Heroes in Business - Bill Partyka, Former President/CEO of Gerber Products Co., CEO Kradle Pet Calming Company kradlemypet.com

Episode Date: February 28, 2025

Tune in as David Cogan interviews Bill Partyka, fmr CEO Gerber Baby Food, CEO of Kradle Pet Calming Company, at the Eliances Heroes Show.   

Up in the sky. Look, it's captivating. It's energizing. It's Eliance's Heroes. Eliance's is the destination for entrepreneurs, investors, CEOs, inventors, leaders, celebrities and startups. We're our heroes in business aligned. Now, here's your host flying in,

David Cogan, founder of eLiances. That's right, I don't drive, I just fly in, flying in with so much energy because it is the people that I have the lifetime opportunity to interview and ask questions that you wanna ask them to better service yourself, your business, personally, professionally, and

everything else. And I couldn't be more excited. And by the way, before we get into our next hero today, thank you again for the feedback we continue to get when I had the former CEO of Apple on. So please make sure that you go to alliances.com. That's E-L-I-A-N-C-S.com. Why? Because it is the only place where entrepreneurs align. Okay, so what does the former president and CEO of Gerber Baby have? Well, that's who I'm going to be interviewing next. And he's got an incredible career and continues to build and build and build because he was also Chief Global Commercial Officer for Wyeth Nutrition Company, held significant roles at Canagra Food, Canagra Brands,

General Mills and more. And he is now building cradlemypet.com. You'll see the information in the link and of course we'll have it on our website. And those that are listening on AM and FM, K-R-A-D-L-E, mypet.com. Welcome to the show, Bill Partica. Well, thank you very much for having me, David.

I am so happy to be here. All right, so Bill, first thing is this, and for our viewers that are watching and listening, I got something in your background that completely stands out. It is so cool. It's a huge poster. It's of the dog and that. So we're going to jump into why do you have that poster behind you? What's the significance of that? Well, I'm, I'm working for a company right now that is totally committed to ensure that

their pets get off to the best start possible in life. You know, we really focus on dogs right now, particularly delivering solutions in the CBD space, but there are a number of applications that go across all species like cats also. All right, and we're going to dive in a little bit later, definitely into the company now that you're building in that. So how is it like, I mean, like your career, you've held such significant roles and I mean, I think almost everybody in the world, right, has heard of Gerber Baby Foods? Gerber Baby Foods has about 85% of the penetration for all the babies in the US. So very popular brand. It's a 90-year-old family-owned brand that comes from Fremont, Michigan. So in the baby space, it's ubiquitous, but I've also seen the similarities

between the needs of babies and the needs of pets alike. Wow. And how did that like come to be where you became the CEO of the company? A lot of classical training. I cut my teeth here. I'm back in Minneapolis right now. I worked for General Mills, which trained some of the best commercial leaders in the country. And I just

progressed over a number of years, eventually selling a company to Nestle, the world's largest consumer foods company. And I eventually took the role of CEO of the Gerber Baby Food Company. Wow. Amazing, amazing. How long did you work for them? For about 10 years. Okay, all right. So then what happened? I mean, we want to find out about kind of your whole path

of where you got to where you are now. So after that, you ended up doing what? Or did you jump into the next or what took place? Well, my career has always been in large scale, fast moving consumer goods, very rewarding career, every company that I'd worked for. But I always knew that I wanted to do something more entrepreneurial and the opportunity here

at the Cradle Pet Comfort Company became available and I jumped into it and it's been a great experience. Well, that's fantastic. And then you moved on to, you know, you had experience with other companies. I guess what we're trying to find out, and I know what our audience wants to know is, is what's the secret skill thing that you've brought over,

one that got you into the door and that you've led and been so successful in your past businesses that that trait that you have? Yeah, I, from my point of view, I have always come from a heavy analytical background. I cut my teeth in corporate America in corporate finance. And I moved into a commercial role where I could apply the disciplines around corporate finance into a commercial leaders experience. I had noticed that there were a lot of commercial leaders that were really inspirational.

