Method's Adam Lowry And Eric Ryan At The HIBT Summit

This episode from the How I Built This Summit features Adam Lowry and Eric Ryan, co-founders of Method cleaning products. Adam and Eric joined Guy Raz live on stage at the Summit in San Francisco, to talk the highs and lows of their business partnership. Every Thursday until mid-December, we'll be releasing more episodes from the Summit – so keep checking your podcast feed. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Guy Raz?

  Hey, it's Guy here. And today, we're going to bring you our second bonus episode from the How I Built This Summit that was held in San Francisco in October. And this episode is from my live interview with Eric Ryan and Adam Lowry. They're the co-founders of Method. And if you haven't heard that episode we did on Method on the podcast, you should definitely go back and give it a listen. It's the story of two guys in their mid-20s who took on Unilever and Procter & Gamble by starting a company that makes green cleaning products. Now, Adam and Eric spent 15 years building Method together before they each moved on to found new companies. So when I sat down with them at the summit, I really wanted to dig into just how they

• 0:46Guy Raz?

  made their partnership work so successfully, how they managed their relationship as co-founders, and through it all, how they managed to stay friends.

• 0:57Guy Raz?

  Thank you for coming.

• 0:58Speaker 01

  Thanks for having us.

• 1:00Guy Raz?

  I imagine a lot of people in this room, maybe even in the bathrooms of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, they will find that iconic bottle of Method hand soap. Can you tell me how you got the idea? Can you tell us how the idea came to you guys?

• 1:17Speaker 02

  Go for it.

• 1:18Speaker 01

  So Adam and I started this company at Pine and Goff here in San Francisco, what's now referred to as Lower Pacific Heights, in arguably the dirtiest flat in San Francisco. So this is not the Martha Stewart story by any means. And it took a different approach, which is not necessarily trying to find a problem to solve or a frustration, because we are not known for our cleaning.

• 1:44Speaker 02

  Especially Eric.

• 1:45Speaker 01

  We saw a really big category, which was a sea of sameness, and we started looking at the category and started to see some opportunities.

• 1:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, Eric really kind of looked at it from a brand perspective initially, which was his background. And I have a very different background, scientific, environmental, and started looking at it from that perspective. And it just was one of those things that just started to grow. We didn't really know what it was at first, but it grew into something.

• 2:12Guy Raz?

  You were in your mid-20s at the time.

• 2:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:15Guy Raz?

  How did you know that the other person was going to be the right partner? Partner when you when you met when you start talking about this.

• 2:24Speaker 01

  I don't know if we did.

• 2:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't I don't think we did. What I knew is that Eric thought in a way that was entirely different from the way that I thought. And I learned a lot whenever I spoke to him about business. I knew that that was a necessary element for any business. And I'm just somebody that believes in just trying lifelong learning. And so I saw that as a huge asset.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think we're so different in the way we think and what our skill sets are. In a typical business situation, I don't think we would ever been brought together.

• 2:58Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  One of the very lucky things for us is that we were friends and roommates. And you, as a founder, you often look to partner with businesses with people who are similar to you. But what you need is someone who's the complete opposite of you to make a business successful.

• 3:12Guy Raz?

  Yeah, so tell me, both of you, this question with you. What skill sets did you bring to the partnership, to the relationship?

• 3:19Speaker 01

  He can spell and do math.

• 3:22Speaker 02

  I don't know, man, I was I was 25 when we started the business. So I can't claim that I had a lot of skill.

• 3:28Guy Raz?

  But you had a background in chemistry.

• 3:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, my background was in chemical engineering. I'd been a climate scientist. You know, I knew how to computer program. I knew how to do sort of technical stuff and could figure out problems.

• 3:41Speaker 01

  Very simply, Adam's inside the bottle. He understood the chemistry, the chemical engineering, the sustainability behind it. And I was outside of the bottle, which was the the design and the branding of it.

• 3:53Guy Raz?

  And one of you, and you may not may not know who, one of them is an introvert and one's an extrovert.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  See, we we need each other.

• 4:02Speaker 02

  I've got a joke for you. You know the difference between an introverted engineer and an extroverted engineer?

• 4:07Guy Raz?

  No.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  The extroverted engineer looks at your shoes while he's talking.

• 4:16Guy Raz?

  So, so you guys, obviously, very different personalities. Totally different skill sets. How did you figure out who was going to do what?

• 4:26Speaker 01

  I think it kind of came pretty naturally. Like, again, there was no way he was going to trust me to do chemical engineering.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, the skill sets being so different, we kind of had to spread out on the field. But, early on in a startup, you're doing everything, right? So Eric was, didn't have any formal sales training, for example, but he was very much on the sales side of the business, leading customer relationship development and that sort of thing.

• 4:49Guy Raz?

  Was that harder for you to do?

• 4:50Speaker 02

  You know, um, yeah, probably a little bit. It also required me to do things like learn finance, right? I have no formal finance training whatsoever, but, you know, that's typical in a startup.

