Success Stories Ep 73 - "Touchdown on Print!"

Since 2009, Corvallis Custom has been a mainstay in the Oregon region for custom-printed apparel, promotional items, and large-format print production. 

They have served in the collegiate market since day one, with a recent name, image likeness, or ni l movement they have been helping athletes was customized merchandise that reflects their unique personalities and viewpoints. 

Today we'll dig into how Corvallis custom has grown over the years and moved into the NFL market in a major way on this episode of Success Stories, get ready to have some fun.

Transcript

Marshall Atkinson 
Since 2009 Corvallis custom has been a mainstay in the Oregon region for custom printed apparel, promotional items and large format print production. They have serviced the collegiate market since day one with the recent name, image, likeness, or N.I.L. movement. They have been helping athletes with customized merchandise that reflects their unique personalities and viewpoints. Today, we'll dig into how Corvallis custom has grown over the years and moved into the N.I.L. market in a major way on this episode of Success Stories. Get ready to have some fun. So Jesse, welcome to the Success Stories podcast.

Jesse Freeby 
Hey Marshall, thanks for having us. It's super exciting.

Marshall Atkinson 
It is super exciting. And I'll tell you, what's even more exciting is we met on a boat, right? We met on a boat. Not many people could say that, right? And we met last year at the ISS Long Beach show at the ROQ event on the boat, right?

Jesse Freeby 
So that was kind of fun we did, and it was kind of a celebrity moment for me, because we had listened to your podcast since I think you'd started a year or two beforehand, and then we're sitting up top waiting for a really cool band to perform. And I was like, That's Marshall Atkinson.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, it was fun. And, you know, meeting on a boat, it's always great. So there you go. So if you want to know people go to an event on a boat, just introduce yourself around, right? Alright, so you ready for the first question hit me with it. Alright, so you've been around since 2009 so I want you to take us back to when your company was founded. So you were doing something in a class project for business school or something at Oregon State. So what happened, and how did you start your business, and how did you grow into what you're doing now, just walk us through that timeline real quick.

Jesse Freeby 
Some people have that origin story that's like, you know, oh, I was destined, or I was born to do this, and then with us, it's, you know, one of those things that we kind of just fell into. So I was a senior at Oregon State, and I had a bunch of friends who were graphic design majors, other business majors, and that was the year that Oregon State football was actually going to battle for the ducks, and the winner of that game would go to the Rose Bowl. And so it was this kind of incredible thing. And everybody always gets hyped over that rivalry game. And so we had this brilliant idea that no one had ever thought of before. And so we were going to create a t shirt that had the Oregon State logo on one side and the Oregon logo on the other side, and it said, battle for the roses. And we spent like, a week designing it. And there was a college class where we had to come up with an economic opportunity that they never thought that we would actually like bring into the market. And we were like, what if we actually sold these? So we stayed up super late, and we borrowed a press, and we printed, I think, a couple 100 of these T shirts, and then we threw them into backpacks, and we headed down to ons stadium, and we were selling them for 20 bucks a piece out of the backpack. Oh my

Marshall Atkinson 
gosh, nobody's ever done that before. Ever Jesse, totally.

Jesse Freeby 
It was a very unique idea, and we were brilliant entrepreneurs, right? Like, this was something that was going to be the next big thing. And so we sold every single one of those T shirts. And as a college student, like, you know, you're looking to make your money, and we were very successful at that. And this was like a game changer for us. We were going to print t shirts. And unbeknownst to us, one of the members of our team was approached by an individual who was like, Oh my god. These are awesome T shirts. This is so great. And he sung to the high heavens. He was like, We're students at Oregon State. Here's our address, here's a social security number, here's our email addresses, here's everything you need to possibly get in contact with us. We would love to print for you. We can, you know, we have this little, tiny Riley Hopkins, you know, six color, six station press, because we're hot shots, and then we can't come back so bright and early, early am delivery Monday morning, we get a FedEx delivery, and it's a document, and we're like, Hey, what's this? And it's a cease and desist letter, because he had been talking to one of the marketing departments at Oregon State, one of the directors. And of course, being young and dumb, we had no idea about licensing, we had no idea about trademark, we had no idea about all of the rules that we had broken. So we got a very what seemed like world ending letter from the university, saying all of the bad things that were going to happen to us if we didn't immediately like work with them. So it was a crazy thing that we actually were able to turn into something really cool that is evolved into Corvallis custom today. So how'd you dig yourself out of that hole? So we went and we sat down with the marketing department, and we basically and we basically pled for mercy. And the cool thing that I actually still to this day have a lot of respect for, and it's one of the approaches that I take into working with other college students, is they looked at it as a learning opportunity. They said, like, you're here to learn about business. So we're not going to, like, take your first born, we're not going to have all these things. Here's. Every little, tiny, detailed place where you went wrong. And here's what you need to do to make it right. So don't use our logos to do all this stuff. And in lieu of charging us, I think it was like a 5000 or a $10,000 fine, they said, if you want to take all the money that you made, which was pretty close to that number, you can apply for like, super provisional. I'm pretty sure they made it up on the spot licensing so that you can produce Oregon State apparel for, you know, student groups and student clubs. So at the time, there was nobody in in our city that could, could locally produce that it was all bigger printers that the student clubs didn't necessarily have access to. So under that license, and under the, you know, being nurtured by the marketing department for a couple of years, we were able to grow that license into now their top tier of licensing, so we can do direct to consumer. We run Go these.com for the university. We print for every single department. We print directly for fans, and we're one of only four licensed companies that has that level of licensure.

