Why So Many Cannabis Companies Fail

Why do many cannabis companies fail? Is it true many fail in the first year of business? Why of over the hundreds of licenses issued by the state, not all are being used? 

The biggest reason is money! When I set out to buy a license to cultivate cannabis I was under the impression it would take a few hundred thousand dollars. This was in 2013 before the state was issuing licenses. At that time it was $5000 for a license not much compared to somewhere around $35,000 per year now. I found an old 20,000 square foot warehouse that was vacant.

A long story short after adding up the costs to open such a place was way over my budget. 

Over the past 30 years, I have been growing many plants from tomatoes to some of the hottest chile peppers in the world. Not all plants are easy to grow correctly! You can buy some seedlings and sure it will produce fruit. But what quality of fruit you will get comes only with experience.

When I started growing cannabis several years ago there were no books on the subject.

Youtube had very few videos and most with guys in a mask and a fake voice. I traveled to Antwerp Belgium a few times when I was in the diamond trade.  One weekend I traveled to Amsterdam to find the cannabis Mecca. These guys knew how to grow plants. I stayed in contact with a few seed producers over the years now I had what I needed to grow this beautiful plant.

 Why am I tell you my story? Simple I am stating the fact that it takes years to master anything in life.

I have met many self-proclaimed master growers in the last few years. That did not know how to get rid of mold or how to kill insects. If you want to be sucseful you will need to know how to deal with these simple challenges.

I have worked for quite a few cannabis companies that thought all they had to do was plant a seed and watch it grow.

What did they do when problems arose? Call a self-proclaimed master grower! A person that had no idea how to fix these situations. One place I worked had a mold infestation and had to dispose of 500 lbs of product. Another I worked for over dried their product 5000bls and it was only good for potpourri they had no buyers.

 Here are a few reasons some cannabis cultivators fail, but the biggest reason is staffing yes staffing.

I will not be one of those guys that say it is because they hire so many stoners or potheads. We have to thank these cannabis connoisseurs. They were, in the beginning, the only people that wanted to work in the cannabis industry. Like most young people they needed guidance structure and encouragement.

I was also in the casino business for several years. I started as a dice dealer and was promoted to cassino manager many years later.

The casino business does not take inadequacies lightly. If you can not do the job you will be gone to let another succeed or fail. It is a sometimes brutal industry but it pays well so there will always be someone to take your job. This is what I see in the cannabis industry many hire friends or friends of friends, which is fine. My question who is going to take all these friends and give them structure and responsibility?

Until these companies start hiring quality managers to take them to the next level.

More will fail or just keep pumping more money into a bottomless pit. Now here is the catch a few years ago I was managing a taxi company with over 500 employees. I was approached by a guy that I knew for a few years to come and manage his cultivation site.

Here was my Delima leave a job where I was making over $80,000. To go into a business that was illegal to the federal government.

The pay was nowhere near what I was making. But it was a chance to go into a new industry at the very beginning. I passed on the opportunity, by the way, that guy failed in 14 months. It will be a few years and will need to be federally legal to get quality management teams in cannabis. I, on the other hand, am willing to help companies with this problem. Me or one of my partners will help you with the staff you have on hand to create policies and procedures. We are well versed in cannabis but more so in managing people with over 50 years of combined experience.

Here at CCS, we will be able to help the smaller groups succeed in a business that even the big conglomerates have yet to see a profit.

If you do not have deep pockets or huge investors to back you give us a try. You, like many of our other clients, will be surprised by how quickly you will go from in the red to black. The key to being a good manager is to get respect. Not from being an angry tyrant but to have your people like you and they will be willing to help you out.

So many managers think different then we do they think being a good manager is yelling or punishing their staff.

Here is the problem with that scenario, let us say you have a problem with a mold issue.  If your staff doesn’t like you and they see a problem they will ignore it. I have had staff members come to me to tell me there is a problem. They did not go to management saying “screw them they are all a bunch of assholes” Now you see if you had the respect of your staff they would immediately let you know there is a problem. It took me many years to understand this, finding a way to want your people to want to help you.

Give us a call 702-234-4102

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