This transcript has been auto generated
00;00;00;00 - 00;00;29;14
Hilary Bricken
Welcome. I'm your host, Hilary Bricken, and this is the Cannabis Law Now podcast, where we regularly discuss issues related to the cannabis industry, including investment, day-to-day operational issues and potential reform on the horizon that will impact all cannabis businesses and investors in the United States.
00;00;29;16 - 00;00;52;00
Hilary Bricken
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Cannabis Law Now podcast. And today we have Dina Rollman joining us, who is the CEO of StrainBrain, the co-founder of the KND Group, and on the board of New Lake Capital Realty. And I feel very fortunate to have Dina on today because she has been doing this at least as long as me or longer, which is terrifying.
00;00;52;02 - 00;01;03;00
Hilary Bricken
And I think she's worn literally close to every hat you possibly can in this industry and ridden out the lean times and the fat times, so I know she's going to share a lot with us today. Welcome, Dina.
00;01;03;07 - 00;01;04;27
Dina Rollman
Hi. Thanks so much for having me.
00;01;05;00 - 00;01;25;17
Hilary Bricken
Of course. Okay. Let's dive into it. So for people who don't know you that listen to this podcast and it's going to be attorneys, regulators, investors, stakeholders, operators, can you give us a little bit of your background in the cannabis world, namely starting from your days in Illinois as a cannabis business and regulatory attorney, all the way to where you are now?
00;01;25;19 - 00;01;54;19
Dina Rollman
Sure. Happy to. So in 2014, Illinois's medical cannabis law went into effect. I'm based in Chicago. I had been a practicing attorney doing litigation business litigation for at 14 years at that point, more or less. And was pretty solidly in that, you know, sort of corporate law reality. But when Illinois legalized medical cannabis, it did so legislatively, which meant that there was a nice, you know, 100 page law that I could pull down.
00;01;54;19 - 00;02;24;17
Dina Rollman
And I just started reading it and got very excited because it was so specific that it literally mapped out exactly what Illinois's industry would look like and said, there's going to be 60 dispensaries, 21 cultivation facilities. This is the parts of the state that can be in. This is, you know, all the requirements of how it operates, what kind of money you have to have, etc., etc. so it allowed me to actually just like, visualize it and see what was coming out of and being created basically out of nothing.
00;02;24;17 - 00;02;50;19
Dina Rollman
And given that it's so highly regulated, it just seemed obvious to me that the industry was going to need attorneys willing to do something that was, you know, technically violating federal law. No big deal for a lawyer and, guide, you know, clients on how to operate their business in compliance with the state regulations. I started, giving continuing legal education presentations about the Illinois medical cannabis law.
00;02;50;19 - 00;03;25;14
Dina Rollman
And that led to me being introduced by a mutual friend to Ben Kotler, who was at that time putting together his initial group for Green Thumb Industries. You know, getting everybody on the team had jobs. But let's put together this team to apply and and take our best shot. And the group didn't have a lawyer, so I quickly got sort of absorbed into the group, which was just really fortunate, was able to keep my day job but get permission from my, you know, the owners of my law firm to sort of take a little sabbatical and just devote full time efforts to the GTA applications.
00;03;25;20 - 00;03;47;07
Dina Rollman
And we had, you know, an incredibly hard working, dedicated, dedicated team that just left it all on the map for those applications. And in February 2015, we, got the good news that we had won three cultivation licenses out of the 21 and one dispensary license. Huge win. You know, kind of bigger than I had ever even hoped.
00;03;47;10 - 00;04;06;25
Dina Rollman
And by that point, I was so into all of this. It was so exciting to have this opportunity to build a new industry through a scandalized parents and everybody around me. And I quit my job as a partner at a law firm so I could do cannabis law full time, which wasn't even really a thing at the time.
00;04;06;25 - 00;04;29;19
Dina Rollman
As you know, I think you were the only other person I knew of in the country, basically, who was sort of hanging themselves out there as a cannabis law attorney at the time, you know, and the needs for Green Thumb in those early days were just fast and furious, because every single aspect of how we built out a cultivation facility and a dispensary and grew plants and sold products, every single bit of it had regulations attached to it.
