Nick Kovacevich, CEO, Co-founder & Chairman, KushCo Holdings
In his role as CEO for KushCo Holdings, Nick directs all business relations and financial strategy for the company. Nick also oversees the organization's senior management team. Nick has been integral in making critical strategic, growth, and financial decisions since the company’s inception.
Nick holds a Bachelor of Science from Southwest Baptist University where he studied Sports Management and earned Academic All-American honors. While at SBU, Nick played small forward for the men’s basketball team, leading the Bearcats to the Sweet 16.
https://www.kushco.com/
https://www.kushsupplyco.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/KushCo_Holdings?lang=en
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kushco-holdings-inc/
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:01] You're listening to Thinking Outside the Bud where we speak with entrepreneurs investors thought leaders researchers advocates and policymakers who are finding new and exciting ways for cannabis to positively impact business society and culture. And now here is your host Business Coach Bruce Eckfeldt.
[00:00:30] Are you a CEO looking to scale your company faster and easier. Checkout Thrive Roundtable thrive combines a moderated peer group mastermind expert one on one coaching access to proven growth tools and a 24/7 support community created by Inc. Award winning CEO and certified scaling up business coach Bruce Eckfeldt. Thrive will help you grow your business more quickly and with less drama. For details on the program visit Eckfeldt.com/thrive. That's E C K F E L D T.com/thrive
[00:01:06] Welcome everyone this is thinking outside the bud SEC fault. I'm your host and our guest today is Nick Kovacevich. And Nick is CEO co-founder and chairman for KushCo Holdings. We're gong to learn a little bit more about Costco and Nick's background and the cannabis business and what they're doing to help develop and expand the market with all sorts of supplies and other service offerings with that. Nick welcome to the program.
[00:01:31] Thank you for having me. Glad to be here.
[00:01:33] So what do we talk about your kind of background and how you got into cannabis. I'm always kind of curious with folks that are in the cannabis space leading these cannabis companies how holidays are they got into it. What's the background. When did you first get involved in cannabis.
[00:01:46] Yeah it's a great question. I'm sure you get a lot of fun answers to my stories you fairly interesting. I grew up in Santa Cruz California which is known as the cannabis community although I definitely was not involved. I was more of an outlier there I was into basketball and not surfing and you know that journey through basketball led me to go to college in a few different places ended up in Missouri of all places. Midwest midwives those that I was living in a town of 10000 people was a Baptist Town. You know certainly the ideas around cannabis in that part of the country were vastly different than where I'm from.
[00:02:30] But if you could get much more different from Santa Cruz to Missouri.
[00:02:35] Yeah exactly and you know I had a unique experience you know growing up like my dad was a assistant district attorney and prosecutor and you know kind of found out later this thing you know he was putting people in prison for marijuana back in the 1970s. So you know coming from more of a conservative background you know finishing college and in a conservative part of the country moving back home getting connected with one of my buddies that I went to high school with Mr. Dallas and bimbo who's on our our board of directors that Kush. We were talking business and really it was you know originally I got into this industry for the business opportunity.
[00:03:13] So and when when was this give us a give us a date because these these dates become important.
[00:03:18] Yeah. So this was 2010 OK. By 2010 we were doing doing some other business together that was not cannabis related. Dallas had started a moving and storage company in college and we operated on college campuses. And so we were doing this business and and you know entrepreneurs looking for other opportunities stumbled upon the cannabis at the time medical marijuana collectives that were starting to pop up around the state of California and in you know being an entrepreneur you go to a business like that that's doing well there. A dispensary that's you know in some cases doing 20 or 30 thousand dollars a day of sales. Yeah well it's you know sort of hiding in plain sight. You have a you know you have an opportunity to knock on the door that nobody else is knocking on. And as a young entrepreneur you know why would I want to go into industry and compete against a million other people when you know this industry is something that's right here in our home state. And it's not really being marketed to. Yeah that was really the genesis of getting into the industry and starting to figure out where do we want to play. And of course with my background with my father he's putting people in jail. Yeah well it's something we wanted to avoid jail that you seem like the best way for us to play it was to come in with something that was ancillary. And we saw packaging as a great opportunity because it's something that's involved in literally every single transaction. Yeah well the products that you're selling you know don't contain any THC or CBD. There are you know plastic or you know hard goods. And so that that was really the opportunity is you know we can buy these products we can market them to an audience that nobody else is marketing to and you know we can you know initially it was hey we can make money.
