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Charlea - Dispensary Manager
116 Plays1 year ago
Self described "Dabbler", Charlea, has found satisfaction and success managing a cannabis dispensary. She shares her journey and the skills she learned along the way that contribute to her success. If you have interest in marijuana for medical conditions, what the cannabis industry is like, or how to get your start in the cannabis industry, this is a must listen interview.
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Music by: SnoozyBeats - Song Title - "Keep It Calm". Please check out SnoozyBeats on PixaBay for a ton of awesome content! - LINK
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Background
00:00:11
Speaker
Hey folks, you're listening to the jobs podcast. I am your host, Tim Hendricks. Your time is valuable. I'm not going to waste it. Let's get right to the interview. Today we have Charlie with us. Charlie has had a number of careers and she describes herself as a professional dabbler. But the main thing we're here to talk about today is her leadership role in the cannabis industry. So welcome, Charlie. Thanks for joining me today.
00:00:38
Speaker
Thank you, Tim. I'm glad to be here. You bet. So let's just start off.
Charlie's Early Life and Career
00:00:42
Speaker
Tell me a little bit about where you were born, siblings, and just kind of how you grew into adulthood and and started in your career path. So I grew up in Southwest Missouri. My family um all worked together my whole life. So I grew up in a family business atmosphere. We had a commercial chicken hatchery and my family's kind of legacy was built on agriculture.
00:01:07
Speaker
So when I kind of talk about my first job or my first career, I was born into it kind of to an extent, but we spent a lot of time together. It was a seasonal business.
00:01:18
Speaker
I was enrolled in private school growing up and graduated kind of top of my class, but I didn't take the typical path that most people did for my school. I didn't go to college right away. And a lot of that was circumstance. My father passed away shortly after I graduated high school. And so it wasn't a super easy path for me at that point to just immediately jump into college. Most of that was just because of student loans and that kind of thing. So.
00:01:47
Speaker
I actually ended up getting married shortly after high school and had a baby like right away because I knew I wanted to be a mom. So my early years were still working for my family, kind of taking care of my little family and figuring out where I wanted to go. And at that point I.
00:02:06
Speaker
Enrolled in college after i had my second child so i was like in my early twenties and had no idea what i wanted to do but no i wanted to do big things and knew i wanted to go to college so. I kind of started there and then overtime just built my career. And what i wanted to do in my life and what path i wanted to be in terms of how do i earn sustenance and living.
00:02:32
Speaker
Just kind of by trying things and you know starting jobs or starting hobbies passion side projects that kind of supported learning new things. And because i worked for my family it kind of gave me a little bit of opportunity to kind of do whatever i wanted so i got the opportunity to really start writing and.
00:02:55
Speaker
you know doing things that would help the business but i got to kind of determine that path for myself because your grandma or your dad can't tell you now as easy as sometimes your your regular body right so.
00:03:09
Speaker
I grew up there, spent a lot of time in agriculture, and um you know and mostly lived in Southwest Missouri. I did about to move around a little bit in my first marriage and that kind of thing. But um really kind of developed to my idea of what working life looked like by working with my family. And then, you know so it was all kind of interconnected. And I think that might be a little bit as to why I kind of call myself the professional dabbler, if you will.
00:03:35
Speaker
Because i always had that opportunity to kind of float from space to space and find things that challenge me and things that i like doing so it kinda started at the very beginning just growing up with my family.
Transition from Agriculture to Cannabis
00:03:49
Speaker
Do you think that, I've noticed that when you have people that as a child, they worked on a farm or they were out doing things. They weren't just sitting in front of a TV while their parents were out working a nine to five job. If if there was agricultural ranching, chicken, ah ranches, whatever you'd call those, chicken houses, I guess.
00:04:11
Speaker
you were probably out carrying buckets of feed and and you know dealing with manure and seed and whatever other kinds of responsibilities you would have in a family operation like that. That's the work ethic that most people that start like that have is usually pretty good. Would you agree with that? I would definitely agree with that. so I think what working for my family business because it was rooted in agriculture,
00:04:40
Speaker
It made me a little bit kind of harder nosed as an employee, even though I'm a bit of a younger generation. I think I kind of look at work ethic a little bit more like people older than me. Primarily because, you know, we weren't really, I mean, we did have chicken houses at one point. We did butcher as a family. We did a lot of that stuff, but that was more for our own benefit or more our family. So like the career side, the business side was more commercial chicken hatching.
00:05:09
Speaker
So it wasn't so much going out and taking feed buckets and that kind of thing. But when you have, you know, when your machines are set for you to have 100,000 chickens hatch that morning, and you have to be at work at 3am, you have to be at work at 3am. If you don't show up to work at 3am, they die. And that's a really, really intense hard line in the sand for a young person to accept, acknowledge,
00:05:36
Speaker
and embody. And so I think that side of agriculture definitely really solidified to me that working is important even when you don't really want to do it. no yeah I think that made it a little bit easier because for me it was a really easy way to see cause and effect as a kid. If you don't show up,
00:06:00
Speaker
so No one's just going to do it for you, and something could be left that results in not only devastation financially, but for me it was loss of life. You would see loss of life in those situations if you didn't show up.
00:06:13
Speaker
And certain times the decisions were really hard to, you know, choose loss of life because it was the right call for the business, which was also a really hard thing. So the agriculture side of it definitely prepared me for all my careers moving forward in terms of the work ethic piece, but probably not so much from the the physical strain as much as it is, you just have to show up.
00:06:37
Speaker
When you've had to deal with a scenario like you just talked about where you could have animals die or financially you could be ruined, when you get older, it makes a TPS report that's a day late really not seem like as big of a deal. ah Sometimes I feel that way, but because of just how my brain and my work ethic kind of works in my own life,
00:07:01
Speaker
I still think the TPS report is probably almost as stressful sometimes. I will say I've kind of had to unfurl that working in the retail space, because in journalism, it's always an emergency. And that was my first, you know, real like big man job as I call, as I always call it.
00:07:20
Speaker
but you You know when when things get really bad in journalism when things are really bad in agriculture like that's when you have to step in and so turning that off has been kind of hard for me. And reminding myself that at the end of the day we're just laying in some weed.
00:07:37
Speaker
and And that's hard for me to say, and I will say that anyone who works with me and anyone who works in the legal cannabis space, and honestly probably in the illegal cannabis space, if I'm being honest, would laugh at that, you know, and it just being slinging me because the regulations and everything are just intense. So certain things, yes, I think it gives me levity, but I think also being raised in the space where you never get to say no, and where like families, you have to show up, that's hard to kind of unfurl too, to tell yourself that you deserve downtime. Yeah.
00:08:07
Speaker
You mentioned journalism. Walk me through how you ended up getting getting into journalism. So I, as a child, was completely obsessed with reading and writing. And I wanted to be a writer. But in the circle that I grew up in, while we did make our money in journalism, we also had a multi-million dollar business. you know I was raised in society around other business people. I went to conferences. you know There was an interesting dynamic because I met people all over the spectrum.
00:08:39
Speaker
And so as a kid, I didn't really acknowledge that being a writer or something like that could be a real job because in my circle, people on businesses, they were doctors, they were lawyers, they were all very professional people.
00:08:55
Speaker
And so as a kid, I couldn't picture that as a job, but it was the only thing I liked doing. So, so I spent a lot of time nerding out in my room, reading books, and I spent so much time writing. I had hundreds and hundreds of notebooks. And as I worked for my family business, I was always trying to figure out a way to use those skills to help their business. So I was making all these little like care guides to send home with people. And I was doing this at like nine, 10 years old.
00:09:21
Speaker
And you know asking my grandma, can I use the copy machine to like make these little trifold pamphlets? And my mother was a artist. And she and my dad had another business that was mostly ah stickers and kind of a holiday things. it's ah we It was a weird kind of business that you don't see a lot now. But there were a lot of like stickers that were around seasonal holidays. they did water balloons for Walmart for a long time, those kinds of things. But because my mom was an artist, I'd had a lot of experience in like how to do design work, and I'd seen her make posters, I'd seen her design stickers. So I had some of that kind of knowledge, and I also had a lot of that um material at my disposal to be able to try.
00:10:07
Speaker
So when I worked for my family, I was always doing these little you know care guides and that kind of thing. And then I said, you know, I think I could really write for a living. And before I even went to college, I started writing professionally online through Answerbag, eHow, Ask Jeeves. This was like back in the day when real people wrote all that and it wasn't AI. So I started that and I really liked it. So when I went to college,
00:10:32
Speaker
I changed my major a couple of times, but I really, really enjoyed it. And so I had one job that was kind of a design job right out while I was in college and while I was raising my kids that was working from home where I was designing photo books and kind of working in publishing. And I really enjoyed that. So when I went to college, I was trying to figure out what would be a good multi-purpose degree. How can I kind of use this? So when I was in college, I actually took my first job as a legitimate journalist.
00:11:01
Speaker
And I'd done a lot of freelance work magazines. I did a lot of interviews. My mom also had been doing some writing projects when I was younger. So I had seen the interview process. I'd seen what it looked like to you know sit and break out a video recorder and, you know, and talk to people. So I just kind of jumped in while I was in college and just reached out to some magazines and said, Hey, can I, can I do a story for you? Do you have anything that you want me to pick up on?
