Advice Line with Monica Nassif of Mrs. Meyers

0:05Hello and welcome to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz. This is the place where we help try to solve your business challenges. Each week, I'm joined by a legendary founder, a former guest on the show who will help me try to help you. And if you're building something and you need advice, give us a call and you just might be the next guest on the show. Our number is 1-800-433-1298. Leave us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you'd like help with. All right, let's get to it. Joining me this week from Minneapolis is Monica Nassif, the founder of Mrs.

0:39Meyers Clean Day. Monica, welcome back to the show. Glad to be back, Guy. So it's great to have you. You were, I think, on the show almost a year ago, and you told us the amazing story of building Mrs. Meyers cleaning products. And for people who haven't heard it, we'll drop a link into the show notes. You basically had this – I mean it came about during an epiphany when you were in the middle of, I think, like a Target or something. And you looked at the shelves of soaps and cleansers and you thought, you know, I can probably do this better. This was, I think, the late 90s. Right. And you did go on to launch a line of cleaning products in 2000.

1:16It was called Caldrea. You eventually got that to Williams and Sonoma. And then Monica was worried other brands would knock off Caldrea. So you created your own knockoff version of your own brand. And you called it Mrs. Myers. And then that brand, of course, grew really fast. And then it was sold to S.E. Johnson in 2008. Mrs. Myers is a real human. Mrs. Myers is named after your mother. She's still alive. Still alive. 93. She still reps, right? She still goes and reps the brand. Even though she's not on the case, she still reps. Yeah. Did your mom hear your episode of How I Built This? She did.

1:58She really liked it. She knows I'm doing this advice line thing, and she's very excited. We should have had her on with you. She would be awesome on the show. Oh, man. Maybe. All right. We're going to figure that out. Oh, man. She'd be good. Before we bring in our callers, I wanted to ask you a question. This relates to your mom, right? Because, you know, a lot of the companies that we have on the advice line and some that will come on today are focused on trying to figure out how to build like an authentic brand voice. And from the very beginning, you guys had such a strong voice and identity, right?

2:34I mean, maybe the copy on the product would say, like, it works like the Dickens on dirt. And your mom is the brand inspiration. She is Mrs. Myers. What advice do you have and do you give founders who are trying to figure out how to, like, build the voice of their company and their brand? I think it has to be true to the founder's mission. You know, you have to be authentic. You can't fake it anymore. You know, the consumer is way too savvy. There's so many brands to pick from. I mean, if you don't resonate emotionally with the consumer, you're just going to have a really hard time. Yeah. And also, I mean, in your case, your mascot was real.

3:12Like your mom would go. Like there was this was a real human who really did the cleaning in a house of nine kids in Iowa. And now you can get the cleaning products inspired by her. Oh, yeah. She was the real deal. In fact, when we first started doing media interviews in New York, every time we had a new product launch, I tried to coach her with three key messages. That was a disaster. So I just let her rip. And she just talked honestly about raising nine kids. She was the original earth muffin. She had a garden. She recycled, repurposed, made every meal from scratch. She was kind of the original eco-friendly mother, if you will.

3:49Yeah. Did you ever have to say, and mom, don't say this, please. Yes. Don't say this. Yes. Did I ever tell you the story, Guy? Can I tell you the story? Can we say it on the air? Okay. She wrote a cleaning book, right? It was a marketing tool for us. We're in New York. We go around trying to find a publisher. We've got an agent. We've got six meetings. We go into our first meeting. And this woman just immediately hugs my mother. She's from Texas and she's tall, buxom, she's got the big old draw. And she goes, before we begin, how in the world did you have nine children in 10 years? and my mom says, well, I had a box of 48 Kotex and I never got through it.

4:34That was her opening salvo. I love it. The reporters loved it. I was mortified. I was so embarrassed. I don't think the intern that was taking notes knew what a Kotex was. I couldn't wait to get out there fast enough, but that's my mother. The truth. I love it. Monica, are you ready to bring in our first caller? I'm ready. All right, let's bring our first caller. Please introduce yourself. Tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just one quick line about your business. My name is Allison Ombres. Calling in from San Diego, and I'm the founder of Encilia Hair. Encilia is putting an end to subpar wigs.

