Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge

Summary

Podcast Summary: How I Built This with Guy Raz

Episode: Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge

Date: March 16, 2026
Host: Guy Raz
Guest: Aaron Krause, Founder of Scrub Daddy

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Episode Overview

This episode of How I Built This dives into the fascinating journey of Aaron Krause, an inventive entrepreneur who transformed a failed industrial hand scrubber into Scrub Daddy—a wildly successful consumer kitchen sponge. In conversation with Guy Raz, Aaron candidly shares his trials, business pivots, deal-making battles, and the serendipitous moments that shaped Scrub Daddy into a global brand. The episode underscores themes around persistence, learning from failure, creative marketing, and the unpredictable path to innovation.

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Key Discussion Points

1. Early Life, Family, and Entrepreneurial Roots

• Childhood & Family Expectations ([07:31])

  • Aaron grew up outside Philadelphia in a family of doctors, with academic expectations.
  • He describes himself as a “B, C, and every once in a while an A student”, distracted by sports and other interests.
  • His father instilled a sense of self-sufficiency: “Your present from now on is you get to buy your own sneakers...” ([08:13])

• First Business Ventures ([09:10]–[14:18])

  • Aaron started out with a neighborhood car washing business in high school, later turning it into a professional detail shop after college.
  • Story of hiring his first business partner and growing the team during the 1992 recession.
  • Memorable quote: “I wanted to create the Domino’s Pizza of detailing... free pickup and delivery... three hours or less or there's a discount.” ([13:27])

2. Innovation in Automotive Industry

• Invention of Edge Buffing Pads ([18:48]–[27:01])

  • Frustration with available car buffing pads led Aaron to envision and eventually patent a new design with beveled edges, safer for car surfaces.
  • Overcame manufacturing challenges, building custom machinery with help from a former boss.
  • Direct sales through trade magazines, a pivotal $10,000 order from Ardex catapulted business nationwide.

  “This is the future of buffing pads.” — Aaron ([24:09])

• Automating Production & Growth ([26:37]–[28:14])

  • Robotic automation scaled manufacturing, resulting in a multi-million dollar business with national reach.

3. The Accidental Sponge: Origins of Scrub Daddy

• Hand Scrubber Experiment ([28:33]–[33:42])
  • Need for a better way to clean greasy hands sparked experiments with different foams.
  • Created a uniquely shaped, highly engineered yellow foam scrubber—originally targeting auto mechanics.
  • Quote: “We should call it Scrub Daddy.” ([32:14])
  • Initial market failure: “No one wanted it… I put them in a box, labeled it scrap, and put it in the back of the factory.” ([33:42])

4. Major Business Turning Points

a. Dealing With 3M & Licensing Challenges

• Exclusivity Error & Acquisition Negotiations ([37:10]–[47:05])

  • Signed a “worldwide, in perpetuity” exclusivity deal on buffing pad tech to a chemical manufacturer, later limiting opportunities.
  • Engaged in a tense negotiation with 3M over company acquisition—stood firm on valuation.
  • Aaron to 3M: “If you're going to base it on EBITDA, there's nothing to talk about...” ([42:48])
    Hangs up on 3M when they disregard his request, but ultimately secures a high-multiple, double-digit million dollar sale (approx. $5–20M).

• Scrub Daddy Omitted from Acquisition ([46:30]–[47:05])

  • 3M rejects Scrub Daddy as valueless: “If you're not buying it, we're taking it out of the deal… I'll start a separate company.”
  • Sale to 3M closes just before the 2008 financial crisis, “the luckiest timing ever.” ([47:57])

b. Rediscovering Scrub Daddy for the Kitchen

• Product Pivot ([52:29]–[56:43])

  • Years later, Aaron uses the original Scrub Daddy foam to clean outdoor furniture—discovers its magic property: stiff in cold water, soft in warm water, rinses clean.
  • Quickly realizes its power as a household kitchen sponge: “If it had a smile face on it, I could clean the silverware on both sides…” ([55:52])
  • Made design tweaks, added the iconic smile, and relaunches Scrub Daddy as a consumer product.

• Partnership Fallout ([57:10]–[60:33])

  • Disagreement with his business partner over relaunching Scrub Daddy leads to buyout and end of their business relationship.
  • Memorable moment: Smoking cigars on their last day together, reflecting on 18 years of partnership.

5. Breaking Into Consumer Markets

• Exclusive Materials & Manufacturing ([61:19]–[62:33])

  • Negotiates exclusivity on the proprietary foam with German manufacturer, ensuring a defensible supply chain.

• Initial Retail Struggles and Direct Selling ([62:53]–[67:05])

  • Couldn’t get meetings with big-box buyers. Friend lets him test in ShopRite; product doesn’t sell on the shelf, but flies during in-store demos.
  • Front-page feature in the Philadelphia Inquirer brings local buzz and sales spike.

6. Catalytic Media Appearances

• QVC Experience ([68:57]–[72:35])

  • Broker helps Aaron get onto QVC after initial rejection.
  • First appearance flops; second chance allows him to sell out and become a QVC staple.
  • Quote: “By the fourth show, I was addicted… on cloud nine.” ([72:35])
  • Yet, fails to leverage QVC success into broad retail distribution.

• Shark Tank Breakthrough ([73:44]–[79:42])

  • Inspired by QVC, Aaron applies for Shark Tank. Initially aiming for Mark Cuban, but finds an ideal fit with Lori Greiner.
  • On-air, demonstrates the product’s magic (“Oh my god, it’s magic!”—Lori, [77:18], though cut from the aired episode for drama).
  • Quote: “I could go on this show and kill the sharks.” ([74:34])
  • The episode’s airing (October 2012) leads to $1 million in sales overnight: “Most transformative thing that could have ever happened to the company.” ([78:31])
  • Post-Shark Tank, retail doors open—Bed Bath & Beyond, Walmart, etc., and Lori provides invaluable connections.

7. Explosive Growth & Brand Expansion

• Scaling Scrub Daddy ([80:04]–[84:03])

  • Leaves 3M consulting contract to focus solely on Scrub Daddy as it explodes (2014+).
  • Expands product line: Scrub Mommy (two-sided, different foam types), Scrub Baby, and more.
  • Embraces multi-product “brand-block” strategy for shelf dominance.

• Media & Social Media Leveraging ([81:57]–[84:42])

  • Shark Tank reruns and follow-up episodes continually renew brand awareness.
  • Invests early and heavily in social media, especially “cleanfluencers” on TikTok—today >5M TikTok followers.
  • Quote: “Social media… even though we paid some influencers, it's very inexpensive… gets you broadcast to everybody.” ([84:03])

8. Defending the Brand and Market Leadership

• Counterfeits & Copycats ([87:43]–[89:24])

  • Protects product with overlapping patents, exclusive foam supply, and aggressive action against knockoffs—successfully shut down a Chinese counterfeit operation.
  • Quote: “If you want a cheap one dollar sponge, I’m not your company.”

• Business Scale & Succession ([89:24]–[91:07])

  • Grown to nearly 500 employees worldwide.
  • Open to acquisition by a global CPG company or a public offering; not a fit for private equity.
  • Quote: “If you’re not planning an exit strategy, I don’t know what you’re doing in business...”

9. Ongoing Passion and “Luck”

• Still Inventing ([89:53])

  • Aaron continues to invent and has new ventures, including a revolutionary hockey stick (“Tovi”) already approved in the NHL.

• Luck vs. Hard Work ([91:07]–[93:36])

  • Aaron credits over 90% of his success to hard work, with “great fortunes” and timing amplifying the results.
  • The COVID pandemic, for example, drove up Scrub Daddy sales, but only because he’d made the company “an essential brand.”

  “You worked that hard to put yourself into a position where you might get lucky.” — Aaron ([91:38])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On relentless innovation:
  “I’m never going to stop until this thing becomes something.” ([59:25])
• On deal-making grit:
  “If you’re going to base it on EBITDA, there’s nothing to talk about...” ([42:48])
• On seeing Scrub Daddy’s potential:
  “I heard the angels start to sing… I was like oh my god, we missed it, this has nothing to do with hands in a body shop. This is the greatest kitchen scrubbing tool in the world!” ([55:52])
• On sticking to the mission:
  “If you want a cheap one dollar sponge, I’m not your company.” ([87:43])
• On regretful Sharks:
  “That stupid sponge…” — Damon John, referencing his regret at not investing ([93:49])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [07:31] — Aaron’s unorthodox school career and family lessons
• [13:27] — The Domino’s Pizza of car detailing: Aaron’s first business plan
• [18:48] — The accidental invention of an improved buffing pad
• [24:09] — Breakthrough: building the first custom manufacturing equipment
• [33:42] — Early Scrub Daddy failures and lessons in “right product, wrong market”
• [41:31] — Breaking the exclusivity contract for a shot at a 3M acquisition
• [46:30] — 3M passes on Scrub Daddy as “worthless”—Aaron keeps the rights
• [55:52] — Realization of Scrub Daddy's kitchen sponge potential
• [62:53] — Retail launch failures and direct selling in ShopRite
• [68:57] — The QVC opportunity and snafus
• [73:44] — Shark Tank journey, Lori Greiner partnership, and massive sales impact
• [78:31] — Scrub Daddy’s post-Shark Tank explosion: $1M sales-night
• [81:00] — Product line expansion: Scrub Mommy, etc.
• [84:03] — Leveraging social and influencer marketing
• [89:24] — Counterfeit and IP defense strategies
• [91:07] — Luck, hard work, and COVID-19 impact

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Conclusion: Episode Takeaways

Aaron Krause’s story is a rich tapestry of entrepreneurial resourcefulness, relentless self-belief, and adaptive thinking. The Scrub Daddy saga highlights the realities behind household-name brands—the setbacks, pivots, and emotional decisions that underlie every “overnight” success. This episode is especially valuable for anyone interested in innovation, deal-making, and consumer product entrepreneurship.

“You worked that hard to put yourself into a position where you might get lucky.”

Transcript

[Guy Raz]

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[Aaron Krause]

i said hey i got this new product and you know it's this awesome sponge and i showed it to him and he said yeah you know it's not gonna sell and i said oh no you're wrong it's a bright yellow smiley face in this neon box like there's no way it's not gonna sell and he said all right so he went to the shelf and he just moved some sponges over and put it on the shelf and said you know we'll see you know how many people bought

[Guy Raz]

it

[Aaron Krause]

nobody

[Guy Raz]

welcome to how i built this a show about innovators entrepreneurs idealists and the stories behind the movements they built i'm guy raz and on the show today how an inventor who made products to clean cars wound up making a sponge to clean dishes and grew it into a massive brand scrub daddy some of the best known products in the world didn't start out as great ideas they were actually meant to do something different take bubble wrap for example it was supposed to be wallpaper yes textured wallpaper post it notes were the result of a failed attempt to create a super strong glue the adhesive was actually too weak terrible for permanence but amazing for sticking something up short term even viagra was invented to treat chest pain but it had a side effect that well you know the rest of the story the point is sometimes the problem isn't the invention it's the market and today's story is about a guy who did not set out to reinvent the kitchen sponge he wasn't even a consumer products entrepreneur aaron kraus was an auto detailer running a small business that made buffing pads for car washes and auto body shops in the early two thousands aaron was looking for a scrubbing tool to clean his own hands after fixing greasy machinery he found it in a foam material that he came across from a german manufacturer the foam material worked great and aaron tried selling it to mechanics but no one wanted it so he shelved the idea literally put these sponges in a box and threw them in the back of his shop but a few years later he was cleaning stuff around the house and he happened to pick up those old foam sponges and he noticed something strange when you ran them under warm water they got soft but under cold water they got firm and it was kind of magic and what aaron realized at that moment is that he didn't have a better hand scrubber he had a better kitchen sponge but the sponge market was dominated by a few huge players and trying to compete with those brands especially for a small time entrepreneur well that's a fool's errand so he took a somewhat unusual approach aaron hawked his sponges on tv first on qvc and then he pitched shark tank and that appearance would catapult aaron's scrub daddy brand into the mainstream today scrub daddy generates hundreds of millions of dollars a year in sales and as you'll hear in this conversation aaron kraus is not a shrinking violet he's relentless he negotiates hard he fights for his product even when he doesn't hold all the cards but we'll get there aaron krause grew up in the nineteen seventies and eighties in a suburb of philadelphia his family cared a lot about academics his parents were both doctors and he had two high achieving sisters but for aaron school was never really his thing i was a b

[Aaron Krause]

c and every once in a while an a student and my dad used to always say the same thing when i got my report card son is that the best you could do and i would my answer was yeah because i'm on the soccer team or i'm on the basketball team too and i have a girlfriend and you know things that my other siblings really weren't interested in i had so many other interests and was all over the place and so i said yeah that's the best i could do and he accepted it

[Guy Raz]

i mean given that your parents were both doctors right and they were sort of encouraging you to go into academia i imagine i mean you know again you grew up growing up in the eighties and i remind people like it's a different time like the whole culture of entrepreneurship wasn't what it is like

[Aaron Krause]

today right absolutely and being an entrepreneur especially i think for my parents was a very risky thing and my parents really were very conservative people you know i grew up in an area as you know the main line a lot of people did have money and my parents you know as two doctors it's not like i grew up poor but my dad was a stickler for making me work for every single thing that i got and up till the time i was thirteen i used to get presents and a big party you know my birthday party and at thirteen i didn't have a party and i was asking where's my party and where's my presents and my dad said well your present from now on is you get to buy your own sneakers i was like what are you talking about and and i didn't understand how i was going to do that and so he started suggesting you know chores and jobs around the house and i started earning

[Guy Raz]

my own money he was basically saying you want something you got to work for it and then you're gonna have to buy it and i'm just i'm just not gonna give you cash for

[Aaron Krause]

everything yeah so you know one of the things that i i started doing cause my dad you know set up all these jobs around the house and one of the jobs that i could get the most money for was washing cars and i can make dollar ten washing his car and i ended up going around the neighborhood and actually washing everyone's car this is in high school yeah this is in high school and i actually turned it into a business and i loved it and i was creating coupons and i i used my macintosh to start using a business program to track my customers and so when i eventually and it was one hundred percent expectation you're going to college i i was going for business right and

[Guy Raz]

i guess you you ended up at syracuse for college where you did take business courses but you actually i think majored in psychology yes but while you were there what happened to the car washing business i mean was that on

[Aaron Krause]

hold for a few years actually no just the opposite so when i graduated high school i did think that was the end of my car washing career and i actually sold the car washing business to one of my friends who was in eleventh grade so that he could have a business and then i went off to college and when i came home my mom who's a pediatrician she got me a job working for one of her patients parents who owns the largest manufacturer spiral staircases in the country at the time and i mean i knew that i knew the owner of the company so i went there in a suit and tie you know because i have an internship this summer with the owner of the company and and i showed up and i remember i walked in and i said you know i'm here to meet rich and and she went and she brought some guy up covered in soot wearing those like you know those big leather gloves and like and and and he was wearing like a welding helmet and and i was like i'm here to see rich and he's like and he said i'm rich go home and change into clothes you never want to see again and the next thing you know i was on an assembly line welding staircases and it was one hundred twenty degrees in this factory it was the worst experience i'd ever had i'm going to say in life one day after about a week and a half rich came over to me and said aaron how do you liking it and i flipped up my helmet and i said oh my god rich this is i never expected this this is really really hard and in fact the only thing i like is the way the welding torch it smells like cinnamon and he goes oh don't breathe that in it's highly toxic and i literally took the helmet off and i said this isn't for me and i quit and i went back to see my friend and see what he was doing he wasn't running the car washing business and so i just picked it up right where i was and i started washing the cars

[Guy Raz]

again and tell me a little i mean was it just you and you know bucket and sponges and soaps and you know armor all and a bunch of things like was that the business

[Aaron Krause]

you know at my graduation my my grandmom my aunt my parents you know they all came up for graduation and we were at the dinner table and my dad said so son i just spent one hundred thousand dollars on your education and you have a degree in psychology what are you going to do with your life and i said well i i am going to get a minor in marketing and i i'm going to start my own business and he said okay well what kind of business you think you'll start and i said well i've been washing cars you know all of high school and throughout college i think i'm going to make it into a real business so my mom is at the table she's crying and my grandmom says oh my god just disown him he's going to be a car washer and my dad said son you have until the end of the summer to make it into a real business because i was running it out of my parents garage and he said you have till the end of the summer to make it a real business and move it out of the house and and however much money you can save in a bank account and show it to me i'll match it at a loan at two points higher than the bank because you're a bad credit

[Guy Raz]

risk a loan to do what to

[Aaron Krause]

start the business because i was going to need i was going to need seed money i had to rent a location i had to put down payments

[Guy Raz]

oh you wanted to start an llc you want to start a car washing business not like going door to door and washing on their property you wanted like a a location a building where people would bring their cars in i

[Aaron Krause]

wanted a detail shop a real professional detail shop where we would pick up and deliver so if you remember domino's pizza back in the eighties they had this incredible campaign it was they would thirty minutes or less they would deliver your pizza or i think it was free it's free yeah or it's free so i was going to create the domo's pizza of detailing it was free pickup and delivery and we get your car done in three hours or less or there's a discount and i was going to franchise that that was my whole business plan and i saved up the eight thousand dollars in a bank account at the end of the summer showed it to my dad and he loaned me eight thousand dollars i think it was at nine percent interest at the time and that was enough money to get a lease on a very small garage in ardmore pennsylvania and i started you know detailing cars from my previous clients and then i started getting

[Guy Raz]

dealerships right who would come in and how did you i mean clearly you must have liked detailing cars like there was something about it that you actually enjoyed like the the work of like cleaning a car and getting it really to look nice i mean you must have enjoyed that work i loved it

[Aaron Krause]

to be honest it's very hard work very grueling but it's very very satisfying you know you start with a car that's in a filthy condition that looks like it's never going to shine again and you restore it to glory and then you bring it back to the client and they are in shock so it's very satisfying work but i also enjoyed the business side of that like growing it i enjoyed having a computer i enjoyed creating all the systems and the processes and like at the time you know computers were pretty new and these business programs were coming out and you could do really unique things like you do someone's car and then you could set like a reminder for three months to call that person back and say it's time to get your car waxed again and so i could come in in the morning and have a list of people that i knew i

[Guy Raz]

could call today so all right you get the money to get the brick and mortar location and i imagine you have to start hiring people so who were your first hires just anybody you

[Aaron Krause]

could find you know the first hire was a business partner i was kind of lonely doing the cars by myself and with one particular day i happened to be dropping a car off next a friend that i knew growing up in the neighborhood we went to overnight camp together we had mutual friends together and i was dropping this car right next to his house and so i dropped the car off and i went and knocked on his door and it was probably about eleven thirty you know in the morning and he answered the door and he was still like in pajamas it looked like he just rolled out of bed and i was like oh my god what are you doing he's like you just ruined my best nintendo score and i'm like are you kidding me do you know what i'm doing all day and he's like oh dude it's in ninety two we were in a recession pretty pretty serious recession and he said yeah i put a lot of applications out no one's hiring i said you got to come and see what i do for the day and if you like it i'm looking for a business partner five thousand fifty and that was my first i don't want to say employee but it was my first person in the business that we were working together and from there we started hiring local people to start washing the cars as we grew and

