Transcript

Greg Dunaway :
People. He is the found co founder and CEO of Hunter Esquire. It is one of the leading talent acquisition firms in the entire space. Chances are if you're involved in any way, shape or form in management C suite, all the way up and down from supply chain to exec, you've heard of him and Hunter Esquire, he's going to be blunt. He's going to pull back the reality or pull back the curtain on the realities of cannabis hiring. I am so glad he's here. My buddy Bryan. Welcome.

Greg Dunaway :
Thank you so much for coming down man.

Bryan Passman :
Thank you. Good to see you again. It's been a while. Thanks for that great intro.

Greg Dunaway :
It could have done more.

Bryan Passman :
You've always been a great hype guy for me. Appreciate it for sure.

Greg Dunaway :
You deserve is so fascinating to me. I think in thinking about this interview. Bryan, it is so interesting. You are one of the few people in cannabis who can sit in rooms where real decisions are made about people or hiring or strategy and you have this third party perspective. And in our industry where on LinkedIn or wherever we constantly see missteps. I'm, I'm so excited to get your opinion on it. It must be really interesting for you to be able to have that third person view on all of these big companies. They're hiring, their mistakes and their successes.

Bryan Passman :
It, it's, it's a cool spot to hold it, you know, took a while to earn it. You have to obviously do some trust earning to get there. I think, I think how I got there was just by being authentic and straight up and luckily I was just able to continue being that way. It's just, just easy for me. I don't, I don't like being anything else. I'm not smart enough to remember all the, all the. I might say so. Yeah.

Bryan Passman :
So then being trusted with sensitive information and carrying it to conversation, to conversation without revealing sources or over sharing. Yeah. Certainly certainly benefited us and companies that partner with us for hiring.

Greg Dunaway :
What. Let's, let's do a little bit of background for everybody. How in the hell did you become one of the leading, you know, not only talent but strategy guys out there? How in the hell did you get to where you are?

Bryan Passman :
Well, when we, I think when we started this, it was just really fortunate timing. First of all, in 2017, it was, I think fairly shortly after the evolution from the friends and family hiring in cannabis. Focus shifted to trying to professionalize the process and go with third parties. And to my knowledge there weren't any other retained executive search firms around at the Time. And when my wife and I started this with a few others, we were bringing a lot of search experience. It was like my 19th year doing it at all. It's all I've ever done since graduating. And we had a few others who had some pretty deep experience, of course, from all other industries.

Bryan Passman :
So we started with a lot of background and relevant industries, highly regulated industries, and cpg, food and beverage, for example, and signed up a really, really big notable MSO right out of the gates that loaded us up with really juicy searches. And it just gave us a good excuse to chat up other leaders in the industry at that time. And then, you know, it just snowballed. So just, just, you know, I don't mind sharing. It's like, I don't care about sharing secret sauce. And if someone doesn't know this, they should. If you're in retain search, Executive search, the best business development tool, is just treating your searches professionally. And, you know, if you have opportunities to go out and talk to people about opportunities, do it in a conscientious, caring, professional way.

Bryan Passman :
And you'll only place one person per search, but you'll build your network, obviously, but also hopefully your clientele, because you convert candidates to future hiring authorities because they enjoyed working with you in that way. So we'll trust you to represent them when they need to hire.

Greg Dunaway :
So when you, this, this strikes me as something that must have been interesting for you. So when you, you know, you had, I think you had like, something ridiculous, like, you know, 15 years in other much more developed industries. So what was it like as you started your first forays into cannabis in terms of seeing where hiring was when you arrived to kind of be like, hey guys, can we try and do this professionally?

Bryan Passman :
Yeah, it was pretty wild. I got to very immediately and around the clock do a lot of that advisement, talking about, okay, we should do this, we shouldn't do that, and then, and just doing a lot of, like, pushing rope and nudging people to do things, which, which, you know, was. Was really good because you get into, like, comfy ruts when you're in an established situation. Right? Like, we know, you know, people in other big companies and established industries, a lot of times the mandate is just don't screw it up and you forget some of the basic blocking and tackling. So it was, it was good to have to, you know, try to, like, communicate in a polite, clear way all the things we should be doing. That's like table stakes for other people. But it was, it was a little bit jarring but also really fun, like, really invigorating, because it wasn't just the same old stuff, like, just, we're going to run the same playbook. We know what's going to work.

