Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Andrew Calderon, COO of WayFast, located in Thunder Bay, ON, Canada.

What's your business, and who are your customers?

WayFast is an AgriTech company that is leading the way in next-generation harvest compliance for American cannabis farmers. In many states that have legalized cannabis, farmers have to farm based on stringent regulations generally called seed-to-sale tracking. This means every individual plant has a government ID on the physical plant. The farmer and their team have to report where the plant is located and how much it weighs during different stages of its life and harvest cycle. Our first products are focused on making the weighing and identifying of plants as easy and seamless as possible.

Farms that use our device go from harvesting, weighing, and documenting the identity of 30-60 plants per hour to over 1,200 plants per hour. Quite simply, you put a plant on our product. It will weigh and identify the plant in under 2 seconds without pushing any buttons. This is a dramatically different process than putting a plant on a scale, writing down the unique ID of the plant, writing down the weight. Then passing that information onto someone to input it, then submitting it to a government portal and hoping it is correct.

This allows farms to focus on growing the best product instead of spending huge amounts of resources on compliance. Our product is quickly becoming a differentiator and standard for farms that are focused on maximizing their efficiency.

Tell us about yourself

I've worked on and in many startups over the years and always enjoyed the challenges and complexities of taking an idea and turning it into a business. There have been many successes and unfortunate failures I've had to learn from and dust myself off from.

I got started on the pathway to starting WayFast when my business partner Bradley Momberg introduced me to a project he was working on for a cannabis grower. That project quickly evolved and iterated to what became WayFast. Seeing the sheer amount of hurdles farmers are faced with when growing cannabis, we saw there was a better way to harvest, leveraging the best technology had to offer. Within a year of working with growers, we had a solid product ready to market and a long list of clients who were eager to purchase it.

We thrive on the feedback and results we get from wowing customers and seeing how we positively impact their business. We continue to iterate on our current products to make them even better. More importantly, we're working on incredible new products that will dramatically change the industry and push the efficiency and profitability frontier for growers beyond their wildest expectations.

What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?

I think for any business owner, surviving during the pandemic is an accomplishment. For us, we've not only survived, but we've grown and become a market leader from nothing. Becoming a market leader and navigating the insane logistics of our supply chain has been our biggest accomplishments. After releasing our first product, we had to redesign it because the supply chain around the components we were sourcing completely evaporated. There were a lot of tough lessons that we learned and built our business upon.

What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?

It's really difficult to self-motivate some days. It's not easy to look at a seemingly endless to-do list and feel like you're doing a good or even passable job. Having a great business partner to have your back and keep you motivated and reciprocate that feeling is vital to any business, especially during a pandemic.

What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?

  1. Fail fast. Iterate. Repeat. Don't dwell on failures. Learn from them and build upon them.
  2. Take a nap, step away from work, clear your head. It's better to work three solid hours than eight mediocre hours. Every startup feels like an endless sprint and will become one and burn you out if you let it.
  3. Keep a social life/personal life intact. It's easy to get consumed by your work and treat every call like it's vital and every email like it needs to be responded to right away. You'd be surprised at how effective voicemail and email are at being responded to the next day if you let them. And once you have found success, you don't want to feel alone, so stay sane and keep your personal connections going.

Is there anything else you'd like to share?

Having a great business partner is key to a solid startup. Brad and I don't always agree on things, but we respect each other's opinions and are not afraid to be wrong or revisit past decisions. For every great decision we've made, it's the wrong ones and how we reacted and moved forward from them that have played just as pivotal of a role in making us successful.

Where can people find you and your business?

Website: https://gowayfast.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoWayFast
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gowayfast/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/gowayfast
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gowayfast/

If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solopreneur that you'd like to share, then email community@subkit.com; we'd love to feature your journey on these pages.

Feel inspired to start, run or grow your own subscription business? Check out subkit.com and learn how you can turn "one day" into day one.