On this episode of "The CEO Series," we sit down with Sean Riley, the Chief Executive Dude of Dude Wipes.
On this episode, I visited Sean Riley, CEO of Dude Wipes. It's a really fun brand that has outrageous marketing, but they are no joke. They're projecting to do over $120 million in sales, and they are disrupting the entire toilet paper industry. Here are some key takeaways from that conversation. Watch the video above to hear everything Sean had to say about the dynamic growth of the powerhouse company.
On this episode, I visited Sean Riley, CEO of Dude Wipes. It's a really fun brand that has outrageous marketing, but they are no joke. They're projecting to do over $120 million in sales, and they are disrupting the entire toilet paper industry. Here are some key takeaways from that conversation. Watch the video above to hear everything Sean had to say about the dynamic growth of the powerhouse company.
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NewsTranscript
00:00 Today we're at Dude Products and we're going to be talking to their CEO, Sean Riley.
00:05 They're a really fun brand, they have outrageous marketing, but they are no joke.
00:09 They're projecting to do over $120 million in sales and they are disrupting the entire
00:13 toilet paper industry.
00:15 Let's go talk to Sean and figure out more about this brand.
00:20 CEOs carry a lot of weight.
00:21 They manage businesses, people, expectations of stakeholders, and so much more.
00:26 I want to hear their story.
00:27 How is it testifying in front of Congress?
00:30 What are some things that you look out for when evaluating a company?
00:33 Rock and roll, yeah, I want to see.
00:35 I'm on a journey to learn and get to know top business leaders.
00:38 I think everybody thinks that they want to be a CEO.
00:40 I didn't get into this to be a CEO.
00:43 What are the risks?
00:44 Oh!
00:45 I want you to hold this under your tongue.
00:46 And how do we de-risk that?
00:47 I'm Will Selvey.
00:48 Thank you for your business.
00:50 And this is the CEO Series.
00:52 Sean, thanks for joining us today.
00:54 Thanks for having me.
00:55 Being a CEO has a perception right now.
00:58 I think that perception is a little negative.
01:00 How do you approach the role differently?
01:02 Yeah, well, the first thing I did was change the name, right?
01:05 So I call myself the Chief Executive Dude because that's more fun and that's more who
01:10 I am.
01:11 And that's what Dude Wipes is supposed to be.
01:13 It's supposed to be fun, authentic, be yourself, like, sort of brand.
01:17 And just because you're a CEO doesn't mean you can't be yourself.
01:20 And I think that's one thing that I like to get across is, you know, this can look a lot
01:27 of different ways.
01:28 You can wear a hat and a t-shirt, you know what I mean?
01:32 That said, you do have to do typical CEO responsibilities.
01:36 So what is something that someone does not know about the role of CEO?
01:40 You have to kind of transition to doing less, you know, and being there more for people,
01:46 supporting people.
01:47 You have to let things go as you become a CEO, which maybe people don't realize that.
01:51 They think, "Oh, the CEO, all this stuff keeps piling up on his desk and he's got to do this,
01:56 that."
01:57 Like, that's not what you want to do as the CEO.
01:59 You want to have great people around you and have them grow and inspire them to do well.
02:04 So I use the comparison of, like, you go from Michael Jordan to Phil Jackson, you know?
02:10 You're not taking the last shot on the court anymore.
02:13 You're not the star player.
02:14 You're stepping off the court, trying to be the Zen master, you know, trying to make sure
02:19 that all of these things work in all of these different parts of your business.
02:23 Personally, you know, that's a journey that I've been on from being more of an executor
02:28 to stepping into more of a coach role.
02:31 This is where we weigh the pallets, so you can weigh yourself there.
02:34 There you go.
02:35 174.
02:36 Not bad.
02:37 All right.
02:38 That's 218 for me, but if I did it after I took a dump, I'd probably be like 217 or
02:45 something like that.
02:46 So sometimes I do that around here.
02:47 Yeah, yeah.
02:48 Man, not the typical CEO that I'm used to.
02:49 No, no, no.
02:50 You got to have fun with it, right?
