Aaron Mitchell
There were times when Aaron Mitchell thought he’d made a huge mistake. Two years ago, he and his future wife, Rosa, would lie awake at night on the floor of a laundromat they had retrofitted as the first La Mota medical dispensary.
Mitchell had already taken a sizeable loan to finance a beachfront hotel in Florida, which, at the time, he thought he would run for the rest his life. Instead, he left the hotel business and the East Coast for a shot at owning a marijuana retail store in Oregon.
“We used every single penny we had,” Mitchell says. “Rosa and I both had fairly nice cars that were both paid off. We sold them. I bought a RAV-4 that cost $500 and you had to secure the hood down with drywall screws.”
Many sleepless nights weren’t spent in vain, though, as La Mota has become one of the fastest-growing cannabis companies in Oregon. Even after making their first million, Mitchell and his wife avoided unnecessary expenses to reinvest everything they could back into real estate and the company.
“I have 15 (stores) and I already purchased six more buildings,” Mitchell says. “We have six more that we are building out right now.”
Mitchell admits he is still “nerding out” over the success La Mota has had in its two short years. And after paying off the loan for his former hotel, Mitchell is setting his sights on a new goal.
“I’m aiming to have the most retail stores in the world,” he says. “And I want to have that title for a while.”