Wes Erickson @blackhillsbuilds | Ep. 10

Held my truck hostage, come to find out that I think he was on drugs or something. I drove to Sioux and owning a Tacoma and owning one of these, these are so much better than a third-gen Tacoma. You ship your '80 to me. Tell me what you want. We'll design a bumper. I was like, done. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome You have arrived at episode number 10. Jon, we are in double digits. I know. It feels like we're actually doing this thing. It's crazy. It's like becoming a habit. When John and I first had this idea a year or so ago, I think we had a number. We said 20 episodes. We were going to do it every week and stick to this schedule, and it was going to be consistent because you had to do it consistently, and then we didn't. Now, granted, we had real life factors that caused that, but we're back in it. John, before we get to our guest, there's a reel that I saw pop up a few places. Let me show you this. Check this thing out. This is a four wheel drive Corolla wagon, obviously. This is an Australian guy. He's named Ricky Tan. You can check his Instagram, but he's got a whole build thread for this thing. And these are real... It was an AE95 is the spec, and they have a center diff lock. They don't have a low range, but they're a real four wheel drive vehicle. And then I just love stuff like that. It's just fun, right? It's a true budget build. I encourage people to go check it out, read through I love these oddball vehicles that you don't see on the road every day. And he built a lot of the parts himself. I mean, just put some coal spacers in it and change the springs in the back, and then you're out there having fun. That's awesome. It makes me want to build out the RAV4. Well, and they share parts. I went down this whole rabbit hole on that, but it uses the same CVs from the RAV 4. Obviously, there was that later Toyota Turcell, the four-wheel drive one, so it's got a similarity to that. And it used... One of the Toyota guys is going to get mad at me. They didn't call it A-Trac at the time. It was called something else track. It was the predecessor to A-Trac. And they even had them with adjustable height suspension. Sound familiar? Yeah. It does, yes. So there's your tidbit for the day, Corolla Wagons, four-wheel drive. All right, our guest tonight does not have a Corolla Wagon, to my knowledge, but he has had many other vehicles that he has documented through his Instagram handle, which is Black Hills Builds. Welcome to the show, Mr. Wes Erickson. Hey, Wes. Yeah, thanks, guys. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be on the show. Absolutely, This is fun. You don't have any Corolla wagons, do you? Seeing that thing made me a little jealous, not going to lie. I got to just end it. I don't have any Corolla wagons. I've driven plenty of Corollas, but none that capable. The 35-mile-per-gallon girl is not the. My sister had. She had a six-speed. I think it was a... Maybe it was a five-speed, but it was like a 2004 Corolla is what I learned how to drive on back in the day. My sister actually taught me how to drive stick shift. It was in a black Corolla. Perfect vehicle to learn to stick on. It is, yeah. You could abuse those clutsches so much like you couldn't kill one. It's funny. I think three or four years after she taught me new clutch and flywheel went in that thing. So I was always just in the back of my mind. I'm like, I wonder what? Was that me? But no, they are bomb proof, that's for So unless you've been under a rock, if you're on Instagram, you have probably seen... If you don't follow Wes, but if you have any type of off-road or overlanding related account, I almost guarantee you one of his reels has popped up in your feed at some time. Your first reel, I think, was back. Actually, I've got a picture of your very first post here, not a reel, but a post. Because in the beginning, you were posting a lot of photos before there was any videos. Yeah, I was on the cusp right before Instagram reels even became a thing. And I'm back in, what was it, 2019, I think? 2019. November 26, 2019. Yeah, so long time ago. That was actually a buddy's camera, so I didn't even take that picture. That was before I even bought a nice camera set up and was just like, Hey, I should make an account, see what people I can meet. Yeah, it was a long time ago. So that was then five years ago. At the time, it was Black Hills taco, correct? Yep. Yeah. Correct. So he documents his his taco bill, which we're going to walk through that here in a second. But you went from zero followers like we all do to 100,000 plus today? Yeah. And I don't know the exact number, but it's right over 100 somewhere. Yeah. So There's a lot of things to discuss in this episode. Wes has got a new company, Adventure Driven Media Co, and we'll talk about how his personal Instagram experience has influenced that and his career up until this point and how it's all evolved. But I think what I want to do first, guys, is we're going to walk through each one of these builds, and Wes just lets you walk us through the journey on each one, because there's been five different trucks that have... Some of them have come and stayed, some of them have come and gone. On your on your account. Some of them stayed longer than others. One in particular went pretty quick. But it all started with the Tacoma here. We saw this first picture. So what did this thing look like when you got it? So I bought this. It was a 2018. It had 18,000 miles on it. I bought it used for 28 grand back when you could get a used taco for a pretty solid price. It was a TRD off-road. It already had a leveling kit and 33s on it. So it had a decent suspension set up right when I got it used from the dealership. And that catapulted this whole journey into off-road and overland for me. You look a little different than five years old. Yeah, I look good. Don't pull that up. Get rid of that. Jeez, what happened? Now I lost it. I don't even know where I was at anymore, guys. It was like when I had one kid. So moving out to the Black Hills, grew up in Nebraska, moving out to the Black Hills, got into hunting, tons of hiking, and just embraced the outdoor scenery. Western South Dakota is beautiful. And I wanted to get a truck where I could still hunt and do different hobbies of mine and utilize it in those scenarios, but just adventure. There's a great trail system in the hills. And Tacoma was always my dream truck, so that's what I landed on. And it quickly evolved into me being influenced by other creators on social media and people on YouTube to, wow, these things have a lot of aftermarket support. And I went nuts. So, yeah, I documented it all from day one since I got it. I immediately started hitting some of the more modest trails in the hills, I guess. And I went through what I would call a typical influencer, IG progression of the truck. In every stage, it was overbuilt for a while for what I needed. I got 33s and a really nice suspension set up. I think I had BP 51s. Oh, nice. Arb suspension. I loved it. That stayed on the truck for a long time. Several different front and rear bumper setups on there was SSOs, front bumper, ATH, FABs, rear. I ended up wrapping the truck. Yeah, it changed color on me. It changed color. Yeah. A couple of times. So that's actually another rabbit hole we don't need to go down. But I had someone in Sioux Falls, South Dakota wrap my truck, and he had it for about a month. And And held my truck hostage, come to find out that I think he was on drugs or something. I drove to Sioux Falls to get it, that right there, wrapped in brown, and couldn't get in, couldn't get a hold of him. My truck was literally locked up. So I remember I rented a rental car to come all the way back home because I had gotten dropped off to pick my truck up. And I went back to get it three days later. And luckily, someone was at his shop and let me in, and I just took it. It was half wrapped. It was not done. So I had to find another shop a couple of miles away because weather shipping wasn't on it. It wasn't really drivable. And it was a whole credit card processing. I put a claim in. Luckily, I got reimbursed. But hard lessons learned for wrapping the truck. And the second company did not do a good job, which is why that brown wrap was only on there for a couple of months. And Luckily, Jake, Lucid Raps. I'm sure you guys have all heard of him. He's amazing. We have a great relationship. He's one of my close buddies now, but that's who wrapped the truck green like that. Wow. Yeah, that was a wild ride. But this stage of the truck was fun. It drove nice. It was regeared on a 33 or 34-inch tire. And this is when I started getting into more, I guess you consider moderate trails in the hills, actually tagging the sliders a little bit, getting more comfortable with driving, taking some trips out of state to go to some random places. But I would still say this truck is pretty overbuilt for what I was using it for at the time. As the journey kept progressing and I kept upgrading truck, I kept hitting harder trails in the hills and pushing my boundaries and my limits a little bit, which was fun. But yeah, the Black Hills taco is what the page used to be. But I mean, the truck looked really nice at the start. I was going to say, that's a damn good looking truck. I love that color. Yeah, it did look really nice. So that's how it finished out, right? In that Yeah. Stayed that color. Yeah. And then- This is Scott on a little more aggressive trail. Yeah. So I started working with C4 Fabrication, which is a local company to me in the hills. And they filmed some install videos with some of their arm around my truck, which is why I have a C4 front there. You'll see eventually I switched to their rear bumper, too, prior to going and actually working for them. So there's the C4 rear. And at this stage, had a camper on the truck. That was the last stage of the Tacoma. Was hitting some more technical trails in the hills, heaven of blast. The truck was on 35s. I was actually in the process of transitioning to work for C4 full-time at this stage. And that's what spawned me selling the truck is I just wanted to pay cash for something that I could build that was a little bit more capable. So We have a lot of really great trails in the hills that I wouldn't have taken at Tacoma on just with the wheelbase and its capabilities. So I had positioned myself to, if I'm going to pivot, what should I pivot to? And that's what brought up the next build. So there she is. So I got an '80s Land Cruiser. I knew I wanted something Toyota still. I love Land Cruisers. Through the journey of the Tacoma, I had followed a lot of people that had built '80s and '60s. And I decided an '80 was the perfect middle ground of some modern creature comforts that would be great for my family, but still super capable, solid axles, coil spring, suspension. So, yeah, I looked a long time before I found a clean Land Cruiser, and I got that one in California. I want to California tags on there. Yeah. I wanted one that didn't have any rust. I got super lucky, and I still talk to the former owner to this day about random things, but I got... You can see, what was that? I can't point with the orientation of the camera. That's like the original window sticker. I got a binder of maintenance records. And he had gone through and done the head gasket and so much baselining and front and rear diff maintenance. And it was Pretty much all OEM. I think there was a one inch suspension lift on there, but everything else was factory other than the bumpers, and it was just really, really well taken care of. So I knew from the get go with the '80, what I wanted to do with it. I wanted to wheel harder trails. So I didn't want to make the mistake of going through three different tire sizes on the '80. So I jumped straight to 37s. I had already done a ton of research on good suspension setups, and I went with Dobbinson's MRR suspension, which is what I ended the Tacoma on, and I really loved it. So I had known going into this everything I wanted to get. And I actually had wheels and tires and suspension sitting in my garage before the Land Cruiser ever landed in South Dakota. Wow. So within like... I think that was within two weeks of having the age. Yeah, it was quick. Yeah. That's amazing. So immediately started running some trails out in South Dakota, and It looked really good at this stage. Now, this is the first set of famous stripes. Is that correct on here? Yeah. I didn't want to do a full wrap, but I didn't want it plain white. I looked and looked on what I wanted to do for a decal, and I saw some pictures of some old school '60s series cruisers that had similar decals. I sent them over to Jake, and he's like, Yeah, we could get something like that printed. And we just retroed it onto the the '80. That front fender flare is a little bit more curved on the '80, but he was able to cut it to a line and tuck the line right up under the door handles, as you can see there. And it looked really cool. And I think that the decals are one of the things that caused the cruiser to go viral is people just like that esthetic look. Yeah. This is one of the few built cruisers on Instagram that I can show my wife, and she's like, oh, I like that one. Yeah. I mean, it had real B-Locks 37s, like I said, right out of the gate, some custom drawers that one of my buddies had helped me with. So I would say it was like an Overland Crawler at this point. It was set up where I could still throw all three of the kids in the back, had a fridge. I could store some random gear. And I did really like the four by four Labs rear bumper that was on it for a while. So I kept that. Very clean. Yeah, that's what I have on my hundred. And then I ended up getting a roof rack, some Delta Radius arms to clear the 37s a little bit better. With factory radius arms, it wasn't driving very good. So I learned a lot about solid axial suspension and caster adjustment and what had to be done to make it drivable with the suspension set up I had, at least more drivable. So Got some Sheilmans in there. To this day, one of my favorite things I've ever done with the '80 is just super comfortable seats. Those are really nice. And they look real, real nice. They match the interior so well. They do match really nice. The '80 doesn't come with an armrest in the little factory center console. It's so low and off to the right that when I saw you could get an armrest on those Sheilmans, I was like, I'm sold right out of the gate. Had some LED lights in there for a while. I didn't really love them and wanted to go back to more of a factory OEM style headlight. Those eventually came back. Yeah, you've gone through a few headlives. Yeah. Do you feel like this is a carry-over of the Tacoma community getting Kind of. One of the main reasons I want to do it is because the halogen lights that came on it are terrible. It's horrible. I'm actually in the process now of converting to quad headlights like you'd see in Australia, but I can actually just get Holly 4 by 6 LEDs straight in them that will look really OEM. They look really classy, but the light output will be way better than what I have now. Yeah, I've been watching all the stories of the multiple coats of the hamper. That's a frustrating process. Stripes change colors, bumpers changed. I went with descent armor stuff, front, rear. Their stuff's great. This is the Star part of the big three link project. Yeah, that was a question from Deedster. Deedster ask, three link info, please. Yeah. So the three link kit is a four wheel underground full kit. So he's got a lot of different options based on what steering set up you want to go with. But all the links themselves, the joints, even my coil My Radfleet coilovers were sourced straight from him. He's amazing at what he does. He helped with spring rates and making sure the coilovers were set up based on my specific truck correctly. I'm not a FAB guy, unfortunately, but I have a guy local to me named Todd over at ZFAB off road that helps with the three link installation. Cool. So he did all the actual FAB work. It's a big process on an 80. You're cutting all the You're putting regular coil buckets out. You're putting new towers in front. You have to completely... What I did was a hell fired knuckle. So I knew I wanted high steering. If I was going to do it, I wanted to do it right with a beefier actual knuckle, bigger chunion bearing, machined arm. So I just got all the parts and did it all at once. And that caused, as you can see some really tight clearance with some of the components there, the fitting the high The hydro steer was tricky. This packaging in general, it's really tight. So it all works amazing now. Nothing contacts, even under full bump. And the three link was one of the best things I've ever done in the '80. A lot of the guys ask me, how does it drive after a three link, and it drives better. With a three link, you're able to set your caster exactly where you want it, set your actual exactly where you want it. And I have about a two inch longer wheelbase now and right at six degrees caster. So it's just-Oh, wow. It tracks down the road great. It's planted. With my radius arms, I actually got an alignment right before we did this project. And even with high caster radius arms, I was at zero degrees caster. So it just drove down the road like a boat. And I could have added extra high caster bushings to those arms and dial that in a little bit more. There's things you can do. But the nice thing about the three link is you set And stuff exactly where you want it. And the coil overs are tuned nice enough, where on road driving characteristics are still really good. That's awesome. Yeah, folks don't realize how important caster is. Oh, yeah. And it's a little different on a solid actual versus trying to explain to people how positive and negative caster can affect wheel placement on IFS is way different. But, yeah, it's super important, especially on a solid axel when you're talking about how much it's going to wander on road. And those issues can be really hard to chase down on a solid axel, too. And then here's the new rear bumper. I started doing some really technical trails, taking the 80 to Moab. And Moab is its own beast, right? You're not going to get hung up in other trails where you do in Moab. But I kept getting hung up on that rear bumper. And I told Ben, hey, man, I'm thinking about going back to a four by four lads with no swing. And he's like, dude, ship your 80 to me. Tell me what you want. We'll design a bumper. And I was like, done. So the 80 went on a truck over to descent, and I told him, I'm fine with you cutting however much frame you need to cut, but as best of a departure angle as possible. Still want a hitch receiver that's integrated into the center of the rear in case I ever want to carry a bike rack or something. I'm never going to tow with it, but They nailed it. It looks great. The angle is amazing. I've kissed it a couple of times on some of the really hard trails out in the hills here, but I barely ever touch it compared to the old bumper set up. It's just so much tighter to the body. So that was the story behind the different rear. I remember watching the progression of that high clearance build, and he actually has one for the hundreds now, which is amazing. And I think it looks so good. Yeah. And a lot of people say, well, I want to swing out. I told Ben, that's not important for me because I knew I was going to get that BellFab carrier and put it in the rear anyway. I wanted more weight centered over the axial and less weight hanging off the back just for wheeling purposes. And I told Ben, keep it as tight as you can. And if that means it's never going to be swing out compatible, I don't think that's a big deal. So that's the solution for the spare tire. Bellfab makes that. And you can stuff a 40 in there. That's a 37. I have a 39 in there now, and the rear seat still locks in place, so it fits great. And driving it is so much more enjoyable now with all that weight more centered over that rear And I got a bigger handle, especially off-road. No more weight up top, so I got rid of the roof rack, went to bigger tires. This is the process of clearancing front and rear fenders for the 39s. So So you only had to buy tires twice with this, but not three times. Exactly. A lot of people, when they go to a 39 or 40, you're cutting the pinch weld out of the rear, you're tacking it, you're seam sealing it. I love the look of the fender flares on the '80s, and even going to this big of a tire, I wanted to keep