Sammy Dorf On Raising $100 Million In 48 Hours For His Cannabis Business

Sammy Dorf is the cofounder of Verano Holdings which is a vertically-integrated operator of licensed cannabis cultivation, manufacturing and retail facilities dedicated to improving lives by providing safe access to effective organic cannabis products that enhance health and wellness and by positively impacting the communities it serves. The company raised over $120 million before it got acquired by Harvest Health And Recreation in a deal worth $850 million.

In this episode you will learn:

• The future of marijuana in America
• The catalysts for exploding the US cannabis industry
• The two events that shaped Sammy Dorf’s entrepreneurial journey
• Picking business partners
• How to not quit on your startup

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About Sammy Dorf:

A cannabis industry veteran and architect of some of the most impactful deals in the space, Sammy Dorf, Esq., serves as Verano Holdings’ Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer.

Born and raised in the Chicagoland area, Sammy Dorf is widely recognized as one of cannabis’s most successful merit-based application strategists, adept at building and coordinating local teams, lining up funding and real estate assets, and working with local municipalities to create the strongest applicant teams.

Over the past 5 years, Sammy Dorf has propelled Verano Holdings’ exponential growth with wins in Illinois, Maryland, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and most recently Ohio.

In addition to heading up Verano Holdings’ expansion through merit-based applications, Sammy Dorf has proven masterful in coordinating strategic mergers and acquisitions, increasing Verano Holdings’ market penetration in States where it currently operates as well as new markets that bolster the Company’s national smart-growth expansion strategy.

In this pursuit, Sammy Dorf has successfully raised over $120M and obtained 25+ licenses spanning 14 States. Sammy is also integral to the creation, design, and development of Verano Holdings’ diverse brands and products.

From inception to execution, Sammy Dorf works with Verano Holdings’ team of professionals to ensure that the Company’s products are best-in-class in each vertical, and has been indispensable to Verano Holdings’ stellar reputation as the creator and producer of top-shelf brands and products.

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FULL TRANSCRIPTION OF THE INTERVIEW:

Alejandro: Alrighty. Hello everyone, and welcome to the DealMakers show. Today we have a guest that is going to tell us and teach us a lot about the cannabis industry, about licenses, and you name it, and there’s a lot of law. So without further ado, I’d like to welcome our guest today. Sam Dorf, welcome to the show.

Sammy Dorf: Thank you very much for having me.

Alejandro: So originally from Chicago, Illinois. How was life growing up there?

Sammy Dorf: Growing up in Chicago has been great. I was born and raised in Chicago, grew up in the northern suburbs, and I now reside in the city where I have for the last ten years. So it’s been great growing up in Chicago.

Alejandro: Why did you move to Kansas?

Sammy Dorf: When I was in high school, one of the schools that I always endeared was the University of Kansas for the basketball team. That’s why I went to the University of Kansas, and I had a lot of good friends that went there.

Alejandro: Got it. Obviously, now, you’ve had this incredible entrepreneurial journey, but what really got you into thinking that an attorney or being a lawyer would be the path forward for you?

Sammy Dorf: When I graduated the University of Kansas in 2008, my father was a floor trader at the Chicago Board of Trade. That was always something I wanted to do. He was a sole trader and always an entrepreneurial individual. So when I graduated, I went down to the floor of the Board of Trade and obviously, in 2008, that’s when the world fell apart. As I stood there on the Chicago Board of Trade, realizing that floor trading wasn’t an option anymore, I sat there, and I realized I needed another set of skills to continue on in my entrepreneurial career. That’s when I decided to go to law school.

Alejandro: Very cool. I’m a recovering lawyer, so I know the drill. Obviously, I know how it applied for myself, but how do you think it has helped you having that legal background as an entrepreneur?

Sammy Dorf: I think that the legal background helps in a couple of different ways. One, you think differently. You understand the art of the deal in the ins and the outs, what can potentially hurt you and what to look for. Second, I think it helps because it gives you a seat at the table. For me, personally, when I got in the cannabis industry, I was one of the youngest guys in the industry in Illinois. But due to the fact that I was an attorney, it gave me a seat at the table and gave me some credibility.

Alejandro: Let’s talk about that point in time where there’s a friend of yours that starts a dispensary of marijuana, and it’s like a wow moment for you.

Sammy Dorf: Yeah, when I was at John Marshall Law School in Chicago around 2010, that’s when the cannabis program in Colorado had just gotten kicked off. I had a close friend of mine from the University of Kansas move back to Denver, and he opened up one of the first dispensaries in Denver, Colorado. He needed some help raising some capital and structuring the deal, and I helped him. We had a bunch of different conversations regarding it, and I watched his company start to explode. I was like, “Oh, my gosh. This is a new industry that’s coming online.” That was my wow moment around 2010, 2011, and watching his company just explode in the new market of Colorado. 

Alejandro: Why didn’t you say, and after seeing that and being attracted to it, why didn’t you pursue that further at that point, because obviously, you went at it as a lawyer, and you started your own firm?

Sammy Dorf: What was unique at that time was that in the state of Colorado, and still almost to today, they don’t allow you to own equity in any of the dispensaries or cultivations unless you’re a two-year resident. I was Chicago born and raised. I was here finishing up my law career, and I wasn’t going to move to Colorado, so at that point, I was realizing I couldn’t get in the cannabis industry unless it was coming to my home state.

Alejandro: Interesting. So you continued, and you started being a criminal and foreclosure lawyer. What were you exactly doing?

Sammy Dorf: That’s a great question. Always being entrepreneurial, when I was in law school, I worked for a couple of criminal defense attorneys in the City of Chicago. When I graduated, I worked for an attorney for four to five months, and I realized very quickly that I couldn’t work for anybody. I wanted to build something of my own. So I decided to break off after four to five months of working at a firm and start my own law firm. I opened up a shop on the western side of Chicago and started doing criminal defense and foreclosure defense.

Alejandro: Then, also, on the side, you were flipping houses. Tell us about that.

Sammy Dorf: Yeah. Well, the legal career wasn’t making much money as I just opened the door and didn’t realize the high barriers to entry. So at that time, flipping houses, which is coming online, and I had a couple of friends in the tax business. We would buy back taxes. So I started getting involved in buying back taxes on properties in Cook County and flipping houses. We started out with one, and then we started moving to five to seven houses a year, which generated my revenue.

Alejandro: How did that work? I mean, were you just buying a property and then you would redo it and resell it? What was the process like?

Sammy Dorf: Yeah, pretty much so. We’d buy a property that was heavily distressed, redo it, and flip it.

Alejandro: Very cool. Let’s talk about a really big point in time for you, and that’s the point where, in 2014, Illinois comes with the medical marijuana program. What did this open up for you?

Sammy Dorf: Around 2014, that’s when Illinois decided that they were going to allow for medical cannabis licensure. It was a very unique program. It was the first time in any of the states that they had this merit-based application process where they were going to have an in-depth application process to allow for 21 cultivation licenses and 60 dispensaries. At that point, I was like, “This is my opportunity.” So I decided to put all my efforts toward going for these licenses. 

Alejandro: Was that something that you read on the press, or a friend told you about it? How did you know about this?

Sammy Dorf: It was all over the news. It came out that Illinois passed a medical cannabis program, and I decided I was going to go for it. Everybody thought I was absolutely crazy.

Alejandro: Why did they think you were crazy?

Sammy Dorf: They thought I was crazy in the sense that — the way that the laws were in Illinois, just in general how things work and how the laws were structured, the most political savvy individuals and the most high-net-worth individuals were going to be the ones that won the licenses. Here I was a 27-year-old kid flipping houses, running a small law firm, and I wanted to throw my hat in the ring. Everybody’s like, “There’s no shot you’re going to be able to get these licenses. You’re not politically connected. You’re not well-financed. There’s no way you’re going to be able to do this.

Alejandro: Especially because the number that you mentioned is quite low. I would assume that there were a lot of people with interest in it. So what was the application process like?

Sammy Dorf: The application process was very intense. You have to have a two-million-dollar bond for the application. You have to have a research plan. You have to have local municipality approval, letters of recommendation, and then your whole team, which was a large dynamic of the application.

Alejandro: Basically, on that point, I want to ask you. All these different processes take time, and it’s probably very frustrating. I’m wondering for you, this moment, how long did it take from the beginning till the end that you got your first license?

