Sweetpotato Awesome Interview - The Creative Freeze-Drying Series - Unique Freeze-Drying Products

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hey David with the freeze dry business Channel where we're connecting the freeze drying business Community with the tools and the resources needed to
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grow a sustainable business this is the first episode of a new series of videos that I'm going to be doing called
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creative freeze drying and the reason I'm doing this particular series is because I want to interview freeze
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drying businesses that are doing unique things with freeze dry creating new equipment or accessories or new
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technologies with freeze drying or it's actually creating a freeze-dried product one single product or multiple or maybe
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something very obscure and unique now this video series is more of an interview style format where I'm going
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to be interviewing Representatives or owners from these freeze drying businesses and asking them questions
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about how they got their start why they choose to go the route they did what could they tell us about their product
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as well as any tips and tricks they might have that could inspire you to go beyond just freeze drying candy or
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freeze drying as a cottage food operator or even just a small commercial operation even like myself the very
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first episode of this series I'm going to be interviewing the owner of sweet potato awesome his name is Josh Kingdon
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and he is out of Las Vegas Nevada and he's got a very unique way and approach of freeze drying sweet potatoes from
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slicing them to giving them all cooked and ready and then freeze drying them he's got a very large operation that
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he's managed to grow into a very sustainable business and he's in Whole Foods and he's on a lot of different distributor locations and I think you'll
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find this interview very interesting and gives you aspirations for maybe what you can create with one single product let's
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get to this interview could you just tell us about your company what what is sweet potato awesome sure yeah well
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first of all thank you for having me so sweet potato awesome we manufacture and sell freeze-dried sweet potato slices
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and Fries we also do strawberries occasionally to kind of fill in the gaps
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during the times when it's a little bit more difficult to uh to acquire get sweet potatoes kind of during the summer
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it's a little harder to get the best sort of sweet potatoes and also because fruits are in general a little bit a
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little bit easier than doing sweet potatoes but yeah we primarily do freeze-dried sweet potatoes we kind of
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have a unique preparation process prior to the freeze drying and I think what also makes us unique is that we season
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our sweet potato slices and fries with that we have a cinnamon flavor a dill
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and garlic flavor a sea salt flavor and then we have the the fry sea salt and
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the FR and then the sea salt slice and we still have a few of our Chipotle
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slices but we're discontinuing that so maybe we can talk about why why later but those are the basic sweep did
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awesome flavors right now and how'd you choose those flavors like what kind of did you try a lot of different flavors
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than you kind of fine tune on what the customer liked or like how many did you start with and how many basically now do
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you have well I I did start with more I mean when I started at the farmer's market here in Las Vegas I had a I had a
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Chia version which basically I think I took cinnamon and I had some like I put some Chia on and it seemed to stick
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fairly well but I think one of the things that I've learned in business is like it's you just want to keep things
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as simple as possible because you know business especially the food business is very challenging because you got to keep
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your cost of goods sold down and so my thought was to try to you know to reduce
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the number of skus that we had and so early on I was like well I love the the
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Chia awesome but I don't know how many people are gonna you know if that's gonna be as as widely loved as much as I
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love it and so early on I thought I had Chia I had the Chipotle cinnamon I used to call the cinnamon
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original awesome because when I first started I would even before I did anything with freeze drying I would eat
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sweet potatoes you know baked in coconut oil with cinnamon and so that that was
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the first thing I tried in my Harvest Right freeze dryer and I you know I
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really liked it so that was the first flavor that I'd kind of really come up with and and we just started getting seed
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back from customers and they they liked you know for the most part pretty much all the flavors and so I think because
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we were small and I wanted to get more and more feedback I just kind of like threw them all out there at the farmer's
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market yeah and I never really wanted to you know I looked I look at in and out in and out is like the ideal business
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because they just have a very simple menu and they could get like super efficient at doing what they do and and
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you know that they yield a lot of profits for them and so that's kind of the goal that I have in mind kind of
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keeping the our menu sort of simple yeah that's definitely something that I talk
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about in in my videos for this channel is I talk about how you know there's a
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lot of things to freeze dry and a lot of our subscribers you know a lot of people are getting into freeze drying kind of
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you know just kind of the the trendy things like candy and stuff but you can get overwhelmed with the amount of skus
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and products that you're doing and sometimes less is more because you got
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to store all that product you gotta you know buy all the product and if it's not selling you're you're you're kind of
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depending on the use date and things like that so I definitely preach you know Simplicity and and sometimes I do
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things seasonally for my own business but yeah I get you that's awesome now why sweet potatoes because I you know I
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mentioned this prior to me talking to you but you know sweet potatoes is a superfood it's very healthy for you but
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you know why sweet potatoes and did you explore other types of foods prior to saying I'm gonna go all in on sweet
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potatoes well I guess to answer that question I it requires a little bit of a back story as to how I got into the food
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business I I kind of have a unique story I was I was Discerning a call to the priesthood in a Catholic seminary in in
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Boston Massachusetts where I had a very specific moment in prayer I was with the oblates of the Virgin Mary and very very
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very specific moment in prayer God said go to Las Vegas start a business you're you're not called to the priesthood
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let's make a long story short I I left the Seminary soon thereafter with this
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very sort of deep conviction that God was kind of sending me on this Mission and and you know he it was clear to me
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that he wanted me to start a business and my being a foodie and being very passionate about food and kind of kind
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of like with a deep awareness of like the difference that food can can make you know on a
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on a psychological physical spiritual level I want to do a food business and so initially I was trying to do a almond
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flour cookie recipe and I was curious to see if other flowers that were you know kind of
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healthy would work and I think I'd bought some sweet potato flour on like a specialty nutrition you know website
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because in general tree potatoes are a little bit more you know acceptable for
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people on more restricted diets some people can't deal with nuts very well and I like the taste of the sweet potato
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flower but my question was like how do I make sweet potato flour and retain the
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nutrients and so I started to dig around and the answer was freeze drying in
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terms of if you wanted to retain the nutrients and what you're drying or dehydrating you know I was looking at
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reading all these articles and showing that you know this very high retention and nutrients and coming from a
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background or you know kind of very health minded this was my goal I was like I really want to make this as
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healthy as possible and so I bought a one of the early freeze dry machines from Harvest right
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I'm pretty sure it was number 63 which I think it was like the 63rd they ever
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made it was back in 2014 and set it up I I I'm now in Las Vegas
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but I was in Massachusetts kind of staying with my parents for a few months so I set up the Harvest Right freeze dry
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machine in my parents garage and and I was simply freeze drying just so I could
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have these slices that I could break down into flour and
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when I first kind of experienced the taste of these freeze-dried pieces of sweet potato I was like that's really
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interesting and I I thought it I thought it tasted good and I said forget about cookies this is far more unique
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and and then I started to play around with adding salt and and doing the original awesome which is you know
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because I knew I liked tasting it I like the taste of it out of the oven so I'm like yeah if I freeze dry it gonna be
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the same sort of thing and then I started to keep keep experimenting with fries and then different flavors the
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dill and garlic actually was the idea was kind of given to me by a sweet potato farmer up in Wisconsin that I had
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talked to and then the Chipotle I just was talking to to chefs at the at the
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farmer's market and I was asking them like what goes well with sweet potatoes you know because you got a lot of really good chefs here in Las Vegas work on the
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strip and I think the one thing that I kept hearing over and over was Chipotle and so yeah so that's kind of how I came
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up with the the different flavors that we have now I just have a question because I live in Idaho but do you buy
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any sweet potatoes from Idaho because we are the like potato Mecca of the United States so I I do not I I'm sure that
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they have sweet potatoes in Idaho but they have a lot more in California because technically like sweet potatoes
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are not potatoes they are from The Morning Glory family and potatoes are from the nightshade family and a lot of
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our the people that are our Target main customer is people are people that are on the sort of what is called the
