I started Matrix, our core group on the ground was made up of family and friends, and then we built around that with people that shared the same vision. We built a great team filled with people who were passionate about the plant who mostly wanted to stand out and succeed in this industry partly because of their love of cannabis and the culture. We've essentially done the same thing with Fleur. At Fleur, I have also had the luxury of working for great people who appreciate me and the team we've built. They allow us to do what we do best with no micro-management, and I can't stress how important that is. I've seen several cultivations that were in a good place end up failing because the investors thought they knew more than the people they originally hired to grow for them. They ended up micromanaging the business to a point where they forced those out that were initially responsible for the company’s success. I am also a firm believer that the plants respond to the energy of who is around them. I've seen first hand examples of this countless times throughout my life, so to me it's very important that the staff has a constant positive attitude and positive energy. One of our jobs as managers is to make sure everyone on our staff is well taken care of and supported with the tools they need to succeed on a daily basis. Fleur pays our employees more than most cultivations offer, and we also offer benefits to all of our employees, which sadly seems to be somewhat rare on the cultivation side of the industry. The ownership at Fleur and Evergreen Organix and I see eye to when it comes to this. My philosophy coming into this industry was that I always kind of wanted to be the Google of cannabis. Google has a reputation of being an amazing employer that takes great care of their staff at a very high level. Everyone at Google wants to be at work when they're at work. Granted, we're not the corporate giant Google is, but providing that same level of a positive work environment is very important to us, and will always be part of our goal here at Fleur. As far as actual cannabis is concerned, we are constantly hunting for new strains and doing our best to get the best results out of the strains we currently offer. We of course want to make sure we put out flower with high cannabinoid percentages, but we also really focus on terpene production. We encourage everyone to look at how high and how deep our terpene profiles run on our test results at dispensaries and compare them to other cultivation numbers. We also have a lot of
great new strains in the works, some of which are testing around 4% total terpenes with total THC numbers in the high twenties. STEPHANIE: Tell us a little about your growing technique/style. EVAN: Fleur Cannabis is a Clean Green Certified cultivation facility (Clean Green Certification is one of the only certificates for a cannabis cultivation to be certified 'organic’ and is the most respected certification in our industry) utilizing sustainable, completely organic growing practices, just like Mother Nature intended. All our plants are grown in no-till living soil using our own hybridized version of Korean Natural Farming. Our composts and fertilizers are made in-house using all organic components, including plant material taken straight from our plants and organic fruits sourced from local farmers. This organic method of growing brings out the full potential of the plant, naturally, and we feel very strongly that it provides the cleanest, tastiest cannabis possible. We do not spray pesticides or fungicides and never use commercial fertilizers. I've used most every method possible to grow cannabis over the years, but after delving into the organic side of things and doing it at scale, I've come to the conclusion there is no better way to grow. For me it will forever be an organic style of growing from here on out. In my mind there is no better way, and commercially I feel growing organically makes the most sense. STEPHANIE: Are there any particular obstacles that are related to growing indoors? Do you also have experience growing outdoors? EVAN: There are tons of obstacles growing indoors, most of which start with creating the perfect environment. Millions and millions of dollars have been lost in this industry with people who have built cultivation facilities only to fail miserably. It's definitely not easy and not the golden goose so many people think it is. When we were designing Matrix there was no blueprint you could purchase, no one offering solid information on how to do this. We had to figure it all out for ourselves. We spent hundreds of hours over the course of 2015 and 2016 with general contractors, architects, mechanical engineers, and electricians formulating a plan. No one back then had a clue. A
lot of 'consultants' claimed they did, but very few actually knew how to scale up and meet the build-out demands Nevada created. 2015 for me was mostly spent in construction meetings and behind a computer screen developing the floor plan and business plan for Matrix. The amount of dedication it takes to do a project like this, and then the time to manage it, is something that I think most people can't really grasp. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, I was a single guy with no kids and really nothing to lose, so it was a gamble I could afford to take. Had I been married with children I highly doubt I would have had the time and the finances to get through it all. The lead up just to get the business started was all incredibly time consuming, expensive and challenging. All that said, I haven't even touched on the challenges of actually growing once your business is off the ground. It's fair to say you can take any problem you could potentially have in a home grow and multiply it by a million. As far as my outdoor experience is concerned, that has been limited. I was part of an outdoor grow in Florida many years back, but not on a level that I can add significant insight on. I tried growing outdoors in Delaware too, but the climate there and the soil (it's clay based) aren't good to grow cannabis. STEPHANIE: Are there any particular obstacles related to growing in Nevada? Any restrictions? EVAN: I love growing in Nevada. Aside from the hot summers which present challenges with HVAC, the humidity here is great, and we don't have an abundance of natural predators that attack the plant that you'd have to worry about as a grower, like in other parts of the country. Don't get me wrong, we still face the same challenges, it just seems to me based on my experience as a grower here to not be as prevalent, at least in Clark County. As far as the regulations and the state are concerned, I've always said there is no state that does privileged licensing better than Nevada. Nevada has a long history of governing taboo industries like gaming and prostitution, and in my opinion that experience played a part in creating what I feel is the best cannabis program in the world. The regulations here are very strict and buttoned up and I feel that has played a large part in the reason why we
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