00;04;29;19 - 00;04;55;24
Dina Rollman
And, you know, kind of one false move and you were at risk of losing your license. So I very quickly it was just, you know, really having to pay very close attention to every single aspect of the business, which was, you know, exhausting and stressful. Because you really felt at that point that there was just no, room for error, but at the same time had a great team that just wanted to win, wanted to do it.
00;04;55;24 - 00;05;20;20
Dina Rollman
The right way. So, it was a matter of like just really staying in touch and everything. So did that. We got Illinois, first approval to cultivate cannabis. That was in I want to say, July of 2015, and, we opened our dispensary on the first day that Illinois allowed sales. That was November 2015.
00;05;20;23 - 00;05;38;28
Dina Rollman
And, from there, it was, you know, very quickly learning how to actually operate these businesses on a day to day basis in a compliant way, and the myriad of legal issues that come up every single day that still do, I'm sure, for many operators. And you get those calls right every day. There's some new wrinkle, some new little fire to put out.
00;05;39;00 - 00;06;15;17
Dina Rollman
So that's what that was like. And then, at the same time we started applying for more of licenses. So, you know, I led the application team to apply in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Ohio, and we won licenses there. So suddenly the business became an MSO, sort of organically, very quickly, through those license wins. And so then that meant paying attention to the specific regulations of each of those markets and making sure that as we built out our facilities and began operating, we were doing it in line with Pennsylvania laws or Ohio laws or Maryland laws, which everyone who's in the industry knows, of course, are all different.
00;06;15;19 - 00;06;39;06
Dina Rollman
There's different, you know, wrinkles to each market and at the same time helping build, gti's internal team. Right. As we were expanding into multiple states, you need more and more, of an infrastructure. And, you know, headquarters became, you know, really key to mind all the details of construction and compliance and legal and accounting and HR and all of that.
00;06;39;06 - 00;06;58;18
Dina Rollman
So it was awesome. It was a true, you know, sort of build a plane while you're flying it. But, you know, smart, hardworking group that, you know, was just very good at problem solving. So we just kept knocking down, knocking down hurdles and just kept going. And then in 2018, we went public on the Canadian Securities Exchange.
00;06;58;22 - 00;07;24;24
Dina Rollman
And then at that time, I think that was around when I saw that we really had a need at that point for a government affairs department backing up. I had basically been, leading our regulatory compliance. And, I was one of two in-house attorneys. So Brett Kravitz, who's Gtis general counsel now, it was sort of me and Brett and he came from a transactional law background, and I came from litigation.
00;07;24;24 - 00;07;56;23
Dina Rollman
So we had a pretty nice division of labor, naturally, where all the sort of corporate law issues that came up, Brett handled, and I was sort of the everything else bucket. And then our legal team grew and in 2018, I created our government affairs department. At that point, or, I don't know, probably close to ten states and trying to figure out how to lobby for, you know, better state laws and state regulations in each market and work with lobbyists and work with trade associations really was just too big of a need at that point to not have some dedicated resource.
00;07;56;23 - 00;08;05;08
Dina Rollman
So I created that department and led, government affairs, until I left in 2023.
00;08;05;10 - 00;08;21;20
Hilary Bricken
And I totally forgot that Illinois adopted its initial medical law legislatively. And so many of the others, right, have gone on voter initiative, both medical and adult use. Do you think that that helped you guys hit the ground running, that it was essentially.
00;08;21;20 - 00;08;41;06
Dina Rollman
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it was funny because in the early days, my team, you know, as we were building out our facilities and just, you know, early days of operating a dispensary, I would get questions all day long, you know, can we do this? Can we do that? And basically, I could, you know, do a find on the statute or the regs and find the answer within 30s.