00:11:29
Speaker
And I had a really good knack for it. I love talking to people. So once I finally graduated, I was pretty solidly an editor at the newspaper I was working in. And I'd already been in journalism for like almost 10 years at that point between publishing freelance work, being an editor at our local newspaper. And so when I graduated, I had a communication studies degree with a minor in English and literature.
00:11:53
Speaker
And so it was kind of a natural progression and I stuck in with that. And actually the job within journalism is how I got to the cannabis space. And it was just because of all the networking I was basically forced to do with my job. Yeah, I knew everybody. So.
Entry into Cannabis Industry
00:12:10
Speaker
But really it was that progression of just being that nerdy kid who read and wrote all the time. Poetry, stories, interviews, didn't matter. I just loved that. And I also really loved people. So it kind of naturally landed there. And then because of all of the connections I had in journalism, I met a lot of people and got the opportunity to get in on Missouri's cannabis industry on the ground floor. And I jumped at that opportunity because I was ready to do something different.
00:12:38
Speaker
A minute ago you you mentioned a couple of times that you were a big reader when you were younger and that you were reading short stories and interviews and things. Was most of the reading that you did, was it more of a creative fiction type thing or were you reading a lot of history or a lot of business stuff or was it just a little bit of everything? When I was a kid it was mostly fiction, mostly classic literature.
00:13:04
Speaker
Mostly fantasy and you know i think I don't think I'm unusual or special in the fact that I didn't have the best childhood growing up in certain areas. you know I think we all have our challenges. So I used it as a lot of escapism when I was a kid. Oh, yeah.
00:13:21
Speaker
and really, really dove into kind of like fantasy world and different people and different experiences. And I found that that was a really good way to learn what other people were like, even if I hadn't met them. And it was a way for me to kind of have experiences when maybe I was too scared to have those experiences myself or didn't have family to take me to something like that. So it was mostly fiction. As I got a little bit older, I got very, very interested in nonfiction and history.
00:13:51
Speaker
biographies, a lot of that stuff. And that's probably what led me more on the journalism side of it, biographies especially. I think people are fascinating. Reading is one of those things where, I mean, you can travel the universe from your bedroom or from your living room or whatever, depending on what you're reading. But I also noticed that people that read, whether it's books, cover to cover, magazines, articles. If they're constantly consuming words, their communication skills are usually a lot better. They can express themselves more effectively. You speak well, you're clearly, well, I sound illiterate by trying to explain it, but I'm trying to say.
00:14:34
Speaker
so You have changed over from journalism to the cannabis industry. You just kind of saw an opportunity and you took a big leap of faith, stepped into it, looking for the challenge. Is is that an accurate summary of that? Yes. And I also was really burnt out in journalism and this opportunity came right when COVID hit in the US. So the idea of
00:15:05
Speaker
not having to cover that tragedy, yeah not having to write about that every week. I honestly, like I can feel myself getting a little bit emotional thinking about it. Journalism was really hard on me in the regard that by the end, I felt like my job was telling everyone about some person's worst day of their life. yeah And that's a really hard thing to reconcile as someone who loves people.
00:15:35
Speaker
Right. And the vast majority of people I really do love. So it was a good opportunity, but I also think a lot of this was time circumstance. I'd also had quite a few health issues and the flow and pattern of journalism was not good for me anymore. And it wasn't really good for my family either. So kind of a perfect storm.
00:15:58
Speaker
So you saw an opportunity in cannabis. It was right for you at the time for a multitude of reasons. What position, what did you step into? Did you go right to the top or, you know,
00:16:12
Speaker
No i did not go straight to the top i actually when i was interviewed for this particular position it was for the general manager position of the dispensary and it was contingent so it was. If we get the license because i cannabis business a cannabis dispensary cultivation manufacturing.
00:16:33
Speaker
There's always a licensing process in states where that's legal. And so Missouri's application process was basically we have a very limited number of licenses that we're going to hand out and you have to put in applications basically showing that you can do this and we're going to score them and then whoever gets the highest scores will will distribute them. That's kind of the simplified version of how it works. and Okay.
00:16:57
Speaker
It's brutally brutally slow, I assume, because you're talking about a state government, so they don't do anything in a hurry. It's brutally slow unless the voters of the state that you have the law coming through force their hand. And that didn't happen in Missouri under recreational. under Under medical, it was a lot slower. Okay. And it was a slow process. So I want to say it was probably October You know, maybe like August, September, October of maybe 2019 that this job was posted and it was actually posted by a local physician just posted online. And I knew this physician because of journalism, because I had interviewed her and specifically about Missouri voting for ah marijuana for a medical program, which would have been, and I believe in 2018 is when we saw that get voted in.
00:17:49
Speaker
So 2019 is when those applications, you know, more information was coming out. And in order to fill out an application, you had to have resumes of the people who were going to be on your team. So I threw my name in the ring and didn't get it. I didn't. And I was really upset about it because I thought I nailed it. My dad actually passed away from colon cancer that ended up spreading pretty aggressively when I was 18. He fought it from the time I was 15 until I was 18. And my dad was given six months to live when he was first diagnosed. And even his oncologist, his whole team, my dad smoked pot like a freight train to be
00:18:37
Speaker
perfectly blunt whenever he got sick. And his whole team said, this gave you an extra two and a half years with your dad that you wouldn't have had otherwise. And we're pretty sure this is what's kept him alive. So I was really passionate. And I was just like, how did I not get this job? Like it hurt my feelings. I was mad. So I called the doctor back and I said, I don't accept that. So I've never done this in my life. I still like sit here and kind of chuckle because this is so not me.
00:19:08
Speaker
But I called and I said, I don't accept that. I said, I'll sweep floors. I don't care what, but you know if this isn't the opportunity for me, that's okay, but I really want to do this. And I think I'm the right person for this. I feel really passionate. I think you want me on your team. And so it was like maybe 24 hours and she and her husband sat down with me at lunch and said, okay, we're going to put you as assistant general manager. And, you know, there's nothing that says that we can't go ahead and do that. And so send us your resume and we'll figure it out. So I got hired as like the assistant store or assistant kind of GM whenever before even the application went into the state.
Challenges in Cannabis Regulation
00:19:50
Speaker
Nice. You took the bull by the horns. I did. And I also offered to put in any extra work that was necessary.
00:19:59
Speaker
And I said, even though I'm not getting paid, I said, you know, this is about my future. This is not my opportunity. And I do think that that did kind of play in my favor as things progressed through this process. We found out in March. So like I said, that was like fall of 2019 and no, it wouldn't have been in March. It was earlier than that. I want to say it was like January, mid January.
00:20:24
Speaker
the physician found out she got the license and I was still a journalist. I was sitting in the budget meeting for the county commission, like the most boring thing I did all year long. I can say that now that I'm not working there anymore.
00:20:39
Speaker
the most boring thing and I get this text message and I just wanted to jump up and down and scream. I was so excited and I couldn't. And I'm like sitting there like, how do I get out of this room? I need to go celebrate. Like all my cells were like vibrating in my whole body. I'm just like, this is so exciting because it was such a low chance that she would have earned the license. There were so many people who were going for them. So the fact that we got one and we had this opportunity was huge.
00:21:03
Speaker
And if you notice, I still talk about this as we, you know, I, I saw myself as part of that team. I saw this as a place that I wanted to build and I wanted to do the right thing. So. Yeah, that's essentially how I got the job. I was the assistant general manager there for the whole setup process of the building. So there was construction. I was mostly working from home. We had to do things like we had to draft out standard operating procedures because there was going to be a major compliance inspection for us to be able to be operational. It's like an operational inspection.
00:21:39
Speaker
yeah They're going to check your security cameras, your RFIDs to get you in the building, all your standard operating procedures, all your manuals. so The little writer in me was ready for this project. good and The general manager and I mostly worked from home during this time when while the build-out was happening. you know The owners took care of the supervision of the construction crew and that kind of thing. and We just hit the ground running. I started doing interviews. and We just kind of rocked and roll and worked through the summer.
00:22:08
Speaker
But things started to get a little bit tense between ownership and our general manager. I was kind of being brought in and kind of taking care of a lot of projects that I didn't really feel like were my duties.
00:22:21
Speaker
but I still did them. You know, it's the work ethic side. I go, it's not my job, but it's fine. It needs to be done. So I'll just get it done. And eventually that kind of reached a little bit of a fever pitch, I think. And I was brought into ownership's office in September of 2020 and was told that I was the new general manager. it wasn't It wasn't really a job offer. It was just, you're the general manager now.
00:22:48
Speaker
And I think I shook my head and said, no, I'm not. So no, I'm not. But that was kind of my, uh, my, the rug got pulled out from underneath me, but I'm grateful for it because I had been doing the work and I had been showing that I'd been doing the work. So it was nice to get that validation. So, yeah but that was the process. It was, you know, I think when I look back on it, I go, man, that was so.
00:23:12
Speaker
fast at the time it felt really slow but i will say looking back on it it was really fast you know i started april first by mid september i was promoted to general manager of you know one of the toughest compliance related businesses in the state Oh yeah, I can imagine the compliance is off the chart, especially when it's a new thing in, uh, you're in Missouri, correct? Yes. Okay. So it's, it's a new state and it's a completely new industry and you have a completely new business with new employees, a new product. Everything is, you got to learn, but you can't make mistakes. I would, yes, agree with that very heavily, but I would say,
00:23:58
Speaker
that the hard part of that is the can't make mistakes. There are going to be mistakes and there's where the challenge is because the government doesn't ever admit that they make mistakes. right yeah And they're the ones regulating a new program. So yeah, it's, it is, it definitely is a challenge. There are a lot of hiccups. It's different. I do think that I am more successful in my career within the cannabis space within my state.
00:24:27
Speaker
So you have a new business. It's medical cannabis. You've hired your employees, your business, you're open for customers. How does that start? I mean, do you just have a line of people the first day that you're open or is it just some guy comes trickling in and asks if you're open or how how does that, did it just take off like gangbusters?
00:24:49
Speaker
So we were the fourth dispensary to open in the state and the three dispensaries that opened before us opened the day before they were all a chain. So to an extent we were, and they were in a completely different location. So we were the only dispensary open in, you know, within four and a half hours of us for months and months and months. It was gangbusters. Yeah.
00:25:16
Speaker
It was nuts and it was a challenge. It was the hardest thing I've ever done. And I completely understand now that I've gone through it. Why general managers who jumped to other States and start from the ground up make way, way, way more money.
00:25:36
Speaker
I mean, really honestly, i'm I'm chuckling about it, but I look back on it and it was really hard. And wanting to do that in a brand new market and facing those challenges, you have to have nerves of steel. You really do. because of probably a million There's probably a million moving parts as well. Yes. And a new program, a brand new industry, the way that cannabis became brand new in any state,
00:26:01
Speaker
is a totally different ballgame because no one's ever done it before in your state. And spoiler alert, state governments don't like to talk to each other. So that was also very frustrating because I feel like you know regulators in multiple states always say they're going to tap into other states, talk to those regulators, kind of help build out the program. It doesn't usually happen. So Missouri made a lot of the same mistakes.
00:26:27
Speaker
that other states made, but also all new ones that probably also could have been avoided just with a little bit of extra communication. So I think there's a little bit of frustration there. But what I will say is that it was absolutely nuts from day one, there were going to be hiccups. And if I could go back and pep talk myself before we started it, before that happened, I would have just looked at myself, given myself a great big hug and said, buckle up, but it's going to be okay. Because really that was it. I mean, there's going to be mistakes. There's going to be errors. You're going to have systems get messed up um because everyone's learning. Yeah. And it's the regulators are learning too.
00:27:15
Speaker
It's surprising to me that if you are a state, you wouldn't call a state that already has experience in this to try and prevent some common pitfalls that everybody seems to make. I don't know if there's ego at the root of that or if it's just our system is too different to where whatever they did in the state over is not going to apply. But it it seems like calling somebody else that's been more or they've been through this or more experienced seems like would be a smart play. But I mean, what do I know? I think I give a lot more grace than a lot of people do sometimes. And I sit and think about how hard this was for us as an individual business.
00:27:55
Speaker
Because we didn't come from another state's cannabis space, I will say that I think even multi-state operators, which are known as mso and MSOs, they have just as many challenges because they're trying to retroactively fit what their model is in other states with completely different regulations and guidelines.
00:28:13
Speaker
so No matter how you do it, it is, it's a big challenge and you have to just be prepared for all of those hiccups. So I give a lot more grace to the regulators and to the government side now than I did before. Because we're all kind of trying to figure it out. And yes, I acknowledge that you are the person who's in charge of this program and you should probably call the director of the Arkansas program and the Oklahoma program and this and that, but It's a huge beast and things get missed and it's really easy to go back and go, Hey, look at all the mistakes that these people made. Yeah. It's a lot harder to prevent those going forward. I will say that I do not give as much grace whenever it's been something that I have acknowledged well in advance, man, we're going to have a problem here.
00:29:01
Speaker
And we definitely saw that in Missouri with packaging and labeling this year, because a lot of the cannabis businesses in the state of Missouri were actively trying to get the state to be a little bit more understanding about what a nightmare that the packaging and labeling changes they were making were going to be. And it created a very, very big problem within the state with product availability, pricing structure and stuff like that. So certain things I don't give grace about, but certain things I do.
00:29:29
Speaker
We could go down a rabbit hole about the labeling requirements, but a superficial hit. what is there is Is there an industry standard as far as we need to know percentages of THC or whatever, or a list of the ingredients from in certain order, or what is it that makes it so difficult to achieve what the state requires? So I think the best way to kind of get people to understand what the labeling process is like and what this looks like is to think about going to the grocery store and looking at a nutrition label. And we're so used to looking at a nutrition label, we know exactly where to expect everything on that label because we've seen it. If you're the type of person who looks at the back of a bag of chips, or if you have someone in your life who has health issues and you got to stay low on sodium, whatever it is, you look at it, it's uniform. You know where to find the information for the most part.
00:30:27
Speaker
because we have a lot of laws in place about from the FDA. We don't have federal guidelines. We don't have stuff with cannabis because it's still a federally illegal substance. States are legalizing it, but the federal government doesn't have regulation rights. And it kind of does make it more complicated um because they're starting a brand new system. So what the state was wanting to do with packaging and labeling changes,
00:30:56
Speaker
you know The rules have been the same from the beginning. They want the labels in the right order so that whenever a consumer looks on the back, they know where to expect what the THC percentage is or how many doses are in that package or how much an individual gummy is. You know you don't want to send someone out the door and they think that they have a 10 milligram gummy and they have 100 milligram gummy. That's going to make someone really sick.
00:31:19
Speaker
yeah So the intent is to make sure that all of the labeling within the state of Missouri and the legal cannabis space is easy to read so that whenever you walk into a dispensary, you know what it is. The second part of it is to also make it, quote, not appealable to children because they're concerned about kids consuming cannabis and getting sick, which I completely understand now.
00:31:44
Speaker
go look at what I will say is go look at a spiked Mountain Dew at the grocery store and then come back and talk to me again because we have a lot of you know cannabis is getting hit with a lot of rules that a lot of other things that are just as dangerous or potentially more dangerous a child can't die of cannabis overdose a child can absolutely die of alcohol overdose so there there are concerns there that I have but you know the goal is to make it readable and so the state was trying to make sure that everything did that But, you know, once again, all those things are subjective, they haven't given a straight template. And so a lot of companies thought they were doing the right thing. And the state denied their packaging, and it's just got a lot of things hung up. And it's actually ended up resulting in it being more confusing. Because us as companies don't understand our labels.
00:32:34
Speaker
In the same way that we used to because we used to say if these are the guidelines set it make it right now it's the states that's the guidelines but they're just as confusing for us and so it's harder to read basically to an extent.
00:32:46
Speaker
Is there any movement within the cannabis industry nationwide for the states that do have it legal, either just medical or medical and recreational, to to basically do their own thing, to use your example about the food labels? And you're absolutely right. You can look on those on any package because it's been standardized for so long, you just know what to expect when you look at it. Is there a movement within the cannabis industry itself to to kind of standardize things. So if you go from one state to another and look at the ingredients or the label, you'll kinda see the same thing.
00:33:21
Speaker
I, not that I am aware of, also every state has individual regulations regarding what labels and packaging look like. One of the big things with Missouri is that we can't have anything on a cannabis package that is appealable to children, but then you have this objective question of like what is appealable to children kind of thing. Yeah.
00:33:44
Speaker
And so every state has a different look at that. States also have different testing requirements. So Missouri has, you know, pretty strict testing requirements compared to some states, but it's also very lax compared to other states and our allowable limits. So it would be pretty impossible at this stage to do that. Now there is On the federal level, there is a potential change that is going to happen that could open up some of that. But in terms of something like a unified packaging labeling, we're looking years and years down the, down the the rep path. Actually a number of years ago, this probably would have been in 2020. I saw Keith Stroup speak at a conference and he is the founder of normal. Normal is the marijuana industry layer or the marijuana group that's been trying to get
00:34:38
Speaker
cannabis legal since the sixties. And when I saw Keith Stroup speak, when he was, gets interviewed a regular question he has asked is why has this taken so long? Because when he was interviewed in like 1972 and they said, Hey, how long do you think it'll take for cannabis to get legalized? He said, you know, I think it could take awhile, like four or five years.
00:34:59
Speaker
To convince people oh man, but this is not bad. And now keith stroup is still the founder of normal. Uh, he's in his 70s, I believe and He said so now people ask they go you back then you said it was four or five years and now it's been over 40 years And now we're actually seeing movement. So keith. Why do we see movement now and he looked at the audience and he said, I answered the same way every time. He says, I look around the room and I said, I have smoked pot every day for the last 50 years of my life. And I have outlived all the drinkers and all of us have. yeah And so finally we've kind of gotten to that place. So, you know, even, even just saying, Hey, can this not be federally illegal? Like we've, we've looked at, it's been over 40 years. This has been a long time. We've declassified all of Nixon's really, really messed up, you know, war on drugs stuff.
