 Good afternoon. Welcome to our panel on economics of cannabis hiring and recruiting. Gretchen Galey, vice president of KCSA Strategic Communications. And we are a fully integrated communications agency that specializes in public relations and investor relations in the cannabis space, as well as FinTech and life sciences. Today, I am here with a fine panel. Next to me, I have Josh Rothman, CEO of Press Management. Next to him, Jessica Cohen, their New York director. And on the end, we have Eunice Kim, who is VP of People at Green Thumb Industries. We're just going to have a basic conversation about hiring and recruiting in the cannabis space and how that's going. Right now, if all you could just take a few minutes, tell me, I would love to know how you came into cannabis. And if you want to give a little bit more of your background, that'd be great. I guess I'll start it off. So Cresta has been around for 15 years or so now. It's been a predominantly based accounting and finance company that has done work in the public accounting, capital markets, industries for years. And when we saw the cannabis boom starting, we decided to basically make a pivot and basically go after the market as it started to emerge in the US and in Canada. This happened roughly 18 to 24 months ago, where we started utilizing our talents searching for accounting people and then placing them into the cannabis markets themselves. And it's been a very interesting wave. And we are on a massive uptick right now. And there's no shortage of people that are wanting to get into the industry. And there's no shortage, as Eunice will probably say, of demand for jobs within these cannabis companies. We'll get into all the particulars later in terms of what these clients are looking for, et cetera. But it's been incredible. So we have a staff of 18 recruiters nationwide with multiple offices. And we have dedicated cannabis specialists that have learned what these clients are looking for. Jessica is one of our cannabis dedicated recruiters that assists clients on a daily basis and was kind of just looking at the market and essentially saying, hey, we should get into cannabis. And it's been a complete success thus far. Hi, everyone. I'm Jess. I've actually been on the agency side of staffing for about 15 years. I've worked both internally and externally for companies that are split. I worked at a public accounting firm for many years. Crest is structured a little bit similarly to that. And my partner in New York City who directs with me, Rita, we were introduced to Josh by one of our business colleagues about seven months ago, eight months ago. And it just was a natural fit, kind of lifted a few of us out. We came in and he said, hey, guys, I do a lot of work in the cannabis space. I'm like, oh, cool. OK, we're from New York. We don't see a lot of that type of recruiting yet. And I think, and I think Eunice can probably talk about this too, is anytime in my career when I've been tasked with recruiting in the industry, because I am a true generalist. I handle business development, client management, and typically high level executive type of recruiting. But I've placed everyone from the janitor all the way up to the CEO throughout my tenure in every industry that you can imagine, from health care to fashion and now cannabis. I started connecting with really high level operations people. And I said, tell me what you do. What types of companies have you worked at and for? How were they structured? What types of backgrounds did you have? What made you want to get into this business? And then it kind of started making sense. Some people have horticultural backgrounds on the operation side. Some of them were just really strong, smart business people. Some of them were on the accounting and finance side. And we'll talk about, because I know Gretchen is going to ask us this question, about industries that are synergists with getting into cannabis, mostly from that corporate level and how that makes sense. So by connecting with people in all different industries, that's really how you become an expert in recruiting for those industries. And so it's been a really wild seven or eight months of just learning. I mean, I consider myself somewhat of a subject matter expert. That's constantly, though, learning every day. And my suggestion is if it's an industry you're not familiar with and you do really want to get into it, start taking yourself down rabbit holes because the industry is evolving and changing every single day from a corporate level, from a financial level, from a government level. And you really have to keep your finger to the pulse because what is happening today could possibly be changed tomorrow. So I think that's something important to think about. Hello, everyone. I am Eunice. I am the VP of People at Carintham Industries, GTI. A little bit different. I am on, first of all, I do not come from the cannabis industry, so I'm happy to share that experience with you. I am also, I oversee the overarching HR team here in our corporate office based in Chicago. So currently, I have a team of 13 employees who are stretched across the HR facets, including recruitment. We have our HRBPs and a total rewards team. And if you guys are not aware, GTI at Carintham Industries is a national consumer packaged brand. So we have our house of brands and also a retailer. We operate in about 12 states and currently have 18 retail stores open under the brand name Rise across the states. And we have about, gosh, the numbers are changing every day. But currently today, I think we have 680 employees. And I've been with GTI for about two years. So joined in June of 2017 as their first HR hire, not a small feat. And I believe when I joined it was about 60 employees and I think we