Cannacurio Podcast Episode 65 with Guillermo Rodriguez

On this episode of the Cannacurio podcast, host Ed Keating interviews Guillermo Rodriguez, a Virtual CFO specializing in the cannabis industry. Guillermo shares his journey from a corporate finance role in a large construction firm to becoming a dedicated consultant in the cannabis sector. They discuss various topics including the roles and benefits of a Virtual CFO, the challenges of managing cash flow, the impact of 280E tax laws on different sectors of the cannabis industry, and the importance of key performance indicators (KPIs). Guillermo also sheds light on recent financial trends and the potential merger between the hemp and cannabis markets.

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Cannacurio Podcast Episode 65 Transcript

Ed Keating: Welcome to the Cannacurio podcast powered by Cannabiz Media . I'm your host, Ed Keating, and on today's show we're joined by Guillermo Rodriguez, virtual CFO to the cannabis industry. He's been in the Accounting space for more than 20 years and has occupied many diverse roles from in house corporate positions to also being a self employed consultant.

And he currently serves as virtual CFO at summit virtual CFO by Anders. So Guillermo, welcome to Cannacurio.

Guillermo Rodriguez: thanks for having me, Ed. Appreciate, appreciate you having me on.

Ed Keating: Absolutely. So question we always ask everybody is how did you wind up entering the cannabis industry?

Guillermo Rodriguez: Well, I wish I could say, cause I wanted to make a lot of money and everybody welcomed me with open arms and it was like, come on in, let's get, let's get going.

But as, as you know, and many others in the space, it's, it's a, it's a tough space to wedge your way into, but no, my background, uh, as you mentioned there in the, in the intro is in, in corporate, you know, I worked for a really large construction and engineering firm for about 15 years. Uh, Throughout my career and, um, I started off as an accountant, you know, uh, doing financials.

I was on the other side of the earnings calls. Like right now, the big news is with, you know, the MSOs and they're disclosing their tax position and all these things. I was on that side, preparing those answers, that script, the presentation. And so, um, I did the accounting piece, the historical financial information for the first half of the career of my career.

And then as the company I was working with, we started to grow, uh, we were looking to make strategic acquisitions. And so that's when I moved into more of a corporate finance role, a forward looking role, and that's what we do as, as virtual CFOs is. Help, you know, look into the future through forecasting to make better, better financial decisions.

And so I loved it. I did that for a few more years. Um, but going back to what I mentioned earlier and being on the earnings calls, I think. I had done, you know, they're every quarter and I added them all up. And I, I like I've done this many earnings calls.

Ed Keating: Hahaha

Guillermo Rodriguez: and I said, you know, creativity has always been, I think it's our nature, you know, and then I, I just thought like, this isn't the best environment for me to use my creativity to really help people to really help companies.

And. What I wanted to help with is profitability. I mean, I think that's what I was made for and trained for is to help companies be more profitable. And so I went into consulting. I mean, I think that's when I had the moment where I said, I've done enough of this and I went into consulting. As you said, there in the intro, working in companies of all sizes, from public companies to middle size.

Um, and through that, you know, COVID period, one of the reasons that I decided to leave is I was with an employer. And just the response with the pandemic wasn't very, you know, health related, you know, it was just around being six feet apart and things like that. And I said, we really need to do something to improve our health.

You know, uh, I saw people dying from, you know, with comorbidities and things and. Just on my own personal health journey, I knew that plant medicine was a big part of health by reducing stress, sleep, all these symptoms that are more preventative and would put you in a better place to survive anything like a pandemic, you know, like what we went through.

And so, um, I just said, you know, Uh as maybe later we'll go into what a virtual cfo does a big piece of it is being in a niche Uh being in an industry. So at that point to say I want to kind of narrow down and I decided Cannabis would be a great one because of those reasons health and wellness was my passion But also because there was a lot of need around improving profitability The tax situation which i'm sure we'll get into I thought it'd be a great space a few years later.

