A big winner from this past Tuesday’s voting day was the cannabis industry with five additional states legalizing recreational and/or medical cannabis!
It’s an exciting time in the cannabis industry, so we wanted to explore what opportunities these new markets hold.
If you need help with your cannabis business licensing or buying a cannabis business, then please reach out to our team today to schedule a time to chat or call 800-674-9050.
Here are some helpful spots to jump to in the video:
- Analysis of New Cannabis Markets
- How do you prepare for these new markets?
- Questions
Cannabis Legalization Vote Transcript
Updates on cannabis legalization from yesterday’s voting, lots of good stuff here. We’re going to talk about the different States that got legalized and some plans for you as an operator or as someone trying to get into the industry. What should you consider? So wait about maybe one or two minutes here for everything to kind of… be able to jump into the room. If you’re watching this wherever you’re watching from, go ahead, drop in… in the chat where you’re calling in from, you know, are you in one of these new States or are you in, you know, a current operating market? You know, we’re going to talk about the new legalized markets here. So maybe about five to eight more seconds here. Nice. Greg Richard here in New Jersey. I’m glad you joined in. We’re going to talk a lot about your Jersey. That’s probably the one on the most excited about so good deal.
Good deal. All right. So over the I’m gonna just get, we’ll get started the presentation here. So over the past 24 hours, we’ve learned that five new States have legalized cannabis for either recreational medical or both uses. Now, those States are Arizona for recreational New Jersey, for recreational, South Dakota, for recreational and medical Montana, for recreational cannabis and Mississippi for medical cannabis. Now those markets could create $2.5 billion in medical and recreational cannabis business sales by the year 2024. So that’s a lot of money we’re talking about here, and the industry is just exploding naturally. So you also may have saw that in Vermont about a month ago, legalized recreational cannabis. So this is a lot of stuff moving over here, especially in the Northeast. So let’s go ahead and break down each market as to its size, the current landscape and the thoughts about the future here.
But before we get started, I need to let you know that the information contained in this presentation is meant for guidance purposes only, and not a professional legal or tax advice and further, it does not give any personalized legal tax investment or any business advice in general. So with all of that, out of the way, let’s dive into our first market here, Arizona. Now this is the second largest populous market of the new ones here. So 7.3 million people. So there’s a fair amount of total addressable market for recreational clients here. Now they do have a cap licensing structure of 10% of the traditional pharmacies in the state. So thanks CVS Rite aid, Walgreens, things like that. So they have just shy of 1500 traditional pharmacies in Arizona. So the dispensary count will be kept about 145 to one, maybe 60 at the most, right? You’re not seeing a ton of CVS is being built.
So we don’t see this, you know, dramatically increasing, but for every 10 pharmacies, traditional pharmacies that go up one dispensary can now have another license. Now the proposition also grants localities, certain regulatory powers regarding cannabis established businesses, including the prohibition of such cannabis businesses within their jurisdiction. You see this in places like California, where two thirds of the state does not allow commercial cannabis business activity. Now, should they exercise these powers, these localities or these jurisdictions? It could lower the cannabis consumption and thus lower the tax revenue obtained from cannabis sales. Now social equity is also earmarked in this cannabis legislation. And according to Canada radar, there is 106 licenses actively that are vertically integrated. I think there’s at least 130 operators though. So close, right? So that leaves about, you know, 40 or 50 new licenses potentially up for the public and social equity licenses.
Because some of these earlier medical marijuana businesses are going to get by first crack at these licenses, these recreational cannabis licenses. So from there, let’s go ahead and talk about New Jersey here. Okay? So you’ve got this, this is the largest newest market, right? It’s almost 9 million people, 8.9 million people here. Now, why do we talk about population? I’m talking about how big these places are, okay. That’s called your Tam, your total addressable market. And if you were to conquer an entire state, that’s how much pie is actually available in that state. Now you’re going to be fracturing it because there’s lots of operators there, but at any rate, this is your total addressable market. Now people are not evenly distributed in all States, right? There are very high densely populated urban areas in their suburban areas. There’s rural areas. So people are spread out different areas of that nature.
