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In this edition of "Rising High," The Fly conducted an exclusive interview with Dan Mondello, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Rank Really High, an e-commerce company specializing in website development and digital marketing for the cannabis ecosystem. Here are some highlights:

E-COMMERCE SOLUTIONS: Rank Really High aims to empower cannabis retailers, distributors, and growers through a spectrum of customized solutions, including native e-commerce websites, Search Engine Optimization and strategies, Search Engine Marketing, Google My Business Optimization, analytics and reporting and omni-channel digital marketing strategies. "Myself, my co-founders and many of the staff at Rank Really High all came from automotive digital marketing, which has a lot of parallels to what we are beginning to see cannabis adopt," Mondello said. "Some examples are websites that have inventory that is indexable to search engines, AI and chat tools that use live inventory as well as Google and Facebook digital marketing. These systems in automotive have historically been connected to inventory in the website, but in this industry we found that a lot of these tools are very fractured from one another and unable to communicate effectively. One of the challenges that Rank Really High aims to fix is to connect these systems together."

He said many companies have mistaken Rank Really High for a website development firm or a digital marketing agency, but the company views itself as a software developer. "We are a software development firm that has capabilities in website development, e-commerce and digital advertising," the CEO said. "I like to think of us as a technology-enabled agency model without diving too deeply into either one of those pools."

RANK E-COMMERCE: In July, the company unveiled its Rank E-Commerce platform, a direct-to-Point of Sales digital marketing platform specifically designed for cannabis dispensaries, offering seamless integration with popular POS systems and e-commerce platforms. "Everything that we do is in response to how we see the market shifting and how changes and needs evolve," Mondello said. "A lot of companies that are offering cannabis e-commerce or website solutions today are making hard-pressed efforts to lock customers into a tech stack. They lock people into long-term contracts and then provide lackadaisical support and disappointing service. One of the key differentiators for us is that we are willing to work with anybody from a platform integration side."

He noted the cannabis industry likes to portray an image of inclusion, but in practice he has seen very little inclusivity. "I get calls all the time from entrepreneurs that have had the door slammed in their face from other tech companies they would like to integrate with," the CEO said. "Rank Really High views it as if you have something really cool that can add a lot of value, we will have that conversation with you. That is one of the things that is different about us."

Another thing that sets Rank Really High apart is enabling cannabis businesses to work with POS providers they want, he said. "I don't mind what POS you work with or if you want to switch POSs," Mondello said. "Right now, for a dispensary group to do that it is incredibly, mind-numbingly difficult. We aim to make it very easy for a number of reasons. Not just because we want to allow our customers the freedom to switch and change their stack as their businesses' needs evolve, we also have a lot of customers that are on merger and acquisition tears. They are acquiring businesses and that is a lot of work, time and money. They have to assimilate the business, switch them over to the preferred POS and make sure their ecommerce interacts with the current e-commerce that they are using. We aim to heal all of the issues by offering a succinct and unified e-commerce package that allows you to connect with any POS and any e-commerce providers you want to work with."

In the coming months, Rank Really High will be introducing a suite of innovative products to the platform including Rank Ads, a comprehensive advertising solution, and Rank AI Chat, advanced AI-driven chatbots. "We integrated early with a lot of the AI budtenders that were out there and we are going to continue to allow them to work off of our platform," the CEO said. "As I and my cofounder Brendan started taking an interest in learning more about AI, we became increasingly starry-eyed on what this could do for a customer. Not even our customer base, but our customers' customer base. A lot of reason why cannabis delivery has not really taken off in any market is we still have not connected well with the cannacurious."

Modern cannabis has become so diversified through genetics, strains, terpenes and cannabinoids, he said, that consumers may be overwhelmed by the number of options. "An AI budtender would help alleviate some of that confusion and help generate a better recommendation for the customer," Mondello said. "In fact, the way we are training our budtender is to be as good, if not better, than an actual human who has been consuming cannabis for decades. We wanted to do something we thought would really help the industry move forward in education and we saw this huge opportunity.".

As for the advertising component, he pointed to the fact that most cannabis brands do not have great direct-to-consumer pathways and rely heavily on retail dispensaries to move their product. "We thought it was a very obvious need, just like big retail has been doing for many years," the CEO said, citing programs allowing brands to purchase real estate on big retailers' websites. "We created a way for businesses to do it all inclusive through our platform. If a cannabis brand wanted to buy an awareness campaign, they now have a series of retail websites that can accomplish that. The only requirements that we have is that the ad must be compliant locally and federally and for the ad to show on one of Rank Really High's platforms, that brand would have to be actively in stock at that dispensary."

