The Bits of Gold podcast regularly features entrepreneurs, thought leaders, and industry innovators. Hosted by Danny Goldberg, the Bits of Gold podcast explores the successes of many professionals and delves into thought-provoking topics. Recently, Goldberg sat down with Miki Agrawal, the founder of Tushy, Thinx, and Wild. Below, read on for their conversation:
Introduction
Host: Welcome to Bits Of Gold Episode 112. Today’s episode is all about living life on your terms and doing cool shit. Welcome back to another episode of the Bits Of Gold podcast. If you’re new to Bits Of Gold, first off, welcome. I’m so glad you’re here. Second, don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. More subscribers help attract more amazing guests to help better serve you with amazing content on how to live with purpose. Now, let’s get to it.
I am confident that the result of our life is often the result of the choices and the decisions that we make. I know that you can be intentional with how and where you spend your time, to start living more and more of a life that you want. You really can, and that’s exactly what we’re talking about in this episode today. Today, my guest is Miki Agrawal.
Miki is an entrepreneur and founder of [inaudible], Thinx, and Tushy, a gluten-free pizzeria, author of Disruptor: A Manifesto For The Modern Woman, and Do Cool Shit, Quit Your Dayjob, Start Your Own Business And Live Happily Ever After. Collectively, her companies are valued at over $150M. Miki’s entrepreneurial journey is incredible.
But, life wasn’t always that way for Miki. At 22, she was actually working as an investment banker, and she had this wake-up call following 9/11. Days after, everything changed. She felt her mortality and needed to live each day like it was her last. She had to follow her passions and not waste another day not fully living. So, she wrote down three things she wanted to do in her life and pursued them one by one. Today’s bit of gold is that it is truly possible to live life on your own terms, to embrace and harness your limited time on earth, and to live and become fully alive, doing the cool shit that you want. Now, let’s welcome social entrepreneur Miki Agrawal to the show.
Miki, welcome to the Bits Of Gold podcast. I’m so excited to have you on today.
Miki: Oh my God, me too. Nice to connect.
On Initial Connections
Host: It’s wild to connect because I met you years ago. I feel like it was kind of when Tushy had gotten started. And the business has really evolved and grown since then. I’m excited to dive in today because when I connected with you then we were talking about product manufacturing and things of that nature and today we’re gonna dive deeper into living a life of purpose. It’s been a while since we last connected, but the premise of me starting this show was that both my parents passed away by the time I turned 25. And It’s my mission. Why I wake up in the morning is to help inspire other people to live to know that they too are gonna die. I remember, when I met you, you were telling me, ‘holy shit, we’re alive.’ And maybe that’s where we can start this one.
Miki: So 2016, we were at a place in upstate New York, and we all did this sound journey, where everyone took MDMA and psilocybin at the same time. We were blindfolded. And then this incredible ethnomusicologist led us on this sound journey for 8 hours. In the middle of the journey, my husband got up and went, ‘we’re alive!’. And we were like, ‘holy shit, we’re alive.’ And everyone was like, ‘oh my God, we’re alive.’ This is crazy. The miracle of being alive… It hit everyone at the same time. This is truly… You can’t make up the miracle of being alive thing.
We forget that we get to wake up every day. It is the miracle of life, being able to wake up every morning and being like, ‘ding!’. I get to just eat delicious food that could probably taste like gasoline but instead tastes delicious and my palate can love it, and I can feel pleasure and experience delight for my eyes, create for my brain, and fall in love and feel things with my heart. And jump on a plane and travel somewhere. We get to do that, and we forget how freaking lucky we are that we get to do that.
Miki Agrawal Says “Holy Sh*t, We’re Alive”
And oftentimes, when you take mushrooms and do these ceremonies… Now we created our project. If you go to holyshitwerealive.com you can actually get a cool hat, or sweatshirt, or a mug, or a notebook, where it says ‘holy shit, we’re alive’ on each page of the notebook. Because, it’s like a journal, and that writing.. ‘Oh this, shitty thing happened’, and on the middle of every page it says ‘holy shit, we’re alive’. And I was like, fuck, this is awesome.
Host: 100%. It really is. You used the word lucky, but it really is. I have a small gratitude practice and a small gratitude journal that I write in every morning, and every day I write that I’m grateful for my health, my safety, and being alive. The miracle of getting to wake up and have my health, have my safety, and have an able body, where I’m able to experience all the joys of life. How fucking lucky am I?
Taking Inspiration from William Wordsworth
Miki: I also think about the pains of life. You think about what you went through with your parents, and that sadness and grief. I think about the challenging, fucked up things that I’ve experienced in my life, and it’s like, wow. It’s like the famous William Wordsworth quote, which I’m gonna paraphrase. He basically says something like, I wanna skid to death’s door sideways, not in a well-preserved body, thoroughly use up, loudly proclaiming, ‘wow, what a ride’.
So, the idea that we get to feel the heights of joy and the depths of sadness, the magic of being alive, and the pain, agony and despair of being alive. All of that textured texturedness is what makes the being aliveness so poignant, so beautiful. You can actually experience incredible highs, and we’ve experienced the depths of lows either, and so there’s this stretching that we have to do to feel everything before we die. And I think only the most brave really let themselves go to the darkest parts, actually.
For more musings from Agrawal, check out the Miki Agrawal IdeaMensch interview. To book her to speak, check out the Miki Agrawal SpeakersNetworkWorldwide profile.
