YouSaid · the spoken record

Bill Keith

lines on the record: 73
first: 2025-06-09
most recent: 2025-06-09
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And if you're interested in insights, ideas, and lessons from some of the world's greatest entrepreneurs, please sign up for my newsletter at guyroz.com or on substack. This episode was researched and produced by Chris Massini with music composed by Ramtin Araboui. It was edited by Neva Grant. Our engineers were Kazy Lee and Co. Takasugi Chernovin. Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, JC Howard, Casey Herman, Carla Estevez, Sam Paulson, Carrie Thompson, John Isabella, and Elaine Coates. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening.”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Lee and Bill Keith, co founders of Perfect Snacks. By the way, since leaving the brand, Bill has started a new business called Green Fat, which sells nutritional supplements. As for the other siblings, many of them have gone on to pursue higher education and start their own careers. Right now, one is in Belize rebuilding a school, another is the president of an environmental nonprofit. And remember Faith, the youngest sister who was born in the pizza restaurant? She just graduated from college.”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, it is amazing. Your mom, who's sort of, you know, we didn't talk about her that much in this episode, but kind of an unsung hero here. I mean, I think probably a difficult life for much of her life. And now probably is provided for, right? Has some comfort”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Inflation, yes. Right, right. Your story is so remarkable and unlikely. Like the two of you, based on all the things that you had to overcome, all the hurdles, all the things in your way, should not be multi-millionaire, should not have created a very successful CPG brand, had no background, had no, you didn't come from elite schools, you didn't have a formal education growing up. You grew up in buses with this very unstable upbringing. And yet, the kids in this family stepped up and made this happen. How much of this do you attribute to the work you put in, the grind, and how much do you think had to do with fortune, faith, luck, whatever, God, I don't know what you want to call it? Lee, what do you think?”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And now you can focus on the fun stuff like branding and being an ambassador rather than dealing with the things that is not always fun. Like tariff.”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And this is why you were sort of transitioning out. I know Lee, you and your brother served as co-CEOs for a time. But eventually, but imagine, Bill, at least for you, as you start to focus on your health, you were already thinking, I'm going to eventually transition out.”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You you yourself were very quite unhealthy. And it's, I don't want to say ironic because you're doing you run a healthy company, but you're on the road, you're under stress, you're probably not eating well. Tell me what health issues you are dealing with because, again, you were a young guy, you were in your 40s, right? Late 30s And you have high prostate PSA levels, or what?”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I think around this time where you're about to come into serious money, which is going to be just unbelievable given, especially given how you guys grew up.”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I mean, they put in a lot of money to acquire a majority share. I mean, this is a very sensitive question, but when money gets involved, it can really tear families apart. It can really damage family dynamics. So I have to imagine with 12 siblings, and now you're talking about serious money, I mean, did it create some challenges in terms of how it was going to be distributed among the siblings?”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You did eventually find and acquire, well, somebody who was interested in buying a majority share, and that was Mondelez, which also owns cliff bar and...”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, you guys now are with the injection of cash and partners. You hit $70 million in sales by 2018. And that's, I mean, once you hit $50 million, that's really where you start to kind of think about acquisition or a bigger investment, $100 million now, I think, in CPG in food is more common. But that year, you guys started to search for potential acquirers. So you guys made a decision that, hey, maybe now we should, you know, we've done this, we've built this up, coming into 15 years of doing this. Let's see if we can get some money for what we've done.”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Nope, they wouldn't care. They wouldn't care, he's saying. And they didn't. In fact, introducing a chocolate chip peanut bar, like that was a game changer.”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's amazing because when VMG invested, I'm assuming that they expected a certain metrics and growth. And from what I gather initially, you were not. And that created some pressure, which I guess was the reason why, or one of the reasons why you guys introduced the chocolate chip bar, because it was sort of We need to hit these metrics.”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not in Kethouse. Yeah. Carob that my mom, when I was a kid, used to say was chocolate. She'd say, here's chocolate. We eat carob. And it was not chocolate. You couldn't fool me. It was just good. It was not delicious.”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And one of the things I guess there, so the people that came and joined you suggested was, hey, ditch the carob and use chocolate. And this was kind of controversial among the family, right? To use chocolate.”