Dude Wipes, Chief Executive Dude & President, Sean Riley

Dudes in an apartment after college taking big shits. We were drinking all the time and getting late-night burritos. And so you look at this 100-year-old toilet paper industry. Oh, it's always been done the same way, right? Like, hey, we'd love wipes for us, you know, so let's call them Dude Wipes. And so we just created our first product, and then a couple months later MTV calls us up. They want to do a whole episode. What happens next?

Sean

Reilly wiped the rules clean, turning Dude Wipes into a $200 million a year beast.

From a bachelor pad idea to a Shark Tank deal, he's built a brand that flushed the old playbook and put swagger back into the bathroom aisle.

It's a dream to be on Shark Tank when you're this early entrepreneur. You were coming to get a deal with Q. It was like the manifestation, visualization. So when he goes out in real time, it's like a gut shot. Was there any indication he was gonna jump back in? No. It was shocking as it is on TV. What's the best piece of advice from Mark? That's something really powerful Mark Cuban said to us. When COVID hit in 2020 and everyone ran out of shit paper. Yeah. Dude Wipes were just selling faster than we could manufacture them. Right. And it was just explosive growth for us. But what was more surprising was like

Welcome everyone to the inaugural episode of the Zeitgeist Podcast. I'm your host, Steven Galanis. On the Zeitgeist Podcast, we are going to be interviewing the people, founders, marketers behind the brands shaping pop culture. I'm so excited to have our first guest today. the chief executive dude of Dude Wipes, Sean Reilly. Sean, welcome to the pod.

Steven, thanks for having me here at beautiful Cameo HQ in Chicago, man. Appreciate it,

man. What a ride, uh, you know, both of us have been on. But, you know, I remember probably 5, 6 years ago, uh, me, you, Greg, Adam, like, going to the Cubs game, and, you know, you guys are just kind of starting to really break out.

Yeah.

And so much of what this podcast about is like, how did people, without the huge budgets, without all the big support behind it, what did you guys do to become the absolute behemoth that you guys have become? So, I'm really proud of you, number one.

Thank you.

But I know that our listeners are going to just absolutely love hearing your story.

Yeah, for sure, dude. I mean, when you talk about the breakout moments, let's just use marketing, for example, where You don't have a budget, you know, you're doing the bootstrap thing. That was Dude Wipes all the way from the beginning.

Yeah.

Because we were just guys in the shithole apartment, put down our money to buy Dude Wipes, and then it's like, okay, how do we sell Dude Wipes? And from that day, we always like, how do we make noise for free, you know? And how do we just get out there? And so the brand, first of all, was built to do that. Like, we got to build a brand that works for free by itself, that gets people's attention, that's funny, and you know, Dude Wipes was doing all of those things out the gate. So like, it's a mindset thing in the beginning. Um, but I would say the, the biggest earliest story was when Dude Wipes got on to the Fantasy Factory with Rob Dyrdek. Um, and so, you know, I was a big fan of the Fantasy Factory and Rob and all of those things. And, and this is what we do back in the day, just send Dude Wipes to people. Yeah. And so found the address in LA, packed up a box, wrote a little— wrote a note in there and sent it off to Rob. Didn't hear anything for a little bit. And then all of a sudden, Big Blacks on Twitter posted, I got these Dude Wipes, man, you know, screw them man ponds. I'm using Dude Wipes now. And we're like dying, you know, like, this is, this is so cool. Yeah. We're just like, we just started this thing. And we got this guy we've always watched on TV posting about it. And then a couple months later, MTV calls us up. They're like, Rob and Big really like Dude Wipes. They want to do a whole portion of an episode that's about

a

PSA. About it. They were calling it the Clean Hole Alliance. You could show some clips here of it, but it's like a big-ass life-size ass that they built and a toilet, and they were dressed up as pieces of poo, and they came out the toilet, and then Dude Wipes cleaned it all up. And like, this is a segment in Fantasy Factory. And that was just like, wow, man. Like, that was in 2014 that that happened. And, you know, 2013 was our first full year in business. And just like, you start to see these moments where if you're doing something unique and putting yourself out there—

Yeah, it just breaks one way versus the other. And suddenly, you know, that, that opens up the next opportunity.

Yeah, yeah. And like, originality creates buzz, right? Like, give people something to talk about and they will talk about something. If you're guys at a big agency who are used to spending big budgets and you're starting a brand, that's where your mind's gonna go.

Right.

Okay, we need $5 million, we need the commercials, we need this and that. And you end up building something that's like needs cash to grow and like almost isn't relatable. And so that's why, you know, in my opinion, like the authentic founder bootstrapped products the way they're born almost always makes them more viral, makes them work harder because that's kind of how it had to be. That's how you had to survive.

100%. And one thing like I really appreciate, and, you know, the legions of people that follow you on LinkedIn, uh, really appreciate about you and your content is how authentic you've been throughout the whole time, right? Uh, when, you know, you were posting in 2016 like, hey, I have no marketing budget, and you're showing up at Wrigley with a Dude Wipes sign and that's going viral and that post You're like, no budget, no problem. Like, right, go get it out there. But the thing that's cool is like, now that you have the budget and you could spend as much money doing anything you want, like, you still have that scrappiness. And so much of the brand love and loyalty and that message is still coming, you know, right from you because you wear it on your sleeve or on your ass every single day.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's like that— you never turn that stuff off. So yeah, now we're spending money on bigger sponsorships, or we'll We'll be on a TV commercial. Like, we're doing all of those things, but then we're on social media every day, whether I'm posting something or Twitter or TikTok. Like, we're out there entertaining and having fun with people every day. And we still know that's free, right?

Yeah.

And then there's still all little stunts we can look for. And then maybe even stunts these days, we never would've been able to pull that off, but it only cost a couple hundred grand. Right. If we send people out there and do it the right way, In a way Budweiser would never do it or whatever. We can create a lot of noise. So you kind of like start blending those things, like the money and the bootstrap mindset.

Right, 'cause then you can amplify like that really like scrappy nature that you guys have always had.

Yeah, yeah, you don't wanna be scrappy with no money forever, right? But you wanna like hold on to that mindset 'cause it ends up being a real differentiator.

Yeah, and saving your chips and so you can really amplify it as well.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

So let's take it back a little bit. For those that are not familiar with Dude Wipes, the story, Let's take it all back. What do you guys do? How did you have the idea? And what gave you the insight that like this was gonna be something that was really gonna take hold?

Yeah, yeah. So the insight was dudes in an apartment after college taking big shits 'cause we were drinking all the time and getting late night burritos and right in Wrigleyville in Chicago.

What was your go-to spot?

Go-to, it was like Taco Burrito Number 2, you know, like one of those. And so it was like kind of those really fun animal houses. Yeah. Right after college where you had a check and baby wipes was the thing that I brought home from Sam's Club along with paper towels and a mop to clean the floor and all of that. And I was using baby wipes in the bathroom. Some guys were, some weren't. Started placing them all around.

And when did that start? When did you start using baby wipes?

Probably like college.

So somebody gave—

Yeah, somebody turned me on to it. A buddy of mine turned me on to it.

