Embarking on an entrepreneurial odyssey can be as thrilling as it is daunting, but Josh Goree of Completeful proves that with innovation and grit, even former Walmart stores can transform into e-commerce powerhouses. Our latest episode reveals how Josh's ventures navigate the digital currents, turning the tide on drop-shipping misconceptions and illuminating the path for businesses to flourish with print-on-demand services. You'll get an insider's view of a journey that reshapes not just physical spaces, but also the way custom products reach eager consumers.
The resilience of the entrepreneurial spirit is a theme woven into each of Josh's narratives, with personal anecdotes that map the highs and lows of relentless pursuit. We reveal how the hunger for success can overshadow the comfort of predictability, sometimes even at the cost of one's social circle and previous lifestyle, as Josh's transformation from franchise owner to e-commerce maven showcases. This episode celebrates the satisfaction found in hard work, the strategic dance of business growth, and the pursuit of revitalizing communities through innovative economic contributions.
As we close the chapter on yet another enlightening discussion, we take a moment to acknowledge the local charm of South Louisiana, a region that continuously fuels Josh's ambition and Completeful's mission to empower creative minds. The episode serves as a testament to the impact of nurturing homegrown talent and the potential that lies in every corner of a community ripe for growth. Join us for this mosaic of inspiration, where strategy, community spirit, and the art of the possible collide in a narrative that's as compelling as it is informative.
AcadianaCasts Presents: Josh Goree
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Thank you to our sponsor, Krewe Allons, official NIL Collective for Louisiana Athletics.
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Like, comment, subscribe...you know the drill....please and thank you.
"AcadianaCasts Presents" is the Flagship Podcast of the ACADIANACASTS NETWORK. Lafayette, LA based host, Carter Simoneaux talks with entertainers, business owners, athletes, chefs, and more - anyone who can help tell the story of Acadiana.
If you want to watch this episode on YouTube, check out our channel!
Embarking on an entrepreneurial odyssey can be as thrilling as it is daunting, but Josh Goree of Completeful proves that with innovation and grit, even former Walmart stores can transform into e-commerce powerhouses. Our latest episode reveals how Josh's ventures navigate the digital currents, turning the tide on drop-shipping misconceptions and illuminating the path for businesses to flourish with print-on-demand services. You'll get an insider's view of a journey that reshapes not just physical spaces, but also the way custom products reach eager consumers.
The resilience of the entrepreneurial spirit is a theme woven into each of Josh's narratives, with personal anecdotes that map the highs and lows of relentless pursuit. We reveal how the hunger for success can overshadow the comfort of predictability, sometimes even at the cost of one's social circle and previous lifestyle, as Josh's transformation from franchise owner to e-commerce maven showcases. This episode celebrates the satisfaction found in hard work, the strategic dance of business growth, and the pursuit of revitalizing communities through innovative economic contributions.
As we close the chapter on yet another enlightening discussion, we take a moment to acknowledge the local charm of South Louisiana, a region that continuously fuels Josh's ambition and Completeful's mission to empower creative minds. The episode serves as a testament to the impact of nurturing homegrown talent and the potential that lies in every corner of a community ripe for growth. Join us for this mosaic of inspiration, where strategy, community spirit, and the art of the possible collide in a narrative that's as compelling as it is informative.
AcadianaCasts Presents: Josh Goree
*******
Thank you to our sponsor, Krewe Allons, official NIL Collective for Louisiana Athletics.
*******
Like, comment, subscribe...you know the drill....please and thank you.
"AcadianaCasts Presents" is the Flagship Podcast of the ACADIANACASTS NETWORK. Lafayette, LA based host, Carter Simoneaux talks with entertainers, business owners, athletes, chefs, and more - anyone who can help tell the story of Acadiana.
If you want to watch this episode on YouTube, check out our channel!
On today's episode of a cadena cast presents. We have the great and powerful Josh Gohry. He is the owner of complete full. They bought the old Walmarts in Lafayette in the north side a couple of years ago. There's been some drama recently that we're going to kind of get into but also talk about his business success, how he got to where he is today. He's in the middle of a busy season so he's gracious enough to come across the street and come sit with us today on a cadena cast presents Exciting conversation.
Speaker 2:Can't wait for you guys to hear it. But first I got to toss it to myself and my friend John Akin, with Cruelon, the NIL collective supporting Raging Cajun athletes. For a quick ad, we'll be right back. Joining us now is John Akin, president of Cruelon NIL Collective supporting Raging Cajun athletes. John man, this is so exciting, this collective. We had you on the show before but we want to just get you on every now and then real quick, to just keep in mind folks about this collective. What do folks need to know? How do they get involved?
Speaker 3:Man. Thanks for having me, carter. Yeah, there's so much momentum growing and awareness. The best way to get involved is to go on to our website, wwwcrueloncom, and when you go to there, there's several different things. You can join the crew. There's some links to join the crew. You can pick your level. You can donate a dollar. You can donate up to $10,000. There's an FAQ section. There will be a section for our board, so that's a great place to find out information and to get involved.
Speaker 2:Alrighty, and what is this collective going to be doing for Cajun athletes? That's different from other collectives, sure.
Speaker 3:So a collective is different from a lot of the giving that goes on on campus really, in that this directly goes to the student athletes. So every dollar that is given to the collective will directly enhance the experience of UL student athletes through the monetization of their NIL name image and likeness. That may be appearances, that may be opportunities on social media, partnering with businesses, and so ultimately the collective is just partnering with different individuals and communities in town to help monetize and educate and create brand recognition for our student athletes.
Speaker 2:Alrighty guys, you heard the man go to wwwcrewalongcom, that's K-R-E-W-E-A-L-L-O-N-Scom. John, thanks so much for joining us and for all the work you're doing for those athletes. Thanks, brother. All right, thank you myself and John.
Speaker 2:Now without further ado. A KDN at CAS presents Josh Gohry. Josh, here we are. Here we are again. The other day you invited me. You're now starting to make content over there completeful. I have no idea what it's going to become. How much is going to be in it? I said a couple of dick jokes in there. I don't know if that's going to make it the final cut, but we'll see what it ends up, but I appreciate you reciprocating and coming over here to KDN at CAS.
Speaker 4:Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely man. So first off, I got to ask you just right off the top what is dropshipping?
Speaker 4:So there's a lot of, I guess, negative thoughts around dropshipping. Really, yes, Well, especially in the younger generation. The older generation not so much, but the younger generation grew up in this wild YouTube like everyone's selling courses you're going to get rich in 20 days. And what they did was they basically preached dropshipping from China. So using AliExpress or Alibaba, I remember Alibaba yeah.
Speaker 4:So using Facebook or whatever platform you want to use, and then whenever you get a sale, the sale is then processed in China, shipped to a customer here, and that sounds good in theory, except most of the time it takes 30, 45 days for an item to come in. If it comes in and the people in China really don't care if you send them money there's not really any way to get it back. So there was a lot of negative feedback with dropshipping, but what we do, what's funny is because I used to preach no, don't do dropshipping, don't do dropshipping. But I was basically preaching don't do that kind of dropshipping. But every company that you know dropships Walmart dropships, Amazon dropships I mean everybody dropships. And dropshipping is basically for a person that's involved in dropshipping, like we are. We carry the inventory and if someone else gets a sale, we ship it to your customer. You're completely hands off.
