How I Built This with Guy Raz - How I Built Resilience: Live with Susan Griffin-Black

Episode Date: April 9, 2020

Each week, Guy will be hosting brief online conversations with founders and members of the How I Built This community about how they're navigating these uncertain times. This past Friday, Guy spoke with Susan Griffin-Black, founder of EO Products. Susan's company has made a full pivot by only producing hand sanitizer and hand soap from their facilities in San Rafael, California. As she continues to run her business, Susan told Guy about protecting her employees while trying to make enough hand sanitizer for her community and frontline workers.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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Now, in case you miss these conversations live, we're going to be posting an excerpt right here every Thursday in your podcast feed. And today's guest is Susan Griffin Black, founder of EO products. EO makes a whole line of body, skin, and hair care products. But since the COVID-19 crisis, they've pivoted to pretty much only making hand sanitizer and hand soap, which is why Susan wasn't at home, when we talked to her, she was actually in her office in San Rafael, California. We are an excluded employer because we're making only hand sanitizers and hand soap. And so what that means is two-thirds of the people are working from home. And who is here on two shifts are all the people who make our products, fill our products,

and ship our products, plus support positions like quality control and so forth. And then senior leadership, we, depending on our situations, we've been taking turns, just coming in and making sure that people are okay. So we have every safety protocol in place. And our main concern is that people are healthy and safe. I mean, after all, we're making hand sanitizer. That's our job here. And we are finding, other than dealing with these unsettling times and being overwhelmed with demand, that we are united in a sense of purpose that is daunting sometimes, you know?

What about your other product lines? Have you kind of just frozen those and focusing primarily on hand sanitizers and soaps? Yes, we devoted all production to mostly hand sanitizers, supported by hand soap, and we're working on other relationships with one contract manufacturer that we have been in relationship with for a long time to see if they can help us out during these times. Susan, obviously super uncertain times for a lot of businesses. A lot of founders who've been on the show I've been in touch with. I've talked to a lot of small business owners through social media. People are really worried. People are really freaking out, especially in companies and in businesses where, you know,

you need human-to-human interaction. First of all, it sounds like right now your business is doing fine. I mean, maybe strangely even better than normal. Well, I would say there's a certain amount of stability that comes with the increased demand and in a more orderly way because we know what we're making. A lot of times, you know, we are forecasting the best we can. And this is a very unique situation where we just can't make enough to meet the demand. It's daunting.

We are staying very flexible to the need because it became obvious six weeks ago that if we're not getting hand sanitizer to first-time responders, then what are we doing? Like, you know, you've got pallets on trucks, you've got tons in warehouses, but they're not, you know, it's not where people actually need it the most. So we just keep thinking and reallocating and responding as intentionally and consciously as we can as needs arise and as we just redistribute products. Right. Do you, By the way, in terms of your employees, because people have to come in to work at the plant to make hand sanitizer, to make soap, how are you sort of maintaining, you know, health at the workplace? This is from Lanny Kaffey, she's asking that question. Right. So there's a daily check-in and check-up. There are sanitizers everywhere. And, of course, we're observing social distancing. We just ordered cloth masks. and of course in compounding, everyone wears masks and goggles all of the time.

Everyone has hair nets on. So it's really enforcing and modeling what it is that we can all do to help each other through. For sure. By the way, have you had to ramp up hiring too? I mean, have you had to bring on additional help? We have in production. So one of the things we did was reallocated some people who were doing some. office work and they are now doing e-commerce shipping and then when we need help in production

it's we try to make it as internal as we possibly can so but we have been hiring Susan in terms of like from from a business standpoint you alluded to the supply chain challenge and that is probably going to pose increasing challenges because you rely on on getting lavender and oils from from all over the world where you you know you source them from very specific places. So how do you begin to plan for the possibility of supply chain disruption with your business? Yeah, it's tricky. The simple answer is as best we can by being in touch with our primary vendors

and just trying to project as much as we can. And also we've committed to quadrupling our inventory in certain items. as quickly as we can. You know, we're just all working it together from our lavender supplier and our, you know, sugar-based alcohol supplier in Brazil. And there's a lot of logistics. You know, FDA has tightened some of these rules temporarily, you know, so distilleries are making hand sanitizer.

But, you know, it's not really a part-time gig. Right. This is a question from Zach from Philadelphia. what is the current state in the future outlook for supply chain of the alcohol used in your hand sanitizer? You mentioned Brazil. What's the outlook for the alcohol? I mean, is there a possibility that we may find ourselves in a shortage of that ingredient?

I don't think so because we have so many. There are a lot of variations on the theme. The quality that we've been working with prefer and have procured over the past 20 years has been, you know, organic alcohol from sugar cane in Brazil. And we were probably one of the first ones in the marketplace to use that. There's also non-GMO corn alcohol that's available. And then there's plenty of GMO corn alcohol available in this country. So it's a matter of the quality of ingredients.

And not everyone wants the alcohol, but we use because it's more expensive. Susan, this is a question from Leanne in San Diego. She's asked, you know, given that you've really ramped up production on hand sanitizers, have you found a way to give it to frontline health care workers to maybe even make it available for free to people working on the front lines? Yes, we've donated to all of the emergency rooms and the police, the firemen, and then now. Now we are providing sanitizers to the local governments, and we donated 200,000 hand sanitizers to lift in the beginning so that their drivers were safe and people who were in cars were safe. And also, you know, we have one little store in Mill Valley, and it occurred to me that the markets close by can't get hand sanitizer because they go through distributors. So it leaves our warehouse on a palette.

It goes over here. Then I got, you know, so I would just stand outside and hand out. I just went to every supermarket and gave every checkout person hand sanitizer. You know, I just take it with me. Every restaurant take out place. You'll see our sanitizer. I've personally given families that I see walking down the street. So as much as we can help and give away and donate, we are like on the ground.

we are like on the ground doing that. Here's a question from Shana in Miami, which I think is a really kind of an interesting question. You know, she says she's seeing a lot of people with kind of a lifestyle change. People are trying to, you know, kind of keep their immune systems strong. And I don't know. I mean, I mean, is there a world where you can imagine that actually everything that happens after this is, everything will change? even the way we sort of our own personal approach to health? I do think that it realigns our priorities in a much more human and healthy way

by slowing down and quieting down and not moving around so much that we're so much less distracted. So I do think people will take heed and try to figure out what it is that has heart and meaning. And you can't take your health for good. granted and clean hands will be like brushing your teeth. So it's a real wake-up call and a global wake-up call. I know. Susan, I want to just talk a little bit about kind of the thing that you've really been focused on throughout your career, which is self-care, right, which is not always easy

for everybody. And normally, we're so busy, you know, we get up and we've got these busy days and most of us spend an hour or two at our homes every day because we're out of, but now we're all in. What are some things that you think people could do? I mean, I just give you one quick thing that I've been doing. I drink coffee like 10 cups of coffee a day, but I just stopped drinking it because it was like heightening in my anxiety because coffee makes your heartbeat, right? So I've just been drinking tea. And that's been actually great. It's been really great.

What are kind of some self-care things? Because a big part of what you do is make essential oils and personal care products. Yeah, it's so difficult. And I think that news fast for sure, extracting yourself from that, taking a break, going outside, getting fresh air, having a cup of tea, not while reading emails, just sitting still really for five or ten minutes outside. Also, I learned to meditate easily when my son, who's now 33, was two in the bathtub. because I found that, and this is especially for, you know, when you're with kids all day, homeschooling, you know, hot water is really good medicine any time and it's accessible. So even if you take a few drops of eucalyptus or lavender, put it on the shower floor,

close the door, put a towel under it, and make sort of a quasi little steam room, sitting there for a little bit, turn the water down, take a shower. it just, it changes everything and just getting outside for a 10 minute walk, move, you know, inhale fresh air. I was saying to someone, if you just took a sample of 10 plants that are in your front yard, that you don't know what they are, it's a really good family exercise to just say, oh, this is, you know, Rosemary and this is, and you just sort of get a little bit more in touch with sense of place. have a small geranium plant on our back porch. We've been using that to make tea, just pouring hot water and geranium.

I'd learn that from my mom. It's amazing. All right. Thank you, Susan. I hope to see you soon after this craziness somehow is fixed. Virtual hug. Virtual hug, yes. That's Susan Griffin Black, co-founder of EO products.

We're going to be putting these online conversations in your feed every Thursday and hosting the actual conversations every week on Facebook Live. This Friday, April 10th, I'll be live with Tristan Walker, founder of Walker and company. He'll be talking to me about his skincare products and Beville, the razor that his company makes, and how they're dealing with the situation. Bring your questions for me and Tristan Walker on Friday, April 10th. That's at 12 noon eastern 9 a.m. Pacific at Facebook.com slash how I built this. You don't need a Facebook account to watch.

And if you want to find out more about our live conversations or other virtual NPR events, go to nprpresents.org. Thanks for listening. Stay safe. And we'll see you next week. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to how I built this. LifeKit is like your friend with really good advice. So can I really be truthful? Yeah.

It's just me and you, right? Well, sure, let's say it is. Three times a week, Life Kit is in your feeds with episodes on health, personal finance, personal growth, and so much more. Listen to Life Kit from NPR.