← Travis Makes Money
Travis Makes Money
INTERVIEW | Make Money by Disrupting Industries and Building Regenerative Businesses, feat. Miki Agrawal
00:24:00
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- [00:01]
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- [00:23]
Travis
You're listening to the Travis Makes Money podcast presented by gohighlevel.com for a free 30 day trial of the best all in one digital marketing software tool school on the planet, just go to gohighlevel.com travis. What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to the Travis Makes Money podcast where it's our mission to help you make more money. Today on the show, I am talking to a new friend, Mickey Agarwal. She's celebrated as a visionary entrepreneur and author. It's a driving force behind the innovative companies Tushy Thinks and Wild that have done over half a billion dollars in revenue to date. She's the author of bestselling books like Do Cool Shit and Disrupt her and recognized by Fast Company as one of the most creative people and by the World Economic Forum as a young global leader. She's now channeling her entrepreneurial spirit into her fourth venture hero, aiming to solve the global plastic crisis with nature inspired plastic eating fungi, which you can learn more about@herodiapers.com Mickey, what's up? Welcome to the show.
- [01:18]
Mickey Agarwal
Thank you. Happy to be here. Hope you feel better.
- [01:21]
Travis
Yeah, yeah. For those who are listening, you probably tell my voice is a, a little drained at the moment. But we're here and we're figuring it out and making it work. So Mickey, I appreciate you coming on. Go a little bit back in time here pre companies and tell me a little bit about how the entrepreneurial side of you came out before you actually expressed it through the version of the first company that you built.
- [01:44]
Mickey Agarwal
Yeah, well, I grew up to a Japanese mother and Indian father in French Canada in Montreal. And so because of that, coming from a very multicultural family, like my dad was From India, like Dr. A very Indian accent and my mom is like from Japan. Hello, pleased to meet you. And I'm from like Maria La Francaise, like super like French paper K because you know, and so we, the dinner table was always multiple perspectives. There's always, there's never like one way of looking at something, one way of doing something. It was always like you could, you could argue and you can actually, you know, hey, there's a different perspective here that we want to present. And so there was never like, this is the way it is. And so I think when I became an entre, when I kind of grew up, it was sort of like, this is the way we're going to the bathroom. This is the way we're managing our period. This is our way. We're eating food. This is the way we're. No, there's gotta be a better way. And so I think that. That I just got to question everything at an early age because of just the multiculturalism of where I come from. And I think that's one of the reasons why I think diversity is actually critical in business because you actually get multiple perspectives. And the best, sturdiest, strongest. There's a thing called hybrid vigor. It's actually a real thing. Like, the more further away you are, if it's like the more your genetics are totally different, the actually the sturdier. The genetics of the kid is. It's called hybrid vigor. And so I think that relates in business, I think there's hybrid vigor in, you know, in just the way you think based on different perspectives and how you can have a sturdier, A sturdier understanding, a holistic understanding, versus just one. One myopic perspective.
- [03:17]
Travis
Now, did your parents. Were they kind of pushing you towards more of a traditional career path coming from. I know I've heard a lot of stories from those types of households where it's like, hey, we want you to be a doctor or we want you to be an engineer or something like that. Did you have that type of. Not necessarily pressure, but kind of push?
- [03:35]
Mickey Agarwal
Of course My. My dad wanted me to. Mickey the heart surgeon, Radha the orthopedic surgeon, and Yuri the brain surgeon. And Yuri became. My sister did become a head and neck surgeon. She's.
- [03:44]
Travis
Oh, really?
- [03:45]
Mickey Agarwal
She was a chair at John Hopkins. She's a chair at. She's the chair at University of. Of Colorado head and neck surgery department. And so yeah, she. So yeah, we. We definitely. My twin sister and I definitely let my older sister like, kind of machete the way for my parents to have their. What they wanted. But then we got to. And do our own thing, which is really great. So I got to be both. My sister. My twin sister are both entrepreneurs. She started Daybreaker, the early morning dance movement. And I then started thanks to she, my restaurants and now Hero, which is my. My current beautiful project.