00:35:52
Speaker
to show that there was never any real reason to have cannabis be illegal. And a lot of the legality stuff was pretty heavily rooted in racism in our American history. And it was, you know, and that's, it's an unfortunate thing, but these processes, because of how long it's been in place, you know, if I sit here and say four or five years, I'm going to be the next Keith Stroup and it's 40 years from now. And the DEA actually started a hearing December 2nd of this year to reschedule cannabis, at least move it from schedule one to schedule three.
00:36:26
Speaker
Because schedule one is where we also still like putting like methamphetamine, right? Oh yeah. That's not comparable. Not at all. And so if we move to schedule three, we can at least research, but now you even have legal States who are telling the DEA, Hey, that's going to mess us up because now doctors are going to kind of be hand tied with federal laws where it's now on schedule three, where we have protections for them in the States that they don't have at the federal level. It just gets very complicated.
00:36:54
Speaker
because the government makes it really complicated. Just two million
Cannabis Benefits and Research Limitations
00:36:58
Speaker
pieces. Yeah, it seems like anything the government touches usually can get messy pretty quick. But the medical side of things, that's what your dispensary started with was because it wasn't recreational legal, it recreationally legal, it was just medicinal. Correct.
00:37:17
Speaker
Now, I've done a little bit of research, but what types of conditions or afflictions really have you seen benefit the most from cannabis use in whatever form the the customer wants?
00:37:32
Speaker
So my you know my big my big three that we hear probably more than anything else are and and chronic pain issues, insomnia issues, and sleep disorders, and ah probably anxiety depression issues are the next probably top three in terms of what we still hear at our shop. And we have also seen phenomenal results for our cancer patients. We've seen phenomenal results for a lot of our people who suffer from really severe digestive disorders, Crohn's disease, IBS, celiacs. And the reason why cannabis is, you know, it scares me because anytime you say the word cure-all, the reason why cannabis kind of looks like a cure-all just has to do with the way it it interacts within our body.
00:38:32
Speaker
So it's a little bit different. It can affect a lot of different disorders, but it is a lot harder to kind of find the right ratio, the right balance to find what works well for you and have it be a good medicinal, medicinal product. So it does almost work for, you know, all these different things, but it just has to do with the way that cannabis binds in our body, because what we have is it's called the endocannabinoid system. And if you imagine,
00:39:02
Speaker
A series of, I guess probably railroad tracks would be a really good way of looking at it. But we used to think of like our endocannabinoid system as kind of being like a plug. So when you take cannabis, if you're missing something in one part of your body. So the reason why you have IBS is because you're missing something on this receptor within your gut.
00:39:23
Speaker
certain types of cannabis, whether that's through the cannabinoids they have, some of those are THC, some of them are CBD, then we have a lot of other cannabinoids that science is researching, like CBN, which helps with sleep and CBG, which helps with digestive issues and gut health.
00:39:41
Speaker
We used to think of it kind of is like a lock and a key or a plug into an outlet but really what it is is it's more like a railway switch so when you use the right kind of cannabis for you know an issue in your gut.
00:39:55
Speaker
It's kind of switching that track from one way, which is making you feel sick to the other way, which is making you not feel sick. And it's kind of filling in that gap and just kind of helping aid to switch that pathway over so that your body can continue to do what it's doing. But where we run into problems with cannabis and the reason why it's more complicated is you just turned off the other pathway.
00:40:18
Speaker
science is really, really behind and we're really limited on how much we can research in terms of cannabis, cannabinoids, terpenes, which are like the smells that you get off of it that makes it smell like a skunk or makes it smell lemony. And so because we haven't had the research, it's really hard to figure out what works. So you know if you find the right product, it's almost like a little bit of a scavenger hunt to see what's going to work for your body because we don't have the science as in depth. So it's more trial and error. So it's a lot of different disorders, in other words.
00:40:54
Speaker
Regarding the research part of it, i don't I read an article, it was quite a while back, and it was talking about how one of the problems with research on the cannabis side of things is that because it's federally illegal still, there was a farm, I wanna say it was in Mississippi maybe, where that's where the majority of the cannabis came from that you could apply to then do studies on THC and all the other various cannabis compounds.
00:41:21
Speaker
Is that still with it being so prevalent on the state level now? Is that still? Does that ring a bell to you at all? Or is that just really old stuff that I read? No, that's actually accurate still. So because this is because cannabis is on Schedule One. Schedule One within within drug laws means that you can't even study it, you can't even research it. And We're seeing a lot of kickback within the health community to say, I understand you say this is illegal, but why can't we try to research psilocybin and see if it does help people like psychedelic mushrooms? Why can't we research it and at least see if it helps?
00:42:04
Speaker
And so because because cannabis is on schedule one, it's technically considered so dangerous that you can't even legally study it. So a science scientist or a doctor can't do a research study to see if cannabis potentially helps cancer better than chemotherapy or whatever it is.
00:42:26
Speaker
And so all of the product, you know, the, the federal government did loosen that up a little bit, but the way that that has been loosened up is in order to be able to do research on cannabis, it started in 1968. You had to go through basically a natural products research program and it is Mississippi. It's all through university of Mississippi. So if you get approval from the United States federal government to study cannabis, you can only study the cannabis that has grown at university of Mississippi.
00:42:56
Speaker
while that While you go, well, it's better than nothing, there is some concern there because there was a researcher who was given research privileges and decided to have that cannabis independently tested. If you have much know about like the federal government, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I will say,
00:43:22
Speaker
The government doesn't like it whenever it tells you, when they tell you this is good stuff, use it. And then you go, I'm going to have it checked instead. They're not. It was not good stuff, was it? It was not good stuff. Yeah. They found it was pretty heavily laden with aspergillus, which is like fungus and mold. They had, it was.
00:43:45
Speaker
the percentage was really bad. And essentially what comes out of the University of Mississippi, and I actually did listen to this researcher speak, I met her in person and listened to her present this. And she said that even within it, like they took the whole plant, ground it up, it looked like dirt and like didn't, didn't harvest it right. Didn't, you know, I mean, it was just basically, okay, here is a whole ground up cannabis plant. And cannabis really needs to be treated with some kindness in order to be the plant and the medicine that we want it to be. There is a lot of science that goes into growing great cannabis. Is it a delicate plant? No, it's a weed. Well, yeah, I mean, it's essentially a weed, but I mean, if you really want to get top shelf stuff, for lack of a better term, does it do you really have to, are most grows indoors nowadays or are they outdoors or is it an equal mix?
00:44:42
Speaker
So I think most commercial grows, I would argue are probably inside. I haven't looked that up, but I would be surprised if it wasn't that way. The vast majority grows in Missouri, obviously your indoor grows because you can control the conditions all the time. Oh yeah, security as well. Security grow year round. Missouri does have some outdoor grows. We have some hybrid grows, which are kind of cool. So we've got some greenhouse style grows where they're indoors, but they're getting natural light. And so we've got a lot of those different ones, but You know, cannabis is a weed. It can grow on its own. You will find cannabis growing naturally in forests all over the United States and in farmland and all kinds of stuff. Actually, it's funny because the this this was probably maybe seven or eight years ago when I was a journalist.
00:45:28
Speaker
somebody called the sheriff's department because they found pot plants growing in their field and they didn't know what to do. And the sheriff's thought, I was actually in the sheriff's office for another reason when that call came in and they were just having a real chuckle about that. i'm sure they um Because he just found it growing out there and he goes, I think he's just grown naturally. They were like, ah, somebody probably plants it. And I said, I could go either way. But yeah, so cannabis plants, you know, it's, it's delicate. So we have done a lot to them.
00:45:54
Speaker
There are a number of, I believe there's 12 land race strains, which are still considered true strains. So they're a true indica or a true sativa species within the plant. But really we've messed with it a lot. you know Cannabis used to be naturally a few percentages of THC. Now we see flowers that are 30 plus percent THC. Good grief. We have cultivated on purpose for the for the effects that we want and for the medicinal points that we want, but that plant doesn't look anything like it used to. But neither does wheat, neither does corn, neither does anything that humans have taught. Right, right. So it's not like Frankenweed.
00:46:31
Speaker
No, it's just, you know, we have just cultivated it. And honestly, probably most of cannabis has been grown a lot more naturally. We don't have Monsanto up our nose, you know, we're right. We're growing a lot more naturally, but you do need to be really specific about like your nutrients, your soil, your light cycle. But you, you know, the biggest thing that on mistakes that I see with people who are home growing is they over love them and they want to like fiddle with them every single day. And they are a weed, so they don't like that.
00:46:59
Speaker
It's just, you can't, can't over love them. Don't over mother them. Don't water them every single day. Don't, you know, I mean, you can't do that because they go stop it. Leave me alone. Kind of like a cat. I did I did kind of interrupt you there. I went down a rabbit hole with but you were talking about the quality from the Mississippi grow and it it dawned on me. There's probably a some guy in a snowboarder in Colorado who in his closeted home is growing a better product than what is being grown at the official federal site from what you were describing it basically looking like dirt. I can I can probably argue that, you know,
00:47:41
Speaker
Stoner science is wild and i would say that probably that stoner in his closet with who loves his plants and who has been. you know, crossing his own genetics for the last 40 years, probably grows better medicine than any company in the world. I mean, really, if you think about it, someone who really cares that much about what they do, you can't have a commercial plant, a commercial grow where you have a hundred thousand plants in your grow space.
