Influencing Culture with Industry Leading Brands
On why he made the leap from Clorox to Cannabis to join the Parent Company
Six months ago, I was sitting at my desk at Clorox managing supply issues during a worldwide pandemic. You can probably say my job was pretty cake as the leader of global sales for a disinfecting products company.
The purpose piece was the reason why I came over. Other than that, I would’ve never, never left my opportunity at Clorox. I’ve been with the organization for 22 years, and you develop a bit of comfort. I was part of the DNA of the company. I’d been around for a large part of that hundred years and was shaping culture as a company. I had a lot of freedom to be who I am and there’s a lot of covers that comes with that. But this was just too interesting an opportunity to pass up for sure.
What were the first days like leading a vertically integrated company?
Observation. On, day two, I got a chance to meet with folks from Jay-Z’s team to really understand the quality that’s expected from Monogram and the rules of engagement with them.
On day three, I was out on a delivery route with my delivery drivers to better understand that part of the operations. I spent the better part of the week in our operations to understand cultivation. We call it, the back-end work that goes into developing a product and spent some time in our dispensaries next to our budtenders.
And they’re making recommendations to folks as they enter our location. So, I really spent time across the entire ecosystem just trying to observe and learn. I think one of my jobs is to serve as a general manager for the business, say, looking at all the puts and takes of building a great organization, that includes seeing everything from seed. So, my job is really to just listen.
you know, one of the things that we’ve seen over the last past year for us is a mainstreaming location and where our dispensary is. You know, I’ve got a couple of locations now that are in parking lots of big retailers like Costco. I’ve got some locations that we had at the very beginning of legalization in California that looked like you’re going down an industrial road to do a drug deal. Right? It feels like, like, why would I go down this road? Like it is only to do a drug deal.
And so, the more that we can actually mainstream it, I think, the American sentiment is already there. It’s about how we catch up with zoning laws and all these other things. Get those things fixed so that we can bring the center closer to the reality.
If you could sum up your experience in a main takeaway or lesson learned to pass onto the next generation?
Take the risk. I’d say don’t be afraid to make the leap
*** The following transcript is AI generated and some words have been removed for spacing. Please listen to the epsiode for full context.
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