Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day: Monica Nassif

0:07 All of a sudden you've got your mom in the Whole Foods in Columbus Circle, New York. And it's called Mrs. Myers and And she's like I'm Mrs. Myers, but it wasn't like um the Charman Squeeze guy. No She's like the real deal.

0:21 Yeah, and we would bring her to trade shows and People just like Loved seeing her and she just embraced this whole thing and I'm like, uh would they ask her like hey, how did you invent this? How did you start this business? Oh yeah. What would she say? She would she would act like she did it. And you know, at first I I kinda always wanted to interrupt and I thought, uh uh. Just let her rip. Welcome to How I Built This.

0:52 A show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements. Built. I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today. Now Monica Nasif knocked off her first brand of household soaps and launched a wildly successful second one. Named for her mom.

1:12 Mrs. Meyer. Imagine you come up with a great idea and then Just as it starts to take off, Someone else starts making a knockoff. Only cheaper.

1:25 This is part of the price of success. Some founders ignore it and focus on brand building. Others spend a lot of money trying to fight back. And we've told lots of these stories on past episodes, but rarely do we tell the story of an entrepreneur who actually decided to knock herself off. Essentially to make a cheaper, more accessible version of the same product she was already selling.

1:51 The story begins in the year 2000. Monica Nasev had just stepped away from her small creative marketing agency in Minneapolis. At the time she was burned out and looking for a new idea. And one opportunity she saw was in household cleaning products. Now at the time They all look

2:09 Basically the same. The same boring plastic bottles, the same boring pistol grip sprays, the same boring brands. So with a bit of seed funding, Monica launched a new cleaning brand called Kaldria. Caldera was, and still is, an upscale cleaning brand that Monica sold into gift shops and even as a white label brand for fancy stores like William Sonoma. The soaps and cleansers and detergents did fairly well, but because they were fancy and pricey, Monica knew the brand would never take off in big box stores like Target or Walmart. So about a year into the business

2:49 Monica knocked herself off. She developed another line of soaps and cleansers. A brand that aimed for the sweet spot between luxury and basic. So clean, elegant, and simple with fragrances that were a little different. Langling, lavender, basil, and so on.

3:07 And one of the smartest things Monica did was to name the products after her mother. Delma Meyer. Delma was a no-nonsense Iowa homemaker who would eventually become a beloved mascot for the brand. By the mid-2000s, Mrs. Myers was in Target and Whole Foods and growing fast. Today, both of Monica's brands, Mrs. Myers and Caldria, are owned by the giant conglomerate Essie Johnson.

3:33 Now there are a lot of amazing lessons in today's episode, including how painfully difficult it was to raise money at the beginning. But as you'll hear, Monica's common sense and sense of humor helped her get through the worst of times. Her upbringing probably helped as well. She was raised in a small town of Granger, Iowa, in the 1960s and 70s. Her dad was an engineer for John Deere, and her mom was the type of woman who could manage the household while at the same time raising a huge family, and I do mean huge, nine kids. My mom had a purple station wagon, like she drove that thing like a bat out of hell. She she got caught speeding so many times. And this was long before seat belt. And I since I was the oldest girl, I would be in the front seat. I always got shotgun and it was always hold a baby. So I always remember I'm holding a baby. She's driving sh

4:26 Like a bat out of hell. And we're going somewhere. Yeah, that's amazing. Yep. You know

4:32 The thing is is that I wish I I kinda wish I had eight kids maybe no wish I had eight kids, but I've got two. But you know what I mean? Like today people would would be like how do you how can you actually afford to have nine children in a house and feed them? Yeah, you know, I don't ever remember as a child being quote poor are not having this or that You know, it was just our reality. And there was a lot of large Irish, Italian families in our in our town because it was a homestead area.

5:01 You know, and that was a law that was allowed people to take on land if they agreed to farm it. And so there's a lot of large families. We weren't alone. And uh You know, you don't know any different. Quite honestly, when you grow up in a house like that. Were you

5:15 Oh, I mean you're the oldest daughter, so So you were Kind of a surrogate mom. I mean kind of looking after the others, right? Oh yeah, I was totally second in command. Uh I basically raised my three little brothers. And I could my mom said, When my nose hit the counter at age nine, I could put dinner on the table. You know, she would scribble a note and it's just what you did. You know, I

5:39 I she said. Monica, you were capable and I needed the help. And Honestly, what's kind of interesting, I she only said this to me a couple of years ago. She said, You know, I don't know that if you had a childhood, Monica. Hm.

5:52 You know, and I think about that often. I don't think I did, but I don't remember thinking, Oh, that's a bad thing. I was just thinking, hey She needs help. I gotta you know, do some laundry or put some dinner on the table or run some brother to some sports practice. And I think of my older sister who who also kinda had to kinda look after me. She was six years older and You know, and but but as a an adult, she's very competent. She's a very competent adult. So yes, a lot of responsibilities as child, but as an adult, she's

6:22 She was like out the gate, ready to go. Without question. You were You know, our uh my parents attitude was get a job. That that was so much more important than your grades. I don't ever remember say saying my dad or my mom going, Hey Monica, what's your grade? They were like, Get out of the house, go get a job. You know, my mom's big saying was the confidence of a paycheck. If you can just make your own money, take care of yourself, you are gonna be just fine.

6:49 I've seen you. describe yourself in in in an interview you gave as a wild child in high school, but but what does that actually mean? I mean you were helping raise your siblings. Like what is that I mean, were you like Driving fast cars and You know, go drinking beer and getting drunk. Yeah, drinking beer. Drinking style, hopping on the back of motorcycles with my brother's friends.

7:13 Being a stoned cheerleader. Yeah, I I uh It was the seventies. It was the it was the early. I had a lot I had a lot of fun in high school, I'm gonna be honest. Did you ever get caught? You know, g sort of breaking the rules, like drinking or

7:32 Mostly grounded. Guy. I spent most of my high school days grounded, but I I uh Had this Amazing. I wish I still had a Jimi Hendrix poster in my bedroom.

7:43 With he had the floral wreath on his head, no shirt, a zipper, you know, about an inch long. Yep. And my dad came up and saw that and he goes, You take that down. I said, I'm not taking it down. He goes, Well, you've got a choice. You can Take down the poster or be grounded for thirty days. I said I'll take the grounding. Wow. I'll take it, man. I'm just gonna sit back and look at Jimmy for thirty days. All right, so you um you graduate high school and then um I think you you go on to the University of Iowa and I guess you tried a bunch of different majors uh before finally settling on on nursing, is that right? Yeah. And I tried journalism at the University of Iowa. I tried photography. I think I had four different majors, Spanish. And I kinda thought, Well, I do need a job. So

8:30 I majored in nursing took me five years. But I also kind of settled down too. I thought, you know what, I'm just gonna see if I can get straight A's for once. Just I'm gonna try it. And I did. And so I finally kinda stopped the party and Got my head on straight and thought, Well, I'll just try this nursing gig, see how it works. Yeah. So you graduate in nineteen seventy nine. Right. And right after that, a very young age, you get married to your college sweetheart.

8:57 That David. And you're Monica Nassif, you no longer Monica Myers. That's right. Yeah. So you I mean, you're like twenty two, you guys are married. Uh I was twenty four. Yeah, I was pretty young. Yeah. And I should say you're still married to David. He hasn't left me yet, guy, I mean.

9:17 He had a lot of chances, trust me. That's he's a good guy. Um I just celebrate twenty, so so yeah, it's it's a it's a I mean, you're nineteen eighty. That's amazing. Okay. So you guys get married, you're and Um he I guess was running a a landscaping company and the two of you decide to move to Minneapolis. Well he had a job offer. He got a job offer Minneapolis and oh my God, I started doing cartwheels. I was so excited because I wanted out of Des Moines. One reason was my mom And we still laugh at they were just laughing about this a couple of weeks ago. She would drop off my little brothers, so I could still babysit them. And I'm married. I'm like, Mom, I'm married. I have left the house. I am not babysitting Pat and Danny. But they loved our house because we had one of the first ESPN channels.

