Editor's Note: Presented by Cannabis Business Times in an as-told-to format. Anderson shared below information directly with CBT. Edited for length and clarity.
Getting into cannabis—man. I tried it one time when I was younger, and I basically fell in love with it. But then, when I started using it for my ADHD, that’s when I really explored the medicinal values of cannabis, and it just kind of snowballed from there. I was intrigued by the fact that there are different strains that have different effects, so you can breed them and come up with something totally new.
I knew when I got out of college that I was going to get into the industry. I remember following the Colorado rec vote when I was in college throughout the night to see if it was going to pass, and then we all smoked celebratory blunts when it happened. And I was like, I'm going to Denver as soon as I get out of college. Then, I got in the industry, started as a hemp temp, started just learning about the plant from square one and working my way up from there. And after that, went into a dispensary, worked my way up and started running the dispensary after two years and oversaw some grows, and then ended up coming out to Oklahoma to start my own thing.
I’m from Dallas originally. I heard about the change in laws, [State Question] 788, [which legalized medicinal cannabis in Oklahoma in 2018,] and I read the bill, and I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is one hell of an opportunity.” And that’s how I ended up out here. We kind of came up with a business idea and made it real.
I work directly with my parents. My mom is director of sales, and she is basically the face of our company, going out and really pushing the products. And then my dad is more of an operations person, and he works on the farm full-time with us, just innovating and building stuff. … It's got its ups and downs, but honestly, we get along really well. It's easy to talk to them about money issues. We're very transparent. Anything we need to prioritize, we usually agree on, which is kind of rare when you have different owners and companies.
I have a few of my heroes– I always looked up to Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart. A large portion of my leadership inspiration stems from my parents. I was raised watching them accomplish their goals to provide a good life for my siblings and me, and now to be an entrepreneur alongside them has instilled even more values for me as a leader and owner of this company.
One of my previous jobs was being a recruiter, and we usually look at someone’s resume as their story. I really look for somebody that sticks with a place for a while, who isn’t jumping around. Those usually become the best employees—the ones that have tenure at different places and actually learned to develop and learned different positions. We’ve seen that multiple times, where we’ll get someone that worked their way up to manager somewhere else and came in to work for us [and] worked their way up at our company.
When I was working at [a] burger joint, basically the culture was very, very bad there. There was no incentive to move up. There was no way to be promoted. It was pretty horrible. I learned what not to do. You’ve got to incentivize, you’ve got to promote fast. If you find some talent on your team, you empower them and promote them as fast as you can once you realize it.
[Working at a dispensary] helped me learn about collaboration. They empowered me, they promoted me and gave me the keys to the kingdom. They didn’t really know me that well, which was kind of crazy on their part, but everything worked out. [The] flexibility they gave me and the collaboration—I was able to take [those things] on to Noble Nectar.
We test all the products. Before it hits the market, we like to have focus groups with all our employees to try everything. We will do that before we release stuff on the market, we’ll do it when we try entering a competition—we’ll do our own blind competition and let everybody judge it. Really, everyone’s opinion does have some value at our company, which is awesome. I'll hear stuff from people we just hired all the way up to people that I've been working with for three or four years, and I think everyone either is coming up with a blend or strain name or different ways to innovate. We’re always listening to our team.
Unpopular opinion, but I lean towards the cheesy cultivars. Exodus Cheese, GMO Fatso Cheese Whiz, Bright Side Cheese, are just a few of my current favorites.
You want the plant to grow faster than it does. A lot of stuff takes time to develop, and it's hard to train your brain to [understand], OK, we [plant] this, and in four months, we're going to have this. So I would just say me being impatient is probably my biggest challenge. I set up lots of different projects and just keep myself busy in different facets. That's what really helps me switch gears between different things and help with that [impatience].
We’re constantly innovating. You’ve got to innovate or you’re going to die in this market. We’re constantly working on improving our efficiencies and terpene preservation, getting as close to the plant as possible, growing the plant the best we can, and just really keep innovating, making a cleaner product. Since we started, we’ve added a lot more filters and some different [integrated pest management] changes in our grow that have just made things super, super clean that we’re really proud of.
I had the pleasure of talking with two Fortune 100 CEOs one time, and I asked them, ”What’s the best advice you can give me?” And it really stuck with me. [They said], “If you have a good attitude and you work hard, that will get you farther than anything else.”