Now you could go into a very large state like a New Jersey or an Arizona, but be in the middle of nowhere and have only 10,000 people within five miles of your dispensary or say, you’re in Arizona. You go to downtown Phoenix and maybe you have 3 million people within a 10 mile radius of you. So really we talk about the market size, but cannabis is a local business. So understand that you really need to look at the actual driving radius of your dispensary or business location and how many people you can actually capture in that market. Now, New Jersey is special such that governor Cuomo from New York said that New York is going to legalize cannabis in a legislative action, probably by April, 2021, which is amazing. But that also puts pretty big pressure on, you know, New Jersey to get this right. Cause you know, New York does not want money.
Traveling New York money, traveling over to New Jersey to buy cannabis. When, Hey, in 12 to 18 months, they legalize it. Why not fast track that process as well as capture the revenue, the tax revenue from that, not just the business revenue for the local businesses, but the tax revenue for the cities, the States and the counties. Now state Senate judiciary committee chairman. Nick Scutari said that within one month of the vote, the medical cannabis dispensaries in New Jersey will be able to sell recreational cannabis. Now New Jersey has licensed only 12 companies thus far to grow process and sell medical cannabis with 90,000 registered patients. So we’re looking at almost a hundred X increase in total addressable market for the medical market here. That does mean it’s going to be huge supply squeezes. So we’ll see how it all plays out. But New Jersey is the one I’m the most excited about specifically because this is the North East is really going to have to make their move.
They’re really going to have to think about, okay, you’ve got… Vermont, you’ve got, um, New Jersey now, New York comes on, Pennsylvania should be pushing in there. You start doing the see, some push on, you know, all right, let’s do a Northeast pact and create this kind of epicenter for cannabis in the Northeast part of our country here. Now, the next city or in a certain, the next state we’ll talk about is South Dakota. I’ll get to the questions in just one moment here, but okay. South Dakota. So this is a significantly smaller state, less than a million people, 900,000 people, but you can still make a big, big business in South Dakota. Now what’s unique about South Dakota is that they legalize medical and recreational cannabis at the same time. Now this will be a local licensing type of thing. So the cities will set the number of licenses, but the law States that they want to, you know, issue enough licenses to substantially reduce the elicit production and sale of cannabis throughout the state, but avoid what they call undue concentration.
So what is undue concentration? Essentially, it’s saying that, Hey, you can’t have too many businesses close to each other and artificially giving someone ownership of a local market. Now there can be many debates back and forth should undo concentration, even be, you know, on the table, but Hey, we’ll see if they want more tax revenue. They may kind of reduce that amount like in LA I think it’s 700 feet from another business that you cannot be close to, but we’ll see how it all comes together. But that’s South Dakota in a small segment there. Now you have Montana. This was a, a good one to look at because they had two ballot initiatives on there. One about the actual age. And if they’re going to create recreational cannabis, laws and regulations, now there are about 1.1 million people in the state of Montana. So a bit larger than mine, or it’s a bit larger than South Dakota here.
But again too, about initiatives here, you had a initiative one 90, which was to legalize recreational cannabis that passed as well as, um, the constitutional initiative of one 18, which inset set the marijuana consumption age for recreational at 21. Now under the proposal, half of the public revenue generated from cannabis sales is going to go towards environmental conservation programs. And then the rest of it’s going to go to general fund and many other things. But that was one of the big sticking points is that half of this is going to go to environmental conservation programs. Now, according to Kana radar, there’s 288 licenses in the state of Montana and existing cannabis operators or medical marijuana operators will get first crack at licenses entering into the adult use market for the first 12 months. Now the initiative also requires that business licenses only gold to Montana residents.
So it’s a pretty captured market there, but Hey, if you want to move there, pay your taxes. There become a resident there. Maybe you could start your cannabis business in Montana. And lastly, rounding it out here with the different States that legalized cannabis through this election here, Mississippi. Now with 3 million people in the state, this will be a market to keep your eye on because though it is yes, generally conservative in nature and most other laws, they did pass medical cannabis with a 74% majority overwhelming majority here. Now it also a lot. So now this law, it allows doctors to prescribe medical cannabis for only 22 debilitating conditions. So it’s very limited in scope and who can participate as a patient in this market, but Hey, it always starts small, a little spark and then boom, boom, boom. It grows up and grows up. And now we’ve got a big cannabis flame here.
Now it is a move in the right direction. Now the grassroots initiatives, 65 will require a medical marijuana program to be in place by August, 2021. So we’ve got about what does that 10 months here until they actually get it. So that’s great. Now you usually see if something becomes legalized as recreational. It takes about two years for them to, they give themselves at least a two year window to create those regulations for the cannabis industry. So Mississippi moving forward quite quickly here with their program. Now let’s hop into questions and then I have another set of things here to talk about, which is getting a cannabis business license in the States, things you should consider and how to kind of get ahead of the process. But first let’s hop into questions. So from Instagram here, Mona organic says, what are your thoughts on how aggressive you can be on cost of goods sold for California farmer?
Great question here. Cost of goods sold is pretty much going to be dependent on the vertical that you’re in. And the ones with the most restrictive access to cogs is going to be dispensary’s right. There’s not much, um, indirect costs. You can back into cogs, but cultivators, you have a lot more Liberty, almost 80 to 90% of your costs can be added into cogs. You can be more aggressive. It’s about your risk tolerance here as well, but I’ll just end it with this. Cause this is a very nuanced explain or it deserves a more nuanced explanation. But the thing is this, you have to remember that you cannot just arbitrarily stuff, items into cogs. You can not just put any old indirect costs into cogs. You have to think about a reasonable methodology for your cost of goods sold. So using IRC four 71, to make sure that you are using a tax code that allows you to back particular costs into cogs. And it may not be the entire cost as well. You can do it by square foot. By time. It can be by weight. There’s lots of different ways to split costs up, to put some into cogs and some that are just SGNA expenses that will not be allowed to be deducted. So hopefully that answers your question there for you. Now let’s hop into some other ones here.
Um, yeah. So
T Y cultivation says, what about cultivation facilities for say Colorado or California? Not specifically. Sure. Your question. They’re dropping a little bit more information. I can jump into that one here. Greg said, just want to point out that the camera’s regulatory committee isn’t staffed for or operational here yet. Very, very true. Okay. So look, we signed New Jersey. They’re going to turn on their… recreational commercial cannabis activity almost right away within 30 days a month. And as I brought up, there’s going to be supply squeezes. There’s going to be regulatory people and employees that need to implement this that have not been hired yet that are not trained on their software yet. So yeah, we can be very excited, but I want this all to be also to be, you know, a healthy dose of reality. You need to start your, you know, movement right now, but you can not expect like, Hey, we’re going to open up our dispensary in 45 days.
It doesn’t work like that. You can’t even close a mortgage that quick or close a lease that quick. So what I’m trying to give you here is a 30,000 foot look about what the, maybe the, the, the territory and the terrain is going to look like over the next 60 to 90 days, as well as the next 12 to 18 months. This is a long process, right? We legalize it in a day or voted on it in a day. But the legalization process has been this big, big push by a lot of these grassroots initiative people. So if anything, Pat the people in the back that pushed and got the signatures and it all the different advocacy groups, that’s really what we’re talking about in the moment. But at any rate, there’s still time to prep for those licenses here. Now, Ray Lopez says Mississippi medical checking in here originally from the Cali scene.
Ray, I wish you the… much success. This is Sydney is one of those sleeper markets. I believe because it’s going to put pressure on Alabama, Georgia and other States. I think Arkansas may have medical cannabis, but it’s going to put pressure on the South. Like, Hey, you know, Oklahoma moved on it, then you’ve got the, um, how do you say Oklahoma? You’ve got Florida moving. You’ve got other States moving. There’s going to be kind of a movement here for medical cannabis. If not recreational, we’ll see how the presidential election shakes out. We may not know for the, until the end of this week and then any other type of actions that happen around the election. But if we do see a democratic president, potentially we see rescheduled cannabis and then a more open cannabis market for off the entire country. Now, Andrew Curtis here says, I don’t understand why I’m in a state where we are considered criminals, but we have passed a bill for medical marijuana that has gone nowhere.