Marshall Atkinson 
What an amazing story. And I love the fact that they said, You know what, let's let these guys grow and learn something from this, instead of just being all lawyer speak all day. Yeah?

Jesse Freeby 
Definitely, one of the things I still have respect.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, that's great. That's great. And so that was 2009 right? Yep. And so here we are, 2023 that's a long time, right? And you've grown since then. You still do collegiate license stuff, and you also do, like local businesses and other things and whatever else, right?

Jesse Freeby 
Yeah, we do everything. So we have two automatic presses, two large format presses, a couple of DTF machines, where we grew from a staff of unpaid business owners to a staff of about 16 now. So we've definitely come a long ways, right?

Marshall Atkinson 
That's great, right. That's great. And what do you think along the way, in the 14 years you've been in existence, what has been the primary thing that's gotten you to the next level? You know, whatever that mythic idea is, where you're solving a problem, and then you keep iterating with continuous improvement ideas, what has been the thing that's allowed you to keep growing and be successful and keep expanding your business? Is there an idea behind that that's really helped out?

Jesse Freeby 
We're extremely relationship driven, so like in every facet of our business, we're looking for Win Win outcomes. So whether that's a customer coming in, and the win for us is it's a paid job and it's a new opportunity to produce something, and for the customer, it's whatever the end result of that is. So we really try to approach things procedurally. We have a lot of really fine tuned, standard operating procedures. And then we also look at our customer interactions and how we conduct business from the end point of what's the end result? What do we want to end up with at the end of the day.

Marshall Atkinson 
That's great. And, you know, I'm a big outcome guy. I talk about outcomes all the time, and I know that you guys do a lot with processes. You were just talking about that, right? So, how you develop those SOPs over the years? Like, do you have a a template? Is there a way that you're doing it, that you're looking at it from my you know, how we measure the analytical point of view, but also from the worker point of view, where they are the ones that have to do everything. So we need to make sure that that's good for them. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Jesse Freeby 
Well, I can say that I have done every single job in this company, either initially, until we were able to define those processes and what that role looked like, or sometimes floating into those roles, you know, during periods of transition or during periods of training. So how do we develop those it's what is the end result, and then also, what are the individual steps that we need to fall into in order to get to that end result. And so one of the things that we focus on is hiring problem solvers. So our staff is composed of extremely capable, solution oriented people, which can be a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing because we're able to produce a lot of things each week. And you know, people don't hound you with a ton of problems, but it also can create some problems when the solutions that are implemented aren't always in alignment with how how I would do it. So the way that you you change that is by giving people again the end goal and then talking about how the core, what's the core balance? Custom way of doing that provides them with the ability to pivot when they really need to, but clearly defines like the steps that we should be taking in order to solve this problem.

Marshall Atkinson 
So it's really about empowering them to be autonomous, but the same time giving them some guidelines and guardrails so we don't just go off the cliff at 100 miles an hour.

Jesse Freeby 
Yes, right, and it's important to remember that this wasn't a process that we just like had a light bulb and overnight made the change. It was one that came from a lot of failure, but making sure that we were learning through that failure. So anytime that we have something that doesn't go the way that we want it to, you know, in the immediate urgency, you solve that problem, but then you need to kind of have a little bit of a debrief that goes, how did we have this problem in the first place? And how do we assure that it doesn't happen again? As always, you just spin your wheels and you're constantly solving the same thing. You. Be it yearly, monthly or daily.

Marshall Atkinson 
And think about that. That's how your company was formed, with making a big problem and then working yourself out of it,

Jesse Freeby 
I know. So it's kind of an ethos we've unintentionally developed, maybe intentionally developed.

