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Episode 4 | Charlie McKenzie
54 Plays1 year ago
Charlie McKenzie is the Sr. Director of Cultivation Operations at Left Coast Holdings in Manistee, Michigan. Before moving to Michigan, Charlie owned and operated CropWalk, an integrated pest management consultancy.
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Transcript
00:00:03
Speaker
Oh.
Reuniting with Charlie McKenzie: Agriculture and Cannabis Excitement
00:00:38
Speaker
Welcome to another episode of the Ag Show Podcast. I am your host, Johan AKA Doc Buck. Joining me today is a special guest, someone whom I've met. Oh gosh, maybe two, not quite, I doubt three years ago, but Charlie McKenzie. How you doing, buddy? Good, good to catch up. Excited for this. Yeah, likewise. Likewise, how are things?
00:01:06
Speaker
They are really good. I think this has probably been the most productive year that I've had in the last 10. So I'm enjoying it and most of that comes down to what I'm learning and what I'm applying after I learn it and seeing the fruits of our labor. Yeah, productive in just overall career productivity.
00:01:31
Speaker
Yeah, I would say so. I mean, I think in terms of the different things that I've learned and that can be applied across different cropping systems outside of cannabis and just small business or business leadership, I think those things have been pretty impactful for me and skill sets that I'm trying to add to. So for me, like I measure
00:01:59
Speaker
At least nowadays, I'm measuring my success with the amount of growing I do, whether that's on the farm or personally and professionally.
Balancing Work and Family Life: Establishing Habits
00:02:08
Speaker
And so I think I did a hell of a lot of growing on the farm and same personally and professionally this year. So far, so good. Well, 2022 was great. 2023, who knows what that's going to look like.
00:02:23
Speaker
What were some of the growth points for you, personal growth points in 2022? Some examples? I think I established some habits that were really, really conducive to
00:02:37
Speaker
being a holistic family man and grower and leader. So it seems like sometimes in my past I've seen folks that, you know, I considered as mentors or I wanted to emulate that
00:02:55
Speaker
Maybe the balance between work and family wasn't quite there or they voice their concerns of like oh you know i wish i would have spent more time with my kids when when they were young or you know just these types of things i think some of the things that have been really important to me is writing a note or.
00:03:15
Speaker
Like recording a voice message is what I'm doing now to my two kids and my wife every morning before I leave for work. And then I get the chance to pick them up and take them to school and then go back to the farm because the farm so close to town gives me that ability to go into work at like six and get a bunch done and then leave to go take the kids and then come back, get some more work done. So I think just habits and getting into those habits and seeing them
00:03:46
Speaker
like flourish and what they create and the results they bring is kind of an unlock for me. So I'm doubling down on that. And I think it coincides with some of the stuff we're doing as a company to get better individually, but get better overall as a team, like the book club we have. So yeah, man, that's some of the growth in the past year.
00:04:15
Speaker
I love that book club. What I love even more is what you mentioned, the personalized notes and that balance. That is something I think parents, I certainly know I've been challenged with that over the years. Like, oh, gung-ho, I want to succeed and I just want to do this and go there and say yes to everything. At the same time, I don't know if I ever slipped away from the family focus. There were certainly times where it was a lot of travel.
00:04:43
Speaker
just that this maybe not calling, but over the past few years, and maybe one of the silver linings to the pandemic was being afforded the opportunity
Impact of the Pandemic: Shift to Home-based Work
00:04:53
Speaker
to work at home. Not that I was a stranger to working at home, but being home more often. And now both of our kids are remote learning and my wife's stay at home. I don't travel as much. I think that'll probably change in 2023, but it's those little moments too, because
00:05:10
Speaker
those little beings, they need you and they grow up really fast. You can't just get those recitals back. You can't get those brief little conversations or tidbits of wisdom that you are providing to your kids or that your kids are giving to you. Just those special moments. You can't get them back. So kudos to you.
00:05:31
Speaker
Yeah, it's going to continue to be a focus. I mean, I think it's easy during harvest season or peak time to kind of shut down and do nothing but make sure the crop is taken care of. I think that's one of my resolutions for 2023. I was talking about it with someone on our team that
00:05:48
Speaker
in the month of late September, all of October and November before Thanksgiving if I can continue all the habits that I've had pretty consistently and that I'm building now until then.
00:06:03
Speaker
If I can continue it through that time where it's really, really strenuous and stressful, then I think that's the ultimate win because that's showing the discipline that I need to over time see the results that I want.
00:06:19
Speaker
Yeah. And being present, because like you mentioned, in your situation, you have those really busy times where you're going to have to be away. Even if you're at home, you're kind of away. You're thinking, oh my gosh, are we getting things harvested? How are things going? So in those times where you're not busy, be present. And that's one thing I'll tell you. I check myself quite a bit. I'll find myself standing there listening to,
00:06:49
Speaker
Anyone in the household or having a conversation in my mind starts drifting towards work and the next thing I'm like, well, nope, be present because are you present when in my situation, right? You're talking to somebody like you or a customer or a client, you're giving them 100% of your attention. You got to do the same thing for your family. That's good. Let's back up a little bit before we get into what you're doing now. For those that don't know you and
00:07:14
Speaker
We're acquainted, but I don't know you all that well either.
Charlie's Horticultural Journey: From Georgia to Greenhouses
00:07:17
Speaker
Let's back up and who is Charlie McKenzie? Where'd you grow up, man? Let's take us back to the early years. I grew up in Georgia. I spent all of my time from the time I was born until I graduated college in Georgia. I spent six months of that time in college out doing an internship in Colorado.
00:07:42
Speaker
But other than that, born and raised in Georgia and went to the University of Georgia. Didn't originally want to study anything related to plants necessarily, mostly biology and chemistry. That changed when I took a greenhouse management course and realized that I could take care of plants and sell them and make money for my family. It was kind of like this full circle thing because I really enjoyed taking care of plants.
00:08:10
Speaker
I'd done a lot of landscaping as a kid, had my own small business, did a lot of management and manicuring of sports fields and things like that in high school as a job. So I kind of had that.
00:08:26
Speaker
management green thumb and from there, you know, fell in love with the greenhouse business or ornamental flowers, specifically the kind, you know, bedding plants that you'd buy at Home Depot or Costco or Lowe's, places like that. So that was the foray into growing and what I was going to, you know, do from then on out and since then.
00:08:55
Speaker
been growing. I've been a technical salesperson. I've been a small business owner. And now I'm a director of cultivation here in Manistee for a vertically integrated recreational and medical cannabis company.
Transition to Cannabis Cultivation and Pest Management
00:09:15
Speaker
So how did you make that transition from ornamentals to your IPM background? Because I think a lot of people know you for start clean, stay clean.
00:09:25
Speaker
I picked up Start Clean Stay Clean actually when I was an ornamental grower from a magazine. I want to say it was DRAM when DRAM was doing water, when they first started doing water treatment. I think Kurt Becker and I were talking about it one day and I was reminiscing on, I think I caught it from him back in the day. But from an IPM standpoint, like how I made that transition,
00:09:53
Speaker
As an ornamental grower, I was struggling with a couple of different pests. One was two spotted spider mite down in New Mexico. It's so dry down there that when you get two spotted spider mite, it's difficult to contain. You know, a lot of the predators that you use don't like how dry it is in the greenhouse, especially the greenhouse we were growing in. And we weren't modifying the humidity.