What’s up with this. And he’s in Kentucky. Yeah. Look, that’s one of the, that’s the last prisoner project. You know, there’s people that are sitting in jail since 1988 and they’re gonna be in jail for a long time and it’s illegal in their state. I think that person is actually sitting in jail in Michigan here at any rate, there is a whole lot of issues around the legalization and the criminality and you know, people being locked up and there are big groups out there trying to expunge all these records. And what you’re seeing with a fair amount of these new legalization efforts is that expunging records and kind of erasing what happened with the war on drugs. These people’s records to allow them, Hey, if they don’t even want to be in the cannabis industry, they can at least go get a normal everyday job that has a higher wage, right?
When you have a drug conviction, usually you’re kind of not considered for larger jobs, higher paying jobs. So that’s one of the most important things. It’s a conundrum that, you know, it’s an incongruency in the market. Shall I say such that people are being criminalized, criminally penalize for something that another person who may be their next door neighbor is making money from, or taking at least a paycheck home as a bud tender selling this. It’s not fair. I agree with you on that, Andrew… Jennifer said here, Oregon, real guys, all drugs, and it’s a hundred dollar fine of caught. Yeah. So if you saw one Oh nine, I think that’s just for silicide, but it may be for all the other ones, but at any rate, methane meth, not methane methamphetamine, heroin, every hard drug has now been decriminalized in, in small amounts. You can’t go out here being, coming a drug King pin, but in small amounts.
So this is a great first drop of the first state. That’s going to be doing that. So we’ll see how that all moves out. I bet it’s going to be a great case study to see how arrests go down, how treatment goes up, how people’s mental health improves from this, how people are going to get help, right? It’s going to be either a hundred dollar fine, or you can opt in to taking… I think it’s like the cogs drug drug, um, recovery programs, rehabilitation programs, instead of paying the fine. So we’ll see how it all shakes out. This is a great move. I’m very excited for all of these things happening in the industry here. So without any more questions, actually, I’ll get to the last one here on Instagram. What are the biggest write-off problems and misconceptions about dispensary’s dispensary’s I’ll tell you the biggest misconception.
And this came out in the Richmond patient group case this year. So typically what you’re looking at here is that dispensary’s would say, Hey, we’re going to be a manufacturer. Let me step back. Tax code IRC four 71 says that if you’re a producer or processor or manufacturer, you get to, you know, write off a lot of the labor and all these different inputs. So dispensers would say, we are a light manufacturer. We buy big pounds of weed and we break them down into either eights or we break them down into pre-rolls right? And they would say, they’re a processor. And they get to write off different spots in different costs for their business. Well, when the Richmond patient group case came out, we made a whole video of that. You can check that out. Just Google Richmond patient group cannabis will be the first video to pop up.
When it said in there is that dispensary’s are not considered processors or manufacturers, which means they don’t get access to tax code IRC four 71. Now I’m not talking about four 71. See this, you know, wild, new things from the tax cuts and jobs act where people say, Hey, if you make less than $25 million, you can write off everything in the cogs. And two 80 E doesn’t apply to you. Do not do that. Please do not do that. But I’m talking about the traditional four 71, where you can say, Hey, I’m a manufacturer and this is the square footage for all of our inputs. This is our machine costs. This is our labor costs. These are all the raw ingredient costs. And you can write off a lot more at any rate Richmond patient group, pretty much boxed the dispensary’s in saying you can only write off pretty much, very little things here, right?
The cost of your cannabis, the cost to not sell the cannabis, not to market the cannabis, but the actual, like, you know, if you do bottle up cannabis, you can write some of that stuff up. But a lot of the larger deductions, and I don’t know the specific details of what those are. Marco and Derek and our tax team would be more app are more in the involved in saying what that is. But at any rate dispensers have their hands tied. And that’s not a good thing. No one wants that, but Hey, if we reschedule cannabis two 80, E’s out the door, and that may happen over the next 12 to 18 months, depending on how this election for the presidential race shakes out. Now, Greg, last one here. Do you know any startup lawyers? Yes, we do. If you could reach out to us via our website at GreenGrowthCPAs.com, we’ll put you in contact with a big Rolodex of lawyers.
