NAPLAB: PROOF OF VALUE WITH DEREK HALES

E100 NAPLAB_ PROOF OF VALUE WITH DEREK HALES

Transcript

Dalton Anderson (00:00.976) Welcome to Venture Step podcast where we discuss entrepreneurship, entry trends, and the occasional book review. Finding objective data about sleep products can be difficult and many people realize too late that they didn't have the full picture before buying. I myself recently just purchased a mattress and the amount of research she had to complete and sign up for which was ridiculous. It should be easier. Today we have a guest, Derek Hales. He's been reviewing products since 2014 and currently runs Nap Lab.

where he focuses on product testing and transparency in the recovery space with an emphasis on mattresses. In 2014, he launched Sleep Populous. By 2017, he sold it. Then he built Modern Castle. And today he's back in the sleep game with Nap Lab. He's a serial founder and has been deconstructing products for over 10 years. Welcome to the show, Derek.

Derek (00:52.974) Hey, thank you so much for having me.

Dalton Anderson (00:55.586) So the agenda today is going to be the inspiration for you starting App Lab and then talking a little bit about the journey from garage to lab. And then some of the methodologies and protocols that you put together at these companies that you could apply to not only mattresses and product reviews, but also to, I would say generic companies that are trying to run a business or have employees that need to complete tasks.

and have them consistently completed where the results are comparable to each other. And to do that, you need to be following the correct steps or the steps that were laid out. And then we want to talk about the vision of NAPLAB and how it potentially will expanding. And then after that, we'll talk about what to look for when you're on these review sites, because there's quite a few and some of them are paid and not paid. so how do you, what do you, what do you, how would you identify the red flags? And then lastly, how do people get in contact with you?

But once again, welcome to the show, Derek. Let's jump right in and start discussing your inspiration for a nap lab.

Derek (02:02.316) Yeah, so I'd say the the inspiration really kind of began in 2014. When my wife and I got married, we did kind of the whole in store shopping experience for a mattress, we needed a new bed, we were sleeping on my my old interspring full mattress from high school for the first few years of our marriage. And so the inspiration just came out of a need, we needed a new bed, we went shopping for one in store and found models we like, but they're four or five $6,000, very expensive, not really in our wheelhouse at the time what we could afford. So

we ended up taking a chance on an online bet at the time, 600 bucks for a king, ordered it, sight unseen, tried it out, wasn't a great fit, returned it, great return policy. Then we tried something else, did a little bit better. And then just as a fun weekend project, I just threw a website up to just sort of kind of put the reviews out there of my experiences with these two mattresses, a comparison, my experiences going into the store, what that was like, and kind of what I had learned. And it just really blew up. And so people really liked what we were doing. We kept testing, kept reviewing mattresses.

Fast forward 11 years, we've tested 500 different mattresses to date. And so the initial inspiration was just a need. I started creating the reviews that I wanted, that I needed when I was shopping and then they weren't out there. Over time, we have, I think, improved our tests and our processes, become more professional and just better at how we communicate, but also a lot more data driven. And so I believe it was in 2015, 2016, perhaps,

My wife and I bought kind of our first sort of nice TV and that was I did a lot of research because it was you know a good amount of money was spending like 1500 bucks which is a lot of money for us. It was a lot of money and so I did a lot of research and when I went into Best Buy they had recommended I go check out this site called RTings, R-T-I-N-G-S, which they were just reviewing TVs. They did just an insane amount of like data-driven testing on televisions.

And it was just so cool and so in depth. I just loved how they could quantify these things that were really like imperceptible in a lot of ways, at least sort of, you didn't know exactly what made a perfect picture, but they did. And they had all the answers and we ended up buying that TV. It was, was fantastic for many years. Um, and so that really got my mind thinking about, you know, so 2016, like, Oh, I want to do this for the stuff I review for, for mattresses and then for later some of the products that I reviewed for modern castle. And so.

