Archives for 2019

June
17, 2019

11 min read

This story originally appeared on shutupnhustle.com

Unlike other startup founders, Brandon Stump, CEO of Charlie’s Chalk Dust, a pioneering brand in the vapor market, didn’t work his way through normal 9-to-5 jobs before, one day, proclaiming that he had had enough with corporate America. That’s because, for Stump, rather than being addicted to an office, he was addicted to heroin, injecting himself daily to get a high that he couldn’t get elsewhere.

Somewhere along the way, Stump found himself at a crossroads: continue to live a life that would, ultimately, kill him — which, technically, it did, as he clinically died an incredible 15 times — or go down a different path and find something deep in himself to turn his life around. He chose the latter, refusing to let addiction be his ultimate fate, and becoming an entrepreneur with one hell of a journey so far.

Now, this is usually the time where, as a storyteller, there’s supposed to be some sort of glorified “holy shit” moment. When I sensationalize the story by leaving out details that suggest that what Brandon Stump did can be done by everyone. Don’t fool yourself, because that’s not the case. You’re about to read an ugly, authentic and raw history of his life.

Rather than sit here and attempt to retell Stump’s story, for fear of leaving any fine detail out, keep reading to see how the CEO of Charlie’s Chalk Dust overcame his addiction to heroin. What began by making the decision to go to an AA meeting to get a free cup of coffee and a cigarette, Stump’s journey led him down an unknown path towards a company that’s disrupting an entire industry. Here it is in his own words…

The root of powerlessness

I never woke up and said to myself, “You know, today’s the day I’m gonna do heroin for the first time.”

Even before high school, I liked to drink on the weekends and smoke and just sort of enjoy life. I liked being rebellious and breaking the rules, and figure out ways to have fun. From partying on the weekend, it turned into showing up to school with orange juice bottles filled with vodka and drinking them in class. And progressed to all kind of drugs.

Related: The Opioid Crisis Is Forcing Open Minds About the Lifesaving Potential of Medical Marijuana 

I barely graduated high school and got into an open enrollment university; where you can basically get in with any grades you want. And I showed up to college already taking Percocets on a daily basis, and, from there, I got into Oxycontin, which is the natural progression. You know, you can only take so many Percocets to get that opioid high before you need something stronger.

When I ran out of Oxycontin, somebody had heroin, and, sure, I was scared to try it, but I said “fuck it” and decided to do it anyway. I snorted it.

After that first time, I thought I would never touch heroin again. Man, I was throwing up for hours; I did too much. And I didn’t touch it for like two months. But then I found myself in a room with a guy who was shooting it up, I gave him my arm and said “fuck it,” just go ahead and do it. So I turned my head, gave him my arm and he shot me up.

That high that I got that day was something that I chased every day until the day I ultimately got sober in 2010. And I never got that high again during my chase for five, six, seven, eight years, however long it was. Once you get addicted to heroin … it’s got you, and it dictates all of your decisions and actions.

Heroin’s impact on his family

Once drug addiction took hold of me and took a grip on my life, my family was affected big time. I mean, complete disarray, where I was a nightmare to be around and wouldn’t show up for days or weeks. My mom and dad told me they used to stay up at night and wonder when I was going to die. My brother and sisters didn’t have an older brother to lean on. I remember the third or fourth time I went to treatment, there was a family weekend and I asked my brother how my heroin addiction affected him. His response was pretty clear: “It’s destroying our family. If you ever use heroin again, I’ll never talk to you.”

Related: Mental Illness: The Silent Destroyer

Image credit: Charlie’s Chalk Dust

The inspiration to get clean came from a simple cup of coffee

That conversation was in 2007. I didn’t get sober until the end of 2010. So, for another three years, I kept at it. The inspiration to finally get off heroin and clean was a combination of my actions. I wrote down my thoughts on a notepad in my car about how much my life sucked: nobody called me for my birthday, I was living in a car, I was in and out of hospitals for overdoses — I had clinically died 15 times. I lost my faith and was looking for an answer because I thought I was going to die.

In the hotel parking lot where I used to park my car, I went into the hotel to get a cup of coffee and they asked me for $2, and I told them to charge it to room 235. They told me they didn’t do that, and, at that moment, I realized that I was defeated. All the hustling and lies to feed my addiction; it hit a low point when I couldn’t even afford a cup of coffee.

I walked out of the hotel in a pair of sweatpants, got in my car and thought that I could get a free cup of coffee and a cigarette if I went to an AA meeting.

So I drove my car to this AA meeting and, before I got out of my car, I pulled the rearview mirror down, looked myself in the eyes and said, “Brandon, let’s do something different today and let’s try to stay sober for just one day.” And I got out of that car and I’ve never had a drink or done drugs since.

What happened that day was that my faith was restored. I focused on one day of sobriety, and that was my answer. I did everything in my power that day to stay sober. As hard as it was, I fell asleep sober. And then I did it again and again and again. I started to reach out for help, and I started to have this restored faith, which led me to try and help other people.

Image credit: Charlie’s Chalk Dust

Building ‘Ohio House’, a sober environment for men

The light was back in my eyes and I wanted to help others. I founded the Ohio House after a couple of guys from Ohio had asked for help. I told them to come out to California. I brought them into my house and showed them what I was doing and how I was doing it.

It wasn’t originally called the Ohio House, but people jokingly called it that after a few months because these guys were hosting sober barbecues and stuff like that. People who needed help started calling me asking if they could come to the Ohio House and, next thing I knew, I just started moving strangers in. I was having fun, helping a lot of guys and I had a passion for it. I just kind of organically grew it into two houses and then three houses and, eventually, I was able to quit my job in aviation to pursue this full-time — but I wasn’t making money at the time, I was just paying my bills and helping other guys.

I called my pops up and told him I was focusing on the Ohio House full time, and he told me I better make it work. I asked him if I could borrow $20,000 since I only had $1,200 in my account, and he said no. But I was able to hustle and make it work, and, with just $1,200, grew it to four and five houses … but I needed some help.

Related: How Gerard Adams Escaped Drugs and Bad Influences to Become The Millennial Mentor

That’s why I reached out to my brother, Ryan, and, after he worked in medical sales for about a year and a half, I kept pulling on him to come work in this sober living house with me. He kept saying, “Yeah right.” But, finally, I hit him up one day and asked him how much he had saved in his account after working the job he had. He told me he had $12,000. At that time, the Ohio House had $12,000 in the account. So, with everything I had in the account, I told him I’d give him everything I had if he came out and helped me. Within two hours, he was packing up his car and driving across the country from D.C. to California.

That’s when the Ohio House really started to take shape, because we now had two brothers together to grow this thing, and we really started to help a lot more people.

Today, we have an outpatient facility called the Buckeye Recovery Network, and we have a female center called the Chadwick House. We’re known as the gold standard throughout the country for aftercare. We help those who come out of rehab and achieve long-term sobriety, and we’re really good at it.

Image credit: Charlie’s Chalk Dust

The itch to sell led to Charlie’s Chalk Dust 

In about 2014, I was still smoking about a pack of cigarettes each day. One of the guys who went through the Ohio House program said he knew how to make vaping products. At that time, vaping was getting really popular. I didn’t really see anything that I liked in the market, so I went into the vaping industry as a way to help me quit smoking. I spent about $2,000 to get some materials to start making stuff at home in my kitchen late at night, and ended up quitting smoking.

I started handing some of the products out to a few guys in the Ohio House, and people really liked them. One of the guys took it into a local vape shop, and they contacted me because they liked it so much.

I went down with no business card, no website, no samples, no product, no price guide. And he asked me what my MOQ was. I had no idea that meant minimum order quantity, but I pulled out a number from my head that made sense for me to go back and make: 300 bottles. The guy laughed at me, telling me that the MOQ in this industry was 100 bottles. I told him, “Not today. If you want this product, you’re going to have to buy 300 bottles.”

I ended up selling him 300 bottles, and I went back to my office, and I was fired up. I had been in sales my entire life; I think it’s the greatest job on planet Earth. The Ohio House was great, but that salesman inside of me was dormant for three years. During those three years, I was building who I was as a human being; my character, my integrity and my professionalism. When I sold those 300 bottles that day, I told my brother that I was starting a vape company and asked if he wanted in and he said yeah.

I took $40,000 to put into Charlie’s Chalk Dust, and within weeks it paid back. And now, we just closed out 2018 with over $21 million worth of sales.

Learning from mistakes

I wouldn’t trade my life experiences for anything. The mistakes that I made in the past have given me the opportunities to become the man that I am today.

I get choked up and inspired when I tell my story because I don’t often do it. But when I get a chance to share with others, I get to look at myself and think about how bad I really was. Like, that’s my story? And to see what it all led to now? That’s fucking cool.

June
14, 2019

5 min read

This story originally appeared on Glassdoor

Earlier this month at Women Deliver, one of the world’s largest conferences on gender equality and women’s rights, I was part of a team that made an announcement. The topic: paternity leave.

To some, that may seem surprising. Why talk about dads at a conference for women? The answer is simple. Supporting men as caregivers is a necessity for gender equality.

In the not too distant past, businesses were built on a Mad Men model. The presumption was that women will stay home and do all the caregiving, while men stay at work. That way of thinking helps explain why the United States still has no national paid maternity leave. The thought process behind it is that the man will make the money, while the woman stays home. (For more on this, see my opening remarks at a U.N. event.)

Unfortunately, the structures that keep those old ways in place, including workplace policies and cultures, still haven’t been rectified.

Today, most businesses have some paid maternity leave, usually covered as disability leave following a birth. But despite some progress in recent years, only 29 percent of U.S. businesses offer paid paternity leave.

And while unlike the United States, virtually all other countries offer some paid maternity leave, fewer than half offer any paid paternity leave.

It gets worse. Even when paternity leave is available, numerous forces prevent men from being able to use it in its entirety.

Related: Companies Offering Generous Paternity Leave & Hiring Now

This brings us to the Women Deliver conference, which took place in Vancouver. Dove Men+Care — a company I partner with on this issue — and Promundo released the State of the World’s Fathers report, packed with data from interviews with more than 11,000 men and women. The findings show just how big a problem this is.

The overwhelming majority (85%) of fathers across seven countries want more time at home to care for their new children. But paternity leave often pays only a fraction of what men make at work — and after welcoming a new child, families are particularly strapped financially. Forty percent of parents say financial barriers are the biggest impediment to paternity leave.

The stigmas against taking it are also powerful. Majorities of women and men say attitudes among colleagues and managers often leave dads feeling unable to take their paternity leave. This is a topic I covered in depth in my book, All In. Men have been fired, demoted or lost job opportunities for taking paternity leave or requesting a flexible schedule.

I explored this in the wake of my own battle for fair parental leave. When my wife was pregnant with our third child, we determined that I’d be needed at home for caregiving after the birth. The policies I was under at CNN, part of Time Warner, allowed any parent 10 paid weeks after having a child — except a biological father who had his baby the old fashioned way.

I challenged this internally. After our daughter was born prematurely in an emergency and work refused me the 10 paid weeks, I took legal action. Ultimately, the company revolutionized its policy, in a win-win for parents and for the company itself.

Businesses benefit from making paternity leave a reality — not just officially in policy, but through a culture of supporting men in taking the leave. It’s proven to attract and retain employees and increase gender equality in an organization. After all, as long as men are prevented from caregiving roles, those responsibilities will fall more on the shoulders of women. They’re pushed to stay home more, while men are pushed to stay at work more, and the sexist cycle continues.

To help paternity leave become a norm at businesses everywhere, Dove Men+Care has partnered with Deloitte, Women Deliver and Promundo to create a Paternity Leave Global Task Force. Its aim is “to identify and promote solutions that will result in improved access and uptake of paternity leave for all men.”

Announcing this plan at the conference, Women Deliver President and CEO Katja Iversen called the effort a “no brainer.” Alan Jope, CEO of Unilever (Dove Men+Care’s parent company) said the commitment to paternity leave is so important because “everybody wins — moms win, dads win and the kids win.”

It’s time to put the Mad Men era behind us once and for all. For that to happen, businesses must embrace modern fatherhood. Today’s dads are as committed to caregiving as moms are. Let’s make sure they get a chance to be there, from day one.

By Josh Levs

June
13, 2019

3 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

One of the nicer things we see in the cannabis community is the eagerness to team up with other worthy causes when opportunities present themselves. In this spirit, several cannabis companies are embracing LGBTQ+ community during Pride Month. 

Related: Cannabis Companies Are Thinking Ahead and Tackling Big Social Issues

Pride Pack

Through a partnership with GLAAD, Lowell Herb Co. is collaborating with artist Gina Rodriguez of Letter Shoppe on a piece of art that comes free with any purchase of the Lowell Pride Pack during the month of June. “Lowell wanted to go a step beyond monetary donation to GLAAD by personally supporting someone within the LGBTQ community,” says Libby Dolan, Lowell Communications Coordinator. “Dina is an entrepreneurial, cannabis-positive illustrator who also identifies as LGBTQ, and we’re grateful we could support her small business and uplift the LGBTQ community by utilizing and highlighting her talent.”

It’s the first time that GLAAD has worked with a cannabis company, and Dolan sees a kindred spirit. “Cannabis use is still considered deviant. We say this not to compare or minimize others’ struggles, but as we push to normalize our industry within society, we want to help other groups do the same,” she says.

Related: These Social Justice Weed Warriors Are Making a Difference

Image Credit: Mr. Moxey’s

Pride Pastilles

Cannabis brand, Mr. Moxey’s are celebrating Pride with their Proud Peppermint PRIDE Pastilles,100mg CBD + 50mg THC mints, in a rainbow tin. Mr. Moxey’s is donating $1 per tin sold and matching partnerships with participating dispensaries. Every dollar raised goes directly to programs that support the community.

“The limited edition Pride tin is rooted in our belief that, just as so many people helped us in our fight to legalize cannabis, it is our responsibility to embrace and support other movements that seek to gain equality and improve lives in the world, says Tim Moxey, co-founder, Mr. Moxey’ Mints.

#PassforPride

California dispensary Blüm is teaming with goodbrands to produce #PassforPride and BlumProudly ad campaign featuring an all LGBTQ+ cast of talent and photographers. “If I see cannabis ads that do not reflect me, I’m not going to spend my money there,” says Javier Mayer, Talent Acquisition Specialist at Canndescent/goodbrands.  “As an industry, we can be scared of looking ‘weird,’ but we can’t ignore our drag queens, our transgendered and non-binary activists. They helped us get to where we are now.”

June
11, 2019

8 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

It’s one thing to start a business and another to scale it. Here are ten tips for massively growing your company from leading entrepreneurs and Advisors in The Oracles who have done just that.

1. Create a sense of urgency.

Grant Cardone

Image credit:

The Oracles

You need three things to scale a business. First, hire well so you can delegate. You’ll never scale if you have to handle everything yourself. Second, pick your battles. Don’t spend days deciding on things like the perfect logo color — your brand will evolve anyway. Focus on acquiring more and bigger customers. You want volume and margin; so start hunting for big game, not mosquitos.

Third, create urgency. Set specific timelines for action and achievements. One of the biggest mistakes businesses make is not operating with enough urgency. You’re in a marathon, but it includes many sprints. Start winning the little races and you’ll create momentum! —Grant Cardone, sales expert, who has built a $750 million real estate empire, and NYT bestselling author; follow Grant on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube

2. Solve your customers’ problems.

Melanie Perkins

Image credit:

The Oracles

Providing real value to your customers is powerful. Its importance cannot be overstated. Offering a solution to a real problem that people care about will make it much easier to run a business.