5:14Wigs are itchy, hot, fit women poorly. Inspired by my own journey with hair loss, I set out to bring the same comfort and flexibility of yoga pants to the wig industry. Awesome. Allison, thanks for calling in and sell your hair. Okay. So you make wigs. Tell me how this, how did you start a wig business? I was eight months pregnant with my son, second pregnancy, and I had one patch of bald spot on top of my head. And within 20 days, I lost 80 % of my hair. Wow. Which is a lot more common than people realize. Alopecia, right? Yeah. I have alopecia universalis, which is the most aggressive form. So I have no hair anywhere, no eyebrows, no eyelashes.

5:55And it's just happened while you were pregnant. Yeah. No, total fluke. The doctors, we really didn't understand. I got sick. It's sort of a long story, but I lost 15 pounds in the eighth month of my second pregnancy. Wow. So it was stressful and all that. And I'm sure it was really traumatic, right? Because you all of a sudden have to figure out, okay, how am I going, you know, what am I going to do? Yeah, I had to go shop for wigs with a newborn. I lived in San Francisco at the time. And so just, I mean, awful experience wig shopping. You know, I went into one shop in the Mission and the guy looked at me with my baby.

6:35He was in the car seat and was like, you have 30 minutes to try on five wigs. Wow. And had no private room. I just, I had a terrible go with wigs. It crushed my self-esteem. My first wig was two sizes too big. It was itchy. It wasn't my style. Everything about it just wasn't me. And you're super self-conscious in the wig to begin with. And so I became obsessed with wigs. I started learning about wigs online and I went to a wig training program. And so I ended up starting a wig consulting business that I operated for two years. And so I learned a lot about the industry, what women like, what women don't like, and a lot of the frustrations.

7:17And then you decided to start your own brand. Yeah. The wig industry is, to put it really simple, is you have a handful of legacy brands that have been around forever. You can get an affordable wig and your wig life is not all that great. Or if you want something that fits well and something that's comfortable, you're spending up to$5 ,000 to$10 ,000. Wow. And I just got tired of that story. It's so interesting because I'm sure it's a larger market than most. Do you know what the total addressable market is for wigs in the United States? So the total wigs in extension is$8 billion. And then for just wigs, it's about$6 billion.

7:56$6 billion, did you say? Yes. That's massive. I mean, that is an amazing opportunity. Well, thank you. I'm trying my best. And that's why, I mean, Monica, you're a genius when it comes to marketing and creating brands and you as well. I'm such a huge fan of you, your show. That's why I'm here because, like, I have a strong sales background, but marketing for me is not my specialty. So you're trying to figure this out. And just before I bring Monica in, what makes your wigs different? Yeah, so wigs are traditionally made out of lace. The material is stiff, rigid. It's itchy on your head. itchy not breathable heavy bulky and i'm just taking everything the complete opposite approach so you know think of the power mesh material and then the seamless flexible stitching that you get in your athletic clothing that's what the wig feels like um but it's hidden it's unseen you can't um see it from a picture and so i'm having a hard time figuring out how to reach more women and how to educate them on the unseen aspects of the wig that are actually the most important aspects.

9:09Okay. Monica, I want to bring you in here. A really cool story. Thoughts, questions for Allison? Well, I think the most exciting thing about your story is, Allison, this is an unbranded category. Yes. Six billion in revenue, and no one's building a brand, and you have a really differentiated story. I was listening to you talk going, oh my gosh, it sounds like Nike, you know, fashion and fit. Hey, tell me this, that market that you mentioned, the women that you want to go after, how do they find you? I mean, do they find you how? They have cancer, they've lost their hair, they ask a friend, and how does that work?

9:48So right now, I haven't done any advertising. I actually just started advertising on Meta and Google this past month. But I have, it's just been organic. So through just purely ranking on Google organically, and then on my little lonely Instagram page that I work really hard on. I did have a wholesale side of my business that I've kind of ended. So I got some more full business from that. At one point, I was working with 20 wholesale wig boutiques across the US. But I just got overlooked and overshadowed by some of the leading brands. It's hard to get people to change what products they recommend.

