Big Weed by Christian Hageseth

Author:Christian Hageseth
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2015-02-25T16:00:00+00:00

10

Best in Show

I’m probably the only chief executive in the country, possibly the world, who will offer to let you smoke out of one of the awards that decorate his retail space.

When people visit, their gaze inevitably takes in the object that sits in a glass enclosure in our downtown Denver location. The glass trophy is about a foot tall, with a depression on the top and two glass necks extending from the central chamber. It’s a beautiful piece of handmade glassware. The words etched into the side read: Colorado Cup, Best Sativa 2012. It will always be special to me for two reasons: It’s the first award our company ever won. And it’s a working bong.

How we won it—and how we started racking up awards for our cannabis products—is really a story about feedback.

All companies crave feedback. Most often it comes from customers. And some of those moments can be poignant as well. I know of one customer, an elderly woman in her seventies, who comes into our shop all the time to buy marijuana to help her with the pain she suffers from a debilitating muscular disease. She is always accompanied by her husband, who is a nonsmoker. But the two of them have become fixtures at our downtown location on Denver’s Santa Fe Drive. When I was visiting recently, the woman made a point of coming over to me and telling me how well she was being treated by one of our budtenders, Jen.

At first glance, you would not think the two women had much in common. One’s an elderly woman who moves with difficulty. The other is a hip, healthy young woman covered with tattoos and piercings. But they have found common ground in their passion for marijuana. What started as a simple transaction has blossomed into a weekly ritual.

That’s a beautiful kind of feedback that every business owner needs to hear and see. It reaffirms that you’re creating a business—a culture and an environment—where all kinds of people feel welcome.

But if we’re honest, entrepreneurs have to admit that we also crave feedback from our peers. We want people in our own industries to nod and say we’ve done a great job.

The marijuana industry may have been new in the United States, but now that it was out of the closet in a few states, it was losing no time organizing competitions. Our grow program had blossomed under Corey’s leadership. Our harvests were back on track. Our confidence was growing. It was only inevitable that we would start to think about entering some of these new cannabis contests. Rooster Magazine, Colorado’s edgiest arts monthly, was sponsoring something it called the Colorado Cup. There was no fancy exhibition attached to the competition. There would be no award ceremony. No partylike atmosphere in one of the state’s convention centers. All we had to do was submit our entries—the best of our best weed—and wait to be notified.

Rather than a small group of us conducting a selection

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