Hello Again, World! Plus High-Risk Banking and Processing 2.0

To My Industry Friends and Colleagues,

Hello! I hope you are doing well. Maybe you’ve noticed I’ve not been available at my old email and phone number, or maybe you haven’t. In either case, it’s not necessarily like me to disappear, especially since I am used to being a front-facing public person. However, when a move happens from one company role to another, it can seem like there is a break in communication channels and the natural flow of conversation. Now that I’ve landed in my new position, I very much want to get back in touch and let you know that I remain a resource. What follows is an announcement of my new position and a little background on what led to my recent transition.

Over the past several years working in Cannabis, and the most recent two years focused on high-risk banking and processing, I am committed to continuing to serve in this lane. As the business continues to expand into the mainstream, financial compliance remains a challenge. MRB Compliance Group was recently formed to provide high-risk banking, merchant processing, and compliance solutions. It is an ISO with High Regard Merchant Services. We are also building a book of contracts where we are delivering ongoing compliance for processing providers. If there is any business you think we can do together now or in the future, I invite you to connect.

After a year like 2020, we’ve all gotten used to things being different, challenging, and perhaps more withdrawn. I am always grateful for my relationships in the fact that there is a social element to my professional life. I’d made a personal move at the end of last year from Denver, Colorado, where I’d lived for seven years, to the New York City area, where I grew up. I’d lived in Los Angeles for the twenty years in between from when I moved to attend college at USC. I had a subsequent career on the business side of the entertainment industry before transitioning into financial services in the cannabis and CBD industries after my move to Colorado.

I’ve had the privilege to work from home these past several months. In May the small business I worked with remotely, which had been bifurcating for some time, hit a stopping point. Over ten people, including myself, were released with seemingly no warning. But knowing what I know, the writing was on the wall that the company’s founder/CEO was beyond ready to move the company in a different direction. More recently the company had been operating as almost two separate companies, and he made the decision to dissolve the arm of the business that for three years had focused on serving customers with compliant banking and merchant processing services.

Since my arrival in Colorado, I had been working in the cannabis industry. I also had a background in being part of small businesses and start-ups. When I met the founder I liked the opportunity to help build his business and solve common financial challenges for high-risk business owners. At first, I helped around the edges of other employment and then stepped in full-time with the wave of CBD merchants who needed help finding banking and processing after the Farm Bill was signed at the end of 2018. Over the next 2 years, our partners and team for banking and processing grew. I was proud of the reputation we’d built as we successfully served hundreds of clients.

At the time my work with him ended, he was well on his way to furthering his own interests in what would now be his company’s primary focus. I had long known he wanted the future of his company to be in some aspect of commercial real estate development. I took a nod that I needed to embrace this long-term objective in order to be a functional member of the company. For my own benefit, if that was the prescribed direction, I wanted to have a foundational knowledge of something I knew nothing about. With this in mind, I began to pursue an application for an Executive Masters program in Urban Planning, back at my alma mater, USC, in the Summer of 2020. I started that program as a grad student last month, almost ironically, concurrent with my departure.

For over two decades now my life is lived in public. I’ve always been an out-front person, except for when I am grinding on my education, a business, or a new project. Then I can get hyper-focused. Therefore, I do incredibly well in my social interactions when people pop into my calendar to chat. Otherwise, my brain in front of my computer wants to solve creative and process problems and tends to be much quieter and therefore less geared to making singular outgoing communications unless there is an urgent matter to resolve. However, I know communication, and especially conversations, are what move both business and relationships forward.

In other news, I am enjoying my graduate school program. I love being back in the USC culture and pushing myself to learn and grow in new areas. They have a certificate program in Financial Compliance that I am eyeing, once I complete this Masters program next summer. I have always been a writer and I enjoy facilitating conversations. With my team, I am excited to put together and share more compliance-oriented educational resources. I am also enjoying learning about history, sustainability, community, habitability, and quality of life. I look forward to seeing how these two areas will intersect and create new opportunities in the future.

Thank you for your continued support. I am here. I am findable. I am happy to get back to work and get things done that help companies grow and be compliant. This is not an easy industry, and not everything is going to be easy, perfect, or stable — but I do my best, and what is in my power and ability to do, to fix or to resolve, I will do it.

Best,

Philippa

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Philippa Burgess

MRB Compliance Group

Email: philippa@mrbcompliancegroup.com

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