5 Expert Approved Tips to Streamline Dispensary Operations with Eleanor Lynch, Kurt Isenberger, and Ray Riley

Welcome and Introduction

[ {Full Transcript} all right well let's kick it off everyone this is the MediaJel podcast i'm your host guillermo bravo today we'll be covering five expert proof tips to streamline dispensary operations with eleanor lynch and ray riley thank you both for joining us today great to be here thanks for having me yeah a little background on MediaJel MediaJel is a connects cannabis brands and retailers with consumers through our ad network of mainstream publishers mobile apps games and tvs a little background on our guests here eleanor lynch is the ceo of chiaro is that pronounced correctly yeah um kiara is a publicly traded cannabis retail um msl uh headquartered in vancouver bc we also have on the line today ray reilly he is the ceo of progress retail a retail employee experience platform transforming the way stores store teams are trained execute initiatives and delight customers welcome to showray thanks cameron well let's just uh start with a little bit about your background uh eleanor you know we noticed that you have eight years experience running retail at lids in almost four years at kiaro how how has the experience from outside the industry been influential and scaling operations within cannabis well i've been in the retail business for about 25 years so very long time and my previous role was with lids and and the operations here in canada um so i think like a lot of well it wasn't a lot of people that made the transition when i did i i transitioned in 2018 right before legalization in canada in preparation for legalization and so i would say that for most of us that transitioned in the early days there wasn't a lot of infrastructure a lot of the things you're used to having um some of the great things from progress retail for example that you know you get exposed to over time learning management platforms point of sales uh there was a lot of companies that weren't in the game yet for various reasons around regulations and legalization in other jurisdictions so i'd say that's probably the biggest challenge if you're coming from outside the industry you're used to a lot of service options um but things have certainly proliferated they've changed a lot in the last four years i'm sure i'm sure this this industry always keeps us on our toes and you know between compliance uh innovation on technology on products like it's it's always changing it's always changing ray outside the industry a lot of back best practices can be applied to cannabis you know what inspired you to adapt the platform to cannabis retailers and you know what problems were you trying to solve yeah you know i'll kick off with our mission you know progress retail and that really revolves around uh the empowerment enablement of frontline teams so how can we make retail as easy as possible for those that really do matter the most those on the front line so we started focusing on cannabis i'd say early 2020 you know recognizing that it was a retail category likely dealing with some of the same challenges as traditional retail and so you know getting back to that empowerment and enablement side of things you know on the enablement side i'd ask all of our listeners you know for them to tally up all the different tools that their frontline teams engage with on a weekly basis so you know eleanor mentioned some of those tools right um you've got your point of sale hr payroll scheduling sometimes that can be three tools in one um or three tools on their own a tool for training maybe a second tool for product knowledge which i know we're going to talk about later you know tool for communications tasks and then there's email it's just insane so we expect teams to deliver you know an exceptional customer experience and for store leaders to develop their teams but you know there's never going to be one app for all this stuff but for us you know we replace anywhere from three to five tools in one uh really designed for retail uh now on the empowerment side you know there's a race to the bottom with some cannabis retailers as it relates to price and so you know that's not a winning strategy and so in-store experience becomes a competitive advantage and that's really where you know on the empowerment side our retail partner is able to leverage a really large library of retail education that differentiates on uh human connection trust and experience that's great that's great and you know i i know historically um you know like what was it like running communications and training uh before progress retail you know for a dispensary retailer yeah i mean this is a big one um and i'll sort of split the store communications from training because they're kind of two different initiatives on the training side it's usually a tale of two camps and that really has a lot to do with where that organization's at in their life cycle so you know are you a five-star chain getting off the ground are you reaching some degree of retail critical mass so cannabis is still in its quite early innings particularly in north america so you know the majority fall into that um initial cam so there could be a lot little learning content designed there can sometimes be an ambiguous way of communicating standards and expectations so i like to use the example of sops in like a word doc format right that's great but

Tip 1: Replace Static SOPs with Visual, Interactive Learning

