An Interview With Ben Ari

To survive and thrive in this industry, not only does your product have to be innovative and of high quality, but your management of the business needs to be just as innovative and more specifically, have the ability to pivot quickly. Whether it’s an approach to sales, marketing, billing, licensing, etc. Regulations and the competitive landscape are changing every day, and an ‘autopilot’ or ‘templated’ approach is a recipe for disaster.

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 Sean Samuel.

Sean Samuel is Vice President of Sales and Marketing at C15 Solutions, a technology company that delivers a life sciences-based eQMS platform tailored for the global cannabis sector and adjacent industries. Sean has a sales and business development background that spans the tobacco and finance sectors. Currently, Sean manages the sales process at C15, spearheads marketing initiatives, establishes key strategic partnerships, executes product demos, and secures valued customers. Sean has helped grow the company from scratch to 65+ corporate customers across 8 countries.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you share the story about what brought you to this specific career path?

Mycareer is an intersection of three things I love — cannabis, technology, and innovation on a global scale!

When Canada initially mulled over federal legalization, I was working at the Bank of Montreal and had long been speculating on the early medical cannabis companies in small-cap portfolios. Shortly after Canada passed adult use, C15 Solutions was formed and it was C15’s partnership with Veeva Systems (VEEV:NYSE) that really intrigued me. They have long been an established tech provider to the Life Sciences and CPG industries, working with multinational corporations like Kraft, Nestle, Bayer, Pfizer, Unilever, etc. Cannabis always struck me as an amalgamation of agriculture (cultivation), pharma (medical), and consumer packaged goods (adult use) so adopting best practices from those established sectors and adding to the quality and safety of cannabis production was a mission I could embrace.

I was already keen on trying to help accelerate the sector’s trajectory when it came to being a leader in the industry, especially as it globalized. The opportunity to work with such an innovative and supportive partner in Veeva as well as being able to build something from scratch (opposite of my situation at BMO) with a fantastic management team at C15, was what ultimately drove me in this direction!

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?

To survive and thrive in this industry, not only does your product have to be innovative and of high quality, but your management of the business needs to be just as innovative and more specifically, have the ability to pivot quickly. Whether it’s an approach to sales, marketing, billing, licensing, etc. Regulations and the competitive landscape are changing every day, and an ‘autopilot’ or ‘templated’ approach is a recipe for disaster.

We also quickly learned that our reputation would be built on not necessarily the product, but also our service. That’s something we take pride in and as of today, C15’s reputation for service and support is the single most valuable “asset” we have.

Can you share a story about your funniest mistake when you first started? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

A funny mistake in our first year was assuming we could have a sales cycle of weeks after securing one demo of the solution… unsurprisingly, it’s a touch longer than that and we now demo to secure further demos as the user communities include QA, Operations, Legal, HR, and others.

Are you working on any exciting projects now? How do you think that will help people?

I think one of the most exciting things happening at C15 right now is our expansion into international markets like Western Europe, the UK, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa.

These markets in particular seem to really ‘get’ the value of eQMS because they operate to EU-GMP production standards, which are higher and require more detailed record-keeping and validation of your processes, equipment, and software.

Our platform has been able to accelerate our customers’ ability to bring products to market as well as help to curry good favour with regulators along the way.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful for who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

My parents immediately come to mind — at one point in my life, I was consumed with playing in the NHL, and did come kind of close! However, when that dream was extinguished, I was directionless for a period of time. I had no idea what I wanted to do and even less of an idea of what I wanted to become. My parents, though clearly frustrated at times, never wavered in their support and attempts to inspire me. They invested so much time and energy (and money!) with the intention of raising the best possible son and have given me the foundation I need to be the best professional and father I can be.

I would also like to shout out a couple of institutions that helped me become the person and professional I am today — Dartmouth College & McGill University. Dartmouth is where my hockey career officially ended but it’s also where I met new friends for life and grew to appreciate the US. My two years at McGill were also unforgettable; I learned so much and met my wife while I was there!

This industry is young, dynamic and creative. Does your company use any clever and innovative marketing strategies that you think large legacy companies should consider adopting?

We engage in education at all levels. One of our favourite things to do is host smaller, invite-only events for prospects and customers that are usually timed with a larger industry-related conference. For instance, we took a group of customers to the Las Vegas Golden Knights game last year during the MJBiz Conference and did so again this year. Earlier in the year, we brought a small crew with us to the Formula One Miami Grand Prix!

We also plan on increasing our presence at trade shows via educational thought leadership but, generally speaking, we’re not fans of paid, digital marketing. Our competitive landscape is spending heavily on SEO terms — sometimes even against their own brand — and even buying up terms that aren’t relevant to that particular technology, which is a shame because this will confuse the user community.

All to say, that’s a very crowded and expensive space with less credibility. So for an innovative, forward-looking tech company, I would characterize our marketing approach as refreshingly ‘old-school’ and more community-based. Moving forward, we plan on featuring our customers more prominently in our marketing; sharing some of their success stories in a creative way.

Can you share 3 things that most excite you about the cannabis industry? Can you share 3 things that most concern you?

Globalization of legal cannabis is by far the most exciting thing to me. I was very fired up when Canada paved the way, but we are effectively 10 minutes into a marathon here! C15 has looked at feet on the ground in Uruguay for the LATAM market and locations in the EU.

Hand-in-hand with that would be the globalization of C15. We hired our first fully-remote, US-based team this year and anticipate further growth as other markets continue to come online.

The other developing storyline that fascinates me is the development of brands! I think US operators have a leg-up in this respect. Many Multi-State Operators (‘MSOs’) are building out a very CPG-esque house of brands, with products that are positioned for different markets and lifestyles. The brand-based contract manufacturing business model is also one that seems to be thriving at the moment. Of course, a more complex supply chain is the trade-off for less of a physical production footprint, however, cloud-based eQMS solutions like ours make qualifying and collaborating with your manufacturing partners much easier.

Of concern to me would be the current cycle of price compression and regulatory overreach of the current economics of cannabis. Lots of regulatory challenges in all jurisdictions.

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.

To be frank, I feel like I joined C15 fully expecting a world of change, adversity, and frustration — that’s part of starting anything new from scratch. I had been a part of a failing start-up previously, so I was under no delusions of grandeur. I suppose the one thing you could say was that I hadn’t anticipated these challenges being compounded by the fact that it was the start-up experience in a BRAND NEW industry as well! However, as the saying goes, ‘there’s no sweet without the sour’ and I can unequivocally say this has been the most rewarding work I’ve ever done.

I would add, being properly funded with great shareholders is an understatement.

What advice would you give to other CEOs or co- founders to help their employees to thrive?

I think one of our biggest management ‘lessons’ has been to hire people vs. hiring for the role. Obviously, there has to be a basic level of competency for the day job, but we quickly discovered that hiring the best person available, and finding work for them to do, was a much more sustainable approach. The benefits are obvious to us; our employees are seeing fantastic professional growth — after all, you don’t grow unless you try things you haven’t done before and make yourself a little uncomfortable — and we’ve developed a very cohesive team because we care about each other and don’t want to let each other down. There are no clock-watchers at C15.

You are a person of significant 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.

Perhaps somewhat ironically, I wish we (the human species) would be able to disconnect from technology more often! Unfortunately, one of the outcomes of better tech is less quality and more quantity. More relationships, more information, and more access, but how deep are those relationships? How accurate is the information? How safe and trustworthy is the access? It’s such a delicate balance; as an entrepreneur in a trail-blazing sector, I fully embrace technology. As a husband and father of three, I also have seen the value in ditching technology to be as present in a moment as I can possibly be.

With that said, technology is the single biggest driver of productivity in GDP and will remain that way for some time — use it at work, less at home!

What is the best way our readers can follow you on social media?

You can find C15 on Twitter and LinkedIn at: https://twitter.com/C15Solutions & https://www.linkedin.com/company/cannabis-onefive/?originalSubdomain=ca.

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!