00:48:13
Speaker
You don't know every individual plant and the guy who's grown that in his closet, he does. And that's one of the reasons why I think that I really appreciate that Missouri has a caregiver program.
Cannabis Cultivation in Missouri
00:48:23
Speaker
So within the state of Missouri, you can actually register with the state to grow cannabis for a specific patient.
00:48:32
Speaker
And okay so if you need a particular strain that you can't get at dispensaries, because I love running a dispensary and I run my mouth all the time at manufacturers and cultivators about really good medicinal products I would like to see. Even though we're still recreational, my heart is still with the medical patient. I got into the space because this plant saved my dad. And I also got into the space because this plant saved me for a number of years while I was really, really sick and waiting to find out what was wrong, which ended up resulting in me having brain surgery.
00:49:02
Speaker
So you know i really cared about what i do and i can tell. Manufacturers all day long the things that i would like to see in the state but since day one i have been asking for two products we are. Four and a half years into the space now almost all been with my dispensary for almost five years and i still don't have.
00:49:23
Speaker
an inhaler, a THC inhaler for a child having an epileptic seizure. I also do not have a nasal spray that has a THC sinus spray that would also work for an ethla epileptic child with a seizure who can't take an inhalation or can't swallow something and it would be dangerous to have them swallow something. Is that a profit issue? Yes, absolutely. Okay.
00:49:43
Speaker
Yeah, it's always it's always gonna be a profit issue. So when you talk about really good medicine, you know, we can fight the good fight, but it's wonderful in Missouri that you can actually have someone make something for you that you can have a legal relationship where someone can grow the thing that you really need. Because in the dispensary space, profits are always going to be at At the heart of it and you know you have to be able to run a business i i love my people and their decisions that i make that i go man i would love to make this decision but i also wanna make sure that my people have health insurance and i wanna make sure they can you know have pto because it's a balance yeah so. Yeah but yeah i would say that guy is closet probably better medicine how many. How many states.
00:50:25
Speaker
are legal medicinally and how many of them, and I don't know if you know this or not, how many of them allow you to grow your own stuff at home? I'm not sure how many home grows. So we have, let's see, 39, I think it's, we're at either 38 or 39 states for medical. And I don't know if we're at 25 yet for recreation. I think it's 24 for recreational right now.
00:50:55
Speaker
And yeah, I'm not sure how many do home grow. I know, you know, in terms of direct vicinity, Oklahoma allows it like close to us. Arkansas does not. And honestly, Arkansas laws are really tough. We end up with a lot of actual medical patients from Arkansas because they have such restrictive laws that they end up coming up and shopping in Missouri instead.
00:51:19
Speaker
Oh, I didn't know that. Okay. What do you see would be, if you had to guess, what would be the next big thing in the medicinal cannabis industry specific to Missouri? Is there is there a category that's about to bust open or is there a ah line of products that's surprisingly catching on fire or is there some research that's just about to, you know, all of the trials have been done and now it's going to come to fruition?
00:51:49
Speaker
Right now, I don't anticipate any big you know whoop-de-doo, as my grandma would have said, in the state of Missouri in any of those kind of categories. Right now, Missouri is kind of stabilizing. And we are seeing where things are going to land, mostly because of just the way the progression of the industry has been over the last year. We opened with medical.
00:52:19
Speaker
It would have been October of 2020. So that's when the first dispensaries opened within the state. You could legally consume before that. You could legally grow before that, like as a patient, but you could not buy in a dispensary setting. So possession was legal, but you couldn't buy it legally. We then opened up to recreational cannabis in February of 2023.
00:52:49
Speaker
And that is really fast. So going from like October of 2020 to February of 2023 for opening up for recreational, like that is a ripping off the band-aid kind of experience. It was really quick. So we had a good established medical program, but when recreational opened, there was some significant Concerns with product availability so we started to see a build up with product and then recreation kind of opened and then we saw. A lot of lack of product availability because it just became so popular. So it's been so for me I go.
00:53:25
Speaker
I think this might be the year where the Missouri cannabis industry can kind of finally breathe because we've had so much change and it's been so up and down. I think the biggest thing to watch in Missouri this year, I take it back, there is one thing. It's the intoxicating hemp, cannabinoid bills that have been proposed.
00:53:43
Speaker
So Missouri does have legal cannabis, that but there is a big challenge within the cannabis, the legal cannabis industry at the state level. And you see a lot of these dispensaries that pop up as you're driving around and they say federally legal, or they say THCA dispensary, or they say Delta eight dispensary or D8, D9, D10. All of these are kind of loophole dispensaries is what legal dispensaries call them.
00:54:14
Speaker
So the cannabis isn't regulated by the state. It's not grown by legal cannabis companies. It's actually hemp flower that is then being broken down through chemical processes and then treated with hemp-based cannabinoids that have been concentrated. And they kind of just respray it on the flower to make it hit more like regular cannabis.
00:54:36
Speaker
So hemp has less than 0.3% THC in it by volume. And then regular cannabis has more than that, according to the federal government. What these dispensaries and companies have done is they've taken the farm bill that had basically this hemp loophole that said it has to be less than 0.3% THC.
00:55:00
Speaker
THCA, this is getting kind of science heavy, but so THCA is what's really heavy and in real marijuana, real cannabis. And when you light it on fire is when it turns into THC. So what actually gets you high in the cannabis plant, the reason why you have to light it is because you burn off that acid component and that's what allows it to be absorbable into your body.
00:55:23
Speaker
So all cannabis is very heavily THCA and very low THC just naturally. But when you calculate what your THC percentage is, you're calculating what it will be after you burn off that acid molecule. And that has not been really well defined within the farm bill. So what's happening is these companies are going, legally, we will fight you on this because by volume,
00:55:53
Speaker
It is less than 0.3% THC, but it's not real cannabis. It's not a legal cannabis plant. It's hemp product that's been being processed. And then they're spraying hemp flower with condensed THCA that they pulled out of it. So last year, or well, no, I'm sorry, not last year, this year, it's still 2024. Buckle up everybody. The longest year of all time.
00:56:16
Speaker
But September 1st of this year, our governor actually signed an emergency order stating that those types of products, so like Delta 8, Delta 9, Delta 10, anything that is not a legal cannabis, legal grow within the state of Missouri is illegal. So he sent in an emergency order, but there has been a lot of government fighting. So there hasn't been a real pathway to stop these retailers from selling it.
00:56:40
Speaker
And next year, this year, well, this upcoming legislative year, we have multiple bills that are going to be put on the books that would basically make that enforceable. Because in Missouri, you can go to a gas station and buy a joint that looks similar to what you would buy at a dispensary. But it is not the same. It's not been legally tested. It's not been regulated. It's not taxed appropriately. And it's not guaranteed to be safe.
00:57:06
Speaker
I personally am not saying these products are going to hurt people. I'm not saying if you consume the pre-roll at the gas station that, you know, something really bad is going to happen to you. I don't know. My concern is that it's not tested. And as someone who does work with cannabis labs, they don't even know how to test these products if they don't know how they're made because there is no regulation process. They can't even guarantee if it's safe, they don't know how to test it because there's so much ambiguity and even the processes of making it.
00:57:37
Speaker
So there's a lot of danger there. The labs that you just mentioned, can you hit the high points as far as when they do testing for the safety of cannabis? Let's say someone comes in that they're dealing with cancer and they need something to help with their nausea or their pain or their insomnia or whatever. What types of things will these industry or these labs test for to make sure that they're not present in the cannabis plant?
00:58:05
Speaker
So we've got a bunch of different testing kind of protocols in Missouri. and the Some of the testing is for actual safety of the product. So we're looking at things like residual chemicals, ah residual nutrients, any potential like, you know, they'll test for heavy metals that could potentially have been in the soil that have gotten into the plant, those types of things.
00:58:26
Speaker
any potential pesticide residue, anything like that. That's what the state's kind of testing for in terms of safety. So they want to make sure that, let's say, you if you make dabs, if you make concentrates. So butter, batter, shatter, they're all kind of the same thing. They're called dabs. Those are a lot higher risk for consumers because they're very, very heavily concentrated. And you also usually break down those products mostly through using either butane or propane.
00:58:56
Speaker
Some do a CO2 extraction, some do an actual just heat and pressure method, which is probably the safest. But anything that's in that plant is getting condensed down really heavily. So if there's leftover pesticides, that could be really dangerous. So the labs do test for all types of things like that. They also test for residual mold or any spores that would be unsafe to inhale.
00:59:20
Speaker
And then they also test for percentages. So they'll test for THC. They test for CBD. I mentioned CBN earlier is a good nighttime cannabinoid. They also test for things like THCV. And that's one that would actually be something that a consumer would need to know if they were having issues like as a cancer patient because THCV is actually an appetite suppressant and THCV products are usually marketed like anything rich in THCV is marketed for like workout or if you're going to be out and about during the day, they're very energizing and they keep your appetite low. So that wouldn't be a good one to recommend. So the state does have testing like that.
01:00:05
Speaker
The difficulty with that is that the average consumer does not know what things would be, the things that they would look for on that label. And unfortunately, even though I don't feel that I run a cannabis dispensary like mo like this, a lot of other ones do, their staff aren't trained on how to counsel someone medically because especially once you open up to recreational, it's mostly a retail space.
