Unbelievably, it is May and summer is around the corner. The swiftness of our industry seems to accelerate days passing, so I wanted to take a moment to share what’s “top of mind.”
Lobby Days
Last year I posted that I have seen a sea change in congressional sentiment since my first year lobbying for cannabis legalization and regulation at the federal level nearly a decade ago. We went from being laughed out of offices and coldly dismissed to engaging in true discourse. This year felt even more bizarre. I’ve never spoken to so many members who support our initiatives. A phrase I heard many of my colleagues begin to say and repeat is that we find ourselves “on the right side of history” as it relates to cannabis reform. With that said, we can’t stop being a force and the squeaky wheel. As Californian Representative Lou Correa (D-CA) advised us, “don’t stop walking these halls and pushing. If you stop pushing, the progress will stop as well.”
Leading Working Mothers
Our lives are filled with different people who play different roles. Or, put another way, we play different roles for different people in our lives. We are children, siblings, parents, friends, co-workers, and more. We need these ties to fill different emotional and intellectual needs. We have disparate interests as well. Some of these may merely be outlets for creativity or physical energy, but sometimes great value comes from interest in seemingly unrelated things. I always think of Steve Jobs having studied calligraphy and how our beautiful selection of computer fonts would likely not exist had he not had that aesthetic interest. I always think of this when I question the value of time spent in exploring something that piques my interest. I’ve explored ideas far and wide, but currently, as we enter a new phase in our business, I’m spending time with my MJ Platform team and my family at home revisiting our foundational principles and values and ensuring we move forward with intention toward goals that feel good and worthy of the pursuit. It’s a Springtime rooting in the ground perhaps before our next season of growth and exploring those disparate interests, some of which may become as important as fonts.
The Importance of the OG Kush Release
In the world of software as a service, updates happen regularly and periodically, and each one is called a release, and they’re usually numbered. However, when you release a big, sexy update with new functionality and performance, it’s nice to give that release a name. Android names all its releases after sweets and Apple named many of its releases after cool animals. We’ve decided to name ours after cannabis strains, beginning with this most recent monumental, foundational release for us which we’ve named OG Kush. This release streamlines our MJ Platform base product, reducing clicks and increasing performance speeds by several factors. All of this means our clients can spend more time on their businesses and less time on worrying about their compliance and monitoring. We make it easier than ever for them to collect the data they need to be compliant and make data based business decisions.
Jessica Billingsley is the co-founder and CEO of MJ Platform Business Solutions. In June 2019, she became the CEO of the first cannabis industry company to be listed on the NASDAQ.
