Michael Thomas and Sarah Rosenfeld on Cannabis and Banking

Renoites- The Podcast about Reno Nevada

One of the greatest challenges for cannabis businesses in this region is navigating the gray area between operating as a legal business in a state like Nevada and dealing with restrictions on basic business services because their products are not legal federally.

On this week's episode of Renoites, we welcome two guests: Sarah Rosenfeld is the owner of MMG Agriculture, a cannabis producer, and Michael Thomas is the Senior VP of Communications at Greater Nevada Credit Union, a local credit union that provides banking services to cannabis companies as part of a new pilot program.

We talked about the unique challenges of operating a cannabis business right now, and how things have changed since the earliest days of legalization, when stores dealt in large quantities of cash (think duffel bags). Other topics included how working in cannabis can affect personal bank accounts and the ability to get loans, how cannabis companies get taxed heavily but can't take write-offs, new categories of cannabis business including consumption lounges, competition from neighboring states with looser regulations, and much more!

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