Marshall Atkinson 
So, you know what we need before we do anything. We need a really big problem, and that way we could solve it.

Jesse Freeby 
So I'm one of those weird individuals that I work really well under pressure, but I also hate being under pressure. Everybody goes into their day envisioning, like, all of the things that they're going to do. And as entrepreneurs, we know that that's not always what happens, but I thrive in that way sir.

Marshall Atkinson 
Are you a person that self procrastinates and that way it comes out better than if you just plan to do it, because I know people like that.

Jesse Freeby 
I totally am not. I'm what I'm doing regimented from the time that I wake up in the morning until time I go to bed. And then these are the frustrations that I have at, you know, eight o'clock at night before, because I wasn't able to accomplish that in the day.

Marshall Atkinson 
So, because there's people who will just, you know, the things do Friday at, you know, it's kind of like the kid the eighth grade with the science project that Thursday at 10 o'clock is when they remember they have to build the diorama, right, right? And there's some people who really are good at that, and other people it's just a total mess. So all right, so I think they're real. The real interesting thing here is that you know, you're continually learning and improving things and pushing the boundaries on some stuff. Can you give us an example of something that maybe you tried and failed and maybe, like, the third attempt? Man, this is we really landed that one, and that you've been doing it ever since.

Jesse Freeby 
Well, so I can tell you how we first approached the, you know, running our business, which became a problem is, we initially trained every single employee to run through the whole process. So the person who took the order was the person who who ordered the supplies, was the person who coordinated with our graphics designer, and then was ultimately the person who printed the items. And that works when you have, you know, like you're working out of a garage, or you have, like a for us, it was about that 200k year threshold, like you can make that work, but it's a constant grind. But what we found is that as you grow customer experience and expectation is is critically important, right? It costs you way more to acquire a new customer than it does to keep a customer. And so if a customer came in and worked with me one day, that experience is going to be different than if they work with somebody else the next day. So we've tried to really refine our business over the last probably 678, years into one of specialization. We still cross train employees, so that way we have people who can float. You know, when we're getting a surge here, a surge here, but that works a lot better, because then the sales people are only focusing on sales, the screen printers are only focusing on screen printing, and then you find that you get expert level attention to those smaller details, because not everybody's a generalist, right?

Marshall Atkinson 
And and how important is communication throughout that so everybody understands what you're supposed to be doing next, or what the parameters are, or whatever.

Jesse Freeby 
I think it's critical if people don't understand that, if they don't have the clearly defined roles and where their piece of the puzzle plays into the overall completion of the puzzle, then it fails 100% of the time. So that's one of the other things that we really, really highlight, is clear communication, but also how we communicate. So if one person sending text messages and the other person's tagging something in our E commerce solution, another person is like sending a carrier pigeon, you can't prioritize all of the means of communication. So if you go, Hey, things of urgent nature need to be communicated in this way. Things of informational nature need to be communicated in this way. And you know, something's on fire, please call the fire department first before you escalate that to a supervisor. So it's just about, you know, really defining what that looks like. And it all kind of goes back to our operating procedures and how we like to structure the business, right, right? Good.

Marshall Atkinson 
So let's, let's totally switch gears here. And I want to talk about an IL because I think it's one of the most exciting things. And I wish it had existed when I was doing stuff a long time ago, because I used to do a lot of stuff for colleges, and during that time were some really exciting college students that were playing. And a man, I would love to have done merch programs for them, right? So, right, so, but I see that it's just riddled with problems and land mines that, like you don't want to go, that you don't want to disturb or go off, because if you do something wrong, then that is somebody's college eligibility for the sport or something. So like, it has to be done the right way. So I want to find out, how did you get into doing right and then how did you learn what to do? And then where are you guys now with it, and what's going on?

