Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day: Monica Nassif

Mrs. Meyer’s is a hugely successful line of soaps and cleansers named for a real Mrs. Meyer: a no-nonsense Iowa homemaker who raised nine kids, including the brand’s founder. When Monica Nassif started Mrs. Meyer’s, she’d already launched an upscale cleaning brand, but it was too pricey for the mass market. Worried that another company might muscle into her lane, Monica decided to knock herself off: she launched Mrs. Meyer’s with an elegant design and exotic fragrances– but at a price point that allowed her to target Target. Monica’s mom Thelma became a beloved mascot for the brand, which–after spreading to sinks across America — was eventually acquired by S. C. Johnson. This episode was produced by Kerry Thompson with music by Ramtin Arablouei. Edited by Neva Grant, with research from Carla Esteves. Our engineers were Patrick Murray and Jimmy Keeley. You can follow HIBT on X https://twitter.com/HowIBuiltThis & Instagram https://www.instagram.com/howibuiltthis, and email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Sign up for Guy’s free newsletter at guyraz.com http://guyraz.com/ 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.

• 0:00Guy Raz?

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• 0:46Guy Raz?

  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. We get support from U.S. Bank. A question I love asking founders. What's the one decision you almost didn't make? The one that changed everything? Because it's never the obvious stuff. It's never, I decided to start a company. It's the small, boring, Tuesday afternoon decision you barely remember making until you realize it's the reason everything after it either worked or didn't.

• 1:32Guy Raz?

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• 2:16Guy Raz?

  on gas and EV charging, office supply stores, cellphone service, and restaurants. You pick up an extra $750 cash back as a bonus. And you've got a low APR on purchases and balance transfers for 12 months while you're scaling. Same business, same expenses, two completely different outcomes 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. If you travel often, you'll want to hear about this unprecedented offer. For the first time ever,

• 3:00Guy Raz?

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• 3:45Guy Raz?

  or bring a guest to the Delta Sky Club. Make every trip feel more rewarding with the car that upgrades your travel. Apply today at delta.com/cardsocial. Offer ends November 4, 2026. Minimum spending requirements and terms apply. Flights are fulfilled as flight certificates valid for Delta Comfort or Delta Maine to select domestic destinations. Book 21-plus days in advance. Up to $80 per person and taxes and fees apply. Other restrictions apply. When I pull up to a gas pump to fill my car, I'm not thinking about chemistry or engineering. I'm thinking about getting in, filling up, and getting on with my day. And it reminds me a little bit of the founders I talk to on this show, because the best

• 4:27Guy Raz?

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• 5:17Guy Raz?

  All of a sudden, you've got your mom in the Whole Foods in Columbus Circle in New York, and it's called Mrs. Meyer's. And she's like, "I'm Mrs. Meyer's." But it wasn't like the Charmin Squeeze guy.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  No.

• 5:29Guy Raz?

  She was rea-

• 5:30Speaker 01

  She was like the real deal. Yeah. And we would bring her to trade shows, and people just loved seeing her. And she just embraced this whole thing. And I'm like, "Ugh."

• 5:40Guy Raz?

  But would they ask her, like, "Hey, how did you invent this? How did you start this business?"

• 5:44Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 5:44Guy Raz?

  What would she say?

• 5:45Speaker 01

  She would act like she did it. And, you know, at first, I kind of always wanted to interrupt, and I thought, "Uh-uh. Just let her rip."

• 6:01Guy Raz?

  Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 6:12Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how Monica Nassif knocked off her first brand of household soaps and launched a wildly successful second one, named for her mom, Mrs. Meyer.

• 6:27Guy Raz?

  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. 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. The story begins in the year 2000. Monica Nassif had just stepped away from her small, creative marketing agency in Minneapolis.

• 7:09Guy Raz?

  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 looked 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 Caldria. Caldria 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 Williams-Sonoma. The soaps and cleansers and detergents did fairly well. But because they were fancy and pricey, Monica knew the brand would

• 7:52Guy Raz?

  never take off in big-box stores like Target or Walmart. So about a year into the business, 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: Lang Lang, lavender, basil, and so on. 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. Meyers was in Target and Whole Foods and growing

• 8:36Guy Raz?

  fast. Today, both of Monica's brands, Mrs. Meyers and Caldria, are owned by the giant conglomerate, S.C. Johnson. 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 the 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.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  My mom had a purple station wagon. Like, she drove that thing like a bat out of hell. She got caught speeding so many times. And this was long before seat belts. And I, since I was the oldest girl, I would be in the front seat. I always got shotgun. And it was always, "Hold the baby." So I always remember, I'm holding a baby, she's driving like a bat out of hell, and we're going somewhere.

• 9:39Guy Raz?

  Yeah, that's amazing.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 9:41Guy Raz?

  You know, the thing is, is that I wish, I kind of wish I had eight kids. Maybe I don't wish I had eight kids, but I've got two. But you know what I mean? Like, today, people would be like, how do you, how can you actually afford to have nine children in a house and feed them?

• 9:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, I don't ever remember as a child being, quote, "poor" or 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, you know? And that was a law that was, allowed people to take on land if they agreed to farm it. And so there was a lot of large families. We weren't alone. And, you know, you don't know any different, quite honestly, when you grow up in a house like that.

• 10:25Guy Raz?

  Were you, oh, I mean, you're the oldest daughter, so

• 10:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:29Guy Raz?

  So you were kind of a surrogate mom. I mean, kind of looking after the others, right?

• 10:34Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, I was totally second in command. 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, I, she said, Monica, you were capable and I needed the help. And honestly, it was kind of interesting. I, she only said this to me a couple of years ago. She said, you know, I don't know if you had a childhood, Monica. 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.

• 11:17Guy Raz?

  And I think of my oldest sister, who, who also kind of had to kind of look after me. She was six years older and, you know, and but, but as an adult, she's very competent. She's a very competent adult. So yes, a lot of responsibilities as a child, but as an adult, she's, she was like out the gate, ready to go.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  Without question, you were, you know, our, my parents' attitude was get a job. That was so much more important than your grades. I don't ever remember saying, 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 going to be just fine.

• 12:00Guy Raz?

  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?

• 12:16Speaker 01

  I was probably, yeah, drinking beer, drinking stye, hopping down the back of motorcycles with my brother's friends. Being a stoned cheerleader. Yeah, I, I was not a model citizen.

• 12:29Guy Raz?

  It was the seventies. It was the, it was the early seventies.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  That's, yeah, and I had a lot, I had a lot of fun in high school, I'm gonna be honest.

• 12:36Guy Raz?

  Did you ever get caught, you know, sort of breaking the rules, like drinking or?

• 12:42Speaker 01

  Mostly grounded guy. I spent most of my high school days grounded, but I, I had this amazing, I wish I still had it, Jimi Hendrix poster in my bedroom. With, he had the floral wreath on his head, no shirt, a zipper, you know, about an inch long.

• 12:58Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  And my dad came up and saw that and he goes, you take that down. I said, I'm not taking it down. And he goes, well, you've got a choice. You can take down the poster or be grounded for 30 days. I said, I'll, I'll take the grounding.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  I'll take it, man. I'm just gonna sit back and look at Jimmy for 30 days.

• 13:18Guy Raz?

  All right. So you, um, you graduate high school and then, um, I think 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?

