Tommy Truong: [00:00:00] so for those of you guys that are listening, today is the day of recording that we found that Trump is, and the administration is going to reschedule. is Schedule three. They had a press conference and everything.
Lucas Gould: It's big news. I know. It's like probably the most monumental progress that we've seen in a lot of years. So it's uh, it's exciting.
Tommy Truong: Federally for sure. And you know, I, I was talking to a pharmacist this and he mentioned that there's a lot of questions more than answers now of rescheduling.
Lucas Gould: I think that's the truth, and that's the thing that people probably don't wanna think about. I, I left feeling like things were a bit. Unclear, then clear. So I'm not really sure what's gonna happen, but I mean, look, my view is that it's just progress, right? Like something's gotta be better than nothing.
You would hope at least. And uh, there's a long road ahead, but it feels like there's some change moving in the right [00:01:00] direction.
Welcome to the the podcast for cannabis businesses looking to launch, grow, and scale their operations.
Tommy Truong: Yeah, so I wonder if this pushes legislation to make it more clear, that's what I wonder. And I know that the benefits are obviously 280E, you know, we can go into complete depth on that. But also that now there's research that can get poured into the plant and the cannabinoids, but then there's this murky area on, well, I guess the state sold it recreationally when it's schedule one.
Does that change when it's schedule three? I wonder.
Lucas Gould: Yeah. I'm not sure. You know, look, you, you gotta hope and believe that a step forward on medical does not equal a step backwards in recreational and adult use. And I think in a lot of ways the federal government's gonna now have oversight into the medical sides of the program.
And, you know, whether they're investing money [00:02:00] into research or they're encouraging research, or they're at least just not like, you know, stigmatizing research, like all that's positive. What, what I'm unsure about is like, how do you, you know, in a market that has both recreational and medical cannabis. H how, how are they gonna bifurcate the two?
Like for two 80 e, will that only be relief on medical sales or will that be relief on all cannabis sales? Right? Like I think that's, that's the question. That's, that people need to answer.
Tommy Truong: Well, I, for me, thinking about it logically, it has to be all for sure because you've reclass rescheduled the entire drug, like the entire plan, right?
Lucas Gould: Yeah, I mean, I think, well, you know, and I need to look more, but from what I saw, like it seemed like the executive order was really specific about medical and research and, you know, therapeutics and Yeah, to your point, like if the whole plant itself is reclassified, then. Yeah, then, then the recreational should not be, but at least, you know, I think there's some, I think there's a camp out there that would say that [00:03:00] this reclassification is specific to medical cannabis.
Now, I don't know if we know that yet, but I've heard that. Whether
Tommy Truong: here's the thing,
Lucas Gould: sure.
Tommy Truong: can you, is is medical cannabis? The extracts from the plant. Can you ever have medical, like pharmaceuticals or generally extracts that are lab tested, all those things. They create medicine out of it. So it's a con control environment and you get medicine out of it, right? That's a schedule three drug, right? So even if you had a medical cannabis license, I don't think that you would fall under those confines. It's questions, questions more than answers.
Lucas Gould: Yeah.
Tommy Truong: Good news, euphoria. And then just like after what things settle down, you're like, okay, so what does this
Lucas Gould: Yeah. Well, and I just, and like for anybody you know who's listening, who I gotta believe is like an operator, consumer, you know, who, you know, some, one of those camps like, it, it's just ultimately gotta be a big win, right? [00:04:00] Like, it's gonna be more access to capital, there's gonna be more access to research, there's gonna be relief on two 80 in some way, shape or form.
It's excitement, right? It's, it's, there's a bit of like normalization that will come from this. Like in, in, I think in any way you slice it, you ultimately end up as like, this was good right. Now, again, like specifically what happens. I think that's the, the uncertainty.
Tommy Truong: Yeah, I mean, it's no longer schedule one you banking. What happens with banking? What happens with interstate transactions? It's now not a scheduled one drug anymore.
Lucas Gould: Yep. Well, so actually, so we. I talked, you know, our, we have banking partners that help us facilitate the Spendr program. And one of the reasons that banking acts is so difficult, at least under the schedule one world, is the compliance requirements and the compliance burdens around, you know, how how do you, you know, actually bank something that is, you know, a schedule one federally illegal substance.
[00:05:00] What we're hearing is that some of those compliance requirements, some of those compliance burdens do go away under schedule three, and so you will see more banks at least be willing, whether they actually bank it or not, at least be more willing to explore banking the industry. So I, that, that will, you'll certainly see some impact from, I think you'll see more, more players come into the space.
Tommy Truong: Yeah, so I, a lot of questions, all positive. It's all moving in the right direction now. I always, I think to myself, what does that look like for a grower in California? That's just now just bust open the doors, or it's still very state specific. So maybe the states, each state decides, Hey, we only want product in our state.
Who knows?
Lucas Gould: Well, and I think the one certainty is like interstate commerce has not yet changed. You know, I don't think that's, I don't think that will, there won't be movement there. But again, like with anything, you know, you gotta hope that. Progress leads to more progress. Right. And so, you know, we were never gonna have interstate commerce [00:06:00] until we have schedule three.
We're never gonna have legalization until there was schedule three. Like you'll never have descheduling until there's schedule three. So like, it just, you know, how do we hopefully parlay this into some additional wins at the federal
Tommy Truong: But then.
Lucas Gould: hopeful.