Bryan Passman :
Just rinse, repeat. And we were lucky that, you know, a lot of our first clients were very good with it. They were hiring us because they wanted talent, but also they wanted that. And, you know, some things I had to pull back on. Like we had this thing called an accountability doc we used to use for a lot of years back in the day. So we're working with a big food or beverage company, but we started a CFO search or otherwise we'd say, okay, this is what you said you wanted. This is the process. We said, this is what you're responsible for.

Bryan Passman :
We're responsible for all the mutual accountabilities. We're all going to sign off on this. Basically, you know, something we could revert back to. And that was something I had to do away with. After a few dozen times sending that to clients, they it because they could get pretty lengthy because when you have a lot of stakeholders, there's a lot of. Lot of push and pull, a lot of conversation. And I eventually had to just ditch those because it was just like another administrative task for people in cannabis that it's like, look, I get it. You're going to hold us accountable, we're going to hold you accountable.

Bryan Passman :
But I don't want to have to initial 8 pages of notes and whatnot. So, you know, stuff like that had to go away and we had to lighten up and loosen up a little bit. But, you know, we met in a good, happy place for the most part.

Greg Dunaway :
Yeah. So you. So you get started and, you know, I have to imagine that you get there, you're working. It sounds like, you know, you hit the ground running with these MSOs. And as we know, MSOs do struggle with churn and hiring. And I am so curious, like, what is it that is this, like, tennis court volley back and forth of people seemingly going back and forth with MSOs, or seemingly, you know, seemingly never being able to keep the churn down? Like, what's your read on that?

Bryan Passman :
Yeah, well, there's. There's this very strong desire to hire someone who's perceived to have been there, done that. Right, right. They're going to come in eyes wide open. They're not going to freak out when they see all the warts of what being in this role at an MSO is like. And, you know, they did it. Exactly. Or even Kind of sort of at a competitor.

Bryan Passman :
So therefore they're a fit. And a lot of times it's just, well, we need a body in the seat because this person just quit or we just had a fire, whatever, the seat's open and you want to hurry up and get someone in it. So, you know, it's just a lot of that rapid hire because we know we'll just rapidly fire the person as well if they don't work out and who cares? So, you know, a lot of, a lot of people have settled into. This is a grind and people are going to churn and burn even if we put a lot into it. So what's the point of putting a lot into it? We have other things to do. Let's just, you know, kind of hope for the best. So we know there's a lot of Hopium being smoked around the industry and I think it's just that. And so when we get inserted, we try to slow it down and challenge that and help, help hiring companies try to understand, okay, was this person really actually successful doing the same role at a competing company and, or maybe hire someone that didn't exactly do that or did it at a company you don't like? Because there's a lot of that too.

Bryan Passman :
We will, you know, we're never going to hire from that competitor because, you know, they suck. We don't hold them in high regards. We're not going to hire. But of course not everyone at the organization is bad. There's, you know, there's always some, some gems in there. So just, I think it's just that, just a lot of we got to go. We, we need someone in here every, every day the seats open. Just, you know, there's stuff piling up.

Bryan Passman :
Let's just hurry up and get it done and we'll boot them quickly if they don't work out, you know, kind of, you know, who cares how.

Greg Dunaway :
And, and, and so in other industries, you know, I think you and I both have, have been lucky enough to kind of dabble in other industries before cannabis. In, in your estimation. Like, do cannabis companies get how expensive turnover is? I know you get it. Like, do they. Can you, can you, can you help people understand why turnover is so goddamn expensive?