10:06 So they thought my husband, David, was a god that he had ESPN. That was big. So then we moved to Minneapolis in eighty one, February of eighty one, in the middle of a snowstorm. And then I got a job at the University of Minnesota in the surgical intensive care unit. I interviewed on Friday and I started Monday. That's how desperate they were for nurses. How did you

10:28 Like being a nurse. You know I loved the pace. I love learning about your body. I loved all the science behind it. But honestly It's It was a hard job.

10:39 It's a hard job. You see a lot of Where I worked in surgical intensive care unit at the U. A lot of train wrecks, you know. A lot of Lot of sorrow, a lot of uh

10:51 Transplant patients. Yeah. We we had the train wrecks on our And I noir award. It's hard to s see every day. So you're in I think you're a nurse. Um, for

11:03 About four years. But in the m meantime, while you're a nurse, you get a degree In English. English. So then I go back. and get my English degree from University of Minnesota. And I had an advisor, Beverly Atkinson, I'll never forget this, another guardian angel in my life.

11:22 Sh I go to her and I go, Okay, you're me. I'm twenty eight years old. I went out of nursing. I have an English degree. What should I do? And she scoots across the table. An internship. at Dayton Hudson, which is now target organization. She was, you should just apply for this, just see how it goes.

11:40 And I did, and I got it. But Shocked me. Um But I was probably the oldest intern at Dayton Hudson at age twenty eight in the history of interns.

11:51 And this is the parent company of Target, right? So so some of your work, I guess, in involved like writing speeches for the president of Target at the time. Yeah, I was so the the vi it was actually the president of Dayton Hudson. He's his his name was Boak Sells. He was from Iowa, so he he You know, liking to me because I he could I could listen to his jokes, stand up on my own and from Iowa. So he's yeah, right. And I I learned a lot from this guy just in terms of how he thought about business, because I didn't have a business background. But

12:22 I just remember thinking this is super fascinating. And I got kind of a firsthand up close view of the retail industry. And I just loved it. I just thought it was so cool. This industry with consumer products, trends, fashion, all of it. So Th I mean this basically begins a career Yes. And this is what you

12:48 are doing. And I'm completely different. So you completely leave nursing behind. Yeah. I I throw I threw my white shoes into the dumpster. I ripped up my license on the way out. Burn the ships. Let's go. So I know that you had your first

13:05 child your first daughter in nineteen eighty seven. Yep. And then two years later had your second daughter, Cala, in nineteen ninety nine. And and you continue to work through I mean you took leave. I took a you know six weeks off. Through both of those. Yeah, births and pregnancies.

13:20 But um but I wanna talk about about Cala because I I know that You know, within a few months of her birth she was diagnosed with cancer. Yeah, that was Probably one of the scariest times of my life. So I Can't

13:34 Even imagine. Cala is born without a peep, without a cry, perfect baby from day one, and all of a sudden at six months. She's throwing up, she's pulling at her ear, she's cranky, and I'm going What is wrong with this kid? This this is not my baby Cala. So I take her into the hospital. And looking back, thank goodness her red regular pediatrician wasn't there, he goes, Okay, let me look in her ears. And he goes, Yep, bilateral ear infections.

14:02 And then he starts to palpate her abdomen and then he bolts from the room. And I'm going, Okay, this is this is not I I just had that sinking feeling. He comes back and he said Have you ever felt this mass in your daughter's abdomen?

14:18 And I opened it. Uh I go No and then How old was she? Six months. Six months old.

14:32 So he goes take her down to children's And probably gotta have surgery. So then Two days later she has her uh Right kidney removed, and she has a Welms tumor.

14:44 Oh. Yeah, it's terrifying. And so how far along was it? She thank goodness she was stage one. So it only involved one. Kidney, thank goodness. So

14:57 Where she goes into surgery, she has her kidney removed and I'll never I'll never forget this. The surgeon is standing in front of us and the oncologist is standing behind the surgeon, and the surgeon turns to us and said She only lost a tablespoon of blood. I did such a good job she won't need chemo. And the oncologist is standing behind him shaking his head. No She will be having chemotherapy. And the surgeon walks off and then the oncologist steps forward and I thought, Oh boy, we're not done here.

15:30 So just say Make sure that we don't freak anybody out. Cala is very much healthy adult today. Doing awesome. She's thirty three. She's got two daughters of her own. Hm. But also at the time what was happening was

15:44 I was on maternity leave because with Calla. I was actually gonna take like six to eight months off and stay home with my little baby girls. And then I started to get all this work from my friend at Target saying, Hey, could you work on this, work on that? Well I took those jobs on. I thought, well, I can do it at night once the kids go to sleep. Well, all all of a sudden, I have just a body of work. I have, you know, Cal is six months old. She has to be in chemo. The oncologist says, Hey, she can't be in daycare because she's immunosuppressed, and neither can your other daughter. You've got to stay home. So we have a whole we're Dave and I are just trying to figure out what

16:20 The heck. to do, you know? Because he wasn't that happy with his job. I'm kinda just getting started to work. And then He just comes home one day day and says I quit my job.

16:33 Mm. No, just never forget it. He laid back on the bed because yeah, I quit. I think you can make more money than me. I'll stay home with the girls. This is a week after surgery. I mean

16:45 I can understand that a thousand percent. I just cannot imagine how stressful that was for you and your husband. She she would come home from chemo. She'd sit in the high chair. She'd throw up. Yeah.

17:01 It was uh A difficult time without question. Alright, so part of probably Not to sort of psychoanalyze this, but I imagine part of you just saying, You know what, I'm gonna put my Put my head down and work. Probably it gave you focus.

17:16 Oh, without question. I mean I would I would get in the car And just go, failure's not an option. I I gotta hustle enough work here to make the mortgage payment. Make the insurance payment, put food on the table. Yeah. I gotta hustle.

17:32 And I gotta hustle. Yeah. And and so uh I mean from from what I gather at this point Um, you start to do a bunch of freelance gigs. You were like writing and and marketing, and I think a lot of it for For Target, right? They were a kind of a a big client. Um and you were basically a free agent, right? But I guess

17:49 y you started to see that that there were a bunch of other freelance people doing this kind of s this kind of work and and what did you Did you get a thinking You know, maybe like maybe I should turn this into like an actual business, like a marketing business. A business. Yeah, without questions. And Target started teaming me up with a creative director. on a lot of projects and finally we just said, Hey, we should just team up, put our resources together.

18:13 You know, she was an amazing art director. I was more on the sales side and the strategy side. And so we ran an agency For ten years, called Kilter. And I learned a lot, you know, that's when I really Learned how to build a brand, what how to design a brand, how to make it, you know, highly competitive in the marketplace. So eighty nine, you start this.

18:35 marketing design company w with with um this colleague. And what was her name? Cynthia Knox. So you and Cynthia start it and you grow it to like almost thirty people. Yeah, so we were doing work for uh not Rainforest Cafe, Live Touch, Metronic. Mostly consumer brands, but other brands out of the hand. Yeah. So there was a lot of work for us. Without question. And were you guys making a lot of money?

19:01 No, we're not making a lot of money. It was I would just call it a hand to mouth kind of business. Uh you know, I always said all your assets are going down the elevator every night. And all your talent. And uh Yeah, I mean we made a good living. Did we make millions of dollars? No, you know. And then um

19:20 While we had killed her, Uh we thought we were so smart. Let's start a watch company. A watch company. It's always another. You and Cynthia said this? Yeah.

19:31 Oh yeah. This this was like wristwatch company. Wristwatch company. Yeah, this was our brain child. And at the time there was this huge gulf between a swatch watch, you know, a hundred bucks. Yep and a Rolex, thousands of dollars. Yep. And we saw this mer this merchandising opportunity like Oh my God, we should fill the void, right? Somewhere between a swatch and a Rolex. Yeah, and a Rolex. Like an upscale Swiss watch. So we went after it. It was the stupidest thing we could have done, uh because

20:01 Well, for a whole variety of reasons. We could design product, but we knew zero about selling into retail stores. We were marketers. We weren't salespeople. We weren't manufacturers. We didn't know any of that. But how far along the path did you go? Did you actually get a watch of like a prototype meeting? Oh yeah, we we made watches, we went to Switzerland, found a manufacturer. Um spent

20:25 Way too much money, lost all that money. Um, but I I learned several powerful lessons with that, and one was never ever Ever. Do two businesses at once.

20:38 Mm. Because let's be clear. The designers And people thought that was about the sexiest thing around was to develop a product. Well, it didn't pay the bills.

20:49 Yeah. The bills were paid by Target and Medronic and Rainforest Cafe that you guys are doing work for them. Exactly. But everybody wanted to work on the watches because that was because it was cool. And so the idea was you would have and what would the what would the watches sell for? Uh, I think they're around like one eighty nine, one seventy five. So they were slightly above a swatch, but a lot more fashion. Were they leather straps? Really clean Swiss faces.

21:17 Very sleek, very Moma esque. Yeah, they were they were cool. I still have some. Believe me, I have probably too many. Wow. Yeah. So so you thought all right, let's Let's see if we can get a brand going and I mean before we get into some more some more details, just like what was the total time

21:33 line that you worked on this like more than a year? About a year, year and a half. Uh Cynthia went to a trade show in Switzerland, found a manufacturer, Um And we just didn't invest in selling. I remember thinking

21:48 This is the stupidest thing I've ever done. We we've got a product and we think, oh, it's so cool, people are gonna beat a path to our door. Well It we were just ignorant. And I just remember thinking when we shut that thing down. If I ever have a product, that is all I'm gonna do. This is it. I'm gonna sell, sell, sell. I'm not coming home till I got a fist full of P.O.s. That was like the vow I made to myself.

22:12 when we had that watch company, so It was painful. It was expensive. How much money did you think you lost? Uh

22:21 Seventy five thousand. Okay. a lot of money Certainly. Yeah, okay.

22:29 But it was a lot of it. Yeah. It was That was A painful lesson in many ways. Um all right, but you continue doing this um this work for and and I guess one of the things

22:44 That you Got frustrated with. was that while you were running a marketing firm you would make suggestions to some of the brands like hey, you guys should do this or that or you should consider introducing this kind of product or that kind of product and

23:00 Most of the time you were the that advice was ignored. Yeah, well two things would happen. Um One, they would take your advice, run with it. And be ex entirely financially successful.

23:13 Or two. Fail to execute and then blame us. And I was like, you know what? I I'm kinda tired of this. Consulting's hard. You know? I was getting restless and I I

23:24 Cut looked into the future and went I'm gonna be sixty and doing the same old stuff. And you know what? I'm bored. I want my own product. And you were about to turn forty, or you were in your early forties. I was looking at forty going, I gotta I gotta do something else. Then, you know, a couple of years later I'm at the store in Atlanta, a big box store, probably a linen some things or a bed bath and beyond, and I see this huge palette of cleaning products, and they're all tipped over, they look pathetic. And I just I stood there for the longest time going, This is the m saddest. most pathetic consumer category I can think of.

24:05 And cleaning products like cleaning products like window spray and to name something, you know, a yellow goo with these military handles, and they're all you know, it was as if somebody took a basket and dumped it on a wooden pallet. And I thought This could be awesome. This category. Aveda's based in Minneapolis. American businessman. He started and Aveda became this kind of first mover in that kind of world. One of the most influential, like right, uh hair care. Oh yeah, hair care, beauty products. Beauty products, yeah. And I've just thought, why can't it be like that?

24:51 Yeah. I mean you think of Aveda and I think they even have like Aveda spas or there are spas in products I've s sure have been one in in the past and you can just there's like a like a a harmonious calming Zen like. feeling. Oh yeah. And and you can smell Aveda from across the block. You know, they have a distinct fragrance. Oh I love the brand. Great brand. Yeah, I buy s still a ton of their product. And I just remember thinking This

25:21 could be the eveda of cleaning. Why can't it be? Who's that? Yeah, exactly. Who said? And then I got on the plane after that store visit and I still have this little scrappy sheet of paper where I wrote down the outline of my business plan.

25:36 How it could be singular fragrants. So if you wanted to clean your house, the whole thing could be in lavender. Or citrus or whatever. When you say the whole house, you would do window spray and floor cleaner and dish soap, laundry detergent, everything in Lavender. Yeah, if that's your fragrance of channel. And and then all the products would be earth friendly. They would have that

25:58 A Veda esque aroma, which you know is so captivating, and people just love the product, and I thought Why can't we love this category? You know, instead of like I have to use it. But I became obsessed and I I started to

26:12 Do all this research, you know, in the dark of the night, go to the library, try to find out what what was used for cleaning pre-World War Two, you know, when all the cons when all the big brands blew up after World War Two, the Procter Gambles, the Wreck and Bennisters. And it was all these homespun remedies, lavender from the garden and all these kind of rituals of spring cleaning. And I thought No one's telling. Romantic's probably too strong of a word, but no one's telling this

26:40 positive healing cool story about what cleaning could be. And I thought the other problem with cleaning products is They look horrible. They look like guns, military guns. And I thought, why can't they be on par with all these beautiful Kitchen appliances. Like we we always said, jewelry on the counter. Jewelry this has got to be jewelry on the counter.

27:02 It should be able to you should be able to have a bottle of hand soap and a bottle of dish soap proudly sit by your sink. Right. used and still use Dawn or Fantastic or Mr. Clean or But I mean they they were tied. I mean that that was That those products

27:18 did and still do dominate the category, but you're thinking, hey, there must be a corner of this multi billion dollar industry. That I could cleave away. With a higher end. sort of more thoughtful thoughtfully designed product.

27:34 Exactly. I kinda I drew this triangle. And I went, Okay, on the bottom triangle, we have Procter Gamble. What are they good for? Performance. They're awesome, right?

27:43 Mm. They get everything clean. Yep. On the bottom triangle, we have seventh generation. Right. They're earth friendly. Performance at the time was kind of sketchy.

27:52 I think that's change. And at the top of the triangle, I put our brands up there and went, Let's take the best. Let's take the best from these two categories and just make something killer at the top. That no one's ever thought about before. Do you like cleaning? Actually I do like claiming. So you do. One of my early jobs was, you know, I had a lot of Uh I have a checkered past guy. I was a truck stop waitress, I was a typeist, I walked beans, I was a crew boss for soybean walking, but I was also a janitor in a beauty shop.

28:27 In a trailer park. This is in college or high school? High s even before high school. So this is I'm trying to get hairspray off the floor. Cleaning. That

28:38 is not a job I like at all. When we come back in just a moment, Monica gets a cleaning job she loves and finds a job for her mom, too. Stay with us, I'm Guy Roz, and you're listening to How I Built This. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's the year 2000, and Monica is ready to launch a new line of upscale and elegant cleaning products. And her first task?

29:17 Finding someone to make them. So the guy used to cut my hair. And I said, Hey Mac, I got this idea for putting stuff into bottles. I didn't tell him the concept. I said, Who do do you know anyone I mean I didn't know anybody in this business. Do you know anyone who knows anything about putting liquids into bottles? And he goes, You know what? I got a f I cut the hair of a fragrance consultant. I'll I'll call her and see if she can call you.

29:44 Well he did, and I met with her. And she said, Here's what you gotta do. And so she kinda walked me through the whole process. You know, you gotta build a fragrance profile. Which is not unlike a marketing profile, you know, who's your demographic, what's it supposed to do, what's what what are your big ideas, et cetera, et cetera. And then she said, You gotta go find this manufacturer out west of town.

30:07 Go find them. They'll help you too. So I go out there's called boomerang. And it's a bunch of ex employees from uh the Redmond hair care business. They they pulled their ESOP funds after that company was sold And started a man a contract manufacturing facility. They were making like shampoo and stuff for shampoos and Yeah, all kinds of stuff.

30:29 So I go out and see this. this person and and I I at the time I already had some dummy bottles. I I I would fill them up with a slight tint. I had all these P E T, which are clear plastic bottles, and I had a designer already create the labels for me. And I go out, I kinda share briefly with my business plan with her. And she sits back and she goes Okay, you crack the code. I'll help you. Meaning she goes, I've been waiting for someone to figure this out.

30:58 So she gave me the name of three camists. And I called them all, just tracked them down as fast as I could. To Just looked at me like I had Like

31:08 I just thought I was crazy. They're like, No, I'm not gonna help you. The second one, no, I'm not gonna help you. And the third one said Oh, I'll help you. And that was Pam Helms. And at the time she was uh a chemist for a personal care company in town. So she agreed to moonlight for me.

