847 Michael Meyer: CEO of I and love and you

0:00Kara Goldin:I am unwilling to give up, but I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. You just want to make sure you will get knocked down, but just make sure you don't get knocked out. So your only choice should be, go focus on what you can control. Hi everyone and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world's greatest leaders. We'll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can't wait to get started. Let's go. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by Grooms.

0:45Kara Goldin:Summer routines live or die by how easy they are. I've learned that if something takes too much effort, when life gets busy, it's the first thing to go. And this time of year, when schedules are packed and energy matters more than ever, I want something that actually keeps up. That's why I've been loving Grooms. Grooms is a daily pack of gummy bears that covers your greens, vitamins, and prebiotics all in one. No powders, no multiple bottles, just one simple step I can actually stay consistent with. And it's incredibly comprehensive. Most multivitamins only have a handful of nutrients, but Grooms packs in over 20 vitamins and minerals, 60 ingredients, plus six grams of prebiotic fiber.

1:38Kara Goldin:That's more than two cups of broccoli. It's vegan, gluten-free, no artificial colors or flavors, and it actually tastes great, like something you want to take. What I love most is how easy it makes everything. It supports energy digestion, immunity, and it fits into real life without overcomplicating things. If you're looking to simplify your routine this summer, definitely check it out. Save up to 52 % off with code GOLDEN at grooms.co. That's code GOLDEN at G-R-U-N-S dot C-O. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by Rhythm Health. Sometimes I wonder, are my workouts actually working?

2:28Kara Goldin:Are the supplements I'm taking making a difference? Am I eating the right way for my body? The truth is many of us are investing time, money, and effort into our health without really knowing what's happening inside. That's why I'm excited about Rhythm. Rhythm is the world's easiest blood test to help you understand what's going on inside your body. You can do it at home in just two minutes. No needles. It's a simple peel-and-stick device. You draw a small sample, send it in, and get your results back in just a few days. I recently did my first rhythm test, and what stood out wasn't just how easy it was.

3:08Kara Goldin:It was what I actually learned. Seeing my biomarkers laid out clearly made me look at my health differently. I wasn't guessing anymore. I could see what was happening with things like cholesterol, inflammation, hormones, and metabolic health, and where I may want to pay closer attention. That kind of information changes how you make decisions. It makes you think more intentionally about what you're eating, how you're moving, what supplements you're taking, and whether those choices are actually showing up in your results. And that's what I really appreciate about Rhythm. You're not just getting a one-time lab report that disappears into a file.

3:50Kara Goldin:You're getting data you can track over time, plus an AI health coach that helps explain what it means and what actions may make sense next. Right now, Rhythm is offering our listeners 15 % off your first month and free shipping at rhythm.health slash promo. That's rhythm with one H R Y T H M dot health slash promo for 15 % off your first month and free shipping. Stop guessing, start testing rhythm.health slash promo. Hi everyone. And welcome back to the Cara Golden Show, have you ever noticed how the biggest opportunities in business are often the ones everyone else is overlooking, the categories people assume are figured out?

4:38Kara Goldin:Well, because sometimes the real opportunity isn't in doing what everyone else is doing. It's in seeing what they're not. So today's guest has built a career doing exactly that, spotting white space in the market and joining companies, joining founders often to help build brands, build consumer spaces. And whether it's in organic baby food, natural pet food, our next guest has done just that throughout his career. So Michael Meyer is with I and Love and You, an incredible pet brand that has done so much in the category. I absolutely love what they've done. I've watched them from afar for quite some time.

5:28Kara Goldin:And Michael Meyer has been the CEO of the company. He's just recently making a little announcement. We'll probably get into that. But I cannot wait to hear everything that he's done to really build this business and build the category overall. So Michael, welcome to the Kara Golden Show. Super excited to have you here. Kara, thank you so much. It's so great to reconnect. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by LinkedIn Hiring Pro. Hi, Kara here. For small businesses, every hire matters, but so does your time. I felt that pressure firsthand. You know, a bad hire isn't just frustrating, it's expensive in time, money, and team morale.