Now I'm like, it's a lot tougher than I thought, but that's really what led me into the industry. And now as a virtual CFO with Andrews. Yeah,

Ed Keating: that's a great journey. Great journey. So, um, you touched on this a little bit, but maybe you could help our listeners know what is a virtual CFO versus a fractional CFO and you know, how much does this cost, like how does this get, you know, built out or how do companies account for it?

Guillermo Rodriguez: Sure. So we've seen more and more outsourcing of accounting functions over the year. It's over the years. It's happening more and more and more accounting firms are now offering the advisory piece. Clients are looking for not just do my books. And my tax return, but I also want to meet with someone monthly, uh, or weekly And look at my historical results and determine what I need to do to improve my profitability how to set my goals Where should I be financially?

And that's what if that's what a virtual cfo does is we really get in there understand the clients Operations and business model and then through forecasting which is the foundation and setting clear metrics That we can measure and predict revenue Uh, we start an advisory relationship, a consulting relationship where we're keeping the ball rolling and helping our clients get better and better, closer to their goals of profitability and improving cash flow, uh, over time.

But it's a, it's a kind of a day by day and there's, there's really no shortcut, uh, or magic formulas. It's daily decisions. Based on, on data metrics and information that we help our clients with, and we use, uh, uh, what we call subscription. It's a subscription based model where, oh yeah. Or a client will come to us or, you know, that's not a client yet.

Or maybe a prospect will, will discuss the, their situation, how many people they have on their accounting staff, and they'll look through our, our, our options and they can basically choose like, do you want us to do your payables? Your financials, you know, the advisory piece, and that way the client can really pick what they need, um, as well as set it up on a fixed price basis.

That way, you know, you don't ever want to worry about hourly charges or anything like that. You're just getting the best use of, of our time and our team, uh, to work together to help you meet your goals.

Ed Keating: That's interesting too. Cause when you talked about before, when you started in accounting and I remember this from business school, you know, where.

Things like that are backward looking as opposed to forward looking and you know, obviously, uh, as some have said, there's a reason why the windshield is bigger than the rearview mirror. I mean, we have to see where we're going. So, uh, so that that's got to be a big help for people. So one of the questions that I had as I was reading through and preparing for our time together is, as you look across The cannabis value chain, you know, everywhere from grow to manufacturer to, you know, retail, do you come across any universal challenges your clients contend with, you know, that sort of cut across maybe more of the value chain than just what a store has to deal with or what a grower has to deal with?

Guillermo Rodriguez: I think by far, it's, it's not looking forward with, with actual numbers. I think it's really a lot of decisions. Without really understanding the cash impact of of these decisions, you know Um when I said well, maybe I hadn't said but retail cash equals sales, you know cash is coming in Uh sales equals cash because it's at the point register But you have a lot of other pieces in the value chain where you really got to get an understanding if You're receiving an advance payment or maybe you see revenue on your books, but you don't see the cash yet Maybe you're spending money you don't have or maybe You don't know how your cash flows are gonna are gonna come in and so that's what we do through forecasting And that's that's pretty much a universal question and a universal problem That's like I don't know how much cash I should keep on hand and I don't know how much cash This represents like if I were to have a downturn in the business, am I good for three months?

Am I good for two months? um If I open a store how much cash is that going to take up? And so I think the problems that that I see are just very much around just visibility into You know, I have this business plan, but I don't have the financial visibility around that

Ed Keating: Yeah, that makes sense. I was at a conference a few weeks ago, and it was, it was all about data.

And it was a great deal of discussion about the challenges at the store level, sort of going to toward the retail end. And, and one of the speakers sort of had a consistent theme, and he just reminded everybody that, you know, carrying too much inventory is Just reminding folks that you're tying up so much your cash there.

I mean, he, he sort of equated it to debt. He says, you know, you've got, uh, you know, eight months of this product. You don't need to carry that much with you. And as a result, you don't have as much free cashflow, et cetera, et cetera. So it was interesting to really see it called out and, you know, almost sort of like an, an, an, an, an accounting language of it's debt in a way, which I thought was pretty interesting.

Guillermo Rodriguez: Yeah. And, and I think that's that those are the type of things that, that, uh, You know, I had a client come to me the other day and he's like, well, I have this plan, uh, but I don't, I don't really understand how the cash moves through the business. Right. And the inventory is a great example is that, you know, through setting metrics, you may have a great month from a profitability standpoint, but you bought a bunch of inventory at the end and, and then you're kind of confused and like, why isn't my cash up?

I, um, my profitability looks good. I made a lot of sales. But my inventory is high. And so that, that's the kind of things that, you know, the accounting mind can kind of help decipher through. But the challenge is, is not just understanding it as a, as a CFO is really being able to communicate that in real simple terms.

To where the, the client finally understands it and then can be more empowered to make decisions in the future and set the goals. Should it be 15 days or 30 days? Uh, when does it make sense to do 30 days? Sometimes it does. So you don't miss opportunities, you know, and talking through all those scenarios.

Ed Keating: Oh, great. Yeah. Well, it's sort of like, it helps people, I think, understand which levers they can adjust as opposed to just running it, you know, Sort of month to month or like, Oh, how much money do I have in my bank account is if that's enough of a metric, cause it's not so, so interesting. Interesting. Now there, there's a number of, of big topics that are kind of financially related that I wanted to touch on.

And the ones that we've been hearing about almost my whole time in the industry. Um, so let's start with, uh, one of the big ones, which is, you know, managing 280E through the value chain, which I understand is one of the things that you obviously have to do. One of the questions that I had in terms of 280E is.

How is that different for cultivators, manufacturers, and dispensaries? Because I think it ties into cost of goods sold and other things. And maybe you could explain it in a way that, you know, we, we all could understand.

Guillermo Rodriguez: Yeah, the super short answer and the very simple answer is that, you know, 280E just allows ordinary business expenses, right?

But there's a piece of the tax code that allows for cannabis companies to deduct their cost of their inventory as a return of capital. And so all that to say is if you can go through the accounting process to identify what costs are related to your inventory, to producing the final good, you can go through.

An exercise analysis of allocating those costs and then therefore deduct in them. I don't want to do this on your on your financials because it gets very confusing. It's just something that's done separately for tax purposes. That way you can understand what your margins are, which are true.

Profitability is. And so for cultivators, there is most of the cost goes into producing flower, right? Cause you have, you know, seeds, all the, most of the personnel are watering plants working. Uh, you know, you have a grow calendar or a flower calendar, let's just say over, you know, 60 days or however long you're really tracking all that cost from inventory to work in progress, to a finished good.

And then once you identify all those costs that are tributable, you still can't deduct it. You got to wait until you sell it. And so once you sell the product, then you can allocate those costs into cost of goods sold and get a tax deduction. But even for a, for a cultivator, there's still going to be overhead costs that are, that are non deductible.

You know, your CFO, your service providers, they're not directly involved in, And producing the final good so that process is very similar for a processor that's taking flour manufacturing into whatever it ends up different thousands of skews And and it follows a similar process, right? Um, but there's still a bucket of costs that are non deductible Now for a for a dispensary a retailer there's hardly any costs that you can push up for tax purposes You Um, then the cost of the product itself.

So you're, so you're buying flour or, or different in different form factors, different categories. All that inventory is cost and that can be deductible, but anything that's overhead and outside of that. Is, is non deductible. So all that to say is that, you know, we do a lot of benchmarking with clients. So we say, okay, retailer, you have, well, let's see, let's just break down an income statement, just in real simple terms, again, take your revenue, any discounting that you do, the cost of the product, the overhead minus the overhead is your profit before tax.

Ed Keating: Yep.

Guillermo Rodriguez: A good number, a good standard for industry regards to the. Of the business model is somewhere around 15%. So if you look at all the non deductible costs and say those are, you know, 30 percent of your revenue, uh, you're looking at an after tax profit of maybe 1 percent or break even. And this is for a cannabis company operator that's doing really well.

And so, like, you do really well. And you may still not generate cash after tax, or you may just be at 1 or 2%, whereas a normal business would be 7 to 10 percent after tax profit. And so, Uh, It becomes very difficult long term to manage a business this way. And so some kind of reform has to happen. This has to go away for the long term health of the, of the industry.

Ed Keating: Absolutely. Well, I think that's a good time to the next topic I wanted to talk about. And it's one that. Uh, I know you focus a lot on which are KPIs, like which KPIs should cannabis businesses be, be focused on? Because, you know, that's a typically a, some sort of data based metric that allows operators to track how we're doing, how we're doing compared to peers, etc.

So, so, you know, how do you help businesses come up with them?

Guillermo Rodriguez: So it's pretty standard. We think about KPIs in terms of how they may help, you know, leading indicators, how they're going to help you look into, into the future. And we, we, we look into four buckets. One of the buckets is actually historical and that's your financials.

So we look at. How much cash you should keep on hand. So as a percentage of revenue, um, that way earlier to my point, you can look at, okay, how much cash does this represent? You know, you can sleep at night knowing that you got 60 days of cash after that you're out. Uh, we've got to find new ways and new solutions.

If we see a change, um, what should your gross margin be? So your cost of your goods, revenue minus the cost of the goods, right? And so let's just say anywhere from 40 to 50%. And then overhead, you know, want to manage that overhead, uh, as a percentage of revenue to set a target for where your net income before tax should be, but that's all just benchmarking.

Once we determine where we want to land there, what that will mean in terms of how much cash that those metrics would generate, when I say, how do we get there? Um, and the way we forecast is by looking at basket sizes, you know, basket size, On average, and that metric simply means your revenue divided by your, do your number of transactions.

And that would give you some insight into, are you selling more items? Less items is the price per item coming down. Okay. Now we look at discounting. Is that what's affecting it? Different market. So we really want to analyze that and it'll be different for mature markets versus emerging markets, of course.

And then down by your, by your region and number of transactions. So if you really multiply those things. That's the revenue for say a retailer.

Ed Keating: Yeah. Um,

Guillermo Rodriguez: but and then, and then that helps give us some insight into where we're spending our marketing dollars. So then that brings us into the other piece of the metrics, which are the, the customer metrics and the pipeline metrics.

And that's where you get into. More of a forward looking, being able to forecast with more certainty, because back to your point earlier about inventory, right? Those are the types of things that you can say, okay, I want to sell this much next month, but I actually don't, don't even have the inventory to do it.

So, um, you know, there's always information you can look that will let you know what you can actually do in the future. So maybe you say, okay, I need to buy more inventory, but those customer metrics. Like your customer retention rate or the lifetime value of your customers. That's what really allows you to forecast with more certainty so that we can set targets for acquiring new customers.

Okay. Now we know how much does the customer actually purchase over, over a lifetime. Right. And then we can start to employ more of the marketing strategies around upselling and cross selling to try and get that basket size up that profitability up and and make those small tweaks and day to day actions to.

To drive a, drive the bottom line.

Ed Keating: No, that's a, that's a great point. And, and, and I like the sort of SAS metrics of lifetime value and, and, and how that plays in. One of the things that we always talk about here, cannabis media internally is, you know, trying to forecast in such a volatile industry that the point that I've been making that my.

Colleagues quote me on is that you can't look at last year's, uh, performance to judge how this year's performance is going to be. It's like every year in cannabis has been different. And we've been at it for basically a decade. And looking back at how we did three years ago means nothing to how we're doing now, really.

I mean, yeah, there's a renewal component of our business, but so how do you forecast when it looks like it's not predictable unless maybe it is on the, on the plant touching side? I don't know, but I'm curious, it's forecasting. A reliable tool in, in such a crazy market.

Guillermo Rodriguez: It's certainly, uh, accurate with the right inputs, right?

If this happens, this is where cash is going to be. Right. So we got to start there. Um, and then if markets change in where we, will we change that forecast? Right. It's I've never seen a, a budget, a forecast, a plan that actually plays out exactly as planned. Right. And sometimes, sometimes it does, but what the forecasting does.

First of all, it, it allows you to accurately look at the levers and be able to adjust. And so we know if we sell this much, we'll be here. We know if the market, uh, we know if, if the market is trending down in terms of consumers, uh, if we lose market share. Um, this is what's going to happen to our basket size.

This is where we need to be to achieve this margin and this cash. And so it's a very, it's, it's to me, it's the only tool to be able to make financial decisions and, and to be able to, to look into the future and, and improve and pivot regardless of, of what the market will do. And so that, that's how I look at that.

But it, what it does is it really allows you to, to look back and say, okay, this is where we started the year. Maybe what did, what did we not, what did we not forecast? You know, we didn't, we didn't expect this consumer base to grow. We didn't expect, uh, as a state to legalize rec and it took out some consumers from our market, you know, whatever the case may be is like, I think that's what it really allows you to do is to look and see what, what can you learn to keep getting.

Getting better at this and to predict where you're going to be.

Ed Keating: Got it. Got it. Now, one of the other big topics, and this is almost, uh, you know, it's really an industry issue and we touched on a little bit earlier is taxation, but specifically some of the tactical strategic, um, Employees engaged by Truelieve and now others following in their footsteps to try and, um, sort of, well, I don't know, is it restating their financials to say, hey, this is cost of goods sold and we want a refund?

I mean, so what's the skinny there from, from, from, from your professional perspective?

Guillermo Rodriguez: They've been very tight on sharing information about it, right? Yeah, trade secret is what I've heard. Trade secret was the most, you know, blatant where it's like, they didn't spend too much time figuring out how to say that, basically saying they don't want to say anything.

But I've spoken to a few attorneys that are involved in some of this. These tax positions that you're seeing now, um, and one of the predictions that came true was that I don't think it's a trade secret because you have other MSOs that I guess everybody knows the secret um, but The prediction was that if Truelieve was successful and I, and I had this conversation prior to the announcement is that you'd see all the other MSOs falling on.

And so that's exactly what's happened is that now you see other MSOs that are, they're sharing a little bit different details about it. Um, some are saying that they are going to continue to make their estimated tax payments. As if 280e has gone away some are saying, um, like true leave I I don't think they really disclose whether how much was state versus federal So there's that to look into is that we don't really know um and so but my case my I mean my prediction is that there there is something to it because you have so many of the msos that are That are moving forward with it Some of the questions, you know, being on that, I've been on that side of it before, uh, not in the cannabis space, but You just you hate the questions from the analysts stuff you don't want to answer And you can tell in the tone of how you know, some of these executives have answered the questions and a little bit irritated when when they ask well What if, uh, the IRS is successful?

How are you going to deal with that? Uh, with that situation, right? If, if all these MSOs are not successful in this, cause it could be contested. And I think that's why it hasn't been disclosed. Right. Because it's not certain. Um, and then you get answers like, well, we'll deal with it with like any other taxpayer and we have great cashflow, but we know that these companies, a lot of these companies don't have great cashflow.

So it is. It's got some level of risk, but it's been analyzed. So I think all that to say is that there must be something to it. Um, but I think there's still some risks that it could be, it could be reversed out, otherwise you would see a lot more information on it and it's not a done deal, but, um, but, uh, I think what's interesting is that when we talked about.

The reschedule is, you know, Whitney economics has done there that study that says it's an extra billion dollars in cash to the industry, you know, this year or next year, if, if, for those who are with making estimated tax payments. Um, but this new situation is three years of amended returns. So it's. It's uh, you know four times that amount of new cash coming in into the industry So it's it's very significant.

It's very meaningful. It's more meaningful than anything We've ever seen from a from a cash standpoint and something that could that could help. Um, And so so we'll see there's some interesting Um articles out there on MJBiz by by some of these attorneys that have worked with these clients and and done some of this Uh, these amended returns that feel very confident.

Some have even stated that they've passed. IRS audits and, and things like that. Um, and, and basically what they're saying is that, that there's an old, there's an old case you can go back and look into that states that 280E doesn't mean that those expenses are disallowed. You know forever they've essentially captured them and can deduct them in the following year or in future years, because what 280E says, if you read it carefully, it says in the current year, I believe.

And so it says there, those expenses are disallowed in the current year. It doesn't ever say,

Ed Keating: is it like a carry forward expense? If there is such a thing, like a carry forward loss.

Guillermo Rodriguez: It's an asset and then you can carry forward into, into future years. Yeah. So I, I don't know if they're offsetting it or offsetting the loss in future years, that, that thing that will come out and exactly how it's being applied.

Um, but, um,

Ed Keating: yeah, I, I started my, I started my career at a tax publisher back in the eighties and I'm sure those people are going crazy on this stuff, sort of delving into it and writing about it. Cause it, it's a fascinating topic and there's a lot of, you know, Art, magic, whatever you want to call it in interpreting these kind of things.

So, uh, so, so we'll, we'll see how that one plays out. But, uh, but thank you.

Guillermo Rodriguez: That must've been a fun job.

Ed Keating: Yeah. Yeah. I was, I was more on the securities law side, as opposed to the tax side, but, uh, but yeah, definitely, definitely nerdy. So, um, now, now one of the other regulatory areas, and this is, I think sort of outside of, of let's say, you know, banking finance, maybe it's more treasury, but, uh, you know, Any views on safe and safer banking?

Like, is that something that really touches your area on the CFO side, or is just one of those Things that we have to keep an eye on as it may impact, uh, you know, part of the, you know, maybe cash management or other elements in the, in the, in the financial arena for these companies.

Guillermo Rodriguez: Yeah, it's certainly more long term than this immediate impact of the reschedule or these amended returns and the more of the tax side and the 280E that we're saying, I mean, that's immediate cashflow where, where I think safe, safer banking now is more impactful is that.

You would see more banks entering the space could be more lending, but I think it'll trickle in. And so there's not an immediate. The unimmediate impact and, you know, more, uh, you know, debt lending or more line of credit for, for the industry overall, I think there'll be an increase. Right. Um, the other piece where it's very meaningful is if you have branded credit cards entering the space.

Oh yeah. Because that would, that increases basket size, that increases the spending and profitability. So it's a game changer. And we know that consumers who have been using like, like AeroPay and some of the solutions, they spend more. Um, but again, I think that's not immediate because at the same time, a lot of these companies will have to evaluate whether they even want to be in the space.

So they'll, even if there is a complete, uh, a re a reschedule, uh, some companies still won't want some of the credit card companies, the brand of credit card companies, they still won't get in, you know, and then there's this kind of. Already, uh, ingrained, uh, behavior in cannabis consumers that they're used, a lot of them are used to spending cash.

And so those behaviors still will take time to change. And so I don't see an immediate, uh, kind of impact. And also there's a lot of great banks that are already banking cannabis. Uh, you know, we work with some and they just do a great job with The relationship and, and treasury, uh, the treasury side of things.

Um, but there's more fees and that thing. So some of that would help help the companies, but I just don't see it as a, as an immediate impact. Plus it's just a source subject, like we keep thinking we're going to get somewhere and uh, this year was the year and it didn't, so I think that's why. We're all just kind of like, well, okay.

I mean, at least, at least from my perspective, I've kind of just put it on the side, cause it's just such a, such a thing that hasn't moved forward when we are so certain that it will.

Ed Keating: Well, right. Right. And then, you know, you talked about people exiting the industry, which we're seeing a lot of. And so this is the question that, you know, I sadly ask everybody toward the end of these interviews is, has the industry hit bottom yet?

Or, you know, we're still in the valley and we don't know when we're going to come back up. Any thoughts or guesses on that?

Guillermo Rodriguez: I think bottom in, in the sense of. Seems to be like markets have have matured and hopefully we've learned what we've learned from, from the mature markets and investors have left and kind of are looking at more fundamentals.

Um, and so it's almost like it's pushing things out. It's consolidating so that all what, what will be left is, is companies that are using data, looking at metrics that have a sound business model. And maybe some consolidation is, is good for the industry. So there's more profitability and cashflow back into the business.

So I don't think the, I don't think we're headed down. I think we just learned too much already. There there's too much information around what it takes to be profitable about, you know, what works and what doesn't, but you still have a lot of companies that are heavily discounting to, to keep customers, to keep market share.

And it's just, it's not gonna, I mean, it's obvious it's, that's not going to work long term. So it's just putting business, it's not sustainable whatsoever.

Ed Keating: So finally, uh, any other trends you're, you're looking at, like, you know, I, I just sort of going back to the very beginning, the fact that you have a virtual role is something that, uh, It past guests have talked about who are in the HR space of there's a lot of that in the cannabis space where there's gig economy, there's virtual, there's fractional.

So, you know, that's sort of one trend on the labor side of land, labor and capital. Any other trends that you're keeping an eye on Guillermo that, you know, you'd like to share with us that we should also pay attention to?

Guillermo Rodriguez: I think one trend, you know, more. Industry wide is, is just like, we got to see how, how the hemp space is going to merge with cannabis.

I mean, that's just a trend. I was just in, uh, in Missouri for, for a MoCann. Um, event and, you know, speaking of trends, there was two big trends. Uh, one is what, what you mentioned is the, the consolidation that's happening. Um, and, uh, you know, the MoCann president did a slideshow and kind of put the numbers up this, how many licenses we have last year and, and entities.

This is how many we have today. So you're seeing more. More consolidation. Um, and that's, that's pretty evident even in new markets. So I think that's going to continue to happen.

Ed Keating: Yeah.

Guillermo Rodriguez: Um, why that's relevant is, is if, even if you're, um, a smaller operator, how you're going to manage your business or, or build a more valuable business, um, for these next few years is, is something to look out for and then.

And then secondly, there's an initiative there's in most of these states California and and here in Missouri of how the states are treating the uh, the hemp market right and so Uh, it's it's largely unregulated. I think it'll continue in Texas. We're kind of wild over here, but in some of these states, um, the they're trying to bring the The hemp market into the existing cannabis program.

And so I think that's something to, to really watch out for. Um, and we'll see what, what happens there, but, um,

Ed Keating: yeah, agreed

Guillermo Rodriguez: from, from my standpoint as a virtual CFO, we're seeing just more, more companies that are, are looking to access talent, the advisory service, and for, for our profession, I mean, it's, it's just.

A topic is like we're talking about how to continue to grow the consulting piece because that's what that's what clients are Are really wanting is really the relationship And so we're gonna the trend is like as accountants. We got to move towards being more relationship technicians, right? Not just the the numbers and the technical but really how to be relationship people.

Ed Keating: Excellent. Excellent Well, Guillermo, thanks so much for joining us today. It's been uh, it's been a great and informative discussion

Guillermo Rodriguez: Thanks for having me on and have a good, have a good trip. I hope to see you at the, at the next conference. Maybe we can meet up.

Ed Keating: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I'm your host, Ed Keating. Stay tuned for more updates from the Data Vault.

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