Try things out, with Monica Nassif

Monica Nassif, founder of the Mrs. Meyers brand, shares productivity tips and the wisdom of small experiments

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Good Morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Today's episode is going to be a longer one part
of the series where I interview fascinating people about how
they take their days from great to awesome and any
advice they have for the rest of us. So today,
I am delighted to welcome Monica Nassif to Before Breakfast.

(00:29):
Monica is the founder of missus Myers's Clean Day household products,
a brand I know a lot of our listeners use.
She is also the author of the new book I
Bottled My Mother. So Monica, welcome to the show.

Speaker 3 (00:41):
I'm delighted to be here. Laura.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
Yeah, thanks for coming on. So why don't you tell
our listeners a little bit about yourself?

Speaker 3 (00:47):
Sure, I founded missus Myers Clean Day about twenty years ago,
and it was really due to a Eureka moment in
a store where I saw these cleaning products on a
wooden pallet. They were tipped over, they had garish liquids,
they smelled terrible, and I kept thinking, why can't this
be fabulous? Why can't this be awesome? Like a Veda

(01:07):
or your favorite personal care products. So that was a
Eureka moment. Then I immediately stopped sleeping. I wrote a
business plan and off I went in terms of raising
money and launching the product and really trying to create
a consistent fragrance across all types of cleaning products for
the entire home that were safe for your kids and
your pets. That was really the genesis.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
Yeah, that's awesome. Well I use a lot of Missus
Myers's products in my house. I almost took a photo
of the stash of hand soap we have in the pantry.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
To send you.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
But a lot of people assume that Missus Myers is,
you know, mister clean, right, But in fact this is
a real person.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
There is a real Missus Meyer.

Speaker 3 (01:48):
There is a real Missus Myers, and she's my mother.
She's ninety three years old. She's still alive and kicking
and doing amazing and she was really the inspiration for
the brand because my mother was a child of the depression.
She really believed in home cooked meals, physical exercise, fresh
fresh air cures everything. And she was really the model

(02:09):
for Hey, this is how you care for your home,
and a loving, practical and not a perfect way. If
you will so. Yeah, she loved her role. Oh my gosh.
When I brought her to media events, reporters laughed up,
and she just thought she was a Hollywood starlet. Yeah,
it's she's a real person and she'll tell you all
about it if you happen to meet her.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Well, I'm sure you guys had all sorts of I mean,
if she is the inspiration for this, what was housekeeping
like in your home growing up? I feel like maybe
none of us could ever live up to that.

Speaker 3 (02:41):
Well, it wasn't. My mother was saying it was never perfect,
and it was not. But one thing my mother did
is every Saturday morning, you ran down to the refrigerator
and she would write on either a back of an
envelope or a brown paper bag because my mother did
not believe in buying paper. These were your chores. And
her big attitude about caring for the house was it's

(03:01):
not perfect, but well we'll keep it up. Because she
really wanted to play. She wanted us outside playing in
the backyard, so once we finished our chores, we could
go play. And she we did that every Saturday morning.
And my mother also loved laundry. Oh my gosh. She
was a very beautiful laundress. She everything was hung outside
in the backyard. So those were the things she really enjoyed.

(03:24):
And and ironing. I think ironing was her morning meditation,
if you will.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
Well that's something if I that's enjoying. But I love
that detail though.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
You know, I used to think that one had to
make grocery lists on envelopes, because my mother always did
her grocery list on the back of an envelope, and
then she would put a used envelope like we're not
using none ever used a new one, and then she'd
put her coupons in the envelope system.

Speaker 3 (03:55):
Right, so that's even better.

Speaker 1 (03:57):
We come from the same sort of thing.

Speaker 2 (03:59):
But there were a lot of you that she was
hanging all this laundry out in the backyard.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
You are one of nine children, right, that is correct.

