In this special 27th-anniversary episode of the Knoodle Founders Hour, host Rosaria Cain reunites with her original co-founder, Caleb Miller, to reminisce about the early days of the agency and unpack his wild ride as a serial entrepreneur.
Back in 1999, Caleb and Rosaria teamed up to launch Knoodle (then known as Image Quest) with zero prior agency experience, relying on their hustle and Fulton Homes as their very first client. After successfully navigating the chaotic startup years, the aftermath of 9/11, and the fallout of a deceitful business partner, Caleb eventually transitioned to other ventures. His career path since leaving the agency nearly two decades ago has been anything but predictable—leading him into healthcare tech, international fundraising, and eventually the legal cannabis industry.
In this episode, you’ll discover:
- The Chaotic Early Days: What it was like starting an ad agency from scratch in 1999, scrambling to find money to eat and pick up the kids, and the grueling hustle required to survive the startup phase.
- The Reality of Bad Partnerships: The hard lessons learned from an early business merger that ended in a massive embezzlement scandal—and why a company is only as good as the honest people running it.
- Pioneering the Cannabis Industry: How Caleb ignored skeptics who warned him he’d go to prison to co-found True Harvest, transforming an empty Revlon factory into what was then one of the largest legal indoor medical marijuana grows on the planet.
- Leadership and Layoffs: The stark difference between firing an underperformer and laying off good people—why the latter is the worst part of the job, and the leadership traits required to protect your business at all costs.
- AI, Tesla Bots, and the Future: Caleb’s mind-bending predictions about artificial intelligence, why he already has deposits down for Tesla robots to replace HR and manufacturing workers, and his thoughts on colonizing Mars.
Whether you’re a startup founder, an agency veteran, or a forward-thinking entrepreneur looking for the next big market wave, this episode is a fascinating look at the highs, lows, and unpredictable pivots of a lifelong builder.
Listen to the full episode of the Knoodle Founders Hour podcast to hear the untold stories of Knoodle’s founding and what it takes to build and scale businesses across multiple industries.
Full Transcript
Rosaria Cain 0:20
Well, what could be more fitting than having my co-founder, Caleb Miller, here to talk about our 26th anniversary, reminisce a little bit, find out what he’s been doing since he left Knoodle about 20 years ago? Does the word serial entrepreneur mean anything to you all? I don’t know, but we’re gonna find out today. So, hey, Caleb, thanks for coming by.
Caleb Miller 0:41
Hey, thank you for having me. And congratulations on, you know, being in business for 26 years. That’s quite an accomplishment.
Rosaria Cain 0:48
Especially in the agency business. They tend to come and go.
Caleb Miller 0:51
That’s, it’s, you know, crazy. So,
Rosaria Cain 0:54
What do you remember about founding Knoodle in 1999?
Caleb Miller 0:57
You know, I was thinking about this this morning, and you were at Fox, you were selling media, Fox, I can’t remember how, because you got a hold of me, because I know the whole story, right, because right, How did you find me? And then we can go from there.
Rosaria Cain 1:14
You were my client with Jim.
Caleb Miller 1:18
Oh, was that it?
Rosaria Cain 1:19
That’s what it was.
Caleb Miller 1:20
But I never interacted with you, so I don’t think?
Rosaria Cain 1:23
You did when you were at Channel 10.
Caleb Miller 1:25
Right?
Rosaria Cain 1:25
Yes, yes, both of you, you were like Laurel and Hardy, and I can’t even remember what your product or service was.
Caleb Miller 1:35
It was the, I know what it was, it was the legal helpline.
Rosaria Cain 1:39
Oh yeah, okay, yeah, and we did some marketing together.
Caleb Miller 1:42
Yeah, we bought some media.
Rosaria Cain 1:43
And that’s that’s where that started.
Caleb Miller 1:46
Right? Because you were like, “Hey, I got a problem,” because you found out that I had just gotten here, gotten back from New York, and I was in the film industry and commercial film industry, and you’re like, I got a problem because Doug Fulton had given you some money to shoot a Super Bowl commercial.
Rosaria Cain 2:09
Oh, the Super Bowl commercial. Yes, yes. And we had to scramble because he did not like the commercial.
Caleb Miller 2:18
Yeah, he didn’t like it, and you came to me.
Rosaria Cain 2:20
The TV station did it.
Caleb Miller 2:21
You came to me, and you’re like, “Could you put something together, could you board something for me?”
Rosaria Cain 2:27
Well, he ended up taking care of it himself, and he used a company in Reno to reanimate the spot, and he did it in like three days, right before the Super Bowl.
Caleb Miller 2:39
Right?
Rosaria Cain 2:40
But yes.
Caleb Miller 2:41
Yeah, so I think I put together some stuff, and we went in and pitched him right, and we were not…
Rosaria Cain 2:49
Is that how you met Doug? See, because I can’t remember.
Caleb Miller 2:52
Yeah. So you were still at Fox.
Rosaria Cain 2:54
Yeah.
Caleb Miller 2:54
You went in to pitch, you know, because he had obviously had an ongoing media buy.
Rosaria Cain 2:59
Yeah, but he ended up finding someone in Reno to do it.
Caleb Miller 3:04
I don’t remember,
Rosaria Cain 3:06
I remember the spot, and it was an animated spot. It was when Reno just had the flood. He wasn’t sure if he was going to get it in time, and it actually all worked out, and he got it in time, but it was a reasonably good spot, but it wasn’t a great spot.
Caleb Miller 3:21
Alright. So, here’s how I remember it: So you wanted me to pitch him, a concept, commercial concept, right? And I was like, “Sure.” And you’re like, “I’ll put together some boards and we can go show it,” and you and I were not together, we, you know, we weren’t as partners, right?
Rosaria Cain 3:45
Right.
Caleb Miller 3:45
So I go in, and I showed him this spot where I was like, “Hey, look, we’re not gonna say a word.” You remember that? That first spot we did?
Rosaria Cain 3:54
Now I don’t remember you meeting him until after.
