How To Better Market Your Dispensary With Seed Technology

What’s going on everyone, back at it again with another podcast, it’s the dispensary marketing podcast. I’m your host Brandon Quan founder of Cannabud marketing. You already know what we do. Marketing agency for cannabis dispensaries both in America and Canada.

If you need any help with anything, just go visit our website, Cannabudmarketing.com. I have a super, super awesome guest here today with a really awesome, software. he’s from Seed technology, his name, his name’s John Railsback, he’s the account, executive, we’ve been going back and forth for a little while.

Been talking about some of the good things that they do. I, myself am always trying to help improve and, you know, just help dispensary owners and retailers just essentially just make more money. Honestly, that’s pretty much it, and have a good ROI, better profit margins, so on and so forth. So I thought having John on the call here would be really, really good.

Um, and he has tons of insights on how to help better your dispenser, your retail shop, or even if you, you know, are looking to kind of start up a dispensary. this is the guy to talk to. So, without further ado, thanks for coming on the show. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. I’m always happy to talk a little bit more about tech stacks and you know, how dispensaries can integrate systems more effectively.

Awesome. So we’ll hop right into it. So tell us a little bit about yourself, a little bit about, you know, seed technology. Yeah. So I’m originally from Minnesota, in college, I wasn’t really sure what I was going to be doing after school, but I was selling used cars and found my way out to Colorado.

Right. and made my way into, you know, cannabis technology, selling SMS based platforms in 2019, all the way to online ordering and then come into seed tech technology at an early stage, and getting things going here. but seed technology is really focused on that in-store customer experience around in-store digital menus, interactive tablets and kiosks.

And then self-service ordering just to beef up those profit margins, like you talked about. Nice. So, just for my own curiosity, you know, I know you mentioned you started as like a car salesman, at, at the beginning. Did you do that for your, for a while? Were you always a born salesman? You know, did you use that experience to leverage into see technology right now? Like, you know, as an entrepreneur, always into sales and stuff.

So super interested just to hear a little bit about that. Yeah. I mean, I think I learned a lot from my dad who had started his own company when I was pretty young. Nice. and in college interned out local of Volkswagen dealerships, so just kind of learning the ins and outs of structuring a deal. Right. and I think that really propelled me into tech sales, after school was kind of doing that as an internship in college at the dealership.

And then, kind of found my way into an AE position right. Outta school. Right. And learned a lot in those first six months about tech stack, the cannabis space in itself. And it’s funny, cuz I always kind of joked in college that I would end up in the cannabis space, you know, just sitting around with friends.

Right. so I’m just happy to be here. Right. So you, so you always wanted to jump into the cannabis space. Yeah. I mean, jokingly, ironically, like, you know, when you’re smoking with your friends, you’re like, it’d be awesome to be in that space or at the time it was really taken off. So just kind of found myself here and have been happy ever since.

Nice. Nice. So tell us about when, you know, so, so you got started, you yourself got started coming outta school, sales rep and then going into account executive and now you would see technology. so I guess when did you start with the company? When did the company get started itself? Yeah, so I started in 2020, and the customer or the company itself actually got started in 2019, built off of an old company, founded by our CEO, Matthew Catone horizon displays, which took a big initiative in-store displays.

So they were doing Nike and Teslas in-store displays, and found themselves in dry bar are pretty popular hair salon out west if you’re familiar. and so dry bar was really looking for a consultation when it came to hair care products, surprisingly enough. So we were doing their in-store menus for all products in stock.

Um, as well as a consultation that would allow people to pick out options about their hair and then be recommended a product to take home. Right. and then in 2019, you know, they saw a really good fit in the cannabis space and moved everything over to a cannabis facing platform. So recommendation tools for strain type, education space platform.

And then just being able to show, you know, what dispensaries have in stock on the fly and helping them increase those margins. Right. Right. So you found, had had a solution for seemingly all the other industries and then found that marketplace gap and was like, Hey, you know, this would really apply to cannabis.

Right. Absolutely. Yeah. and since then we’ve just been laser focused on the in-store experience, you know, we don’t stray and go for web-based platforms or work on websites. we’ve just really catered to that one on one interaction with the customer. Right. Right. And how many, how many stores are you in now? Yeah, so we’re in around 300 dispensaries nationwide right now.

Um, our larger clients being air wellness and all 75 stores, jars, Michigan, all 15 one plant California. So a big spread and everyone’s using different services, but you know, I think we’re pretty trusted in the space right now. Right, right. So, we’ll, we’ll touch on this a little bit later in the call, but you know, we’d love to hear kind of some of the, you know, I guess it doesn’t have to be the case study buildup itself, but kind of like any kind of feedback that you you’ve received from these retailers that they’ve kind of, you know, walked you through saying, Hey, you know, we gained X percent or, you know, you know, Hey, the, the, the customers love it and you know, we’re seeing more customers keep coming back.

Yeah, absolutely. So I think a lot of proof points we hear back are just the fact that dispensers are able to utilize these menus to sell more product. Right. And so for TV menus, I mean a lot of dispensers are pushing, you know, high margin products, overstocked or expiring products and just moving inventory more effectively, right.

When it comes to self-service, you know, we’re really helping dispensaries as it comes to transactional velocity, you know, getting people in and out of the door or even when, you know, staff is understaffed or overstaffed having a solution in place for customers to shop on their own. Right. And so we’ve seen when people shop on their own around a 26% increase in basket size.

Wow. And I think that just comes down to people, being able to have the privacy of shopping on their own being recommended and upsell throughout the consultation. and then just being able to get in and out of the dispensary as they would in any other shopping experience. Nice. So, I do have, you know, I would love to hear your feedback on this.

So same thing, just like how you said, just by having the product up there, you can essentially move either higher margin products or you can move products that aren’t selling as well, maybe at a discount or something like that. And I tell my clients the exact same thing, like on your website, it acts as expensive real estate, right.

People are going to your website to check things out, you know, have a featured product section, so you can move higher margin product and, you know, products that you wanna move. Right. do you like, do you know if there’s any other products that you would recommend to having kind of like the high real estate area? Like, I don’t know, maybe products that further improve retail loyalty, maybe you have some sort of specific strain that, you know, nobody else has.

Like, are you finding that the two high margin and products that you wanna move in the main things or are there any other, excuse me, products that people can generally add to, to those, to those menus? Yeah. I mean, with the ever changing space, it just seems like everyone is getting somewhat vertically integrated at this time.

Right. And so being able to move in-house brands over others is always gonna be a key, feature of our product. Right. and so those are also gonna be the high margin products. but with our self-service when we do our upsell, right, we always try and cater to upselling, you know, whether it’s someone shopping for flour and just upselling a $5 to $10 pre-roll or offering all their in-house brands as an upsell, it seems like dispensers are really focused on pushing their key brands.

And so in some spaces where dispensers are just partnered with very loyal vendors, they can always, you know, work with those vendors and push, you know, say Stevey, for example, over others. so people are definitely utilizing it to their full potential and moving those products that they see in their backend as high margin.

Right. Right. And yeah, it seems like cuz everything that you’re offering, we, we spoke about this, you know, in our previous call that like, you know, in terms of the pillars of what I would think retailers really need to focus on. I have my customer acquisition framework where it’s like awareness, conversion and loyalty, but in that loyalty portion, there’s like four main things that you need to focus on, good product, good pricing of the product, good customer experience and then good buying experience.

So the customer experience is like, yeah, you know, John help me out. he remembered last time I had a question about this and said that we had a new product coming in and highly recommended it. And it was awesome. Like that’s a lot of Google reviews, but then the, the last one is I think very underrated is that buying experience portion it’s like are products in stock? Do they have a good selection? does it take me an hour to buy like all these different things? And it seems like you solve a lot of these things from the menu where I can easily see yes, there are pictures, there are percentages, there are things that I can see versus just a random array of 50 different items on the screen.

And you guys are also accelerating the process with the, the self-serve option, which increases the, the, you know, that buying experience as well. Right. Right. And we kind of took a step back. I mean, some people in the space, their solution is maybe just uploading on a flash drive of a bunch of different skews at once.

Yeah. Or maybe their current integration is only pulling skew data and having a hundred skews on the screen. Yeah. And for example, when you walk into dispensary, you know, you’re not always gonna have the time to sit there and look at all these skews at once. Right. So we kind of took that step back and highlight those key products, maybe five at a time that kind of align with a vendor ad, and getting people to really engage with the menus and ask questions.

And also, you know, when you speak to kind of that transactional velocity and speeding up the experience when people can read off the menu on their own and not have to have such a long conversation with the bud tender. Yeah. Not only does that aid the experience, but it also might, you know, help your dispensary reduce with labor costs.

Yeah. And just having more people in and out of the door. Yeah. Yeah. All all goes into buying experience that just all goes into the efficiency of the process. Right. You know, if every single time you’re super busy and you have one customer walk out out of 10 customers and you’re losing 10% of business and you know, you never really take that into consideration.

