Cultivation Conceptual Design

 

Video Transcript:

Hey, this is Ellis Smith at American Cannabis Company, thanks for tuning in.

Today we’re going to talk about cultivation design and how important it is to hire a firm or a resource that has experience in doing this and can really give you the guidance on designing a cultivation fields facility that meets your needs.

This is something that I have done personally within the company for the last seven years. We’ve built over a million square foot of growth space, if you’ve heard me say this before.

Like I said, we’ve designed over probably 10 million square foot through all different projects that we’ve done that may not have always got to market.

And so we really understand the process that it takes to put together a facility. But also, being operators in deploying businesses and getting them going, we understand and have refined our process over the years to ensure these things flow in a certain way.

And so make sure that you hire the right company to come in and understand what it’s like from the first person that walks into that door that’s going to the cultivation facility.

How are you going to decontaminate that person?

How are you going to provide a space for him to come into and change his clothes, change his shoes, but get into a clean uniform.

He’s at the process of putting on hairnets, rubber gloves, if you want to take it to this extreme. And then when he goes through that locker room into a threshold, we’re going to call it a clean zone/dirty zone.

How do we limit access into this clean zone of the cultivation space? You got to design behind all of this stuff.

And so once they’re behind that wall, what’s that ergonomic workflow from cutting cloned to transplanting, to moving plants from veg to flower, to harvest, to dry cure.

All of this stuff has to be in harmony or work with each other. You’ve got to look at different process, procedure, looking at lean manufacturing mindset, looking at Kaizen, what Toyota did with a constant improvement.

You have to constantly be looking at where you can provide these improvements and make things more efficient.

And so this is what we do: Here’s the company with the firms that we work with to put together these designs for you, on these floor plan drawings, on these concept drawings, and we would be glad to help you and assist you with your project.

We’ve got so much experience doing this stuff. I have a ton of fun doing it.

So, if you don’t have a firm, give us a call.

Love to help you and assist you with your design. Thanks.

Importance of Standard Operating Procedures SOP’s

 

Video Transcript:

Hey, this is Ellis Smith from American Cannabis Company, thanks for tuning in.

I want to talk to you today about SOP (Standard Operating Procedures) and how important they are for any new business or existing business.

So for those of you folks that are getting into the industry, whether it is cultivation, extraction or even dispensary, make sure that you understand exactly each workflow that has to happen within your business. And have a set standard operating procedure that you can write out so that you can train off of exactly each aspect of that workflow.

This is what is going to make your business be more organized. It’s going to help you make sure you can be competitive in the marketplace and really make sure you have your shit together – excuse my French.

And so make sure you are having someone internally write them. Or if not, please reach out to American Cannabis Company as we can assist you with putting together these tools.

We have some set templates that we work off of to come into your facility that we customize based off of how many steps it takes to do each workflow, how many keystrokes it takes to complete a task, and a few other tricks that we have up our sleeve to really ensure that every single task from the compliance to the admin, to how do you remove cannabis waste materials in everything in between.

So, please make sure that you have these tools in place. If not, give us a call and thanks for tuning in.

Dispensary Conceptual Design

 

Video Transcript:

Hey, this is Ellis Smith at American Cannabis Company, thanks for tuning in today. I want to talk to you today about dispensary design and how important it is to hire the right team and resources to ensure you design this thing properly. There’s many different levels to designing your dispensary; really a lot of different things you have to take into perspective. And I’m going to kind of outline some of that through this today.

So, first and foremost, make sure the building that you choose is zoned properly, make sure it’s in the right place in the community, is going to allow you to operate this kind of business.

Once you’ve crossed that line and you make sure that’s correct, then you’ve got to start to understand, make sure that the facility is designed from a compliance standpoint. Meaning, you’re following the rules and regulations on: Where they want the product stored, how they want to remove up the floor day and night.

And a lot of this stuff would dictate how we design this thing. And so it kind of break the design component into front of the house and back of the house. And really it’s the customer experience and then the budtender experience. And the budtender experience is twofold.

One, it is, how does product come in the back door into the facility?