Caleb Miller 3:57
No, we met him before. This is how I remember it, right, but this is years ago. I got a bad memory, all right. So this, how is how I remember is went in and I had this whole thing of we’re not going to say a word, we’re just going to show images, and at the very end we’ll roll out the you’re proud to own, you’re proud to build concept, and he loved it, you know. And then he was like, well, why don’t you, why don’t you guys partner up? You, you can buy my media, and you do all my creative, because I was not thinking I’d be ever be in the agency business, right.
Rosaria Cain 4:40
Well, the way I remember it, that conversation happened when I went and saw Doug and told him I was going into the agency business with you.
Caleb Miller 4:48
Did I know this at the time?
Rosaria Cain 4:50
Yes.
Caleb Miller 4:50
Okay.
Rosaria Cain 4:51
You absolutely knew it. It has been a long time, and Doug was open to it, and he said, “Well, let’s just see how it goes. And we did the first spot, which was the one that got us in trouble with the Attorney General office, the one that said with a family just like yours. You were, you were dating the leading Holly?
Caleb Miller 5:16
Hillary.
Rosaria Cain 5:16
Hillary! There you go, sorry, I’m close. That spot, that was the first spot,
Caleb Miller 5:23
Right.
Rosaria Cain 5:23
And that was the first thing that we did together.
Caleb Miller 5:25
Yeah.
Rosaria Cain 5:25
And the first spot that the agency did together.
Caleb Miller 5:29
Yeah.
Rosaria Cain 5:29
But he was open to it, and that was when we started Knoodle, and we started with Fulton Homes.
Caleb Miller 5:36
Yeah, yeah, that was a lot of fun.
Rosaria Cain 5:41
It was fun, it was exciting. I mean, starting a business, and as people are listening about founders, it has its highs and lows.
Caleb Miller 5:50
Oh yeah, I mean, think about all the things we went through,
Rosaria Cain 5:53
Right? Like when you, when you need money to eat.
Caleb Miller 5:56
Yeah.
Rosaria Cain 5:57
Gas and stuff.
Caleb Miller 5:58
Or you can’t, you know, figure out how you’re going to pick up your kid, while you got meetings.
Rosaria Cain 6:02
Right? We both had small kids.
Caleb Miller 6:04
Yeah.
Rosaria Cain 6:05
Small children at the time.
Caleb Miller 6:06
Yep.
Rosaria Cain 6:07
And so those were interesting days.
Caleb Miller 6:10
Right? And our first offices were down off of Thomas and Central.
Rosaria Cain 6:15
Yes.
Caleb Miller 6:16
In those suites.
Rosaria Cain 6:17
Yes. And then we went a few months between offices, and then we located here.
Caleb Miller 6:25
Yeah.
Rosaria Cain 6:25
Knoodle has been here, which was known back then,
Caleb Miller 6:28
As Image Quest.
Rosaria Cain 6:29
Image Quest.
Caleb Miller 6:30
Yeah.
Rosaria Cain 6:31
And Those were exciting times,
Caleb Miller 6:33
Yeah,
Rosaria Cain 6:33
So those were heady times, and then there were other clients that came to the party, like Ashley Furniture.
Caleb Miller 6:40
Right,
Rosaria Cain 6:41
Franklin Law Group.
Caleb Miller 6:43
Yeah, Charles,
Rosaria Cain 6:44
Yeah.
Caleb Miller 6:45
Chuck.
Rosaria Cain 6:46
Yep.
Caleb Miller 6:47
That was great.
Rosaria Cain 6:48
The RV, Encore.
Caleb Miller 6:51
Yeah, Encore. And yeah, so they were fun.
Rosaria Cain 6:55
Yeah.
Caleb Miller 6:56
Who else?
Rosaria Cain 6:56
Oh, Blinds Mart.
Caleb Miller 6:59
Blinds Mart.
Rosaria Cain 7:00
Yeah.
Caleb Miller 7:01
Lee Miles Transmission,
Rosaria Cain 7:03
Lee Miles Transmission, yeah.
Caleb Miller 7:05
There’s another spot.
Rosaria Cain 7:06
We actually picked up some business in the early days.
Caleb Miller 7:09
Yeah.
Rosaria Cain 7:09
It’s harder now, actually.
Caleb Miller 7:11
Yeah. Well, we had a couple that we lost out on, which I don’t think we should have.
Rosaria Cain 7:16
Well, there’s that’s always the case.
Caleb Miller 7:19
I mean there was Copenhagen.
Rosaria Cain 7:21
That’s right.
Caleb Miller 7:22
I remember we were in the running for that. You know what I do remember was the Barrows Children’s, was it Children’s Hospital that we, they made us. Do you remember they made us do this whole pitch and to have it ready right after Christmas?
Rosaria Cain 7:41
Vaguely, Gosh.
Caleb Miller 7:42
So we had to put together this whole campaign, and they made us get, because it was always my thing, like I’m not going to show them my creative, I hated that, right, because I think you and I used to bat, you’re like, no, show them, and I was like “No.”
Rosaria Cain 7:57
We show creative before we sell it.
Caleb Miller 7:58
Right, you know, I was like, no, because then you know,
Rosaria Cain 8:02
Well, it’s always a problem, but they don’t know what you can do till they can see it.
Caleb Miller 8:05
Right? So, do you remember we did that whole thing, and Diane Sasaki and I were working diligently came up with, let’s show the kids after, you know, third 20 years after they were there, and their success stories, and we gave them that campaign, and they didn’t hire us, but they used the campaign, right? And do you remember that?
Rosaria Cain 8:34
No, but that’s happened to me several times.
Caleb Miller 8:37
We actually sued them.
Rosaria Cain 8:38
We did?
Caleb Miller 8:38
Yeah.
Rosaria Cain 8:39
I don’t remember that.
Caleb Miller 8:40
Yeah, they paid us.
Rosaria Cain 8:42
They did?
Caleb Miller 8:42
Yeah, they–
Rosaria Cain 8:43
I don’t remember that.
Caleb Miller 8:44
Yeah, they ended up pick, because I was so mad that they did that.
Rosaria Cain 8:47
The reason why I don’t remember is because I didn’t do the creative on it.
Caleb Miller 8:53
Right.
Rosaria Cain 8:55
I remember the Bartending Academy. Remember the Bartending Academy?
Caleb Miller 8:59
Vaguely
Rosaria Cain 8:59
That ended up in court.
