Greenhouse Wellness co-founder and Medical Director Dr. Leslie Apgar wanted to create “an atmosphere of learning and growth and support” when she and Gina Dubbé started the Baltimore-area dispensary less than three years ago. Their vision is reflected in the dispensary’s design, which features natural lighting, white leather furniture, fresh flowers and crystal chandeliers—a warmth they feel distinguishes them from other medical or retail settings. It’s a work environment that the company has described as feeling “like family.”

The dispensary’s homey vibe may be one of the reasons the company continues to receive recognition as a great workplace. Greenhouse Wellness has twice been named one of Baltimore Business Journal’s Best Places to Work. Now it adds top billing in Cannabis Dispensary’s 2020 “Best Cannabis Companies to Work For” ranking. From the company’s furnishings to its culture, Greenhouse Wellness’ Dubbé and Apgar are “doing dispensary” their way.

Knowledge Workers

For Apgar and Dubbé, creating an exemplary workplace was a priority from the start. “I’m too old to work with people who aren’t amazing,” Apgar jokes. “To cultivate a culture of kindness and collaboration and to create win-win relationships is always top of mind for me.”

Education for patients and employees was a key component of the culture the pair conceived. “I wanted [our employees] to be ambassadors for the medical cannabis journey,” Apgar says.

Hiring employees in tune with those goals has been fundamental to the dispensary’s success. Given Maryland’s status as a medical-only cannabis state, Dubbé and Apgar felt a commitment to health and fitness was an important employee prerequisite. Most of the dispensary’s employees have advanced degrees in one of those areas.

But academic achievements aren’t the qualification that really makes Greenhouse Wellness tick. “We also felt that kindness was an essential part of who we hired,” Dubbé says. “As a point of fact, we hire people based on those criteria, and then if we have to teach them cannabis, we do. But we really want them to be kind to people that come in.”

Apgar agrees that personal qualities outshine impressive backgrounds and cannabis knowledge. “We do feel that you should hire the personality and train the skill,” she says. “We don’t expect to hire people that have our level of understanding or sophistication about the science behind why [cannabis] is working, but we really want to hire the personality.”

In the quest for kindness, Greenhouse Wellness looks for applicants who go the extra mile. And for anyone who sees kindness as intangible, Dubbé can list the ways it manifests at the dispensary every day. She shares the example of some retired nurses on the dispensary staff.

“I’ve watched them walk people to their car, give people a hug, and they just seem to know and understand the temperature of the person—not in degrees, but in where their soul is that day,” she says. At Greenhouse Wellness, healing encompasses both symptomatic issues and the person within.

Career and Personal Growth

As entrepreneurs with numerous academic and professional achievements between them, Dubbé and Apgar actively seek to share their experience and expertise with the dispensary staff. Employees are trained and nurtured with personal and professional development in mind.

“We want people who want to be their own operators,” Dubbé says. “We’ll help train them to be at our place, but we think that we’re growing future entrepreneurs.” To cultivate entrepreneurial seeds and further Greenhouse Wellness’ educational goals, employee learning programs go way beyond cannabis benefits and product formats.

As one example, the company brought in its accounting firm to teach its employees how to start a company. The class covered topics such as how to incorporate, how to create an LLC, what to look for in a business plan and how to formulate a cash strategy, among other things.

While some dispensary owners might see the class’s content as irrelevant to dispensary staffers or, even worse, as equipping future competition, the pair doesn’t see it that way. “We figure the smarter they are and the more they want to succeed, the better it is for us and our patients,” Dubbé says.

Greenhouse Wellness employees also benefit from mentorship programs, leadership training, self-development activities, job shadowing and cross training—all intended to further the dispensary’s goals for employee education and growth.

Feeling ‘Like Family’

Family-centric thinking is an important piece of what makes the company a great place to work. Opportunities for flexible working hours and minimal overtime add to the family-owned business’s appeal. Full-time employees qualify for medical benefits after 30 days on the job. Staff dinners, retreats and outings serve to reinforce the family-like workplace atmosphere.

While business-focused development plays an important role, Greenhouse Wellness’ commitment to personal development and fulfillment extends beyond its walls. One of the most popular and valued benefits among the dispensary’s employees is the company’s policy of unlimited, unpaid personal time off.

“As for vacation and time off, we accommodate most anything and any duration,” Dubbé explains. “We don’t pay for the vacation, but we encourage our employees to experience the world the way that they want to.” The company actively encourages staff to take advantage of this benefit.

“They can go to India, they can go to Russia or wherever they want to go, and if they need two or three or four weeks, we’re going to do whatever we have to do to accommodate that,” Dubbé says.

