YouSaid · the spoken record

Mary Waldner

lines on the record: 74
first: 2023-07-10
most recent: 2023-07-10
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

“That's fun. I saw a guy in the grocery store the other day and he was standing in line behind me carrying like four boxes of my crackers. I said, oh, you're buying a lot of those. He said, I didn't say anything, but it was just fun, you know?”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We dove in 100% and we made that commitment and the universe supported us. And it's always a team effort between what we do in this physical world and making sure that the message that we're sending to the other realm is that we really want this, we're really committed to it, and we're going to do whatever it takes to make it happen. Because when you do that, The rest of the world, the invisible realm, lines up behind you to make it happen.”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The way I look at it is that When you get a message from The spirit world, or whatever you want to call it, you hear a voice, you hear, you have an idea that really touches to your core, whatever language you want to use. And you don't honor that, that that's a mistake because when you honor it, The universe works with you and supports you. And yes, we worked really hard, but there Was a lot of magic involved. There were so many moments when it could have gone the wrong way and it didn't. And so I don't think luck is the word that I would use. I would say that”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't exactly have the answer. I think part of it is this kind of venue where I get to talk about it and where I get to where I, you know, I've spoken a lot over the years, where I get to warn people about starting businesses and what to look out for. I'm not sure about what my development, you know, like I said, I'm put everything in the context of my own growth and my own development. And obviously I'm a different person having gone through this.”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I would say yes. I think, I mean, I'm obviously a different person. There was a point in there where I Said to myself, and I said to God, you know, why am I having to learn this in my fifties? Why am I having to deal with people who lie and look you straight in the face and lie and want to steal? And, you know, my other joke is that I never dealt with crazier people as a therapist. I stop, you know, until I stopped being a therapist and went and started this business, you know. And I wondered why I lived all these years without having to deal with people like this. Why am I doing this now?”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, what was joyful for me was how many people loved my product. And how many times I would go out into the more of the public domain and be told that not only do they love my product, but they love me because of how the product save their lives. And so that made it worth it to me because I understand that it saved my life too. And I was. I was surprised by the response, but I shouldn't have been because it was what I was going through. So that Brought me and still brings me incredible satisfaction to know that I helped a lot of people and still do.”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, in the beginning, when I was still full time, I became a consultant the last two years, but there were two more years in there that I was full-time and I was there. I was still in that area. But I wanted to make new products. I had a lot of ideas. And that was really why I stayed.”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you know, I guess it was funny because Dale used to say when I would ask him to stop, you know, to take some time off. And he always felt like he was in way over his head, which we both were, but he was on the front line way more than me. And I understand that. But I also know that you can only do so much in taking some time to yourself would would only make things better. And he would say things like, you know, if this business fails, our marriage won't work. You know, that was his big fear. And that was not my fear. But the irony, which was that when it succeeded, it was when it failed, our marriage failed. He couldn't get off of that marriage around. I think he enjoyed it on some level or he was hooked on it or whatever.”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let's see. He moved out around the same time that two year period was up. So it was probably about a year after the acquisition that it I mean, things had obviously the issues were there all along, but it was really clear to me after a year that he couldn't stop. I was ready to celebrate. I wanted to relax. I wanted to stop traveling as much. We didn't have to do what we did up until that point. And he didn't want to. He wanted to keep going, and we were on very different paths by that time.”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and they knew how to manufacture for the first time we were going to, well, they already, you know, the first two years they were there, they brought people from Japan, their manufacturing experts right away to clean up our, I mean, there was so much room for improvement, but they also made the commitment to We needed an automated line. And they were willing to do that.”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They could get out that they were willing to get out. We, like I said, we asked if we could buy them out earlier and they refused. So it was us holding on as long as we could and then pressuring us to sell. And a couple of years before that, we had been approached by this Japanese company that wanted to buy us way before we were ready. But they, being the Japanese, they're very patient. Time is not the same for them as it is for U.S. companies. And they hung around.”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I decided that I was going to, I had to take care of myself. And I decided not to go in first thing every morning. I would not go into the office until, you know, 10, 11, even 12 sometimes, so that I would have time in the morning to do yoga, to walk, to breathe, you know, to feed myself, all the things that I had stopped doing. So I'm good at that because I had learned what I needed and I'm good at that. Dale, not so much. He's just really good at pushing, and that's what he kept doing.”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let's see. So when we moved up to Paradise, which is near Chico, the first two years, so between 2006 and 2008, so we took the money in 2007. And so now we're running the factory full-time. We're up, you know, Dale's up at four in the morning and he's on the factory floor. I'm there pretty much right behind him. But my body starts to give out. By 2008, I decided that we now have a toddler business on our hands, not an infant business. And with toddlers, you can start hiring babysitters, you know?”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, we had great conversations about the vision of the company and they really had their recipe and we were not allowing them to do that. And then it became a battle between them and us personally where they just hated us because we kept beating them at this game. Well, the game of trying to get rid of us, they were, you know, we were older. We weren't in our 20s because of our friends, not because of us by that time, but because of our friends, we still had a majority share of the business because they voted with us anytime we asked them to.”