words don't teach yes kurt joined what's up kurt um apologies everyone i looked at my calendar i saw the wrong time on there i was like oh my gosh i'm letting everybody down so nice and serious apologies no it occurred uh my apologies i i've been traveling here i'm in uh austin texas for south by southwest and my calendar was wrong so you know you can blame it on me on this one uh then just a little background on kurt isenberg is that isn't burger is that correct burger eisenberger so kurt eisenberger is the learning development manager and and influential in retail operations at loom uh loom is the largest vertically integrated single operator in the united states welcome to the show kurt yeah appreciate it thanks for uh thanks for having me i'm looking forward to connecting and you know uh you know i know ray uh fairly well you know it's always great to have a partner there and demeta eleanor and yourself also so thank you so much yeah thank you as well and you know kurt you have eight eight years of experience at apple how you know how has that experience been instrumental in your leadership role at loom oh gosh uh i'm thankful every day you know i'll just start there i think you know as i reflect on my time spent with such a large organization at the scale they are globally you know and i i bring it back to kind of where we are current state as an organization you know we've been scaling extremely fast you know so with that uh you know comes along with some some key aspects of like you know how do you deal with all that ambiguity you know and how do you remain extremely agile and accomplish what you want to all at the same time well you know growing so much you know throughout the states um as well so um you know i i pay homage to like my skills that i've developed as a leader you know and uh some some of my operational prowess within retail um as well uh to uh you know to really be able to influence and uh support and lead let's be teams or individuals across them so i'm i'm extremely thankful and you know for the past opportunities and kind of where it's led me to now well that's that's quite impressive and you know it's you know your experience is instrumental in in what's needed in the cannabis industry really to uh legitimize and and scale these businesses and you know what role does cannabis education play in the day-to-day operations and you know what does your onboarding process look like at a resource yeah yeah it's a great question uh it's like you know it's almost like what role doesn't it play it does not play you know within retail right i think it's a huge segment you know it's something that we're hyper focused on on day to day and you know i know ray and i have had this conversation many a time and i continue to have it let it be at the store level or with executives that you know there's there's the uh the the piece where we want to legitimize it you know and you know i think also still pay homage to the culture that's come from the past also at the same time you know how do we create this space that's really open to everyone so we've been extremely focused obviously from a product knowledge standpoint with the products that we carry you know um to is essentially what cannabis is and what it excuse me what it can do uh but then also you know how does that come back to how we interact with the customers and the consumers you know because we've got those folks that have been embedded in the culture for decades too like hey i've never done this before i'd like to give it a shot though and uh you know and you guys look like it sound like a you know a great starting point so it's extremely uh extremely important on the day-to-day agreed agreed and ray you know how is how's turnover before and after implementing you know retail operations or retail employee experience platform you know like progress retail yeah and i think you know getting back to that those two themes of empowerment enablement you know we have a case study um we're running a new case study right now uh but our retail partners in the first of implementation were able to decrease their employee turnover between 28 and 79 in the first year of implementation it's a real wide gap of course right um when we aggregated the data not average but aggregated it came out about the 61 reduction so we're not a silver bullet we like to say that you know but this is a really a combination of the right tools the right learning and of course you know committed execution on the part of our retail partners when teams you know optimize teams deliver optimized outcomes and that's just what it's about agreed again eleanor like how do you streamline internal communication across multiple stores regions and states we'll be provinces i'm in canada so um we are a multiple uh retailer fully federally legal in canada uh and despite the the legalization um across the country there is still a definitely a stigma issue i think curry you mentioned that i think that was a great point uh the issue of stigma can't be under underestimated when you're dealing in the cannabis space and so making it a comfortable place for patrons because most of our employees that work with us are team members we call them cannabis consultants they love the plant and they're super comfortable with the plant and most of them use the plant some of them are close to the plant in other ways and so there they have to learn how to create that comfortable environment for somebody that's new to to enjoy cannabis and so what i love about tools like progress retail and working with terry and ray is certainly the ability to as ray said optimize bring people together on the journey and have them understand the different levels of where people are at and allow that to be consistent across the chain because that's the other issue we have across retail is that as technology and tools have exploded most executives have um a little bit far from the experience of the associate and for the associate they've got like what five six seven tools and you know that's easy easy to manage well maybe not if you only work two five hour shifts a week that's challenging to remember all that stuff and go to school and or be a mom or be a dad or whatever it might be and so what i love about trying to find ways to optimize onboarding to optimize experience is it really becomes about what the where the journey starts and the journey starts between uh your customer uh that's external and your customer that's internal which is you know your your team member so it's it's uh definitely very helpful to help bring those things together and how do you you know

