Premium vs Scale in Cannabis: Inside Rubicon’s Strategy ft. Margaret Brodie

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Bryan Fields: Margaret, if you look across the cannabis industry over the last decade, most companies pursued a very different strategy. The belief was scale wins — expand geographically and compete on price. Rubicon took almost the opposite approach. Why? Margaret Brodie: Quality. Quality wins. You don't build a brand promise without consistent quality, and we've seen that time and time again. In the early days of Canadian cannabis, I remember going into a store, being very excited to buy my first eighth, and I opened up this mega-large plastic package, and inside was the driest junk that I shouldn't have paid $60 for. If you actually want to build a brand, you need consistency, repeatability, and quality inside. Bryan Fields: So how are those internal metrics defined? Because quality is such a nuanced term, and when we're talking about cannabinoid products it can vary so much. So how do you put that north star on the board and say, "Hey team, this is how we're going to define it, and this is how we're going to orient everything toward it"? Margaret Brodie: There's a couple things I want to unpack there. There's the quality of the cannabis itself — what is premium cannabis or weed, whatever you want to call it — and then there's what is a premium brand. Let's start with cannabis, because a lot of people go out to build a premium brand and put a ton of energy into it, but they don't put the same energy into the operational needs to actually deliver premium quality. I like to use the old adage — you walk into a convenience store, pull out a can of Coke, open it, take a sip — you've never looked inside, right? Maybe there was one story fifty years ago about a finger showing up, but that shouldn't happen these days, because you trust Coca-Cola and the quality of the product — they earned your trust. Cannabis hasn't earned that trust yet. So what we need to start with is building a brand promise that every time a consumer trusts us with their hard-earned dollar, they open up a product, have that moment of "aha," and inside is beautiful. That's where it starts. Bryan Fields: So how do you get that experience for customers every single time? Margaret Brodie: It's embedded all the way through your culture. It starts with people, it starts with caring, it starts with really understanding that you need to grow quality bud — beautiful product — and that customer experience needs to be there. I think building a premium brand starts with the quality of your flower. You're not going to build a premium brand in cannabis today without actually having premium flower. Maybe it can be done in markets with a lot of social noise and marketing, but in Canada we haven't been allowed to do that, so you have to have good bud. The consumer gives you one chance with that $60 they walked in with, and if it's not good, they're not buying it again. So it's about consistency. When we sort our flower, it starts with larges, mediums, smalls — the A's — and the smalls get ground up and go into pre-rolls. So everything coming out for our consumer is a great experience. And then we have recipes for what goes into a jar or a package, so the consumer has an expectation of how great that quality is going to be. We're going to make it right if it's not, but hopefully that doesn't happen. Bryan Fields: Was this the original thesis? Margaret Brodie: Yeah. The original thesis was building Canada's premium and organic cannabis house of brands. We made the decision very early that you can do two things — be like Lululemon, where all your products are Lululemon, or be a company with brands underneath it. That's the approach we took. We started out with Simply Bare Organic, and we could have grown the whole facility as Simply Bare Organic if the demand side of the equation was there. But in Canada, the demand side wasn't there for that pricing and level of product. So we launched our second brand, 1964, which has actually become the engine of our business. If Simply Bare Organic is super premium, 1964 is premium — fantastic quality for the money. Bryan Fields: What gave you the confidence that premium could hold over time, especially with all the price compression we're seeing? I get the thesis, but as prices change, and from your background running the numbers, at the end of the day the business has to make sense. So what gave you the confidence that premium could hold at that positioning? Margaret Brodie: We've seen it in the legacy market for years. You can still buy way more expensive ounces up and down the West Coast. I'm sure in New York and other places it's the same — I've heard some of the prices for weed that are insane. People are willing to pay for quality, and that's true of every market — whether it's scotch, wine, or clothing. People, especially connoisseurs, or just someone who really loves the product and the experience, are looking for quality, and quality is attached to premium. Bryan Fields: Going back to the operational procedures, I'd imagine that ethos has to permeate across the organization, because a concept like that has to be consistently reinforced. Sometimes it's probably easy to say, "This is