An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
When you engage diverse teams, you help prevent blind spots. At GRAV, we are a consumer brand, and we have to be very thoughtful and intentional in our branding. We’ve had numerous instances where a team came up with an idea for a campaign or design, but it wasn’t until we went to the broader team for input that we were able to identify aspects of that idea that were culturally insensitive. This happens all the time with advertising campaigns that really miss the mark. We’ve all seen an ad campaign and turned to the person next to us and asked, “how did that get approved?” The answer is usually a lack of diversity in the approval process.
As a part of our series about “How Diversity Can Increase a Company’s Bottom Line”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Brandon Miranda
CEO of GRAV, the world’s premier weed accessory brand and champion of outlaws and underdogs, Brandon Miranda is a leader and strategist extraordinaire. With roots in both the art and tech startup worlds, Brandon’s blend of creative and analytical thinking, in combination with his business integrity and relaxed demeanor, has enabled him to accelerate GRAV’s growth while keeping the company’s soul intact.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive into the main part of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit more. Can you share a bit of your “backstory” with us?
I started my career in the arts. I spent half a decade in the music industry working as a sound engineer and producer. I really loved these years, but I found that trying to turn art into business took all the passion away, and I began to fall out of love with the work. I’ve always loved building things, and I was drawn to the tech startup world. I spent a decade rapidly growing and scaling teams at startups. I was fortunate to join companies that experienced hypergrowth, which afforded me tons of experience and upward mobility. I learned a ton about the stages of growth and the operational challenges that come at each stage. After a few successful exits, I decided to leave the world of tech. In parallel, my lifelong friend, David Daily, had founded and built GRAV into a fantastic company with tons of opportunity. As GRAV reached a stage where it could benefit from someone with my experience, Dave and I saw an opportunity for rapid growth without outside investors and on our own terms. And as they say, the rest is history.
Can you share the funniest or most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? Can you tell us the lesson or take away, you took out of that story?
I wouldn’t say this story is funny, but it was definitely a learning experience. Early in my career I was head of accounts for a high-growth startup. Our CEO was a multi-time founder who already had some successful exits in his career, and I had a lot of faith in him. One day I received an email from our CEO asking for my opinion on what would happen if we “hypothetically” acquired a specific competitor. I replied with all of the details I assumed my CEO wanted — we could stop giving any discounts on pricing, we could stop development on some product features that were only to compete with this company, we could raise prices for new customers, etc. Flash forward about a year, and our company did end up purchasing the competitor. The DOJ launched an investigation to see if this acquisition created any antitrust violations. Saving all the excruciating details, there was a brief period of time when if you googled my name, the top result was a copy of emails between me and my CEO that had been seized and published during the DOJ investigation. We eventually lost the DOJ lawsuit and had to divest the acquisition. The tough lesson I learned was two-fold. First, I learned the importance of the phrase, “should we take this conversation offline?” And second, I learned that no matter who is asking the question or giving instructions, you should always use your own judgment and not assume that folks with more experience know better.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you tell us a story about how that was relevant in your own life?
The quote that guides my life more than any others is “never make a decision based on fear.” We all feel fear. It’s a normal part of life, and it’s not something we should try to avoid. But unless you’re being chased by a bear, letting fear into your decision-making is only going to cloud your judgment. If we don’t do things because we are afraid, then we will never be bold and put ourselves out there. Fortune favors the brave. That doesn’t mean we should be unnecessarily risky. What it means is there is a difference between assessing risk and being afraid. Cus D’Mato, Mike Tyson’s former boxing trainer, once said, “There’s no difference between a hero and a coward in what they feel.” The point being that we all feel fear. It’s what we do with that feeling that matters. I’ve been very fortunate to have experienced a lot of success in my career. I have worked hard and had a lot of great people provide me with opportunities, but I think it was my willingness to take big risks that has led to the most success. I’ve always been willing to put myself out there, to try new things, and to seek out challenges that get me outside my comfort zone.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are?