Speaker 4:And I remember the first time I heard the term dropshipping was when I was opening up my first Jimmy John's and they said we're going to dropship this item to you. And in my mind I was like, are they just? They pick it up and drop it on a on a pallet? Like what does dropship mean. So I went and looked it up and it was like oh, that just means somebody else is going to send it to us. So that's why they didn't have the tracking number. So dropshipping is basically having someone else that's holding the inventory and shipping it on your behalf. So what does Completeful do? So we're in a couple of different different, I guess industries as far as e-commerce is concerned. So we got eventually originally got involved in print on demand. So now print on demand is we have a bunch of blank items, let's say, a tumbler, coffee mug, t-shirts, you know, whatever it may be, we've got about a thousand different items that we print on. So it allows a user to upload any artwork or any quote or any you know any of their favorite designs on these
Speaker 4:items. Now what's cool about it is you don't have to buy any bulk inventory. So I don't have to go out and buy 20 shirts and try to sell them to someone and I can create as many designs as I want for free. I only pay whenever I get a sale. So if we print a shirt for $8 and you want to sell it for 15, every time you sell one we're going to charge you $8 and you keep the difference of $7. So it's a pretty neat business model that allows you know especially anybody that's got an audience to sell merch without having to worry about warehousing and buying and all this jazz. But then we got into fulfillment. So it's basically the same thing, except people will send us their product and anytime they sell on their website, we ship it for them.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, so is that where like things like Etsy come in?
Speaker 4:Yeah, so Etsy and Amazon and then a few other places. So we have a bunch of different vendors that send us like bulk orders of product. It's a lot of supplement companies that mostly send us into just someone that doesn't want to have warehouse space, have to pay for a warehouse manager and most of the time I mean you can get a lot of supplements on one pallet. You know one or two pallets so we'll store it. We charge them just a storage fee for those pallets and we charge them a per item fee. So anytime an order comes in, we have someone come pick, pack and ship it for them, and so they're completely hands off on that and they're just doing the marketing and selling.
Speaker 4:Etsy was built to be a mom and pop. Everyone's designing, you know, these pieces in home and trying to sell it online. Now what I figured out was is, let's say we got an 18 by six board, a plank, here, that someone's trying to sell for Mother's Day, and they'll put something like mom and through the middle they'll put like the kids names. Now, if I'm having to do that by myself, I've got to go buy a piece of wood, I've got to cut it to that size, I've got to stain it. I've probably using some sort of vinyl cutting machine to then put vinyl down, make it look nice.
Speaker 4:I've got a lot of time involved in making this piece right, but so what we do? We find items like that are they're selling a lot, and we figure out how to automate the process. So a piece that someone may be selling for 40 bucks we can now do for five and we are at it's. It's two sided to this, because one we come in, we just absolutely destroy anybody selling those types of items. Right, but that's so. I can only get that much. That person has the ability to come on our site and sell the same exact item, just without having to do any, having to have any labor involved in it. So all the machines, all the printers that we have, we basically allow people to use those for free.
Speaker 2:So let's rewind. How did this? Because obviously it wasn't both things at once.
Speaker 4:No, no, no.
Speaker 2:So where did a Completeful start? I know you had some business adventures before Completeful, yes, and it's kind of got you to this point. So bring me back. How did this whole thing begin, if I had to?
Speaker 4:say how Completeful started. It's because I knew that I wanted to be any commerce. I had a. I was at Jimmy John's franchisee. I was sitting in a store one day.
Speaker 2:How over you when you were at Jimmy John's franchisee.
Speaker 4:I think I bought the franchise the rights to have the franchise, when I was 21 or 22. I didn't open the store up till I was about 25.
Speaker 2:Do you know what I was doing when I was 21? I was going to the keg three nights a week.
Speaker 4:I walked into the Jimmy John's corporate thing and I was having a I guess they called like an audition to be a franchisee, so they just don't give a mouth to anybody. So I walk in the first guy. He says oh, the manager's meeting's down there. And I was like I'm not a manager. He's like well, what are you, what are you doing here? And I was like I'm here for I own this bitch. I'm here for an audition for the franchisee.
Speaker 4:He was like how old are you? It's not a matter, let's have this meeting.
Speaker 4:I was 21 or 22. And so I didn't open the store up for like another three years. It was just a long process. But I watched. I was sitting in the every single day. I'd get there about six AM, help get through the lunch rush from. You know, about two to three, four o'clock I was on my computer and I would watch people walk into the store just one by one, and I said there's only so many people that can walk into the store and get a sandwich. There's a limit to how many people can come in and out every day.
Speaker 2:Sure, there's fire codes. I imagine, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4:And even if they're, even if you just open the door, there's only a certain amount of sandwiches we can make.
Speaker 4:Yeah it's a finite amount of space and sandwiches. Yeah. So I said, if I had a website, it's unlimited. All I gotta do is sell right. And so I learned everything I could about e-commerce and anybody that knows me. During that time period you could, in my house, I mean like 16 hours a day. I'd have a million tabs open just reading and learning and trying to sell everything I could. And eventually I got to the point where I knew what I wanted to sell, and it was wedding items.
Speaker 4:And so I built the first little laser in there High dollar, yeah, and like people will spend money on it, they don't care, yeah, you mark it up. So I realized that you don't find a. You don't go looking for a product and then try to sell it to someone. That's most people's mistake and that's what I kept doing. I kept trying to find a product and then try to sell it to someone. Try to find someone that was willing to buy it, right? But I listened to one I was listening to I think it was an ad and the guy who made a lot of sense. He said most people are doing this. He said what you want to do is find an audience that are ready to buy and put a product in front of them. So I said well, anybody that's engaged is gonna get married and they've got to buy wedding invitations and groomsmen gifts and everything that comes with a wedding. So I was gonna buy a laser engraver. I forget how much it was $3,000, $4,000. I didn't really want to spend that money on a laser Plus. It was like a 12, 13 week lead time to get one. So I just bought all the pieces to make one myself and so I used a Arduino board a little 80, 20 aluminum, and put a print driver on it and I built my first little laser engraver. It did horrible engravings. It was awful, but it got the job done and I was able to start selling and before too long I was selling a lot, bought a professional laser engraver and then that turned into two, three, four lasers and in my mind it got to the point where I had maxed out the wedding industry and so I had. Now I can go after, like people that are having babies, I can sell them things.
Speaker 4:But I was stretched too thin. I was doing the marketing, I was doing customer service, I was actually running the lasers themselves and I said I want to get completely out of selling. I said I'll just teach people how to do it, I will handle the back end of fulfillment and they will get their cut. So we have a flat rate that we charge per item. Whatever they mark it up above, that is theirs to keep.
Speaker 4:So I taught one of my friends he happened to be. I taught multiple people that were selling a little bit. But I had a friend of mine that came on a trip with me and he saw my phone going off. He saw me getting sales. He said what's going on right there and him and I have been friends for a long time We've done sales together and he didn't know much about online selling, didn't even know what a domain name was. But I knew that he was really smart and I knew that he was very consistent and he would put in the work to do it. So him and I just spent days and hours just constantly just showing him how to sell and do things online and he's actually our largest seller now. Wow.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and that was the beginning of Completeful that we didn't even have an app. Then we used different codes to get the art across and we've kind of like broke the system and then, ever since then, have been building an app and a system around to piece everything back together.
Speaker 2:Well, so you talk about this work ethic that you got without even bragging. You're just like I was spending this much time, just days and days and hours and hours, even before we were talking. Like you're in the busy season right now. The holiday season, so you're not sleeping. In fact, I'm not even sure if you believe you're actually here.
Speaker 4:you might be hallucinating.
Speaker 2:But from you and I talking the other night, I know a lot of that kind of started early on in your life. You were a record breaker in track in high school and you were telling me this story about how you're winning the championship on your back for your team. What is it like? You guys scored like 50 points and then you put up 40.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you put up 40 on your own and then, on the way back, everyone is celebrating on the bus, except for you and you're the one who got them there. How are you able to, from then putting in all that work and not feeling gratified to now, do you feel gratification of your work ethic, that you put into this thing, or you always just chasing?
Speaker 4:Yeah, so that's what I realized that the end goal was not the goal. And I worked so hard to break that Louisiana state record and I did, and then after that it was just a complete feeling of emptiness.
