Some guests have a LOT of gumption and energy to create new. Miki is releasing her first album now. But over time, she has launched new companies and created new spaces. Some of the road has been bumpy and some has developed whole new categories that help people's lives.

Guest: Miki Agrawal, Co-founder and former CEO of THINX and founder of TUSHY and WILD

Miki Agrawal is a serial entrepreneur, social innovator, and author. Renowned for her disruptive ventures in taboo categories, Agrawal challenges the status quo and drives cultural change. She is the founder of acclaimed social enterprises TUSHY, THINX, and WILD. Agrawal is also the author of the best-selling books 'Do Cool Sh*t' and 'Disrupt-Her.' Her innovative approach and impact on business and culture have earned her recognition as one of Fast Company's "Most Creative People" and a "Young Global Leader" by the World Economic Forum. Agrawal's ventures have been featured in prominent media outlets, and she is a sought-after speaker on entrepreneurship and creative marketing. What are you most passionate about with your current work? Music has become a potent outlet for me during my transition out of my marriage. It allowed me to express my deepest yearnings, desires, frustrations, and realizations about love. Collaborating with Happie Hoffman and Gene Evaro Jr. was an incredible journey of trust and vulnerability. We explored the fusion of dance music and heartfelt lyrics to create an album that shifts energy and promotes healing. Links:

• Her new album: "It All Exists" by Soul Gaze - https://open.spotify.com/album/5QEuZWv6WTXrtWAJDp6xtS
• TUSHY Bidets - https://hellotushy.com/
• Thinx Period Underwear - https://www.thinx.com/
• WILD 100% gluten-free Italian restaurant - http://eatdrinkwildbk.com/
• Book, "Do Cool Sh*t: Quit Your Day Job, Start Your Own Business & Live Happily Ever After" (2013)- https://www.amazon.com/Do-Cool-Sh-Business-Happily/dp/0062366858
• Book, "Disrupt-Her: A Manifesto for the Modern Woman" (2019) - https://www.amazon.com/Disrupt-Her-Manifesto-Modern-Miki-Agrawal-ebook/dp/B079P32W22
• Medium: https://medium.com/@mikiagrawal
• Contact: Jon Bleicher, jon@prospectpr.com

About Creative Innovators Podcast

In the Creative Innovators podcast, innovators and creators share stories of how they create and reimagine. In each episode, host and change agent Gigi Johnson interviews a different changemaker from a wide range of industries, including creative industries, software, education, sciences, and social innovation. The guests share their stories of how they became passionate about innovation and how they have transformed their businesses and communities. Https://creativeinnovatorspodcast.com

Gigi Johnson: 00:00:00

So we are catching you in Austin, Texas, right now. In the time period of you launching your first album.

Miki Agrawal: 00:00:06

Yes, this is my very first album in the history of ever. I've ever kind of harness that medium outside of deejaying. I mean, my twin sister and I have deejayed for the last decade and love bringing music together, setting a vibe, setting a tone, bringing songs, you know, in love with beats and a vibe that is just like super high, high vibe.

:: 00:30:12

Miki Agrawal

But we just we haven't . . . I haven't had really a music making side of me yet. And I think it took, you know, like everyone writes their best albums and they're going through a breakup and going through sort of really challenging moments, I think, or like the most incredible moments falling in love and stuff like that. So this album was inspired by sort of the uncoupling of my 11 year marriage and just sort of the wild lounge of love and how love exists in many forms.

:: 01:04:18

Miki Agrawal

And it's all okay. It's all beautiful. I wrote all the songs I brought my beautiful friend Happy in, who's an incredible artist and creative, And then and then we co-produced it with ah, with Gene Navarro Junior, who's like a fourth generation musician, and he co-produced it with me. And it was a phenomenal experience to work with these two to me, legends in the music Populous.

:: 01:32:08

Gigi Johnson

And it's not the high pulse beat. It's very much a mellow-ish narrative.

:: 01:38:03

Miki Agrawal

Yes, No, we have a dance. We have a dance album and we have an acoustic album. So you have.

:: 01:43:18

Gigi Johnson

To . . . I think I've just listened to the acoustic album. Okay, So I missed the dance album.

:: 01:48:22

Miki Agrawal

I can listen to that. The dance. The dance is the most important. It's like the most textured one because I do all the spoken word in it and it's sort of like it's got deep beats that would highly recommend you go back. And that's the main album. And then the acoustic is sort of like the sweet sort of singer songwriter vibe.

:: 02:04:01

Miki Agrawal

But the dance album has both me and Happy kind of going back and forth and spoken word and singing with a super kind of eclectic beats. And it just makes me want to get up and dance.

:: 02:18:00

Gigi Johnson

So we'll come back to the music because that I find is incredibly important, and especially at this interesting time in music, to be coming in as a . . . as a new ish musician, deejaying, being a whole nother wonderful side of this. But did you do music when you were a young person?

:: 02:35:17

Miki Agrawal

I did. I played. I mean, I was in a few musicals growing up and I was in a play at Cornell. I was like, I kind of somehow got cast as a lead in a play at Cornell. So I've . . . I’ve definitely . . . and then, you know, I've done music classes like playing flute and clarinet. And my sister played the piano and we grew up like with a lot of music around us.

:: 02:59:10

Miki Agrawal

But it wasn't like a thing. I never sang and never necessarily wrote music, So this was the first real opportunity to . . . just music poured out of me . . . I wrote 17 songs during this uncoupling process, and it was really just just pouring out. It was . . . it was an amazing experience.

:: 03:19:01

Gigi Johnson

So where did you guys grow up?

:: 03:21:16

Miki Agrawal

Montreal, Canada.

:: 03:23:18

Gigi Johnson

Montreal. Oh, okay.

:: 03:25:06

Miki Agrawal

Yeah. French Canadians. I used to speak English like this with a French accent, and French is my first language, so my song Do Less, Be More. The second song on the dance album starts with French French words. But yeah, French is my first language. Grew up in Montreal, super French, part of Montreal, Arkansas. And yeah, that's where I spent the first 18 years of my life before going off to college.

:: 03:50:16

Gigi Johnson

Now, you . . you went in the direction of not just business, but almost hyper-entrepreneurial business. Were you the type of teenager who is trying to sell your friends stuff or is starting small businesses when you were young, or what was the teenage you?

:: 04:07:17

Miki Agrawal

My twin sister and I and my sisters, I mean, we were just we were just we were just athletes. So I played . . . we both played soccer at the highest level. And we just kind of . . . we played soccer, field hockey, badminton. We just, you know, ran track. We did all the sports. And I think sports is the greatest teacher for team were getting up when you know you fall down like if you lose a ball how to like get back in the play really quickly these are all lessons entrepreneurial lessons that were taught and ingrained in the world of sports in me for since I was four years old.

:: 04:41:08

Miki Agrawal

So yeah I think I . . . entrepreneur not so much. We definitely entered science for projects and definitely like were inventive. And I think one thing that my parents gifted us with is just the ability to debate at the dinner table. You know, I think, you know, my mother's from Japan, my father's from India. They grew up in French, Canada and Montreal in North America.

:: 05:05:10

Miki Agrawal

So we had so many different perspectives on every subject matter at the dinner table. And so and there was never like, this is the way it is. It's like this is the way we look at it. It's where they look at this, where everyone looks at it and they come from totally different perspectives. And so we were just we grew up debating around the dinner table all the time.

:: 05:25:02

Miki Agrawal

And I think that debate led us to be like, why is it done this way? We could be done better. Could it be done differently versus just accepting the way things are? And I think when you grow up in a very insular kind of world where it's like just one way, then you often are like, Well, this is the way it is in my culture, this is the way it is in your culture different, Whereas I grew up with like multicultural family that were very opinionated and a very kind of French part of Canada, where French and English were also in debate.

:: 05:53:15

Miki Agrawal

And so there was just debate everywhere, which I think lent itself to being kind of disruptive in thinking.

:: 06:00:13

Gigi Johnson

How did your family end up in Montreal?

:: 06:05:03

Miki Agrawal

go straight back to Japan in: 1974

:: 06:25:06

Miki Agrawal

So was it I'm doing a two year master's program in Ottawa. They both they both went to school and got into Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. And he was really like to India. And after his two year master's program. But they met, fell in love within seven months they were, you know, married and then they had three kids in one year.

:: 06:47:21

Miki Agrawal

And my dad's very first job he got was in Montreal, Canada. And so we all moved there. Well, they moved with my older sister and then they had my sister, my twin sister and me thereafter. So they were Irish triplets. So I have a third sister is 11 months older and then me and my twin sister.

:: 07:08:16

Gigi Johnson

So a not risk averse family.

:: 07:13:04

Miki Agrawal

That's right.

:: 07:14:03

Gigi Johnson

Because they will grow up in households that, you know, do safe things, have a safe job, do what you're supposed to do, you know, play their cards right and going to college. But you did go to Cornell, a relatively traditional program in what business?

:: 07:34:01

Miki Agrawal

Yeah, I mean, my parents were still quite traditional, even if they traditionally married each other. The Hindu Buddhist, Asian philosophy of, like, hard work. You know, studies come first, like, you know, listen to your parents, like obedience is important. And so there's not like we debated that, but they also had very like strict, you know, Asian family rules, too.

:: 07:58:09

Gigi Johnson

So high expectations that.

:: 08:00:12

Miki Agrawal

at would have cost my parents: 1500

:: 08:26:17

Miki Agrawal

And my older sister went to Harvard and we went to visit her in Boston. We’re like “freedom from our Asian parents! This is amazing!” And so we decided to apply to Ivy League schools as the only option our parents gave us. And Cornell was the very first school we looked at. And the one thing that we found challenging about Boston and Harvard was that it was in a big city like Montreal.

:: 08:50:23

Miki Agrawal

So people just scattered, went off the city and just did the city things. Whereas Cornell was an Ithaca, New York, where there was nothing else to do but be in the school and have a lot of school spirit and do school thing. And there was like fraternities and sororities and clubs and sports programs and all the school things to do.

:: 09:08:07

Miki Agrawal

And so we just decided my twin sister, I decided to go to Cornell. We were recruited there for soccer, Division one, and we just loved the school and love the energy, love the esthetic of it. It was like on Beautiful Gorges. They say it's because gorges it was like all the waterfalls and it was nature nestled in nature.