The reality is none of us achieve success on our own. There are dozens of people who have helped and supported me throughout my life. But for me, it all goes back to my dad. My parents split very early in my life, and I was raised by my dad. My dad grew up extremely poor and saw education as a way to escape poverty. My dad didn’t have the means to pay to send me to college. He had trouble keeping a steady job and ended up in bankruptcy the year before I graduated high school. Paying for me to go to college just wasn’t a possibility. So, my dad did research night and day to help me find grants and academic scholarships. I applied for every scholarship we could find that I was eligible for. When I made it to interview rounds, my dad would take off work and drive me to my interviews. In total, I applied to 52 scholarships. The process was grueling, and I was rejected 50 times. But in the end, I was awarded two scholarships. Those two scholarships covered the cost of my education. Not only was I able to get a college degree, but I was able to do so without taking on any student loan debt. It would have been easy for us to give up after I had been rejected a few times — or even a few dozen times. But the lesson my dad taught me in this experience is that the no’s don’t matter. All that mattered was persistence and perseverance to eventually get to a yes. It’s easy to get discouraged or to even want to quit when we come across obstacles, but what I took from my dad is the attitude to keep trying and never give up.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
GRAV is a truly unique company. We have been operating a business that serves the weed community since 2004, and we are based in Texas. We have a rebellious outlaw spirit that attracts people to our company. We celebrate the countercultures that are oppressed and villainized by mainstream culture. Our community is filled with artists, activists, felons, queer and trans people, immigrants, and people who are targeted and villainized simply because they don’t have pale skin. In addition, we are a bootstrapped and profitable company. There is not an owner in the company who is not a current or former employee. This enables us to run the company on our own terms. We can focus on our consumers and making products that people love. While most companies are focused on returning profits to shareholders or hitting the next milestone for their investors, we can prioritize impact and our mission of helping create a just, equitable, and responsible weed space.
Are you working on any new or exciting projects now? How do you think that might help people?
Recently, we collaborated with Gypsy Sport for LAFW, which was an exciting opportunity to unite the fashion and cannabis industries, but more importantly, we got to work with a company dedicated to the same ideals we are: inclusivity, accessibility, diversity, and creativity. Going forward, we have several partnerships and collaborations in development at that intersection of creativity and innovation. Opportunities like this are optimal for spreading our message of inclusivity, and I can’t wait to announce and share the results with everyone.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
When thinking about having an impact on the world, many times our default is to think about the entire world. But there are almost 8 billion people in the world and having an impact at that level is daunting and overwhelming. For me, I think about bringing goodness to the world that is around me. That starts with the employees of GRAV and the friends, family, and loved ones of our employees. It’s important that we pay our people well, that we cover the majority of our employees’ healthcare premiums, that they have generous vacation time, and most importantly that they are able to fit their work to their life instead of their life to their work. Impact is embedded in our company mission, and we focus on impact at the community level. We invest roughly 1% of our top line revenue in impact initiatives. We don’t really spend much of this in donations to non-profit organizations. Instead, we invest in individuals who are personally helping create a more just, equitable, and responsible weed space. Sometimes these are entrepreneurs and small business owners, and other times these are folks who are simply bringing joy to their communities. Most recently, we [fill-in recent support. Maybe DAWA?]
Ok. Thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the main part of our interview. This may be obvious to you, but it is not intuitive to many people. Can you articulate to our readers five ways that increased diversity can help a company’s bottom line.
The first thing I think about when it comes to diversity is how it helps with informed decision making. At GRAV, we have a specific process for making decisions at the leadership-level that is designed to take advantage of having a diverse team. We break decision making into two phases: information gathering and making the call. When gathering information, we go broad and wide. We want to hear from as many folks as possible and really understand their perspective as an individual and their perspective in terms of their position within the organization. Instead of having one or two executives make all the decisions, we break this process up and spread it across the company. For each area of the business, there is a workgroup designated to make decisions for that area. If we need to make a decision about pricing for a new product line, the product work group that is responsible for making that call. They will gather input from across the organization, synthesize it, and present it to a team of 3 who will arrive at the final decision. When you make sure everyone has a voice and you spread the decision-making process across the team, you end up with a much more informed and engaged team.
