How I Built This with Guy Raz - Five Guys: Jerry Murrell (2019)

Episode Date: January 14, 2019

Jerry Murrell's mother used to tell him, you can always make money if you know how to make a good burger. In 1986 — after failing at a number of business ideas — Murrell opened a tiny burger joint in Northern Virginia with his four sons. Five Guys now has more than 1,500 locations worldwide and is one of the fastest growing restaurant chains in America. PLUS for our postscript "How You Built That," we check back in with Hannah England, who turned a common parenting problem into Wash. It. Later. — a water-tight bag for soaking soiled baby clothes before they stain. (Original broadcast date: June 5, 2017) See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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made it feel less like a visit and more like we were actually living there. Plus, taking a trip is the perfect time to host your space on Airbnb. Your place with all of its personal touches and its amazing location could make someone else's vacation even better. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca.ca. Hey, it's Guy here. So, you know how there's a place in your town or city where they do amazing pizzas or barbecue or tacos so great that the line snakes out the door? Well, that's kind of what Jerry Morel had in mind when he wanted to open five guys. One place, burgers and fries, keep it simple. And he deliberately looked for a hole in the wall, somewhere kind of out of the way,

because he thought if you can get people to come there, then you know you've got something pretty great. We first ran this episode in June of 2017. It's a really fun one, and hope you enjoy it. How did you even know how to make a burger? I mean, were you a good home chef? Was anybody in your family a good chef? Listen, you come from my hometown.

You can't make a burger. You can't live. So, I mean, we knew how to make burgers. I knew how to cook a potato. That was a bodied. You knew how to grill a burger and out of fried potatoes. Yeah. And that's all you really needed to know how to do.

That's all we knew. From NPR, it's how I built this. A show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Raz. And on today's show, how a tiny family run burger joint in suburban Virginia became one of the fastest growing restaurant chains in American history. So Jerry's going to move a little closer to that mic, right? Yeah. So Jerry, get a little bit

closer. Okay. And can you see me okay? Yeah. Yeah. You ready? No. Okay. Um, introduce yourself, please. If I met you at a party, I'd say, uh, who are you? What's your name? I'm Jerry. Morrell. And what do you do? Sell hamburgers. So this is the founder of Five Guys, Burgers, and Fries. Jerry Morel is 73 years old, and it's been a long journey to get to where he is today. He was born in a small mining town in northern Michigan. And Jerry says when he was a kid, his dad wasn't around that much. He was an adventure.

He wasn't very family-oriented. He was a stunt pilot. That's probably when my mom had him got a divorce. are fairly early. Jerry went to Catholic school as a kid, where he says he was not the best student. I was a terrible student. I didn't like school.

In fact, I remember the nuns used to say, you're going to end up selling hamburger someday, so you don't work hard. Anyway, Jerry did get through school, and eventually he went on to study at the University of Michigan. I got scared there. I said, my God, how am I going to make it

in this world with all these smart people around? In fact, I was more intimidated after I got out of college than ever. So after college, Jerry moved back to his hometown, and he married his high school girlfriend. He got a job selling life insurance, and they had three sons. But the marriage didn't last. His wife ended up leaving and taking the kids to Florida.

And for Jerry, that was a low point. Kind of floated around for a while, lived in different cities. He wasn't sure what he was going to do with his life. but he was sure of one thing. Well, one thing I was sure of is I was going to get my kids back. You wanted your kids to live with you? Right. How are you going to do that?

Well, I didn't know yet. Around the mid-1970s, Jerry was offered a consulting job in the D.C. area, so he took it, and he moved to Alexandria, Virginia. And that's where he met his second wife, Janie. And after a situation stabilized a bit, his kids did actually come to live with him. And it was also around that time when Jerry decided to become a financial planner. I was shocked at how much money there was in the D.C. area. So I said, I'm going to go back in the financial planning business.

And I got my degree from Brenmar and started selling financial products to people in the D.C. area. And that's what I did. So the boys move in with you. All of a sudden, you've got five people, a household of five people. Right. And that was basically what you did. You were a financial planner? I was a financial planner.