Speaker 3 (04:07):
I'm the oldest girl, so I had in ten years,
nine of us showed up. So I had two older
twin brothers, then myself three sisters, and then we called
them the three little boys, my three younger brothers. And
believe me, it was a scrum, let me tell you.

Speaker 1 (04:23):
And as a lot of children, a lot of kids.

Speaker 3 (04:25):
In fact, I had a woman when I was in
my forties in business. She said, hey, I'm taking a
self defense class and I said, why. She goes, I've
never hit anyone. She goes, have you ever hit anyone?
And I went, uh, yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
That's how you survived lots of times. I can only imagine.

Speaker 3 (04:45):
You know.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
One of my personal fascinations is large family logistics. So
I'm very curious if you guys had any sort of,
you know, cheaper by the dozen things you all did
to keep the household organized, like everybody had to have
a certain color sock or something like that.

Speaker 3 (05:02):
I don't remember that. I do remember everybody kind of
had their own laundry basket by the bedroom. So there
were three little bedrooms upstairs, and there were six, the
six oldest were up there, and every and every room
had a laundry basket. So your clothes came down in
that and then they were folded. Of course, you helped
her mom. We helped our mom fold them, and then
they went back upstairs. That was one, and then for dining,

(05:25):
everyone had the same position at the dining room table.
The other rule was if you cooked, you didn't have
the do dishes. And believe me, I learned really quick
to cook because I did not want to do dishes
for eleven people. So that was the other thing.

Speaker 1 (05:38):
I think.

Speaker 3 (05:39):
The other thing my mother did was she was also
a big believer in physical exercise. So back in the day,
she adored Jack Lalaane. Now I'm showing my age, Laura,
I'd okay, you've heard of it, Okay. So he was
kind of the first personal fitness guru, and she watched
him daily and we all had to exercise along with her.

(06:00):
So that was one thing she did. Or she kicked
us outside as soon as we were able. And then
the other thing that she kind of controlled her day
was she every afternoon, after lunch, she would set the
timer on the stove for thirty minutes and we all
had to lay down in the living room and rest,
even if you know, up to age twelve, we had
to just kind of calm ourselves after lunch. I actually

(06:21):
think that kept her saying a lot of the days,
so she.

Speaker 2 (06:26):
Knew she was going to get at least thirty minutes
of quiet, right whatever the rest of the day looked.

Speaker 3 (06:29):
Like, right, exactly exactly, And you know.

Speaker 2 (06:32):
She was obviously spending much of her time caring for
all you guys. But she she had had a career,
I believe as a nurse at one point, and.

Speaker 1 (06:40):
She had a lot of career advice for you as well.

Speaker 2 (06:43):
You mentioned in your book that some of the best
advice on like experimentation and not being afraid of failure
came out right.

Speaker 3 (06:49):
Yeah, you know, my mother was she said, failure was
not in my vocabulary. I just thought that was learning.
You know. It was never a mistake that you used
granulated sugar for versus powdered sugar, or you sowed the
wrong sleeve into the bodice. It would it was always oh, now,
you know, just try it again. Everything was just kind
of that's okay, try it again now, you know, it

(07:12):
was just learning. You know. I don't and I don't
ever remember my mom being afraid. Really, she kind of
had this devil may care, God will protect me. Let's
go I've never been here before, let's go over there.
She was very adventuresome, and you know that gave us
a lot of confidence too. When you see your mother,
you know, go anywhere with the nine kids in a

(07:34):
station wagon, you know, because my dad traveled all the time,
so she was always taking us everywhere. You know, all
of us at once.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
And how do you how on earth do you corral
nine children in public? And I mean I guess you
guys were just maybe she wasn't afraid, but you all
are afraid of what would happen.

Speaker 3 (07:50):
No, you know what, she was an extremely fast walker.
She's a very fit woman. And man, I'm telling you,
if you didn't keep up with her, she'll leave you behind.
So you just learned to stay line, keep up and
make sure you can see your head, you know, make
sure you can see your tail lights because she was
on the move.

Speaker 2 (08:08):
I'm sure all great training for then managing perhaps unruly
teams in the future and your business careers. We'll be
back in just a minute to talk with more with
Monica Nassaf. Well, I am back talking with Monica nassav

(08:28):
who is the founder of missus Meyer The Clean Day.
And we've been talking about your childhood in a family
of nine. But when you started your business then, I
think it's so fascinating. You started with the high end products,
right with the Caldria brand, and then pivoted from that.
I mean, you still had culture Caldria, but to bring

(08:48):
in a mass market brand. I'm curious what was the
thinking there that you know you you were gonna switch
gears in a way?

Speaker 3 (08:56):
Well, the thinking was we started at the high end
because I knew that industry a lot better. I knew
the gift and specialty industry, especially coming in out of
retail excuse me, a far better than how to get
on the grocery store shelf or the whole foods of
the world. And plus we wanted to experiment a little about, Hey,
what fragrances work? Does this concept work? And once we
saw traction with the concept. We were also doing all

(09:18):
the private label program for Williamsonoma at the time, so
we knew from them that their sales were going good
great too, And we thought, you know what, someone's going
to knock us off. I just know it. I'm fiercely competitive,
and I thought we got to get to the mass
before someone else does. So I thought, if another team
came and said let's take out Caldrea, how would they

(09:38):
do it? So we hired a whole nother design team
and a whole really a couple marketing people just to
focus on creating Missus Myers. And we thought, this has
to be so different from Caldrea, wholesome Midwestern really just
kind of looking to our own personal heritage. And we thought, God,
just sounds like my mom and bo the you know,

(09:59):
the idea was born.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
Yeah, well it makes so much sense.

Speaker 2 (10:03):
I mean, I love the idea of high end cleaning products.
But there's also this tension here because I mean, anyone
who can buy truly high end cleaning products can also
pay somebody else to clean their house. And so you're
going for the market maybe of people who want to
do their own cleaning or need to do their own cleaning,
but still want it to be a good experience.

Speaker 3 (10:20):
Oh for sure. No. And you know, even my mom said,
I can't afford that stuff. I would never buy that
Caldaria stuff. Why did you make something for me? That
happened actually about a month before you know, the light
bulb went on and we thought, she's right, we got
to do a mass market brand.

Speaker 1 (10:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (10:36):
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (10:37):
So, you know, obviously a lot goes into the thought
of whether one is going to start a business. And
you know, I think, you know, you mentioned in the
book somebody is not so much about how to start
a business.

Speaker 1 (10:48):
Should I start a business?

Speaker 2 (10:50):
And what are some of the characteristics that people should
know in themselves to know if this is the right
path for them.

Speaker 3 (10:56):
You know, it's a great question because I get asked
that mechanical quotes all the time. How how it's a
good question, No, you know. But at the first question
is should you be doing this? Do you see an
entrepreneur in the mirror? And you have to think about
are you a solo flyer? You're very much alone in
the beginning, you know, So can you handle being alone?

(11:17):
Can you live in the gray zone? That's another question
you have to ask yourself. Are you intuitive? Can you
make a lot of decisions without a lot of information?
And can you save yourself? You know, you know a
lot of people can't save themselves when they find themselves
in a deep dark hole with their favorite shovel set
next to them. So can you save yourself? And I

(11:38):
think you have to be comfortable? And can you go
broke and live with all that you know? Can you
check the downside? Can you write down all the horrible
things that might happen and go okay if that happens.
I can live with this. I'm okay with this. I'm okay,
My family's okay. So I think there's a lot of
questions you got to ask yourself before you begin, well.

Speaker 2 (11:57):
What do you mean exactly by can you live in
the gray zone? How would somebody know that they're okay
with that?

Speaker 3 (12:02):
Well, like, for example, can you make decisions without information?
You know, sometimes you'll go, I wonder if we should
go in that store, and you have to walk into
the store and go, Okay, I see other like brands,
all right, we fit with that. You know, you have
to have enough experience under your belt to be able
to live in the gray zone. And yet what I
mean by that is you don't have the data, right,

(12:23):
you don't have the sales data to know you should
be in this store, but you just kind of see
the other brands and you say, yeah, we could fit here,
we should be here, Let's go after them. That's what
I mean about the gray zone, and especially too when
you're creating a brand, and a lot of it is
creative brainstorming. Again, can you live with the process of that?

(12:44):
I see a lot of I used to be in
the consulting world, and I saw a lot of clients
super frustrated with Well, we don't know if that's going
to work or this is going to work. Let's test it.
With you know, focus groups, and I knew focus groups
that they're there kiss of death, you know you do
a phone because I don't ask me about focus grips.
I'm very much against them. I never think anything good

(13:04):
comes out of them other than c ya. But you
have to make decisions based on your experience and your
passion for the brand. That's what I mean by living
in the gray zone.

Speaker 2 (13:14):
Yeah, and you have to be so creative with an
entrepreneurship sort of thing. But you mentioned there are ways
to be more creative. There are also things that kill creativity. Yeah,
I think focus groups are one of them.

Speaker 1 (13:25):
What are some of the other.

Speaker 2 (13:26):
Things that that can really nip the outside the box
thinking right there? Uh?

Speaker 3 (13:31):
The ability to take on a creative risk. And what
I mean by that is if a creative uh, let's
say idea comes to you, you're the client, and it's
just so out there, But does it make you lean
in the hair on your arms kind of raise and
you go, oh my gosh, I don't fully understand it yet.
That is so attractive, that's so appealing. But that only

(13:55):
comes because you really understand your mission, you really understand
your vision. You know, I'm a creative thinker. But I
can't draw stick figure. But if you hire great graphic
designers and advertising folks, they can make that vision come alive.
And that whole process is gray. It's entirely muddy, and
you kind of don't know where you're gonna land. And

(14:16):
a lot of people go, how do you know it's
gonna work. Well, honestly, you don't know it's gonna work.
But if you see great creative work that reflects your
vision and your mission and your passion for the brand,
you'll know it when you see it.

Speaker 2 (14:28):
Well, and I imagine that some of the lessons you
learned from your mom about tolerating failure and there's just
new ways of learning that plays out in this.

Speaker 3 (14:34):
Right without question. Yeah, we didn't like my mom didn't
have a roadmap, she had no idea what was going
to happen through the day. It was just like, hey,
we'll go over there, we'll try that. If that doesn't work,
we'll do this. And so that sense of just sort
of be agility if you will agility, agile in your thinking,
agility in your actions. Yeah, I was raised like that.

Speaker 1 (14:57):
Wonderful.

Speaker 2 (14:58):
Well, we're gonna take one more quick ad break and
then I'll be back with more from Monica Nasseif.

Speaker 1 (15:09):
Well, I am back.

Speaker 2 (15:10):
Talking with Monica Nassif, who is the founder of missus
Myers Clean day household products. She is also the author
of the brand new book I Bottled My Mother about
the real Missus Myers.

Speaker 1 (15:19):
But let's pivot to talk about your own schedule.

Speaker 3 (15:22):
Here.

Speaker 2 (15:22):
A lot of listeners of this show that is called
Before Breakfast have morning routines, and you have one as well,
don't you.

Speaker 3 (15:28):
I do. I am a very early riser, I am
usually and I've I've been liked out my whole life,
probably because some of my first jobs I used to
walk beans on. I wasn't raised on a farm, but
I did a lot of farm work in my when
I was about twelve and fourteen. So I usually get
up about four thirty cup of coffee, big glass of water.

(15:49):
And I'm a big yoga person, so if I can
find a hot yoga studio, I love that. I try
to read all my newspapers online. You know. I've got
probably four that I read, and then I always every day,
even when I stopped working full time, I write down
everything I'm going to do that day. So I'm a
big list maker. I write down what I'm going to do,

(16:10):
I look ahead of my calendar, and I love breakfast.
So man, this is my kind of show. I'm telling you,
we got a lot of lood done there before breakfast.

Speaker 1 (16:20):
I imagine.

Speaker 3 (16:21):
Well, I mean, how.

Speaker 1 (16:22):
When are you eating breakfast?

Speaker 2 (16:23):
I mean if it starts at four thirty, when it
when is the breakfast fight actually happening there?

Speaker 3 (16:27):
I usually have coffee and a banana every morning, okay something, Yeah,
I'm always eating. Yeah, don't worry about that. Yeah, I
make sure I find something to eat.

Speaker 1 (16:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:37):
Well, that was good that if you were doing farm
work as as a kid you had this sort of
early bird tend. Then say that that would have been
hard if you were were not into that exactly.

Speaker 3 (16:45):
I love early morning and I'm I am most mostly productive.
I have my best hours, and I love it's quiet,
no one else is on.

Speaker 2 (16:54):
Yeah, and were you able to were you able to
reflect that schedule, like when you were like deep in
the weed of building your your brand?

Speaker 3 (17:02):
Oh, I had to. I had no other I had
no other choice. I had two small girls at the time,
and I had to get up and get organized before
they were awake, and so I've been getting up early
and getting organized my whole life. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (17:16):
And what time do you need to go to bed though,
in order to be up at four thirty in the morning.
I mean, there's that's of course the key question here.

Speaker 1 (17:22):
Do I have to say this out loud?

Speaker 3 (17:24):
It's all right, okay, I probably go to bed around
nine o'clock, eight thirty, nine o'clock.

Speaker 2 (17:29):
That that is totally legit if you are up at
four thirty in the morning. What's really funny to me
is people are starting like getting up at like three
thirty or something. I'm like, jesz, you have to be
in bed at like seven pm to make it work.

Speaker 3 (17:39):
I'll only get to catch an early flight. No, I
don't get it better.

Speaker 1 (17:42):
Yeah, that's exactly.

Speaker 2 (17:43):
So, I mean, are there any other sort of routines
you have that help make you more productive?

Speaker 3 (17:49):
You know? I think getting organized, but I've been doing
that my whole life. Also physical exercise. Again, this hails
for my mother. We were always taught you had to
do something every day. Take a walk, you know, go
ride your bike, go hiking. My mother loves to hike.
She's still to this day she wants to wants me
to take her on a hike. She can't go as far,

(18:10):
but she still wants to go. So I think just
taking care of your body with healthy food, you know. Also,
my mom she hated junk food. She always said, junk
food is junk food. And so we were raised with
real healthy eating. Drink lots of water, no process foods.
That makes a healthy day. You feel better, you think
you know you're sharper.

Speaker 2 (18:31):
Yeah, well, you mentioned as part of your morning routine
that you are planning out your day, like what would
happen at different times? Is there any point where you
look at time more broadly, like do you have a
weekly planning or monthly planning.

Speaker 1 (18:41):
Routine or something where you look a little broader than that.

Speaker 3 (18:44):
I kind of what I do right now is I
look out probably monthly, you know, in terms of what
I've got going, what my kids are doing, what my
grandkids are doing, because I want to be available for
them when I can. So that's kind of how I
look out ahead, and also too when I might go
see my mom, you know. So that's I kind of
look out monthly, if you will.

Speaker 2 (19:05):
Yeah, okay, So Monica, I ask all my guests this question,
what is something you have done recently to take a
day from great to awesome.

Speaker 3 (19:13):
Oh, from great to awesome, you know, it'll take it
from great to awesome. Is a great hike. I love hiking,
I really do. I spend a lot of time in
Colorado and the mountains, and one thing I've started to do,
and it's really challenging, is uphilling you put what is.

Speaker 1 (19:31):
Uphilling me other than just going uphill? All right?

Speaker 3 (19:34):
It's the fastest growing sport in Colorado. You put your
skins on your downhill skis and you trudge up the
mountain and then you ski down. Oh okay, and it
is it is like that high you get after running,
but I can't run any more because my knees are shot.
But it is the best high ever.

Speaker 2 (19:52):
So you're basically just skipping the lift right there to
the lift, Okay.

Speaker 3 (19:56):
You're hiking up. It's you know, at ten thousand feet.
It's a great workout. And if you go with a friend,
it's a great time to just chat with someone and
then you ski down and then you're done.

Speaker 2 (20:07):
Yeah, and you've really earned that ski down.

Speaker 1 (20:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:12):
Well, that does make skiing a little bit different as
an activity.

Speaker 1 (20:15):
I hadn't really even heard about that.

Speaker 3 (20:17):
But if you hit the mountains, you'll see the uphillars
all over the place. It's very popular right now.

Speaker 1 (20:23):
Do you get a lot of ideas when you're out hiking?

Speaker 3 (20:26):
I hate, Yeah, I do. I totally do. I get
a lot of ideas, like you know, in the shower
or sometimes a long car ride I get. That's how
I came up with the title for the book. After
being in the car for sixteen hours, I was brainstorming,
and then the next morning I woke up and I
had the title.

Speaker 1 (20:43):
Yeah, these things just come to us.

Speaker 2 (20:44):
I wish you could plant more, but it usually is
when we're not it not doing we don't you know,
we can't just sit down and be creative.

Speaker 1 (20:51):
It has to sort of percolate in there.

Speaker 3 (20:52):
Yeah, that's why you got to have a notebook and
a pencil at the ready.

Speaker 2 (20:56):
Yeah, and you keep your notes sort of an analog
form like that I keep.

Speaker 3 (21:00):
I'm a big paper person, but I also have my
note section on my iPhone is just completely full of stuff.

Speaker 1 (21:05):
And when do you review that?

Speaker 3 (21:06):
Then? Are you just well, I started this thing years
ago and I still keep it up. I have an
excelsive document that I have across the top, music, movies, podcasts, books,
design all these ideas that I'll see with that when
I read, and if I'm looking for something or thinking
about something I don't have a solution, I'll go back
to that sheet and go, oh, yeah, that's right, I

(21:28):
remember seeing that before. Then that will lead me to
something else. So I kind of keep track of everything
that kind of piques my interest.

Speaker 1 (21:36):
Sounds amazing.

Speaker 2 (21:37):
So I also like to ask people, what are you
looking forward to right now?

Speaker 3 (21:41):
What am I looking forward to? Well, I'm looking forward
to launching this book. It's been in the making for
the last two years, and the first year I spent writing,
the second year editing almost takes twice as long. You've
written a book, right, Laura, I have a couple of
you know, right, edit it takes some time. It's yeah,
it's of time. So I'm looking forward to that. And

(22:02):
then I'm trying to think of, Okay, what's my next
creative project. I don't have to figured out yet. I
have some ideas, but I'm not there yet.

Speaker 1 (22:09):
But you will get it eventually. Maybe on a hike.

Speaker 2 (22:11):
Maybe well you're all trudging up and holding your skis
on you exactly.

Speaker 1 (22:16):
That's what it'll come to you. Yes, all right. Well Monica,
where can people find you?

Speaker 3 (22:20):
Oh? Where can people find me? Monica nassum dot com
or you can find me on LinkedIn.

Speaker 2 (22:24):
Awesome, Well, Monica, thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you to everyone for listening. If you have feedback
about this or any other episode, you can always reach
me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. And in
the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's
to making the most of our time. Thanks for listening

(22:48):
to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback,
you can reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts
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(23:11):
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