method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan (2018)

In the late 1990s, Adam Lowry and Eric Ryan took on the notion that "green doesn't clean" by setting out to make soap that could clean a bathtub without harming the environment. Adam started experimenting with baking soda, vinegar, and scented oils, while Eric worked on making sleek bottles that looked good on a kitchen counter. Just a few years later, Adam and Eric were selling Method cleaning products in stores throughout the country, after a bold gamble got them on the shelves of Target. Order the How I Built This book at: https://smarturl.it/HowIBuiltThisSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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• 0:00Guy Raz?

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• 0:45Guy Raz?

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• 1:30Guy Raz?

  based on one small decision. Visit usbank.com/business to learn more. The creditor and issuer of this card is US Bank National Association, pursuant to a license from Visa USA, Inc. Some restrictions apply. Our presenting sponsor today is Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Every founder on this show started with a hard question. Not the marketing plan, the 2:00 AM kind. Is this idea any good? Am I the one to build it? Should I quit my job? Anthropic got built the same way. A public benefit corporation founded on one Hard question. How do we make sure AI goes well for people?

• 2:14Guy Raz?

  So they asked over 100,000 people their hopes and their fears and are publishing what they find, even the uncomfortable parts. Me? I've got my own hard question about AI. Here it is. If everyone has access to something that can help them write the business plan, build the prototype, analyze the market, maybe even come up with the idea. What separates the people who actually build something from everyone else? I don't have a clean answer yet, so I've been sitting with it with Claude. There's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claude.ai/hibt.

• 2:54Guy Raz?

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• 3:36Guy Raz?

  The agents bring speed and scale and people bring taste, judgment and control. Learn how you can get more out of your site from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at framer.com/built for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's framer.com/built. Rules and restrictions may apply. AI isn't just opening new business opportunities. It's changing the way businesses get work done. The questions they ask, the decisions they make, the routine tasks they can hand off. That's the idea behind NetSuite Next, the next generation of NetSuite with AI woven into the tools your business already relies on.

• 4:21Guy Raz?

  NetSuite Next surfaces insights exactly when you need them, puts agents to work on routine tasks and problems, and lets you ask complex questions in plain language, like talking to a knowledgeable colleague. But technology is only part of the story. AI is also reshaping how people and teams work together, and that shift is already underway. That's why NetSuite wants to put a new, expert-created business guide in your hands today. It's called Aligning for the Agentic Era: How AI is Changing Everyday Work. And right now, it's yours, absolutely free. Inside, you'll discover how AI could reshape work across your entire organization, and how to position your business to prosper from it.

• 5:06Guy Raz?

  If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, get NetSuite's free business guide, Aligning for the Agentic Era: How AI is Changing Everyday Work, at netsuite.com/built. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com/built. netsuite.com/built. Hey, everyone. So I have a request. If you value this show, if you value the stories, the lessons, the wisdom and inspiration we bring to you, if you think of me as your friend, which I am, because even though millions of you are listening, I'm actually talking just to you right now. I need you to be there for me as well. And you can do that by supporting what I do and buying my book, How I Built This.

• 5:51Guy Raz?

  It is just out now and available everywhere. And it doesn't cost more than a few cups of coffee. And it's filled with wisdom and stories and ideas that will have you feeling inspired and fired up to take on the world. So please, if you love this show and what we do for you, do us one back and pick up How I Built This wherever books are sold.

• 6:17Guy Raz?

  OK, on to today's show. And just so you know, our team has been working frantically to crank out a new episode each week for most of this year. But each episode we make takes months to produce, from the huge amount of research we do, to the fact checking, to the very long interview, to the editing, and then more editing, and even more fact checking, and then more editing, and then scoring the episode with original music. It takes a lot to produce a single Monday episode of How I Built This. So this week, we're taking a break and bringing you one of our very favorites from the archive, the story of Method Cleaning Products, a multimillion-dollar company that came to

• 7:00Guy Raz?

  be because two old friends just happened to run into each other on a cross-country flight. Hope you enjoy.

• 7:11Guy Raz?

  I read at one point, Eric, that to prove that this really was non-toxic, you actually drank it.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I was in London. You know, I love the British press, they're so skeptical. And she said, is it, you know, safe enough to drink? I was like, sure. So we both took a shot at the toilet bowl cleaner.

• 7:29Guy Raz?

  OK.

• 7:29Speaker 01

  And then I immediately text Adam. Finally, he got back to me. I was like, hey, just drank the toilet bowl cleaner. I'm going to be OK, right?

• 7:45Guy Raz?

  From NPR, it's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 7:56Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and on today's show, how two friends in their mid-20s mixed up some household ingredients to make soap and detergent, and then took on and eventually outmaneuvered some of the biggest companies in the world.

• 8:11Guy Raz?

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• 8:56Guy Raz?

  users processing a combined $1.9 trillion last year. So if you're already thinking about what's next for your business, see what's possible at stripe.com.

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• 10:42Guy Raz?

  If you were looking to start a business in the late 1990s, you probably didn't have to spend a lot of time convincing friends and family that it was a good time to go into tech. This was the height of the dot-com bubble, and it seemed like the future was literally being written by companies like Google and Yahoo and eBay and Amazon. So it can be kind of hard to imagine why 220-somethings, who lived in San Francisco in the 1990s, would survey this promising landscape and say, "You know what the world really needs right now? Soap. Soap that will do a good job cleaning your kitchen counter

• 11:24Guy Raz?

  or your toilet, but that won't destroy the planet in the process." And that is exactly what Adam Lowry and Eric Ryan set out to sell in 2000, the very year the dot-com bubble burst. And the company they founded, Method, with its sleek bottles and products smelling like cucumber or bamboo, it actually went on to compete with some of the biggest soap companies in the world. But before they went into business together, Adam and Eric were actually childhood friends. They met when they were kids, maybe 12 or 13 years old, because they were both super into sailing. And both of their families worked in the auto industry, which Adam says was pretty much what everyone did

• 12:09Guy Raz?

  where they grew up in Gross Point, Michigan.

• 12:12Speaker 05

  Almost everyone that I can remember, their families were involved. And I think, Eric, your family--

• 12:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, so my great-grandfather dropped out of pharmacy school and moved to Detroit to work for Henry for $5 a day. And then ultimately--

• 12:26Guy Raz?

  Henry--

• 12:27Speaker 01

  Henry Ford.

