How I Built This with Guy Raz - Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day: Monica Nassif

Episode Date: February 17, 2025

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 & Instagram, and email us at [e-mail]. Sign up for Guy’s free newsletter at guyraz.com See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. I talk to entrepreneurs all the time who are looking for a way to upgrade their digital footprint. Well, whether you're just starting out or you're scaling your business, Squarespace is the easiest way to build a great website that stands out. It's an all-in-one website platform that gives you everything you need to claim your domain, showcase your products, and get paid. Anyone can use Squarespace's cutting-edge design tools to build an online presence that truly reflects what makes your business. special. There are templates, intuitive drag-and-drop editing, and even an AI-enhanced website builder. Then, Squarespace's built-in analytics tools help you make smarter business decisions. Review website traffic, learn where to focus engagement, and track revenue all in one place.

Looking to grow your business? Squarespace even offers fast, easy business financing through Squarespace capital. Go to Squarespace.com slash built for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code built to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Loans issued by Celtic Bank and serviced by Stripe. All loans subject to credit approval. This show is in partnership with Airbnb. This past summer, I took my family to Vienna, and it was incredible. We spent our days wandering the old streets, stopping for coffee and pastries, visiting museums, and just soaking up the history of one of the most beautiful cities in the world. And one of the things that made the trip so special was the home we booked on Airbnb. It had

tall windows, beautiful old details, and plenty of space for all of us. And being in that home on Airbnb, right in the middle of Vienna, walking distance from so much of the city, 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 a place with a 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.com slash host. All of a sudden, you've got your mom in the Whole Foods in Columbus Circle in New York, and it's called Mrs. Myers.

And she's like, I'm Mrs. Myers, but it wasn't like the Charmin Squeeze guy. No. She was real. She's like the real deal. Yeah, and we would bring her to trade shows, and people just, like, loved seeing her. And she just embraced this whole thing. And I'm like, oh, shh. But would they ask her, like, hey, how did you invent this?

How did you start this business? Oh, yeah. What would she say? 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. Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements. they built. 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.

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 Nassiv had just stepped away from her small creative marketing agency in Minneapolis. At the time, she was burned out and looking for a new business.

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 grips 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 that. Caldria was, and still is, William Sonoma. The soaps and cleansers and detergents did fairly well, but because they were fancy and pricey, Monica knew the brand would 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. Myers was in Target and Whole Foods and Growing Fast. Today, both of Monica's brands, Mrs. Myers 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 a 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. My mom had a purple station wagon, like she drove that thing like a bet out of hell. She got caught speeding so many times. And this was long before seatbelts. And I, since I was the oldest girl, I would be in the front seat.

I always got shotgun and it was always, hold a baby. So I always remember, I'm holding a baby. She's driving like a bet out of hell, and we're going somewhere. Yeah, that's amazing. Yep. You know, the thing is is that I kind of wish I had eight kids, maybe I didn'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? 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 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. Were you, oh, I mean, you're the oldest daughter. So you were kind of a surrogate mom. I mean, kind of looking after. to the others, right? 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, she said, Monica, you were capable, and I needed the help. And honestly, what's kind of interesting, she only said this to me a couple years ago. She said, you know, I don't know that 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 got to, you know, do some laundry or put some dinner on the table or run some brother to some sports practice. And I think of my oldest sister, who also kind of had to kind of look after me. She was six years older.

And, you know, 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 was like out the gate, ready to go. Without question, you were, you know, my parents' attitude was get a job. That was so much more important than your grades. I don't ever remember 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. I've seen you describe yourself in an interview gave as a wild child in high school.

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, drinking beer and getting drunk? I was probably, yeah, drinking beer, drinking stide, hopping down the back of motorcycles with my brother's friends, being a stone cheerleader. Yeah, I was not a model citizen. It was the early 70s. Yeah.

And I had a lot of fun in high school, I'm going to be honest. Did you ever get caught, you know, sort of breaking the rules? Like drinking or? Mostly grounded guy. I spent most of my high school days grounded. But I had this amazing. I wish I still had a Jimmy Hendricks poster in my bedroom. He had the floral wreath on his head.

had no shirt, a zipper, you know, about an inch long. Yep. And my dad came up and saw that and he goes, you take that down. I said, I'm not taking it down. He goes, well, you've got a choice. You can take down the poster or be grounded for 30 days. I said, I'll take the grounding. Wow.

