Meet Patrick Masucci | Founder & CEO, Destino Farms & Canna Ocho

We had the good fortune of connecting with Patrick Masucci and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Patrick, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
I think there has been less of a thought process and more of a feeling process behind wanting to own my own business.

I’ve always just wanted to work really hard at the things I’m passionate about…but, the feeling of working for bad bosses sucked, the feeling of working really hard to earn really little was discouraging, the feeling of not having the total freedom to create freely wasn’t inspiring me, and the feeling of having to ask for permission to do things I believed in whole-heartedly was annoying.

I just wanted the freedom to creatively express myself however I saw fit…and I found it really difficult to find opportunities like that in the job market. Not many bosses will say “here’s some start-up cash, show me an idea you believe in and illustrate how it will work, and if it works take a % of the profits.”

Lucky for me, my investors believed in my business plan enough to fork-over that start-up capital, and that’s what gave me the rocket fuel to start testing my business ideas as an entrepreneur.

My thought process at that point was, if I can make a similar living for myself as a business owner without any of the creative limitations put on me at most 9-5 jobs, then I’m winning big time! So that was my first goal, make around $70k/yr and run my own show; anything extra would be icing on the cake.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
Destino Farms is a brand dedicated to curating quality Hemp-Derived Cannabinoids like CBD & Delta-8 in their most heavily sought after forms – gummies, tinctures, moonrock, concentrates, pre-rolls, vapes, and topical creams.

I started Destino Farms in March of 2019 shortly after the Farm Bill was passed which legalized Hemp CBD Federally.

My inspiration in starting the company was to fill a gap in the market – many retailers saw huge demand from their customer base asking for CBD products, but the stores didn’t know where to find CBD (it was so new and untapped).

I was in a unique position at the time because I was working for GT’s Kombucha as a Territory Sales Manager here in Miami – I had a lot of retailers asking me about CBD products already.

So, starting off was actually rather easy because I had a good network. Within a few months of start-up I scaled to roughly a 20 client wholesale distribution business. I was going to door-to-door asking store owners or store managers to buy CBD gummies and vapes from me wholesale and sell them to their customers at a retail price.

The beginning was smooth sailing and we were making enough money to feed back into the business and scale up. But then in February of 2020 just after I signed a lease to open a small warehouse/showroom for the wholesale business, COVID-19 struck in full force. Many of my wholesale clients were closed for business and my monthly sales were down over 80%.

It was a difficult moment. I started to think on my feet, since I couldn’t sell to my wholesale clients, I wondered if I could turn my wholesale showroom into a retail store…and that is what gave birth to Canna Ocho our retail Hemp Dispensary & Smoke Shop based in Little Havana, Miami.

When some of the Covid restrictions loosened up, my wholesale business went back to normal and Canna Ocho began taking off as well. We now had two successful businesses instead of one! And we never looked back from that point on, we just kept reinvesting whatever profits we made back into the two business – growing inventory, growing our team, investing in our branding, investing in new store buildouts, investing in our e-commerce site. Scaling up on profits you generate is the best feeling ever. I didn’t need to use debt because I was paying myself so little and kept overhead very low.

Today we have two retail stores, our own brand (Destino Farms), an e-commerce store (destinofarms.com), and our wholesale distribution business (Destino Farms Distribution).

I would say the keys to our growth and success have been:
-Never taking too much salary as an owner, reinvesting everything back into the business
-Never taking too big of risks, never risking the whole business on any one thing
-Persistence – if one prospect gives us a no, on to the next one, eventually someone will see our value and align with what we are bringing to the table
-Hustle – most people will work 8 hours and call it a day. In the first 3 years my wife and I were working 12+ hours a day, sometimes 7 days a week, and unfortunately without many breaks or vacations (in all honestly this proved pretty bad for our mental and physical health, however it got us to where we are, we take vacations now)

Almost every single day as an early-stage entrepreneur you will face a challenge or some form of rejection, failure or loss…the trick to dealing with this is finding inner-peace, calm, clarity, and slowing your mind down enough to be able to objectively process these scenarios…being able to look at the challenging information with a clear mind gives you the ability to respond to these challenges intelligently and with strategy, as opposed to fear and impulse.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Mr 01 Pizza, Green Street Cafe, Lilikoi Organic Living, and South Point Beach!

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I’m giving my shoutout to a long list of people and organizations that have mentored me, educated me, and course-corrected me along my entrepreneurial journey: Trish Omoqui, Jeff Kaplan, Mr Young, Greg Oram & Vistage Florida (CEO Peer Group), Pablo Maida (CPA, HOA Books), Ashish Joseph, Shri Patel, Peter Nguyen, Anthony Foley, Chris Paul, Darlynn Masucci (Mom), Gerard Masucci (Dad), Gabby Masucci (Sister), my whole team at Destino Farms and Canna Ocho, and the person who has been there since the beginning of this wild journey at Destino Farms, my wife Karina.

Website: www.destinofarms.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/destinofarms/?hl=en

Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/canna-ocho-delta-8-thc-and-cbd-dispensary-vape-and-smoke-shop-miami