Greg Toroosian 5:31
that’s great. I love to hear that story of the founders, knowing what they want to do and being aware enough and then giving that position to someone else that they trust.
Unknown Speaker 5:41
It’s very rare. Yeah,
Greg Toroosian 5:42
yeah. I’ve talked about a few times in these episodes, so apologies listeners if you’re doing a little marathon session, and I’m sounding repetitive, but that self awareness and relinquishing control is super important when you’re scaling a company especially if it’s your first company. You know, you don’t want to be a boss. neck or shoot yourself in the foot with potential hires or scaling certain departments or something like that, where you can just stick to what you’re best at and bring in specialists for the other areas. So that’s really, really cool. So what was it like for you actually making that shift from? You did stuff in finance, you did stuff in health and fitness, and then now you’re in the cannabis industry. So how’s that transition been for you?
Travis Steffen 6:28
It’s been really exciting. And the reason I say that I’ve been a founder in a couple different or an executive in a number of highly regulated industries. I’ve had companies in gambling, finance and now drugs basically. And they’re all incredibly regulated by the government so it can put a pretty tight restriction restrictor on your ability to make various decisions that you wouldn’t In, you know, let’s say you’re running a company that builds CRM software, you’re not going to have the same oversight or the same hard and fast rules for the same clunky government software that you have to integrate with. That goes down every day. So the challenges, in my opinion are much, much greater. And the interesting part about cannabis in contrast to, for example, the gambling world is in cannabis. The legislation has been going overwhelmingly in our favor, without us having to me because in a previous company that I was an executive at you know, we had 45 lobbyists on staff at one point we wow got five bills passed, but it was a struggle constantly. Because it was just not something that was a popular topic for the voting public. You know, there was a very divisive topic, regardless of the revenue that it might generate for the government. In cannabis, I think what you’re seeing is a pretty dramatic shift in the public perception of the product. And as such, the state governments are seeing that there’s a pretty significant opportunity for taxation above and beyond what they ever thought possible. And it also decreases a burden of enforcement on a specific type of product that was so highly regulated, that was resulting in a very large amount of incarcerated citizens, you know, requiring a lot more resources to manage that sort of thing, and so on and so forth. So there are a lot of shifts that are taking place that we’re benefiting from, and we’re doing our best to advance the industry as much as possible.
Greg Toroosian 8:45
That’s great. So can we take a step back actually, and for the listeners, in your words, explain what GrowFlow does and what’s unique about them in the cannabis space?
Travis Steffen 8:56
Sure. So GrowFlow. We do compliance Inventory management’s point of sale analytics and sales tools for specifically cannabis companies at all parts of the supply chain. So zooming out, basically, you have a number of different operations from the moment a seed is planted in, you know, on a farm or in a growing operation to the moment where the consumer is able to consume the product. And that could be you know, you have the grower, you’ve got processors, you’ve got brands, you’ve got distributors, you’ve got retailers, and dispensary’s transportation. All of those are licensed roles in the supply chain. All of those have compliance burdens where every single thing that you do as a cannabis operator has to be reported to the state almost without fail now with varying degrees of scrutiny. In some states, it’s it’s it’s incredibly tight in some states, it’s a little bit less so but For the most part, let’s say for example, you’re a farmer, and you’re growing cannabis or you’re growing hemp, but particularly cannabis, you anything any movements of the plant within your facility, any change in custody of that plant in that facility. Let’s say you plant something that has to be reported to the state, that plant has to be tagged with an RFID tag to identify, hey, this plant is here on this shelf in this room and it’s at this stage once it sprouts or once it’s flowering. Once it’s harvested, all those statuses have to be updated with the state. If you move that plant to a different room, if you move it to a different shelf in the same room, that all has to be reported to the state everything basically any movements up and down the supply chain in near real time, passes the report to the state otherwise you run the risk, you know huge fines or potentially worse. You know beyond that you are still a business So you have a lot of operational things that you need to match that inventory you need to track how productive or unproductive your staff is what sales look like, and need to be able to actually sell products to customers in a compliant way. Some facilities require a medical card, and they have customers who can only buy from them. Some states you can buy from anywhere, but you have to potentially be a resident of that state or you have to be of legal age and you have to verify that as an operator. Otherwise, you’re out of compliance. So you’re juggling, you know, starting and managing and growing a business which is already difficult. But then you’re doing these activities, these compliance activities that have absolutely no business value for you. Other than allowing you to keep your doors open and legally operate. So girl flow basically is done if we blend those compliance activities with business critical activities like managing your inventory or selling products, customers, things like that. So that behind the scenes, we’re reporting those interactions and those actions within your facility to the state as often as possible.