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autoimmune protocol diet so they avoid things like nightshades which would include the onions Peppers you know that
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sort of thing and and so yeah so I mean there may be more
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sweet potatoes up in Idaho but California is right next door to Nevada and we've been buying them from California so
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and California is the number two producer in the country for for sweet potatoes behind North Carolina so now I
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gotta ask about your Harvest right so how did you how did you even find Harvest right because at 63 I mean on
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Google did it come up in a search engine or did you have some type of connection and yeah just tell me like how did you
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come across a affordable freeze dryer because you know a lot of people are getting
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into freeze drying and it's only been three years or so that's really taken off so yeah how'd you come to find
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Harvest right it was a lot of Googling if I recall just like searching because there was there are a few companies that
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made sort of I guess they would call them like pilot freeze dry machines right so I think I probably found them
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first and they were like 16 or 20 Grands and I was like geez that's crazy for such a small machine
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and I think I just through Googling I just you know kept searching and you know found their website and and made
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the order now keeping on with the freeze drying equipment right like do you still
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own some Harvest Right freeze dryers and how many did you so you started out with one and what's the most you've actually
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had just knowing just kind of your operation I think I purchased 20 yeah 20
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20 Harvest ride freeze dry machines I think the most I've had operating all at
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the same time was 17. and now I have a it's a it's not official I was I don't
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know I should describe this but it's a prototype that I was able to purchase from Harvest right that is very large
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and basically it'll it'll hold 8 22 18 by 26 full-size sheet pans
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and so I've been using that that's been really really helpful for our business and I was able to purchase that just
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basically because I you know kept bugging Harvest Right for a bigger freeze dry machine and they were working
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on it I think they've started to talk about it and I think they're going to be releasing them by the end of this year I
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don't don't quote me on that but I think they're gonna be releasing them to the general public you know later on this
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year oh interesting right yeah and right now I have I think I think it's 14 freeze dry
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machines not most of them are up and running but I'm trying to transition to if I could have
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just like three or four of the large industrial units that would be ideal it just makes our process a lot a lot
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quicker specifically because we're going from the oven to to the freeze dryer and the the sheet
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pans are the same size so it really helps us out in terms of efficiency yeah well Hardware strike just came out with
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their XL earlier this year and that's really been a game changer I unfortunately don't have one yet I'm
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hoping that I can trade in a couple of mine and and sell them and then get the
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XL because you know it can do up to 36 pounds of food and it's just that's at
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least two and a half times of Two and a Half cycles of the regularly large so really could trim down time now have you
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looked at other types of freeze dryers because one of the things I did want to talk to you about is there's quite a you
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know probably since 2014 you know Harvest Right seemed to be kind of the only home freeze dryer but now there's a
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lot of other ones that I talk about on my channel that other people are buying there's a stay fresh machine that
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actually is built in Utah as well there's also a couple other ones Alpine freeze dry there's this Cube by prep for
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Life they're also smaller ones but have you looked at any other ones are you familiar with those what's your take on
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all these other manufacturers I haven't used any of them out you know I've only
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used Harvest rides and I've only purchased Harvest rides I have looked into them but because like right now it's such a priority for us to find a
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large really large freeze dry machine you never really considered purchasing one and as far as I know they don't I
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don't think any of them have one you know as large as the XL so like for us
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because you know we're carrying about 50 Whole Foods and we're trying to really expand you know scale is is of the
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utmost importance so but it's really encouraging for me to see all these manufacturers you know coming out there
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because it sort of validates the industry yep you know because I I've been doing this for a while and it's just it's exciting to see the industry
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starting to take off so I like competition yeah I I tell people that
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all the time you know it's like you know people are like is it too late to get in I was like on the contrary I think it's the perfect time I mean there's so much
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technology that people companies all these companies investing and and
