Jon Malave, Founder, CEO, QAcanna
As the founder, owner and CEO of QAcanna Jon brings 20 years of practical experience within the pharmaceutical, medical device, combination products and dietary supplement industries.
His thorough comprehension of industry regulations and standards, along with an understanding of how to effectively apply those standards to various business models, has allowed him to successfully navigate and lead through various sectors of regulated industries. His current 2-year participation on the ASTM International’s technical committee “D37 on Cannabis” has allowed him to participate in the construction of standards that will guide the cannabis industry on a global scale, while gaining valuable insight as to future regulatory expectations.
https://www.qacanna.com/
info@qacanna.com
jon.malave@qacanna.com
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. I'm Bruce Eckfeldt. I'm your host. And our guest today is Jon Malave. He is CEO at QAcanna Quality Assurance and Compliance Consultantcy. They help cannabis companies navigate the troubled and sometimes difficult waters of dealing with regulatory issues, compliance issues.
[00:01:24] It's gonna be a fascinating topic. I think this is a big factor in cannabis. It's a big factor in the industry.
[00:01:29] It's really shaped the way the industry has played out. We've got state by state regulations with international staff. We have more regulations there. And Jon is an expert in that. So we're interested in getting his insight and advice on this. Like this is gonna be a fun conversation, but also a very educational one with that. Jon, welcome to the program. Thanks Bruce. Thanks for having me. So why don't we start with background? What I guess, what were you doing professionally? How did you get into cannabis? And then we'll talk a little bit about the work that you're doing today. Give us the backstory.
[00:01:57] So historically, I come from pharmaceutical medical devices, other highly regulated industries, started out as a chemist and have been in quality assurance for the past 16, 17 years almost. So I came into cannabis because I've always been an advocate, probably a self-medicate or, you know. You know, since I've been young, I think has a lot of people in this industry have been and just have always known that there's you know, there's been a lot of propaganda, a lot of misleading. The real story about it hasn't really been out there.
[00:02:29] And, you know, having always been a scientist by education, by by occupation, have always tried to find the data to kind of support what I had, you know, experience and felt anecdotally the positives of cannabis and things and how I can actually help someone's well-being or or help other people in a lot of respects and shouldn't have the negative stigma that I had attached to it. So I really was, I guess, a cultural kind of thing or something that I utilized for self medicating. And then as the some of the science started to come about and obviously it was from outside of the US usually that kind of supported the positions that I had experienced and that I had observed in, you know, through friends and society and things like that.
[00:03:11] Yeah, yeah. And so tell me about Kua Cano. How how did that come about? What was that was a strategic decision you made at one point? Did you find yourself kind of just getting involved? What was was the founding kind of story for you?
[00:03:24] You know, I actually had a friend and a colleague that I used to just always talk to. And I think at that time, California was talking about, you know, they were already medically legal and were talking about going recreational. And I was like, you know what? This this industry is going to be regulated. I don't know to what extent was going to be regulated, how it would be regulated, because there was nothing there was no precedent set prior to that. Right. There was nothing that came out of such illegality for so many years and then basically moved into this framework of where the states were making legal. But it was still illegal in a federal landscape. But I just I just knew that it was going to I guess, internally that it was going to be legal in some manner and it was going to be regulated. And I was like, well, this is just leveraging my experience that I utilize within pharmaceuticals and medical devices and things like that and and repurposing women and bring them into this space, all the all the things that we that we know about quality principles and, you know, producing safe and effective products that have integrity and and ultimately end user safety and patient safety. Those are all things right in my wheelhouse. So this is a no brainer for me.
