High Touch with Jake & Duffy
High Touch with Jake & Duffy dives into how today’s cannabis businesses create emotional impact and real-world value—from seed to software, and store design to storytelling. Hosted by two cannabis tech founders who’ve seen it all (and still have questions), each episode brings candid conversations with the founders, creatives, and operators shaping the industry's future. Whether you're in the biz or just curious, expect human stories, hard-won insights, and maybe even a little lift along the way.
High Touch with Jake & Duffy
A Higher Calling | Jesse Redmond
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Some people find cannabis through opportunity. Jesse Redmond found it through his father—a man who spent decades managing chronic pain with opioids before cannabis changed everything. That personal story became the thread that pulled Jesse out of a successful finance career and into an industry he couldn't walk away from.
Jake and Duffy sit down with Jesse Redmond, Chief Strategy and Investor Relations Officer at Leef Brands, to talk about one of the more unlikely origin stories in cannabis. From allocating over a billion dollars in hedge fund strategies to running a dispensary out of Santa Barbara with his mom doing deliveries—Jesse has seen this industry from nearly every angle. Now he's back in the operator seat, building what might be one of the most compelling cultivation stories in the country.
If you care about where the money is—and isn't—in cannabis right now, this one's worth your time.
Topics Covered:
- Why Jesse walked away from finance to open a dispensary
- His father's journey from 1,000mg of Oxycontin a day to cannabis
- The state of cannabis capital and why the industry feels stalled
- What Leef Brands' 1,900-acre ranch changes about their cost structure
- Why half of California flower that passes as flour fails when concentrated
- Interstate commerce, Schedule III, and what actually unlocks next
- How to position your cannabis business as an acquisition target—not a casualty
- What Jesse tells young people who want to get into the industry
About Our Guest: Jesse Redmond is Chief Strategy and Investor Relations Officer at Leef Brands. He began his career at Franklin Templeton and Fisher Investments, co-founded two hedge funds, and allocated over a billion dollars to hedge fund strategies before closing his fund to open a dispensary in Santa Barbara. He has since become one of the most respected cannabis analysts in the space, leading research at Water Tower Research and co-hosting the Higher Exchanges podcast with Morgan Paxhia of Poseidon.
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