I tried a few businesses. I started an oil business in Texas, and I did a couple other dumb things. I tried to start a water business, of all things. I thought selling bottled water back then would have been a good idea. And everybody laughed at me. I had a hard time raising money. This is in the early 80s? Early in the middle 70s.

The worst one was oil because I started a company and I went down to Texas and found out that they were waiting for me because I was from the East and they were going to take all my money. And then my wife and I went into the real estate business and we were experts at buying real high and then went until it crashed and trying to get rid of it. Okay, so if I get this right, you were doing financial planning as your main job, but you'd had like all these business ideas that you would try it on the side? Yep. And basically none of them worked out.

Right, right. I really didn't know what I was doing. I'm just lucky that I got in the hamburger business. So how does five guys be in? What's the genesis event? You want to hear the short side or the long side? No, on the wrong side. Well, where I grew up, there was a guy named Push Him Up Tony.

And Push him up, Tony, had a little tiny hamburger place with a picnic table in it. and he had a grill, and he didn't sell anything except hamburgers. And it always seemed happy. And it's stuck in the back of my mind because people used to come from all over town to get hamburgers there. And then when I moved to Washington, I saw something I just couldn't believe was Ocean City, Maryland. And they had a place, and they were selling boardwatt fries.

There's a place there called Threshers. And there must have been 20 places selling board. walk fries, but only one place had a long line. And that was Thresher's. The line was 100 feet long all day long. So me and the kids, that got into our mind like hamburgers and fries. Keep it simple, might work. And that's where the idea came from. So what did you do? Did you, I mean, did you go to your wife and say, let's try a burger joint? Yes. So what'd you say? Probably the same thing the banks said at the time, are you guys out of your mind? But we did it a little different. We said, let's not put a lot of money into it. And let's find a place where the rent is real low,

out of the way where nobody can see it. And everybody said, why would you want to do it that way? And we said, well, if we can put it where, it's hard to find, but if we can get people coming there, then we know we got something. And this was in 1986, right? Yes. So where was the first location? Columbia Pike and Glebe Road in Arlington, Virginia. And it was like a little place and rent was cheap. And what was, how much money did you have to put up to? Our first story put $35,000 in it. And what did that cover? Everything. The rent and the equipment. The equipment. We found junk equipment. We built it ourselves. It was a stand-up only. And Chad and Matt were still in high.

school. In fact, Chad was, I think, maybe 13 or something. And I said, I got some money saved up for college if you want to go to college. And they pretty much said, no, we'd rather do something else. Wait, go back for a second. You sat your kids down and you had your kids' college fund, and you said to them, hey, look, I got this college money. I will send you to college, or you cannot go to college and we can use it to open up a burger joint. Right. Were you, I mean, you can imagine today, like a parent saying that to their kids and then other parents saying, you're mortgaging your kids' future on this burger joint? Yes.

Did you have any of that feeling in your mind? Like, maybe this is not a great idea. No. No. If something was telling us, it was the right thing to do. Probably a look back on it was probably a silly, it was kind of. It was kind of crazy. It didn't seem crazy to us.

For some reason, we all seemed to be on board with it. Yeah. And now I was really surprised because the kids jumped right in and worked hard and Janie worked hard. She kept all the books. And I was amazed how the kids jumped into it. And what is the story with the name? How did you come up with it? Well, one of my lawyers said you should incorporate and you need to have a name as he fills out the papers.

Well, this was so well thought out that we didn't have a name. So me and Janie and the boys said, hmm, we had. Three sons plus one more son with Janie. My fifth son wasn't born yet. So it was four sons and me. So we said, well, we'll call it five guys for now and then we'll change it. As soon as we get the papers filled out, we'll change it. And the lawyer said, okay.

Okay, so on your first day, the opening day in 1986, did you guys have like a grand opening? No, we didn't. And when we first opened up at 11 o'clock, there was no business at all until quartered 12. And then one person finally walked in, and 1230, we were almost packed. And we made money from our very first day. And we were breaking even. We were paying our rent. And you didn't have any employees, right?

