For Nickole Ross, cannabis is a family business.
The chief operations officer for Noohra Labs co-owns the medical marijuana processing company with her family. Her dad, Ted, is CEO; mom, Niki, is outreach director; and sisters, Neariah and Taylor, are operations director and quality manager, respectively.
“We are a company that makes medicine,” Nickole said. “We take flower that has been grown from cultivators, and then we extract all the oils and all the different cannabinoids that are inside of the plant and make it into product.”
Nickole’s path through the cannabis industry actually began with infused dining — she partnered with a chef friend to launch the first cannabis restaurant in California.
“One day we just said, hey, let’s incorporate cannabis and food together, because they are two major components that people are willing to share,” Nickole recalled. “Traditionally people use it in edibles like cookies or brownies, but you rarely find people using it for food. The conduit of food is such an important ingredient to our body. So we just decided to pair those two things together.”
At the same time, she began working with her family back home in Dayton to write their application to become Ohio’s first minority-owned, women-led cannabis company. The state awarded their license in 2019.
“There are a lot of different things that we wanted to be able to make sure we had in this cannabis industry, and one was ownership,” Nickole said. “So many people are left out due to the war on drugs. It has been a privilege to…create the impact that’s important for those who have been incarcerated based off of the same thing that we now now get to use from a legal and a medical perspective.”
But the path from getting a license to opening the manufacturing floor, was not easy — or cheap.
Nickole and company raised $5M+ to build out their infrastructure and get their doors open. And they did it without any VC dollars.
“We wanted to make sure that we stayed community-owned and also a family-owned business,” she said. “One of the things in cannabis is a lot of barriers to entry. When you get into this point to have the opportunity to be a licensed operator to produce and to manufacture cannabis, you want to be able to own and control the work that you do.”
But operating in the cannabis industry is expensive. On top of typical manufacturing costs like machineray and specialized personnel are additional costs like increased security and regulations, Nickole said.
And through it all, cannabis companies can’t access traditional banking resources, since marijuana is still illegal federally.
“If we don’t have the small business banking that we can do traditional business like construction, renovation, payroll, just cash flow, it’s hard to be able to keep running your company in an industry that has so much regulations and so much red tape,” Nickole said.
Nevertheless, the Ross family powered on, even through a pandemic, even through shifting supply chains.
“People don’t understand that I have to buy product from a cultivator in order to manufacture. A lot of people still think we are a dispensary, but we are manufacturing company,” she said. “One day we will have a dispensary, one day we will have a cultivation facility, so we can master both the growing and the retail side along with our processing that we’re currently doing.”
Launching this groundbreaking company with her family has been rewarding, Nickole shares.
“It has been a rewarding experience to learn old school principles, but also incorporate new ones that I was able to bring to the table,” she said. “But then also, just having your father, who’s also a role model to you, be your partner is something that — I wouldn’t have been able to ask for a better one.”
Her father’s business legacy in the Dayton area stretches back three decades, Nickole said. It always inspired her, but she never knew what business to pursue.
“My nature and my passion has always been in music and creative and film,” she recalled. “I’ve always been a creator and kind of a free spirit. So structure and business was just like, those are for those other people.”
Coming back home gave her the discipline she needed to run a company, she said.
“One thing my dad said is, you’re always unemployed. Because every day you got to think about how to keep the lights on, and making sure that your team is compensated for the work that they’re investing into you, and vice versa. You got to always be on goal,” she said. “You got to always be creative and think outside the box.”
But business isn’t for everyone — and that’s OK, too, she said.
“Understand what you can handle,” she said. “Because sometimes you be like, I got to make payroll, and I’m waiting for my vendor to pay me. Those are things that you got to still challenge through.”
Since launching operations, Noohra Labs has grown to provide products to 40 stores across Ohio. And they aren’t done yet, Nickole said.
“I enjoy potential. And I’ve always been a pusher. I want to direct us into the direction that can all have us thrive and grow,” she said. “When I see joy in people’s eyes because they accomplish things, and I see my own joy for manifesting something that was just on paper now into an opportunity to be able to employ and hire — it just gives me hope that we can all change something.”
The entrepreneur journey can feel dark and lonely — but don’t stop, she said.
“As new entrepreneurs, we have to give ourselves grace. When you know how to meet your own (expectations) and be still with yourself and just give yourself time to just grow and learn, you can overcome so many challenges,” she said. “Keep going, and keep striving for your own potential, cause we all have it.”
I am Nickole Ross, and I am an entrepreneur.
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There’s no one way to be an entrepreneur.
You don’t have to look a certain way, operate in a particular industry, or pursue specific education. You don’t have to grow up in a particular household, or spend your free time nurturing any particular hobbies — entrepreneurs grow from all walks of life.
In this series, entrepreneurs, founders, and small business owners from across the Dayton Region share their individual stories to break down pervading stereotypes about who can or can’t be an entrepreneur.
They proudly declare, “I Am an Entrepreneur” — and you can be, too.
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