Zero to a hundred employees in twelve months

Born ready.

Coolist, thank you. It's great to great to be with you today. I really appreciate the invitation and I'm so excited to talk about all things consulting and making it rain.

That's right. Sure. So I'll start with my introduction. My name is Lucas McCann. I'm the CSO of CAN Delta. We're a regulatory and scientific cannabis consulting company. So what that means is we help people, we've traditionally helped people who are looking to break into the cannabis industry for legal, medical, or adult use production, manufacturing, analytical testing, or retail and medical sales across Canada, the US, and internationally. We've worked in markets like Germany, Canada, the US, Australia, and many of those legal markets in between. I've been doing this for about eight years now and it's it's a full time job. I have 25 staff. and recently within Candelta, we've launched a digital marketing company inside of Cand Delta. So there's now a startup being built inside of a startup. So it's it's a lot of a lot of learning. A lot of you know, a lot of mistakes, but a lot of learning from those mistakes and learning how to do better. So to go back and answer your question now, I went to school for a really long time. I did my PhD in organic chemistry. I loved learning about science, but didn't necessarily want to work in a lab. really enjoyed how in in science, in especially in chemistry, you can take something that we find in nature and using commercially available material. You can reproduce these very complex molecules using synthetic organic chemistry in a laboratory, creating the exact same molecule, which all have the exact same effects as the original naturally occurring version. This was I thought was very thought-provoking. it was very exciting. And that led me to my role at Health Canada after I graduated my PhD from York University. I went to Health Canada and stayed there, elucidating, which means determining. the structure of molecules that they would find in substances that were from illegal drug labs. So they would break down illegal drug labs and they would send all the products to the chemist as part of a like a an investigation to be able to press charges against people who are making very, very bad compounds illegally and dangerously in their garage lab or their basement chemistry kitchen. that was I was there for a little while. it was great. It was really exciting. But one of the things about working in government, and I think this is true in any country where you work, the harder you work doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to get any kind of advancement or better pay. So you're not really incentivized to do well. And so in that role, I would say it was not necessarily incentivized beyond the learning and achieving personal goals. following that, I was there for six months, and it was very difficult to get full-time work in the government. So I found something that was working as a a consultant scientist, sales engineer for a digital textbook company helping sell chemistry textbooks. I traveled across the US and saw all the campuses, all the chemistry departments across all the major schools in the US and really enjoyed traveling and particularly traveling across the US, meeting new people. And really enjoyed business development and sales as a result of that. This is around the time that Canada was legalizing adult use cannabis production and sales. And because of my time at Health Canada, I met up with somebody else who was also from the specifically the medical cannabis program in Health Canada. We had both left the government and we were getting a lot of questions from people about how to submit an application and how to start this business. This was a time where this is extremely new, right? So this is in 2018. You know, we're the first G8 country in the world who was legalizing adult use cannabis. We thought this could be a really excellent opportunity. we found our first client, they knew about our history. We wrote down a big number on a piece of paper and said this is how much it's going to cost. And they looked at that number, they signed the document and they handed it back to us. So we thought, great, this is gonna be something that could potentially work here. So for for For that proof of concept, we built on that. We went and found an office space. I quit my other job. And we were in a small office for about two months, and then we were in a little bigger office for another couple of months, and then a bigger office, and then a bigger office, and then it grew until finally within about a year and a half, you know, we had a a much larger office and over 10 employees. So it was from zero to a hundred in less than a year, right place. Right time, right expertise. So my my business partner handles a lot of the application work and the details in writing and preparing those applications. at least she did until we had more staff that handles that. And I would handle a lot of the business development. So creating the relationships, doing a lot of the public speaking, going to the trade shows, and helping to develop the business for the company and bringing in and and and talking about the the numbers that we would charge for for the work. So we've grown to 25 employees. We've got two offices now. We've got a tr head office in Toronto, and we have another satellite office in New York City, right on Wall Street, which has been great because we've been able to follow the legalization brush fire as it goes into different jurisdictions. So New York and New Jersey legalized around 2021. Minnesota legalized a couple of years ago. And right now we're running a huge campaign for Virginia and the states, which is legalizing, which has legalized, but has developed their marketplace, which will be launching soon in twenty twenty seven. So that is what our foreseeable future looks like. All the while we're developing our digital marketing service and and business for our existing clients. And we're also looking to take on other clients as well who are not necessarily in the cannabis space. So that long winded is how I got to where I am today.

Once we would help set up a lot of our clients with the license, we would help them to build out their operations, develop their their facility. We would put together a floor plan, a security design, but eventually they would start operating. And as far as the value we could provide as a consultant, it effectively ended there until such time that maybe they wanted to find an investor or find someone to buy the business from them completely. So we started doing MA transactions where we would help people to sell the business at we helped construct. that was great, but there was this piece in the middle where we weren't providing any value to our clients. We really wanted to make sure that we are involved because it takes so much work and effort to find a client. So our customer acquisition cost is very high and our lifetime value of our clients was very high, but we determined that we could make this higher if we kept them engaged with a compliant marketing service.

One of the reasons that there's a gap in this industry for marketing specifically is because the marketing in cannabis is extremely difficult. You cannot use paid ads, you cannot have any kind of promotion about your menu, on Google Ads, Meta ads, even on an Instagram story. Doing so will have your accounts very quickly suspended and potentially indefinitely shut down. So there is an art And a science there on how to run a compliant cannabis marketing campaign. This is something that a lot of folks struggle with. So, yes, there are a million other marketing companies in the world, a million other people are creating a social media strategy, are posting stories for other businesses, but there are very few who can do this well in the cannabis industry because of the intense amount of restrictions. Now, some of the restrictions include making sure that if you're advertising anything, that you're doing so in a way that you're not advertising to young people. So here where I'm at today in Toronto, the legal age to purchase cannabis is 19 years old. Right? So if you are under 19, you should not be able to see cannabis advertised. You shouldn't be able to walk into a retail dispensary. In fact, you can't, even if you're accompanied with an adult. So the avenues in which you can get your name out there, TV commercials, radio spots, billboards, in-home, out-of-home advertising is extremely limited for these businesses. And the only way to do this is to focus on the business owners who are behind the brand. And that's what we do. We do the storytelling of the people who started the companies and the brands. We put that out there because that is the one thing that you can't censor. You can censor maybe this cannabis product that I have in my hand and say, okay, you know, that's you're not allowed to show that. But the person holding the mug, right? That's the story you can tell about. So that's what we put our focus on. And we do that through storytelling, through content creation, video, other kind of visual media, a lot of article writing, informationally based article writing, not sale-based article writing, and developing an interest and becoming a subject matter expertise or helping our clients to become subject matter experts in their domain, which is in the cannabis plan. And again, you have to be careful because you cannot. Associate cannabis with medical claims. So it has to be very factual. So you cannot say this product will help you sleep. This CBD product will take away your pain or inflammation. Completely not allowed. So in lack of that, you have to get creative and find other ways to get people interested so that when they're writing something into Chat GPT or looking for you on Google Maps, that you're coming up because you're answering some other question that they might be looking for a solution to.

Sure. one of the things that we've had to develop for ourselves is because we are a consultant that helps people to create a startup, we have to be the first point of contact. So a lot of the contact that we put out there has to do with everything you need to know to start your business in cannabis. We do this through running webinars, YouTube videos, we go to trade shows, and at trade shows I will speak and I'll have this as a title often. About everything you would need to know. So that the at the inception point where people are thinking about starting a business in a particular market, they find us. And when they find us, we provide a lot of value. Right? You can never provide too much value as a consultant, right? Especially when you're you're providing, you know, you're charging very high fees. Right. And then people, if they see this value and they recognize that they've only got so much time on their hands, you know, and they have. money that they would like to exchange for my experience, that's when they're they're they they become aware of us is at the point of inception when they're thinking about even writing a business plan. That's it. And now we're not a fit for everyone. We're we're a very, very expensive service, but if you don't hire a company like ours, then you pay a different way and you pay for the time that it takes to become experienced. And that can often lead to mistakes that you make the first time you're doing something. Or it can Also lead into missing a deadline, missing an application window, and missing your opportunity altogether to be able to do this. As when you are starting a business, you write an application in cannabis. And if you miss a particular application window, that window can close and that opportunity can be gone forever. So for us, being the inception point is super important. And how do people research now? How do people research topics? I mean, it used to be Google, but now it's AI. People are asking their their their bot that they've trained on their on their preferences and on themselves. What is the go-to resource? What are the things that I should be thinking of? Based on everything you know about me, what would be the best answer? So we're making sure that the answers that we're putting out there in terms of the content we drive are solutioned through AI. And that we're the response and the authority when people ask questions about our domain. And again, it's just a large amount of content creation. So if you look at our website, candelta.com, it's probably over 2,000 pages of every state, every country, every license type within that has its own page. You know, in a lot of general, like how do you start a business? How much does it cost? How do you write a business plan in cannabis? How do I buy an existing business? All that information, you know, we're constantly putting out there so that we become that authority source.