I don’t even know people know what that word is, Rolodex, but a good list of lawyers, depending on where you are in the process and what state you are in, because lawyers are state-by-state. So Greg had reached out to us and can help you with that. Now let’s hop into, okay, I want to get a cannabis business license, but I have, you know, I don’t know what to do specifically. Now the big question is, okay, how do you prepare and kind of get ahead of this licensing process and increase your chances of successfully getting a cannabis business license. Now I’m gonna to talk about two different kind of scenarios if you’re plugged into the industry and if you’re not plugged into the industry or if you’re not operational, okay, so we’ll start off with most people here, probably if you’re not plugged into the cannabis industry, we have four major tips here.
Okay? Tip number one. You’re going to want to look for cities that are favorable for cannabis businesses, right? Not every city is going to be licensing for cannabis businesses, though. They may have the ability to do that, right? They may not be restricted in this. They may not open up licensing. So first you want to look for cities that are open for licensing. What does that mean? If you’re in a state that just went recreational, look where the medical cannabis businesses are concentrated. That’s where probably recreational businesses are going to be concentrated now in tandem with that consider what vertical you want to be in. Okay? Maybe you want to start a cannabis nursery with the smaller plants in the clones, but then you may want to expand to other verticals such as full cultivation, or you want to be a retailer with a dispensary or a delivery business, or being in distribution business.
You may want to be in manufacturing or maybe go ancillary and be into testing. Okay. But, or you may want to go fully integrated. Who knows. Right. But think about which vertical you want to be in. And that is the city that you’re looking at licensing those types of businesses, right? Not every city is going to license for every vertical. All right now, to pair with understanding what vertical do you want to be in? You need to understand what are your skillsets for yourself and of your team so that you can bring the most value to the market. Don’t just open up a cultivation facility because you think it’s fun and sexy. Okay. If you don’t know how to grow cannabis very well, this is going to be an extremely painful and tough process, especially if you’re doing it just for the money. Okay. There is not, it’s very, very easy to make money in the cannabis industry.
It’s very hard to keep your money in the cannabis industry. Okay. What I mean by that taxes, mistakes. They all eat up a lot of your cash. Now, if you’re only doing it for the money, when you see how much at the end of the year you’re making, and then you actually look at that as the number of hours you put in and your hourly wage, you probably making minimum wage or less as an owner of a cannabis business. When you look at your distributions, now why I say all of this, you want to make sure that you’re passionate about what you’re doing, right? If you’re a cultivator, say you work on different farms for other agricultural products, go into cultivation because you love it, right? If you’re a logistics operator for DHL or for Amazon, and you want to get into the distribution business, and this is just another product to move into ship and get into the distribution business.
If you love talking to the general public, going to retail, if you’ve managed to CVS, or if you’ve managed a McDonald’s or you’ve been a general manager of a QSR or a big, big business that has people in and out, maybe retail is right for you, pairing your skillset and your passion with your vertical result in much better success instead of going in it for just the money. Now, the second tip here is to begin to budget accordingly, okay? Starting a retail location for the first and having the first six months of operation can take anywhere from $750,000, all the way to 1.5 million plus depending on the state and the locality that you’re in now, cultivation, depending on the size and scale, it can go from 500 K all the way to $25 million, depending on how you want to go. How big you want to go.
I would say start small and scale up. Don’t try to go and do 10 greenhouses at 5,000 square feet of peace. You will become overwhelmed. You’ll run out of money. You’ll make mistakes and it will cost a lot more. You may not even get operational at that point. Now, again, it all depends on your scale now nurseries by about 250,000 to 500 K minimum. And look, there’s a lot of capital investments in cannabis, all the different equipment. It’s just, there’s a marijuana markup on everything. Certain equipment’s not even there. And you have to custom make your equipment and you, and you’re typically paying higher than normal rents. You’re going to have to potentially have a mortgage. You’re going to pay high lawyer fees. Are they paying for security fees, security plans, environmental plans. There’s a lot to go in this. This is a very highly regulated industry, just like alcohol, just like the airline industry, just like the pharmaceutical industry.
