The Dealer's Diary is where we share the work. Cannabis HR insights, retention math, compliance gaps, and the operational decisions that actually move the needle for cannabis dispensaries, cultivators, processors, and multi-state operators.
We write for the founder losing sleep over turnover. The GM weighing a PEO against fractional HR. The compliance lead who just got blindsided by a state inspector. The cultivator scaling from one license to three.
Every post is real work with real cannabis operators. The math is real. The advice is what we'd say in a discovery call, written down so you can read it before you call us.
Dealer's
Diary
A Massachusetts dispensary operator called us on July 8. Massachusetts had quietly raised its minimum wage on July 1, and the operator’s assistant manager was now within $0.75 an hour of a shift lead. Compression was already showing up in staff conversations. The assistant manager was five days away from taking a job at the […]
July 17, 2026
Cannabis Events Week of July 13, 2026: Operator Picks From MA, NY, NJ, RI, and ME post-710 recovery mode collides with the FIFA World Cup 2026 in full swing, a Massachusetts rally against a potential adult-use repeal, a full networking calendar in NYC, and the fifth annual Maine Women’s Cannabiz Symposium in the woods of […]
July 15, 2026
This post is informational and reflects patterns we have seen across the 50+ cannabis operators we work with and the 6 cannabis M&A integrations we have led. It is not legal, tax, or licensing advice. Cannabis M&A carries state-specific licensing, badging, and successor-liability rules that vary and change often. Consult licensed cannabis counsel, a cannabis-specialized […]
July 13, 2026
This post is informational and reflects patterns we have seen across the 50+ cannabis operators we work with. It is not legal advice. Federal drug testing, DOT compliance, and immigration rules interact in complicated ways and change frequently. Consult licensed employment counsel and immigration counsel before making hire or fire decisions involving federally-regulated workers. A […]
July 8, 2026
If you came here to talk about Jaylen Brown going live on Twitch during a playoff game, you need this article the most. Because the story everyone is telling about the Celtics and Jaylen Brown is the wrong story. People want to talk about bad optics and streaming and whether he was a problem in […]
July 7, 2026
This post is informational and reflects patterns we have seen across the 50+ cannabis operators we work with. It is not legal or tax advice. Cannabis payroll rules vary by state and change often. Consult licensed counsel and a cannabis-specialized CPA before signing a payroll contract or restructuring 280E labor allocation. A Massachusetts dispensary operator […]
July 6, 2026
On the Monday after 710 in 2025, we got the same call from three different cannabis operators in three different states. All three opened with some version of: “I do not know what happened on Friday. The line never stopped. We sold out of three SKUs by 2pm. Two budtenders quit on Saturday. And I […]
July 1, 2026
July is when the cannabis calendar gets loud. The second week of the month carries more events than any other stretch of the year. If your operator calendar still has white space between June 25 and July 12, you are about to miss the easiest hiring, partnership, and budtender training month of the summer. This […]
June 29, 2026
Multi-state cannabis HR is the moment most operators discover that everything they built in state one breaks in state two. Badging works differently. Training rules shift. Wage thresholds reset. Leave laws change. Payroll filings multiply. Pay transparency rules appear out of nowhere. Most operators lose six months and several expensive mistakes on their second state […]
