Michael Sweigart: Founder & CEO of FurZapper

Episode 538

On this episode of The Kara Goldin Show, Michael Sweigart, Founder and CEO of FurZapper, shares all about his journey as a creator and entrepreneur riding consumers of pet hair. You have to love this story! As a pet owner frustrated by endless fur on his family's laundry, Michael took matters into his own hands and invented a patented solution that's not only simple and self-cleaning but incredibly effective. We hear all about the backstory plus his experience on Shark Tank, where he secured a deal with Lori Greiner. I can’t wait for you to listen to the conversation with Michael and hear more about this fantastic solution. Now on this episode of #TheKaraGoldinShow.

Resources from
this episode:

Transcript

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be I want to be, you just want to make sure you will get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked down knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control control control. Hi, everyone and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go. Hi, everyone. And welcome back to the Kara Goldin show where we spotlight the trailblazers who are making a significant impact in their industries. And today, I’m really excited for our next guest, Michael Sweigart, who is the amazing founder and CEO of a an incredible product, but also an incredible company called FurZapper. And you have to just love the story, especially if you have pets of any sort. But a pet owner frustrated by endless fur on his family’s laundry, that is the story of my life, for sure with my three Labradors. And Michael though took matters into his own hands and invented a solution that not only is simple and self cleaning, but incredibly effective. So FurZapper has not only been become a must have for pet owners, but also captured the attention of the investment world. With a successful pitch on Shark Tank. I can’t wait to hear more about that. And today, we get to dive into the entrepreneurial journey of Michael and how he became an accidental entrepreneur. And really, really excited to hear more about him as well as FurZapper so welcome Michael.

Michael Sweigart 1:57
Kara, thanks for having me.

Kara Goldin 2:00
Absolutely super, super excited about this. And really a thrill to meet you. So I always thank you. I always say that it’s, it’s really fun when somebody develops products that are that you actually want in your house. It’s not a it’s not something that you’re, you’re like, Oh, that’s a pretty good idea. But this is just so incredible. So I’m not surprised to hear how successful you’ve been. But tell us a bit about you. What were you doing before FurZapper?

Michael Sweigart 2:31
So before, FurZapper, I owned a few small businesses, mostly in advertising and marketing. So small agencies with just a few people, you know, building websites doing internet marketing, pay per click Google ads, and also an advertising firm that did a lot of radio, TV, outdoor billboards print. So a lot of direct to consumer marketing is really what I did prior to this for decades.

Kara Goldin 2:58
So and then what was the transition then to actually becoming an entrepreneur? How did this come about?

