We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Willie McKenzie. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Willie below.
Willie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What do you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry? Any stories or anecdotes that illustrate why this matters?
There’s a culture that goes along with cannabis that corporations don’t understand and it’s lead to a lot of failures in the industry. Culture is not something that can be created with brand experts or marketing dollars.
There has been a large influx of corporate dollars into the cannabis industry over the last 9 years, those dollars have been accompanied by professionals from other industries who thought they would easily dominate the emerging market. To some extent they’ve been successful, but only in limited license markets with less educated consumers and limited options. In more mature markets where consumers have had access to medical marijuana for years, those large corporations have largely failed. Why is that? They don’t understand the culture and therefore they don’t understand the consumer.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I am an entrepreneur through and through, I love solving problems and starting businesses. I’ve started and scaled two construction companies to 7 and 8 figures in the commercial multifamily industry. I’ve also been involved in the cannabis industry for 20 years and started a regulated cannabis company in Michigan in 2020.
In my current role as CEO of Left Coast Holdings I oversee a vertically integrated business that employs 85 people between our cultivation, manufacturing and retail businesses. It’s a challenging business but I enjoy what we’re doing and it’s been fun starting something from scratch in such a nascent industry and being able to scale it to 8 figures in a matter of 2 years.
I’ve recently started using my experience to mentor entrepreneurs in both the construction and cannabis industries, which I really enjoy. It’s a great feeling to work with someone who’s exactly where I was a few years back and to be able to help them maneuver and avoid some of the costly mistakes I made.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
In 2011 I lost everything- business, house, cars, motorcycles, relationships, etc. to an opiate addiction. I got clean in 2012 and started the long and arduous process of rebuilding my life. Since then I’ve created a pretty amazing life for myself. I repaired relationships, built 2 strong businesses, got married, had a son. I am very fortunate to be here and I don’t take anything for granted any more. It’s a great comeback story and I’m proud of what I’ve done.
Any fun sales or marketing stories?
I have always been a salesman, that’s been my role in every partnership I’ve been a part of. When we started Left Coast Holdings my role was to be the CEO, so I was no longer involved in sales on a day to day basis. I spent a couple years holed up in my office doing the executive work, but I was itching to get back out in the field. We’d also had a string of bad luck with sales people not performing, and since I hadn’t personally done regulated cannabis sales, it was difficult for me to give advice or feedback on the processes. In the beginning of 2023 I decided I needed to hit the road and do some sales for myself to figure out if things were as hard as I’d been told, and to figure out the best way to sell our products. I had a great time getting back in the field, was able to open up a bunch of new accounts and figure out a sales system that works for our products. To this day I try to get out 1-2 days a month to hit some accounts because I really enjoy it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://williemckenzie.com/
- Instagram: @williemckenzieofficial
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/william-mckenzie-ceo/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@williemckenzie/featured
Image Credits
Photos taken by Madison Richards