Greg Toroosian 12:09
Very cool. Very cool. Yeah, I got a little bit of anxiety there thinking about, you know, if you were in the position of a founder, and you’re like, oh, I’ve got this great idea or product and I want to go out and do it and you get jump in, you hit with all of these red tape, basically. And if you miss step, you’re gonna be subject to fines and potentially close and all of that stuff and you guys basically solving that problem, while also adding to that business, the business function. So that’s great, very, very unique. How has it been, like attracting talent for the company?
Travis Steffen 12:42
It’s, I mean, there have been some unique challenges, but for the most part, it hasn’t been a huge issue, especially like we’re a well funded company. We just closed Series B for eight and a half million on April 1. So right and grant getting off when COVID started. great time. Yep. Yep. So we were very grateful to get that deal done and shout out to our partners over at TDC capital, they’ve been credible. They’re very, very heavy. They have a very rigorous diligence process, which took several months. So we were very involved with it every single day. So we’re, we’re so glad that that got done right when the public markets just tanked. Yeah, but I mean, honestly, it’s been acquiring talent before that wasn’t wasn’t too hard. We did have to wrestle a little bit with some folks who maybe were indoctrinated with beliefs about the cannabis industry, and so on and so forth. But once we were able to share hey, here’s how, you know a lot of people’s lives have been saved or we’ve been able to help them and because we basically our purpose for being is to keep the actual cannabis businesses legal and operating and a lot of those are medical facilities who are basically prescribing medicines to patients and you know, That’s anything from a, like treatments for epilepsy or improving your appetite if you’re getting chemotherapy or I mean the list goes on so many pretty incredible benefits. And you know, that doesn’t even touch on the various benefits that you know various cannabinoids like CBD have. So when we can have that conversation with them, and we can say, hey, also our leadership team has zero cannabis experience before we all come on. We just love building, you know, products for customers together. It definitely is a very tight knit squad. We are very rigorous on our cultural standards as a company so no one’s going to be forced to pick up the slack for somebody who doesn’t deserve to have a job here. They are very players working next to a player. So once they’re able to see that and witness that. It’s a much easier conversation. All that said, you know, there are always I mean. Hiring is one of the most difficult things in a company to do well. Anyone can throw some money out there and hire somebody. But in order to get somebody that can really take your company forward, it’s one of the most difficult and one of the most important parts of scaling, in my opinion.
Greg Toroosian 15:15
Yeah, I couldn’t have said that better myself. I mean, obviously, I’m biased, because that’s the space that I’m in and have been for a long time. But it is truly truly important, especially when you’re at these pivotal times, you know, getting the right people to take you to the next stage is crucial. And also there’s a big part in internally having those discussions with the early stage to your founders, right. They did it themselves to themselves, but then the rest of them like, Hey, we need to widen the scope of some roles, shorten it of others, bring in specialists, you know, so that that’s really important. I was actually gonna ask you to answer the question about the stigma attached to the cannabis industry and if that’s still an issue for you, obviously It’s been legal for a long time. I say a long time. It’s been legal for some time now. Do you think that it will get to a place anytime soon where you won’t have to be explaining the benefits of what you guys do and how you’re actually impacting people’s lives so positively and the industry so positively and people may be self off their own backfire apply and reach out?
Travis Steffen 16:23
Yeah, I definitely do. I mean, I think within the last five years, you’ve seen a pretty dramatic societal shift in the direction of being, you know, pro cannabis, or at the very least cannabis neutral. Yeah, I think you’re seeing a lot less judgement in the public as a whole when influencers or celebrities or athletes come out in support of the cannabis industry. Know, for example, the NBA just just took cannabis out of what it tests for basically allowing their athletes to consume cannabis products effectively.
Unknown Speaker 16:59
Wow.
