Elevate Your Grind

Craig and Marc Wasserman are the founders of California's award-winning marijuana business and criminal defense law group The WassLaw Firm, a.k.a. Pot Brothers at Law. For over 30 years, they have represented countless marijuana business clients from dispensaries, patient cooperatives, marijuana delivery services, cultivation, marijuana manufacturing, and criminal defense for marijuana-related crimes here in the State of California.

In today's episode of Elevate Your Grind, we sit down with Craig to hear how they gain their stardom on Instagram, their widly-used script for potential possession accusations, and what the legal landscape looks like in California. 

Durée Ross launched her own PR agency, Durée & Company, at the age of 24, and has since been setting the bar for excellence in PR, serving the corporate, agency and nonprofit arenas for local, national and international clients. An award-winning entrepreneur, she has been nationally recognized for her ability to develop winning strategies and successfully deliver creative campaigns for clients. 

Durée leads a 10+ member team of PR and marketing professionals in her Fort Lauderdale, Florida and Aspen, Colorado offices. She fosters diversity and inclusion in every aspect of her business and is the winner of PR News’ 2016 Top Women in PR award, which honors influential women who are driving the agenda for the industry and in their companies.

Durée is also a pioneer in her adaption of emerging industries, including CBD. Her work in the space has resulted in a growing list of clients, from processing facilities to consumer products sold in big box retailers. Through a watchful eye on local and federal legislation, a strong pulse on key expos and leadership conferences and proven relationships with influencers and thought leaders, Durée understands how to navigate the rapidly-growing cannabis industry to achieve client goals. She is a Marijuana Moments member and a corporate partner to CannabisLAB.

Jake Bullock, Co-Founder of CANN has always been canna-curious, and eager to explore the potential for cannabis to replace society’s troubling dependence on alcohol and prescription drugs. Jake’s curiosity got the best of him, as he started Cann, the first truly low-dose and 'sessionable' cannabis-infused beverage. In his garage in Palo Alto, CA, he experimented with different dosage levels and flavors, force carbonated kegs, and bottled samples to test on his classmates. The overwhelmingly positive feedback pointed Jake to pursue the project full-time after graduating from Stanford. That same year, Jake recruited his old friend Luke Anderson, and Cann Social Tonics was born. Luke was a former colleague who had never stepped foot into a dispensary before, but Jake knew that with Luke’s experience launching CPG products, he would be the key to bringing the product to life. The two worked together to design a brand and to formulate delicious social beverages that were geared towards the cannabis curious who are looking for an alcohol alternative.

Rather than our standard Thursday episode of Elevate Your Grind, we decided to reair last week's investment panel hosted by our Broward chapter. 

2020 was supposed to be a turbulent time for the Cannabis Industry……and that was before the pandemic hit. Now that Cannabis has been deemed “Essential” has that changed the outlook for this year? Join our panel of expert Investors as they discuss how being deemed essential has changed their outlooks and where they see opportunities to invest in the private Cannabis market.

Meet Your Speakers:
Emily Paxhia, Managing Director Poseidon Asset Management, LLC
Matt Hawkins, Founder & Managing Principal, Entourage Effect Capital
Matt Nordgren, CEO & Founder, Arcadian Fund
George Mancheril, CEO, Bespoke Financial,
Jonathan Robbins, Partner & Chair, Akerman's National Cannabis Practice

Yesenia Garcia is a longtime resident of South Florida, she graduated from FIU and went on to lead an in-house creative and marketing agency of one of South Florida’s leading gaming and entertainment establishments. Yesenia joined Curaleaf last year in May in search of a career and personal challenge in an emerging industry that also happened to have a positive impact on people’s lives. “It was important to me to work for a company, like Curaleaf, who values social responsibility and gives back to the communities it serves,” said Yesenia. Providing consumers with options to medicate with quality cannabis as a natural way of achieving their wellness goals is one of the many reasons this industry is so rewarding to her.

In our latest episode, we sit down with Arby Barroso, Co-Founder of Green Roads. An injury at 23 years old led him on a rocky journey that would ultimately result in one of the countries largest and most trusted CBD brands. Arby suffered a hip injuring playing football which led to an opiate addiction that would end up with jail time. Soon after Arby met Dr. Laura Fuentes, a compounding pharmacist who helped him leverage CBD to fight his addiction. Laura and Arby knew that the world needed this solution, and today Green Roads can be found in over 10,000 locations across the globe.

Bob Hoban was one of the first in the legal field to pivot into the cannabis industry, starting his full-service cannabis practice in 2008. Since then, Hoban Law Group has expanded into seventeen states and ten nations abroad, with over fifty attorneys who specialize in all aspects of the commercial practice surrounding the cannabis industry. In today's episode of Elevate Your Grind, we talk with Bob on how he's seen cannabis develop over the past decade and his experiences in the trenches. 

Valda Coryat started her position as CMO of Trulieve in December 2019, just a few months before the COVID-19 outbreak forced them to shift into an unprecedented state of operations. In this episode of Elevate Your Grind, we talk about Valda's transition from Mangos to Cannabis, starting with a company during a time of uncertainty, and her thoughts on where the industry is going. 

Chloe is the Director of Corporate Growth at Trulieve managing organic growth opportunities for Trulieve, and a focus on new market penetration through competitive license opportunities. She has over five years of operational, licensing and policy experience in the cannabis industry. Before Trulieve, she served as Managing Director of a Los Angeles-based vertically-integrated cannabis company and has influenced cannabis policy in a number of state and international jurisdictions, including California, New Jersey, Canada, Mexico, and Guam. She is also a member of the Policy Committee for the Minority Cannabis Business Association and formerly served as Research Director for the National Cannabis Industry Association's Federal Policy Council.

Jeff Finnerty got into the Cannabis industry by witnessing the powerful possibilities of the plant and the people creating access to it. His sister had Fibromyalgia, and he saw for years how it made her unable to hold a job, enjoy time with family and friends, all due to pain and suffering from her illness. Once she turned to Cannabis for pain management, it immediately changed her life, and he wanted to create that same experience for thousands of other patients. He is now the Senior Director of Sales & Marketing at iAnthus Capital Management, and we're excited to have had him on Elevate Your Grind to share his experience in the medical cannabis market.