02:51 All right.
02:52 So we got this.
02:54 We talked about your creative marketing.
02:57 This is Dude Wipes in a nutshell right here.
02:58 This is Dude Wipes in a...
02:59 All right.
03:00 So we got the creative marketing.
03:01 For those who couldn't read it, and I think we all know the craze, it's October, it's
03:06 fall, so that means there's a lot of pumpkin spice stuff.
03:10 There's pumpkin spice latte.
03:12 This is dumpkin spice.
03:14 This isn't just for basic dudes.
03:16 It's for anybody who wants a new little seasonal scent, but we've sold out of these products,
03:22 so we made a limited run and we sold out.
03:24 First year doing it?
03:25 First year doing it.
03:26 We've always had the idea, but this year we actually got it done, and this is like a blend
03:30 of a marketing stunt and a sale.
03:34 This is going viral on social media.
03:36 People are posting about it.
03:38 They're having fun with it, and you really got to do things fun and creative to get people's
03:42 attention.
03:43 This is a wild world of social media, brands doing everything, and so this right here has
03:49 been the funnest thing.
03:50 We've done all year and probably a couple years on the product side for sure, and people
03:55 are talking about it.
03:56 People are liking it.
03:57 Can you tell us a little bit about the origin story, because it's been a pretty wild ride,
04:01 I'm sure, from when you started in 2012 to now.
04:05 I remember you said you did about 150,000 in sales your first year up to now, which
04:09 is around 120 million is what you're projecting.
04:13 Can you tell us a little bit about Dude Products' origin?
04:16 Yeah.
04:17 Our origin story is just kind of like a fun, authentic one that I think a lot of people
04:22 can relate to, just you and your buddies sitting around wanting to come up with an idea, and
04:28 then the big first idea was I put these baby wipes in the apartment, and everyone started
04:33 getting hooked on them, and they were so much better than toilet paper, so it kind of turned
04:37 into why doesn't something like this exist?
04:41 That was sort of the necessity is the mother of all invention.
04:46 We need this.
04:47 We need some sort of wipe for us.
04:49 Then around that, it was like how do we build a brand that just represents who we were at
04:53 the time, guys sitting on a couch, eating burritos, drinking beers, like how do we just
04:58 develop something real fun, different?
05:01 Man, that is a tough process when you don't have any experience or you don't know what
05:06 you're doing.
05:07 You're Googling everything.
05:08 You're making phone calls.
05:10 Who can make these wipes?
05:11 How do I incorporate a company?
05:13 All these different things, so you just kind of got to get started, knock one thing out
05:18 after another.
05:19 When did you know that you had something here versus kind of like that hustle and grind
05:24 mode in those early years where you're trying to figure things out?
05:27 I know you went on Shark Tank in 2015.
05:30 Was that the pivotal moment?
05:31 Was it a little bit before that, and then that kind of kicked it off?
05:34 Tell us when you started to recognize that you might have a very legitimate business
05:37 here and that you could start taking market share of the toilet paper industry.
05:40 I mean, I think we knew we were onto something in the first year because say we made 150
05:47 grand that year, which to us kind of blew our mind.
05:51 How did we just buy these dude wipes, put them in our bedroom and make over 100 grand
05:55 selling them?
05:56 Right.
05:57 And so that was cool, but the emotional reactions we saw from people very early on gave us more
06:02 confidence than probably the revenue showed or we should have had that when dude wipes
06:07 got in people's hands, they laughed or we would see them passing them to other people.
06:10 It's like making a big fun joke about it.
06:13 We're like, our product is making people laugh.
06:16 Just getting them talking like that high, like got us going and pushed us to survive
06:22 for another couple of years, to get on things like Shark Tank, to start getting in stores.
06:27 So that belief is everything.
06:30 So like you have to believe day one.
06:34 And if you don't, you won't make it to some of these breakout moments or whatever, because
06:39 no one else will believe.
06:40 But we internally saw that the customers liked it, so we believed we could do all these insane
06:46 things like disrupt a huge toilet paper industry.
06:49 Talk about some of this guerrilla marketing approach, these creative tactics that you've
06:53 used to help elevate the brand.
06:55 Yeah, yeah.
06:56 I mean, the guerrilla stuff for us is always on.
06:58 It's something we've known since the beginning.
07:00 We got to make the brand work for us without a bunch of cash.
07:05 So the World Series story was simple.
07:07 It was in Chicago, 2016, and A-Rod and Frank Thomas and all the guys are parked there on
07:13 Clark Street.
07:14 And we said, we could just go picket this game with the big dude wipe sign.
07:18 And 20 million people are watching the program, and we got a free billboard behind those guys
07:24 that everyone's laughing about online or going to our website.
07:28 And that's just putting a fun brand out there and letting it take off.
07:31 And there's a lot of ways to do it that don't cost money.
07:35 And some of the other stuff, like you talked about, was like a girl in the UFC, she sh*t
07:40 herself in the ring.
07:41 And of course, that's national news.
07:44 That's great clickbait.
07:46 That's great headline stuff.
07:47 And as soon as we see that, we're DMing her.
07:50 We're getting her products.
07:51 Are you guys just scouring the internet for this?
07:54 Or do you kind of just stay on track with some trending topics?
07:57 And is it always related to sports?
07:59 It's always related to sh*t.
08:01 And that can happen in sports.
08:03 That can happen in business.
08:04 That can happen anywhere.
08:06 But we're scouring.
08:07 I mean, now we're to the point where people are tagging us, sending it to us.
08:11 "Hey, this person just talked about how when they were pitching on the mound, they sharted,
08:17 and it blew up on a podcast."
08:19 Well, we'll get in touch with that guy.
08:21 Send him dude wipes.
08:23 And then he'll post it, and the whole thing kind of works in that fashion.
08:28 And had a lot of those things go viral.
08:32 Another famous one was when a football player wiped his butt with a football as a celebration.
08:36 The NFL fined him.
08:39 So of course, the NFL is going to fine you.
08:41 We'll pay for your fine.
08:42 So we reached out to him.
08:43 You paid for the guy's fine?
08:44 We paid for the fine.
08:45 We sponsored him there.
08:47 And that went mega viral, where Howard Stern's talking about it.
08:50 It's on all the sports radio things.
08:52 And so you've got to put yourself out there.
08:55 Try things that are on brand.
08:57 And for us, that's kind of poop-related.
09:00 That's where we hang.
09:01 You lean into it.
09:02 We do a lot of things in it.
09:03 And not all of them work.
09:04 So we send out a lot of packages.
09:06 We try a lot of viral things that don't hit.
09:09 But you've got to take a lot of swings in this game.
09:12 And then when they do hit, super fun and gets everybody riled up.
09:17 Did you have doubters because your brand is a little more...
09:20 It's different.
09:21 It's different than the typical brand.
09:23 You do a lot of very creative marketing approaches.
09:27 Did you have people criticizing that early on when the brand wasn't as solidified?
09:32 Definitely.
09:33 And we still do today.
09:34 And if you don't have haters, your vision's not big enough.
09:37 You can't have the love without the hate.
09:39 It's these energy concepts, essentially.
09:42 And I call that the first law of branding.
09:45 For every emotional reaction, there's an opposite and equal emotional reaction.
09:49 So if people love your brand, you're going to have people who don't really like it or
09:53 hate it.
09:54 If no one loves your brand, you're just sitting in the middle here.
09:56 And that's a flatline bad position to be in.
09:59 So we don't expect everyone to love Dude Wipes.
10:03 And that's okay.
10:04 And yes, of course, more so in the beginning.
10:07 It was like, "Who are these clowns?
10:09 This idea is stupid.
10:10 This will never make it."
10:11 How does that make you feel?
10:13 Great now.
10:14 You know what I mean?
10:16 That means to me now we're doing something right.
10:18 That you have those people who are saying things like that because we know we have a
10:22 great community and a lot of fans.
10:24 Sean, this operation right here, very different, I'm sure, from when you started.
10:29 So can you explain?
10:32 I heard a story about you packaging up early on.
10:35 So tell us about how you got these packages, where you got them from.
10:38 Give us a little insight into that.
10:40 Yeah.
10:41 I mean, early on, we have a fun story where we would get these big wholesale orders and
10:47 they would need to go in bigger boxes.
10:49 And there was a dump near us that had recycled boxes for free.
10:53 So we'd drive to the dump, get some big boxes, make sure they didn't have too greasy of stains
10:58 on them or anything like that.
10:59 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
11:00 You pick the good ones.
11:01 Pick the good ones, pack our dude wipes into there, tape them up and bring them to UPS.
11:05 And that was just because we needed to save a dollar to make a little bit more money back
11:10 then.
11:11 And I think that's something that if you could elaborate on how important that is for an
11:15 entrepreneur is to figure out how to be resourceful versus, "I need resources."
11:21 Yeah, it's going to make your life a lot easier if you can learn that.
11:24 It seems like the harder way to go, but then you're going to encounter problems and not
11:29 say, "Oh, I need to throw resources at this problem.
11:31 Now how do I think about this differently?
11:33 How can I get this at this differently to solve it?"
11:36 And that's kind of what we learned from the beginning.
11:39 And that's why our brand does something fun like Dumpkin Spice.
11:43 How can we be resourceful about something that's happening in the market and we can
11:46 do something cool with it?
11:48 So you got to keep those things running through your company as you get bigger, in my opinion,
11:54 to hold a strategic advantage going against the big boys.
11:57 Because that's kind of what they're bad at is the resourcefulness.
12:00 And they solve problems with resources and people and capital and all of those things
12:06 are important to solve problems.
12:07 But the secret sauce is just kind of saying, "How can we open up our mind to do anything
12:14 about any problem we encounter?"
12:16 Oh, there we go.
12:18 You're like Jurassic Park, were you?
12:20 Enjoy the ride.
12:21 We're heading up, man.
12:22 We're in sync.
12:23 You started from the bottom, now you're here.
12:34 The scale.
12:36 Let's talk about the scale.
12:37 You did start from the bottom and now you're here.
12:40 That's right, man.
12:41 How's it feel?
12:42 We like staying down there and focusing on the bottom, but you got to come to the top
12:45 sometimes, get a view of it all.
12:48 And we make butt wipes for the hardworking American dude because that's who we are and
12:53 that's who we care about.
12:54 Have you ever thought about a jalapeno flavor?
12:59 Anything like that.
13:00 Spicy stuff, we've thought about it.
13:02 Maybe an April Fool's one.
13:03 I don't know if people would legitimately like that or not.
13:06 They might.
13:07 They might.
13:08 Who's a CEO that you do not know that you would like to meet?
13:12 Yeah, I think some of those people, maybe, like we said, my role might not be traditional
13:18 CEO.
13:19 I'd like to meet someone like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Drake or someone who's done all these different
13:25 creative things and built this huge brand and this huge presence.
13:30 Whether they're the CEO of it, those are the people I'm most interested in who have had
13:36 that big bang moment, built this whole brand, built all this creativity.
13:42 So those are a couple guys I think who have done really cool, interesting, unique things.
13:49 I've always been a fan of the product.
13:51 I've always been a big fan of your marketing and I just really appreciate your time.
13:55 So great getting to know you.
13:57 Great hearing your story, Sean.
13:58 Yeah, thanks for all the things you're doing for CEOs and the city of Chicago and putting
14:02 all this content out there, man.
14:04 It's awesome.
14:05 Trying to.
14:06 I really appreciate it.
14:07 Again, I can't wait to give this a try.
14:09 There you go.
14:10 There's your new one.
14:11 Awesome.
14:12 Well, this is a cool little segment, but I don't know what else to talk about.
14:20 We love all our customers.
14:23 But no, when it's done.
14:24 Because that's who we care about.
14:27 This wasn't just here.
14:28 We put this here on purpose, but you're making me nervous.
14:32 I'm just joking.
14:33 Cool.
14:34 Cool. That was great.