We recently connected with Jon Vought and have shared our conversation below.

Jon, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

I first had the idea for starting Rescue 1 CBD out of desperation. As a full time firefighter, I had foot surgery that left me unable to do my job for over six months. I was using prescription opiates to deal with the pain and I had some dependency on them which means when I stopped taking them, my sleep was wrecked.

I was suffering from a ruined sleep cycle and needed relief but I didn’t want to take medication for it. After all, medication is what landed me in this crappy sleep cycle in the first place. I kept seeing articles and suggestions about CBD usage but I kept reading it would cause a failed drug test. I ended up testing my luck with CBD and getting great relief from my poor sleep and wanted to bring it to the US Fire Service but I needed to create a product that was absolutely pure with no possibility of failing a drug test.

The majority of CBD users don’t care about failing a drug test. And that means all manufacturers aren’t creating CBD products with this in mind. I’m mission-driven to bring this to our men and women, this isn’t a monetary goal for me. I’m just a firefighter with no college education and almost zero experience with business. But in my rapid self-education, I saw this as a classic innovators dilemma for the larger brands. Whereas they don’t have an incentive to make a drug-test friendly CBD, there appears to be a market for it, and I saw myself as the right person to do it. This stuff changed my life and my sleep pattern and I want to do the same for the men and women who serve in the US Fire Service

Jon, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m a firefighter/paramedic with 16 years on the job and I’m currently the captain on a ladder truck downtown in my city. I have no background in business but I started using CBD after a very invasive foot surgery left my sleep wrecked from taking opiates long-term. I had no idea I could have these side effects from opiate usage and I needed an alternative to medicine that would help my sleep.

All of us in the fire service want the benefits of hemp and/or cannabis plants but we can’t fail a drug test. I travelled around the USA to learn about CBD extraction and manufacturing. I tested products (rejected most of them), met with scientists, chemists, and the lab directors that would test this stuff to prove it’s safe. But, even at 0.000% THC (our standard) there was still no study that showed CBD doesn’t cause a failed drug test. So, I worked to create the first clinically-studied CBD that’s proven to be drug test friendly. We’ve solved the problem of CBD that could potentially ruin a career with trace amounts of THC causing a failed drug test. And, we’re delivering better sleep, reduced inflammation and therefore a longer lifespan on the job and after retirement to our firefighters.

The study is concluded and we’re looking forward to it being published later in 2025

Has your business ever had a near-death moment? Would you mind sharing the story?

This story defines the brand I created, even though it happened two years in to running the business, I consider it our founding moment.

Every year Rescue 1 CBD attends a trade show: Fire Department Instructors Conference. It’s the largest firefighter convention in the world. Every new piece of technology, every tactic and every new product that gets adopted into the fire service starts at FDIC first. Naturally, bringing CBD into the fire service would start here too. This was 2022, my second year going and Rescue 1 CBD was just starting to gain product/market fit and we sold out on the website so I had a batch of CBD tinctures created, labelled and waiting on the lab tests to return but FDIC was the next week. So I just shipped up the product under the assumption the lab test would come back perfect like it always does.

The shock came when I was setting up my vendor booth on the tradeshow floor in Indianapolis after spending almost $15,000 (a lot of money for my bootstrapped startup) and the lab results were delivered to my email showing trace amounts .01% THC in my product that’s supposed to have 0.000% THC.

I felt stranded. I have a contaminated product and after several phone calls with the lab that tested the product and the extraction team that created the raw CBD ingredient, I realized this wasn’t a false positive, we had a problem.

I decided to trash the entire batch and tell everyone who came to my booth what happened. I was sure this was the end of my brand but I figured, if I was going to build this brand on integrity, it’s time to put my money where my mouth is.

There was an outpouring of support after that. We collected emails from everyone who said they would be interested in buying once we were back in stock and they absolutely came through months later.

Until then, I listed all products out of stock, changed the way I vetted lab testing (fired the extraction company I was using) and then got new product tested and ready to go.

This was an extremely stressful point early on in our company’s history but the most important one. We chose to lose a lot of money when it was dangerous to do so and we did it because we have core values and they were tested. I’d like to think we passed that test and emerged from that very successful

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

Bein self-educated in business I’m trying to devour books, podcasts and YouTube videos. Most of them are worthless, to be honest. But there’s some really great stuff out there that either helped with my approach to life or business and some content that gave me very insightful tactics that taught me execution and thinking bigger.

Basics:
The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing (Reis and Trout)
Traffic Secrets & Dot Com Secrets (Russel Brunson)
Traction (Gino Wickman)
Good To Great (Jim Collins)
The Innovator’s Dilemma (Christensen)

Mindset, strategy and approach:
The Hard Thing About Hard Things (Ben Horowitz)
Shoe Dog (Phil Knight)
Entrepreneurs Handbook (Harvard Business Review)

Contact Info:

• Website: https://rescue1cbd.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/rescue_1_cbd
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@rescue1CBD