Ep 3: Inside Cannabis Sales Ops — The Shift

with Dusan Markovic · The Shift, a podcast by Headquarters

How modern cannabis sales teams really operate — order entry, inside sales, account coverage, and the data behind every closed deal.

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Auto-generated from the episode audio and lightly edited for readability.

0:00 Welcome to The Shift, a show where we talk all about cannabis and business. Now, today's guest is a very peculiar individual, a person that runs a legion of people in his apartment, a person that knows sales, but interestingly enough does not sell, a person that operates within sales, an ex basketball player, frequent traveler, and a guy you go to in order to save your sales guys money. But we will talk about all that in a second. Please welcome Dusan Markovic.

0:42 What an intro. Wow.

0:44 Right.

0:45 Yeah. I actually got a fact check you. I didn't play basketball.

0:49 You did not?

0:50 No, I played tennis.

0:53 Why was I under the impression you play basketball?

0:55 Yeah, I love basketball. I mean, I played basketball as a junior, but not really professionally or semi-professionally.

1:00 Do you remember when you and I actually first met uh in person? I said to you, you're extremely tall. Did you ever play volleyball or basketball? You said you played basketball.

1:10 Yeah, I played basketball, but didn't you know, I didn't play played professionally, but you know,

1:16 you ruined my intro. Doesn't matter. Um,

1:20 it's all good. It's all good.

1:21 But that's that's great. That's a great intro. Let's start off with um you and sales. So where did that start? Where did you obtain your understanding of sales and how sales work?

1:35 So before I came to headquarters, I was actually working in sales for about five five and a half years. Interestingly enough, it was a Canadian internet service provider and it was a small team but I came as a junior back then just learned the ropes started doing sales grew kept going to like a meteor senior and then eventually a team lead and uh ended my career there after 5 years came to headquarters and funnily enough that's a great story uh how how I met our CEO David and uh the whole headquarters opportunity. I drove for 4 hours from my city to Belgrade to meet David and surprisingly I was met by 10 different department heads that interviewed me at the same time and it was a it was a funny and eye opening experience actually and uh got a call a few days later and we're here since and this

2:44 Wait, so so you you drove from Niš to Belgrade to for the interview with him.

2:51 Yeah. Yeah.

2:52 I I passed everything like I I So I I spoke to him online and I was like, oh, nailed this interview. About to get a job. 3 days later. Oh, can you come meet me in person? I'm like, wait, I didn't get a job yet.

3:07 Sure, let's let's go. I'll I'll do it. And yeah, met met him and uh well, everyone from headquarters at this point there. Uh, and that went great. Uh, got a call back a few days later, got the job, and my journey here started, and it's it's been an eventful one to say the least.

3:26 But that's that that sounds so much like David. I'm not surprised.

3:33 Yo, but honestly, life-changing. that that whole experience just puts things into perspective for me like where I was and where I am today and how higher level things were. I to I thought I knew sales and I thought I knew the business and then saw these people in person like challenged me on a completely different level than I was challenged before and I felt so small at that point. I was like,

3:59 "Yeah,

3:59 we don't belong here." And then, you know, now as things stands, things are great. As you know, obviously,

4:06 obviously, yeah, we're we're running it. But it's it's actually very interesting what you said there cuz like I was sort of under the same impression as well when I met David and when I when I actually started working with HQ because it's not cuz I I've had some uh previous experiences with startups. I had some previous experiences with corporations and this one was like sort of a mix of both and you're you know it's it's very interesting how you have to juggle between the two to to actually reach the goals that you want to reach.

4:34 So

4:35 really does make a lot of sense. Um but so let me revert back to the sales uh experience previously. So five years you were selling internet provider contracts or how how did that work? Yeah. So I sold everything from like internet service to like internet equipment and it was mostly residential. There was also some commercial sales but I was mostly in the residential area and like it was rural Ontario. So you got to understand there wasn't like highspeed internet back then. That was like 8 years ago at this point.

5:10 Wasn't highspeed internet everywhere. Starlink still wasn't established. So

5:16 uh it was just a struggle for you know

5:20 hardworking people that had money to find reliable internet. So I figured out you know how to sell it, how to approach the clients and how to hit my targets essentially. But what was interesting to me at that point that I didn't know was how connected the problems that I had back then were the problems that sales teams are facing in cannabis. And it's surprising that like when you walk into like a sales industry for a bigger company, you will have a defined role which is, you know, just going to hit the road or hit the phones, call and close, and that's it. you're hitting your targets, you're getting paid. But with me back then, I was doing sales and post sales. So once I make a sale, I'm like drafting up a contract, organizing the installers or like the people who are going to install the equipment. So like I'm the one navigating the logistics behind it. And I noticed the same thing in cannabis, too. It's like people would like make a sale, be on the road for 8 hours a day, then come back home, submit orders online for like 3 hours. And I'm like, what are you guys doing? So that's that was an interesting parallel that that we are now solving basically. That's that's actually a great segue to what I wanted to talk to you about next, which is what are the differences and similarities between what you were selling before and now as someone who's really attached to this like selling process with other uh brands is like what is what are the major let's start with the major difference and then we can we can look at the similarities uh when it comes to selling in cannabis versus uh your previous experience. Yeah, obviously.

7:05 Well, cannabis is just the major difference because things are just not consistent. And I noticed like the brands that are on top are consistent and they have consistent products, consistent strains, consistent percentages. And like coming from other industries, you know, you're selling the same thing. So, the pitch is the same, the motions are the same. And here like one month you might have like a blue dream, you know, flower that's like 32% THC and then the next batch is like 24.

7:35 So it's a completely, you know, there's a lot of inconsistencies that you do not anticipate. And also what I noticed is people in cannabis are way leaner. The companies are just trying to save as much as possible and everyone is wearing multiple hats. So that can be a blessing in a startup. But if if you're scaling, that's a problem. And as you know, like in our business, all of our clients want to grow and want to scale, but they're facing this fundamental problems where, you know, you have a salesperson who's also an analyst who's also an admin. Uh so that can't be good. I mean, sure, there's, you know, exceptions to the rule. there's probably some superstar people that don't even know how how good they are, but most of the time it just creates chaos and inconsistencies. So, that's like the biggest uh thing that I noticed.

8:30 Yeah, it it's it sort of sounds like there's there's um there's a lack of definition between the roles, which is understandable given that, you know, the market is also sort of kind of young if you compare it to other markets and under other industries as well. But like on top of that, like we're not talking about a fed a federally regulated market. So it's very different from state to state and there's like all a lot of a lot of these differences that you have to get adjusted to. But uh um but it does make sense. Now, so and this is interesting because I'm just going to say it and I'm pretty sure a lot of people will agree with me, but you are killing what you're doing.

9:15 like you're really good at your job and that's like sort of a well-known fact between everyone you and I know but also between some of the clients that you're working with as well.

9:25 And um when you were talking a little bit earlier about that whole process when you were selling before at that internet company and you say like oh when I finish the sale or the sale I have to go and do do a bunch of back office work and and logistics make sure everything is executed yada yada yada. So what I'm what I want to hear from you is was that a contribution to how successful you are at the moment right now with what you do and smitch a little bit of um of a teaser of what you do specifically.

10:02 Yeah, a thousand% actually. Now when I turn back the clock when I used to be doing that I was so annoyed because all I wanted to do is sell. Like I I used to tell my previous mentor is like listen just give me the leads put me in the position where I can succeed the most. I know I can outsell almost everyone here but I was just so annoyed with all the back office work I had to do. But that then right now that like enabled everything that I'm doing today because it taught me like how to be accountable, how to like be consistent and also multitask at the same time because you know cannabis is very chaotic and like things happen in a snap. Like you would be doing you know a a job today and then tomorrow that job might completely change. you would be using a process for 2 weeks or 3 months and then all of the sudden, hey, here's this new AI tool that can completely revamp this process and it can automate it completely and then you're like, aha, let me get on that. So doing all of the admin work and like doing the repetitive stuff over and over again helped me tremendously like adapt to cannabis and sales operations in general because when I came here I didn't know what exactly we did as a team but then as I dived into the weeds I was like wait a minute I was kind of doing this back in my job except you know it wasn't in focus it was just in the back end so it was way easier for me and And as we started growing and growing, I was able to like put all of those lessons in motion and kind of make sure I'm organized and I'm staying on top of everything.

