Miki Agrawal Highlights Entrepreneurial Wins on the Business of HYPE Podcast

Serial entrepreneur and disrupt-her Miki Agrawal recently attended the Business of Hype podcast, from HypeBeast Radio, hosted by Jeff Staple.

As the Founder of Wild, Thinx, and Tushy, Miki Agrawal has garnered extensive insight related to creative marketing, drumming up hype, and maintaining a creative edge. Below, check out parts of the illuminating exchange:

Jeffstaple: From HypeBeast, and Hype Radio, I am Jeffstaple and this is the Business of HYPE, a show about creative entrepreneurs, brand builders, innovators, and the realities behind the dreams they’ve built.

In today’s episode of the Business of HYPE, we have the pleasure of hearing from an author, a professional athlete, a restaurateur, a creator, a brand owner, and an instigator. Here’s something really convenient, they’re all the same person. We live in a time where anything and everything is made and made at your disposal. We have so many options on what we can consume today. As creators, when we choose to add something to this world, we have equally so many options on what to create. So, doing something intrinsically new and purposeful actually sounds a lot more challenging than it seems. 

Our guest seems to have a knack for doing this over and over again with success. Just look at her track record. Her mission is to challenge the way society thinks. Interestingly enough, she wants to do that through amazing products. I love how she’s able to take the wants, needs, and desires of people and turn them into initiatives that better the world. So, get ready as we break down her ideation advice, investment war stories, and the need to discuss very uncomfortable topics. Everyone, please welcome a true serial social entrepreneur, Miki Agrawal.

Miki Agrawal: Well, my name is Miki Agrawal, I’m an entrepreneur, specifically a social entrepreneur. So, I like both solving problems in the first world and also in the developing world simultaneously. I have a couple of books. The first one is called Do Cool Sh*t with a subtitle: Quit Your Day Job, Start Your Own Business and Live Happily Ever After. 

I started a company called WILD which is a gluten-free farm-to-table pizza concept. And this was in 2005 when nobody was talking about gluten-free, farm-to-table, organic, or any of those words were not there. And so it was such an uphill educational battle to get people to even try it. They would say things like, “Ugh, must taste like cardboard.” “Eww, gluten-free pizza? Gross.” “Organic, eww.” That was really where it was 2004-2005. So, that was my first business. It’s still going. I have three restaurants. You can check them out at eatdrinkwild.com.  

I also launched Tushy, a modern bidet that easily clips onto your toilet and turns any toilet into a bidet in less than 10 minutes. You go from the barbaric toilet paper consumption to a pristine, precise shower for your butt. That’s only a $69 product, so it’s not like those really fancy Japanese bidets.

Jeffstaple: Right. And again, another subject matter that most people would be like, “Eww, like, poop.” Right now in real life the fact that we’re about to talk about fecal matter, I feel like I have to censor myself. It’s so strange.

Miki Agrawal: I know, it sucks. The fact that 100% of people who don’t use a bidet are walking around literally with fecal matter, with poop on their butts, which then causes and exacerbates infections, diseases, chronic urinary tract infections, if you’re women, women, anal fissures and anal itching, and things like that if you’re both a woman or a man, wet wipes exacerbate anal itching and also anal fissures, which are basically small lacerations in your bottom. It strips away the natural oils from your behind over time.  

I mean, think about it, would you jump in your shower, not turn the water on and just use dry paper to wipe your body down and call yourself clean? People would call you crazy. People would literally think you should be in the loony bin. Right? Or would you go to your dirty dishes in your sink in your kitchen, say you cut a raw chicken with salmonella all over it, and instead of washing that dish, you just wipe it with dry paper and put your dish away. Do you know how much bacteria is in fecal matter? So much! The fact that we’re wrapping… The average American uses 57 cheat sheets of toilet paper per day!

Jeffstaple: It makes no sense. 

Miki Agrawal: It actually makes no sense. When we remove the veil of indoctrination, because like our great-great-grandparents or grandparents were brought to America in the late 1800s, and so it’s really been intergenerationally the way we’ve been taught how to do it. I think if we really stop and ask ourselves, wait a minute, is it the best, cleanest, most hygienic, the best for the environment, the best friend pocketbook? 

I mean, we’re spending an average of $20 a month on toilet paper, including if you have wet wipes, etc., stuff like that. Within three months, you've paid off on a bidet. You still have to pat dry with some amount of paper but you’re using 80 to 85% less toilet paper to pat dry. You’re helping save 15 million trees from getting flushed down the toilet. I mean, the amount of CO2 in the air today is more than 20 million years or the last 20 million years by doubles, triple numbers. 

Jeffstaple: Yeah, and it’s only to feel better. It’s almost like if you had to do all this good stuff but then you felt a little bit worse, it’d be fine. But like no, you actually feel better afterward.

