828: LIVE from ⁠InsightsEDU⁠ 2024 - with Daniel Kalef, Chief Growth Officer, Green Flower

Joe Sallustio: Welcome back, everybody. It's your time to add up on the EdUp Experience podcast where we make education your business. I think this is my 10th or 11th podcast of the day. So I am allowed to mess up here and there. I've done this intro a lot here at Insights EDU. Why have I done so many podcasts? Because there are so many darn interesting and amazing people to interview. I've got a gentleman in front of me who came by and said, "You want to have a really interesting conversation, you need to interview me." And then he told me what he did. And I said, "Yes, this is going to be a very interesting conversation." 

I'm going to bring him in right now because we've got a lot to talk about. Ladies and gentlemen, he's Daniel Kalef, Chief Growth Officer at Green Flower. Daniel, welcome to the podcast. I'm so sorry I got your last name wrong. You told me seven times how to say it. I should have gone for an eighth - it's my fault.

Daniel Kalef: No, it's not your fault.

Joe Sallustio: You're here from Green Flower. You came by, you said, "Joe, let's have a really interesting organic, if you will, conversation." What is Green Flower?

Daniel Kalef: So Green Flower is kind of the noted cannabis education company in the country. Surprise. Not too many people have heard of it or even think that it's a thing. We've actually been in business for 10 years now. But the first, I'd say, five or six years of that was just trying to get rid of the myths in the industry and help people. So we had curriculum. You could go online, take a class about CBD or things like that. And then we started helping cannabis companies train their employees to really understand it better. 

About four years ago, four and a half years ago, I came on with the idea that we could expand our reach if we started to offer programs in partnership with universities across the country. So we did that about, you know, in late 2019, we started kind of going out and talking to folks and our first foray was going to a couple conferences where people would come up to our booth and take selfies and chuckle and walk away. And then finally, in January 2020, we signed our first university partner, Florida Atlantic University. Yeah, we now work with 27 universities and 25 community colleges across the country.

Joe Sallustio: Okay. So what is it that you do exactly for these universities?

Daniel Kalef: Yeah. So we've created programs that leaders in the industry said are needed to help people really be successful. So we have a business program. It is from seed to sale. It's like a mini MBA in cannabis. So everything from the business side of agriculture to distribution, to retail operations, marketing, banking, accounting, manufacturing, supply chain. It's a really amazing program for people who want to understand any part of the business. And it's one of the most highly regulated industries in the country. And not a lot of people truly understand. 

You get a lot of people on the retail side who worked at the Gap and liked to smoke and think that they'd be great working in a dispensary and they're not helping anyone. And the turnover is pretty significant in the industry because of the lack of training. People just think it's going to be cool when it's, you know, they don't know what they're getting into. And so our business program is really, really helpful for that. 

We have an agriculture and horticulture program. So it teaches commercial growing, including hemp, as industrial hemp is legal in every state. And then we have a medicine and healthcare program, which was designed for healthcare professionals. So we get a lot of doctors and nurses and therapists in that program. Doctors and nurses get about one hour on the endocannabinoid system in school. And so if you're a doctor or a nurse in a state that just went legal, you might have your patients come in saying, "You know, I don't need to take my blood pressure medicine anymore because I've got these gummies and it's just really solving my problems." And if you don't know what you're talking about, you don't have any response.

Joe Sallustio: Yeah. And it's kind of scary, right?

Daniel Kalef: So it's really important. And that program is fantastic. And then we have a compliance and risk management program. It's again, it's so heavily regulated. You need to understand that if you're running a business at all, or if you're a lawyer or an accountant and you're consulting. You need to understand risk management really significantly. 

And then we just started two weeks ago offering our fifth program, which is our product design and development program. So amazing. When you walk into a dispensary these days, there are so many different products. It's not just buying a jar of bud and going and smoking it. There are oils and tinctures and candy bars and gummies and topicals. And so the process of extracting THC or CBD or CBG from the plant and infusing it into products and not screwing it up and not making it so your candy bar is half really strong and half not or whatever it may be is very technical. And there's a huge demand for it. So we just started offering that program as well.

Joe Sallustio: This is insane. All right. So why is this so cool? What you're saying is that the cannabis industry is so large and sophisticated now after all these states have gone legal and states have been involved and so on, that it's created its own ecosystem of jobs. And in order for these businesses to run effectively, which now it's not, you know, when you think about the cannabis industry, many people think, wow, some kid in his backyard and he's growing 14 plants out in the garden. We're talking about warehouses, scientists, business owners running, selling, buying inventory, tracking metrics, sales, taxes. I mean, you think about the taxes and the laws, the lawyers, the attorneys who probably specialize in cannabis law. It's probably a specialization. This is an ecosystem of jobs now without the sophistication needed to perform all these jobs. So you need a company like Green Flower to come in and tell you what needs to happen. Basically, is that right?

Daniel Kalef: Yeah, 100%. And it's not only its own ecosystem as an industry, every state has its own ecosystem. Because if you think about it, because it's not federally legal, you can't have a dispensary in Michigan and buy your product from Illinois. It goes against the interstate commerce clause of the federal government. So every state has to, everything you buy in your state has to be grown there, extracted there, produced there and sold there.

Joe Sallustio: So what do you do? You go to a university from Green Flower and you say, we need people who know how to do this, whatever this is. Do you design the curriculum?

Daniel Kalef: Yeah, we've already designed the curriculum. We actually have the instructors too. So because most universities who think this makes sense, right? It makes sense because it's the fastest growing job market in the country. If you think about what's happening in higher ed now, micro-credentials are a really big deal.

Joe Sallustio: So big deal.

Daniel Kalef: So we've created, you know, the six-month fully online, but instructor-led micro-credentials. Most of all of our schools, except for two, offer them as non-credit. But there's just such little subject matter expertise on college campuses. We include the instructors, all of the curriculum, we also then, marketing cannabis is really difficult. You were talking to your Google friends, you still can't buy a Google Ad word with the word cannabis in it.

Joe Sallustio: Really?

Daniel Kalef: Yeah. So it's hard. And so we do the marketing and recruiting of the students for the schools as well.

Joe Sallustio: So you do like a rev share model, basically, you're bringing in the packaging, you're bringing in the curriculum, the instructors, the marketing, and then you're taking a percentage out the back end. This is all business. This is higher ed as business. For anybody that listens to this that goes, I wish they didn't bring that up. Everybody needs to make money to provide a service that they have. The question is, can you provide the training that the cannabis industry needs if you're hiring an institution. If the answer is no, and you want to do that, how do you do it? Where did you create the curriculum from? Did you go hire a bunch of experts that put this together?

Daniel Kalef: Yeah. So if you think about what I said about the history of our company, the first five years was creating a cadre of about 700 of the top experts in the world to come together and create this curriculum. And it's each course has some incredible video lecture in it from these top experts that you wouldn't have access to otherwise. Then there's readings and you're interacting with your other students and there's instructors that are helping you along the way. Each program is made of three eight-week courses. So it's a six-month program. And it's really changing people's lives. People are getting jobs or starting businesses. They're doctors and they're helping people. I mean, you name it. It's just we've had about six thousand students go through it in the last three and a half years.

Joe Sallustio: That's amazing. Say again, you said all the schools but two are non-credit or all the two schools but two offer non-credit?

Daniel Kalef: The university partners want to be non-credit because they don't want to, they're worried about running afoul of the federal government and Title IV and all that. But University of California Riverside offers it in their extension school for credit and then last year Syracuse University started offering... they're not offering it for credit when you take it. But if you go on to get a degree, they'll give you full credit for the program.

Joe Sallustio: They'll give you a prior learning assessment credit, right? So because you could take that, you could take credit from learning about the business of cannabis and say that is equal to a course or two in this business program, business management, because you're learning about money management, you're learning about something that... right. That seems to me like that the credit transfer would be more common or credit... I guess not.

Daniel Kalef: You know, everybody's still just a little nervous of the Department of Education, although there are universities that offer degree programs now on cannabis, and there's not been any problem. But I understand. You were talking about how schools need to make money. Most of our partners have a division of continuing professional education, and they're self-funded. So they don't get any money from the school. They only operate based on what they bring in in revenue from their programs. And so it's a really big help to them to be able to get a lot of students in a program that people are getting jobs from.

Joe Sallustio: So you approach a school and you say, hey, look, we could do this. You can enter. You can create some market share in the cannabis industry for students. The university says, cannabis. But faculty or my traditional faculty are not going to like this or my traditional administrators are not going to like this. Or yes, we've been waiting for something innovative like this. That's a spectrum. Where is the real reality? Ninety-five percent are, gosh, what are you talking about? That's not a good idea. My provost is going to kill me if I bring it up or things like that.

Daniel Kalef: And so it takes a while to help them understand this is not, you know, this is not about telling people how to grow in their backyard and sell it to their neighbors. This is a real business. This is a multi-billion dollar business, the fastest growing job market in the country for the last four years running. And in a state where it's legal and we're... and all of our partners with one exception are only in states where it's either medically or recreationally legal. The demand is enormous. 

So schools start if a school looks to their mission and starts to figure out that our goal was to train the future leaders of all kinds of industries. I can promise you every university figured out or is trying to figure out how to have an AI program.

Joe Sallustio: Yeah, for sure. Right. And there's not even necessarily jobs, quote unquote, in AI.

Daniel Kalef: There are jobs in cannabis every single day. And so it's making a difference and universities come around. It takes a little while. I've had to have some chats in front of, you know, boards of trustees and lots of presidents and provosts. But I think once they figure out that this is about education and not advocacy, you know, we're not saying that this is right for everybody, that everybody should go out and be consuming cannabis. We're saying that this is a viable growing industry and people need to be trained in order to run it.

Joe Sallustio: Which, you know, this is the type of issue that could become political very quickly, which we tend to stay away from. What I will say is in the state of Missouri, where I live, cannabis became legal in November of this past year, I think it was medically legal and then went recreationally legal maybe a year ago. I don't know. It's about a year ago.

Daniel Kalef: Yeah.

Joe Sallustio: And if you drive by... your thoughts for the average person that's freaked out by cannabis and think the people are going in and out of these shops are not the tie-dyed, you know, long-haired hippies of the past. You're talking about professionals. The elderly are going in there for topicals. The uses for cannabis are far-reaching. The people who are using cannabis products are far-reaching. The acceptance of cannabis is not as far-reaching.

Daniel Kalef: So yeah, so yeah, you're exactly right. 50% of the people that walk into a recreational dispensary are over the age of 50 and looking to solve for a problem, not get high. Right. They're not sleeping. They have chronic pain. They're in cancer treatment. They're not eating. You name it. And so it's not... yeah, it's not about people just going in and seeing how quickly they can get high. The people are really solving for problems. And it is... it's you know, probably the real enthusiasts who are just, you know, wearing their tie-dye are probably growing it in their backyard anyway. They're not going into the dispensary. Yeah. So that's not changed. But it's, yeah, it's a real business and people are benefiting from it. 

My mother is 85 years old and a year and a half ago, she told me she only slept four hours a night and I was like, that's not good when you're 83.

Joe Sallustio: So when you're eight, yeah.

Daniel Kalef: She lives in Florida. So she got a medical card and I told her, get a candy bar, have one square of a candy bar an hour before you want to fall asleep and now she sleeps eight hours a night and that's game-changing for the elderly.

Joe Sallustio: Yeah.

Daniel Kalef: And so it's huge. That's why, you know, Florida is the third largest cannabis market after California and Colorado and it's only medical. Because it's just such a need. So yeah, you're right. It's not just the stoners.

Joe Sallustio: So what's the, what are you doing here at this conference? What are the goals? What are you hoping for?

Daniel Kalef: Well, because we're responsible for the marketing of the programs for our schools, you know, we put a lot of investment into marketing and understanding trends and things like that. And this is a great, great conference for that. I'm looking forward to trying to maybe convince Google to start letting us buy Google AdWords with the word cannabis, because as of now, you can't do that just like you can't put money from a cannabis company into a federally insured bank. I mean, there's just so many crazy rules around cannabis. It's still federally illegal.

Joe Sallustio: So federally illegal. So we're just... we're just trying to learn everything we can so we know that we can reach as many people as possible, which it makes it... sorry, but I get going on these thoughts. It's like if it's federally illegal, and I can't put it in a federal bank, then I need to put it in a different kind of bank. I need to manage my money differently, track it differently. How am I going to do that?

Daniel Kalef: I'm just gonna be somebody that just imagines this and all of a sudden figures it out or I need formal training to understand the flow of dollars, where things are going in and out. And security. Security I know is a big-time issue, right? Because I know it's mostly cash business or was it a 100% cash business for the most part.

Joe Sallustio: There are some dispensaries that have been able to do kind of a debit card transaction. But in general, it's 100% cash. And that's why when you walk into most dispensaries, there's an armed guard at the door. And it's so it's not safe for the people that are working there. It's not a good business model to put money in a mattress. So we talk about alternatives for that and really help people figure that out. And it's making a difference.

Joe Sallustio: So you're here. You're going to talk to Google primarily. Elvin's got sway with Google. I got fingers and toes crossed. I have to convince them to do something different. Are you looking to get some university partners while you're here? The enrollment and marketing people that are going to go, "I need more students." Right.

Daniel Kalef: I've spoken to a number so far. And we have a couple of our existing partners that are here as well. So it's... I always like to be able to catch up with them and see how things are going from their perspective. So this is a great opportunity to see lots of different people.

Joe Sallustio: Very good. What else do you want to say about Green Flower?

Daniel Kalef: You know, if anyone's interested in learning more about the programs, our website kind of lists all of the programs and all the schools you can choose from. So greenfloweredu.com is a great place to go to learn about the programs and really get a feel for all the things we offer and see what's coming next. And then also, you know, choose a school that might be good for you. Or if you're at a school and you want to learn more about it, you can reach right back out to us. We're not in every state that's legal right now. You know, we're, but our goal is to be. And so, you know, it's just kind of a slow roll, if you will, to get schools up for the challenge.

Joe Sallustio: You want to. Who's going to be at the front end of this? That's the question. What institutions are going to want to be at the front rather than trying to catch up from behind? That's always the question we have to answer in higher ed. Daniel has been here to help, hopefully help you want to be more on the front end of things. Ladies and gentlemen, he's my guest. No, he's your guest. Let's see if I get his last name right. He's Daniel Kalef.

Daniel Kalef: Well done.

Joe Sallustio: Kalef, Chief Growth Officer at Green Flower. Daniel, you have a good time on the podcast today talking about this with me?

Daniel Kalef: This has been great. I'm a fan of your all's and so it's really cool to meet you and to be on and we really appreciate the interest because not enough people understand the significance of it and it's great to get the word out.

Joe Sallustio: Thank you, my friend. Ladies and gentlemen, you've just EdUp'd.