Nathan Girard, CEO of Bloom Brothers and Co-Founder of Lit Alerts – Interview Series

While entrepreneurship is a cornerstone of the cannabis industry, it is rare to find a professional who has founded successful ventures across such a wide range of its sectors. For Nathan Girard, Co-Founder and CEO of Lit Alerts, establishing a premier brand at the dawn of the Massachusetts market was just one milestone in a broad entrepreneurial career.

To gain insight into the evolution of the Massachusetts industry, interstate expansion, and multi-level business strategies, MyCannabis.com sat down with Girard to discuss his journey.

While obtaining your MBA from Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, what were the most useful or otherwise interesting courses you took? How were those courses useful throughout your career?

I received my undergraduate degree from Endicott College in 2005 with a degree in Business Administration focused on Management. After spending several years in the workforce, I realized I wanted to deepen my understanding of how businesses truly function beyond day-to-day operations. That led me to enroll in the Professional MBA program at MCLA (the first of its kind at the school). It was a 24-month program that met every Saturday for eight hours, which required real commitment.

The two courses that had the greatest impact on me were Financial Management & Policies and Financial Strategies. I’ve always been fascinated not just by how businesses make money, but by how differently they are run depending on the mindset of the leadership. Those classes reinforced that there is no single “right way” to operate a company, but there are definitely wrong ways. They taught me how to think critically about capital structure, risk, long-term strategy, and decision-making frameworks.

What I took away most is that every business needs its own “secret sauce.” That sauce is built around your goals, your risk tolerance, and your operational discipline. Once you understand that, those principles can be applied across industries; whether real estate, hospitality, cannabis retail, or technology.

What were the most exciting parts about working in real estate, and how did you manage in an industry that changes so much so often? How did your duties change depending on whether it was a residential or commercial real estate transaction?

Real estate excited me because every deal is different. No two properties are identical, no two sellers are the same, and market conditions are constantly evolving. It’s a business that forces you to stay sharp.

The key to surviving in a changing market is understanding cycles. Interest rates move. Inventory shifts. Buyer psychology changes. You can’t fight the market. You have to read it and adjust your strategy accordingly.

Residential real estate is emotional. You’re dealing with families, life transitions, and personal finances. It requires empathy and communication. Commercial real estate, on the other hand, is more analytical. You’re evaluating cash flow, cap rates, lease structures, zoning, and development potential. The conversations are more about return on investment and long-term positioning. Having experience in both sharpened my ability to balance emotion and analysis something that has helped tremendously in later ventures.

What were the most valuable lessons you learned in customer service and hospitality while owning and operating Adams Ale House? What were some of the most memorable events you hosted at that location?

Owning Adams Ale House was all about customer service and operational discipline. In hospitality, you learn very quickly that margins are tight and your reputation is everything.

The most valuable lesson I learned was consistency. It doesn’t matter how great your concept was, because if service and quality aren’t consistent, customers won’t return. Hospitality also teaches you to manage chaos. Friday night at a full restaurant forces you to build systems that work under pressure.

Some of the most memorable events were community-driven nights, fundraisers, themed parties like our annual Halloween costume bashes, and packed game nights where the entire place felt charged up. Those moments reinforced something I carry into every business: you’re not selling a product, you’re creating an experience.

After serving as a real estate broker for so long, what in particular inspired you to enter the cannabis industry? What caught your entrepreneurial interest about working in such a young and mostly uncharted field in terms of law and regulation?

Cannabis intrigued me because it was a completely new market with real demand but little to no roadmap. Coming from real estate, I understood zoning, licensing, municipal approvals, and regulatory processes all of which were central to launching a cannabis business.

The industry felt like early-stage entrepreneurship on a large scale. It was regulated, misunderstood, and evolving daily. That complexity was attractive to me. Going back to when I was a kid my parents can attest to this; Nate seems to work best the fuller his plate was. When he has a chance to get bored, that is when he struggles. Where others saw uncertainty, I saw opportunity for those that were willing to put in the work.

It required patience, capital discipline, and the ability to operate under shifting rules. That challenge aligned with how I think about business.

What were the biggest logistical or license-related obstacles you faced when starting Bloom Brothers? Given how many years ago Bloom Brothers opened, what was the licensing process like when the Massachusetts cannabis industry just started?

When Bloom Brothers licensing timeline started in late 2017 / early 2018, the Massachusetts cannabis industry was still in its infancy. The licensing process was lengthy, unclear at times, and required intense documentation and municipal support.

The biggest obstacles were capital requirements, regulatory interpretation, and timeline uncertainty. We spent months preparing applications without clarity on when approvals would come. After we applied, we actually built our building on a whim and had a Certificate of Occupancy in hand prior to an architectural approval being issued by the CCC. We took a major risk but without taking that risk, we wouldn’t have been open for another 2 years potentially if we waited and that was not going to happen for us.

Banking limitations had also made financial management challenging. It forced us to build strong compliance systems from day one. In hindsight, navigating that early environment created resilience that still benefits us today.

How have the Bloom Brothers operations grown since its 2018 founding, as the Massachusetts industry has also grown and evolved? How has the company had to adapt to great regulatory changes that have been implemented?

Since 2018, the industry has matured dramatically. Competition increased, pricing compressed, and regulations evolved. Bloom Brothers adapted by focusing on operational efficiency, data-driven purchasing, inventory controls, and customer retention strategies.

As margins tightened, we had to become sharper operators. Regulatory updates required constant compliance adjustments, including but not limited to packaging, labeling, reporting, and taxation rules changing frequently. We built internal systems and later developed technology tools to stay ahead of that curve rather than react to it.

Another important consideration here is that when opportunity knocked to potentially sell the business we were smart enough to take advantage of it and we recently sold Bloom Brothers MA to focus on our New York operation of Bloom Brothers on 1/20/2026.

What are some transferable skills from your ventures in real estate and hospitality that have proven to be useful for running a cannabis or cannabis ancillary business?

I have taken something away from every industry and in some cases multiple things for example;

• Negotiation skills from real estate. Just ask some of the suppliers I work with. I have the best of the best terms. I know suppliers are in cash crunches so I have negotiated prompt pay discounts because I pay my bills and they need cash so if I am willing to pay within 3 days of delivery that is sometimes worth a 10% discount to a supplier but I am only able to ask for this after months and sometimes years of a relationship.
• Customer experience from hospitality. The customer matters in every sense of the word. One of our earliest trainings in any industry we have ever been involved with is to give the customer the time they need. No matter what. I don’t care if a customer is spending $10 on a pre roll or $500,000 on a house. They have questions and hopefully I have the answers for them. If I don’t have the answers I will get them for them and get back to them. Follow through matters but nowhere near as much as the customer and their needs.
• Financial discipline from both. You have to stay vigilant. No matter how many businesses I get involved with I still “sign checks”. When it comes to money no matter how much I still try to be involved with the decision making process associated with the spend. I focus a lot on ROI. I know we may need a new hire here and there but what is the investment into that person and the expected return that will create whether it be financial or relief of someone else’s bottlenecks. There has to be discipline when it comes to financial decisions. I don’t spend money just because I have it. I spend money because it makes sense and will make the business operate better.
• Real estate taught me how to structure deals and evaluate risk. Hospitality taught me how to manage teams and prioritize customer loyalty. Both industries taught me that cash flow matters more than ego. Those skills directly translate into cannabis retail and ancillary services, where margins, compliance, and service all intersect.

What are some clever ways that CannaVersions help dispensaries and other cannabis businesses recover lost potential revenue? How widespread are the issues that CannaVersions helps to alleviate?

CannaVersions focuses on revenue recapture and customer engagement automation.

Dispensaries lose revenue every day through abandoned online carts, lack of follow-up marketing, and inconsistent customer communication. CannaVersions automates abandoned cart recovery, google review generation, custom order confirmations, and push notifications. The issue is widespread because many operators are focused on compliance and inventory and not marketing systems.