Derek (04:22.53) That really got me going down this road of I want to make the most data-driven, quantifiable, mattress resource possible on the internet. And so that really is what I tried to build with NapLab.

Dalton Anderson (04:37.431) No, great story. It seems like it's just randomly your random curiosity of trying to make the right decision waterfalled into a company that was in sold. Shout out to our things though, because the last two computer monitors I've had, I use our things and the last two TVs I purchased, I've used our things. So our things is great. Very technical, but as long as you can, you know, read the number at the top with what's the score. And then you can compare whether or not there's a dealer.

Derek (04:45.494) Absolutely, yeah.

Dalton Anderson (05:06.959) and a deal on that product. And then a, if it's got a little bit of lower score, but a good deal, then get that one. But I like our things. And then I wish I knew known about nap lab because like your story of starting nap lab or not nap lab, but the sleep populace or like your curiosity into sleep reviews and how that blew up was really like the reverse of what I did was I did all this research, but did not publish anything.

But I was like, wow, this is a crazy amount of work. I was surprised. And now here I am. And I wish that maybe like two months ago I would have known about NABLAB. But here we are.

Derek (05:48.59) Yeah, it's kind of crazy whether you're buying mattresses, televisions or any sort of like complicated product, especially if it's over like a thousand bucks. Like I don't know if you're like, I put a lot of time and effort to make sure I make the right choice or at least the best choice that I can make. And I come out of these sort of, know, research silos, just, you know, having learned everything I could possibly learn. And yeah, it's almost a shame to not publish it. So, well, I can't publish everything that we research and test for.

at least in the world of mattresses, we're trying to make other people's lives a little bit easier there.

Dalton Anderson (06:22.576) No, for sure. Speaking of research, originally your research started, like I would say, quote unquote, garage, which is probably like in your room or like a spare bedroom. And then it's turned into a lab. Do you want to talk about how that journey was?

Derek (06:36.706) Yeah, so it began in 2014 in a one bedroom apartment my wife and I lived in right after we got married. And like that's where we were that's where I had the space and that's where the first mattresses came in. So we were in that apartment for about a year. And at one point we had 17 king size mattresses.

Dalton Anderson (06:56.176) Wait, wait, on. Where are you putting the mattresses, Derek? Where do they go?

Derek (07:00.414) Everywhere everywhere. So they were they were in the hallway. They took up about 60 % of the living room They were just stacked up like a bookcase on the far end They were in whatever you might call the kitchen in the dining room Because we had so little space at one point we had to like sleep three mattresses tall just to get like so there was some space and then I would have to take those off and I got down to like actually testing on on the baseline mattress level just one mattress, so

By the time we were sleeping three mattresses tall, almost hitting our heads on the ceiling, like, okay, I think that it's probably time to get to a little more space. And we were able to get to our first house at that point, which became sort of the next sort of, you know, testing studio. And so we had a house that was about I think, 2200 square feet, you know, a little more than twice the size of our apartment. But same thing, I turned basically the dining room and foyer into just a mattress warehouse just lined them up.

like a bookcase. I think at that house we peaked at around, I want to say like 47 mattresses. And then got to fast forward to our final location, our third location where we're at right now, which is it's a house with a guest house on the back and it has like a detached garage. And so we use the detached garage for mattress storage. And then where I'm at right now is the guest house. So we have

Basically a studio here, some office space, storage space. And so this is where we do all of our testing photography, videography and everything else to run the company.

Dalton Anderson (08:31.888) Yeah, I could just picture my partner's patience running thin on just like the whole house is being filled with mattresses. Like, Dawn, when are you gonna figure this out, Dawn? Like, we can't be, we'd start eating mattresses at that point. Like a mattress farmer.

Derek (08:37.866) yeah.