:: 09:26:06

Miki Agrawal

So we said yes to the school, even if we forgot that it was freezing cold like Montreal, let's go see.

:: 09:31:12

Gigi Johnson

But you were used to the freezing cold. A bit from Montreal.

:: 09:34:06

Miki Agrawal

Exactly. 100%. Yeah.

:: 09:37:13

Gigi Johnson

So soccer or you were had dreams of being then a professional soccer player.

:: 09:42:12

Miki Agrawal

That's right. And so we both played one at Cornell, my twin sister, unfortunately had three ACL reconstructions in college, you know, and which is sad. I luckily didn't tear my ACL or my knee. I didn't hurt my knees in college, but I had chronic ankle injury, but I still got to play all four years in college. And then when I graduated, I did try out for the New York Magic, which was the basically the the feeder team to the New York power.

:: 10:08:07

Miki Agrawal

It was professional level. It was professional league, but it was sort of the farm team for the power. And so it was sort of like getting yourself ready to go, go. Truly, the big leagues. And yeah, it was sort of like going up against the best of the best. It's kind of like in football or in a college football.

:: 10:25:01

Miki Agrawal

It's like there's this one level which is amazing. But then when you go to professional level, it's a whole different, different league. And so somehow I don't know how, but I mean, you know, I was yeah, so I made the starting lineup of the New York Magic soccer team and was ready to quit my job at investment banking.

:: 10:43:05

Miki Agrawal

It's a whole story around that. But yeah, but then first game fresh, The first game of the season with the New York Magic juked out a player, crossed the ball, striker scored the back of the net, but then a defender came and took out my knee and I heard the telltale snap and I tore my ACL first game in my of my New York Magic career.

:: 11:07:11

Miki Agrawal

And so that put it to a halt. And I had to do the physical therapy. I stayed on my investment banking job so I can still get the . . .

:: 11:16:19

Gigi Johnson

So you were at Deutsche Bank interning or you were . . .?

:: 11:19:06

Miki Agrawal

No I was in the I was in the investment banking analyst program. I got a job as investment banking analyst at Deutsche Bank. And working the real estate investment banking division. And yeah, it was like, you know, cutthroat AF and 100-hour weeks the people, you know, slept under their desks. It was like that. But then I found out that the . . . well, 9/11 happened, which was the crazy aha moment in my life, and that I was 22 years old and, you know, my subway stop every single morning was to World Trade Center.

:: 11:48:23

Miki Agrawal

And I was supposed to be there when the planes hit, but it was the first and only day in my life. I slept through my alarm clock. And it was one of the craziest days of my life. My girlfriend Laura and I usually meet up and we would, you know, get tea at 2 World Trade. And then she would go to the floor where she was working at Aeon. . .

:: 12:11:19

Miki Agrawal

And I would walk across the street to Deutsche Bank. And 9/11 happened. 700 people at Aeon and Cantor Fitzgerald died for the two big companies in the . . . above the 100tj floor. And two people in my office died and I was certain my friend was dead. But she had gone down to get coffee right before the first plane hit. So it was like a crazy, crazy, crazy time in our life.

:: 12:35:13

Miki Agrawal

And it was then when I that was like the big realization, which is the, you know, the quote that's been etched into my brain, which is the mystery of life, is that you never know when it's going to end. And the time was absolutely now to make it count. And that's when I was like, I want I wrote down three things I want to do with my life.

:: 12:52:18

Miki Agrawal

The first was to play soccer professionally, The second was to make movies, and then the third was to start a business. And then like, off I went on my adventure.

:: 13:02:08

Gigi Johnson

So investment banking, you closed that door and then went into filmmaking?

:: 13:08:09

Miki Agrawal

Yep. I started working at a film production company in New York, but then I kind of got pretty tired of the 9 to 5 because I wanted to play soccer as well, and it was really hard to have a job while doing it. So I was like, okay, going to go freelance. I heard there was a thing to do freelance where you can work on sets and you can work on commercials and music videos, but you didn't have to necessarily have a 9 to 5.

:: 13:29:08

Miki Agrawal

You'd be on set for 12 hours, would crush it, and then you'd be able to have your other time to do whatever you wanted. And it was then though. So then I basically tried out for the New York Magic again, made a team again, made the starting lineup again, but that in a semifinal game tore my other ACL.

:: 13:47:08

Miki Agrawal

And so it was sort of like, this is a universe telling me that's not in.

:: 13:52:14

Gigi Johnson

Your body screaming at you a bit too.

:: 13:54:10

Miki Agrawal

Yeah, it's like you're dying. So I basically, you know, worked in the film industry and was kind of thinking about my next move was going to be. And it was then when I realized that on sets of commercials, the music videos, they had these tables called craft service tables where you order it, where you just basically get food and it's like snacks.

:: 14:17:15

Miki Agrawal

And it was like M&Ms and pigs in a blanket and pizza and just crap. And I would just eat that because free was my favorite price and I was still paying off my student loan debt.

:: 14:27:23

Gigi Johnson

It’s lower calorie when it's free.

:: 14:29:12

Miki Agrawal

Also, it's just like right And so and so I decided so basically every night would eat this crap and I would go home with a horrible stomach ache and realize that I was like, Wow, like, what is happening to my stomach? Like, it's so in pain all the time. And I finally just Googled it and realized, wow, like the massive processed food industry, the hormones, antibiotics, pesticides, bleach, sugar, like the coloring, all this crap, the preservatives that was in food, those making people become intolerant to foods and like the gluten intolerance and the intolerance to this and dairy and all the different intolerances are going up.

:: 15:12:08

Miki Agrawal

And the biggest time I would have these horrible stomach aches and bloating and pain was when I was eating pizza. And that's when I had my big aha moment looked into the pizza industry. I was like, Wow, the pizza industry is a $32 billion industry. Americans eat 100 acres of pizza every single day. There's a huge opportunity here to disrupt it and create the alternative pizza concept using gluten free flours and hormone free cheese and local seasonal toppings and organic when possible, and really enter the first like alternative pizza world natural world organic world farm to table world.

:: 15:47:08

Miki Agrawal

This in: 2004

:: 16:07:09

Gigi Johnson

You were still in New York, then you were.

:: 16:09:13

Miki Agrawal

Huh?

:: 16:09:23

Gigi Johnson

I was living in Brooklyn. Living, living.

:: 16:12:01

Miki Agrawal

Living in Brooklyn, New York, with my sister. Yeah. And so it was just one of those things where it was just like, wow, there's just like a huge opportunity to disrupt. And basically that's when, you know, I was like, I'm going to raise the money. I'm going to build New York City's first alternative pizza concept and I'm going to make it happen.

:: 16:31:04

Miki Agrawal

And it was just like and actually somehow I don't know how, but the Food Network followed me for five months as I was raising money for the business for the first time ever, Raise Money Day. My life as I was like doing taste testings as I got the lease for the space on the Upper East Side, I beat out the Subway franchise to basically get this little space.

:: 16:54:02

Miki Agrawal

It was a shitty nail salon and nobody really wanted it. That's why I got it. I did dig out a full basement, full on dig it out, which was to convert this entire pink nail salon into a restaurant space. Bill, how did.

:: 17:07:06

Gigi Johnson

You make that living for yourself while you were doing this? Because you were doing this from scratch. You were you were you sofa surfing, were, you know, no burning for a year. I was credit cards or.

:: 17:20:18

Miki Agrawal

No, I was still freelancing in the in the world, in the film world. And and that's when I got to, like, again go on set for 12 hours, make the money that I need to make, and then and then work in my restaurants and go in the film and work such like freelance was great because I got to really do both in my book.

:: 17:40:19

Miki Agrawal

rote the book Do Cool Sh*t in: 2013

:: 18:04:21

Miki Agrawal

And it was really it really shared the story of like raising money for the first time, getting press for the first time, getting a location, figuring out how to even come up with the idea and like creating the meeting of the minds where I had a bunch of friends from different walks of life come together at my friend's like, you know, loft apartment.

:: 18:23:06

Miki Agrawal

I borrowed my friend's apartment. I had my friend cook the pizza and then I had different walks of life come, come in and tear apart my business plan on my idea, or just come up with a bunch of ideas together. And that's when my whole business came to be. And was sort of like rung rung out was in those these meetings of the minds.

:: 18:42:12

Miki Agrawal

And so and then raising money like.

:: 18:45:15

Gigi Johnson

Some of your biggest mistakes you made at that first business that was your own.

:: 18:51:05

Miki Agrawal

Was getting pressed too early was a huge one. I was so excited. I literally like mapped out a route of all the media outlets in New York City and rode my bike and to each one of these media outlets to drop off these little boxes that I made. With the help of my friends. We made these like nondescript boxes I've got for $0.25 at like the local U-Haul store or whatever.

:: 19:16:09

Miki Agrawal

And then my friend's dad gave me 55 bags from his hospital. He was working as a doctor at a hospital and basically gave me 50 I.V. bags. And then I wrote this little note with the help of my friend Richard and his friend who helped write the copy. It was like the perfect food will be arriving shortly until then, don't eat anything.

:: 19:39:22

Miki Agrawal

And my restaurant, my my restaurant was called Slice. The perfect food Slice was the name of the restaurant, the perfect food was it was pizza, It was healthy, was organic. It was sliced up in little sushi like bites on a sushi plate to the way we delivered the pizza. It was like bite-sized. It wasn't messy. It was a perfect food and pizzas actually was considered a thalamus was a brain food because it has all the food groups, which is why people love pizza so much because it if satiated your entire body.

:: 20:05:15

Miki Agrawal

You've actually done right. And it was present in a beautiful sushi way. And so it was called slice the perfect food. And so in these boxes we wrote the perfect food will be arriving shortly. Until then, don't eat anything. And then on the I.V. bags, I put a sticker on it which said, Should the lack of sustenance prove to be debilitating?

:: 20:28:20

Miki Agrawal

Please insert tube into vein. And so it was the idea was like, don't eat anything until the restaurant opens. If you need sustenance like uses I.V. bag. And it was just this funny box that my, you know, adverts and friends and I worked on and made and basically said that I basically rode my bicycle and brought them to all the different media outlets and they all found this box to be super entertaining versus like a picture book.

:: 20:57:20

Miki Agrawal

They just pile up on their tables and no one cares about versus it's like really creative, bizarre box. And so they all wanted to come in. So New York Times, Daily Candy, Timeout New York. Every major food outlet covered . . . the Food Network, like I said, followed me for five months. And then the show Recipe for Success came out on the Food Network.

:: 21:18:18

Miki Agrawal

We had lines out the door. They made a mistake saying that the restaurant was gluten free. We had gluten free pizza, which is why we decided that we got so many phone calls from people saying that we're I'm gluten free, I need this food. I want your pizza, that we decide to make a gluten free pizza and then now our restaurants are 100% gluten free because it's just.

:: 21:38:20

Gigi Johnson

The restaurants are still open under the name of Wild.

:: 21:42:05

Miki Agrawal

Yeah. So in: 2013

:: 22:03:20

Miki Agrawal

Every ingredient want them to be wild and coming from the farm and different and different shapes and sizes. And that's what makes it as organic and healthy as possible. And so we I was I graduated from Slate, the cutesy slate and Wild was like from the wild. And it was like more it felt more elevated who I was at that point.

:: 22:22:12

Miki Agrawal

And and we completely redid the spaces and my restaurant while they're still still there today if you go to eat drink wired.com or go to at eat drink Wild on Instagram, you'll see a bunch of food porn on there, which is really delicious food images.

:: 22:37:02

Gigi Johnson

Now, do you still own it? And did you need to sell a part of it for growth because you ended up getting to and you know, a nice number of stores?

:: 22:46:06

Miki Agrawal

Yeah, we we got to four locations but we ended up closing two during COVID, which was really hard. But yeah, I mean, think about it. Almost 18 years later, my restaurant still stands in New York City. That is almost an impossibility. Like, that doesn't happen. So I'm very, very, very, very proud of our forward thinking ness and my partnership with my my business partner, Walid.

:: 23:08:19

Miki Agrawal

He joined the company. We're equal partners. We have investors for the business that we've been slowly paying back over time. And it's just been a labor of love. And it's like I was just there last week. I was in New York with my friends and it just so fun to still see, like this space where I, like went to Home Depot and bought the sheetrock and taped it with my, you know, like with Andrew at the time and poured concrete in the basement, 5,000 pounds of concrete.

:: 23:33:15

Miki Agrawal

My ex-boyfriend, like, just like all the shenanigans that took to make that place possible is still there. Like the guts of the spirit of the place is still there, which is so cool.

:: 23:43:20

Gigi Johnson

It's so hard you to it.

:: 23:46:01

Miki Agrawal

And it's in the heart of the West Village, which is amazing because it's like, you know, Jon Bon Jovi, one of his favorite restaurants. Paul McCartney's there all the time. Meryl Streep is there. It's like the Who's who are constantly in the restaurant because they're all super, super conscious of health. But they also eat healthy, eat pizza. And so it's it's just an epic location in the West Village of York City and on Hudson and Hudson Street.

:: 24:10:21

Gigi Johnson

So there's been a lot written about your work. Anything from then opening that the store in Las Vegas and the sport for that. And then there's been a lot written about your explosion with thinks in terms of growing the business starting the business, some of the chaos around the business. I love to frame that in the learning modality of what caused you to since you already had a line of restaurants to start another company.

:: 24:43:10

Gigi Johnson

And then what did you learn from that when you started then TUSHY? Because you've had start some people go from a related business to a related business and you kind of are kind of thematic, but you really are not in related businesses. How have you decided when to start the next and then what did you learn from the prior businesses and mistakes not to make again or things to think about when you're now launching a new business?

:: 25:13:06

Miki Agrawal

Yeah, well, so THINX is born out of necessity as well. I mean, you know, like having period accidents constantly running from one restaurant to another and was just such a pain in the butt in general. But then, you know, it was at a family barbecue when we were in a three legged race championship. My twin sister and I were defending our three legged race championship title and like running together, tied to each other.

:: 25:34:12

Miki Agrawal

And my sister started her period in the middle of the race. And that's when the idea for things came to be was when we were running up the stairs, still tied to each other and she took off Her bathing suit bottoms are washing them and we both kind of had this like eureka moment of like, Oh my God, wouldn't it be amazing if you can create leakproof underwear that didn't stain and you can wash an out and they're reusable.

:: 25:55:12

Miki Agrawal

I didn't have billions of tampons and pads and up in landfills which take 500 years to decompose. Like what if there is a way to create a beautiful pair of underwear? Then we brought in our third friend Antonia to really come and build it with us, and we spent four years developing the technology and putting it into the world.

:: 26:10:19

Miki Agrawal

And then, you know, turns out everyone has period problems. If you're a woman and you have accidents constantly and the idea of like you're in the middle of a soccer game, you can't be like your ref, stop the game. I got to go change my tampon or my older sister who's ahead of next surgeon and she can't be like, while someone's face is open to be like they stay open while I go change my tampon.

:: 26:28:22

Miki Agrawal

All of our underwear are completely soiled because she has to continue through leaks and issues. And so, like any situation stuck in traffic, you're at a recital. The number of ballet dancers who have called me and thank me have seen me and hugged me that it can't please. And they spit tampon shoot out of them on a stage, you know, and they just get so there's so much there's so many things that happen to so many women.