00:10:16
Speaker
It was something that I struggled with and I needed a solution for. I started working with a company called Biobest. I had a technical advisor that came out and visited me in the desert middle of nowhere in New Mexico. He kind of got me hooked.
00:10:37
Speaker
He held my hand the whole way through my first crop of using beneficial insects. And, uh, I was doing it on a pretty large scale to start with. Cause we had a 20 acre greenhouse, uh, down there in New Mexico that I was managing. And we transitioned in one, uh, one year from like probably.
00:10:56
Speaker
85, 90% harsh pesticide use down to like 5% total pesticide use. And a lot of other products were biorational or beneficial insect for controlling pests and pathogens. And that transition taught me just like a crazy amount in a really condensed time.
00:11:22
Speaker
I was at the same time a medical cannabis patient in New Mexico and was growing cannabis at home and struggling with different things that I was bringing home from the greenhouse probably at that time now looking back and so I started tooling around and I met a fella out in
00:11:45
Speaker
Gallup, Gallup, New Mexico, it was called Red Barn Growers. A guy named Coy had a small medical cannabis operation, one of the first in New Mexico back when they opened up and he was struggling with a lot of different pests. And so I would drive out to Gallup
00:12:05
Speaker
after work from where I was at in Nastancia, which is like a three, three and a half hour drive and spend, you know, three or four hours with that team out there in the evening, trying to teach them what I was learning. And, you know, it was as much of like, hey, I'm a, I'm a,
00:12:22
Speaker
grower, I'm a consultant in a way, but like, I'm only a chapter ahead of you. It's not like I'm, I'm light years ahead of you. And I know all of these things. I'm a couple chapters maybe at the most ahead of you. And I'm just trying to share what I'm learning in real time and give you what I can give you because you know,
00:12:40
Speaker
I hadn't messed around with beneficial insects and cannabis at scale, but I knew how to grow commercial crops and I saw success with beneficial insects in the ornamentals. So that's kind of how it started with IPM services and helping others and me working in integrated pest management. And I kind of transitioned after that to
00:13:03
Speaker
managing a cannabis operation that was focused on hemp, CBD cannabis. And that was in Colorado working for the same business that had the ornamentals down in New Mexico and in Colorado. So it was a multi-generational ornamental business that decided to get into CBD cannabis. Hemp, I guess, is what it was called at the time. To me, it's all the same.
00:13:30
Speaker
It's just low THC or high THC or all of the two combined in different ratios. I'm glad you said that. I've talked to somebody before and it's like, no, it's hemp. I'm like cannabis. Let's just differentiate the THC.
00:13:46
Speaker
Yeah, it's also the same plan. Yeah, all the same plan. There's just different, you know, people have bred for different reasons and we have different outputs. And I've grown a lot of different types of cannabis at this point and seen a lot of similarities and a few differences, but there are definitely differences. And like,
00:14:09
Speaker
So that experience in starting up that kind of helping that business grow and applying commercial horticultural practices that I had learned in New Mexico to that cannabis business in the greenhouse and outdoors was really, really fun for me and taught me a lot. But at the same time, I think I was looking for something else in terms of like, okay, I've been
00:14:38
Speaker
working pretty much for five and a half, six years at that point, probably more on the working too much side, not balanced enough. And so like I was looking for something different and I had the chance to join BioBest USA as a technical sales specialist and go around the country and eventually
00:15:07
Speaker
you know, into Canada working with different growers in ornamentals and cannabis and leafy greens. And, you know, that was kind of the next part of the journey.
00:15:20
Speaker
your time at BioVest, did anything stand out at you? What was the craziest thing you saw or what was the most rewarding aspect of that? Did you have one instance where somebody had that aha moment with biologicals? Oh, yeah. There were a lot of people that became believers, but bug leavers, if you will. It was cool seeing people
00:15:45
Speaker
change their minds and see it work in real time and at scale. There were some folks down in Georgia, ornamental growers that I turned on to biologicals and they just like a young girl that had
00:16:00
Speaker
that was in college at the time at University of Georgia. Her dad was an owner of this greenhouse business out there and she took to it like so quickly and they crushed it that next year with biologicals and it blew my mind how fast they took it up and it was inspiring to see that. So it like made me double down
00:16:22
Speaker
even harder on helping other people. But I would say one of the most rewarding aspects was truly getting to see what it takes to get those beneficial insects, one, reared and created, and two, shipped across the world in a viable condition to get to the grower and
00:16:44
Speaker
When you, when you break down what's actually happening, it's pretty fascinating that they can get them to you at the price that they get them to you. Um, like I have to walk on the other side of the fence pretty, uh, frequently and say, Hey.
00:16:57
Speaker
The cost of goods are growing. My product is high enough. I need lower pricing on beneficial insects. But from a person who's been a part of a company, worked and saw the inside of that interworking, it's crazy how intensive it is to get those insects created and then
00:17:26
Speaker
delivered and so I have a lot of respect for those folks that they're not, it's a whole different world of growing bugs instead of growing plants. So it's folks that grow bugs that serve people that grow plants and it's wild because it's a whole niche industry in and of itself that's trying to serve another. It's really fascinating and I met a lot of really, really brilliant people
00:17:52
Speaker
and people that I'll consider friends, you know, and colleagues probably for the rest of my life if I get the chance to. So I would never take that that time back. It also informed me of ways that growers were not able to utilize those products effectively, whether it's because of lack of education, lack of tools, lack of training, like all these different these different pieces that they were lacking. And it gave me
00:18:19
Speaker
uh, insight on ways that I could help them further. And that's kind of where crop walk was born. What kind of tips would you give growers considering making that switch if they're not using a biological program or things that they need to consider when making that transition and implementing it?
Advising on Biological Pest Control in Agriculture
00:18:38
Speaker
It's, it's not an all or nothing thing. And I, and I would say that so many folks are like, Oh, I can't do that. Cause I can't do this or can't do that. It's, it's replacing one piece at a time. Like never, never have I ever been, uh, like a, you need to pull the band-aid off right now and change everything over because that that's, that's a way that you lose a crop or
00:19:02
Speaker
or financially ruin your business in that transition. And I don't, other than billionaires who are farming for tax breaks, I don't know anyone who can do that kind of thing with their operation. So to me, it's about identifying low hanging fruit and starting to work with those either pests that you can target with biologicals effectively and integrate
00:19:29
Speaker
that biological into your program that might take you tweaking some of the other things you've done in the past and used to a more light on beneficial insect type product. Not as harsh, doesn't kill as many beneficial insects when it's sprayed. It becomes as much of an integrating two different modalities than it is, you know, two different trains of thought than it is anything else. And I don't know other than people who are like,
00:19:58
Speaker
that can't, uh, spray anything for any reason. And I'm trying to think of a cropping situation that, that, that would happen. But like, even for us growing cannabis, uh, we use zero tall and, uh, you know, proxy acetic acid very regularly, uh, sanitate five, we use, uh, oxy-foss very regularly. We use mill stop. Um, you know, we use sulfur. Uh, so we've used diatomaceous earth. We use stuff that, you know,
00:20:27
Speaker
common agricultural producers will use even though we are producing one of the most highly regulated crops there is. So it's just about finding those breaks in the chain where you can start to make a small difference and over time it'll start to add up. And I think the other thing is you don't think that it's gonna cost you more money in the long run
00:20:55
Speaker
all the time. It might cost more to begin with because it's a learning curve. Like there's going to be some things that maybe you think you need that you don't need when you really break it down. Maybe you thought you needed 10 different parts to this whole system. And once you do it for two or three years, you realize that there's only four parts that you really need in that system. But to start with, you probably want to hedge your bets and have more protection
00:21:21
Speaker
than less protection so you don't have crop failure or economic damage. But be patient one step at a time and find someone that you can trust to guide you. I had that fellow, Amir, oh man, I almost pronounced his name wrong, Emil Van Der Waal, I think is his last name. He works up in Canada still. I think he works for...
00:21:46
Speaker
I'm like a supply wholesaler now. But man, did he teach me so much and gave me the confidence to try a lot of different things and feel like I wasn't going to lose the farm because of trying. So that would be my suggestion.
00:22:06
Speaker
I'm glad you brought that up because my follow-up question was going to be, okay, if you're an operation that maybe you don't have the means to have a dedicated IPM manager, how do you go about getting over that hesitation? And my thought was, find a reputable retina can help walk you through that and teach you the tools of the trade, what tools you need, how to go about scouting a crop and looking for it on your own as you gain that experience.
00:22:35
Speaker
That's it, man. I think there are two different schools of thought. You can work with someone that you pay to get the tools and tricks and information and the how-to, and they don't provide you
00:22:54
Speaker
the beneficial insects or the biological products and that would be like your advisor or your consultant. A good example of that would be Suzanne Wainwright-Evans. She's awesome when it comes to helping growers learn how to use biologicals. She doesn't sell biologicals, she suggests what products you might need to use and she has like a huge rolodex of people
00:23:20
Speaker
that she can call on when it comes to different supplies that a grower might need one of her customers might need so that's like a really good option if you want the done for you or like done with you type of of service like to really get a hold of it quick and and get this wealth of knowledge that she has you know for thirty years i think in the industry working with bugs that would be one way to approach it and
00:23:46
Speaker
I tend to lean that way because I'd rather pay to accelerate my learning and get as much as physically possible as quickly as possible. The other option is to work with a supplier who has the beneficial insects or the products and has a technical specialist or someone that has grown before and use those products that can guide you through it.
00:24:12
Speaker
When you work with someone like that, if it's from one of the big beneficial insect suppliers, you've got to realize that that business is very incestuous. And so some suppliers might be selling product to another person and supply. There's a lot of collaboration, if you will, in that industry from the top down.
00:24:39
Speaker
Suppliers are also very competitive, which is weird. So like you might be getting a bug from one supplier that's actually reared by the other supplier. So like they're selling the same bugs, right under different brand names. And so you're getting that, but they're competing with each other at the same time. So there's a lot of like, there's a lot of working through kind of the mud with finding the right supplier and the right technical specialist. If you're going to get your knowledge from one of those technical specialists, there are some fantastic
00:25:10
Speaker
technical specialists out there that work for bio best or bio B, or beneficial insectary, you know, that like, you can learn so much from with them coming out for one visit. So if you can find that one, then you've lucked out. But that's not always the case. And I can tell you that like, literally for me, the first
00:25:34
Speaker
technical specialist advisor that I had, I won't name the company that they came from, uh, that came to sell me bugs and sold me a couple of weeks worth of bugs and then kind of fell off the face of the earth and trying to help me use them. Uh, and then when I had problems with the delivery and them not coming, they didn't really give a shit. So like it, like you can strike out as well. If you try to go work with, with a certain supplier and a certain, you know, specialist or salesperson, it might not be.
00:26:05
Speaker
what you were thinking it was gonna be. So you gotta pick your poison and figure out where you stand on the DIY, you know, done with you or done for you type of service that you need.
Lessons from Running Crop Walk: Leadership and Communication
00:26:17
Speaker
And Suzanne's come, it's bug lady consulting, right? If people want to look up Suzanne, if they don't know who she is. Yeah, she's definitely look her up. And if you can get some of her bug pins, the different beneficial insects or pests that she has for putting on your shirt, it's definitely worth it. Right on.
00:26:40
Speaker
from, so yeah, back up, so Biobest, then you went to do Crop Walk, you used to do your own company, right? Holy cow, I bet you have some lessons you learned there. What was that experience like?
00:26:52
Speaker
Oh man, it was so rewarding and so much growth in the three and a half years from the time we started it to the time we sold it. I learned a lot about myself and working with business partners, things that I lacked a ton of and needed to work on, things that I'm working on now, whether that be skillsets in business or skillsets in leadership or communication,
00:27:22
Speaker
I learned a lot about growers.
00:27:25
Speaker
that I'm a grower and I'm hoping to always be a grower in some capacity, but I'm just one grower. And so I only have certain unique contextual knowledge and information based on what I've done or what I've seen or things I've worked in. So getting the chance to work with other growers and tackle some of the big problems that they had in IPM
00:27:53
Speaker
even towards the end, leadership, I think that was really, really fun for me and something that I'll never look back and definitely won't regret it, but I'll always cherish it and the relationships that I made with different growers that we worked with. It also gave me an angle
00:28:20
Speaker
that I look at or a lens, I guess, perspective that I have now that I'm using in working with other vendors as a grower again that I didn't have. And what's interesting about it is I think I expect more.
00:28:38
Speaker
out of vendors now than I did before I was a vendor because I see that there are a lot of people that claim to solve the same problems in our industry and there really are only
00:28:59
Speaker
a few that can truly holistically solve your problems for you in each little category. And so like making sure that you're not just accepting what someone says, you know, at face value is something that took me, you know, that experience definitely to learn because when growers are stuck
00:29:26
Speaker
And I've been in this position this year. When you're stuck and you're on the back of the ropes, you know, like up against him and you don't know what to do, man, you'll freaking try anything and you'll talk to anyone. So like being able to look at a vendor and ask the right questions about what they know, what experience they have and how they can truly help, I think,
00:29:55
Speaker
has been really helpful for me in kind of short cutting and getting to what I really need in terms of tools or solutions when it comes to this operation that I'm leading out here.
00:30:13
Speaker
Right on. I'm going to make a note of that one because, you know, we do some work together. I want to make sure that, that, that I live up to those expectations and the companies I represent live up to those expectations. Cause that's what, that's what counts most is. So I dig it over and making sure that you back it up. Yeah. It's, it's about like the cool thing about you, you're on is that, uh, you.
00:30:42
Speaker
have a lot of information that you share, but the thing that I cherish most is when you say you're gonna do something, you do it. And I think that that's kind of one of the things that you tend to see fall off in serving growers. Like everyone's talking a big game, like, oh, I'm gonna get you this guide and I'm gonna get you this spreadsheet tool and I'm gonna get you this and I'm, you know, as long as you do this with our product.
00:31:08
Speaker
And they, they're never bringing anything to the table other than you need to buy our product. And so, you know, I think good communication and having like something other than a sales pitch is, is the first piece and you've always had that down. So, uh, no worries, man. Yeah. I appreciate that.
00:31:28
Speaker
For me, it's connection. I mean, we're all people. We have our goals. And this is an awesome industry. I don't care if you're going cannabis or wheat or almonds or forage or tomatoes. We are blessed to work in agriculture. And then when you break it down into the business aspect of it, it's like, yeah, it's just, how do you want to be treated?
00:31:52
Speaker
The golden rule, if you will. Although I guess in sales, you would say, how do they want to be treated? And so you got to understand that, right, too. Because not everybody wants to be treated the same way you do. So understand. And just, yeah, live up to it. And at the same time, be able to take that feedback. Like, dude, if I ever fall short, check me on it. Yep.
00:32:13
Speaker
No, that's big. I think having the hard conversations is something that I also learned from the past four and a half years experience of having a crop walk and then now leading the team out here that.
00:32:30
Speaker
And I can't remember who said it. It's one of the people that I really enjoy the content they create, but I think it was the success of your day should be measured by the amount of hard conversations that you have.
00:32:46
Speaker
Um, because often the hard conversations are what drive us forward. And, and when, when you're talking about hard, hard conversations, it's not just hard conversations with others. It's hard conversations with yourself. You know, so, um, I think that that. That's a, that's a big one. And I appreciate that you take that approach you on. Thanks, man. Yeah, I agree. Hard conversations. Check yourself. Um, all right. So.
00:33:13
Speaker
You made the leap from Crock-Wock, right? You made another transition and that you've been doing something new for just over a year now, huh? Yep. Yep. And that is Senior Director of Cultivation Operations.
Cannabis Evolution: Community Integration and Perceptions
00:33:29
Speaker
Is that your title at Left Coast Holdings? Yep. Cool. Before we train, this is a good transition too, by the way. I want to back up. I want to kind of set this up.
00:33:42
Speaker
You had mentioned earlier that you were a medical cannabis patient in New Mexico. What was your mindset towards cannabis before becoming a medical patient? Was it something you had already supported or how did you make that? I think this is going to help me. And the reason why I ask is because others may be having the same questions.
00:34:10
Speaker
Of course. Yeah. So I think, uh, becoming a medical patient in New Mexico was the first time that I had the opportunity to use cannabis, uh, quote unquote medically. Right. Uh, if, if it was prescribed by a doctor. So when I was in, uh, college was when, you know, I first started really, uh, uh, experimenting with like.
00:34:35
Speaker
growing cannabis and learning what the plant looked like. Probably shouldn't have been doing that back in Georgia, but that was part of my college years, understanding the green thumb had to come out. I had consumed cannabis.
00:34:53
Speaker
before that and I would say that it wasn't something that I used consistently by any means until later into my college career and as I started to transition into work full-time and what I had found was I had
00:35:13
Speaker
injured my back in college and you know, it was due to a lot of different things. Lifestyle changed from high school to college and the different activities that I was doing and I ended up injuring my back and you know, the doctors really didn't have much for me other than painkillers and muscle relaxers and steroids and anti-inflammatories and
00:35:38
Speaker
Whether we want to admit it or not, those things might help us for a bit, but they typically don't help long term. And so, um, you know, I think I was on the hamster wheel for a little while with different prescription, uh, pharmaceuticals trying to like figure out.
00:35:53
Speaker
what was going on with my back. And in the end, the two things that really helped me were cannabis because I was able to not have all these side effects and feel out of sorts from the pharmaceuticals. And number two was yoga.
00:36:12
Speaker
Like I figured out how to strengthen my core and my lower back through stretching and exercise. And so, what's cool about cannabis is it tends to also allow me to get into a state of mind that allows for that kind of focus on something like yoga. So they do have some synergistic characteristics there. I think,
00:36:40
Speaker
When I became a medical patient in Colorado or in New Mexico first and then subsequently Colorado, I think at that time it was still
00:36:50
Speaker
Coming from Georgia, I didn't really tell a lot of people that I was a medical patient, especially because I was the general manager of a 20-acre greenhouse facility and had 70 employees at certain parts of the year. So it wasn't as acceptable as it is now in being recreational in the different states. I think it's changed quite a bit just in that amount of time.
00:37:20
Speaker
The great example is the company that I work for here in Manistee, we're pretty...
00:37:29
Speaker
integrated into the community in the sense that we're at all of the parades, we sponsor sports teams, we do beach cleanups and highway cleanups. There's a lot of participation in our community and we're proud that we are cannabis farmers and agriculturalists and that this is our lifestyle and our livelihood.
00:37:56
Speaker
And our community supports it as well. And so like, even just the time from when I was a medical patient in New Mexico to now, there's a lot of change that's gone on and I think acceptance. I mean, a great example is one of the largest
00:38:15
Speaker
fruit farmers, apples, cherries. He also does asparagus, things like that. In the county, his son, who was part of that farming family, is our extractor and does all of the distillate and live resin extractions here in Manistee on our farm. He was growing hemp for a few years and then he got into the lab and started working in the lab and then it transitioned to cannabis.
00:38:45
Speaker
You know that's that is the evolution of that agricultural family and that's a that's a five or six generation i think agricultural family and they are proud to say that cannabis is one of the crops.
00:39:01
Speaker
that they grow. It's not the crop they grow, and that's the way I feel about myself and my career. Cannabis is the current crop, and I will hopefully always get a chance to grow cannabis, but I definitely foresee myself growing other crops in the future alongside cannabis, and I feel like everyone should have a chance to grow as many crops as they can.
00:39:25
Speaker
Yeah, diversify your ag enterprise. Yeah. Well, that's cool, man, that you're involved in the community that way because that's kind of, I mean, that's great. And the community supports your support, I take it. Yeah, absolutely. That's one of the things that I want to accomplish with the trade show, with the podcast is kind of educating or having my guests educate
00:39:56
Speaker
listeners that may not understand cannabis. It's not all reefer madness. We can go back and how that came about and why we have this, you know, not everybody that consumes cannabis is a hippie. And look, any, any psychoactive compound can be abused. It does anything, you know, cough syrup can be abused. And so it's,
00:40:21
Speaker
folks like yourself and others in the industry that are professionalizing it and helping others realize that it's not all crazy, weird, it's not bad. Take away some of that taboo opinions towards cannabis. So I do want to transition into your work at Left Coast Holdings.
00:40:47
Speaker
So you moved from Georgia to Michigan. Now you're working with this company. It sounds like, I mean, you made
Outdoor Cannabis Cultivation: Benefits and Challenges
00:40:58
Speaker
that move. What's that been like in this last year? What have you learned? Because you grow outdoors primarily, right?
00:41:05
Speaker
Yeah, so we've got 12 acres of outdoor crop that we grew this past year and we'll do the same, if not a little bit more this coming year. And then we have a 3,000 square foot greenhouse. We're going to expand that to 6,000 square feet this coming season in early spring. And then we've got about
00:41:27
Speaker
800 square feet of canopy of indoor cultivation for flowering and we just took over another building on our site and that is serving as our
00:41:42
Speaker
uh, indoor mother stock and propagation hub for the farm and for other customers. Uh, so I would say the transition has been awesome. It's been like the town we live in where, you know, I think the house, the house that we live in is.
00:42:00
Speaker
three quarters of a mile away from Lake Michigan. We get crazy big snow storms. There's skiing 30 minutes away from the house. So there's a lot of outdoors activities that the family's really into hiking. We've been hiking along the M22.
00:42:19
Speaker
We have this book that gives us a hike that we go on every Sunday. That piece of this transition is exactly what I needed. After selling the business, I needed a reset and a refocus. I think the balance that I've gotten up here has been fantastic. When I'm at work, it gives
00:42:41
Speaker
Like the work that I'm doing and the team that I'm working with give me the opportunity to really express the skill sets that I have, but also grow into new ones. And I think that that's really rewarding for me. And so, you know, the last thing I say is it's been a cold transition, just a lot colder up here. Yeah.
00:43:02
Speaker
Right now and in the growing season, man, we had like five or six days during the growing season that were below freezing. Yeah, it was crazy. What was the driving force behind predominant outdoor production? You said 12 acres and I think you're adding anymore. Was it cost? What were the driving factors?
00:43:27
Speaker
Yeah, we have a processor on site that does extraction and manufacturing. We have some really good machinery for creating THC distillate. We also have the ability to create live resin.
00:43:48
Speaker
THC and terpenes extracted from wet cannabis biomass that's frozen and then extracted.
00:43:58
Speaker
really was the driving force behind doing as much outdoors originally. Because if you want to feed those machines and have them constantly humming and even have a couple of shifts going per day, you're going to need a lot of input material. And so being able to get that much material and do it at that cost, which is typically
00:44:28
Speaker
I would say depending on who you are and what kind of facility you have and who you're working with as vendors, it could be anywhere from 3 to 15 times less expensive than growing indoors or greenhouse. You're not going to get quite the same output across all the different types of growing environments, but for us, we found that growing outdoors seems to be the most profitable given the
00:44:55
Speaker
wholesaling that we do and the kind of contracts we're fulfilling there. Now, all that being said, we have an indoor facility that is probably two, three months away from being licensed. And that's a larger footprint for us to produce more of the premium quality offering
00:45:16
Speaker
in the cannabis market here in Michigan. We're approaching it different ways. I personally love outdoor cannabis growing for a few different reasons. I think that the cannabis that you grow outdoors in the sun has different terpene profiles and cannabinoid profiles, making it sometimes more
00:45:39
Speaker
attractive and applicable for your broader range of consumers. I know folks that won't consume indoor cannabis because typically the THC levels are so high and the intoxicating effects they get from them or medicinal effects are not what they're looking for. Whereas if they were to ingest sun grown outdoor cannabis, they tend to have a better experience.
00:46:07
Speaker
We went really, really heavy this past season into testing and trialing, growing for outdoor smokable flower, so harvesting and drying it to that precise water activity level and then getting it trimmed and
00:46:25
Speaker
and cared for in a way that can be presented to a consumer so they can they can smoke that flower in it in that state and so that was an endeavor because we didn't have the drive facilities quite the way we needed them to so we had to make do and you know we.
00:46:43
Speaker
We've read Excuse me redneck engineered or farmer fantastic Quite a bit this heart harvest season and got it done. But you know, I was proud of the team we Hit the metrics we had set for ourselves back in January of last year both from a yield standpoint and from a cost of doing it and I think when we talk about
00:47:08
Speaker
my main focus of 2023 is helping myself and the people that are currently on our team at least 2x our productivity as individuals. So the time that we spend on the farm is that much more impactful and productive. And really what that is is just having better habits and being more structured and disciplined throughout our day and having better intentions. And so we're tackling that right now. But as we look forward, a lot of our processes
00:47:37
Speaker
and the different pieces of our outdoor cultivation puzzle are being ripped apart and built back together so that we can lower the cost of goods, both direct costs and indirect costs. From an indirect standpoint, we've restructured the team a little bit knowing that
00:47:59
Speaker
this past season, I took on the role of both director of cultivation, but also general manager of that property because we lost our general manager early in April. And it was our decision that we would just
00:48:13
Speaker
ride it out with the team that we had and we realized through that experience that actually we were probably stronger without having that extra link in the chain and that we got more done and it allowed us to elevate the other folks on the team to have more responsibilities and accountabilities and it made us stronger overall.
00:48:37
Speaker
I would say 2023 is the year of being lean as possible and man,
00:48:45
Speaker
I think anyone that's listening to this that doesn't work in the cannabis industry at all, you're probably thinking, wait a second. I thought cannabis was where people made money. And that was the case. It definitely was. And it still can be the case. And that's something that I'm up on a soapbox a lot about right now because coming from the ornamental business, coming from working with tobacco farmers that are transitioning into growing hemp,
00:49:13
Speaker
and helping them get set up in Virginia and North Carolina. That was part of some of the consulting I did.
Scaling the Cannabis Industry: Leadership and Adaptation
00:49:19
Speaker
These folks, albeit some of them, are not as well off as they'd like to be, but there are some very, very wealthy ornamental grower families that have done fantastic for themselves over the past, however many years it is. Some of them are young businesses, some of them are old businesses, but you know, Johan, that the ornamental industry has been
00:49:43
Speaker
slapped around nonstop with so much change when it comes to offshore cutting production and cut flowers leaving the United States pretty much completely. The fact of the matter is even in these businesses that have
00:50:00
Speaker
lower margins than cannabis typically had. These folks are making money and they're feeding their family and they're feeding others families doing what they enjoy and love and have a passion for. I don't know, for me, if 60% of the people in the cannabis industry leave,
00:50:20
Speaker
and don't come back because the money's not there, then it's probably for the better because then it leaves the folks who actually care about the crop and care about the folks who consume it and that they're getting a quality, safe, clean product. That's what I'm here for. I'm definitely someone that does not live to work. I work to live, but in the end,
00:50:50
Speaker
money only goes so far. And so for me, I want to enjoy what I do and make an impact. And I feel like with the cannabis industry,
00:50:58
Speaker
There's not as many folks focused on looking at it from the perspective that I take and some of my colleagues take. And so just having that point of view and driving that and inspiring other people to look at cannabis production as an agricultural soon-to-be commodity and that we have to focus on production efficiencies and leadership and building strong brands and sales and marketing.