Because everybody was in a family. We had a couple employees, but mostly it was a kids. And we were paying them some. I think at the time we were paying them $7.50 now or something like that. How did you even know how to make a burger? I mean, were you a good home chef? Was anybody in your family a good chef? Listen, come from my hometown.

You can't make a burger. You can't live. So, I mean, we knew how to make burgers. And from where I'm from, as Posen was right near us, and they raised potatoes. I grew up on a farm that we raised a lot of potatoes. I knew how to cook a potato, and we knew how to cook a hamburger. That was both it. You knew how to grill a burger and out of fried potatoes.

Yeah. And that's all you really needed to know how to do. That's all we knew. Where did you guys get the ingredients from, like the potatoes and all this stuff? Like, how did you know how to source this stuff? We went to Thresher's in Ocean City and looked on the potato bags. And we found out they came from Rigby, Idaho. A guy named Rick Miles was a small potato dealer out there.

So we got a hold of him. And we said, would you sell us potatoes? We did not know at the time that he was small. Now he's become a multimillionaire because we buy all our potatoes from him. And what were so special about his potatoes? They were sold by Thresher's in Ocean City. So you thought, hey, if there's a line outside this potato joint, their potatoes must be good. Right.

What was five guys offering at that time? Was it burgers with all the toppings and all that stuff? Well, what we did with the kids, Janie and I would not tell the kids how much we were paying for the product. we'd said whatever pickles you want to put on the hamburgers you guys picked the pickles so they would try different brands and different pickles and finally they'd end up with the most expensive pickles there were

and we wouldn't say anything about it we'd say okay if that's the pickles you want buy those pickles they would just buy them at the supermarket yeah at first okay then we said well buy the most expensive cooking oil you want to cook in and it was peanut all because that's where they cooked them out inocin city they wanted to buy this bread from a little baker in Arlington that made really good bread. Brenner's bakery, they're probably the best

bakery in Arlington at the time. But for a restaurant business, that would be expensive. We're paying about seven times for a hamburger bun as McDonald's was then. And what was a burger going for in 1986? I think we're selling something for like three times, four times what McDonald's was selling for, which everybody said we were crazy. We wouldn't make it that way. But we didn't let the kids know how much we were paying for any of the food. So they would just say, go out there and whatever it was, if they liked it, that's the way it was. And what was the thinking behind that strategy? The thinking was that they're going to pick the best product.

They're going to pick what the customer likes, what they liked. Give you an example how ridiculous it is. The kids liked a certain kind of mayonnaise because it was thick and it would hold things together. And we were buying our mayonnaise at the time from a guy up in New York City that was really hard to get along with. And so when we hired our first purchasing agent, he said, there's no way that mayonnaise is this important. No way, because this guy was so hard to deal with. So he had all the family come in and do a blind mayonnaise taste.

And to this day, I can't eat mayonnaise by itself. So we had like nine different dishes with mayonnaise, and you tend to take a little spoon, and everybody would taste the mayonnaise blindfolded. And he'd say, I'm going to prove to you that you can't tell the difference. this manis or any other manis, you know. And after we took our blindfolds off, my wife, myself, and all the boys picked the same mayonnaise.

Wow. He couldn't believe it. And that was the mayonnaise we were getting from New York. So, uh, Jane and I, what we would do was at the end of the month, we'd look at the sales, and then we'd look at how much we paid for the food, and we'd say, we've got to raise our prices.

The kids didn't know why we were raising the prices, but we would always say food costs, stay around 30%. Whatever we got to do, if we got to raise prices, we raise prices. And we said, if we have to worry about price, we don't want to be in this business. Okay, so you've got this first burger join, right? And how do people find out about it? How do people even know about it? The only way would be somebody else telling them. They said, there's this great burger place, this little like walk-up shack. You got to try it. Right. That's the only way they would have found out about it.

There was a place in D.C. when I first moved here, I had an office downtown that lunch and breakfast, but it was downstairs, and it was an alley. And it was nothing on a door, if I remember right, just a steel door coming off the alley. But all the officers around there would go to this place, and it was on-marked, and it was in alley. And I was always impressed with the fact that that guy could do that much business up there, and I knew him. I knew much money was making. and he sold it, and within three months it was gone. The people were going there for the food, and it was working. And I said, well, heck, if that guy can do that, then, you know,

we'll just open up in a corner, and if people like us, they'll come, and if they don't like us, they won't, and then we won't be in the business. Coming up, how five guys did stay in business, and how they grew way beyond Virginia, even though the last person who wanted to do that was Jerry. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR. This is Peter Sagle. When we began Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, we dreamed that our rude jokes would be, in the end, the appropriate way to talk about the news. And look, it happened. Listen to Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me on the NPR One app or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Hey, welcome back to How I Built This from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So, Jerry and his sons opened up a tiny burger joint in Arlington, Virginia. And at first, people, people, People knew about it through word of mouth. But of course, eventually, newspapers started to write about the burgers, and then the lines started to get longer. So Jerry and his family started to think about opening a second location. But they needed the money to finance it. I can remember going in the bank, and they said, you're going to do what? I said, well, don't put another hamburger place.

And it was just, they laughed at us. But so my sons said we got friends that their parents got a little bit of money and they know five guys is doing good. Maybe we'll ask them for a few thousand. So we got eventually we got about 150, 200 people that would be willing at any one time to give us money. But not as investors just for loans. We did it a different way. We did it as investors. We'd say give us $5,000.

We'll give you a certain percentage of the, gross, not never the profit, because it was always too many ways to get cheap people that way. So I said, we'll give you a certain percentage of the gross, we'll give you the money every single month. And anytime you want your money back, you can have it. And everybody said, well, that's stupid, because if you have a blip, everybody's going to come in and ask for the money back. But my method to my madness was also that I said to them, anytime I want to pay you back, I can. Because I knew someday, if this thing was successful, I was going to get better. financing. I can go back to these people and pay them back anytime I want it. So you never gave

them, so they weren't equity owners? Not in a real sense. We just made a note, said, if this store does 20,000 a week, you get a certain percentage at every week. And we gave them the money exactly on time every month so that we could always go back and ask for more money. So how much money did you, did you raise to do store number two? Well, for store number two, we probably only had to raise maybe maybe 150,000. But we had a lot of people that just wanted to throw money on us. Because they liked the burgers.

They liked what you're doing? Well, they liked the fact that we were making money and they were getting paid every month. I had about 75 people I didn't even know on that list. And I used to say to everyone, don't put your money in somebody else's business. And they were just,

it seemed like a lot of people saw something in five guys. Were you fully committed to this? Or did you, were you still doing financial? planning. I still doing financial planning. At what point do you say to your kids and your wife, you know, I'm going to give up my job and I'm going to focus on five guys full time. Well, that was almost the day I got hit in the head with a broom. I must have been having a bad day at the office or something. And I went home and I said, my wife, I quit. And she said, you've got to be crazy. And I said, no, I'm done. I'm not going to work anymore. I'm just going to

concentrate on the burger business. And she was pretty upset. Because she thought this is too risky. Yes. But you thought, I think we could make this work. Well, I just, I thought it was fun. Yeah. I always told my kids, I said, you don't have to be in this business.

If you want to be, make sure it's fun. Pick something you like to do in the business. Okay, so now it was like the entire family focusing full time on five guys. Yep. What, like, roles did everybody play? Well, Janie is like a general. I mean, she is very organized. She runs the office and everything.

But my kids were able to go to investors. And so I kind of, if it wasn't for them and my wife, there would be no five guys. I didn't build five guys. I used to sit around thinking, God, look at this thing. It's growing so fast. I can't believe it, you know. They came up with most of the names. new ideas and they pretend they listen to me.

So I have lived in the Washington, D.C. area for a long time, off and on. And I remember, you know, driving to Virginia in like, you know, 1999, 2000 to get a five Guysburger in Virginia when it was still just, what, four or five locations. 2002, up until 2002, you grew up to five shops. Five. And were you doing pretty well? Were you all making a decent living at that point? You guys must have been rich. No.

You weren't. But the thing is, we had figured out the nuts and bolts of the business by them. Most franchisers start off to franchise. We didn't start off the franchise. We had no idea we're going to do that. We started off to build a family business. And we put 17 years into it, and we figured out how to do it right. Yeah.

So when it came to time to franchising, I mean, we had a perfect system. So how did you then at that point say, you know, hey, let's, franchise. Let's build this thing out. My sons came to me about in the 19, late 1990 and started trying to convince me to franchise. And I was dead set against it, really dead set against it. Because I didn't think there was any way I could convince other people to do what we were doing. So how did they change your mind? Well, there was a guy named Mark Mosley that was selling franchises for another company.

He'd been watching five guys for a while. And my kids got me to meet with them. I didn't want to do it. In fact, they bought me a book called Franchising for Dummies. It was written by Dave Thomas. Oh, the guy from Wendy's. Yeah, the guy from Wendy's. Yeah, okay.

And so I read it. The legal stuff was amazing, all the rules you had to follow and everything. So, well, they talked me into it. Why didn't you want to do it? Because when you start franchising, first of all, telling a franchisee that you're not going to worry about food costs, that's pretty stupid. You're going to tell a franchisee that you're not going to advertise? That sounds pretty stupid. You're going to tell them that you're only going to sell hamburgers and french fries.

They're all going to say, wait a minute, we've got to be open leader, we've got to sell alcohol, we've got to watch food costs, we got to shop around for our products. I said, I don't do that. And I said, we buy from people and we're going to stick with them. That was all hard to sell to franchisees. But we got through that. And I remember Mark coming in because he was going to be our salesman. He said he was going to sell, I can't remember how many stores the first year that were going to sell. But I said, no, just cut that in half.

I mean, if you're going to sell 50, just cut it down to 25. You don't have to sell 50. And I think within a year and a half or two years, we sold $3,500. We sold the whole United States. So wait, I mean, your burgers were still a lot more expensive than like a McDonald's burger. Absolutely. And it took a lot longer to get a burger there, right? Like, it's not instant.

It's not skinny. No, no. It takes longer to get a burger. So, I mean, the business model is different. So were you worried? I mean, did you ever think, you know, maybe this works in Northern Virginia, but I'm not sure this is going to work somewhere else. Absolutely.

It's scared the heck out of us. You were talking about the long wait. We used to have a sign at one of our stores that said if you're in a hurry, there are a lot of really good burger places near here. And everybody said, oh, my God, you can't put that sign up. And it helped. Yeah. I remember the first franchise store we opened up was in Richmond.

And I said, oh, my God. God, Richmond, nobody's going to know who we are in Richmond. Yeah. I couldn't even sleep the night before. Richmond, that's like down the road 90 miles. It's nothing. But I couldn't even sleep. I said, nobody's going to know who we are.

And Richmond's still over successful. And then they said, well, now we're going to go to North Carolina and South Carolina. I said, nobody knows who we are down there. And I said, no way we're going to Florida because people will never buy that product in Florida because they're older people. And Florida's, we got 100 stores in Florida or something. I mean, the idea of going from five stores in 2002 to thousands of stores within a year or two years. Well, we didn't go to thousands of stores.

We sold franchises. Those are still being built out in the United States. We've got about 1,400 of them built out now. But all the territory in the United States is gone. Was that just mind-boggling to you? Mind-boggling. mind-boggling. And I was so proud of my kids that didn't go to their head.

They're still my kids. They work just like they used to. They work hard all every day. What is it, I mean, what does it like to work with your five sons and your wife? I mean, they're all involved in the company. Do they each do a different thing for the company? Well, I have one son that just loves doing stuff in the stores, like making sure they're painted right and decorated.

rated right. And he's really into that. So that's his job. That's what he does mostly. And I got another one that's a fanatic about the food. And so he goes around the world putting on shows and how to cook things right and stuff. And I got another son that he's really into the financing part of it. He grabbed it. And I'm glad because I don't understand a lot of it, especially it's international finance. So everybody's kind of found their own little niche, you know. And my grandkids, I got four grandkids working the business. Some of them like teaching. Some of them like working in the field.

And one of them just loves taking care of making sure there's no food-borne illness. She's just a fanatic about it. And she loves doing it. And so I let them find what they want to find. And if there's a gap that can't be filled by them, then we'll hire somebody. Is your family still the primary owner of the company? Yes. We own about 75% of the company, me and my family.

But we took in a fairly big investor when we first started franchising. They don't interfere in our business at all. They gave us a big chunk of money. They're entrepreneurs, too, and they saw something in Five Guys. What percentage of the actual restaurants do you guys own? We own, out of about 14,500 restaurants, we have a joint venture in Great Britain and France and Germany where we own with our partner half. That's about 60 stores.

And then over here, we own about 450 out of the 1400. So how many countries total is five guys in now? We're in Great Britain, which I guess is still one country for now. Right. You're in the U.K. And now we've got 60 stores there. We're doing France. We just opened up in Shanz de Lozay.

Got a store in Madrid. We got several stores in the Middle East. So I think a lot of people, when they get a little bit successful, they look back and trying to figure out how they did it. I can't figure it out. You still don't know? No. Do you think a lot of it was luck? Oh, my God, yeah.

Two things I give a lot of credit to them. I'm a great believer in intuition or a higher power or God or whatever you want to call it. I'm a great believer in listening. into my hunches. And I couldn't have done it on my own, that's for sure. My kids, I'm lucky and heck I got my kids and my wife because it seems like to me, without them, we'd have done nothing. But we were lucky, real lucky, real, real lucky.

Do you, I mean, really your vision was not to open up a burger joint. Your vision was to get your kids to live with you when you and your wife divorced. Right. Which that was your, I guess, that was your real success, getting your kids to come live with you. I think so. Yeah, the best thing it's ever had in my life is my kids, there's no doubt about that. And the best thing that's happened to their mother, which is my ex-wife, is the fact that they were able to do all kinds of wonderful things for her. Yeah. So.

And you still have a pretty good relationship with her? Oh, yeah. So does my current wife. Yeah, we get along. So she's benefited from the success of your sons as well. Absolutely, absolutely. How did being financially stable and set? How did that change your life?

Were you able to do things that you couldn't do before? Well, most people that I know, I've known since I've been a kid. When I started five guys, I let three or four of my buddies that I went to high school with buy stock and my company, because I thought it would be a great thing for them. because they didn't have money. They had a little bit of money, but not much. And one of them I had a loan on the money. And they're all millionaires now.

But we're still same old people. I mean, I just had a bunch of my friends down from Michigan a couple weeks ago on my boat in Florida. We drink beer together, same as it was 30, 40 years ago. And you can lead a pretty anonymous life. Like, no one, you're not walking around the street, and no one's like, oh, there's Jerry, the founder of five guys. No, in fact, my wife always says she gets upset of me if I'm sitting out in the front yard eating a can of beans or something.

And I always wear Levi's. But, no, I don't know how other people look at me, but I don't think any of us put on airs. I hope not. Yeah, it's amazing. I was thinking back to what you said earlier, that when you were a kid, the nuns said you were going to sell hamburgers. Yeah. What about your mom? I mean, what would she have thought about what you did with Five Guys hamburgers?

My mom liked hamburgers. She probably thought that was a good idea. In fact, my mom used to say, if you could make a good hamburger or serve a good drink or give a good haircut, you'll always have something to do, yeah. Have an income. Yeah. Jerry Morel, founder of Five Guys, Burgers and Fries. And if you add up all of the restaurants and franchises around the world, old, he says they are approaching $2 billion in revenue. By the way, for years, five guys resisted

selling milkshakes. But about two years ago, after considerable debate, some stores decided to start selling them with mix in flavors like peanut butter, banana, strawberries, salted caramel, and of course, why not? Bacon. Hey, thanks so much for sticking around because it's time now for how you built that. And today we're updating a story we first ran about a year ago. And just a quick warning, if you're a parent of small children, you are about to hear about poop and barf, because those two things are at the very heart of Hannah England's business. She has two small children of her own. And if you've ever wondered what happens inside one of those family changing rooms, well, I walked into the bathroom and there were two moms.

