The one thing you can count on in the Cannabis Industry is change, from regulations to banking and overall business practices the business of Cannabis is always changing. With all the changes cannabis businesses have a lot on their hands, in turn many companies across the industry are coming up with creative ways to use IoT in their operations. Smart technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning are helping growers, manufactures, and dispensaries streamline their businesses to help transform and grow the cannabis industry. We meet up with John Gunn long time technology influencer who focuses on IoT.
Video Transcription
Harry Brelsford
Hey gang back with John Gunn. John, how you doing today?
John Gunn
Here? It’s nice to see you again, man. I’m doing really well.
Harry Brelsford
Good, good. Well, you’re you’re the most modest man on the influent that kind of tech influencer list we compiled and I mean that graciously that you said you looked at the other names and you said, Man, I’m not in their leagues, but I beg to differ a little bit. You’re a technology influencer and you’re participating in cannabis. So we’re gonna play a simple game, what’s your story? How did you get to be an authority in technology? And how did you get a touch point in cannabis?
John Gunn
Okay, that’s actually a great way to approach it. So I’ve been in technology my whole life. I mean, I got interested in it in like seventh grade. And by the time I was in ninth grade, I was in a computer. Computer Club, there were six of us. And I was the only guy, it was kind of weird. So I’ve been in technology for a long time. And I went to school, and I studied technology at a business college, and ended up going into preparing tax forms. And from there, I continued to evolve. And during the.com era, I worked in emerging technologies. And for quite a while, eventually, I ended up landing as IoT developed in the IoT industry, which is where my business today IoT group.io is, is a technology company around IoT technologies. And so with all the kind of different backgrounds that I’ve had, has combined to really kind of view process and how the world works and technology and how it influences it. And then as cannabis became a legal place to go, and I wanted to get involved in it, the best fit that I saw was around IoT technology. So I ended up working for a company named fast sensor and fast sensor had amazing technology that you could use your cell phone in an anonymous way, and be able to track people, which is really important from the privacy standpoint, and everything’s about privacy these days, and be able to predict, buying behavior using that. And I was fascinated by that. And I went to work for them, and eventually worked with med men and and help them outfit their stores with technology to understand the consumer behavior. And that was kind of a game changer, because they actually learned some things about the business that they didn’t know, like, they didn’t understand why tinctures weren’t selling, we were able to tell them that. And a lot of it had to do with we’re able to spot that people spent too much time standing there, didn’t learn anything and didn’t engage. And so they just changed the behavior of the employees and put up signage and began education and teacher started to take off for them. So continuing on with that, I ended up working in IoT around try other tracking technologies, and some of which are really quite important. We have technologies that you can use for agriculture, that will tell you what, what the moisture is what kind of chemicals you have in it, which plays very well into the growth side of cannabis. And this integration of all these technologies gives us an end to end picture from seed to store. And you can apply it in every one of those ways. And so I’m a proponent of leveraging existing technologies and best business practices to be able to influence doing better business in the cannabis space. And if you go read the cannabis blogs, a lot of them actually today are now talking more about how do we adopt the things that are already best practices today, and how do we stay up with it? So IoT is kind of a tricky thing, as is adopting existing processes. Now all of it can’t go without very unique ERP software and things that are designed for the cannabis industry. And there’s some very unique pieces of components. But surprisingly, there’s just a big chunk of technology that actually plays really well. The overall.
Harry Brelsford
It has Yeah, it does. And it reminds me of by analogy, when I first started getting my head into the IoT conversation. BlackBerry was a phone BlackBerry was a thing.
John Gunn
Yeah. It was actually still are a server system, by the way.
Harry Brelsford
Yeah. And they had Yeah, and they had me back on the other side of the aisle with SMB Nation. They had me interview one of their hot shot, Blackberry partners, who was effectively doing some IoT isms with the phone and agriculture right up in Canada. And I got the memo, right? I’m like, Well, wait a minute. Cannabis is agriculture. Right? This all makes sense. Yes. So a final question. What’s the future hold for you is again, I consider you an influencer and technology and you have some touch points in cannabis. what’s ahead for you this year and beyond?
John Gunn
Well, this year, I’ve actually been exploring some newer technologies as well as some older ones that that are being repurposed into the space. So the first one is from a company called Wiliot wilIoT, which is a great name. They invented and which lead into some other stuff to talk about a technology that has a little tiny little chip and an antenna on it. And that speaks Bluetooth, and it can measure temperature and movement and location. And imagine if you could actually use that for your product tracking all the way from, from the grow all the way through the store, you know where it is, what your inventory is, you know, when it’s sold when it went out the door, you know, if it’s being cared for properly. And the best part is that they’re about a penny apiece for each one of these sensors. They’re charged via Wi Fi. So it picks up a frequency that turns it into power, and it’ll power those little Bluetooth chips. And then they report in and say what they’re doing. I’m kind of blown away by this technology I’ve been I’ve been talking with them. I’ve got a kit on the way for a sample kit. And I’m building some technology with some people down in Australia around that. And that’s probably one of the biggest, most fun things I’m doing. And then I’m also been looking at how do you leverage first party and second party data in the cannabis industry. And so for instance, there are all these Wi Fi opt in systems that are out there. And if you can take the opt in systems like you have it like a Starbucks or someplace like that, and be able to to combine that because it says I want to get my permission to do that we can actually build a customer profile and understand a bigger picture of what a customer is outside the cannabis industry and be able to gather other data, what’s their stomping grounds? What’s the lifestyle, and help us better understand those. And so I’m exploring the combinations of these different technologies and how they’re going to work in the cannabis industry this year. And I’m kind of excited about that.
Harry Brelsford
Yeah. Well, you know what, Jimmy, if you could make a note over in the radio control room. Let’s get John back next quarter of the traditional SMB Nation side, because I think the work you’re doing is also interesting to SMB Nation, above and beyond our vertical focus on can attack. So I think we have a couple conversations with you. We’d love to do that. Thank
John Gunn
you. All right. Thank
Harry Brelsford
you. Take care.
John Gunn
Take care. See you next time.