Right. Like 10 percent’s a lot. if it happens every single time. So, you know, like I said, I, I really like, you know, what you guys have going on and it looks really, really awesome. So absolutely, I appreciate it. Yeah. We’re definitely doing a lot of things in the space on the, so, you know, I’ve taken a good look in stuff, but now that I’m thinking of it, the people who are listening probably really don’t have a very good idea of exactly what you guys do.

So if you wanna walk through like, very, very simply like if, if, I was a retailer, how would you walk me through what you guys offer? And then very quickly again, why this thing that you offer is going to relate to the retailers, making more money. Cause again, that’s what it really boils down to. Yeah.

Yeah. So we offer three fully integrated products with the dispensaries point of sale API. And so that allows for up to date inventory deals and specials. And we promote all those five with three products. So in store menus on the TV, interactive menus and tablets, so people can browse the menu on their own, learn about every product, maybe in a waiting room or lobby, and see current deals or specials as well as self-service ordering.

And the self-service ordering might be hard to visualize, but just a quick, easy shopping experience for people that are coming in and know exactly what they want. So they can quickly browse the menu and place in order or for new customers coming in that maybe have never shopped at a dispensary before, or they’re a tourist or anything like that can take a full consultation or almost like a virtual bud tender on the tablet and be recommended a product.

And then with both of those shopping experiences, get that upsell opportunity, which just benefits dispensaries when it comes to increasing that margin. more so those three products are a great market fit right now just because everyone, I think with the way the dispensary market is going, everyone’s getting super competitive and margins are dropping across the board.

And so being able to increase that profitability on everyone that comes in the store is super important at this moment in time. Right. So on the, let’s start with the, the, the digital menu boards, so how does that work? Do all the people you work with and need smart TVs? Do they need an app on the TV? Is it apple TV? Is it Chromecast? How, how, how does that work in terms of the implementation? Yeah, so it’s super easy to set up, installing an apple TV on the back of the TV is as simple as plugging HDM.

I cord, a lot of people will just quickly add a couple Velcro straps and clicks right onto the back of the TV. and then it’s a dedicated seed app in the apple iOS store. So they can just download the seed app right on the apple TV, enter a pin code and be fully integrated into their POS. Right. And then on the actual graphics and design of the, the product itself, are you guys the one that’s providing templates? Are you doing brand new creative for all of these stores or is it up to the retailers to then have some sort of graphic designer be able to put the digital, like, you know what I mean? Like have the creative action, right, right.

Yeah. So that’s kind of our powerhouse, the back end is really easy to use. There’s a full media library where creators can upload all of their own content. we never push any of our own brand ads across TVs of our clients. And so that leaves a lot of wiggle room for dispensaries to maybe negotiate discounts on products with their vendors.

Um, even, you know, maybe get a check every month that says, you know, we’re displaying your ads 11 hours a week. could we work something out, but when it comes to content creation, you know, for larger clients that are signing on, we definitely help them out with a lot of branding aspects and media creation.

Right. But for the most part with the dispensaries we’re working with, they have a marketing team in place. They have a ton of collateral from vendors already. So it’s as simplest plugging it into the backend and then uploading it right into a venue. Right. And then this software automatically integrates with whatever POS they have.

So it’ll update on the backend and you don’t have to continue like type in at the end of the day. we sold outta this product time to delete it, you know, and that sort of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So eliminating all of that labor cost as well. we can also integrate right with their online ordering platform.

Right. So any images in there can be pulled. so if you would picture a menu, like you could have a vendor ad on the left and then for each individual product have a photo associated with that skew line. Yes. And so people can actually visualize the product on the TV. Right. Right. And for people that also mean further visualization, just like kind of look at any, fast food restaurant.

Right, right. McDonald’s you have a picture right. Of what they sell. Right. And is, you know, it’s probably simple to everyone listening right now. And I would feel like most people here have gone to McDonald’s at least a few times. Right. But whenever you’re first time buyer and, and you’re trying to figure out what product to buy, it’s really helpful having the picture, you know, beside, beside it.

Right. even with those new deals and, you know, they offer these deluxe burgers, like you still visually want to see what you’re getting. Right. And I think that’s exactly what you guys are offering versus, Hey, get this OG cush and then you just don’t know, like, you just don’t know what it is, right.

