Contrary to popular belief, presentations aren’t just for stuffy offices with bad fluorescent lighting and dated policies. While many millennials might scoff at the idea of a presentation, they probably still use them. There’s a need for presentations in nearly every industry, even the marijuana industry. And there’s a way to make them fun, and relevant.
Maggie’s Farm is the perfect example. Maggie’s Farm is Colorado’s premiere farm-to-bowl source of recreational and medical marijuana. All of their products are grown in the fresh mountain air, nourished by sunlight, organic soil, and mineral-rich spring water before being slow-cured and hand-trimmed to unlock the strongest flavor, potency, and quality of every last bud. Maggie’s Farm prides themselves on the fact that they never use any pesticides or growth hormones on their crop. In fact, they’ve been Clean Green Certified® for the past eight years, meeting all the criteria for USDA organic certification. Their dedication to the crop is unmatched.
But they nourish more than their crops to ensure a fruitful business. Maggie’s Farm is dedicated to scaling their business, and as such have leaned on presentations to help with efficiencies in the office. We caught up with Krystal King, Head of Retail Operations at Maggie’s Farm, to learn more about how they leverage Beautiful.ai to grow both their crop and their business.
Time is money
Before discovering Beautiful.ai through a friend, Krystal and her team were using PowerPoint. The dated presentation platform was a total efficiency-killer, which was costing her time and money. Plus, she was looking for a tool that was more visually appealing, fun, and relevant for their audience. Krystal liked Beautiful.ai’s ease of use and intuitive controls, which is what ultimately sold her to make the switch.
Krystal shared that when she first joined Maggie’s Farm, the departments weren’t preparing regular reports—likely because PowerPoint was such a time-suck. Adopting Beautiful.ai, it opened up the door to cross-departmental collaboration and enabled them to speak to and own their piece of the business. Simply by having access to a better, and easier presentation software they were able to establish better communication among teams. She adds, “Reporting correctly has led to over $200,000 saved in the last 9 months.” Which just goes to show the importance of presentations, and impactful data visualizations in their industry.
To further streamline their process, Krystal builds out a couple company templates to keep their reports fresh and on brand, always.
Telling a story
At Maggie’s Farm, they’re working with a diverse group of clients including medical patients, recreational patients, and agriculture vendors. Nurturing relationships with old, and new, clients is important for Maggie’s Farm, and presentations help them get in front of their customers. Using a presentation can help keep clients informed and engaged, contributing to a more prosperous relationship for all parties involved.
But beyond external presentations, Krystal has used Beautiful.ai to help tell her story internally. Krystal says, “All of my presentations tell a story of how an initiative is directly affecting our company’s bottom line.” She uses Beautiful.ai for end of month reporting, client-facing pitch decks, and scope overviews. While she might only create a handful of presentations each month, Krystal understands the importance of telling her story.
Keeping the content clean, but cool
In any trendy and booming industry, there’s pressure to keep your work relevant and hip. This means that any presentations need to align with Maggie’s Farm’s overarching brand. But how do you make presentations cool, without compromising professionalism? Krystal leans on Beautiful.ai to help with content management and branding control for their business.
Beautiful.ai helps keep their presentations clean and professional so that the team can be proud of what they’re presenting. Krystal says it’s important to “keep the slides simple, stick to what you know and when you’re comfortable presenting, you make the room feel comfortable.”
Some of Krystal’s favorite features include the smart slide templates, rich and modern icons, and the ease of importing and resizing custom images.
Krystal says that she is constantly receiving glowing reviews on the level of design and organization of her presentations. “This software makes me look good with minimal effort.” She adds, “Our CFO refuses to do his presentation after mine because ‘How do you follow a report like that?’” We’ll chalk that high (pun intended) praise up as a win.