what the plant grew, how do we meet demand." Is this a continual process that needs refining, or does it get passed down and understood by managers? How does that process work? Margaret Brodie: It starts with every person. It's so simple. When people come into the organization, I do a session called Mission, Vision, Values — which our former president started, and I added Expectations to it. We talk about our vision, which is to be the most trusted house of premium cannabis brands, elevating experiences for people everywhere — whether it's a medical patient or a consumer. Elevating experiences isn't just for the consumer — it's the shopper, the retailer, the province, everybody touching it. It's whether we deliver a pallet on time and in full. On the expectations side, we're very clear about what's acceptable and expected as a member of the team. We have awesome people, they're adults, and one of our values is freedom — we want to give them the freedom to operate but also to make really good decisions. We set really clear expectations, and this goes back to an expectation cycle: you set them, say how you're going to measure them with KPIs, hold people accountable, and provide feedback. It's simple, and once everybody's on that flywheel, it kind of moves itself. Every year, our C-suite goes out into the business, meets with every team, and goes through expectations of being a member of the team. Quality is our first value, and it starts with quality in everything we do. You can grow the best weed on earth, and if you don't cure it properly, process it, trim it carefully, and package it right, it doesn't matter how great it was coming out of the facility. Every member of the team is as important as the last. Premium and quality doesn't bash its competitors — it stands for what it stands for, and it's proud of it. We're trying to move out of our humbleness and into our passion. I used to say I was the "cheesy BC cannabis person," and I got corrected — "No, you're passionate, be proud of it, stand up and say it." So I'm doing that today: we're passionate, we're proud, and we want to get better every day. The next piece that a lot of people don't know we do here at Rubicon is we take it all the way through — not just what it looks like in the facility, but what it looks like coming out of cure, what the trim looks like, what the certificate of analysis says on microbials. We go all the way to a quality evaluation panel that Health Canada has blessed as an appropriate and safe process. Every batch gets smoked before it goes out to customers. We empower people to stop the product if it doesn't look right going into packaging. We also log and check every complaint, whether it comes through Instagram, Reddit, a store, or anywhere else. Our complaints have gone from double digits to single digits per 100,000 units. On our quality evaluation panel, the highest score ever was 82 out of 100 on a given genetic, which tells us we can get better genetics and get better every day. We compete not just with the legacy market, but with incredible growers around Canada — let's get great genetics, grow them beautifully, and go out and win. White Rainbow was a really famous internal strain a couple years ago; now we're like, "I think this one's better than White Rainbow, let's go for it." Pink Drip is out there crushing it. That excitement about getting better is culture. Bryan Fields: The one element I think you left out is competing internally — organizationally you always want to strive to do better. If you got an 82, maybe you get an 83 next year, and I think that's the right mindset, because it's easy to say, "We have to save some margin here, there's price compression, we have to cut here." But instead you're pushing further, learning from customer feedback, and letting customers know each day you're trying to do better than you did last time. Margaret Brodie: Absolutely. We are so hard on ourselves as a team. We were just at an exec meeting yesterday, and I kind of blame my father for this — he's passed, and he was a wonderful man, but he used to say to me, "What happened to the other 2% on the test?" I've created that probably unhealthy culture at Rubicon — "That was great, but how do we get even better?" I need to slow down and celebrate our successes more, but it's part of the joy of knowing we can find better genetics, grow better, and get better. I'm also a believer that our customers tell us all the time with their dollars whether the product is good. So why did we go into premium when a lot of people are in the race to the bottom? Because the customer exists there — they're discerning. We white-knuckled through three years of unbelievable price compression, people selling below cost in the Canadian market. There's a consumer who walks in every day and says, "I want highest THC, lowest price." That's not our consumer, and that's okay — there's a place for them in this market. But as a smaller company with limited resources, we're going to win doing what we do extremely well, leaning hard into our strategic differences and competitive advantages. Another one of our values is excellence, which I rename "competitive spirit," because I rowed crew through high school and university — everything is about how you make the boat go faster. Do you have the right people in the boat? Do they want to row hard? Are all our oars going in the same direction? We started this year by asking the team, on January 5th, "Where do we want to be at the end of the year?" Everybody wrote it down, and we compared: are we doing the things that will make the boat go faster toward those goals? Bryan Fields: Was there something pulled from that conversation that wasn't originally on the list, that you realized belonged on the 2026 list? Margaret Brodie: Yeah — there were a couple things around quality and growing the business, particularly around contracted supply, and how much we wanted. That helps us grow the business, but it's also risk management and supporting the entire Canadian cannabis industry. I describe it like that weird bottle of tequila on the top shelf in a bar — you think, who ever drinks that? Then once a year the bartender says someone bought ten shots and paid a thousand bucks. You never want to be that one expensive jar on the shelf — it takes you out of the realm of the consumer. You want a full premium shelf — maybe three to four brands — and you want the highest rate of sale, being the one the consumer chooses. If you're that jar on the far shelf that's too expensive, that the shopkeeper has to get a stool to reach, first, it's not going to be freshest for the customer, and second, nobody's going to buy it. You can aspirationally have the most expensive weed in the world, but if nobody buys it, you're not making money. There's a happy place where we position the brands relative to our consumers. Bryan Fields: That's the challenging dynamic of a plant as your product — it has that shelf life where it's perfect and then starts to degrade, where alcohol can sit for years and nobody notices. That's where brand positioning matters — you walk into a dispensary and want to know exactly which one pulls you in, but it has to be right for the demographic and the customer. Maybe it's a little more than you wanted to spend, but if the product experience is perfect, maybe that's what was missing to pull you in — it solves that value equation you were looking for. Margaret Brodie: Absolutely. Consistency is what builds a brand promise, and that builds trust. So many branding seminars right now are around creating trust. We're in an interesting industry because in some ways we have protection from all the noise out there, because the consumer is making their choice based on the truth of what they see, consume, and experience. It's a simple equation: do it well, say what you're going to do, deliver it, listen to feedback, get better, and repeat. What I get real joy out of is a new product launch — you get that first opportunity for people to buy it, often because of reputation or because it's new. Especially with the budtender, when they say, "I've bought it three times," that's the trial and the repurchase. What's really exciting is when you get the recommend — the budtender is the voice of the industry in a huge way. If you engage with a budtender, you can learn a ton about what they're looking for and how they're consuming. They tend to be heavy consumers, but they're very welcoming to new consumers, because they want people to have their own experience. Bryan Fields: The holy grail is that recommendation, exactly like you said. You can convince anyone to purchase once — discount it, whatever — to get that first time. Maybe they come back a second time, but the third time is when you've reached a threshold, where they're looking for the product and get disappointed if it's not there — that's when you know you've gotten into that echelon. So are you deep into the data side, tracking first-purchase and repeat customers, to see if you're trending in that direction? Margaret Brodie: I wish we were more. I think the data in the industry just isn't there. I just looked at a report on attachment rate within the brand — our 1964 brand had something like 47% attachment, meaning people who buy into the brand also buy other products within it. That's coming out of a retailer with a loyalty program. Now, that was one month — is it one data point? How clean is that data? There are a lot of questions because of where the industry is, but it shows that if you have proof points of quality, you can get that quality to attach across the whole line — if you have premium flower and premium pre-rolls consistently, people will try your oils and edibles and equate that quality across the board. It's more difficult when you're launching in the value space, competing on price and THC rather than consistency, experience, look, touch, and taste. Bryan Fields: Are all the products made in-house? Is all the biomass cultivated internally? Margaret Brodie: All the biomass is — except, I didn't finish my thought earlier on contracted supply. We think it's important to highlight excellent growers who don't have brands in the Canadian space, because we want to prove Canada has awesome growers — there are awesome growers around the world, and this is going to be global competition. So we lean into helping our industry so we can control our supply and quality into our brand promise. As for whether we do everything ourselves — there are things we don't. Our Wildflower brand is no longer made in-house, because it's not our core competency. We evaluated, and found great partners in Blue Swag Hemp Ventures in Saskatchewan, who do a great job with our relief sticks and cool sticks, which are absolutely loved in market, with very consistent repeat consumers. There are a few other things like that we do outside the business, but as we look forward over the next two to five years toward more profitability, we'll look at what we can bring back in-house. Bryan Fields: I love that you shared that. Was that an internal audit, where you decided to reevaluate, this one gave you different vibes, and then you dove into the numbers and decided it might be better positioned outside? Margaret Brodie: A hundred percent. We need to constantly ask ourselves what we're holding onto because we think we should, and whether that's the right thing to do. I have an amazing executive team. Our COO, Mel Ramsey, is really good at challenging things like that. We had a great example recently — she, I, and our CFO were discussing a project similar to the Wildflower situation, and what was presented at the last leadership meeting was totally different than what I thought we were doing nine months ago. I asked if that was the same as what they were seeing, and they said yes, so I said, "Can we slow down and have someone look at the project, the resources, the people, and whether this even makes sense anymore?" You have to get out of the detail and slow down — one of the things I've had to learn, because I was the CFO before, where you're in every detail. Moving into the CEO role has taken training, and I've had an incredible board tell me, "Margaret, get out, go for a walk with your dog and think — not with a podcast on, just quiet thinking time." Then I go, "Huh, that actually didn't make sense," and we look back at the project. We completely shifted what we were doing, freed up resources, and the team agreed it was the right decision. It doesn't mean it's a no forever — it's a no for right now, because we have higher and better uses of resources and money. I was describing this to my daughter, who was in her first year studying economics at UBC, and she told me about "opportunity cost." I said, "We do that every day" — ranking projects by complexity, risk, and strategic opportunity, and reassessing if assumptions change. She was mind-blown that what she's studying is literally what happens at work. We have workbooks for capex, innovation projects, and big strategic decisions — everything gets ranked. It's where the legacy people, the CPG people, the finance people, and the business people in our company all come together. Saying "highest and best use of resource" doesn't sound exciting on its own, but once you're actually ranking projects and understanding complexity and strategic need, it becomes real and it matters. Bryan Fields: It was probably a really difficult decision. I can imagine how uncomfortable it might have felt for the people involved — loving that part of the brand but knowing it doesn't work. When you free up those resources, you free up additional capacity, because straining in both directions means quality might suffer elsewhere, or resources can't be pulled from another project. You have to keep the organization lean and efficient, but it's a strong muscle to flex — the first time is difficult, the second time is easier, and the third time you know exactly what to do. I think the industry is going through that phase now, especially US teams, figuring out which assets they do well and which they don't, because you can't do everything well — self-assessment is such a critical skill. Bryan Fields: So was that cut-and-dry for you, given your financial background — just the numbers, end of the day? Margaret Brodie: We were fortunate — we raised quite a bit of money, but not as much as some other companies, and we made our share of mistakes. Once you make a few mistakes, you learn you've got to cut your losses, run, and make a better decision — what's done is done, you move forward on the information available. We've seen people in this industry keep building huge facilities they already knew were uneconomic, because the project had already started, instead of taking the money and doing something they could actually win at. When you're already behind, why keep throwing more money down a money pit? Some people call that owning a boat. You've got to get over it and right-size the ship quickly. Because we haven't always had copious amounts of money, right now, what I would do with $25 million — I have projects that would catapult us forward — but we have to go to highest and best use of resource. I think this industry — people thought it was climbing a ladder, but it's actually more like going straight up in an elevator, except really it's a series of stairs. Do one thing, do it well, cement it, move to the next. At the same time, you've got a team getting ready to execute the next flight of stairs. I described this to our board like four 4x400-meter relay races happening within the team at once — the middle-distance legs are really hard to run, people are handing off batons on projects while getting ready to run the next race. The innovation team thinks of it, capex gets it ready, ops gets it there, marketing has to have the buyer ready, sales has to be ready with the tools — and that's happening maybe fifty times a year. You have to look at all those projects and ask which ones you're really betting on, and whether resources are in the right place. You need a team that's cohesive and communicating well. We're in a magical flywheel right now where everything's going faster and faster, and sometimes something flies off — but you've got the trust that it's okay, we'll get it back. You won't be in trouble for a mistake — please tell us as soon as you can, because we've fixed a lot of problems. As soon as something goes wrong, you shake it off and move to the next thing. Same thing if you decided to build a million-square-foot greenhouse and that turns out to be a bad idea — when you're at 200,000 square feet and it looks like a bad idea, maybe you should assess and stop before spending more money or adding more debt. You always want to be assessing where you can win. We use a book called Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works when we assess projects — it's process, but it's also about getting the right people around the table, challenging yourself, and driving forward. Bryan Fields: I've got to ask — if you had $25 million, what are you doing tomorrow? Margaret Brodie: That's such a great question. Number one, I'm investing more in our systems — internal software and technology tools — making sure the foundations we've built are tweaked and in good shape. Number two, I'm building a kick-ass genetics facility that sets us up for the next five to ten years. We call it a bit of "fight club," because we don't talk about it — well, now I've talked about it, so I'm in trouble. But I think we could do a lot more and grow faster in genetics — pheno hunting, breeding, wild crosses, all of that is really exciting. I'd probably also buy a facility in Quebec. Quebec and BC have been the homes of weed in Canada in a big way, and I spent a lot of time in Quebec as a kid. Then I'd look at channel — where do we want our brand in the world, and where are we going to win? That would include exploring some European markets. And then I'd love another 10,000 kilos of capacity — I'd love to be at about 30,000 kilos of premium capacity. I've got eyesight on getting to 20,000 kilos with our existing capacity, and I'm talking premium weed we can actually sell, not trim. There's going to be competition coming in at the value category — Thailand has really become a great competitor to Canadian biomass for the Australian market, and Colombia in the next few years is going to come online, largely distillate and volume-focused. But being able to take premium BC bud to the world is pretty exciting, and I think it's where we can compete and win. Bryan Fields: Is there a specific priority among those that would take the top spot? Those were five or six competing goals that would take resources and team members — which one would go first? Margaret Brodie: It would be EU GMP — I didn't say it earlier because to me it was part of channel — that capability here in Canada so we could export anywhere in the world and have it within our control, and it would impact pricing as well. That's number one. Genetics is probably sitting right beside it — those two would change the trajectory. After that there's a big, exciting list. I believe our existing facilities can do more too — I think we could add incremental lights into our Pacifica facility in Delta, BC, and increase yield, which would increase our gross margins. We want to sweat the assets and make sure they're working at a world-class level. I think we're doing premium and organic cannabis at scale, which I don't believe anybody else is doing consistently for five years — so we're the world leader in that today, and I'm really proud of that. But I look at what's next — pumping yield in that facility, challenging the team on what we need to adjust given current capacity. Adding incremental light, getting to around 1,000 PPFD, would really help. I'm excited about some of the concentrates we can develop too, but those aren't huge investments — those are time and resources, and we're planning to execute on that this year. So I'm looking at 2027, 2028, 2029, asking where we want to be as a business, and beyond that, goals for 2030 and 2035. We want our brands to be on shelf for the next thirty years. There have been cannabis brands that were bought and sold and became nothing. We've demonstrated we can consistently deliver through quality — now it's time to flex that muscle, put more throughput through our facilities, and drive innovation. From there, I think cannabis brands are just at the beginning in Canada of becoming a promise on a package. Brand recognition is still very low. What's next is what it means when you step out with a Simply Bare Organic terracotta jar — what does that say about you, what emotion does it bring? When you're picking a car, maybe you're fancy, and you drive a Maybach, a Honda, a G-Wagon, or an Audi — it says something about you. We don't yet really have that in cannabis. So how do we get to the stage where a consumer associates themselves with a brand? That's where I'd like us to go — but you can only get there once you've delivered on that brand promise consistently. I'm excited that I think we're at the beginning of building Canadian brands that can do that, and I'm excited about taking some of these brands to the world — that's a sneak peek hint of things to come in 2026 for us. Bryan Fields: That's what I was going to ask next. If you've got a really strong brand, and some Canadian counterparts are going out to Europe and doing really well, this is an opportunity where if you come out really operationally disciplined and take a small approach, you could have a bite at the apple that grows pretty quickly. Is there anything else you can share about that? Margaret Brodie: Watch this space. Over the last eighteen months we saw the wild west of cannabis internationally — dramatic prices high, prices low, regulations shutting, ports open, ports closed, new entrants coming in. If you've been in this game a while, this is the stuff of legends. We did what we call test-and-learn in international markets, because I might have been born at night, but it wasn't last night — I lived through the early heyday of a whole bunch of broken promises. So we went out, met people physically, put an executive on it — our VP of Marketing and New Business is fantastic — and we dropped into three different markets, and have now sold into four. We did it under wholesale, not our own brand, so we weren't putting our name on something that could risk our reputation, and we've been pleasantly surprised and learned a lot. Our assumption on which market we'd go to first changed as a result. We ranked the countries, ranked complexity, ranked how we could talk to the consumer, ranked the size of the market, ranked where the premium consumer is, ranked pricing. And there's a market — I'm not telling you which one, because it's hopefully coming out relatively soon. Bryan Fields: Just you and I. Margaret Brodie: I know it's just you and me here, but I have to disclose material news, so I take that seriously. What I can say is our intention is to launch a brand — and I'm hoping it's very soon — into a market in Europe. We want to put our best foot forward, and it's not going to be a huge, splashy launch — we don't have an extra 40,000 kilos to sell. That's actually a good problem, because it means we can think about how to do it well and build that brand promise. It's more of a test market than a full splashy launch. We've got plans beyond that, but we also don't want to lock ourselves into anything where we're not controlling how our brand shows up and how the product gets to the consumer. There's a balance between wanting to go fast and having the patience to do it right. Having watched the wild west, where people went from having no product because they sold it all internationally to having no money because buyers hadn't paid them — we're finding the balance, building channel, because five years out we're going to have global competitors, the US at some point is going to be exporting, and we're going to be in mega competition. We're not going to win on lowest price, largest volume, but we can build brand into channel that's consistent, trusted, and beautiful, and on a good day we can go head-to-head with anyone. It's about building the channel and the trust now — you don't need to be first in cannabis markets to win. A lot of companies that raised money on being first have already pulled out of the Canadian recreational market because they couldn't compete and win. Being "one of the six brands" might work for a few months, but if you have an off-putting experience, it spreads really fast, and that reputation is hard to come back from. Bryan Fields: I can imagine, going back to the European example, the best call to get is "Margaret, we're out of product, we need more immediately," versus the other kind of call — "I can't get this off the shelf, do we discount it?" — which is the sign you don't want. Going slow but balanced is really critical, but also kind of tough, because it is exciting. Margaret Brodie: It just feels slow because cannabis is so frenetic. Bryan Fields: Right — it isn't really slow, it just doesn't feel like the ultra speed this industry sometimes moves at. And you need to bring the cannabis consumer along. Margaret Brodie: They're people — this is a medical consumer too, so you want to be consistent for your patients, especially in Europe. They might start out consuming something that's not great, and as they go along in their journey, people move along and want the better one. I had a CEO from Australia say to me last spring, "Margaret, nobody in Australia is going to consume premium — we're just different than Canada and the US." Six months later, he called me and said, "Can I buy everything you have, wholesale?" So the consumer does change and move, and one thing you can expect in cannabis is that it's going to change. We've seen drastic changes every couple of years in Canada. Two or three years ago, infused flavored pre-rolls took over the market and drove growth; now that's stabilized and moved to vape. Vape grew really quickly, but our vape market hasn't grown as much as the US market, which is closer to almost 30% in many markets — in Canada it's sitting around 19%, and we're a bit surprised it hasn't grown more. Every market has its nuance, and you have to listen to that feedback loop, not just go with preconceived notions. Some products from five years ago, like dosed beverages, I think were great products, ahead of their time, but we don't see them every day here because they were ahead of where a lot of consumers were comfortable. With our Wildflower wellness stick, consumers love it, but a lot of those consumers aren't comfortable walking into a cannabis store today. A lot of people say, "It's the soccer mom that's consuming" — well, the soccer mom isn't consuming daily or in large amounts. She goes into a store once every three months and buys a few packets that last three months. That's still a very small percentage of the Canadian consumer today. We need to respect where we came from — the medical patient in the legacy market got us here. Bryan Fields: Building a premium brand for the soccer mom would be really difficult because it wouldn't be that sustainable. But maybe in the future, as stigma changes and people feel more comfortable, that's the dichotomy — building a brand with lasting appeal and trust, but also the right consumer today, that can hold that brand through its transformation. Margaret Brodie: There are some executives in cannabis — not a lot — who still come in, don't consume, and talk about the soccer mom being the future. I say, that's not the market today, and you're not going to get there. We've seen people try to appeal to markets that don't exist or are tiny. We're focused on the market that's here today, while keeping an eye on where the market's going — let's honor our consumers and the people who got us here. When I was talking about contract growers, I want to be part of growing other people's businesses too. McDonald's has the three-legged stool — suppliers, franchisees, and corporate — each as important as the next. I love the Canadian market, and I think it's going to have two or three premium and super-premium brands on shelf, and everything else will be hyper-local going forward, because it'll be more efficient for the consumer. If you don't have a brand on shelf today, the barriers to entry are really high to start in cannabis now. The people here have been storm-tested — we've come out the other side, and now we're taking on more passengers, getting bigger and stronger, having learned the lessons — like when to say, "We can't keep going with that project," and to get over it fast and move forward. If you come into this industry with a preconceived notion of exactly what your business will look like in five or ten years, that's on you if you keep chasing something that's clearly unsuccessful. Bryan Fields: The world is moving too fast to expect that five years from now anything will resemble today. It's better to have that north star, and from a decision-making standpoint, it doesn't matter if you go two steps right or two steps left, as long as you're moving toward it. I think the most important lesson today was the self-auditing — the internal reflection of "this might not be working for us," even when it's uncomfortable, but if the numbers say it's not working, you have to figure out what to do about it. Margaret Brodie: Yeah, you should have a north star and a vision — we refreshed ours last year: "The most trusted house of premium cannabis brands, elevating experiences for people everywhere." It makes clear what we're doing, and it helps us say, "We're not doing that project." Elevating experiences is a rallying cry for us — people can hold us accountable to it. I had a reflection driving in this morning — I was listening to "Glorious" by Macklemore, and the lyric "these are the good old days" struck me. If there's something I can leave people with today, it's that if you're in the cannabis industry right now, we are working in the good old days. I look back at the last ten years, and I'm so proud of the people I've worked with and the personal growth. But today is the good old days too, for where we'll be in five or ten years, and we're so busy looking forward that we're forgetting where we are and what we're building. We should be really proud and excited about where it's going. Bryan Fields: I love that. Last question — what question do you wish more people asked you? Margaret Brodie: I think it's, "Would you do it all over again?" Because a lot of people hesitate to be an entrepreneur, to be brave, to be uncomfortable, to take risks. I'd say go do it — even if you fail, what have you learned? I can't stand people sitting in the cheap seats lobbing in comments — if you're not out there hustling, I'm not going to listen to your opinion. There are people I tremendously respect in this industry who are out there doing what they think is best, taking a lot of flak for it, and I respect that tremendously. Bryan Fields: That's great advice. For our listeners who want to get in touch and learn more, where can they find you? Margaret Brodie: RubiconOrganics.com — you can reach out to us, or info@rubiconorganics.com. We're always listening, you can ping us on pretty much any platform. We're a small company, so we're realistic about how long it sometimes takes to get back to people, but be brave out there and go for it. Bryan Fields: Thanks for taking the time, this was a lot of fun. Margaret Brodie: Thanks, Bryan.