10:27I don't know anything about this market, but if you are a woman looking for a wig, clearly you've dealt with these pain points, the itchiness, they don't fit well, they're heavy, they're not working for me. And so is there a world where you literally like make videos, short videos, where you're showing people what the inside looks like and why you are making, let's say like the Lululemon performance wear, like literally turning it inside out, stretching it, and then comparing it to what's available on the market and why this one is very different. Yeah, I agree. I think the visual, it's exciting, you know, in terms of what guys are saying.

11:08And, you know, especially you, you're the real deal, right? You don't have any hair, now you have gorgeous wigs. Yeah, yeah. That's compelling. And you are the model in a lot of these photos, right? Yeah, right now I am because I don't have the funds to outsource that. And it's hard. I'm sort of a big believer in having models who have hair loss, and it's hard to find them. So it's hard to get the right photos from the right people sort of thing. I think you're just a compelling personality that you should be doing these videos, It's, you know, bald, inside out, showing how it fits. Yeah. I mean, you are – I agree, Monica.

11:51I mean, you are the brand. You are. Are you putting yourself out there in any way besides on the website? I mean, I've been very quiet with the brand on purpose. Manufacturing has been a huge hurdle that the industry is very opaque and hard to break into. So it's only within the last actually six months that I have diversified my manufacturing and I work with some of the largest wig manufacturers in the world now. And I have very strong relationships with them. And so I haven't had the confidence that I could keep up with demand. And so I didn't want to like shout to the world like, here's this amazing wig that's just groundbreaking and then not be able to deliver on it.

12:36How are you doing with sales, by the way? So last year I did, and again, it's just myself, a bootstrapping sole entrepreneur, no advertising. Last year I did 90 ,000. I only had one product, which was the sport headband wig, active wig. And then this year I introduced my full wig, which I'm wearing, and a few other accessory products. And I'm going to hit above 200 this month. Amazing. Good for you. If you're going to bring in 200K this year in sales, you got to think about how much of that you can put into marketing and advertising. Usually it's about 10%. It's a lot of money. It's 20 grand, right?

13:14But you want to think about what you could – if you could spend that, what you could do with that money. I mean it seems like you have an opportunity to really – you need to get in front of the camera, really dive into what you can do for free, which is you and social media. and then think strategically about how you want to spend some money on targeted ads. Where would you spend it if you were me? I have some thoughts, Monica. I mean, social media is where I would spend it. Okay. Meta, yeah. Think about a TikTok store. It's tougher these days. You know, customer acquisition is tougher on social media, but you've got to try.

13:56I wouldn't put all of your eggs in that basket right away, And I would try different small experiments, you know, start with$100 and then maybe$500 and$1 ,000 and see where that goes. Small micro-influencers for a category like this, critical. I mean, if you can find somebody with 1 ,000 or 5 ,000 followers, you know, you could probably work with them for a few hundred bucks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it works. I mean, I've done some micro-influencers before, just people that I love that I've seen over the years. And as soon as I send them a product, I usually get revenue back. I usually make sales from it.

14:36That's great. I would also think about investing in a video about you and your story, a two-minute video telling your story. You know, Liquid Death launched its brand with a$1 ,500 video. I mean, really, that is the story. And so your story is so compelling. Like this happened to me. I didn't expect it. My life changed. And all of a sudden, I'm a young mom trying to find wigs and it sucks. And so I decided to start the company to do this. Like that is a simple, clear, compelling story that you should turn into a two-minute clip and put it on every social media site you can. Totally agree. Do you think it needs to be like super professionally done or just not at all?

15:23I think it needs to be real. And you're real. I think it needs to be authentic. You need to show, look, I'm bald. Now I'm not. And tell the story Guy just said. All right. You've got your marching orders, Alison Ombre and Celia Hare. Good luck. Yeah. Thank you, Guy. Such a big fan. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for calling in. OK, next up after the break, another caller with another business challenge. I'm Guy Raz, and we're answering your business questions right here on the Advice Line on How I Built This Lab.

16:04Welcome back to the Advice Line on How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz, and my guest today is Monica Nassif. She's the founder of Mrs. Myers, and we are taking your calls, and let's bring in our next caller. Hi, Guy and Monica. It's been a dream to be on your show, so thanks for this opportunity. My name is Nick Harmon. I'm the co-founder of Randomals. I'm originally from the UK, but I've lived for the last 32 years in Sun Valley, Idaho. Randomals are combination animal plush, figures, beanies, and two award-winning books with a simple message. What makes us different makes all the difference in the world.

