Cultivating mental health with Tyler & Bryan from Front Row Ag!

It’s our 100th Episode! To mark this major milestone, we invited our good friends Tyler Simmons and Bryan Willkomm from Front Row Ag to join us for some real talk about why it’s important for cultivators – and all of us, really – to prioritize our mental health and well-being. From proactive problem-solving to making business trade-offs that support the team to staying rooted in self-worth outside of work, and much more, our centennial episode spotlights the importance of cultivating not just thriving plants, but people too!

Some of our favorite quotes from the session: 

You Are Not Your Next Harvest

“Sometimes you're going to crush it and you're just going to be riding high because you're like, oh yeah, we hit 120 grams/sqft on this harvest, and everything was sold before it even left the trim table, and that feels really good. But then you've got the times when something goes wrong, you had an HVAC problem, your dehumidifiers went out the last two weeks of flower, and maybe you didn't have the best harvest. And when that happens, do you want your entire feelings of validation and self-worth to be riding on…the latest harvest that you had?”

– Tyler Simmons, Front Row Ag

Treat Yourself Like You Treat Your Plants

“We've seen so many facilities where everybody is monitoring every single component of their plant – roots on substrate, the nutrient profile, environment. And then I watch them go and grab two liters of Mountain Dew and just pound it and talk about, “Man, I just feel like crap lately and drank too much last night”....To dedicate so much attention to the plant and neglect yourself, up into that support system and having support to reach out for help when you need it, and organizing your team in a manner that there is an escalation workflow for these types of situations.”

– Bryan Willkomm, Front Row Ag

Solve Problems Using A Growth Mindset 

“Maybe I'm weird ‘cause I'm a fixer, but I actually loved seeing problems. It's like, all right, here's a problem – What tools do we have to diagnose this problem? And then, even more importantly, after we've diagnosed it, what kind of resolution? How do we make improvements in what we are doing, or in how our equipment operates and how our people relate to each other? How do we make changes in that and implement it so that we can avoid those types of issues later on, and have a little bit more consistent average on the long term?” 

– Jason