Bryan Passman :
Well, yes, some companies get it. I think probably every day there's another company waking up to that fact. Then there's the balance of, well, we understand it's expensive, but also time is our most precious resource. So we kind of just have to roll the dice and, you know, maybe just eat that that additional cost because we don't have any more time to give to trying to do it better, unfortunately. But yeah, I mean, there you're so again, first thing with Churn is time to backfill the position. So hopefully you're doing it at least sort of kind of right, and you're involving he PT members. You're either spending on a third party to do the search for you, or you're asking your leaders to take away from their day job where they're already living in time triage to go do the search. And that's a lot of times where we get called in now from the SVP or chief, blah, blah, blah, is like, okay, I try to do a solid for the company and fill it on my own three months later.

Bryan Passman :
I'm just, I'm tired of talking to unqualified people, just please help me. Or tired of being left at the altar. So there's that, but then there's just all the HR blocking and tackling, setting up payroll, getting someone their computer. I mean, it's a whole laundry list of other things getting legal involved in an employment agreement. So I think, yeah, I forget what the math is to figure out the monetary. It's a percentage of that person person's cash earnings. It's a pretty decent percentage is the actual monetary cost. But I think for people in cannabis, not that everyone's rolling in it, there's certainly this capital crunch and difficulty carving a path to profitability.

Bryan Passman :
But ultimately it's just, it's the time cost for everyone just. And then, and then, and then the opportunity cost of not having more people working together more and gelling better together as a team and you know, flowing and vibing better together.

Greg Dunaway :
Right. And I think you brought up an interesting point too, which is like I know there's people who are listening to this that are probably, you know, they're either actively, they're in the industry looking for a new job, they're trying to break in the industry. Let's just rip the Band Aid like I I from my seat, you know, over at, over at Colt. Looking at price compression. I've got a seat on. Hey, I can tell you right now what the price per pound is in Arizona. I can tell you right now there's one independent cultivation going under every single month in this state. You, my friend, have a national and even a global.

Greg Dunaway :
I like, let's just rip the Band Aid for people. What are you seeing as far as hiring trends, if any, at this stage in the market right now.

Bryan Passman :
For us, it's been very heavily focused on finance and operations leadership placement. There's just I think a very, very broad realization like we've really moved away from just focus top line, who cares about all the waste? Just, you know, as long as revenue is strong, we can go raise more capital if we need to. Obviously that's not the case anymore. So finding very operationally oriented finance leaders, new CFOs, controllers and so on that could partner well with operations to really reduce SGNA and dig into the organization and partner to figure out ways to turn a profit or improve profitability and then hire ops leaders that are very OPEX oriented. It's not really an ask for lean Six Sigma certified ops leaders, just more OPEX operations leaders who obviously don't mind getting their, their hands dirty and really understanding what's going on. You could always sprinkle in other other growth leader roles and roles in hr and we've done a couple of recent regulatory and quality searches but for well over a year now, heavily skewed, probably you know, 75, 80% plus finance ops leader.

Greg Dunaway :
Yeah, that makes that tracks and then you know, let's also. That's great. Hey, if you're an OPEX and finance leader, great booyah for you. What are you not seeing, Bryan? Like what, what has changed?

Bryan Passman :
Not not seeing a, a heavy focus on really building out the HR function. Unfortunately that spiked some years ago and then fell off. I think what, what a lot of us can agree on, what we see is when times get tough, those in people, operations and marketing unfortunately are a lot of the first to get cut. Whatever reason, those are seen as luxuries unfortunately. So we've, we had a lot of fun building HR teams for a long time. That, that was great. Took a while to get there and, and now it's been a while since we've had a heavy amount of HR searches unfortunately. I say unfortunately because even some of our best clients are bare bones with their HR organizations and their organizations really struggle as a direct result of that because you know, people just feel less cared for in general when that happens.

Bryan Passman :
Uh, also something I've really been rooting for, we've helped recently on a couple. Something I've really rooted for since day one to do a lot of is chief of staff searches. Interesting that, that, that, that real like kind of connective tissue. Someone that's multifaceted, multifunctional, that can work across departments really easily and be that like smoke detector for the organization. Make sure really key projects are happening on time. Being that that herder of cats and pusher of ropes. You know, they, they exist out there, but in really low numbers. And I could count on one hand how many of those searches we've done.

