How to Build a Cannabis Business | Clint Armstrong | TEDxAlmansorPark

[Applause] [Music] [Applause] every morning when I wake up I tell myself to mantras the first mantra I will work with the smartest people in the world my second mantra I will change the world two very simple ideas but very powerful and executed now I have to admit at the time I didn't know how I was gonna work with the smartest people in the world let alone how I was gonna change the world but I kept telling myself this over and over again I would talk to myself I'd say Clint you're gonna work with the smartest people in the world and you're gonna change the world Clint you're gonna work with the smartest people in the world you're gonna change the world I was convincing myself it will happen through repetition within five years of taking action and practicing my daily mantra I built my first successful company into a powerhouse in the staffing and recruiting world earning the ranking of the fifth fastest growing HR company in the nation making the Inc 500 fastest growing private companies and having close to a thousand employees I was working with executives that ran billion-dollar organizations in aerospace food automotive electronics and technology and as time passed by it hit me like a ton of bricks I was living and experiencing my first mantra I was working with some of the smartest people in the world my company has one division that focuses in a particular area agriculture I developed a passion for agriculture after I unexpectedly received a very rare and special invitation to visit the Amazon and Peru and study plants with the Shipibo tribe that's when I fell in love with plants and their healing abilities before that the scope of my experience with plants wall kind of entailed rolling joints in the back of my high school parking lot sorry mom I love you but seriously speaking we're a nation founded on farming and I found an application to use my extensive experience with plant medicine to change the world for the better and no no no no no no no I'm not talking about my experience with purple haze or edibles sorry mom I'm talking about using cannabis responsibly for medicinal needs because I believe in the power of happy and healthy people my vision is to help the world experience the benefits of cannabis I asked myself how can we help cannabis companies flourish on a large scale you see the difference between global industries today and that of current cannabis companies is that global industries utilize platforms that center around managing their human resources their very own people so I asked myself what if we build a revolutionary comprehensive HR platform that could legitimize the illicit cannabis industry can this change the world can this satisfy my second mantra it got me thinking even farther you know instead of using my experience to create some proprietary platform I decided to do what Elon Musk did at Tesla on June 12th of 2014 Elon Musk made an unprecedented move of opening all of us electric car pans to outside use it's a time when you have Apple and Samsung spending billions of dollars in legal costs to secure their patents all while Elon is just giving his away for free you know a lot of investors in Wall Street thought this move was ludicrous dangerous crazy but it serves a much much much greater purpose serves his mission to accelerate the transition to sustainable energy so I'm standing here today to try and help the cannabis industry in the same way now imagine trying to build a company in this case a cannabis business where you are selling a registered scheduled one control drug here are some of the registered schedule 1 controlled drugs that the government itemizes assent that amine heroin was before that and now you have cannabis now that you know what you're up against would you do it how would you go about doing it dealing with the banking the credit the licensing trying to find qualified employees today if you're expecting to open a cannabis visits expect the capital requirements to be astronomical and this isn't discourage you but to make you realize the current marketplace and regulatory issues that we face right now the current market risk in cannabis include high regulatory and application costs licensing cost legal costs compliance costs insurance costs distribution costs security cost you guys get the point right if you want to be in the cannabis industry maybe you're interested in opening a dispensary or maybe you're interested in creating a delivery service or maybe you're a really great agricultural list and you grow some amazing cannabis and all your friends tell you about how great it is whatever it is it's for a great cause what you're gonna need some help along the way one of the first areas where you're probably going to need some help in is payroll in taxes now I'm not going to bore you with the complexities of payroll and taxes actually wait I take that back parallel taxes is totally boring but the cannabis industry faces huge hurdles in this department and it's really important to understand why so today if you're a cannabis business you're most likely paying your taxes in cash and operating your business in cash today it's estimated that cannabis cannabis businesses across the United States will owe 2.8 billion dollars to Uncle Sam according to new frontier data and if you pay those taxes in cash the IRS reaps an additional two hundred and eighty million dollars in penalties and fees from you meaning the government taxes you an additional 10% tax for paying your taxes in cash that's a lot of cash house is not boughten vacation is not taken and Ferraris not driven my friends but wait a second is that what the cannabis industry is really about is it really about buying fancy houses and taking fancy vacations and driving Ferraris no it's not the cannabis industry is about exercising our divine right to wellness and having the access to the medicine that we so dearly need and because it's still illegal the federal government is the real Al Capone of our era today cannabis businesses lack the internal accounting and finance infrastructure because the system is predicated on cash so to establish and grow your business you're gonna have to find and navigate those waters find some way that you can process your payroll some way that you can bank your cash and hopefully not pay your taxes in cash now you may think that banks will open an account for you because well cannabis is illegal right and you're right I challenge you go down to your local Wells Fargo Chase Bank of America they're not going to open an account for you however we found that banking your cash be accomplished through state chartered banks state charter banks that operate and legalized states are banking cannabis cash right now and they're not going to tell you because they're not advertising about it and they're not going to until it's federally illegal however some of the largest banks in the world are baking cannabis cash right now through their state sub Seri charter banks so if you can't find a bank to operate in then try and navigate those waters and find a way that you can somehow run your payroll without paying your employees and cash paying your taxes not in cash and trying to increase your legitimize expenses for your cannabis business this will greatly improve what matters most in any business which is your bottom line the next area where you're going to need some help in is workers compensation and insurance now here's the funny thing how does that work can you go about insuring something that's federally illegal well insurance companies will actually insure anything trust