:: 26:51:10

Miki Agrawal

Every scenario giving a presentation, you're taught whatever it is, to have something that gives you strong back up on your period was just a duh. But initially, from a cultural perspective, bleeding my underwear like that sounds weird. I would never bleed to my underwear or very.

:: 27:06:15

Gigi Johnson

Retro because that's of course, what you know, our parents. I'm older than your parents. Parents? Parents did. Yeah. Is that you would be washing everything out. There wasn't the whole concept of a disposable system. Yeah.

:: 27:20:10

Miki Agrawal

That's right. And so there was just, like, this whole to me obviousness, but it was still this we're discussing this of it because people were so used to tampons and pads and so that they were just like, oh, like you wash them out, you bleed in your underwear. That sounds weird. And so there was a lot of stigma associated with how we presented the product.

:: 27:39:23

Miki Agrawal

I think what was so amazing about my experience with my restaurants to then building things was like the thesis around how do you change hearts and minds and trying something new that would otherwise have a healthy pizza? I'm a Jewish pizza kind of guy. Like I would never eat healthy pizza. I like blaspheme and you know, and so like, how do you get people to lean in to something where they would naturally lean out to?

:: 28:03:16

Miki Agrawal

And, you know, when I stood outside my restaurants for years handing out little pieces of pizza, you know, getting people to try and taste it, you know, cutting up little pieces to be like some and pizza, like healthy pizza, like no one would stop. They would keep walking like gluten free pizza. Like no one would stop it. I would see yummy pizza and he would stop.

:: 28:22:03

Miki Agrawal

And I'm like, okay. And then while they're eating it, I bet, did you know it was healthy? You know, it's full of is gluten free and organic and local and seasonal And they would say, wow, that's amazing. Let me get a menu. So I got to teach people as they were trying something like health Yummy. But like, so they learned to meet people where they are.

:: 28:39:17

Miki Agrawal

And I learned from that experience, like not to try and see things that were too scary or too academic or too clinical or medical or whatever. But to meet people where they are and to do it artfully. Beautiful pizza bites, beautiful restaurant space, appetizing experience that got people to lean in versus lean out the right language thing. How do you say something in a way that gets people to lean in versus lean out?

:: 29:05:07

Miki Agrawal

So took all those lessons and four things where it was like period underwear. It was like, how do we tell the story where people can lean into something totally different that their parents and grandparents were not doing, but their great grandparents, maybe the rags or whatever. But it wasn't like no one knew about bleeding. It was completely new.

:: 29:24:05

Miki Agrawal

And so it was like, how do you use artful esthetics? How do we use accessible, relatable language? How do we, of course, have the best in class product that makes you feel sexy and beautiful, doesn't feel like a pad. It feels like you're throwing a regular pair of underwear and it actually works. You actually forgot that you had your period, that you were just, Whoa, I forgot that I have my pure This is a revolution in that I can go about my day and not actually have it be a period, but be a comma and keep moving forward.

:: 29:51:05

Miki Agrawal

Right. And so there was like such a revelation for women when they were using it for the first time, and then it just blew up. We had this controversy with the New York MTA where they basically banned our ads from the subways because they said, you can't say period in the in the subway in the most progressive city in the world, New York City.

:: 30:08:16

Miki Agrawal

And so we basically turned lemons into lemonade and and went after the MTA and said, hey, you know, because they said, what if a nine year old boy sees these ads? And we were like, we want every one.

:: 30:19:18

Gigi Johnson

Of the girls.

:: 30:20:06

Miki Agrawal

Out there. They can. Yes. It's like then it's you know.

:: 30:23:11

Gigi Johnson

It's not just his sister and mom, you know, and that they should.

:: 30:27:14

Miki Agrawal

Get married because of it. Yeah.

:: 30:29:16

Gigi Johnson

Because absolutely. Because you've done so many other things as well. And so you're you're definitely known for things. You then became you you before thanks or early in thinks became an author and came back to being an author. Yeah what why and then what did you bring from your entrepreneurship into being an author and how did writing help with the rest of what you were doing?

:: 30:56:13

Gigi Johnson

How does how does being a book girl help with the rest of it has a tie together?

:: 31:02:15

Miki Agrawal

And then, of course, writing twisty, which I'll get into after and after that, but basically Do cool Shit was written and the subtitle is Quit your Day Job, start your own business and live happily ever after and this book was written because I'd read all these books like Richard Branson's book, like Losing My Virginity or, you know, it's basically about, yeah, it's about basically like his story of building Virgin Virgin Records, Virgin Galactic, Virgin Airlines, his whole Virgin story and reading, you know, Tony Shea's book, Delivering Happiness and all these epic entrepreneur's books.

:: 31:39:04

Miki Agrawal

But it was like it never they never gave me the blueprint. Or then I would read these entrepreneur books like How to Go, you know, like from step zero, step one, but then like by page three your eyes are crossed because it's so heavy and so thick and it's a business book and you're like, “Ah!” So like, I wanted a fast page-turning book that told me about the stories, but then gave me takeaways.

:: 31:59:10

Miki Agrawal

Like what email did you write to get your first . . . You know, meeting of the minds to happen? What email did you write to get your first investor to say yes, even meeting with you? What did you even . . . how did you get investors to even write your first $25,000 check, let alone the first million versus like the Richard and Tony talk?