00;08;41;06 - 00;08;58;22
Dina Rollman
My team thought I was a genius, as if I had, you know, all of this knowledge just stored in my brain already. But really it was all, you know, me, pretty black and white on paper. So it was just a matter of, you know, I was very comfortable as a lawyer reading through dense regulations and statutes. I could kind of maneuver around quickly so I could have answers really quickly.
00;08;58;22 - 00;09;03;27
Dina Rollman
But I was really grateful, honestly, that most of the time there actually was an answer.
00;09;03;29 - 00;09;25;17
Hilary Bricken
Yeah. And I came from the land of voter initiatives, which is always interesting. And of course, that's like a total negotiation with the public over what they'll tolerate. And so there are some contradictions there. Okay. So we're the lawyer hat for many, many years, obviously, but now you're not practicing law anymore. At least I don't think you're not.
00;09;25;19 - 00;09;36;13
Hilary Bricken
When did you decide to ditch the lawyer side for the business side in the industry, and why? More than when I think you said one. But more. Why did you decide to do that?
00;09;36;16 - 00;09;55;21
Dina Rollman
Well, I got, you know, in some ways, I really am still practicing law. It's just not in such a formal way as before. But, you know, I can. I'll explain that. But, you know, when I got to do the entrepreneurial journey that I did at GTI for, you know, almost ten years I worked so closely with the business side.
00;09;55;21 - 00;10;22;01
Dina Rollman
You know, I've been color the founder, CEO and Anthony Georgiadis, who's the president. That was where like, the excitement was and the juice, you know, it was like that feeling of like building all the time problem solving. And it was just so much more fun to me than my previous life. You know, as a litigator, generally it was, you know, the clients coming to you when everything's gone wrong for business and saying, okay, now we're ready to fight about what happened.
00;10;22;01 - 00;10;43;28
Dina Rollman
And so you're sort of looking backwards and you weren't a part of the business decisions that got made, and it's too late to solve, you know, the, the problems. Right. So I loved, really flipping where I fell in, in line in a company which was at the growth stage and, and problem solving and avoiding litigation. Frankly, I wasn't looking to like, buy myself more litigation.
00;10;44;00 - 00;11;09;28
Dina Rollman
So it was really a matter of approaching things, as, you know, how do you work cooperatively, how do you navigate conflict with your counterparties, etc.? So I, I really, truly loved it. I learned so much. I came into GTD as a fairly typically risk averse attorney. You know, if you're when you're dealing with litigation, you've seen all the things that can go wrong and you're fighting in court, and the other side is always picking into every little detail.
00;11;09;28 - 00;11;36;05
Dina Rollman
And if you get, you know, you get one statement wrong, you get one fact wrong. You know, you can really, get hurt by that. So you're just, mitigating risk all the time as a lawyer for your career law firm and for your clients. And when I think now, like who I my what my risk tolerance was in 2014 when I got involved versus, you know, 11 years later now, like a different person, you know, I was able to see that, you don't have to sweat every risk.
00;11;36;05 - 00;11;54;26
Dina Rollman
And, you know, some amount of risk is good. And I've learned much more to trust my judgment about how to assess risk and then go ahead and take some. So once you sort of have that transition and make that journey, it would be hard for me to go back to, you know, solely wearing the legal hat.
00;11;54;29 - 00;12;07;15
Hilary Bricken
No, I bet, I bet. And when you were an industry lawyer, full time or in-house? Full time. Can you give me maybe your top two biggest success stories while you were in the chair there?
00;12;07;17 - 00;12;32;17
Dina Rollman
Sure. I mean, one that always stands out to me is, you know, under Illinois medical cannabis statute, you had only six months from the time you were, you know, told you had a provisional license. So that was February of 2015. You had six months to build out your facility and have plants in the ground. So but you're in Illinois because you're only one of you know, we had two, two of the 21 cultivation facilities.
00;12;32;17 - 00;12;54;20
Dina Rollman
These are really large scale facilities. This is like building out of Costco and starting to grow plants within six months. I mean, logistically it's insane. It was a huge task. And the regulators were basically saying, you know, this is a real requirement and if you don't need it, you're at risk of losing your license. And that was obviously just, you know, fit, you know, failure was not an option on that front.
