Becoming Legend: The Billion-Dollar Blueprint to Be a Whale in a Sea of Sharks

Berner, cofounder and CEO of the cannabis brand Cookies, debuts with an energetic business guide that recounts his rise from a high school dropout “hustling in the streets of San Francisco” to head of a successful global company. After getting a job at a medical cannabis dispensary at 19, he began to see marijuana as a product that helped people and offered community. Simultaneously making a name for himself as a rapper in the Bay Area, he noticed that weed and music went hand in hand and started selling pot to influential rappers and producers. When cannabis was legalized for recreational use in California, he already had a brand identity ready: Cookies, inspired by a strain he sold that tasted like Thin Mints. Framing cannabis as a once-in-a-generation opportunity, he explains how instinctive branding, cultural fluency, and sharp timing helped Cookies dominate a rapidly corporatizing sector. Structured around punchy principles—“ ‘no’ is code for ‘negotiate’ ”; “don’t let blueprints blur your vision”—his advice favors intuition over formal business frameworks. Though he leans on slogans rather than sustained analysis, Berner’s insistence on authenticity as a competitive advantage is persuasive. Fast-paced and unapologetic, this will resonate with entrepreneurs drawn to brand-building at the intersection of culture and commerce. (Mar.)