YouSaid · the spoken record

Shazi Visram

lines on the record: 103
first: 2020-01-20
most recent: 2020-01-20
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

“He couldn't believe it. He actually told me he had to sit down. His head was spinning and he had to lie down. And so, yeah. But he was proud of me. Because I think I became the daughter that he had hoped for as a human. You know, you want your kids to grow up and be someone that you love and you're proud of and you want to be around them and you, you know. You respect them. And I think that's what we had.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He was. You know, nothing makes me prouder than thinking about every month we would talk almost every other day, but every month I would call them and tell them what our sales were. And I used to call them and say, like, Dati, we did $4,000 in sales You know, and then I remember the last one was May of 12. I think we had a $10 million month. And my dad would always remind me, he would say Shazi, you are a lion. And they are sheep, but you are a lion, and he was so proud of me and the irony at the end when we sold the company, and he grew up again dirt floors motel room he was comfortable there. He died a millionaire because of their investment in happy baby. Happiness I've ever gotten from the conversation with him was telling him we sold the company and getting him to guess for how much.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't see how you can answer that without saying both. You know, I think, number one, I think I am the luckiest person I've ever met. But, you know, I think you make your own luck by showing up and fighting for what you believe in and being there so when those opportunities do show up, it feels lucky. You know, it feels lucky that we were in Amex. But like I say, you can't win the lottery unless you buy a ticket. So I think it's both.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So much else in their history, you know. And it's funny how it works out, but it's been a really pleasant two-way street. And we've stayed very true to who we are. For instance, I've really believed strongly in the movement around B Corps. And happy has been a B Corp for many, many years. And Danone recently became the largest publicly traded B Corp in the world. And I feel like Happy has been an inspiration in that process. And that's a way to make systemic change. I'm not saying everything is sunshine and rainbows when you sell your company as a founder. It's hard. It's bittersweet. It's my baby, but it's not mine anymore.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That was part of what I had hoped. And if anything, I wasn't so naive to think they were going to do very much because, you know, when a big corporation buys a smaller brand, part of it is they want to retain your DNA in what makes you uniquely, you know, like the mission of our brand and the beauty of our business is very attractive to a large organization because we help inspire them to make the changes that they inherently want to make but have inherited.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure, especially when you feel like you need to find something for your family and your children. I will, you know, I will kill for it. I will do everything in my power, and I'm a fighter, and I don't quit. And in that case, I felt like that was the right choice to give me some financial security, to partner with someone so that I could continue to build and have ownership, but not the majority of the burden And, you know, not for nothing. Danone's been selling baby food for 100 years. They were the second largest infant nutrition company in the world, and there were a lot of synergies that I could have imagined working with them to build this brand for the future and which we have actually accomplished.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, it's right, you know, not just financially, but focus and attention wise. You know, it's like there's so many special moments. Not that I was just missing as a mom, but that I needed to be a part of in order to help his healing. And the thing was what my parents would have done for me is drop everything and focus on how to figure out the solution for me to have the best chance in life.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yet every milestone in his first two years of life. All of a sudden, he was losing his milestones and losing his ability to communicate and point and talk and label things and make eye contact. And it was terrifying. And as a mom leading a business that was what the fastest growing food business for almost three years in a row, I just felt like I needed to take a step back and say, what, I need to focus on number one, the health of my child and my family.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In April of 2012, my son, who's so beautifully featured in the American Express commercials, was diagnosed with autism. And it was a state of, they call it regressive autism.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Might have gotten crushed in everything we work so hard to build. Around that initial mission of actually changing the way children are fed, all of that could have been jeopardized. And then personally, I was just in so much turmoil at home. And I just felt like I needed another strategic partner.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you knew if they had the backing of those big companies, they could potentially crush you with all those ad marketing dollars and R&D and the distribution they had. If they wanted to, if you stayed independent, you might have gotten crushed.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was really really nervous. I was nervous about the future of the business because I saw the potential of it being the biggest baby food brand in the world. And I really felt like we are in uncharted territory, B, it's not like you don't know what your competitors doing. I knew both of our bigger competitors had hired bankers and were selling their companies.