How is it stored and then how does that product get moved onto the floor daily for the sales process to happen. And then how do you refill that stock as it is depleted in the unit to restore, ensure you can keep those sales going on that day.

So, we’ve got understand those design components, making sure they’re seamless and they meet the compliance aspect. But also too, we’ve got to understand the customer.

Retail is all about that experience and keeping customers coming back and enjoying that whole process.

What is it going to like when they walk in the door?

Do they have to show their ID and staying in a waiting room?

Do they automatically get led into the floor?

Do they have a budtender that follows them all the way through the process or they have free rings to walk to the store?

How are you displaying your products? Are they on a wall?

Are they in cases on the floor?

Are they part of the sales process where the POS system happens?

All these things have to take into account when you’re designing this thing to ensure it’s a seamless process. It meets the expectation of the customer and it’s an enjoyable process. Doesn’t take forever. They’re lost. They don’t know how to get to the POS system. They don’t know what products should offer.

Is their education material out so they can learn how to use these things that they’ve never seen these before?

So much information has to be kind of brought into this mindset of design. So, be sure that you’re hiring the right person or resource or firm to assist you with this aspect.

Give us a call. We do it too. We’re glad to help you.

Thanks for tuning in.

Extraction Conceptual Design

 

Video Transcript:

Hey, this is Ellis Smith at American Cannabis Company, thanks for tuning in.

I want to talk to you today about extraction design and how important it is to hire the right resource to assist you with this. We’ve got some great resources here at ACC that we work with that are owners and operators that do design work.

I have backgrounds in chemistry, have worked in labs, have worked in pharmaceutical labs. Well, they can bring the expertise, understanding of what it takes to really design this layout and functionality to one to meet the very strict code that you have to follow.

Whether you’re doing hydrocarbons, whether you’re doing CO2 and whether you’re doing solventless, there’s a requirement that you have to follow for each one of those extraction methods.

And we ensure that we can design and build that to meet those for you. But also, we’re going to play into account what products are you going to manufacturer, what space allocation do you need for those in products that would be going into the market that you’re going to be either wholesaling or selling through your retail channel.

And so it’s very important to understand all these process flow perspectives when designing your facility. So, give us a call, we love to assist you with your extraction design and make sure that the same meets the compliance aspect, but also can give you an efficient workflow.

And the space allocation is not too large and you have unused space. And it’s not too small and you wish you had more space.

Thanks for reaching out.

The Importance of Having a Cannabis Business Plan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbcO68eQQPI

Video Transcript:

Ellis Smith here at the American Cannabis Company, hope you are well, thanks for tuning in.

I want to talk to you about why it’s important to have a business plan.

Once you have kind of assembled your team together and you have a focus and direction on what type of business you want to start: extraction, cultivation, transportation, dispensary, whatever that is, this is going to now give you that road map.

That business plan is that road map is going to give you that direction, is going to help give you that focus, is going to help give you an understanding of where do you want to operate, what that market research is going to tell you about the demographics that you’re going to be targeting, that are in that area you’re going to be operating in, and it’s going to also extrapolate information from your pro forma model that’s going to look at some of your financial information, and it’s going to really show how the business is going to function from year one to year five, and really break down all the details behind what it takes to operate a business.

And so this is a very important tool. It’s more or less for your internal needs. Some of this information can be broken down into a pitch deck to be used for financing and raising capital. But for the most part, this is really your road map and guidance on how to run and operate your business. And we really ironed out all the details and help you get a focus on the direction you’re going in. 

There are some great online templates you can access to use these as guidance to write your own. There’s great information to research out there to find out your assumption, information that you want to put in there or hire someone like ourselves to help you with this.

Either way, this is going to be the tool that you can use the month to month, year to year. It’s a living document. Try to update it year after year just to make sure that you have a focus and a direction and you’re staying on track.

So that’s why it’s important to have that business plan. Thank you.

 

How Do I start a Cannabis Business – Part 2: Raising Capital

 

Video Transcript:

Hey, this is Ellis Smith at American Cannabis Company, hope you are well, thanks for tuning in.

