YouSaid · the spoken record

Tom Chappell

lines on the record: 36
first: 2017-12-11
most recent: 2017-12-11
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

“And I went home and told Kate, and she said, Well, we'd have to give it to a museum. We wouldn't want that in the house. So I'm afraid I had to pass on it.”
2017-12-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tom's Of Maine: Tom Chappell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I got a call from the family. Oh, this was probably ten years ago, saying that the painting had been in their home in Milan for years and that the children in inheriting it had decided to put it on the market with Sotheby's. So they said it's been valued at $750,000 and they wanted me to have the first chance to buy it.”
2017-12-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tom's Of Maine: Tom Chappell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think having forces come together in a serendipity way is indeed an important part of the process. But I think it's both you can't do it without skill. But I do think you, for me, because I live in the spiritual world, it's not luck. It's the work of grace paying attention to what I'm doing and nourishing it.”
2017-12-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tom's Of Maine: Tom Chappell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I never considered myself becoming rich, and let me explain that. I read a book called The Gift, and it's really about how to use money. And the purpose of money is to keep it in circulation, not to stow it away. And so we certainly traveled and we were able to buy properties that we otherwise would not have. But aside from that, I needed to find something constructive to do and to use my money.”
2017-12-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tom's Of Maine: Tom Chappell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, that's not fine Absolutely. I'm a businessman, and to be a businessman, profitability is part of the responsibility to yourself and to others.”
2017-12-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tom's Of Maine: Tom Chappell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For me, it's important to demonstrate that this is a different business model in which you are using Boober's concept that the mind is twofold, that you can, on the one hand, consider the goodness, inherent worthiness of something, and on the other hand, the utility of it. And as long as greed and domination were the motivations, then that's where we get into our trouble. That's my life legacy, that this is something that needs to be taken up by business schools and larger corporations to understand that there are vulnerable as long as they operate with the sole principle of maximizing profitability.”
2017-12-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tom's Of Maine: Tom Chappell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right, exactly. And I thought about a business that could once again benefit from a change in the way it operated, operating with the principles of sustainability, which have been so important to me at Toms of Maine. And that's what I decided to do in the textile and the garment industry because it is the second largest polluter on this earth. It exploits sewing and seamstresses around the world. So we set out to figure out what we could do of an American-based product, i.e. wool. So we make coats, we make shirts, we make pants. Polo shirts, everything.”
2017-12-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tom's Of Maine: Tom Chappell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I spent time thinking about what I was going to do with the next part of my life, and one of my mentors in New York, a fellow named John Whitehead, he said, you're a young man, you have plenty of time left. This is not the time for you to retire. I didn't feel like retiring. I felt I had a lot of energy. I had a lot of desire to do something, and I wanted to once again create impact. Yeah. But I also understood that the reason I was successful at Tom's domain is because I took market share away from Colgate, Procter& Gamble, and Unilever. So when you can take market share away from the commodities by an alternative approach to that product development and that product and service, that's what I'm good at.”
2017-12-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tom's Of Maine: Tom Chappell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it created a loss for that operating year, and we were able to recover the next year. But certainly, I don't mean to suggest that it wasn't disruptive. It was extremely disruptive and difficult. But we weathered through it.”
2017-12-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tom's Of Maine: Tom Chappell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It did not last. And it was clear that we had made a mistake. We had a responsibility to call that product back and to figure out what to do in the meantime. So we did a product recall.”
2017-12-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tom's Of Maine: Tom Chappell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The crisis is we were trying to find a source of humectant. And because we were all about natural and renewable materials, we did not want to use petroleum-based ingredients. So we thought that we had found a substitute in coconut-derived glycerin, and we reformulated the deodorant using that as the humectant rather than the petroleum derived. And we found after getting it into the stores that we hadn't really thought this through carefully enough. It wasn't an effective deodorant.”
2017-12-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tom's Of Maine: Tom Chappell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, but we would organize that charity work or they would elect to do what they wanted to do in the community. It might be literacy work. It could be helping on the Appalachian Trail. It was generally community-based, environmental-based needs, then they loved it. I mean, they would come back to work excited about what they have been able to do for their community.”
2017-12-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tom's Of Maine: Tom Chappell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it changed my life, first of all, because I was getting answers to questions in the readings of these philosophers that were solutions for me. It gave me a spiritual orientation. I actually began to see a new reality. There is a force of goodness that is available to any one of us, call it whatever you want to call it, that force of goodness becomes a medium by which we begin to do work differently together one of respect and mutuality collaboratively towards ends that have more constructive value than just for the sake of piling up a lot of profits. I think Harvard Divinity School gave me the knowledge and I was able to return to Toms of Maine on a full-time basis and say here are the things that we're going to do now that are in the name of goodness and performance.”
