Ep 8: The Power of Resilience: Surviving the Brink of Business Collapse with Greg MacDonald

There are a lot of entrepreneurs that try to launch a brand and fail. There's not many that have made it as big as our guest today. He's been featured in almost every major publication. He's won awards, he's got products all over the world in retail, online. Relatively new company. This happened fairly quickly, but it was not easy. There was a lot of hiccups, there was a lot of problems. There was a lot of moments that he's going to describe in this episode where he was days, hours, or moments away from complete failure, where he, maybe by accident or divine intervention or just a little bit of luck, stumbled upon some changes that were able to not just help him survive but to thrive.

It's going to be a great episode. You're going to love this. There's a lot of great storytelling in here. There's a lot of great anecdotes and tactical information that we can take back for ourselves. Listen to the end. Here we go.

Hey, everybody, and welcome to another episode of The Growth Gear podcast. I'm your host, Tim Jordan, and I think that we make mistakes as entrepreneurs by assuming that other entrepreneurs or other founders or other business leaders have it great, especially the folks that aren't in the business world that are around me. They think, "Oh, it must be so great to be a business owner," because they see the cool stuff. They see the stuff on social media, they see the accolades, they see the successes. But what they don't see is behind the scenes. When you dig in behind the scenes, you find that every success really came with a lot of blood, sweat and tears, usually, a lot of stress, a lot of semi failures and problems and hiccups and speed bumps along the way.

So today, our guest is one of those guys that has a lot of accolades, a lot of success. He's the founder of Bathorium, which is North America's top clean bathing brand. Their products are in over 5,000 retail locations, which is huge. He was just awarded the Forty Under 40 Award from one of the top Canadian business journals. He has products online, offline, in retail, in places like the Four Seasons. He's been featured in Forbes, Cosmopolitan, Oprah Daily, Good Morning America, The Ellen Show, and others. A lot of great stuff going on here. A lot of great obvious success, and well-deserved success, now that I've gotten to dig in a little bit. But he's going to tell some of the behind the scenes and some of the lessons that he's learned getting this business to where it is now. So welcome, Greg. Glad to have you on the podcast.

Hey, thanks, Tim. Appreciate the intro.

So was that a good intro? Is there any other big flex that I left off?

No, you nailed it. You nailed it. That's great.

Awesome. And a little bit of a sneak peek. Greg has been filming some episodes. He is the host of a new documentary that's going to be coming out later this year on one of the top and most well-known streaming platforms, that actually dives into some cool topics related to his brand. So good luck with that, and congratulations on the future success of that. That's another cool project. We'll be able to talk about that maybe a little bit towards the end of the episode. So tell us about the genesis of Bathorium. How did it get started? How did the idea come up? And tell me about the first growth phase.

The Bathorium is actually the result of an amazing experience that I had in Italy. So in 2014, I was actually a bartender in Toronto, and at the same time I was a bread maker. So I had a little bakery called Wellington Breads, where I made fresh bread rolls. And then I'd bring them to work at Shangri-La, and I'd sell them to the guests and the residents at the bar. And what's key to note there is I always wanted to over-delight them. I always wanted to make sure that they weren't just getting a white sourdough or whatever. I'd make sure it would be a brown bread with toasted molasses and like a caraway seed crust outside or something more than they were expecting.

This was some bougie bread, then?

Yeah, I was doing bread before bread became cool in the pandemic. So I was doing that. And I loved the feedback, because I craved them coming down and being like, "Oh my god, Greg. Best bread ever," whatnot.

So September 2014, I actually left to Europe, and I backpacked around at 22 years old, no, 24 years old. Backpacked around, and I ended up in Italy at this house rental where this woman, she rents out different rooms to travelers. And so I checked in. And I was snooping around, getting the lay of the land. It was in Positano, right on the coast there. And I checked in, and so I was snooping around. And I found her bathroom, and she had this gorgeous claw foot bathtub overlooking a window, and then next to it was shelves and all these different little jars of oils and salts and flowers and whatnot.

So I was smelling all of them. And she came in and she said, "Can I draw you a bath?" And at that point, I had been in hostel showers for the past few weeks, so I was like, "Yes, I would love a bath in this beautiful, beautiful area." So she starts drawing this tub, and she's adding in different salts and different clays. And she had this block of cocoa butter and she's shaving it under the hot running water. She had goat's milk. She was adding all these incredible ingredients into the bath. And I got into that tub ... And I always refer to that moment as my Oprah aha moment because I got in and I was like, "Oh my God, this is the most decadent bath that I ever had in my life."

I hadn't experienced anything like it, because before that, I was just using whatever salt I could find at Shoppers Drug Mart. And as a kid, I was using my mom's Oil of Olay pearl beads. So I didn't know there was a world of baths that could be decadent and my skin felt amazing; the water was silky, and it was incredible. So anyway, she came in two hours later, she's like, "I have to pee. You need to get out of my bathtub." And so I got out and I was like, "This is the most incredible bath." She wrote down everything she used that day. And that was my founding moment of Bathorium. So I came back and I closed the bakery down and I said, "I really wanted to create these bath bombs that gave that same experience I had in Italy, because I want people to experience what this was." Because at that point, I didn't think there was anything else like it on the market. And turns out there wasn't. So that really was the founding moments of Bathorium 10 years ago.

So give me an example of what went wrong. I always love this question, because some of the biggest mistakes that I made or the biggest screw-ups or just the bad luck are things that helped me in my past find the biggest pieces of success later on.

Totally, yeah. I mean, A, our first company was called The Bath Bomb, and our website was ilovemybomb.com. And all the Shopify entrepreneurs out there will understand that our Shopify URL internally, you can't change. Today, it's still ilovemybomb.shopify.com. So, in saying that, we had spent all the little bits of money we had as actually branding everything as The Bath Bomb with this logo, and ilovemybomb.com. And our branding was super ... didn't match the product. So our branding was like, "Blow up your tub. Time to get blown up," really aggressive marketing. But we were like, "This is not a relaxing bath vibe."

[inaudible 00:07:16] love it.

Yeah. And The Bath Bomb initially, going in, was like, "Well, people are going to want that. It's a bath bomb. They're going to lean into that bomb culture." But unfortunately, that was the year also around the Boston bombings had happened. So it was just a really horrible time all around to have a bath bomb company. So we had that for about six months, and then we closed it down and then relaunched in early 2015 as Bathorium, and then really pivoted everything from let's get away from all this [inaudible 00:07:48] all this aggressiveness.

One funny story really quick is we actually put stickers on our shipping box that had a funny, cute thing on it. And during the bath bomb era, one said, "Don't open it, it's a bomb," which we thought, marketing geniuses, will go viral on this thing called Instagram, which was just [inaudible 00:08:06]-

Yeah, but UPS and FedEx didn't think it was funny?

They didn't find the humor in it so much. So that was also a big learning curve, when we got some interesting phone calls from the border. So yeah, I think starting off when you're 24 years old, I didn't have the experience of running the e-commerce business. Shopify was new in general, and it was new to me obviously. And selling and transacting and shipping products, everything was new. So mistakes came along the way, from like things would freeze and explode in mailboxes, or we didn't ... We actually started to get some poly pouch packaging.

We went with a producer that did coffee bags, so it was a very different ... a bath salt essential oil is very different than an acidic coffee grind. So our bags were being eaten through from our products leaking out of them. And they were exploding because the pressure of the reaction side of the products were actually blowing up bags. So we learned a lot along the way. Again, not saying that it was right, but it made me really much more resilient and more proof-testing a lot of things we do today.

Now, the term that you used when we were chatting earlier was ... Where is it? I have to find it. But you said, "Running on passion, prayer and credit card debt."

That's right, baby.

I think that I can definitely relate to that. Probably most people listening can relate to that. But when you get through that and you find that next level of success, which you obviously have, I always find it interesting to retrospectively look back and think like, "What were the lessons I learned? What was something that I was able to take away from that experience that's valuable now?" Or, "What was I doing even unknowingly and accidentally that helped me get through that?" Tell me some of the main takeaways that you now have in your arsenal, some of that knowledge or wisdom from that stressful upstart period.

When I say passion, and I still have it 100% today, it's the passion for my product and the passion for the industry I'm in. So I take a bath at least six days a week. And I know my product was impeccable 10 years ago. Even just right out of the gate, I knew this bath bomb was going to be different than any other bath bomb. So what really got us through, and it's what I encourage more entrepreneurs to do, is don't look so much for opportunities, like, "Oh, there's a great trend that's coming up. Let me jump on this business or service." Find something that you really actually believe in, that you actually love, that you want to change about something in the world, so minute or so minuscule, or on a bigger, grander scale.

But you have to have passion, because when there's days where things aren't going right or you have zero sales in those early days, you have to believe in yourself that one day, you pray one day the right person is going to try this product and they are going to have an amazing bath. Then that's really where our success will start to drive from. And there were a lot of days where, I'm not even religious, I'd pray that someone would try our product that would put it on Instagram and it would go viral, or they would get it into their local store. Or eventually one day we'd get to a big box store, a big hotel or a big spa chain. And I think that passion is really what kept me going and prevented me from giving up.

And it also gave me blinders where some days when I'm making ... We didn't have insurance. We told people we had insurance if they asked, like retailers. We didn't have insurance. We couldn't afford that, but in the early days ... And I don't recommend that. But what I'm saying is when you find these obstacles that come your way, they could definitely happen, but if you believe that new product is good enough to actually make that difference and to be something in this very cutthroat market, find a way to get it out there. Give it to people. Get people trying it. Talk about it. And then tell everyone about it too.