Canva is proof of this. Within the first month of launching in 2013, we had more than 50,000 people sign up to use the platform. Six years later, we’ve grown to over 15 million active monthly users across 190 countries who have created over 1 billion designs. —Melanie Perkins, co-founder and CEO of Canva, which is valued at over a billion dollars

3. Become a master at selling to your avatar.

Patch Baker

Image credit:

The Oracles

Many people will tell you to hyper-focus on a niche market, like health care or real estate. I disagree. Focus on the process, not the industry. For example, we identified processes for products at different price points, and for one-time services versus monthly services. Figure out a system and a checklist that works. Once you have a process for one industry, you can apply it to others. Then you can scale because your team is doing the same thing repeatedly, so they become experts.

Similarly, learn to sell multiple things to the same person. Get really good at selling to a specific client “avatar”; then you can sell other relevant services to them. —Patch Baker, founder and CEO of Mobius Media Solutions; former U.S. Marine, with a mission to help people leave the military today and not feel abandoned tomorrow

4. Focus on operations, belief, and leadership.

Brandon Dawson

Image credit:

The Oracles

First, become clear on the best way to pursue the opportunity. Then, perfect your operations with measurable, systematic processes you can replicate consistently. Understand what contributes most to your impact at a granular and macro level and maximize that in everything you do. This also requires a best-in-class team and concept or product.

Pushing yourself and others to new levels requires challenging your beliefs about how big and impactful you can be. Belief energizes you and your team to work harder and smarter. It is the catalyst to thinking, doing, and being more. Belief leads to action, which leads to results; so the higher you believe, the higher you achieve.

The “secret sauce” that allows you to grow may be difficult to transfer to others; so ensure your people are aligned and committed. Your culture must embrace personal growth and transparency. Align individual team members’ successes with your objectives. Teach them to break through their limiting beliefs so you can conquer your shared mission together. —Brandon Dawson, serial entrepreneur and co-founder and CEO of Cardone Ventures; founder and CEO of Audigy; host of “The B Dawson Show” podcast; connect with Brandon on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn

5. Surround yourself with others who have done it.

Josh Steinberger

Image credit:

The Oracles

Technology replaces roles we once needed to hire for and speeds up the growth process in many ways. But scaling your business in 2019 is no different fundamentally than it was 50 years ago.

My best advice is to surround yourself with others who have done it. They have already been there, made mistakes, and paid the price. At first, you will need to pay to get in the room with them. But the life-long friendships and partnerships are worth every penny. —Josh Steinberger, founder and CEO of NextGen Restoration; principal in Driven Acquisitions, a holding company that owns and operates apartment buildings in Ohio; connect with Josh on Facebook

6. Create an irresistible company culture.

Peter Hernandez

Image credit:

The Oracles

An amazing culture creates huge growth. Magic happens when everyone is empowered to “own” their domain. Give your team permission to experiment intentionally and celebrate innovation and collaboration. When leadership asks for coaching from the team, this 360-degree accountability builds respect and camaraderie.

Success requires physical and mental stamina, emotional intelligence, and powerful habits that are reinforced daily across the organization. Clarify why you exist as an organization, then define measurable goals to achieve that purpose. That’s how you become fiercely focused. To truly realize the power of a unified vision, translate it into a shared vocabulary like a mantra, phrase, cheer, or rallying cry. —Peter Hernandez, president of the Western Region at Douglas Elliman; founder and president of Teles Properties

7. Master traffic and sales.

Rudy Mawer

Image credit:

The Oracles

After scaling two businesses past seven figures and helping dozens of clients scale up to nine figures, I believe it comes down to your sales pipeline and traffic. If you can create an unlimited number of potential customers and convert them with a sales funnel, you can 10x your business quickly.