[00:05:02] Yeah yeah I think I got the idea that you saw the business opportunity. What was step one was at figuring out package suppliers was it figuring out was a developing product and how did how did you go from pay.
[00:05:13] I think there's an opportunity here to you know let's takes a first step and do some investment or you know actually start working on the business.
[00:05:20] Yeah it was we you know we looked at the products that were currently being used and certainly a lot of people were using Ziploc bags and we saw a few people use. More of these medical grade containers and there's these pop top vials that were being used.
[00:05:34] We weren't the first to bring them to the market. I'd like to say we were the first ones to make them cool. Yeah. You know we saw that and said look this is great because this is something that's a pharmaceutical grade solution it's child resistant. So it will be compliant and in however the market develops. But it's different than the traditional pharmaceutical packaging which was the push in turn vials that you know you'll get if you go to a Walgreens or Duane Reade to data a pharmacy that the pill pill bottles that you get out of will work.
[00:06:05] And so we thought this was going to be a good opportunity to create you know mass market something for the cannabis industry that was in line with what it was being called a time which was a medical industry but also different because certainly the folks that participate in medical marijuana weren't the same folks that were your traditional pharmaceutical goers right. So we saw this as a sort of a niche and and the first thing we did is we figure out where we could buy them from. And we ordered the container that at the moment was from China. And we're now producing 100 percent of those popped up vials that we sell here domestically. But at the time we were we were started by sourcing a container from China and then it was how quickly could we sell that container and put some money together to buy another container. And that's really how the business started.
[00:06:48] And you're primarily this is all California at the time.
[00:06:50] Yeah at the time it was all California. And you know we started to make some inroads in Washington and Colorado and the big unlock for us was in 2014 When Colorado legalized it was the first state that had stringent requirements mandating child resistant packaging for every single sale of cannabis.
[00:07:10] And our sales as a result went from less than twenty thousand dollars in calendar year 13 to over a million dollars in calendar year 14 because of these two rule changes which was rule implementations which was adults now can have access 21 and older and that added 20 acts to the marketplace. And then by the way every single one of those transactions has to be in a child resistant container.
[00:07:35] Yes. And there's interesting is I think a lot of companies are a lot of leadership teams that kind of complain about regulation and about how difficult it is. You know when the government kind of steps in and controls an industry like this in this case it can't do the math fast enough but 5000 percent something like your business it one here twenty thousand dollars down a million dollars when year just because of regulation that got put in place by the government around how these products needed to leave facilities. I guess did you see that coming or was this kind of fortuitous set of events for you.
[00:08:05] You know I wouldn't say we necessarily had a straight line of sight to this the whole way but you know we started to figure out that this was going to happen and then we started to embrace it. And you know we've basically from that point on decided that you know the regulatory component to this industry was going to be something that we needed to be experts in and of course regulation like you mentioned in a lot of industries can stifle business for us specifically in this case it helped our business immensely. But what we found over time was there was a healthy balance of regulation that's what we ultimately advocate for. So there are certain things that especially when you're dealing with something like cannabis that's a hot button there's certain things that you just you have to prevent. Right and certainly child ingestion of cannabis is one of those things right. If kids are getting access as product and getting higher or getting sick or going to the hospital is not only going to be bad for the business it's that sold that product is going to be bad for the entire industry as a whole. So you know we have to make sure that we're we're regulating certain aspects of the industry and that's definitely one of them. Now we've also seen industry overregulate and have massive qualifying conditions requirements needed for medical access. So you know if you can't get medical access if you have PTSD or stress anxiety or chronic pain you know those markets are not very vibrant and there's there's not a lot of a lot of people that want access are forced to go to the black market. So we've advocated for regulations not only that protect and are somewhat restrictive but we've also been big advocates for regulations that allow for broad access to the plan and allow for these markets to really develop and open up a bunch of questions on the business.
[00:09:42] But before I go there I just wanted to see.
[00:09:44] I'm curious what your experience was you know being the son of a D.A. as you know basically prosecuting this.
[00:09:52] What was the dynamic like in terms of you know family relationships friends relationships as this started to take off and you're now you know co-founder and CEO of a business who was growing dramatically in the cannabis space. Was that was there any kind of blowback or any kind of navigation that you had to deal with with relationships.
[00:10:11] Well certainly I think the biggest thing for me was coming from. You know we're had just gone to school my last two years was in Missouri. I had a school where you know I was a was one of the star basketball players at a networking base that I'd established. Those relationships were pretty much. At that point right nobody was going to be supporting me in the new industry. And then you know you go to you know friends and family and you know at the time it was a big surprise. You know what industry are you in and then you know it eventually became. But you're not directly touching the plan. And then that was that was somewhat moral. OK. Got it. You know now we're deep work army and they're trying to get everyone's best friend. Yeah. So you know you just see this big evolution and for me you know originally as I mentioned you know what drew us to this industry was the ability to try to make some money and seeing opportunities as a new entrepreneur to go into a market that was relatively untouched. But what we quickly learned and it was it was a phenomenal learning lesson for me was that everything that I had been told about cannabis was for the most part inaccurate and wrong. And it created this stigma that you know quite frankly we're all still trying to fight today even though we've made a lot of progress. It's still there and seeing people with my own eyes whose lives were positively impacted. You know people that have you know muscular know diseases and you know by using cannabis they can now relax and they can talk and you know people that needed to manage stress and pain and you know to sleep at night and you know just that whole other side and kind of coming from where I come from.
[00:11:48] It was really interesting to be able to you know change my own mindset which which happened fairly quickly and then that and you know become an advocate for changing other people's mindset and back to your question about friends and family. You know that's one thing that I've really tried to do is try to get people to open up their mind as my mind was open years ago and start to change their beliefs and you know do my own small part to help destigmatize this industry in this plant.
[00:12:16] Yeah yeah no it's I think it's a fascinating process and I've talked to many many different people that have had kind of different backgrounds and different kind of starting points but everyone's kind of gone through the you know I guess I won't call it an awakening process but at least an education process around you know about the plant and the stigma and also kind of understanding. I think that the fascinating part of cannabis is not just sort of the medical or efficacy but really the political social cultural situation or the history of it and understanding kind of why we're in the situation we're in or we're going through the process we're going in terms of legalization and the state by state and federal laws and all that. I think it's a it's it's a fascinating story. I mean really in all sense of the word so.
[00:12:56] So let's talk about the business a little bit to hit upon an angle to the cannabis market that you know is a Berlin one meaning that you've got you're selling a replenish a bowl that needs you know needs constant new product. You've got these states that are coming on board. What were the big challenges from the business. Once you realize that you had you kind of hit a good strategic niche like what were the what did you need to focus on next.
[00:13:18] In terms of making the business work and scaling the business well we could talk about that setback because you know as as you put it your this right you're always going to be evolving and developing and certainly you know that's been the case for us. I mean really coming into this industry you know finding a niche with a certain type of vial and then understanding not everybody wanted that vial or that jar the next guy wants something different and the next guy wants something completely different than that and so as a result we've had to expand our product offering very drastically I mean we have one of the most robust offerings in this industry which includes you know twelve hundred fifteen hundred different skews and not only that but the ability to customize and brand those skews and not everybody wants a generic vial. People want to put their brand on it and help with their marketing message on it. And so you know we've had to really you know doing custom projects and branded projects has been very challenging managing the workflow you know timelines being able to deliver on the quality that's required. So we've had to build robust processes around that be able to you know really fine tune and dial in our our supply chain which is an ongoing process.