Like, you're really leaving Like some big ones down there, like, try this out.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it's very clear, it's a cleaner clean. And so that became really clear to me, like, oh, this, this does the job better. Everyone's getting hooked on it as soon as they try it. And so you look at this 100-year-old toilet paper industry, oh, it's always been done the same way,

right?

And some guys just start realizing there's a better way, but nobody's talking about it. And nobody's selling like a flushable wipe really, and no one's selling it positioned in a way as better than toilet paper. So those were like the early insights, just like super consumers, I say, typically create the best brands. If you're a super consumer of what you're creating, you're going to end up like really being good at it.

I totally agree. Like almost all the best founders of either CPG companies that I know or consumer brands, Like they are just, they are the biggest consumer of that. They're the whale customer. Right. And they just have the insights and they know how the other whale customers are going to want to buy and exactly like what they need.

Yeah. Yeah. And then they designed that, right? You know, like, oh, I would love it if it was a little like this. And so that's all it was at first. Like, hey, we'd love wipes for us, you know, so let's call them Dude Wipes. Let's make them in black packs. Let's make them, you know, on the go, all of those sorts of things. And so we just created our first product. just with those insights, which was a little condom-sized, put-in-your-pocket dude wipe. And the brand was meant to like talk just like guys on the couch would talk. Like, you know, we're gonna talk about taking shits, going to the bathroom. Yeah. We're gonna have fun, be humorous. Like, the whole thing was started to have fun, right? And so very easily it was like, well, this brand has to represent that because we, we want to quit our 9-to-5s, we want to break out and do something interesting, and we want to do something fun.

Yeah, and it's— and when you have a brand and consumer that, you know, that like you're looking for people like that want to have fun, they want to be part of the party on that, right? It's, it's, it really is so important. Like for us, uh, make it fun was a corporate value at Cameo. Eventually that became make it memorable, but like, yeah, yeah, that ethos was there. So when we did the first sale ever in Cameo history, it was 6.9% off, and that sophomoric humor, yeah, yeah, like that frat room humor is like One of the things that helped us stick out and like get out there because, you know, we're running, it was like a, I think it was a Cyber Monday sale. Everybody else is like 30, 40% off and we're 6.9% off and it was like almost higher impact.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And like Facebook's not gonna do that, right? You know what I mean? But Cameo's gonna be having fun and scrappy and do something like that. And you like, you realize those are just competitive advantages.

So I'm a huge fan of the concept of category creation and specifically there's a book called Play Bigger. I don't know if you've ever read it. Yeah, yeah. That whole framework around category creation is critical. The idea basically is that there are going to be signature brands like a Kleenex that become the absolute dominant player in the space, and then their marketing costs are lower at scale because word of mouth is happening. You're seeing this even though there's 50 different AI agents right now. People say ChatGPT or they say Google. Right. And that ends up being such a compounding advantage. The wipe industry has been around for a long time. You mentioned you were bringing baby wipes home. Obviously, that had a branding issue for guys. Similarly, I was—

Didn't even have a brand. It was just a commodity.

I was at dinner last night with a girlfriend here, and she was talking, I told her we were chatting today, and she was saying how sanitary wipes have always been around for women, but they're in the bathroom and it's kind of like a gross, nobody talks about it. Nobody's built this great brand about it. Talk to me about, like, as you're thinking, like, this is the space you're gonna go to, naming was probably really important. What were some of the other names you were thinking of? Like, how did you think about building this brand that you very deliberately built?

Yeah, I mean, I didn't know all of the, like, category design creation stuff that I do now when we were starting. So, like, you know, got a whole more sophisticated spiel I can give now, but Back in the day, it was just like hell-bent on being authentic and like creative and original, you know? And so that's what everything came through. Like, it's gotta be original, it's gotta be creative, it's gotta be like something no one else is doing because I just looked at things I liked. Like Lil Wayne was a rapper I liked at the time. Yeah. It was like unapologetically himself. He had like developed this whole thing where he was like the most popular guy in the world, you know? And it was because like he was just him. And I was like, that's like what a brand like needs to be. And that's, you start realizing then you're looking at categories where it's like, how can I do something no one else has done? And so we saw this category like, okay, no one has hung their hat and said, I'm an ass wipe. You know what I mean? There was like baby wipes, that was for babies. There was toilet papers.

Right.

Some of them had, the toilet paper brands had the flushable wipes, but they weren't, you know, hanging their hat on it. And so that felt super cool and original that no one's come out besides calling it a dude wipe and doing all the fun stuff there.

Yeah.

Besides being like, we're gonna go for the Kleenex of the butt wipe category, you know? And you can argue that we're like empirically there now.

Yep.

There's some stuff on Amazon where more people search for dude wipes than they do flushable wipes. And so like,

amazing,

that's what you're looking for,

right?

Um, and those are things we appreciate more now, but in the beginning, and which I just like harp on people in those early stages, just like, what do you feel in your heart? Like, that's most original, most authentic, just fucking go for that. And there's gonna be a lot of good things that come out of that. And you'll get smarter along the way.

Yeah, you got a dream. Now you've got a name, you know, you're still starting out, you've raised no money. What happens next?

Yeah, so, you know, kind of those early hustle days, we're starting to sell some dude wipes, flip them a little bit.

And when that— when you first went out to market, how did you go out to How'd you get your first 10 customers, your first 100 customers? What feedback did you hear right away? What early tweaks did you make, if any, to the initial offering? How did it change? How did what you ended up finding product-market fit on change, if it did at all, from what you originally thought you were going to be selling?

Yeah. We did a lot of boots-on-the-ground stuff. As soon as we got product, we had a table at North Coast Music Festival.

Passing it out on the beach.

Yeah, yeah. And we just had this table. We were there all weekend. At first we showed up and we thought we were gonna be able to sell wipes, but like no one really wanted to like buy a pack of wipes. Yeah.

So you're like, I got the product, we're here, let's give them out.

Just give them out, you know? And like immediately you would see people like have fun and laugh and get it. Oh great, there's a porta-potty right here. You know, like you saw that spark. So like from day one getting out there, we saw that stuff. And it was a lot of boots on the ground talking to people, handing out wipes. Our big— our first big sale was when me and my co-founder Ryan went to Illinois State, my alma mater, for freshman orientation weekend because they gave us a free table.

Yeah.

And we were just sitting as freshmen were walking by, handing them Dude Wipes. And like a president of a frat came over. He's

like, we need them in the house.

Yeah. And he cut us a check for like $300, $400 worth of Dude Wipes.

That's it.

We cleared out the trunk of the car.

Yeah.

It paid for the hotel that night. Like we were, So happy. Made a little beer money. Yeah, beer money. We hit the pub. So yeah, there was— it was really boots on the ground early like that. Not super efficient, but like we learned a lot. And then it very quickly became about the internet and Amazon. Like, oh crap, here's somewhere where we can reach people at scale. There's no gatekeepers. We can get in front of customers. They'll actually buy this product very efficiently, very easily. And that's when we started making a few hundred grand, start closing in our first million, is when we kind of learned we got to concentrate on online sales.

Talk to me about your co-founder and just the initial team that happened that like really got this thing off the ground. One of my favorite investors is a guy named David Cummings out of Atlanta. And he has this theory about consumer companies. And he said, every great consumer company I've ever seen or backed has these 3 things in the founders. Now, sometimes the founder has all 3 things. Sometimes there's 3 founders and they each have one of these skills, could be 2 and 1, etc. But he's like, I've never seen a successful consumer company that wasn't founded by a hustler, a hacker, and a hipster. You have to have the hustler that finds like a new and novel way to get this out. So, you know, you're out at, you know, passing them out at the frat house or going to North Coast and, you know, literally hand-to-hand combat. Right, right. You know, the hacker finds this like new and novel way to kind of like break through. And, you know, that could be so much of the stuff you've done on brand. And then the hipster is really interesting because they have to be tasteful enough to not just know what's cool now, but like what's gonna be cool. Like when you first told people you were selling, you know, dude wipes.

Yeah, yeah.

And people are thinking baby wipes or like, you know, they're thinking about like sanitary napkins. Like that isn't a sexy space, but like you were able to, you guys were able to like paint this future of what it could be and get people there. So talk to me about, you know, about the, like the, the founding team and like who had what skill sets and like how complementary or not they were? Because a lot of people ask me about this.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I like that. And the, uh, yeah, kind of need to be that like tastemaker. Like, what does the taste look like in the future and how can we develop that and give people what they don't even know they want yet?

100%.

Um, but between that framework, like, definitely you're always looking for hustlers, you know? So in the beginning, it's like You got a lot of buddies. Which one of them are actually interested in being an entrepreneur?

Right.

And hustling to do it? Now all of a sudden you only got a few buddies, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%. So like, you know, we're definitely all hustlers. And then it was about those like complementary skills. And so, you know, one of my partners is the investment banker, the finance guy. Like, you know, all of these things I'm not good at, you know, he's good at and helped us kind of make sure we're managing the money and thinking about the growth, right? And, you know, how do we bootstrap and all of those things? And so maybe that's missing from the hustler, hacker, hipster. Like typically there's somebody who's really operationally focused, whether it's the finances or the programming or something like that.

I'll have to tell David we're missing the nerd.

Yeah, yeah, we're missing the nerd. There you go. Yeah, Jeff will love that. And then, yeah, like you said, hacking. My partner Ryan is like the branding guy. He's the CMO and he's always hacking on these different branding things that are making headlines and all of that. And it's just, you know, it's from that everyday brand hacking, viral hacking mentality that we've had since day one. But yeah, he's definitely the hacker on all the brand.

As you think about—

I guess I'm the hipster.

The hipster. I don't think we needed that.

You had to guess.

We saw, we saw, we knew it. We knew that one. No, I think it's so interesting because a lot of times what I see is people have a great idea and then they partner with someone that's too similar to them. It's like they both are the tastemaker and really you can't do design by committee. Somebody has to go say, this is how it's done. There always has to be that end. But as I'm thinking about, you've now found early product market fit. You're starting to get some buzz. You were able to do something pretty early in the company's history that almost every person with a dream dreams of doing.

Yeah, yeah.

You got to go on Shark Tank and eventually closed a deal. Talk to me about the whole process of Shark Tank because I think there's a lot of misconceptions about what it is. I remember when we were starting Cameo, every single day we'd wake up. It was me, Devin, Arthur, and my brother, and Adam Ostrom. The 5 of us would be like on— like everybody was living in my We got rid of all the couches. There were 3 Tempur-Pedic queen-size beds in the living room where the couches used to be, and then the 2 bedrooms. And we would wake up, we'd work out, we'd go to work till, you know, 8, 9, 10 o'clock. We'd come home, we'd get Chipotle, like a Chipotle bowl. Like, none of us were making any money at that point.

Yeah, yeah.

It was like, like chicken and rice, and we'd watch Shark Tank every single night. That's awesome. And that was like what got us through the really early days.

Yeah, yeah.

And, you know, I remember at that point like dreaming like, wow, if we could be on this one day, like, Wouldn't that be something?

Yep.

You did it. You guys had the dream. I know it didn't have— it wasn't like the first time, but like, talk about that process. Like, how did, how did you get on Shark Tank? What, what did it take to get there? And then what ended up being the impact of that?

Yeah, for sure. I mean, same thing as you, right? It's a dream to be on Shark Tank when you're this early entrepreneur and you're watching Shark Tank even before you launch the company, or it's super early and you're just like, I don't know, I just always wanted to be on Shark Tank, right? So like, The first year we got product, they were holding a live audition in Chicago, and we hadn't even started selling it yet. So I went to this live audition. I was a zero-revenue guy, but I still tried to get on, you know. And they were like, it's cool, you're fun, but, you know, we'll call you, we'll call you next year if we're interested. Like, it's too early, you know. So then we had a producer's email, and we were able to follow up next year.

Give them some updates.

Yeah. So Long story short.

So like, I think this is a good teaching moment for a lot of entrepreneurs there. Sometimes you go have that, you know, you get that rejection, you know, maybe you get the email, but you think it's a blow-off. Like, what did you do to stay top of mind with those producers, if anything?

Yeah, yeah. Just understanding when's the next time they're looking at people and getting the contact information. Okay, spring is our next tryout or whatever. And so I didn't even go to a tryout the next time. I just emailed them an update.

Here's where we are.

Here's where we are, update the application. And we got pretty far that time, but then didn't get the call to LA. So then it was the third year. Here's the update. Here's where we are. And kind of like everyone knew kind of at that point, like, hey, we're, we're about to make our first million. We just had gotten into Kroger. So like, now all of a sudden we were selling wine.

Kind of breakout inflection moment.

Yeah, we were breaking out like on our own. Right. Right. And that's exactly what they're looking for. And so then the timing was right after the Persistence to get out there. You got the call, go to LA, go to the show. So that was in 2015. And

then how long did it take for it to actually air?

Our episode aired probably like 5 months after we shot it.

Oh, that's actually not bad. Yeah. A lot of times you hear like, sometimes it's a year, year and a half after.

Yeah.

And then it's just kind of crazy because like, you know, you've been at it. And by the way, sometimes companies that early, like they might have missed that It comes out almost too late.

Right.

And suddenly it's not as helpful as it would be.

For sure. No, I mean, our timing was great. Like, the show was hot, right? It was like must-see TV 2015. And then when it airs, we're like rolling into Christmas time and we had a bunch of inventory. We were like starting to grow a little bit and sales just exploded.

Yeah. What did it do to your sales?

Like, you know, you've never seen the thing online go this high one day. Like, it's just We made like $300 grand in a weekend or something.

And well, like you did $300 grand probably that weekend right after. And like what, like

when we were sitting on Shark Tank in June, we had done $300 grand year to date.

Right.

You know, and then you just do it in a weekend on Shark Tank, you know.

Yeah. I remember, uh, the first time like we went like hyper, hyper viral, it was a really similar thing that happened. You know, we ended up doing like $36 grand that month and the whole history of the company, the first 5 months before that, we'd done $8 total. Right. But it's just like, and you look at those charts and then it just starts igniting.

For sure.

So this happens, uh, and explain, like, I think a lot of— there's a lot of misconceptions about Shark Tank. You know, you see what you see, right? But like, the pitch is a lot longer actually. You're there, uh, these deals tend to be like actually more complex in like how they get going.

Yeah, yeah.

Give us any like behind-the-curtain look at like what that experience was like. Who you ended up partnering with, and then, you know, how important that person's been to the growth of the company going forward.

Yeah, for sure. You know, the main thing I didn't realize until we went on the show is they don't know anything about you when you walk out.

No briefing.

No briefing.

Total cold.

Yeah, they don't have a little sheet that says Dude Wipes is coming out. You know, they want their authentic reaction. So that's why these pitches tend to last an hour on average, is because they, they got to learn about your business. So, they're like badgering you with questions and it's a little chaotic because everyone's talking at the same time. They edit it to seem a little bit more structured, but—

But it's not.

It's not. Yeah, it's pretty crazy and they're talking over each other. And then you get into a groove, right? Okay, they know enough about the business. People are going in, people are going out. Like, it's starting to develop into a deal after they've kind of like live due diligence you essentially for like 20 minutes.

Like, and this is like on stage with the lights blaring, they're like,

yep,

proctology exam, right? Yeah, yeah, with cameras rolling.

Cameras rolling. I always say like that sales pitch early on in my career, I'll never go into one that has higher stakes or like higher pressure, you know, because you got 20 million people on the other side of your sales pitch watching you, you know, whatever happens. So you're nervous, right?

Yeah.

But then the nerves go away because you're out there for a while and you're just kind of now like in it. You know, you can only be nervous for so long. And that's when people started going out and Mark Cuban went out in ours, who was like our guy, you know,

like— And did you like coming in, was Cuban circled? Is that who you really want? Oh yeah. You were coming to get a deal with Cuban.

It was like the manifestation visualization. Talk about it.

You're like, this is— if Mark Cuban backs our company, like we're, you know, we're going to make it.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. So when he goes out in real time, it's like a gut shot, right? Like, oh, here's this thing you've been dreaming of being on this show for so long, been dreaming about getting a deal with this guy, and he's out, you know, in real time.

And why was he out at the time?

He said he wasn't a wipes guy. I think you guys are smart. I think you'll do well, but I'm not a wipes guy. I don't need some products, man. And for that reason, I'm out. You know what I mean? And he— so he wasn't seeing the future yet. Yeah. Which he is now, you know, by the way.

So he's—

spoiler alert.

Now he's a wipes guy.

Yeah, for sure.

No shards.

He doesn't have anything to do with wipes, man.

deals with Charmin over—

Yeah, exactly. So then, you know, what's interesting happens is then we're like talking to Mr. Wonderful and Robert Herjavec, and they're interested. Mr. Wonderful's of course getting greedy like he always does.

What kind of royalty deal did he want you guys to do?

He did not pitch us a royalty deal, shockingly. And I was almost shocked he was interested.

Yeah.

But he was, he really liked it.

Yeah.

But we were kind of— we went in at one valuation, now we're at the top, right? We're not going to go any higher. And we asked if him and Herjavec would split. They're like, well, the split, we need even more equity, you know? And we're like, no, we're not. Like, this is our top. Like, you know, we're not going—

And like, what was that like, that deal? It was like you were gonna sell 20% and they were 10 and 10 and they needed 25 and 25? Or like what?

They were— it was 25%. Yeah. And they wanted 2.5% more.

So you were close.

To split. Yeah, yeah, we were close, but we wouldn't budge 1% over that. We were just like, kind of had our top.

Now, if you didn't— if you hadn't budged and you didn't get the deal you end up doing, would you have regretted— would you have regretted like not budging on the 2.5 extra percent? Have you ever thought about that?

Yeah, I mean, probably would have been, you know, one of those— I don't know if it would have been a regret.

Or do you think like just being on the show and having the opportunity to even say no, like would this spike Like, do you think it made a difference that, that, that you got the deal you ended up getting? Or is it just the exposure from the show and like no matter what happened on it?

Yeah, yeah.

Like it could have had the same spike.

Yeah. So we do a deal with Mark, right? He comes in, he says, I'll do a deal. And it's like, it's almost when you're not selling.

So he's out and then he come and he's just sitting there and then like, was there, was there any indication he was gonna jump back in?

No. It was shocking as it is on TV. We're just like, guy hadn't said really anything in a while, you know? And it's kind of like when you're not selling somebody, they want in.

100%.

And we're selling these other guys and we're standing our ground. We're making all these good points.

There's another famous saying in venture that venture capitalists all want to be the first second. Yeah, yeah. Like very few people like actually have the conviction. And those are the special ones that come up and like put that term sheet down or write that big check before anybody else. It's almost always who's in. And then if there's somebody in that they think is like, or someone smart is like looking at the deal or they're referring over, That's when they'll jump in.

Yeah, yeah. Then it starts rolling, right? And so, yeah, Mark comes in, takes the deal from him. You know, we're high-fiving and everything and awesome, right? Dream come true. To your point about like the Shark Tank spike, like you'll still see a good spike being on the show whether you do a deal or not. Like, I don't think the consumers really care. They're like, hey, I want to check that out. What obviously happens afterwards, you're with Mark, Now, you're on updates. We've been on 3 updates with Mark.

And do you still see spikes when they're doing the updates?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You always see traffic spikes, Google spikes, as people just take to their phone while they're watching the show and look you up. And then obviously, Mark is a celebrity and an influencer and all of that. So now, we basically have an influencer on our board in Mark Cuban. And so, That's sort of the things you would miss out on if you didn't do the deal. You wouldn't miss out on that spike on first air date. You miss out on all of the other stuff that comes after it of being a successful Shark Tank company. And then in particular, being with a celebrity like Mark and him always promoting you. And, you know, this is outside of advice you get from Mark and connections and stuff. Yeah. This is just like pure marketing, branding, you know, power that comes with the show. Doing a deal and doing a deal with Mark.

What's the best piece of advice you've taken from Mark? Or like, how has he—

Yeah.

How has him being on the board shaped you and the company?

Don't drown in opportunity. That's something really powerful Mark Cuban said to us, especially early on. You know, now we, we're making a little bit of money off Shark Tank. We're calling up everybody in the world trying to sell Dude Wipes everywhere. You know, we're like, we're running crazy, you know? And he's like, guys, you just got into 300 Targets. Yeah. You know, like—

Do a good job.

Sell in those 300 Targets. Like, make that work. He's very patient, right? And when you're an entrepreneur and you're in like hustle grind mode, you're not. You know, and so to have—

Totally. No matter how much it breaks out, you always feel like it should be going faster.

Totally.

Yeah. And you know, everyone else is looking like, oh, Sean, you guys are such a success. Or like, how amazing is this? And you're just like, this is— I didn't start this business 'cause I didn't think it would be like that, right? Right. Yeah. I started the business 'cause I thought it'd be way bigger than that.

Yeah, and faster.

And faster.

You know, so you're impatient and you'd expect some guy like Mark Cuban to be like, sell, go, yeah, you know. And he's actually the opposite, like, guys, chill, you're doing well here, develop this, you know what I mean? Like, he's very patient. He's been our investor for over 10 years. And so he's not like a venture capitalist where he's like, I want to be out in 5 years, where's my money? He's pro-entrepreneur. What he's mentoring, you know what I mean? He's not, he's not investing essentially. And so all of his advice comes from, you know, a place where this is what I would do if I was in your shoes, guys, and slow the fuck down, you know, concentrate on what you have going and keep growing the right way. And those are very important pieces of advice to get early on.

Well, I love this idea of like not drowning with opportunity. And a lot of times that also You know, for breakout consumer and especially CPG, you tend to see this immediate pressure to like, hey, what's the second act, right? What's the next product?

Right, right.

So talk to me about that. Like, at this point, obviously you're thinking about geographical expansion, getting in more stores, penetrating different channels. But I'm sure like in, like around the table as you guys were talking, it's like, this worked. What was the, what was the second thing you wanted to try?

Yeah.

And how long did you Wait to go, you know, we've got Lil Dude Wipes.

Yeah, yeah.

Here, like, at what point did you feel like confident to go try the second market or the, the second product?

Yeah, we started to get shiny object syndrome

immediately, right?

Yeah, yeah. And like, because once you can create something and you see it making money, you kind of think, man, I can create more shit.

Yeah. And honestly, like, by the way, we're all guilty of this. You kind of get that god complex where it's like, I've made something that people Right. I can go do it again.

Yep.

But a lot of times it's like there was something very unique and special about that initial insight you had that doesn't make it like it's— you might have been the best at recognizing that trend, but it doesn't mean that you were the best person in the world at like making the product. So, you know, we've all been— I know I've been guilty of that for sure.

For sure. And you start getting away from that category creation, originality, creativity, everything that brought you to where you are. And so like our example is like, well, hey, we should make some natural deodorant. We should make some dude body sprays. Like, you know, we're, we're this male grooming company and, you know, retailers are asking us for this stuff. Like, why wouldn't we? Um, so we started doing stuff like that a little bit. Um, and we were still focused on Dude Wipes, but we were starting to like drown in these other, you know, second acts and how do we do these other things. Um, and it ended up not being original, right? Other people were kind of doing it. It ended up being unfocused. It was taking energy and capital and all these things we couldn't afford. We're fighting one war with big TP, the multi-billion-dollar conglomerates, and we decided, oh, let's go fight another one with Old Spice and Axe and stuff. Looking back on it, it's so stupid. But when you're in that moment, it feels right. And like you said, that God complex, creation complex.

And just as important as It's one thing if you make the mistake, but, you know, throwing good money at— money after bad obviously is, is, you know, even worse. So at what point did you realize that you were on the wrong path and like talk about, you know, kind of killing that product line or shutting it down?

When COVID hit in 2020 and everyone ran out of shit paper.

Yeah.

And Dude Wipes were just selling faster than we could manufacture them, right? And more people were coming on board and understanding that they were better than toilet paper. And like, it was just explosive growth for us. And we said, what are we doing spending time on this other stuff? We are so early in this journey.

Right.

That was our like wake-up moment that we needed to discontinue everything else, double down on Dude Wipes. And, you know, we haven't stopped growing since.

Yeah.

And we haven't like launched really anything new since, you know? And we've just been focusing on being the best and doing it bigger and better. So I call it like innovating in a vacuum. Like, we can be creative, we can innovate, but we're Kleenex, you know what I mean? We're dude wipes, and it's going to be all focused on this. So that was really big. And to your point about like doing it or regrets or anything, a good thing Mark said was like, it's a good thing we tried that,

right?

Because if we didn't try that early on, you'd be thinking— I'd be thinking about it right now. 100%. Like, we tried it early, we got refocused, And that was like a blessing, you know, that whole lesson.

You know, I hadn't thought about the bump that you had in COVID. Like, obviously, I knew you before, I was watching the rise, like Shark Tank, all that stuff. And then obviously, like seeing what happened. But that very clearly was a major, major, major inflection point for you. But there also were major challenges. Like, you know, Cameo similarly had a wild run during COVID But we didn't have physical manufacturing. We like, there were a lot of like, we didn't have supply chain Right. You know, we, we, there were so many things that were like just natural advantages. We didn't build the business model for COVID, but it ended up being kind of tailor-made for it. Right. Talk about like—

It ended up being viral for us.

Talk about from the very beginning, like, you know, right away, like people are shutting down, you know, there's stay-at-home orders. Like, did your sales spike right away? Did they fall first and then come back up? Like, what was going through your head? Like, take me back to those days as you're navigating through. And then obviously when you realize that this is a massive tailwind, like what did you do to like keep up with demand and scale, not just the organization, but yourself through like these times of massive growth?

Yeah, I mean, right away. So within a week you've got a warehouse full of Dude Wipes and then every retailer says, I want them all, and you split them up evenly and gone. Empty warehouse. You know what I mean? Like—

And where were you manufacturing them?

In the US.

Okay, so that was helpful.

Yeah. Yeah. So obviously then the first calls you start making is to your manufacturers.

I need more.

I need more. And being quick and agile.

And did you find like, because there's other products that, you know, ended up not being essential, like were they happy to provide more capacity or was that a challenge?

They were happy. Yeah. Because the machines that they had available kind of only make these kind of wipes and stuff. And so it was like, hey, you know, that's where the startups can move so quick. So immediately we're talking to these guys and they're able to triple our output. And we're able to say, yes, we'll commit to it. Yeah. And we're able to do this in a matter of days, where big companies, like, they're just so big and they can't react as quick. We were small enough that we could, like, triple overnight and lock up that capacity. And then, so for about 6 months, it was just manufactured to our warehouse, warehouse is empty, manufactured to our warehouse, warehouse is empty. It just, it took a long time for the supply chain to catch up. So You know, we were making a lot, right? But what was more surprising was like once things normalized, that kept going.

And do you think a lot of that is just because people, they just, you know, like once they try the product, like you probably saw that right away. It's like once you try the product, it is just better. And then that, that was just a trend that stuck.

Just the natural retention of the brand, right? This was mass trial, but then those same laws of retention ended up falling into it. Like, I never heard of Dude Wipes, but there was nothing else at the store, so I grabbed them. And let's say 35% of those people stick around. And so all of those numbers just started playing out that way. And yeah, we just—

Did the retention numbers get better or was it just that there were so many people trying for the new time that retention stayed the same and then it just amplified because it was a bigger scale? As you were thinking pre-COVID, call it 2015 to 2019, were there Were there points where you found like major changes in the retention of the business?

Retention's always been like steadily growing. Yeah, you know what I mean? And maybe if you looked at the COVID buys in like, you know, that time frame was probably a little lower because you just said people were buying anything. They might not have been interested in it, but then they, you know, recovered to our normal retention rates. And then our retention rates keep growing because we make the product better. We grow the brand more, we're getting more distribution. Like, distribution is a part of retention, right? Like, if, if you're not available at this store, I'll just buy somebody else. And so as you get more distribution, you end up getting better retention because you're just in stock. So brands that grow naturally get better retention as long as they're doing product price, you know, stuff right.

Exactly. And when you think about product price, like, Talk about some of the mistakes that you guys made at that. Like, ever was there any time where, you know, there was a pack that you thought— like, I know now you originally was like selling the double, there was like the individually wrapped doubles. Like, what did you learn about pricing and how people wanted to buy your product?

Yeah, I mean, the first thing was when we only launched single Dude Wipes, we realized everyone wanted a big multi-pack on their toilet. And so So that took us like a year and a half to do, even though we immediately realized that out the gate, like, oh, this product is great, but everyone wants a bigger pack,

right?

You know, and it's more cost efficient to sell them that bigger pack because it has less packaging. You know, you're essentially putting a bunch of wipes in one pack. So,

you know, and your initial, like, your LTV is increasing too, because if they're just buying that first, you know, big pack, that's way better than buying the 3-pack or the 5-pack if they got third, they got a month's

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um, so yeah, just a lot of simple stuff like that. Like, how do we just sell people more wipes and better priced packages, um, so they can stay stocked up better? Um, a bunch of weird things with pricing. I mean, one thing we almost stumbled upon that was good is like when we launched Dude Wipes, they were kind of expensive, but it was all— we, we couldn't afford low margin,

right?

You know, and so now if I had like some money behind me and I was going into a product, I would go in at lower margins knowing when Volume got up, I would you know

raise it

then raise it. This was not the case. We were just like, man, that's kind of expensive for a pack of dude wipes. But like that's who we are. We're early. Yeah, we're scrappy. And so you don't want to overswing and outprice yourself out of the market.

Totally.

But you want to make sure that some profit can roll in.

Yeah, and that you can actually have like positive unit economics when you hit that. So you're not you know because like you get that COVID demand if you got negative unit economics there. Like, then that, you know, that kills your brand as opposed to like makes it.

I will say when we got into Walmart, we had to look into the future a little bit. Yeah, be like, okay, Walmart is asking for Dude Wipes, right? We have to look at a new price that we've never given anyone before.

But it's Walmart.

But it's Walmart. They're gonna bring a ton of volume,

change everything,

and we're gonna be able to go use that volume to lower price. So that was like, we went into the Walmart deal with like, this is pricing we never offered anybody. This is a new scale of Dude Wipes we're ready to go to. And then once they said yes, we were able to execute that scale. So sometimes you got to kind of play like a chicken and the egg game there.

Yeah. Amazon's been a massive channel for you as well, like, I believe, right? Like, is—

yeah, yeah.

When you think about, um, your sales that are coming like from, you know, online versus in-store, what's the breakdown right now?

Um, it's probably about like 35-40% online. And then the rest stores. And some of these stores are starting to get blended between like Walmart.com and stuff.

Or like Instacart, you know. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

But yeah, Amazon's still a behemoth for us. And it's just, it's where innovative brands are born.

Yeah,

because there's no gatekeepers. And when a brand is born there, it ends up having a lot of—

It ranks.

Relevant. Yeah, exactly. And now it's like, well, dude wipes.

So talk to me about that. All right, you're You know, you've got this product, you got some sales, you know, you got Shark Tank, and all of a sudden now you're, you know, on Amazon optimizing, like trying to get this out there, and there are a billion products on there, right? Like, how'd you stick out?

Stuck out by the brand. So like, hopefully you see it. Oh, this Black Pack Dude Wipes. No one's ever talked to me as a guy before, you know?

Right.

Um, and so that's, that's your pillar. And then it's like boring stuff, like running ads when people are searching for flushable wipes. Check out Dude Wipes, you know, like it's just getting yourself in front of the customer who's looking for your product,

right?

So it's super unsexy, but then it's like, oh, I'm looking for flushable ass wipes. This brand looks cool. I'll try it. And that's how we ended up building in the early days. And then when the viral moments hit,

yeah,

everyone goes to Amazon because they're on Google and they go to Amazon first, you know? So those help it out. And then you just do the boring category stuff of like, hey, you're looking, you're looking for this general category, we'll check out this new cool brand.

Well, anyone listening here has now heard like a couple of these like inflection points that you've had getting into Kroger, getting on Shark Tank, doing the Walmart deal, COVID. These things happened, but not all of those were necessarily viral moments. A lot of those things like happen beneath the surface and then all of a sudden it's out there, sales are spiking, etc. Talk to me about like the handful of like viral moments, maybe even starting from the beginning where there's like a breakout and like how at each of those times like that, you know, changed the trajectory of the business. And maybe even the story of like, hey, we want to take this shot, like let's try to do it.

Yeah, yeah. Our first big viral moment on that was putting Dude Wipes on the ass of Tyron Woodley.

Yeah, I remember that.

Yeah. in 2014, uh, UFC pay-per-view fight, basically when you could sponsor them. You can't do that anymore. Uh, and we trended worldwide.

And what did that cost back then?

$10 grand.

$10 grand.

And that was— I think we had to take a loan out to pay for it.

Totally.

Um,

and what gave you conviction that that was the right guy, that that was the right— you know, obviously, like, the UFC, um, you know, that, like, UFC boxing, that whole world, that is, like, the core demo. But, like, yeah, like, what was it about, uh,

Woodley? You know, he reached out to us and—

Was he using the product?

He was using the product and his, you know, the space was available. Someone backed out, so it was kind of his idea. He's like, how funny would that be?

You know what I mean?

Dude wipes on my ass.

That's amazing.

Yeah, exactly. It wasn't something we thought of.

So then you get this and, and, but then you're like, fuck, that's a lot of money.

Yeah, fuck, that's a lot of money. Like I was talking about, my partner Ryan, who's like the hacker, was just like, no, like, this feels right. Like, we gotta do this. And so yeah, we pulled a little like line of credit or something to like get it done. You know, we're just like, let's just take this shot. And it is one of those moments where you've never spent ten grand on like one little play before. And so it's a pivotal moment because then when it goes crazy, you start to understand. Like we always say, scared money don't make no money around here. Like we got to spend money to make money. We got to take these shots. And so then you start developing this confidence and this like gut feeling of like. What's worth doing it on, and then being okay when they fail, especially as you grow more. Like, okay, take that shot. It's got a chance to pop off. It might not, but like, we gotta do it. And that was the first one that taught us that lesson.

So you have that lesson, you've had a big win. What were kind of the next few that you did like that? And what was maybe like the craziest thing that finally you're like, yeah, like, like, we can't do that, even though Like it, like people were excited about it.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm trying to think if we ever got in trouble with a viral moment. Probably got in trouble in some moments, but they were never like viral ones, you know? I feel like the virality has always been positive for us.

And really interestingly, even when it is negative, like you, at least for us, like when we've had, you know, great headlines or terrible headlines, that spike still boosts the business, interestingly.

Right.

Right. Because like you're in the news, you're in the zeitgeist and people are thinking about you.

As long as you're being yourself too in those moments and someone grabs it and spin zones it, that's fine. You know what I mean? Like, if you guys are— if you're being yourself and it's coming from the place of something you wanted to do, then like, that's it.

Totally. Like, the, the first breakout viral moment at Cameo happened, uh, and Tyler will remember this. This is like Christmas 2018, 2019. We're just about to move into our new office, uh, 2018. And Brett Favre had been like tricked into making an antisemitic dog whistle message in a Cameo.

Yeah, yeah.

And this thing had gone like hyper viral. And unlike Twitter back in the day, if somebody sent a bad tweet out, they'd be like, well, I got hacked or something else. But in this case, like, it was a video. There were no deepfakes then. So it's like, he said this. And, and then that was something that like at the time was like an existential moment for the company, right? Because if Brett Favre, who's the most prominent person on the, on the platform, if he loses his Wrangler deal or he, and he has to drop off the platform, that's gonna cap whoever could have joined our platform. But, you know, we were able to like handle that, keep him on board. He ended up investing in the company after that. And yeah, yeah, that was the biggest growth we ever had, you know, directly from that, you know, being on NBC Nightly News, right, defending it. So, you know, sometimes those, those really negative moments too that feel existential, like if handled the right way, can be the next inflection point.

Totally. No, you don't grow without challenges.

Right.

You know, and that's a big challenge, and then you guys handle it the right way, and then growth is on the other side, you know.

So Sean, obviously like Cuban's on the cap table, Tyron Woodley was like really early there. Who's the most famous person that's used your product?

A lot actually have used our product. Uh, so like we know we're on like Post Malone's rider, we've had the Jonas Brothers, you know, share videos, we've had Dave Chappelle share stuff, but probably the coolest dude wipes famous person's story we have has to do with this new product coming out, which is the Dude Wipes Double Deuce here. So this is a product that has 2 wipes in 1 pack. So I got one of them on me here. So the Dude Wipes Double Deuce, you open this one up and you get 2 wipes in here instead of just 1. So this idea came from—

Perfect, perfect for the double flush.

For the double flush, this came from John Mayer, and so we put "We live in a two wipe world" on the back because he sent us an Instagram message that was like, "Guys, I love your product, but we live in a two wipe world. One is never enough." And we're like, "Actually, John, that's a really good idea. You know, like we'll look into it." And so we started messaging back and forth as like we were developing the product, and he was just like into like the creative jam sesh of it, and he suggested. the 2 Dude Wipes in one pack, and the Double Deuce launches this month, has finally been born. So that's the best Dude Wipes celebrity, you know, in comedy.

I mean, that's about as good of a story as it gets. So yeah, thank you for sharing.

Yeah, for sure, man.

Awesome. So talk to me now about you guys, you know, like one thing I really appreciate about you and Dude Wipes is like, as the company's gotten bigger, the operation's more sophisticated, there's more people, but you've managed to still stay like very scrappy, very but you have resources to lay down the big bet when you want.

Right.

Talk to me about how you've had to emerge from, even though most people would call you a CEO, but you're the chief executive dude at Dubilipes. Talk to me about your own personal growth going from scrappy founder, hipster founder, to CEO of a company that is doing hundreds of millions in revenue and matters and employs people. What has that taken from you from a personal development perspective, and how's your day different today than it was 5 years ago?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm executing a lot less. I think what I've learned in order to grow, you have to let go.

Yeah.

And so, early on, you've learned all of these things that you had to do to pull the levers and make all of these things work.

Yeah.

And then as the company starts to grow, you realize like, I can't hold on to those things, even if you like them. And if you do want to hold on to them, then you can't be the CEO, you know, because Because a CEO has to continue to let go of things. And there's still things I need to let go of to this day. Like, it's a process, you know? It's not like one day you wake up and like you let everything go and stuff like that, at least not for us. And so it's like every week, honestly, every month, every year, you want to just be continuing to grow, bringing people to support you, and being able to be more of that hipster visionary at the end of the day. Right. You know what I mean? Like, you want to be able to think about what's next, build those relationships out there, Build up the people beneath you, kind of, yeah, be that leader. So that's what happened.

I saw you say something on a roundtable that got told to me in 2020, like right after The Last Dance came out. Nicole Quinn, my Series A board member at Lightspeed.

Yeah,

right after that round, you know, we're getting ready to build our first like major executive team. You know, we just were about to raise this $100 million round and you know, we're at the time, we're like thinking we're, you know, maybe 2 years to 3 years away from going public and like building that infrastructure. And she said to me, Steven, you've been Michael Jordan, it's time to be Phil Jackson.

Yeah.

And I heard you say the exact same line on a roundtable with some other founders in Chicago a couple weeks ago.

Right.

And I know for me, like, I really struggled in that change. And like, I've been like, I wasn't able to be Phil Jackson. It didn't work for me. I couldn't bring all super talented people together in the way that I wanted. Talk to me about your evolution doing that. What worked? What didn't?

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, what didn't work was trying to be Michael Jordan too long. Yeah, you know, and so we put off like hiring a team and building people for just too long. We got too big too lean.

Yep.

Which is— you'd rather have that problem, you know what I mean, than kind of have to cut down. It was hurting the growth of the business. And so learned that early on. And then what went right is like when we started to bring in people, like giving them trust out the gate, letting them run their teams and build their teams and like being there to support them. So bringing in like people who were ready to kind of like grow teams and bring out people underneath them. But yeah, that's so funny that you said that because I just, I read Phil's book, Sacred Hoops.

Great book.

Amazing book, you know, like amazing book to apply to business and you realize, yeah, it's like there was all these superstar players, but Phil was getting them to all play for the same— Yeah, he brought them together.

And yeah, as you know, building teams, everyone you've hired, you know, like you hired them because you think they're great. You hired them because you think that they're gonna like be accretive to it. And it really is a CEO, is, you know, your people team, it's your job to like make sure that the whole is better than the sum of the parts, right? And right, you know, sometimes the sum of the parts can be better than the whole, and then that's where you're you know, really in trouble culturally. So I really appreciate, like, just from the outside looking in, the culture that you built, that Tyler's built, that everybody's, you know, around has done. And that authenticity, like, it plays in the brand. You know, you see it every single day. Whatever you guys are doing, you just know, like, everyone's marching on the same drum. And I know from always it's messier under the hood, but like—

Right, right. For sure.

But at least, like, you know, the enthusiasm that I see of any of your employees posting on LinkedIn when there's a job offer, like, it's really contagious. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, the intent is there, right? Like, it's never going to be executed perfectly, but as long as everyone culturally has the same intent and we're all on the same team and we're all reaching towards the same goal, like, things are going to work out, you know? Uh, and we have like a bunch of values like anybody else has on the wall.

Yeah.

But the first one is the dudeness is the magic. And somebody recently in an onboarding was like, well, if you could pick one of those values, you know which one? And it's like, oh, they're all important, you know? But in that moment, I realized the dudeness is the magic is the most important one. Everything else is explaining to you 100% what the dudeness is. But the dudeness is our creative spirit, how we treat each other, how we're on this mission. And that's our magic. And as soon as we lose that, we're fucked.