Tip 2: Use Technology to Execute Consistently at Scale

manage the execution of changes in policy at a company-wide level level uh i think the same mechanism see this allows you really to to make things simple there are other tools that are in the the ecosystem that are also helpful but you know there's an expectation for immediate information digestion and you got to be really careful about that because that expectation leads to confusion uh over over information i mean that's a big problem in our world today is like just too much information you know people that sit in executive seats really need to think about you know turning a ship as it gets bigger uh takes takes a lot more effort and he has to be a lot more more thoughtful and as you're scaling your business and maybe kurt this resonates for you when you when you have just a few stores and you're starting man you can turn things on turn things off change policies it's relatively simple uh but then you get to to scale and maybe one day we're always we've got a retailer sitting at a thousand stores let's sports group was certainly at around a thousand store mark across several countries that's a lot that's a lot different and so all of these tools help you on that journey of change that you go through incurred you know anything you'd like to add on onto that as far as the journey and you know streamlining internal internal communications across you know all of your stores yeah absolutely i think you know i would definitely echo uh eleanor's points and i think for us and my success especially myself personally you got to keep it simple too right there's there's like so much stuff that you could easily just get in front of your store teams your butt tenders or luminaries as we like to refer them to here at loom um and they can just add a lot to their plate and also create a lot of confusion and you know and i think sometimes even like um you know mix up like certain priorities that you want to try to accomplish you know let it be at the retail space or like the individual level as well from that story so i think it's extremely important like how do you simplify the message it also still has that has the biggest impact for your team members as well now in terms of like learning and development in the journey you know it is just that it's a journey you know and we always like to say like you know it's it's it's something that's also not done alone it's not a matter of like we have teams or butt tenders whatever you call just sitting there we give them like a bunch of manuals here you go read through it and it's like a silver bullet and all of a sudden like magic you can you can do it at the best of your ability right so we like to emphasis like the partnership at the leadership level within our locations along with the with the employees and how does that partnership and that relationship really work uh uh in synergy with each other to help the development and strive and get the best for our teams and obviously how that translates to our guest experience as well that's been that's fantastic fantastic uh and as far as communications ray like how do you how do you communicate changes from hq to to each in store yeah well you know i i hung my retail ops hat a handful of years ago but um i'm never saying never um i'd love to get back at it someday um so i can sort of give you some context as to how our retail partners do it um and i i love what both um eleanor and kurt just shared you know i love what eleanor shared around that empathy for that internal customer that employee that cannabis consultant or luminary in the context of today's talk and then also kurt around you know streamlining it keeping it simple and effective so for us you know when we're talking to retailers we say you know ask yourself before you send a store email right because there's always anyone in retail knows you know monday or tuesday those are big store email days before you do that ask yourself three questions one is it a task meaning is this does this have contextual information a due date uh requirements relevant recipients like the store manager follow-up do they need to like send photos or something then don't email that create a task and obviously our platform enables that uh you know is this an update so like a notice or some good news or praise group communication if you will but we have an integrated communications tool to funnel that type of communication but then last and definitely not least you know is this a learning initiative so do we need to lead teams through a concept or process a way of working we can then quiz or assess you know whether they've absorbed what they need to know what they need to do so especially when we talk about like regulatory stuff and compliance right that's really really important so let's make a quick course and so you know what we've found is when retailers get in that habit um and structures sort of these cadences of communications the results are astonishing goes back to you know optimized teams optimized results wonderful and eleanor in your opinion like what is the most important thing about communications when it comes to managing a retail chain gosh i just like really love the way rey puts it i think that's you know we had you know kismet when we first met because that's exactly how i would i would say that is the best practice you know and i don't know that in retail that is always the way we do things and so it's great to have a partner that reminds you to you know compartmentalize and and to categorize what you're trying to accomplish and the stream that would best accomplish that because then it helps people think about what their outcome is and then they deploy it in that manner so if it's a learning initiative you know it's it you have to go slow and you have to make sure people understand it but you also don't over complicate it and give too much information um so i i don't i can't really follow that answer with with ray's answer with anything more because i think he hit the nail on the head definitely categorize and be clear and consistent in your communication we have we have a question from the audience here what is the average annualized cost of training for retail businesses what percentage of the total cost should be technology tools that is a very uh good question i'm um i don't know if i should tackle that one as though any anyone i'm teasing you know it's funny we we once i don't have the data anymore we about three years ago i think we sort of started to look at this we started to take our retail partners at the time their annualized revenue and we you know obviously looked at their investment um and came up with a very very it was a fraction of one percent like in terms of investment now the question becomes though what are you getting right and i think that this is you know um something that we uh particularly prior to meeting with the retailer we struggle to articulate is the value that we provide it's not just a tool you also are getting access to this renowned library of education and so you know you take you take l d right as a department um and i i know you're like it's great we have kurt here who's really you know spearheading that for loom um alongside you know dan and a lot of the other folks there you know l d there's a great infographic where there's actually 22 roles that sit with an lnd so what retailer can afford 22 salaries not many and of course there's some jack of all trades you know like occurred out there and and that but um even still you know like where do you need to partner and where can you focus on your you know your core competency as a retailer or a cannabis retailer um to be able to drive the most amount of value so um it's a it's a difficult question to answer there are a lot of variables um but of course you know we've got two partners on the call that their insights would be uh more insightful than mine yeah i'll i'll share this um you know for someone that's been with loom now for a little over a year and if you think about it if you're like a retail organization just getting started you know the one bit of advice what i would say is you know take advantage put yourself out there and see what's out there to use right you know then and you know there's something to be said like the face to face value for like a small startup and an entrepreneur that has like their singles uh store operation where you know they're side by side with their team and having that interaction that relationship but then as you scale and grow you definitely need to look at some resources or organizations that can be great partners to help you you know broaden your influence and your impact when it comes to tnd um in terms of like monetary value gosh it's a hard question to answer kind of what ray was speaking to but i think the one thing you have to be thoughtful about is like you know what makes sense for you and your brand you know as it relates to what you're trying to accomplish you know and uh you know and you know and i'd say like listen to those closest to the action as well like how do you solicit feedback from your teams and your leaders around you know what they need and what their wants and desires and many in many cases it can kind of steer you on the correct path of the the desired path that the organization would want to go and curry you brought up a good point there as far as feedback uh you know how you know how does progress retail take feedback uh you know from employees from management and then put that into you know implement that in it within the system and and you know improve on on their operations yeah yeah absolutely i think at face value with what we're trying to accomplish um you know it gives the immediate feedback in terms of like uh scale learning opportunities at the store level and of course at the district level in terms of like accomplishment and uh you know being able to uh to i know i guess gather the data so to speak and see how teams are are able to absorb the data and learning right you know you've got different ways you can kind of like measure that from that standpoint i think on the on the other side of it too we use progress retail and the uh the content that's provided they'll also ask some great questions when i'm in stores you know asking about their learning journey and you know just like some opportunities or some successes they're seeing at the store level you know what can we do maybe a little bit differently as well when it comes to you know enhancing their their um their environment and their abilities to create a great experience for guests you know and how progress retail uh you know ray and i have these conversations at times i'll just shoot like a random email because a random thought would be like yeah we thought about this before i've heard this from a couple of our team and you know we'll banter back and forth and in many instances