We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful John Shute. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with John below.
Hi John, thanks for joining us today. Risking taking is a huge part of most people’s story but too often society overlooks those risks and only focuses on where you are today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – it could be a big risk or a small one – but walk us through the backstory.
In 2016 I was a Marketing Director for a cannabis contract manufacturer in California. My intern and I helped them generate a ton of revenue in the first year we worked for them, so they promised us a long-term position with salary, benefits, etc. About a month before my wedding, they fired my intern and told me they couldn’t employ me any longer. I had no money and no job lined up, but I knew my worth. Without going for a job with immediate income, my intern and I teamed up with another friend of mine who had a specific skillset to start our own cannabis specific marketing agency, PufCreativ. We knew it was a big risk, but knew that if we worked hard we could be successful.
Now our agency has been in business for 6 years, we work in 23 different states and 4 different countries. We have 15 employees, have equity in a few other organizations and just submitted our application for our cannabis retail license in NJ. It’s been a very wild journey of ups and downs, but we’re gearing up for our biggest yer thus far.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I’ve been in the industry for 7.5 years. Right after I got my MBA, I was the marketing an operations director for a mega nightclub in South Florida. I crushed it for them, making their last year open before remodeling their most successful year in 11 years, but didn’t feel fulfilled. I also lost friends and family to opiates during that time. I was always a huge advocate for cannabis since I knew all the good it could do, I decided to use my skillset in the cannabis space to help make the world a better place.
Although I specialize in cannabis marketing strategy, business development, sales and project management, our agency offers logo design, branding, packaging design, website design and development, mobile app design and development, SEO, social media, graphic design, animation, PR and advertising. We’re community-focused and have won some awards for our marketing and community work.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
When Covid first started, we lost almost 35% of our on-going revenue that first month because folks were so unsure of what was going to happen with the world, their business, the cannabis industry, etc. It took a toll on our entire teams salaries and our mental health. We banded together to help support each other through the hard time and worked our tails off to get all of our pay back to normal. As a leader, I never felt so lost but also never felt so driven in my life. I knew focusing on mental health and being a good person would pay off in the long term and it did. I’m so grateful for my team and everything we’ve done together.
Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?
The best advice I can give anyone who manages a team is be realistic, have empathy and respect for your team. Everyone is human, has their own personal lives, troubles, hardships, emotions etc. It’s important to create goals for your team, keep things exciting on the day-to-day and be polite. My entire team works remotely. We all treat each other with respect and use tools to stay organized so it’s easy to work together on various projects. Make sure you take care of yourself so you can take care of your team!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://pufcreativ.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pufcreativ/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pufcreativ/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/pufcreativ