Intro: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Kaya Cast podcast for cannabis businesses looking to launch, grow, and scale their operations.
Tommy Truong: So, you know, you have a background in inventing stuff, and what made you start DynaVap and why is it called DynaVap? DynaVap and not DynaVape?
George Breiwa: Okay. Well the last question's the easy one. Uh, and it goes all the way back to our very beginning, and that was kind of the impetus being. Way back in, believe it or not, 2012. Uh, I was seeking a better alternative because, uh, although I find that cannabis can be really helpful, not just to me, but to other people, uh, there is some inherent problems, especially with the consumption, especially with smoke.
Didn't really agree with me. Uh, when I first [00:01:00] found a vaporizer, it's like, wow. This is massively better and oh, when I use this, my flower kind of tastes like it smells. That's really nice. It's not so hot and harsh, but doggone it, this thing is the size of a walkie-talkie. It barely fits in my pocket and it's $300, which thankfully. It was important enough to me that I saved up the money and I bought it. Didn't have a lot of money back then, but I did it anyway 'cause it was important to me. 'cause I knew the smoke didn't agree so well. About six months later, I'm, uh, sitting in my basement sharing it with a couple friends and this just thought kind of came across my mind is like, well, why do these things need to be so big? have to be so expensive and wouldn't it be nice if there was a way to bring, we'll call it, uh, this [00:02:00] technology to the masses, to the world, to people that under no circumstances can practically afford a $300 device. And so here begins the mission. Is it possible to distill the concept of baking your flowers instead of burning them into a very small, compact, simple and easy to use device that can be produced at a price point that's low enough that even people in third world countries can afford it?
And what became very clear once this journey began is that using electronics in the product itself. It is probably the single biggest reason for the complexity, the cost, and the failure rates. So it became really, really clear. We're gonna do it the way that, to the best of my awareness, at least at that point in time, no one else is really gone, and that's, [00:03:00] although our product might not look very technological, there's actually a lot more technology that is either in it or is required to make it function well than it might seem.
As we take this different path to make a vaporizer, or as we like to call them, a thermal extraction device that does not need any electronic parts. So when you take a vaporizer or a vape and you remove all of the electronics or the E is is typically associated with E-waste or e-liquid or all the other E things.
Regarding electronics, vape changes to vap.
Tommy Truong: Oh, I see. That's clever.
George Breiwa: hence DynaVap and not DynaVape because our product doesn't contain batteries or wires or heavy metals or [00:04:00] effectively anything electronic. It's what a lot of people refer to as a very. Simple mechanical vaporizer or analog type device where, uh, another fun way to describe it is when we think about what a traditional dryer vaporizer is or what it represents, um, without getting into individual components, we can break it down into basically three things.
You've got an oven, you've got a source of energy, and you've got a control for that source of energy. Because if you can't control the energy, you're gonna burn your cookies, right? So what we did is we effectively separated the source of energy from the oven, okay? And we took the control and we use this widely available control, called a [00:05:00] person and put the person in control. And we made it a little bit easier for them by giving them an indicator. In other words, our little cap simply clicks when it's ready, so you know when your oven's at the right temperature, but you're still in control. So if you like, if cookie's a little crispier, you can keep heating a little bit longer, or you can stop right at the click and know that your cookies might be a little bit gooey, but they're still gonna be properly baked.
Tommy Truong: I love finding out unique like contraptions, like a better way of doing things. When I, when I was doing research on our conversation and I saw DynaVap that it, I was like, why, why didn't we do this before? Because for me, personally, e-cigarettes or vapes, I know I, I inherently know that it's, [00:06:00] you're smoking an extract, you're not really smoking the plant, and that can't be healthy.
And then on the other side of things, if you're smoking a joint. You're smoking a lot of smoke that can't be healthy either. Are you an engineer? Like what? What's your background? How did you think that you could solve this problem, and what made you start this business?
George Breiwa: Well, so from a definition perspective, I don't know if you'd call me an engineer because uh, I didn't. Go to school to study engineering or anything along those lines. Um, at least not a formal school. Uh, I've been a lifelong student in the regards that I have a passion for understanding things. I love mechanical things.
Uh, still like taking things apart, you know, uh, anytime I see a label, you know, uh, no user serviceable parts inside. Oh, I guess I'm not a user. I'm gonna open you up anyway. I wanna see what's in there. [00:07:00] And, you know, I pride myself in my ability to also reassemble complex things, uh, into a functional condition again.
So give me a little bit of background, a little bit of understanding how things work and the other component being, I, I, I suffer from a condition where. Uh, I'll get fixated on something and I am just driven to continue pursuing whatever that thing that I'm fixated on might happen to be until I find resolution.
And this was one of those things because I was really passionate about what it represented. And the other thing that I saw here was the opportunity. Okay, here I am at a point in time in my life where I don't have access to much for resources. I want to create more products. Okay, [00:08:00] how can I get access to resources?
Well, there's basically two ways. Someone's going to contribute some resources to you, hence raising capital, right? Or you're gonna find a way to create something of value. Bring it to the market and the market will contribute resources to you. There's the only two ways that I'm aware of that it can really happen, and I didn't know anything about raising capital, so I guess I just need to figure out a way to create something that's worthwhile and see if I can have it interesting enough that I can engage with people and they might wanna buy it.
Tommy Truong: So you, when you created, when, when did you create your version one of this portable vaporizer?
George Breiwa: So version one happened in early 2012,
Tommy Truong: Hmm.
George Breiwa: a little while ago, uh, at that point in time, I was spending most of my time, um, [00:09:00] kind of working for and managing a, uh, spray foam insulation company, uh, which was another interesting challenge. Uh, you know, with some complex equipment and plenty of problems to solve, which I like solving problems, especially mechanical ones.
So it kept me there, uh, but it didn't, it didn't check all the boxes, right? I didn't find myself, after doing it for several years at. Okay, well I can take some nice vacations. I can buy some toys, or I can buy some equipment so I can start making things. No, it just kind of scraping by and pouring a huge amount of my available time into kind of trying to get this company stable and running, and then 2012 rolls around and I get this idea.
It's like, no, I think this is gonna be a big thing. 'cause I mean, 2012 cannabis, there was a few medical states. It seemed like recreational stuff was coming, [00:10:00] right? Like, like on the cusp. It's like, there's gonna be a big opportunity here. I need to pursue this and just go after it. And that became a, a bit of a focus.
I,
Tommy Truong: From your envy, because it's one thing, and Elon Musk says this all the time. It's one thing to build a car. It's another thing to build a cart en mass. So it takes a lot of capital, a lot of planning, a lot of, a lot of resources. When you decided, Hey, I'm gonna bring this version one to market,
George Breiwa: Mm-hmm.
Tommy Truong: where did you start?
'cause it, it, when I look at the vape, it, it, it seems to me that there's a lot of customized parts, a lot of, a lot of stuff that needed to come together to produce in mass. Like how, how did you start?
George Breiwa: Oh, it was such an interesting journey, right? I started by. Doing something right. Uh, so for years leading up to this, [00:11:00] I was just trying to create something, right? Trying to find something that I could make that would be interesting and bring value that would hopefully give me access to some resources so I could do more of that.
When I finally touched on this and had a, we'll call it a functional prototype that I could share with people and get some reactions like, wow, that actually works pretty good. Uh, I was like, all right, well, I'm gonna put some more effort behind this now. And all along this is me sitting at a little desk in my basement or in whatever space I could kind of carve out.
Basically, cutting and grinding and sanding and filing, and just manipulating things, trying to build another unit. Okay, that works better. Well, now if I'm gonna make a couple more, how do I scale that? Make a fixture, make a jig, do this, do that. And just systematically going through the process. Okay. Now, uh, roughly [00:12:00] two years later, whole lot of other things, development and life happening between then, alright, if I'm gonna do this, I gotta do it.
How am I gonna do it? All right, well, the metal part, the cap. I need a good supply of those and they're not gonna be an easy part to make. I tried numerous different ways to make them myself, and it's like the best way to make that is through basically the same process they used to make aluminum cans.
Right. So it's, it's, it's called a deep draw process, uh, and it's really, really suitable for mass production. Okay. So I'll get that made that way. Who's gonna do that? I find a company that can do that, and that was a journey just trying to find a supplier and then. Okay. I found a couple companies that can do it, but it's $16,000 for the tooling, and it's gonna take months for them to make the tooling and maybe even longer than that for them to actually [00:13:00] start producing these things. it's like, all right. It was one of the most expensive things I had ever purchased except for my house. And it came at a time where I was. Nearing one of the lowest points financially where I just didn't have much to work
Tommy Truong: Hmm.
George Breiwa: But I have to be grateful and thankful that when I had a little conversation with my wife, it's like, Hey, I need to do this.
It's gonna be $8,000 to start another $8,000 when it actually works. And that's just for the tooling. Then we have to buy the parts afterwards. She apparently had enough confidence in me to say, okay, and we figured out a way to pull a little bit more cash out of this or that, or some retirement funds and credit cards, and got the whole process started.
And while that was being worked on, I started working on other ways I could start scaling this up and continuing the refinement of the product. Okay. [00:14:00] And it was. Almost a year after that, before I finally actually had the, the key raw materials being, you know, the, the parts we make, the little caps out of, uh, that was black.
They're normally more of a stainless steel color. Uh, and alright, now how am I gonna get it to the market? So did it, the only way that I could imagine was gonna work for me, and that is I put together a crowdfund campaign.
Tommy Truong: Oh really?
George Breiwa: Which would've worked actually pretty good, except several other vaporizer companies had successfully raised a fair amount of capital a couple years before, and the crowdfund campaigns decided that they didn't want to have that sort of thing on their platform.
So they changed the rules and I thought I was complying with the rules, but apparently not enough. So they shut my campaign down.
Tommy Truong: Oh.
George Breiwa: But [00:15:00] it's kind of like one of those things where sometimes the universe can work in really interesting and mysterious ways, and after they shut my campaign down, being a person that doesn't tend to give up easily, it's like, okay, so I can't offer a vaporizer as a reward, but I can offer a case for the vaporizer as a reward. For contributing to my campaign. So I reformatted the campaign and took the vaporizer out of all the rewards, and I just said had all the same pledges, and you get the special case that's perfectly designed to fit the device, seeing if people kind of see between the lines and contribute anyway, and lo and behold, I relaunched the campaign. And all the people that had contributed to the original campaign got notified and it was probably one of the most exciting moments in my life at that point when over the course of just a couple of hours here, I was [00:16:00] right back where I was when the campaign got shut down and everyone got their money refunded as all these people re contributed to by this special case.
Tommy Truong: Oh, I love that. I love that story because it's, that actually gave me goosebumps. It, it perfectly encapsulates the, the journey of an entrepreneur. How resilient you have to be, but what a rollercoaster ride you had highs to the lows and back up.
George Breiwa: I wish it would've been that easy though. See, and this is where I think it's important as an entrepreneur to understand that, okay, this exhilaration, I'm actually back to where I was. and things were really moving, like this is fantastic. It lasted three days. The campaign was supposed to be 60.
However, again, because of the way that the universe works, okay, [00:17:00] my campaign got shut down, so my, I'm on high alert here. I'm navigating. A challenging road, which for anyone in the cannabis industry, that's how you operate because you're in a gray area. Even though things are a little bit more understood these days, there's still all these legalities that just aren't quite defined.
So here I am. Did I change it enough? Is it gonna get shut down again? Well, thankfully, at that point in time, uh, I had access to all the contributors email addresses. Once they would contribute. So I made it a point to multiple times a day, capture that. And when my campaign got shut down again three days later, it was a big disappointment.
But I had my email list and it actually served its purpose quite well because now there's people out there that knew that the product existed. Okay. Um, [00:18:00] someone even made a, uh, thread on a vaporizer forum called Fuck Combustion, which was really cool. And it's like, okay. And so then I can go there and I can interact with people, I can answer some questions.
And then I also had to then contact my web developer that was helping me out with the website that was live, but wasn't capable of e-commerce yet, because didn't need to, 'cause I had a crowdfund campaign that was gonna do. So here I've got no crowdfund campaign, no funding campaign shut down, accounts locked. But I've got emails, so, uh, like, all right, talk to the web guy. We gotta get this e-commerce up as quick as possible so I can contact these people before they go
Tommy Truong: Is this 2015? About 2015. 2015. Wow.
George Breiwa: So. We managed to get the website live for e-commerce in five days, which was fantastic. And then I drafted an email and sent [00:19:00] it out to everyone.
Said, Hey, sorry about all the runaround with the campaign. Uh, really appreciate your support. If you are still interested, you can contribute right here and pre-order this product and I'll do my best to get it to you, uh, as quickly as possible. And it was another one of those beautiful moments where. I was absolutely shocked at how many people that I just emailed now and took from a campaign that was canceled twice and redirected to a website that did not look very good at all to buy this thing, and they came and bought it.
Okay? Now keep in mind it wasn't expense. It was 20 bucks. Okay? Uh, 'cause I knew I needed it cheap to get the risk level low enough that I could get people to least take a chance on it, but still. Uh,
Tommy Truong: big was your email list at that time?
George Breiwa: uh, like 150 people. So it's like nothing,
Tommy Truong: No, but it's a, it's a lot when [00:20:00] you're first starting off.
George Breiwa: Well, it's a lot when you consider that it's 150 people that have been pre-qualified as definitively having interest in your product,
Tommy Truong: Was that the aha moment that you had as an entrepreneur where you're like, okay, I got something. I mean, you were going all in beforehand, but this is just the wind.
George Breiwa: Well, it, it, it, it was wins and exhilaration followed by ha. Gotcha. Now whatcha gonna do? You know, so this, this game, and I think it's important that we try and look at some of these things as games because you're gonna struggle with various aspects of no matter what it is that you're try and do.
Because what is a business? It's the attempt to create organization out of chaos. Okay. That's not easy. And as soon as you stop the organizational process, it starts to break down and the chaos kind of comes back into the play. And that's this balance that we're trying to find here as as we go. So yeah, [00:21:00] there were some exhilarating moments on that early path.