Michael Sweigart 3:06
Yeah, so you know, I’ve always run my own businesses. So I always had that, that entrepreneurial spirit, you know, start things from the ground up, basically create something from nothing, just figure out how to do it and just go and do it. So what happened with FurZapper is that I’ve always been sort of a hobbyist and inventor, I’ve always tried to find better ways to do things, building a better mousetrap, even if it was just for my own interest or to help my family or friends. So in this case, I was I was a work at home dad. So I worked at home for for 20 plus years. And I would always do the laundry. So I would you know start in the morning, start to wash, start a load, decent, you know, dryers by midday, and then fold some clothes. And, you know, I found out that the clothes were coming out of the dryer. Having three pets in the house, they’re coming out still filled with hair. Now the hair was clean, but it was still filled with hair. It was clean hair. And it was frustrating. It was frustrating for everybody in the family. And I tried to find ways to solve it. I tried to see what’s on the market. I went to stores tried to, you know, ordered products from Amazon to try. And nothing really, really worked well. So from fabric softeners to dryer balls. I even did some, you know kind of crazy ideas and like tied rubber gloves together and, you know, check the do it yourself forums to see hey, what’s working for everybody? What how do you how do you solve this problem and it it really just came down to well, you just have to take an extra, you know, half hour after the laundry and just let roll everything and that, you know for a guy that tries to be really efficient and get things done. That was frustrating to me so so I had to find a solution. couldn’t really find anything that were and One of my hobbies, I guess you’d say, or one of my little side fun gigs that I would do is work in some special effects type product. So I would develop like masks and we do, you know, makeup for like zombies and things like that for Halloween and, and I got to into making silicone masks and things like that. So, one day I was in my workshop, I dropped a mask on the floor, this mask was going in the trash, it was all it was all ripped up. And I picked it up, I noticed there was head hair all over it, it was just filled. You know, it was cleaning with pet hair. So I said, Oh, that’s that’s a lot of hair. Like that’s, that’s pretty interesting. But how do I get it off. So I took it over to the sink, put water on it, and the hair just immediately came off. So I might be onto something here, because I knew the properties of silicone and they’re very resilient, very, very high temperature rating, they can withstand extreme temperatures, that it’s very hypoallergenic, allergy free, it’s a very safe product. So what I ended up doing is I threw a piece of a zombie mask inside of the washer and dryer. And I did some laundry with a you know, grotesque side of a face. And I took it out and I said wow, there’s a significant decrease in the amount of pet hair. And what was great is that it wasn’t all clung to the mask itself, it actually was kind of tumbling and releasing the hair into the lint trap inside the dryer. So and from there on, I said, Hey, let me try to see if I can fine tune this, maybe find the optimal size or space. Optimal material, make sure it’s soft and tacky enough. And I just started experimenting, ordering different silicones trying different shapes sizes, I was making molds myself to try to, you know, here’s one of my original molds, even that I made by sculpting out of clay by hand. You know, YouTube is great for that stuff, how to sculpt you know, on YouTube and, and I learned how to make a little paw print. And then I learned how to make a mold of it. And then I poured silicone into it. And you know, found the optimal size. And that’s really where it started. And then I realized everybody has this problem, every pet owner, which is the majority of people, they wash and dry their clothes, and they’re just used to it, you’re used to pulling your clothes out of the dryer, and there’s still hair and you shake it out and the lint roll, it’s just part of your, your process. But now that we have these, we just throw them in the dryer and they just, they tumble through and they just pluck the hair right off and drop pincher lint trap. That’s

Kara Goldin 7:40
amazing. So you had this idea, you created the molds, you you know, developed now you actually have to get it made into a product. Right? How long did that take? And how did you figure that out?

Michael Sweigart 7:57
Well, part of the process was, you know, trying to come up with the right, you know, product size formula and everything. And that was like a whole separate adventure, I guess to try to find the best possible material, then there’s also the side of the marketing of it. And, you know, do I get a patent? Is it patentable? That was a big question, because because I know that if you don’t have a patent, anybody can just kind of come in and take it. Even if you do have one, they still they still try. So I sought out online to see if there’s anything was patented like this, and I found out that it really wasn’t anything close to this. So spoke to patent attorneys, you know, filled out application submitted. And simultaneously, I was still developing the product. So as that’s going in the background, I built a website, because that’s what I did at that point. So I built a website, took pictures of the product, got packaging online, open up Photoshop and designed, you know, the design for the package, hired a logo guy. And basically put a package together, which is pretty rough. It’s pretty rough at the time. But it was enough to launch a website and let people know about the product. And also meanwhile, all my friends and family were were testing it and trying it and trying different shapes and sizes and going hey, the Frisbee size one is a little big, and you know, and the small balls get lost in everything. So I had to find that, that that happy medium by, you know, through the feedback of great people that really wanted to see this work.

Kara Goldin 9:29
And how long did that take from the time that you actually created this product to actually figuring out Okay, I’m ready to go.

Michael Sweigart 9:39
I’d say it’s fairly quick. I don’t know how that compares to other people. But developing it by yourself and having the ability to make every component of it for the most part, man it basically manufacture it, package it and ship it. It probably took me about three months to have a sellable product that was on a website that people could click and add to cart. That’s amazing. It wasn’t perfectly fine. It was printed in my, you know, laser printer on cardstock paper, but it was audible how to package and everything, you know, chip it out.

Kara Goldin 10:14
That’s great. I always tell people I mean, clearly in developing hint, we, we didn’t think it was perfect, but it was perfect enough to get it on the shelf. No one was gonna get sick. You didn’t want anyone’s dryer to catch on fire? And? Yeah, right. I

Michael Sweigart 10:31
thoroughly tested it. And it was it was risky. Yeah, you know, I tried some risky materials in there. And now there’s some products on the market that are that will melt inside your dryer. There’s some counterfeits that popped up over time that were causing some damage to dryers crazy.

Kara Goldin 10:47
So you get it launched, you’ve got your friends and family probably going to the website supporting you. And then you decide to go on Shark Tank. Can you talk about how that all came about? Well, it’s

Michael Sweigart 11:02
actually an interesting big step before that. And I had a newspaper article handed to me. And it was a full page ad, I think it was in New York Times. That said, Walmart is looking for made in the USA companies as part of this, you know, made in USA program that they have and submit your product. If we’d like it, we’ll invite you down to Bentonville, Arkansas to give us a pitch. And I filled out all the applications, you know really fine tune the product made it look the best I could hire a more professional mold maker, someone that wasn’t a hobbyist and went down to Bentonville pitched it to them. And at this point I was making them in my basement, I was literally mixing up the silicone, adding the color, pouring it into the molds, building bigger molds so I can make more faster. The kids are packaging things up, you know, like everybody’s helping. And Walmart wanted it. They were like we really want this product. And at this point, we weren’t in any retail stores. We were just on a website. And that was really it. Amazon was just starting at that point. And they want it for their stores as a test and came back. And then they said well, let’s do it for all the stores on the modular. So our first customer was Walmart. Oh, so it was a big? Yeah. Yeah, we’ve done millions of dollars in business with Walmart.

Kara Goldin 12:27
That’s, that’s crazy. And so and how big was that order? Like how many individual? I mean, that’s a that’s a lot of molds to make in your basement, I would imagine.

Michael Sweigart 12:38
Yeah, the First Order was 35,000 units, which are, you know, a unit was a two pack. So it was actually, you know, almost 70,000 individual furs at present time. So that was well beyond me and an army of people pouring things in mold in a basement. So I was honest with with Walmart, and I said, Hey, I’m making these out of my basement, like, and I got other people that can help. But we can’t make 35,000 in. I think it was a three or four month time period, but we had to hit their modular time. So I said, Can you help? Do you have anybody that you’d recommend that are that are good silicone manufacturers that we could interview, tap into? Do some due diligence on see if they work, and they recommended one in particular that we ended up going with that was worked out really well. We’re still with them today. And they still make Walmart’s product. Yeah, that’s

Kara Goldin 13:33
amazing. So did you self funded the company initially? Right. Right.

Michael Sweigart 13:37
Right. It’s all self funded. You know, it’s some like small business loans, things like that SBA. But yeah, it’s all it really took off. You know, once it once it really got in the market, once Amazon really kicked in, it just became fairly viral. We didn’t do any advertising, any marketing, we still really don’t do any marketing. It’s all word of mouth viral. People have seen the videos and things like that on it. So yeah, we just, it just grew and grew and grew, and then added salespeople to, you know, sell more and add more staff. And then, you know, was always interested in Shark Tank, you know, applied once to it. And, you know, COVID kind of came along and mess things up a little bit. But then, you know, during COVID, they said, Hey, we’re interested in having you on the show. So we went through a very lengthy process of making videos and interviews and different presentations to different producers, Assistant producers, etc. Going through multiple steps to get on the show. And, and even then you don’t know if it’s going to happen. It’s Halloween. Now they cut it tomorrow. It’s literally in the middle of COVID. You know, everybody’s on lockdown. So if you really want to pull the show off during this and they’re like, We got to do it. So, yeah, went out. During COVID, complete lockdown, I was literally locked in a hotel room for 10 days couldn’t leave, you know, multiple COVID tests before we, for one in the air. So it was a, it was very interesting to COVID COVID Bunch,

Kara Goldin 15:18
what a crazy time and so you just had the one product to when you went on to, to Shark Tank, you didn’t have anything that

Michael Sweigart 15:28
time, I also added another product on we have a glove with a grooming glove, which was really, it was like an add on product, it wasn’t a full round up invention at the time, it was just, we just pack to someone else’s product really, just to kind of extend the line. So we walked into, you know, Shark Tank with really, FurZapper in the first app or glove. But FurZapper was the main. That’s the main item that’s got many patents on it is it’s very protected.

Kara Goldin 15:56
That’s terrific. So you get on the show, you are in front of the sharks, you’ve had many videos and interactions. But as I’ve talked to many guests of of shark tank in the past, and you know, the lights go on, and then all of a sudden you’re It’s like a It’s a fire drill. Right? And can you can you think back on that day? And like, is there anything you do differently? Or sort of show? Exactly. If you can kind of lay out exactly what happened, I know that you did get an investment. So yeah, maybe want to talk about that, too. Yeah, it was

Michael Sweigart 16:35
the process for me was was fairly nerve racking. I’m sort of extroverted but also introverted at the same time, so, you know, I’m I put myself out there and, and sharing what I know, and what I have, you know, available as far as its product, but it’s also very intimidating. There’s a lot of cameras, a lot of lights, a lot of different people that are just, you know, guiding you in different ways and telling you what to do and where to stand and what cameras look at, where not to move forward to and back. So, you know, we did, thankfully got a walkthrough of, you know, where the studio is, what the process would be like walking through the big doors, down with the sharks, you know, where to stand and everything and what to look at. So it did get, I gotta say that the producers and everybody involved were incredible. There was no question that was left unanswered. They helped with everything that they, they offered everything you could you could want. So they did help through the process and ease the nerves quite a bit. But it still was very nerve wracking, waiting in that, you know, big hallway, just waiting for those doors to open and then seeing the brightness of it was overwhelming. And just all their smiling faces and stern faces and, and trying to read the room real quick and not forget your lines, because you have to memorize your pitch you have a limited amount of time to you know, go through your intro anyway.

Kara Goldin 18:02
And so what were you asking for? What did you ultimately get? Yeah, so

Michael Sweigart 18:06
we were looking in, I was looking for $600,000. Initially, for 10%, we settled for we actually had all the sharks bidding, and making counter offers and offers which is ideal, obviously. So they’re all came down pretty close at the end. Someone to partner up some might, were trying to outbid the other ones. And, you know, I thought Lori was the best fit for FurZapper, not only for the QVC reference, but she’s just such a great personality and really outgoing and, you know, it’s a great consumer product. And, you know, she very approachable in that way. So ended up you know, ultimately negotiating, finalizing it on the air with her. And the rest of us was sort of history.

Kara Goldin 18:53
That’s terrific. So going back to the naming FurZapper How did you come up with the name? So

Michael Sweigart 19:01
interesting, the first name was not FurZapper, it was FurGetter. But after doing, had someone do a trademark search on it, and they said that forgetter might have some issues. So, you know, looked into a million other names, basically wrote a little database to come up with combine the word for with all these other phrases and show me what you got. So there’s literally hundreds of different opera, different phrases or trademarks we can consider and furs average has really stood out. It’s it’s hard. It’s like tells you what it does. It’s happened the fur and it’s you know, it’s got a good impact to it. So, and that was trade markable it was we won’t really want to protect our intellectual property. And I think people that sometimes go into this, don’t think about that. And if you don’t think about that, you can get into a lot of trouble and not trouble but people can just come in and steal your thunder in a minute. Especially If you don’t have a patent, or trademark copyright on everything, even with our patent patents and multiple countries, and we still have counterfeiters, you know, left and right, we spent tremendous amounts of money to battle these counterfeiters still going on, it’s not as bad as it used to pay, but it’s a lot of work. Yes,

