Operational Mastery, Category Clarity, and Building a CPG Brand With Sam Nebel

Sam Nebel is the Co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer of Goodwipes, an eco-friendly personal care brand known for its flushable and biodegradable wipes. He launched the brand with his college friend to create a stigma-free alternative to traditional bathroom products. Sam is also a board member of the Responsible Flushing Alliance and was a Regional Manager and a founding team member at Party Degree, where he catalyzed the growth of one of its branches to over seven figures in annual event and nightclub sales.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[2:29] Sam Nebel shares the origin story of Goodwipes
[8:13] How Sam built Goodwipes from his parents’ house and sourced a manufacturer
[11:22] Goodwipes’ early product and retail challenges and why Sam rejected financing
[16:58] The importance of operational mastery and its impact on product performance
[20:51] How to build strategic supply chain partnerships for long-term scalability
[28:33] Shifting the founder’s role and hiring A-plus talent to scale from $10 to $100 million in revenue
[30:28] Strategies for planning resources and infrastructure ahead of growth
[36:05] How flushable wipes are reshaping the bathroom category and driving premium growth
[39:36] Common overlooked aspects of category management and how to dominate your category
[45:12] The mindset shift founders need to scale: letting go, hiring experts, and building culture
[51:10] Sam’s idiosyncrasies and interests

In this episode…

Some consumer products entrepreneurs stall when trying to scale from $10 to $100 million in revenue. They often underestimate operations, overestimate the impact of marketing, and delay building scalable systems until it’s too late. What does it take to build a durable, category-leading brand that lasts?

Operations-focused entrepreneur Sam Nebel scaled his brand by committing to operational excellence, product superiority, and category leadership. He emphasizes the importance of establishing supplier relationships early, hiring specialized talent to elevate execution, and prioritizing product quality and the consumer experience. Data-driven decision-making is crucial for outperforming the competition and positioning your brand as a category leader. Sam also recommends planning your infrastructure ahead of growth by reverse-engineering from long-term goals and identifying the capacities, vendor relationships, and supply chain redundancies needed to scale.

In the latest episode of the Up Arrow Podcast, William Harris sits down with Sam Nebel, Co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer at Goodwipes, to discuss building and scaling a high-performing CPG brand. Sam talks about shifting your role as a founder to scale, how operations impact product performance, and the value of consumer-driven product design.

Resources mentioned in this episode

Quotable Moments

“This was life-changing… we’re just making you feel good by wiping your butt.”
“Have fun and get crap done — that’s the environment we’ve created and continue to cultivate.”
“The obsession with what you're building and the product has to lend itself to fighting through.”
“Culture is basically what do you tolerate, what is good work, and what are accepted behaviors?”
“In order to get to where you need to go, you have to create that ecosystem.”

Action Steps

Build deep relationships with supply chain partners: Treating vendors as strategic partners fosters trust, flexibility, and shared long-term success. This becomes critical as your business scales and operational complexity increases.
Invest in category-specific data and analytics: Understanding market trends, consumer preferences, and competitor movements empowers smarter decision-making. Strong analytics drive better retail positioning and reveal new opportunities for growth.
Hire A-plus talent before you think you need it: Bringing in top-tier talent early elevates performance, culture, and strategic execution across the organization. Waiting too long can limit growth and burn out existing team members.
Design functional and aesthetically appealing products: Consumers want products that work well and look good in their homes. Visual appeal can drive brand loyalty, shelf visibility, and social sharing.
Plan infrastructure for the business you want to become: Reverse-engineer operational needs from long-term revenue goals to avoid capacity bottlenecks. This proactive approach supports smoother scaling and minimizes disruption.

Sponsor for this episode

This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is a performance-driven e-commerce marketing agency focused on finding the best opportunities for you to grow and scale your business.

Our paid search, social, and programmatic services have proven to increase traffic and ROAS, allowing you to make more money efficiently.

To learn more, visit www.elumynt.com.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:00

Welcome to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris, featuring top business leaders sharing strategies and resources to get to the next level. Now let's get started with the show. Hey everyone.

William Harris 0:16

I'm William Harris. I'm the founder and CEO of Elumynt and the host of the Up Arrow Podcast, where I feature the best minds in e-commerce to help you scale from 10 million to 100 million to 100 million and beyond, as you up arrow your business and your personal life, today's guest turned an everyday habit into a category defining brand, and he did it with humor, grit and one heck of a long game. Sam Nebel Is the co founder of Goodwipes, the brand that made flushable wipes, cool, normalized, staying fresh, and broke into retail one shelf at a time. What started as two guys bringing baby wipes to college parties has now grown into a national CPG success story, available in major retailers across the country, and scaling fast. But here's the part most people don't see. This isn't just a marketing win, it's an operational masterclass. Sam has built Goodwipes on the back of supply chain resilience, smart category management and long term scale planning that most founders only start thinking about when it's already too late. Today, we're going deep into what it really takes to grow a physical product brand from 10 million to 100 million, beyond how to future proof your supply chain and how to think like a category leader, even when you're still scrapping it out at 5 million. If you're building in CPG or want to you're about to get a crash course on how to turn wipes into a weapon and good instincts into a great business. Sam Nebel, welcome to the Up Arrow Podcast. Whoo,

Sam Nebel 1:29

William, that was an awesome introduction. I love it.

William Harris 1:34

Yeah. Well, I had some help. I do want to thank Will Nitze for putting us in touch. The former chess champion, brilliant founder of IQ bars. He was a previous guest on the pod. Will thanks for putting us in touch. Check out his episode. Too

Sam Nebel 1:48

Cool. Yeah, thanks. Well, I didn't know he was a former chess champion, but that made sense. Because he is a wizard, an absolute wizard.

William Harris 1:55

He's thinking, he's thinking nine steps ahead of a lot of people, that's for sure. That is absolutely correct. I do want to announce our sponsor, and then we'll get into the good stuff. This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is an award winning advertising agency optimizing e-commerce campaigns around profit. In fact, we've helped 13 of our customers get acquired, with the largest one selling for nearly 800,000,001 that IPO. You can learn more on our website at elumynt.com, which is spelled Elumynt.com, Okay, on to the good stuff. Let's start with the obvious. For anyone that doesn't already know what is Goodwipes and where did the idea come from?

Sam Nebel 2:29

Goodwipes are America's favorite, flushable butt wipe brand geared for adults. We tackle taboo topics. We make people feel good. We have the awesome, most awesome, efficacious, flushable butt wipes that are super soft with gentle ingredients that make you feel clean and fresh. Goodwipes are the only way to wipe because butts deserve better. What made us start Goodwipes? I've been a baby wipe user my entire life, William, since I was as young as I can remember, I always use baby wipes. We did. We barely had toilet paper in our household. In fact, I recall sitting on the toilet when I was young, between seven and 17, where I left for college, and I would scream down the hallways, hey guys, I need more wipey whenever I needed more baby wipes. And so I would just remember someone, my brother, chucking a bag of baby wipes, bouncing off the sink in my bathroom, landing right in front of me, and that was all she wrote. And I had a passion for sharing that, not like an overt passion, but it wasn't covert either. It wasn't sure the only thing I was talking about. But whenever my friends would come over and say, you've got to use these baby wipes, and every time they would say, You're crazy, and then they would say, Well, that was pretty cool, but then it would just kind of dissipate out of their minds. We wouldn't talk about it, they would just recall, like, oh, it's funny that Sam uses baby wipes. And so I took those learnings and that spirit to college. I went to Florida State University, where I met my co founder, Charlie, and in the upstairs bathroom of this fraternity house, as freshmen in 2007 maybe we, we stumbled upon each other. Each had a bag of baby wipes, and bonded over the fact that we were both using wipes. And we kind of said, This is crazy. Everyone else. No one else is using this. Why not? So then we went and told all of our new friends, to which they responded, You guys are crazy. So the same story we were hearing. But then over the next 30 days, these guys would start coming up to us, and people would talk, and they would say, Hey, do you have any of those wipes on you? Our girlfriends would come up to us and say, Hey, do you have those wipes in you? To the extent that we were carrying them in Ziploc bags at football games and tailgates and all these different sorts of events and libraries and school campus, we always had them on us. And so we became known as the wipe guys, or the wipe dealers, and we were very entrepreneurial in college. College. But we decided a few years after college and we had always worked together since that day, best friends and working together partners since, you know, almost 20 years now. But we felt this inclination, this itch that we had to scratch, I guess you could say other people's butts were itching that we had to help relieve for them. And come up with this idea because Charlie had sensitive skin and was very into, like, personal care products, and I had IBS, which I was always very habit still, we're still very vocal about these things and passionate, and that's where, like, the brand ethos and element came in. Okay, we need to make people feel good. It's okay if you have IBS, let's be loud about it. Let's be proud. Let's figure out ways to get better. It's okay if you have sensitive skin, let's come up with a really good product for you. And so we felt like there was a void in the marketplace and that we needed to come up with something that was more relatable for our pure audience at the time, and that has really evolved. And it took us a while, probably five or six years, to really start getting really solid market feedback and find our footing, find our positioning to blossom, and turn to the brand that we have today, that you see across 1000s of shelves, including Target, Walmart, Kroger, Safeway, Albertsons, Amazon, anywhere. You name it,

William Harris 6:13

you lost me after you said efficacious. I didn't hear a single word after that because of the vocabulary. I'm kidding, but I did appreciate that. I'm not gonna let that go. How does this come up? Though? You know, you, you mentioned that you guys just kind of stumbled upon the fact that you both were using baby wipes. That's not a normal dinner conversation. You know. It's not like you're following each other into the Oh, you use those. Like, how did this actually happen?

Sam Nebel 6:38

Well, I think it takes, I think it takes a to someone who cares about it enough. I think it's just Passion, Passion driving that force or that unstoppable need to share this. And that's that's an underlying current of what has driven our company out into the marketplace, where we didn't raise a lot of money to start, where we didn't really know what we were doing. It was fueled by passion and ignorance and ignorance of what it takes, it takes to succeed and build a commercial and consumer facing brand. And because of that, we were just it was this unstoppable pull, this obsession, that we needed to share this feeling, the sensation, with people, because that feeling for them, that experience of seeing the look on their face saying, You changed my life. This was life changing. And also that piece that's not that serious, right? It's, it's, it's not like we saved your life by curing an incurable disease that you have. It's, hey, we're just making you feel good by wiping your butt, but it is something that you do every day. So I think that perfect storm lends itself to our personalities and how we take how we view ourselves as a brand where we can really change your life. We're not that serious. We want to be a bright spot in your day, whether you see us on Tiktok in the bathroom, or whether you're using Goodwipes in the bathroom. We want to make you feel good.

William Harris 7:57

I like that. Well, take me back to the early days. Tell me about what the hustle was like, because you used the word, you know, what naivety, ignorance or whatever like, and I think that that's almost necessary for a lot of brands to even just get that start. But what was the early day like of building this up?

Sam Nebel 8:13

Yeah, the early days were pretty wild. We I remember sitting in my mom's non for profit office. I'll back up. We actually started the company out of my parents house. We were supposed to be there for only two months. Ended up being 15 months where there was a mutual Parting of the Ways. In other words, my parents kicked us out. Sure we wanted to go find a place too, but we were just burning through cash because of time. And we would call manufacturers all over the world, United States, outside of the world, we got this crappiest samples you could ever imagine. You know, people would always think and say, I remember in the early days or mid days, boy, isn't a wife, just a wife. And the that was what drove us to find this perfection, this improved product, this hero Dreams of Sushi, this idea where we needed to come up with a much better product, because a wipe is not just a wipe, and I can back that up with data that no one wants to hear. But a wipe is not just a wipe. And so we hustled to get samples. We finally found a partner that we wanted to move forward with. We moved forward with that partner, that and I think such an underrated piece of that is partnership too. You would get so many folks, and I'm sure countless entrepreneurs and CPG, food and beverage run into this, and you hear it all the time where they're just laughed out of the room, right, like you could never make a product like that. Yeah, you're that's gonna cost you, you know, four times the average cost. Oh, that'll never work and and what you really need is a partner that says, You know what, we're willing to take a bet on you. We're willing to take a bet and grow with you. We see your vision, we like you guys, and we're going to grow with you. And we were able to find a partner that was willing to do that, and so we we planted roots there and decided to grow with that part. Ownership. And I think we learned a lot through that, that just, you know, from day one you start, you start with this noble idea, and then you're met with friction right away. And that's, that's the entire journey of when you're starting and launching a business, from the beginning, until where we're at now, where we're going to go, you're always going to run into friction points, but the obsession with what you're building and the product has to lend itself to fighting through all of those, those those roadblocks, and at the same time view them as puzzles to just put them together. And now we have that hindsight bias of saying, well, we've just solved, you know, 1500 10,000 piece puzzles. We can do the next 1500 too, if we want, as we continue to build this brand,

William Harris 10:49

yeah, I to a point you have to have a bigger vision than the problems, right? And I think that that's something that a lot of people miss when they go to start a company, is they're like, Oh, I think I've done the math on this and it makes sense. If the business makes sense, you probably don't have the right business plan yet. It maybe needs to make a little less sense. I understand that you got to run into a couple of different friction points. I'm sure that you have then as well. What are some friction points that you have run into as you as you were building this up.

Sam Nebel 11:22

Yeah, I think a number of friction points. One, how difficult it would be to get on retail shelves. Two, making sure we're going in the right category and and on the right with the right retailers. You asked about what some of the hustles were in the early, early days, talking 10 years ago, we started by selling to brick and mortar gift mom and pop shops, drugstores, no name, you know, just family chain stores or one off shops, just so we could start selling product. That's what we said. We said we just need to sell and get people to say, Oh, I'll buy this, put in my store and reorder. But when we noticed, they would say, oh, yeah, we're doing well. We're going to reorder again in two months. And you're ordering two times a year, and you're talking about at most $3,000 a store, kind of like, wait a second, where's the scalability here? And so took us a while to kind of figure out and breakthrough to traditional retail, after we had built up some sales and gotten Product Market Fit feedback, getting consumers responding to us, narrow down our product segment, start focusing in on what the brand should feel, talk and look like. We got accepted to a branding accelerator, CPG accelerator called the brandary out in Cincinnati, 2016 which is transformative for us that we really were kind of, you know, hammered in our head the institutionalization of consumerism, how to work with consumers, how to work with work with shopper marketing, how to work with brokers, presenting to broker, all sorts of things. And that was after starting the brand for two and a half years thinking, Word, you know, have this cool company, and we just get, like, ripped a new one, basically, to the extent of, here's where you really need to be focusing and and not having any CPG experience, or frankly, startup experience that we did have some consumer, commercial brick and mortar experience, nothing of selling a product to brick and mortar. And I think it's really challenging. As prevalent as it is today, it doesn't mean it's gotten any easier. It just means there's more people doing it, which makes it even harder. Sure,

William Harris 13:19

a lot of times when brands are getting going, they run into, let's say, financial issues, where they're looking at, well, do we take on financing? Do we take on debt? If I remember correctly, you guys looked at financing and turned it down during the COVID time. Tell me about what what were you What were you thinking? Why did you say no, this isn't right for us.

Sam Nebel 13:41

Yeah, so we had, we had talked to, look, there's been a number of folks that we've talked to that haven't been a right fit for us, and I think, and that could be on the angel or the fun side, it was actually a group that had committed to a term sheet, signed a term sheet, felt like they were stalling COVID. Happened March 15 was the day we were supposed to get the money wired to us, but we didn't have everything signed said, Hey guys, what's happening the day after they said, Hey, we're putting our pencils down. She said, This is ridiculous communication that should have been a complete and utter signal immediately that we shouldn't we should have just dropped away from them right then, but we were trying to understand what's going on, and they were going on, and they were being vague and wouldn't really explain, and they wouldn't talk to us on the phone, and we still hung around because they said, Oh, well, we might, but we're not sure, because we don't know what's happening with COVID. And we said, look, we gotta, we gotta know what to do here. And I think that was such a blessing in disguise, because that would have clearly been the wrong partners, right, and eventually we found the right partners. And I think that was just a lesson in, it's, it's, it's challenging to find partners out there, and especially if you're if you're new, if you don't have connections in CPG, and to the to the other side of that coin is there was a period of time, I would say, probably 2000 and. 13 through 2022 or 2023 where a lot of different funds were entering in. Or people would think that they could be CPG investors, because they would see all these exits happening. Or, well, if Dollar Shave Club can do it, and then Harry's comes out, and then on his company, anyone can start a CPG brand. There's so much money and opportunity there. Well, no, and this is something that will nitzaset talks a lot about, there's not opportunity unless you're an operational wizard. There's not opportunity unless you build a world class brand, like Dr James Richardson suggests in his book, ramping your brand, unless you're doing these things and executing against a vision that is so powerful with penultimate execution and tackling roadblocks and and really just being a steward of your brand, then you're not going to build something great. And I think that's weeded out a lot of these consumer investors that that were just pencil pushing and thought they'd be in for an easy ride and, and I don't blame them, right? Sure, what? What should an investor do? They're looking for arbitrage. If there's something where you think there's an easier ride or easier money, then you go for it. Why wouldn't you? It's the scooter craze, the scooter bubble, right? All these examples where, hey, there's easy money, there's boundless opportunity. But it turns out it's, it's things have gone back to the basic fundamentals. You have to have a profitable business with good operations, a solid supply chain, a brand that resonates with people in repeat purchase. It's breaking it down back to the first principle fundamentals. That's what makes a great consumer brand.

William Harris 16:33

You talked about this idea of operational mastery, and that's kind of where I wanted to go next with this. Because when you and I talking before, if we were gonna say, what's the one thing that's going to make or break your brand? It seems to come down to this, right? Like all the other things are important too. But if you're not an operational master, you're going to really miss out on a lot of what do you think a lot of brand owners miss when it comes to being operational masters? I think

Sam Nebel 16:58

they miss not thinking about it. I think they there's a thought around a product could be good enough. I believe a product there used to be the Battle of everyone would talk about differentiation or innovation, or this discussion around, are you different, or are you better? And I think it has to be all of the above. I think it needs to feel like innovation to the consumer, that it looks good in their house, that they feel proud to own it, that the taste profile, the mouth feel, or the butt feel, or whatever it is, has to have not just differentiation points, but it also has to be better. And you should strive for both. I want Goodwipes to be better than than any option right, at least from what we think and what our consumers say. And I want it to be different, so that it stands alone, otherwise it just gets clumped up together, and they might buy you on promo and not on others. And so our repeat rate reflects that in the category, and we're bringing more new users to the category than anyone else, and that's a focal point. So the when you think of the four Ps, the most important one is product. Sure, and so operations ties to marketing. It ties to your strategic positioning. It ties to building a brand, because the product can only be done through a series of operational components configured

William Harris 18:15

together. That makes sense. You You hit on something that I really liked, which was that the product also has to look good in their home. I feel like a lot of people don't talk about that, but there is something to be said for the product has to have some esthetic appeal within the home and functional appeal within the home. If it's if it's awkward, it doesn't work either. How do you go about making sure that your product fits within the home?

Sam Nebel 18:37

That's such a good point. I'll even look. I'll give you an example. There's these paper towels behind me here. I was short on paper towels. I forgot them, so I got an Instacart delivery of private label paper towels. By accident. I picked one brand. They brought me the private label, and it sucked. It was awful. It doesn't fit, it looks awkward, and it just looks like crap in my house, it just looks like absolute crap, and I don't want it. I can't wait till it's I actually haven't even been using them. I bought other paper towels that I like better, that are cleaner, that function better, and part of that is the esthetic, every piece of it. And so again, it ties back to operations, quality. And then how does it show up and appear in the house? I think it's our company. And I'm not going to say I'm the best. I'm not the best at it at all, but our company has super high standards for design and esthetics, and I think it's and I think the results that we're seeing pay off because of that effort and energy and intensity that we put into that and how you look in the home. It's it comes down to what method did, where people used to leave dish soap on top of their or underneath. And then they met because the method, they would put it on top. And I agree. I have, you know, one brand up there right now, and then I have a method bottle of something else that doesn't even need to be out. And I'm like, Oh, I like the way this method looks, and I hate the way that other one looks. Same with toothpaste. Hello, toothpaste did something similar. And so we. Drive, where we where we sit in the consumers life, which is the back of, back of the toilet, or somewhere in the bathroom. We want to be out for everyone to see. It needs to be conspicuous. Yeah, we want it to be shared, right? So that's what's that's something that's really important to us, and we've done a lot of research. And look, CPG is tough because you have long feedback loops. You take three months to get insights, three months to put an idea together, three months to launch something, three months to XYZ, a year before you bring something to market, then you need three to nine months of feedback in the market before you do it again. So it's longer feedback loop times than just AB testing something on the website. Yeah.

William Harris 20:39

Operational mastery looks different at 10 million than it does at 100 million, than it does at 1 billion. What does it look like at 10 million on its way to 100 million? What are the things that need to be there? Yeah,

Sam Nebel 20:51

I think more Providence over your supply chain and being really in depth with your vendors, that is not just the immediate suppliers. That is not just the immediate three PL agencies. That's everyone, that includes the freight forwarding companies, that includes the logistics providers. It includes getting and some of these things are things that we have done, are doing or wish that we had done. And I think what that looks like is not just treating them transactionally with here's the PO, but getting to know them, getting to know them just like any other vendor that you work with, becoming a true partner, like as if they're an extension of your team, because they are a very important part of your team, you rely on them a lot, and the stakes only get higher every month that goes by. Every time your business grows, the stakes get higher, not lower. So it's worth investing in those partnerships and relationships, and building true relationships, going to dinner with them, bringing them to your office. They love those the littlest things that you would think are innocuous, means so much to folks that work on that side of the business, the supply chain, bit the supply chain, piece of the business, beyond that, as you grow it goes well beyond and will as a master of this, it goes well beyond just working with your immediate supplier. It works with their it's about working with their suppliers, qualifying them, getting to know them, building relationships with them. So for us, if we have a let me pull out a wipe, a pack of wipes, and a wipe. If we have a pack of wipes, right, you have a number of components here. Well, let's say maybe the wipe itself, which constitutes, for you know, a significant percentage of the feel and the function, the performance, wouldn't it be pretty smart or pretty important for us to develop a relationship with the people that make these I would say so. I think so. And that's something that I think a lot of people don't do in CPG. And if I were to ever start another brand over. I would, I would be very involved in that from the beginning. And I know will does that with his almond flour, investing in arbitrage, or whatever he does, so that he's like tracking all of those markets that create the inputs for his final output. And I think that is something that's super important, that that people should realize you

William Harris 23:22

touched on this, but I want to make sure that I get it right, because it's, it's different from what I've done before. I mean, you're talking about having them, you know, going out to dinner with them. You're talking about hiring them over to the to your office and your warehouse and things like that. Like, how do you actually develop a meaningful relationship with them outside of just like buddy buddy, let's go golfing to like a relationship that actually now you have learned something about the quality and stuff like that that they're putting into the product.

Sam Nebel 23:51

I think it's just continuing to do research, digging into the supply chain, going deeper and deeper and deeper in the supply chain. Oh, so who do you source from? Okay, these two companies, great. I would like to talk to them. Oh, great. Who else do you, you know, could you possibly source from? Oh, cool. I would like to talk to them. Oh, what's their pricing look like? You're always optimizing. You're always getting better. You know, one of my mentors, advisors, told me that supply chain is similar to marketing. Is always refining. You're always finding pieces to optimize. It's never a set and forget it thing. And I find that to be true, and I find that to be something that is really important and not something I would say it's a big learning for me, something I didn't wake up or start the company thinking of the importance for

William Harris 24:34

that. Well, that brings me up to another good question, which is, what's one operational system or workflow that you wish you would have built sooner.

Sam Nebel 24:45

One operational system or workflow that I wish we built sooner would be that's a really good question. Yeah, I think doing all those things that I was saying earlier, I think doing that before you get to 10 100 if you can, if you have the I think it's worth it to make the time. I think it's worth it to make the time if your almonds are coming from China or Canada or Norway, I don't know where they're grown, or California, I don't know, Ethan, and that that's a big part of what your taste profile is like for a protein bar. I would, I would go start talking to those people, even if you're not going to do anything, even if you're just visiting and saying, Hey, I'm really excited. We're point 00, 1% of your business. But consumers love our our stuff and what you're doing, you should know comes out in this final product. Take a bite. They go, Oh, my God, this is amazing. Great. Here's our sales, here's our vision. It will change the way that person thinks about you and brings a more organic attachment to their own work of whatever it takes to process and harvest the almonds. That makes sense?

William Harris 26:03

Yeah, a lot. Let's flip that on the other side. Then what does a healthy, healthy supply chain relationship look like, and when? What are red flags that it might be time to break up with that supply chain?

Sam Nebel 26:16

I think when you there may be times where you outgrow and this isn't necessarily true for us, just things that we've seen, if you hit friction points, if you hit and that could happen with with money, where maybe you can't pay your bills on time. So maybe you're the problem and you need support. And you say, hey, look, we're raising money, or we, we just need your support right now to give us an extra 15 days of terms, you have to be ready to have those, those difficult conversations, be ready to ask for those conversations, and be be ready to make it right. And you might realize at some point, like there could be a mismatch in culture fit. They maybe someone says, or a group A says, Hey, we only do things this way. And we and everyone realizes that work to get us from zero to 10, but from 10 to 100 maybe that doesn't work, and that's okay, and that's natural, and that sucks. But everyone has to do what's best for their business, because if you're going from 10 to 100 and you needed to operate a certain way, and it doesn't involve those prior folks anymore, then you're doing a disservice keeping them around if they're not going to change their ways either. So I think it's just being honest and upfront and transparent about it, and not everyone will understand it in the right way, but I think it serves that everyone better in the long run. So you just have to be willing to address those, have those conversations, work through them, and if people aren't working through them, or if they're acting, you know, funny, then you have to find a way to amicably move on. And you know, I'd also add to that, not not bashing those people, or not creating a negative resentment of those people, internally or externally, but just just moving on. Because the sooner you get out of that energy and into a new vendor relationship, it's like a breakup. You it just becomes the past and the distance grows, and you're focused on the future, which is more important, the present, which is more important.

William Harris 28:06

Yeah. I mean, it feels a lot like, even with an employee, right like to your point, the sooner you make that, once that decision needs to be made, and you're aware that that's the decision that needs to be made, the sooner you make that happen, the better for everybody, including the person that you're moving on from Amen, it ends up being better for them too. Um, I want to talk about scale then a little bit. When did you first realize that going from 10 to 100 million wasn't just more marketing, it was an entirely different

Sam Nebel 28:33

business? I think, when we think it's been over the past few years as we started to really onboard some a plus, plus plus players, and you realize that things that would have taken me three months or weeks, these people are doing in hours and days, and you realize, whoa, there's a different there's a different level to this, and I better figure out what I need to do, what I'm doing, what I'm good at, where I belong in this organization, how I can lead better, how I can support these people better. And what is the business calling for is super important. Yeah, so I think it was when we started to change the personnel around us, and frankly, change how I thought that we were going to do it, as far as you know, will, as you know, has under 10 people on his team, and I thought that is so aspirational, that is, that's just whatever they've done with their crazy way of doing business that they're able to achieve it. And I think that's, I'm not saying it's unrealistic, like it can happen. But for us, what we found is we're and we're not a huge team, but we're, you know, 2021 22 people, hiring those each person has exponentially elevated the culture of excellence and discipline in our organization and at work output, as well as the fun side of culture too, where it makes all people better. Yeah, there

William Harris 29:52

are different ways to approach this. Like you said, will takes the the approach of, we're going to outsource a lot of this stuff. Yeah, I. Curtis Masco on over at Portland leather goods. He takes the approach of, we're going to in source almost everything, right? And both approaches can work. You just have to know to maybe to your point, as a founder, which type of founder Are you? Where is your skill set lie? Yeah. Who can you surround yourself with? That makes sense, because one approach will work for one person and it won't work for another person. For sure. For sure, absolutely. How do you think about planning for scale without outpacing your resources?

