2023 Changes to NJ Cannabis Business Rules

 

There are several new changes to the rules that govern the cannabis industry in New Jersey: Three new license types will soon be available: Class 3, wholesalers; Class 4, distributors; and Class 6, delivery licenses. The criteria for priority applications have been reordered with all Social Equity, Diversity-owned Businesses, and Impact Zone applications — including those for annual and conversion licenses — receiving review before all other applications. There won't be statewide restrictions on cultivation licenses as of February 22nd, 2023 (your municipality may still have restrictions). After February 22nd, 2023, cannabis license holders will be able to hold a cultivator license, a manufacturer license, a retailer license, and a delivery service license at the same time.  License holders will be able to have only one of each and in any combination.  Additionally, wholesale license holders can also hold a distributor license.  Expanded alternative treatment centers may cultivate, manufacture, retail, and deliver. To learn more visit: New Jersey Cannabis Regulatory Commission takes actions on applications process and cultivation caps

Overcoming First Time Entrepreneur Fear

Starting a business can feel a lot like diving off a bridge towards a small body of water, plummeting for a heart-stopping eternity, and hoping feverishly until the last second that your aim is true.

I mention this particular analogy because most never actually take that dive. What if I miss? Will I be successful? Due to that fear, you stay where you’re safe and lie to yourself that you didn’t really want to make the dive in the first place.

Fear is the destroyer of dreams, and if you let it control you, then you’ll never reach your full potential. If you intend to become an entrepreneur and take control of your personal and professional destiny, it is essential that you find a way to overcome the fear that strikes every first-time entrepreneur. Of course, that’s easier said than done. In this post, we’re going to look at four key tips for facing that fear and moving ahead.

Tip #1: Break Your Process Down into Manageable Steps

The first thing you need to know is that the diving analogy is fundamentally flawed. The reasons vary, but the biggest one is that you don’t veer uncontrollably from the first step to the final destination (whether it’s success or failure). Rather, you move horizontally.

You have a long way to go and a huge amount of work to do, but you can backtrack. You do not need to do it all in one fell swoop. Take your time, going from one step to another only when you’re ready.

By learning as much as you can about the entrepreneurial process and figuring out the intricacies of each unique challenge you’ll face along your journey, you can massively boost your confidence to take the dive.

There are countless resources that provide all the insight you need, packaged in various ways for ease of consumption. Here are three big categories:

Blog posts: The web is packed with exceptional blogs providing great insight into the entrepreneurial process. Take HubSpot, for example: its blog has an unmatched reputation for offering finely-honed guides on topics pertaining to business, entrepreneurship, financial management, training, and a myriad of other topics relevant to running a business. Simply search for the niche topic that interests you and you’re sure to find an article to point you in the right direction.

Video guides: If you’d rather watch videos than read articles, this is a great option. YouTube is flush with entrepreneurial guides from people who’ve been there and done that, and it can be extremely reassuring to hear them talk. Two areas that are particularly useful are motivation (overcoming your fears, setting goals, etc.) and sales (choosing products, targeting an audience, etc.).

Podcasts: Not a fan of reading articles or watching videos? Podcasts are great because you can listen to them and absorb valuable information while doing other things. One idea is to find podcasts from people who’ve been in your position before. How did they achieve their goals? What mistakes were made along the way? The more you hear about paths already traveled, the easier you’ll find it to navigate your own.

Tip #2: Set A Budget That You Can Afford To Lose

Feeling like you’re putting everything on the line is pretty daunting when you’re trying to start a business because it magnifies the pressure on you. You simply can’t afford for things not to work out. You have one shot ー miss it, and you’ll have no choice but to return to a life of conventional employment, minimal creativity, and never being your own boss. How is anyone supposed to perform well in those conditions? Even a seasoned professional would struggle.

Instead of going all-in, you should pointedly set a budget that you can afford to lose in its entirety. If your startup crashes immediately and you can’t recover any of the money you put in, you shouldn’t face any financial trouble. Ideally, you should still have some savings to support your next business venture.

Keep in mind that this isn’t just about regular operational costs: it’s also about your initial costs to some extent. What equipment do you need for your new business? What will make you maximally efficient? A new desk? A coffee machine? A couple of external displays for your laptop, and maybe even a hard drive docking station to neaten things up? 

Your loaction is a key considerations that go into the decision-making process: decide if you'll be working from home, frequently traveling, or in a co-working space and how that will affect the kind of equipment you need and the amount you'll have to spend.

Before you invest in something, then, think about whether you really need it for your business, and whether you can afford to leave it for a later date. In all likelihood, you can give it time.

Tip #3: Outsource Everything Except For Your Core Tasks

Part of the intimidation factor of entrepreneurship is simply the amount of work required for a startup. You need a brand, complete with a full set of thought-out brand guidelines. You have to build a high-quality website. You need rigorous financial management. You have to come up with a compelling value proposition to make you competitive. Your content marketing strategy needs to garner traffic and earn the trust of your target audience.

That’s a lot of work for one person, which is why the solopreneur life is exhausting. Don’t take that approach. However, don’t hire full-time staff yet either because that will only heap more pressure on you. Being responsible for the well-being of others will lead to major feelings of guilt if you can’t deliver success. So what should you do? 

*SPOILER ALERT* If you read the subheading, you already know the answer. You should outsource everything except for your core tasks.