11:44 Great. And that makes a lot of sense. So So if give me your elevator pitch. So what what is what is your job? What do you do?

11:55 Tell me in a in a quick one. Well, I like I like telling people to sum everything up because I can go in elaborate detail, but basically what I do and what my team does is we just help sales people do what they do best, which is sell. And the way we do this is exactly what I hated doing before. Like I just take a give them back their time. That's like the number one thing. So focus on your work. focus on doing what you're getting paid to do and what you want to do. And we'll do everything else in the back end. Whether that's order management, menu creation, uh CRM, uh management and updates, all of the tedious things that they hate doing, we love doing and we are very good at that. Uh so that's the elevator pitch. I can go deeper. Uh but basically just enabling them and buying them time.

12:47 But but that's that's that's crazy because like you just and that's interesting because again it sort of intertwines and it connects but you said before like when you were working in that internet company said like you know I wanted to sell I don't want to do all this back office stuff and now knowing what that struggle is as someone that knows how to sell. You're like I just just give me the leads. let me handle everything there and then you do all the other stuff that I don't want to be bothered with which is which is awesome.

13:17 Um uh but yeah I look feel free if you want to go in in more detail if if there's something that you like to say specifically about what you're doing go for it and then um I'll probably follow up with some extra questions um if you want to.

13:33 Sure. I mean, the the premise of our job is simple at first, but then as you get deeper, it's way more layered and way more complicated. That's why we're sometimes used to have issues recruiting and finding the right talent. But I'll talk on that a little bit later. But basically, a sales hypothetically, so a sales rep would close down an order. They would call or email our team, hey, here's the order. Can you please get it into the systems? And then invoices in invoice it back to us,

14:01 right? But the complications and the problems often come from like inventory. Like they would sell something that's out of stock, low stock. And then we got to figure out the logistics behind that because obviously everyone wants to save revenue, right? Like if you make an order for 10K and you can only fulfill 8,000, where is the 2K coming from? You know, so that's where we come in. We're able to make smart substitutions like note out of stocks like figure out figure out what the brand wants and then what the retailer wants. We give them those notes you know on our hand and in our own SOPs. So we are able to like on the fly make those decisions

14:41 and uh save the revenue and also as I said like save time for the people doing that work. Yeah, that's that's actually a fantastic thing that you've mentioned there is and it's because and I'm looking at from from the perspective of other departments that HQ is doing as well is like we communicate with all sides and um you know whatever services that we do have they're communicating and working with both brands, distributors, uh manufacturers, resellers, retailers, literally everyone. And we sort of get the pictures from all them. know what their goals are and we can use that to our advantage to make sure that whatever service we're delivering, we're delivering at a good quality, but also making sure that all the parties are equally satisfied and and that sort of translates uh to to you as well and what you do because obviously as you've been growing, it sort of goes to show that you as someone who does communicate with all these guys, you really know what they want and what they need and like give them

15:44 um and and make sure that satisfied.

15:47 That's that's super important and actually an unsung hero of all of this that I've done is like proper communication with sales reps directly. Of course, everyone wants to talk on a high level, you know, with decision makers and CEOs, but having great, you know, understanding and trust between sales rep is super crucial because you're dealing with their revenue and they need to know that you're on the same page as them and you will do no harm to them. And coming from sales, sales people are superstitious.

16:21 salespeople do not trust anyone, do not want change and do not want to evolve. So, uh us having to like thread that path correctly and communicate effectively helps everyone win-win because if like they want to trust us, they just, you know, don't know it yet and we obviously want to help them with their work. So, building that relationship is super crucial.

