We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Greg Dayley. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Greg below.

Hi Greg , thanks for joining us today. What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?

The idea for SeaBar was a long time coming.

It really started when I was living in hawaii and freediving almost every day. One day I found a seaturtle caught up in a plastic bag and as I cut it loose I vowed that I would do something about it…. and for a long time all I did was to choose paper over plastic at the grocery store.

Fast forward a few years and it’s during the pandemic. I work remotely for a hair care brand and pick up beach trash as my ‘Pandemic Project’ one day in the shower looking at the ingredients on the back of the bottles in the shower. First ingredient water… then I look to the shower head raining water down on me…

After I got out of the shower I reached out to our chemist and asked him what percent water was in our products… it was north of 75%

It just didn’t make sense. We were selling bottle water to use in a shower…. In a plastic bottle just like the ones I was picking up on the beach.

After some thought I decided bar shampoo made the most sense. It was better quality, and lasted WAY longer. So I told my sisters… all three of them said they wouldn’t buy it. After doing more digging I found that the biggest thing keeping most people from trying bar shampoo is that they don’t like how bars get gross in the shower. I tried all kinds of cockamamie ideas to fix the problem. One day while thinking on it I happened to finish a deodorant bottle… what if? So I stuffed a shampoo bar into the deodorant bottle and it worked so well.

It kept the bar from getting gross, it was easier to hold on to and it made the bars last even longer…. but they were made of plastic. so I tried to make a simolar applicator out of metal, it corroded, bamboo, it split, glass… well I decided I’d rather not risk that one.

What I discovered was that plastic really is a miracle substance. Its light, strong, flexible, and won’t rot or rust… all things super important in a shower.

So we made it refillable so people can use it over and over saving countless plastic bottles from ever being made in the first place.

And we decided to make it so every time SeaBar customers washed their hair they would support ocean clean up through our one pound one product inititve. where we clean one pound of ocean trash for every item we sell.

For me it was a process of connecting the dots from ocean trash, to wasteful shampoo, to a shampoo bar people would actually want to use to a finished product. Each step presented new problems, but I just kept connecting dots and solving problems till I had a product that my friends and family, and most importantly myself thought was really great!.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I fell into the hair industry accidentially.

My cousin and I ran an Instagam marketing comapany and one day he called me and told me to look up an account because it was growing so fast. I looked and said “it’s about hair…. nobody cares about that.” He was right it was growing crazy fast, but it was only posting pictures. So we just started a couple reposting accounts for videos of hair and they blew up to millions of followers. And through that I became friends and began to work with many of the biggest brands and influencers in the professional hair world.

I think what set’s me apart is being able to draw together ideas and trends from totally different areas and make them work together.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

One thing that i’ve had to learn is that your strenghts are not always a strength, and your weaknesses are not always a weakness.

Context matters in everything I believe wisdom is knowing when to lean into your strengths and when to exercises your weaknesses.

Have you ever had to pivot?

The first version of SeaBar was actually a skin care company. We started the skin care brand soley because we had been given the instagram handle @skin by a friend. We knew nothing about skin care, and tried making a brand based on simply an instagram hadle. We had the same ideals and goals as SeaBar, but it failed because we weren’t also passionate about the product.

I think in entrepenureship you have to have the right mix of passion and crazy to carry you through the ups and downs.

Things have been going much better since we added in passion to the mix.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://seabar.com
• Instagram: @seabarcleans