I’ve been seeing a few posts lately asking what it’s like to be a cultivator, the things that stress us out the most about our jobs, the things we love the most, etc. I can’t speak for the vast majority of people in the business, but I’d like to share my experience with those of you who are looking to get into the industry.

I’ve been working in the cannabis industry for over 8 years. I was two years into my bachelor’s program when a friend of a friend offered me a cultivator job. The pay was generous and my responsibilities were limited to cultivation tasks only, but there was a catch: I would have to relocate to another state (Midwest US) and essentially be on-call 24 hours a day. This was 2010, I knew that cannabis was going to be huge in the near future, and I saw this as a golden ticket. At 23 years old with no wife, no kids and no serious financial obligations, I decided to put my academic career on hold to pursue a “career” in the cannabis business.

My first job involved working a grow operation yielding between 30-40 lbs per month. We were a small team, but we were part of a much larger collective of growers and sellers who had secured a large and loyal share of the local market. At the time, flower was selling at about $3500-3800 per lb. If we could keep our yield at a decent rate (about 0.8-0.9 grams/watt), it was literally growing money on trees. Even though the operation itself was somewhat sloppy at times, I saw myself making pretty good money in a very short span of time. I decided to give it at least two years before I returned home.

Then about 8 months into the job, just as I was given a promotion with a substantial pay raise (including a profit share), one of our grows got robbed. 20 lbs were stolen, and a large chunk of my pay with it. A few months later, we had to shut down another grow because the owner wanted to sell the property. As you can imagine, this lead to a lot of infighting and distrust in our collective, not to mention a lot of pissed off investors. Money was being lost and relationships soured, so our team decided that we would relocate to another market: My home state of California.

Setting up shop in California was both a dream and a nightmare. At the time, California was widely recognized as the “big leagues” of the industry; if you could make it here, you could make it anywhere. The competition was fierce, the market was massive, and the lure of legalization attracted hordes of new players like us. It was an exciting time to join the fray, but we knew it was going to be an uphill battle. It was especially hard for us to adapt to this environment at first because of how different it was from our previous situation. We were used to an established network of buyers who always asked for more than what we had, and now we were forced to wait in lines with other vendors just to leave a phone number and a sample. While it was nicer living closer to my friends and family, doing business in California was costing us a premium. While we were no longer beholden to outside investors, our limited budget and economies of scale forced us to take less profit than before. And while our product was always exceptional, so was everyone else’s.

The work itself suddenly became more demanding. As it turned out, my two-year stint in college made me the most educated person in the operation, as my former partner once explained that he “doesn’t like to read.” In addition to my responsibilities as a grower, I eventually had to apply what little knowledge I had to every other facet of the business: accounting/bookkeeping, operations management, technology, law, etc. If I wasn’t maintaining the grow itself, I was managing sales, paying bills, reading the news, Reddit, and social media, and attending cannabis shows and conferences to stay up-to-date on industry practices. It was also essential that I stayed healthy throughout all this, because there was no one to cover for me if I ever got sick. The work itself was decent enough exercise, but I had to be extra cautious about the food and drinks I consumed. Good sleep was a luxury.

I also got into more frequent (and increasingly tense) disagreements with my partners. In stressful environments, even the best relationships can sour. I once admired one of my partners for his strong work ethic, moral compass and resourcefulness, but as we started experiencing setbacks, he became more erratic and vindictive. In turn, I grew more annoyed by his ignorance and ego. This came to a head in late 2014 when he said my ineptitude as a grower was causing us to yield less (and thus lose money), while ignoring the fact that our profit margin was actually higher because I refused to overspend on equipment and supplies we didn’t actually need. (This actually still pisses me off.) I decided to break off the partnership after that argument. He went on to run his own side of the business, increased his overhead by about 400%, and replaced me with four other people who all quit in protest when he similarly blamed them for his business going red. I spent the next four years working on my small operation entirely alone.

And this is my last year.

At this point, I wish I could say that all the sacrifices I’ve made, all the time I could’ve spent with girlfriends/family/friends or all the money I could’ve spent making more worthwhile investments (such as my education) didn’t go to waste. I wish I could say that my business thrived, that I did everything right, and that I got a massive payday from it. But I didn’t. And the ugly truth is that most people in this business don’t. Survivorship bias is strong in the cannabis industry. Stories about Tilray, Canopy, and all these big brands coming out of the woodwork might inspire grandiose dreams of massive wealth and success, but the reality is that this life can be incredibly hard, and is definitely not for everyone. I failed, and I've seen others fail. I lacked the foresight, intuition, business acumen, and good fortune to follow through on my aspirations of running a cannabis empire. I made a lot of dumb decisions that had serious consequences for my life and the lives of those around me. And worst of all, I have regrets. Even as I write this, there are so many things I wish I could've done differently.

People have often said to me that it must be nice to “be your own boss.” What they and many others don’t understand is that, as a business owner, the business itself is your boss. You’re on the clock 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It dictates your every move and never compromises. And if you're not careful, you'll eventually become its slave.

TL;DR - I grew weed for almost a decade, and it sucked. Make sure that it doesn’t suck for you.