Episode 224: Big Mike of Advanced Nutrients on Building World-Class Teams and Uniting Cannabis

Welcome to another episode of Cannabis Tech Talks powered by Shopline and Association with ICBC and MJ Bizcon. I'm Mary Jane Gibson and I'm here with Big Mike from Advanced Nutrients. How's it going?

Good to be here today. That's where I'm on the Cannabis Tech today. On Cannabis Tech today and on the cover of Cannabis and Tech today. Yes. Nice surprise. Thank you very much. I really appreciate you for that. That's a great shot. So this article is about pushing the limits of growth

with advanced nutrients. Can you tell us what's going on with your company? Yeah, I would love to. Eighth generation is coming out. Took us a little over three years to make it right

and to do it what we wanted it to do. Spent millions of dollars doing it. Our guys were up till two to three o'clock in the morning for the last few years.

Great R&D team, gotta give all the credit to them. They're amazing humans. So again, I gotta tell you though, what's great about the eighth generation

is all the active ingredients have never seen the light of day in our industry. That's wild. And we took stuff out of DARPA, like seriously, like some other research.

And we have some really baller tech in the eighth generation, and it gives results that are just incredible. As good as our seventh generation is, the eighth generation just decimates it. Eighth generation, so you've been doing...

And by the way, the pricing is exactly the same. The pricing per gallon is exactly the same. Wow. So as someone who's been in the game since 1999, you've seen so many developments,

so much R&D. behind so much of the science with the dancing dance. How do you find the best people who are gonna help you continue to do this?

That's a, listen, that is the most challenging thing that I had to learn is to understand human nature. And they call it human training. And I went through with some of that,

a lot of it actually. And I understand people at a different level. Things that used to make me upset with people, I just go, nah, just humans.

It's just like, it's human nature. Just go over and move on. I just, that's what I've done. Do you feel like you've learned a lot of that

through your philanthropic efforts? Like I know that, you know, outside of advanced nutrients, you have initiatives to give back. Yeah, it's, it's,

there's a hell of a learning curve to understanding people from where I came from and being in this industry because you're a surroundable type of person

that's hyper independent and looks at life a lot differently than let's say the rest of society. And, uh... You mean like that?

Yeah, you have to, you can't... The quality of people you can get now that are available is very different than before. And we have, you know, we can get high quality people,

but you also have to understand on how to act and how to talk and how to be, not be emotionally dysregulated and your kindness and compassion.

And so through all of that, I've learned quite a bit about fighting a good, like you said, good people. I gotta say, we've got the highest quality group of people globally than we've ever

had before and what a difference it makes. Wow. Wow. Do you have a story that you can share with us in a aha moment where you really realize

that things needed to shift in somewhere for you? Yeah, yeah, sure. So, some stuff happened to the company and I had this missing piece in me that I just couldn't figure out how to fix it and I knew there was something wrong.

And one day I finally came to the decision, you know, like you've looked at everything else but you haven't looked at yourself. So I've learned internal locus to control. And so now I take full accountability responsibly for all actions no matter if they turn sour

or not because I made a decision to work with that person. So the a-ha moment came when shit hit the fan so to speak and I had to come through realization and I had to look at myself. That was my big a-ha moment.

And a lot of people aren't willing to look at themselves. They poo-poo that. But that is where all, like life's, that's the easy button in life. It's hard to learn.

I've been studying it now for psychology two to three hours every day for the last seven years. Plus hiring people to come in and paying them to, okay, break this down for me. Break this down.

What does this happen? What does that happen? So I studied under Andrew Bustamante. He's everywhere on YouTube and Chase Hughes and a few other people who want to remain

nameless. So you're talking about, I mean, I think the term gets thrown around a lot, but accountability, essentially, personally, professionally. And some people think they have a comment.

They don't really understand what true accountability is. That's mean, you take full responsibility. You make no judgments and you just, you take that information, you don't react and you come up with a plan and then you execute on the plan with the right people who

know how to do exactly what you're looking for. And I prefer to hire people who are way smarter than me in every aspect of the business. So I'm like a coach. That's how I look at myself and I'm building a world-class team which we've got now. That sounds like a pretty incredible

evolution to happen in your life as you also move forward with your business. I'm self-aware now where I was before, let's say I was partially self-aware like nine years ago but I'm getting there but what happened to me accelerated that self-awareness. So yeah it's great. I can self-reflect and I can

think about other people and how I might have handled that situation better or high, I'm going to handle it based on their personality type and, uh, you know, connect with them. It's just about connection at the end of the day.

And a lot of our industry doesn't understand that. And a lot of the folks who aren't here today, well, they are probably, uh, have the traditional mindset of the past and not the future. And the people who are a lot of folks here, different, different

reader people, this, uh, even though there's less people to show itself selection, these people are the ones who have, who have,