Caleb Miller 9:01
Did it?
Rosaria Cain 9:02
I can’t remember.
Caleb Miller 9:03
Wait, what was that guy doing? Oh, he never paid.
Rosaria Cain 9:06
He never paid his bill.
Caleb Miller 9:06
He never paid his bill.
Rosaria Cain 9:07
We won’t mention his name. I don’t remember his name anyway.
Caleb Miller 9:10
All this startup things that we used to go through.
Rosaria Cain 9:13
Yeah, yeah. Well, that’s part of the thing about a business. When you start up, you often take business that you need, and you may not have a lot of background on where and how and when to say no.
Caleb Miller 9:28
Yep.
Rosaria Cain 9:28
And I think those are things that come with time.
Caleb Miller 9:30
Right? And we didn’t know, because neither one of us are really from the agency world.
Rosaria Cain 9:34
No, in fact, between the two of us, we had zero experience. Yep.
Caleb Miller 9:38
Zero.
Rosaria Cain 9:38
Yeah, yep. But I was a rep, and I thought I knew everything back then, and looking back, the fact that I outran what I didn’t know, and we outran what we didn’t know, although I think you probably knew more than me, because you were in business for yourself when we did this, so you probably had a little bit more context.
Caleb Miller 9:58
Yeah.
Rosaria Cain 9:58
And we somehow made it through those first few pivotal years, and as soon as we opened, it wasn’t long after that we had 9/11.
Caleb Miller 10:06
Yep.
Rosaria Cain 10:07
And got through that.
Caleb Miller 10:10
Yep. Then we had the old, you know, Omar debacle.
Rosaria Cain 10:16
Oh yeah, our neighbor, our business neighbor.
Caleb Miller 10:21
Which was a stellar concept.
Rosaria Cain 10:24
Well, he was, he was one of the first online marketing people that really was in the market, and he did a shared e-commerce site. If I can remember that right, is that right?
Caleb Miller 10:36
He could do e-commerce websites, but we had them, they were up and functional in 30 seconds.
Rosaria Cain 10:46
Was that that quick?
Caleb Miller 10:47
It was that quick.
Rosaria Cain 10:48
Wow.
Caleb Miller 10:49
And we were taken off, and little did we know that, you know, we decided to merge, because that was, I mean, it was where everything, and still is where everything went, and then we found out.
Rosaria Cain 11:05
That was brief.
Caleb Miller 11:05
We found out he, well, yeah, until we found out he was embezzling money.
Rosaria Cain 11:09
Yeah, that was brief. I remember that, that was almost like a fleeting thing.
Caleb Miller 11:13
Well, then they made me the CEO, and Watson, Chris Watson, our, you know, our account guy, the CFO of that company. Remember Steve Weinberg?
Rosaria Cain 11:25
No.
Caleb Miller 11:25
Steve Weinberg was the IT lawyer and sat on the board, super smart guy, and he was like, ‘You’re going to be the CEO, and I was like, ‘I don’t want to be the CEO of that, that’s a mess, right? And it was, but we did extract our company out of it, yeah, and saved it, because it was gonna go down.
Rosaria Cain 11:45
Yeah. I do remember there was a problem with it, and we got out,
Caleb Miller 11:49
Yeah. It was massive. I thought you were gonna kill Omar. I literally thought you were going to kill him.
Rosaria Cain 11:57
Well, you know, you mess with my business, you mess with my family.
Caleb Miller 11:59
Well, it was. it was everything, like and had stolen money from us, and we caught him red handed, so it was bad.
Rosaria Cain 12:07
I must have blocked this out.
Caleb Miller 12:09
Maybe.
Rosaria Cain 12:10
Because I don’t remember the details at all. I remember there was a brief period that we were doing some work together,
Caleb Miller 12:16
Yeah.
Rosaria Cain 12:16
And then we just weren’t, and we parted company.
Caleb Miller 12:20
Yeah. We parted company, yep. I was like–
Rosaria Cain 12:24
And it was really early in, that was in the first couple of years.
Caleb Miller 12:26
Yeah, I was like, hey, you know, we’re, you know, we’ve got to save.
Rosaria Cain 12:31
I think you were doing most of that work with Omar.
Caleb Miller 12:34
Yeah. I was involved,
Rosaria Cain 12:35
So I wasn’t as heavily involved, yeah. So I don’t think I even knew the depths of it.
Caleb Miller 12:39
Oh, it was bad.
Rosaria Cain 12:40
Yeah.
Caleb Miller 12:40
And when you did find out how bad it was, because I, I didn’t know how bad it was, and I knew, and I was like, oh, but that’s one of the other things about being,
Rosaria Cain 12:54
You have to know who your partners are.
Caleb Miller 12:57
Right?
Rosaria Cain 12:57
Yeah.
Caleb Miller 12:58
That is a one of the hardest things about being an entrepreneur, is getting involved with less than honest business partners.
Rosaria Cain 13:08
Well, I think the best perk of the job of being in your own business is you get to choose who you work with.
Caleb Miller 13:15
Yes.
Rosaria Cain 13:16
And you have to be more discerning.
Caleb Miller 13:18
It’s hard.
Rosaria Cain 13:19
It is hard.
Caleb Miller 13:20
It’s hard. It’s very hard, even when you know you know them, and you trust them, and they people do weird things when it comes to money.
Rosaria Cain 13:32
They do. Well, money can be, be a real, it can, it can really take a good person and make them make them weak. It just depends on what their values are.
Caleb Miller 13:43
And sort of their situation. Yeah, because some people, you know, you don’t know, because they’ve hid it, they’re in a desperate spot, and you know, desperate people do desperate things.
Rosaria Cain 13:57
Yeah, whatever happened to Omar? Do you know?
Caleb Miller 14:01
Okay, that’s an interesting story. So they went off on their own because I told Chris, I was like, I go, “I gotta stay here because I got mouths to feed,” right? And this is cash flow. I was like, but that’s the future of the industry, right? I was like, you should stick and go.
Rosaria Cain 14:21
I remember Chris stayed with them, I do remember that.
Caleb Miller 14:23
Yeah, so they moved down, the building on Alma School and Dobson. It was a high rise with the electric blue lights on it.