[Guy Raz]

grew all right so you've got this business going and i mean it must have been profitable pretty quickly right because your overhead and you got your people and probably the rent wasn't that high on the place and a detail even probably in nineteen ninety two was at

[Aaron Krause]

least one hundred bucks right it wasn't that profitable and the reason why there was a couple of reasons why i hadn't learned all my lessons in business yet and so i wanted to get big and i wanted to do volume and so i tried to keep my prices as low as possible and because my prices were as low as possible i couldn't hire the best talent so the people that i had doing the cars weren't really skilled laborers and they wouldn't do a great job or it would take them too long to do a car and every car is different every shape of every car is different one car's got a total mess in the back because they had a baby and the other car is a brand new mercedes and so it was so variable that you had no idea how like what your profit was going to be at the end of the day or the week all right so you

[Guy Raz]

were not really making a whole lot of money in this business but you you had a business you were there you had a place and and i should mention you were you were living with your parents i mean nothing no no shame in that but like no that's right you were saving money on

[Aaron Krause]

rent i was saving money on rent and on laundry and everything and i i lived at my parents i'm ashamed to say this this is so embarrassing i lived at home till i was twenty nine but it really gave me the opportunity to spend all my focus on growing the business and not worrying about where i was living or where i was getting food and so i owe my parents a huge debt of gratitude for doing that i guess while

[Guy Raz]

you were running this business you kind of stumbled on a problem which was from what i understand i'd love to hear the story you're buffing a car and it's it's damaging the vehicle like the buffing pad that you're using was not a good one and it kind of sparked this idea maybe i imagine to find a new buffing pad initially but eventually you would come up with your own what's the story it's really

[Aaron Krause]

interesting so cars have been polished the paint's been polished by started out with like lambswool and then eventually people started using wool yarns and making like this hairy wool pad and that's been the standard for and when i started detailing cars that's what it was you had this hairy wool pad and you would attach it to a buffing machine and it would spin at two thousand revolutions per minute and the problem with these pads are it's you know it's like a carpet right and when it gets caked up with chemicals and it wears down it doesn't become a buffing pad it becomes a grinding wheel and if you're not an absolute expert it's very easy to burn the paint off the car and then you just bought someone a two thousand dollars paint job and in around ninety two ninety three people started experimenting with polyester urethane foam that's kind of like the same padding that's in like your seat cushions and everyone's felt it you know and it was like a sponge and it would give and so it was much more forgiving i started experimenting with this and instantly i was like oh my god this is the future of buffing pads but the problem was there was no technology in them so they were just taking a a piece of foam and die cutting a cylindrical shape so it was flat on the sides flat on the bottom flat on the top well i'm doing this car and i'm trying to get underneath this mirror but the pad doesn't feather like a wool pad and i end up hitting the backing plate against the mirror and there's a big grinding sound and i jump and i break the mirror off the car and it was a mercedes i think the mirror cost one thousand dollars yeah and i was just absolutely sickened i was i was like i can't believe and i i blamed the pad i didn't blame myself i'm like that is the wrong shape why is no one making these foam pads in the shape of the wool pad it should have edges and so i have this idea for this buffing pad that should have edges to it and i start asking around for it you know does anyone have this this kind of buffing pad and nobody had it and so i said oh my god forget i mentioned it and i went to the local library and i started reading about how do you patent something and then i looked up patents on other buffing pads and then i copied the format that they did and i actually wrote my own patent and sent it in and about two months later i got back a letter that wasn't even in english i didn't know the language it was written in it didn't say you got a patent it didn't say you didn't get a patent i had no idea what

[Guy Raz]

it said you just couldn't understand it it was like all this legal language

[Aaron Krause]

that you couldn't understand it's legal mumbo jumbo that is you know which is patent law and i have a family friend who was a patent attorney and i just went and called him and i said hey can you take a look at this i got this back and every page that he flipped his face got redder and redder and he got angrier and angrier and then he threw it down the table and said let me ask you a question aaron if you had a toothach you take a drill and start drilling your own tooth and i was like no he was like what makes you think you can write a patent he's like here's my recommendation we file with the uspto and we beg them to rescind your application and pretend they never saw it and then i will write you a patent application and i was like okay and we did that and he got

[Guy Raz]

me my first patent got it okay so you have you're working on a patent for this new this new design to basically to buff a car and i guess around this time you decide to focus on this and not the car washing and detailing business well we

[Aaron Krause]

did both remember i had a business partner and he ran the car washing business i didn't completely leave the company but the only way to make this happen was there was no internet i opened up what we called yellow pages and i started looking up foam where do i buy foam and who cuts foam and this is where we find out why no one's done it so i'm going fabricator to fabricator and i'm getting laughed out of people's offices and i'm remember i'm a twenty three year old kid like i don't know people are laughing you don't know what you're doing and they're like that shape can't be made and eventually i found this one guy and he said listen you're going to need to build a piece of robotic machinery in order to make this happen okay so i need like one hundred thousand dollars up front and then i'll try to make a piece of equipment to make this thing because what you're trying to do is you're trying to cut this flexible foam pad into a circle with beveled edges that meet at a perfect point in space and there's no equipment in the world that can make this so give me one hundred thousand dollars now if i make the machine and it works it's another one hundred thousand and that's before we talk about how much each pad is going to cost you to make

[Guy Raz]

and you've got what kind of capital do you have to work with none

[Aaron Krause]

i'm using money from the company we're on a shoestring budget i already told you the car wash business is not making a lot of money i had already borrowed another ten thousand from my dad for the patent and there was no money to do this and i literally was at the verge of giving up and then one day i remembered this crazy guy that owns a spiral staircase manufacturing company that you worked for that i worked for as an intern

[Guy Raz]

after your freshman year of college yep

[Aaron Krause]

and i said rich i have this crazy idea i want to make this buffing pad and i showed it to him he said you know what come here every day after work when the shop shuts down around five o' clock and i'll work with you on it and we spent probably two months together working on this and he did it he welded together a bunch of hand cranking machinery and with two cheap i mean one hundred dollars drill presses and a two hundred dollars band saw we created the first edge buffing pad and all my employees are in awe they're like dude this is the best buffing pad we have ever used and i knew right away we had something really unique and so i put some ads in some local trade magazines not local national trade magazines it was called national car washing and detailing magazine and i put a full page ad showing the edge buffing pad so we started out selling direct through this ad we put into the magazine but very quickly some of the distributors started calling us and there's a local company in philadelphia that's a manufacturer of car washing and detailing chemicals called ardex and i knew them really well because they brought me all my car washing chemicals and so i asked to have a meeting with the owner and i showed him our buffing pad and he gave me a check for ten thousand dollars on the spot and said give me as many pads as i can get for ten thousand dollars and that was the first time i realized oh my god this is going to be big we're not just selling to individual shops now i'm selling to one of the manufacturers of car washing detailing chemicals and if this works he's going to start selling this and distributing it to all of his distributors and that's what happened it took off immediately from there and in three months we were selling them all over the country and so we knew right away this is the scalable business not the car washing business how much was a

[Guy Raz]

pad did a pad cost pad cost

[Aaron Krause]

to make a dollar or something and we were selling them for three or

[Guy Raz]

four dollars so with this product did you start to think okay this is really going to be our business or did you start to think we're going to start making more things like this for the you know the auto washing and detailing industry no the only thing

[Aaron Krause]

i could think of was that i couldn't keep washing cars and doing this at the same time and we needed to focus on solely on this and then we needed to focus on how to produce this more efficiently and so we went to an automation company that makes robots and they built me this robot that would cut a pad in eleven seconds with no one involved wow

[Guy Raz]

so now you're really focusing on this new product this what were you calling

[Aaron Krause]

it again so it was called the edge buffing pads edge buffing pads and the company name was called dedication to detail which by the way my dad gave me that name and we bought this automated equipment and then we needed to move into a serious warehouse and so we rented our first three thousand square foot real manufacturing site so all

[Guy Raz]

right so let's talk so now you've got you're out of the car wash and detail business and now you run the buffing pad manufacturing business give me a sense of how much you guys were doing in sales a year like over a million two million or less

[Aaron Krause]

yeah we started i'd say by by ninety eight we were doing over a million million and a half but i could see the writing on the wall this was going to become multimillion dollars like we were going to be selling these there's tens of millions of pads sold every year and it's not something that you would use or many of the listeners may use it's something that's used in every car wash detail body shop it's also used to polish marble airplanes boats statues it's a huge business

[Guy Raz]

all right so you're doing pretty well selling buffing pads and then i guess at one point this is around two thousand six you come up with an idea for a totally what would become a totally different type of product which is not even for cars but for cleaning your hands so how did that

[Aaron Krause]

happen so i used to build all these machinery all this new equipment and i was the only one who knew how to fix them right and i'd come back in the office my hands were filthy dirty and i used to have this white keyboard that i would type on and i remember looking down one day and seeing it was covered in soot and grease and i was like geez look at my hands i need a better way to clean my hands and i started out using different kinds of soaps like lava or gojo

[Guy Raz]

oh yeah lava does lava soap it must still exist right i think it must still exist i remember those ads in like the eighties and nineties like it was always like car mechanics or something in those commercials like using the