Yeah. Yeah. And like I was thinking about the other day and so like fast food restaurants will also promote meal deals and yeah. You know, certain specials, they have ins stocked. But more importantly, when they have a new product coming out, that’s their first way to advertise, I would say. So as soon as a dispensary gets new product in stock, it’s a great way to launch it or have like a brand takeover day.

Right. So you can set in the back end, let’s only show these products on the TV for the day. and schedule that out Monday through Friday, and see a pretty big increase in that new product sale. Yeah. Like some sort of, yeah. I, I think you, you, you hit it on the head is like, I think an underrated way to get, so in the retailer space, a lot of times people buy like single channel items.

So like, for example, if you’re going in for flour, you buy flour. If you’re buying pre-rolls you buy pre-rolls, if you buy edibles, you buy edibles. Right. but I’ve been having a few discussions with a couple other people and, you know, and talking about the importance of having multi products in terms of what customers want.

So if a customer comes in and you know that they’re gonna buy flour, some sort of concentrate, and maybe an edible they’re much more valuable customer because you can essentially just sell them more things. And if they’re buying more things, their lifetime values higher, their card size is biblically higher, all those fun things.

Right. So to your point, by being able to have those bundles online and have the menu, I think that is super powerful. Cuz again, you can see, okay, I’m getting a pre-roll I’m getting this bag of, of gummies or whatever it is and then you get this. and I think that’s, that’s super powerful and it’s, I didn’t know, you guys offered that, but it’s really good that you guys are doing that.

Yeah. Lots of ways to customize. That’s kind of where we fall back on is like we have the premier customization tool in the space. Right. So allowing people to merchandise as they see fit because every dispensary is different. you know, some people are taking this wholesaler or like big box store approach, but some wanna have that more personal experience.

So we definitely wanna fit their strategy. Right. Are you, and this is super tricky. I mean, I would, I don’t even expect this, but when it comes to the data game and what works and what doesn’t work, like attribution’s really huge, right? Like even in the SEO spaces where I’m focusing on, it’s like, how do you know that the person who came from Google ended up purchasing the product that you know, you’re selling.

Right. and a lot of the times it’s an Omni present approach, right? Like they’ll find you on Google. They’ll be like, I have to place an order for something on Friday. Let me go check out, let me go scope out some deals. They find you on Google and then maybe they leave. And they’re like, I Googled this company.

Let me drive on in there very quickly. And like, you know, go hop on in. Right. So where does that attribution come from? What is the attribution window? So my question to you is that with all of these different ways of customizations and number of bundles you can have and number of pictures you can have and all of these items, have you done any, or do you have any current data right now and what would be the most effective way to, to, to, have digital menus? Like, is it having 30 items? Is it having 20 items? Is it having 10 items with pictures? Is it having five items with flour, five items with like, I, I know this is this varies, but it’d be super interesting to, to, to, to know if you have any of that insight.

Um, I was just, just wondering. Yeah. So, I mean, when it comes to attribution, we’ve done a few Proofpoint studies when it comes to new clients. So when new clients sign up and maybe they haven’t had seed before, we can look at their data beforehand. And so a couple we just saw, so customer one before seed sold one half ounce of $140 profit of a new strain they had in stock right after seed, it looks like they sold over one pound at $5,200, a profit within one week.

So a profit of 3600%. and so those proof points are pretty easy to speak to because they’re obviously doing like a brand takeover showing that strain on their TVs over time when it comes to self-service super easy to point back to the fact that they shopped on the tablet itself and then they added an item to the cart.

So we can prove out that 26% basket size increase through self-service super easily. Right. But I would say seed is very heavily invested in our success team over our sales team. Right? So just making sure that every customer has a strategy in place and some people might come to us and say, you know, our success metric right now is loyalty signups.

So we could put a strategy in place on the TVs that offer QR codes. So people can sign up on their phone right off of the TV and see a direct increase in those signups, as well as on the tablet, when they’re shopping, entering their phone number and opting into SMS based marketing is huge. Right. moreover like another customer’s success metric might be, Hey, our average transaction size right now is $70.

You know, how could we look at getting that to $90? Right. So putting a strategy in place around those high margin products, or maybe even inhouse brands. Right. And seeing if we could even, you know, move that needle a little bit over the course of a week. And I would say we’re very successful at doing that.

Nice. Nice. So now bridging over to the, the, the selfer side, how, how does that work now? It’s any tablet I’m assuming whether it’s an iPad or an Android, you should be fine. And then is it an app that is, is being placed on the store and then the app is customized through some sort of desktop application you give on the backend.

I’m I’m assuming that’s how it works. Yeah, absolutely. So we like to say we’re pretty hardware agnostic. So we work on iOS platforms as well as Android platforms. Nice. and we can do self-service through a few different ways. So ELO units are the larger screens you traditionally see in like a McDonald’s or a Starbucks for self service order.

Right. Right. So those can range from 22 inch all the way up to 30 inch units. Right. but we also can work on a mobile iPad. So carrying it around the store and interacting with the customer on a one-on-one basis and placing an order. but for some dispensaries, like on the east coast, we work with a couple clients who have two staff on hand at all time.

And the customers walk in and are directed right to a kiosk. They place their order. They go and check out, show their ID and they’re right on their way. and so all of it CTV as well as self-service, as well as interactive tablets are gonna be managed through seed manager, which is kind of our powerhouse for larger clients or anyone that wants to be able to control every TV and every self-service station from one place.

So air wellness, obviously with 75 stores is gonna have to put a strategy in place across those stores. So one marketing person can sit down, log in, upload all of their media content and schedule out the menus for the whole week. Right. also on that back end, you’re gonna see a full analytics page for self-service.

So duration of time someone spent on the kiosk, you know, what they bought, which will really help you merchandise your products on that kiosk more effectively and put those higher selling items right. At the top. Yeah. So people can get in quicker and easier than ever, or maybe even recommending those in the upsell opportunity.

Right. but again, all managed through seed manager, which is, you know, kind of what we’re really prideful of that the fact that people can have this central administration unit. Right. And log in and control it all from one place. Right. Wow. Okay. That’s that’s interesting. so you’re saying that within the self-serve option, you have data points as to, like you said, how long somebody stays like scrolling, whatever it is and then how long it takes them to buy the product.

And obviously what products that they buy and stuff like that. So then I can then be like, okay, customer took three minutes to find the product that they wanted. And I’m seeing this over the next, you know, this is a significant sample size where I’m seeing the next, I don’t know, 50 customers doing the same thing, then I’d be like, okay, I should probably put that product a little bit higher because if customers are willing to scroll that long to do it, I can move it up.

However, right. That being said, if I do see customers take that long, that also means that customers are going to see more products, which would also mean that they can add more products to the card size. Right. So, I do think that’s an interesting case study where you can be like, okay, how do we optimize it so that the customers see enough products, but they don’t, you know, lose as a conversion once they’re leaving.

Cause I would expect that once a customer’s inside the store, the friction, it would take for them to leave. The store is a lot, lot higher than it would be for you to just go on a website and not find the product. And I think those two are very interesting points cuz like if I were to go into, I don’t know, some random store, there’s been multiple, let’s say Walmart, for example, I’m looking for a light bulb, I’m gonna walk up and down and up and down all those odd until I can find this stupid light bulb, but I’m not gonna leave because I’m already in Walmart.

Right. Right. so I think kind of going through that case study and having somebody assess the data to see what is truly effective is really impactful. Have you done any of those studies or anything like that? Yeah. I mean, we are always looking at, so like one client came to us and said, you know, I don’t think our wait time’s that long.

It’s only 10 minutes, but 10 minutes in a space like this could 10 minutes could feel like a lifetime. Yeah. Yeah. so reducing. Like when I go under dispensary, I always feel a little bit nervous. I don’t know if that’s just cuz I’m from Minnesota and it’s a new thing for me. But when I go in, I feel like it’s kind of like a new experience.

Lighting down any of that time would be awesome. and especially for dispensary that might be, has a line coming out the door and customers leave, you know, every customer that leaves, that’s almost like $1,500 of lifetime value. Yeah. So getting people in and out the door effectively and catering to them is the most important.

And when it comes to being able to browse these tablets very easily, you’re able to segment by flower cartridge, edible. So people can click right into what they’re looking for and then browse the whole selection. Right. Right. And yeah, to your point, like, you know, if the buying experience is that, it takes me 15 minutes to kind of do the whole process again.

That’s way too long. Right. So Definitely, definitely right on that. So if you were to summarize the benefits of what you guys do, into a few key, main points again, that would benefit the retailer, what would be, you know, those, those main things. Yeah. We like to talk about five proven benefits and they’re gonna be increased transactional velocity.

So getting people in and out the store faster, increased profitability. So increasing that basket size by a certain percentage, reducing the dispensary’s labor cost just by having these systems in place. That means someone doesn’t have to log in every morning and update a menu or print out flyers and promotions as well as like kind of cutting down any conversation that has to be had with new guests.