Tommy Truong: know the interstate commerce for most likely the plant doesn't change. But if you are a pharmaceutical company and you now do research in cannabinoids and you create a compound and extract, that's, say for example, CBN for example, Hey, we can justify and through studies that CBN does help for sleep, and you create the CBN drug that you can sell anywhere in the country.
Lucas Gould: That's interesting. Yeah. I mean,
Tommy Truong: It's schedule three. I mean,
Lucas Gould: Yeah.
Tommy Truong: so now that opens the door for that, what happens afterwards? Questions?
Lucas Gould: Questions? Yeah. Maybe more questions than answers, right? Isn't that what
Tommy Truong: Questions. More questions than
Lucas Gould: [00:07:00] friend said? Yeah.
Tommy Truong: But you know, before we start and you are here, you know, this is breaking news, so I, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about that. But I also wanna talk to you about loyalty. The game that you're in. Before we start, maybe Lucas, can you tell our listeners just a little bit about your background, what you do?
Lucas Gould: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I, you know, I think we as a company Spendr, do a lot of things. We ultimately started Spendr. I think to solve a lot of the problems in the cannabis industry that everybody faced, whether that's payments, banking, access, you know, marketing, advertising, access you know, all the things that go into like how do you create a loyal customer experience and a loyal customer base.
Uh, I would say specifically Spendr is a financial and loyalty platform. Um, dispensaries use Spendr to offer compliant cashless payments through a mobile app. Uh, they can offer rewards and discounts to their customers, and then consumers would use Spendrs similar to like using Venmo Cash app, the Starbucks app.
Uh, think like one [00:08:00] place where you can, you know, add your bank account. You can fund money into a digital wallet. Then you can use the app to buy products from your favorite stores, get rewards for those purchases, get discounts for those purchases. Kind of like get, you know, get that loyal type of experience really anywhere you shop so long as you're paying the Spendr.
Um, and we launched that in Ohio, which was a medical only market at the time is now a adult use market as well. Uh, we're now offered in 13 states, some medical, only some adult use in medical. Uh, we work with over 200 dispensary locations. And I think ultimately really what we're doing is like solving this question of how do you create a loyal customer base.
I like to say that there's no such thing as like a loyalty product in that. One product doesn't solve that for you, right? Like to create loyalty, you need to have a clean store and a wide selection and good pricing and you know, ha happy and helpful staff. And you need tools like Spendr and you need tools like [00:09:00] KayaPush and you need, you know, there's, there's so many tools that you need ultimately to, to create that.
And we're ultimately a tool in that tool belt. So happy to, you know, happy to dive in and then give you some more specifics.
Tommy Truong: I love that you mentioned that it's the entire customer experience that creates a, a loyal customer. So there are tools to, to measure, to achieve, to see, to communicate, but it all comes down to what does experience look like and are you meeting customers expectations?
Lucas Gould: Well in every, yeah, I mean, and I think we, you know, we try not to say that Spendr is a loyalty product and that again, like we don't, we don't want to give the. You know, we don't want to give off this perception that like, take Spendr and that automatically equates to loyalty, right? Because again, like there's some things that we can't do for you, right?
Like, we can't make your staff happy per se. We can't, you know, increase the selection of your products. We can't figure out your pricing for you. So we're, we're a tool in the tool belt. And I think like that's, if you look at the most successful dispensaries that have a really loyal [00:10:00] base, you're gonna see that they do a lot of things right?
Like they have lower turnover, they have a happy staff. They offer a range of products. They do discounts occasionally, but not all the time. They use tools like Spendr. And that's just, yeah, I mean it's, it's like every customer's different. You gotta figure out what works for 'em and you gotta be willing to kind of meet them where they are.
And I
Tommy Truong: what was the problem that you guys are solving initially when you started Spendr, what was the biggest problem?
Lucas Gould: Well, initially it was the payments problem, so it was the problem with cash. You know, I, I, you know, am a cannabis consumer and medical marijuana patient, and personally hated paying with cash. Uh, I shopped at, you know, I don't know, maybe a hundred plus dispensaries in my life and just hated the idea of paying fees to get cash out or doing like the Roundup debit card thing with a fee, and just felt like there gotta be a, a better solution to that.
And, um. You know, I think you're seeing the world change into like mobile apps and digital wallets. I think you can look to [00:11:00] Starbucks as like a great, you know, comp around will people pay with a mobile app when done well. And I think the answer is yes. Um, and we try to prove that, right? Like we try to prove that we could convince the consumer to ditch cash, get the Spendr app, link a bank to Spendr, and then use Spendr for their purchases and continue to do that even past that first time.
And we solved that I think really quickly and clearly in that we were getting. You know, almost 40% of a dispensary's whole business was coming through our platform. And these were businesses that did the cashless ATM, that did cash that maybe had another A CH product. And Spendr was the lion's share of all of their transactions because we just made a better, a better experience and more rewarding experience, one that helped the consumer.
So that was the initial problem. I think what we've evolved into is really solving the customer retention problem. Right. And I think that's, again, it's kind of synonymous with loyalty. Like you can't have loyalty unless you have retention, right? If a customer only shops with you once, that's not a loyal customer.
Um, and what I think dispensaries have the most, you know, one [00:12:00] of the biggest challenges with is like retention. How do you keep somebody you've brought in once, you know, there's a lot of stores in certain areas. Like if you're all carrying the same products with the same prices, the same first customer discount, how are you gonna keep that person the second, third, fourth time?
