Launching a cannabis cultivation business is no small feat, and it takes a dedicated team to get a grow facility off the ground. For many applicants and license-holders, going it alone is a recipe for disaster. You’ll need expert support to make sure you’re checking all the boxes as you prepare to open your cultivation facility. But not all cultivation consultants are the same: it’s important to choose a partner you can trust who can give you the right guidance based on real experience. This guide on how to effectively work with cultivation consultants can help you evaluate the right partner – and ensure your business will be successful.
What Cannabis Consultants Can do for Your Cultivation Business
Cannabis cultivation consultants are experts when it comes to everything about cultivation. From applying for a cultivation license to optimizing workflows on an ongoing basis – and everything in between – consultants ensure cultivators have no blind spots in their planning and execution.
For first-time license-holders in many states, consultants offer an invaluable service. After all, when you’re new to such a complex space, you don’t know what you don’t know, even if you’ve done your homework. When competing against multi-state operators that have launched cultivation facilities before, there is no margin for error. Luckily, cultivation consultants can help with everything you need to know about getting your business online, including the following.
Obtain Licensing and Approvals
The first step in opening a cannabis cultivation business is to obtain the proper licensing and approvals from the applicable regulatory bodies. This includes a cultivation license from the state in which you’ll be operating, as well as permits to construct or operate a facility from your local land use boards.
Navigating the bureaucracy is not as simple as filing the right paperwork. It also includes meetings, hearings, and behind-the-scenes outreach to officials. Cannabis consultants not only have the know-how to help you navigate this process, but also the network to help get things done.
Identify and Prepare a Site
To open a grow facility, you need a location that is zoned and suitable for cultivation. Not only does this mean finding a place that is large enough for a cultivation facility, but also available for the adequate utilities needed to support your grow. Cultivators require access to significant amounts of water and electricity, and many sites may not meet these needs. Requiring upgrades from utility companies could extend projects by months or even years, and the costs associated with these upgrades can be astronomical. To avoid these delays and control energy costs, work with a consultant to thoroughly vet each site on your shortlist to determine if it meets all your needs before you acquire the real estate.
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Design a Facility
Facility design can be tricky for cannabis cultivators, especially for horticultural experts who aren’t familiar with the world of architecture and engineering. Consultants typically maintain relationships with experts in both these fields to help you design a facility that is both functional and aesthetically pleasing. The design phase includes everything from the actual floor plan of the building to the plumbing and electrical systems to the HVAC system, all critical components in managing workflows and environmental conditions once your grow facility is operational.
Establish Standard Operating Procedures
Standard operating procedures (SOPs) are essential to establishing efficient, repeatable processes that result in the best possible outcomes for your plants and your business. Working with consultants who have helped cultivators launch successful businesses in the past ensures your SOPs will reflect the processes that are proven to work. Moreover, it enables you to tailor processes to your facility’s specific needs, as experienced consultants will understand how your operation may differ from others they’ve worked with in the past. Although there are general takeaways that should inform every cultivation facility’s SOPs, it’s important to remember your business is also unique — any consultant you work with should be able to create workflows and documentation that suit the individual needs of your team and business.
Implementing Hardware and Software Tools
Any cultivation business will need a full complement of hardware and software tools, from the LED grow lights that support the plants to the environmental monitoring software that helps ensure conditions surrounding the plants remain optimal. Partnering with consultants who have clear knowledge of the many tools available to cultivators on the market is an important step in making sure you have everything you need to get started once your facility is ready.
The benefit of partnering with TSRgrow is that we combine our innovative cannabis lighting solutions with 360-degree environmental monitoring software and data analytics, known collectively as GROWHub. This centralized command center provides full transparency into all your operations, an archive of all your master recipes, and real-time notifications and alerts, should anything require individualized attention. This enables your personnel to adhere to proven best practices established over generations of plants while remaining dynamic enough to respond to the ever-changing conditions in your grow rooms.
Analyze Your Operations
There is always something you can modify that improves the health of your business, so maintaining an ongoing partnership with consultants is helpful when it comes to analyzing and optimizing your operations.
TSRgrow offers a unique advantage when it comes to this type of analysis. Since GROWHub offers a comprehensive archive of all the data captured in your grow facility, offering both a panoramic overview and granular metrics, TSRgrow personnel are totally plugged into everything that’s happening in your facility. This provides a centralized dashboard for support from our expert consultants to the decision-makers on your team. A 24/7 digital connection offers the opportunity to make regular adjustments to workflows and SOPs to provide for the best possible outcome for your people, process, plants, and profitability.
What to Look for in Cannabis Consultants
Before you hire any cannabis cultivation consultants, it’s important to fully vet them to ensure they can deliver on their promises. Always look for the following in any experts you plan on working with:
- Demonstrable experience: Your consultation partners should have clear experience in the cannabis industry and should be able to point to successful operations they’ve worked with in the past. TSRgrow has decades of collective experience in cannabis cultivation and technology, making us true experts on people, plants, and processes.
- Personal relationships: The cannabis industry remains one built on face-to-face relationships, not distant communication. Any consultant you consider working with should be willing to integrate with your broader team and become a member of your organization. At TSRgrow, we are fully available to support your business long after you’ve purchased your lighting solution. Your success is our success, and we want to make sure our insight and expertise helps you grow.
- Extensive questions: Avoid consultants that ask a list of cookie-cutter questions without an interrogative eye on your business plan, process, or goals. Deep, probing questions are an important part of the consultant-cultivator relationship and help identify any blind spots or shortcomings before they become an issue. In our years of working with cultivators, we’ve seen it all and will critically analyze your plans from the outset, even before the application process is underway, to make sure you are set up for success when you launch your cultivation facility.
- Positive reviews: Don’t just take a consultant’s word for it — ask for references from previous clients and independently seek out client reviews for yourself. Any consultant worth your time and money will be happy to provide a list of customers you can contact to discuss their experience before you sign a contract.
- Honest feedback: Consultants should never pull punches when pointing out the potential pitfalls facing an organization. If every conversation you have with your team of experts is comfortable, it’s probably a sign they’re not digging deep enough. Consultants are there to rigorously scrutinize your business and provide you with deep data that serves to reinforce and strengthen your business. At TSRgrow, we not only have the expertise but also the data-driven insights needed to help you refine all your plans.
- Individualized strategy: One size does NOT fit all in the cannabis industry. Your consultants should take the time to help build an individualized strategy that takes into account the unique factors facing your business, from locale to target market to workflows to master recipes. Look for a consultant who proves up front they have the capacity and drive to really sit down and tailor a plan just for you. With TSRgrow’s GrowHub on your side, you’ll get just that every time.
More Than Just Lighting: TSRgrow Offers Expertise
TSRgrow is not just a supplier of top-quality advanced LED lighting, we also offer our combined decades of cannabis expertise to help your facility launch, grow, and flourish. When you purchase TSRgrow’s lighting as a platform solution, you gain access to a suite of software solutions and data analytics, as well as the support of our team that can help you identify actionable improvements to your operations and implement them in the most efficient manner possible.
To learn more about our holistic approach to cannabis cultivation and how TSRgrow can help you launch your business, check out our cannabis consulting services. If you have any questions, contact us now. We are here to help in any way we can.