- [04:21]
Travis
What was the first project that you. That you worked on?
- [04:25]
Mickey Agarwal
The first business I started was New York City's first gluten free farm to table pizza restaurant. And this year, this year marks my 20 year anniversary for the restaurant. Most restaurants, 95% of restaurants close in their first year. 85% of restaurants close in our second year. And we've been over 20 years, we just actually expand doubled our footprint this year. Which is pretty crazy after 20 years. And yeah, it was like again I think I learned all my entrepreneurial chops from running, running the restaurants and really seeing in real time feedback from customers like what they, like what they didn't like, you know, what they want, what they don't want, what drew them in, what didn't draw them in. And I got to really real time test feedback. So I got to when I started Thinx and then Tushy and now Hiro were able to ab test so quickly because I learned that standing outside holding, handing out little pieces of pizza and basically out out loud ab testing different headlines to see how many people would show up and eat some pizza and try it, you know.
- [05:24]
Travis
Yeah. And then what I find fascinating though is that typically, especially in a, in a field like restaurants where it is, it is difficult. It's just one of those industries that's like if you're going to start a restaurant, like good luck and Godspeed. You know what I mean? Like it's, it's, it's a very difficult space to be in. You got in and you figured that out. Why was the, why transition to like physical products, E Com and things like that versus going harder in that space? What, what pulled you in that direction?
- [05:52]
Mickey Agarwal
I think just, you know, everyday things that we used to take care of ourselves, especially disposables is like one of the craziest things you think about. Like menstrual pads, like billions end up in landfills every year. Toilet paper, you're killing 30 million trees every year in America alone. Hundreds of millions globally to make toilet paper. It's insane when you think about diapers. Diapers, the number one household plastic waste item. 100 billion diapers end up in landfills every year. And they take four to 500 years to break down. I mean the number of diapers that end up in landfills every year could circle the earth 1500 times per year. And they take 500 years to break down. And so we're the first couple company ever to create, to partner with nature and bring fungi into the mix and have fungi break the diaper down after you. So you drop in this little pouch into the diaper after the baby poops or pees and right before you throw it away, you just drop a little pouch of little, it's almost like a tea bag in the, in the diaper and you throw in the trash. In a couple of weeks the little fungi wake up inside that little tea bag and grow and start eating the diaper. And you know, our vision is to be truly compostable in under 12 months instead of four to 500 years, which is life changing and game changing for so for us it's like solving everyday single use product. And you know, tushy, we've helped save over 10 million trees from getting flushed down the toilet by putting a bidet on your toilet and just attaching a to your toilet in less than 10 minutes. And all of a sudden you have an elevated bathroom experience and you are saving millions of trees from your flush on the toilet and you're saving a shit ton of money. And same thing with here at my diaper company. You know, we've created the first and best unbleached diaper in the market. It's the only unbleached diaper in the market. We partner with local American cotton farms that create this process to not bleach the cotton. And we unbleached wood pulp. We're the only one that like one of the, you know, that, that removes a toxic blue line while being unbleached. We like it's the best diaper and it's like five times drier than leading brands. It, it like absorbs three times faster, not leading. So the, the products are better. Like they're better products for, for the consumer and they also happen to be like exponentially better for the planet as well. So it's a true win win and they're a win for your pocketbook. And I think that's the trifecta for any business to succeed is you have to, it has to be like level. And so for us with Hero, while the diaper, the diapers itself up front might feel like, you know, you know, it's the same price as a luxury diaper. But we're teaching parents every single month a practice called elimination communication, which gets your baby out of diapers in under 18 months instead of 3, 4, 5 years that other diaper companies want to keep you in. So we're actually literally cutting your diaper consumption by a third to like half. And so you're saving thousands of dollars over time and thousands of hours of diaper changing and getting closer to your baby as well. Learning their c such a win, win, win on every level.
- [08:46]
Travis
What would you what would you ascribe the continued success of your companies to? Having started one, moved to the other one started.
- [08:55]
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- [09:25]
Travis
Another one move the other one, start the other one, move to the other one. And obviously each new startup is a new baby that needs a lot of time and attention and energy investment and then, but then your other companies are continuing to grow in the background while you're working on this one. What, what have you, what have you, what have you learned in order to be able to keep that growth going even after you've been, you know, sort of checked out, working on the next project?
- [09:48]
Mickey Agarwal
I mean it's really about your teams. It's really about you know, partnering with the right, the right operators and the right partners. You know all of my partners are top operators or they, they grew to become top operators and they have different skill sets and different temperaments to me. So opposite skill sets. Like for me if I'm creative, visionary, marketing, pr, like you know, just brand, I need someone who's like ops, finance, you know, like supply chain, you know, all that part of the business product, you know, that piece. Like if someone is killer at that and has a calm, level headed, relaxed temperament to my like spirited, feminine, sort of fiery spirit, you know, that's the perfect match for me. And so my partners have always been opposite temperaments and opposite skill sets and they've, it's been, I partner my restaurants 20 years and my partner in Tushy has been with me for, for almost 12 years and we're just get along like a house on fire, no issues at all. And when I didn't, the one company I didn't have them which was thanks was we had, I had major problems with, with, with personnel when I didn't have the right, the right partner and then with hero. I have an amazing like Bain, Bain Capital guy, Bain Consulting guy who's also a Ph.D. in chemistry to be my, my, my CEO now who's amazing.
- [11:04]
Travis
So, so when you, when you use the word partner, are these like, like actual partners in the business or they
- [11:11]
Mickey Agarwal
sort of like partner Operators, partner operators, like they have equity in the business but they're, but they're, they're really operating the company. Yes.
- [11:18]
Travis
Yeah. Okay.
- [11:22]
Mickey Agarwal
My partner in, in Tushy now is become, has become my CEO as I've taken.
- [11:27]
Travis
Okay, got it, got it. And then when you're, when you are transitioning from one company to the next company, is there like a timeline that you're usually going like when you're just like okay, I have this new idea for this new product. But obviously building a product from scratch is not something that takes a small amount of time. Right. So like you know, how quickly are you sort of like transitioning out of that business or how much time do you spend on a daily basis in each of the businesses or are you really focused on the one that you are growing now, which is hero?
- [11:58]
Mickey Agarwal
Well, so I sold things, so that's done. My restaurants are managing themselves with my partner and my team. So I haven't done touch anything at all except to go eat there and then Tushy. I have a full team there except I run the creative still and still the visionary, the creative visionary of the company. And and so I touch, I touch the executive team once a week. I touch the marketing team once a week. I touch the creative team once a week. So I'm like touching in but it's like more like with a wand, fairy dust, vibes and then with here I'm full, full fledged focused on building this business. Yeah. But I also have a leaders. Like I, it's like I'm working with like self starting leaders and that coupled with A.I. you know, it's pretty remarkable how much you can get done with a small team of leaders.
- [12:45]
Travis
Was all of this sort of your natural intuition from the way that you were raised? Like did you, do you feel like you had somebody who helped you learn along the way, a mentor or something like that which is learning school courses, YouTube, like where exactly do you, do you find that you've attributed a lot of the learning that you've taken along the way to build this many successful companies?
- [13:08]
Mickey Agarwal
I think it's just intuition and, and you know, I think one of my, I would say like gifts is to like see around the corner like what's the next thing that's coming and creating the first one that's actually like a cool brand in the best in class product, the bre. The best, you know, like customer experience and, and the most sustainable. And so it really, it, it fills the void of like and the right price. You know, I think with, with Hero people initially are like, oh, it's. But actually when you net it out, you're saving thousands of dollars and thousands of hours of time saved. Changing diapers when you learn elimination communication that we teach you every month for free. It's part of this course. Plus we give, you know, $2,400 a year worth of free master classes from top doulas, midwives, lactation consultants, people in the birth working space, all for free. Every week you build your community of. Of parents that people are so, like, feel so lonely when they have children. And so to be able to have a community come to every single week for free as part of your hero's journey, subscri. It's really epic. And so net net, you feel like you're getting an insane deal. It's like $119 a month where you get all the diapers, all the friendly fungi. You know, you get a tushy travel so you can like wash your baby's butt without using wet wipes constantly, which are so bad for the environment. And it also comes with a community and a masterclass every single week for free with a bunch of top, top, you know, leaders in, in the birthing space and post birth. What do you do to get back in shape, to get your nutrition back, to get your system back, to be eco forward? What are things life ha can do to, like, get your house and home so eco in a really useful way? Like, this is all stuff we teach for free every single week that you can come back to over and over and over again.
