I’m back with another candid conversation with a woman mixing things up in the cannabis industry. If you want to usher in change and have your voice heard, you need to be sitting at the table where those plans are being made and the deals are getting done. And here to inspire us is Marie Montmarquet, co-founder of MD Numbers, Inc., a 100% black-owned family of vertically integrated cannabis brands — including MD Farms, Marie’s Deliverables, and Legacy Coterie — that provide a range of goods and services to the California supply chain, retail customers, and equity community.

If you’re picking up what I’m putting down, please rate and review Casually Baked, the potcast wherever you listen. That one small action helps other canna curious folks find highly responsible discussions like this one with Marie, pulling back the curtain on social equity programs and sharing insights for succeeding in cannabis. We also discuss how the monopolization of our industry is happening at warp speed and the importance of advocating for equity and inclusivity to protect the diversity and heritage of cannabis. And we explore some ideas for protecting small farms and setting equity cannabis businesses up for success.

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‘After the Show’ Notes

Co-Founders of MD Numbers, Inc. | Marie Montmarquet and Allen Hackett

Marie is a legacy cannabis operator who’s been passionate about the plant for over 13 years. Her cannabis business expertise and equity activism have put her in the national spotlight.
In addition to developing and scaling successful cannabis businesses, Marie is focused on being an advocate for social justice and equity in the industry. She’s an advisor to the cannabis equity program for Success Centers and offers monthly tours to MD Farms for equity applicants.

The big takeaway today is - We can’t wait for others to step up. There’s no time like the present to advocate for access and social equity.

And focus most of your energy locally - do your homework, ask questions, start a dialogue. For example, if you live in California and you don’t have a dispensary in your town or county and maybe you don’t have access to delivery - I bet you’re not the only one pissed off about that. Start there.

And if you live in a state without a developed cannabis market, it’s go-time. Find out who the state and local players are and how far along they are in creating the regulatory bones of the legislation, meet your state and local representatives, attend city council meetings, join local and regional organizations and get involved. And share the Cannabis Social Equity Program Advocacy Handbook that Marie and the other members of the Working Group Coalition put together. You’ll find the link below in the Sustainability Roll-Up.

Cannabis is the most regulated consumer-facing industry in the United States. The regulatory framework and compliance requirements from pre-licensure all the way through to financing and actual operations dictate and create the supply chain.

Therefore, if equity and access are not advocated for at every step of the licensing process and accompanying regulatory framework, Social Equity applicants and operators will be set to fail from the beginning.

The policies written create the industry. So let’s make sure we’re learning lessons and adding the necessary guardrails to protect black and brown equity applicants, small farms, mom and pop businesses, etc. from an innately predatory landscape.

If you’re inspired by today’s chat with Marie, I hope you’ll share this potcast with your smoke circle.

Marie’s Tips for Succeeding in the Cannabis Industry

It’s a small industry so do good business!
Break bread with people; build your industry network
Serve a niche market; being early to market in that niche - even better
Survey your customers, ask them what they want
For delivery services discretion is key

Legacy Coterie is a full-service cannabis consulting, distribution, and sales service focused on developing equity in the cannabis space. Part of the MD Numbers family of brands, Legacy Coterie draws from decades of cannabis business expertise and its family of vertically integrated subsidiaries to meet the demands of modern-day cannabis entrepreneurs. From legacy operators transitioning to the legal market, equity applicants looking to build their next enterprise, to multi-licensees scaling operations, Legacy Coterie pairs your cannabis vision with equitable, proven, world-class solutions. https://www.legacycoterie.com

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Today we’re stepping up to sustain the diversity of cannabis - as both a culture and industry.

In my chat with Marie, she talks about the work she’s doing to empower equity business owners. As part of her pro-bono work, Marie is a member of The Working Group Coalition who created a Cannabis Social Equity Program Advocacy Handbook providing Baseline Policy Recommendations for True Access & Profit Participation in the Global Cannabis Economy for Communities Destroyed by the War on Drugs.

This free, 43-page guide is the brainchild of black and brown social equity applicants, black and brown social equity license holders, activists, compliance directors, and cannabis operators who came together to lend their expertise and first-hand experience of what to do and what not to do.

As more and more states and nations decriminalize cannabis and create the initial framework of this new industry, it’s become increasingly clear that efforts must be made to actively fight and advocate for access-driven policy every step of the journey.

It doesn’t matter what state you live in, this is advocacy handbook is a blueprint to:

1. Advocate for uncapped licenses with the accompanying zoning rights.

2. Advocate for more access to Social Equity programs and expanded definitions of who is eligible and what communities were destroyed by the racist war on drugs and the accompanying multi-generational community divestment.

3. Advocate for better oversight of Social Equity programs both at the local, state, and federal levels using existing frameworks.

The handbook introduction explains that the American cannabis industry is approaching a crucial inflection point where large privately held corporations operating on national and international growth plans are acquiring pools of cannabis licenses at an exponential rate. Their growth and their projected profits come at the expense of the Black and Brown communities that were destroyed by the failed War on Drugs.

The collective experience of the Working Group Coalition revealed that the only way to create an equitable, access-driven path for Black and Brown communities into cannabis is to actively advocate in person to our local, state, and federal governments to assure the initial policy framework of this industry secures the profits for the communities that were and are continuing to be destroyed by the failed war on drugs.

They are so right. You must be in the rooms. You must be at the table. And if you’re unsure where to start, Marie has shared a link to the Cannabis Social Equity Program Advocacy Handbook which you can find by clicking the link below.

Handbook Download | The Working Group Coalition

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For you grown-up joint-rolling novices, I invite you to learn the craft alongside me. Catch the Roll With Me video series live streaming on the Casually Baked YouTube channel and the “Highly Responsible Canna Consumers” FB group with replays on the Weed Tube and IGTV.

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Potcast 213: Succeeding in the Cannabis Industry