There's a question worth asking everyone still standing in cannabis right now: why are you still here?
Not when things were good — when dispensaries were opening on every corner and investor decks were full of hockey-stick projections. But now. After the failed ballot measures, the compressed valuations, the companies that didn't make it.
The people still in this industry have an answer to that question. And it's usually not the one you'd expect.
We sat down with Jesse Redmond — Chief Strategy and Investor Relations Officer at Leef Brands and co-host of the Higher Exchanges podcast — to talk about what keeps operators in the game when the financials aren't cooperating. His answer says a lot about the kind of industry cannabis actually is, and the kind of relationships brands need to be building inside it.
Jesse spent two decades in institutional finance before walking away from it all. Franklin Templeton, Fisher Investments, his own hedge fund. A successful career — but by his own account, one without much purpose.
That changed when his father found cannabis.
Two car accidents left his dad disabled before age 50, diagnosed with chronic regional pain syndrome. The medical playbook of the era: high-dose opioids. Doses that climbed, over years, to over 1,000 milligrams of Oxycontin per day — and still didn't adequately manage the pain.
"The older I get, the harder that is to imagine what that must have been like," Jesse said on the High Touch podcast, "to be in the prime of your career, prime of being a father and had that all... completely taken away, but severely compromised by those car accidents."
Around 2015, his father started working with a cannabis doctor. Over a few years, through careful tapering and a combination of CBD tinctures, minor cannabinoids, and flower, he weaned off the opioids entirely.
That transition — witnessed up close, over years — is what made cannabis more than a thesis for Jesse. It made it a conviction.
Jesse didn't romanticize what came next. He opened a dispensary, built a real business, then pivoted to cannabis investing and analysis — just as the industry stalled.
"I kind of think about it in two ways," he said. "One is the purpose behind it... I wouldn't take it back. But I also think when we have these conversations, I always like to just let people know that people like me have been struggling right alongside everyone else out there in this industry."
That kind of honesty is rare in cannabis. The industry tends to produce two types of voices — true believers who oversell the upside, and cynics who've already moved on. What's more useful is someone who holds both truths at once. Who believes in where this is going, and is clear-eyed about how hard it's been to get there.
His framework for operators: "You can't base your cannabis business decisions around expecting reform." Build your expectations around what happens if it takes twice as long as you hoped. If the answer is "we'd be okay" — you're building something real.
Something worth understanding about the cannabis retail landscape right now: the operators, budtenders, and brand reps still in it aren't primarily here for the money. The financial opportunity hasn't been there consistently enough for that to be the main driver.
They're here because cannabis means something to them.
Jesse put it plainly: "I think you have to really care to be here at this point. 'Cause the financial opportunity hasn't been here... I feel like all of us — guys talking today — the good part about it is I know if you're here now, you're here for the right reasons. You're not here for the money chasing."
He talks about delivering cannabis to a Vietnam veteran named George — a man using it to quiet what the war left behind, who had to sell his VA-prescribed Vicodin just to pay for it. He talks about his niece, who has cerebral palsy and epilepsy, and the families in her community who've found relief through cannabinoids the medical system still won't fully embrace.
These aren't talking points. They're the reasons people stay when the spreadsheets aren't cooperating.
If the people on the retail floor are there because they genuinely care about cannabis — and most of them are — that changes how you should think about brand relationships at the point of sale.
Retail employees in this industry aren't just clock-punchers. They're often patients, caregivers, advocates. They have real stories about why they're there. And when a brand gives them something worth caring about — real product knowledge, a reason to lead with your SKU, recognition when they do — the response is genuine.
That's the connection SparkPlug is built to help brands make. Courses give retail teams the product education they need to sell with confidence, not just recite a label. Sparks give them a reason to champion your brand on the floor. Analytics show you which locations and which employees are actually moving your products — so you can double down where it's working.
The brands that will be standing when this industry finally gets the regulatory tailwinds it's been waiting for aren't going to be the ones that out-spent everyone else. They'll be the ones that built real relationships with the retail teams who showed up every day, for the right reasons, even when it was hard.
Those people are already there. The question is whether your brand is showing up for them.
Insights in this post are drawn from Jesse Redmond's conversation on the High Touch podcast. Jesse is Chief Strategy and Investor Relations Officer at Leef Brands and co-host of the Higher Exchanges podcast.