How David Allen Tracy Turned Nonprofit Roots into a Global Marketing Empire

[00:00:00] Brian: Welcome to How to Fortune Cannabis. I'm your host, Brian Weber. Our topic today, transforming your cannabis operations with automation and good data. How to Fortune Cannabis is the educational focus show with experienced leaders in regulated cannabis. Our guests have a wide range of industry experience in law, insurance, real estate, and today, an expert in data automation.

[00:00:21] Brian: There's no pitches here. This is designed to be a master class in regulated cannabis. How to flourish in cannabis is our effort to educate and elevate. I am so pleased to have David Eagleson senior here on the show today. Do you usually go by senior? I do since I have a junior.

[00:00:38] Brian: Dave is the CEO and founder of Outlaw Technologies. I'll say they are a partner of flourish, but I wanted to share their general mission to the show today because they're a partner for flourish for a reason. Dave, why don't you just introduce yourself? Cause you have a, such a great experience.

[00:00:52] Brian: I want you to, share that knowledge with everybody.

[00:00:54] David: I appreciate it, Brian. Yeah. So my background is I've got over 25 years in the RFID data collection space. I started off in the late nineties doing enterprise software, worked for a group here, that now you might know as Zebra technologies, and we basically rolled out RFID into like Walmart, Target, Boeing.

[00:01:12] David: So I had a lot of experience doing that. So fast forward, how did I end up in cannabis? So most people are familiar with metric as a company metric, started in Colorado. I think we all know that, the founder of metric and I've been close friends and he's been a customer of mine since that time. So, in 1998, 99, he came to me and said, Hey, look, metric has been putting out RFID tags.

[00:01:33] David: We'd like someone like with your experience to build tools, handhelds, things of that nature. That's kind of why I kicked off Outlaw and really why I'm in this And, yeah, just taking all the lessons learned in my past experiences and trying to bring those best practices to this industry.

[00:01:48] Brian: Well, I, I know we needed this industry and, if you've ever been in a grow room or have ever seen pictures of a grow room and you have plants literally for days, like feel the dream style.

[00:01:58] Brian: How do you track all those efficiently? How do you make sure that data is correct? Those are things we're going to be going over in the show today. So just for a quick reminder, our topic today. transforming your cannabis operations with automation and good data. And we're gonna have, I know Dave works, as co founder of data automation company.

[00:02:16] Brian: But these are all good practices that you could use regardless if you're using a lot of technologies or other ones. This is going to be a master class and I really hope you guys pay attention. You're gonna be able to get a lot of it today. I love these because every time we do these prep shows, I learn so much from our partners or our guests that we have on board.

[00:02:32] Brian: And I learned a lot from this one and I really appreciate you making the time today, Dave. No problem. Awesome. So the first one, and I think this is a great first one. Let's talk about errors.

[00:02:41] David: Yeah. Look, I think what people have to understand, I think most people do understand, look, when you have anything that's a human driven, right?

[00:02:47] David: A human capture of data, input of data. I have a pen and paper. I'm a left handed person. My handwriting is not the best and probably could have been a doctor. The reality of that situation is you've got to read it. You've got to input it. So anytime you start dealing with people putting in information or being forced to type in something, you run the risk of errors.

[00:03:06] David: I mean, it's the reason that you have barcodes at itself, checkouts, and you have things like that is it doesn't make an error, the system will grab the ID correctly, will account for it correctly. Similar in this industry, errors is driven by people, unfortunately. but the reality of it is just systems to get around that.

[00:03:24] Brian: So in relevance to cannabis, I know you had a story that we shared during the recording about metric and, like in the midst of the harvest that you're going through some errors.

[00:03:32] David: Yeah. So we have a system in outlaw where we've created a harvest system is basically a touch screen plugs into an existing scale and allows that particular person to capture the weight.

[00:03:41] David: By regulation, by compliance. We had a client in California actually doing a harvest. I got a call late at night, 830, nine o'clock Eastern. Obviously they're on West coast. I get the phone call. Hey, we're on the metric system right now. And it says there's 50 plus plants. I'm looking at an empty room. What the hell?

