First Smoke of The Day
byBlackleaf & PackGods
BusinessEntrepreneurshipLeisureHomeScienceNatural
Welcome to First Smoke of the Day – The Ultimate Cannabis Industry Podcast!First Smoke of the Day is your go-to podcast for Exclusive insider Access to Cannabis Culture, Cultivation, Entrepreneurship, and more. Tune in for behind-the-scenes interviews with Cultivators, Hashmakers, Breeders, Brand owners, Athletes, Musicians, Smugglers, and the Fearless Hustlers shaping the cannabis industry. Discover Untold stories, expert tips, and valuable lessons from cannabis legends and innovators. From navigating underground movements to uncovering entrepreneurial success stories, we bring you real stories, hard truths, and actionable insights from the people driving cannabis culture forward.Why Subscribe? • Hear Stories from Industry Disruptors & Legends ...
Episodes(40 episodes)
I Never Sold Weed. The Feds Investigated Me
Harrison sold bongs. He never touched the plant. The police still showed up at his house and federal investigators still looked into him, because people assumed anyone shipping at that volume had to be moving product too.In this episode he lays out what it actually costs to run a cannabis-adjacent business under federal prohibition. Banks that froze and closed his accounts as a matter of routine, to the point where the only institution that would take them was overseas. Thousands of units seized at customs over the years through random inspection, all of it destroyed...
Published: Sep 23, 2026Duration: 10m 11s
I Sold a Million Bongs. My Salary Was $90,000
Harrison built the largest online head shop in the country. Over 50 million dollars in revenue, a thousand bongs a day for a year, and more than a million sold. His salary when he sold it was ninety thousand dollars, the highest it ever reached.In this episode he traces the whole build. Launching a one dollar subscription box on Reddit and waking up to a hundred subscribers, then quitting his customer service job the same week. Twenty months of putting nothing into his own bank account. Getting burned by supplier after supplier until a test order...
Published: Sep 22, 2026Duration: 22m 22s
I Sold My Company for $10 Million. I Didn't Get $10 Million.
Full episode is up at fsotd.comHarrison sold his company for $10 million. A third of it was cash and two thirds was stock. Then the stock fell from around $8 a share to $1.In this episode he breaks down the full acquisition. The buyer had just purchased three of his biggest competitors, and when the offer came in around $9 million, he said ten or he walks. They agreed. What followed was two years nobody saw: a seven figure tax bill on money he didn't have yet, staff who couldn't be told about the...
Published: Sep 21, 2026Duration: 17m 53s
Puffco's First Brand Collab Was Mine | HopeLord
The whole thing is at fsotd.comHopelord's first paycheck in cannabis came from Puffco. The job was seeding and talent relations, which in practice meant handing Puffco products to artists he met while touring.In this episode he traces the whole relationship. Finding Puffco through a producer friend in the ASAP camp, visiting their second office in Carroll Gardens when it was seven or eight people and Roger lived upstairs, leaving to focus on Talking Terps, and coming back years later as the brand behind Puffco's first co-branded collab. He also gets...
Published: Sep 17, 2026Duration: 17m 16s
Why the Worlds Biggest Brands Keep Collabing With Me | HopeLord
TP Crawford took close to a year. 3D render first, then find a factory that'll actually take the call, then prototypes, then shipping, air or sea. Hopelord walks through what it really costs to turn an idea into something physical.He also went to the RAW factory with Josh and saw the scale up close. One mill supplying essentially the whole world, and damn near pre-sold out while they were standing there.The detail he's proudest of isn't the look, it's the feel. The lighter sleeves are made in the USA and finished...
Published: Sep 16, 2026Duration: 21m 57s
One Rule Built Talking Terps. Steal From Everyone | HopeLord
Hopelord's father taught art for 47 years. He passed six years ago, and Hopelord only learned his most repeated lesson by reading what former students wrote on his Facebook wall.One of them, 36 years later, was still applying it: steal from everyone. Get up from your seat, walk the room, see what everybody else is doing, take what you like and make it your own.That's the lens he uses now when people copy Talking Terps. He made a toy, and within a year other people were making toys. He posted a lighter case...
Published: Sep 15, 2026Duration: 17m 23s
Weed Got Me Into Rooms Money Couldn't Buy | HopeLord
It started with a tweet. Someone in the ASAP mob posted that he'd just gotten a G Pen and was looking for wax. Hope saw it, brought some over, and by the end of that week he was with the whole crew after the show.That one post turned into years of access. Touring with Flatbush Zombies from Seattle to Santa Ana. Meeting Ted before Alien Labs was Alien Labs, back when it was Lemon Fuel OG and a six lighter in Reading. Running around High Times Cups collecting flavors like Pokemon cards and coming home...
Published: Sep 14, 2026Duration: 16m 30s
I Documented How Cookies Was Built | LMC Media
LMC made the documentary on how Cookies got built. He says what Berner created is legendary, and the timing may never be repeatable.Still illegal, then legal. Streetwear first because it moves across borders easier and costs less to support. The Wiz vlog era that put Berner in front of an entire generation, including LMC himself, who watched it in middle school. And Berner walking on stage with the plant, a clip he still remembers.He breaks down what he sees now that he's had the curtain pulled back. Berner as a promoter...
Published: Sep 11, 2026Duration: 20m 16s
I've Spent 4,000 Hours on the Phone About Weed | LMC Media
LMC estimates he's spent three to four thousand hours on the phone with people in cannabis, hearing their version of events. His read: a lot of them are straight up lying, and most of the rest are incentivized to shape it.He talks about why he's developed a strange compassion for some of the people this industry treats as villains. Not all of them, some earn it. But walk back far enough on most and you see how they got there.Lance gets into his own version of the problem. Someone says something...
Published: Sep 9, 2026Duration: 15m 42s
Why Almost Every Celebrity Weed Brand Fails | LMC Media
Celebrity weed brands keep dying and LMC has a theory about the room where those deals get made.Everyone at that table is incentivized for the deal to close. Nobody gets paid to say no. So even when someone in there knows cannabis works nothing like liquor licensing, there's no reason for them to speak up.He walks through why the ones that survive all have the same thing in common: they live it. Wiz with Khalifa Kush. Method Man out there in the story feeds gifting boxes. TCA reps working events. Compare...
Published: Sep 8, 2026Duration: 15m 21s
I Made a Documentary About Spray Packs. They Buried It | LMC Media
LMC dropped a documentary warning people about spray packs. It hit 400,000 views in two days. Then YouTube age restricted it.He appealed. It's journalistic, it's educational, it's not promoting anything, it's literally warning people about a dangerous product. Denied. In the year and a half since, that video has done under 50,000 more views. Age restriction cuts off suggestion and advertising entirely, so growth just stops.He looked up what a video with those numbers typically pays a creator. Just under a million dollars. He's been paid $50,000 in AdSense across everything....
Published: Sep 7, 2026Duration: 13m 43s
The 50mg Fortune Cookie By Every Dispensary Register | Super Chill Goods
Before Super Chill, there were medicated fortune cookies. Vanilla or chocolate, 50 milligrams, five bucks, sitting in a jar right by the register at TLC and Zen Healing.They pitched dispensaries on customizing the fortunes. Put a promo inside, a free joint on the next visit, $25 off, and suddenly every patient walking out has a reason to come back. One shop in Marina Del Rey ran a quarter pound giveaway through them every month.The very first fortune was an Eddie Huang quote from Fresh Off the Boat. They wrote the rest themselves, keeping...
Published: Sep 3, 2026Duration: 18m 12s
You Can Buy an Entire Edible Brand Off a Website | Super Chill Goods
Lance brought in a tray of the cheapest edibles he could find, 50 cents to a dollar each, different brands across the board. Super Chill's read: most of them are coming out of the same manufacturers running the same SOP. Same recipe, different mold.They explain how it actually works. Mold companies publish recipes on their websites. You can buy pre-flavored, pre-colored gelatin in bulk with instructions telling you to mix in rosin or distillate. Link up with a graphic designer and you have a brand. That's the whole barrier to entry.They also...
