Scott Lentz
Audio By Carbonatix
Some ideas just need a little backing to get off the ground in the business world. But if marijuana is involved, that help can be harder to find, according to Black CannaBusiness founders Brandon Wyatt and Todd Hughes.
The two men know what business resources can do for budding entrepreneurs. They recently launched a free incubation program for minority entrepreneurs in the marijuana space in Denver and on the West Coast after creating similar programs in Boston and Chicago.
“We developed this program for about seven years before getting a grant from the State of Maryland,” Wyatt says. “The public-private partnership is very important. But multi-state operators also have a responsibility to the industry they’re stepping into, to make it more inclusive.”
Wyatt and Hughes have been working together in the marijuana consulting and social equity spaces since 2014, and they started expanding their message after receiving that grant from Maryland. Although Colorado’s marijuana industry has become slightly more diverse over the last three or four years, pot businesses here are still largely owned by white men, according to the state Marijuana Enforcement Division.
BCB’s mentorship program, a six-week executive training program for minority business owners from Colorado and western North America, will provide “MBA-level” training, Hughes says.
“Our goal is not to help build mom-and-pop shops. We want to build enterprise-level service providers,” he explains. “The focus of the program is helping them redevelop their business plans and ensuring they have the knowledge, networking and capital necessary to scale their ideas, and that they receive this from mentors who look like them.”
The State of Colorado and the City of Denver have both created social equity programs for marijuana business owners, with grants, technical assistance and licensing priorities all part of the initiatives. These government-run programs are only for licensed and plant-touching businesses, however, and are based on economic, legal and location factors instead of ethnicity.
While several of the BCB program’s students are local business owners in Colorado’s marijuana delivery and hospitality spaces, industries ancillary to licensed pot businesses, such as software and service providers, are a key focus of the program because of their expansion potential and lack of intense state and federal tax regulations, according to Wyatt and Hughes.
“The person who really wins in the gold rush is the individual selling pickaxes, and that is true in the cannabis space in some areas. We’ve helped businesses like [cannabis] clothing and subscription boxes, and services like accounting, legal, branding and marketing,” Wyatt says.
Mentors in the program include Wyatt and Hughes, who sits on the board of the Minority Cannabis Business Association, as well as James Jackson, director of social equity at the Atlanta-based marijuana company Parallel, which is a main sponsor of the program. According to Wyatt and Hughes, the intellectual property of students will be legally protected, but there could be partnership opportunities with Parallel or other companies.
Students in the Denver program will face different industry landscapes than their counterparts in the Midwest or on the East Coast, as much of the western United States legalized recreational marijuana before the rest of the country. Colorado, which was the first state to have legal rec sales, is currently facing declining marijuana sales and claims of an oversaturated retail market.
“Denver is a market that has been around for a while and has a lot of industry players. Entrepreneurs need to be creative in markets like Denver, and can’t take that traditional route,” Jackson says. “When we look at Denver, I know people are going through their own struggles with opening consumption lounges and entertainment, but I think a market with such a scenic backdrop and things to do will always be something to look into.”
The BCB will begin its first classes this month after a celebration mixer Friday, August 26, at Spangalang Brewery in Five Points. The mixer will include a panel on marijuana diversity and awards honoring local marijuana and criminal justice reform advocates Kelly Perez, Rosalie Flores and Melanie Rose-Rodgers.
