Her first week in the cannabis industry brought a sigh of relief, as Lisa Jordan could feel the distance between her former life in the corporate world of telecommunications and her new role as the director of marketing for Canna Advisors.
The difference between the traditional corporate world and cannabis became obvious immediately.
“What surprised me was the passion people have at the office — that depth of passion and the savvy to make a difference,” she says. “It’s a very collaborative and positive environment.”
Upon joining the team in September 2017, Jordan was tasked with aligning the five-year-old company’s brand as it continues to grow in scope and into new markets.
“I think it’s about making people aware that we’re in this to help build the industry and not just for the financial piece of it,” Jordan says. “We see it as not just a multibillion-dollar industry, but also see it from the benefits it provides patients and consumers.”
Jordan’s responsibilities with Canna Advisors are twofold: Not only is she in charge of publicizing the firm’s ability to provide license application support, facility design, operations management and other services, but also lends her marketing expertise to clients as part of the company’s brand development division.
“A lot of people think that branding starts with a logo,” Jordan says. “The logo is the really the last thing you do when you look at brand development and strategy. What do we want to do? How do we want to help the industry? How do we want to talk about that?”
Prior to jumping into the fast-growing cannabis industry, Jordan received awards at both the local and international levels from groups such as the American Advertising Awards and the Cannes Lyon International Festival of Creativity.
Jordan, who has an MBA in marketing from the University of Mississippi, says her decade in the wireless industry was invaluable as she transitioned into marijuana. She first got involved in the cell phone business just four months prior to Apple introducing the first iPhone, a pivotal point in the technology field that she says allowed her to “create something from nothing” as the industry’s future remained uncharted.
“I see a lot of parallels between that wireless switch and cannabis,” Jordan says. “That’s the role we see at Canna Advisors — to build industry from scratch.”