I'd like to say that he sounds like an utter ass hat. I to had a "friend" that wanted to grow, I even let him borrow a 400w to get going, and gave him a clone. Couple weeks before I gave him some advise told him what to buy, and "to start doing as much reading as you can". He did none of those things, dropped and dented up my light, and killed the clone. He then proceeded to grow bagseed VERY POORLY, and try to pass it off as my product I had gave him that he couldn't then pay for. I havn't talked to him more then once since.
I would also like to add that the idea of growing out massive trees is not a bad idea in any way. If you have 10k watts you could even get a nice perpetual thing going with like 1-2 bushes a month or every other month. The biggest key would be the veg time, and the amount operation space you would need to do all that would be large. The pay out at the end would also be large. You can definitely get over 1lb per bush. However if your buddy is wanting to use "hydro tables" bushes are not the way to go. If your gonna grow bushes you'd be far better off with a large DWC, or even a bucket ebb and flow system. You could easily use smart pots and coco, I just read a thread the other day with a guy doing exactly that and I believe he was pulling about or over 2lb per plant, 5 plants, 4k watts hanging vertically. If I can find the thread I'll come back and link it for you. Now all that aside, that operation would definitely be a full time job, and I would really think it would be tough to do alone, if not impossible to do right alone.