And we think Spendr has proven to be that thing That really does differentiate one from another. And is helping customers retain those, you know, helping dispensaries retain those customers?
Tommy Truong: So at Spendr, how has Spendr evolved from a platform to where it is today?
Lucas Gould: Yeah, I mean, I think it's funny, like it's, I think it's evolved a lot while also not right? Like to some degree the product that we offer day one is very similar to the product we offer today. Obviously, we've made it better, we've improved it. There's, you know, it's less glitchy, there's less bugs.
It's a. A more seamless experience, but in terms of the feature set, we're offering very much the same features that we were day one. I think what's changed is in how we, you know, how we position Spendr both to the customer and to the, you know, the customer being the end consumer and [00:13:00] the dispensary. I think what we leaned into though, and that's where the evolution has come in, is we really leaned into like, how do you turn payments into a retention channel?
I think there's a lot of companies that think of payments as just payments, right? And somebody's gonna pay with it and they're gonna move on and you're gonna need. Text message marketing, email marketing, to ultimately do that communication, what we found was that payments is actually the best communication channel.
Payments is the highest intent, right? You're in Spendr when you're ready to buy. Uh, it's like last mile delivery, so to speak, and that you're in Spendr right before you buy. There's no window shopping. So if you're in Spendr, you're a intentional wanting to buy cannabis person and we can now position to you the right communication, the right deal, the right discount at the right time in a very personalized and targeted way.
And I think the ability to communicate through payments is what's driving that retention. So I'd say that's where the evolution comes in. Like again, the product set is very similar. We've done a lot, but it's, it's very similar to what we offer day one. We just, we really [00:14:00] just like leaned into turning payments into a communication channel.
That's been, it's been really effective for us so far.
Tommy Truong: How do you get customers to open Spendr?
Lucas Gould: Like the consumer.
Tommy Truong: The consumer? Yeah, because once they're in there, like you said, communication can be dialed. The offering can be dialed based on historical purpose purchases. Now your. And it, it's, it's probably a problem that you are solving constantly, right? You have, you have somebody with a phone and they have a million apps.
You open up my phone. It's,
Lucas Gould: Yeah, it's crazy. Yep. Yep. Yeah, I mean, you know, look, I think that's where relevancy is like the most important metric to target. You know, I find it funny 'cause I feel like market, like just marketing platforms and advertising platforms are somewhat counterproductive. What I mean is like if you're a marketing platform or an ads platform, you make money by surfacing more messages or more ads to a person.
The problem is the more you do [00:15:00] that, the less likely they are to engage, right? So there's this like relationship in which. The more I get spammed, the less likely I'm to engage with the thing. And so what you really have to do is like dial in relevancy. And that's what we focus on is like how can we prove and how can we measure relevancy so that when we do deliver it to somebody, they're like, oh wow.
Like this is for me. I've really thought about this. This is like a thoughtful communication that I actually care about. And then it doesn't feel like marketing, right? Like. You talk about apps on your phone, let's talk about like your inbox with all the promotional emails and all the spam emails you get, right?
Like how many people open the promotional emails. And so the problem with that is that people aren't really seeing the information that you're sending them because it's not relevant. But with Spendr, what we've really focused on is delivering you something of relevancy so that you open it and then, then what actually happens is like the more you see that we're sending you relevant communications.
The more likely you are to open it that next time because you're like, well, last time it was very relevant and it helped, it like [00:16:00] made my life better, so now I'm gonna try it again. And then like each time they open it and they're like, wow, this feels good. They're more likely to do it again the next time.
So we're actually seeing like open rates go up over time and engagement rates go up over time because each time they open it, it's like a reinforcement that we actually understand what they care about. And so then they're more likely to like give us another chance in opening our email. So I'd say that's how we do it, is like you gotta dial in relevancy.
And the more you do that, the more likely they're to open your app
Tommy Truong: I feel like you, you guys are solving you. You, you solved a problem. And you are tackling a different problem than getting somebody's email. That makes sense. So if I giving somebody their email, there's a, there's a lot less friction involved in that exchange because I don't have to download an app. But you're competing now for attention because my inbox.
You are right. When I wake up in the morning, there's gotta be 20 people that send me promotions. And it's promotions I never signed for sign up for. So now [00:17:00] I'm just click, click, click, click, click, delete. I don't even open any promotion unless it's from somebody that, and sometimes I delete. In doing so, I delete
Lucas Gould: stuff you
Tommy Truong: that I should actually open.
Lucas Gould: Yeah, that's the problem. A hundred percent. Totally.
Tommy Truong: so you get the volume out, but the quality is in there.
Lucas Gould: Well, and and again, that's, I think the, the counter productiveness is the fact that like. People then think, well, then I should send 'em another email and another email, another email. And like each of those emails, you're just eventually getting so pissed off that you hit the unsubscribe button. Right? And then you don't get any emails anymore.
And I think that's where we've really tried to focus is like, yeah, getting that initial signup is hard. Once you get that signup, it's so much easier. And I think I would rather like, you know. It's like this concept, like choose your hard, right? It's like I would rather it be hard to get them in, but then easier to keep them and engage them versus the reverse, which I think it's easier to get them in, but much harder to engage them and keep them.
And I, I, I'll tell you one other thing on, on this point, [00:18:00] Spendr also provides real utility to the consumer and that they actually pay for their cannabis and they get discounts on their cannabis through Spendr. If we were just a marketing app, I wouldn't use it. Yeah, but the fact that I can actually pay for my cannabis, the fact that I can find stores, I can get discounts.