were in three states. So just explosive growth through and through and I'm happy to share all of that with you today. Oh, my story of how I got into cannabis. It just happened, it was happenstance. So I traditionally come from a tech startup agency environment here in Chicago. So worked at a company called Centro and another company called Kaleidoscope. They're more on like the agency side in terms of like a, it's a B2B agency. So creative and ad tech. So worked in companies where the structure was very similar explosive growth, very progressive HR culture, really thinking about the employee centric experience. And I happened to be leaving Kaleidoscope and P. Cadence who's our former CEO. I'm not, that name is pretty familiar in the cannabis industry. Reached out to me on LinkedIn and said, hey, I know Centro has been the best places to work for five years in a row. I want to know your secret and you can make that change happen at a GTI, which will be a national cannabis operator or you know, evaluated billions of dollars someday. And I honestly thought it was a scam and actually had another offer for a different company and not at all this environment. But I took the call and you know, I walked in and it was like the, I walked in and there were like makeshift desks and I was like, okay, like I knew it. I'm not a stoner, all these people are high. I can't work here, like this is not for me. And when you get to talking, it's all about, you know, this is a blank slate. The industry is unprecedented and how would you like to be part of building an HR team where you can define all of the traditional stuff that most companies do because they just have always done them and really think about how to be an employer of choice in the cannabis industry, but just an employer of choice that just happens to be cannabis. So that was a task two years ago and still working very diligently towards that. But that's how I got started. All right, well thank you. It seems all of our panelists have alluded to and I think most of us in this room know about the booming industry. You may find it interesting that they estimate about 250,000 Americans are employed by cannabis companies currently. So my first question to you all would be, what are you looking for when you're trying to find new employees? A good question. I think that from our stance, we work with the startups to the large cannabis companies that already are publicly traded on the Canadian exchanges or have ambitions to go public in the near future. So every client is completely different that we have. They might be looking for a senior accountant or they might be looking for a CEO. So we have to rapidly change and acclimate to the environment of these particular clients. I will say that for the most part, most of our clients actually do not want people with cannabis experience. Based upon the client's trajectory, they're looking for people out of a manufacturing background, a distribution background, a pharmaceutical background. So in terms of the way we search, I think it's really important that people recognize that we're after top tier talent of C level executives for the most part across the country and for that matter across the world. People are dying to get into the space. We're being flooded by people that wanna get into the space and for the most part, our clients are looking for entrepreneurial type people. So I think the short answer to your question is, is that we're looking for people that are diverse based upon what the client is actively looking for. Eunice, from the inside perspective, what are you looking for? So I echo everything that Josh said. In just my short time at GTI, we did first start with looking at, gosh, they have to have cannabis. We opened up a couple retail stores in, is this me, I'm so sorry. And we opened up a couple of stores in Maryland and we were like, well, we gotta get the Colorado guys. Like we gotta get the people that have run the dispensary before. And we worked with an external agency, like we were just trying to get the ground under our feet. And it did work out that all three hires that we've made are great, but we've also learned that cannabis and regulations are gonna vary state by state. And you can actually teach once you have a good knowledge expert, all the things that you need to learn about running a highly regulated dispensary or in a manufacturing facility. But what you can't teach is somebody's leadership style. Their professionalism. And we've actually scaled back and I think we don't not consider employees that have cannabis experience, but we definitely don't put as much emphasis on it as we've evolved and grown. So to your point, I do think that, one thing that we look for in any hire, whether or not you have the cannabis experience or not, is do you have the functional expertise to run your job, to do your actual job? You know, I think that what we've seen a lot too is that with just the sheer growth that we've seen, the job that we might have scoped out today may not be what the job looks like when the person even signs on board. So what we've gotten better at from like the other side of the curtain is that we really need to think about who do we need today, but what do we need this person to look like to be successful in this role so they can grow with our company? And then the second piece is just being incredibly agile, flexible, change is the only thing that's constant in this industry. And when people come from traditional retail or very corporate environment, they're just not used to this amount of change and movement and reshuffling and reprioritization because the industry still is very subject to that. And then the last thing that GTI specifically looks for is no ego, this humility of being able to