Dr. Jeremy Weisz 9:40
So you see me so you have this idea, you figure out if this is worth it to pursue what’s the first thing you start doing to get traction was starting?

Brian Wilkin 9:49
Um, well, we, you know, we needed to first find a manufacturer that could make this product. So, you know, that that was that was kind of the first sorter businessman, you know, after we designed figured out that it was, you know, a good, decent market to move into, we started contacting manufacturers? And, you know, it was, it was a process to say the least, you know, dealing with manufacturers from all over the world,

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 10:17
how did you even begin to find a manufacturer in the first place?

Brian Wilkin 10:21
We just start, we started googling white manufacturers. And most I mean, ideally, we wanted to find somebody in the US, you know, but most of the, I mean, most of the companies are foreign. And, you know, so we just started calling on them to, and we found, we found some US ones too. But once one in particular, one story in particular was, we thought we had a really good relationship with with one of these manufacturers that we had been talking to, and they were a China based, but they had us context. And so we had been having conversations with this guy, he’d sent us samples. And you know, it was pretty, it was a good way if we actually liked the quality. And all of a sudden, this guy just kind of I mean, it was like a few weeks worth of conversations probably over that probably about a month and a half’s worth of conversations. And we thought like we were kind of moving forward. And then the guy just kind of fell off the map. And we like didn’t, we just basically didn’t hear from them. And, you know, it was a lot of these big a lot of these wipes manufacturers are big money manufacturers, you know, so like they deal with huge clients. And so I think we think that was part of the reason why we just never heard back was because Okay, he realized that this was going to be kind of a bootstrap situation. Dealing with an entrepreneurial company, like, may not be working with huge volumes right away. And you know, he was a sales guy making a percentage off his sales. So you know, we just kept calling, we just kept at it. And we ended up finding a great, great manufacturer, their US based manufacturer, and our context, there’s awesome, we’ve been working with them for the past two years. And yeah, it’s so it was definitely a process. And you know, there’s some ups and downs through it. But you just got to persevere through that stuff.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 12:19
What was one major thing that you knew, like, you found this this manufacturers? It was, are there some things that stuck out to you that you knew this would work out?

Brian Wilkin 12:30
Yeah, I think it started with just the personal relationship that we had with the contacts that we had our initial contact with, he’s or he’s still our same contact. You know, we’ve actually met up with them, like a few times over the past, you know, couple years, like three or four times we’ve gotten together with them. So we really just even looking back to that one relationship that we thought was going well, comparing it to what we have now, like, you know, once we found this guy, just, it was like, night and day, you know, I mean, this guy had been responsive to us, no matter what. And he was very engaged with the brand we were trying to create to the other guy wasn’t so much. And you know, he just kind of was in it for the business. But our contact now with our manufacturer, like really, really gets what we’re trying to do and loves it, and is actually an ambassador for our company, too. So, yeah, it ended up I mean, it ended up working out.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 13:29
That’s interesting. Yeah, I wouldn’t have thought that, but I guess it would be important that they kind of onboard your mission. So they become I mean, they’re, that’s a huge thing, you, this is your product, so you need the person,

Brian Wilkin 13:40
they’re a stakeholder in your business to you know, if they’re willing to go out there and promote it, you know, good things could happen for their company as well, you know, so it’s always cool to find those big guys that like to actually still explore like the entrepreneurial spirit. Like I think that’s something that is like very valuable if you can find that as you’re searching for whatever kind of partners you’re looking for, if they like really get what you’re doing in particular, but like really enjoy the entrepreneurial spirit to huge.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 14:14
So now you have the manufacturing of the product. So what’s it like early on trying to get your first customers?

Brian Wilkin 14:21
That’s pretty funny, man. I mean, if you think about the nature of what we’re doing, we’re kind of selling and promoting a male ass wipe. I mean, you can use it for you know, whatever purpose you kind of want dudes are snug smart enough to do it, but it was just straight bootstrapping. I mean, we were we had these things in the back of our cars, just bringing them to like soccer games that we play in. We were bringing them to you know, family parties like introducing it to our seeing if anybody wanted the biome. I mean, the first kind of like big exposure that like all of our friends and family had was. There’s a so we are all of our co founders are kind of friends grown up. We’ve been friends for years since like about fourth grade. And so we’ve been going to a buddy’s lake house for Fourth of July for years. I mean, as long as we can remember. So the first like, kind of big introduction to a huge group of people was at this Fourth of July party because we had gotten product about a couple weeks before the Fourth of July last year. And so it was we basically, one of my buddies, dads kind of introduced and he was like, so the dudes have made their first product. And you know, we had like a table setup with like, all these boxes, you know, stacked up, and we were basically just trying to push sales on to our friends and family. So honestly, I mean, we we just kept doing that for a while. I mean, we were we were just grassroots in and, you know, really that phase two was just testing the viability of our product, like would people pay for these things? And what we found was, yeah, I mean, people were more than willing to, like pay for this, like cleanliness solution. I mean, they think, like, the thing with a brand is like, it’s engaging, like just what the name dude, you know, it kind of like tears down barriers.

Unknown Dr. Jeremy Weisz6:16
And, like, in formal like, yeah,

Brian Wilkin 16:19
yeah. And that’s what we want to be we want to be kind of informal with our customers and like, engaging, but yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s a challenge, though. I mean, crossing that sales barrier, you know, I mean, we were, this is, this is not like selling for cat selling boxes, a dude wipes for cash is not the way that you build like a profitable, scalable business. That’s how

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 16:40
you start though. Right? So what are some of the responses you get from you walk up when your friends or someone? Or even someone you don’t know, what are some of the responses you get?

Brian Wilkin 16:51
Yeah, so as you can imagine it, it kind of, there’s a wide range of responses that we’ve heard and one maybe one of my favorites is, okay, so like when girls see the product, and they come up, and he’s like, is this like, for guys crotch? Is this, like a sex wipe or something like that. And we’re like, I mean, you could use it for if you want to, but we, we primarily market it, you know, as a compliment the toilet paper guys, kind of, we’re trying to change the way guys kind of think about their bathroom routine and their bathroom hygiene routine. Kind of another funny aspect of this is, you know, I’m close with my family. And my mom is a huge ambassador of pretty much anything that I embark on. But this is a particularly strange thing for her to try and introduce to people and she’s voiced that to me a lot is Brian, you know, I really love what you’re doing and stuff, but I just don’t know how to bring it. I don’t know how to bring it off to people. Like I don’t know how to introduce your company. And so yeah, that’s actually been kind of a challenge for for us too. And we hit we really had to think about that a lot is like, how, what’s your like, five second, or, you know, 10 second Spiel to somebody if, if they’re like, you know, what are you doing? Like, if you say, Okay, I’m starting my own company, like, what what are you doing? You know, what is it that you do? And that was a challenge for us? Because, you know, if we just say a male ass wipe, yeah, so

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 18:24
give me a comparison. Like early on before you figure it out. Like you honed in on your five second what was like before? And then what is it now? Do you remember what used to say?

Brian Wilkin 18:34
Oh, man, it ranged. At the beginning, we were just kind of filling things out and trying to gauge like people’s reaction, kind of, you know.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 18:45
So you kind of tested it by saying it because I think this is important question. Because people out there, they may have a product too. And maybe, you know, it really helps to hone in on that, that five second, what is it?

Brian Wilkin 18:59
Yeah, it really is important. I mean, and I think that’s honestly, the best way to go about it is just test different things. Especially like, you know, our wife could be an all purpose wife, and you know, we want it because we think it’s more disruptive to be like a male like bathroom wipe. It’s more of a disruptive kind of like thought process. That’s how we wanted to introduce it to like, people and customers. But we also like, didn’t want to cut people off at the beginning or like, you know, make it make it a weird conversation right away. So we were kind of introducing it like, Oh, it’s a white for dudes, you know, and just keeping it like real general. And people were just like, Okay, you didn’t tell me anything, you know? But and then we would say, you know, we threw out like it’s it’s an ass white for guys, you know? And that actually, like, got really good feedback. You know, I mean, some people were turned off by it. But as we were more blunt about like what we were doing and what If this actually was for the conversation just gradually goes into like, but you can use it for other purposes. You know, like guys can use it to like, wipe off their face or their pits or whatever, you know. So yeah, really honing that message is, is really important. And we’ve actually found the way to do it. Like even when people come up to us and ask, like, what is this, we lead in with, like, our little backstory of like, you know, we were five guys living in an apartment and one of us use baby wipes. And there, we all got addicted. And we just started developing a white for guys. I think the last thing you think, yeah, yeah, it’s just a quick story that kind of like, people can relate to a little bit more than just telling, telling them what your product is for kind of telling them like a little bit of the backstory where it came from, you know?

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 20:54
Yeah. So tell me, one of those moments that you just felt it was impossible to get that customer sale, one of those huge challenges, what was one of those?

Brian Wilkin 21:07
Um, so, like I said, we were, we spent probably a month and a half, just straight kind of, you know, taking cars, and sorry, dogs, dogs?

Unknown Brian Wilkin1:23
You got excited about that question?

Brian Wilkin 21:28
Yeah, we like I said, we were like month and a half, we were taking them around in our cars and selling them for cash, you know, to like friends and family, and then just acquaintances and stuff like that. And then we kind of took a step back, and we’re like, you know, we kind of validated that, like, people will buy this stuff. People are really engaged with the brand, which was most important for us. Like, we wanted to create a brand that was engaging and authentic and people people liked, kind of talking about and stuff. So we took a step back, and we’re like, what’s our next step, you know, and we decided to start, like really reaching out to, like online distributors, that would kind of fit within like, our demographic that we were going after, which is obviously kind of like do like 1835 year old guys, kind of the parameters we set, but it extends beyond that. So we basically just started contacting sites, online distribution sites, online retail, and it was it was pretty, it was pretty challenging. I mean, just the amount of calls that we made, or emails that we sent, or submission forms that we filled out, the amount of, I mean, the response rate that you get, at the beginning of like, 2% might be generous, you know, I mean, especially for this concepts that we’re introducing, I feel like that was a little bit of a challenge to be Yeah,

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 22:52
because when you enter a new market, I mean, that’s even tougher, you’re like pioneering something that people haven’t heard of, it’s much easier if they knew what you’re talking about. How did you like, what was some of the challenges you faced? When you were calling some of these companies?

Brian Wilkin 23:06
Yeah, so I mean, the first challenge was just getting a hold of people. Right. So that that was tough, and then kind of just getting them to understand what what the benefits of this product like carrying this product was, you know, because a lot of these retailers, they like to look at their competition and be like, Okay, what, what are they selling? Are they selling anything like this? And, you know, for us, there really isn’t anything, there wasn’t anything out there really like, like a dude, boy, you know, so, these, these people would like, do their due diligence, look at their competitors and just not have an offering out there. You know? So it was like, disheartening, man. And, you know, we just have to, we had to stay true to like, Guys, this is gonna happen, like, you know, we just got to keep calling and like, somebody will get it. And then once we get on one, it can be somewhat domino effect, right? Like, once we get on one site, and these things start gaining some traction online, things will start moving a little bit. And sure enough, that’s what happened. We closed kind of the first sale after about probably a month and a half of like, calling and things like that first online retailer, and it was cool. It was a male, like, outdoor kind of site, and they put us on Amazon as well. It was a score for us, you know, we felt really good. And it was a small win, but like, it felt like a huge win, you know? So yeah, it was it was pretty cool.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 24:39
It was one of the first sales that wasn’t like a major distribution website. Do you remember one of those?

Brian Wilkin 24:47
Um, yeah, man who was one example that I like to kind of talk about is one of our so like I said, we all grew up together all of our co founders and one of our really good friends is a marine. And at the time, when we initially got the product delivered, we sent out a free box to him, you know, and he was like, holy cow, like, these things are awesome. And like everybody in my platoon is like, taken off and whatever, you know, he’s like, I need to buy like, bulk from you guys. So he bought, like, you know, nine cases of dude wipes. And, you know, there’s nine boxes in a case. So he bought like, 81, you know, boxes of dude wipes for, you know, his marine buddies and stuff,

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 25:34
like about what did they say they like about was the feedback because when I think a Marine, I think like the ultimate man’s man, like, what are they enjoying about it? Like, what did they use it for?

Brian Wilkin 25:44
Well, it is, honestly, probably the most practical product for Marines. I mean, they like they use baby wipes, you know, so they were like, super excited to see like, Dude wipes, you know, like, a white that’s actually made for like a man’s man, you know. And so that was pretty cool. But like, we knew that, you know, Marines have gotten lights and use them in the field, because, you know, they don’t have too many other options and stuff. So we just thought it’d be cool to, you know, send it out to our body, we weren’t really expecting much out of it. But man, the feedback that we got was unbelievable from him. And then another guy that I went to college with, was a Marine down in, he was stationed in Florida for a while, and I kind of talked to him about it. And yeah, they started buying from us too. So just a really cool market to be a part of to man just like, actually helping out like something that’s a great cause. Obviously, you know, it’s a little bit more than just selling product at that point, too. Which is cool. But yeah, I mean, whenever a marine can validate your kind of brand and like the badass Ness or whatever, right? That’s what we knew we were kind of validated. So how

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 26:59
did you break through to on the weekend, when you scaled up when you got into the under the website? How did you make that happen?

Unknown Brian Wilkin7:09
got onto which website when

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 27:11
you said one of the big first customers when you kind of broke through? And onto the under the website who listed you ended up listing on Amazon? How did you end up landing that?

Brian Wilkin 27:22
Oh, so that was? Yeah, when I was talking about like, just cold calling. I mean, that’s, that was just kind of a success and cold calling. And we had just, you know, we, we just kind of kept kept reaching out to them, we thought it was like a good alignment. And actually, we knew backtracking now that I think about it, we actually knew a friend of a friend, like ran this site, too. So I mean, just working your network as much as possible when you’re trying to establish those initial sales is huge. So yeah, this this outdoor training site clever training, he started, he started his own company, and kind of just stocks like outdoor kind of products on his, on his site and stuff. And was he liked, he liked what we had to offer, you know, and started, started making purchases through them from us. And he’s like, Yeah, I’ll open up an Amazon account for you guys to know. And yeah, they started selling actually pretty well. Mostly through Amazon, like, you know, some Through clever training. But, you know, the product wasn’t real well known or anything like that. And most people go on his site for like, more outdoors kind of camping stuff, and outdoor training. So but yeah, it was that actually was a relationship that we, you know, like kind of a fourth degree relationship. So, I mean, I guess the lesson to take out of that is, don’t be afraid to talk about what you’re doing to anybody and everybody because you never know, what can drum up business. So like I said, we were cold calling ran.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 29:03
Brand. So tell me a little bit about I know, like with all this, it’s a big learning curve. And there’s a lot to that goes into this. And there’s a lot of steps and it’s not easy. Did you get advice along the way to shorten some learning curve? Like what do you do for that?

Brian Wilkin 29:18
Yeah, absolutely. Kind of building off the last point is just a lot of it is like, you know, not being afraid to talk about what you’re doing even though I mean, it was hard to talk about like, Dude wipe sometimes like just because people have different reactions, I mean, you see a wide array of reactions, but so just talk to anybody. So I went to IIT got my Master’s in finance and one person that kind of linked me into a network that I just kind of had a random conversation with. I was trying to figure out like if I wanted to move on to a different job within finance as I was, you know, doing the dude products thing So I talked to Luigi Pecoraro in, in the Career Management Center. And he, he thought we were doing was funny, obviously, and he put us in contact with Nick Robocop. And Nick has been unbelievable. As far as advice he’s given us and just like talking to other people about what we are doing. And, you know, he works at ATA and works with 1871. So he’s got a huge network of people that are in the entrepreneurial kind of atmosphere in Chicago. And so we all I always try and stay in touch with him have have a breakfast or, you know, meeting with him, whenever, whenever possible. For instance, we just got back a couple of weeks ago, my partners and I from Texas, we were in an accelerator program down there. And one of the first people I reached out to was, was Nick, because I just wanted to give him an update on where we were at and what we were kind of where we’re at with our business and what we needed to do to kind of like, Get get this thing going to the next level. And, you know, as always, he had, he had great advice, and what kind

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 31:13
of advice did he give you? That you like, really hit home for you?

Brian Wilkin 31:17
Yeah, you know, so he is really good at kind of bringing things into focus, you know, as, as we kind of go through like, our retail launch that we want, that we want to utilize, and kind of our big marketing push that we want to go for. We our thoughts go all over the place, sometimes, you know, and one, the big. The main takeaway, or the big piece of advice that I took away from Nick’s been conversation was with Nick was one thing entrepreneurs, one of the first questions I ask, any entrepreneur that comes and wants to talk to me is, who’s your who’s your market? Like, who are you going to market towards? And a lot of the answers are, you know, everybody within like the demographic we’re going after, or maybe just everybody, and he immediately says, Well, do you have like a 10 million to $100 million budget to to make this happen. And I mean, it’s safe to say most entrepreneurs do not have anywhere close to that kind of budget purely for marketing. So he highly recommend just having a focus like a laser like focus on owning a market like owning one market and constantly hitting that market. And an example that he used was the Red Bull example. Now obviously, Redbull is a huge brand and company now but what they had an extreme focus on, and laser like focus was hidden the extreme sports world, that’s where they did, like, basically all of their marketing was extreme sports. Extreme sports is pretty niche, you know, it’s not like everybody identifies with that. But, you know, it trickled down to mainstream society. I mean, you can’t go into a bar or anything without them carrying and Red Bull. So, yeah, just a really, really, that that was like a huge takeaway for me, because with our product, like people get so engaged with, with the brand, the dude brand, you know, and there’s so many different things we could do. But we have to be focused, because we don’t have that Unlimited, you know, bottomless cash to, to rip through. So that was huge. I mean, and you need that you need to be reined in by people too, because other people will just drag you in all sorts of different directions. But you need to like have somebody there to say you guys need to focus like know what you’re going after. And hit that heart. So

Unknown Speaker 33:52
what made you choose it in the first place.

Brian Wilkin 33:56
So I have my undergrad background was you know, business and economics, finance and economics and I had an interest in kind of deepening my technical knowledge of finance. And you know, I looked at MBA programs and in the Chicago land area, and did my research on that and I came across it and their MS in finance program was really what I was looking for, it was building off of kind of what I had learned in undergrad without like, kind of overlapping a lot of the stuff. It was truly like things that I didn’t know in finance at all. So I wanted to get the technical aspect of finance exposure. So that’s ultimately why I chose it over like a Northwestern or, or something like that. I mean, seems

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 34:49
like you got some also some great advice with Nick. What uh, what was some advice piece of advice you took away from the was at the incubation station? Yeah.

Brian Wilkin 34:59
Oh, Mmm, is that there was a ton of takeaways from, from incubation station. So just as a means of background, these were some of our mentors, there were people that had started consumer packaged goods company in the sense that had since sold them and are dabbling and other CPG companies now and then other mentors where you know, market market research people in marketing people. Key takeaways, there were so many, they helped us refine our business so much. And I guess the key takeaway from there is kind of the same thing, as what Nick was, is, like, so much of our focus down there with what we’re trying to do with our brand is like, we have to know what our brand message is, and stuff like that, you know, like, what is our brand identity? have that strong? And then what is this product for? Like, what are the uses of this product and make that explicit, like on packaging and stuff like that. So that those were some huge takeaways from them. And just, they gave us so much perspective on the aspect of concentrate on planning, you get, you can get so overwhelmed with like the here and now with so many things that are going on. But you know, you really need you really do need to take a look into the future and plan for the expected and unexpected, really. So that was a huge takeaway too. Because, you know, these are people that had been there done that before. And for us, you know, to just hear it from them. Great takeaway there

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 36:44
any advice that you remember that surprised you that you were like, because I mean, your, your brand has dude products. So like, it’s pretty, like someone hearing that knows, like, it’s a male product? Like probably, like you said, most people? Oh, it’s for everyone, like you’ve already kind of niched it down. So what was some of the advice you got that maybe you took to heart that surprised you? When you were there?

Brian Wilkin 37:11
Let me think. You know, I guess, I guess it was kind of surprising. And it was kind of validating to for us, because a lot of the a lot of people that we had talked to, and some people down there would always say you’re cutting off half of the, like, half of the entire market by calling your product do products. Right? Yeah. Which is, you know, a valid point. But at the same time, when we go back to this kind of focus aspect, and really branding something for somebody or something, you know, that was a huge takeaways, like a lot of these people actually got that. And we’re like, you know, what, that’s actually really smart. Which was kind of a step back, because always we had heard kind of was don’t cut off, like half the market, you know, you’re cutting off dollars off your valuation or the potential. And it’s like, you know, we realized that but we’re not going to be as an entry, we’re not going to be as intriguing of a brand or as true of a brand as we want to be by trying to reach everybody, like, we are this demographic. And we want to reach this demographic with with this product and with this brand. So that was like, something that was pretty cool to like, kind of hear validated from these people that had been there done that as like, Yeah, I mean, you guys can speak directly to your audience, which is awesome. So what

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 38:41
was something that you did to try and make money that you thought would work but actually ended up just failing miserably?