Sammy Dorf: That’s a great question. What I started doing from day one is, I started going to every single event. I was like, “All right. I’m the youngest guy in the room, so every single event that would be hosted in the City of Chicago by a law firm or a lobbyist or consultant I went to. I started meeting all of the people that were in the industry, and I started to form my own little team. Then one of the really neat things in the state of Illinois is, as I said, you have to have local approval. So I started taking my dad, and we’d drive the entire state of Illinois looking for local approval, and we found this town in western Illinois called Galesburg, and I was able to secure this approval. In that process of going to the events and finding the approval, that was eight, nine months in the working from then. Then I started trying to raise the capital that was required for it. That was a whole other probably six-month process. So from the time I actually started the process and networking and trying to raise the capital to the time I’d met my partners who I had partnered up with, it was about an 18-month process from when the application came out to when I applied, and we found out we won.

Alejandro: How was the conversation with your father? Here you are, a lawyer, and being a lawyer is super respected. The career takes a lot, passing the bar, all of that good stuff. Here you are telling your father that you want to go after the medical marijuana. How was that conversation with him?

Sammy Dorf: It was actually an incredible conversation. I came to my father, and I said, “Dad, listen, I want to get involved in the cannabis industry. I’m going to shut down the law firm. He looked at me, and he goes — he was a prosecutor for the state of Illinois from when he was 20 years old to 32 years old. When he was 32 years old, his friends were all down at the Chicago Board of Trade, and they told him that he had to come down there because it was an opportunity of a lifetime. He was like, “You guys are crazy. I have my legal career here. What am I going to do down on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade? Ultimately, they convinced him to leave the prosecutor’s office, and he went down to the Chicago Board of Trade, and he had an unbelievable career. He left the law field at 32 and went down, started trading, and traded for 31 years. He looked at me, and he goes, “Listen. This is the time. If you believe there’s an opportunity. I did the same thing in my life, and he was the most supportive I could have ever asked of him. It was really interesting because a lot of his friends were in shock. They almost gave him a hard time about, “How could you let your son get involved in the cannabis industry?” Because you’ve got to remember back in 2014, it was still a bit sketchy. 

Alejandro: Yeah.

Sammy Dorf: And it just wasn’t where it was today. So he was extremely supportive of everything I did.

Alejandro: He has played a key role, and he made a key introduction. Tell us about this lawyer friend that he had.

Sammy Dorf: Yeah. When I was in this process and trying to raise the money, it was really difficult raising — even at that point, it was a couple hundred thousand dollars, about $500,000, but I had the land security. He was out to dinner one night with one of his friends who was representing a group out of New York, who at that time was one of the largest cannabis companies at that time. They were looking for an Illinois partner who had local support and land. My father told them, “My son is doing this at the same time, and he’s got the local support. He’s got the land. You should introduce them.” So he set up the meeting, and they came in from New York. They’re all Goldman Sachs guys. We set up a meeting, and we hit it off. We formed a partnership for me to merge into their company as their Illinois partner.

Alejandro: Very nice. Then you went into this association. What was this association about?

Sammy Dorf: At that point, we applied for the license. We won one of the 21 cultivation licenses in the state of Illinois. We won one of the 60 dispensaries and one of six in the city of Chicago. What happened quickly was that all the winners from the association, all the winners from the different teams, we formed an association to lobby and to represent the licenses. I was the representative of our license in Illinois. Through that process, I knew all these guys. I was the guy who had met them all previously from going out for drinks and meeting. So it was pretty cool all being together in the association at that time.

Alejandro: It’s really interesting. Something that came up to me right now is, as we’re discussing numbers, they’re small numbers, the licenses that were given out. How many applications were for every license that was granted?

Sammy Dorf: There were over 300 applications for the dispensaries and over close to 200 for the cultivation licenses. So it was an extremely competitive process. Again, everybody that was applying was politically connected and high network individuals and had these unbelievable applications.

Alejandro: Got it. At this point, also, you met your co-founder. Is that right?

Sammy Dorf: Yes. At that point, through the process, I realized I wanted to break off on my own again. I met an individual named George Archos. He won one of the cultivation licenses in Illinois. We just hit it off. George is also one of the younger guys, and he came from an unbelievable operating background. He ran a bunch of restaurants, and still to this day, owns them in the City of Chicago. I approached him, and I said, “Listen, Maryland’s coming up pretty soon. I think I’m good at putting together these applications and doing all the work on the ground. You’re a good operator. Let’s partner up.”

Alejandro: How much do you think your legal background helped here?

Sammy Dorf: It helped because he thought I was crazy. He’s like, “How are you going to be able to do this?” I’m like, “Don’t worry. I’m a lawyer. I’ve got this.” He respected me a bit more because I had just gone to law school, opened up the law firm, and flipping houses. He knew I was an entrepreneur that wouldn’t say no.

