YouSaid · the spoken record

Jeffrey Hollender

lines on the record: 80
first: 2026-05-28
most recent: 2026-05-28
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

“Coates, JC Howard, Catherine Cypher, Carrie Thompson, and Neva Grant. I'm Guy Ross, and you've been listening to the advice line on how I built this lab.”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. And by the way, please make sure to check out my newsletter. You can sign up for it for free at guyroz.com or on substack. And of course, if you're working on a business and you'd like to be on this show, send us a one-minute message that tells us a little bit about your business and the questions or issues you are currently facing. Because we would love to try and help you solve them. You can send us a voice memo at hibt at id.wondery.com or call us at 1-800-433-1298. You can leave a message there and make sure to tell us how to reach you. And by the way, we'll put all of this in the podcast description as well. This episode was produced by Sam Paulson with music composed by Ramtin Arablui. It was edited by John Isabella and our audio engineer was Jimmy Keeley. Our production team at How I Built This also includes Alex Chung, Carla Estevez, Casey Herman, Christmas Eni, L.A.”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We were working with a tissue paper manufacturer out in Wisconsin that made all the paper products. But we were crazy, by the way, because we were selling unbleached 100% recycled fiber bathroom tissue, which was the scratchy stuff that you found in a gas station.”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And by the way, if you haven't heard Jeffrey and his co founder Alan Newman's original How I Built This episode about Seventh Generation, you've got to check it out. It's really, really good. It's got a lot of wisdom. It's a great episode. Check it out. And here's one of my favorite moments from that interview.”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of the things that I've reflected on is growth, and we are obsessed with growth. The bigger, the faster, the better. And I think that that is a dangerous thing. Because it's a dangerous thing to be moving so quickly, and it's stressful and it challenges your employees. And I think that we need to, you know, I was excited when we were going 50% every year, but it was killing people at the same time. So I would say pick something this more in moderation that is comfortable, that doesn't create the challenges and the stress and the sleepless nights that growing that quickly does.”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Caroline Buck, the brand is called Petaluma. It is a plant-based dog food company. Good luck. Thank you for calling. Jeffrey, before I let you go, I ask this question of every guest who's come back onto the advice line, which is if you could go back to your time at seventh generation when you really were catalog business and just starting this out, and what do you wish you would have known back then that you now know with decades of experience and perspective that might have been helpful for you back then?”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, nice, that's great, and that's a good start, and maybe you can distribute that to some of these boutiques or eat cool stores that you like where people take their dogs and people could just hand them a treat. So you may want to try something like that, but I do think giving people the opportunity to start with a treat could be really cool.”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We have a chew, like a jerky. But not a treat. That's something we've been toying with for a while. So we have like a, it's just a single ingredient, sliced, dehydrated. Sweet potato. That's like an alternative for a chicken jerkey.”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And one other thing is I think I'm going to throw something at you and it's going to be a pain, but I think you've got to introduce dog treats.”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would agree with guy. You can't give up on social media. It's critical to grow your business and experiment with small amounts of money until you strike on something that works well. You got to experiment.”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And similar to humans, if you're not 100% plant based, you still get benefits from eating plants, right? Like it's not a pure, it doesn't need to be all or nothing at incorporating more fibrous. Foods in your dog's diet is positive. That's actually a very controversial sentence in the pet food world. I feel confident in saying that. Adding more plants to your dog's diet is a good thing.”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They're finicky, right? Sometimes, like, what is this? And so maybe you should also. Encourage people to hey, start just mix it in with your food. Try that”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The other thing I don't know if you're doing this in your site, but every time you switch a dog's or any pet's food, except for one of my pets, he'll just eat anything. She will eat absolutely.”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I agree. And I think dog food is still one of those things that makes a lot of sense for subscription. It's awkward to buy. It's heavy. It's bulky. You can't run out. So I agree with you. And also, I don't have any experience in retail. So that's been a big reason why we haven't done it.”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that's a great point. I think I've developed a stiffer spine in the last few years too with just polarization comes with some downsides, right? Like I think it just, you have to kind of treat it as a sunk cost.”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Lean into, but start with this, acknowledge this skepticism, acknowledge because we have been sort of trained to think that dogs need to eat meat protein. And also dog food's gross. The way they use that scrap meat and just the crappiest cuts of meat is really nasty. And it's why there are brands. Premium brands of like refrigerated dog food that have done so well because they are focused on really expensive cuts, you have an alternative here, and it's a great alternative. And that's why I would try to lean into social media, give it another chance, but try it with this, hey, I get the skepticism kind of message.”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm going to disagree with you. I don't think that they want to only appeal, to predominantly appeal to vegetarians. This is a very small market. We've looked at this. The number of people of vegetarians in the U.S. is tiny. It's not enough. You want to appeal to people who do eat meat, but who might say, wait, this is interesting. Like, I'm looking at your site here, and I have an old dog, right? And my old dog has some kidney challenges. And I see that maybe some of your food could benefit her, right? It's like that kind of stuff, you know, that I would really”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Today, I mean, it's a lot of word of mouth organic traffic to our site. We do run ads mostly on Google, and we do run some very small social campaigns. I've lost a bit of a stomach for social advertising. I haven't given up on it. We still do it in a smaller way. You're wading into the deep end sometimes, and it can be a lot.”