Kaisha [00:00:05]:
What's up, gromies? Welcome to AROYA office hours, your source for free cannabis cultivation education. I am your moderator, Kaisha, and this is episode 100. Y'all. Shout out to our live viewers on the hangout on YouTube and on Instagram, and to everyone tapping in on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you so much for your support. And if you like the pod, be sure to drop us a review, because we really appreciate your feedback. Seth and Jason, how you guys doing? Can you believe it's our 100th episode?

Seth [00:00:34]:
Flew by? It's hard to believe.

Jason [00:00:37]:
It's been a good time.

Kaisha [00:00:38]:
Yes. All right, well, in honor of this milestone, we're mixing things up. You want to tell everybody who's on the hangout today?

Jason [00:00:46]:
Yeah, we got. We got Tyler and Brian from front row. Super excited to have them. I think Tyler was one of the very first cultivators that I saw down there in Humboldt, way back in the days. Might have been 2018, I think so. Always a pleasure. Pleasure to have him. And good to have Brian on the call, too.

Tyler Simmons [00:01:05]:
Yeah.

Bryan Willkomm [00:01:05]:
Thank you, guys.

Kaisha [00:01:06]:
Yeah, Tyler and Brian, please introduce yourselves. Tell us a little bit about you.

Tyler Simmons [00:01:12]:
Sure. Yeah, well, I'm super excited to be here as well on the hundredth episode, and it is funny thinking about it, like, yep, 2018 started working with AROYA, and here we are, which is really cool. So, my name is Tyler. I've been in the cannabis industry for about 13 years now, focusing on operations, design, and consulting, and with a particular interest in, I guess, controlled environment agriculture and finding ways to quantitatively improve what we're doing over time in cannabis. I've made every mistake you can possibly mistake you can possibly make, but I've tried to learn from them and make less mistakes over time, become less wrong. And before I was in cannabis, I was in strength conditioning, where, you know, I started to notice there's some interesting parallels between human performance and plant performance, and also how human performance impacts plant performance in your cultivation facilities, which we'll get to talk a little bit about today.

Kaisha [00:02:23]:
Beautiful. And how about you, Brian?

Bryan Willkomm [00:02:26]:
Yeah, my name is Brian Wilcom. I've been in the cannabis industry for about 13 years, manage some California cannabis dispensaries, cultivation facility, distribution, and processing, and I've been working with the front row ag team on our dry, soluble powdered nutrients for about three years, and actually was on a track and field team with Tyler in college. So it's a coincidence that we've come back together in the professional world. And in addition to my time working with the sales team here. I've been coaching track and field collegiately for 14 years, and so we have a lot of interesting overlap, like Tyler was saying in our observations of successful cultivation managers and how their health and wellness actually incorporated into their success in the garden. So we appreciate you kind of entertaining our topic here.

Kaisha [00:03:14]:
Yeah, amazing. Thank you both for your super interesting background. I had no idea. Yeah. So let's get into it. So, basically, we started office hours almost two and a half years ago as an educational resource for cannabis cultivators. The community has really shown up asking questions and sharing their stories and their data, with a goal of ultimately helping everyone learn and succeed. But there's an underlying subtext to all this, right, that we don't really talk about.

Kaisha [00:03:39]:
And it's the fact that people in this industry are dealing with incredible odds, you know, high production costs, regulatory policy hurdles, heavy taxation, that's just to name a few. And at the end of the day, they just want to grow this plant so that more patients and consumers can have access to good, quality medicine. So when the stakes are this high, it can really take a toll. So we wanted to spend our 100th episode talking about successful cultivation habits, applying the lens of mental health. Tyler, I'm going to start with you. How about kicking things off by telling us a little bit about why this is top of mind for you and Brian?

Tyler Simmons [00:04:12]:
Yeah, I mean, what I mentioned a minute ago, it's just. It's become clear over the years that you could have the best protocol ever. But unless you've got buy in and happy people who can consistently execute what you're doing over the long term, what you want them to do, that you're just not doing things as effectively as you could be, and your performance in a facility is going to suffer. And beyond that, the reason that we're all in this for one reason or another, the reason anybody's in any job is because they're trying to support a life and lifestyle for themselves, their families, their colleagues. And I think it's good to kind of connect what we're doing sometimes back into, like, why are we doing this? Like, what are we getting out of it? And how is it good for the people that are involved, too?

Seth [00:05:03]:
Yeah.

Bryan Willkomm [00:05:03]:
And in my work with the sales team, in managing the sales team, so often we end up jumping into conversations with our prospective customers that end up skirting a topic about mental health, about them being overwhelmed, or them having fears of failing and needing additional support just to stay above board. And, you know, just like you were talking about Keshia the immense amount of stress that we're in in the industry. There's just some habits that Tyler and I started to observe that certain individuals and companies were taking that were putting them into more successful positions long term. And I think, again, all of our goal is to continue in this industry long term and not run into the burnout that many of us observe. Your team included, I'm sure, and implementing some of these partnerships and these tools to help support our cultivation managers be successful.

Tyler Simmons [00:05:55]:
Yeah, we can get into some of the specifics here in a minute. I just kind of wanted to start off talking a little bit about overall mindset that goes into this, because I think it's something we forget to talk about a lot, and it makes a big difference of our actual experiences working in a cultivation facility and with our employees. And one of the things I like to remind everyone of is that we should treat ourselves and our colleagues with not only, like, the same respect and care as we're treating our plants, because everybody's feeling good. If you're, you know, averaging 100 grams/sqft in the garden, it's going. Everything's going great, but it's not always that way. And it's important to, like, keep. Keep in mind the experience as we're going through this. And one of the things that just a high level mindset thing that I.

Tyler Simmons [00:06:47]:
That I see, I think a lot of people lose track of, not just in cannabis, but in all sorts of professions, is that we get our identity so wrapped up in the success of our next harvest. You know, we get like, you are not. Your next harvest is what it comes down to. And some days, sometimes you're going to crush it and you're just going to be riding high because you're like, oh, yeah, we just, like, we hit 120 grams/sqft on this harvest, and everything was sold before it even left the crim table, and that feels really good. But then you've got the times when something goes wrong and you had an h vac problem. Your dehumidifiers went out the last two weeks of flower, and maybe you didn't have the best harvest. And when that happens, do you want your entire feelings of validation and self worth to be riding on the next thing that's happening or the latest harvest that you had? It's so easy for everybody to get caught up in that. So I.

Tyler Simmons [00:07:48]:
I like the idea of kind of keeping our identities small and diversified, not having it 100% wrapped up in your most recent performance, but also, like, balancing out, balancing it out with the. The rest of your life, because we're cannabis cultivators. And if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably a pretty competent one, but it's not the only thing about you, and it might not be the most interesting or valuable thing about you. So, making sure that we've got stock personally and validation from the other parts of our life helps kind of buffer us against the ups and downs, like the volatility of the experience in cannabis.

Jason [00:08:31]:
Yeah. So I used to always say, happy people, happy plants, and it goes hand in hand. When we're in a good cultivation facility, most all the time, the people are very. They're very excited to grow top quality product.

Tyler Simmons [00:08:47]:
All right?

Jason [00:08:48]:
And obviously, people that aren't very happy at their work have much more difficult time producing a quality at a consistent rate. And I kind of want to just tap in on some of the things you were saying about the. The last. The last run. Um, one of the first things that I did was. Was just really start making averages, uh, across my. My facility. And that was how.

Jason [00:09:10]:
How do we say that we are improving over time without, you know, constraining ourselves to. All right, what season is it? How many mistakes did we have during this cultivation cycle? And then when we did have a cultivation cycle? Maybe I'm. Maybe I'm weird. Cause I'm. I'm a fixer, but, uh, you know, I actually loved seeing problems. It's like, all right, here's a problem. What tools do we have to diagnose this problem? And then, even more importantly, after we've diagnosed it, what kind of resolution? How do we make improvements in what we are doing or in how our equipment operate and how our people relate to each other? How do we make changes in that and implement it so that we can avoid those types of issues later on and have a little bit more consistent average on the long term?

Seth [00:09:55]:
Yeah, I think a big part of where this comes in is planning your production schedule and just all of your operations. Also take into account humans. Some of the more successful grows I've seen out there don't actually operate like a 24/7 factory. They're adjusting certain dates because people are gone Saturday and Sunday, and they don't have the workforce over the weekend, let's say, to get that harvest done. So we're going 62 days instead of 60, maybe. But part of the key to that consistency is having a happy workforce and getting everyone into the right headspace where you find some satisfaction, what you're doing, not just what weed ends up in the bag at the end, right. If you base your whole identity on that, you're probably not in the right, the right environment to have a happy life. Like, you know, I always say, like, there's, I've met a lot of people over the course of my career, and some of the happiest and most successful, like, those aren't mutually exclusive ideas.

Seth [00:10:48]:
I think that's where some people kind of drop off a little bit. They think, like, hey, to be successful, I'm going to, you know, give up my whole social life or my whole happiness to do this. And thats really not true. Some of its just that mindset and thinking, hey, we need to organize things and ill be on the same page to where were working to live, not living to work. And I think just having that little mindset shift helps a lot of people take a lot of satisfaction out of their job and then also leave it behind a little bit. So when you come back after the weekend, youre fresh. On the same token, if you can take a lot of satisfaction out of solving problems, then you're kind of setting yourself up for a successful career because you're not having the down feelings and unproductive times. Just because you see failure.

Seth [00:11:36]:
Like, failure is just a challenge. It's not necessarily like something to be depressed about. And failure comes in small failures, big failures. There's a range, right? And I think that's where a lot of people get lost and burn out in the industry. And we see it, too. You know, if we've, you guys have definitely seen it, where there's a facility that's just running way too mechanically, way too hard, and they struggle to keep people around, you know, hire people, and they're like, hey, what? You know, 50% of our employees quit after two weeks. And it's like, well, I guess we got to figure out a way to make that a little better, dude, because there's not, there's not a cost effective robot out there to do this job for you. This is a very hands on, intensive industry that we're in.

Seth [00:12:19]:
There's really no, no way around that at this point. Even if we all wanted to throw our plants out and not touch them till harvest, harvest, like, there's still people out there with pruning shears, cutting plants down, you know, we can't avoid that. And those people absolutely matter. If you're, if your workforce is unhappy, if they're overwork, if they're burnt out, that's when the ball gets dropped. That's when maintenance doesn't get kept up on. That's when people are too confident, not taking their readings, not documenting, and then suddenly you've kind of got this big mess that you've got to work backwards through.

Bryan Willkomm [00:12:50]:
And being in fertilizer sales, you know, part of our process is we might have new build outs where everything could be perfected and planned for ahead, or we're going to be doing a nutrient conversion. And in that process, we're onboarding and we're learning about the challenges that our cultivators are facing, assisting them in overcoming and in Tyler's role with my team. He's my technical expert, where I have escalations of those issues directly to Tyler. And we had a discussion, actually, about this concept of earned success and comparing that to the opposite of learned helplessness. And I think some people have always been in that situation where, like, I'm trying everything I can do, I can't seem to move forward. And that sense of learned helplessness is really degrading to your mental health. And sometimes by actually having those struggles, those challenges, and overcoming them, you earn this concept of earned success. And that's where I really appreciate teams like yourselves with the AROYA team, where you're providing a product and a service that allows us to gather data, refer to that data, and make these best decisions, and also taking the time to reflect on the mistakes, just like Jason was saying, and how to implement the improvements on the successive runs.

Bryan Willkomm [00:14:00]:
It's growth, and some of the most successful people we've met are really the culmination of a ton of failures.

Tyler Simmons [00:14:06]:
Yeah, just a follow up on something you said about the problems that we have, which I thought was just right on. Seth. Imagining that things will only be good once you have no problems left is a fiction, because there's always going to be problems. In fact, that's just what our brains do, is they create problems out of nowhere. But the key is, like, if you do things right and you learn from previous mistakes and you fix them and address them, then you have better problems over time. And sometimes that's the best way, you know, to get. To get that sense of earned success. You're overcoming problems.

Tyler Simmons [00:14:43]:
You've solved those ones, and you have this track record of being able to do that in cultivation. Gives you, like, the confidence to predict that you'll have future success, and the problems are going to keep happening. They're just going to be better problems than before, and that's good. And just to give a specific example of some good problems to have, it's like you might make a change in your crop steering regimen or, or your fertilizer application, and all of a sudden youre yielding 15% more. Well, heres a new problem. Now, your dehumidifiers are not sized properly to handle that level of transpiration and the amount of flower mass that youve got. So youve got another problem. Like, all right, now our environments not matching up, but thats actually a good problem to have and another thing to work through.

Tyler Simmons [00:15:36]:
So I think we can kind of, like, we want to get people in the mindset of thinking of like a chain of problems getting better over time.

Seth [00:15:46]:
Absolutely. And I mean, I always go back to, this is a human heavy industry. You know, there's a lot of people making all of this weed that we all get to smoke eventually, right? Like, it takes human hands and you've got to keep those people happy. One of my buddies, Aaron over at Goldkind, really encapsulated with this one quote, and that was, man, I thought I was going to be growing weed, and now I'm just managing like 80 people's emotions. I feel like I'm like, yeah, dude, but that's a good problem because that means, you know, your rooms aren't burning down, your plants aren't dying. Like, now you're, everything's running smoothly. You realize that the biggest contribution that you're bringing to, you know, every single morning is helping empower your employees to get the jobs done and making sure that they are in a good headspace, that they want to do it, that they feel like it's a good place to be, because, hey, at a certain size, you have to rely on those people. There, there is no other option.

Seth [00:16:36]:
Like, as a leader, if you can't get your team unified and get everyone on the same page, you're leaving efficiency on the table. And you, like I said, there's no, I don't know, Jason, have you heard of a good cost effective robot to go prune plants yet? Because I haven't seen one that's I would trust to go out and do it.

Jason [00:16:54]:
No, no, absolutely not. And, you know, that minds, mindset thing is really, really important. One of my favorite clients here, back east, he's, he said, he said in a quote like, hey, Jason's my, he's my psychiatrist. I'm like, I may not even teach this guy anything on a call, but, but really what it is, is to break it down into, you know, that perspective of how do we need to attack this issue and how, what's the severity of it? Should it, should it be disrupting you know, my mental state today, or is it something that we can use as a learning opportunity?

Seth [00:17:28]:
I think one thing, guys, that has been awesome, for me, at least, working with AROYA, working with you guys, getting out and talking to so many different people, started to realize that there's a lot of kind of siloing going on coming out of the industry. Whether it's old school legacy growers that feel like they've got the magic sauce, don't want to give up their secrets, or on the flip side, some of these large, large corporations that are getting set up to grow, that feel like they have internal ip with their processes and stuff, I think realizing that, hey, that is the reality of the industry. And if you can go out and make friends and feel supported in the fact that we were talking about, hey, we upped our yield 15%, and now we're running into some humidity issues, maybe mold. I think a lot of people feel like they're like, oh, man, I messed up. This is my problem. When in reality, I heard that a hundred times in the last two months, you have average problems that are completely solvable. Like, you can get by it. And so many times people just, you know, miss the forest for the trees when they're looking at these problems, just because they.

Seth [00:18:32]:
It's hard to step back sometimes once you're so deep in it, and if you don't have a network of friends that are also doing the same kind of thing and willing to communicate it, really. And sometimes that's all it takes, right? To walk into a different facility and go, hey, that's way different than the way I do it. That makes sense. Just never thought of that before.

Jason [00:18:52]:
You can usually pile 100%. You can buy a lot of dehumidifiers for a 15% increase in yield.

Seth [00:18:59]:
Yeah, exactly.

