Justin Forsett will tell you himself that he delivered what he calls the worst pitch in Shark Tank history. The former Pro Bowl running back and his two co-founders left without a deal in their 2018 Shark Tank episode, unable to answer basic questions about their own numbers while all five sharks passed. The company they pitched, a body-wipe brand then called ShowerPill, has since grown into a multimillion-dollar business. The turn did not happen under the studio lights. It happened in a U-Haul.
Forsett spoke with PFN’s Unguarded Access at Pro Athlete Community’s Accelerate Event in Phoenix, a multi-day conference designed to prepare players for their post-NFL careers.
Justin Forsett’s Shark Tank Flop and the U-Haul Ride That Changed Hustle Clean
Forsett and his Cal teammates, Wale Forrester and Wendell Hunter, entered the tank seeking $300,000 for 10% of the company. The pitch unraveled when the founders could not explain their margins, and Mark Cuban told them they had choked. Forsett, a year removed from his nine-year NFL career, had stepped in as the public face while a partner ran the day-to-day, and the cameras exposed how much of the business he was still learning.
He does not dress it up. “It’s probably the worst Shark Tank pitch in history,” Forsett told PFN’s Unguarded Access. “But it was such a great learning experience for me as a young business owner.”
The lesson arrived on the drive home. Shark Tank requires contestants to haul their own set props back across town, so Forsett found himself in a rented U-Haul in the middle of Los Angeles traffic with nothing to do but think. He and his partners started building what the hosts called a self-scouting report, the same exercise he ran after a bad game on film.
“You just got a lot of time to think about what just happened,” Forsett said. “It’s a come to Jesus moment. Is it going to fix this, or this whole thing is going to fall apart? And none of us were quitters, so we’re just going to figure it out.”
How ‘Artificial Harmony’ Almost Cost Justin Forsett His Company
The deeper problem had nothing to do with margins. Forsett built the company with men he already trusted, and that closeness had quietly become a liability. Three friends who never pushed each other were not getting the best ideas out of one another.
“When you start a business with your teammates or friends, you can have what the author Patrick Lencioni calls artificial harmony,” Forsett said. “It’s only because we’re not addressing the real things, the elephants in the room. We weren’t having healthy conflict early on in our business, so we weren’t really getting the best concepts and ideas because we weren’t pushing each other.”
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That recognition forced a change in how the founders talked to each other. The polite version of the business had to go. Forsett frames the entire flop, the traffic, and the hard conversation that followed as the moment that kept the company alive rather than the moment that nearly killed it.
None of this should surprise anyone who tracked his playing days. Forsett went 233rd overall in the 2008 draft and got cut twice as a rookie, once by Seattle and once by the Colts, yet carved out a nine-year career that peaked with a Pro Bowl in Baltimore in 2014. He treated the boardroom the way he treated a crowded depth chart.
ShowerPill rebranded as Hustle Clean and expanded from wipes into wellness and health products. Forsett says those early cuts taught him to start investing in his future, and the company became the smooth transition most players never build. The pitch that embarrassed him on national television is the reason it survived to grow. “If it wasn’t for that moment,” he said, “we wouldn’t be here today.”