DATA ANALYTICS, MARKETING STRATEGIES: When asked about how cannabis businesses can leverage data analytics to drive sales, Mondello stated most dispensaries do not use data to make decisions. "There have been hundreds of dispensaries that we have spoken to, pitched or turned into customers, where many did not have a Google Analytics account or many did not have that account connected to e-commerce," he said. "They had no idea what their customers were actually buying other than the reports they were getting from their POS or e-comm provider. That is another reason we are seeing a lot of failure and wheel-spinning in the industry."

Rank Really High was founded with the intention of ensuring industry data was not only available but put to use, the CEO said. "We're committed to ensuring that every single one of our Rank Really High customers has a Google Analytics account," he said. "Either they already have it and we decorate it with the e-commerce information, or if they don't we'll build it for them from scratch to make sure it is set up correctly and they know how to use it. We're able to build an executive rollup summary and build that for them on a repeating basis, as well as build them customer reports to help them better manage inventory flow, inventory ordering and pricing metrics. And in the very near future, you'll see Rank Really High use market retail data to help dispensaries price their products in a more competitive way."

Mondello added cannabis businesses looking to improve SEO and digital marketing should not just rely on the purchase of an SEO website. "Having an SEO website is a foundational purchase in every other industry," he said. "It's not the magic bullet for all problems, it is the starting point. My recommendation to dispensaries is have a great website and hire a marketing manager who can help you internally manage your campaigns and your overarching digital and print strategies. That is a position that needs to be in every dispensary, not just ones that can afford it."

Cannabis firms must also work on diversifying their marketing investments and strategy, the CEO said. "Understand that it's not just one channel and no one really has an exact science of what particular message or channel is going to resonate most," he said. "Dispensaries put a lot of eggs in the blog basket and a lot of eggs in the social media/Instagram basket. Blogs have a purpose, but people are using them for that purpose and the social media profile value is there, but if you want to reach new customers, you do so through advertising,"

Mondello said he believes brands should be advertising through various Meta platforms and have a Google Advertising presence. "It's not completely easy, but it can be done and its effective," he said. "One of the misconceptions that is out there is a dispensary thinks they are going to buy a website and displace dispensaries that have been around and matured for years before they opened. That is not the case and a real reality check needs to be had. With the nature of Google, just because you have a page on your website that says dispensary near me, doesn't necessarily mean you're going to rank for them."

PRODUCT CATEGORIES: According to research firms within the space, flower still holds the biggest share of sales of any cannabis product category, followed by vape. "Flower in every market that Rank Really High has operations in dominates," the CEO said. "It is between 30%-65% of sales in any market that we are in and is absolutely on top of every sales sheet that we look at."

He added he sees flower holding the biggest share of market sales, usually followed by pre-rolls, vapes and edibles. "I think the war against flower has begun to rage," the CEO said. "Some of the extraction techniques and edible technology has come so far. I don't now how much you can advance the flower technology. There are limitations to how ingenious you can become with that product category. Flower will continue to be a dominant player, but with some of these advances, there's slowly going to be dilution in the market share that flower has."

SCHEDULING: The U.S. Justice Department recently formalized its process to reclassify cannabis as lower-risk and reschedule the drug from Schedule I to Schedule III. The Drug Enforcement Administration submitted a notice of proposed rulemaking on Thursday, May 16, triggering a 60-day comment period that will allow members of the public to submit remarks regarding the rescheduling proposal. "It's a welcome change," Mondello said. "Having cannabis classified the same way as cocaine, crystal meth and heroin never made a lot of sense to me. The change will bring in investment that's not there today and attract more economically savvy companies that have ignored the space. And Meta, Google and other major advertising companies have signaled that there are changing temperaments about their views on cannabis. Moving it to Schedule III will allow advertising to open up in a way that every other retail industry has experienced."

He said he would like to see the final rule published prior to the election, but the government is currently dealing with many distractions. "I really hope they can get it done, I just think it is going to be challenging for them," the CEO said. "If the tides change and we're looking at a second Trump presidency, I don't know how that changes things. I have a feeling that they will continue to move forward towards rescheduling, but I also don't know if it would be as high of a priority."