[Aaron Krause]

lava soap always car mechanics because our hands are filthy dirty and i'm like a mechanic because my hands are always under these machines and getting filthy and i couldn't get them clean and i couldn't use this soap anymore i wanted to use my soap that smelled good and bubbled up and foamed so i started experimenting with different materials and then one day i just saw the wall of foam that we make our buffing pads out of and i was like i wonder if like our rough foam could scrub my hands and i tried it and it didn't work but it worked a little bit the problem was i was using buffing pad foam right it's too soft it's for rubbing on a car and not scratching it i want something that's really gonna scrub my hands well i know every company in the world makes foam so i send out a request to everybody send me the roughest toughest foam that you have and this company in germany sends me this rock hard yellow foam so i cut like a regular rectangular shape and i start scrubbing my hands with it and it's hard to hold so i i cut a circle and that was really easy to hold on to and then i want to get my fingers clean because it's hard to go around your fingers with this big thing so i cut a hole and then i could stick my finger into that hole and just spin it and it would scrub your whole finger all the way around and i scrub my hands with it with regular soap and it comes completely clean by the way i'm only using cold water because in the back of the factories a lot of times you don't have a hot water heater so you're just using cold water out

[Guy Raz]

of the really fun in the winter

[Aaron Krause]

right really fun yeah and so anyway it works great it's cleaning my fingers beautifully and then i want to get underneath my fingernails so i cut some ridges on the top of it so it would fit underneath my fingernails but it was hard to hold it so i cut two holes and i could put my two fingers in and then the sponge stayed on my hand and i could just power through my fingers

[Guy Raz]

so you're doing this thing with this piece of foam and what right away like okay this is it this is great this is actually what i've been

[Aaron Krause]

looking for well it needed to be a little bit stiffer and the pore sizes need to be a little bit wider and it's a little denser so i contacted the company i said can you make this can you do that and they said sure sure and they sent me prototypes and i made some scrubbers and they were they were the best thing i'd ever used and i love them and i use them every day and then the light went on what am i doing i'm in the body shop industry i'm selling to car washes and body shops and mechanic shops and detail shops these guys all have dirty hands we should make this a product yeah so we need a name and we're sitting in the office and i'm talking to one of my office managers and he's looking at it and it looks like two eyes and some hair looks like a radical skateboard guy maybe and it looks a little bit like the godaddy symbol you know like the godaddy symbol with those spiky hair and he's like we should call it scrub daddy and i said oh my god that is the best name ever

[Guy Raz]

that was your reaction right away oh right away best name ever that's the

[Aaron Krause]

best name ever and you're thinking of

[Guy Raz]

this as a hand scrubber it's only

[Aaron Krause]

for scrubbing your hands that's it so

[Guy Raz]

really for the mechanics and auto detailers like again it's for a very specific industry that you're thinking well i'm in

[Aaron Krause]

that industry right yes what i know i'm not even thinking outside of it

[Guy Raz]

i'm thinking consumers right no and these

[Aaron Krause]

are all my customers already so and that was it we started trying to sell it and market it and no

[Guy Raz]

one wanted it how much were you trying to sell one of these sponges

[Aaron Krause]

for so that's the problem it's a really we call it a highly engineered polymer and it was made in germany so we had to ship it across the ocean and then we had to cut it and shape it and it was four and a half dollars and

[Guy Raz]

people are like four and a half dollars for a brush to scrub thing

[Aaron Krause]

to clean my head my guys can

[Guy Raz]

use can use lava soap not only

[Aaron Krause]

lava soap but these guys you're talking to the wrong market like they don't care about dirty hands they would go home with dirty hands and spend four dollars on a sponge and so it died it died right away no one wanted it i had made one hundred fifty samples and i'm a bit of a pack rat i i always save things i'm working on and i think oh i'll i'll come to this you know one day later so and i spend money on these so i can't throw them out with good content so i put them in a box i labeled it scrap and i put it in the in the back of the

[Guy Raz]

factory so how long did you try and sell these did you spend like months or a year wow and you

[Aaron Krause]

put it aside put it aside yeah it died

[Guy Raz]

when we come back in just a moment why aaron eventually gives the scrubbers another chance and why he furiously hangs up the phone on the company that wants to buy him stay with us i'm guy roz and you're listening to how i built this when you're starting off with something new it seems like your to do list keeps growing every day with new tasks and that list can easily begin to overrun your life trust me i know getting my production company built it productions off the ground was no easy feat finding the right tool that not only helps you out but simplifies everything can be such a game changer for millions of businesses that tool is shopify shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and ten percent of all e commerce in the us from household names like heinz and mattel to brands just getting started with hundreds of ready to use templates shopify helps you build a beautiful online store that matches your brand style shopify is also packed with helpful ai tools that write product descriptions page headlines and even enhances your product photography start your business today with the industry's best business partner shopify and start hearing sign up for your dollar one per month trial today at shopify dot com shopify built go to shopify dot com built that's shopify dot com built every business right now is asking the same question how do we actually make ai work for us because the possibilities are huge but guessing is risky and sitting on the sidelines that's not really an option because chances are your competitors are already making their move that's where netsuite by oracle comes in with netsuite you can put ai to work today netsuite is the number one ai cloud erp trusted by more than forty three thousand businesses it brings everything together your financials inventory commerce hr and crm all in one unified system a single source of truth and now with the netsuite ai connector you can connect the ai tools you already like directly to your real business data that's what makes ai actually useful helping automate routine tasks deliver actionable insights and even cut costs so instead of waiting and wondering you can start moving forward if your revenues are at least in the seven figures get their free business guide demystifying ai at netsuite dot com built the guide is free to you at netsuite dot com built netsuite dot com built built hey welcome back to how i built this i'm guy raz so it's the mid two thousands and aaron has shelved his idea for a hand scrubber but he's still designing lots of other things for the car industry including something that'll become a hit product we had created

[Aaron Krause]

the first double sided buffing pad with a quick connect disconnect automatic centering reversible adapter you'd snap it on and it was like smooth as butter and i thought this was this was game changing and it was industry changing and one of our customers who was a big chemical manufacturer in the detailing business they saw the technology and they wanted the exclusivity for this system they wanted to

[Guy Raz]

exclusively license it or not to buy it out just to exclusively so they basically they liked it and they said all right we'll do a deal with you but you can't sell it to anybody else we're gonna be your only customer yeah which is not it could be great but it could also be

[Aaron Krause]

not great it was not great i was foolish and i signed a worldwide exclusivity for this technology for very very low minimum quantities and you did that because because i was well i was desperate to be honest at that point i had dumped a huge amount of money into this project and we needed to get sales out of it i mean i had put the company in a little bit of a financial stress

[Guy Raz]

point so how long was the deal that you signed with them it was

[Aaron Krause]

in perpetuity as long as they met their minimum requirements and that was that became a real major issue for us

[Guy Raz]

okay and i guess we should explain why this became a major issue for you because something else was going on right which is that three m which is this massive manufacturing company they make everything post it notes to scotch tape and so much other stuff they also wanted to license some of your products right i mean they sold buffing pads too and i guess your pads were eating into their market share yes and

[Aaron Krause]

they came down and i toured them around my factory and they see this machine that i built this fully automated machine that makes buffing pads and i watched the three m engineer's eyes blow out of his head and he was like where did you buy that and i said i didn't i built it he was like you're kidding me i was like no i built it he's like could you build another one i'm like yeah of course and from that point the discussions about them wanting to license our technology or you know use our buffing pad technology somehow turned into we want to buy the company we

[Guy Raz]

want to buy dedication to detail we

[Aaron Krause]

want to buy dedication to detail but

[Guy Raz]

there's a problem because the license to your hero product is somebody else has

[Aaron Krause]

it in perpetuity correct it's a huge

[Guy Raz]

problem so it must have been agonizing when three m was like we're interested in acquiring you and then you had to tell them well this is the situation and i guess what their response

[Aaron Krause]

was ooh that's tricky they said that's

[Guy Raz]

tricky that changes the equation here yeah

[Aaron Krause]

they said we're not going to be able to probably move forward so i i'm pretty devastated because i know this is this is the future of the company and it needs to be sold to three m but i'll say this i didn't have a deal with three m i had nothing they expressed an interest and i saw the interest and i needed to be able to have the ability to do that but i also needed to keep running my business as if it would never happen and i start looking through the contract there's got to be some way out of this contract no so i said listen guys we need to renegotiate this contract because it's really egregious like you have the worldwide exclusivity on a product you have this in perpetuity you know and for minimums that are not even one percent of the market share like none of this is fair and in that negotiation i just need to find a way to make sure there's a clause that if someone wants to buy me there's a way out and the way out i let them negotiate themselves i said like what happens in the case that a company buys me and they said we want this amount of money paid to us and we want twelve months supply at a locked in price you know and then you know if that happens and you get bought out we'll let you down all right so

[Guy Raz]

you managed to get out of this exclusive contract which finally i guess allows you to start talking with three m about and acquisition and i think you negotiated with them for what for like a year right but from what i understand the back and forth was was pretty heated right like it this did

[Aaron Krause]

not go smoothly no three m and i had a very contentious negotiation and due diligence the major sticking point with three m was the price like they you know yeah i distinctly remember this they have this thing called the zip code conversation and it's when you get to the point with three m that they're going to buy your business that they throw out a number and you see if you're in the same zip code and if you're not in the same zip code the conversation's over and i told them from the get go guys i know our sales aren't anything huge but i'm not selling the company on our sales or our ebitda i'm selling the company based on a technology that's going to change the entire industry that i own the patents for the next like fifteen years but their formula