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So here's the crazy thing you hit 63 million dollar in dollars in revenue in 2012, a company that Did $115,000 just a few years earlier selling frozen ice cubes of baby food that you were co-packing. You were making it a co-packing facility. You're doing $63 million. Presumably exceeding your own business plans and projections. In twenty thirteen, You sell ninety two percent of the company to Denone, which makes yogurts and is a huge French conglomerate, owns a lot of food companies. Why? What was a thinking behind it? What was the advantage? I mean, obviously you're going to get paid a lot of money, but you were already doing so well. Why did you sell it at that point?”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When we had 100 and some skews. So we had, you know, at this point, we were building a real platform for nutrition for the first three years of life.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A guy they played it before, you know, like on the Golden Globes when they show you save it for the end, what's the best movie? Our commercial played before that. They played it on the Super Bowl pre And all I had to do was take that email from Amex and email it around. And I raise $8 million in three weeks.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For four days, and this is, it's all kind of culminating, you know, so I just had my baby and he's in the video and it's very sweet. He's the happiest baby, honestly. So it was just beautiful to see that journey kind of documented. And, you know, we've been like working hard and we're sort of seeing some success. It's not big, but like it's coming and the pouches are coming. And we know that something is about to happen. And then Amex emails. And they say, we need you to come in for voiceover work for the commercial. And I'm like, what do you mean, commercial? I thought it was an online documentary. Oh no, it's a commercial. It's the centerpiece of a campaign. We're putting $50 million of media behind your commercial.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We didn't win. We were actually the second. We were the runner up to the most inspiring business in the country. And then what happened was about a year later, American Express was doing another campaign. And I had no idea when they called. It was an inbound email. I didn't even know it was related. They finally said, well, we heard about you threw shining a light, but we're just doing an online documentary. Can we follow you around for four days? Of course. So they filmed this.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it wasn't totally random. It wasn't totally random. So the real story is in 2009, there was a competition called Shine a Light. And Shina Light was a competition between American Express and NBC to shine a light on inspiring new businesses that were actually making it in America. And you had to submit this very long form and talk about why your business could be one of these.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I never, so I never took a penny from any institutional shareholders. That time in our life, that was really hard for me because I up until that moment we didn't have this breakthrough hit. And I was ready to do whatever it took to make sure we had the financing we needed to grow the business. And I started talking to private equity funds. And I had a few options. And I was scared. But it's one thing to cobble together $550,000 from 36 people. It's another thing to raise $8 million in one shot. And that's where I was looking at. And actually what happened is, you know, my son was just born. I got an inbound email that said, we're doing an online, it was going to be an online documentary actually for American Express. We want to tell the story of Happy Baby. We've heard about your company.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Got into Target with frozen baby food. Jessica and I would walk around a store. There was twelve Target stores that we were in for the test. We would walk around the store with a free trial coupon and a box of frozen baby food. And regardless of how terrible our turns were, they kept us in. And I'm very proud to tell you that Happy is the biggest brand and target in baby. Wow. And it started in 12 stores, literally walking around and giving it away for free.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, so we were the first brand of baby food and pouches and whole foods and Target. And those two accounts were really meaningful for our whole business moving forward.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was like a dog-eat dog world of competition. And back then, when you're fighting for shelf space, if you think about it, like going to a retailer and showing them this whole full lineup of maybe 20 SKUs to have that platform, I mean, this was like, it was like the stuff of dreams. But you had to be the first one to get there.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And if you don't have cash to compete with someone else asking for that line time in these facilities that have this very precious and very highly sought after commodity of a technology, then that's when it gets like really challenging. And so we lived through that too, because if you're scrappy and bootstrap the way we were, that was like actually the big thing. It was like, it was so crazy because he's sitting here thinking, I finally found the solution that will make this business the business in my dreams. And then you're like, oh my God, I have this huge challenge as a result of that solution that makes me feel like this is nearly impossible right now. And there's, I mean, the world of baby food sounds sweet, but it's actually like a dog-eat dog. It was my bet.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There were two options in the United States and one in Canada. And when you notice something that's disruptive and groundbreaking in the market, your competitors notice it too.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It tasted better and it felt better. You could feel the fiber in the food. Like the technology allowed for such a different process.