Ned Montgomery introduces Budworkz, an app using geolocation to revolutionise connecting employers to employees in the cannabis industry.
Every company in industries from logging to gaming has added expenses for new employees that go beyond the hiring and onboarding process.
Sometimes a relocation package is needed, with added expenses for travel as the employee moves across the country in order to live closer to the job site, or the employee could simply work remotely.
However, in an industry where the product is not contained on spreadsheets or on databases, that an option does not exist.
The cannabis industry needs hands on work, and robotics have not yet advanced to the point where the product can be remotely maintained from hundreds or even thousands of miles away.
My name is Ned Montgomery, and I am the founder of Budworkz LLC, a Colorado based app that exists to connect employers with prospective employees in their area of operation. I came up with the idea for Budworkz when the grow I worked at had to pay for the gas, food, and housing expenses of several employees who lived about a three hour drive away from the grow.
Three hour commutes are not radically uncommon, but it should not go unsaid that that long of a commute is not ideal for either the employee or the employer.
The average day for such an employee would start as: waking up well before dawn, hopping in their car, and hoping that the traffic and the roads are clear enough so they can get to their job on time. It is quite likely that they were never at home during daylight hours.
Budworkz uses geolocation to ensure that such a logistical nightmare for both employer and employee will not hamper business and keep employees from having to drive from one corner of their state to the other just to get to their job on time.
Geolocation technology
Geolocation will ensure that employees and employers save time and money in trying to find both hires and employment in their area, the two most crucial aspects of a functioning business.
Budworkz was officially born in September of 2017, with the idea that the cannabis industry could use geolocation to help keep the industry up to date with the latest technology in hiring employees.
The electronic industry is rapidly changing, and great strides must be made to keep up. As the electronic industry has changed, so too has the cannabis industry.
Currently 11 states have legalised recreational cannabis, with 30 plus having legalised it for medicinal use, to say nothing of the various states that have decriminalised recreational cannabis use.
The cannabis industry is going to keep growing in the second decade of the 21st century, and Budworkz is built to help the growth of the businesses by ensuring they keep unnecessary expenses such as paying for hours long commutes or relocation packages, down over time. Recruiting has changed with the market as well.
No longer can you go to a job site and hand in a resume and expect to get an interview or get a hire. Everything is digital in the 21st century, especially recruitment which is why Budworkz was created.
It exists to help both sides of the employer-employee relationship navigate the waters of the hiring process in the new and ever changing digital world of the 21st -century.
A key part of the changing landscape has been the app market. Since the introduction and wide-spread adoption of the smartphone, in-app revenue has skyrocketed to new heights. For example, in-app revenue in 2015 was just under $70bn (~€63bn) in 2015.
Next year, in-app revenue will be over a hundred billion of that previous mark. The potential for growth in that industry is why I created Budworkz as an app, instead of as a website or a recruiting firm.
Budworkz is intended to be free to download for the employee and a $8 base monthly subscription to use for the employer, with differing member tiers offered.
Both the in-app market and the cannabis industry are scheduled to explode in the next decade, and Budworkz was created to use the success of the former to help the latter staff their companies.
The in app revenue model will ensure the growth of Budworkz for the next decade, thus making it so that Budworkz can help the cannabis industry grow by connecting local employers with prospective local employees.
Negotiating State laws
No one State’s laws regarding cannabis production and consumption are the same. For example, certain aspects of cannabis are legal for medicinal use in the state of Iowa, but recreational use in banned, in contrast to where Budworkz is located.
Hiring practices and laws can also differ greatly from state to state, which is why geolocation is important for the cannabis industry; less worry about the amount of paperwork that needs to be completed in order to hire an employee across both state lines and municipalities. By law, an application in California looks different from an application in Nevada.
Budworkz’s geolocation will keep costs down by letting employers hire from surrounding areas, as opposed to putting a ‘we’re hiring’ post on their social media accounts and hiring employees who might have to endure a hellish commute each day.
That approach cuts out employees in the employer’s area who may not have the requisite social media know-how or connections to get hired.
However, none of this talk of cutting down expenses for both employers and the employee will matter if the app does not function or crashes upon launch every time. The biggest phase in the life-cycle for apps is the product launch.
A bad launch will quickly leave you in the hole both user and public relations wise, and a terrible launch will mean that your product is dead on arrival. At best, your app is ignored; at worst, it is widely mocked on social media and throughout the industry.
Word of mouth is absolutely crucial for successful ventures in their first year of existence and I will make sure that Budworkz’s is thoroughly positive. I know that Budworkz will not be able to assist the cannabis industry in the way I want it to if it is poorly designed or badly implemented; an employer wants to be able to see the prospective hires in their area as quickly and efficiently as possible, and a prospective employee wants to be hired just as fast as the employer looks at their profile.
If Budworkz does not function as intended or is too complicated for either party in the cannabis industry to use, it fails to deliver on my promise.
User friendly
I created Budworkz to stand out from other apps and practices on the basis of its intuitive and user friendly design. Budworkz is different because of the ease of use and strong customer service.
Broken products do not make a brand, at least not one that is financially viable and positioned for consistent market growth. I am prepared to go all out in my efforts to make Budworkz the most-user friendly app in the cannabis industry; I predict that a significant amount of my initial investments will be spent on making Budworkz compatible with market-leading technology.
Most, if not all of Budworkz’s operating costs in the first year will be spent on getting the app functional and efficiently running. Investing the most in my app’s future will reap fantastic dividends, both for the app itself and for the people most involved in the cannabis industry.
The ease of use for Budworkz means that it is designed for all firms in the cannabis industry, from massive grow operations run by large firms to small operations done by a single family.
All businesses in the cannabis industry stand to benefit from Budworkz; and so do prospective employees, from the college student looking for seasonal employment to the full time cannabis worker seeking to break into the industry.
The chief selling point for an app such as Budworkz is that one size fits all; I created Budworkz to make the hiring process for local hires seamless regardless of grow size or company head count. Customer loyalty will be ensured by a top-notch customer service team that will go above and beyond for the customer because no customer remembers average service, they only remember the extraordinary; be it extraordinarily bad or extraordinarily good.
Budworkz will build its brand by ensuring that the latter is what the customers get out of the app when they use to hire employees or get hired and to gain an experience on the app to keep updated in the industry.
A cluttered user interface will only give customers a headache and drive away potential sources of revenue in the cannabis industry, a key feature that Budworkz avoids by making user-intuitiveness one of our core principles.
If Budworkz’s customers cannot navigate and use my app efficiently and expeditiously, they will find no reason to either return their business to it or recommend its use to colleagues.
A key part of Budworkz’s future success will be our competitive pricing.
I stated earlier that I believe that the flat $8 entry price makes Budworkz one of the most cost-effective hiring platforms in the cannabis industry for both sides of the hiring relationship. This pricing strategy is an effective way to draw in people looking for jobs in the industry, as well as employers. Large firms in the cannabis industry will be attracted to Budworkz because of how cheap it is to get access to the platform, and smaller firms will be attracted to Budworkz because the low price will help them keep their operating costs low, helping them get an edge in a competitive and growing marketplace.
Employees will be attracted to the base price because Budworkz will place them with a company that saves them money and time that would be wasted trying to find a job in the cannabis industry the traditional way.
In addition to the low cost for the customers, Budworkz will also offer seasonal discounts and promotional deals in order to attract potential customers into making the plunge and trying the product. In the cannabis industry as elsewhere in the business world, the line between profit and deficit can be as little as $8; these discounts will help struggling companies in the cannabis industry fulfil their hiring needs while also keeping their books in the black during crucial grow periods.
