A young entrepreneur’s blueprint for taking the right risks, scaling to new heights, and building a legendary brand. “I love it when my fellow rap comrades diversify their portfolio with books of information and knowledge.”--Snoop Dogg Armed with only his hustle and an otherworldly instinct for marketing and branding, Berner, the co-founder and CEO of the world-conquering legal cannabis company Cookies, had the vision to see that cannabis was swiftly moving from the street corner to the corporate office and was able to make moves worthy of a chess grandmaster to launch the first dominant brand. Berner has grown Cookies into a billion-dollar mainstream company with more than seventy stores across the country and the world, added a sought-after streetwear side-brand, and gained millions of fans eagerly awaiting his next move. While building Cookies into the empire it is today, Berner took notes from everywhere: a strong sense of identity from the best streetwear brands, frequent collaborations from the music industry, and rapid expansion from Silicon Valley. In • It Starts with a Vision: Potential is everywhere. Recognize opportunities and don’t be afraid to think big. • Access Is Everything: Your network is your net worth. Learn how to leverage and increase your access to impactful people. • Become Timeless: Creating an identity is crucial in brand-building, whether it be you or your logo. • Put Your Fingerprints on Everything: If you let people speak for you or represent your vision, a great idea may never blossom. • Never Be Afraid to Throw Back Whales: Learn to trust your gut. Not all money is good money. <Becoming Legend< is the instruction manual for all aspiring entrepreneurs to not just get rich but leave a legacy....

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Berner

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A young entrepreneur’s blueprint for taking the right risks, scaling to new heights, and building a legendary brand.

“I love it when my fellow rap comrades diversify their portfolio with books of information and knowledge.”—Snoop Dogg

Armed with only his hustle and an otherworldly instinct for marketing and branding, Berner, the co-founder and CEO of the world-conquering legal cannabis company Cookies, had the vision to see that cannabis was swiftly moving from the street corner to the corporate office and was able to make moves worthy of a chess grandmaster to launch the first dominant brand.

Berner has grown Cookies into a billion-dollar mainstream company with more than seventy stores across the country and the world, added a sought-after streetwear side-brand, and gained millions of fans eagerly awaiting his next move. While building Cookies into the empire it is today, Berner took notes from everywhere: a strong sense of identity from the best streetwear brands, frequent collaborations from the music industry, and rapid expansion from Silicon Valley.

In Becoming Legend, Berner pulls back the curtain on his incredible rise to success while bringing to light how he did it and how you can too, including:

• It Starts with a Vision: Potential is everywhere. Recognize opportunities and don’t be afraid to think big.
• Access Is Everything: Your network is your net worth. Learn how to leverage and increase your access to impactful people.
• Become Timeless: Creating an identity is crucial in brand-building, whether it be you or your logo.
• Put Your Fingerprints on Everything: If you let people speak for you or represent your vision, a great idea may never blossom.
• Never Be Afraid to Throw Back Whales: Learn to trust your gut. Not all money is good money.

Becoming Legend is the instruction manual for all aspiring entrepreneurs to not just get rich but leave a legacy.

Leseprobe
Chapter 1

It Starts with a Vision

I’m not sure vision is something you can learn. You either have it or you don’t. I’ve certainly never taught anybody how to have a vision. The closest I ever come to explaining it, to helping someone learn how to be a visionary and to think bigger, is when I tell young entrepreneurs: See what you would like to exist in the world, imagine how you want things done or how you want things to be, and then execute it. A clear vision will serve as your finish line. How you get there, well, that’s a whole different beast.

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“This is the place?”

I pull up to a tiny storefront set into the street level of a gray concrete apartment building in San Francisco’s Sunset District. The fog is always thick and low here, making everything seem dreamy and mysterious—just like the unmarked door I am about to enter.

It’s the summer of 2001, and I’m eighteen years old, fresh off my shift at a coffee shop called Tully’s where I’ve been working since dropping out of high school a year ago. From middle school on, I’ve been hustling. I’ve sold everything from weed to candy bars to T-shirts to my own mixtapes. I’ve been trying to make a name for myself, so I’m documenting everything on a bulky handheld camcorder I picked up from a friend’s kid brother. But I don’t know yet how I’m going to make the next leap.

The streetlights start to turn on as I reach the Hemp Center, a medical cannabis dispensary where, amazingly, it’s legal to buy weed. I heard about the Hemp Center from one of my boys, a co-worker at the coffee shop. Near the end of our shifts, as we were wrapping up, he always makes these calls.

“Hey, whatup, so what you got over there today?” I’d overhear him ask.

“Oh yeah? Well, I’ll take an eighth of Trainwreck, and an eighth of Romulan, and three Raspberry Bombers. Put that aside for me,” he’d say. “I’ll be over there in a little bit.” Then we’d pool our money together and he’d head out and return with some fire—I mean, consistently great weed. It was night and day from the bland, dusty herb I smoked as a teenager in Arizona, where my family and I spent a few years before moving back to my hometown of San Francisco. As it turned out, my hometown had the best weed in the world.

...

I made a deep connection with weed from a relatively early age. From my first experiences smoking with my friends in grade school, I recognized the power of the plant. Sure, I liked the feeling of being high—the calm feeling of clarity I get when I smoke, the curiosity it awakens in my mind, the way time seems to slow down. And of course I enjoy the smell, the taste, and the habitual process that goes along with smoking a joint—breaking down the weed, smelling the bud in the grinder, stuffing a rolling paper full of sticky dank, and spinning it between my fingers before twisting the top and sparking that bad boy. I liken it to the way a wine connoisseur enjoys not just drinking the wine but carefully opening the bottle and sniffing the cork, pouring it into a glass and swirling it to release the aromas, and sticking their nose into the glass before tasting. But what I really love about weed is how it brings people together. I love that people from all different walks of life connect and bond over it. That sense of community is a big part of what keeps me smoking to this day. Plus, I’ve learned to love the feeling of having good weed, of sharing it with others and seeing the reaction it gets. There’s an energy that the weed brings out in people that I gravitate to. And I love being the person who supplies that energy.

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Since moving back to Cali a couple years earlier, I’d seen a few dispensaries around town. You’d see the green cross image, and I swear you could smell them from down t…