BUILDING BETTER PRODUCTS BY REFUSING TO ACCEPT "GOOD ENOUGH" WITH JOSH SPRAGUE

E119 Building Better Products by Refusing to Accept Good Enough with Josh Sprague

Transcript

Dalton Anderson (00:01) Hey Josh, welcome to the show. Glad to have you here.

Josh (00:03) Thanks for having me on, Dalton. Appreciate it.

Dalton Anderson (00:06) So the podcast episode is really gonna dive into a couple things. And one of the main ones is the bootstrapping and creating a company and passion-based brands. And one of the first ones that you've created was Orange Mud. Do you wanna tell us on like how did that even come about and just the background of how that got started?

Josh (00:19) Yep. You got it.

Sure. So yeah, I I ⁓ you know I spent a lot of years marathon or racing marathons and Ironman and and you know I regular triathlons and mountain bike racing, adventure racing, pretty much anything you can imagine. And after ⁓ slogging through countless events, I always hated waistbelts because they squeeze your waist and they're just uncomfortable and a lot of times you feel the water all flopping around. And then I hated handhelds because they,

I've never understood why anybody wants to run with a handheld. Granted, I've designed two at this point and I I like them. I won't run with them because I don't like handheld still as a category, but a lot of people do. But on top of that, a lot of backpacks were too hot. They were They would rub you, they would wouldn't carry the right things in the right places. And so after many years of adventure racing and staring at my teammates' backs, I just had this idea from watching how a back moves on a body

in and how the upper piece of the back is more stable than the middle and the lower piece. And I thought, "Man, if I just build a water bottle-based pack, something simple during a marathon or a triathlon or road training or just your standard lunchtime run, I could have a water bottle and my phone, nutrition, keys, wallet, maybe cash for a beer garden after a race, whatever." And that's all I wanted. It was simple. And so, so one night after a training run, this wasn't long after I just finished my second Ironman and, and really hated a lot of the

long runs just because I didn't like to carry stuff, I went into my garage and I destroyed a gun holster, a ratchet strap from the back of my truck. a tie-down ⁓ a ⁓ I well I So I took the gun holster piece which was like the back cross member and then I took the ratchet straps to go through that and then a waste pack for the bottle holder and then hotel room sewing kit is what the pieces were and then I sewed together that crude concept and I still have it and it looks absolutely terrible.

⁓ Red straps, black deal. And I think I had like purple thread or whatever it was that was on the free kit from a hotel. And, and I went out and went for a run and and I came back. I said, "Hey, this worked really cool." I told my wife, I said, we're "We're gonna have two backpacks worth twenty five thousand dollars each." 'Cause it's probably gonna cost at least fifty grand. And I was like, "Worst case we're gonna have two backpacks worth twenty five thousand each. And best case, we can start a brand." And that's how it all came about. You know, from there it took.

Dalton Anderson (02:17) Mm-hmm.

Josh (02:45) That's really only, that was the easy part. There's the easiest part of starting everything. And it's still the easiest part to this day. Everything else has always been hard. It's like finding people to make it, making it actually look like it's worth more than a nickel. You know, cause it it looked pretty crude at the time. But, ⁓ but yeah, 14 years later, we, we celebrated 14 years as of January this year, ⁓ since the inception. And ⁓ yeah, we're still kicking it and going full throttle.

Dalton Anderson (03:12) Which is a great accomplishment, ⁓ to say the least. Like from, from prototype garage to brand to the longevity of the brand, and it's, it's known and respected in the I think the ultra space, like any like ultra endurance type of space, is it's like one of the first or you know, second or like at least top five for sure on the list of everybody. Like I think legitimately always in conversation for a top three, I think, for suggestions of

Josh (03:13) Crazy. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. I appreciate it.

Dalton Anderson (03:41) different products and they're always in the running. Yeah. So which is, which is really cool. If for people who don't know what an Ironman is, what is that? I I just like this It's the craziest race. I mean now there's Ultra Ironmans, but like for normal Ironman, like what, what is that?

Josh (03:42) Yeah, we try. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

So yeah, Ironman. is a ⁓ The start is a a four thousand meter or two point four mile swim. And then it's a hundred and was it hundred and twelve mile bike? And then a twenty six point two mile run afterwards. And ⁓ all in succession. And, ⁓ and it's, it's you know It's strange because it's, it's a discipline that, that ⁓ I have a love-hate relationship with because

ultimately, that was like a training day to us when we were doing adventure races. We'd go way longer than this. You know, we'd race for a day or days on end. And so like when I signed up to do an Ironman, I told my, my buddy, who was who's one of my teammates, I was like, "I, I don't want to do this. I don't like roads. I like dirt." You know, I mean I like dirt roads, but I don't, I don't like pavement. And I didn't know how to swim very well when I did my first Ironman. And so I had to go get coaches to dial in ⁓ swimming fitness and

and I've always ran a lot, but I'm really never, I've never really been a good runner. I just run and I don't even know why I run. I don't even really like it, but I I still do it all time. ⁓ And so you know, I got running coaches to understand, "Yeah, there's a reason why you typically hurt your foot because you're you're basically running like a Clydesdale and not efficient." And so cycling is my, is my beast and I've always done really well with. but ⁓ but the the tri The sport of Ironman, of triathlon, in general is, is complicated because you start in, in a, you know, this

flat position, right? You're swimming. And then and you're hunched over swimming for, for most mere mortals, you're roughly an hour and a half. And then, then all of a sudden you get up on your bike and then your, your belly's in this hunched position. You know, you're in the arrow position as long as humanly possible in arrow bars and, and trying to be as efficient as possible to glide through that. And that's, you know, six and a half hours or whatever. And then you enter the suck zone, which is the run. And almost everybody, even if you're a good runner, hates the suck zone. And that is,

it's just gonna hurt because then you stand up. And that's when your belly normally says, "You know what? I don't like you because you were this way and then this way and now you're this way." And once you stand up and you start to run, your, your belly, your gut usually is like, "You're gonna throw up at some point today." If you're, if you're, if you're lucky. And otherwise you might just be sick. But it's, it's a hard discipline to get nutrition to comply with. And, and then the other piece of that.

Dalton Anderson (06:08) man.

Josh (06:18) And and it I mean Tying even Orange Mud into it, ⁓ I I was always frustrated that, that I I wanted to carry my own nutrition's, you know, nutrition strategy. I didn't want to drink the water on the course. I have it most Most of us that do, you know, have done Ironman, you you you become disciplined because it's such a beast and you want to do well. And so you you have this nutrition strategy you want to execute. You have this business plan, if you will, for for the for the race. But then all of a sudden you go into race day and you're like, "Yeah, I guess we'll just drink water on course and eat gummy bears at the aid station." And

And that is what makes a lot of things go sideways. And And so that's why I was like, "Well, if I could, if I could have a bottle-based pack that's itty bitty and I could carry my own nutrition supply and I just can drink from my 24 ounce water bottle, I only need to refill three, maybe four times in a run. And and I can put in my exact hydration strategy and I can hopefully have a gut that complies and is happy with me ⁓ all the way to the finish."

And so that's where, where I where I built this pack, but, but it's you know, tying it all together. That's ⁓ the the gist of an Ironman is is a long day.

Dalton Anderson (07:23) Yeah, that sounds brutal. Sidebar while you're talking about the nutrition and trying out different things like the day of the race, like the gummy bears or somebody else's water, I was thinking about a buddy who was running like a marathon or maybe a marathon like half marathon and they had different nutrition packs like the day before the race. And I was telling him, like, "You're better off just not doing it at all. If you don't know, just don't do it." And then he wind up just taking

Josh (07:32) Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, no. No, not good.

Dalton Anderson (07:50) puking during the race and he messed up his all his training and it was just like, Yeah, if you don't know, don't do it." Especially like you train for ultras like ⁓ an Ironman or any like ultra marathon. Like that's some serious discipline and training. Just to leave it up to like an unknown the day of is, is not a good, not a good decision.

Josh (07:51) Yeah.

It's brutal.

Yeah.

And especially nutrition. Nutrition is the one thing that like I'm, I'm not afraid to test, you know, a new pair of socks, maybe, you know, or a new backpack or a new t-shirt or something. Sure, I might bleed a little bit or whatever, but, but nutrition is the one thing I don't mess with. You know, I am, I am a scientist. When it comes to that, I know exactly what I'm going to do and I don't mess with it. And it's just, it's the one thing most of us struggle with in endurance sports. You know, anybody can do stuff.

Two or three hours. ⁓ But once you cross that two or three hour barrier, that's when your body starts to, to say, "I don't like what you did, and I'm gonna punish you." I I did a half Ironman ⁓ once where I literally threw up every, I tried to throw up every couple hundred meters for the whole entire thirteen point one miles. The whole thing. A buddy of my I finally sat down. I had a buddy of mine run past me and he's like, "Sprague, you okay?" I'm like, "No, no, I

I just need throw up." I put my fingers so far down my throat. I'm like, "Please just throw up for Christ's sakes." And I couldn't. And, and I tried a new hydration mix prior to that race. And this was a long time ago. It's probably 20 years ago. And, ⁓ and he's like, "You're really pale." I'm like, "I know, like I feel terrible." But it was, it was absolutely worst, man. But you know, I tried this hydration mix at the expo before the event, and I was like, "Man, that tastes great." It was this cherry flavor. And I, I thought, "Man, this is gonna be amazing."

And then yeah, it wasn't. Yeah, it was, it was really bad. Yeah, it's like 2006, it's twenty years ago. Yeah, it's 2006.

Dalton Anderson (09:40) Yeah.

These

things need to be battle tested, just like Orange Mud. And talking about how you tested that against athletes when you're like developing products, I think that maybe that's an interesting conversation. Just, just talk us through like how do you go through testing of a new bag?

Josh (09:45) Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Sure. Yeah, well, in the beginning, so what one thing I found to be the consistent truth is that about three hours is in is the minimum I would ever ⁓ ever run in a new design. And before I would say that pack is good. And, and the reason why, ⁓ well, I can't explain the the the mechanics of it. It's just, I don't know, it's just always been what I've noticed. But, but in, in testing, you know, I always go and I test, test, test, test, test, right? And the first day, this first step is stability.

That's where our packs are just very different than everybody. The way I anchor them to a body, they're always stable. And that's the number one thing to me in a backpack. It really isn't much more complicated. You've got a bunch of fluid, you've got a bunch of stuff. Make sure stuff and fluid doesn't move. It's that simple. And so since the very beginning, that's always been my premise. Let's lock it onto your body and make it rock solid. So going for a run though, what ends up happening is that, you know, I, I've had plenty of packs where I go for an hour run and I'm thinking, "Wow, this is really cool." And I'm really excited about my design. "Oh,

nice, I got this." And then, you know, the next weekend maybe I'll do a two-hour run. And then all of a sudden I'll do a three, four, five, six hour run. And it's, it's at the three hour point is when you find out whether that pack's gonna work or not. And, and I found weird things. Sometimes it's not like the pack breaks. I mean, I've always overbuilt my packs to where they're not gonna fail, but, but like I had one pack I worked on for two years and and this one which worked great up to about two hours, in three hours it had kind of a pressure point right here, somewhere in like my upper shoulder somewhere.

I just didn't like how it fit. And and I It really bummed me out I actually to a point where I was so frustrated with the design after working so long, I actually stopped working on it for like four months and then came back. I don't know, I think on a mountain bike ride, I came up with the idea and I came back months later and then completely redid the whole thing from scratch. It ended up being an entirely different product. But, but it's, it's where ⁓ you you have to do things for a long period of time in order in order to find out if they're gonna work for you.

Just like it, it's like a pair of, you know, shoes. It's the same thing. You can wear a pair of shoes for a little bit and it's gonna be fine. But you wear a pair of shoes all day long, even for three or four hours, and you're gonna find out are they gonna hold up and are your feet going to be happy with how they how they perform? ⁓ But backpacks are the same thing you have to push to an endurance level. And then ⁓ so I I am I I am kind of the universal sort of source of truth before anything ever goes to production.

⁓ I do test it on other people, but ⁓ I I I have learned that my body type is kind of this perfect middle ground that, that just seems to work well with a lot of people. I know the certain type of people that are the big, tall, lanky guys that have really broad, bony shoulders. I know they're problematic. And so there's certain little adjustments I have to make. Or with women

that have large breasts or artificial breasts are actually, I tell people all the time, like I think of boobs all the time when I design things. And it and, I don't mean that in a perverted way. It's like I have to because it's fairly easy to design something for a guy. But for women, ⁓ regular breasts normally, you know, non-artificial breasts are usually not an issue, but all of a sudden you have an implant and now they're much more firm and it kicks the backpack chest pockets up, and then it makes everything ride poorly. So there's little design considerations like that, that, ⁓ that I've learned how the

fit needs to go to be able to comply with various body types. And so I use myself as a basis to find neutrality, but then I, I adjust for these given learning periods that we've got from feedback.

Dalton Anderson (13:24)

I heard a couple things in, in your walkthrough of how you go through testing. So the first thing is I just want to acknowledge how insane it is just like casually going on three to five hour runs. Like for the, for the casual listener and then and then ⁓ 'cause I Yeah, yeah, 'cause I've never ran that far and ⁓ I'm not an, and I'm not an ultra runner, but I you know, I could go out and run a twenty mile run, no problem, and go work out later that day. That, that's great. But like,

Josh (13:37) Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah, you forget sometimes, but yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Dalton Anderson (13:54) once you go past that and you're like, "Okay, now I'm gonna run fifty miles," it's like "Okay, well that that's a different ball game." Just to do that casually, like not a race. Just like, "Okay, I'm gonna go see you, sweetie. I'm, I'm out, I'll be back. I'll be back in six hours."

Josh (13:58) Yeah.

Yeah.

in it and I've done so much stupid stuff over the years that ⁓ I sometimes forget. But you know the, the neat part, like my, my son is fourteen and I just took him on a man trip with us to, to Moab and we did five days of mountain biking up there with my buddies and, and you know in one of the days we did a forty eight mile mountain bike ride and and I was like, "You gonna be good with this?" And he's like, "Yeah, yeah, probably."

Dalton Anderson (14:19) Mm-hmm.

Josh (14:32) Because he doesn't know better. That's the beautiful part. When you're a kid, you don't know better. Us adults, we say, "God, it's three hours. There's no way I can do that." You can't. You just have to do it. You know, it's, it's like the first time you run. I I remember in cross country in high school, my coach was like, "You know, here we'd run three, five, six, eight miles, whatever." And then one day he's like, "I'm gonna take you guys out in the country and drop you off, and you, you have to run back." I'm like, "Well, how far are we gonna go?" He's like, "15 miles." And I remember thinking,

"There's no way. This sounds absolutely terrible. There's no way I can do this." And we did, and it wasn't a big deal. And ⁓ but to the flip side, you know, now I look back and it's like I've ran up to 100 miles. I biked up to over 700 mile races. And you know, it's, it's just it's just something I don't worry about. But it's, it's just what you get comfortable with. You're always pushing, right? And that's what a lot of people do. ⁓ But, but again, it's back to the point of the kids, it's, it's neat because

Dalton Anderson (15:03) Crazy, yeah.

Josh (15:29) an adult we lock into "I've only done this, therefore that's my limit." A kid's like, "I don't know what my limit is. Yeah, sure, whatnot. I'll, I'll go, I'll go do, you know, something stupid." But ⁓ yeah, I like to push.

Dalton Anderson (15:39) Everybody's

limitless if you think you are. I think that's the...

Josh (15:42) You

truly

are. All you need, I tell everybody this, "All you need is calories and sodium and you can do, you can do anything."

Dalton Anderson (15:49) I don't know the quote is, but it's like, I "I think so I am." I I don't know who that's by, but I know that's by it's not it's not me. I didn't say that. Yeah. But the other thing that I I thought was interesting that you said was when you spoke about, "Hey, I was working on something intensely for some time and I just, it didn't turn out the way I want it to. I just took a break and I came back." Like that's that's important to realize for other people in this conversation that might be listening, is like

Josh (15:52) Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, sure. Yep.

Mm-hmm.

Dalton Anderson (16:19) When do you when do you know you gotta take a break and just like, you what? "I'm gonna put this out of my mind for two months and then I'll come back. Like I've I've lost the rights right now. I've just gotta relinquish this responsibility for now and circle back."

Josh (16:25) Yep. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, the what I I've designed, I mean, I've designed a lot of stuff. I'm not sure. You know, just with Orange Mud, I've probably designed 200 things, I guess. I don't know. It's, it's been a lot. But ⁓ one thing I've consistently found is that only once have I ever designed something where I visualized it and then it worked. And it was so cool. It was awesome.

I watched a Star Wars movie with my son, and I came out of the theater. I was like, "Buddy, I'm gonna make the coolest damn pack on the planet. This is gonna be awesome." And I did, and it the first prototype was awesome. I was so excited. Only time that's ever worked. And, and it was so weird. I saw like a pin pocket on a shoulder and it somehow translated to this whole backpack. Anyway, normally it's 10 months for is what it takes me. And normally with designs, I I hit a I I can always get to 90%. It's really, it's easy. That's, that's like,

Dalton Anderson (17:13) Mm.

Josh (17:24) you know, one-on-one little stuff. It's that last 10% is absolutely brutal. And every single time I hit a point of impasse, with exception of the one except for the one PFB I designed, but one pack. But ⁓ every time, I hit a point of impasse that I don't feel I can get past. But because I've done it's just like endurance racing, because I know I've done it before, I know I can do it again. So I keep pushing and, and eventually I keep test, test, test, test, test, and then

sometimes I just hit a point I run out of ideas. And then I'm like, "All right, well, I gotta take a break and I'll come back to this when I come back to it." And, and then it just comes to how bad do I want it? And, and which is normally like in the next week, you know, or the next few days. But, ⁓ but there's many, many, many of nights that I have been up designing until two, three, four in the morning. And it's usually at like four a.m. I'm like, "There it is. I got it." I may not, once I figure it out,

Dalton Anderson (17:56) Mm-hmm.

There it is.

