Small Business, Big Lessons - Season 1, Episode 8: How small businesses drive change

Key Takeaways

welcome back to small business big lessons a buffer original series my name is Ash Reed head of content at buffer and throughout this series we're going on a journey to understand how great work happens we're telling stories of unique businesses and meeting the incredible people behind them examining how they're doing things differently and what we can learn from their Journeys in this season one finale we're meeting Damien Fagan founder of gullybean a hemp Farm based in Hudson Valley New York Damien is part of a small number of non-white farmers in the U.S and his road to founding Gully bean and growing his first successful crop was paved with its fair share of challenges but throughout his journey from starting his career in International Development in Guatemala all the way to farming in Upstate New York Damien has built a vision for the impact he'd like to make in the world and his story and unique approach to building business offers insights and lessons for us all from how to think big and push for real change to recognizing when a business has served its purpose and rethinking how we measure the success of entrepreneurial Pursuits here's Damien [Music] my background is actually International Development work so I started my career in the Peace Corps in Guatemala I was working in a part of Guatemala in a public health capacity but a department a state of Guatemala that is entirely dependent on coffee exportation coffee cultivation so that was like my first you know uh inclination that I was interested in farming moved back to DC where I'm originally from and began a career in the government at Department of Justice and state department doing International Development work primarily in Latin America in the Caribbean you know a lot of that work in DC focused on judicial reform criminal justice development work in Latin America in the Caribbean so specifically we'd be working with a Ministry of Justice in Bogota or in Paraguay or Jamaica or training police officers in Trinidad and so I was managing projects for both the state department and Department of Justice and kind of interagency capacity so you know I was there for three years and a lot of the work there left me feeling a little wanting in other areas of development specifically Economic Development so after three years there I I came here to New York to grad school and I was ultimately choosing between two grad programs in DC or New York and I knew I had to get out of the DC bubble if I was ever gonna do something different in development work especially looking at it from the lens of a private sector company and you know here in New York at Columbia is where I first started really focusing on agriculture and economic development that led me to classes at Columbia business school and the policy school that focused on the intersection of smallholder farming and you know large-scale Economic Development helping Farmers export helping them cultivate higher yields and at the time this is 2016 to 2018 uh when I was in grad school and cannabis is obviously blowing up uh and I saw that crop as potentially transformative for the global South specifically West Africa Caribbean Latin America southeast Asia regions that are perfectly suited for cannabis commercial cultivation and I wanted to learn how to grow the crop as a student I started just cold calling investors and businesses that worked in the space medical cannabis companies everyone I eventually connected and got really close with the founder and CEO of a medical cannabis company in Pennsylvania that operated Out of Philly and they backed me to pursue a hemp operation in South Carolina so I partnered with them got funding from them I spent the next two years learning everything I could about growing cannabis growing hemp Damien traveled learning all he could about the commercial cultivation of hemp and commercial farming in general he visited Farms across the state and returned to South Carolina to start a 20-acre hemp Farm Damien's first attempt at growing hemp was disrupted by climate challenges including hurricanes an unseasonably warm weather which meant ultimately his first crop wasn't successful despite this disappointment Damian wasn't put off by the experience what it did do is it pushed me back to New York where I had been living and what I found in the Hudson Valley is a much more stable small farmer-friendly community with great soil organic practices you know proximity to one of the biggest consumer markets in the world and it was here in the Hudson Valley in Upstate New York where Damien set up for his next attempt at growing hemp if this crop was successful he hoped to realize the economic potential of the hemp plant by producing a tumeric infused CBD tincture but the possibilities of the plant go Way Beyond just that one consumer Market the economic potential of hemp is pretty astounding and I'm not talking just about CBD cbd's Market is ultimately somewhat limited you're looking at you know nationally like a five billion dollar industry there you know it's big but compared to stuff like livestock or dairies it's nothing but the hemp crop itself because it comes in many different genetic variations there comes in varieties that are more textile friendly varieties that are more friendly to making organic material that can be you know substitute for plastic the problem with the crop and with the genetics we have access to is that the United States spent the last 80 years with the federal ban on studying and growing the hemp crop I see the potential for this crop you know after CBD to go into the textile space especially as people move away from Fast fashion and towards more durable materials that they want to wear longer term that's where I see the biggest economic potential particularly in the global South and we're talking you know in order to get into that space you're talking a minimum of a thousand acres of of hemp fiber you need to grow so this isn't like a small 10 acre CBD farm this is large-scale commercial agriculture as all varieties of the hemp plant grow in similar ways and in similar conditions the knowledge of how to grow a CBD crop can be applied to Growing hemp for different uses in different markets such as the booming recreational marijuana industry in the US but the crop comes with a huge amount of historical baggage inherited from America's history with the War on Drugs which in itself is linked to disparities in wealth and access to Opportunities between various social groups in the country part of Damien's mission is to address those inequalities the hemplint is not divorced from the history of the marijuana plant in the United States and that criminal justice history nor is it divorced from the lack of racial and gender Equity that currently exists in the Cannabis space you know being able to grow hemp is very much a land access issue a lot of people in New York City would have loved to have done what I did but they have no access to land the Hudson Valley has some of the most expensive agricultural land in the country and so they can't uproot their families uproot their lives uproot their jobs and move out there without knowing how to grow the crop and you know try this out the people who had access to growing cannabis own farms and they own land and they live in communities that have very traditional agricultural routes only two percent of farmers nationally are black and so the disparities that already existed in agriculture and land access are just being Amplified in the Cannabis space and so I always saw the plan to something that could potentially bring brown and black folks into the agricultural space and I'm still struck by a memory I have of my Greenhouse in South Carolina you know we're in a very rural isolated part of South Carolina called Marion South Carolina it's like a town of like 4 000 people but I brought a couple local you know 18 19 year old kids that summer into the greenhouse to do work for a few weeks basic manual labor stuff but the first day that they were there is like their eyes completely lighted up you know they were in a outdoor Greenhouse with 2 000 cannabis plants that smelled and looked like cannabis plants and you could take these kids out to the farm and have them you know cut tobacco or plant tomatoes whatever and they'll they won't ever look like that but they saw a future in that and they got excited about it and they started talking about the future in a very excited way based on what they had experienced in that greenhouse and so you know the the alarm Bells went off at that point where I'm just like you know you talked about getting these kids into potentially lucrative careers in agriculture and food production and you know in their communities this is this is the right place to start there are multiple barriers to entry when setting up an industrial cannabis growing operation financial and racial factors play into the availability of the knowledge and resources needed to set up a hemp Farm even within the agricultural industry and so to begin to operate in that space Damien had to confront those issues head on and figure out ways to overcome them cannabis cultivation knowledge is primarily located in majority white communities so I have to go to Colorado I have to go to Denver where I don't know anybody and I have to pay someone a large amount of money a large amount of money at the time because it was very much being gate kept the information and pay them a lot of money to spend time with me just to talk to me things that they would probably be able to provide to their friends and family in their community at no charge um and so right off the bat there's just a lack of access to knowledge unfortunately the places that have legalized cannabis first and you know this may be also a commentary on our Criminal Justice System the places that legalized cannabis first are very white as well as the current issues of play there are historical reasons why black and brown farmers are so underrepresented in America today not just generally but specifically within the field of hemp and cannabis cultivation too these farms in this out there are black owned that have maintained black ownership over you know 100 years or so they've been left in the cold with regards to bank loans support from the Department of Agriculture which specifically siled their loans for white Farmers so if they've been able to hold on to land and successfully commercially grow crops corn soybean whatever they are a lot more resistant to new ideas they are very much as almost a survival mechanism very committed to the stable Revenue generation that they've been able to maintain over the years Damien also experienced firsthand how unwelcoming some rural communities can be to non-white Farmers whilst growing his crops in Upstate New York on top of all that those challenges operational challenges logistical challenges Financial challenges there is the element of I'm a black guy in Orange County New York Western New York they don't like the city up there I had the cops called on me a couple times because there's just a black guy in the field of cannabis which is looking back on it like sure why not I guess call the cops I had the Park police called on me because they said I was shooting deer on my land which I've never even shot a gun so they had to come out and they were in fact dead deer behind my