Jesse Freeby 
Okay, so we have another story here. So prior to n i l becoming a thing, we actually had the mom of one of the basketball players at Oregon State come in and go grabbing a family reunion. We have all of the our family is coming to this seniors last game. Can you print t shirts for me that have like the seniors base on them? And we explained, like, Hey, we're licensed for Oregon State, so there's some things that we can do without the university's approval, but as long as it doesn't say long as it doesn't say like, Orton state or look like a jersey or something like that, then we should be good to go. So we printed the athletes, like, literally a spot process print of him, like, kind of positioned in a super cool graphic te, and we produce it for his entire family. And then once again, like, nine o'clock in the morning that Monday rolls around, and this time, it's one of the athletic directors, and he's standing at our door and wants to have a conversation about about academic eligibility and how we've by by producing this and turns out the mom had some expertise, and so was trying to sell him to people at this game, which created a problem. So with n, i l, n, i L stands for name, image, likeness. So it's basically anything that describes or look like, looks like the individual athlete or their association with the University. And so previously, you couldn't touch any of those areas, because it could be seen as like an inducement, or you are helping that person to get paid. And there's tons of of of stories about athletes, you know, losing that eligibility, no longer being able to play, you know, forfeiting their potential pro careers afterwards because they weren't able to tie that line. And so universities are incredibly strict, even things that we never intended to sell these. We sold them to the mom. We had no idea that this was a gray area, that the university was zero tolerance. They weren't going to risk it on behalf of this athlete. Then they certainly weren't going to risk it just just, you know, because they're accountable to the NCAA. So with n, i L, it's actually a Supreme Court ruling that came out a couple of years ago, that was a long term class action lawsuit, where an athlete sued, saying there's a sports company out there that released a video game that's clearly me, that's my number, that's my stats, and they're making millions of dollars off of this. Where's my cut of it. And so the basis of that lawsuit was, you're profiting off of of me. I should be entitled to some compensation for that. So all the way up, over about a decade in Supreme Court, Supreme Court rules that athletes can engage in activities that are for profit, provided that they're legal in the states they go to college to. So kind of hunted it back down to the states a little bit, but very clearly said you can get paid, and then college and universities are ultimately responsible for enforcement and determining that you know what the athletes doing is legal and in compliance, and then the athletes must report all of those academic or economic opportunities to both the school and the conference. So that's the first three big things that that is approached in any n i l deal, whether you're a printer, whether you're you know somebody who wants the athlete to come in and do social media posts for you or to be a spokesman, is Is it legal? How are you paying the athlete and are you reporting it to the college or university? So it creates an incredible opportunity for us as printers, because we can now work with a demographic that has an incredibly high visibility, right? Like these student athletes are in stadiums with 50,000 60,000 people. They're broadcast across the nation for all of their games. So it's there's, I don't think anybody's going to disagree, but there's opportunity there. It's just about making sure that you're doing it in a way that doesn't that meets those nio guidelines, and then also doesn't jeopardize the athletes position on the team. And then the other component of that, just from my experience, is you also have to have relationship with university if you want to tie those two things together. Just because the athlete signs off on a t shirt, again, from from my first story, doesn't necessarily mean that they have can give you permission to put the university's name or the university's logo, and just for clarity, they 100% cannot give you that ability.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, because the athlete can't do a you can't do a cartoon in him standing there with like a bloody Viking ax or something, because the university is going to say, wait, wait a minute. Like, you know, that's a cool image, but that's not something that we want to be associated with.

Jesse Freeby 
Yes, and most university guidelines, and this is where you run into some gray area that really, again, comes down to open communication, right? You have to have a really good line of communication with the university as well as the athlete. Is they have standards for using their branding or associating with them, so like, no drug or alcohol references, no gambling references, no, you know, depending on the university that you're dealing with, that could be 30 different things that the university just says we don't want associated with our brand. And so even if the athlete is like, you know, I love murder mysteries, I want that, you know, mid journey generated, you know, stab. Or yeah graphic the university is going to go doesn't align with us.

Marshall Atkinson 
but we want to if sorry, you wanted to look like Jason from Friday the 13th, we're not doing it right. So how did you like kind of get into it? Are you doing their merch stores, designing logos for them? Are you helping with marketing? Like there's a million questions here, and I'm sure a lot of people want to know how you know how it all works. So what kind of walk us through that a little bit?

Jesse Freeby 
So again, we're all about relationships and we're all about end result. So the the win for the athlete is building a brand and is monetizing that brand, right? They want that beer money that we wanted when we're we were attending Oregon State University, and so we do that through an actual separate business that's a subsidiary Corvallis custom called athlete zone. So you can go to athlete zone.com you can check us out on social media. And currently we do all of the brand building, e commerce and fulfillment and customer service for a couple 100 student athletes. We have athletes across all of the power five conferences and a bunch of universities now. And so what we do is we kind of interface. We're the power broker between the university and the athlete, and we help, using our university licensing, assure that that athlete is going to be compliant with they want to put Danny the beaver on stuff, or like, you know, Utah, or TCU, or whoever it is. We make sure that that's in compliance on the university side. We make sure it's something that the athlete wants designed on their behalf. Because ultimately, they provide the marketing side of things. They provide the social media they're driving that traffic to our E commerce platform, and so we want them to be super hyped on the apparel that we're producing. And every athlete on like, you know, the base level wants to be Michael Jordan, right? They want that, that Jordan level teas, like we just saw the movie that came out, right? Like, everything, yeah, wants that. And so as a creator, as a printer, we can help kind of connect some of the dots there and provide them that with that economic opportunity to actually monetize it. Now the again, another pitfall there, because you mentioned that in the beginning of this, is it's very important for printers to understand that you're dealing with 18 year old and 19 year old young adults who don't have a lot of business experience and don't have a lot of this legal and compliance experience. So I come from a unique perspective, because I was there, and I know exactly how it can get you into trouble, but the added weight there is you can cost them their their eligibility, right, or their ability to transfer their ability. So there's, there's a lot of landmines you got to make sure that you navigate, and it's your responsibility to make sure that that those are being navigated so that the athlete only gets the benefit of that, only gets the win. It's a win for everybody, and doesn't step into something that they're ultimately going to regret.

Marshall Atkinson 
So so let's say a listener out there is licensed with a local school, right? They already got that, because sometimes that's hard to get. So let's just pretend they already have it and they want to do Niel, does the school help them set it up so you're not making mistakes. Is there a like a class you can go to, or an association of people that do n i L, so there's standards that we can follow? How does it How does it work with that?

Jesse Freeby 
I guess the simple answer is no.

Marshall Atkinson 
There's not free for all folks.

Jesse Freeby 
Well, but it's not. There's there's. Everybody thinks that it's a free for all, but then there are some pretty big consequences. So we were actually, we helped a couple of universities create those nio policies. And so because of how quickly this happened, I mean, 2001 is when Supreme Court said, like, Yeah, go for it. We're leaving it up to universities. And so a lot of the universities were scrambling. Well, first the states, the states had to say, like, okay, the athletes want to do this. Now, we have to come up with some type of statute that actually enables it, and some guidelines for enforcing it. And so they kind of put that together over the next six months. And then the universities were in a position where they were like, Okay, now we have to enforce it, and we have some very clear reporting requirements. And then it kind of trickled down over the next couple of months to, you know, companies like athlete zone to actually implement it. And what we found over the last year and a half is you get told a lot of, yeah, totally, go ahead and do this, and then six months later it's like, Absolutely do not. Don't touch that at all. Don't ever do that again. We can't believe you did that in the first place. So the universities are still developing those rules. The NCAA is also playing a part in they're called interim rules, so there's a lot of pivoting in the industry. But that doesn't mean there's not also opportunity there.

Marshall Atkinson 
So have you had to tell an athlete? Sorry, no, that's a ridiculous idea. I can't do that.

Jesse Freeby 
Yes, and we probably should have done that at a greater frequency. With some athletes, sometimes you get a customer or, you know, we call our athletes partners, because they, you know, share in the benefit of this with us, who have this idea that, to them is like the million dollar I'm going to create battle for the roses T shirts. And using the experience that we have over the last 14 years, we look at that and go, Oh my god, this is another one of those customers that has the million dollar t shirt idea, and they're going to buy 10,000 of them if you give them a discount, but they only want two right now. And so it's, it's kind of navigating that line to make sure, again, that you find that success with the athlete, that you also get success from right so it's prioritizing sometimes, like, what is your end result? Do you want just a cool t shirt that nobody buys, or maybe you buy it, or your family buys it. Or do you want something that actually is economically viable is learning process?

Marshall Atkinson 
Do you also feel that you could have a really well recognized, popular athlete, and if the art sucks, they're not selling anything, so we have to have a great looking image, a cool logo, a good slogan. There has to be some creative thought behind it that makes somebody go, wow, I gotta have that, otherwise it just doesn't sell. Am I off on that?

Jesse Freeby 
No, you're not. You're 100% on target. So we found that just because an athlete is, you know, top of their class, four star recruit is on TV every single Saturday as a starter. There is zero correlation between their ability to be successful in n, i L and, you know, have people purchase the T shirts and and their success every, you know, Saturday, or whatever it is. And it ultimately comes down to whether the athlete values that relationship. So we without calling anybody out, we found a couple of times where athletes who would be thought going to do exceptionally well. And we had talked to retail stores about carrying the gear, and we had talked to, you know, other other opportunities, in addition to our E commerce platform, and then the athlete launched it, and then just basically was like, I'm so important. I'm a prima donna. This isn't important for me to do anything. I've given you permission to use my image. Make this the next Michael Jordan thing, and that's doomed to failure every single time, and it's just because there's not that athlete buy in. So it's dancing that tight rope line of Yeah, the art can be awesome, economically viable, but the athlete has to do the marketing work has to be something they're willing to wear and promote, because ultimately, it's their brand, right? We just provide some of the back end side of things.

Marshall Atkinson 
And do you advise them on that? I mean, it seems like that would be a crucial part of getting to getting started.