Derek (08:43.63) Yeah, my wife is very patient and long suffering and has been there on the journey with me. So she's been amazing the entire time. both her and I, we're very much ready to have a dedicated space where we can, this is the space we work and we test and we have all of our mattresses. But then our house can just be a house. So I think that's been really nice for both of us.

Dalton Anderson (09:10.352) Question about the mattresses. So when you review the mattress and when the review is completed, you do your analysis. The mattresses are pretty big. like after the review is over with, what do you do? Do you just put it to the side somewhere like a bookmark, but it's like a big bed or how does that work?

Derek (09:29.458) It depends on the mattress. So if it's a super popular model, we try to hang on to those in case we ever go back and do a follow-up test or we want to do something different in terms of video or photos or retest. But other than that, we try to let the mattresses go. So we have a local charity here in Phoenix, Arizona that we support. we're able to get basically everything that we test gets over to them with time.

Dalton Anderson (09:53.969) That's awesome. It was pretty much like a brand new, brand new mattress, maybe a little worn with the new device that you have, the little roller thing that you were talking about, but the, guess you could also go ahead, sorry.

Derek (10:01.966) Yeah, yeah. But yeah, we try to keep them, we try to keep them in as sort of as good sort of as like new as we possibly can. And anything that's not like, you know, basically at that level, then we're just gonna, you know, trash or recycle. But otherwise, you know, I don't want to just completely destroy mattresses if I can avoid it and try to send them off to a good home.

Dalton Anderson (10:21.807) Yeah, that's awesome. I was just thinking for the mattresses that you said were popular, would maybe hold on to them maybe if you were thinking if you were going to get some additional testing equipment and then from there be able to retest.

Derek (10:37.122) Yeah, exactly. the, didn't exactly know what I was holding onto them for. I've been basically holding on to kind of all of the sort of the pantheon of mattresses, if you will, for about five years since we got moved in over here. But I've been holding onto them for really this durability machine. So we just got this thing sort of up and running or nearly up and running. We got kind of the first test going now. Basically it's a big sort of

Dalton Anderson (10:43.948) You just love mattresses.

you

Derek (11:06.158) rolling pin that rolls back and forth over a mattress. It's part of like the standard mattress durability test that sort of all major mattress manufacturers use. And so we've got one of those machines now. So we're going to be able to test to measure for things like how much does the mattress soften over time? How much does the mattress sag over time? How much like height does it lose over time? The types of things that are really important to understand like is this thing still comfortable and supportive after 10 years? And so we're able to basically do that 10 years of sort of experience at about five days.

And so the goal is to basically run everything in the warehouse through that machine so that all the most popular models will have really good durability data and longevity data. so just one more level of just quantifiable data-driven information that we can provide that we can say, OK, well, here's how this performs. Also, here's how long this lasts. And here's what you can expect it to look like and perform like at the end of 10 years.

Dalton Anderson (12:01.06) I was just thinking you've got all this sophisticated testing. You've got the nap. Like it could just be a front that you're, you're a really big sleepover guy. Like you're like, you just love sleepovers. You have all these mattresses just waiting for the big sleepover. You know, you have 80 people over just mattresses in the front yard.

Derek (12:08.994) Yeah.

Derek (12:14.67) The ultimate slumber party. Yeah, we could probably fill my entire backyard up with just wall-to-wall mattress.

Dalton Anderson (12:22.218) Speaking of your testing, so I know that you're talking about the durability machine and then testing in general. Can we just talk through some of the maybe testing methodologies slash like maybe that testing methodologies that could apply to broad, broad management of procedures and then also dig into some, maybe some testing or testing procedures that you came up with.

That seemed like a kind of like a funny thing that you ran into. You know, you didn't really think that that was some the approach that was like you were looking for like something very, very optimal. And then you're like, you know what this does? This this does like probably 98 percent of what this fancy machine might do. So this is what we're rocking with.

