Green View Magazine | December 2019

22 GREEN VIEW MAGAZINE DECEMBER 2019 educating the people who are interested in getting a license about what’s allowed and what’s not allowed. Even though, technically, they’re the 31st state to pass some form of legal cannabis legislation, it’s all new to them. “Because cannabis is federally illegal here in the U.S., every state has rolled out a program in their own way; 30 different programs with 30 different sets of rules. While a lot of it is very new, we’ve gotten into a rhythm of understanding the common denominators, and then understanding the uniqueness to each state. Often people come to us and want to know ‘where should we start?’ and ‘where are the better opportunities?’ and we try to guide them along based on our experiences.” GVM: What is your advice to potential investors in the cannabis industry? Jay: “We have people from time to time that have just come into money and are eager to deploy it into cannabis, and the first thing I tell them is ‘proceed with extreme caution.’ Second, don’t rush into anything, because for every really exciting potentially good investment, there are going to be 10 bad ones. It’s easier for Diane and me to zero in on good investments because of the network we have. We know so many people and a lot of our best investments are through people we’ve gotten to know over the years. “At this point, we’ve had two exits, where our client operations have been acquired by public companies. And we get pieces of equity, from time to time, so it’s interesting for us. In most cases, investors get some cash, but mostly it’s stock. And that’s potentially exciting because U.S. stocks are nowhere near where I believe they’re going to be one day. Let’s say somebody has an exit of $20 million (take GTI for instance), investors get most of that in stock. Well, GTI is probably up 100 percent at the beginning of the year. So if you get acquired by the right public company, it can be very exciting. You could end up with two or three CANNA ADV I SORS Diane and Jay Czarkowski, founders of Canna Advisors INVESTMENT