It Ain’t Easy Being Green: Mac Mo Green’s trek to rule over KC’s cannabis biz

Mac Mo Green During the Second Annual Major Pac Cannabis Expo. // Photo by Emahni Carr

During an average business day back in 2009, Mac Mo Green was working at Shawnee Mission Hyundai when he made a decision to redefine his lifestyle.

Involved in the music industry at the time as a member of 3Kings Royal Empire, Green and his fellow rappers got the opportunity to open at a couple of Young Jeezy’s upcoming concerts.

With the chance of a lifetime at his feet, he had to take the leap of faith, asking his boss if he could have some time off to travel to San Francisco, California.

“I’ll never ever forget this. This is literally what started me. I asked for the time off and he said, ‘I don’t care if you think you’re Randy Jackson, Michael Jackson, I need you here this weekend and you’re gonna be washing cars this weekend.’ I’ll never forget looking that man in the eye and I was like ‘What’d you say to me,’” Green says.

In utter shock that his boss not only declined his time-off request, but also committed racial discrimination in the process, Green told him ‘eff that’ and headed off for the Bay area.

In that moment back in a 2009 Hyundai dealership parking lot, Green said, “I’m never working for nobody else ever again.” And he stuck true to his statement, now paving the way for cannabis culture in the heartland.

Mac Mo Green And Techn N9ne Walking Out for a Fight. // Photo by Jeff Vee

Bay Beginnings

Touching ground in California, Green and his comrades set off on their music ventures. However, music and entertainment quickly transitioned into an entire new side of business that Green has always had a passion for: Cannabis.

With his newfound lifestyle of traveling between California and Kansas City, Green discovered himself surrounded by many tight circles, those of which were some of the earliest cannabis advocates on the front lines of California’s road to full legalization.

He quickly became involved with the cannabis industry and culture in The Bay, guided and mentored by some of the nation’s most recent pioneers. With much of the heavy-lifting already drudged by the legacy growers, Green spent much of his time soaking up as much knowledge about the political and cultural side of the plant.

“I could work and learn out there. I could fuck up. I had guys who had money and been doing it for 20 years. OGs that would show me things,” he says.

Here, he was able to see production from start to finish, how business transactions between overseas manufacturers were processed, and gained many key relationships that were pivotal to his growth.

He credits much of his success to some of his early cannabis connections such as Jungle Boys, Alien Labs, and now Bodega Boyz, as well as many more OGs in the field.

While Green enjoyed his time spent in California, there was always one thing that kept him coming back to his hometown: His daughter Mili, who was born in 2013.

But this was no worry for him, aware that legalization would eventually snake its way to the show me state, where he would come back for good. Consistently building business relationships and learning the ins and outs of the cannabis industry during his time in The Bay only made his transition to the Missouri market more straightforward.

In 2018, Green heard the shofar, as medical marijuana became legal in Missouri.

Mac Mo Green at one of his Fights. // Photo by Jeff Vee

Cultivating Culture

Today, Green is the CEO of Kansas City’s first cannabis culture company, Major Pac. Founded during the process of legalizing cannabis on a medical level in the state, he and his team are some of the contributors of spreading knowledge and awareness about the plant, in as fun a way as possible.

Together, they have helped heighten the level of awareness, education, and overall growth of cannabis culture throughout the city, largely attributable to the many cannabis-centered events that they have configured within the metro.

One of their staple events, the Major Cannabis Expo, is an annual event that Major Pac has produced in the city over the last two years. Last year was Green and Major Pac’s first go at a cannabis expo since recreational use of marijuana was legalized.

While the event consisted of a great group of vendors and figures within the Kansas City cannabis scene, Juicy J—the event’s headlining performer—did not appear, and the number of attendees was lower than Green and his team would have hoped for.

“We sat back and we grew. We said ‘okay what happened guys? What can we control?’ Because there’s things you can control and there’s things you can’t,” Green says. “We can’t control Juicy. We paid, we did what we were supposed to do. But what’s good now? He owes us a show.”

Green is far from halting the traction that his company and team have gained as the year gets underway. He is hopeful that evolving the cannabis expo will only make it bigger and better than before, and it all starts with timing.

The first annual Major Cannabis Expo was held in March of 2022. The second in September of last year. This year’s expo will be held in mid July. Green believes that he has an untapped market in the age range of 18 to 24 because many have been away at college during the times that the previous two expos took place.

This year’s third annual Major Cannabis Expo will be held at the College Basketball Experience, zoning closer in on the aspect of sports and cannabis, rather than the entertainment route that they took last year.

“That’s our focus for the expo this year is bringing a lot of big name athletes, focusing on the athletic aspect of destigmatizing cannabis.”