it can lead to like some some really good aha moments like hey maybe there's something to this or maybe if we think about it a different way we can still get the same bang for a buck and add value and and really provide what our teams are looking for that's phenomenal and you know kudos to ray and the team for building such a valuable resource of you know this library of education of retail tools and you know uh curtin eleanor for for implementing these and and putting them into action with uh you know five ten twenty locations it's uh it's quite impressive uh as far as the essence oh good guys throw something in there of course i'm a promoter of like you know progress retail and their brand and what they do and i'll just say they're just getting started you know with what they have available already and like some things in the pipeline and i think about like you know what's on the horizon for loom and what we want to try to accomplish and so my ideally some things that probably resonate with others in the cannabis industry um it's pretty fantastic and it's not it's obviously about cannabis but i think at the end of the day when we think about it it's more so about people right it's about our teams and also our customers and our guests you know as well at the end of the day agreed great job over there ray oh well thanks but i can't stress this enough you know we're um we're retailers like you know we're not technologists um uh we're retailers at heart and you know it takes we're you know we are in our early innings but we would be nowhere if it wasn't for you know i will use the term not lightly visionary operators like eleanor and the uh the kiaro team and kurt and the loom team that want to go about cannabis employee experience in a in a new way right um you know there's a lot of old tools out there there's a lot of old ways of doing things and they both and their teams get that you know it is 2022 and there is probably a new way to do things as opposed to how retail was ran in 2005 you know and and so i i i can't i can't i can take very little credit because without them you know um we would not be able to continue to invest and grow this product so i'm very appreciative so you mentioned you know how retail was done in the past uh how it's done currently um crystal ball like what do you see 2050 how's retail gonna be uh how's that experience going to be different well yeah i mean 2050 i mean gosh i think you know the trend right with retail is it's it's splitting in two uh the term that's been thrown around is bifurcating right so you've got you know your high touch experience your low touch experience i don't know kurt and eleanor could speak much more eloquently about probably you know what the cannabis side of that like obviously i think there's going to be you know probably uh drones delivering you know your pre-rolls and edibles okay probably by 2050 but who knows you know there's the old saying you know we wanted flying cars and um instead we got uh you know what i forget how that quote goes um so yeah i think that look i think there is always going to be a degree of retail um that is going to be high touch and require incredibly talented and skilled individuals um in those stores they're gonna have to be highly empowered and enabled and that's obviously um what we are progress retail betting our futures on that that's gonna be the case so um yeah that would probably be my answer i love the question i think it's a great question i get asked the question a lot i'm sure kurt does as well as ray uh and no one has a crystal ball so i'll i'll i'll say something bold which which may or may not be true it's just certainly my perspective my experience from key retail for so long i think you're going to see a lot of big retailers very disrupted because retail is now uh the center of the experience is if you're going to do brick and mortar certainly there's still still a place for brick and mortar i mean i find it funny when people are like oh brick and mortar is going to go in it's never going to go away it's always going to be there but it's man you're going to get disrupted because you can't you got a lot if you agree for a big company and the center of the experience is community and we have all of these tools now that allow us to connect with our communities in different and more meaningful ways really what do you have to pay attention to you have to pay attention to the experience of those that deliver the experience and i think that when you are running in a world that was maybe less complicated where there was less to disrupt your business it was very hard to get your space i don't know that's the case anymore i think it's really easy to be disruptive in the space with all of these tools there you go that's one of them and so man you better really be thinking about how do you connect in communities and make meaningful moments yeah i um yeah i agree with eleanor wholeheartedly and i think you know in terms of like how do you predict the future like

Tip 3: Future-Proof Your Dispensary for What's Next