One was at the changing station and her baby had just had a blowout, like, major, like up the back all the way to the neck kind of a thing. And this is going to be a situation that every mom gets themselves into. And by the way, every dad, I mean, I've been there. And here's a thing. Once you've cleaned up your kid, what are you supposed to do with all those soiled and disgusting clothes, especially when you're not at home? You know, you kind of just cringe when you have to stick that in your diaper bag.

And then when you have to open it after a full day, I mean, it is not pleasant. Not to mention, after the clothes have festered in your diaper bag for a day, it may become impossible to get the stains out of them. Anyway, all of this got Hannah thinking. I came up with this idea when I was putting my three-year-old to bed. And I came out to the living room when I just started describing to my... my sister-in-law and my husband, this bag, this soaking bag, and I kept filling in the blanks. What if we could, and what if it had this? And then they looked at me and they're like, well, it sounds like you just invented it.

And what Hannah envisioned was a watertight plastic bag that you could keep in your diaper bag. It would have a soap pod in it, kind of like the pod that goes into your dishwasher so that when your kid pooped or barfed all over her clothes, you would just throw it in the bag, water and voila, the clothes would soak in soapy water while you went about your day. And then I kind of just hit the ground running because I thought, I need this in my life. So about two years ago, Hannah started calling manufacturers. They sent her prototypes of the plastic bags and she and her husband began to test them.

We'd immediately fill it with water and seal it and hang it upside down in our living room and kitchen to look for drips and leaks because we want these things to be able to hold up in a mom's diaper bag and that's like going to combat. But in those early days, nothing worked. The bags would break or the zippers would come undone and water would get everywhere. So Hannah kept calling around until she found one manufacturer in Wisconsin who seemed to know exactly what she needed. And he goes, well, I think we're going with a seal that's actually really aggressive for your utility. and I said, exactly, I want it to be aggressive.

A seal so aggressive that you would have to use scissors to get it open. And then Hannah found another manufacturer to make a very gentle soap pod. And finally, she designed the outside of the bags with classy black and white stripes. I wanted the design itself to not scream like, okay, this is a bag for soiled poop. She then launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise about $12,000. dollars, and for a while it looked like she wasn't going to make her goal. But then, kind of an amazing thing happened. The accounting software company, QuickBooks, found out about her.

And QuickBooks has this program where it supports small businesses. And so someone from QuickBooks sent her a message via Kickstarter that basically said, hey, we're going to back you for the rest of the way. It just showed up on our Kickstarter thing. And my husband, of course, was going, nope, this is some weird fraud thing. And I laughed at him and I'm like, what kind of fraud puts money into your bank account? Normally, they take money out. Hannah was right. It was not fraud.

And in December of 2017, she shipped her very first production run, about 5,000 bags to those Kickstarter backers. Her company is called Wash It Later. And since we spoke to Hannah last year, the company has moved from her basement to an actual office. And about two months ago, they started selling a grab-and-go version of their diaper bag. It's become an even bigger success than their original product. If you want to learn more about Hannah and her company Wash It Later or hear previous episodes, head to our podcast page, How I Built This.NPR.org. And of course, if you want to tell us your story, go to build.npr.org.

We love hearing what you're up to. And thanks so much for listening to the show this week. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcast. and why you're there, please do give us a review. You can also write to us at hibt at npr.org, and if you want to send a tweet, it's at How I Built This. Our show is produced this week by Casey Herman with music composed by Ramtin Arablewe.

Thanks also to Mia Venkat, J.C. Howard, Noor Kudsi, Neva Grant, Sanaz Mechkampur, and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is Candice Lim. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This from NPR.