OHL 57 TX (AI generated)
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[00:00:00] Kaisha: All right, it's Thursday, 4:20 PM Eastern. That means it's time for office hours. You're sourced for free cannabis cultivation education. I'm Kaisha one of your co moderators today and we missed y'all. I hope the feeling's mutual, right? Mandy?

[00:00:15] Mandy: Oh my gosh. I was just about to say that. Oh, we missed you guys two weeks off.

[00:00:19] Mandy: There's so much going on in the questions right now. But yeah, we're here for episode 57. We're super psyched to be back. But y'all know how we do it. We're going live over on YouTube [00:00:30] momentarily, so if you're logging on with us over there, make sure you get your questions to us and I'll get those to the team.

[00:00:35] Mandy: If you're active on social media, make sure you're following us on all the platforms. So we're on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn and Social Club. But I also heard we have a special guest on the show today, so I won't waste any more time. I'll throw it back to you, Kaisha.

[00:00:49] Kaisha: Thank you Mandy. Seth, and Jason are in the house, in the studio.

[00:00:52] Kaisha: How are you guys doing?

[00:00:54] Jason: Pretty good. Good.

[00:00:56] Kaisha: You wanna tell us who we have on the show today?

[00:00:58] Jason: We have Anna Wiley, [00:01:00] founder and c e o of Cam. Been a long time, great client of ours, and we are very appreciative for her time to be with us today.

[00:01:11] Anna: Oh, thanks guys. Thank you.

[00:01:13] Seth: Thank you for being here, Anna. I really appreciate it too.

[00:01:16] Seth: I, it's been, I don't know why we've gone this long without having you on here.

[00:01:20] Anna: I really appreciate it. I'm super excited. I tune to you guys and there's always great conversations and just having some different perspectives and learning from all the people that [00:01:30] you have on here. It's been.

[00:01:32] Kaisha: Yeah, we're thrill to have you. I got my gelato and runts on the program. Also, just to show that I'm a fan of the brand. I haven't tried any for today, but coming. Yeah, I'm Pacific. But Anna, the last time we saw you was when we came to your facility for a case study visit last year. You were just building it out. Give us some updates.

[00:01:53] Kaisha: What's been going on with you the last year?

[00:01:55] Anna: All right, so we finally finished construction. I would [00:02:00] say pretty much on schedule. We got our temporary certificate of occupancy, our TCO in January. We also got all our state licenses. We have 700 of the 2000 lights filled. We are filling a room every nine days.

[00:02:17] Anna: We have five dry rooms, so we're just working. On our our filling schedule as that occurs. Like most grow facilities, we're actually still finishing a little bit of construction on the south [00:02:30] side of the building, . So that's been kind of fun to have our construction crew and our cultivation team all enjoying time together under one house, being facetious about that

[00:02:43] Anna: But we should have our like mechanical final here on the south side, but we're in it and we are learning all the trials and tribulations of operating out of, in New Skid and and going from there. So. [00:03:00]

[00:03:01] Kaisha: Amazing. Congratulations on that. I would love for, we, we did do a case stand on you.

[00:03:06] Kaisha: I'll drop it in the chat in a minute, but let's go back in time. What is your origin story? How'd you get into cultivation?

[00:03:13] Anna: Okay, so I have al, I've lo I love weed. I've always been interested in cannabis. I went, I grew up in New York City. I came to Colorado in 1998 and I did my master's in Applied [00:03:30] Math.

[00:03:30] Anna: And during that period of time I. Had some really great mentors that, you know, just doing some hobby growing. Four lighters, six lighters. I finished out my degree. I started in software in as a software engineer for many years and kind of did some hobby growing at night, like most people did prior to rules and regulations.

[00:03:55] Anna: I will continue to say you learn a lot about looking at plants. [00:04:00] Commercial cultivation has, I think that there's not that much to share between growing in a home and commercial cultivation because after a while it really becomes, running teams and running environments. But you know, the love of the plant is still there and just needs to transfer.

[00:04:17] Anna: In 2009, Colorado came out with their rules and regulations for legalized cannabis. I took my savings that I had and [00:04:30] got a 5,000 square foot. Cultivation facility. Didn't know anything about building out spaces except for what I had done in basements. So I basically built eight small basements in a 5,000 square foot facility.

[00:04:46] Anna: At that point also got a medical store in Denver, Colorado, and that's where Cam started in 2009. And it took us [00:05:00] about I would say like a year and a half to kind of get up and going. And it just, it's, it was amazing Between 2009 and 2015 we grew to 1,140 flowering lights, three cultivation facilities, two stores.

[00:05:17] Anna: I exited outta Colorado in 2016 and came to Sacramento and got a 30,000 square foot warehouse here. And that's where California Artisanal Medicine, also known as Cam [00:05:30] started in California. And it's been a really wild ride from 2018 to now.

[00:05:39] Kaisha: Amazing. All right, well, so you're scaling. Let's talk about that experience. Let's get into,

[00:05:46] Anna: All right. Scaling is hard. You, I will say with just one facility, you really get comfortable with your processes and your people. We do all our own distribution, so I think it's been great to kind of just feel our way through [00:06:00] running 600 lights.

[00:06:03] Anna: When you scale, it's exciting for your team, but it's also really hard. So kind of everything that you were doing on a 500 light facility level, going to 2000 lights, you just basically, you're four, five xing it everything changes from like your holding tanks to the skids you're using.

[00:06:23] Anna: I think that there's a lot of safety and we've been using AROYA for. [00:06:30] Three and a half years now. And being able to grow with the technology platform as well has been amazing. And learning how we can utilize the data to our best ability has made us comfortable to, to go into a 2000 light facility.

[00:06:46] Anna: So, every building is different, so we're learning our way around around this one for sure. Everything from having issues with like our internet and how that can affect [00:07:00] your repeaters and your environmental controls to just, software in general and that, and then ramping up, people, hiring really fast and getting teams to work together is, has also been challenging, but still fun.

[00:07:20] Anna: It's been an amazing experience and we're excited to see what this year kind of holds for us.

[00:07:28] Kaisha: Amazing. I'm gonna keep asking [00:07:30] questions, but like the team, feel free to just jump in. But I wanna talk about genetics too. Like, I mean, Sacramento is definitely on the map here in California. Let's, I have my gelato runs. I also like r e m from Cam, but yeah let's, what are you growing?

[00:07:46] Anna: What I will say, I think the number one thing, at least our strategy for strain selection, this has been super hard for cultivation, which is to what I call grow as many strains as [00:08:00] possible and see what sticks.

[00:08:01] Anna: I think that people, which has been just been reeks havoc on the cultivation team, because let's just be honest, if you're, you wanna run something three or four times so you can get data on it and then actually, release it into the world. What we do is we change our menu a as if it's literally a restaurant seasonally.

[00:08:22] Anna: So we're bringing in anywhere between 12 and 15 strains. I think the best thing about scaling is that we're gonna be able [00:08:30] to run in like run like almost like 40, 50 cultivars at one time, but still have, still only have maybe three strains in a room, right? So I think that's the big, and kind of grouping strains together that, that finish, that maybe your dry backs are similar, canopy is similar that you have that they kind of stop scratching at the same time.

[00:08:56] Anna: And that's kind of hard to do when you're constantly changing your strains. , [00:09:00] the cannabis market in California is extremely demanding. The stores, after they've had a strain like three times, they're like I'm good. .

[00:09:11] Anna: They want something new right away. So.

[00:09:15] Mandy: Well, let's keep talking about the strains that you're seeing out there.

[00:09:18] Mandy: What's really popular? What do you see selling?