Sam Nebel 30:28

Planning for scale without outpacing your resources? I think if you're finally able to afford the time of making the space and time for that and saying, let's say if, if we want to be a business one day that does two, 50 million or 500 million sales, my suggestion, the way I think about it, is start planning for that a little earlier. Doesn't mean that that's what you're urgently working on every day, but in the Dwight in the Eisenhower matrix, it's important, and so you need to start setting up for that. So if your manufacturing facility can only make 10 million nuts a month, or 10 million bars a month, but you really needed to make 20 then you either need to have that conversation now about investing in the capacity and the machinery to build for that, or you need to go and find a new factory to put on top or to replace them. And those are the things that you have to be thinking about, unless you just want to stay at where you're at, which there's no problem with making 10 million bars a month. But if you're going to keep growing, you have to be continuing to look forward for that. So it's always about optimizing and growing and refining your supply chain and operational mastery book.

William Harris 31:37

I think the thing that I like about this is that you're looking forward, you have to set the plan, then you work backwards from that plan to say, okay, in order to get to that, what are the pieces are going to need to be in place, right? Yeah. And that allows you to make the decision today with confidence, because you can say, I know that in order for us to be able to do X, we need y. So when y comes about, the answer is yes, yeah, you already know, yep. Where do you see? CPG founders get this wrong whether either they start too late or they start too soon in their scale planning,

Sam Nebel 32:11

I would see it's probably and by the way, I'm writing notes, because the way you just start taking it back to me is, is amazing. So in order to get to where you need to go, you have to create that, that ecosystem, and work backwards from there. I mean, this is well worded, how you said it.

William Harris 32:28

I appreciate it. It's Eos, basically Foundation, which is what we run on. And that is the whole point of, like, the I, and I like thinking about, like, 50 years from now more than I like thinking about five days from

Sam Nebel 32:39

now. To me, I'm the same way, right? And so I but I can

William Harris 32:43

make that plan, and I say, This is what the agency needs to look like 50 years from now, if that's what I believe about the future, and I'll be wrong, right? Like we'll all be wrong about what the future looks like 50 years from now, but if I at least have an idea, a vague concept, of what that is, then I can work backwards. Okay, so 10 years from now, it needs to be this, five years from now, one year from now, so now, next quarter. These are the things that have to happen for us to be at least on track. The actual execution will look different because things will change. Things will come up, but at least now you know that you're at least moving in the right direction roadmap.

Sam Nebel 33:14

And it's so important for the rest of your team that to have that even if they only take 50% of your vision in their head, because they're so mired in the day to day. At least they can. When they go home and their significant other or their parents or their their best friends at dinner say, Oh, how's it going? And they say, Oh, well, this is happening. It's like, oh, cool. Well, what do you guys do? And you're like, Well, crap, we're building, we're building a category leading but white brand, yeah, cool. You know what I mean? Like that, like, oh, that's what we're doing. That's why we care. That's why this, this piece matters, because it rolls up into this broader vision. Here's the three year vision, here's the 10 year vision. This is what we're building towards. So I'm huge on that. Will? It? Will? I think we, we might share some brain cells together.

William Harris 34:00

Quantum entanglement, yeah, quantum entanglement. Oh,

Sam Nebel 34:03

that's another one.

William Harris 34:06

Well, okay, so what's your your mental model for knowing when to reinvest in infrastructure team or new product lines? Because there's always a balance that everybody has to choose between those right? And you know, maybe whether you want to go. But how do you, how do you work through where that next investment is

Sam Nebel 34:22

going? You know, I think what's kind of fun is we at Goodwipes every time we think of new and there's a time and a place for it. The more more often when we think of slashing, going back to the basics, just doing what we're doing really, really important, high impact, high leverage activities that actually move the needle and take the business fundamentally, because now you're kind of a bigger ship, so you're turning the big ship, rather than, here's this new, you know, sale that you could put at the top of the ship that is going to do a little bit more. And this is that, it's funny, I'm saying. This. This was kind of like, told to me about some things where I was like, What about these bolt ons and add ons? And it's like, hey, what about this, which is the direction of the ship? And I'm like, Yeah, we are going to do that. But, but that every time we go back to the big impact, high impact, high leverage activities, you feel better. Yeah, work is smoother. You're working on the right thing and and like, just like magic, the work output is better. The inputs better. The output is better. And you realize how much work actually goes into that project and process. And you say to yourself, I can't believe I thought of doing that stupid little, you know, possible line extension, when there's so much that we have to do here and this, all this work takes us to such a bigger output

William Harris 35:49

that's well worded. I want to talk category management and market dynamics a little bit, because I think that you guys have done a really good job of not just building a brand, but shaping the category. You've said that flushable wipes are one of the fastest growing categories. What excites you about the space right now? Yeah,

Sam Nebel 36:05

it's doubled in the past 10 years. So it's over a billion dollar category now, growing three times faster than toilet paper. Goodwipes are up 77% year over year year to date, which is really encouraging. The whole category is growing. Premium is driving the category. So it's not being driven by private label, it's being driven by Goodwipes and some other premium brands. Which means, which signals that consumers want an elevated and a true experience with this product, not just a sanitization. They want a true, authentic self care experience. They're they're thinking about this experience. They're taking time to invest in this experience. Retailers are opening up shelf space, and you're talking from smaller retailers by small I mean, you know, 100, 100, 200 store chains are seeing the writing on the wall all the way up to your Krogers and your targets and your Walmarts are all adding space. They continue to add space over every two years. And if we're not in, we get told, Hey, we are going to bring you in when we can do it. And time after time, that is proven true, that when a retailer tells us we're going to bring you in, we just need to make more space. They are doing it. And once we get in, we prove that we bring more incremental consumers to the category that are new, and everyone loves it. So it's worse. I call it the toddler phase. It's not infancy, where it's like zero to 100 it's you're going from 100 to billion plus. And we are, we are doing we're just, it's all just working right like what we're doing is working. What are some of our competitors are doing are working, and it's creating a better directional momentum. The tailwinds are heading in the right direction. Legislation is heading in the right direction. Of, you know, do not label or do not flush. Labeling requirements are soon to be, you know, knock on wood, federally legislated to make sure that consume and educating consumers that they're flushing the right products, which are good, white, flushable wipes and a few others, rather than baby wipes which you cannot flush, facial wipes which you cannot flush, Wet Ones, hand wipes which you cannot flush because of what the wipe is made up of. So that education, it's all creating this massive amalgamation of of momentum and energy in the direction of consumers are leaving toilet paper to wipe their butts with flushable wipes, which bodes well for our business.

William Harris 38:35

Yeah, I love that you refer to this as like the toddler stage, because I think the toddler stage is an exciting stage, just even in human life as well. If I, if I don't share this on this podcast, there's no other podcast I could it reminds me of one of my daughters, when she was going through the potty training stage, and we walk in and she goes, somebody pooped in my underpants. We're like, I think it was you, you know, you didn't know it a little bit, kind of, no, somebody else pooped in my underpants. And it's like, Well, okay, but toddlers are funny. They come up with really interesting things. They make you think about things very differently. It's exciting to watch them explore and learn the world. And I think, to your point, that's, this is the exciting stage of a new category,

Sam Nebel 39:13

100% second inning, toddler phase. Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna borrow that line, if I ever, uh, I ever let one go or something happened? I'm gonna say, Did someone just do that in my underpants? That's wild.

William Harris 39:27

Yeah, there you go. What's something that a lot of CPG founders overlook when it comes to category management?

Sam Nebel 39:36

I think I feel like I don't hear enough doing it. I feel it it's not the number one topic of conversation in all calls, but it's something that I think about a lot, which is understanding the competitive set. And by the way, that doesn't mean I'm scouring the internet to see what you know, the competitors are doing in my category, like, what's their branding say? It's not, it's not that at all. It's, it's what. What's their data look like? What's their consumers look like? How are they positioning themselves? Not so that it's like this innovation arms race, but just so we can make sure that we're staying true to what we're doing and realize, Oh, they're they're getting their consumers. We're getting our consumers. Everyone's getting consumers at an excellently high clip. Everyone's winning here like that. That's great. It's more for knowledge. And say, Hey, are we performing? Are we doing everything we can? Are we doing the to the best of our ability? And, oh, by the way, wow. What can happen if we invest in this retailer that we're not in because x, y, z is happening. It's just there's so many opportunities. And so we've invested heavily in our data and analytics arm. We've just made some amazing hires there, and the output is impeccable weekly reports of just understanding what's going on and understanding the landscape, and numerator reports, understanding what the consumer is saying, what our consumer profile looks like. I just think all those things are so important. And then you start to build in your head a story and a snapshot, these series of snapshots of what's actually happening on the ground, what's happening in this category. And I think that's something that. One thing I'll add to that is not just your direct category, but if you're a protein bar, you're not just fighting against other protein bars. You're fighting against other snacks, share stomach. Yeah, you could have 10 protein bars a day, but realistically you're going to have maximum two, maybe three if you're literally just traveling all the time, but you're competing against drinks, protein beverages as well. And so we look at that and say, Hey, we don't just look at data for wipes. We're looking at toilet paper data. We're looking at baby wipe data because we know some users are still accidentally flushing or maybe just wiping and throwing away baby wipes, right? So it's having a broader look of where's your where's your category really sourcing from, and it's typically not just a sub category. I think that's important. How

William Harris 41:56

much of building up the category is passive versus active. And to clarify what I mean by that is a lot of the category building is from people using Goodwipes, sharing it with other people, and it's building as a result of that, versus you actively causing it to happen. I've seen brands attempt to build a category, and they can struggle to do that. How much do you have to invest to to actively make it happen.

Sam Nebel 42:21

I would want to be active all day. I think we're really fortunate that we've because of the way we position our brand, because of the organic word of mouth sharing, because of the product, the positioning, the sampling efforts that we've done, which is category building, but by existing on shelf, we've drawn a lot of we've attracted a lot of intention instead of push and promoted. And so I think we're really fortunate in that sense. So I think we've had a good mix of passive and active. And if you could, if you could hack in or build in the the passive, and I'd say, like a great design package, design and symbolism, then that makes everything that you do in the active side easier. So they should really work together.

William Harris 43:02

I like that. How do you work with retailers or partners to position self as the brand in the aisle? Yeah,

Sam Nebel 43:08

I think we always like to tout the category and say, hey, the category is growing. Invest in this. What your napkins are down, your paper towels are down, your toilet paper's down, your paper plates are down. So you should, you should really look at investing in flushable wipes, like how well it's doing. It's been growing for the past 10 years. You've gone from 6% to 12% so you doubled of your total Bath Tissue shares. Flushable wipes. You're, you know, making more money, etc, etc. And we'll always position that story first, and then we'll add on and say, Hey, here's what we're doing, and here's why we think our variety of flavor profiles are important. Here's why we think X, Y, Z is important, right? And I think that story goes really well, because you build credibility by talking about category first and then saying, here's what we're doing, and here's most importantly, here's what we are, here's what we have done. Are doing it will do for you? Yeah,

William Harris 44:01

just to be clear, you don't have flavor profiles for Goodwipes. Do you you mentioned that?

Sam Nebel 44:06

Oh yeah, we do. Oh yeah. We have, that sounds like an April Fool's. We have brochure, we have Rosewater, we have Shea cocoa. We have lavender, we have Cedar. We have botanical bliss, which is launched in Target and Walmart. We have a few others that we're working on

William Harris 44:20

so scented, scented? Not, yeah,

Sam Nebel 44:22

we end up saying flavors. It's just kind of stuck. It's fun. Yeah,

William Harris 44:27

that's good. How do you let's say that you're a smaller brand, and you maybe can't afford all of the biggest data opportunities, right? Maybe you're 5 million, and you're trying to do this. How do you get the best data for understanding your

Sam Nebel 44:41

category? You got to partner with a good broker that's willing to share, sure, and you got to just glean insights as much as you can as fast as possible. You have to find scrappy ways to do it. You have to work with these agencies to find reports that you know can work for you and make something, make something happen there.

William Harris 44:56

Yeah, that makes sense. There's not really any other way to hack it. You just. Got to get the real data, because the data exists, and if you guess at it, you're just going to guess wrong. Yep, for sure. I want to talk about the human side. Then of building this, what mindset Do you think founders need to unlearn in order to scale?

Sam Nebel 45:12

Ooh, I think you have to start opening your mind a lot. And you got to hire Well, right? And when you hire, well, you'll find that you get to listen a lot you set direction, but you can listen a lot and have the experts really run and then you get to focus on the higher level and bringing everything together. I think that's really important. You get you. I think you have to be open minded to evolving your role in the company and just figuring out what's best and and I have a very unconventional role myself, where kind of doing a mixture of things, where I'll be on podcast, but I'm also working behind the scenes, on supply chain. And I think you must have a mindset of, you cannot do everything on your own. And I think my scrappiness and bias for Lean being lean, you know, I'm looking at Will's, Will's company, and say, well, they can do, we can do too. Was, was, was just misguided. And was, I don't know if it was a masked way or it wasn't like, Oh, I know I could do this better. I knew that I couldn't, but I kind of was like, Oh, it's good enough. But once you bring experts on, I was running the Amazon business, for example, was doing good, doing well. But once we brought some epic Amazon players into the mix. Shout out Liz, shout out cat, we are soaring. And they, I know they're working hard, but they make it seem effortless. And I was, you know, not struggling, but I just wasn't deep enough in it. And you have to allow for depth and expertise to come in, because as you scale, everything gets more complex, and you need people that know what the heck they're doing in there. So I think it's being able to step away and being comfortable with that, and I get the privilege of watching that flourish and encourage and cheer from the sidelines and devote my energy to areas that are more useful.

William Harris 46:59

People talk about hiring a players a lot, and then they go around and do the same things that everybody else does to hire people, and so they get, you know, they're not quite a players, BBB plus, and that's fine. How do you hire those people who are actually going to be transformative

Sam Nebel 47:14

to the business? We've been really lucky in that a number of our recent hires have come from referrals of people on our team, huge where our team, you know, our Chief of Staff, Jake, who's a wizard, super young high Revver, has so much experience and wisdom, and he's he's calling and he's hustling and getting people onto our team and recruiting top talent. And a talent knows a talent, they know where to find it, they know where to get it. And that's been super helpful for us. And even someone that he got, that he hired and recruited at a festival, she ended up going and recruiting someone, right? So it becomes this web I'm not saying all of our team did that, but that's been a nice bonus that has come out in the past year. Yeah, I've

William Harris 48:07

heard that from others before, that a players like a players, and so if you surround yourself early on with the right team, they will quickly. They will find other people who they want on their team that are a players. They will also weed out anybody that you end up hiring that is not an A player very quickly for you.

