When Christopher Ehde's 5-year-old son struggled with proper cleanup after using the bathroom, it sparked an invention that would revolutionize personal hygiene. Christopher’s journey from concerned parent to inventor showcases how identifying gaps in everyday products can lead to breakthrough innovations; in this case, a simple mirror attachment that transforms how families stay clean.
What started as a parent's frustration with teaching proper wiping techniques led to a remarkable innovation that's now helping families worldwide. Christopher’s product, the Toilet Mirror isn't just about teaching children to wipe effectively; it's expanded to serve diverse needs including postpartum care, personal hygiene verification, and medical monitoring.
Christopher's marketing success story is equally compelling. By creating authentic content that addressed a sensitive topic with humor and practicality, his viral video garnered over 100,000 views in the first 24 hours. This marketing approach and strategic social media presence has helped establish Toilet Mirror as a leader in personal care innovation.
In today’s episode of the Harvest Growth Podcast, we’ll cover:
How identifying gaps in everyday products can lead to breakthrough innovations
Creating viral marketing content that drives engagement
Why timing and preparation matter in entrepreneurship
How to leverage social media for product demonstrations
Using AI and modern tools to accelerate business growth
And much more!
You can listen to the full interview on your desktop or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Or, click to watch the full video interview here!
Transform your bathroom routine with the Toilet Mirror, designed for visual clarity and independence in hygiene, grooming, and health monitoring. Discover how this simple innovation works at www.toiletmirror.com.
To be a guest on our next podcast, contact us today!
Do you have a brand that you’d like to launch or grow? Do you want help from a partner that has successfully launched hundreds of brands that now total over $2 billion in revenues? Set up a free consultation with us today!
Prefer reading instead of listening? Read the full transcript here!
Jon LaClare [00:00:00]:
How do you create a video that generates 112 million views? Just having a good product isn't enough, and it doesn't always require an expensive production. Today's guest shares the formula that worked for him on his first viral video and that has driven millions more views for as many other videos that followed.
Jon LaClare [00:00:46]:
Welcome back to the show. I'm really excited to be speaking with Christopher Edie today. He is the founder and inventor of Toilet Mirror. You can check it out at toiletmirror.com on Amazon, lots of other places as well. That's a really cool product idea. It's gonna be a fun interview. We've got some cool stories to share with you as well, so I encourage you to listen. But first of all, Christopher, welcome to the show.
Christopher Edie [00:00:59]:
Thank you, John. I appreciate you having me on. Like I said, I love talking shop and I love being able to share our story and what we have going on. So it's going to be great to share this with your audience. Thank you.
Jon LaClare [00:01:09]:
Absolutely. So tell us, what is the toilet mirror? For those in the audience that may.
Christopher Edie [00:01:13]:
Not have seen it before, you know, the toilet mirror is exactly what it says it is. It's a mirror that goes onto the back of a toilet seat lid. And I know that it sounds ridiculous, and I know that it sounds a little bit crazy at first, but there's a purpose behind it. And I'm just going to jump right on into the story because it'll make a little more sense as to why I. Why I invented it in the first place. And it was after a long Saturday with the kids, the second that my butt hit the couch. As any parent knows, you get these calls from the bathroom. Dad, can you come check? My first time, I got to sit down all day.
Christopher Edie [00:01:48]:
And so I didn't hesitate. I got up and I went into the bathroom to check my son Channing. Check our son Channing. He was five years old at the time. He had been potty trained for a couple years, but he wasn't potty independent. And I think that a lot of parents miss that phase of life. There's potty training and then there's potty independence. So with, with puppy dog eyes, he says to me, I did my best, right, dad? And at this point, I've seen every exit pattern and wipe attempt, everything that you can imagine.
Christopher Edie [00:02:16]:
And it was a disaster like it had always been. But I realized in that moment, I said, you know, I was like, wow. I'm like, there's no training aids for this phase of life for children. And they have all the capabilities in the world. They have the readiness, they have the motor skills. How come they're not able to wipe themselves? We're more of a family that like to push independence. And so in that moment, I thought, wow. I said, what if I put a mirror on the back of a toilet seat lid? I'm like, these kids can't wipe what they can't see.
Christopher Edie [00:02:46]:
And so I kind of came down to my wife, who ironically was changing our youngest daughter's diaper at the time. And we kind of laughed and joked around about it and. But the idea didn't leave our, our mind for a month and to the point where I eventually got a couple mirrors, a couple samples, and we put it to the test. And after the first time my son used the mirror, he came running out of the bathroom. I always get goosebumps telling this part of the story because he was proud, confident, and clean. And he was saying, daddy's invention works. It works, it works. And we realized that we had solved the final phase of bathroom independence for children.