Miki Agrawal: You actually feel clean. Before having a bidet, before I actually had my Tushy installed, I would be that person using definitely more than 57 sheets of toilet paper per day. I would get two wads of toilet paper, I would go to the sink, dab it with water, have two wads of wet paper and I would sit down with two dripping wads of wet… And then I would take the first wet wad, wipe it, then I would take the dry paper to dry it and then take the second wet wad to wipe it and then take the fourth dry wad to dry that so I can try to get as much out and it was so gross. It was like dripping in my… And I had to wash the whole thing. Like, I understand why people take showers after they go to the bathroom because you’re literally dirty. 

Jeffstaple: Yeah. It’d be like if your dog crapped on a table, and you wiped it off with just like a newspaper and just left it. Like, you wouldn’t use water or spray on that somehow.

Miki Agrawal: Anything. Yeah. It’s actually interesting when you really lay it out like that how people say, “Oh, yeah, that’s true.” Then, there are all those things like, “Well, isn’t it toilet water or dirty toilet water?” And I’m like, “No, no, no, no.” The water is pulled from your wall, the same water you brush your teeth with. It comes with a splitter and a hose and you literally split off the water from the wall. So, it’s not from the toilet bowl or the tank. 

Jeffstaple: Do people still think that? 

Miki Agrawal: Oh, yeah. Another thing people say is, “Oh, well, when you spray your butt, it must spray poopy water everywhere.” No, the answer is no. It’s like a reverse waterfall. It pulls the poop down in the bowl. I mean, it’s a super simple, clean, easy, precise experience. It's just different. Anything that’s different people want to shy away from. Anything that’s against what you’ve been doing for so long and someone tries to tell you that that’s not actually the best way, you have pushback. 

I mean, with my first business, my restaurants, people would say “Don’t tell me how to eat. I want my pizza like my Joe’s pizza with the bleached flour and the processed cheese and pepperoni. That’s the way I do pizza. So, shut the fuck up.” And I’m like, “Well, what if you had the same tasty, in fact, even tastier pizza but it was made with gluten-free flour and hormone-free cheeses and organic cheeses, local seasonal toppings? Instead of using tons of sugar to cut the acid in the sauce, why not use fresh carrots and fresh onions to naturally sweeten the sauce?” Just try it. Just taste it. “Oh…probably tastes like shit. Probably. Probably. Probably.” And then they try it and they’re like, “Oh my God, that’s the most delicious thing.” And like, “Oh my God…” And it’s also healthy.  

You have to kind of get people over the edge to just try it. It’s hard to have people try a bidet. That’s why we chose a price point that was low enough for someone to be like, “You know what? I’m going to try it.”

We also have a 60-day money-back guarantee policy as well. We had to put those things in place because we were like, listen, it doesn’t matter if you tried it and didn’t like it, you can always return it right. Just try it, and then you’ll see. We’ve had the most skeptical people who were like, “I’ll never use a bidet, ever in my life. It’s disgusting… Never.” to be like the one shouting from the rooftops the biggest advocate. It’s interesting how that happens.

Jeffstaple: Yeah. Is it a coincidence you think that all of your businesses involve the reprogramming of people? Is that your thing? 

Miki Agrawal: Yeah, I think it’s the most interesting for me. I really love shifting culture and shifting culture for better-using products. Can you improve the lives of people, the planet, our pocketbook; can we improve our lives effectively with a better, more effective, better, more comfortable product? That’s a challenge, right? Can you do it while everyone’s telling you that it’s the dumbest idea? Can you do it when no investor wants to invest in you? That’s fun. That’s a challenge.

Jeffstaple: It doesn’t matter the industry. There’s a similar approach to work that many guests of the Business of HYPE share, a very common thread, to say the least. We’ve talked about being the presidential intern, we’ve talked about the underdog, and we’ve talked about the hustler. The idea of knowing you’re either starting from the very bottom or starting with your back against the wall, no matter the circumstance from which you start, you’re going to need to grind to find the solutions that fit you and your vision. That’s universal for a lot of our guests, and it’s even more evident for Miki Agrawal.  

She’s actually fine-tuned her internal radar to realize that when others told her she cannot, that actually means she should. Miki Agrawal has also done this by tackling taboo and unconventional topics which only makes this process twice as hard. But in doing that, she’s made her mark in each and every industry that she decides to work in. During a time when there wasn’t a common understanding of gluten-free or organic foods, she opened WILD 13 years ago. I’m not going to lie, talking about the work of some of her past and current companies might be a little awkward or uncomfortable, but that’s her point. 

There’s a stigma around these conversations and it’s Miki Agrawal’s goal to normalize them. Whether it’s a discussion about fecal matter, incontinence, or the menstrual cycle, Miki Agrawal wants everyone to be able to openly discuss it, because in their lies the solution. These are real human experiences that she’s trying to battle. And the great product, thoughtful design, and differentiating service are Miki Agrawal’s weapons of choice. So, remember, if you’re ever toying with an idea, hear the advice, but also be confident in the possibility of how far that idea can go. When they zig, sometimes the payoff will be when you zag.