Authoritative and highly actionable advice on selling marijuana.
A debut guide offers counsel to cannabis retailers.
“The stigma of cannabis is one of the biggest barriers we face as retailers,” writes Berry, a former Fortune 500 executive who now operates a cannabis business consultancy. This informative book begins with the author’s sobering admission that she got interested in medical marijuana when she witnessed opioid addiction in her own family. In the opening chapter, Berry broadly defines the stigma of cannabis by enumerating four “big lies” (“Black Men are Dangerous”; “Cannabis is Dangerous”; “Opioids are Safe”; and “Addiction is the Addict’s Fault”), which, she explains, are interconnected. These lies are contrasted with “Big Truths” about marijuana, including its medical, economic, and societal benefits, detailed very effectively by the author in the next chapter. Having addressed the negative perceptions and positive impacts of cannabis, Berry turns her attention to the retail side in the book’s remaining chapters. She covers customer relationships, leadership, branding, service, merchandising, omnichannel, marketing, and store operations; in short, it’s a comprehensive menu of what any retailer needs to know, with a specific focus on selling marijuana. The author applies her considerable experience working with leading traditional retailers to an area that has special challenges. Justifiably, Berry emphasizes the consumer experience as the key aspect of retailing: “A delightful customer experience generates the most important competitive advantage you can have in this industry: customer loyalty.” Her rundown of typical customers—well beyond the “stoner” stereotype—should be extremely valuable to every cannabis retailer. One of the author’s useful and creative ideas, for example, is to give customers a “cannabis usage journal” that “provides a structured format for users to record their experiences with different cannabis strains and products.” Other material is commonly found in basic retailing books; clearly, Berry’s intent is to touch on all of these areas without getting too deeply in the weeds. Still, there is just enough clearly written content in each chapter, augmented by numerous instructional sidebars and a few well-placed stories, to provide a solid platform for retail operations. For those interested in starting or improving a cannabis retail business, this work fits the bill.
Authoritative and highly actionable advice on selling marijuana.Pub Date: March 21, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5445-2892-2
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Zepplyn Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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