Published: Sep 2, 2026Duration: 14m 14s
Everyone Told Us Not to Use Real Fruit | Super Chill Goods
Everyone told Super Chill real fruit wouldn't pass testing. Too expensive, too unstable, not worth it. They did it anyway.Their process starts at the Hollywood Farmers Market on a Sunday morning, not in a kitchen. Baby Crawford peaches from Ryer Farms, a third generation grower whose stand runs $10 a pound with a sign telling you not to touch the fruit unless you're buying it. Wiser Farm melons. Harry's Berries. Wong Farms mangoes with a line 40 people deep before the market even opens, and they still got sold out two people ahead of Jen.<...
Published: Sep 1, 2026Duration: 17m 31s
Every Employee Quit the Day We Moved In | Super Chill Goods
They did the walkthrough and the office was fully staffed. Graphic designers, compliance officers, the whole team. The day they moved in, everyone was gone. What was left was the owner's little brother and his friend from high school.Super Chill had just landed a statewide Stizzy launch across 50 stores plus delivery, with Catalyst and others already placing orders. All they needed was a kitchen and SOPs. Instead they found out none of the compliance had been filed. Three months of production got logged in a single weekend, the BCC flagged it, and an audit came...
Published: Aug 31, 2026Duration: 18m 27s
They Won't Let me Put Samurai On My Weed Bag | Turtle Pie Co
Turtle named a strain Giant Fuyu after a Japanese persimmon. The state told him he couldn't put it on a label because it appeals to children.His response: what kid in America is asking their mom for persimmons. The samurai artwork had to go too. Two Chinese food boxes smoking blunts for Purple Sticky Rice, gone. Now most of his strains are just words on a bag, and he says it's taken a lot of the fun out of making packaging.He came up from retail, stocking end caps at a grocery store...
Published: Aug 27, 2026Duration: 15m 38s
Nobody Grows Weed for Stoners Anymore | Turtle Pie Co
Turtle smokes for how weed makes him feel, not how it tastes. He says the market stopped caring about that a long time ago.He gets into the two things killing good flower: THC percentage and the camera. Strawberry Melon sold fine for years until numbers became the deciding factor. It never got past 26%. Green Dog's verdict was blunt: it's good weed, it tastes good, it gets you high, nobody buys it. And if a jar doesn't photograph well, people won't post it, and if they won't post it, it's almost not worth running.<...
Published: Aug 26, 2026Duration: 19m 8s
We Ran 105 Seeds. Six Made It. | Turtle Pie Co
Turtle ran 105 phenos with the Green Dog team. Six made the final cut.The reason wasn't yield or structure. Keegan set one rule: if it's not better than Purple Sticky Rice, it doesn't get garden space. Doesn't matter how many A's or A minuses it pulled. When your competition is already that high, you can't afford to run it.Turtle breaks down the whole hunt. Why the 30s hit hard for three rounds and then fizzled by the fourth. Why 69 looked like nothing early and became the one he's most excited about. Why...
Published: Aug 25, 2026Duration: 17m 14s
I Quit My Job With $22,000 of Weed in My Car | Turtle Pie Co
The dispensary went under owing $300,000 across their entire vendor roster. As the buyer, he was told to call 40 people and tell them they weren't getting paid.He quit on the spot. Then he went to both dispensaries, pulled all the Green Dog off the shelves and out of the vault, took the Gold Drop carts and a topical from a vendor named Canicare, double bagged it, and walked out. His words: call the cops, beat my ass, I'm leaving with this.He called Drew in tears. They owed him 30 bands. He got 22 of...
Published: Aug 24, 2026Duration: 13m 21s
He Flipped A Sample on TikTok & Got Millions of Views | JBoogz
24 years old. Staten Island. No label. No manager. Just beats and a vision.JBoogz pulls up to First Smoke of the Day and breaks down what it actually takes to build an independent music career from scratch in 2026. He flipped a Mac DeMarco sample on TikTok and hit 2 million views. Now he is in LA cooking with artists and stacking percentages over upfront cash.We get into how sampling actually works, why the MPC changed everything for independent producers, how TikTok built his career before Instagram did, why he takes royalty percentages over...
Published: Jul 13, 2026Duration: 59m 23s