[00:04:31] So about three years ago, I started doing some market research, had reached out to a couple of them, closer competence that were in this space and asked them about what they thought about what I wanted to bring to the table in this respect. And they said, you know, you're probably a few years ahead of time, but you need to get into this space now. And really, that's a lot of the initial time with Q8 kind of formulating it was a lot of spinning wheels and not gaining much traction. So, you know, you had to find a way to essentially differentiate yourself because you weren't gaining traction on what you do because there's no regulatory structure and a lot of respect. So it was very fragmented and it still is fragmented, obviously. But there wasn't there just wasn't a need per say. People love what you're saying. People, you know, when you explain it to them, they desire what you're saying because it makes their product better. And, you know, they care about the product that's going on into the market, but there's no mandate for it. So, you know, it's I think it plays into the part that what there's a misconception that everybody in this space is making. Money hand over fist.
[00:05:30] It's just that's just not raining money.
[00:05:35] Exactly. You know, like more people are probably broke and surviving in this space and just trying to stay afloat than many realize on the outside. Yeah.
[00:05:43] Yeah, I would I would. A group. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about this regular sorry. Kind of contacts for the environment that cannabis operates with and because it's a little complicated. Talk to us about kind of.
[00:05:53] Well, it does still some kind of the biggest down kind of international level regulation, federal and then the state and local. How like what kind of comes into play when you start thinking about, you know, regulation, compliance, quality assurance, you know, mandated quality assurance at those different levels? What's what's kind of the dynamic at this point in this industry?
[00:06:11] Well, the dynamic is that people don't really. I mean, when you're talking about the US, because the US landscape is obviously different than, say, Canada, which is regulated by Health Canada, which regulates there, there are pharmaceuticals and there are dietary supplements and things like that. So they have a formal regulatory structure that, you know, might not be up to par to where it needs to be, but it's all about continuous improvement. So those are things that are going to be revised and you're going to have lessons learned and they're going to change in that manner. And it really goes for any country that's adopting these practices, whether it's, you know, Germany or anybody else. They're looking at this as this is an industry just like any other highly regulated industry. We have to worry about consumer safety, product safety, pack integrity and things like that. So we're going to use the tools that we have in place for other industries and utilize them for, you know, repurposing and utilize them for cannabis deals. It's very different, obviously, because it's it's put down to the states at the federal level. We can talk about where I think it's going to be going. But right now, the federal level, their hands are off in that respect. It's still obviously illegal.
[00:07:13] And, you know, the states really, from my experience, don't have the the experience and the expertise, should I say, for lack of a better term right now to effectively manage such an industry. It's just it's very hard to take something that needs to be so highly regulated. It really needs to be, because the fact is, these are going into patients. These are people that are that are a compromise health wise and essentially doing all of the things or making sure that these companies are doing all the things that they need to do in order to produce safe and effective products. So it's the fragmentation, the lack of I should, I'm gonna say, knowledge base, not that it's not out there, but the people that are actually driving it. The lack of knowledge has really made a sometimes I just use the word an egregious failure within the state, you know, state of cannabis within the United States, because there's just so much consumer safety factors out there that are just exposed that it's unreal. It sometimes boggles my mind to think about it because I'm just like coming from a quality perspective. It's just like I'm appalled sometimes that it's allowed to go in the manner that it's gone for so many years.
[00:08:23] You know, these medical programs, you know, so a lot of a lot of a lot of work to do and most likely a lot of changes going forward. What? I mean, we weren't talking about quality and compliance.
[00:08:32] What is it that we're really at? Is how does that practically work? Like how does how does the regulatory process work? How do companies do to become compliant? How do they stay compliant? I mean, from the operational point of view, how does this play out?
[00:08:45] Well, you know, people bring up complaints a lot when compliance is it's a loose term, right. If I come into cannabis and say that your regulations are that you're your signage needs to be in red and your signs are in red more than you're compliant. So compliance is loose. It doesn't really tell you, you know, how effectively somebody is in a state of control within their operations. That's basically set about by the regulations, the rules by which these companies need to adhere to. Now, when you're talking about quality in every other regulated industry, whether it's aerospace or food or pharma or med device, they all have quality systems and quality departments in play because that's really the the safety net of the organization. Basically, they're it's like their checks and balances, ensuring that they're doing what they're supposed to be doing, ensuring that they're not breaking the rules. So to say and essentially any other problems that are internally happening are being disseminated up to upper management and upper management has visibility on them. So ultimately, they're the real decision makers and they're the ones that are that are essentially going to say, OK, this is what we need to do so we can, you know, comply with the current regulations that are in place.
