We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Marion Claire Brooks. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Marion Claire below.
Hi Marion Claire , thanks for joining us today. Crazy stuff happening is almost as certain as death and taxes – it’s technically “unexpected” but something unexpected happening is to be expected and so can you share a crazy story with our readers
The craziest story about my business has to do with the creation of it.
I did not come up with the idea to start a business, I was given one on my birthday by a 40 year old Italian man, who at the time had become one of my best friends.
My business targets individuals who are attempting to transform their addictive habits. I was 25, socially active and full of bad habits…that I enjoyed. I didn’t work traditionally (meaning weed work, making sterling jewelry, etc) and this man asked me to start working for him. I had no idea that I would actually work for him. But he did a good job at providing me weekly pay in Los Angeles so we began to spend lots of time together. As we began to know one another I learned his backstory.
He was an old Wall Street broker who fell from grace and evaded his taxes. Meaning he could not hold a bank account without seizure of funds. I had spent many plenty of time around scrupulous characters, so this information had little to no effect on my risk assessment.
He began to take me under his wing and introduce me to all of his connections within CBD and THC – this led to time spent alongside a local chemist. This chemist was a sweetheart and a hilarious human. He started to notice my “bad habits” and began to supply me micro-doses of his CBD formula while I was exercising.
When I started eating CBD, everything began to slowly change around me. I began to choose new vices, exercise more, and eventually I let go of my love for alcohol.
While this was going on, my older gentleman friend was becoming inspired. And so one birthday, he delivered me a gift. His gift is now quite suspect but at the time, I had trust. So when he gave me a binder with all of my incorporation certificates inside it, signed and dated by me…….I felt inspired too.
As I look back now, after all the disagreements and separations he and I have had…I realize that I not only enabled myself to business but I enabled him to do business as well.
People always have interesting motivations and I am better off having gone through this weird experience. I take my time when making decisions now, but honestly when looking back I wouldn’t change a thing.
The juice was worth the squeeze. Incorporating and learning the art (and mess) of American commerce, changed my life and my mind. I have loved the challenging and never stable journey.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
My brand is called Full Moons Club, we provide nicotine free products and family friendly CBD tincture formulas for all humans and animals.
My lead product has been my CBD Cigarettes- not only has the vice kept me sexy and sane but it’s been incredibly rewarding to get other people smoking and not hooked. My cigarettes are non-addictive – non-habit forming, and they don’t kill you.
They have good energy and the packaging has been super fun to curate, it’s very sex positive and hyper local to the creation of the product.
I control my supply chain and the manufacturing so I maintain the quality and have been hesitating to scale because I don’t want to sacrifice the flower quality nor the taste. The fact that they are non-habit forming sets up apart from the toxic market of VAPES AND TOBACCO.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
Most recently, the company I first scaled my oil with liquidated and went bankrupt in three days circa end of 2022.
I had a wonderful experience with them – they were large market holders for a proprietary technology that used cold distillation techniques vs hot distillation. I loved them and the products we made together.
However, I think they probably grew too fast and mismanaged their funds egregiously at the end. This is at least what my rep told me AFTER I received a call from a bankrupting agency asking me “Is this Full Moons Club?”
My response is unimportant so we shall speed up to the part of the conversation where they tell me that all my inventory and packaging will be sold in one week unless I can provide proper transportation.
CONTEXT: It’s one week before Thanksgiving and the weight of my product and packaging is over 900lbs.
I had to do some really fast R & D and PIVOT towards crisis mode in an attempt to not lose the investment previously made. It was kind of fun, honestly – I have a deep love for logistics. And at the end of the day, you can always get something done if you are able to shell out the cash.
I believe it didn’t take me too long to discover ARCBEST which is a corporation that handles freight shipping by the truckload.
I paid them a little under $1,500 to do a rush retrieval and delivery of the material.
Luckily I had a boyfriend with a big warehouse and a large home base where I could frantically store the product.
In the end, I don’t think I even need half of the packaging we saved…as it soon became irrelevant within our product SKU. But never the less it was a big panic moment I could never have foreseen.
Can you talk to us about your experience with selling businesses?
I have never sold my business.
I have had three businesses… a small jewelry making hustle called Mechanica Jewelry, my CBD business named Full Moons Club and my consulting agency named Brooks Trading Company.
I think the best piece of advice I can offer in terms of buying or selling businesses… is choose that outcome at the very beginning. Start with the intention of a long term vision with hopes of selling or start with the intention of creating a life long enterprise. This will make your decisions more clear as time goes on.
I was once offered 600K in 2023 to sell my business and honestly it was not enough money. But the moment it happened, I think the person who made the offer saw on my face that I lacked clarity in my intentions. I would have rather known the firm answer myself, otherwise I was able to be persuaded by others needs and not my own.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.fullmoonsclub.com
- Instagram: @fullmoonsclub
Image Credits
Susan Berry photographed one of the images Fox Sinclair photographed others