Spendr truly is like the most kind of affordable and easiest place to find and buy cannabis out there. So I don't even think of it as a marketing app as like the consumer, right? I think of this as like real utility, like something of value. And so I'm opening it regardless of the communication, because I want to get value out of.
It and that, that, I think that's the difference is like, how do you provide real utility, real value to the consumer where they're seeking you out versus
Tommy Truong: tell how. Spendr works
Lucas Gould: Yeah,
Tommy Truong: yeah,
Lucas Gould: For the end user.
Tommy Truong: for the end user and then for the merchant.
Lucas Gould: Yeah, so the end user downloads the app from, you know, apple or Android. They can also sign up on the web if they [00:19:00] want. All the 99 percents on the mobile app. They create a quick account. They link their bank through Plaid, which is the same software used by Venmo and Cash App and all the large FinTech apps.
So you can like get a Spendr account and be all the way set up within like 60 seconds to two minutes, you know, given your kind of savviness with tech. And then once you're in, you can then just start to, you know, put money into Spendr. You can hold money in there. You know, you can find the stores nearby that offer Spendr.
You can see all of your reward offerings. So we give all of our customers like milestones, whereas they spend with Spendr, they get rewards. Uh, these rewards are discounts, cash back, you know, other benefits for using Spendr. Um, and then once you've kind of found that store, you're in that store that takes Spendr, you.
Scan a QR code. And when you scan that QR code, the money just goes from your Spendr account into the dispensaries account. It's one click of a button. It's faster than cash or debit card or credit card or any, any other platform that exists. And then you're instantly met with that like feedback of like, did I [00:20:00] get points?
Did I get rewards? What cash back did I get? Did I unlock a new discount? And that's really again, how we're creating some of that value for the consumers, like giving them like kind of real time access. Like, here's what you've earned, here's what you can earn. So that's how it works for the consumer. For the merchant.
We have, you know, integrations with a variety of point of sale systems and that experience looks a little bit different than the cases that we don't have point of sale integrations. But the cool thing about Spendrs, you can use it anywhere that accepts it. We're point of sale agnostic, so we work with every point of sale.
And essentially the, the, the bud tender or the, you know, the clerk is gonna just create a Spendr QR code. That the consumer can scan with their phone or the dispensary can send them a, like a request to pay via their phone number so you can do it remotely. Like I can send you a payment right now, even though we're thousands of miles away.
It's instantaneous. You hit a button and you pay, uh, and then everything reconciles on the back end pretty automatically.
Tommy Truong: So how does the merchant [00:21:00] create repeat customers through Spendr?
Lucas Gould: Yeah. So the cool thing is that we do a lot of that work, you know, I would say like automatically for them and that. Once you've purchased at that store with Spendr, you are automatically enrolled. So you can think of like that payment to that merchant is an, is an enrollment into their Spendr marketing.
Once you've enrolled, we start to retarget you automatically with that dispensary's content. And so typically a dispensary's like gonna say to us during onboarding, like, Hey, you know, we have a weekly deals calendar. Okay, great. So then every day, every week, we're gonna be promoting that weekly deals calendar to those customers that have purchased a Spendr.
And we're gonna send those consumers push notifications, uh, and other content to like get them into the app. They're also just organically going into the app, and they're gonna be able to see that dispensaries content. It's not an ad board, so we're not showing other dispensary's content. We're only showing the dispensary that you've purchased from with Spendr.
[00:22:00] Okay. Does that make sense?
Tommy Truong: It does. What happens if in your neighborhood you have two or three merchants that are using Spendr and you go to all three?
Lucas Gould: We show you the last place you purchased that we kind of, we rank it. And so you could see, you know, one or two, but we're gonna rank it, uh, based on where you've last purchased and really what our goal is, right? And, and where we've been successful is we're gonna, actually, we're gonna make sure you don't do that.
You, you still may, right? You still may go shop at two or three places with Spendr. But our goal is to make sure you only shop at that first place that you used it ad and that's what our data shows us, is that you're, you know, it's like on average the Spendr user shops at like 1.2 stores. So it's like very, like the majority of them just shop at the one store.
They've, they've first heard about it at.
Tommy Truong: Got it. Yeah, that's interesting. So really you take the heavy lifting of the promotional communication from away from the dispensary.
Lucas Gould: Yeah. And, and some will like, you know, [00:23:00] some, you know, that have design resources or marketing resources will be more, you know, more engaged, sending us content, sending us designs, and we're happy to publish and promote those. And some dispensaries will like say, Hey, you know, we have a loyalty program, or we have our own mobile app.
We want you to promote our mobile app through your mobile app. Like, great, you know, we'll be lead generation for you, right? Like, we don't, we don't really care like our, our, our job is to help promote that dispensary to its customers and to help keep its customers with that dispensary. But I think what you're hitting on is important, which is that like we're not expecting the dispensary to log in, dis Spendr every day and figure out what to do.
We do that automatically for them. And so that's where, again, I call this like a tool in the tool belt. So like they're. You know, they're logging into Alpine IQ or Spring big multiple times every day, figuring out what messages to send, where to send them, you know, when and where and to whom. We do that work and we're just like another channel that's gonna reach those customers.