So be prepared to pay a lot of money. If you want to be in this industry. Now, there are many other factors, but it will take a lot of money to open one. And other verticals such as distribution made you get along with a little bit cheaper, something, you know, sub 500 K because you’re not going to have, you would probably not pay for your inventory. You’re going to take everything on consignment and manufacturing, at least a million dollars equipment. Your first test runs developing your SOP. All this stuff takes time and all those inputs to create those SLPs takes time. Now look at here. The third lesson I want to talk about here is going to be talking about building a team. I say this in almost every video, and I want to pound this into your face. Cannabis is a team sport. You cannot do this as a one person, person operation.
Very rarely will. I say there’s only one person I met there in Oklahoma. They have a small-scale grow of 3000 feet. Okay? If you want to stay small, maybe if you’re in Oklahoma, you can do a one person show a one-man or one-woman show. But in most cases, you’re going to build a team. And now you’re going to need lawyers. You’re going to need CPAs. You’re going to need help with those things for your M and a activity, right? You’re gonna need that for your applications. You’re gonna need a CPA for your financial projections. You’re going to need operations partners who can help you actually run the business. Maybe you’re the idea, guy or gal, and you’re not really the operator of the day-to-day operations. Well, if you want to open up a dispensary and you have the money, or you’re the idea person, you need to find a day to day operator.
Because if you don’t like dealing with the public, a dispensary is going to make your life miserable. Okay? So building a team around you for those types of things. Now, if you’re going into manufacturing, you may want to find a master manufacturer who’s worked in CPG or things of that nature, where they’ve done large scale manufacturing or gone from small scale, and then scaling up to these larger quantities here. And you’re going to need a head grower. If you’re going into cultivation, someone who likely has experienced someone who is passionate about it, and who’s going to take the time to figure out all the issues. One thing I noticed in my trip down to Oklahoma was, Hey,
There’s a lot of people that know how to grow a lot of great
Cannabis. And this is someone I met from that is from California. That’s in Oklahoma. And they said, Hey, we’re growing great in Humboldt. But then we moved over to Oklahoma and the humidity really crushed our business. And then we had to do a lot of troubleshooting around, you know, how do we manage the environmental factors in the grow operation and a lot of different, you know, details around that. So you want someone who is very well versed in dealing with different grow environments. Okay. So team is your third lesson here, or sorry, your third tip here. And now the last one and I think is the most important because this is something that’s going to help you build up over time is that you should join your local cannabis community and see where the needs are. Right? You may say I’m so passionate about dispensary, dispensary, dispensary, or grow, grow, grow. But if there’s a hundred dispensary’s there and they’re only all serving 10,000 people, there’s probably not enough room for another dispensary, maybe
There’s room for another cultivator or another
Manufacturer in this case. Okay. But what you really want to do is get involved, right? There’s already advocacy groups out there. They just pass these laws. So there’s a built-in community already out there. So go out there, maybe even volunteer at current cannabis businesses or get a job there, go to meet ups. If you’re busy, if your state allows that right, stay safe. When you do that too, don’t violate any, you know, lockdown restrictions and don’t put yourself in harm’s way. But if you’re not going to physical meetups, look at online meetups, Facebook groups, and different things like that. Join our email list. If you haven’t. All right. Also you can reach out to other cannabis business owners via social networks and network with them, chat with them. Talk with them, ask questions. Hey, what’s the best part about being a retailer in New Jersey? What’s the best part about being a cannabis cultivator in… you know… we’ll say Arizona ask these questions.