my fender flares. So this is the end look of what it ended up looking like with trimming the fender flares to stay on, but still having the tires at full bump, clear the inside of the fender and flair together and be able to still steer lock to lock. And then there's descent's new front bumper that requires a frame chop of the front frame rail, too. Way, way better approach angle than their other one. Which is already extremely impressive. Yeah, the other one's already good. Got some goal wings on there for solve function. So it's just I'm actually transitioning away from a drawer now, and I'm going to have a sleeper platform in the back that I can store, spare drive shaft, CV, probably a Pro Eagle or some jack under. So all my spare parts will go under for wheeling trips. I'll be able to secure them. And then I'll still have a sleeping platform for running the Rubicon this summer, so I don't have to bring a tent. That's awesome. So no more fridge in the back. I have a small fridge. I'll probably just strap down in my back seat somewhere for those couple of day wheeling trips. And it's progressed to a full-time wheeling rig. It's still drivable on the road, even with the 39s. But because of the type of wheeling I like to do now and wanting to push limits as much as possible, I'm just going to start trailering it to places. That way, if something disastrous does happen, I can still get home. I'll tow it back. You just pick up that really nice trailer that you've been-Yeah. Like really nice. It's super nice trailer. I... Resale value on trailer is nuts. I was looking for months to try to find something drive over Fender, five K or seven K axles. And no one's taking any money off a used trailer. So they're seven years old and still asking for $1,000 under MSRP. It's crazy. So I just figured at that point, I don't know what the condition of the axles or or hubs or anything would be in. So I might as well just get myself one straight from the factory, which is what I did. So I'll be taking some big trips with the '80 this summer, just towing it behind the Dura-Max. And I'm excited to put it all together and let it go to work. So speaking of tow rig, so in the middle of the '80, this little Nissan showed up. Yeah. And And all our Nissan friends got real excited and said, he's switching teams, he's switching teams. But no. So I love this truck, actually. The whole idea behind this was when I started working at C4 Fabrication, I started to build the '80. I had a Ford Edge, and that was my daily. And transitioning into C4, I was in medical sales previously. So I wanted to get rid of the Tacoma and make sure that I was doing that transition the best possible for my family. So that's why the Tacoma went buy, buy, paid cash for the '80. And I was just driving that beater as a daily and eventually got to the point where I was like, okay, I think I'm ready for another truck that I can daily. So we sold the Edge, and I picked up a new frontier. This is the first and only brand new vehicle I've ever purchased in my entire life. And I immediately started cutting it up. But owning a Tacoma and owning one of these, these are so much better than a third gen Tacoma. Oh, wow. Oh, my. The 8 speed is better. There's more power, the 360 cameras, front camera. I mean, I had the pro 4X trim, so I guess I got some of those features, but sound system, seating, the display, infotainment, everything about this truck I loved. It drove great. I threw a two-inch Dobbinson IMS, their lower-end suspension on there and some 33s and low pro armor. I knew this was my daily, so I set it up to be more like I can go out and hunt and adventure a little bit with my family, and I'm never going to wheel this truck on difficult trails because that's what the '80s for. So a different mindset going into this truck. And I loved it. Even like this, it would get 18, 19 miles per gallon. Yeah, those eight speeds are wild. I actually worked for the company that supplied the head units to these. I was They're a quality engineer. Really? Yeah, it's a Bosch head unit. Got you. I actually left working with Nissan when these came out. I never got to test drive one or see it in action, but they're sweet. The only problem I ever had with mine is I was getting a gear wine. And since it was under warranty, they couldn't figure it out. They actually just completely swapped my rear actual. Yeah. And then it went away. So I'm assuming it was just set, the lash was set incorrectly from factory. I don't know. But other than that, I never had a single issue. It was super reliable. And yeah, I loved it. It was just we had our third kid, and As our third kid started getting bigger, that truck started feeling smaller and smaller and smaller. That's the only complaint. And I knew that was... I don't know what I thought. I was going to happen, getting another mid-size truck with several kids. Obviously, kids keep growing. It's not like the back seat is getting any bigger on those mid-size trucks. But no, I love the frontier. It's a good-looking truck. I will give it that. It's a very good-looking truck. They are. They didn't position themselves very good. They came out with a really good, naturally aspirated V6 platform on the tail end of everyone then transitioning into forced induction four cylinders, where their specs were good for four months and then just got blown out of the water by everybody. But I think that they'll... Nissan is good about keeping platforms alive for a long time and being fairly competitive with pricing. So I don't think they're going anywhere anytime soon. That's one way to say it. Yeah, they're good.. A little marketing flair on there. All right. So speaking of marketing, then you bought the marketing hype on the F-150, huh? Yeah. So I'm telling you, main reason I got into F-150, two reasons, the back seat space is unreal on these trucks. It's huge. Like all three of my kids could be strapped in and my 110 pound Golden retriever could be standing in front of them. Oliver couldn't kick my seat anymore. It was amazing. And then the EcoBoost and its towing capabilities. I had the travel trailer at this point that we towed on camp trips, and not that the Nissan struggled with it, but I just knew something like this would tow it a lot nicer. And in the back of my head, I knew where the 80 was, that eventually I wanted to be able to tow it. And I knew that a half-ton pickup like this would be able to tow an 80 across the country, maybe not super comfortably, but I knew it would get the job done and still be a great daily. So that's why I went this route. And I love the truck. Esthetically, for the most part, it It drove nice until it didn't. This one was short-lived, and it was 100% due to just the truck having issues. Toeing the travel trailer to Oregon and back, it threw me into in it mode several times because it was overheating. My ECT, my temps would get up to 255, 260. And that trailer is like 2,500 pounds. The to spec on this is supposed to be 10K easy. And I swapped in four different sets of T-Stats. I did a full... I did plugs, I did full coolant flush, pretty much anything you could do to try to track down basic overheating issues on these things. And Ford basically just kept coming back to me and saying, these things just run hot. I was like, well, if it can't tow the In a travel trailer, it's sure as heck not going to tow the Lancreuser without overheating. And then it started having some really hard, clunky shifts. The 10 speed just shifted erratically from the beginning. And a typical Ford, I got that same answer. Yeah, it's just a 10 speed thing. But there was a couple of violent down shifts in there where the whole truck's giving me whiplash. And I reset the transmission a couple of times. It would fix it week, and then it would start doing it again. I got out of this one before something really bad happened. I love the truck, but ultimately, it wasn't worth gambling on it long term, which is why the Ford left. So then When you... Well, what I call you press the easy button. It looks so bad with that body lift on there. I remember when you posted this picture, I was like, what is going on? So at this point, I knew what I wanted to do with the 80. I knew I wanted to be able to tow it. I want to go to the Rubicon. I want to run some of these trails that are across the country. Wasn't driving very far to commute anymore to work. And I wanted to just buy cash, something that could tow and is capable. And tons of research on, I get a old Power Stroke. Do I get a Chevy? This specific engine, the LBZ, which is like '06, '07 Dura-Max, was right before emissions. They didn't really have any issues. Some of the earlier LBO or excuse me, LLOY, The high engines had some issues. These ones, they worked out a lot of those kinks, and just they're reliable, up to 350, 450,000. People run these trucks on the ground. So I looked for a long time to find one that didn't have any blow by, was It's fairly low miles. I mean, it's got like 150K on it, but it already had a lift pump on there, and it was as deleted as it could be, and it was in good shape, no rust. And that's what I wanted. I still shake my head at what I paid for this thing. I think, what? 25 grand. I'll just... 25 grand for this old of a truck, which I think is insane, but there's a cult following for these things. And now that I've had it for five or six months and I've driven it every day, I absolutely love this truck. I can see why people pay what they do for them. The power is great. It tows like it's no one's business. I can't feel anything behind it. It drives great. The IFS on these trucks. I revamped the suspension and went through and replaced control arms. And As much as I could because you get 150K on these trucks without replacing a lot of that stuff. It's shot. So I did tie rods and a lot of different stuff, and it just rides great. And it'll tow the 80, no problem. So that's what spawned that. It's just a solid daily that's going to be able to tow very, very easily and reliably. Yeah, you're right. It'll tow the 80 no problem. It will have all the normal GM gremlin. It'll be a little electrical things, window switches, body control modules. I already have a couple of switches don't work already. My mirror switch doesn't work. Luckily, the dash still works. I got a couple of