The following interview is a conversation we had with Kevin Hart, Founder and CEO of Green Check Verified, on our podcast Category Visionaries. You can view the full episode here: $16 Million Raised to Power the Future of the Cannabis Business
Kevin Hart
Pleasure. Looking forward to this.
Brett
I am as well, and I’d love to kick off just a quick summary of who you are and a bit more about your background.
Kevin Hart
So I’m a technique going way back. Started as an assembler programmer, CoBOl programmer in the late seventies, and held a variety of positions, industry wide, sea level, for the past four decades, taking a couple of companies public, exited a few publicly traded companies, worked for VC’s private equity folks for ten years in their portfolio companies that suffer from Founderitis. It’s a real disease, and we can get into that if we want. Brett, I’ve had cases of it myself a few times, and then was approached to build a point of sale system for the cannabis industry based upon my background. Global supply chain, consumer packaged good products, complex data solutions. And the more I learned about the cannabis industry, the more I became fascinated with solving the problem of access to financial and business services in a connected environment. And voila.
Kevin Hart
Here we are at Green Check Verified.
Brett
Tell us about Founderitis.
Kevin Hart
So you can have a great idea, but a lousy team. You can have an amazing team and a lousy idea. You can end up with some bad investors, and then you get also not only have Founderitis, but you get plugged with what I call portfolio cram. Hey, seem to be doing a good job. Can you take over this company, or this company, too? And you get misdirected.
Kevin Hart
So, you know, through all the years and the work that I’ve done, certainly here at Green Check Verified, it was an opportunity to define who we wanted to work with, how we wanted to approach the market, what our goals were, and what the total addressable market was going to be that were going to serve, and how were going to go about doing that, and learn from all those past experiences, not only with the companies that I was in, but all the companies that I actually worked with and partnered with over the years. I’ve been very fortunate in having run the companies I’ve done and worked with the companies I’ve been in. We’re talking about Fortune one on down on a global basis. And you learn a lot more about people by watching them than you can sometimes by talking to them.
Kevin Hart
So being exposed to so many different, unique operating environments, especially in the realm of supply chain profitability, market concentration, new product launches, et cetera, that exposure, it was the best education I ever could have gotten over all that time. And to be able to apply those lessons to a new and unique situation, such as what we have here, it really has been exceptional.
Brett
You mentioned there you’ve taken several companies public. Can you take us behind the scenes? What it’s like on IPO day and what it’s like to ring the bell. I know that’s something that all founders really aspire to achieve at some point in their career.
Kevin Hart
It’s nerve wracking. It’s because, you know, overnight successes take a long time to get there. It’s an event, and it’s a moment. And I didn’t personally get the ring the bell. I was part of the team, but to see that happen and see all the hard work and drive to it. But I think for me personally, the best part of any of those, whether it was the ipos themselves or the selling of companies to publicly traded companies, it was the discipline required to be able to achieve that and all the things that led up to that event. And foundationally, how you build your company, how you operate, what your intended exit might be, IPO exit or otherwise, how do you actually instill that discipline across the entire team and into the market that you serve?
Kevin Hart
So, again, that was the big event, but it’s almost anticlimactic. Also, when you’re part of that team, you also get stuffed into the lockup period. So you’re not only walking your way up to that exciting moment, but then you realize you got this whole period of time where, okay, I’m kind of stuck. So while it’s fun and exciting, I don’t know that I recommend it for.
Brett
Everybody when it comes to founders who inspire you, who’d you say is the top Founder?
Kevin Hart
So, not to not answer the question, but personally, I think founders get too much credit, and I’ll throw my hat in that ring, too, with too much credit. I think our job and our role as founders are come up with a new idea or a better idea, or completely innovative idea. Create the structure and the framework that others can be involved with it. Put those guardrails up to keep you out of the ditch, or as we say internally, don’t do stupid insert word here stuff and then get the hell out of the way. So after over 40 years, I’ve been exceptionally lucky to be involved with so many founders and a lot of companies that flat out failed. And candidly, I’ll let those names go because those are some of the people I learned the best lessons from.
Kevin Hart
Not because they failed, but because of what they did and how they did it. So I’ve always been much more admirable coos and chief operating officers and chief strategy offers who can take the nuances and the crazy thoughts that reside in founders heads sometimes about seeing the future and how things might be able to come together and actually pull those together. Im going to go back to my technology days and the software companies that ive been involved with and those are the folks that I really admire most and a great many are still involved in the industry today.
Brett
I love it. Love that answer. What about books? The way we like to frame this, we got this from an author named Ryan Holiday. He calls them quickbooks. So Quickbooks is a book that rocks into your core, really influenced how you think about the world and how you approach life. Do any quick books come to mind?
Kevin Hart
Yeah, there’s one I’ll always go back to Brett, and it’s called the Whiz Kids and it’s by John Byrne. And this was recommended to me by one of my best mentors ever in the world. And part of those, he wasn’t a Founder, but he was an exceptional operator. Dave Girard, who I work with at MSA, Dun and Bradshaw Software, went on to JD Edwards, et cetera. Just an amazing person. And the cool thing about that book was this was the first group of individuals and put all the politics and what their backgrounds were aside from how this cadre of ten individuals was formed. But it really, they came out of World War Two and they put together this group of ten individuals, super bright, high powered individuals.
Kevin Hart
And you were one of the first groups that actually took the concept of data and data analysis and data practicality and data usage and brought it forth into what was then modern industry. And they actually formed a pact, if you will, and it was like, you can’t hire one, you gotta hire all ten of us. And so they all went to Ford Motor Company and the impact that they had on that and the ability to look at data, right, and how to utilize data. And I am a data nerd. I have OCD tendencies about this stuff. Brett. I’m at stoplights. I’m trying to figure out how many cars are going to make it out of each lane into the light path based upon that.
Kevin Hart
And one of the cool things that they brought forth is not only understanding the limits of how you quantify certain drivers and certain things aren’t quantifiable, such as product quality or customer loyalty per se, but then when you quantify what those drivers are, how do you make sure you’re looking at the ones that are going to give you the best insights into the overall problem that you’re trying to solve? Right. Because any positive, forward moving technology is not only the opportunity, but it’s eliminating a problem. And then when you can quantify what those key drivers are, how do you know what are the most meaningful ones? Not all problems are equal. Not all opportunities are equal. So how do you create that focus? It’s a long read. This is not a weekend book. You got to get into it.
Kevin Hart
But I think it’s exceptionally helpful. And I know it’s had that quickbook impact that you talk about on me personally through my career. So it’s a book I’ve probably read 20 times. And now that you asked the question, I got to go find it and read it again. I love that.
Brett
And I’ll be adding that to my Amazon card here right after the interview because it’s a pretty strong endorsement if you’ve read it 20 times. So I’ll definitely read that. If it’s long and I get to the end of it, I’m not happy. I’m going to send you angry email, but sounds like it’s going to be a good read.
Kevin Hart
I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you a money back guarantee. If you don’t like it, if you could find it, one thing. But if you find it and you read it and you don’t like it, I’ll buy the book. You can keep it, but I’ll pay for it.
Brett
Sounds good. Sounds good. Let’s switch gears now. Let’s dive a bit deeper into the company. So take me back to 2017, the early days of founding the company. What were those early conversations like, and what was it about this space and this problem that made you say, yep, that’s it. I’m going to go spend the next 510 15 years of my life building in this industry.
Kevin Hart
Well, going back to what we talked about, what I mentioned earlier, I was approached to build a point of sale system for the cannabis industry. And that really was the reason why I was approached. That was born out of going back to 20 11, 20 12, 20 13, when I ran a company called Techserve in New York City. Shout out to the founders, David Lerner and Dick Deminis, for an exceptional company that they built, which was the largest apple reseller in the world at that point in time. And again, based upon my supply chain, knowledge, technology knowledge, we brought iPads to the airports, and it was a fascinating exercise.