31:23 and help me figure out how to make this product. So we met. Every Wednesday night at nine and every Saturday morning. And she would create these formulations for we started, I think, with five products. It was hand soap, dish soap. Irony spray.

31:39 And something else. Oh, countertop spray. That was it. And three different fragrances. And she goes Well now we have to test them. And I went W what what do you what do you mean? We test'em. Don't you test them? She goes, No, we got a Give them to twenty five people and have them rate the product.

31:54 on a whole variety of factors. Fragrance, performance, streaking. So every Saturday morning I would take these little tiny samples of bottles. In a brown paper bag with an evaluation form. I had twenty five deliveries every Saturday morning. And I would go around, I found twenty five of my friends and family. And they would rate the product and they would fax fax back, believe it or not.

32:19 um their evaluations of the product. And and What gave Pam confidence in you? Do you think it was your background in in marketing? Ha. I don't know if I gave Pam a lot of confidence, man. I asked her to come work for me three or four times and she said no every time. She kept moonlighting and finally it took I think three years after we

32:41 uh got up and running, she finally said yes to me to come work for me full time. And so you were just keep kind of paying her as a consultant? I just kept paying I'm like, Pam, come on. Well just join us. And she's like, No, no, I don't know if you guys are gonna make it or not. And I totally get it. And finally when she said yes, she said Why did you keep asking me? I said Pam.

33:02 Are you kidding me? If I stopped it no. I would never get out of bed. No, it's just the beginning of a conversation, you know. I hear no I've heard no my entire life. It means nothing.

33:14 Yeah. W when you um I mean when you so you start to work on this and then Uh Pam's working on this. And but meantime, what were you doing to earn money? Oh w was David your husband? Was he working at this point? So he he's working at this time. So he's actually still at our former agency and I had

33:31 I also saved up two years of income. Like I really spent The several years before I left the marketing agency saving money. So then what I do is I'm running the business plan and I'm out raising money and it took I was just trying to raise about seven hundred thousand. Well that was the first round. And honestly.

33:51 That is the hardest, most humbling Part of the whole deal. How did you raise the money? Shameless cold calling. Shameless.

34:01 I just had this vision of a funnel in my mind thinking if I get a hundred names, I get one call. I mean, I was so desperate, a friend of mine he gave me the church directory for his well fluent church in Minneapolis. He goes Monica, just work down the list. Just start calling down the list. So I did. I I literally called everybody and anybody and I I mean I ran into some characters, believe me, and I

34:32 I went to every meeting. I thought, you know what, I don't care if they're the right investor or not. I'm just gonna practice. You know, because when I finally find someone with a bucket of money and interest, I gotta be ready. So I went to so many mini meetings that were so ridiculous. I mean, here's one that's very funny. So someone said, Hey, there's this old guy. who's got a blab and back and he's helping this woman with this personal care company. You gotta go see him. So I go see him. His office is full of smoke. He's got more crap on his desk. I thought he was gonna light himself on fire. He's got these long, ugly yellow fingernails from smoking f since birth.

35:07 And he grabs the business plan out of my hand and he starts going through and he flips right to the back, right to the financials, pro forma financials, and he goes, Hey, here's how this works. I'll give you a million dollars in cash. I get seventy five percent of the company, I and I own all the formulations. In two years he goes in two years if you make your these numbers, these numbers you're showing up.

35:29 You get it all back. You get back to seventy five percent ownership. You get back ownership of your formulations. And I thought. Oh my God, get out of here as fast as you can.

35:40 But What did I learn in that meeting that you owned your formulations? Yeah. I didn't know that. So that was a huge learning. So you turned that up or down. Oh my God. I ran from the building as fast as I can. I mean I once saw a guy who From the office he says, Come in here, little Philly

35:58 And I thought What is this? I l spend the next hour listening to him tell me about his

36:07 Stud Farm. And his Arabian horse's artificial insemination. And I'm thinking, well, this is a mismatch. So I mean, just the crazy people that you have to go see. It almost became like a comedy show. So I had to change my strategy. So I finally call this woman.

36:27 And she goes, Hey Monica, you gotta find this guy named Dick Magnuson. He was an early investor in the Nerf Ball. Mm. Believe it or not, Nerf was invented in Minneapolis. Find him, he might help you. So it took me six weeks, finally tracked him down, got a cell phone. And he goes, Okay, meet me out here at

36:46 Eight o'clock on this Friday morning. I got to this crappy old office again, smoke-filled room, and I'm like, oh God, here we go again. Well Dick Magnus is sitting there smoking. sit down on this folding chair, it grabs my plan. He flips through it. And he goes.

37:02 You know, I hate consumer product deals. I just hate them. He goes, but I kinda like you. So I'm gonna read this plan. over the weekend, and if I like it, I'm gonna call you at 8 a.m. on Monday morning. And he called me.

37:14 eight AM on Monday morning. And he helped me. He said, I'm in. He said, I'm in. And how much did you raise total?

37:23 Uh, we raised about uh eight hundred thousand the first round from a whole variety of investors. But he's an ex investment banker, but one thing he really taught me was Okay, Monica. We're not running for political office. That's what he said to me. He goes.

37:38 We're not running for political office. Stop smiling so much. We're doing a business deal. Now let's get serious. I'm gonna be honest, it helped to have a old white guy at the table asking other old white guys for money. So I've started to see a big breakthrough after that. So all right, so you have you you're re and and I mean, this is what you're doing full time.

38:00 David is bringing in some income from his job. you decide that you are going to pursue this sort of higher end cleaning supplies. And and but and by the way, how many Different. products did you want to have? You wanted to have like window cleaner and detergent and dish soap. Like w Yeah, we didn't we did start with laundry detergent.

38:20 We started with five products in three different fragrances for Caldera. They were uh the fragrances are lavender pine. Green T patchouli and citrus mint Langling. And they're in these gorgeous bottles. And so and the five Five products each.

38:35 And Caldria was the name. Tell me about the name Caldria. Oh, so Caldria comes from Cala. And Andrea. Oh, your daughter. Yeah. So it's an issue of my daughter's names. And so you were gonna and and let's so you have the f you've got the funding to kind of Get this manufactured.

38:54 Um, let's first talk about the bottles. What what was so special? Were they plastic bottles, were they glass bottles? They were called P E T. I don't know what that stands for, but they were these beautiful clear bottles usually reserved for uh food or personal care. Yeah, they were not typically used for cleaning products. They were very upscale. So I found this guy who became a bottle distributor for us and Ray would bring me so many samples. I think he too he felt sorry for me, but he also thought, well,

39:21 I don't know, this might work out. I'll give her some free bottles. So he gave me a bunch of bottles to work with so I could dummy up some products and take these small little brown fragrances into these meetings so I could share, hey, this is what we're trying to do, here's how it's gonna look, here are the aromas. You know, so people will get a sense of this is what this is gonna look like on shelf. So so you start to Get this produced, this co packer co manufacturer in Minneapolis. where you were experimenting with this stuff with the with the with the product. They you you hire them as your contract manufacturer. Right. They become our filler.

39:55 And they were awesome. They you know, they too were a startup. So they they help us just in terms of, I mean, I didn't I didn't know how you price this stuff. When I wrote my business plan, I would spend a lot of time at grocery stores. I didn't have another category from which to model. And I'm a big believer, I think I learned that in marketing. Let's find some models for pricing, brand extension, all that stuff. And I couldn't figure out how to price this. From a retail standpoint and then work back to the cost of goods.

40:25 That was really tricky. We didn't ha'cause we had Nobody else was doing what we were doing with cleaning. And the other thing that was going on, we had a difficult time with the vendors supplying us with aromas, surfactants. olive oils, all the things we wanted at the personal care grade level for cleaning. They're like, we don't, we're not doing that. That's ridiculous. So we had a hard time finding vendors on the manufacturing side to believe in our concept of upscaling this whole category of cleaners. Where were you buying the fragrance from? Uh

41:00 Usually from Switzerland. That's it came through most of the offices on the east coast, I think New Jersey. And by the way, was Caldria just you at this point and some f some sort of contract employees, or did you have to No, I had I had probably maybe two to four employees at the time. Okay, and what were they doing? I had a COO who was kind of in charge of manufacturing operations, and then I had Uh warehouse person and then That was kind of it for starters. You know, we were doing everything.

41:31 Right, okay. And and and when it comes to strategy, I I'm I'm assuming you guys I I think you guys initially wanted to get Caldria into gift shops, right? Like uh like shops where people buy you know, homewares and and and and things like that. Yeah. Like ABC carpet and home out of New York, for example. At the time we that was a major coup for us. We got in there, they had a they had a kit a kitchen area where it had that all these upscale kitchen gadgets. So that's the other thing we looked for. Could we be, you know, saddled up next to upscale kitchen. Upscale gift, because we could definitely make our product giftable.

42:06 You know, because the bottles were so beautiful and it was kind of a new category. So Slowly over the you know, coup one or two years, I finally had all the rep groups set up. And then we start going, having a booth at all these gift shows. Atlanta was a big market, New York was a big market, Texas. Um, and so what we learned really quickly was that the coasts were very good for us. What about like William Sonoma? Was that uh was were you did you guys approach them?

42:34 So William Sonoma, it's an interesting story. So that January before we shipped our first product, I saw on the back of their catalog our concept. They had lavender dish soap, hand soap, candle. And I literally Hit the panic button. I'm like Oh.

42:49 Crap. They're in this bit they're in this business. And if anybody can do it, these guys can. So lo and behold, Fast forward to this housework show. our first house were show in Chicago, and we have A hutch?

43:03 That's why we have a hutch and all of our product. William Sonoma sees us at ABC Carpent Home when they're doing their trend trips. They come and say. Hey, would you make we love what you're doing, we love your fragrances, we've tested your products, we've used your products. Would you make this for us?

43:19 Wow. So they want uh and they were having problems with their vendors getting their dish soap made. They were they couldn't s fill out they couldn't fill their supply line. So we're like, Oh my God, this is awesome. So anyway, we have to go out. And have a meeting in San Francisco. And I thought to myself,

43:37 Okay, when we come back and show them our dummy product how this is gonna look, I'm gonna fill this table because they're very creative. They're very consumer focused. I thought we're gonna build a huge display here, just like to see it in a store. Because that's how their minds work,'cause I thought Let's put on your marketing hat, Monica. This has gotta be like bold and competitive and killer. So they just go, Oh my God, I gotta go with these guys.

44:03 And that was a significant revenue program for us. Yeah. And it served as our financing for the rest of the for the rest of the life of the company. But it wasn't a brand builder. It wasn't a brand builder, but it was a category builder. Yeah.

44:18 And that was just as important in my mind. And a lot of our advisors said, Oh, Monica, don't do it. You're crazy, private label. It's a low margin business. But if William Sonoma gets behind a category of premium cleaning and they sell their dish soap for seven ninety nine and and Caldera for seven ninety nine, we all win because William Sonoma was landlocked to 250 stores. This was long before internet shopping. So I wasn't worried that I was competing with them. I took the attitude of hey, all boats float in a rising tide. We're all gonna grow this huge premium category together. I thought it benefited everybody. So they didn't sell Caldria in addition to the white they just sold the white label brand. But it did say

45:00 But on the bottle it did say made by Caldria, right? Yes, uh because I gave them a margin point for that. Got it. Okay. So again, it was validating our position in the marketplace where you could find it in all these gift stores. Let me ask you about the

45:16 Price point here, right? Because I imagine a strategy can be Pricing something. higher'cause it gets people interested. They're thinking, wait, ten dollars for a a bottle of d of you know, Windex like this must be really good Windex.

45:31 Right. So our dish soap is price at seven ninety nine. And so that's why I knew we would never survive in mass, because let's be honest, Don was a dollar ninety nine. Yeah, or two ninety nine, whatever. Right. Yeah. The customer would go, Who are these? This is makes no sense. It can't be that great. It's not like specks of gold are in there. So it had to be at a gift shop where people might be like, Oh, this is interesting, it's not Dawn. Right. So here's my question. I mean you're in you start you you're working with distributors, right? And you're getting into More and more gift shops.

46:02 How are you getting people to buy them. I mean now you're just you're just hoping that people will notice them in the stores. So it's still it's gotta I mean imagine 'Cause you launched this business in two thousand. I imagine

46:15 Two thousand one when these are in stores. It's it's slow going. Oh yeah. It's not like flying off the shelves. No, exactly. But we what we had done is 'Cause I learned this from my past careers, we hired a PR firm out of New York. And so all I wanted them to do was to get us placement in all the home deck, home decor, women's fashion, all these magazines. Martha Stewart living. Real simple

46:42 You name it. That's that's what we wanted to be in. And and it worked. It started to put us on the map. good housekeeping. So that that is how we spend our marketing dollars at the time. Alright, so your You've got Caldria out there.

46:56 And It's doing okay and you've got the Williams Sonoma business. But I guess you started to pretty early on. Get worried that You know, some other

47:09 better funded brand or company could come in. And just basically do the same thing and cr and and You know, or or or introduce an a an kind of a cheaper knock off. That would really be

47:22 Damage your business. Yeah, oh I I did start to worry because You know, when I started I knew th I knew the st st statistic was that hey Almost eighty percent of all household cleaning products are purchased in the grocery store and discount stores. So that was the market.

47:38 But When I got started, I honestly did know how to get there. I didn't have the expertise. I didn't have the funding. I didn't know how to start there. But all of a sudden I went You know what, let's knock off ourselves.

47:48 Let's if Let's knock off ourselves. Let's knock off ourselves. I had a I had a boss who always said, Hey, Monica, saw the branch you're sitting on and reach for the one above you. And I kept thinking about that with Mrs. Myers. And I thought let's just knock off ourselves. So we're gonna go to mass, we're gonna figure it out, we're gonna create a whole nother brand. And you know, that's what I knew how to do. I knew how to build brands because a lot of people said, Oh, Monica, you're you're you're not focused, you're you're building all these brands. But that was to me the easy part. The hard part was The selling, the operations, the manufacturing. I didn't have expertise in that area. So we're we're like, Okay, we're gonna knock off ourselves. We're sitting around

48:26 Probably five of us at the time were brainstorming and we're going All right, if we wanted to take out Caldria, how would we do it? Caldera's European, she's fancy, she's high priced. Let's make something Midwestern, wholesome, out of a garden. And then all of a sudden it was like

48:43 This wait, this is like my mom. You know, she's like the Consummant. House. Wife with huge family, huge garden, total she was a child of the depression, waste not, want not is her operating model.

48:56 For everything. So that's how we came up with the name. Mrs. Myers. Mrs. Myers. Bye mom. Yep.

49:05 So I call my mom. After we've you know, first of all you have to make sure you clear it with the trademark office. I call my mom and I go, Hey mom, do you want to be a brand? And she goes Of course she's in the garden. She goes, What's a brand? I said, I'll just explain it to you later. Just just just agree to this. We gotta'cause we gotta get running with this. And then I'll call you later and explain what we're gonna do. I didn't really know what we were all gonna do, but I wanted her not to get running. You know, this is really interesting. I mean you're s you're you start to recognize it, Caldria alone.

49:38 Is is gonna be vulnerable. Because it's small, it's not well funded. Yeah, maybe we might get lucky. But there's a good chance that a competitor's gonna come in. and crush the brand. And so you start to say

49:51 It's so interesting because I many years ago I interviewed Kenneth Chnault. the former CEO of American Express in another show I do called Wisdom from the Top, and I asked him, about how he thinks about business and he said You always want to think, How can I become my competitor? my future competitor. How do I become my future competitor now?

50:13 It it's like a great strategy. Yeah, you know I When you have eight siblings It's It's a dog fight.

50:22 Highly competitive. Right. You know, and I'm like I'm not letting anyone take this concept. I'm gonna do it. You know. Super competitive and I thought let's just let's knock ourselves off.

50:33 What would be different between the the the Mrs. Myers products and the Caldria products? Uh, but we kind of had this uh marketing philosophy that it has to come out of Mrs. Meyer's garden in Iowa. It has to be authentic, it has to be authoritative. And it has to be priced. slightly above the mass. And it's gonna be based on a real person. We're not gonna make this up, you know, in terms of It's gonna be my mom. It's gonna be my mom. And you know, she's

51:00 The real deal in many ways. And um You know, we were raised to kind of uh Take care of what you have and it will take care of you. And she was very thrifty. And and my my brother had a saying she could make a nickel squeal. You know, she had a hard life as a child, you know, she didn't have probably running water electricity until she was 10.