Jesse Freeby 
We try to approach, we approach all of our n, i l deals from we're partners in it, right? So here are the clear to clearly define things that you again, we're kind of going back to the stops and how I like to really be detailed and everything. So, you know, in alignment with that, we like the athletes to understand going into it, before they sign with us, before we launch anything for them, exactly what they need to do to be successful. And we need to define what that success looks like. And then we talk to him about what we do. So the very first athlete that we signed who actually went pro, we invested like 10 grand in developing 15 different designs for him and putting it across like a ton of different apparel and a ton of different print methods. And, you know, we invested a lot because he, in our eyes, with zero experience, had a ton of potential if we were ever going to be successful with this, the kid that's going pro, for sure, is going to be the opportunity. And and that was one of those disconnects where, you know, we met all of the things that we decided that we were going to do and communicate that we were going to do, and that athlete was unfortunately not. And again, we're dealing with 18 and 19 roles, right? So I'm not trying to play not trying to place blame or say that this individual just flat out refused to do it, but there's no experience there. We have 14 years worth of, hey, this is what we got to do to be successful. And when you're dealing with a 19 year old, or in this case, I think like a 21 year old. There's a lot of athlete experience, but not a lot of business experience, and so sometimes bridging those gaps becomes more of a challenge than you would anticipate.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, and how many of the folks have you worked with were not about making a book, but helping support a cause like cancer or, you know, you know, some other social mission or whatever, and they're using their n i L as the platform for to talk about some other non profit entity. And how did that work out? Because I've actually seen that, and I know some athletes that have been very successful. With that, but I'm interested for to hear your viewpoint.

Jesse Freeby 
So causes, especially nonprofit or philanthropic causes, always have an audience. Like, regardless of an athlete associating with it, they always have an audience. And so anytime you can kind of coalition build like that, where, like, here's a nonprofit, you get to tap into their audience, and you the second person in that coalition is going to be the athletes you know. You get to tap into the collegiate audience, all the all of their fans who may want to support this. And then you tap into the, you know, the audience that Corvallis custom, they bring to the table through your list, building on athletes. So those items that we sell tended to be very successful. You're always gonna have outliers, right? But that just probably because of the community partnership that's formed, those have done pretty well most as far as like, the frequency of those athletes, which was part of your question, most athletes just want something cool that's theirs, right? Like they want this is a business opportunity to think that it's exciting, so they're not necessarily thinking two or three steps down the road. Some of them are like, hey, I can use this as a campaign for good. And so after we develop something that kind of represents them and checks the boxes on their branding needs, then they go, Hey, can we partner with and then they insert a nonprofit they're familiar with. And we're like, yeah, we can 100% do that. And so we actually match the athletes. So any percentage from their commission that they want to give to that nonprofit Atkinson matches that, you know, percent per person, right?

Marshall Atkinson 
Okay, that's good, all right. So my next and last question is all about the future, and right now, I feel that we're poised. We're at the cusp of a brand new way this industry is going to work, and it's so exciting. And what I'm talking about, of course, is AI Artificial Intelligence, from using open AI, you know, chat, GPT, to platforms like mid journey, or dolly, or generative AI with Phil, with generative Phil with Photoshop, or all these great tools are coming out, and right now nobody knows how to use them, because we're all learning together. We're all making the mistakes. And I was talking with somebody earlier this week, actually, and there they go, Marshall, why are you so crazy about this mid journey thing? What's going on with that? Yeah, have you lost your mind? And I said, No, I go because I remember I'm old enough to know when the personal computer came out. We did everything. We were designing T shirts by hand. We would make camera ready on blue line, that's where the term camera ready comes from. And they would take images with this big thing called a stack camera. And doing this process sometimes took a day or two, and the personal computer came out, and we were able to take that down to like an hour or two, and it was just amazing. And now, with chat, GPT and mid journey and programs like that, we can refine that down to like 15 or 30 minutes, and we've got an amazing piece of art that we're making money on. And and, but right now, I think we're it's such an early part of it that nobody really knows how to use the tools yet, right? So I'm very curious as to your take on it, because you're a very thoughtful guy and very process oriented, and I know you're right on the cusp with a lot of this stuff. So what are your opinions on it, and how are you using it?

Jesse Freeby 
So I hope that in post you, when you say the future, like, you add some reverb to that and right the future, yeah, because ultimately, this industry is all about innovation, right? So if you don't change anything, we hadn't changed anything from the 14 years ago that we started, I don't think that the business would be here today. And so whether that innovation is through new, latest and greatest technology, like DTF, whether it's through, you know, things like open AI and chat, GBT and mid journey, like it's something that printers should 100% send, devote some time into it. I know there's a newsletter that's out now that is helping them kind of cut the curve on that. So hopefully you'll give a little bit of a drop to that, because it's been very valuable for us in helping decrease that amount of onboarding time we've had. But for our shop, we actually have found we use chat, GPT for a little while. It's kind of cool. Some of the things that you can use to help automate your process or run your form emails through it right? Like, if you're using a software that sends out automated emails. We run them through chat, GPT, just to be like, how can you improve this? And sometimes you take it and sometimes you leave it. But it's cool to get that outside perspective that is, you know, generated based on more information than an individual could could bring to the table on the mid journey side of things, we again in story time. So we have a customer who. Every single year comes to us to design baseball t shirt or softball T shirts for him. And so we have a local rec league here that is a couple of different cities that are close to us, and, you know, they go through a summer season of, you know, just rec softball. And so every year he comes up with a super creative name for it, and we design the artwork for it, which is usually like a cartoon or something, and then we printed on a bunch of different jerseys or T shirts that look like jerseys. And so this year and that process takes, like, you know, eight hours to design it, you know, six hours. And this year we were like, This is the perfect job for chat, GPT. And so the big disconnect that we get with any design project, and this is, I'm sure other people share in this challenge, is customers are not always great at articulating what they actually want from you. And the ones who think that they're great on it, when you give them the end result that in your eye, you know, looks exactly what like they asked for, there are always changes, right? And so with mid journey, you can cut that time frame down pretty substantially. You can take what the customer gives you. We actually have started using it as a little bit of an interactive tool. It's not like a super top secret thing. Top secret thing. We're like, okay, come over here. This is discord. This is mid journey. Describe that for me one more time. And they like to be a kind of a part of like, Oh, that's cool. That's cool. And it flushes out some of those questions that they were going to have anyways, but it cuts the time to get to those questions down pretty considerably. So we took the outline that that our customer had given us, and we ran it through mid journey, and within like 15 minutes, we had eight different images that were kind of all a little bit like what he we thought that he wanted. Then he chose one of them, like right on the spot, had a couple of changes. We dropped it into Photoshop or designer, you know, cranked out the final version. Within another like 10 minutes or so, then we went straight to print, like the next day or two days later.

Marshall Atkinson 
So total, total time savings on that was what compared to last year.

Jesse Freeby 
Six hours, seven hours. We spend more time talking about how cool mid journey was than actually using that to generate the artwork which was printable for us.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, so and you have an artist on staff, yeah, we have a couple of artists on staff. So, you know the take the what you pay that dude an hour, and multiply by six what it costs you to have mid journey, is that project, right?

Jesse Freeby 
Well, and also the designers, I don't know about other industries, but our designers right now are booked out, like, a week or two. The our main designer, our head designer, is booked out two weeks solid, and we're begging her to like, Hey, do you want some Saturday hours? Like, Hey, you want to work, you know, extra time today, and it's just because of the volume that we have coming through. So it becomes one of those things that we analyze, you know, process again and go their design time is better spent, not it's always on quality, right? We always want quality coming out of here, but for a job that you know has $1 value of less than 1000 bucks, again, it's a win for the customer to not pay for that design time. That eight hours of design time like it cost him a couple 100 bucks less than it did last year, so he's way happy. And then also that was capacity that got freed up for our graphics designer to be working on the next $1,000 $2,000 $3,000 job, so that, yeah, and all around.

Marshall Atkinson 
And it doesn't have to be the whole image like earlier today. Jesse, I needed a texture. I wanted to apply a rough texture to some type for an interesting, funky look, you know. So I typed in to mid journey burlap bag texture in 30 seconds, I get one that I liked. It was the first one. Picked it, saved it, brought it into Photoshop, posterize it so it was just black and white, applied it to the font, it's instantly perfect, and now it was exactly what I wanted. And it was two or three minutes of work done, right? Instead of trying to find a texture somewhere or creating it somehow in Photoshop, because I've done that before, where you take, you know, blur, and you do some things with it, noise, and you can make a texture in Photoshop pretty easily. This was just, Bam, Bam, Bam, done. Super easy.

Jesse Freeby 
And how much it costs to your designer, or whoever does it, to go search all the stock websites for something that your license or can pay to use, or find something that's free to use, or, like you said, create it. So I think the time savings is one of the biggest value adds, because our graphics designer is still stuff like that texture that's a component of what they're ultimately creating. So I don't see mid journey or any of those things replacing designers. I think it is going to make them way more effective.

