Craft matters in small ways, like how coffee is made or how a wooden table is built piece by piece, and in not so small ways, like how your money is cared for.
At UBS, we elevate investing to a craft.
We deliver our services with passion, expertise, and meticulous attention to detail.
This is what investing means to UBS, not just work, but a craft.
Discover more@ubs.com craft.
The value of investments may fall as well as rise, and you may not get back the amount originally invested.
Hi, I'm Ezra Marcus.
I'm a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine.
This week's Sunday read is my profile of a Bay Area rapper who goes by the name of Berner.
He's a guy you've probably never heard of, who, in all fairness, is not the most accomplished rapper, but he somehow always ends up alongside Jay Z and Kanye on these lists of the five richest rappers in the world.
That's because Berner is the CEO of cookies, one of the largest, most well known legal cannabis brands in the United States.
Maybe the best known.
And what makes Berner fascinating is that, in a way, he embodies the current state of the cannabis industry as a whole.
On the one side, a weed industry that's legal and yet completely hamstrung by regulation, and on the other, a black market that's still thriving and even facilitated by the supply.
From the legal side.
A couple decades ago, Berner was working at a medical marijuana dispensary while also dealing weed on the street.
Weed was on the cusp of becoming recreationally legal in California, and Berner saw an opportunity.
He noticed that when he draw colorful labels for weed strains, they'd sell better.
Branding is really important, he figured.
And so he started using rap music as a marketing tool.