Tyler Simmons [00:19:01]:
Well said that ROI is high. I think something you said there really just reminded me of another thing I think is really important to mention. And we're in an industry where small things going wrong can create really large negative effects on our outcomes. Right. So what that kind of fosters is this feeling you see in a lot of facilities and a lot of people who are extremely dedicated of, like, extreme vigilance, where they may be, you know, having their phone on all night long, listening to notifications, so they can, you know, make changes or be ready for a communication from somebody. And I think this is, in the short term, can be pretty effective, but in the long term, is extremely corrosive to people's long term performance and well being, if only just because of it interferes with people's sleep. And if your employees or you are not getting enough quality sleep, then your decision making capacity is compromised. It's just like if you're doing crop steering, but you're doing it in a chronic, low sleep state, you're crop steering, like, in an impaired way.

Tyler Simmons [00:20:15]:
And we do this all the time by leaving our phones on at night and our notifications on. And sometimes it's just what it takes, and I get it. Like, we've all been there, and you just have to do that sometime to make sure you're successful, because there's a lot riding on the line. But I would encourage people to try to find a smart way to do that, too. That walks the balance of, like, being able to be notified if something's going wrong or needs to be fixed. But try to filter out all of the things that can wait a day or two. You know, if. If a notification is not critical, try to set things up so that if you have to, like, respond to a notification outside of work hours, make sure it's something that's critical to respond to outside of work hours and not something that can wait a couple of days.

Tyler Simmons [00:21:04]:
And it's one of the things I love about AROYA is it, like, you get the best of both worlds here, because you can really set things up so that you're just getting notified when a certain, you know, certain parameters going way out of bound in a catastrophic way so that you can address it, but then you can be confident to know the rest of the time that, like, I don't have to worry about it. You can take that time off to make sure that you're sleeping well and making the best decisions you possibly can. And it's just something I think is ubiquitous and, like, harmful in our industry is just like, how much we expect ourselves and other people to constantly be on call for little things when there's a better way to do it. Well, that's part of that.

Bryan Willkomm [00:21:49]:
Building the support system and developing the workflow, if you will, of escalation. And that's something that we have even made recommendations through nutrient onboarding, is we may have to just look at the way you're organizing your business, because so much is being put onto one individual that you're not able to ever turn off. And, you know, the story that Tyler and I were telling is we've seen so many facilities where everybody is monitoring every single component of their plant roots on substrate, the nutrient profile environment. And then I watch them go and grab two liters of Mountain Dew and just pound it and talk about, man, I just feel like crap lately and drank too much last night. And it's just like, how interesting of an observation to dedicate so much attention to the plant and neglect yourself up into, you know, that support system and having support to reach out for help when you need it, and organizing your team in a manner that there is an escalation workflow for these types of situations.

Jason [00:22:50]:
Yeah, it's kind of interesting for me. It's like, when I talk about AROYA, we've got three pillars that make our product work. And when I think about happy cultivation, when we're striving to get a facility to stability, we're looking at things like relationships, resources and logistics, right? Are we. Are we providing an environment that helps people, you know, encourage each other? Are we providing an environment that gives them the tools that they need to learn more and stay on this stable track? And then also, are we making it easier for people to work, you know, especially when we're trying to get efficient and we're trying to make sure that our staff wants to stick around. Uh, let's make these people's jobs as easy and enjoyable as possible.

Tyler Simmons [00:23:35]:
Oh, yeah.

Seth [00:23:36]:
I mean, it's. Sometimes it's simple things like, if you've got 20 rooms, do you want to have a 20 room cycle? Or do you want to, you know, block like four or five of those rooms together so that your harvests are manageable? Like, hey, maybe there's some trade offs. We don't have a factory that's planting plants and harvesting every single day. But, you know, after you run it for a while, it's kind of nice to not have to transplant and harvest and pull dry weed, you know, do the whole process every single day. Uh, so there's. There's little trade offs like that that, you know, may seem monumental, but when you sit down and do the math on some of these moves, like the, the hours all pan out, all of these things still have to get done. We're just organizing in a way where it's like, hey, if you guys don't want to work weekends, are you going to be happier? And if the answer is yes, okay, you know, adapt your schedule so that you can keep your workforce happy. Because, uh, I mean, there's only so much like any of us can do with our own two hands at the end of the day.

Seth [00:24:30]:
That's the reality. And as any cultivator knows, especially if you start to get up into the, you know, 1502 thousand square foot plus rooms, man, there's it's like a lot of hours to get one task done, you know, and setting yourself up on too tight of a timeline, it just causes you mental anguish. You lose sleep. Like you said, brian, when you're. If you're not healthy, if you're low on sleep, if your life is in health wise disarray, you really don't tend to not make the right, not maybe not the wrong choices, but you're in a reactive, not a proactive state. We should be looking back, and this is something I find a lot of growers just haven't been in the habit to do because they're used to scrambling and being in that reactive state. But it's like, hey, man, if you can sit down at the end of a run and just look at all of your data, not just AROYA, but every other note, picture everything, and just find out, like, hey, what. What really was horrible that last run.

Seth [00:25:24]:
And sometimes it's something like, hey, man, our emitters were plugging up a lot. Like, why are we talking then? You didn't change them yet. You know, like, just set some of those rules, and then you go, you know, like the emitter example. Like, hey, after about a year, we see these things pretty out of line. Well, let's just be proactive about it and not stress this, because it seems like every time we let, you know, a room go too long without an irrigation changeover, people quit because they have to come in at 06:00 a.m. They don't get to leave till 07:00 p.m. Because they got plants wilting every morning. Morning.

Seth [00:25:52]:
And, like, their life is ostensibly terrible. And a lot of times, if you have good people, they're going to make their life terrible, when really it should be, you know, if they're your employee, it should be your life that's terrible. But they're going to try to pick up that slack and burn out. And if you're not attentive, sometimes, you might, you know, some of your best employees might not complain about something like that. And then you end up burning them out, and you're like, well, man, let's just solve the problem because, hey, you're a really hard worker. I like what you're doing, but let's, you know, structure it so you can be more productive with your time rather than fix these problems that are entirely avoidable.

Tyler Simmons [00:26:28]:
Yeah, and also, I. Go ahead.

Bryan Willkomm [00:26:31]:
I was going to say, Tyler, we should comment about the experiences we've had that led us to start the front row certified program.

Tyler Simmons [00:26:37]:
Oh, for sure. Well, I was going to say just to directly follow up on that. Most people at some point maybe heard about this idea of, like, three levels of problem solving. There's like, the first level, which is very reactive. Like, a problem happens and you scramble to fix it reactively as quickly as possible. And it's pretty. It can be stressful and really labor and intensive and costly. On the second level is like a problem happens and you fix it, but you also redesign your systems to fix that problem permanently so it doesn't happen again.

Tyler Simmons [00:27:09]:
And then the best and third level of problem solving is you try to predict the sets of problems that you might run into ahead of time and build fixes in ahead of time so that you prevent the problems from happening in the first place. Obviously, that's not possible for everything, but I think it's a good exercise for people to do is just like, okay, what are the problems that we might, that we can foresee as possibly happening here? Let's try to, like, build fixes or systems for those ahead of time so it's not an expensive and costly scramble every single time. And, I mean, that's like, that's a big part about our technician training program. Brian, tell them about that.

Bryan Willkomm [00:27:51]:
Well, yeah, so in the sales management role, I started to get frustrated hearing repeated problems at different facilities that were linked to a gap in training, essentially on water chemistry and the interaction of certain chemicals mixed in with whatever nutrient line you're using being the underlying issue. So a cultivation manager is bringing in somebody, and I've been in a facility where I literally watch somebody throw in a little bit of ph up, a little bit of ph down, a little bit more. Mixing in, not waiting. Time to go. I don't know what's wrong. It's not changing. And so we found, through our tech expert team and with the support of our product formulator, a technician training certification program, where basically we wanted to review the basics of fertilizer, fundamentals, water cleanliness, Ec pH, how to even read a label of a nutrient line that you're using to understand what is within it, and how to properly apply any type of chemical with whatever nutrient line you're using. Our goal was to mitigate the risk that these cultivation managers were running into by having just under trained staff members and not always putting the burden on them to create that training.

