2300 - Building Greatness from the Garage with Green Leaf Payroll & Business Solutions Inc's Marc Rodriguez

0:04Well, hey, Thoughtful Leader. Welcome to the Thoughtful Entrepreneur. On this show, I interview purpose-driven founders, experts, and change makers who are making a real impact in the world. Want to be a guest? Simple. Go to upmyinfluence.com and click podcast. I'd love to promote your story to our audience of over 100 ,000 and across over 2 ,300 daily episodes and counting. Want to get booked on other great shows like this? Simple. Go to podverified.com and get your free guest authority score. Thousands of hosts are looking for high quality guests and Podverified connects you the right way. Now let's dive into today's episode.

0:58With us right now, it's Mark Rodriguez. Mark, you are the CEO and co-founder of Greenleaf Payroll and Business Solutions. You're found on the web at greenleafbizsolutions.com. Mark, it's great to have you. Great to be here, Josh. Thanks for having me. For sure. Well, listen, before we get going into your superpowers and the work that you do, Mark, what are you currently doing for fun? Things I love to do for fun, Josh. I love to play golf. I love to play golf. I love to surf. I live in San Diego, California. And I've actually probably the thing I do best, the hobby that I do best is probably fitness.

1:35I've been a competitive CrossFitter for over a decade. So I spend a lot of time in the gym and doing all kinds of crazy stuff to push my body. What's going on in the CrossFit world in 2025? All kinds of stuff is going on. The CrossFit's up for sale right now. There's just like battle between the old CrossFit regime and the new CrossFit regime and what's going on. There's always drama. The CrossFit Games just ended. Shout out to my training partner. His name is Sean Patrick. He took third at the men's 55 to 59 division this year. So congrats to Sean. But yeah, lots of going on in the fitness world.

2:12A lot of drama. I don't really subscribe to it. I'm just trying to stay healthy. The aging process, you know? Yeah, yeah, for sure. Just out of curiosity, like how do you, you know, again, someone in likely, I'm guessing 40, somewhere around there in your 40s. but how do you keep from injury? How do you keep yourself from injuring yourself? Especially when you're, I know sometimes it's CrossFit, you know, you're kind of doing a lot of variety of different things. And, and if you're not careful, it, it just sucks. Like that's my biggest thing right now is just injury prevention. And so I can keep going.

2:48Yeah, I'm constantly stretching. I go to the chiropractor once a week. I'm always kind of focusing on my movement patterns, right? I started crossfitting when I was in my late twenties. So, you know, little aches and pains. I paid, I played competitive soccer growing up. So, you know, you got to know how to take care of your body and listen to your body. And so when you start to have that, Oh, my foot or my ankle hurts or my knee hurts, like that's your body telling you, Hey, something else in that chain of movement, that pattern, that, that line is, it is, is not aligning properly. Get it looked at.

3:19So, you know, whether you're getting body work done or going to the chiropractor or just stretching with intent, like those are the things you have to the more you're going to use just like anything else like we're talking about business owners today like you're you're working on your business because you want to make it better you got to do the same thing with your body right and that's maintenance that's care that's all those other things too i feel like as we age you know when we were younger you know stretching was kind of like you can get away with not stretching as much like you know as you age like yeah no you don't have that luxury anymore it's pretty much and i like that idea of intentionality behind your stretches too.

3:54I mean, you'll sleep better. Just your whole life will be better if you prioritize that. Thank you for the motivation. I appreciate that, Mark. That's a great reminder. So let's talk about Greenleaf Payroll because this is something that, again, you're the co-founder of about seven and a half years ago, absolutely has exploded because you serve the hemp and cannabis space. So give us an overview of Greenleaf. Yeah, so Greenleaf was founded in my garage about eight years ago. And I worked for one of the big box payroll companies in Southern California. And right around 2016, cannabis was legalized recreationally in California.

4:34And so that big box payroll company was bringing on companies to do payroll for. Some of those companies were cannabis companies. And it was against that company's policy. And many companies, every company for that matter, virtually, every payroll company's policy to bring on cannabis companies because of the federal illegality of cannabis, right? Moving money for a cannabis company. Are you serious? That was kind of the attitude. So this big box payroll company was kicking these cannabis companies off of payroll. well, they had employees that need to be paid. They had, you know, those employees need to be paid.

5:08They need benefits. They need all the other things that everyone else needs as an employee. So we saw a need and we said, Hey, we're going to launch Greenleaf. So we started out just in California, working with some dispensaries and some smaller clients kind of perfected our service offering. And you fast forward to today, we work with the largest cannabis companies in the world. We do their payroll and HR services and offer, you know, incredible technology for them to leverage their human capital. And, you know, we off, we have expanded into other things like benefits. Like we offer the first ever transparent, fully transparent cannabis 401k platform, which is secured through first, first citizens bank, American trust.

5:43We have Vanguard involved in that as well. So we're really proud of a lot of things we've done and kind of pioneered in the industry. Well, you know, when you get in early, you know, I think that there was certainly skepticism. Oh, it's a little shady. And I'm like, how ridiculous. Like if it's legalized, it's legal. And, you know, but, you know, I would imagine even today, there are quite a few peculiarities and just maybe red tape or hoops that you have to jump through because systems are still catching up and there are still biases out there. Do you mind maybe just kind of sharing why it would be really valuable to work with you versus some generic payroll company.

6:26You know, even if they say, sure, we'll take cannabis clients. Yeah. You know, that experience, like anything else, right? You own a business, you have a niche that you're focused on, who's going to be better than you to handle any kind of anything that comes at it. So I'll give you an example. Most states require cannabis companies to put a labor peace agreement in place before they open their doors, right? So oftentimes, larger or mid-sized cannabis companies are forced into unionization. Like crazy to think about that, right? So you could have 25 employees or 30 employees, and now you're basically subject to a union coming in and unionizing your employees against you as a business.

7:05This is crazy, right? That's tough. If you're baby brand new and you're struggling and you have thin margins as it is. Yeah, and 75 % of cannabis companies are losing money today, right? Because of the heavy taxation around 280E, which we can probably get into. But, you know, just dealing with labor unions and the reporting and all of the different things that go in with unionization, we help our clients navigate that, which is not something you're going to see in traditional business all that often. And then the unions are different by state in a lot of cases. That's just one example. Most cannabis companies today that are profitable are what's called vertically integrated, meaning they own the entire supply chain from seed of the plant to the sale of the plant, right?

7:51So they're cultivating it. They're manufacturing that plant into gummies or edibles or something like that, vape, cartridge, oils, what have you. And then they own the process of getting it to the dispensaries. They own the dispensaries. And then basically they're maximizing margins because there's no markup to a different vendor along the way they own the entire process. That's called vertical integration. That's really like five or six businesses in one. So when you talk about a payroll and HR infrastructure that encompasses all of that, you want to work with someone that knows the ropes. That's us.

8:24Yeah, no kidding. Well, what are the major headlines for your world in 2025? I know in a lot of industries, there's been a lot of confusion, is one way to say it. It's just, you know, a lot of wait and see type stuff. A lot of, oh, this law is changing. Oh, no, I guess it's not. No, now it's, anyway, I'm sure you're experiencing that as well. Yeah, so I'll give you the CliffsNotes version, Josh. So everyone hears about like the, maybe you heard about the farm bill or you heard Trump recently talk about or being questioned about the cannabis and hemp industry. And there's all these different things like THC versus hemp derived THC and Delta nine and Delta eight and all these different things.

9:11And people are like, what are we, what is this? Right. So basically what it comes down to is a few years ago, I believe it's 2018, the Farm Bill was passed, which allowed for basically commercial commercial use of hemp. Well, because there's been so little legalized research around cannabis, what researchers found was that they could essentially extract the same properties out of hemp to get that same high that you might get out of a federally legal THC operation, right? So now I can commercially grow hemp legally with a farm bill in any state in the country. I can process that hemp, and now I can produce gummies.

9:58I can produce all these different things that are going to give the end user, the consumer, the same high or similar high as one that would be derived from a plant, a THC plant, right, in a highly regulated state, right? The issue that that brings on here, Josh, is that you have people that are able to circumvent companies and individuals. They're able to circumvent the licensing process that these legal cannabis operators had to go through in a lot of cases. So that's kind of what's going on right now in the industry. It's a massive, massive shakeup. But I think at the end of the day, ultimately a good thing that the cannabis is the top of conversation in politics and top of conversation for businesses, because some of these things are going to have to change and they will probably in the next 12 months for the cannabis industry to truly survive in the shape that is in today.

10:52Yeah. Wow. Fascinating. So how does that, when you are working with your clients, I don't know how much of an advisory position that you're in. Do you mind maybe just kind of giving kind of scope of services and what you do? Yeah, great question. So we do everything for our clients when it comes to payroll, HR, human capital benefits and the like. So, you know, you're going to need to hire your employees. We can go as far as posting jobs for you, recruiting for you, scheduling phone interviews for the people in your organization. We can go as far as actually doing the interviews for your organization and giving you people ready to go.

11:34So we have staffing and recruiting models available for our clients to plug into. If they have their own people that can do that, you have your own administrative staff, we can give you all the technology and teach you how to operate all that technology to get that employee to your company. Once that employee is there, we're going to help you administer all the benefits that are required for that particular state, health insurance, dental life, vision, whatever those things are. We take that information, Josh, and we're going to make sure it gets to the carriers appropriately so that when Bob shows up to the doctor that they pull him up in the system and he's got health coverage along with his wife and his kids.

12:09So we do all those things. We actually will even go as far as helping our clients with terminations or M &A activity as two companies are coming together as one. There's multiple systems, there's fragmented divisions, and we kind of bring company that really offers payroll and HR services as part of our core offering. And to that industry and SMBs in general and growing and scaling companies, regarding just generally dealing with human capital, payroll, that sort of thing, are there any kind of industry agnostic advices? If you're speaking to a room of 50 CEOs and they kind of range in terms of industries, what do you typically like to advise, advocate for, or recommend that those leaders be mindful of or pay attention to or watch out, particularly maybe something that might be a little bit newer or relevant right now?

13:14Yeah, that's a great question. So the big buzz right now, Josh, is AI. AI, AI, AI, right? Everyone's talking about AI. And how do we essentially limit our administrative burden, our overhead, when it comes to how we leverage AI and then how does that play into payroll and HR? And the answer to that question or some of the insights I have is we're not quite there yet when it comes to AI. So if you're being prospect or you're hearing a lot of AI can do, AI can do it. Like be very skeptical because it's not quite there yet. I've seen everything. I've seen the best. I think the second thing is that right now, it's so important as businesses are getting going or if you're making a change in your payroll and HR vendor, that you're picking the right technology to start.

13:57I see a lot of companies rely on their HR director, their VP of HR, their VP of payroll to pick their next HR or payroll vendor. And sometimes they just get it incredibly wrong, right? So if you're an owner of a company and you're letting your team determine who that is, I would just say maybe take a little bit closer look. Be on some of those meetings. Be a little bit more involved. Ask some questions because that decision will directly impact a relationship that your employees have with your business. And if you pick a bad one, you can put a lot of key people in a weird spot. Last thing, Josh.

14:39long-winded, but your vendor that you choose, payroll and HR, that vendor, the technology and interface they provide to your employees, that brand should also match your brand that you're trying to create, right? So you're not going to see a big tech company using QuickBooks for a payroll vendor, right? They're going to use a technology that has an app where the employees can access and interact and engage with the HR teams that are running that company. So that's what I got. That's Soapbox, quick top of my head stuff. So to our friends that are listening right now, your website is greenleafbizsolutions.com.

15:20Who is your ideal client? You know, I used to say everybody, Josh. I used to say everybody. But really now it's companies that are in rapid growth mode. It's companies that are trying to grow and scale very quickly. It's companies that plan to do mergers and acquisitions. but really anyone with any level of complexity in a highly regulated industry, we're going to excel with, right? Because our, our, our service model is a high direction, high support service model where we're actually training your staff on how to use our services. If you, if you pick us up for managed services, meaning you want to outsource your payroll department to us, you want to outsource your HR department to us.

15:59We document everything and build SOPs for your organization so that you can essentially replace us if that's what you wanted to do. So yeah. All right. The website, greenleafbizsolutions.com. In addition to obviously, you know, grabbing a call with someone on the team, do you have any resources that you'd recommend for someone that, you know, wants to learn more from the content or whatever you're creating? Yeah, so you can find us on LinkedIn. You can find me on LinkedIn. You can find my company on LinkedIn. Also our website. So we have a full website that shows lists of managed services and lists of things that we do.

16:37Like you said, Josh, greenleafbizsolutions.com. But really anything that you're going to throw at a traditional payroll company, you can throw at us. But if you have some wrinkles, maybe you had some tax issues, some payroll tax issues with the feds or with the state. Maybe you had a transition where something was missed and you're trying to communicate that to your payroll company. And they're just not quite understanding what's going on, right? you feel like you're getting lost in the shuffle, like you can come find us and we'll get you squared away. Awesome. Mark Rodriguez, president and co-founder of Greenleaf Business Solutions, found on the web at greenleafbizsolutions.com.

17:11Mark, thank you so much. Thanks, Josh.

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