Derek (13:09.89) Yeah, so let's see your second question there, because it's, I think, a little bit easier to answer. one of the things that we do to measure just how much sinkage there is on a mattress is just place a medicine ball on the mattress, take a photograph of that medicine ball and the profile kind of beside the mattress, and then we measure how deep that medicine ball has sunk into the mattress by how much of the medicine ball is not visible. And we were taking pixel level measurements in Photoshop to give us a very precise level of sinkage.

That is a very simple version of what this machine is also capable of doing. So it has a very precise, basically metal plate that it pushes down at a certain level of force that's measured in terms of Newtons. And then it can measure exactly how far down. Very cool, very expensive, very advanced, very precise, but we're getting basically the exact same information in a really sort of easy, sort of low budget way.

Now, if you can have access to the machine, absolutely get that. And we're gonna start trying to capture that data as well, just to sort of double check and verify our measurements. But I think sometimes a simpler approach is just as good and sometimes better. Another one is, some manufacturers will use really sophisticated drop tests, where they're dropping some kind of a ball onto the mattress and it's a whole contraption, it's a big metal thing. We do a similar test, but again,

We have a medicine ball, there's a piece of string with a weight on the end. So I know that it's being dropped 18 inches every time, raise it up, drop it down. And then we've got our camera recording the whole thing. Again, we can see exactly how far it goes down, exactly how far it goes up and get the same level of precision, just a little bit of a different way using more sort of the technology side of things where we're going into Photoshop or Adobe for me, or to take, you know, sort of pixel level frame by frame type measurements.

I think those are two good examples where sometimes a little bit of a lower tech solution when married with some software can really make a big difference and get you 99 % of the way there, but in a way that is relatively inexpensive.

Dalton Anderson (15:17.524) Yeah, I think that's something that people could take away more because I know when it becomes more technical and I that these reviews are technical in nature that you could over engineer what you're trying to do. I think that's a big problem with people when you're just starting a company or when you are working on something technical. If you're if you come from a technical background, it's like, OK, you try to take this very technical approach and have this rigor to what you're doing so people can ask questions about your analysis or.

They can, it's pretty rock solid. But hey, like at the end of the day, the medicine ball and Photoshop probably get you close enough and it takes like a third of the time.

Derek (15:56.236) Yeah. And one of the reasons I love sort of the simple sort of medicine ball test is it's so easy to understand. You don't need to have a big long written explanation. People can see I dropped a ball, it bounced up. Was that high? Was it low? What's it that medicine? What's it the liquid vial beside it look like? Was it bouncing a lot and sloshing around? Okay, well that probably has motion transfer. They can see it with their own eyes. if I could have one criticism of our things and

I absolutely love what they've done. think their work is truly incredible, but it's so complex and often just confusing that unless you're an engineer yourself or like so immersed in these fields, the stuff they're testing can just like fly right over your head. Now you can just ignore it all and look at their overall scores and those are still amazing and helpful. But when I said about developing our test for Nap Lab, I didn't want it to be so complicated that you needed to be an engineer to understand. I wanted the test to be sort

visually understandable to anybody. Anybody can see a medicine ball drop and know what that means in terms of height and balance. They can see how deep that's sinking in and know that that number is more or less than the average and that's better or worse depending on what their needs. So I think bringing that level of just like an intuitive understanding when you're testing and reviewing products I think is really important.

Dalton Anderson (17:20.975) And another point about that simplicity, simplicity creates confidence in command about what you're talking about. So if you try to make something overly complicated to where, and this isn't, this isn't related to our teams, it's just, related to life. Like, you knew you asked your friends some kind of question or colleague and it's just like overly complicated and she's like, okay, well, like really do you understand what is going on or no, because that stuff happens quite often is like you try to overcomplicate things.

Then you almost almost get lost in the sauce and like it seems like the intention is for your audience to get lost in the sauce and I'll be able to ask questions or like not be able to understand Once again not related to our things at all

Derek (17:59.456) Exactly.

