The Hotbox with Dustin Hoxworth isn’t your polished PR interview. It’s me getting stoned and asking people the questions they probably aren’t ready for. These aren’t cold reads or copy-paste Q&As; I sit with my guests, usually multiple times, and I’ve likely met them in person, which gives me a window to learn who they really are before I ever send the questions. By the time the words hit the page, it’s smoke-thick honesty, not surface-level bullshit. These are cannabis conversations that showcase the voices, stories, and truths that won’t show up in the boardroom.
The Hotbox with Kim Bruen
This week in The Hotbox, we sit down with my friend Kim Bruen, the Founder and CEO of Zen Den HR. Kim is one of the smartest, most down-to-earth, and caring humans you will ever meet. She is loyal, fierce as a founder, and deeply committed to building organizations where people actually thrive. For me, she has been a trusted friend and ally, someone who even helps with minor HR duties at Fat Nugs Magazine because she cares about our success.
Kim’s career began far from cannabis. She worked as a Critical Care Nurse Team Leader in a cardiac ICU, where data-driven decisions, teamwork, and leadership under extreme pressure were non-negotiable. That experience honed her ability to combine critical thinking with compassion, a balance that defines her work today. When she transitioned into Human Resources, Kim brought those same skills into business operations, building people-first systems that cut through corporate bureaucracy.
With Zen Den HR, she partners with businesses, particularly in cannabis, to create human-centered cultures rooted in authenticity and transparency. She rejects the one-size-fits-all approach of traditional HR firms, instead focusing on radical honesty and fairness for both employees and leadership. At Zen Den, the goal is to streamline operations, resolve complex people issues, and implement policies that reflect real culture, not corporate jargon.
For someone like me who never trusted corporate HR because they existed to protect companies instead of employees, Kim represents something rare. She has proven that both sides can be supported equally when transparency and honesty lead the way.
The Hotbox Q&A: 5 Questions with Kim Bruen
Your career began in healthcare as a critical care nurse. How did that experience shape your leadership style and the way you approach Human Resources today?
The ICU definitely made me into the leader I am today. I lead with understanding first. That’s how I was as a nurse. I used to show up 30 minutes before every shift to research my patients and what was going on with them. I take that same approach with HR. I like to really understand everything, the company, what they’re doing, what their purpose is, who the people are, and what each person actually does. If I don’t understand that, I can’t really help anyone
When I was working in the Cardiac ICU, it was incredibly intense. People were dying in front of me every day, so staying calm under pressure wasn’t optional; it was part of the gig. Everyone kept their cool, nobody blamed each other, and when something went wrong, you took accountability, because that was the expectation. That stuck with me. Stay calm no matter what and always look to find a solution. I always remind people, look, no one’s dying here. We can slow down, take a breath, and ground ourselves in figuring out the problem together for a beat to solve it with intention, not panic.
I think that background gave me a really high level of emotional intelligence, which helps in HR. People always laugh when I say this, but I got into HR because I still wanted to help people. To me, HR should actually be helpful. It should be that connection between employees and employers. It should make things smoother, not harder. And part of helping my clients means making sure their employees are doing okay, not just at work, but outside of work, too. Because all of that affects how they show up every day.
I think that’s why healthcare and cannabis go so well together and why I was meant to end up in this industry. In healthcare, you’re serving people. Everything you do is for a living thing. Cannabis is the same. It’s about nurturing something living, whether it’s a plant or a person, or a company. It’s about care. That throughline of service, of wanting to make things better.
Zen Den HR was built on a people-first philosophy. What does that mean in practice, and how does your approach differ from traditional HR firms?
People-first is one of those phrases that gets thrown around a lot, but to me, it’s really about putting humans into systems that actually work for the humans and for the system. A lot of HR firms lead with compliance or policy, which matters, but those systems are supposed to serve people, not the other way around. If you try to fit a square peg into a round hole every day, you won’t get very far.