Bryan Passman :
I would, I would love to do those all day. Those, those people that are qualified for chief of staff roles are typically really cool to work with. Also. They're really energetic, outgoing people. Don't mind talking to them, actually seek them out to talk to them because they're pleasant and great. Those are some of my favorite people.

Greg Dunaway :
What. Let's. I want to talk to you about something. I've had the unique experience, Bryan, of when I was looking for a new role. I got the opportunity to kind of see how you work from the other side. I got to do that kind of interview as a candidate. I have been so curious about that because I feel like when you're talking to a candidate, you might get just as many insights from those discussions as you do from like, you know, a CEO talking to you. Like, what, what? And I hate to generalize too much here, Bryan, but like, it feels to me like when we use the word culture in cannabis, we use it a lot to describe the fun part of culture or the legacy guys or all that.

Greg Dunaway :
But there also is this aspect of culture that you deal with, the culture of companies in cannabis. And I don't know about you, but if you read LinkedIn every day like I do, or you, you're. It feels to me like there's a lot of broken culture culture in cannabis. Do you, do you, do you agree with that as far as it comes from like the, like the company side of that, that business culture being broken?

Bryan Passman :
Well, I want to say yes and no, and it depends, right? For sure. There are some very, very large, very notable companies that we will never work with. I know their cultures are incredibly toxic. They also happen to be some of the best paying companies in the industry. That's oftentimes referred to as your hazard pay or danger pay. I've had conversations with very high ranking individuals that have left $300,000 plus salaries with nothing else lined up because they just, they didn't want to exist in that very toxic world anymore. And I fully respect that. We have some hiring authorities that can't really grasp that.

Bryan Passman :
Like, that's crazy. And do you really believe him or her? And yes, because I've done stuff like that before myself. But I say yes and no because I think that some companies oftentimes will be on the phone with people and I'll hear about their comments on some companies Having terrible cultures. And when, when you really dig into it and you ask them what, you know really like what's, what's the right culture fit for you? And why was that? Why were they not a fit? A lot of times it ends up being tied to. Well, that company was trying to be very KPI centric. They were trying to hold people accountable. They really wanted to measure people's success and they didn't create the very, you know, cannabisy culture that the person was looking for because they were trying to run it like a real business. Certainly a lot of companies, you know, over correct on that and start running it like it's a very sterile, non caring environment.

Bryan Passman :
And a lot of times you get that with bankers at the helm. But you know, I think, I think some companies in the industry get a bad wrap around their culture because they're just trying to run a legitimate business and get to that profitable place so they can continue employing people and keep going and have more Runway for everyone. So yeah, I like talking about culture. When we're recruiting and placing folks in terms of culture ads, is this person a culture fit? It can, can be a slippery slope because maybe some aspects of that, that culture are being worked on and we're shifting because we just went public and now we're trying to professionalize. So yeah, they're, they're a culture fit for what we've been, but we're trying to change the culture. We get called into that a lot. So we look, you know, for people that maybe sometimes are hard to vet for fit because you might have some OGs in the organization that are trying to hire people that will help them create a new cultural DNA. So like helping them understand, okay, well maybe you didn't really vibe with that person, but they're going to help you get to that more professionalized place.

Bryan Passman :
Of course, everyone, people have to like each other and be able to genuinely say, yeah, I would be excited to work with that person on both sides of the equation. But I think like the culture contributor aspect of that assessment, a lot of times for us is more important than just so they fit to what we are and have been.

Greg Dunaway :
Yeah. And so you dovetailed nicely into where I wanted to ask you about this. I think one of the questions that really could be helpful for some of our listeners out there is you've been doing this since 2017. We're talking, you just did a really eloquent, a really eloquent diagnosis on kind of that culture aspect. What are some of the other really costly mistakes that cannabis companies make when they're hiring or thinking about hiring or where does it go wrong? Bryan?