come in and say, if you hire somebody to run a manufacturing plant, maybe before in their previous life, whether that was class or whatever manufacturing facility they were operating, they were just managing every single day. But the reality of it is we kind of need people to flex, I don't wanna say down or up, but they need to be able to flex as being like the player coach. They need to be able to do the job. They need to be able to understand when we're gonna need to hire additional staff members, when we're gonna need to an expansion. And part of that is that they need to understand how the landscape of the ins and outs work because there's process improvements to be made. And, you know, but they also have to be able to flex the other way and be able to oversee and operations, manage a team, lead, talk about career development for the company. So I think that's been the hardest thing for us when people come outside from the cannabis industry is they're like, well, I set up here, I only do this. And it's like, oh, you also need to do all of this in order to be successful here. Cause I think that's the nature of this industry right now and the way that we've specifically at GTI have hired and staffed to be pretty lean. Jess, would you say that you're seeing a number of professionals trying to come into cannabis industry who are mainstream? Who all of a sudden are like, yes, I wanna be in pot. Yeah, I think that it's twofold. We work on a lot of director level and above positions in all different types of companies, packaging, retail, manufacturing, production, distribution. And those positions look very broad, merchandising, sales, finance, a lot of finance. We're finding that a lot of people are building out their finance teams now, especially in the California market where we do a ton of work. And so, what's interesting is that the more structured retail people, it depends on the area of the country that we're in really when that happens. But if they have some kind of personal connection to the cannabis industry and they don't have to be a user, right? Maybe they had a stick relative and so they know more about it than the average Jane or Joe and they're in a state where it became newly legal and now there's things opening. Those people have a high interest and they tend to be a little bit more qualified because they are grittier. And I think to echo what Eunice and Josh said, it's a gritty type of personality that hands on, that ego-less. And then, so those are the people that are kind of really interested. And then I constantly am having conversations with really high-level executives that are like, oh, you know, I've never thought of that before. Tell me more. And so, we're educating a population of people across the country too and saying, you know, this isn't just going to the corner and getting your dime bag. Like, this is solving a problem. It's a different kind of industry, whether it's medical or adult use. There's a huge need for this space in a lot of people's lives. And it's the next dot-com boom. So, a lot of high-level executives, especially that are in like the mid to later part of their career, they're super interested to get into that because they want to be a part of something that maybe they weren't able to be a part of when the dot-com boom happened. And so, it's like half and half. It's half of the mainstream people trying to get in. And then also educating some of those mainstream people on what it's about and seeing if they have the grit to be successful. I found, I've worked in the industry for the past five years and I always run into somebody who's like, I want to be a grower. I'm like, great. What's your background? Can you grow? No, I can't grow anything. But they all want to be in there and they all want to start a PAW company. Are you running into that and what advice are you giving to people who may not, who have dreams of being in cannabis but aren't really staying in their lane? I think it's really funny. I mean, my son plays little league and his coach, I don't know, found out through the woodworks that I'm in the cannabis industry. He takes me aside and he said, hey, can you get me in? What do I have to do? And my, sorry about that. My first comment to him is always, hey, it takes a lot of money to get into the cannabis industry right now. I mean, blooded with the demand is just there and not everybody can get the license and have the capital that is needed to get into the industry. I think that one of the ways that we've been successful, Cresta is actually a brand that is integrated with one of the largest capital markets groups called LO that is specialized in the cannabis industry, raising funds for people, advisory services, helping them actually get into the cannabis industry from the ground up. And so what that enables us to do, it's not only a synergistic from the standpoint of we're passing leads back and forth, but it also gives us another service line that we can pass off to our clients and help them with debt restructuring, advisory, capital raising, I mean, things of that nature. So I mean, I think the answer to your question is simply put, we get a couple dozen requests daily for advice and consultative services on how do I just get into the industry? These aren't people that are looking for jobs necessarily, these are people who actually wanna start the business, make money, and then grow the operation they're after. What do you tell these people? I mean, it's say they do want a job in the space. Are they coming at it? I'm an accountant, I want to account for a cannabis company. Are they able to put together that that's the path they should be on? I think we have to educate them. I don't think that it's just plug and play. I think it all depends. I mean, I think Eunice is absolutely correct. I think that there's a specific type of individual that does well in the cannabis industry. Like I said from the very beginning, we have a variety of clients that want a variety of different types of candidates. But for the most part, it's the entrepreneurial for looking speaker or for looking person that can hang from an A to Z type of an atmosphere. They're being asked to do multiple things because most of these cannabis companies, at least the smaller ones, aren't established enough to have multi-leared layers of specific departments. A finance person could be asked to do a simple journal entry. At the same time, they could be asked to go in front of a capital markets person to raise millions of dollars just to fund the business going forward. So there's a lot of components that go into it. And we spend a majority of our time as consultants educating people really. On that note, I'm sure, and you mentioned this before, that you work with a number of startups. So I'm sure that you come across some inexperienced leadership teams or other ones that are looking to scale and transition as they grow. What advice are you given to those teams or how do you help to place the right people into those spots to help that business grow and thrive? I think that there's a big segment out there. You've got the well-established cannabis companies and then you've got the ones that are emerging, trying to get into it. We give them similar advice, but I think with the startups, we take it slower. They're not ready to commit massive funds to hiring talent. They wanna generally see what's out there. So we offer attempt to hire type of a service where they can test the employees, basically give them a longer runway if they need to establish an HR department, for example, or establish various leadership teams. So the startups are a completely different animal than the established, I would say, majority of the clients that we work with. I mean, Jess, would you agree on that? Yeah, and I think to echo what Eunice is saying about when they're hiring at, sorry, typically a very loud person, so to be told to speak louder is not difficult. You need someone that's gritty that can do more than just one job. You have to make sure that you're really super honest with someone that you could be called a CFO, but you might be managing the general ledger, which is typically not something that a CFO is doing, or you might be the director of people, but you are entering people into an ATS system, which is typically something that an HR coordinator or even an admin is doing, but you might not have one. So I think that when we talk to people that say I wanna get into cannabis, it's about asking them, what type of background do you come from? And I think accounting and also distribution are two easy industries to compare, because if someone is coming out of a public accounting company and they're telling me, well, oh, I worked on most of my clients for manufacturing, that's great. There's a ton of synergy for that in cannabis because a lot of these companies are manufacturing and production. If someone's on the distribution side and they're ahead of distribution, even at like an Amazon or a bigger company, and they're like, hey, I really wanna get in, depending on what types of products they are handling, if they're consumer package goods, if they're consumable products, if they're coming from an alcohol or a beverage company that is controlled substance, that's extremely synergist from a distribution and a compliance side. So kind of asking candidates about their backgrounds and then seeing how to coach them on getting in or what they then need to do if they don't have that experience, I think is really, really important, but constantly letting people know that you're not just gonna go in and be this one-trick pony. You constantly, and that's even for us on the recruiting side of it, we have to flex all the time. And if you're not flexible, that's just the nature of this industry. And to be honest, I don't really think it's ever gonna change, no matter how big the industry is. Eunice, you have over 600 employees across the country. How do you manage that kind of team? And how do you start when you have a new license in a brand new state, brand new regs? Where do you even begin? Yeah, I think for a while, it was just like all hands on deck. So everyone that was part of the initial group where we called them athletes, they can really plug into a new application. They can go on the ground and work with the local team to find real estate. They were the ones that were also at the career fair. So currently, I think we have, while there is still some ambiguity in exactly what you're gonna be doing today and exactly what you're gonna be doing tomorrow, we have looked introspectively to say, okay, all the fuss aside about this industry, where do we believe we should be as a company? How do we define our org? So the people that were hired maybe a year or two ago that were hired to lead that team, well, that's also changed. So working on a lot of change management internally to make sure that we have kind of that organizational structure and that we're hiring to the best of our abilities and setting that expectation with our candidates who are coming in. So that allows for people to have, maybe they're still a little bit more flexed, but they actually know what lane they're operating in and know where they can support. And from, and managing a team across the country, it's difficult. It's difficult because we, things are constantly changing. We're getting so big to the point where a message or a decision made in Chicago in our executive team meeting may not make it to the Danville general manager in time if it has to with