If you’ve ordered from Lucky Elk, you’ve probably seen the card. We include one in every order—a small piece of hemp paper with a 15% off code on one side and the Principles of a Lucky Elk on the other.
The discount only works once per customer, so if you’re a regular, you might wonder why we keep sending them.
One reason is simple: give it to a friend. If you’ve already used the discount, pass it along to someone who hasn’t. That happens to fit pretty well with our second principle: Give more than you take.
But there are other reasons we keep putting these cards in every box.
The Principles
There are four:
Always choose the best grass.
Life is short. Why settle for less?
Give more than you take.
Leave every field greener than you found it.
Respect the herd.
Think for yourself. Elevate others.
Rise to the challenge.
Find your passion. Persevere. Be your highest elk.
They’re meant to be fun. But they’re also sincere.
Lucky Elk started as a small vegetable farm in Southern Oregon. We eventually started growing medical cannabis, then hemp, and over time Lucky Elk grew into something much bigger than I ever expected.
I remember when two or three orders in a day was exciting. Years later, we found ourselves packing 200 or 300 orders a day.
There was never a master plan to build a national cannabis brand. We were farmers. We liked growing good weed. We met other farmers who were doing exceptional work, and we wanted more people to experience what they were growing.
As Lucky Elk grew, these four principles became a simple way of putting into words some of the things we valued along the way.
Always Choose the Best Grass
This one is the most obvious.
We’re picky about weed.
There are easier ways to buy and sell cannabis than working with small farms, chasing particular harvests, searching through different phenotypes, and passing on flower that isn’t quite where we want it to be. But finding something exceptional is still one of my favorite parts of this business.
And the longer I’ve done this, the more I’ve come to appreciate how many little things have to go right.
The genetics. The farmer. The soil. The season. The harvest. The dry. The cure.
You can see and smell the care that went into great flower.
So: Always choose the best grass. Life is short. Why settle for less?
There’s more to that idea than weed, but we’ll get into that later.
Give More Than You Take
This one came naturally from farming.
If you work the same piece of land long enough, you start thinking about what you’re leaving behind. The goal shouldn’t be to pull everything you can out of a field and move on. You want healthier soil, healthier plants, and a farm that can keep producing long after the current crop is gone.
Leave every field greener than you found it.
I think the same idea applies to business, relationships, and communities.
It even applies to the little card in your order. If the discount isn’t useful to you anymore, give it to somebody who can use it.
Respect the Herd
I like the tension in this one.
Think for yourself. Elevate others.
A herd matters. So does the individual.
Lucky Elk wouldn’t exist without our farmers, employees, customers, friends, and all the people who have helped us along the way. At the same time, some of the best decisions I’ve made have required being willing to do something differently, question the conventional wisdom, or follow an idea that other people didn’t immediately understand.
Respecting the herd doesn’t mean following it blindly.
Think for yourself. Help the people around you. Both can be true.
Rise to the Challenge
Farming teaches you pretty quickly that things aren’t always going to go according to plan.
Neither does business.
We’ve had failed crops, difficult seasons, changing laws, shipping problems, regulatory headaches, and plenty of ideas that seemed much better before we tried them.
But we’ve also had an incredible time building Lucky Elk.
Find your passion. Persevere. Be your highest elk.
Of the four principles, this may be the one that has changed in meaning the most for me over the years. I want to spend more time on that in its own story.
One More Use for the Card
There’s another reason I personally like these cards.
They make excellent joint filters.
I constantly see people tear a piece of paper from whatever happens to be nearby when they need a filter—a magazine, cigarette pack, receipt, or some random piece of packaging.
I’d rather not do that. Everyday paper products can contain coatings, dyes, adhesives, laminates, and other treatments. Our cards are intentionally simple: natural hemp paper printed with the same type of ink used for newspapers.
The weight and texture also happen to make a great filter.
Choose Your Principle
Somewhere along the way, using the card as a filter turned into a little ritual for me.
Before I roll a joint, I look at the card and choose one of the four principles. I tear out that section and roll it into my filter.
Which one I choose depends on the day.
Sometimes there’s something difficult ahead of me and I choose Rise to the challenge.
Sometimes I need the reminder to Give more than you take.
Sometimes Respect the herd feels particularly relevant.
And sometimes I just have some really beautiful flower in front of me.
Always choose the best grass.
I roll the joint, take a moment to set my intention, and light it.
It’s a small thing, but I’ve grown to really enjoy it.
So if you’re a longtime customer and another Lucky Elk card shows up in your next order, now you know why we keep sending them.
Use the discount if you haven’t already. Give it to a friend if you have. Keep the principles around if they mean something to you. Or pick one, roll it up, and take it with you.
Over the next few weeks, I’m going to dig a little deeper into each of the four principles and the stories behind them.
Choose your principle. Set your intention. Light up.
— Tucker
Founder, Lucky Elk