Bryan Passman :
Yeah, that's a lot of stuff. I, I'd say, you know, probably, probably most of it stems from just not being great on communication and collaboration. So I don't, you know, so we don't try to spend several more hours here listening out all the, what, what happens. It's just being, being communicative amongst the, the hiring team before embarking on the search, having all the negotiations, hashing out. I know you want this and I know you want that. We're not all going to get what we want. There's no perfect candidate out there that can make us all happy. Let's, let's, you know, horse trade and figure out what must haves and nice to haves are and really, really agree on it.

Bryan Passman :
Not like fake agree on it. So we could just get going. And then if you're working with a third party recruiter to be clear about that, or ideally have them involved in those conversations and they can help everyone navigate it or just witness it all and absorb it all. So really hashing all that out and then collaborating well through the process and ensuring that everything is being communicated transparently to the candidates and not BSing your way through that process so that you can land the person you want and then they'll quickly realize they were bait and switched. You know, people make a lot of really, really important decisions and develop a lot of emotions and feelings around their decision to take a new role in the like the first day or two in it. And it's really hard to reverse any, any of those negative emotions around it. So it's just, just being like honest and transparent about what's good and not good here and what's all the trash this person's gonna walk into and being honest about what to expect from this person saying like, oh, just because we're gonna pay this person a healthy comp package and we're gonna pay Hunter and Esquire or someone else a nice fee to find them. And saying okay, that means this person should single handedly save us because we've invested so much is obviously just unfair.

Bryan Passman :
And I think a lot of unfair expectations are put on people when they're brought into cannabis businesses these days because everyone's in some degree of a struggle. So just being fair, honest, transparent, communicative, collaborative, so much of the other just dumb stuff that that breaks down the retention part of it after all of that could just be resolved if you just take that more, more I guess human approach to it.

Greg Dunaway :
Yeah, for sure. I love that. I was also wondering too, Bryan, like, and again, you'll laugh when you hear this question because of our shared history together, but there are a lot of young companies in cannabis. There's a lot of young CEOs in cannabis, there's a lot of youth. And I think there's also a little bit of this idea that, you know, that maybe cannabis is a little too young. And I guess my question for you is, do you feel like our industry kind of shies away from bringing in people with other business experience to the detriment of some of the organizations you work with? Is that bias real?

Bryan Passman :
So again, yes and no. Going back to some, something earlier we discussed, you know, we, we had to learn, we learned an important lesson. You know, coming into this. A lot of, a lot my, myself included for sure. Probably worst of all was very used to looking for pedigree. If, if I was recruiting for some really pedigree organization and some category of whatever the industry was, we wanted to go get someone who was doing it at another pedigree organization. And when early on, when we always, we had leadership searches and so it's evolved early on there wasn't a lot of this talent that had come in yet. It was, it was happening, but not in droves like it's happened since 2017.

Bryan Passman :
And so we wanted to go out and get the best of the best people with all, you know, all types of great education and rigor working in, you know, really legitimate world class organizations. And a lot of it was well, you're trying to professionalize and standardize a process and procedures. So let's go get you someone that comes from like a, like a GE or some other whatever, like a Toyota. We never, we don't recruit from automotive, but as an example, very process oriented organization. Right. And then, and then, and then really, really the, the hard way learned the lesson that actually a lot of times that person's not the right fit because they, they may have opportunities to create a little bit and build a little bit here, but a lot of times it's just tweaking and just exist well in this construct and just don't screw it up. And, and if they had to build and create, they had a lot of resources to do it. They weren't, you know, wasn't, you know, the same.

Bryan Passman :
So there was really that, that, that learning that if we're going outside of cannabis we really should a lot of times go get someone from like a really gritty and grimy you know, type of environment.

Greg Dunaway :
I love it.

Bryan Passman :
Yeah, like, like really just like sweatshoppy type of stuff. And it was, it was just, it was, it was fun to watch. Like some of our placements, like, were a lot of resumes that old Bryan would have looked at and said, heck no. And, and then we're placing these people and they're just thriving in the industry because.

Greg Dunaway :
Going and killing it from the grimy places. I love it.

Bryan Passman :
Yeah. So that we did, we, we learned that. I say that's, yeah. So hopefully that answered it because now my, my sickness is kicking in and my brain fog is.

