Over the past 5 months I have gone from occasional,
recreational toker to registered medical marijuana patient who is highly
educated in the cannabis industry and am now a connoisseur of this wonderful
plant.
I have learned a great deal about cannabis, cannabinoids,
terpenes and the endocannabinoid system. And along this journey I have begun to
also learn some of the more interesting ways folks communicate with each other
when they are talking about marijuana. It is unfortunate that so many people
still feel it is taboo to talk about their own personal involvement with
marijuana.
For example, if you and a co-worker want to take a break in
the middle of your work day to consume your strain of choice, you can’t just
walk up to them and say, “Hey, let’s go outside and get high.” That probably
would be overheard by the wrong person.
One way to say this is to say, “Hey, let’s go for a safety
break.” That’s a nice way of saying, “if I don’t go outside right now and take
a puff to calm myself from the stress of my job right now, only god himself
will be able to save the next person who calls me with a stupid question.
You’re toking and chilling is for the safety of all us around you. “Safety
break time. Who’s with me?”
Why do you think people enjoy taking smoke breaks? Even
those nasty cigarettes. It’s because all
of us need to take breaks to chill out.
The best place to take a safety break and have a business
meeting is in your happy room. If you don’t have a happy room, get one. Mine is
an enclosed and heated 4 season porch with a hot tub and super comfy chair, the
Love Sac (check them out at your local mall, they’re awesome). I live in New
England so having the hot tub outdoors only lasted a couple of winters. Getting
out of a hot tub in the middle of a very cold New England day needing to race
into the warm house before you freeze like a Popsicle is very hazardous to
one’s health. You’re wet, you slip, you fall on the frozen ground and that
hurts a lot. So it had to come inside.
Now when having a business meeting on your safety break it
is very important to lay down some rules early on as to what you can actually
talk about. You should never try to talk about finances, loan applications or
POS systems. Oy, wait until I tell you about POS systems. You’re taking a safety break for a reason, to
relax of course. And the last thing you want to talk about is boring stuff and
stuff you will actually have to pay attention to and remember. The likelihood
of you remembering what you talked about during your safety break is slim.
So what business can you talk about when you’re high?
Marketing ideas are OK. Marijuana is very often associated with enhancing
creativity. Just remember to have pencil and paper with you and right down your
brilliant ideas immediately. My wife and I came up with some of our best ideas
for product names and loyalty program ideas while we were “being safe”.
For those of you thinking of taking your own safety break
right now, that would be a bad idea. Because you will never remember the
important advice I am about to drop on you regarding POS systems. If you’re
going to open a retail store, you are going to need a cash register. But you
can’t just buy a cash register and start shoving your customers’ money into it.
Nope, you need an all-encompassing, all-connected, all-powerful piece of
software to connect your brick and mortar store(s) and your online website
together with your customers and your social media/marketing outlets like
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.
Since I have a background in IT and I love to research
things to death before I buy them I was more than happy to do what is my
bread-n-butter, my element of expertise. If this were in the hands of the wife,
she would have talked to one person and bought what they wanted her to buy. She
is the type of person that will buy the first thing she sees that someone tells
her will be perfect for her. I am a lot more distrusting, especially with
salesmen. And remember, POS does not stand for Piece of Shit, at least not in
this articles context. It stands for Point of Sales.
Whatever POS system you buy, just make sure it meets all of
your required needs. Do not buy anything that almost meets your needs. And if
the software company that created and supports the system tells you they are
working on the feature you want and it will be available in the next release.
Do not believe them. Even if it does come true, you would be working with a
first version of that feature you require. As a former software developer I can
absolutely tell you beyond any doubt in my mind, don’t ever buy any version 1
of any software.
If it’s a big feature that you must have to meet your
business needs and the POS system you are investigating doesn’t have it in
their currently released version then you should move on to a different POS
system. If it’s a minor feature you can live without for the short term knowing
they are going to add it to a future release, then keep investigating and
comparing.
For a head shop we had a requirement that our POS system
must have the ability to scan a driver’s license to do age verification. You
must be 21 years of age or older to purchase goods from a head shop. First I
was surprised to learn that many of the systems did not have this feature or it
was implemented poorly. The second surprise was how much they jack up the price
of a barcode scanner when it needs to support both UPC scans and barcodes on
the back of drivers’ licenses (PDF417 is a stacked linear 2D barcode). The
price for the scanner jumped from $150 to over $400.
Since, as previously written about, we moved on from a head
shop to our Wicked Chronic idea, we no longer needed to maintain the
requirement for age verification in our POS system. However, even though I did
pick a POS system that does not currently have age verification, I did make
sure they would be adding it in the very near future. After all, our long term
dream store is going to require age verification.
As a self-described computer geek I was immediately
attracted to cloud based POS systems. Cloud
based POS systems met several of our needs. We wanted the ability to keep
inventory in sync between our brick and mortar and our online website. We also
wanted to take sales at trade shows. When you are new to any industry and even
more so in a re-emerging industry like cannabis, it is a good marketing
opportunity to have a booth at local industry trade shows. For the cannabis
industry there are a lot of trade shows to choose from. Don’t spend a lot of
money traveling to trade shows. Pick the ones that are within driving distance
for you.
** Safety break **
I can’t believe I just bored my
readers with advice on POS systems.
