Fungi, Plastic, and the Future of Business: Miki Agrawal's HIRO Vision

0:01John Lee Dumas:Light that spark fire nation, JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire brought to you by High Level, the all-in-one sales and marketing platform. Today we'll be breaking down fungi, plastic and the future of business. To drop these value bombs, I brought to Miki Agrawal and the EO Fire studios. Miki is a trailblazing entrepreneur, author and speaker who founded Tushy Thinks and Hiro, known for turning taboos into thriving industries. She's redefining innovation with creativity, purpose, and soft power. Today, we talk about the origin spark, working with nature, profit meets planet, lessons from past ventures, and oh, so much more.

0:36John Lee Dumas:And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Mickey and our sponsors. Fire Nation, stop putting off launching your website or business. Hostinger makes it incredibly simple and affordable to get online with everything you need to succeed all in one place. Visit hostinger.com slash onfire. Use code ONFIRE for 20 % off. Your next chapter starts today. Stop duct taping your business together. High Level runs your website, your funnels, email, automation, scheduling, payments, and memberships all in one place. And when you sign up at highlevelfire.com, you get a 30-day free trial plus my exclusive bonus stack that includes weekly office hours with me and much more.

1:17John Lee Dumas:Visit highlevelfire.com, highlevelfire.com. mickey say what's up to fire nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with that you need a lot of spacious time alone fire nation we're talking about fungi plastic and the future of business and i want to talk about the origin spark what was your inspiration specifically for hero and how did the discovery of plastic eating fungi become the foundation for this fast growing mission driven business. It all started with said spaciousness. You know, I started taking what I call Friday thinking, feeling days where I don't take any calls or meetings on Fridays.

2:05And I just allow for creative ideas to download. And my assistant knows like I, it's an absolute, you know, sacred day. And And on a particular sacred day, I was just sitting in my room looking out the window, staring at a tree. And then I had this like epiphany. And I was like, wait a minute. Breast milk is considered liquid gold because it's so nutrient rich. And so therefore, baby poop must be fertilizer gold. And right now we're wrapping billions of pounds of this fertilizer gold in plastic diapers and throwing in the trash. and not harnessing these billions of pounds of incredible nutrient-rich fertilizer.

2:48And so I was like, what if when the baby poops into the diaper, it could trigger something to grow and then potentially eat the diaper? What could eat diaper plastics? What could eat plastics? And so when I was asking myself this question, my son, Hero, at two years old, comes running into my room, points to a book in my nightstand, while saying Pachamama, which means Mother Earth. And this book, I look at my nights in my bedroom and there's this book that happened to be there, which I did not put there. It was called Pacha's Pajamas. And there's this book and I pull it out and it's this like children's book.

3:24And I pull it, I open it up and it says certain types of fungi can break down plastics.

3:30John Lee Dumas:I mean, Fire Nation, if that's not a sign, what is? And I wanna keep talking about this because this is specifically moving in with working with nature. So how do you harness natural solutions to tackle these man-made problems that we've created over hundreds and thousands of years? So what lessons have you learned from letting nature lead the way? Yes. I mean, if you look at the greatest creator of our time, it's nature. It's our planet, our mother nature. And she's been iterating for three and a half billion years. It's the greatest technology ever made. And we've kind of forgotten that in a lot of ways.

4:11And when you think about it, you know, fungi were brought to the planet over a billion years ago and then cut to 390 million years ago. Trees came to the planet and with a hard part of the trees called lignin, which is what allowed the trees to stand up erect. and um if you know when a tree died back then there was no no way for the trees to actually return to the earth so actually for about 70 to 90 million years these trees when they would fall and die they would just be strewn all over the planet like plastic just trash trash of trees and trash of even dead animals dinosaurs and things like that so over those over the course of 70 to 90 million years, fungi learned how to, you know, create these enzymes that can spit out these enzymes and start the breakdown process of this hard part of the trees called lignin and learn how to break down the carbon backbone and return them to the earth, which then allowed for the, you know, ecosystem, the bugs, the worms, the microbes, all the different, the community of, of insects to come in and take over to help finish the job and return the tree back to the earth so fungi you know were the original catalyst the original recyclers but it took them 70 90 million years and so in that 70 to 90 million years these trees and dead animals dead trees and dead animals would get compressed and compressed and compressed and compressed down to the to you know many many layers down into the earth which then later became our fossil fuels because what is fossil fuels.

5:46It's just basically dead trees and dead animals compressed into oil. And when you think about where plastic comes from, cut to, you know, many, many years later, plastic comes from fossil fuels and fossil fuels comes from dead trees and dead animals. And so therefore, if fungi could break down the carbon backbone of trees, it can also break down the carbon backbone of plastic. Ding, ding, ding. Right. It's been doing this for hundreds of millions of years. we just had to remember and listen and tune back in to wait carbon carbon it can do that whoa so we brought together over the last five years the top mycologists phds in mycology micro remediation biodegradation biology chemistry top top top people in the diaper engineering space from png like you know we just really brought together the oceans 11 of you know this plastic eating fungi and diaper and the reason why we chose to start with diapers was because when i became a mom i was going through like 20 diapers a day because my son had such a sensitive bottom to all the bleach and all the crap in the diapers and i switched to you know the the the cloth diapers and those were just like white washing poop out of cloth diapers was just an absolute even if i'm an eco mom it was like way too much and so i i looked at bamboo diapers and discovered that they were just bull greenwashed viscose.

7:08That was basically a derivative of plastic because it was so processed and they were totally bleached as well. So full of dioxins. And so we just were like that and they don't even work properly. And so we were like, OK, that's not working. My kid had blowouts constantly. What's all we had left was conventional diapers. And I was like, whoa, the amount of bleach and plastic and toxins and dioxins and crap that were in regular diapers was just out of control. And then I looked at the end of life of diapers and discovered that every baby goes to up to 6 ,000 diapers and they take four to five hundred years to break down.

7:40And diapers, the number one household plastic waste item, number three waste item in a landfill. It's like crazy. The very first disposable diaper is still sitting in a landfill somewhere, which means all of your diapers, John, are sitting in a landfill somewhere. All of my diapers, all of your mom and dad's diapers, if they were in diapers, are still sitting in a landfill. The very first one is there. The number of diapers that end up in landfills, 100 billion per year and globally annually every year could circle the earth 1500 times per year. Circle the planet. That's how many diapers. That's why we started with diapers because we're like, holy cow.

8:13Number one household. Let's go. So we created Hero Diapers, the very first diaper that is the unbleached, the softest unbleached diaper made in America. Our fungi are made in America. Our diapers made in Canada. Our unbleached cotton comes from local American cotton farms. were the first unbleached diaper in the market in America. It's the softest. It's the safest unbleached diaper. It's the cleanest. It's so, and it's the most high performing, up to five times drier. It's, you know, it absorbs up to three times faster. But then the coolest part is that it comes with little fungi pouches that are designed to, you just drop a little pouch into each diaper during the diaper change, either pee or diaper or poop diaper, either doesn't matter, just needs moisture.

8:57You just drop a little pouch in the diaper and you throw it in the trash. We call it one inspired action and that's it. And then from there, when the diaper ends up in a landfill or wherever in nature, the fungi will start to wake up, fertilized by the baby's poop or pee, start to grow, and then start the process of returning the diaper back to the earth. And then, of course, all the microbes and all the different community of beings come in to support that breakdown. But it's truly a remarkable thing. We're the first to create shelf-stable and scalable fungi that are designed to break down plastic.

9:29And if you go to Herodipers.com, you can see how beautiful our website is. You can read all about it, H-I-R-O-Dipers.com.

9:36John Lee Dumas:I mean, Fire Nation, that is the circle of life that we should all be focusing on here. I love that concept. I mean, I have a two-year-old right now, so I know exactly what you're talking about when it comes to diapers. And it's just like, how many diapers, how many wipes, how many of everything are we going through on a daily basis is absolutely insane. and man, thank you for doing what you do. I really, really personally do appreciate that. And Fire Nation, we have so much more coming up as soon as we get back from thanking our sponsors. Fire Nation, I know you've been sitting on an amazing idea.

10:05John Lee Dumas:Well, it's time to move from one day I'll launch this project to taking action. Seriously, the barrier is way lower than you think and that's where Hostinger comes in. Hostinger is your all-in-one home base to get online, domain, website, hosting, business email, even email marketing all in one place. No tech headaches, no juggling five different tools at the same time. So many people never pursue their dreams because it feels complicated or expensive. Hostinger flips that script. You can go from idea to MVP in minutes by chatting with AI, and it's incredibly affordable, so you can't use cost as an excuse.

10:39John Lee Dumas:Millions of people trust Hostinger to power their online presence, and now it's your turn. Head over to hostinger.com slash onfire and use code onfire for 20 % off and build your site today. You are Fire Nation and Fire Nation takes action. Hostinger.com slash onfire. That's H-O-S-T-I-N-G-E-R.com slash onfire. Fire Nation, ideas are exciting, but systems will allow you to create freedom. That is where High Level comes in. High Level allows you to build and run your entire business from one platform. Website builder and hosting, funnel and landing pages, email marketing, automation and workflows, calendar booking, payments and subscriptions, even course and membership hosting.

11:22John Lee Dumas:Everything works together seamlessly. Plus, award-winning 24-7 support so you are never stuck. And when you go through my link at highlevelfire.com, you unlock my full bonus stack. A 30-day free trial of High Level with full access, a private 15-minute coaching call with me, weekly live office hours with me, a digital copy of my book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, my 50 Days to Something Execution Roadmap, and more. Stop piecing tools together. Start building momentum. Visit highlevelfire.com and start building your something today. Now, I want to talk about profit meeting planet because let's be honest, at the end of the day, you can make a bigger impact when you're running a business that actually makes money.

12:07John Lee Dumas:It can be sustainable and can keep rolling as a result and maybe expand and market more and do all the great things. So what does the next era of entrepreneurship look like when profit and the planet actually work together? It's the future. It's like outsized impact, outsized returns in that order. Like it's such an important thing to feel into when you take care of the planet, when you take care of the ecosystem, your family thrives more. It'll just pay back dividends and dividends and dividends. It just does. And I think people don't really see that or feel that until they experience the magic.

12:42And you're like, when you're communing with nature, I mean, when you go into nature, you understand it. Like when you go into the forest and you're like taking a walk, magical things happen. Like you really feel this interconnectedness and that interconnectedness actually creates magical manifestations. And it's true. People don't even realize it. And so my recommendations for everyone listening is to go into nature, tune into nature consciousness and say, I'm opening myself up to the most creative potential you're bringing here with me and just see what happens. Magic will happen. All of my best ideas for campaigns, for business ideas, for projects.

13:17The idea for hero came from staring at a tree, giving myself spaciousness, being amongst nature. and I think we do such a disservice to ourselves when we're only working with our prefrontal cortex and our brain and cutting our entire embodied self and all of our the spiritual parts of us I mean Native Americans have been you know tuning in with with with nature for forever and it's not just for fun because there truly is magic that happens magical manifestations that happen when you're tuned in and tapped in tapped in well you mentioned these and I kind of

13:53John Lee Dumas:want to talk about lessons from past ventures. I mean, what did your experiences with Thinks, with Tushy, what did it teach you about scaling culture, shifting brands, and how have you specifically applied those lessons to Hero? They're all very different projects. Thinks was really about serving women and solving a deep problem for women and having to, as a woman myself, wearing pads and tampons, bleached pads and bleached tampons you put inside the most absorbent part of your body was just an absolute no thank you and so providing a really beautiful solution as a pair of underwear but then also really changing the conversation through storytelling through the arts through the media was such a big part of it um and um and then with tushy you know we have elevated people on the planet and it's like starts with you know one clean butt at a time you know and we again harness harness the arts and harness creativity and harness consistency of delivering a message that washing is way better than wiping with dry paper that kills 15 million trees per year 15 to 20 million trees per year now including the canadian boreal forest and it literally smearing poop around your butt promotes chronic utis hemorrhoids fissures itching bacterial vaginosis like all the crap all that stuff can be just alleviated by using water the thing that you use to clean everything else in your life, you know?

15:18And so for us, it's like, the way we think about it is the, the, the company that can, that, that best, um, uh, names, the problem earns the right to solve it. And so I think for us with hero as well, like we're naming the problem, every baby goes to 6 ,000 diapers. They take four to 500 years to break down diapers currently are bleached, processed, full of crap, full of dioxins, even the, you know, cotton ones are bleached and they don't work and they're and so like first of all just on a diaper problem itself it's a problem but the end of life of a diaper the diaper's lifespan is two to three hours then sits in a landfill four to five hundred years like that's insane and so how do we tell both problems simultaneously over and over again consistently harnessing the arts if you go to herodiapers.com you'll see how artful our website is how we tell this story if you go to our at herodiapers on instagram you can follow our hero's journey and see how we tell these stories and how we build our community.

16:12The way we're doing it at Hero is totally different. We're doing it community up. Like, you know, it's very hard to compete with these big diaper companies who are spending so much on Meta and, you know, spending and spending and we're, you know, a startup. And so we are going the mycelial route, mycelium movement route. We have 300 ambassadors of doulas, midwives, lactation consultants, like all these epic women in the birth working space. You know, we have, you know, really, really epic partners who are, you know, who we will be collaborating with this year and beyond. And so it's sort of a different way.

16:43We're launching a huge diaper statue showing every baby goes to 6 ,000 diapers. We're rolling around a 6 ,000 diaper statue around the country that we're going to start launching in South by Southwest. And so just doing like very, very artful, very different things to build the mycelial movement.

16:59John Lee Dumas:Let's talk about the new paradigm when it comes to parenting. I mean, how do the principles of raising the next generation, influence leadership, influence innovation, and the way that we build mission-driven businesses. So one of the things that we really, really thought about when tuning into launching Hero and having our first product be Diapers, because we're launching tons of other absorbent products after Diapers, but Diapers is the first one. But the reason why we chose Diapers is because it's truly an acupuncture point of change. When you go from maiden to mother, when you go from bachelor to father, think about your experience of having a two-year-old.

17:37What you were like before baby and after baby is a very, very different John, right? And so when you think about that, it's an acupuncture point of change. You're going through a one-way doorway. You go from an I-me consciousness into an us-we consciousness where you're not just thinking about yourself all the time, but you're thinking about now your micro ecosystem, which is your household and your family. But what we're saying is that if your ecosystem thrives around you, i.e., if the soil is strong, if you actually have nutrient-rich food, if the ecosystem is thriving, not full of trash and plastic that's now ending up in your brains, in your bloodstream, in your reproductive organs, and your baby's umbilical cord to the tune of us ingesting one credit card of plastic per week now, it's insane.

18:24you know to be able to really tune into ecosystem consciousness which means if your ecosystem thrives and your baby and your family will thrive way more obviously and so the new paradigm parenting movement that we're starting with hero is teaching parents these eco forward parent leadership tips like learning about permaculture learning about um learning about um just just planting a little herb garden in your house how do you do that like replacing all of your um your single use products with reusable products and how to do that in an effective way, how to compost and composting right now, literally 24 % of all landfill waste is food waste.

19:06And so if we can literally each household stop throwing away our food, but just put it in a little compost or that turns into soil and you just throw it outside, you know, even if you live in a city, you can put it by the tree. Like all of a sudden you're reducing the waste stream by 24%. Like there's so many things that we can do and like i planted my first garden this year like the thing that i'm so excited about is like when we say to parents like putting the little fungi pouch into the diaper the little mushroom pouch it's by the way non-toxic culinary grade and you can eat it it's but don't um but you know by putting this like one inspired taking this one inspired action by putting this one little little pouch into the diaper you feel so good you feel like you're supporting the ecosystem you feel amazing and then you're like oh like what's the next thing i can do okay i'm gonna replace my paper towels with these cloths.

19:52I'm going to get a composter. I'm going to start planning my first little garden. I'm going to replace all my plastic cleaning products with just a glass bottle that I replenish with essential oils and or apple cider vinegar and water. Like there's so many little things that you could do instead of getting those squeeze bottles and squeeze packs are, by the way, full of microplastics are going inside your baby. You're getting a little mini grinder that you carry with a little spoon and you can grind all of your grownup food and just feed it to your baby, like baby food. And that's all your baby needs.

20:21And it's like, there's so many little hacks that you're like, wait a minute, I'm just doing, buying all this crap that takes two to three, that lasts for one minute. If it's a squeeze pack for my baby, but then it sits in a landfill for hundreds of years or a diaper, two to three hours. It sits in a landfill for four to 500 years. Like what are things that I can actually do to serve my ecosystem and thus my baby's ecosystem. If I actually care about my baby, you know because if you don't if you think you care about your baby but you're only just taking care of your household and you're throwing it away constantly you're actually not truly caring about your baby all the way and so we're teaching ecosystem consciousness in a way that's just that's just true that's easy that's easy small micro changes you can make that makes one taking one inspired action really fun and what's the next inspired action you can take what's the next

21:08John Lee Dumas:inspired action you can take mickey take us home where can fire nation connect with you where can they learn more about your companies? What is your call to action for our listeners today? I would choose regenerative products forever moving forward if you care about living a good life and having a planet that actually can sustain ourselves and the next generations to come. So please check out at Hero Diapers, H-I-R-O Diapers. Follow us on Instagram. Support us by telling all of your friends about Hero Diapers, go to HeroDiapers.com. You can also use the code Mycelia and get a big discount at checkout if you subscribe.

21:51And then, yeah, check out HeroDiapers.com. And then if you want to follow my whole universe, then go to at Mickey Agrawal. I've written the books Disruptor and Do Cool Shit. And of course, check out Hello Tushy and Wash Your Butt and Save Trees. But really, really support regenerative products and regenerative models and it will serve yourself and serve the planet.

22:13John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with MA and JLD today, so keep up the heat. And for links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com. Type Mickey, M-I-K-I in the search bar. The show notes page will pop right up. And Mickey, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value of Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we will catch you on the flip side. Thank you so much. Well done. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Mickey for sponsoring today's episode. And Fire Nation, are you an entrepreneur on fire who's looking to share your amazing message with the world?

22:46John Lee Dumas:If yes, we are now accepting applications for entrepreneurs on fire. To learn more about becoming a guest, visit eofire.com slash guest, and I'll catch you there or on the flip side. Fire Nation, stop putting off launching your website or business. Hostinger makes it incredibly simple and affordable to get online with every you need to succeed all in one place. Visit hostinger.com slash on fire. Use code on fire for 20 % off. Your next chapter starts today. Stop duct taping your business together. High Level runs your website, your funnels, email, automation, scheduling, payments, and memberships all in one place.

23:23John Lee Dumas:And when you sign up at highlevelfire.com, you get a 30-day free trial plus my exclusive bonus stack that includes weekly office hours with me and much more. Visit highlevelfire.com, highlevelfire.com.