Rosaria Cain 14:31
Yeah, I remember it. Wasn’t at the Hilton?
Caleb Miller 14:33
Yeah, something like that. But they evolved it into, they had a call center, and they were, you know, like marketing online, and having people call in and build websites, sort of like a GoDaddy, before Godaddy was Godaddy, and Chris had gotten into the point he was going to, they were going to sell the company, and he had inked a deal for like $40 million and the day of, or the day before, Omar backed out, and Chris was like, “You can’t back out, you know, it’s too late,” and well, then he had to disclose, oh, he had embezzled $10 million that they were going to see that he had been hiding from Chris, so that deal blew up, and the company kind of fizzled out after that, and Chris was, oh, he was, you know.
Rosaria Cain 15:35
Sorry he stayed with Omar.
Caleb Miller 15:38
Yeah, well, for a while, but you know, he also, I mean, that was a wild success story for a long time. They were the kind of the darling of the town for a minute, and it was going great till it wasn’t.
Rosaria Cain 15:51
Yeah.
Caleb Miller 15:52
You know, but I, you know, we were talking about, I was like, well, you knew he was a thief. I mean, that’s we, that’s how you and I wound up in that spot to begin with. So I was like, kind of your own fault, little tough love.
Rosaria Cain 16:05
Yeah, I’ll say.
Caleb Miller 16:06
So I had gone into this. Funny, we were talking about Chris, so I gone into.. did you know that I was partners at Blender Creative?
Rosaria Cain 16:17
Yes, I met you there once.
Caleb Miller 16:19
Oh, you did.
Rosaria Cain 16:20
We were looking at working on something together, I can’t remember what it was, but yes, I remember that.
Caleb Miller 16:25
So we had done LifeLock, we helped them build their brand, and then we had also done a lot of work at PNG with the Pizza Hut rebrand. It’s very interesting, so I was handling a lot of the digital business, and there was another guy, he had a media company that was working for healthcare, and he had approached me while I was there, like, ‘Hey, I, you know, I think I need.. it’s, you know, he kind of pitched me his business model, and I said, ‘You’re a media buying company, you’re not like you should just talk to my partner, talk to Rosaria. She buys media, you know, something like that. So, anyway, he got a contract with Pfizer and Merck, and he, he calls me out of the blue. I didn’t talk to him, and he’s like, “Hey, I need a CMO that knows about this kind of tech, you know, just as a figurehead, while I’m trying to raise money, come and work for me. So I was like, okay, so I basically worked all East Coast clients, and I helped, like, Pfizer and Merck. It was just when everyone was getting on to, you know, trying to really force the mobile app back in like 2014 15, and so I did a lot of work on the mobile device application of online marketing, so that was interesting.
Rosaria Cain 17:55
What company was that?
Caleb Miller 17:58
It was Medex Media, I think, at the time, I don’t know if it’s something else.
Rosaria Cain 18:02
Okay.
Caleb Miller 18:03
So yeah, but they, he had contracts with Walmart, where he knew how to scrub the HIPAA information and repackage it, so they could market to it.
Rosaria Cain 18:16
Still valuable.
Caleb Miller 18:17
Yeah. No.
Rosaria Cain 18:18
And timely.
Caleb Miller 18:19
Yeah, yeah, no. It was, it was an interesting time. It was dark. I didn’t like it, though, because it’s when I really found out about, you know, ghost cookies, and, and how you’re being tracked across all platforms, if you’ve even turned on a smart phone, and most people don’t even know that. So, but it was tech, and you know me, and tech, I always loved it. Long story short, is I get a call, I hadn’t talked to Chris, five six years, and he calls me out of the blue, and he was like, “Hey, what are you doing? And I was like, “I’m working for this company, you know, helping him, I’m a consultant, but you know, helping him raise money and working with Pfizer and Merck and their ad teams, and he was like, “You like it?” and I go, “No, I hate it,”
Rosaria Cain 19:09
You were never really the media type.
Caleb Miller 19:11
Well, yeah, you know.
Rosaria Cain 19:13
You were on the creative side.
Caleb Miller 19:14
Yeah, I was like, no, it’s not, it’s, you know, right, it’s very corporate, very, you know, and that’s not.
Rosaria Cain 19:22
It’s many people would call media the boring side of the business.
Caleb Miller 19:28
Yes, but it’s–
Rosaria Cain 19:29
It’s not creative, it’s fairly,
Caleb Miller 19:31
But you know, but it’s the steady, it’s the bedrock, I mean, it’s the media pays all the bills.
Rosaria Cain 19:38
Right.
Caleb Miller 19:39
Right, you know,
Rosaria Cain 19:40
It’s the money side,
Caleb Miller 19:41
It’s the money side of it, so it’s, you know, it’s really the only side when you think about it. So, I mean, especially now, because the creativity, especially with the advent of the internet, kind of got killed for a while there.
Rosaria Cain 19:55
They’re doing some pretty exciting things now.
Caleb Miller 19:58
Now it’s coming back to story tellingand stuff, but for I’d say good solid 15 years, it was–
Rosaria Cain 20:05
t=That’s why they called them architects, they would call people that worked in that field online architects.
Caleb Miller 20:12
Yeah.
Rosaria Cain 20:13
Which is really boring.
Caleb Miller 20:14
Yeah, so anyway, he calls me, he’s working for Tommy Mello, A1 Garage Doors, right? And he’s like, so he’s being his CFO, and he wasn’t big. I don’t know if you know who he is.
Rosaria Cain 20:31
Oh yeah, I’ve talked over 26 years, I’ve talked to almost everybody.
Caleb Miller 20:35
So he was like, “Hey, we’re trying to do some, some Google review tech,” and he goes, “we need to, you know, we need some help, come and help us.” So I was like, “Sure.” So I go meet Tommy, and I love Tommy. Tommy’s the greatest. So we were putting together an API where we could a customer could, you know, just we’d say, hey, when his sales reps be like, “Hey, you want to do a review?” and you know, most people say no, and we like, “No, it’s really easy,” so it would basically write the review, and all they would have to do is put their name in and press send, so we kind of spun that off as a silo, and so I worked there for a little while. I sold it to–
Rosaria Cain 21:29
See, I remember when you were there.
Caleb Miller 21:31
Yeah,
Rosaria Cain 21:31
I remember when you were there.
Caleb Miller 21:33
We sold that, or he sold it to, I think it was, I can’t remember who we sold it to, but I got Colonial Penn on that, and all their brokers got it through that kind of stuff, so it was that was an interesting time, and then the at the same time I was in talk about a serial entrepreneur I had started raising money through with the EB-5 federal program, where if you brought foreign investment money, and you would get, they would get a visa, you know, for themselves of spouses or anybody under the age of 21 and I talked with some guys, and formed a region. You had to have a regional center set up, you know. And so I went and raised $50 million in China with these guys that were doing short-term rehab to go home facilities, meaning 30 days after you get out of surgery, instead of a
Rosaria Cain 22:43
Kind of like a rehab center.
Caleb Miller 22:45
Yeah, but a nice one, you know, not like a nursing home.
Rosaria Cain 22:49
They have different, yeah.
Caleb Miller 22:51
Yeah, so I was doing that at the same time, and then we were also raising money, which is now starting to come through like everything out off the 303 you know, that went around all that highway,
Rosaria Cain 23:06
Surpise and all that area.
Caleb Miller 23:07
Yeah, they’re getting ready to build out, you know, Buckeye and South.
Rosaria Cain 23:11
Yeah.
Caleb Miller 23:12
So these guys were cobbling together all of that land, and so I helped him do some of that, and then my partner showed up and knew that I was raising money in China, and he was like, “Hey, he goes, what do you think about this? You know, we’ve got this factory out at Revlon, you know, that’s been empty since 2002. It’s perfect for, you know, being able to grow cannabis indoors, because you think you could raise money in China. I was like, “No, it’s all vetted by the feds, and you know, so that’s illegal. I give a, you know, I know a couple people right that I could talk to.” So, anyway, you know, I end up putting my, my money into it, you know, the first money, you know, really, so we.
Rosaria Cain 24:06
Seed money.
Caleb Miller 24:07
Seed money, you know, and yeah, so that’s how we got started out there,
Rosaria Cain 24:12
And that was the beginnings of True Harvest?
Caleb Miller 24:14
Yep, 2014.
Rosaria Cain 24:17
Tell me about True Harvest. I am not a cannabis user, I know nothing about this field.
Caleb Miller 24:22
I didn’t either, to be quite honest with you. I just knew it was,
Rosaria Cain 24:27
it was coming.
Caleb Miller 24:28
It was coming, and when I was telling people I was thinking about really doing it, everyone told me I was going to go to prison, right? Because it was federally illegal.
Rosaria Cain 24:38
Before, yeah, before the trend.
Caleb Miller 24:39
Right? It was very early on, and I was just like, all right, if everyone’s telling me I’m insane and going to prison, I’ve got something right, because everyone’s kind of scared to do it, so I’m not going to have a lot of early adopters, and so, yeah, so we had an initially we started out. Jerry Tokoph is the guy who owns the building, that’s my partner’s ex-father-in-law now. So he was like, “Listen, and you know, I’d met him once or twice. I was friends with Mike, my partner, you know. I’d known him and his family forever, and a good Italian boy, macaroli, by the way.
Rosaria Cain 25:20
Yeah, that definitely qualifies.
Caleb Miller 25:22
Yes, so he just looked at us, you know, and he owns 8 million square feet of commercial real estate here, and he’s like, “I’ll give you guys the space, but I’m not putting any money into it,” right?
Rosaria Cain 25:39
That’s a lot of money in space.
Caleb Miller 25:41
Well, yeah. So, but he didn’t make it easy, you know. He’s like, you’re gonna start out, you got 15,000 square feet, and then you’re gonna take down 20,000 square feet every six,
Rosaria Cain 25:52
Kind of gradually.
Caleb Miller 25:53
Yeah, well, whether you like it or not, you know. And if you can’t pay,
Rosaria Cain 25:57
That comes with the terms.
Caleb Miller 25:57
I’m taking it all back. So we took the initial money, it got everything going, and we, you know, we kind of did the architectural drawing on the back of a napkin, you know, one night working, you know, with a guy, you know, who’s growing weed, you know, which
Rosaria Cain 26:16
A little sketchy back then,
Caleb Miller 26:19
Yeah, it was–
Rosaria Cain 26:19
Not a lot of sophisticated business people, at that time.
Caleb Miller 26:23
So we, by far and away, were some of the most sophisticated people. Nobody would even.. it was, it was crazy. So, we built, we started out in 14,000 square feet, had no idea what we were doing, but we were mad, we were able to get crops out the door on the harvest, you know, not all of it was great, but you know, he understood the heavy industrial systems in that building, so because he had been managing it for 20 years, so he knew everything there is to know about that, and then, so I was like, I’m like, all right, when our grower was insane, I mean, this guy was out of his mind, you know, beard down to here, and
Rosaria Cain 27:16
CG top,
Caleb Miller 27:17
Oh my god, it was crazy, so he was, he was growing, and we didn’t know what we were doing, and but I, by myself, our first 10 months in business, I did all the sales, I sold $3 million worth of product.
Rosaria Cain 27:38
Now, tell me about what their, their story was, was it medical marijuana?
Caleb Miller 27:43
At the time, it was medical marijuana. So every–
Rosaria Cain 27:47
It still says that on your LinkedIn, by the way.
Caleb Miller 27:49
Does it?
Rosaria Cain 27:50
Yeah, it does.
Caleb Miller 27:50
I haven’t changed it. So yeah, it started out as medical. It was only medical for a while, and you know the industry was very small, and you know, I think people bought from me because I was the only professional, either, either it was because I was the only semi-professional salesperson in there, or they thought I was a cop.
Rosaria Cain 28:14
Oh, there you go.
Caleb Miller 28:15
I was like 48 when I got into it.
Rosaria Cain 28:17
It wasn’t legal yet, right?
Caleb Miller 28:19
In the state, it was.
Rosaria Cain 28:20
Medical, medical was legal.
Caleb Miller 28:22
Medical was legal, but it hadn’t passed rec yet. So yeah, we started out there, but you know, there, there weren’t that, there was probably only 50 dispensaries open at the time, but you know, there was a lot of people, so we sold out, you know, every single harvest we had.
Rosaria Cain 28:42
So you didn’t have a lot of competition back then?
Caleb Miller 28:44
No, not–
Rosaria Cain 28:46
In the legal space.
Caleb Miller 28:47
Well, yeah, in the medical space. So, at the time, when we got the whole building approved, it was, I believe, the largest indoor growth on the planet that was approved for growing cannabis. The whole thing was, so it was interesting, and we got a lot of attention from the city and the state, right? Because once the word got out that
Rosaria Cain 29:15
Good attention? Bad attention?
Caleb Miller 29:18
Bad attention.
Rosaria Cain 29:19
Okay. All right.
Caleb Miller 29:20
You know, when–
Rosaria Cain 29:20
They didn’t, they didn’t give you a day?
Caleb Miller 29:25
Well, getting through the inspections, you know, to get a C of O, were those were challenging times, because they, you know, they looked that electric box one day and say, well, fix it, you know, do it this way, and we would do it, call them back out at 300 bucks a crack, and they’d be like, oh no, no, no, we want it back the other way, and we had to go through all that with every inspection that we ever did, we, I would say that we had 500 exit lights in our back. Building, for some reason, you know, when we had six.
Rosaria Cain 30:04
Just because they were messing.
Caleb Miller 30:05
Yeah, it was interesting. So,
Rosaria Cain 30:08
How long did it take you to get that done?
Caleb Miller 30:11
We started construction in 2014 and got plants in the building October of 2015 so I would say about a year of construction, and you know, jumping through hoops, and the whole nine yards.
Rosaria Cain 30:30
And that was about five years before it was legalized for recreational use. Yeah,
Caleb Miller 30:36
So the first time it was on the ballot in 2016.
Rosaria Cain 30:39
But didn’t pass.
Caleb Miller 30:40
Didn’t pass. Yeah, they were. I was like, you, they didn’t get what you know they were trying to buy media in a put in an election year, you know, in June, and I was like, guys, first off, you’re getting outspent eight to one, and you can’t do a TV buy, you might as well just end that and go internet, but they didn’t, wouldn’t listen to me at all, and I sat on all those meetings, so it was, it was interesting.
Rosaria Cain 31:13
Well some of your experience helped you.
Caleb Miller 31:15
Yeah, no, no, no doubt, no, like everything, everything helped me, you know, when I got to this point, and what I couldn’t do, and still hasn’t happened, is every crop, every commodity that I’ve ever known, they co-op, you know, they corn, soybeans, oranges, dates, you know, they all get together and charge the same price, these guys. Nobody would do it. I was like, guys, all you have to do is agree on a price per pound, you know, on because there’s different kinds, there’s different levels, there’s really high end, there’s, yeah, I was like, but you know, XYZ, it’s simple, and that way we’re not cannibalizing each other, but everyone thought they were going to be
Rosaria Cain 32:03
the dominant player.
Caleb Miller 32:03
The Budweiser. But I will tell you this: that raising money for that project, why you thought it would have been hard, was the easiest money raise I’ve ever done. It was, it’s not even close, like I think it was so novel, like when we walk out and show people a room full of weed, they see cha-ching dollar signs, so it was pretty easy to raise money.
Rosaria Cain 32:33
Kind of like Breaking Bad.
Caleb Miller 32:36
A little bit, yeah, you know, and it was sexy, and it was legal.
Rosaria Cain 32:39
The legal version.
Caleb Miller 32:42
It was fun.
Rosaria Cain 32:43
So, one of the things I like to ask people, I think being an entrepreneur is such an interesting existence. Do you think you’ve always been an entrepreneur, or did something make you an entrepreneur?
Caleb Miller 33:01
That’s an interesting question. No, I don’t. I think I was more, as you would probably say, when we were first working together, I was more of an artist, right?
Rosaria Cain 33:12
Right. Well, you definitely like the creative side.
Caleb Miller 33:14
Yeah, so I
Rosaria Cain 33:15
I don’t remember you being incredibly interested in the business numbers.
Caleb Miller 33:19
No, no, I was way more interested in what we were doing creatively, but over over the course of time I found that I love chasing business, you know? I was like, oh, I, I really like pitching, right? I did, and I still do to this day, and I think that sort of helped me develop into, you know, being, you know, like wanting to develop business and be an entrepreneur, and understanding, you know, I would say I developed into it, I wouldn’t say I started out like–
Rosaria Cain 33:59
That’s a skill, so that, being a pitch man, that being a presenter.
Caleb Miller 34:04
Yeah.
Rosaria Cain 34:05
You really thrive in the limelight.
Caleb Miller 34:09
Yeah, I was always great on a pitch, you know.
Rosaria Cain 34:12
Yeah,
Caleb Miller 34:12
It was..
Rosaria Cain 34:13
I would say
Caleb Miller 34:13
It was just something I could do.
Rosaria Cain 34:15
Yeah,
Caleb Miller 34:16
You know, all my partners all say, you know, Chris Watson was like, “He’ll sell ice, don’t ask him how, just get him in front of him,” right? So, I mean, I always love to pitch and present, and I like selling, and you know, that’s one of the probably the most important part, and then next is knowing how to build a team.
Rosaria Cain 34:41
Right, and so those are characteristics of a good leader.
Caleb Miller 34:44
Yes,
Rosaria Cain 34:44
What else makes a good leader? Honesty. Probably looking at past people we’ve done business with.
Caleb Miller 34:53
I’d say honesty. I’d say a couple things. Honesty, you have to have. Compassion for people, even when you don’t want to, and you have to be okay. You have to be okay with disappointing people, because you can’t please everybody, and people are going to get mad and disappointed in you, and you have to have a thick skin, you know. And above all, you know you’re there to serve your business, so your business has to survive at all costs, you know, and that you know for me is what I always try to do, and I always tell everyone that’s ever worked for me, I’m like, listen, I can’t do my job if you aren’t doing yours, so I don’t care if your job is to sweep the floors, right? If you’re not doing your job, and I got to take away time to figure that out, then I can’t do what I’m good at. So I think you know, getting people to buy into that concept, that’s the other thing too, is getting people to buy into your philosophy on what you’re trying to do, and you know, one or two or three bad people can really wreck a company.
Rosaria Cain 36:09
One bad person.
Caleb Miller 36:10
One bad person can. Yes, so when I’m doing things, I try to focus on that, and I, you know, we had 200 employees out there at True Harvest, and that was a lot, you know. Just evolved into that wasn’t my favorite part of it, right?
Rosaria Cain 36:31
The people side is messy.
Caleb Miller 36:37
Yeah. People have to understand what you’re saying, and want to follow you, and at the same time, but you can’t be people’s best friend, especially, you know, but you also have to have compassion for what they’re going through. That’s a skill set, too, right? As you know.
Rosaria Cain 36:59
It is. Well, you know.
Caleb Miller 37:00
You’ve been doing this for a lot of years, so you got a lot of people.
Rosaria Cain 37:02
26 years, never had a layoff, lost, lost my butt for 10 years during the recession, but tried to really cut what I could and never over hire.
Caleb Miller 37:18
Yeah, that’s always–
Rosaria Cain 37:19
I think it’s really important to stay slim, as slim as you can possibly stay, and still get the work done and get quality done.
Caleb Miller 37:25
Yeah, yeah, it’s that’s a big thing, isn’t it?
Rosaria Cain 37:31
Now, a lot of people measure their success by how many people they have working with them, and while I love the idea of growth, I love the idea of growing clients and their business and bringing new business in, and that kind of growth. Growing staff means it jeopardizes everybody’s life, and I don’t think people always equate the two, but if you have too many people on the boat, it can sink the boat, everybody goes down.
Caleb Miller 37:59
Yes, you’re 100% correct.
Rosaria Cain 38:02
So, those are the things I pay attention to, is how many people are on the boat.
Caleb Miller 38:06
Right?
Rosaria Cain 38:06
And are we producing good work?
Caleb Miller 38:09
Yeah, and having to lay people off, or that means you can’t pay them. And to me, when I’ve been in those scenarios, which I have, that, that bothers me.
Rosaria Cain 38:27
That’s the worst part of the job.
Caleb Miller 38:29
Right?
Rosaria Cain 38:30
Luckily what I did is I hung on to people way too long during the recession.
Caleb Miller 38:34
Yeah.
Rosaria Cain 38:35
Because I started the recession with a nice fund from a few really great years, and that was, believe it or not, a mistake.
Caleb Miller 38:45
Yeah.
Rosaria Cain 38:45
Because you end up spending money you shouldn’t be spending, because you have it.
Caleb Miller 38:50
Yes.
Rosaria Cain 38:50
And I’m determined not to make that mistake ever again.
Caleb Miller 38:54
Yes, I, you know, I tell people I was like, I’ve never had a problem firing somebody.
Rosaria Cain 39:01
Oh, I have.
Caleb Miller 39:02
Not one time I was like, because if I’m firing you, I’ve already had the conversations,
Rosaria Cain 39:07
Right?
Caleb Miller 39:08
You know, like, hey, you’re, you’re not performing.
Rosaria Cain 39:10
Still hard, though, isn’t it still hard?
Caleb Miller 39:12
No, it’s not laying off people because you don’t have the work or the money to pay them. That sucks, because that’s no fault of theirs.
Rosaria Cain 39:19
I did learn how to fire someone, though.
Caleb Miller 39:21
You did, finally?
Rosaria Cain 39:22
30 seconds, you’re out because you’re not counseling them. No, and you’re not giving them a pep talk, and it’s painful for them too.
Caleb Miller 39:32
Yes.
Rosaria Cain 39:32
So you want to be honest and truthful. Well, but you don’t want to give them any information.
Caleb Miller 39:39
Yeah.
Rosaria Cain 39:39
And you want it to be quick, something vague, like “We’re going a different direction. Thanks for your time. Here, here’s your check.”
Caleb Miller 39:48
Yeah.
Rosaria Cain 39:48
Good luck to you. And it’s just less painful for everybody.
Caleb Miller 39:52
Well, and your employee is, you know, almost, they’re going to be college educated.
Rosaria Cain 40:00
Yeah, and they need to process it.
Caleb Miller 40:02
Yeah.
Rosaria Cain 40:02
And always do it on a Friday.
Caleb Miller 40:04
Yes, at 3o’clock
Rosaria Cain 40:06
At 3o’clock exactly.
Caleb Miller 40:08
And have a meeting scheduled right after that, 10 minutes later, I gotta go.
Rosaria Cain 40:12
Yeah, yeah, nope, it’s absolutely true, it’s the ugly side. When you’re looking at company values and you’re putting this together because you’ve done this a few different times. What’s most important to you? I know you mentioned, for instance, honesty.
Caleb Miller 40:29
Well, there’s two things. I mean, there’s multiple things I look at if you’re evaluating whether or not you think a company is worth investing in, or getting into bed with, and helping them grow, or starting something from scratch, is, you know, it’s always the people, it’s always the people involved, right? If you get a, I don’t care how smart they are, what kind of con, you know, what they have, what kind of tech they have. If, if you don’t think they’re, you know, hardworking, trustworthy people, you know, you might as well walk away, no matter how good it might look on on their numbers and their rev and you know their EBITDA and all that kind of stuff, right? So that’s always the first thing, is trying to, because you’re investing: a company is only as good as its people, right, at the end of the day, and they succeed or fail based on their people, right, and they can have the best systems, the best, you know, and they’ll still fail if the leadership is, is not good, and they’re key people, you know, that they hire are are not great either. So that to me is probably the more important out of the, you know, the revenue, and you know, and then I always look at where what is, where is a market that they’re in positioned and where’s it going? Where’s the growth on that? Because you don’t want to get into something that is experienced the explosive growth already, right? Because then what are you doing?
Rosaria Cain 42:17
Right?
Caleb Miller 42:18
You know it’s already happened, so you know, you’re trying to identify to me, I always try to identify stuff that’s right there on the verge, on the tipping point, and people are a little nervous about it, and you know, like a lot of like VC people who I’ve learned from, you know, taking lots of money, you know, and and then you know what is the exit look like you know, at the back end, and how do you, you know, when, when I do everything now, it’s based on a five year, you know, even more accelerated at this point, three to almost a three year, you know, the lifespan of businesses now are not what they used to be, like 10 years would be considered a long time for a company now, right? So 26 years in business is a long time, but most of them now are three to five years,
Rosaria Cain 43:09
Right,
Caleb Miller 43:09
before they get bought or they fail. Yeah, so it’s things are you know fast and furious, and you have to be ready to go and go fast.