00;12;54;20 - 00;13;17;27
Dina Rollman
So marshaling the forces internally, you know, with with Ben and the others to sort of on an operational level, get a building built, get your grow equipment, all of that, you know, was insane. But but we did it. And so when it came time within that six months that we were ready for that inspection to get permission to start growing, we were the first ones in the state who were ready.
00;13;17;27 - 00;13;42;23
Dina Rollman
So the head regulator for cultivation comes out to our facility. And to be honest, he looked almost as nervous as I was. I mean, I had never, you know, lead an inspector through an inspection at that point of a cultivation facility and knowing that there were 8 million requirements that he was going to look for us to meet, and he had never given permission to a company to start growing marijuana in Illinois.
00;13;42;23 - 00;14;06;10
Dina Rollman
So it was kind of, a partnership in that way that, you know, we are both feeling our way through. But we did it and we got we passed that inspection and we got permission to start growing. And it just felt like a just a huge achievement. And, it felt great to have that regulator sort of express that level of like trust and confidence in our ability to do it and do it right.
00;14;06;10 - 00;14;15;11
Dina Rollman
It was validation for our team that somehow we seem to have pulled off the impossible. So, I will I will never forget that day. And, you know, always enjoy that memory.
00;14;15;13 - 00;14;35;28
Hilary Bricken
Yeah, that's a good one. And I relish those old memories, too, in the early days, because there was so much momentum and it was very, very cool to be a part of it. And now transitioning to life today, you're very diverse interests on the business side, which I really enjoy, and I think it's fascinating. Can you tell me a little bit about your experience with New Lake Capital and what it does?
00;14;35;28 - 00;14;40;21
Hilary Bricken
And then I'll move into probably your newest baby Strain brain, which I really want to talk about.
00;14;40;27 - 00;15;01;06
Dina Rollman
Definitely, definitely. So through my corporate law background, where honestly, a lot of the litigation I did was director and officer liability, meaning directors or officers were being sued for not discharging their duties appropriately. For various companies. You know, I got really familiar with what their roles are. You know, what what were you supposed to do as a director?
00;15;01;06 - 00;15;14;11
Dina Rollman
Officer? What are you not supposed to do? Sort of, you know, got to honestly defend, you know, quite a few directors and officers. So I was always very interested in that role. And I liked that viewpoint that they had where you're not exactly in the business day to.
00;15;14;11 - 00;15;15;14
Hilary Bricken
Day, but you're really.
00;15;15;14 - 00;15;38;00
Dina Rollman
Responsible for steering the company, providing guidance, using your judgment. So I always enjoyed those relationships and that exposure and always really did have a goal to be a director at some point. I recently got appointed as an independent director on the board of New Lake Capital Realty, which is a publicly traded real estate investment trust that leases properties to cannabis operators.
00;15;38;00 - 00;16;16;11
Dina Rollman
So think large scale cultivation facilities, dispensary properties, etc.. New Lake is led by its CEO Anthony Coniglio, who any listeners here who have, you know, either encountered him on other podcasts or just in the day to day, you know, excellent person. Excellent. Operator. It's again gives me that chance to work with a CEO and learn so much, you know, just from that perspective, but also start, you know, using that muscle that I sort of felt that I had to provide guidance as a director and, you know, for the new Lake Board in particular, because they are leasing to the cannabis industry, it really is very important to them to keep a pulse on what's happening
00;16;16;11 - 00;16;28;29
Dina Rollman
from a legal and regulatory front. So I am still in all of this day to day and paying attention to the legal and regulatory, you know, developments. So it's just sort of a natural fit for me to have those conversations.
00;16;29;01 - 00;16;45;27
Hilary Bricken
Got it. Okay. And now strained brain. So when I saw you a couple months ago, one of these big omnibus cannabis conferences, I know you were talking to people about this idea and the deliverables and everything, so share it here so our listeners can know what strain brain is there.