Josh (18:19) I may not go and complete it because it may take just too much work, but I'll I once you're in it and you're spun up, your brain is spinning and it's working through all the little problems. Once you figure it out, then it's like, "Okay, let's make all these notes and go figure it." But But a lot of times, like I have a pack right now, I've been working on it. It's a waist belt. My running waistbelt, I worked on for off and on for like 10 years. And I finally launched it a year and a half ago. And, and it's awesome, it's truly awesome. I literally started this brand because I hated

Dalton Anderson (18:22) That's

Josh (18:49) waistbelts and handhelds. Now I have two handhelds and one running waistbelt, and I genuinely believe they are better than everybody else's in the market when it comes to stability, performance, function, durability. ⁓ I love them. ⁓ And I do frequently run in my waistbelt. But my mountain bike waistbelt, I thought I'm gonna build off this same pattern. This will be cool. And people always ask about waistbelts for mountain bike, and I'm like, "You realize it's an illogical category of putting projected mass at, you know, coming off your butt."

And when you're mountain biking, it's going and it's, it's trailing at an angle that doesn't make sense. It it's just It's just off. But I thought, maybe, maybe I can stabilize it. And so I have built something that looks awesome. I use it hunting, hiking, I love it, but it sucks for mountain biking. Just like every other pack that I've tested in that same category. It sucks. And so it's like, "Sure, I got a cool fanny pack," which is also funny that you know, I grew up, I'm

older than you and and like it when even when I was a kid, fanny packs I thought were terrible and but then they went out of style which I thought was great and then now they're back in kind of in style and and now I'm like it's funny that I'm wearing a fanny pack. Like I'm embarrassed in the woods hunting by myself wearing a fanny pack, even though it looks awesome. So this one I, I don't know how I'm gonna solve it. ⁓ I am planning a ⁓ a fifty-ish mile mountain bike ride on Saturday for my birthday and

And and usually most of my problem solving happens on my endurance mountain bike rides or gravel bike rides. So I'm hoping I may solve it on Saturday. I won't be wearing the pack because it sucks right now. But I'll be wearing a different pack that I love ⁓ of mine. But but ⁓ But yeah, most things only work in the, in the free state of thinking, which is usually of only one of two, one of three places, usually on a bike ride, on a run, more often on the bike ride. And ⁓ And then the third is like

when I'm in my backyard in the morning having coffee and looking at the birds. That's about it.

Dalton Anderson (20:46) To

where you don't really have anything going on. It's, it's therapeutic. It's It has a a meditative space to it. And that's just where you can let your mind just go free and then it just solves whatever your subconscious wants to solve. And in, in this case it might be the mountain biking pack or it might be some kind of, I don't know, kids' conflict. I

Josh (20:50) Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Dalton Anderson (21:13) Whoever, whatever's going on in that person's mind, but it gives your opportun your mind the opportunity to wander versus having a strict, rigid approach, which I think is more beneficial. And the other thing that you said that was pretty funny was when you're like, "Yeah, I might figure it out at 4 a.m., but ⁓ that might take too long for me to do it then. So it's it I just take some notes down and I like to say that's for Dalton for tomorrow. And so for you, it's like that's that's that's tomorrow's draw.

Josh (21:15) Sure.

Exactly.

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Yeah.

Dalton Anderson (21:42) Josh with tomorrow's problem, not mine. Going to bed. Yeah.

Josh (21:43)

No, I I do lo I love it when I figure things out because then I can sleep. Otherwise I go to bed and I can't sleep and that sucks. But but I if I If I figure it out when it's late, then it is neat because it's like, "I know how to do this tomorrow. And if I go to sleep now, I'm gonna sleep and then I'm gonna wake up more refreshed and I may make it even better because I at least have the solution." But, but yeah, the, the designing part, man, it is brutal. You know, innovation is,

It's ⁓ it's fun. But you know, I I I work really hard on doing everything my way rather than trying to copy what somebody else is doing. For better or for worse. I mean, there's times where I'm like, "I should just buy this other brand's pack and then make some adjustments to it, you know." But I I don't wanna I don't wanna get locked into whatever their design premise is, you know. I, I don't wanna A steal somebody's IP, but some of it's like it's backpacking.

backpack. But, but even so, I, I want to innovate for what it is that makes sense. And so ⁓ it's, it's the reason why I like to kind of suffer through things. Yeah.

Dalton Anderson (22:50)

So talk about pain. You have an embroidery company, right? Seven Clay. Why did that come about?

Josh (22:56)

Sure. Yeah, because I I It's kind of like Orange Mud, it was "Innovation out of frustration" was our tagline ⁓ and with, with Seven Clay, we have a different tagline, it's making it make an impact, but, but the the real root of it should be "Competition sucks, let's hurt them." And because that really should be my tagline. ⁓ When we had I have a product called the Transition Wrap. It's a changing talent seat cover.

So it goes over your seat in your car, and we embroider club and team and store logos on the headrest of it. And we've, we've embroidered hundreds of thousands of units. I don't know how many at this point, but a lot. And, And I had used numerous embroidery companies over the years. And I often argued with them. I'm like, "I don't understand why. Can't you trim the threads on these dang things?" You know, because I had, it was always a job for someone at my company, myself included, has been a part of this ⁓

of going in and trimming loose threads and burning all the loose threads. Cause I, I just we have a zero tolerance to no, we we have a zero tolerance to, to bad quality. And,

Dalton Anderson (23:57) Yeah, that's just not a good look. Yeah.

So l little things as you're saying. It's like the little attention to details, like the care of the product and the pride of craftsmanship.

Josh (24:21) there's hundreds of them around the country and and we've been making product for them for years and and and I've used three different embroidery shops over the time. And every time I'm like, "Man, there's no way you can increase the the thickness." I didn't know what to call it at the time, but I'm like, you know, the kind of like, "I just don't want to see the towel through it. It's like white thread, it's very basic text and everything." And, and so they would they would tell me like, "No, no, you don't understand." I'm like, "But what I don't what why? I mean, it's just like a needle and threads going back and forth. Can't you like make them kind of tighter?"

Dalton Anderson (24:23) Yeah, they're huge.

Josh (24:50) And they're like, "No, you don't understand." And so when we moved our business to Texas in July of 19, in June of 19, ⁓ I had tried to outsource and I had a lot of work at the time ⁓ to outsource, and I really struggled to get anybody to do my work. And, and I end up having a guy that he's like, Yeah, he's like, "I'll talk my wife into doing these for you." I'm like, "What are you talking her into?" I'm like, "I'm paying you guys for this. It's not like I'm asking you to do free work." I'm like,

Dalton Anderson (25:16) Yeah.

Josh (25:16) "What are

you

talking about?" Like I am outsourcing a lot of value. You know, I I Orange Mud would be a top customer in almost any embroidery shop, to put it in that perspective. And so I couldn't believe that I couldn't get a lot of these ⁓ people to work with us. It just blew my mind. It made me very angry because I did not need another business. And ⁓ but it was I just, I hit a breaking point one day where I was not happy with the quality.

And, and I spent fifty-eight thousand dollars that day on a an embroidery machine. I came home, told my wife, I said, "Hey, I bought an embroidery machine, it's gonna be here in a couple weeks." And ⁓ I My goal is to hurt the local competition. That's my sole goal. I want to put them out of business. And we've had three different shops around us go out of business, which good riddance. they're idiots. I was trying to give people work, and most of these people, they wouldn't call you back, they wouldn't answer the phones, they wouldn't answer their emails. And even if I did work with them, their quality sucked. And, and so ⁓

Yeah, all these years later, it's, it's comical because we quickly ended up adding another machine, bigger, fancier machine, more expensive machine. And then we added another of that same machine. And then And then people were like, "Well, hey, do you have ⁓ can you do leather patches?" I'm like, "Yeah, I mean, probably." Yeah, yeah, that's a place in order. And then I bought a machine and then now I have three laser machines. And then people are like, "Well, can you screen print?" "Yeah, yeah, probably." And then next thing you know, we bought screen printing and sublimation and all this stuff. And, and now I mean we even have full custom cut and sew in shop

that we do and select projects, but we do, you know, medical device stuff and, and you know commercial stuff and and whatever. And so it's it's it's funny how that business has evolved. And it was actually, it became bigger, it took off like a rocket ship and it became bigger than Orange Mud by year three. And it's all simply because we are better than most people out there. There there's and and and let and I don't mean to say this in a conceited way, because I need I do need to clarify that

We were better than any of the shops I outsourced to by day two. And And the reason why is because I reached out to my digitizer and I said, "Hey, I just want this to be more dense than this. Can you do this?" And he's like, "Well, Josh, that cycle time is gonna go from two minutes to three minutes and 20 seconds." And I was like, "It takes me five minutes to load the machine. So it can run in five minutes and that's fine." And And he's like, "Okay, sure. Here you go." Boom, fixed.

