In this episode of the Cannabis Accounting Podcast, host Raymond Guns sits down with @luna_stower (Luna Stower), founder of Luna Stower Strategies and cannabis brand-marketing expert, to explore what it actually takes to build credibility and lasting impact in this industry. Luna was employee #1 at both Jetty Extracts] and Ispire Vape, helping navigate two very different public exits. She has been working with cannabis for over two decades, is a certified Ganjier, sits on the NCIA board and multiple other industry organizations, and consults globally across the Americas and Europe. Luna opens up about: 🎓 Teaching as a cannabis framework: How six years in the classroom — including work at San Quentin and Bay Area juvenile halls — built the exact skill set cannabis demands. Meeting people where they are, checking for understanding, and never moving on before everyone's on the bus. Luna sees cannabis education and business consulting as the same thing: putting people on game. 📈 Two IPOs, two completely different outcomes: Jetty Extracts chose culture, said no to buyouts, and stayed the course. iSpire chose the Nasdaq and eventually walked away from cannabis entirely. Luna was employee #1 at both. She shares what that fork in the road actually looked like from the inside — and what it reveals about what cannabis companies owe to the communities that built them. 🌍 Suits, roots, and the ecosystem nobody's managing: Why the cannabis industry needs both legacy farmers and corporate capital — and why the scarcity mindset on both sides is slowing everyone down. Her framework: conscious capitalism, not competition. A rising tide raises all boats, but a sinking ship creates a sinkhole everyone goes down in. 👤 Consumer first — not product, not brand: Most founders build the wrong thing because they start with their idea instead of their buyer. Using the Anthony Bourdain vs. Eric Ripert debate on what matters more — the chef or the food — Luna explains why four buyer personas on the wall should precede every packaging, pricing, and channel decision. 💰 How Luna runs her consultancy: Client vetting, checking references in an industry with no Yelp or Better Business Bureau, contracting up "like a prenup," and why she has never had a client stop working with her. If you are leveraging your time, your brand, or your money into someone else's company — you are an investor, and investors do due diligence. 🌱 What's coming in the next 1–3 years: Luna was at the Buddies event at the Chapel of the Flowers in Berkeley last week. Twenty farmers from seven California counties in one room, alongside Origins Council, and the County Growers Alliance, talking appellations and the future of small farming. That is what the right foot forward looks like. Luna Stower has been in rooms most cannabis professionals only hear about — and she is still the most excited person in those rooms. If you want to understand what it looks like when advocacy, brand strategy, and genuine love for the plant converge into a career that moves the whole industry forward, this is the clearest picture yet. The optimism here is not surface-level. It is earned across twenty-plus years, two public exits, and a belief that love can be lucrative — if you build it right. Subscribe for deep dives on cannabis business, accounting, regs, and growth! 🔥 👉 Connect with Luna Stower: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lunastower/