Greg Dunaway :
Oh, no worries, no worries. You more than answered it. I, I, I, it's so funny. I love hearing this because, like, you know, you're, if you're, if you're in the thick of it sometimes again, your, your perch up here is so much better. Do you, let's, let's offer some concrete advice as we, as we head towards the tail end here, Bryan and I, and before I ask you a couple really magic wand questions, I want to get to. But so you're, you're someone right now who's listening to this. You're, you're looking for a new job. You're wondering, you know, hey, is Hunter Esquire right for me? And again, I'm not trying to flood your inbox or whatever, but some concrete things for people to consider right now, given the market.

Greg Dunaway :
You know what, right now, if you are in OPEX or finance and you have those skills, is it a good time for you to be coming? If you're coming from outside the industry, Are people preferring people from inside the industry? Is it a little bit of both these days? What, what are you thinking for candidates that are out there?

Bryan Passman :
Yeah, well, I mean, I, I would definitely give a caveat to anyone outside the industry that's in a really good place and has a lot of people depending on them and wants some decent amount of stability and security in their career to absolutely stay away. And just, if you're really, if you're really feeling the pull but you're in a good place, stay there. Just. It's brutal right now. We know. And if you're in the industry, I know you're probably in at least a little bit of an unhappy place, if not a complete place of misery. I think that's the spectrum right now where people are. I mean, I do, we, we do have some clients that are like really high agency organizations and we've helped them hire like extreme high agency type A folks that are really enjoying just crushing together and, you know, depriving their health together and just like working their tails off, creating and having fun and their families are fully signed up for it.

Bryan Passman :
But that's not for everyone. And, you know, a lot of the searches that we've had are with these new groups coming in, you know, picking organizations up out of receivership, asking us to help them rebuild their leadership teams. And, you know, some of these special committees. That's a new experience we're getting is working through receivership, acquisitions, rebuilds and special committees. That's a challenge in itself. Probably a whole other conversation is that.

Greg Dunaway :
Is that just to start interrupting, but is that one of the only places where you are. This is a really jacked up thing to say, but is that one of the only places you're seeing growth? Is that like there are people kind, coming in and kind of picking up the, the cadavers and trying to reanimate them? Is, is that, is that where you are seeing some action?

Bryan Passman :
Yeah, mostly it is, yeah.

Greg Dunaway :
God, it's too early in the morning to have a drink. Oh, my God. Tell us more about that. I don't think a lot of people know about that.

Bryan Passman :
Yeah. So receivership is cannabis bankruptcy, right? That's.

Greg Dunaway :
Yeah. Yep.

Bryan Passman :
And then it's wild because there's sometimes this really lengthy period where you're acquired, but not really the transaction hasn't closed. And there's special committees appointed. And thankfully in the cases we've been involved in, there are special committee folks that have been in C suite roles, so they understand operating company challenges. But a lot of times, not just straight up bankers who are, you know, kind of trumping everyone else's opinion on what we need. And they're working from a place of, you know, just looking at the balance sheet or some Excel spreadsheets on what they need. So that, that's been tough. Kind of like brokering those in IT who are going to work with this person and the special committee folks who are in charge now but are going to step aside and, and then placing leaders who don't actually know who their boss is when they join. And you're going to report to the special committee and it's going to be someone after that, but who knows?

Greg Dunaway :
Good luck.

Bryan Passman :
Good luck. And in those cases, we do get a lot of asks to hire from outside the industry, which was different because leading up to that we sort of went to, all right, there's all this great talent. So many people have entered cannabis. Why go outside? Let's hire from within. Just Try to do it the right way. And we do our best, respectfully, to say, well, we don't think we should go outside. You really need someone who's going to hit the ground running a little bit more effectively and understand what's going on there. And then.

Bryan Passman :
So usually what we end up doing is running a search, really kind of two searches, looking for both. We're building a slate of great athletes from outside of cannabis and then great people we know from inside and usually on the front end, everyone's like, wow, I love that person from the, all these pedigree, all these people from these pedigree companies outside. But after you dig deep, two or three conversations into it, usually there's consensus, like, okay, we need to focus on these people that understand our struggle more so than otherwise.

