Matt Brown, the founder of Denver-based marijuana tour company My 420 Tours, was recently interviewed by Ganjapreneur about what led to his decision to make a career in the cannabis industry after working for financial titan Bloomberg and starting his own tech company. Brown was interviewed by Mitch Shenassa, author of The Cannabis Aficionado’s Handbook and founder of Incredibowl, and the interview was recorded in audio format. The original interview ran for over 2 hours, and the recently published segment is one of many to be released over the coming weeks.
In this segment, Brown explains his own history and how he came to have the experience necessary to start a medical marijuana consulting business. After working at Bloomberg, he had a job at Accenture, a medical consulting and supply company, where he learned the ins and outs of small, independent pharmacies. “This is actually where a lot of my early dispensary consulting came from,” Brown says. “I reorganized the sales team for independent pharmacy sales. I created a spreadsheet that took industry metrics– So these sales reps, who aren’t particularly business people, will go talk to mom and pop pharmacies, who are also not particularly business people, get a couple really simple metrics, and immediately tell that pharmacy how they compare to their peers, and it was a big way to start selling a lot of the automated systems and ordering through back-end. But I got a really good feel for how these– You know, not Walgreens, but like real, small businesses work.”
Brown also commented on his involvement with medical marijuana in Colorado, his current state of residence, and how it has led to a successful recreational market upon the passage of Amendment 64 in 2012. “They let me grow pot as long as I follow the rules. These are the rules, they’re pretty simple. It’s not really that bad when you think about it. And that everything you get to see in this room, I get to do legally, and I don’t have to worry that I might go to jail, and even more, if you try to steal from me, I can call the cops, and they will arrest you and give me my weed back.”
The interview with Brown is part of a larger series of interviews by Ganjapreneur, whose aim is to feature prominent cannabis industry pioneers and provide insight to aspiring “ganjapreneurs,” or people who hope to make a career in any of the new industries relating to legalized marijuana.
Ganjapreneur also recently launched an open-source dictionary of every slang term related to cannabis and marijuana. They announced earlier this week that the dictionary is open to submissions from the public, and that they intend to grow and expand the database of slang terms over time.