I can't remember who exactly said it. I want to say Einstein, but I'm not sure. Something to the effect of like, if you can't explain what you're doing to a child, you don't really understand what you're doing. And so if you've got to use all this technical jargon, you don't understand it as well as you should. And we want to be able to explain things so that everybody could understand it. And so making it as simple as possible is a big piece of that.

Dalton Anderson (18:25.989) No, for sure, for sure. Do you want to drop in and transition a little bit? But maybe before you do that, like I purchased the Brooklyn betting signature hybrid. I think I'm pretty sure that was it. And it's got a decent score on the website. It looks like it is an 8.79. Do you want to just discuss your score a little bit and use something like as an actual example as the Brooklyn betting signature?

And if you need to, could share my screen.

Derek (18:55.618) Yeah, yeah, 8.79 for that mattress, that price point is fantastic. And so our scores range from zero to 10, but I think our bottom score is like a 6.0. That's the worst bet I've ever tested. And our top score is something like a 9.79. The average is, I believe, 8.52. So the Brooklyn betting was 8.79 is a good bit above average. I think it's also helpful to think about the scores and with respect to price.

Brooklyn Bedding is $1,000 for a queen with an 8.79. I want to say it's like top four, top three or top four based on its pricing tier. So there's only one or two mattresses or three mattresses ahead of it. And one of them is another Brooklyn Bedding mattress. And I think the other is like a Glacier Original and the other is a Boring Hybrid. Those four beds, incredible performers. Any of them would probably be a good fit for you. And so while you could definitely spend more money and get better performance,

For a thousand bucks, it's a fantastic bed. And it's one that I recommend to a lot of people, especially when people are buying guest bedroom mattresses. I think that's a phenomenal bed.

Dalton Anderson (20:06.341) Hey, I'm glad I made it. You heard it here folks. I'm glad I made the right decision, but for me to get there, instead of just looking at that score, I was researching beds and then I was researching my bed and you know that the beds typically have that tag and it shows like where it's manufactured. So like mine was manufactured in Arizona, some place in Arizona. And then I was looking at mattresses that were direct to consumer and they also were manufactured in Arizona.

And they had like videos about the workers and like, it seemed like it was like pretty much the same video. And I was like, hold on. And then I was looking up like LLC mattress companies in Arizona. And then I was looking up from there, I was looking up like companies that have large manufacturing presences in Arizona for bedding. And then I ran into that, the Brooklyn, the Brooklyn bedding company. And that's how I really found like that group was like through this like

spider web of researching other companies that had manufactured, like got their stuff manufactured there. And then I found out that that Brooklyn bedding or I forgot what the exact parent company name is.

Derek (21:10.848) 3Z is their parent.

Dalton Anderson (21:13.871) Yeah, that owns the Brooklyn bedding. So I was like, okay, that makes, that makes sense. So I was like, okay, well if I like this bed, then I like this other bed. And then I was doing research on that and then cross referencing beds. And then here I am with the Brooklyn Brooklyn bedding signature or whatever it is. But that's what I'm saying. That's a lot of work. Like people are not signing up to do all that and they're going to, they potentially get fleeced about some of the beds that I would see that

Derek (21:29.16) That is a rabbit hole.

Yeah.

Dalton Anderson (21:41.789) from what I could understand, and I'm not a betting expert, but it seemed like they had similar materials and they're manufactured the same place and then they're twice the price. That same bed for the same materials, different brand, could be $2,500. And so you think that you're getting something much better when you pay for what you get. But that isn't necessarily true because beds are complicated, but also on the surface seemed as simple.

So it's like, I don't want to, spent a third of my life on this and like, there's like that scary factor. Like, what if I mess up my sleep? Did it mess up my job? I lose my job, I lose my longevity. And then you can just borrow out. But I just thought I would share that snippet of the research I had for the Brooklyn bedding signature, which was intense.

Derek (22:20.962) Yeah

Derek (22:29.804) Yeah. It is unfortunately really hard to know sort of, you know, what's a good bed, what's a bad bed. Is this really worth a thousand dollars? You know, sort of, I'd say the industry at large in the last like 30 years has really kind of gone out of their way to sort of make it more confusing. You would have, you know, mattress models that have similar names, but a little bit different skews, a little bit different materials, a little bit different design if they're offered in target versus.

Walmart versus Costco versus you know any number of other retailers making it all the more confusing And I think in addition to that materials can can look similar, right? You can have let's say a 10 inch mattress that has three inches of foam and a seven inch coil unit Okay. Well, they look the same but foam quality is not consistent. It is a massive spectrum of different field types that determine how they feel on your body, but also

quality, how long it's going to last. Same thing applies to the coil unit. So mattresses that look very similar can actually be very different in terms of feel, performance, and longevity just because the quality and type of those materials is varied.

Dalton Anderson (23:42.776) And what the customer just wants is good sleep. That's it. Like I just want a good sleep score at the end of the day.

Derek (23:46.21) Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. They want to be to buy with confidence and spend $1,000 and know that bed's going to last 10 years or so. And I think it's really hard to do that, at least in the US right now.

Dalton Anderson (23:59.901) Derek, have you gotten the chance, and this might be something on everybody's mind that's listening, to test one of those really, really expensive beds? I know that there's those $80,000 Swedish beds or something like that. I think they're 50 grand.

Derek (24:11.476) Yes, Cloughed and Hastens and there's a few others they use, know, horse hair and unicorn blood and all kinds of crazy stuff that, know, who knows how much of an impact it's actually having in the bed. But I tested them at, you know, sort of major sort of mattress trade shows and conferences, but I've not done any sort of deep dive testing. They've not sent me one that I could saw open to look inside. Man, that would...

Dalton Anderson (24:19.41) Yes.

Dalton Anderson (24:29.307) store.

Derek (24:40.75) If I cut Oakland an $80,000 bed to just sort of peek inside, I would die a little bit, I'm afraid. But I would love the opportunity to test one in the future.

Dalton Anderson (24:52.912) Yeah, I know. They're probably not just giving out beds, you know, they probably like Rolls Royce doesn't give out tests, like car, car drives and just ships out there. Like there's that one YouTuber who like just tears. I forgot the name, but you like test the, the longevity of a car, but like rips the door off and like rips the inside, like just totally jacks with the car. And it's like, that's not, yeah, that's not happening. It's similar to say like, they're not going to want you to. So I saw into it. Speaking, speaking of that,

Derek (24:57.998) No.

Yeah.

Derek (25:13.869) huh.

Yeah.

Dalton Anderson (25:23.026) Next steps with with NAPLAB. Like where do you where do you see this going? Like you know, they've been in this like review space for a while now. Ten years is a good amount of time, so there's definitely a passion. Like where do see your passion going next?

Derek (25:37.676) Yeah, so I mean, I'm still sort of pursuing sort of the the niggle in my soul to just like create the ultimate mattress resource, the ultimate review for the world of sleep and mattresses. And so that's still very much our focus. I think we are closer today than we've ever been bringing in the durability testing machine. I think it's going to be a super cool just level of information game that's just like not out there for whatever reason mattress manufacturers like don't

publish this data. I think they should because it would let people buy with confidence, but most of them do not. And many of the other testing laboratories like won't let them share the data, which I think is just insane. So I want to be able to publish that data. I want to be able to do it at the biggest scale that we possibly can be because I think it's something that consumers will find really both interesting and informative. So just be able to buy a bed with confidence or if you do find a bed that's like cheap and you wonder how good it is, you know, it might not be perfect.

but maybe the durability test is still good enough that you could buy with confidence. And so I'm really excited about, again, just continuing to perfect our process, our reviews, our videos, to do everything we can to make the best review possible. And then just sort of secondarily, you know, just trying to make sure people know about us. That's why we're here on today's podcast and doing what we can to just make sure people know we exist so that, you know, when they're in the market for a new bed, that they can find us, that they remember us.

and that we can hopefully help them find the mattress that they're looking for.