Bryan Willkomm [00:29:00]:
But, hey, here's what we see as an industry standard. Here's what we gathered from both academia and our time in the field. To give you an example of the best practice is to set your team up for success. And it's a free service, because what we find is that if we provide you the better baseline, you'll be more successful with our nutrient line or any nutrient line. And that's a direction that we try to cultivate within our team is empowering any of our customers to be better at their craft.

Jason [00:29:26]:
Go ahead, Kaisha.

Kaisha [00:29:27]:
Oh, no, I was going to say, I love that. I wanted to also bring up, because it's come up in the last couple episodes that we've done of the podcast, just like, understanding, you know, implementing effective solutions. Part of that means choosing your battles, identifying, like, what the main focus, where you really should be, focusing your energy. Can you guys talk to that a little bit?

Tyler Simmons [00:29:50]:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think it's really nice to be able to look at like, your potential risk surface area and both your potential for gains and your potential for downside risk, and make decisions in light of that. So sometimes theres changes that you can make that might offer a small potential gain in your annual production, but on the other side, they might increase your downside risk, your risk of a crop loss or failure by a much larger margin, 15 or 20%. And so I think its important to evaluate where are we going to apply our efforts and make changes to our systems in a way where we really are paying attention to. Are the upsides of this potential change worth the downside risk? Because there is usually going to be trade offs in a lot of these areas.

Seth [00:30:47]:
Robert?

Jason [00:30:49]:
Yeah. I always like to think of opportunity cost coming out of business school. It's like, all right, how much do we lose if we don't make these changes, if we don't invest in these systems? Um, sure. Upfront costs, we're, we're, we're always going to do it right. I like that. Let's take that 15% yield. Um, uh, what's our cost if we don't, uh, get the new dehumidifiers so that we can accommodate the 15% yield? Well, it might be 30 or 40% loss in mold, um, now that the environment's not right. So what, what does that opportunity cost, um, turn out to an roi? And is it the right choice for your, for your time and energy?

Seth [00:31:26]:
Yeah. And sometimes, just looking at one thing I was taught in just basic farm economics, always balance your decisions against what would that same amount of money do in a savings account? And that sounds kind of silly, but if you put that rule into play, you might find like, hey, maybe I'm chasing this a little far, just like you said I'm pushing a level of risk that I might lose some, and then also the benefit, um, just. Just isn't there. Even if this thing works out perfectly, sometimes we're making decisions based on, uh, the ego and interest, and unfortunately, like, that sometimes is a difference between a garden and a farm. Uh, you know, in my garden at home, I play around with all kinds of fun things, but, you know, that. That harvest isn't. Doesn't affect whether that garden's there next year or not. So it's.

Seth [00:32:15]:
It's kind of one of the. The ugly downsides. You know, a lot of people get into this industry with a lot of passion, and it's hard to reel back sometimes. But, you know, just like we were talking about the mental health aspect before, I think that's important because some of the most passionate people that I meet are some of the people that, man, they have the hardest time letting go when there is a failure in the garden. And sometimes it is something that's completely not their fault. Like, I've seen businesses that are running profitably well, they have a great crew, and then they get zoned out of existence. Like, what do you, you know, what do you do at that point? Either pick up and move to a new place or accept it for what it is. But either way, your mental state's not going to affect the fact that your business is gone and you got to do something about it, right? So making sure that you're in really that happy spot is, I think it's just so critical.

Seth [00:33:06]:
And it's not unique to cannabis either. Right. Like any other industry any of us have worked in, we've all seen someone that just gets burned out on what they're doing. And I think, unfortunately, um, like I said, for us, it's the most passionate people in cannabis that get burnout the hardest, and that's the people that's, to me, the most sad when I see them burn out is I'm like, man, when you're doing good, you are happy. So let's cultivate a process that keeps you in that space. And then, yeah, man, you might have to drop a little ego. Like, you're not harvesting 3.8 to 4.5 a light on all your strains. Well, okay, let's just look at the economics and figure out how much weed can you grow in this space.

Seth [00:33:45]:
What kind of approximate values are we working with? And then build the rest of the business around that, you know?

Bryan Willkomm [00:33:50]:
Yeah, we always hear about reach the genetic potential of your cultivar. Right. And it's also sometimes, what's your facility's potential? And if you're reaching that potential, you need to take a moment to look at yourself as successful. And one of the ways that Tyler and I had discussed that minimizing the downside risk might be a simple question that a customer might ask us. Hey, what media do you suggest that I run front row with, you know, coco or Rockwool? And often it's a question back, well, how good are you monitoring your dryback? You know, because there's. There could be a huge downside to choosing Rockwool, uh, versus coco if you're not prepared, uh, you know, to monitor closely.

Seth [00:34:30]:
You got five rooms on one feed line, direct injected. Well, let's, uh, maybe not go with Rockwell, guys like that, you know, like, why? Well, just trust me and, you know, well, I'll tell you what you need to do to get there, but let's not experience this crop loss, because, you know, that's a, that's a story you hear all the time in the last five to ten years, right? Like, hey, I tried Rockwool and my yields just got cut in half. It's like, well, you probably did it wrong, you know? No, no other way to put it. You messed up really early on, and, um, it's a bummer that you had that experience because had you been able to use it, you'd be able to give it a fair trial and decide, like, hey, do I actually like this? Now that I know how to run it in the parameters where it performs and, you know, just kind of the transition of the industry out of a hand, feel everything to actually using sensors. You know, a lot of us aren't. Your personal tuning, your personal measuring scale is only as good as the tool you've used to establish that scale. So while there's a lot of cultivators out there that do absolutely, you know, awesome. Just picking up pots, holding their hand up, sensing the humidity, you know, you can't scale like that without going crazy, right? There's only so many of those people that can walk around and actually do that.

Tyler Simmons [00:35:44]:
Yeah. I wanted to follow up on what you said there about ego, especially, and I view this as something that for all of us is and for everybody involved, is a huge barrier to making good decisions sometimes, you know, it's. We all have been in the place or know somebody who's been in the place of just not seeing reality for what it is, because they are defending this idea that, like, I'm the best at this, like, I crush it and the methods that I use are definitely the best. And I think this is just so harmful, like, to, to ourselves, you know, when we have this idea because it prevents us from seeing what's actually going on and it keeps us attached to old ways of doing things and like defending things, that might not be the best way to actually do something. And its a totally natural human response. And if we can recognize it in ourselves and were having that response and then just being like, okay, nope, im make mistakes all the time and theres lots of people who maybe know more about this thing than I do. And instead of getting attached to any one specific methodology, technology or anything, Im just going to do what makes sense, what actually works. And like seeing clearly, having the tools and the frameworks to like fall back on for making those decisions is so valuable.

Tyler Simmons [00:37:15]:
Like your potential performance over the long term goes up so much and in so many ways. I know one of the things that's been huge is just we all came from, you know, a background where, where every business was super, super isolated and insular, and now we're in an environment where we can just reach out and ask for help and just being able to do that and just be like, yeah, I don't know this thing or this is not an area of my expertise, but I know someone who probably does. And we can reach out to people and then talk through something and we can judge a problem or a question together and come out of it with a much better system or approach than we might have had before.

Jason [00:38:00]:
There's some irony out there. I like benchmarking the productivity of clients and it seems like the people that are the absolute most profitable and most productive are the ones that are most open to learning more. Really, the best of anybody in any industry are going to be the ones that are learning the fastest to get better.

Seth [00:38:24]:
Yeah, absolutely. No, go ahead. I was just going to say, hey, we do something cyclical. You know, how many? Even if you're not like setting up an experiment with every run, as long as you're keeping up with some crop registration pictures, data, talk to your people, you can glean so much from that. And I think, you know, being in that reactive state, it's really hard to notice that if you're not taking the time. But man, its just so valuable to look back and actually learn from your mistakes and then, yeah, dont freak out about it. Like I said, learn to take some pride and satisfaction in the actual things youre doing. If youre successful, the money will come.