I'll take it, man. I'm just going to sit back and look at Jimmy for 30 days. All right. So you graduate high school and then I think you go on to the University of Iowa. And I guess you tried a bunch of different majors before finally settling on nursing. Is that right? 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. It took me five years. But I also kind of settled down, too. I thought, you know what? I'm just going to see if I can get straight A's for once.

Just I'm going to try it. And I did. And so I finally kind of stopped the party and got my head. head on straight and thought, well, I'll just try this nursing gig, see how it works. Yeah. So you graduate in 1979. Right. And right after that, in very young age, you get married to your college sweetheart. That's right. To Mr. David Nassif. And you become Monica Nassif, you no longer Monica Myers. That's right. Yeah. So, I mean, you're like 22. You guys are married. I was 24. Yeah, but pretty young. Yeah. And I should say, you're still married to David.

He hasn't left me yet, guy. I mean, he had a lot of chances. Trust me. He's a good guy. I just celebrate 20. So, yeah. Good for you. It's a, I mean, you're 1980.

That's amazing. Okay. So you guys get married. And he, I guess, was running a landscaping company. And the two of you decided to move to Minneapolis. 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 at it. 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. I interviewed on Friday and I started Monday.

That's how desperate they were for nurses. How did you like being a nurse? You know, I loved the pace. I love learning about your body. I loved all the science behind it. But honestly, it was a hard job. It's a hard job. You see a lot of where I worked in surgical intensive.

intensive care unit at the U, a lot of train wrecks, you know, a lot of sorrow, a lot of transplant patients. Yeah, we had the train wrecks on our and on our ward. It's hard to see every day. 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. In English. 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 went 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. But I was probably the oldest intern at Dayton Hudson at age 28 in the history of interns. And this is the parent company of Target, right? So some of your work, I guess, involved like writing speeches for the president of Target at the time. Yeah, I was so the, it was actually the president of Dayton Hudson. His name was Bokesales. He was from Iowa. So he kind of took a, you know, liking to me because I could listen to his jokes, stand up on my own.

You were from Iowa, so he's, yeah. Right. And 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. 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. 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. So I know that you had your first child, your first daughter in 1987. Yep. And then two years later had your second daughter, Cala, in 1989. And you continue to work. I mean, you took leave. I took, you know, six weeks off. Through both of those, you know, births and pregnancies.

But I want to talk about Cala because I know that, you know, within a few months of her births, she was diagnosed with cancer. Yeah, that was probably one of the scariest times in my life. So I can't even imagine. 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 is not my baby Calla. So I 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 palpade 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 he said, have you ever felt this mass in your daughter's abdomen? And I go, no. And then, of course, Gild sets in like, hey, I'm an ex-nource. I should see these things. I just, I dismissed it. How old was she?

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. Oh. Yeah, it's terrifying. How far long was it?

Thank goodness she was stage one. So it only involved one kidney, thank goodness. So she goes into surgery, she has her kidney removed, and 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. 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. So just to make sure that we don't freak anybody out, Kala is very much healthy adult today.

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 Cala, 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 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. 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. I mean, I can understand that a thousand percent. I just cannot imagine how stressful that was for you and your husband. She would come on from chemo.

She'd sit in the high chair. She'd throw up. Yeah. It was a difficult time without question. All right. So part of probably not to sort of psych, go analyze this, but I imagine part of you just saying, you know what, I'm going to put my put my head down in work. Probably it gave you focus. Oh, without question. I mean, I would,

I would get in the car and just go, failure is not an option. I got a hustle enough work here to make the mortgage payment, make the insurance payment, put food on the table. Yeah, I got a hustle, and I got a hustle. Yeah. And so, I mean, from what I gather, at this point, you started, to do a bunch of freelance gigs. You were like writing and marketing. And I think a lot of it for Target, right? They were kind of a big client. And you were basically a free agent, right? But I guess you started to see that there were a bunch of other freelance people doing this kind of this kind of work. 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. A business. Yeah, without questions. And Target started teaming me up with a creative director on a lot of projects. 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 Kiltur. And I learned a lot. You know, that's when I really learned how to build a brand, how to design a brand, how to make it, you know, highly competitive in the marketplace. So 89, you start this marketing design company with this colleague. And what was her name?