I want to talk to you today is, this is kind of our part two of what it takes to get into the cannabis business, and this is about raising capital.

First and foremost, put this disclaimer out there, at ACC, we do not raise capital. We do help clients put together tools. They go out and raise capital, but we do not raise capital. I want to put that disclaimer out there.

What I do recommend is you hire a lawyer that can help you put together the necessary tools from your PP, your private placement memorandum, to your safe harbor information on your pitch decks and really help them give you that guidance so that you can follow these properly.

I see a lot of people out there, sending out quite a bit of pitch decks that are really illegal, and they should be reported. We don’t do that, but just know that you will get tracked down by doing this, if you’re not doing it properly.

So I just recommend once again, hire a lawyer on how to do this. But at ACC and what we do, is we help put together these tools so that you can work with your lawyer and go out and raise capital and put together the right information.

So these pitch decks are really evolved around a full-blown business plan with using anywhere from 60 to 100 pages, and then also a pro forma model that really is going to break down the business from all the capital expenditures, operational expenditures, what the ROIs look like over time and really give you those details.

Then we can extrapolate a lot of that information down into a very shorter version of the pitch deck that can be used to be put out.

So these are the things that we do to help put together the tools for our clients that have gone out and raised millions and millions of dollars over our time in business here.

And so for you, as a matter of putting those tools together, and then going and finding those resources, there’s many different ways to get capital. There’s debt and there’s equity and there’s a combination of both you can do.

And so you have to understand what works best for you. A lot of people don’t understand that. You’ve got this great idea, you want to start a business and you’ve put together these tools and you think, “Oh, I need to go and raise $10 million. I’m only willing to give up 10% or 15% of equity in order to raise this capital.” Well, you’re never going to get funded that way.

And people need to come to the reality that, you will potentially give up control of that business and lose that and have the minority stake in the business just to get that capital raised. And that’s pretty common, you’ll see across the space.

So hire a good lawyer and give them the guidance, hire a consulting firm that will put together these tools with you or legal team could do that for you as well.

And go out and just tap the capital market and see what’s available to you as far as all the different resources from private money, public money, there’s all kinds of family money.

How Do I start a Cannabis Business – Part 1: Getting Started

 

Video Transcript:

Hey, this is Ellis Smith from American Cannabis Company.

I hope you’re doing well out there. I am reaching out today to talk about what it takes to get started in the cannabis industry.

First and foremost, I’d like to just point out that there’s a ton of research you can do to really arm yourself with a bunch of information.

First and foremost, if you can go to conventions and trade shows, dig online, you know spend a lot of time putting together a lot of information that’s out there.

You can even find states that have been through the application processes, even go and read some applications that have already been produced. That’ll really show you how dispensaries, cultivation facilities, extraction facilities look, function, operate, and what states you’re kind of looking for.

But now, whenever for you to start your business, you can kind of do some of that background research, then start to understand what type of team members you want to put together, and understanding that to get into this industry you really need to have a good, qualified team, and they need to be diverse.

That’s kind of the first component of this. Once you can put together who your team members are, then you want to start to understand what market are you going to operate in — is it going to be competitive?

Is it going to be easy to go in and apply and not have to worry about any type of loss if you do apply?

You want to buy an existing business? And you have to understand what are those things you’re looking to do? Is it cultivation? Is it extraction? Is it dispensary? You want to do transportation? All of those things.

Where do you feel your core competency want to come from?

Once you can kind of figure all those things out, then you can start to understand the business plan, financial models. Hire folks like American Cannabis Company or other companies out there that can put together these tools for you, and they’ll really start to compile tools that will be very useful for your team to understand how the business is going to function, how it’s going to look, but also what the costs are going to be to get into this, what the operations are going to look like, how many employees you’re going to take, what your return on investment is going to be.

So it’s really quite a bit of work that goes into this. Do the homework, do your research, compile your team, and then when you have these things together, put together the right tools that you can use for (1) that your team can utilize for their own use and understand how that business will function.

But (2) you can actually use these tools to go out and raise capital. And that’s all going to be an important for you as well.

So in a nutshell, what it takes to get started in the cannabis space, you heard it.