Travis Steffen 17:00
Yeah, so that was that’s a recent development and I expect the major sports organizations in the next collective bargaining agreements to follow suit. It’s just that’s the direction that the industry is going. That’s the direction that public opinion is going. I think enough people now are being exposed to positive experiences with cannabis. And those are being reported on so frequently, that it’s, you know, you’re changing people’s minds. Most people who have a negative opinion are by and large, just parroting what someone has indoctrinated them in them at an early age. I’ve not actually experienced it for myself, because the bottom line is that there are a lot of legal substances that are without question, harmful alcohol, cigarettes, things like that without question, and are still legal to sell cannabis online. The other hand is actually saving people. It’s and that’s also without question. That’s what the data shows. It’s why, you know, so many medical professionals are now prescribing
Greg Toroosian 18:11
prescribing a 20 pack, or
Unknown Speaker 18:13
no, no.
Travis Steffen 18:16
Yeah, they’re trying to get people off of that. So yeah, so I think it’s nice to see that and it’s nice to see that the voting public has begun to agree. You know, with what a lot of people in the cannabis industry have been saying for years. And to be clear, like I’m, I can’t claim to be a cannabis og I actually was not a user of the products before. I came on as CEO since I came on as CEO. I basically said, Look, I need to support the industry that supports me, and I need to find a way to utilize this product that enhances my life in some way so I can be authentic when I’m preaching about it. was not a big smoker of any kind was not a big vape guy. Have any kind but I did find that low dose edibles that had maybe two to four milligrams of THC specifically indica right before bed. I mean, I’m a former athlete. I’ve fought professionally here in the States and in Thailand. I’ve been a triathlete and ultra marathoner, things like that. So my body’s basically racked up. So, you know, I have no problem getting to sleep, but I would typically wake up 234 times in the middle of the night, basically, for no reason. So I was just a very light sleeper. And in just doing that, like a small enough dose to as to not feel it, or feel, quote, unquote, high. I was I, I slept better than I ever have in my entire life. And it’s had a profound effect on all other aspects of my health. So I couldn’t be a bigger proponent at this point.
Greg Toroosian 19:49
That’s great. And another good point, you know, a lot of people think to be part of a consumer side of the cannabis industry is smoking vaping whatever. That may be but the edible side is huge, right? And CBD oils, things like that massive and huge benefits there even the whole cosmetic side of it now as surely as my mind every time I see new products out there and the benefits associated with them, it’s really it widens my mind because obviously I mean I grew up with the stigma of cannabis and the people who smoked it or use their where I grew up and stuff like that or, and then you know, film culture, music, culture, etc. But then now to see this whole booming industry that is helping so many people and now as a recruiter, thinking about how would you communicate that to people from outside? Yeah, I used to work. I don’t want to name the names of the companies but like this global platform, help blow them up and then he went into the cannabis industry briefly on another marketplace type platform. And that was like, for me looking at his resume and seeing that shift and knowing him, I was like, how did you end up there and again, it was eye opening about the positive impact of the industry taking away the stigma attached to the product, and how this can actually be booming, successful help a bunch of people and have a big impact. So that’s my little two cents on it. My personal experience with real estate. So touching on the recruiting aspect, how do the recruiters support what you guys do. Do you have people internally that focus on that? Are you big on referrals? Do you like specialists externally? What’s your strategy for hiring?