Greg Dunaway :
That is, that is fascinating. I mean, I just, I just can't get over like, what's, what's a high growth area in cannabis? Oh, people going to bail out, companies in receivership. There's a lot of growth. Oh, man.

Bryan Passman :
Yeah. And then, and then you're, you're asked to do that, right? You're asked to come in and do that. And there's not even like, you know, all of, all of the, you know, abilities for HR and, and the board and everyone to offer you all the rewards for this work because usually everything's on hold and it's, forget about an equity package in case that might be worth something one day. A lot of times it's questionable even what your short term incentive is going to be. So it's like, it's exciting because you're coming in to transform this organization and be a part of blood, but with a tremendous amount of risk and like very little, if any financial reward. It's just, it's really more of the personal reward, like just putting your thumbprint on something and just making a really demonstrated impact. An organization that, you know, hopefully you could talk about years from now was saved from just disappearing off the cannabis map.

Greg Dunaway :
Right? Well, hey, look, if you save a continent, that's a great one for the old resume. Hey, I saved Atlantis a couple more. Bryan, I know I've taken up a ton of your time. I do really want to dive into one thing that we kind of skirted over. If you are, if you are a CEO in cannabis and you're trying to make organizational change, I know that you've seen this. What are some of the times when you've looked at that CEO and you've said for one reason or another, you've made A classic mistake. Or you're going to make a classic mistake. Or I've seen this playbook before.

Greg Dunaway :
Or what I'm trying to drive at is that like I know for a fact that you've dealt with some interesting CEOs and you've seen some of these classic mistakes. Like what are they? That these. That maybe there's a CEO out there from an equipment vendor listening, or maybe you're gonna grow. Hell, maybe Justin RCO and Colts listening. Like, what are those mistakes that you're like, guys like, don't do this.

Bryan Passman :
Yeah. Well, I'll start with. I think I have like probably two or three things I'll start with. What's probably the most obvious is just empower your people to do the damn job you hire them to do. Like trust them and give them the support and whatever resources you can to do the thing you hired them to do. And don't hamstring them after you bring them in to do this thing. That's it. Then really, really subscribe to.

Bryan Passman :
I'm gonna have to give like unconditional, copious amounts of empathy to these people and I'm just gonna have to suffer. Like if your cannabis CEO is probably one of the loneliest gigs around. Except for when you're out on the circuit on stage and everyone's kissing the ring. But when you're back in the, in the seat, it's lonely. It's horrible. I've joked many times I should change my title to professional Ledge Talker offer. Just thinking about the conversations I have early late in weekends with CEO friends. It's a horrible, lonely, unforgiving place and you just have to own that.

Bryan Passman :
However you can cope with that. Just eyes on the prize. We're gonna succeed if I just keep letting myself get abused and just loving the ones I'm with and always making them feel cared for. And then I guess kind of tied to that is I think a big fail is also being brutally hard on yourself. Like really publicly, not all the way public publicly to those in your organization, accountable for your screw ups, never pointing fingers. Obviously, you know, some people screw up, you have to have a, have a tough conversation and sometimes you have to let people go. But owning every single mistake of your own, like big time owning it and being obscenely apologetic and killing yourself to make it right for the organization and those directly impacted who have to clean up your message. Just.

Bryan Passman :
Yeah, I've seen some really, really good CEOs get to some really bad places because they fail to do that. It's not all that hard to do. It's kind of humbling. I think it's easy to get an oversized ego as a cannabis CEO, especially if it's your first gig and you're really young and you're hotshot. Things like that just. And of course not everyone who's young and first time leader roles like that. There's plenty of good young people who are willing to own their shit, but just really owning it, like falling on all the swords that are aimed at you.

Greg Dunaway :
I love it. I love it. A couple more and then we'll get it. Get you out of here. Bryan, I have one for you. What? You are again, so uniquely positioned. You've been in the C suites, you've heard the like professional ledge talker offer. That's hysterical, dude.

Greg Dunaway :
So if, if you had a magic wand, whether it's, you know, hiring hr, whatever, if you could change something about this industry, what, what in the world would it be and how would it impact everybody?