Marshall Atkinson 
It makes them iterate and create faster. Now the trick, though, and you know this because you're using it, is, what are the prompts for using like that? Because you the more specific you are, the better. And it's not. Is the long paragraph. It's because mid journey only uses the first 50 words, right? So if you type in 300 words in your prompt sequence, it's only using the first 50 the back 250 it just is totally ignoring Right? So there's people who type go to chat GPT, and they write this long, huge fantasy story, and they put it into mid journey, and are only using their first 50 words, so you gotta, like, know the prompts and anything that can describe an art style or an art technique or a photography style or lighting, or any different types of any kind of how an image could be described. Those are golden words to be used, and because that's where you hone in on stuff and so but it's lots of fun trying to figure out these words. And that's to me. The fascinating thing is, what word should I be using? And and I'm always trying to do it with less words. How, you know, Mies van der Rohe, they're architect, right? Less is more. How can I use less words to get what I want? You know, it's kind of like little babies, right? Hungry. That's all you have to say. And then we'll feed them, you know.

Jesse Freeby 
So that's awesome. I didn't actually know that about 50 words, and I was, we were definitely one of those businesses who was trying to improve things using chat, GPT and putting in the, you know, 200 words to, you know, which they ignore. So thank you for the insight there. That's a huge value add for me personally.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, well, in the newsletter, I'll have stuff about that. I just haven't, I haven't got to the point where I could put everything in the newsletter, because then it will be, it won't be a newsletter.

Jesse Freeby 
It'll be a book. And the other challenge that we're still looking to overcome, so if you have an insight on this is we'll generate stuff, and we'll be like, That's awesome, but then cataloging in a way that we can go back to those prompts. We can go like, Oh, yeah, hey, this is one we used six months ago. Let's not try to reinvent the wheel a second time. Yeah. Pull this from here and this from here in this room.

Marshall Atkinson 
Well, you know, mid journey. Your mid journey account has, like a little mini portfolio. You should look yourself up in mid journey, and then you can see what you've saved, what was new, what you liked, you know, all that is in there, very cool, yeah, with the prompts, and you can download that image, right? Because I'm all the time, Oh, I did that. What tree like, or whatever like three months ago, which in mid journey time is, might as well have been 10 years ago, a few pages ago, right? You're scrolling. I've done so many more things since then. Anyway, so I go back and I find it, I go, Oh yeah, that was that prompt. And, you know, it's good to like review. And the other thing that I've used is us, I keep a spreadsheet, and with the prompt, there's three columns, prompt, it says, prompt, it says, What does it do? And then why would I want it okay? And so I use a word or a word sequence, you know, like abstract geometry or whatever. And then, what did that do? And then, why would I ever want to do that again? And and so now I'm around 250 words that I've actually tried out which 250 words doesn't sound like a lot, but that is a lot of work. So and because I'm re rolling things, and I'm using it, I'm playing around with it, with different things and and just to kind of end this thing, if you want to learn to use mid journey or any of these creative AI platforms, just do one simple thing and then modify it with another word. That's it, right? Don't try to do 50 things in the prompt. Just do one thing you know, rabbit with a watercolor, rabbit with photography, rabbit with pencil, drawing, rabbit with an A rocket engine, right? Whatever. You just to see what it does. And that way you learn the prompts. And then you can, once you learn them, it's like learning the vocabulary words, then you can apply it to stuff later, right? That's the That's what I've kind of discovered, and that's the fun part. Is like, it's kind of like, what will it what will this do? And you hit the button, right? And so a lot of Saturday mornings have been wasted with a cup of coffee, and I would say wasted, I'd say invested and learning how to do this stuff.

Jesse Freeby 
So, and at the end of the that, you're like, Man, that's kind of cool. And then you're like, Okay, how do we use this?

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, that is cool, right? And all right. Anyway, so Jesse, any last minute words of wisdom for listeners out there?

Jesse Freeby 
That's all I got for you.

Marshall Atkinson 
Okay, so thank you so much for sharing your story of success with us today. What is the best. Way to contact you if someone wants to learn more about what you do or maybe how you can help them.

Jesse Freeby 
So we're very active on Instagram, so you can follow us at athlete's own store to handle or at Corvallis Custom Marshall. Thank you so much for having us. It was a pleasure to talk to you. Hey, thanks.

Marshall Atkinson 
Can you spell Corvallis? Just make sure someone listening, because it doesn't check for everybody.

Jesse Freeby 
Corvallis, C, O, R, V, A, L, L, I, S, C, U, S, T, O, M.

Marshall Atkinson 
Great. Thanks Jesse, appreciate you.

Jesse Freeby 
Thank you sir. Appreciate you too, everyone.