Advertising these promotional deals will spread Budworkz to the far corners of the cannabis industry and build Budworkz’s customer base. A competitive starting price ensures that Budworkz can quickly lay the foundation for rapid growth in a volatile industry, but what keeps Budworkz fresh is our sense of innovation. As I wrote earlier, smartphones are a relatively new mass phenomenon, but the revenue that has been added to that industry is immense.
That bears repeating here. Budworkz was, and is, created to take advantage of new trends in the cannabis industry, as well as to forecast the future to some degree. The future of the cannabis industry is rapidly different from the beginning of the decade, and it will no doubt be as radically different to us in 2030 as it is to us from 2010.
Budworkz is not intended to have just a single feature and build its base off of that permanently. Such a model is not viable in any industry, especially the cannabis industry.
The most successful companies are those who use their growth to plan for an uncertain future, which is a core aspect of Budworkz.
Wearable tech is being used in far greater numbers than in years before; artificial reality is included in most smartphones. 5G is a tangible product in the next few years. Without the ability to adapt to new trends, Budworkz would be a one-trick pony; valuable for a few years at best before quietly fading away to join the overflowing trash heap of companies that failed to adapt to changing times. Budworkz will draw in a core audience with its user-intuitive interface and competitive pricing programme and grow that audience by keeping the platform forward-focused.
Budworkz cannot help both employers and employees in the cannabis industry if it remains permanently stuck in 2019 in the year 2023. Inflexibility serves no one, least of all, an app in one of the most innovative and exciting industries in the 21st century. Geolocation is the main selling point of Budworkz.
An employer could realise that they are short-staffed and in desperate need of more workers, open their phone on their grow site and find workers instantaneously. Normal hiring practices in the cannabis industry are long, arduous affairs of sifting through resumes where you end up hiring a worker who lives too far away to afford a delay.
For the employee, hours long commutes add hundreds of miles of wear and tear on their car. The employee would also have to hope that inclement weather, traffic road work, car accidents or car trouble did not occur or cause delays on their way to work (or hundreds of dollars in ride-share fees, if they can find a driver willing to take them to their job site).
At a certain point, the expenditures to maintain a car for hundreds of miles each day surpasses the pay check the employee would get for their hard work. The drive to the job site would be just as draining physically as it would be to their car. The most essential function of Budworkz, geolocation, would ensure that the employee would not have to sacrifice their car and their pay cheque just to get to work on time.
Apps using geolocation as a core feature have caught on and disrupted many industries in our new digital age, and I believe that geolocation can help the cannabis industry, rather than disrupt an existing service and cause tensions where none exist.
Driving innovation
Currently, there exists nothing like Budworkz in the cannabis industry; it is a niche waiting to be filled by a strong product with a robust and outstanding customer service.
Furthermore, geolocation will help cannabis employers dispense with the need for relocation packages to be paid out by cannabis firms in order to get the right employees, another reason as to why I created Budworkz. The cannabis industry in the United States has changed swiftly this decade, and more change is on the horizon.
The difference between failure and success for a company in the cannabis industry can often mean finding the right hire and the right fit for the right cost. Footing the bill for an employee’s gas, housing, and food expenditures who live a three hour drive away from the grow can eat away at razor-thin margins and put once-profitable companies in the hole.
The stakes for potential employees are similar. No employee wants to have to wake up hours before dawn to get into a car for hours on end just to get to work in order to collect a pay check, and then return home after the sun has set, driving for hours after work just to get back home. The miles start to add up, both on the employee and the car they drive to get to the job site.
Budworkz will ameliorate this tension for employee and employer. It’s why I created Budworkz in 2017, so that both sides of the hiring relationship can be satisfied that they found the right fit for the least amount of time and money spent. I believe that Budworkz will serve the cannabis industry for years to come as it continues to grow in the United States.
Ned Montgomery
Founder
Budworkz LLC
+1 515 979 3113
budworkzapp@gmail.com
Budworkz Facebook
Budworkz Instagram
This article will appear in the first issue of Medical Cannabis Network which will be out in January. Click here to subscribe.