[Guy Raz]

and i'm sure in any acquisition is clear it's ebitda look at you know multiple of revenue or you know of ebitda and they're looking at your business and they're saying okay here's a multiple

[Aaron Krause]

of that yeah well i told them if you do that the conversation is over and i'll hang up on you and the day that we had our zip code meeting they called me up and i had forbidden them to talk about ebitda it had to be about the value proposition of what i was bringing them and i get on with these finance guys and the guy goes so aaron based on ebitda we're going to and i and i hung up i hung up and they and they called back and said we got disconnected i said no we didn't i and the conversation's over goodbye and the business guy called me up said aaron i don't understand what happened i said i told you do not come with that number i'm not interested if you're going to base it on ebitda there's nothing to talk about because you know our business is just getting off the ground i'd rather keep going and i'll take all of your market share and then we can talk about a multiple then so he said aaron what if we doubled the number and i said not even close he said tripled the number i said you're getting closer he said triple the number and we'll buy some of your accessories we'll make a contract to buy accessories from you as well and i said okay now we have a conversation we started getting into that like the depths of like what that number is going to be and they were like aaron you need to justify we have a board we're shareholders we're a public company you need to justify literally every like asset you have and so i have to go through a list of everything the desks the computers the patents right every piece of equipment and i have a patent on this thing called scrub daddy i got a patent for the next you know fifteen years for this hand scrubber and i'm going through a list of all of these things that i have patents on i have a patent on a brush that has an ergonomic shape that helps you clean the buffing pads that i invented called the edge conditioner brush and i got a patent i patented an apron that has velcro cord holders so when you're buffing the car the cord doesn't fall and get wound up in the machine that's spinning at two thousand revolutions per minute and how many patents

[Guy Raz]

did you have more than ten fifteen

[Aaron Krause]

seven or eight at that time okay

[Guy Raz]

and and you have to justify all the assets you have because you've got machinery that you've created and you've got this buffing pad and and then the hard assets like office equipment right you've got to justify to them so they can go to their board and say hey here's what he has and here's

[Aaron Krause]

why the company is worth this kind of money and the patents were like the most important right because you you get a patent for a set period of time you own the exclusive rights that you have a monopoly and you can make your killing in that period of time and so i'm like well i have a patent on this brush you know for the next fifteen years and they're like yeah not interested in that brush you can just minus that off of the deal you thought that brush was worth one million dollars aaron minus one million dollars oh this apron really cool idea by the way not interested minus one million dollars what's this thing scrub daddy for cleaning hands what are your sales zero yeah minus that off they went through and carved out five items and said not interested in any of them and they went through this list and literally showed me the math and said okay so we're taking these out and here's the number you said you'd sell the company for and we're taking those items out of the deal those are valuable and here and you agreed on that price what was i going to say i said oh i guess you're right i guess we have a deal and we'll sell the

[Guy Raz]

company i know the number's undisclosed right but are we talking about somewhere between five and twenty million dollars yes okay

[Aaron Krause]

all right we're talking it's double digit

[Guy Raz]

millions okay so they said we don't need this we don't need that this is really what we want and among the things they did not need was

[Aaron Krause]

this scrub daddy correct and they're carving that out of the deal and did

[Guy Raz]

you i mean but at this point you weren't like ha ha ha lee carved it out you were just thinking

[Aaron Krause]

whatever they don't want it i thought it was i thought it was kind of trash too like nobody wanted it sitting in a box collecting dust like yeah of course they're not gonna buy that and i think at one point they were like you know we're not paying you for it if you want to leave it in the deal you know sure we'll take it and i was like no if you're not buying it we're taking out the deal i'll start a separate company you know i'll make an accessories business and i'll sell my accessories to someone else right so

[Guy Raz]

you piece together a deal that is acceptable and you and your partner finally you both get some cash out of

[Aaron Krause]

this deal so this is the craziest thing i sign the papers the money transfers i literally go from not just paycheck to paycheck because some you know weeks i didn't get a paycheck to i'm a multimillionaire like immediately and it's the most shocking i spent all weekend opening up my bank account and just looking to make sure it was real

[Guy Raz]

looking at the zeros yeah just to

[Aaron Krause]

make sure it was real and we had a great we had a great time that weekend you know we went out did a bunch of great dinners and exciting and you had two kids

[Guy Raz]

by this point two little kids i

[Aaron Krause]

had two little kids i think they were like three years old or something

[Guy Raz]

like that you are forty you're almost forty at this point right yeah yeah

[Aaron Krause]

and on monday morning i come into the office and i get a call from the lead m and a guy that we've been you know doing the whole deal with at three m at three m and he says oh my god you are the luckiest guy i ever met and i said why because i sold my company to three m and he goes no because i'm reading a memo from the ceo of three m and it says shut down every acquisition the world's coming to an end and that was september first two thousand eight financial crisis and the entire markets just began to collapse and we were completely insulated because we had sold the company and i had a contract with three m to keep working with them as a consultant as a consultant and when you're acquired by a company with a prestige of three m it's life altering and i was so proud to work with that company and go to headquarters and and then i learned a lot about how corporations actually function like big corporations and i can't tell you how valuable that is to me now that i'm running a much larger organization

[Guy Raz]

it sounds like you i mean it sounds like you really took this job and you know in good faith and really like if i'm reading between the lines you kind of felt like i really want them to know that they made a good decision i'm glad you

[Aaron Krause]

said that because it i have a lot of passion around like that's my reputation and i i felt like you know they bought this business and they did pay a huge multiple i mean a very very double digit multiple for this for this business and i was like i'm going to prove to them that they got not just what they bought but every dime of it and and i also had a consulting contract

[Guy Raz]

and i guess part of the agreement right part of the way you could make this deal work was they allowed you to do your own side work like you were a consultant for them but you could start another business if you wanted and i guess they had already agreed that they would buy products

[Aaron Krause]

from this new business right exactly so you hit the nail on the head they knew i was starting a new business because they were already a customer of it and so i was running the same factory for them and under the same roof i was running a totally separate company called innovative accessory products and it was probably the most incredible deal ever because i don't have any issues anymore like all i had to do was run the business i didn't do the marketing i didn't do the sales when the machine broke it was their machine i called them up and said you machine broke it's not my machine anymore and it's going to cost you know this is how much the new motor is but i had to go and fix the machine make sure that the place was operating and i had to transfer all the knowledge to them in year one and year two and i had several like requirements that we had to achieve in order to get paid out our full earn out and some of them were that we had to hit a certain sales number you know and combined like of my new products we had to sell this amount or i didn't get paid out millions of dollars and that's where i that's where i learned the frustrations of working for a multi billion dollar conglomerate you know it's it's mired down in red tape and politics and it was extremely frustrating for someone as entrepreneurial and adhd as me and so there was parts of it that i loved and then there was parts of it that were like extremely frustrating for me okay

[Guy Raz]

so you've got this going and you're working for three m but you've got this side business and three m was your main one of your probably your biggest customer really for that side business

[Aaron Krause]

so they were our biggest customer side business not our only customer but our biggest and you know interesting enough one of the products that wasn't selling was the sponge called a scrub daddy that was sitting in the back that no one had wanted but we were selling aprons and we were selling the conditioning

[Guy Raz]

brushes but the scrub daddy you were

[Aaron Krause]

not selling no no no one wanted

[Guy Raz]

it but it was on your mind clearly because you brought it back out again i guess not to sell but just to kind of use right tell me tell me what happened because from what i understand this happens around twenty eleven where you kind of take these scrub daddies that you'd made in like two thousand seven out of the box and you start to play with them

[Aaron Krause]

again so that's exactly right like they're sitting in the box collecting dust every once in a while i probably grab one over the years to clean my own hands but they last a long time so i wasn't you know pulling a lot of them maybe one or two a year in twenty eleven my beautiful wife was nagging me to clean the lawn furniture because it was gonna be spring soon and the lawn furniture sits out there and gets all moldy and gets allergy on it and stuff like that so i started out using a traditional sponge it's a yellow stinky sponge and it's got that green scour

[Guy Raz]

on the back yep i know the

[Aaron Krause]

sponge well and it scratches things really easily and i'm scrubbing this furniture and it's taking the paint off and she's out there watching and she's like you're scratching the paint what are you doing and i was like oh shoot i can't use this what am i going to use to scrub this stuff off and i remembered this box of rock hard scrubbing things at the office and i thought you know i'll bring a couple of those home and so i brought you know two or three of them home and i made a bucket of hot soapy water because it was fifty degrees out and i didn't feel like working in cold you know water yeah and i had never really experimented with hot and cold temperatures with this sponge it was always in the back of the factory scrubbing my hands with cold water so i dunked it into this bucket of hot soapy water and it went completely soft it literally squished down like a regular sponge and i took it out and squeezed it a bunch of times and i was like well it's what i have let me try it and i started scrubbing with it and it started cleaning and it was pretty good but it was fifty degrees out and so the longer i had it out the harder it got it started to crystallize in my hand

[Guy Raz]

and the cold air was making it rigid and firm again correct the cold

[Aaron Krause]

air was changing the sponge into a harder textured sponge and the harder it got the better it scrubbed and then when i you know took it with all this dirt and muck in it i would put that back into the warm water and it would go completely soft and i'd squeeze it and everything would rinse out of it i did all the lawn furniture and and held it up and looked at it and it looked like i hadn't used it it was brand spanking new so that night i go to do the dishes and i'm scrubbing you know around the kitchen with a regular sponge and i see this thing sitting there and then i remembered that texture change thing and i thought i wonder you know does that work in the sink and so i made it warm and i started you know scrubbing some stuff and then i made it cold when i made it cold it scrubbed all the burnt spaghetti sauce off the plate in two seconds and now i'm going into my engineering inventing mode and what i'm noticing now is that everything is round pots pans plates coffee pots muffin tins casserole dishes they're all round why are we using a rectangular sponge with edges because this is getting all the way to the sides of all these things and