Sam Nebel 48:25

Yes, which is, which is really good? Yeah, it's really

William Harris 48:31

how do you keep the culture still scrappy, creative and fun, even as the stakes become higher?

Sam Nebel 48:38

I don't know how you do it. I think it has to be an organic thing. Yeah, I think it's just what we do. There's a saying I like, which is, have fun and get crap done. And I think it's just the environment where we've crap we're I was thinking about this recently culture. Culture is kind of like two different things, right? And people talk about culture like, oh, what's the energy like? Is it tense? Is it fun? Is it you know, serious? Is it not too serious? And then there's culture, which is basically, what do you tolerate? What do you accept? What is good work? What is, you know, what are behaviors that you will tolerate or or say that you want, minus what actually are the results and how you operate as a system, and how you operate as a team? I think both of those and then those work together, so that's why I say have fun and get crap done. And we've, we're continue to sort the having fun part is, I would say it's pretty effortless for us. It's just we're really lucky that that's just who we are as a company. And I think we've, you kind of look around your organization and you see, oh, like everyone feels like they belong here, right? Like it's a culture fit. We talk about the same things. We laugh about the same things. We go on walks every Tuesday at noon together, and we get, you know, 10 people walking, right? Just somehow we've landed that. And I think that's part of the interview for process and intuition, gut feel of people who you like want to. Around. And then there's the get crap done piece, which we've just done a really good job of sorting through that as well and attracting, like we said, those eight players. And you could just kind of feel it in the interview, right? It might be the 100th interview for position, and then all of a sudden, you say, Wait a second. This. This feels unlike any other. And you can kind of send get that sensation. We

William Harris 50:21

undervalue gut so much because of all the access we have to data, and so we think everything has to be data validated. We don't remember about how much data our gut actually does process. Yeah, I had will leach on here. He was ex Pepsi, and he talked a lot about, you know, the different minds you've got, your reptilian brain, or whatever that's processing like. I don't remember what the number is like, 1000 times more data than your conscious mind is. Just don't think about it in the same way. But those gut feelings are something worth training if you're going to be successful as a good founder. I couldn't agree more. I want to get to know Sam Nebel a little bit here. Sure Tell me about your childhood and how that helped shape you to be the successful founder that you are.

Sam Nebel 51:10

So childhood, I was actually really shy, which is funny, because now I'm you're not shy. Yeah, I'm not shy at all. I don't know how that transformation happened, but it just kind of did. I think I've definitely like I talked about earlier, I was huge on wipes. I've always talked about Wipes. Wipes are who I am. This is this, this company is, is I don't like saying extension of me. I like saying extension of we, because every person on our team, especially the early folks, Ave have have a chemical makeup that is reflected in the brand, and so it's far better and more mass oriented and exceptional than I would have come up with, or just Charlie and I would have come up with, right? So I don't like saying that, but the wife's part, and that, that innate, organic, original passion of wanting to scale that feeling out to the world, that that's just where I where I've always come from, right? And that I could say is, you know, I'm not saying it's just a direct reflection to me, but this job suits me, well, I would say, right. So what we're doing is it works perfectly, and that shaped who I am. And I think it's no surprise that this is what I'm doing. And it's kind of funny. I don't, I don't think I think about it enough, but I, you know, I go to the bathroom several times a day, and so I get to it's nice to wipe, and say, Oh, this, this is my product. It's our product. But, yeah, it's, it's, it's fun. It's super fun. Um,

William Harris 52:35

your family was using wipes, though, before this was a company, and so, like, why? How did that get started as your family thing when you were younger?

Sam Nebel 52:46

I don't I think it's something that happens in Jewish households a lot. I hear that from a lot of people. They're like, Oh, I'm Jewish. I have, you know, my little Jewish tummy, or, sure, dairy intolerances, etc, ends up being the primary driver, I'm not sure it just kind of happens. And that secret insight that we've unlocked over time, I don't know why we had it. It just just always it just did, yeah,

William Harris 53:13

if you and I were gonna work together, maybe we're going for one of these walks here that you talked about, which I like going for walks, what else would I learn about you? Any like idiosyncrasies or things that aren't obvious on a podcast like this?

Sam Nebel 53:28

I think every entrepreneur has idiosyncrasies. 100% agree, which makes them what they are. I think that, gosh, let's see what it I feel like. I have so many. I've also worked on a lot of them to tame them. I'm a high energy individual, and so I've really crafted times where I could have more just be in more, like tame or docile environments. And I think that's helped me, but, but at my core, when I'm when I'm feel good, I'm not tired. I am. I am high energy. Last night, I was cooking. I made ceviche for which is super cool, and fish that I caught and started getting into spear fishing recently, which is super fun. Just I like the idea of, like, building and creating and curating and crafting fun, lot like a fun life and fun hobbies for myself. And so like, spear fishing has been that new piece that I've augmented into it, which, anywhere I go, I you could, you could reflexively fish, or spear fish, right? Any tra, anywhere I travel for fun or work, which is has been really cool. And so anyway, I was making ceviche, and I just sat and said, This is so cool. This is freaked out. This is so exciting. I've never done this before. I looked up on chat, GPT, I have conf that I caught in the Bahamas, and really, and I'm chopping it up. I'm like, wait, I can do this. Anyone can do this. And it's amazing. And just reflecting on I would say, like, the cool, basic things of life. Right? I could get excited about so many things excite me. I'm easily excitable, I guess is my long winded answer of getting to that idiosyncrasy, which I'm totally fine with. Well,

William Harris 55:10

I love it. I'm also very excitable, and I like to cook so and I like ceviche. You were talking about that I made beef Rogan Josh. Rest of the family won't make lamb Rogan Josh. That's what I prefer. But I made it just the other night. And I like to cook. I like to explore, kind of one of my artistic outlets that I have, yeah, from time to time, right?

Sam Nebel 55:29

Um, let beef Rogan Josh, right now, and I am my mouth is watering, yeah?

William Harris 55:35

Well, I mean, so earlier this week, then on Monday, I made a Burberry chicken with Ethiopian lentils, like i i look like this for me, is an opportunity for me to just express some creativity. But I never cooked like at all up until maybe a year ago. Me too say, yeah, yeah, but it's like, it's something new that I'm, you know, passionate about it right now. And who knows how long that lasts until I move on to the next thing. I want to come back to spear fishing, though, because I I don't know much about it, and so I will say I'm completely naive. Are we talking like spear, like a gun spear? Are we talking like you're out there with a stick?

Sam Nebel 56:10

Well, both I would you do. So the Bahamas is it's illegal to use the spear gun. Okay, so you dive underwater, free dive. No, no. Tanks. Scuba tanks are, wow, yeah. And then you have a spear that's you have to, like, turn your arm like that, and it's connected your arm, so you're building tension. You wind it up. And so it's like a rubber band, kind of really long rubber band, and you aim at the fish, you fire at the fish for anywhere from like one to four feet, at max, away. And you know, you have to hope that you have pretty good aim at the fish that should carry off. So, yeah, it's so much fun.

William Harris 56:53

I mean, it's like Avatar. So what's one of the coolest fish that you've caught so far?

Sam Nebel 56:59

I think last week, week in the Bahamas, I ended up just kind of follow, falling on a 40 pound fish, a huge fish. And I just turned I said, what is that? Then I looked to the right, there was an even bigger one, and they were just shallow waters. And I was like, I don't know if this is I gotta, I gotta, I gotta shoot this thing. And I did, and I go, guys got a fish. And they're like, What the hell is that monster fish? That was really cool, I think, like the more skillful hunts, where I was actually diving, you know, to 17 to 30 feet, and actually had to put the whole package together, because I'm a beginner at this was, was really, was really nice. I mean, 30

William Harris 57:43

feet is no joke. How long you holding your breath, then anywhere from

Sam Nebel 57:48

I'm getting down there pretty fast, because I'm kind of like rushing. And I would say that I've gotten to probably, I've gotten upwards of a minute, minute and a half. But these are quicker hunts, right? So I've, I'm like, I'm going in, very targeted. I had a little trouble holding my breath in the Bahamas. So there it was just so much repetition. I was just getting, like my lungs were burnt out. Yeah,

William Harris 58:12

yeah. It was fun, though. How do you feel? Like, hobbies like this help to keep a founder sane. Because there's, I think this is therapeutic. Oh,

Sam Nebel 58:21

it's so therapeutic. It's so much fun. You're just you're there's stimulation, there's relaxation, there's focus. You're engaging every sense of your body. You're, you know, watching out for sharks. You're watching out for other people. You're watching out for fish. You're obviously being practicing safety. You're working doing, you're exercising. There's so many things that you're doing so you're so engaged, like you're not. There's no FOMO. You're not missing out on anything. You're not missing out on on work. And then you get to come back stronger, and then it reverberates. I was able to bring in a bunch of fish. We've vacuum sealed and froze the fish. Then I got to bring it back for the whole team. The team likes it. It's really good fish. So it just kind of creates this, this whole environment that it's, it's, it's, um, regenerative, it's, it's, it's circular, right? And so I've it, I don't know. I'm lucky to have kind of fallen into it. And I think if you were to ask me, even five years ago, what I would say, I've never heard of what spear fishing is. I have no idea what it is, so like me and I have to ask about it. Yeah, it's so cool. I love it. I love it. I can't

William Harris 59:26

imagine doing a lot of spear fishing here in Minnesota, the lakes are not clear enough for me to probably catch anything. What about health? I understand that you are a big fan of just being healthy, working out what you put into your body. Yeah. What spurred that on?

Sam Nebel 59:42

Yeah, I think it's been years of experimenting and just liking to be in good physical condition. I think it also comes from a frustration of, oh, I don't, I don't feel my best, I don't feel as strong. Or you go out on a basketball court for the first time in a year and you say to yourself, Okay, well, my cardio is gone. Downhill if I can't do what I used to do. So keeping up with that, maintaining that, I think, is so important. And then health evolves over time. Health is now, you know, in your as you enter your 30s, health becomes blood work. Health becomes watching your cholesterol. Health becomes going to the dentist. Health Health becomes mobility. I tore my Achilles last year, which was a really tough injury that you know had material impact on how I exercise and live for a long time. And now it's, Hey, it's, it's not just oh, I want to be in good shape, but it's, I need to take care and be athletic. I need to be injury free, right? So injury prevention is at the one of the top pillars of my health and wellness routine, whereas that never would have been on there, had I Yeah? I always say, yeah, yeah, okay, mobility, yeah, like, yeah. I'll stretch sometimes when I can. But now it's like, if I'm doing something vigorous, you have to stretch right or prepare warm up properly.

William Harris 1:00:59

Have you always been in through, let's just say, health to the level that you are, or, because I feel like a lot of times entrepreneurs, we're busy, we can get so wrapped up in what we're doing. Was there ever a period of time for you where, you know, it slipped? Yeah,

Sam Nebel 1:01:16

I think in my late 20s, after we had started Goodwipes, you just think, like, oh yeah. Like, I'm still healthy. I'm eating healthy, whatever. And then all of a sudden I go to the dentist have four cavities, and I say, I have not had a I've had one cavity when I was 14 years old, and now you're telling me I have four. What is going? How is that even possible? Like, well, you need to floss. I'm like, Oh yeah, okay, but you're not flossing every day. No, okay, well, that's why you have them. Okay. It's just those realizations, letting letting weight slip, just not paying attention to it in a mindful way. I think it's mindfulness, right? It's mindfulness. It's Hey, am I brushing my teeth? Am I flossing my teeth? Am I doing this? Am I brushing softly enough? It's just and, like I said, with business, going back to the basics, cardio. I'm really just walking right now because that's what I have time for. But I'm I'm walking fast. I'm getting cardio right, better than not 100% if, if somebody

William Harris 1:02:13

wanted to kind of follow a little bit of a protocol on where you're gathering some of your information from for health. Who are you listening to? What podcasts or where are you getting your ideas from

Sam Nebel 1:02:27

health, I think a lot of it comes from twitter, and now actually Twitter, my own research blogs, yes, and podcasts, but Twitter and the podcasts are all the same people, and then it kind of blends together. And I think the best is when I end up researching on my own, because then I own it and I say, Okay, if this, if this is what I want to do, I've researched on my own these five sources, and now this is what I'm going to do. Yeah,

William Harris 1:02:56

I really appreciate researching things. I actually like to get into reading the actual, you know, PubMed, things that I can to the best extent that I can. I will admit, there's a lot that goes over me. But you know, one of the more interesting articles that I can remember reading there was about, I think it was the Cleveland Clinic, 2008 where they just imagined working out and they gained, I think it was like 28% strength after eight weeks of just imagining doing bicep curls or something along those lines. And I think the thing that I appreciate that, as I said, there wasn't a gain of muscle mass, but there was more activation in like neurons, connections and things like that. So it was just able to activate more muscle fire. Oh, cool. And so when you think about that, I think, to your point, you were talking about just intention. A lot of what we do if it's not at the front of our minds, whether that's in our personal lives, whether that's in our business lives, if we're not measuring that, if we're not thinking about it, it's very hard for those things to be improved upon. Like we even said, the vision of the business, if there isn't an already something out there, an intention to do it, it does become difficult scientifically, not just you know kind of stuff.

Sam Nebel 1:04:03

Yep, cool. If people wanted

William Harris 1:04:07

to work with you, if they wanted to follow you, what's the best way for them to get in touch and stay in touch with you?

Sam Nebel 1:04:13

You can follow me at on LinkedIn, and my handle is going to tell you right now, because I don't know it off the top of my head, because I change my name all the time. Samuel Marcus, the bell, any apostrophe, B, E, L, on LinkedIn, is the best way to get in touch with me. And I highly suggest if you really want to know what we're up to at Goodwipes everywhere, Instagram, Tiktok, LinkedIn, perfect

William Harris 1:04:43

Target, Walmart,

Sam Nebel 1:04:45

Amazon, let's go.

William Harris 1:04:46

Let's all of them. Sam, I really appreciate you sharing your time, sharing your wisdom with us. It's been a lot of fun learning from you, and just to hear more about who you are as a person, too cool. Appreciate

Sam Nebel 1:04:55

William, thanks so much for having me on yeah. Thanks

William Harris 1:04:57

everyone for listening. Have a great rest of your day.

Outro 1:05:01

Thanks for listening to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris. We'll see you again next time, and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.

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