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Joe Kryszak of Stirling Oils: 5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started Leading a Cannabis or CBD Business

An Interview With Candice Georgiadis

The biggest way to fail in this industry — spend too much $$ with marketing companies. Marketing companies are the only ones getting rich in this industry. Learn the basics of marketing and do a deep interview of all the marketing companies.

As part of my series about “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started Leading a Cannabis Business” I had the pleasure of interviewing Joe Kryszak.

Joe Kryszak is the founder and owner of Stirlingcdboil.com & Stirlingprofessional.com. Joe completed his undergraduate at San Diego State University and received his MBA in 2002 from Pepperdine University. Joe has run billion-dollar businesses at HP, Lenovo, and Amazon. In 2014, Joe launched Stirling with the goal of providing a healthy, natural alternative to over-the-counter and prescription medication.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you share with us the story about what brought you to this specific career path?

Growing up in California, I had a passion for Cannabis — it was a part of my social upbringing. In college, the cannabis industry was not a traditional career path and I had some amazing opportunities to develop myself and my business career. After amazing successful years of corporate experience at Fortune 500 companies like Black & Decker, HP, and Amazon, I determined it was time to follow my passion and help lead the wave of holistic health solutions for people. The CBD / Cannabis industry was the logical place to put my energy and passion.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

Unfortunately, the Cbd/Cannabis industry is full of what we Californians call “posers”. In my 8 years in this industry, I have met 10X the amount of unprofessional, unscrupulous, and arrogant people I have met in my 30 years in the corporate world. The good news is that my experience working with all types of people with different backgrounds and skillsets makes me an excellent evaluator of talent. The biggest lesson I can tell people who want to enter this business? Trust but verify, and then verify again. A bad partnership in this industry means you are doomed.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

A potential partner indicated that they had extracted one of the “Holy Grails” of Cannibionodis — however, he was unwilling to get his product tested and was adamant that all 3rd party testing was a scam and the testing companies were not able to verify his solution. We passed on the partnership and he quickly got bought out. Just 3 months later, that partnership blew up and he potential partner came back to us with a radically reduced fee. We passed on him again…Trust but verify — and then verify again!

Are you working on any exciting projects now? How do you think that will help people?

We are working with leaders in the retail, extraction, B2C and telehealth communities to develop a complete solution for people who are interested, but nervous, about CBD. This will open up a whole new avenue to this amazing solution.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person you are grateful for who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

I continually lean on people who are smarter than me in specific areas. As we are in over 200 Chiropractic offices, I have continual contact with people who love, own, and practice healthy solutions. I appreciate all the partnerships I have made and will continue to lean on them for procust advice.

This industry is young dynamic and creative. Do you use any clever and innovative marketing strategies that you think large legacy companies should consider adopting?

The biggest way to fail in this industry — spend too much $$ with marketing companies. Marketing companies are the only ones getting rich in this industry. Learn the basics of marketing and do a deep interview of all the marketing companies.

Can you share your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started Leading a Cannabis Business”? Please share a story or example for each.

  • This is not a get rich quick scheme
  • You will spend far more time making your company successful than you expect
  • Trust is earned in this industry
  • Marketing companies are better at marketing themselves than you
  • This business is like a good golf shot — “Keep your head down and follow through”

What is the best way our readers can follow you on social media?

https://www.facebook.com/InfoStirlingOils/

https://www.instagram.com/stirlingcbdoil/

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!

Joe Kryszak of Stirling Oils: 5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started Leading a Cannabis… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.