When it comes to cannabis security local knowledge is important Large amounts of cash and valuable inventory create a dangerous environment for cannabis businesses. Mario Rodriguez the President of Forseti Protection Group, the industry's only minority-owned security company, joins Dan Humiston to talk about how they help cannabis protect their employees, customers, and business. He explains how they utilize the latest technologies to create a protection plan that's customized to each location. Produced by PodConx MJBulls - https://podconx.com/podcasts/raising-cannabis-capital Dan Humiston - https://podconx.com/guests/dan-humiston Forseti Protection Group - https://forsetiprotection.com/ Mario Rodriguez -https://podconx.com/guests/mario-rodriguez
When it comes to cannabis security local knowledge is important
Large amounts of cash and valuable inventory create a dangerous environment for cannabis businesses. Mario Rodriguez the President of Forseti Protection Group, the industry's only minority-owned security company, joins Dan Humiston to talk about how they help cannabis protect their employees, customers, and business. He explains how they utilize the latest technologies to create a protection plan that's customized to each location.
MJBulls - https://podconx.com/podcasts/raising-cannabis-capital
Dan Humiston - https://podconx.com/guests/dan-humiston
Forseti Protection Group - https://forsetiprotection.com/
Mario Rodriguez -https://podconx.com/guests/mario-rodriguez
Dan Humiston: [00:00:00] Today on MJ bulls, we are joined by Mario Rodriguez, the president of, for SETI protection group, Mario.
Welcome to this.
Mario Rodriguez: Hey Dan, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Dan Humiston: I'm really excited. As I said before, we jumped on you are officially the first Buffalo based guest I've had on go bells.
Mario Rodriguez: Go bills. Yeah. Yeah. We appreciate obviously offline, we were talking about the one degree of separation in Buffalo. It's just kind of how it works. So it's awesome to be linked with you here.
Dan Humiston: Yeah I'm really excited that you're here and there's so much excitement about New York right now with, passing the rec law. And now cannabis is going to be legally in New York state. Unfortunately it's still illegal federally. Which causes a bunch of issues.
And security is probably one of the bigger ones. , I guess maybe to start off with you guys are involved in so many things from providing security guards to even active shooter training, what are some of the unique challenges that cannabis present from a security stance?
Mario Rodriguez: Jeez. , it's [00:01:00] talked about quite often. Everyone thinks of it from a compliance standpoint, where do I check the box to get everything I need to for my dispensary or from a manufacturing company, but honestly, it's way bigger than that. There's other components that go into it and the thing that people often forget and what we talk about with clients and what we're talking about with perspective.
You have to protect your investment. So the checking the box, every state is different of what the checkbox means, and that's great for the compliance components, but what are you doing to protect your assets, protect your investment. And that includes the product that includes the cash, but even bigger than that, the people at the end of the day, , that's where folks just get lost in translation of what that security aspect is.
And it's always that budget line item where oil security is only going to have, X amount of money, or this is what are going to be my budget for that. But there's a bigger piece of that. What can we do to protect your assets so that your return on investment is actually, three or four or five times that to give you that longevity in your business rather than losing money?
Dan Humiston: , you bring up a really interesting point. [00:02:00] Obviously the immediate concerns are the ones that you're talking about, but there are some intangible aspects of a security breach.
Mario Rodriguez: Yeah.
Dan Humiston: employees can't be scared all the time, they won't be able to do their job.
Mario Rodriguez: Right, right. Yeah.
If you think about just recently, even, I, I can't remember the exact date here, but you had the situation in California where the dispensaries were hit for over 5 million in the course of a couple of days with robberies. Think about that from the employee standpoint.
. What does that feel like knowing that you're going into this type of environment? Nobody should have that kind of. Going into any kind of workplace. So what are we doing as business owners and what are we doing as investors and what are we doing as the cannabis community to have that kind of talk and transparency, but then what are we doing to protect them?
One of the things that we highlight when we talk with people is innovation over intimidation. That's kind of our world that we live in. How can we go and have a dispensary or manufacturing companies that you have black and brown consumers. , not all the time. So don't take [00:03:00] it that way, but there's all oftentimes that community that's coming in and there's a piece of that puzzle that comes along with that.
It doesn't have to be a hard target. I read an article where, people are talking about the safety and they're like I'm just going to have my roll-down screens that come over the doors. And when. Those days are over. , there's way more ability now to be able to protect your assets, have the aesthetics that are appealing, that are super sexy in your environment, and yet still being able to protect your employees and assets.
Dan Humiston: I saw that when you're one of your videos, you got to tell people about this, but you have access to so many cool technologies and the way you're implementing it, the film over the glass to make it bullet resistance.
Mario Rodriguez: Yeah. Yeah.
Dan Humiston: work?
Mario Rodriguez: There's a good, better, best scenario when you're talking about glass protection. Good is security film,. Think about it as your smartphone. You put that film over the top, it's protecting the glass Right.
To prevent it from cracking the screens similar concept.
And so your ability to put that over the top, it really just delays entry for some of those kinds of things. And then you go to the [00:04:00] panels now and if you have a storefront and you're retrofitting a storefront, we were talking with a client in New Jersey, that's coming up here and they had, I think it was 60 front windows of a storefront that they had to retrofit the panels, come over the top.
And that's your better scenario that the panels actually give you 250 times pound per force resistance on an actual glass. It actually prevents you from getting through to the glass itself and getting through to, into the interior of the building. And so you're adding layers. What we do is risk mitigation, essentially.
So everyone calls a cannabis security and all these other fancy things. And however you wanna say. But our job is to mitigate risks. And those are the good, better, best. And then you have the final one, which is the best one is that's the ballistic level. You want to protect against nine millimeters AR shotguns, whatever the case is, you have that ability.
And again, with the aesthetics, you're able to retrofit build that out. You don't have to have the hard vestibules and hard looking. You can really shape it up. Just technology and innovation is just beautiful and we have to use it to our advantage.[00:05:00]
Dan Humiston: it looks just like glass. That's the cool part about it. People can see and see out this kind of dovetails into the one size fits all. Doesn't work in cannabis. , every situation is different. Every organization is different.
There are so many nuances to doing it correctly. Let's talk about just Western New York in particular, right? I'm assuming that there are some things in Western New York that an outside firm wouldn't understand, maybe. Patterns of weather, all these different things.
You take all that into account , when you're putting together a security plan for dispensary.
Mario Rodriguez: absolutely. Absolutely. So that is where our, I think our specialty lies and a couple of other components, one of the things that we have in our private sector our physical security specialists that are what we call septet what is actually crime. Do environmental design. These folks are actually using the environments around your location along with data and research that we put in to talk about what the risks are, and then you go into what we call again for risks, all hazard approach.
What are we [00:06:00] looking at for plans and operations? , are you planning for contingencies? We just had last week here. And it more than anything, but we had six feet of snow that came on in a matter of a couple of days, , two feet, one day another two and a half feet the next.
And then the last couple of days, we had another two feet that came. So it's like, are you preparing for these? Think about that from the delivery standpoint, how are your drivers getting in, how are you coming through and delivering your product to your environment? If they're not being able to get through with the plows and everything else that are coming into your environments here.
There's a lot of things that come into play. And if you're not having someone on your team, that's your trusted partner to give you these advisory solutions to really have a positive impact on your cannabis cultivation center or your dispensary.
You're really selling yourself short.
Dan Humiston: And you're not just in Western New York. You're also in Boston.
Mario Rodriguez: Correct. Yeah. We have a second office location in Boston.
In New York we specifically have three divisions. So we have physical security assets. Those would be your uniform guys on site. And then you go into [00:07:00] the consulting aspect and then the training mitigation component of the.
And then the final part is , the glass protection. As you mentioned in Boston, we specifically focused on the cannabis consulting and consulting risk mitigation only that has been our focus and core focus there at that office. , we don't stray away from that too often.
Dan Humiston: with applications there's a component of the application to give People that have been affected by the war on drugs and advantage or, help mitigate , some of the unfortunate things that have happened , over the years.
, your company can help with that as well.
Mario Rodriguez: Yeah. So the social equity applicants, or anyone in the legacy market, that's going through that process and trying to figure out whether that's a good application.
for them or not, or where they can enter the cannabis market in space. We're one of the very few minority certified security risk management companies in the cannabis space.
It's extremely important for us to be able to have some sort of positive impact with these individuals that have been impacted negative. In the past by [00:08:00] marijuana prohibition our goal is to really just change that norm assist them to really get themselves up and running and get them to where they need to be.
And it could be a phased approach to, that there's obviously budgets and all these things play a factor into what you're able to do out of the gate. But there's so many opportunities. It's just having the right conversation. And again, just having a trusted partner by the time. Believing in you believing in this industry and what we're able to do and achieve together.
And again looking forward to the future and how we can play a positive impact here. So that's what we do.
Dan Humiston: No, that's great. We'll have all for SETI protection groups info in the show notes. And so you can just click the link to learn more about what some of the opportunities are probably even to speak to somebody on Mario's team. I'm sure it will be happy to speak with you, Mario. Great to have , a fellow Buffalonian on the show for a change.
Nice to have you on the show. Thank you.
Mario Rodriguez: I appreciate it. Dan I'll have some wings sent over to you really soon,