At Zen Den, I really get to know the people and the companies I work with. I like to understand what everyone does and how their work connects to the bigger picture. That helps me see where things make sense and where they don’t, so I can advocate for people and strategize for the business in a way that’s fair and grounded.
We don’t get involved in the day-to-day drama, which I actually think is one of the biggest benefits of how we work. We’re involved where we’re needed, but we’re still separate. That’s intentional. I really believe HR works best when it’s a third-party. It gives everyone, leadership and employees, more trust in the process. People can come to us without worrying about internal politics, and leaders can trust that we’re looking at things objectively.
I hear it all the time, “HR is here to protect the company.” My response to that is always the same: protecting the company is protecting its people. If you’re doing something that hurts your people, you’re hurting your company. The two can’t be separated. My job is to build systems and relationships that make sense for both sides.
The cannabis industry is unique, often chaotic, and still stigmatized. What are the most pressing HR challenges you see for cannabis businesses, and how do you help them navigate those challenges?
Cannabis is chaotic. A lot of it comes from outside factors, things that make it incredibly hard to just run a normal business. Don’t get me started on how small the industry is. That could be its own article.
But it’s a different kind of chaos compared to what I was used to. The biggest difference I see now is the amount of pressure people put on situations that don’t deserve the pressure. Sometimes the chaos isn’t even about what’s happening; it’s about how people are reacting to it. That’s what makes things spin out.
One of the biggest challenges I’ve been facing lately is this constant tug-of-war between what’s corporate, what’s structure, and what’s culture. I feel like I’m right in the middle of that battle every day. There are these outside forces trying to corporatize the industry, bringing in traditional systems and language that just don’t fit, and I understand why they’re coming in, because we do need structure. But it has to be our kind of structure.
A lot of what works in corporate America doesn’t translate to cannabis, nor do we want it to. The culture of this industry is very real and very human. You can’t just drop a corporate playbook into a cannabis company and expect people to follow it. It’s not that our industry doesn’t want structure; it’s that the way the corporate world tries to implement it doesn’t fit. It needs to be managed, shaped, and woven into what already exists here.
I’m a structure person. I love process, I love systems, and I write policies and handbooks all day long. But I’m not a fan of corporate. I worked at Procter & Gamble, and I don’t now, for a reason. There is a middle ground, though. You can have structure without losing soul, and that’s the balance I try to help my clients find. That’s where the real challenge is, getting both sides to understand that we need a mesh of the two.
And then there’s the regulatory side. Our industry is overregulated to the point of exhaustion. Things that would be simple in any other business, like opening a new store, updating a form, or making a change to an SOP, tend to feel like breaking into a bank vault. That level of restriction costs businesses so much time and money, and it’s frustrating for everyone involved.
I always say cannabis HR is the ICU of HR, as it’s intense, unpredictable, and constantly changing, and that’s exactly why I love it
Many employees distrust HR because they believe it only protects company interests. How do you bridge that gap so both employees and leadership feel seen, supported, and respected?
I get this all the time. It’s like when your mom calls you by your full name; I can tell when someone’s upset because they’ll say, “Of course, HR is protecting the company.” I understand where that comes from. I’ve seen HR and its policies be completely weaponized, and that’s part of what drew me to HR in the first place was seeing that people weren’t doing their jobs.
My clients know that protecting their people means protecting themselves. I work really hard to help employees understand that, too. If a company is doing things that are hurting employees, that’s not protecting the company; that’s putting everyone at risk. So if I were to let that happen, I wouldn’t be doing my job.
One of the biggest ways I build trust is through communication and transparency. I have a lot of meetings, I’m extremely accessible, and I don’t hide. From the beginning of every client relationship, I focus on being present, not just during the tough stuff, but during the good parts too. I run trainings, I get on calls to talk through real-life issues, I go to the dispensaries and shop there, and I visit cultivations. I show up. I build real relationships with people because that’s how trust is built.