Speaker 2:It was in the, just to be clear. It was in the 400?.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it was in the 400,. Yeah, and I realized then it was just like I was willing I would put my mind to whatever the task at hand and I was willing to put in any amount of work to get to whatever the goal that was. And then after that was like this is not what I thought it was gonna be. I thought I was gonna enjoy this. I thought I was gonna be, like you said, grateful, and I bring friends over and family and they come by the office and they're like, oh my gosh, you got this place, congratulations and all this stuff.
Speaker 4:And for me it's like I enjoy the work more than the result that I'm getting. And that was something I had to kind of develop myself, because the part that would make me put in the work was thinking about the end goal. But now I don't really think about the end goal. It's just like I think about enjoying the process that I'm in right now. Because if you enjoy the process, the day-to-day stuff that you're in right now, you never have to have that overwhelming empty feeling at the end of the day like, oh, I just accomplished this, now what?
Speaker 2:And so now yeah, the anxiety of what's next.
Speaker 4:I liken it to my dad. I remember one time he came into the office this was just in the middle of our like non peak season and he came by my office when we were out in the Biscoe building and I had a closet in there that I would sleep in. And so he comes by, it's like I don't know one two o'clock in the afternoon and I'm asleep in the closet. So he comes by there. He's like I see Josh's truck out there. Where is he? So they look around the place can't find me. But I'm asleep in that all night. They come and wake me up.
Speaker 4:I get up and my dad said you wanna go have lunch? And I was like, yeah, sure, so we go have lunch. And he said are you okay? He said when are you not gonna have to work this much? And I said I don't have to work this much right now. And I said but let me ask you something.
Speaker 4:I was like remember when my brother was playing Xbox 16, 18 hours a day, just in his underwear, eating chips, like just that's all he wanted to do Alpha position, yeah. And I said you wanted him to get off his ass and go do stuff because you wanted him to make money and accomplish things right and get his life together. And I said, fortunately for me, the thing that I'm obsessed with does all those things, and I said so. I was like it's unlike my little brother playing the Xbox, like I just love it, I love putting in that and it's not. I don't want people to get confused saying like I don't believe hard work makes a person wealthy. It depends on what you define as hard work, cause most people would say hard work is work in 16 hours a day, you know, work in shift work and doing the same thing over and over.
Speaker 2:Raising a family is hard work.
Speaker 4:So hard work to me is doing something that's completely unknown to you and learning how to do and growing into a different person than you were the day before. That is a lot harder to do than hard labor, and I've done hard labor. I used to work in. My dad has a farm. I used to work in the farm 12, 16 hours a day. It's really easy to get told what to do and go say, hey, go shovel dirt all day and you just sit there and you shoveling dirt all day. It's a lot harder to read a book, realize something about yourself and then make a conscious effort to try to change that. That's what I would call hard work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, man, I mean that really speaks to me with the whole Katie and Cass thing. I mean, luckily I'm blessed that I've got a support system around me that I don't have it's not end all be all this thing In that like I don't have to sink everything into it. As least when I started I had some safety nets and thankful for love of people, the office that we're in, the nonprofit, and I'm able to do work for them, and so I'm able to grow this thing at kind of the pace I was comfortable with. But at a certain point I started getting antsy but like, well, okay, this thing isn't where I want it to be. Okay, well, because you're not putting your entire self into it.
Speaker 2:And so kind of through that process I've learned a little bit by myself. And as I've started to sink my teeth more into this thing, I'm looking around and this is not to show I've throw shade at any of my friends or family, but not that they're hindrances to what I'm trying to do. But if I don't dedicate everything to this thing and keep sacrificing this to appease other people, then it's just never gonna happen. And you kind of got a little video explaining about that. We're gonna get Jai to pull that up.
Speaker 1:None of my family, almost none of my friends, agreed with what I was doing or even joined me on what I was doing, lost a lot of friends over it because they didn't want the same things out of life that I did. And I was told that I was an idiot for quitting school. I was told I'm never gonna make it doing this, never gonna make it doing that and honestly, that kind of fueled me to the point where I was like I'm gonna burn this bridge, there's no way back.
Speaker 2:That kind of mindset and I'm not trying to necessarily burn any bridges, there's no malice but there is a point in me like that I need to kind of put some parts of my life that I've loved for so long to the side, to make this thing that I really wanna happen.
Speaker 4:When someone says focus, a lot of the time people think that focus is just sitting on a computer for an hour or whatever it may be, and just lays focus on that one task. But focus to me is cutting out everything else that causes you to be distracted from what you're trying to get to. And I am. I've got some really long-term friends that have come with me and I'm a really good friend. If you call me and you say, hey, I'm in a bad spot, I need something Like I can move mountains in the heavens to make something work for you, right. But if you need to talk on the phone with me each day, call me and say, hey, how was your day, you know how's everything going, and kind of, I'm not your guy, I'm not that friend, you little pimply, little shit.
Speaker 4:If you need somebody to go out and drink with everything on high, you need somebody. I'm not that guy. You're not that guy. Pal, trust me, you're not that guy. Okay, okay, you, absolutely. I'm probably not going to text you very much or probably not going to call you very much, but in the times that you need me I can be there and I can do things. I'm just I've all the I guess small talk and everything that kind of it's death by a thousand cuts to me, because you don't realize how far you're getting behind each time, or at least that's how I feel. I feel like I'm getting behind if I'm out, you know, just sitting there having dinner like talking about nothing.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, how was your day last week? Oh okay, well, I did this and I did that. Like that brings, I don't know, it sets something off inside. I mean it almost makes me feel claustrophobic, like I would. I don't like when people talk about other people. I like when people are talking about what they're going to do Cause what you've done has already happened. Nobody cares. You can't change it. What are you going to do? Going?
Speaker 2:forward. See, that's interesting Cause I would probably venture to say that some of my friends and family probably got tired of me talking about this like Katie and a cat. No, they will.
Speaker 4:Everyone does. Eventually, people tell you to shut up. You know, and that's why it wasn't that I burned bridges because I was. You know, I was an asshole or day, or tried to. It was just because I was so obsessed with one thing that that's all I wanted to talk about. So someone would try to change the subject and I'd bring it right back, and so it was more. No one wanted to be around me because they knew this is what I'm going to talk about, this is what I'm going to do, and that's. That's a hard pill for somebody to swallow, but for me, I knew what I wanted, so it was just like if I lose some friends in the process, and you know it is, it is what it is.
Speaker 2:So completely. You had this building, I think in Caracrow right Was that the kind of the first Yep?
Speaker 4:Well, it wasn't the first spot. Actually, that was the spot before the Walmart building. So the first spot, for the first about six months, was out of my house. I built the laser. I got a video on the phone of the laser I built in my kitchen of my house and then I pretty much turned my house into a warehouse. I used some of the bedrooms as storage for inventory. I took all the pots and pans and plates and forks out of just about every drawer and cabinet in the house and stored inventory in each one and labeled them. So I knew where things were. Yeah, you couldn't. I would just basically eat out every single day, get food delivered, just sit on a box and eat on a box. Got removed everything in the house that would make it a home. Did you get fat? No, I didn't. You've been eating out all the time? No, I didn't. I mean, I was eating probably once a day.
Speaker 2:Have you always like, since high school, kept a pretty good physical regiment.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I go through times where, you know, probably the longest I've gone without working out after college was probably six months or so, and well, maybe during my sales years, maybe more like a year, and I tend to lose weight. If I don't work out, though, I tend to just stop eating. I tend to get like really, really skinny, like I'm almost 200 pounds right now but Six months man.
Speaker 2:I call six months my cheat day dude.
Speaker 4:But I'll get down to like 140, 150 pounds. If I don't work out Like I'll just get really small.