lights on there. My four wheel drive light doesn't turn on, but it's just like with truck from that age, what do you expect? Well, the dashes don't die altogether on those. They just slowly, you lose more and more. You just got to on them until the lights turned back on. But yeah, it's been great. And I just threw some 35s on there. I got rid of the body lift, thank God, and just went with a torsion key lift in front with a little bit of a space in the back, some new longer shocks to give it about two inches. So to clear the bigger tires, and that's about it. Nice. Well, before we wrap up talking about your build, let's go back to the '80 for one minute. I want to make sure I get this question from our friend Scott. He says on the '80, he says, Is this the final iteration of the '80 build, or do you have regrets that mean it's not going to be the final? I'll probably do some rear suspension set up eventually. The only thing I think when people ask that question, they're referring to axles. For what it would cost to do one tons properly and redo the full three link in front with new axle amounts and then do more fender trimming, I just don't think it's worth it. The 80 axles are fairly strong, and I'd be them up as much as possible. I mean, they're Cromalia Axle shafts, front and rear, bigger Trunion bearings, ARP hardware. The nice thing about the AD Axle is they're way higher clearance than a one ton. And they're narrower. So unless you're doing a custom cut one ton with custom shafts. You're way wider, which means way more vendor trimming and oftentimes less up travel. So there's pros and cons. And I think for the monetary investment that that would cost, it wouldn't make sense. It would make more sense to just do a dedicated mini truck Crawler or something at that point. So I think this is the final iteration other than maybe just improving some stuff over time. I've been on the LS, is that worth it? And now that I'm going to be trailering the 80, not for what it costs. If I had the time to do a junkyard LS swap and teach myself the ins and outs of the harness and everything I need to do, that would be cool. But it's not really needed for how I'm going to be using the truck now, trailering it to more technical trails. The one thing I would do is slap on. I've talked to the Magnuson guys a little bit, and there's talks that they might come out with a new supercharger for the F So if that actually happened, I'd slap on a supercharger and just have a little bit more torque off-road. It'd be nice. There have been some climbs where even with low range gears, I wish I had some more power. Like Poison Spider trying to get up the waterfall. Eighty couldn't do it. My buddy with his LS just ripped right up it. But is that worth a $40,000 engine swap? Probably not. I could just winch it. See, you've gone from talking about a junkyard LS to a $40,000 engine swap. He worked for profits. He had a nice one. But yeah, this is probably as final as it gets, other than just tweaking stuff to make it more my style over time or dial it in as I see some random need from running more and more technical stuff as things progress. Supercharger would be nice. Supercharger would be nice. For the investment that would cost, I think that'd be the one thing I think it be worth it from a performance standpoint. But with my luck, I'd throw one on there and I'd blow my engine up. There's pros and cons. It could probably do like 4 to 6 PSI. Yeah. And I'm sure Magnuson, if they actually come out with a new one, I'm sure that they would be like 6 to 10 PSI. And maybe they would... You can't really tune these trucks. You You can do a stand-alone, but you're talking a lot of money. It's a whole other mess. Yeah, it's a whole other mess. And you can mess with mass airflow stuff. And I don't know. I'm sure they would figure it out. So we've gone through all five of the builds that you've documented here. We didn't even bring the the trailers in. There's been the travel trailer and the hauling trailer along with that. But But outside of the vehicles, there's one other thing that really took off on your Instagram account. And we've got a little three minute montage here. And I'm going to play through all of this because I think if you saw it before, if you saw it last year when it really hit, it's worth watching again. So let's bring Ollie up here. I could get him. He's probably going to bed right now. Hey, Ali. You pulled it and I wrote it. Oh, he was so little. I put it. You have a little winner. A winner. A little one? Yeah. Hi. My name is Adi. You pulled it and I wrote it. Can we try that again? Hello, darkness, my old friend. My name is Adi. You pulled it and I wrote it and I wrote it. No, he had no weight and no money. Our oranges are beautiful. Never mind. That's ugly. How? Hi, I'm Adi. You pulled it and I wrote it. You get it. That's an ugly. You're not ugly. What are you doing, Major? I'm Adi. You're supposed to not look nice. Look nice. I think this circle mom can draw it. I I'm ready to move on. What did he say? I heard, I heard it. You post it and I wrote it. Is that funny? I check. That's a good one. They do look real similar. I got it. You post it, and I roast it. You got more different. Hi, Oli. This is Jack. That's me. Here we are again in front of the roast my rig. Oli, let's go ahead and rip this off. Xoverland has answered the question for all of us, how much can you pay to spend a weekend in Montana? Never mind. It's all free. Don't be fooled because those roof boxes, they're not for gear. They're to carry around their YouTube plaques. I got to buy a wall, I need for that money. I mean, let's be honest, the narration has gotten a little bit out of hand. You're not pushing the limits of man, nature, and machine. You're camping next to a family in their Honda Odyssey. I just got it. At least I'm not 50. Can't say he's wrong. So this has been a very collaborative 8. 9 out of 10. Hi, I'm mommy. You poked it and I wrote it. Did I hit I can go slow, though. Come on, my gosh. I'm writing, You poked it and I wrote it. Dad, Our race car is supposed to be fast. Why they want to lose? It's okay, guys. Our creamer will make you feel better. Oh, man, those are great. That is fantastic. Truly fantastic. His eyebrows make the whole thing. His His eyebrows are wild. I have no idea where he gets them either. They stand straight up. It's awesome. Do you post it? I roast it. Oh, man. So how did that come to be? How did you get the idea to have Ollie roast people's rigs? I don't even remember. I think we went on a trip to get the travel trailer. I brought Oliver, and we went to Oregon. And before him roasting rigs, I had done like, Hey, send your tag in, and I'll roast your vehicle, and I'll just post on my story. I had done that a couple of times. And me and Oliver sitting in this hotel room, just bored. And I think I made a story The first couple were on the story, and I had said, send your vehicle in, Oliver will roast him. And he obviously was super cute, and he could talk good enough where you could understand most of it. And he had a good And I mean, he was pretty young at that point, where if I rattle the sentence off, he could just repeat it. So it was like a lot of like, simultaneous clips taken, and we would mash them up. And sometimes I'd show him the vehicle, a picture of the vehicle and get some inspiration for what he thought. But we posted two or three of them, and my phone just started blowing up from people thinking it was the funniest thing ever. So then I took a couple of those stories and post them as reels, and then it just snowballed from there. People ask me, hey, we'll all roast my rig. And so we did it a couple more times every couple of weeks. And then he just kept getting bigger and his speech kept getting better. And gosh, it's crazy. I see those videos. I'm just like, he was so little. We did one, I think a couple of months ago, maybe. But he talks so much better now. It's nothing. Yeah, I imagine you had no idea that it would take off the way that it did. No, I was hoping that one of them would pop off and really blow up. But it's a pretty niche thing, like little kid roasts overland vehicles. But we had fun with it. And he's always loved the Tacoma and the 80 and adventuring with me. And he loves watching those videos and just being involved. And I would read him some of the comments. And so he just ate it up. That's awesome. Yeah. My eight-month-old is like, Hey, I want to look at your phone. And I'm like, Oh, maybe one day she'll be roasting folks. Yeah, do it. We have a little girl that's She'll be three in July, but she's watched a couple of those videos, and then she'll even be like, Post it, roast it. Like, Uh-oh, should we do it? But it's fun. It's been fun involving for sure. Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. So let's take it back to Black Hills builds. What was the inspiration for creating that Instagram account, which was Black Hills Daco, and then document and everything as you've gone through those builds? What made you do that? I think it started out as trying to find community in that space. We had lived in the hills for a couple of years, but I didn't really have any friends that had similar interests other than maybe a couple, and they weren't really involved on social media, and they didn't have Tacomas. So it started as a way for me to get inspiration for my own builds and see what other people had done. And as I progressed in different modifications to the trucks or different setups, obviously, I had a lot of questions and was able to lean into some people as far as what they had done on their builds and issues they ran into and troubleshooting some random things. So it definitely started more as looking for community to connect with that had similar interests. And then snowballed into me enjoying photography and enjoying the process of documenting changes on my page and going back and looking at the different iterations of the vehicles and where they used to be. And then as I would do that, I would get questions from people and was able to help them along the same that I had gone through with the Tacoma or with the 80 and be a resource and some knowledge for guys. The Land Cruiser, especially, there's a ton of information out there on forums, and it can be very difficult to sift through. I've done it. I've spent hours and hours reading through 60 pages of forums to try to find an answer. And luckily, I've made some really good Land Cruiser buddies, and I can go to them directly with weird technical questions now on I'll be like, let me look at page 86 of the FSM. So I have those resources now, but I was able to be that for some people and pass the knowledge I had learned along to different people getting into the land cruiser space, the Tacoma space that weren't familiar with forums and are a younger generation that they look to social media or Facebook groups or different avenues to try to find information. So And that's been cool is just trying to get to help people on the process like I was helped by other people. It's an interesting point that you bring up because I was in the Miata before I got my Land Cruiser, and the Miata forum is extensive. There's basically no topic that hasn't been broached and explained fully. And as I went through that, it went away from... I'm looking at forum posts from 2011 all the way back to 2000. And now folks are on Facebook pages asking all the questions. And it's just not really the same continuation of knowledge. You get the same questions over and over again, and it's hard to link. I'm similar in that regard on my Instagram, where folks with hundreds will come to me all the time with questions, and I'm happy to link a forum post because you figure out how to Google it and whatnot. Yeah. And a lot of that stuff is really Googleable, which is nice. Is that a word? My pro The tip is you put site: forum. Hatemud. Com. And then you only get results from there. And I've had questions like, hey, do you have a build thread? No. Documenting photos and videos and stuff on social is enough work, let alone like-I have story highlights. Yeah. Some of those guys go nuts. Like more power to them. Like step by step installs with pictures. My hand has been held through so many things because of the amount of knowledge people have put into their forums and build threads on muds, specifically. But when I've got those questions, I've just rolled my eyes. Like, how do people have time for that? That is insane. I would love to say I would do it, but there's no chance. Same. So the taco was the first Instagram build, you could call it. Was there an overland, off-road, trail-ready, anything before the Instagram taco? Not really. I had some just general trucks, like Ram 1500, different things like that that I had lifted and done wheels and tires and have always been into semi building up my vehicles and making them a little bit more capable or more of my style, setting them up to hunt or do basic trails, but not to that level. No, I didn't really get interest or direct interest in off-roading or overlanding, you could say, until the Tacoma. And I think what spawned that was as I started documenting it and doing more research, I saw that platform, specifically the aftermarket support ahead, how people with that specific truck really dove into this space and built their trucks out specific to the space. And it aligned with my interests. And I had already started getting into some of those trails out in the hills and enjoying it. And it just went wild from there. So It's awesome. It's awesome. One thing that we do like to see is all the collaboration that you've had. You mentioned C4, FAB, and descent. How is that tailored your builds? Are you looking for a company that fits what you want, or are you going to companies to see what they have that may fit your vehicle? How do you approach those collaborations? Yeah. So I've been super blessed to be able to work with a lot of cool brands in the industry on almost every build. And I'm proud to say that I've never just taken products from a brand and throw them on my truck and taken money for it. I've never promoted a product that I don't personally want to use or believe in. Most of the brands on every single one of my vehicles have been what I would consider the top brands in their space, really quality parts. And I'm happy to pay full price for something to have it be exactly what I want. So as I've developed some of these relationships with these brands, a lot of them spawn from me, already having that brand stuff on my vehicle and them approaching me to be in a booth or to collaborate with them on some level. It just really varies. But It's been awesome to get to know some of these business owners and marketing teams and provide some value where I can. Yeah, hopefully that answers your question. Yeah, no, that's awesome. Yeah, I think that goes along. We had another viewer question. This is from DJD524. And they're asking, what role do you feel influencers in the Overland community, I think they're asking to disclose partnerships. So basically, what is the obligation of the influencer to say, Hey, I'm getting compensated or I got a discount on this in some way. We know what should happen, but we also know it doesn't always happen. Yeah, I think that technically there's different state regulations for a lot of that stuff, or a lot of that's driven by the company. I personally would love it if everyone disclosed all that stuff. It's pretty easy to spot if you just are aware of what you're looking at. Unfortunately, a lot of people push products that I would consider to not be good reputable companies or products in order to just make affiliate commissions or to give themselves more benefit, which is a bummer. I always encourage people to do research on parts, talk to people that have ran them, make sure that their quality, don't just watch someone's post about something and immediately buy it without digging into it on your own. I've been offered, hey, we'll set up an affiliate code for you. And I've never done it for any brand, just even brands I care about and that I'm proud to represent because I just I don't I don't feel good about making funds off of other people's purchases, if that makes sense. I've never wanted any of these brand relationships to turn into an income driver for me. I've never wanted my income to be tied directly to social media promotion because at the point, that's what it is for me. It doesn't become fun anymore. It becomes straight work. So all my partnerships have been more like organic. If I can provide value to you guys in any way, I'd love to work with you in some way, shape, or form. But it's never been the opposite, which is what you see occasionally. It just depends on the person. I feel that. I definitely do. And we talked about when John and I started doing this show, I said the one thing I don't want to do is I don't want to do product reviews of the latest Chinese trinket for an Amazon affiliate link. There's a hundred other videos you can go watch tonight if that's what you want to watch. But if you want to actually meet the people and hear the stories behind quality products and services and everything this community is made of, that's what we're about delivering. After our second to last episode with Perry's Parts, I was like, okay, I want these on my truck. And he's like, I'll give you 100 % off discount code. I'm like, no, I'm going to buy these. He did give me a little bit off, but I'm not going to take that for free because that's not what we set out to do. It's more showing and educating less than shilling and pushing. Yes. Yeah. And you can see when you're on someone's platform and that's the content they push out is, it's content that's centered around discount codes and product promotions and no shade against any creators that do that. For all I know, that's how they're putting bread on the table for their. Sure. Like more power to you. It's obvious as an audience to understand intent behind that stuff. And you just have to be aware. And if you don't mind it, cool. Follow those people. Take advantage of the deals they're giving you. Try to save some money. I've always just wanted my content to feel as organic as possible. And yeah, I might feature some products or something that I like every once in a while. But I've never, ever wanted my page or content to feel like, oh, Wes is just shilling out some stuff to make a buck. That's not who I am. Well, it's just a new... 10, 15 years ago, like Hot Rod TV and all of those shows were really just a big infomercial, right? I mean, we love watching them. And that's what the new promo code and product review videos It's just taking place of that. Yeah. Yeah. And those companies were for sure getting directly compensated by whatever product they were featuring and making whatever percentage on the sale. And I remember sitting there watching stuff like that growing up. Oh, yeah. Just like everyone else. So that leads us to the now. And you gave us a little bit about your background. You did medical sales, then you ended up at C4 full-time as the sales director there. But as of today, you are full-time with your new venture, along with your partner, Adventure Driven Media Co. So give us the elevator pitch on what the company is. Yeah. So we are a full scale digital advertising agency. So our primary services would be PPC, pay for click management across various channels, Facebook, Google, Amazon, TikTok, whatever it may be, search engine optimization. So just helping different business owners show up higher within SERPs, primarily on Google, setting up their website, On and off page, technical SEO, everything that entails email marketing, whether that's automation or campaigns, helping integrate that into people's websites and take advantage of that. And I guess text, too, it just hasn't really caught on a on in our industry yet. Those would be our three busiest things. And then we also do some sales and marketing consulting, social media management, web design, our other things that we've done for clients that wouldn't be what I would consider primary services, but that we're still very much capable to do. Well, it has to be a a holistic approach, right? With digital marketing and the social media management of it. I mean, Can you have a company now that you have a digital marketing department or brand and you have a social media brand and they're not collaborating? I've seen that as disaster. I'm assuming you see the same. Yeah, for the most part, it's usually direct collaboration there. I think where we provide a lot of value to companies is the stuff that we do is very technical and requires a lot of experience, really. Just time learning the ins and outs of all these platforms and the technical side. And the average business owner doesn't have the time to learn or the motivation, and it's super overwhelming for them. And we're able to go in and provide value immediately that is a metric that they can actually see. We can say at the end of the month, here's what we did, and here's how it helped your business. And it's not like a what if. It's tangible. There's numbers associated with it. So the whole Our goal is to try to help companies grow through whatever their goals might be. And every company is a little bit different. Is it sales-based? Is it brand awareness? We don't really have packages because every company is different. So we look at your company's individual needs and the pieces you have in place to manage those needs already and try to position ourselves to where we could best fit in to help that specific company. And you're focused specifically on this outdoor, off-road, automotive niche. Is that true? Yeah. So I guess a little bit of backstory on how it spiraled into a full-time career, but I was doing these services through my position at C4. And one of my friends owns a business in the industry and caught wind that I was doing that. He's like, we have a guy doing that for us, and he's not doing a good job. Would you mind looking at this? And I said, yeah, no problem. And he ended up saying, hey, I want you to do this moving forward. And I was like, okay, cool. I can do this night's weekends. That's not a big deal. And did a really good job for him. And he referred me to a buddy. And through referrals and over the course of two years now, almost, it transpired into I did not have time, nights and weekends anymore to do both C4 and this, and just wanted to focus all my energy into the business. So it slowly progressed from a little side hustle of mine, trying to help a buddy out into a full blown career, which has been a big blessing. But I guess that's some backstory on how it started. Repeat the question one more time, and I'll answer specifically. I don't remember exactly what I asked, but I've got a follow up to how we landed there. It's interesting. So you said it was word of mouth and referral by referral. And here you are a digital marketing agency, and it always goes back at the end of the day, that you can't beat a direct referral, right? That's a marketing 101. But how does... Now that you... So now you've built up enough clientele that you guys are willing to go out here full-time. So now you're introducing yourself to people you haven't met directly and trying to get the word out there. So take us through what that looks like. Yeah. So I remembered your question. It was, are most of our clients primarily in the space? Currently, yes, because we both come from the space, so we understand it and can provide a lot of value that sets us apart from other agencies. We understand the products, we understand the industry. We're probably familiar with your brand, and we're able to really step in, and you don't have to teach us that. We understand the sales process through and through. So most of our clients currently are, but they don't have to be. We work with a roofing company and some other random companies outside the industry. And the principles to their core apply across many industries. But to answer your question, so my partner, Keegan Keller, he was the full-time sales and marketing director for CBI off road. So C4 is direct competitor. Keegan and I had met several years ago just through shows in the industry. We're basically working similar positions for competitive companies. And CBI actually helped build out my frontier. So I got to spend a lot of time with Keegan when they were building my frontier, which C4 didn't make products for. And I think that's how it started. I told them what I was doing for a couple of companies. And Keegan used to work for an advertising agency prior to going full-time with CBI. And I needed help that point. And we had built a pretty good relationship foundation. And we decided, hey, let's just go in together on something and we'll see what happens. And that was a little over a year ago. So we're both grinding on the company, nights and weekends outside of normal business hours, taking more referrals and building it up as things went. And like you said, referrals are amazing. And we were able to do a good enough job for the companies we were working with, where they kept feeding us more and more companies. So we didn't have to really make that hard decision. Do I go out on a limb and take this risky jump for us? It was very much so like, we don't have the time to do both. And this is now sustainable for us. So in order to really focus on it and grow it, we need to jump into a full-time, which is still a scary thing to do. Benefits are a real thing. And jumping into your own thing full-time, obviously, neither of us had ever done that before. So there's a big learning curve with the logistics of just completely running your own business top to bottom and tax liability and just a bunch of stuff I don't need to talk about. Has there been anything that blindsided you there? I mean, it happens to a lot of entrepreneurs, right? You just wake up one morning and you get this email and you're like, what is... Nobody told me about this. Not yet. We were doing it for a year. We have a joint LLC and we're true business partners. And I'm OCD, so I was consulting tax attorneys and making sure that our ducks were in a row so that in order to make this successful long term, I wanted to lay the correct foundation to do so. So it's for the most part been great. And we've been full-time now for almost a month. And it's been awesome. I mean, I'm more busy now than I was before, which doesn't make sense to me. But I think this is all I'm doing now. So I'm just devoting all my time and energy into it. But it is nice being at home, being able to go eat lunch with my family. Sure. If I have to have an appointment or something, I can run to it and come back and finish work later. But yeah, it's going great so far. But to answer your question, most of our companies are in the space. And I think the reason being is because we have so many of those ingrained relationships between the two of us. And we love the space that it makes sense to try to provide value to those companies that operate in the same space we love. Is your partner moderately local to you? So he's actually in Idaho. So he lives... Cbi is based in Idaho Falls. He lives in Idaho Falls. But because of what we do is it's pretty much all online. I got three monitors down here and we work fully remote. We set up Zoom calls or Google Meet calls with clients. Me and Keegan talk daily, multiple times a day, and have some software management that we can assign tasks to one another and make sure stuff is getting done on time when it needs to be. And because we've already been doing it for a year, we've worked out all those kinks. So that transition into full-time wasn't really a big adjustment. It was just now we actually have time. Now we can breathe a little bit and focus. If you don't mind, Wes, let's dive into some of the nuts and bolts on campaigns and really calculating the the ROI on digital advertising, because this is a big thing. And in my professional career, I've spent a lot of time analyzing profit and loss statements and going line by line and going, okay, what is this $2,500 a month? And they say, well, that's for our social media consultant. All right, so what are we getting for that? In dollars? How are we calculating that? And then, well, how do you guys look at that? Obviously, it's different with each case and what the end goal of the campaign is. But how do you make sure that you're showing some type of quantifiable ROI to your clients? Yeah, that's a good question. I think depending on our service, that goal is going to change. If it's social media management, it could be an impressions or followers goal. If it's a PPC campaign, It could be a sales-based goal. If it's email marketing, it could be open, subscribe rate, whatever that may be. But I guess for PPC campaigns, specifically, majority of our clients are some type of e-commerce or sales-based So the goal of running paid ads is to make money. There's a lot of strategy that can go into it and different platforms that strategy can change. But what's nice about what we do is we're able to set property is up for clients, transfer ownership of those properties to the client or just get access to the properties they already own, and make sure those properties are properly linked to their website channels, whether it's Shopify, WordPress, Wix, whatever it may be. So That any campaign we're actually managing has hard analytical data, where at the end of the month, I can say, here's what you spent in advertising. Here's the dollars in conversions that you pulled back in. So is this making sense for you guys? And if it's not, we shouldn't do it. So it's very much a black and white thing for that specific type of campaign, which is nice for clients. I will say not every agency is like that, unfortunately. We've taken over for some bigger agencies where the transparency is not there, which is sad. I really think that's the norm from my experience in it, is there is no transparency. It's a big gray area. They have a lot of buzzwords around why they can't answer the... They've got a prepared statement as to why they can't give you an answer. Yeah. So what we found a lot of these big agencies, what they do is they have a huge Facebook platform or a huge Google platform, and they'll create clients' accounts on their own properties. So like, oh, I have my own business manager on Facebook. I'll create client B, an ad account, and I'll run your ads on my account, and you don't have access to it. And at the end of the month, I'll send you some random Excel document that's a report that says all your metrics. And other than trusting them, there is zero way to fact check those numbers. There's zero transparency. So the numbers we provide, we only access our clients' accounts through their actual properties. And if they don't have properties, we're creating them for the client, transferring ownership to them. And then if they want help, logging in and looking at the exact numbers we're giving them at the end of the month, we're happy to show you that. It's sad that that's how it is, but it very much is these agencies take advantage of clients and try to position any metric as positive, even if it's not, because they want to keep you as a client. We have had some clients for a long time now, and most of our clients are doing amazing. If we had a client that wasn't profitable month to month, we would be the first people to say, hey, pay If the ads aren't working for your product, it's too niche, or you don't have the data to support correct audience targeting or whatever the case may be, let's either stop service with you or pivot these funds into something that's going to make more of an impact for your company, whether that's organic SEO or email marketing campaigns or social media or whatever it may be. But that's the agency we want to be. We want to be able to lay our head down at the end of the night, feel good about what we're doing and actually help companies. It's awesome. How does that... Another thing when you talk about marketing and digital marketing is everyone wants to be ahead of the curve, right? There's all these jokes, and some of them are not jokes, real conversations about the algorithm and what changed and what the machine wants to see. How do you guys as a firm stay educated and up to date on that and then make sure that... Because I'm sure it's not just set it and forget it with your clients, right? There's a constant evolution and looking back and making sure we're doing the best thing. Yeah. So again, it varies on the service. But we're in these accounts every single day looking at things. A/b testing campaigns to make sure that this tweaking the audience improve our numbers? Does improving the creative change things? Constantly following what I would say are the more prevalent people in the space and researching algorithm changes and staying on top of the technical side to make sure that if there is a big change, we know about it and we're adjusting things as needed. I would say the biggest thing on the forefront of digital advertising in general right now, whether it's social media or paid ads or SEO is AI. A lot of clients that we're talking to now, that's a primary driver of the conversation. It's like, well, what about AI? Shouldn't we just be completely leaning into AI? And we utilize AI for some random things when they will help. But even Google now is shifting their Google algorithm for SEO to place more emphasis on websites that are writing original content, human-driven content, and hurting you in certain aspects of SEO for just blasting out a ton of AI-based content. Legislation might be changing, requiring you to disclose if content was written by AI. So a lot of that is changing. And I don't think it's ever going to be as simple as AI is the answer. Ai can be a tool to help people like me do their job more effectively and target more more effectively. And there are some features within these platforms where we use AI for some random audiences, and sometimes it works really well, and other times it doesn't. So it's a moving target. But I think just being in the role we're in, it's just something that you're always going to have to stay on top of. It's always going to be changing. And if you're not changing with it, you're going to fall behind the curve. But the nice thing is that's our job to learn, not our clients, right? It's overwhelming for us. And you start talking to some of our clients that are focused on product development and growing their brand image and day to day business operation. They don't have any idea of the stuff we're looking into. But Luckily, we're in there every day trying to position their stuff as best as possible, whether it's emails, paid ads, SEO, you name it. So. Talk about, because I think you guys cover both sides of this from what you said, you have this really technical side of SEO requirements and updating content on the side and making sure that's what Google wants to see. But then you've got the creative side of it, right? The site still has to be pretty. The site still has to look like it was made in 2024 and not 2014. So how do you do that balancing act? I mean, you can't just jump, dump a giant blog on the the home page to get the to get the characters there. How does that work? Yeah. So I think it always needs to be a balance, especially when you're looking at website optimization and SEO. If your website doesn't look good, your bounce rates can increase. If it's not easy to navigate, your bounce rates can increase. You need to set your website up for a good purchase conversion window first and foremost, and then address SEO alongside that. So there's a lot you can do from a speed optimization standpoint to make your website load faster. That is going to help. There's things you can do just to make sure your website's properly crawling and indexed in Google's eyes and people are able to find your pages. There's on page optimization with product listings to make sure that people are going to find you in search results that it just takes time updating meta titles and descriptions and alt text. And so there's a ton of on page website stuff that will correspond directly. But you still need your website to look nice, and that is important. We've actually told a couple of clients, we don't want it on ads for you until you redo your website because they won't convert. People will land on your website and they're not going to buy anything because it's that bad. And it's our job to know the ins and outs of what does this menu navigation look like or how many clicks it's going to take to actually make a purchase on your website? What easy tweaks can we make to improve conversion rate optimization and then still have SEO on the forefront of our mind if our client wants us to do that for them? Some clients are like, no, don't do SEO. We'll do that. You just manage our campaigns. Other clients only want help with SEO or only want help with email marketing. So that's where it just is important to have those conversations with each individual person. I hope that makes sense. Yeah. And that leads me to the next question. Some people want different things. What What size companies are you guys, is adventure driven working with? I mean, because you've got companies that maybe have a few dozen employees, I don't know, like C4 and CBI and that thing. And then there's a lot of companies in this community that are real mom and pop, real family businesses, handful of employees that are oftentimes, as we as customers see, they're the the ones that need the most help on the website and understanding who their customers are and how they drive traffic to that side. So it's a big mix. We have clients that only have a couple of employees all the way up to several dozen employees. As we were coming up with our business structure and doing a lot of competitive research in the market, we realized a lot of these agencies have like, packages they like to force clients into. And if you don't fit into their package, sorry. Our business motto, especially catering towards the space we work in, which is Off-Road Overland, has always been more like a la carte. We have different pricing packages based on how involved we are with the client, based on what size campaigns we're running for the client, so that the barrier to entry is a lot lower. So for some of these smaller shops that just don't have the budget to spend 15 grand a month on marketing and advertising, can we do anything for you? Usually the answer is yes. It still needs to make sense for both parties. But we've tried to position ourselves in a manner where that barrier to entry is as low as possible. So if there are companies that just don't know where to go or don't have any direction or this part of the business is overwhelming for them that we can help them. And it still makes sense. It's still got to be profitable for them. And at a bare minimum, we will free audits for companies to show them where they're at in an SEO standpoint or how does their social media look or if they're currently running paid ads, are they profitable? You'd be surprised how many times we've got in and done a PPC audit for a company and been like, you lost eight grand over the last six months. And they're like, what? Because their agency doesn't tell them that. So, yeah, it really is all over the board. I will say the one thing that we don't do, and it's on purpose, is a bunch of content creation. A lot of agencies want to bring all that into house, and there's some value in that. But what our experience has been is for the most part, a lot of these brands don't have an issue with getting content. They're working with ambassadors. A lot of them are running their own social media. They have assets. It's the technical side that don't understand. And they can't afford to pay these agencies to run ads, do email marketing, run their social media, and make all their content. And that's what some of these agencies want to force them into. Our fees usually include taking the assets you have, making creatives. We do all the reporting. There's no set up fees. So what we try to do is just cater to the clients in the sense of, give us everything you have, and we will work our magic with it. We'll We'll be as successful as we can be with what you have. And if we have to offset some of that and do a little bit of content creation, we have the capability to do that. If we need to do some product photography or whatever it is. But I think a lot of people like to force the content creative side onto clients because that's how they make a lot of money. They're like, oh, if I do all your content, I can charge you eight grand a month. And these companies are just like, eight grand? What are you talking about? And that's really sad, right? Because especially in our niche, these outside firms that they're working with a hundred different types of companies, they don't understand when a guy is looking for a high clearance rear bumper, they don't know what that target market looks like. Yeah, they don't understand the audience, but they don't even understand the product. Getting in and doing