Ep #331: Resilience + Reinvention = Opportunity - with Steve Peterson

This week’s episode is a conversation with Steve Peterson, Partner at Tress Solutions. Today, Steve shares his professional journey which is defined by recognizing good opportunities and taking the plunge.He tells the story of how he adapted to his client's needs and provided solutions to their biggest pain point: cannabis trash collecting. Steve explains that investing in the right people came first in entering an emerging cannabis niche worth $5 billion.What You’ll Learn From This Episode:07:21 Seeing new perspectives and challenging the status quo12:13 Cannabis waste: Addressing urgent problems and finding opportunities16:31 Investing in people first and products second19:01 The cannabis industry: A great product with room to growQuotes:06:46 “You might create something that’s good but not good enough. And I think you’re constantly forced to look and say well, how can we make this better?”07:18 “The buyer didn’t want to have more compliance software. What they wanted was somebody just to frankly pick up their trash. So we have to adapt and say, okay, we’ll pick up your trash.”11:50 “Until you can see it and feel it, you don’t really truly understand what problems they’re having. And so from that knowledge, then you can really architect the better solution.”13:19 “We started seeing a whole alternate industry out there which is basically taking those stalks, stripping them down, and turning them into things like clothing, bedding, industrial hemp. So that whole market is a $5 billion market.”18:10 “Let’s not play this game of my product is $5 cheaper. Let’s buy the waste from the grower and say we’ll take it from here so they don’t have to pay for it. It solves an economic problem for the customer, at the same token from an ecology standpoint.”T