wholesale. So part of how we staff and making sure we have the right leader in place is that we've already felt kind of the connection breaks, the communication breaks and making sure that we have leaders that are held accountable to the team underneath them as opposed to having everyone report into the executive team. So we've gone through a lot of evolution as a company just in these past six months and identifying, okay, we used to hire doers because they were cheap and they just wanted to get in and they were athletes. And now we have to step back and say, who do we need to lead this team? And those are difficult decisions. I mean, people, and this going back to my no ego comment of if you're gonna make it at GTI, there's always a chance that you may be hired over or, and that is the reality of it. And unfortunately, you know, this isn't, I'm not proud to say this, but we just are growing too fast to develop the people that maybe could be in that position and we don't have the resources in terms of just sheer energy to get those, to groom those people to that next level. Now, if you add that level in, so our, you know, your staffing are C-Suite, we're adding, you know, competencies at the leadership team level and really assessing who is sitting around that table, not just who's been here the longest and who knows the most. That allows us to be able to manage 600 to 1,000 to 2,000 people across the country because there is accountability for each vertical or department. From my experience, a lot of folks when they come into the cannabis space are a bit surprised by perhaps a lack of benefits or a lower salary than they're used to. How do you deal with that? How do you tell folks that take a leap of faith, go for it? Stock options. I mean, honestly, that is, there's no pun intended in that, that is it. I mean, we have companies that are doing things that are completely out of the box. I mean, I know, I'll give you an example. Jessica and I just did a placement for a very large client of ours who doesn't have benefits yet. And so the client said, listen, we want this guy bad enough, we're going to pay his out-of-pocket benefits costs in cash, him to get his own personal policy if it costs us $2,500 a month, we don't care, we're so well-funded, let's pay it to get the guy on board and his family because they're not ready with the whole benefits, the 401k, all of these kinds of things. The other side of the coin is that, I said stock options and it's true. There are massive stock plans being offered to these sweet level executives that if the companies do go public, it will be multimillionaires overnight. And so there's no shortage of companies that are doing this. And the other side of the coin is we're seeing, in our business, in accounting and finance for the last 15 years of doing this, we're placing tax partners at PWC on the lower level here, for example. In this business, what we see are similar types of individuals, high level, but what these clients are doing, especially the ones that are really well-funded, they're segmenting these with large sign-on bonuses, big cash. The deal we just did the other day was a $50,000 sign-on bonus. Walk in the door, here's your check for 50 grand, you stay for a year, the money is earned. That wasn't exactly. Yeah, I mean, sometimes we've done deals where it's more than six figures, just to get them in the door, to compensate for where your question is that they don't have a fully integrated HR department with all of these lovely benefits that everybody would wanna have. So I think that the CEOs and the board members of all these companies have to think outside the box in order to achieve, maximize, and bring on the best talent. I mean, I would say to you, Eunice, are you seeing the same thing? I mean, you guys obviously have benefits in all that stuff now, but am I on the right track here with what you guys see? Yeah, so I think we have crossed a line where now we're focused more on being fair and equitable and just making sure that we don't have millions of outliers. So we've kind of gone absolutely. There was a day and a time where we would be like, all right, we gotta get this guy in, we gotta close this year or X amount or whatever. And now we're really looking, again, introspectively, and saying, do we have the right levels? Are people paid appropriately for the job they're being asked to do today? So we've spent a lot of, me personally, with the team that I've hired to make sure that we aren't actually doing the programs that we create, the packages that we offer are scalable. And I personally, being somebody that joined in 2017, just speaking very freely, I understand that the equity is the long-term game, but also there is something to be said about putting a lot of emphasis on people coming into the industry and not taking care of the people that have already been in the industry. So a lot of what we're working on today is with the executive team, the CEO and the CFO, is how do we make sure our current team is also marketable for now what their experience is? Because now they've become more marketable in cannabis companies and may go to a job for a $50,000 sign-on bonus because they joined in 2017 when we paid them 20% below what they're making now with no 401k. So yes, we have done packages like that. We're becoming a little bit more stringent on doing that for everyone coming in and actually taking a look inside our walls and making sure we're doing that for our current employees. But equity is a big piece. There are a lot of, I'm learning as I go, as in cannabis you just can't be liquid overnight. Unfortunately with just all the barriers and you can give a mid-level manager 50,000 stack options but you also have to teach that mid-level manager what that means