CEO's You Should Know x Swanson Health Products

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I grew up in a little town and farming community
in northern North Dakota, about sixty miles from Minnesota, sixty
miles from Canada. So up in the northeastern part of
the state, my dad had about five thousand acres of
grain land, So you can imagine what I did growing
up all the way through high school is spent a
lot of time on the family farm, and I raised

(00:20):
quarter horses and apple loosa's at the same time.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
So those are my hobbies.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
I went to school at North Dakota State University, graduated
in accounting, got my CPA license, and yeah, never went
back to the family farm. My dad asked me if
I wanted to stay home and farm, and I said no,
I didn't think that was a good idea because I
didn't like dirt.

Speaker 3 (00:46):
I was lot to get people contact, because you know,
we're going to talk a lot about Swanson Health products
today in the cuping that you run now. And you've
had such a varied and cool resume. But as you
were coming out of school, you talked about not liking dirt.
What did you want to do?

Speaker 1 (00:59):
Wanted to travel the globe and do international business. I
grew up in littletown in North Dakota. So I felt
pretty sheltered. I felt like I hadn't seen much, heard much,
or done much. But remember back then, there wasn't a
lot of social media, thank Eavans or who knows, right, Yeah,
how we'd have all handled that back in the day.

(01:20):
And there wasn't a lot of exposure. I mean even
when I graduated. You know, I'm fifty nine years old.
I didn't have a cell phone at high school or college,
and I wasn't seeing a lot of that. So I
wanted to get out and see the world, and I
wanted to do international business.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
Well, let's talk about that, because, as I said, you've
got a very very cool, diverse resume. You know, you've
been a vice president and you've been to CFO at
several different companies, and then also CFO at your current
company until you became a CEO about just a little
bit over three and a half years, as you started
to find out what you wanted to do. Here, tell

(01:54):
us about the process, about the companies you were at
and your evolution and incension of the different things that
you did.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
Well. Quite honestly, I had a mentor early in my
in my day that just kept telling me, you know,
you've got to go left, you got to go right,
you got to go you know, diagonally, you got to
go up, you gotta go down to get to where
you want to be, which basically said, you just have
to do a bunch of stuff. Yeah, right, get a
bunch of experience across a wide variety of areas, and

(02:20):
then eventually you'll get to kind of pick your ladder.
And that's kind of what I did. I mean from
you know, being in an audit advisory you know, person
at Arthur Anderson and Company in Minneapolis, to joining the
Pillsbury Company, Pillsbury and Hagendass, Green Giant and Old L PASO,

(02:41):
and then you know, joining the drinks division with with
diagio on on the drink side, joining Newell rubber Maid
was sharpie. I was always a finance guy. I was
either a finance manager, director, rolling up to VP and
eventually you know, regional CFO.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
But I always had my hands in.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
Every everything, so from sales to operations to risk to
whatever it might be.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
And I kind of felt like I liked the sales side.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
So when I was at Sharpeat building that business in
Latin America with a team of great experts from across
the region. I said, hey, you know these distributor markets
in Central America and the Caribbean, nobody's touching those.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
Can I have those? And they're like, sure, go at it.

Speaker 1 (03:25):
And so after about four years, I had about a
thirty million dollar business there the markets that nobody wanted,
and of course they weren't going to give me the
big ones with all the big names, and I had
to build it from scratch. So yeah, I was always
just kind of looking to do a little bit more
than just finance. And you know, not that it didn't
keep me busy, but it was just curious.

Speaker 3 (03:46):
I guess well, I mentioned the diversified resume and I'd
love to hear the origin story about what were you
at right now when it comes to Swanson Health. You know,
it's really amazing because you know, sometimes you know, there's
so many different reasons we talked to people in the
series why people make a big move, whether it's a
lateral or you go from CFO to a CEO. But

(04:07):
you went from a CFO one company to another, and
now you've ascended to the CEO, and as I look
at your very diverse resume. I can really see why
Swans and Health Products might have been interested in you,
but why were you interested in joining them?

