Mrs. Meyer isn’t a mascot. She’s Thelma Meyer, a farm girl from Kansas who raised nine kids.
Her daughter, Monica Nassif, joins me to talk about putting her mother’s name and face on every bottle and building one of the most recognizable cleaning brands in America.
Monica grew up the oldest girl of nine in small-town Iowa, raised to cook, clean, sew, and take care of babies. She waitressed at a truck stop, worked in an emergency room at sixteen, and started as the oldest intern at what’s now Target. Then she founded Caldrea, built Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day, and sold the company to SC Johnson in 2008.
If you’ve ever been told you don’t fit the mold, this one’s for you.
What You’ll Learn
Why Monica built the brand that could beat her own company
How she turned cleaning products into “beauty products for the home”
Why grouping every scent together on the shelf made shoppers get the brand
How she won over Whole Foods one store at a time
Why she pulled her brand out of Target before Target could drop it
What to write down before you decide to start a business
What her mother meant by “failure is not in my vocabulary”
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A Line From the Conversation
“It’s not about their no. It’s about your vision, putting on the blinders, and moving forward.”
Favorite Book
The Experience Economy by B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore
Monica’s pick fits this conversation. She calls the book her business-plan bible. It argues that people pay for how something makes them feel, not just for what it does, and that’s exactly the bet behind Mrs. Meyer’s. Dish soap was a commodity until someone decided it should be an experience you’d leave out by the sink.
Favorite Quote
“Timid salesmen have skinny kids.”
(00:00) Intro: The real Mrs. Meyer
(01:53) Meet Monica Nassif
(03:05) Raised to cook, clean and sew
(06:26) “Failure is not in my vocabulary”
(09:32) From truck stop waitress to the ER
(14:07) Interning at Target
(22:58) “We’re holding ourselves in captivity”
(30:45) Turning cleaning into beauty
(36:45) Lemon verbena, lavender and owning the shelf
(39:38) Why she pulled her brand out of Target
(44:19) “Hey mom, would you like to be a brand?”
(48:15) Knowing when to step aside
(51:22) Building to sell vs. building what you love
(52:51) SC Johnson in her booth at her first trade show
(59:53) Get your financial house in order
(60:34) Should you start a business?
(63:22) Can your business last the long haul?
(65:09) Favorite quote & book
Most of us are waiting for someone to tell us we’re ready, or that our background fits the box.
Monica never waited. She asked one question every time someone said no: does this fit my vision? Then she put the blinders on and kept going.
If you’ve been letting someone else’s “no” decide for you, this conversation is for you.
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