We are developing a reality television program. Basis of this series will be a new cannabis business
MJ Mike’s
We are in the development phase for the production of a reality television program being broadcast over the internet. The basis of this series will be the daily life in a new cannabis business established in Portland, Oregon and the interactions of the founder with his friends, employees, vendors and colleagues. It is being broadcast now on Bigado.TV and MJ Mikes Video Channel for broadcast of their new series “Cannabis Reality”.
The format will be daily occurrences in the cannabis business. This will be surrounding the title character MJ Mike. MJ Mike is newly relocated to the Portland, Oregon area to establish an ancillary cannabis business in the newly legal cannabis industry. Moving here from Texas to compete in the advertising space against some of the biggest names in advertising out west. But Mike has an advantage in the cannabis advertising space he has Cannabis Reality. He had been the CTO of the highly successful internet television program and built the company to be valued by CBS for $100 million. He knows this space.
What have we been required to do to grow the business? These events will be coupled with local dispensary owners, processors and growers stopping by to discuss their brands and products. Their incentive for them to be on the show is to be on the show and promote their brands and products. Ours is to have new products presented which will give added interest to our viewers.
My name is Michael Davis. I have recently moved to Oregon from Texas to start a business in the new legal cannabis industry. I would like to share these experiences with our viewers.
I have potential directors, crew and production companies acquired through Oregon Media Production Association. I have also been establishing contacts in the local cannabis community. On Monday I went to a Meet-Up at the NW Cannabis Club which I joined. This is the last cannabis social club in Portland. There were about 10 vendors there mostly glassware and growers, a few processors but also some cannabis activists. I believe these types of people would be excellent as people interviewed for the show. I will attempt to set up a table next Monday as a vendor and put a recorder behind me. I think after a few weeks can probably start recording after I get known. The cannabis community is still a closed knit group with deserved paranoia as from the Fed standpoint it is still illegal and thus controversial and will make for great material.
My original college degree was in biochemistry and I subsequently pursued a career in dentistry. While in college I had thought of switching over to computer science, however at that time the school didn’t offer a degree in computer science and thought I wasn’t sure if anyone could make a living from computers but a lot of people had as doctors. I practiced as a successful periodontist until I had a patient die in my office while under my care. The ensuing legal problems and the fact that I had already looked into my required number of mouths for my lifetime I decided to become a stockbroker and quit dentistry. I did very, very well and even though it wasn’t a Stratton Oakmont it had similarities to it.
I moved into investment banking and concentrated on capital raises. While doing this in 1995 we were raising money for a new internet company.
I saw the potential of the internet and decided to establish an internet company myself. I had 6 top notch programmers developing a new search engine called TheInfoSource that was not based solely on Inktomi like everything else back then. This was all prior to Google and before Yahoo made Mark Cuban wealthy. The programmers had planned to develop an associated travel site, job site, printing website and a food channel. We were even going to do a Netflix type of operation back then but dropped it as we were told we would never have the bandwidth available for that.
Investors were throwing all their money at anything that smelled of the internet and ours was no exception, The ensuing legal problems I had from the dental and stockbroker careers resulted in me spending a four year vacation with the State of Texas. The Saturday after Thanksgiving in 1998 I was forced to abandon my internet dream. That following Monday a venture capital firm arrived at my office with a check for $10 million for 10% of the company. They asked “Where is Mike?” My employees: “We don’t know” “When is he coming back?” We don’t know that either.”
What I heard was that the programmers took their new search algorithm to Sabre and AMR and developed Travelocity. Anyways TheInfoSource folded and I was forced to watch nightly news from the day room about all these different web companies being bought for $500 million to a billion dollars.
In 2004 I started to resurrect my internet company but the internet bubble had already burst. I retrained as a Cisco network professional and further schooled myself on web development. I finally joined a financial news internet broadcast television company in 2007 as their CTO with 10% ownership. We were doing quite well and CBS was considering a buyout. The CEO of the company who was my former sales manager at TheInfoSource and an associate from the investment banking days had his own legal worries for running a pump and dump scheme. Luckily for me I wasn’t around with them then, otherwise I would be locked up by the Feds with him. Our company evaporated into nothing and I was finding myself needing to make an income. I didn’t want to compete with all the 20 year olds in the technology arena so I decided to concentrate on one of my 350 websites.
The most profitable was my online ticketing agency. I was doing absolutely nothing as it was all internet based but it did generate about $1000 a month in sales as TicketSource.net. So then I became a ticket broker which I knew nothing about. I got on the job training. I had thought “I don’t want to be a ticket scalper they are so sleazy.” The first experience with the ticket broker business was I bought $3000 worth of Dallas Maverick playoff strips the first time they went to the NBA Finals. I cleared $10,000 on those and thought maybe this business could be something.
Of course the ticket business is not always like that but rather more like the tomato business. This is because if you don’t sell your tomatoes on time they end up in the dumpster as garbage the same as expired, worthless concert tickets the day after the event. I am supporting myself with the ticket business but some brokers do very phenomenally well. I talked with another broker this week about joining forces as they do over $700,000 a month in sales out of Seattle and I only do a fraction of that here in Portland.
Why I decided to move to Portland from Texas is that recreational cannabis is legal in Oregon.
With my chemistry background I wanted to get into the edible and extraction industry. I knew I would need to support myself establishing and getting the new business to profitability. So I would get a physical location where I would do the ticketing business from the store front and do the extraction business from the back. Then I found out about Section 280E of the IRS code. What that says is that anyone that makes their money from trafficking in illegal drugs, for which cannabis is still a Schedule I narcotic, cannot generate business deductions. There are some exceptions in that you can have a secondary legal business in the same location that can generate legitimate business deductions. A Seattle based accountant who I have worked with told me about a farmer in southern Oregon who set up a used car dealership on his property. This is his fifth year to file federal taxes under that model. My fear of having a used car sales lot is the potential liability with a used car. If the brakes fail and a family goes off a cliff who gets sued? If someone sells bogus event tickets your only liability would be refund of the sale price. And we never knowingly sell counterfeit tickets.
With my knowledge of the ticket business and web expertise MJ Consulting entered into establishing online ticketing websites into medical marijuana dispensaries and recreational cannabis stores to help mitigate the effects of 280E on these businesses. This is being done through my cannabis advertising and marketing firm MJ Consulting Services. This is a band aid for these cannabis businesses until 280E is changed. However in the meantime tax liability for these businesses can be as high as 90% but with our ticketing agency and coffee franchise installation we can help reduce taxes 50-60%.
The cannabis industry is very new. I kind of liken it to the internet back in 1996. Mainstream investors are still leery of it right now but another two years and it will be the feeding frenzy the internet was in 1998. I’ll put the pun out there but another 2 years and investors will throw all their money at anything that smells of cannabis. The difference with the cannabis industry is that it has a solid infrastructure of a physical product that people are willing to pay cash for and that they want. Not like the internet where there were companies being bought for half a billion dollars that all they were was an idea and never made a dime.
Link to the Project:
