Marijuana Company Of America Inc (OTCMKTS:MCOA) Is Pushing Towards Operational Execution

Marijuana Company Of America Inc (OTCMKTS:MCOA) is an interesting one right now. The company is running up on thin air (well, a few releases, but very little substance) and currently trades more than 750% up on its mid year price. It hit highs of $0.13 back in November, when a number of US states voted on recreational legalization.Right now, it's down a little on these highs, but if the last few weeks is anything to go on, we're probably going to see a return to the upside momentum near term. It may be a short squeeze, it may be markets flocking to pick up an exposure to the cannabis industry and latching on to what is one of the strongest names, from a branding perspective, available on the public markets. It may be a combination of the two (likely) and more unknowns (again, likely).Whatever is driving the momentum, it's there, and this is enough to catch our attention. So let's try and figure out what's next, and what we can do about it.We covered this one recently, and our primary takeaway was that it's looking to become a sort of multi level marketing (MLM) company, similar in concept to Herbalife Ltd. (NYSE:HLF). As a quick recap, it's developed a product called hempSMART, which is a sort of cannabis based health product (the active ingredient is a cannabidiol, if the marketing material is to be trusted) and it's going to be the company's flagship product on the scheme it's trying to promote.Basically, people (called distributors in marketing material) buy stock of hempSMART, then sell it to customers as a sort of run-your-own-business program. They are also encouraged to recruit other distributors, and they pick up a percentage of the for-sale product that their recruited distributors sell to their own customers. The concept repeats. As mentioned, it's an extremely successful model, as employed by Herbalife, ethical arguments aside, but it's got to be rooted in strong marketing.The question, then, is the hempSMART brand strong enough to build a network on?It looks good, and with the wave of recreational interest in the cannabis space currently spreading across the US, then there's every chance it could take off. The guy in charge of building out the program, which is billed as an affiliate marketing program, is Donald Steinberg, and he currently serves as the Company's CEO. He's gone on record as saying he's developed one of the largest affiliate marketing programs in the world, with offices in over 50 countries and an affiliate base of over 100,000 members, and that he's going to leverage this legacy network to get the hempSMART kicked off. His resume reads well, with him having developed numerous large MLM programs in the past, so this bodes well.So, now things are becoming a little clearer. The company is looking to develop an affiliate network through which it can sell CBD based products, and it's going to use the CEO's previous networks to kick start the program. It's too early to say with any certainty how successful, or otherwise, but the foundations are now in place for what could be a promising operation.It's not a risk free exposure, of course. There's are still many uncertainties. These programs can be expensive to launch and will generally have to operate against a headwind of disagreeability with the business model (we've seen this from Bill Ackman with the above mentioned Herbalife). The company's not got any cash, and so dilution is going to be inevitable near term. This will eat away substantially at any early stage holdings and will be a tough pill to swallow from a value perspective.If things work out as planned, however, there's plenty of growth potential here.We will be updating our subscribers as soon as we know more. For the latest updates on MCOA, sign up below!Disclosure: We have no position in MCOA and have not been compensated for this article.