[00:09:20] Anna: So we have gone, like, we have a Bubba's girl. Like, I'm trying to, I know I've grown a lot of older strains too, right? Like pre Bubba 98 [00:09:30] and sour Diesels and I think that, and OGs, but I think that paired with some of the newer stuff we're growing lots of things from J B Z.

[00:09:42] Anna: We're growing a lot of stuff from no labs. We are uncle dad vibes. He's, they've been putting out a ton of interesting crosses with chauffeur. , we still have kind of like the stuff that we've been growing for years with Cushman's. I'm really hoping this is [00:10:00] the year that testing is not at the forefront of selling product.

[00:10:07] Anna: So that there's some amazing strains out there that don't test at 30 plus percent t a c. It's hard to grow a lot of those strains because they don't sell at the store. So, we're always, because we do our own sales and distribution, we're always trying to keep all of our retail people in mind.[00:10:30]

[00:10:31] Seth: Yeah I gotta say Anna, it's definitely frustrating that you have to go by the market sometimes. And unfortunately for the last couple years it has been T HC or T H C A numbers, right? Which we kind of all know don't necessarily translate to the smoke.

[00:10:44] Anna: Well, my first year in 2018, I came out here with a suitcase of like 19 different OGs.

[00:10:49] Anna: Let me just tell you no one wanted them. So , so I had like SFB 92 BioD, I mean just like st like really older stuff that was [00:11:00] doing great in Colorado. It is kind of cool with our expansion to coming back into some of these states to see what people are still growing, believe it or not, in the Midwest.

[00:11:10] Anna: Like everyone still loves Blue Dreams, super lemon haze, like Tangerine Haze. It's like, and a lot of those strains have such great attributes. I mean, they're resistant to a lot of shit. . So, I'm sorry, . Cause they're resistant to a lot of issues that we see with [00:11:30] brand new strains, right? Here I'm not I mean, we're growing so many versions of runs and L c g

[00:11:37] Anna: All right, I'm just gonna put it out there. All right. We are living in the world of candy gas. Some weeks, too much gas, some weeks not enough gas or not enough candy. I dunno, guys. , . But it's it's been a pretty interesting roller [00:12:00] coaster of like what's hot and what's not, right. And but what the beauty of Of being able to package your product.

[00:12:09] Anna: The number one cool thing about having a brand is that you can actually still grow some things that aren't purple . So yes, I'm growing some green weed and I'm packaging some of it and people actually like it. So Georgia Pie z Skittles, a lot of Z Skittle crosses. Like, I still really believe [00:12:30] in the fact that it is how it smokes, right?

[00:12:34] Anna: I mean, I'm Indian. I wouldn't say Indian food has the best appeal for looking at it, , but it tastes good, right? So, and it's, and same thing with cannabis. At the end of the day, it's gotta smoke well. .

[00:12:50] Seth: Yeah, I think the purple thing's really interesting cuz in my experience, purple tends to be a little harsher compared to the same variety and not grown to purple up and,

[00:12:59] Anna: Absolutely. [00:13:00] And if they're not naturally purple, I mean, you're basically just pulling out the humidity and how hard your dry backs can be. And or I mean, when people say they're cooling down a room, they're really just sucking out the humidity. Super cold temps retards the plant. Let's just be real with it.

[00:13:15] Anna: Yeah,

[00:13:15] no,

[00:13:16] Seth: it slows growth. It's less reality growth.

[00:13:18] Anna: It's the reality of it. It, there definitely when there wasn't this like urge to get to a certain grams per square foot. I think that [00:13:30] people ne I, what I have seen though is that some of these cultivars won't produce as much, which I think is actually might be a good thing.

[00:13:37] Anna: We, we definitely have a little bit of a saturated market . So, we need better product, not more of it.

[00:13:46] Jason: So I've got a question from the cultivator side, and you touched on a little bit about how it is more difficult to run that many cultivars and introducing as many as you do.

[00:13:57] Jason: How do you know how to run a cult bar [00:14:00] the first time that you get it going?

[00:14:02] Anna: Okay. So we I try to just take it right down the middle. Right. Which is not too like super heavy. P F D not super heavy. We have what we have in our rooms, so we're getting the cult of ours to fit our room.

[00:14:20] Anna: Okay. So, how does it do in our environment? , I mean, you'll go over to somebody else's spot or see the end product and be like, oh, this looks great. But then, maybe in your [00:14:30] room, depending on your light layout, whether you're five and five and a half, off center, or you're four and four and a half off center, if you have a 1200 P F D, your thousand P F D, depending on where you're placing the strain in a room.

[00:14:42] Anna: And it, and that is just like luck of the draw. That's what I'm saying. It's super hard because after the first round you'll have sales and sales assist being like, oh yeah, no one liked that. I'm like, it was the first round , or the second round or the third round. Like, [00:15:00] gimme at least like.

[00:15:01] Anna: A year. Right.

[00:15:02] Seth: Yeah. Keep telling us why pheno hunts are so hard. .

[00:15:06] Anna: Yeah. Yeah. A year and a half. Year and a half. At least. At least. And that's if you don't herm out your entire room. So, there's a lot of that too, so,

[00:15:16] Seth: oh, yeah. I think something I find really important in the industry right now, and kind of sum it up here when you're trying to progress strains through really quickly, and that's what the de market's demanding these days.

[00:15:26] Seth: Let's be realistic. Five, six years ago, everyone wanted to have their [00:15:30] 10 or 20 strains that were, that our house strains and our specialty. Right? Well, low and behold it's just like the pre-roll joint market. If you'd asked me five years ago, I would've said, that's going nowhere. Well, five years later,

[00:15:42] Anna: guess what? It's almost the number one. Yeah. It is literally that, it's like almost the number one selling thing in stores today because a lot of people aren't rolling joints. Right. They're not. Of that stuff, so,

[00:15:55] Seth: oh yeah. And it's, I mean, for all of us that like enjoyed cannabis before [00:16:00] legalization, that seemed like a silly question. Post.

[00:16:02] Seth: You look at like your average consumer effort, put in what they want, which is to go to the store, walk away with something to smoke or ingest in some way that's easier, right? But I think what this really highlights is data when you're at scale, when you're trying to produce and keep up with the market, data is equally as important as fertilizer.

[00:16:21] We can,

[00:16:22] Anna: I would say it's more so because then it's really being able to control your environment and all [00:16:30] on at a real time over multiple rooms, right? You're not dealing with four or five rooms. You're dealing with like 30 rooms, 40 rooms, right? And then also from a dry room perspective, I think the number one thing that I would like to talk about is that post-processing.

[00:16:45] Anna: it's just as important as cultivation. Like, and all the tools that you're gonna have environmentally in your dry room from top to bottom is also super important to monitor and how you're trimming the product, how quickly you can get it to the [00:17:00] customer before it gets old.

[00:17:01] ,

[00:17:01] Jason: so it 30 rooms. How does your team process this data to make good decisions going forward?

[00:17:08] Anna: Well, we're only, well we're only almost 10, so , but it will be the type of scaling. Yeah. Okay. Yep. Yep.

[00:17:18] Anna: We want to have a lot of organization in who's looking at the data and tons of communication. So I think that's [00:17:30] like a big thing with this many rooms. So the folks that are working in the rooms, making sure that they feel comfortable to be able to tell kind of cultivation what's wrong in the room, right?

[00:17:39] Anna: Because there's so many zones and there's so much, right? So it's just making sure that the folks that are in there Defoliating leaving putting on Trellis, I mean that there's tons of communication between the groups.

[00:17:55] Kaisha: Anna, we have a couple of questions actually that are folks are submitted asking about [00:18:00] your operation. Can I get those going? Bilbo is on with us. He has a couple. I'm gonna just like dive right in with this first one. Is there a tried and true cultivar that you are seeing in the 202,000 light shops that is keeping the lights on?

