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Owls Oil has always been public about the products, the testing, and the work behind the brand. What customers do not usually see is the pressure that comes with building the business itself.
In a recent conversation, Owls Oil founder Luke Gavin put it simply:
“How could I make five of me, please?”
That line sums up a problem a lot of founders eventually hit.
The business grows. The responsibilities grow with it. Home still needs you. Payroll does not care that you are tired. Customers still expect answers. A second business still needs attention. And if part of your work happens across the Atlantic, the phone may start ringing before most people are awake.
Running a cannabis business can look exciting from the outside. The harder part is building something that can keep moving when the founder cannot personally carry every task.
Growth Creates a Different Kind of Problem
Early in a business, doing almost everything yourself can work.
You answer the messages. You make decisions quickly. You solve the problem in front of you. You stay close to every part of the operation because there is no one else to do it.
Then the company grows.
At that point, the same habits that helped build the business can start working against it. The founder becomes the point every decision has to pass through. A busy day turns into a bottleneck. A rough week at home becomes a business problem. One delayed payment or unexpected expense can affect hiring, inventory, payroll and the amount of help available.
Luke’s conversation gets into that uncomfortable middle stage: the business is large enough to demand real systems, but every system still costs time or money to build.
That is where “just delegate it” stops being useful advice.
Delegation only works when there is someone trained to take the task, enough cash flow to support the role and enough structure for that person to succeed without creating more work for everyone else.
Cash Flow Changes What You Can Fix
A founder can know exactly what needs to change and still be unable to change it immediately.
Hiring is a good example.
More staff can reduce pressure, but staff have to be paid. New people need training. They need clear responsibilities. Someone has to answer their questions while they learn. If the company is already stretched, adding a new person can briefly increase the workload before it reduces it.
That makes cash flow more than an accounting issue. It affects how quickly a business can become less dependent on its founder.
In the video, payroll and cash flow sit right beside family pressure and staffing. That is how it works in real life. These are not separate problems living in separate boxes. They touch each other.
If money is tight, hiring may have to wait. If hiring waits, the founder keeps carrying the work. If the founder keeps carrying the work, the strain can show up at home.
This is why growth can feel strange. Revenue may be moving in the right direction while the owner feels more stretched than ever.
Running an International Cannabis Business Does Not Respect Your Clock
Owls Oil operates across the United States and Europe, with a major focus on THCA in Ireland, which means the workday does not always begin at a normal hour.
A call that makes sense in Ireland may land at 4:00 a.m. in the United States. A supplier issue, customer problem, team question or operational decision can arrive before the family wakes up.
For a short period, that can feel manageable. You get up early, handle the call and move on.
Over time, though, those hours add up.
The problem is not one early call. It is the expectation that the founder can keep being available to two time zones, two businesses, a growing team and a family without something eventually giving way.
That is where systems matter.
A good system does not remove every problem. It decides which problems really need the founder and which ones should already have an answer before they reach him.
“Just Delegate It” Is Not a System
Delegation sounds easy when someone else says it.
Hand off your inbox. Hire an assistant. Give a manager more responsibility. Outsource some work at home. Bring in help.
Sometimes those are exactly the right moves. But the handoff only works if the work has been defined.
If a task exists mostly in the founder’s head, handing it to someone else usually creates another stream of questions. If the team does not know who owns a decision, everything still comes back to the same person. If the company has no written process, new staff have to learn by interrupting the people who are already overloaded.
Real delegation starts before the hire. It starts by making the work visible.
Which decisions happen repeatedly?
Which tasks require Luke specifically?
Which ones only require a clear rule?
What information does the team need to act without waiting for approval?
Those questions are less exciting than launching a new product. They are also what allow a company to grow without asking one person to be everywhere at once.
The Business Is Not the Only Thing Growing
One of the strongest parts of the conversation is that it does not pretend business pressure stays at work.
Luke is also a husband and a father of three.
There are times when the company needs more from him at the exact moment his family does too. His wife needs a present husband, his children need their dad, and the business still has problems that cannot simply be ignored until Monday.
That conflict is common in founder stories, but it is usually edited out.
People like to talk about discipline, long hours and sacrifice when the business is growing. The cost is harder to package.
Being available to the company can mean being less available at home. Solving one urgent problem can create another somewhere else.
That does not mean the answer is to stop caring about the business.
It means the business has to mature.
If the company only works when the founder is carrying an unreasonable load, the company is giving him useful information: the next stage needs a different structure.
Sometimes Pressure Is a Contraction
Luke described the current pressure less like proof that everything is failing and more like a contraction.
That is a useful way to think about it.
A contraction is uncomfortable because something has to change position.
Businesses go through periods like that. The old way of operating stops fitting the size of the company. The founder feels the squeeze first because he is usually holding the gaps together.
The temptation is to treat that pressure as a sign to work harder.
Sometimes the better response is to ask what the pressure is exposing.
- Maybe a role needs to be hired.
- Maybe a process needs to be written down.
- Maybe the founder needs fewer direct reports.
- Maybe a task that felt important no longer deserves his attention.
- Maybe the company has grown faster than its internal structure.
Pressure does not automatically mean the business is broken. It can show you where the old version of the business has reached its limit.
Building Owls Oil’s Next Stage
Owls Oil has changed before.
The company grew from Luke’s years in the U.S. cannabis industry into an Irish and European operation. Products changed as regulations changed. The team adapted as the market moved. Customers can see the company’s commitment to transparency through its published test results, and businesses interested in carrying Owls Oil products can learn more through the wholesale programme.
The next change is less visible to customers, but it matters just as much: building a company that does not require Luke to be the answer to every question.
That means better systems and clearer ownership. Staff need enough information and authority to handle the work they own. Luke needs more room to focus on problems that actually require the founder.
It also means protecting enough space to be a husband and a father, not only a business owner.
There is no clean line where that work suddenly becomes finished. Businesses keep changing. Families keep changing.
The aim is to build the company so growth eventually creates capacity instead of only creating more weight.
What Other Founders Can Take From This
If you are building a cannabis business, an e-commerce company or any operation that is beginning to outgrow you, the warning signs are usually obvious before the solution is.
You are answering the same questions repeatedly.
Important decisions wait because everyone needs your approval.
Hiring feels necessary but difficult.
Home life keeps absorbing the cost of business emergencies.
You start wishing there were five of you.
That last feeling is worth paying attention to.
You probably do not need five copies of yourself. You need to identify which parts of the business should no longer depend on you.
That is slower than motivational advice makes it sound. It requires cash. It requires training and documentation. It also requires trust while people learn the work.
But it is the work that turns a founder-led company into a company that can stand on its own.
Owls Oil is still in that process.
That is the part of entrepreneurship we wanted to show in this video.
Not the polished version after the problem has been solved. The part in the middle, when the business is growing, the family matters, the pressure is real, and the next version of the company is still being built.
Watch the Full Conversation
The full video goes deeper into cash flow, hiring, running two businesses, international calls, family pressure and the systems Owls Oil is building for its next stage.
Watch the full conversation above, then read more about Luke Gavin and the Owls Oil story. If you are here for the products, our guides to THCA vapes in Ireland explain the category in detail, and you can browse the current THCA vape collection when you are ready.