That was it. It wasn't because I was a genius. It's just because I asked a question and I refused to accept some crap. Right. And and And that's the way everybody in my organization operates. We're, we're still the same ⁓ as we were in the very beginning of, you know, crap doesn't work. You know, it just needs to be good. And And even like with my lasers, ⁓ I only bought that because I was outsourcing leather patches to these big this big ⁓ patch company, leather patch company. And, and

I had a I got into an argument with, with them on a simple patch for a a client of ours that became a friend of mine. And And I was like, "Man, can't you just use like different levels of light? I want two different levels. This part, one level, and this part, you know, a more intense beam." And they're like, "No, you don't understand." I'm like, "Okay." I literally had done a better job than they did in 24 hours of having my machine. And I knew nothing, like nothing about lasers. And it just goes to show,

If if I can be smarter than somebody else within 24 hours, the bar is low in this industry. It really is. People are just lazy. And it has been easy to be the best, especially now that we actually know what we're doing. Like before we didn't even know what we were doing. We were just kind of working on it and documenting the process and trial and error and recording everything and and and constantly making improvements. And and it's just, You know, it just kept going. So

So yeah, it's It's a fun business and. and attention to detail, is is really the ⁓ it's just something that I've always been a giant stickler on. Anyone that's ever worked for me knows that I have a like, that's what we do. There's a There's a no tolerance to it. But it's, it's easy to do good if you just try. It really is. It's just like anything. Like I said, you you want to run a marathon, you can go do it tomorrow. It may hurt you, but you can do it tomorrow if you just try. You know? Yeah.

Dalton Anderson (29:29) It may hurt a lot. It may hurt

a lot.

Josh (29:32) Yeah, it may hurt a whole lot, as a matter of fact, but you know, you're gonna be happy once you did it. You just have to put your mind to it. You just have to try. But it's no different everything that we've done in this business. And and ⁓ and yeah, We work with some of the biggest brands in the industry. We've done, you know, custom work for Red Bull and and ⁓ I mean, we've done some really cool stuff and with giant brands, and we're, you know, very thankful to have built, you know, such a fun enterprise.

Dalton Anderson (29:58) That's awesome. The thing that catches catches my ear during during that whole background about Seven Clay was it's a theme, consistent theme, but for some reason it's just not caught wind the way that it should. But your customer is your best place of feedback. So if your customer is saying, "Hey, I need these to be denser," like the real response should have been, "Of course, we'll figure it out."

Josh (30:13) Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Dalton Anderson (30:25) We'll we'll we'll We'll figure it out. You've got enough order volume with this other thing, then like with Orange Mud, we can figure it out. Maybe, maybe we might need a new machine, but let's, let's look into it. That's a valid concern. And we can figure out these extra threats. That we can get that squared away. And when it gets to you, they won't be there. And how how it happens behind the scenes is none of your business. So they they might have somebody.

Josh (30:38) Yeah.

Dalton Anderson (30:50) That might be the person's son or daughter just cutting threads after it's done before it goes to you. But for you, it's finished product. And you're like, you're happy with it. It's denser, the threads are loose, then there's no more loose threads. That's what should have happened. And then maybe they can make it work over time and they can improve the product, buy a new machine, whatever it may be. But in if you just say "No," it's like, "Well,

Josh (30:53) Sure.

Yep.

Exactly.

Dalton Anderson (31:15) I felt what I was saying was reasonable." This is a reasonable ask in, in your mind in that scenario. And if the answer is no, and the next person's answer is no, well, it's like, "Well, this is something I need to do." So then you forced, you like basically forced your hand to do something you really didn't want to do, because you you were fine with not having a business. But it worked it with another one. But it worked out to where the the business grew and you also have a a pretty good clientele with, with Orange Mud, right? Like where you you could you could also

Josh (31:20) Yeah.

No.

Yeah.

Dalton Anderson (31:45) be more aggressive on innovation when it comes to like the usage of the machines or prototyping because you already had material and you, you were your own client and and obviously that had grown over time, but I think you're able to innovate faster when you are your first customer or customer zero is how I like to say it. So those are, there's only two, three recurring themes like throughout guests that are on the show is one, your customer is your best place of feedback. Two,

Josh (31:55) Mm-hmm.

Yeah, for sure.

Dalton Anderson (32:15) if you are customer zero, then you have a like a critical advantage. And that was your scenario for both companies that you'd built. Like you were your first customer for Orange Mud because you were just completely just frustrated. And then the second, second company, Seven Clay, was also your first customer.

Josh (32:23) Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, true. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. I never thought of it like that, but you're right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean ultimately you gotta I, I think it boils down to the the same premise, premise in many things in life. You know, there's so many things that we do to make other people happy, but ultimately you need to make yourself happy first. And if you do that, you can make more people happy. Right. And and so yeah, On my side, I just wanted to sleep at night, just knowing that it everything that I'm doing is, is making me a happy person. And and ⁓ And then if

we apply that same methodology to every single customer that we work with, then everybody's happy. So yeah, yeah, it's it's not hard to be It's not hard to have a good business. It's not hard it's not hard to get customers if you do things right the right way. Maybe hard to grow a business and maybe hard to find the customers, right? But, ⁓ but it's it's easy to keep customers as long as you, you know, do everything as if you would to do for yourself.

Dalton Anderson (33:27) Yeah, I think that's fair. With this extra capacity of new companies and the innovation of LLMs and AI, I was pretty impressed with our conversation outside of the podcast about your workflow and how you use Cowork with Claude. And I think that's important to note on like with this new technology, you're able to do more with less without reducing the quality and without compression loss of

Josh (33:32) Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Dalton Anderson (33:56) I would say somewhat sometimes it's automated, sometimes it's a manual run, but really just wrapping the listener's head around like, "Hey, now I've got these companies been running for some time. This new technology has given me an opportunity to innovate and spend more time on what I think are more important things like the company might be designing, prototyping, testing versus more of these administrative pieces where less of my time is going towards that and I'm going towards things that I think are more

Josh (34:15) Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Dalton Anderson (34:26) leverage activities for the business."

Josh (34:28) Sure. Yeah. I mean, I I've been using Cloud Cowork for I don't know, probably since roughly since the beginning of the year. ⁓ I think, maybe a little before then. And ⁓ you know, it, it's in and to, to those that don't know, because there's, there's still incredible amount of people I talk to where I'm like, "Are you using "Are you using AI in your business?" And like, "Yeah, I use it." I'm like, "What do you use it?" And they're like, "Well, I use you Gemini," or whatever. I'm like, "That's great." But most people use it as a chat tool. It's like, you know, what,

"What's the life of a butterfly?" You know, stuff like that, and which is fantastic. And I love it for stuff like that. But ⁓ Cloud Cowork to me is, is what is the greatest innovation that I have found ever in my entire career ⁓ because it can run autonomously. ⁓ It can run on a program, it and it and it's organization in terms of project management, is what's cool. So I have in mine, I have, I have many accounts that I've managed between

my own business and and some others I manage with, with Google ads and Facebook ads and Meta ads and Microsoft or Microsoft ads and Amazon ads and, and then of course the analytics and the setup and every the configuration and and even CRO and SEO and, and what not whatnot opportunities. So you I I break it into projects and then I put in all the parameters, the sources of truth, you know, with things that need to be cross-checked because Facebook often lies and Google often lies with attribution

⁓ or whatever they got a loose definition of attribution and so I like to have a server-side attribution so what I do is I tell Cowork, I said "Hey, here is my like Google for example. Here is my Google Ads account. Here's my Google Analytics account," and I spell out the account numbers. So there's no cross up. Now most people may not have this problem, but me managing a lot of businesses, it can get crazy. So, so I I give it all this data so there's no confusion. No matter what, there's no confusion. And I say this, this, you know, reference Google's data

and cross-reference my server-side attribution to insert ensure that the server is the source of truth and ensure that Google's data is matching that as close as possible. If you discover problems with that, attribution's wrong, programming's wrong, right? The backend of Google is not set up right. Meta, same thing. And, and then of course, dig into my campaigns, but you know, I I've I and I I continue to re revolve evolve this, but but I, I specify, "Don't tell me what campaigns are doing well.

Tell me what campaign, ad set, ad, how they're doing." Because it may not be a campaign that's doing bad. It's an ad in the campaign that's doing bad. Or it's an ad set in the campaign that's doing bad, whatever. And so you can program this to where it automatically runs on whatever schedule you want. And what for me, normally that's me going there and clicking around and wasting my life in reports. And honestly, half the time it's, it's calculating the amounts of data that is too great. And with Claude, I can say, Go in and tell me what's working."

I did this yesterday and I do this weekly. But ⁓ tell me what's working and what I'm doing really well. And because I want to learn from what I'm doing really well, right? And, and it's easy sometimes like, "That's positive attribution. Great, positive, bro. That's great, I like it." But why? And so I like to have it tell me what I'm doing well so I can learn from that and, and further push that throttle forward, but then tell me where I what I'm failing at and what I need to improve, ⁓ and then obviously identify any

things that are failing in terms of the analytics and the measurement tool. I care greatly about the measurement because if you don't have the proper measurement ⁓ set up, then you're going to fail. And so it, it reviews this weekly ⁓ and even checking links to make sure all links are working. I don't think most people realize how many broken links there are in ad campaigns. And I see it a lot from

I'll see something neat on the web where it's the company that should know what they're doing. Like they should, they're so big that they shouldn't have problems. And you click their link and it's broken, you're like, it makes me feel better. I'm like, "If that guy is having problems, then I am a freaking genius, you know?" Because it's like if you see a Coca-Cola as a broken link, you know, like that's not good. But but ⁓ But this is where where AI opens up the door to do so many things greater, or even like before our call this morning, I have a new product that I'm launching.

Dalton Anderson (38:31) Mm-hmm.

Josh (38:47) it's a it's It's real fancy. It's a seatbelt cover, but it's really cool. It's a magnetic seatbelt cover. It's right here and it's actually launching next week. There's only handful of people have even seen it. ⁓ So it's just kind of a basic, you know, nothing fancy, you know, thing, but it's complimenting one of our other products, and we've had people ask for this forever. So ⁓ I went in and I took pictures, no kidding, here on my floor in in my office ⁓ with my iPhone.

Dalton Anderson (38:56) wow.

Josh (39:14) I didn't bust out my prograde equipment. I didn't send it to a lab. I took a picture on the wood floor and then I said, "Hey, wipe the background, format square, ⁓ give me high-res images." Boom. Claude came up with that. I'm like, "Hey, good job. You did a good job filtering that. Okay, now I want you to create me A plus content for Amazon and Shopify ⁓ pictures, as well as build out the product listings for me. Here's the UPC and the SKU."

And, and then I of course gave it the parameters of "Here are the key core functions of the product and, and the key, everything." And all of a sudden it created hard pressed to know that the people that were that have it modeled on them on a seat weren't real. It was actually pretty cool. Where sometimes AI is like, "That's definitely AI." This, this is if you're in a studio getting a good program, you could it would be it would be similar to this. So

this created what would normally have been me monkeying around listing by listing. It went and did it all in about 20 minutes while I was doing other stuff. While I was having some coffee. So this is where the, the limits of it, they're only getting started, but they're and they're, they're only improving. And there's a lot of tools out there that are, I believe, leveraging Claude because I'm testing two different champ, two different tools. I just shut one down that operate out of Slack.

To be able to run your PPC campaigns and to be able to create stuff like this. And I'm running all I've been running all three side by side, ⁓ Claude and then these two other Slack tools ⁓ that manage PPC. I get damn near the same results. Of course they're slightly variant, but, but I almost get the same results. And again, Claude's cheaper. I mean it's only like a hundred bucks a month for, for the plan that I have. So man, there are there's There's so much you can do, and even just I use it for, you know, scouting for ⁓

for fraud. It's one of the fun things in business. There's always somebody trying to steal money from you and and especially with credit cards and hacking there. So I have it run a monthly analysis of my credit card transactions just to look for reoccurring that is outside the norm or new transactions outside the norm. ⁓ I'm even using it for inventory reduction because inventory management systems suck really for B2C ⁓ consumer, you know, products like mine. And so it's, it's truly endless with what you can do.

Dalton Anderson (41:39) But all that stuff you're talking about, that would be super expensive to do. Okay, so if you're managing all these accounts for ads, like you're talking about like paying multiple thousands of dollars a month for these ad campaigns and managing it all. Then you're talking about some kind of inventory system. That's, I mean, probably with the volume you're doing, it it's a it's at least over, over ⁓ five thousand dollars a month or something to manage all that. So you What you're really you're saying is like

Josh (41:50) Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

A lot. Just a lot in that.

Yeah.

Dalton Anderson (42:08) This is This is like a hundred thousand dollars potentially of like savings that you're talking about throughout this like Cowork workflow that you have. And it's hands-free-ish, you know, it's, it's hands-on when hands-on keyboard when you want it to be, but you could schedule it. And I think that's a big, big deal because you're getting a lot of leverage from this tool for you said a hundred dollars a month, so it's twelve hundred dollars. For twelve hundred dollars, you're getting

Josh (42:15) Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Dalton Anderson (42:37) A massive ROI and it, it allows you to have a lot more free time with either things that you want to work on at the company or things that you want to do in your life. Like if you want to go walk, and then you can also hook up Cowork to your phone. And then so you can you can be on a mountain bike thing, take a break, have a water, kick off a whole bunch of jobs, go mountain bike for a couple hours, and then come back when you get home, everything's already done. Which is cr like.

Josh (42:39) yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yep.

Yeah.

Dalton Anderson (43:06) I love that because I always get I I'm at this place right now where I feel guilty if like my chat GPT isn't running. Like I use Codex, so it's similar to to Cowork. But if it's not running, it's like, I I'm missing out on all these on these, on these hours. Like it should be running. I should be more efficient. Like this, this should be running. There's gonna be one thing running. Why is it not running? And I'm like trying, trying to make sure.

Josh (43:13) Yeah.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

I'm with ya. Yep.

That

is a cool feature, man. The only thing I don't like, so what you're talking about in relation to Claude is what's called Dispatch. And DIspatch is you can use ⁓ a terminal from anywhere to communicate with the terminal that runs most of your operations. And so it's the one thing I don't like about Cowork is that ⁓ with Claude is that it's isolated per computer, which I think is strange. And so like I have cloak Cowork my laptop.

And it has some of its own parameters that it does. But then I have Cowork my Mac and this is my kind of my beast that I drive things. But yeah, from my phone, I can be on a mountain bike ride and I'll be like, "Hey, ⁓ Claude, what's up with the task running on Meta with Orange Mud right now?" And it'll be like, "Yeah, it's waiting for your decision on these three parameters," and it'll spell them out. And I'm like, "All right, go with number two." And then I'm like, ⁓ put my phone back in my pocket. I'm like, "This is awesome. Keep on riding." So yeah, it's

Dalton Anderson (44:23) Yeah, it's nice.

Josh (44:28) It it's I wish it was all synchronized between systems. And I'm sure it's not far away from doing that. I, I still am puzzled with that. But ⁓ but the the ability to it like a lot of people, ⁓ and myself included, I do think, you know, AI is probably gonna take over and we're all gonna be murdered someday by robots. But that being said, for now, I'm in it. I'm just going for it because whatever. It is, it is what it is. But but I I do, I I love it, and yes, it's gonna get rid of a lot of jobs, but it opens up

Dalton Anderson (44:48) Ha ha.

Josh (44:56) it it opens up efficiency and opportunity. And and my my The way I view it is ⁓ I have paid a lot of agencies that have hurt me in, in ⁓ PPC management over the years. Lots of money. I mean I, I'm talking we're talking a lot of money that I've spent in SEO and PPC management between and, and then a lot of these guys are like they're only a Facebook expert or they're only a Google expert. They're only an Amazon expert I don't want those people. I want one

⁓ at least entity that can manage everything. Because why the heck not? Why wouldn't you tie it all together, right? Like Google and Amazon, they're search-based, ultimately search-based PPC. Facebook is interest-based. I want Google and Amazon. That should be the same person, or at least the same entity that's managing it, right? And that's where Claude is cool because I'll roll out a campaign with Claude, and people that are searching for Orange Mud type of products in Google are likely searching for the same products.

And Amazon. Why not use the same search? But I, over the years I've always had to pay two separate people between Google and Amazon. It's always been two separate. But now I don't have to do that anymore. So I can have a more unified approach to how I approach my PPC strategy. It costs less. And it's probably going to be done better. I mean, last year, for example, and this is what sent me down this whole path. My Amazon PPC ⁓ agency that I was paying, I liked these guys for a long time. They did a great job.

Dalton Anderson (45:56) Amazon, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Josh (46:24)

I don't know, they put me down to the lowest minion in the crackhead schedule, and and all of a sudden, you know, I'm, I'm completely burning through cash like insane. And, and I reached out to my guy there, and I'm like, "Hey man, what's, ⁓ what's gone wrong here?" And he's like, you know, "No, everything's fine." I'm like, "No, it's not fine. Like we're bleeding money, we're losing money." Well, it's what led me down the AI quest, and it took me a while to get to Claude, but I, I was using mostly Grok last year and and doing analysis of

campaigns and breaking it down and trying to get a better understanding of what the heck they put together, which was insanely complicated. And then from there, it was like, "Okay, they were at, Grok was able to help me analyze a mess," is what really old what it boiled down to. But then it was able to help me shape a more a campaign strategy. And that's because they're really whatever, whatever there was there

was not a strategy, not unless you're an absolute like you're a serial killer, then maybe it would make sense. But what we have now is a strategy. And, ⁓ and it's such just something that I, I think once people go deep into the AI usage, they will find that they can they can shift the money that they were maybe paying. And I'm not saying fire your PPC agency, but if they're not getting you at least a two to two and a half times ROS, definitely fire them and go find somebody else.

Or if you're in product-based business like I am ⁓ but, but it's something that you can shift that money to other things, you know, and and and like right now I pay Claude a hundred dollars a month. I would, I mean, I don't know what I'd pay it but I'd pay it a lot more. Don't tell them that but it's probably listening anyway. But, but yeah, Claude's already heard it and it's already, he's already sent it to the CEO. But, ⁓ but it's it's something that the, the expense because I hear some people like, "I don't want to pay that much money." I'm like, "Have you tried it?" Because

Dalton Anderson (48:00) Claude Claude is gonna hear this, it's definitely gonna get

Josh (48:16) you could instantly get rid of some of your resources or you instantly have resources that you never had. Most people don't have. Like I know, I know a lot. I've been doing this 14 years, and I'm I consider myself like a expert beginner in in a lot of PPC and analytics setup. And I And I say that because it changes so much. I don't I don't know if you can be an expert in, in the backend of this stuff.

I I it's so I Like I said I'm an expert beginner. It's It's if you look if you're in a If you're a mountain bike racer, I'm like an awesome Cat 3 guy, is really what it would be. You know, Cat 1 is your basic, your pros, and then Cat 3 is like, you know, your beginners. But I'm the best in the beginner category. That's essentially where my knowledge is in if in at least the way I feel, ⁓ compared to, to what the knowledge attainable is. But it changes so much it's hard to get there. And this is where AI is really cool because I've been able to

have it run analysis on Google, for example. Because Google is really complicated. It's not just Google Ads. You know, you've got to have your analytics set up properly. And you have to have your analytics configured, obviously, with your website properly. You need to have Google Tag Manager, which is a different animal in itself. You gotta have your Google Merchant Center and Google Search Console. You've got to have all these tools. How many people? I spent like eight hours on a tech call with Google.

Up until the point, like the lady was literally cooking for her family in her kitchen and still on the phone with me solving problems. And I'm like, I'm like, "Are you sure you don't need to go?" But this is how complicated Google's ecosystem is. Claude, it I'm not saying it's perfect, don't get me wrong, but it digs in and it reads the whole ecosystem and it makes sure that ecosystem syncs and it's fixed problems that I didn't even know I had. And that's the true beauty. It'll It digs in again when I know this the systems quite well,

and it found problems I didn't even know that I had and solved things that would have been an all-day deal with a tech call. Or it would have got an all-day deal wasted only waiting to go to the next level of the tech person because it was a different division of the Google bat of whatever problem it is. So it's these type of things that I just, you know, I, as you can tell, I'm very passionate about because it's, it's opened my knowledge base, which is already pretty deep in this stuff, and it's allowed me to dig in even deeper to make sure I'm set up properly.

Dalton Anderson (50:19) Mm-hmm.

Josh (50:35) And that's all I care about. I love a system that is configured. And if it's configured and it's optimal, then at least if I'm failing, it's because I'm doing a bad job with driving the ad creation or I'm doing a bad job with creating the product. And then I can push that point that finger back to whatever that problem is and I can solve that problem. And then I can go off and hopefully ride my mountain bike more. Because ultimately that's what it's all about is living and not working. But yet what do we do? We all work all the time. So you know,

if I'm gonna go mountain biking, at least if I'm working, it's you know, it's through Dispatch. So...

Dalton Anderson (51:07) Dispatch,

and I think Remote is what it's called on ChatGPT or Codex, is a game changer for sure. But when you're mountain biking, you can always try out your, your new mountain biking pack. You know, you could you could put yourself through a little bit of pain with your, your mountain biking pack that you're working on. The waist, the waistbelt.

Josh (51:14) Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

wife that I have to go on a mountain bike ride to test a new backpack, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. But do you want me to fail? What, sweetie? Do you, is that what you want? I have to do this today. And I have to ride all day. Yep. Yeah, that's what we do. You know, gotta do this. You know, I don't want to. I don't want to go for a 12-hour bike ride.

Dalton Anderson (51:30) I I need to do this. The they need me. I I have to test this right now. It's like

I thought we were successful. You're setting me up to success. This is a successful household. So funny.

I don't wanna do it. They're forcing me to do this. It's

Josh (51:55)

it's why I bought a motorcycle last year because I, I wanted to to get into the motorcycle backpack ⁓ market and so I bought a ⁓ Yamaha TW200. It's like a it's a little just playbike, man. It's awesome. And I only got it for dirt and and and and even so like I went to Claude Cowork. So I've researching backpacks on the moto side and and and I went into Claude and just out of curiosity and I was like, "Hey, Claude, like

go in and read the reviews, all the reviews you can find on these four backpacks, you know, three key products that I'm looking at that are our top competitors." And this is a good thing for other people to do too. And so I said, "Go in and research all of their marketing attributes and then look for all the negative feedback and give me a summary of what I can do different to be better than everybody else. And it was like, "Yeah, no problem."

And put out this beautiful whole dossier of all this stuff when it came down to because I wanted to understand what peop what do people like? You know, what do people not like? What what do they not have? Like what's not out there in the market right now? And, and that's something that sure I can go read every freaking review on the planet and go summarize every YouTube and everything. But Claude can do it in seconds, and it can, it can instantly push me further forward than I would have ever been able to do in years past at least.

Dalton Anderson (53:20)

Like I can recall when I started a Amazon shop with my mom, like in college. We did some kind of product that did like magnet fishing or something like that. And you'd pay there was The product that we use was helium, helium 8 or something. It's a popular like yeah, helium 10. There we go. And I think they've got other products within their product suite. Like they're one of them's like 72. I, I don't know. But there's that and like Jungle Scout.

Josh (53:23) Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm. Yeah, healing tin. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yep. Yeah. Real expensive.

Dalton Anderson (53:48)

they do is product research and the the whole scope of it. It's built on, you know, finding your competitors and helping you with keywords and managing your ad campaigns for you and like helping discover which products that are good. And it's supposed to give you an advantage, but also it's like it's like $400 a month. It's like $250, $400. Yeah. And it's a There's a lot to it.

Josh (54:06) Yeah.

Overwhelming. And it's it's overwhelming and expensive.

Yeah.

Dalton Anderson (54:16) And I think the biggest thing when it comes to just these LLMs and the iteration of like this technology that is becoming part of infrastructure of businesses, similar to how you think about cloud infrastructure. This is another part of this new infrastructure of what it means to own and run a business. It reduces the friction for an entrepreneur to think and iterate on an idea.

Josh (54:36) Mm-hmm.

Dalton Anderson (54:44) And so you might have an idea about the motorcycle space. And so instead of spending weeks or paying for some kind of service and having to learn how to use that service and then making making use out of that service, you can ask your your AI buddy, we'll call it. We could We could be brand agnostic agnostic. So you ask your AI buddy, "I want to do this. Can you research it and get back to me?" Builds this whole report for you. You read through it. It would have taken you weeks to gather. You could have done it yourself for sure.

Josh (54:59) Yeah.

Yeah.

Dalton Anderson (55:13)

it's a lot of work and it's not fun work either. It's like, it's the work that you don't want to do. And it has to be done. It's just the necessary evil. And then from there you can iterate, or it's like, you have a different idea. Like, what are the regulations of mountain? Like maybe there's some regulations with motorcycle stuff. Like, what are the regulations? And like you find out all these regulations, you're like, "Okay, hold on." Like, I actually personally I think it's interesting, but with these regulations, I, I'm not as interested anymore.

Josh (55:16) Sure. Yeah.

Sure.

Dalton Anderson (55:40) Or I'm interested, but it can't, I can't do that right now. But if you don't have that information or that scope, it's like, you've got to pay like maybe a consultant or you've got to pay for this service, learn how to use a service. Whereas now you can ask questions and then you can get a product like the seatbelt that you're talking about, the cover, which I think is cool because if the, if your clientele is like ultra runner, like they're all like ultra runner, ultra bike like mountain biking, they're all dirty and like mucked up in their car. So like that makes sense that they don't want their seatbelt all dirty.

Josh (55:40) Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Dalton Anderson (56:09) But in nasty. But the The next part of that is to take photos, you've got to find somebody to do the photo. You've got to schedule it. You've got to bring the product. You've got to ship the product to them. Then you got to review it. You might not like it. Then you got to iterate on it. And then before you know, it's like a month gone and then it's hundreds of dollars expensive. And I remember when we did the pricing for that, when we were starting our new product, we because when when you think about these like

Josh (56:16) Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

It hurts.

Dalton Anderson (56:35) Amazon listings, and if you don't have like a established brand like Orange Mud, when you're starting your first product, you don't make money until like the third shipment because you've got to do all the licensing, you got to do insurance, you've got to do the postings. And so you're trying to cut costs when it makes sense. And one of the ones that we thought made sense was the product photos, but this is before AI. So this was, this was like undergrad, like maybe sophomore year of of of college. So

Josh (56:43) Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Dalton Anderson (57:02) we took like a white, like I think for the office, like office floor that like for your chair or something, we taped it on the wall or something like that, or some kind of project board thing, taped on the wall. We like hung up some lights in different areas, like actual not professional lights, just like kitchen light type of situations, like lamps, but they're they weren't on the ground anymore. They're like kind of suspended, whatever. And then we took photos and it took us a mini many iterations to get them good.

Josh (57:05) Mm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

⁓ yeah.

Dalton Anderson (57:29) You know, it's like a huge pain in the butt 'cause then the shadows, you see the shadow and it's like, "Okay, well, what if I just turn up the exposure a little bit, the shadow go away, but now it looks now it looks like washed out." It's like, "Okay, we gotta redo them." And you're trying everything that you can. It's like, "I really don't have to redo these." And it's just so much easier now to get started and to know if there's something something there.

