Lori Greiner Says She's 'Had Holidays' with Scrub Daddy Founder After Investing in Company 12 Years Ago (Exclusive)

Lori Greineris opening up about one of her most impactful Shark Tank investments — both financially and personally.

Speaking exclusively with PEOPLE about her time on the hit entrepreneurial reality series, which is set to enter its 16th season on Friday, Oct. 18, Greiner, 54, recalls one of her most successful deals from the series: getting a 20% stake in Aaron Krause's Scrub Daddy brand.

"Scrub Daddy came in, he had one little sponge, he needed help with his packaging, he had $140,000 in sales, that was it, and we have taken it now to a multi-billion dollar company and an international global company," Greiner recalls, reflecting on Krause's original pitch in 2012.

"It has changed his entire life, his family's life, but we give back. We have factories we've built all over the world that are giving back to now other cultures as well," Greiner tells PEOPLE. "And it's all really about helping people."

"Not only am I super close to him and his family, I've gone on vacations with them, I have had holidays with them, they've enriched my life by who they are and that friendship," she says of Krause and his family.

During Krause's Scrub Daddy pitch back in season 4, a bidding war broke out between Greiner and fellow Sharks Kevin O'Leary and Daymond John. Greiner ultimately won out after she offered him $200,000 for 20% of his company.

According to Greiner, their partnership for Scrub Daddy allowed them to create jobs both inside the U.S. and out — and "sell a product that makes people happy."

"I have relationships with most of my entrepreneurs. I love them," she tells PEOPLE. "So they enrich my heart first and my soul first, and then we do good business together, and then we help other people, and we have a humanitarian bent usually, a give-back, and we make money. ... We make money because we do all those other things." -

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Greiner has previously been candid about the success she and Krause had after expanding the sponge company's business across the world. In a Shark Tank behind-the-scenes video shared to Instagram last year, the businesswoman revealed that she knew she was going to invest from the moment he began his QVC-style demonstration.

"It was highly demonstrable," she said at the time. "It hits everything I'm looking for. I thought, 'What a great pitch person.' He knew his stuff, so I was in on him."

Elsewhere in her conversation with PEOPLE, Greiner opened up about how Shark Tank has transformed from the time it began in 2009 to now.

"What was interesting is we really didn't get so much AI-type things, which I do think will be coming, right?" she said of season 16. "But with the economic times, I think it's interesting. We had some people that were really booming, and even though people are saying, 'Oh, it's not booming, the economy's bad,' we had some people that were doing pretty good."

"And I think that there's a mix right now of what's going on. I think some people are doing better and some people are doing worse," the investor added.

"... I think that even if money is in tight supply, we're always going to be who we are. We're always going to invest in what we believe in, what we think has a chance and opportunity because we're here to help people," Greiner finishes. "So if money might be tight, we're here to give them money to help them and give them a leg up."

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Shark Tank season 16 premieres Friday, Oct. 18 at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.

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