A few years ago, Eastman re-connected with childhood friend Shawn Hauser, a partner at Vicente Sederberg. After careful consideration, the pair decided to join forces, launching Rootwurks in July 2021.

“We took 20 years of lessons from the food industry and applied it to what we built, tailoring the solution from the ground up to support the unique intricacies in the cannabis market,” Eastman said.

The initial content offered by Rootwurks was curated partially by the compliance team at Vicente Sederberg, leaning into its impressive array of expertise.

To provide the most value to its clients, the company worked meticulously to conduct additional research on what it really needed to know.

“Anytime an operator had been dinged on an audit by a regulatory body, we pulled all that information and the corresponding fines, and then use that to prioritize the topics we cover,” Eastman explained.

“We spent nine months doing industry data scraping and public records requests to build a consolidated database of all the non-conformities that have been issued in the industry.”

Lessons run the gamut of manufacturing and retail compliance, including workplace safety, sanitation, and the proper way to verify customer IDs.

High-level, overarching courses, as well as deep dives into subtopics are offered, covering every detail an employee across the vertical would need to know.

Compliance Through Your People

The Rootwurks platform provides initial compliance training along with reinforcement through three different modules.

Operators can deploy an awareness module, which provides all the pertinent information required by state law. A “micro” module provides bite-sized sessions laser-focused on specific components of the awareness modules. 

Long-form certification modules are designed for supervisors or those on a cannabis career path that may call for more advanced knowledge. 

Eastman and the team developed the multi-pronged approach to combat the so-called forgetting curve, a theory arguing the vast majority of adults will lose nearly 8% of the information they learned within 30 days of training.