• 13:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I tried journalism at the University of Iowa. I tried photography. I think I had four different majors, Spanish. And I kind of thought, well, I do need a job. So 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 kind of stopped the party and got my head on straight and thought, well, I'll just try this nursing gig, see how it works.

• 13:59Guy Raz?

  Yeah. So you graduate in 1979.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:02Guy Raz?

  And right after that, at a very young age, you get married to your college sweetheart.

• 14:08Speaker 01

  That's right. To Mr. David Nassif.

• 14:10Guy Raz?

  And you become Monica Nassif. You no longer Monica Myers.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  That's right. Yeah.

• 14:15Guy Raz?

  So you, I mean, you're like 22. You guys are married.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  I was 24. Yeah. Pretty young.

• 14:21Guy Raz?

  Yeah. And I should say, you're still married to David.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  He hasn't left me yet, guy. I mean, he had a lot of chances. Trust me. He's a good guy.

• 14:31Guy Raz?

  Um, I should celebrate 20, so, so yeah.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  Good for you.

• 14:34Guy Raz?

  It's a, it's a, I mean, you're 1980. That's amazing. Okay. So you guys get married. You're, and, um, he, I guess, was running a landscaping company. And the two of you decide to move to Minneapolis.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  Well, he had a job offer. He got a job offer in 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, but 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. So they thought my husband, David, was a god that he had ESPN. That was big. So then we moved to Minneapolis in 81, February of 81, in the middle of a snowstorm. And then I got a job at the University of Minnesota in the surgical intensive care unit.

• 15:32Speaker 01

  I interviewed on Friday and I started Monday. That's how desperate they were for nurses.

• 15:37Guy Raz?

  How did you like being a nurse?

• 15:40Speaker 01

  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. 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, a lot of sorrow, a lot of transplant patients. Yeah, we, we had the train wrecks on our, on our award. It's hard to see every day.

• 16:09Guy Raz?

  So you're in, I think you're a nurse for about four years, but in the meantime, while you're a nurse, you get a degree in English.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  Correct. 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. I go to her and I go, okay, you're me. I'm 28 years old. I want 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. And she goes, you should just apply for this. Just see how it goes. And I did, and I got it, which shocked me.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  But I was probably the oldest intern at Dayton Hudson at age 28 in the history of interns.

• 17:01Guy Raz?

  And this is the parent company of Target, right? So, so some of your work, I guess, involved like writing speeches for the president of Target at the time?

• 17:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was so, the, the, it was actually the president of Dayton Hudson. He's, his, his name was Boak Sales. He was from Iowa. So he, he kind of took a, you know, liking to me because I, he could, I could listen to his jokes, stand up on my own.

• 17:23Guy Raz?

  You were from Iowa. So he's, yeah, right.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  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 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.

• 17:49Guy Raz?

  So, I mean, this basically begins a career in like corporate communications, right? And this is what you are doing. And, and completely different. So you completely leave nursing behind.

• 18:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, 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.

• 18:13Guy Raz?

  So I know that you had your first child, your first daughter in 1987. And then two years later, had your second daughter, Calla, in 1989. And, and you continued to work. I mean, you took leave.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  I took, you know, six weeks off.

• 18:27Guy Raz?

  Through both of those, you know, births and pregnancies. But, but I want to talk about, about Calla, because I, I know that, you know, within a few months of her birth, she was diagnosed with cancer.

• 18:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was probably one of the scariest times in my life. So.

• 18:44Guy Raz?

  I can't even imagine.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  Calla 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 ears, she's cranky. And I'm going, what is wrong with this kid? This, this is not my baby Calla. So take her into the hospital. And looking back, thank goodness, her regular pediatrician wasn't there. He goes, okay, let me look in her ears. And he goes, yep, bilateral ear infections. 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 good. I just had that sinking feeling. He comes back and

• 19:25Speaker 01

  he said, have you ever felt this mass in your daughter's abdomen? And I, I go, no. And then, of course, guilt sets in, like, hey, I'm an ex nurse, I should see these things. I just, I dismissed it. I did.

• 19:38Guy Raz?

  How old was she?

• 19:39Speaker 01

  Six months. Six months old. So he goes, take her down to children's, and probably got to have surgery. So then, two days later, she has her right kidney removed, and she has a Wilms tumor.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's terrifying. And so

• 19:58Guy Raz?

  How far along was it?

• 20:00Speaker 01

  Thank goodness, she was stage one. So it only involved one kidney. Thank goodness. So we're, 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.

• 20:40Guy Raz?

  So just to make sure that we don't freak anybody out, Calla is very much

• 20:45Speaker 01

  Oh, gosh.

• 20:45Guy Raz?

  Healthy adult today.

• 20:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, she's doing awesome. She's 33. She's got two daughters of her own. But also at the time, what was happening was I was on maternity leave because with Calla, I was actually going to 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 of a sudden I have just a body of work. I have, you know, Calla's 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.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  So we have a whole, Dave and I are just trying to figure out what the heck to do, you know? Because he wasn't that happy with his job. I'm kind of just getting started to work. And then he just comes home one day and says, I quit my job. Now, just never forget it. He laid back on the bed. He goes, 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.

• 21:54Guy Raz?

  I mean, I can understand that a thousand percent. I just cannot imagine how stressful that was for you and your husband.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  She, she would come home from chemo. She'd sit in the high chair. She'd throw up. Yeah. It was a difficult time without question.

• 22:15Guy Raz?

  All right. So part of probably not to sort of psychoanalyze this, but I imagine part of you just saying, you know what? I'm going to put my, put my head down and work. Probably it gave you focus.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  Oh, without question. I mean, I would, I would get in the car and just go, failure is 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 and I gotta hustle.

• 22:44Guy Raz?

  Yeah. And, and so, 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 kind of a, a big client.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 22:57Guy Raz?

  Um, and you were basically a free agent, right? But I guess you started to see that, that there were a bunch of other freelance people doing this kind of, this kind of work. And, and what did you, did you get to thinking, you know, maybe like, maybe I should turn this into like an actual business, like a marketing business?

• 23:12Speaker 01

  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. 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 10 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.

• 23:44Guy Raz?

  So 89, you start this marketing design company with, with, with this colleague. And what was her name?

• 23:51Speaker 01

  Cynthia Knox.

• 23:52Guy Raz?

  So you and Cynthia started and you grow it to like almost 30 people.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. So we were doing work for, uh, you know, Rainforest Cafe, Live Touch, Medtronic, mostly consumer brands, but other big.

• 24:03Guy Raz?

  Brands out of Minneapolis.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, big brands. Yeah. So there was a lot of work for us without question.

• 24:08Guy Raz?

  And were you guys making a lot of money?

• 24:12Speaker 01

  No, we're not making a lot of money. It was, I was calling a hand to mouth kind of business. 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, while we had Kilter, uh, we thought we were so smart, let's start a watch company.

• 24:37Guy Raz?

  A watch company?

• 24:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, this, it was an utter-

• 24:40Guy Raz?

  Who, you and Cynthia said this?

• 24:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. This, this was our-

• 24:43Guy Raz?

  A what? Like wristwatch company?

• 24:44Speaker 01

  Like a wristwatch company. Yeah. This was our brainchild. And at the time, there was this huge gulf between a Swatch watch, you know, a hundred bucks-

• 24:53Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  And a Rolex, thousands of dollars.