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building and spending all that money to invest in building freeze dryers I mean that's a lot of money and they're only
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going to do that if they see an opportunity for a business to grow and actually the technology for knowing that
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it's dry knowing that it's getting faster also just like just a smarter
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machine is only going to be beneficial for not just a commercial large company like you but you know for small people
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as well just trying to get into it so on the contrary I think competition is great do you have any cool equipment or
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is there something that you just absolutely love that you purchased and it took a big leap to buy it but you
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just you can't live without it right now yes and I would say that is a it's it's a it's a heat ceiling gas Purge machine
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which will seal four pouches at the same time and we we transitioned we before we
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had that we had a single basically heat sealing purging machine they would do one bag at a time and uh
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it it it's a game changer for us I I think it's really important for us because
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I mean you got on one level you want to retain the nutrients as best you can inside what you've freeze-dried and so
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therefore you want to avoid oxygen exposure and so the the tighter seal that you can get on a your pouch I think
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the better the other aspect maybe some of your listeners hadn't haven't haven't heard of the nitrogen Purge but
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basically what you do is is you push in nitrogen into the pouch which disperses
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the oxygen and then it reduces the oxygen inside the pouch and you know gives you you
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know a better shelf life and in particular if you're if you're doing anything with any sort of fat like we
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use coconut oil as one of our ingredients so which is has a very low
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out of all the oils is probably the least likely to go rancid but it's something we're very conscious of uh to
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try to avoid that because we don't want our customers you know opening up a bag and having that smell right so it's it's
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really important for us to be able to you know get as much oxygen out of the pouch and get it sealed in the other the
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other aspect there is when you seal the pouch and you get that poof here I got one right here we get like this the push
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the cushion it protects what's inside better and so you get less of a chance that you know all the whatever product
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or fruit or vegetable that you're freeze drying you know less of a chance that it's going to break down when you ship
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it somewhere or just when it's traveling that sort of thing so yeah and for those that don't know about kind of the the
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nitrogen type of thing versus Like Oxygen absorbers yeah that typically has been kind of a standard for you know
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putting it in and storing it away like MREs type style but you know what what
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what's the is the shelf life is it just as long as you know putting it in a mylar bag sealing it up and you know
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vacuum sealing and then putting a auction absorber in like how how long
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have you seen some of your product last I would say it's longer simply because
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you know if you if you put you put an oxygen absorber in there like I was told when I because I used to
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use oxygen absorbers in conjunction with my older nitrogen heat sealing the
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nitrogen Purge heat sealing unit and the sales person told me that like once
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you open that bag of oxygen absorbers like if you leave it open for any much much longer than like 15 or 20 minutes
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like they're all done and so I think of it this way like even
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if you're putting it inside of a sealed bag like it's gonna it's gonna absorb oxygen for a while and it's definitely
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gonna help but it's much more efficient is if you can figure out a way to get
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the ox so get it to the point where your pouch has as little oxygen to start with as possible and like I
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the unit that we have now I have you know I had to get a loan it's fairly expensive I think it was about fifteen thousand dollars so it's you know it's
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not exactly for like you know a cottage food sort of business but it we could
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basically it'll pull a vacuum and do a gas Purge and pull a vacuum and do a gas purchase you can set the number of times
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that it does that and we just did a test when I was first setting up the machine with an actual Like Oxygen sort of you
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know recognizing device to tell you how much oxygen was in there and we know it's a pretty substantial difference where we ran it you know
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seven or eight Cycles as opposed to just one and I mean you have that the vacuum with like a subtle vacuum and then the
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gas Purge and the subtle vacuum that's the ideal sort of scenario I mean I
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would say if anybody's doing anything with some sort of fat where you really need to get the oxygen out of there it's
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you know it it's certainly really helpful it's it's expensive the other unit the first unit that we had
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the Name Escapes me right now but I bought it from it it's a company in San Diego
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that would only have the gas Birds and the heat seal which was still really helpful I mean it had a vacuum mode but