People sometimes ask me if that makes it harder when I have to make difficult decisions like terminations, and it’s the opposite. It makes it easier. Because when those moments come, people already know me. They’ve seen how I work, they know I’m honest, and they’re not surprised at where things are. They’ve had every opportunity to adjust. I think that’s what makes the difference.
As a founder yourself, what do you believe is the role of HR in shaping culture, retention, and long-term business success, especially in fast-moving industries like cannabis?
HR is really important in shaping culture, and I don’t think I fully understood that until I started working in it the way I do now. It’s not the policies or the SOPs that shape culture; it’s how people actually work with each other.
Something I highlight constantly in everything I do, and in every training I lead, is respect. I tell people all the time, no matter what, that’s my baseline expectation: you respect everyone who crosses your path. That’s the lowest level I’ll accept.
A big part of my job is getting to know the founders and owners and understanding their vision. Every company has its own personality, its own way of thinking and moving, and that’s what makes this work so interesting to me. I’ve always been fascinated by human behavior and psychology, and it’s wild to see how differently every organization operates. You can’t use the same approach everywhere; you have to adjust to fit the culture they want to build.
HR has a huge influence on that. We shape culture through how we train, how we lead, and how we give feedback. When HR leads with empathy and honesty, it sets the tone for how everyone else communicates. If we teach managers how to have hard, transparent conversations with respect, how to actually listen instead of defend, or how to give feedback that helps instead of hurts, that ripples through the whole company.
Even the little things matter: how we show up in meetings, how we respond to mistakes, or how we follow up after conflicts. All of that builds trust and shows people what’s acceptable and what isn’t. HR isn’t policy; in a way, it’s modeling. It’s showing people how to lead by example. Those small shifts in how people talk to each other completely change how a workplace feels.
When it comes to retention, people will stay where they’re happy. Sure, they obviously need to be paid fairly, but what really keeps people is how they feel at work. If they feel respected, HEARD, and supported, they are more likely to stay long term. I’ve seen it play out in retail before, where you can have one store with an incredible vibe and another store struggling with turnover, even under the same company. Sometimes, it’s not even truly a company problem. It’s a leadership problem.
Having the right structure matters – good leads, assistant managers, support systems, but even more important is having the right leadership at the top. Culture starts from there. When leadership leads with ego instead of empathy, people feel it instantly. When leadership leads with accountability and respect, people mirror that too. That’s what I try to do. Less ego, more soul.
One of the reasons we have been successful is because we’re proactive. In the last six months alone, we’ve helped open eight stores across four states. That takes planning, structure, and project management, but also a lot of emotional awareness and knowing how to keep people steady while things are moving fast.
That’s where HR and business strategy really come together: your people are your strategy. If your team isn’t aligned with what you’re doing or working toward the same goals, you’re never going to get there. That alignment starts with management with giving feedback, supporting people, and being clear about expectations.
It also impacts how we hire. Because we understand operations so deeply, we don’t just fill roles; we understand how each position actually functions within the business, how it interacts with other roles, and what kind of personality will fit both the job and the company culture. We don’t just match skills to a job description; we look at how a person will fit into the bigger picture.
The last thing I’ll say about culture is this: just because it’s gone off track doesn’t mean you can’t fix it. Culture can shift back in the right direction just as fast as it shifted the wrong way. If your retention’s dropping or your team’s unhappy, the first thing you should do is talk to your people. You might not love what you hear, but that’s the only way to fix it. People need to be heard. That’s how you rebuild connection and that’s what culture really is, the relationships you and your employees build with each other.
Kim Bruen proves that Human Resources can be something more than policies and compliance checklists. Through Zen Den HR, she has created a new model built on compassion, honesty, and strategy. She shows that HR can protect both employees and leadership when trust is put first.
For me and for Fat Nugs Magazine, Kim has been more than a professional resource. She has been a friend, a believer, and someone who reminds me that leadership is about people first and business second. In an industry as unpredictable as cannabis, having someone like Kim in your corner means your foundation is solid and your culture is real.
