Hi, I’m Brandi Javorsky, founder and CEO of DankLocal and Housewives Grow.
How did we end up in cannabis? What is our connection to weed? To fully answer this question, I’ll need to leap back to the early 90s. I grew up in a home with three sisters and a single mom. My mom had three girls before the ripe age of 19 and little to no support from our biological father. To say we were mostly poor would be an understatement. Mom lacked any formal education and often worked up to 3 jobs at once to make ends meet for our family, and she was rarely home between work schedules.
The Early Years
Fourth grade story time, I remember coming home from school one day crying. I was being made fun of on the bus because I wore Pro Wing tennis shoes. NIKE was the style brand at the time. If you are unfamiliar with this brand, it was a Payless shoe store brand in the 90s. My family could not afford NIKE tennis shoes. I remember this event clearly for two reasons. I remember the look of heartbreak on my mother’s face, and I remember coming home two weeks later to a shiny new pair of Nike shoes on my bed after school. Let’s say from then on, I remember cannabis being around. I mostly tuned it out and did not pay much attention, we seemed to be struggling a lot less as a family, and mom was home more.
Fast forward to the day before my first day of 9th grade and high school, when my world turned upside down. The police raided our family house. Yep! You read that right.
It is still hard to discuss the details of this experience even to this day. What I can tell you is it was very degrading, even for me as a child who was of no fault. I’ve been my advocate in life ever since.
Following the event, my sisters and I were made state wards and placed in foster care, where I remained until I graduated from high school in 2000. I know all these experiences sound bad, but they also molded me as a person, and they were and still are the driving force behind my motivation and passion to be better for myself than the hand I was dealt!
My mom got out of the weed game, laughing out loud. She did everything she could to get custody back of us girls. An old-school hippie, I know she still carries a lot of guilt about what happened, but I was never mad at her for her choices. She was doing the best she could with what she had to work with.
As crazy as it sounds, she taught me that it is ok to have my own opinions, push the rules, and think outside the box. I try to keep my thinking inside legal boxes, but you get the point. She showed me how to be strong.
For some, my story will be hard to understand or relate to, and for others, it will sound very similar. Growing up in a low-income neighborhood with families who struggled to make ends meet. I’ve known legacy cannabis operators my whole life, people who lived in our neighborhood and followed the same path as my mom, for some of the same reasons.
Whew, are you still following? It is difficult to transition into the next chapter that happens many years later.
My Sweet Jessica
My sweet Jessica, I met Jessica in middle school. Our moms worked together at a local bar. Us girls would hang out at the bar, eat food, and mess around while our moms worked. Jessica’s background was similar to mine and we ended up being very close friends following high school and many years beyond. Here is where the story gets the hardest for me to share. In 2018, Jessica’s life was taken way too early in a cannabis-related crime. The home she lived in with her children was targeted and robbed. Her boyfriend had cannabis and money in his possession, and the house was a target. My home state is Nebraska, and cannabis was at the time and still is illegal as of 2023.
When everything happened beyond being hard to understand or accept, some of the hateful things people were saying socially and in the media were heartbreaking. People commented, “She deserved it because she put herself in that situation”. Now, living in a legal state and seeing a completely different dynamic. I cannot help but believe if there were more legislation and legal solutions, the story might be different.
Heading West to AZ
Getting to how all this leads to Dank Local. It all started with an adventure and a google search. On a whim in early 2021, I decided to support my son’s dream of living in Arizona following a less-than-fun divorce. Together we packed up our Lincoln, NE home and hit the road, settling just outside Phoenix, AZ.
A welcomed change for both of us following drastic life changes in 2017.
Gravitated to the Market
For me, the legal adult-use market in Arizona was fascinating, but it hit very close to home. It was hard to believe that something that had caused so much hardship to myself, my friends, and my family was legal for adult use and available to buy in a retail store.
A consumer experience with cannabis flower, following a medical recommendation that first brought me into a dispensary, and that first experience was very overwhelming.
Someone who understood cannabis was overwhelmed.
The variety of products was more than flower, and I was unfamiliar with the selection available. I had no clue what products would work best for my specific needs or where to begin. Following this first frustrating interaction with the budtender asking, “What do you want?” I went home and did a Google search, “dank local cannabis subscriptions” to be exact. I hoped it would be easier to sample different varieties of cannabis and products to discover what worked best for me. The search result returned nothing. Now, I am thinking through the limitations of a cannabis subscription service. It became clear why the service was not widely available. But what if it could be?
Feeling gravitated to the market from my background, to solve the problem, having know-how with my career experience and interests, I went all in. It is how the unique model behind DankLocal’s cannabis subscription services and marketplace truly bloomed.
A Budding Future
Today, I sit in a class with peers and entrepreneurs whose energy and background stories are like mine. While some of us look different, their hurdles and struggles are far greater than mine. As humans, we have the same hustle and a story that gave us no choice. It’s refreshing to find similar people who share my background and not feel like it is a factor of my worth.
The best piece of advice I have to offer, no matter what life throws at you, and no matter your circumstances or situation, YOU must be your cheerleader for life. People might show up along the way to support you, and they might not. YOU must show up!
As a company, our biggest challenges are every woman’s hurdle in business, especially in a technology startup. The cannabis industry is no exception to the bros of the world. We have spent two-plus years learning the industry, building our business model, messaging, early traction, and industry connections, and we struggle to get the support we need.
As a founder motivated to succeed, I want to provide my team with the best resources to flourish.
Want to implement a cannabis subscription service at your dispensary? Learn more about our pilot program–and get Dank!
DankLocal’s cannabis subscription model and technology platform is dedicated to creating a market-wide standard that keeps subscription service dollars with dispensaries, brands, communities, and professionals. By providing easy-to-use subscription software that integrates with the technology they already use to make curating and managing compliant subscription services a breeze–all while simplifying a disparate market for consumers.
Founder & CEO DankLocal
Brandi Javorsky
