Running a Vaping Empire With the Daya Brothers
Running a business is hard enough. Throw in the dynamic of family – and you enter a whole new world of challenges and risks. Somehow, the three Daya brothers, Saadiq, Khizer and Saabir have all found a formula for success with VanGo Vapes.
The Daya brothers operate VanGo Vapes from Vancouver BC, not far from where they grew up and long dreamed of money-making enterprises to call their own.
Khizer, the middle brother of the three, is the company’s chief operating officer, while older brother Saadiq serves as CEO and the younger Saabir works as the Lab and Innovations Manager.
“My older brother and I, we started off with a paper route but wanted to do something for ourselves, so we started a lawn-mowing business when we were 12 or 13,” Khizer explained.
“We both used to smoke cigarettes when we were a bit older,” he continued, “until someone showed us this vape. I was around 21 and he was 23, and we just kind of took a leap into this, and it grew from there.”
The key to success?
Sharing the same values
This is a little bit easier coming and growing up in the same family, but as three individual people, three different lifestyles and even their own family units, making sure that the business has one set of shared values, principles and a clear mission helps keep everyone focused and aligned when managing growth, daily surprises and challenges – especially when working in a dynamic industry like vaping.
Complementary Skills
The key to any good partnership, regardless of the relation, is balancing of each other’s skills and competencies. From operations, to process innovation, to vision – each brother has found a clear role in the business that allows their personality to shine, while feeling 100% responsible and 100% ownership of certain areas of the business. This creates a sense of balance and equality, while trusting that the right people are in the right roles.
Defined and clear roles and responsibilities
Building off of the individual skills, means defining clear roles and responsibilities. That way each brother knows what they are accountable for and what they need to do. While marketing, investment and partnership decisions are all shared and voted on, there is clear defined territory around business operations, sales and service operations and manufacturing operations – giving each brother a major component of the business to manage.
Clear Goals
Every successful entrepreneur, individual and business has clear and defined goals that keep them focused. VanGo is no different and together the 3 brothers have built an incredible business, brand and reputation – but their goals are lofty. The plan to dominate the e-juice liquid industry through their Flaving model has proven unique and effective with consumers and retailers, and the team is now using their knowledge of inhalable flavoring to expand into the legal cannabis industry and forthcoming edibles market… So make sure to keep an eye out on the Daya brothers in the near future!
Open and Safe Conversations around and in the Business
The biggest key to managing everything is communication and the brothers have excelled at creating processed for every aspect of the business and that includes meetings and planning sessions for every aspect of the business. This helps identify opportunities and challenges early on to avoid surprises.
Running a family business is not for everyone, but if there is a model of success, the Daya brothers have proved it for all of us on siblings day.