So I was very vocal, like, "I started this bath bomb company. Would you like to try a product?" Or just networking myself and marketing myself was huge early on when you had nothing else to market. We didn't have ad spend. You couldn't exhibit at fancy trade shows or beautiful booths or whatever. All you had was myself and my Facebook account that you were posting ... my mom's Facebook account that she'd be sharing our posts on.

But really, that community and the people around you that support you, they need to believe in you as well. So if they see that you have a passion, they see that what you're doing, you're not going to give up, you're not going to be like, "Ah, it's hard. I'm bleeding," they're more likely to invest in you financially. But they won't be likely to invest in you emotionally. They're going to share your posts, they're going to tell their friends, they're going to buy you as Christmas gifts. They're going to do whatever because they want you to succeed. And that's crucial.

So I really believe that entrepreneurship is very divided by a lot of people that are mission-driven, some people that are actually out there to make change and they have something that they really believe in. And then there's the opportunist entrepreneur; nothing wrong with it, but there are people who are looking more at, "What's a great hole that I can fill using these amazing trends or data sets that I can use to make a lot of money?" Again, nothing wrong with that, but they're two very different ... When you talk to an entrepreneur about their founding story and those challenges, they're often very different stories, because we're blinded a bit by we think that our product is the greatest.

Well, talk to me a little bit about being the greatest. And then the context or the angle that I'm thinking about is this paralysis by analysis, right? Because you told me that this whole business idea started with this spiritual experience in Italy, with shaving off cocoa butter from the block. You can't necessarily replicate that exactly in something that you send in the mail, right? So did you ever run into a situation where you had a hard time launching because you felt like it wasn't ready?

Yeah, I think in the early days, the products I knew were better than what's out there. And I knew that they were unique enough that they were going to stand out. And that they did give me a version of that experience that I had in Italy where the water was milky that didn't contain any synthetic fragrances and colorants or gumball rings or unicorn poop-smelling fragrant oils, all that stuff that was in bath products heavily in 2014. So I knew it was different enough that it was going to make a mark and it was going to appeal to people like me who really cared about their bath rituals so they wanted to enhance their bathing rituals.

And that was the marketing that we really told around that, too. So our social media, our marketing, our website, everything really tried to give you that same experience. So it's an extension of the product itself. You were being welcomed into Bathorium's world. So Bathorium's world is very clean. It's fun, it's approachable. We love wine on weekends and tea during the day. It's this lifestyle where you can have these intimate moments with yourself in the bathtub. You romanticize your alone time. Self-care isn't just a hashtag. Self-care is a practice that you really can lean into and you can find new parts of yourself that ... You can touch the different parts, you can meditate.

Some of my best ideas in the last 10 years have come to me being in a bath. And I'm sitting there being like, "You know what'd be really cool?" And I'm jotting things down or screaming at Siri, because I don't bring my phone in the back, like, "Write this down," because I find sometimes when I'm disconnected, that's when I got to really think about, "Well, my customers are doing the same thing. What do they need right now? What would make this experience a little bit better, a little bit more different?"

And also, the first couple of years I used every single bath product I could find on the market, from Etsy, to the most expensive Jo Malone salts, to every Lush product, because I wanted to see, what is everyone else using? What is this experience that everyone else is getting? And how do I just make it a little better for you or for the experience, or what are they doing? And some of them, you're paying $65 for a thing of salt in the most gorgeous glass jar, but inside it's salt and [inaudible 00:16:22]. So you're like, "Okay, so people are buying this because they want it to look pretty in bathrooms, but they don't actually care about the experience, because they can't."

One of the products that I used to sell online were bath trays. I would sell these rustic bath trays that were super cool. And I don't know that anybody ever used one or took a bath; it was just for decor, because it sounded good.

So going through that phase, that upstart phase and you don't have insurance, you're maxed out on credit card debt, at what point do you now identify as being the end of that chapter? Was there a significant breakthrough? Was there a significant relationship that was built with a buyer where you're like, "Okay, that's what moved us onto the next chapter"?

Totally. So it actually came from Good Morning America, and that's the biggest fish you could go after. But I knew the success of this segment that was pretty relatively new ... It was called Steals & Deals. So it was Tory Johnson. She goes on and she finds cool brands, sells [inaudible 00:17:25]. But I knew the volume that happened on those shows. I had some friends who had done segments. So I had gotten an email, got a connection. So I pitched in 2016, so a couple of years after launch. And they said, "No, you're not ready yet. Not our thing." And I pitched every six months after, until 2018. Finally, they were like, "For the love of God, we'll give you a spot. We don't want to hear from you again."

"If you'll just leave us alone."