• 24:55Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  And we saw this, this merchandising opportunity, like, oh my God, we should fill the void, right?

• 25:02Guy Raz?

  Somewhere between a Swatch and a Rolex.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  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, 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.

• 25:24Guy Raz?

  But how far along the path did you go? Did you actually get a watch, like a prototype?

• 25:29Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. We, we made watches. We went to Switzerland, found a manufacturer, spent way too much money, lost all that money. But I, I learned several powerful lessons with that. And one was never, ever, ever do two businesses at once. 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.

• 25:59Guy Raz?

  Yeah. The bills were paid by Target and Medtronic-

• 26:02Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 26:03Guy Raz?

  Rainforest Cafe, that you guys are doing work for them.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 26:06Guy Raz?

  But everybody wanted to work on the watches, because that was cool.

• 26:08Speaker 01

  Because it was cool.

• 26:10Guy Raz?

  And so the idea was you would have, and what were the, what would the watches sell for?

• 26:14Speaker 01

  Uh, I think they're around like 189, 175. So they were slightly above a Swatch, but a lot more fashion.

• 26:22Guy Raz?

  Were they leather straps?

• 26:23Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Leather strap, plastic, really clean Swiss faces, very sleek, very MoMA-esque. Yeah, they, they were cool. I still have some. Believe me, I have probably too many.

• 26:34Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:34Guy Raz?

  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 details, what was the total timeline that you worked on this? Like, more than a year?

• 26:46Speaker 01

  Probably about a year, year and a half.

• 26:48Guy Raz?

  Okay.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  Cynthia went to a trade show in Switzerland, found a manufacturer.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  And we just didn't invest in selling. I remember thinking, this is the stupidest thing I've ever done. We've got a product and we think, oh, it's so cool. People are going to beat a path to our door. Well, 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 going to do. That is it. I'm going to sell, sell, sell. I'm not coming home till I got a fistful of POs. That was like the vow I made to myself when we had that watch company. So it was painful. It was expensive.

• 27:28Guy Raz?

  How much money did you think you lost?

• 27:31Speaker 01

  Seventy-five thousand.

• 27:33Guy Raz?

  Okay. So a lot of money, certainly.

• 27:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:38Guy Raz?

  Yeah, okay.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  Not devastating, but

• 27:40Guy Raz?

  But it was a lot.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  Our savings for our family. Yeah. It was, it was a painful lesson in many ways.

• 27:47Guy Raz?

  All right. But you continue doing this, this work for, and I guess one of the things that you got frustrated with, I read, 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 most of the time you were, that advice was ignored.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, two things would happen. One, they would take your advice, run with it, and be entirely financially successful. Or two, fail to execute and then blame us. And I was like, you know what? I, I'm kind of tired of this. Consulting's hard, you know? I was getting restless and I looked into the future and went, I'm going to be 60 and doing this same old stuff. And you know what? I'm bored. I want my own product.

• 28:42Guy Raz?

  And you were about to turn 40 or you were in your early 40s.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  I was 40, yeah. It was kind of, I was looking at 40 going, I gotta, I gotta do something else.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  Then, you know, a couple of years later, I'm at the store in Atlanta, a big box store, probably Linens and Things or Bed Bath & Beyond, and I see this huge pallet 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 saddest, most pathetic consumer category I can think of.

• 29:15Guy Raz?

  These were like cleaning products like?

• 29:17Speaker 01

  Cleaning products, like window spray and, yeah, name something, you know, yellow goo with these military handles and they were 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, it could be like Aveda. That's what I was standing there going.

• 29:37Guy Raz?

  Aveda.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, because Aveda's, Aveda's based in Minneapolis.

• 29:41Guy Raz?

  Yes, he started in Minneapolis by, I think, he's not an Austrian American businessman. He started, and Aveda became this kind of first mover in that kind of world, one of the most influential, like, right, hair care.

• 29:56Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, hair care, beauty products.

• 29:58Guy Raz?

  Beauty products, yeah.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  And I just thought, why can't it be like that?

• 30:01Guy Raz?

  Yeah. I mean, you think of Aveda, and I think they even have like Aveda spas, or there are spas in Aveda products. I'm sure have been one in the past. And you can just, there's like a, like a harmonious, calming zen-like feeling.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. And you can smell Aveda from across the block, you know, they have a distinct fragrance. Oh, I love the brand.

• 30:27Guy Raz?

  It's a great brand.

• 30:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I buy still a ton of their product. And I just remember thinking, this could be the Aveda of cleaning. Why can't it be? Who said?

• 30:36Guy Raz?

  Yeah, exactly. Who said?

• 30:37Speaker 01

  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, how it could be singular fragrance. So if you wanted to clean your house, the whole thing could be in lavender, or citrus, or whatever.

• 30:53Guy Raz?

  When you say the whole house, you would do window spray, floor cleaner, and dish soap, laundry detergent, everything in lavender?

• 31:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, if that's your fragrance of choice.

• 31:03Guy Raz?

  If that's your fragrance, right.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  You know. And, and then all the products would be earth-friendly. They would have that Aveda-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 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 II, you know, and all the when all the big brands blew up after World War II, the Procter and Gamble, the Reckon and Benisters. 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

• 31:45Speaker 01

  telling, romantic's probably too strong of a word, but no one's telling this 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. 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.

• 32:18Guy Raz?

  Right, because most people used and still use Dawn or Fantastic or Mr. Clean or, right, I mean, they were tied. I mean, that that was, that those products 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.

• 32:44Speaker 01

  Exactly. I kind of, I drew this triangle and I went, okay, on the bottom triangle, we have Procter and Gamble. What are they good for? Performance. They're awesome, right? They get everything clean.

• 32:55Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 32:56Speaker 01

  On the bottom triangle, we have Seventh Generation, right? They're earth friendly. Performance at the time was kind of sketchy. I think that's changed. 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.

• 33:17Guy Raz?

  Do you like cleaning?

• 33:19Speaker 01

  Actually, I do like cleaning.

• 33:21Guy Raz?

  You do?

• 33:22Speaker 01

  So one of my early jobs was, you know, I had a lot of, I have a checkered past guy. I was a truck stop waitress, I was a typist, I walked beans, I was a crew boss for soybean walking, but I was also a janitor in a beauty shop in a trailer park.

• 33:39Guy Raz?

  This is in college or high school?

• 33:41Speaker 01

  High school, even before high school. So this is, I'm trying to get hairspray off the floor, cleaning. That is not a job I like at all.

• 33:52Guy Raz?

  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 Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.

• 34:10Guy Raz?

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• 34:52Guy Raz?

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• 35:37Guy Raz?

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• 36:22Guy Raz?

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• 37:06Guy Raz?

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• 37:45Guy Raz?

  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, finding someone to make them.

• 37:58Speaker 01

  So the guy who used to cut my hair had an Aveda salon. And I said, hey, Mick, I got this idea for putting stuff into bottles. I didn't tell him the concept. I said, who 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, I cut the hair of a fragrance consultant. I'll, I'll call her and see if she can call you. Well, he did. And I met with her. And she said, here's what you got to do. And so she kind of walked me through the whole process. You know, you got to 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 are your big ideas, etc., etc.? And then she said, you

• 38:42Speaker 01

  got to go find this manufacturer out west of town. Go find them. They'll help you too. So I go out there. It's called Boomerang. And it's a bunch of ex-employees from the Redmond Hair Care business. They, they pooled their ESOP funds after that company was sold and started a contract manufacturing facility.

• 39:04Guy Raz?

  They were making like shampoo and stuff?

• 39:06Speaker 01

  Shampoos and yeah, all kinds of stuff. So I go out and see this, this person. And I, I, at the time, I already had some dummy bottles. I would fill them up with a slight tint. I had all these PET, which are clear plastic bottles. And I had a designer already create the labels for me. And I go out, I kind of share briefly with my business plan with her. And she sits back and she goes, okay, you cracked the code. I'll help you. Meaning she goes, I've been waiting for someone to figure this out. So she gave me the name of three chemists. And I called them all, just tracked them down as fast as I could. Two just looked at me like I had like four eyeballs. They just thought I was crazy.

• 39:50Speaker 01

  They're like, no, I'm not going to help you. A second one, no, I'm not going to help you. And the third one said, oh, I'll help you. And that was Pam Helms. And at the time she was a chemist for a personal care company in town. So she agreed to moonlight for me and helped 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, ironing spray, 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, what do you, what do you mean? We test them. Don't you test them? She goes, no, we gotta give them to 25 people and have them rate the product

• 40:33Speaker 01

  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 25 deliveries every Saturday morning. And I would go around, I found 25 of my friends and family, and they would rate the product and they would fax, fax back, believe it or not, their evaluations of the product.

• 41:01Guy Raz?

  And, and what gave Pam confidence in you? Do you think it was your background in, in marketing?

• 41:09Speaker 01

  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 got up and running, she finally said yes to me to come work for me full time.

• 41:24Guy Raz?

  And so you were just kind of paying her as a consultant?

• 41:27Speaker 01

  I just kept, I'm like, Pam, come on. Just join us. And she's like, no, no. I don't know if you guys are going to 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. Are you kidding me? If I stopped at 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.

• 41:53Guy Raz?

  Yeah. When you, um, I mean, when you, so you start to work on this and then Pam's working on this. And but meantime, what were you doing to earn money? Was David your husband? Was he working at this point?

• 42:05Speaker 01

  So he, he's working at this time. So he's actually still at our former agency and I had 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 writing the business plan and I'm out raising money. And it took, I was just trying to raise about 700,000. Well, that was the first round. And honestly, that is the hardest, most humbling part of the whole deal.

• 42:35Guy Raz?

  How did you raise the money?

• 42:37Speaker 01

  Shameless cold calling, shameless. I just had this vision of a funnel in my mind, thinking if I get 100 names, I get one call. I mean, I was so desperate, a friend of mine,

• 42:52Speaker 01

  he gave me the church directory for his affluent 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, 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 going to practice, you know? Cause when I finally find someone with a bucket of money and interest, I gotta be ready. So I went to so many 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 lab in back and he's helping this woman with this personal care company. You gotta go see him. So I go see him.

• 43:36Speaker 01

  His office is full of smoke. He's got more crap on his desk. I thought he was going to light himself on fire. He had these long, ugly, yellow fingernails from smoking since birth. 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 75% of the company 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 me, you get it all back. You get back to 75% ownership and you get back ownership of your formulations. And I thought, oh my God, get out of here as fast as you can.

• 44:19Speaker 01

  But what did I learn in that meeting? That you owned your formulations.

• 44:24Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  I didn't know that. So that was a huge learning.

• 44:27Guy Raz?

  So you turned that offer down?

• 44:29Speaker 01

  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. And I thought, what is this? I spent the next hour listening to him tell me about his stud farm and his Arabian horses, 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 called this woman and she goes, hey, Monica, you got to find this guy named Dick Magnuson. He was an early investor in the Nerf ball.

• 45:13Speaker 01

  Believe it or not, Nerf was invented in Minneapolis. Find him, he might help you.

• 45:18Speaker 01

  So it took me six weeks, finally tracked him down, got his cell phone. And he goes, okay, meet me out here at 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 Magnuson is sitting there smoking, sit down on this folding chair. He grabs my plan. He flips through it and he goes, you know, I hate consumer product deals. I just hate them. He goes, but I kind of like you. So I'm going to read this plan over the weekend. And if I like it, I'm going to call you at 8:00 AM on Monday morning. And he called me 8 a.m. on Monday morning and he helped me.

• 45:57Guy Raz?

  He said, I'm in.

• 45:58Speaker 01

  He said, I'm in.

• 46:00Guy Raz?

  And how much did you raise total?

• 46:02Speaker 01

  Uh, we raised about, uh, 800,000, 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, we're not running for political office. Stop smiling so much. We're doing a business deal. Now let's get serious. So I'm going to be honest, it helped to have an old white guy at the table asking other old white guys for money. So I've started to see a big breakthrough after that.

• 46:34Guy Raz?

  So, all right. So you have, you, you're, and, and this is what you're doing full-time.

• 46:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:39Guy Raz?

  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 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?

• 46:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, we didn't. We didn't start with laundry detergent. We started with five products in three different fragrances for Caldria. They were, uh, the fragrances were lavender pine, green tea patchouli, and citrus mint langling. And they were in these gorgeous bottles. And so, and the five, five products each.

• 47:14Guy Raz?

  And Caldria was the name. Tell me about the name Caldria.

• 47:17Speaker 01

  Oh, so Caldria comes from Carla and Andrea.

• 47:21Guy Raz?

  Oh, your daughter.

• 47:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it was a combination of my daughter's names.

• 47:24Guy Raz?

  And so you were gonna, and, and let's, so you have the, you've got the funding to kind of get this manufactured. But, but tell me about, um, let's first talk about the bottles. What, what was so special? Were they plastic bottles? Were they glass bottles?

• 47:38Speaker 01

  They were called PET. I don't know what that stands for, but they were these beautiful, clear bottles that usually reserved for, uh, food or personal care. You know, 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, 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 fragrance bottles into these meetings. So I could share, hey, this is what we're trying to do. Here's how it's going to look. Here are the aromas. You know, so people will get a sense of this is what this is going to look like on shelf.

• 48:20Guy Raz?

  So, so you start to get this produced, this co-packer, co-manufacture in Minneapolis, where you were experimenting with this stuff, with, with, with the product. They, you, you hire them as your contract manufacturer.

• 48:32Speaker 01

  Right. They become our filler 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. That was really tricky. We didn't, because 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,

• 49:16Speaker 01

  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.

• 49:37Guy Raz?

  Where were you buying the fragrance from?

• 49:38Speaker 01

  Uh, usually from Switzerland. That's, it came through most of the offices on the East Coast, I think New Jersey.

• 49:45Guy Raz?

  And by the way, was Caldria just you at this point and some, some sort of contract employees? Or did you have?

• 49:51Speaker 01

  No, I had, I had probably maybe two to four employees at the time. Yeah.

• 49:55Guy Raz?

  And what were they doing? What were the roles you hired for?

• 49:58Speaker 01

  I had a COO who was kind of in charge of manufacturing operations. And then I had a warehouse person and then that was kind of it for starters. You know, we were doing everything.

• 50:11Guy Raz?

