"The pathway to prosperity is paved with satisfied customers."
Gary Long is the Chief Executive Officer of Botanical Sciences. With an extensive background in healthcare in the state and across the country, Long is uniquely qualified to lead Botanical Sciences on its journey to provide hope and relief for the patients of Georgia.
Most recently, Long served as Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer of R1 RCM (NASDAQ: RCM), offering technology enabled revenue cycle management services for healthcare providers across the country.
While at R1, Long led the company to unprecedented levels of market success and profitable revenue growth. Previously, Long held numerous executive leadership roles within the healthcare industry.
He spent nearly six years with Premier Inc (NASDAQ: PINC), one of the leading group purchasing organizations and healthcare technology companies, and 11 years at McKesson (NYSE: MCK), one of the largest pharmaceutical distribution and health technology providers in the country.
In his free time, Long enjoys giving back to the community. He serves as a board member for an organization dedicated to the empowerment of underserved youth through mentoring programs and scholarships for post-secondary education.
Long values spending time with his family and living an active lifestyle, with his favorite activities including golf, tennis and pickleball.
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Table of Contents
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company.
Gary Long: I have spent over thirty years in the healthcare industry, specifically in medical devices, capital equipment, technology and services. I have spent the majority of that time on new business development, marketing and customer relationships. Dr. Fowler, the founder of Botanical Sciences, was actually my roommate during undergraduate college, so we go back about 37 years now.
He and I had so many conversations about the medical cannabis selection process in Georgia in the 2010s. Botanical Sciences was born out of these conversations, and Dr. Fowler asked me to serve on the board. I became Chief Executive Officer of the company in 2023 and have been holding that role ever since!
To give some background about Botanical Sciences, the company is Georgia’s first physician-owned medical cannabis provider. The company is heavily rooted in medicine, and we have a mission of giving hope and relief to qualified patients in Georgia. We grow, manufacture and dispense the highest quality medical cannabis with special attention to purity and consistency.
In the past year, what is the greatest business achievement you’d like to celebrate with your team? Please share the details of that success.
Gary Long: We really built this business from the ground up, and this was my first experience building a new company in an industry that I hadn’t worked in before.
It was a challenge, as there was no precedent in Georgia on how to set up successful medical cannabis business, so our team of leaders and employees have enabled us to stand up to this intimidating venture and build a great brand.
We have already achieved the milestone of opening four of our five dispensaries. In just twelve months, we took Botanical Sciences from a thought written down on a piece of paper to a high functioning company that uses the most contemporary practices in business.
We have evolved every aspect of our business including growing, manufacturing, distribution and dispensing to build a successful business that competes against the far more capitalized companies with longer experience in several states.
What advice do you wish you had received when you started your business journey and what do you intend on improving in the next quarter?
Gary Long: In Georgia cannabis, there was no playbook, nobody to mentor me or share the ups and downs relating to federal and state challenges in addition to issues every business owner deals with.
If someone had prepared me for all of this, I would have felt more comfortable preparing my team for those challenges.
The good news is that we have successfully navigated those challenges, which has created incredible resilience in our company. We know that there will always be more challenges, so we try to constantly prepare and use the difficulty as a learning experience that helps us best prepare for what comes next.
Here is a two-fold question: What is the book that influenced you the most and how? Please share some life lessons you learned. Now what book have you gifted the most and why?
Gary Long: It is definitely Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” It is a foundational book for any type of personal or professional interaction. It details how you act, react, how to treat people, how you want to be treated and more.
I have adult children who also read the book, and they have also followed the principles included in the text. Its simplicity is profound, and it is the book I have gifted the most.
Business is all about overcoming obstacles and creating opportunities for growth. What do you see as THE real challenge right now?
Gary Long: There is an interesting dynamic in our country relating to marijuana policy. Currently, there are 38 states and 4 territories that have a law allowing at least medical cannabis to be sold. The federal policy still states that marijuana is a Schedule 1 narcotic.
The way people are treated under federal law is different than how they are treated under these states/territories. 25 of these states have a recreational or adult use market and the remaining states, like Georgia, are a medical market. The vast variability between states proves to be a challenge.
Federal laws have implications for patients and companies like us who provide medicine to patients. It makes it difficult for us to act as a normal business as there are strict regulations, especially on taxes.
There is also a taboo nature surrounding marijuana. We must navigate these ever-changing issues at state and federal level while interacting with patients in need. The recent news of DEA reclassification of marijuana as a less dangerous drug is a huge step in the right direction!
There will, of course, still be hurdles, but when it is reclassified at a federal level, physicians and pharmacies can be reassured that their use of medical marijuana won’t be a concern for the DEA.
Years 2020-2023 threw a lot of curve balls into businesses on a global scale. Based on the experience gleaned in the past years, how can businesses thrive in 2024? What lessons have you learned and what advice would you share?
Gary Long: The pandemic and era following it was unprecedented, and it taught me that we have to be prepared for the unexpected.
It taught people that you can’t just invest in things without having a clear line of sight on how I will benefit consumers, patients or the business with a real return.
We have a mission larger than ourselves, which makes us unique. We understand that it’s not always about putting the company first, but that we will have a successful company if we continue to put the patient first. When you do right by the customer, you will earn the right to have success.
What does “success” in 2024 mean to you? It could be on a personal or business level, please share your vision.
Gary Long: Success means many things, including striking a proper balance between work and personal life, although they often overlap when you are a CEO.
Seeing how people’s lives change for the better is our favorite thing to do and we plan to continue assisting our partners and patients on their medical journeys.
I have a vision for my team to be working smarter, not harder, which requires us to have focus to work on the things that matter most, without getting overly distracted by random things that pop up every day.
To me, success is staying true to our strategy and plan to make the best company with the best products and services.
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Gary Long for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Gary Long or his company, you can do it through his – Linkedin Page
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