Tommy Truong: Yeah. I'm really thinking about the use [00:24:00] cases now. Spendr is really a marketplace. It's the ability for a consumer to go into a place to buy cannabis. how does the inventory, I'm guessing you integrated with a lot of pss the merchant's inventory get to Spendr. Mm-hmm.
Lucas Gould: We don't, we don't have to really worry about the inventory. We, we do have integrations, so we can see like what you're buying, but that's all being done at the point of sale level. So you can think of us more as like the, you know, like the, how much did I buy? You know, when did I buy, where did I buy? Not like the, what did I buy?
We kinda know the what, but we're not responsible for like pulling in that inventory that's happening at the point of sale level.
Tommy Truong: Oh, when I go on a Spendr app and I'm ready to buy something, am I shown the inventory of what I can buy?
Lucas Gould: no, you're doing that through their like e-comm platform, and then you're just hitting like a pay with Spendr button. It's like PayPal. [00:25:00] Yeah. Or like shop pay. Or Apple Pay online, right? It's just like you're hitting the Spendr button or you're going in store, you know, you're placing your order physically, and they're like, Hey, it's a hundred dollars.
You're like, great. You pull out your Spendr app, you hit a button, you scan a QR code and you're done.
Tommy Truong: Well, so can you walk me through kind of the not, maybe not the finances, but how does the merchant then pay Spendr?
Lucas Gould: Yeah. The merchant pays us a fee for processing those transactions.
Tommy Truong: Got it.
Lucas Gould: Yeah. So, and that's where I think, like, again, the. You know, I think what we did and how we evolved was in, you know, we don't want, we think, look, we think payments should ultimately be free, right? I mean, my a CH is no different than any other company's.
A CH pay payments is a commodity. I mean, anybody who tells you payments is not a commodity. I, you know, I would argue is maybe not in payments. The value is in the, the broader. Feature set and the broader product set. And so for us, like the reason we charge the dispensary is not really for payments processing, it's for the marketing, it's [00:26:00] for the retention, it's for the loyalty services, it's for the ability to actually get that customer back into the store.
And so the way we price Spendrs, the dispensary only pays if they're making money from us. And we actually have a, a way to, to prove to them with their data, right? We don't make up our own data. We, we say, Hey, pull your, you know, pull a report from your point of sale. Let's get on a Zoom call. Let's actually dig into it together and at the end of that call, you tell us if you want to pay us or not.
99% of customers that have tried Spendr have moved forward to pay us because we can prove to them that once a customer adopts Spendr, that customer is gonna spend more, they're gonna shop more, they're gonna be less likely to go elsewhere. than the non-Spendr customer So that's what we, we, we charge for, right?
We don't charge for payments, we charge for customer attention. For customer, yeah. Loyalty, right? Being, again, being kind of a leg of the stool. You know, to creating that loyal experience.
Tommy Truong: So this becomes a, a kind of like a revenue channel. I
Lucas Gould: It is a revenue channel.
Tommy Truong: yeah, I equated Spendr to say an Uber [00:27:00] for example. Right? Not the same
Lucas Gould: Yep.
Tommy Truong: you, but Uber Eats is more of a marketplace you can pick and then, then away you go. Spendr is a little bit Marketplace E because you're promoting the last place that the customer purchased through Spendr. But I was always thinking to myself, okay, well, Uber Eats, they have a markup on the selection. But you guys or the customer then isn't really feeling the pinch in terms of higher prices.
It's, it's really a finder's fee, more or less.
Lucas Gould: the customer actually gets lower prices. We're actually subsidizing the customer's costs. We're, we're reducing the amount that they pay, uh, the consumer. And then yeah, and I think, look, like, I think whether we're defined as a marketplace or not, like, I think to your point, we're not trying to, you know, like I think we, we, I think we can bring a [00:28:00] dispensary, new customers.
But what we're doing is really keeping the ones that you have with you and we're increasing how much they spend. So like I think on average, once a customer adopts Spendr, they actually shop about 40% more times per month. So if they were shopping with you, you know, two or three times per month, they're gonna now increase that to, you know, maybe one or two additional purchases per month, which is gonna be like new business you did not have without Spendr.
And when you compare that to the Nons Spendr customer. It's gonna be a lot higher. And so we, we are a revenue channel in that way. But we're not doing markups. We're not doing monthly fees. We don't do setup fees. We're not stealing your customers and, and selling them to the highest bidder. We don't do anything like that.
Like our, our number one focus is to like keep your customer with you and to encourage that customer through incentives, through brand, through content communications, that they should shop more with you than they were beforehand.
Tommy Truong: That's powerful. So where do you see, yeah, [00:29:00] what, where do you see the future of loyalty? Because you've taken loyalty in such a different angle.
Lucas Gould: Yeah, I mean, look, like I said, like I, I think, I don't, I'm know, I don't wanna profess to be the, you know, the only thing that drives loyalty into a store, but I think. You know, I think where's loyalty going? I mean, I think, look, I think dispensaries have to get honest with themselves and this, you know, this may be an unpopular view.
They have to get honest with themselves that like, it is just hard to differentiate because they do all carry the same products. They do all price 'em the same way. They do all offer the same discounts. Like it's not the same as, you know, on, you know, I'm Chipotle, you're McDonald's. Like we, we sell very different food, but dispensaries sell the same stuff.
And so I think the ones that have come to that realization or have accepted the fact that the one down the street is the same as them in terms of what they offer, it then allows 'em to look at the world very differently. And what they [00:30:00] then start to do is they then start to say, well, what can I control if I can't control what I'm selling?