Kara Goldin 20:21
yeah, no, with the product that I founded hint, we’ve had many, many people and who have internationally and we I always tell people, we take our trademarks, very, very seriously. So yeah, yeah, and, but it’s, but it’s frustrating, right? Because you think here, you’ve got it locked up. And then to have to go in that direction and actually have to go after people internationally, it’s just it’s super, super tough title

Michael Sweigart 20:57
is our patents pretty, fairly broad, as well. So FurZapper is really the only product that can go in your washer dryer, that can take fur off the clothes, it’s really that broad. So it’s protected on any type of material that goes in there, whether silicone or plastic, or wood or metal, if they want to different shapes and sizes. So it’s nice to have that protection, and rely on it, and then have companies or you know, attorneys actually enforce it. So

Kara Goldin 21:28
I want to go back to so when you got this order, from Walmart, and again, going from, you know, nothing, basically, you had a you had a bit of orders coming in, but certainly didn’t have 30,000. I mean, that was that was massive. Were you able to figure out, like, you know, some sort of financing Did, did Walmart end up helping you kind of figure that out, I know, I’ve heard Target has helped people in the past, like, if they have a huge order something they’ve been able to figure out the, you know, receivables financing, or some some kind of write some kind of finance arm of, of your business, but any advice for people like, you know, because it’s pretty scary, right? You know, on the one hand, you want the order, you want it to be successful. But a lot of people just don’t have the money, you can’t max out your credit cards enough to do that.

Michael Sweigart 22:28
I already spent a lot of money, you know, personal money into this, and you know, buying all the materials and making the product. So definitely didn’t have enough money to fund 30,000 units. Plus, you know, Walmart pays at a certain timeframe, which isn’t immediate, you know, 3060 days is what, you have to wait, and then by the time you get paid, they’ve already placed their next order. And you have to build that, too. So what I did is I worked with this manufacturer that Walmart recommended, and I shared with them, my, my ideal terms, and my ideal terms with them, were to pay them when Walmart pays us. And they went for it, they did it they went on. So we still have it to this day. So you know, they’re a bigger company, pretty well established. So they could kind of float a little bit. And it’s Walmart, you know, you’re not gonna get stiffed by them so to speak.

Kara Goldin 23:21
That’s great. Well, that that’s the perfect terms. Because I think, yeah, many people have to pay that upfront. And that’s a lot of, yeah, it’s a, it’s a ton of money. And especially for bigger ticket items, it really can be sort of disastrous.

Michael Sweigart 23:37
If you don’t ask for it, you’re definitely not going to get it. And that’s, you know, that was my mentality for this was, you know, hey, I asked Walmart for all their stores, and they gave it to me, they want to do a test. And I said, Well, what about all of them? They said, Let’s do it. You know, I asked the manufacturer to do things a certain way. And that was the payments were a big part of it, which is we can’t do this without, you know, us getting paid, and then you getting paid, and didn’t necessarily like it, but it worked out. It’s been a few years now.

Kara Goldin 24:07
So when you first, you talked a bit about this, but it sounds like I’m a huge believer that when people think about getting their product on the shelf, oftentimes they don’t want to launch it because it’s, it’s not perfect. And I always share with entrepreneurs, it will never be perfect, right? It’s the best entrepreneurs are always upgrading, you know, continuing to have 2.0 But how much has your product changed you? I mean, you’ve gone from your home laser printer that the actual packaging has changed, but I mean, how much is the product actually changed since your beginning? Once that you were selling?

Michael Sweigart 24:48
So from the initial product, it’s changed. We’ve I’ve tested out a lot of different new materials to see if maybe there’s something better something more efficient. Didn’t something more cost effective. So while the product didn’t change really much at all, I was testing out different products and materials, I did come across and formulated with some chemists are really good thermoplastic, which feels like silicone looks like silicone has the same properties as silicone, and it’s a lot less expensive. So we have that option for less expensive, that’s made overseas, it’s a little cheaper. And we have the silicone ones made in the USA, you know, available as well. So But ultimately, the product hasn’t I mean, here’s the initial mold, so dirty. And here’s the product, it probably still fits in here. This is a product, you know, manufactured a few weeks ago, it really hasn’t changed that much. It’s really, really the same, the packaging has changed. Our instructions have changed in response to customer demand customer complaints, you know, we had to roll with that and say, Well, how are they using it wrong? What do we need to do to educate them, so they don’t use it improperly, and get poor results. And that’s still a work in progress. People still, I still have people that go, Oh, I know what this is for. And they just started rubbing it on their body. And it’s, you know, people know best. Right?

Kara Goldin 26:19
That’s, that’s funny. So when you think about your consumers, you you obviously have heard comments back from consumers. How about any amazing, somewhat funny stories that you’ve heard back, I always say that those consumer stories are the things that keep entrepreneurs going, right that the love the love fest that you get, and the the humorous ones especially, but definitely, I’d love to hear,

Michael Sweigart 26:46
we do get a you know, a lot of customers that, you know, thank us over and over again for, you know, saving them so much time and effort. And I think that the funniest stories are what people share with us what their kids are doing with different zappers, which is throwing them on the ceilings and they stick to the ceilings. How do I get the first Zapper, you have a stick? You know, pretty good. So my God be stuck on there. So yeah, a lot of customers that, stick them and have their kids play with them. So they I got more first at first, because my kids like to play with them, too. So we get a lot of that. And we’ve had a lot of requests for different sizes, make sticky hands out of them, and all sorts of other fun things that you know, some of them I’m considering. So that’s,

Kara Goldin 27:30
that’s great. How long does it how many washes or how many dries, I should say just one last?

Michael Sweigart 27:36
It depends on like, what chemicals they use and everything. But if it’s hundreds 100 use it over and over again hundreds of times it’s it’s a good, you know, earth friendly product to it’s not leaving any leaching any plastics into the environment, either.

Kara Goldin 27:49
So when you think about next products, or if you want to talk a little bit about the products that you’ve got now versus maybe anything innovation coming forward? Well, first of all, what are they that that you’ve got? That is different than what you originally launched with? But when do you know that you should be launching new products? That’s sort of a, you know, universal kind of question of the hour, I think for many entrepreneurs, because like, do I go do this? You know, what a failure? Right? Yeah, totally.

Michael Sweigart 28:26
I think what what’s defined my product development is if I have something that fills a void, that solves a problem, then it’s ready. You know, you can always change packaging, logos, you know, size. But if it’s working and solving a problem, then it’s, it’s, it’s ready to market, especially if you can protect it with, you know, trademarks, copyrights and patents. But yeah, it’s got to be for me, it’s got to be something functional, something that that works that helps people either save money, save time, save some effort.

Kara Goldin 28:59
That’s terrific. How have you gotten the word out about besides being on Shark Tank, and I mean, is there and you mentioned, you haven’t really done much advertising is there one way that has really kind of gotten the word out.