51:22 on a Kansas farm I mean, we didn't have to make up that much stuff about her. One one of the interesting things because your mom's name is Thelma, right? Thelma Meyer. One of the interesting things about About this product was that The original packaging had like a little

51:39 character on it. It was like a sort of a fifties housewife with a dress and an apron. Am I am I right about that? It's not on there anymore, but I think it was. And that's a little bit I mean. I remember seeing that and it and y you know there are different um ideas that might come in someone's head. Like I see that and I think of like Judy Jets, you know, or Well I I I I think of oh that's that

52:01 Um evokes a certain image in my mind, right? And and I think that was a point. But that's risky, right? Because there could be backlash. There could be people saying Hey, wait a minute, what are you what are you doing playing into stereotypes? Right. So much for women's lib. And at the time, and at the same time, this was my mother. joyfully accepting her role in life. And so we just embrace that. And

52:24 This designer I worked with who did all the packaging, Werner Design work, Sharon Werner, she when I approached her, I knew her from other projects in Minneapolis, she goes, Oh my God, this is my mom. She just totally got it. And so we as we were creating the design, we had all these mood boards with all these little ic from the 50s. Because we kinda wanted to make the packaging look like Thelma. Could have made it in her basement. Know the bottles weren't too slick, the labels weren't too slick, but slick enough, you know, so it had a kind of a retro sophistication, if you will.

52:56 You know, it's not like you have to be that person in an apron cleaning your house. You don't it it's that you we you have the authority of a domestic mentor and she's real. Yeah. That's how I viewed it. Interesting. It's it's often the um It's often.

53:13 People who are least affected by those things that are the most alarmist about them. Right. Yep. So all right, so you basically you start to work and and be Be between the time that you come up with the idea and the time that you actually have a A bottle. With

53:29 you know, the label and the story, how long did that take, roughly? Probably less than a year because you know, we had a lot of the product developed. So um, you know, anytime you make a product like this, it has to go through seven months of stability testing. So you've got that alone is within your time frame for launching. And so We had the packaging all created. We were working on the fragrances, much simpler, lavender and lemon verbena, very different packaging. And we go to another trade show and restoration hardware stops by. And at the time, restoration hardware actually had a cleaning section. I don't know if you remember that. This is long before it became. But it was enough. It was a real

54:08 Authentic with the best mops, the best brooms, you know, camp, you know, all that stuff. And The buyer comes by and goes, Man, I love what you're doing. So that was our first customer was restoration hardware. Hm. Alright, so when Mrs. Myers

54:23 uh is going to be ready by two thousand two. Yep. And what was your was your plan to go after was there like in your mind did you say okay let's just go right into the big box stores or did you again say let's start small. Like'cause we didn't we did a story of Method, which c also was introduced around this time, but you probably didn't hear about it'cause it was in just in Molly Stones in the Bay Area for a couple of years before You know, it got bigger. But did you think, hey, maybe we should start small with this?

54:53 I thought we should get in Whole Foods. That's that's Whole Foods, okay. Oh yeah, I was like, that was my target. So you thought we gotta get to whole foods where The sort of the let's just say I hate this this term, but like influential buyers have been. Oh for sure. Yeah, they are. Yeah. Because all the target buyers, other groceries buyers, what are they doing? They're snooping around Whole Foods in major markets and the Columbus Circle Whole Foods and the San Francisco there oh what what products do they have? How are they selling? All that So

55:23 At the time What I the other thing that I really wanted to pull off was brand blocking. And that is, before we showed up, if you had dish soap, it went with dish soap. Window spray went with window spray. And it was all scattered throughout the cleaning aisle, and I thought. We're gonna die. We're just gonna be Oh, you in other words, the window sprays were together, the dish soaps were together, which meant that if you had multiple Skews, your brand was like scattered around. Oh, scattered all over. I thought we'dn't have all the Mrs. Myers together. Right. And Whole Foods what? They allowed us. Because one thing they had was personal care.

55:57 You know, they had a personal care section and they were used to the birds bees of the world coming in there and saying, No, we gotta be all together. Because then you validate your price point and you kind of make a promise to the consumer. that hey, if the hand soap is awesome, the dish soap is gonna be awesome. You know, it has this halo effect. Alright, so you get into whole into those whole foods and Um I guess again, I mean you're you're in some of these

56:22 I mean you you had Caldria in some of these magazines Now you've got this very unusual'cause I remember the label. You've got the You know, the Judy Jetson or whatever, or the June Cleaver on there, Mrs. Myers. And so it it stood out. But but how are you gonna get people to buy it? What what was the approach you took? Well again we had

56:42 PR firm working on Mrs. Myers, but we also started doing sampling. So this is when we got My mother Thelma to go into stores in Columbus Circle in San Francisco. And we made tiny little samples like the personal care business. Yep. And soap, dish soap. And my mom would stand there in her little uniform we were created for her and she would have been a little bit more than a little bit. Oh, it was like a plaid shirt, a denim apron, and little red capris and red shoes. That's and and she was like I'll play ball.

57:12 She she was like, I'm in. I love everything about this. And was that what she wore normally? Oh. What

57:20 She wore red she wore work shoes. My mother believed in German work shoes. So these were red work shoes. And did you make her like get her hair done in a certain way in Just a little more upscale, but You know, she had a mop of gray hair, thick mop of gray hair, and she wore makeup. She th she just thought she was like a movie star. Yeah. And it's called Mrs. Myers and

57:44 And she's like, I'm Mrs. Myers, but it wasn't like um the Charman Squeeze guy. No. Like she was re she's like the real deal actually the real person. Yeah, and we would bring her to trade shows and People just like loved seeing her. And she loved, you know, she just embraced this whole thing. And one thing I learned early on was So you know, when you come out of corporate communications, you learn, hey, if you're getting somebody prepped for media relations, give them three three key messages. Well, I tried that on my mom. That was a disaster because she'd be interviewed by a salesperson or a Media and and she'd say, Was that a key message? She'd look at me

58:23 Oh while she'd be interviewed, she'd turn to go, Hey, was that the right key message? I'm like, But would they ask her, like, hey, how did you invent this? How did you start this business? You know what would she say? She would she would act like she did it. And you know, at first I I kinda always wanted to interrupt and I thought, uh uh, just let her rip. I mean, to this day, people think she started it. And then if I'm around standing around, she goes, Oh no, no, no, my my daughter did. Right. Um and but at some point, I mean you Uh you and your mom

58:54 joined forces to go on QVC, right? Like I mean you and you pitch both of the brands, Mrs. Myers and Caldria. Right. We went on QVC. KBC wanted to bring us on. They brought in my mom. Disaster. I went on a disaster.

59:08 It was a disaster. You know, there's something about QVC That we just didn't understand. Wait, what happened? It just So

59:17 If you know anything about QVC, you sit in the green room when someone's on and you can just see the lights blink when the calls come in. Yeah. It is a whole different type of selling environment. And You know, I came out of traditional retail. I didn't understand TV shopping. I should have never said yes to this. But I thought, Oh heck, let's try it. Why not? Wait, was she not funny or interesting? I think she was good, but I think I think she was and and I have to say I was too. It was kind of intimidating to be on for a half hour. You know, it's one thing to have like a two to three minute little news clip. It's quite a different animal when you've gotta keep that energy and the demo and everything up for thirty minutes. And you know, my mom Wasn't that person.

1:00:00 We just didn't understand. Like kind of. the demoing part of it. You know, like oh look at this as a hot mess. Oh now it's clean. And then I thought, is that what we're about?

1:00:11 No, we're not. We're about fragrance and it's hard to communicate fragrance over a television. So we walked away from that. Yeah. And nothing was considered a failure. It was always like, oh wow, that didn't work, well now we know.

1:00:27 But we come back in just a moment. Monica learns another lesson, do not put your brand in target. Until you are absolutely ready. Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz.

1:00:55 So it's the early two thousands, and Mrs. Myers products are in some top whole foods locations across the country. And Monica decides it's time to pitch to the buyers. A target. Yeah. So I knew the target folks. I went over there, I made a presentation and they go Great. We'd love to do a two hundred star test.