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it was from Europe. It was like the very, you know, at first there were these pouches that had this tear strip and we looked into that and we launched initially with both kinds of pouches, a tear strip for more chunky meals and a pouch that had a spout where the beauty of it is this product, this package enabled to change consumer behavior in a way that gave them a more premium product with fruits and vegetables and a lot of vegetables actually, but made it easier rather than harder. I mean, it was like, you know, it was like the epitome of the light bulb moment where we've been in this game for a few years now and you see something, you're like, that's what I've been looking for all along. And that is it. That is the alternative to the jar.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I saw a pouch of a sauce at a trade show in Melbourne, Australia, and then I started seeing the cooking. And then I started seeing kids' applesauce in this pouch.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we had a multi grain with amaranth and quinoa. We had rice, brown rice, and we had an oatmeal. And we could also show people how you could mix them with the cubes of frozen to make a yummy breakfast or a meal. And it started beginning a platform. Absolutely saved our hides.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, we looked everywhere, and the first space to innovate where I really saw something was with cereal. So we launched the first ever baby food in the world that had probiotics. Believe very strongly in gut health and establishing strong gut health from the very beginning of life. And why can't we introduce them into a first food that's a weaning food typically off of breast milk or formula? So we still have, so the baby still has probiotics. And that was just a moment. And that became happy bellies. And that Was like a huge success. I mean, to quantify huge. It was, it took us from, you know, we did 115, 116,000 the first year, 520,000 the second year, still on Frozen Baby Food. The next year we launched the cereal and were able to get so much more distribution because we weren't struggling for space in the freezer.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Always, and it was this is part of the solution. We're playing a long game here. We're changing consumer behavior that doesn't happen overnight. You know, believe in me, bias sometime, we're going to support this. We're going to promote it. And we're on a mission. Don't give up on my mission. But it was hard. I mean, the sales were terrible. And every time we made a batch, we would lose money on it. You know, and we had to keep selling it in to keep staying alive because you can't just launch and then go away and then come back two years later.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, no. What I thought was, let's look at the set and let's enlighten it And the first innovation actually was, let's see what's there and how can we bring something meaningful to the table. And it was funny. I was having, we had a trade show. We were sampling the frozen baby food because to the external world, you don't tell them you're giving up on something. You're still selling it in and trying to build a brand. But in your heart, you just know it's just like, you know, this is not going to be the thing. But you got to keep it going.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And what I realized hey, Shazi, you're being a dummy. Frozen, this is a beautiful product, but it's the alternative to homemade baby food. This is not how you're going to change the way children are fed in our country. You got to do that in the baby aisle where moms are shopping and dads are shopping.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so in 2006, when we launched, we had five skews, ten flavors of frozen organic baby meals. And I think probably guy within, and here I'm talking about something that took me almost two years and change to get on shelf, get produced professionally, have the right quality control scientists, microbiologists, everybody working together to make this product. Probably on the third time that I did a demo, did I realize that this wasn't going to work?”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean one of the hardest things to do is to change human behavior. And what I realized is you have to work with the existing human behavior and make small steps to change. I realized that like my whole dream of creating this sort of like enlightened alternative to that jar, that alternative was not frozen baby food. And so it also meant like, while we're running out of money, we need to pivot and we need to think of something else. Because the dream was pure and real and the vision was real, but I didn't have the product right, despite how much I loved it.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And also, I guess our habit is to go to that one aisle where all the jars are. Like we don't, it's hard to change human habits, right? And people were not used to going to the freezer aisle for baby food.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because it wasn't that some people weren't buying it. Just a few people who were buying it. But they were buying it as an alternative to homemade. They were not. What I needed was the alternative to the jar. And that's how you move markets. And it wasn't convenient.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, imagine, I don't want to try that. Or, ooh, baby food. A lot of people were like, ooh, I don't want to sample baby food. And I'm like, well, why don't you want to sample it? It's amazing. It's so look at this. It's incredible. It's delicious. I literally, I live for this. But that's not how you convince a consumer to buy something, you know. And I'm thinking like I have this big dream to change the way children are fed in this country. And it is not going to happen if I keep standing where I am standing right now. And we got to change. We need to get into that aisle.