Rosaria Cain 43:21
And then find the next venture.
Caleb Miller 43:22
And then find the next one.
Rosaria Cain 43:24
What trend do you find troubling right now? I know we spoke a few weeks ago about AI, for instance.
Caleb Miller 43:31
Yeah, troubling. It’s troubling. I mean, it’s. I don’t know if that’s troubling–
Rosaria Cain 43:43
It’s the word that came to mind after we talked about it.
Caleb Miller 43:46
Yes, I mean, I will say this through some things I’ve experienced with AI, and putting this, like I told you, I strung together, you know, Claude and Chat GPT and Gronk on a on an app, you know, and they started working together and watching them communicate was… we’re not the most, we’re not the dominant species on the planet anymore, I think I said that, and you either have to accept that and move forward with it, and under, you know, I mean, I’ve seen a cut, you know, we’ve experienced, we were part of the first tech revolution, right, so this is
Rosaria Cain 44:42
The infancy, really.
Caleb Miller 44:43
Yeah, this – we were right at the forefront of it. So this is something very different. So you know, I don’t know. Do you get the Neuralink, you know, in your head and. Get on a starship and go to Mars. I find, you know, robotics now it’s getting.. I mean, I kind of.. I want one, don’t get me wrong,
Rosaria Cain 45:12
A butler, maybe cook dinner, clean the house.
Caleb Miller 45:16
Yes, that’d be great. Or, you know, well, so I’ve run manufacturing facilities, so I’m looking at it like no more HR, and you know, you let them go to work, let them work.
Rosaria Cain 45:28
Why need people?
Caleb Miller 45:30
Yeah, just go to your, you know, when you’re running, when your battery’s running down, go to your charging station, charge yourself, and then go back to work, you know. So, as a matter of fact, I have down payments on the Tesla bots, so I’ll, you know, I don’t know if I’ll need one now, but I’d take one for myself.
Rosaria Cain 45:52
So, what is this?
Caleb Miller 45:54
You know, Elon Musk, the Tesla bots.
Rosaria Cain 45:57
Oh, a robot.
Caleb Miller 45:58
Yeah. Well,
Rosaria Cain 45:59
I knew he was making them, I didn’t know where they were, even for sale.
Caleb Miller 46:02
Oh yeah,
Rosaria Cain 46:03
Are they?
Caleb Miller 46:04
Oh yeah, he’s gonna mass produce them this year. So basically, the robots with their AI–
Rosaria Cain 46:09
That’s why he has stopped producing the, if I remember this right, the S and the, the S and the X.
Caleb Miller 46:17
Yeah.
Rosaria Cain 46:19
To make room.
Caleb Miller 46:19
Yeah. He’s gonna mass produce those, and he’s going to fly them all to Mars, and they are going to colonize Mars. I mean, why do you think he’s digging all the tunnels underneath the cities and flying into space and creating, I mean, he’s got unlimited access to lots of things, so he’s gonna go colonize Mars.
Rosaria Cain 46:42
He’s about ready to get an IPO for SpaceX.
Caleb Miller 46:44
Yes, I have an inside track on that too, but it’s the entry, the entry fee is
Rosaria Cain 46:51
It’s high.
Caleb Miller 46:52
Yeah, it’s steep. So I’m thinking now, do I figure out how to borrow the money to leverage it and put it in, but that’s a pit.
Rosaria Cain 47:05
You know. My next question is, you probably answered my next question. What about you would surprise people that you have an inside track to? Tesla robots and colonization on Mars?
Caleb Miller 47:19
Tesla robots two three years ago, they came out like, hey, if you want to put a deposit on the price hasn’t changed, it was, you know, 25-30,000 for the bot, but the programming at that point was going to be the expensive part, like, you know, but now, since the advent of AI,
Rosaria Cain 47:40
Right.
Caleb Miller 47:41
that’s went away, so that might surprise people. It might surprise people that, hey, I would put the chip in my head and get on a spaceship and go, you know, that I know people are like, “You do what?” Right? So, I, you know, I think that’s that’s probably pretty surprising.
Rosaria Cain 48:01
Probably wouldn’t surprise you to know I would prefer staying on Earth.
Caleb Miller 48:04
Yes, yeah, I want to see what’s out there.
Rosaria Cain 48:10
Well, on that note, fascinating interview, and catching up with you,
Caleb Miller 48:15
Yes.
Rosaria Cain 48:15
For the whole world to hear. And thank you for coming by, I really appreciate it. I thought it was a good conversation.
Caleb Miller 48:21
Thanks for having me. Congratulations on still being here.
Rosaria Cain 48:24
Thank you for your help on that.
Caleb Miller 48:25
Takes a lot of perseverance.
Rosaria Cain 48:27
We both have,
Caleb Miller 48:28
Well, you have a lot of years after me to keep it going.
Rosaria Cain 48:31
Yeah, well, you know, we’ll see what the future brings.
Caleb Miller 48:34
It just wasn’t as fun without me around this place.
Rosaria Cain 48:37
It had it’s ups and downs. No, but you’re not, the early days, are always the most expensive.
Caleb Miller 48:42
Yeah, right. You look back on those, the most nostalgia.
Rosaria Cain 48:46
Yep,
Caleb Miller 48:47
Right. Because that’s when everything was, you know, you didn’t know, and it was just fun flying by the seat of your pants. Yeah, yeah, literally.
Rosaria Cain 48:56
Literally. Waiting for checks to come in.
Caleb Miller 48:58
Well, hey, I appreciate it, because I learned a lot, kind of informed me.
Rosaria Cain 49:03
You’ve done a lot, and I’m proud of you.
Caleb Miller 49:05
No, I’m proud of you for being here.
Rosaria Cain 49:07
Well, on that note, we will sign off.
Caleb Miller 49:10
Great, thank you for having me.
Rosaria Cain 49:11
My pleasure.
Caleb Miller 49:12
Okay.