10 Practical Tips
Have you noticed how people like you and me are rushing to get our CBD-inclusive businesses going? Angie’s Gardens doesn’t fear competition, and we don’t think you need to, either. There’s still room for many a good idea. In fact, we want to help ourselves by helping you to set up a good, strong basis.
Read on to profit from lessons we’ve learned. We wrote last week about tenacity and stick-to-it-iveness, the third of 10 steps we consider vital. If you missed last week’s tip and need to catch up, start here – Starting a CBD Business, Tip 3 – and also dip backward to read tips 1 and 2.
Now let’s move on to Tip 4.
4. Getting Paid
CBD occupies a grey area in federal regulations. The USDA considers the hemp plant legal, but the FDA does not, although the FDA have mostly kept their hands off CBD businesses so as to avoid inter-agency conflict. However, this ambiguity has a major impact on how you process non-cash payments. All cash is one way you can keep on doing business, but it may not be the most successful way.
CBD occupies a grey area in federal regulations. The USDA considers the hemp plant legal, but the FDA does not, although the FDA have mostly kept their hands off CBD businesses so as to avoid inter-agency conflict. However, this ambiguity has a major impact on how you process non-cash payments. All cash is one way you can keep on doing business, but it may not be the most successful way.
Troubles
When we first started offering CBD products alongside our herbal teas at Angie’s Gardens, we simply added the products to our website and trusted that everything would work. PayPal soon suspended our account. So we launched a Stripe payment system. A few weeks later, Stripe shut us down. For awhile, we could only sell these products with Bitcoin and other crypto currencies!
Luckily, we were already set up through Square to take credit cards at the many farmers markets we attend. Square requires CBD providers to prove they’re legitimate, so be prepared. Happily, and perhaps because we had a good history with them, Square quickly approved us to process CBD purchases through their system. We remain their loyal supporters!
As you venture into the CBD selling world, know in advance which payment processors you will use and take the time to ensure that you have dotted all your i’s and crossed all your t’s before you launch an online presence. It is very harmful if your online payment system is shut down for several weeks. The time you spend evaluating and selecting a payment processing vendor will become money earned, if you match your business profile with the vendor’s forté.
We at Angie’s Gardens typify a lot of businesses in this field, in that we backed into making products as we worked through health situations in our own lives and those of our friends.
Question for Us All
Which payment options do you offer customers? Why?
Please come back next week for Tip #5 and, if you like this, share it with others!
