We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nancy Domenichelli a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Nancy, thanks for joining us today. Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?

TarTubes was an idea conceived about three bong hits into our regular morning smoke sesh. Diana is a tobacco smoker and reached for a cigarette after toking. I reached for a joint (had to be polite and not let her smoke alone). Diana uses disposable tobacco filters with her cigarettes. When I reached for my joint, I also grabbed a filter but it was way too big for my cone-tipped dispensary pre-roll. Together, we had the same thought–our joints need to fit with these tobacco filters!
So, we started creating ways to prop up the joint to keep it from flopping over–using tissue, cardboard, until eventually Diana’s husband, Allan, found a plug for a transmission in his workshop. He drilled a hole in one side to fit a cone tip, and the other open end happened to fit perfectly with the filter. That was our prototype, The Allan.
We took The Allan to a local university’s engineering lab, where they crafted prototypes and gave us the units as well as the blueprints to have what we named TarTubes mass produced.
We tapped some of my local contacts I met through LinkedIn 15 years ago and would meet regularly back in the day. We would get around a table for a brown bag lunch and discuss our small businesses’ pain points as well as successes. These were the folks who eventually developed small business accelerator programs in the area. It had been years since I’d talked to any of these contacts, but they’re the ones who showed up for us and helped get things off the ground with their help and advice.
We applied for a local accelerator program but only made it to the semifinals. Undeterred, we tapped the huge network of people involved in that accelerator program for additional help and advice.
Bottom line, it was the generosity and encouragement of so many folks along the way who were immediately on board with TarTubes, seeing how effective they are at capturing tar from dispensary pre-rolls before it hits the lungs.
I should mentioned we were powered by sativa most of the time! :)

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

We’re a couple of tie-dye wearing, weed-smoking sexagenarian women from Springfield MA. I am semi-retired from the research transcription business I’ve owned and managed for over 30 years, ModernDayScribe.com. Diana is retired from directing a battered women’s shelter in VT for over a dozen years. She followed that with team trucking with her husband.
We got into the cannabis industry because we’re heavy indulgers and knew firsthand the effects of long-term inhalation of marijuana smoke. We both had persistent coughs–until we started using The Allan. After ten days, my cough disappeared. So did Diana’s smokers’ cough.
I should mention that Diana and I are heavy tokers, smoking over a dozen joints a day. We knew from the American Lung Assn that there’s 4x the tar in a joint than in a tobacco cigarette. It was visibly apparent because the filters fill up with tar instantly and to a startling effect. Users see and feel the immediate benefit of using TarTubes to help capture the tar before it hits the lungs.
We shared samples and eventually pre-launched our product at a Flower Expo held in our area in June. It was very satisfying to see people’s reactions to the immediate buildup of tar visible after just one hit. People are sold on our product after their initial use. No one says, Gee I’d rather keep that tar in my lungs…
The pre-Launch was very successful. We handed out a thousand samples and started to see on social media that people were using them and appreciating them. Again, we tapped local resources to find a graphic designer, a packaging company to produce the display boxes, and a nonprofit printing company for all our print materials. We found more advisors (free) and a marketing guru (not free, but very good) to create www.tartubes.com.
I am most proud that TarTubes was an idea we came up with in February of this year, and we just launched in October. Things happened really, really quickly. We credit the sativa we’ve been toking throughout. It kept us powered and focused on each next thing that had to happen. Because if we knew ahead of time all that would be involved, I doubt we would have pursued this. One joint at a time…

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

We’ve pivoted so much, we’re ready to replace Payton Pritchard as point guard for the Celtics! At every turn, we’d seek and adhere to advice that had us moving and changing our next steps.
We had decided at the outset that we would market strictly to local dispensaries initially and sell wholesale only. Well, on a Tuesday afternoon two weeks before launch, our marketing strategist and other advisor met with us and made the case for offering retail sales, too. That sounded way too ambitious for us, but we listened. And acted.
We reached out a friend that evening who is recently retired. She agreed to be our Shipping Department for retail sales the next day, and had an office cleaned out and ready to roll by Thursday. People told us throughout that things happen very quickly in the cannabis space, but boom, boom, boom, one thing after another presented itself as an obstacle, but we listened, evaluated, and pivoted accordingly.
I had put out a press release prior to launch in October that I thought was only going to target Massachusetts. But it went national! We’re now getting retail sales from all over the country. We are very grateful for the advice to embrace retail sales, daunting as it seemed at the time.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

Diana and I met through the Nextdoor.com app in the summer of 24. It’s a social media platform based on your zip code, so you communicate with your neighbors there.
One morning there was a post asking for volunteers to write letters for Kamala, and we were the only two that showed up. We wrote our letters and talked a bit. We found out that we lived just a few blocks from one another. And that each of us smokes weed, a lot of weed! We became fast friends, hanging out every single day since.
Together, we’re on a mission to reduce tar intake in tokers’ lungs.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.TarTubes.com
• Instagram: @TarTubes
• Facebook: TarTubes
• Linkedin: Nancy Domenichelli
• Youtube: TarTubes