Um, that kind of ties into reduced human error, you know? And everyone’s not perfect. So someone might print out a menu one day and the pricing isn’t reflected in the POS the same as it is on the menu. Right. Right. And you never want to have an upset customer coming up to the bud tender and having a price discrepancy.

So cutting down on that and then just in general, like modernizing your dispensary, you know, a lot of these markets are kind of mature at this point and they got started back in 2013 and so they have these systems in place and maybe they haven’t even realized that they’re not efficient at the moment.

And newer dispensaries is coming online. I would say, actually we get a ton of inbounds from brand new dispensaries that are like, I see a system like this as a needs to have in a market today just because it’s so competitive. Yeah. It’s crazy. Yeah. Cuz I, I speak to, you know, as you can imagine, a fair amount of retailers and, and you know, there’s, there’s a few buckets they fall under.

Right. But in terms of what we’re speaking about, like it’s like, yeah, I’ve been doing this for 10 years. I know what I’m doing. This is what, how it has been. And this is how it’s going to be moving forward. I’m like, look like, again, however you wanna run your business is the way you want to do it. But with anything in the world, there are evolutions in how things are done.

And you know, who’s to say, what is a good evolution and what is a bad evolution, but evolution in the sense that things are gonna change, right. Buyer behavior, right. customer familiarity, cuz eventually you’re gonna be familiar with walking in these dispensaries and you’re, you’re gonna know exactly what’s going on and all you’re gonna wanna do is be like, okay, I wanna do this, this, this, and then boom, good to go.

Right. you’re gonna know what your product is and you’re gonna go out, buy it and, and get what you want. But if a lot of these other retailers are not, kind of following that or at least kind of changing what the customer needs and wants, then it’s gonna be like a death by a thousand cuts kind of thing, you know, I’m gonna opt out of this thing.

It’s gonna cost me $200 a month. I don’t know if I want to do it. But I think the main question is, is that okay if you don’t spend $200 a month or whatever it is, we’ll talk into the pricing and stuff that you have. Right. if you’re not gonna spend X amount of a hundred dollars a month on this thing, what are you then going to allocate that to? Right.

And is that thing providing you more or less ROI then it is not to have it. Right. And I don’t think a lot of people are looking at at it that way. A lot of people who I have conversations with are, that $200 is a lot. I can maybe buy something else with it. Right. And they, they, I find a lot of times typically people will take the dollar amount value to personal use.

So like with $200 a month, you know, I can save up for a trip and go here, but I’m like, no, this is business money. This isn’t personal. Right. Yeah. but again, that’s a completely separate thing, but it it’s good to hear that you guys are, are, are focusing a lot of these things. And like I said, I think things do change and it looks like you guys are on the forefront of, of, I at least, you know, you’re niche for now.

Yeah. And to your point, like, you know, I have a background in SEO as well. And it seemed like when I would reach out to people in the cannabis space, you know, is always like the running joke. Like I got a guy, so they already have something in place. but I think it’s really beneficial to look and reevaluate your tech stack from year to year and see if the system you have in place is working for you.

Right. Right. Yeah. It’s, it’s tricky, uphill battle the, the education of customers, but Hey, that’s what this is for. Right. You know, whoever’s listening, right. This is completely for free. I, you know, I don’t even know who’s listening at this time, but if you are retailer, I do think whether you decide to work with seed or decide to work with Canada, but marketing for whatever it is you need to do, it’s super, super important for you to take at least, a 30,000 foot view of your business to see, okay, this is the thing that I have.

Right. How can I do the things that are gonna take me to the goal that I want to achieve and how can I remove the things that are taking me further away? Right. A lot easier said than done. but there are efficiencies that can be made. And unfortunately with a lot of change and I talk about conversion optimization all the time to where if the friction to do the thing is too much people aren’t gonna do it.

But a lot of the times operationally the friction, it would take to implement a new agency to have that hard talk with their current SEO guy. But they’re not ranking on Google and that never replies to them three weeks or to kind of integrate a new software because their old digital, provider didn’t work and go to you guys sometimes that inherent friction just takes too long.

Um, but I, I highly encourage you. Whoever’s listening to just kind of take a step back and be like, look like, okay, ah, I, I see a clear picture. This is where we need to go. And this is, you know, where, you know, where I need to stray further away from . So, what are some of the biggest, challenges that you guys are facing right now? It seems pretty straightforward.

You offer a software, you have digital signage and you have a self-serve option. Like what are the main things that you, you know, the problems that you guys are having right now? Yeah. probably the same problems you’re running into at the time. Honestly. I mean, this industry is so complex and volatile, right? Like with ever changing landscapes, legalization across states, crackdowns on illicit markets, just everything kind of, you know, ebbs and flows in the cannabis space.

Right. And I think even from seeing like fundraising efforts from other companies and like the thoughts of a recession maybe coming up, there’s a lot going on when it comes to signing on new clients. Right. And so I think everyone is pretty conservative at the moment when they come to making a new decision on a tech stack.

Right. and so just overcoming that by just knowing that, you know, we have a solution in place that works, you know, I’ve been in the space for a while and see, it has really shown me that there can be products that increase and improve out ROI and so I think just, you know, trusting in our process and knowing that the product itself can get the job done and provide huge value to clients is a big portion of why we’re doing what we do.

Right. Right. Look, it’ss a value exchange, right? Like that’s a business is right. Like, are you providing enough value to solve a problem that your customers have and are they willing to pay you for that solution to that problem, which is the, the big thing, right. Like you and I can go back and forth solving problems all day, but how much will people pay us for the problem that we, that we’re solving for you? Yeah.

And I, I think, you know, having that gap is, you know, you know, in solving it is really important. Yeah. And it’s nice to work and, you know, be trusted by large clients like our wellness and jars and, you know, have our product proven out in market and showing that it fits in real time. Right. and it’s also really important for us at this stage of the game, just to, you know, know what competitors are doing, have good competitor analysis and show how we stack up against them.

Right. so obviously overcoming this stuff is just kind of keeping your head to the grindstone, changing as we need to and evolving within the space. Do you have anything coming down the pipeline in terms of new services, maybe additional features to the things that you’re doing right now? Like what are you guys up to, in the next, I guess, short term and long term? Yeah.

So short term, you know, as it comes to product development, we’re really focused on beefing up the back end. Currently you can do a ton in the back end, but we really want this tool to be in the hands of our users. So being able to do everything on their own when it comes to, you know, maybe they have like an on the fly font change, which they can currently do in the system, but just providing them with more options and ways to do that.

Um, and also just being able to go in and update and feature all their products on their own when it comes to the consultation and stuff like that, you know, that’s kind of on our side to work with the client one-on-one and identify that stuff. But when people sign on and, you know, maybe they have a clear vision in place of what they wanna do, they should have the power to do that.

Um, so I know some competitors, you know, you may have to submit a ticket for everything where we’re trying to move towards, you know, a power user that knows what they want and can do it on their own. Right. long term, you know, just trying to stay, stay in the game with the industry and, you know, stay up to new standards, and introduce new products as they’re needed.

You know, seed originally was founded as an education platform where people could come in and learn about products, and that evolved into self-service ordering. And then obviously there’s the need for menus. So just, you know, working with industry and going the way it goes. Do you have any products in line right now that, that you can talk about? I don’t, I dunno if we are revealing any secrets coming out or I, I think another better question would be if you D you know, if you wanna stray away from the products that you have coming out, you know, having that competitive advantage, what are you seeing in the marketplace right now that could possibly use a solution that you guys could potentially offer? Well, it’s your question of, like, if we have new products coming out, I think you’ll just have to wait and see.

We’re currently working on the 3.0 rollout. So just to Beed up back end, we’re definitely gonna focus next year on, you know, revamping and upgrading the self-service ordering aspect of it. Right. So just being able to, you know, consult on more topics, you know, have faster ordering times and everything like that.

Um, so definitely just always looking at product improvement, and making it a better experience for the customer coming in dear dispensary. Right, right, right. so I guess hitting off the, the, the, the tail end of the conversation , but again, really appreciate you hopping on board.

This is a, a super awesome chat. I, I think things like these are, so I don’t, I don’t know if it’s under probably underrated, but just probably under, like, known in general, because like, when I speak with people, in terms of growing their business, it’s all about how can I do more marketing? How can I do more marketing and stuff like that.

Right. And to an extent, like, that makes sense, but it’s like, how can you do the things that you’re already doing, but doing them better, right? Like you’re already selling to your customers. You already have customers coming into your store. My example, you already have a website, just get more people to the website, but people are like, yeah, I want to go jump into running a billboard campaign or running magazine ads or running radio ads and stuff like that.

Right. But optimizing the, the opportunity that a lot of these dispensaries have right now in terms of, Hey, you’re already getting, I don’t know, a hundred people, however, many people, a couple thousand people coming into your store every single month. and if you can guide them through a better process to help purchase products, you’re gonna make sure that the lifetime value stays on longer.