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it was kind of hard to to get it to vacuum just right the newer unit does that really well
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but even with that you know we had we had pretty good luck with it not as it's not as good as it is now but I just
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think that aspect of that pushing all the nitrogen in there and getting out of getting the oxygen out of there is is
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pretty helpful yeah it's kind of it's an interesting World out right now in terms
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of there's a lot of people getting into freeze drying including myself that you know you're trying to find the
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best information out there of like you know freeze drying really wasn't something that was a common
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practice or like a food process for a lot of people and so a lot of people are
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buying bags with Windows on them well that window allows a lot of sunlight
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that then exposes the product to spoil things like that and then you know
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everyone thinks of oxygen absorbers because that's what mountain house or you know an MRE had previously and
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that's what just kind of like you think of you need same thing but then when you go and buy a freeze-dried strawberries
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at Trader Joe's there's no Oxygen absorber in there and and it still tastes just as great still just as dry
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of a strawberry things like that and you know there's a lot of I think unknown
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maybe maybe there is known research but there's a lot of unknown public knowledge of how to really preserve the
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the freeze drying products and I think that's going to change as competition comes in as the industry grows for sure
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I definitely want to talk to you more about that in a future interview because I'd be interested to know kind of like
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how you found out all these ways to like preserve and make sure you're doing the right things with your food hey while we
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pause the interview for one second if you could do me two things one hit the like button on this video so that I know
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whether the content that is in this video is very helpful for you and then number two if you could comment in this
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video and let me know maybe further questions if you would have liked me to ask Josh I might be able to actually get
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another interview schedule with him and we can ask those questions all right let's get back to the interview can you tell us what it inspires you most to
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like keep going with sweet potato awesome well and you know I I strongly believe that
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food is very very important I think as a as a whole our society doesn't
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place the proper value on the importance of food I think it I think it affects us in
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ways that we're not always aware of are conscious of and food is very
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important but I think honestly the the real reason that keeps me you know
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change it out the freeze dry machine and cleaning the cleaning the trash and stuff at you know 10 o'clock 10 30 at
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night you know six days a week is it I I believe very strongly as I mentioned earlier that I'm this is my path to
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sanctification as a Christian as a Catholic and it's it's sort of the path
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that God has given me and I I feel like I was not I feel like I'd be running away from something if I wasn't giving
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myself fully to this this project and this business so oh that's great
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well also I gotta ask too you know are you finally able to pay yourself a salary being from a small business now
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to where you're at today is it has has the effort and everything that you put in over these past nine years finally
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come to fruition in terms of allowing yourself to have a a nice you know a nice Payday for your company
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well no but it was open for a different answer
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yeah well I'll be I think this is I mean a lot of your your viewers you
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know I think it's probably important to know that in the food business it's like when you start out and you're
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working you're doing I did the cottage food thing and you're you're in your own home and you're you're selling pretty well at the farmers market but you don't
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really have that many expenses and you know yeah if you have some expenses for sure but they're Limited and I made the
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jump to to basically lease a you know commercial space and because we were freeze drying I I
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mean I'm sure there are other people that are able to do it but I just didn't see a way that there would be able to do it uh without having access to that
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space so I didn't think I could rent like a commercial the space in a commercial kitchen and it's just
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something to keep in mind is that as you grow like we've grown you know now we're 50 Whole Foods we sell pretty well at
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and a large retailer in Los Angeles called air one and you know
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the the rent goes up the cost of sweet potatoes go up and transportation goes
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up and it's it's something to keep in mind is why I talked about sort of that efficiency you know the importance of
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efficiency in reducing your skus is that you just gotta the name of the game and the food business is sort of
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keeping your cost of goods sold down is you can sell a lot of your product but if you're not and I I see it in your
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videos you're very much aware of it yourself keep that expense down and we're kind of at this place where we're
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very close to getting to everything to efficiency and the scale I used to I used to tell
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people all the time that I talked to I'm like well the selling is the easy part that's sort of the fun part of the business it's just the making it and you
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know for the longest time you know prior to us getting this really large freeze-dry machine it was it was a quite
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a struggle because smaller units just weren't we were I was doing it you know but they just weren't enough for us to
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be able to kind of take the next step and like right now we're very we're really close to kind of getting over the
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hump with the larger dryer it's just like there's a certain amount of scale that you need so I think something else
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that your viewers might want to keep in mind is that you know grocery stores it's sort of a it's a
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glamorous sort of thing but it also can be very expensive sort of thing because
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you have to take into account yeah the transportation a lot of grocery
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stores will require a distributor you know Whole Foods has been a great partner they've been fantastic they they
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have allowed me to ship directly to them so basically I got a higher margin because I can ship directly to Whole Foods but a lot of grocery stores that
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approach you'll approach that aren't even that big they'll they want to work with the distributor because it makes their job easier and so when you work
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for the distributor your margins are cut you know that much more so it's just something to keep in mind
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that you know growth is is expensive and again you you it's why it's so important
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to keep your costs of goods sold down your production process as super efficient as possible because it's a big
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step going from you know Farmers Market to sort of a more commercial you know
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wholesale sort of operation so for sure and I'm kind of I've been I I've had
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this channel for almost a year now and I've told people you know there is there
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is and anybody who's watching this who's brand new or hasn't kind of seen my videos and what I preach and is is that
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there's a lot of ways to take the step to Cottage food and still build a sustainable business that doesn't
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require you to lease a commercial space necessarily and have to invest in all that equipment
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you know I I'm a Christian as well and basically I I contacted churches because
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churches typically have a licensed commercial kitchen for their congregation and their members and you
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know you could put one to maybe even three freeze dryers there and just kind of start tapping into your local market
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to see how you could sell wholesale and things like that and yes you know those
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wholesale retailers are going to take a cut but you can do a little bit more volume and you can really see kind of
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what what's a food what what is this type of food service industry and this food processing
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industry and do you like it do you like The Grind of all right the sales just like you said the sale was great also
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need to get that that order you're like great that's awesome then you get the check it's great but all you got the
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work is going into it now so you've got to meet the deadlines of what they want and if you have a lot of skus like a lot
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of people have with all this candy and ice cream and fruits man it could be really really daunting so I encourage
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people to look at churches schools and I'm at a I'm at a restaurant and I'm the
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only one there fortunately and you know it's an affordable rent where I can really test it out and just a little off
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topic in terms of my story is I actually had five freeze dryers at one time with my friend who I started this with and
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that lasted about six months and the reason being is we still had full-time jobs we still we were growing our
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families I've got two boys under the age to three now and you know it just became too much because five freeze dryers
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requires you to fiddle five freeze dryers and get the food out then store
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it then bag it and yes I liked having a partner because I got to do the selling
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and I also got to do the distribution and the wholesale and deliveries but he
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was doing all the bagging and bagging a thousand bags a month can get really monotonous if you don't have some type
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of a system and so yeah it's it's exciting I think I'm kind of in that middle ground where I haven't yet made
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that leap where you were probably years ago where I got my own leaf space but I'm happy where I'm at and I do have
29:00
aspirations to be it at your space at some point at some point just based on some ideas I have but I'm happy with
29:06
what I've got right now and that works with my lifestyle if I may add I think that's a really smart approach you know
29:13
just staying staying kind of lean and mean and not you know I I'm just like
29:18
I'm you know crazy let's just go for the moon sort of thing but even even when
29:23
Whole Foods approached me you know I I I could have gotten into more stores initially but I initially just said hey
29:30
can I do one store in Las Vegas and they give it to their four stores here in Las Vegas and I said and they
29:36
gave me four to start but I I think the approach that you're talking about makes just a lot of sense just keep it local
29:43
you know as I talked about before shipping is expensive you know hearing a set of pallets somewhere you know I
29:49
think one of the great things about being in Las Vegas is we are right next to you know four hours away from Los
29:54
Angeles a big big metropolitan area but if I just may add towards the whole idea
30:00
of getting into stores something that you will encounter is fairly common
30:05
nowadays but stores will ask you for what's referred to as a free fill which
30:11
is basically free product free product to put on the Shelf if they don't ask you for money outright to be put on the
30:17
Shelf so it's just something to kind of prepare yourself for it's kind of it's kind of standard right now in the
30:23
industry you know there's some I mean not everybody does it it doesn't happen all the time and is that fairly recent that they've
30:30
started asking for that or is that just common it's been that way since you started being approached by
30:37
grocery stores I think it's it's it's kind of always been practice at practice but it's become more
30:44
more common over the last couple years and I think the one advantage you have
30:49
is a smaller vendor is that you you have a you have a a better case to kind of plead with them they kind of help you
30:55
out I know some some grocery stores have definitely you know been helpful for me
31:01
as in terms in that particular area but it's just something you got to be aware of that once you go into the
31:07
wholesale Arena some people won't even talk to you if you're you are willing to do that they'll just go to somebody else
31:13
somebody you know we're in we're in the freeze dry industry so it's it's pretty unique and so you got that you know you got
31:20
that that's the thing is like the freeze dry process is really difficult or not really difficult but it's difficult and
31:26
you go through all these hoops and you know it takes you know 20 hours or whatever hours to make your product uh
31:33
but the book side of that is you have something really unique and you have something that if the grocery stores want something unique yeah you're one of
31:40
the few people that has it so yeah yeah I've got a lot of things to say on that but just through the time for this
31:47
interview we'll save it for another another session I've got two more questions for you and then we'll wrap up
31:53
and again we're talking with Josh from sweet potato awesome he's the owner and founder and he is based in Las Vegas
32:00
Nevada freeze drying sweet potato yummy awesome chips that are super Foods
32:07
healthy he's got various different flavors and so you're watching an interview of me just asking him about
32:13
his business and what inspires him and giving you inspiration to start thinking about what your strategies and goals are
32:19
for your freeze-dried business all right final two questions Josh what advice would you give someone who is watching
32:26
this and has aspirations for going beyond that candy you know just that kind of cottage food operation even just
32:33
medium for me you know like I'm I'm not quite at the point of jumping into that
32:39
expensive route of leasing a space but you know do you have any advice of you
32:44
know maybe here's how you know when you're ready to take that step is there any advice on
32:49
that I don't know if you ever like no I think there's always going to be some element of just stepping off into
32:57
the unknown but I think in terms of advice again I just you know Echo this
33:02
the keep it simple I I think of it as like the in and out business model just just keep it keep it simple keep it lean
33:09
try not to overextend yourself you're gonna get you know you're gonna get a lot of
33:14
people that will you know want you to be in such such grocery store and it's so tempting but I think it's always better
33:21
to to stay within your means and like you know it's you know it's great to have some big po but
33:28
if that's going to affect the quality of your product and that's gonna you know you're not gonna be able to deliver on
33:33
it it just kind of keep it lean keep it mean and try to you know at least initially just try to take on almost
33:41
even just slightly less than me what you think you can take on and just be really good at it be really good at what you do
33:46
and and and stay local you know stay local if you're you know maybe you're
33:51
not near a major metropolitan area but you know basically you know stick with
33:57
the closest one that's nearby you Las Vegas has been growing so we kind of been fortunate in that regard City it's
34:02
been growing crazy amounts over the last few years but you know those that's my biggest piece of advice keep it lean and
34:09
mean and and then go from there now if people don't know who you are but they want to find out more about sweet potato
34:15
awesome you know what where can they find you what's the best way to kind of follow you and just get more updates and
34:22
find out more about you after this interview to just kind of see your story sure well we we have our website
34:28
sweepdataawesome.com or you can learn about all our products in terms of like the kind of daily
34:34
updates Instagram we kind of have more of a presence on Instagram we do you know I
34:39
do stories there fairly consistently if you want to kind of follow along with us or simply get a Whole Foods today
34:45
there's a few pictures from today up there but those are the big ones I don't really do too much with Facebook or you
34:52
know Tick Tock or anything like that it's primarily Instagram and our website if you want to follow sweet potato awesome go ahead and and follow him on
35:00
Instagram I've been following him for several years since I started in 2020. it's really great to just kind of follow
35:06
people who are doing things differently and doing things beyond what you're
35:11
currently doing because it can push you to do things that you're not quite doing and just puts you outside of your limits
35:17
you never know what those limits might be to catapult you to a new career like Joshua like Josh has I gotta ask one
35:24
more question Josh what is with the sweet potato the awesome part did
35:29
somebody tell you these are so awesome and you said all right I'm adding awesome to the end of my business or
35:35
what came how did you come up with the name sweet potato awesome I don't remember the specific moment but I know
35:41
at some point in time just the idea the name came to me sweet potato awesome because it's a sweet potato and I'd like
35:48
to think it's awesome and so I mean the sweet potatoes are awesome to begin with because they're super food high and you
35:54
know vitamin A and and all that stuff that sort of thing so yeah I don't know is it sort of a gift from God I think
36:01
and most people seem to like the the name well thanks for your time Josh again if you haven't subscribed to my
36:07
channel freeze-dried business go ahead and hit the Subscribe button also hit the like button if you like this content
36:13
I'm going to be doing more series with different freeze-dried business owners across the country thanks Josh for your
36:19
time and and we'll catch you again some other time thanks a lot you're very welcome thank you very much for having
36:25
me you're welcome [Music]
36:32
[Applause]

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