Speaker 2:So you had this spot in Caron Crow and then it's time to grow, and I remember 2021, as whenever you guys moved in to the Walmart 2021, yeah, 2021. Okay, so I think I was still working for the news at that point and a lot of these economic development stories, a lot of it's Lita, which, no, Lita does great things, don't get me wrong, but it's stores and issues like Lita. A lot of times they're promoting like look what we're doing, we're growing, we're doing it.
Speaker 4:I caught that.
Speaker 2:And it was almost like Josh and Gopleful, the savior of North Lafayette. Do you feel like any sort of pressure as far as like economic development? Because obviously it's the North side of Lafayette is kind of downtrodden and people are trying to figure out ways to revitalize it and it has too many issues that I don't want to get into and A don't have the brain capacity to even begin to know. I'm not the guy with the solution.
Speaker 3:That's right. So use your fucking head if you know how.
Speaker 2:You know, they kind of painted you almost in this picture of like you guys are gonna help bring revitalization to North Lafayette. I feel like it's not a bad thing to say that you probably really weren't concerned with that, and that's not a bad thing You're obsessed with the thing that you're building.
Speaker 4:I had no idea what it meant to anybody else. For me it was just more of a business move Like this is a building that will fit our needs. We could put everything in there. It's a place that we can grow. This will. I knew every building that we ever got into wasn't our headquarters per se.
Speaker 4:I knew it wasn't gonna be long before we needed more space and with this building, it was like, finally, we can kind of plan our feet here, and I never really had like a nice office at any of these buildings that we had, which kind of retrofitted whatever we needed and just puts stuff in there. But I, in this building, you know, we spent money in making offices look nice and make a little bit more welcome, actually, and keeping the place clean and building it to suit. But no, it wasn't until, like I went to some of these city council meetings and stuff and when I realized what it meant to other people and I think they no one really comprehends, or no one comprehended like what kind of business we're in. So I think that they thought we were gonna have like we were just gonna take the building and make it really nice and people were just coming in and out and it's like that's not the kind of business this is Like there's everything that we sell is going to a different state.
Speaker 4:But one cool thing about our business and most people don't think about this as you know, for an economy, if you take a restaurant, you open it up here in Lafayette. Most of your business is going to be residents of Lafayette, so all you're doing is circulating money inside of Lafayette. You're taking money that someone here has, you're giving it to a restaurant. That restaurant is then giving it to employees here. That is then distributed again. So you're just recirculating the same money, which is obviously good.
Speaker 2:That's good for the city, that's good for the city.
Speaker 4:So they're getting sales, they're getting tax, they're getting money on that. But one cool thing about what we do, no matter where we are, just about everybody that buys our products. They're not in Louisiana, they're not even in Lafayette.
Speaker 3:I mean they're not in.
Speaker 4:Lafayette, they're probably not in Louisiana. So you're taking a lot of money across throughout the world and funneling it to Lafayette, Then paying 100, 150 people. So you're really stimulating the economy because now you've got 100 people that are getting money from. They're not just not recirculated yeah, it's coming in. It's coming in, yeah, and it's being spent here on homes, on groceries, on other things. So you need more businesses like that to bring money from outside the city limits into Lafayette. And it doesn't matter where we go, Because where we are has no bearing on our business, which is great about the building's in a great spot. But we don't need signage. We could be in the middle of the woods. As long as we've got power and space, we're good to go.
Speaker 2:So that's an interesting way to. I've never really thought about that. Obviously, I've thought of a local business and how it stimulates the economy in that way, but I didn't think about the outside money coming in and how that could yeah, there's not a circle anymore, it's just coming in and then it's creating little circles within.
Speaker 4:The economy will stay the same if the money's just recirculating. Because what most people don't realize is is when the government takes money, they take that money and then they pay somebody else with that money, and the whole point of taxes is to recirculate money. It basically removes someone from being able to hoard it all, and so I get the point of taxes. I just I hate taxes.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I'm a massive libertarian, so obviously I think it's the devil. Speaking of my crazy libertarian beliefs, I am of the belief that public schools are indoctrination camps by the federal government. That being said, there are many, many great teachers and staff who, you know, all they care about is just helping kids, and I respect and love that. I just think the system is broken.
Speaker 4:But yeah, I love teachers, people that devote their life to saying you know what? I'm gonna go to school and I'm gonna go in and I'm gonna teach these. You know, these badass kids that are, you know, probably screaming and yelling at you all day Like you gotta be a special person to do that.
Speaker 2:Oh my God, I look back at some of the teachers at St Paul's and all guys school I went to in Covington and you had to have thick skin to be a teacher there, because it's a bunch of boys going through puberty and it's like hive mind, like once we find a target, we're going hard. And they told my mom was a teacher there and they told her, hey, any advice before I start teaching? And like someone told her don't smile until May, don't smile. Yeah, yeah, yeah, don't show weakness.
Speaker 4:I completely agree with the uh, the, your indoctrination theory there, because think about, like, how advanced technology is compared to where you know things started, but we are still taught, still taught the same way that Jesus was teaching people 2000 years ago. And like you're standing up in front of a group and you're just you know they're preaching basically, and that that to me just blows like, blows my mind.
Speaker 2:It was fascinating, like we we experimented a little too soon with a totally different way of teaching during COVID, right, that kind of remote stuff, and obviously we weren't prepared to teach in that way.
Speaker 4:But you're kind of saying like there's other outlets of education and the best, everything, the most important things to me, that I've learned. I have all been self taught, um, just watching YouTube videos, deciphering whether this is something that I think is right or wrong, true or not true. You know, I think it's something that's, you know, going to help. And I mean, I don't remember anything that I learned in high school, I barely remember anything I learned in college.
Speaker 2:Like. I will say this I do still conspits the definition of plot. Do you know what plot is Like in, like in story? Yeah, yeah, like the plot. Yeah, like the framework for the resolution of opposing forces. Shout out, brother, brother Ray, rest in peace. Uh, great educator at St Paul's for thousands of young men, uh, but yeah, for the most part there's not many things. Every now and then you can tap into something, but not to get into this education tangent. The reason I bring that up is because you recently had a kind of a legal battle and still kind of going through with the Lafayette pair school system. Yes, and we're going to get to that right after this break.
Speaker 2:Guys, I got to tell you first about a Kady and a cast as an entity. A Kady and a cast presents. But a Kady and a cast is this podcast production, development, content creation platform and if you are a creative, please reach out to us. We've got shows like law have mercy. If you're ever in a car wreck or you're stopped by a cop, it'd be nice to know what to do. Well, chas Roberts, a local personal injury lawyer, breaks down kind of legalese for the common man on his show and on social media. We've got that show. We've got the buzz on better business, which is Chris Babbin, the president and CEO of the Better Business Bureau of serving a Kady and a, interviewing accredited businesses, great business owners like Josh, who have made their way into the zeitgeist of a Kady and a. But mostly they're just good business owners and they want to do good business and you kind of learn about their backstory and learn some things along the way about, you know, being a good business owner. And, of course, the T with Ben Powers with developing Lafayette. He loves stirring the T on social media with development Lafayette. I'm sure Josh has been caught in a couple of those, those little firestorms, but those three shows, plus the Kady and a cast presents, we've got more in the works coming to 2024.
Speaker 2:So, like comment, subscribe to the social media is Instagram, facebook, tiktok we're on some others, but forget the rest. Do those. And YouTube, of course, a Kady and a cast. We've got some really cool content coming, not just podcasts in the next year, but also some core YouTube shows, some, some different things that are really exciting. But we need your support in order to do it. Go to a Kady and a castcom. That's a Kady and a casts C A S T S pluralcom to get started and have your voice heard, all right. So from my understanding you were in the process. Uh, did you buy the entire Walmart and the land yeah, both the entire Walmart and the land.
Speaker 4:And pretty crazy, there was two lots of land next to it that Walmart owned right. At the last second they threw those in for free. How about that? Pretty neat, not a bad deal.