Truly, because we kept changing. Over these couple of years, we would release a new product line, or our Crush products came out, which is now our signature product, what Bathorium's regaled for. And then our packaging would improve. So I kept sending them every time a new change would happen or we'd get a very Canadian Best Health feature, I'd be like, "Hey, we're featured in Canada's top publication." You glorify it to them. Because again, it's the mentality; not the fake it until you make it. I don't love that. But it's the, you are your biggest PR agent. It's yourself.

Finally, in 2018, we got the segment. And that was really the beginning of Bathorium, what it is today, is we went online. We actually started scaling. So my parents lent me my first big chunk of money, lent me $100,000 on their line of credit. And that also I appreciate so much, because they reminded me of that every day. My parents don't have a lot of money, but they had enough line of credit, and they believed in me, because they saw my passion. And I knew that I couldn't fuck this up, that it was amazing. We did like $200,000-something in one day in sales.

And then that momentum really rocket launched Bathorium on to new retailers. We got picked up by Urban Outfitters in those days. Some hotels started creeping on, and then The Bay came on; little ... not little, but retail started coming on. And I would use the same thing. I'd go to another reach out and be like, "Hey, we're into The Bay now. We'd love to move to Holt Renfrew," or this hotel picked us up and then we'd go to a hotel in another city and say, "We've been proven successful at this hotel." And so that really was probably the most defining moment of that era of Bathorium. And we've done several segments since then. So we owe a lot to Good Morning America and Tory Johnson.

And I know a lot of businesses, a lot of founders, a lot of entrepreneurs don't hit that inflection point. A lot of businesses fail, a lot of them go down. But when things started to look up and you could look back at that period where it was much more stressful and you hadn't started finding those big successes yet, what's a piece of advice or a piece of wisdom that you could share now with people that might be in that phase as they're trying to get to that next big break or that next inflection point?

I mean, the advice of never give up sounds like a tragic poster, but it's also true. And I mean, there's also a point where I think if you've tried everything and your product or your business hasn't been validated in the market, maybe there's also talking to your network, like, "Do you guys think this is a good idea? Do you I think I should support that?" But if you're getting positive feedback and you truly believe in it, it will come. And you never also know when a big break just happened, but you have no idea it just happened.

And for us, it was also the Crush, which I had mentioned earlier, is crush.bathbombs. Number one product. 75% percent of our P&L statement is this product range. It was actually created by accident. So we were on a television segment, The Marilyn Denis Show, in 2017. And all of our bath bombs had dried. The humidity was really wonky that day in Toronto. We came in the next day to wrap all these bath bombs, but they all crumbled into dust, into a powder. And we were broke and we had no time to remake these bath bombs.

So I said, "Okay, let's order some bags on Uline, print off a Vista print like [inaudible 00:21:07]. We'll call it Crush, like crushed-up bath bombs." And we did. So we took all these bath bombs and we smashed them even further with a hammer, a chicken mallet, and then dumped them into these bags. So Marilyn Denis is on the show and she's like, "This is Bathorium." And again, it's the most horrific segment, but ... because again, these little poly bags. But people bought it and people kept calling and writing in being like, "Hey, I bought this product. I don't see it on your website anywhere. I want some bath bombs, but I really like this powder called Crush."

And that was also the most pivotal moment of Bathorium, because again, Crush is what Bathorium is known for today. So you also don't know when something that feels so terrible and tragic and career-ending happens, like losing all our product overnight, that it's actually the greatest thing that ever happened to you. So you have to also go look for those signs. And again, I hate the word pivot, but it's changing your trajectory really quick. So I could have said, "Hey, Marilyn, we're not doing the segment. No product. Can we book next month," da, da, da, da, da. Or we pay express shipping on Uline and get the product there really quick. So yeah, I think it's also listening to the universe.

That's awesome. What a cool story. That makes me think of all the accidents that came out of NASA, like the Silly Putty guy or the Michelin guy; accidents. But man, I can definitely relate to being in there with a hammer on the table crushing this stuff up, and you're trying to wing it with last minute Uline shipments and supplies, because man, that's what it takes. So Bathorium obviously started doing well. You started growing massively, you were having lots of successes. And then the world changed in 2020. How did COVID impact Bathorium, and what the heck happened during that period?

Yeah, so Bathorium in early 2020, that kind of Q1, we were on a really great growth spurt. We were launching new retailers rapidly. We got some IPL commitments from some big box retailers. Holts had given us a full commitment for all doors. The Bay had given us a commitment for a full Mother's Day spread. And when you get an IPL, they're saying, "We're going to give you this product," but it's not an official purchase, sort of this projection letter in some cases.

So we had started ramping up. I mean, we owned all of our own manufacturing. So we purchased all those raw ingredients, we're producing all the inventory, we're palletizing everything, we're launching new retailers, we're hiring more people. And then when the world changed on March 20th, we shortly then after got emails from all of our buyers saying, "Do not ship this order. We can't take it. Our stores are closing." But those pallets were already wrapped and ready to be picked up.

