Keegan Peterson. Keegan is a technology entrepreneur blazing a trail in the legal cannabis industry. He has worked for many software and services companies. He founded Wurk which helps cannabis businesses pay their employees while adhering to the Federal and State Regulations. Keegan is also a former division one athlete from Florida Atlantic University.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Stealing Fire
What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk
Favorite online tool? — Asana
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5 to 6 hours
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “I wish I would have started something earlier in my lifetime”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:19 – Nathan introduces Keegan to the show
01:53 – Cannabis is a fascinating industry that is a great place for technology to play a big part in it
02:31 – For a year, Keegan financed Wurk but they’ve now raised $3M from venture capital (VC)
03:09 – Cannabis businesses include growing, selling, and extracting the plant
03:29 – “Marijuana” and “Weed” have a negative stigma, unlike “Cannabis”
03:46 – Wurk makes profit by selling a service to their clients
03:56 – Wurk ensures cannabis businesses’ taxes are paid correctly and calculated correctly
04:33 – Payroll companies being backed by national banks cannot touch cash made from cannabis
04:54 – Wurk is a SaaS company and is in 17 legal cannabis states
05:17 – They sell their services directly to business owners
05:30 – They have hundreds of users on their platform
05:39 – Keegan launched Wurk 2 years ago, in August 2015
06:10 – They currently have 18 employees in 3 offices
06:28 – It’s NOT a requirement to smoke cannabis to work for Wurk
06:40 – They do look for people who believe in cannabis as a progressing industry
07:13 – Wurk provides a whole difference face to the industry
07:30 – “We are not the traditional cannabis business”
07:45 – A large portion of Wurk’s clients are in cannabis, but there are some clients that are not
08:12 – Most business owners in the business pay their employees in cash
08:27 – “We’re trying to help solve that issue”
08:42 – The average client payment per month ranges from $10 to $30
09:03 – Number of employees and number of states the business is in are factors in a client’s metrics that determine how much they pay to Wurk
09:55 – Wurk doesn’t charge per customer; they charge per employee
11:00 – They don’t have a lot of competition
11:16 – They have a low churn of 2 customers in 2 years
11:41 – Currently, they don’t have an average Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) because they mostly get referrals
12:01 – They have 5 full-time sales reps with 1 chief revenue officer and other employees are on implementation
12:18 – Their sales reps earn through salaries and incentives
13:40 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

There are still industries that are not saturated.
If there’s hole in an industry, there’s a market for a business that can fill that hole.
Referrals or word of mouth is still one of the best ways to get a customer.

Resources Mentioned:

The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

735: Sell Cannabis? He's Raised $3m To Be Your Payroll Management System

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders