Got stiffed on a consult - others beware - Entoura / AVF

CannaBusiness
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Hey all,

I know I don’t post a whole bunch here - but I had to chime in to protect other consultants, potential employees, and people who may want to do business with this group.

There’s a lot of detail to the story, but the short version is that I own and operate my own CBD / delta 8 manufacturing facility in indianapolis. We have been cranking out a lot of really nice product and doing some white label projects. I was approached by Kevin from Entoura to initially potentially work on some bottling opportunities, but discussions always went the direction of trying to share large contracts and opportunities and work together. Which is always BS if you ask me - but I digress.

Kevin approached me one day about doing some consulting. Said they already were making d8 they just wanted to make it faster, and he also was intrigued with my water clear techniques. They had tried it a few times without success.

I’m based in indianapolis, they are based out of Nashville. Kevin asked me to come down and check out their operation to see how I could help.

I came down, and over lunch we discussed my daily rate plus room and travel. He agreed it was fair. So I got to work. I was inside and out of that building trying to piece together how they could be more productive and what they needed.

I dialed in their wipe film parameters (pushed out more volatiles as their internal condenser wasn’t hot enough), and turned up their wiper speed and resulted in a much better looking starting product for conversion.

I also taught them how to properly reflux in a reactor. I also taught them proper CRC techniques.

Fast forward to their first COA they get back. It wasn’t great. Like awful. Worse than anything I’ve produced. I tried to discuss how to improve on their processes and how to address their second trial but I started getting a scent of them dodging the invoice. I informed them I’m happy to continue working with them but I must be paid for the work done or else I can’t invest any more time. Fair I thought.

I have dozens of ND COAs over 90% purity and I’ve done lots of good work for happy clients. Both on the consulting level and sales level.

I took 2 separate 2 day trips down and their invoice came out to $7200. Now I’m getting a refusal to pay because of a “misunderstanding”. They are saying they were expecting certain results and didn’t get it. The only misunderstanding is that I don’t work for free. I’m willing to continue working with their team but I can’t continue taking time out of my own (competing) business without being paid or even discussing getting paid. They did one trial with my SOP and used dirty distillate instead of the recommended isolate for the results they were expecting. I have so much more knowledge to share but it’s simple I can’t invest another second without getting paid. I have my own business, clients, sales, and COAs to prove my own success. It’s not on me that his team can’t execute. I didn’t get it right the first time either.

So if you’re looking to consult for them - get paid up front. I’m just having my legal team and accounting handle it. It’ll be sent to collections after 90 days. Still a bummer.

Anyone else done business with them?

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What does the terms of the contract state?

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Yeah, we should have a “bad clients” page.

I was scammed for quite a lot of work by “iResinate” – beware them

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Ya definitely needs a scammer page, @MedSchoolDrop22 is also a thief and a liar, not a consultant but the rest none the less

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Oh shit…

What happened?

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Took payment for cuts and ghosted, only answered when i called from one of my other phones he didnt know the number and then no response after he knew who it was. Its a laughable amount i could careless, just dont want someone to lose alot. Im just gonna fuck with him now. Same as deshazzo he did the same thing

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Did he lure you in with his seeds?
Something didn’t feel right when I talked to him, so I left it alone.

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No it was cuts, he kept saying i got the seeds you asked for and i told him many times we didnt agree on seeds, its was pink rozay, the snowman and a couple others he said he had and then all kinds of cookie merchandise he said he was sending i dont want. Just the cuts he said he had and agreed to provide

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Well damn. That’s fucked…(regardless of the amount)

@MedSchoolDrop22 explain yourself.

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He told me he was no good with cuts, his experience was mainly with seeds. This tells me he is new to the game. Maybe he is having issues getting them to root and thinks ignoring you is better than the truth for some reason.

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Im all about this. I made a post a while back but edited and scrapped it to avoid a shit show. A page like this needs to go down. Be wary of green revolution in cali/washington, screwed me on my contract, lost well over 5 figures and 6 months of my time.

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What exactly did they hire you to do?

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That the folks with the gummy recipe you weren’t allowed to share? I’d pay for that if it’s available

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I never signed the NDA, that recipe does 11 million in washington a year and id sell it in a heart beat. I got nano water tinctures(reverse engineered sonomechanics emuslifier recipe too) pressed pills…

Any references i can sell ip to and ill split the pie. It was really more like 9 months and i moved my whole life for that ish

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He said probably whatever anyone wanted to hear, i could gibe a shit. Cheap price paid to know a scum bag, i also have a long memory and patience.

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It’s on me - but there was no formal contract. I’ve been burned before and idk why the good human in me thinks others will be trustworthy too. But who would think a company backed by millions of dollars would stiff on a measly 7 grand? It’s a lesson learned for me I just wanted to make others aware.

The agreement was that I would help them speed up their production and get more throughput.