16:41All right. Thanks for calling in, Nick. So Randomals, like random animals. Is that the portmanteau here? That's right. That's where it came from. All right. I'm looking at your website. So I see a frame of framel, which is a frog camel. So it has frog arms and legs and a frog head, but a camel, like the camel humps. And there's a hork, so a shark's head. A shark on a horse. A girdle, which is a giraffe with a turtle back. This is super interesting, very unique. How did this come about? Tell me the story behind this. Oh, thank you, Guy. There's two inspirations. The first inspiration, this was a pandemic company back in 2021.

17:27Okay. And I had a dog, a Bassador, part Bassett and part Lab. He had all the lovingness of a Lab and the stubbornness of a Bassett. And that's where the idea came from. But more importantly, the book and the origin story of the randomals, that inspiration came from my wife's daughter's love of toy story and specifically the inspiration of the little boy next door, Sid, that used to like to destroy his toys. She always thought that he needed a redemption story. And so in the book, Ollie the Bassador chews all the little girl's toys. She's devastated. She finds bits and pieces everywhere. But she finds a way to put them back together and create the random ones.

18:10I love it. Yeah. Imagine if you could crossbreed a gorilla and an elephant. You would have an Elorilla, as you have in your cast of plush toys. Okay. So you start this business. And I'm assuming these are mainly sold online, or do you also sell these in shops? Probably 90 % of the business is online, but we just recently had a really successful story through an unlikely place. The company called Ripley's Believe It or Not and Ripley's Aquarium, they've seen one of our viral videos, and they did a test in a couple of stores. They bought 10 cases to start with. And a few weeks later, they called back and said, we're going to need some pallets.

18:55So they ordered 10 pallets. And then within three months, they went national. And they now ordered by the 40-foot container. And the manager of the retail department said they've never seen anything that's brand new fly off the shelves so fast. What do you expect to do in sales this year? Last year, we did just under a million. And this year, we're hoping to do just over a million. All right. That's great. Okay. So before we dive in further, what's your question for us? The question is, we think that randomness is an important inflection point. We want to capitalize on our momentum. But we think our strategy has become a little scattershot.

19:34We've launched in a couple of other countries. We've dabbled in rep groups. We're meeting with animation companies and toy companies. And we often talk about bringing on investment and hiring some real marketing and expertise in e-commerce. and we'd love any advice that you have regarding where you think we should focus our attention and what path you think we should take to scale the business to the next level. All right, Monica, I want to bring you in here. Randomals, definitely just a fresh take on the stuffed animal category. Yeah, I mean, they're really funny and odd and lovable all at the same time.

20:15Just listening to you, I really think you have to focus in terms of, I would just focus on the U.S. market. And how many toy stores are in the U.S.? Could there even be 10 ,000? Yes. So if you're going to go wholesale, you really have to work smartly with your rep groups to make it happen. Never, ever leave rep groups alone. Never. You've got to do ride-alongs. You've got to do training. You've got to get them excited with incentives. because they're walking into a toy store with 10 to 20 brands. And why is your brand at the top of their bag? That's one thing for sure. I would not go to other countries.

20:52Right now, right now. I was just going to say, I agree. I agree. The one good thing, we did go to the London Toy Fair back in January. And the happiest of accidents happened. A guy with hardly any followers did a video of me telling the random old story. And within a couple of weeks, it hit 36 million views. And that really got the attention of not only people calling from producers and also retail stores. So that was a really true blessing in disguise. But I agree with you that refocusing on the U.S., because I'm sure we haven't scratched the surface of it yet, is probably the way to go. And then that's not even Target, Walmart, Toys R Us.

21:35We're talking specialty, and then you're going to move to Mass. So you have a huge opportunity here in the U.S. Yeah. I mean, tell me a little bit about supply. I mean, how are you financing? Are you having problems financing purchase orders? With our success that we've had and some of the viral videos, yes, that's been a very frustrating aspect. To begin with, we started with$100 ,000. We haven't taken any money out of the business for the last five years. everything goes back into keeping up with inventory because I'm sure as you both know, running out of inventory is criminal. And it's happened to us on more than one occasion, especially when these videos pop up online that we have no idea about.

