The Intersection of Banking Reform and Cannabis Retail

Learn more about the intersection of banking reform and cannabis retail with Alexander Lipnik, AeroPay, and Peter Su, Greencheck Verified.

Alex Lipnik is the Head of Strategic Partnerships at AeroPay, a digital payments platform for the cannabis industry. In his role, he works with ancillary technology companies – including delivery, eCommerce, and POS providers – to create seamless payment experiences for cannabis businesses and consumers alike. He also serves on NCIA’s Retail Committee.

Peter Su, Green Check Verified, Peter Su is a member of NCIA’s Banking and Financial Services Committee and chairs the banking and financial services committee for the New York City Cannabis Industry Assoc. Peter is a certified cannabis banking professional (CCBP) as well as a Certified Commercial Cannabis Expert (CCCE).

We start by talking about the SAFE Banking Act, which passed through the U.S. House a handful of times but always gets stuck in the Senate. Cannabis businesses are still struggling with cash-heavy retail operations. NCIA has pointed to how having so much cash floating around is actually a public safety issue attracting criminals with nefarious intentions. Getting into the nuances of SAFE Banking and how that would actually impact cannabis companies, particularly retailers who are dealing with customer transactions on a daily basis. We talk about if it were to pass and get signed into law by President Biden and the whole nine yards tomorrow, what that would actually mean for cannabis retailers?

Harnessing Terpenes, Sensory Effects, and Replacing Opioids

Learn more about harnessing terpenes, sensory effects, and replacing opioids with Eybna CEO and Co-founder Nadav Eyal. Eybna is a pioneering cannabis technology company and terpene manufacturer headquartered in California and R&D center in both Colorado and Israel. Nadav’s professional background is rooted in the field of data science. Nadav has long been passionate about botanical medicine and how it can offer a more effective medicinal treatment than pharmaceutical products.

In 2014, Nadav founded Eybna with a mission to bring the health benefits of cannabis to broader populations worldwide. The mainstream is starting to wrap their heads around cannabinoids, but terpenes are the next level of the science of cannabis. Nadav explains first of all, what terpenes really are and what they can do for human health. For example, lavender has a calming effect on my anxiety, and lemon lifts the mood, and so on and so forth, so as far as harnessing terpenes and their sensory effects, we dive into more about that. Cannabis is really breaking barriers, replacing opioids/narcotics – underscoring an NCIA white paper focusing on how cannabis is a viable solution for replacing opioids.

Insights into National and International Market Trends

Learn more about Insights into National and International Market Trends with Kelly Nielsen. Kelly is the Vice President of Insights and Analytics with BDSA. She leads the Insights and Analytics team and engages with clients to generate insights from a vast quantity of data to make informed business decisions and drive results. Together with her team, she works with manufacturers, retailers, and investors to deliver unmatched insights and analytics to drive their businesses forward. Headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, BDSA is the premier global cannabis market research firm helping businesses improve revenues, reduce innovation risk, and prioritize market expansion.

We start by talking broadly about the cannabis movement which is beyond national and now global. We dive into who the players are in this global market and what we expect to see in the next five years or so. Here in the U.S., we’ve had a few years to watch what’s happened in the first states to legalize adult-use like Colorado, California, Oregon, Washington. We talk about what trends emerged from that journey and if we expect that to hold true in other emerging markets. Also, what lessons we learned watching these last 6 years. There are also these new emerging markets especially on the east coast as we’re watching Massachusetts and Michigan for example, plus New York and New Jersey. Different demographics, different cultures, different customers, but the same plant. With that, we talk with Kelly about what is she is expecting to see from these markets.

A Deeper Dive Into Standards Development In Cannabis

The Science of Standardization in Cannabis With Darwin Millard

Learn more about the science of standardization in cannabis with Darwin Millard, The Spock of Cannabis. Darwin Millard (aka The Spock of Cannabis) is a cannabis (marijuana and hemp) industry thought leader with over 14-years of hands-on extraction and product manufacturing experience. Darwin specializes in mechanical and solvent-based extraction methodologies for isolating highly volatile terpene phenolic secondary metabolites from botanicals. He is an Executive Committee Member of ASTM International’s Technical Committee D37 on Cannabis and serves as the Subcommittee Vice-chair for D37.04 on Processing and Handling and the Subcommittee Co-chair for D37.07 on Industrial Hemp.

Darwin uses his vast knowledge of the cannabis industry, international affairs, and regulatory frameworks along with his passion for phytocannabinoid preparations and the cannabis plant, in general, to help his clients make the complex, simple. Darwin Millard is the creative influence behind companies such as Millard Masonek Solutions, Plant Consulting Group, and Nutrawerx, and provides educational services, regulatory development guidance, and creative approaches to problem-solving.

Future-Proofing Environmental Sustainability in Cannabis

Learn more about future-proofing environmental sustainability in cannabis with Will Vizuete and David Vaillancourt today on NCIA’s Cannabis Industry.

