Taboo topics make for good business: Thinx, Tushy, Daybreaker
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What qualities bring success? Miki and Radha Agrawal share the story of how one decision changed their lives. By pursuing what they felt was right, they found viral fame and business opportunities. They also realized that to achieve your dreams, it does not only takes perseverance but finding your tribe and creating a community.
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MIKI AGRAWAL:

Miki Agrawal is a social entrepreneur who loves to use designed innovation to break taboos and change culture. She's passionate about sharing her knowledge and strategies, from idea to launch to growth to overcoming setbacks, in the most human way possible.

Miki is the co-founder / chief inventor-er of THINX: the period-proof underwear company that’s disrupting the $15 billion feminine-hygiene market. She also co-created a gorgeous pee-proof underwear called ICON to help women stay their MOST unapologetic selves. For every pair sold, money goes to the Fistula Foundation to provide care for women with obstetric fistula in developing countries.

Miki loves eating so she founded the acclaimed farm-to-table gluten-free pizza concept WILD. The restaurant rang in its 12-year anniversary in 2017 (ding)! She just opened her fourth location in Guatemala!

Miki's newest brand is TUSHY (hellotushy.com) which upgrades the American bathroom experience with a modern, best-in-class, affordable bidet attachment. Wiping with toilet paper after you poop is not only ineffective but helps cause health issues like UTIs, hemorrhoids, yeast infections, anal fissures, anal itching (from wet wipes too!), not to mention kills 15 million trees to make the toilet paper. Toilet paper was introduced to America in the 1800s and Miki and her team agrees that it's time to get our butts into the 21st century. Each purchase helps Samagra combat the global sanitation crisis affecting 40% of the world.
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TRANSCRIPT:

Radha: Often people will write me an email, like a young person will write me an email like, “Hey, can we get together for coffee?”

And then I won’t respond just to see if they’ll write me again.

Because there’s something in that! Like I would write my mentors probably 20 times until I got a response.

Miki Agrawal: I showed up, like a stalker.

Radha Agrawal: Yeah. We find out like— this one guy I wanted to get in touch with, I called his landline like 20 times, he wouldn’t pick up, and then I found out where he was speaking in New York City and then I went there, and I was just, like afterwards I was like, “Hey what’s up?” And he became the head researcher of one of my big projects!

And so I think the resilience and never giving up, persistence is something that sports has taught us, and I think that we can all be so sort of timid at times to continue reaching out again.

Like my best friend Max, when I first started hanging out with him he was 22 at the time and I was 32 – he’s our best friend. Okay. Sorry. Our best friend Max, he was 22 and we were 32, and we met him on a vacation and when he came back to New York he would just text me all the time he would say “Hey want to hang out?” And I was like, “No I don’t want to hang out with a 22 year old kid, no thanks.”

But then he just kept texting me over and over again and be like, “Hey I’m in the neighborhood!”

Miki Agrawal: And just kept showing up— first person at the party, last person to leave.

Radha Agrawal: Yeah. And he would show up all the time. And then finally he came to one of our parties and we realized how smart and thoughtful and interesting he was, and he’s now our best friend. So I think that perseverance is something that we aren’t often taught and it just—keep going up.
And especially as women we’re so empathetic that in some ways our empathy becomes our fuel for fear.

Empathy becomes fuel for fear because when we care so much about what someone else thinks it stops us from actually wanting to step on anyone’s toes. “I don’t want to bother them again.” And if you just take on that attitude you’re never going to get to where you want to go.

Miki Agrawal: And the worst that happens is rejection.

Radha Agrawal: Yeah. Exactly. And so I think because, again, we had each other, this is why I wrote a book called Belong. It’s all about finding your tribe and create community. When you have a tribe that supports you and that really makes you feel safe and gives you wings, you don’t feel weird reaching out to people because you already...

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