and how to transact. What does that mean for you? When is the, without giving tax advice, what is the taxable event and how do we make sure that we have employees that are acting smart and in the long term because that's where it is. It's not really in the short term. So that's something that is quite a challenge actually because you offer this equity plan before it's fully baked out and part of our responsibility as an employer is to make sure that people understand their total package and then continue to evolve your benefits offering with ancillary perks and 401k is hot and heavy on GTI's mind. So just being just constantly looking forward and making sure that we're making our competitive total compensation package competitive. So yeah. Are you finding that people are taking to this out of the box approach when it comes to their benefits or people standoffish from joining the industry because of it? I don't think there's any standoffish at all. I think that they're so eager to get into the industry as long as it makes sense financially and from a family perspective they're jumping at it with hoops and bounds. I mean, to give you an idea, our success rate in closing deals is like greater than 95%. It's a testament to our recruiters who know what we're looking for but I think it's also the prospective employee wants to get into the space. And so if it's a good enough offer with a good enough company that has upside abilities and potential, they're jumping at it and signing on the dotted line and starting within three days. I mean, it's like, let's go. I think it's important to remember that even on the adult use side and corporate side, cannabis is a very mission driven industry. I look at it a lot like a nonprofit organization. If you go on a nonprofit website, you'll see what their mission is and that's what drives a lot of people that are in a nonprofit industry to work at that organization. And cannabis, I find the same thing. All of our clients have very clear mission statements. Right past it on the front of their website and whether, like I said, their adult use or medical. And so I think that both of those play into a lot of people's personal missions too and when they see that, that gives them confidence that they're entering an industry that isn't just about money or the leaf or the flower or whatever. But even in the past like seven, eight months, just to talk about the benefits for a second, we've had clients where we placed someone back in December and it was like, okay, listen, we have no benefits. We're gonna pay $2,500 out of pocket. Here's a great sign on bonus. Here's your equity plan. Can you start? Here's your car allowance. And that same company now, when we are making offers to people, we have a legitimate benefits plan that we're presenting to them. And that was just from December to May of this year that one particular company has evolved. We have clients that even have been able to obtain 401K plans. It's been kind of interesting to see all that happen in such a short amount of time and then the offers changed too, right? So then some people are saying, well, why aren't I getting a $50,000 sign on bonus? And we're like, well, the compensation just evened out. So while I and my friend joined and this is what they got and I thought I was gonna get a big sign on, it's also about managing those expectations I think as the industry evolves that today we're talking about really big sign on but in like six months, those companies that are established that we're working with or even startups that are gonna be able to find more people coming out of cannabis, they might not be offering the same types of packages. They're gonna be structured differently. All of you have talked about the flexibility and the grit that you're looking for in employees. Can you be a little more specific on what types of issues they're gonna have to be flexible with? Eunice, I'll start with you. Oh, okay. All right. Um, yes, I can absolutely speak to that. Yeah, so there's, I think there has just been a lot of unknowns. So, you know, the example that I just brought up about, you know, being hired a year ago and you think you're running this massive marketing team and you know, the way that we've organized our department that that person is actually gonna be reporting into another C-suite that we've hired. So just a little, like just, first of all, just that more so goes with the ego. But for the grit, you know, we have employees that in Pennsylvania are helping our Ohio operations get off the ground and they're training the team. So we really believe in like creating knowledge experts and having and training the trainer and having those people train our teams because, you know, we always say like, we're not reinventing the wheel every time, but for a while we were. We were, it was like all over again, the same situation where like, how do we approach this? And I think part of it is like, we just didn't have the right people to own that. So we have lots of late nights where, you know, for if there's an application that we're applying for and corporate, it's kind of like all hands on deck. Like, how do you, how do you help? Even though my function is HRI, I have no idea what's going on there. Can I help bind? Can I help put packages together? Can I help copyright? Because at the end of the day, like if we win this license, it means that we all win. And Ben, our CEO always talks about winning, being not just a singular focus, but a team effort. And the bigger that you get and the more lanes you create, the less collaboration there becomes. So just hiring people that have the natural tendency to just say like, hey, how can I help? Like, I don't know what's going on. Like, how can I help? So, you know, even thinking about