[00:18:16] Anna: No, I wish there was, there. I, it, a lot of times people will say, if I just got X right, if I just get Rs of love, if I just get this drain, then everybody's gonna Right. And I think that it's really about what grows best in your [00:18:30] facility and who your customers are. And knowing that. So, I think it's the turn and having the newness of different strains and then making sure what you're putting into the jar is a decent product every time.

[00:18:43] Anna: And that way people find brand trust, so they're like, okay, well, I'll try something new. Like I usually buy whatever Bubba's Grill or Cushman's or re you know, REM or one of these strains that, that's been around for a while, but I'm okay to try Zao Gelato. I'm [00:19:00] okay to try Georgia Pi z Skittles, right?

[00:19:02] Anna: I'm okay to pie, try something else from this brand because Mo nine times out 10 it's pretty decent. So, and I like what I'm seeing, right? Four nugs in under looks good, smells good, tastes good, hits all those factors.

[00:19:17] Seth: I think you nailed something, Anna, that I like to tell a lot of clients who I meet that are just starting out in the commercial industry and that's be very cautious and protective of your brand because there's so many, [00:19:30] in any wreck market there hits a point within a year or two where there's so many brands in the store and there's so much strain crossover between brands that, I mean, you're.

[00:19:40] Seth: I can't tell you how many different brands of great cannabis that I've encountered, but I won't hear, but I can name a few that I'll never buy again, and I can guarantee those problems came in post-production. Yeah. It looks okay in the jar, but then you open it, it's too dry or too wet, and you're like, ah, these guys, I don't know, I'm not gonna buy it anymore.

[00:19:59] Anna: Yeah. [00:20:00] And even for our quality control team, just to be able to pick up any jar, like what I love is like they like when you guys came and I just wanted to go and just grab some samples Right. For the AROYA team that I didn't have to like, go through eight to be like, okay, are, is this one good?

[00:20:15] Anna: Right. That I collectively pick from seven or eight strains and they're all like, pretty decent. And that makes me happy and I know that my team's doing a great job.

[00:20:24] Seth: Well, yeah, and it's a new aspect, right? Because even even if we go back to the medical dispensaries, there's a lot of [00:20:30] deli style, a lot of like, Hey, we're gonna get this bulk product to a point and then deliver it to an endpoint.

[00:20:36] Seth: Then I don't have to worry about it to take care.

[00:20:38] Anna: Don't worry your packaging somewhere, and it's not gonna come back to me. And so what's interesting is to, be able to understand that you're gonna get, you're gonna get, you need to take that feedback. You can't be scared of the feedback, even if it's bad, right?

[00:20:53] Anna: You gotta address it. And knowing that, like, if you put something bad into the jar, you're gonna hear about it and you're gonna hear [00:21:00] about it from a. , weeks on hand inventory from a store, right? Like, how long has a product been sitting in on the shelf? Why did these string, why did these two strings sit on the shelf longer than everybody else's?

[00:21:12] Jason: Yeah. And the product might not come back too, but your buyers might not come back as well.

[00:21:16] Anna: Yeah. They might not make another order. You know what I'm saying? And I think that's and then you gotta have a sales and distribution team that's going to be talking to those people and making sure if there are strains that are sitting on the shelf or didn't do as well, you're giving the store credit.[00:21:30]

[00:21:30] Anna: You're like you're taking it off the shelf, right? That you're not just gonna sit there and be like, well, that's not my problem anymore. Well, that person's not gonna come back to buy your product. And that's really the most important thing.

[00:21:41] Absolutely.

[00:21:42] Kaisha: Yeah. I got another question from Bilbo.

[00:21:44] Kaisha: I really love these questions he submitted cuz it really gets to the meat of like, just like doing business, right? He wrote in being a vertically integrated company, does your current production capacity outpace your sales in the retail? And if yes, do you sell to other retailers?

[00:21:59] Anna: So with [00:22:00] 2000 lights, I can tell you we'll be doing every type of business, right?

[00:22:04] Anna: We'll be doing white labeling. Right now we've been really cautious with 600 lights. It's been a perfect, we're in 310 stores. We basically sell out of everything that we're growing. But it's not, Too much to say that we have to package every single one to meet, to meet our demands.

[00:22:21] Anna: So we, can still sell a little bit of, a little bit of bulk when it's not good enough to put in the jars. And that's okay to say that too. Here we're gonna have [00:22:30] obviously quite a bit more product, but that gives us like the ability to work with tons of other brands. It gives us the ability to make new brands just kind of other parts of the business that we haven't really gotten into.

[00:22:42] Anna: And all this, all these years when everybody was selling bulk, we never really did that. So it'll be kind of fun to go back to selling some bulk For sure.

[00:22:53] Seth: Capture the market from all angles.

[00:22:56] Anna: Yeah, exactly.

[00:22:57] Kaisha: . Yeah. People are getting more creative, right? Like I'm hearing, I'm [00:23:00] seeing a lot more collaborations between brands.

[00:23:02] Kaisha: Yeah. It's really special.

[00:23:04] Anna: Yeah, I do too. I do too. And I think that if you just partner with, like, people that you like working with and I think that's what makes it kind of cool being a woman in cannabis. Have a little bit of a gentle, more gentle approach and it's not so, competitive that you just wanna work with people and it's a little more, warm and collaborative.

[00:23:29] Kaisha: let me on [00:23:30] those lines. Being a woman in cannabis, a woman of color in cannabis let's hear about your journey. This is not the most diverse industry.

[00:23:36] Anna: I wouldn't say that, but I will tell you that my experience has been different and I'm only here to talk about my experience. I have had some amazing, I mean, first of all, most of our cultivation staff isn't male and has been.

[00:23:51] Anna: We're working actively to kind of bring in more women into that. But I love working with guys and some [00:24:00] of my best friends and my best mentors in cannabis have been men. And I've had a ton of respect. I think it's a lot easier to come from someone that already has a ton of experience, and that's probably why I.

[00:24:12] Anna: Experience some of the negative aspects. I'm sure there is. I'm not trying to deny that there's not, any of that out there. But my experience has been super, super positive and I've been really lucky to work with some great people.

[00:24:28] Kaisha: That says a lot for someone like [00:24:30] me, I mean, I'm looking up to your journey that I'm inspired by your journey, so I love it.

[00:24:34] Kaisha: It's for me. It's great to see you walking in authority at the trade shows.

[00:24:40] Anna: Yeah, just feels good. Yeah. Yeah. It feels good, doesn't it? Yeah. There's definitely some boss bitch efforts there. .

[00:24:47] Kaisha: Alright, I got one more question here from Bilbo that I wanna ask. He asked, do you have more than one cultivar per irrigation zone?

[00:24:54] Anna: Never. We never do that. That's a ti Like we, we have in desperate [00:25:00] situations when we have like, either have like had an issue with moms or or we're just really just trying to see if something's even gonna, like we have like six clones of something. Right? But we're really trying to do in the 500 light facility, two, every strain gets two benches, two zones.

[00:25:21] Anna: So we can kind of see where it's, how it's, and how it's kind of living in the middle of the room or at the end of the room, that kind of, that, and having 'em side by side. [00:25:30] But we are trying to keep the same cult bar in each cell.

[00:25:35] Seth: That's why we love working with Anna. We don't have to tell her anything that's normal common sense like that. you're awesome too. Bilbo.

[00:25:43] Anna: No, but I de I definitely have in my younger years when I was growing in, he, you have like a gajillion different plants not understanding why that's a bad idea. . So, and what's amazing is that we've set up our skid here [00:26:00] and we're able to feed by recipe in this warehouse.