Dalton Anderson (27:11.986) I know for sure that my next bed is going to, I'll take a gander at nap lab and see, see what, see what's going on. Hopefully I don't have to buy a bed for a while. I think on average they, they last like 13 years or something.

Derek (27:22.189) Hopefully.

Yeah, you should get I think 10 years is a pretty safe estimate. Sometimes a little less sometimes a little more depends on how you're using it body types, you know, environmental factors and other things. But for the most part, tennis years. And again, pretty much everything coming out of three is these factories for most part is really solid. So I don't think you'll have any problems with longevity.

Dalton Anderson (27:44.925) And then your statement about transparency of pros and cons. It's not like transparency is like a bad thing. think transparency is good, right? But like the way that you phrased it was more like, Hey, I just want to inform the world on whether or not they understand what they're getting into. I think that's the perfect way to phrase it is like, there's not a good or bad option. Like you might have a budget. There might be three beds in your budget, four beds.

But from there you have different pros and cons you have to think about. Like this bed might be rock solid for the first five years, but if you're buying a budget bed, maybe you don't care about it lasting 10 years, but you want something that's like the best sleep for like three years. And then the durability on that bed just diminishes after three years. then, well, at three years you're ready for a bed that you would say is more expensive and higher quality bed. But knowing that is the important thing.

I think there's a lack of transparency and continued lack of transparency with all this stuff going on in the world where there's news, there's social media, there's paid influencers, paid reviews. I recently had a podcast episode last week about stretch with Annie Elwood and his mission is about transparency and pricing with groceries and yours is transparency. And like, would say, I would phrase it as proof. Now I'm messing up. lost my own words of my own statement, but

I guess proof of quality, like NAPLAB is a proof of quality where as before the proof of quality is kind of confusing and it's more of brand driven proof of quality versus subjective, not subjective, objective proof of quality, rigorous testing that can be comparable.

Derek (29:32.972) Yeah, exactly. think it's again, the the the sort of industry in the US and the US for mattresses is really, it's very asymmetrical. The brands, mattress brands have all the knowledge, all the information, they have the exact specs, they know the gauge, the coils, they know the density of the foams, they largely choose to not share that because those metrics can help you understand the actual quality and longevity of the mattress. They have their you know,

1566 testing protocols. They are choosing not to share them. And I think that's just wrong. I think consumers should have the same information to know what's in that product. Is it good? Is it quality? Is it gonna work for me and my budget? And so that really is where I'm hoping NAPLAB can help fill that gap.

Dalton Anderson (30:22.896) No, it's an exciting journey and definitely seems that you're well equipped to keep, keep paddling down the river of reviews and guiding that lab to this, the scale of what you're, want to see.

The vision of NAPLAB, what about red flags? So you mentioned RTings, which I really appreciate. And NAPLAB has like a very technical, but not too technical and easily comprehensible testing protocol. What are some red flags when you're looking at reviews or researching products? What are some things that you as a customer should look out for?

Derek (31:05.666) I think one of the sort of big sort of obvious things is just sort of be skeptical of other reviews that you see out there. And I think the reason is the world of prog views has become so inundated with reviews that are artificial, sponsored, paid, manipulated, incentivized, you know, in a number of different things where it's not a perfectly authentic, honest experience being shown to you. So I think

Everybody should have a good level of skepticism with the reviews that they're seeing for the product. Make sure that, you know, what you're seeing is not just sort of a marketing arm of the brand, but it's rather, you know, something that is genuinely third party, independent, has some sort of, you know, rigorous testing protocols doesn't necessarily need to be as data-driven as what we do on NapLab, but at least has something where they have the same process that they are reviewing sort of that product at scale.