00:51:26
Speaker
it's not the gold rush anymore. And so that's what excites me actually, because this is when the real players get to play the game. And so that's what I'm all about going forward here in 2023. Amen to that. Yeah, as it scales. And I see that with other growers that as they scale, I'm like, oh, you know what? I can't
00:51:52
Speaker
Buying my inputs at the hydroponic store is not, I can't scale that way or- Can't buy water anymore. Yeah. I hired someone who has experience, quote unquote, experience growing, but then you got to scale and people like yourself who had that larger horticultural experience, you know how to grow at scale. And once you know the agronomy of the crop,
00:52:22
Speaker
you can pretty much be dropped in it and say, here you go. They give me the parameters in which this crop needs to grow and let it rip. You know what the deciding factor for me is? If I were to be in a situation like that, the variable that would change the success of that crop to me, and I would have told you,
00:52:44
Speaker
Shit, a couple years ago, Johan, I probably would have told you, oh, well, it's gonna be the structure, the greenhouse structure, or where the farm's located, or it's gonna be the soil type, or it's gonna be what media they're using, or, you know, all these things that, yeah, they definitely impact a crop's quality, but I think,
00:53:07
Speaker
Uh, what I know now, the variable that like you can't live without and that you've got to always factor in is the team of people that are growing the plants because people grow plants. And as leaders, if you want to scale cultivation, you can't.
00:53:28
Speaker
grow or touch all the plants yourself. So you have to focus on growing people. And to me, if I'm constantly focused on growing myself and I'm constantly focused on how do I help these folks like reach their full potential and even beyond that, how do I break their beliefs of what their actual potential is and show them that their potential is beyond what they ever imagined? Like that is the true,
00:53:56
Speaker
goal I think for folks that are going to be around in the industry here over the next five years because like there's going to be a consolidation in cannabis, there's going to be small players that don't make it, there's going to be small craft players that do make it and they're going to have a niche and that's going to be awesome. But when you talk about what growers like myself are going to have to expect, they're not going to get to expect to have a lot of opportunities where they're going to be the only ones
00:54:21
Speaker
or a couple people they're working with are running all of the entire operation. You're going to have 40, you're going to have 60, you're going to have 100, you're going to have 300 people that are taking care of those plants every day. I think if there's anything that I will never get enough of is
00:54:41
Speaker
learning how to be a better leader and figuring out how to influence and inspire people to be everything they can be and more. Amen.
00:54:54
Speaker
You don't have to follow Charlie McKenzie Long on LinkedIn to get a sense of that. Your post, I think it was just yesterday post, because it leads into your post, which was the T-Post award. You're always giving credit to others and saying so and so, couldn't have done it without this team member. That's the kind of team anybody should want to work on. If they don't have a team like that, again, it comes back to having that hard conversation. Check yourself.
00:55:23
Speaker
You said it leadership cultivating people as well as plants and running lean and treating your enterprise like any other farm because once this flips cuz it's gonna flip eventually it's gonna legalize
00:55:39
Speaker
You don't think for one second, like your farm friends up the road or those out there that are kind of sitting back that have the equipment, they have the capital, they have the know-how, they can come in and they can do it because they know how to grow plants and they know how to grow a lot of them. And so I think you are on the right track. My perspective is you're on the right track, you've got it diversified. I do want to touch on one thing. I know we scheduled for about an hour, so I'll try to, I don't want to run, you've got an enterprise run.
00:56:08
Speaker
For those that are unfamiliar with the cannabis industry, when you're explaining you have the indoor production set aside for flour and the outdoor for distallets and extracts, what do you
Cannabis Distillate Production and Future Potential
00:56:21
Speaker
mean by that? What do those compounds go into? What are the products that are made from those types of materials?
00:56:30
Speaker
Okay, so when you talk about distillate production, distillate is made from extracting dried cannabis biomass. And so cannabis biomass can be the leaves and the flowers together. Sometimes it's even the stems, depending on who's harvesting it and how they
00:56:52
Speaker
how they harvest it and how they process that biomass. From there, it's typically extracted. There's a couple of different ways, but we use butane extraction. So with
00:57:07
Speaker
the butane extraction, you are pulling the THC or other cannabinoid molecules out of that material and getting it into a concentrated form that can be used in manufacturing processes. So what you'll see with distillate after that biomass has been
00:57:28
Speaker
processed and you have the THC or other cannabinoids extracted, much like CBD. This is the same exact process for CBD hemp. You're just extracting a different molecule. Once it's in that concentrated form, that is taken into the manufacturing setting and put into edibles, put into tinctures, put into lotions and
00:57:51
Speaker
massage oils and has many different outputs. It can be used to formulate in combinations with other cannabinoids. You can add essential terpenes and oils back into that product to create some sort of, you know,
00:58:12
Speaker
combination. When you look at distillate, you can also put that into a vaporizer cartridge. So if you ever come across a vaporizer cartridge, if you've been to a legal state or you've been to a smoke shop or somewhere, a gas station that sells CBD products, you'll see a vaporizer cartridge distillate is put into that.
00:58:35
Speaker
Live resin is extracted from wet cannabis biomass that was frozen. So we'll harvest it off the plant while it's wet. We won't even dry the plant at all. Sometimes we harvest it off the plant while the rest of the plant is living. So it's like a
00:58:51
Speaker
a cut and come again type of scenario, which blows some people's mind when it comes to harvesting cannabis. So that is then taken, put into some sort of bag sealed and then frozen with dry ice, flash frozen as quickly as possible. And then from there it's extracted from
00:59:09
Speaker
in another butane extraction process, butane as the solvent. And that process tends to create similar concentrated cannabinoid oil, but it also pulls along the terpenes with it. So that is a more flavorful, more fragrant type of product than your distillate product. And that is typically either
00:59:37
Speaker
put into a vaporizer cartridge, put into edibles to have a more flavorful type of edible, or it is consumed in some sort of other rig or consumption device. Are you doing any beverages yet? Yeah, so distillate is typically what is used in beverages, but there are folks that are doing
01:00:07
Speaker
Man, it's some sort of nanotechnology where they're taking the distillate and it gets processed even more so, so it becomes very soluble and you're able to get it into solution really, really easy and then you're not dealing with oil in the solution whatsoever.
01:00:28
Speaker
There's a company that we do business with now that we're looking to do more manufacturing business with that produces low thc micro dose seltzers and that company is called wink w y in k.
01:00:47
Speaker
There's a lot of people that I know that don't consume cannabis really much at all and they try one of those drinks and it changes their mind about, because it's a low dose and it gives them some of the good feelings. It tends to activate differently than the other types of consumption or roots of administration or ways you can consume it. I'm a firm believer that drinks actually will be pretty impactful in the future when it comes to getting people to try it and then
01:01:15
Speaker
Um, just making it more normalized. Yeah. I think that's where it's going to, you touched on something earlier about the outdoor grown flower. Cause not saying I have experience with this, but the, you know, the higher, the more potent material for inexperienced people. Yeah. It could be way too much. So I'd like in what you described as maybe a glass of wine or a session IPA versus
01:01:46
Speaker
you know, whiskey or something that you could consume it. Yeah, you're not doing a keg stand. Yeah, right. Yeah, because when you look at it, as a market, it's about the number of people that consume or how often that much and that
01:02:07
Speaker
Honestly, I think in many ways it's healthier than say alcohol from a medicinal standpoint. It's certainly better than opiates and things that are addictive that give you kind of not all of those things that you mentioned and then some, right? Dispelling some of these myths about addictiveness.