16:47 Yeah, that that definitely does make sense. So, and you know, taking all this into consideration, when you look at all of the HQ services, sales ops is one of the most popular ones. I think it's not the most popular one. So,

17:04 what does it make so popular? What is actually So, when you're talking to the stakeholders on a brand side, right, what is the thing that you see like, oh, this is what sort of ticks in their head and and that's why they get interested. this is why they want to come here. Why what does it make so what does it make sales ops so popular in HQ? That's a good question and I think it just easy to connect the dots for higherups in a sense of hey let's give your sales people more time because they can make more money because that's how they talk like everyone wants to generate more revenue and I've heard this before uh from one of our partners was like hey before you guys came in they were super unhappy like they did their job but they were like one guy almost quit on me uh we had to fire another person to bring a fresher person on board because they were just working 10 hours a day and half of those hours were like doing admin tasks. So I think it's easy to make the connection between uh us you know stepping in on a support side of things and then them going out more and generating more revenue and also saving time and making them happier because unfortunately for you know 70% of the people not in sales sales people bring the money I wish it was like more equal uh but people will listen to sales teams so us coming in and building those relationships is super impactful and also very easy to integrate. We don't require a lot of training. We don't require any SOPs. Uh we're we on board within a week even less within days. So it's super seamless uh for us to come in and start doing that work. So that's I think what's a big benefit for us.

18:59 Yeah. And and also like you yourself know if you're a dissatisfied salesperson, you obviously know what's the difference of how you're going to be selling and how successful you're selling if you're dissatisfied versus if you're satisfied.

19:13 Uh and and what let's not even go there if you have all of your time reserved exclusively for you literally going out and pitching to people and selling product or whatever it is. So that does make uh a whole lot of sense. Now, um I so before this podcast obviously I reached out to you. I was like look I and and I was really passionate about this because it's a very good sort of case study/example of why sales ops is an extremely important service and and a you know a a good solution for different types of brands. Um, so I've asked you like what can we do? What can we share about this one specific brand which we're not going to name at the moment right now, but give us a little bit of a clue of, you know, how big they are, who they are, and and tell me about this success story um with this client.

20:05 The brand that we're talking about is top two MSOs in the business. They're one of the biggest players in cannabis and we've been working with them for I would say about two years now but for a year we work with them in a much smaller capacity. So we supported them in three different states and those were the smallest states in terms of like output and volume. And then I mean we were obviously doing a good job. Uh and this was before I became a manager of this team. And then once he became manager we started talking about potentially expanding with them and no one understood the scope because my team

20:44 was not running on high volume to that extent. like we were just doing a good job with a lot of clients, very efficient uh but smaller uh and then this opportunity presented uh itself to us. They wanted to expand from three states to eight states and that those includes like their biggest hitting states and our volume and output quadrupled in 3 months. So, we went from like I don't know like 500 orders a month back then to today three three and a half uh thousand orders a month. Our team tripled uh in the last year. So, we went from like five uh sales ops people to now 17. But what's interesting there is like our efficiency increased because our output went from 500 to 3,000 and our team just tripled. So,

21:36 that's what I say. It seems like it was it's actually a a money saver on top of a money saver pretty much because you save money by having the service and now all of a sudden you're expanding with other states. You're saving the money on saving the money with having less of required individuals to do this job but having as you said quadruple the number of orders um that they're um asking you to do for them. So that's that's that's amazing. Yeah, it's really really a testament to like how hard the team works and just headquarters in general. Like every again I will always be a preacher for the people. Uh I love working with people like putting people in the right positions to succeed and this whole experience in the last year has been you know life-changing in that regard. just hiring the right talent and then training and onboarding correctly.

22:34 Uh just setting processes in place. I mean obviously if things stay the same from before that deal to today it wouldn't be possible but we had to like strip the whole process naked basically and just build it from the beginning like make sure all of the SOPs are in place and followed build checklist. uh build accountability within each person on my team and then you know lead by example also I mean when those things are happening I was working actively with all of our clients back then so I was able to like coach people and mentor and take them with me show them how I think how you know anyone with more experience should think and now today I mean we have two team leads within my team when I joined uh and I became a manager I was doing the work alone now we are lucky enough to have promoted from within that people stepped up and now are leading these teams but it's been a great collaborative effort. Of course, you know, I I don't want to sound cliche that, you know, I'm no one without my team. I mean, it's kind of true, but also it just everyone worked hard and I helped build this processes that today we're scaling with other clients as well and we built a blueprint that now is so easily replicable. Uh it's insane. Uh and yeah, sorry I went on a tangent. I'm just very passionate about these topics