And as the weeks went by, or I'd say maybe days at that point, it got worse and worse. Our sales online just completely plummeted, because no one knew if they had a job or if they were going to get sent ... There was so much uncertainty that everyone backed off their laptops and stopped buying. And so I laid off all my staff. So it was just me and Mathieu. We were the only staff left, and we were doing whatever sales we could. And I was looking at all the numbers, the bills that were stacking up, because there was no relief [inaudible 00:24:20] there was no rent relief. Rent was still due April 1st, May 1st. Payroll still had to go out. There was a lot of big expenses that were coming our way. And we had invested everything into all this inventory. And we're 100% bootstrap too, so we don't have investors in the brand. So that all fell on my shoulders.

And emotionally as a human, it was very horrible, because I felt obviously unease for the whole world, what was happening and watching the news reports, and that in my own world, my parents are getting COVID, my business is crumbling. But people would ask, "How's Bathorium?" And I would always say, "It's good, it's great," because they've [inaudible 00:25:08]. I don't want them to have to worry about me. So I would just keep it all inside. And then finally, a few days before our big break, which I'll get to, I really decided, I just leaned in and say, "I have to tell people, or I'm going to not do well." So I ended up telling my parents and my closest friends that Bathorium is not doing well, and this is the state of where we're at. These are the bills, these are our P&Ls right now. And it's not looking good for us.

And what was that period of time from when things started shutting down to that point where you realized, "Oh, we may be completely screwed"?

Two weeks? Two weeks.

That all happened in two weeks?

Yeah. I mean, when you go from all your sales, everyday money's coming in, to all the taps just turn off, but the drains are still on, it happens so quickly. So that basically I said, "You know what? Let's turn things around. Let's pivot really quickly." Everyone's at home, everyone is on their phones, everyone is stuck with their family. And they can't travel, they can't go to work, they can't go to the gym. Where can they go? The bathroom. You can go to the bathtub and you can lock your door and you have a great bath.

So my staff that were laid off, and there was I think six of us at that time for management staff, I put on a contest. So I said, "Okay, guys" ... No one's getting paid right now. Everyone went on on SERP. I said, "Right now, what I'll do is you guys start DMing this script to everyone's who's got a blue check mark or everyone who's even remotely influential in their network, whether they're a popular baker, a great mom, share good tips, whoever it is. Send them this script and get them product. If they agree to product, they don't have to agree to give us a post or a shout-out. All I want them to do is try product."

So then my team of six, they went out and they scoured Instagram and they went to everyone from the Selling Sunset Crew to ... Kelly Ripa was getting a message from us saying, "We're Bathorium. We'd love to send you a package. Take care." And it was extremely successful. A, it was a good chance to send the last little [inaudible 00:27:16] money we had to my staff. But it was great because we ended up picking up all these amazing people that were like, "I'll try product." Because these celebrities were also like, "I'll try product." They were also not working on their phones.

So we ended up gifting hundreds of these packages out, and they all turned up on Instagram. They were all coming on Stories. People were like, "I tried this product, Bathorium company, bath bombs," ba, ba, ba. And it was like wildfire. And that, coupled with us starting to tell the narrative of baths are a great way to detox some toxic news cycles ... Leave your phone away. Have some alone time, warranting yourself in your bath, away from your kids, away from your family for an hour, for half an hour, whatever you can spare.

And we started telling that narrative, and we started offering free local delivery. We offered free local pickup. We really heavily hit that narrative home of ... We lowered our free shipping threshold. We did a combo offer where you got all of our best sets for 50 bucks, no tax, no shipping. We didn't make much money off it, but we sold like 20,000 per month of these kits. And it turned into wildfire. And I always have goosebumps when I tell this story, because one day I came to work and I had a lineup of people outside of my office.

And they were people from the local area, like, "I heard Bathorium's here." They all had their cash. And I was just in line taking cash and giving out product. We didn't advertise that we even had a storefront, that we even had a place. They just Googled us and found us. And they're like, "We need more baths [inaudible 00:28:40]. You made me fall in love with baths again." And we ended up going from that six staff laid off, everyone got brought back. We ended up at the end of 2022 ... No, 2022, I had 47 staff on payroll. We had tripled our ... We were only in 3,000 square feet. We went to 12,000 square feet. We opened up another facility in Toronto that did all of our third-party manufacturing for some of our product lines.

So the growth that we experienced was really amazing. So at the time too, I was working with Shopify, so I was also able to really help a lot of my retailers get online, because a lot of them, a lot of the stores and slots that we sold into, which made up a good chunk of our retail business, they didn't have online stores. So personally, I walked them through, I'd set up a Shopify store, I'd give them full exports of all of our products, a lot of other brands I knew they carried. I could work with those founders, we could create those Excel spreadsheets. We launched into several of those spas and salons online for curbside pickup and local delivery. So that also really created a nice momentum.

And as Bathorium started to generate all that income, we forgave a lot of our retailer debt. So companies that couldn't open, like a lot of our service-based providers, like the hair salons, the spas that could not transact, we forgave a lot of their debts that they owed to us before the pandemic, because they couldn't sell and we couldn't sell. And that forged some really amazing relationships that we have today. And that spread a lot like wildfire. It got onto the media and the news.

So I think the pandemic really spurred an amazing time for Bathorium and its growth sector. And it gave us a great exposure that we never would've had if it wasn't for that weird time in our lives. But do you remember Cheer? Remember that Netflix show, Cheer, like all the cheerleaders [inaudible 00:30:37]? They all got Bathorium products and they were all at home in the bath doing a cheer squad with Bathorium products. It's like I would've never reached out to the Cheer [inaudible 00:30:46]-

That was like the collegiate cheerleaders?

Yeah. They were talking about Bathorium.

Holy cow.

So it was a really cool time.

So a lot of companies obviously didn't survive crisis periods, whether it's COVID or something else. And it sounds like you were on the brink. You said you went from everything's cruising along to two weeks later, "Holy crap, dumpster fire, everything's toast." And it sounds like maybe a little bit of forward-thinking, a lot of luck, a lot of maybe relationship equity you'd built with your staff who were willing to come in and bust their tails without promise of being paid. It's a great story.

But looking back at that, what is maybe a piece of advice or some wisdom or experience that you could share that you learned during that period of time that you think is valuable for anybody going through crisis period, whether it be willing to pivot, be willing to ask for help? You mentioned a lot of stuff. What are some of the top things on your mind that are the big takeaways from that period?

Engage the people around you that support you, because those people are what saved my life. My aunt and my nephew ended up working for Bathorium for five years afterwards too. But during the pandemic, they were laid off their jobs. And I just said, "Hey, could you do this? I don't know if I can pay you, but we're starting to get some orders coming through." And so they came in. And even just talking to my network of other founders who were also struggling, hearing how they were pivoting, they heard how I was pivoting or how we were all just ... What new programs are coming out, what new subsidiaries? Whatever it was, I felt like my world wasn't caving in when I knew that other people knew my real reality. That was a huge game-changer for me.

So I would say if you're in a moment of crisis or a crossroads and you don't know what to do, is just talk to the people around you that support you, because A, for your own mental health, it's really a good thing, but also that insight and that help. And that they'll help you see things that you might not see yourself that are so obvious. And I think if I didn't have my strong support system, I don't know if Bathorium would be here today. I was, as you mentioned, very close to giving the towel, personally. I was also like, "Why do I even run this company? Why do I have all the stress when I'm also doing TikTok dances and making sourdough? And here I am trying to see if I'm going to have to claim bankruptcy at 29 years old. 30 years old."

So yeah, I think it's talking to people and talking to the ones around you, even putting on social media, even if you are open enough to share with people that don't even know you yet, but that might support your business or support your brand, even hearing from them fills my cup. Even today, again, we're much bigger now, but we still have hard days. What fills me up is my reviews. So I love reading Bathorium reviews, because people will output all these really great reviews, and it fills my cup. And that always goes back to my passion. 10 years ago, I had that same passion I have today for my product and for my business. And hearing that validation from people at that Shangri-La bar where I gave bread, that validation is what I crave; not validation, more like hearing how my product has impacted them. I love it. I'm serving them, like it brings them joy.

Not validation, but confirmation?

Confirmation, yeah, that's a better word. We'll edit out "validation."

It's like hearing that I've benefited or I've enriched or I've improved their lives in such a minute, minute way with a bath bomb or a loaf of bread or whatever it is, it fills me up. And it gives me a little bit more energy to do it all again the next day. And I think that's what really saved me during those moments of crisis.

It's tough, right? Because entrepreneurs, we have to, or maybe we feel like we have to put on a brave face and everything's going all right. You said it earlier, you don't like the term of fake it till you make it. I have insurance when I don't. And man, a lot of times we're close to being broke. And we don't want our staff to know it because they're going to go out and look for new jobs. We don't want our clients and our fan base to know that we're struggling, because we might be scared that they're going to dip out. They're not going to see us as a stable company.

So just thinking myself, those are some of the biggest fears I would have with making that decision: "Hey, do I just let the world know what's going on?" What about you when you're making that decision, "Do I call for help? Do I let people know what's going on," what was your biggest fear? What's the biggest risk you think that you felt like there was in doing that?

Yeah, I think it was I didn't want to be perceived as a failure, even though I hadn't failed. But that fear of failure is what kept me up at night. It was all that success that we experienced and then being like, "I failed." Even though you might not have failed, it's out of your control, that fear of failure is something that I really was scared of experiencing. I didn't want my parents to know that I failed. I didn't want to know my best friends that had ... constant cheerleading: "Look at Greg go. Look what he's built," to then go back to them and say, "I don't have any money and I don't have any hope of getting money."