what's on the horizon or around that corner you know the the longer you try it the further out you try to look out it's almost like you know looking down the road at night it's you know the vision becomes a little bit more blurred right just so just because so much can change you know if i look a little bit more shorter term i will say a couple things that come to my mind i think you know the our culture and our um the the i guess the consumer in itself kind of can set the standard to a certain extent also as well you know as things evolve you know you're holding up your your your smartphone there we know what that did to us as uh us as a world you know and when you kind of like tie those things and start connecting the dots it can go in a lot of different directions you know i think for me you know when you think about at the heart of like retail and cannabis retail um you know these centers or these um dispensaries are really at the forefront of really how everyone within the communities can kind of come together experience this product firsthand and first out you know and you know there's something to be said by like depending on the type of industry you're in like digital market digital uh retailers might have more in a distinct advantage but when it comes back to people you know we're all social creatures and like we like to come together you know and especially around cannabis as well so i think as we look towards the future um i don't think i don't necessarily think that's going to be going away uh really at all uh if you know in the short-term menu or if ever you know i think the thing we want to think about is especially for like states of michigan that i'm in you know we're still in its infancy so things are going to continually rapidly change and i think we need to um as much as possible stay ahead you know be innovative be relentless have that grit you know and sometimes you know when we think of like you know we don't know if this is going to work and trying something new try it you know the worst case thing that can happen is maybe maybe it doesn't work in the moment but it can also be like a learning opportunity to uh lead to some discoveries that you never thought you could have before as well yeah it's really set yourself you know apart from the competition right being that an innovator innovator and you know you know better than uh anyone right working at apple it's uh it's a company known uh for its innovation and and really set the tone and you know really dominating the global market so you know transitioning a little bit to i'm curious ray kurt do you think we're going to be shopping in the metaverse in the next uh [Music] oh gosh um i'll say this um i think uh with like companies like facebook and the work that we're doing around there i think it's it's a great start i think uh the tricky thing for that kind of like technology is it can catapult very quickly or it can have like a very long road um when it comes to cannabis in our industry there's probably certain things that you'll be able to experience that folks will probably want to especially when it's new shine shiny and bright right um but you know when you think about i don't know what i personally think about like cannabis and like you know what really attracts or gets uh folks excited about it it's the intimacy of it as well and you know um someday maybe we'll be able to fill that gap in the metaverse or with these certain technologies um to be able to overcome that but you know in this day and age you know there's you know we see someone coming in and you know and taking that flower and smelling it and a smile getting on their face and like sharing personal stories around you know how how it helps and enhance their life or even um their go-to socially to to connect with their friends you know it's hard to beat it's hard to beat and then and if we get out get over that hill you know um it's going to be an exciting thing i don't know if it's going to be anytime soon like i dabble a little bit in like the vr stuff like just you know on occasion and uh you know i'm a little bit of a snob when it comes to that just because i i just like ah this is kind of too blocky it reminds me like nintendo like the nintendo version of tech you know even though it's at its beginning uh versus something like that but i would i would probably personally gather more towards augmented reality first before virtual reality you know if anything where they can kind of like come together with potentially within our retail spaces uh future state yeah that's really well said i think we're chiaro here in canada with 17 locations ecommerce omni channel reserve online pickup and store delivery that's last night we're we're big on integrating tech and improving the experience in terms of how you get the experience you want but i'm i'm super curious about how others like kurt and rey see you know the the real forward thinking changes that are coming because you know the landscape has already changed so rapidly that's great um feedback thank you for sharing that um i think it's a great question i also you know it's interesting to see how you know technologies are always used before they're fully understood and you know you look at the example of walmart that put out that video um a month or two ago of shopping at walmart in the metaverse and that's like a very linear way of thinking around this and you know i don't think that that's probably going to be a very large use case for the metaverse but when i think about retail and luxury retail and even cannabis i mean i think we all saw the mike tyson uh ear edibles that came out the other day and i think about that and i say all right well is there some metaverse uh application like something similar potentially to an nft where you have a mike tyson autographed um evander holyfield ear gummy right like is that then a way a store of value um you know maybe i mean i'm i'm 32 so like i was i'm a little i'm just past like the the generations really gaming a lot and collecting all these things in these digital worlds it wasn't really what i grew up with um i'm not knocking it because i just don't personally fully understand it but um i i definitely think there's a large segment of folks that are largely operating in these spaces and um i think that true human connection and experience though in person is going to um i think especially with what people have gone through the last two