Cannabis Safety: Myths and Testing Regulations
01:02:28
Speaker
Now I have heard of something though that I'm curious about and I can't remember what it was, but some sort of maybe disorder. I don't know what brings it up, but something about
01:02:37
Speaker
people getting this condition where maybe they end up vomiting or wanting to take hot or cold showers or something like that. That's really one of the only side effects I think I've ever heard of when it comes to cannabis. Are you familiar with that? Yeah, I can't remember and I might not pronounce it correctly, so if I butcher this.
01:02:56
Speaker
Please forgive me. It's like cannabis, hypermesis, hyperactivity. It's CHHS or something like that is the acronym. And so what they're saying, doctors are saying is it's typically
01:03:11
Speaker
found in people who have an excessive cannabis tolerance and usage disorder or people that tend to be very, very habitual with their cannabis intake and that at some points their receptors are so filled with cannabis that it creates an adverse reaction and makes them
01:03:33
Speaker
ill, not in a deathly type of ill way, but not able to eat or keep anything down until the receptors reset, which could be a couple of days based on the half-life of cannabis. What I can tell you is there's also
01:03:49
Speaker
some beliefs that that condition is caused by certain products that are applied to cannabis in the growing practices. So for instance, some people claim neem oils and certain types or qualities of neem oils from certain manufacturers sprayed it on cannabis flower
01:04:15
Speaker
at certain times in production could be the cause of some of these symptoms. And knowing what I know about neem oil and knowing what I know about some black market nefarious growers in the past spraying at all sorts of times in the crop right before they harvest and not doing anything after that, I mean, I wouldn't put it past someone getting sick from ingesting pesticides. And that to me is,
01:04:47
Speaker
We've learned it. The war on drugs is the war on drugs. It's not stopping anyone from doing drugs, especially cannabis. And so like the fact that we have as stringent of testing as we do placed upon our production, I am grateful for that because as a consumer, I would much rather
01:05:10
Speaker
know that there's an acceptable standard of these things that are tested for and that I'm getting product that's within these acceptable standard ranges. Whether or not we know truly if those are the acceptable standard ranges yet, we're trying to establish them and get the data right in the past before it was legalized.
01:05:30
Speaker
people were getting PGRs like, you know, bonsai and psychosel in their cannabis and they're getting, you know, fluoromite and, and, uh, like nasty, nasty stuff. And so the fact that I would say most of the flour is tested legitimately that sold at dispensaries and it's, and it's,
01:05:54
Speaker
clean based on what we know about those products and science and ingesting it, that's a big win for consumers. And that's one of the reasons why I think legalization is important. I mean, whether or not you think it's good for people to do and whether or not it's worth your time doing or using as a medicine or for recreation, at least you know that the people who are doing it aren't like accidentally hurting themselves because they don't know what's going on with the product.
01:06:24
Speaker
Yeah, that's one of the things I love about the legalization of it is opening up the opportunities to do research. Yeah. And legitimate research. People I know personally that are doing the research, I'm like, oh, thank goodness. Yeah. Because I know that what they are doing is sound research and now they're getting the funding and they're putting time and effort into
01:06:47
Speaker
building the scientific knowledge on this crop which it needs and just to make it better, right? Just like you said, regardless of your opinion, people are going to use it anyway, regardless of your opinion and having safe, safe products out there and you can get into, you know, it's safety as a
01:07:11
Speaker
as a flower or something that people consume, a drug, if you will, which we won't get into. But yeah, all very good. I love what you said about leadership.
Passion for Continuous Learning in Agriculture
01:07:23
Speaker
I want to wrap that. I want to come back to that leadership because I wrote down two words before we started the podcast episode, and I wrote down humble and grateful. And I think that really summarizes
01:07:37
Speaker
what I know of you and as a leader. I think you're humble and I think you are always expressing your gratitude and gratefulness for your team and others. And you are good people, sir. Hey, that means a lot to me coming from you. I respect you a lot and the folks that I respect a lot respect you a lot. So when it comes to what
01:08:03
Speaker
I get to do every day with agriculture and horticulture. I'm so freaking lucky because I didn't know it about myself, but I am a learning addict. I'm a learn it all and I can't stop from being curious and wanting to know more and wanting to understand why and with agriculture and
01:08:31
Speaker
plant production and working with people in plant production, there will never ever be a moment where I am not able to learn something. Sometimes it's learned stuff that I definitely shouldn't do to my crop because I've seen something that someone else did, or it's something that's like earth shattering and is going to change
01:08:54
Speaker
you know, the way I lead teams or grow. Every morning I wake up just jacked up knowing that I get to have this kind of job in this kind of industry and
01:09:09
Speaker
I haven't been in a lot of other industries. My dad is a printer and a marketing guy and has owned a business for the whole time I've been alive. My mother's an attorney, so I know a little bit about those industries.
01:09:27
Speaker
I don't really think there's many people as passionate about their industry as we are and growers and here in the green industry, you know, people that serve growers. There's just something about the camaraderie and like the love that we share over
01:09:50
Speaker
being a steward to our environment and to these things that have a mind of their own but need a little bit of support sometimes to reach their full potential. Man, I get tickled all the time thinking about I've only been out of school now for college for
01:10:15
Speaker
close to 11 years and I hope that I get to do this for another 55 years or however long it is that I can survive and do it alongside folks like yourself who I get to enjoy working with and I'm learning alongside and growing alongside. Theoretically and literally or however you want to put that.
01:10:45
Speaker
Yeah, well, I mean, it's primal. It's primal. We are connected to the earth and the plants regardless of regardless of your religion from dust to dust, man. We.
01:10:54
Speaker
from the earth we go back to. We are intimately connected to that. I want to start wrapping it up here pretty soon. You hit on something. This ties into you as a leader. You mentioned a book club. What are you reading? Oh man, this is awesome. Right now,
01:11:15
Speaker
The book club is reading Atomic Habits by James Clear. And so that book actually was one of the catalysts for me over three years ago to focus on my physical health in a different, in a whole different like,
01:11:34
Speaker
tenacity and that book allowed me to change habits and focus on things that helped me you know i think i lost close to over a hundred pounds and so that book for me was like really instrumental in that time but i hadn't read it
01:11:53
Speaker
OK if you're listening we had some sort of a glitch I don't know what happened but we are back and Charlie McKenzie is still with us and you were mentioning atomic habits.
01:12:07
Speaker
Yep. So, uh, atomic habits was, uh, something I read three years ago and it really, you know, it was instrumental in making a lot of transformative changes in my life. Um, mostly physical, uh, health related to start with. And then, uh, you know, unknowingly I used a lot of the tactics from the book, uh, over the past three years until I picked it up again. And so with the book club, uh, I would say.
