March 12, 2020 • 40 mins
The way Shazi describes it, she had a magical childhood. Living in the motel her family owned and operated, she had no shortage of things to keep her busy-- from hanging out with cooks to watching new customers to adopting a pet duck. But how did someone who always dreamed of being a painter end up founding Happy Baby, the number one organic baby food company in the world? Shazi and Bob discuss how her parents' drive and optimism led her to believe anything was possible; how she was able to pivot once she realized her grand idea wasn't in the right supermarket aisle; and why listening to your gut really matters when it comes to VCs. Plus, Bob gets a sneak preview of Shazi’s new company healthynest!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to Math and Magic, a production I Heart Radio.
To stand in a store at a Whole Foods and
do a demo in the freezer aisle, and to have
people walk right past you and not even want to
stop and try it. And you're standing there so eager
with your cute little T shirt on, and you're like,
(00:23):
smile pictures on the back of the box. For two
and a half years. You've been working on that, and
they don't want to try it. This is everything. I've
risked everything for this, and then you realize I gotta
change it all. I am Bob Pittman. Welcome to this
(00:46):
episode of Math and Magic Stories from the Frontiers and Marketing,
where we dig into the stories of the people who
create marketing and business successes through that special blend of
analytics and creativity. Today, our guest is one of those
folks actually try in both art and business, the creator
and founder of the number one organic baby food company
in the world, which you might know as Happy Baby.
(01:08):
Chassi Vishram Chausi was born in Canada, grew up in
her parents motel and Alabama. The family had two adjoining
rooms one and she got a great education as a kid,
went onto the Ivy League, studied art and history at Columbia,
(01:30):
and later came back for an NBA. At first, it
looked like she might go the math route through media buying,
first at the media buying Powerhouse Horizon Media, and then
her own shop, but she found her calling in healthy
organic baby food, eventually creating the leader in the category,
but not without a lot of twists, turns and pivots.
She's won numerous well deserved awards, and by some strange
(01:52):
twist of fate, she's actually a childhood friend of our producer,
Mangesh Chasi, also happens to be a great storyteller. We'll
get ready for some good tales and useful insights. Welcome, Chassi,
Thank you so much for having me. We're going to
dig into all these stories, but first I want to
do you in sixty seconds. Okay, are you ready? Do
you prefer phone call or text? Text? Cats or dogs,
(02:15):
Cats and Dugs? Birmingham or Toronto, Birmingham to Ham, New
York or Connecticut? New York? Copper Cone Cone yoga or running,
running room or roun? What's your favorite city? Prague, secret talent,
(02:36):
my memory, greatest motivator, my kids, smartest person you know?
My dad, childhood hero, my dad, historical idol Muhammad Ali
quote to live by never give up. What book are
you reading right now? I am not reading a book.
Favorite of vacation always Jamaica. Favorite happy baby product, spinish
(02:57):
mango peer. What did you want to be when you
were growing up? A neuroscientist? If you could have one superpower,
what would it be? I love to learn how to fly?
What topic can you talk about forever? Children's health? What
was your first job? Popcorn and girl at the movie
theater in Birmingham Get free popcorn? Too much? Okay, let's
(03:20):
jump into the real stuff. Usually we start with a
business story, but your childhood is so fascinating I'd like
to start there, if you don't mind. I can't imagine
a more inspiring immigrant story than what we're getting ready
to talk about. Your dad grew up in Tanzania, moved
to Pakistan, marriage your mom, who was a doctor there,
and then moved to England and then on to Toronto
(03:40):
where you were born. What was their dream? What were
they chasing? They were chasing the idea of pure freedom
and true opportunity. And I think they were thinking always, always,
always about how do we do better so that our
kids can have a better life than us. They both
grew up with dirt floor. The motivation was almost inborn.
(04:04):
If you live with the dirt floor und your feet
and you've ever seen a place that doesn't have a
dirt floor, you know there's something better, you know, And
I think that's what it was. So they moved to London, Toronto.
It's interesting that your mom was a doctor in Pakistan, right,
So she was basically a doctor Pakistan, as you know,
(04:24):
is a Muslim. She's a family of ten brothers and sisters.
She was quote unquote just a girl. Every year when
she was in high school, they would say, we probably
don't have enough money to send you to school. This year,
only the boys would get to go. The last year,
when she was about to graduate, they said, I'm sorry,
we don't have the money. My grandfather sold rugs on
(04:44):
his back. That's how they lived hand to mouth. And
she got a scholarship at this St. Mary's School and Pakistan,
and the deal was they would pay for her to
finish school, go to college and to start as a nurse,
and then after that she would have to do two
years of service as a nurse in a village of
their choice, and they put her in this small village
(05:07):
in Pakistan and she worked in this clinic. There's something
about her which is unique. She had these like healing hands.
Everybody in the town would come to the clinic and
only ask for her. After her two years was up,
she said, let me start my own, so she started
her own clinic. She was one of the first women
in all of Pakistan to have her own medical practice.
(05:30):
Everybody flocked to it because she had a reputation of
having these sort of healing hands. The first time her
family had furniture in their home, it's because she bought
it for them. My mom and dad were arranged. They'd
never met each other. All of a sudden, her family
back in Hydrobad gets this letter from like a cousin
(05:51):
who's looking for a match for this man who was
like forty and super charming and very handsome and hadn't
yet settled down. I think that family was my dad's
family and there in Tanzania. So they literally come to
Pakistan and they're thinking, Hey, we're gonna get this woman
to you know, cook and clean for my dad. And
(06:12):
I got my mom, which is funny oops, because she's
actually really terrible at cleaning. She's a really good cook,
but I don't think she's ever actually washed a dish.
My dad did all of that ironically. But anyway, they
see each other and within ten days they were married.
My dad said, my brother has a little shop in
London and he needs my help, so we're going to London.
(06:35):
They packed all of her stuff and within like twelve
days she left all of that and moved to London
to basically when she got there, she didn't know, but
she was basically going to be a maid. That's the
beginning of her journey kind of in the West. And
then they made the move to Toronto. What was that about?
You know, I think everybody's dreams to move to America,
(06:55):
and Canada is kind of like almost America almost, And
my dad had a sister in Canada. They moved to
Toronto in seventy My brother was born in seventy three,
and I was born there in seventy six. Year of
the Dragon. My mom was thinking, I will find a
better job because part of why she didn't want to
(07:16):
be in London, and she's like being treated like a maid,
and she's so much more than that, so they moved
to Toronto. My mom looked for jobs in the medical
field and the only thing they said she was qualified
to do was basically be a nurse that would change
out bed pants, and she did that initially. You can
imagine like being transplanted from like a tropical climate to
(07:36):
London to then Toronto and like battling the snow and
commuting for three hours to clean dead pants for a
couple of dollars an hour. That's basically what her life became.
My dad got a job at IBM. He was really
really charming and super good looking and just had this
way about him. He was a kind of person like
at his funeral, I've met people who only met him
(07:58):
once and travel six or twelve hours to come to
his funeral to pay their respects. He was just that
kind of guy. He had this letter from this lady
who would come into the cash and carry shop in
London where they were living above and she wrote this
letter of recommendation for my dad. He used that to
get a part time job at IBM, working the docks
(08:20):
because he had no education. So the letter like literally said,
you know, his school burned down and there are no records.
It worked and he gets this job. And my dad
didn't even have a third grade education, but he has
a photographic memory that proved to be really helpful because
we had to like go find the boxes and then
go log into the computer and say where they are.
Because this is a massive warehouse. He always knew where
(08:42):
everything was. So the job evolved to become full time.
And meanwhile, my mom was so fed up cleaning bed
pants that she then started working on the line at IBM,
assembling motherboards, and they would meet for lunch in the cafeteria.
They did that for a few years, and they saved
up an money to buy a little store in Toronto.
(09:02):
I don't know what it is, but this is like
part of my blood, like you don't work for someone
else all that time, they're biding time to get to
a point where they can be self sufficient. So they
bought this little store. And for some reason, my parents
just couldn't get over how much they loved Americans. Even
Canada wasn't America. Their dream was to move to America.
It took them from Toronto to Orlando. We drove down
(09:27):
and we met with this man. My brother and I
played in this playground in Orlando, and the man had
sold my parents this motel in Birmingham, Alabama. Fultondale, Alabama.
Town less people, yeah, very tiny. I think in those
towns you know everybody. And we were like the Indian
family that lived in the motel. I mean, this is
(09:47):
a big jump. And they knew nothing about hotels, no,
nothing about Alabama, nothing about Birmingham, nothing about the history
of the South, and like nothing about it. I mean,
this is just like a giant leap faith. And by
the way, this must have been all the money they had.
Oh yeah, and they thought they were buying a franchised location.
What was the franchise. I think they thought they were
(10:10):
buying a Ramada in And they got there and literally
within the first week they came and took the sign down.
And then they had to make up a motel name.
And it was named my nickname from my brother is Heman.
His real name is Raheem, but when I was a baby,
I called him Heman, and so it was Hem and ink.
The hotel's name was hamman In and they made it
(10:33):
look like a Hampton. So if you think like royal
blue and this sort of like gold border and the
same kind of shape. That was basically so they were
good marketers. You know, I hain't the picture of that time.
I mean, got these incredibly entrepreneurial, risk taking parents. They
come to this small Alabama town living in a motel,
(10:55):
immigrants from another culture, another country. What did it feel
like at that moment? When you just say it, it
sounds sad and like, oh, you must have been so poor,
stuck in a tiny little room. But it really wasn't
like that. The South is actually really magical. As you know,
I love Birmingham. When you asked Birmingham versus Toronto, I mean,
(11:16):
hands down the ham Growing up was weird and fun
and kind of quirky, and there were all these different characters.
If I were to make a movie of what it's
like to grow up in a motel, it would almost
be this funny, mystical comedy because it wasn't sad. Remember
I had this duck named Peeper. It was a baby duck,
and I convinced my parents to let me keep this
(11:37):
baby duck. I didn't realize people was not going to
stay like yellow and fuzzy. There was one day the
health inspector was literally inspecting the restaurant and people walked
into the restaurant while the health inspector was there so
you could Eventually, we failed, and my mom and dad
were so sad about it. But if you think about
(11:57):
it's like hilarious. On the one hand, it was a
unique and different experience than my peers were having. But
on the other hand, I almost felt like I got
to see the world in a different way. How did
it shape you? You've been very successful in business, also
very entrepreneurial. How does that relate to that childhood? Dealing
with unique challenges almost on a daily basis, and seeing
(12:21):
your parents at the dinner table, whatever conversation you're having
was always about business, and it was always about a
problem and then finding a solution. That was something that
has become part of my DNA. I have a really
hard time being around something that's broken because I want
to fix it. You go from small town Alabama to
(12:41):
Columbia University Ivy League, New York City. That looks like
a really big jump. What was behind that and how
did that jump feel? The number one goal was to
be in New York City, and that meant I had
to go to the school that was the best in
New York City to justify that to my parents, you know,
when you're talking me about dirt floor immigrants. But still
(13:01):
Harvard is like the goal. And so I had to
be in New York and then I had to go
to Columbia because that meant that I was at an
Ivy League school and then they would be proud. So
you grew up with very determined, smart, hardworking, entrepreneurial parents
and you decide to study art. What did your parents
feel about that and why that choice? In high school,
(13:23):
I was a painter. I always thought that business robbed
me from a life of deep interaction and connection with
my family. And I was a little bit resentful of
it because it was the focus, not me, not my brother.
I didn't want to follow in their footsteps. I wanted
to be expressive and creative. I wanted to do something meaningful,
(13:45):
and to me, that was going to be painting pictures.
Did you live the life of an artist after college
for a little bit, until I realized that that wasn't
why they went through all that. Let's just be honest.
I'm not like a Picasso or even close. I was okay,
good idea is not great at the execution Ultimately, I
realized that I could do more for the world if
(14:07):
I jumped into a place where I could help people.
So in after college, you joined our friend Bill Kohningsberg's
Horizon Media as the first person in digital media. Then
you're off the Glimmer Media, this time in content creation sales,
and then you start your own media buying firm, Maven Marketing,
all before returning to Columbia in two thousand two to
(14:30):
get your m b A. Y the n b A.
It was a journey. So before Horizon, I was actually
at a nonprofit teaching kids and teachers how to use
the Internet because at that time there was very little
knowledge or access if you can imagine what that was like.
But seeing kids experience for the first time was really special.
That's what led me to Horizon as I was working
(14:50):
a nonprofit for a few dollars an hour I think twelve,
and the Horizon was an opportunity to say, you know what,
I'm kind of smarter than this. I don't see myself
being a meaningful contribute or in a nonprofit. I was
twenty two, but I'm thinking I should lead this thing.
I get this opportunity to basically start the interactive division
at this very well known media buying agency. I jumped
(15:12):
on it and it was exciting because it was bringing
this whole world of this new media to a whole
group of advertisers who didn't know how to use the medium,
and that was really cool. And I did that for
a little while, and then I kind of realized why
I don't really love some of the work the product.
(15:34):
Where do you take the value of the work that
you've done, who gets to benefit from it? And does
it match your set of values? And ultimately I felt like,
let me go and try to do this on my
own and see if I could market other people's products,
but I was the one that was the beneficiary of
heading my own shop. And then that was like, whoa
(15:55):
wait a second, Hey, Chassy, you can do this and
you can make money doing it, but do you feel
like super excited about selling subscriptions and creating cost per
acquisition models? And so, to answer your question in a
long winded way, I went to Columbia to get my
m b A because I needed tools in my toolbox
to take the desire to do something meaningful for myself
(16:17):
and to go big with it and not be a
mom and pop operation like I saw my parents struggle
with for so long. Just hold on a second, because
we've got so much more to talk about. We'll be
back after a quick break. Welcome back to math and Magic.
Now let's get back to my conversation with Shausi Vitram.
(16:39):
Let's jump to the big story. Let's come to Happy Baby, which,
by the way, I have to disclose I was one
of your investors, so I was also an outside observer
of your journey building that amazing business. As I understand
that it was a mom guilt conversation that gave you
the initial idea. It was catching up with a friend
who had two ends and she just was berating herself
(17:02):
the entire time about not being good enough. One of
the things she mentioned was how she wasn't making all
of their food fresh from all the produce at the
farmer's market, and that's like how she always imagined she
would be as a mom. I said, wait a second,
you mean there's nothing fresh to feed your baby that's
already made, and she said, no, there's these jars baby
food and they're really gross and I feel guilty every
(17:25):
time I open one, but that's what we do. And
It kind of just dawned on me. Our bodies have
the ability to heal themselves, but we put in things
like processed foods and medications and antibiotics and so many
other things that get in the way of our ability
to heal. And I thought, that's crazy. We're starting babies
off with uber processed food and we don't scratch our
(17:48):
head and wonder why literally of children develop adult onset
diabetes if they eat the standard American diet, And why
sixtent of toddlers were obese and children were obese, not overweight,
but obese kids as young at twelve, we're getting put
on lipator for life rather than being counseled to work
(18:10):
on diet and exercise. I just saw it all in
that one moment. Well, it starts in the beginning. What
if we could change the very first few bites, What
if we could change the very initial experience of food
and health? Couldn't make a difference, and could I do
it better than what there was? So that was the idea,
was that who helped you start it? Inside and outside?
(18:31):
So many people. For almost two years I worked on
the business plan. My mentor at Columbia, Cliff Shore who's
still a best friend of mine today. He's an advisor
in my next company, Healthy Nest. He is just one
of those people that helps you chart away forward. He
taught a program called the Greenhouse, which is actually how
I became connected to you. And the Greenhouse is like
(18:52):
an incubator for students at the school, and Cliff really
helped me with the business plan and all the ideas
and access to people who could pave the way. I've
basically left Columbia with a business plan but no funding.
I started talking to the investment community. I didn't have
(19:13):
any stripes. I was just this unknown girl without a
rich uncle, using the network as best I could to
be introduced to people like Andy, who then introduced me
to someone like you. And I remember, Actually I don't
know you remember, but can I say the amount that
you invested Pilot. You invested three and I'm pretty sure
(19:38):
at one point I gave you a check back for
like ten or twelve million dollars at the end of it.
Sometimes things take a while, and you were very patient
and it worked out. Thank you for your support. But Andy,
who was on your team, said well, we want to
do this, we want to invest Bob just hasn't given
the final green light. He needs to see everything. I
(19:59):
need to sit down with him. And I'm like, well,
when are you going to sit down with him? And
he's like, well, he's going to be in the office tomorrow.
I'm gonna try to do it. And so I think
I showed up at like nine o'clock. I asked, your
assistant is Bobb and yet and this is like in
the old days. I don't think I would ever do
this now, and she's like, no, you know, he's going
to be gone most of the day. He's coming later,
and I don't know that he has time on his
schedule to meet. And I was like, it's okay, I'll
(20:21):
just wait. I don't know if you remember, but I
sat there for like six hours. I probably didn't know
you sat there for six hours. Well I did, and
I'm glad I did. You finally come in and Andy
knew I was there, and he sat you down and
he met and then afterwards you gave us the green light.
It was such a pivotal moment. We were literally on
(20:41):
the verge of running out of money, and so that
bought me like six months. Let's talk about money. Very
early on you rejected a big investment from a venture
capital group. Why did you do that? Money was tight?
What's the lesson in that? The lesson is go with
your gut and the easy way is not always the
best way. I had gotten this interest from this group.
(21:05):
They were very well funded. They wined and dined me,
and I was naive and totally broke. And you know
what it feels like when you're broken. You're scared. Everything
I would buy, like groceries or anything, was on an
American Express that I wouldn't have money to pay for
it later. And I was thinking, we'll figure it out
by the end of the month. It was like living
that way, and so all of a sudden I had
(21:25):
this offer for five thousand dollars as the seed investor.
I was so excited about it. Basically on a handshake,
I said yes. But then when I actually saw the
terms from the get go to lose control of the
vision and the mission, which, as you and I know,
the mission never changed and the vision never changed, but
the path to get their changes so much. You have
(21:48):
to be adaptable. You have to be ready to pivot
at any moment. If you don't have somebody behind you
that sees that. Or if you're not in the driver's
seat and you can just make the turns as you
choose to see the force and react, then you're hamstrong
and you can't do it by committee. No people in
an organization today think that all decisions need to be
(22:09):
made by committee. Ultimately, this is not a democracy. I
have a vision and we have a mission. I have
to be the captain right now. You guys have to
trust me, and usually you have the right team. Everyone does.
We all trust. I had to walk away from that
because it wasn't right. Even though it was so desperate,
it was really hard to walk away from. In retrospect,
(22:29):
that was the best thing that could have ever happened.
So let's talk about product. You don't know anything about food,
nothing about baby food. You've got an idea. Talk about
how you take that idea the intangible and turn into
the tangible. How did you find out how to make
the food, where to make the food, how to package it,
how you sell stuff in the food business. Did you
(22:52):
have all that when you were at Columbia and did
that as part of the business plan? Where did that
come from? Hands on? After you had really committed to
this idea. I think it was both. When you're doing
a business plan, you're basically making up how you hope
things will be and what you think things will look
like based on kind of BS projections in a way
(23:12):
because nobody knows. But at the same token, you can
do enough research to put together a decent plan and
then go live it and change it all the time.
Part of the beginning was finding everyone in my life
that knew about food, knew about production, knew about all
of the rigors of quality control that one would need
(23:33):
to know about to have a microbiologist as an advisor,
to have an entrepreneur like Seth Goldman from Honest Ty
as an advisor. I found a really good partner and
a woman named Jessica Rolf who became my CEO and
was a wonderful partner who really dedicated herself to understanding
QA and production of food. Along the way, I've just
(23:54):
learned so much, But at the same token, I still
would say I know very little about any one thing
because there's such a specialty in each category, and it's
about assembling all the smartest people in the world around
the areas where you need help to get their expertise
and to put it into developing something you're really proud
(24:14):
of and feel good about and you know, want to
scream from the mountain tops. And that's where I think
my ability comes in. I love to develop something, make
something tangible, and because I know it's so good, I
like to talk about it and share it, because I
don't think that's marketing. I think that's giving a gift
to someone who needs it. You start out as frozen
(24:35):
baby food, you get going, you get distribution, you get
in Whole Food, you get in babies or us, and
then you realize it's not going to get you there.
How did you come to that conclusion? How did you
realize it? And how did you admit to yourself that
you weren't hitting the goal? Two and a half years
in against this business plan, we're making frozen baby food
(24:59):
and this little ice c trays and they're beautiful. The
food tasted amazing, like this palette of all these beautiful colors.
The peas were so green, and the carrots were just
like neon orange, and it was just so fresh and alive.
It was like literally art, you know, to stand in
a store at a Whole Foods and do a demo
(25:21):
in the freezer aisle, and they have people walk right
past you and not even want to stop and try it.
And you're standing there so eager with your cute little
T shirt on, and you're like, smile pictures on the
back of the box. For two and a half years,
You've been working on that, and they don't want to
try it. And then you realize, okay, wait a second,
am I talking to the wrong people. You're just standing
(25:42):
there waiting for a mom to come in with a baby.
She would be like, but where where would I find?
You know, I never come down this aisle. I only
stopped because you were here, and sudden realizing, wow, we
have to create a whole new category of grocery called
frozen baby food. That's an uphill battle. All all the
moms who are walking into the store of the baby
right now are going straight to the baby food aisle.
(26:05):
I mean it took me two or three demos. I
mean really literally, after two and a half years, there's
like two weeks of a few data points, just real
experiences that I didn't want to admit to myself because
you're kind of in denial. You're thinking, oh, this is
just a one off. So committed. This is everything. I've
risked everything for this, and then you realize, I gotta
(26:28):
change it all. We gotta change it all, but you
can't change it all. Drop the Happy Baby Frozen line.
It's what everyone's invested in, it's what you invested in. Meanwhile,
I'm thinking, we gotta get in the baby food aisle
stat We've got to create something enlightened and differentiated and
meaningful that still matches the mission to create sustainable, organic
(26:52):
options for everybody and to have babies start from day
one of eating with the healthiest start in life. A
very first product that met those high standards was there,
Happy Bellies Baby cereal with probiotics and got you what
two or three times the sales of the two years
of the frozen Yeah, so we went from one sixteen
(27:12):
to five twenty and then five to two point one,
and between five twenty and two point one was the cereal.
So then you jumped to the one that I think
people really go, wow, this was genius. Your plastic squeeze
pouches a purade baby food. That was really the game changer,
wasn't it? One thousand percent? And where did that idea
(27:32):
come from? That clearly wasn't in your business plan back
at Columbia. No. What was in the business plan was
to create an alternative to the jar of baby food.
And the original idea for that alternative was frozen. And
what I realized is frozen is not the alternative to
the jar. We created all these other wonderful products, but
(27:53):
we still had yet to find the alternative to the jar,
and that pouch was the alternative to the jar. In
a heartbeat, the world changed back then. If you walk
down the baby food aisle, there's always one or two
broken glass jars of baby food. And it was nine
nine jars of baby food and that's it. And now
(28:13):
walk down a baby food aisle, it is a sea
of pouches. We're not the only ones by far, but
we were one of the very first. And the first
pouch I ever saw was in Australia. There was one
apple sauce and I thought, this is it. This is
the alternative to the jar. We came home and started
working on it right away. By the way, your sales
(28:35):
then took another multiple jump based on this. But every
great business usually has some external X factor, that unexpected
catalyst for growth. America Online in the nineteen nineties. It
was Nora Efron's movie You've Got Mail. At MTV. It
was Michael Jackson's thriller for You. It was an American
Express commercial tell us the story two thousand nine, I'm pregnant.
(28:57):
We just launched our pouches. One sent me a link
to a competition called Shina Light, which was to shine
a light on what would be America's most inspiring business
and I thought, you know what the hell? The application
had how do you help the community, how are you
a force for good? A number of things that I
felt like we really lived up to, so it wasn't
(29:18):
hard to fill out the application. Then we had to
get fifty people to endorse it very quickly, which we did,
and it's literally due at midnight, right almost at the
stroke of midnight. I had sent on this thing I
had sent and I forgot about it. And a few
weeks later, I'm in California. I'm getting ready to come
to Boston to do a big trade show in the
food world called Expo East, and I get a call
(29:41):
from somebody at NBC Universal. I think she set. Out
of more than entries, you've been selected as one of
the top three most inspiring businesses in the country. Where
are you tomorrow because we need to film a commercial
that needs to air next week. And I said, well,
I'm in Boston tomorrow, I'm in California right now, I'm pregnant.
Let's do it, and so we filmed this commercial. Had
(30:03):
a little health food store in Boston. So I walked
past this cool mural that says eat local, and I
go into the store and really like bright and excited,
talking about how proud I am of our products, standing
in front of the produce aisle. It was what I
thought was going to be the biggest moment of our
entire life. And then we lost the competition, so we
came in second, which was okay, but they played that
(30:24):
commercial before the office. They played it on TV so much.
Nine months later, I get another call and it's from
someone at amm X and they say, we saw your
shine a Light commercial and we're doing a new campaign
called Business is Booming, and we want to show people
how important small businesses in America. We like to highlight
your story with an online video. Can we come film
(30:48):
me for a few days? Yeah, of course, I just
had a baby. Let's make it happen. And this time
we were able to really showcase the story of Happy Baby.
We're in New York, our office. We had this little
baby food truck that we drive around the city. We
parked it in front of the Natural History Museum. They
filmed this spot and I didn't get to see it.
(31:09):
I thought we would talk about how we would roll
it out online. And then a couple of months later,
I took my parents to Africa, and I wanted my
dad to see what life was like in Africa without
dirt floors, because I was winning an award in Cape Town,
and so I take my mom and dad and my
husband and my little baby son to Africa. We go
(31:30):
to Cape Town and we stay in these beautiful places,
and then we went on this incredible safari and my
dad had a heart attack in the middle of the bush.
And um, we didn't know he had a heart attack.
We just thought he was really sick. We were on
a plane from Johannesburg back to New York, but it
(31:52):
stopped in Abu Dhabi and on the plane he almost died.
So they wheeled him off in a gurney and we
went straight to a hospital. They were using the you know, yeah,
the defibrillator to bring him back to life. And by
the way, he made it great news. Yeah, yeah, he
made it. So they saved his life. And we were
(32:12):
stuck there for like three weeks. Months before we left,
we had started the process of realizing the pouches are
taking off. We need to raise a big round. This
is not something I can do with individual investors. And
I started talking to a number of different funds that
was only going to be gone for eight or ten
days and end up being on for almost four weeks.
And while I'm in Abu Dhabi, the first few pouches
(32:35):
rolled into Target on shelf. Within the first two weeks,
they were in the top items in all of Baby
in all of Target. In two weeks, it was like
unheard of. People were buying them like crazy. I'm thinking,
oh my god, we need money so badly. We're about
to drown, drowned in demand. Because we had to prepay
(32:55):
for everything. We had nothing. And I'm like in Abu
Dhabi in this hotel near a hospital with a baby boy,
and I was worried about my dad, and I was
worried about the business. And then I get an email
from American Express saying the video we shot is actually
not for online. Your story has turned out so well.
We're going to put about fifty million dollars behind this commercial.
(33:19):
They sent a clip of what it looked like, and
I sent it to all of you guys. I think
we raised I want to say it was eight million dollars.
In like two or three weeks, American Express ended up
coming through and that was like the equivalent of what
I would consider an Oprah moment. So piece after piece
fell in place, after some big worries and pivots in
(33:41):
the beginning, and in two thousand thirteen you sold of
the company. Why did you come to that decision, Well,
a curveball was thrown my way. In April of two
thousand twelve, my son, Saying was diagnosed with not to
sum this is a baby boy. He was right there
with you, super connected. Go watch the commercial. He's in it,
(34:05):
and then all of a sudden started losing milestones and
losing the ability to communicate and just went into this
little bubble. It's not like he was born this way.
I knew him, and I knew something was going on,
and I couldn't find the answers, and I was terrified.
I was also terrified that this business that had really
become something big, we still didn't have any money. If
(34:27):
you ask me what my bank balance was, it might
have been like fourteen thousand dollars, and I would have
been happy that I had that much money in the bank,
because it used to be like seven dollars. I literally
spent my life savings on that trip to Africa. I
sold the business because I thought that I needed to
have access to capital to save my kid, and in
(34:50):
so doing, irony is that I lost control of that baby.
But I had to do it for the all the
right reasons, the right reason. What you did well financially,
it was a great return for every investor, great return
for you. And and two thousand seventeen you stepped down
a CEO. How was that feeling of stepping away from
(35:11):
the company. I mean, it's bitter sweet. It was actually
January of two thousand eighteen, and I left after we
had the data that we were the number one organic
baby food company in the country and that we were
the number two baby brand in the entire country. And
in a way, that's a good time to walk away,
(35:33):
because at some point you want to keep learning and
challenging yourself too. I had bigger and more important things
to do. While I had focused for so many years
on taking chemicals and pesticides out of our children's body
and creating a brand that allowed everybody to have access,
(35:53):
my own personal experience showed me that I needed to
do more. And it started with my son. And then
I realized I had to do something else, like I
had unfinished business. So while it was bitter sweet, it
was almost like seeing your child graduate from high school
and kind of get accepted into Harvard and feel like
they were in a good place, and it doesn't have
(36:14):
to be Harvard, it could be anywhere they wanted to go.
I felt like the business is in good hands. I've
done my duty and it's time to move on. It's
always going to be my baby, and I'm always going
to be so proud of everything that we've done and accomplished.
I'm still the chair mo home of the board, so
I'm still connected to some degree. Let's do some advice.
(36:34):
If you could give some advice to your eighteen year
old self, what would it be. The first thing I
would say is you are so freaking resilient and smart
and strong that no matter what comes your way. You're
gonna figure it out, So stop second guessing yourself because
it's a waste of time. Focus your time on making
(36:54):
things because you're good at it. So for people thinking
about leaving the corporate world to start their own business us,
what insights or advice would you have for them? If
you're going to leave and it puts you at a
financial risk where your risks, make sure that your assumptions
are tested. The biggest failure is the failure to try.
(37:16):
But that doesn't mean to do it without intelligence and
analytics and a lot of research before you make the
big jump. For people whose business is stalled like yours
was with the frozen baby food, what advice do you
have for them? My advice to anybody who's struggling is
to take a minute, try to distress so that your
(37:38):
brain is working, because your brain works a lot better
when you're not operating out of fear, and call ten
of the smartest people you know and just have conversations.
Because when you care so much about something, if there
is a way to attack the challenge, I think you
will find a creative solution. Rooms to where you are
(38:03):
today and that incredible journey you've been on you ever
sit back and reflect and say, how on earth did
that happen? Every time I drive through the gate at
my house, I think I can't believe I live here.
I'm very grateful. I literally think that anything is possible
in this life. I think about my mom and dad.
(38:26):
I think about how nice it would be if my
dad could see my house right now. We end each
episode with a shout out. This is mathe and magic,
after all, mathematicians and the magicians. Who's the person you
want to give the shout out to? Is the best
of those mathematicians, the person who sees the world through
the numbers. I read a book called small Data. I
would give a huge shout out to the author of
(38:48):
that book. It's about taking small insights and recognizing how
the world works, and then you can use big data
to confirm those insights. Who the most creative the magician?
I would say Malcolm Gladwell, one of the great chas.
This is an amazing story, amazing journey you've been on
(39:09):
and it's still going. Congratulations, thanks for sharing it with us.
Thank you so much for having me. It's such an
honor and so much fun to see you again after
all these years. Here are a few things I picked
up in my conversation with Chazi. One, match your values
to the value of your work. Jazi created a company
(39:31):
that matched her core beliefs. Not only was it fulfilling,
it was a business success too. To trust your gut.
When Chassi turned down an investment offer because the terms
didn't feel right, she kept control of her company and
ultimately let it down a more profitable path. Three. Identify
problems and find solutions. After many years of developing the
idea for frozen baby food, Shazi learned very quickly through
(39:55):
live demos that she needed a different product to reach
the right people. I'm Bob Pittman. Thanks for listening. That's
it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening to
Math and Magic, a production of I Heart Radio. This
show is hosted by Bob Pittman. Special thanks to Sue
Schillinger for booking and wrangling our wonderful talent, which is
(40:17):
no small feat Nikkiatore for pulling research bill plaques, and
Michael Asar for their recording help, our editor Ryan Murdoch,
and of course Gayle Raoul, Eric Angel, Noel Mango and
everyone who helped bring this show to your ears until
next time
You're listening to Math and Magic, a production I Heart Radio.
To stand in a store at a Whole Foods and
do a demo in the freezer aisle, and to have
people walk right past you and not even want to
stop and try it. And you're standing there so eager
with your cute little T shirt on, and you're like,
(00:23):
smile pictures on the back of the box. For two
and a half years. You've been working on that, and
they don't want to try it. This is everything. I've
risked everything for this, and then you realize I gotta
change it all. I am Bob Pittman. Welcome to this
(00:46):
episode of Math and Magic Stories from the Frontiers and Marketing,
where we dig into the stories of the people who
create marketing and business successes through that special blend of
analytics and creativity. Today, our guest is one of those
folks actually try in both art and business, the creator
and founder of the number one organic baby food company
in the world, which you might know as Happy Baby.
(01:08):
Chassi Vishram Chausi was born in Canada, grew up in
her parents motel and Alabama. The family had two adjoining
rooms one and she got a great education as a kid,
went onto the Ivy League, studied art and history at Columbia,
(01:30):
and later came back for an NBA. At first, it
looked like she might go the math route through media buying,
first at the media buying Powerhouse Horizon Media, and then
her own shop, but she found her calling in healthy
organic baby food, eventually creating the leader in the category,
but not without a lot of twists, turns and pivots.
She's won numerous well deserved awards, and by some strange
(01:52):
twist of fate, she's actually a childhood friend of our producer,
Mangesh Chasi, also happens to be a great storyteller. We'll
get ready for some good tales and useful insights. Welcome, Chassi,
Thank you so much for having me. We're going to
dig into all these stories, but first I want to
do you in sixty seconds. Okay, are you ready? Do
you prefer phone call or text? Text? Cats or dogs,
(02:15):
Cats and Dugs? Birmingham or Toronto, Birmingham to Ham, New
York or Connecticut? New York? Copper Cone Cone yoga or running,
running room or roun? What's your favorite city? Prague, secret talent,
(02:36):
my memory, greatest motivator, my kids, smartest person you know?
My dad, childhood hero, my dad, historical idol Muhammad Ali
quote to live by never give up. What book are
you reading right now? I am not reading a book.
Favorite of vacation always Jamaica. Favorite happy baby product, spinish
(02:57):
mango peer. What did you want to be when you
were growing up? A neuroscientist? If you could have one superpower,
what would it be? I love to learn how to fly?
What topic can you talk about forever? Children's health? What
was your first job? Popcorn and girl at the movie
theater in Birmingham Get free popcorn? Too much? Okay, let's
(03:20):
jump into the real stuff. Usually we start with a
business story, but your childhood is so fascinating I'd like
to start there, if you don't mind. I can't imagine
a more inspiring immigrant story than what we're getting ready
to talk about. Your dad grew up in Tanzania, moved
to Pakistan, marriage your mom, who was a doctor there,
and then moved to England and then on to Toronto
(03:40):
where you were born. What was their dream? What were
they chasing? They were chasing the idea of pure freedom
and true opportunity. And I think they were thinking always, always,
always about how do we do better so that our
kids can have a better life than us. They both
grew up with dirt floor. The motivation was almost inborn.
(04:04):
If you live with the dirt floor und your feet
and you've ever seen a place that doesn't have a
dirt floor, you know there's something better, you know, And
I think that's what it was. So they moved to London, Toronto.
It's interesting that your mom was a doctor in Pakistan, right,
So she was basically a doctor Pakistan, as you know,
(04:24):
is a Muslim. She's a family of ten brothers and sisters.
She was quote unquote just a girl. Every year when
she was in high school, they would say, we probably
don't have enough money to send you to school. This year,
only the boys would get to go. The last year,
when she was about to graduate, they said, I'm sorry,
we don't have the money. My grandfather sold rugs on
(04:44):
his back. That's how they lived hand to mouth. And
she got a scholarship at this St. Mary's School and Pakistan,
and the deal was they would pay for her to
finish school, go to college and to start as a nurse,
and then after that she would have to do two
years of service as a nurse in a village of
their choice, and they put her in this small village
(05:07):
in Pakistan and she worked in this clinic. There's something
about her which is unique. She had these like healing hands.
Everybody in the town would come to the clinic and
only ask for her. After her two years was up,
she said, let me start my own, so she started
her own clinic. She was one of the first women
in all of Pakistan to have her own medical practice.
(05:30):
Everybody flocked to it because she had a reputation of
having these sort of healing hands. The first time her
family had furniture in their home, it's because she bought
it for them. My mom and dad were arranged. They'd
never met each other. All of a sudden, her family
back in Hydrobad gets this letter from like a cousin
(05:51):
who's looking for a match for this man who was
like forty and super charming and very handsome and hadn't
yet settled down. I think that family was my dad's
family and there in Tanzania. So they literally come to
Pakistan and they're thinking, Hey, we're gonna get this woman
to you know, cook and clean for my dad. And
(06:12):
I got my mom, which is funny oops, because she's
actually really terrible at cleaning. She's a really good cook,
but I don't think she's ever actually washed a dish.
My dad did all of that ironically. But anyway, they
see each other and within ten days they were married.
My dad said, my brother has a little shop in
London and he needs my help, so we're going to London.
(06:35):
They packed all of her stuff and within like twelve
days she left all of that and moved to London
to basically when she got there, she didn't know, but
she was basically going to be a maid. That's the
beginning of her journey kind of in the West. And
then they made the move to Toronto. What was that about?
You know, I think everybody's dreams to move to America,
(06:55):
and Canada is kind of like almost America almost, And
my dad had a sister in Canada. They moved to
Toronto in seventy My brother was born in seventy three,
and I was born there in seventy six. Year of
the Dragon. My mom was thinking, I will find a
better job because part of why she didn't want to
(07:16):
be in London, and she's like being treated like a maid,
and she's so much more than that, so they moved
to Toronto. My mom looked for jobs in the medical
field and the only thing they said she was qualified
to do was basically be a nurse that would change
out bed pants, and she did that initially. You can
imagine like being transplanted from like a tropical climate to
(07:36):
London to then Toronto and like battling the snow and
commuting for three hours to clean dead pants for a
couple of dollars an hour. That's basically what her life became.
My dad got a job at IBM. He was really
really charming and super good looking and just had this
way about him. He was a kind of person like
at his funeral, I've met people who only met him
(07:58):
once and travel six or twelve hours to come to
his funeral to pay their respects. He was just that
kind of guy. He had this letter from this lady
who would come into the cash and carry shop in
London where they were living above and she wrote this
letter of recommendation for my dad. He used that to
get a part time job at IBM, working the docks
(08:20):
because he had no education. So the letter like literally said,
you know, his school burned down and there are no records.
It worked and he gets this job. And my dad
didn't even have a third grade education, but he has
a photographic memory that proved to be really helpful because
we had to like go find the boxes and then
go log into the computer and say where they are.
Because this is a massive warehouse. He always knew where
(08:42):
everything was. So the job evolved to become full time.
And meanwhile, my mom was so fed up cleaning bed
pants that she then started working on the line at IBM,
assembling motherboards, and they would meet for lunch in the cafeteria.
They did that for a few years, and they saved
up an money to buy a little store in Toronto.
(09:02):
I don't know what it is, but this is like
part of my blood, like you don't work for someone
else all that time, they're biding time to get to
a point where they can be self sufficient. So they
bought this little store. And for some reason, my parents
just couldn't get over how much they loved Americans. Even
Canada wasn't America. Their dream was to move to America.
It took them from Toronto to Orlando. We drove down
(09:27):
and we met with this man. My brother and I
played in this playground in Orlando, and the man had
sold my parents this motel in Birmingham, Alabama. Fultondale, Alabama.
Town less people, yeah, very tiny. I think in those
towns you know everybody. And we were like the Indian
family that lived in the motel. I mean, this is
(09:47):
a big jump. And they knew nothing about hotels, no,
nothing about Alabama, nothing about Birmingham, nothing about the history
of the South, and like nothing about it. I mean,
this is just like a giant leap faith. And by
the way, this must have been all the money they had.
Oh yeah, and they thought they were buying a franchised location.
What was the franchise. I think they thought they were
(10:10):
buying a Ramada in And they got there and literally
within the first week they came and took the sign down.
And then they had to make up a motel name.
And it was named my nickname from my brother is Heman.
His real name is Raheem, but when I was a baby,
I called him Heman, and so it was Hem and ink.
The hotel's name was hamman In and they made it
(10:33):
look like a Hampton. So if you think like royal
blue and this sort of like gold border and the
same kind of shape. That was basically so they were
good marketers. You know, I hain't the picture of that time.
I mean, got these incredibly entrepreneurial, risk taking parents. They
come to this small Alabama town living in a motel,
(10:55):
immigrants from another culture, another country. What did it feel
like at that moment? When you just say it, it
sounds sad and like, oh, you must have been so poor,
stuck in a tiny little room. But it really wasn't
like that. The South is actually really magical. As you know,
I love Birmingham. When you asked Birmingham versus Toronto, I mean,
(11:16):
hands down the ham Growing up was weird and fun
and kind of quirky, and there were all these different characters.
If I were to make a movie of what it's
like to grow up in a motel, it would almost
be this funny, mystical comedy because it wasn't sad. Remember
I had this duck named Peeper. It was a baby duck,
and I convinced my parents to let me keep this
(11:37):
baby duck. I didn't realize people was not going to
stay like yellow and fuzzy. There was one day the
health inspector was literally inspecting the restaurant and people walked
into the restaurant while the health inspector was there so
you could Eventually, we failed, and my mom and dad
were so sad about it. But if you think about
(11:57):
it's like hilarious. On the one hand, it was a
unique and different experience than my peers were having. But
on the other hand, I almost felt like I got
to see the world in a different way. How did
it shape you? You've been very successful in business, also
very entrepreneurial. How does that relate to that childhood? Dealing
with unique challenges almost on a daily basis, and seeing
(12:21):
your parents at the dinner table, whatever conversation you're having
was always about business, and it was always about a
problem and then finding a solution. That was something that
has become part of my DNA. I have a really
hard time being around something that's broken because I want
to fix it. You go from small town Alabama to
(12:41):
Columbia University Ivy League, New York City. That looks like
a really big jump. What was behind that and how
did that jump feel? The number one goal was to
be in New York City, and that meant I had
to go to the school that was the best in
New York City to justify that to my parents, you know,
when you're talking me about dirt floor immigrants. But still
(13:01):
Harvard is like the goal. And so I had to
be in New York and then I had to go
to Columbia because that meant that I was at an
Ivy League school and then they would be proud. So
you grew up with very determined, smart, hardworking, entrepreneurial parents
and you decide to study art. What did your parents
feel about that and why that choice? In high school,
(13:23):
I was a painter. I always thought that business robbed
me from a life of deep interaction and connection with
my family. And I was a little bit resentful of
it because it was the focus, not me, not my brother.
I didn't want to follow in their footsteps. I wanted
to be expressive and creative. I wanted to do something meaningful,
(13:45):
and to me, that was going to be painting pictures.
Did you live the life of an artist after college
for a little bit, until I realized that that wasn't
why they went through all that. Let's just be honest.
I'm not like a Picasso or even close. I was okay,
good idea is not great at the execution Ultimately, I
realized that I could do more for the world if
(14:07):
I jumped into a place where I could help people.
So in after college, you joined our friend Bill Kohningsberg's
Horizon Media as the first person in digital media. Then
you're off the Glimmer Media, this time in content creation sales,
and then you start your own media buying firm, Maven Marketing,
all before returning to Columbia in two thousand two to
(14:30):
get your m b A. Y the n b A.
It was a journey. So before Horizon, I was actually
at a nonprofit teaching kids and teachers how to use
the Internet because at that time there was very little
knowledge or access if you can imagine what that was like.
But seeing kids experience for the first time was really special.
That's what led me to Horizon as I was working
(14:50):
a nonprofit for a few dollars an hour I think twelve,
and the Horizon was an opportunity to say, you know what,
I'm kind of smarter than this. I don't see myself
being a meaningful contribute or in a nonprofit. I was
twenty two, but I'm thinking I should lead this thing.
I get this opportunity to basically start the interactive division
at this very well known media buying agency. I jumped
(15:12):
on it and it was exciting because it was bringing
this whole world of this new media to a whole
group of advertisers who didn't know how to use the medium,
and that was really cool. And I did that for
a little while, and then I kind of realized why
I don't really love some of the work the product.
(15:34):
Where do you take the value of the work that
you've done, who gets to benefit from it? And does
it match your set of values? And ultimately I felt like,
let me go and try to do this on my
own and see if I could market other people's products,
but I was the one that was the beneficiary of
heading my own shop. And then that was like, whoa
(15:55):
wait a second, Hey, Chassy, you can do this and
you can make money doing it, but do you feel
like super excited about selling subscriptions and creating cost per
acquisition models? And so, to answer your question in a
long winded way, I went to Columbia to get my
m b A because I needed tools in my toolbox
to take the desire to do something meaningful for myself
(16:17):
and to go big with it and not be a
mom and pop operation like I saw my parents struggle
with for so long. Just hold on a second, because
we've got so much more to talk about. We'll be
back after a quick break. Welcome back to math and Magic.
Now let's get back to my conversation with Shausi Vitram.
(16:39):
Let's jump to the big story. Let's come to Happy Baby, which,
by the way, I have to disclose I was one
of your investors, so I was also an outside observer
of your journey building that amazing business. As I understand
that it was a mom guilt conversation that gave you
the initial idea. It was catching up with a friend
who had two ends and she just was berating herself
(17:02):
the entire time about not being good enough. One of
the things she mentioned was how she wasn't making all
of their food fresh from all the produce at the
farmer's market, and that's like how she always imagined she
would be as a mom. I said, wait a second,
you mean there's nothing fresh to feed your baby that's
already made, and she said, no, there's these jars baby
food and they're really gross and I feel guilty every
(17:25):
time I open one, but that's what we do. And
It kind of just dawned on me. Our bodies have
the ability to heal themselves, but we put in things
like processed foods and medications and antibiotics and so many
other things that get in the way of our ability
to heal. And I thought, that's crazy. We're starting babies
off with uber processed food and we don't scratch our
(17:48):
head and wonder why literally of children develop adult onset
diabetes if they eat the standard American diet, And why
sixtent of toddlers were obese and children were obese, not overweight,
but obese kids as young at twelve, we're getting put
on lipator for life rather than being counseled to work
(18:10):
on diet and exercise. I just saw it all in
that one moment. Well, it starts in the beginning. What
if we could change the very first few bites, What
if we could change the very initial experience of food
and health? Couldn't make a difference, and could I do
it better than what there was? So that was the idea,
was that who helped you start it? Inside and outside?
(18:31):
So many people. For almost two years I worked on
the business plan. My mentor at Columbia, Cliff Shore who's
still a best friend of mine today. He's an advisor
in my next company, Healthy Nest. He is just one
of those people that helps you chart away forward. He
taught a program called the Greenhouse, which is actually how
I became connected to you. And the Greenhouse is like
(18:52):
an incubator for students at the school, and Cliff really
helped me with the business plan and all the ideas
and access to people who could pave the way. I've
basically left Columbia with a business plan but no funding.
I started talking to the investment community. I didn't have
(19:13):
any stripes. I was just this unknown girl without a
rich uncle, using the network as best I could to
be introduced to people like Andy, who then introduced me
to someone like you. And I remember, Actually I don't
know you remember, but can I say the amount that
you invested Pilot. You invested three and I'm pretty sure
(19:38):
at one point I gave you a check back for
like ten or twelve million dollars at the end of it.
Sometimes things take a while, and you were very patient
and it worked out. Thank you for your support. But Andy,
who was on your team, said well, we want to
do this, we want to invest Bob just hasn't given
the final green light. He needs to see everything. I
(19:59):
need to sit down with him. And I'm like, well,
when are you going to sit down with him? And
he's like, well, he's going to be in the office tomorrow.
I'm gonna try to do it. And so I think
I showed up at like nine o'clock. I asked, your
assistant is Bobb and yet and this is like in
the old days. I don't think I would ever do
this now, and she's like, no, you know, he's going
to be gone most of the day. He's coming later,
and I don't know that he has time on his
schedule to meet. And I was like, it's okay, I'll
(20:21):
just wait. I don't know if you remember, but I
sat there for like six hours. I probably didn't know
you sat there for six hours. Well I did, and
I'm glad I did. You finally come in and Andy
knew I was there, and he sat you down and
he met and then afterwards you gave us the green light.
It was such a pivotal moment. We were literally on
(20:41):
the verge of running out of money, and so that
bought me like six months. Let's talk about money. Very
early on you rejected a big investment from a venture
capital group. Why did you do that? Money was tight?
What's the lesson in that? The lesson is go with
your gut and the easy way is not always the
best way. I had gotten this interest from this group.
(21:05):
They were very well funded. They wined and dined me,
and I was naive and totally broke. And you know
what it feels like when you're broken. You're scared. Everything
I would buy, like groceries or anything, was on an
American Express that I wouldn't have money to pay for
it later. And I was thinking, we'll figure it out
by the end of the month. It was like living
that way, and so all of a sudden I had
(21:25):
this offer for five thousand dollars as the seed investor.
I was so excited about it. Basically on a handshake,
I said yes. But then when I actually saw the
terms from the get go to lose control of the
vision and the mission, which, as you and I know,
the mission never changed and the vision never changed, but
the path to get their changes so much. You have
(21:48):
to be adaptable. You have to be ready to pivot
at any moment. If you don't have somebody behind you
that sees that. Or if you're not in the driver's
seat and you can just make the turns as you
choose to see the force and react, then you're hamstrong
and you can't do it by committee. No people in
an organization today think that all decisions need to be
(22:09):
made by committee. Ultimately, this is not a democracy. I
have a vision and we have a mission. I have
to be the captain right now. You guys have to
trust me, and usually you have the right team. Everyone does.
We all trust. I had to walk away from that
because it wasn't right. Even though it was so desperate,
it was really hard to walk away from. In retrospect,
(22:29):
that was the best thing that could have ever happened.
So let's talk about product. You don't know anything about food,
nothing about baby food. You've got an idea. Talk about
how you take that idea the intangible and turn into
the tangible. How did you find out how to make
the food, where to make the food, how to package it,
how you sell stuff in the food business. Did you
(22:52):
have all that when you were at Columbia and did
that as part of the business plan? Where did that
come from? Hands on? After you had really committed to
this idea. I think it was both. When you're doing
a business plan, you're basically making up how you hope
things will be and what you think things will look
like based on kind of BS projections in a way
(23:12):
because nobody knows. But at the same token, you can
do enough research to put together a decent plan and
then go live it and change it all the time.
Part of the beginning was finding everyone in my life
that knew about food, knew about production, knew about all
of the rigors of quality control that one would need
(23:33):
to know about to have a microbiologist as an advisor,
to have an entrepreneur like Seth Goldman from Honest Ty
as an advisor. I found a really good partner and
a woman named Jessica Rolf who became my CEO and
was a wonderful partner who really dedicated herself to understanding
QA and production of food. Along the way, I've just
(23:54):
learned so much, But at the same token, I still
would say I know very little about any one thing
because there's such a specialty in each category, and it's
about assembling all the smartest people in the world around
the areas where you need help to get their expertise
and to put it into developing something you're really proud
(24:14):
of and feel good about and you know, want to
scream from the mountain tops. And that's where I think
my ability comes in. I love to develop something, make
something tangible, and because I know it's so good, I
like to talk about it and share it, because I
don't think that's marketing. I think that's giving a gift
to someone who needs it. You start out as frozen
(24:35):
baby food, you get going, you get distribution, you get
in Whole Food, you get in babies or us, and
then you realize it's not going to get you there.
How did you come to that conclusion? How did you
realize it? And how did you admit to yourself that
you weren't hitting the goal? Two and a half years
in against this business plan, we're making frozen baby food
(24:59):
and this little ice c trays and they're beautiful. The
food tasted amazing, like this palette of all these beautiful colors.
The peas were so green, and the carrots were just
like neon orange, and it was just so fresh and alive.
It was like literally art, you know, to stand in
a store at a Whole Foods and do a demo
(25:21):
in the freezer aisle, and they have people walk right
past you and not even want to stop and try it.
And you're standing there so eager with your cute little
T shirt on, and you're like, smile pictures on the
back of the box. For two and a half years,
You've been working on that, and they don't want to
try it. And then you realize, okay, wait a second,
am I talking to the wrong people. You're just standing
(25:42):
there waiting for a mom to come in with a baby.
She would be like, but where where would I find?
You know, I never come down this aisle. I only
stopped because you were here, and sudden realizing, wow, we
have to create a whole new category of grocery called
frozen baby food. That's an uphill battle. All all the
moms who are walking into the store of the baby
right now are going straight to the baby food aisle.
(26:05):
I mean it took me two or three demos. I
mean really literally, after two and a half years, there's
like two weeks of a few data points, just real
experiences that I didn't want to admit to myself because
you're kind of in denial. You're thinking, oh, this is
just a one off. So committed. This is everything. I've
risked everything for this, and then you realize, I gotta
(26:28):
change it all. We gotta change it all, but you
can't change it all. Drop the Happy Baby Frozen line.
It's what everyone's invested in, it's what you invested in. Meanwhile,
I'm thinking, we gotta get in the baby food aisle
stat We've got to create something enlightened and differentiated and
meaningful that still matches the mission to create sustainable, organic
(26:52):
options for everybody and to have babies start from day
one of eating with the healthiest start in life. A
very first product that met those high standards was there,
Happy Bellies Baby cereal with probiotics and got you what
two or three times the sales of the two years
of the frozen Yeah, so we went from one sixteen
(27:12):
to five twenty and then five to two point one,
and between five twenty and two point one was the cereal.
So then you jumped to the one that I think
people really go, wow, this was genius. Your plastic squeeze
pouches a purade baby food. That was really the game changer,
wasn't it? One thousand percent? And where did that idea
(27:32):
come from? That clearly wasn't in your business plan back
at Columbia. No. What was in the business plan was
to create an alternative to the jar of baby food.
And the original idea for that alternative was frozen. And
what I realized is frozen is not the alternative to
the jar. We created all these other wonderful products, but
(27:53):
we still had yet to find the alternative to the jar,
and that pouch was the alternative to the jar. In
a heartbeat, the world changed back then. If you walk
down the baby food aisle, there's always one or two
broken glass jars of baby food. And it was nine
nine jars of baby food and that's it. And now
(28:13):
walk down a baby food aisle, it is a sea
of pouches. We're not the only ones by far, but
we were one of the very first. And the first
pouch I ever saw was in Australia. There was one
apple sauce and I thought, this is it. This is
the alternative to the jar. We came home and started
working on it right away. By the way, your sales
(28:35):
then took another multiple jump based on this. But every
great business usually has some external X factor, that unexpected
catalyst for growth. America Online in the nineteen nineties. It
was Nora Efron's movie You've Got Mail. At MTV. It
was Michael Jackson's thriller for You. It was an American
Express commercial tell us the story two thousand nine, I'm pregnant.
(28:57):
We just launched our pouches. One sent me a link
to a competition called Shina Light, which was to shine
a light on what would be America's most inspiring business
and I thought, you know what the hell? The application
had how do you help the community, how are you
a force for good? A number of things that I
felt like we really lived up to, so it wasn't
(29:18):
hard to fill out the application. Then we had to
get fifty people to endorse it very quickly, which we did,
and it's literally due at midnight, right almost at the
stroke of midnight. I had sent on this thing I
had sent and I forgot about it. And a few
weeks later, I'm in California. I'm getting ready to come
to Boston to do a big trade show in the
food world called Expo East, and I get a call
(29:41):
from somebody at NBC Universal. I think she set. Out
of more than entries, you've been selected as one of
the top three most inspiring businesses in the country. Where
are you tomorrow because we need to film a commercial
that needs to air next week. And I said, well,
I'm in Boston tomorrow, I'm in California right now, I'm pregnant.
Let's do it, and so we filmed this commercial. Had
(30:03):
a little health food store in Boston. So I walked
past this cool mural that says eat local, and I
go into the store and really like bright and excited,
talking about how proud I am of our products, standing
in front of the produce aisle. It was what I
thought was going to be the biggest moment of our
entire life. And then we lost the competition, so we
came in second, which was okay, but they played that
(30:24):
commercial before the office. They played it on TV so much.
Nine months later, I get another call and it's from
someone at amm X and they say, we saw your
shine a Light commercial and we're doing a new campaign
called Business is Booming, and we want to show people
how important small businesses in America. We like to highlight
your story with an online video. Can we come film
(30:48):
me for a few days? Yeah, of course, I just
had a baby. Let's make it happen. And this time
we were able to really showcase the story of Happy Baby.
We're in New York, our office. We had this little
baby food truck that we drive around the city. We
parked it in front of the Natural History Museum. They
filmed this spot and I didn't get to see it.
(31:09):
I thought we would talk about how we would roll
it out online. And then a couple of months later,
I took my parents to Africa, and I wanted my
dad to see what life was like in Africa without
dirt floors, because I was winning an award in Cape Town,
and so I take my mom and dad and my
husband and my little baby son to Africa. We go
(31:30):
to Cape Town and we stay in these beautiful places,
and then we went on this incredible safari and my
dad had a heart attack in the middle of the bush.
And um, we didn't know he had a heart attack.
We just thought he was really sick. We were on
a plane from Johannesburg back to New York, but it
(31:52):
stopped in Abu Dhabi and on the plane he almost died.
So they wheeled him off in a gurney and we
went straight to a hospital. They were using the you know, yeah,
the defibrillator to bring him back to life. And by
the way, he made it great news. Yeah, yeah, he
made it. So they saved his life. And we were
(32:12):
stuck there for like three weeks. Months before we left,
we had started the process of realizing the pouches are
taking off. We need to raise a big round. This
is not something I can do with individual investors. And
I started talking to a number of different funds that
was only going to be gone for eight or ten
days and end up being on for almost four weeks.
And while I'm in Abu Dhabi, the first few pouches
(32:35):
rolled into Target on shelf. Within the first two weeks,
they were in the top items in all of Baby
in all of Target. In two weeks, it was like
unheard of. People were buying them like crazy. I'm thinking,
oh my god, we need money so badly. We're about
to drown, drowned in demand. Because we had to prepay
(32:55):
for everything. We had nothing. And I'm like in Abu
Dhabi in this hotel near a hospital with a baby boy,
and I was worried about my dad, and I was
worried about the business. And then I get an email
from American Express saying the video we shot is actually
not for online. Your story has turned out so well.
We're going to put about fifty million dollars behind this commercial.
(33:19):
They sent a clip of what it looked like, and
I sent it to all of you guys. I think
we raised I want to say it was eight million dollars.
In like two or three weeks, American Express ended up
coming through and that was like the equivalent of what
I would consider an Oprah moment. So piece after piece
fell in place, after some big worries and pivots in
(33:41):
the beginning, and in two thousand thirteen you sold of
the company. Why did you come to that decision, Well,
a curveball was thrown my way. In April of two
thousand twelve, my son, Saying was diagnosed with not to
sum this is a baby boy. He was right there
with you, super connected. Go watch the commercial. He's in it,
(34:05):
and then all of a sudden started losing milestones and
losing the ability to communicate and just went into this
little bubble. It's not like he was born this way.
I knew him, and I knew something was going on,
and I couldn't find the answers, and I was terrified.
I was also terrified that this business that had really
become something big, we still didn't have any money. If
(34:27):
you ask me what my bank balance was, it might
have been like fourteen thousand dollars, and I would have
been happy that I had that much money in the bank,
because it used to be like seven dollars. I literally
spent my life savings on that trip to Africa. I
sold the business because I thought that I needed to
have access to capital to save my kid, and in
(34:50):
so doing, irony is that I lost control of that baby.
But I had to do it for the all the
right reasons, the right reason. What you did well financially,
it was a great return for every investor, great return
for you. And and two thousand seventeen you stepped down
a CEO. How was that feeling of stepping away from
(35:11):
the company. I mean, it's bitter sweet. It was actually
January of two thousand eighteen, and I left after we
had the data that we were the number one organic
baby food company in the country and that we were
the number two baby brand in the entire country. And
in a way, that's a good time to walk away,
(35:33):
because at some point you want to keep learning and
challenging yourself too. I had bigger and more important things
to do. While I had focused for so many years
on taking chemicals and pesticides out of our children's body
and creating a brand that allowed everybody to have access,
(35:53):
my own personal experience showed me that I needed to
do more. And it started with my son. And then
I realized I had to do something else, like I
had unfinished business. So while it was bitter sweet, it
was almost like seeing your child graduate from high school
and kind of get accepted into Harvard and feel like
they were in a good place, and it doesn't have
(36:14):
to be Harvard, it could be anywhere they wanted to go.
I felt like the business is in good hands. I've
done my duty and it's time to move on. It's
always going to be my baby, and I'm always going
to be so proud of everything that we've done and accomplished.
I'm still the chair mo home of the board, so
I'm still connected to some degree. Let's do some advice.
(36:34):
If you could give some advice to your eighteen year
old self, what would it be. The first thing I
would say is you are so freaking resilient and smart
and strong that no matter what comes your way. You're
gonna figure it out, So stop second guessing yourself because
it's a waste of time. Focus your time on making
(36:54):
things because you're good at it. So for people thinking
about leaving the corporate world to start their own business us,
what insights or advice would you have for them? If
you're going to leave and it puts you at a
financial risk where your risks, make sure that your assumptions
are tested. The biggest failure is the failure to try.
(37:16):
But that doesn't mean to do it without intelligence and
analytics and a lot of research before you make the
big jump. For people whose business is stalled like yours
was with the frozen baby food, what advice do you
have for them? My advice to anybody who's struggling is
to take a minute, try to distress so that your
(37:38):
brain is working, because your brain works a lot better
when you're not operating out of fear, and call ten
of the smartest people you know and just have conversations.
Because when you care so much about something, if there
is a way to attack the challenge, I think you
will find a creative solution. Rooms to where you are
(38:03):
today and that incredible journey you've been on you ever
sit back and reflect and say, how on earth did
that happen? Every time I drive through the gate at
my house, I think I can't believe I live here.
I'm very grateful. I literally think that anything is possible
in this life. I think about my mom and dad.
(38:26):
I think about how nice it would be if my
dad could see my house right now. We end each
episode with a shout out. This is mathe and magic,
after all, mathematicians and the magicians. Who's the person you
want to give the shout out to? Is the best
of those mathematicians, the person who sees the world through
the numbers. I read a book called small Data. I
would give a huge shout out to the author of
(38:48):
that book. It's about taking small insights and recognizing how
the world works, and then you can use big data
to confirm those insights. Who the most creative the magician?
I would say Malcolm Gladwell, one of the great chas.
This is an amazing story, amazing journey you've been on
(39:09):
and it's still going. Congratulations, thanks for sharing it with us.
Thank you so much for having me. It's such an
honor and so much fun to see you again after
all these years. Here are a few things I picked
up in my conversation with Chazi. One, match your values
to the value of your work. Jazi created a company
(39:31):
that matched her core beliefs. Not only was it fulfilling,
it was a business success too. To trust your gut.
When Chassi turned down an investment offer because the terms
didn't feel right, she kept control of her company and
ultimately let it down a more profitable path. Three. Identify
problems and find solutions. After many years of developing the
idea for frozen baby food, Shazi learned very quickly through
(39:55):
live demos that she needed a different product to reach
the right people. I'm Bob Pittman. Thanks for listening. That's
it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening to
Math and Magic, a production of I Heart Radio. This
show is hosted by Bob Pittman. Special thanks to Sue
Schillinger for booking and wrangling our wonderful talent, which is
(40:17):
no small feat Nikkiatore for pulling research bill plaques, and
Michael Asar for their recording help, our editor Ryan Murdoch,
and of course Gayle Raoul, Eric Angel, Noel Mango and
everyone who helped bring this show to your ears until
next time
Host
Bob Pittman
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