Planting Seeds: Advanced Cultivators

Live from NECANN, we sit down with Rick Borges and JB from Advanced Cultivators for a conversation about cultivation, consistency, and building a cannabis company from the ground up.

The two discuss launching an award-winning grow operation in Massachusetts, using data-driven cultivation practices, and why vertical integration became the next step for the brand.

This episode also dives into family, partnerships, and the unexpected moments that helped shape Advanced Cultivators into what it is today.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Alright, so on three, what I'm gonna do is just say Cash Color Canvas, a high level of conversation, live from Neekan, and I'm gonna introduce you to you. Okay, perfect. Alright, so one, two, three. Cash Color Canvas, a high level of conversation live at NECAN. As you know, we do not have mics, so that stops nothing today because we're live on stage and I got some I got two great guests. We're gonna learn a lot about advanced cultivation today, man. So first off, I got my man Richard and I got uh JV. JV. I got Richard and J V with us. I remember J V primarily from Pride Packs. Maybe that's why I'm throwing I'm throwing around, but you know, like you say, you rebranded and we got we we better learn about all that today. So without further ado, man, also introduce yourself and just tell us what you did. Okay, you have Rich Borges, um, CEO of uh Advanced Cultivators. Um me and my uh business partner, uh Stephen Ramirez, we're the we're the starters of Advanced Cultivators. Uh I'm JV, uh I'm the head of cultivation for Advanced Cultivators. Um me and my son, we also own our own brand, Friday. Um so pretty much I just take care of run the whole day-to-day operations or everything that has to be with the brand. Got you, got you, man. So, you know, we got a funny background then being that you he worked in the fire department. I mean, like, how do we find ourselves in weed? So, I mean, it's kind of a long story. So I'm gonna go way back. This back in 2013, okay. Um, my sister's graduating law school and I meet Steven for the first time. And he mentions about Canada at that point. Uh, because it was kind of real big, obviously in California, he was involved in that, and uh he was asking me how I felt about it. At that point in my life, it wasn't on my radar. It was nothing I was really interested in doing. I didn't think maths would ever go for it. Um, fast forward, 2019. Uh my nephew gets a full right scholarship to BU of A. They decide that they're gonna pick up and move to Massachusetts. He then starts working for me at a construction business that I had since 2004. And uh he starts mentioning, hey, cannabis. Let's get into the mechanism. I know cannabis. I'm like, I don't know if it's for me. You honestly have a pretty successful construction business. I say, well, how about this? And this is where the story gets kind of crazy. I go, show me two legitimate cultivations and see what it's about. We go up to York, Maine, we take a look at two facilities. I am not impressed. I am like, this is not for me. To be honest with you, it looks like legal traps and dirt. Um he says, okay, I'm gonna change your mind. We're gonna fly back to California, and we go to this area called in Adelanto, it's called 420 Properties, and it has 16, 75,000 square foot facilities. They're all different brands, all of them, cookies on down. So we happen to go on to this one, it's uh Casa Azul, tequila. They have a brand there, uh Canvas brand. We walk into their facility, as soon as I walk in, I said, I will build it like this. This is this is the standard I want to be at. And he was like, oh shit, I shouldn't have showed you the Ferrari so quick. So then uh, and then so it really was from there. At that point on, we just started looking for um areas that uh would allow us to cultivate it. And we it took us about about six months, uh, we finally found a place. And it was in Lowe. And it happened to be the same place that we're at, but there was a little issue. I had read in the in uh in an article that any um place of business, if they have a loan, they might forfeit on that loan if it's to a cannabis company. So I let the owner know, hey, I know we signed the lease, we did all this, but I don't want to get past everything and then we have to stop and put you in a fast position. We appreciate it, we back off. Fast forward two months later, we're about to go in the old mill. And it's just because we feel like, hey, we just gotta get in the business, we're ready to go, we're done home. Um circles back to us and says, Hey, I talked to my bank, I have a lot of money in there, I'm gonna pull it because the only interest, because this is during COVID, um, is cannabis covering. So uh so uh he says, Do you guys want it? And we said a hundred percent. So we are blessed to kind of get that place. We signed the lease in uh July 15th of uh 2020. That's well, congratulations.

SPEAKER_00 4:13

That was kind of our journey in uh so it was gonna be pretty neat.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

That's amazing, that's amazing. So how did JB come in come into play? Well, um, so me and Steve uh were part of uh like a what do we call it? So a social equity like not equity, a social like uh community of growers out of California. And uh we we came out to California, involved in California, and he came out one to get some breakfast, right? Happened to be with my daughter, which is a waitress. He found out that my daughter ran my nursery doctor, and so my daughter called me, he's like, hey, I met these guys from Boston, they want to meet you, we had the same event. We were there all day, didn't meet him, and five minutes before I left, I met he wanted my daughter to come out. Uh so my daughter was training uh USB Lady May at the time for Casco, but uh worry about that for you, you know? Uh and but then it happened to be that she was training, so she didn't want to come. My son wanted a job, and so I brought him out and uh I met him. I at this time I talked to Steve over six months, and we build a good relationship with each other. Brought my son out to make sure that uh he was a fish for the team. My kid was going for me since they were 15. 10 years have been helping me out and brought him out, and here I've seen a facility, I've seen what Rich and Steve and other programs have built on their own that intrigued me because back home I'm on a farm and all that, a greenhouse farm, and uh I built everything from the ground up. So I was like, I'm about to be fine. You know, so I took the job, lived quite back home, and I decided I I would take the health provision, and two months later me and my son drove across the US and I've been here for three years off. Man, congratulations. You know, it also speaks how how small, how little small situations bring people together. You're talking about a waitress who's your daughter, having a conversation. Hey, I know this guy in Boston. Next thing you know, we got a whole we got a whole nother collaboration happening right here. So from that day on, everything's meant to be for me and my life. Yeah. Ever ever since. Everything's like cooked one after another. I love that. I love that, man. Well, one thing we are learning is that with advanced cultivation, that you're also growing into the dispensary model as well. So you're gonna have to grow and the disco all at the same time. Correct. What is that like trying to pull that off? That's like a that's that's a ch that's that that's more than that's not even a hatchery, that's something else. Like, what's that about? You know what it is? I I you know, for us it was about being vertically integrated. Yeah. Because we have a big square footage of the building, 36,000. We're only built out twelve thousand. Our business model in the beginning was to scale up, start building more of it. But as the industry started evolving, um, it was in our best interest to be vertically integrated and kind of control our own bearing. Um and keep our price points and keep all those type of uh situations in the kind of volatile market in massive. Um so that's why we went for the dispensary. Um it was also a business model that they had seen in California. You know, everybody rushed to dispensaries, nobody had the cultivation, um, and that's why we went cultivation first, because we know that that's the source of everything, and that suspension will be the next evolution for us. Yeah, the cultivation isn't the easy thing to pull off either. You know, especially uh and uh ask you that from your standpoint from your perspective. Cultivation is not easy. It's not easy to grow something. You think plenty of times you'll grow something, you think it's gonna be amazing. You might find mold, it might be not good enough, you gotta start throw everything away, start all over again. Talk to us about the process of of of cultivation and and how much time and work actually goes into making sure that the product you're about to smoke is gonna be smokable. The plant's gonna take no day on. That's it. You know, everybody thinks it's easy. Um, it's not labor work, right? But it's tedious work, it's kind of consuming, and you know, you you have to start with a very quick facility person. You know, and it starts with with the mud, all the mouths are and uh so that has to be like the the the room in the whole facility is on the same distance. If you don't have helpful moms, you can't have helpful phones. The phone goes to a team, a team it goes to my flower, you know, and you can use the target. So everything from that turn on has to clean process all the way through to have a perfect process with a topper uh environmental control that ox thrust, irrigation, how to steal the plant, you can't just water it and expect it to not know, but like there you go. There's a whole system. No, no. And y'all have perfected the system because you're also award-winning growers with that, man. Talk about it about the award. Matter of fact, you bought one yesterday, you weren't even sure about it. Talk about being an award-winning brand like that and growing that kind of product to where people aren't giving you and giving you flowers early. Well, I say that's actually awesome to kind of leave it too. So it's our third year in a row competing, and every year we've won. And so it was a nice thing to show one thing about consistency. It's something that we believe in, and we're showing it day in and day out. We're being blessed with these awards, but on our end, three years in a row of winning. Um, and we want to continue that. And it goes back to everything that he stated. Um, when we first built this, did we build this facility ourselves? Um, but we built it with my my brother-in-law, who's a grower as well. We had that in mind. So a lot of times when people build, they don't they can still grower late. He's just they're gonna hire us. He's part of the business. I'm a contractor. So we were able to really make this situation to where in the process of growing, we can keep it sterile, we can control the climate, we can do all those things where uh a lot of facilities don't have that in mind. Um so and then also centers. We have um over 63 centers. So a lot of these places, you want to jump into that part? I know we're we're data driven, right? So uh a lot of places will have like let's just say in one room, they have one sensor per table. Uh we have three sensors per table, so that way we collect more data over a whole spread of the whole room, right? Um without without knowing what's going on inside the plant, it's hard to know like how to steal the plant, how to how to make it cloud, you know. So with all the sensors and the whole facility, you know, not a lot of people have that material. And that allows us to maximize the potential of that plant. So we can see uh how he's watering, how he's seeing these things, and how it's reacting, and how is the climate, how is you know, microplaning, if we have to adjust on anything. This this data allows us to do those necessary changes to make sure that we're within the potential of that plant. Every culture is different, you know. So uh you gotta keep all that data so we need running again to protect protect that to stop going. Data is key, man. You need data in everything, but when you especially when it comes to growing, I I can assume, you know, that you would want to know what's gonna make it work every single time. And speaking about working every single time, do you have a favorite screen? So I don't use cannabis. Do you have a favorite screen? So, so uh we I have my I I love Pluto. Okay, so I'm known Stockholm and Charlie for uh growing original Frutos that was gifted to me. Yeah, that's my that's my baby. That's my bread baby. I'd have to try that, but yeah. With a lane of its own, a lot of people don't know about it. Yeah, so that's what's special. I hate that I think we're running close to time. So I want to kind of wrap this up a little bit. Please let somebody know how they can find out more about advanced cultivation, especially in Massachusetts, if they wanted to support whether it be social media or just kind of learn a little bit more about the brand. How can they do that? Yeah, so reach out to us on uh on Instagram. It's uh Cultivators Advanced. Um, and then also our website. Uh it's advancedcultivatorslc.com. Uh those are two good forums. Um, you know, as far as the Instagram, you get to really know the personality of our business. It highlights, and we're not afraid to show our grow room, and highlight a lot of uh different partners that we're associated with. Um those would be the two places to move. I don't know where we're at. I love that, I love that, man. Well, appreciate you guys stopping by. And one quick thing before we end. You are a fire cat, you're a fire um chief of Malden. Captain. Captain, sorry, Captain. I went to Malton Catholic, and the minute you said that you triggered me. Like I saw I just got an email, a mail uh mailing from them last week asking for a donation. I'm like, oh my god, right. My son went to Captain C too. Did he? He's a Lancer too? Yeah, he's a Lancer. Congratulations. Congratulations, man. Well, thank you for the Tabla Box. Thank you for the Tabla Box. And that's Cash Color Campus, high level conversation, live from me, can we finish this? Thank you, man. Man, I appreciate it. No problem. Let's see if I can get a picture with us. Don't take a pictures if you need it. Just never