More Than 100 Factories Told Joshua No. Then One Said Maybe

I have been doing some work recently with Alibaba.com as one of its brand ambassadors. As part of that, I’ve had the chance to meet several fantastic entrepreneurs, another one of whom I want to tell you about tonight.

Josh has a different Notes story, but no less impressive.

The idea came to Joshua Stancle one morning while watching his young daughter struggle to brush her teeth. She had trouble opening the cap, squeezing the tube, and getting the right amount of toothpaste onto the brush. By the time she was finished, there was often a mess left behind.

Joshua wondered why we were still doing it this way.

He imagined something entirely different: Toothpaste as a small, dissolvable film. One clean, pre-measured dose. No tube, no squeezing, and no mess. It would be simple enough for a child to use and convenient enough to take anywhere.

There was only one problem. When it came to reinventing toothpaste - no small feat, that - nobody knew how to make it.

Breakthrough #1: The Maybe

Joshua began contacting manufacturers about turning toothpaste into a dissolvable film. They told him it could not be done.

So he contacted more.

U.S. manufacturers said no. International manufacturers said no. More than 100 factories rejected the idea, and almost everyone Joshua spoke with seemed to agree that it was impossible.

But he kept asking.

“I wouldn’t accept no for an answer until I found a maybe,” he told me.

Eventually, one manufacturer finally gave him that maybe. Working with R&D partner Atrium Scientific, Joshua then spent three years and went through 1,100 formulation trials before they finally got it right.

The result is Clean Saint and its first product, Mouth OS, a waterless, dissolvable toothpaste film that comes in individually wrapped, pre-measured doses.

Damn if Josh didn’t reinvent toothpaste.

That would be a pretty good breakthrough story all by itself, right? But inventing the product created a new challenge: How could one exhausted entrepreneur package, market, sell, and fulfill it?

That led to breakthrough number two.

Breakthrough #2: The Staff He Never Had to Hire

Joshua then used Alibaba.com to find sourcing and packaging partners, and then he turned to Alibaba.com’s AI tool, Accio Work, to help him turn his unusual octagonal package from a concept into a real product.

And then Joshua realized Accio Work could do far more than help with sourcing.

He began creating AI agents to handle specific jobs throughout Clean Saint. Today, he has a staff of 12 AI agents.

Ten work on the direct-to-consumer side of the company. Two focus on business-to-business opportunities. Together, they help Joshua build and optimize his Shopify pages, create content, manage marketing, monitor brand compliance, and handle many of the jobs that once would have required employees, contractors, or an agency.

People see Clean Saint’s polished website, packaging, and marketing and assume Joshua has a large organization behind him.

What he actually has is what he calls “the team I never had to hire.”

Clean Saint is just launching, so the market will ultimately decide how big this venture gets, but Joshua has already demonstrated something important about entrepreneurship today.

Old-fashioned persistence got the product made. New-fashioned AI gave one founder the staff he needed to bring it to market.

Not bad for one maybe.

The Takeaway

When I wrote the third edition of The Small Business Bible about a decade or so ago, half of all small businesses still didn’t have a website.

Half!

Why? Mostly because too many owners found the technology intimidating.

That should not be the case today vis-a-vis AI. Tools like Accio Work make creating AI agents simple and intuitive. Don’t be intimidated, embrace it.

Truly, this is an incredible opportunity.

Steal This Strategy

🪥 Business: Clean Saint. Waterless, dissolvable toothpaste film in individually wrapped doses.

🛠️ Tool: Accio Work. An AI agent platform designed to help entrepreneurs handle sourcing, operations, marketing, ecommerce, and other business tasks.

💡 Strategy: Start with the problem, not the AI agent. Joshua identified a specific job that needed to be done, then created an agent around that job. Do that repeatedly and eventually you may find that you have built yourself a staff!

About Steve

Steve Strauss is the best-selling author of The Small Business Bible (and 17 other books), Inc.’s small business columnist, a lawyer (non-practicing), and an entrepreneur. He sold his last venture, TheSelfEmployed.com to Mark Cuban & Zen Business. Need a ghostwriter or a newsletter for your business? Contact Steve!