Seth [00:39:04]:
Thats how its going to work. Out. If any business works out, its going to be good. But you really got to focus on whats going on now. And thats the hardest thing is to say, hey, you need to pour your heart and soul into this. And then, man, you got to take a vacation. And I like, that's, to me, that's the ultimate sign of success as a, you know, if you're a cultivation lead or a manager at a facility, like, hey, can you take a week vacation and not have your phone blow up or like, you know, have a weird sleep schedule in a different time zone? Because you're like, I gotta get before am and check my graphs. That's, to me, that's like one of the ultimate signs of success.

Seth [00:39:39]:
Hey, you can leave. Your crew's got you. You got good communication, good tools like, go, relax, let it go. That's a good sign.

Kaisha [00:39:47]:
That's a perfect entry point because we got a poll here on YouTube. We asked, how do you spend time outside the garden? 33% responded that they travel, 22%. General recreation, 44%. They focus on self improvement.

Jason [00:40:04]:
Nice. Nice.

Tyler Simmons [00:40:05]:
Yeah.

Jason [00:40:06]:
So about the time that I met Tyler, I was working with another great cultivator, actually up here in Washington, back in the research phases of, of building out what their AROYA product would be. One of our questions was always, hey, what's your goal? Right? What are your goals in here, doing here at the facility? And most people are quality, yield, profitability, productivity. And this guy was so dedicated, he just goes, I just want a week vacation. That's my goal. About a year and a half, two years later, he sent me a message and says, hey, we did it.

Bryan Willkomm [00:40:44]:
Yeah, well, but then that's also our experiences. Since the topic is the successful tips for the cultivation manager, it's taking up that time to set up the SOP and the workflow and communication with your team so that you can. And I think one thing that we've seen, too, from our sales team is having an escalation workflow from your garden hands. People in the garden, day to day, if you're in the cultivation manager position, is ensuring that there is a workflow to listen to. The feedback is being provided from your frontline employees who are spending the most time in the garden. Too often we see a separation sometimes from the decision maker who truly isn't receiving all of the data that could, that could benefit them long term and make the changes needed to be successful.

Tyler Simmons [00:41:29]:
Yeah, it's. Yeah, I think probably a lot of businesses have caught on to this at this point, but because it's kind of, like, management 101 basics. But just, like, set up and make sure you're getting at least 30 minutes of one on one time with all of your direct reports each week, because there's going to be. You're going to learn a lot during those meetings that might not have come to your attention if you didn't have, like, a little bit of one on one time every week. So, you know, you're like your room managers, your cultivation techs. Set aside that 30 minutes for you guys to meet one on one and just ask them not only what is going on in your life right now, because that's important, too. It affects what they're doing in their jobs, but what are the things that are on their radar? What have they noticed recently in the rooms? Is there anything weird they've noticed? Do they have any ideas? Not only does that make people feel like their insights are being respected and heard, but you will learn things that. That absolutely improve the performance of your facility doing that.

Tyler Simmons [00:42:39]:
It's so simple and so effective.

Jason [00:42:41]:
Yeah. You know, one of the vital things about becoming a manager or any type of leader in a facility is one, you know, getting to a point of employee stability so that, you know, all right, is this an observation for our company to improve, or is this a complaint? And hopefully, you know, when you've gotten to a point that you have happy employees, you start to realize that we're not wasting time with complaints. We're. We're spending this time interpreting observations.

Tyler Simmons [00:43:12]:
Yeah.

Seth [00:43:12]:
And it's, you know, it's something, I think, that's oftentimes difficult to establish. Uh, but once you establish it, easy to maintain, and that's that trust, where it's like, hey, man, no, you like, I don't care what the problem is. Uh, if it has to do with something breaking or going wrong for whatever reason in this facility, I want you to bring it to me. I'm not going to fire you. I want to know the problem that's so much more valuable to me than I would ever be have retribution towards you because I thought you caused it, because you brought it to me. And I think that's a thing, too, that people get into. It's like there's this stress that kind of trickles down from the top. If you're too stressed about thinking you're going to lose a crop and lose all this money, that trickles down and people are scared to bring up these problems that they know are going to affect that number you're talking about.

Seth [00:44:00]:
So some simple strategy is where you just highlight to people. Like, hey, guys, it's so much more valuable if we're all aware of these problems, then if we try to mask it or hide it, because guess what? We're going to weigh everything at the end anyways. We have these running numbers. Like, it's going to get noticed, but if we don't have all the details, we can't solve it. You know, like, if you're not taking notes, you don't know how often, like, your, the switch gear for your dehumidifier went down, let's say. And you're like, okay, how many guys? Guys, how many nights were we, like, at 0.3 VPD? You're just like, oh, I don't know. Like, well, it would be good to know that because the difference between ten nights, like, that latent flower and two is probably pretty big, you know? So I need to know, like, what kind of an impact if something goes down. How long can I hold out on fixing it? You know? The ideal answer is zero time.

Seth [00:44:48]:
The real answer is if it shuts down at 08:00 p.m. And doesn't come back on, it is, can I go in? Can anyone go in until 06:00 a.m. And or 08:00 a.m. Whatever it is. And if that's the reality, like, okay, I want to know that way down the line when I look back and I say, oh, hey, this run was 2% lower. Like, what happens? The DHU in that room sucks and usually cuts out for about 10% of the plants lifecycle. So we lose a couple percent yield. That's the correlation we can establish.

Seth [00:45:15]:
Now, I'm not worried about it now. I just know so I can plan for it.

Tyler Simmons [00:45:19]:
Yeah. Yeah. This, I mean, this seems so simple, but one of the specific things that can really help, you know, your employees alert you to when things are going wrong is just having basic checklists, giving somebody, I mean, first off, like, for anybody that works for you, setting, like, really clear expectations about what they're just directly responsible for and what their expectations are. And so that they're just not dealing with a lot of ambiguity about how they're supposed to be spending their time or what things are important. And then as part of that, to get more specific, having. Having the right tools for them to rely on that allow them to, you know, produce the outcomes that you want. And just like, this is, it seems like the easiest and stupidest thing, but just having a checklist for somebody who, like their first checks when they enter the garden every day, you know, like, go down and check these things. Like, literally check it off on a list.

Tyler Simmons [00:46:19]:
Or if you make a checklist in AROYA, have them check it off on there. And if, like, one of those things isn't right, then it's just like, they know notify you, like, we'll get it fixed or something like that. I think we overlook these really simple tools sometimes, and a lot of it is like the curse of competence, because we've done things for so long that a whole bunch of knowledge becomes, like, completely implicit, intuitive, where it's just operating subconsciously in us. And when that happens, it actually becomes harder to teach. The more implicit and ingrained your knowledge is, the harder it is to consciously think, what are the things that I know and do? How do I teach it to somebody else? Build the systems for that, and then give them the right tools so they can do what you want them to do, whether it's like checklists or. I'm a big fan of having a nice irrigation program calculator that lets you calculate out all of your, all of your event sizes, durations, and intervals for p one s and p two s, and just do it really fast, you know, so it's always consistent. And then, um, using the recipes and templates in arroyo, just, like, so huge, you can set it up so that you've got, like, everything preloaded in there. Like the tasks, you know, if they don't get done, the parameters, if they're out of line, then, you know, it just makes things so much easier for everyone.

Jason [00:47:46]:
It's probably one of the most enjoyable things about our jobs is the fact that, you know, we get to rely on scientists to kind of really stand behind what we're trying to share. You know, it's not like we're inventing anything new. It's just really trying to make it interpretable for our clients.

Tyler Simmons [00:48:03]:
Right.

Jason [00:48:04]:
And some of the best, best agronomic calls that ive been on. Im working with a long term grower, typically not with much ego, and theyll be like, hey, after using Aurora for three months, six months, I had a feeling about something that was happening in the grow room, or something about how plants are responding, and then they get super excited because now theyve validated something that they felt as a grower, and they have the scientific backing or the data backing to be very confident that they were right or sometimes wrong.