:: 32:15:22

Miki Agrawal

I raised my first million dollars. Be like, what? How what did you say? Like what? You have no experience in it. Like, what do you do? And so there was like this this huge like ha like there is this gap of like storytelling and then the how to like I wanted a storytelling book that taught me how, but in a way that it felt like a story that I wasn't like, Oh, I have to like, sit and read this business book.

:: 32:37:17

Miki Agrawal

So it kind of merge the two, which is why I do go ships like the successful book to this day that people come up to me and told me I became entrepreneur because of this book, which is really cool. My second book, Disrupt Her, came out after really building Thinx and then starting TUSHY. And in between I had this like crazy, another controversial experience where I realized that people who are trying to disrupt the status quo, you know, have takedown experiences.

:: 33:07:19

Miki Agrawal

And it's like very, very real that society wants to maintain its form. And anyone trying to shift society forward and move society in a new way will get rocks thrown at them, like try to get like taken down tall poppy syndrome at its finest, like all the different things would happen in order for them for society to stay status quo.

:: 33:31:11

Miki Agrawal

And I think I didn't really I wasn't prepared for that to have society be used against me for self-gain as I was growing THINX exponentially. So I had a really, really painful, challenging experience building my company. We don't have a ton of time to talk about it, but I wrote a whole Medium post about it and we'll.

:: 33:51:23

Gigi Johnson

Put that in the show notes. The Media post Yeah. Update In the Medium post you've added as well or Yeah, good piece of the puzzle to have in the show notes so some people can sort of see the nuts and bolts of what happened and your response to it.

:: 34:05:09

Miki Agrawal

Yeah, because it was like a wild time. I was pregnant when this crazy, this crazy story came out that was so wild and false and it just unbelievable that people would just want to see someone who's trying to support women. They just wanted to see them take it taken down and just didn't care about checking with me to be like, Hey, is it true?

:: 34:25:05

Miki Agrawal

Like no press called me to be like, Is it true? Like it was just like a takedown piece? And I was just like, wow, It was a wild, wild time. And I was pregnant with my son Hero at the time, and I was so scared of having miscarriages. And it was just, you know, so I kind of was just like, you know what?

:: 34:40:13

Miki Agrawal

When they go low, I go high and I'm going to stay high. I'm going to, you know, like I had a whole storyline with my board, which is a whole other story. They want to control the business because of the money. And I didn't realize more money, more problems that it will protect myself well enough. And so they use this crazy storyline as a reason for me to step down as CEO.

:: 34:58:23

Miki Agrawal

It was just a wild, wild, wild, wild tale that, you know, I could go on for. But so I stepped down and I basically focused on just like making sure my baby was okay and I had my beautiful baby. What was so magical about this experience? And like, the universe always gives us the gifts that we need. For me, it was really around being able to be a mom for a year before I really wrote Disrupter the first two months my baby's birth, actually while he was sleeping and breastfeeding and passed out online, I would just be typing because I had so much to say about the world of disruption and and like the world

:: 35:35:11

Miki Agrawal

that we live in and how society was created by people. No different than your I. And it's set the way it is, like this is the way it is in society. That's like who says, like, who decided that this is the way it is? Like, let me disrupt the way we think about money, power, business, like friendship, career, like just the sticks and stones of feminism, patriarchy and, and and just like all the things that we kind that keeps us in line as a society because we're so scared to also be told we're wrong.

:: 36:07:21

Miki Agrawal

Or maybe, you know, like in back in the day, if you're ostracized from a community, you could die. And so people want to stay in line because they don't want to be ostracized from society. But for me, because I grew up with parents who let me debate and question everything, I grew up building things and got so much pushback and a lot cheerleading and, you know, people being like, Oh my God, your products have changed my life.

:: 36:31:08

Miki Agrawal

I can eat pizza for the first time in my life and feel good. And I wear your product and I feel like I feel liberated and I feel I can do anything. And with with TUSHY, like, it's changed my life because I don't have hemorrhoids or UTIs or yeast infection or fissures or itching or, or I have a, you know, an and it just feels healthy.

:: 36:47:12

Miki Agrawal

You want to go on a date like TUSHY using a bidet has changed my life. And I realize it's, you know, I can.

:: 36:52:09

Gigi Johnson

Handle a lot of that. But similar to period products being being a a past century product that I travel in other places and going to go the Middle East and here's a wand and a hose what they do to have a wand and a hose. But here you've really stepped up. I mean, you are running essentially three enterprises right now, right?

:: 37:13:03

Gigi Johnson

You're running…you’re running TUSHY. You're still part of the restaurants, but you’re running TUSHY You're a parent and you're a musician.

:: 37:20:21

Miki Agrawal

How you know in writing my and wrote my book while she wrote all of that. Yeah. Mm hmm. Yeah.

:: 37:26:06

Gigi Johnson

And presently you're juggling three sets of things. Well, as we come to the end of the conversation, what would you suggest other people take away? Because we don't even have time to even talk about TUSHY. We'll put links in the show notes. Well, let.

:: 37:40:02

Miki Agrawal

Me let me say one thing about TUSHY, and I think it's really, really us to really talk about it because, you know, like I built things and had that, you know, the huge like us realization of like, wait a minute, there is a better way to manage my period in that, you know, it's like it's the same thing with TUSHY when I started TUSHY similar thing instead of periods.