[00:14:32] We're constantly having to tweak and evolve our supply chain as your one point in time you're a small business selling x amount of units then you grow and you outgrow that supplier. You need a new supplier and then you outgrow that product line you need to evolve into a new product line and so we've been doing that every single year as we've developed. But the biggest challenge that we've had and I think is a similar challenge a lot of businesses face in this industry is access to capital. This is a capital intensive business especially for us where we're distribution business and we're not a technology business where you build some software it's scalable and then you can start to turn it on globally Yeah wants to grow our business. We have to physically buy more product. We have to physically store more product and we have to physically ship more product and these hard goods have a cost associated with them and so we've seen our if you look at our balance sheet or amount of inventory on our balance sheet grow. Substantially year over year and of course how do you get the cash to fund that.
[00:15:32] Well in the traditional industry something like hard goods inventory that can be collateralized and that can be lended against and you have banks that will give you a line of credit and or or you know lenders that will factor. This industry has not had any of that. Now it's starting to change. But you know early days there was no access to debt. There was very little access to equity funding and so I spent the first three years when we decided that we're really going to start scaling this business. And the first few years of the business it was just our own capital and sweat equity. But 2014 at two thousand seventeen I was out knocking on doors and you know over 200 accredited investors to buy something like 10 million dollars. Wow. And it was a lot of a lot of hard work.
[00:16:18] And then finally in 2018 the equity capital markets really started to open up and so you were able to get family offices and smaller institutional investors to start to fund some of these companies. And I think now in 2019 we'll see the debt markets start to open up as well. So things are changing but that's been a constant battle. How do you grow a business when you're growing 200 percent right or roughly right. And that means every three months you have to buy 50 percent more product while you were buying three months ago. Yeah. And where do you get the cash to fund that and that's been a constant challenge for us that you know obviously we were continuing to solve for and I think we've put ourselves in a very strong position competitively because we have been able to solve for that when a lot of the people that we compete against simply haven't had access to that type of capital or haven't had those types of balance sheets to be able to support the infrastructure and the inventory required to service at the scale that we are now doing.
[00:17:17] Yeah yeah it's a great example of how you know any business in any industry really is is governed by constraints you know and if its source of materials if its sales if its talent if it's real estate you know there's always some governing factor and it's fascinating to see a situation where access to capital is is the limiting factor is the thing that defines how quickly or slowly you're at a decision to see how that kind of market or the different types of capital or access different types of capital is kind of opening up and I'm assuming I mean I guess what have been the big changes in terms of either regulation or laws or things that have impacted you most in terms of the capital access to capital and the types of capital.
[00:18:00] Well I think that number one the Canadian market Canada between federally legal companies like canopy in Aurora and Kronos until Ray able to access the mainstream you know U.S. exchanges the NYSE and Nasdaq.
[00:18:16] And being able to start to shed a light on the opportunity in this space and they have obviously done it you know from Canadian and global standpoint but it sort of opened the door for people to start to take a look at the U.S. market. And so again this all started to change really and in mid 2017 and 2018 was just a big you know I think market where you actually saw these companies start to list on the major exchanges and the real institutional capital start to flow in and of course that had a trickle down effect all the way down to two businesses you know throughout the industry that they were operating in the US or in various states throughout the U.S. and also you know other businesses globally and we've seen you know the markets improve for countries like Australia and Israel and you name it. So that was a big catalyst in my opinion and then you know sort of investors also had a stigma and as cannabis has continued to become less and less demonized more or more public opinion and support behind it investors aren't as fearful to come in and invest. Not from a business standpoint but from a reputation standpoint. So I think the Canadian market shed light on the business opportunity and the popular opinion and decent rotation here in the U.S. started to change appetite from a reputational standpoint and the combination of that has basically been a an initial unlock of capital and now I think the funds that are playing today these aren't you know the trillion dollar funds of the world yeah they're still relatively small players. And I think there's huge opportunity for family offices and private investors. I think over the next five years you'll see that transition into a more mature capital markets and the larger institutions will be playing the space. So it's still on the second or third inning but it's all happening and we're going to watch it right in front of us.
[00:20:07] Yeah.
[00:20:08] And not not to mix basketball and baseball analogies but it's okay to say you know just in your role as as the company has grown and gone from you know twenty thousand dollars a year you know through this fairly significant expansion what have you kind of found in terms of your own. Transformation. You know change of focus. What would have been the things you've had to kind of either adjust in the way you approach things or what you focus on or you know kind of the skills that you rely upon.