- [14:49]
Travis
So we, we have a lot of entrepreneurs who listen to the show, but we also have a lot of wantrepreneurs. People kind of sitting on the sidelines. They know they want to do something. They can't quite figure out exactly what it is. How would you, how would you recommend people get started specifically in the physical product space? Because it seems like that would be one of those spaces that has a higher barrier to entry, maybe more cost to, you know, get a prototype built out. Or like, if somebody's like, I, I have zero idea how to even get a product sent to my front door, let alone to be able to see version 12 of this product actually go live and people buy it. Like, where, where do I start if I have this idea for a product that I want to start a business, but I just don't have any idea, Right?
- [15:30]
Mickey Agarwal
Well, first they should read my book, do cool shit, quit your day job, start your own business and live happily ever after. We've had like, like you know like over a hundred thousand people like with their jobs and like read after reading this book and it's really cool and so it's, it's, it's a good roadmap on like how to actually get funding for the first time, how to get media for the first time, how to like deal with setbacks for the first time, how to think about your, your actual business model for the first time. Like everything that you really are. Like I don't know like where do I start? I have a back of napping idea but it's a really fun, fun book, story driven book to read on that. And then I actually also happen to have a course on mind value called 0 to 100 million which is basically step by step how to take your business idea from zero to a hundred million. And it's like piece by piece. But honestly that's one of the reasons why they asked me to do this course because there isn't a lot of step by step guide. We could chat GPT now I'm sure like what do I do next? What I do next? And you know there's actually a lot of tools now that you can use. I'm sure you can YouTube it and see like what are the steps. But if you actually want someone to like hold your hand through the process. I do have a course on Mindvalley called 300 million and I also yeah wrote a book about it so that's a great place to start. And then there's, you know, I don't think business school is a good idea. I think it's bullshit. I think it's just like whatever you can literally figure out like how to build a website on Shopify. You can figure out a third party logistics site to get your products shipped there and then have them link to the Shopify site and have it delivered. It's actually not that complicated. You know you have to have a good customer experience portal, your emails can all live on Klaviyo. That's all connected to Shopify. Like there are so many systems now that are just like bam bam bam that you just, it's like it could take you a day to set up a shop if you to want want.
- [17:09]
Travis
Now what are you most excited about in the entrepreneurship space right now?
- [17:14]
Mickey Agarwal
For me it's regenerative. Everything regenerative. I think we live in a world of just more fucking stuff. More, more, more, more, more, more, more stuff. And it's like no less, less, less just what you need. Just enough. And make sure that if you're buying it that it has a regenerative principle behind it that that there's a. That it actually returns to the earth.