Speaker 2 (04:20):
Well, you know, the stars collided.

Speaker 1 (04:23):
I'd had a lot of experience, and the best experiences
of my life were in areas like e commerce, distribution,
consumer products, big brand names, international business. And when I
started talking to Swanson, this role that they were looking

(04:44):
to fill at all, and so I'm like wow. And
at the same time, I had a family issue with
a brother that passed away and aging parents in their nineties,
feeling like I should be a home, a sense of
obligation to come back here and and pay back a
little bit of what I was given. And at the
same time, the Swanson opportunity came up. So, like I said,

(05:07):
the stars collide, and I'm like, I don't know how
this can be bad. They're asking me to be a
CFO and I've done that. I think I can do
a good job at the job there. They're asking me
to build their international business, which isn't hardly even off
the ground, and I've done that in about three companies
and a lot scarier parts of the world, So why

(05:27):
not I'll give it a shot and I really liked
the CEO that was here at the time, and so yeah,
so jump ship and came back to North Dakota. Left
twenty five years earlier, said I'd never come back here,
and six years.

Speaker 2 (05:43):
Later here I am.

Speaker 3 (05:44):
You're right on the different paths that we take, and
you're always surprised. And you know, there's a common theme
in this series too, Jim and you kind of talked
about and Loud is that leap of faith that we
always taken passion that people have. And we'll talk about
a little bit later, but when we talk about culture
and leader ship and team and all those things, but
I do want to talk about one thing. If you
can indulge me just for a second, I promise that

(06:05):
we'll talk about mission and vision and what exactly Swans
and Health Products does. But you move from CFO to CEO,
and I've talked to so many people in this series
that directly go to a president and CEO, but there's
a lot of people that work their way up through
a company and there's something to be said, and I
would love for you to expound on this about going
at a different role at CFO, learning that terrain which

(06:27):
prepared you to be CEO.

Speaker 2 (06:28):
Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah? Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (06:31):
You know, all those people that went directly to a
CEO job were good, really good at something, and I
feel like I had a lot of experience and I
was pretty dang good at the CFO role. They're all different,
they're all different with huge challenges. This here was my
first real private equity CFO role and have an amazing,

(06:55):
amazing group of partners at Swander based Apple to work for.
So was that was super fun. But about three years
in two years in excuse me to my tenure here.
My business partner who moved back to North Dakota twenty
five years after he left, saying he'd never came back,
came back for family reasons, just like I did. After

(07:16):
having been all over the US doing a variety of
great things. He came here as well. Well, his kids
left and he was an empty nester. So he moved on.
And the board said to me, you know, we think
we'd like to make you the CEO, or even if
on an interim basis, And I said, I've never wanted
to be a CEO.

Speaker 2 (07:34):
I'm a CFO and I run.

Speaker 1 (07:35):
The international business and I'm just getting it off the
ground and it's a lot of fun. Well, you'll still
be responsible for that, but we think he should give
it a shot. We think you've got the right personality,
the collaborative approach, and the respect of your peers in
colleagues here at the company.

Speaker 2 (07:51):
We think he should give it a shot. So I said, sure,
I'll give it a shot.

Speaker 1 (07:56):
About three or four months in, I said, well, it's
time to decide.

Speaker 2 (08:00):
Other I'm going to do this permanently.

Speaker 1 (08:02):
They've given me the role on an interim basis, and
so I told swander Pace, I'm like, I'm ready for
the job, and if I don't get named the full
time CEO, I'm probably gonna leave. Because everybody that I
elevated behind me to be the CFO, the CMO and
all the other roles to fill in the gap while

(08:23):
I was interim did such a great job.

Speaker 2 (08:24):
I couldn't ask them.

Speaker 1 (08:25):
To go back to their old jobs, right, So if
I can't ask them to go back to their old jobs,
I can't go back to mine either.

Speaker 2 (08:31):
So I guess it's up or out.

Speaker 1 (08:33):
And at that point I became the full time CEO,
and Swander Pace was very trusting and very gracious at
that point for me having never been a CEO, and
they've been very supportive along the way.

Speaker 3 (08:45):
Well you also, well you obviously earn their trust too, Jim.
I mean yeah, without embarrassing about that. And I did
want to before we talk about mission and vision. I
think we should do this because I want to get
some more context to our listeners about Swanson Health Products.
And I know that things were founded back in nineteen
sixty nine, and if you just just spend a short
time about that company being found, of what it was,

(09:07):
and where we are today, and then we'll talk about
all the other cool things about the company.

Speaker 2 (09:11):
So Lee Wantson was a golfer.

Speaker 1 (09:15):
And his knee started hurting, elbows starting hurt, shoulders started hurting,
and he said, I got to come up with something,
and I believe it was vitamin E and possibly even
glucosamine were the original products, and he went and sourced them,
found him started taking them and they helped him, and
he liked me today, believed that he had a sense

(09:38):
of responsibility to tell other people about it because it
had helped him so much. Lee, different than me, flew
all over the world and found antidotes and regiments in
almost every country. It's why we have twelve hundred amazing
products today that helped people be well.

Speaker 2 (09:56):
He started out with a catalog. That's how he got the.

Speaker 1 (09:58):
Word out to his fall followers and built a call
center of great customer experts to answer everyone's questions. And
then the world of e commerce came along, so we
moved it from the catalog online. Now we're in one.

Speaker 2 (10:15):
Hundred and fifty countries.

Speaker 1 (10:17):
Wow, we're on about ten US marketplaces in a very
big way. And our core channel, Swansonvitamins dot com is
the online catalog where all of our customers come for
the branded, real authentic experience.

Speaker 2 (10:34):
They all come home there.

Speaker 1 (10:35):
That's home base, that's base camp to find out, you know,
the real educated, truth and wellness.

Speaker 2 (10:42):
So that's the story that's outstanding.

Speaker 3 (10:45):
And for our younger listeners in this podcast and CEOs,
you should know a catalog, kids, is basically a book,
that's what it is. And Jim and I are about
the same age, so I remember those very very well.

Speaker 1 (10:56):
Well.

Speaker 3 (10:56):
Listen, Jim, I buried the lead long enough. When it
comes to Swanson Health broat what's the mission and the
vision of the company.

Speaker 1 (11:03):
I think it's important to know that we are an
extremely well trusted name and wellness and that comes with
fifty six years. There aren't any competitors that can really
say they've got twelve hundred products that span vitamins, supplements
and herbal remedies that have been in development for fifty
six years, tried, trusted and true and honestly, the supply

(11:27):
chain we have built over that period of time gives
us a lot of preference and a lot of cloud
in the community. During COVID, for example, we were fulfilling
orders that eighty five percent when people couldn't get product,
and that's relationships.

Speaker 2 (11:42):
That's relationships built on trust over time.

Speaker 1 (11:45):
So we're trusted by our customers and we're trusted and
trust our supplier network as well to make sure that
these products are available when people need them. And I
think the biggest thing is is we have science backed solutions,
and I don't think there's anything more important in this.

Speaker 2 (12:04):
Day and age.

Speaker 1 (12:05):
For younger, middle aged, older consumers, they all want the data,
they want the science, they want to know what's going
to work.

Speaker 2 (12:12):
They're spending harder money on something and they want.

Speaker 1 (12:15):
To feel better and they don't want to waste sixty
to ninety days of taking something and find out, well, that.

Speaker 2 (12:20):
Was a fizzle.

Speaker 3 (12:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:23):
So I think it's great that we're good at what we.

Speaker 1 (12:26):
Do, but it's science backed solutions for people's wellness. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (12:31):
And you know the other thing that I'm sure is
a byproduct way you and your team do. You're helping
people make them feel better, and I imagine that's something
you get up every day and think about. I want
to talk about COVID in just a little bit and
your business model, because you alluded to it that business
didn't stop. But I want to talk if there's any pivoting,
because that's always an interesting conversation. But I do just

(12:51):
want to give a thirty thousand foot of you one
more time for our listeners. If you to explain everybody
what Swanson Health Products is in what you do and offer,
what would you tell them?

Speaker 1 (13:00):
We manufacture and market wellness regimens to bring everybody to
their best self every day. We have twelve hundred products
of our own that we developed, science backed solutions, and
twelve thousand of partner brand solutions. So when you come
to our shopping Experiencewsenvitamins dot com, you can get our

(13:21):
stuff and we're going to sell our partner stuff as well,
to make sure you leave with a cart full of
everything you need and you don't.

Speaker 2 (13:28):
Have to go five or six different places to find it.

Speaker 3 (13:31):
Outstanding. Now, let's circle back to covid. You mentioned that
business was still going. Was there any kind of pivoting
that the business had to do whatsoever? Obviously was time
when a horrific time when we were all at home
and we're you know, ordering breadmakers and making sure that
our patios were a lot of DIY products and different

(13:53):
things that we did out there as families staying at home.
When it came to covid and your business model, what
did it look like before and did you have to
do anything afterwards during that pivot of covid.

Speaker 1 (14:03):
So we're lucky, we're we're primarily an online business, digital business,
so all of that kept going just as could be expected.
But we also wanted to keep our teams safe, and
we were in an essential business.

Speaker 2 (14:20):
So while we.

Speaker 1 (14:21):
Could all be in here every day, you can imagine
there were a lot of people that became ill, right,
and there's a lot of people and there's always turnover
in the business. But I didn't want to bring in
a lot of new faces that we didn't trust because
I wanted to keep our team well. So our entire
executive leadership team, all of our functional leaders, all of

(14:43):
our employees from the corporate office environment, were down packing
boxes morning, noon to night because we didn't bring any
temporary staff in to fill the gaps because we didn't
know them and we wanted to keep the team here safe,
and so we worked through it with people like me,
and trust me, the error rates and packing boxes.

Speaker 2 (15:04):
Probably went up sky high because they had me down
there doing it.

Speaker 1 (15:08):
And while I might be doing a good job as
a CEO and CFO, probably not made for it, but
we sure all gave it a college try.

Speaker 3 (15:15):
Well that's cool. Everybody had to pitch in at that point,
so that makes a lot of sense. And once again
that's the leadership that I want to talk about in
just a little bit. I do want to talk about
some current challenges in the industry, and without making any
assumptions of your business model. I always hear in the
news because everybody does, about tariff, so I'm curious how
that will affect you, your products and your customers. But
if there are challenges in the industry that present you

(15:37):
and your team right now.

Speaker 1 (15:38):
Are there any I would say the biggest thing is,
you know, we have a constrained workforce.

Speaker 2 (15:44):
It's finding employees.

Speaker 1 (15:46):
If you're a restaurant owner a Starbucks looking for Starbucks baristas,
or you're looking for people here out on the shop
floor or in the office, it's hard to find great talent,
and so, you know, I'd say that's a big consideration.

Speaker 2 (16:01):
Tariffs haven't been a big deal for us.

Speaker 1 (16:03):
One hundred percent of what we source is are from
companies here in the US, while some of the VMS
products all come from overseas.

Speaker 2 (16:11):
We haven't seen an issue in the supply chain yet.

Speaker 1 (16:14):
It'll take until the end of the year or in
early next year for tariffs to really stick and be
significant to cause us an issue.

Speaker 2 (16:22):
So so far that has not been a problem.

Speaker 1 (16:24):
But we definitely have our experts eyeballs on it to
let us know if it's going to be a problem,
and we'll do everything we can with the efficiency of
our work and our suppliers work to take costs out
of the system to offset any of that that comes
our way.

Speaker 3 (16:40):
Jim, I'm trying to get my head around when you
say twelve hundred products. How on earth you keep up
with everything in the education about not only what it
is and what it does, and how it's offered to
the clients and your subscribers and all the people that
leve all the different products that you offer, How on
earth do you keep up with everything?

Speaker 1 (16:57):
We have an amazing infrastructure built around our inventory operations
and marketing functions. They work very closely together because, as
you can imagine in those twelve hundred products, certain ingredients
change from time to time, right, which means the label changes,
which means all of the supplement facts change. And we

(17:19):
want to be very accurate for our consumers want to
We want them to be well, We want them to
know exactly what they're taking. So that coordinated effort is
something that works just amazingly flawless behind the scenes.

Speaker 2 (17:32):
And I wish I could tell you that it was me,
but no, we have.

Speaker 1 (17:36):
It's quite a coordinated effort to keep twelve hundred of
our own and twelve thousand of our partner brands products
represented one hundred percent accurately on the site every day.

Speaker 2 (17:49):
It takes a herculean effort in coordination.

Speaker 3 (17:52):
Standing and I know this is not going to surprise you.
But every time we talk in this series with leaders
like you in the run companies, team is so important
to be trusting of them to do what your vision
is and what the company's vision is, and then execute
that and feel good about what's happening. So I appreciate
you sharing that. I did want to talk about maybe
a good story. And I imagine that because of the

(18:13):
type of business you're in, you're always getting feedback from everybody.
This work, This didn't work, this change in my life.
But if you could just maybe share a story with us,
something that maybe got to you, not necessarily directly to you,
but got to you from one of your team members,
about how it maybe change somebody's life, of a product
or products that you offered, could you share one with us.

Speaker 1 (18:31):
Well, it's really funny that you say that, because I
get them every week and always inspired. Actually makes me
feel like I have a sense of responsibility, like I
said before, to share what I know with others, because
being well and feeling.

Speaker 2 (18:49):
Good it's it's it's it's life. I mean, it's it's
what you want, it's what you need.

Speaker 1 (18:56):
Today I was given a handwritten note from a veteran
of a ninety seven year old man in his little
town at a parade with a picture of him riding
on a float, and it said, you know, dear Jim,
thank you for all of Swanson's products, because I've been
taking your supplements and I feel well. I'm able to

(19:17):
be in this parade today at ninety seven years old,
and thank you for your products and your continued support.

Speaker 2 (19:24):
Where I should have been thanking him for trusting.

Speaker 1 (19:26):
Us all of these years in taking Swanson products and
feeling good. But it was a ninety seven year old
war veteran riding in a parade saying it was me
that did that or our company that did that. I
think he did a lot of it himself to get
him to that point. But any support we can give
along the way, happy to do it.

Speaker 3 (19:48):
That's such a cool story, and I ask people in
this series, hey, could you share this is why we
get up everyday kind of story. That's exactly what I
ask all the time. That's why we get up to
change lives. So it's got to be fulfilling, man.

Speaker 2 (20:00):
No, No, it really is.

Speaker 1 (20:01):
I jump out of bed in the morning to come
to this business because I know it's actually doing well
for people.

Speaker 2 (20:06):
It used to be here in the US, and now
I can say all over the planet.

Speaker 3 (20:10):
Yeah, which is very cool. Well, let's do this. I
want to talk if we could just for a second
put a pin in work, even though it might affect work.
I love to talk about philanthropic and charity work. And
I know you're super busy, but when you have time
to be a part of either of those things, whether
it's through the business or person with your family, what
do you like to be part of.

Speaker 1 (20:27):
Well, yesterday we had our fifth annual Swanson Cares Charity
golf tournament here in town, and over the past five
years we've raised over two hundred thousand dollars through our
company five oh one c three charitable foundation called Swanson Cares.
And if it's firefighters, you know, children's homes, foster groups,

(20:53):
whatever it might be that we contribute to. We do
a variety of things through that chair. We get solicitations
to support from everywhere across the United States east west,
north south, but also Columbia, Japan, Brazil that we support

(21:14):
through our Swanson Cares charity. We have our golf tournament,
employees donate. We have a round up function on our
site where we take donations to help communities across the
US as well. So that's been a great intersection for
us here at Swanson between philanthropy and work that we're

(21:34):
able to do it together as a team, and it
brings a lot of people into it that help them
feel really good about what.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
They're doing, not standing.

Speaker 3 (21:42):
And it sounds like that means a lot to you,
So I really appreciate you sharing that, Jim. I do
want to talk about leadership and circle back to that,
and in this series we hear about team and culture
and honesty and being trustworthy of people. You know, you've
been in a lot of leadership roles and now you're
running this very large company. As I say the word

(22:03):
leadership to you, what does it mean to you and
how do you execute it?

Speaker 2 (22:06):
I think leadership is about bringing out the best in people.

Speaker 1 (22:09):
Everybody has strengths and everybody has weaknesses or development needs.
Focusing on their strengths makes their weaknesses look smaller or
not even noticeable. So I think leadership is about bringing
great groups of people together for a common purpose and
letting them thrive in doing what they're passionate about, which

(22:30):
brings out the very.

Speaker 2 (22:31):
Best in each one.

Speaker 1 (22:32):
Of them.

Speaker 3 (22:32):
I love that. And you know what word that we
hear a lot in this series is passion. You know,
whether it's you or your team members or if the
customer has passion for your product, it's all about that
and that's really what gets people going. So I'm glad
that you share that. I did. Want to get some
final comments and recap from you, Jim, and then we'll
give the website to everybody. If you're on socials, we
can give that too, but maybe just some final thoughts

(22:54):
about what we talked about and the floor is your sir, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:58):
Well, I guess what you know. Thank you for giving
me the platform. First of all, thanks for letting me
share a little bit about myself and my team and
what I think is our great company. You know, Swansonvitamins
dot Com has been around for fifty six years and
from what I see, it'll be around fifty six if
not more in the future because there's so much left

(23:21):
to do. We've brought together an amazing team here just
recently in the last few years that is really really
working in a concerted.

Speaker 2 (23:31):
Effort to share what we know about wellness.

Speaker 1 (23:35):
Where people came to us and found our product and
really stuck with.

Speaker 2 (23:38):
Us for the last fifty six years.

Speaker 1 (23:41):
I think people are going to be pretty shocked to
see what we do in the next couple because now
this team is ready to go tell.

Speaker 2 (23:47):
People about what we've got. They're not coming to us anymore.

Speaker 1 (23:51):
We're going to find them and let them know what
they need to know about wellness. Because let's not forget.
As I heard somebody very smart say a little while ago,
you know, the heart attack at sixty started at thirty,
the dementia at seventy started at forty, And we have
to address the entire population out there to let them

(24:12):
know we've got some things that can make them feel
good and be well. And I'm very excited to do
that and lead this team that's really passionate about telling
the world about what we have to offer and how
we can make people just feel.

Speaker 2 (24:26):
Good every day.

Speaker 1 (24:27):
And there's nothing better than just waking up and feeling good.
And we've got a few things that might be able
to help the world. So we're going to be very
vocal about it over the next few months and the
next year or two. Where our brand awareness has not
always been i'd say at the high mark, it's been
on the lower end, and we found ourselves, you know,

(24:47):
finding consumers organically and incrementally.

Speaker 2 (24:52):
And that's about to change pretty significantly.

Speaker 3 (24:55):
So I'm excited, understanding, let's give that website one more
time for everybody s wants and vitamins outstanding. I'm stoked
at not only your passion for the company, Jim, but
you're excited about the future. I always love to hear
things like that, as somebody who's had RA since I've
been twenty one, supplements and things to make me feel
better beside the regular medication. I take his paramount, of course,

(25:16):
the regular exercise and died and that stuff, but anything
that I can give my chance to feel a little
bit better. People like me are always excited about the
products that you offer. So thank you for all you
and your team do. And I really appreciate your valuable
time and I'm really glad we could feature you on CEOs.
You should know continued success.

Speaker 2 (25:32):
Thank you,