Brian Wilkin 38:51
I think the main thing, so a few months into us having our initial order of product, we thought that a three day felt like outdoor festival would be just an unbelievable place to like, go and sell these dude wipes. And keeping in mind, we’re working with like, a very limited budget. At the time. We decided that we were going to buy a tent for all three days and like have like a vendor tent, you know, expensive. Yeah. Expensive. Yeah. And so we did that with like, the thoughts in the back of our mind that like, no doubt will break even like, that’s not even like on the radar. Like we’re gonna make a killing here. Right, like triple our money. And, like, really, further from the truth. You know, a lot of a lot of festival goers like, like getting freebies and sample free samples of things, especially when it kind of looks like this. It’s just like a small package. You know, they’re just looking to grab it and leave the table. So um, yeah, that uh, that grand your sales thoughts that we had did not formalize but yeah, I mean, it was a good takeaway though in itself, because what we did notice was a lot of people were talking about, like the product and stuff and like, when they would walk away from the table or a group film or like showing it to themselves, or you know, and talking about it. And obviously, in a, obviously, in an atmosphere like that it’s word can spread fast and stuff. So we have a lot of people visiting the tent and stuff like that. And you know, we made some sales, not nothing, hardly anything, but just the brand recognition aspect of it was a good takeaway, because that’s actually something that we’re really talking about. And discussing moving forward is like, once we raise significant capital being having a presence of a lot of these festivals.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 40:55
So what was something then that really worked that you were surprised about?

Brian Wilkin 41:02
Um, so we, we acquired drugstore.com, which is walgreens.com. And so Walgreens owns them? And yeah, so it’s like a family brand type, type store, I guess, is what you could call it. And so we ran a comment to win promotion on Facebook with through drugstores Facebook account. And, you know, we were expecting pretty much little to no feedback, because we just kind of figured that. That wasn’t a place where a bunch of guys were going to shop necessarily, it was drugstore.com. But it turns out, like, we did this comment to win post, and the feedback and interaction that was going on with this post was like, pretty unbelievable. I mean, so like, not even talking about, like the sales aspect. You know, we saw a good sales bump after the comment to win, but like, what is what really is more important for us is we got to build this brand and to like, know that people are talking about it. We had I mean, there were comments from ranging from a grandma to like, you know, a person in our demographic, like a 23 year old guy to a teenage girl. I mean, it was it was crazy, the wide range of people. I mean, I would say most of the posts were of like, moms that had kid like, had kids or husbands and saying, I need these for my dude, you know, like, I mean, moms were making comments about like, their kids skid marks in their underwear and stuff like that. Like,

Unknown Speaker 42:46
what were some of the funny comments that you I mean, like,

Brian Wilkin 42:49
literally moms are talking about their skid marks on drugstores Facebook page, their kids, it was just, it was really funny. And like, that was like what was most important to us and kind of eye opening. Because when we when we were talking about a minute ago, like cutting off like half the market, well, women have been really engaged with this brand. I mean, while guys are the direct beneficiary of kind of like having a cleaner hygiene routine. Girls are definitely an indirect beneficiary of it, you know, whether it be your mom or your girlfriend or

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 43:23
the only beneficiary. Most guys don’t care. It’s like the women suffer.

Brian Wilkin 43:34
Right? So yeah, that was a, that was a really cool kind of surprise for us. Or, you know, I guess you could categorize it as a winner.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 43:42
They did you approach them. And they just posted like, how did it what did they actually post in? The people commented on?

Brian Wilkin 43:50
Yeah, so it was, we, I can’t remember the exact phrase, but we had gotten in contact with our buyer, and said, you know, is there anything that we could do with you guys, from kind of a dual marketing standpoint, you know, and they have their own social media kind of branch within the company. And so he put us in contact with her with our contacts in the social media and marketing. Branch or whatever. And so we had discussions with her and she, we kind of went through a bunch of options that they offer, and we decided like this comment to win would be the best one. So we kind of just made up like a little blurb. Like what is Why do you need Dude, why it’s or something, something to that effect? I don’t remember the exact thing. But yeah, and then like there was a picture of, you know, the box up there. So they have like a good picture. And that’s when the comments just started flowing. And you know, they posted

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 44:53
a picture on the front. We show that there’s a picture on the back of the box, right?

Brian Wilkin 44:58
Oh, yeah. So You know, you can see this little graph graphic cards right here, like the man minus a dude wife equals an ape. So yeah, and like this, this eight drawing was actually submitted by one of our customers. So, like, as I’ve kind of talked about throughout this, this interview is like, we really want to be like an authentic and engaged brand with our customers like, and just from a general standpoint, for like the viewers of this, it’s like, that’s so important. Obviously, everybody knows that. It’s like, customers are engaged in like every aspect of business in general now, like, the more you can interact with the customer, and it’s so easy to do with, like social media and stuff, more like, personality that you can bring to the table, I think is, I think, is just hugely beneficial.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 45:53
So we’ve been talked about drugstore.com, and Walgreens, how do you even get into that caliber of a company?

Brian Wilkin 46:02
Um, so with, with that account, with I literally called their one 800 Number. And I think it was actually like, their customer service number. So it was just like, first step in the door, I was like, alright, well, I’m just gonna pose as one of their customers, I guess, you know, and, you know, started with the little, a little pitch about, like, what we were doing and just asked, I mean, we’re talking to an operator first, right? So we just asked, like, if I could get in contact with like, the personal care and personal care section of the business. And they were like, of course, asked why. And, you know, I explained, you know, what we were bringing to the table for them. And so she forwarded me on the operator forwarded me on and, of course, it was like the wrong department, and I got a voicemail. And I just, I left a voicemail asking if they, you know, this person could potentially, you know, call me back and put me in contact with a personal like, men’s personal care contact. And, you know, I didn’t hear back, but I did have an actual contact name, because I heard their heard their voicemail. And so next time I called the operator, I was actually able to forward a name and give her that give them a name to, to put me in contact with. So this went on for, I mean, probably three weeks, like I would call, I left, you know, I’m left a message the first time. And I would call like, every third day or so, and I would call direct to that, you know, get put in direct contact with that number. And so I left like, probably a couple emails on that person, or a couple of voicemails on that person’s mailbox. And then finally, probably two weeks in, like somebody answered on that on that phone. And, like,

Unknown Speaker 47:59
leave me alone.

Brian Wilkin 48:02
The guy was actually a really nice guy. I mean, you know, people are busy. So yeah, yeah. Like, that’s another thing I would say is like, when people don’t get back to you, when you’re throwing an idea out that has really no end. Like they have no entry. I don’t know you, they don’t know. Yeah, don’t like get offended, because that’s like, the worst thing that you can do is like, Oh, they’re not interested. I’m not gonna call anymore. Like follow up. People really, really appreciate follow up, like, people are busy with their lives and like, you can’t you kind of got to take a step back and be like, Okay, do products is like probably the last thing on these people’s minds. You know, like, I just got to show some, some hustle and like, some will to like, follow up. So yeah, I actually had a conversation with this guy. And he like, laughed about what we were doing. And he was like, Okay, well, let me put you in contact with the personal care people. And so yeah, that’s when that’s when I was actually able to probably about this was probably about three and a half weeks to a month of just getting bounced around drugstores, voicemail mailboxes. And finally, I was able to talk to the people and they were really engaged and basically I just said you know, you guys are you guys are you know, a have them like a men’s personal care section, but you don’t have like, a complimented toilet paper or like a hygiene a bathroom hygiene wipe for guys. We are offering that now you know, and they were engaged right away. And literally that sale kind of closed like really quickly.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 49:40
So what’s talking about I mean, that’s like a high point then what’s a lower point? What’s one thing that you wish you would have avoided so far in the in what you’re doing with the company?

Brian Wilkin 49:53
Yeah, so we so we like worked on like all this design. In stuff like with the box, and like the wipe and stuff like that, we did this all ourselves and none of us really have actually, none of us do have like a graph graphic design background. So we really wanted to refine our design and kind of make it look more professional and ready for the shelves. So we decided to try and work with a graphic designer, and we, you know, those, those people are expensive. And so we had a few meetings with with this company, and it was the meetings went great. I mean, we have branding decks, explaining the kind of like brand, we want to be the kind of guys that we want to be engaged with the kind of like customers that we want to go after. And then other ones have friends that are existing today that we really like, and that we kind of want to like, formulate our brand after a little bit. And like these people got it, like the conversations, they were asking all the right questions and really like, loved the dude brand in general, and really got what we were trying to be with, like this masculine kind of, like, approachable brand. And we, so we decided to do go with this company. And they, you know, we paid them in a substantial upfront fee. And we waited for about a month or three weeks to a month to get these iterations. And it was kind of a time sensitive thing too, because we were actually pitching to raise money. And we wanted to have these design mock ups done for that pitch. But so that was like kind of another aspect that a time sensitive issue. And so we got these iterations back from this, this company, and it was just like, just a complete kind of disaster. To put it lightly. I mean, it was just, it got it. They just like didn’t get through all the conversations that we had, and like how confident we were that they got it, it just came back, way off. And every iteration was they pulled out like a box, like a mock up of the box. And it was like, just all over the place. It was multicolored, and, you know, the dude was not like accentuated and we wanted to we made it clear that, you know, dude is our brand, we want that kind of like, front and center. And that didn’t happen. So

Unknown Speaker 52:41
what would you do differently? Knowing what you know, know?

Brian Wilkin 52:43
Yeah, I mean, I think so it was, it was our first experience dealing with a graphic design company too. So I don’t think it was, you know, anyone’s fault. But I would do differently. You know, we obviously looked at some of the stuff that they had done in the past, and it was really professional and really good stuff. But it was kind of had all the same feel to it. Like the the design aspects. And it really nothing like looked like a dude kind of branded product, or design. And so I think just, that’s one aspect is like kind of doing more due diligence and kind of trying to align the, you know, historical is the best kind of predictor of the future work, right. So we kind of could have used that as a back lay, would expect, and then also just kind of touching base with the person or the companies as they’re working on stuff for you. That’s something we didn’t do, we kind of just let them go at it and came back with these kind of final iterations. And what we really probably should have been doing in hindsight, was touching base with them a couple times a week and saying where you’re Where are you at now? Can I see like, where we’re going and then kind of like shortening the turnback turnaround loop, you know, just shortening that feedback loop. So you’re not like going through to a final kind of product or something without getting feedback and, you know, making small changes where need be. So those are definitely a couple takeaways.

Unknown Speaker 54:25
What’s been what’s been one of the hardest parts about running the company?

Brian Wilkin 54:30
Um, well, I mean, a difficult, obviously difficult thing for us is, so we’ve been bootstrapping this whole thing since the beginning. And so most of us still have full time jobs and we’re kind of we started the company kind of working at nights and on the weekends, just having meetings about how we’re going to design and, you know, having our getting things put together to you know, make pitches. To people we’re selling to and things like that. So, and then, you know, as we moved forward, obviously, the sales stuff and things like that go on a lot of that goes on during the day. We’re all working.

Unknown Speaker 55:13
Yeah. So how do you manage that?