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So I received a check last week while I was out for vacation. For a fraction of the total invoice. It seems they looked at my itemized invoice and paid me for travel and board only. I still spent 4 days and 2 separate trips going down there. I’m still owed $5k.

It’s amazing all this while they are dodging an invoice my team and myself are cranking out buckets on buckets of product with no quality or testing issues. I have quite the list of things they were doing wrong and reasons why they were getting the results they were yet they’ll never get to hear it or work out the kinks in their process.

Remember, Kevin approached me based on my company’s success he had seen with his own 2 eyes and dozens of compliant 90%+ COAs provided. He’d been to my facility once, sent someone up another time, and then even after the consultation sent his guys up to look around at every piece of equipment we had and how everything was configured. MIT graduate employees that don’t know how to plumb a simple manifold or how to creatively think. I was hired as a consultant, not a spoon feeder. That would require full time plus benefits. Part of the problem they could be having is wildly unhappy employees as well from the conversations I had while there. One guy had his foot out the door already and he’s the guy he had in charge of the whole project lol. You think he cares about their success?

Amazing the amount of people that have reached out to me privately and validated their poor business practices. From the sounds of it, they have zero good intentions and are hemorrhaging cash. It makes sense - big facility and lots of employees sitting around pointing at other employees to do something for not much product.

Luckily my business has low overhead, no debt, and no investors. That’s how you survive this market.

I’ll be sending them an updated invoice reflecting the payment, and continuing on the journey to collections. Also lucky for me I have legal representation in the state of Tennessee already on retainer for these small headaches.

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Hello,

I am sorry that you feel the way you do about the outcome of your consult. I believe it is important for you to know that the disagreement between you and Kevin does not extend beyond the two of you since the greater team was unaware of the promises that were made. That said, I found the following paragraph to be wildly inappropriate and inaccurate:

“(1) Kevin approached me based on my company’s success he had seen with his own 2 eyes and dozens of compliant 90%+ COAs provided. (2) He’d been to my facility once, sent someone up another time, and then even after the consultation sent his guys up to look around at every piece of equipment we had and how everything was configured. MIT graduate employees that don’t know how to plumb a simple manifold or how to creatively think. I was hired as a consultant, not a spoon feeder. That would require full time plus benefits. (3) Part of the problem they could be having is wildly unhappy employees as well from the conversations I had while there. One guy had his foot out the door already and he’s the guy he had in charge of the whole project lol. You think he cares about their success?”

(1) Kevin approached me based on my company’s success he had seen with his own 2 eyes and dozens of compliant 90%+ COAs provided.

To my knowledge, Kevin approached you based on your company’s success, not because of your compliant 90%+ COAs. It is well known in the industry that there is large inter-lab variance in D8 and D9 potency for a single sample. Cherry picking labs is a huge issue for the hemp industry especially for D8, and in my opinion, enforcing specific D8 sample prep and testing methods should be a federal priority. In other words, having dozens of compliant COAs from a few select labs does not prove the true quality/potency of your product. I would be very impressed to discover that you have dozens of compliant 90%+ D8 COAs from a dozen labs or a few highly respected labs for D8 analytics such as KCA.

(2) He’d been to my facility once, sent someone up another time, and then even after the consultation sent his guys up to look around at every piece of equipment we had and how everything was configured. MIT graduate employees that don’t know how to plumb a simple manifold or how to creatively think. I was hired as a consultant, not a spoon feeder. That would require full time plus benefits.

Multiple people visiting your facility is a moot point and has nothing to do with why you were not paid, which I believe is the focus of this post. The reason for the last visit was for our CFO to better understand your workflow and true production COGS. It is my understanding that you were contracted (verbally) to share a process that would improve our “water clear” D8 production efficiencies (i.e. COGS, production speed, etc.). For you to do this, it would have been imperative for you to understand (1) the baseline efficiencies you are working to improve, (2) your own production efficiencies for comparison, and (3) to provide an SOP that includes basic information such as number of personnel, chemicals, equipment, consumables, and a standard procedure that would allow us to replicate your production of “water clear” D8. All the above was not communicated or executed effectively, if at all, and after final evaluation, the team decided your procedure was more costly and less efficient compared to the procedure implemented prior to your arrival.

(3) Part of the problem they could be having is wildly unhappy employees as well from the conversations I had while there. One guy had his foot out the door already and he’s the guy he had in charge of the whole project lol. You think he cares about their success?

This person DOES care about the company’s success, and he also cares about his personal success. Recently, the team has improved production of “water clear” D8 by over 100% and at significantly lower costs using a method completely different from your own. In his defense, it would have been a poor business decision for him to move forward with your proposed “water clear” D8 method. Unfortunately, irrespective of your opinions, it is likely you were not paid in full due to failed promises.

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Yep they just magically increased production 100% all on their own okay my guy

How about you just pay your debts and stop plaguing this industry with your shitty illegal Businesses practices

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Yeah seems like a lot a lot of words for “I don’t want to pay this bill” to me.

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