703 episodes
- Four childhood friends pooled $30,000 in a Chicago apartment to make wet
wipes for men. Everyone told them dudes would never use them. Thirteen
years later, Dude Wipes does close to $220 million in retail sales, runs
on a team of just over 20 people, and is Mark Cuban's best-ever Shark
Tank investment. They bootstrapped almost the entire way, none of them
had retail experience, and they built a nine-figure business in a
category the legacy players weren't even watching.
In this interview, Ryan Meegan breaks down how they carried a business
to $40 million with just three people, the guerrilla news-jacking
playbook that made Dude Wipes a worldwide Twitter trend for pennies, and
why brand marketing they never tried to measure was the smartest bet
they made.
What you'll learn in this interview:
• Why four founders with different skill sets and zero egos never
clashed in 15 years
• How they got their first national retail deal with Kroger through pure
cold-calling hustle
• The Shark Tank bidding war that landed Mark Cuban's check - and why he
calls it his best investment
• Why going viral and trending #3 worldwide on Twitter barely moved
sales - and why they kept doing it anyway
• The Isaiah Crowell NFL moment: how a $3,500 deal turned into ESPN,
Howard Stern, and national press
• The Amex float strategy: how putting every PO on a credit card funded
growth without big raises
• Why they refused the VC and Shopify-loan path most DTC brands take -
and how they built bank credibility instead
• The line-extension trap: why deodorant and body wash failed, and how
Covid refocused them on flushable wipes
• How three people ran the business to $40M before hiring 15 more
• Why they took private equity from TSG while keeping control - and the
billion-dollar goal behind it
If you're bootstrapping a CPG brand, trying to build awareness without a
war chest, or wrestling with whether to chase line extensions or go
deeper in your core category, this conversation will fundamentally
change how you think about brand, capital efficiency, and staying in the
game long enough to win.
SAVE 50% ON OMNISEND FOR 3 MONTHS
Get 50% off your first 3 months of email and SMS marketing with Omnisend using the code FOUNDR50.
Start here → https://your.omnisend.com/foundr
SAVE 95% ON XERO FOR 6 MONTHS
Simplify your business finances with 95% off Xero for your first 6
months. Start here → https://foundr.com/xero
WANT TO GROW YOUR BRAND WITH META ADS?
Join the Foundr Operators Waitlist → https://foundr.com/operators
HOW WE CAN HELP YOU SCALE YOUR BUSINESS FASTER
Learn directly from 7, 8 & 9-figure founders inside Foundr+
Start your $1 trial → https://www.foundr.com/startdollartrial
PREFER A CUSTOM ROADMAP AND 1-ON-1 COACHING?
→ Starting from scratch? Apply here →
https://foundr.com/pages/coaching-start-application
→ Already have a store? Apply here →
https://foundr.com/pages/coaching-growth-application
CONNECT WITH NATHAN CHAN
Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/nathanchan
LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanhchan/
CONNECT WITH DUDE WIPES
Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/dudewipes/
Website → https://dudewipes.com/
Ryan's LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-meegan-07971859/
FOLLOW FOUNDR FOR MORE BUSINESS GROWTH STRATEGIES
YouTube → https://bit.ly/2uyvzdt
Website → https://www.foundr.com
Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/foundr/
Facebook → https://www.facebook.com/foundr
Twitter → https://www.twitter.com/foundr
LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/company/foundr/
Podcast → https://www.foundr.com/podcast 701: Trieu Doubled His Brand To $200K/Month In 5 Months - Whilst Still Working Full Time
02/09/2026 | 28 mins.Trieu became a dentist because he liked working with his hands and helping people - he got into UCSF's dental school as the very last student accepted, number 81 in a class of 81. Then the job started breaking his body. Aching neck, aching back, and mentors around him retiring early from surgeries.
So he tinkered with some prisms until he could sit up straight and see like he was looking through a microscope, filed a patent, and built Hero Loops - ergonomic loupes that do the job of a $20,000 wall-mounted unit. He launched it one month before the pandemic hit. He still practises dentistry full time while running the whole thing.
In this episode, Trieu gets honest about the brutal timing of launching right before Covid, the years it took to crack marketing after nailing the product, and how he thinks about building - including a psychology framework he borrowed straight from dentistry.
What you'll learn in this interview:
The origin story: how his own neck and back pain, plus watching colleagues retire early from surgery, drove him to prototype an alternative to the bulky $20K microscopes on the market
Why he left dentistry income on the table for product income - and the scaling logic behind it: a product has quality control and consistency, while a dental chair only makes money when you're in it
The painful timing lesson: launching one month before the pandemic, doing $20K in the first month, then watching competitors use the downtime to copy his product - and why he still says launch before it's perfect
The plateau most founders hit: stuck at $5-6K a month with a great product because "you can be the best dentist, but if nobody knows about you, they won't come"
The single change that broke the plateau: a new website and platform that did $50K in its first month
How defining what "success" actually looks like - and watching that target keep moving from $50K to $100K to $200K - helped him appreciate the milestones instead of always chasing the next one
The core ads skill that drove the growth: learning when to turn ads off, when to turn them on, and when to increase budget - and building the confidence to do it
The "five Ps" framework he uses to judge whether a product will sell - pain, profit, prestige, preservation, and pleasure - and how Hero Loops hits several at once
Why static ads outperform video for his analytical, detail-oriented audience - and how live customer-reaction reels hook attention at the top of the funnel
What's next: bringing manufacturing in-house for faster delivery and expanding worldwide beyond the US - and the licensing and distribution hurdles that come with it
If you're a professional with deep expertise in a field, sitting on a product idea but unsure whether you can build something outside your day job - this episode is for you. Trieu's story is a grounded reminder that the product is only half the battle: learning to market it is the skill that actually compounds, and you don't have to quit everything to start.
SAVE 50% ON OMNISEND FOR 3 MONTHS
Get 50% off your first 3 months of email and SMS marketing with Omnisend using the code FOUNDR50.
Start here → https://your.omnisend.com/foundr
SAVE 95% ON XERO FOR 6 MONTHS
Simplify your business finances with 95% off Xero for your first 6
months. Start here → https://foundr.com/xero
WANT TO GROW YOUR BRAND WITH META ADS?
Join the Foundr Operators Waitlist → https://foundr.com/operators
HOW WE CAN HELP YOU SCALE YOUR BUSINESS FASTER
Learn directly from 7, 8 & 9-figure founders inside Foundr+
Start your $1 trial → https://www.foundr.com/startdollartrial
PREFER A CUSTOM ROADMAP AND 1-ON-1 COACHING?
→ Starting from scratch? Apply here →
https://foundr.com/pages/coaching-start-application
→ Already have a store? Apply here →
https://foundr.com/pages/coaching-growth-application
CONNECT WITH BY TRIEU TON
LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/trieu-ton-3b7055122/
Website → https://heroloupes.com/
FOLLOW FOUNDR FOR MORE BUSINESS GROWTH STRATEGIES
YouTube → https://bit.ly/2uyvzdt
Website → https://www.foundr.com
Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/foundr/
Facebook → https://www.facebook.com/foundr
Twitter → https://www.twitter.com/foundr
LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/company/foundr/
Podcast → https://www.foundr.com/podcast700: (Solo) The Ambassador Strategy - How to get Famous People to Sell Your Brand for Free
31/08/2026 | 13 mins.I interviewed the founder of HexClad about a year ago. Cookware, pots and pans, not the sexiest category in the world. But their ambassador is Gordon Ramsay, one of the most famous chefs on the planet. And when he holds up your pan, you do not need to explain anything else. So here is the question nobody asks: how does a cookware brand get Gordon Ramsay without a massive ad budget or a celebrity agency on retainer?
Here is the answer: a genuinely great product and a strategy. The same strategy I have used to build Foundr for over a decade and that I apply to every brand I advise.
In this episode, I break down the ambassador playbook step by step so you can get respected people in your market to endorse your brand, even if you are starting with zero audience and zero connections.
Here's what you'll take away:
• The three pillars of a brand that breaks through: a genuinely great product, next level design, and ambassadors
• The "who's who in the zoo" framework for identifying the 10 to 30 people your customer already trusts
• Why the gatekeeper is not an obstacle but your way through the door, and how to treat them accordingly
• The follow up strategy that got me Barbara Corcoran after two years and how one question reframes "no" into "not right now"
• The Amazon coming soon hack that lets you offer distribution instead of asking for a favour, and how it landed me Tim Ferriss and Tony Robbins
• Why ambassadors are not a "later, once we're big enough" thing, and how each one you land makes the next one easier
If you have been assuming that big-name endorsements are reserved for brands with big budgets, this episode will show you exactly why they are not, and give you a concrete list to start working through this week.
If you're loving this solo series, I'd love to hear your feedback. Email me directly at nathan@foundr.com — I read every reply. Hope you enjoy it.
SAVE 50% ON OMNISEND FOR 3 MONTHS
Get 50% off your first 3 months of email and SMS marketing with Omnisend using the code FOUNDR50.
Start here → https://your.omnisend.com/foundr
SAVE 95% ON XERO FOR 6 MONTHS
Simplify your business finances with 95% off Xero for your first 6
months. Start here → https://foundr.com/xero
WANT TO GROW YOUR BRAND WITH META ADS?
Join the Foundr Operators Waitlist → https://foundr.com/operators
HOW WE CAN HELP YOU SCALE YOUR BUSINESS FASTER
Learn directly from 7, 8 & 9-figure founders inside Foundr+
Start your $1 trial → https://www.foundr.com/startdollartrial
PREFER A CUSTOM ROADMAP AND 1-ON-1 COACHING?
→ Starting from scratch? Apply here → https://foundr.com/pages/coaching-start-application
→ Already have a store? Apply here → https://foundr.com/pages/coaching-growth-application
CONNECT WITH NATHAN CHAN
Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/nathanchan
LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanhchan/
FOLLOW FOUNDR FOR MORE BUSINESS GROWTH STRATEGIES
YouTube → https://bit.ly/2uyvzdt
Website → https://www.foundr.com
Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/foundr/
Facebook → https://www.facebook.com/foundr
Twitter → https://www.twitter.com/foundr
LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/company/foundr/
Podcast → https://www.foundr.com/podcast- Tom Gozney hit rock bottom with addiction at 21 and spent nearly a year
in a South African rehab facility. What saved him back home wasn't a
business plan - it was a brick oven he dug into his garden, because
cooking pizza for his friends was the only way he could socialise
without alcohol at the centre of it. He noticed something: after a few
weeks, people stopped bringing beer and started bringing toppings. That
shift in behaviour became the entire thesis of the brand. Fifteen years
later, Gozney is valued at over $100 million, did $8.5 million in the
first four hours of its Dome launch, and forged the portable pizza oven
category from scratch.
In this interview, Tom breaks down why he redesigned a fully tooled
product weeks before shipping after watching a Steve Jobs documentary,
how a synchronised Instagram launch with 30 influencers generated 27,000
signups, and the imposter syndrome that made him underprice his own
ovens for years.
What you'll learn in this interview:
• Why he says he's selling a shift in human behaviour, not hardware or
pizza
• How he got his first oven sale by leaflet-dropping a restaurant with
genuinely terrible branding
• The £5K loan from his mum that funded the first fibreglass mould and
website
• Why he scrapped a fully tooled steel design weeks before shipping -
and retooled it in silicone in a month
• The Richard Branson exchange that put an oven on Necker Island and
fuelled the Rockbox launch
• The synchronised 30-influencer Instagram drop that drove 27,000
signups before a single unit shipped
• How the Dome launch did $8.5M in four hours, crashed the site, and
triggered death threats over a pizza oven
• Why going straight to big factories doesn't work before you've proven
volume - and how middlemen killed his early margins
• How he rebuilt his entire supply chain by recruiting a board and COO
who'd done it in outdoor grilling
• Why imposter syndrome made him underprice for years - and what finally
gave him conviction to charge premium
If you're building a physical product brand, wrestling with
manufacturing and margins you don't yet understand, or scared to price
for the value you've actually built, this conversation will
fundamentally change how you think about brand, product obsession, and
building something bigger than yourself.
SAVE 50% ON OMNISEND FOR 3 MONTHS
Get 50% off your first 3 months of email and SMS marketing with Omnisend using the code FOUNDR50.
Start here → https://your.omnisend.com/foundr
SAVE 95% ON XERO FOR 6 MONTHS
Simplify your business finances with 95% off Xero for your first 6
months. Start here → https://foundr.com/xero
WANT TO GROW YOUR BRAND WITH META ADS?
Join the Foundr Operators Waitlist → https://foundr.com/operators
HOW WE CAN HELP YOU SCALE YOUR BUSINESS FASTER
Learn directly from 7, 8 & 9-figure founders inside Foundr+
Start your $1 trial → https://www.foundr.com/startdollartrial
PREFER A CUSTOM ROADMAP AND 1-ON-1 COACHING?
→ Starting from scratch? Apply here →
https://foundr.com/pages/coaching-start-application
→ Already have a store? Apply here →
https://foundr.com/pages/coaching-growth-application
CONNECT WITH NATHAN CHAN
Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/nathanchan
LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanhchan/
CONNECT WITH TOM GOZNEY
Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/tomgozney/
Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/gozney/
Website → https://www.gozney.com/
FOLLOW FOUNDR FOR MORE BUSINESS GROWTH STRATEGIES
YouTube → https://bit.ly/2uyvzdt
Website → https://www.foundr.com
Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/foundr/
Facebook → https://www.facebook.com/foundr
Twitter → https://www.twitter.com/foundr
LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/company/foundr/
Podcast → https://www.foundr.com/podcast - I got on a call recently with a founder in our community who had everything right. Amazing product, clear gap in the market, strong differentiators, all the boxes ticked. But she had no sales. So I asked her to walk me through her days, and she said she was doing seven hour days posting on TikTok, Instagram, running Facebook ads, trying everything. And I told her that was the problem right there.
Here is what I keep seeing: the number one reason new brands fail at marketing is not a bad product. It is scattered focus. Every guru on the internet is telling you to be everywhere, and when you try to do everything, you become mediocre at all of it.
In this episode, I make the case for doing less and break down the exact framework I gave her: one product, one channel, one message, to one customer avatar.
Here's what you'll take away:
Why scattered focus, not a bad product, is what kills most new brands, and how to spot it in your own business
The one product principle: why obsessing over a single hero product beats spreading yourself across ten SKUs
Why there is no wrong channel to start with, and how to pick the one to go all in on
The hard lesson I learned building Foundr on the back of one channel I did not actually own
Why most founders underprice their product, and how pricing can be the difference between a campaign that scales and one that never does
Why the company that can afford to spend the most to acquire a customer wins, and how your unit economics decide that fight
If you have got a great product but nothing is sticking, this episode will show you why, and give you a simple four step filter to focus everything down to what will actually move the needle.
If you're loving this solo series, I'd love to hear your feedback. Email me directly at nathan@foundr.com — I read every reply. Hope you enjoy it.
SAVE 50% ON OMNISEND FOR 3 MONTHS
Get 50% off your first 3 months of email and SMS marketing with Omnisend using the code FOUNDR50.
Start here → https://your.omnisend.com/foundr
SAVE 95% ON XERO FOR 6 MONTHS
Simplify your business finances with 95% off Xero for your first 6
months. Start here → https://foundr.com/xero
WANT TO GROW YOUR BRAND WITH META ADS?
Join the Foundr Operators Waitlist → https://foundr.com/operators
HOW WE CAN HELP YOU SCALE YOUR BUSINESS FASTER
Learn directly from 7, 8 & 9-figure founders inside Foundr+
Start your $1 trial → https://www.foundr.com/startdollartrial
PREFER A CUSTOM ROADMAP AND 1-ON-1 COACHING?
→ Starting from scratch? Apply here → https://foundr.com/pages/coaching-start-application
→ Already have a store? Apply here → https://foundr.com/pages/coaching-growth-application
CONNECT WITH NATHAN CHAN
Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/nathanchan
LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanhchan/
FOLLOW FOUNDR FOR MORE BUSINESS GROWTH STRATEGIES
YouTube → https://bit.ly/2uyvzdt
Website → https://www.foundr.com
Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/foundr/
Facebook → https://www.facebook.com/foundr
Twitter → https://www.twitter.com/foundr
LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/company/foundr/
Podcast → https://www.foundr.com/podcast
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About The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan
Hear the stories, learn the proven methods, and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan.
About the show:
For over a decade, The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan has been a leading entrepreneurship podcast for open-book conversations with, by, and for founders. Whether you're starting, building, or dreaming about your business, The Foundr Podcast is where you can access experienced founders who've been in your shoes to learn their proven methods, lessons from failure, and inspirational stories.
Past guests include Emma Grede, Mark Cuban, Neil Patel, Kendra Scott, Alex Hormozi, Trinny Woodall, Tim Ferriss, Sophia Amoruso, Simon Sinek, Tony Robbins, Amy Porterfield, Ed Mylett, Michelle Zatlyn, Reid Hoffman, Scooter Braun, Dany Garcia, Marc Lore, Ariana Huffington, Pat Flynn, Lewis Howes, Jordan Harbinger, and many more.
About the host:
Nathan Chan is the CEO of Foundr and the creator of The Foundr Podcast. Chan literally started from knowing nothing. He was just an average guy working in a 9-5 job he utterly hated. He knew nothing about entrepreneurship, nothing about startups, nothing about marketing, and nothing about online or how to build a business. In the past decade, Chan's built Foundr into a global leader in entrepreneurial education, helping tens of thousands of aspiring entrepreneurs start and scale their businesses.
Need help with your business?
Visit foundr.com/foundrplustrial to join a global community of entrepreneurs, gain access to proven strategies, and fast-track your business growth confidently.
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