  Right. Okay. And, and when it comes to strategy, I'm, I'm assuming you guys, I, I think you guys initially wanted to get Caldria into gift shops, right? Like, like shops where people buy, you know, homewares and, and, and things like that.

• 50:24Speaker 01

  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 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? Cause we could definitely make our product giftable, you know, because the bottles were so beautiful. And it was kind of a new category. So slowly over the, you know, one or two years, I finally had all the rep groups set up. And then we started going, having a booth at all these gift shows. Atlanta was a big market, New York was a big market, Texas. And so what we learned really quickly was that the coasts were very good for us.

• 51:08Guy Raz?

  What about like Williams Sonoma? Was that, was, were you, did you guys approach them?

• 51:14Speaker 01

  So Williams 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 crap, they're in this, they're in this business. And if anybody can do it, these guys can. So low and behold, fast forward to this houseware show, our first houseware show in Chicago. And we have a hutch, that's all we have, a hutch and all of our product. Williams Sonoma sees us at ABC Carpet and 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?

• 51:58Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 51:59Speaker 01

  So they want, and they were having problems with their vendors getting their dish soap made. They were, they couldn't 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, 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 got to be like bold and competitive and killer. So they just go, oh my God, I gotta go with these guys.

• 52:43Speaker 01

  And that was a significant revenue program for us.

• 52:46Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 52:47Speaker 01

  And it served as our financing for the rest of the, for the rest of the life of the company.

• 52:51Guy Raz?

  But it wasn't a brand builder.

• 52:53Speaker 01

  It wasn't a brand builder, but it was a category builder.

• 52:56Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 52:57Speaker 01

  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 Williams Sonoma gets behind a category of premium cleaning and they sell their dish soap for $7.99 and, and Caldria for $79.99, we all went because Williams 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 going to grow this huge premium category together. I thought it benefited everybody.

• 53:33Guy Raz?

  So they didn't sell Caldria in addition to the, they just sold the white label brand.

• 53:37Speaker 01

  They just sold the white.

• 53:38Guy Raz?

  It did say, but on the bottle, it did say made by Caldria, right?

• 53:42Speaker 01

  Yes, because I gave them a margin point for that.

• 53:46Guy Raz?

  Got it. Okay.

• 53:47Speaker 01

  So again, it was validating our position in the marketplace where you could find it in all these gift stores.

• 53:53Guy Raz?

  Let me ask you about the price point here, right? Because I imagine a strategy can be pricing something higher because it gets people interested. They're thinking, wait, $10 for a bottle of, of, you know, Windex? Like this must be really good Windex.

• 54:11Speaker 01

  Right. So our dish soap is priced at $7.99. And so that's why I knew we would never survive en masse because let's be honest, Dawn was $1.99. Yeah, or $2.99, whatever.

• 54:21Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 54:21Speaker 01

  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.

• 54:27Guy Raz?

  So it had to be at a gift shop where people might be like, oh, this is interesting. It's not Dawn.

• 54:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 54:32Guy Raz?

  So here's my question. I mean, you're, you start, you're working with distributors, right? And you're getting into more and more gift shops. But still, like, 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 got, I mean, imagine, because you launched this business in 2000. Imagine 2001, when these are in stores.

• 54:58Guy Raz?

  It's slow going.

• 54:59Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 55:00Guy Raz?

  It's not like they're like flying off the shelves.

• 55:02Speaker 01

  No, exactly. But what we had done is, because 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 decor, women's fashion, all these magazines.

• 55:17Guy Raz?

  Martha Stewart Living.

• 55:18Speaker 01

  Martha Stewart Living, Real Simple, you name it. That's what we wanted to be in. And it worked. It started to put us on the map. Good housekeeping. So that is how we spent our marketing dollars at the time.

• 55:32Guy Raz?

  All right. So you've got Caldria out there. 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 better funded brand or company could come in and just basically do the same thing and, you know, or introduce a kind of a cheaper knockoff that would really damage your business.

• 56:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. I did start to worry because, you know, when I started, I knew the statistic was that, hey, almost 80% of all household cleaning products are purchased in the grocery store and discount stores. So that was the market. But when I got started, I honestly didn't 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.

• 56:28Guy Raz?

  Let's knock off ourselves.

• 56:29Speaker 01

  Let's knock off ourselves. 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 going to go to mass. We're going to figure it out. We're going to 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 not focused. 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 like, okay, we're going to knock off ourselves. We're sitting around, probably five of us at the time, we're brainstorming and we're going, all right, if we wanted to take out Caldria, how would we do it?

• 57:12Speaker 01

  Caldria'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, This, wait, this is like my mom, you know, she's like the consummate housewife with huge family, huge garden, total, she was a child of the depression, waste not, want not is her operating model for everything. So that's how we came up with the name.

• 57:40Guy Raz?

  Mrs. Myers.

• 57:41Speaker 01

  Mrs. Myers, my mom. Yep. So I called 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, because 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 nod to get running.

• 58:11Guy Raz?

  You know, this is really interesting. I mean, you're, you start to recognize that Caldria alone is, is gonna be vulnerable because it's small, it's not well-funded. You know, we might get lucky, but there's a good chance that a competitor is gonna come in and crush the brand. And so you start to say, and it's so interesting because many years ago, I interviewed Kenneth Chanault, the former CEO of American Express on 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? It's like a great strategy.

• 58:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, when you have eight siblings, it's, it's a dogfight, highly competitive.

• 59:03Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 59:03Speaker 01

  You know, and I'm like, I'm not letting anyone take this concept. I'm gonna do it. You know, I'm super competitive. And I thought, let's just, let's knock ourselves off.

• 59:12Guy Raz?

  What would be different between the Mrs. Meyer's products and the Caltria products?

• 59:18Speaker 01

  Well, we kind of had this 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 going to be based on a real person. We're not going to make this up, you know, in terms of.

• 59:35Guy Raz?

  It's going to be my mom.

• 59:36Speaker 01

  It's going to be my mom. And, you know, she's the real deal in many ways. And, you know, we were raised to kind of take care of what you have and it will take care of you. And she was very thrifty. And 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 on a Kansas farm. I mean, we didn't have to make up that much stuff about her.

• 1:00:06Guy Raz?

  One of the interesting things, because your mom's name is Thelma, right?

• 1:00:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:00:09Guy Raz?

  Thelma Meyer. One of the interesting things about about this product was that the original packaging had like a little character on it. It was like a sort of a 50s housewife with a dress and an apron. Am I right about that?

• 1:00:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:23Guy Raz?

  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, you know, there are different ideas that might come in someone's head. Like, I see that and I think of like Judy Jetson, you know, or I think of, oh, that's, that evokes a certain image in my mind, right? 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?

• 1:00:52Speaker 01

  Right. So much for women's lib.

• 1:00:54Guy Raz?

  Right, right.

• 1:00:55Speaker 01

  And at the same time, this was my mother, joyfully accepting her role in life. And so we just embraced that. And this designer I worked with who did all the packaging, Werner Design Works, 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 icons from the 50s. Because we kind of wanted to make the packaging look like Thelma could have made it in her basement. You 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. You know, it's not like you have to be that person in an apron cleaning your

• 1:01:39Speaker 01

  house. You don't, it's that you have the authority of a domestic mentor and she's real.

• 1:01:45Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:47Speaker 01

  That's how I viewed it.

• 1:01:49Guy Raz?

  Interesting. It's often the, it's often people who are least affected by those things that are the most alarmist about them, right?

• 1:01:58Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:01:58Guy Raz?

  So, all right, so you basically, you start to work, and between the time that you come up with the idea and the time that you actually have a bottle with, you know, the label and the story, how long did that take roughly?

• 1:02:12Speaker 01

  Probably less than a year because, you know, we had a lot of the product developed. So, 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 timeframe 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...

• 1:02:45Guy Raz?

  Yes, I do.

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  But it was, it was a real 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.

• 1:03:00Guy Raz?

  All right. So when Mrs. Myers is going to be ready by 2002?

• 1:03:05Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:03:06Guy Raz?

  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, because we did, we did a story of method, which also was introduced around this time, but you probably didn't hear about it because it was in, just in Molly's 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?

• 1:03:32Speaker 01

  I thought we should get in Whole Foods. That's, that's

• 1:03:35Guy Raz?

  Whole Foods, okay.

• 1:03:35Speaker 01

  Oh, I was like, that was my target.

• 1:03:38Guy Raz?

  So you thought we got to get to Whole Foods where the sort of the, let's just say, I hate this, this term, but like influential buyers happen.

• 1:03:46Speaker 01

  Oh, for sure. Yeah, they are.

• 1:03:48Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:48Speaker 01

  Because all the Target buyers, other grocery buyers, what are they doing? They're snooping around Whole Foods in major markets in the Columbus Circle, Whole Foods in the San Francisco. They're, oh, what, what products do they have? How are they selling all that? So 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 going to die. We're just going to be

• 1:04:18Guy Raz?

  Oh, you, in other words, the window sprays were together, the dish soaps were together, which meant that if you had multiple SKUs, your brand was like scattered around.

• 1:04:27Speaker 01

  Oh, scattered all over. I thought we

• 1:04:29Guy Raz?

  You couldn't have all the Mrs. Meyers together.

• 1:04:31Speaker 01

  Right. And Whole Foods would, they allowed us. Because one thing they had was personal care. You know, they had a personal care section and they were used to the Burt's Bees of the worlds coming in there and saying, no, we got to 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 going to be awesome. You know, it has this halo effect.

• 1:04:54Guy Raz?

  All right. So you get into Whole, into those Whole Foods. And I guess, again, I mean, you're, you're in some of these, I mean, you, you had Caldria in some of these magazines. Now you've got this very unusual, because I remember the label. You've got the, you know, the Judy Jetson or whatever, the June Cleaver on there, Mrs. Meyers. And so it, it stood out. But, but how are you going to get people to buy it? What, what was the approach you took?

• 1:05:19Speaker 01

  Well, again, we had the PR firm working on Mrs. Meyers, 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.

• 1:05:34Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 1:05:35Speaker 01

  Hand soap, dish soap. And my mom would stand there in her little uniform we created for her.

• 1:05:40Guy Raz?

  What was the uniform you created for her?

• 1:05:42Speaker 01

  Oh, it was like a plaid shirt, a denim apron and little red capris and red shoes.

• 1:05:48Guy Raz?

  That's and and she was like,

• 1:05:50Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 1:05:51Guy Raz?

  I'll play ball.

• 1:05:51Speaker 01

  She she was like, I'm in. I love everything about this.

• 1:05:55Guy Raz?

  And was that what she wore normally?

• 1:05:57Speaker 01

  Oh, well, she wore red. She wore work shoes. My mother believed in German work shoes. So these are red work shoes.

• 1:06:05Guy Raz?

  And did you make her like, get her hair done in a certain way?

• 1:06:08Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. We had, oh, 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 she just thought she was like a movie star.

• 1:06:20Guy Raz?

  Yeah. And it's called Mrs. Myers. And and she's like, I'm Mrs. Myers. But it wasn't like the Charmin Squeeze guy.

• 1:06:28Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:06:29Guy Raz?

  Like, she was real.

• 1:06:30Speaker 01

  She's like the real deal.

• 1:06:31Guy Raz?

  Actually, the real person.

• 1:06:32Speaker 01

  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 then she'd say, was that a key message? She'd look.

• 1:07:02Guy Raz?

  Oh, while she's being interviewed, she'd turn to go, hey, was that the right key message?

• 1:07:06Speaker 01

  Was that the right key message?

• 1:07:07Guy Raz?

  I'm like, oh. But would they ask her, like, hey, how did you invent this? How did you start this business?

• 1:07:12Speaker 01

  You know what?

• 1:07:13Guy Raz?

  What would she say?

• 1:07:13Speaker 01

  She would. She would act like she did it. And, you know, at first, I kind of always wanted to interrupt. And I thought, uh-uh, just let her rip.

• 1:07:22Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:07:28Guy Raz?

  Right. And but at some point, I mean, you, you and your mom joined forces to go on QVC, right? Like, I mean, and you pitched both of the brands, Mrs. Myers and Caldria.

• 1:07:39Speaker 01

  Right. We went on QVC. QVC wanted to bring us on. They brought in my mom. Disaster. I went on an hour.

• 1:07:46Guy Raz?

  Disaster.

• 1:07:47Speaker 01

  It was a disaster. You know, there's something about QVC.

• 1:07:52Speaker 01

  That we just didn't understand.

• 1:07:53Guy Raz?

  Wait, what happened?

• 1:07:55Speaker 01

  It just, so 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.

• 1:08:02Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:03Speaker 01

  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?

• 1:08:14Guy Raz?

  Wait, was she not funny or interesting?

• 1:08:17Speaker 01

  I think she was good, but I think, I think she was, 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 got to keep that energy and the demo and everything up for 30 minutes. And, you know,

• 1:08:36Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:37Speaker 01

  My mom wasn't that person. We just didn't understand, like, kind of the demoing part of it, you know? Like, oh, look at this is a hot mess. Oh, now it's clean. And then I thought, is that what we're about? No, we're not. We're about fragrance and it's hard to communicate fragrance over a television.

• 1:08:57Speaker 01

  So we walked away from that.

• 1:08:59Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:00Speaker 01

  And nothing was considered a failure. It was always like, oh, wow, that didn't work. Well, now we know.

• 1:09:06Guy Raz?

  When 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.

• 1:10:02Speaker 02

  So what are you waiting for? Lock in for kickoff because everyone and everything is on PrizePix. What you on?

• 1:10:10Speaker 03

  Download the PrizePix app today and use code WONDERY. That's code WONDERY to get $150 instantly in lineups. If you win your first $5 lineup. PrizePix, run your game. Must be present in certain states. Visit PrizePix.com for restrictions and details.

• 1:10:32Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's the early 2000s and Mrs. Meyer's products are in some top Whole Foods locations across the country. And Monica decides it's time to pitch to the buyers at Target.

• 1:10:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I knew the Target folks. I went over there and made a presentation and they go, great. We'd love to do a 200 store test. But I'm going to be honest, I secretly had this instinct that we were, it was premature.

• 1:11:00Guy Raz?

  That was a mistake.

• 1:11:01Speaker 01

  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 going to take myself out.

• 1:11:16Guy Raz?

  Wait, wait, you, you were Target? Okay, we should clarify here because Target usually gives you one shot, right? To come in and if you, it's like Sephora, some of these companies, you go in, if you don't make it, they're not going to bring you back in. And so you agreed, hey, let's, I mean, I think I would too. It's Target. But why didn't they sell there? I mean, were you just not able to bring your mom to enough stores? Like what, what was the problem?

• 1:11:41Speaker 01

  I just think the whole problem was not enough brand awareness for 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, as a Whole Foods. So I had concentration in a market that people would see it of, oh, if I went to Whole Foods, I saw Mrs. Meyer's, oh, if I go to Target, I'll see Mrs. Meyer's and that didn't happen. We couldn't control the stores, the 200 store test. And so I'd had no market concentration. We had zero brand awareness. We were so premature with the brand, we didn't really know what we were doing. So I saw the numbers every week and I decided we got to take ourselves out. So I mean, I, I went over to Target and I said, you know what? We're not ready for you.

• 1:12:24Speaker 01

  I thought I, I'm going to kick myself out because I want back in.

• 1:12:28Guy Raz?

  Yeah. So. At what point did you feel comfortable reapproaching Target? Like, what was the metric that you were using?

• 1:12:37Speaker 01

  Oh, boy, I don't know if I remember having a metric. I just remember thinking, I think we're in enough stores. And they often asked us to come back and provide an update of how the brand was doing. 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 PO. I thought, no, I'm gonna, you know, let them ask me. So a couple of years later, they said, okay, do you guys think you're ready? And I did think we were ready because 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 it if brands are in places like that.

• 1:13:21Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:23Guy Raz?

  So when you, I mean, by the time you sort of, you're back in Target, I think in the mid 2000s.

• 1:13:29Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:13:30Guy Raz?

  And you're nationally in Whole Foods. Do you remember, you know, by 2007, let's say, do you remember what your revenue was? Was it over $5 million?

• 1:13:42Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, for sure.

• 1:13:43Guy Raz?

  Over 10?

• 1:13:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:13:46Guy Raz?

  Over 20?

• 1:13:48Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:13:50Guy Raz?

  30?

• 1:13:51Speaker 01

  No, close.

• 1:13:52Guy Raz?

  No, okay.

• 1:13:53Speaker 01

  Very close.

• 1:13:53Guy Raz?

  Between 20 and 30.

• 1:13:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:54Guy Raz?

  So you were, so you were really, I mean, you were, and were you profitable?

• 1:13:59Speaker 01

  We were probably profitable around 15, 20 million. Once we got the margin, the cost of goods sold figured out for Mrs. Meyers. 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, what I want to say, the formulation engineered for a good price point to be at the mass level.

• 1:14:24Guy Raz?

  Was your husband David, did he eventually join you?

• 1:14:27Speaker 01

  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, well, you just, he, he, he didn't really want to help me. He's like, I don't know what you're doing. You're kind of crazy. But I said, could you just come down and hook up the computers? He 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, Dave, it's, it's almost 10 billion. I just want a corner, I want a corner of it. He goes, I'm going to help you on one condition. I said, what? He goes, you never ever start another business.

• 1:15:05Speaker 01

  I said, okay, I did, but, um, so he came and helped and, and he got involved and, and thank goodness that he did. Cause he was really our finance expert. He ran the books, all the accounting, the shipping, all of that was his forte.

• 1:15:18Guy Raz?

  So, all right, so you've got this growing business. You hit, you know, between 20 and 30 million in revenue in sales. Um, and this category is exploding, right? I mean, this sort of premium category, there's method out there. You guys, there's other brands coming out, um, today, obviously even bigger, uh, and more brands, I should say. But you get an offer, you get an acquisition, an acquisition offer comes to you, or you approach, or you, you put yourself up for sale? What, tell me what, what the story was?

• 1:15:55Speaker 01

  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?

• 1:16:18Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:19Speaker 01

  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 always stumped them and I thought, this is not the partner I'm looking for. So finally, in 2000, late 2007, 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 because 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 understood fragrance. They understood the cleaning category.

• 1:17:03Speaker 01

  They were experts in this department, you know? And so they were really 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 kind of cool. I don't know that we could do that, you know? 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 want to screw this up, man. 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.

• 1:17:42Guy Raz?

  Yeah. So you agreed to be acquired by them?

• 1:17:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:17:49Guy Raz?

  Um, I mean, it's, it's, I think the outcome was probably great. It was undisclosed amount, but you know, it's if you guys were doing between 20 and 30 in revenue, you can imagine what, what that acquisition price was. I imagine that in a sense, it was a relief, right? Because here you, here you are. I mean, you know, you didn't have, really didn't have money, a lot of money, most of your life. And now you are, 2008, you must've been close to 50, maybe just a couple of years after 50?

• 1:18:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, 52, 53.

• 1:18:21Guy Raz?

  52? And, uh, and for the first time in your life, you have this opportunity to actually have a significant amount of cash that probably can support you and your family for the rest of your life.

• 1:18:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, it's a, it's a bittersweet decision.

• 1:18:39Speaker 01

  You know, um, first of all, you're selling your mother, you know, that.

• 1:18:44Guy Raz?

  Right, cuz that's the right cuz she was the brand.

• 1:18:47Speaker 01

  She was the brand.

• 1:18:48Guy Raz?

  Her likeness, her name.

• 1:18:49Speaker 01

  Her name. It's so it's like selling your child. And that's, you know, people think, oh, you got 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.

• 1:19:07Guy Raz?

  And so when you sold the business, you stayed on, you agreed to stay on, or you want, I'm sure you wanted to stay on too.

• 1:19:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:14Guy Raz?

  And Pam Helms, who's your chemist and who joined you, she also stayed on.

• 1:19:18Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, she's still, um, still with them. Yeah.

• 1:19:20Guy Raz?

  She's still with SC Johnson?

• 1:19:22Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:19:22Guy Raz?

  Amazing. You stay on, um, and what was, what was your job?

• 1:19:27Speaker 01

  I stayed the CEO.

• 1:19:29Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 1:19:29Speaker 01

  And 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, you know? 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 accept that's your new role. And, um, I fulfilled my contract and, uh, left the company.

• 1:19:58Guy Raz?

  They also acquired Caldria?

• 1:20:00Speaker 01

  Yes, they acquired everything.

• 1:20:02Guy Raz?

  Everything. So you leave and you still have the itch and now you've got your own money. So you don't have to beg and plead with other people for their money if you, if you want, if you didn't want to. You had money to start something new.

• 1:20:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:16Guy Raz?

  And you decide, hey, I wanna, I wanna get back into the game.

• 1:20:22Speaker 01

  Guy, I should have just stayed home.

• 1:20:27Speaker 01

  What was I thinking?

• 1:20:28Guy Raz?

  I don't think so. No, I don't think so. I think it's, it's, I mean, listen, it makes sense. You don't want, you don't want, you don't wanna just sit around and let your brain cells die.

• 1:20:35Speaker 01

  No, you don't want brain rot.

• 1:20:37Guy Raz?

  Keep firing those synapses, right?

• 1:20:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, no, for sure.

• 1:20:40Guy Raz?

  So you come up with a new idea.

• 1:20:42Speaker 01

  So I have a new idea and it really comes from staying home for about a year.

• 1:20:46Guy Raz?

  You're staying home.

• 1:20:47Speaker 01

  I'm bored out of my mind.

• 1:20:49Guy Raz?

  Bored out of your mind.