And I think that was really what kept me up at night until I changed my thought, being like, they were with me when I had nothing and starting out. They'll be with me here. They're not in it because they want to ride in a nice car one day. They're in it because they believe my passion, they believe in me, and they believe in my business. So I can be honest and I can be transparent with them, and they are going to love me. They're going to support me, and they're not going to run away. I'm not their meal ticket. That's not what my friends are for. And I think if you do have friends that you are their meal ticket, I mean, shoo them away [inaudible 00:37:07].

Yeah, maybe they're not your friend.

Exactly. So yeah, I think it was like that fear is really what I was afraid of. And yeah, I'm happy I turned that corner.

I had a period of time where a business was failing and I didn't sleep for like seven nights. And some of you that have heard some of my other content, you've heard the story. But yeah, I remember being on my knees beside the bed, just crying into the mattress and telling my wife, "I'm letting everybody down. I'm going to have to lay off the staff. I'm going to have to tell my mom that I failed."

And I went into some deep research into that, because my doctor the next day, who my wife made me go to, is like, "Congratulations, you have raging clinical anxiety. Here's some medicine so you can actually sleep." And it's like, "Well, I can't have anxiety. That's for the weak. If you're depressed, you just need to smile." That was that mindset that I had. And what I learned later was that entrepreneurs are like seven or eight times more likely to have mental health struggles than the general population. And it's because we equate our business success with our personal success. If you're an employee at a corporation and that corporation has to make layoffs, well, you just update your LinkedIn and you go back on the market. But if you're the founder of a company that goes under, you've completely tied your brand and your own personal worth and what you perceive as other people's worth to that company. It's dangerous, it's terrifying. I don't know how to it, I don't know to alleviate that risk, but I totally understand what you're saying, and I'm sure that a lot of our listeners can relate to that.

When you decided that you're going to be transparent ... You've mentioned a couple things. You had family members that jumped in and helped for free. You had these other things happen. But what was one of the other most surprising outcomes of that that you never would've expected to happen that had a profound impact on your business? Maybe from the perception side, whether it be your employees, whether it be your brand followers, whatever.

The staff that I had back then are still with me today. So I think it also created personal bonds and personal relationships that today ... I mean, Elise and Mark are two of my directors in SalesOps. And they were with me, they were the ones that went months without pay that were DMing and harassing Kelly Ripa. From a business and the culture that we have here at Bathorium, there's a bond that can't be replicated with the ones that are closest to me because of what we went through. In that moment of listening to also their struggles, I was also their sounding board for what they were going through.

So I think that was also really special and something that it really surprised me with how close you can get with someone that you just hired off Indeed. And the next thing you know, you're [inaudible 00:40:02] crying because things aren't going great. Even today, as we go through our versions of difficult times or hard decisions or whatever, I think I'm just way more well-equipped mentally with myself on how I lead my team, on how I make decisions. But it's also the business is more resilient because of our channels.

Bathorium is so divided with how we can transact. So we have our online store, we do retail, we're in spa, we do private label for our luxury hotels. We're in high-end grocer, we're in export. We have another company called Bathologist that does mass market, so it's more like TJX and Macy's and whatnot. So we're so diverse that now if, and heaven forbid, there is another global crisis, we're set up that we really can meet the customers wherever they're at. So we're really trying to risk mitigate anything happening again where we put all of our eggs in those retailers that rescinded their POs in the pandemic. And we weren't strong online. We didn't even have a marketing team going into the pandemic. We had an intern who posted gifs on social media. So we didn't prioritize it. So I think now, having all channels fully strategized on how they transact, how we meet our customers, how we communicate to our customers, that's been a really great learning from the pandemic. And it's also something that just really made Bathorium a much stronger brand and starter company culture as a whole.

I love that. So I know we're going to run out of time, but I have to ask about this Soaked in Tradition. I'm curious about what it is, but I'm also curious why. And the reason I ask is because we, as entrepreneurs, we bounce around between a lot of stuff. But I know there's a lot of folk probably listening to this thinking, "Man, if I hit the big times, had this level of success that Greg had, why on earth would I be thinking about taking on another project? Does that become a distraction from my current success?" Give us the story of what it is, and then talk about why you felt like this is a worthwhile endeavor and important.

Sure. So Soaked in Tradition is going to be a series of episodes where I go around the world and discover different bathing and cleansing rituals and that culture's relationship with water and wellness. And I'm a very curious person. And I want to learn from different people and how they bath and how they look at bathing and what their connection is to the historic rituals of bathing and water and wellness.