01:00:31
Speaker
Right. You have to know what you're recommending to someone who's dealing with epilepsy or cancer or what have you. Yeah. So the state has those things tested for, but then the state also has really particular rules about like not putting medical information on packaging that could be misleading. The packaging labeling has been being really hard to deal with, but there were even debates about whether or not companies would be able to put indica or sativa on a package and You know, our argument was this, it's not a guarantee that that's the effect, but it helps people choose things. That's what they're using. But even on like deli style flour in Missouri, what most consumers are looking for is a percentage on the label. And that's actually not what the state wants us to put on it. So if we want to put a percentage on, we have to ask for basically a break from the rules.
01:01:24
Speaker
to say, hey, this is what makes more sense for our consumers. So the labs are testing for those things, but I definitely think there's some hiccup on people really understanding what's in their product. They also test for terpenes, which a lot of research recently is that terpenes are actually more important even than cannabinoids which within cannabis products for medical reasons. And it's similar to how essential oils work or those types of things, which I i hate even saying that because people have very strong opinions about essential oils.
01:01:52
Speaker
including myself, I also have strong opinions. But um but those those terpenes do have scientific research that they do have effects, you know, the fact whether you want to use lavender oil or not, I mean, there is good science that that lavender does kind of sedate help relax, they've actually shown that.
01:02:10
Speaker
so So terpenes are things that get tested for two you're not required to test for terpenes in missouri but a lot of them do test for them and that probably would be really helpful for most consumers but you don't see those as frequently on packages as obviously the ones that are required.
Cannabis Education and Industry Hiring
01:02:26
Speaker
Most every time I hear somebody mentioned essential oils, I saw a t-shirt a while back. A guy was wearing it and it had a bunch of bullet holes in the front. And then it said, don't worry, my wife has an essential oil for this. And I don't know why, but I i had to sit down. I was laughing so hard and I almost bought it, but you know, whatever. I i think we all who are in like the cannabis or even natural health care space. Yeah. We get so skipped because Of the people who misrepresent what it is that we're trying to get people to understand, and there's a time and a place for everything. But in the same sense that I don't want to sit here and say that cannabis is a cure-all, it's going to fix everything. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. I've been using cannabis in my own personal life for well over five years to manage chronic health symptoms. And it is still a challenge. And I do this for a living. And I have a cannabis nurse who works for me, who is an RN, who I see every single Monday.
01:03:24
Speaker
And I still don't always have all the answers. You know, we don't, our bodies are complicated. If someone wanted to You didn't take a traditional path as far as I went to school and then I went to college and then I got this specialization and then I got into the industry that I want to get into and here we are. You described yourself as a professional dabbler at the beginning and now here you are. But looking back, if someone wanted to follow in your footsteps and so you know what, I think her line of work is something that is interesting to me.
01:03:57
Speaker
What do the education opportunities look like? I mean, are there schools that offer training programs? I don't know if there's even a two year or four year degree with a specialization in cannabis research or in the marketing or retail side of things. What what does that look like training wise?
01:04:14
Speaker
So there are a lot of online courses that are available for just cannabis studies and research, and some of them are oriented toward becoming a bud tender. Some of them are oriented toward just being able to kind of take care of yourself and heal yourself. I do think that those courses are really helpful, but That's hard for me to tell people to go out and spend that money on those because I think if you care enough about it and you just want to read books on your own, you can probably get just as much from that as otherwise. When I first started and I wanted to learn a lot about cannabis, I just started really basic like how-to guides that were oriented toward really simple concepts. One that I recommend for everyone, even including men, does not matter. I don't care what it's called. but it's called
01:05:05
Speaker
There's a book by Nikki Fuhrer called A Woman's Guide to Cannabis. It is by far the best introduction book to cannabis I have ever read. She wrote it with her mother in mind. So she thought, okay, I've been in the legal cannabis space. My mom's going on this girl's trip with all of her friends. I don't want her to have a bad time. And I also don't want her to feel stupid at the dispensary. And I don't want her to not know what questions to ask.
01:05:30
Speaker
So she just lays it all out. It's a fantastic book and that's where I recommend a lot of people start. And see if that really speaks to you. Because if the way she talks about cannabis in this book speaks to you, this is probably a career field you would enjoy. Okay.
01:05:45
Speaker
And then from there, so you can, you know, and I listened to podcasts, I got a bunch of books, I'm a nerd and I'm a reader, so I got some pretty intense ones. But I watched documentaries, just kind of really went down the rabbit hole, which I think we've said on this podcast like 15 times since we started today. That's fine. but That's what we're here for. Yeah, but yeah, so I started with that. I think that there are If you're going to pay for a program in Missouri, I know there are a couple universities actually who already have cannabis education training programs. I can't speak to how long they are. like I'm not sure if it's ah you know for if it's a two year or that kind of thing because I haven't looked into it super heavily.
01:06:27
Speaker
But i do know that you know i know for sure there are those programs because our dispensary sends graduation gifts a lot of the time to like their classes and that kind of thing. And we you know just because we're in the community that some of the instructors will reach out and say hey we've got a group of graduates can you send something and we'll usually send them like some t-shirts or something like that.
01:06:47
Speaker
just as a celebration. But then they also will connect and talk to people who work within the industry and help them kind of network. So I would if someone's really wanting to do the education side and they want to follow a path, I would do one of your local colleges or universities because likely they're going to be tied into the actual industry within your state. If you're just wanting it more like if it's more like really new and groundwork, you can kind of do one of those online programs. But For me, i I have actually been to career fairs. um I was only invited once because I think parents weren't super happy about. it you know The funny thing is, anyone who's met me, I don't act like a normal dispensary manager at all. And most people would never suspect if they met me that I even used cannabis. you know I maybe look a little bit alternative, but not really. I just kind of look like somebody's mom, um three people's mom.
01:07:40
Speaker
yeah so i don't present things the same way but even when i kind of talk to kids who are getting ready to graduate they're getting ready to go into the world and i talked to them about what i look for you have to be twenty one in the state of missouri most of the people who work for me are younger you have to be twenty one to work in the cannabis industry.
01:07:55
Speaker
and For the most part, who I'm hiring, they're people who are you know in their early 20s, mid 20s, sometimes later 20s. What I recommend to people when they come in is present themselves as authentic when they come in for a job because cannabis is one of the most interesting spaces in that you don't get discounted for the same types of things in an interview that you might in other spaces.
01:08:21
Speaker
If I have someone walk into my office who has a giant neck tattoo, gauged ears, bright blue hair, tattoos all over, like rocking board shorts and banana socks up to their, you know, their knees and, you know, all this goth makeup on.
01:08:44
Speaker
15 rings per hand, shakes my hand. I am not going to assume that that person is not a CFO of a multi-state operator who is making $500,000 a year plus bonuses. I'm never going to assume that because this space is really encompassing for people who are alternative and maybe didn't buy into other careers and other paths.
01:09:07
Speaker
So I tell them to represent themselves professionally, but I do look for a lot of the same basic things in terms of getting into the cannabis ace and getting into your career. Are you shaking hands? Are you making eye contact? Are you representing yourself as an authentic person? Because people can always tell whenever you're trying to get one over on them or kind of lie a lot of the time in an interview setting.
01:09:30
Speaker
So I always tell people, if you know you're going to be late to work every day, don't look at your boss and say, I'm a punctual person. Because within two weeks, you're going to have a major problem at your job. If you know you're not going to show up on time, make sure that you are presenting it that way. Or if, you know, I had one girl who straight up told me that she was not going to take the job that I was offering her because she didn't like our dress code.
01:09:56
Speaker
And in a lot of spaces, that would be considered totally just crazy. What? You're not? I would completely accept that and I acknowledge it. And I told her, I was like, yep, I i totally get it. I understand because it's a different, you know, people are coming to this space with different expectations because they're different kinds of people. It's just very different. So,
01:10:20
Speaker
It's not so much about how you, how you look, but what I will say uniformly across the board, regardless of whether you go through an education program or you work your way up or you research all on your own or, you know, it doesn't matter. I don't care what path once you get to that interview. And if you get that job, show up for your job, have a good attitude and don't participate in the types of things that will frustrate like your managers,
01:10:49
Speaker
or your coworkers because that's the one thing that I see that's the hardest in the cannabis space much more so than other places because we're very unique individual people. We're kind of unique. We're on the fray. We like things that are a little bit different than other people, but you still have to put in the work and you still have to choose to show up. Yeah. And regardless of what space you're in.
01:11:11
Speaker
The soft skills thing is a question that I usually like to touch base with, with folks that are in charge of others or manage other people or you know own a business.
Work Culture Post-COVID
01:11:22
Speaker
It doesn't matter what you look like. You show up on time. yeah It doesn't matter what you look like. You're honest. You have integrity. It doesn't matter what you look like. You treat other people with kindness. How would you like to be treated if a customer is getting upset? you know there's just There and should be an industry standard as far as how we conduct ourselves regardless of the piercings or the tattoos or the color of our hair or
01:11:46
Speaker
if we don't have hair like myself. so you know i can see that I can see why that would move to the top of your priority list when you're interviewing people. For sure.
01:11:57
Speaker
and it also I think there are certain things that as a society we have shifted a lot and I think that COVID has played into this to a pretty big extent.