[00:03:58] David: The reality of it was is when we dug into the data, we, on our side, we quickly were like, Oh, what happened? What we found was one of their employees had done a destroy a function, but never uploaded it. They did a destroy report. They never submitted it. Obviously, if you don't tell the compliance system that the event occurred, it didn't occur.

[00:04:15] David: So it was one of those situations where when that was found out, they quickly upload it and they're like, sorry to bother you. And that was the end of the discussion, but it goes to show that that's some things that you have to like, we've put in some checks and balances for that. Because again, Human nature.

[00:04:30] David: Someone didn't hit submit.

[00:04:31] Brian: Yep. Yep. In the prep that we talked about this, , it's the errors that you're trying to prevent from here are destroyed plant reports, or if you have commingled plants or these other things. And it's about the action items that you can take is, really trying to, Understand what your workflow is, have it documented, and maybe that employee didn't know to hit the submit button, or that wasn't automated someplace, , in that records or their SOPs that they have, like, that really is the recommended action items for when you're doing this, whether you're doing it with a scanner or whether you're doing it manually.

[00:05:00] David: Yeah, I think the key thing, there's several key takeaways. One is you need to make device and systems as simple as possible. We call them simple. Donor proof. That's not to be belligerent. That's not to be condescending. But the reality of it is in today's world, people are very much can take, I can give an eight year old an iPhone.

[00:05:16] David: I can give an 80 year old an iPhone. They can figure it out. Apple's very smart. There's a lot going on behind the scenes, but it's tap tap. I'm done. If there's more than three taps, you're probably asking too much of the person. So one of the things you have to do is you have to look at, how do people get trained?

[00:05:29] David: How can muscle memory set in? , How can I, as the manager teach my person, or if I'm moving up the ladder, who's my replacement? That's the kind of stuff that everyone needs to look at because handing you a clipboard saying best of luck, probably not a good SOP.

[00:05:42] Brian: No, no, definitely not.

[00:05:44] Brian: Definitely. Definitely not. and that kind of actually hearkens on, our second point that we have on here that you had shared with me was like understanding, What your true costs are related toward automation and S. O. P. S. And workflows. And you had a story about an employee, maybe wanting to grab some dinner with his family.

[00:06:01] David: Yeah. So we were at Nikan, which is obviously Nikan Boston. a great show, by the way, we've always attended. We were always there. so we were there and one of our customers literally stopped dead in his tracks as he was walking by it. You the outlaw team, he goes, you're the reason I get to go home at night and have dinner with my family.

[00:06:16] David: And we're kind of like, what do you mean? He goes, when I was doing audits, whether it was plant audits of rooms, now that I have your scanner, what used to take me, I was seven, eight o'clock at night, cause I'm the assistant general manager, I'm now done. I'm out of there by four 30. I can do an audit in minutes.

[00:06:30] David: not ours. Our harvest went from four hours to one. Those are the kind of things where, it makes you feel good when you provide those systems to folks. But the reality of it is when you give someone a tool, the right tool again, the right tool, it does wonders. so that's an example of somebody that just, really saw the value and wanted to relate to us that, thank you.

[00:06:49] Brian: That's nice. I'm sure, I'm sure his family appreciated that so much as well. And like when you look, when you kind of macro that as well, that, Person may have left, and they would have had a rehire. Somebody else knew and retrain that person. There's a cost there. And also just the enjoyment of, just they can actually spend their time and their expertise adding that to the job and not sorting around the room and just trying to find this plan or that plan or reading like little metric barcode tags, which I'm assuming are quite challenging to I've seen them like they're hard to read in the, in the field, after a full day of work.

[00:07:22] Brian: So let alone, . That's your true cost there.

[00:07:25] David: Yeah, I think the thing they have to understand is, look, this is an industry we all know because, your group flourish, you guys are heavily involved in it as well. Look, if you get people mindless tasks, counting plants, sit on a stool, touch each plant barcode scanner, or write the numbers down after about a month or two, I'm really going to get burnt out on doing that job because it's not taxing me mentally.

[00:07:44] David: It's not really engaging me. It's not taking advantage of what I bring to it. If it's a mindless task, automate. If it's something that's literally just data collection, get a tool to do it. Because I think unfortunately ownership, and I say this, a lot of people kind of view it as I'm paying Steve or Sue, no matter what might as well let them do it.

[00:08:01] David: Yeah. Until Steve leaves. Now you've got a cost of retraining. You've got a new hire you got to get and you lose the con.

[00:08:07] Brian: And you haven't fixed the problem. It's still the same bad job that someone else is going to leave.

[00:08:12] David: It's the same. Exactly. You're just throwing them in the deep end without a life ring.

[00:08:17] David: And I mean, again and again, you see it. I see it. The industry tends to be, I call it dollar foolish, right? I don't want to spend a penny to get a dollar back. You're like, really?

[00:08:27] Brian: Good, good points. Good points. Let your employees go home for dinner and get them the tools that they need. They'll stick around longer and there'll be a lot more productive when they're there.

[00:08:36] Brian: The next one that we have is removing. I don't know. Tell me a little story about that.

[00:08:41] David: Yeah, we had, we have a customer in Massachusetts where the state agency came in and this is kind of what a lot of state people do. Show me plant 1234 tag and you're like, Ooh, I don't know where that one, two, three, four is exactly. So back to using metric and look, I'll, I'll say this metric puts the RFID in their tags, both parent and pet plant and package.

[00:09:02] David: So now when we have a device called desperado, where you can load that ID in and actually use seek and find. So what does that mean? We're actually directionally looking for a specific tag, not all thousands that are there, but that one, they're able to walk to that plant, show that auditor, see it isn't veg one.

[00:09:18] David: As I said, it was. And for the auditor, they're kind of like, wow, if he can find a plant in amongst a sea of plants and answer the, I don't, there's not the, I don't know where it is, they've won.

[00:09:28] Brian: Yeah. Yeah. And that, it instills confidence in the operations as a whole as well, if you're able to answer those questions very specifically.

[00:09:34] Brian: So, you had on your notes here, good compliance equals good inventory.

[00:09:39] David: I think people believe that the compliance is a burdensome thing and they look at it as, metric is the devil or why do I have to do this? But my flip side of that is keeping your data clean, keeping your information accurate, keeping this information is, is equal to your day to day business, right?

[00:09:55] David: You have an ERP, you have a flourish, you want to know what's going on. going on. And if you have bad data, if you think you have extra 10 plans when you don't, but you're planning for those 10, I I'm looking around, I've got vape carts to fill. I don't have product. So the reality of it is I think good compliance also goes back to good business, right?

[00:10:13] David: People need to understand that the data is equal to your business as it is to the state.

[00:10:18] Brian: That is true. Our biggest, and I'll, I know we're focused on no pitches here, but like our biggest, competitor here at flourish, being an ERP platform is Google sheets and Microsoft Excel.

[00:10:28] David: You got it. And how would they fill? How do they fill those Google sheets in Microsoft tools?

[00:10:34] Brian: No audit controls, no logs, no locking, no user access, none of those things. It's just open there. So this industry will mature. And that's why we do these shows like this. and actually speaking of that, We appreciate putting these shows together.

[00:10:47] Brian: We do this really for education. It's really not to be self promotional. So if you're getting value out of this and we're three points in, so you're obviously are likes really help. Subscribes really help. Send this to a friend who you might find this to be useful. That really helps. And if you have any questions for Dave, I'm happy to do a follow up show or pivot to a different show on this or any other comments that you want.

[00:11:09] Brian: Leave a comment in the show. That engagement means the world to us. That's all we ask. That is our gentleman's agreement on for the show. So we thank you very much next topic. And I love this one. Cause you kind of sell a magic wand, but I know you're going to push me back on this one is next subject is there is no magic wand.

[00:11:28] Brian: Tell me a story about that.

[00:11:29] David: Yeah. So look, this is an RFID scanner. And for those that can see the image that I have here, right? So a scanner itself is a wonderful tool, but it's a tool. No, like not just like a hammer, right? I can hammer a nail. I'm not going to hammer a screw. With people have to understand RFID is not magic in the sense that yet radio frequencies is like your toll tag.

[00:11:46] David: People are very comfortable driving under a antenna array, not even knowing they just got billed five bucks to go across the bridge. That technology has been out, right? The Walmart's I mentioned, Lulu lemons. The, the DOD, there's a lot, your bag tags and your airline bag tags all have this technology.

[00:12:01] David: This is not some magic wand in that regard. But the flip side of that is, is if you think you're going to walk, stand at a doorway and just do this for a second and go back to bed and get everything perfect, probably not going to happen. So I think there's some SOP things that people have to understand every technology.

[00:12:17] David: Example barcode. If I smear it, I can't scan it. If I rip it again, there's nothing to scan. So RFID has limitations, things like metal, metal As a friend and foe. So what do I mean? If I put an RFID tag on a metal bag or a foil bag, I'm not going to read it. There's no antenna anymore. Flip side. If I have a metal room, it will ricochet around and now I'm getting better reads.

[00:12:39] David: So I guess what I'm trying to say is people need to understand what they're dealing with. There is SOPs to everything in life. So you need to set those SOPs. We're going to stack things a certain way. We're going to do it a certain way. Things on peg hooks. I can scan those easily, open air, no problems. I bring that up because I think some people have this fanciful idea or this kind of vision of, I just want it to be so easy that within a second, my entire vault is done.

[00:13:05] David: Probably not that good, but I can take you from hours to minutes.

[00:13:08] Brian: Yep. Yeah, you definitely went into those things and that, kind of early, it comes back to working to working smarter, not harder, as well. But you had shared a story with me in some of the show prep about a B I tool that an MSO was using and trying to get the data in and out.

[00:13:22] Brian: of that, I'd love you to share that with the audience.

[00:13:25] David: Yeah. I mean, look for the business intelligence, it's only as good as what we feed into it. Right? So there's a lot of groups that are trying to pull stuff, whether it's from metric or for your point of sale data or, various things. So those BI tools are all wonderful, but like I always trying to say, junk in junk out, I view data as gasoline running into an engine.

[00:13:42] David: If it's. It's watered down. It's going to make the engine run like hell. And I think that's where the BI tools sometimes are dependent on where they get the info and they assume everything's correctly. Look, in today's world, don't assume anything because more than likely you're wrong. So I think what I'm trying to get at is, is that the challenge is always people always look at the backend, the CEO.

[00:14:03] David: My biggest thing and where I've put my career is how did the data finally get in there correctly? How did I feed the engine so that when someone says we should be doing this? They have good data to make that decision. So that's kind of where I think the BI is great. It's like anything else. It's only as good as what you're fed.

[00:14:20] Brian: Yep. Yeah, it's very supply chain at the data point of view. , you know, you guys provide some tools that are the input there. And the output is that, that those dashboards, those reports in the BI tool of what you're getting from that. So garbage in, garbage out. We've heard of that.

[00:14:32] Brian: And also good compliance is good compliance is good for business. So I definitely get those. So, both those points on understanding like how some of these RFID tags, how you're getting that data into the system, whether it's, through a barcode through an RFID tag or whatever else.

[00:14:49] Brian: And then also where that data is supposed to be going to at the end of the day and the decisions you're making off over that. It's extremely important. So, I love it. I love it. And actually kind of feeds into the next one. I kind of foreshadowed this one a little bit was operating smarter, not harder.

[00:15:04] Brian: Very, I remember as a kid watching DuckTales and Scrooge McDuck. He always said that phrase. I don't know why that stuck out in my head 40 something years later, but share us a story on, that.

[00:15:15] David: Look, I think the work smarter, not harder. I mean, the reality of it is, is harder is what I described having to touch every plant to do an audit because tomorrow morning, the state's coming in or your financial auditors need the data to close out the books, right?

[00:15:28] David: So you need to basically. Take a tool. That's going to allow that individual to, again, we have an example of customer in Missouri, 30, 000 square feet. They probably have 16, 000 plants or more. They're doing an audit in under 20 minutes, right? They can audit as quickly as they can move. So, I mean, those are the kinds of things where working smarter makes sense.

[00:15:48] David: We've even done a little kind of gift, not just interesting tool sets for our handheld. You can tap it on the screen and turn on the reader. Why is that important? We have customers with second tiers. They'll take a handheld, put it in a pipe, lift it up and walk. Well, what does it do? I don't have to go up the scaffolding, which I could trip and fall.

[00:16:05] David: I don't, I'm not up and down the stairs. I'm able to do that audit as quickly as I can do level one. I can do level two. So , you have to look at what you're doing and step back from it. Right. Industry, Walmart, people like that. They know every keystroke, every movement. They've mapped it to the point where they know what everything costs them because they've figured it out.

[00:16:25] David: This industry is still trying to figure it out. And unfortunately, I think the underlying feeling is if there's a question, get another body, get another body, get another body. And this industry can't afford it.

[00:16:35] Brian: No, we cannot afford that this industry and like, yeah, those industries are models for where we need to go.

[00:16:40] Brian: And , we are taping all the systems together, sometimes with duct tape and sometimes with really nice surgical thread, as we get better and more mature software and services to support this industry. That was a great rundown, Dave. Like, those are things that operators can do. Right away today to really think about how they're doing their systems.

[00:17:00] Brian: And I think the biggest takeaway I got from you today was think macro about your processes and then execute in a micro level to be able to make those a lot more efficient in whatever way that you can. That was my big takeaway from today. I don't know about the audiences, so I'd love to hear your comments, though.

[00:17:15] Brian: Please type those in. so just a quick review of the topics today, understanding and removing the source of errors. Understanding your true costs, what's driving those, removing the, I don't know answers, understanding that there is no magic wand and understanding where your data is come from, that you're making decisions on.

[00:17:35] Brian: And then also operate smarter and not harder. Like this industry is hard enough. We don't need to do it any harder. Think macro. Focus micro. Dave, I appreciate you being on the show today. Where can people reach out to you if they want to find out about more about what you do over at outlaw?

[00:17:50] David: Yeah, I mean, the best place is probably to go to our website, which is, outlaw technology dot net. Unfortunately, dot com was taken. So outlaw technology dot net. or they can just send sales at outlaw technology dot net and we'll get on what we try to do with our customers is outlaw Do , web type training.

[00:18:05] David: So we can show you this handheld on a, on a same kind of venue we're doing here. The nice thing is it makes it very simple. Hardware shows up, your team gets it. You're off and running. I think that's a beautiful thing that we've, and unfortunately COVID forced that, right. We couldn't go and visit people.

[00:18:19] David: So necessity enforced things. that's one of the areas, but yeah, I would think just reach out to us. And look, even if you want just to ask questions, we're happy to help and give you answers. It's not just a sales pitch. I really do want the industry to succeed. I want the industry to. Flourish because it's good for all of us.

[00:18:34] David: And that sounds cliche, but it's true. I worry about the market. I really do. Because I'm like, my gosh, you can't do it with 30 dispensary. You need to get it down to about 15.

[00:18:44] Brian: Yep. Yep. No. And that is one interesting thing about this industry is that \, we do want this industry and I'll keep using the pun.

[00:18:50] Brian: Thank you. to flourish on this and like, we do have a common good. , to really help bring good practices to this industry because it helps the operators that are out there, supporting this industry. Stay solvent, stay in business and be competitive and like deliver for the customers that are out there.

[00:19:04] Brian: this industry has enough challenges. We shouldn't be one of them.

[00:19:07] David: We shouldn't be a road. We shouldn't be a road.

[00:19:10] Brian: Not at all. No, let's, and that's why we do the show to educate and elevate. And you've been a great part of that today, Dave. And I appreciate you being on the show. Thank you so much your partnership and your information here today.

[00:19:20] Brian: I

[00:19:20] David: appreciate it.