Do You Have To Be A Resident Of The State You're Applying For a Cannabis License In?
Hi, my name is Adam. I'm the CEO of rootAffects, the CEO of Caribbean Green (where I’ve secured 6 licenses all vertical), and I run High Class Academy, the online education course for the cannabis industry and a plethora of other things. But I just want to get this thing kicked off. So today I have my friend Frank asking a bunch of questions about the cannabis industry and just kind of got from here. So Frank why don’t you tell me a little about yourself and what your history is in the cannabis industry and stuff like that?
Frank: So I'm just a cannabis enthusiast. I have tried in the past to get myself in the industry and had some roadblocks and I'm really just trying to put my money and my resources in the best place to try to set myself up for success in this industry. And I know you have a lot of success in doing that. I thought that I would ask you some questions to help me along the way.
So the way this whole thing came about was Frank and I, we've been friends for years now and he's always asked me questions, you know, on and off here and there about different things and it's just like, man this is stuff I really wish I could just record and tell everybody. So everyone else got the same information. So I figured, hey, why don't we just record it and then put it out there and then bam, everyone's got all the info. So, that's really what this is. So, really Frank, you're really leading this conversation. You're more interviewing me than I am you essentially.
Frank: So let's get after it. So as I'm trying to get into the industry and understand this from somebody who's had a lot of success, I'm trying to go back to the basics and some starting points. So let's first of all say that I want to apply for a license, and I'm a New York resident. I would like to get into a situation where I positioned myself to have a piece of a license or to apply for one and control it myself. What's the best jumping off point to start that process?
So first off, if you're thinking about applying for a license in New York, it's closed. So all the licenses have been issued. They're currently issuing actually a couple more, but only to people that have already applied, I think it was a couple of years ago now. So there's no way to get in on that now. We do have information that they will be opening this up again in about two years once the elections are done. So you can get into New York at that point, but if you wanted to get in now - which I highly recommend because I think in two years it's going to be too late, honestly, for a whole plethora of reasons we can get into later if you want. But you're going to have to look into other states. So if you're looking to get into the license, you're trying to get yourself into a license or buy your own license or investment or whatever, you're going to have to do it outside of New York.
So you can either find an emerging state, one who has passed legislation recently and now has opened up applications for licenses or you can find an existing license and you know, invest into one. If you want to get into one of the new ones, most of the time you have to be a resident of that state, or at least the majority of the money and/or ownership of the company that's applying for the license has to be residents of that state. So you have to partner up with somebody from that state, wherever you're applying. And even if it doesn't say that you have to, when they judge your applications and they rate them, they're going to heavily base it on your residency of that state or not. So you really do have to have someone partnered up and realistically, you're going to be opening up a business in a state you don't live in and most likely a state you don't know much about. So it really is beneficial anyway just to partner up with someone from that state. And they probably have political connections or they might have internal finances or they already have businesses and they contribute to the community in that state. And all that stuff helps you in the application process. So yeah, New York is pretty much out of the question for now. You're gonna have to look into other states.
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Cheers!
.: Adam
CEO