Seth [00:48:38]:
Yeah, I think that's something that's important to really pontificate on here. We're not just Arroya, but as an industry the cannabis industry is embracing technology in a way and at an expense that other parts of agriculture just aren't. And one of my favorite things about being engaged in that is watching people leverage technology to increase their productivity and improve their quality of life, because now they're able to not only increase the amount of weight they produce, the quality, but also the consistency. And that consistency, yield to yield. Like, I can't tell you how many growers I've talked to. They're just like, man, if I could just get 2.8 light every time. You know? Like, we've been up to 3.8, we've been down to 1.5, and we're just struggling to keep it the same. And sometimes, you know, a little bit of technology goes a long ways into just, you know, building the foundation of your business and helping make it efficient right off the bat.

Seth [00:49:33]:
Cause that's one thing in the cannabis industry, I think, new build out versus new build out, it's getting better. But every company I've talked to, the tendency is to massively over hire right away or under hire, then over hire, then do this fluctuation thing, man. Even with AROYA managing customer service and client success, I leverage all kinds of tools to help me do mass emails and little bits of my job where I'm like, hey, I can cut down on a lot of hours here. I can reach more people, and I can record things better. So, hey, that lets me be way more productive and takes a lot of stress off my plate, because now I've got something helping me monitor that, helping me keep up to date with all my tasks and everything, and that eventually leads to me not having to work quite as long in the evening every day. Right? Which ultimately feeds into that good feedback loop where, hey, I get to leave work at some point and, you know, go do something that makes me happy.

Tyler Simmons [00:50:31]:
Work doesn't make you happy.

Seth [00:50:32]:
There's a certain amount of satisfaction, but it's like we've been talking, you know, there's a. There's a mental health aspect to not having your entire identity tied up in your livelihood.

Tyler Simmons [00:50:42]:
Yeah.

Seth [00:50:43]:
And I think that's.

Kaisha [00:50:45]:
Oh, go ahead. I'm sorry.

Seth [00:50:46]:
For me, over the years, I've always kind of kept that mentality, and you know what? I've managed to stay employed and not have any major gaps in my adult career. Like it. You know, I. I connect with better people and find more opportunities when I'm in that space. So that's why I always encourage people like, hey, you know, just get. Get your good basis and work hard and then, you know, endeavor to be interesting, sometimes do cool stuff.

Tyler Simmons [00:51:10]:
Wait, wait, Seth. So. So you're telling me that you don't spend all of your free time outside of work just crop steering for fun?

Seth [00:51:17]:
No, no. Strangely enough, dude, it's weird, right? But then when I hit it Monday, dude, I'm stoked. You know, I've been away from it for two days.

Jason [00:51:24]:
He'll be out on the weekend doing raft steering instead.

Tyler Simmons [00:51:27]:
Yeah, that's right.

Seth [00:51:28]:
Coming up. Yeah.

Kaisha [00:51:31]:
This is such a wonderful conversation. Brian and Tyler, I love that you brought this our way just to kind of close it out. You guys want to speak to some strategies for improving mental health, like, just, you know, whether it's personal that you do for yourself or just some general advice?

Bryan Willkomm [00:51:47]:
Well, I mean, working with my sales team, I prioritize their well being because they're just so much more productive when they're in the right state of mind, well rested, and feel empowered to do their job. And so one of the things that we really believe in is continuous improvement and continuous education. And so we're always looking to build the network, educate our team to be the best that they can be, and check in with them on the. What we call internally, you know, is, like, their meds, their. Their meditation, exercise, diet, sleep. These are important to you, just like they're important for our customers to monitor everything going on in their garden. It's kind of like checking in with yourself. And the specific tips that we're trying to create here with the cultivation managers and why we even brought this up as a topic is because of how often we've been hearing these issues amongst our customer base, both prospective and current customers.

Bryan Willkomm [00:52:39]:
And so there is no perfection, necessarily, but it's really about the progress in the process. And I think that applies both in the garden and to our attempts to improve our well being.

Tyler Simmons [00:52:52]:
Yep. Well said. I'll just add on, like, a really broad note that when we think about, you know, improving our own well being, you know, and the well being of people around us, there's. There's very broadly, there's two approaches, two ways you can go about it. One of them is the external approach, which is where you go and you take action, agency in the world, to manipulate the world around you, to, you know, create the conditions that are compatible with you, being happy and satisfied. And that's the external side is like, I'm going to do all of these things, and I'm going to set the world in a way that I'll be happy and have a lot of well being in. And then the other complete strategy is the internal ways, which is reorganizing your mindset and your internal thought patterns and processes so that you're going already to less stress and more comfortable with the way things already are, you know, becoming more comfortable and more at ease with the way the world actually is. And so neither one of these is enough all by itself.

Tyler Simmons [00:54:00]:
We should be doing both of them. And I think for people, just keep an eye out. If you end up getting stuck only doing one or only doing the other one, and try to think about, like, where do I have the opportunity to create the best improvements in well being? Is it by, you know, frantically manipulating the external world more, or do I need to go sit down and, you know, spend 15 minutes doing mindfulness every day?

Seth [00:54:25]:
Absolutely. The way I've been putting into people is sometimes you need to wake up and run away from your problems for a little bit. Literally come back to it, you know, like, that's what it takes, man. Like, get yourself in the right headspace. It will improve your life so much. And, you know, as enthusiastic as. And that's one thing I love about working in this industry compared to traditional egg, where I came from many years ago, like, the. The amount of passion I meet with cannabis growers versus wheat growers, for instance, or guys who grow garbanzo beans is, I mean, it's incomparable.

Seth [00:54:57]:
Uh, but it sets them up for so much more disappointment when they fail that it's like, man, you gotta, really gotta balance that because ultimately what you're doing is cool, it is fun. There's a scientific aspect. We have a lot of problems we get to solve. But, yeah, if you burn out on it now, you're also in a spot where you invested a lot of time into a really niche industry. And unless you're going to go grow berries or something along those lines, another hydroponic system, there's not a lot of transfer over. If you put eight years of your life into this and you were a plumber before, do you want to go back to that? I mean, maybe, maybe not. Like, that's still a good skill you can transfer around, but also right back to that, you know, you. I think that's something to think about.

Seth [00:55:41]:
Anytime anyone's looking at any career, period, it's like, what is the long term satisfaction here? And plan on it. Because to me, you know, running a cultivation facility represents, if you can have a sustainable business, a pretty good career in life opportunity, uh, compared to a lot of other jobs, out there, you know, and it all comes down to planning and systems, right? It's. This isn't the most complicated business to be in, but you can really make it stressful for yourself if you don't plan well, 100%.

Tyler Simmons [00:56:13]:
I'll add on one thing there, which is just. I think it's always good if we don't take ourselves too seriously. You know, we're all less important than we feel like. It's good to remember that once in a while. And I think about that in cannabis, you know, like, yeah, I feel like I'm pretty good at what I do, but I'm definitely not the best at it. There's lots of people that are way better at this than I do, than I am. And even being pretty good at it, it's just like, it wouldn't matter to the world in the slightest bit in the long run of things if I left and went into a different career. It just wouldn't matter.

Seth [00:56:52]:
We'd miss you.

Tyler Simmons [00:56:55]:
It mattered to you guys. But I think. I think about that all the time, and it's kind of liberating once you realize that, right? You're just like, oh, yeah. Just like, my involvement in this whole area is so much less important than it can seem, like on a day to day basis. And when you realize that, you're like, okay, then it really is just about making smart decisions for our lives and the lives of the people around us.

Seth [00:57:28]:
Focus on happiness, always.

Kaisha [00:57:31]:
That is really it.

Seth [00:57:32]:
It's got to be the goals, right? For not trying to be happy. What are we doing?

Kaisha [00:57:37]:
Thank you so much. This is such a great conversation, just not just about cannabis cultivation, but about life. So, really appreciate Brian and Tyler for being on with us today. So now we're going to change things up a little bit. If you guys follow us on instagram, we invited you to post your best cultivation crops are in question, and if they are selected today, you'll be entered into a raffle to win an arroyo go, as well as a front row ag commercial bundle or craft bundle. Brian, tell us about that.

Tyler Simmons [00:58:11]:
Yeah.