6:13Kara Goldin:And yet hiring the right person can feel like a full-time job on top of everything else you're already doing. Sifting through applications, trying to spot the real standouts, second-guessing decisions, it can get overwhelming fast. That's why having a way to save time without sacrificing quality isn't just nice to have, it's critical. Luckily, LinkedIn Hiring Pro is built for that reality. It's your hiring partner designed to help you hire with confidence by surfacing only the right candidates without turning hiring into another full-time job. Posting a job isn't always the hard part. It's finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates.

6:56Kara Goldin:Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process from drafting your job to shortlisting candidates and conducting AI-powered interviews for initial screenings. Their updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language, no recruiter jargon needed. Nearly 60 % of hires find a candidate to interview within a week. With Hiring Pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at linkedin.com slash Kara Golden. Terms and conditions apply. This episode of the Cara Golden Show is brought to you by Naturium.

7:42Kara Goldin:I've tried a lot of skincare over the years and I know how easy it is to get pulled in by products that look great, sound great, but either cost you much to use consistently or make the whole routine feel too complicated. And here's what I've learned. Skincare only works when you can actually stick with it. Consistency is the piece that matters, and it's also the piece most people make way too hard. That's why I love Naturium. Their products make it so much easier to stay consistent because they feel luxurious, but they're actually affordable enough to use every day. I've been using their Glow Getter Bundle, and I genuinely love it.

8:27Kara Goldin:My skin feels more hydrated, smoother, and just has that healthy radiant glow. The body wash starts as this rich oil and turns into a gentle lather without drying your skin. The scrub is super effective, but still gentle. It helps reveal really soft skin. And the body oil and body butter, they just layer beautifully and leave your skin feeling deeply nourished and glowing. It feels like a high-end routine, but without the high-end price. And what I really appreciate is that Naturium is all about making skincare that works for everyone. Clinically effective, dermatologist tested, and designed to be used consistently every single day.

9:12Kara Goldin:Give your skin the affordable, luxurious glow up it deserves. Go to naturium.com slash Kara Golden for 10 % off your first purchase today. That's naturium.com slash Kara Golden. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So for listeners just discovering the brand I and Love and You, how do you describe the brand and what makes it truly different and unique from other pet food in the market? it? Sure. Well, first of all, it obviously starts with the name, right? So I and love and you, right? It's like the best. And for anybody who has a dog or a cat, they're your plus one, right? They're part of the family.

10:00What you want for yourself, you want for your best friend. And so that's where the brand starts. The brand was actually founded in Boulder, Boulder, Colorado, and it was founded around natural food principles. So that first part, natural food. The second focused on dog and cat equally. Most pet brands are dog dominated and have a little cat or just cat. So this brand figured out how to resonate right with the dog and the cat owner. And then number three, the premise of the brand was to make it accessible to humans for where they shop for their own food. So this brand, this pet food brand, is not in a pet store.

10:44It's in Kroger's. It's in Albertson's. It's in Publix. It's now online with Amazon and Thrive Market. And so it's everywhere. Well, we say everywhere they're human shop. So those are kind of the key points of differentiation within the brand.

11:04Kara Goldin:So you joined the brand four years ago. and at a time when natural pet food and the category overall was still very much in its kind of growth phase. I mean, there's been a number of pet brands over the years, and you've been a part of this industry overall for over 20 years now, which is incredible. But now I and Love and You is the number one independent pet food brand in the natural channel. So what do you think that you've gotten right with the brand and building the brand that maybe other founders listening can really learn from? Yeah. So again, it comes back to the founding of the brand, right?

11:50It was built to resonate with the consumer, to really understand what the consumer feels about their dog or cat, but also what they believe in in terms of human food values. It all starts there. It goes right back to the founding days and is building upon that and expanding that in the market.