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so you have like a table and you put down as much as you can to make it look nice and warm and fuzzy. And I'm standing there with a happy baby t-shirt on and my gloves, you know. And you're trying to get people to sample what looks like warm, fresh, really, really high, like beautiful colors of these yummy foods that I'm thinking, I'm so proud of this. This has taken years to make this, you know? You're standing there by the freezer waiting for someone to come. And then it's like barely anybody comes. And then you're waiting for.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we launched in New York City in five gourmet garage stores. Gourmet garage was my first of, I mean, must be at least like a thousand demos.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so there was an ice cube tray, and it had like a thin sort of plastic film over it that was like kind of heat sealed on. And then it came in a little cardboard outer shipper. And it said, happy baby. And there was pictures of all of the fruits and vegetables, which I would take. So I had this little white box, and I would take all the fruits and vegetables and photograph them. And then we had a contest for all of the different babies to be on the front of the happy baby box. And it was really fun to name the winners because they all, of course, became huge fans of Happy Baby. So at least we had like seven consumers in the beginning because we had one of them was my nephew. But yeah, and it just looked like this fun, beautiful, different thing in the freezer with a bunch of babies on the front of the box smiling at you as you walk past the freezer.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. Yeah, they're the massive, you know, it's like it looks like a giant had a cuisine art. Had one of those, and they had this blast freezer. I remember being in that blast freezer and being like so cold.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, so it'd be like local organic produce that we would, you know, peel and chop up and steam and, you know, just literally just like if you were making it homemade, that's the way we were doing it. And this is a commercial case.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, we have this little, we made a mold, we made a tray that looked like an ice cube kind of tray, and we would fill, you know, it was kind of like Lavern and Shirley. Like I would do the peas and she would do the carrots.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, actually, there was a man I'd met who had a little manufacturing facility outside of Boston. And he was making kids' foods. I remember calling him and I said, Steve, can you just, do you think it would be okay? We could just do a pilot run because I really just, I want to launch from a professional facility. And he said yes. And Jessica goes there and we were jumping up and down, you know. We would drive up, and because my parents had a days in, we had these days in employee discount coupons. They were like literal physical yellow coupons, and you could get a days-in room for $25 a night. So, like, Jessica and I would share a room at the days in Danverse, which was near the facility. And we would literally go and like make the baby food in their plant. And we initially used... Like a pastry baster pastry bag type of thing to fill.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Alright, so you've raised this seed money, you've got a partner, and Jessica, and how did you find the place to make the baby food? Was it in New York? I mean, I guess it would have to be, right? Because you were living in New York.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think I have a pretty good gut for good people. You know, I talked to her and met her a number of times before I offered her a role. But she was just authentic and smart and really organized. She was a perfect person to be a COO to like a, you know, crazy kind of loudmouth visionary type person who had big ideas and big dreams. She was an executor. And that's what a lot of us founders need sometime, as The right person to actually make it happen.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, yeah, Jessica is my founding partner, and she was our COO, and she was working in Texas at Whole Foods, like on site at Whole Foods, basically doing research for them. And we were connected through a mutual friend. And I said, look, if you want to be a part of this, come join me. Help me.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My whole pitch was look, I'm not trying to make something cheap. I'm trying to make something premium that is truly like an alternative to homemade. And we might look at the baby food market, but then look at all the other stuff for baby. You can drop $1,000 on a crib right now if you want. You can drop $1,000 on a stroller. And yet at the time, parents didn't have a better option when it came for food, which does actually impact your health. And so my whole thing was, look, people will spend more and we will be able to have a healthy margin. And to a retailer, this is an opportunity to make a healthy margin on something that was otherwise a loss leader.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that had a tremendous amount of pressure. And then there were people who invested because they really believed in the vision and the mission and felt like it was right and felt like I was going to do my very best or die trying.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh my God, it was super challenging. The ones who like you who don't really want to invest have a hard time being straightforward sometime, and so then you're like circling back and circling back and following up. And, you know, it was really hard. And yeah, some people believed in me, but I didn't have a track record, you know, and I've never done this before. I didn't know anything about the food industry. And I think the people who invested, first of all, there's so much extra pressure when it's the people you know. And my mom actually to go back to the banning, she was the first person who put the money in. Like, I knew the value of my mom's money. You know, I knew she was like making a margin selling Snickers bars to give me that money.”
2020-01-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Happy Family Organics: Shazi Visram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT