In this episode of the My First Million podcast, host Sam Parr and co‑host (Speaker A) interview Julia Cheek, founder of Everlywell, about her experience on Shark Tank. Julia walks through the lengthy audition process— a printed 50‑page application, multiple voice and video interviews, and a four‑month producer‑led preparation that shapes the pitch into a human‑interest story for reality TV. She explains the contractual obligations to ABC and the extensive editing that condenses an hour‑plus filming session into a few minutes for broadcast. The conversation then shifts to the deal she struck with shark Lori Greiner: a line‑of‑credit arrangement at an 8% interest rate for a 5% equity stake, based on a $20 million post‑money valuation. Julia discusses how the deal was finalized on‑air without negotiation to make good TV, and how post‑show diligence can alter or cancel deals. She shares the massive impact of the episode on Everlywell’s traffic and sales— a 30‑fold traffic spike, about one million unique visitors, and roughly $1 million in sales over four days, leading to sustained growth rather than a short‑term spike. The episode also touches on Lori Greiner’s investment style, her personal fund, and her role in helping Everlywell secure brick‑and‑mortar retail presence and branding. Throughout, the hosts intersperse casual banter about reality TV shows, highlighting the contrast between the edited broadcast and the real behind‑the‑scenes experience.
Chapters
Uh, the other thing that's interesting is you were on Shark Tank.
I was.
So as a fan of reality TV, me and Sam both watched The Challenge, probably the trashiest reality show.
But tonight's the season finale of the Netflix one.
Of which one?
The Circle?
No, the one where they get married after living in a room.
Love Is Blind?
Yeah.
Wait, didn't it all come out already? Didn't they just release it today?
Today?
No, I'm at episode 3 of that one. Um, good show.
It's pretty awesome.
Pretty good show. Have you seen it?
I haven't seen it yet.
Do you know the premise?
I do know the premise. They put people in rooms and they don't see each other.
Yes. So it's actually pretty cool as an experiment.
And then they have to get married.
Yeah, they have to get married or you get cut off the show. Like, literally, you don't even get like eliminated Survivor style. They just edit you out like you're just not shown ever again if you didn't propose. And so what ends up happening is it's 10 days behind a wall. You talk to this person and you're speed dating basically behind a wall. So you're kind of like deciding who you like. And then someone proposes through the wall. So they're like, "Can you come close to the wall, please? I'm on a knee now and I wanna, you know, ask you to marry me." And then, but the thing is that I thought that's where the show would end, but then they like put them in the real world together and they're like, "All right, you're gonna get married in 30 days and see what happens." And it's pretty interesting stuff. So good job, Netflix. Shout out to you.
Why are you asking her about Shark Tank?
Because tell me about how it came about. You applied many times, one time. How'd you get on?
Yeah. So Shark Tank was an— honestly, I am a huge fan of the show. I also am a huge fan of my own experience, and that's not, I think, what everyone has to say, but I always tell people I think it can be a really game-changing thing for entrepreneurs. Um, if you do it the right way, it is a lot of fricking work, a ton of work. So I—
once you're on or before you're on?
Before you're on. Okay. Um, so I would say like, so I— we aired in November of 2017.
Go to the beginning. How'd you even audition?
Like a 9-month process. Process of, I would say, the year of 2017, 80% of my year was Shark Tank. So we applied, and by we, me. It's like a 50-page written application.
Online or?
No, it is printed and written out. I tried to like use a PDF editor. I mean, it was like a decade ago.
So you write this whole thing out?
I write this whole thing out. I will be honest, I was a finalist at TechCrunch Battlefield in 2016. 2016, the producer scout from—
gotcha. So they reached out, maybe.
So they reached out. Um, so it's kind of like if you're thinking about American Idol, maybe, which I would never be, but you either can get contacted and sort of put in the front and audition, or you kind of—
you wait in line.
So it's not that I had necessarily a better chance, but I did get shortcut into the application process. So filled that out. The application probably takes 40 hours. And then you have to sign all their contracts and basically sign your identity and image away to ABC for in perpetuity. But, and then from there you do a voice interview with producers, you do a video interview as well with the application, then another video interview of your pitch. And then from there the producers work with you for about 4 months to get on like, what is your story, what is your brand, what is your script. And ultimately, your— what I think people people don't realize it's a human interest story. It's a human interest story. You are there to make good reality TV, but it is your decision. The producers will help you and advise you, but this is your gig, and it's up to you to decide how you want to display yourself and who you want to be on TV. Um, but so do you still remember whether or not to air you?
Do you still remember your opening? Because you probably drilled it like a thousand times.
I did, I did. And I will tell you, I thought I was like really good and comfortable at public speaking, and then I did this and I was like, okay, I was really bad. Now, now I'm good.
Did you raise money from them?
Um, I did. So I signed, or I shook on the largest deal ever for a female entrepreneur in terms of valuation.
Wow.
So yeah, with Lori Greiner. She is on board. She's been tremendous.
Um, because of QVC or what?
And for me it was really, at the time we had no brick and mortar retail presence, and I knew that that was a priority for us to create a product that was like actually accessible and ubiquitous. And that's actually, in hindsight, been a really good move for us. But I felt that she would be invaluable in helping us to get some of those stores. Yeah, she really helped with packaging and branding and making something that's accessible. When you're trying to like sell a testing kit where either people think it's a DNA kit, right, or they have no idea what it is, right, um, being able to differentiate that when you have like 10 seconds to grab something.
How much of a check did she write?
Um, so the deal we shook on was Why do you keep saying shook?
Because there's the shake on it and then there's the actual deal.
The actual deal.
What's the actual deal?
I can't disclose that.
Oh, come on.
However, hold on one second.
It's different. Yes.
Better or worse?
Better for the company and probably better for Lori.
And better because honestly, why does the deal change? So normally there's like, they do diligence and they might change it probably for their favor. You're saying it went better for you guys.
It went better.
How does it improve?
So there was a, and it's very case by case. So what happens after the show is, can I pause you one second?
I wanna make sure you project because your audio, you're, what you're saying is great. I wanna make make sure we're getting it all. So my audio paranoia over here, just make sure you talk louder than you're comfortable talking.
So after you shake on the deal on the show, um, a fair number of those deals, I think it's something like over half, never come to fruition at all. And then another quarter or so actually change, and then another quarter get done at the terms that you shook on. Yeah, I think each shark, each shark has a different approach. So like, I— they're totally— you then go into their management company —right? So you're going into Mark Cuban companies or Lori Greiner's companies, and so it's not a— I don't know what Eat Shark's process is. I can say Lori's was super fair. They go through very detailed diligence on everything, but, but you know what, the show actually does diligence on you. They have a venture analyst on board, so they run diligence on you before you ever pitch. What was your valuation that you guys agreed on? I pitched— my valuation was $20 million post-money.
And how much did she invest?
So that was— how much did they agree on? It was a line of credit deal at an 8% interest rate for 5% of the company.
And was it like, you know, hey, deal offer on the spot, or do you have this like long pause where you're like, can I think and write this down?
Well, in my case, every Shark was out and I actually knew I wanted either Lori or Mark— sorry, Lori or Mark Cuban. And so I was really excited about it. And so I really did want to work with her and it was a good deal. So I actually sat on the show because you're supposed to negotiate. But I said, because it makes good TV. Yes. And so I said, I know I'm supposed to negotiate, but I want to take this deal. Right. So I didn't. You do have— it is really what you see. Like, you can exit, you can talk about it with your partner, you can call a lifeline or a friend. They may edit that out or whatever else, but you can take a minute to think about it.
Well, something people don't, don't see or don't realize that is different from having actually gone through it versus watching it. What's a— what's one difference?
I think people know it's edited. I don't think people realize how long the actual time filming can be from when you walk in and walk out to like what they edit down to 5 minutes. So it varies, but mine was probably an hour and they edited it to 7 minutes. Some people's have gone on up to 2 to 3 hours, some are 15 minutes, right? And so I think, you know, it's edited to a degree, but I don't think you realize how much discussion actually happens. Was Lori investing her own money? She is investing her own money.
Um, so So that— does she have a fund or is it literally just hers?
It is in a fund structure, but it's her capital. How old is she? It's her money.
How much do you think she's worth?
You know, I don't know. I will say she is a prolific salesperson in the sense that like the top 3 or 4 companies from Shark Tank, and I mean companies that have done like a quarter of a billion in sales, Squatty Potty. Yeah, those— she has a relationship with each of those companies. And is invested in each of those companies. So I suspect quite a bit, not to mention her own patent portfolio and the success she's had with products. She has a great team.
But do those pay cash flow? I mean, who cares if you— I mean, it's important, but if you own equity in that business.
Yeah, and there's not an exit. Yeah, so I don't know.
Where is her cash coming from?
I don't know. I don't know.
I'd be very curious. Sam's gonna get to the bottom of this. I don't know.
Look, 'cause I also— Fat checks. Well, and I also don't—
she takes that Saudi money.
Each deal is different, right? So like she does it just like in any VC deal is different, right? She's negotiating a deal with me, right? It's different. I don't know what, what terms are, you know, with the rest of our companies. I do know she has put all of these companies on the map from Scrub Daddy to Squatty Potty, these companies that have incredible consumer products. She delivers. Now she delivers.
Yeah. So you do.
I'm telling you, I think it seems to be actually— I don't have one, but it does seem— I mean, it does seem very popular.
Apparently. So, Everlywell, question for you. When you actually get the test, how do you actually administer it?
Hold on, let me ask one more question about Shark Tank, and then we'll end on Shark Tank.
How much traffic did your site get? Oh yeah. So we got—
This is back 3 years ago?
It was November.
Which would be even better than now, because there's more tra—
people watch TV more than— Right, and it aired the night before Cyber Monday. It was Thanksgiving weekend. Couldn't have been a better day. All of my poor team, they were wonderful. They canceled all their Thanksgivings. It was a lot of work. But we got about 30 times our normal traffic, but we had an interesting experience. We didn't have this tremendous huge spike the night of in terms of purchases, but we ended up doing about $1 million in sales, which at the time was a tremendously large number for us, in the 4-day period after. —right— the show. So there's been a little bit of this interesting thing for us that I haven't heard many other companies have, which is we doubled— like, we doubled in that week on a run rate standpoint, and then we continued doubling the next month, and we never had that decline, right? But we didn't have this spike in like the 3-hour period that we aired. Yeah, we had a lot of traffic, like a million— a million uniques. Yeah, uniques. Yeah. So, and we did, I mean, we had to, I mean, at the time we were not set up for that scale. Now we don't even have to think about it. We know we've always been on, um, uh, on, um, Stripe, not WooCommerce, not Shopify. Um, BigCommerce. We've built it, we've built on it now and like totally customized it. Uh, something else. It's not, I know, but it's one of the big ones that actually I think we should have gone to Shopify, but we didn't. Gotcha. So I shouldn't, now I shouldn't name them because It's going to sound bad, but shout out to Toby from Shopify. Yes, exactly.
I like to think he's listening. Yeah.
So might be. We're trying to get him on. I was going to say that valuation, right? Yeah. So he also streams on Twitch. Great guy. Oh, so yeah. So we saw really good traffic increase, but it was an— it was a very different pattern. And Lori warned us about that. She said some companies it's like they sell out immediately and some companies it's just a slow, right, a slow burn. So that was what it was with us, but we did not crash, which was essential.
