 Can you accept that some people, no matter how good a case you make for the cleanliness and the environmental impact, will just never consider your product? Yeah, I'm cool with that. Good luck with this, I guess. Mickey Agarwal, founder and chief creative officer of Tushy. You ready to answer some questions? I am. Have you ever been embarrassed to say what you do? No, I've never been embarrassed. Who did your branding and what was the brief? I gave my creative team the brief. Okay, so it has to be aspirational, artful, irreverent and accessible. And what brands were on your mood board? No brands, per se, just art and different sort of nature images, forces of nature, colors, human poses, body, language, facial expressions, things like that. It's a really good logo. Tell me about the logo. It's a butt inside a water drop. It's a precise shower for your butt. It just tells you what it is. What part of the Tushy brand still needs work? We are still just getting the overall brand aesthetic. People are going to look at that. Oh, that's Tushy, that's Tushy, that's Tushy. And so that's what I've been working on for a while with my amazing creative team. Our new campaign is like very Honey I Shrunk the Kids where we're taking old people, young people, you know, different shapes and sizes, colors, like everything, mobility, all these, everyone. And then we're kind of cutting all the people out and then shrinking them and putting them all on the toilet. You know, and just doing different things. So I think scale is going to be something I'm really excited about for this next campaign and for the next look and feel of Tushy. And so you'll go on the record saying this one's going to stick? I think this is the thing that people will copy. Everyone copied things after we launched the campaign in a lot of ways and I think that this will be something that people will use as an inspiration, I think. I hope. What part of the brand are you most proud of? I am most proud of our voice because I think it's a reverend, it's funny, takes your guard down. Yes, you keep to those brand tenets but you make a lot of different brand content of different lengths all over the place. Why? Because otherwise it's boring and it's, you know, you expect something and then when you expect something it's just not interesting anymore. So for you as long as the voice is a reverend and unexpected that's true to the brand? Yeah, if the voice is true to the brand then the visuals as long as they're artful, aspirational, interesting, we can shift, switch it up. How'd you raise money? People are still like, I don't know, is America ready to wash their butts? So raising money was really hard. We had a couple of early investors, got lucky, had a couple of meetings and they just threw in 400k and that was it. So your 400 is what you used to start? Yep, it was straight equity. Does PR sell products? PR does sell products, sadly. I think it's- Why sad? Just because brands are dependent on it and it's often scary because brands could, you know, it can make or break a company. It can be a blessing or a curse. What's been your best PR blessing in regards to Tushy? The MTA banned the Subway campaign saying that that Tushy is a sex product. Because of that we got a write-up in, you know, a New York magazine and then SNL picked up the story and then ran the most epic three-minute ode to Tushy. It was like an infomercial for the company on SNL by Michael Che himself. I think these Subway ads are great. People need to know about Bidets. I just got one and it's changed my life. It's glorious. What did that do for sales? From a daily sales perspective it tripled, tripled, you know, one time then it ran a rerun quadrupled. I mean it's just unbelievable. You had success with getting rejected from the MTA before with Things, correct? Yes. How much of this was, were you like, I ban me because I know what this does? I mean we didn't necessarily want to be banned but I think for us it's like there was a playbook there that worked. Why not try it again? Worked again. And so we're like maybe, I don't know, could keep working but at some point I'm sure Press will be like, old story. If you had one dollar to spend in marketing where would you spend it? An influencer right now. A really good one. How do you determine a good influencer? Mid-sized influencers so like someone in the 100 to you know 150k range has a good and then they have a strong you know at least 10% if not more of engagement. What's been the biggest individual media investment you've made? Howard Stern radio. How much was that? Not that much like 30k. We would have spent more on MTA but sorry. What have you done in sales to date? I could say over 10 million but our goal for this year is to actually do that amount well more than that 12 million. You've shot a lot of video commercials or videos for Tushy which one's your favorite? It's a booty washing magic and it's by this amazing director named Ty Calner and I just love it. It's basically going around a home and then like seeing things that are dirty and then