Scaling Safely: Risk, Capital & Compliance in a Maturing Cannabis Market

In the cannabis industry, financial fraud often goes undetected until it materially impacts valuation, financing, or regulatory standing. Limited access to banking services, inconsistent reporting practices, and pressure to demonstrate growth create an environment in which financial misrepresentation can thrive. 

Focusing on how financial statements, ownership structures, and transactional data are manipulated, this session examines financial fraud across the four stages of the business lifecycle: startup, growth, sustainment and Exit/M&A. 

Retail and service specialists, or “budtenders,” are consumers’ gateway to cannabis. While this role is often a minimum-wage entry-level hire receiving little training, the resulting compliance failures, poor company culture, unsafe and unqualified medical advice, or simply failing to meet customers’ needs clearly illustrate how uneducated teams can be your greatest liability. These risks are mitigated with quality training, which becomes any brand’s greatest asset when your team knows what they are doing and has confidence in what they say. 

Training frontline workers is becoming even more critical now as states begin to license social consumption lounges. This session will help you create informed strategies to ensure your team can effectively communicate (within their role and responsibilities) the law, types of products, ingestion methods, terminology, and titration information to guide customers to products that best meet their needs. This presentation takes a closer look at the role of the service and retail specialists, and how businesses can nurture their most critical—and costly—business assets, the team itself.  

Cannabis marketers face an evolving digital battleground where platform restrictions tighten while consumer demand for authentic education explodes. While CPG brands master aspirational storytelling, cannabis content must navigate AI-powered moderation, shadowbans, and arbitrary deletions. This session will cover strategies to avoid insta-jail and disabled accounts, showing cannabis brands how to thrive on social media without violations. 

Whether you're a cannabis brand struggling with restrictions, a dispensary looking for exposure, or a marketer trying to reach untapped demographics, this session delivers actionable strategies for breaking through algorithmic barriers while building authentic connections with consumers on platforms that loathe cannabis content.