12:12Kara Goldin:So you made a very intentional decision to build the brand across multiple channels and become an omni-channel brand. So there are many CEOs who come in who might think, oh, we just have to be in mass or maybe for a natural brand, you've just got to really kill it in natural or maybe even e-commerce and just become a direct to consumer brand that I think there's less and less of that today. But I think there's an intentional decision that you've made to really make sure that you're in all these channels. So why was that decision? And sort of historically, can you talk a little bit about that and kind of where the brand was and where you grew it from there?

13:04So again, from the founding days, it was to bring much better pet food to the grocery aisle, to the center of the store, right? So that was the premise. But again, as we started interacting with our consumers, it became very apparent that those consumers shopped in multiple places. And so we really thought through, well, what is that next logical extension of the selling experience? right so conventional grocery natural grocery with sprouts right if you go into a sprout you can't miss us it's an amazing display in sprouts uh as you said the number number one independent brand in that channel and and then e-commerce we probably leaned in maybe six years ago so i was on the board so i've been on the board since 2017 um and then in the ceo position since 2022 and probably maybe around 19 or 20, we said people are buying more and more online and let's start to explore it.

14:11We didn't really know how big it could be. Everybody was learning, but we leaned in. We leaned in. We hired a sales lead just to own that channel. And a founder of Wellness Pet Food, Jim Scott, used to say we sell one bag at a time, one bag at a time. and it will grow. And that's where we started. That's what we did.

14:33Kara Goldin:This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by Rhythm Health. Sometimes I wonder, are my workouts actually working? Are the supplements I'm taking making a difference? Am I eating the right way for my body? The truth is many of us are investing time, money, and effort into our health without really knowing what's happening inside. That's why I'm excited about Rhythm. Rhythm is the world's easiest blood test to help you understand what's going on inside your body. You can do it at home in just two minutes. No needles. It's a simple peel-and-stick device. You draw a small sample, send it in, and get your results back in just a few days.

15:15Kara Goldin:I recently did my first rhythm test, and what stood out wasn't just how easy it was. It was what I actually learned. Seeing my biomarkers laid out clearly made me look at my health differently. I wasn't guessing anymore. I could see what was happening with things like cholesterol, inflammation, hormones, and metabolic health, and where I may want to pay closer attention. That kind of information changes how you make decisions. It makes you think more intentionally about what you're eating, how you're moving, what supplements you're taking, and whether those choices are actually showing up in your results.

15:54Kara Goldin:And that's what I really appreciate about Rhythm. You're not just getting a one-time lab report that disappears into a file. You're getting data you can track over time, plus an AI health coach that helps explain what it means and what actions may make sense next. Right now, Rhythm is offering our listeners 15 % off your first month and free shipping at rhythm.health slash promo. That's rhythm with one H R Y T H M dot health slash promo for 15 % off your first month and free shipping. Stop guessing, start testing rhythm.health slash promo. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by Naturium.

16:42Kara Goldin:I've tried a lot of skincare over the years and I know how easy it is to get pulled in by products that look great, sound great, but either cost too much to use consistently or make the whole routine feel too complicated. And here's what I've learned. Skincare only works when you can actually stick with it. Consistency is the piece that matters and it's also the piece most people make way too hard. That's why I love Naturium. Their products make it so much easier to stay consistent because they feel luxurious, but they're actually affordable enough to use every day. I've been using their Glow Getter Bundle and I genuinely love it.

17:27Kara Goldin:My skin feels more hydrated, smoother, and just has that healthy radiant glow. The body wash starts as this rich oil and turns into a gentle lather without drying your skin. The scrub is super effective, but still gentle. It helps reveal really soft skin. And the body oil and body butter, they just layer beautifully and leave your skin feeling deeply nourished and glowing. It feels like a high-end routine, but without the high-end price. And what I really appreciate is that Naturium is all about making skincare that works for everyone. Clinically effective, dermatologist tested and designed to be used consistently every single day.

18:12Kara Goldin:Give your skin the affordable, luxurious glow up it deserves. Go to naturium.com slash Kara Golden for 10 % off your first purchase today. That's naturium.com slash Kara Golden. So you recently made a deal with a very famous chef, Bobby Flay, who has been involved in another brand made by Nacho. Can you talk about that and sort of that combination that just went into effect? Sure. Well, first of all, we love the combination. We've known the brand for a number of years. It's a nascent brand. It's a young brand. So Nacho's maybe four or five years old, right? Out of 11U is 14 years old. They are very much in their toddler stage, and we're in probably the young beginning to become an adult stage, right?

19:11And what we loved about the brand, well, two things. what we loved about the brand was that it shared the same cultural values as us, right? It's got to be what's best for baby, right? Natural. And it has a culinary aspect to the offering, right? The taste profile. We loved that it's in the cat space. The cat space, we've always believed in the cat space. As we said, we founded 50-50 Dog and Cat. And to this day, it's 50-50 Dog and Cat. And so we know there are more, actually just now I think there are more cat households than dog households in the United States. And the cat households I think grew double digits last year.

19:53Right? So there is a growing population of cat. And the cat has been somewhat neglected. The dog is taking all of the press and all of the headlines. so you know leaning in and doubling up as i like to say on cat and bringing that variety to our consumers so the products you know our products i love and you and nachos products are very distinctive and they're very complementary uh they're complementary in different proteins they're complementary in different profiles um so i love and you is very strong in pates and stews nacho is very strong and minced and flaked so that texture matters a lot to cats and so having that variety of textures and flavor profiles is all about building that category so interesting

20:47Kara Goldin:so when you look at the combined businesses because this is a very small business right and you're bringing it into a larger business obviously there's you know you've almost got to go back to the basics because you can't just put a small business in. You've got to build the brand, all of these things. What advice would you give to any founder who's thinking about, should I go and work with a celebrity on building the brand? Should I start another brand within my brand or go buy another brand? I mean, what are kind of the thinking that goes on and I guess the risk as well well i think there's a couple things first of all again cultural fit critical and culture has to do with people and who people are and what people believe in and if you don't have the right alignment in terms of the brand beliefs the product of beliefs even the way you interact with people beliefs really really critical really it's foundational so it starts there And the second is really thinking through what skill sets does each bring to the table.

22:02And, you know, so for I and Love and You and Nacho, what Bobby loves, Bobby and Ellie's the co-founder too. There's two individuals there. Bobby and Ellie felt that they had a brand that was beginning to resonate in the market. But how great would it be to be with a brand that can help them to deliver that product? so people processes systems retailer relationships broker relationships manufacturing partner relationships like all of that infrastructure takes takes a long time to build and to refine and so it's almost it's never as easy as that but it's almost a plug-in it's like okay come on in right we'll help to to to propel this brand this episode of the kara golden show is brought to you

22:49Kara Goldin:by Rhythm Health. Sometimes I wonder, are my workouts actually working? Are the supplements I'm taking making a difference? Am I eating the right way for my body? The truth is many of us are investing time, money, and effort into our health without really knowing what's happening inside. That's why I'm excited about Rhythm. Rhythm is the world's easiest blood test to help you understand what's going on inside your body. You can do it at home in just two minutes. No needles. It's a simple peel and stick device. You draw a small sample, send it in, and get your results back in just a few days. I recently did my first rhythm test, and what stood out wasn't just how easy it was.

23:34Kara Goldin:It was what I actually learned. Seeing my biomarkers laid out clearly made me look at my health differently. I wasn't guessing anymore. I could see what was happening with things like cholesterol, inflammation, hormones, and metabolic health, and where I may want to pay closer attention. That kind of information changes how you make decisions. It makes you think more intentionally about what you're eating, how you're moving, what supplements you're taking, and whether those choices are actually showing up in your results. And that's what I really appreciate about Rhythm. You're not just getting a one-time lab report that disappears into a file.