it, a perfect example is, and this is so small, but it's like, we have a sales associate who works in our wholesale business here in Illinois. And we have an office manager and she was staying pretty late because there was some office construction that was happening. So she was staying cause it's loud during the day and we could not have office, we could not have construction during the day, which is very unfortunate for her cause she also lives in the suburbs. So the sales associate just came up to her and was like, hey, you've been here really late and I live in the city. Like, I'm happy to come back at seven and stay till 11 so that the construction person team can finish up. He did not have to do that. He did not have to even acknowledge that that is her function. He barely is ever in the office. So, because he's always on the road, you know, going as clients, but just to see that type of personality and the person that really leans into their coworkers really is what sets the candidate apart. Like, so the employee apart. And, you know, I will say just as we've grown, there's just a lot less of that because we're just not, you know, we never say that we're a family because I think family means that there is, you know, that there is no condition, no conditional love. And, you know, we're a business. We are close. We are a team. We operate as one, but we are not family because that is to say that there is unconditional love for every single person is just not true. But when we find great people like, you know, the sales associate I was just talking about, we want to invest in him more. He has the DNA. He has the great, he has what we always say is a combination of grit and moxie. So just the ability to be, you know, just charming and kind and empathetic and that that with the grit is kind of what makes people successful. All right, this question's for all three of you. Are there any certain roles or positions that you're finding it difficult to fill in this industry? So difficult to fill. Honestly, the lower level positions corporate have been the toughest for us to fill. And that's mainly because clients that are startups have these delusions of grandeur sometimes because those are the positions where you don't typically see, you'll see the same thing with paying of benefits and that kind of thing because if a company doesn't have benefits and they wanna make things even across the boards and everything. But, you know, we're looking for, let's say a senior accountant and typically in whatever market we're looking in that person would get paid 100K or over 100K and they're like, well, I want a great person for 80 and they should want it because it's cannabis. We're like, but in certain areas across the country, that still doesn't mean anything to anyone and they're concerned about getting into a business that's so tumultuous at the moment, constantly changing, looked upon taboo in very, a lot of states still and a lot of even inside of those states, especially in non-urban areas, areas that are more suburban that maybe don't have as much exposure, they don't have a dispensary, they don't know anyone personally that subscribes either medically or adult use, doesn't mean anything to them. So I think to think that anyone is just gonna take any offer just to get into cannabis is foolish because it's just like any other industry still have to offer someone what they can comfortably continue to live on, right? Their quality of life is dependent on their paycheck and so those like lower level positions are very, very challenging for us because the clients just don't understand that they still have to meet the criteria of getting people to live within their lifestyle. The candidates are willing to be flexible. We typically don't have a hard time getting people interested. Their first question is this is what I'm earning or this is what I need to earn. Am I going to earn that? And sometimes we have to say no and are you still interested, you know? I would say that she's 100% correct. I think actually even a bigger issue is the location of where most of our clients are trying to fill these roles. I mean, without naming names of a lot of our clients because of confidentiality rules, but I mean, I've got a client that's in Northern California, not in San Francisco, about 50 miles south in the middle of nowhere where their cultivation segment is 350,000 square foot grow operation and they want their VP of finance to be located there and their entire team to be there. So it's very difficult to find a VP of finance who's got an investment banking background, manufacturing component who has moxie and wants to live in the middle of nowhere, even though there's massive upward potential. Similarly, we have things in Dayton, Ohio. I mean, that might be a little bit more easy to fill but it's not always Los Angeles or Manhattan or Chicago. So I think location is a huge, huge factor in terms of where people are setting up their overall operations. I mean, you have 18 retail locations and I don't know where they all are per se, but some of them I would imagine aren't in downtown Chicago. They are not. And so that might be a challenge for you, I would say. Yeah, yeah, location has become less of an issue for us now because I think we have a corporate brand recognition so people in the cannabis industry know GTI. So we do operate in small town Danville, Central Pennsylvania, our dispensaries are in the Harrisburg area in Erie, Pennsylvania and we've actually relocated a handful of folks to those locations because they wanna work for GTI and they know that there's going to be growth opportunities with us. I think if you're a one or two state operator, you're kinda like, well, I don't wanna live there forever whereas for us, there has been a lot of like, I'll go to Erie to get my foot in the door and I'd love to grow with your Florida operation. So we had that benefit. We have asked, said the comment about, well, they will take 80 because we're in cannabis and we know that that's not necessarily the truth and the reality of it is the hard part about just doing what we do and hiring people is that and my director of talent acquisition always says this in part of my French, but like, we don't wanna like eff with people's lives. This is a job and we don't want to sell you a false bill to get you to come over and then you hate it. So we have actually taken a very different approach and a recruitment to be extremely honest about the hours are long here in our corporate office. When I first started, I was working seven to nine and that was not uncommon. I was maybe one of the first people out the door and maybe one of the last people in the door. Those are big cultural shifts that we just wanna be very transparent about and we've grown a ton and we understand that that is not scalable and that we are gonna burn our people out, but it does, you can't change your culture and the behaviors overnight. So part of it for us is just being incredibly honest with our candidates about like, you teach them about the equity component for the comp package, but also the growth opportunity that lies ahead for our organization specifically as we continue to grow and expand. I think we have time for about one more question. So I wanna leave it on kind of a happy note since nobody wants to go to Danville. What excites you most about this industry and being a part of it? I mean, it's changing every single day and one of the reasons why I just love recruiting in general is that I get to work on a side of the desk where every day is completely different. I get to work intimately with every type of business or organization that you can imagine and act as a consultant, someone that guides and someone that makes people happy because they're like, oh my God, we just hired this amazing person through you and also help them through those challenges and those struggles. And so being involved in such a crazy growing industry has just been super exciting. What's happening today is gonna be completely different tomorrow. A job that I don't have today to talk to someone about is gonna be a job that I'm gonna have tomorrow. An executive that I may not have reached out to yesterday in two days I may be reaching out to and saying, hey, I just spoke to X, Y, and Z person. I really wanna connect them with you. Would you be open to that? So it's being a connector and a relationship builder and seeing and learning and just learning something that is ever evolving and changing. Just like it just keeps your mind going. I think for me it's, I can sum it up in about a minute. I mean, for 15 years I was bored to death most of the time dealing with accountants who have no personality at all and listening to them trying to tell me that they deserve $80,000 more to make a move. Whereas the juxtaposition here is is that in the cannabis industry these people are actually energized. They're excited, they have personality. They have a wherewithal about them that is completely different, that we actually enjoy the conversations. We meet our people sometimes face to face and we have no issues with texting them late at night or talking to them on the phone for an hour at a time. I mean, Jessica talks forever as it is but sorry, I wanted to mix that in. But I mean, there's some sort of fun to recruiting in the cannabis industry that was different in the segment lines that we had done for years. And so that to me is probably the single biggest thing that I like actually doing. And the other side of the thing is that for me telling recruiters that we want to work for Cresta that we work in the cannabis space I have people knocking on the door wanting to come on board. So it's just an exciting time for us to be able to continue and do this on a large scale. It's very simple for me. I'm an HR professional and I think I could literally go to any company, not every company but I had the luxury of going to every company but there's never this like association with I am making a difference here. And I think that's what we see in a lot of our headquarter roles is that you are to the point, the industry is changing. There's no day that's the same but also you're seeing it move in front of you. Every day there is a bill being passed. There's a state that's in discussion to go adult use or if they're already in medical or if they're not in medical then opening up a medical program. We have no shortage of demand of candidates that are interested and but for me I think it's just the passion of being surrounded by people that, I said this to Karchin and it's like there's one common thread that weaves through every single person that works at our company and that's just I've never been a part of that before and maybe if you work for a brand or if you work for a nonprofit that is true but to be able to look to the left of you with a grower and to the right of you, the SVP of accounting or the GC and be able to say like, yeah, we all have different functions and we don't really all know what each other does but we are here because we are making a movement and the industry is so unprecedented that we had this opportunity to truly be a leader and make a difference and set that precedence and kind of be a disruptor and that's pretty cool and it's not for everyone but the passion, you know, whether it's a product, the plant, the social justice component is just so very cool to see and it just is a great collection of people that not a collection but just a great group of people that we have on our team, so that's pretty cool.