The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Blazy Susan CEO & Founder Will Breakell Interview

Episode Date: July 14, 2021

Blazy Susan CEO & Founder Will Breakell Interview Blazysusan.com

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi this is voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming in a great podcast we certainly appreciate you guys tuning in thanks for being here with us today we've got an amazing show we go to youtube..com, 4chesschrisvoss, see all the wonderful things

we're doing over there. And you can also go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisvoss, to see all the authors we have over there and everything. And you can also go over to all of our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, all those different places to see everything we're up to. Today, we have an amazing guest on the show. He is the CEO and founder of Blazysusan.com. He's Will Riegel. So, Will, thank you very much for coming on the show. Give us your bio and tell us more about you. Yeah, Chris, thanks for having me on. It's a pleasure to be here. So, I am a Virginia boy, born and raised in Roanoke, Virginia. I went to a military college, studied business and economics, and have been an entrepreneur all my life. I was mowing lawns when I was 13, started trading stocks in college, and basically somehow creeped into the cannabis

industry back in 2013. From there, I actually lost a bunch of money trading stocks. It turns out I was young and not maybe as ready for money as I thought I was. And so it ended up moving me out to Colorado where I really came up with the idea for Blazy Susan and fell back in love with the cannabis industry and was able to really make a place here. Basically, I'm college educated, been an entrepreneur, and really came and saw a niche and an opportunity out here in the cannabis space. There you go. There you go. What motivated you to start this company or what brought you into it? Yeah. You know what? It's funny because when people ask me this question, it's like, what's the inspiration, right? And so the inspiration really came from a messy coffee

table for me. So I moved into a house, I moved in with four other people. And this was in Denver, Colorado, right as legalization for recreational marijuana basically came about. I moved in with this house and I was fresh out of military school. We had a rule book this thick about what our room should look like with pictures and the whole nine yards. So I got into this house and I was like, wow, these guys are messy, but they smoke a ton of pot. And it kind of came from me being hot. I smoked. And then I looked at their coffee table and I had like this epiphany. It was like, you guys need to clean this shit up, man. Like it's really messy and you can have weed is great, but come on, get your coffee table in order.

So literally the blazy Susan just popped into my head. That was back in 2014. So it ended up being like three years later, I actually launched the business, but the name stuck in my head and the value proposition really jumped at me. So it was very interesting. And I think that cannabis is a great thing to inspire people and to give people new ideas. There you go. So what is the Blazy Susan? Well, that is a great question. So the Blazy Susan is a spinning rolling tray. So it has all of your accessories on it. It has an ashtray, it has silicone and has all kinds of spots. It's like a Swiss army knife for your coffee table. If you smoke, if you dab, if you do concentrates and there's so many different

methods now, right? Back in, I'm sure when you were in college, maybe it was, there were only a couple of things that may roll up a zigzag, but now there's a vape cartridges and edibles and gummies and concentrates. So there's so many, there's so many products being created around the consumption. And I found there were very little products created around organization and like home use. So for, for the Blazy Susan, it was born really out of the people in Colorado, people that have medical cards. These are daily patients that are smoking or dabbing. They might smoke in the morning and dab at night. So they have multiple methods that they consume. And so we set out to really find the perfect solution. And that looks like having an ashtray,

having a little piece of silicone, because it's messy, it's sticky. There's all kinds of things that you want to be able to clean easily. That's basically the concept. And from there, we started with one tray and we were fortunate enough to get actually featured on CNN back in 2018 for the ball drop. So a pretty crazy sort of exposure. We had Jimmy Kimmel shout us out and he was like, oh, I need one of these. And so it was a very kind of interesting time when we started off back in 2018. Wow. That's amazing, man. Now you've spread this to a lot of different products that you sell on your guys' website, right? Yeah. So I think ultimately when I started,

