In this episode of the Cannabis Accounting Podcast, host Raymond Guns sits down with @luna_stower (Luna Stower), founder of Luna Stower Strategies and cannabis brand-marketing expert, to explore what it actually takes to build credibility and lasting impact in this industry.

Luna was employee #1 at both Jetty Extracts] and Ispire Vape, helping navigate two very different public exits. She has been working with cannabis for over two decades, is a certified Ganjier, sits on the NCIA board and multiple other industry organizations, and consults globally across the Americas and Europe.

Luna opens up about:

🎓 Teaching as a cannabis framework: How six years in the classroom — including work at San Quentin and Bay Area juvenile halls — built the exact skill set cannabis demands. Meeting people where they are, checking for understanding, and never moving on before everyone's on the bus. Luna sees cannabis education and business consulting as the same thing: putting people on game.

📈 Two IPOs, two completely different outcomes: Jetty Extracts chose culture, said no to buyouts, and stayed the course. iSpire chose the Nasdaq and eventually walked away from cannabis entirely. Luna was employee #1 at both. She shares what that fork in the road actually looked like from the inside — and what it reveals about what cannabis companies owe to the communities that built them.

🌍 Suits, roots, and the ecosystem nobody's managing: Why the cannabis industry needs both legacy farmers and corporate capital — and why the scarcity mindset on both sides is slowing everyone down. Her framework: conscious capitalism, not competition. A rising tide raises all boats, but a sinking ship creates a sinkhole everyone goes down in.

👤 Consumer first — not product, not brand: Most founders build the wrong thing because they start with their idea instead of their buyer. Using the Anthony Bourdain vs. Eric Ripert debate on what matters more — the chef or the food — Luna explains why four buyer personas on the wall should precede every packaging, pricing, and channel decision.

💰 How Luna runs her consultancy: Client vetting, checking references in an industry with no Yelp or Better Business Bureau, contracting up "like a prenup," and why she has never had a client stop working with her. If you are leveraging your time, your brand, or your money into someone else's company — you are an investor, and investors do due diligence.

🌱 What's coming in the next 1–3 years: Luna was at the Buddies event at the Chapel of the Flowers in Berkeley last week. Twenty farmers from seven California counties in one room, alongside Origins Council, and the County Growers Alliance, talking appellations and the future of small farming. That is what the right foot forward looks like.

Luna Stower has been in rooms most cannabis professionals only hear about — and she is still the most excited person in those rooms.

If you want to understand what it looks like when advocacy, brand strategy, and genuine love for the plant converge into a career that moves the whole industry forward, this is the clearest picture yet. The optimism here is not surface-level. It is earned across twenty-plus years, two public exits, and a belief that love can be lucrative — if you build it right.

Subscribe for deep dives on cannabis business, accounting, regs, and growth! 🔥

👉 Connect with Luna Stower: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lunastower/

In this episode of the Cannabis Accounting Podcast, host Raymond Guns sits down with Nick Kenny, Founder of KBS Strategic Advisory, to pull back the curtain on how the world's largest, most established companies have been quietly studying — and entering — cannabis for nearly a decade.

Nick spent 18 months inside Imperial Brands educating a FTSE-listed boardroom on cannabis before anyone could say the word publicly. That work led to real investments, a career pivot, and eventually to KBS — a consultancy built around one idea: helping highly regulated, mature industries navigate entry into highly regulated, immature ones.

Nick opens up about:

🚬 The question that started everything: In 2015, the president of Imperial Brands walked into Nick's North Carolina office and asked what he knew about cannabis. Nick's first instinct was to check for hidden cameras. What followed was 18 months of global research, boardroom education, and a career-defining move.

🌍 Winning the stigma battle before the business case: The biggest obstacle wasn't regulations or financials. It was that every executive in the room had a personal history with the plant. Nick's solution: fly senior leaders to Colorado and Vegas to walk into legal dispensaries themselves. Seeing a branded, ID-checked retail environment next to a bakery changed the conversation entirely.

🏢 What pubcos actually want from cannabis: Large companies avoid cultivation — they don't want to own grows. What they want is end product: brands, IP, velocity, and distribution leverage. And their first play is almost always the same.

⚖️ The Proceeds of Crime Act problem: In the UK, even exploring cannabis investment had legal landmines. Nick mapped red/amber/green pathways just to figure out which routes wouldn't expose Imperial to criminal liability under POCA.

💰 Cannabis is a side project — and that's the point: For a multinational, the cannabis team might be one person with five minutes of board time to get a project approved. These companies are not in a hurry. They're investing early and waiting for regulatory stability before they deploy serious capital.

🔄 A three-prong framework for navigating regulatory shifts: Nick was one week from manufacturing a hemp-derived THC beverage when the rules changed. His framework for deciding how to respond: map your least-risk pathway, set conditions for waiting it out, and define what "go all in" actually looks like. Then pick the one you can live with.

📈 The tobacco market share lesson cannabis hasn't fully absorbed: Tobacco's survival playbook runs on a constraint cannabis hasn't fully accepted yet — you can't grow the total market. What you can do is take share. If your business depends on the regulatory environment improving to be viable, that's worth a hard look.

Nick has spent a decade on the inside of how established money evaluates this industry. The perspective here doesn't come from pitch decks. It comes from boardrooms. If you've been wondering what the multinationals are actually thinking about cannabis — and what that means for operators building businesses today — this episode maps it out clearly.

Subscribe for deep dives on cannabis business, accounting, regs, and growth! 🔥

👉 Connect with Nick Kenny: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholasjkenny/

In this episode of the Cannabis Accounting Podcast, host Raymond Guns sits down with Mark Waller, Director of Client Accounting Services at SAX and former owner of Moore & Waller CPAs.

Mark has one simple belief: if you don't fix cash flow first, nothing else matters. Not 280E. Not tax strategy. Not compliance. Cash flow kills more cannabis businesses than any of those combined.

Mark spent 20 years in traditional accounting before launching his own cannabis CPA firm during COVID. He merged into SAX in January 2026 and now runs their cannabis practice. He has watched operators obsess over tax optimization while their bank accounts drain to zero. And he keeps seeing the same mistake destroy businesses over and over again.

He talks about:

💸 Why 99 out of 100 failed cannabis businesses ran out of cash, not tax problems. The businesses that close their doors do it because they have no cash left. Everything else is secondary.

📊 The CAS-first approach that keeps clients in business. Bookkeeping drives weekly reports. Weekly reports drive monthly financials. Monthly financials drive tax prep. You cannot skip steps.

⏳ Minnesota's slow adult-use rollout and what every new market gets wrong. Minnesota legalized in August 2023. Stores are just now opening in April 2026. Every state takes longer than expected. Lawsuits and refunding delays are guaranteed.

📞 Why calling clients beats AI tools and email marketing. Everyone is chasing automation. Mark is doing the opposite. SAX is picking up the phone. Live conversations solve problems 10x faster than spreadsheets and emails.

🏛️ How CPAs legitimize cannabis and reduce stigma in real time. When CPAs work in cannabis, it signals to banks, investors, and lenders that this is a real industry with real businesses. Mark's mother-in-law went from skeptical to asking for cannabis beverages in his fridge.

Hit subscribe for more deep dives on cannabis business, finance, and strategy. 🌱

👉🏻 Connect with Mark Waller: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrwaller/

In this episode of the Cannabis Accounting Podcast, host Raymond Guns sits down with Griffin Basden, Senior Client Manager at AlphaRoot, a cannabis-specific insurance retailer. Griffin has one simple warning: your insurance policy might not actually cover you. Cannabis operators are paying for policies with cannabis exclusions buried in the fine print. And most don't find out until they file a claim and get denied.

Griffin breaks down the difference between retail brokers, wholesale brokers, carriers, and reinsurance companies. She explains why some policies require secondary wholesalers and why claims get handled by third-party administrators you've never heard of.

She talks about:

🚨 The cannabis exclusion hiding in your policy right now

🏢 Why brokers exist and who actually pays your claim

⚠️ Why safeguards matter and how they determine whether claims get paid.

🗺️ State-by-state coverage and why interstate commerce doesn't exist yet

🔍 Free coverage reviews and what to look for

Hit subscribe for more deep dives on cannabis business, finance, and strategy. 🌱

👉🏻 Connect with Griffin Basden: https://www.linkedin.com/in/graebasden/

Cannabis is moving toward a true global market where every country plays to its strengths. Where the industry will be in another ten years should be quite awesome — and anyone who's been in it long enough knows the difference between hype and a real shift.

In this episode of the Cannabis Accounting Podcast, host Raymond Guns sits down with Chris Day, co-founder of the Global Cannabis Network Collective (GCNC), to break down what's really happening in the global cannabis industry — and why US operators who ignore it are setting themselves up to lose.

Chris has spent 30+ years helping businesses grow in industries that move fast and break rules. He was recruited into cannabis by MJBizCon, and six years ago he and Jillian Redish launched GCNC to connect operators across countries that were all solving the same problems in silence. Today GCNC has boots on the ground in 25 countries across 5 continents. Chris bases himself out of Mexico, hops between Latin America and Europe, and spends his days mapping how cannabis actually moves around the world.

Chris breaks down:

🌍 The real global map: Africa is rising fast — South Africa, Lesotho, Botswana, Morocco, Kenya. Brazil has almost 300 million people and a trade show that draws 70,000 attendees. Most US operators have no idea any of this exists.

🚫 Why US operators are getting left behind: Chris met a "long-time cannabis industry veteran" last year who didn't know there was an international market. That kind of tunnel vision is going to hurt when Canadian LPs, Colombian producers, and African cultivators start showing up in American supply chains.

🏦 The banking cowardice problem: Big US banks treat cannabis clients as risk with no upside. Chris explains why smaller community banks and credit unions have the real opportunity here — and why most of them are still too scared to take it.

🇩🇪 ICBC Berlin and what to actually watch: Germany gets the headlines, but France, Italy, Czech Republic, Poland, and Greece are where the real growth stories are quietly building. Chris explains how to read the European market like an insider.

💡 Why vertical integration is dumb: Heinz doesn't grow its own tomatoes. Cannabis operators trying to do everything themselves are fighting a losing battle. New global markets are launching without vertical integration on purpose — and that's a lesson US operators need to learn fast.

The US cannabis industry has spent a decade stuck in state-by-state silos. The rest of the world didn't wait. Chris has a clear message: you can keep operating like your state is the whole market, or you can start paying attention to the global industry that's already been built without you.

Subscribe for honest conversations about the business, legal, and financial side of cannabis every week. 🌱

👉 Connect with Chris Day: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisday/

In this episode of the Cannabis Accounting Podcast, Andrew Hunzicker, CPA, founder and CEO of DOPE CFO, recaps the biggest cannabis industry news from April 2026.

Listen to learn about:

✅ The historic rescheduling of cannabis to Schedule III: what the April 23rd DOJ order means and why it's the most significant federal development in 15 years

✅ The end of 280E: how Schedule III eliminates one of the most punishing tax laws in cannabis and what it means overnight for client financials

✅ The DEA registration portal: what it is, why the first 60 days are critical, and what cannabis businesses need to do right now

✅ Hemp, the Farm Bill, and the state-level battles shaping the industry heading into the midterms

✅ What's coming next: the More Act, full descheduling, banking reform, and the wave of new cannabis companies expected to enter the market

Articles mentioned in the episode:

https://mjbizdaily.com/news/can-the-28-billion-hemp-industry-be-saved/615123/

https://www.marijuanamoment.net/virginia-governor-wants-amendments-to-marijuana-sales-legalization-bill-including-delayed-market-launch/

https://ganjapreneur.com/ohio-judge-blocks-state-from-enforcing-thc-beverage-ban/

https://mjbizdaily.com/news/meet-the-native-tribe-taking-on-the-most-anti-cannabis-state-in-the-us/615150/

https://vicentellp.com/press/landmark-colorado-bill-introduced-to-modernize-colorado-thc-drinks-sales/

https://ganjapreneur.com/massachusetts-cannabis-regulators-pass-cultivation-licensing-freeze/

https://vicentellp.com/press/president-trump-signs-executive-order-accelerating-psychedelic-research-and-patient-access/

https://ganjapreneur.com/massachusetts-gov-signs-cannabis-industry-updates-into-law/

https://www.marijuanamoment.net/teen-marijuana-use-is-lower-now-than-before-legalization-government-study-from-minnesota-officials-shows/

https://www.marijuanamoment.net/congress-has-the-votes-to-pass-federal-marijuana-reform-top-house-democrat-says/

https://norml.org/blog/2026/04/22/poll-most-americans-support-making-marijuana-legal-nationwide-opinions-shaped-by-personal-experience/

https://www.marijuanamoment.net/tennessee-lawmaker-calls-for-special-session-focused-on-medical-marijuana-as-its-federally-reclassified-under-trump/

https://www.marijuanamoment.net/federal-marijuana-rescheduling-announced-by-department-of-justice-months-after-trump-executive-order/

https://mmapplication.diversion.dea.gov/

https://ganjapreneur.com/report-indiana-residents-spend-about-2b-on-cannabis-annually-despite-prohibition/

https://www.marijuanamoment.net/house-passes-farm-bill-including-hemp-provisions-but-without-delaying-thc-product-ban-scheduled-for-this-year/

https://www.marijuanamoment.net/gop-led-congressional-committee-votes-to-block-marijuana-rescheduling-defying-trump/

https://themarijuanaherald.com/2026/04/global-cannabis-market-projected-to-reach-148-9-billion-by-2031/

https://mjbizdaily.com/news/how-mso-terrascend-is-leading-the-cannabis-industry-forward/615734/

In this episode of the Cannabis Accounting Podcast, host Raymond Guns sits down with Amanda Metzler, owner-operator of Bigsby Farms in Oregon, and Matt Kennicott, Executive Director of the Cannabis Association of New Mexico. Amanda has one simple belief — if you don't control your costs, the market will control you. Matt knows another truth — bad policy kills more businesses than bad operators.

Amanda has been farming since 2016 and built the largest solar installation on any farm in Oregon. Matt runs a micro-cultivation farm and leads the Cannabis Association of New Mexico. They have both seen the industry go from gold rush to grown-up business. And they keep seeing the same mistakes destroy farms over and over again.

They talk about:

🚨 The border seizure problem nobody warns you about: Border Patrol has seized over $1M in legal cannabis at New Mexico checkpoints. Operators now vacuum seal and wipe down product like smugglers just to move inventory they're legally allowed to sell.

💸 Why consignment killed Oregon farmers: One farm started giving product to wholesalers on consignment and the whole state copied them. Now farmers front all the money and get paid last — if they get paid at all.

⚡ Amanda's $125K solar investment that changed everything: She powers her entire seed-to-sale operation for under $200 a month with just two people and only grows what's already sold. The days of growing all the weed and asking "will you buy my weed?" are over.

📦 The packaging war and child-attractive labeling fight: New Mexico proposed forcing brands into plain black-and-white packaging with sans-serif font "to protect kids." Matt built a public education campaign over one weekend that got the state health department and poison control center on board instead.

📉 The tax trap crushing retailers right now: New Mexico's cannabis excise tax is currently 13% and rises 1% every July until 2030. Combined with gross receipts tax, customers pay over 21% at checkout — so they go back to the illicit market. Retailers need 40 new customers every month just to maintain current margins.

🌾 Why unlimited licensing breaks everyone: New Mexico handed out unlimited licenses with almost no barrier to entry. Now the market is oversaturated, margins are razor thin, and licenses have zero value. You cannot sell or transfer your license at all.

This episode is for cannabis owners and investors who want to stop chasing hype and start running businesses that actually survive.

Subscribe for deep dives on cannabis business, accounting, regs, and growth! 🔥

🌱 Connect with Matt Kennicott: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mkennicott31/

So you landed a cannabis client... now what? Here's what it actually looks like to serve a cannabis client as a world-class CFO.

---

With federal rescheduling on the horizon, cannabis CFOs have never been more in demand. DOPE CFO gives you the tools, training, and network to build a premium cannabis CFO advisory practice — ready to go from day one. Get started here: https://go.dopecfo.com/get-started-6?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=specialized-cfo&utm_term=cfo+client+service&utm_content=non+lottery+tickets+cfo+edition

---

Andrew Hunzicker, CPA, founder and CEO of DOPE CFO, has spent 26 years finding what Nassim Taleb calls "non-lottery tickets" — low-cost, low-effort moves with massive upside. In this video, he breaks down how that framework applies to client service, and why the CFOs who get this right become the most indispensable person in the room.

Andrew covers:

- Why bookkeeping, taxes, and audits have zero value in the eyes of your client — and what actually does

- The month-end close discipline most firms skip and why it's the foundation for everything else

- How to split your month into execution work and pure value-add time — and why your competition structurally can't do the same

- Real stories from 26 years in the field — the small bets that cost nothing and paid off for years

- The one cannabis-specific move he's been pitching to every operator he meets — nearly zero cost, potentially six figures back in your client's pocket

The CFO who masters this doesn't just keep clients — they become the first call for everything.

🌿 Ready to build your specialized practice? https://go.dopecfo.com/get-started-6?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=specialized-cfo&utm_term=cfo+client+service&utm_content=non+lottery+tickets+cfo+edition

Most cannabis companies in the global supply chain aren't failing because of regulation — they're failing because they're running businesses like magpies. Chasing whatever's shiny. No strategy.

In this episode of the Cannabis Accounting Podcast, host Raymond Guns sits down with Atiyyah Ferouz, founder and CEO of AgCann Consultancy and one of the most globally connected compliance experts in the cannabis industry, to break down what really happens when producers try to move cannabis across borders — and why chasing the "export" buzzword is quietly bankrupting small operators.

Atiyyah has been in cannabis since Canada's 2018 legalization, starting as a tissue culture lab manager, scaling up to run a million-square-foot greenhouse, and then launching AgCann in 2020 with just $10,000 in the bank. Today she runs five cannabis businesses across three continents, is a certified pharmaceutical GMP professional, and has advised producers in emerging markets from Thailand to Colombia to Germany.

Atiyyah talks about:

🌍 Why your domestic price is often higher than what you'd get in Europe or Australia — and why most operators don't find out until it's too late

⚠️ The "Can I buy a GMP?" problem: Operators hear buzzwords like GMP, Germany, and export and chase them without understanding what any of it actually means. Small cultivators producing 200 kilos a year do not need to go GMP — and trying to will break them.

💸 The cash flow trap nobody warns you about: European payment terms are 60 to 90 days. A million dollars of flower can sit locked up for three months before you see a dime — and one buyer going bankrupt can take your company down with them.

✨What "magpie management" actually looks like — absorbing 15 parts of the supply chain, chasing every buzzword, and never building the strategy to sustain any of it

🚩 What has her concerned (Germany moving compliance goalposts mid-shipment) and genuinely excited (France, emerging markets, new primary producers coming online)

The global cannabis supply chain is still being built — and it'll probably take 30 to 40 years to fully mature. But the operators who survive this phase will be the ones who stop chasing trends, build real partnerships, and respect the fundamentals.

Subscribe for honest conversations about the business, legal, and financial side of cannabis every week. 🌱

👉 Connect with Atiyyah Ferouz: https://www.linkedin.com/in/atiyyahferouz/

In this episode of the Cannabis Accounting Podcast, host Raymond Guns sits down with Jim Ickes, Partner at Frantz Ward and one of the most experienced cannabis and hemp attorneys in the country, to break down the legal and financial reality facing the hemp beverage industry right now — and why the longer arc still points toward normalization.

Jim has been practicing law for 26 years, working in cannabis for a decade, and has advised everyone from Ohio operators to the Greek Ministry of Agriculture on medical cannabis frameworks. Since 2023, hemp beverages have been his primary focus — which means he had a front-row seat to both the boom and the regulatory gut punch that followed.

Jim breaks down:

🍺 Why hemp beverages took off: Low-dose THC gave millions of people a friendlier way to enjoy cannabis without the paranoia. Five milligrams was the sweet spot — and the industry grew fast because of it.

⚖️ The law nobody saw coming: In November 2025, a 0.4 milligram THC cap was quietly attached to a must-pass government funding bill. Businesses that had spent hundreds of thousands building hemp brands woke up to a completely different market overnight.

🗺️ What is happening state by state: Minnesota and Texas are building their own programs. Ohio is already pulling products off shelves. The market is shifting fast — and mostly heading south.

💰 The 280E problem nobody is talking about: If a hemp product crosses the federal THC limit it could be treated the same as marijuana — bringing the same crushing tax rules that have hurt cannabis operators for years.

The hemp beverage category took a hit, but the industry has absorbed worse. Jim's been in this long enough to know the difference between a setback and an ending — and this isn't an ending.

Subscribe for honest conversations about the business, legal, and financial side of cannabis every week. 🌱

👉 Connect with Jim Ickes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-ickes-839a1113/