Josh (57:33) Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That

part's a game changer, man. I mean, the amount of money that I have spent and largely been disappointed with ⁓ results from doing so to photo studios over the years is insane. And and And to a level that I, I was like you in the beginning, I was like, you know, hold it, take a picture of it. I had ⁓ Canon Rebel back in the day and I'd use that to take pictures and then, and then I

Dalton Anderson (58:13) It's a nice camera, by the way.

Josh (58:14) I finally ended up buying the, ⁓ the Sony A73 and I bought, I bought the with the L glass. I bought the best of everything. And I mean that's nice. And and I've got you I've got like the 70 to 200, 2.8. I mean it's like a t I think it was like a $3,000 lens. It was awesome. And, and I've got you know the 50s and the pancake, I've got, I've got all kinds of stuff. And most of all that stuff, it's I don't know, I think it's down here under in a, in a bin, ⁓ because I can do almost everything with an iPhone now. But

Dalton Anderson (58:22) Okay, that's a really nice camera, yeah. Yeah.

Josh (58:43) Back in the day, yeah, it was like setting up photo studios. I bought these giant roll-down curtains, like 10 foot wide white curtains, and I had them mounted on this two by four frame that I built in my basement. And then we pull it down, had all these studio lights, and even with that, and even having good glass, you take in the images and you're like, "Dang it, how do I fix that shadow?" I'm like, "I need a tenth light bulb." And then you're like, "Well, that's too bright." Now you're out, you're adjusting brightness and hues and saturations and all these things. And I became really proficient in Photoshop over the years, but

now it's like to do what I did this morning. So my wife's like, you know, those are coming in next week. I'm like, "I know, I gotta get this done." And that's why I was like, "I'm just gonna have Claude help me. What the heck am I doing?" So I had Claude and then these other two apps all doing it concurrently and and and really between the mix of things, even to get A plus content, which that alone just like this is a big one for if you're not in the B2C space, to be able to comply with the sizes of images with Facebook.

And Amazon. Good luck. You know, good luck finding what they are if you're not using AI. It's hard to get the image size requirements. It's hard, this has always been this way. And so this is the cool part of AI. I'm like, "Hey, just do it. Like, I need A and I need Shopify." With Shopify, I only run square images, so I'm like, with Shopify, "I need square images." But with Amazon, "I need the product listings and I need the A plus content and make sure it's all fitted for it." It's like, "No problem." It not only formatted them all, it

Dalton Anderson (59:52) Yeah.

Josh (1:00:12) build out the freaking listing for me. And that in itself, if you've never done it, is like amazing. I mean, it really is amazing. Shopify pretty easy. Amazon sucks when it comes to building out stuff. But, but yeah, the the getting rid of the food photo studio and, and the lighting doesn't matter. If you're like, I don't like the lighting on that AI picture, change it a little bit. And and and it still comes down to prompting, right? And this is where I've always been a big fan of define the problem.

I don't like people complaining unless you define a problem. Totally fine to complain, but you better define a problem. And so, like for me, it I found it's one of the the ⁓ most amazing tools you can ever do is to find the problem when it comes to AI. Because if you do, if you define it, you say, ⁓ when you when you ⁓ up res this image that I took with my iPhone, lock the perfor the proportions of the logo. Do not change the logo at all. And because

I recognize that it's one of the biggest problems with AI right now is that ⁓ it will, it'll like totally change your logo. But if you just like you look, okay, what's the problem? It's changing my logo. Well, how do I fix it? Well, tell it not to change the logo. And you just tell it, lock the proportions of my logo. Do not change anything and look. And it fixes it. It's it's actually here. I battled it for a couple months. And the other day I was thinking about this actually when I was having coffee in my backyard and I was like, I should just tell it to lock the proportions. I wonder if that'll work.

Dalton Anderson (1:01:25) Mm.

Josh (1:01:40) Sure enough, that's all it took. I just had to tell it what to do. And this is where there's so many things like this. If you just define the problem and then you go and you say, Okay, I'm not doing this because I'm dragging my feet, I can go have Claude do it. But I need to define the problem and and then and then it's done.

Dalton Anderson (1:01:56) Yeah, there's less, there's less eating the frog nowadays. Now you just have AI eat the frog and then you just you review the results and then AI eats another frog. And you so you're less of eating the frog and more of watching people eat frogs. That's great. It's funny. I was doing thumbnails for one of my podcast episodes, and this is a funny story about AI just like not working. Like it was, my guess was fine, but then myself, it was changing the color of my skin.

Josh (1:02:00) Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Exactly.

Yeah, I love it. I do.

Yeah.

Dalton Anderson (1:02:26) And it

made

me super tan. It even it made me black. And I was like, "Guys, that's, that's not me. Can you just, can you stop? Make the image me? Like you're changing my hair and then you're changing my skin tone. I, I'm not these shades of, of skin tone. Like you're you're you're completely altering who I am." And it's like, "I'll generate another one." And it's like, and it's like, No, this is still not me, not even close." This is like

Josh (1:02:29) Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm.

Yep.

Yeah.

Dalton Anderson (1:02:55) six shades different than what I would look like. And yeah, it's just, it was just funny. I got it just completely changed my hair. It gave The first one gave me like earrings and like a nose piercing and changed my shirt. And I was like, Well, what are you doing? Like bring it, bring it back to who I am." And then it changes it and it changes my it it like took the earrings out and the nose piercing, but then made me really tan. And then I was like, "Okay, well you, that's great that you did these things. But you, you're also you're changing my skin tone too much. Like you've got to You've got to

Josh (1:03:02) It does some crazy stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Dalton Anderson (1:03:25) leave it the how it is. And then it made me black and I was like, Okay, I'm, I'm done." I came back the next day. I came back the next day and it worked. But yeah, it just wasn't working for some reason.

Josh (1:03:26) Yeah. Yep.

That's crazy.

Well, and and you know, but on that on that note, you know, a good point about that is that there's certain tools that do a better job of things. I mean, I use Gemini, Grok, ChatGPT, Claude, obviously, ⁓ and I don't know, plenty, plenty others. ⁓ But like Nano Banana, I'm a huge fan, fan of it for when it comes to image. ⁓ But, but it's it it does weird things like

if I give a complicated prompt, it doesn't do a good job. But if I'm like, well, like this morning, this with this image, I, I actually, you know, I test I said I test three platforms, but technically I did four because Banana, Nano Banana actually did a better job when I uploaded the picture and I said I want it to have crisp edges, white background and up res it. And it did, and I downloaded it in 4K and, and it was phenomenal, the perfect picture. And then I, I gave the other three channels that same picture.

Because none of them were doing as good of a of a of initial edit. But then they had clean data to work from and they were better at doing the creative and laying out A plus content. And I couldn't even believe they laid out like all the bullet points right. I mean, it's like some things that read your mind. And, and that's sweet when that works. It doesn't always do that, but but, it is important to use the right tool for the right job. It's no different than using a Philip Phillips versus a flat, you if you a freaking Phillips head on a screw, right? So it's the same thing, but...

Dalton Anderson (1:04:40) The creative? Huh.

Josh (1:05:01) But there are definitely different results and and I would encourage everybody to to test those platforms and see, ⁓ you know, what results you'll get because I I had I had ⁓ well I had my Google Ads account hacked this year and Google sucks to just throw that out there. But ⁓ like their tech team is terrible. But basically long short of it, bad guy spent 186,000, hacked me, removed me from my account. This was March 18th, 113 days ago, it's still not solved.

Dalton Anderson (1:05:28) Wow.

Josh (1:05:31) ⁓ I just messaged the CTO of Google today and I know he won't respond, but I still don't care. And ⁓ and because I, I can't solve this problem and ⁓ I need Google's help. And, and so ⁓ what I in the In the earlier phases when I was trying to ⁓ get back into my account, I had Google messaging me some actions that I needed to do of putting some some data into my website so they could verify that I am the legitimate owner. And I,

mind you, it's my email, it's literally the Orange Mud email. But that being said, I ran it by Grok, Grok's like, "No, absolutely do not do that. That is, I think you're getting this email that is from an imposter. Is this all started from an email hacker?" And so there Grok was like, "Absolutely don't do that." What they're, what that person is telling you to do is likely a st an imposter of a Google tech support case, and that's not actually a Google person.

And I and I So like over a few weeks I kept pushing back on the on this email. I'm like, it's telling me I need a different way. I'm like, surely you can there's something else we can do here. And, ⁓ and after a few weeks, ⁓ I finally got a person on the phone at Google. And they're like, "No, that is, that is ⁓ legit. That's it, that's what we need you to do." And I said, "Really? Okay." So then I went to Claude and I should have done this, but I went to Claude, I was like, "Hey, Claude, what do think of this?" And like, "Yeah, you should just do it. Here's how you do it."

Dalton Anderson (1:06:46) There's a way, yeah.

Josh (1:06:56) But yeah, Grok was like, "Absolutely not, this is fraud." So Grok was wrong. But you know, you would think these things wouldn't be that different, but I did get two completely different results. And if I would ask Claude in the beginning, I would have probably just done it. You know, I mean, I was skeptical, of course, but everything seemed legit. But, but that's where it's important to test the different models too, ⁓ depending on what you're doing, because you'll, you'll start to identify at this point in time

Dalton Anderson (1:07:00) Yeah.

Josh (1:07:26) which one outperforms the other and and and things are changing so fast that what just because one doesn't perform well today, don't get rid of it because it may be better in like tomorrow.

Dalton Anderson (1:07:33)

it's like whatever feature you think that you want to have, don't change whatever platform you're using. Just stay on the platform you have because it it's coming soon. Don't worry about it. But I would say that Grok is phenomenal at real time information due to the connection with X. But like if you ask like, "Hey, what, what's going on with this recent news event," it could tell you not only

Josh (1:07:45) Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Dalton Anderson (1:08:01) the news reports, but sometimes it's so recent that there is no real like there's might be like one news article, but like there's people reporting on it live, like an event that happened or some kind of terrorist attack or a sporting event where you can it compiles all of the users information of what they're saying in that geographic area. And then it it provides like really good stuff. But as far as like critical takes on I don't know, infrastructure stuff, I think that Grok lacks in like coding and, and other reasoning things, but

Josh (1:08:07) Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Dalton Anderson (1:08:30) When you think about ChatGPT or Claude for coding or, or creating slides or asking questions like that, I think there's just n it's just not even close. And then if you're only integrated in Google and you wanna use Google Cloud, then I would use Gemini 'cause that's trained a lot on the c Google Cloud infrastructure. But I mean it's really depending on what you wanna do and what what what tools you need to pick up, depending on what you're doing.

Josh (1:08:40) Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Yep.

Dalton Anderson (1:08:57) That's really it. I mean, at the end of the day they're gonna I think they're gonna converge and it's all gonna be pretty much the same thing. ⁓ But there's slight differences, but the differences are slowly, the the differences are slowly just I don't know, smoothing out where there's less bumps. It's just everything's just a smooth road. So like are you driving on road B, C or D? It kind of depends on what you wanna do.

Josh (1:09:02) Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean it, it was it was crazy especially with graphic creation and, and like HTML creation. ⁓ You know, Grok was for sure superior to Gemini maybe six, eight months ago when I was working on it. ⁓ There were things that I would do that in Gemini where I'm like, "God, this is like, it's like going back to some dot matrix printer." I mean, it was some really weird output on HTML stuff.

Where Grok was like, a supercomputer. And then now, actually, I think I probably even prefer Gemini with some of that same HTML stuff. Cause it seemed that yeah, they're, they all do different things and it, and it but it is amazing how quick the gap closes. And just when you think like last week it sucked, this week, wow, this is an entirely different thing. Yeah, it's it's it's really cool. I, I love where the tech is.

Dalton Anderson (1:10:12) No, it's great. I mean, I always say it's like competition is good. Like competition is really good. You shouldn't You shouldn't be upset that another competitor is like doing these features you like. You should love it because your company that you're using, they need to do the same thing. So the horse that you're backing or the horse that you're riding on, that's gonna get the same upgrade coming soon, month, couple of weeks, whatever it may be. But bet you that they're working on it and they're they're trying their best. And

Josh (1:10:16) Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Dalton Anderson (1:10:38) Every every time a new model comes out, it puts a lot of pressure on the other company to come up with a new model and then you're reaping the awards. The only thing I would say I would like more open source models. Like I think I get concerned about like five companies owning like the world's compute and logic. Like where it's like I don't, I don't know. I, I mean we've seen sci-fi movies before and that one never really works out. So I'd, I'd rather it be like, "Okay, I don't have the compute, but at least I've got an open source, open weighted model where I can see the weights.

Josh (1:10:43) Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Dalton Anderson (1:11:07) And I can see how things are being done." That, that's further, further away. So let's see.

Josh (1:11:07) Yeah. I know. We'll see. We'll

see. Like I said, I'm riding that wave until they kill us all, yeah.

Dalton Anderson (1:11:17) Yes, yeah. At least you can you can you can make enough money to go mountain biking and then if you if you need something to do something, you can you can prompt it with ⁓ Dispatch.

Josh (1:11:27) Yeah. I mean before too long I might like be homeless and just ride my mountain bike daily because there won't be any jobs left for us humans to do. I mean the I tell it It makes me feel dumb sometimes because I see how fast it can compute insane amounts of data. Meanwhile I have a hard time spelling like basic like, you know, basic words sometimes. It's like I'm sitting here, you know, typing and, you know, my brain is not fast, you know, compared to it and, and it

Dalton Anderson (1:11:50) Yeah, I feel the same way.

Josh (1:11:57) it seriously, you start to question, you know, "Are we truly, truly that superior, right?" I mean it's you see how powerful AI is and it's scary.

Dalton Anderson (1:12:06) We're saying that

now,

but what about, what about in ten years? We'll see. Ten years is gonna I I I was I mean, this is a This is a definite sidebar and off topic, but I was, I was telling a friend, I was like, once you get to quantum computing and then we have like nuclear power plants powering, powering these AI, like I don't know, I think the whole societies like people might get to the point where they start worshiping these like systems as if like they're their own profit or something like that. ⁓

Josh (1:12:10) Ten years, yeah, we seriously maybe like we're working for them. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Dalton Anderson (1:12:36) Might run the government. I don't know. I mean, quantum computing plus AI is, is going to be something that we don't even know what the capabilities are. But that's a completely different like philosophical topic and not really on track with what Venture Step talks about. But And it's too, too big broad of a topic to discuss like at the end of this episode too. You know, but it's a crazy thing to think about.

Josh (1:12:36) Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, no, but it's true.

Well bit but if you even just to take a step kinda a a s a sidestep to that is that you know we, and it in in tying it into your audience too, we all are just a node to the computer. And what I mean by that, I was explaining this to my father-in-law the other day, that, that he is just a a targeted interest. When you really think about it, you're a prey we as a human.

Like my father-in-law, for example, he is a predefined interest point that, that he engages with the internet, with computers, right? But he is a predefined interest point. So ⁓ things we know about him, you know, he's, he's very tired, grandpa, loves golf, you know, and, and more than anything, but watches hockey and you know, all these things, and likes bourbon, in and all those things are all those are all features of what is that

person, that human, that, that basically terminal, right? And, and then he's the one giving that information to the internet. And then the internet is able to programmatically serve content to him. But when you really think about it, we, we really are already working for AI. We already are working for the internet. It already has all the data. We're just giving it the data that we exist with and then it makes the decisions based upon what we exist with

more so than us telling it what to do. When you really think of it, it's it's it's an inverse. It really is. But it when it when you're on our side of the equation and you're trying to reach that person, you realize I'm defining my problem. The internet is taking that, whatever you want to call it, and then in that ecosystem is going and it's finding the other people that are engaging with it. It's giving their problem, their, their interests, and then it's

Dalton Anderson (1:14:25) Yeah.

Josh (1:14:50) connecting the dots to serve. And so it's really funny when you really think about it. We We are already working for it in all reality.

Dalton Anderson (1:14:56) Are you familiar

with

the Dead Internet theory, Josh?

Josh (1:14:59) ⁓ I've heard of it. I don't, I don't know about it.

Dalton Anderson (1:15:02) Dead Internet

theory is like probably another weight of the equation, but basically when ⁓ humans can't differentiate what is AI generated and what is real content, then people just disengage. Like you, if you can't tell what is real and what's not real, people just make the choices like, "All right, well, this isn't for me." And I, I saw a video today that was like pretty interesting on X this morning where it was like this guy was transporting himself

Josh (1:15:15) Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Dalton Anderson (1:15:32) with a drone and everyone was like, "Is that even real? Like what what what is that? Like is that AI?" You know, it's like you don't really know nowadays. It's We've already crossed the Rubicon about a year ago. So I don't know. It's just, it's just an odd space. I mean we're still figuring out how to act as a society and I don't know.

Josh (1:15:37) Yeah. Yep. It's already there.

Yeah.

In a few years, we may all realize that ⁓ we miss basic interaction of, you know, hanging out and just talking. Maybe, maybe. I mean it maybe this thing comes full circle. You know, we're all living in tribes because the internet locked us out of our houses.

Dalton Anderson (1:15:59) But

I don't know how it's gonna play out. but ⁓ I like to do on the end of the show, I just say wherever you are in this world, good evening, good afternoon, good morning, thanks for listening in and thanks for the show. But before we do that, I'll cut this out. But is there any way that or if you have people that want to get in contact with you or you want to share anything, like how would you like to do that? How would you like to get in contact with?

Josh (1:16:12) Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

It's

easiest

just to go to orangemud.com, go to our contact page, or sevenclay.com, go to our contact page. ⁓ That's the easiest way to to reach me. or you can always connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm easy to I'm really easy to find. I'm I'm pretty SEO easy to find when it comes to that side of things. Yeah, yeah, that part's pretty good. You search for Josh Sprague or you look for Orange Mud or Sevenclay.

Dalton Anderson (1:16:47) Yeah, you've you've set it up properly.

Okay. Thanks for sharing. Of course, wherever you are in this world, good evening, good afternoon, good morning. Thanks for listening in. Listen in next week.