[00:20:38] What has been what I've been sort of meaningful transitions for us as you know as IFCO.
[00:20:44] Yeah I think you know for me being a CEO that you know has a focus on the public markets and capital raising and emanate activity versus being a highly operational CEO and you know more strategy and corporate development than say day to day operations. You know I've definitely seen a focus of where initially it was all about PR. It was about getting your name out there about being able to get in front of investors and you know get them to know your story too. You know now where there's been you know several companies that have emerged as real players in the industry and I believe that we're one of them. We're now the institutional investor community and analyst community and you know people have already they know us right and they know the other players that are up there as well. And they're taking a new focus on looking at financial performance and execution and being able to go from a period where it was just hey how do we get our name out there how do we get the word out there how do we get people to look at us to now hey people are looking at us and they're taking a deep dive.
[00:21:53] And your question is you know why why is this growing at that rate and why are we not doing this and how much do we pay for that. And so you know having that sort of focused you know whatever you want to call it you know community looking at us and saying you know hey we're tracking your performance. Now you have to sort of change your your focus and say hey we need to operate. We need to execute we need to deliver on the commitments and the promises that we've essentially told Wall Street. So that's been very interesting. And you know going in and you know early days where it was about how do we how do we grow this thing fast how do we get revenue and yes you know we were looking at a lot of MDA activity acquisitions and stuff that could accelerate us to now where you know the business is growing organically and it's less of a focus for us and more of a focus on how do we just execute on what's working we know that we have a nice position in the market we know that our products are adding value to our customers.
[00:22:54] How do we enhance that. How do we make our operations better and smoother and more efficient. How do we deliver on a better level of customer service. So just a shift in thought and a shift in how we act. But ultimately we can't expect it not to change again.
[00:23:08] We know that this year is like dog years people say six or nine months there'll be a new focus there but we think we'll pay attention to and we need to be highly dynamic proactive and reactive and very focused on being able to continue to execute on the initiatives that we put forth.
[00:23:27] Yeah I'd like to say that we're a year in most businesses is a quarter in cannabis. That we can press everything into that. Yeah.
[00:23:35] So let's talk a little bit about where the business is going so you started as cash bottles I believe and then you're now cash holdings. Tell us a little bit about why the change. What that change represents what's the kind of underlying strategic thinking in terms of position of the company or what the company is and how that's transformed.
[00:23:54] So we you know we started as cash bottles as you mentioned our main product was the pop top bottle that we talked about. And so that name was very appropriate because you have on one hand you have Kush which is one of the most potent forms of cannabis strains and you have bottles which is our core product. Now we obviously quickly outgrew that as we moved from selling bottles to jars to different containers to labels to gloves and you know eventually vaporizers and all sorts of different stuff and now we're selling butane gas and ethanol so that name no longer fit. And as we looked at OK well where's this thing going. You know it's changed already you know four or five times in terms of where we position ourselves in the market. So let's pick a name that's a little bit more broad. We wanted to keep the kush in the name because a lot of people noticed a lot of people just call us Kush. Yeah. And so keeping the cushion the name but making it something broader and a little bit more unique not just cash but cash Costco and putting the holdings below it so that we could make sure that we had the ability to diversify into any area that we saw fit.
[00:25:00] Today we have our main core operating business which is called Kush supply company and that essentially what could his bottles became and could supply go is under Costco holdings and that's our entity that sells products to cannabis businesses and the products that we sell are much broader than you know the original bottles we started with. So that's where we got the name Supply Co. Because it's it allows us to have a very broad and unique offering of. Different products and then by way of acquisition we purchase the hybrid creative which is a you know a full spectrum branding agency market. You know marketing branding agency that you know again now this is a services component that we can offer as well. So I think when you think about Costco holdings of course with the name Kush we're going to be focused on cannabis and of course hemp as well. We're going to be building a business model around that but we may have you know various products and various services that we offer to that marketplace.