01:12:34
Speaker
There's probably like 25 or 30 people out of our 70 person company that are part of the book club and a lot of them are on the cultivation team. And so we're talking about it pretty consistently after we do stretches and have our morning meeting and different folks are bringing up different things. And like someone on the team today described some of their habit stacking and how they're taking habits that they really don't know how to get into their
01:13:03
Speaker
Routine and putting them in front or behind habits that they do really consistently and like just those tools and tricks are helping them and what's fun about it for me is that my Intention a few months ago was to really establish some some productive habits in our cultivation Department and leads and so some of it was creating checklists and different things that they have to do every day at a similar time and
01:13:29
Speaker
and then report on it. And what I noticed is that some of the folks now that they read Atomic Habits came to me and have realized why I was having them do things the way I was doing it because I wanted them to get into the swing and establish that habit. And they're like, wow, it all makes sense now. We thought you were just freaking crazy. Why were you doing things like this? So it's coming full circle. And I think
01:13:56
Speaker
Oftentimes, folks will be like, oh, we can't spend money or time on having our team read a book or talk about a book. What kind of work is that? You would not believe the impact it's already had on our business.
01:14:18
Speaker
It's something that we all can relate with. The only other thing that we can all relate with is that we consume cannabis and we grow cannabis together. So now we have a third thing to talk about and it's also impacting people in their personal life. And they're talking about how it's helping them with their wife or with their kids. And like that to me is the ultimate goal of being a leader is if I can
01:14:47
Speaker
be some bit of a catalyst towards someone becoming a better individual while they're under my leadership and they can go do something bigger and better in their life
01:15:02
Speaker
Because of that and they leave a better person like that is the the the true win or or sign of success in a leader and I think by Having book clubs like this and you know, our CEO is the one who established it and him and I had a conversation He was like, hey got some books. I know your your growth mindset and so we put together the list and he's been getting everyone together and man, I
01:15:32
Speaker
think that any business that's not doing it is really missing out because there are things that I've learned about the team, different members of our team, just through like hearing about what they've learned from the book that made me realize that I'm under-utilizing them. Like there are different opportunities that they could be taking on and it's just, it's enlightening in a lot of different ways. So I encourage it. What about you? What are you reading on right now, Johan?
01:16:00
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. I will get to that in a second. I want to tap into what you said there because it comes back. The old adage, we can't afford to invest in our employees. Can you afford not to? Right. Did I hear you say you guys do morning? I shouldn't say guys. Did I hear you say you do morning stretches?
01:16:20
Speaker
We do. We call it stretch out and then stand up. So we do about seven, eight minutes of stretches, typically out in the snow if we can't find a spot in one of the buildings clear enough, but we're dedicated to it, man. It gets our blood flowing and gets us ready to attack the day and in the end probably lowers the incidence of injury.
01:16:43
Speaker
Love it. I love that. That is cool. What am I reading? Well, I tend to I tend to read multiple things at a time and truth be told I've slipped over the last year so I am NOT reading as much as I I should or want to and I'm kind of a bibliophile I tend to buy books and then put them on the shelf going hi, we'll get back to that I have a whole like 80 some audiobooks and etc. However, so I am one of the books I'm reading is the one that you sent me the other day and
01:17:12
Speaker
I'm about 70% through it, the $100 million offers. So I'm reading that. And this is a conversation I had with another grower. This year, I'm going back to basics as well. So I'm reading a book now on balancing soil nutrients.
01:17:31
Speaker
Because how many times do we get asked, what is this? Oh my goodness. Go back and review the foundational knowledge. Oh, you're Dr. Buck, PhD, you should know all this stuff. Nope. I will tell you first and foremost, I do not, I struggle with, I was not the best student. I wasn't a straight A student. It was tough for me. I'm surprised I got into college and ended up getting a PhD. So I go back and
01:17:57
Speaker
reread things all the time and I was going to dedicate this year to also going back to basics. So I'm reading a book on balancing soil nutrients. It's got some good tidbits in it. I mean, it's not terribly scientific, but it's got some good, good info. And then I'm also looking at my shelf over here and reading other things outside of, of leadership and, uh,
01:18:25
Speaker
plant sciences, soil sciences, I tend to stick with that personal improvement. And then the science, and that doesn't even include the scientific articles. Oh my goodness. That's a whole another beast in and of itself. I mean, you could spend so much time and effort on that. And that's highly valuable too if you've got the mind for dissecting what the results are and how the experiment was set up.
01:18:50
Speaker
Yeah. And I've been trying to, I've been, I've been, I've been toying around with AI. I've been looking at some of these AI systems where you can, you can summarize scholarly journals. How accurate is this? Because there's, we live in such an information age. Oh my gosh, you can't read all the literature out there. So maybe I could, maybe I can use this tool to summarize this so I can get the gist, but then it's okay. Well, how accurate is that summary? So it's only so accurate now, but the more we toll around with it, the better it's going to get.
01:19:20
Speaker
Yeah. Now, there's some other books. I've read Crucial Conversations. I don't know if you've read that book. Okay. I haven't read that one. I need to check that one out. Start With Why by Simon Sennick is a good one. It's a good one. Yeah. So many good books. So many good books. Sales. Being in sales. PhD in sales. What? Yeah. I study sales. I want to understand it.
01:19:48
Speaker
It makes you better at doing your job. None of this trickery stuff, none of this, because sales kind of has a bad reputation in some cases. I'm like, no, sales is a noble profession and we won't get into how I got into sales. That's a topic for another discussion, but I'm fascinated with which processes work and best serve the customer.
01:20:13
Speaker
Yeah, that's the goal. If you're a salesperson that's focused on giving the customer the best opportunity to be better at what they do or better at who they are, then you're a good salesperson. And if you have an ulterior motive, then, you know, that's on you to fix. Yeah, and it'll come through. It'll come through. Yeah. Charlie, with the exception of that little technical snafu, which I'm sure I'll be able to fix, this has been awesome.
01:20:42
Speaker
Yeah, I've enjoyed the conversation as always catching up with you and I'm looking forward to the time we get to do this in person and catch up that way. Yeah, I look forward to that as well. And hopefully it's with you in Michigan because I have a lot more questions and would love to just kind of sit down and hang out and just not have a time limit.
01:21:05
Speaker
Heck yeah, I'm all about that. I'm looking forward to listening to this and then also all the other podcasts that you put out. I'm excited to hear from other guests in your network because it's a pretty deep network with some talented individuals.
01:21:21
Speaker
Thank you. It's going to be eclectic. I set this up with it being eclectic in mind. The ag show is pretty broad and the goal is interview people who are far reaching across all different facets of agriculture.
01:21:40
Speaker
I've had some great feedback so far, so I'm like, okay, well, I must be on the right track. And because, for example, people will listen to this, they may not know much about cannabis, they'll learn something. In a couple days, I'll be having a conversation with an ag economist, learn something from that.
01:21:59
Speaker
I plan on enter in every so many episodes or bring somebody on that focuses on leadership or team building or mindset and because as you mentioned cultivating people.
01:22:14
Speaker
We want to not only share information about ag, but things that we can take into our daily lives, both in the home, personally, professionally, and then learn something about different areas of agriculture as well. So thank you so much for being a part of it, Charlie, and I look forward to seeing you soon. Heck yeah. Thanks a bunch. Take care, folks.