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, a crazy idea, but I think your best customers are going to be vegetarians who have dogs. And if you can find people who are vegetarians and have dogs, you're going to make a quick connection with the belief they already have about this diet being healthier and the logic of it's good for me is probably good for my dog”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Meat based foods, but I think you should really use that skepticism as the fuel to tell your story and really actually surface that. So if you were to make a video or you were to even have a message on your website, you would start with like, wait a minute, dogs can eat plant-based? Is this actually good for them? Because this sounds wrong. And then you can say, well, that's a fair question. So let me kind of walk you through it. And really say, well, actually, their bodies really respond well to simple whole foods like, you know, peanuts, peanut butter, and oats or whatever you're putting in the food sweet potatoes.”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so it's interesting because I'm looking at your website and it says guilt-free shelf stable. And now I click on the website, Jeffrey, for seventh generation. And what does it say the first thing it says is leave dishes extra clean. It doesn't say guilt-free cleaning. It doesn't say a better safe. It says extra clean dishes. It's talking about the function. And I think to me, I think that if you start with, hey, it's guilt-free, it can be polarizing because some people might say, I don't feel guilty about serving my dog.”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think you have to question that because. I'm not sure if people want to buy something that's as good as what they're getting now or as good as something else that they can get. So I'm not sure I would go with that positioning. I think you've got to feel proud about what you're selling. And if it's not better, make it better because I think to survive, you've got to have a better alternative than other people have. You've got to have a story that talks about why you are better. And to the extent possible, you have to have evidence that backs that up.”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There are excellent studies that have come out in the last two years, really, showing that they go to the vet less often. There's lots of really specific things about plants that are similar to the benefits that humans get when they eat more fiber, for example, or they have more anti-inflammatory rich foods in their diet. But I would say like the most compelling evidence is just that it's As good and probably better than a lot of traditional dog foods. And I think that's, I've tried to, I've kind of strayed away from making a claim that it's so much better because I don't want to lose people in feeling like I'm proselytizing or being preachy.”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, I think some of it is that most people have never heard of it before. So I think there is like a bit of a knee-jerk reaction that people have of like, that's wrong or that's not possible type of thing. And then food is just, as both of you know, very emotional, polarizing. People have super strong opinions. And especially dogs have kind of risen to the status of children for a lot of people. So what you're feeding them is a big thing.”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I got some good thoughts here. I'm Jeffrey Holland. I want to bring you in here before we answer Caroline's question, any questions for her or thoughts?”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It ourselves in small batches when you realize how much dog food you have to make, that gets hairy quickly. And it took us a long time to make something that we felt really excited and confident about.”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No. I spent most of my career in tech. I've been in the Bay Area for my entire adult life. I worked at lots of startups. I saw lots of entrepreneurs up close. It took me a long time to want to create something myself, but it came out of a need and a desire for a product. I was someone who wasn't buying meat for myself. I was still buying like a 20-pound bag of mostly processed animal products every couple of weeks for my dogs and it felt really incongruous. And that's been prescribing vegetarian dog food for decades to manage allergies. The most common allergies to dogs kind of strangely compared to humans is chicken and beef. So it's not new, but I couldn't find something that felt like it was a similar quality level to what I'd been feeding before. So it started out in my husband and I make”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, I had been kind of flirting with being vegetarian most of my life, but didn't really go full tilt until maybe 2016, 2017 on a New Year's resolution. I just went cold turkey and never looked back. I have a couple of dogs and living at the time in San Francisco, I had a very crystal conversion moment of walking my dog in Golden Gate Park and him playing with a pig on a leash, someone's pet pig. And I was just like, all right, I'm officially the lions have officially blurred. I now need to knock this off. So it was a personal dietary change before it became one for my dog.”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“20, 30,000 years ago, maybe even longer ago, and they ate our scraps for most of human history and most parts of the world, we didn't throw out a lot of meat. So they had to evolve to have digestive enzymes to break down carbohydrates and starches. And they are true omnivores like humans.”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Course, yeah, it's the same question that most vegans and vegetarians get when they go home for Thanksgiving for the first time, too, right? Like, aren't you wasting away now? Most people, I think, have been fed mostly like a marketing story about what dogs should be eating. They co-evolved with us”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Awesome, welcome to the show. Okay, so it's a direct to consumer plant based dog food company. Tell me about, I'm sure the first question you get a million times is well, don't dogs eat meat? Isn't that, aren't they carnivores?”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Alright, we're gonna take another quick break, but we'll be right back with one more caller. Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to the advice line right here on how I built this lab. Welcome back to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz, and today I'm taking your calls with Jeffrey Hollander, co-founder of seventh generation, and let's bring in our next caller.”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And finally, you've got a great story Michigan, cherries, specific cherries that really are about this part of Michigan. People love that, you know, and I think you could also lean into that as well.”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, as we talked about before Guy finding people, particularly people that people will recognize, talking about loving the product is a way to attract attention to your brand. So if you can find people, and I would send them samples, I would find some people that maybe are really into cooking or into”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I think a lot of it is just nailing down your message, right? Millions of people are interested in metabolic health. And so I would really tap into some of that. One tablespoon of water to regulate blood sugar every day. Upgrade your salad and then have it in sparkling water in the afternoons. Just hammer those ideas and start at the website and then build those out at the farmers' markets, on social media. videos of people tasting this and saying, wait a minute, this is great. So I would really start with just nailing down the message and then amplifying that out wherever you go.”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We are excited about that. We've got people in California, New Jersey buying a third time, fourth time, fifth time people buying two bottles, four bottles. They're sharing it with their friends. So we're seeing that. We just need to grow faster if we were going to achieve our goal.”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think we need to improve that for sure. What they do is we bring them on to our email list if they opt in for that. And then basically about every two weeks or three weeks, we're sending out email updates on the business, the farm, recipes. We have about 50 recipes online. And building upon that, I really question whether that's frequent enough, whether every two weeks is sufficient. What are your thoughts?”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Agreed. We have sampling set up here locally, farmers markets, local stores, retailers. We're down in Detroit area. So we've got some distribution down there, about 10, 15 stores. But absolutely. We need to get more people to trial it. And then follow through.”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Nothing replaces those sampling programs because many people have never experienced this before and you've got to convert them. And as Guy said, there's no better way to convert them than to let them taste the product.”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that for you, it's really what you're after is that first taste. Like you need You've got to get people to try it, right? You want to generate that first try. And I imagine you're going to farmers markets, probably locally, right? But let's face it, Northport is, I'm looking at the map here. I mean, Traverse City is the closest kind of... Big, bigger place, it's small, right? You want to get to Grand Rapids. You want to get to Chicago, Milwaukee, and you want to get into stores where you can sample this, where you can get... People to just taste this. You've got to be there to do that.”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that is going to be confusing to your potential customers. And we got to get the algorithm to work so that it doesn't send people to the wrong place when they're searching for you because that's critical.”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. You know, I'm looking at your website here. It's nice, but there are a lot of things that you can do small tweaks, I think, that will help you start to shape your message. Jeffrey is talking about social media, which is absolutely critical, but you got to shape the message that you're going to deliver on social media. And I think that one of the easiest things, the low-hanging fruit, so to speak, here, Is helping people understand how to use this. Morning ritual, one tablespoon of water. Upgrade your salad for lunch. In the afternoon, pour some of this in a glass with sparkling water and you've got a great pick-me-up. Just something like that, you know, where it's like one, two, three every day. And then you start to shape and help people understand how they should be using this.”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, you shared with me some of the educational literature you have, which I think is terrific because I think the primary challenge we have is letting people know all of the benefits that this product has. That's a tough thing to do at retail. It's very hard to put all that information onto a bottle and consumers don't spend a lot of time reading labels in the store. So I would continue to work away at your social media. I think that there's many, many people that would be interested in this product. You have lots of information to share with them, and I would drive people to your website to buy by sharing the information on places like TikTok and Instagram.”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're trying to figure out a messaging here. Okay, Jeffrey, I want to bring you in here. You are a healthy guy, and I should say I drink a tablespoon of diluted apple cider vinegar every day. I believe in it. I put in water. I think it's great for insulin, increasing insulin resistance and blood sugar management, and I love it. So I've been doing that for years. Anyway, Jeffrey, messaging around cherry cider vinegar.”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, our purpose to achieve and support local farms by producing this vinegar, what we're trying to do is really understand our messaging and actions that would accelerate trial and increase purchase intent. That's what we're trying to do.”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It is a premium product. It has, if you think of it as apple cider vinegar, so we have the mother, we have the same acidity of vinegar, vinegar is good for you, but then we have all these polyphenols and the superfruited cherries. And of course, as we get our scale up, then we can bring that price down.”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Good question. We see cherry vinegar as being like a new category of vinegar. So you have like your apple cider vinegar, you have your grapes vinegars, so we can make a balsamic version, we can age it, we can. Pipeline of these new products over time that we'll bring out.”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So you're buying up the cherries and then turning into vinegar. And is this going to be your only product or do you have a sort of down the line, do you imagine creating a broader product line?”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Cherry vinegar, I think pretty straightforward. You basically take cherries and let them sit in like grapes and turn into basically a wine, and then you let that keep fermenting and turns into vinegar, right?”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wow, welcome to the show. Thanks for calling and Phil. So cherries, I guess I should have known this. Are they like a big thing in that part of Michigan?”
2026-05-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT