Ep 212: Monica Nassif: The Founder Of Mrs. Meyer's On Bottling Her Mother And Building An Empire
WHAT YOU'LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
The two things every brand with a cult following has, and why Monica's mother was living proof of one of them
Why she deliberately built a cheaper version of her own successful brand, and how to know when to do it to yourself first
The exercise called "check the downside," and how naming the worst case on paper with real percentages moves you through fear
What to do in your first 90 days as a solopreneur: the superpowers and passions exercise Monica gives every founder she coaches
The four questions to answer honestly before you start anything: can you live in the gray zone, can you live with risk, are you intuitive, and do you have grit
The most underrated skill in building a brand, and the 16 foot shelf question that separates founders from idea people
How Monica made a four person company look ten times bigger the day Williams-Sonoma came to visit
How she won shelf space with no sales reps, and why she still straightens the shelves at Target today
Why Monica kicked herself out of Target, got her house in order, and came back as a powerful brand parter
What "don't let them eat your soul" means, and how to tell when it's time to go
The employee comment that changed how Monica leads, and the words she had to learn to say
Why sales, not building, is the first job of a new company
The case for pausing, and why rest without punishment is a skill entrepreneurs have to learn
The one line from her mother that Monica has carried since she was a teenager
The book that changed how she built Mrs. Meyer's, and what she's reading now
SHOW NOTES
Monica Nassif grew up in a town of 600 people in Iowa, one of nine kids, raised to cook, clean, sew, and garden. She turned every one of those skills into Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day and Caldrea.
She started at age 43 out of a spare bedroom with maxed out credit cards, two daughters, and a backup plan to drive a UPS truck. She grew to 20,000 stores and sold both brands to the multi- billion dollar household cleaning empire, SC Johnson.
And Mrs. Meyer is real. She's Monica's mom, Thelma, who is 93 and still out in her garden tending to her geraniums.
In this episode, Monica takes us inside the messy business of building. The moment in a store in Atlanta that turned into a business plan on the plane home. Why she decided cleaning products should be personal care for the home. The decision to knock off her own successful brand before someone else could. And the investor who told her he hated consumer deals but liked her anyway, and became her greatest champion.
She also gets honest about her daughter's cancer diagnosis while she was building, and what her mother said that got her back to work. The two companies out of four that flopped, and what each one taught her. Why she kicked her own brand out of Target before Target could. And what it feels like eighteen years later to have sold her own mother.
Monica now sits on the board of Barkeeper's Friend, coaches early stage consumer brand founders, and just published her memoir, “I Bottled My Mother.”
Her motto: Bet on Yourself.
Connect With Monica
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/monica-nassif-686876335/
Website: monicanassif.com
Book, “I Bottled My Mother”: available at Amazon, Walmart, and Target
Recommended in this episode: The Experience Economy by Joseph Pine, and his new book, The Transformation Economy
Listen and connect:
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Spotify: Rock Your Brain. Rock Your Life.
Website: www.sarahmoody.com/mainpodcast
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