[00:09:55] So right now, when you talk about compliance, sometimes the regulations are just so deficient, egregiously deficient that it doesn't matter whether they're complying or not. The fact is you're still probably putting out adulterated products. And and the fact is that, you know, these doctors are talking about prescribing medications and stuff like that. And I think it puts them in a kind of a weird position because they're basically prescribing medication that that isn't really up to par of what they're used to prescribing. I'm not saying that cannabis is an effective, but essentially that. It's just likely in some manner adulterated because it's not processed within the state of control. You know, from the very beginning, from raw materials coming into the manufacturing processes to distribution and things like that. So so quality really ensures that the doctor or the end user is actually getting a consistent quality product that's expected throughout the whole lifecycle manufacturing process of that product itself.
[00:10:56] And then when when you say adulterated, we're looking at things that are introduced to the product, either through growing and pesticides and treatments and things that happen on the plant itself to the processing equipment and the chemicals that are used in processing. And are those residual? Do they have harmful effects? What level concentration stuff like.
[00:11:14] Right. That's correct. So, you know, people bring up pesticides and stuff and they will pesticides are used in food and stuff like that. But, you know, usually with food, you can wash off your food or something like that. And externally and I'm not and I'm not justifying and saying that all pesticide use is just safe and it's the best practice. I'm just giving one factor there that cannabis you can't really do that. Usually it's it's systemically introduced and there's no way to, you know, extract that out or separate that out in a lot of respects, just as the nature of the product and how it's grown and it's processed. Yeah. And then and then also comes to the point that, you know, you also have inconsistencies in the analysis that are supposed to detect these pesticides and things where you have and I'm not going to mention any stage or anything specifically, but you'll have some lab analysis where it will show that it'll say no, no pesticides detected or none detected. But essentially, you'll have a note or a blurb stating that due to some type of, you know, matrix problems with the plan itself or whatever, we cannot actually effectively detect pesticide. So it's kind of being disingenuous, as you're saying, that it is not detected. But you're really saying in the same breath that we don't really have a methodology that can detect it due to these other limitations where they are just not effective method development or other enhanced remedies, you know?
[00:12:33] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so when I mean, we're looking at the through the regulatory process in terms of how this gets implemented, the state is also so we're dealing mainly right now if you're doing if you're involving in cannabis, you know, high THC level cannabis products in those states in the US, that you're going to fall under state state regulatory issues, they're going to issue some kind of set of standards. How does the testing work? I mean, I know some states are doing this. The state is testing. In some cases you have to use a state authorized lab. I mean, how does. Who actually does the testing? How do they do the testing?
[00:13:09] Who organizes that? I mean, give us a sense of kind of the dynamics and the economics of the testing process or the assuring that you're actually meeting these compliance and these standards that.
[00:13:21] So just as you said, you either have a state identified or sold state testing facility or you have third party approved laboratories that can actually test. And the dynamic there fundamentally is kind of backwards. And the reason I say that is because really the laboratories are driving this industry. They are the end all be all sitting there saying that something passes. You can't distribute it. And something I mean, something passes. You can distribute it or something doesn't pass and you can't distribute it. Where when you're talking about mature industries like pharmaceuticals or dietary supplements or anything like that, obviously with different levels of stringency, the laboratory is really just a confirm her of what you're doing or what you expect with them, with your products, cells and company A within pharmaceuticals. They basically have in process or in-house testing that they get these results to say, all right, quality is going to release these out to the market for distribution. They might send something out to a third party laboratory if necessary, to get confirmatory results to say they align. But right now in our industry, in the cannabis industry, it's not that way. So it's kind of backwards because not only is it inherently contradicting, because one lab uses this methodology in this lab, in this methodology, in this lab uses this methodology because we don't have a compendia of some recognized or all recognized methodology for extraction or for I mean, for analysis in that respect.
[00:14:45] So that that dynamic is it's a little bit screwy in my mind, you know. You know, people look at the laboratories because QC is the standard in this industry right now, which is very reactive, rather than having QJ, which is proactive and trying to prevent and project what's actually going to be happening down the process line within your manufacturing and things like that in a laboratory that the whole laboratory dynamic is, it's a little screwy. Not saying that all labs are not proficient in what they're doing. I think the fact is that there's just not enough harmonization, there's not enough cross discussion about the analysis and the methodologies that we're utilizing to sit here and say, OK, we're really doing this to ensure that these these products are made consistently with consistent levels of. GHC, et cetera, et cetera, but rather than but rather it's just you send it to us. We're going to tell you whether you can distribute or not due to state regulations.
[00:15:38] Interesting.
[00:15:38] Yes, it is the issue if I'm if I'm worried about a particular an organic solvent that's used in some extraction process. You know, what's the method by which I test to see if it's there or not? And you're saying that going from lab to lab, the method that they use to test will vary. Therefore, you have fundamental differences in the results that you're getting and it becomes difficult to compare or at least standardize what are the limits that we're setting and then how do we validate that those limits are or met or not met? And that's a problem in and of itself.
[00:16:05] Correct. So essentially, like from my experience with manufacturers, they would say that those it's one lab and they get one result in a failed note, send it to another lab and another's on the passes and are like the people do the shopping and get it until it passes. Yeah. And that's inherently something you wouldn't do. I mean, any regulatory body would be like, you can't do that. You're trying to test quality into your product, which is not which is not allowable. Just can't do those things. So it puts them in a in a bad situation because they don't have consistency on the analysis end. And they might be that their manufacture and they might be working within a good state of control for the manufacturing. Well, that's not you know what I've seen. And you have experience store within the space in a long time. Everybody's cutting corners.
[00:16:46] Know, I can imagine that this whole process becomes quite political as well. So like who? You know that the people that actually decide what the standards are and who's gonna do the testing and things like that. I mean, ultimately, this is a kind of a government function, right? There's a health safety issue for the general public. So the government is involved in doing this. But government is, you know, obviously flawed, not perfect in the process of making these regulations become, you know, a little bit skewed. I mean, I don't know how much insight or experience you've had or stories that you've seen in terms of the actual sausage making on this. What? Yeah. What have you seen in terms of how how the regulations actually get made? And, you know, to the extent that they're actually doing or not doing the job of protecting the consumer, making sure that we've got, you know, safe and effective product.
[00:17:29] You know, I really try to even though I'm exposed to it, I really try to stay out of the policy side of it so much, because the political you know, the political landscape is just it's it makes everything so convoluted and problematic. Really, a lot of the problem that we're having are because of the political landscape, the policy aspects. You know, you can't implement medical cannabis programs in 90 days and expect to have an effective program that's going to, you know, ensure consumer safety and ensure that the the the people that are that are licensed to manufacture are doing so in a controlled state. There's just there's just not enough conveyance of the knowledge that's out there. There's a wealth of knowledge. There's a wealth of quality knowledge that you can gain from, you know, from pharmaceutical or medical devices that are just out there for guidance and and for really kind of recipes for it for this industry to follow. Unfortunately, people just aren't educated because they don't come from that space and that they're not aware of it. And a lot of times, the politicians that are driving this or that or the political motivations are only really caring about, you know, tax revenue and, you know, and whether it's, you know, they're maybe enhancing some of their constituencies they might have good relationships with. So it really is doing a disservice to everything. And this is why I really feel that. And I do believe that the FDA is eventually going to take us over. And I think the CBD framework and hemp framework that will be formulated by the FDA will just allow a pretty easy transition of cannabis to slide into it. And then obviously with, you know, higher regulation, stronger regulations, more stringent, but still into that into that framework.