Michael Sweigart 29:12
So we have two parts of our business, we have a direct to consumer side, and that’s where we sell on Amazon and a lot of online properties, like grommet and chewy, ace, target.com, and places like that. So that’s more direct to consumer. And then we have the b2b side, which is where we sell to stores and retailers and wholesalers and overseas importers as well. So that’s two completely different approaches. On the direct to consumer side. We really didn’t do a whole lot of marketing, did some Amazon ads, put some deals out there for Black Friday. Things like that. Made a lot of videos, and a lot of customers made videos which was incredible, with a lot of just user sent videos that were like, Hey, I’m gonna test this thing out, see how it works. And there are people that had some followers on different social media platforms. And some were just regular, you know, moms or dads that were just like, Hey, I found this product, and I’m just sharing it. So we share those videos out there. But as far as the direct to consumer, we haven’t done a lot, we have social media, you know, tick tock, Instagram, Facebook, not not an incredible amount of followers on there. But it’s been it’s really been word of mouth, it’s been positioning, positioning, positioning it right on Amazon, and other properties as well to make sure that people can see it, and find it and go, Wait a minute, that that’s all something that I you know, I have a problem with that. So that’s the consumer side on the business to business side. You know, I’ve salespeople that go out and contact businesses, we also have rep firms that, you know, are very specific or niche focus, like one that just handles target, for example, there’s one group that we work with, that’s all they do, they’re the biggest investor that our sales reps have been most successful with fire meetings. So there are organizations that offer you the ability to have one on ones with real buyers in the real departments for the product in the category. And you can sit down with them for five to 10 minutes and tell them everything and they can’t leave, they’re locked in and they got to hear your pitch, and touch your product and try it out and see if it works for them. So those have been phenomenal for us, we’ve had one of those every year, sometimes multiple times a year in different categories. So we get to sit down with with buyers of major retailers with hundreds or 1000s of stores and tell them our product, we’d never be able to reach them, probably otherwise. So those

Kara Goldin 31:51
so you don’t go directly typically to the store as you’re doing like an ecrm I think is one of them, or one

Michael Sweigart 31:57
CRM is get one of them, we do go direct to stores in many occasions, you know, Walmart was a direct to store a few of them we have, and we’ve actually, you know, changed our product a bit and to appeal to more price conscious shoppers like we’ve made a smaller version of FurZapper for like dollar stores, Dollar General Dollar Tree, things like that. So we’re now like reaching out to a different whole different market space as well. And that’s different sales reps in different firms.

Kara Goldin 32:27
That’s terrific. So last question, what’s the most rewarding part of creating a product that solving a problem?

Michael Sweigart 32:36
I think that was your rewarding part is when we’re at a trade show or an event that we just came back from global Pet Expo, which is one of the biggest pet expos in the world. 1000s and 1000s of people and hearing customers just walk up and store owners, hey, I got your product. I love it. It saved me so much time and effort. And you know, my dog loves it too. And it’s great to hear the feedback from people, I think that’s rewarding for me. And then to see the product out there in the wild, or have people friends family, hey, I was up in my daughter’s up in Canada. And she went to Walmart up in Canada and took a picture of the product. And I said I don’t have one and I have a picture of our bilingual packaging, you know, in a store, you know, we have French, French English packaging up there. So it’s fun to see those pictures to like friends that that send you things and hey, look at this. It’s me and my kids by the first ever. So that’s fun to see to see.

Kara Goldin 33:34
That’s terrific. So it was such a pleasure to meet you and talk to you and so excited that you created FurZapper and I wish you all the best. We’ll be watching for new ideas coming in. But everybody’s gotta get lots of FurZapper. We’ll have all the info in the show notes too. But thank you again. And thanks, everyone for listening.

Michael Sweigart 33:58
Thank you.

Kara Goldin 33:59
Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would, please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit and of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast. Just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms at Kara Goldin. I would love to hear from you too, so feel free to DM me. And if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal, best selling book undaunted, where I share more about my journey including founding and building hint. We are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thanks for listening and good bye for now.

Click to subscribe:

Listen on Apple Podcasts
Listen OnApple Podcasts
Listen on Spotify
Listen OnSpotify
Listen on Overcast
Listen OnOvercast
Listen on PlayerFM
Listen OnPlayerFM

People Also Liked

617

David Bean: Founder & CEO of NIRA

616

Brianda Gonzalez : Founder & CEO of The New Bar

Mike Dunlop: Author of The Art of the Turnaround

614

Katie Lefkowitz: Founder & CEO of Harken Sweets

613

Erica Bethe Levin: Founder & CEO of Globowl