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That must have been massively life changing. I mean, it was. $10 million to distribute among the family and the equity holders in the business”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, I want to ask you about bringing on investors because now 10 years, a little over 10 years, you guys have brought this business up to $15 million in sales all by yourselves, bootstrapped it. You've learned a lot along the way. You got the scars to prove it. You are experienced operators. Now you've got a professional investors coming in and they brought in some executives to join you guys, I think. Did that cause any tension? I mean, I'm sure now that you've got more of a quote-unquote professional group of people joining you, they have ideas of what it means to professionalize. And was that smooth sailing or was there some Iraqi?”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and you're really close to getting this deal, but then something really bad happens, which is during what I guess was a routine kind of testing of your dough or your batter, you find a possible sign of contamination, a microbe, salmonella, and something like that. I mean, we've talked to other founders who've dealt with this kind of thing. I mean, something like that can kill your business, right? So what happened?”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, so you guys are growing, growing, growing. And I imagine, so I want to talk to you by bringing outside investors because you brought in outside investors in 2015, VMG partners. Did you have people coming to you or were you still under the radar enough where you had to go find it yourself?”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“40% lift just right. It's amazing. And you guys were in Starbucks, which I think was kind of a pioneer in that in the refrigerator section. How did you get into Starbucks? Did they come to you?”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hey, welcome back to how I built this. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2014 and Perfect Bars are at about 4,000 stores with roughly $15 million in annual revenue. And Bill and Lee decide the packaging needs a new look, so they hire a branding agency to design it. And now the label changes to what it looks more or less what it looks like now with a giant sort of peanut shape on the front. And so you see the peanut and there's just the protein content. It's changed even more now where it's sort of translucent. You can see the bar underneath it, but it more or less looks the same. It's a really nice looking packaging. And did that cost you a fortune to get that rebranded?”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What do we come back in just a moment? Lee and Bill get their first chance at private investment and their first taste of disaster with a possible outbreak of salmonella. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's kind of again, I'm not. I hope I'm not sounding like I'm psychoanalyzing your dad, but he strikes me as somebody who really truly was the definition of a visionary without the discipline of an entrepreneur.”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think your dad derived some comfort from knowing? Because I think probably a lot of his stress came from the fear that he couldn't provide for these children, that he would die, and they would be on their own. But seeing kind of that maybe actually they would be okay. Did you get a sense that it provided him some psychological comfort?”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wow. So, this is happening, and I want to back up in the timeline for a little bit because we jumped ahead a little bit. But there was so much momentum because you're in Costco and you're growing and then you're still hand rolling it while you're selling this at Costco 24 hour shifts. But your dad, who is getting progressively sicker, he passes away in 2009. I know that he was increasingly volatile as he was getting sicker and sicker. He was able to start to see that his children were having some success with this business, what did he think about that”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People who listen to the show regularly know I'm a big fan of Costco. I think it's a great equalizer. I think everybody that just loves it, I just think most people love it. And so, but I wonder, I don't ever do the samples of Costco because a lot of things I just choose not to eat. But I want to go with my kids, they'd just go and just sample everything. So part of me is like, yeah, you know, people are just sampling and sampling. But I guess only the tiny percentage buy, it still works out in your favor, right? Because they have to buy a large quantity of this product.”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because Costco is again, we've done this on the show. It's risky because in many cases, you're essentially subsidizing the consumer for a while. It can be that, the case where you have to price the bars or the product.”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So in 2009, I guess you guys get a really big break, right? Because this is just three and a half years after you launched the business, you get a meeting with Costco, which is huge, right? The potential is huge. And I guess it was like a broker there had reached out to you.”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Leah, I just want to sort of pause for a moment because at this point, I mean, again, you grew up with just enormous disadvantages compared to a lot of people that you knew. Here you are, just like four years after you get a GED and you're talking about margins and you're talking about P&Ls and you're doing all the accounting. I mean, it's Did you ever stop and think, I freaking like top myself this stuff?”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I think right around this time, like this is still in 2008, you guys hit a, you know, a decent milestone, a million dollars in revenue, right? And meanwhile, Bill, I think you move out to Denver for a while to expand the products into some more stores out there.”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just do it yourself basically not working with the co manufacturer, co packer. Just as an aside, Bill, I mean, you are ostensibly the CEO and you're the oldest sibling and you're kind of the leader of the tribe here. How did that work with your siblings? I mean, I think based on the two of you, I think probably you're all pretty nice people and have good values. But, you know, still, like, you've got to tell them what to do and they've got to listen to you. And you're the boss. And so how is that going?”