00:00Today on Forbes, meet the founder of America's best-selling cannabis drink.
00:06At 13 years old, Aaron Naspich smoked his first joint in a friend's backyard in their western Illinois suburb.
00:14This was an exceptionally risky high for Naspich, who knew that when he returned home, he would be facing his father,
00:20an agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.
00:24Over the next five years, if Naspich ever came home a little stoned, and he often did,
00:31his dad would pound on his smoking buddies' doors and greet them with arrest threats.
00:37Now 31, Naspich runs one of the best-selling brands in the cannabis industry's buzziest sector,
00:44the THC Beverage Market, and his dad is a customer.
00:49After losing his chief marketing officer job due to equity disagreements at Monk,
00:53an aromatherapy vape brand, Naspich leaned on his favorite pastime, getting high.
01:00He says, quote,
01:01It got to a point where I was like, wow, I'm smoking a lot of pot.
01:05I gotta make this profitable somehow.
01:08In 2018, he co-founded a CBD brand, which sold non-psychoactive products until the company's
01:15Facebook account was restricted for failing to comply with Meta's advertising policies.
01:20Though the business fizzled out, Naspich was inspired to start an agency called Lucid in
01:262019 to solve the complex problem of advertising federally illegal cannabis.
01:33Most social platforms have strict, conflicting, and sometimes arbitrary regulations when it comes
01:38to advertising cannabis products.
01:41Naspich says, quote,
01:42I just paid really close attention to Facebook's rules, figured out what was allowed, what wasn't
01:48allowed, and did the same thing with Google, Twitter, Snapchat, and TikTok to come up with
01:54strategies on how to compliantly advertise these products.
01:58By 2023, Naspich says his company handled advertising for 60 of the top cannabis brands,
02:05including low-dose THC beverage pioneer Can.
02:08The product impressed Naspich, quote,
02:12as a guy who used to drink a lot of alcohol and stop drinking alcohol.
02:16And he fell in love with the beverage sector, especially after seeing Can take off.
02:21He soon started dreaming up his own cannabis beverage.
02:25He says, quote,
02:27I took all of my experience in e-commerce, cannabis, and wellness, and I brought in the smartest
02:32people I know from past projects to hit the ground running.
02:35Launched on cannabis' high holiday, 4-20, in 2023,
02:41Breeze is a low-dose cannabis drink infused with lion's mane mushrooms,
02:45which many believe have health benefits including improved cognition and inflammation.
02:51It earned around $1.3 million in its first year and became profitable after six months.
02:57Breeze brought in $28 million in revenue last year and $13 million in the first quarter of 2025.
03:05It's outpacing nearly every other competitor.
03:08It's outpacing nearly every other competitor.
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