farm that I assumed the locals had shot and like left on my farm so I had to explain why they were on my land and um just general like hostility from some of the Town locals people that had been growing there and working there and are generally fairly poor for the last hundred years sees this black guy from the city come in and start growing cannabis in in what they believe to be a very lucrative and unique and rare opportunity for a grower and he's a first-time grower and so I made no friends up there and that's isolating because I'm out in the field and middle of nowhere it's you know seven o'clock at night um with a bunch of people who don't like me who like guns so I'd often be running to get out of there at night before the sun went down um and then you go to sleep at night and you think that they're out there messing with your crops because you can't protect your crops all the time you can't put I can't put a fence around couldn't afford that so I just had to hope that they wouldn't mess with it and you know call the neighbors and just say like if you see anyone out there give me a call so yeah on top of like you know all those logistical operational challenges just the challenge of not belonging of not being wanted there of not being able to build really Community out there and that goes back to a lot of the stuff I was saying earlier about land access and you know general safety of sending black and brown people out into these communities that don't have a lot of black and brown people and I'm not saying that all the people in these communities are racist but they don't have a lot of experience in diverse engagements that challenge is very real and very personal Damien's experiences with golly bean have informed his outlook on how to address the current inequalities of opportunity within the hemp and cannabis space on March 31st 2021 New York became the 15th state to legalize recreational marijuana which has opened the floodgates for a hugely lucrative new sector and all the associated business opportunities that it brings Damien plans to teach people not just the agricultural processes involved but also the associated know-how of setting up an industrial hemp growing business his goal is to take the knowledge into communities who may otherwise find it impossible to capitalize on the potential of this plan as a cash crop and he's taking the first step by teaching at Medgar Evers a historically black college and university or HBCU in Brooklyn New York the biggest benefit starting goalie being and growing cannabis and growing have has made on you know my thinking around the space is that it's exposed to the holes in the system that prevent people like me from entering the space and in the fall I'm going to be teaching at Medgar Evers in Brooklyn which is uh the only historically black college in the city and primarily I'll be teaching you know Horticulture but a lot of it will be a larger discussion on the supply chain business opportunities in cannabis that so that people can actually see it the way it exists in other states and identify places where they can position themselves to make money start a business what have you the second thing I'm doing is launching a cannabis incubator and Cooperative in the Bronx with a legacy non-profit there the idea with that project specifically is to create a facility and an environment wherein interested people in the Bronx entrepreneurs people who formerly grew cannabis in the basements of public housing in the Bronx those people can access our facility rent equipment and launch their own cannabis businesses the legalization of cannabis in New York has created huge business opportunities a 2020 report by arcview market research and bdsa the leading provider of cannabis industry market research projected that the New York cannabis Market will be worth more than 1.6 billion dollars by 2025. and a February 2021 report by the center for New York City Affairs predicts that the industry could generate 2.6 billion dollars in sales and support over 50 000 jobs by 2027. I'll tell you exactly when I realized that this was the next step I should take I was in meetings with Medgar Evers University you know their administrators and Medicare Evers it's at HBCU it's got a 16 graduation rate which is primarily because the kids who attend Medgar Evers have to get jobs eventually and so they drop out to start working because they need to make money and in talking to them about their cannabis program as they're getting ready to launch it you know they were asking me well could you build a growing space in one of our closets so the kids can see the plant and they can like learn how to grow hemp in the in this closet and I literally was thinking about designing a plan to refurbish the utility closet in this Administrative Building to grow cannabis like this is ridiculous there are 12 cannabis programs Upstate New York uh at SUNY schools that teach cannabis Horticulture that teach cannabis business and including Cornell there's the 13. and there's zero in New York it's here in New York City and they want so badly to be a part of this industry and all the bad luck in where they're located in the most dense city in the country that is the most expensive real estate so you can't just build greenhouses and you can't just grow in places where very few people know how to grow anything they're scrambling for ideas to how to help their students and so it hit me pretty hard and it more than so than just being an adjunct that you know teaches a couple classes like it just highlighted the opportunity and the need really for a transition away from you know farming outside of the city to bring in the farming and the plant inside the city to help the communities