Yes.

And we don't have any more competitive advantages. And so that's the holy one to protect.

Yep.

And we'll help define it and we'll help craft it. But

I think, I think that's such a That's such an incredible insight. We have the same thing at Cameo. We've got, you know, our core values, but roll out the red carpet is really the ethos.

That's your— yeah.

When you walked into the Cameo office, what's the first thing you saw? You walked that red carpet. And we want anybody that interacts with our brand, you know, to feel like they are being escorted down the red carpet at the Oscars. Right. You know, like whether they're interviewing for us or it's their first day, you know, their first day, you know, like I want them to have the best interview process of all time. I want them, you know, their first day of work to be the best day of work they've ever had, and their second day of work should be better than that.

Yeah, yeah.

Our customers should feel it in the way that we're interacting with them. Our talent should feel it. And, and that ethos, like, that is the secret sauce of, of our business. And, you know, the dudeness, uh, is the secret sauce of yours,

right? I love that. And you can feel it when you're here, right? There's all these attentions to details, and there's these ways to take care of people and these ways to have fun and roll out the red carpet. And this is like your office and how you guys treat your people. So that's super cool that that's yours because, yeah, you can definitely see it. And like, that's what other tech platforms aren't going to do for their customers either, is like have that customer service, treat them like they just got the bottle at the nightclub or something, right? Like, that's how everybody wants to be treated.

Yeah.

And if you can come in a new industry and treat people like that where no one else is, like the big

So you're very clearly in your ikigai zone right here. Are you familiar with ikigai?

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, so it's a Japanese construct and framework for basically saying like you can only be the best in the world if you're at the intersection. And imagine a Venn diagram with 4 circles versus 2 of what are you great at, what do you love to do, what does the world need, and what can you get paid for and make money doing?

Right.

And like very, very clearly like Like, this is like, you are just so in that zone and it's so obvious to anybody that spends 5 minutes with you or sees one post on LinkedIn. Like, they know that's your zone there. If you were to sell Dude Wipes tomorrow, what are you doing next?

Yeah, yeah. I think building something again. Like, what is that thing? I don't know, but it would have to just come from your heart like the first idea did.

Yeah.

And I think that's where, that's where people need to start, is like, what is in your heart that you really want to do? And that could be, that could be being a doctor, that could be being a musician, all of these different things. But everything else will develop. You'll get good at it, you'll end up getting paid from it. But where people fuck up is they think with their head.

Yeah.

And, oh, what should I do? And I should go to college, and I should get this job.

And it's a deep level.

Yeah. And then they're missing that. So that's your— this is the magic.

And by the way, it's so important. It's such an important lesson because, you know, ass wipes were not a sexy space. You know, we were— when Cameo started, we were helping third-string defensive ends, like trying to make $5 videos, right?

Like, right.

Like, we were working with people— no offense to, you know, Lance Thomas, some good sponsors, Dad Lewis. These are my best friends, you know, some of my best friends in the world.

Yeah.

But like, we launched Cameo with a bunch of people that nobody would ever launch a business with, and you guys are passing out you know wipes at North Coast Music Festival and going to the frat house and at ISU. But you know in that time when it was unsexy, you had so much passion about it that the world kind of like you knew it was gonna be big. The world catches up.

Yeah.

And one thing I see, I wasn't making money back then, right? For sure.

So it was like well this guy doesn't have it figured out, right? It developed. You know what I mean?

Right. And I think, and that's something that I think is so like, I love to, you know, spread as a lesson to early-stage founders that I talk about, or someone that's got an idea and they're deciding like, hey, should I quit my job over this? Like, do I go all in? Do I burn the boats? And at the end of the day, like, if you're doing something that you truly love, it doesn't, like, it doesn't feel, even if you know it's gonna take time to go do, like what you're doing for play is like what somebody else is gonna try to do as a mercenary later when you pick up. And that missionary is always going to beat the mercenary.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. No, it's funny, me and my co-founder Jeff were talking about this the other day because he had the high-paying job at the bank while I was, you know, slinging the dude wipes out of the apartment kind of deal. And so he had all the money.

Yeah.

But he wasn't really enjoying what he was doing. And he would be jealous of my situation where I had no money, I'm in this shithole place, but I'm like working on these Dude Wipes and I'm doing all this, you know what I mean? Like, I'm having fun and I'm like going for something. And I would be jealous of him because he could fucking, you know, buy a bottle at the club or something like that and all that. Right. And so it's like you, you realize though what you, what you really want is just to be doing something you love. And that's why he was so excited as soon as he could, you know, Come over, leave his job, come to Dude Wipes because then he was leaving money behind to come into the mission.

I that that just rings so true. Like I remember it was Valentine's Day, must have been 2019. We just done our Series B and you know we're we're scaling. You know we have Kleiner, we got Lightspeed. Like yeah, we're starting to really build buzz. We're hiring. The team's growing. And I remember I got to go to Napa Valley with. 2 extremely successful founders who had had billion-dollar-plus exits, like Chicago guys.

Yeah.

And both of them now were like not, they had the money in the bank, but they weren't at their company anymore.

Yeah, yeah.

Both in this point of like what to do next. And I didn't have a pot to piss in at that point.

Right, right.

I didn't make any money the first 3 years of the company, like no salary. And then finally now here we are. And, you know, I'm at the French Laundry with these guys, right? And it's like, and I got to pay for 2, you know, because it was like Valentine's Day.

Yeah.

And, and I just remember like one of them, Peter, came up and was like, Steven, you know that like both of us would trade bank accounts with you to have that opportunity to be building and doing something you love and building a team and a culture again.

Right.

And that was just one of those moments for me where like you just realize how special that moment is. And you, you know, as a leader, you're trying to do everything you can to like nurture it and cherish it and, and get it to the next level so it could become like what, you know, what you think it, it deserves to be.

Yeah, no, that's a funny story that they're like, yeah, because you're building something that you love and you're, and you're in it and they're jealous.

Yeah, and I've given my credit, my debit card, and I'm like hoping that, you know, there's enough in there to pay for 2 because I didn't know how expensive the wine thing Right,

right. Yeah.

Anyways, Sean, this has been absolutely amazing. I'm so happy that we got to kick this off together. Yeah, it's an incredible story. But I would be remiss to not end with the question that we're gonna ask everybody on their way out. And I think this question is particularly relevant for you. Because in some ways, it, it inspired your whole business. What's your death row

My death row meal? Ooh, that's a good one. I think it's Portillo's. Yeah.

Walk everybody through. I want— hey, by the way, you can mix and match. You could be like, I need Italian beef from Portillo's and I need—

oh

yeah, I'm saying go all in. Give me—

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I go the beef from Portillo's and then I got the little ice cream spot called Vinny D's right by my house on Division in Wicker Park. Uh, just get a big-ass Oreo shake from there. And then the fries from McDonald's. So that's pretty Chicago, right? By

the way,

I got McDonald's, Portillo's, and the local place.

Yeah, that's awesome. Sean, thank you so much. This was amazing.

For sure, Steven. Thank you for having me on, man.

Awesome.