for me, it was very like, I was working a sales job. I was working in a startup. And for me, I was like, I don't know. I'm tired of making, you know, 150 calls a day. I'd saved up $7,000 and which is in hindsight is hilariously low, but I quit my job and basically started making these prototypes. And so from there, I just had the one tray and I started really thinking of let's, how do we really develop a brand around this? Because once I started making them, people liked the product, but they're like, listen, I don't think this is going to pay my bills at this point. So it really led me to start, you know, really thinking of the brand behind the tray. And that's really where we came up with Blazy Susan as a character. So when we came up with Blazy Susan as our spokesmodel and spokesperson, from there, we started really thinking of what

are the products would Susan use, right? And so that sort of led us into one of our next products, which is actually one of our most popular and probably most widely known is our pink rolling papers. Again, it was just, I like to say high design, right? So it's a lot of these things come to me when I'm high, weirdly enough. And I think I'm organized enough to really like act on those ideas, which is I think really what separated me, I think from'm organized enough to really like act on those ideas, which is I think really what separated me, I think from the industry at the beginning was anyone can get high and be like, oh, this would be cool to go out and actually take the steps to really build it, I think is the next challenge. But we came up with the rolling papers. And as soon as we had the rolling

papers, that was like the spark where I'm like, this could really be a real company because rolling papers are sold around the world. It's a multi-billion dollar market. And we were looking for an angle that no one else was doing, which was really launching with a pink rolling paper. It goes along with Susan. She's a female. There's not really a whole lot of products. And I think now there are more that we've been in the space, but there weren't really a lot of products that were catered towards women in with cannabis. So you look at like the traditional cannabis culture, it's very male centered, right? It's the Cheech and Chong's. And not that we don't love those guys, but it's more like, Hey, listen, if your grandma was going to go smoke, is she going to identify? Is she going to go in and buy the Rasta, all that kind of stuff. We really ultimately like with our vision

of our brand, it's to bring everyone together. And it's all that kind of stuff. We really ultimately, with our vision of our brand, it's to bring everyone together. And it's saying, cannabis is great. We have a great time with it, but it's also medicine. And there's also things that people really get out of it beyond just to legalize it. Let's just get high and sit around. And that's really what we wanted to bring out to the forefront was we can make products that are fun and also changing the stigma of what that, you know, cannabis user is going to look like. And that's pretty interesting. So that's why you chose the color pink is to give it an appeal to women users. Yeah. At first it was like, how do I get into this space? And am I going to drop a normal, another paper like everyone else? Obviously there's so

many brands that just like, Hey, like, why don don't we try pink and then we were actually able to find a supplier that made pink rolling paper and then the next step and this is something that we're very we pride ourselves on this is getting the consumer feedback getting the product into the customer's hands and really letting them tell us what they want and in the case of the pink rolling paper i think i only had two booklets i was mailing like two little sheets of rolling papers in an envelope, in a letter. And I would send them out. I sent them out to 200 people all off Instagram, which is really where we started our whole brand and sort of the whole movement was on Instagram. And we just had incredible reviews. And so it was like, for me at that point, I'm like, wow, I really didn't think that people

would love this paper so much. We have to do this. And then at the same time, it also makes a lot of sense for me personally, because my mother's a breast cancer survivor. So it was one of those things that kind of collided at the same time. It was like, Hey, this is a product that would be great for women. It would be great for Susan. And also we can really bring in like an awareness aspect of, Hey, this is also, you want to support breast cancer. You want, I'm not going to sit here and say that smoking things aren't, it's not bad for you. But if you can have a positive message and have that sort of positive communication with your community, I think it does really well. And, and we've been working on giving back last year was actually the first year I was able to write

checks to charities with profits from our company. And since we started, that was actually the first year I was able to write checks to charities with profits from our company. And since we started, that was really the goal is to give back, spread awareness and ultimately really work towards legalization. When my mother was going through chemo, that was in Virginia. So for me, I was like, hey, can I get you something? Can I help? Because I know I've heard of so many people that have positive experiences if they can't eat, if they feel nauseous. And she just didn't want to do it because the doctor didn't say, hey, do this. And that's totally understandable because so many people are going to also say, hey, I don't want this could maybe interact with my medication or

they just don't know and they don't want to try it. And so for me, that's really, I think, the social barrier that I feel personally motivated to knock down and doing it through fun products is I think it's a very good way to break down those boundaries and say, Hey, pot's not what you think it is. It's not, you're not going to be in your basement listening to Grateful Dead, you know, all day and not this. I love the Grateful Dead, but that being said, it's like your grandmother could use this, but maybe she doesn't want to smoke a joint. She wants to put some cream on her elbow or on her wrist because she has. So it's really cool to be able to have this platform, I think, and really create this opportunity for more people to come into the space and really make it their own.