Our ICP, I would say, are usually small business owners who are doing something for the first time. You know, they're they're starting a business for the first time and they don't know what they don't know. And they recognize that there are people out there who might have solutions that they don't have and they're willing to pay for them. So Typically, I mean, regardless of the business you're starting, all the challenges you see when you're starting a business are extremely similar. You know, once we get past like the licensing and the and the compliance and the regulatory, really this is what am I doing? What am I providing to people, whether it's a service or or a product or some kind of value to them? You know, how how do I how do I assess how that value that I'm providing to them solves? a problem they might have or response to a pain point. And you know, from there you you really just need to create the relationship to be able to determine what those pain points are and yes, effectively just have the conversation. Now I I find that in terms of business development now and I think one of the biggest mistakes that a lot of digital marketing companies are doing is they're running in mail campaigns. They're running cold email. Now I can't think of a person that loves in mail. I can't think of a person that loves a cold email. I can't. that's not how people like to buy. How people like to buy is they like the old-fashioned way of human connection. And they love conversations that are started what seems to be organically, even though from our side it's very intentional. When we cold call a business, you know, we research them, we compliment them on everything they've done well. And we ask if they would be open to learning about how they could take five things that we have today and improve their business. And there it is, the free value point. So if you're giving people value for no charge, they'll listen. If you give people something that they can take away from the conversation, if they get nothing else, they at least get those five things they could start doing today. And then if those things do work for them in the way that you promise, they might look a little more and say, well, what's a sixth thing I could do? So for us, this is all about relationships. So we like to walk into people's business, look them in the eye, shake their hand, ask them five things about themselves that maybe they don't get to talk about all the time and get them talking, and that builds rapport and trust. I still use business cards, I still call over email every chance I get. And these things lead to relationship building. And relationship building is what drives business. So All that to say is that the new practices of volume and and mass distribution of your messaging falls on deaf ears. It's less effective. And if people actually just took the time to develop meaningful relationships, they would have less conversations, but they would have higher customer, I think, conversion from lead to close. And I'm a firm believer in in in that philosophy. And I think the relationships you build are deeper. and more meaningful and more meaningful as it pertains to the dollar value.

Yeah, great question. so you know, going back to your point about creating value and delivering value for people, I mean, we plan to continue that. I think that if you are a consultant and the only value you can bring that you can count on one hand and it's five points, and people get that value, you know, you don't have a skill, you just have a secret. So If you can't go beyond those five, 10 points, you need probably like a hundred great points to be able to really be a consultant. And then after that, it's just staying ahead of where your customers are, you know, anticipating their next problem and their next need because you've seen this before. that's really it. So what's next for us? What's next for us will be continuing to build out our our our sales team. we found that Yeah, we're we're trying all new techniques. I think we've tried a little bit of everything all the time. So we're looking to continue to build out our sales team, build out our digital marketing offering and really going deep into the digital marketing piece and finding ways that we can easily convert our existing clients into digital marketing clients and keep them forever is really the goal. So a lot of it is just continuing to to do what we've been doing. finding the right people, you know, finding the right people and learning how to. recruit the best possible people that can that can that can work for us and provide the most value to our clients and and also to the company then and that's it sounds easy but it's it's a challenge that you struggle with. I think people as a resource, people as as contributors in the company, finding those people and understanding, you know, when you go from a couple of conversations, you know, a couple of interviews to being able to recognize who are the right people and who aren't. That certainly, you know, requires a good amount of skill. Not to say that I have that skill in entirely, but you know, when you're hiring for new staff, you're taking a huge risk. You are investing probably tens of thousands of dollars of time into people. And you want to make sure that they're happy, that they stay, and they bring you a great amount of value because they feel like they're getting something more than money working for you. So I think continuing to hone in on that. And you know, just as I provide business advice to others, I also receive business advice. You know, I like to be a part of other groups and receive coaching much the same way that I provide coaching. So r staying humble, I think, is important and understand that you never have all the answers. And that it's important to talk to other like-minded people who have been through similar things. And there's probably someone who's been through it all. Or someone who's been through everything, not all one person, but there's collectively people there who have probably encountered every issue that you've had as an entrepreneur. So I think that would be one piece of advice I would have for anyone is connect with other like minded people, talk about your issues, and consider the solutions that they discuss.

Sure. I mean, I would say give me a call. We've got a number on our website and I love having conversations with people. It gets the conversations out of an inbox. But if you do want to start off by filling out a form on our website, you can certainly do that. So Candelta is at candelta.com or you can ask your Claude or Chat GPT anything about starting a business in the cannabis space and it'll point you right to us.

Yeah, thanks for thanks for asking me some great questions.