SAFER BANKING: In September, a U.S. Senate committee voted to advance The Secure and Fair Enforcement Regulation Banking Act bill, which seeks to ensure that all businesses, including cannabis businesses, have access to deposit accounts, insurance and other financial services. "I think that will go forward, but I don't know if I could predict a timeline," Mondello said. "That is going to open up more access to funding and finances than have historically been available. And with the dissolution of 280E businesses will be able to benefit in the way that every other retail business in this country benefits by being able to access capital and write off expenses. Once that happens, you're going to see a much happier and healthier economy for the industry."

CHALLENGES: When asked about the largest hurdles facing the space, the CEO pointed to the U.S. government's policy around cannabis as well as social equity programs in the industry. "The policies of this country for the last 200 years around this plant have been asinine," he said. "We're slowly rectifying them, but no one should be in prison for a marijuana-related crime and we haven't fully fixed that yet. The thing that really annoys me about the U.S. government is what they have done with social equity."

The U.S. has wrongfully incarcerated many for non-violent marijuana-related crimes and has made progress through release and expungement of records but has not done a good job of explaining social equity programs, Mondello said. "You may have been successful selling this on the street or to your friends in college, that's not necessarily going to translate one-to-one into running a retail store," he said. "We're not making it very clear to the social equity applicants or license holders how hard it is going to be for them to get funding. In most markets in order to qualify for social equity, the social equity holder still needs to own at least 51% of the business. That is a tough pill to swallow for a lot of people who want to put money into a business and want to mitigate risk. I would like to stop misleading social equity applicants."

OPPORTUNITIES: As the cannabis space develops, the CEO said he sees the biggest opportunities in the unification of the supply chain. "It really comes back to the siloed approach that the industry has currently," he said. "The e-commerce doesn't talk well to the POS, the POS doesn't talk well to the wholesale and then the wholesale doesn't talk well to the cultivators. What we are going to start to see is some companies are going to start raising their hands and saying, 'We'll work with you, we'll integrate this value here.' When these companies from seed-to-sale all start working collectively for the greater good, you're going to see efficiencies increase, waste decrease, new jobs open up and a lot more data to look at that will help us make much more informed decisions with our hard-earned dollars."

CANNABIS/PSYCHEDELIC STOCKS: Publicly-traded companies in the space include Acreage (ACRHF), Ascend Wellness (AAWH), Atai Life Sciences (ATAI), Aurora Cannabis (ACB), Ayr Wellness (AYRWF), Avant Brands (AVTBF), BZAM (BZAMF), Cannabist Company (CBSTF), Cannara Biotech (LOVFF), Canopy Growth (CGC), Chicago Atlantic (REFI), Clearmind (CMND), Clever Leaves (CLVR), Compass Pathways (CMPS), CordovaCann (LVRLF), Cresco Labs (CRLBF), Cronos Group (CRON), Curaleaf (CURLF), CURE Pharmaceutical (CURR), CV Sciences (CVSI), Cybin (CYBN), Delta 9 (DLTNF), Entourage Health (ETRGF), Enveric Biosciences (ENVB), Fire & Flower (FFLWF), Flora Growth (FLGC), Trees Corporation (CANN), Greenlane (GNLN), Green Thumb (GTBIF), GrowGeneration (GRWG), Hemp (HEMP), Heritage Cannabis (HERTF), High Tide (HITI), IGC Pharma (IGC), IM Cannabis (IMCC), Indiva (NDVAF), Innovative Industrial Properties (IIPR), InterCure (INCR), Lotus Ventures (LTTSF), Lowell Farms (LOWLF), Lucy Scientific Discovery (LSDI), MediPharm (MEDIF), MedMen (MMNFF), MindMed (MNMD), NewLake Capital (NLCP), Numinus (NUMIF), Optimi Health (OPTHF), Organigram (OGI), Planet 13 (PLNHF), Red White & Bloom (RWBYF), Relmada Therapeutics (RLMD), Reunion Neuroscience (REUN), Revitalist (RVLWF), RIV Capital (CNPOF), RYAH Group (RYAHF), Safe Harbor Financial (SHFS), SNDL (SNDL), Sproutly (SRUTF), Skye Biosciences (SKYE), Stem Holdings (STMH), Sunniva (SNNVF), TerrAscend (TRSSF), Tetra Bio-Pharma (TBPMF), Tilray (TLRY), Trulieve (TCNNF), Tryp Therapeutics (TRYPF), Verano (VRNOF), Village Farms (VFF), Vireo Health (VREOF), Zynerba (ZYNE) and 4Front Ventures (FFNTF).