Tyler Stratford, Cannabis Consultant, Operations Expert
Tyler was an Infantry soldier at 19, graduated as the best soldier of hundreds, and then was recruited to the elite Honor Guard in Washington D.C. He quickly became a leader and rose to the prestigious “front rank”. After about 1 year of being a top-tier Honor Guard soldier, he was moved to special duty of driving their Regimental Commanding officer, as well as training him in his ceremonial responsibilities. He went back to the “First Presidential Marching Platoon” as a Sergeant, who was quickly given the responsibility of squad leader, a position beyond the rank he held. He was responsible for regimental training of thousands of soldiers on specific weapons systems, and areas Infantry soldiers were required to be proficient. He also spent about 3 months of each year playing for the All Army and All Armed Forces soccer teams. Travelling and playing internationally against other countries, representing the United States. When Tyler got out of the Army as a 23 year-old, he witnessed Cannabis save the life of his grandmother, who was unable to treat her back pain with opioids. He then began working for one of the first licensed vertically integrated cannabis companies in Boulder, Colorado, Boulder Kind Care. He helped them relocate and build their cultivation facility, including equipment selection and installation.
For a few years he worked his way through almost every one of the positions across the cannabis vertical. He has held cultivation management positions, dispensary positions, and eventually was the director of compliance for Boulder Kind Care. After helping a couple other local vertically integrated companies transition from Medical to Dual/Medical & Recreational companies in the Colorado market, he then went to work for MJ Freeway as an Operational Implementation Specialist. Having been a beta user of MJ Freeway and the only one with perspective on “both sides” of the software, he was responsible for the implementation and “go live” of well over 400 operations in the cannabis industry, across the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, and Spain, Including the first 4 dispensaries in 4 states (NV, MN, AK, FL). He has spoken at countless conferences and events, trained thousands of operators on both Cannabis plant/product knowledge, compliance, tools/software, and helped create a lot of their educational content and SOP documentation.
After 3 years, he then went to work for Canna Advisors (one of the most prestigious, professional, and successful consulting companies in the industry) as their Director of Client operations, advising both pre-license and post-license clients on operational set-up and efficiencies. He also created their Strategic Partner Program, negotiating deals for their high-quality clients with vendors of ancillary cannabis products. He even represented a client as an expert witness in an appeals case where he spent over an hour taking questions from the State AG, they got the license. Since then, he has helped multiple start-ups as Director of Operations and Chief Strategy Officer, primarily in the California Market.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tyler-stratford-7ab7b254/
tyler@stratfordcannabisconsulting.com
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
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