Secondly, when you engage diverse teams, you help prevent blind spots. At GRAV, we are a consumer brand, and we have to be very thoughtful and intentional in our branding. We’ve had numerous instances where a team came up with an idea for a campaign or design, but it wasn’t until we went to the broader team for input that we were able to identify aspects of that idea that were culturally insensitive. This happens all the time with advertising campaigns that really miss the mark. We’ve all seen an ad campaign and turned to the person next to us and asked, “how did that get approved?” The answer is usually a lack of diversity in the approval process.
Attracting diverse talent who are interested in our industry and listening to that talent helps us better understand the diverse landscape of people who engage with weed and cannabis. If we want to be able to speak to the diverse communities that engage with our products, then we have to have those communities represented within our walls and engaged in our decision-making process.
Diversity is important, but you won’t get any of the benefits of diverse teams if you don’t have a company culture that is both equitable and inclusive. The kiss of death for any company is when a new hire joins the team and has to ask themselves, “who do I need to be to be successful at this company?” The moment your new hire is being anything other than their authentic self, all your benefits of having a diverse team go out the door. Unfortunately, this is all too common. The worst position of all is when companies hire diverse talent but don’t have an inclusive culture. The “diverse” hires are going to feel unseen, unheard, and not valued meaning the team is going to have a false sense that it is gathering diverse perspectives when making decisions.
Lastly, I’d like to address the benefits of having a diverse team for leaders themselves — which in turn provides benefits to the company. Too many leaders center themselves as the most important person in their organization. That means one of two things, either they aren’t doing a good job of hiring great people or they’re putting their ego’s needs above the needs of the company. Hiring fantastic people with diverse perspectives and life experiences, it creates a culture that values equity, inclusion, and authenticity that engages people across the company in every level of decision making. The result is an organization that is greater than the sum of its parts. GRAV is not me. It’s not our founder, Dave. It is Micah, Maria, Madi, Red, Nene, Travis, Maximus, and everyone who works here. It is all the communities we come from and all the communities we serve.
I don’t want to give the impression that I or GRAV have it all figured out. Diversity, equity, and inclusion is a process, and we are committed to the process and continuing to challenge ourselves to be better every day.
What advice would you give to other business leaders to help their employees to thrive?
When I was in the music industry, I used to think my job was to get the best sound out of each artist I was working with. Then one day, I listened to an interview with the famous producer, Rick Rubin. The interviewer asked him to explain the job of a producer. Rick’s answer was that the job of a producer is to help the artist understand who they are and fully express themselves in their art. It completely blew my mind and changed the way I looked at things. I had always thought that as the producer and engineer I had knowledge and experience that I needed to share with the artists — a very similar mentality to most first-time leaders. But that thinking was all wrong and made it about me. The same goes for managing and leading teams. Our job as leaders is to find amazing talent and then help them express who they are in their work. We have to tap into the human in each role of the company and find what makes them great. And we have to train our frontline managers not to be like me when I was a sound engineer and producer. It’s not about getting their team to be more like them. It’s about helping your employees to fully express themselves through their work.
What advice would you give to other business leaders about how to manage a large team?
The larger the team, the more important it is to have clarity of vision and a great leadership team. Clarity of vision is important so everyone across the company knows what is most important right now and how what they do contributes to these goals. This is important in all organizations, but it becomes more and more important as the team grows. The vision comes from the top of the organization and is reinforced by all the leaders and managers. At GRAV, we spend a lot of time with the leadership team making sure we all know how to bring out the greatness in each member of our team. We’re not interested in homogenous, high-producing clones. We want individuals who are working to express themselves through their work. Scaling this in larger teams means putting in the effort to make sure the leaders understand this and know how to put it into practice.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this 🙂
That’s a tough question, but since I already brought him up, I’m going to have to go with Rick Rubin. Rick is a creative force, and it’s hard to find music today that hasn’t been influenced by him. I mean, come on; a sampling of his work includes Beastie Boys, Run DMC, Jay-Z, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nine Inch Nails, Johnny Cash, Lady Gaga, and Wu-Tang Clan. His work is inspiring, but more than that I just love his thoughtful approach to how he works with others.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
I don’t really put a lot of content out there. If you want to check out what I’m working on these days, come check us out at GRAV.com.
Thank you for these excellent insights. We wish you continued success in your great work.
Brandon Miranda Of Grav On How Diversity Can Increase a Company’s Bottom Line was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
