Bloom Montana

Tyler Brennan

Cannabis Retail Authority

After more than 12 years in cannabis, I can say with complete confidence that anyone claiming to have this industry fully figured out is either lying, selling a webinar, or has not worked a Saturday shift during a product shortage with a compliance inspection looming and the debit reader making noises like a dying robot.

Cannabis is a beautiful, strange, overregulated, underappreciated beast. It is part retail, part healthcare, part hospitality, part logistics puzzle, part community center, and occasionally part circus. The industry has grown up quickly, but not always gracefully. It put on a blazer, built dashboards, hired finance teams, and started saying things like “margin optimization” with a straight face. That is not a bad thing. Growth requires discipline. But somewhere between the medical days and the modern storefront, some operators forgot that cannabis is still, at its core, a people business.

That is the part worth protecting.

The regulations matter. The budgets matter. Labor, inventory, compliance, security, training, merchandising, and sales goals all matter. But none of it works without culture. Cannabis culture is not just posters on a wall or someone knowing the difference between live resin and distillate. It is the energy in the store. It is a big, warm greeting. It is the budtender who remembers what helps a customer sleep. It is the older customer who comes in twice a week, complains about pricing, never tips, tells the same story every time, and somehow becomes part of the family.

That is not traditional retail. That is cannabis.

To lead in this industry, you have to understand both sides of the register. You have to understand the customer who knows exactly what they want and the customer who is nervous because they have not touched cannabis in 30 years. You have to understand the employee who loves the plant, loves the people, and still needs coaching on urgency, accountability, and why “the menu is mostly right” is not an acceptable operating standard.

That balance is the job.

Cannabis leaders have to be real with people. Not cruel, not corporate, and not hiding behind buzzwords — real. The best teams I have worked with did not improve because everyone agreed all the time. They improved because someone was willing to say, “This is not working,” and someone else was willing to listen without turning it into a personal attack. I have only become better because people told me when I was wrong. That is how leaders grow. That is how teams grow. If criticism makes you defensive, cannabis will find every weak spot you have and introduce it to the whole room.

Operational discipline is not the enemy of culture. It is what protects it. Clean stores, accurate menus, strong compliance, smart scheduling, consistent training, and clear expectations give teams the structure to create a better experience. I believe in running lean, focused operations: the right number of registers, the right number of people, strong expectations, and then treating those people well. Fewer people standing around. Better people engaged, trained, and respected.

That is not just thrift. That is common sense.

One of the biggest challenges in cannabis today is that the industry has become divided into little kingdoms. Retail is over here trying to hit the budget. Cultivation is over there fighting its own battles. Production has constraints. Marketing has a calendar. Compliance has concerns. Security would like everyone to stop doing strange things near the back door. Finance wants answers. Everyone has a point, and everyone is frustrated.

The companies that win will be the ones that stop acting like separate departments and start acting like one machine. That requires collaboration without ego. It requires leaders who can take input from the person running a store, the person growing the flower, the person building the promotion, and the person interpreting the regulation, then make the best decision for the whole business, not just their corner of it.

That is hard work. But it is work.

I miss the medical days. I miss the wellness-center feel, the deeper patient relationships, the advocacy, the city council meetings, and the sense that we were fighting for something bigger than sales. I miss helping people navigate cannabis when they were trying to sleep, eat, manage pain, or move away from pharmaceuticals. In many markets, those days will never come back in the same way. We went from wellness centers to storefronts, and the industry became faster, sharper, more competitive, and more transactional.

But the soul is not gone. You can still find it.

You find it when a customer becomes a regular. You find it when a team knows its community. You find it when the music is right, the store feels alive, and people want to stay for a conversation instead of rushing out the door. You find it when someone walks in having a terrible day and leaves feeling seen. Very few retail jobs can honestly say they have the ability to improve someone’s life. Cannabis can.

That is why the work still matters.

Looking ahead, the future of cannabis will belong to operators who can balance the old soul with the new standard. Passion alone is not enough anymore. The industry needs stronger systems, better data, better training, tighter compliance, and more disciplined execution. But discipline without humanity turns stores into cold transaction boxes. That is not the future I want to see.

My advice to emerging leaders is simple: stay humble, stay curious, and stay close to the floor. Learn the regulations. Know your numbers. Listen to your teams. Listen to your customers. Take criticism without flinching. Have a hard conversation before the problem becomes a disaster. Protect the culture, but raise the standard.

No one has the perfect blueprint for cannabis. That is the curse and the thrill of it. We are still building the plane while flying it through smoke, policy changes, budget pressure, product shortages, and customer expectations that somehow get higher every year.

And yet, here we are.

Still building. Still learning. Still trying to do it better.