Cynthia Knox. So you and Cynthia started and you grow it to like almost 30 people. Yeah, so we were doing work for, you know, rainforest cafe, live touch, Medtronic, mostly consumer brands, but other big brands out of Minneapolis. Yeah, big brands. Yeah. So there was a lot of work for us without question. And were you guys making a lot of money? No, we were not making a lot of money.

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 in all your talent. And yeah, I mean, we made a good living. Did we make millions of dollars? No, you know. And then while we had kilter, we thought we were so smart. Let's start a watch company. A watch company? Yeah. This, it's an utter... You and Cynthia said this? Yeah. Oh, yeah. This is our wristwatch company? Like a wristwatch company? Yeah, this was our great child. And at the time, there was this huge gulf between a swatch watch, you know, $100. And a Rolex, thousands of dollars. And we saw this merchandising opportunity,

like, oh my God, we should fill the void, right? Somewhere between a swatch and a Rolex. Yeah, and a Rolex, like an upscale Swiss watch. So we went after it. It was the stupidest thing we could have done 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. But how far along the path did you go? Did you actually get a watch, like a prototype me? Oh, yeah. We made watches. We went to Switzerland, found a manufacturer, spent way too much money, lost all that money. But 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. Yeah. The bills were paid by Target and Medtronic and Rainforest Cafe that you guys were doing work for them. Exactly. But everybody wanted to work on the watches because that was cool. Because it was cool. And so the idea was you would have, and what would the watch to sell for? I think they're around like 189, 175. So they were slightly above a swatch, but a lot more fashion. Were they leather straps? Yeah, yeah, leather strapped, plastic, really clean Swiss faces, very sleek, very MoMA-esque.

Yeah, they were cool. I still have some. Believe me, I have probably too many. Wow. Yeah. So you thought, all right, 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?

Probably about a year, a year and a half. Cynthia went to a trade show in Switzerland, found a manufacturer. 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 be the 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.

It is it. I'm going to sell, sell, sell, sell. I'm not coming home until I got a fist full of POs. That was like the vow I made to myself when we had that watch company. So it was painful. It was expensive. How much money did you think you lost? $75,000 savings.

So a lot of money certainly. Yeah. Yeah, okay. Not devastating, but our savings for our family. Yeah. It was a painful lesson in many ways. All right, but you continue doing 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. this kind of product or that kind of product. And most of the time you were, that advice was

ignored. 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'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 the same old stuff. And you know what? I'm bored. I want my own product. And you were about to turn 40 or you were in early 40.

Yeah. It was kind of as I was looking at 40 going, I got to do something else. Then, you know, a couple of years later, I'm at the store in Atlanta, a big box store, probably a linens and things or bed bath and beyond. And I see this huge palette 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. These are like cleaning products like window spray. And yeah, they named 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 palette. And I thought, this could be awesome. this category. It could be like a Veda. That's what I was standing there going.

A Veda. Yeah, because a Veda is based in Minneapolis. Yes. We started in Minneapolis by, I think, he's not only a lot of alive, but an Austrian-American businessman. He started and Veda became this kind of first mover in that kind of world, one of the most influential, right, hair care. Oh, yeah, hair care, beauty products. Beat products, yeah. And I just thought, why can't it be like that?

Yeah. I mean, you think of Aveda, and I think they even have like Aveda spas or there are spas. Oh, yeah. Products I'm sure have been in one in the past. And you can just, there's like a harmonious, calming, calming, zen-like feeling. Oh, yeah. And you can smell Aveda from across the block. You know, they have a distinct fragrance.

Oh, I love the brand. It's a great brand. Yeah, I buy still a ton of their product. And I just remember thinking, this could be the Aveda. of cleaning. Why can it be? Who said? Yeah, exactly. Who said? 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. When you say the whole house, you would do a window spray,

floor cleaner and dish soap, laundry detergent, everything in lavender. Yeah, if that's your fragrance of choice. That's your fragrance, right. You know. And then all the products would be earth-friendly. They would have that a Vedasque 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 started to do all this research, you know, in the dark of the night, go to the library, try to find out what was used for cleaning pre-World War II?

you know, when all the big brands blew up after World War II, the Procter & Gamble, the wreck 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 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 always said, jewelry on the counter. This has got to be jewelry on the counter.