[Guy Raz]

it's the perfect shape so you're cleaning the dishes right you've already cleaned the furniture i mean i would be thinking at this point i should revisit this thing this thing is actually this is interesting i mean is that what you're

[Aaron Krause]

thinking that night i'm enjoying washing the dishes and seeing it rinse clean and i look at it and i'm like oh my god if it had a smile face on it i could clean the silverware on both sides and i grab a steak knife and i cut a smile in it and i stick the spaghetti slip spoon in the mouth and i squeeze it and pull and both sides come clean at the same time and when i tell you this i honestly heard the angels start to sing i like heard like i was like oh my god we missed it this has nothing to do with you cleaning your dirty hands in a body shop this is the greatest kitchen scrubbing tool in the world i just need to market this differently and that's when scrub daddy two point zero was born

[Guy Raz]

okay you go back to your office which is you've got your business with your partner and you've got the three m buffing business yup did you i mean were there still people presumably there are people working there who remembered when you tried to sell this in two thousand eight everybody two thousand eight and did you say hey guys do you remember this thing or tell me what tell me what you did remember i

[Aaron Krause]

told you like if you go back into history i'm i'm constantly you know inventing you know new crazy ideas and concepts so people are always like aaron are you kidding me and this is crazy idea you come up with another one and then you know my poor partner like i would you know we'd finally make money i'd be like wait i got a better idea if we do it this way and then we got to reinvest all the money again and that there's no money so so yeah i knew it was going to happen and i went to my business partner and he said i don't like it i think we wasted a lot of time and money on it before and three m didn't want it and i'm not interested and i said well look we got to move forward with it it's a great product great idea and i know it's going to be successful and he was adamant that we're not going to do anything with it and i kind of felt his pain because for eighteen years i had made him spend every dime that we ever made in profit plowing it back into something yeah and he could see the writing on the wall here we go again aaron's gonna gonna make us do this and i was like no look we each will each put in you know like seventy five one hundred gram and you know we're gonna start this this whole new thing again we need advertising marketing branding packaging and we're gonna blow this thing up and he was adamant that he was not gonna do it and and it's really sad story because we had our first real blowout fight ever we had eighteen years we had never had a fight we'd always gotten to discussions and they could get you know hey i want to do it this way but ultimately it always resolved we got into it we got into a yelling match so what happened

[Guy Raz]

did he eventually agree that you should

[Aaron Krause]

pursue this or well i i had the right to make the final decisions on everything as the ceo of the company and i pulled out the shareholder agreement and i said here's the deal you're a fifty percent shareholder and i'm a fifty percent shareholder but i have the right to make the decision on this and i'm telling you what we're going to do and and he was he was very unhappy with that and he opted to leave the company so i had to i had to buy him out of of innovative accessory products and i had to make a go of scrub daddy on my own and

[Guy Raz]

did that end your relationship i guess

[Aaron Krause]

you could say it did we had a really great talk the day that i gave him the check and he departed the company i did say to him and i have the exact words i'll never forget it we smoked these cigars that we had bought years ago in hong kong we got these cuban cigars we thought one day we're going to smoke these and so i said well i guess this is the time we're going to smoke the cigars and i said you know i got to ask you we did so much great stuff together and we grew this whole business and you know me like i'm never going to stop until this thing becomes something and he says yeah i do i know you and for eighteen years you plowed every dime we ever made you know into the company and we finally did it and i have you know money and a nest egg and i wanted i want to go and do things on my own i want to invest in in other businesses now and you know i don't want to like start a whole company over from scratch and and i said okay i respect that and and with that you know we shook hands we hugged and and he went on his way and i he never really looked back and we we didn't really keep in touch much after that to be honest

[Guy Raz]

all right so now you've got this conviction in this thing and in this product and you're really for the first time going to go into consumer products so i guess the first i've got a bunch of questions about this i mean the first question i have is you had patented a design right you basically patented the design of this sponge but the underlying material was not yours you were going to have to depend on this german company to give you the material so in order to protect your product did you sign an exclusive deal with them like what did you do to make sure that somebody else couldn't just get this material and just cut it in a different shape exactly

[Aaron Krause]

i negotiate with the company and get an exclusivity on the material they can't sell it to anyone else but me and it turns out for some very specific reasons no one else can make it it's literally locked into this one particular facility in germany it's kind of like bread you know you ever eat bread at a at a specific bakery it's always different than the next bakery and certain bakeries they make a special bread and it's like it comes down to their processes and their ovens and their temperatures but it's very specifically at that facility makes that bread and that's that's how i can liken it this company had some technologies that this wasn't going to be easily copied and now i own the exclusivity basically so the

[Guy Raz]

deal was they would send out the raw material and you would cut them into shapes in the us so it

[Aaron Krause]

actually started in my own facility like i cut foam for buffing pads i had all the equipment and so they would send us the material and we would cut out scrubbed dies one at a time by hand and we created i spent you know one hundred fifty thousand dollars on packaging and logos and and i created this beautiful product in a bright orange box called scrub daddy and i started calling all of the

[Guy Raz]

retailers and let's just pause for a minute because your relationships were with people in the automotive industry detailing and body shops like you didn't have i imagine you didn't have relationships with like the walmarts or targets or kroger's of the

[Aaron Krause]

world right zero not only did i not have not have context i had no experience in this market i mean i was in the oem industrial professional world you know and my thought was i called walmart how far do you think you get when you call the reception from walmart right i mean this

[Guy Raz]

is twenty eleven right this is early days of direct to consumer right this is really when it's starting just starting to you know become eventually what it would become did i know you sold them on a website but did you think all right this is the way we should do it just let's just try to sell it online sure we

[Aaron Krause]

made a website but there was no virality at that point yet you know there was not tiktok or instagram and maybe facebook was just getting going and we made a website i would tell my friends you know go and buy a scrub dye but it wasn't nothing

[Guy Raz]

was happening you needed to get into

[Aaron Krause]

a store i needed to get into

[Guy Raz]

a store okay there was so you've got this this product where did you get like who gave you a chance to put this in the shop so

[Aaron Krause]

after i contacted everyone from walmart to target to lowe's and home depot and kroger and couldn't get past the receptionist i went to a friend of mine whose family owns five shoprites it's a local it's a small chain maybe two hundred fifty grocery stores in the philadelphia region and i went to him i said hey i got this new product and you know it's this awesome sponge and i showed it to him and he said yeah you know it's not gonna sell and i said oh no you're wrong it's a it's a bright yellow smiley face in this neon box like there's no way it's not gonna sell and he said all right so he went to the shelf and he just moved some sponges over and put it on the shelf and said you know we'll see let's so you know give me the price and i told him it would be three hundred ninety nine and he asked me what you know he can buy it for and i had to give it to him for you know less than half and so you know he could make money and we put on the shelf and i walked that aisle for ten hours a day waiting for a customer to buy it you know how many people bought it how many nobody everyone would walk down the aisle wouldn't even turn their hand would go out and grab the old scotch brite sponge that their grandmom's been using and just keep going and i went to my friend i said wow you're right i mean no one's even looking at it he said look no one's coming to the store to look for the latest in sponge technology they're coming here for their eggs their milk their cheese and maybe a sponge and they're getting out of here he's like the only way you're going to get interest is if you set up a little display and do like live demos in the store and i'll give you some space you want to try that i said yeah so i built this little booth with hot and cold water and a couple pans and a mug and i wouldn't let you walk by by me i mean if you were walking i mean ma ma' am i got to show you this you're not going to believe this and i would do a demo and every person that saw the demo bought one or two and then after a couple weeks people would come back and tell me i have never had a sponge that i love so much in my life and my friend came to me and said aaron i'm used to selling like two three sponges a day you're selling a hundred you need to go to every one of my stores all five of them and sell sponges but i couldn't do that because i was running another business right and you couldn't

[Guy Raz]

constantly demo and even if you're demoing in a one shop right i mean you know it's not it's not enough

[Aaron Krause]

to it's not scalable right no not scalable and i then i did the math and i couldn't even pay someone ten dollars an hour because i'm not making the four you know three point nine nine price i'm selling to him for like a dollar or something you know they're making all the profit and i was like oh this is crazy i can't even pay someone to do this what am i going to do and it was it was frustrating and i was but i was really busy you know i was making buffing pads for three m every day i was running a factory that runs twenty four hours a day so i mean i was i was occupied but i was really sad because i felt this had a lot of potential and then one day and you remember this is twenty eleven i'm in the middle of another recession and if you remember eleven we're teetering on what they think might be depression and there's all these stories that are coming out in the newspaper and the local paper is called the philadelphia inquirer here they have like a million and a half followers and they're writing these articles about how bad the economy is and how many people are losing their jobs and that china's taking our jobs and we might go into a depression and i instantly am like they need to write a positive story so i called up and i got through to an editor and i said hey i'm a business in the philadelphia area i'm an entrepreneur and inventor i'm creating more jobs in the philadelphia area and i have this new product called scrub daddy that's going to be the greatest kitchen sponge and they said oh that sounds interesting they came down it was supposed to be an hour interview and i wouldn't let them go so they spent the entire day with me and they wrote an article on the front page of the business section on the sunday inquirer that hits one point five million people and it's my big smiley face holding the sponges and it says he's the daddy of the scrub daddy and the phone started ringing off the hook and i said here we go it's about to start

