We caught up with the brilliant and insightful JM Balbuena a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi JM , thanks for joining us today. How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? The world needs to hear more realistic, actionable stories about this critical part of the business building journey. Tell us your scaling up story – bring us along so we can understand what it was like making the decisions you had, implementing the strategies/tactics etc.

“Hi, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?”

Thank you for having me. My story is constantly evolving as I navigate the many dimensions of my life as an entrepreneur, creative, and community builder. When it comes to business, my main focus is the legal cannabis space. My business is now entering a new phase of growth for which my team and I are very excited. The most exciting part is that as an organization, we get the opportunity to invite people in to partake in the benefits and risks of the growth of our flagship retail and delivery platform Jaxx Cannabis, and we get to do it as a community. This initiative is called www.Weed4ThePeople.com. We have been approved by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to raise capital via Reg A+. This means that anyone can invest in our business in exchange for equity.

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?

“Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?”

Being an entrepreneur is a challenge in itself. Being an entrepreneur or business owner within the legal cannabis industry is next level challenge as not only is your product federally controlled, it is also highly stigmatized given the history of misinformation and propaganda. For this very reason, I wrote my book The Successful Canna-preneur. In it, I paint an acute picture of what it takes to be a part of this industry, the potential challenges one may encounter as an entrepreneur, professional, investor, or advocate/educator, and I also provide resources to those interested in being a part of the space in any capacity.

The journey has not been easy but it definitely has been, and continues to be, worth it. There is still so much work to be done, there are people still incarcerated for the plant, and there are plenty of opportunities to maximize.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

“I Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?”

One thing that I do is mentor young people about business strategies, mindset shifting, and personal development. This is one of the most gratifying aspects of my life because in helping others get ‘unstuck.’ I also help myself, but most importantly, I get to be the person I needed while I was trying to figure things out early in my career.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

“Can you talk to us a bit about happiness and what makes you happy?”

I find happiness in a lot of things. But internally, I find happiness in being myself, in following my intuition, going with the flow of what I truly love to do, and vibing with the energy of the people I love.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_jmbalbuena/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johannbalbuena/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/cannabissynergy

Image Credits
Emily Eizen Dylan Laylani