[00:26:02] Anna: So that's really cool. All of our irrigation is, you can just send a recipe whatever you'd like, whether it's three o e c or you're dumbing it down to two five. We don't believe in flush here, so, Go from there. ,

[00:26:19] Kaisha: Jason. So happy .

[00:26:22] Anna: Not believe in I, I like big girls and I like to feed my women a lot of [00:26:30] food.

[00:26:30] Anna: Who wants to starve people out? Guys, I'm in the business of feeding.

[00:26:36] Seth: Well, I think we talked about earlier that post-production, there's nothing more disappointing than doing a hard flush than seeing this stuff mold in the dry room, right? You're like my art.

[00:26:45] Anna: Yeah. Well, my whole thing is like, you're just basically, it's like, okay, well it's, I call it a cannibalistic approach,

[00:26:51] Anna: Like, they believe me though. I know a ton of people that are still going to zero and feeding [00:27:00] literally water at the end. And I'm like, well, you're literally cannibalizing the plant's gonna start eating itself. , what do I know?

[00:27:09] Seth: Well, it just takes a few times I think of going it, and that's where we see, I think a lot of as scaling progresses in the industry, there's a big disconnection between different departments.

[00:27:19] Seth: Some people have their prop and veg department that takes care of their moms and clones and veg. Then the flower department, that's its own cultivation crew, and then they pass off right away to [00:27:30] post-production. So sometimes you have a disconnect where post production's pulling this stuff down, they notice it's molding.

[00:27:35] Seth: They just blame the cultivators, the coulter's bators blame the post-production. You're like, all right guys, we need to have like a little crossover here so we all understand what's going on, and then get to the root of the problem.

[00:27:45] Anna: Yeah, we do that and we have like, I mean, we do some very basic stuff where we have like our head of post-processing make sure that they include ev a lot of folks in cultivation to talk about what's going on in post-processing.

[00:27:58] Anna: , literally on a [00:28:00] day by day basis for trimming. We have trim logs that everybody has access to so they can, it's just more of like an open door policy for our company so that everyone can see It's not this like secret, like what was, what came out of this room? We want everybody to know, right.

[00:28:15] Anna: And say, how can we make it better? Right. We had some issues. Let's try more. And and that's the beauty of what we get out of AROYA is that not only there's like, there's some task schedule management, but there's also just being able to look back. We just [00:28:30] recently looked back at. Like, Hey, we've seen this maybe one issue occurring over the last couple harvests.

[00:28:36] Anna: Let's look last year. Look, let's look year over year. What changed year over year? Right. Okay. Obviously we have issues with the envi, with the actual building. Just loving those leaks, that everyone's gone through. But that's why it's exciting to have a new facility too. There's nothing like a brand new car.

[00:28:58] Seth: Well,

[00:28:58] Jason: nice.

[00:28:59] Seth: I definitely gotta [00:29:00] say, Anna, I've learned over this winter that they don't build very watertight roofs in California.

[00:29:04] Anna: No, none . They just like, I might as well just be, I'm like, oh, now I'm outdoor facility. , , custom from mold resistance. This sucks. .

[00:29:14] Jason: I just kind of want to reiterate, I mean, obviously I came into cultivation from more technical data aspect, and so obviously it's easy to get along with you because that's how you.

[00:29:25] Jason: Have your background going and you guys were one of the fastest up and running [00:29:30] as far as using AROYA and tailoring in your crop steering and stuff. So, huge applauses there. But using data as a common platform for communication, it drives accountability. It makes it way easier for us to communicate across silos and do the breakdown of, Hey, I did my part in this case.

[00:29:49] Jason: Here's the proof in the pudding.

[00:29:51] Anna: Absolutely. And with the facility the size we have, like, we have an entire mechanical team, so that just works on HVAC all day. I mean, [00:30:00] the cultivators only gonna be as, I mean, they, what are you gonna do if you have two ac, two out of four acs that are out.

[00:30:05] Anna: Your room's not gonna dehumidify if you're at 70%. Right. So, yeah.

[00:30:10] Seth: Yeah. And I will say Jason had the opportunity to work at a place I was just getting started up. And I would say generally understaffed in cultivation and maintenance. So if you're at a successful place, you might not get the opportunity to experience clone to jar in one spot, and also have to fix the pumps, fix the [00:30:30] HVAC

[00:30:30] Seth: Yeah. Make sure lights turn on.

[00:30:32] Anna: Make, yeah. Making sure that your pumps aren't running dry. Yep. All that. Make sure you're, you make sure your run fossils are primed. We're, believe me, we're dealing with all of that. And then some, and then just making sure that the tasks are delegated properly. Because there's a lot of that like, oh, I thought you were gonna get that , are you not getting that?

[00:30:51] Anna: So, . And that's also an testament to our team of how everybody gets along. So I think that if you have like the end goal, it's not like this [00:31:00] blame factory of like, it's not my fault, right? , or it is my fault, where everybody feels that they have responsibility to grow the best product that they can.

[00:31:12] Anna: It really helps when you have issues. Everybody kind of bands together and like, we gotta, we got, we have to make it work and we're gonna make it work together. So, that being said, The number one thing I can say, take care of the people. Like, [00:31:30] pay your people, take care of your people, make sure you're whatever money you are making, make sure you spend it on your people.

[00:31:38] Jason: Yeah. And I actually bring this back to an antidote that connects people and making the right maintenance decisions was using data a couple times we'd always have issues with the lights forgetting to be turned back on in the bedroom after I p m and it was actually just a specific person that needed to be talked to.

[00:31:59] Jason: Not the entire [00:32:00] IP team or I p m team that needed to be addressed. It's like, all right, well 90% of our team's doing a great job and this one person, you just gotta take their keys when they go into the ip, ipm mode and make sure that they don't turn, they do turn the lights back on until they get their keys back.

[00:32:16] Anna: Yeah that's a perfect way to do it. And then also maybe when you have a couple folks on the team that are doing something wrong, I think it's good to take them aside and then also kind of make like a process rule, [00:32:30] right? Where you're not blaming anyone specifically, but saying, putting out kind of a blanket statement of, Hey guys.

[00:32:36] Anna: Let's try, like, the number one thing that, that a facility decides is cleaning, right? Just everybody needs to clean their space and take 15, 20 minutes out of the day to do that. And it, and usually it's like one or two folks that don't do it and leave it for the next person in the morning.

[00:32:53] Anna: So we we'll try to sometimes switch up am people versus, they'll have shifts, right? So then they'll start to [00:33:00] realize if they don't do their cleanup or do their tasks or finish their tasks at night, guess who that leaves it to the morning person. And that kind of stinks for the morning person.

[00:33:09] Anna: So, if you're able to do both parts of the job it's really helpful to understand where the other person's coming from and what you're leaving them.

[00:33:19] Seth: Oh yeah, a little just little bit of sympathy there, , where you're like, okay, now I know what it feels like. A little

[00:33:24] Anna: bit more empathetic. A little more empathetic.

[00:33:25] Anna: Action, for

[00:33:25] Seth: sure. Yeah, exactly. And I mean, that communication's super critical [00:33:30] and it's definitely one thing I think a lot of people struggle with as they scale out because, we're going from a smaller passion project to this factory essentially. Like you, you nailed it with saying how, for you, it went from cultivation to managing people.

[00:33:46] Seth: And I, I can't tell you how many times I've heard that

[00:33:49] Anna: people and environment and tasks, and maybe since I love people, it's been like a totally fine transition. And, but I mean, I still get my time with plants and [00:34:00] walk zones, but you have to let things go and To answer one of the questions of just how do you cultivate or create new talent?

[00:34:09] Anna: You wanna make it into a buddy system. You wanna make sure that people have upward mobility and you're talking to all your team members and getting buy-in with new processes. So if there is a new process, you actually go to the people that are gonna be doing the work, see how they feel about it, get their buy-in.

[00:34:26] Anna: Sometimes it takes longer and it's, and get their feedback, [00:34:30] even if we don't go with like, their version of the process, telling them why that it's not gonna work out that way. Just communication.

[00:34:39] Kaisha: So many good lessons. Anna, we are getting a lot of questions specific to your operations, so we're gonna get to those in just one minute.

[00:34:46] Kaisha: But I would love to just hear like what's happening in the future? What can we look forward to? You've already won some awards. What, where, what's happening next?

[00:34:55] Anna: We're we're, our main thing is just to get this operational in (inaudible) [00:35:00] mids. So one. We, that's our main goal

[00:35:03] Kaisha: as a California consumer thank you

[00:35:06] Seth: don't usually grow meds just so people know.

[00:35:08] Anna: I haven't seen any. No. But to just not to like, to actually bring what we have been able to Perfect in a 500 letter to a 2000 life facility. That's first and foremost. And g getting there with a team that is happy and healthy and making sure that our legacy team that has been with me for like a long period of time really feels the benefits of.

[00:35:28] Anna: How about that? That's [00:35:30] kind of like our main goal and to kind of just survive 2023. I know a lot of businesses are having a hard time being able to work with the folks that we think are gonna be here next year, being a good retail, like being a good vendor to retail partners. We're looking forward to the Emerald Cup.

[00:35:45] Anna: We're looking forward to Hall of Flowers. We even are looking forward to everybody's non favorite cannabis holiday of four 20 , which for people that are growing weed is like, when will it end? . [00:36:00] So, and just trying our hand at the other business aspects of a large scale facility too.

[00:36:07] Anna: We're super excited.

[00:36:09] Kaisha: We're excited for you, Anna. Congratulations. Amazing. Thank you. Yeah. Oh my gosh, yes.

[00:36:14] Mandy: I've been writing everything down. Oh my gosh. There's just so much to learn from you. That's it. Yeah. Well, I mean, we have a ton of questions that are coming in over on YouTube, so I can go ahead and jump into those.

[00:36:24] Mandy: Let's do it. Yeah. Sweet. Just real quickly, we did put a little quiz over on YouTube. What's the [00:36:30] biggest expense in your operations? The answers were power, utilities, staff and headcount, and facilities and power and utilities cost a lot. You guys, 86% said that was the biggest expense for you guys, and then facilities was second with 14%, so that's really interesting.

[00:36:44] Mandy: Yeah. So yeah. Jumping into the questions over on YouTube, Zachary wants to know Anna, how large of a mom room do you have?

[00:36:52] Anna: So for 2000 lights, we have a 4,000 square foot mom room and a [00:37:00] double decker veg. , so about 30%. So about 30%. So whatever facility size you have, we try to scale for about 30% because we're growing so many different strains.

[00:37:11] Seth: So we, I have a real question here about that. What do you think is coming in terms of tissue culture libraries and is that something you guys are leaning towards hard?

[00:37:24] Anna: We think so. We think that's like a huge like of like just either [00:37:30] getting all of your cuts from someplace that has tc.

[00:37:32] Anna: I mean, every time we get we obviously make our own moms and take our own cuts, but when we do go out and buy new strains, we're getting 'em from a TC from and we noticed how different, how much healthier those strains are. So,

[00:37:47] Seth: right. And allowing you to have a kind of,

[00:37:50] Anna: Just more mom space.

[00:37:51] Seth: Yeah.

[00:37:52] Anna: Yeah. I mean, nowhere else in agriculture does someone do top to bottom end. I hope everybody knows that. Like, so in regular ag there's just places that [00:38:00] make teens and there's places in China that make cuts or that make starters, okay. And then there's entire facilities that actually finish out the end product.

[00:38:08] Anna: So, I think that we'll move to that eventually, but for right now, it's kind of cool to be able to do it all. I don't know if that will be the business model moving in the future.

[00:38:17] Seth: As much as I thought it'd be more like standard ag, like let's just say apples or pears or something, where you're buying these scions from someone else that's got their genetic orchard.

[00:38:27] Anna: Yeah.

[00:38:27] Seth: And you've got your production orchard. At [00:38:30] first I thought, hey, we're gonna head that way with nurseries, but I think there might be a really big future in companies like yours that are hitting a point where it's like, hey, we're starting to be able to justify approaching doing this on our own rather than having a different business that contracts with all these other businesses.

[00:38:45] Seth: we can spearhead that because

[00:38:47] Anna: Yeah,

[00:38:47] Seth: I've seen a lot of man, a lot of rough startups in the nursery field over the last few years.

[00:38:54] Seth: It's been difficult.

[00:38:54] Anna: Yeah. And then also just, I mean, just think about it. If they don't sell these clones and it gets past three [00:39:00] weeks, four weeks, what do you do? It's just a loss and you don't wanna give somebody four weeks.

[00:39:04] Anna: Five week old clones, but you're like, at that point you're like, well, I gotta feed these, like, I don't know, seven to 10 human beings that are here. So it's like, back and forth of like, what's appropriate and how long you can keep, starts going. It's tough.

[00:39:19] Seth: Oh yeah. Well, I'm building up a client base that's if you're a cut producer, building up a client base to buy all those clones in the right time on contracts, so you're not backed [00:39:30] up.

[00:39:30] Seth: And that's tough right now. A lot of people especially coming out of like the medical days, it was kind of more of a like, I order clones when I need 'em. Right.

[00:39:38] Seth: And hopefully

[00:39:39] Anna: Exactly. And there's no rhyme and reason. So for nurseries or like, great, this clients ordering 10 K for X amount of time, right?

[00:39:46] Anna: And then nothing.

[00:39:48] Seth: Exactly. It's, and part of it I think is gonna be moving forward, being able to really speed up, bringing in different cultivars, evaluating 'em, and adding 'em to your library. [00:40:00]

[00:40:01] Mandy: This is the reality of running a cannabusiness. Awesome. I'm gonna keep going down our list.

[00:40:06] Mandy: Thank you for that. Anna. I think this is also directed toward you, Anna. Diane wants to know Jason, Seth, Ramsey and Josh recommend Defoliating. They're putting you guys on the spot, five to seven Leafs per plant. What's your opinion on that, Anna?

[00:40:19] Anna: Well, I think it just, it depends on how many plants you have per i in your room.

[00:40:24] Anna: So depends on what your square footage is like. We try to run a really [00:40:30] low plant count. So that means you are, you're having more light hitting the plant, so maybe a little less defoliation because it has more room. If you have 10 or 16 plants underneath a light, you're gonna be doing probably a little more cleanup.

[00:40:43] Anna: Depends on what kind of buds you're looking for. If you're looking for a lot of pre-roll type activities, you're gonna want more be buds. Both Jason and I constantly get the question strangely enough of how do I grow more B buds? It's pretty strange. . So there's [00:41:00] a lot of ways to skin a cat, but I think that there's, that that's a good way to look at it, is to take some foliage off.

[00:41:08] Anna: But some people believe in heavy defoliation. I think that we do, we. We try not at this scale because we have so, so many plants we're trying to decrease labor and do less defoliation than ever.

[00:41:22] Mandy: So, couple considerations to keep in mind. I think this is a general crop sharing question, so I'll just throw this one out there.

[00:41:29] Mandy: [00:41:30] Grateful, grateful one to know. What are your opinions of the ----- machine?

[00:41:38] Seth: ----? I'm not super familiar with that.

[00:41:40] Anna: Okay. Thanks guys. Appreciate this.

[00:41:42] N A T r O l

[00:41:46] Anna: I literally would have to google that. I'm sorry.