24:02 and you should be because again it is a very huge success story. But also what I really love at what you said there and I think we're I both of us are coming from the same place is that the the way that HQ differs from maybe some other companies in terms of hiring is that and as you said like I don't want to sound cliche but what we do is we really try and focus on finding the right people for the job. And when I say the right people for the job and I'm not not thinking about like you have this degree or you have just this experience or blah blah blah. I'm saying of like literally trying to understand what that person wants to do, where do you fit perfectly so that they're going to be satisfied with what they're doing, but also that the delivery um is going to be at a level that no one can beat, right? And I think that the reason why they're doing their job so well cuz like what we don't even have like a turnover of people.

24:58 It's like whoever it's like people are extremely valuable and the backgrounds that we have at our company are like are do you want to do um I don't know whatever accounting you have to know accounting but you also have to have cannabis experience

25:18 cuz without like that's sort of the way that we go about hiring people is like you have to be within both of these scopes otherwise it's very hard for for it to work cuz if you're not in the cannabis industry, you're not going to be used to this dynamic surrounding that's like constantly changing as you said yourself but also we need the expertise of

25:36 I agree and also like I don't know how how what your experience is with other teams but I I always set myself up up for failure uh on purpose with like recruitment for example I always tell them hey guys like this is not for everyone like you need to be able to multitask and like pivot Because like being able to pivot in this industry is like the number one skill and I will never not say that just because you never know what you have and then it's gone tomorrow. Like you need to be able to have a plan B and a plan C and a plan D and like just being able to constantly be able to like, you know, task switch and go from one place to the other.

26:19 That's like super crucial. And some people are not cut out for that. And you have a Frenchie there.

26:24 This is my sister's dog. This is not my dog and she's uber uh attention seeking so I I do apologize. She's just I think

26:32 that's cool.

26:33 I think mine's sleeping next to me. So that's that's great.

26:38 Come on. Come on.

26:40 But it's my sister's dog. I I this is not

26:44 Sorry for getting dog. Go.

26:46 You're good. Don't worry.

26:48 Um

26:49 yeah,

26:51 that's Yeah. Uh we're on the same page there. And I think this is extremely important. Not, and I'm not talking just about cannabis industry. I'm talking general. If you want your business to run good, your people need to be happy with what they're doing. Um, and that does not include, you know, just like having quality compensation. They have to be valued and cherished and appreciated, but at the very top understood as individuals and where they fit. Um, which is which is again the reason why we're so successful as well. Um, now We talked a little bit about like sort of hiring people and sort of like going into the past, but what I'm interested right now is what what it when you look at the industry right now, when you look at what you're doing, what are the problems that you're facing in sales operations or what you anticipate might be a problem in the future that you're looking for a solution right now?

27:48 That's that's a good question and also a broad question. and I'll try to answer it from from my perspective. It's like I mean you know this uh but everyone's facing cash problems right now like it's tight. People are trying to get creative and smart in terms of savings and obviously that's not great for business but we also have to be creative and figure out solution to solutions to problems that our clients may have and also anticipate solutions to the problems you're going to have tomorrow.

28:20 So uh right now in terms of like sales ops what we've done historically our work is very reactive. So we would be hey here's the deal I closed here's the order get it into the system and we execute so fast but like that's the root problem is it's very reactive. So my goal over the last like year and I've talked about this with you you know Jen you know Adam we've been talking about this for a while is like how can we do the job that we're so good at but be more proactive about it and right now what we launched recently is inside sales which is the more creative approach of order management or order entry however you want to call it is like utilizing the POS data and the data that's out there in the ether whether you know our clients are sending to us or we're scraping through Hoodie or Headset uh realizing like what's in stock generating those reports and then us doing that work proactively hey here's here's an order a sales rep didn't have to call us to trigger it would think that this is what you should order based on the sell through data and based on all the reports so everyone can get a win-win because how sales works in the old world is you know sales people would be so hungry and greedy for their cut, they would oversell very aggressively. And that's fine for the sales rep. He's going to get commission.

29:50 But then brands and stores can get into potential problem with, hey, your product is sitting on the shelf for 7 months. You need to credit us. We can sell this. So they're going to be like AR, we're going to be paying you like

30:04 Yeah. Right. Exactly. Pulls and pushes and creates this ginormous issue for a lot of different um departments, teams, individuals and so on and so on. So I completely get what you're saying. Yeah,

30:18 I I agree a thousand% and you guys are doing a lot of like your team is doing a lot of the work. Exactly. Because of those issues. So now we are being more strategic with with that work and just always ensuring that the product is shelf the appropriate amount of time. I mean that's like in discussion with the client of course maybe they want to be on the shelves for a week for two weeks maybe the order should be once every month once bi-weekly. So based on those conversations we do the work in the back end generate those reports make an order and everyone's winning because

30:54 the shops will order more frequently. maybe not as high amounts as they were before, but you're going to get frequent income and they're going to pay it on time more often than not because they're not going to have uh overstock product. The product is going to keep flowing and moving and then you can work on that relationship in terms of AR. It's going to be, hey, you guys owe us XYZ,

31:18 but look, we're constantly, you know, supporting you with the right amount of product so that relationship can be mended. So, this is something that we are currently working on and developing. We currently have a couple of clients that we're doing this work with. And then maybe tomorrow, well, I might save this in in my pocket, but right now problems, cash problem, and us being more proactive about our work.

31:42 Okay, got it. Makes sense. So, and and now let me just retract a little bit with with the inside sales things. Uh would can you would you say that inside sales is like this new improved modernized version of order entry? Would you say that? Maybe

32:00 I would well I would not frame it like that but I would just say it's the big cousin of order entry just because they are adjacent like you you can't do one without the other because the good thing about headquarters and our services right now is if you're getting inside sales from us you're also getting order entry in the package so we do both. You don't need to like worry about having to do admin work yourself.

32:29 It's just like basically a Pokemon evolution of order entry is today.

32:36 Yeah.

32:36 Comparison though. Love it. Love it. That's great.

32:40 Okay. Awesome. So let me and this was this was extremely helpful for for me to understand what you do even more than um how I do understand it right now but also for whoever going to be watching this they're going to have a better understanding of what sales ops is and order entry is and what you do but let me generalize it a little bit and ask you and this is something I'm asking everyone because I I want to genuinely understand and hear what people see in the air and what they feel in the air and that is Where is the cannabis industry going?

33:14 What do you see for the cannabis industry in the next period? Let's say a year or two years from now.

33:20 I'm hoping it goes federal because it's been a blood I mean you know this. It's been a blood bath lately. Uh markets are way oversaturated at least like the top markets. Like we we had an exodus from California for a while uh with my department. uh we weren't in California for like a year even though like in the past we were and now we're back and what we are seeing right now is a complete parallel of what was happening like even 2 years ago but 3 four years ago it was way different but it just margins are super thin it's oversaturated like the competition is huge

33:59 and everyone is just bleeding money and I mean for the sake of the industry

34:04 I think I mean I think we're headed there I don't know how soon it's going going to be, but it needs to go federal. Uh because there's so many smart and creative people in this industry and like the brands that we all root for and support, but a lot of brands are going out of business as you know, and uh they need help. So hopefully, you know,

34:26 the market needs to expand uh and I'm I'm hopeful not just in the states but also in Europe um and uh further um as it is right now. So we're all having our fingers crossed for that one. Um,

34:46 I was I was in Germany two weeks ago uh and I was so shocked how much weed presence there is in Cologne Germany. uh it's on level of Chicago and I was shocked because I I know that Germany has uh like it it's gone medical last year but I was not ready for the whole city to stink like cannabis and I mean I enjoy it

35:17 recreational as well. You have the lounges now in uh where you can you can literally just like smoke recreationally. But also, let's just I mean, let's just be real. You can literally smoke cannabis wherever you want. And for sure, no one's going to be like, "Oh, shame on your ear. You're going to be arrested or whatever." I don't know, dude. I I know people that got in a lot of trouble uh just like having a joint on Oh, yeah. I I know a guy who got a year and a half in prison, but he cut a deal, but had to pay a crazy fee for just having a joint on him. So, I I I don't know. I don't mess with cannabis here unfortunately. It just

35:58 Wow. That's that's a completely different experience from what I I

36:01 Yeah, at least South I mean where I am it's just very

36:06 So let me just share a little story that I had and it's not me it's Spain. Um and I think it was like maybe a year ago or something.