They’re gonna be happier customers and clients. And then you can capture new customers that are coming in a little bit better, because like you said, it’s like, it’s almost intimidating going into these dispensaries cuz like, you really don’t know what you’re getting when you walk into it. A lot of it’s like, yeah, you can’t see on the inside, everything’s kind of blocked out or they have like, you can’t just see.

Um, and then you don’t really know what to expect from a, you know, different locations cuz like what’s really going on. Right. but if you can have a way to be like, Hey look, there’s this familiar thing that’s going on in the buying process. It works the same thing as if you’re ordering from a rest for the most part.

Um, I think what you guys are doing is, is, is really awesome. Yeah. And to hop back to, you know, things coming down, the pipe consumption lounges are a big thing these days. Yeah. And so integrating solutions with consumption lounges where people can order from the table, is a big initiative for next year.

Um, but yeah, I think it all kind of ties together. I mean, you really wanna have your in-store experience nailed down. because the points of all those other, you know, initiatives are to bring people into the store and you know, even when people order online, they still have to come into the dispensary.

So having everything looking good and feeling good and having a good experience, I would say is the number one priority. Yeah. That’s it, you know, I think the best case scenario, somebody orders online, they look at the digital menu board. They’re like, I didn’t know you guys had that. Right. I’ll get one, those, something as simple as that.

Right. a lot of ways that this can kind of benefit the retailer. so, what would you say, and again, this is just kind of based on what you think next level means, but what would you say to like a dispensary owner that’s looking to, to take it to the next level and again, it could be, you know, it could be sales, it could be operations, it could be anything, but what would you say? they should do.

Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, everyone’s coming into your dispensary. So like I said, you have to have that experience nailed down. And I think digital menus are definitely in needs to have in this competitive space. and for operators like dispensaries, it seems like it does always come down to margin.

So I was just talking to a client who, you know, is in a small town, they have four locations, but there’s almost like 20 other dispensaries around them. And some of them are dropping their margins down to 20%. And so just having, you know, a modernized dispensary and introducing integrated integrated solutions, you know, like an integrated menu with your POS are gonna save you time and that always results in saving money.

Um, and just like, if you wanna take your dispensary to the next level, you really wanna avoid manual processes like updating paper signage or updating menus by yourself, or, you know, when it comes to self-service, you don’t wanna be overstaffed at certain periods of time or understaffed. So really locking that down and that combined will only increase your margin.

Um, and so like with my background, my personal opinion that is having an efficient tech stack in place will only compliment a sophisticated operator at this point. Right. Right. You know, elimination, automation, delegation, like those three main things. Like if you can kind of like take these things off your plate, you can kind of work on more things, which is, you know, what you guys allow and any, final nuggets, any nuggets of wisdom that you would like to offer to, to any of these dispensary owners, any patterns that you’re seeing from the retailers that you’re talking to saying, Hey, you know, I think, you know, if I was to send out a message or two or maybe three, to, to these guys, I would really help them out.

Um, what would you say? Yeah. more, most importantly, I’d say, you know, the onboarding process with seed is super easy to do. Like we said, just plugging in a system and integrating it right with the POS. So there’s never gonna be, like you said, a hurdle to onboarding, just a very easy process.

So if you’re looking to open a new store as kind of a one store chain right now, easy to upgrade, and more so like going back to my point about taking it to the next level, you know, one location stores right now, aren’t gonna be able to scale unless they have these sophisticated processes in place. so definitely always just reevaluating from year to year would help you out.

Um, and looking at what systems are costing you the most money. Right, right. Nice. And last but not least. Where can people find you if they wanna find you? Absolutely. You can always go to get seed.io. that’s our website and you can book a call there or send me a personal email. It’s just Jr. The s@getseed.io, or on LinkedIn Johannes Railsback.

Perfect. Well, that was it for the dispensed street marketing podcast. Like I said, I’m your host, Brandon Kwan, you know, the deal founder of Canada, bud marketing, do marketing for retailers, both in Canada and America. So if you want any help with any of the things we spoke about on this call, feel free to book a strategy, call on our website, Canada and marketing.com or on the bottom right corner.

There’s a little text widget. So if you’d rather text, we can do that as well. But, you guys have an awesome day. it’s Wednesday here. I don’t know when you guys will be listening to this, but I hope you guys have an awesome day and you know, I’ll see you on the next one. Thanks. Bye.