Focus on your team, core product, customer experience, customer service, and internal systems. Once you have those fundamentals dialed in, level up to the more advanced tasks that add up, like reducing expenses, improving the average order value and customer lifetime value, and streamlining automation. Expand horizontally with more offers and vertically by selling more of the 80/20. —Rudy Mawer, founder and CEO of ROI Machines and RudyMawer.com; Facebook marketing and ad expert, who built a multimillion-dollar business by age 26; connect with Rudy on Instagram

8. Identify your focus, cadence of accountability, and process.

Sharran Srivatsaa

Image credit:

The Oracles

I grew my real estate business, Teles Properties, 10x in five years before selling it to Douglas Elliman. When I reflected afterward, I identified 37 lessons I learned, including three core pillars: singularity of focus, cadence of accountability, and good process drives good results. This is now part of the foundational formula for scaling that I teach the CEOs I mentor.

Having a singular focus is transformational because it rallies you and your team around a big aspirational goal. Ruthlessly filter everything you do with that goal in mind. Cadence of accountability is about reducing that big goal into monthly, weekly, and daily activities, then tracking your progress to drive momentum. The hustle and grind will only leave you tired and resentful. Systems drive scale, which is why a good process will always drive good results. —Sharran Srivatsaa, CEO of Kingston Lane and mentor to top entrepreneurs; grew Teles Properties 10x to $3.4 billion in five years; follow Sharran on Instagram

9. Find a way for everyone to win.

Craig Handley

Image credit:

The Oracles

Our call center business was competing with another company for the same customers. Instead of looking at them as a competitor, we saw them as a partner. Our platform lacked their tools for tracking and measuring results, but our sales performance was better. So we offered to use and pay for their platform if they helped us grow our business. Together we focused on putting the client first.

By doing what was best for the client, we performed better and gave our clients better reporting tools. As a result, both companies generated more revenue than we could have separately. We grew 6,994% and went from 100 to 1,000 agents, making number 27 on the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing companies. Going from $3 million to almost $15 million was great for us and our new partner, but we also helped our clients see unparalleled success in the U.S. Hispanic market in the process. — Craig Handley, co-founder of ListenTrust and author of “Hired to Quit, Inspired to Stay”; read more about Handley: Why These Founders Train Their Employees to Quit

10. Think big.

Keri Shull

Image credit:

The Oracles

Have a vision so big that it becomes magnetic and excites your team to help you accomplish your desired results. Then continue to evolve and think even bigger. Culture is key. Create a workplace where people have fun together, support each other, and grow together, and no one will want to leave.

Hire and fire for your vision. In the beginning, I was hiring for survival. Since then, I’ve learned that if you hire ahead of your needs, you can outpace all of the competition. This was difficult for me to learn: you must also make hard decisions along the way. Some team members who are valuable at one point in your business won’t grow enough to stay valuable as you evolve. Don’t wait to let them go. —Keri Shull, founder of the Keri Shull Team, which has sold over $2 billion in properties; co-founder of real estate coaching business HyperFast Agent; named one of America’s Best Real Estate Agents by REAL Trends; connect with Keri on Facebook

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June
10, 2019

2 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

The average household has five internet connected devices, and the more people in the household the more connected devices there are on a network. Current Wi-Fi technology only connects to one device at a time, sending and receiving small packets of information before moving to the next device. The result is a slower overall connection as a Wi-Fi router struggles to keep up with all the internet-of-things devices modern families can’t live without. Wi-Fi6 is now rolling out and it will be capable of connecting to multiple devices at a time, greatly improving the speed of connected devices.

The history of Wi-Fi goes back much farther than you think. Developments in the technology that led to wireless internet were theorized by Nikola Tesla in 1929 when he predicted people would one day be able to communicate with each other wirelessly in an instant with devices that could fit inside a vest pocket.

Hedy Lamarr created and patented the Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum technology in 1941, which skipped signals over multiple frequencies in a predetermined pattern. Her technology was used to guide torpedoes without being detected during WWII, but it wasn’t until decades later the technology was used for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee and more.

It has taken decades of smaller developments, such as intranet and internet, ISM Band, WaveLAN and more to get to the point where there are now multiple devices that depend on a steady connection to the internet. Now there are internet connected doorbells, air conditioners, light switches and more. Thanks to Wi-Fi6, these devices are going to be running much more smoothly with less interference to other devices.

Learn more about the history and future of WiFi from the infographic below.