Don’t just assume, you know, get part of the community. All right. So once you figured out your estimated location, where your funds are coming from and how much you need and your team, the true first step is getting a property buying or leasing it. All right. And then getting licensed when it opens up and you’re gonna need to work with a local lawyer. As I brought up earlier, who fully understands the regulations and can help with your application as well as everybody else, CPA, security, environmental operations, the whole kit. All right. That will be very, very thoughtful on that because this is when the reels race starts to be building a meaningful business. All right, now the whole other scenario is, Hey, I’m already plugged into the industry. I’ve got a couple million sitting on the sidelines. I’m ready to go, ready to get into the industry.
All right, well, if that’s the case, consider buying one of those medical marijuana businesses, it’s already operating now that the laws passed set for medical and recreational, you’re probably going to pay a significant premium than if you were to purchase maybe 90 days ago, but that is your one way to potentially really dovetail yourself into this recreational market, buy a medical business, or start a fund with people who can, you know, maybe get access in part ownership to multiple medical businesses, right? As someone who’s well capitalized, you probably don’t want to jump into the day-to-day ops made you do, but likely you don’t. So maybe getting some exposure to multiple cannabis businesses in multiple verticals. What do I mean by that? By a 10% stake in a dispensary by a 40% stake in a cultivator by a 35% stake in a manufacturer and by maybe a 49 or 50% stake in a distributor in maybe by a larger stake, a majority stake in a testing lab.
Right? Think about how you gain exposure to this industry, right? That’s jumping into the industry, right? It’s not just a diving board jump. It’s called getting exposure to the industry, your investment exposure, your investment upside exposure, potential downside exposure as well, but exposing yourself to the industry. Now, all this to be said here, what are we offering here at GreenGrowth CPAs, right? We’re a financial compliance from anything cash and cannabis we can help you out with. So if you need perform a financial statements, or if you need a gut check on your license, possibility and potential, then please reach out to us and we can help you out with that. You can visit our website. GreenGrowthCPAs.com. Click on the, get started button in the top, right corner of the… how I say of the, of the website there, fill out the form and you can schedule time with our team right there on the website.
Now you can also give us a call at (800) 674-9050. And we can help you there as well. Now let’s go ahead. That’s a lot of stuff I shared with you there. And if you have questions, drop them in on the chat here. I’ll answer a few more questions. All right. So let’s see. I gotta scroll up here. There’s a lot going on. So Andrew says with over half of the States legalized for medical marijuana, why haven’t we put in a vote to the house in Congress like alcohol prohibition. Now there have been, you know, movements to try to reschedule cannabis, to, to be criminalized cannabis, but you know, really bringing it back. They’re doing more around the cannabis banking and things of that nature. That those are the things. And I can tell you, there’s probably a myriad of reasons of why they haven’t descheduled it or rescheduled it.
You know, there’s different politics at play and power politics at play and posturing, these different politicians. Hey, we’ll give you this cookie, but not this one. That’s a very loaded question. And it’s my very simple answer. We don’t know why, but Hey, we’ll see how everything shakes out with the rest of the elections here. And if that potentially does get rescheduled, all right. Either a, my guy from Brazil, it’s good to see you here. Good to see you either. All right, Jennifer Rodriguez says here, I need mentors because I can do this. I got a team and a plan, but no capital and legally great area live in NYC. All right. If you are a mentor that, Hey, reach out to Jennifer she’s in here on the YouTube live stream. Just reach out to tender for also, let me just give you a few steps on finding a mentor in this industry.
The first question, or sort of the first step to getting a mentor is finding out who is the specific, what is the specific thing you want to be mentored on mentors? Don’t just give capital. They give advice. They can make connections, or we call them smart money. If you are getting capital from them, such that they’re not just giving you money, they’re also going to introduce you to their entire network. Okay? So first, what do you really need help with? Because in that first meeting with your arm, your mentor, they’re gonna ask you, Hey, um, what do you want to learn? And you’re gonna say, I don’t know. Well, don’t do that. You want to say, I need to learn about raising capital. I need to learn about creating a business plan. I need to learn about creating proforma financial statements. All right, cool. I can help introduce you to Michelle can help with the application or the proformas, and I can help you do this or that, or they can personally help you out.
