Share
First Smoke of The Day
Exclusive: Michigans Craziest Menu, Legacy of Dispensaries, Hunting Down Exclusive Flavors
Whoever says that Michigan doesn’t have the fire is about to be proven wrong. Today’s guest is a keeper not only of insane Prop 215 lore, but also one of the real-deal pioneers of the medical and recreational scene in MI, actively setting the standard for A-1 smoke and the right way to get it into the hands of the people 7 days of the week.
Blackleaf is joined back in the FSOTD studio by the legend himself, Andrew Thomas, of Exclusive Brands, to discuss the late 90s and early 2000s, bouncing around LA and visiting places like the iconic dab bar at Kind Meds, as well as Michigan’s claims to fame in terms of Chem, OG, and Gas genetics, the prominence of customers driving in from border states like Ohio and Illinois to get MI prices and premium flower options, as well as the future of the industry in terms of interstate commerce, and safe, traditional banking, marketing access, and so much more.
For those unaware, Exclusive Brands is a vertically-integrated retailer with (currently) seven shops running across the state including in Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, Monroe, Muskegon, Lowell, Coldwater, Lapeer, and Gaylord. Their portfolio includes their in-house labels like Concentrate Kings, Strain Kings, Terpene Tanks, Magic Edibles, and more, offering a full range of products from flower and vapes to edibles and concentrates. Exclusive emphasizes quality and transparency with lab-tested products and educates consumers through rewards, weekly deals, and (most importantly) knowledgeable and attentive staff, with an expansive line of merchandise and in-house product.
You’ll also get to hear about how they became the first in the state to get the licensing to manufacture and distribute major California stables like Kushy Punch. And even the story about how Andrew's partner eventually even acquisitioning the Kushy Punch brand after it had a very public legal fallout. We’re not joking when we say that this episode is JUICY in terms of free game and crazy stories surrounding partnerships, trapping, building the dream team, expanding into 5+ shops, and how to keep a lid on it with an almost religious connection to customer service paired with aggressively competitive prices.
From producing mixtapes with The Game and countless other hip-hop legends as a teenager to diving headfirst into California’s early Prop 215 days to absorb the culture, set up shop, trap it out, and then bring all the knowledge back to Michigan the minute Medical hit, it’s almost impossible not to learn something valuable from this conversation with Andrew if you’re a hustler or even just a passionate fan of the plant. Hit the play button, kick back until the end, and you’ll thank us later. Visit Exclusivemi.com to learn more about everything you’re missing out on in the Michigan scene.
Subscribe to our channel and the FSOTD.com site to keep up with other key players and enjoy conversations with trailblazers from the culture you can’t find anywhere else.
More episodes
View all episodes
I Turned Down Millions to Sell My Farm | Dirty Arm Farm
17:29|Someone shows up at the farm with a contract and serious money behind it. His answer has been the same every time: send me the contract, and then no.In this episode he explains why those deals rarely work in the grower’s favor. The risk sits almost entirely on one side, the buyer wants the brand to dress up a parent company, and the math falls apart the moment prices move. He walks through what it would actually look like to take twenty million and lose control of the outcome.The alternative has cost him. Years of operating at a loss, watching most of the growers around him leave the industry, and scaling up in ways people told him were not possible. He runs his material at a fraction of what comparable product sells for, on purpose, because he does not think quality should only reach people who can pay a premium.He also gets into why he stays out of competitions, what he makes of the large companies moving in, and the morning federal agents came through his house.Catch the full sit-down at fsotd.com.I'm the Biggest Hash Processor in the Country | Dirty Arm Farm
16:03|Six hundred and sixty pounds of fresh frozen material, washed and loaded into freeze dryers in about nine hours. Two people run the wash. The farm itself is handled by one.In this episode he explains why volume is the whole argument. The cost to process a run is roughly the same whether it takes nine hours or seven days, so speed is what brings the price down, and that savings is supposed to reach the person buying it. He is blunt about what he thinks the market currently charges and who benefits from it staying that way.He also shares the lessons that came expensive. Why a freezer will not actually freeze anything, what to do at harvest instead, the equipment failure that nearly cost a full run, and why he refuses to process material he did not grow himself, no matter who is asking.Catch the full sit-down at fsotd.com.There's Sulfur in the Hash You're Smoking. | Dirty Arm Farms
16:48|He says there is a lot of sulfured hash and concentrate on shelves right now, and that most of it comes down to one thing. The people making it never learned to grow.In this episode he explains when sulfur is actually appropriate, why it is the only real answer to a pest problem that has worsened in recent years, and why it has no place anywhere near the flowering stage. His argument runs through everything else too. You cannot make good product without growing it right first, whichever method you use.He also walks through his own path. Seeing shatter for the first time in Portland, accidentally making live resin because his material was not dry, getting rejected by stores for it and then winning a major cup with it, and eventually switching away from the method that made his name.Full episode is up at fsotd.com.I Don't Care About Your Nutrients. Fix Your Air First. | Only The Flame
13:20|He ranks environment above everything else, and says around ninety five percent of the operations he walks into do not have enough dehumidification.In this episode he lays out his rule for building a room. Spec it for week nine, not for day one. Sixty pints per day per light fixture. And understand that the colder you run, the less capacity that equipment actually delivers, to the point where a cold room may be getting a small fraction of what it was rated for.He also covers keeping a room flatlined so pressure swings stay minimal, the numbers he targets through veg and into early flower, why he keeps veg rooms hot rather than cooling them down for the crew, light levels by variety, and the overnight failures that nobody catches until the next morning.fsotd.com has the complete episode.I Can Tell a Grow Is Failing Before I See a Plant - Only The Flame
16:17|He can tell how a room is doing before he looks at a single plant. He walks in, notices how his skin feels, and says that alone tells him whether it is going to be a long day.In this episode he breaks down how he actually diagnoses a grow. Reading plant architecture after the stretch to work out where the room was overwatered or dried back too hard, and roughly when it happened. Why environment is the most common failure by a wide margin, and why so few operations own a light meter now that the industry has moved to LED. What he checks when the numbers all look right and the plants still look wrong.He also gets into building a real pest program with multiple modes of action instead of spraying the same thing until it stops working, how to spot hop latent viroid by leaf angle and stems that snap without pressure, and the hardest call in cultivation: when a room is no longer worth saving.Catch the full sit-down at fsotd.com.I Get 1,000 Followers a Day for Making People Angry
20:21|Harrison was on a call with a consulting client when his phone started blowing up. Joe Rogan had played one of his videos on air. He told the client he had to go, hung up, and decided to start taking the work seriously.In this episode he explains how videos about California infrastructure turned into about a thousand new followers a day. It started with an unfinished airport train, then the high speed rail, roughly eighteen billion spent with projections reaching far higher and no train to show for it. He makes a point of keeping it out of party politics. His argument is simply that people are paying for something they are not getting.He also talks about the politicians who have reached out since, why he has turned down every paid promotion offered to him so far, an honest answer on manufacturing overseas, and the trip to Mexico that is becoming his next video.The whole thing is at fsotd.com.I Never Sold Weed. The Feds Investigated Me
10:11|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. And the morning his social account with six hundred thousand followers vanished while he was on a plane to pitch investors, leaving him to pitch the next day with nothing.He also talks about finding one of his own custom designs sitting unbranded on a shelf across town, and why he thinks the major platforms change their position the day banking opens up.Head to fsotd.com for the full conversation.I Sold a Million Bongs. My Salary Was $90,000
22:22|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 with a brand new seller came back perfect, and building that factory alongside them from two hundred pieces to two hundred thousand.He also talks about the community volunteers who turned packing into a party, the meme page partnership that ended with him at Tommy Chong's house and moving his whole team to California, and the one thing he thinks most people get wrong about cold outreach.Catch the full sit-down at fsotd.com.