So that way, you know, when they are saying, this is the best, well, that cuts that, that means something. Whenever I see sort of, you know, like just, you know, maybe like one person doing review and say, this is the ultimate. mean, like it was the ultimate for that person. They had a great experience. They found a product that they liked and it met their needs. And yet they haven't tested everything. They don't really know what's out there, how it would necessarily compare. again, just sort of, think being aware of sort of the role that reviews sort of play more broadly and

be aware that many of those can be manipulated in one or more ways.

Dalton Anderson (32:38.365) It's like when somebody says in New York, best burger in New York, like, okay, like there's so many, bro, best pizza in New York. This is the best pizza. It's like, you've tried all the pizzas. Like what makes it, what makes the best pizza? And for, for someone who hasn't been doing this for 10 years and has that rigor of discovery, what would be like an easy example of like what you would call a red flag? Like you, talked about how do you, how do you know that it would be a consistent testing protocol or

that is not sponsored. I I know that if it's sponsored, it's a little bit more difficult to discover, but how would you typically know?

Derek (33:14.2) Yeah.

At least in the world of us to call like professional reviewers So somebody that they had they have a website YouTube channel a platform like what they do they test products What I what I want to see I think is some level of transparency I want them to explain what they're doing why they're doing it why that matters And and just and what does this information mean a lot of times? We'll see Let's say

reviewers say stuff like our our tests our lab are this and then I go and try to find any information about how they're actually testing You know cooling or motion or bounce or what-have-you and there's just nothing there all the visuals are there. It looks beautiful They've got the photographs. They've got little charts and graphs, but it's all there's just there's no teeth to it because I Suspect and in most these cases that there's just really not a whole lot of actual testing going on they know that they need to

put on a good show to be at least perceived as a platform, a site, a YouTube channel that tests. But if you aren't getting into the data and aren't transparently explaining what you're doing, how do we know you're doing it? And so I have a lot of skepticism for those types of reviews and I think a healthy level of distrust.

Dalton Anderson (34:41.531) Yeah, that's pretty much.

like 90 % of the reviews you could find on YouTube probably. I mean, there's some that are very good, but I know for a fact, just like, Oh, well I like the color. Like these brands, this brand's great. Like they made great headphones. It's like, well, why are these headphones so good?

Derek (34:57.09) Yeah. And if that brand sponsored that, not just gave them the proper testing, but they've often incentivized that as a sponsored thing, those get really muddy as well. it's just, yeah, I think it's really difficult to be able to sort of understand what is an authentic, genuine, honest review versus something that has been made biased in one or more ways from all of these different factors that

you know, are at play in different sort of incentivization systems. So sort of transparent explanation of what's going on, whether it's, you, you being sponsored? Did you get this product for free? How are you testing? What does that mean? How does it compare? All of those things sort of pull into what helps give me more confidence in a review. And when all those elements are there together, I'm saying, okay, this like, they know what they're doing. They understand how this thing

could be perceived by viewers like myself, and they are explaining exactly what happened and why they did this. And when that doesn't happen, then my red flags are up, and I'm worried that I'm maybe being sold or misled.

Dalton Anderson (36:12.579) I think that's a good way to think about it and to make sure that you're not just getting shield products. Like no one wants that. And if people wanted to get in contact with you or follow you, how would they do that?

Derek (36:29.23) So is this way just hit us up over at naplab.com. It's NAPLAB.com. There we have our reviews, tests, comparisons, best of guides and a whole lot more. We also have our mattress finder quiz. Answer a few questions about your needs, preferences and budget that goes straight to me or a member of my team. We send you back a personalized recommendation within 24 hours. You can also find my contact form there. If you want to just say hi, ask a question, feel free to shoot me over a note anytime.

Dalton Anderson (36:55.335) Hey, thank you, Derek. And wherever you are in this world, good evening, good afternoon, good morning. Thanks for listening and listening next week. Thanks again. Goodbye.