years with covid i think going to really uh explode um over these next few years so how that impacts the metaverse i'm not sure but it's definitely something i think is really really um fascinating to see the the the excitement around and i'm i am here at south by southwest and i and i did attend a a panel with um faith popcorn on 2015 five predictions for 2050 and you know she was sharing that uh you know when it comes to the maida verse and what you express curry as far as the limitations um as far as smelling tasting uh that you know in the in the near future you will be able to taste smell and feel from the mataverse so so when that changes then you know what how is that going to impact our experience uh in the in these different applications and you know just another example that was given is you know we we can go back in the midverse and go back to prohibition times and see see how it was to live in the 1920s and go through history and experience that you know in person in first person immersed in in that whole experience as opposed to just reading about it in the book um so that those type of uh those type of kind of immersive um i don't even know what you call them but just just different media like those experiences yeah this experiences um will make an impact on us and be able to see go to a farm you know go go to uh to one of your producer processors farm go to kiara go to your allow someone in a retail store to go to the actual farm and and grab a plant and get a tour of you know the uh the hq or anything that you liked so it's just really connecting that experience in store too as you said you know omni channel across all platforms i think kurt you know as far as sops you know like what's the process of creating you know how sops how do you manage how do you implement these across the company oh yeah gosh it's a great question um it definitely looks a little bit different now than i'd say even a year ago when we're only at 13 retail locations um to a certain extent um i i feel what you kind of have to do especially starting out is not

Tip 4: Build Cross-Functional Teams to Standardize Operations

create what you know what's referred to as these like little hot teams right you know especially if you're an up and coming uh retailer and uh you know you wanna you wanna standardize some best practices to create alignment operationally across your uh across your locations you know so we we've tapped like like folks from like that work directly in the retail in terms of leadership you know and sometimes we'll have these cross-functional teams and have someone on like our ops excellence team kind of partner with that from that standpoint to come together because the one thing that we've uncovered um you know since i've been in this industry and at loom and actually others is you know we we need to hear the voice of those closest to the action and you know and value their opinions and ideas you know uh far be it for me as like the tnd um like leader for loom is just sit behind the desk and like have these grandiose ideas and just like all right here's what we're going to implement send right so i think that's going to be extremely critical um from creating like standard operating procedure procedures and how you get things done but i think also so so there's that piece of those teams and i think the other piece too is you got to really think about you know at times you can have competing priorities as an organization as well which i'm sure you know eleanor especially is probably familiar with like what's what's most most important how you prioritize that and really having those teams come together from a sop standpoint really had drive those conversations you know and and accomplish what needs to be accomplished that's going to have the biggest impact across uh like most entities you know and kind of go from there so i'd say think big you had a funnel down though and you know and have laser focus but also bring the right people along with you as well versus maybe sometimes the one the one or two folks that you wouldn't want only to make the only decisions wonderful we have a question from the audience here what are some of the best training libraries we can subscribe to do these touch into the cannabis train or soft skill for me i'll say well progress retail first and foremost in terms of some of the cannabis care and actually you know the great thing that i love about that platform also is it's the cannabis education and there's some other things coming but then also you know there's there's uh training in there for um bud tenders around some of those you know the people say soft skills i refer to them as hard skills because sometimes interacting with people can be challenging you know because everyone's different so they've done a really nice job of teeing up but like you know focusing on some specific skills when it comes to connecting with people and really how to create a great experience and i think also there's the uh the third piece too with like leadership development also is extremely important you know you know our team members at our store locations heavily reply on great leadership to guide and support you know along the way so progress retail of course i'm a little bit biased as well um you know for our organization there's been um and forgive me if i butchered this uh the gangier um gunji air program that's been floating around a lot you know we've got a couple of our managers in our organization have gone through it it's almost like the sommelier kind of a certification course i've heard uh nothing but good things as of yet anyway about that but then also if you're wanting to like also develop other skills outside ]

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