[Guy Raz]

when we come back in just a moment the phones may be ringing off the hook but sales are still pretty limited and local and aaron has to figure out how to get scrub daddies in front of a of bunch bigger audience stay with us i'm guy raz and you're listening to how i built this hey welcome back to how i built this i'm guy raz so it's twenty eleven and aaron is finally starting to sell some scrub daddies because of a story that ran in the philadelphia inquirer and pretty soon after he gets a phone call

[Aaron Krause]

the guy calls and says hey i saw the article and i love this this idea have you ever thought of selling this on qvc and i said like home shopping network like no one's going to buy sponges on that and he said oh no you'd be surprised you could sell millions of sponges on that and i was like so do you work for qvc he said no i'm a broker i said well how's that work he said i can get you into qvc and then i get a cut of every one you sell and i said well isn't qvc down the street from me he's like yeah i said well why would i just go there and try to get in myself and he said sure go ahead and do that here's my number and when you can't get in give me a call so i went to qvc i got booted out the door in ten seconds they told me go online and fill out you know a form request yeah yep i filled out the form i was rejected within a but within hours it said this doesn't meet any of our marketing criteria and wouldn't sell on tv best of luck to you so i called the guy back and i said well i can't get in you know why do you think you can get me in and he said because they say no to everything because everyone wants to sell on qvc so they rely on a network of brokers and we waste our time and our reputation to bring a product to a buyer that we know could sell on tv and i think this could sell on tv so i said okay we'll give it a shot so you

[Guy Raz]

get this opportunity to be on qvc and from what i read you know and this is normal it took you some time to warm up but like many products that go in qvc it did pretty well like you reached a national audience and it was probably huge right for scrub daddy can you estimate like how much you sold as a result of your qvc appearances well to

[Aaron Krause]

be honest on the first show i failed i was like a deer in the headlights and so i didn't know what to do the cameras are all keep turning on and off and the host can see i'm nervous so she took the sponge out of my hand and and tried to start doing demos herself which she couldn't do i got through no demos and i think they had brought in twenty thousand sponges maybe and we only sold forty percent which is a fail and and when you fail on qvc you don't get a second chance like it's airtime they gave you and they just kick you off and and my broker was livid and was like you didn't sell enough they're kicking you off air and i was devastated i thought that was the end and and i got really lucky the the broker called me up after i failed and said i've never seen this in all my years at qvc he said i just got a call from the buyer and the producer and they loved your energy and the product and they wish that you know you had more time to talk they're going to give you another show and so i got a chance to sell the other sixty percent and every time i went on they would reorder like thirty to forty percent more and give me another show by the fourth show i loved it and i was addicted to it i mean there's a high because they're talking in your ear and the producer can tell you oh my god great demo aaron huge spike in the phone sales you just got a thousand people on the phone and like it builds you up and you finish the show and you sell out of all your inventory and you're on cloud nine you know and then the sales are incredible and then qvc reorders and by the fourth show i'm directing the show i'm like telling the i'm telling like the cameraman which angle to come in and how to show the product right wow

[Guy Raz]

okay so this was like and i think a lot of people see qvc and they assume that's it you're set you know but that's actually not really the case and i think that even with that success you had a tough time getting scrub daddy into retail you still couldn't get it into stores yeah

[Aaron Krause]

at that point none of the retailers still would call me back and the only place we were selling it was at qvc and in five shoprites but

[Guy Raz]

if so so could you theoretically just have kept doing it on qvc and even if you didn't get the stores was that not an i mean would that have been enough to create a

[Aaron Krause]

sustainable business it would have been a spike and then a saturation point and then they would the minute that you had a bad show you would have

[Guy Raz]

been kicked off yeah you need it to get into stores one hundred percent all right so this is where and a lot of people know this part of the story or may be familiar with this is where shark tank comes in because i guess you are a fan of shark tank at this point and you start to think well if i'm going to get more exposure maybe i should try to get on shark tank is that what you start to

[Aaron Krause]

think i think it was the qvc that did it i started having television experience and being really comfortable in live tv i would have never thought to apply for a show on television before but now i'm not watching shark tank like a you know a regular viewer i'm watching it like oh my god look at that camera angle can you imagine i could do a demo in front of seven to ten million people like it's going to be the best show ever and i'm bragging to my wife that i should have been a tv star and i turned to my wife i said i could go on this show and kill the sharks and i took my phone out and started searching how do you go on shark tank and i found a website and i just filled out an application and the best thing was i told them here is a link to my last qvc show you can go watch how i do on tv and they obviously

[Guy Raz]

they responded and they invited you to film an episode of shark tank from what i understand your hope was that you would do a deal with mark cuban because he was the guy that you thought could really help you make this into a nationally known product well

[Aaron Krause]

i thought we had a lot of synergies you know we're both entrepreneurs and he's like the billionaire of the show and when i looked at the show it was you know barbara real estate and damon is fashion and kevin was you know nasty and herjavec was technology and mark is like sports and entrepreneur and everybody knows him he's a celebrity i'm like i'm going for cuban so

[Guy Raz]

you pitch he's not even interested in

[Aaron Krause]

this product it was a very shocking experience i mean i went in extremely confident into shark tank except for i didn't know lori was going to be in the show and the producer told me that an hour before the show that they had subbed barbara out for someone new and this person gets products on the qvc and i'm already on qvc so you don't need her for that yeah well i don't need her for that i went in and i did what i thought was a flawless pitch and herjavec starts out and tells me he doesn't see the retail value and he's out and i was like are you kidding me this is going to be a huge retail product i'm like you know what he's in tech he doesn't understand but then mark started telling me that i was just a one product company i'm like you don't understand i'm an inventor i actually said to mark cuban you don't understand who you're dealing with and he said look you may be the scrub daddy but i'm not a scrub pimp so i'm out and the only comeback i could think of to that was that hurts mark i really wanted to work with you really bad yeah and with lori it became really obvious that we were like kindred spirits not only is she on qvc but she's a product presenter like me and she has one hundred patents and it instantly made sense for me but she actually called me out and said she thought that my pitch was a fraud she said i just watched your pitch different than everyone else did and you used two different sponges and two different weights to show the texture change i think one of the sponges is hard and one of them is soft or one of the weights is heavy and the other one's light and i was like no it's one hundred percent real and she said fine let me come down off the set and she came down standing right next to me and she starts dipping into the hot and cold water and all the sharks are screaming laurie does it work does it work and she's like face to face with me and she goes oh my god it's magic and i'm looking at her i'm like oh my god you might be my shark and i can't wait for that to air on the episode but they cut it from the entire episode because they

[Guy Raz]

want to make it more dramatic probably

[Aaron Krause]

yeah yep they knew we were going to do a deal

[Guy Raz]

so you end up doing a deal well you you you're i think you offered like one hundred thousand dollars for ten percent and people listening to this show know that the deals that are brokered on the show that we see are not actually the deals that get finalized because there's a lot of negotiation and lawyering and papering and oftentimes it doesn't resemble what you agree to on tv but lori griner clearly i mean it makes total sense because she this is what she did she sold things and made things and invented things and sold them on qvc she's interested and she wants to do a deal with you absolutely and

[Aaron Krause]

you're one hundred percent right the deals just like every deal like you negotiate for a house and then you make a deal and then you go do an inspection and the deals change so i think shark tank is very real like that when three m came to buy my business then they made an offer that whole deal changed by the time we got through due diligence so

[Guy Raz]

it's totally accurate that episode i think you filmed it earlier in twenty twelve and it aired in october of twenty twelve and when it was aired tell me what it did to your sales

[Aaron Krause]

oh my god we did a million dollars the night the show aired wow it was the most transformative thing that could have ever happened to the company and i already heard the stories the scare stories that you air on shark tank and your website blows up and so you better have inventory and you better have backup servers and we had all of it i had it people sitting there watching and when the traffic got too heavy on one site they flipped it to the next one and i had the inventory ready made in our factory waiting for the show and the bed bath and beyond person that wouldn't talk to us before called us and walmart called us and lori was really gracious and she joined a bunch of the calls and brought star power and they were blown away and instantly took the product in and then she would have other experiences with other entrepreneurs that she had and she'd be like oh call the target buyer i know that person and and she'd give me the number and i could just call them and take it from there and then things just blew up and she turned into like monster celebrity and she invested in all these companies and she was like aaron you good you know what you're doing i'm like lori i got this and now we're like more like good friends than she doesn't like get involved day to day with the business she doesn't need to yeah makes

[Guy Raz]

sense all right so it sounds like at by this point right scrub daddy is really starting to take off but meantime i mean you are still working for three m you've still got a pretty big job there making the buffing pads and you're running the separate accessories business so how are you doing all of this stuff and scrub daddy at

[Aaron Krause]

the same time yeah so by twenty fourteen i was out of horsepower i couldn't run the three m thing at the same time i was running scrub daddy and i had to make a choice and scrub diet was exploding and it was much more lucrative and i can control my own destiny and that was really big for me and i told three m i won't be renewing my contract and i'm moving on and you know by that time we really started to understand the retail landscape and we understood you can't be a one product company you need to create a brand block and so even on the show if you watch the show again we were talking about mark cuban mark cuban says to me well you're just a one product company right i'm like not for long we got scrub mommy we got scrub baby for doing baby bottles i got a holder so i was already thinking this way and then we came out with scrub mommy all

[Guy Raz]

based around the same foam material yes

[Aaron Krause]

so scrub mommy is a double sided foam so instead of just being the hard scrubbing texture changing sponge we put a really soft absorbing sponge on the other side that wasn't cellulose that didn't smell didn't stink so it was still a unique material and to this day scrub mommy outsells scrub daddy by about ten percent in every retailer and i'm