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We'll see as quickly as possible, we didn't know, the return on investment was fine. We were a hugely successful, fast-growing company. I still to this day think that if they had really partnered with us and had helped us grow instead of battling us, which is all they did, really, they really never helped us grow, that we all would have made out much better than what ended up happening, but they were so desperate to just get rid of us and do it the way they thought it had to be done.”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. But we didn't know any of that. We didn't understand that. That's not what they told us. There was nothing verbalized ever about what their agenda was or what their plan was other than to help us grow and to partner with us.”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like we had to become a Delaware corporation instead of the LLC that we had been. You know, they started changing the structure.”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because we trusted them, you know, these are really experienced business people. I don't remember the details of their contract, but they were the preferred shareholders and everybody else was common. So that gave them certain privileges.”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, we never stopped communicating with them. They just had this kind of party line that everything we were doing was wrong. So the first thing they did was, so Dale and I had always been co whatever, CEOs, co-presidents, partners in every way. The first thing they did was they said Dale had to be CEO because someone had to be financially responsible, right? So they made Dale CEO and what did they want me to do? You can be whatever you want. You can call yourself whatever you want. So it was very demeaning. They were really demeaning to me. And that was this kind of divide and conquer mentality. So they would question Dale's mental health at one point. They just undermined everything.”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They said, just don't worry about the money, don't worry about the money, just grow. What that meant was the faster we grew, the more money we needed, and they had set it up that we couldn't get more money. Beyond a certain amount without their approval. And so they almost did it. They didn't do it because Dale was smarter than them. They wanted us to be dependent so that the money would cost us more and more.”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Neither Dale nor I in the beginning had a clue that this is what it meant to take money from a VC. They started undermining, especially Dale, questioning everything, accusing him of things. Just it started to get hostile and then Dale started to study what VCs, you know, what their dynamic was, especially back then. and started looking at how they had treated other companies and it became very clear We were so naive”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Had a very different agenda. I think it maybe took about three months where we had a little bit of a honeymoon phase where they did connect us with a better sales force and better manufacturing expertise and things like that. But it was very soon that it became clear that what they wanted was to take over the company.”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We did get a million from them. And more, I have to say, more than that they were going to give us some grow and be in the be at the level that, you know, we were. In over our heads by that time, you know To be our own manufacturing facility, to be this incredible fast growth. There was so much, the learning curve was so steep, and to meet people who had done this before, who had been very successful in a variety of fields, who knew everybody and could, you know, we wanted some partners is really what we wanted.”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I don't know how much we thought we needed to raise, but once we moved up there, what we wanted to raise a million.”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So half of the people were our friends and they were always supportive. And the people who were on the board were the larger investors. And they did help us raise money. They did invest, but they gave us a really hard time about it and kind of made us wait until we were, you know, terrified that we wouldn't be able to continue. It was just very stressful.”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We weren't profitable. We were, you know, because we were growing so fast. And the more you grow, which I didn't understand, I don't think Dale did either, that you need more cash because you have more. More product, you know, in the pipeline, and you're not getting your money back as quickly. And, you know, you just need more and more cash as you get bigger and bigger. And then on top of that, we had to move into our own space. We never could have grown at the rate that we needed to grow in the co-packer. We almost went out of business with them because they just didn't really didn't care and they were very sloppy and we needed to take over. So in 2006, we moved up there. I closed my practice and did that.”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is failing. You should wind up, close down the business The food world was telling us we were an incredible phenomenon and that nothing happens like this in the food world. And our board was telling us, you know, shut it down”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, not the building, but everything in it. Yeah. So we needed more money to do that. That was with our original investors. We raised more money. That was another whole other stress because Mostly because they didn't understand the food business and they were engineers, a lot of them, and they thought we should be profitable by now. And so they were giving us a lot of pressure and telling us we were a failing company”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so that's when I closed my practice, and we moved up in that area because we Opened up our, we moved out of that co-packer and opened and got our own space because we were growing really quickly”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it made me nervous. Dale and I would talk a lot about if this didn't work, how long would it take us to pay this off? And could we do it? And yeah”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, to To do everything we had to do to get to raise money even. So we didn't have, we didn't buy equipment on our own. The graphic designer or going to trade shows or all the things that we were doing. We were probably about 150,000 dollars in debt.”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, we did demos. It was all, you know, we tried everything. It was really, there were events like outdoor events where we would set up a booth. It was a lot, a lot, a lot of sampling.”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We got the list of UNFI as the largest natural food distributor. Back then it was divided by regions. Now it's all one all over the country. But we got their top 1 Stores and we sent a package of our crackers and a letter from me in a nice box because we had a great logo and we had great packaging and we sent them to all the grocery buyers of those top 100 stores. So we were just going directly to the people that we knew would love these crackers and would want them.”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No. You know, in the food business, it's you don't sell to stores, you sell to distributors. And there was one distributor at the time that specialized in gluten-free stuff. But our strategy was different. We wanted to get the crackers into people's mouths because we knew obviously by that time that anytime anybody ate them, they would love them. For example, the gluten-free distributor, we gave them little sample packs and they gave them to their truck drivers. And so the truck drivers would taste them and they would deliver them with whatever they were delivering. And so again, we knew these crackers were going to get into the hands of the buyers, which is what we wanted. We sent out our samples to those.”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah. She helped. It was the two of us, you know. She and I were a great team. And she made us look so much more together than we were”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, there was so much to learn. I was looking for packaging equipment, what kind of boxes did we want? We spent a lot of time in grocery stores buying cookies and crackers and looking at packaging and calling lots of cold calls. So I have all the people that I was making cold calls to, you know, for packaging, for ingredient supply, for design. We found a graphic designer before we got our money, which was just a huge boost to have somebody like that who was amazing.”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, this was again a lot of experimenting. They had experience with this hot gooey dough. And when they followed the proportions of my recipe, the dough would get stuck in the machine because it wouldn't flow through the stainless steel tubing. And that my recipe wouldn't, it wouldn't flow. It was too dry. And they kept saying you have to add more water. And I kept saying no, because that's not my recipe. This went on quite a while. And eventually, what I did was, I said, okay, we'll make some your way with more water and see what happens. So anyway, we made a batch with more water, and then we did a blind taste test. And everybody liked the ones with more water better than my handmade ones. So that's what did it. That's what allowed me to add more water to my recipe.”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, when we went up there we saw that they had one piece of equipment that we needed, which was this huge rice cooker thing. It's hard to describe And it was kind of the combination of the food processor and the rice cooker and everything that would make the dough.”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I didn't think so. And so this is where what ended up happening was, like I said, I had gone through all the co-packers and nobody could do that. And then I started pulling products from my cabinet and my freezer to look at who was making gluten-free food and where were they and could they help us? And that's when I found this company that was making this rice crust pizza. And they were in California. They were in Chico. I told them what I was doing and I asked if they had room and if they were interested and they said, yeah, they thought they could probably do it.”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, no, it was the year before we started the actual manufacturing that Dale quit his job. And I was still working because I had more flexibility. But otherwise, up until then, yeah, we were both working and doing this.”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, exactly. We were on the wave, and it was so hard to see, obviously, we had But we knew something was happening. And Taylor, I remember one point him saying, you know, we're going to miss the window, we're going to miss the window, because everything took so much longer than we thought it would take. But we knew that there were something like 400 celiac support groups all over the country that we knew about. We knew they were like me. very loyal to food that you find that you can eat. They read the labels. They also go to the stores and make sure if there's a product they want, that store will carry it. They're huge advocates for themselves because they have to be. We knew that existed.”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, again, remember now, everyone and their brother has tasted these crackers and everyone loves them One of my close friends who was in my women's group, her cousin, loved them, and she was married to a very high level person at Bechtal Corporation. Was where Dale got a PhD in business, in business plan writing and in finance. And so this guy was not going to put a penny into it until that business plan was perfect and until he could sell it to his friends. So he ended up becoming a lead investor and he brought in a lot of a few other bechtel people and other people that he knew. He brought in half the money.”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Our original raise was $750,000 And we thought it's just the whole thing is so funny when I think about it. But we thought that would be enough, that that's all we would need.”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, so I was working more on this on the manufacturing side of things, and Dale was working on the business plan We were both thinking about who to start approaching for money.”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and I gave him a bowl of dough and he said, let me play with this for a while. And he worked on it and decided that one of the machines that's a cookie depositor could be adapted to at least get the blobs onto the pan And then what ended up happening is we had to invent a machine that would flatten them because that was the challenge. So we got the blobs on the pan, but then we had to create our own piece of equipment that flattened them.”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So, I mean, what ended up happening is I took now in the Bay Area there were a couple of food manufacturer facilities and I took big bowls of dough to a couple places because there's another process that's like a form and fill where they would put the dough into these molds and drop it out onto the tray. But again, nothing's going to drop”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, what kind of equipment do you have? Most cracker places use a pretty standard dough machine that rolls out the crackers and cuts them, and that wasn't going to work.”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, also, what kind of equipment is even going to make these? We didn't know. So that was part of the process too.”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we don't know what we're doing. Neither one of us, and he said, well, then find me, because I bought, there was a book about, you know, with a list of co-packers. And of course, nothing was gluten-free.”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. And so you give somebody the recipe and, you know, you supervise that process, but somebody else has the equipment, somebody else has the expertise, all of that. And I, you know, this was a big point of contention in the beginning because Dale thought that we had to manufacture them ourselves. And I kept saying, no, that's impossible. We don't”
2023-07-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mary's Gone Crackers: Mary Waldner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT