209: An Innovative Spin on Smoking Accessories in the Cannabis Industry – Will Breakell of Blazy Susan

209: An Innovative Spin on Smoking Accessories in the Cannabis Industry – Will Breakell of Blazy Susan

Background on Will Breakell of Blazy Susan:

Will Breakell is the brainchild and founder of the Blazy Susan brand. Will is a young entrepreneur from Roanoke, Virginia. Although Will graduated from the esteemed Virginia Military Institute, he soon realized that he was meant to take a different path than the majority of his peers. The mountains of Colorado were calling for him, and so was the emerging cannabis industry.

One day, while sitting on his couch looking at his cluttered coffee table, Will had an epiphany; thus, the original Blazy Susan was born. A few short years later, and the company has grown to reach all over the world, and is revered by an extremely supportive community of customers and fans. The Blazy Susan is a revolutionary tabletop organizer for your smoking accessories and products that clutter your coffee table. They also provide another one-of-a-kind smoking experience – Pink Rolling Papers! These papers are the perfect option for anyone looking to smoke in style.

Time-Stamped Show Notes:

[6:20] Will Breakel, 28 years old, is the founder of Blazy Susan, which provides smoking accessories for customers in the cannabis industry.
[9:30] In 2019, they did about a quarter of a million in sales and it grew up to almost $2 million in 2020. Today, Will has 8 employees in the company.
[11:21] Will talks about his college life at VMI, which is considered as a very tough military school in the US.
[14:30] Going to a military school has prepared Will for the challenges and hardships of being an entrepreneur.
[15:57] Will shares more stories about his experiences in VMI.
[23:55] During his time in the military school, he went into stock market trading and he was focusing on cannabis stock.
[26:33] Starting with $10,000, he grew it to $60,000 through penny stocks.
[28:09] After graduating from VMI, he had a brief trading stint in Las Vegas and then took a job as a proprietary trader in Denver. After a year and a half working in the trading firm, he got fired for losing too much money.
[34:18] By asking random people whether they smoke and what their coffee table looks like, Will pursued his idea of making Blazy Susan a reality.
[36:45] The early process of designing and producing a prototype for his Blazy Susan was challenging and costly for Will.
[40:15] He found an old guy who had a C and C milling machine that could help him manufacture his product and take it to the next level.
[52:44] Creating his first mock-up design and showing it on Instagram, he was able to sell a few of his products. This made him realize that he needed to create more products.
[55:22] The major turning point for Will and Blazy Susan was meeting a guy at a trade show, which was the reason why he got into CNN and had a shout-out from Jimmy Kimmel.
[1:00:28] The Blazy Susan tray wasn’t selling as much so Will had to invest in a new product, which is pink rolling paper.
[1:03:20] There were several hurdles in finding the right manufacturer for his pink rolling paper.
[1:16:41] In late 2018, he developed a great relationship with his first distributor, which started his early growth.
[1:20:27] From 2020 onwards, there were several factors that contributed to the huge success of the Blazy Susan brand.

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Fabulous 4 Questions:

📖📚 Favorite Books? Reminisces of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefevre, How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie
🙌😎 Favorite Amazon.com purchase? Cheap Charging Cables
🌱💸 Favorite Tool that's GROWN your Business? SKU Vault ERP / Inventory Software
💭💡 BIGGEST Challenge keeping your Business from GROWING? Keeping Up With Demand! Finding traditional financing channels that work with more grey market businesses. (Smoke Shop/Vapes, etc.)

Key Point from the Interview:

“I start asking people randomly, hey do you smoke weed? They’d be like, yeah I do. And then I just go, what does your coffee table look like right now? And then they stop for a second and I go, it’s messy isn’t it? And then they are like, yeah it is, it’s messy. And I'm just like, what if I had something that could fix that and it was called the Blazy Susan. And people were just like, oh my God I love it.”