Marijuana Business Magazine September 2019

Marijuana Business Magazine | September 2019 118 Looking Back at Washington state If given a do-over, Kara Bradford, CEO of Seattle-based Viridian Staffing, would have launched her company in Colorado instead. But by then, it was too late. So she pivoted. “Washington’s bumpier rollout and original ban on third-party staffing providers made it more challenging to achieve early traction,” she said. “Thank- fully, we were able to keep the bills paid by servicing other vanguard ancillary firms active in Washington and Colorado.” By “vanguard,” Bradford means other pioneering companies that jumped in early in Washington state, including Eden Labs and BioTrackTHC. For about a year and a half, the LCB required all plant-touching workers to be direct employees of the licensed business, which made third-party temp staffing solutions unlawful, according to Bradford. “While some less-scrupulous, fly- by-night firms were happy to skirt the regulation, putting their clients’ licenses at risk, we were not,” she added. “It wasn’t until the LCB changed the regulation and we received confirmation of that change did we roll out our temp staffing solutions in Washington,” Bradford recalled . Viridian Staffing provided direct- hire recruiting to many of those firms but had to leave a lot of temp staffing opportunities on the table by insisting clients operate within the law. “The rollout of I502 (the ballot initiative legalizing adult-use cannabis) was kind of a mess as well, so we were able to keep the lights on, in part, by servicing other ancillary firms while the direct plant-touching firms were working through the licensing process and build- ing out their facilities,” Bradford said. “Had it not been for some of these ancillaries, we might have been ‘too early’ to survive.” Steve Fuhr, managing member of Shelton-based Toucan Farms, said he would have taken his time, money and hard work and applied it to the hemp industry—a move he eventually did make. Fuhr attended a cannabis conference last fall where about 20 owners of Washington state-based cannabis companies said they hadn’t taken a salary since Day One. In 2014, Washington state followed on the heels of Colorado and became the second state to begin recreational cannabis sales. Five years later, the state’s marijuana company executives revisit what they would have done differently in hindsight. They cited the following as lessons learned: • Pay attention to how you diversify your business. If you try to do everything, you’ll do none of it well. • If you’re going to branch out, do so in an area where you’re already doing well rather than trying something completely new. • If one part of your business isn’t working, cut your losses and change direction. • Be careful when developing partnerships; set goals to prevent future conflicts. I give myself a little slack because none of these processes were standardized, and we were inventing operations at scale in real time. —Jeremy Moberg, founder and CEO of CannaSol Farms Kara Bradford. Courtesy Photo