Cannabis Drink Counteracts Being Too High
Cannabis Insider
English - September 17, 2021 18:53 - 1 hour - 59.5 MBInvesting Business Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
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Episode Summary:
On Thursday’s show, hosts Elliot Lane and Javier Hasse spoke with Kyle Kelly, CEO of SynchronyHR and Cameron Forni, President of Curaleaf CURLF.
Forni told us about a new venture capital fund, HypeScale, and the company’s plans to develop a new incubator project in Nevada that will hone in on developing U.S. tech and stimulating jobs.
“HypeScale Ventures is a new venture capital fund devoted to the next generation of Cannabis 2.0 pertaining to the customer experience, AI & CannaTech, with a strong emphasis on community engagement and social equity participation and support”
Forni revealed that the company is working on a drink that counteracts being too high.
“This is going to be a beverage that counteracts the THC," he explained.
He also talked about the mission of the Forni Family Foundation, which he described as “a new charity/organization” with a heavy emphasis on mentorship and access to leadership tools and programs “for children and demographics that aren’t as likely to receive that support,” adding that they will initially be operating in and around the Las Vegas and Nevada area.
Guests:
Kyle Kelly: Chief Executive Officer & Managing Partner - SynchronyHR
Cameron Forni: President, Select - Curaleaf
Hosts:
Subscribe to our Cannabis Daily Podcast for daily Cannabis news and trade ideas.Benzinga Cannabis Hour is a podcast focused on marijuana and all things weed, CBD, hemp and psychedelics. Hosts include Elliot Lane, Javier Hasse and Patrick Lane.
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Unedited Transcript:
What up Javier is up. Boy, when I started there, when I was just wherever you're tuning in, cross the globe. Thank you for joining us on another edition of Benzinga cannabis hour. My name is Casa and my hope co-host today is Mr. Elliott lane. That's me. Hey, off. That's going on? Here we are. Thursday's man.
How's it going? Harvey. How's Argentina treating you today. Treating me very well. This is the last show I'll be doing from Argentina and quite a bit. I'll be traveling to Columbia next Tuesday to do some in-person reporting from, from the north of Columbia, from the Caribbean, some very cool cannabis operations here.
We'll probably be checking out. Uh, I'll be kind to our pharmacy, yellow, clever leaves, Kyron, um, one world farmers. So, you know, we'll keep you posted on that. After that we're going to New York for the Benzinga cannabis capital conference and of course, to Vegas, just to be broadcasting from MJ biscuit as well.
So yeah, I got to tell ya, you know, just to toot our own horn for another minute or so this cannabis event we're putting on October 14th and 15th is freaking loaded. Um, I mean, you guys got to come. I mean, we are having the who's who of this industry participate, uh, with the exception of maybe a few operators.
I mean, this, this is an exciting event, exciting to get back in person and you guys can come and join us or watch online your choice. Uh, but we'd love to have you, um, Javier, it's been a busier week and I know we tell people a little bit about the, you know, who's who speaking of the conference, because we got food houseplant because Brando holdings occur in our wine and brands, clever leaves, Mary med, Harbor side, uh, AFC AMA urban grow sundial growers in divas Lang worldwide pleura is equity.
Well talking about sundial, they're literally going to be there. So literally go himself. SAC. George will be speaking at the Benzinga cannabis capital conference. So mark your calendar, October 14 to 15. Look at solar ups comment have got my eyes on zone properties. Uh, I didn't read the rest of that. I just started that, but I'll re so looking at it further zone properties will be there as well.
They just signed on for the event. Very excited about. How to best assess its health and strengthen the industry. Any advice as far as evaluating rates. Oh man. You know, it's, it's funny. I just talked to Rob from Delores equity. Uh, I had like an hour long meeting with him yesterday. Um, great. Just incredibly knowledgeable about the space, but, um, I think it's interesting to watch public versus private for REITs specifically as we move forward and seeing how they, um, how their strategies, uh, play out.
I think there's value to both in different ways, but, um, I mean pylorus is, is doing some cool things and I think in the next couple of weeks, we're going to see some cool announcements come out. Indeed. Indeed. Generally read. Sorry. You know, there's a few ways to, to analyze or evaluate a REIT, um, beyond, you know, the assets, how leveraged they are, you know, who they are, who they're doing business with and in the cannabis industry, super important.
But honestly it comes down to experience. Management is one of those things you learn a lot over the years, right? Properties isn't necessarily a REIT in the traditional sense either. So, you know, they're not necessarily a direct competitor to a lot of your standard REITs. Um, you know, they're, they're an interesting play and Brian is an incredibly knowledgeable guy.
So I do think you should keep an eye on him. Lot of room to grow. I think it's a young company with big aspirations and I think Brian is the man to do it. Um, you know, but I think it'll, it's going to take a bit, it's going to take some years of growth and, uh, some more legislation for them to get there, but I think they know that.
Um, so I think it's kind of a long-term. Watch list, investment type play for sure. Uh, we have Tilray S and D L you know, all the standards yeah. With sundial. So today, Sunday, a launch to Kaveri cones under their top leaf brand. Um, it's, it's an interesting product. Sure. Price is really hovering around that.
70 mark, 70 cent mark. I shouldn't say not $70. Um, but I like this stock. I do. I said this last week or two weeks ago, I'm a fan of how they have responded to the volatility. Um, so I I'm personally interested in the long-term. I think sunscreen is a brilliant move, uh, just to kind of I'm very quickly summarizing my, my thoughts that we gave more in-depth before, but, uh, I, I love what they're doing.
Our thoughts on Gabby. Uh, we had them on last week, check out last week. Margot was on last week. I think here's my thoughts. I think Margo is like a traditional campus operator. Does that make sense? I'd be like, she's doing things like a little bit more traditionally. She's not necessarily inorganically growing as quickly as other operators are, but she has a footprint in California, the world's biggest cannabis economy and a strong one.
So, you know, I, I think they're going to have to speed up growth a little bit to maintain, um, competition, but at the same time, you know, I don't think that's necessarily a bear sentiment. Right. Indeed. What do you think about their wellness? We had some interesting news, uh, this week eight Y R w F I mean, I love what they're doing.
I think they're awesome. I think so. Did you see Verdeans reports? I did not yet. I don't have time to read it, but here's what we're talking about. Right? Air wellness, uh, w in New Jersey CVI the, uh, acquisition of garden, state cannabis dispensary, it was $101 million in a cash and stock. Very, very interesting deal that they just closed.