22:21Just within the first couple of weeks of us launching, I thought that it was our killer marketing and social media posts that had blown up our store. But it turns out it was a toy designer in Chicago that just saw the brand online, ordered all the products, did a unboxing, and we sold out of everything. And it essentially broke the store. And obviously, you know, takes two or three months for the product to get over here. Tariffs have been a bit of an issue. So yes, keeping up with inventory is definitely a challenge. Nick, how many SKUs do you have? How many products do you have? We have 16 plush toys, 11 hard toys, 10 beanies, and three books.

23:05Okay. So you're not over-assorted, really. That's good. So you can really control, do a better job of controlling your inventory. I'm always wanting to create more. I've got lots in the pipeline. But yes, my other partner tells me to slow down. So really, and so the question is, many questions do expand outside of the U.S. And again, I agree with Monica on this. I wouldn't do that right now. I would really focus on fixing your supply chain, right? Because and this happens, you get an order from a toy store or toy company, and then you go and manufacture it and then they cancel it. And so you're left with all this product, right?

23:43And I mean, there are ways around that. You can create some mechanisms to protect yourself. But at the end of the day, you want to find the cheapest and most efficient way to make this at the highest quality. And so the Ripley's thing is interesting, right? Do you know how many shops they have? I think we're in about 21. It's the Ripley's Believe It or Not, which is the oddities. And then there's also the Ripley's Aquariums. So they really like the ones, the random moles that have an aquatic theme. And they had a brilliant merchandiser. And that has been a key to our success in retail, I think, having a merchandiser.

24:16Yeah. I mean, it seems like you want to follow the pull, right? And the Ripley's, to me, seems like that's sort of the clearest, the clear sign of a product market fit right now. I think you want to give that more time and really use the time to focus on operations before you really push out further, just maybe take a step back. It may be a little frustrating because it's exciting. But you want to focus on having an efficient supply chain and you want to focus on having a strong relationship with that customer and then maybe even building out in the cities where those Ripley's are located, right, and targeting independent toy stores.

25:01That's where I think you want to really kind of build out the brand, you know, in other stores around there. Yeah, I would agree and get a good sales group to really pound away, let's just say, San Francisco, other major markets where they're just strong, independent toy stores. We've had quite a bit of interest from different sort of animation studios and producers as a result of that video that went viral. Do you think that we should pursue that hard? Obviously, that would be a tremendous exposure for the brand if we were to be able to get anything like a TV show or just YouTube shorts. I think it would be a great way of telling the story and bringing that to life.

25:43It's tempting, isn't it? Because it's so sexy, right? So you have to ask yourself, what business are you in? And you're so small, you have to pick a path right now. I'm not saying forever, but for right now, you got to pick a path in terms of a way to grow. I agree. I think you're being stretched and already being stretched in too many directions right now. I think you need discipline. I think you need operational strength. I think you want to focus on, as I say, supply chain. I'm not saying for a year or two. I'm saying for like three or four months. Really get that down. Because if you are doing too many things, that turns into chaos and not strategy.

26:25It sounds like you've got a good brand. The IP is gaining traction. You've got this Ripley's thing that's going pretty well. I would look at that as an opportunity to really lean into and then try and build out geographically based on those locations. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. The brand is called Randomals. Nick Harmon, good luck. Thanks for calling in. Thank you, Guy. Thanks, Nick. Thank you, Monica. All right. Awesome. We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, another caller, another question, and another round of advice. I'm Guy Raz. Stick around. You're listening to The Advice Line on How I Built This Lab.

27:17Welcome back to The Advice Line on How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. And today I'm taking calls with Mrs. Myers, founder Monica Nassif. So, Monica, are you ready? I am ready. I'm thrilled to be here, Guy. Let's do it. Let's do it. Awesome. Hey, Monica. Hey, Guy. My name is Ben Rothenhafer, and my company is Chandelier Cleaning VA. I'm based out of Richmond, Virginia and service the surrounding states. We specialize in cleaning and the restoration of antique and modern lighting. Our work preserves the integrity in historic architecture while bringing a new brilliance to the spaces we serve. Ben, thanks for calling in.