'Let's Go All In On Cannabis' Grown Rogue's Obie Strickler & Josh Rosen

Grown Rogue (GRUSF) prioritizes flower-forward operations and culture over rapid scale, targeting sustainable growth in an immature, volatile cannabis industry. CEO/Founder of Grown Rogue, Obie Strickler, and Chief Strategy Officer, Josh Rosen, discuss GRUSF's recent entry into New York while maintaining bandwidth discipline. Public listing as a capital access tool, not a strategic end; GRUSF favors shareholder-friendly moves but avoids first-mover risks in uplisting. Valuation complexities persist due to regulatory uncertainty, especially around 280E and Schedule 3; investors should focus on state-level KPIs, management quality, and sustainable growth plans.

CEO and founder of Grown Rogue ( GRUSF ), Obie Strickler and Chief Strategy Officer, Josh Rosen discuss their paths in cannabis and why operations matter more than scale (1:00) (metrics that matter most (12:30) Uplisting and public vs private (20:40) What should retail investors be paying attention to? (24:40) On the price of cannabis (34:40)

Rena Sherbill: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Cannabis Investing Podcast. I don't know if my guests know it, but we have been on a hiatus of sorts as we suss out the cannabis industry from the sidelines a bit in the past year. But over the past few years, I have been really wanting to and I am very excited to speak to Obie Strickler today. He is the CEO and founder of Grown Rogue ( GRUSF ). And Josh Rosen, who has been on before, I believe in our very last episode , actually, with Jerry Derevyanny. And he is the Chief Strategy Officer at Grown Rogue. Gentlemen, welcome to the Cannabis Investing Podcast and Seeking Alpha. It's great to have you.

Obie Strickler: Appreciate you taking this on and glad to be here.

Rena Sherbill: It's great to have you. I thought a nice place to start since you both have had different routes and it's been a eventful, non-eventful, I don't know, interesting, not interesting, volatile for sure, somewhat confusing for sure time past few years in the industry. Obie, perhaps we'll start with you if you could tell us your journey here. And then maybe what you were thinking about the industry, let's say a few years ago, and what you're thinking about it now.

Obie Strickler: Born and raised in Southern Oregon, parents moved out of the big city down in LA up to kind of a northern tip of the Emerald Triangle. So cannabis has been in the fabric of my life and this area since I was born. I just did an op-ed in High Times that really talked about that experience and how it was brought up, but got exposed to cannabis flower very, very early in my life. Biggest thing was always finding consistency and supply, right? We were lucky to be where we were, and so generally we had good flower, borrowing from my brother, borrowing from my dad, borrowing quote unquote and then quickly realized the way to get consistent supply was you had to grow yourself. So started growing at a relatively young age, was still an athlete, I played college basketball, so it was these dual paths that we took. Started the medical business officially in 2004 or five, I think our first year in the Oregon market and then was pursuing some of my natural resource kind of work. I have a geology degree, in mining project development and things like that. Traveling a bunch and then as legalization started to come through, call it 2014-15, a project I was working on was kind of coming to its conclusion where I could assist with it. We still had our medical business going, my wife and I, and we said, let's go all in on cannabis and so we went all in on Grown Rogue, I think started at late sixteen, early seventeen in Oregon and then it's just been, I wouldn't call it a roller coaster, but it's been an effort since that point. And a lot's changed over the 20, 25 years w...