Alejandro: Very cool. So what happened next?

Sammy Dorf: After we partnered up, we applied for a cultivation and dispensary in Maryland. We were successful there. We came together, and we won one of the 15 licenses there and one of the dispensaries. From there, we started to build the company and really come together. We started to look at the overall landscape with the desire to go after more markets. It assured me after we’d won in Maryland that we knew what we were doing from these merit-based application processes. 

Alejandro: For the people that are listening that are not that familiar with the cannabis industry if you had to explain in a simple way what the ecosystem looks like because we’re talking about the dispensaries. We’re talking about perhaps the regulators, as well. What does the ecosystem look like as a whole if you had to describe it from a 30,000-foot view?

Sammy Dorf: From a 30,000-foot view, there are two different types of markets. You have your markets that are like California, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, where pretty much anybody can go and get a license. All you have to do is you have either a proper zoning and a couple of thousand dollars in funding, and you can open up a cultivation center. Those markets become very saturated. Then there are other markets that are these limited-licensed markets like Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, and Ohio, where the state puts out an RFP process where they have these merit-based applications. They are extremely intense applications anywhere from 1,500 pages, sometimes upward to 3,000. You have to have background checks, security plans, local approvals, and very in-depth application processes. And there are also all types of consulting that comes into play and a lot of strategy on where you go and how you tell your story. In these states, when there are limited licenses, obviously, there’s a lot more at risk because the application might cost you a couple hundred thousand dollars, and you might lose. The barrier to entry is also higher, and the risk is higher. What you’ve seen a lot of these other markets is that there are different licensures. You might have one for a dispensary. You might have one for a processing license. You might have one for a cultivation center. For us, it’s always been important to be a vertically-integrated cannabis company. What that means is you control it from seed to sale. So you own the cultivation license. You own the production license, and then you ultimately own multiple retail locations. If you can control the whole ecosystem within that state, again, you’ve got to remember cannabis can only be grown and sold within that state. It can’t cross border to border. You can control your own destiny against any type of market change pretty much.

Alejandro: So you can’t, for example, have marijuana that grows in Colorado, and then take it to Illinois?

Sammy Dorf: Correct. If it grows in Colorado, it can only be sold in Colorado.

Alejandro: Got it. Very interesting. Then how did you guys go about scale? Because after you had this operation going, then you start to hear what’s going on in Maryland and in other states. So tell us how you went about scaling this.

Sammy Dorf: Scale, quite honestly, was very difficult for us. Unlike some of our other competitors who, right from the start in Illinois or even Maryland, really sophisticated, high network teams; it was really just George and me. One thing we realized quickly is that we weren’t good at raising capital. Through our networks, we knew successful people, but we didn’t ultimately know very wealthy people. And these businesses are very capital-intensive. Like everything else I’d done, we had scrapped everything together. Again, we struggled with scaling it because we weren’t able to raise the proper capital. That being said, what we were able to do was self-finance enough of it to get by. What it did, it created us to become very good operators and operate frugally, but also put out a high-quality product. That was the early days. It was hard to scale, but through winning the licenses through the merit-based application process, continuously, we were able to expand within the state because although you tend to have the tens of millions of dollars to hire all these consultants and build out your buildings and do these huge raises, we were able to win these licenses for a low cost because we did them all internally.

Alejandro: Got it. When you were saying it was a capital-intensive business, what would you say is the area that requires.

Sammy Dorf: I would say that the area that’s the most capital-intensive is certainly on the cultivation side. To build out the cultivation centers, you’re looking at anywhere from ten to upward of 20 million dollars to build out these buildings. What’s unique about the cannabis space is that you can’t get traditional financing. You can’t go to a bank and get a mortgage on a building or find construction loan financing. Everything is cash on cash up until the last six to ten months per se.

Alejandro: Then let’s talk about the moment where you guys meet JJR because this was a breakthrough moment for you.