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So by 2007, you're in 10 Whole Foods that year. Just out of curiosity, did anybody at Whole Foods say, you know, you really might have more of a shot at scaling this if you can make it shelf stable?”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, alright, so you guys were doing that, and you're in 10 Whole Foods, but were you getting anybody coming to you to just kind of help you and give you some mentorship? I mean, you are all really young, and I would be super excited to see what you guys are doing as a family. But was there anybody who was like, hey, I've got some experience here. Let me give you some advice or not quite yet”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the refrigeration seems to me to be like there were some disadvantages because people aren't looking, if they're looking for an energy bar, they're going to the energy bar shelves. But the other side of that coin is if you see something like that next to orange juice or yogurt or salsa, you're like, wait, that's interesting. That's different, which stands out too.”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Why did it have to be refrigerated? I mean, it's peanut butter and honey and protein powders. I mean, peanut butter doesn't have to be refrigerated.”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Then at the time, there was probably like a quarter of a nile, maybe less, but nothing in the refrigerated section. You're going, but because you're demoing in the store, you could direct people to where to get them.”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And just to clarify, I mean, again, if you go to Whole Foods today, it was different in 2006, but if you go to Whole Foods Today, there's half an aisle that's just energy bars.”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And did people buy the carob chip? Because carob to me is more controversial than, I don't know what, than any controversial issue. To me, carob is the third rail of American politics.”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But still, mainly what you're selling is a peanut butter bar. I think you have maybe two or three other flavors. Maybe you added a carob chip bar, right? What other flavors did you have in the beginning?”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Bill, you were driving back and forth, Sacramento, Berkeley every day or every other day to get fresh bars in, to stock the store?”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Meanwhile, Lee, you are in San Diego, and is it you and another one of your siblings that were trying to also kind of market and get this product in front of into stores in San Diego?”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So you've really got to do something to generate more sales here, right? And I guess one idea that you had was to start going to music festivals, rock festivals in Northern California to hand out samples there, right?”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How are you making all these bars and then going out and trying to pitch it to co-ops? Tell me about your day-to-day up there in Sacramento”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Where were you trying to sell it? I mean, you're in Sacramento, and traditionally with these kinds of stories we've done on the show, a food product, there's concentric circles. Like you're in Sacramento, you start with a couple of stores in Sacramento, then maybe you get into a local chain in Sacramento, and then you maybe begin to Whole Foods in Sacramento. That was not how you guys were doing this.”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, that's pretty good. Did they look janky? I mean, using like a knife to cut through peanut butter bars, like you're not going to get a perfect cut. It's not going to look like machine cut. Do they kind of look sort of like, you know, it was made by”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And let me just get a sense of how you were doing this. Because, first of all, from what I understand, it's you and your brother originally in Sacramento. And not only were you trying to sell them, you guys were physically making the bars? Tell me how you were doing that. You had like”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, there are so many reasons why I can see people saying this is not a good idea. Okay, like a refrigerated bar made out of peanut butter and honey and like, I mean, you're basing the potential success on this just from feedback from friends, which I know, having done almost 700 of these episodes, every entrepreneur when they start and they hand out their cookies or their bars or their apparel to friends. Their friends are like, these are awesome. I love these. They're not always the best control group here, right? Like the best panel. Oftentimes they're not.”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was you and your brother Whichever's name? Amaya You moved to secondary, so you basically take 60,000 of the 100,000 and buy a machine that automatically wraps candy bars thinking once we get this machine, that's going to transform this product because you had these things that you were selling in Ziplocs just for a moment. Was there a cheaper way to do this? I mean, did you have to buy a candy bar wrapping machine to do this?”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You decided, and at this point you all moved to Sacramento, right? The whole family, most of the family moves to Sacramento.”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is a crazy idea. This is like Jack in the Beanstalk. This is like, here are some beans for your goats. I mean, who's going to take that $100,000 and say, let's take it all and invest it in a peanut butter bar. I mean, it's totally nuts.”
2025-06-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Perfect Snacks: Bill and Leigh Keith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT