Gary Long Podcast Transcript
Gary Long joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, Home of The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Gary Long. Gary Long is the Chief Executive Officer of Botanical Sciences. With an extensive background in health care in the state and across the country, Long has uniquely qualified to lead botanical sciences on this journey to provide hope and relief For the patients of Georgia, most recently long served as Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer of our one RCM offering technology enabled revenue cycle management services for health care providers across the country, while at our one long led the company to unprecedented levels of market success and profitable revenue growth.
Well, good afternoon, Gary. Welcome to the show!
Gary Long: Thanks so much, Brian. I appreciate it!
Brian Thomas: You bet. I appreciate you making the time, starting the day off with a podcast from the Georgia area. And I do appreciate the time. Sometimes I’m traversing all around the globe, but today is fun. Good to meet you and listen to your story.
So, Gary, jumping into the first question, you’ve transitioned from significant roles that are, are one RCM and Premier to leading Botanical Sciences. What inspired this shift towards botanical based therapies, especially within the context of your extensive health care background?
Gary Long: Yeah, I mean, it’s a really good question.
And ironically, I’ve been asked that quite a few times by. Family and friends and colleagues that I’ve worked with in the past. It’s a bit of a surprise to some folks, but you know, look, it’s all health care related. I’ve spent the entirety of my 30 plus year career in health care. And whether it was in these companies, most recently, you mentioned these two public based companies or some of the privately held ones that have been in in the past.
You know, they’re all altruistic. It’s around serving patients. We’re all patients. Our family members are patients. Our friends are patients. And so, you know, irrelevant, you know, to whether it’s on the financial or business side of health care or the clinical side of health care, you know, what, what inspires me is trying to make the health care system and the treatments for people who are patients better.
So, it really wasn’t an easy transition for me. I’m having spent the last, let’s call it. 10 to 12 years on the business side of health care. Specifically, I really want to get back into the clinical side of health care again. And this particular company being a brand-new industry in our state around medical.
And being able to serve patients in a brand-new industry in the eighth largest state, which is Georgia was something that really was inspiring to me. And, you know, the experiences that I’ve had those 2 companies as well as McKesson and others in my past have all kind of set me up from experiences and those types of things to be able to bring all of that to a brand new industry and to an early stage company in that industry to, again, serve patients and to establish kind of new ways of doing things in our state.
And I think you would agree, like, you know, medical cannabis, well, it’s been around for, well, cannabis has been around for thousands of years, but the industry in the United States has really been around for less than 15 years. So, I think therapy itself being something that people should now consider as another, let’s say, tool in the toolbox of things that you can use to help provide relief for diseases and conditions, is pretty revolutionary. I mean, there’s not a lot of medical doctors out there who have you know, been trained in the science of endocannabinoids. They know what it is in general, but they really don’t understand the science behind it. And that’s not necessarily their fault. It’s not being taught in medical school.
And I think you’re going to see this transition occur over the next few years, especially now that the federal government. Is has a signal that they’re going to reschedule marijuana from a schedule 1 narcotic to a schedule 3 that, you know, science and research that comes in behind this will now be allowed to occur.
So, you know, with all that being said, we’re in some pretty, great times as it relates to this industry and being a great therapeutic treatment for a lot of patients.
Brian Thomas: Thank you, Gary appreciate the back story on that. And you do have a broad experience in the healthcare arena, which I believe brings a lot of benefit to your company, and obviously it’s helped grow and be the success of your company and I love I love your mission been in healthcare for 20 plus years myself on the technology side. So, I do appreciate that.
Gary, switching gears here, could you elaborate on the mission of Botanical Sciences and how it aims to provide hope and relief to patients in Georgia? What specific needs are you addressing?
Gary Long: Well, yeah, I mean, as you just stated, our mission is to provide hope and relief to the patients of the state of Georgia who are suffering from the qualifying conditions that the state has outlined. There’s now 17 qualifying conditions of certain disease states and symptoms that come from many of those diseases.
The most noteworthy of those are like chronic and infractable pain, which, as you know, comes from a whole myriad of potential conditions. As well as a lot of neuromuscular diseases some of the usual suspects like cancer sickle cell disease. A lot of dementia related, and Alzheimer’s related conditions are also well tolerated you know, by the, the treatment of having medical cannabis.
So you know, with all that being said, we, we are really focused on providing, again, therapy for physicians and for patients that can be used as a tool in the toolbox for them to either provide help in treating disease. Or to help alleviate symptoms that come from these diseases or conditions, and I can tell you from my own personal experience of, you know, interacting with a lot of the thousands of patients that have visited our dispensaries in the last 18 months.
It is unbelievable, it is profound, the impact that we’re having on people’s lives. Now, I’m not going to sit here and tell you that this is curing disease or anything like that. But, you know, there’s a quality to life that is important when people are going through very serious conditions and diseases.
And a lot of times, you know, we’ve been trained in our country, especially that the only answer is to take a pharmaceutical drug from a large company. And I’m a huge proponent of pharmaceuticals from pharmaceutical companies. I worked for a pharmaceutical distributor for a large part of my career. But, with that being said, it’s not the cure all, be all.
And I think we offer a very pure, high-quality product that people can trust. And I think that’s one of the issues and challenges, not only in the state of Georgia, but around the country, is making sure that if you choose to consume these types of products, that you’re getting it from a trusted source that’s been laboratory tested, It’s free of pesticides and microbials and heavy metals and those types of things.
Just because of what you see going on in our country with the scourge of fentanyl not knowing where products are made or grown or how they’re grown. You know, those are the types of things we’re trying to bring to the market and provide a really a deep level of education and consultation to patients.
Because again, we’re trying to create the awareness so that it’s not this taboo thing that it once was led, we’re all led to believe it, it is. So, you know, that’s that really kind of fuels our mission as a company, not just myself, our leadership team and all of our employees. And again, we see the results every day, so we, we feel good about the work that we’re doing.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I appreciate that. And you did bring a different perspective to the mainstream, you know, farm industry and I get it. But you are bringing hope. And relief to patients through an alternative method, and I, I do appreciate that really do Gary, how was your background with healthcare technology companies like McKesson influenced your approach to integrating technology at botanical sciences?
Gary Long: Yeah, it’s it, it definitely has had a direct impact. I’ve spent of my 30 plus year career. 20 of it in tech and tech enabled services companies. So we use technology every day. And in fact, our entire company is built on kind of a tech enabled set of systems and platforms, which again is, is very contemporary.
Or how maybe this industry has evolved, right? So, I think the typical company, I’m not talking about, you know, the large corporations that have come into the medical marijuana industry, but a lot of the startups tend to be mom and pop type shops. We’ve started with a state of the art out of the ground facility that has been enabled technology enabled.
So, we can dial in any aspect of the manufacturing process all the way through the logistics. Down to the dosing and dispensing of these products. So again, the purpose is to provide people with almost a pharmaceutical like experience but doing it with an alternative non pharmaceutical as it’s described today.
And so, whether we’re talking about the information that we, we, we use to engage patients out in the marketplace, or if it is how we’re actually getting products out to market and making sure that we’re doing it effectively and efficiently. And again, backward integrating into our, our manufacturing and cultivation process.
Everything we do is using technology. And now we’re starting to incorporate a lot more, a lot more of artificial intelligence. Into our business and so, you know, it’s, it’s quite unique. I would, I would say, especially for an early-stage company to incorporate this. But again, that’s been my experience. And I know the impact that it not only has on the effectiveness of our business.
But then the engagement that we have with our customers and our, and our future customers that this will serve us well and serve obviously our state. Well,
Brian Thomas: Thank you. Gary, appreciate you highlighting some of the tech. We’re a tech podcast and platform. And so we like to highlight some of that stuff for our audience.
I do appreciate you integrating that into your company and Gary, where do you see the future of botanical therapies heading? And how is botanical services positioning itself to play a role in this future?
Gary Long: Well, I mean, again, we’re one of three companies in the state who have an integrated license to sell these products.
I think the way in which we will show up in the future is going to be leading this industry. We’re only one of two companies who have a, what’s called a class one license in Georgia, which means we have the. Highest tier of classification by the state that allows us to have the largest amount of growth and delivery to the market.
And with that, you know, again, we’re shaping not only what we’re doing for patients, but we’re helping shape. Working in conjunction with lawmakers and other public officials, the future state of what it will look like in Georgia. And I, and I will say, I’ll commend. The leaders in our state have evaluated what has happened in other states, good and bad.
And, you know, we’re in the middle of that conversation of evaluating, well, what is working and what isn’t working and how can we make it better for our state. So that we can serve as a, an example, a positive example of how this can be done responsibly. It can actually provide the, the, the desired impacts to Georgia State population.
And to do it in a way that folks feel like it’s, it’s, it’s legitimized. It’s no longer taboo. Now that’s, that’s an evolutionary path that we’re on. We’re going to lead the way from this kind of medical centric out model. Our business is founded by a physician and anesthesiologist. So, everything we do is rooted in the science of medicine.
And again, that coupled with my background of being a technology leader for the lion’s share of my career. I see these two things coming together in a, in a beautiful marriage that will again serve these 11 million plus people in the state of Georgia plus serve as an example for other states that have either yet to go through the process of legalizing medical marijuana in their states and or looking at other states that already have these programs in place.
And improving their respective programs, because there are examples where it’s not working extremely well in some other states. So that’s a pretty simplistic answer. But we try to keep things simple here.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I appreciate that, Gary. And again, sharing your vision for the botanical sciences.
They are your company. And serving the residents of Georgia. It’s been a great podcast today and I want to let you know, it was certainly a pleasure having you on and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Gary Long: Okay, great, Brian. Thank you very much.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Gary Long Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s podcast page.
