Coss Marte, after serving a seven-year prison sentence for drug possession, has turned his life around and become a successful cannabis entrepreneur. He is the founder of Conbud, one of the first fully-licensed recreational cannabis businesses in Manhattan, and expects to generate $12 million in revenue this year.
In 2009, a drug conviction landed Coss Marte a seven-year prison sentence. This year, Marte expects to bring in as much as $12 million selling cannabis legally. Marte, 39, is the founder and CEO of Conbud, one of the first businesses fully-licensed to sell recreational cannabis in Manhattan, and the first in the city's Lower East Side.
After first opening its doors in Marte's business currently brings in roughly $800,000 in sales per month, including nearly $100,000 in profit, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. Marte projects a final tally of roughly $7 million for 2024, he says. After being granted an early release from prison in 2013, Marte launched a fitness business called Conbody, based on his workout regimen from behind bars. Then, in 2021, New YorkA year later, the state announced that entrepreneurs with past marijuana convictions would be eligible to receive the first licenses for selling recreational weed. Given his experience running Conbody and the requirements laid out by the state for retail licensees, Marte saw a golden business opportunity, he says. He saved 70% of his income to retire at 34—why he's no longer ‘hyper-frugal': I ‘got into deprivation' and wasn't happy 'I was following this law, and what they required was two years of a net profitable business and a conviction on your record,' says Marte.'Now, how many people have that to qualify for a cannabis license? Not many.' Marte grew up on the Lower East Side, surrounded by an illicit drug trade that ensnared him at age 13, after he saw other teens making money that way, he says. 'When I was a kid, people would ask me: 'What do you want to be when you grow up?' And I would say: 'I want to be rich,'' says Marte.'The first opportunity was through the world of drugs. So I started dealing weed.' In prison, doctors told Marte that he was overweight with dangerously high cholesterol. He started working out intensely, using body-weight exercises that he could do in his cel
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