So finding that out. And then the second part of this is just asking most people that have made it by whatever financial terms or happiness terms you want to say, they are willing to find willing to help other people out. They just never get asked, right? I’m a mentor to certain people. And it’s only because they’ve asked that they want me to be their mentor. It’s a great thing to feel that. So if you’re looking for a mentor, ask people to be your mentor, reach out to people, find them on LinkedIn or on leaf wire or on Instagram or anywhere else. You can find people and ask them. And this is not a lifelong commitment. They can be maybe a two month engagement as being a mentor or a 12 month thing, or until you hit a certain threshold. So that’s my thoughts on being, finding a mentor in the canvas.
All right. So Cody said, so you can own a dispensary in Mississippi now. Yes, there is a possibility to open up a medical marijuana dispensary. But again, it’s very, very limited in who is going to be able to do that. Now we don’t know specifically the regulations. I think I said that Mississippi is going to open up their market by August, 2021. They’ll have all the regulations in place. So as these regulations start to materialize, we’ll give you more information, excuse me, on the types of licenses that are available and how many of each of those licenses will be available. Now… either says white labeling is already working. All right. So you just talking about the white labeling thing that we were working on… late last year, um, we are still working on partners with that. It’s a very friction high friction process here find the white labeling, but either if you’re still looking for help with the white labeling, reach back out to our team, again, go to the GreenGrowthCPAs.com, fill out the get started form.
And we can revisit those conversations. I believe your state side, you were in… in Brazil, but I believe your state side. If you’re still here, great. If not resil, we can still help you out there. Now let’s go ahead. I’ll Jennifer says she needs help with everything. Hey, we all need help with everything. I’ll I’ll I’ll preface or I’ll add onto this. No one knows everything about the industry, right? There are self-proclaimed experts. Maybe I’ve been guilty of saying that I’m an expert, but I’m humble enough to say that. I don’t know everything. I don’t know every law, I don’t know every tax code, but I know enough to know that there are certain frameworks, either figure something out or find the right person that can answer that question for me. Right? You have to have humility in this industry because you may know everything on Wednesday at 6:00 PM.
And then you wake up on Thursday and there’s a new bill that passed or a city, you know, that had their, their, their meeting meets. And then now things have changed, right? Look at LA you thought you knew everything about the LA licensing and then boom delivery licenses got kicked out for five more years for anybody. That’s not social equity. That’s a big change that happened in just one vote or one night. So again, if you need help, reach out to us, if we don’t know the answer, we’ll put you in contact with the right people that do.
All right. So let’s
Look, here are the dang says Mississippi’s restrictive program will be more viable than Louisiana’s on launch. I think so. I think that, you know, we have to see how all the specific nuances of the regulations play out. I could say that, Hey, this one is better and this one is not. But seeing that Mississippi passed it by a 74% vote is very, very assuring that this is going to be a great market. Again, it’s kind of in the center of the South. So you could see some really good businesses being built in Mississippi to leverage out to the other States nearby. All right, Andrew says a very informative a preciate. It, I am doing this for you guys here. I’m glad you’re finding value in this. I’m going to go ahead and wrap up our presentation here. We’ve been going for a good amount of time.
So again, if you need help, or if you have questions about starting a cannabis business in these five new markets or anywhere in the country, then please reach out to us via our website at greengrowthcpas.com, click the get started button it’s nice and big and green in the top, right of the screen. If you’re on your mobile device, there’s a little hamburger menu on the top, right? Click that. And then click get started. Go ahead and fill out the form. And you can schedule time to speak with our team right on the website, right? Don’t wait, schedule your time now in chat with our team. Now, if you’re not much with the, you know, going to fill out the form, you can give us a call at (800) 674-9050. Speak with our receptionist. They’ll take a few notes or he will take a few notes and then they’ll get that information to our team and we’ll then reach out to you and schedule time with you. But again, thank you very much for your time. It’s been my pleasure chatting with you today. Hopefully you found this presentation valuable. If you did tell a friend, share this video with your friends, let them know that cannabis is here to stay. There’s big things popping in the cannabis industry. Maybe even more big things pop in depending on how this election plays out on the presidential, as well as the congressional seats. I wish you much success have a great day and we’ll talk to you soon.
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