[00:19:01] So, yeah, you brought you brought a CBD and I'm curious to talk about that.
[00:19:05] I mean, to CBD, you know, for folks on the program here is this is sort of the cannabis plant. That's Lessem. Well, in the United States, less than point 3 percent. THC is considered hemp. Extracting CBD from hemp is now legal under the farm bill. That I think was the twenty eighteen farm bill finalized legalizing that. Tell me about the compliance side of that, though, because I my recollection and my understanding is that who's actually controlling it isn't a supplement. Is it a drug? Is it USDA? Is it FDA? Like all all these things for a while, we're still up in the air. Has it been resolved or where where is compliance or how is compliance being handled on the CBT side?
[00:19:40] Well, the USDA for the actual cultivation of hemp has released guidance in that respect, the regulations. But the FDA is still formulating regulations for CBD production that are essentially going to be going in to people. So right now, it's really kind of up in the air and it's kind of like it's been, I guess, driven by kind of the the auspice of dietary supplements, you know. So you'll hear like things about it, like, you know, you can't claim health efficacy on a labels or anything like that. That's one of the distinctions between dietary supplements and and pharmaceuticals. Just no data to show that. So you got any those claims on the label. But there's still no there's no regulation specifically for things like CBD right now. So they're still being formulated. So that's really still up in the air. And it's and it's still a big risk. Or for these manufacturers, because now it's it's legal. So HAMP's legal is CBD legal. So everybody in our brothers thinking or jumping into the game and or not, nobody nobody's worried about, you know, things like product liability, you know, like if you don't have good manufacturing practices and controls within within your manufacturing and your your supply chain and distributions and things like that, you're exposing yourself to these product liability claims and potential class action lawsuits. And, you know, these people that are taking their money, their life savings or or, you know, small amounts comparatively to two large organizations investing in these companies. You know, one class action lawsuit or one major lawsuit, they're just wiped out. It's going to be done. And this is, you know, applied the candidates to they're gonna be done. And and even if they do make it through any type of litigation, the PR crisis that they're gonna spend on PR is gonna be astronomical, you know, especially in such a competitive landscape.
[00:21:22] And let's talk about sort of the different Scheuring compliance and assurance. You brought this up earlier.
[00:21:26] You know, compliance, you know, compliance being, you know, are you meeting a bar, you know, assurances, sort of testing that you've met the bar after the back, assurance being you have the systems and processes in place. Why? I guess how do companies if I'm either in a hemp CBD, a store or THC, you know, marijuana based company, how do I kind of think about this or what's my strategy around this whole kind of compliance and assurance and I'm building quality in my process. What does that look like?
[00:21:52] Well, just to clarification, there was I think they're not they're not compatible in this respect. So if I if I'm talking about compliance specifically, when you're saying compliance, that means you're you're a hearing to regulations. That means it's mandated. It's the law. If I'm if it's something that's a guidance or something like, let's say, ISO standard. And it's not coming from a say, a regulatory body per say, then you're conforming to the standards. You're basically saying that these are that these are the rules were split. We should be following these are the suggestions. So we're conforming to that. So you can be when you're compliant. Essentially, you're just compliant with whatever is required for you to be compliant to whatever the whatever, though the rule is, whatever the rule law is in that respect. With these companies that are in compliance. And, you know, I've heard this for the past two and a half years. When you talk about your services, you're like, oh, don't worry, we have that covered. We're compliant. But that doesn't that doesn't tell the whole story. Like you're compliant with grossly deficient regulations and rules.
[00:22:48] So if you don't have the foresight to be able to see the exposure that your company has when it moves into an ever more stringent regulatory environment, which is the only way it goes, it does. It's not going to become less regulated. It's only gonna become more regulated. You know, then at that point, are your internal systems and expectations, are they up to par? And really, it's going to take an effort of these companies to think outside of the box and go above and beyond. Because if you're looking to have sustainability in this in this landscape and if you're looking to really withstand the onslaught of major companies that are going to be coming into the cannabis space specifically and we're talking pharmaceuticals and other big, big, you know, sometimes multinational companies that are going to come into play. If you want to withstand an onslaught, you better make sure that you are up to par with everything that you need to do. Otherwise you're probably just going to end up just getting wiped out. Honestly, it's just it's sad, but that's the way it's really going to be.