Dr. William Vizuete, Ph.D., is Chief Scientific Officer, and co-leads the Byers Scientific Emissions Analysis division, and is a key member of the Byers Mitigation Technologies division product research and development team. Dr. Vizuete is also a radio DJ on WXYC 89.3 FM and specializes in Jazz and Jamaican Music.

David Vaillancourt, founder, and president of The GMP Collective — specializes in assisting cannabis and hemp businesses to ensure profitability and compliance through repeatable quality by design principles, formally known as Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs). David Chair’s the NCIA’s Facilities Design Committee.

We talk more about Future-Proofing, which is a topic many NCIA committees have been focused on and discussing across the board for months now, with lots of great blog content on our website to refer to. We dive into the basic idea behind what “future-proofing” means aside from simply preparing for the future. The cannabis industry is doing our own thing in a lot of ways and going above and beyond. We discuss where the crossover between what we’re doing on our own to future-proof versus what rules and regulations are out there that require or encourage this at the state or federal level, as well as preparing for federal legalization and what’s coming in the future.

How COVID has Changed Recruiting And Hiring in the Cannabis Industry

Learn more about how COVID has changed recruiting and hiring in the cannabis industry with Kara Bradford of Viridian Staffing, and Bryan Passman, Hunter + Esquire. Kara is Co-Founder and Chief Talent Officer of Viridian Staffing. Founded in 2013 as the first professional, full-service staffing, recruiting & HR consulting firm in the cannabis industry. Bryan is the Founder of cannabis industry talent acquisition firms Hunter + Esquire and The GIGG®.

Much has changed in the last year and a half or more. We talk about how the COVID pandemic has changed all of our lives, and this is true in the cannabis world as well, though we were considered an essential business during those lockdowns as well. Workers kept working in the cannabis industry, albeit a little differently.

There was a time when everyone wanted to work in the cannabis industry and hundreds of resumes were coming in. It’s a little different now, and we’re even seeing lower-wage jobs in non-cannabis companies offering much higher salaries/wages and benefits in order to attract employees. We dive into if it’s a candidate’s market now as well as what does that looks like now from the recruiting and hiring standpoint. Our industry sees the traditional cannabis enthusiast applying for jobs of course, but also individuals with advanced skills from other industries coming to cannabis in order to apply those skills from other industries to ours.

Standards in Cannabis Food Manufacturing

Learn more about Standards in Cannabis Food Manufacturing with Merril Gilbert and Rhiannon Woo. Merril Gilbert is the Co-founder and CEO of TraceTrust, a nationwide cannabis and hemp manufacturing compliance company advocating for safe consumer experiences through HACCP training and Good Manufacturing Process (GMP) Certifications. Merril has 25 years of experience working in the food and beverage industry and has been working in cannabis for over 6 years. Merril is the past chair of the NCIA’s Education Committee and a current member of the Risk Management and Insurance Committee. Rhiannon is the Co-founder and Chief Science Officer of TraceTrust. She is a sought-out leader in Food Safety development and protocol and is an expert in Good Agricultural Practices, Good Harvesting Practices, Good Manufacturing Practices, HACCP, and the Food Safety Modernization Act. She is the Secretary of NCIA’s Hemp Committee.

The cannabis industry considers itself a wellness industry, so when we’re consuming cannabis in any form, we always want to do good for our customers and not cause harm. Staying compliant and having a good understanding of these standards of food safety and GMPs is part of the solution here. Cannabis doesn’t have FDA oversight (YET!) but we as an industry are certainly looking to the future and getting our ducks in a row now. We talk about what other benefits would a cannabis manufacturer experiences, in your perspective, by embracing food safety, GMPs, and making their operations more sophisticated in this respect. This underscores the importance of collaboration and education, including NCIA’s committees which are really setting the stage for more sophistication, more education on these issues, through blogs and podcasts like this, and both of our guests are on an NCIA committee. Both guests talk a bit about their experiences collaborating in NCIA committees for the benefit of the whole industry, both operators and consumers.

Harnessing Celebrity Brands and Endorsements in Cannabis

Learn more about harnessing celebrity brands and endorsements in cannabis with Dan Shapiro. Dan is the Associate General Counsel at Greenlane Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: GNLN), one of the largest global sellers of premium cannabis accessories and CBD products. Prior to joining Greenlane, Dan worked at CAA in the Sports Business & Legal Affairs division. Dan is the Founder and Inaugural Chair of the Cannabis Division of the American Bar Association Forum on Entertainment and Sports Industries and a member of NCIA’s State Regulations Committee.

We are certainly seeing a lot in the news about athletes using cannabis. With the Olympics happening this summer as well, there’s debate about whether cannabis is “performance-enhancing” but others see it more as a pain recovery for injuries. We all remember Michael Phelps the Olympic swimmer getting in some trouble many years ago.