Even small recovery percentages can translate into significant annual revenue gains and the best part is we know it is expensive to run a dispensary and it is hard! So we make it no brainers for people. We charge for revenue collected not expected. It is a line I learned from my property management background. You only pay if we perform.

If I can show you that I sent an abandoned cart email at 4:37PM and the customer clicked into that email at 4:40 and placed a $100 order at 4:42, I claim responsibility for that order and you as the customer would then owe me 5% of that recovered revenue, so in this case $5.00. It works wonderfully because you only pay for what I can show you I am responsible for.

Technologically speaking, what all went into the creation of the Lit Alerts platform? How does the system collect all the data that it does and how can the platform help dispensaries strengthen their operations?

Lit Alerts was built to solve a visibility problem. Dispensaries often don’t know how they compare to competitors in pricing, product mix, and inventory strategy.

The platform aggregates publicly available menu data, standardizes it, and applies analytics and our “secret sauce” to uncover trends in pricing, SKU movement, brand performance, and helps craft operational strategies for brands, cultivators, retailers, and other ancillary services alike.

By giving operators actionable data and intel (INTC ), Lit Alerts allows them to make informed decisions on purchasing, pricing, and marketing which has been shown to strengthen margins and positioning for operators, myself included. What originally started as a bit of a selfish production because I myself was sick of browsing competitors menus to try and figure out a strategy on how I should price my products for sale; turned into a major collaboration that I literally let me closest competitors use because at the end of the day running a cannabis company is again hard as hell.

My team and I build tools for the operator by the operator. I know what goes on behind the scenes and I want folks to succeed by getting actionable ALERTS to help guide them on their daily decision making powers. I don’t want them spending all day inside the service. I want them to take 10-15 minutes a day to help make better informed decisions.

We also build the future of the tool based on the feedback from our hundreds of clients. Clients are now telling us what they need that we lack and we build it. If that isn’t a full circle moment I don’t know what is.

When did Bloom Brothers decide to expand into New York, and how different was the licensing process in New York versus Massachusetts?

Expansion into New York came after seeing long-term opportunity in an emerging market similar to Massachusetts in its early days.

The licensing process in New York has been different and extremely frustrating politically, structurally, and operationally. There has been more emphasis on social equity, and timelines have been unpredictable.

We initially applied as part of the November queue and followed all the rules. We were application number 000015 and then when the queue was reseeded many rule breakers got huge benefits where we ended up getting reseeded as application number 1958 out of 2300. We were ready to open in May of 2023 with a Certificate of Occupancy in hand but with the queue being what it was we were delayed until April 30 2025 before we could open.

Having already navigated Massachusetts gave us perspective. We understood the importance of patience, compliance infrastructure, and strong capital planning, and unlike most folks we are at least open and we could do an entire article on just this topic which we will save for another day.

What are some exciting future plans for your companies? With an eventual federal rescheduling, how will that change the operations of your cannabis-related companies?

Looking ahead, we are focused on operational excellence, technological expansion, and disciplined growth. We want to continue building a strong retail operation in our New York location and get to profitability here while expanding our data and automation platforms. Lit Alerts + CannaVersions merged into one company which is now just Lit Alerts. They work so well together and the tech foundation is the same (to benefit the cannabis company operator)

If federal rescheduling occurs, the biggest impact would be financial normalization which would include proper banking access, tax reform under 280E, and broader institutional investment.

That would significantly change margin structures and growth strategies. However, the companies that survive long term will still be the ones that operate efficiently and stay disciplined. Regulatory relief helps, but fundamentals always matter.

Having recently sold Bloom Brothers in MA, my plan is and continues to be to provide for my family. Bloom Brothers is a family owned operation including my wife, my brother Ben and my brother Nick. We will continue to operate in New York and hopefully continue to grow and do our best and make the customer commitment to them. One thing to note over the course of 1500 customer reviews between Bloom Brothers MA and BB NY, we have a 4.9 rating and that is so super important to us.

Thank you for joining us, Nathan! For more information on Bloom Brothers, please visit its website.