Christopher Edie [00:03:23]:
And if we could give that proud feeling of accomplishment, because, you know, we don't realize that children love having the privacy in the bathroom just as much as we do, even down to a 2 year old. I'm sure you remember 2 year olds running to the corner, having to go poop in the corner because they want their privacy. And it's all the weights, even when they're 5, 6, 7, 8. And we know parents of 9, 10, 11, and 12 year olds that still at times have to wipe their children. So once we realize the impact that this could have, you know, we just got to work.
Jon LaClare [00:03:58]:
I love it, and I think it's a great story behind what you've done. As, you know, you and I were talking before. I've got four kids, you know, I've been through this. They're a little bit older now, but I remember potty trainings. It's a hard thing for a parent. It's hard for the kid too. And I think, I think that embarrassment and as you mentioned, privacy, I love how you connected it back to standing in the corner when they're wearing diapers. Right? Like even when they're, you know, they're in front of you.
Jon LaClare [00:04:19]:
But they're trying to have a little bit of a private moment, but also just the independence, the ability to teach them to do something on their own. It's, you know, one of the things we're going to do the rest of our lives. Right. But you got to figure it out. It can take some while, it can take a long time without some coaching or an aid like a help device like, like you've developed. Before you invented this product, you actually, you were telling me a story about how kind of the why behind the business itself. So I believe you started the business before you had this product. Can you talk to us about why did you do this in the first place? Why are you building a business on your own?
Christopher Edie [00:04:51]:
Yeah, yeah, John, thanks for asking. And you know, this actually goes back to when I was a child. I have, I found old notebooks with old inventions. I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur, a business owner. I've told a couple of these stories before, but you know, I came up with a come to you car wash. You know, I wanted to come to your home and wash your car. The year before that, I remember I wanted to do a lawn mowing business and I didn't do the proper planning and I guess I didn't necessarily have the proper drive. And my dad said, hey Chris, you know, what's your price? How are you going to do this? How are you going to do that? How are you going to do this? And I didn't plan those things.
Christopher Edie [00:05:28]:
Things. And so, so I went back to the traditional route. I got my summer job and I just went back at it. But the next summer, I remember the things that he said and I planned, I prepared, I came up with business cards, pricing. I bought the materials and the products that I needed. I put a couple signs out. And this was kind of before there was really social media and things. And I was still just a young kid who loved having fun with his friends.
Christopher Edie [00:05:53]:
Like, you know, who, who, who didn't have fun with their friends during the summers. So it didn't work out there either. Again, growing up, it's kind of the traditional route. It's kind of how everybody is preached, you know, go to college, go find what you're passionate about. And I was never quite able to find my passion. My passion had always been being able to help somebody. I wanted to come up with my own business, I wanted to invent something. But those ideas don't just fall out of the sky.
Christopher Edie [00:06:20]:
And so I've kind of realized now that I needed to Be. I needed to be prepared further for the opportunities that would have in my life into the future. And so, you know, I needed to be a father. I needed to be. I needed to be a hard worker. And you know, one thing that I really, I'm very, very proud of is my work ethic at my jobs, specifically over the last 10 years in the flooring industry. And I, I bring these things up because I treated those businesses like my own business. If I couldn't own a business today, well, what could I do today? It was to treat my employer like my business.
Christopher Edie [00:06:58]:
So I could start from someplace like that and I could be open and receptive to any ideas that come to me while I'm doing this. And so fast forward to May of 2022. It was kind of after, you know, just a long, tough day at work. I had been thinking about it for a few weeks on my lunch break. I opened up an llc. And when I came home that day, I told my wife, I said, hon, I said, I opened up an LLC today. I don't know what we're going to do with it, but we have to move our feet in the direction that we want our lives to go. And so I opened up that llc.
Christopher Edie [00:07:33]:
We are brainstorming, actually at work the other day, I just found my notebook that had my original brainstorm ideas from the businesses that I was going to try to start doing. Pressure washing, 3D printing, wall printing, several different things. But funny enough, as soon as I started moving my feet in the direction that I wanted my life to go, the idea came two months later.
Jon LaClare [00:07:54]:
That's awesome. I love how you talked about, you know, moving your feet, moving forward, etc. And I kind of, I think back to when I started this business. That's been 18 years we've been around as harvest growth. But before that, I always wanted to be on my own. It was always my goal, my dream. I went into everything. My audience has heard my story before.
Jon LaClare [00:08:11]:
But every kind of career choice I had along the way was leading me towards that. And then the big opportunity finally came. When I was at OxiClean, the company was sold off. He got a bit of a severance and I had this window. And I still started to interview for jobs because it was the habit, right? But I finally sat down. I'm like, if I'm not going to do it now, when am I? And I, I keep my notes from that original couple of weeks, period of time. For me, it was a kind of a epiphany. Whatever you want to call it that it was, you know, late at night as I'm scribbling scrabbling notes down or scribbling notes down during the day.
Jon LaClare [00:08:39]:
And just laying in bed one night I woke up and kind of had this idea of what my business would be. And here we are today, now, 18 years later. But it, but it does take moving forward, right? It takes the decision, okay, I got to do something, as opposed to like, ah, someday, someday I'll do it in the future. The other thing I want to point out that I would word. Just add to what you said word differently. But I think about the best employees we've had at our company over the years. When I go through the interview process to hire, I always try to ascertain. I asked them a question.
Jon LaClare [00:09:09]:
It's hard to get an answer for it in the right way. But are they entrepreneurial? And I think that's. That's how I would describe the way you're saying is, you know, you felt ownership in all or feel ownership and all the businesses, all the jobs you've worked in over the years. And that's ultimately what it takes. Not everybody has that drive, that initiative, and it's not necessary, maybe in every job. But the more you can be entrepreneurial before you're truly an entrepreneur, right. Even if it's in your day job, it's going to train you, prepare you and help you to become that way when you, when you get on your own as well. So I love that.
Jon LaClare [00:09:41]:
That terminology. I want to talk about some of the marketing you've done for this business. And particularly one of the first big things that really helped the toilet mirror to take off was a viral video. So I want to show this video. So let's play this video for a few seconds here for our audience. Afterwards, you'll kind of hear some music. I'll have you, Christopher, explain it to those that might be listening, not able to see it if they're not watching the video, and then let's talk about the results of it. So let's go ahead and watch that video.
Jon LaClare [00:10:12]:
All right. Awesome. So first of all, can you. Can you describe what we just saw? So that. That viral video, what did our viewing audience see that our audio listeners might not?
Christopher Edie [00:10:22]:
Yes. So our viewers saw the. The fake butt shorts that I opened up one day that came home from Amazon, My wife knew people were saying to us, we don't understand how it works. We don't get how it works. And we knew we'd have to do a demonstration someday. And so my wife, like, I said, she ordered the butt shorts. And we made a quick little video kind of how the day played out of the day that Channing asked me to go wipe him. And but what we did is we clipped it up and we tried to take what recipe that we could find with our ingredients to try to make a viral video.
Christopher Edie [00:10:58]:
You never know what's going to go viral. So what you're seeing there is a couple quick clips, things changing, bold statements happening with a trending audio and that's how you keep the viewers attention. What we realize, keeping video short, having things change on the screen every second to half second, it doesn't have to be the video, it could be the text, then the video changes, then the tech changes again. But people like seeing shock, they want to see a shock factor. And so my wife put on there, we will never use the toilet again without this. And it was me wiping my butt. So it really gained a ton of traction. The first couple days or so we were like, oh my gosh, this is going to get to 50,000 views.
Christopher Edie [00:11:43]:
We were giving each other high fives. We were at work, we couldn't believe it. And then it shot to 100,000 within a day and then it absolutely took off like a rocket ship. Our phones, our phone batteries were dying in hours. And it was just something that we had never experienced before. You know, we're, we're just your average Joe's, we're just your, your average family or your hard working blue collar people. And it's just kind of, you know, you need to take chances, you need to put yourself out there. You never know who's looking, who's watching.
Christopher Edie [00:12:15]:
And a lot of people, they took, they took the video how you might take it, it's, it's a little ridiculous. Received all types of comments, but it gave us a great opportunity to educate those viewers, educate the negative comments and we were able to engage those. And I cannot tell you, we, 90% of the people retracted their statements and said no, I apologize. Thank you for, thank you for correcting me. There is absolutely a place for this product in the market. And so it was just, it was just an experience that, you know, you hope that you can, you can catch lightning in the bottle again. And you know, we, we think we have the opportunity to do it because I know it sounds simple, a toilet, a mirror, but it had never been thought of before. The, some of the first mirrors were found 10,000 AD in Turkey.
Christopher Edie [00:13:01]:
They were, they were polished obsidian. And then you could find the first kind of modern toilets where you'd sit on them, you know, 3000 BC. So here we are nearly 12,000 years later. We use a mirror for everything. To shave, to clean, to brush our teeth, to put on makeup, to do everything. If you got a stain on your face, you would go check the mirror to make sure that you got it, got it off. If you got something on your arm, you would make sure you used your eyes visual verification to make sure that you got the stain off. And so we use that same principle to make sure that you have all of the fecal matter off of your body.
Christopher Edie [00:13:40]:
And it goes on way more than potty training and just trying get poop off of the body, you know, my wife, she's pregnant now. She wished that she had this device when she was pregnant the first time because it's going to be fantastic for pregnant mothers and postpartum mothers because they can't see. It's a common joke. They need help grooming, they need help doing this, need help doing that. And then you get into. My wife cringes a little bit when I talk about these things. But the menstruation aspect of things, nearly 2 billion women on the face of this earth actively experience menstruation. The way how men can relate to that is we all have tried to get dried blood off of our skin before, right? It's quite difficult.
Christopher Edie [00:14:22]:
So now imagine having to get it off of an area that you can't see. Fantastic for that, fantastic for body grooming, fantastic for people that experience hemorrhoids, prolapses, fissures, numerous ailments in the rear end. So this is more than just a gimmick mirror. This is, we're, you know, this is a medical device that we're going to give independence and we're going to revolutionize the way that people use the bathroom moving forward. Because what we like to say is that, you know, our body is God's gift to the world. We shouldn't be ashamed to look at all of it in its entirety. And I know it sounds strange to look at your rear before you go, but it's very simple. It's a final check.
Christopher Edie [00:15:01]:
I'm not telling people to stare deep into the black hole. I'm telling people to, to handle their business as they want to. Toilet paper, wet wipes, bidet. But when you're done, just take a check to make sure that it's gone and you have your rear as clean or not clean as you want it to be. It's just, it's more of like a personal preference. For people. And that's, you know, that's what we're. That's what we're trying to do.
Jon LaClare [00:15:25]:
And I do want to encourage our audience. If you have not followed Christopher's account on Instagram or other social media channels, he develops a ton of content. So that was one example that went crazy viral. But, Christopher, you've done a great job. I don't know how many, but I think hundreds of videos or certainly dozens that you've got on your. On your. On your feed that have been really good. And it's.
Christopher Edie [00:15:45]:
And you.
Jon LaClare [00:15:46]:
You can see some of the techniques you've used and, you know, improved over time as well. The quality is getting better and the story is getting better. It's really fun to see. So check it out on. So how's the best way to follow you on Instagram? Let's say, what's your handle?
Christopher Edie [00:15:58]:
Yeah, the. The best way to follow us is our. Is our handle. We're the original toilet mirror, and you can find us on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok. We do have a YouTube page opened up, and we're just trying to get our content out to the world because, like I said, you never know who's looking. John, you know, we posted out into this, into the stratosphere, into the metaverse, and, you know, you found us. You know, you're just one great example of a lot of really cool organic opportunities that are happen. Happening to us.
Christopher Edie [00:16:31]:
And I think that's just a testament of our preparation and just our passion that we have for the product and where we're just trying to go with our lives and people feel that we're trying to help people. We're trying to do this for the right reason.
Jon LaClare [00:16:45]:
Love it. Well, Christopher, this has been a really fun interview. Is there anything I didn't ask you that you think would be helpful for our audience?
Christopher Edie [00:16:50]:
Yeah. You know, one thing I do want to say, John, is that, you know, kind of I want to touch back onto what you were talking about a little bit earlier about you starting your own business. You know, one of the biggest mottos that we've whole entire time is dream big, start small, act now. And it's, you know, kind of what you said, you know, no dream is too big. It goes back to this goofy saying that I got a long time ago in the carpet industry when I first took on an operation manager task, things were going absolutely crazy within the company. It was, Chris, how do you eat an elephant? And I just thought it was ridiculous. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. And so it's I want to encourage people to chase their dreams.
Christopher Edie [00:17:38]:
I want to encourage people to, when things are feeling a little overwhelmed or they don't know what direction to go to, take a step back. There's fantastic resources out there, specifically utilizing AI technology to ask the questions that you don't know. You can expedite all your answers today faster than ever. You don't have to watch full YouTube videos, full TikTok videos, scour through hours of Internet pages. You can ask the AI and get appropriate answers that you need. That has helped us with setting up Amazon Pages. Shopify Pages LLC is moving forward in our patent process, which we have. We've been granted utility patents on several variations of this product.
Christopher Edie [00:18:19]:
So I just want to encourage people to know we're just average folks, you know, we have a very, very long way to go. But chase your dreams, follow your dreams. You can do it if you're focused and passionate about it.
Jon LaClare [00:18:32]:
That's such great advice. Well, Christopher, like I said, this has been a really fun interview. I encourage our audience. Please check out toiletmirror.com if you're driving. As always, it's in the show notes. But check out the content that Christopher's put together and this great product to learn more about it. And also, did you know you can meet with a member of my team absolutely free for a 30 minute strategy consultation. We've launched and grown hundreds of products since 2007 and learned some of our strategies while growing OxiClean back in the Billy Mays days.
Jon LaClare [00:19:01]:
We're here to help, so please go to harvestgrowth.com and set up a call if you'd like to discuss further.