[00:41:48] Seth: Jason's gonna google it right now. We'll see what happens. I am not familiar with it, I'll be honest.

[00:41:53] Mandy: Okay, we'll move on.

[00:41:54] Anna: I have, let me tell you, there's a million things I don't know, so I'm so quick to be like, I don't know.

[00:41:59] Anna: It's totally [00:42:00] fine.

[00:42:00] Jason: Cannabis, dry and cure vapor technology. Lock in your terpenes. Reduce your labor. They're selling me right from their webpage.

[00:42:10] Seth: Yeah. This all looks really nice to me. So it looks like a yeah, a drying mon monitoring system or an all in one box. More like, yeah I think something like that's great.

[00:42:20] Seth: It might be somewhat expensive to scale up, but it also looks like they really try to offer the total grow room control package. Whether [00:42:30] the name Krol or having it built out custom by someone else is a huge difference. I couldn't tell you. If they wanna reach out and talk to us more , I'd be happy to rate it.

[00:42:41] Seth: It looks like a pretty decent product though.

[00:42:45] Anna: All right. Awesome. I just think having a box where you're putting plants into, you have to be a much smaller scale. I mean, we have 1500 square foot rooms to dry, and that's for 104 light rooms, so [00:43:00] I'm not sure if that would really work that easily for a facility the size, but I'm not saying anything good or bad about, just say,

[00:43:06] Seth: Diana.

[00:43:07] Seth: They had everything from little cabinets all the way up to walking freezer status. So yeah, looks like that's their specialty. I would check 'em out and probably have some good technology, I don't know for, yeah. At the end of the day, a lot of it comes down to price point too, with some of this stuff.

[00:43:21] Anna: I mean, yes, a lot of, and then we do a ton of that evaluating like new technologies and if it's worth it. And so, [00:43:30] obviously that's the other thing about AROYA and they have a subscription fee, but every year we see new. Types of technology and I'm super excited to see all the new things that you guys are coming out with on, kind of growing the plant digitally and just all the enhancements made to AROYA that we currently use now.

[00:43:52] Seth: Oh, yeah. And even in this post-production, if you're trying out something like you're thinking about going with canol, one of the best things you can do is be an AROYA customer and have access to [00:44:00] all these sensors.

[00:44:00] Anna: Yeah. Water activity. And I have all the sensors and just, and then, I mean, we just recently tried out cure tubs and had everybody on our team kind of try out what the product was before and after.

[00:44:11] Anna: Some of the strains made a difference, some didn't. We , it takes a long time to make an evaluation if we want a product. And I think that every company should take that approach and talk to as many people as they can that is currently using the product and seeing what their experience is with it.

[00:44:28] Anna: And I think that's been really cool [00:44:30] for AROYA because you just call five people and they're like, yeah, it's great. It's changed the way I've grown. Period. Hands down.

[00:44:34] Seth: Well, one thing I'll say with the cure side of it too And this relates to a few other things in the cannabis industry, but even though we're coming out of the dark ages or whatever you wanna call it, with cannabis plant science, there still are a few tried and true things that PE tried and true things that people have came to the conclusion of over many years in gross cycles.

[00:44:53] Seth: Yeah. Years. Many years. Yeah. So like in the drying space, one of the funny things I see is like, speed up your curing time. And I'm like, [00:45:00] I don't know about that. Yeah,

[00:45:01] Anna: no. Yeah. The chlorophyl is not gonna lead the, I mean, it's just not a good idea. So just take your two weeks, it's gonna be fine. Do your sit down 60, it's gonna be fine.

[00:45:10] Seth: Exactly. So like, just, I don't see anything on the can TRL website, but anytime you're looking at things like that, just look out for the snake oil. Some, someone promises you something that seems too good to be true, like cut to jar in 16 days. Question that don't immediately jump in and do something that seems too good to be [00:45:30] true and risk your business on that piece of equipment.

[00:45:33] Jason: It also comes back to, what people call the green tax for a lot of the stuff that's marketed specifically to cannabis. I mean, there's been drying rooms for all types of products, meats and cheeses and really thing, anything that's processed in a similar manner.

[00:45:49] Anna: Alcohol Yeah.

[00:45:50] Anna: Barrel, all sorts of things. Yep.

[00:45:52] Jason: And so it just kind of comes down to, hey, can we work with someone that is experienced enough in the traditional usage of this type of equipment, whether it [00:46:00] be HVAC stuff or any of that. And a lot of times they'll have more knowledge, maybe not specifically to cannabis but the best ones are, can understand the needs of this specific application and usually apply, 20, 30 years of history working in that industry to what we're doing in cannabis now.

[00:46:20] Seth: Oh, absolutely. Just on the dry side, if you have enough experience modulating dry rooms with let's just say food, and you've had the opportunity to work in several different [00:46:30] industries where you're dealing with different particle size, different densities and stuff, you might be able to control that dry room to a degree that other people just can't.

[00:46:38] Anna: I mean, the number one thing that we've seen is that it's just is that the size of your plants and the degrees of difference of drying from the top, like, we have a pulley system. It's pretty. So, what you're, what you're seeing from the very top, what are the plants are hanging up on the top and what is the middle and the end?

[00:46:59] Anna: [00:47:00] So, and just different drying, drying times there. So it also depends on when you trim, cuz nobody wants to trim wet weed. Looks awful. .

[00:47:08] Seth: Yeah, exactly. Well, and just like saying you guys have a pulley system. All right. Do we have to go in there and rotate to different parts of the room? There's actually, it's just the little things like that you really gotta key in.

[00:47:19] Anna: We actually have bigger rotator wheels this time around so that we can actually, so they're not, every time you pull it, a bunch of like plants fall off or they're touching each other. So, we've lived and learned with [00:47:30] our dry room on building 'em. And we see a lot of that. We see a lot of that.

[00:47:35] Anna: We're just trying to enhance, like, Hey, this works but it could be different. This could be different.

[00:47:42] Seth: Yep. And it, everything can always be better if you're someone who's like trying to rest on their laurels and say like, my setup is perfect. Like, no, let's walk through in 10 minutes.

[00:47:51] Seth: We'll find something that's broken or some piece of equipment that's out there

[00:47:55] Anna: and it continues. I was just, I mean, Jason knows this, that there, there really are, [00:48:00] these cultivation facilities are labor of love cuz they can be money pits, but you do have to continuously maintain your space. So you have to set part of your budget.

[00:48:10] Anna: That list of things that are super expensive. I would say after being in a building for three or four years, it's the maintenance and having to replace tons of acs and dehumidification in your space every couple years.

[00:48:26] Seth: Yep. And that's just real, right? None of that equipment's gonna last much longer [00:48:30] than that.

[00:48:30] Seth: So now that you figured out the duty cycle

[00:48:32] Anna: oils, all that, eventually, especially up in Nor Cal, you're gonna have to replace some shit .

[00:48:38] Seth: Oh yeah. Yeah. Those compressors only have a limited lifespan before they're totally worn out.

[00:48:42] Anna: For sure.

[00:48:43] Jason: And, honestly and some of the best designs most cost effective way to get up and running is to push equipment pretty close to its limit.

[00:48:53] Jason: So, so many of these places that I see, hey we're operating in max capacity of this device. So it's [00:49:00] lifespan is gonna be as short as anything from that implementation.

[00:49:03] Anna: I mean, also, 90% of us have comfort coolings comfort Cooling is supposed to be on like 20% of the time, not 24 hours a day, running it to its max and then heating up a room and cooling it down.

[00:49:14] Anna: So, so whatever, like, lifespan of a, of, of train or carrier, take that five to six years and cut it down to two and a half and you're gonna be looking at replacing parts and replacing motors and condensers [00:49:30] no matter what you do. It's just as part of it.

