I Bottled My Mother: The Mrs. Meyer’s Story: Grit, Grime & Growing a Business'

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1:18Monica Nassif:The thing about AI for business, it may not automatically fit the way your business works. At IBM, we've seen this firsthand. But by embedding AI across HR, IT, and procurement processes, we've reduced costs by millions, slash repetitive tasks, and freed thousands of hours for strategic work. Now we're helping companies get smarter by putting AI where it actually pays off, deep in the work that moves the business. Let's create smarter business, IBM. Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. This is Bloomberg Businessweek with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio. Michelle Bowman, Federal Reserve Governor, said ease capital requirements could encourage U.S.

2:06banks to expand loans for small businesses. Here's what she said, quote, supporting credit for small businesses is critical to our economy. This was in prepared remarks for the Consumer Bankers Association a little earlier this week. A regulatory framework must provide access to capital for these businesses to ensure our rules support the economy. Makes sense to me, right? We talk about the importance of small business, entrepreneurship, the backbone of the U.S. economy. Monica Nassif knows about access to capital for small business. She is, before she was a big business, she was a small business.

2:38She's the founder of the household cleaning products company Mrs. Meyers Clean Day. It sold to S.C. Johnson in 2008. She's also the author of the new book. I love this title. I Bottled My Mother, The Mrs. Meyers Story, Grit Grime and Growing a Business. She joins us here in the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers Studio. Welcome. Thank you. Delighted to be here. You have an amazing story, but it starts with your mom. It starts with my mom. You just told us she's still alive. She's 90. She's 93. She's still alive, going strong, lives in our family home. She's still bossing me around. She raised nine children.

3:12How did you bottle your mother? Well, we bottled all of her values. Frugality. She loves her garden. She raised nine kids in 10 years. And her parenting advice was, I'm raising adults, not children. And so she just had this Midwestern strong work ethic. So as we created this other brand to kind of knock off our first brand, Caldrea, we decided, what would that represent? How could we take out Caldrea? And we thought, oh, a brand with strong Midwestern values. So I called my mom and said, hey, mom, could we name you after a brand? and she goes what's a brand I said well just say yes because we got to get going we got things to do tell us though about like this marketplace though is crowded it becomes increasingly crowded and um you guys went a different route and I told you before we got started my daughter who is now 23 years old when we had her nursery we started using because your product is right I'm right oh yeah for sure you're right I was like doing the math if I'm wrong but we were using your products because we wanted no chemicals in our room.

4:15We were, and we've been using it since. So tell us about how you approach the marketplace. You know, I approached it really differently. You know, before we came on the scene, it was problem solution. Dirty window, Windex, dishes, Dawn. Yeah. You know, kind of one trick ponies. Very, I mean, great performance, great products, great brands. But I thought of the home as like personal care for the home. Like what if you could clean everything in lavender or lemon verbena or basil, your window spray, your dish soap, your hands, you know, laundry, everything. And customers loved it. So I just kind of turned the market differently and thought about it more as a fashion and personal care business than a cleaning business.

4:55And also thought, okay, what's great about the green brands? They're green, to your point earlier. They're safe. What is it about the big P &G brands? Performance, price, right? But I thought, what if you take both of those things and then add great packaging, a great personality and bring it to the consumer. And she loved it. She really did. You know, it's been almost 20 years since you sold this company. Yeah. And I'm wondering, as you see the company as part of SC Johnson, no longer, you know, under your umbrella, has it changed? I think it's changed a little bit. They've introduced a lot more fragrance.

5:37Is that the biggest change in the last 20 years? Craig, I feel like the bottles are the exact same they've been. I think the bottles are the same. They've changed some tops and caps and some of the illustrations on the packaging. But for the most part, it's pretty much the same. Do you think it still encompasses the values that you achieve with building this yourself? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that's, if you build a brand right, you know, in terms of we were dominant in our category. No one was offering this many products for cleaning the home in a singular fragrance. That still holds true.

6:10I mean, they're doing that really quite well. Well, S.T. Johnson wasn't the first company that sort of came knocking. You had venture capitalists and private equity who were interested in the company. Why did you sell when you were only 53 years old? And the brand, I think, to a lot of people was still relatively young. Yeah, we grew so fast. We were also capital constrained, I'll be honest. And at the time, what was happening is all the organic brands were being acquired by strategic partners, by VC, by private equity. And from day one, from our first trade show at the houseware show in Chicago, I'll never forget, we had private equity VC and SC Johnson in our trade show booth.

6:51Wow. Because it was such a different category and a different brand. And I asked every private equity, every VC person that walked in the booth, hey, what can you do for us that we can't do for ourselves? and you know there weren't a lot of interesting answers but se johnson said we can scale this and you know when you put your heart and soul and your mother into something you really want somebody i thought it had global presence i really did i really did when i started well two tips point though um i was going to ask you without even thinking about like changes they've made but like seller's remorse and the reason i ask is is i've talked to people whose names are on brands, well-known brands that you would know and have sold and the regrets they have.

7:37And they were just at a point too, where I think it became too big. It was all consuming of their life. And they're just like, I kind of need to get out. But then a few years later and realizing, especially when it was their name or their mom. Oh, I know. Like it's not yours anymore. No, it's bittersweet. Yeah. Yeah. There's definitely seller's remorse involved. No question. You know, but at the same time you think, okay, what am I personally really good at as the founder. I can build a brand, I can sell, I can hustle, but you know, that starts to start to get worn out too. I'm going to be honest, you know, it's a hard, it's a hard life.

8:11Do you think you could build the brand today? It's such a different space. And I think there's so much more consumer awareness about this stuff. You were so early to it. It feels like it's table stakes now to make sure a product that you put on your hands or use to clean your home or you have in your home like you were doing with your daughter more than 20 years ago yeah it seems like table stakes to make sure it doesn't have any harmful chemicals no i think you're absolutely right could i build a brand again not a brand this one oh i don't know probably i bet you could build a brand again but i'm wondering about the timing yeah this one like no the time was it lightning in a bottle the timing was perfect yeah it really was we were kind of pre you know because here are the changes in the consumer's home she started making changes to her diet organic food she started making changes to personal care.

8:55She started buying all these upscale culinary items, Nespresso, KitchenAid mixers. And I thought, why are cleaning products so behind? Yeah. We used to call them jewelry for the counter. You know, she wants to leave that hand soap and dish soap by the sink right next to her gorgeous KitchenAid mixer. No one was thinking like that. You know, I grew up in retail. I used to work for Target. So I kind of understood how that upscale consumer thought about her home. And I thought, gosh, she's got to keep step with what's happening in the world. What do we need to know about your mom? My mom. She's 93.

9:27Yeah. She's going strong. She just went on a safari in Africa with my brother, Tim. You know, she walks to church every day. She believes in fresh air, frugality, faith, family. She has a great sense of humor. And she raised us to be confident individuals. Yeah. You know, by kicking us out of the house early. I'm going to be honest, go get a job. She never once asked, Hey, Monica, what are your grades? It's Monica, do you have a job? Really? Yeah. Yeah. She was all about working. Cause you think about generational and I always think about this, um, grew up a mom who was, she was born in 29. She's not with us anymore, but you know, growing up and I'm one of seven kids and, and even though we're all kind of close in terms of the duration of when she had kids, I mean, she was a homemaker first and eventually went back to work.

10:17But it's just interesting to even, you know, women and their role in society and how it's changed. And I'm just curious, your mom is of that era where women were homemakers, right? She was a homemaker. She was also a nurse. Yeah. And she went back to work as soon as she was able. And I think she just said there was too much to do with nine. I mean, she had nine of us in 10 years. That's how it was in our household. Yeah. And I was the oldest girl. Yeah. so I had early responsibility for when she left, I had all the kids in tow, you know? If you were starting a company today, like when we were talking about it, is there something, or when you look at the marketplace, is there something that you find interesting that you think needs to be tackled?

11:03You know, I think the whole thing of social media and consumer products is super fascinating. And I kind of just wonder when that's going to - In a good way or a bad way? Well, I don't know. I think it's going to flame out. I think, you know, there's all these shiny objects. And I think the brands who build for the long haul, you know, in good times and in bad, especially like, let's say a skincare line or a body care, they're going to survive in any types of media. That's my opinion. So I think those brands that do that really well will survive. What are the brands that you look out at today and you think they've done a really good job?

11:37you know what i look at a lot of the fashion brands and a lot of the personal care brands and i always did throughout my entire career it hasn't changed it hasn't changed and maybe because that's where i locked my eyes on women's wear daily and beauty and you know i that's where i spent my eyes and ears looking for trends well at the same time retail has changed so much since you sold in 2008 if we think about the the places where we used to go bricks and mortar to actually buy your product i would imagine a lot of it is now purchased online i know that when the um did you when did you have the peppermint seasonal or was that something that happened so we created all the private label for william sonoma and creighton barrel and harvey nichols out of london and peppermint william sonoma did that and then it became then it came to mrs meyers and that consumers love that brand the reason i ask is because when that was released a few years ago So it was seasonal.

12:29And I was like, I actually have to stock up on this because if it's going to go away. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If it's going to go away, that's going to go when you like something. Like three boxes of it. But I did it on Amazon, which is not the typical way that I think people were buying your product in the early years. What is the right way to position to meet buyers where they are today versus when you were building this brand? I think you have to depend on what's your target audience, first of all, and where do they go to consume media. And then you've got to be there, like it or not. You've got to figure out all the intricacies of how they work.

12:58You know, when we started, Amazon was eight years old. I was curious about, yeah. Oh, and when we used to call on them, we'd go into their, I'll never forget this. Is Jeff here? Oh, wait. It was all tech guys. And they go, how should we package this? And I said, what do you mean, how should we package it? How many bottles in a box? And, you know, they were tech geeks. They weren't product geeks. You know, now that's changed completely. So we had to educate a lot of the early online players, you know, how a consumer product should be positioned, you know, for shipping to a consumer. Do you have a favorite moment in like this whole process?

13:36You know, there is a favorite moment. Creating, selling, not looking back. Not looking back, yeah. Well, building the brand, I love. I used to have a marketing agency. So we did that a lot for other clients. So I just love that entire process. But one of my favorite moments is, so when I started the company, I had this image in my mind's eye of what this brand should be. And I imagined an in-cap in Target loaded with product. And so I always said when I got lost, I felt like at the end of an aisle. Yep. Like in a Target or a Walmart. And I had this image in my mind. And whenever I got discouraged or lost, I would reboot that image.

14:14So one day I'm in the Whole Foods store in Austin, Texas, where they're based. And we're supposed to do this big laundry promotion. and I run back to the cleaning aisle and I'm like, where's the laundry? I said to my salesperson, where's the laundry? She goes, you ran right by it. You didn't even see it. I didn't even see it. And there was this huge, I literally almost brought me to my knees. There was the image that I had in my mind's eye from day one, the reality of it. Yeah. That was a moment. You have this book. It's really beautiful. It's kind of just, I like it. It looks like the product.

14:47How do you hope people approach it, use it, think about it? You know what? I wrote this book, well, first as a love letter to my mother, but really for the wannabes, the dreamers, the schemers, the wannabe entrepreneurs, the people who call me, send me an email. How should I do this? Have you thought about this? Would you meet me for coffee? I've also done a lot of speaking to entrepreneur groups, and I answer a lot of the questions that I get asked all the time. What's the number one question you get asked? How do you do it? And you know what I say? Should you do it? Yeah. You know, you really should look in the mirror and ask yourself, do you have what it takes to pull this off?

15:23Because this is not easy. Well, it's interesting because we had the head of the MBA school. Who am I thinking? Oh, the Berkeley, dean of Berkeley yesterday. He's my mind. He's my brain. Dean Chapman. But just talked about the importance. Now, they're on the West Coast. They're in Berkeley. And we found this with Stanford when we've talked to the team there, that it's entrepreneurship, that so many people are involved in it. But you think about the importance of it. It's not easy. Right. But you find a lot of like MBA candidates. Oh, yeah. Who really want to do it. They really want to do it. I think I read a study that the word title founder has grown 69 % on LinkedIn titles.

16:02That's interesting. So that's pretty fascinating. Right? We start off of COVID. What's your favorite fragrance? Basil. Oh, it is? That's like picking your favorite child. It's basil. I've got to admit it. We had to go there. Thank you so much. Good luck. Congratulations. Thank you very much. Really appreciate it. Monica Nassif is the founder of Mrs. Myers, and she's the author of the new book, I Bottled My Mother, The Mrs. Myers Story, Grit, Grime, and Growing a Business. If your finance team spends more time finding data than using it, if there's one entity here and one here and one here and one here, If scaling your business feels like starting over, you need the Intuit ERP.

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