The co-founders believe that granting employees the flexibility to experience life in ways that many employers don’t allow—whether that’s a dream vacation or a month-long wedding break—delivers a payoff in the end. “What happens is the employee that comes back is appreciative and will go the extra mile for the business,” Dubbé says.

The same accommodating philosophy applies to sick time. “If one of the staff is sick, we’re going to do whatever we have to do to accommodate [that person’s] needs,” Dubbé explains. Different employees have different needs; some have chronic illness, while others care for sick loved ones. “How could we say no?” she asks.

Employee Empowerment

Employees must feel respected in the workplace for a strong, supportive staff to take shape, Apgar says. She believes that Greenhouse Wellness pays employees a little more than its competitors, but compensation is only one part of the formula for workplace respect.

A greater factor in employee satisfaction is the collaborative atmosphere where patients and employees benefit from everyone’s expertise. With a staff that includes retired nurses, fitness enthusiasts and chemistry majors, Dubbé and Apgar encourage collaboration among team members whenever a patient visits the dispensary.

“When a patient comes in, it isn’t like, ‘Oh, you’re meeting with her.’ If somebody else at the [counter] has something to offer, we like them to chime in,” Dubbé says. “It’s a group project, and every patient is important to all of us. So, we just operate a little differently.”

“We want people who want to be their own operators. We’ll help train them to be at our place, but we think that we’re growing future entrepreneurs.” Gina Dubbé, co-founder, managing director

Sharing the dispensary’s perspective with the greater community is also an integral part of the company culture. The company offers paid time for employees to participate in community outreach, company-sponsored community service initiatives and volunteer opportunities.

“We invest in the community. We’ll teach. We’ll go into hospitals, hospice and doctor offices. We also have classes for the community,” Dubbé says. In addition, the company plans to launch a recycling program later this year. “We strongly believe in our community and that our job is to support it,” she shares.

Apgar reiterates that the dispensary’s educational focus is its most important asset. “With any kind of community outreach and with any kind of effort outside of our dispensary, we’re only increasing the number of those that are exposed and trained to what medical cannabis is and does,” she says. “That’s why our focus is there; it’s the right thing to do. When you cultivate a culture of kindness, it returns to you. So, we’re really just trying to model the way in everything that we do.”

Leading by Example

Open communication is another key to overall workplace satisfaction and employee engagement. Dubbé and Apgar hold quarterly employee meetings, conduct satisfaction surveys twice a year and encourage an environment of open, ongoing feedback from their employees. Apgar says she and Dubbé also try to “lead by example,” which helps to build employee buy-in.

“What I’m trying to say is that if you are sincere and true to your mission statement and to your goals about why you started the company and what you’re trying to get out of the company, [then] you’re going to create a workspace that perpetuates that—and it spreads like wildfire,” Apgar says.

With a company culture designed to cultivate an intangible quality like kindness, it’s only fitting that employees cite an equally intangible benefit when explaining what gives their jobs meaning and makes Greenhouse Wellness the cannabis dispensary industry’s best place to work.

“They say it is the ability to touch people’s lives so intimately and so impactfully, and that the gratitude that it brings them is unlike anything that they’ve ever experienced,” Apgar says. “That’s the unifying theme: Our employees’ ability to really get down into the dirt with our patients and really figure out what’s going on and really create impactful change. That’s the thing that keeps them warm at night.”

Virtually every state cannabis program has an element of local control, which can be a blessing and a curse. Strong local approval of the cannabis industry can make doing business easy, from licensing to operating, and a favorable local government can influence state-level regulators. An adverse local government, meanwhile, can present continuous roadblocks, preventing cannabis businesses from operating efficiently—or, as in the case of moratoriums, preventing them from operating at all.

We have worked with clients and local governments to either rescind cannabis moratoriums or to prevent those moratoriums from being enacted. The process can be long and sometimes arduous, but we have had success educating local officials and residents about the reality of the cannabis industry. Most opposition, we find, comes from a lack of understanding and subscribing to outdated stigmas.

Here is a road map should your business encounter local cannabis opposition, along with eight tips for addressing the pushback.

If legislation enacting (or rescinding) a moratorium is referred to a committee, you need to be at the committee meetings.

Know the Process

Every locality has a nuanced procedure for handling cannabis moratoriums. Some cities may enact a temporary ban while they craft final local regulations. Some may enact a permanent ban on an emergency basis (more likely in a state with a new cannabis law). In either event, understanding how to navigate the local process is key to a favorable outcome.