I care about business incubators are designed to help new and young companies to innovate and grow they usually offer workspaces mentorship education opportunities and access to equipment to help businesses get off the ground and scale the incubator will have three elements the first element is micro cultivation pods those pods will be financed by external sponsorship grant funding but we'll basically build them place them into designated Warehouse that's accessible to the community they will grow under the supervision of someone like me and more experienced cannabis Growers to learn the tools of the trade as opposed to you know potentially putting up hundreds of thousands of dollars of their own money to start this business on the equipment we want to build the infrastructure that ultimately belongs to the community and give them access and lower the The Upfront risk for a lot of these entrepreneurs the second component of what we're going to build which is a Workforce Development educational component where people will be able to take specified one to two month course in cannabis cultivation that will ultimately be informed by the businesses that are operating on the property we want those Growers to become the community leaders and the Educators for cannabis cultivation in the Bronx you know we don't want the Bronx relying on people from California people from Colorado or me you know I'm not I wasn't born in the Bronx I want the Bronx to empower the Bronx I want the businesses in the Bronx to train people in the Bronx I wanted to be a virtuous environment where you know there's a lot of learning and a lot of Equity Building and wealth generation happening in the same space and the third component is uh less for sure right now but I do want that facility to have its own business that can make it self-sustaining there will obviously be a level of profit sharing with those who come in and utilize the the spaces to start their businesses to pay for the overhead but I don't want to start something that is reliant on continuous funding and sponsorship from donors and corporate sponsors the idea is ultimately to build a model that is scalable I think I really just want it to be a a model and a framework that is self-sustaining and can exist in the community perpetuity one thing that really stood out from speaking to Damien was his unique approach to entrepreneurship and his vision for how businesses can be stepping stones to The Wider impact you'd like to make in the world I definitely we have always viewed entrepreneurship and businesses from a very different perspective because of my International Development background International Development is very much systems based you do one thing leads to the next thing and I look at ecosystems I look at structures and analyze them and understand if they're fair or not or how to change the levers of policy to make them more fair and so Gully being and business formation and you know running your own business for me it's possible I very much viewed it as a step in a larger system of impact that I want to have in order to better address the business climate in New York state so that it's more Equitable for cannabis I had to grow cannabis it adds to my credibility and the discussions I'm in with legislators and regulators and Community leaders and it informs a lot of the recommendations I make and it's unfortunate that you know if a business doesn't go beyond the one thing it did that is viewed as unsuccessful you know so long as investors got to return on their investment you know or just their money back that's a success to me and if they were able to take lessons from that and build something bigger and better that had more impact and scale that up to a larger Community that's infinitely better than continuing down the track of doing that business I think it is even better if you know the business that you're operating is wholly owned by you and it's not you know something that involves a lot of Partners investors where you can actually just change it internally and reposition yourself to do something different businesses Damien says are an extension of ourselves something we've touched on a couple of times in this series but Damien also looks at business success for a very unique lens believing that businesses don't have to last forever or even be extremely profitable to have been worthwhile and successful Pursuits entrepreneurship and the businesses we build especially for you know young people today are extensions of themselves they're they're largely extensions of themselves you know my dad did this and so now I wanted to do this and I'm passionate about this because this hurt my you know my friend in this way in my case you know my dad and my grandfather were farmers in Jamaica my dad is literally sends me pictures of his cannabis plants in Jamaica on WhatsApp like every day he grows bigger ones than me there's some real you know personal attachments to Gully Bean that I've I've cultivated you know the name itself is a plant I remember people cultivating him in the small town my family's from in Jamaica entrepreneurs largely launch businesses that are extensions themselves you know some obviously launch ones that'll make a lot of money but other ones much less profitable ones that are like very they're personally attached to and so when they do fail that can be very debilitating to one Vigo to one's self-esteem to one's idea of self and when they do succeed you know I'm succeeding I need to keep succeeding with this same idea and I think that is something that we've it's been ingrained in us the way we were raised uh the way we were taught about how to pursue our passions and things that you know Define us and who we are and