01:12:10
Speaker
I don't think that we look at the world and work and responsibility the same way that we did because I think a lot of us who showed up to work every day and saw how important it was when the world kind of almost seemed to be stopped spinning, we realized that things were still floating, things were still okay. Or maybe that's how I got through it and maybe not everybody else did.
01:12:35
Speaker
But I think when we got on the other side of COVID, I think people looked at life a lot differently, whether they acknowledged it or not. And I think that realizing people are people first, and a lot of people have seen that whether or not we are essential, and I'm doing giant air quotes, essential workers is pretty darn relative, isn't it? Yeah.
01:13:04
Speaker
Because I will say that as a journalist who is considered to be an essential worker, that's really hard. Because how am I an essential worker in the same way that someone who's working in a hospital is? And in the same way, yeah and i and I will say that you know I was in the dispensary space once COVID vaccines came out, all that kind of stuff, and it was Definitely very different being within actually a health care space because we did look at it a little bit differently and i will say that my people under medical when we first started i think we looked at our jobs and the things that we did a little bit differently and i do think that that made the switch to recreation a little bit harder for some of my staff it's a hard transition no matter what anyway but a lot of people leave whenever you move from medical to recreational.
01:13:53
Speaker
because, you know, we wore masks because we did acknowledge that we were counseling, you know, a 70 year old lady who had chemotherapy later that afternoon. And we took those things very, very seriously. And I think it was kind of hard to undo that for some people. But then I also, I think that a lot of people kind of just saw through how not important work is at the end of the day.
01:14:20
Speaker
Which is a weird thing to say on a podcast about my career and my job. No, I know what you mean. It depends on the context, and it depends on the lens that you're looking through. So it's never as cut and dry. While I talk about jobs, it's never as cut and dry as as some people would think. There's always nuance and gray areas and context. Because while you may have a job that is black and white, you have human beings that are doing it, and human beings are not black and white. No, not at all.
01:14:49
Speaker
you know And I think the soft skills and where kind of all that lands is where are your priorities and why do you want to be here? Because I think that the soft skill that most people gloss over is attitude and why you're showing up. Because that's what I see work against people all the time. And there are situations all the time at work where I get very, very frustrated.
01:15:20
Speaker
because of someone making a mistake, because of me making a mistake, because the the law changed, because of whatever else. And one thing that I do consciously do in my career, no matter where I've been, is when something really frustrates me and I'm really mad and I want to be the boss that nobody wants to have, because everyone has that moment, even if you're the nicest person in the world, where you just go, I want to get mad. I want to yell. I sit before I say a word.
01:15:50
Speaker
And I ask myself why I showed up that day. And the answer is always that I am grateful for what I am doing. And I am, I am grateful for my job. I am grateful for the people I get to lead. I am grateful for the opportunity because I think that what I do is important. Not because I'm just singing weed for a living, but because I can do that well. And because I can show up and be there for other people.
01:16:15
Speaker
And so even if something frustrates me, before I choose to respond, I remind myself that I have actively made a choice to be there that day. And I think if more people had that soft skill, you would see them advance a lot more because I think people get miserable and upset. And maybe the reason why I'm a professional dabbler here, I've come to the conclusion. The reason why I'm a professional dabbler is because I choose to enjoy what I do.
01:16:43
Speaker
And when I get to a point where I realize that I can't make that choice, I can't choose to enjoy what I'm doing, then it's time for me to move on to something else. I think I just realized another show. I could do a therapy podcast where I walk people through and help them, you know, realize why they do what they do. And maybe I'm onto something there.
01:17:06
Speaker
I think we are, we have a joint podcast in our future. co Oh, there you go. I have in my office, my staff have lovingly dubbed the chair across from my desk is the crying chair.
01:17:18
Speaker
so Geez. That's loaded. Yeah, but it's not, it's okay, but it's not ever for the reason, but some people will come to my office. They go, Oh, i I get it. It's the energy. It's because the crying chair is the chair where you can come in and you can say what you need to say. So you can get back to work.
01:17:34
Speaker
And it is, it's because sometimes you just need to come in and you need to like word vomit or you need to say the things that are playing on your heart or you need to just say, I don't want to be here today. And I do really try hard to be the boss that has that space for people. Yeah. Because we are people first. We are always humans first.
01:17:59
Speaker
Speaking of crying, how would you advise if someone says, what's your best advice on how to deal with failure? Because we all make mistakes in various aspects of our lives. All humans are flawed. So what would you say to someone who just said, how do I best deal when I make a mistake? That's a great question. I need to let my brain wrap around that for a second. Okay.
01:18:25
Speaker
Well, let me ask you another question while you can think about that in the back recesses of your mind. Let's talk about pay. If someone says, I want to get into the cannabis industry and I want to start from the bottom and I'm going to try and work my way up with experience and education and whatnot. So a bud, bud tender would be typically your first position in a dispensary. Is that correct? Yes. Usually bud tender is going to be the first.
01:18:53
Speaker
And budtenders, so it's going to depend a little bit on your market. Obviously, I've seen some budtenders start, you know, minimum wage to up to, you know, $2 to $3 an hour more. So it's a hard thing because Missouri, I think our minimum wage goes up to $13.75 in January. But then, you know, when you're living in California, it's like $20 an hour or something like that. yeah So it is very subjective. And you have to remember that I'm in Missouri, which is a very low ah socioeconomic kind of average, I think, compared to a lot of places.
01:19:22
Speaker
sir But so our, you know, bud tenders for the most part, what I see kind of on average in Missouri is if, you know, minimum wage is $12 an hour, they start anywhere from 13 to 15, usually, and then they get tips on top of that. So you're, you're usually most dispensaries love tips. And so they usually get tips on that. And that is one thing that I will say, a lot of bud tenders sometimes struggle to make that leap to management because of the tips. And I think you see the same thing in like restaurant space.
01:19:53
Speaker
because it's a different kind of thing. So some people do work up. And for the most part, people do work up within the industry, especially at the beginning. But in more mature markets, you see more people kind of transition from one space to another and kind of go manager to manager versus working their way up.
01:20:11
Speaker
I see the tipping thing that you mentioned, I'm familiar with the restaurant, you know, where it's 15, 20, 25%, whatever, depending on the type of restaurant you're at, and and of course, the level of service, but there's, there's kind of benchmarks in that we're all familiar with in the restaurant field, that you typically tip percentage wise, is there anything like that in the cannabis industry? Or is it typically, I spent $20 and I have $5 change, here you go.
01:20:39
Speaker
I think for the most part you have people kind of go more, here's my change and here you go. I don't know if it would always be the $5 that would come back. Okay. You know, I don't think people see the same pressure to tip like you do at a restaurant where, you know, I kind of feel like if you're at a restaurant and you're tipping below 20%, for the most part, people are going to look at you like, you know, it's not the same kind of situation within the cannabis space, but You see a lot of tipping, especially with your regulars. And so what you hear a lot is like you know the apology if they don't have it that day or that kind of thing. But honestly, a lot of the time your regulars probably aren't the people who can afford to give the good tips either, but they're the ones who do because they have that connection with their people. As a budtender, though, your tips are very heavily based on the service you give. And it's similar and in the restaurant world in that way and like the way that you engage with someone. So my people who are much more kind of chatty, pleasant,
01:21:35
Speaker
you know They get tipped probably better by certain people than my other people who are like way more education oriented, really overloading people with knowledge and that kind of thing. so It's a balance. The folks that come into your dispensary,
01:21:51
Speaker
i I would imagine that you have your regulars that you come in, you get to know them, what they want, whether they're just for something for sleep, they know what they want, they get it and they move on. Or you have the grandma who comes in and she's never been to a dispensary before and she feels like she's doing something wrong, but she has rheumatoid arthritis and she can't do whatever she wants to do with her hands, whether that's cooking or you know whatever. How do you How do you cater to those people when they come in and they just don't know they're in a whole new world and they don't quite know how to feel about being in that new world? So a lot of that is where when we hire, we're looking at personality and the way people talk to other people. It's a hard job. Honestly, but tenders are really hard jobs to hire for, not because you don't have a lot of applicants, but because of what you just pointed out.
01:22:47
Speaker
which is it's not just a simple thing. And it's also not the same thing as going to a restaurant and needing to know 15 items on your menu. My people need to know hundreds of
Customer Interaction and Employee Roles
01:22:58
Speaker
products. And those products are changing on a daily basis. And people are going to have questions like, how is this manufactured? Or how does this affect you? Or you know well what company makes this? And what what kind of materials do they use to process their concentrates?
01:23:14
Speaker
it's You know, they ask a lot of questions, so it's a very difficult job to do. It's not just transactional, is it? It's you really are a guide and you need to know what you're talking about and have empathy as well. Yes, you need to be able to talk through things, figure out what people are asking for, help them choose something. And finding the right people for that is a challenge, not because you don't have 50 million people who want those jobs. Like, I mean, we open a job and we get you know dozens of resumes within the first couple hours. but And that's in an area where we're pretty rural. We don't have a lot of people who live here. So it's not that people don't want the jobs, but it's finding people who can really cater to people and handle it. And then also you have this almost therapist angle that goes into it where, especially around the holidays, people just overshare, they unburden, they talk about you know their family. And you know most of the time,
01:24:11
Speaker
During this time of year in the morning, my managers and I are standing reminding everyone, hey, just as a reminder, any of the you know the stuff that's slung at you today about people's family trauma is not on you. And just remind them that they can have their weed and go on their days.