• 1:20:50Speaker 01

  I got gas in my tank. So 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 made all their clothes. So I have a long history of making clothes. So I have this idea that, God, you know, lingerie and sleepwear for older women, my age, in their 50s, 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 fabrics? So

• 1:21:20Guy Raz?

  Like when you mean like silk?

• 1:21:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, gorgeous cotton, Swiss cottons. 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.

• 1:21:37Guy Raz?

  Pajamas, luxury pajamas.

• 1:21:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. And this was before, you know, somebody once said to me after they saw the line, they said, Monica, you were two years ahead of Instagram. Had you just waited two years, Instagram, this would have worked. But they didn't, social media wasn't there for a fashion brand. So I had a couple of employees, I had a pattern maker and we made our, we manufactured our goods in New York and I set 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 gonna spend any more money on this brand. I'm just gonna shut it down.

• 1:22:17Guy Raz?

  How much money were you willing to put into it?

• 1:22:19Speaker 01

  A million dollars.

• 1:22:21Guy Raz?

  Okay. And by the way, anybody listening, you can Google Sophia Grayden. I don't know if you want people to do it, but it's, it's, it's interesting because you can see pictures of what this looked like.

• 1:22:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was beautiful.

• 1:22:32Guy Raz?

  It's really nice, well-made pajamas, robes.

• 1:22:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:38Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 1:22:39Speaker 01

  So I got into it and I realized, oh, my God, this is gonna take like $10 million. This is, you know, once I saw how you have to bring in fabric and the different sizing, you know, I just.

• 1:22:50Guy Raz?

  And you were buying expensive fabric.

• 1:22:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:52Guy Raz?

  This is not like, just like

• 1:22:53Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:22:53Guy Raz?

  mass produced in a factory in Chengdu.

• 1:22:56Speaker 01

  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, 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 buck out 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 flow goal. And I said, it's, we're done.

• 1:23:33Speaker 01

  And I learned a lot and I also learned, you know, before you proceed another startup, we're not going to do that again. Okay. That's what I finally said. I think my startup days are over.

• 1:23:46Guy Raz?

  Did you love, did you love this idea, the pajamas, the, I mean, did you like really love it?

• 1:23:53Speaker 01

  I didn't, 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 end cap from day one, when I stood over that pathetic pallet in Atlanta, when I first had the idea, it just boom, came to me.

• 1:24:10Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:10Speaker 01

  And I, I was obsessed. I didn't have that same obsession. It was kind of a whim and a whim never makes a business. And I know better. I know better.

• 1:24:24Guy Raz?

  So you, so that ends. Meantime, Mrs. Myers is growing like.

• 1:24:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, a rocket ship.

• 1:24:31Guy Raz?

  Like wild because, you know, it reminds me of an episode that we did a couple, a couple of months ago about Barefoot Wines, right? It's, I think it's the best selling wine brand in the world. And the year before Gallo bought it from, from the founders, I think they, they did like four, 500,000 cases. The next year, Gallo produced like four million cases.

• 1:24:54Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:24:54Guy Raz?

  Like that's how quickly they could scale this brand over, like it just, they acquire it, boom, and now it's the best selling, one of maybe the five, two or three best selling wines in the world. And I, I think there's a similar parallel with Mrs. Myers, right? Like they, SC Johnson was able to basically with a snap of, of their fingers, put it in every Walmart, every Target, like everywhere.

• 1:25:18Speaker 01

  And that, that was the attraction to selling to them. I thought, they can do what we can't do.

• 1:25:23Guy Raz?

  So did you, I mean, after that ended, after your time building that brand ended, did you just shut it out of your life or did you continue to follow what they were doing?

• 1:25:34Speaker 01

  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'm 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 them a couple, you know, some like $10. Go and get all the shelf, pull up the product from behind the shelf and they say, Mom, I still straighten out the product on the shelf. You just can't help yourself. It's like you're children. You gotta make sure they look good.

• 1:26:05Guy Raz?

  I, I make, can I make a confession to you?

• 1:26:08Speaker 01

  Please.

• 1:26:09Guy Raz?

  I do that with my book, one of my bookstores.

• 1:26:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:26:11Guy Raz?

  They take it out and I, I put it front facing. So it looks like the bookshop, like

• 1:26:16Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:26:18Guy Raz?

  So if you ever see my book, Front Facing, you know that I was probably in that bookstore.

• 1:26:21Speaker 01

  Don't be a shame guy. I do it all the time.

• 1:26:27Guy Raz?

  So I get it. All right. So you, and once you were done with, with that second business, Sophia Grayden, which really was your third business, right?

• 1:26:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:35Guy Raz?

  Did you think, all right, I'm done with starting businesses now?

• 1:26:40Speaker 01

  No, I didn't think I'm done. I just thought, you know, once you've built a Mrs. Meyer's business, it's hard to settle for a little business. 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.

• 1:27:01Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:02Speaker 01

  You know, that's probably why I haven't gone after it.

• 1:27:05Guy Raz?

  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, just talking to you over the course of this interview, I mean, you're very talented. You've got a lot of ideas. And so what have you, how have you been keeping yourself energized?

• 1:27:27Speaker 01

  Well, I've been on a lot of boards of consumer product companies and I've also been an investor in a couple startups and I've learned one big lesson with that. I'm a far better entrepreneur than I am an investor.

• 1:27:40Guy Raz?

  Most, most, by the way, 95% of entrepreneurs are better entrepreneurs than investors.

• 1:27:45Speaker 01

  So I'm not doing that anymore.

• 1:27:47Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:48Speaker 01

  I like to think I'm a quick study, but sometimes not.

• 1:27:51Guy Raz?

  Yeah. And, you know, in, in terms of like, 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.

• 1:28:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:05Guy Raz?

  But you really are the, I mean, you, you, you created this brand.

• 1:28:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:08Guy Raz?

  And when you think about, you know, the journey you took and, and how you built this business, this brand, and then, 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 you think had to do with luck?

• 1:28:23Speaker 01

  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 if a little ladybug comes on your shoulder, it's a sign of good luck. And when that happens, you better run. It means it's go time.

• 1:28:43Guy Raz?

  Yeah. Um, just, just to, just to get back to your mom for a second, um, does, does she still like work as a mascot for, for the brand? Like when SC Johnson, uh, took, like bought, bought you out, uh, did she still show up to pitch the product?

• 1:29:00Speaker 01

  She still, she still did work for them. In fact, she, she did the Rose Bowl Parade with them. She'd still made some appearances, but you know, let's be real, at the same time, my mother's aging, you know, she's 92, 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 and hand out samples. I mean, she still tells everybody that she sits next to on a plane, who she is.

• 1:29:27Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:28Speaker 01

  And they love her for it.

• 1:29:31Guy Raz?

  That's Monica Nassif, founder of Caldria and Mrs. Meyer Clean Day Products. Is the five second rule real? If you drop something, I mean, 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...

• 1:29:52Speaker 01

  Like Julia Child did with the roast, like just dropped the roast.

• 1:29:55Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:55Speaker 01

  You know, I don't know. I, I, I had 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.

• 1:30:10Guy Raz?

  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 guyraz.com or on Substack. This episode was produced by Kerry Thompson with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Carla Esteves. Our engineers were Patrick Murray and Jimmy Keely. Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, J.C. Howard, Catherine Seifer, Chris Messine, Sam Paulson, John Isabella, and Elaine Coats. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.