You should be able to have a bottle of hand soap and a bottle of dish soap and a bottle of dish soap. Proudly sit by your sink. Right, because most people used and still use Dawn or Fantastic or Mr. Clean or, right. I mean, they were tied. I mean, that those products did and still do dominate the category. 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. Exactly.

I kind of, I drew this triangle and I went, okay, on the bottom triangle, we have Procter & Gamble. What are they good for? Performance. They're awesome, right? They get everything clean. Yep. 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. Do you like cleaning? Actually, I do like cleaning. 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 typos. 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. This is in college or 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. 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. 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. So the guy who used to cut my hair, had an evada salon. And I said, hey, Mac, I got this idea for putting stuff into bottles. I didn't tell them the concept. I said, 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 cut the hair of a fragrance consultant. 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've 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 are your big ideas? is, et cetera, et cetera. And then she said, you 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 pulled their ESOP funds after that company was sold and started a contract manufacturing facility. They were making like shampoo and stuff for... Shampoos and yeah, all kinds of stuff. So I, I go out and see this person, and at the time, I already had some dummy bottles. I would fill

them up with a slight tint. I had all these P.E.T., 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 crack 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, I 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.

They're like, no, I'm not going to help you the 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 9 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, countertops spray. That was it. And three different fragrances. And she goes, well, now we have to test them. And I went, what do you mean? We test them. Don't you test them? She goes, no, we got to give them to 25 people and have them rate the product 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 back, believe it or not.

their evaluations of the product. And what gave Pam confidence in you? Do you think it was your background in marketing? 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. So you were just kind of paying her as a consultant? 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 it, 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. Yeah. When you, I mean, when you, so you start to work on this. And then, Pam's working on this. But meantime, what were you doing to earn money? Was David your husband? Was he working at this point? So 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. 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. That was the first.

round. And honestly, that is the hardest, most humbling part of the whole deal. How did you raise the money? 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, he gave me the church directory for his fluent church in Minneapolis. list, he goes, Monica, just work down the list. Just start calling down the list. So I did. 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, because when I finally find someone with a bucket of money and interest, I got to 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 a this old guy who's got a labin back and he's helping this woman with this personal care company. You've got to go see him. So I go see him. 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 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. But what did I learn in that meeting, that you owned your formulations? Yeah. I didn't know that.

So that was a huge learning. So you turned that off or down. 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, a little Philly. And I thought, what is this? I spend the next hour listening to him telling 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 call 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.

Believe it or not, Nerf was invented in Minneapolis. Find him. He might help you. So it took me six weeks, finally tracked him down, got his cell phone. And he goes, okay, meet me out here at 8 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 a.m. on Monday morning. And he called me 8 a.m. on Monday morning. And he helped me. He said, I'm in.

He said I'm in. And how much did you raise? Total. We raised about 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 a 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. So, all right. So you have you're and and this is what you're doing full time. 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 by the way, how many different products did you want to have? You want to have like window cleaner and detergent and dish soap? like, wow. 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. And Caldria was the name, tell me about the name Caldria. Oh, so Caldria comes from Cala and Andrea. Oh, your daughter's, okay. Yeah. Yeah. So it was an addition of my daughter's names. And so you were going to, and let's, so you have the.

you've got the funding to kind of get this manufactured. But tell me about, let's first talk about the bottles. What was so special? Were they plastic bottles? Are they glass bottles? They were called P.E.T. I don't know what that stands for, but they were these beautiful, clear bottles that usually reserved for 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 him in a bit, 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. So you start to get this produced, this co-packer, co-manufacturer, in. Minneapolis, where you were experimenting with this stuff, with the product, you hire them as your contract manufacturer.

Right. They become our filler. And they were awesome. They, you know, they too were a startup. So they help us just in terms of, I mean, 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, 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. Where were you buying the fragrance from? Usually from Switzerland. That's, it came through most of the offices on the East Coast, I think New Jersey. And by the way, was Caldria just you at this point and some sort of contract employees or did you have? No, I had, I had probably maybe two to four employees at the time. Okay. And what were they doing? What were the roles you hired for? I had a C.O. 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.

Right. Okay. And when it comes to strategy, I'm assuming you guys, I think you guys initially wanted to get Caldria into gift shops, right? Like shops for people buy, you know, homewares and things like that. Yeah, like ABC Carpet and Home Out of New York, for example. At the time, that was a major coup for us, we got in there, they had a kitchen area, where I had 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? Because 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 find, 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. What about William Sonoma? Was that, were you, did you guys approach them? So William 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 business. And if anybody can do it, these guys can. So lo and behold, fast forward to this houseware show, our first housework show in Chicago. And we have a hutch. That's all we have a hutch and all of our product.

William 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? Wow. So they were having problems with their vendors getting their dish soap made. 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 going to look, I'm going to fill this table. because they're very creative. They're very consumer focused. I thought we're going to build a huge display here, just like to see it in a store, because that's how their minds work. Because 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 got to go with these guys. And that was a significant revenue program for us. Yeah. And it served as our financing for the rest of the life of the company. But it wasn't a brand builder. It wasn't a brand builder, but it was a category builder. Yeah. 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 William Sonoma gets behind a category of premium cleaning and they sell their digital for 799 and Calderia for 799, we all went because William 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. So they didn't sell Caldria in addition to the, they just sold the white label brand. They just sold the white label brand. They just sold the white label. But on the bottle, it did say made by Caldria, right? Yes, because I gave them a margin point for that. Got it.

Okay. So again, it was validating our position. in the marketplace where you could find it in all these gift stores. 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 of thinking, wait, $10 for a bottle of, you know, windex? Like, this must be really good windex. Right.

So our dish soap is price at $7.99. And so that's why I knew we would never survive in mass because, let's be honest. Don was $1.99. Yeah, or $2.99, whatever. Right. Yeah, the customer would go, who are these? This makes no sense. It can't be that great. It's not like specs of gold are in there. So it had to be at a gift shop where people might be like, oh, this is interesting. It's not done. Right.

So here's my question. I mean, 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 hoping that people will notice them in the stores. So it's still, it's got to, I mean, imagine, because you launched this business in 2000, I imagine 2001 when these are in stores, it's slow going. Oh, yeah. It's slow going. It's not like flying off the shelves. No, exactly. But what we had done is, because I learned this from my past career, is 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, home decor, women's fashion, all these magazines. Martha Stewart Living. 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. All right.

So you've got Caledria 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 kind of a cheaper knockoff that would really damage your business. Yeah. Oh, 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 did 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. Let's knock off ourselves.

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 other 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?

Caldria is 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, wait, this is like my mom. You know, she's like the consummate house wife with a huge family, huge garden, total to the child of the depression. Waste not, whatnot is her operating model for everything. So that's how he came up with the name.

Mrs. Myers. Mrs. Myers. My mom. Yep. So I call my mom after we, 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 agree to this. We got to, because we got to get running with this. And then I'll call

you later and explain what we're going to do. I didn't really know what we're all going to do. But I wanted her nod to get running. You know, this is really interesting. I mean, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, start to recognize that Caldria alone is going to 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 going to come in and crush the brand. And so you start to say, it's so interesting because many years ago I interviewed Kenneth Chenult, the former CEO of American Express and 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. 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. Yeah, you know, when you have eight siblings, it's a dog fight, highly competitive. Right. You know, and I'm like, I'm not letting anyone take this concept. I'm going to do it. You know, I'm super competitive. And I thought, let's just, let's knock ourselves off. what would be different between the Mrs. Myers products and the Caldria products? Well, we kind of had this marketing philosophy that it has to come out of Mrs. Myers' 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. It's going to be my mom. 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. One of the interesting things, because your mom's name is Thelma, right? Thelma Meyer. One of the interesting things about this product was that the original packaging had like a little character on it. It was like sort of a 50s housewife with a dress and an apron. Am I right about that? It's not on there anymore, but I think it was.

And that's a little bit. I mean, I remember seeing that. 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. 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 doing playing into stereotypes? Right. So much for women's lib. 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, Warner design work, Sharon Werner, when I approached her, I knew her for mother.

projects in Minneapolis, she goes, oh my God, this is my mom. She just totally got it. And so 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 retro sophistication, if you will. You know, it's not like you have to be that person in an apron cleaning your house. You don't. It's that you have the authority of a domestic mentor, and she's real. Yeah.

That's how I viewed it. Interesting. It's often the – it's often people who are least affected by those things that are the most alarmist about them, right? Yep. 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. with the label and the story, how long did that take, roughly? That's 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 time frame 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 stop. 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. Yes, I do. But 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.

All right. So when Mrs. Myers is going to be ready by 2002, 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 a story of method, which also was introduced around this time, but you probably didn't hear about it because it was just in Molly 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? I thought we should get in Whole Foods. Whole Foods, okay. Oh, yeah. I was like, that was my target.

So you thought we got to get to Whole Foods where the sort of the, let's just say, I hate this term, but like influential buyers happen. Oh, for sure. Yeah, they are. Because all the target buyers, other groceries buyers, what are they doing? They're snooping around Whole Foods in major markets and the Columbus Circle Whole Foods and the San Francisco. Oh, 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. Oh, you, in other words, the window sprays were together, the dish soaps were together, which meant that if you had multiple skews, your brand was like scattered around. Oh, scattered all over. I thought we didn't. You couldn't have all the Mrs. Myers together. 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 Bs of the worlds coming in there and saying, no, we've 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. All right. So you get into those Whole Foods. And I guess again, I mean, you're in some, you're in of these, I mean, 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. Myers. And so it stood out. But how are you going to get people to buy it? What was the approach you took? Well, again, we had the PR firm working on Mrs. Myers, 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. Hand soap, dish soap. And my mom would stand there in her little uniform we created for her.

What was the uniform you created for? Oh, it was like a plaid shirt, a denim apron, and little red caprize and red shoes. That's, and she was like, oh my God. I'll play ball. She was like, I'm in.

I love everything about this. And was that what she wore normally? Oh, well, she wore red, she wore work shoes. My mother believed in German work shoes. So these were red work shoes. And did you make her like get her hair done in a certain way? And 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. Yeah. And it's called Mrs. Myers. And she's like, I'm Mrs. Myers. But it wasn't like the Charmin' Squeeze guy. No. Like she was

She was actually the real person. Yeah, and we would bring her to trade shows, and people just 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 prep for media relations, give them three key messages. Well, I try that on my mom. That was a disaster because she'd be interviewed by a salesperson or a media. And she'd say, was that a key message? She'd look at me.

Oh, well, she was being interviewed? She'd turn to you go, hey, was that the right key message? Was that the right key message? I'm like, but would they ask her like, hey, how did you invent this? How did you start this business? You know what would she say? 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. I mean, to this day, people think she started it. And then if I'm around, standing around and she goes, oh, no, no, no, my daughter did. Right. But at some point, I mean, you and your mom joined forces to go on QVC, right? And you pitched both of the brands, Mrs. Myers and Caldria. Right. We went on QVC. QVC wanted to bring us on. They brought in my mom disaster. I went on an hour. It was a disaster. You know, there's something about QVC that we just didn't understand. Wait, what happened? 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. Yeah.

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? Wait, was she not funny or interesting? I think she was good, but I think she was, and I have to say I was too, it was kind of intimidating to be on for a half.

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, 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. So we walked away from that. Yeah.

And nothing was considered a failure. It was always like, oh, wow, that didn't work. Well, now we know. 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. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's the early 2000. and Mrs. Myers products are in some top Whole Foods locations across the country. And Monica decides it's time to pitch to the buyers at Target. Yeah, so I knew the Target folks. I went over there.

I 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 it was premature. It was a mistake. 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. Wait, wait. You were Target. Okay. We should clarify here.

Okay. Okay. Okay. 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 was the problem? I just think the whole problem was not enough brand awareness for a 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 whole foods. So I had concentration in a market that people would see it. Oh, if I went to Whole Foods, I saw Mrs. Myers. Oh, if I go to Target, I'll see Mrs. Myers.

And that didn't happen. We couldn't control the stores, the 200-store test. And so I 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 went over to Target and I said, you know what? We're not ready for you. I thought, I'm going to kick myself out because I want back in. Yeah. So at what point did you feel comfortable re-approaching Target? Like what was the metric that you were using? 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 going to, you know, let them ask me. So a couple 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. 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. Yeah. So when you, I mean, by the time you sort of, you're back in Target, I think in the mid-2000s. Yep. 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? Oh, yeah, for sure. Over 10? Yes. Over 20? Yes. 30? No, close.

No, okay. Between 20 and 30. Yeah. So you were really, I mean, you were, and were you profitable? We were probably profitable around 15, 20 million. Once we got the margin, the cost of goods sold figured out for Mrs. Myers, that was really our struggle in the beginning because 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. Was your husband, David, did he eventually join you?

Yeah. So 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, but you just, 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. And then he turns to me and he goes, how big did you say this industry is? I said, Dave, 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. I said, okay, I did. So he came and helped and he got involved and thank goodness that he did because he was really our finance expert. He ran the books, all the accounting, the shipping, all of that was his forte. So, all right, so you've got this growing business. You hit, you know, between 20 and 30 million in revenue and sales. And this category is explained. I mean, this sort of premium category, there's method out there. You guys, there's other brands coming out today, obviously, even bigger, and more brands, I should say. But you get an offer. You get an acquisition offer comes to you or you approach or you put yourself up for sale. Tell me what the story was.

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. 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? Yeah.

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 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 huge glade business. They really understand. They understood fragrance. They understood the cleaning category. 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, and 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. We got something here. Maybe we should get out while the getting's good, you know. That was another feeling I had, quite honestly. Yeah.

So you agreed to be acquired by them. Right. I mean, it's, I think the outcome was probably great. It was undisclosed amount. But, you know, if you guys were doing between 20 and 30 and. revenue, you can imagine what that acquisition price was. I imagine that in a sense it was a relief, right? Because 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 have been close to 50,

maybe just a couple years after 50? Yeah, 52, 53. 52. 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. Yeah, you know, it's a bittersweet decision. You know, first of all, you're selling your mother, you know. Right, because that's right, because she was the brand. She was the brand. Her likeness, her name. Her name.

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 grew that brand from nothing. And that was the whole fun of it for me was building a brand. And so when you sold the business, you stayed on. You agreed to stay on. Or I'm sure you wanted to stay on too.

And Pam Helms, who's your chemist and who joined you, she also stayed on. Oh, yeah. She's still with them. Yeah. She's still with S.C. Johnson. Yep. Amazing. You stay on. And what was your job? I stayed the CEO. 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 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 I fulfilled my contract and left the company. They also acquired Caldria. Yes, they acquired everything. 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 want it, if you

didn't want to, you had money to start something new. Yeah. And you decide, hey, I want to get back into the game. Guy, I should have just stayed home. What was I thinking? I don't think so. No, I don't think so. I mean, listen, that makes sense.

You don't want you to, you don't want to just sit around let your brain cells die. No, you don't want brain rot. You keep firing those synapses, right? Yeah. Oh, no, for sure. So you come up with a new idea. So I have a new idea. And it really comes from staying home for about a year.

You're staying home. I'm bored out of my mind. You're bored out of your mind. I got gas in my tank. So I, grew up in a family of seamstresses. 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 I do. Like when you mean like silk and Yeah, we're gorgeous cots, Swiss cottons. So I thought, I'm going to do some research. So I do some research. I go to a couple trade shows in Europe, look at fabrics, and I thought, I'm just going to start a small line of luxury sleepwear, caftans.

Pajamas, luxury pajamas. Yeah. And this was before, you know, somebody even said to me, after they saw the line, I said, Monica, you were two years ahead of Instagram. had you just waited two years, Instagram, this would have worked. But social media wasn't there for a fashion brand. So I had a couple of employees. I had a pattern maker, and we manufactured our goods in New York, and I set a revenue goal for myself,

and I set a cash flow goal, and I said an investment goal. And I said, if I don't make this revenue, I'm not going to spend any more money on this brand. I'm just going to shut it down. How much money were you willing to put into it? A million dollars. Okay. And by the way, anybody listening, you can Google Sophia Graydon. I don't know if you want people to do it, but it's, it's interesting because you can see pictures of what this looked like.

Yeah, it's beautiful. It's really nice, well-made pajamas, robes. Yeah. Right. So I got into it and I realized, oh, my God, this is going to 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. And you were buying expensive fabric. This is not like just like mass produced in a factory in Chengdu.