They could lead an organization, but they weren't always making the best business decision to create value. That's how I differentiated myself. I always say it's important to create your own brand early in your career and then you start to practice that and eventually you become that person and I was always defined as a value creator so that was my point of difference. Excellent, as a value creator and you're definitely creating value on this show and I have got the opportunity to be able to interview you because

you're listening watching to me David David Cogan, host of the Alliances Hero Show. Make sure again you go to Alliances.com. That's E-L-I-A-N-C-E-S.com. We have with us again Bill Partica, former president and CEO of Gerber Baby. That's right. And now we're going to talk about what he is doing next, which is CradleMyPet.com. Once again you can reach it at K-R-A-D-L-E, mypet.com. All right. So how did this come to be? You know, you've, again, your career has been in just a variety of different businesses and now you're with Cradle My Pet. What was the lure to want to work and build that company? Yeah. The lure was having worked in baby for such an extended period of time, about 15

years, I really gained an appreciation for how you define how a baby develops. And I started to realize there are definitely analogs with the same way a pet will develop in their lifetime. The difference between a baby and a pet is a baby, for those of you who have had kids at home, a baby is a baby for about two and a half years. And then they become in their mind young adults. A pet is going to be a pet your entire life. They are there to provide love. They require you to take care of them every single day. So this idea of maximizing the value of your business over

the journey of a pet, it was really appealing to me and I wanted to do it in a smaller company. So, Bill, you've got it's it's CBD that's in the pet products. It is one of the fastest growing trends we're seeing in consumer products right now is the emergence of CBD and you know, CBD has a number of therapeutic benefits that are still being understood in the marketplace. So obviously in pets, CBD tends to be used for reducing anxiety in pets,

but it's also a great reducer of inflammation. It reduces pain. It's a great product to support the development of a strong skin and coat, particularly for dogs. So there's a huge area of application that's emerging in the marketplace, which is a tremendous growth area. And are there any plans to go into other pets like cats and that? We will be going into a number of different species. Cats would be the next logical move. We really want to make sure that we become the masters of dogs and then we'll start to make that transition within the company. Wow. Now, from what I understand too in our cradle. My pet was also on the Ellen DeGeneres show. Uh

Ellen has been a huge both for rescue pets that transition to the shelter to their forever homes and most all of her pets, I t rescued. So she understood shelter and eventually to their family. There was just a great harmonious opportunity to partner with her to deliver our message. Yeah. And and Bill, just curious. Do you have any dogs? I do. I have two dogs, two black labs. One is extremely anxious. So, she she likes the company I work for now. And do you serve your dogs cradle my pet? I absolutely do every day. Nice.

Nice. And so, of the ones, tell me a little bit about the different types of products that are out there. You said CBD is one of the ingredients. What are other ingredients there that really that consumers should know about? And then what differentiates it? Because I imagine that there are other ones that also have CBD out there and non-CBD. So how does your differentiate from it? Yeah, I think there's kind of a couple different segments within the category. First of all, most of the solutions in this category right now are actually pharmaceutical products. And any consumer that has put their pet on pharmaceuticals, they first of all, they realize

they work extremely well. Actually, they work extremely well. Actually, they work too well. They tend to make a dog kind of catatonic, so an anxious dog. You start to lose their personality. They lay around the house all day and they really almost become zombie-like. So, as we started to look at the insight of today and tomorrow's pet consumers, millennials and generation Z's. Their pet ownership is at highly increasing rates. A lot of it has to do with COVID. And what they realize is great to have a pet in the house, but when they leave, there's

there are things like separation, anxiety, et cetera, and they're looking for natural solutions anxiety, etc. And they're looking for natural solutions to help address those problems. CBD is very effective in addressing those, in those issues. And then there are other botanicals that are also natural that we engineer into our products just to make sure that we are differentiated the marketplace. And we deliver those in really easy to use solutions. So they're familiar to the consumer and they know how to use them. You know, it says that some people treat their pets better than they treat their children.