some of these audits on these agencies that have positioned products incorrectly is just a bummer to see. From the ad copy, the text of the ads or some of the email copy that they've sent out, just not fully understanding the product or the demographic. And sometimes that makes a difference on whether a campaign is successful or completely tanks. And like you said, they It's easy to throw around fancy marketing words and make it sound like your God's gift to Earth. But it's another thing to have your client's best interests in mind and want them to succeed, right? Like, actually care about the value you're bringing, not just adding another client onto the payroll. Well, I think it's exciting, and we wish you the best of luck with it. I think there is definitely... There is a need there. I've worked and spoken with enough manufacturers, specifically in this space, that they need someone like you that not only understands the ins and outs technically, but can speak the same language on the product and the service. So if you're watching this, reach out to Wes. I'm sure he'll be glad to talk to you any way you want to reach out to him. What is the new official website? I'll put it up on the. Yeah. So adventuredrivenmedia. Com. Adventuredrivenmedia. That's a good domain. We didn't want to do adventuredrivenmedia. Com. It just felt like that a little. That's going to confuse the boomers aren't going to be able to figure that one out. Is it. Co. Com? What's happening here? There's a form on our website. If you want to fill it out, we'll get an email. We'll get in contact with you. Awesome. Is that where I submit roast to? I'll see it. All right, before we let you go, Wes, we've got to run through our rapid fire questions this week. So hit him, John. If Black Hills builds had a mascot, what would it be? Dude, that's the one question that I was reading through these. I'm like, I have no idea. What I came up with is being that I'm in the Black Hills, I was like, could it be Mount Rushmore or who once, like George Washington as a mascot? It'd probably be like a bison. Thick bison. I like that. Throw some bee locks on him. You know what I mean? I like that. Bison wheel drive. Yeah, exactly. All right. New GX 550 or the new Land Cruiser? This was the easiest. 550 all day. I'm in the same boat. Yeah, we're all in the green. For power train alone, for me. One, esthetically, I think they look better, but the fact you can get a V6, that's a no brainer. It blew my mind that that was an offering for the GX and not the Lancourt. Well, I think it can Refused thousands of people. Yeah. Yeah. No idea what they were thinking there. I mean, I get the price difference, but it's not even that much. No. For getting that much better of a powertrain, that much I have their specs right out of the gate. Yeah, I have GX all day. I was actually just showing one to my wife the other day. I was like, hey, man. Yeah. The overtrail is sharp. She's got a Siena right now. So like- Dude, same. What What is it? It's a 15. Nice. So for any of you dads out there, once you get to three kids, here's the minivan hack. You pull the middle seat out. So in the middle, you got one captain's chair, right? Set one kid in there. The other two kids go on the very back. And then you just have this huge cavitation of space where the kids can get out and run around. We have a travel Porta Potty. Amazing. Slap that thing in there. Dogs got to load up. It's amazing. Yeah. So going from minivan to... I don't know. I don't think my wife could go to a GX 550 in the space-wise. We'd be getting fries and too many air vents in the third row. It wouldn't work out. You have no idea how much this minivan conversation excites John. I have the same V6 as you have in the Ciena in our RAV 4, and it rips. We don't have that in the 23 Ciena, but it is a hybrid and it is all-wheel drive. Yeah, so we don't have all-wheel drive. It's 36 Highway. We get 18. Yeah, it's insane. And the all-wheel drive is an electric motor, so there's no drive shaft. It's just on demand. Really? Gosh. Maybe I need a new Ciena, though. But for what you pay for a new all wheel drive Ciena, you might as well go buy a freaking GX5. Yeah, Yeah. I was like, hey, why don't we just buy a Sequoia? She's like, nah, let's get a siena. New sienas and odiseas now. They're fully taking advantage of people. Yes. Favorite brand, motor or gear oil? Are you a loyalist or what's on the shelf at Walmart? Not really. In my AD, I run Vivaline synthetic stuff. Oil, whatever, ATF, Vivaline, just Vivaline across the board. I've hit really good with all this. Really good luck with all synthetic stuff. I've talked to so many people, too, on the old land because they're just like, you run synthetic? Do you not? I've always ran synthetic, and it's been great. It might burn off a tiny bit. I think for the most part, all my sales are pretty good. I don't have any noticeable oil loss between oil changes. Yeah. I feel like if synthetic is going to cause a leak, you are going to get a leak anyways. Yeah, exactly. They may have expedited it, but it was going to happen. Yeah, for sure. You catch it earlier, right? Yeah. So no, that's what I use, but not loyal. I'll throw whatever cheap stuff in the siena. You can just mix in coolant until it gels up, just Wait a minute. Which team, Wes, red or yellow? I'm a DeWalt guy for sure. That only-I mean, he's wearing a red shirt. It started because, gosh, eight or nine years ago, out of college. It would have been a couple of years out of college, but I finally decided, I should get some good tools. And someone gave me the starter pack, the dual, right? The drill and little impact. And I just felt like, are you the batteries? So every tool I've added since then, it's just made sense to stick with the wall. I like it. I'll admit, if I had bought the wall as my first one in college, I would be a DeWalt guy because you just stick with what you got. When I was finishing out the inside of my shop, my buddy is a Milwaukee guy, and I had my little quarter drive impact versus his. And his was ripping, though. And I was looking at him like, What is wrong with this DeWalt one? Do I have the wish version? I think that's just how they come. Milwaukee impact, I will say. It was pretty impressive. You know, John, we need to start a scoreboard for this. This question stays consistent with each guest, and I'd say we're about tied at this point. Are you counting yourself? How many guests have been like a Team Rayobi? We check that. We check that in the pre-interview. They don't pass it. They're like, Sorry, you can't be on the podcast anymore. I think Milwaukee is owned by the same company that owns Rayobi, which is scary. They're probably made in the same factory. It's probably just little upgraded internals, a little better battery. There's a lot of that that goes on. Last question. One country outside the US to wheel, what is it? Where is it? I'd probably have to say Australia, just because of the heritage of off road and overland, coming from over there. And The influence that they've had on US. And now I think it's coming full circle vice versa. And a lot of their stuff is being influenced by the crazy bills that we've had in the States because there's not as much regulation. And I've watched videos of their tracks and all the backcountry stuff they do. And I think their style of wheeling would be super fun. I don't think the 80 would be set up well by any means, but it would make it like 180 miles. I'd have no spare fuel. Maybe you got like 500 kilometers to the next goal. But no, I love it. Like the whole Canopy style, Bush country stuff that they do, they get after it. They do. Yeah, they really do. Crazy two track, deep mud bog stuff. I hate mud. If there's one type of wheeling I would never want to do again, sign me mud. Take it off the list. Just because it's such a pain to clean your vehicle afterwards. Yeah, my The garage is constantly dusting. Don't come visit us over here on the East. Yeah, you're in the wrong side of the country. You want to avoid mud. Don't remind me. That is your thing. So I just realized now that I cut the fenders, there's no fender liner anymore on the 80. And even the overhanging the flares cut out, right? So it just got it. So I went to the Badlands for the first time after I did all that. And just Badlands mud is clay, thick, goopy. I don't even know what's in it? It turns your tires blue. It's weird stuff. And I just destroyed the inside of that. And I think I spent an hour and 20 minutes and $45 a car wash. Manual Bay, just getting the nozzle and every nook and cranny. Yeah, been there. I was just like, why did I do that? It was not worth it. Every two minutes you're going over and putting in eight more quarters. Yeah, dude. Luckily, they have credit cards because But I think I maxed the credit card out once. I think it automatically shut it off after 25 or 30 bucks. I went over there. It's just like, oh my gosh, what am I doing with my life? I just need to get it. It's hard because I live on a well, so I don't really want to... Oh, I see. Well water pressure washer. I don't know. Yeah, you can probably get a tank from a co-op or something or marketplace and just use that to feed it. Yeah, that's not a bad idea. Our water in our house is treated. So if I could find a way to tie our main off into the garage or something and then use that water, maybe that would work. But for now, everything outside is just super hard, iron filled water. And I'm like, I don't feel great about cleaning the 80 off with that either. Yeah. Jeez. All right. Well, thanks again, Wes. We sure appreciate you coming on and walking us through your whole journey here. It's funny. I mean, you went from five years ago from Black Hills taco starting an account, and now here you are with an entrepreneur with your own digital media company. So congratulations, buddy. Thank you. It's been crazy. I appreciate you guys. It was fun. I appreciate you guys have me on. And I will say, keep the intro video because I was like, okay, what are these guys? As I was watching some of your guys. No, I love it. I love what you guys are doing. You guys' former episodes have been great, too. Well, thank you. Yeah. Yeah. I really appreciate you coming on. All right. Thanks, guys. See you next time. Yeah. Thanks, guys.