How I Built This · Nov 9, 2026 · 1h 3m · 54m saved
With Jack Haldrup, Founder and Former CEO of Dr. Squatch
Dr. Squatch started with about $1,500 and a shelf of soap in a Chicago closet, and ended in a sale to Unilever reported at $1.5 billion. Jack Haldrup, founder and former CEO of Dr. Squatch, told Guy Raz on How I Built This that he cut costs by circling line items on printed bank statements and turned a $15,000 video into the company's main source of sales. Jack does not credit the plan alone. He puts half of the result down to luck.
"It's close to 50/50. I think the number one thing is just getting started and creating a vehicle, because if you don't have that, you can't benefit from any of these lucky events." — Jack Haldrup
Jack built a men's soap brand from $12,000 in first-year sales to $113 million by the end of 2020, then stepped down as CEO in 2023 because he decided he was the wrong person to run a company that size.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 63 minutes of audio, 9 minutes of reading.
Here are the 13 lessons that matter.
Key Takeaways
Jack Haldrup launched with about $10,000 in savings and a 90-day deadline
Cold-process soap fell out of use in the early 1900s because it is hard to make at scale
Facebook beat Google because nobody searched for men's soap
Jack treated ad spend as "a sales machine", limited only by supply, not as a marketing budget
Retail went from essentially zero to well over $300M after the 2021 Summit deal
Jack stepped down because he was not suited to running a large company
Jack puts the outcome at close to 50/50 skill and luck
1. Leaving Consulting
Jack left a consulting job in Chicago around 2012. He disliked the work, and he was also developing psoriasis, which pushed him toward natural personal-care products.
Jack Haldrup quit consulting because it meant advising on businesses he was not in
"I didn't like being a consultant, and a lot of consulting is kind of positioning yourself as an expert and telling other people what to do, even though you're not necessarily in their business." — Jack Haldrup
Even the top of the ladder held little appeal, because making partner would not have ended the travel.
"The highest level that you can get at this type of company is to become a partner ... but you're still kind of in that travel lifestyle." — Jack Haldrup