[00:26:00] But the goal is to kind of create an ecosystem where you know if we have a relationship with the customer they can come to us and we can support them in a myriad of different ways thinking about how do we add the most value and make sure that our clients recognize us as a value added partner. We don't want to be a middleman. We don't want to be a distributor. We want to be producing our own products. We want to be delivering services and delivering a customer experience helping them with logistics and helping them solve problems and being a connector and letting them use our ecosystem to their advantage. So if they do well of course in turn we should do well. And that's the Monitor that we've kept with is how do we enable our customers add value have them accelerate their business and then as a result we're going to benefit too.
[00:26:47] Yeah. Now it makes sense. And so tell us a little bit about your view on kind of where this market is going. So we've got these kind of state by state or continued kind of state by state legalization or legislation that's passing that's kind of opening up the different markets you've got Canada who just you know in the in the throes of implementing their federal policy is for legalization and another still there. Edibles is coming out towards the end of the year here.
[00:27:12] You know what. What is and then obviously all these other countries that are talking either doing it are talking about it or talking about talking about it.
[00:27:19] I guess where do you see the business really kind of growing expanding. Is this are you looking primarily internationally or are you kind of taking the state by state what's what's kind of your assessment and take on where the market's sort of shaping up over the next 12 to 24 months.
[00:27:35] Craig question we have you know a little bit of a different opinion on where we like to focus our efforts. You know it's very fun to think about all of the new opportunities in cannabis. I think Europe is a huge opportunity. Latin America you know we're seeing progress in most of the Westernised nations we're seeing obviously now a fully legal Canadian market that's going to be expanding and offering you know edibles and they can concentrate products year very soon. So there's a ton of stuff going on and it's very exciting to think about and certainly all of it's on our radar. But our approach is really we have limited resources as we talked about earlier that Mr capital the ability to scale this business does depend on resources and where we're going to most effectively be able to deploy those resources in our opinion. It's going to be where most cannabis commercial activity is happening today and in the near future. And that is for the most part right here in the U.S. We have California obviously our home state gigantic market that's still developing. I mean there's only five hundred or so retailers open in the legal market. That Where is going to go three acts within the next 18 months. You have Massachusetts that just opened their first dispensary in late November of last year. Now that market you know when you talk about the northeast and you include Maine who's already legal Vermont who's already legal in states like New Jersey New York that are are making progress to become.
[00:29:17] We're going we're trying to make progress. We haven't quite got here yet but you know you think about the size of that thing.
[00:29:25] It's bigger than California and that's all developing right now it's opening up. Of course Canada big market there. The ability for the PS to ship their product internationally that's probably the most the best way to play some of these international markets is to focus on Canada because they're going to be a bridge to Europe and a bridge to Latin America or Australia. And then you know Michigan just legalized that market is taking huge. Illinois is talking about legalizing and the governor certainly you know behind it. And so we see we see the Midwest starting to open up as well and not to mention you know Florida is a very vibrant medical market. They just you know overturn the ban on smoking will flower and they're talking about putting Rick on the ballot in 2020 as is Arizona. So so much opportunity right here in the U.S. that's where we're more focused because it's it's a it's quicker. We see these markets you know even when a market legalizes you know take the November 2016 election. Huge news we had California Nevada. She's the main all vote to legalize but it's not.
[00:30:30] It's not like it becomes they want to get walk down to the corner store that next morning and start buying. Yeah right.
[00:30:38] You know I was up I was up in Canada toward the end of the year after the October 17th the legalization date and has you know asking one of the big LPC you know where can I go get some cannabis. They said you know I hate to say this but you're going to you're going to have to go to one of the black market. You know the legal dispensary out. And you know this is a country that's legalized so think about just how these markets have the developer working out the pass a law. Then they have to implement the law. And we've seen in the U.S. states take you know Nevada is the earliest sort of you know eight months to you know Maine is you know up to 28 months and still really no traction there so you know it can take six months to three years let's call it to roll the program out and then the program has to gain momentum. I and look at Massachusetts you know a couple stores open in November a couple more in January. You know a couple more now we just got our first dispensary open in the in the broader Boston metro area. Just up and I think it was a couple weeks ago a couple weeks ago and I mean that's you know late March. So it's all unfolding in the U.S. I think quicker and you know we want to keep our mind our antenna up for international markets that may may be opening up but the opportunities right here in our backyard.