Because like I have to sell the most popular products and I have to price them the same way. Well, then they start to think about. You know, employee happiness. Well, maybe if I have a happier employee that will like rub somebody the right way and that person won't come back, maybe you know, it's worth investing in a tool like Spendr.
Um, you know, maybe it's worth figuring out ways I can incentivize my bud tenders. You know, maybe I should clean up the store a little bit, may, you know, add an extra light in the parking lot so that people feel safer. Maybe I should have customer support. They start to do things like that that I think actually does move the needle, right?
Like that's what's controllable. And I think that's where I see loyalty going is that whether you have more dispensaries open up over time in certain markets, or let's say there's consolidation, there's fewer over time. I think at the end of the day, the ones that survive will be the ones that have really been thoughtful about that customer experience, and they accept the fact that the one down the street is very [00:31:00] similar to them.
So they, they then start to invest in the ways that they can be different. And again, Spendr's just gonna be one of the, the ways that they do that. I would say additionally you have to figure out how to talk to your customer, like you said, with emails. Like I, you know, I've, I've shopped at a lot of places and they all try to talk to me and I'm not talking back to them 'cause I don't read their emails and I don't even get their texts because they get blocked.
And so I think like, how do we get more creative with these, like, channels of communication? And what I found personally is that like I will shop at the dispensary that I feel closest with. Not necessarily in proximity, not in like what they've done for my pocket, but just like the ones that I'm like, man, I've had a good experience here.
The people were nice, they remember my name, you know, they're sent, they are gonna send me the deals, and I like actually will open their emails because of that. I think that's where I see it evolving into is like less of a focus on professing their difference and more about accepting the fact that [00:32:00] they maybe aren't and finding ways to.
You know, finding ways to improve that customer experience.
Tommy Truong: Yeah. Customer experience to me is essentially your brand promise. And that's how you differentiate yourself because a brand promise is, is a promise to the customer on what they can expect they're interacting with your business, your store, your bud tenders, and yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head.
It's to, and then if, then if, for me, it first starts with, and I was talking to somebody about this the other day, you can't really have a loyalty program unless you actually have a brand identity. And a brand promise. And if you're unclear with what your brand stands for, then that's the basis of the foundation.
How, how do you build communication on top of that?
Lucas Gould: Yeah, I agree. Yeah. And I think, you know, and it's just like, it's [00:33:00] just so hard and I, I think to some degree, like I, like every market's so different. Like what we've seen personally is that certain markets that like started off small markets, new markets, there weren't many competitors. They didn't really have to do a lot to be successful.
Right? Like they had the right location. They were the first store to open in the city. Those businesses crush it. But the minute they start to see people then come in and put one next door or down the street, they then really had to be like, oh shit. Well, like what do I do now? Right? Like, I'm now not the only one on the block.
And I think that's where they then started to invest in that brand identity. Like, what do I stand for? You know, what can I do to help my customer beyond just again, like offering the same thing that they all offer. And those are the ones that I've personally seen, like really stick out, you know? And it's just like the little things, like one thing I like to do is go on Google.
Don't look at the stars, like the rating, but like actually read the reviews. And I think what you'll see is like the ones that feel more personal are the [00:34:00] stores that actually end up being more successful.
Tommy Truong: Yeah, no, I agree.
Lucas Gould: It's really interesting. Yeah,
Tommy Truong: The ones with really great reviews have all one thing in common, and that's exceptional employee training
Lucas Gould: exactly. Yep.
Tommy Truong: It's impeccable and they train their, and part that part of the training is how to get more reviews,
Lucas Gould: yeah, yeah. Well, no. Yeah. Agreed. Yeah. How to get more reviews and, and, and I think too, like the, and I've found, I've seen this too, and maybe this is what you're saying, it's just like the stores that have invested in their employees also tend to do really well, right? Like, the employees want to be there, you know, they give a shit, you know, like they.
You know, like that, it just, it just makes all the difference in the world, you know? Like I still find cannabis buying to be like a very, like, personal thing, you know? Like if, you know, I personally go, like, I was literally yesterday, I was in a dispensary for seven hours talking to customers, talking to bud tenders, just like [00:35:00] I was physically there.
And you, you see every walk of life, you see all the reasons why somebody would or wouldn't buy. Um. And you can just see the difference when like that check-in person remembers your name, like the smile it brings to that person's face, you know? And like that, that's the stuff that you would think is like the easy thing to do, but is I think, widely missed because people don't spend the time taking care of their employees.
Tommy Truong: I was talking to Ryan the other day, Ryan Hunter, from Spherex Labs, and he mentioned something that really, really struck me. 🍃🍃🍃 is the only one of the only industries in the world where you're buying something relatively low cost, but you are asking somebody for their advice on what to buy.
Lucas Gould: Oh, interesting.
Tommy Truong: There's not a lot of other products that I don't go to a McDonald's and ask 'em, Hey.
Lucas Gould: Wait, what should I get?
Tommy Truong: What should I get [00:36:00] or, or a retail store or anything, right. I go in, I grab a Coke, I grab a bag of chips and I get the hell out. You know, cannabis is very unique in that way.
Lucas Gould: Even like alcohol. Yeah, you're right. 'cause like even with alcohol, like I'm not, I don't really ask the clerk. I'm like, Hey, what, you know, what tequila should I try? Or what beer should I get? You know, I'm just like buying whatever, and I'm leaving. Yeah, it's true. Yeah. Wow. What do you think that means? Like why, why do you, why do you think that's the case?
Tommy Truong: Well, it depends. I mean, there's two type of, of consumers even the ones that are the regular consumers that, that have consumed cannabis in a while. For a while. There's always new products that come in every week, and I, I truly believe that there's just, the skews are just so big and there's just so much selection that naturally you get into a conversation with, particularly with a bud tender or, or a team that's really trained and they understand what your preferences are, [00:37:00] and now they're trying to enhance your experience with another
Lucas Gould: Hmm.
Tommy Truong: Right. So it's interesting. I mean, cannabis is one of the only things that you take to regulate your mood. Hey, I want to be in this mood. You know, I want to be in this mood. And it's the same plant, you know, different terpenes, but there's so many different moods that you can get into.
Lucas Gould: Yeah, I, uh,
Tommy Truong: Yeah.
Lucas Gould: I think I often break down the customer, like there's the customer who, you know, knows what they want and maybe they just like buy the same thing every time. There's the customer who knows what they want, but is always open to trying something new. And then there's the customer who doesn't know anything you know about cannabis and what the buyer, what to try and like.
They're very inquisitive and I find that like, you know, there tends to be the, I think the fewest bucket of people is the bucket of people who like know exactly what they want and [00:38:00] aren't open to trying something new. The people that I've found that like really love cannabis are very knowledgeable about cannabis.
They're always excited to like, hear about the new product. They're always excited to like, try the new product. They're always excited to like, have the bud tender be like, Hey, like, yeah, that flower you picked up is like really great, but like, have you tried this one? Oh no, I haven't. You know, maybe I'll pick it up today.
You know, like it's, it's also like something that I feel like it's very, it's like people are very open-minded and I think that's you, you then need a, like a happy and helpful bud tender and like a good customer experience to like facilitate that because people are gonna be inquisitive. Like they, they want to know and they want to.
Learn and try new things. That's like, I think that's very unique in, in this
Tommy Truong: actually, if you're a flower consumer, it's hard to stick to one flower. I mean, crops change.
Lucas Gould: Yep. Yeah. Batches are different. Yeah. Each harvest. Yeah, a hundred
Tommy Truong: it's hard. It's,
Lucas Gould: I feel like with that, everything, dude, honestly, I got bought concentrates guy and uh, it's even how I feel about concentrates. Like I, I maybe got my favorites or whatever, but [00:39:00] like. You know, batch to batch. It's, they're, they're gonna be different, you know?
And, and also like, what you'll learn is like, you could try a hundred jars of, of, you know, rosin or whatever, you know, and each jar is gonna be different. And, you know, even, even, you know, you know, they, you know, you could think that they're similar. You know, cultivars are similar. You know, terpene profiles similar, but like, it's still gonna be a different experience once taken, it's gonna be a different flavor profile.
Like, and, and so that just like opens your mind up to be like, well, shit. Like I gotta, you know, I wanna keep trying, you know, like I want to, I want to keep kind of cycling through the, the, the options to, to really dial in on the thing I want. And again, there's just like nothing else like that. And again, that just, it's very unique.
Just feels very unique.
Tommy Truong: You know, off topic, and I al I'm always curious when I talk to another entrepreneur. What are some of the biggest problems that you are looking to solve [00:40:00] in 2026 in relation to Spendr? What are some of
Lucas Gould: What are the biggest problem
Tommy Truong: Yeah. Businesses
Lucas Gould: specific to Spendr you're saying?
Tommy Truong: Yeah. Like what are some, some of the big milestones that you're chasing?
2026\.
Lucas Gould: Yeah, I mean I think like any early stage company, there's like an unlimited list of things we want to do better. I guess, you know, you know, look, I think for us we have been really successful in some key markets, you know, large share of the market. I think what we're seeing is demand for Spendr elsewhere and.
We want to provide that, right? So how do we recreate the excitement we, we have in 13 states and now go do that in 30 states. And I think anytime you expand your operations in that way, like we, you know, just this year we went from five markets to 13 markets. Next year we think we could go from 13 markets to, like I said, maybe 30 markets.
And anytime you have kind of that rapid of acceleration in the growth and that kind of [00:41:00] comes, you know, with the same. You know, acceleration in the new locations using the platform, it's like, creates a lot of problems. You know, just in that, like how do you, you know, how do you manage more accounts? How do you train more accounts?
How do you, you know, it's easy to onboard one per month. How do you onboard 30 per month? Right? How do you upkeep, you know, a hundred per month as opposed to, you know, 20 per month? So I, I think for us it's like, how do you. You know, I, I would say like, I would summarize all of the problems, you know, or all of the milestones into this.
Like how do you recreate the experience that we've had so far, and two to three times more places, right.
Tommy Truong: scaling, kind of scaling your existing operations.
Lucas Gould: yes. Scaling and, and I think like, I really care about quality. I'm like, you know, and I'm probably, you know, and I, I never, I'll never say like, I care too much about quality. 'cause I don't think that's possible, but like.
There's always this balance of like the people who are obsessed with maintaining a quality [00:42:00] experience. I think it's easy to then move more slowly and like, an example I'll give you is we don't outsource our customer support. So our customer support is like in the room next to me. You, it's a 5 1 3 Cincinnati area code number where our office is based.