Because I think earlier cannabis has really been more on the misogynistic side. That's like pointing fingers at anyone. But just generally speaking, if you look at ads, how people are advertising their products, it's women in bikinis and all this sorts of stuff that is a little off-putting, right, to a woman that might really want to be a cannabis user. So that's really a huge part of the brand. Nice. I think that's beautiful. And it really supports the i i saw this one time this this entrepreneur uh woman she she went to home depot she saw all these tools that are in men's colors and designed towards men they're you know rugged and stuff like that and she came up with this brilliant idea to take

tools because you know a lot of women are single and then maybe they want to fix stuff around the house and she came with these pink tools and. And they were more designed towards women or more appealing to women. Because the whole thing didn't appeal to them. Right, it's all yellow and... Yeah, yeah. Yellow and black and blue. And it's got different things that are really manly to them. And the marketing is appealing, is targeted towards men as well.

She came up with this concept just like you did. And it's brilliant because that's something that appeals to them too. And, of course course the colors, I love the tray sort of concept and where people can roll right there on the tray. Is that correct? Yeah. So there's a little spot for rolling. There's a spot for concentrate. So it's really, it's a place for everything. And in the center, actually, if you have, and this is one thing that a lot of people requested was like, hey, what happens if you have a dog? If you have a dog and you have a bong, right, or a glass piece, it's almost inevitable that your dog's tail has knocked that off the table

or has broken something. We want to stop that. We love dogs and we want to also save the glass at the same time. So you can have your bong right in the center of it. And it's on this nice silicone pad that has a little bit of shock of resistance and it's not going to slip around on it. So it's made for if you smoke bongs, if you smoke pipes, if you roll joints, if you smoke bowls, if you smoke pens, if you do edibles, there should be a slot for you. And that's the fun thing is creating a platform that people can reinvent in their own ways. So some people might take a hole that I thought might be for a lighter, and then they might put something completely different in it. And that's on them. And that's perfect because we don't like to tell people what to do. We just want to give you a lot of slots and

a lot of ways that you can organize your stuff. Do you have one handy there that you could hold up? I do actually. Yeah. Let me just grab one. Sorry about that. No problem. Yeah. Good people can see it. But yeah, I've definitely definitely seen especially in the old days of friends in college where the whole coffee table has just got pot flakes all over it and it's just you're just like oh wow look at that it's quite a good size isn't it so yeah so this is the bare bones tray right here so we make this all in the usa actually in right next door in my other office so then we have these little silicone accessories that come with it so this is an ashtray i'll open this up for you but it's basically made for tapping out it's got this little spike on it and this little spike is great for clearing out like little bowls

and actually here's an example so here's a pipe right you get the pipe very clean which is not you can actually when you clean it out with the ashtray you can just tap it right in there and it cleans it out so these are all things these are like stoner problems that have been around for years and years and we really just set out to figure out what those problems were and solve them so this is another little accessory this is pink so this is all silicone and this is where you can put little bangers and stuff for concentrates which if you don't know what that means it's it's got some weird terms like banger right it's a odd term but this is something that you would also put in the tray and then you can have both sides hey if

i'm smoking on this side or you're smoking on that side i can just spin it right over to you you can access it from here you don't have to reach across the table and that's really part of the beauty of it is keeping it more organized and keeping it more accessible. Something where you don't want to feel embarrassed when your friends come over. You want to have your stuff out, but you don't want to be like, Hey, this, like you said, like the table's covered in a thin layer of right weed and whatever. So it's pretty gross. And the nice thing about the silicone and everything is you can put it in the dishwasher, clean it off with alcohol. And, and it's pretty gross. And the nice thing about the silicone and everything is you can put it in the dishwasher, clean it off with alcohol. And it's also one of those things too, in full transparency, some people use these better than others. So what I mean by that is you have those people that will go out and buy a lot of organizing stuff, but they might not even use it. But the same person that might not use that stuff, they still like it. They still feel like it helped them out. But we also have some customers that are religiously organized. And every little hole on this tray has something in it. And it's