Bryan Willkomm [00:58:12]:
So, in addition to the Aurora go system, we'd like to provide either our commercial bundle, which is three bags, 25 pound bags for part a, two bags of our part b, two bags are part bloom. That's our traditional setup for a smaller scale commercial or craft grower bundle, which is going to be our five pound bags of ab and bloom, in addition to our ancillary products. And we really just look to earn the opportunity to interact, show you what we do with our onboarding process, the way that we give dedicated account management to our cultivation managers, and how we try to do things a little bit different as a nutrient company.

Kaisha [00:58:47]:
Amazing. All right, so thank you to everybody who dropped your questions. They were all outstanding, and we're just going to put them in the question bank and try to get to as many of them as we can over time. But we did pick three questions for today. I'm going to go ahead and ask the first one. This one came from tongue stainer. They ask how important are the effects of temperature differential in both veg and flour, and what kind of role does it play or influence during crop steering, if any? So throwing that to the whole panel.

Jason [00:59:17]:
Who wants it first?

Tyler Simmons [00:59:20]:
Go ahead.

Seth [00:59:21]:
All right, I'll take it. Super important, actually. You know, when we lower that temperature, plants, they don't produce a lot of their own internal heat. There's some, but they're not warm blooded like you or I. They're not burning calories to maintain and a constant level of metabolism. So, you know, like in veg, for instance, if we run an overnight diff, that's going to slow down overall metabolic rate. So if we're looking at trying to shorten up our veg time to the shortest possible time, we can put a plant in there and get a satisfactory result, which is our goal in a commercial application. Um, we're not going to run a big overnight diff.

Seth [00:59:51]:
And that's also why we don't really recommend a big overnight differential during generative stretch, because, you know, as much as we talk about plant stress, we're trying to influence that plant to grow with a certain morphology, but we actually still want it to grow at like, the maximum rate possible. Like, we're slowing down cellular stretch, but we're still trying to keep up cellular division, produce more nodes, and still achieve a certain plant size. So, you know, that's, that's a technique that some double stack growers have employed over the years, doing a five to ten degree differential during generative stretch. Um, that's not ideal, but that's a solution for them when they have 48 inches of overhead room and, you know, they're already trying to flip plants right after they have roots, basically, you know, seven to ten day veg, but that's not optimal. Once we're going later into the flowering cycle, you know, we start to introduce that differential and that helps us bring out maturity in the plan, because the plants evolved for millions of years to, you know, bloom in the summer, late summer, heading into fall. It's got a natural response. Not only a natural response, but physiologically, too. When we slow that metabolism down overnight, we're also slowing a lot of the metabolic growth processes.

Seth [01:00:58]:
So part of where that purple comes in, for instance, is we're slowing down everything the plant can do at to build up resistance to that highlight. So that's like, you know, when we're looking at really getting that color, we're looking at really slowing down those processes that an anthocyanin is coming out. It's helping protect the plant from the high light levels we're still exposing it to in the daytime. It's, you know, a suntan's not a direct correlation between us and the plant, but kind of similar. And it's important to understand what the action is. You know, it's. It's not quite as simple as, like, hey, the plant senses its fall, so it's doing a thing. And that's where, you know, when we were just talking about ego earlier, like, start reading more and more and more about plant physiology.

Seth [01:01:38]:
One of the best things you can do is pick up a book that has nothing to do with cannabis and just talks about plant biology. That way, you can start to see, you know, hey, what. What am I seeing here? I ran a little bit lower differential or higher differential and stretched, let's say I tried to run ten degrees compared to last run. My plants grew slower. Now, you know, there's that light bulb moment where you're starting to connect plant processes to actual morphological changes that you're seeing. We could probably go on a lot about temperature if we want to, but those differentials are hugely important. And don't discount how important they are, especially when we started talking earlier about humidity capacity, for instance, or dehumidification capacity. Hey, you're not getting your purple.

Seth [01:02:21]:
Well, hey, man, if you go to 65, you mold out your whole crop. That's also not worth it, minimizing risk.

Kaisha [01:02:31]:
Awesome. All right, thank you for that. Question number two was submitted from deer in the garden. They wrote, how dry can we go with drybacks without interfering with plant physiological growth responses?

Jason [01:02:47]:
Yeah, I love this question, mostly because I love talking about matrix potential. And that's really the answer, right. It's going to depend on the substrate that you're working with. Uh, because what's going on there in, with matrix potentials, it's the. The vacuum that the roots have to apply to the substrate in order to draw water out of it. Right. And so, in most all substrates, as we decrease in water content, we're going to have a lower value for our matrix potential. That's because it's a vacuum, so it's a negative pressure.

Jason [01:03:20]:
And at a certain matrix potential, we're going to hit temporary wilting point. If we keep going farther without getting a refreshment of water, we're going to hit permanent wilting point. Obviously, there are certain strategies, especially in traditional agriculture, where we're using irrigation deficits in order to hit that right on that level of temporary wilting point for most hydroponic substrates, we're not quite there. And that's where we're using things like osmotic differential to help and environmental parameters to help do the steering of that crop to, you know, influence a hormonal response, get that plant to react physiologically so that we get the desired morphology out of it. And so, you know, those levels are, like I said, very specific to the type of substrate that you're working in. Obviously, when we're looking at something like Rockwool, it is very, very low in water content. Typically, you know, we're talking about under ten, under 5% for Rockwell. And those are the ranges that we're going to be seeing hydrophobic properties develop in the Rockwell.

Jason [01:04:35]:
And that's a pretty big no no. Unless we're in the last, just few days of the cycle, that's going to be a serious hindrance for our ability to get back up to field capacity and stay on the type of steering strategies, the irrigation schedules that we have developed for it. And then things for like coco. Coco is usually going to be a little bit higher. When we see that matrix potential. It actually has a little bit of an elbow in the curves when we graph matrix potential versus water content. And another thing, there is little slight differences in coco depending on our pith chip manufacturer. But usually we start to see those matrix potentials decrease quickly, become more negative quickly, typically in that anywhere between ten and 20%, depending on the type of coco.

Seth [01:05:24]:
Yeah, it's important to note, you know, once we hit that, that hockey stick or the elbow in that matrix potential curve, we're hitting a point where we're past efficiency for the plant. So we're not, you know, we're actually losing energy comparatively, dipping into that territory. And there's oftentimes not a real benefit to really running things to the ragged edge of temporary wilting point. And the, that, and that's why we always say, or I say it a lot, we always say plant stress. I don't, it's, yeah, we don't a lot. There's a lot of wordage in the industry about that. And we're actually not trying to stress it. It's more like working out.

Seth [01:05:57]:
You know, you don't want to go to the gym and work out until you're dead for the next week. You want to work out till you put a little bit, a little bit of that appropriate work into those muscles, get just enough effect, and then actually have a good recovery time. You know, if you, um. I haven't been running away from my problems every day, so if I go run 10 miles tomorrow morning, I'm going to have a bad week. Right. I should probably go, like, run a mile. Uh, and that's, you know, plants are kind of the same way, and we have such a short time period. We're growing these things, you know, 60 to 70 days in flower max.

Seth [01:06:29]:
Like, that's each day is way more than 1% of that plants, you know, productive life cycle that we're focusing on, you know, even, even if we include Vegas. So anytime we dip out of efficiency range, and that's, you know, at either end of the spectrum, whether we're talking about water content, ec, we're leaving grams on the table, or we're leaving quality. One of the two, right?

Tyler Simmons [01:06:52]:
Yeah, that's, that's really well said. I don't really have anything to add to that other than just, there's a really, there's a couple of really great papers out there that show these curves that we're describing where you can see the, like, the, the substrate, the differences and different substrates and how low the water content can go, and they'll still yield water. And just like, just like these guys said, it's like, if you ever get down so low that the plant can't get water out of the substrate, well, you've not only have you harmed the plant, but long before that, you've harmed your substrate. And it's just like, I think our tendencies a lot of the time, um, when people learn about crop steering and drybacks, is to think like, okay, well, a little bit of dryback, that's good. So we'll just go more extreme, and we'll get even better results. And that is, like, most definitely not the case. It's just like, this is another application of, like, upside downside risk, where your upside potential of, like, pushing your dry backs a little bit farther is, like, really, really small, is like, is applying a tiny bit more stress going to get you a little bit better stacking or something like that?

Seth [01:08:05]:
I dont know.

Tyler Simmons [01:08:06]:
It just seems like, trivial amount of increase, but the downside potential if you do that is maybe you just dropped, you went too low early in your week, two of flower in your rockwool, and you dropped your field capacity or your effective field capacity, or the volume of substrate thats even accessible to the plant roots for the rest of the cycle. And you just handicapped your yield, maximum potential yield by 25%. So just like I think it's a really important area to think about, this just is it worth the risk trying to push to really, really low water content levels?

Seth [01:08:44]:
Yeah. Focus more on the minimum. You want to achieve that ten to 15% more than the maximum end because that's so dependent on plant and pot size and what media you're in. And I think there's a lot of hype around just the term dryback because we're putting numbers on it. It's something measurable and it's not kind of this like, oh, hey, the rooms. How does it feel? This isn't how it feels, it's a number. And, uh, man, whether it's yields, potency, or drybacks, we all want to brag about a big number, right? That's just what it is.

Jason [01:09:16]:
Don't irrigate till your feels like this.

Seth [01:09:18]:
Yeah.

Tyler Simmons [01:09:21]:
I drive back 110% of the time away every time. That's how you do it.

Jason [01:09:26]:
Getting after it. That's a lot of crop steering, he added.

Seth [01:09:29]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kaisha [01:09:31]:
All right. And actually, on that note, we got one more question to ask, and this one came from Ashley. I think it's IPA Christensen. They wrote, based on your experience, what are the most common challenges growers face when implementing crop steering? Can you offer any practical tips for troubleshooting these issues?

Jason [01:09:50]:
Probably. Understanding uniformity and consistency would probably be the ones that I would approach first. And it's something that we work with clients to make sure that they have addressed before they do any purposeful crop steering changes to their existing program. If I have a large deviation across the population of my plants when I start crop steering, we are going to get some plants that dry back too far and we're going to jeopardize the substrate. If I have certain clogged emitters across the room, I might start to get into EC ranges that really are not desirable and or those water content issues. What does the spatial variation of my room temperatures or humidities look like? And so for me, it would be all right, well, let's, let's take a snapshot right now. Understand, what is the uniformity? Obviously, since most production facilities are working with clones, we kind of got a leg up on typical, typical biological analytics simply because they are closely related in their genetic makeup. So that is helpful.

Jason [01:10:53]:
But then obviously, we have factors of what is the consistency of our substrates? What is the consistency of our processes? Are we really good at cutting clones? And then it comes down to the consistency over time. Can we do those processes repeatably on a day to day to day to day basis, and then can we do them on a run to run to run basis? And if both of those are in good shape, then, you know, it is time to start saying, let's push the envelope of crop steering so that we can improve what we've built on.

Tyler Simmons [01:11:31]:
Yeah, that's really well said. I mean, if you don't. If your data is not of high enough quality to make decisions on reliably, then it doesn't matter if you have the perfect crop steering protocol, it's going to fail. And that uniformity and consistency is so, so key to make sure that, like, you know, we can't have a sensor in every single plant, unfortunately. So, you know, we're taking. Yeah, yeah. All right, all right. That's a good deal right there.

Tyler Simmons [01:12:05]:
But most people, you know, you're not going to get a sensor for every single plant. So you're taking a very limited sample and you're hoping that it reflects the overall average of the room and the plants with not a huge amount of variation from plant to plant. And if for some reason you know, any of those things that you mentioned, like drippers, substrate, initial starting conditions for the substrate, wind, air movement, light intensity, all of those things, if they're not, you know, decently uniform, so that the data you're looking at on your screen is representative of what most of the plants are experiencing, then your crop steering, it's just not going to work.

Seth [01:12:48]:
Oh, absolutely. Personally, I think reliability of your system, redundancy and good human decision making are probably the three biggest things that people battle. That's something that, like, you know, their salespeople over the years, we've definitely coached them a little bit. Like, hey, guys, so here's this thing. You'll sell someone a 50 grand system, and then a month later I tell them to spend another 100 grand on their irrigation to redo the whole thing in the facility. So it's led to this idea like, hey, we want data. Absolutely. But start to think about the things that really, really are problems in your facility.

Seth [01:13:23]:
So, number one, data is going to help you a lot identify those. But sometimes if you just do a little bit of reading, a little bit of looking around, maybe have a buddy come over and check out your place versus theirs. You might be able to find something like, hey, we do need the data but our vp's at like 0.8 is as high as we can ever get it. Okay, well, you can't crop steer in that situation, you know, I mean you are always crop steering but you're steering towards a poor result if you can't get your VPD above, you know, 1.21.3 in the daytime minimum. So hey, solve that problem. You know, don't, don't think that there's one magic bullet here. It's a very holistic system and you're responsibility as an operator if you want to stay in this the long run, is to think sustainably and really, really minimize any of those risk chances. Its kind of what weve been talking about the whole time here is minimizing risk.

Seth [01:14:14]:
Theres a lot of us out there that have gone to, okay, whats your business model? Do you sell joints and extracts. Okay, dont prune it up. Like why? Well, youre running 14 strains. Youve got new people coming through all the time. Youre probably losing more by trying to teach them to do every strain perfectly. Then you would be harvesting a little b and C grade and throwing it to extract, you know, and that's a, that's a hard decision to make, right. Because then you walk into that room and it doesn't look just on point, you know, you're like, ah, this is a little, little overgrown, a little messy. You know, I want this room to look cleaner.

Seth [01:14:49]:
But hey, okay, the dollars and cents add up. You know, I'm, I'm paying people to throw away products. That, that sucks. I'll stop doing that. And like I said, that's right back to that ego thing. We all want to walk into a beautiful room every single day and sometimes, hey, problems happen.

Kaisha [01:15:09]:
Amazing. Thank you guys so much for answering this question. So I have minimized risk and put those three names into a hat so we could pick a winner right now live in the show. So let's see, who's it going to be? All right, dear in the garden asking, how dry can we go with drybacks? Congratulations, you just won. So we're going to reach out to you on Instagram, get your contact info, send you some real goodies, really excited. Thank you again to everybody who entered and thank you guys for answering these wonderful questions. What an awesome show. Thank you so much for joining us.

Kaisha [01:15:50]:
Tyler and Brian from front row ag being part of our hundredth episode let the folks know where to find you guys website. Instagram.

Bryan Willkomm [01:15:58]:
Yeah, Instagram. Front, underscore row, underscore ag and frontrow ag.com. And check out our technician training. That's free for any customer, frontrowag.com dot. You can get linked through there. And additional questions that you may have for Tyler. You can reach us through there through a commercial application.

Kaisha [01:16:16]:
All right, fantastic.

Tyler Simmons [01:16:18]:
And I'm available through front row egg through those channels. Also my Instagram, Tyler incognita. You can just see some of the stuff I post up on there.

Kaisha [01:16:29]:
Oh, and it's glorious. You want to follow that? For sure. All right. And then one more announcement before we go. Be sure to check out our go and arroy a course specials this month only. Contact our sales team at Salesroya IO to learn more. All right. With that, thank you, Jason, Seth, producer Chris, for an epic 100th session.

Kaisha [01:16:50]:
I am grateful to be on this journey with such an awesome team. And we want to thank all the gromies so much for joining us for this week's AROYA office hours and all of them. We could not do this without you. To learn more about AROYA, book a demo at AROYA IO and our team will show you the ins and outs of the ultimate cannabis cultivation platform. If you have any crop steering or cultivation questions you want us to cover, and we have so many in the bank. Thanks, y'all. Drop them anytime in the AROYA app. Email us at salesroya IO and or send us a DM via Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

Kaisha [01:17:20]:
We want to hear from you. If you're a fan of the pod, please leave us a review on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts. We appreciate your feedback. And be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel so you never miss an episode. Thanks, y'all. See it at episode 101. Take care. Bye.