1:01:13 But I'm gonna be honest, I secretly w had this. instinct that we were is premature. We didn't have a mistake. It was a mistake. We didn't have the funding We weren't in enough locations. I said yes anyway. So we were given a hurdle, you know, a sales hurdle for you know how to fly off the shelf. Well, we completely missed it and I decided I'm gonna take myself out.

1:01:36 Wait, wait, you you were target okay. I we should clarify here,'cause target usually gives you one shot. Right, to come in. And if you g it's like Sephora, some of these companies You go in, if you don't make it they're not gonna bring you back in. And so you agreed, hey, let's I mean, I think I would too. It's target.

1:01:55 But why didn't they sell there? D I mean were you just not able to bring your mom to enough stores? Like what what was the problem? I just think the whole problem was not enough brand awareness. For a target. And the other thing that I really tried to do and it didn't happen was I tried to have those target stores in the same market as a uh as a Whole Foods. So I had con concentration in a market that people would see it of Oh, if I went to Whole Foods, I saw Mrs. Myers. Oh, if I go to Target, I'll see Mrs. Myers. And that didn't happen. We couldn't control the stores, the two hundred store test.

1:02:26 Um and so I had no market concentration, we had zero brand awareness. We were so premature with the brand, I we didn't really know what we were doing. So I saw the numbers every week and I decided we gotta take ourselves out. So I mean I I went over to Target and I said, You know what, we're not ready for you. I thought I I'm gonna kick myself up'cause I want back in.

1:02:48 Yeah. So At what point did you feel comfortable reapproaching target? Like what was the metric that you were using? Oh boy, I don't know if I remember having a metric. I just remember thinking, I think we're in enough stores. You know, and they they often asked us to come back and provide an update of how the brand was doing.

1:03:09 So I'd go back. You know, every six, nine months. pitch all the new products, tell them what we're doing. I never asked for a P.O. I thought, no, I'm gonna, you know, let them ask me. So a couple years later. They said okay.

1:03:23 Do you guys think you're ready? And I I did think we were ready. 'Cause we were in a lot more stores. I can't remember the number of stores, but we were probably in, you know, several thousand stores by then and in all of the major upscale grocery stores. And that's you know, Target likes likes it if brands are in places like that.

1:03:41 Yeah. So when you I mean, by the time you sort of you're back in target, I think in the by the mid two thousands, and you're nationally in Whole Foods. Um, do you remember You know, by two thousand seven, let's say. Do you remember what your your revenue was? Was it over five million dollars?

1:04:02 Oh yeah. For sure. Over ten? Yes.

1:04:07 Over twenty? Yes. Thirty? No. Close. No, okay.

1:04:13 Between twenty and thirty. Yeah. So you were so you were really I mean, you were And were you profitable? Uh, we were probably profitable around fifteen, twenty million. Once we got the margin, the cost of goods sold uh figured out for Kel for uh Mrs. Myers. That was really our struggle in the beginning because we were so we wanted to get that product to market and we didn't quite have the

1:04:38 I w what I want to say the formulation engineered for a good price point to be at the mass level. Was your husband David did he eventually join you? Yeah, so he um He joined us very early and finally we were getting to the point of where we were moving into an office. And honestly, I didn't know how to hook up the computers. And I said, Dave, but you just

1:05:00 He he he didn't really want to help me. He's like I don't know what you're doing, you're kinda crazy But I said, Could you just come down and hook up the computer? She goes, I'll do it He goes Then he turns to me and he goes, How big did you say this industry is? I said to him it's it's Almost ten billion. I just want a corner.

1:05:17 On a corner of it. He goes, I'm gonna help you on one condition. I said, What? He goes, You never ever start another business. I said, Okay, I did, but um so he came and helped and and he got involved and and thank goodness that he did because he was really our finance expert.

1:05:34 He ran the books, all the accounting, the shipping, all of that was his forte. So all right, so you've got this growing business. You hit You know Between twenty and thirty million in revenue. And sales.

1:05:47 Um And this category is exploding. Right. premium category, there's method out there, you guys there's other brands coming out um today obviously m even bigger

1:06:01 Uh and more brands, I should say. Um But you get An offer. you get an acquisition an acquisition offer comes to you or you approach

1:06:11 Uh or you put yourself up for sale. What tell me w what what the story was. So Throughout the history of the company, I had mostly private equity, mostly guys come and say, Oh my gosh, we're really interested when you guys are ready for the next stage of financing, yada yada You know, and so I kept a running list of everybody who approached me, usually at a trade show, and I always asked them one question. And the question was, Hey, what can you do for us that we can't do for ourselves?

1:06:38 Yeah. And do you know I never got a good answer. I mean I just Okay, an obvious one was throw money our way, but It would always stomp them and I thought, This is not the partner I'm looking for. So finally

1:06:53 in two thousand two thousand and seven, I get a phone call. Do not ignore this voicemail. You've ignored so many of my voicemails. I've left with you. Please don't ignore this. Call me back. And I thought Who is this guy? So I called him back, he identifies himself, and it's Essie Johnson. And I was not surprised whatsoever,'cause they had been in every trade show booth since our first trade show. And I understand why. They had a you know, huge blade business. They really un understood fragrants, they understood the cleaning category. They were experts in this department, you know? And so they were really

1:07:28 Fascinated by what we were doing. And so when I asked them that question, hey, what can you guys do for us we can't do for ourselves, their first answer was global distribution. And I'm like Well, that's kinda cool. I don't know that we could do that. You know, and Something else happens when you kind of have a business that's up and running. You start to get a little I always run paranoid, but you start to get a little more paranoid that I don't wanna screw this up, man.

1:07:55 I We got something here. I uh maybe we should get out while the getting's good, you know? That was another feeling I had, quite honestly. Yeah.

1:08:05 So you agree to be acquired by them. Right. Um I mean it it's I think the outcome was probably great. It was undisclosed amount, but you know, y it's if you guys were doing between twenty and thirty and revenue you can imagine what what that acquisition Price was I imagine

1:08:23 That It in a sense it was a relief. Right, because here you here you are. I mean You know, you didn't have

1:08:32 Money, a lot of money. Most of your life. And now you are like two thousand eight, you must have been Close to fi maybe just a couple years after fifty? Yeah. Fifty two, fifty three. And uh and that for the first time in your life. You have this opportunity to actually have significant

1:08:49 amount of cash that probably can Support you and your family for the rest of your life. Yeah. It's a bittersweet decision. You know, um

1:09:01 First of all, you're selling your mother. You know. That Right,'cause that's the right'cause she was the brand. She was the brand. Her likeness, her name. Her name is so it's like selling your child. And that's

1:09:16 Okay. Yeah, people think, Oh, you get a bucket of money for it, but You know, that was hard. We we grew that brand from nothing. And That was the whole fun of it for me was building a brand.

1:09:28 And so when you sold the business. You stayed on. You agree to stay on, or you want I'm sure you wanted to stay on too. And Pam Helms, who's your chemist and who joined you, she also stayed on. Oh yeah, she's still um still with them. Yeah. She's still with S C Johnson. Yep. Amazing. You stay on. Um and what was the what was your job? I stayed the CEO.

1:09:49 Yeah. And uh I just saw my future as Death by PowerPoint. You know, I just thought I am a creative idea person. I you know, and I just thought Somebody else needs to come in here and run this.

1:10:04 You know. Um And uh as my brother once said to me, Monica, you don't have the keys to the car anymore. And so you have to kind of Except that's your new role and

1:10:14 Um I fulfilled my contract and and uh left the company. They also acquired Caldria. Yes, they acquired every everything. Everything. So you leave. And you still have the itch and now you've got

1:10:27 your own money so you don't have to beg and plead f with other people for their money if you if you want, if you didn't want to. You had money to start. Something new. Yeah. And you decide, hey

1:10:39 I want it. I wanna get back into the game. Guy, I should have just stayed home. What was I thinking?