Speaker 2:So eventually was the space just too big or you wanted to bring in some other. How did the connection with LPSS start?
Speaker 4:So in in uh, the process of buying the building, I knew I didn't want the entire thing, because I want to set up satellite locations outside of Lafayette. I want to put one in St Louis, put one in like Nevada, so that we are able to save on shipping costs and um it it it'll help our sellers be able to um, sell more, uh, with faster processing, faster shipping, cheaper shipping. So the the plan was never to use the whole building. The plan was to buy it and then sell a piece of it or lease out a piece of it to whoever you know the may may come. But we had we had a bunch of different people reach out. Um, I could name, I could name probably 10 different companies that wanted one of the building.
Speaker 4:Um, for me it was like, whenever the Lafayette pair school system reached out, it was like, okay, this, this, that seemed like the right thing to do. You know, I've got all these other companies that are offering this money and that money and this and that, and I was like, but the being on board with the school board and the school system would, I felt like, would be a good thing, right, and I was like these are people trying to. You know, do good. You know, and, and, and despite our attention earlier about, these people these are people that are trying to do good, like I.
Speaker 4:There's a way that I can help. I'd love to do that and be partnered up with them. Um, and that was the case for the. You know the first little bit and um, right at the last, they literally like the week they were supposed to close, things got really shady and they started. They backed out, told us they weren't going to follow through with it because they said that we didn't hold up our end of the deal. And we held up our end of the deal to the T? Um and said that the building was couldn't accommodate what they wanted to do.
Speaker 4:Now we had a meeting with the uh, the school board architects and engineers, and every single problem they brought up, we had a solution for it, not really a solution just like like this is what you need to do and and you could tell, I could tell by the engineers like he started. He started kind of like smirking a little bit because he didn't know that we were engineers.
Speaker 4:So every single problem they brought up. I was like he said one time the inflection point of the, the pallet racks, uh was, was too heavy. But he'd already given me the max weight of the uh each pallet. So I knew what I knew with the, uh, the load was. And so I was like, okay. Well, I was like you don't have to put pallet racks next to each other, you can stagger them. So you'd have two different inflection points versus one and and whenever. And I was like you're not going to lose any space to stagger them. And so then I knew and he smiled, that's when I knew I was like they don't want to close, they're not, they're not presenting problems, they're trying to figure out, they're trying to get an excuse to get out.
Speaker 4:And they know that they can't get out because they they passed the due diligence, got to the last, you know, got to the last bit. And I was like they know that they're screwed. And so, um, this architect had convinced them that they needed to go build a completely new facility. You're talking about the difference between a $5 million for $5 million for a hundred thousand square feet. The going rate right now for a hundred thousand square feet is $250 a square foot to build.
Speaker 4:That's 25 million bucks is what it would cost to build the same same thing. So not only are they going to screw us out of the all the. I spent over a million dollars on the wall electricity, um, getting the city to come out and do all the um, all the work on splitting in the plat and whatnot Um, that was a million dollars, like of my own cash. I didn't, I didn't, couldn't finance that. So they're. Not only are they screwing us like royally, but now you're going to take the taxpayers money and instead of building a $5 million and if they really cared about the north side as much as they say instead of developing that area with with the $5 million, you're going to spend $30 million by new land, putting concrete down, putting up this whole new building, just because the architect's going to get paid more.
Speaker 2:So I, I first kind of got wind of this. You know I, I I subscribed to the advocate. Um, um, I think it's some of the best journalism that we have in a KD. Anna, uh, the current also did. They did great work with it. You know they're a nonprofit, but, um, uh, Jai, I believe I have the tab pulled up from Adam Daigle. So, yeah, here's the, uh, here's the advocate article. Lafayette pair of schools backed out of deal to buy a part of the old Walmart. Now they're being sued. Uh, the owner of the former Walmart super center on the evangel and through way is suing the Lafayette pair of school board after the agency backed out on purchasing half of the building. Uh, now who's J and J commercial real estate? They own the building.
Speaker 4:That's. That's, uh, my company that owns the building and then complete full rents the building from J and J.
Speaker 2:Gotcha. Yeah, I don't even want to get into how all that works, but I'm just that's just the structure. That's how we structured it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that that makes my brain hurt. That's show you what kind of business man I am. Uh, yeah, so it keeps growing down. The deal involved the seller making about $1 million in upgrades to the building, like you just said, including a dividing wall to separate it from the building's current tenants. Complete, full. A drop shipping company, blah blah, moves to the building two years ago, so you know you talked about that. You $1 million of your own capital for this wall, and then somewhere in the article it says like that wall wasn't actually needed.
Speaker 4:It honestly wasn't. So the code, the state fire marshal code, changed. This was this was one of the things they were trying to to trying to say that the wall wasn't too code. Uh, but we had a uh state fire marshal come in and he said the law, now the rule is you don't even have to have a separating wall. You can just say this is your side, this is our side and you're fine. As long as the building is built to code, there's no reason for a wall. You don't actually have to separate it.
Speaker 2:No, I mean it would make sense having two separate entities, having some sort of space. If you guys run a machine, we would have put a wall in there anyway.
Speaker 4:But the argument was was whether or not we needed a a one hour wall, a two hour wall or a three hour firewall. That, that's the. That was the argument. They were like you guys built a two hour wall, you need a three hour wall, and what? What does that mean? Hour, that's how long it takes for the fire to burn, to burn, to get past it, basically how long it's going to prevent fire to come, come, come through my dad's going to hate that I asked that question.
Speaker 2:He's been in the fire business for over 30 years.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so that's, that's what it's rated for. And so there there's. Meanwhile, they're trying to argue with us what you know one hour, two hour, three hour wall. Then the state fire marshals like you don't even need a wall.
Speaker 2:Now I also read in the article that, yeah, you're suing them for a certain amount, but there's also like a contingent, like if you just pay us back, then it's all copacetic. Did I read that wrong, correct?
Speaker 4:So there's, basically, they have two options. One they can either buy the building, do what they said they were going to do, which would be the smart play. I don't know why they wouldn't. It's the perfect building. It's got everything. You need Plenty of parking. Second thing is you pay us, pay me back for the, for the money I've spent on the wall, which you know. This is what they should do. If they don't end up closing on the building and I don't at this point, I don't think. I don't see there's that there's any way they're going to actually close.
Speaker 2:So for the layman who maybe aren't familiar with the old Walmart but have been into a Walmart, but how does it separate it? Like, obviously there's like a, if you can remember there's, you know there's a grocery section, there's an auto parts section. You know it's a big old Supercenter Walmart. So like, what was, what was they, what was their allocation, what was their part of the building?
Speaker 4:So the building is right at 230,000 square feet and they had basically committed to buy 100,000 square feet of that. So we keep the 130,000 on one side, they get the 100,000 on the other side. The wall pretty much goes down the center of the building. So if you look at the right and left vestibule it's pretty much right down the center of the building. Just a gives it gives us about 30,000 more square feet on our side than the other, right in the middle of the retail clothing section, we have the, we have the the where the groceries were, and then they they have where the garden center and the auto center was.
Speaker 2:Gotcha, gotcha. So you're suing them, and then, in turn, what do they do?
Speaker 4:In turn. I didn't know this at first, but the Lafayette Parish school system is the Lafayette Parish tax system. So we filed suit. Filed suit, the president of the school board resigned, like the next day. I don't know, I don't know if those two are correlated at all, but I'm assuming that they are. And then, about two or three weeks after we filed suit against them, I got a letter saying that we were being audited by the Lafayette Parish tax system and the sales tax department. And so I was like, oh, wow, that's what a coincidence, you know. And then I realized that the Lafayette Parish sales tax department is the Lafayette Parish school board. They are the same entity. I mean that that is.