Local ordinances typically begin by a city councilperson introducing draft legislation to the full council. That draft legislation is referred for consideration to one of the various council committees, which meet separately from the full council. Committees are smaller than the full council and generally are comprised of only a handful of council members, with one member chairing the committee.

After considering a draft ordinance, the committee recommends that the full council either pass or defeat the ordinance. After draft legislation is introduced, it can take four to six months before that measure comes to a final vote.

If legislation is passed, the ordinance goes to the mayor, who can generally do one of two things: The mayor can sign the legislation (in which case it becomes law), or the mayor can veto the legislation (in which case it does not). If the mayor does nothing, local and state law likely determine whether that ordinance goes into effect.

Too often, companies affected by local ordinances attend full council meetings, but fail to attend meetings of the relevant committees considering those ordinances. TIP 1: If legislation enacting (or rescinding) a moratorium is referred to a committee, you need to be at the committee meetings. It can be difficult to get full council to override an adverse report from a committee because other council members will want to defer to their colleagues on a committee.

Educate

TIP 2: When attending council and committee meetings, be prepared to educate members on why cannabis can be beneficial for their community. Members who oppose cannabis will be concerned about increased crime, increased youth use and decreased property values. These are issues that we want our local officials to be concerned about. But there is good news. The data is in your favor on each of these topics.

Crime Concerns:

• A Cato Institute analysis of cannabis policy shifts in Colorado, published in 2014, found no significant change in murder, aggravated assault, robbery and burglary in Denver after commercialization in 2009, legalization adoption in 2012 or full implementation of legalization in 2014.
• When border states enacted medical cannabis programs, violent crime fell by 13 percent on average, according to the U.S. study “Is Legal Pot Crippling Mexican Drug Trafficking Organisations? The Effect of Medical Marijuana Laws on U.S. Crime,” whose findings were published in The Guardian in January 2018.
• There is also evidence to suggest that cannabis businesses do not attract more crime than other businesses, according to the report “Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Not Linked to Neighborhood Crime,” whose findings were published in U.S. News & World Report in June 2012.

Youth-Use Concerns

• Medical marijuana programs typically do not lead to an increase in teen usage, Forbes contributor Debra Borchardt shared from a Columbia University study published in The Lancet Psychiatry in June 2015.

Public Health Concerns

• In states with medical cannabis programs, suicide rates for males aged 20 to 29 decreased 10.9 percent, and decreased 9.4 percent for ages 30 to 39, according to a study co-authored by professors from Montana State University, San Diego State University and the University of Colorado at Denver, reported by PBS NewsHour in February 2014.
• And, annual deaths from prescription drug overdoses are 25-percent lower in states with medical marijuana programs, according to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
• The reason for that prescription drug overdose decrease may be that prescriptions decreased for painkillers and other drugs for which marijuana may be an alternative. On average, that resulted in 1,826 fewer doses of painkillers per year in legal states, according to the research article “Medical Marijuana Laws Reduce Prescription Medication Use In Medicare Part D,” published by Health Affairs in July 2016.

Property Value Concerns

• Cannabis legalization can lead to increased commercial and residential real estate values. On the commercial side, cannabis cultivators generally prefer to purchase vacant warehouses in industrial areas, while cannabis dispensaries look to purchase (or lease) vacant storefronts in business districts, according to the November 2017 article “The Budding Impact of Marijuana on Real Estate” published by Poplogix.
• The same article states that localities with cannabis businesses also tend to see an increase in residential sales as workers move to the area seeking employment. Data also suggests that states with legal cannabis see an increase in home prices, well above the national median.
• Another finding from the Poplogix article: The main caveat is that residential areas near large cultivation facilities may see a dip in home values due to unavoidable odor from cultivation operations. For this reason, most localities limit cultivation and manufacturing to industrial areas.

Be a resource for local officials when it comes to your state’s cannabis program. Ensure they know you are available to answer any question, whether about your business or the industry.

Persuade

Armed with this information, what is the most effective way to persuade your local government to allow your cannabis company to operate? We find that a multi-pronged approach works best. TIP 3: Talk to the councilperson for the area in which you want to operate. They are the most important person you need to persuade. Get a feel for whether they have preconceived notions about cannabis and have an honest discussion about their concerns. Find out whether any residents have contacted them about cannabis and what their response was.

TIP 4: Talk with local officials on council and in the mayor’s office and loop in the local police chief. Build a rapport with everyone you can so that they feel as if they can trust you. Explain that you want to be a partner in the community and keep the lines of communication open.

TIP 5: Campaign for your company. We have gone door-to-door with clients to talk with residents about what life would be like with a dispensary next door. Many times, apprehension comes from not knowing who wants to do business in the community. Residents are rightfully afraid that some out-of-town company wants to move in and maximize profits sans concern for the community. TIP 6: Explain the data above, as well as the security measures your company will implement to keep the community safe. If you plan to donate to or support local community programs, let them know.

Talk to the councilperson for the area in which you want to operate. They are the most important person you need to persuade.

Be a resource for local officials when it comes to your state’s cannabis program. Ensure they know you are available to answer any question, whether about your business or the industry. TIP 7: Be candid about the unknowns—this is still a relatively new industry, after all.

TIP 8: Don’t be afraid to help local officials craft permanent legislation that would authorize your company to operate. It doesn’t have to be more onerous than state-mandated requirements, but maintaining some semblance of local control may make it more likely that a moratorium will be rescinded or avoided altogether.

The process to address local cannabis moratoriums can be lengthy. It can feel like pushing a boulder up a steep hill. But we have found that by developing relationships at the local level, our clients emerge not only with a more favorable local framework, but with a true operating partner in the local government.

Thomas Haren is an associate at Frantz Ward LLP. He assists clients with license acquisition, regulatory compliance and more. Patrick Haggerty is chair of the Frantz Ward Litigation Practice Group. In 2015, he created the firm’s Cannabis Law and Policy Group. Mark Stockman is an partner at Frantz Ward LLP. His counsels clients through all phases of real estate development and construction.

Brand voice is the magic thread that pulls together a company’s content, ads, promotions, packaging and more into a singular experience with which customers can relate and engage. A brand’s tone creates recognition and a place from which to communicate. It’s what sets a solid brand apart from the competition. Brands with a loyal following and wide customer base often have a well-developed voice driving that engagement.

Finding one’s voice in the social media era can be a challenge. It requires a brand to engage more deeply with its customers than was expected or possible before Facebook. Marketing communication has historically been a one-way experience: A brand sends a message, the audience receives it, and it ends there. Thanks to technology and countless communication platforms, brands are now expected to not only talk, but to listen to feedback, comment on issues, create content and engage as a real person would.

The demand for a human experience is why a brand voice is so critical to marketing success. Without a position or perspective that is predetermined and consistent, a brand has no place from which to communicate meaningfully with the audience. Without a consistent position, marketing appears random and reveals a company that isn’t ready for primetime.

These four tips will help you start to build a brand voice that is relatable, meaningful and effective.

1. Define and Communicate Your Values

In working with my clients in the early days of social media (2005 to 2007), I realized we needed to find a way to make their brands relatable and their communication consistent to meet the high demand for engagement on social platforms. That forced much experimentation with content and tone. It was not easy to find consistent ways to solicit reactions. Funny quips and “Questions of the Day” were effective for only a few months. When the novelty wore off, it was back to the drawing board.

I was perplexed by how to create a consistent way to communicate with an audience that could be replicated over the course of years, not just weeks or months. I decided to examine the elements of lasting relationships: What made people like and trust one another?

I researched what psychologists, marketers and sociologists said was the foundation of successful relationships, both intimate and professional. I found they are all, to some degree, based on people sharing similar values. We see it in politics, religion and sports: We are drawn to those who share our interests, beliefs, likes and dislikes. It creates a trust and familiarity because there is agreement in our worldviews.

This same approach works wonders with customers. Brands have values, and those values—from diversity in hiring to sustainable growing practices—can be powerful tools in developing loyal relationships with customers. Whatever your values, they should be front-and-center in your brand voice. People are willing to invest in a company to which they feel connected.

Despite its challenges, social media is the most effective way to communicate your values. For instance, a medical dispensary could post a blog sharing the company’s story, why it’s a medical dispensary and what its main goals are for serving the community. This blog post can be re-purposed into quote cards and shared on Instagram and Twitter. Retweeting or sharing articles that align with these goals or starting conversations in medical patient communities about how to better help them are all great ways to talk values with your audience.

It is important that all employees are trained on the company’s values. Empower them to live up to those values and share them with customers. At every point of contact with customers, a brand should find ways to share who it is and what it intends to accomplish.

2. Be Authentic

When it comes to finding your brand voice, the most common advice is “be authentic.” It’s vague advice that can be difficult to decipher: How does a brand actually be authentic when it isn’t a real person? Being authentic means that you are being true to the brand’s values and goals in how you promote and advertise your products and services. I often see brands make the mistake of trying to conform who they are to who they think their audience wants them to be.

For example, if you’re trying to promote a calming product, don’t run an advertising campaign showing people performing high-energy activities. Instead, cater to experiences, environments and color schemes that are more soothing and relaxing. A confusing message in your ads can create confusion about the product and what can be expected of the brand. When brand authenticity is overlooked or poorly developed, it creates an inconsistent, and thereby confusing, voice that does not best represent the brand. This, in turn, creates distrust and disinterest from the audience.

3. Be Human(ish)

We all know that a brand is a concept and not an actual human; therefore, to create a human feeling of engagement from a set of concepts is challenging.

Basing a brand voice on company values and focusing on authenticity is a good start toward developing a human-like feeling. Values provide context for perspectives the brand shares and a guideline on how and what the brand communicates.

In feeling human, a brand must find the right ways to express empathy, compassion, excitement and joy. Not all situations will be the right fit for a brand’s voice. For instance, a product that is made for athletes might choose to show compassion for big-headline sports injuries, lost games and the like. However, that same brand showing empathy for a dress store going out of business is off base and makes the brand feel inauthentic, robotic and unable to determine how to appropriately engage in the world around it.

Using the correct emotional expression, from the perspective of a brand’s authentic values, is a winning combination in a brand voice. It ensures that all communication coming from the brand is aligned with its central messaging and directed to the appropriate target audience.

To discover your brand’s true values, ask yourself questions such as: ‘Why did we start this company?’ and ‘how do we want our customers to talk about our company?’

4. Question Yourself

It requires real digging to discover a brand’s true values. Follow this list of questions to get started:

Why did we start this company? The motivation or passion that drove you to start your company can be a major factor in your value set. Are you trying to disrupt, create a new vertical or save the world? This is all meaningful to your audience.

What do we value about our product/services? This shows that you can stand behind what you do and tells your audience why they should as well.

How do we choose who we want to work with (employees and vendors)? What makes someone a good fit for your company? The answer will reveal your underlying company culture, another point of trust building when you communicate it to your customers. It also helps to attract the right employees.

What is different about how we make or sell our products/services? A great way to stand out from your competition is to share what makes you special and worth choosing over others.

How do we want our customers to talk about our company? Your answer sums it all up. This is the goal in all of your communication, to have won the hearts and minds of your customers.

Company culture can seem like an intangible aspect of business. Yet experts in most industries would agree that it’s essential to have a positive work environment for an organization to be successful in the long-term. So, how can cannabis dispensaries create an engaging company culture?

Knowing what matters most to employees is a start, and that’s exactly what Cannabis Dispensary wanted to discover as part of the “Best Cannabis Companies to Work For – Dispensaries” awards program. CD, in partnership with the Best Companies Group, an independent research firm that specializes in identifying great places to work, conducted a workplace study in the fall of 2019. For cannabis dispensaries that applied for the award, we asked their employees how well their companies handled leadership, communication, relationships, work environment, training, pay and benefits, and more, and you can read the results in this issue.

Participating dispensary leadership also completed a questionnaire about company policies, practices, benefits and demographics. Results from the employer survey were weighted at 25%, while the employee engagement section was worth 75% of the total evaluation.

Five dispensary operators, some of which are vertically integrated, scored high enough to be crowned among the “Best Cannabis Companies to Work For,” and you can read more about each. In addition, the co-founders of top-ranking Greenhouse Wellness, Gina Dubbé and Dr. Leslie Apgar, will share insights on how they built a strong cultural foundation for their Maryland-based dispensary at the Cannabis Conference, April 21-23.

Knowing what matters most to employees is a start.

The Employee Engagement & Satisfaction Survey asked employees to rank statements like “The leaders of this organization are open to input from employees” using a scale ranging from “Agree Strongly” to “Disagree Strongly,” and the results are interesting. Those who earned the “best” distinction scored much higher than their counterparts in questions about leadership and planning; for example, 90% of employees from “Best Companies” answered statements like “I have confidence in the leadership of this organization” favorably, while other companies averaged 71%.

“Best Companies” also performed much better on average on questions about role satisfaction (91% versus 79% for other companies), corporate culture and communications (87% versus 72%) and training, development and resources (84% versus 70%.) Overall, many employees surveyed indicated they were satisfied with their relationships with supervisors, as the averages of those questions were 92% for best companies and 84% for other companies.

Questions about pay and benefits, however, carried the lowest overall averages for both “Best Companies” (74%) and other companies (61%.) Eighty-three percent of employees from “Best Companies” agreed to the statement “My pay is fair for the work I perform,” compared to other companies at 59%. Both groups fell short when it came to specific benefits, like retirement and life insurance.

Many business decisions are data-driven, and we hope this research can help you determine which company benefits and programs you can prioritize to create a positive culture that will lead to happier, more productive teams and a more successful business.

Michelle Simakis, Editor | msimakis@gie.net