[00:23:45] Yeah, I think a lot of people don't see us really that risk. You know, business risk assessment and mitigation that this comes up as well, not just don't check the box. What my particular regulations and I'm under for the state. But how do you engage with the client? What's what's the process look like for, you know, a company that's looking to improve its quality assurance process? Where do you start all the stops? What are the procedures? What is the structure, the engagement? How do you work with folks?
[00:24:11] You know, I think it goes at a dynamic of our company. You know, when when we first came into this space, the focus was that we're like, OK, we're gonna be a quality assurance and complaints firm, which, you know, quality. It's a wide breadth of activity. I mean, it touches upon every part of a regulated company, you know, outside of financials. But essentially, it's like it has its hands in everything. It's a safety net of the whole organization. So we thought we're gonna be focused in on quality and complain, unfortunately, without mandates, through regulations, without the the operators really being probably aware and educated of, you know, what's coming down the pipeline and how quality can not only help protect you against product liability and things like that, but also increase process sufficiency, you know, better profit margins and things like that. We didn't really gain a lot of traction with the operators, which is which is really where our focus will be when this regulatory structure becomes more harmonized, you know, because that's that's a wealth of activity. And so much that goes on there where we've really gained a lot of traction is with the financial sectors, the insurance industry and things like that, because they're the ones that are taking risk-management into consideration. They're the ones that are looking at this, you know, inherently from their from their business models. Anyway, if you can provide insight into a cannabis operation or, you know, the industry. And give no further data points of where to assess risk and where we can mitigate risk and things like that.
[00:25:35] It's valuable to them, you know, from the private equity PE perspective or investment perspective that, you know, they want to. They want to make sure that they're investing in a company that's going to be sustainable. They want to make sure that they're playing the right valuation to from the insurance perspective, they're looking at, you know, creating a robust risk management program because they don't have collateral. They're not lenders. They're basically writing policies that are hoping that you're not going to really have many claims or they're kind of projecting that you're not going to have as many claims and not expose them to losing money on on writing policies for you. So it's real. That's really where we've engaged and where we've got a lot of traction in that respect. But anybody else and we were always talking to operations. We're always talking to various people within this industry, because I think as anybody who's in this industry knows, it's a lot of face to face interaction. Personal, personal, getting out there and talking to people, meeting people and engaging, because there's still a lot of distrust, stigma that's applied to the industry metric that just so there's there's no marketing firm to go to and say, you know what? I'm a business to business operation. Can you give me a marketing plan and let's get marketing for this now? It just doesn't really exist out there for. For what we're doing in our services.
[00:26:45] It makes sense then. And when you actually do start working with the company, what's the process? Are you going onsite? Are you are you reviewing documents? I mean, how do you actually understand what a company is doing from a process and a quality point of view? And how do you assess, diagnose what needs to get changed and what does that what does it look like?
[00:27:03] Yeah. So if you're if you're dealing with like an insurance company, then there's really no there's really no need besides engagement with, you know, executives or stakeholders that should say there's no need to really go onsite or anything like that. But if you're dealing with an operation and you're usually going to go in and do an initial evaluation, some type of gap assessment or assessment, depending upon what type of deliverable they're looking for, some what type of support they're actually looking for. So ideally, you would go into an operation because again, they're all pretty grossly deficient. And when you do your own evaluation, your output might be a report that identifies, OK, you're compliant with your state mandated regulations or even municipality mandated regulations. This is where you guys stand. But this is where we see gaps. These are the data points that you're not really identifying and where you have a lot of risk, potential diversion risks for security or potential contamination risk, cross contamination risks, work or even supplier risks and a lot of respects. And then you can provide that that entity, that gap assessment in that respect, saying, all right, this is where you are not you know, this is where you're not meeting the requirements that are going to be down the line, whether it's months or a year or whatever it is.
[00:28:13] But you can take this phased implementation approach so you're not acutely absorbing the cost of implementing quality practices and principles, which, you know, it's not cheap, but it's something that needs to be done. And if you take it in the phased approach, it's a lot more manageable and acceptable by organizations. That's usually the and the initial way because the industry is not really mature enough now to hire people. I should say reactively. So like if you are in pharmaceuticals, usually a third party consulting firms are going in because there's a problem within the organization. They're getting FDA 43's or getting a warning letter. And you need to have an outside party that has some shredder expertise to come in and help them remediate those problem on it. The industry now is not mature enough for that, but it will be happening that it's a no brainer and inevitable.
[00:29:01] Now, if I'm an operator or a company working with cannabis products and actually touching the plant, what are the things I need to kind of do or think about? Or do I kind of make sure that I'm thinking about quality assurance, quality compliance issues, some of the questions I need to ask myself?
[00:29:18] Well, I mean, it has to be and we talk about this even historically in pet in my past life in industry material straight. It's really a cultural change within your organization. You have to really accept and believe in the practices of quality, not only caring about your end users, your customers, and putting out a consistent and good quality product, but also your employees and having them working in an environment that they feel good to working at. That they feel that they can continuously improve and and learn different things. But sometimes that dynamic and it's again, even in past life, it's been exposed in this respect that, you know, when you're talking about a company that's trying to make money, you know, manufacturing and things like that kind of hold precedence over quality. And unless somebody comes from an cannabist, unless they come from an industry or a company that has really had this culture, they really don't see the value in it. And they really need to they really care about sustainability. They really need to take an honest step back and evaluate. And if they can't see the broad picture, they need to bring somebody else in who has the ability to be able to see where they're exposed and where they can start improving and solidifying. Systems. So when you know, when it inevitably comes, they're going to be able to not only adhere to the regulations and withstand any type of scrutiny, but also be, you know, a market differentiator by, you know, putting out a high end product that people are gonna know are going to consistently deliver the same results that they're looking for as users.
[00:30:50] Some great if people want to find out more about you, about Kua Kanna, the work that you do.
[00:30:55] What's the best way to get that information so you can go to our Web site www.qacanna.com
[00:31:02] You can e-mail us at info@qacanna.com or you can email me directly at jon.malave@qacanna.com
[00:31:13] And I'm going to throw into there. We're actually going to be doing a seminar over in Israel in I think on March 16th and 17th.
[00:31:23] So if anybody's international or listening to your podcasts and it wants to engage, we will be over there talking about some quality related subject matters at an all day expo there and then a one on one session the next day.
[00:31:36] Awesome. We'll all put in the show, notes, the euros, calls and emails. And then, yes, I mean, the link on the program, you're doing a march in Israel and I'll put that on there as well.
[00:31:45] You know, I actually I would be remiss if I didn't mention this. We're actually just launching a Q8 Qantas show, which I think kicks off on third of this month. We're gonna be doing a monthly show and each show we're gonna be talking about a quality subject herfrom. And the first half an hour we'll be, you know, discussion on that subject and it'll be done by constituency's within within the firm itself. And I think we're gonna to also have some other outside external subject matter experts coming in to provide some insight. And then we're going to leave the last half an hour for some Q&A. So hopefully there's a lot of engagement. You can see that on unlinked in on the Kua Kanna Company site and you can sign up through. Right there. It's free. And hopefully we get a lot of engagement. We feel it's it's a good way to educate people on how they can actually improve their organisations and move the move the compass in the right direction.
[00:32:36] Also, we'll include those links as well. Thank you so much for taking time. Great topic, great insight. Clearly, you know, highly knowledgeable in the space. I appreciate you taking the time and sharing with the audience.
[00:32:45] Thanks Bruce for having me. I appreciate it.
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