Happy Wednesday to everyone tuning in to today’s episode of The Hirewell Update. I’m your host, Ryan Brown, vice president of our corporate functions team. And this is my co host. I’m Emily Goor, director on our go to market recruiting team. Before we kick off the show, you can find all of our content at talentinsights.hirewell.com. Or if you’d like to learn more about Hirewell our service offerings, check out our website, www.hirewell.com. Hey there, Em, how are you? I’m good. I’m doing well. How are you doing? I’m doing really well. And I think part of the reason why I’m doing so well in particular is because we have a really exciting show today.
We’re actually like bringing it back old school. It’s been a minute since we’ve had a guest and we have a guest today. We have a guest. We, yeah, we cut guests transparently from the show. I’m sure you’ve all noticed. We just wanted the spotlight for ourselves. No, thats not true. Things get hectic.
Scheduling gets hectic. And here we are, but we are really excited to have a guest, a guest on today. We sure are. Yeah. I mean, like we said, it’s been obviously a minute since we’ve had anyone on the show live, but there’s a lot of exciting things happening, happening at Hirewell. When are there not? I feel like we’re constantly in a state of evolution.
Evolving, really figuring out what like the best type of service and offerings are to our clients. So today we’re going to cover one of our new practice areas, which is super, super exciting. So for our talent insight segment today, we’re going to be talking all things cannabis solutions. We’re bringing in one of our colleagues, Scott Wells, who will be joining us to kind of walk us through everything.
Uh, what do you say, should we bring in Scott? I’m so excited. Let’s bring Scott. All right. Come on in Scott. Hey there. Hey, how are you? That intro was quite fun. Yeah, it was quite fun. We’re so excited that you’re here, Scott. Obviously, you’re new ish to Hirewell, but you’re super familiar with us as an organization.
Before we get, you know, started and kind of dive into all things cannabis, why don’t you just introduce yourself so our viewers get to know you a little bit better? Yeah, hey everybody, I’m Scott Wells. I’m the Director of the Cannabis Practice here at Hirewell. Um, after spending four and a half years as the, uh, executive vice president of talent acquisitions and human resources at Cresco Labs.
So excited to be jumping into something new here at Hirewell. And we’re so excited and jumping in and being our first guest back on The Hirewell Update in ages. So what an honor, um, maybe like, let’s remind me too. Are you in, you’re in Florida area, right? Yeah. I’m in very, very far Northeast Florida, up near the Georgia border on the Atlantic ocean.
Okay, good. I always just like people to know where we are. Cause I know Hirewellians are spread out all over the country. Um, I know you were telling me before that you’re, you’re a safe up there from all the crazy weather going on. We’re, we’re thinking about all those, all those Floridians affected.
Glad that y’all are doing okay. Um, but I, I digress. I know kind of kicking things off. We’re thrilled to have you as leader of our, our newer cannabis practice. I, and I think we get a mix of viewers, just so you know, assuming we get viewers, right, Ryan. Viewers today are either. super familiar with the cannabis industry, or I mean, let’s, let’s talk to everyone, right?
Or maybe not at all familiar with the cannabis industry. Can you sort of briefly describe for us just the current state of the cannabis industry? Yeah, that’s a great question.
I’ll go back a little bit when I started with Cresco in 2019, it was kind of that time where it was just, it was crazy, everybody was super excited.
Things were happening very quickly. Mergers and acquisitions were happening all over the place. And, and most of the major MSOs were just hiring at breakneck speed um, so, you know, coming forward to today, you know, things have cooled a little bit. Right. I mean, I like to say that the industry is kind of taking its collective breath, um, waiting for it, waiting for changes, right?
I mean, you’re waiting on rescheduling, you’re waiting on safe banking or you’re waiting on federal legalization and, and we’ve got an election coming up too, right? So. There’s a little bit of, I would say, uneasiness in the industry, but the hope and the optimism is still there and the industry is poised to grow, uh, pretty quickly.
So, you know, I think the current state, if I summed it up. And it just a couple of words is, um, you know, waiting, um, patience, um, with a, uh, a level of excitement that something’s going to come pretty quickly on one of those three areas. And I know we, like I said, we kind of assume if folks are watching this, they’re probably interested in the cannabis industry and are very familiar, but in case they’re not, can you give us like a 30 second or less
kind of explanation about what’s going on with rescheduling. Um, safe banking. A lot of us probably know about federal legalization, but maybe the first two. Yeah. So, um, rescheduling is, is basically where the, uh, DEA and the department of health and human services have um, approved cannabis moving from a schedule one to a schedule three drug Um, and essentially that just means that you know Schedule one is basically like cocaine fentanyl things like that and schedule three is more like tylenol with codeine for example Um, which just it it makes everything a little bit easier and it removes a federal tax penalty from the major MSOs Uh called the 280e penalty.
So that that’s that’s rescheduling and then and then safe banking is actually um, Um, it’s a bill that’s been passed by the Senate multiple times, um, and essentially it just allows banks to do business in, in a relative amount of security, not being concerned about the federal government, quote unquote, punishing them or whatever might happen for doing business with a federally illegal company.
Um, . That bill has not been passed by the House of Representatives. Let me be clear. It was passed by the Senate only multiple times, but the House has not passed the Safe Banking Act. I’m already learning so much. Thanks Scott so much for that background. You know, in particular, I feel like I’m super excited about this.
Scott, we had the pleasure of partnering together in your previous role at Cresco and I was kind of on the forefront with our relationship back in 2019 and all of the craziness that was coming with, you know, the, the fast growth and all of this stuff, so very excited that the cannabis practice is new for Hirewell and that we’re really wrapping our arms around the industry in a larger way.
Why did you think in particular it was a good time to start this practice? Well, I mean, some people might say that it’s not necessarily a good time to start the practice, but I think, you know, the leadership at HIrewell, you know, I think really has a great approach to this and, and that’s, you know, being market experts means you have to be ahead of the market.
And, you know, I think the objective there,
and I agreed with this obviously in joining the company was. Sure, there may not be a change in rescheduling or, you know, state banking may not pass or federal legalization may not happen tomorrow, obviously, um, but we are bullish on the fact that it’s going to happen within, in the not too distant future.
Apologies, one of my dogs is outside and she’s having a good time barking at me. Yeah, Lou usually says hi. As everybody knows, dogs are welcome here. so sorry to get my brain back on my train of thought there um, you know, .
We wanted to get ahead of the market, right? I think just simply said, right. I think it made sense for us to, you know, start to get the word out, you know, tell, tell folks in the cannabis industry.
What our expertise is, where we’ve been, what our history has been um, because before me, Hirewell did a significant amount of work within the cannabis industry. So I think really I’m coming on to just, you know, kind of double down on that and help promote the opportunity that companies would have in working with us.
Yeah, I know. I mean, Ryan and I say on the show every single week that we, you know, we have market experts in, in every single space. Um,
So I think I, I love what you said about like, in order to be a market expert, you kind of. You have to ride the roller coaster of the market. So even if things are, like you said, we’re taking that collective breath now, but you know, have that market expertise for when things will likely explode down the line.
I think that riding the roller coaster is a good way to put it. Oh, and it’s, and it’s a roller coaster indeed. Isn’t it? I, so we’ve talked now about what you’ve done um, a little bit at, at Cresco labs, maybe, can you give us a little bit more background of you know, what the company was like when you came in, what type of growth y’all were going through during your time there,
um, yeah, just kind of give, give the folks watching a little bit more backgrounds. So I’ve, I’ve been in HR and TA for 20, 28 years. Um, and you know what that makes me, right? It’s, it’s old, so don’t answer. Um, but I’ll, I’ll say it for myself, but I actually consider Cresco, you know, one of my, one of the accomplishments that I’m the most proud of, I think, in building the team that we built and building the company that we built.
Um, I started with Cresco when Cresco was about 250 employees and within about four months of me being there. We were hiring in excess of a hundred people a month and to go from such a small company to such a, you know, fast growing, I mean, just crazy rapid expansion company in such a short period of time.
It was insane. I mean, the experience is just, I, I, I could never even hope to duplicate the experience there. Um, Ultimately over my four and a half years, we grew the company. My team grew the company, uh, to over 4, 000 people. I think we’re at about 4, 500 at our largest. 250 to like over 4, 000. That’s incredible growth.
Yeah. And in the meantime, really. Creating the corporate structure and building the infrastructure and all those things that you have to do to handle that type of rapid growth, right? I mean, think about the corporate departments that have to grow. Um, so, you know, your accounting department has to be bigger, right?
Your marketing department, you know, all those things have to have to grow at the same time um, so it was, it was, it was a great mix, I think, of. You know, working on executive roles, filling senior managers, mid managers, you know, building the structure. And then also, you know, all the people in the field working at the manufacturing facilities and the retail stores.
Um, So, you know, it was a really fun time. Um, and it was a, it was a opportunity to do something that, you know, frankly, not a lot of people get to do. Yeah, totally incredible to see that type of growth, Scott, especially in that amount of time, it sounds like that was such a pivotal role in your career and something that really stuck with you.
I’m curious. I mean, you have to have learned quite a bit during your time at Cresco, especially taking like Emily mentioned from the 250 to over 4, 000 employees in four years. Like what stands out to you in terms of what you learned during that time? Yeah. Yeah. We didn’t do everything right. I mean, you know, I’ll hesitate to say this because it might sound a little bit self serving giving my role here at Hirewell.
but we, we, we, we could have probably, you know, worked on a solution that was a hybrid of, you know, an internal recruiting team as well as maybe a partner, like an RPO type of a solution. Um, you know, when you go out and hire a bunch of recruiters, there’s going to be ebbs and flows, even though we kind of took off like gangbusters, there were certainly times when we didn’t need as much horsepower.
And, you know, again, Self serving. Had we, had we worked with a partner, we probably could have eliminated, um, any need for, you know, the expansion and contraction of our own internal team by using somebody who can turn it up and turn it down as we needed their assistance. Um, so yeah, I mean, that, that would be, I think the biggest learn for me, um, would be if I were to do this again, or if I were to counsel companies on how to do this appropriately.
And I think with the, the most effectively as well, right. It would be to have a smaller, more nimble internal, internal team, and then. Probably work with an outside provider. Yeah, that makes a ton of sense, Scott. And I’m sure too, because it sounds like from what you shared, like the focus on executive LE level hiring, but also high volume hiring as well, like understanding kind of what.
Each of those subsets needs in terms of your experience, in terms of what the process looks like, like that, those two differentiators had to have made a big impact as well. For sure. Yeah. And I think like, honestly, translates really well at Hirewell, right. Just kind of thinking about our different offerings of like being able to go after those, you know, very strategic executive level searches while also, Focus, you know, we have different offerings that focus on those high volume types of searches like you’re describing.
So it sounds like you got exposure to all that and kind of sticking with that self serving theme a little bit. Can you describe a little bit about your initial experience working with Hirewell and why you ultimately decided to leave Cresco and why you decided, decided to join Hirewell? Yeah, well, to be really clear, I didn’t necessarily decide to leave Cresco, Cresco was caught up in some of the same issues that other cannabis were a year and a half ago or so where there was a need to, you know, shrink the organization down.
Um, and you know, certainly I did have a. a voice in that decision, but it was the best thing for me to do, you know, was for me to go and move on to my next opportunity. So, um, again, to be really clear on that, but I mean, joining Hirewell, for me, it was easy, right? I mean, I had worked with Hirewell, as a, they were a provider of mine, you were a provider of mine, Ryan, you and I have worked together many times, and that was over 10 years of experience.
Right. So I just had a ton of respect for the organization. I was never disappointed when I came to them with an opportunity. You know, they took everything that I, that I needed. They were very good at gathering the requirements and making sure that they understood exactly what my needs were. And frankly, Hirewell delivered every time I needed them.
Right. I mean, so if you’re going to go do something different, And go do something new. Why not go to work for a company that you trust? Right. And I trusted the leadership. I knew many of the founders and partners, et cetera. So again, long answer, but it was a really easy decision for me. Well, Scott, if you want to just keep gassing me up a little bit, I mean, I’ll take it.
If you have any other nice things to say, don’t stop just kidding. But I echo the same sentiment. Scott, it was obviously so great to work with you and partner together over that time and we’re absolutely thrilled that you’re now part of Hirewell and really excited to see all the things that come in the future.
Um,
Of today’s conversation if someone is in the cannabis industry and is watching and they’re hiring, what types of roles can we now as the Hirewell Cannabis Practice help with in terms of providing support? Yeah. I mean really, you know, cannabis companies are really no different than, you know, you’re kind of typical organization, right?
Um, From the sense of the corporate roles, right? So anything corporate infrastructure, right? If anybody’s in need of anything, corporate infrastructure, one of the things the reasons, another reason I joined higher wells because there so darn good at, you know, kind of those corporate roles, HR, legal, IT, marketing, finance and accounting.
Um, So anything like that, that’s, that’s in our, our tool belt, right. At all times. Right. And then, and then I think on the cannabis specific side too, right. Really anything that’s plant touching is something we can manage, cultivation. Um, you know, facility director roles, um, people on the manufacturing side, folks in the kitchen, folks in the lab, uh, retail leadership, you know, really any, anything related to, I mean, that’s what I did for four and a half years at Cresco.
Right. And so are now, and, and again, you know, Hirewell has, has had those opportunities before I even got here. So, um, you know, I think we’re kind of a one stop shop as opposed to, really just focusing on the cannabis side, we can, we can really cover the whole gamut. Absolutely. Yeah. I’m, I’m so excited to see just the growth, um, in terms of this practice in general, like you’ve mentioned, we’ve obviously played in this space for quite some time.
We have expertise in a lot of these areas, but to really, truly become experts in this space and have someone like yourself, Scott leading the charge on that is super exciting and I’m glad we’re at the forefront of a lot of this and excited to see where things go as we continue to progress, building this out.
Yeah. Yeah. And it’s, it’s, uh, so far, so good. It’s been a lot of fun connecting with folks in the cannabis industry. So thank you all who have taken my call, even though you probably knew what I was calling about. Right. Um, So that’s, that’s been a lot of fun and everybody’s been super nice. And you know, for those of you that I don’t know, um, those of you who I haven’t crossed paths with yet, you know, if you’d like to reach out, you can reach me on LinkedIn.
Um, Obviously I’ll be, I’ll be tagged in this presentation, um, or you can email me directly to at scott@hirewell.com. Pretty easy to remember one of the ones that got the first name. So yeah, definitely reach out to Scott, scott@hirewell.com connect on LinkedIn. I am going to go ahead and make the bold statement that you are welcome back here whenever, anytime, Scott, please. Love to do it.
And I learned so much. It’s so, it’s so great kind of, you know, like learning about this different area that, you know, like you said, higher was great because we have market experts in specific areas. So even getting to learn about this area that I’m not as familiar with, um, it’s, it’s so great. And we’re, we’re very lucky to have you.
Looking forward to a fun ride. Thanks for having me on the show. Thanks, Scott. Thanks, Scott. We’ll see you soon. Ah, so fun to have someone like Scott on the show. I mean, it’s super exciting, just all of the changes that Hirewell consistently goes through. We’re constantly in a state of evolution, of thinking about what’s next, and um, I think super fun in particular to have a previous client and a great client that we worked with for many, many years at that joining our organization.
I think those full circle moments are just so cool. I couldn’t remember. I was chatting with Scott earlier. Is he the first? Like, has that happened before? It has happened before. Jeff Smith was previously a client. I hope Jeff is not watching this, that he knows. No, he’s got the same shame. And honestly, there’s probably other people that over the years, we’ve just, um, so I guess it’s possible, but it is so cool.
Like you said, to have someone who had like such a good experience working with her while working with you, of course, particularly, um, that was like, wow, these people know what’s up. They know how to deliver. I’m, I’m going to go ahead and work for them. So we’re very lucky to have Scott and really excited to see what our our cannabis solutions practice does.
Absolutely. We sure are. Well. That was a great show. Um, I had such a good time having Scott on. I learned a ton too. I mean, those, um, those industries in particular that are still growing, that are still kind of, the foundation of things is being laid out and there’s a lot of change happening. It’s cool to stay, you know, top, top, um, of mind in terms of what’s going on with those.
So I appreciated the updates that Scott shared in terms of what’s the latest and greatest in cannabis and a lot more to come. A lot more to come and maybe like the return of guests, some guests on our show, we’ll see, y’all know we’re always trying to keep it fresh. So yeah, well, that is a wrap for this week’s episode of the Hirewell update.
Thank you all so much for joining us as a reminder, you can find all of our content at talentinsights.hirewell.com. Or if you’d like to learn more about Hirewell, and all of our service offerings, check out our website. It’s www.hirewell.com. We’ll be back probably starting now every other Wednesday.
So mark your calendars. We’ll start to advertise doing some cool new things. Um, We will see you all then.
