i own a business that does pretty high sales. Worked as sales manager in a few businesses some with over 1b in revenue…
i come from a family of sales reps though…
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bro youd crush at sales
but yeah salaries in cannabis are a joke for the risks one has to take.
this seems like a kushy position for the right individual
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I’m all for being wrong, but in the end we are operating a business here. This exact post went up on indeed 2 days ago and theres 150+ applicants. Most without relevant experience, but there’s straight up PHD chemists and a fuck ton of other highly trained and skilled people applying for salaries like this… We aren’t trying to take advantage of people, and if we cant find the right fit at this range then we will move it up, but frankly, people need work, and if they can get into an rapidly growing industry at a cool as spot with nice bosses, it could be the perfect fit for someone.
yeah… id take a job for that salary. I can have my kid run my businesses day to day… give him an occupation rather than working at the mall threw college.
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we own 3 brands currently.
Baked
Budget
CleanAF CBD
with 2 more brands on the way, one of them being a Kratom brand.
In addition to our in-house brands we also white label and co-pack for some other big players in this industry.
There’s a ton of opportunity
Well i do have 2 masters degrees and 2 Bachelors and finishing my phd over the next few years. Guess ill just teach when i get my phd. said when my kid goes to college. ill finish my phd
You just said your last candidate didn’t work out due to no relevant experience.
Relevant experience will inherently be limited in this new industry. If I were you I’d value 100 million of cannabis sales over a billion in sales of Doctor Pepper.
I can’t publish my 20+ year illegal cannabis job. 
I’ll stick to my kushy Amazon business
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We are looking to legitimize this side of the industry. Selling cannabis products to stores is easy. What’s a lot harder is creating incentive programs for our stores and distributers, properly merchandising retail locations, running rebates and campaigns, and looking at the business from a 30,000 foot view.
We don’t have any issues selling our products, but we are looking to go to the next level and most of the large beverage companies have already figured it out.
We supply over 200 distributors across the country and our products are already in 10s of thousands of retail locations.
I have gotten us this far, but to go to that next level is going to require someone who’s already accomplished everything we are looking to do.
I don’t think a PhD chemist is the right fit for this job. It would be weird to me if the interests of managing people filling carts aligned with a highly skilled scientist. If they were passionate about cannabis science they would be doing something else more related to chemistry.
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I don’t disagree, I was more just trying to make a point that there are a lot of highly educated people out there apply for jobs in this pay range.
Point taken, but based on what you said you are also looking for experience in the industry. If that’s not possible, which is more important to you? Operations expertise or product expertise?
While everything you said is important in legitimately pushing the cannabis industry forward I would venture to craft the type of industry you want and don’t solely rely on what other industries do. Learn and improve. At least find an industry to copy that is a fit. As you said, the skills required to have a 30000 ft view selling Dr Pepper and more importantly creating the infrastructure to do so isn’t the same as in cannabis, so why try to make it as such? Things that may work in the corporate world the cannabis industry isn’t ready for yet as you said. Cannabis is not just a consumable yet, the national supply still disctates cannabis as a luxury item. That is hugely different from a purchase decision the required almost no thought, a la Dr. Pepper. How will the person you hire construct incentives for distribution, sales, compliance if he doesn’t understand this?
I used to work for one of the big tech companies and when they entered the retail space they made this exact mistake because their operations and incentives were copied from a business model that did not correctly or closely enough resemble that works in retail. The difference between buying a high priced phone at a specialty store (lots of guidance, thought, industry minutia) vs retail counter displays were huge because the product was different. The c-suites who set this in motion didn’t understand this.
I’d be hard pressed to find an operator who made a real difference in this industry who doesn’t use the products or surround themselves with a team who does and step to the side to let them handle it. Sure, some have had success, but I think that’s vastly different from making a real dynamic change in the industry which is what you seem to want. Why not bring our culture into the corporate instead of vice versa?
Just my two cents - as others mentioned, most chemists who are worth their salt will want to be playing with chemistry, not managing others. Those solely focused on efficiency aren’t going to want to take the time to understand how this relates to cannabis or what changes are needed to suit it (changes don’t tend to be efficient at first so it’s avoided.)
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I have a PhD and I apply for cannabis jobs below this pay range.
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Well the position we’re in is we already have the distribution, we already have the sales, we already have the contacts.
So now it becomes more of a how can we capitalize more on what we already have.
To further clarify, we are not in the Rec cannabis market, we are selling CBD and Delta products to Smoke Shops, Gas stations and C-stores. Most of our largest distributors are tobacco and vape distributors.