1:10:51 I think it's it's it's I mean, listen, it makes sense. You don't want you don't you don't want to just sit around and let your brain cells die. No, you don't want to keep firing those synapses, right? Yeah. Oh no, for sure. So you come up with a new idea. So I have a new idea. And it really comes from staying home for about a year. Staying home. I'm born out of my mind. Born out of your mind. I got gas in my tank. I grew up in a family of seamstresses. And my sister was a fashion she grew up in fashion. My mother made all of our clothes. My grandmother clothes. So I have a long history of making clothes. So I have this idea that

1:11:26 You know? cloth lingerie and sleepwear for older women my age in their fifties is terrible. It's either the Victoria's secret junk or flannel. And why can't you have somewhere in between and have it out of gorgeous? So Yeah, with gorgeous cotton Swiss cottons and some so I thought I'm gonna do some research. So I do some research, I go to a couple of trade shows in Europe, look at fabrics, and I thought I'm just gonna start a small line. of luxury sleepwear. Calf dance. Pajamas. Luxury pajamas.

1:12:00 Yeah. And this was before You know, um Somebody once said to me after they saw the line, I said, Monica, you were two years ahead of Instagram. Had you just waited two years, Instagram, this would've worked.

1:12:15 But Yeah. Social media wasn't there for a fashion brand. So uh I had a couple of employees, I had a pattern maker and we made our we manufactured our goods in New York and I said

1:12:27 a revenue goal for myself. And I set a cash flow goal and I set an investment goal. And I said, If I don't make this revenue, I'm not going to spend any more money on this brand. I'm just going to shut it down. Well how much money were you willing to put into it? A million dollars. Okay. And

1:12:43 By the way. Anybody listening can Google Sophia Graydon. I don't know if you want people to do it, but it's g it's interesting because you can see pictures of what this looked like. Beautiful. It's really nice, well made Pajamas, robes. Yeah. Right.

1:12:59 So I got into it and I realized Oh my God, this is gonna take like ten million dollars. This is you know, once I saw how you have to bring in fabric and the different sizing. You know, I just And you were buying expensive fabric. Not like just like mass produced in a factory in in Chengdu. No, they were Swiss cottons. They were French silks. It was yeah, no, it was it was beautiful things and I wanted to have it all made here in the United States. And you know, we had great reception, we had great

1:13:28 Again I hired a PR firm out of New York to promote the product, but I could see how expensive it was gonna be. And honestly, I did not want to go out and raise a bucket of money. I just thought I've been through this, it's so hard. So I got to my revenue goal or short of it. And I got to my cash Local.

1:13:49 And I said it's we're done. And I learned a lot and I also learned You know, before you proceed another startup. We're not gonna do that again, okay? That was when I finally said. I think my startup days are over.

1:14:06 Did you love? Did you love this idea? The the The pajamas that I mean, did you like really love it? I did I loved it, but I didn't really love it. I didn't love it as much as Mrs. Myers. And the thing with Mrs. Myers I could see it in my mind. I could see the in cap from day one when I stood over that.

1:14:25 Pathetic palette. In Atlanta, when I first had the idea, it just boom came to me. Yeah. And I I I was obsessed. I didn't have that same obsession. It was kind of

1:14:37 A whim And a whim never makes a business. And I know better. I know better. So you so that ends.

1:14:47 Meantime, Mrs. Myers is growing like A rocket ship. Like Wild because You know, it's reminds me of an episode we did a coup uh a couple months ago about barefoot wines, right? It's I think it's the best selling wine brand in the world.

1:15:01 and the year before Gallo bought it. From uh from the founders. Uh I think they s they they did like four or five hundred thousand cases. The next year.

1:15:12 Gallo produced like four million cases. Wow. Like that's how quickly they could scale this brand. Over like it Just they acquire it. Boom, and now it's the b best selling. One of the maybe the five, two or three best selling wines in the world. Um and I I think there's a similar parallel with Mrs. Myers, right? Like they S C Johnson was able to basically with a snap of of their fingers Put it in every Walmart.

1:15:36 Target, like everywhere. And that that was the attraction to selling to them. I thought They can do what we can't do. So Did you I mean U after that ended, after your time.

1:15:49 Building that brand ended. Did you just shut it out of your life or did you continue to follow what they were doing? I continued to follow and You know, to this day, I go into a store and I straighten out the bottles on the shelf. I mean, I I I'm like always counting. I'm always like looking behind and pulling up product, you know, if it's not I can't help myself. And my girls do it, you know, in high they were in high school with their friends. I used to pay'em a couple h you know, some like ten dollars. Go and get all the shelf pull up the product from behind the shelf and they st Mom I still straighten out the product on the shelf. You just can't help yourself. It's like you're but you're children. You gotta make sure they look good. I I make sense can I make a confession to you?

1:16:28 Please. I do that with my book. One of my bookstores. Yes. They take it out and I I put it front facing. So it looks like the bookshop like Absolutely.

1:16:39 So if you ever see my book front facing, you know that I was probably in that bookstore. I do it all the time. So I get it. All right. So you And once you were done with With that second business, Sophia Grayton, which really was your third business, right? Yeah. Did you think, all right, I'm done with

1:16:58 starting businesses now. I don't think I'm done. I just thought You know once you've got the built a Mrs. Myers business. It's hard to settle for a little business.

1:17:09 You know, you think if I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna go Big baby. I'm gonna be bold, competitive. It's gonna be another product category, not a product item business. And I haven't seen that yet. Yeah. You know.

1:17:23 That's probably why I haven't gone after it. Tell me what you Started to devote your your time and your energy to because you're obviously You're super vibrant. You're super energetic. You're I mean, I uh you know, just talking to you over the course of this interview, I mean you're

1:17:40 very talented. You've got a lot of ideas. And it and so what have you how have you been keeping yourself energized? Well, I've been on a lot of boards consumer product companies, and I've also been an investor in a couple of startups, and I've learned one big lesson with that. I'm a far better entrepreneur than I am an investor. Most most, by the way. Ninety five percent of entrepreneurs are better entrepreneurs than investors. So I'm not doing that anymore.

1:18:07 Yeah. I like to think I'm a quick study, but sometimes not. Yeah. And Yeah, in in

1:18:16 just looking at these brands, right, that you built and they're You know. Obviously Mrs. Myers is a Huge brand. Your mom is still around. Yeah.

1:18:26 But you really are the I mean you you you you created this brand. Yeah. And When you think about You know, the journey you took. and and how you built this business, this brand and then

1:18:37 You know, had a successful exit. How much of of this do you attribute to the work you put in the grind and how much do you think had to do with luck? You know? I always said I was never the smartest person in the room, but I could outwork anyone. I worked my Tail off to make this happen, but I'm also a big believer in

1:18:54 If a little ladybug comes on your shoulder. It's a sign of good luck. And when y that happens, you better run. It means it's go time. Yeah. Yeah.

1:19:04 Um, just just to just get back to your mom for a second. Um Does does she still like work as a mascot for for the brand? Like when S C Johnson Uh to go like bought bought you out. Uh Did she still show up to pitch the project? No, she still she still did work for them. In fact, she w she did the Rose Bowl parade with them, she still made some appearances.

1:19:27 But you know, let's be real. At the same time my mother's aging, you know. She's ninety two. She's still super healthy, but you know, that's not a gig she can keep up anymore, you know, but I I'm telling you, she had a garage sale this summer and she wanted to know if she could put on her outfit hand out samples. I mean she still tells everybody that she sits next to on a plane who she is. Yeah. And they love her for it.

1:19:51 That's Monica Nasiv. Founder of Caldria and Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day Products. Is the five second rule real? If you drop something I mean, g you know, you're a cleaning expert. If you drop something on within five seconds, can you still eat that twinkie? Or what like let's say it's something very absorbent, like a

1:20:12 Like Julia Child did with the roast. Like just drop the roast. Yeah. You know, I don't know. I I ask I have to I'd have to ask Pam, the chemist. But you know, as Julia Child said, there's no one in my kitchen. Is there anyone in your kitchen? She picked up the roast and continued to cook.

1:20:30 Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And if you're interested in insights, ideas, and lessons from some of the world's greatest entrepreneurs, please sign up for my newsletter at gyros.com or on Substack. This episode was produced by Carrie Thompson with music composed by Rantina Rablui. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Carla Estevez. Our engineers were Patrick Murray and Jimmy Keeley. Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, JC Howard, Catherine Seifer, Chris Massini, Sam Paulson, John Isabella, and Elaine Coates. I'm Guy Raz and you've been listening. to how I built this.

What you see above is a preview of the first minutes. One unlock costs 10 credits and covers this episode forever: full segment and word-level timestamps on this page, plus .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like.