Some would say that. I mean, you know, I think it's too, just the study behind of people who have pets and what it does, you know, for them psychologically, physically. It's, yeah, it's just the studies out there and just how they're, you know, help with emotions and, and soothing. And yeah, so quite incredible, again, what you're doing. How did it lead, though? I mean, how did you even find out? Or how did they come to you? Or kind of where, where, where was that? Where did it come to be?

Yeah, the company was moving into its next stage of growth and they really wanted to bring in kind of a tested executive leader to help them make that next transition. You'll see us showing up in some pretty large scale retailers in the next couple months. And that the requirements of the organization to perform once you start to penetrate, you know, big box retail, it's just a different business than a small boutique, more entrepreneurial business. So that's why I'm here and I'm pleased. Right. And extremely competitive and I'm pleased. Right. And extremely competitive and really almost right. Whatever product you've got, almost whatever product you have trying to get into those.

As far as like building companies, cause again, you've been very successful, led multi gazillion dollar type companies with, I mean, God knows how many employees in that. companies with, I mean, g in that. Uh, what, what's or sauce of staff? Becaus now it's just more in the been difficult finding the

the company is, how do yo want to follow the vision of what the company is, how do you build? How do you do that? Yeah, I think there are a couple components of it. First of all, the CBD pet space is uniquely this generation. So millennials right now have brought pets into their house and now they're trying to deal with the awesome responsibility of having a pet in the house. So the personal dynamic with pets in this space and CBD makes it very attractive for Millennials. The other thing is having worked in a small company, you're right, I've run some really large companies, you know, thousands of employees. When you're dealing with limited resources, it is actually a good opportunity

to change the way people work. If you have thousands of people to rely on to get something done, I used to think it was very difficult, but it's actually much easier than when you're dealing with a handful of highly motivated colleagues where there's blurring of the lines functionally and I've come in recently we've kind of sat

down and looked at our structure and said what are our requirements who needs to be doing what and when just to clarify what the right accountabilities are in the organization and ultimately I don't care if you're working for a big company or if you're working for a big company, or if you're working for a small company, everyone has to be totally inspired around the single minded proposition of what you want to deliver to the marketplace. And what's the best way you think with children now that want to be able to make their mark, perhaps work for large organizations like

you have as the former CEO of Gerber Baby and held other executives and now building another company that's going to be probably well known. What kind of secrets can you share that perhaps either parents that are listening now or we have all age groups that listen to our shows, high school on up and that of what they can do. What do they need and how do you get inspired? How do you find that inspiration? Yeah, I, you know, for the next generation, I would say you need to do a couple things. First of all, when you're getting education, focus on your technical skills. I have met a lot, I continue to do a lot of mentoring,

and I have seen kids in university with not a clear definition of what they're trying to accomplish with their academic training. I think it's really important to say, for me to achieve this, I need to get this skill today so I can build on that into the future. The second thing, and it's, it sounds easy but it's harder than you think, you have to create a personal brand early. I have seen people that look at senior leaders and they

say, I want to be him or I want to be her. Well, they didn't become him or her without a lot of practice. What they practice was in their mind, a definition of who they wanted to be. Nobody is ever a brand until you practice it and consistently deliver that proposition to the marketplace day in and day out. And then the third thing I would say is you really have to focus on the granularity of execution.

It's easy to have a big idea, but if it doesn't get executed, it's irrelevant from a business leader's perspective. So, you know, to me, the skill set, the branding, and then emphasizing delivering what you say is really important to do early in your career. Well, Bill, you have definitely built your personal brand. You've made an impact in several markets even again as former CEO of Gerber Baby, now working to improve the health and well-being for our furry friends. Bill Partica, now working with cradlemypet.com. Make sure you go to cradlemypet.com. That's a hero, building companies, employing others, and most importantly, helping our

loved ones, our furry friends. Thank you so much again, Bill Parker, and we appreciate it. Thank you, David.