Speaker 4:There's no way that that should happen. You can't. There's no way that a a some single entity should have the power to go and buy things back out of them and then audit you whenever they don't like that. You're trying to sue them for the money that they owe you. That is wow, that's too much power. Oh, it is, there's, there's, that's, it's a.
Speaker 4:It's definitely a broken system, and I'm never one to play a victim mentality. I don't care who the president is. Like you know, I'm going, I'm going to do my own thing. I'm going to make it. I don't care what obstacles you put in front of me, and this is just another one of those, those obstacles. But for me it's more about the companies and the individuals and small business owners that cannot fight the Lafayette Parish school board. They get sued like multiple times, like a week. There's lawsuits like all the time against the school board and school system and the tax department. And I've had, I've had so many friends reach out after that article saying, man, I got screwed by them on this and I got screwed by them on this. And it's just amazing that an entity that's there to try to increase commerce, help the economy, is doing the absolute opposite of that.
Speaker 4:Because elected officials decide I don't. I honestly don't think. I, I, I, I. After meeting with most of the members on the school board, I don't think it has anything to do with with them.
Speaker 4:They all seem like really good people, really nice people, and they were all on board with with doing the, with doing the wall. I think that it's a big group think problem. So whenever they see articles like you know, complete for suing um the school board, they, instead of accepting that it's one person's fault, they're just like oh, that was somebody else, like I didn't, I didn't have anything to do with that, even though they did play a small part because they could have there's an institutional problem.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it is Correct, and and um, whoever is making the executive decisions there has been been making the wrong ones.
Speaker 2:So this probably wouldn't have gotten any sort of immediate attention if it didn't have to do with the school board right If it was just you and some other company backed out.
Speaker 4:The first article was although you are the savior of North Africa. Yet so you probably got some, some immediate coverage on you. Yeah, the first article that made things, um, you know, kind of kind of spring up was one that and I, the guy, kind of used clickbait, and article was basically saying that the whole building was now back on, back on the market. And that's not the case.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I read that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so it made it seem like we were going out of business. Which is funny is because there was a bunch of people on there, like you know, reposting it, saying like oh, this is karma, and yada, yada, yada, and I was just like dude. It's like we're having our biggest year yet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I read. I read some Reddit comments. Oh, it's hilarious.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I like, I honestly like, like that fuels me. Like someone coming up saying, congratulating me, saying good job, like I, I can't stand that. Like I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't need praise, like, but if you someone comes up and says, oh, you're not going to be able to do that or you're going to fail, like that motivates me more than someone coming up saying congratulations.
Speaker 2:What's the?
Speaker 4:timeline on this being resolved. Who knows, it'll take probably forever. I knew that going into it, I knew, as soon as they backed out, is like even if we do soon, when this will take it at best a year, probably two, three years.
Speaker 2:Well, I know you mentioned earlier in the episode that you know part of what made you so successful is the amount of research that you did and poured in. So in this new endeavor, did you do a lot of research as far as how other school systems operate? Do they also work in congruence with the tax? Assessor no no, that's not. That's not if I'm saying that correctly.
Speaker 4:I don't know if I'm using the right yeah, it's not. I've. I haven't found any, but anywhere else where that is the case. I mean, the sales and use tax department is the sales and use tax department. It has nothing to do with the school board. I just I don't understand how that, how, that's one entity.
Speaker 2:I need to get some sort of Lafayette historian in who can speak on that. Somebody did not? The guy from Alexandria and the guy from Covington or my friends in New Orleans call me West Mississippi. They don't even give me Louisiana acknowledgement. Well come on.
Speaker 2:Anyway, that's the end of your norther Well, so okay, so it's, it's kind of ongoing. And do you think, after doing this episode, do you think this will be the last time you're talking about it publicly for a while? No, no, I'm sure, Because you did mention something about like I kind of want to stand up for the people who don't have that ability.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, I mean that's it's, it's. You know, for me it's like I said, I don't, I don't ever play the victim entirely, I would just kind of move and you know, move and go on, but I've had so many people reach out that didn't have the resources to fight back, that didn't have the you know. So it's more about like trying to invoke some change than it is to for me to get my money back, sure it's not.
Speaker 4:yeah, I want to see, you know Lafayette grow. I want to see it, you know, prosper. But when you have an entity that's taking, you know, lots of money from individuals and then squandering it on extremely expensive conference centers, for for I just I don't know. I feel like that's not right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's.
Speaker 2:I tend to agree with you, but that's, I guess that's for the public to decide. The legal system, you know, we'll see how it plays out, we will see. So let's kind of, as we kind of get near the end here, let's, let's, let's get a little loose, let's, let's have a little fun. All right, I need to know what is the oddest thing that you have ever made. It's, it's a complete fall, like any sort of request, is it? Is it just like some weird phrase on a mug or a tumbler, or or is there like some sort of item that sticks out to you Like that was kind of weird, but you know, whenever they pay to.
Speaker 4:So yeah, there's. I mean, obviously, anything that gets printed on you can't. I mean, I remember some. I remember to hatch it one time saying something about like use this to to use this to tickle your butt or something and I was just with a hatchet and I was like I don't even know what that means.
Speaker 2:I have a hatchet hammer crowbar mix. I don't think this would do any good. Good tickling.
Speaker 4:Yeah, exactly. We used to engrave we still do something, engrave a pretty good bit of hammers. And I remember this one hammer that said it was like it was. It was. She was saying it was it was to her uncle and it was like for all the, all the fun times building things in the shower, or all the fun times we built in the shower and I like I guess they built, maybe they built a shower together or something, god I hope. But it's yeah, yeah exactly. But it didn't sound like that on the hand and I'm just like looking at it, I'm like Is this like a message? Like I know? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I was like am I, am I?
Speaker 2:should I report this? Yeah, geez, Okay. So yeah, that would be the that would classify as probably the weirdest thing you've ever made. How are you guys incorporating AI into what you're doing?
Speaker 4:Multiple ways. So we are using chat GPTs or open AI's API. So we're not using chat GPT, we're pulling from their API. And whenever you pull from open AI's API and what is API? It's a interface basically to for any programmer to pull information from and it's basically a gateway to to get whatever you want from some some program.
Speaker 4:Is is is what I would, is how I describe it. So by using open AI's API, we're able to use AI in kind of in the way that we we want to. Not chat GPT is just is a system built for any individual to come in and be able to use it. But we, what we use is called God mode, and so we can take it, we can kind of manipulate it, have it stored data and build things the way that that we, you know, we want to use it. So we use it to generate new mockups, we use it to figure out like, what is the best titles, tags, descriptions for products, automatically generate those for us, even write some code and whenever, whenever you're trying to do something really simple, ai's is pretty, pretty good at writing writing code, and it's streamlined the process, made things more efficient.
Speaker 4:Streamline the process, especially using camera recognition. So whenever you have a product coming across and normally you have a person sitting there like having to go through each item make sure that it's right, and it's really hard for one person to see the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over and not catch it every, every item. It's just. It's just human nature, but AI and camera recognition can make sure that it's perfect every single time.
Speaker 2:So that's a positive that it's affected you Now, someone who's close to me. I'm not going to say who or what they do, but their company has just kind of on any sort of company computer and company time, whatever company resources, no chat, jbt like, no open AI language based stuff. And no, was it like, was it Firefly, jai, the? Yeah, firefly, yeah. So the image generator AI type type software that Adobe uses? None of that because they don't want their copyrighted creative properties to you know, potentially be sourcing this giant algorithm that someone else takes accidentally?
Speaker 2:Yeah, firefly is first, so they don't want to do the same thing to someone else. Yeah, so are you. Is there any con to AI that that that worries you about what in your industry, or is it all just kind of?
Speaker 4:just helping In in our industry. It's all pretty much. It's all pretty much helping, I think, about the future of AI and what, what that may look like and that's kind of scary. But Well, you believe we're in a simulation already, yeah, so I I believe that's. I believe we're probably already part of the system where the system is built to. The system has built us and we've built. We've built a system that now looks like whatever built us.