So I first hosted this actually on LinkedIn. I went to France back last May, and I went to visit one of our suppliers who gives us all of our French gray sea salt in the Brittany region of France for one of our collections. So I went to go meet them. And I had an amazing time [inaudible 00:42:55] the salt fields, learning how the impact of our dollars went to support the community, looking at how these beautiful traditions of harvesting that salt was so ... These [inaudible 00:43:05], it's been in their families for hundreds of generations.

So I was like, "Okay, you know what? I'm going to put this on LinkedIn and call it Baths Abroad, where bathroom goes and discovers all of our suppliers globally," because we resource farms of coconut milk in Sri Lanka, and eucalyptus oil from Australia, et cetera. I'm like, "That's a really great content. And I'd love to learn how our dollars globally impact those different communities."

So I put it on LinkedIn. And someone from Flavor Films, which is our partner in Soaked in Tradition, reached out and they said, "Let's meet. Let's talk about this." And that's really what spurred this new idea of instead of going around the world discovering how Bathorium's supply chain has evolved, let's actually look at all these different cultures on how they bathe and what we can learn from that practice.

So in Japan, learning about how they don't bathe like how we bathe here in North America. They bathe nightly. It's habitual for them. They're using extremely hot water. They're looking at onsen water, where it's geothermally heated, it's full of minerals. It dates back to Shinto times and how the imperial family would bathe. And learning from people in all these different walks of life. I interviewed over 30 different people and bathed in over 40 different onsens and private baths and public baths. And I had such an appreciation for this culture and how they look at bathing and how we can take a lot of that practice back in North America. And that premiere is in the fall.

Being at 10 years, there's so much that Bathorium is doing. And we're growing rapidly and we've got amazing retail partners coming on board and new product lines, which is very fulfilling for me. But also, I want to show the world more about baths, because I think baths have always been ... in our neck in Canada and the US, we look at baths as a way to get clean. We'd have a glass of rose, it's Instagram, but whatever. In different parts of the world, their view on baths are so different. And I think that story should be told, because it's inspiring to actually stop and practice self-care and look at how other cultures are doing it and the benefits that they reap from it because of the way they do it.

How can we do that in our own lives to slow down, to practice mindfulness, to practice meditation, to look at that relationship with cleansing more spiritually, more intimate with ourselves, versus with your cell phone on Instagram and TikTok with a bath bomb that's full of colorants and bubblegum? There's a very different way to do it. And I think that's where Soaked in Tradition is going to tell those stories through the lens of those people. So I'm very excited to show the world.

That's cool. It's like a fun passion project. It gives you the opportunity to travel all around the world and call it work, but it's also exceptional branding for Bathorium, because that's all going to come back full circle. So congrats. That's awesome. And definitely see why I was introduced to you and wanted to hear your story. I appreciate you sharing the ups and the downs, because the downs are important. A lot of people don't want to share them.

And love a lot of the advice that you've given here. I've got a page and a half of notes that I've made just for my ... So if you can see that, I appreciate ... Is there any place that people can go to find out more about what you're doing or what you've got going on? Obviously bathorium.com, for anybody that wants to get some of this crushed-up bath bomb stuff that's magical, but also they can just find more of your content and what's going on. Is LinkedIn the great place to do that, or tell me where everybody should go.

Yeah. For the entrepreneurs, LinkedIn's a great spot to find me. I post a lot about my learnings, challenges, wins, et cetera. If you want to follow along Soaked in Tradition, it has its own Instagram page, @soakedintradition, which you can see a lot of the behind the scenes. There'll be up-to-date on when the premiere dates are happening, where to find that episode. And then @livebathorium on Instagram is also our Bathorium Instagram. So you get to see a lot of the fun. We went viral on TikTok the other day, so we've got a whole new boss for social media strategist thing going on, which you'll see. We've got like 10 million views on this TikTok Reel; sorry, Instagram Reel. So now it's shifted that strategy and our wheels where it's less about beautiful detonations of product. Now it's more me and Krista, who's one of my coordinators, about how I'm telling her to go viral and she can't do it, and we end up going viral from it.

So you can see all that content on Instagram. And then my inbox is always open. I love talking to their entrepreneurs. I love hearing their stories. If there's anything I said that resonates with them and they want me to elaborate on, I'm always an open book when I can find time to help whoever needs it, because those early days can be lonely. And I think I reached out to a lot of entrepreneurs in my early days who I thought they had made it, they were so unbelievably successful. And now I'm friends with them, say, "You messaged me when we were nothing." But in my eyes, they were everything. And they really got me through those next milestones. So my inbox is always open.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much. For those of you here listening, thanks for being on this episode. Make sure to leave us a review on whatever podcast platform you're listening to, follow us on the social medias, and also check us on YouTube. Subscribe there, because we put out short reels that will hopefully grace the presence of your screen as you're randomly scrolling, and maybe can drop some cool nuggets. So thanks for being on. Thanks, everybody, for being here, and we'll see you guys on the next episode.