01:24:27
Speaker
because people really do, you know they do really have a tendency to overshare. So when people come into your dispensary, do you cater the customer and the situation that they're in with a specific bud tender? So you have four bud tenders, an elderly lady comes in, their first time, I know who you need to speak with, you need to speak with so and so, versus the construction worker who just comes in and knows what he wants,
01:24:53
Speaker
Anybody can help you out. Do you kind of cater it that way? So I do to an extent, whenever we have new people start, they won't serve medical patients. So we kind of do a hybrid in ours. And when you first get hired, you're a bud tender. And then as you kind of prove yourself, work your knowledge, work your way up, then we kind of change your title to patient care associate.
01:25:17
Speaker
And so for the most part, we're not like asking, we're not screening every single person who comes in the door to find out what they need or send them to a specific person. And but we do make sure that like our newer people aren't getting the patients or customers who are really overly complicated or might be asking them too many questions that might be overwhelming. and Okay, that makes sense.
Embracing Failure and Future Aspirations
01:25:39
Speaker
who So let's jump back to the question you've had time to think about it now, maybe, hopefully, your best advice on how to deal with failure. What would you advise someone who asks you that question? I think the best way for me to answer that is to say how I personally look at failure. And that has probably been my biggest challenge in my entire life. And I think, you know, you mentioned the joke about the t-shirt with the bullet holes and my wife has an essential oil for that.
01:26:10
Speaker
yeah And, um, and I kind of chuckle about that because it's how I identify with every time I see the memes that pop up on the internet about the gifted kid. And it's like, Hey, how is that being able to do anything you want? And now you are so like paralyzed by the idea of being bad at something that if you were ever bad at something, you just immediately give it up the second you get bad at it. And I'm being horrible about paraphrasing that, but I get it. But I'm not good at failing. I hate failing. And I've had to shift my perspective as I have gotten older to challenge myself to say, I am grateful for this failure because I can learn something from it. And I can learn that I don't have to be immediately good at something. I can learn that there are skills that I can acquire through this process.
01:27:08
Speaker
But failure is hard for a reason and the failure isn't usually to challenge the skill we're trying to build. I think the failure is usually trying to challenge our attitude, our outlook and our tenacity and what it is that we want. So I try to look at every moment of failure as what is it teaching me and also take it as a challenge to try to do something that I would fail at next.
01:27:35
Speaker
because it's a good learning experience to not be immediately good at something. And it's a humbling experience to not be good at something. And if you're lucky you know or fortunate, you know I've been really good at a lot of things and I've been really bad at a lot of things. And I think you learn just as much about yourself realizing that something is not for you, that it's the wrong call or it's the wrong career path or it's just been too long. you know That's what I look at my my last job Leaving was not the failure. Leaving at least a year and a half after I knew that it was no longer the place for me was probably the failure. So when I look back on it and go, why couldn't I be great at being a journalist? It wasn't, I was great at it. I loved it. I enjoyed it. I learned a lot. I felt like I did a great job and I realized it was time to move on because I wasn't taking appreciation from that anymore. And failure should show us that there are more opportunities.
01:28:36
Speaker
There are more opportunities out there and failure also shows us that even when it feels like the world is falling apart, if you sit and you stop, the world is still spinning. Like the world that we live on, this rock that's hurtling through space, it's still spinning. And even when things feel like the end of the world, even when failures feel like the biggest thing we've ever done, they're not. You just have to choose how you see them.
01:29:02
Speaker
If you weren't in your current career right now, because I can tell that you get a lot of satisfaction from working in the cannabis industry, it seems like a good fit for you, just talking with you. But if you could go back and there was always that one little career or opportunity that you kind of wish you would have done, what do you think it would be? Is it something like a rock star or professional car driver? I don't have any idea, an actress.
01:29:30
Speaker
Or is there something like a doctor or another career that you maybe would have chosen? So I know that I would not have wanted a career in which I would have been very focused in the limelight. However, when I really am being honest with myself, you mentioned something at the beginning that actually I didn't say thank you for, thank you for saying how well spoken I am. um I appreciated that compliment very much. You done good.
01:29:58
Speaker
but You know, I acknowledge that part of my natural strength is my ability to communicate with people and my ability to speak and present things. I actually in college, it was really funny. This is an aside, but my public speaking professor in college, when I took advanced public speaking only handed out 200% in her entire career. And one of them was to me and she was retiring the year that I was graduating. And I like literally have held onto that and clung to that for like
01:30:30
Speaker
since 2015, I think, whenever she told me that. um It was one of the best compliments because I like speaking in front of people, but I always don't feel like I'm good at it. So you mentioned a lot of things that are like limelight. And I always say, oh, I wouldn't want that much attention. But I think if I could go back and take a more traditional path within the professional world of writing,
01:30:56
Speaker
I would try that because I do think that if I had taken a more traditional path, if I had kind of worked more as a journalist and then jumped into publishing and taken more kind of contract to gigs and stuck with it. I think I could have continued to grow in that space in a way that would have been really fulfilling because I think I really would still like to publish at least one or two books and, you know, something that I write myself.
01:31:23
Speaker
So, and I could still do that, you know, I'm a dabbler. I could still go back and do it, but I think if I could redo everything, I would probably go and take that different path because I think growing up around people who did these really, really big things all the time and ran companies and were so important to what they did, doctors, lawyers, whatever. I don't think I saw how much value there was in the arts and how much we as a society and as a culture,
01:31:53
Speaker
thrive with exposure to those things. So I think that's probably what I would do. I would go back and try and be more traditional and try and stick with it because I do love writing. And I think maybe I could still go back to it, but I think I would have gone more traditionally with the way that I went through it. And maybe that's impossible because I'm not a traditional person. What would you write if you were going to write two books right now? Just what do you think that the two topics would be?
01:32:19
Speaker
I would love to meet someone who has had a really interesting life and wants someone to write their biography for them. and right so i will you can write about me so who would the other
01:32:35
Speaker
And then I think for a second project, I would really like to do some kind of a historical research based kind of journalistic book. There is an author who I really enjoy and her last name, I believe it's Broome, B-L-U-M, but she wrote one book called Bonk and it was actually on the history of like kind of sex research within the medical world.
01:33:06
Speaker
And she wrote other ones. so Oh, I'm sorry. It's Mary Roach. it's not Bloom is a different one. But Mary Roach wrote one called Bonk that was really interesting. I think I would really like to do some type of a historical look and research-based. There's another book called The Poisoner's Handbook. That one was the one by Deborah Bloom.
01:33:29
Speaker
And it's kind of similar. So Mary Roach wrote some, she did the one on the Poisoner's Handbook, which was actually like the history of forensic medicine. But I think as I am older, my favorite thing to read is either historical based fiction that has kind of roots in real history or traditional actual historical books.
01:33:52
Speaker
um That just kind of tell the story of things that happened in the past and using a lot of research from old newspaper articles and that kind of thing to write them Well, I think you should do that there's nothing, you know You can do it before work on your lunchtime after work on the weekends as as the spirit moves you so to speak then you can You know next thing you know a year from now you'll have a book with all of my free time.
01:34:17
Speaker
i do I do think that there is a legitimate possibility for some changes with you know with little side projects and things like that for me as things go forward. But I think what I'm looking forward to most in the future is seeing what my kids want to do and figuring out if that's something that I can support them in, something that I can help them in. My youngest is really interested in getting a food truck, and so we're researching that too. So you know there's more dabbling in my future, I'm sure.
01:34:44
Speaker
Well, maybe I'll have somebody who owns a food truck on and we'll do an interview. So we'll give your, your family some, I'm here to help Charlie. yeah i I cannot wait for the interview with you and my 13 year old about the food truck. That will be the most entertaining thing I can imagine. Yeah. He probably would run talk circles around me, but Either that or you can't get a word out of them. They could go either way. ah He's a teenager. I've got those. I know how they operate. so Thank you so much for your time today. This was an excellent interview. I enjoyed talking with you. You shared a lot of excellent information. Very informative, very well spoken. I had a blast. I hope you enjoyed your time.
01:35:22
Speaker
I did. It was a good, good time. And it was nice being on the other side of the interview. I enjoy that. I've done it a few times since I've been in the cannabis industry and I'm getting more comfortable with it. So I enjoy it, but I appreciate that you're a wonderful host, Tim. And if there's anything I can do in the future, you know, whenever I hit my new career, I don't know, I better not say that. If my new bosses hear that, I think they'd be scared.
01:35:46
Speaker
Yeah, don't move you up in the company just to keep you probably. so Yeah, I'm sure I'll be doing something, dabbling in some other way, hopefully something more of a challenge, something to keep my brain busy. Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Charlie. All right. You are so welcome, Tim. Thank you for having me. You bet.
01:36:04
Speaker
And that wraps up another episode of the jobs podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today. Hopefully you found that interesting. As always, I wait until the end of an interview to ask you to like, subscribe and share. I feel it's important that I earn that support from you. Thanks again, and we will see you on the next one.