Justin Hartfield Weedmaps
As I wrapped up my interviews with the first Cannabis company I covered for my blog here, Cannabrand, I knew there was an opportunity to cover more start ups and the movers and shakers of the weed legalization movement in Colorado, Washington and soon to be other states. There were many other stories to be told. This new column, “The Puff Post” will focus on and cover all these types of new businesses whether they be entrepreneurial, technology, policy/lobbying, financial, product canada goose sale uk or service oriented Cannabis companies. New or established firms, join me as we take an inside look at this exciting new sector in America and the companies driving it forward.
Canada Goose Outlet Justin Hartfield founded an Irvine, California based company, Weedmaps, that I came to find out is canada goose outlet online reviews considered the “Yelp of Cannabis.” He serves on the Board of Directors of the National Cannabis Industry Association, the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) and National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), where he also serves as the canada goose outlet phone number Treasurer. Canada Goose Outlet
I found Weedmaps to be more of a Google Maps, canada goose outlet niagara falls because when you hit the Weedmaps website, you’re asked whether you want to allow or deny their site your location coordinates and if you allow it, a big map pops right up of where you are and what legal medical dispensaries are located near you. Now that there’s legal weed dispensaries in a couple of states, Weedmaps has become the online spot to find your smoke just like ordering Chinese food, a new sofa or that latest video game. (All of which, come to think of it, might be major requirements after smoking pot.)
canada goose coats on sale Having “Weedmaps TV” and a cool Twitter like feed, the site also reminds me of Foursquare and Twitter in that people are real time posting what kind (or strain in the biz) of pot they are smoking with mini reviews. Sporting names like “Blue Dream,” “Casey Jones,” “Jack Flash,” “Skywalker OG,” “Willie Nelson,” “Durban Poison,” canada goose outlet legit “Granddaddy Purple,” and “White Siberian,” there is certainly no dearth of choice. I guess Yelp really is the best analogy for Weedmaps. canada goose coats on sale
canadian goose jacket We interrupt this Puff Post column for the first ever, “HuffPo Reader Puff Post Poll.” canadian goose jacket
canada goose So, is this story about Weedmaps; comparing it to all the other location based and/or social media sites? Or is it about Justin Hartfield? canada goose
Canada Goose Parka This story is about Justin Hartfield because he’s the motivating force behind the canada goose outlet mall creation of and explosive growth of Weedmaps. Without Hartfield, no Weedmaps. It is his story that I tell here. Canada Goose Parka
cheap Canada Goose Though Hartfield has been featured in The Wall Street Journal (3/14/14) among many others and written opinion pieces for The Orange County Register (8/21/13), what I hope canada goose jacket outlet sale to accomplish here is a more full throated telling of his story which will give you a better idea of who Justin Hartfield really is, as an entrepreneur and a man. cheap Canada Goose
The first thing the reader needs to know about Hartfield is that he’s an unabashed, unwavering and unrepentant pot smoker. He just loves the stuff and gushes about it when he talks. “I’m a longtime (pot) smoker since high school. I smoke it all the time,” Hartfield told me canada goose outlet black friday sale with gleeful emphasis. “There’s no way I’m ever getting a job I smoke continuously.” Hartfield has a legal medical marijuana recommendation in California, so his smoking is legal and necessary for medical reasons.
The conversation was going canada goose outlet online very well from my vantage point. Not only was Hatfield starting off with unusual and rare honesty which just sounded genuine, but he was opening up a can of worms I badly wanted to surface among the non partaking crowd. Can somebody who smokes pot all the time be a contributing member to society? Hold down a full time job? Possess ambition and drive to succeed? Have strong and positive relationships with others?
Now, I’m not the first one to ask these questions but I do believe I’m one of the few. Conventional wisdom has taken a firm hold on the opinions of many. Most people (sweeping generalization alert) don’t even ask these questions, preferring to assume that of course, chronic weed puffers cannot do any of these things. Well Justin Hartfield, as we will see, defies this kind of uninformed logic.
buy canada goose jacket While Hartfield doesn’t have a traditional job in any sense of the words, he’s very clearly been hard at work building several companies and positioning himself as what I would call a canada goose outlet online store kind of “Steve Jobs of the Cannabis Industry.” buy canada goose jacket
canada goose clearance But first, more canada goose outlet buffalo about his weed smoking activities. “I can smoke a bowl at 11 am and be back working hard and effectively immediately,” Hartfield told canada goose outlet winnipeg address me proudly, I think surmising the contradiction I was hoping to surface. “I canada goose outlet store quebec don’t smoke weed anymore,” he canada goose outlet 2015 then canada goose outlet winnipeg said. Wait a minute I thought major disconnect there, no? canada goose clearance
buy canada goose jacket cheap “Now, I smoke butane hash canada goose outlet florida oil (BHO) using a device like a small bong. It’s got a small torch and heats up a nail to 900F and I canada goose outlet orlando let a few drops onto it and well, it’s canada goose outlet belgium great. In California, more than 25% of the market has switched to oil from weed; I haven’t smoked weed in over two years.” Isn’t the oil smoker hard to travel with and doesn’t it immobilize canada goose outlet edmonton you? “Not at all, I’m going golfing with it tomorrow,” he said proudly. buy canada goose jacket cheap
If Hartfield is sounding like a pretty cool guy right about now, that’s because he is. He’s multi functional and has a lot of drive, you can hear it in his voice. He hasn’t been ‘mellowed out’ by the weed too much as some are. I’ve wondered about this many times and this dynamic will be a frequent thread in The Puff Post. How and why does this happen? How is it that Hartfield doesn’t show any reduction in his activity, drive, ambition or efficiency? “I’m extremely active and ADHD, so I’m always going. I guess it’s my metabolism. Since I’m always smoking my mental and physiological tolerance is so cheap canada goose high, it doesn’t effect me as much anymore and I still function at a high canada goose outlet nyc level.” Almost like it’s more normal to be stoned than straight, I thought to myself. So this is a man who is ultimately committed to smoking his herb and being at canada goose outlet in vancouver peace with others and himself.
But he has also built a empire of pot businesses with $30 million per annum in revenue growing inexorably.
canada goose coats I ultimately believe that it’s a canada goose outlet in usa very star crossed activity is pot smoking and this is from a guy who grew up during the 60′s and 70′s when weed was cheap, plentiful and the coolest thing. When you try it, there are two paths one can go down. canada goose coats
Canada Goose online First, you can become completely consumed by it and expand your experimentation onward (and downward) to cocaine, LSD, methamphetamine and the devilish granddaddy of them all, heroin. Choose this path, as quite a few of my affluent classmates from good homes with loving parents did, and there’s nothing to look forward to, only pain, suffering and the Seventh Circle of Hell. Canada Goose online
canada goose black friday sale The second, which some modicum more of my classmates did, involves a kind of “everything in canada goose parka uk moderation,” explore much attitude. All things are possible on this path: family, friends (real friends not drug buddies), ambition, drive and success in business as well as life. canada goose black friday sale
I want to be very careful here that you, the reader, canada goose outlet online uk doesn’t get the wrong impression canada goose outlet trillium parka black about Justin Hartfield. Though he’s a quasi religious, high tech, weed smoker, Hartfield is also one of the most upbeat, educated, ambitious, sharp minded business people and entrepreneurs I’ve come across. And he’s very clearly in full possession of one of the “Entrepreneurial Holy Grails for Success”. having fun and lots of it.
canada goose store “Love what you do and do what you love. Don’t listen to anyone else who tells you not to do it. You do what you want, what you love. Imagination should be the center of your life.” Ray Bradbury (1920 2012) canada goose store
Let’s go into a little of Hartfield’s interesting background, shall we? Born and raised in Hawthorne, California, Hartfield was raised in the shadow of one of America’s biggest shopping malls, Del Amo Mall. Coincidentally, I spent quite a bit of time there in the food court as a freshly minted teenager living canada goose kensington parka uk up the hill in Palos Verdes.
“When I was five,” Hartfield told me, “I was given an Apple IIC and it quickly became my prized possession. I obsessed over it for a long time and became an introspective computer nerd. At 12 or 13, I got into (computer) hacking and canada goose vest outlet also. weed.”
Canada Goose sale Going on to get a Computer Science degree from UCI (University of California, Irvine), Hartfield went out into the world seemingly unaware he would eventually turn into a ‘marijuantrepreneur.’ (Just kidding about the trademark.) Canada Goose sale
canada goose deals “My first job was https://www.canadagoosepark.com at an in flight entertainment company and it was unfulfilling and so easy. I had been writing for my college newspaper, canada goose outlet los angeles mostly sports articles and really enjoyed that, the writing of it. So I wrote a book in my spare time and then quit this job to sell it on an e book website. When that didn’t work out, I then wrote another book on sports betting and that didn’t work out either,” Hartfield said, proving that in order to achieve success, we all have to fail, sometimes repeatedly. canada goose deals
Before he left the in flight company, Hartfield had a seminal experience at their expense. “They needed somebody to go to India on business and I volunteered. What was supposed to be a couple of weeks there turned into a couple of months for me. I loved the culture there in Mumbai and roamed the markets, tasting the spices, meeting people and really coming to understand the Indian people.” It sounded transcendental and led to Hartfield writing yet another e book, “Zen Presence.” Books not working out seemed to be a pattern for Hartfield up until this point.
Not one to give up easily, Hartfield then wrote an e book that became very hot at the time, “The Ultimate Guide to Picking Up Girls on Facebook.” The title sounded perfect, especially because Zuckerberg had an original founding mission of rating women as “hot or not” with a keen eye on taking advantage of canada goose outlet online store review them. But Facebook and Zuckerberg apparently didn’t see the synergy and sent a cease canada goose parka outlet uk and desist order to Hartfield to shut the book down. Hypocrites.
canada goose clearance sale “I made more than $10,000 on the first weekend before Facebook shut it down,” Hartfield added gleefully. So this brief, online financial success must’ve given the young man an idea; planted a seed, as it were: that there was big money to be made on the Internet without e books. And, that it was just a matter of finding the right vehicle and vertical market canada goose clearance sale.