There’s the cannabis product itself, the flower, the pre-rolls, the extraction brands and so on that celebrities participate in. But the accessory space, in particular, is what Dan wrote about in the blog most recently, so this includes vaporizers and grinders. Celebrities endorse all kinds of products all the time, like make-up lines, face creams, perfume, so seeing them move into the cannabis endorsement space seems to be helping to normalize our industry. We dive into how this is evolving going forward as we see the expansion of legalization across the country, state by state, and preparing hopefully for federal legalization.

How Cannabis Operators Can Avoid A Lawsuit

Tune in to learn How Cannabis Operators Can Avoid A Lawsuit with Adam Patt and Ian Stewart of NCIA’s Risk Management and Insurance Committee, which promotes the interests of the cannabis industry’s risk management and insurance sectors, developing strategies for their responsible advancement.

Ian is founder and co-chair of the Cannabis and Hemp Law practice at Wilson Elser, an AmLaw 200 law firm with 850 attorneys in 37 offices in the United States and London. Ian leads a national multi-disciplinary team of lawyers who serve all aspects of the cannabis and hemp industries, as well as financial institutions and insurance companies that service those industries.

Since 2008, Adam Patt has served in leadership roles as President for both ICANN Insure, LLC and Maxam Assurance Agency. With over 20 years of experience, Adam’s industry knowledge and attention to detail have earned his agencies multiple insurance awards for Best-Practices and Best-In-Class. His strong background in risk management, safety programs, and IT solutions supports their continued success. Both serve on NCIA’s Risk Management Committee.

Emerging Markets and Data Compliance with Chad Bronstein

Learn more about Emerging Markets and Data Compliance with Chad Bronstein of Fyllo. Chad Bronstein is the founder of Fyllo and brings expertise gained during a career leading the sales and marketing teams of some of the largest businesses in advertising, media, and technology. His experience leading large-scale acquisitions, venture fundraising, strategic partnerships, and corporate exits has resulted in the scaling of several startups into national leaders. Under Chad’s leadership, Fyllo has revolutionized marketing technology for highly regulated industries, allowing the most ambitious cannabis, CBD, and consumer brands to overcome the complexities of compliance at scale.

Since founding Fyllo in 2019, Chad has overseen the product development, marketing, capital raising, and M&A deals that have uniquely positioned Fyllo to solve the challenges of these fragmented and inefficient markets. The Fyllo Compliance Cloud is a suite of software and services built to overcome the complexities of highly regulated industries.

With Fyllo based in New York with offices all over, we start by chatting about some new states coming online on the east coast, New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut recently as well. It’s great seeing these smaller states and Northeastern states moving toward cannabis legalization, so we talk about what Chad is seeing there. Each state is its own unique world of laws and regulations, and the demographics of the customers in California are going to be considerably different from the customer demographics of people from New York. As they say, data is king, so we dive into the world of customer demographics and much more.

Harnessing the Ecosystem of Business Partnerships in Cannabis

Learn more about Harnessing the Ecosystem of Business Partnerships in Cannabis today on NCIA’s Cannabis Industry Voice. John Shearman is Vice President of Marketing and Cannabis Business Lead at Applied DNA Sciences and has over 30 years of deep enterprise and advertising agency experience across all marketing, sales, and IT disciplines. John spearheads the Applied DNA Sciences cannabis vertical leading the vision, strategy, and product development for this emerging market. John also oversees the marketing for the entire company driving the marketing strategy for its other core verticals.

In the cannabis industry, we’re harnessing technology to improve how we run our businesses, which are highly regulated and ever-changing. The systems in place need to actually make life easier for the operators, not more difficult. But there’s Seed to Sale compliance, inventory, quality management systems, laboratory information management, it goes on and on. We talk about what other kinds of technology systems are seeing cannabis operators implementing. As part of this sophistication of our industry, we don’t have to wear 20 hats on a single person anymore. We’re expanding, we’re delegating, we’re getting more done, and we’re working smarter, not harder. That means harnessing partnerships across the industry as well, what are some of these partnerships that are crucial to expanding one’s business.

Construction Laws and Regulations in Cannabis

Tune in to this episode to learn more about Grow America Builders with David Fettner. David is a managing partner of Grow America Builders and has been one of Chicago’s premier general contractors for over two decades. As a third-generation builder, David’s expertise in high-end retail and commercial construction provided a seamless transition to the cannabis construction industry. Grow America Builders is a national design-build construction firm specializing in the cannabis industry, dispensaries, labs, extraction, grow houses, and greenhouses. Grow America Builders is all about serving the cannabis industry, building and upgrading facilities, which can be an exciting time for their clients.

We hear David share some stories about the complexities and roadblocks of our industry which is riddled with many regulations and compliance issues. We know you can’t build a dispensary within a certain number of feet of a public school or church, for example, but David dives more into the details of these regulations. We talk all the time about the fractured state-to-state regulations, and even within the state. This means getting into specific construction laws which are totally separate from seed-to-sale compliance. We discuss the complexities and nuances in construction law when you’re dealing with one state versus another. All that and much more on Grow America Builders with David Fettner on NCIA’s Cannabis Industry Voice only on Cannabis Radio.