Inventor Max Appel: 5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Became A Founder

Keeping up your enthusiasm — Always talking to customers finding out what they liked the most and how can we improve. Customer interactions play a huge role when you are first launching a new product.

As part of my series about the leadership lessons of accomplished business leaders, I had the pleasure of interviewing Max Appel.

As a wildly successful American entrepreneur, Max Appel has created innovative cleaning products that have taken over the pop culture lexicon for over 4 decades, including household staples: OxiClean, Orange Glo and Kaboom.

A veteran of product development, Max has achieved significant success selling products direct-to-customers as well as through retailers. He loved getting direct feedback from consumers and distributors — it was crucial to learning what people liked in their cleaning products, as well as what they didn’t want. Through this, Max was able to revolutionize the way people discover and buy new cleaning products that set new quality standards in the industry.

Max’s rise to becoming one of the most well-known and nationally lauded cleaning industry disruptor, began in…