🌲 Falls Peak Rising

A new title, a new team, and the first signs of trouble

The Call That Changed the Offer

When I got back east from Montana, the mountains still clung to me like smoke. My body was home, but my spirit had not left those ridgelines. I carried the air of Glacier in my lungs, the memory of a summit under my boots. Yet as soon as I landed, life pressed back in. Bills. Interviews. The quiet anxiety of waiting for something to break open.

Randy was the break. His name on my calendar was more than a scheduled call. It was a signal, just as much as that email blinking to life at eight thousand feet.

We caught up the way people do when there is already trust in the room. He told me about Falls Peak Farms, about building something different. He wanted brands that mattered, products with integrity, a culture that did not grind people down until they were unrecognizable. He spoke like someone who had touched the plant and still remembered why it mattered.

Listening to him, I knew this wasn’t about the sales rep role I had applied to. He had a bigger picture in mind, and somehow I was in it.

“Director of Sales and Marketing,” he said at last, as if the title had been waiting between us all along.

The words fell heavy. They were proof I had survived the wreckage of High Horse and still carried value. Proof that someone could look at me, not the gossip, not the retaliation, not the silence of the industry, and see worth.

I gave him the safe version of my exit from High Horse. I said I had outgrown it. I said the culture was toxic and the bosses were small. I did not mention the EEOC complaint. I did not talk about retaliation or lawsuits. That was my private fire, waiting for its time to burn.

I did not want to be the wild card they branded me as. Not yet.

So I told him enough, and kept the rest tucked away.

When he said, “If you can sell as well as you market, you will be a shining star here,” I felt something crack open in me. A chance. A resurrection. A doorway back into the industry I loved, only now on different ground.

---

Meeting the Team

Before I could accept the role, I had to meet the executive team. That meant one other familiar face, Gary, steady as always, and a few new ones. Ira and his son Caleb, the money behind the operation. Joe, Ira’s best friend since childhood. And Danny, the Director of Ops who would grow and package the goods.

We sat down together and I laid out my plans. It felt less like an interview and more like a pitch, a chance to prove I could see the road ahead. By the time I finished, the decision was made. We were off to the races.

The irony was not lost on me. I was once again the fifth employee in a start up, just as I had been in the first company that High Horse eventually acquired. Another beginning. Another bet on myself. Another chance to bring new brands to life in east coast cannabis.

---

The Weight of Yes

When the offer came, I tried to negotiate. I knew what it would mean to run both sales and marketing, the weight of two departments pressed into one pair of shoulders. I asked for more, because I had learned at least that much: you will never get it if you do not ask. They did not budge. The number stayed fixed, five thousand less than I had earned before.

I wondered, just for a moment, if the outcome would have been different had I been a man. But the thought passed quickly. The answer was no to more money. My answer was still yes.

Yes to the title. Yes to the challenge. Yes to proving myself again.

I will not lie, I felt the weight of it. Leading two departments was not going to be sustainable forever. A year, maybe, before the cracks would show. But in that moment I had hope. I had a new job. I had not disappointed my family after all.

And beneath it all, even though I did not see it then, there was the hunger to prove I was still valuable, that I mattered. The team at Falls Peak already seemed to believe I did, but I was not sure I fully believed it yet.

So I chose faith. The team felt authentic and down to earth. I told myself we would cross the heavier bridges when we reached them. For now, there were brands to be built and relationships to be made.

---

Building Hype Before the Harvest

I started my new role right after Labor Day, and it felt electric. No mean girls. No manipulators. At least not that I could see at the time. What I did see was a blank slate, a chance to paint a picture of success built on integrity and collaboration instead of the shadows I had left behind at High Horse.

I stepped into leadership knowing it mattered. It mattered for the people I worked with. It mattered for the brands we were building. It mattered for me too, because I wanted proof that my kind of leadership could make a difference.

I built my early core team, two women who were nothing short of exceptional. Jamila took sales in the North while I worked the south, knocking on dispensary doors and breaking bread with buyers. Shelly joined as Marketing Manager, ready to breathe life into brands that didn’t even exist yet. Together, we hustled. We laid the groundwork. We pitched products, built relationships, drafted agreements, planned launches, spun up websites, sent press releases, and designed social campaigns. Long before the first plant was harvested, we were already setting the stage. Hype was building. Momentum was ours. All we needed was the product to be ready.

For a moment, nothing could dim our shine.

Except Caleb.

Ira’s twenty-something son with a bright smile and easy charm, he meant well but made everything harder. He showed up when it suited him, derailed progress when it didn’t, and had a direct line to his father whenever he wanted a different outcome. Ira was a sharp businessman who had built an empire, but it was clear he had handed his son more title than he had earned. Caleb called himself a Business Development Manager, though I rarely saw the business he developed.

What I did see were the wrenches he tossed into carefully laid plans, his marketing “expertise” delivered from the sidelines, his sudden interventions that sent us back to square one.

Caleb was the first sign that Falls Peak might not be the perfect rebirth I had hoped for. He was not the storm, not yet, but he was the first crack in the glass. And in the cannabis start up world, cracks have a way of spreading fast.

✨ Before you Roll….Ask Mary Jane!

She’s been through the grinder and came out loud, lit, and ready to help.

Drop your questions in the comments or shoot your shot in the inbox. No bullshit. Just blunt advice from someone who’s lived it, left it, and is building something better.

💬 Got something to say? Say it.
📬 Want to grow with me? Subscribe.
📣 Know someone who needs this? Pass it on.

Thanks for reading The Chronicles of Mary Jane🌿 ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Thanks for reading The Chronicles of Mary Jane