completely, and they keep it flawless. So it's very cool to see people that really believe in the concept and then maintain it because it's just like a life jacket. If you don't wear it or don't use it, it won't work. And you guys also sell pre-rolled cones for people so they can have those. Yeah. Some of the pink, some of the pink cones. There's Susan up there. I'm sorry. My webcam is not the best here, but yeah. So the pink cones has been like one of our, one of our top sellers and it's not, it's not a very bright pink. You can see a little bit more in person, but these are papers they're made in France. We use FSC certified sustainable wood sources. And the factory that we were able to work with is actually one of the largest and most advanced in the world. And a funny thing about rolling paper is that most of it

is coming from just two or three factories. So it's all about branding. It's all about connecting with the audience and ultimately maintaining your quality. It's not impossible to find quality paper, but it's very hard to, I think, looking at more of the business side, it was very hard initially, I think, breaking into the distribution of these big distributors that are saying, I sell, I sell zigag and I sell Job and I sell all those papers that have been around for hundreds of years even. And me coming to the table with, hey, I know that there's never been a paper like this, but I think you should sell it. It's a pink rolling paper and it's marketed towards women. It's funny, when I first started having this conversation, they were

like, we don't want to buy that. Women don't want that. And it's like, they didn't even really care. So we really focused on social media. We focused on influencer marketing. And over the last two years, we've seen the distributors and the store owners come to us and say, Hey, we've been having people ask us about these. So they begrudging, I think made the switch. And now they're like, we want to sell more pink stuff and they want to. So I think it was very cool to see the industry kind of change over and accept us as a brand. And then the light kind of came on, wait a second, women are actually amazing customers. And that's not to say that only women buy our products right now. I think it's about, you know, 60, 30, or I'm sorry, 60, 40, I'm a little off there, like 60, 40 females to men.

So we have tons of guys that smoke our papers. We have, we work with a lot of rappers surprisingly, and we just have, we have fun with it. So I think that's one of the, one of the things that sets us apart as a brand is that we're real, we're real cannabis people. We were not just here to sell you a widget. We enjoy the process. We enjoy creating. And for us, it's, Hey, what do you want? How can I build you something? We might, I might build you a blazy Susan, right? For your podcast studio that you can just put your pens in. You can have your water in there. I think Lazy Susans are just, it's a fun concept, and we can make them for anyone. We've done collaborations with alcohol brands where we make little displays for bottles and things like that.

So we're all over the place. And at the same time, we're very focused on our core brand and our core audience, but we're always looking for new ways to expand because the cannabis industry is this evolving Leviathan of an industry. And for us as a startup, we want to try to cast as wide of a net as we can really for staying power, right? Because certain things can always change in the market. We don't want to be too invested in one particular product or SKU because there's always a risk in putting all your eggs in one basket. Definitely. Most definitely. What else have we talked about with what you guys do and how you guys do it? I think another thing that's interesting that we've done recently is actually we've started building furniture and actually building.

So the tray is like the first step, right? Now we've started to actually build larger things like coffee tables that have expandable storage that are hidden. We've actually built giant like 10 foot weed bars for celebrities like Bella Thorne up in Hollywood and created sort of these experiential marketing pieces around cannabis consumption space and what that looks like. So for us, the home is obviously the first frontier of consumption because it's still very hard to just go out and smoke a joint on the street. So most people are doing this at their home. So we're really looking at the next wave. And actually, I'm going to be in New York this week. So we're going to some events out in New York and that market obviously just went legal and you're seeing the cannabis events and the consumption lounges and really the social

side of cannabis start to explode. And I think that's a very cool place to be as well in the future. Vegas also is passing laws where Vegas, you can have, you can go into a, basically a bar, right? You can buy a joint at the bar and then smoke it. And that's very much, it's, that's such a huge step, I think, because they would only say, well, you can only buy an eighth and you can't smoke it anywhere except for, you know, maybe outside and it's illegal. So Vegas has been always, you can buy weed, but you can't smoke it on the strip.