00;16;45;28 - 00;17;05;24
Dina Rollman
So last year some locals in my neighborhood just such a small world, right. Some non cannabis people who live in my neighborhood walking distance asked me to meet them for coffee because they had this business idea that they really just wanted me to weigh in and from like a cannabis industry perspective. Not that I would have a role in the company, but just, hey, we have this business idea, what do you think of it?
00;17;05;24 - 00;17;43;20
Dina Rollman
And so I met with them and the idea was to acquire strain brain. Strain brain is an AI powered bartender. So basically, it was it's technology that had been invented by a couple of 26 year old Canadians who are, you know, brainiacs, to say the least. And over the course of four years, they had built an algorithm that took proprietary data about strain cannabis strains and their effects and mapped them out, and then allows a consumer to shop a cannabis dispensary menu by what effect they are seeking and strain.
00;17;43;20 - 00;18;10;26
Dina Rollman
Brain does its little algorithmic thing and pops out what the top three product recommendations that fit that customer's desired effect. So the strain brain has already existed for a few years in market, so they showed me how it works. Green light is probably Strain Brain's biggest customer right now. Green light has trained brain running at all 33 stores, so any listeners are welcome to go on a Green Light website and go to their menu and check it out.
00;18;10;28 - 00;18;44;03
Dina Rollman
Super simple. It's all sort of a plug in on that e-commerce menu, whether it's Dutch, your Jane, and it says, you know, get a recommendation question mark. And we know that a lot of customers these days when they're navigating that ecom menu, whether they're online, at home or on their phone or in the store at the kiosk, if you decide you want to pick up some flowers, you may be scrolling seven pages of potential products and you're looking at terminology like indica or sativa or Turpin or THC percentage or CBA and CBD.
00;18;44;03 - 00;19;04;06
Dina Rollman
I mean, there's just so many words and letters that, you know, your average cannabis consumer isn't familiar with. So we know it can be a very intimidating experience. And that's borne out by the fact that there are a lot of abandoned shopping carts online. When people are shopping because they just get a little frustrated or intimidated that they don't know how to feel confident about the purchase they're making.
00;19;04;08 - 00;19;19;02
Dina Rollman
So when they're strain bearing, they're and it just says, you know, what form factor you're looking for and it gives you everything, gives you a choice. You never have to think of what question to ask. None of the questions involved, you know, terminology. It's just what form factor do you want? And then what effect are you looking for?
00;19;19;02 - 00;19;43;24
Dina Rollman
And it gives you, you know, eight options, right? Sleepy. Relaxed. Energized. Focused. What flavor profile gives you choices? You can skip that if you don't care about. If you want earthy versus flowery versus vanilla, you can indicate that. And then, how strong do you want it? And rather than having to understand THC percentages or ratios or things like that, there's just a little slider bar and it's like, you know, less strong, more strong, you know, just very intuitive.
00;19;43;29 - 00;20;02;25
Dina Rollman
So you get through these four clicks in, I don't know, 30s hit submit. And then it's the algorithm is looking at what's in that particular store's inventory, matching it up against those four choices that you made and saying, here are your top three matches objectively and gives you like a percentage match. You know, this is a 97% match for what you wanted.
00;20;02;25 - 00;20;23;06
Dina Rollman
This was a 92 and this was an 89. And then you can click on that and just add it, you know, then you're back into the econ menu and you can add it to your cart. So it's very seamless, very fast. No terminology. So when I saw that my reaction was I want to use that. Like, you know, I want my local dispensary to offer me that option.
00;20;23;08 - 00;20;46;02
Dina Rollman
Because even though I'm 11 years into the industry, when I'm confronted with 100 options for anything in life, I'm just like tired, like, please, like, don't make me scroll through 100 options of anything. Like I just don't have the time or patience and even I don't really know how to distinguish between 100 different into because I am a, you know, I want a indica leaning hybrid.
