I Dropped Out of High School and College and Still Became a CEO

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Aaron Nosbisch, founder and CEO of BRĒZ. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I started my first company when I was 13. That’s also when I smoked pot for the first time, and fell in love with cannabis. The two milestones weren’t related, although both have shaped my life.

My business back then was selling T-shirts. It was the early days of graphic design, and I sold my shirts on MySpace. Physically, I was in a small Midwestern town in Illinois, but being online gave me access to the whole world. The Midwest instilled great values in me, and the internet allowed me to break out of the small-town mindset. I was a big-time entrepreneur, if only in my head.

That was great for my business acumen, but it made it hard to relate to my peers. When I could make friends, it was with the misfits. I ran with a rebellious crowd — the wrong crowd, according to my parents. After my freshman year, I dropped out of traditional high school, instead choosing online schooling. This was back in the early 2000, so my parents weren’t thrilled. Eventually, I convinced my dad, and he helped get my mom on board.

I was nontraditional, but still felt I should try college

I did well with online schooling and graduated a semester early with a great GPA. But that was more because I was creative and crafty than due to my study habits. Once, I hired a tutoring company to help me check my answers — or so I said. Really, I was letting them do the work for me.

At every chance, I went against the grain. I wasn’t interested in fitting into the path that everyone else was on. I figured the outsize returns must be outside that well-trodden path.

Still, I couldn’t let go of the idea of college. My parents raised me to believe college was the key to success, and not going was never an option. I was learning all I needed to online, but I still wanted the traditional college experience and to make my parents happy, so I enrolled.

I dropped out and got married young

None of my classes taught me skills I needed for business success, like social media advertising or influencer marketing. Yet college did offer one huge payoff: it’s where I met my wife, Skye.

By my second year, Skye was encouraging me to drop out. She pointed out that I was already doing what I was going to college for. I had a social media marketing agency and was making money. I realized she was right: I didn’t enjoy school, and didn’t value what I was learning in classes.

Convincing my parents that it was OK to drop out took some work — so did convincing them that it was a good idea to marry Skye when I was 20. But by that point, I had shown myself and my parents that I could thrive on an untraditional path.

I found a niche in cannabis advertising

Leaving college was one of the best decisions of my life. As I did more work in digital marketing, I saw a huge gap in the market. CBD and hemp were decriminalized in 2018, paving the way for legal use, but advertising hemp and CBD products compliantly on social media was very difficult.

I realized whoever figured out how to do that would unlock a huge market. Most people shied away from the problem because it was so complex, but I leaned into it. I founded Lucyd Media, which I still run today. It’s one of the largest cannabis advertising firms in the world.

I hated the side effects of drinking alcohol

I have always loved using cannabis. I also enjoyed alcohol, but hated the consequences it caused, from hangovers to anxiety. I believed that if cannabis were going to go mainstream in the US, it would have to be in a beverage — one that people could sip throughout the night with friends, like they do with alcohol.

I worked with a business partner to try to get just the right tonic. In 2023, we founded BRĒZ, which sells cannabis-infused beverages (and now, non-cannabis drinks, too). In 2023, we had $1.25 million in gross sales, and in 2024, that jumped to $28.9 million.

Lucyd is lucrative; that company helped me scratch the itch of feeling like I have wealth. But BRĒZ makes me feel like I’m helping humanity: fulfilling a role that I’m uniquely qualified for in giving people a healthier way to relax.

I was raised in the D.A.R.E. era and got in a lot of trouble for smoking pot. Yet I still had a vision for it, and trusted my inclination that cannabis isn’t some big, scary thing. Maybe I was a bit delusional in my belief in myself — but that’s allowed me to create something beautiful.