2017-12-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tom's Of Maine: Tom Chappell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I got up at 4, 4 30 in the morning to study. I worked very hard. It was extremely difficult educational experience, but it was so motivating because I was learning things from philosophers like Martin Buber who had some fantastic things to offer in his book I and Thou. And I would say to myself, wow, why don't more people know this stuff? This is important. It wasn't just Martin Buber, it was Jonathan Edwards and a whole bunch of 19th, 20th century philosophers.”
2017-12-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tom's Of Maine: Tom Chappell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The crisis was that we had achieved our strategic benchmarks, and I was feeling quite empty because we hadn't created a new product in four years. And I said, I just don't feel the meaning of this enterprise in just improving the business in terms of size and profitability. And we were not creating new products and making a difference in areas that I thought we should because we had become overcome with the numbers and the leadership had become the MBAs.”
2017-12-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tom's Of Maine: Tom Chappell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Totally. I had a fellow join the company as a director named John Rockwell, who from Booz Allen in New York became a great mentor to me. And I remember his saying, we've got to help transition this company from serving the health committed to expanding it to the people that are health concerned. So, if we were going to go into supermarkets and drug stores, that was going to be a different business proposition. We brought on people from Booz Allen Hamilton, a McKinsey& Company. And so from 1981 to 1986, we were executing a strategic plan that had a lot to do with changing your message so that you could appeal to that new consumer, finding the right people to help on the team, to build the team. In our case, we needed to increase our prices and figure out ways to make the product more efficiently.”
2017-12-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tom's Of Maine: Tom Chappell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I didn't think that. I don't think I had the self-confidence to think that I think my aim was to bring it to a certain sales level and to stay within the natural food community because within the natural food store community or distribution system, we were the Procter& Gamble of that class of trade. When that particular opportunity started to wane in terms of growth rates, then we looked at the traditional supermarkets and chain drugstores and asked the question, what would it be like for us to be on those shelves to expand into the traditional market?”
2017-12-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tom's Of Maine: Tom Chappell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, that's absolutely true. And mind you, we were countercultural too. We just didn't look the part and play the part. I don't think you would have found me in Berkeley. You wouldn't have found me in Cambridge demonstrating. But I had the same indignation deep down inside about the way the country was being run. I just had a different way of handling it.”
2017-12-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tom's Of Maine: Tom Chappell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think so. I think we were more straight-laced, and the reason I say that is I wasn't an activist, I wasn't a hippie. I wanted to appeal on the merits of the product.”
2017-12-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tom's Of Maine: Tom Chappell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, you've got to do, it's cruel. There's no pretty way And so we refused, and we went to Washington and met with the FDA and said, we've got human trials, and they eventually acceded, and then we went on to get the American Dental Association seal of acceptance as well. So we kept to our values, and the change happened after that. All the other companies stopped testing on animals. We had a big influence.”
2017-12-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tom's Of Maine: Tom Chappell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Couldn't pronounce. And so our package, our toothpaste box, like any toothpaste box, has four sides, and one side was committed. And we did have a moment of courage in all of this when the federal government said that any kind of fluoride toothpaste would have to be registered as having tested successfully for efficacy and safety on rats. And we said we don't subject animals to studies. We've used human trials. And they said, well, the protocol is rat studies.”
2017-12-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tom's Of Maine: Tom Chappell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think that comes purely and simply down to who you're serving. And in our case, we knew very well that we were serving a consumer that was discerning about what they would put in their bodies and why they wanted facts, knowledge. We thought, well, why not serve these people? This is a great idea. The more people learned about what was in their shampoo or their soap or their toothpaste, they would question. And Ralph Nader in the mid-70s was successful in facilitating legislation that required that ingredients in personal care products had to be on the label. Once that happened, that disclosure and transparency raised lots of questions in people's minds for the first time.”
2017-12-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tom's Of Maine: Tom Chappell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I had a hunch that it would be successful because there was no natural toothpaste. People didn't know what a natural toothpaste was and I felt that the motivation for my customer was to avoid additives. Yes, the turning point came with the launch of the toothpaste.”
2017-12-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tom's Of Maine: Tom Chappell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, that of course is a wonderful question. It's got a calcium carbonate that is a natural mineral that is a mild abrasive to do the cleaning of the teeth. We've got a humectant eglycerin that is a byproduct of a natural soap making process. But I had a chemist that helped me with all that. I could only talk about the ideal. I would give him my sense of the ideal, and he would try to turn that ideal into an efficacious formula.”
2017-12-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tom's Of Maine: Tom Chappell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was making his peppermint oil soap, but other than that, there was a shampoo made called orgine shampoo on Long Island. But after that, no, we were the first person to put a toothpaste together, a deodorant together, a mouthwash. All of that was we were first time providers of that.”
2017-12-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tom's Of Maine: Tom Chappell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What Kate was actually very much involved in raising the three children that we had at the time, and she was probably our best consumer advocate within the system to help guide my thinking on product design and packaging and so forth. And she's an artist. So she helped with the graphics and the art. Otherwise, I hired a chemist who was just perfect for us. He was brilliant. He helped us with product formulations that were authentically grounded in natural ingredients. We had a warehouse in Kennybunk. We bought used stainless steel dairy equipment around the neighborhood. I knew where to get a hold of stainless steel equipment for $100 here and $100 there. And then you get your first filling machine. So on. You just go.”
2017-12-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tom's Of Maine: Tom Chappell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I didn't. I asked a friend to put up $5,000. He and his wife were involved in the creation of this new alternative school in Kenny Bunk called the School Around Us. We became good friends and I told him of my idea and he had some IBM stock and took it to the bank as collateral to loan me $5,000. And that's what the company was started on, and obviously that didn't last very long. He put in another $2,500, and then after that, it was the second mortgage on the home, and then the SBA loans, and so on and so forth.”
2017-12-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tom's Of Maine: Tom Chappell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, so I was certainly familiar with the nuts and bolts of the chemistry of cleaning. So the idea of cleaning the body with soaps and so forth with ingredients that were not harmful to the environment and I certainly had my father's example and the thing about business that I loved so much that it wasn't business that was in itself harmful, it was the agents that ran the business that could be sinister and one just needed to use the tools of free enterprise in a way that was more ethically constructive to society as well as to those that are taking the risk.”
2017-12-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tom's Of Maine: Tom Chappell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I was doing this for me it was about combining business and the environment. In the mid-60s, you didn't work for business. And be concerned about the environment. It was either or you work for a nonprofit on behalf of the environment or you worked in business. And I knew that you could integrate the two.”
2017-12-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tom's Of Maine: Tom Chappell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He had been in the textile business in Massachusetts and like all of the businesses in Uxbridge, Massachusetts, they all failed. And so he had to reboot, restart his life, and he did it with his new business, which was pollution abatement for textiles, industries in Maine, and he was inventing things that could do the job without nitrates and phosphates, which was a new idea.”
2017-12-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tom's Of Maine: Tom Chappell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, you're right that I saw my life as. Being full of possibilities, I certainly had the intellectual wherewithal to question whether or not a refined life in corporate America was going to make me happy. And I decided that it was not. And I went in to tell my boss and he said, well, maybe we should get you a psychologist to talk to before you take this extreme position. You left”
2017-12-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tom's Of Maine: Tom Chappell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it's always been important to me. As a matter of fact, I've had people say to me about their work, I've never aspired to be the boss. And I think to myself, good Lord, I can't imagine that they want to be at least one or two steps down so that they don't have the responsibility. But I love competing. I see nothing wrong with it. It motivates me. It motivates my team. So, sure. Yeah.”
2017-12-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tom's Of Maine: Tom Chappell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Correct. That didn't compute for me the truth for me was that working in a large corporate structure was something I could see required a great deal of order, discipline get in line, wait, and I realized that I was not made for that kind of a culture.”
2017-12-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tom's Of Maine: Tom Chappell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I was the number one salesman in my class of 65 people, but I was then given my raise, the raise was $600, and then I found out the lowest raise was $300.”
2017-12-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tom's Of Maine: Tom Chappell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. Matter of fact, Norman Rockwell found me at a choir practice in Pittsfield, Massachusetts at St. Stephen's Church, pulled me out and asked if I wanted to be on the cover of the Saturday evening post. And I was 10 years old. I had never heard of the Saturday evening post. I'd never heard of Norman Wockwell. So I just looked at him and I said, I don't know, I'll have to call my mother and see.”
2017-12-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tom's Of Maine: Tom Chappell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We found after getting it into the stores that we hadn't really thought this through carefully enough. It wasn't an effective deodorant. So we did a product recall.”
2017-12-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tom's Of Maine: Tom Chappell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT