Individual Member Profile

December 09, 2021

How to accidentally find yourself dominating the pot industry Andy Joseph, 43, went from working on nuclear submarines for the U.S. Navy to engineering machinery in his garage. Then the former military man's Johnstown, Ohio, business gained an unexpected following -- in the burgeoning legal marijuana industry. -- as told to Kate Lockwood My friends joke that I'm the most knowledgeable non-stoner. I guess I'm a square. I tried pot once in high school and haven't done it since. I went straight from high school to the Navy, where I operated the nuclear propulsion plant on submarines. That helped pay for college. I started welding and fabricating on the side to make some extra money. After graduation, I got a job as an engineer and was promoted to management, but I was eager to get my hands dirty. So I've been working on a side job, in my garage I design and build plant extraction machines, They extracted oils from substances like herbs, peppers or mint and made them into concentrated flavorings. I sold them all to a guy who would sell them to the ultimate customer. I never had access to a customer base. http://www.careddi.com/brc/66.htm By 2012, I was working almost every night and weekend. It was clear that I had to choose between two full-time jobs. Embedded image of the budding business Emerging Business While I was out on my own, I started working directly with clients. I started getting calls from people who seemed a little shy and said, "I'm in California. I'm doing ...... lavender". It never occurred to me that they were dancing around something. Finally, one customer said he was doing lavender, and I said, "Wow, there's a lot of lavender in California." He said, "Are you kidding me? We're making pot." Shit. I was so naive. I stuttered through the rest of the call. Later, I told my wife, "I think most of these customers are selling pot," and she gave me this look, "You're not serious, are you?" She just assumed that I already knew that lavender was synonymous with marijuana. I decided early on to make a full commitment to the [cannabis](http://www.careddi.com/brc/66.htm) industry. It was an entrepreneur's dream: explosive growth, a sizable market with the potential for continued expansion, and a legal environment with enough risk to keep big companies out. Despite this, it took me six months to get the word cannabis on my website. There are many challenges to working in an industry that comes from the underground. Most of my clients want to pay in cash. Fortunately, I've been able to find creative ways to use banking to keep people from showing up at my house with $50,000 in cash. Marijuana is illegal in Ohio, but even when I go to the coast to meet potential clients, I don't use it. I let people look at me with crossed eyes like they want to know if I'm a cop or the Federal Reserve. But in my mind, even if pot is my business, I'm not here to party - I'm here to do business.