• 12:27Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  I have some Ford stock that was bought when Henry was still running the company by my great-grandfather. Then my great-grandfather and grandfather together started a machine in stamping. If you ever see like eight mile, those giant presses that come down. So they would make a lot of the parts that went on the automobiles. And so I kind of grew up in the shadows of my great-grandfather and grandfather being these entrepreneurs who created something from nothing.

• 12:55Guy Raz?

  Adam and Eric both went off to college. This was in the early 90s. Adam went to the West Coast. He studied chemical engineering at Stanford. And Eric went to the East Coast and studied business at the University of Rhode Island. Both of them were actually recruited by the university's sailing teams. They were serious sailors. And to be clear, in college, Adam and Eric didn't really keep in touch. They were the kind of friends who were happy to hang out and catch up, just whenever they were back in Michigan. So after graduating, Adam stayed in the Bay Area to work for the Carnegie Institute of Science. He was doing research on climate change. And Eric got a job in advertising. And eventually, he made his way out to San Francisco as well.

• 13:37Guy Raz?

  And shortly after that, they both just happened to run into each other on a flight.

• 13:43Speaker 05

  I think it was Thanksgiving, if I'm not mistaken, one year, maybe '97, '98. I walk onto the plane, I see Eric. And I didn't know that he was living in San Francisco. He'd only moved there a couple of weeks ago. A couple of weeks prior.

• 13:56Guy Raz?

  Early.

• 13:57Speaker 05

  And so there was an open seat. I ended up sitting next to him on the plane. We, for five hours, got all caught up. It turned out we were living on the exact same block, just out of pure coincidence. And I was living in a flat with four other guys from Stanford. And Eric was living by himself in a one-bedroom. And so when one of those guys rotated out, we invited Eric to move into the apartment, and then we were roommates.

• 14:23Guy Raz?

  This is when you could actually live in San Francisco for a reasonably low amount of rent.

• 14:29Speaker 05

  I paid $600 a month in rent.

• 14:31Guy Raz?

  Oh, my god. This is 1997, '98. Amazing. So you move into this group house, doing what you do in your early 20s or whatever. And the house was just like a six guys in a presumably not super clean.

• 14:44Speaker 05

  It was exactly as clean as you would expect it to be.

• 14:47Guy Raz?

  Got it. All right. And I mean, did either of you, at that time, in your minds, were either of you thinking business? Or were you just kind of grinding away, doing your day-to-day jobs?

• 15:00Speaker 01

  I mean, for me personally, I knew since the third grade I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I was the annoying neighborhood kid who was constantly selling buttons or anything else I could. So I just, I always knew I wanted to start a company and I loved, I fell in love with advertising and branding, but I knew it's pretty uncommon as an entrepreneur, your first company will be successful. So I kind of wanted to build a little bit of a safety net of a career, but I was constantly noodling on ideas. For me personally, just coming up with the right one that I would eventually take a leap for.

• 15:30Guy Raz?

  Adam?

• 15:31Speaker 05

  For me, you know, the journey to entrepreneurship was less predestined. My parents are both entrepreneurs. They started their business in 1981.

• 15:40Guy Raz?

  What's their business?

• 15:42Speaker 05

  It's an automotive sales rep business, representing part suppliers in the automotive industry. But when I was six, seven years old, mom's making chili for the week for myself and my older brother and my older sister, and I watched them build the business and do it in a way that was much higher risk than the risk that Eric and I eventually

• 16:04Guy Raz?

  Because you were so young.

• 16:05Speaker 05

  We were young. We didn't have families. We didn't have mortgages and any of that. So while Eric kind of always knew, I'm going entrepreneur as soon as I can. For me, I'm motivated by creating some sort of good change in the world. And I'm a big believer in that you don't need to figure out what you need to do with your life. You just need to figure out what you want to do next.

• 16:28Guy Raz?

  So what were you noticing in 1999 that eventually would lead to cleaning products? What was going on around you?

• 16:39Speaker 01

  I was working on a project for Colgate, so I was spending a lot of time in the grocery store. And I just started looking at the cleaning aisle and saw that it was such a big category, but a sea of sameness. Like, everything looked and smelled the same. The brands were pretty dated. And so that was kind of the clue of, dig here.

• 16:58Guy Raz?

  But, I mean, you're 25. Now, I get, you're working on an ad campaign for Colgate, so that makes sense. You start to get some exposure to that industry. But like, it could have been anything. I mean, it could have been chewing gum. Like, you could have, what was it that, that made you think, wait a minute, cleaning supplies?

• 17:16Speaker 01

  Well, we're really, like, I think with any idea, you start off from this absolute place of insecurity. Like, when I mentioned this to my mom, she's like, I've never seen you make your bed. Are you sure you're the right person to start a cleaning products business? So I hid the products underneath my bed because I didn't, it was pretty dorky. I didn't want anybody to know I was even thinking about this category. And Adam and I were both back in Michigan and we were driving up north early morning to go skiing and being close friends, I felt like Adam was somebody I could share an idea with.

• 17:49Guy Raz?

  This is the winter of 99 presumably, if you're going skiing.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:52Guy Raz?

  I didn't even know there was skiing in Michigan, but keep going.

• 17:54Speaker 05

  It is technically skiing.

• 17:57Guy Raz?

  Okay. Yes.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  And I mentioned that, hey, I think there may be an opportunity in this space. And I remember Adam looks over at me as he's driving and goes, you know, I have a degree in chemical engineering. It's like, that would be useful.

• 18:13Speaker 05

  And then we just, it was sort of one thing leading to another that, and I said, well, you know, not only are these products really ugly, but did you know they're super toxic as well, right?

• 18:24Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 18:24Speaker 05

  And that was kind of where one idea gets added to another and it kind of goes from there.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  But the one point I remember is we got there to go skiing and we went up the first chairlift and we did a couple of runs and we realized we were more excited to go work on this idea than we were to keep skiing.

• 18:43Guy Raz?

  So paint the picture for like cleaning supplies and products in 99. Like if I'm going into Safeway in 1999, I'm going to get 409, I'm going to get, you know...

• 18:53Speaker 05

  Mr. Clean.

• 18:54Guy Raz?

  Mr. Clean, right?

• 18:56Speaker 01

  Really strong sense. There was kind of like, you know, if your eyes weren't watering, it means it wasn't clean. You know, it was a pretty toxic category. And to Adam's point, that was the thing that he brought that really opened my eyes. It's like, you mean like you actually pollute when you clean and you use poison to make your home healthier?

• 19:14Guy Raz?

  And at this point, Adam, and this is like the winter of 1999, were you still working at the Carnegie Institute?

• 19:21Speaker 05

  I stepped down from Carnegie.

• 19:22Guy Raz?

  You just quit?

• 19:23Speaker 05

  I did. There is an important detail here. I quit my job in September and in October was the Olympic trials for the 2000 Olympics.

• 19:34Guy Raz?

  And you wanted to go?

• 19:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, and I had been training with the US sailing team. I was on the US sailing team for seven years. We did not win the Olympic trials. We got third in the Olympic trials. And so that period of time, for a couple of months there, I'd just finished the Olympic trials. I was doing a bunch of interviews with product design firms and

• 19:56Guy Raz?

  Looking for a job.

• 19:57Speaker 05

  Engineering firms, yeah, in the Bay Area.

• 20:00Guy Raz?

  So, right then and there, at that moment, you both, I mean, it was almost a perfect storm for you, Adam, because you were kind of in this transition phase. Eric, you were still working at the ad agency, which actually was giving you this incredible experience. It was like sort of opening your eyes to this entire world that you hadn't been exposed to, right?

• 20:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, really understanding consumers. And this was really kind of driven by, so you go back to 1999, IKEA was just arriving in America. Home and garden television was just taking off. So it was a time where people were starting to think more about their homes as a reflection of themselves. And so the thought was, well, what if we designed these products so they were like pieces of decor? And hey, if a spray cleaner was beautiful enough to leave on the counter versus hidden underneath the sink, out of sight, out of mind, you might actually use it more. And I love the phrase, like, there's no such thing as low-interest categories, just low-interest brands. So our thought was, how do we take boring cleaning and not make it boring?

• 21:02Guy Raz?

  So what happened after that Christmas trip to Michigan? You come back to San Francisco and you do what?

• 21:09Speaker 05

  So, you know, I was in the middle of a job search. And I said, hey, you know, I'm going to look for some jobs, but I'm going to start doing some research and trying to figure out these categories and do some of the digging that Eric had a full-time job at his ad firm and didn't have a ton of time to do. And I said, I'll start to do this. And so I actually, at one point, had a desk in Eric's bedroom where I would work on some of this stuff while I was kind of continuing my job search. And we were writing the business plan together. I was doing a lot of that research and then at night we kind of put the pieces together.

• 21:43Guy Raz?

  So you already decided, let's make a go at this.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  Well, it was really, I think, you know, the hardest thing with starting a company is we are really insecure about this idea.

• 21:53Guy Raz?

  Well, you're 25. I mean, sure.

• 21:55Speaker 01

  Twenty, 25, and we're going to take on not only some of the largest multinationals, but the world's first multinationals in the form of Procter and Unilever, who have 150-year head start and have really, you know, owned distribution.

• 22:09Guy Raz?

  But was that your vision in 1999, or did you just think, let's just make this and see who buys it?

• 22:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, we, I mean, we said from the beginning, like, go big or go home.

• 22:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, go big.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  We want to disrupt an industry, but our, we, we didn't feel very secure getting there. So one of the first things we did was we created what we called the concept book. And so we brought to life the idea, gave it to the 20 smartest people we knew, and asked them, shoot holes in this.

• 22:33Guy Raz?

  And these were what, professors, friends, family?

• 22:36Speaker 01

  Oh, God, everything from, you know, people who, actually, we found some former Clorox employees, lawyers, people from a finance background, advertising, just like, tell us why it's going to fail. And nobody could come back with a reason other than, if it's so good, why has nobody done this before?

• 22:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, or they'd say, the reason it's going to fail is because they're big and you're small, which we didn't, that's not a reason.

• 23:01Guy Raz?

  So let me understand this. This is still the before the dot com crash, okay? This is the dot com-

• 23:07Speaker 05

  It's almost right on top of it. That was in April. I remember it well.

• 23:10Guy Raz?

  But this is a time when most people your age at that time were moving to this area to get involved in a tech company. Did anybody say, um, soap?

• 23:20Speaker 01

  What are you doing?

• 23:21Guy Raz?

  Like, why aren't you going into tech?

• 23:24Speaker 05

  Everybody said that.

• 23:25Guy Raz?

  Right?

• 23:26Speaker 01

  We had friends who were raising $40 million on 40-page business plans and bragging about a million dollar per page for a raise, or doing these lavish lunch parties, which seems so ridiculous now to spend funds on a lunch party. But yeah, this was San Francisco at the turn of the century, and money was being thrown around in tech. And here we were, showing up, pitching soap, an idea that was hot 120 years ago.

• 23:48Guy Raz?

  So when do you actually mix stuff together and get it, get like a, was it hand soap? Was it dish soap? Was it cleaner? What, what was the first thing that you decided to work on?

• 23:59Speaker 05

  So, yes, right around that time, sort of mid 2000, it was mostly me mixing those things out of-

• 24:04Guy Raz?

  Like, what were you mixing?

• 24:05Speaker 05

  Well, you can make cleaning products out of very standard things that you can buy in the grocery store.

• 24:12Guy Raz?

  Like water.

• 24:13Speaker 05

  Things like, yeah, of course, water, vinegar, baking soda. These are relatively simple chemicals that don't require a professional lab in order to mix them together.

• 24:25Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 24:26Speaker 05

  And...

• 24:26Speaker 01

  The best part was I came home one day and Adam was mixing things in beer pitchers, which I'm like, we're gonna kill one of our roommates here. Luckily, this stuff's non-toxic.

• 24:34Guy Raz?

  What do you remember mixing?

• 24:37Speaker 05

  Well, I think there's different soaps and different detergents. You know, you can make soap from basically a base and an oil, so a vegetable oil and a base, you bring those together to make a soap. For solvency, you can use things like vinegar or some of the acids that are present in things like orange juice, very common, everyday, mild chemicals that you formulate in different ways to achieve a certain cleaning function. And you mentioned, you know, dish soaps, hard surface cleaners, that kind of thing.

• 25:11Guy Raz?

  And were you, like, I'm trying to imagine, were you like in your room or in the kitchen of this group house, like...

• 25:18Speaker 05

  In the kitchen.

• 25:19Guy Raz?

  With a bucket, like, pouring in?

• 25:20Speaker 05

  Imagine sort of 16-ounce jars, maybe of plastic or glass containers of orange oils and baking soda, and then I would just experiment. I would try different formulations, and I would make experiments the way that a scientist does, so that you, you know, you kind of have a control and then an experiment, and you, you know, it's just an iterative process to getting to something that worked really well.

• 25:45Guy Raz?

  So, Eric, while Adam was sort of looking into the category and looking at potential ingredients and stuff, what were you doing?

• 25:54Speaker 01

  So, our plan was to create our first four products, which were the surface cleaners, and get them in the local stores. So, Adam was working on basically doing everything in the bottle, and I was doing everything kind of around the bottle. And the joke was style and substance. And so what I started doing was, we didn't have a lot of, you know, money to do custom tooling, and so I started looking for stock bottles, couldn't find anything I really liked. So, I had this camping water bottle from Norway that I had found, just a really simple kind of bullet design with these nice elegant shoulders. It had, it was very utilitarian, but at the same time... Would look almost like a vase sitting in someone's home.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  So we used that as the basis for the first bottle.

• 26:40Guy Raz?

  And how were you paying for the cleaning, you know, the oils and all this stuff? I guess it wasn't that expensive, right?

• 26:46Speaker 05

  No, it wasn't very expensive, but out of pocket. We paid, we ran the business out of pocket for about two years.

• 26:52Guy Raz?

  How much money did you have at the beginning? To, how much money did each of you put in?

• 26:57Speaker 05

  We each put in $45,000.

• 27:00Guy Raz?

  And that was all the money each of you had?

• 27:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, my grandfather had passed away and left me with that money. And so we put it right into method.

• 27:08Guy Raz?

  And you split it 50/50 at the beginning?

• 27:10Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 27:11Guy Raz?

  Put it down on paper and you called it method?

• 27:13Speaker 01

  At that time, yeah, we had-

• 27:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think we had the name by then.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  We wanted a name that represented a technique, a new approach to doing things. And Adam and I were both brushing our teeth at the same time. Sounds very weird.

• 27:24Guy Raz?

  Well, you lived in the group house. I mean, you probably had one or two bathrooms, right?

• 27:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, basically one.

• 27:30Speaker 01

  Adam looks over and goes, "How about method?" I'm like, "That's it!"

• 27:33Guy Raz?

  How did you come up with that name?

• 27:35Speaker 05

  I don't know, I just thought of it.

• 27:38Guy Raz?

  You mentioned you had these bottles that you really liked. Were you just buying these off the shelf somewhere?

• 27:44Speaker 01

  No, we, we did, I mean, design was so important. A big chunk of the dollars we had went into tooling. We just couldn't afford the actual design, but tooling-

• 27:53Guy Raz?

  And you designed the bottle?

• 27:54Speaker 01

  No, we basically took inspiration from this bottle I found in Europe.

• 27:59Speaker 05

  And then had a supplier kind of do the engineering of it?

• 28:02Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 28:03Speaker 05

  And then build the bottle molds, which ate up most of the investment-

• 28:07Guy Raz?

  Most of that $90,000 bucks.

• 28:08Speaker 05

  Yep. And then we had the bottles and we were making product at home with like funnels and paper towels, right?

• 28:15Guy Raz?

  You were filling the bottles yourselves? You were bringing them to your apartment with a funnel and just pouring it in and closing it up?

• 28:21Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 28:21Guy Raz?

  Okay.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  And we wanted, we wanted to feel very different than everything else out there. But also to really show it was, you know, safe to be around. You think about when most people were cleaning, they would put on that, you know, that old team building exercise sweatshirt from 1998 and the rubber gloves because you don't want the stuff touching your skin. So our first labels were very different. They actually showed people on the front of it. And of course, we didn't have any money. So we would go to Home Depot and buy a sink and photograph Adam holding the sink. Properly return the sink to get our money back.

• 28:54Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 28:56Speaker 05

  If you fast forward to late February of 2001, by now Eric and I have product prototypes. And we were taking these prototypes around, walking into grocery stores unannounced, and cornering the store manager and trying to get him to buy our product. And so we got a grocery store at the end of February to say, yeah.

• 29:16Guy Raz?

  2001.

• 29:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was actually February 28, 2001. So we had bothered this store manager enough that he said, fine, guys, I'm going to give you space, but you have to get the product here today. This was in Burlingame, in sort of the mid peninsula of San Francisco Bay Area.

• 29:33Guy Raz?

  What's the store called?

• 29:34Speaker 05

  Molly Stones.

• 29:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, so essentially what we needed to do is get a proof of concept. So we decided the first step was to try to get into all the independent grocery stores in the Bay Area. These are the places where that manager can make the buying decision. So you've got to show up at 6 a.m. This guy's always really grumpy. And I think essentially, they just agree to take your product because they know you're going to keep coming back until they say yes.

• 29:56Guy Raz?

  But were you going to the store in Burlingame? And you went there multiple times?

• 30:00Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:00Guy Raz?

  And the first time you went there, the manager was like, I'm not interested?

• 30:03Speaker 05

  I mean, imagine doing this at 6 o'clock in the morning with a store manager. They are not interested. First of all, store managers don't take sales calls, right? So that was just, that's not how you get a product in grocery stores.

• 30:14Guy Raz?

  No.

• 30:14Speaker 05

  But it was the only way we knew how. So they weren't used to seeing that. And so there was a lot of...

• 30:21Guy Raz?

  Explain, you drove up to the store in Burlingame and you...

• 30:25Speaker 06

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• 31:13Guy Raz?

  And just one more thing, the How I Built This book is now available. It's a great read and a great gift for anyone looking for ideas, inspiration, wisdom, and encouragement to have the courage to put out an idea into the world. It's filled with a ton of stories you haven't heard and how some of the greatest entrepreneurs you know and respect started out at the very bottom. Check out How I Built This, the book, available wherever you buy your books. And please, if you support what I do on this show, you can show that support by picking up How I Built This, the book. And thanks.

• 31:58Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This from NPR. So it's 2001, and Adam and Eric get the first Method cleaning products into a grocery store in the Bay Area. And pretty quickly, they realized that they couldn't just make all this stuff in the kitchen of their San Francisco group house. So they start to think about building a supply chain to make more of the product. But meanwhile, day in, day out, they're showing up at different stores trying to convince customers to try out Method Soap.

• 32:29Speaker 01

  Well, we didn't have marketing dollars, so what we would do, we would offer demos. So we did that. And of course, we didn't have anybody do a demo, so that would be me.

• 32:37Guy Raz?

  You would go there, what, into the grocery store and like?

• 32:40Speaker 01

  You set up a table, and I was wearing a lab coat, which is comical to look back years later. And it's kind of funny, I look at these photos, and I was standing in the wine aisle. And I think I just realized that people shopping for wine were way more interesting to talk to than people shopping for cleaning products. But we were really big believers that the packaging would have to be the primary marketing vehicle. And you would see it on shelf because of the design. You would buy it because of the unique fragrances. You'd get home, find out it works, turn the bottle over and realize it's good for you and good for the planet, and that would start to create a following. And if you talked to most Americans at that time, they would say, "Green doesn't clean." The only way we were going to make this work is we had to get the mainstream into a green product.

• 33:24Speaker 01

  And we thought a lot of it as, "It's a Trojan horse for good." We had to put our green credentials on the back of the bottle and almost kind of hide them.

• 33:32Guy Raz?

  So after you got into Molly Stone's, what was the next step? How did you get into the next store? Same process? Talk to the manager?

• 33:40Speaker 05

  The first step was that, I believe there were 10 Molly Stone's at that time. There's, I think, more than that now. Then there were other similar chains of premium, high-end, more gourmet-focused grocery stores that we went to in the Bay Area.

• 33:54Speaker 01

  But what we did, we built up these 30 stores, and we called it our paper route. So every morning, we would take turns driving to each store, counting how many you sold, replenishing it, writing up an invoice. And it was a way for us to really understand the grocery business. And I think the big moment of truth came through when, you know, we didn't have a customer service number, so my cellphone was on the back of every bottle. And I remember getting this first call from this person who just wanted a call to say how much they loved our cucumber bathroom cleaner. And of course, I thought it was a friend just playing a joke on us. But these calls started coming, and we realized, like, we really struck a bit of an emotional chord in a category that traditionally is so low interest and so boring.

• 34:38Guy Raz?

  And it's just 24/7? You guys were just working all the time on this?

• 34:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, the challenge is, you know, with any startup, but particularly in this space, momentum is your friend. And then to raise capital, you need to show momentum. So yeah, you always felt this race against the clock to grow as fast as possible.

• 34:55Guy Raz?

  And I guess, pretty soon into this thing, in 2001, it becomes clear that you've got to raise money. You've got to get-- because 90,000 bucks is only going to take you so far. So how did you-- what was the next step? How did you get the money?

• 35:11Speaker 01

  Friends and family.

• 35:11Speaker 05

  Oh, wow, that was a saga. That was a saga. I mean, we're constantly running out of cash. And so we were getting 5 grand, 10 grand here from every friend, family, person that would give us money, and did that for about, almost two years, to run the business. And all told, it was maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars that we got that way before we were able to raise our first professional money.

• 35:37Speaker 01

  There are people who believe in you more than they necessarily believe in your idea. And I also found it so motivating, because it's one thing, like, for Adam and I to, you know, lose our own money or fail. But when you're taking money from people you really care about, our roommates, grandma, my siblings, parents, you don't want to let them down. And I always encourage entrepreneurs to take money from family because I think it's the best motivation to ensure that no matter how hard things get, you're going to find a path forward.

• 36:08Guy Raz?

  Yeah. So you are funding this any way you can. At what point are you able to, or what point do you decide, hey, we got to go to like real money people, big money people, and get an infusion of real investment?

• 36:24Speaker 05

  Well, we decided that really early on, but it took a long time to get it done. So it was probably, I mean, even by mid 2000, we knew we were going to need to get capital to run the business, but it took another year at least before we were able to get a professional investor to sign on the bottom line.

• 36:42Guy Raz?

  How much did you raise in that round?

• 36:44Speaker 05

  The first round was a million dollars.

• 36:45Guy Raz?

  And it was from one investor, this one firm?

• 36:48Speaker 01

  It's one investor, and we were scheduled to sign the term sheet on what turned out to be September 11th.

• 36:54Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  And so in the months that followed, we were stalled because, of course, nobody was doing deals with the uncertainty in the world, particularly in a premium-priced cleaning product. And I remember we finally closed in November, and you always have a closing dinner when you raise capital. And we went around the room to pay the bill afterwards. Between Adam and I, none of our credit cards worked. Luckily, we knew the person who owned the restaurant, and we asked them if we could pay them next week after we closed.

• 37:25Speaker 05

  Because we had run out of money. And so all of the business, you know, we had inventory and orders and stuff like that, and all of that was on credit cards.

• 37:34Guy Raz?

  You were just maxing them out.

• 37:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, just maxing them out on the faith that we would ultimately get this investment. That was a scary time for both of us.

• 37:43Guy Raz?

  By the way, what was your pitch to these investors? Like, what did you think convinced them to give you their money?

• 37:49Speaker 01

  I mean, a big part of our pitch was showing what we had proven locally and regionally, and the argument that we were going to go get Target next. In that we needed capital to be able to close Target and start to scale nationally.

• 38:04Guy Raz?

  But how did you even, how could you even say that? Were you talking to Target before you had any money to make this product?

• 38:10Speaker 01

  No, not at all, because we wanted to be able to get the capital. But what we started doing is we're working with Karim Rashid, who is a very famous industrial designer. And we wanted to create a line of products, working with Karim, that would make a real statement in the marketplace.

• 38:26Guy Raz?

  Just to postulate, Karim Rashid is like a huge industrial designer. Like, he's made products for, he's designed Pepsi bottles and iconic furniture and like perfume bottles. Like, you guys are in your mid twenties. Like, how did you connect with this guy? And why would he even answer your call?

• 38:45Speaker 01

  We were huge believers in the power of design and great industrial design. So we put a list together of the top industrial designers. And Karim was at the top of that list.

• 38:53Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 38:54Speaker 01

  So I figured we'd just work down the list until we finally got somebody to agree to work with us. And I shot Karim an email.

• 39:01Guy Raz?

  You just went to like Google and typed in his name and found his?

• 39:04Speaker 01

  With the studio, shot an email cold to him.

• 39:06Guy Raz?

  Okay.

• 39:07Speaker 01

  And said, you know, here's our pitch. We want to work with you to redesign the dish soap, an object that sits across every sink in the landscape of America. Will you work with us? And he wrote back within 20 minutes and said, yes.

• 39:24Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 39:24Speaker 01

  I do remember, I think when he first met us for the briefing, he said to Josh Handy, who we worked with at the time, he's like, uh, maybe try to get some of the payment upfront.

• 39:33Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I mean, I mean, how did you, how are you even going to afford to pay him?

• 39:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, we were able to convince him to do it for a lower fee because he really believed in the project, but also with equity. And he gave, you know, got him to have skin in the game with us.

• 39:49Guy Raz?

  So he agreed?

• 39:49Speaker 01

  So you agreed to do it, which was absolutely amazing. And they, at the time, Target was working with Philippe Stark, and we knew they had an interest in working with Karam. And so what we did was, working with Karam, we were able to use kind of Karam as the carrot to get a meeting with Target Marketing, who then invited the buying team. We did a big dog and pony show with Karam, kind of spent pretty much our last dollars.

• 40:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, we kind of went all in on this, yeah.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  And ultimately, none of this company would have ever went on to exist if it weren't for the risk we took on our dish soap. And Adam pulled miracles to get the first prototype of the dish soap. It arrived moments before the presentation.

• 40:34Guy Raz?

  The actual soap?

• 40:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 40:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, soap in the bottle.

• 40:38Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 40:38Speaker 05

  And what was unique about this product that Karam had designed is that it was upside down. So the dish soap came out of the bottom. It was on this inside that everybody, you know, you always turn it over. It's a weird experience. So kind of shot out of the bottom, this beautiful sort of sculptural shape. Now, this is an important detail. I was not actually at the meeting because, as Eric mentioned, to the, literally, the very last moment, we were putting together the product. I was in the factory doing that 24/7 for weeks in preparation for this meeting. So I was like sleeping on the factory floor and doing that whole thing. And then I FedExed this thing first overnight to Eric for the pitch.

• 41:19Guy Raz?

  This is like a make or break meeting.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  Oh, it was. I mean, I was starting to work on my business school applications just as backup because of like...

• 41:27Guy Raz?

  Oh, really?

• 41:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, you knew that if we could not get a national retailer behind it, the economics weren't going to make sense. I mean, we're competing against people who, you know, they own their own plants. They've had 150 years to figure out efficiency. And we were charging initially like $5 a bottle to keep bringing the price down to make it more competitive.

• 41:46Guy Raz?

  So you were losing money on every bottle you were selling?

• 41:48Speaker 05

  Oh, sure, yeah.

• 41:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:49Speaker 05

  Early on.

• 41:50Speaker 01

  So we needed scale, and we needed it fast.

• 41:53Guy Raz?

  So what happened at that meeting?

• 41:56Speaker 01

  They said, "We'll do a test." Marketing stood up at the end and said, "This is right for our guests. It's designed forward, on trend." And so Target gave us a 90-store test to basically prove ourself out.

• 42:08Guy Raz?

  To sell dish soap?

• 42:11Speaker 05

  And surface cleaners.

• 42:12Guy Raz?

  And surface cleaners. And do you remember how many units they bought?

• 42:16Speaker 05

  Oh, they bought initially about 25,000.

• 42:22Guy Raz?

  That's a lot of soap.

• 42:25Speaker 01

  Oh, it was.

• 42:26Guy Raz?

  Were you like jumping up and down? Did you call Adam and say, "We made it, we're in Target"?

• 42:32Speaker 01

  Not really, because we knew if we failed that test, we were out of business. It was make or break.

• 42:37Speaker 05

  There was, I mean, to be fair, there was a triumphant like, "Yeah, we've got this test", which was great. But I mean, I remember that moment vividly because my heart sank. Because I had to then make sure that we could get 25,000 units made with perfect quality and all of this.

• 42:55Guy Raz?

  And how long? How many days?

• 42:57Speaker 05

  It was only about eight weeks. And that includes things like long lead times for making bottles and all this type of stuff that it never should have been able to be done in eight weeks. I still, to this day, don't exactly know how we got it done. But there's a theme that always ran through our business that when you hit a roadblock, you get out the paperclip and the chewing gum and the rubber band and you figure out another way around. And making 25,000 units was just another sort of MacGyver moment. If you're going to build a business, any business, it's hard. And you've got to be incredibly resourceful. And for us, that was very real because it was born from all of these times where we

• 43:41Speaker 05

  went the path you were supposed to go and a door got slammed in our face and we had to figure out another way.

• 43:50Guy Raz?

  So mid 2002, you are in 90 Target stores. And you've got to hit a certain target for them to expand out further.

• 44:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 44:01Guy Raz?

  How'd you do that? How did you create awareness around the product?

• 44:04Speaker 05

  Well, we didn't hit that target, as it turns out.

• 44:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. The first thing we did was, there was a set date. And so, we had to make sure we got on shelf as fast as possible. So we started driving store to store, go in. If it's not set up, you go to the back room, you pull it out yourself, you take whatever's on shelf off, and you get your product on shelf, quickly. But, we started, you know, first week, looking at the numbers, we're missing the number. And then we had a problem, which was, the dish soap that we did, which was the first ever inverted dispenser, so it comes out of the bottom.

• 44:36Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I remember that.

• 44:37Speaker 01

  Consumers would go to smell it, because the fragrances were really unique at the time. And they would pull off the bottom, in a way it wasn't supposed to really come off. So it meant, it didn't really go back on. And thinking we were great merchants, we put that on the top shelf. So we would walk into stores, and there's just dish soap raining down our entire display.

• 44:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was horrifying.

• 44:58Speaker 01

  It's hard to sell a product when it's covered in dish soap.

• 45:01Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 45:01Speaker 01

  And it's really hard to clean up dish soap, in the aisle of a store.

• 45:06Guy Raz?

  But how were you, I mean, you had to hit this target, and you didn't. So what happened? Why did Target keep carrying it?

• 45:15Speaker 05

  Ultimately, it was, while we weren't hitting the number of units of sell-through that they gave us for a well-known brand, on promotion and all of that, we were doing reasonably well. And fortunately, a buyer at Target realized that it wasn't just the number of units that we were selling, but the type of people that were buying our products, and the other types of products that they were buying in the store.

• 45:39Guy Raz?

  Who were they?

• 45:40Speaker 05

  You know, they were, they were people that were sort of the millennial equivalents of the day, right? They were young, they were more dynamic, more, slightly more urban, a higher end audience. These are exactly the types of shoppers, Target calls them guests, that they wanted to get in their store. They knew that that was a highly valuable shopper for them.

• 46:02Speaker 01

  I think that's the paradigm we really broke, and I guess we'll take credit for it because we haven't found anybody who did it before us, but eco chic. And traditionally, green products didn't look beautiful, and beautiful products weren't necessarily green. And I think a lot of it is just coming down to our own dumb look of Adam's passion for sustainability, mind for design. That's why Target made so much sense, because we just needed that bigger platform to drive change.

• 46:29Guy Raz?

  So after Target, at that point, did it become easier to get into other big box stores and other retailers?

• 46:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, I wouldn't call it easy, but what I would say is every next retailer, every next financing round gets incrementally easier. And that's really, that's momentum, right? If you build, really, at the end of the day, I believe that business is about starting with a really small, that's a small success, and building into a slightly larger one. And if you do that a couple of times, whether it's going from direct store delivery at Molly's Stones, to some regional grocers, to a test at Target, you only have to do that a number of times, and you can build a pretty big business. It's not easy, but the more you do it, it gets easier to get bigger and bigger wins.

• 47:15Guy Raz?

  It's interesting that you started really with Target, because we've had John Mackey on the show, and we've had other products that really started out at Whole Foods, that were non-toxic, and environmentally friendly, and organic, and so on. I read that, actually, you had a hard time getting into Whole Foods at the beginning. Is that true?

• 47:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, they, I mean, you know, oddly, they didn't like that we were already in a mainstream retailer. And we were just very upfront and said, listen, we think that we've got a product that your shopper is really going to enjoy.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  We just didn't look like a green product. We didn't, we didn't wear the uniform of, of green. We wanted to change that because we, those weren't the people we want. We wanted people to buy our product who would never consider buying a green product.

• 47:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, it, it's, it's important to note here, like, I think it's totally pointless to make a green product for green people, right? There, only about 5% of products in the, in the US market that are sold are green products. And so if all you're doing is preaching to the converted and the 5%, like, what are you doing? We want to create a product that, that appeals to everyone, right? And not just people that are only going to shop on their environmental credentials.

• 48:24Guy Raz?

  I, I read at one point, Eric, that to prove that this really was non-toxic, you actually drank it. Like, you drank, what, what did you, did you, what did you drink? Which one did you drink?

• 48:36Speaker 01

  So I was in London and, you know, I love the British press, they're so skeptical. And I was talking about our products that they're, you know, non-toxic and safe. And she said, is it, you know, safe enough to drink? I was like, sure. And it was a toilet bowl cleaner. And so we both took a shot, the toilet bowl cleaner. And then I immediately text Adam, it was still, you know, he was still sleeping here. Finally he got back to me, I was like, hey, just drank the toilet bowl cleaner. I'm going to be okay, right?

• 49:08Speaker 01

  He writes back, well, it wouldn't have been my first choice. Like, thank you, Captain Obvious.

• 49:12Speaker 05

  We, we've both had to, to drink. I, I ended up on Japanese television a number of times, drinking a lot of meth, so I'm still here.

• 49:19Guy Raz?

  So how quickly, when did you actually become profitable? When, when, when did?

• 49:26Speaker 05

  It was about five years in. I think 2005, we became profitable.

• 49:29Guy Raz?

  So this is after you're in Targets all over the country and it still takes some time before you turn a profit?

• 49:36Speaker 05

  And that's actually relatively fast for a consumer products business to go from nothing to profitable in about five years, pretty quick.

• 49:42Guy Raz?

  How much money did you have to raise before you could stop raising money and just fund the company?

• 49:47Speaker 05

  About 25 million.

• 49:48Guy Raz?

  25 million dollars?

• 49:50Speaker 01

  We, we felt we had to grow fast, both to keep

• 49:55Speaker 01

  Startup competitors away, but also all the legacy brands were starting to copy us.

• 49:59Guy Raz?

  I'm sure, right? Because you guys had this. People were like, I love this product, right?

• 50:05Speaker 05

  They did try to crush us. And there were a number of brands that were launched by large CPG.

• 50:12Guy Raz?

  Like Clorox and...

• 50:14Speaker 05

  All of those guys. But what was interesting is, it was so funny, and Eric predicted this, to his credit. He predicted that they wouldn't be able to get it right. And what they launched invariably was sort of the same old pistol grip bottle with the finger grooves in it that happens to run down their lines already with a different label on it, and then they slap a flower on it with some sort of name. It just was like, come on. And they did throw a lot of money at that stuff. Believe me, it was really scary for us.

• 50:47Guy Raz?

  Did it cut into your business?

• 50:49Speaker 05

  Absolutely. In the short term, it did. But because they weren't authentic products, they weren't interesting products. They were just sort of, you know, people would try them once, and they got promoted, so they'd capture shoppers that way. But then just the product didn't perform.

• 51:08Guy Raz?

  These are like Procter and Gamble, like the big companies?

• 51:10Speaker 05

  All of them did some version of it.

• 51:14Guy Raz?

  So I guess around 2008, you decide to branch out into personal care products. So what was the name of the label?

• 51:22Speaker 05

  Block.

• 51:23Guy Raz?

  You say that in a very matter-of-fact way. This was shower gel and hair shampoo and stuff like that?

• 51:32Speaker 01

  The original idea was actually this really kind of beautiful, organic shape. But it didn't stand up.

• 51:39Guy Raz?

  Shape of bottle?

• 51:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, almost imagined like a seed. We wanted to still keep that kind of object approach, and we ended up with Square. And then, it's like a plane crash. It's not one thing that goes wrong, it's like 10 things that go wrong.

• 51:52Guy Raz?

  So what went wrong?

• 51:53Speaker 01

  That's exactly what we did there. From kind of walking away from our core vision of it to not getting the tooling right. And one of it is, we were always a little bit more conservative of, you know, we believed in fail fast, right? So you get products out there, limited number of retailers, make sure it works, adjust, launch and learn. And everybody loved the design of it. So we went really broad.

• 52:16Guy Raz?

  Everyone said, this is gonna, everyone's gonna have this in their bathtub, in their shower.

• 52:20Speaker 01

  Costco loved it, grocery, everybody got behind it. And it essentially was nailed to the shelf and did not move. And it's expensive to launch a new product. It's really expensive to discontinue. Because when you see something on shelf that's being discounted for the store to get rid of it, the manufacturer is funding it.

• 52:40Guy Raz?

  Oh, man. Were you, so you just got rid of all this stuff? Like, what, what happened to the excess stuff? Inventory?

