Miki Agrawal On The Three-Pronged System

On her YouTube interview series, Kiki L’Italien often chats with innovators, industry leaders, and generally creative professionals. L’Italien often broaches topics of inspiration and innovation, and chats about ways to change the world. Recently, L’Italien sat down with serial entrepreneur Miki Agrawal, the founder of companies like Wild, Thinx, and Tushy. Often described as an industry disruptor and innovator, Miki Agrawal has created her companies with visionary insight, awareness, and desire to innovate traditionally antiquated sectors. Through her work, Miki Agrawal has become a revered public speaker, often lending her insights and experiences to interviews such as this one. Read excerpts from the conversation here:

Miki Agrawal On Association

Kiki L’Italien: Okay, association chat, people! The thing that people say over and over about whatever industry that you’re in or whatever practice that you’re in for marketing, is challenging that, right. And what that looks like and the fact that you have people who continue to push back even though rationally, logically, it’s all there. That’s it.

Miki Agrawal: I mean and also like when you think about you know, even from yeah, let’s talk about the associations, right. Like, what can associations keep doing to innovate, to bring in more young people to freshen up that blood to get people more excited about joining, I think it’s really about thinking about is a new disruptive way of thinking about it? What is it? What can I do to get people from thinking about associations as this to this? And for me, I have a very simple thesis around how to get people to shift their behavior from this.

Kiki L’Italien: I love this. I was talking with my husband before I came here saying this is actually the question. This is a question I wanted you to answer.

Miki Agrawal: So, amazing. Well, great. Well, so for me, it’s three-pronged, right.

Kiki L’Italien: Okay.

Miki Agrawal: It’s a three-pronged system to really shift culture and to challenge societal norms.

Kiki L’Italien: Okay.

The Three-Pronged System

Miki Agrawal: The first, and how to do it through a product. As a product or a service, right.

Kiki L’Italien: Okay.

Miki Agrawal: So number one it has to be a one of one innovation. One of one best in class product, right. So period-proof underwear or a bidet or coming up with a new way of thinking about an association, right. Like it has to be a one of one steps of creating that like the product right.

Kiki L’Italien: Yeah.

Miki Agrawal: So what is that product? Is it a one of one product or is it a one of many product?

Kiki L’Italien: Okay.

Miki Agrawal: It has to be a one of one product. So best class product. That that’s kind of a basic obvious thing. The second thing is it has to have considered design across every touch point of the brand.

Kiki L’Italien: Okay.

Miki Agrawal: If someone is going to like look at something new and different that they’ve never seen before or find to be gross or weird or old school or just not relevant. All of a sudden they’re looking at art. Looking at something beautiful and artful and creative. They can then be like, wow, that’s so refreshing. That’s beautiful. Oh, they’re talking about period. They’re talking about who they’re talking about this old school. Visually aesthetically every touch point of your brand you have to consider from an artful visual perspective.

Kiki L’Italien: Right.

Miki Agrawal: And not like I’m just going to throw something on paper and blah. I’m to put it out. My favorite two words when it comes to visual design is breathing room. Breathing room.

Kiki L’Italien: Yeah.

Miki Agrawal: There has to be space to breathe, always breath.

Kiki L’Italien: Making notes.

Miki Agrawal: Because if it’s so much clutter with so much information in one place you’re just like I can’t think and then you’re just you’re out of there. You’re like it’s too much.

Kiki L’Italien: Yeah.

Miki Agrawal: What are the most like the 5 words or the 1 word or the 3 words that can boom pop your idea for people who poop.

Kiki L’Italien: For people who poop.

Miki Agrawal: And just like I poop.

Kiki L’Italien: I poop.

Thinking About Aesthetics

Miki Agrawal: I click on that. And so it’s and you have to really think about the aesthetics across every touch point of your brand or website what it looks like and is it busy? Is it clutter? Get too many dropped up. Is it just too much or what is the 3 most important things you want to achieve from your website? You want to acquire email addresses. You have to have a really strong email capture kind of value proposition. A beautiful image at the top with one word that describes what you’re doing. For your one sentence that describes what you’re doing and that’s it and the rest is an image and you scroll down, you have space to breathe every time when on the whole website and when you have space to breathe on the website, you can make an interpretation for yourself. Oh, this is what this means to me. You have now, you’re going to have a say in the experience. Instead of it just being thrown at you.

Kiki L’Italien: I so wish that I had the crowd around me right now that I could see what all of you guys are writing in or typing in. Because I can imagine that there’s some processing Happening right now. So we’ve talked about one of one innovation and then we’re talking about considering the design.

Miki Agrawal: Yes.

Kiki L’Italien: Okay so those are the two.

The Power of Relatable Language

Miki Agrawal: Yes and then the third is accessible relatable language across every touch point of your brand. And so what that means is you can’t be too technical, too academic, too clinical. We’re also like cerebral in our own ideas and what we’re doing what we’re creating and we think we all we think that everyone knows what we’re talking about.

Kiki L’Italien: Yeah.

Miki Agrawal: But nobody knows what we’re talking about. Nobody has any clue.

Kiki L’Italien: And so that’s so true. I was just voice first. Anybody who’s really into like when you say voice first does anybody know what that means? Like nobody knows.

Miki Agrawal: And it’s like one of my biggest test is if I tell you what I do. Can you repeat it back to me?

Kiki L’Italien: Right.

Miki Agrawal: And a lot of people are like oh what do you do? I be blah blah blah blah blah blah and they’re like, huh. And then they don’t remember anything. They walk away. They don’t remember your name. Remember what you do. But the minute they remember like one about you because they can repeat back what you say, boom, it’s done. Oh, she created a product that helped people poop better. You know what I mean?

Miki Agrawal is also the best-selling author of “Do Cool Sh*t” and “Disrupt-Her”, two inspirational tomes. To hear these books, head over to the Miki Agrawal Audible author page.