https://youtu.be/WRiHulo7I48
Will Bowden is the Founder and Owner of Grasshopper Farms - local Michigan farmers on a mission to grow and provide high-quality cannabis. We discuss the future of cannabis farming, how to dodge shiny objects, and the difference between outdoor and indoor cannabis farming.
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Dodge Shiny Objects with Will Bowden
Our guest is Will Bowden, the founder and CEO of Grasshopper Farms with a mission to grow high quality cannabis. Will, welcome to the show.
Thank you, Steve. It’s a pleasure to be here.
You’re the first person on the show from the cannabis industry, so that is very special and I'm very curious about this whole business and I'm sure our audience are too. But let's start at the beginning where we always start is how did you get into this business? What prompted you into starting a cannabis field, a growing company? What's been your journey?
Yeah, Steve, thanks so much. And I'll try to honor the fact that I'm the first cannabis guest on your show here. So let me see if I could do okay with that. You know, my story is I actually grew up in California and quickly found myself leaning into law enforcement and military. So while the product itself wasn't unfamiliar to me and I didn't really have any issues with it. My career decisions kept me from partaking as either from a use perspective or also from a working perspective as well. And that's just my personal choices and journeys. And so as I was going through my life as a police officer and also in the military, I found myself about 10 years ago, observing and appreciating the industry as it was growing from a business perspective.
And I remember saying out loud, I'm like, “Wow, what an amazing business opportunity for other people.” And I said it like that because it was more of an appreciation than a desire to do it because at the time I was still in the midpoint of my military career and I didn't have any aspirations of retiring at that point. But wouldn't you know it that the same month that I retired, I ended up meeting this gentleman who was also former military. And when we started to get to know what we have done in life, he said, “Hey, listen, I'm starting this business and I'd really like you to consider joining me.” Well, it was a cannabis business. And so what he wanted me to do was to come on and basically be the person who went and operationalized licenses in other states. And so that's kind of how it happened. I came home to my wife and I'm like, “Wait a minute, is this really happening right now? So I'm actually eligible to, I can legally work in the industry.
There's no conflict of interest, all that kind of stuff.” We talked it over and ultimately I decided to take the position in the first state that I was sent to was Michigan. And so my job was to operationalize licenses, which means for that business model, it was retail, indoor grow and manufacturing. And as I was doing that, I came upon the other types of cultivation. So there's greenhouse as well as indoor, and then there's also outdoor. And I really liked the outdoor farming idea and I wanted to learn more about it. And once I learned more about it, I approached my previous company about possibly incorporating it for all the right reasons.
They couldn't do it because they were resourced doing other things. And I said, “All right, well, I'm just gonna investigate a little bit more.” And eventually I did, and I left that company and started Grasshopper Farms. And that's what landed me just square in the middle of the cannabis industry and outdoor farming of cannabis as well.
Well, that's fascinating. So how is outdoor farming different from indoor farming? Is it that makes the product different? Is it cheaper to do outdoor farming? How is it different?
You know, so at the broadest level, I would just say that they are different disciplines, right? So there's three different disciplines of overall growing of plants. You have indoor growing,