Sandy Sheils of Equation Consulting: 5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started Leading a Cannabis or CBD Business
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Break free from the standard work expectations, set goals instead and empower your employees to get those done. Teach/train them other business skills and get them trained in compliance, quality, and safety. They will be happier and more productive employees.
As part of my series about “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started Leading a Cannabis Business” I had the pleasure of interviewing Sandra Sheils.
Ms. Sheils is a BCSP Board Certified Safety Professional, OSHA Outreach Trainer and Accident Investigator with special training and experience in the Cannabis Industry both Medical and Adult Use.
For over 20 years, both as a corporate safety director and private consultant, Ms. Sheils has provided a variety of organizations, including private industry; environmental industry; chemical industry; power companies; and the legal and insurance community, with technical assistance on safety and accident issues.
Ms. Sheils established Equation Consulting (DBA The Safety Equation LLC) certified WBE, Women in Business Enterprise. The objective of The Safety Equation LLC is to provide research analysis and consultative services in the areas of safety; contract safety services; and risk management to private industry, insurance and legal communities, government, and trade organizations. These services have included, but are not limited to, analysis of facilities, products, operations, and equipment; programs to detect physical or environmental hazards/failures, coupled with recommendations of needed solutions/methods to mitigate or eliminate hazardous and/or high-risk conditions and/or lower insurance and worker compensation costs; and seminar development and production, corporate safety manual drafting and written procedure development, emergency action planning, and providing site specific designated professional safety staffing.
Today, Ms. Sheils is impacting new industries, supporting equitable change and growth projects, developing neighborhood outreach programs for those re-entering the workforce and promoting public safety and workplace safety by bringing her experience and best practices into the Cannabis industry operations reducing risk and saving the businesses assets and image.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you share with us the story about what brought you to this specific career path?
I have a bet with my younger brother, who is a Sheriff Deputy, who voted “No” on our State 420 laws. I voted “Yes.” The bet is that once Cannabis is legal in our State the increased use will both cause community damage and injuries and I said that it will not. The bet is for only $1.00 but the unswallowable pride…. I set out to access the true risks of the industry from “seed to sale” so to speak. I closely analyzed the industry from coast to coast. Les than 50% of the industry was training their employees or even considering a health & safety plan. People were getting hurt. An explosion in a BHO lab, a press injury, a large-scale cultivar room fire. Loss of assets, time and personal injury were possible and are happening. I set out to do something. I championed for safety in all aspects of the business at every convention I could touch, participated in neighborhood outreach programs for those considering “opting-out.” We had an opportunity to make this industry a leader, a modern marvel of best practices, we can and will go beyond, to prove you wrong. You the naysayers, the “no” voters, the premium chargers who think Cannabis should pay an extra 25% because of “perceived” risk. I will bring my skillset to every operator from retail to extractor taking that ultimate step in legitimizing the industry and proving them all wrong: zero harm.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
In Michigan, our Marijuana Regulatory Authority allowed our Medical Caregivers in operation to come into full legal licensing with a “no questions asked” intake of caregiver product into the tracking system up until a certain compliance date. Any product after that date must be a fully tracked product in the system, meaning seed to sale licensed providers which caregivers were not. My client was integrating the caregiver inventory with my assistance in preparation of license application. While we were inputting inventory into the system the data had to be written over and over again because each day the owner was carrying in more and more caregiver products to fill his shelves before the deadline. Everyday gummies, more flower, more shake, more flower, more gummies, change the inventory count, submit, wait did we submit already? Do not submit, we have more gummies. When I finally closed out the project and all inventory was in the system and the caregiver deadline had passed and several months into the new year the provisioning center manager called me. She called me and told me that the plumber was in to repair the plumbing and when they removed a section of the drywall, they had found plastic containers of gummies, 15,000 containers of gummies to be exact. Gummies that the owner had placed on the other side of the wall to the bathroom that no one knew was there. What now? I learned an important lesson that day it was that of double verification and due diligence. The owner had indeed purchased the product legally, had legal receipts, and a chain of custody, the product was safety evaluated and had a date associated with it, the owner retained all video feed and could recall the day he carried in those products, and the day the contractor arrived. Documentation is everything in compliance think block chain evidence.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
It was about 3:30 in the morning after hours and hours of inventory data input conducted remotely using handwritten notes (during the pandemic) when I realized a strain, I had input I recalled specifically seeing far more than the data entry. When I went back through the data, I had found that each line item had an incorrect inventory count. I spent hours and hours verifying the inventory counts. I realized I had sorted the columns of data alphabetically but had not sorted the associated data column. It was a fatal data error in excel caused by me! I had to re-enter hours and hours of data in order to complete the inventory correctly. Verification is everything in compliance verification should not be remote. Verify and verify often throughout the project.
Are you working on any exciting projects now? How do you think that will help people?
Currently I am working with the ASTM’s D-37 committee on Cannabis to develop some standards and guidance specifically on Cannabis employee training. Training will help keep incoming employees safe at work. I am also providing training to the community through outreach programs to train the youth, transitional adults returning to work, and disabled veterans who have been disfranchised due to Cannabis. This training will bolster resumes and provide a good foundational employee for prospective employers.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
Denise Pollicella, founder of Cannabis Attorney’s of Michigan indirectly helped me along. I pursued and pounded doors on every legal office in the business. Her office called me for an interview of my services. I sat with her assistant and paralegal and explained my services and experience which at the time was innovative and unheard of, however necessary. Her team matched me with a large incoming player in the medical cannabis which spawned increased opportunities which ultimately created my name in the Cannabis space.
This industry is young dynamic and creative. Do you use any clever and innovative marketing strategies that you think large legacy companies should consider adopting?
I like humor and the unexpected. I find incorporating those into any marketing effort will make it memorable. I use direct approach and apply my services in person. In a drop by visit I may call out a violation I see; however, compliance and safety start at the top and it’s important to have that culture from the very beginning especially coming from an unregulated to regulated industry.
Can you share 3 things that most excite you about the Cannabis industry? Can you share 3 things that most concern you?
The most exciting aspects of the Cannabis industry are its potential, its growth, and its impact. The biggest concerns I have are its growth, its lack of specific regulatory oversight as in OSHA regulations specific to the industry thereby lack employer attention, and its potential to squeeze out small business by large corporations.
Can you share your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started Leading a Cannabis Business”? Please share a story or example for each.
- Investors and operators are two different things and investors who attempt to operate without experience can risk or lose their investments. Two under thirty investors also insisted on operating without any business experience or formal training they followed the chapters of an EOS system. Six months into the venture the business in in the red and is stuck with inventory that is non-compliant and not sellable. Those investors would have been far better off and in a good financial position if they had made their first hire a business consultant.
- Try not to hire your friends; friends are friends, business is business. As difficult as it is to turn a close friend down, do not hire your friends. A client hired a longtime friend who knew “a little about a lot of things” bundled in chaos and rolled into a package that few professionals would work with. He took liberties within the operation and over purchased and underperformed. He delayed the timeline by months impacting profit and embarrassing the business to the point of shareholders looking to quickly exit.
- Everything in the Cannabis business costs more. It costs more for two reasons: the belief the industry is cash flushed and the perception of risk. Everything costs more from the property you will purchase to the insurance coverage you carry. You can control those risks and drive those costs down by hiring the right team to control those exposures. Be certain to include a Health & Safety professional.
- To make money in Cannabis you need a network so you can control your supply chain. In Michigan, a few summers ago you might pay $540 an ounce for flower, if you could find it. A large influx of new licenses and limited legal supply created a huge imbalance with the supply and demand drying out supply. Provisioning centers did not turn sales for months unless they controlled their own supply chains. If you do not vertically integrate your licenses, then create a family network of licensees to service one another and keep the supply chain flowing.
- Picking your company values is more important than its branding. Set your foundation in Compliance, Quality and Safety and your operations will naturally be efficient and profitable. Great branding is meaningless if your company is not trusted by the community or the employees that work for you. When a company favors profit over CQS the products and the brand suffer. A start up company placed family investment at risk and went all in. When times became difficult the finance favored choices deteriorated product quality and salability further pushing the company into negative financial losses. This company had an opportunity to create generational wealth and instead will be closed within 24 months. Tons of money wasted toward marketing and branding this company; however, their inexperienced operations is what set the tone.
What advice would you give to other CEOs or founders to help their employees to thrive?
Break free from the standard work expectations, set goals instead and empower your employees to get those done. Teach/train them other business skills and get them trained in compliance, quality, and safety. They will be happier and more productive employees.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
I would love to champion grocery store food trucks that would deliver fresh, healthy food choices as well as packaged cook at home meals into areas of urban food deserts then into all areas. Food choices would be local, farm to table, zero waste products at low cost.
What is the best way our readers can follow you on social media?
linkedin.com/in/sandra-sheils-cannabisafety
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
Sandy Sheils of Equation Consulting: 5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started Leading a… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.