228: Cannabis Category King Dennis O’Malley, CEO of Caliva
Christopher Lochhead Follow Your Different™
English - November 02, 2018 12:16 - 55 minutes - 51.2 MB - ★★★★★ - 16 ratingsSociety & Culture Education Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
How does a button-down professional become a legendary pot entrepreneur? On today’s episode, Dennis O’Malley shares with us how he embraced his category. And he also talks about why taking on the pot industry is an exciting endeavor as any.
“In cannabis, almost more than any other industry, there’s an ability to really create and own your category.” - Dennis O’Malley
Three Things We Learned
Dropping the bomb to everyone
Dennis started out like any other aspiring entrepreneur—a button-down, suited up professional who didn’t look the part of a pothead. He remembered the last time he ever smoked back in freshman year, and even then he thought it was mowed lawn grass. Naturally, people's reactions varied when he dropped the news of wanting to be part of the industry.
Earnest involvement in the company
He had no cannabis acumen or passion for the product, not even an understanding of the industry. But Dennis developed a great relationship with the owner of the company and began consulting for the business from there. Through all this, he realized how challenged the company believed it was and the impact cannabis could have to everybody’s well-being.
Challenging himself as a leader
When Dennis took the lead, he gave himself six months to do two things for the company. He tried to find out if he could recruit the people that he needed to be able to be successful. Tied together with the passion around the industry that he discovered, he thought he could be the doing things right.
He became the CEO of Caliva back in January 2017. And he finds himself continuously blown away by the number of people that he gets to meet as well as the passion that he learned about. Dennis can now confidently say that he has really endeared himself to the industry.
Bio:
Dennis O'Malley is the CEO and President of Caliva. It is the largest vertically integrated company based in the State of California.
Links:
Caliva
We hope you enjoyed Dennis O'Malley on this episode of Legends and Losers! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!