Speaker 2:Let's, let's, let's give a nice chance to give a Jai some shine. Jai, put that camera on you. What's, what's, what's your theory about the state of AI and and how it's helped you? Because you know, jai does a lot of video production super, super talented guy. He and I'm you know he's the one who told me about you know, firefly and what he, what he's using it for. What is your thought about a simulation theory? And b? How is AI helping you?
Speaker 5:I just kind of started using it honestly, so it's let me take these off. No headphone gang I'm. I use Gigi PT a little bit, but what I started doing with the AI generated art and stuff like that is like storyboarding and getting shots and ideas.
Speaker 2:I mean, whenever we were redesigning this the other day we were using it you know, that's right, just to kind of you know which looks like a Pinterest AI is not quite there yet, but we're working on it. Uh, but yeah, I mean I've used it in, you know, editing podcasts like the DaVinci Resolve is editing software that I use. I'll also you never commented on a simulation theory. What is simulation theory? Oh, break it down for us, josh.
Speaker 4:So if there's any progression of technology and we know that there is, and it seems to be that the progression is getting faster and faster and um and with medicine, eventually we will get to the point where we can upload consciousness or you know, whatever that may be, but medicine will get to the point where people just don't buy. Do you agree with that? Like, technology is going to get to a point where we can make life pretty much endless. Yeah, I agree with that.
Speaker 4:Technology will get also get to the point where we can submerge ourselves into a VR system where we can't distinguish the difference between reality and virtual reality. Right, yeah, um, I don't know if you've put any sort of like like an Oculus owner VR and that's like what we have now. It's like the first versions of it and it I mean you can trick your brain really easy to think that you're about to fall over so and and and. Even if there was just the smallest incremental steps to get there over an infinite amount of time, we would inevitably get there, but we're we're increasing really fast, so I think that we've already got to that point. I think we've already got to the point where people can live forever. Technology is great, and so life would become extremely boring. You can live forever, you can do like. You have basically unlimited resources at your disposal.
Speaker 5:What makes you think that we already got to that point?
Speaker 4:Because the fact that we are the first version of that would be more of an ego thing telling us that we're going to be the first ones to do it and I think that it's more ego driven than anything else.
Speaker 2:So, if, if, even if you know the God that we, that most people, subscribe to is is is real. Even that is some sort of version of the simulation.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and and I, you know, I believe in God, but the world that we live in was was that that would be a simulation that God created. Whether or not that simulation is what you believe it to be or not is is, you know, up for debate. But I feel like I think we got to the point where technology was so great, we can live forever. Life's boring. So the only way for life to have meaning or to to get any excitement out of life would be to submerge yourself in a VR simulation where you've thought that you were going to die. Wow, so it gave. It gave some meaning to life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So suppose a weed tonight and really ponder that and let yourself fall into a deep, deep, deep sadness.
Speaker 4:Nothing you do matters. I think that if we are in a simulation, we are the ones that put ourselves in the simulation.
Speaker 2:God, it makes my head hurt, right, but you know who am I to say that it's not true, or is true? Yeah, I? I can only know what's in front of me, which is this card which has one more question Do you believe, as someone who's from Alexandria, that tomatoes belong in gumbo?
Speaker 4:Tomatoes belong in gumbo. I would prefer tomatoes to not be in my gumbo.
Speaker 2:I figured as much on one of these days we're going to find someone. We're going to find, we're going to find a tomato. I guess I got to go, Issa, define that person and bring him over here. Uh, but I don't know what I'm going to do with all this. The, the. I've asked the same question a few times, multiple different shows, and I haven't like put out that answer other than just on the episode. Yeah, Um, so I'm thinking about making some sort of giant case study.
Speaker 4:Finally someone says do you?
Speaker 2:have any uh any any hot takes about uh central Louisiana central Louisiana is basically the, the where everyone goes to die.
Speaker 4:I it is a miss, it's a. It's not a very welcoming um place. The crime there is really bad. There's not really any good economy there. You have proctoring gamble. That's about it.
Speaker 2:I did not realize the proctoring gamble was in San Juan.
Speaker 4:There's a proctoring gamble there. There's been so many different, like aluminum plants and like promises of like these big industries coming in to to bring a bunch of jobs to central Louisiana, but it never. It never seems to amount to anything.
Speaker 2:And what's the specific town that you're from Glenmore.
Speaker 4:Do you still have family there? Yeah, my, uh, my parents still live there. I was actually there yesterday. My sister just had a baby, uh, but we could go. So so when Saul, uh, when Saul, my niece, was my first time uncle, so nice.
Speaker 2:So when, if you were to sell, send law to somebody at least visiting your town. What's well, what is there to sell?
Speaker 4:Really, if you are into ATVing um, I could take you on some really cool, partially illegal ATV riding tours um, which is what I enjoyed to do while I'm there.
Speaker 2:There we go yeah.
Speaker 4:My, my dad's a farmer. So, they got internet for the first time like a year ago, so there's not a whole lot, a whole lot to do there. You can shoot, uh, shoot guns, a lot of a lot of tight. Don't have to worry about you know going to a gun range or anything. Just go out in your backyard and you start shooting whatever you see.
Speaker 2:Nice, hopefully not whoever, although it's sometimes like you're saying the crime way you might have to.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Uh, look, this thing's called a cadena casts and it's because I fell in love with this area and I think to a degree you did as well. Yep, uh, you wouldn't have spent all the money you did to build in Lafayette, um. But at the same time I want this show to reach people in. You know where I'm from, in Covington, you know the other side of the state, or things are done a little bit differently, but there's so many similarities and just South Louisiana. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Um so, with that being said, like what? What is it about South Louisiana that you've come to understand and and, and love and really admire?
Speaker 4:I mean being from being from Glen Mora, um, and you know, not, not not experiencing or not having much life experience by the time I was 18. And then, you know, going to college, you did some, did some really cool things, but whenever I got, I got into this sales gig and also I was coming to Lafayette like pretty much every day and, um, just the people that I met, the food, um, there's, there's a bunch of good looking women here. I mean there was a lot, of, a lot of people trying to make change and that meant more to me than uh, anything else I would meet, uh like um, joel um Roboto, he's, he's, he was also, he was former mayor president. Yeah, um came up with, like um L us, there's, there, they've got so like we have the fastest internet in the country, like second to like Memphis or something. Um, they're on it.
Speaker 4:Most people don't even realize that, but we have our own like grid, our own system. I just see people bitching about L us. Yeah, and it is. It may be bitching about it, but it is a really good system, and there's there's a lot of people here that have made a lot of really good change. Um, and a lot of people are doing some or trying to do some really big things, and I think I think you know they've, they've already done it so far. So all they got to do is keep doing what they did before, and so I, I I think eventually, um, they'll, they'll make the changes they want to make and watching something grow like that and, like I said, uh before, like I would, I don't want to go to a city that's already got everything. I want to go. I want to be in a city that I believe has the power to grow into something that has everything, and you want to be a part of that?
Speaker 2:I want to be, a part of the process. Hell, yeah, yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's. Uh, I talking to a lot of people who are from here. You know they get discouraged that you know. For example, uh, nita Begno, who was running downtown development authority, has just announced that she's moving to a a a job in Virginia of a very nice job and and and and, but she's, you know, leaving behind a nice little legacy of her helping revitalize downtown and really build that up. And I was, you know, talking to somebody and he was just so frustrated that, uh, you know a guy who's born and raised or from here and kind of run the gambit of businesses and and and you know culture around here, but you know, just upset that, uh, you know Lafayette has these talented people that come through, whether they're from here or they come here and then they get plucked somewhere else. They get plucked somewhere else, yeah.