Sammy Dorf: Yeah. As I was saying, we had a lot of trouble raising capital, but we still kept expanding. So at this point, George and I kept rolling from state to state, and we won in Illinois, Maryland, and Ohio, then Nevada, and then Arkansas. One of our competitors, [0:21:07], went out public on the Canadian Stock Exchange at 750 million dollars. I called George that night, and I’m like, “We have the same assets as these guys, and they’re valued at 750 million dollars. We’ve got to pull this together, and we’ve got to do a real capital raise here, rebrand our company” because, at that point, we had branded all these different things. It was a hodgepodge of licenses put together because we didn’t have a real marketing branding team. So we started going up to Toronto at that point, because that’s where the capital markets were, up in Toronto. As I’m sure you guys know, the Canadian Stock Exchange, at that point, they had the Canopy’s and the Tilray’s, and there were a lot of investors that were willing to get in the cannabis space, unlike the United States. So we went up to Toronto, and we started meeting all these different guys. Quite honestly, none of them were good fits. We went up there for about ten months. On our last visit, we met these guys from JJR Capital. We hit it off from day one. Within 48 hours, we struck a deal with them to raise around 88 million dollars. Then we added another license with one of their friends, which became a 120-million-dollar raise. So it was a wild experience.

Alejandro: I can imagine. I mean, 120 in 48 hours. It’s unbelievable. What do you think triggered, for the deal and everything to go so quickly?

Sammy Dorf: They saw us as we were a clean cannabis company. We were profitable. We were really lean and mean. So not only did we have all these assets — we didn’t have a huge valuation on our company yet because we were self-financing and raising as we had gone. So we created a solid opportunity for them to come into an awesome basket of assets as well as with really good operators. Then some of the most important things are: we got along, and we shared the same vision. So, yeah, we raised 120 million dollars, which was the largest privately-held cannabis raise at the time. We partnered up with them, which was great. They had a lot of capital market experience at the same time. So they got a lot with us, and we got a lot with them at the same time.

Alejandro: That’s pretty amazing because at the point when you guys were striking the deal, how many licenses did you have?

Sammy Dorf: At that point, we had north of 50 licenses, and we had licenses in nine states. 

Alejandro: That’s amazing. Just out of curiosity, how has, for example, a license increased in value over time since, let’s say, 2014, where you started to see this happening?

Read More: Charlie Bachtell On Building A $600 Million Cannabis Business With 1,800 Employees

Sammy Dorf: Yeah, that’s a really good question. In the licenses, it increased exponentially to a degree that I couldn’t have even imagined. That’s due to the fact that in these states, they’ve increased as states have relaxed their medical programs. When we first started this in this industry, there were really strict guidelines around getting a medical cannabis card. So you had low patient counts. If you have low patient counts, you have low sales. So all the sudden, as you’ve seen all throughout the U.S., more states have been coming online, and these states have gone from medical to recreational markets. The values of these licenses have increased and increased.

Alejandro: To provide an example, so the people listening get an idea, how much would you say is a license today, let’s say in Illinois?

Sammy Dorf: In Illinois, to get a cultivation license now, some of the last cultivation licenses were trading close to 20 million dollars. Dispensaries have traded even higher than that, upward of 25 million dollars.

Alejandro: Wow. And that compared to 2014, what were the numbers then?

Sammy Dorf: 2014, you probably could have picked one up for 4 to 5 million dollars. Again, as the patient numbers have been rising, we’ve seen the stigma reducing in the U.S., and that as well has increased the values of these licenses.

Alejandro: So you got the 120 million. What happens next? Now, you have all this money, and you’ve got to deploy, and you need to execute. So what was the most immediate step after?

Sammy Dorf: At that point, right after we raised the capital, we really launched toward going public on the Canadian Stock Exchange because that’s what a lot of our peers were doing at that time. That was another way to access even more capital as well as creating liquidity for your investors. So as we were about to go public, I was sitting in my office, and again, George and I had a come to Jesus moment. “Do we really want to run a public company right now?” At that point, it was in December of 2018. The public markets were pretty choppy at that time for the cannabis industry. We sat there for a month, pondering the question. At that point, all of our peers and other companies that were similar to our size at that point, we were the largest privately-held cannabis company in the U.S. regardless of revenue and licenses. Companies started coming to us and giving us offers to merge or purchase the company. At that time, we decided that the best use of the capital that we had and the license that we had was to merge our company with a strategic public cannabis company to create one of the largest de facto companies in the U.S. We believed that ultimately, that would create the best exit. At that point, we started doing the dance with all these different types of cannabis companies to merge.

Alejandro: Then how did that happen, because Harvest was eventually the one that you guys decided, and the transaction happened. What was the process like?