Brian Wilkin 55:17
You know, it’s tough man. I mean, I was. Me personally, I can remember, multiple, multiple times. And it’s like that for all of the co founders in our company. We’ve had to, like, you know, take, I mean, we have conversations sometimes like about dude products, and like, you can tell sometimes, so a couple of the partners are in sales, so they can kind of, you know, be driving around and be on calls about dude products, and it not matter. But then a couple of us are in office settings, all the time. And, you know, you could kind of tell when somebody’s like, at their desk, because they’re like, Hey, what’s up? What’s going on? Be real quiet. And, yeah, so there’s been like, so many times, where you’re just having to step away, like, go down the floor to like, the lunch, you know, the cafeteria, you know, and like, Hold held our conversations. And, you know, I personally don’t have access to like, my personal email, at work. So, you know, I’m on my iPhone for a lot of the day like, next to my work computer, like kind of answering sales emails, or reaching out to people trying to set up banking relationships and stuff like that. I mean, it’s just, it’s kind of fun to do. Yeah, it’s cool. Especially if, you know, you’re passionate about your, your job that’s gotten you to where you you’re at, but obviously, like, as entrepreneurs, you know, you’re a lot more passionate about something that you’ve created. So yeah, striking that balance is definitely difficult.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 56:50
Yeah. I mean, you talk about the co founders, too, and I want to ask about that, because, you know, it’s good to have that support. But also, I could see multiple personalities, you know, conflicting, what some one of those challenges from having multiple co founders.

Brian Wilkin 57:06
Um, so like I said earlier, in the interview, we have all been friends for like, forever. So we definitely have kind of different personalities, but we’ve all you know, we know what our kind of like quirks are, and what our strengths and weaknesses are and stuff, but So like, for instance, Sean, the CEO, is a self proclaimed and actually produces rap. So he’s, he’s a white rapper. So striking that balance of when to be a CEO of dude products and when to pursue your, your rap career, you know, is, is always an interesting balance. But no, I mean, so he, he’s like a more creative mind, you know, and he was actually, he’s the guy that really wanted to get like, Dude wipes going, and, you know, he was the baby wipes user, and he kind of brought this into the fold, and we decided to do it. And I’m kind of more conservative minded and, you know, like to concentrate on, like, what’s the return on the spend going to be? What, what strategic marketing stuff that we need to execute to, like, make money, you know, and I want to see that turnaround, like, right away. Whereas Shawn does a really good job of like, having a big picture view. Right. So it’s just like that balance. That’s actually it causes clash? For sure. Sometimes, but it’s definitely needed, you know, because otherwise, if it was just Shawn, you know, dude, products would theoretically have about 15 products on, you know, in the workings right now, no, no money to fund it. But if I were, it would probably it would have, we would never even gotten off the ground. So

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 58:56
you strike that balance you complement each other with Yeah, yeah, exactly. So what I mean, it seems also that you’re in touch with your customers, you’re going out to these fairs, you know, you have these tents, and what are some of the features that users talk about? Or give me feedback on that you maybe wouldn’t have realized otherwise.

Brian Wilkin 59:17
Um, so yeah, I don’t, I guess maybe we didn’t necessarily realize it off the bat, which was kind of stupid, I guess. But like, if you just like look at the package, right, like a lot of people. And I said before, like a lot of comments we get is like, is that a sex wipe? And a lot of people have commented like, this looks like a condom, you know? So that’s actually kind of something that we’re we’re working on, is to try and like redesign things, maybe even just shift like, Dude wipes whether like, instead of it being horizontal, maybe being vertically aligned. Maybe that makes it look less less like a condom package or some Then like that. But yeah, I mean, we haven’t gone through this is our first iteration of the product, you know. And so that’s like, actually really interesting feedback when like customers say, that looks like a condom and like, I may not buy it, just because of that, or some others say, it looks like a kind of an eye kind of like that it looks like a condom, you know. But I think we can strike a balance of maybe changing some color, like maybe not making it black and making it, you know, kind of like a gray color or something or a metallic color. So yeah, I mean, customer feedback is huge, at all times, you know, I mean, they’re the people that are ultimately going to be ultimately going to determine the success of your company. So, you know, any takeaways that we can glean from our customers, we’re more than open to it. And like, with our, it’s embedded in our packaging, customer feedback is too, because we like on the back of like each wipe, there’s like a customer tweet that can potentially land on it, right? So we want to be engaged with our customers at all times. And the more feedback that we can get from them, I think the better company will probably be.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 1:01:18
Yeah, another question that I was thinking, as you’re talking is, you know, you know, it’s tough to manage all this, like a growing company, full time job, how do you know when to just transition fully to the company to dude?

Brian Wilkin 1:01:34
Yeah. So, yeah, and that’s a really good question. And I guarantee you, it differs company by company. So for us, we have been part time, dude products, you know, for the past couple of years. And, you know, the first year of that two years, was just trying to find a manufacturer and coming up with the designs and stuff like that. So, but as far as knowing when to quit, it’s like, so we’ve been growing pretty significantly on in our online accounts recently. And, you know, we got accepted to this accelerator program. So we have like, a significant amount of momentum. And I think it’s like a feeling that you can get as like an entrepreneur, like, if you have like, significant momentum, and, you know, customers or buy in, and, you know, accelerators are huge, because you’ve just built a network of people that have had success in pretty much the industry that you’re going into, that you could just have at your disposal. So I think there’s a momentum, kind of, like, just feel that you’ll get that you’ll feel comfortable leaving, but then, you know, the other aspect is you gotta live to. So you know, us being, we have four co founders total. So, you know, we’re trying to raise, we’re actually in the process of raising money right now. So, you know, we gotta be practical, like Shawn has left his job, and he’s full time, dude products, I am still working, and my two other partners are still working.

Unknown Dr. Jeremy Weisz:03:19
And once we raise this capital, I’m going to transition off and be full time as well.

Brian Wilkin 1:03:27
But, you know, it’s just like I said, it’s just kind of a momentum field. And then you got to have can’t, if you have co founders, you got to have candid conversations and good communication, and a plan to really, so everybody feels comfortable. And it’s not going to cause friction. Because, you know, fine. As much as you don’t want to talk about like money and like, personal personally, being comfortable, like you want to pour everything into the business. At the same time, you gotta live, you want to live and not, you know, be scraping by too. So how

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 1:04:01
do you? How do you, you know, breach that topic? Especially people, you know, I can see on one hand, you’re comfortable with your few people you’ve known forever been the same in the same respect. Once money comes up, like, tension, you know, people kind of feel tension with it. Right? Um,

Brian Wilkin 1:04:17
you know, we’ve had throughout the past couple of years, we’ve had, you know, those kinds of, I wouldn’t even call it at least for our company. It really wasn’t. There wasn’t a whole lot of like, tension within the talks. You know, we’re all pretty. I mean, we’re immature in our own ways, too, but we’re all pretty like mature guys. And we, like I said, we’ve known each other for so long, that we wanted to make sure ownership and like money issues came up at the beginning. And as we go, as we hit, like, certain milestones about okay, we’re going to need to raise like, let’s have this conversation. You We’ve really done a good job about that. So like, you know, we’ve kind of divvied up things as far as how long certain people have been involved and like the amount of work that kind of we have put in to a certain point, right. And that’s kind of how we divvied up retrospectively. And going forward. It’s pretty self explanatory. I mean, now the only thing that we’re kind of having discussions about is yeah, just the roll in of full time working. And those aren’t really tough conversations, because we feel like we’re at a pretty good point right now. And once we raise this money, we’re going to actually be able to execute on like, a lot of the plans that we have and stuff. So yeah,

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 1:05:42
I have one last question for you, Brian. But before I ask it, I just want you to tell us a little bit more about what’s exciting right now a dude wipes.

Brian Wilkin 1:05:51
Yeah, so what’s really exciting for us right now is, like I said, we just got done with incubation station, which is a consumer products accelerator in Austin, Texas. So we were down in Austin, Texas for three months. And, you know, getting mentored by awesome people, super smart people, very experienced consumer products, people. So we got through that program. And we our business is just so much more refined now. And right now we are trying to we’re basically sourcing money. So we’re trying to raise Series, Series A capital. And that’s really exciting. Because we’ve we’ve had really good discussions over the past, like, since we’ve, we’ve gotten done with the program, we’ve had really good discussion discussions with people. People are just kind of sorting through the details of the deal. And we’re going through some negotiations. But yeah, I mean, we feel like we’re in a good spot, we’re probably gonna raise this money within the next couple of months, hopefully, and be able to start executing. And we’re really excited to we’re working with the company, kind of like dual tracking, we’re working with a company to actually that really does understand and we did our due diligence, we’re checking up like, you know, lessons learned type thing, but we’re doing like a redesign of the packaging and the brand and the website, and stuff like that. So yeah, once we once we raise this capital, we’re going to be ready to roll and start executing on our marketing plans. And the goal for us is to get on retail shelves of Walgreens and CVS and stores like that. And we feel like it’s not too far from happening. So

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 1:07:32
for everyone listening, what’s the website? They can go to, to check out your company?

Brian Wilkin 1:07:39
It’s www dot dude. products.com.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 1:07:43
Got it. Okay, so last question. I had Brian was, um, I know that early on, you guys tried out for Shark Tank? Yeah. What happened with that?

Brian Wilkin 1:07:55
It was actually a cool experience. I actually wasn’t present at the trial. But I wish we might have like pictures or a video that we should like, throw up on the website or something like that. Because the find this? Yeah, so this was like, a year and a half ago. So it was like the casting like last year, two years ago, maybe. And so we didn’t have product yet. We literally had like, a pretty bad looking like, mock up of like a box of dude wipes, you know? So we were going into these tryouts in Chicago with like that as like our product offering. And the way we kind of so like our brand, we want to be entertaining, engaging, right? So we went in there, and one of my buddies dressed up as Mr. Wonderful to make the pitch. And So Sean, the CEO of our company, or C D, I should say, Chief Executive dude. He was pitching to it was kind of like a skit that they drew up, right. So he was pitching to Mr. Wonderful and stuff like that. And we made it through the final casting call. So we like got videotaped and stuff like that. And we got sent to the executive producers, and we just never heard anything back. But think it might be a different story. If we were to do it again and like actually have a sales track record and like an actual product to present them. So

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 1:09:21
did you have an actual like, were you thinking ahead, like who you want to invest? Or we didn’t even get that far?

Brian Wilkin 1:09:29
No, I mean, we definitely had those conversations. I mean, I think what would align awesome with us would be Cuban, just because we’ve we’ve actually reached out to professional sports teams and then had conversations with professional sports teams and gotten in their locker rooms and stuff like that with dude wipes. So we think that could have been like an awesome partnership, because he could have gotten us in any NBA locker room and probably beyond just to build that like brand. To authentication basically, you know, so yeah, we thought about it, but yeah, it didn’t happen.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 1:10:08
Well, Brian, thank you so much for your time. It was a pleasure and I look forward to people checking out dude products that camp. Yeah, man.

Brian Wilkin 1:10:17
Thanks, sir. Appreciate it. Appreciate your time a lot and it’s great being with everybody in the audience.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz:10:23
Thanks, Brent. All right.

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