Appearances from different athletes, such as former 18-year NBA player Al Harrington, are aimed to bring more people to the event. He is hopeful that the change of scenery and evolution of the expo as a whole will bring back previous vendors, while also reeling in new ones.

“What if I can turn your booth fully interactive? Now there’s a pop-a-shot game attached to your booth. So you’ve got people standing in line wanting to play this game, but while they’re standing in line, you can educate them on your brand,” he says.

Looking even further down the line to future cannabis expos in the city, Green says that each year, there will be a different focal point that he will drive at the event.

“The expo and the brand is built on sports, health, business, and entertainment. For the next couple years, our plan is to highlight each one of those aspects. Last year, we did entertainment. This year we’re gonna go super big on sports. Next year we’re gonna go big on health. Keep evolving and that keeps bringing different people into our group,” Green says.

Mac Mo Green during a Fight. // Photo By Chuck Williams

Weighing In

Business does not stop when Green puts down the phone for a pipe or turns the screen off for a spliff. It’s just a quick break before he finds himself amongst one of his other life-engulfing passions: Mixed martial arts.

Back in 2013—when Green was still heavily in the music scene—he had just finished performing a show at The Riot Room when a friend of his congratulated him on the presentation, followed by ‘you need to get back in the gym.’

He then started hitting the gym, but this time, not to merely build his physique. Rather to compete in mixed martial arts competitions. A few years later, in 2016, Green had his first amateur fight at VooDoo Lounge at Harrah’s Kansas City.

A posse of Green’s closest companions ready to cheer him on to victory as he stepped into the octagon showed up to the venue, only to witness Green take a heartbreaking defeat in his first bout.

Nonetheless, it was going to take much more than one loss to send him home packing. He continued down the path of being an MMA fighter for, now, a decade, as he has gone 9-1 in all of his amateur bouts, and 2-1 in his professional MMA matches.

He went undefeated up until last June, when he took a critical loss that made one of his biggest critics question his future. That, of course, is his daughter Mili.

“My daughter Mili says daddy’s retired, but I don’t know if I’m hanging them completely up. But right now, being a professional athlete is not the focus. The amount of time and energy one must dedicate in that lane to be great, I just don’t have right now,” Green says.

The balancing act between being an MMA fighter and the day to day can be incredibly stressful, especially being the CEO of a recently founded business.

“I don’t know if people understand what it takes to be a professional athlete of any stand. What that fighter’s going through, the mental fight is everything,” he says. “That guy just cut 20 pounds, his girlfriend might have left him, this fight could be for his rent.”

During his rise in the MMA scene, Green said that his days consisted of strenuous amounts of training and working out.

“I’d be in the gym six, seven, eight, even ten hours a day. When you go to work, what’s a full-time job? Eight hours. So I can’t spend less than eight hours of time in the gym a day if I’m calling myself professional.”

Major Pac Team at the Second Annual Major Cannabis Expo. // Photo By Emahni Carr

A Flower Family

It’s easy to raise the question of how he gets work done when he is training for fights, raising his daughter, and if he has any leisure time at all. Well his answer to that would be his team.

Whenever Green is out maneuvering a different avenue of life, outside of Major Pac, his tight-knit group of individuals that he holds near his heart handle the day-to-day. Keeping it short, sweet, and hard to beat, he says, “How do I do it? Those guys.”

2024 will be yet another test of Green’s perseverance and determination, as he has since founded Major Media Marketing—separate from Major Pac, while keeping the same team—in order to branch out to other forms of marketing outside of just cannabis.

“We’ve taken all of our knowledge from our years of doing this expo, all our years of throwing shows and everything we’ve been a part of, and turned it into a real marketing firm for the city,” Green says.

This is yet another beginning for Green, as he takes himself out of the cannabis culture box and places himself in the realm of all that multi-media marketing has to offer.

“I can work with anybody. I can go work with Verts, I can go work with Illicit, I can go work with Vertical,” he says. “That’s why I have the relationship I do with the community. I’m not trying to fight, I want to put all y’all on. When I leave Kansas City, I rep all of y’all. I am KC. I’m the king of cannabis in KC.”

But don’t think that this is the end of his reign as “cannabis king” because Major Pac has plenty of events and shows that they are involved in as this year continues to unfold. On top of the third annual expo, he and his team will also be involved in/putting on 311’s concert at Grinder’s KC on 4/20, cannabis events at the Lake of the Ozarks, as well as conferences amongst political figures and cannabis figures in the near future.

“Growth is real, and I’m not afraid to grow. Anybody that knows me, knows that I will put it on the line and my team will put it on the line.”