Bryan Passman :
I mean, yeah, if we're talking about magical Narnia Land things, I, I would create a world where it was just less hard, where, you know, something trigger 280e going away and you know, maybe a reschedule or deschedule action that just made it easier so that, so that people could breathe. You know, I want to say, I want to say just do better by your people, but, you know, I don't want to say that. I don't think it, you know, it's, it's, it's not, it's not fair because there's a lot of, a lot of people out there that are struggling to lead their organizations the right way. Not because they don't want to, because they're just, they're, they're, they've already deprived themselves of their health, they've deprived their families of their time. They have kids and spouses that don't see them. They're killing themselves to do it. They're working 18, 20 hour days day after day and they just can't get ahead of it and get breathing room. Of course then there's, you know, people that would go to Coachella and Burning man, all these things when they shouldn't and, and they fall behind for those reasons.

Bryan Passman :
I'm not talking about those people to those people. Stop doing that. Just be in your job. Don't, don't do things anymore. But just I would magically try to alleviate some pressure so people could just be in it more and have, have more bigger big picture and you know, have conversations that enable you to Set strategies that will hopefully still be effective more than several weeks or months down the road instead of always having to revisit and retool everything and never having time to really care for your people the right way and put other things in place that the business needs.

Greg Dunaway :
Last question for you, my friend. I know Hunter esquire is growing. I know you're looking at adjacent industries as you guys continue to scale, continue success. What's next for Hunter Esquire?

Bryan Passman :
Yeah, we're, you know, I think some, some real traction in cannabis is catching where people are realizing, okay, it's insane to say I'll never do anything else or touch anything else. And people are diversifying what they're doing even within their cannabis organizations. So, you know, that was really resonated with me. I've had a lot of those conversations. People banging their heads, talking off ledges and a lot of times I've said, just, just don't be insane. There is life outside of cannabis. A lot of us don't want to do anything outside of this, but sometimes you just have to, you could come back to it. So for us as a family that's really into eating clean and trying to stay healthy and when I first got into cannabis, I thought I was getting back to health and wellness because my original search career was 15 years in medtech and medical device and biotech.

Bryan Passman :
So I thought I was getting back to something like that. I think we, you know, we can still call cannabis health and wellness, retail, ag, you know, a lot of things. But you know, for us it's broadening the health and wellness umbrella and you know, working with functional beverage plant medicine. We do have clients in psychedelics. That's again going back to my old days working with companies that pursue FDA approvals for products. So that type of stuff, we have friends in the gut health space. That's really important. I think a lot of us are realizing that your gut is really your brain of your body and we need to do better taking care of ourselves in whole ways.

Bryan Passman :
Not just feeding our endocannabinoid systems better, but, you know, feeding our whole selves better. So just good for you. Food, beverage, vitamins, supplements, gut health stuff, probiotics, even my wife and business partners really into skin care and biohacking and life longevity stuff, you know, like red light therapy and other things, which is, you know, probably moving towards some FDA approvals as med tech stuff. So it's really, we're early innings of figuring out that we're just casting a wide net. It's going to be fun to meet people in those other spaces who also mostly love cannabis because again, that's. It's a, it's a health and wellness option to. You know, alcohol is the most obvious call out. But yeah people that you hear that everybody.

Greg Dunaway :
There is a world outside of cannabis that we can, we can explore. It is we. We get going to drop some optimism in here, Bryan?

Bryan Passman :
Yeah, yeah. I mean tbd, if moving around those communities is as fun as hanging out with the cannabis community, probably not. Maybe.

Greg Dunaway :
Yeah. Well, I want to thank you for your time. I know you've got a bunch of candidate meetings and CEO meetings and everything else that you're doing, so thank you for meeting with me, my friend. I have loved it. I always love catching up with you, shooting the shit and hearing the state of the industry and most importantly, just some really solid lessons for everybody up and down the organizational chart today. So very much appreciate it, my friend.

Bryan Passman :
Awesome being here with you. Thanks for having me. It was fun.