• 52:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, we ended up actually just recycling a whole bunch of bottles that never got sold.

• 52:54Guy Raz?

  Do you still have it in your garage? Like, do you still use it?

• 52:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, I still have some.

• 52:57Speaker 01

  It's a great product. We did hear some of it was sold to prisons.

• 53:00Guy Raz?

  Wow. So how big of a hit did you guys take on that, did Method take?

• 53:05Speaker 05

  You know, I don't remember exactly in dollar terms, but it was, you know, it was in the low millions of, you know, an investment that basically an amount of money we lit on fire. But the bigger thing, though, is just product failure is a reputational risk. And it's something that you need to recover from. The customers, meaning for us, a customer was a retailer. Yeah, they were, they were not excited about that. And, you know, it's something that you have to dig yourself out of.

• 53:32Guy Raz?

  So I'm curious, because at this point, you've, you've had, obviously had lots of success with, with Method cleaning products, right? The company's profitable. And then you had this failure with Block, right?

• 53:43Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 53:43Guy Raz?

  And I mean, was there, was there any tension between the, the two of you around that? Like, how was your relationship going?

• 53:50Speaker 01

  It was like a marriage.

• 53:51Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah, it is like a marriage. I mean, I think Eric and I are super good friends. You know, we obviously know each other incredibly well because we've been in the trenches together. There was a time for a couple of years where we were at each other's throats.

• 54:06Guy Raz?

  Why?

• 54:07Speaker 05

  You know, Eric and I approach problems from very different angles. And that is a huge asset. But it also can be a huge rub. When, you know, I see a problem from this direction and you see the problem from another direction and you can butt heads about that. And, you know, that, what it requires is it requires a lot of open-mindedness. It requires a lot of self-awareness. It requires a lot of listening. These are all skills that I'd say that we've learned.

• 54:40Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 54:41Speaker 05

  But early on, you know, I don't know a lot of 25-year-olds that have that level of sort of experience and maturity to have those skills.

• 54:50Guy Raz?

  Well, I mean, many, many partnerships break down. It's unusual for partners to create a company, to scale it, and then to stay friends after, you know, and good friends. I mean, how did you guys get through that, those tense times?

• 55:05Speaker 01

  Well, I think we just, over time, you know, we knew how to be friends, but we didn't know how to be colleagues and partners together. And we started to learn each other's different styles professionally. My instincts is to just engage and run at it. Adam needs a little bit more space to kind of think it through.

• 55:22Speaker 05

  He's an extrovert, I'm an introvert.

• 55:24Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 55:25Speaker 01

  And we really learned each other's working styles and we were able to find a better rhythm together. And at the end of the day, that was the glue.

• 55:33Speaker 05

  I mean, it was a very, very conscious effort to say like, screech on the record, like, we've got to work on this, right? Or this is going to end badly. I mean, at the end of the day, it was mostly about us doing it individually and working with one another to figure out, you know, when Eric says X, Y, Z, and I feel like it means this, actually, that's not what he means. He means something else and I can separate the two.

• 56:00Guy Raz?

  You guys sold this company, Method, to Ecover in 2013. Why did you decide to do that? You built this from the ground up. Was it a point where you kind of had to do this? Had to sell it?

• 56:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, we were approached by a private family out of the UK. And they had owned the Ecover brand, which was really the pioneers from the 70s of green cleaning. And so the pitch to us was it was an opportunity to really allow all of our investors who'd been in for a long time to see a nice return.

• 56:32Speaker 05

  We're big believers that you build businesses sort of for posterity, to endure. And businesses change ownership. And so the question isn't, will it? It's if it does, will the business be better afterwards? And in this case of selling the business to Ecover, actually, the greatest example of that is we were able to build what's probably the most sustainable manufacturing facility in the whole world in the inner city of Chicago immediately after we sold the business. So there was an example of like deepening and enhancing the mission and building something that helped us grow the business much better, rather than what other people fear would happen.

• 57:12Guy Raz?

  So you, both of you moved on around 2015?

• 57:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're still involved with the company at a light touch.

• 57:20Guy Raz?

  But you have no ownership at all anymore of our method?

• 57:23Speaker 05

  That's correct.

• 57:24Guy Raz?

  So I ask this question to pretty much everyone who comes on the show, just to start with you, Adam. How much of the success of Method, do you think, has to do with your intelligence and your skill? And how much with luck?

• 57:39Speaker 05

  Well, I think there's other factors, other than just those two. I think that it certainly isn't all because of me. I'd like to think that I contributed an amount to a group of people working together to create something really awesome. I think perseverance was a huge, huge key to the quote unquote luck that Method had. And yeah, was there 20% luck in there? Absolutely.

• 58:04Guy Raz?

  Eric, what do you think?

• 58:06Speaker 01

  I always say an entrepreneur can never have an ego, because luck is always a factor. And I agree with that. With enough persistence, luck always shows up. Yeah, I mean, we made so many stupid mistakes and kind of had near-death moments that luckily the ball just bounced the right way to keep us alive.

• 58:25Guy Raz?

  Is it strange to go into a Target or a Whole Foods and see this bottle you designed, this soap you designed, this thing that you were making in a San Francisco group house, call it whatever you want, and it's not yours anymore?

• 58:42Speaker 01

  It's still ours. But emotional attachment, and every time I see you walk into a random restaurant bathroom, and there's our teardrop hand wash sitting there, and you see it, and you can think of the stories and the creation of it.

• 58:56Speaker 05

  It's so much a part of our identity. Like, whether or not we own a couple of shares or not has nothing to do with it. It's still ours.

• 59:06Guy Raz?

  That's Adam Lowry and Eric Ryan, the two co-founders of Method. By the way, since selling the company, each of them has launched their own new ventures. Adam founded a company called Ripple Foods, which makes plant milk and other dairy-free products from vegetable proteins. And Eric has launched two companies, Ollie, which sells nutritional supplements, and Wellie, which sells first aid kits. And in an interview last year, Eric said the idea behind Wellie is simple: An injury is actually the trophy of a well-lived life.

• 59:43Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. You can write to us at [email protected]. If you want to follow us on Twitter, it's at HowIBuiltThis or at Guy Raz. And on Instagram, it's at Guy.Raz. This episode was produced by Casey Herman with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. Thanks also to Candace Lim, Derek Gales, J.C. Howard, Julia Carney, Neva Grant, and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is Vera Safari. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.

• 1:00:20Guy Raz?

  This is NPR.