00;20;46;02 - 00;21;05;18
Dina Rollman
Great. There are so many of those from so many producers. I just, you know, really I'm often at a loss. So I love how this just expedited that decision making gives you confidence in the purchase you're making. So I told, you know, the guys I met with, I love this. I think it's a great idea. I would support it.
00;21;05;25 - 00;21;26;17
Dina Rollman
Okay, great. And then, you know, they reach back out to me like, well, you know, can we talk more? And long story short, I became the CEO of Screen Brain, and we did a friends and family, investor round enough to acquire the technology from these 226 year olds. So good for them. They had their first exit, 26, which is pretty cool.
00;21;26;19 - 00;21;54;05
Dina Rollman
And then, you know, we have a core team. The co-founders are Noelle Berkman, who is my neighbor here. Just by coincidence, she does not come from Cannabis World. And Steve Horowitz, who's based in Florida, and our head of product is Ed Brill, who spent about 20 years at IBM running their Lotus Notes division. So we have, you know, a very seasoned team with, you know, 15, 20 or more years of experience in ecom sales and, technology.
00;21;54;07 - 00;22;18;29
Dina Rollman
And so they brought all of that to the table. And I was able to bring the, you know, sort of, just understanding of the cannabis industry. And so I really like the team. And now what we're doing is just expanding strain brain into more markets, more stores. The other thing that really excited me about Strain Brain was that in addition to improving the customer experience, it's actually a great easy unlock to grow revenue.
00;22;18;29 - 00;22;50;05
Dina Rollman
We have, you know, plenty of data to show now that on average, when a customer uses strain brain to make their product recommendation, they spend 11 to $12 more per transaction. And that translates into, on average, about 22% increase in incremental revenue for your transactions. And that is simply by just having, you know, this AI bartender software running on your online menu, you know, so you're not hiring additional people.
00;22;50;08 - 00;23;12;29
Dina Rollman
You're not, you know, just sinking more money into, you know, marketing efforts that you don't know if they'll work or not. This is proven. So it's a really we see it as a marketing spend, not an IT tech stack spend. Because it's something you're doing that in providing a better customer experience. It just has a positive impact directly to your bottom line.
00;23;13;01 - 00;23;32;15
Hilary Bricken
And I'm always happy to see kind of innovation land in the cannabis industry. I think it needs it desperately, whether it's new product offerings, new experiences, tourism, I mean, you name it, it just helps kind of push its legitimacy forward and makes it more normalized. And on that note, I and cannabis people talked about for a long time, you know, how would these two integrate?
00;23;32;15 - 00;23;51;14
Hilary Bricken
And are we talking automated grows where it's just robots or whatever? Realistically, do you think there's anything else out there for AI and cannabis? Something that's actually utilitarian, like being able to scroll menus very quickly and aggregate information to make an informed choice. Do you think there's other stuff out there that people are missing in the AI cannabis world?
00;23;51;14 - 00;24;21;14
Dina Rollman
Well, you know, there were a lot of conversations that I've had at conferences and just networking around in the last six months. And the number one topic that is coming up related to AI is data. There's a real hunger in this industry for consolidated data that will help with demand planning, inventory management, you know, a more personalized customer experience, which is, you know, what strain brain is providing integration, you know, with kind of the data getting that they're getting from their loyalty programs.
00;24;21;14 - 00;24;43;00
Dina Rollman
I mean, there's there's so many touch points in the cannabis industry, from seed to sale and tons of data collected along the way. I don't think we've seen yet the full impact of AI in, in sort of collecting and synthesizing that data, making it more predictive and more sort of, you know, easily digestible and usable for your day to day operators.
00;24;43;02 - 00;25;09;18
Hilary Bricken
And you mentioned conferences, and I have, you know, two more questions for you while I have you and this is one of them, you've been in this for a long time. And the common joke is, you know, when you're in the cannabis industry, it's like seven dog years or whatever. What do you notice now? The biggest difference between the early days of conferences you used to attend and the ones you go to now, because I'm pretty knocked down by it, it makes me feel very old and almost out of touch.
00;25;09;18 - 00;25;14;00
Hilary Bricken
Not quite. But how do you feel going to conferences now compared to, you know, 11 years ago?
00;25;14;02 - 00;25;31;28
Dina Rollman
Well, it's funny that you ask, last week I was at Nicon Boston and it certainly hit me that, you know, in the early years of cannabis, when you went to any type of either regional or national conference, the operators were there. So, you know, Ben Kotler was at well, I don't know if he ever went to MTV. It was actually maybe he went once.
00;25;31;28 - 00;25;55;24
Dina Rollman
I'm not sure. He was never big on conferences. But, you know, the rest of our team and, you know, Cresco and Curaleaf, like all our counterparts of the MSOs, you would go and you would see the founder CEOs there. You would see their executive team. You would see, you know, their market presidents, etc.. So like leadership was at these conferences that networking with each other, meeting with, you know, lenders, analysts, things like that.
00;25;55;24 - 00;26;19;10
Dina Rollman
A lot of the sort of business business was being done and at those conferences. And so the people that you got to know in the industry were sort of all there. There were tons of like, familiar faces and friends. And my feeling it, you know, the conferences I've been to lately is that most businesses, they just can't afford the time away from the store, from the grow, from the business to be hanging out in conference.
00;26;19;10 - 00;26;39;28
Dina Rollman
There's just it's lean times and, you know, some somewhat dire for quite a few operators. So the attendance is still there. Attendance is strong, but it's just a different make up. And I would say it's made up of a lot of like the much newer operators who are still hungry to make connections and learn, they're still figuring out their service providers.
00;26;39;28 - 00;26;57;09
Dina Rollman
So they do want to meet with, you know, somebody providing lighting equipment or grow equipment or rolling machines or whatever. You know, a green thumb at this point, you know, if they want new lighting equipment or HVAC or whatnot, like they don't need to go to a conference to sort of evaluate those, those options, right?
00;26;57;12 - 00;27;17;07
Hilary Bricken
Somebody needed to disrupt the conference circuit. Maybe you could work on that next to make them to make them attractive again. Okay, so final question. It's an unfair one because it's such a big question, but you have so much experience and specialized knowledge. I would like your input if you can afford it in the next two years. What do you think the number one challenges for this industry?
00;27;17;07 - 00;27;21;13
Hilary Bricken
Because like you said, it's dire. It's flat. What do you think it is the biggest hurdle.
00;27;21;16 - 00;27;46;00
Dina Rollman
I mean I would I would probably just say money but not like a normal business where like, sure, every business in America is like, yeah, I would, I would like to make more money. Sure. You know, I don't mean that that simply but just, we're still in this horrible position as an industry where there's just not that access to capital and related the impact of two eight and you take those two factors together, which I'm just probably calling money.
00;27;46;06 - 00;28;16;22
Dina Rollman
And it's like, wow, you're, you know, being taxed at a completely exorbitant, unfair, unsustainable rate. And you can't access traditional, you know, bank loans at traditional, you know, just regular rates like cannabis businesses still just aren't treated like normal business. You know, we can't list on the major exchanges, like just it feels like every avenue that every cannabis operators looking to right now to put themselves in a financially healthier position, it's like just road blocked everywhere.
00;28;16;22 - 00;28;32;05
Dina Rollman
So you can be such a great like lean operator and efficient and allocate capital well. And all the things. But there are some factors here that until there's, you know, legislative and regulatory change, you're just sort of like fighting with one arm tied behind your back.
00;28;32;08 - 00;28;52;04
Hilary Bricken
Fair enough. I agree, and I really do hope something can turn it around, whether it's new states coming online somehow or ultimately federal reform. But only time will tell. So Dina Rollman, thank you for your time. CEO director, queen of the cannabis universe, we really, really appreciate it.
Dina Rollman
Thanks so much for having me.
00;28;52;06 - 00;29;14;18
Hilary Bricken
And that concludes today's episode of the Cannabis Law Now podcast. Until next time, stay alert. Stay alive.