It's real people. They've been with the company for years. They care about our customers. They care about Spendr. And so your, your problem's gonna be solved immediately. But with that, it's like, well, as we scale, like that's more calls, right? That's are we, are we hiring for that team? Everybody's talking about ai, like there's value in, in self-service, FAQs and you know, articles.
But like nothing beats, at least not yet, like talking to somebody, human to human who really cares about your problem and is gonna solve it. And that's like something that is really important to me and to our company. And so I think like, how do you. You know, how do you, how do you solve this problem of like wanting to be super efficient, super scalable, without sacrificing quality?
And I often find that like, if you just [00:43:00] focus on quality, the rest of those problems end up working out and taking care of themselves while just remaining mindful that like speed matters, size matters. We, you know, we need to get bigger, you know, broader, more markets, more stores, more consumers. But like, let's never forget our identity of like really caring about our customers.
And really focusing on like providing them a quality experience.
Tommy Truong: Yeah, it is always solved the problem of. Scaling too much. You, you know what I mean? But you can really invest your energy towards scaling to five extra size. But now all that money has gone to that versus somewhere else that's useful for the business.
Lucas Gould: Yeah.
Tommy Truong: the constraint in terms of how much you can.
Lucas Gould: Well, and I think like, you know, I, I find too that it's like easy to get you know, like there's always like shortcuts I would say. You know, like if you wanna grow faster, like yeah, take some shortcuts, but you then lose certain things [00:44:00] along the way, right? Like we, and you know, don't get me wrong, like we, we grew our business, you know, we're about, you know, four x year every year in terms of our size.
And we think that will continue into next year, but. We never once chose to take like the easy route. Um, and again, like focus on that core identity and yeah, like I think they often say about technology startups, like, do you grow at all costs or do you like build a kind of sustainable, high quality business?
And I don't know, I'm probably a blend of those two. I want to grow a lot, but I also want to have sustainability and something of quality.
Tommy Truong: I guess it really depends how easy money
Lucas Gould: Yeah.
Tommy Truong: easy or is.
Lucas Gould: money you can get.
Tommy Truong: Yeah. Right. there's always that in the formula somewhere.
Lucas Gould: That the truth, man? Yeah.
Tommy Truong: we could talk about this for forever. I'm fascinated not just on customer experience, but also in the growth of I see businesses, a business as a [00:45:00] game of infinite problem solving. Right? And whatever stage that you're in. There's gonna be different problems, but the name of the game is, which problems do you choose to solve? 'cause there's just so many to solve.
Lucas Gould: Prioritization. Yeah. I mean. You know, and that, you know, I'm a big believer in like longevity in that, in that, to your point, like it's a game of problem solving. And so if every day you can just keep solving the next problem and yeah, hopefully over time get better at picking the one to solve that day.
But I just tell our team and myself, you know, at times, uh, when things get hard, it's like all we can do is wake up the next day, solve the problems that face us. Go to sleep, wake up the day after and just do that again. And like if we continue to do that every day, like there is success and we, you know, again, like I think, you know, we were super fortunate to launch Spinner in a medical market and I'd love to, like, I don't, I don't know if you had this experience with your company or like, I'd love to talk to other founders who experience this, but like when you launch a product in a medical [00:46:00] market where your customer is a medical patient, you build like a.
You know, there's, there's this like, just like this very unique perspective about like what cannabis can actually do for somebody. I think people often, you know, people forget that for a lot of people, cannabis truly is medicinal, you know, and, and, and it's just super helpful to them. And for the first year plus of our, of our lifecycle, our end user was a patient who needed this and.
It just like, it created an appreciation for like what people go through and how the plant can be helpful. And like, I know that's what keeps our team running. You know? I know that's why we want to do in-house customer support. it's why we wake up and solve these problems. It's just like a really unique perspective that I'm personally grateful that I was able to experience 'cause yeah, like it's, it's certainly easy to like get down.
Days aren't perfect. Things are hard. Things are busy. You don't sleep a lot. You know, I told you I just took my first vacation ever since I started the company. Like, difficult to [00:47:00] do, but um, yeah, it's all worth it in the end. If you can just like, get through each day and solve the problems and just stay alive, that's what I say.
just gotta stay alive, you know, be here another year from now. We'll be good.
Tommy Truong: Yeah. Lucas, before I let you go, how can our listeners find you?
Lucas Gould: Uh, LinkedIn, you know, Spendr. Just type in S-P-E-N-D-R? No, no. Second. E. Just one E-S-P-E-N-D-R. Um, LinkedIn, our website. Spendr.com. We're on Instagram. Get Spendr. Yeah, and we're in, like I said, we're in 13 markets kind of all across the country. People can check us out on the app stores. S-P-E-N-D-R.
Tommy Truong: What, what's the next three markets that you're looking to enter?
Lucas Gould: good question. Uh, I don't wanna jump the gun, but I would say that we are, we've done a lot of expansion on the East coast this year. Uh, we're in Connecticut, we're in Massachusetts. We've kind of filled up like Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia. We should be adding a cup. We're in New York. We [00:48:00] should be adding some other markets kind of up in that.
You know, east coast corridor. Um, so that's what I'll say.
Tommy Truong: Awesome. Well, I'm sure that if you guys are listening fine Spendr on the app store, check Lucas out. Lucas, thank you so much for joining me today.
Lucas Gould: Appreciate you having me. It was a good time. We should do it again.
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