24:15Kara Goldin:You're getting data you can track over time, plus an AI health coach that helps explain what it means and what actions may make sense next. Right now, Rhythm is offering our listeners 15 % off your first month and free shipping at rhythm.health slash promo. That's Rhythm with one H R Y T H M dot health slash promo for 15 % off your first month and free shipping. Stop guessing. Start testing. Rhythm dot health slash promo. This episode of the Kara Golden show is brought to you by Naturium. I've tried a lot of skincare over the years and I know how easy it is to get pulled in by products that look great, sound great, but either cost too much to use consistently or make the whole routine feel too complicated.

25:11Kara Goldin:And here's what I've learned. Skincare only works when you can actually stick with it. Consistency is the piece that matters, and it's also the piece most people make way too hard. That's why I love Naturium. Their products make it so much easier to stay consistent because they feel luxurious, but they're actually affordable enough to use every day. I've been using their Glow Getter Bundle and I genuinely love it. My skin feels more hydrated, smoother, and just has that healthy radiant glow. The body wash starts as this rich oil and turns into a gentle lather without drying your skin. The scrub is super effective, but still gentle.

25:55Kara Goldin:It helps reveal really soft skin. And the body oil and body butter, they just layer beautifully and leave your skin feeling deeply nourished and glowing. It feels like a high-end routine, but without the high-end price. And what I really appreciate is that Naturium is all about making skincare that works for everyone. Clinically effective, dermatologist tested and designed to be used consistently every single day. Give your skin the affordable, luxurious glow up it deserves. Go to naturium.com slash Kara Golden for 10 % off your first purchase today. That's naturium.com slash Kara Golden. So you've been backed by firms, including L.

26:46Kara Goldin:Catterton, and growing multiple businesses, not just in the pets category, but also, as we talked about, Plum Organic. What advice would you give to founders who are maybe thinking about, do I go the private equity route? What do you think they're looking for that maybe a founder might not be aware of, knowing what you know today? Yes. Well, you know, again, it comes back to people and relationships. And it's a partnership. It's a marriage. It's a marriage. You might have two founders, co-founders in a business. That's a marriage. and when you bring in potentially a private equity partner, that's a shareholder.

27:28That's another partner in the business. So, you know, that's the first stop is do you, does everybody around the table have a shared sense of beliefs and a shared sense of where collectively those folks around the table can take the business and the brand to the next level? It could be a beautiful, wonderful thing, but if it's not right, it may not be. So it comes down to the people. And then private equity, and all private equity is a fancy name for capital. There's different sources of capital, right? There could be bank capital. There could be capital that's in private hands. It can be capital that's in public hands like an IPO.

28:15So it's just a form of bringing capital. And then the key is like, how do you utilize a capital? to build a business together with shared, again, shared beliefs, shared values, and shared goals.

28:27Kara Goldin:Is there time to bring in, I guess, private equity as well into a business? Because I think that there's, you know, as you mentioned, there's family offices, you know, there's different types of capital. But I think with private equity, they're typically, not always, but they're typically buying a majority, right, of the business and definitely board seats and all of that stuff that goes along, right, that goes along with it. But I get this question from founders all the time. I mean, do you bring in somebody like that when you're a$5 million business, a$50 million business? It sounds like with Made by Nacho, I mean, it was pretty early, Right.

29:14Yeah. So they, Dotshow had private equity before we brought them into the business. And that private equity helped them to get to where they were. And I think, you know, it's all time and place, whether it's a$5 million startup or it's a$20 million, you know, just getting its legs. You know, it really depends on the stage of the business, what, and what capital is needed to drive the business as opposed to how much you can raise and at what valuation. That's secondary. The first is like, what do we need and how do we deploy?