So, I mean, in New Jersey is a huge market to enter. It's a lot of money for, I think, the asset itself, but I think overall they'll make it back relatively with these. Um, but I think with air now, so Verde, and actually I'll go back to them first. What, what Scott and team said? They think air has one of, if not the best single footprints for an MSL, uh, with a recent acquisition with Illinois, with this acquisition in New Jersey, uh, they think air wellness is poised to be the top.
Ms. As it stands right now, their price target is I think actually less than what they're at right now. So I think they'd probably adjust that. Um, but at the same time, I, I mean, everybody's bullish on this stock for good reason. Um, and I actually heard Jen in a panel at salt conference two days ago, had a very interesting sentiment on federal legalization.
She, she very much hopes it doesn't happen anytime in the near future, because the more she's able to roll up yeah. At air wellness, the more brands they can have, the more of a footprint that can have going into federal legalization. I mean, the more ahead of the competition that they're going to rise, they're going to be, I think you see that, um, sentiment from a lot of tier one MSLs, but Jen is embodying yet.
Yeah, man, super interesting. And that's a view that, that several MSOE and operators in the cannabis space share, um, controversial one for sure. Um, for sure, very much a corporate, uh, corporate view, you know, less a health and wellness view. And I think cannabis got to where it is by, um, by, by embracing the health and wellness.
So, you know, it's an interesting thought and actually I'd love your thoughts on Michigan, uh, as well. Do you see that, uh, they're kind of taking another step away from home grows. What, what are you seeing? Not, not step away, but they they're, they're trying to enact, uh, legislation. I, I touched on it this morning, listen to cannabis daily.
Y'all, uh, 10:00 AM every morning on our podcast channel, but, uh, essentially they're, they're taking another step away toward home grows and it it's not necessarily illegal, but it's definitely more restricted. Uh, yeah. They're, they're trying to reduce the number of plants about and stuff like that. It's it's definitely not a good move.
There's honestly, we're starting to see a lot of industry pressures, right. Over policy. Uh, I just hope, you know, the lobbying, it goes in the right direction and not just to, you know, pushing corporate interests over, oh, well I think, but you need both. And you know, I am as advocate or I'm sorry, as aggressive in the stance as possible.
You need that corporate side. You need to get it wholeheartedly to MBR for this industry to move forward, but you cannot forget the culture of cannabis along the way, you know? Cause that, that's why we are where we are now. Um, you know, and, and that those will be your consumers, red, white, and blue. We had a interview with them.
You and Patrick did an interview with them last week. Right? Last week, last year, go, go to YouTube after the show and just Google cannabis, insider red, white and blue, more Benzinga cannabis, insider red, white, and blue. And you'll find the interview with all the details regarding the Michigan model. Zach has a great question.
Do you see that, uh, any thoughts on safe, possibly being included into the a, it seems like a real possibility from what I've read. I heard that too today on CNBC. Um, Tim Seymour seems pretty optimistic. Uh, there was another investor or talking head on the channel that seems to think it won't happen the end of this year.
Um, but I, I think that is what is needed to kind of more focus in, on how they're going to get this done. Bill was way too broad, you know, I think everybody knows that everybody says that it's not my personal view, but it was just too broad to get anything done. Um, so I think including something in a more specific sense, like, you know, getting rid of two 80 Beatty, putting safe into NDA, things like that are ways to take steps forward and get small wins.
Oh yeah, indeed definitely more palatable for, for lawmakers and for the general population, for sure. Should we bring on our first guest? Um, so you're my friend, but it sounds great. I'm excited. I know nothing about this part of the industry. So I'm very excited and we'll be talking about human resources with synchrony, HR CEO, and managing partner, Kyle Kelly, Kyle, what's up, my friend, I look at this HR stuff is not nearly as interesting as the stuff you were talking about.
So it's all necessary though. Like nobody's, that's what it's about. Nobody should sleep on how businesses run, especially in an emerging market and you know, the obstacles that you're facing. So I'm pumped to dive in, but Kyle, tell us about yourself, man. Uh, tell us about synchrony. Yeah, well, myself, I'm, uh, over 25 years of this crazy, uh, HR outsourcing business.
So I look back often and say, I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing, but, uh, synchrony HR is exactly that guys were, you know, we're helping the businesses outsource the. The stuff, that's not the core part of their business, you know, um, handling payroll tax, you know, handling HR issues, um, you know, handling technology utilization of the time management or employee benefit administration, or how to onboard an employee and do an I nine verification, um, risk management, you know, security worker's comp, uh, which unfortunately in, in many, in many states we've got to, you know, we've got to execute that, uh, and employee benefits, you know, that's kind of the core part of synchrony HR.
Now we do that. We do all of that for a lot of our clients would be some of that parts of that. Um, and it's just allowing them to focus on their core business. Um, let it just handle that stuff. Business. It is a very necessary platform. You're up there for sure. For sure. So, I mean, how do you, if you don't mind me kind of jumping in, I'd love to kind of understand, are there traditional issues in the cannabis industry for HR companies, uh, that, you know, to kind of start in ground this conversation we should be aware of?
Um, yeah, there are, I mean, I think there's some things that aren't necessarily, um, uh, compliance, driven, but certainly things that are making it a little more difficult for the, uh, for the cannabis industry securing workers' compensation, right. It, depending on what, what, what the folks are doing out there, if they're running dispensary or if they're harvesting or if they're doing farming or anything in between, that becomes a bit of a challenge, uh, for the guys trying to either grow that business or establish that business and securing those lines of coverages.
Uh, what's great here through this Alliance, right guys, you're going to hear me say as a hundred times. This Alliance is about aggregation, why we're aggregating all of these businesses kind of under one. So we've got a little more buying power purchasing power, if you will. So the smaller guys can take advantage of what the bigger guys can get and securing workers' compensation is one of those.
Not only is it hard because of the, what we call the class code that the, you know, the a workers' compensation Institute puts these guys under, um, you know, it's hard to get competitive pricing, uh, because there's there's risk involved. So I think that's probably one of the big areas. You know, the, the they're going to be faced with, and we can certainly help secure that.
Another big one, the famous, uh, tax code two 80 E you know, and, and, and how to manage through all that and have the appropriate, um, you know, reporting and things. The owners need to be able to, to, to file that tax appropriately. And a lot of pieces of our technology, certainly our time and attendance system, having the ability to keep track of all that, you know, that's, uh, that's another big one.
Um, and I'll just say one more. And unfortunately it's in the light of insurance employee benefits. It's this exact concept of, uh, you know, the worker's comp stuff either. You're just starting up, um, or you're rapidly growing in multiple states, securing competitive, strong, good employee benefit. Uh, options is huge to hire and retain good talent.
So. You know, those are just a few and those are a few that, of our cannabis clients. Those are ones we're helping them with everyday, you know? And how are you solving some of these rights, of course, without spilling the secret sauce by like what what's like, what, what are some of the things that you're doing to, to help solve, for instance, you know, the, the lack of employee benefits, right.
As you see, because it's not your lack of willingness, right. From, from most employers, it's just a lack of availability. Yeah. Well, look, have you, one of the, one of the, one of the things that most business owners love to talk about is insurance, right? So it's a lot of it is just pure education. What are, what are the options that are out there?
You know, um, what are some of the others in my industry doing that's working. If it'd be contribution strategy, Benefit plan design choices, what they're offering, you know, whatever that might be. So I'd say, uh, Javier, the first and foremost would be just giving them knowledge on their options, what's available, what they can and can't do.
What's a reasonable contribution strategy for, you know, my manager and my, you know, my front line folks. Um, so I think that's one of them. And then again, as I said, I'm going to harp on this a bit, but the fact that we're buying in bulk, you know, we are, you know, we are working with a select handful of carriers out there that are at support the industry and are, and are, you know, helping us manage quality rates and premium dollars, you know, versus just one of these, you know, going out and just trying to secure the coverage on their own and really having no guide.
So, you know, the cost of the coverage itself. Um, I think those are, those are two big areas, um, that we're, I think helping a lot of these, um, groups a lot. So, yeah. And just, just to kind of expand upon that, you know, looking at your website, you know, something that you all, I don't know if claim is the right word, but I think mentioned is really helping the bottom line, helping these companies save money, you know, and if I think of like a third party, um, outsourced, you know, firm that doesn't sound like something that's saving money.
So I'd like to hear from you like, exactly, like, how are you saving these companies money, these companies money, you know, in helping these investors get more return. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and, and ironically, we're starting to do a lot of work with the private equity and investment bankers that are very active in the cannabis industry because, you know, we're able to again, come across their entire portfolio and do a lot of things.
The first thing I want to say, when we talk about saving. There's that soft cost hard cost. Right. And that's, you know, and that's one of the things when we, when we work with a client, uh, before bringing them on, we kind of go through an entire discovery. And what we're doing is we're, we're trying to understand the structure of the business.
What are some of the goals? What are they doing today? If they're an existing business, what are they outsourcing today? What are they doing in house? So on and so on and so forth. But through, through that exercise, I'm able to evaluate really what we're looking for and what they're needing. Um, and so we could come to the table and, and literally hit the bottom line because we're able to save them 20% on a worker's compensation rates or an employee benefit program.
I mean, just right out of the gates or, um, business owner is looking to get rid of a, a body or two. That's doing nothing but HR work, you know, look, unfortunately at the end of the day, HR is a, you know, it is a role that many businesses are looking to, to outsource today. It's, it's hard to justify. Pretty complex, very large organization that the need for a human resources person on staff all the time.
So in that case, we're actually bringing an entire headcount back to the financials and looking at a savings, um, or there quite frankly, could be a situation where they're either using employees or they've got another outsourcing provider or multiple providers that they're paying for three to four services when we can consolidate that all under one and radically reduce that cost.
So it's it, you know, it could come in the form of an actual dollar to the bottom line, or it could come in the form that we're, you know, we're, we're shifting a cost that was sitting in the budget that now no longer exists, you know, um, So that that's some of the years, you know, another, another area again is, is, is all around the creating efficiencies as well.
You know, the amount of time, unfortunately, as you guys know a lot of these owner operators, they're doing this stuff late at night, they're doing this stuff, you know, on the weekends and whatever. And you know, our ability to utilize technology and to start pushing stuff through a more efficient process, you know, you can't necessarily put a dollar next to it, but it's that time somebody's spending that no longer has to be allocated and they can allocate that towards something else growing the growing to dispensary or order, whatever the operations are looking to focus on.
So, um, and you can definitely put a dollar value on it to be on it. I know how long it takes for me to, to pay each one of the people to check each one of their contracts, to send it out, to check their hours, to check their performance. Right. It takes hours here. Well, and we've got, we actually featured, um, I think for you guys, uh, last month, one of the biggest areas, not only for the cannabis industry that we work so much in, but also our traditional clients recruiting talent.
I mean, let's face it, the workforce right now in getting good quality tail is so hard, but hobby, or to your point, you think about that paper you're pushing during the process you described, think about the application, prep that whole, uh, resume and, and putting the, the, the job out on the job post and that resume coming through and trying to get everybody to look at the resume and then get the interviews organized and doing it's crazy.
And you don't even know the quality of those candidates come in. Oh, yeah. I'm hiring them Twitter right now. And it's just like, it's a nightmare. Yeah. It's like, okay. Someone is looking for like, when I'm trying to source for someone like a good friend or whatever, like, Hey, I'm looking for, right. Okay. Like who wants a writing job?
And then I get like 50 direct messages on Twitter. Well, clearly you and I are going to have to talk after. So our, our, we have a system, it's an applicant tracking system and you guys, ultimately, you put together the job posting and you put it into this system. And this system basically is it's scrapes all the job boards out there and it funnels the people in electronically.
You can, you can have, have them do some interviews. You can have put them up on video. So you're getting a feel of these candidates even before you actually talk to them. And then they manage the candidates coming through the system and you're able to then out in, uh, um, assign that out to the hiring managers.
And now they're hiring, you know, not only do they get stack a hundred, they're getting a stack of 20, but there's a high probability they're going to have. You know, one or so of those candidates and that, that that's, uh, that's to me, an incredibly efficient process, we're able to bring to the owner-operators in that category.
So, wow. I mean, so you're looking at a wide volume, you know, out of, I mean, I, I guess, you know, there's the recruiting thing for, as me for a loop here. I'm not going to lie, so, and not you specifically, but recruiting in cannabis. Cause like you have firms that are specifically executive search firms and now more and more, you're seeing more staffing firms, um, you know, are, are you both, are, are you, you know, are you more staffing?
You know, I know it's, it could be both very easily, but I know this industry is very picky about its executive style. So we're, we're actually neither. So I can clear that out quick. So what are we are we're we're going to help manage the flow of all those candidates. We're not responsible for finding those candidates.
Okay. Does that make sense? So as you're either using your executive recruiter or your staff recruiter, or you're using job posts that you've already, that you're already utilizing, or you want some specialty ones, that's you tell us? And then our system will help track that resume job flow as they come through the pipeline, so that it's clean and efficient.
So you're not getting all these Twitter messages as Javier is talking about, are all these LinkedIn posts or all these resumes in your mailbox, it's all coming together. And you can actually even program this to have them send you a, you know, a video of them, maybe asking a question that you might want to have or whatever it might be, but it gives your hiring manager or the owner a look at that candidate versus just freshly looking at the resume and making that call.
You know what I mean? So that's really interesting. Yep. Yep. It's a really cool, and then by the way, should that person get hired? Yeah, it goes right into our electronic onboarding system. The are electronically verified and it goes right into the electronic onboarding employee benefit enrollment if applicable and right on down the line and all that papers are removed from that process.
But I imagine, sorry, go ahead, Hobie, please. I was just gonna say, I imagine, you know, you're not constricted by the normal, you know, kind of state market lines, but, uh, do regions make a difference to you? You know, do you focus more on one state, more with certain types of companies? You know, what are your standards for working with companies?
No, it's a great question. I mean, we're first, we're licensed to do business in the entire country. Um, right now we're probably running payroll, I'd say in about 45 states. That doesn't mean we can't do it everywhere. That's kind of where we're going, but specifically. Um, to that question, you know, we're, we're obviously getting pulled into the bigger Metro areas geographically, right?
That's as it is probably with you guys, but that's pretty common now we're headquartered here in St. Louis. So we're kind of in the heart of the Midwest, which, which I like operationally, because we can kind of hit those time zones from a service perspective on both east coast, west coast, our group new business growth efforts are, are certainly drawn us to the Northeast, um, and parts of the Southeast and really kind of Midwest west.
So, um, I, you know, we, we love Texas. We love Colorado. We love California. We love Washington. You know, we love New York, uh, New Jersey, Pennsylvania. We love the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, and probably a sprinkling. Um, and, and honestly, that's also driving because of where our businesses. So we've got obviously this entire cannabis vertical that we do a lot of work in.
Um, but we do, we are, we do vertically sell, which also draws us kind of these markets that you described. And when I say that, you know, we're, we, we can, we do a lot of hospitality business, um, not so much the mom and pop diners, but we're doing a lot of, kind of the white linen, uh, larger restaurant group.
So a restaurant group owner that owns multiple types of restaurants, probably ones that you guys have dined in numerous times. Uh, and, and we do a lot of ironically radically different than that. We do a lot of technology, kind of a, I'd say gray, white collar. So high users of our technology is right when they start their business.
They're like, we're outsourcing. Um, so that's kind of what draws that regional push that we, uh, that we do. And another thing to note guys, we, um, we're pro uh, the, probably the bulk of our entire rope is from a referral partnership. You guys are a referral partnership of ours. We're not out really banging on the end-user door.
Everything comes from a professional relationship. So, so that all done means kind of where we're growing. Yeah. Yeah. Back to cannabis for a second, you know, in a hiring the biggest gaps, right. What are the most needed and sought after positions, professions, you know, studies, in other words, what roles do do we see the cannabis clients looking Rodman?
A lot of it back to what you guys say, a lot of staff positions, quite frankly. Um, and, and really what, what, what makes that role very competitive? Right? First of all, there's a, there's a, there's a flood of that out. But it's getting people up and wanting to be active and get to work and what's driving a lot of it.
I'll tell you, obviously there's always the pay itself, but they're looking for more now. And that's why I keep coming back to the they're under. They want to understand what the employee benefit program looks like. They want to know what the 401k contribution is. Um, you know, they're starting to ask questions beyond just the core part of that compensation.
They want to know what their PTO policy is going to look like. And unfortunately, as owner operators, you've gotta, you've gotta be prepared to attract if you're gonna attract that talent and retain them because of the flood of folks out there looking for work, you've gotta be prepared to if you like it or not, you gotta be prepared to offer that.
And we do a lot of, we do a great job in, in being able to allow that small business owner to be much more competitive, particularly when they're trying to recruit against the bigger guys. That's very cool. How big is technology in the space of HR? It seems like very important looking at what you offer, but, uh, I'm curious how competitive that makes it for you guys.
Uh, it, it, you know what, when I say technology, you know, I, a lot of times people say, well, technology, like, what do you, what do you mean we're in managing my employees? What do I need technology for? But it's actually big. I mean, if you think, if you think about the life cycle for a moment, we we've touched on a lot of the, kind of the individual components of it, but they're all tied together.
If you think about it. And so many businesses now are doing this stuff manually, right? And when we engage with the clients, even if they are as basic as ever, and as manual and old-school as ever, we are trying to push them to a paperless electronic environment. Um, we don't always win, but that is the goal.
And, and it starts again, guys from that, that whole recruiting applicant tracking process that I just discussed. If you think about how manual and filled with paper, that process typically is, you know, we're, we're, we're working real hard to get away from that. We're trying to get away from anything about either when you guys were hired or some, or some affiliates, an application filling out an application, don't do that on paper, you know, let's that, that should be an electronic process.
Once you're hired, you got all the, the, the, the state local federal stuff, like an I nine for that you're, you know, you're capable of working here in the United States. That should all be done electronic. Um, and then as you go in, don't use a time. And an old time system for track people's time, have them log into their smartphone or their laptop or whatever, and log in and check in and check out for lunch.
And, you know, let's get away from the missing the pole punch in the O in that old system, you know, um, uh, hardware for that all the way to, you know, enrolling in benefits. Don't fill out a paper application, let's have that in the system. Let people take a look at what their benefits are. Just like if you're going to buy a TV, let us compare the plans that you like in the, what the price is going to be.
Let me take a look at, have a video. If I need education on that health plan, the problem with healthcare is it's just it's education. People will understand it if they're, if they, if they have an opportunity. You know, who teaches us though, except for you, Kyle. So that's why you guys got, yeah, I have one more question and I'll let Javier kind of finish up with his thoughts, um, the addressable market within cannabis right now.
Um, and you don't have to know this, you know, it's not something we've talked about previously, but do you have a sense of how many companies out there still need HR initiatives, um, or are lacking what you provide? Um, and what the addressable market looks like as we continue to grow in this, I, I don't have an actual number statistic, but it it's, it's, it's huge.
It's amazing to me. And it doesn't mean that, you know, these, these owner operators, you know, it's not on their radar, what it means is they just, they they're dealing with so much other stuff. They can't take a second to even think about this. Yeah, over time, it become a huge part of the success of their business.
I mean, you're talking about people you're talking about, um, you know, managing those people, staying in compliance. You're talking about insurances that you have to have to be in business in certain states. Um, so it's, we're putting a massive investment in, in continued resources and technology that supports the cannabis industry because we believe this thing is just going to continue to expand and the need for what we're doing, uh, will continue to be there.
And, and, and really it's about us educating. We just gotta get in front of it and say, guys, you don't need to worry about all this stuff. We got you here focusing on getting your shop going and, and, and get the employees in here and, you know, and running and, and, and creating sales and, and bringing in more customers.
That's fantastic. Kyle Kelly is a CEO and managing partner at synchrony HR co thank you so much for joining us at Benzinga cannabis hour. And we hope to see you at our Benzinga cannabis capital conference. Yeah, it was a pleasure, man. Thank you for sure. I appreciate the time guys. Thanks so much. All right.
Be well, Kyle. All right, man. That was interesting. I've honestly never had the conversation about HR in, in cannabis before and the obstacles. It sounds boring, right? Because what, when they tell you, okay, let's just talk now. No, it's so necessary guys. Like service providers are necessary to the growth of a company.
Like, I mean, so I mean, I I'm glad we had them on. I learned a lot, um, obviously one of the leaders of what he's doing and uh, if he ever goes public, we'll keep you guys updated. Cause I don't know how much competition there is. Maybe like work synchrony. That's the only two I can name. I don't know about you.
Uh, Javier, any other thoughts? A lot more, just some other news, right? Tilray is attempting a bullish reversal is attempting a bullish read why there there's a technical reason for this go to benzinga.com/cannabis and go check out the article. You know, we got charts and graphs and everything to explain why this might be a good model.
It's a great article. I read it right before this podcast. And, um, honestly, hobby or team does an incredible job. I do want to address a quick, uh, comment. So I've been seeing this a lot. I'm bending as Twitter, but it says hashtag crypto dads. Um, I need a hashtag canter bros. I'm sure that's taken, but, or hashtag Canada dads hashtag can a hobby.
I don't know. Y'all come up with something, let us know. But, uh, we can't just let this go. Untended, Javier wordsmiths, you know, weed wordsmiths I'm down. Y'all with that hashtag prodigies. I got a few. Oh, okay. All right. Well obviously gonna drop them on Twitter. DMS. Y'all send us your best hashtags, uh, Javier super pumped for the next, uh, interview.
Uh, we, this is not the first time we've had curly fun. In fact, I think it's like the fourth, but we've talked to different executives every time. And it's a massive company knowledge that each of these have these, these executives have to get to work. Your leaf has gotten it's incredible and I'm super pumped about, well, this is a completely new perspective, by the way, today we have camera Forney.
Uh, he is the founder and president of select at COOLIEF COOLIEF trades on the OTC under the ticker C U R L F. I met Cameron several years ago when he was still running select. And so I've had yet not been acquired by, uh COOLIEF uh, I think at the time it was actually called Cora cannabis solutions, right?
Yep. You're a cannabis solution. That's right. I don't even remember that. I don't know what you guys are talking about. Cameron. It's good to have you. Thanks. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Yeah. You know, clearly this is a very large company. You're right. Javier. Um, you know, I, I started in 2015, um, you know, I started building the brand, uh, select, um, you know, starting my living room, you know, helpful for my credit cards, you know, really got into the cannabis industry.
Luckily Oregon had low enough barriers to entry to allow, you know, a younger entrepreneur like myself to be able to kind of cut his teeth in the market. Um, so I was very, very fortunate to be in the Oregon market, uh, to begin my career. Um, then you know, my, uh, partner got bought out by a famous entrepreneur in Oregon called
Um, I'd merged into cure partners, um, became the CEO of cure. Um, led care partners for several years, um, growing from Oregon to California, uh, to Arizona, we became the fastest growing company in the history of Oregon ever doing 14, over 14000% growth in two years. Um, we've won a few best companies to work for.
Um, we started the first cannabis company to offer full health insurance to all employees. And we started with a $20 hour minimum wage. Um, so we, we really, uh, we really did a lot of, a lot of good work there. Uh, Tara partners that was acquired by cure leaf. Now, surely there's a whole nother different monster.
All right. So now I stayed on for purely for one year. Um, I'm now a special advisor to CEO, Joe Baron, and Shirley. He's just an incredible person, incredible guy, happy to have him in the industry. Um, he was running boss waters, the CEO of boss wire prior to that and chief strategy officer for Cadbury. So some very significant companies, you know, in, in, in the world.
Um, you know, clearly now it's about 5,000 employees. It's in 23. And as you know, cannabis in every single state is like a different country. So that's 23 different sets of rules, regulations, city codes, uh, department of trans, uh, uh, um, uh, OSHA laws, uh, the bureau of cannabis control department of taxation.
There's, there's a lot of different hands in the pie and a lot of different states. Um, so surely it's in 23 states, um, over 30 processing facilities, 131 retail licenses, 103 of those licenses are active and they just bought the largest cannabis company in Europe called Ian AC, um, which is currently participating in nine countries, um, or six countries.
I apologize. So, you know, surely it's a very, very big, big, big, big, big, uh, big company it's did about, uh, uh, $312 million last quarter, 27%, um, growing, you know, 166% year over year revenue. So surely is an absolute gem. Um, why I did the deal with purely. I wanted to build the largest canvas brand in the world.
And I wanted to build a brand that people could know and people could trust and people could rely on, you got consistency, you got quality of product. We started that with setting pesticide standards very, very early in the state of Oregon, uh, worked with, uh, regulators to set those standards, workers, regulators in California and Nevada, Arizona, and, and our curely team has been working on the east coast.
So like really stands for quality. You know, hitting quality at scale is a whole different element, right? That is a different monster. You're talking about 23 different rules and regulations. 23 different packaging sets. Can it be opaque? Can it be see-through can it be 800 milligram cartridge? Does that be a thousand?
Carter's right. There's a lot of hurdles there. So select zero in 21 states select will be in 23 states shortly, and we'll also be in six countries after. So there's is no brand in history yet it has been able to reach this customers in the world clearly can select the U S addressable markets about 192 million customers right now.
Um, and then our potential addressable market in Europe, when it all goes, uh, legal over there for recreational market will be 740 million. So here a big entity, but, uh, now, uh, now just advising, uh, with your leap and helping them select with innovation and, uh, expansion, um, uh, I'm product development. And then I also am, uh, doing a couple other projects.
Um, high-scale is a venture fund that I have, um, going on and, uh, uh, that's, that's really kind of another piece of my focus. Yeah, and I love that one. We'll get back to that in a second, but we move on to the millions and the billions and the, you know, all these massive markets. You said all of this started in your living room.
I believe then there was a garage involved that I remember you sharing the story with me in 2016 where you were just starting. And I was writing my book and it was, you know, you were, you were, it was almost an instant hit, but you were at first, you were just like filling cartridges yourself. Like, can you share a little bit about that story?
And maybe some, some learnings that you've gone in from it in terms of building something from the ground up really, you know, from, from a scrappy startup to a multi multi-million dollar company. Absolutely. And you know, if it's important, but you're not like the, the, the, the guy where the, with like, you know, PhDs and, and, and, and business, right?
Like you, you really. Did this a lot, intuitively you did, you did study business management and stuff like that. Right. But yeah. So entrepreneurship university of Oregon and played hockey there and it was a great time. Yeah. Yeah. So I've always been an entrepreneur my whole life and yeah, that, I think what you're talking about is there's, there's my wife and I filling out those cards in the living room.
That's, that's really how it started. Um, and you know, I just did some research. I, you know, if you want to be successful, the fastest way to be successful is one from mentorship, um, in to studying other people that have been successful in other industry segments. So I looked at the vape industry and the vape industry is that, you know, back in 2015 was a $40 billion industry.
It was, it was colossal compared to the illegal companies. So we started. You know, or I started, um, getting different. Uh, I would go down to these vape contests, one in your gene that he's keen cloud competitions, where these guys would take these mod boxes that are like this large 2000 bucks figure symbol, these huge clots.
And these guys were literally doing like one hit of vape, one hit of air, like oxygen. Like that's how they live their lives. Like they're doing this all the time, so why are they doing this right? What are they using? They were all using Japanese. They're all using Japanese organic cotton. And they're all using a, uh, campus feel and a nightclub and everything.
One in cannabis at that time was using silica fiber. So it could, fiberglass was synonymous with the e-cig market, but Silicon fiberglass was also gave you the ability all these, most of these products are made in China. So they gave you the ability to handle a multitude of viscosities because oil can be very, very thick.
It, high tendency can be very, very thin and lower potencies, depending on CO2 BHO, EHL, RSO, uh, live resin, uh, live rosin and all those different multitudes of viscosity have to work in a cartridge it's similar. So back in that time, there was everyone was doing silica fiberglass. I brought Japanese organic cotton into the cannabis space.
Um, I called it my nano cartridge. Um, I had American cancel steel, which is what they're using the e-cig market. I wrapped it with organic cotton and I started using CO2 oil. That's how I designed my first cartridge, um, which was the select nano cartridge select strains is what it was called that. And kind of built that up, built that up and started growing it fast.
I wouldn't remember, uh, you know, leaving, leaving the house. I got my house, so I registered as a live workspace and I got a medical license on it. So I was allowed to have a 28 ounces at the time. So I was leaving my house and I would go to the stores and my medical card and medical license. And I would sell into the stores and the back of my Jetta and go in and I met, you know, a ton of great people along the way, a lot of great owners, um, you know, I've been to now 1700 dispensary's in 21 states.
Um, so I don't, I don't know anyone else that's put this much grind into the cannabis scene as far as going store to store and door to door, but that's really what I've been. What's what I've been doing for the last six years. Yeah. Scrappiness. I love that. I want to touch on really quick, the brand, uh, aspect of select.
And then I want to, I want to follow that up with a question from the chat from Zach, um, you know, you built one of the top five brands by BDSA standards in terms of. Uh, in the contract, you remember where you ranked it was like third or something regardless. There's a lot of brands fair. So, you know, can you just give me the grounds of what makes a good brand right now in the cannabis space?
Ooh,
it's a fantastic question. Right? It's it's quality, it's quality of product and consistency and user experience. Um, if you can really nail down those two things, um, which it is very, very hard to do, right? There's I'm not sure what brands are over us in total sales. It's interesting because so selects built itself across the United States to be very focused on the customer and for customers to see that buy.
For instance, I live in Vegas now. I called Vegas an international state because everyone from Oklahoma, Oregon, Idaho, Washington, Florida, New York, New Jersey, Maryland named everyone comes to the. So the brand has to be represented there in Nevada in a good way. And then you also have to be able to see that brand at home.
So how do you make that brand, you know, a national brand and synonymous and identify that with customers? Well, you have to, again, leading back to your question, you have to really get into the quality of the brand, that the specs that you set for that, what is the potency? What is the consistency was the quality of the chirpies.
What are you testing for molds? And mildews residual solvents, micro, uh, micro, uh, micros, microbes, um, uh, pesticides and so forth. So kind of setting those standard practices and then layering those practices across the United States, whether or not the state chooses to test this stringent as we do, we still have our own standard that we set and that's really how we've kind of, we've created our brand.
So that's how, yeah. Thank you for that. And you know, before we jump into a few of your other ventures, I want to get to a few of the questions that the chat from Zach, uh, can you provide any commentary on what select is doing to increase distributor. Uh, specifically in California and maybe broaden that question a bit to what's next for select, you know, select is all about innovation.
Um, it always has been, so we are innovating in the vaporizer space, vaporizer hardware space. Um, we're innovating in the solventless space. Um, we're innovating in, uh, the nano gummy space. Um, it's happened to sounds cool, but aren't yeah, man, I really hope we, we, we have some goodies waiting and the hotel in Vegas.
Hey, there's that always, always we'll we'll take care of you come by the store and we're happy to service you guys. Um, very there's two stores here in Vegas. One's called acres. One's called cure leaf on eventually they'll both be cure leaf. Um, but they've got a couple of cool products. For instance, here's one with, um, you know, let me talk first about nanotechnology.
So the nanotechnology is really unique because you're going to absorb, instead of going in and processing through deliver like a normal edible, that takes 45 minutes to an hour, depending on your metabolism. The nanotechnology really, uh, uh, shrinks the molecule and it allows, uh, a better penetration kind of through the upper GI.
Um, and, uh, Equis, um, Jess is going to kill me for this, our scientists. He he's got this down to the details. And so what it does is it, it, it absorbs very, very rapidly. So it'll absorb between, you know, 15 to 25 minutes. Um, so my, our, our goal is with the company is, you know, getting on pace with alcohol, you know, cannabis is like alcohol, it should be treated the same way.
It should be treated, you know, just the exact same way, right? You should be 21 to use it. Um, you know, unless you have medical conditions, then you can be younger. Um, but it should be regulated in the same aspect and, you know, cannabis needs to work, uh, about the same pace as. So, you know, when someone doesn't want to drink, I have a, uh, intestinal problems.
And, and when I drink that, that can cause heartburn and acid reflux, I brought them cannabis. Right. And a lot of people would ever use cannabis than alcohol. So you need to have a similar path where if you're going out and having a, a cocktail or having a drink with a friend, you need your cannabis product to work like a beer or work like a drink where you're getting incrementally more intoxicated at the same time.
Um, instead of, you know, uh, I'm fine, I'm fine. I'm fine. Nothing's happening. And then an hour later, what happened? He hit me. That's never happened to any of us cam ever. And our product is for, um, we also are working on a beverage, um, at my other company, I'm working on a beverage that actually, um, uh, um, uh, counteracts, uh, being, uh, So I'll call.
There's nothing you can do besides drinking a water in between every drink on this is going to be a new beverage. Um, it's going to be able to counteract, uh, the THC
that? What's the company. What are you doing? What? Just break it here. Cameron break in here as well. Right. Um, so I, I started this, um, this, uh, venture fund called hype scale ventures. Um, I have a lot of great partners in there. Dr. Norman Scotsman. My partner is four degrees, uh, residency at Stanford surgeon, very, very sharp individual.
And he's been working with a collection of companies, um, that we're actually getting ready to set up here in Nevada. We're actually setting up a very large incubator, um, with the governor and with, uh, the city Councilman and, uh, with all government approval to kind of set up a can of tech. Which is going to be working on a lot of these things, such as a cannabis beverage formulation, a quantum water quantum water gets between five and a hundred times quicker absorption, not only to humans, but to plants.
Um, and a lot of pretty cool, uh, AI led lights goes. My goal in cannabis is to get cannabis to a less carbon neutral footprint or more carbon neutral footprint. So my goal is to go solar into LEDs, use the water from the LEDs to cool and flood the humidity in the room, your agnostic lighting, um, and really use LEDs like folks lights, um, to, to really lessen that burden of having all of the, the, the, uh, HPAC and all the, uh, humidifiers in the room, um, and really use, can attack, uh, to get us there and to make cannabis less of an impact and an imprint on our own.
So that's fantastic. You're like a dummy, just eating regular brownies and drinking regular water.
It's pretty cool stuff. A lot of, lot of really interesting people, the sustainability aspect of that is attractive. I mean, I would imagine that's really attractive to investors. I mean, not only do you investors just, but humans in general, we look and take a really good look at ourselves and what we're doing at this point.
I mean, I don't even drink water bottles anymore. I refill a metal water bottle. Every single day. I created the system in my house that refills, this water bottle, and I just kept seeing all these bottles pile up, pile up and it just drives me insane. I've always wanted to create change and create impact in our community.
And, and, and I, I think, you know, caring about our environment and our planet that we're on. I mean, look at Musk Musk is trying to try to get, uh, get us to a multi-point species ASAP, just growing and how fast we're consuming. And it's really a scary thing. If you look at it, you know, and really think about it for a long time.
So, you know, we gotta do a lot for cannabis and getting a small carbon neutral on our footprint, our power usage, you know, our water usage, um, our waste or packaging waste is disgusting in cannabis. Um, the rules and regulations really have to make a significant shift in cannabis. You're, you're getting 15 packages, uh, to take out one item and it's just not necessary.
And, you know, that's something that we're going to be working on too, but, you know, so for hyperscale, you know, um, hard skills, really going to be focused on, uh, genetics, a lot of cannabis genetics, what's the new strain. What's the most unique strain. What's the flower time to those strain, what climate condition can be grown across the United States?
Um, what the potency, that strain and what. Um, you know, primarily the key turpines and attributes of those trains. Uh, so that's a focus of hype scale as well as customer experience. That is everything from product development to lounges, cannabis consumption, lounges are starting to be a big thing. So we're investing in a few of those lounges and want to create a really unique customer experience.
But then the giving side of that is I'm going to be working with a lot of socially social equity, applicants, and disenfranchised communities for cannabis. Um, so that's going to be a lot of mentorship and training because you know, when you get into this space, they're like, oh, here's your social equity applicant.
Got it. No problem. Have you ever run a business maybe? Yes. Hopefully. Have you ever been in cannabis or run cannabis? Um, maybe yes, I was in cannabis in the, in the listed market, but never really been in the regulated market and had to deal with all the hurdles and all the challenges and the rules, the regulations, and the stipulations were involved in being in this space.
So I'm going to do a lot, lot of, of helping kind of around that aspect in the head skills. So. Yeah. Are you able to play that into, um, uh there's uh, we talked to Kadija a while back. Yeah. About like the four pillars. Uh, is that, is that a kind of a, does it play into that? it's in rooted in good in four pillars.
Um, with purely I'm I'm participating in that started a mentorship, uh, with a young individual right now. Um, and then I'm going to be doing some on my own, uh, hearing about. Super cool. I mean, it seems like you're, you're, you know, you, you did get when, when you got acquire when, when select got acquired, but you did good.
You then, you know, you, you allocate much of the money to do good, right. Uh, from, from the Forney family foundation to hyperscale to the incubator. Right. Can you, can you give us an overview of, of where you're putting your money, where you're investing in and, and, you know, work? Like what, what should you want with the money?
Basically, I always invest in people. I invest in people first. Um, you know, their businesses are obviously very, very important and they gotta be a, a strong business, strong, uh, background and, um, a product that I'm really interested. That's either helping or benefiting, uh, you know, the world in some way. Um, that's where my, you know, main focuses are, but the Forney family foundation is just the foundation that I set up.
Uh, it was from Portland, Oregon originally, and I couldn't deal with the homeless issues, the homelessness issues in Portland. It's really, really sad. What the governor's, what happened to the state of Oregon? Um, there's tents everywhere. You don't feel safe. Um, cars are being broken into every night.
They've legalized all drugs, meth, heroin, crack cocaine, uh, cocaine, everything in small dosage. So you see this literally on the streets. So Portland needs a big clean up. And I remember talking to John Wentworth, he's a district attorney up there in Oregon. And he said the biggest issue for homelessness is foster children.
It's these foster kids that go into foster care and then they have no mentoring. They have no guardian. They have no parents. They have no one teaching them. They have no one to fall back on. So they just kind of get it spun out and go their own way and they don't have any of that support system. So I'm going to be, I'm working here with United ways of Southern Nevada and Dana, uh, uh, boulders and bolt bizarre.
Um, and, um, McKinsey, Scott is a, uh, Jabez of sex white. She just did a big donation into, uh, the UHS, uh, uh, United ways as well. And the 40 foundations can be donated in a matter as well, specifically focused on, um, you know, foster children, the food insecure and insecure and sheltering, uh, homeless. Um, that's, that's kind of our big, big, big, real focuses there.
It's education and workplace support the community. So, you know, you've got to take care of everyone and you got to take care of people. Um, so that everyone rises up and, and that's, that's really my focus as an entrepreneur and that's whatever, uh, with the rest of my life, I can retire now and not do anything.
And, um, that's just, uh, that's just not the case. I, once they move in and I want to make an impact on this point. So then. That's awesome. That's incredible, man. Really respect to you there because I mean, over the course of the last, I would say eight months, I mean, it seems that the trends of, you know, ESG are, it's a wave, you know, it's going up and down.
So it's nice to see executives like take a personal interest in it. Um, just from my got more time now I used to be running all of these states. I was just special advisor, so I don't, I'm not good at sleeping. That's why I started cannabis. I couldn't sleep at night. That's a dilemma. It's a dilemma. Like I love sleep.
I hate going to sleep. The kind of, you know, and my last question here have, you may have one more, but can you comment a little bit on the landscape of the, your competitors for lack of a better term, right? When you look at Canada, you can maybe comment on Hexo, you know, they just announced carbon neutrality.
Is that something. Um, you know, how they did it, is that how you're doing it? Or maybe like, you know, truly hitting a hundred dispensary's are they, um, are, do you appreciate another Ms. Dos footprint from the chest? Yeah, no, I appreciate everyone in this industry. It's, it's very difficult industry to work in anyone that knows this or anyone that's operating a significant company, or even any cannabis company in any state.
It is difficult. It is painful at times rules and regulations, ship them to your feet like an earthquake, and you have to be ready for those changes. It's it's, uh, it's, it's, it's, it's nonstop if you really want to be significant in this space. So I had an incredible amount of respect for all the other MSLs and all the other cannabis companies.
I'm actually doing a roll up of cannabis. Uh, as well during my free time, um, where I'm taking, you know, individual operators, standalone, uh, retailers, uh, standalone cultivators, um, and vertically integrating those companies, uh, to allow sustainability with those companies because the taxation is so difficult in the space, especially in California, where you have a supply chain tax, uh, luxury tax, a sales tax, uh, city tax, gross revenue tax, uh, wet pound weight tax, supply chain.
I mean, it's over a hundred percent taxation. And if you're just a retailer, you have two 80 hitting you and you aren't able to vertically integrate down. You're you're, you're, you're actually not profitable when it comes tax time. So it's very, very important to vertically integrate these companies. So I'm doing a lot of vertical integration with small businesses.
Was this owners and, and, and chains, um, across the United States, you know, primarily focused on Nevada, California, Arizona, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Florida are my key targets right now. Um, and those are going to be the main states that are, that I'm going to be working with these companies, um, to, to help vertically integrate them so they can be sustainable for the future because it is only the first Indian second Indian cannabis.
Right. We've got a long ways to go. So we've gotta, we gotta work together, you know, in the last minute that we have, um, what do you think is next for cannabis? And since these are the first innings, but you know what what's next and cannabis is really going to be products, user experience, you know, getting carbon neutral, you know, getting, getting cannabis to a renewable replace is, is a very important, um, and getting cannabis to be more like alcohol, um, where, you know, it's, it's treated the same way unless states and, and banks and bank safe act passing, and it's going to be, uh, one of the biggest, uh, tidal waves, uh, tip the cannabis industry.
Um, so it's a good time to be investigating in. Um, it's a good time to be investing in strong companies in cannabis when that safe banking does pass you go from trading. You know, let's say 10 million shares a day where you have a, like a canopy trading, a hundred-ish million shares a day, a hundred million dollars worth of shares a day.
And now all of a sudden the big financial institutions can get involved. The Robin hood is the TD Ameritrade. All the retail customers can actually buy stock. Have you tried buying cure leaf stock? It's hard, man. It's hard. A lot of work. You're not watching the retail customer yet. We're not even touching anywhere.
So when the safe banking act passes, that's when this massive tsunami, this tidal wave will come crashing into cannabis. And that's when it's time to be part of it, you know, good strong companies with core values and core products that can reach the customer tomorrow. That's fantastic. Cameron Forney is the founder of select massive cannabis brand.
If you don't know it, go check it out. He's a special advisor to the CEO of quarterly joy, Byron and overall, a guy who doesn't like to sleep
had been saying Cameron much pleasure, man. I appreciate you being here. Really appreciate you. Wonderful. You probably a good one. Thanks. Talk to you too, my friend. Awesome, awesome hobby. Thank you for getting Cameron that wasn't a killer conversation. I mean, it's, it's been years in the making and the wait, by the way we reconnected, um, a few weeks ago doing a meeting, uh, for the rolling stone, cultural council were both, uh, members and, you know, just, you know, connected to a meeting where there's different industries, you know, and, and people from very diverse industries.
And suddenly I see a familiar face there and we're like, oh, there's. I mean, I just, I, I can't get over what he's doing with the Forney family foundation. Like, I, I want to find a way for benzine going to be a part of that. Um, that's fantastic. Y'all I hope you enjoyed the show. Super interesting discussions with the, a major service provider in this industry, what they're doing to affect the bottom lines of many companies in the space and the addressable market they're in, uh, and clearly, uh, you know, but honestly, a completely different perspective within Cura leaf.
It's always a pleasure to talk to their executives. Um, uh, I'm very happy with this show and I hope you all enjoyed it. Drop a one in the chat. If you did Javier, one more shout out, man, October 14th and 15th, going to be an amazing event. Uh, parent company, unrivaled brands, um, air wellness, uh, I mean the list goes on.
You listed a bunch earlier. I'm trying to think of the others we didn't list, but, uh, really appreciate you guys joining us. Please see us there, uh, or definitely, you know, tune in virtually. That's all. I got Hobie, any last words for our wonderful. That's it. Go check out BZ cannabis.com for more information in the event and the zynga.com/cannabis for all of your cannabis news.
I asked cannabis daily every morning at 10:00 AM. I do it. Thanks so much. We'll have you guys getting much lover for the podcast? I'm going to share some of the comments next week. We're getting comments from this week. I got comments about Elliot's podcast from Mexico, Argentina, Brazil. Um, Nigeria, wait, where w where else?
One, one person was from lake very strange from Mali, from, you know, like Mali in Africa. And it was like, how, how did he even find us? Wow. I I'm, I'm all for it, man. I want to hear some of these comments. This is new for me. Um, but y'all, I mean, a hobby I'm actually, I actually do that. That's that's awesome.
I'm like, I'm a little flushed right now. Um, I'm glad to hear that though, but you all, thanks again for. As always, thanks to Aaron. Thomas could not do this with Adams and Javier. Thanks to you for everything you do for us, man. We'll see you guys next on next week on Tuesday. I won't, you will, your day. I'm going to the beach out here.
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