Speaker 4:So I have a place in Tampa, so I spend a lot of my time in in Tampa and I really enjoy being there. The weather's great. I mean, you got, you got the beach, pretty much, all these really nice restaurants.
Speaker 2:No income tax.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:There's all there's, there's a lot of good things I like. I like about Tampa, uh, but you know, one of the things that I think a lot of people say about Louisiana is is the, you know, the Southern hospitality, sure, and it's like, oh, everyone's nice, you know everyone's nice here, and, and there's, there's a lot of nice people in in Tampa as well, and they may not be as nice as they are in Louisiana, but the only thing that could be that I think that if, if you could change that, if it would be, you know, a mindset thing that would make Lafayette really grow and you'd keep the people here is whenever I'm in Tampa and I go out to dinner with people, new people, I don't ever hear one of them talk about somebody else. Hmm, it's always ideas. What do you do? Like, okay, well, I do this, like, I'm trying to do this, I'm trying to grow, I'm trying to be better, like it's. It's. It's always like trying to. How can we work together to be better, to bring to, to, to grow together?
Speaker 4:People be gossiping and in in Lafayette it's everyone is just talking about other people. It's, it's sometimes not negative, yeah, it's just like it's more gossip. Yeah, a lot of it, yeah, and you're never going to grow or change. If all you're doing is talking about some, what somebody else has done, you're living in the past. You see that in government. Point in the finger. Yeah.
Speaker 4:You're living in the past and what's cool about like it's, but everyone's looking for a future.
Speaker 4:What can, what can we do, not what did you do or what did so and so do it's what. What can we do? How do I get better? And I do like that a lot. I had a friend. I had a friend there that said to me he's like, yeah, there's a lot of, there's a lot of fake people. You know they, they're faking that, they have money and they're you know they, they haven't really made it. And I was like at least they have the ambition to fake it till they make it. And I was like, cause a lot, of a lot of people here won't even they're, they're okay with just going around gossiping with whoever may be. But if, if, if, I had one piece of advice to any kind of leadership in life yet it was just like the change would be to change that Like stop talking, it doesn't matter what somebody else does.
Speaker 2:I couldn't care less. Yeah, easier to sit and then done. I feel like that's kind of ingrained in people.
Speaker 4:It is it is and it's it's a mate, and like, because I go back and forth so much, it's really easy to see difference in conversations. Like I'll be having breakfast or lunch with someone in Tampa and that night I'll be in Lafayette having dinner with someone, and it's just like it's a completely different conversation. And then it makes me realize why people get stuck in that, in that rut. It's because you'd rather spend time talking about what somebody did versus spend time talking about what can we do?
Speaker 2:Well, man, this has been a really great conversation and I appreciate you giving me the time during the busy season. I know everything's about to kick off. Yeah, you're running on zero hours of sleep. Before we do that, jai, pull up the complete, full website, completefulcom. Which nice getting not completely Lafayette or completely Louisiana. Yeah. Complete full, which is that a word?
Speaker 4:It's not a word. Okay, that's okay. There, it is it, it it. So there's a few different companies out there, like Printful, and my idea was it's called complete fulfillment, and so for sure it was complete full Gotcha.
Speaker 2:So on here, the you know if you go to. You know you know product how it works about. Go to the about page there, jai, and if you scroll down, completeful was built on experience is the best dropshipping service on the market. The what is complete full tells you a little bit about it. Keep going down. What products do we offer? You can see some products. Keep going down. What does complete full do for you? Okay, so there's that little section. What does complete full do for you and how can people get involved? So you being us, not you, yeah, I know what it means for you.
Speaker 4:For me, complete, full was the whole purpose. Was all this money I spent on machines. All this, all this time I spent learning, you know how to get the machine to do what I wanted.
Speaker 4:All that was done so that someone could use our equipment, Someone could use our services to build a product to bring their dream to life without having to fork out all the money for the equipment. So if they, if they're an artist and they want they had this design, they, you know, they, you know. They wanted to sell instead of having to go and buy this big flatbed printer, all the equipment in a warehouse space and figure out how they're actually going to put it all together.
Speaker 4:It's like, hey, we have all that. We figured that side out. Here's all the tools you need for free. You know you only pay once you sell something, and so that's all I focus on is being able to help other people sell more easily, and that's that's easier said than done, because most people, instead of me going in and teaching a class on marketing, it's like how can we automate all of that? Take every, all the you know information that I have, all the knowledge as far as selling, as good you know goes, and be able to use a system and take someone that has no idea what they're doing and make them successful. That is, that's my ultimate goal. That's what complete is there for.
Speaker 2:So there's a, you guys have an app?
Speaker 4:Yep, it's a. It's not. When you say app, most people think that they can just pull up a you know an app on their phone. It's not an app on your phone, but it's an. It's an application that integrates with websites Etsy, Amazon and it's an interface that allows you to create these designs, and it's a seamless transition whenever someone places the order, so you don't have to worry about tracking them or you don't have to update your customer within any information. You may have to talk to them and figure out what they want and then you can, you know, use the app to get you know, send that to them. But yeah, it's an application that you can start on, like Shopify or Etsy or Amazon.
Speaker 2:Well, I've got you know one of my good buddies working for you Shout out Joe Fuentes and he's. He's been begging me to get on the Etsy train and and take advantage of these things that he's learned through you and and he could be more of a bigger fan than you and he's been a god send almost you all two coming together and really opened up his life. And so I appreciate you doing that for my buddy.
Speaker 4:Yeah, Well, I didn't. I didn't do it for you and I didn't really do it for him.
Speaker 2:But it's cool that the power that you have just by the passion that you have for this thing that you want to do, and and you know the kind of wake that comes behind you of positivity, it's cool to see, and I'm glad that you're here in Lafayette, a town that I've adopted and grown to love, and we'll see how that LPSS stuff turns out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's see how it goes. But as we, as we end every episode and once again I can't thank you enough for being it's been. It's been cool getting to know you.
Speaker 2:You know seeing you hanging out with Joe and you know seeing you out at the legends or whatever Marley's going out and kicking it and talking some shit back and forth and you know it's cool that we're getting to the point where you know we're conversing like this and and obviously, any sort of content that you guys are doing. I would love to be involved in any sort of way. I'm excited to see how that builds, of course, complete full on YouTube and start seeing some, some content coming out. Yep, although you have no hand in that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean we're, we're getting better every day. You know making, you know and that's what most people don't realize is like yeah, you're going to. You're going to look stupid whenever you first start out. If I give, if I give someone that's never thrown a baseball and say hey, you know, try to throw this thing. They're going to look, they're going to look stupid, I look stupid now?
Speaker 4:Yeah, and so it's. It's just, it's a matter of being able to look stupid and but learn each time you say, well, that that it wasn't good, Well, this wasn't good. And and being honest with yourself. And that's what we're trying to do, trying to get better every day. I love it.
Speaker 2:Well, as we end every single episode, take a look at that single camera right there, yours. You can say a word, a phrase, some advice, a poem, anything that you want to end the show with. That's going to live on the internet forever. It's going to live on the internet forever, probably, unless I get you know demonetizing kickoffs. There's some new federal law coming through about internet and you know censorship and whatnot.
Speaker 4:I have like a million. I'm not like an encyclopedia for for lyrics and quotes and stuff, but uh, my my favorite quote of all time is the chief calls of failure and unhappiness is trading what you want the most for what's in front of you right now.
Speaker 6:That's a wrap. Hey, thanks for tuning into the show. Since you made it this far, might as well give us a like, a follow, a subscribe. You know whatever you got to do to alert you that there's a new episode out. Look, it helps us grow and it allows us to give you the content that, well, you deserve. If you want to be a sponsor, if you want to be a guest, if you just want to berate me, hey, all goes in the same place. Info at akadienakastcom, email info at akadienakastcom and for more locally sourced podcasts, go to akadienakastcom. Bye.