You can't do this or that. And, and now they're creating these lounges. They're really creating opportunities for a ton of business. Looking at tourism, looking at even people that I can't, a lot of people can't afford legal cannabis in some of these markets because the taxes are so high. California, for instance, the pricing is really aggressive and it's not accessible for normal people. So if you just wanted to go into a club and buy something in a smaller portion,

now that's going to be an option for you. And my personal belief is I think that the best way to do this, because obviously it's still not federally legal, but once we get to the point where it's just like an alcohol model, whereas, hey, I buy the alcohol from a distributor, I bring it to my bar, I can sell it, I can make drinks. There's laws in place to regulate certain things. But that's I think once once the cannabis industry is in that space, it's just going to be huge. And it's going to open so many more doors, not only for like small business owners, because a small business owner, if you don't have millions of dollars, there's no way you can start a cannabis facility right now. You need investors, you need licensing. And so it's very hard to access that. And I think that's another side of the cannabis industry that people talk about, but it's the social equity side. There's still people in jail for cannabis

right now. And then you've got guys taking companies public. Most of these guys are rich white guys and that's great. And we, and that's fine. And we knew that was going to be a part of the industry, but I think a huge side of really what the community wants and what people that are cannabis users want is they don't want those people to run the businesses. I think ultimately that's the craziest disconnect is because big business for cannabis is bad for people that haven't been active advocates and people that don't want to smoke bad product that doesn't have the same attention to detail that certain other products might have. There you go. We've covered, I've been going over your website

here as we've been going through the thing, but you also have an affiliates program and a wholesale program. So if people are retailers, they can get ahold of you. Yeah. Yeah. So we have distributors across the country and actually we're in multiple countries now in the UK and even Australia and New Zealand, believe it or not. But if you're interested, if you're a store owner and you're listening to this or you have a dispensary and you need some more products on the shelf, come on down to blazysusan.com or give us a call and we can definitely take care of you. One of the things that we really pride ourselves in is really trying to help other brands and help other businesses sell the product. Like the art of negotiation, right? I want you to come to that same conclusion with me that yes,

this is a great thing for both of us. And so if it's, hey, we can help build displays or we can help create marketing materials for you as a small business, that helps us sell product and that helps you sell product. And that's something that we're really passionate about is really empowering the small business owners and people that basically support us. There you go. There you go. That's pretty amazing. Anything else you want to touch on before we go out? Anything to plug?

I would want to plug really, I think, some of our breast cancer charities. One of them is Keep Abreast. And they are a great organization. They do stuff for awareness. So they have an app where you can screen yourself. And it's like the preventative side of breast cancer. And the other charity that we really like to work with is the Lynn Sage Foundation. And that's one that does really more focused on research.

And we worked with them last year. And we're really excited this year for October. So keep an eye on us. We're going to be doing some really big stuff in October and really setting out for some really awesome charity initiatives. That'll be cool. That'll be definitely cool. So give us your dot com so people can look you up on the interwebs before we go out. Yeah. So it's www.lazysusan, like lazy Susan with a B,.com.

There you go. There you go. It's been wonderful to have you on the show. Thank you very much for spending time with us today and updating us on what you guys are doing. And everyone, I'm sure we'll go check it out. And beautiful thing is it looks like it's getting legalized everywhere and eventually, hopefully should become federal. So that'll be good for your business. Yes, sir. I appreciate you guys having us on and yeah, take care. I appreciate it. There you guys go. Guys, be sure to watch the video version of this at youtube.com. Forge has Chris Foss, so subscribe over there. Go to goodreads.com. Forge has Chris Foss. See all the things we're doing over there. See all the

groups we have on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all those different places and all that good stuff. Thanks to everyone for tuning in and we'll see you guys next time. Alright.