And you know, here I thought I finally was on a track. Okay? I don't have to go through the crowdfund, which is beautiful because they're gonna take 10% anyway. Now I only have to pay the merchant fee. Well, right now the merchant fee is PayPal, so it's like 5%. So that's saving me 5%. Great. How about a month later?
Then PayPal shut my account down. 'cause they didn't like vaporizers either.
Tommy Truong: Oh my God.
George Breiwa: here I am. All right. I thought I was on track. I'm taking pre-orders. I got a little bit of cash flow. I'm trying to build these things, but now I can't take orders anymore and PayPal froze my account. In fact they did one step worse than that and it really kinda showed the true colors what that organization was when, uh, being just a little bit conservative here, I was making an point to withdraw the funds on a regular basis.
Well, not only did they freeze my account, they went back into my bank account and took money out of [00:22:00] my bank
Tommy Truong: What?
George Breiwa: then froze my account. Yeah, because apparently I violated their terms of service because they thought I was selling here, here, get back in these terms, vapes. But I wasn't selling vapes, I was selling vapes,
Tommy Truong: Yeah.
George Breiwa: basically a pipe, uh, with a cap that clicks when your cookies are ready so you don't burn them.
Uh, but you can't explain these things to these people because they don't give you an opportunity to do so. Okay, well here's the next challenge Now. I've got an e-commerce website, but I don't have a way to process payments, so I need to figure that out. So I to try and find a merchant account, but I don't have any history.
Oh yeah, sorry. If you can show us your history, we can get you set up right away. Yeah, but I don't have any history. Well, then we can't really help you. And finally, I've got one company that says, well, we can do it, but you're gonna be high risk, so we're gonna charge you. A lot of fees and we're gonna have to put up a, [00:23:00] a reserve account where we're gonna take 25% of every transaction and put it into this reserve account until you have $10,000 in the reserve account, just to make sure that we don't have a chargeback problem.
Okay? That doesn't sound like a very good deal. So I had to navigate that, but eventually I got a merchant account open and was open for business and was able to finally. Start moving in that direction of, okay, now we can start scaling some other things.
Tommy Truong: How did you, so that that was the operational hurdle that, uh, that you had to get through. Once you saw that, what was the next step on? Because the, that sells itself. When I saw that, lemme tell you, George. I have to order it and I already have birthdays of friends that I'm like, okay, this is perfect for you.
Right. How did you get word out that, hey, this is a better contraption.
George Breiwa: So [00:24:00] that part was probably one of the most fun parts of this whole journey. And I, I'm gonna say to a large extent, it still is. Uh, and so the big component was that vaporizer form that a person that I've never met started this thread about our product. And when I saw it there, I was like, oh, this is great.
And I saw people talking about it and they had questions. So I started answering questions, you know, so I went and made an account and just started interacting. And then here I am, uh, you know, this is as the crowdfund campaign is going, like a week or so, 10 days in, I go to log in to check on this thread so I could keep the interaction going.
And I find that, oh, my account's been frozen. For violating the terms. I'm like, wait a minute, what's going on? So I reach out to the mods and I don't get a response, [00:25:00] and a day goes by another day and I reach out again. I don't get a response. And finally after four days, I finally get a response. I like, yeah, uh, you know, you're obviously part of a company, you know, that sells product and we don't want people posting on there.
Uh. As part of a company without being identified as being part of a company. It's like, okay, well how do I do that? Well, you gotta do this thing. Okay, I'll take care of it. So I took care of it and the person actually really nice and we got it resolved and everything was great after that point. And that became probably one of the most impactful ways to get that messaging out was on this forum because the people that were interested in exploring what the options were to bake their flowers instead of burning them.
You start looking up vaporizers and where do you find information on them? There weren't many good options, especially in 2000 15, 16, 17. There just wasn't a lot of information out there, so [00:26:00] the forums had it. YouTube also was a great place to learn about things before it became so biased and censored. Uh, and that was the second thing that I learned early on, uh, even before DynaVap app.
When I was doing a lot of the spray foam stuff, uh, I put a post on Craigslist, if you remember Craigslist, because I needed a videographer because we're doing this, this project with the spray foam equipment, fixing a roof on a building. It's like, well, you know, we should maybe record this so we could use it for promotional purposes.
So I put an ad on, on Craigslist looking for a videographer, and found a guy, talked to him. He showed up. I think I offered him like $50 to. Record this and edit me a video. His name was Ben. Uh, we call him Video Ben now, and he's still a member of our company and has been since the beginning. So he helped me through the spray foam stuff and then when [00:27:00] DynaVap app got going, I was like, Hey Ben, you wanna help me do another fun project?