Travis Steffen 21:45
Yeah, as of today, just based on and I’ve had experience with all aspects of hiring and recruiting. Yeah, I mentioned previous companies kind of depending on the size of the company. We found our best luck by far. comes from referrals from our internal team. If we go to our team and we say, hey, these are the roles that we have opening up, if there’s anybody who is among the best people you’ve ever worked with, by far that fit these criteria, send them our way. And we found that almost without fail, they’ve been our best hires. Second, so that we have built an internal recruiting organization. We, you know, and it’s, it’s funny, the I’ve been a big proponent of, you know, for several years, there have been, you know, talks in Silicon Valley and in tech about a lack of diversity. And that’s been something that because of that ongoing, and I know it’s been amplified lately, but well before any of that had been amplified. What we went ahead and imposed was we’ve got a five layer hiring process. We’re very, very detail oriented during the hiring process. We actually do try to live the hire slow fire quick mentality. That first layer is personality and phone screen. So that’s like host resume submission and things like that will see the information on that individual and then do a phone screen. that’s meant to, but that layer of the process is blind. So we don’t see names. We don’t see gender, we don’t see race. We see experience, we see, you know, their personality, we see ability, things like that. And that’s managed by
Greg Toroosian 23:26
the recruiters. They remove all of that information, just set you up on a call or they do that call and then share that information with you minus
Travis Steffen 23:34
Yeah, somebody internally will anonymize and then the others will, you know, the other folks that are actually in charge of the phone screens and that sort of thing, are the ones who then have that phone screen, and then they continue to anonymize that process to the next level. So they don’t anchor anybody with any expectations. Next Level is a culture fit interview which we use top grading methodology to To establish Hey, is this person their character is their culture in line with what we want to create here? So, at this point we haven’t even gotten into, you know skillset or technical ability or anything like that. It’s just do you fit the caliber of person of human being that we want to attract? And do you exemplify our core values in a way that, you know, at the very least, we feel like we can coach that person up in what are important to us in terms of our company, seven core values. And then the next layer after that if they pass they go to a focus interview with the actual hiring manager. So that handoff is done blind until like right before the interview. So we know how to greet the person and so forth. That interview is done with the person who would actually be managing that hire. That’s when you dig into the technical skill set and so forth. From there if they pass that they’ll do reference checks. If it’s a key role, they’ll be sent to me as well for like a last layer, and then we’ll make a decision. Every one of these candidates is ranked based on every one of those layers in the process. You know, as well as, at the very end, if we have people who are neck and neck, we basically say, who could bring the most differentiation in perspectives and methods to our team? Who would they who they would be working with every day. So, you know, if that team is, by and large, quite a bit younger, if we have a candidate that’s 10 years older, we might go that route just to get a little bit of a different perspective, or vice versa, if that team is, is heavily male, or or, you know, more skewed towards one specific, you know, ethnicity or something like that. Yeah, we’ll try to broaden that perspective and broaden that breadth of, you know, the ability to think about Bringing in folks who just can’t push beyond that little bubble. So that’s been I mean, we are always governed by who applies. But we try to consciously and proactively remove as many cognitive biases during that process we can we feel like it’s not only is it the right thing to do morally, which I mean, it’s kind of a happy byproduct, the data just shows that it’s a more successful way to build a company, which is what I’m more attracted to personally. You know, I think if you have, you know, additional perspectives across the board, and you have people who don’t, who aren’t just clones of each other, you’re going to have more success, you’re going to make better decisions, you’re going to have better judgments. And we have used external recruiters in the past but we got more benefit from those folks for one higher level role that is just a little more difficult to get from, excuse me, a more traditional process and to when we get a little bit larger. And you know, we don’t want to just continue to augment the size of our hiring team. Yeah, yeah, that hiring team thought that that’s an important detail that’s our hiring teams diverse. Like that’s that team is no like no exception to our ethos there. We’d like right now today I believe two thirds of our hiring team is female, two thirds of our hiring team are people of color. And that’s been incredible for us because that’s another way to remove cognitive bias from the equation because we have diversity in thought. So it brings out a lot of good discussion among that team throughout the process.
Greg Toroosian 27:37
Amazing. But just to clarify, when you say hiring team, you talk about your internal recruiting team or the people that are responsible for the interview stages along the way.
Travis Steffen 27:45
Yeah, both. I mean, so our recruiting team and the people who are moving people, especially those first two levels, phone screen and top grading, that’s who we consider to be the hiring team. They’re shouldering the brunt of the load. By the time it gets to Through those first two layers, we’ll probably have weeded out 98% of candidates. And then by the time the hiring managers job, they’re out, they’re actually doing the work and they’re managing people. And we want to make sure that we’re not imposing a significant burden on their shoulders, we’re only sending them the best, the best.
Greg Toroosian 28:18
That is great. You know, honestly, hats off to you and to the team, because you’re the first person I’ve spoken to that has a process like that every a lot of if you’ve hired a lot in the past, or even if you’ve got your finger on the pulse, anonymous hiring lightly stages is very real is you’re able to do it, regardless of the stage of company that you are. And there’s tools out there to even put it in place in our use sourcing tools that can be hired just for diversity or anonymity. Hiring as well. So it’s powerful and you are doing your part and you stand behind it. And if diversity is something that’s part of your mission, your values, something that you stand for as a company, then you should definitely have that So that that’s amazing. It’s actually a breath of fresh air to hear that and to hear that you guys stick to that throughout the stages. That’s great.
Travis Steffen 29:09
Yeah. And like any of the other kinds of fellow capitalists out there, like I said before , it does feel like, Okay, this is morally the correct way to do things. But, you know, as a CEO, I’ve got a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders to make decisions that increase shareholder value. The data says it is a better way to build a company, period. Like there’s there’s no refuting that so it’s I don’t candidly understand how, you know, Silicon Valley or tech in general, doesn’t, you know, wake up wake up to that fact with a little bit more breadth because it just doesn’t like we are so data driven in every other aspect of building the company that I think oftentimes during the hiring process, people are still tempted to make instinct. decisions to surround themselves with people who think just like them. It’s just a more comfortable way to do things. But, you know, if you look at some of the more successful business people, for example, you know, there are a lot of stories about Larry Page at Google that get pretty upset when people agree with him. Internally, it is only when you can build a culture of not just diversity of thought, but in the ability to actually feel comfortable voicing dissent and voicing disagreement. Like that’s that’s pretty quick
Greg Toroosian 30:38
trick critical as well. 100% agree. I mean, diversity is not just a race or gender or sexual preference, but it definitely is that diversity of thought and I love that you, you’re mindful of that and have that in the process about even on the age aspect as well, because you’re absolutely right if you have a team full of 20 somethings So early 30s, they’re going to have very different experience viewpoint and perspective and someone who’s in their late 40s. and not being afraid to hire someone like that, you know, a lot of companies that, I mean, I can’t speak wholeheartedly for the cannabis industry, because I probably know, like the tip of the iceberg when it comes to that, but when it comes to, you know, tech startups and stuff, they can be a little bit ageist, you know, they don’t want to hire someone to experience you know, limits that so sure, and for the value that comes with that diversity is you know, it, you can’t really put a finger on it. It’s so, so valuable. And that’s great. Well, you know, you’ve shared a lot with us, and I’m really, really thankful for that because you’ve got a very unique perspective for doing things that are pretty unique here. And I think a lot of people should actually take know and try and implement some of this stuff. Is there anything else that you can give us? advice wise, some gems from your years of doing this in terms of team building the structures, hiring partnerships, or even when it comes now employer branding is so huge and so important. I’m not sure how much experience you have there, but anything that you can share that people can take away and put into practice.
Travis Steffen 32:12
Let’s see. I mean, the the first thing that comes to mind is there is no, like, consistently, there are so many different ways of succeeding. There are some very clear ways of failing. But there are different paths to success. There’s not one right way. So, you know, pay attention to the data. Like for example, we treat our new hires coming through our hiring process like customers. So we’ll survey them during the process. We send them different surveys really, as they Yeah, just to test how the process has been thus far. We want to know how we’re performing. That’s part of our ability to scale as an organization then, after they come on the Get a different survey, you know, a week later, a month later, and 90 days later, I promise they’re, they’re not those particular surveys are not anonymous we want to actually drill into but part of our one of our core values as a company is to, to challenge respectfully so we want to we want to actually build a culture we where people feel comfortable and safe to to give actual feedback with Nazca. So a lot of our survey questions specifically are asking for negative feedback. And our leaders when we see things that are just a little bit too sugar coated, we’ll go back to those people and we’ll say don’t be a little bit more brutally honest here like this is what we actually want. Like, for example, some of our surveys are, you know, which of our core values is this person who’s managing you or who are you imagine living the least, which one did are they are they not exemplifying at all we need that directionality to fuel our improvement efforts as as like individual professionals, so if we’re not getting that from each other, we’re not like so we, when we send out an engagement survey, we do that once a month. It’s a different topic. You know, we’ll say things like, hey, show your teammates enough love to be completely honest with your feedback. So you can give them the opportunity to grow like they want to. And with that in mind, like we do get a lot better results and people are just really, really grateful because otherwise, people just don’t like confrontation. They don’t like to make others feel bad. So if we can flip that on its head and say you’re actually making people feel safer and feel better when you’re being real with them. Because then you know, like, how many times have you companies fire people who had no idea that they were underperforming? So they don’t address it head on? Yep, exactly.
Greg Toroosian 34:54
I’m curious. How have you found two things? How have you found the response rate for Your surveys during an interview process and attached that question? Do you wait for or against the person if they have completed that during the process?
Travis Steffen 35:11
We do Wait, wait, like, like we do Wait, like we want them to be as involved as possible. And surveys are a big part of our culture. internally. We do like to ask them in every way because we found the response rate is close to 100% during the hiring process, just because everyone wants to have a job, right? Everybody’s trying to get a job. So they want to, like every once in a while, you’re going to find somebody who gives one word answers and they usually don’t make it to that stage.
Greg Toroosian 35:39
All they say if you find sorry, since rubber, they actually do find it they’re very truthful or brutally honest. like are they very positive about it because they want to get a job.
Travis Steffen 35:49
They’re very positive about it for the most part, and that’s kind of one of our first teaching moments as a culture. We basically say we’re really wanting to find something that we’re like Not doing as well. So that’s a really good moment in the process for us. And it’s just it’s training started or and most of those people who take the survey don’t actually get hired, we only can hire one person for that role in most cases. But it ensures that we get more responses to improve our hiring process.
Greg Toroosian 36:18
Definitely. Yeah, I love the idea of surveys and something that I’d implemented previously, but what we’d find is two things. One, we could send people to our Glassdoor page to do an anonymous review on the interview process, but they wouldn’t their review wouldn’t go through until the interview process is finished. And normally, people want to put something negative if they don’t get a job, right, sure. And then candidates, because the culture just wasn’t not naming companies or anything like that, but the culture just wasn’t as transparent as you guys seem to be or looking for direct, not conflict, but you know, the way to communicate or disagree respectfully, and call people out. It just wasn’t So people would be a bit hesitant to do that throughout our process. But that data was very important afterwards because you could see and we unfortunately did it anonymously because then it was valuable to take to hiring managers or departments and say, Look, you can see how you compare to other people, you know, your candidate satisfaction rate or fall outright and things like that. And this is what they’re saying about the process is helpful when you have enough Yeah.
Travis Steffen 37:25
And honestly, I like I’ve been a founder or a CEO for 90% of my career, but I did at one point, they’re in the middle take a job as a founding team member of a startup, which ended up scaling up pretty quickly and early on, it was really great, eventually became dramatically mismanaged. And as a team member who was not the one that was making those decisions. I felt the pain of seeing a lot of those things be done incorrectly, like a huge lack of transparency or inability to give feedback or things like that. So I felt the pain. So now as a leader, I have so much more empathy for what our team goes through. Because I was right there in their shoes. So like, it’s more important for us to do things the right way. And a lot of the leaders that I brought with me who have helped me to build this company to what it is today, you know, they also have had experiences like that. So it’s been really important for us to do things in a in a really specific way.
Greg Toroosian 38:31
So great. Yeah, this has been very, very refreshing for me, to say the least. Okay, well, thanks for being on the show. We’ve been talking to Travis. Steffen is the CEO of GrowFlow, Travis, where can people learn more about you and GrowFlow?
Travis Steffen 38:47
I mean, go to getgrowflow.com and check us out there. We’re just going through a pretty big transition in our branding. So you’re probably going to see a big change in that in the next couple of weeks, and then above and beyond that, we will have not been active on social media today. Our team has been marketing in other ways. But we’re, we’re getting there. And we’ll be focusing more on that this year in the next quarter. Beyond that, go over to Amazon and grab a copy of Viral Hero basically teaches founders, CEOs, growth hackers, how to architect and build a product that grows itself. It’s a different look at viral marketing than most have ever ever touched. And the response has been pretty incredible thus far. So go check that out, pick up a copy and and hit me up on Instagram and let me know what you thought.
Greg Toroosian 39:39
Amazing. Think I’m gonna have to get one myself. Alright, great. Well, thanks again for being on the show.
Unknown Speaker 39:45
Thanks for having me.
Outro 39:48
Thank you for listening to the Elevate Hire podcast. Be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes. Until next time.
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