ORLANDO, Fla. – This week on “Black Men Sundays,” host Corie Murray interviews Cimone Casson, CEO of Cannas Capital Holdings and its subsidiaries.
Cannas Capital Holdings’ stated mission is to aid in shrinking the racial wealth gap by supporting growing initiatives that show financial promise and by utilizing social economics to create new enterprises which foster equality.
You may have also already inferred by the company’s name that much of its focus is given to the budding U.S. cannabis industry, one of several ways in which Casson envisions new entrepreneurial legacies can shrink said wealth gap and level the playing field.
“I own Cannas Capital Insurance Agency and we focus on the protection needs of commercial cannabis, craft beverage, professional athletes and hospitality,” she said. “(…) For those of you that don’t know what social equity is, it means — especially in the cannabis space — looking for opportunities for people who are most harmed on the war on drugs, especially people of color, disadvantaged areas, then they’re able to get provisions for licensing in that. Equity means ownership and that means absolutely nothing if you don’t own anything. To put it in short, a cannabis license, commercial cannabis license, only lasts for one year, so if you don’t have access to capital, it means nothing. The whole world can say, ‘Everybody in the world gets a cannabis license,’ and it means absolutely nothing if you can’t actually open up the business.”
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Going way back to when and how Casson got her latest projects off the ground, she told Corie that she started her insurance agency — which she says is now worth an impressive $12.5 million alone — with just $400 for the right licenses.
“I came back to Michigan, I literally started the insurance agency with $400, which was a gift from an ex boyfriend,” she said. “He kept asking me what was I gonna do with my life and at the time, Prop 1 was coming up, that was what was making Michigan become adult (recreational marijuana) use and so I said, ‘I’m gonna insure weed businesses,’ and he was like, ‘You could do that?’ (…) The first year I did not make a dime because the medical businesses were going out of inception and the adult use businesses had not started, but from the first year that I started to 12 months later, I did $120,000. Right? Eureka.”
Hear the full interview and more in Season 5, Episode 4 of “Black Men Sundays.”
Black Men Sundays talks about building generational wealth. Check out every episode in the media player below.
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