spring them with the Tushy nozzle and then they all go ding ding ding clean clean clean. They're just beautiful. It's like artfully shot. My favorite ad the one I just talked about did not perform that well. I want to stay on this because I really wanted to talk about that because that Ty Calner ad is a fantastic ad. Do you know why it didn't perform? Once Tushy is a lot more mainstream and people know it that will be our best ad. So you're poopery infomercially talking to camera less creative more expected video that performs what you do now and then when you become a brand that needs to do a commercial you did the commercial too early. That's it and that's our TV 100% that's a TV ad right there. Why do you do so much long form video now? Because it's a product that needs explanation. So we're having to do these real sort of narrative showcases of why you need it. Do you know how many trees are cut down to make toilet paper 15 million? You know do you know how much water is required to make a single roll of toilet paper 37 gallons? All those things really important. But why did you break that convention when today it's all it feels like Instagram, Instagram 15 seconds, we'll flight 10 different videos, we'll call them Tushy DigiNose or whatever and run them like that. Long form sometimes converts better, short form we're testing more now. We're just we're again we're in testing phase for us it's like may the best ad that performs the best win. Can you accept that some people no matter how good a case you make for the cleanliness and the environmental impact will just never consider your product? Yeah I'm cool with that good luck with this I guess. How important are reviews? Reviews, reviews, reviews and actually we just have a video of like a cute blonde friend just sitting on a toilet reading the reviews in a really cute voice and that cost us almost nothing to do just doing great. Do you know what your cost per acquisition is and at lifetime value? Customer acquisition cost is around $20 our AOV is around 80. Why don't you just keep spending and spending and spending and spending and spending and spending? We're doing that we're doing that we're just we're but we're doing it profitably. We're a profitable company woo you know I think like so many people forgot what profitability is and they're all about just like scale unicorn like raise more money I just did my series d and I raised like a billion dollars and you're just like but how much money are you making compared to how much are you spending? What you earn must exceed what you spend and that's just math. Hardest thing you had to learn on the job. It's really important to have really strong management in place pretty early on. Who was your first hire? My first hire ops person now every time after my restaurants bringing an ops person literally after I spent seven years trying to make it work myself within one week of my ops person taking over the restaurant operations our numbers doubled within one month our numbers tripled so I said from that moment moment on never again will I build a business that doesn't have an ops person by my side because it's it's just not my strength. Is any part of you still pissed or not running things? Not at all it's actually in the right hands. If you had one superpower what would it be? Time travel. What's the exit strategy? If there's a great company that can really spread the mission and build it with us with the right with the same ethos then come one come all minimum 100 million so good luck. You seem quite unstoppable what's the ultimate goal for you? To keep elevating humanity while supporting the planet. Is there a bigger plot for you? Yeah I mean I think it's really about just breaking societal preconceptions I mean the fact that we are listening to society that was created by people who are no different than either of us and the fact that that's controlling so much of what so much of what people do to me feels arbitrary and old and irrelevant and we can literally create our own reality and I think if we can show that through business through brand through aesthetic through language then we can shift everything for anyone. Is there a little Oprah in you that wants to be an Oprah or some elected office? No definitely no elected office never ever ever I think there needs to be a level of skin in the game for real shifts to happen so for me I think business conscious businesses creating disruptive innovations creating social enterprises is really what's going to move move the world. Who's the one person you'd love to have coffee with? I mean I guess I'd have to say Oprah. Now to the outside world you're doing a million things realistically how many hours a day are you dedicating to Tushy at the moment? It's my my my priority you can only focus on one thing at a time I'm the chief creative officer of the brand and I want to see this through to 100 million. So Mickey Aguil, thank you so much for being here with us and answering some questions. I'm Ian Wichengrad and we'll see you next time on I'm with the brand.