Adriana Herrera first got here up with the thought for EpicHint, a coaching and staffing service for hashish dispensaries, whereas she was browsing off the coast of Oaxaca, Mexico.
Decompressing after the dissolution of her final startup enterprise — her second try at working her personal enterprise — Herrera realized rapidly that browsing and #vanlife wasn’t her final calling.
The serial entrepreneur had beforehand based FashioningChange, a suggestion engine for sustainable purchasing, again in 2011. The firm was gaining traction and had some preliminary help, nevertheless it bumped into the buzzsaw of Amazon’s product growth group, which Herrera claims copied their platform to construct a competing product.
Undeterred, Herrera took a number of the instruments that FashioningChange had developed and morphed them right into a enterprise centered on on-line advertising to customers on the level of sale — serving to websites like Cooking.com pitch merchandise to individuals primarily based on what their searching historical past revealed about their intent.
By 2017, that enterprise had additionally run into issues, and Herrera needed to shut down the corporate. She offered her stuff and had headed right down to Oaxaca, however saved desirous about the emergent hashish trade that was taking off again within the U.S.
Herrera had a pal who’d been identified with colon most cancers and was taking medicinal marijuana to deal with unwanted side effects from the operation that eliminated his colon.
“When recovering from the removal of his colon, he’d run out of his homegrown medicine and go to dispensaries where he . got the worst service,” Herrera wrote in an e-mail. “He would ask for something pain, nausea, and sleep, and was always recommended the most expensive product or a product that was being promoted. He never got what he needed and had to self advocate for the right product while barely being able to stand.”
Herrera buckled down and did analysis all through the course of 2018. She hit up pharmacies first as a buyer, asking completely different “budtenders” for details about the product they had been promoting. Their solutions had been… underwhelming, in line with Herrera. The subsequent step was to speak to dispensary managers and analysis the weed trade.
By her personal calculations, hashish corporations (together with dispensaries and growers) will add roughly 300,000 jobs — most of them beginning out at near-minimum-wage salaries of $16 per-hour. Meanwhile present coaching packages value between $250 and $7,000.
That disconnect led Herrera to hit on her present enterprise mannequin — promoting an annual subscription software program for manufacturers and dispensaries that might provide a coaching program for would-be job candidates. The coaching would give dispensaries a leg up for knowledgeable hires, rising gross sales and ideally decreasing turnover that prices the trade as a lot as $438 million.
“The data is showing an average of a 30% turnover rate in 21 months,” says Herrera. “Looking at turnover and a lot of that comes down to bad hiring.”
The firm is on its first eight clients, however counts one undisclosed, giant, multi-state dispensary together with just a few mother and pop outlets.
Herrera additionally says that the service can cut back bias in hiring. Because dispensaries solely rent candidates after they’ve accomplished this system, any unconscious bias received’t creep into the hiring course of, she says.
Applicants excited about a dispensary can enroll within the dispensary “university” and as soon as they full the curriculum undergo a standardized type to use for the job.
“Our suggestion to run and get the very best outcomes is to pre-train, pre-screen and have the graduates unlock the flexibility to use.”