think of ourselves as individuals and it very much puts us in a very sometimes toxic relationship with the businesses we start where any slight you know challenge to the business is now viewed as a challenge to me personally that I need I must you know overcome but in reality it makes it harder for people to let go of failing businesses and it makes them less likely to innovate and transition or pivot or change after they've had a little success and so I think those things are very much tied to understanding who you are a little bit better talking to a therapist talking to your friends but withdrawing yourself a little bit taking a bird's eye view of your business and what it is you're doing and really think about it um in a more detached way Damien believes that eventually the legalization of cannabis will spread across the globe and he has big Ambitions to expand what he'll be creating in New York City to other areas the things I've set into motion over the last month or so has committed me to this cannabis Equity thing in New York City for the next two to three years minimum especially launching this facility in the Bronx but that isn't to say that you know last week I was envisioning the project after that which is legal cannabis globally uh and going to the global South and helping Farmers they're organized and commercially grow cannabis and get a good price for their crop I Envision a world where eventually people are buying cannabis much like they buy wine this was grown in Colombia it's this genetic they use these methods to cultivate it that's why it smokes like this that's why it tastes like this the future of cannabis is not being grown in sterile indoor spaces in Canada so yeah I definitely think that my next project will be more internationally focused more farmer focused especially rural isolated impoverished farmers in the global South it almost it does seem like I'm following the cannabis plant itself from my own business to like where it is like creating value and making sure that that value is Equitable but I I believe in the plants I believe in the crop ultimately Damien's Journey isn't about growing cannabis it's about empowering communities one could argue that using this particular crop as a means to do that is almost coincidental but there is a symbolic Justice in the fact that a plant historically used as an excuse to oppress black and brown communities can now serve as the basis of businesses that could lead to prosperity for those same groups success in this space I literally dream about this a success with this project specifically I know exactly what it looks like it looks like I'm not involved it looks like someone from the Bronx is you know now the managing director of it it has successfully generated several million dollar cannabis cultivation cannabis micro business so success looks like that it's Bronx run and that it is successfully graduated you know a number of small all businesses into larger cultivation facilities into spaces outside of the city into more affordable maybe outdoor cultivation operations in Westchester Orange County or Upstate but the idea is ultimately to be a launching pad not like a place where they exist in perpetuity but to cycle businesses in and out and help them scale and move into cannabis farming move out of the city get some land that's what success looks like Damien's story is incredibly inspirational and his approach to business is truly unique he hasn't followed the traditional path to entrepreneurship if there even is a traditional path that is and his journey has taken him to all corners of the globe to learn from and connect with different communities and cultures his work in International Development has given him a perspective that very few others have when it comes to entrepreneurship and a very different approach for measuring success entrepreneurship isn't necessarily about doing one thing forever it's about finding something that fits your goals for right now and helps you take the next step towards your vision it's also okay to innovate transition pivot or change even if you've had some success Damien story also shows that small businesses have the power to drive real change golly Bean is a business Damien is still incredibly passionate about but it was also a way for him to gain the experiences he needed to have a greater impact and also to fight for restorative justice agricultural education and better representation of black and brown farmers in the United States thank you so much for listening to season one of small business big lessons with this series we really wanted to celebrate small businesses that are challenging the norms and questioning the best ways to do great work and the stories we've shared are intended to show that it's possible to build a business and do good along the way from hearing about Sean askinosi's switch from criminal defense lawyer to Chocolate entrepreneur in episode one to learning how Wild bit is changing the future of work and so many more inspiring stories we hope this Series has proven that the route to building a successful and impactful business can be made from roads less traveled foreign of small business big lessons was written by me Ash Reed script edited by my teammates Haley Griffis Tom Dunn and Sophie Gill and produced by Rowan Bishop at message heard we're making this podcast because we believe in a different way to do work and we want to share the stories of the businesses inspiring us we also share our own story transparently over at buffer.com forward slash open if this episode is inspiring you or helping you think about building your business in new ways we'd love to hear from you tweet to us at buffer or send us a note at podcast buffer.com [Music]