Feet on the Ground, Head in the Clouds with Hope Wiseman
Hope Wisemen was raised in Prince George’s County, Maryland, graduating from the illustrious Spelman College where she received her Bachelor’s in Economics. At the age of 25, Hope became the youngest Black woman dispensary owner in the country. In September 2018, her dispensary Mary and Main, opened their doors to Prince George’s County. Hope’s mission is to continue to end the stigma the country has created about Cannabis within the Black community and help Black Americans realize the importance of their place in the industry.
Hope has always been passionate about serving her community and was known for her exceptional leadership skills in several campus organizations. After spending a year at SunTrust as an Equity Institutional Sales Analyst, Hope decided to continue striving for excellence by pursuing her dreams of entrepreneurship. With her financial and banking background, Hope founded Mary and Main on the foundation of her vision to create opportunity for minorities who have been disproportionately affected by the war on drugs.
GROWING UP, WHAT WAS YOUR RELATIONSHIP TO MONEY?
I was definitely raised in a true middle class family, two parent household and both my parents worked very hard. My mother was an entrepreneur and started her dental practice the year I was born. There are actually pictures of me in a stroller right next to her chair while she worked on patients, making me feel like I’ve seen hard work from the day I was born. My family was middle class but we had everything we needed in our household. I tell people all the time, I had a really good childhood and my mom was sure to instill the idea in me that there’s always more and I’ve never forgotten it. I was raised in PG county Maryland but actually born in Fairfax Virginia and my dad was a hospital administrator out there. They had just opened their new wing to deliver babies and I was the second baby delivered in it. Both of my parents were probably raised with lesser than I had but they made sure to provide us with a better life and instill in us that we’re supposed to keep that trajectory going. I was raised to be free thinking, open minded to ideas and always look for opportunities to build wealth so my upbringing was definitely centered around their entrepreneurial mindsets. We weren’t super traditional and didn’t have dinner every night, but we would talk about money and taxes and I understood those kinds of things at an early age versus a lot of my peers.
“I continue to strive for things that are outside of the box and listen to myself and intuition as much as possible.”
HOW DID YOU AND YOUR MOM BECOME CO-FOUNDERS?
Ever since my mother started her own dental practice I’ve always been with her as she takes risk and tried new things. I’ve watched her try all different types things growing up! She doesn’t practice anymore but she still owns the office, has a few dentists working and then her real estate, she’s always working on or trying new things. I’m constantly inspired by how hard she works, her intelligence and how she’s able to figure things out. I have definitely taken on many of her same qualities and she has really been able to help me sophisticate the way that I think about business. We haven’t always dreamed about doing this and people ask me how long I wanted to be in the cannabis industry, I didn’t even know that there was an industry. Being so motivated and inspired by my mothers entrepreneurial spirit, when this opportunity came, it clicked and I realized I would be in one of the biggest emerging industries of my lifetime. With being so inspired by that fact, I knew that if I got into the industry at the ground floor level, I could potentially be one of the major players in this space. I knew that this industry would grow to be very, very big and we’ve only seen constant growth since the industry became legal.
WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE BLACK AMERICANS WHO WANT TO GET INTO THE CANNABIS INDUSTRY?
To start! You don’t have to spend that much to go threw an application stage but you should have a good budget and someone whose been through it before like myself guiding and assisting you. Between 50 to 75,000 go through the process and there are a lot of people who are advocating to different legislators to remove requirement that are very capital intensive. There are legislations required like requiring a property be under contract or already having control over a property. Those requirements are unnecessary and you could actually wait until after a license is awarded and it would then make more sense to invest more money. My goal is to change that and see less of the unnecessary obstacles so when we realized we couldn’t do it alone me and my mother put together a budget and got a third founder. Dr. Larry Bryant, he’s an oral sergeant in Maryland and known me since I was a baby, he and my mother worked closely together during the entire process. So from that point I was able to keep it in the family and the 3 of us bootstrapped it and got it done. Granted, I was straight out of college so I had a little bit of money saved up, paid like one lawyer bill and I thought I was doing something. There are for sure a numerous amount of resources but one of the biggest ones right now is connecting with people in the NCIA, the National Cannabis Industry Association. That is a huge platform and they have a lot of different opportunities and job postings on the message boards and provide information about the entire industry and other sectors.
HOW CAN WE INVEST AND SUPPORT THE CANNABIS INDUSTRY?
I tell people all the time owning a dispensary or a cultivation center and touching the plant isn’t the only way to get into the space. Ancillary is so important and necessary in this industry and you can literally do anything you can think of in this full-blown industry with a lot of different sectors. Businesses, centers and dispensaries need packaging, labeling and other supplies, then the equipment to use those supplies. We need equipment for cultivation, then all the supplies to assist with growth like hydroplane stores, soil, people to sell clones and the trimming supplies. Literally anything you can think of would be an investment in this industry, even down to professional services like marketing, accountants, lawyers and real estate agents. It’s really important that they have a certain level of expertise in cannabis and are able to do their job fully and you not doing half of their job for them. When you bring people in it would serve best to have rules and regulations yourself and for your investment. The industry is really nuanced so you need people with a specific expertise and you can also charge a premium because of it. I would pay a premium if that meant that I didn't have to run down the regulations of what would work in my state versus California or any other state. There are also so many other ways you can support the industry and there isn’t as much red tape around them. We’re subject to a lot of restrictions that businesses who don't even touch the plant aren’t subject to.
WHAT IS YOUR TAKE ON LEGALIZATION?
Firstly because, there's not an emphasis on social equity, criminal justice reform and health equity in these bills, folks don't want legalization. When it comes down to it, the black market or the legacy market, as I like to call it, is alive and well and making billions and billions of dollars and at the end of the day. Whether we legalize the plant or not it's still going to get used. So advocates aim to get it legalized the right way or they don't want it because we’re not going to legalize it and allow the same people locking us up to be billionaires off of it and keep us out of it.
When we built this culture we also built this industry and we're the ones that perpetuated it. Yes, there are some states and local municipalities that put more emphasis on social equity than others but we just heard about New York legalizing adult use cannabis. The bill's been passed, but they still have to write the regulations and go through that process. But the regulations that are coming out now have proven to be some of the most progressive on the east coast. The industry is constantly expanding and will continue to do so. That’s going to create multiple different opportunities for many outside demographics, we just have to go after them.
HOW ARE YOU LEVERAGING MARY & MAIN TO CREATE GENERATIONAL WEALTH?
My lifelong dream was definitely not to be a cannabis person and even though people call me a queen, cannabis mogul and all that stuff, cannabis was the first stop on my entrepreneurial journey. Plenty of multi-millionaires, billionaires start by creating a company and then selling it but for what I’m doing right now, it was a really unique opportunity to get into this industry early the way I did and really build. I’m making sure that Mary & Main leaves a legacy of being a well-run black company. I want people to know that a young black woman started this company and built a brand around Black excellence and a place of sophistication. It’s not that I don't love traditional cannabis culture or an urban lifestyle feel, I appreciate it, but one of the goals for Mary and Main is to bring sophistication to the idea of a black person owning a cannabis company. And that's my goal in my every day life not just in cannabis, but everything I do, I’ve had to fight stigmas that come with being a young black woman. All those things together, the intersectionality of who I am has always been something that had to be five times better and faster, just to be taken seriously. It's no different in this industry and coming from finance and investment banking world it sometimes feels too normal and I thrive in environments like that. However, I hope the work I’m doing allows other young black women to not have to work 10 times harder just to be given the same respect as a mediocre white man.
“We’re 5 of 100 of this industry, there’s a lot of opportunity and time left to get involved in seizing opportunities.”
WHY IS OWNERSHIP IMPORTANT FOR BLACK AMERICANS?
I believe ownership is important because you get to write your own story and personally, as a business owner, I get to pour back into my local community and that's huge for me. I think it’s another benefit of owning a business, real estate or anything, the opportunity to have influence and use your platform to really enrich. It will always go back to community and that's the biggest thing, we need more ownership within our community. So for black America we need to realize we can't be upset about the way things are if we're not going to do our part to change things, and I believe that ownership is a way to do it. With that responsibility comes a certain mindset, because as a business owner and stakeholder, I have influence and can go talk to legislators who write the laws that govern how we live. That has taught me that, the more ownership you have, the more influence you'll be able to have and that means you’ll be able to have an impact. Then being able to have what we need to pour back into our communities and make spaces that are safe for us to start businesses. Also, when there’s ownership, we have a chance to provide for others, like with my employees, I’ve given them that space to create their own. No not everyone has to be become a billionaire and build a huge business but if we continue to build small communities overall, that momentum will gain traction and we’ll start to build safer spaces for black people as a whole.
WHAT IS YOUR PASSION AND WHEN DID YOU KNOW?
When I did a TedX a few years ago and talked about how tragedy can lead you to purpose, and I think I knew from a very young age that I was an influencer. I knew that people would look at the things I did and want to follow and I felt that even as a little girl. I never took that lightly and have always tried to be a really good example. I attribute a lot of it back to growing up so young and doing pageants. After looking at who I was under that light and as a person, putting myself on stage to be judged, and did a lot of self-discovery pretty early on.
When I started to understand my purpose was in college. With my name being Hope, it was kind of heavy because I felt like people met me and were expecting me to be a light for them. Even though I thought having the name Hope was heavy, I remember before leaving for college my mom told me she named me Hope because she went through tough times before I was born and named me Hope for herself. I really started to realize that I have always had an impact and influence but then realized my life is supposed to be a blueprint and an example for other people. It allows me to continue to strive for things that are a little outside of the box and really try to listen to myself and intuition as much as I can. I believe that our souls come here already full of purpose and meaning and we just have to spend our life trying to tap into it.
“God put me here to be a leader of people, that’s my responsibility, that’s my gift.”
Are you interested in connecting with Hope Wiseman?
Instagram: @iamhopesodope
Want to learn more about Mary & Main?
Website: maryandmain.com
Instagram: @maryandmain