36:15 I was there uh for a sports event, right? And um what happened was obviously you know there's a lot of sports but when uh the sports stuff ends everybody goes to the club goes on drinking mode um and um as you know people that are coming from like um Southeast Europe there's a lot of people that don't have accessibility to cannabis product. So, um, everyone was like, "We want to smoke. We want to smoke. We want a joint. We want cannabis all around." And, um, trust me when I tell you, literally in front of the club of like where we're hanging out, there was a bunch of police officers. Everyone was smoking a joint.

37:00 Everyone was like having a or whatever it was. The police guys were just being there with them. No one said a thing. Bear in mind in Spain recreational I don't think it's legal still fullon as it is like in Germany. I think you can like consume a certain amount but like again it it's a very very small amount. It's not like

37:23 right

37:23 United States right? Uh but and then I asked this girl and was like she's by the way she's from France. I asked her

37:31 so like how freely can you smoke here? And she was like you know what no one cares. The only the only situation where you like might be in in a problem is like if you um get pulled over uh if you're driving bad and a cop pulls you over and they see that you're

37:46 obviously right

37:48 like that that but otherwise just like no one cares anymore.

37:52 I mean that's a good thing and that's something I wanted to ask you like I what do you think where is the industry heading? I I'm well hopefully what you said it goes uh federally and that's I think whoever I asked this question the answer is always the same like everyone wants uh cannabis to go fully legal which obviously I'd like as well but what I think is we're going to um I feel like it's going to be even more commercialized it is right now If that happens, and I think that if that really happens, cannabis is going to be like the new energy drink uh industry. It's going to be everywhere. Everyone's going to want it. Everyone's going to be using it.

38:42 I mean, that's fair. Sorry, can you please?

38:46 No, no. I That's sort of what And I think it's going to be this next main thing, but I also would like for these social media platforms to remove the bans from cannabis because I'm not really sure why they exist anymore. That's like sort sort of crazy. Let us talk about it. Why do you

39:03 I know

39:04 content that's like so crazy. I really

39:07 Well, is getting lobbyed everywhere. So that's that's my only pet peeve is I I agree that if it goes federal and like moves in Europe and everywhere in the world, it's just going to be way way way more commercial. But I'm like the counterargument to that like is that a bad thing? Like I would rather sip a THC seltzer than a beer. Like it's more healthy for you, you know?

39:30 Yeah. Yeah. 100. And and again that would be perfect because then in a world where we would thrive. I I would like that for sure.

39:39 I agree. I mean we have people in especially our country like every second person is an alcoholic or like uses something else like give them cannabis they'll be happy you know.

39:52 Leave it. Leave it. Yeah.

39:55 Um but yeah, that was uh this was an amazing time that I spent today with you and I really appreciate you coming over and just spilling out um everything salesy, sales opsy, order entry and so on and so on. So really do appreciate that and I really do hope that um people that might be interested in understanding better what you do will get uh a clearer image as well. So, thank you so much, Dusan Markovic. Uh, a proud tennis player, ex-tennis player, and, uh, an ex basketball player. Uh, appreciate it. Uh, have a great rest of the day, and, uh, we'll see each other in some other meetings.

40:36 Thank you for inviting me, Filip. This was this was a great experience. Uh,

40:40 did this satisfy your your, uh, your sort of interest to being on a podcast? Oh, I mean we weren't supposed to break the the fourth wall with this. Like never heard of this podcast. I just came to the meeting. You were here. I was surprised.

40:58 But yeah, I'm I'm happy to see you thriving. And what what podcast is this? Am I number one? Number two? What is this?

41:05 Oh, number two. Okay. Well, many more fruitful podcasts for you in the future. Uh I really enjoy this. And is there something you want to say to the audience? just keep on watching. I I think that uh the the ne I mean including yourself and the previous guests and so on and so on. We we have a lot of awesome individuals in different aspects of the industry that people really really enjoy uh listening to and can learn more about the industry and business and cannabis.

41:36 So just stay tuned. That's it.