• 5:02Guy Raz?

  But you were more comfortable being in the background and letting Eric kind of be the face of this to investors and partners and customers?

• 5:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. Part of that's around my internal motivation, which is, you know, I am oriented the way that I am, introverted, if you want to call it that. But, also, I'm, I'm, I'm much more, and this is not a commentary on Eric, I'm much more just sort of internally motivated about trying to learn new things and get better at something, get a little bit better every day.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  What are you saying?

• 5:33Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  That's what, that was the caveat. So, so, yeah, but I think that that, you know, to kind of bring that around, that's actually really important in a business, is that you have separate roles that you can, that you can play. And it actually was very much to our benefit. I mean, some of our very early sales pitches that we talked about on the show, where Eric was out in the front of the customer and I was kind of squirreling away, trying to figure out stuff in the meantime, and trying to get it all to come together at the right time.

• 6:04Guy Raz?

  Yeah. You know, we've had episodes where the founders, co-founders, split up, and it's bad, you know, and it's, it's actually more common than not. Your case is almost unusual, because you're still friends, you see each other, even though you've gone your separate ways, and you both have separate companies today, which we'll talk about in a sec, but, there must have been tension. I mean, I mean, there's still business decisions that have to be made, there's still... Processes. So how did you, how did you deal with that tension?

• 6:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you're under extreme stress and pressure. And you're doing this as a partnership. And I always tell people, it's, it's a lot like a marriage, but it's, it's even harder because you can't have makeup sex.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  So you've got to find alternative ways through it.

• 6:50Speaker 02

  There's so much I could say right now.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  But so much of the tension of the two of us, of these very complimentary skills, and you can see the tension in our, our brand, and great brands have tensions, right? So we had to find healthy ways. And, and I think we understood each other well as friends. And it took a few years, but when we really learned to understand each other well as business partners, and what our different work styles were like, and we could respect it and understand it. And then we were able to support each other in a completely different level, which has been amazing.

• 7:24Speaker 02

  I would just add to that, and we fought like cats and dogs. We hated each other's guts for.

• 7:29Guy Raz?

  And you lived together.

• 7:32Speaker 01

  I don't remember hating you.

• 7:35Speaker 02

  That was good. That was good. Score one for you. And, and we actually kind of had to intervene in it, but the key for us was recognizing that it was way more important for the business that we have a constructive relationship than to get our own individual way. And the big learning was because we're so different, learning that when Eric says something, you know, what he really means. And when I say something, he perceives it differently than what I'm trying to say.

• 8:06Guy Raz?

  Like, give me an example of that, Eric. Like, you are, I think you mentioned to me, and I don't know if this ended up in the final version of the podcast. You're very communicative. You're kind of an open book. And, and sometimes you described the way that Adam dealt with challenges or pressures was to kind of internalize it and stay quiet.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, Adam kind of needed the space to then get the energy to go attack the problem.

• 8:28Guy Raz?

  But you thought that he was angry with you or something like that?

• 8:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, or withdrawn, like, why, like, you know, like, the house is on fire, and I was looking at what he was doing, and I didn't feel he was having. That same sense of urgency where he just needed to approach it from a very different way. Where when I'm under pressure or under stress, I have to attack the problem head on. And that's very classic introvert extrovert.

• 8:53Guy Raz?

  Did you ever get a coach or like a therapist or somebody?

• 8:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, we did.

• 8:56Guy Raz?

  Yeah, tell me about that.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  We did therapy together.

• 8:58Guy Raz?

  You did therapy together?

• 9:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, it got us ready for marriage.

• 9:03Speaker 02

  But I'm a big proponent of that because it's what helps you understand this like this situation that we just talked about. Where when things get stressful, Eric talks a lot and Adam shuts up, right? And that's two different people responding in different ways that still need to work together in ways that are constructive, even though they're stressful. And so having somebody to help you understand that, you know, what Eric, by talking a lot, what he means.

• 9:29Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 9:30Speaker 02

  And by mean, you know, not, I'm, you know, trying to think my way through a problem that we kind of got to meet each other in the middle and use the best of each other's skill sets to get through it.

• 9:38Guy Raz?

  I'm just really fascinated how you were so kind of mature about this. You were so young in your mid twenties. I mean, in your mid twenties, you're going through lots of things in general, like what am I going to do with my life? Is this working out? And yet you both seem to just have this very single minded focus on making this thing work.

• 9:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, and a lot of that is driven by what a lot of us are trying to do, which is to create meaning through our work, right?

• 10:05Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 10:06Speaker 02

  We spend an awful lot of time working. So if we can make it meaningful, that's something that has been a goal for us all along. And that means, yeah, putting putting yourself a little bit aside because you're trying to create something that's bigger than you could ever be.

• 10:21Guy Raz?

  Yeah. What do you think the difference between good tension and bad tension is, right? Because?

• 10:27Speaker 02

  Trust.

• 10:28Guy Raz?

  It's trust.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  Wow, well said.

• 10:30Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I mean, because conflict can be good, right?

• 10:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, it usually is. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I say trust, maybe that's obvious, but conflict is a great thing because it's where you are able to build an idea into a bigger, better idea. And you're going to have differences of opinion and trust is what allows you to evaluate that objectively as something that's a better way of solving a problem that your business has, or a better idea than the one that Suzie or Bobby came up with, all by him or herself. Where there isn't trust, that's when, you know, things get weird, you know? Authorship becomes more important than quality and all kinds of stuff.

• 11:11Guy Raz?

  For, for people in this audience who are early-stage entrepreneurs and trying to build something and maybe thinking about a co-founder, or maybe they have a co-founder, there's a small team, what, what would you have wanted to know, you know, 20 years ago that would have been helpful for you as you've now grown and scaled your own businesses?

• 11:31Speaker 01

  I mean, I always encourage people to take a partner because it's one thing to let yourself down, it's really hard to let someone else down. And that partner, you keep each other going when things get really hard, which, which they always will. And then I always encourage people too, to find somebody who's just the complete opposite of your skillset. So between the two of you, you can cover as much of, of the business as possible.

• 11:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, and go into it with an open mind because I think you'll learn more about yourself than anything else, in terms of what you're good at and what you're not good at, how you're perceived, and how ultimately you can be effective, and how you can lead people in a way that's, you know, true and authentic to the type of person you are.

• 12:15Guy Raz?

  I asked you earlier, both of you, how did you know that the other person was the right person? And your answer was, we didn't.

• 12:22Speaker 01

  Mm-mm.

• 12:23Guy Raz?

  So was it, I mean, was it just serendipitous that you just?

• 12:27Speaker 01

  I think, yeah, a little bit of luck. And, you know, a startup is a journey, and you kind of figure out along the way. And if Adam had started Method on its own, it probably would have looked like a Birkenstock. It smelled... It smelled like one.

• 12:46Speaker 01

  And if I had started on my own, it'd probably look like Hello Kitty.

• 12:51Speaker 01

  And would have been toxic and didn't work.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  And because of us coming together and bringing these different points of view and the strengths, we created, I get, we're gonna take credit for it because we haven't found anybody who did it first, but really the first Eco Sheik, a product that was high design and deep sustainability, which is really hard to do. And we were both insistent that it would have these qualities and brought, it's a lot of our personality coming together.

• 13:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, a big part of it as well is making the commitment that, hey, I'm gonna start this business, right? You start a business, that's at least a 10-year commitment.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 13:26Speaker 02

  And I'm gonna do it with this person, which, you know, I mean, we're using the marriage analogy a lot, right?

• 13:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:33Speaker 02

  It's something you've got to commit to, not just the way it starts, but how you're going to develop it over time so that you can make it work to the benefit of the business. And then I think a key is always put the business before yourself. And if you do that, it'll bring you back around to that when, you know, he says something that gets on your nerves or, you know, there's a stressful situation.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  This is great group therapy.

• 13:55Guy Raz?

  It's great, right?

• 13:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:56Guy Raz?

  It's great, yeah. You are both running your own businesses now. You sold Method and you're no longer involved with the company. Eric, you run Ollie, which is vitamins and nutritional supplements. You've probably seen a Target and Ripple. You've probably seen that all over the place, Whole Foods as well. It's a plant milk company. What do you most miss about not working with the other person?

• 14:20Speaker 02

  Eric's creative spelling.

• 14:24Speaker 02

  No, in all seriousness, I mean, Eric is one of the best people I've ever met in just kind of coming up with, we're really building on ideas, little nuggets that sort of get built into more interesting and creative ideas. That's what I miss about working with him.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, first of all, I just miss our sense of humor. We have, we always had a lot of fun together in the office. And I miss that daily banter. We're like brothers from a different mother. I loved how Adam would push these really hard initiatives around sustainability or, you know, chemical engineering that would scare us all, but we would get behind. I think ocean plastic was one of my more favorite ones as well, to launch a line of products that were made from plastic retrieved from the ocean. And I miss being surrounded by his really kind of big, audacious thoughts on that every day.

• 15:19Guy Raz?

  That's so cool. Adam Lowry, Eric Ryan, the co-founders of Method, the founders of Ripple and Ollie. Thank you. Thanks, Eric Ryan and Adam Lowry, co-founders of Method. Adam and Eric joined me live onstage at the How I Built This Summit, which happened last month at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. More of these short bonus episodes from our Summit event will be coming out every Thursday over the next month, so check out your How I Built This feed for new ones. Next week, my interview with John Zimmer of Lyft. And thanks to Casey Herman, who produced this episode, and Reptine Arablui, who wrote the music. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to this special bonus episode of How I Built This from NPR.