me but because the cannabis industry is a new industry insurance companies lack the data to predict risk predominantly workers compensation risk you know when I first started working with cannabis companies I would ask them a technical question I'd say what would you do in the event an employee got seriously injured at work tell me about your illness injury prevention program and the steps that you would take to get them back to work the response cricket's I'd go back to when I say do you know what the government would do in the event that you don't have the proper insurance and programs in place they would roll their eyes and look back at me and I'll tell them fines for not having the proper insurance and programs in place can cost you up to $100,000 in occupational health and safety fines so no it is OSHA and there's some of the harshest in the nation I'll share with you another tip when looking for insurance try not to go through the state fund try to go to outside services that can harbor your risk for cheaper and protect yourself against liability this can be found through the private markets if they're insuring it through professional employer organizations or even staffing companies that can underwrite the liability for you okay the third area we're going to need some help is through staffing and recruiting unlike other industries where you can go find credible and reliable employees the cannabis industry lacks the staffing and recruitment platforms to help you source quality employees it's not like these employees are on monster Careerbuilder or linkedin or zip recruiter it's been a black market right so how do you go about finding them well today there's over three hundred thousand job openings in the cannabis field making it the nation's second largest job market and with barely half the nation legalized there's a tremendous void in our workforce that filling this demand so the number one biggest hurdle is gonna be you training the workforce to work in new processes of cultivation extraction laboratory and sciences genetics or research and development how we train new employees for cannabis is by transitioning agriculture-based employees into cannabis and by using some form of technology to help train and certify these employees in cannabis specific processes the next area we're going to need some help in is occupational health and safety and how it relates to corporate responsibility that's a fancy way of saying HR compliance and safety it starts with education on how to use the plan and what I'm trying to describe to you is you need to use some type of set standard certified knowledge base to educate your staff on how to use cannabis responsibly we would also educate your staff on cannabis manufacturing processes and regulatory requirements in a cannabis environment you know one of the many concerns of OSHA and insurance companies is they believe the majority of employees working in cannabis are stoners and potheads you can see why they're reluctant to insure you this just doesn't pertain to canvas though when cannabis well legal in California many of my clients in the aerospace automotive and manufacturing fields all had concerns how this was gonna affect their workplace if workers are enumerated while working with heavy machinery it poses a huge threat to the safety of the employee their co-workers and the employer and the truth is they're probably right if employees are operating in an environment where the product in this case cannabis is accessible many of them are probably actively using it at the job just how we prohibit the use of alcohol while operating heavy machinery we can't have workers operating machinery while under the influence of cannabis so using some kind of an HR platform to educate cannabis usage will ultimately lead to a safer work environment another advantage to using a platform for your cannabis business is to vet new hires and this just doesn't go for cannabis this also goes for other corporations when I hire a new employee I predicate the job offer on the employee passing a drug test right like the majority of other companies out there today I'm going to change the way I drug test my own employees rather than testing for any and all substances of cannabis I'm going to start testing for what cannabis compounds are actually in their system there are two molecular cannabis compounds CBD and THC CBD is the non psychoactive ingredient doesn't get you high and it doesn't affect the clarity of your own decisions therefore why are we still testing for it it's up to companies today to stop discriminating against those that use cannabis responsibly and start incorporating new THC drug testing models to vet and hire new employees the fifth area where you gonna need some help in and that can really change the world is in healthcare when an employee gets injured at work in any industry like a slip a fall maybe even a broken bone that employee is prescribed pain medication from a doctor what if you made cannabis as an option in your health care plan according to Kaiser Family Foundation and employers are spending nearly nine times more to treat opioid addiction than they did 12 years ago from 300 million dollars in 2004 to two point six billion dollars in 2016 this will cost employers up to six hundred and thirty five billion dollars in medical costs and lost productivity costs so today injured workers are becoming addicted to opioids that are prescribed to help manage their pain so let's look at the cycle of what occurs here right first a worker is injured on the job second a doctor prescribes opioids to manage the pain in the injury third the doctor advises the employer and the worker that he or she is unfit to go back to work while being under the influence of opioids fourth the employee becomes withdrawn from society social and working life which often leads to greater dependency on the drug itself and fifth and the worst case scenario the employee overdoses and in some cases dies so employers want to prevent addiction but have no choice but to send their worker to a doctor who prescribes them opioids all while the alternative to a new solution and plant medicine is sitting right in front of our face what I'm describing here today is self-insured health care by incorporating cannabis into your health care plan it provides employees with the access to the medicine that they need that is much safer it also gives the tools and resources for that worker to become a happier and healthier worker which leads to greater productivity in your workplace so using an HR platform that can provide cannabis health care options will give them the access to the medicine that they need and help you reduce your turnover and more importantly increase your long term retention and the reason why I'm talking about it from this stage is because I hope that this will inspire other companies to incorporate cannabis into their HR models as a cannabis plant transcends and starts to reclaim its place as a teacher and most importantly as a healer currently this doesn't exist I'm trying to build it right now and today I'm challenging the big players like United Healthcare Kaiser Blue Cross and others to incorporate cannabis into their health care plans and you know what I want you to challenge them with me because my second mantra is I will change the world and together we can do it [Applause] [Music]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 82,517

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Business, Agriculture, Entrepreneurship, Workplace

Id: _-eaJQ-QhGk

Length: 18min 47sec (1127 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 12 2019