No, they were Swiss cottons. They were French silks. It was, yeah, no, 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 from out of New York to promote the product. But I could see how expensive it was going to be. And honestly, I did not want to go out and raise a bucket 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, we're done. And I learned a lot, and I also learned, you know, before you proceed in another startup, we're not going to do that again, okay? That was what I finally said. I think my startup days are over.

Did you love, did you love this idea, the pajamas? I mean, did you like really love it? 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 in cap from day one when I stood over that pathetic palate in Atlanta. When I first had the idea, it just boom came to me. Yeah.

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

yeah, the rocket ship. Like, wild. Because, you know, it reminds me of an episode we did a couple months ago about barefoot wines, right? I think it's a best-selling wine brand in the world. And the year before Gallo bought it from the founders, I think they did like four, 500,000 cases. the next year Gallo produced like four million cases. Wow. Like that's how quickly they could scale this brand.

Like 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 think there's a similar parallel with Mrs. Myers, right? Like they, S.C. Johnson was able to basically with a snap of their fingers,

put it in every Walmart, every target, like everywhere. And that was the attraction to selling to them. I thought they can do what we can't do. 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? No, 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, oh, I'm always counting.

I'm always like looking by hand and pulling that product, you know, if it's not. I can't help myself. And my girls do it. know, in high, they were in high school with their friends. They 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 still, say, Mom, I still straighten out the product on the shelf. He said, can't help yourself.

It's like your children. You've got to make sure they look good. I make a confession to you. Please. I do that with my book, one of my bookstores. Yes. They take it out and I put it front facing. So it looks like the bookshop, like, my need of front facing.

Yeah. So if you ever see my book front facing, you know that I was probably in that bookstore. I'll be a shame guy. I do it all the time. So I get it. All right. So you, and once you were done with that second business, Sophia Graydon, which really was your third business, right? Yeah.

Did you think, all right, I'm done with starting businesses now? No, I didn't think I'm done. I just thought, you know, once you've built a Mrs. Myers business, it's hard to settle for a little business. You know, you think if I'm going to do that. I'm going to go big, baby. I'm going to be bold, competitive. It's going to be another product category, not a product item business. And I haven't seen that yet.

Yeah. You know, that's probably why I haven't gone after it. Tell me what you started to devote your time and your energy to, because you're obviously, you're super vibrant, you're super energetic. I mean, just talking to you over the course of this interview, I mean, you're very, you're very, talented. You've got a lot of ideas in it. And so what have you, how have you been keeping yourself energized? 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. Most, most, by the way, 95% of entrepreneurs are

better entrepreneurs and investors. So I'm not doing that anymore. Yeah. I like to think I'm a quick study, but sometimes not. Yeah. And, you know, 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. Yeah. But you really are, though.

I mean, you created this brand. Yeah. And when you think about, you know, the journey you took and how you built this business, this brand and then, you know, had a successful exit, How much of this do you attribute to the work you put in the grind and how much you think had to do with luck? 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. Yeah. Just to skip back to your mom for a second. does she still like work as a mascot for the brand? Like when SC Johnson took up, like bought you out, did she still show up to pitch the product? Oh, she still did work for them. In fact, she did the Rose Bowl parade with them. She 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'm telling you, she had a garage sale this summer, and she wanted to know if she could put on her outfit handout samples. I mean, she still tells everybody that she sits next to on a plane, who she is. Yeah.

And they love her for it. That's Monica Nassif, founder of Caldria and Mrs. Myers' 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 within five seconds, can you, within five seconds, can you still eat that twinkie or what, like, let's say it's something very absorbent, like a like Julia Child did with the roast, like just drop the roast. Yeah.

You know, I don't know. 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. 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. If you're interested in insights, ideas, and lessons from some of the world's greatest entrepreneurs,

please sign up for my newsletter at gairozz.com or on Substack. This episode was produced by Carrie Thompson with music composed by Rantina and Bluie. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Carla Estabez. Our engineers were Patrick Murray and Jimmy Keely. Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, J.C. Howard, Catherine Seifer, Chris Messini, Sam Paulson, John Isabella, and Elaine Coates. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Build. this.