Outsource your brand design. Outsource your financial management. Outsource your content marketing. Outsource your mail management. This will add to your expenses, yes, but it’s a worthwhile investment because it will give you more time to focus on the things you’re best positioned to handle.

Tip #4: Know That You Can Adapt As You Go

When you settle on your first business plan, there’s early value in viewing it as a fixed sequence of events. This can give you focus and clarity, helping you stay on track instead of being lured into working on things that don’t really matter and seeing your progress suffer as a result. But even the best plans need contingencies and alternatives — and your first business plan is highly unlikely to be anything special in the grand scheme of things.

It isn’t that you’re incompetent or lacking in talent: it’s simply that you don’t have the experience to know what will work in practice, not just in theory. Due to this, you have to remember that you don’t need to get things right the first time, and small-scale failure won’t require you to abandon your business entirely. Instead, you can adapt to the circumstances you encounter.

You might benefit from pivoting a central element to adopt a different approach, for instance. The more time you put into research, the more you’ll learn about what your target audience really wants, and you can reap the benefits through making updates. In short, the business you end up with won’t necessarily be the one you planned or anticipated, and that’s alright. Don’t worry about your ideal plan. Just get started and stay on your toes.

Let’s Recap

In this post, we’ve covered the following tips that will help you succeed:

• Work in manageable chunks. Something that initially seems intimidating (or even impossible) seems so much simpler when you break it up into smaller pieces.

• Keep money in reserve. If you protect your savings and only invest a small amount, you can take risks knowing that you can bounce back from failure.

• Focus on what you’re good at. Don’t drive yourself to frustration by trying to do everything yourself. Play to your strengths. This will increase your comfort.

• Remember that you’ll learn. You don’t need to know everything now. You don’t even need to know much. Just be ready to learn as you go.

There’s nothing bad or shameful about being afraid. It’s how you respond to that fear that will define your entrepreneurial career. Denying it or shying away from it will only make it worse. It’s only through accepting it and facing it that you can eventually overcome it.

Planning for a Credit Worthy Future

 

Credit seems like a complicated fickle thing when you don’t understand it. There are many unforeseen and preventable things that can come about and bite you in the rear leaving you in a credit mess when you are not aware of the ground rules to good credit. 

The best way to avoid those messes or recover after coming out of a financial mess is to plan your financial future and set some boundaries for yourself for a better, more solid financial future.

Planning for your future can look like a lot of things and should involve many different aspects, like living within your means, things you want to accomplish financially, what you want out of your future credit, how you will build and maintain your credit and how you will set guidelines for yourself to avoid making common credit and financial mistakes. This blog post will briefly touch on each one of these to offer readers, regardless of age and current situation some insight into how to plan ahead for a credit-worthy future.

Living Within Your Means

What does this mean exactly, well it means not spending more than what you make each month. This is one of the hardest things for most American families to do, especially when your household expenses exceed your income. 

Ideally, you need to be able to pay all your bills on time each month and still be able to buy amenities like food and clothing, while also putting aside 20% to 30% of your income for savings. To live within your means can be making choices between eating out or learning to cook and eat home cooked meals most of the time, including taking lunch to work from home. 

There are lots of ways to creatively shrink your monthly expenses and live within your means.

What Do You Want to Accomplish Financially?

This is a big part of living within your means, because if you are just distraught over the situation and want to have more luxuries in life, then you simply need to earn more money. You should look at the life you would like to live and then estimate what it would take monthly to make that life happen.

Put together a plan to meet those needs before you start living that way. That could be as simple as seeking out additional training in your industry, working towards a job promotion or asking for a raise, changing jobs or taking a second job. The important thing is to always stay within your current means, even if you are looking for a way to increase your income. 

Until you are making that higher income, it is not available to you.

What Do You Want Out of Your Future Credit?

Most will answer buy a house, buy a car, vacations, college for the kids and retirement. These are all valid reasons and should be part of your goals depending on your family and personal situation, but all these things and many like them require decent to good credit and some careful planning to obtain in a secure, responsible way.

Think about the types of things you want in these areas and speak with professionals in those industries to get a clear picture of what it would look like on paper. This will give you a realistic look at what it takes to get both your credit and savings healthy enough to help you afford and finance the things you want. 

Build and Maintain Your Credit

To build and maintain a good credit score you need to stick with the guidelines surrounding the living within your means section and that also includes paying your bills on time consistently month after month, year after year.

This is not always possible but it's what everyone should strive towards. If you have setbacks beyond your control in this area you should work towards getting back on track as quickly as possible building and maintaining good credit because bad credit also increases the interest rates you pay for credit and insurance!

Set Guidelines for Yourself

It’s important to set some spending rules and good habits for yourself. Don’t completely deprive yourself because that will only lead to failure and can have catastrophic results for your finances and future. Instead, set some ground rules with occasional indulgences and stick money aside in savings for the big rewards.

•  Smart money practices will always win out over excess in the long run.

MyCreditSystem is not just a DIY credit repair system for those already in trouble it is a Credit Education Program that helps you repair your credit yourself and also empowers you with the knowledge to keep a good credit score and maintain your credit rating. 

It's a great gift for High School Seniors and College Students so that they learn early one how to avoid the pitfalls of credit recklessness and also how to get out of it if they need to. They can also build a business around it! Who knows maybe your teenager or young adult is the one that fixes everyone's credit in the family or your neighborhood?

To learn how you, your teenager or young adult can build their own business helping their friends and family fix their credit sit with them and watch this video