[00:49:34] Seth: Yep. Absolutely. And I think that was the hardest part for some people to swallow, getting into this industry. is the long-term maintenance. Everyone for years was so locked into short-term like, Hey, we'll be in this building for a little while, that we're probably have to move again.

[00:49:48] Anna: Well, what stinks for like all the other like ag into like, there's grants, there's, I mean there's so many different types of like non-recourse financing that allows you to do all that type of work.

[00:49:57] Anna: . And we don't get any of that. We're just [00:50:00] like, how's your last round? Last round? Do well now we can fix a bunch of more acs. Yep. That's about,

[00:50:05] Seth: yeah. Lemme know when you wanna go veggies in your backyard by, we'll get you some grants and stuff.

[00:50:13] Kaisha: Awesome. All right. We have quite a few crop steering questions, cultivation questions coming in. I'm gonna change our focus for a second because we had someone share their graph with us and they're just looking for a little bit of help at what they're looking at. So in addition to Seth and Jason being able to chime in, [00:50:30] Anna, we would love to, if you have any thoughts

[00:50:32] Anna: let's this person out.

[00:50:34] Anna: Let's all look at this graph.

[00:50:35] Kaisha: Let's look at this graph. So Moby Dill sent in a picture of the graph and wrote, this is the 24 hour graph for the room I just posted. This would be day 20 going into 21. I'm in Charco blocks. My input pH is 5.9, and my EC is 2.6. What is your opinion and what could I be doing better to screen share in

[00:50:58] Seth: a second?[00:51:00]

[00:51:00] Seth: Yeah, let's see that graph. Let's take a look.

[00:51:06] Jason: Yeah. Do you want me to jump on a screen share from my screen here?

[00:51:14] Kaisha: If you can. Yeah, I can also, yeah, lemme know.

[00:51:16] Jason: I can do that real quick.

[00:51:18] Seth: Let me just, Jason, blow it up so people can see what we're talking about. I'll do what I can.

[00:51:26] Seth: Of course now it's gonna be way over there. Not right there. So I'll squint again. [00:51:30]

[00:51:30] Anna: So they're in day 20. They're probably just thinking about, they're probably just done with Stretch. They probably got some bud set. They're probably thinking about just going into vegetative. Yeah,

[00:51:39] Seth: that's the first spot to start is if you haven't been tracking the stretch on your plant, like, is it done stretching yet?

[00:51:46] Is

[00:51:47] Anna: it's done. You sure you wanna go into vegetative or to look up?

[00:51:52] Seth: And then to me it looks like you might, let's see, there's a little bit of glare, but it looks like we're just looking at. [00:52:00] A little over 24 hours there

[00:52:01] Anna: one day. Yeah. Max water content, they're getting some pretty decent dry back.

[00:52:07]

[00:52:07] Seth: Looks like you have big plants in a one gallon pot if you're in the -------. Yep. If I had to guess. But it looks like you're doing everything you can to maintain a generative steer and we can't really see the EC values too Well based on that, can we?

[00:52:22] Anna: We're at ECS of 3 57 and a little bit of spikes on ecs, but nothing [00:52:30] too crazy.

[00:52:30] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the only thing I see here too is just a little bit less or less regular irrigations than we're used to seeing. Like I said, it is hard to judge that based on the timeframe. But typically I'm gonna see, P one events getting close to field capacity, and then P two is maintaining that a little bit more.

[00:52:51] Anna: Yeah. I don't see any p I don't see any P two. Oh, well I do on this. Second, there's a maintenance shot, like a second day.

[00:52:57] Seth: Yeah. Yeah. There's some maintenance there to try to keep it from [00:53:00] over drying.

[00:53:00] Anna: That's Yep. Right there. There's your, yep. There's your your P two right there. Catching it kind of midday.

[00:53:07] Seth: Yeah. So if your plants are done stretching, start applying some more P two s. One of the key things is when we're switching over into bulking, we're trying to maximize the number of small irrigations in the day, and how many of those we apply will actually kind of be strain dependent, right?

[00:53:22] Seth: That's a little bit experimental. So part of it is like, let's look at adding P two s and then seeing what's your, what your P one program is. Are you [00:53:30] on three P one s, four P one s or are we gonna cut those in half and double the number, make it into eight P one s to really maximize that bulking, but let's make sure it's done stretching before we do that and send it into a re-veg situation.

[00:53:45] Kaisha: I can't tell you how much I loved watching the three of you analyze all of that together. It just felt really special. , it's so lovey do. Yeah. Thank you for sharing your screen with us and have a shout out to all the AROYA.

[00:53:58] Jason: One last thing, I [00:54:00] might be nitpicky. Just and it depends on strain all the time, but in this case I would probably go for a little bit higher ec.

[00:54:07] Jason: Yes. It depends a little bit on what part of the flower cycle that we're looking at. Are we looking at, generative first few weeks?

[00:54:15] Anna: Yeah. But like nine, we gonna bed three? Yep. A little higher. EC for sure.

[00:54:19] Jason: Down there at less than feed ec that we usually recommend. So I can see anomaly here.

[00:54:24] Jason: We're floating at to. Sorry about three. [00:54:30] So, most situations nominal ec, if we're in vegetative, will be about one to two EC higher than our feed ec. Just from some salt buildup in, there's typically when I'm looking at vegetative growth mid-cycle, well I'll usually shoot for anywhere between say, four and eight ec.

[00:54:50] Jason: So a lot of times we'll see that ec actually still climbing in a really accelerated growth of a plant. [00:55:00] So, yeah.

[00:55:01] Seth: One thing I'd like to highlight here too, we're talking about running higher ec, which Anna's pointed out is fairly important. You wanna feed your plants and it definitely contributes to quality.

[00:55:10] Seth: I think we can all say that overrunning super low EC versus higher EC runs. That being said, cutting runoff and trying to ramp your EC up starting at week three here is gonna lead to problems. This is something we want to treat early on and work on that ramp up. So at this point, we're sitting more in [00:55:30] that four or five to eight or nine region, and one thing I find that helps a lot of people out is start monitoring your veg.

[00:55:38] Seth: The tendency right, is to put sensors in your flower room cuz that's where you make the money. But if you can't get your EC up in veg, it's gonna be really difficult to get that to stack and also maintain a proper pH as you're stacking that up.

[00:55:50] Anna: Yeah. And if you're in LEDs, like we are in veg, it does like a higher ec.

[00:55:55] Anna: They're just, they're greedier and hungrier.

[00:55:59] Seth: [00:56:00] Oh yeah. And the funny thing about LEDs that I've found is a lot of people are finding that your margin for error on maintaining your environment is actually quite a bit lower. Like it's real. It's a lot easier to mess it up with LEDs.

[00:56:11] Anna: Yeah. Yes. Much easier.

[00:56:13] Anna: Exactly. So,

[00:56:15] Kaisha: fantastic. Thank you guys so much for running. Thanks y'all for running through that. All right, Scott dropped a question in the chat here. Wanna ask, what is the best size coco pot and rock wool size for crop steering? Four plants per light.

[00:56:27] Jason: I [00:56:30] mean, so for coco, I mean, my favorite's between one and two gallons.

[00:56:35] Jason: If I'm growing a really big plant, I'll be definitely in a two gallon so that I can maintain crop steering and get that generative going. If I'm in a double tier or I'm just doing short squatty plants, I can usually get away with a one gallon. That being said, for rockwool slabs are my favorite pretty much all around.

[00:56:57] Anna: Yep. I'm on four inch cubes on slabs.

[00:56:59] Jason: Yeah. [00:57:00] And that, those four inch cubes are awesome because we can accelerate how quickly we're getting vigor in the plants during our vegetative growth, or 18 six early veg before we flip to flower. And then that transplant's pretty simple. Just the process that it works out with, we can set up the room with slabs, hydrate 'em and then get things.

[00:57:20] Jason: get those plants in onto there when we're ready to flip is it's a nice smooth transition. That being said, there are some coco slabs out there these days [00:57:30] that I haven't had too much opportunity to explore.

[00:57:32] Seth: Yeah, I wanna start playing with some of those and see what they're like. I can't imagine they'll be all that different than rockwool just coco in a more convenient packaging.

[00:57:41] Anna: Yeah, I guess so.

[00:57:45] Seth: I mean, one thing I would look at honestly though, if you're at four plants per light is probably jumping up to about nine, three plants per slab, three slabs per light is a wonderful setup. Three slabs per light. Yep. Super easy. And generally, if we're looking at going four plants [00:58:00] per light, that's gonna be putting me at like a four week, five week fe time to get 'em big enough so I can actually fill up that canopy space.

[00:58:07] Seth: Not to mention I'll put in perspective, I might run four plants at home because I like to get in there and touch 'em and train 'em and have fun. But on a commercial scale, like we were talking before, Anna, you highlighted this, we're talking about defoliation leafing and stuff. Every time we touch the plant we're losing money.

[00:58:25] Seth: So yeah, we're , so we gotta balance that. I mean, [00:58:30] absolute yield isn't everything. If it still cost you $1,200 a pound to produce, right.

[00:58:35] Anna: That's right. And I think just knowing your cogs whatever they are is super important. I think people are almost scared of that number and just hoping that they get a higher price than whatever money.

[00:58:45] Anna: They have. You just have to know those cogs and just learn how to get like a little more efficient. And that way you can make your dollar stretch.

[00:58:56] Seth: Absolutely. Well, and there's a point of diminishing returns on all of this. [00:59:00] Like I said, once we can For sure. Yeah. There is supplement so much money, spend so much money on labor, on inputs, but.

[00:59:06] Seth: And then

[00:59:07] Anna: especially at the beginning, just what, like minimizing your burn rate if you are starting up and knowing what the numbers are. And that will give you some ways to sleep at night of knowing what your burn rate is. And especially in this economy right now. And even though cannabis is like, we're experiencing some like ups and downs what I will say is an amazing time for people to [00:59:30] find a way to the top much easier because there might be less of us competing in the space.

[00:59:36] Jason: Yeah. And th those cogs are a very serious thing. They're one of the things that you can control. And that's how you keep your future in business. Yes. Basically what's happening in so much of this market sure. Are selling our distributions, controlling what types of strains that they're purchasing from us to some degree.

[00:59:56] Jason: Controlling what price that we have to sell it to [01:00:00] them at so that they can get it off the shelf. And I've seen it so many times to this point where a brand doesn't, they don't correlate their cogs with their brand image. If I am a craft company then I need to realize what my cogs can be limited to.

[01:00:20] Jason: Just because I'm craft doesn't mean that I can spend eight, $900 pound in creation of product in the long run. It just doesn't work out when the [01:00:30] market starts to stabilize. Maybe, years ago that was okay but at this point you have to understand, all right, for a craft growing, I can be at this price for cogs on and it costs a good salt on a pound.

[01:00:42] Jason: If I have a little bit lower tier product or I have different distribution channels, then I may not be able to make it at the cogs that I'm at.

[01:00:51] Anna: Exactly, and that's okay too because you'll have there's a product for lots of different tiers and lots of different price points. You just have to know what yours [01:01:00] are.

[01:01:00] Seth: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I will never say that 10 years ago, people buying, six, eight part nutrient systems that were a hundred to $150 for two lights, you were making money then it worked

[01:01:13] Anna: out. Right. Housing garden four for like a 50 long time, no problem. Saying that like, What else did I try?

[01:01:21] Anna: Bloom 18 parts. Loved it. didn't get enough, didn't get enough of like, ooh, more yellow bottles, but , wait,

[01:01:28] Jason: did you love it or did your [01:01:30] plants love it?

[01:01:30] Anna: No. I loved it. . I was definitely just me. So, but what I will say is that's all part of the learning and the growth, right? And when I was using those, when I was using house and Garden, I was creating a product that, for the price point of what I was getting for, it was great for the time being.

[01:01:50] Anna: So I was definitely, just producing about a pound of light. I was definitely getting over. $5,000 a pound on bulk products. It was completely different. It's [01:02:00] just a different time. And for everyone that hasn't experienced that, I'm sorry for you. . .

[01:02:05] Seth: No. Actually, you should be happy that ruined too many people. You're one of the few that went, this isn't gonna last.

[01:02:12] Anna: No. Decided build a business that way. And I walked, it happened in Colorado and then came to California and immediately was like, we're watching every, we're watching every, we're watching every input. So, and making sure that you're keeping the lights on.

[01:02:24] Anna: So it, it really is, to be in it right now is like a labor of love. You really gotta be love weed to be in [01:02:30] it.

[01:02:30] Seth: Oh, yeah. And be able to take that passion out of the garden, I think is a big thing too. Yeah. It's okay too, yeah. Like for sure. You're like, Hey, this isn't just about me. Yeah. Creating this special product.

[01:02:40] Seth: It's, I'm building this whole enterprise around it.

[01:02:43] Anna: Yeah, exactly. It's really about your team and your people and how they're feeling about in their roles every single day. Oops.

[01:02:50] Kaisha: Exactly. Well, friends, we went over a few minutes, but I mean, Anna Wiley, founder and c e o of Cam, thank you [01:03:00] so much for coming on the show today.

[01:03:01] Anna: Thanks guys. Thanks for having me.

[01:03:04] Wow.

[01:03:04] Anna: I love talking to you guys. Well, maybe you need to come back. My AROYA family my favorite.

[01:03:10] Kaisha: That's right. No, we are like, thrilled to have you on. Grateful to have you as a client. Gladys working for you and just really proud to hear about all your success.

[01:03:19] Kaisha: So keep it up.

[01:03:21] Anna: Huge part of that, huge part of it. I'm excited to see you guys at Hall of Flowers. Yes. We'll be repping your gear. We love the product. We just we [01:03:30] can't say nicer things about the team either. Jason, Seth, thank you.

[01:03:37] Kaisha: That means a lot. Appreciate you. Thank you so much. We had a lot of questions we couldn't get to, so we have not forgotten about you folks.

[01:03:42] Kaisha: We got you. We got you in the question bank. We're gonna get to 'em next time. Mandy, thank you for holding it down with me as always. And of course, Seth and Jason. Thank you so much for being the experts and so amazing on the show. So, thank you for everybody. Oh, and thank you to Chris, our producer, [01:04:00] who's thank you, Chris.

[01:04:01] Kaisha: Hurry up and wrap this up, . Thank you all for joining us for this week's AROYA Office Hours. We do this every Thursday, and the best way to get answers from the experts is to join us live. To learn more about AROYA get in touch with us. We'll send you, we'll get you a demo, and one of our experts will tell you about all the ways it can be used to improve your cultivation production process.

[01:04:19] Kaisha: If there's a topic you'd like cover in a feature episode of Office Hours, post questions anytime via the AROYA app. Feel free to drop us a note at support AROYA meter group.com. Send [01:04:30] us a DM over Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook Social Club. We are on all the socials. We wanna hear from you, and we record every session.

[01:04:37] Kaisha: So we will email everyone in attendance a link to today's show, and it'll also live on the Amer AROYA YouTube channel, like, subscribe and share while you're there. And if you find these conversations helpful, spread the word. Thank you so much, and we'll see y'all next week. Bye

[01:04:53] Anna: bye bye.