Stop Doing Everything For Them

Stop whatever you are doing for someone else right now, and read this.

So many discussions on self preservation versus socioeconomic scaling in the workplace on LinkedIn. Like, what percentage of GAF should you possess in a company run by stoners, or, even worse, capitalist psychopaths, when you’re basically the only person who knows how to make the model succeed?

Do you taste some salt in your mouth from reading that? Is the texture grainy? Is it because you’re a struggling small business owner and you don’t know how to treat your staff? Or, is it because you’re the employee/shareholder getting bent over instead of leveraging your talent to actually be happy in a commercial space that shows you an ounce of reciprocal respect and will guarantee generational wealth through hard work? 

Hi. I’m Beth Myers, and I’m a cannabis industry accountability specialist. I’ve dragged my gravity chair I installed with a strong seatbelt all the way to the first row, and I’ve been sitting here hanging upside down on the front lines of this pathetic massacre for the last 15 years. I’m here to tell you in so many insulting words that if you can’t read between the lines you will die in this game alone. And, until our industry can take an honest look at itself on a granular level, encompassing and then reshaping all aspects of collective stupidity, we will continue to face detrimental levels of dysfunction. 

Now, I know what you are thinking. It’s really funny to lean back and read Law360’s Cannabis section, and it’s worth it to spend $200/month for the best weed popcorn and tea you’ve ever had in your life. But, at the same time, it’s cringe and embarrassing that there are so many (mostly white) people angry at each other for seemingly one reason: They can not self actualize or take accountability for any of their poor decisions. 

Imagine the entitlement of willfully spending bank plotting litigious trojans against fellow drug/greed addled dipshits while other disadvantaged humans sit imprisoned for selling plants in the 1990’s, unable to hug their own children. This is an epidemic within this industry. It’s our crisis that we have to deal with. If we don’t fix this the new generation of Social Equity owners will forever stand on uneven ground. Please stop yourself from commenting on this editorial until you’ve thoroughly researched the roots of sardonicism and I’ve adequately shit on everyone. This is a whole series of blogs calling out everyone, including myself. Thank you, here we go.

To The Struggling Small Business Owner

Hi. I’m back. I’m talking to you. Okay, so first of all, congratulations. You’ve probably bought in at the peak of a bubble and entered a trade that coincides with a high risk of cardiovascular disease. It’s not like stress is everywhere. It’s concentrated within you. It’s a gas leak waiting for a lighter. You are also the lighter.

Some of the situations you encounter that cause stress are out of your control. The general necessary entanglements with bureaucracy such as licensing, compliance, zoning, and then also managing the daily operations of a highly regulated business on your own are a universal annoyance. 

You have your hands tied behind your back with red tape while a 30 year old emotional teenager with Rainbow Brite hair you hired to run your dispensary is shit talking you at every moment humanly possible when you leave, creating irreversible damage to your company culture, compromising the benefits of your core values while sneaking rosin gummies into her Fjällräven purse at close, having mastered the art of waste disposal theft. You can blame Anika for her choices, but you can’t hold anyone but yourself accountable for the ease of her actions within your facility.

Anika is Shit Talking You To Others As You Are Reading This

Let’s say you get lucky, and you hire someone amazing who is not an owner, but they treat your company like they are. They’re passionate, professional, punctual, and accountable. They can handle any task with ease, and, when needed, they are astute delegators. They are big picture thinkers. They grab you in the hallway on your way out the door, and bring you back in to go over a list of questions and demands and ideas. They see flaws in your company quicker than you do, and they offer solutions instead of cynicism. They defend you and stay loyal, even when they know the root cause of the disruption…is you. 

As a shitty business owner, you are already alienating them with your lack of organization and overall acumen. You’ll continue to both lean on them and undermine them until they become cynical and then they turn into another Anika…or they leave you at the most inconvenient time, and you’ll blame them for everything as they literally run from your building. You may have the capacity for change, but it will take metacognitive powers to answer these questions before you go back to your facility happy:

1. Have you ever been to therapy?
2. Do the people who work for you like you? If not, why do you think that is?
3. Do you find yourself doing work for employees you can’t seem to fire?
4. If you sell tangible items: When was the last time you personally audited the physical inventory at your premises and compared it against your Point of Sale or tracking system? Not your team. You.
5. How do you define your company’s Culture of Accountability?
6. Have you implemented a comprehensive training program to set boundaries and manage expectations for your staff (and yourself)?
7. How is your relationship with your immediate family? If you have children or pets, do you spend enough time with them?
8. Are you in debt, and if so, is it worth the stress you are enduring? 
9. Are you making money, and if so, is it worth the stress you are enduring?
10. How do you counteract your stress levels?
11. Is consuming Cannabis still a positive force in your life?
12. Are you going to call CannManage to reverse these negative cycles through training and mass standardization?

To The MSO Business Owners

You just keep doing you. I’ll be back soon.

To The Cannabis Martyr

Now, I’m going to talk to you. I used to be driven equally by boredom and passion. I’ve always loved retail and I’ve always loved cannabis, and I’ve always loved the process of everything. The harder I worked, the faster the day would go by. I also wanted to make more money, because the earliest licensed dispensaries paid a bit above minimum wage in Colorado in 2011. With a passion for the process also comes the ability to see around the bend before anyone else can. This is derived from experience and intuition.

There is a bit of power in being the only one who’s working hard at that shit show. You know if you endure the emotional duress and low wages you can stay there forever, and this offers a strange comfort. You assume you’ll always have some greater level of authority than if you worked somewhere with higher standards. Chaos and dysfunction is an environment you thrive in…or you just don’t fully grasp that this vibe can have adverse effects on mood and quality of life, long after you move on to another organization that will take advantage of you because you don’t know your worth. I’ve experienced apathy and complacency when management and ownership were particularly aloof or unappreciative of me, even if I went above and beyond my job description. The shitty small business owner sees initiative as a necessary threat, and will chase two rabbits until they lose them both.

This is You Quitting The Shit Show in The Middle of Your Shift

I tried to leave a shit show once, and it worked. I secured a management role that was better than my previous one, and for an actual salary. That company would go on to be a slightly larger shit show, and would fizzle out shortly after adult use regulation. I got fired in a parking lot three blocks from Casa Bonita with no explanation from management, and was forced to count my last paycheck in cash out of an envelope sitting on the hood of my 2004 PT Cruiser. The opportunity I made for myself after that was one of the best of my young life. At that point, my experience evolving along with this nascent trade left me lopsided from years of tolerating dysfunction. I never learned the self-preservation to fight for what was right for me. I only secured the acumen to get to the top. I spent too long working for naive small business owners who saw in me a short sighted opportunity to exploit talent, and I was willing to accept that. There are parts of me that will never heal from these experiences because I know I missed out on opportunities where I could have gained skill sets that would have opened doors for me that I will never know existed because I didn’t believe in myself. I need you to answer these questions before you click to the next snarky weed editorial:

1. Why do you get up every day and work so hard for a company that does not value you? 
2. Have you tried to leave? 
3. Have you gone on any interviews? 
4. Did you call Vangst, yet? 
5. Are you networking with other professionals, like CannManage’s free Discord Community?
6. Do you leave the house on your days off and search for a better future?
7. How many times are you going to complain about your job before you realize you are 50% of the problem?
8. Do you consume too much Cannabis to focus on changing negative aspects of your life?
9. What the fuck are you waiting for?