Work record / Stories

Walking away from a deal that kept changing its own numbers

A funding request for a cannabis build-out shrank in cost and nearly doubled in revenue within four days.

Brian Fracasse, an architect I have known for years, passed along a request to help finance finishing a cannabis cultivation facility in Phoenix. My team went through the itemized ask and the numbers would not hold still. Costs shrank as they got more specific, while projected cultivation revenue for that same building almost doubled over four days.

I said no to funding it. To protect my relationship with Fracasse, I sent the decline personally and did not go silent or hand it off. I attached one condition to any second look: an independent third party must verify the building's real condition in person, with no reliance on the sponsor's own numbers.

The packet read like an overdue accounts-payable file wearing a completion budget, with vendor invoices unpaid since May, and the ask's figures changing each time anyone wrote them down. The property was also on the market while capital was being raised to finish it, which alone weakens a completion story. The Fracasse relationship also brings other live, valuable work to LIEF. Being an honest broker protected that channel, which neither a quiet no nor a soft yes would have done.

The decline went out on 2026-07-26. A data room that had been started for the deal was stopped before it deployed. Fracasse and I kept working together on other projects.

If every number gets smaller as you look closer, and the one that should shrink instead doubles, the deal is showing you what it is. Nobody set out to lie. Incentives pushed the numbers around. I built the decline to protect the friendship and the referral channel, beyond simply saying no.

Story details

All stories · Work record