Kevin Hart
And it’s very akin to, if you think about it from a dispensary perspective, especially back then, you have to go through security to get into the point of where you can buy something, and then your time’s limited, but all the products aren’t available. You can’t touch them, you can’t see them, you can’t feel them, unless you want to wander around or spend a lot of time at the counter once your turn came through. And so presenting products to people, it was interesting. Different modalities, different usage, et cetera. And we all know electronic cart systems, and I was involved in the whole dot bomb error, etcetera. All those things are super fascinating to the cannabis industry. But when I learned from harborside out in Oakland, California, the OG of cannabis is certainly in California and across the country, recognized as one of the early trailblazers.
Kevin Hart
The fact that they could not get a bank account was mind blowing to me. So I had to really dig in and scratch the surface. I’m like, what do you mean? Why not? It’s just such a foreign concept to me. But then once I understood the reasons why the financial services industry, specifically banks and credit unions, were reticent to do it, I was like, aha. Now we’re onto something. And that really tickled my data. Data nuance, my data bone within me, and it’s like, okay, so how do you take two highly regulated industries, and they’re independently highly regulated, and that have evolving, especially on the cannabis side, rules and regulations, either at a license level, at a city, county, state, and certainly a federal level. How do you enable the connections of data in dollars?
Kevin Hart
Dollars are critical, obviously, to financial services, so that financial institutions could develop a level of comfort to serve this industry. And so it became this gigantic data puzzle again. I was smiling from ear to ear and work with a lot of super bright, brilliant people that have made Green Check Verified the company. It is, this is not a Kevin Hart story. This is about our company. And when we analyze that and then having my background in discipline, in the fact that I’m not a banker. That served us very well, because we didn’t have to think like a bank. We had to think about, how do you solve a problem, and how do you use technology to do that?
Kevin Hart
And then we just kept redefining, coming back to the touchstones of what we knew that we’d have to do, from differentiation, relevance, and sustainability, the hallmarks of a good company, and how you’re going to be able to not only define a market, but scale and be relevant on a go forward basis and sustainable. That became the big data puzzle that we set out to solve, and I would say, quite successfully.
Brett
So did you have any hesitation on getting involved in the cannabis industry? I feel like it’s evolved a lot over the last couple of years, but thinking back to 2016, 2017, I think there was still a lot of stigma there around the space. Did you have any concerns there before you started the company?
Kevin Hart
Oh, absolutely. I’m not going to lie about any of that. And even through some of that formative times, I had some reservations about what were doing and why were doing it. But the more I learned, and I’ve had some true goosebump moments in my life, in and around how cannabis is positively affecting people. And one of them was listening to a doctor. He escapes my name now. He’s from Israel, and he’s recognized. He has since passed as one of the foremost researchers on cannabis and the positive effects it had. And so I can say I went to Harvard Medical School. I went there to watch the symposium, so I really didn’t go to Harvard Medical School, but I was on campus.
Kevin Hart
And when I listened to this gentleman talk, and he was given an example of how cannabis affected children and adolescents with autism, and the positive impact and highly qualified empirical case study, which, again, appeals to me. And then how somehow the plant mutated, even in that hyper controlled environment that they had in Israel, which is exceptional for research, but then how they figured it out and how they got it back on track, and so how they discovered that cannabis wasn’t having the effect that it had been having, and then what it did have once they researched it. I still get goosebumps when I think about that. And then, on a personal level, I’ve seen too many people.
Kevin Hart
This happens when you get to your mid sixties and older, too many people that end of life diseases and horrible, physical, protracted conditions such as Parkinson’s and ALS, et cetera. And I’ve seen how cannabis has helped them through that last part of their journey. And so that became very interesting. It wasn’t just about a commercial aspect. It’s about how do you help this become more normalized? That was a big part of it, so those reservations went away. I get choked up when I think about that. I apologize. No worries at all.
Brett
We like having real and authentic conversations here, so appreciate you being open and vulnerable there. This show is brought to you by Front Lines Media podcast production studio that helps B2B founders launch, manage, and grow their own podcast. Now, if you’re a Founder, you may be thinking, I don’t have time to host a podcast. I’ve got a company to build. Well, that’s exactly what we built our service to do. You show up and host, and we handle literally everything else. To set up a call to discuss launching your own podcast, visit frontlines.io podcast. Now back today’s episode. I want to ask a little bit about product evolution. So you said it started off as a point of sale system. Today I see it’s expanded dramatically. There’s a lot of different solutions that you provide.
Brett
Talk to us about how you prioritize what solutions to build and expand and have this full product suite.
Kevin Hart
Well, we actually never even went down the path of point of sale, just clarification. I was approached to build a point of sale system, but once I found out about the challenge of financial services, I never even launched that concept framework. I flushed that right away. As much of a tech geek as I am, I use these wonderful composition notebooks, and I filled one up on a red eyed flight home one weekend from Oakland, California, to start developing the concept. Now, the evolution of that, though, from that point in time of what we wanted to do to solve the problem was how the industry has changed, but yet how it has remained very consistent.
Kevin Hart
So a lot of these states have different rules, and they have cities and counties that can opt in the compliance rules engine, which is the heart of what Green Check Verified really does. Ingesting sales data, inventory data, and financial data. So financial institutions know that they’re working with a compliant business, that selling compliant product in a compliant way with compliant method of payments, et cetera. There’s this whole compliance rules engine that we have. The complexity of that has evolved a lot because there’s 38 programs today, and we’re working in Guam and Saipan. And so then you look at the different license nodes, because this is about the supply chain of commerce over the supply chain of data. Supply chain words, again, can’t get away from it.
Kevin Hart
Brett, how financial institutions can work with the entire industry, because we are stuck within today’s world, intra state commerce only. But then back to that differentiation, relevance is sustainability. What do you do and how do you make sure that what you bill and what people are counting on you to actually be able to bank these businesses is still alive and well and functioning when interstate and international Congress come into play? So, so back from the very beginning, we’ve always heard about safe or safer banking. We’ve heard about descheduling or rescheduling cannabis. But the one thing we could always count on with any of those changes is the rules are always going to exist, the regulations are going to become more frequent. Washington can’t help itself. That’s a fact set. You just have to accept that.
Kevin Hart
But then how do you allow all nodes and operating components within that to adopt and continue on a go forward basis? So that’s been, I wouldn’t call it the pivot point, but that’s been, again, back to the touchstones. One of the things that we constantly have to go back to and look at and say, okay, here’s something new and how do we handle that? Especially as you start looking at medical only to adult use, mixed use, you look at some states that are hemp concentrated, all the same plan, it’s just different outcomes from the plant. And then you start looking at the psychedelic industry and how people want to get involved, how long you have beverages which may be sold at a 711 or your local national convenience store, versus what is under the auspices of a state program.
Kevin Hart
So the complexity has certainly evolved, and that’s what we have to stay on top of.
Brett
What best describes your market category. I wanted to say, or I came into this thinking it was cannabis banking, but I feel like it’s much bigger than just the cannabis bank. Is that fair to say?
Kevin Hart
Yeah, it’s significantly bigger. I mean, that’s how we started. We had to get the first few on board, because, again, this is a demand and a supply problem. The demand was there back when we had the idea, and we started the company, and the demand has only grown. So when we started, it was in 13 states. It was a $3 billion industry. Now it’s in 38 states, and it’s a $50 billion industry. But that demand being there for all the products and services that we enabled, that had to be matched to some set of supply. And in the early days, and I would say even now, still, even with the 154 different financial institutions that have signed up with us, we still get what we call the high spend. You can go in and talk to anybody in a bank.
Kevin Hart
And we say, we like to talk to you about cannabis, and it’s like, eh, stop, hand out. No, we’re not doing that. We can’t do it. It’s federally illegal. Come up with all the whole laundry list of things. So that has changed and that is better, but it’s still not where it needs to be.
Brett
Talk to us about selling to cannabis businesses. What are those sales cycles like and.
Kevin Hart
What’S that market like when you’re selling into it? Well, one of the things that we did from the very beginning is that we knew we had to make this frictionless, or as frictionless as possible for adoption rate. Again, from a technology perspective, having worked in the Salesforce and Apple App Store ecosystem, etcetera, how do you make it easy for people and knowing that financial institutions back then and still some today are going to charge to bank cannabis businesses? We made the decision early on were never going to charge cannabis business to be on the platform, and we haven’t and we don’t.
Kevin Hart
So when you’re bringing a product and service that they need, that they want a better solution or that they want more flexibility and offering, our commercial arrangements are with the financial institutions that are on the platform, and they all have the same agreements pretty much across the board, because the financial industry, banks, and credit unions that decide that they recognize the value of this growing industry, it’s the biggest growth opportunity they have right outside their door in the states where it’s legal. How do you remove the friction for them to be able to bring those deposit dollars and those business relationships in? So we make it super simple for the cannabis businesses. Go to Green Check Verified, connect our marketplace, pick what products and services you want.
Kevin Hart
We’re going to connect you at a price that you’re going to enjoy and like with people that are open, armed, willing to serve you.
Brett
I see on the site that Ohio just became the 24th state to legalize cannabis. Do you ever feel like your growth is stifled by how slow regulation is moving? I do feel that you have market penetration in these 24 states and you could dramatically grow the company if those markets opened up. Or do you feel like you could still, or there’s still a lot of opportunity to serve this existing market of those 24 states where it’s legal, we.
Kevin Hart
Still think there’s a significant opportunity to serve the market. So we talk about those hundred 54 financial institutions that have signed with us. We have yet to see one of those tap out, using a wrestling term to say, wait a minute, we have too much deposit activity. We’ve gone past our concentration ratio, we can’t handle this much influx of cash, even though some of them are doing exceptionally well. So, at the end of Q three, we had 19% of the 2.9 billion that was processed, and that all came to a Green Check Verified. But none of those FIS were over deposited, because the cannabis industry is still growing on its path of maturity and business and profitability. So deposit activity versus retained deposits are one thing.
Kevin Hart
When you look at the number of businesses that get licensed in those states, there’s a latency to the timing of being licensed and open the door to actually creating that banking relationship of deposits from business activity, et cetera. So we serve the cannabis businesses through that journey, connected to those fi. So they’re all starting from zero, if you will, and then graduating forward. So everybody kind of knows what to expect. And then I would say the last thing associated with that, too, is, yes, our growth has been lower than I personally would like to see in some areas.
Kevin Hart
But by going to the cannabis industry directly through Green Check Verified Connect, now, instead of us relying strictly on the FIS serving these cannabis businesses and pulling them into the Green Check Verified ecosystem, by marketing directly to the cannabis businesses, we’re pushing them into that supply of financial institutions. And so, in that period of time, we’ve seen, over the last twelve months, over 146% growth of the number of cannabis businesses connected to the platform through Q three. And so at the end of Q three, we had over 7700 unique cannabis businesses on the platform looking for financial and business services. And that was a vast jump forward from when we launched Connect at the end of January in 2023.
Brett
With all that growth, Im sure theres some competition. Whats the competitive landscape look like, and how are you positioned in the market, Trey?
Kevin Hart
There is competition out there. We welcome it because I think competition always makes you better. If you’re the only one in town, you’re going to get fat and lazy, and thats never a healthy lifestyle, so. Or a business model, that’s for darn sure. So there are some competitors out there, but the differentiation between us and everybody else is we look at the money before it enters the financial institution, not after the fact. Or an examiner or regulator doesn’t want to know that you found a problem after the money’s in the door. Okay, they’re glad you found it, but why did that happen in the first place?
Kevin Hart
So that’s a big separator for us because we took a data first approach and a data enablement and a data usage approach first, and we’re at that single dollar level, you can engineer your way up into anything in terms of how you approach the market, but if you don’t have that data, you’re stuck. You can’t rebuild your company. The tech debt and the operational debt would be too much. You never can go backwards to get to a lower level. It just doesn’t work. And I’ve seen that fail I don’t know how many times over four decades of doing this, but when you start with data, you can engineer your way up into anything. So that’s why we have been continually expanding not only our install base, but the opportunity for everybody who’s associated with it to bring more products and services.
Kevin Hart
Again, that whole supply chain of commerce over the supply chain of the plant. You’re an Fi, you can bank the same dollar five times product was sold in a dispensary, which came from a manufacturer, which came from a supplier, which could have come from an extractor, which came from a cultivator, which came from a grower. All different businesses, all different nodes. But with that visibility, financial institution can bank every one of those businesses. So it’s that same dollar. So they really enjoy that ability to have that relationship and monetize this fast growing industry very well. And then you offer your products and services across the board to them, and this becomes a new line of business for financial institutions. It’s not a project, it’s a program. It is an entire line of business.
Kevin Hart
We’ve had financial institutions that have renamed and rebranded entire segments of their business to be cannabis specific. They’re not whispering that they’re serving the industry. They’re taking out billboards and saying, we’re doing this. And that is a dramatic change over the last four years.
Brett
Now, as I mentioned there in the intro, you’ve raised over 16 million to date. What have you learned about fundraising throughout this journey?
Kevin Hart
Well, fundraising for the cannabis industry is certainly a lot different than fundraising in the technology industry that I’ve been involved with before. And although we aren’t plant touching and we don’t touch the money, we’re a tech company, we have distance here. Again, the word cannabis just throws a lot of people off and or a lot of their investment charters and the work that they’ve done with their lp’s will specifically say they can’t do that. So the investors that are serving the cannabis industry, a lot of them, they’re learning as they go along, too, what success looks like. There’s a lot of crazy early money that was thrown around.
Kevin Hart
And again, I’m not the smartest guy in the room I’ll never profess to be, but you can just look at certain businesses and certain investments and go, that’s a bad move, and that’s the wrong valuation, and that’s not sustainable and that’s not relevant. But people get enamored with that. And I think we’ve seen that with cannabis investors across the board, and we do have some cannabis investors in Green Check Verified. But the vast majority of our money comes from financial services and people that work in the banking industry and people that understand the opportunity of where this industry is going to go and how it’s going to continue to evolve, and what we’re doing in our part, in our lane, to actually make that better for everybody. So our money comes from financial investors.
Kevin Hart
People that are look at Fintech and their lp’s are actually the banks that we serve in hell. So we’re in a different spot. We talked to everybody because we’ve had to, through our safe and our convertible nodes and our Series A, we talk to the interested parties. But not all investors are equal. And you can kind of tell pretty quickly if they’re, I call them screen kickers. People go to auto lots and do cut tire kicking to buy cars. I call tech investors screen kickers. You can come take the screens all you want, but we get a pretty good sense pretty fast, whether or not you’re genuine and you’re interested, or if you’re just trying to get educated.
Brett
Let’s imagine I came to you and I said, kevin, I’m a technology Founder. I want to build in the cannabis space. What would be the number one piece of advice that you’d give me, based on everything you’ve learned so far?
Kevin Hart
Educate yourself. And I know that sounds simple and trite, and that’s probably what everybody should say. But again, from my experience with all the companies I run or operated or started, etcetera, working within the cannabis industry is exceptionally unique. Theres a culture that you have to respect. Theres a history that you have to be aware of. Theres a sense of, are you here to help? Are you here to take my money? Theres a level of cynicism and skepticism. And then I think, unfortunately, a lot of people that got involved in the cannabis industry saw and or heard the green rush, the green wave, whatever label you want to put on it, and with all the best intentions in the world, they jumped headlong into it and they didn’t plan first. I don’t care if you’re evaluating a tech company, an opportunity or anything.
Kevin Hart
One of the things that we live by is begin with the end of mind and keep coming back to that. And if you can’t define that when you start, you’re sure as hell not going to be able to operate through that. And so what are the key things that you think you’re going to be able to do and keep coming back to them? Revisit them all the time? Where are we on this? Did we have the right hypothesis? Do we have the right method to get there? Which change that’s in our control? What’s happening that’s outside of our control? Don’t get married to the idea and then just run headlong into the night, because you’re going to hit a wall really hard. And we’ve seen that, unfortunately.
Brett
Final question for you. Let’s zoom out three to five years into the future. What’s the big picture vision here?
Kevin Hart
I think a lot of the conversations that have been going on in Washington for quite a period of time are nothing but political theater. And that doesn’t make me a popular person when I say that. But actions are the measures of people, whether or not descheduling, rescheduling happens. All these things are going to happen, Brett, but I think the timing of it is such that we have to move past political theater and we have to move into the reality. Now, they’re working up against a whole lot more important things than what we’re solving and what the cannabis industry thinks they should be solving. People have to accept that. But as you start looking at interstate and international commerce, the game is going to change dramatically and profound ways.
Kevin Hart
So I think for a lot of people, be careful what you wish for, especially as it relates to rescheduling or rescheduling cannabis. I think that you, as the larger companies, and we call them, they’re all the billion dollar companies that everybody has these wonderful dreams of exits to. They’re on the sidelines. They’re all looking at this industry. And I don’t care if it’s a brand like a pharmaceutical company. I don’t care if it’s a global distribution company like an Amazon or a CB’s or a Walmart. If you look at the payments providers, a visa, Mastercard, Amex, discover, if you look at global PoS providers, et cetera, they’re all looking at cannabis. The industry’s getting too big to ignore. So how are you structured? Doesn’t matter where you sit in this industry, how are you structured to protect yourself against some of those changes?
Kevin Hart
And I think the other positive thing, real positive thing that’s going to come out is we’re seeing an emergence of different providers to the cannabis industry that are going to make the data challenges and therefore the operational challenges, the cannabis businesses operational and actionable, not just a bunch of pretty pictures. You can’t just show somebody a pie chart, bar chart, and all these other wonderful AI machine driven models if it’s not actionable, because again, what is their open order? What is their demand plan? How does that affect the supply chain? What happens when this starts having interstate and international commerce come into play? And we’ve seen this play out over the years. What happens when the price point per pound drops so low that it actually makes your business model ineffective?
Kevin Hart
The smart operators, the people that are utilizing data, the people are developing sound businesses basic principles. Thats whats going to be the big shakeout over the next three to five years, enacted by whatever Washington decides to do. And they will always have more rules and regulations, never less. Its just not going to happen. Id love being wrong, Brett, but that is not going to happen.
Brett
Thats one thing we can always count on from Washington, I think always going to be more rules coming out of there.
Kevin Hart
Amen. Kevin.
Brett
This has been so much fun. We are up on time, so we’re going to have to wrap before we do. If there’s any founders that are listening in that want to follow along with your journey, where should they go?
Kevin Hart
Green Check Verifiedverified.com dot come check us out. We have cannabis banking boot camps. We do a lot of education. We have a whole knowledge center. You’ll come and learn a lot about the cannabis industry and how you can participate in it.
Brett
Amazing. Kevin, thanks so much for taking the time. This has been awesome.
Kevin Hart
Thank you, Brett, you’ve been dead. You too.
Brett
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