- [17:34]
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- [18:02]
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- [18:29]
Mickey Agarwal
actually comes back and that. There's a. There's a cycle of return and coming back. There's a. There's a birth and death cycle along and transformation along the entire cycle. Just the way nature has been doing it for billions of years. Why it's. It has such homeostasis. As soon as we came and showed up and just extract, extract, extract and take, take, take and just fucking waste, waste, waste. It's just so terrible for the actual cycle of life. And as we see industries, communities, disease, everything is going up, up, up because we are in this extractive take, take, take world. Whereas when you think about the world, even the projects I've, I've built myself, it's like my restaurants. Affirmative. First farm to table local organic pizza place. We partner with local organic, you know, farmers thinks we've helped divert hundreds of millions of tampons, pads and applicators from landfills by providing a reusable pair of underwear which I'm wearing right now. Tushy. It's a reusable, a reusable attachment, a bidet attachment that you attach your toilet in less than 10 minutes. Anyone can install it. Even if someone who can barely hang a painting like me can install in less than 10 minutes. And you literally like, like all of a sudden you've saved millions of trees from getting flushed down the toilet. Like you're part of a group of people who've saved millions of trees and you've now actually properly washed yourself instead of using a disgusting dry paper that just smears shit around everywhere. You know, with hero. Instead of literally having your baby be part of a diaper crisis where 6. Every single baby goes through 6,000 diapers that take 4 to 500 years to break down collectively. Like I said, 100 billion diapers every year. It's crazy. And all of those plastic is ending up in our brains, in our bloodstream, and in our re. Reproductive organs, and now in our babies. Unbelievable cords. And so it's time to really think regeneratively and not just think from our, like, grow, grow, grow. Money, money, money, money, money, money. It's like a coping mechanism of trauma. You know, it's like, how do you make more money by actually giving back to the, to the, to the planet that's given you so much. Actually.
- [20:29]
Travis
Side note, did you ever see the south park episode about the toilet paper industry?
- [20:33]
Mickey Agarwal
They did a whole thing about bidets, right?
- [20:34]
Travis
Yeah, yeah, it was, it's. You would, would genuinely appreciate it because it's very well written and hilarious. But yeah, it was, it was this whole. Yeah, basically he goes in, gets a bidet and then the toilet paper, like, you know, corporate powers that be are like trying to prevent him from getting it. I think you would find it hilarious.
- [20:54]
Mickey Agarwal
I know I've gotten the clips, I've gone all the bidet clips. But no, I haven't seen the whole actual episode, but I will.
- [21:00]
Travis
Yeah. Highly recommend.
- [21:01]
Mickey Agarwal
Yeah, Saturday Night Live actually did. If you actually Google on YouTube like Saturday night Live. Tushy. Michael J. The head writer of snl. Basically, when our tushy ads were banned from the New York City subway station because we said rusty, starfish, whatever, you know, gets cleaned. And so because of that, they're like, you can't, you know, put your ads in the subway. So we basically raised like kind of upheaval and an article was written about it. And then we didn't realize that Saturday Night Live looks for all the dailies to find funny things to talk about in New York. And they found our piece about how our bidets were not allowed in the subways. And so Michael Che, who loves tushy, he basically wrote a three minute it weekend update rant about why tushy bidet should have been allowed in the subways. And it went viral and people like, we are our numbers like 5x that day. And you couldn't, you couldn't pay millions of dollars for that.
- [21:53]
Travis
You know, I was gonna say that's, that's earned media right there. Yeah. The power of earned media. Mickey, I appreciate you taking the time. I know you're a super busy person so I do not take your time lightly or for granted. Where can people go to get more from you and what you're working on?
- [22:06]
Mickey Agarwal
Well, they should check out Hero Diapers athero diapers h-I r o diapers.com and you should follow our hero's journey at Hero Diapers on Instagram. It's a fun journey to follow. And then my journey if you want to follow mine, it's just Mickey Agarwal if you want to learn everything about regenerative entrepreneurship, entrepreneurships power. These are all things I talk about on my personal Instagram at Mickey Agrawal
- [22:27]
Travis
at Mickey Agal on Instagram.
- [22:29]
Mickey Agarwal
Buy a bidet if it'll change your life.
- [22:31]
Travis
On hello Tushy Ellotushy Go check out some of the stuff that Mickey's working on. Pick up a copy of her book Do Cool Shit if you're looking. If you're somebody who is that in the entrepreneur sector and you're trying to find a roadmap on on how to build a good company, Mickey, I think might have might have figured out a thing or two along the way of doing like a half a billion in sales with a bunch of different products and services and then building restaurants and all that stuff. Mickey, you're awesome. Thanks for taking the time. Everybody else remember, money only solves your money problems, but it's easier to solve the rest of your problems when you have money in the bank. So let's start there. Here on the Travis Makes Money podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Catch you guys next time. Peace.