Sammy Dorf: The process was really interesting. You got close with a lot of your competitors, and you see, like under the hood, how they operated. That was important to us was to understand how all these companies operated because, at the core of all these big companies, you have to have a profitable company. You have to be able to grow quality cannabis, quality extraction, good product, good distribution as well as win these merit-based licenses. As I just mentioned, these licenses now cost upward to 20 million dollars; however, you can win them through an application process. It might only cost you $200,000 all in. So it’s really important to win these licenses from a merit-based process. After going through all the different cannabis companies, we’d potentially merge at, as well as analyzing the footprint, which companies didn’t have applicative assets as us? We ultimately landed on Harvest because, like us, Harvest does extremely well at winning these merit-based licenses. What they had was a huge west coast presence. We had a solid east coast presence. When you put the two companies together, there was not a lot of overlapping assets.

Alejandro: That’s amazing. So then, how big was the transaction?

Sammy Dorf: At that time, it was an 850-million-dollar transaction, which was the largest transaction in the cannabis space at that time to merge the two companies. Yeah, that’s where we’re at.

Alejandro: That’s amazing. What does the road ahead look like? 

Sammy Dorf: The road ahead looks good. The policies are continuously changing in the U.S. We believe that there are catalysts coming soon, whether it’s a safe banking act. We do believe federal legalizations are not far off in the future. Once the banking acts and the access to capital start freeing up, we think the industry is going to continue to open up. As I said, the patient numbers are rising in every single state. The stigma’s reducing. Every day, more states are coming online. Even deeply Republican southern states are coming online with medical cannabis programs. On top of it, a lot of these states are flipping to recreational. So we think the future is really, really bright for the cannabis industry, and especially with the footprint that we have.

Alejandro: Very cool. There are two events that shaped your entrepreneurial journey. I want to get your thoughts, and more specifically, what you learned out of them. Obviously, one, we were talking about the fundraising and all the different issues, as well, with the deals that you had when structuring these things together, there was probably a thousand times when you wanted to give up. What do you think, at the end of the day, didn’t allow you to give up, but continue to move forward?

Sammy Dorf: That’s a great question. It was the desire to succeed and just not giving up and not taking no for an answer. There were so many times, as you said, you could have quit or given up or thrown in the towel, but I truly believed in this opportunity, and I believed in this industry. I wasn’t going to take no for an answer. It kept on going and plugging away. It continued forward in the pursuit of putting the company together, and creating a solid brand, and bringing health and wellness to patients. I’d seen when you stand in our dispensaries today, and you talk to the patients, you realize that instead of taking opioids, they’re taking cannabis and instead of sleeping pills, they’re taking cannabis, for PTSD, they’re taking cannabis, and you’re changing lives. That, mixed with the desire to succeed and be able to change lives, kept me going the entire time.

Alejandro: Very cool. Then the other experience that paid a key role is that unfortunately, you picked the wrong person to go at it on one of the phases of the journey. What did you learn about picking the right partners and how to go about it?

Sammy Dorf: Through the journey, we had a couple of different partners that we had to part ways with. It’s important to pick the right partner and to make sure that you guys are on the same page. Do a deep dive of due diligence in who you’re going into business with. It basically becomes your family, and you have to be aligned on all levels in order to succeed because you’re going to be hit with a lot of tough times and a lot of difficult decisions. If you’re on the same page, it can go really well. If you’re not on the same page, it can take you down.

Alejandro: Yeah. This has been a really incredible ride for you with the highs and with the lows, and a journey where you’ve been able to learn a lot. There’s one question that I typically ask the guests that come on the show, and that is if you had the opportunity to speak to your younger self, your younger self that’s thinking about starting a business, what would be that one piece of business advice that you would give to yourself before launching a business and why?

Sammy Dorf: The advice to myself: an overnight success takes a long time, and there’s no get-rich-quick scheme. You really have to put in your time and your due diligence on anything you do. You’ve got to work harder than you can ever imagine. I think, especially, for the younger generation, we see all of these quick schemes to try to make money, but at the end of the day, it’s all about working hard, working smart, and going after opportunities that you believe are in growth industries.

Alejandro: I love it. For the folks that are listening, Sam, what is the best way for them to reach out and say hi?

Sammy Dorf: You can find us at [email protected] as well as my Instagram, @sammydorf on Instagram. Feel free to follow. DM me with any questions regarding the cannabis industry. Any advice I can give, feel free to reach out.

Alejandro: Fantastic. Sam, thank you so much for being on the DealMakers show today.

Sammy Dorf: Thank you very much for having me.

 

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