So he helped me with the crowdfund and everything and has been along for the whole journey. And his big thing when we first met is like, Hey, I'm gonna put together an infomercial for you for YouTube. And so he did that. And it drove a fair amount of business for us for the spray foam. And so when starting DynaVap apps, I was like, Hey Ben, we gotta do the same thing but better.
And so we started making videos and started recording the content and recording some of the, the trials and challenges that we were encountering along the way, and just sharing that as well as explaining our product, which is really important because our product is so different from what people are accustomed to or familiar with that without videos to show them that, hey.
Even though there's no battery, you can get comparable performance to an electronic vaporizer. And the best part is if you really learn how to use this thing, you can get better [00:28:00] performance. Then you can get out of a battery powered unit and it becomes very intuitive. Kinda like riding a bike. Once you get familiar with it, you don't think about, how do I ride this bike?
You just get on it and you think about where you want to go. Okay. That's how our product works. Once you get familiar with it, because it's intuitive, it's tactile. You get to hear what's going on and you get a feel for how to use it based on what you're looking for in that moment. And so it just got a different level of interactivity that I think helped it be a little bit more appealing to people that.
Fall into this category. That's really important, especially for a startup company, and that's the early adopters, if you know what I'm talking about. The early adopters, they want the cool new thing, and they're willing to deal with the less refined components of what that new thing is because they want the cool new thing.
Okay? Since they're willing to deal with those [00:29:00] less refined components, they tend to be a little bit, not only more tolerant of that, but almost engaged by. Can I make this thing actually do what it's supposed to do? So they have a little bit more tolerance for the learning curve. And so our goal was to really engage with those people.
And I think another important component of what helped us find a little bit of success here is not only engage with them, but make their day. Because when I think about the value of a customer, I think you can create a scale for the value of a customer, and that is what's the value of the first customer.
For a brand new business compared to the 1000000th customer, it's not the same, if you know what I mean. Those first customers are near priceless, and so there's nothing more important when starting a business than doing everything you possibly can to make sure that those first customers not only get a good experience, but no, you want them to have a phenomenal [00:30:00] experience.
They are your most valuable investment. Right there. Your business will fail if you fail your customers.
Tommy Truong: That is words of wisdom. How did you mention that? Did you get a lot of feedback from your initial customers and did that help shape the version? What version are you on now today from your initial version?
George Breiwa: it depends how you define version, but it's, it's, our product has been refined. Hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of times, depending on how you look at that. And that's kinda one of the next things that I think played a really, really important role for us as a company on our path. So our original product was effectively a glass tube.
Okay. With another little glass tube inside of not exactly great little rubber mouthpiece that held them together. And of course, one of our little. Temperature [00:31:00] indicating caps on the end so that you could literally heat it with almost anything until it would click okay. Uh, and for anyone's never seen that.
I think it's probably worthwhile. Just do a little quick demo so you can kind of see what the process is. You know, like for example, on, on this one here, you know, just a small little chamber and put your flower in. Cap goes on like this. And I like to use a torch because it doesn't bother by the wind. I just aim and rotate a little bit till I get that click and I'm ready.
So very, very simple device. Super compact. I mean it compared to the lighter, right? There's almost nothing here. So you get a form factor of a one hitter or a cigarette. Doesn't weigh much more than that. Heats up really fast, but it's not burning. We're baking instead of burning. Okay? So that right there certainly appealed to customers, but.
Back to your feedback question. [00:32:00] One of the first things that happened when I started really engaging on this forum, 'cause that was my best interface with the customers, existing customers and potential customers, existing customers posting about the small number of units that have actually shipped out.
And they're like, yeah, I actually got it. It actually works pretty good. It doesn't look great, but it works surprisingly good. Which helped, you know, grow that interest. Well then. People in the forum suggested I connect with this other maker in the space go, who goes by the name of Ed's, TT. And so I connected with him like, Hey Ed, so what do you do?
Well, I make really cool wood stems for solo vaporizers. Okay. Hmm. Well I was told I should get in touch with you so we can do a collaboration. 'cause he was more well known in the space. Yep. I can do that for you. But I'm thinking to myself, wait a minute, I've got this device made outta glass with a metal [00:33:00] cap, and you make stuff outta wood. How are we gonna do a collaboration? I can't make a wooden tube that I put my metal cap on and torch. You're gonna be extracting stuff from the wood as well as the flower, or it's gonna catch on fire. That's not gonna work. So.
Tommy Truong: Yep.
George Breiwa: The simple solution was, well, maybe we need a different material and maybe we wanna use a cool material that people really like and have an attraction to, like titanium.
And what came from this is, well, glass is great. Wood's really nice, but if we can make our oven out of titanium, well then we can use O-Rings to connect that oven to. A wooden tube and the titanium can take the heat. The old rings will allow for a little bit of variation in dimension in the wood, and [00:34:00] also function as a kind of a thermal break between the titanium and the wood.
Maybe we make like a hybrid thing here. And so that's what we did. And in the process, not only made something that was really elegant and simple and kind of sexy, but. It was the beginnings of what became probably one of the most important, uh, forks in our road. And that is modular parts.
Tommy Truong: Oh wow. And you, and this was from a forum, you did a joint venture with another company
George Breiwa: Yes.
Tommy Truong: to create a vape. So where, what's your relationship now?
George Breiwa: So we just did, it's funny you mentioned it, another collaboration with Eds t and t. Like weeks ago where he made up a batch of custom wood stems and we made it them with one of our modular tips and made it full device. And here you go. Another thing, uh, I [00:35:00] like collaborations. I like working with other creators.
I like supporting other creators. And you know, whenever and whenever, wherever practical, I like to do what I can to offer them maybe some guidance if it's possible because. There's nothing that's been more fulfilling and satisfying in my life than being able to pursue something that I care about, you know, to being able to go to work.
Not only just go to work, but when I wake up in the morning, I'm excited to go to work. I mean, I love going to work. I go to work almost every day. I possibly can because it's just what I love to do and I think. This combination that is responsible for some of the most amazing things that we find in our life are the things that are created by people.
Not because they have to necessarily, but because they want to, because they're driven to do it. And it's this combination of, this [00:36:00] is what I want to do, this is what I want to create. I can't wait to go and work on this project Again, whether that's your hobby or not. Well, with a little bit of effort and a little bit of tolerance for disappointment and setbacks and obstacles, the hobby can be converted into a job, to a business where you can pursue your passion and potentially get others to jump on board and help you pursue that passion. So you can pursue that passion with vigor and with the capability and the capacity to take it to levels that would not be possible no matter how many hours you work. It's just not possible to do what's possible with a company of dedicated, driven, passionate people. All, all behind the mission of a company.
Tommy Truong: What are, so what was the next hurdle that you had to [00:37:00] overcome? I, I saw in the video that you guys. Outgrew your space, had to move into a new one.
George Breiwa: Yeah.
Tommy Truong: What are the challenges that you're facing today?
George Breiwa: so, so that happened in early 2018. Okay. So here we are, uh, 2016 comes about. It got through 2015. Late 2015 is when the modular components kind of came into the mix, and it was a real epiphany that not only can I do this collaboration with Eds TT, but if I can make this titanium oven with our temperature indicating cap fit on a wooden stem, I can put it on a tube of nearly any material as long as the inside dimensions are the same, just plug and play.
Oh, that means we've got all these different things we can make, all these different materials, we can use, all these different designs we can come up with and [00:38:00] implement. Well, it wasn't much later, I think, uh, early 2016 when, uh, around the time where I hired our first full-time employee. Who was part-time prior to that, which is a big, major milestone.
Okay. Well, I've got a full-time employee now. Okay. Uh, by the way, full-time employee, have to give 'em a paycheck, but the company wasn't making enough money that I could get a paycheck. No. Wasn't there yet. And then I see someone posting on this forum. They've made their own custom stem to meet up with the tips that we were making.
And it struck a chord in me in a really interesting way where initially it was really disappointing and kind of unsettling and it almost, it kind of bothered me. [00:39:00] It's like, oh, they're copying me. And then I took a deep breath and I looked at it. It's like, but it's actually kind of cool. So having read about other.
Entrepreneurs and especially other, other inventors. There's something that really stuck in my head, and that's very few inventors ever make it. Almost no patents ever become profitable, and one of the main reasons why is not because they're not good ideas or good inventions. It actually has more to do with the inventor than the invention.
Okay? Because of this, uh, idiosyncrasy amongst inventors where. They might go and file all these patents to protect their invention, but they're so afraid that someone's gonna steal it, that all they see is people trying to steal their invention instead of seeing that as an opportunity. And so, okay, the answer here is not to try and shut this person [00:40:00] down.
What if we reach out to them and develop a relationship and see if we can find a point of mutual benefit? And so I reached out to him. Yeah, that's pretty cool what you're doing. And so we just interact a little bit. Is there anything I can help you with? And he was asking for some specifications. He said, you know, sure, no problem.
Uh, and then he started asking if you could maybe get a part or two. He's like, yeah, no problem. Send me your address. And so, uh, he was actually in uk. He sent me his shipping address and I put a whole bunch of. Fully functional, perfect tips, caps, o-rings, everything I had plus some additional raw materials and everything and shipped it to 'em.
And with a little note that said, love what you're doing. Here's some stuff. So you, instead of just selling a stem as an accessory, you can sell a complete unit because it's gonna bring more money, more value. ' [00:41:00] cause I wanted to kinda get off on the right foot the vision being if we do this right.
We've got these modular parts, we can create like a whole community of people that want to make things that are gonna be their creations, not mine, and not ours as a company. They're gonna have their own flavor. That's gonna be different than anything that we're gonna come up with. And it's only gonna add to the variety, to the diversity and make the whole DynaVap verse, as we like to call it now, that much more interesting and engaging.
And I have to say it kind of worked because although we've got quite a few different components, parts and pieces that you can fit together however many different ways and customize your product, there's also other accessory makers out there making parts and pieces that are compatible with our product that change the way it looks and performs.
So that diversity means there's a huge range of. Nearly anything you can [00:42:00] imagine in this category for people to find exactly what they're looking for or connect with one of these makers and have it custom made
Tommy Truong: Wow. So did that, how did that impact your business today, now that you've created really an ecosystem of creators into the pro? You know what it reminds me of, uh, in the software space?
George Breiwa: Okay.
Tommy Truong: Salesforce, for example, they'll let developers build on their software and have in their marketplace, and then you can, you know, you can attach stuff to the core product.
George Breiwa: It just makes sense. Right. Although the, the part that I had to really learn is that although you wanna have some level of control over the marketplace, hence the patents and the trademarks, they do matter. Okay. But to just go off and. Send, uh, a cease and desist or try and sue someone for [00:43:00] treading on your turf as the first course of action?
No, no, not a good choice at all, because it takes a lot of effort to convert an idea into something and when you see someone else that's trying to create or make a part or an accessory for your product. What they're doing is they're pre-qualifying themselves as a potential, either a business partner or B associate.
So you don't have to go and find them. They're letting you know, Hey, I'm over here. I like what you're doing. I wanna participate. Can you guide me?
Tommy Truong: Mm-hmm. That's awesome.
George Breiwa: so it's a mindset thing, you know? Yeah. Could they be adversarial? Sure they can. Could they take a bite out of your business? Yes, they can. But. If you are willing to have a discussion and help find a path that is mutually beneficial, they can also add energy with a flavor that you're not [00:44:00] capable of providing and help you grow.
And I truly believe that it was the embracing of the makers and encouraging them to do their thing and giving them support and trying not to be adversarial. That helped us grow in significant ways because. It helped everyone feel a little bit more inclusive versus excluded.
Tommy Truong: Uh, George is this now on your distribution network? Is this like a huge part of your distribution network today? Where do you are, are you nationwide? I'm, I'm assuming you are nationwide. Uh, are you worldwide and
George Breiwa: Oh, we've, we've been, we've been global since the beginning, which is another really fun little tidbit that, um. When I think about, and it's kind of, I find it somewhat interesting 'cause when I was younger, I had zero interest in anything business related. In fact, the, the whole topic of business was actually offputting to me.[00:45:00]
Um, I can't completely put my finger on exactly why. Uh. Part of it was, you know, I saw my father, who also was an entrepreneur, spent a whole lot of time working on his business, and it just seems so boring to me. Why would anyone want to do that? Right? Uh, as I got a little bit older, it's like, well, you know, maybe someday I'll work in an RD lab.
That'd be kind of cool working on new things. Or maybe I can get a job at Area 51 working on the UFOs. Because I felt like I was smart and capable to do something like that. But how do you get a job working on something that technically doesn't exist? Well, that's maybe that's not gonna work. Okay, I gotta find another path.
And eventually it became clear that the likelihood someone's gonna discover me is close to zero. Hmm. I guess it comes back to that. Responsibility word. If I'm gonna do the things that I really wanna do, I need to take responsibility for making the choices and put myself in a position that I can do them.
And [00:46:00] that's kind of where it started to go. Okay, well guess the path to doing that is guess I gotta run a business, create a business, and hopefully make enough good choices that the business can grow and we can hire some people and we can amplify what we can actually output. And then we got access to resources if we do a good job.
Well, when thinking about a business, then, okay, maybe I do wanna run a business. It'd be really cool to have a international business because I don't know too many people that do a lot of business internationally. Well, this is the beautiful thing about a crowdfund is crowdfund don't have borders per se.
Yes, there's some countries that can't participate, but the reality is there's not many because. Pre-buying a product to a degree. And so when I launched that first crowdfund campaign, what I found fascinating is as these people were contributing the campaign, all of a sudden here I am, I'm looking at it and it shows the breakdown of where people are contributing and like 40% of the people contributing this campaign [00:47:00] where from places outside the US is like, that's fantastic.
And so as we got a little bit further down the path, it's like, okay, not only do we wanna continue this international trend, but I wanna grow the international part of the business with more energy and effort than the domestic side as a hedge, because 2015 presidential election coming up, don't know what's gonna happen.
You know, we're just now entering the state of legalization and recreational cannabis. Don't know what might happen. If we have a good portion of our business internationally, well hopefully at least then, even if regulations change in the US, we'll be able to export product and still survive as a company.
So we put a huge emphasis on developing an international market, and so today we're still right there in terms of the amount of product that we manufacture and produce and export is around 40, sometimes as much as [00:48:00] 45%.
Tommy Truong: That's amazing. I, I know that we're running out of time. I wanna have you back, I want to dive deeper into your journey. This has been, I love business. I absolutely adore business. I love the, the challenges and the persistence that it takes to, to get an idea and have it become successful. Wait, what's your distribution channel today, George?
For our listeners listening, you have to check out this vape or vap, I should say, vap. It's, it's an amazing contraction. I love seeing things that I'm like, Jesus, why? Why don't I have that in in my home? What's going on?
George Breiwa: so, uh, if you want to connect again, I'd love to do it. It'd be kind of fun because then we can kind of chronologically kind of go through the, the path here. 'cause really we've only. It's gone, but just a couple years into how we got going and some of the critical decisions [00:49:00] and some of the other setbacks that I think are really important to elaborate on because the universe is going to do a, a little test on a regular basis to make sure you still want to be doing this, that you're still passionate about it, to make sure.
Yep. Okay. You're gonna get past this one. I'm gonna throw you another challenge. Right. Anyway, as far as the distribution is concerned, uh, when we were just getting started, you know, 2016, 17, we were an unknown company, right? The only people that knew we even existed were people that went to website forums and then finding a couple YouTube videos.
So we are primarily selling direct to consumers. But in the summer of 2016, we finally connected with a customer that was willing to take a risk and buy a larger quantity of product to sell on their website. So our first wholesale sales started to occur. Well, wouldn't it be great if [00:50:00] we could connect with the distributor and just get this messaging out there? Well, number one, I don't think it would've happened. Okay. Because no distributor would've carried our brand in 2016 or even 17, and likely even 2018 at least. No normal distributor, but this is the cannabis industry where back then nothing was normal and you could get away with different things. And one of the most fun things is our product was sold in a plastic DBE tube.
Okay? No joke. That was our packaging, plastic tube tube. And we're selling products that sometimes were over $150. In a plastic tube tube, but it was mail order, so most people didn't care. And it was actually useful because it was airtight and you could actually wash your product in the tube, so it had utility, but the distributor's not gonna carry your product if you don't have a UPC, if you don't have proper packaging, you don't have display marketing materials.
We had none of that. So we had to be our own distributor, [00:51:00] and so we didn't just have to grow as a company, grow as a brand. Find a way to continue funding and operating our, our own engineering and r and d department. But then we had to make another really critical choice in 2016 where, okay, if we're gonna take this to scale, we need more product.
And there's, here's another fork in the road to be, go and have it contract manufactured overseas, likely, much cheaper than we can have it made here. And then we can get quantity, and then it'll come in packaging and we go into distribution, but then we run the risk of having our idea stolen and we lose the ability to rapidly refine the product.
So we lose a lot of control. And then if the manufacturer doesn't make it the way that we want it or the way that's optimal and they screw something up, we're gonna have a whole lot of substandard product. Then we, then we have to either take the whole loss on [00:52:00] it and then have another batch made and we lose time, we lose cash flow, we lose the product, or we have to liquidate it and potentially damage the market.
Well, I guess let's start. Another business. So we've got a brand business, we've got a research and development business, we've got a distribution business. I guess we'll start a manufacturing business on top of that and learn how to make the stuff ourself, and that way we can refine faster and we can take our stuff to scale on our terms.
Tommy Truong: Wow. Okay. I'm gonna end it there and come. Please come back. Let's, let's schedule another time and if, if you are up for it and let's
George Breiwa: Oh, I'm totally up for it. Totally up for it. It's, it, it's fun to talk about these things because it's been a really engaging journey. I mean, the, the, the last 10 years, I can't think of a single time where I've been bored. It just [00:53:00] hasn't happened.
Tommy Truong: No, I, I know what you mean. I, I wake up every day. I'm just grateful. Mm-hmm.
George Breiwa: that too. And I think that's probably one of the most important components. And if we're gonna kind of end this segment here, if you lose your gratitude, you're lost
Tommy Truong: Yeah.
George Breiwa: because it's, it's probably the most single, most important thing that we have in this. And that's when we have the good fortune to be able to pursue the things we really, truly care about and have passion for. Wow. There's literally nothing to be more grateful for.
Tommy Truong: George. Um, I will, we'll connect after this and we'll schedule, schedule, um, part two of our conversation. I wanna thank you so much for, for coming on and sharing your journey.
George Breiwa: Bet. It's, uh, been a real joy. Uh, I enjoy chatting with you. [00:54:00] I think you, you've got the right approach, and it'll be fun to help other entrepreneurs with maybe a few little tidbits of challenges along the way.
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