The Lab Test That Sparked an Anxiety Attack and a Business Breakthrough

Good decisions come from experience. Experience comes from making bad decisions

By Jon Vought 

I think people would categorize me as a risk-taker. But, I’d call it something else. I take actions very quickly with limited information. It’s like a working fire, I will commit to risk if there’s a lot to be gained because I’ve prepared to make a dangerous situation as safe as it can be made. I think most of us are like that. In 2022, my “ready, fire, aim” mantra caused the event that led to the one and only anxiety attack of my life (so far), a lot of financial loss, and eventually the defining moment of the business I started. 

When I started Rescue 1 CBD I had no real background in business, but I wanted to jump in the deep end and figure it out like I always do. I learned I’m not alone. This is standard practice in business for what’s known as a “minimum viable product.”

I was preparing for our FDIC trip of 2022, and we were days away. Our CBD oil was out of stock, and we were just waiting on a lab test to clear this latest batch to start selling. But, the lab test wouldn’t be completed until the day we arrived at FDIC. This created a problem: our SOP is that we can’t sell a product without a lab test that ensures it’s perfect, and we need it now. Every lab test we’ve ever had came back perfect, it wasn’t worth canceling the trip just because we were restocking at the last minute. So, I shipped the product to Indianapolis and got on the plane.

The Results Are In

The test results arrived when we were setting up our booth, and it showed what I truly feared and had never seen before: There was a small amount of THC in the product (0.01%). This defeats the purpose of the entire brand. We’re made to be Safe For The Job. It’s our slogan, for crying out loud. 

After several phone calls between the farm I was using and the lab that tested the product (even having them call and argue with each other), I got nowhere with a solution for getting a good product to sell at FDIC. 

Right then, I knew I had to trash the entire batch. 

The conference starts in 24 hours, I’ve spent thousands of dollars to be up here, and now I have no product to sell. My mind started racing. I’d never had an anxiety attack, and this event caused my first one. I immediately started blaming myself for jumping the gun and assuming this lab test would be OK.

Accepting Mistakes 

Be OK with making mistakes and accept you’ll work really hard to correct them. I was up in the morning (if you want to call what I did prior “sleeping”). I put headphones on so I could talk to myself while I walked around downtown Indy until I figured a way out. I forced myself into this position, and now I was forcing myself to resolve it, and there wasn’t anything to do other than just tell people what happened.

So, that morning with the booth set up and boxes of tainted product back at the AirBnb, my crew and I did just that for a whole week. We told them about Rescue 1 CBD and then told them we have no product because our lab test came back with THC in it and I had to trash the batch. I was certain we were going to scare off everyone and this was the end of the brand. 

Instead, something incredible happened. I noticed that after looking everyone in the eye and explaining how we’re upholding the standard that we always said we would, we gained the trust of our brothers and sisters. We needed to put our money where our mouth was, and when it was time, we did it. People asked us to email them when our products were back in stock. 

After I got home, I had to ask myself, “How do I stop this from ever happening again?” And I was forced to learn how to avoid the pain of doing this ever again, and it led to how we changed our business processes today. Also, we cut ties with everyone involved in that screw-up and haven’t done business with them since. 

The Importance of Resilience

If you’re willing to take a punch and keep getting hit (hopefully getting better each time), then you’ll succeed at damn near anything. But it’s so much easier said than done. How hard of a hit can you take and still come back for more? 

The conversation around mental resilience in the fire service comes up a lot, but it’s hard to train for. In running this business, I’ve gotten a lot of training for it, and I’ve noticed I can “take a punch” much better than I used to. Mostly because I’m not trying to avoid it, I know they happen, I just want to learn how to deal with them rather than avoid them. In the words of former boxer Mike Tyson, “Everyone’s got a plan until they get punched in the face.” 

Reps are More Important Than One Perfect Execution

A quality vs quantity experiment was done in a group of photography students at the University of Florida. Their professor put the class into two different groups. The first group would be graded on the amount of photos they could submit for their final test, regardless of their quality. 

The second group of students were told they would be graded on the quality of one single photo, they weren’t allowed to submit multiple photographs. 

The professor was surprised to learn that the group graded on quantity produced better photos. They iterated each time, played with lighting, and honed their skills.

The group who waited to take the perfect photo sat around contemplating what made a great photo. They knew their grade was on the line and wanted to make it perfect. But, while “sitting on the bench” talking about what a good photo was, the other group was out there working and getting better every day. 

You see, the only thing that’s going to make you better is experience.

My advice to anyone who’s contemplating more than acting: there’s always a million reasons to not do something, and the “perfect time” will never arrive. Inertia seems to be the most powerful force in the universe. One will keep moving in the direction they’ve always been moving in, it’s really damn hard to turn around or change directions once you’ve been moving in the same direction for a long time. 

A Special Thank You

To my FDIC crew who kept my head on straight in a very challenging time of my life: my (almost wife) May, Rob, Meredith and the other firefighter-owned businesses that had my back and lifted me up. CRACKYL, FLAME, Notorious, Next Rung, Rekindled Lids and The Burn Box.

Jon Vought is a firefighter/paramedic on the job in South Florida who currently holds the rank of Captain with 16 years of experience. He started Rescue 1 CBD in 2020 on a mission to bring CBD into the mainstream of the U.S. Fire Service.