We have the luxury of being able to sell across state lines, and have more than 100x more outlets for our products than rec or medical markets. One thing that the drink companies have really figured out is their merchandising and incentive models. If we have a distro that sells $100k a month of one of our brands, how we can incentivize and grow that into $200k a month for that brand, plus cross sell our other brands and get them to work with all our products.
While traditional cannabis may not be a “consumable” the cbd and delta markets definitely are. There are a lot of brands playing in this space, yet not a single brand has actually achieved household name status. We believe we are uniquely positioned to become that as we do have truly unique product offerings that no one else in this space has.
We have the smoke shop market pretty dialed in, however when it comes to gas and c stores there are literally hundreds of thousands of outlets we can sell in across the country. Someone that comes from a beverage background understands the framework and nature of that market a lot more than someone from the cannabis market.
Obviously we dont know all the answers, or we wouldnt be looking to bring someone onto the team that does. But while we have this brief opportunity where we are able to sell “cannabis” products to retail locations all over the country, we want to capitalize on it as much as possible.
To further clarify and make even more sense of this, our brand Budget is currently doing about 400k vapes a month, and growing month over month. We retail 1g carts at $10 and 1g disposables at $15, and our packaging and overall product lineup is uniquely positioned to be sold in every gas station and cstore across the country. budgetbrand.com
while 400k units a month is definitely a lot, with the amount of people consuming these products and the number of outlets possible, this could very easily become multi-million units a month.
im not really following the drink comparisons because they are very different business and need very different approaches.
youd probably better off finding someone from the tobacco industry…
id imagine the pay has to be much higher as this industry is very grey… your career could be over and possibly depending on how the law eventually catches up… might put you in hot water with the law…
good luck though… i watched calibloom go up in fire quickly. seems like these business are high risk… high reward
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Well, if you are sticking closely to beverages I could see what you are saying. As someone who is familiar with beverage and tobacco (smoke shop) distribution there is certainly a crossover. What you are looking for is for someone who can build the bridge for you to cross.
I think someone who has done nicotine distribution would be a huge asset for you since you have a mixed product portfolio. The biggest problem I see is that the hemp industry is trying to make things boof so they can be sold at the lowest price. I don’t think you are going to be a household brand by being the cheapest until full legalization occurs. Currently people want quality cannabis but there is a shortage of supply nationally, the only reason people even buy cannabis at gas stations right now is because they don’t have access to it elsewhere. Quality will only become available at gas stations after the market settles (maybe not true for your brand specifically, but in general.) I would definitely say that cannabis in the hemp sector is still a luxury. People want to pay more for better shit, it’s how it’s always been since Black market, and I don’t see that changing until the market is saturated with supply of such cheap quality that only a select demographic will pay the significant cost of having the best around, but it will exist still and be a profitable market just as the bottom segments are.
Speaking of beverages, just look at how the liquor market developed. Historically comparing, we are not even to the point where “prohibition” had ended like alcohol, so now is not a time to race to the bottom for price in my opinion, ESPECIALLY with a hemp brand that has access to the national market and is not handcuffed to in state market fluctuating. It’s the time to brand yourself as a reputable company, pricing will take care of itself soon enough.
And that’s an example of why I would pick someone that understands cannabis trends if you want a 30,000 view. You are very focused on pricing in your post rather than understanding trends that would relate to you (such trends include rosin prices holding stable and rising in some places, and the beverage portion of the cannabis industry being it’s largest growing sector). Pricing doesn’t matter if the market is saying hey we want and will pay more for these currently novel products that are higher quality than average. Correlation to past history can not be discerned if the person you hire doesn’t understand the current trends and how to extrapolate them. If you think your claim to fame will be price then you are looking at a long term play of being the Fleischmans or Steel Reserve of cannabis. Even though for example Jack Daniels is viewed as average quality today, at the end of prohibition it’s quality was far superior than the black market moonshiners that were making people sick. This is what hemp companies looking to grab a national market should be focused on in my opinion - promoting the quality gap that currently exists between the (hopefully) high quality products you make and other ones that cut corners. If you did this you would have a better shot of being a household name and pricing will adjust accordingly to the market over the next decade. As long as you are still front and center you’ll survive and thrive when prices drop but volume increases. I think inherently the way you are thinking in terms of price only is misaligned with your stated goals and the person you bring in should be able to build that bridge to cross as I said.
One thing I see on your website is the first lab test for an HHC cartridge I click on opens a test. Great! Even better tested at KCA, GREAT! But the test is two years old. You seem to be more focused on the price and cash flow, tightening up leaks, extracting profit, than realizing if you went the extra mile to BE a company that already ACTS as if they are a household name much of those other issues would solve themselves. Why should a person mention you in their household if you can’t score a new test more regularly than two years for something they’ll be inhaling?
Nothing that other companies haven’t done, heck nothing that I haven’t told to my own bosses at times when they cut corners. What I’m saying ultimately is if you want to be a household name then act better than the other companies who are not.
The brands that prioritize customer experience over all else will be the ones standing in a decade with a stable market, and to achieve this the sales director would in my opinion be someone who cares about this, and as such, needs to understand cannabis.
My 2c. I wish you only success my friend, I’m sure someone intelligent like yourself will smash it!
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We do have newer lab tests, if there’s old ones on the site we’ll make sure to get those updated, thanks for bringing that to my attention.
I agree with most of what you’re saying. But unlike cannabis the delta space is actually insane… the “norm” right now is a 5-8 gram disposable that retails for $30-60. Prices have already heavily been condensed in this market.
I bring up price because we are one of the ONLY brands still selling 1g options, most are 3+. I also bring up price because we didn’t sacrifice any quality on the mfg side, we use compliant d8, we use high quality hhc, we’re sourcing most of our terpenes from Abstrax or some other smaller boutique but premium brands. All our hardware is also sourced through ALD, which do make some extremely high quality hardware. We are simply just one of the few brands even capable of producing a high quality product at prices that make sense. Most brands outsource production and are in it only for the money. If the products we sold weren’t quality we wouldn’t see the growth and repeat business that we have.
The real value prop for our brand Budget is how it’s packaged and that it’s actually a premium product that people can afford.
The majority of delta buyers aren’t focused on premium or luxury (hence the 5gram+ vapes being popular haha). They simply want access to cannabis and most of them have no idea what quality is, a lot of the products in the market are complete dogshit. These products thrive in non legal states, but do far worse in legal states.
I do think that being able to pick up a Director level person who has tobacco experience would be a massive win for us and they could bring a lot of knowledge to the table. Tobacco companies have things dialed in more than beverage companies in regards to merchandising and distribution in my opinion. Finding good and the right talent is the hardest part about building a successful business. Assembling a team of quality people is by far the most important thing you can do to grow a business, and thankfully we’re in a position where we can start recruiting more talent which should help bring us to that next level.
Appreciate the discussion
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Agreed. The only thing that I would add in response is that you talk about how you are creating one of the most scalable quality brands that is available while in the same breath saying that your average Delta customer doesn’t care about quality. Never underestimate how much money your customer has or what is important to them. As you said many Delta customers are not aware of quality so how can we sit here and say that they don’t care about it?
Food for thought - the type that would fall in between the cracks on a spreadsheet of someone not familiar with cannabis.
The analogy I’ll use is I used to think Korbel
Champagne was delicious… when you’re 17,18,19 you most of the time haven’t had quality champagne. And then I tried quality champagne and my whole perspective of what good champagne was changed. I can’t even smell korbel now lol.
So while everyone does want quality, most simply don’t know what it is. Which is why after someone buys our products they tend to come back and continue to buy because their baseline for quality has increased. Our $15 disposables are better than almost any disposables you’ll find in the delta space, the added perk from a consumer level is they can afford it.
Outside of just Delta though, we do have a growing cbd brand which is really in a much less crowded space, most cbd brands left completely and just started selling deltas. We’ve also got a premium Kratom brand in the works. All with the assumption deltas could go away overnight. We’re just trying to position ourselves to be in the best situation no matter what happens from a regulatory standpoint.
Once the relationships and distribution network is built out, the best way to become more profitable isn’t to cut corners, it’s to sell more brands, products and skus at every location
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True, and honestly I’m interested to see if in the end the informed public chooses quantity or quality en mass since our cannabis markets have historically been predisposed to quality. Is this solely due to the fact that those willing to risk legal issues to consume are more likely to be elite judges of quality? As the market expands to the unknowing millions, will this change?
I like to hope that because those who choose to try cannabis are generally opting for a healthier alternative that the standard for a preference of quality will remain.
I see this especially in raw flower CURRENTLY, which as a market segment I see falling largely to the way side in the next quarter decade. Folks will smoke joints like cigars, special occasions. Gummies, beverages and vapes will rule in my opinion.
But that’s enough market speculation and high horsing from me. Sounds like you’ll do just fine my friend, good luck in all you do.
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