[00:31:52] When you have limited resources this is sort of the best place to spend them outside of maybe Canada. Like I said which is a which is a great market and something that can actually help penetrate internationally as the Canadian Hopis are doing business globally. So that's where our focus has been. And then our focus has been around how do we build more products and more value for our customers. So if we're selling our customers you know X Y and Z is there. You know another category or another you know sort of bucket that we can onboard and offer now. And by doing that we're able to get some pretty attractive cross-selling metrics that we actually showcase and report where we see customers that are spending over half a million dollars with us on an annual basis buying on average 50 different skews from us. That's great for us because it makes that customer relationship more efficient. Yeah it makes it stickier. We get more tied in with those customers and so for us it's looking at new markets but also looking at new products and new product categories and being able to expand and grow with our customers as they expand and grow and develop themselves into new markets etc..
[00:33:05] I think that makes a lot of sense. I think that's a kind of a classic I a lot of kind of high growth companies make as they go chasing new customers new markets when oftentimes they're their best move is to figure out how can we how can we expand the work in the business and the products we have on our car customers and deepen those relationships and make us more profitable. And it's often particularly where profits are an issue. The best way to juice profits is figure out how to sell more to the people who are already doing business. So it makes makes subtle sense make this event Great. Great story great background. I love the kind of the journey you went through in terms of founding the business and taking it all the way through today as a major player in the cannabis industry. And I think you're still in the early stages. There's a lot more to go. So we're curious and look forward to kind of staying in touch us as things continue to evolve in the business.
[00:33:54] But thank you so much for taking the time. If people want to find out more about you or about Costco what's the best way to get that information.
[00:34:01] Well again you know thank you for the time and happy to be on the program anytime you'll have me and you know keep up the good work that you're doing and getting these businesses exposed to a broader audience and certainly understanding the industry and where these companies are positioned but also you know sort of the financials and the execution behind all I think is sort of the next phase in this industry where you know again like I said people are going to look at that execution and start to measure companies on that.
[00:34:28] And so you know we embrace it and we appreciate the role that folks like you play in that for us. You know Kush com obviously a great starting point. You know our Investor Relations website could supply co dot com as I mentioned that's our main operating business where you can find all the products that we sell. Of course I'm on Twitter Linked In a content writer for Forbes as well. So I'm putting out a few pieces every month on Forbes So there's a lot a lot of ways to find us to find me to find some of the stuff that is near and dear to us that we're we're out there advocating for and supporting and you know we have one of the largest Salesforce in the country we have a we have a footprint around the country and also in Canada and we're always out on the scene. Mean We're big advocates of supporting the industry going to the events whether it's regulatory events or or events or you know trade shows and stuff like that. I mean we're out there on the scene. So you know if anyone's out there. These events you know gatherings or trade shows or or industry events or regulatory events you'll look for somebody from our company and talk to us we're very friendly. We love to help. We are behind the scenes supporting businesses in the cannabis industry. That's our job. So if you're a business or thinking about starting a business and you want some free advice. Yeah we're a good place to go to and we're happy to help. That's what we love to do and that's ultimately what I get pleasure out of as well as being a part of this ecosystem and helping build this community which by the way is becoming a phenomenal business community was always a great cannabis community but it is now becoming a great business community too.
[00:36:07] Yeah I agree. I think that's the fun part of being in the cannabis space it is it is very community oriented.
[00:36:12] People are incredibly open and sharing and welcome as as you have demonstrated in giving us so much today. And I'll encourage everyone on the program here.
[00:36:21] Take Nick up on his offer. Contact him. Get the free advice of any useful and I'll make sure all the links that everything are in the shadow so people can click through. I get this. This has been a pleasure. Thank you so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it.
[00:36:34] All right. Thank you so much. Take care.
[00:36:37] You've been listening to Thinking Outside the Bud with Business Coach Bruce Eckfeldt to find a full list of podcast episodes. Download the tools and worksheets and access other great content. Visit the Web site at thinkingoutsidethebud.com. And don't forget to sign up for the free newsletter at thinkingoutsidethebud.com/newsletter.