All across America and around the world, this is Veterans Radio.
This is Veterans Radio.
Welcome to Veterans Radio.
I am Jim Fossone.
I'm the officer of the deck today.
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We want to welcome to VeteransRadio today Will Bowden.
He's got an interesting story.
It's part Coast Guard, part business, part marijuana growing.
So this is not your normal business entrepreneur here.
So Will, welcome to VeteransRadio.
Thanks, gentlemen. It's really, really nice to be here.
I appreciate the invite.
Well, it's always great to talk to a coastie.
And we do, on VeteransRadio, we talk to a lot of veteran entrepreneurs and businessmen.
I think sometimes the image of us veterans is that, you know, we're all kind of broken
down guys and we're not.
Generally, we take our skills that we learned in the service and turn them to really interesting
and positive life outside of the military service.
But let's talk first how a nice kid like you end up in the Navy and move to the Coast Guard
and have the career that you had.
You know, the irony has not been lost on anybody for Surgeon.
So I was born and raised in Santa Cruz, California.
And the only reason I go back that far is because, you know, this was an area that was
very accepting of cannabis.
But my choices in life, law enforcement and military, did not allow me to participate
either from a work or use perspective.
Right?
So I joined the Navy shortly after high school and I went into military law enforcement,
did a couple of things there pre-911 and had a really, really good time there.
And as I transitioned off of active duty to reserve, I went into the Coast Guard Reserve.
And what's funny about that is I thought that that was actually going to keep me in some
geographical areas within the United States.
I ended up in a unit in the Coast Guard that actually does not deploy in the United States.
It only deploys overseas, right?
Ended up being just a really rewarding tour in the Coast Guard and it's a nice way to
start the Coast Guard.
It's called a port security unit.
And then 911 happens and I become more active in my time in the reserve time than I was
my, the whole time I was on active duty.
So it was just, you know, everybody appreciates that no matter who you were in the military,
very, very active time since then.
So all along that time, so when I transitioned from active duty to reserve, I also joined
on as a police officer down in Naples, Florida in Collier County.
And I had an amazing time at the police department there as well, serving from road patrol all
the way till I actually did when I was on the SWAT team.
The reason why I left the police department was because I went to school to get my MBA.
And while I was going to get my MBA, I thought it would be neat to work in corporate America
and Florida has a nice way of allowing people with their active law enforcement license to
leave and do other things and come back within a five year period and maintain that licensure.
So when I went to my administration and I said, hey, I'd like to go do this, they were completely
supportive of it, amazing mentors and leaders there.
And so I went and did that.
That's what took me to a pharmaceutical company, Merck.
And I'm still at Coast Guard Reserve at that time too.
So I go there, I finished my MBA program and Merck ends up offering me a pretty cool position.
They said, hey, why don't you come up to headquarters?
We're about to change our US commercial model.
And I was really excited about that because I just got done doing my MBA program.
This was stuff that was totally going to make sense.
So I went back to my same administration and they're like, oh, it sounds like an amazing
opportunity.
It's only supposed to be about a year.
So I go up to Pennsylvania from Florida and I start to work with Merck.
And basically what ends up happening over the next 14 years was I really enjoyed the
work that Merck was throwing me from an intellectual perspective and I was still getting my sense
of duty and service from doing all the stuff I was doing in the Coast Guard.
And again, I was being deployed all the time and not even Conest, I was being deployed
overseas.
So doing really interesting work with the Coast Guard too.
So I just never went back to law enforcement, which is funny because now my cop buddies
will call me and laugh at the fact that I'm in the canons.
Yeah, right, you've gone to the other end of the spectrum.
But because we so rarely get to talk to Coast Guard folks, and I should say, well, Bon retired
as a Lieutenant Commander, tell us about some of those overseas assignments.
I don't think folks really appreciate the depth and breadth of tasks that the Coast
Guard gets pulled into.
Yeah.
So first of all, the Coast Guard has stations all over the world and that's something that
we all don't appreciate.
The things that we appreciate is the things we tend to see.
So you see things like search and rescue, you see things like drug interdiction, you
see things like hazardous materials cleanups and stuff like that.
What we don't see is some of the units that were actually developed before and during Vietnam,
the river impetrels and a lot of the support that was happening during those days.
So Coast Guard has been long standing of being small boat experts and small boats can be
like your 24 foot boats, it also can mean your small cutters compared to the larger ships
that the Navy would have.
So being very small and agile, being a smaller specialized organization afforded the Coast
Guard to develop those skills and be very complimentary when working with the Marine
Corps, United States Navy, Air Force in some cases too, and definitely with the Army at
times too.
So one of my first deployments with the Coast Guard was actually to Guantanamo.
We went down there and we were part of the initial detainee ops of when they were bringing
detainees right after 9-11 to Guantanamo and we were part of the initial efforts to stand
up that operation, establish good security protocols, working very closely again with
the different entities that were already down there.
I don't think a lot of people understand that that's one of the places that we would deploy
to and operate in.
We were also active the entire time and continue to be active the entire time in the Middle
East and all the Middle East operations that were going on.
So everybody understands that we have a presence over there in what we do.
I think when you think about the Coast Guard deploying overseas, what you want to think
about is land or structure scenarios that touch water that need to establish normalization
and security.
So that could be the oil platforms in the Middle East, that could be Guantanamo Bay having
a high threat security zone and a bay down there and everything in between.
One of the sweet spots that the Coast Guard does very well.
Well, and we've had some guests on on Veterans Radio and we're talking to Lieutenant Commander
Will Bowden of the United States Coast Guard retired.
We've talked to guests about the Coast Guard being deployed in the Pacific over concerns
with Taiwan and China.
Again, those are things I think in general, people don't know that the Coast Guard's
out doing that, but just sort of summarized it, the phrase of small boat experts really
kind of helps you visualize where they are and what they can do.
It is.
And, you know, there's a combined effort out there and sometimes we forget.
So one of my final assignments was at the time it was called PAKOM, the Combatant Command,
Pacific Command, but it's been censoried, renamed Indo-Pacific Command.
And in that Combatant Command, they have jurisdiction for 52% of the world, like the Pacific Ocean
and all of the continents and countries that touch that Pacific Ocean.
And so I got to work in a really neat policy group that really focused on Northeast Asia
with more of a focus on North Korea and China.
So when you think about that kind of work, you don't automatically think of Coast Guard
there, but at the end of the day, what you are talking about is the United States military
working together to accomplish the goals that we need to accomplish both operationally and
policy-wise in the world today.
And that requires everybody.
That requires non-government entities as well as government entities.
We had non-military entities at PAKOM as well as your military partners as well.
And it is a bigger picture than I think most of us see.
But again, we tend to believe in the things that we see.
So there's movies, there's television, there's my uncle was in whatever.
And that's the stuff that we formulate our opinions on, right?
It is.
And that's why we do these shows on Veterans Radio to tell real-life stories that broaden
out those pictures.
And we always kind of end up asking the same question, which is, based on your experiences
in the Coast Guard, if your niece, nephew, family member, friend, son of a friend came
in and said, you know, I'm thinking I should do something like this, what do you think
about an opportunity in the Coast Guard?
Where does it take you?
So Jim, this is so great because one of the things that I take very seriously is coaching
people in general, but coaching kids who aspire to explore something in the military.
My favorite example of this is somebody might come to me and say, hey, I want to go fly
jets, so I'm going to join the Air Force.
And I don't throw them the obvious thing of where else jets are.
I say, well, that's awesome.
But do you know that the Army has more aircraft than the Air Force has?
And that usually stops them in their tracks and then said, I'm not asking you to join
the Army.
What I'm asking you to do is just do more digging, be more curious, because you're going
to join an organization that has a bunch of different jobs that are in that organization.
And chances are you might want to try a few of those jobs in there.
So make sure that you understand not just the job you're going in for and you want to
join, but also what are the other jobs that you would maybe want to see or try or work
alongside as well.
And it's really just getting people to do a bit more diligence, especially our youth,
to say there's a lot of amazing jobs.
There's amazing jobs in the Coast Guard and the Navy that never see the water.
There's amazing jobs in the Air Force that never see aircraft.
So you just have to understand that it's a bigger world out there than the thing that's
tending to motivate you, which usually is that father, that uncle, that movie, the thing
that grabs your attention when you're a kid, as it should when you're a kid.
But as we get older and we're graduating high school and we're considering military service,
there is more diligence that usually can benefit people for sure.
Well, I want to congratulate you on doing that sort of mentoring because I think we
all have a responsibility who've served to be talking to the younger generation about
the value of it, the skill sets you're going to receive, the crazy places you're going
to get sent to and see the world, even though you thought you'd only be deployed in the
US.
Yeah, all of those are positive things, but I want to transition.
As I said, we like talking to veteran business entrepreneurs and you move from law enforcement
to the corporate world.
We're doing really well and it's successful with a huge company there.
What in the world made you transfer those skill sets that you had learned along the way?
And Will is the CEO of Grasshopper Farms, which is a marijuana growing operation in multiple
states all outdoors.
But we'll talk about Grasshopper Farms in a minute, but I want to start with like the
mental process going on as you as you transferred your skill sets into this being this vetropinur.
Well, you couldn't have labeled it better than the mental process because that's exactly
what happened.
So really what happens here is I retired October of 2018.
So that was the moment when I exited the military.
But before that, good 10, 12 years ago, I was watching the cannabis industry and I was
appreciating it for the business perspective of what it's doing and then for the medical
perspective of what it's doing too.
There's amazing things going on that go way beyond the Narcos, Mexico and reefer madness
that we really need to understand better.
But so I was already appreciating it, but it was always from afar because it was not
something that I was allowed to do simply because of my military service.
And I was really enjoying that.
So the same month I retire, I end up meeting another guy who was also former military and
we're just getting to know each other.
But when he learned that I had prior law enforcement experience, the things I had done in the Coast
Guard and then my pharmaceutical experience, he said, Hey, I want to offer you a job.
I go, what's that?
He goes, well, he's starting what we call an industry in MSL, multi-state operator.
And he wanted me to help him go operationalize licenses in other states.
And so I go home to my wife.
I'm like, is this really happening?
You can't make this up.
I mean, it's just like, it's crazy.
It's the same exact month I retired.
So that was a bit of a jarring moment mentally speaking, right?
But at the end of the day, I talked to her with my wife.
I was really excited about a new opportunity, almost in the same way of like being excited
for a new command as we rotate through military service, right?
And so I sat down with my wife and we said, yes.
So I started and I went to work for him learning the industry.
First I was sent to Michigan to operationalize licenses.
I got three retail locations up and running and got indoor grow up and running, manufacturing
was in the pipeline.
But all along that time, I developed an appreciation for the outdoor farming aspect of the industry.
So that's kind of what broke me into this.
There's not a lot of farmland in Santa Cruz, California that you're relating to here.
This isn't a family.
I want to grow up to be a farmer thing.
How did you say, well, that's the, I like this field because it's brand new and a lot
of opportunity.
How did you decide outdoor grows my niche?
So as I was going through all of this, it's really important as you enter any business
that you really understand what your operating costs.
And when you do that analysis on indoor cultivation, you start to realize that energy in the form
of power is going to be one of the main drivers of your operating costs.
And so as I was looking at that, I was like, okay, so why aren't more people growing outside?
And at the same time, I came across a study that was done back in 2011.
We're talking 12 years ago now that basically said that indoor cannabis cultivation was
occupying 1% of the US power grid.
And I was like, ooh, not sustainable.
And it's not that indoor grow is bad and needs to be demonized or anything.
That's not the case.
It's just we haven't realized our balance yet of indoor greenhouse and outdoor grows.
That's what it comes down to.
So I got really curious and I started doing the research and I started trying to figure
out so why aren't more people doing the outdoor farm?
Well, long story short, it's because farming is really, really hard.
I will tell you that right now.
So but I started looking at the business model of it.
And the other on the business side of it is, is when a person would go into a retail cannabis
store, they would see different grades of indoor flower that they could select from.
But usually there was only one grade of outdoor flower.
Usually it's discounted and considered to be lesser quality.
And I said, well, that's just not right.
This plant was outside.
And the only reason why it even went inside was because it came in illegal and people
went into basements and pole barns.
And that's just where it kind of evolved into.
And people then not surprisingly have stuck with that discipline because not just over
decades but generations, they've learned how to do that well.
So now it's time to come back outside and do it well though, because there's plenty of
people who have done it well and can do it well.
So let's do it.
So that's what I did.
I formed the team.
I left that last company and started this company.
And we, we went to market saying that I think that what we can do is provide a higher quality
of outdoor flower than is available in the market today in Michigan.
It ended up working out.
So we expanded to Colorado now in New Jersey too.
And we're, we're working our way into Minnesota and Massachusetts.
And I want to try to build a collective of 10 farms is kind of the goal here.
10 different teams as we continue the mission.
Well, you've just identified a number of states, including Michigan, which are not warm weather
states.
They have a specific grow season.
How does that factor into all this analysis that you're doing, which is probably pretty
deep.
And thus the MBA, thus the role, operational role at the Coast Guard where you were doing
a lot of planning.
But, but how do you look at this from outdoor grow operations and the seasonality of it
all?
Well, first and foremost, if you're going to pick to do outdoor farming, you better operate
where other outdoor farms exist.
And then you got to pay attention to what exists as far as an outdoor farm goes as well.
So where we're set up in Michigan, we're surrounded by blueberry farms.
And if you can grow blueberries, grapes or tomatoes, you're probably in the right vicinity,
geographically speaking, to do an outdoor cannabis farm there too.
So location, location, location, right?
It's just, you got to know what state are you going into, what kind of seasonality.
You also mentioned there is a season.
You're absolutely right.
We are a single season outdoor grow, which means we produce a crop once a year.
So we have to be very deliberate in what we do throughout that year to support being able
to produce the amount that we need to to run a business.
Right?
So there's, there's a lot of math that goes into that for sure.
But when it comes down to picking the state or where in the state, because Michigan, much
like California is much different at the bottom of Michigan from a growing perspective
than it is up to what they call the UP or the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
And I would recommend you probably don't want to do an outdoor grow for retail flower in
the Upper Peninsula.
You might do it for a smaller scale and for biomass, but you just, you just have to be
careful on these things.
There's ways to do them in a lot of different locations, but you got to be very deliberate
in knowing what's going to work in that location and then go after that.
So when did grasshopper farms get started, Will?
Yep.
So we started in 2020.
The name grasshopper farms, grasshopper represents two things for us.
One is that we are on a journey of always learning.
And the second one is the grasshopper hops from season to season because we are a single
season outdoor grow.
We don't benefit from things that like vines for grapes and blueberries that we can revive.
We literally have to start over with new plants every single year.
And in those three years now going, you've opened up in Colorado, Michigan and New Jersey.
How many acres do you have?
So in Michigan, we bought 160 acres, but it's important to say out loud that we only developed
40 of those acres.
And the reason why is because we were bringing a new type of flower to the market.
And so to do that, that means that we have to have a lot of focus and discipline.
So we started by building out 40 acres because we knew that we could logistically operate
that with a high degree of precision.
And we would not expand until we honed in our practices.
And then also the market dictated that it would be appropriate to expand.
So we've done that.
We're ready now to expand in Michigan to an appropriate level, which will probably be
just another 40 acres.
And we'll probably stop there.
That will probably be what grasshopper farms is in Michigan.
So for each state, what we're going to do is we're going to always have that focus and
discipline so that we don't get distracted with shiny objects.
We really stick to the mission and we're able then to provide that quality and consistency.
And you're probably going to say, well, we could just substitute some of the names and
call it a military operation and you're absolutely right.
That's exactly what it is.
I was laughing at the focus and getting away from the shiny objects.
It is, as I say, a new kind of niche business, right?
That there's not a lot of folks who can look to and talk to and say, well, how did you
do it?
But how much of this becomes then a marketing and outlet?
Because, okay, you grew it.
You picked those flowers once a year.
It's now got to be processed.
This is not a retail.
There's a more integrated part of the industry.
Talk to us a little bit about how you approach that.
Yeah, Jim, you're absolutely right there.
So look, when we came to market, we told everybody, hey, we're grass upper farms and you're going
to know us because we're going to produce premium sungrown flower.
And everybody kind of gave us that virtual pat on the back and said, sure, you're going
to, buddy.
You go out there and do your thing.
Yeah, good luck.
It's really hard to do.
Yeah, that's right.
The reason why most of the outdoor flower out there is in a discounted lower quality
status, and that's because it's really hard to do.
And those farms also focus on biomass for making things like edible, topical, sublinguals
and before.
So when we came to market, we had to be deliberate about what we were saying about who we are
and how we're doing it.
So we were building a brand at that point too.
And so this is really important.
When you're running a business, you not only have to know what product or service are you
selling, but how are you going to communicate that to people as well?
And that's the marketing aspect of that.
So we initially started out there when we had no product to sell by going around and
telling our story.
We went around to retailers.
We started talking about it on Facebook and Instagram.
We went to a couple of conventions and we just told our story.
And then we just said, I know what you guys all think this is going to be hard to do.
It may be impossible, but just give us a try when we come out.
And then what that did was it let the onus fall on us to produce what we knew we could.
So we produced a product that ended up being a higher quality outdoor flower than was typically
available.
And retailers and consumers did accept us for that.
And because we did all that marketing work and continue to do all that marketing work,
it's now developed a conversation with people in the United States and even outside the
United States where they're paying attention to what we're doing and we've built a name
for ourselves.
I think that's really important in any industry that you do that.
You've got to build a name for yourself so that when other folks try to do what you're
doing, it's fine that they do, but you've already solidified your name in this too.
Much in the way that in early days of Sam Adams, they never try to compete with your
cores and Budweisers, right?
They just made a solid craft beer is what they did.
And I know they're a lot bigger now, but eventually in our industry, you're going to have some
legalization changes occur.
You're going to have some bigger companies come in.
And if you haven't made your name for yourself as a smaller company, you run the risk of
possibly getting just run over by those larger companies.
So how do we do that?
You spend the time, you tell your story, you make a name for yourself, and let's not forget,
you've got to have that quality and consistency of whatever the product or service.
You've got to produce.
You've got to mission accomplished.
You know, one of the reasons besides being a Coast Guard alum and we love talking to
you guys because you're hard to find, but veterans in particular are very interested
in the cannabis world, the use of cannabis, the medicinal use of cannabis.
They run a file at times, you know, because it's still a federally scheduled drug.
They run a file with VA sometimes, although that's loosening up.
There's some legislation to do more VA research on the benefits of cannabis, but by and large,
a lot of interest in veterans in the use of cannabis because of the quality of life that
it provides to them.
I'm wondering as with your background and with the Weirgrass hopper farms are located
and what you plan on doing, how do you see the veteran world intersecting with what you're
doing in the business?
And even in the employee world of yours?
Yeah, so a few different layers there.
So I think a lot of folks when they were getting to know the medicinal benefits of cannabis,
there was I think a lot of references to things like glaucoma and cancer.
And definitely those things exist for sure.
For me, it was more so on the side of talking to men and women who had served and we're
now benefiting from cannabis from either combat injuries or PTSD.
It's just at this point, I've lost track of how many I've talked to who benefit from that
specific angle.
And it's really important to understand that cannabis has incredible medicinal value.
I wouldn't be doing it otherwise.
It is a strong medicinal candidate for so many things out there, but we're just scratching
the surface right now because we're in a phase right now where it was illegal for so long
and the Reagan and Nixon administrations were so good at their anti-drug campaigns and
including cannabis in it.
So now what we're learning is that cannabis probably shouldn't have been in it.
It probably is definitely is not a gateway drug.
In fact, I've been calling it a reverse gateway drug because it has been helping people to
have a healthier relationship with things like pain medication and alcohol.
And so when you start to see this used appropriately or just used for sleep, there's so many people
who are sleep deprived today that are not diagnosed as a medical condition and they
use it for sleep and they don't even think they're using it medically.
They take the stigma of using it recreationally when in fact they're not.
They're using it to get something that's one of the most important factors that you need
in the world, which is a good night's sleep of both quantity and quality.
So I think that the implications federally certainly are they need to be contemplated
and understood the severity of the scheduling and how that impacts men and women who might
be able to benefit from this in the service.
I think that that will start to ease up as the federal changes happen, as the VA learns
more and as more research becomes available too.
As far as our position right now and how we're trying to help, we actually just had a former
Marine come and visit our farm with three of his friends and he benefits from a program
in Michigan that actually affords him to have free access to cannabis products to help him
with the combat injuries that he sustained from his service.
And we were introduced to that program and now we're going to contribute product to that
program as well to make sure that we're contributing to that free access that he can obtain in
the state of Michigan.
And I'm glad the state of Michigan has actually stepped up in doing something for military
veterans who need this product to basically just have quality of life.
And then as far as veterans go, listen, anytime I can grab a veteran and put him on the team,
it's going to happen because we already come from a foundation that we can understand together.
And I know what I'm already working with when I hire a veteran.
So I'll hire a veteran every day of the week for whatever positions that we have within
our organization for sure.
Well, that's why we're talking to Will Bowden, CEO of Grasshopper Farms, which grows outdoor
cannabis in three states.
He's a lieutenant commander from the United States Coast Guard Reserve, retired now.
And Will, I think getting the message out to more folk is part of what's necessary to
do.
There are a lot of people in that industry and you can probably pick your industry and
say, eh, there's some sketchy folks.
But I think it's important to, as you say, get out, talk about what you're going to do,
and then follow through and do it.
And that's what you're in the process of now.
Just quickly because we're running a little long.
Are you growing yet in Colorado or New Jersey?
Yeah, so we had a full season this year in Colorado.
They're in the middle of Michigan and Colorado are both in the midst right now of an outdoor
harvest.
In New Jersey, we've received all of our state licensure and we're just waiting for
the final licensure from Galloway Township.
And then we'll be what I would call plant touching at that point and operational.
So I would expect that within 90 days or less, we'll be plant touching within New Jersey
as well.
Well, that's great.
That's great expansion.
It's got to be exciting to be in the middle of harvest and we appreciate you taking some
time to talk to Veterans Radio and educate us about cannabis, outdoor cannabis growing
in particular and that transition from military to law enforcement to veteran entrepreneur
in the cannabis space.
So we really do appreciate the time today.
Well, thanks Jim.
It's not just an honor.
I also consider it a duty.
We've got to help each other out.
The way we do that is we support each other through communication and helping each other
to discover paths that work and then support each other to success.
So my honor, thank you very much.
And I want to thank everybody for listening to Veterans Radio today.
I am Jim Fossown.
It's been a pleasure to be your host.
I'm a Veterans Disability Lawyer at Legal Help for Veterans and you can reach us at
800-6934800 or legalhelpforveterans.com on the web.
You can follow Veterans Radio on Facebook and listen to its podcasts and internet radio
shows by visiting us at veteransradio.org.
That's veteransradio.org.
And until next time, you are dismissed.
If you have a VA claim denied by the Board of Veterans Appeals, contact Legal Help for
Veterans at 1-800-6934800.
They're experts in handling cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims.
Their number again, 1-800-6934800.
We again want to thank our national sponsors, the National Veterans Business Development
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Charles S. Kells Chapter, Ann Arbor, Michigan, VFW Graf O'Hara Post 423 in Ann Arbor, and
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We appreciate all your support.
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And until next time, you are dismissed.
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