About Scott

Scott Foster is the founder and CEO of JJ Scott, a strain-specific cannabis beverage brand made from solventless hash rosin, and a partner at Foster's Extreme Clean, his family's Ohio cleaning company. A former professional baseball player, he moved through real estate, medical-software sales, and commercial real estate before a cash-flow crunch pushed his team into cannabis extraction in 2017. JJ Scott is named for cultivators John Casale and Jason Gelman of California's Emerald Triangle.

What we talked about

From baseball to bartending to cannabis — How a pro athlete's need for autonomy led through real estate and medical-software sales into a cannabis extraction business almost by accident.

Why cannabis beverages bridge two worlds — Scott's case for THC drinks as the middle ground between avid smokers and social drinkers who don't want the smoke, the hangover, or the blackout.

Marketing a product you can't advertise — How JJ Scott gets its story out through competitions, podcasts, and word of mouth when one wrong Instagram post can get the account banned.

The four pillars of a product business — Scott's framework: great product, great brand, availability, and relentless follow-up with customers.

Finding the right partners — Why he asks the best people in an industry not for one recommendation, but for their top three — then vets each personally.

Betting on what happens after November — His read on legalization, the black market, and why he thinks the alcohol industry is already worried.

Sharpest moments

On the moment cannabis stopped being a red flag for him:

It really opened my eyes like, wow, maybe we got bamboozled a little bit, this is pretty cool plant.

On weathering setbacks as a founder:

You gotta be more like a palm tree. When the winds hit, instead of an oak, because if you're an oak and you're sturdy and you're strong and you're stubborn, you're gonna break.

On cutting a team member who didn't fit:

It takes one bad egg to scramble an entire company. So you got to make sure you get rid of that quickly.

On staying in control of the business:

You don't cater to your investors, you shouldn't. And if you do, kind of selling out, in my opinion.

Key takeaways

• JJ Scott is a strain-specific cannabis elixir made purely from solventless hash rosin, named after cultivators John Casale and Jason Gelman of the Emerald Triangle.
• Scott's core marketing thesis: cannabis brands can't run paid social ads, so competitions, podcasts, and word of mouth carry the story instead.
• His four pillars for a product business: great product, great brand, availability, and consistent follow-up with customers.
• When recruiting specialists (manufacturing, formulation, emulsification), he asks each expert for their top three recommendations rather than settling for one name.
• He expects post-November regulatory changes to push hemp-derived beverages toward dispensary channels, splitting low- and high-dose rosin beverages into separate market segments.
• He sees the biggest unmet need as distribution — legal, compliant delivery straight to consumers' doors.