:: 37:58:11

Miki Agrawal

the toilet, we're back in the: 1800

:: 38:19:07

Miki Agrawal

And I'm just going to go there and do the thing quickly and run out as if I was never there. Meanwhile, not asking wait a minute, is there a better way? Is there a cleaner way? Is a healthier way? Is there a way that makes me feel more confident if I'm going on a first date or if I just want to feel clean?

:: 38:33:20

Miki Agrawal

It's like it's it's a night and day difference using a bidet than using dry paper. I mean, the analogy I always give is imagine if you jumped in your shower and and, and like didn't use water, didn't turn your water on and just use dry toilet paper to clean your dirtiest bits like people would call you crazy.

:: 38:52:09

Miki Agrawal

Right? So like, why are we doing that to the dirtiest parts of our bodies? And I think it goes along with the book disrupter and things and everything I've been through where it's like we just follow what we've been doing without questioning, Wait, I have chronic UTIs or have chronic hemorrhoids, have chronic itching, or have chronic dingle berries.

:: 39:11:05

Miki Agrawal

If I'm a guy with a hairy but, you know, whatever, it's just like, could there be a better way? You know, the answer is yes, but there's so much shame and stigma and and like associated with that, there's no, no innovation in it. And so for me, like my whole book of writing disrupter and do cool shit and creating products that are seen as unmentionables or initially like, you know, leaning out, like leaning into those things can actually create massive transformation.

:: 39:40:22

Miki Agrawal

You can actually build big businesses, both companies are nine figure businesses. You can actually like shift culture and support the planet. TUSHY has saved over 5 million trees to date. We're getting flushed out. We have funded the build out of clean toilets for 60,000 families in India. We have funded recycling and resource we forestry projects all over South America thinks has helped millions of girls go back to school with menstrual products.

:: 40:02:18

Miki Agrawal

I mean, we are agents of change through a disruptive business like that is possible too, right? So the whole idea of writing the books and the music and everything that I'm doing is to make you question and ask yourself, Wait a minute, and let me touch on the music for a second. The music was written when I was going through my divorce and like, really like in the uncoupling process, I wrote 17 songs and they poured out of me and it was really not about like sad Woe is me.

:: 40:30:10

Miki Agrawal

It was like the massive leap, Beautiful Me of Love, and that Andrew and I had a successful decade long marriage. The last couple of years were challenging, but all in all, we had an incredibly successful marriages, and sometimes marriages have a beginning, a middle and an end. And just because you went through a divorce, it doesn't mean it was unsuccessful.

:: 40:48:17

Miki Agrawal

It means it was perfect for its chapter. I'm in a new chapter now and like, what is this? What does love look like? What am I yearning for? Like, what am I calling in? Like, what do I crave? Like, what didn't work? What was I sad about? What was I screaming about? Like, what was but what was I so like?

:: 41:04:14

Miki Agrawal

Like about right? Like, what is love? Like, love is everything. And so like this, this whole the arc of the music is actually tell is a story of my entire life through the lens of love. But it's really about disrupting like, you know, like the uncoupling process in love, still magical and beautiful even in that process, you know.

:: 41:25:09

Gigi Johnson

So I to make we've covered a piece of the waterfront. We readily could talk with you for four or 5 hours. You've done so much anything as we close out that that you want to make sure we mention. And then if you if people want to reach out to you, who would you like to reach out to you?

:: 41:45:03

Miki Agrawal

Yeah. I mean, first don't go to TUSHY.com. It's a very graphic anal porn site. Go to hell, Go to Chicago if you want to check out what we're up to. We just launched a new, beautiful website. I'm so proud of our incredible team. And if you want to ask me questions or talk to me, it's always on Instagram at Mickey Abra Wall on Instagram.

:: 42:04:01

Miki Agrawal

It's the best place to find me, to ask me questions, to talk to me. If you want to see all of my projects, including my books and my companies and all my staff, go just Miki Agrawal, AECOM and check it out. And yeah, I think those are the things type of people who I want to, you know, I'm hoping to, you know, listen and reach out or people who are really in there questioning of their own lives and the disruption of their own lives and the updating and upgrading and next chapter entering in and and not wanting to follow the status quo and wanting to start and create whatever it is in their lives, whether

:: 42:42:16

Miki Agrawal

it's music or business or a book or anything that they're like, I'm an imposter. Like I'm an I haven't done any of those things before. And yet I have given my heart and soul in all of them without and just saying like, cool. Like if someone doesn't it, they won't listen to it and I'll do it for myself and I don't care what anyone else thinks.

:: 43:02:11

Miki Agrawal

And in the meantime, I'll have ups and downs and takedowns and come ups and people loving me and people not liking me and all of it's okay, too. So, you know, I think that's just the way to think about creation is just creating for the sake of creation, not to liked. Because you need something, the world that you want to see that there's this burning yearning desire to have it out in the world.

:: 43:24:04

Miki Agrawal

That's enough to see it in the world.

:: 43:28:06

Gigi Johnson

So thank you. And I'm going to go listen to your dance tracks for the afternoon and appreciate you being on this show. Thanks a lot.

:: 43:34:23

Miki Agrawal

Thank you so much.