[Guy Raz]

i'm wondering when you even when you get them into stores right how are you able to like by twenty fourteen or fifteen like how are you able to get people to still know what it was because shark tank is there's an audience right but if you hadn't seen shark tank and you weren't familiar with that episode and you just passed by the scrub daddies on the shelves of kroger in twenty fifteen how did you get people to know what it did like didn't you have a similar problem that you didn't you know in the shop rights in twenty twelve so

[Aaron Krause]

you know shark tank is the gift that keeps on giving they don't just air once they have reruns and then because of our success in twenty thirteen like a few months later they did our first follow up episode where we got into bed bath and beyond and that gave us another boost and then the next year we had a huge bunch of sales and they gave me another follow up episode i've been on shark tank almost fifteen times and almost every year they do some follow up and then cnbc picked up all the reruns and started airing them all the time and so i end up you know in episodes all the time on that and so throughout all that time we're constantly out there and then people start uploading clips of me from shark tank onto social media and that gets a life of its own and then we start going hold on this social media thing we should be involved in that and so by like seventeen eighteen we start posting on instagram tiktok facebook and it explodes yeah i mean we have almost five million followers on tiktok now almost a million on instagram and some of our videos get twenty million

[Guy Raz]

views and and the videos that you also like one of your strategies i guess there's like these clean influencers what

[Aaron Krause]

are they called cleantalk or yeah clean

[Guy Raz]

talk yeah yeah like there's this whole i don't i'm not on tiktok but there's a whole world like of people who just like clean stuff right like influencers who makes sense there's influencers of everything and and you got into some of these people pretty early yeah so

[Aaron Krause]

the influencer marketing i'm going to credit my best friend who's my chief strategy officer here at scrub daddy he found two or three of these influencers who have become mega mega influencers in the cleaning space and you know you know what happens in covid people start going crazy about cleaning and they're watching these videos like religiously and these influencers take us to the next level and so

[Guy Raz]

basically it was like a combination of the shark tank reruns and then you start to invest in social media and that and so year over year over year you're just growing every year i

[Aaron Krause]

also started to do a lot of podcasts a lot of interviews and i also got myself onto like every major publication lori got me onto the view you know fortune magazine did an article the wall street journal did an article and put our sponges on top of a whole bunch of scotch brite sponges and said three m fights off upstart and so all of this you know free media all of it and i consider social media even though we paid you know some influencers it's still very very inexpensive and it gets you a broad broadcast to everybody i i'm curious

[Guy Raz]

i mean did you i know that you sold your previous business to a part of three m that was not in household cleaning supplies or consumer products but did three m at any point come and say oof we blew that one or hey should we do you want to talk again or anything like

[Aaron Krause]

that so in twenty fourteen when i resigned i said my goodbyes and they said aaron the home products division would like to talk to you and i said about what and they said oh i'm sure you know about what and i went and met with them and they were all loving scrub daddy and it looked like that was going to lead to another acquisition and i was more than happy to entertain that i felt like three m was my friends like family and unfortunately one day the lead m and a person called me and said we have to stop all of our discussions the vp of the home products division who loves you and loves your product and sees the vision they got promoted to another part of three m which happens all the time and they brought in someone new who has no experience in the home products care and their first directive was shut down every acquisition until i understand the business and they stopped talking to us and gave back all our diligence information and that was it wow

[Guy Raz]

i know that on a few occasions you've been public that you were like ready to sell and i think even in twenty twenty you told the philadelphia business journal that you were ready to sell and tell me about that i mean has the right offer just not come around i mean because it sounds like maybe you would still sell today if the

[Aaron Krause]

right offer came around everyone has to be that's one of your strategies right if you're not planning an exit strategy i don't know what you're doing in business there has to be some succession plan i won't be here forever i don't foresee my children running scrub daddy it's far too complicated and sophisticated a business and my daughter wants to be in education and my son is a social media influencer and hockey player so this isn't for them so what are we going to do with it so yeah i'm always open to sell it's just a matter of the price and you know to date we haven't gotten the right offer although we know that we've been valued in multibillion and selling this to like xyz private equity firm doesn't ticket for me and i have no interest in that this this needs to go to the right home at some point and that needs to be one of the largest companies in the world in the cpg space that needs to be a procter and gamble a unilever a clorox a henkel a three m it could be any of those or i'm left with the last piece which is we just go public right

[Guy Raz]

how do you protect against copycats that

[Aaron Krause]

happens every single day so the first thing is i told you our material is exclusive and really only one company in the world knows how to make it and can make it so we've every day there's a chinese knockoff and it's a piece of junk so a lot of people will try to copy us you can't get the smiley face right because i have the patent on it but they'll make some other shape and when you copy our trade dress which is our packaging designs or our color schemes i will actively pursue you and defend vigorously and so one way we protect it is we maintain our exclusivity and we only sell the top products in the world and we we keep to the fact that scrub daddy if you want a cheap one dollar sponge i'm not your company now we also started seeing this is recent last year we started seeing counterfeits and i mean real actual counterfeits that look just like it did it was my name on the box it was it said scrub daddy scrub mommy it had my address had my patent numbers on it they literally made a scrub daddy box but they put cheap you know chinese sponges inside of it and they were passing it off all over amazon as if it was ours we hired a private investigator we found the company in china we sent a guy with a camera in on his lapel he filmed the whole thing we went to the chinese government and said this is fraud someone's copying our brand and they agreed and we raided the facility and took all of their inventory and so we think that sets a good precedent some people start to see that we protect our brand and we'll continue to do that anywhere that it's possible you you

[Guy Raz]

have like i think over what about two hundred fifty employees or three hundred

[Aaron Krause]

employees now oh we have almost five

[Guy Raz]

hundred worldwide five hundred wow aaron you are i mean you've been at this for a long time right what do you i mean how long do you want to keep running it i mean it is it is it something that you want to you could do for ten twenty more years do you want to if you if you did sell it would you start another business like what are your sort of ambitions at

[Aaron Krause]

this point so as long as i find it still fun and entertaining and interesting which i am i'm still developing new products all the time getting new patents we just got our eighth patent on a toilet scrubbing system that's coming out this year so as long as i can keep doing that and i'm enjoying it i'm going to i can keep doing it until the right suitor comes along and if it's not that i would consider going public and at that point i would step down i'm not i don't want to run a public company it's far too much red tape for me and as far as you know starting other businesses i've already done it i'm in the middle of a brand new startup making this really unique hockey stick called tovi t o v i it's a revolutionary hockey stick that we have nhl approval for and i love the sport of ice hockey i've always loved it i've always played it and i love to change that sport forever and so i've already started what will be my next business should i ever exit scrub diet but until this becomes like too stressful and until my wife tells me that she's tired of sitting home by herself a lot of nights i can keep doing this

[Guy Raz]

when you think about everything that's happened to you and selling to three m right before the financial crisis and even selling to them and then them not taking this product as part of the deal like them you got to keep it they didn't care about this sponge scrub daddy thing and then where you are now how how much of that this where you are now do you attribute to the work you put in and how much do you think had to do with getting lucky so i

[Aaron Krause]

think it's a definition of luck right and i think you know luck would be someone just coming to my door and dropping off a boatload of cash like that's luck so i mean i attribute you know more than ninety percent is hard work and then there's just like great fortunes like you know like you're just fortunate because you worked that hard to put yourself into a position where you might get lucky you know in twenty twenty i saw the writing on the wall and i got scared and sent everyone home and said well i working from home we'll shut the factory down for however long and then i got letters from walmart and target and lowe's that said you're considered a essential product in the home cleaning business and you're not to shut down in fact we're increasing our orders thirty percent like we were the unintended beneficiary of like a pandemic where cleaning becomes paramount but is that luck well no i created a cleaning product and i put a lot of time money and effort into making this brand and because of that i was in the position that one day there happened to be a pandemic and cleaning became essential yeah i

[Guy Raz]

mean it's you know you were determined to make this work like you knew it was gonna work but still like i mean it on first glance like the response was this is ridiculous this is a smiley face sponge like what it doesn't make sense that's what kevin

[Aaron Krause]

o' leary said on shark tank he said you're kidding me a sponge with a smiley face cut out that costs two cents to make in china and i was like you're missing the whole thing every single person in the world uses some kind of sponge or cleaning tool and so the market share is so big that even if i didn't get the whole market this was still a monstrous opportunity like i knew this was going to be something huge and i would have put all my effort into it which i did

[Guy Raz]

that's aaron kraus founder and ceo of scrub dad by the way it's actually one of the most successful shark tank companies ever which has led to some regrets from the sharks who did not do a

[Aaron Krause]

deal with aaron i'm very close with daymond john and he's always making fun of the fact that he didn't get the deal and he was on the drew barrymore show and she's like you ever missed you know ever regret something he's like that stupid sponge and like i know he's kidding because he used the scrub daddy and and he loves my barbecue brush and we talk all the time and all the sharks on my fiftieth did a video it gave me a happy birthday so nice it's pretty cool

[Guy Raz]

hey thanks so much for listening to the show this week please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show and as always it's totally free and if you're interested in insights ideas and lessons from some of the world's greatest entrepreneurs sign up for my newsletter at guyraz dot com or on substack this episode was researched and produced by chris masini with music composed by ramtin irabloui it was edited by neva grant our audio engineers were patrick murray and jimmy keeley our production staff also includes alex chung nora gill casey herman sam paulson kathryn cipher kerry thompson rommel wood john isabella and elaine coates i'm guy raz and and you've been listening to how i built this