IAM337- Founder & CEO Invents Plant-based Pest Control Powered by Nature

Kari Warberg Block, an unlikely disruptor, challenged an industry that by its very nature is toxic. As the Founder & CEO of EarthKind, Kari discovered that 98% of pest control solutions sold were poison & kill methods – so she set out to invent a better solution: plant-based pest control powered by nature. Kari was the first to develop, manufacture, and commercialize poison-free rodent and insect repellents for farm and home use, with a mission to build a purpose led company to create change through business.

Once a mom on food stamps Kari started EarthKind with nothing more than a package of garden seeds and a vision, and has built it into $20 million company. Kari was selected as an Ernst & Young “Entrepreneurial Winning Women,” and has gone from being a part of her local homemakers club to advising the SBA, Congress and the White House on policy that impacts women in business. She has been featured in CNBC, the New York Times, Huffington Post and Forbes.

• CEO Hack: 5 minutes each day listing the things I'm grateful for
• CEO Nugget: 70% of decisions in business don't consider value thus its important to leave it to employees
• CEO Defined: Chief environmental officer – creating the right environment

Website: http://www.earthkind.com/

IG: @earthkindinc
IG: @kari_warberg_block
Twitter: @KariWBlock
Twitter: @EarthKind
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kariwarbergblock/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/earthkindinc/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KariWarbergBlock/

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Transcription

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:29

Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Kari Warberg Block of Earth Kind. Kari, awesome to have you on the show.

Kari Warberg 0:40

Happy to be here.

Gresham Harkless 0:42

Super excited to have you on Kari. And what I wanted to do was just read a little bit more about you so everybody can hear about all the awesome things that you're doing. And Kari Warberg Block, an unlikely disruptor, challenged an industry that by its very nature is toxic. As the Founder & CEO of EarthKind, Kari discovered that 98% of pest control solutions sold were poison & kill methods – so she set out to invent a better solution: plant-based pest control powered by nature. Kari was the first to develop, manufacture, and commercialize poison-free rodent and insect repellents for farm and home use, with a mission to build a purpose-led company to create change through business.

Once a mom on food stamps Kari started EarthKind with nothing more than a package of garden seeds and a vision and has built it into a $20 million company. Kari was selected as an Ernst & Young “Entrepreneurial Winning Women,” and has gone from being a part of her local homemaker's club to advising the SBA, Congress, and the White House on policy that impacts women in business. She has been featured in CNBC, the New York Times, Huffington Post, and Forbes. Kari, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO Community?

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Kari Warberg 1:56

Hi. Let's do it.

Gresham Harkless 1:59

To kick everything off, I want to hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story. And what led you to start your business?

Kari Warberg 2:06

Sure. Well, I was sitting out in western North Dakota, and a mouse ran up my bare legs. I was on a day with a farmer who I went to marry after this incident but he asked me to pull started truck so I said okay, I can help you. I used to drive a truck. I thought long-press the guy. Well, lone and behold, out of the floorboards, a mouse ran out my bare leg. It freaked me out. I just didn't know what to do. The trucks started shaking and I distinctively grabbed a bottle of perfume out of my purse, thinking, Well, hey, I'm gonna give that little sucker headache like it's a raid or something. And I've just sprayed it all over.

And the mice, there were two of them and they ran out. He comes running up. He's like, are you okay, what's going on? They thought that it was like having an epileptic attack or something did I say oh my gosh, there's life in here. How gross and by this time, I had my head covered in mouse droppings or feces. They shook out of the headliner. I was freaked out. I mean, I could still feel those little feet on my legs just talking about it now.

And I go, Look, what is this? Like, it's mice. There's nothing you can do. It's just a fact of life on the farm. So I ended up marrying the guy. And I really challenged the status quote. And Dad is like, You're kidding me? You can't like keep them out of stuff. Because no, you use poison and you kill them or you use a sticky trap. And then, like, yeah, how long does it take to die?

And I was asking all these questions, and there really wasn't anything. It's not like I could plug in one of those little ultrasonic things in a truck. And that damage started after I was married out there and everything just kept getting infested no matter what we did. And I couldn't use a poison it didn't feel right to me on every single level. So I invented a better way.

Gresham Harkless 4:12

Nice, I definitely appreciate you obviously for creating that and I don't think I've heard a few dating stories here and there. I have not heard that dating story where it is a multi-million dollar company so you definitely take the cake you should be on the cover, whatever, dating site there could be because I think that's phenomenal because it's your entrepreneurial form you had an issue but rather than just say there is no better way, it's just how it goes. You decided to actually go on and create something so I appreciate you for doing that.

Kari Warberg 4:42

Yeah, thank you. It is funny how all these years later I did not set out to change an industry. But I knew rodents are not a sexy business. Right? It's not like cover material but I figured a way to make it sexy from the packaging, smell a bit, just to all of it and guys don't seem to mind and the women love it.

Gresham Harkless 5:07

That's a good one when women definitely so wanted to hear a little bit more on Earth Kind and everything that you're doing, can you tell us a little bit more on what you can get and what exactly it does? And then also, what you feel kind of makes you and your organization unique.

Kari Warberg 5:24

I'd be happy to have to open up. We're on video today so you can see. So I basically invented this product and for anybody listening, it's a rare thing to invent something to get it to market and then to commercialize it and to make it into a national brand. And so, I was able to do that. And for anybody listening, I can't say I'm a genius. I mean, I had no experience, I didn't have a background, I didn't have a chemistry degree, anything. I had a high school education. And I figured it out because I had a purpose. And I just took one step at a time.

So I could say from that what I did is, I thought, well, how do I make this product really easy for people, which turned out to be one of the main competitive advantages for our company because nobody has really made it super easy to control a pest for people, especially that don't have knowledge of pest right. So which I didn't at the time. So it really helped me. But you just take the pouch, and you put it in wherever you have the problem in the past lane. So it's really that simple. The science was a little more complex than that.

But that became our competitive advantage. The other thing that became our competitive advantage was that it became sustainable. And this is way before it was cool. 10 years ago, nobody was thinking that people heard the name Earth Kind. And I actually hit it below the product names because they're like, Oh, well, I feel pot smoker, they thought for sure were just as hippie chick group, but because I was a farmer, I'm thinking, hey, I might as well at least grow the ingredients and get some value added. So all the ingredients come from nature. And even the packaging is biodegradable. So that helped us to create a real competitive advantage that helped us scale to a national brand, and be adopted by consumers.

So easy to use, sustainable, and then the fact that it's a woman-owned company. Now if I'm not sure if you've shared the statistics, but it is just exploding right now. The community of people in this country that want to buy from a woman-owned business, I think it was Walmart did a study and found that there was a 90% higher likelihood of a purchase by a consumer if you had a woman on local. And it just played well.

Because people will trust me and our products with their families, right,s and their properties. And the other thing that really drove me to this was somebody had to do it, and for anybody listening, if you have that urge subtenant I do this like I want to start my own thing, right? I would have never picked rodents. No an old perfume girl. I'm like me, I don't know about this. But if it was a pain that nobody was starving in the world, it became a very conscious decision. Somebody has to do something about this. I'll take a step at a time. And I'll try to get there.

And so that's really what I did at the time. I started 98% of everything sold to control a pest in and around a home and a farm. Like for the property stuff. It was 98% toxic and killed. And so I saw this white space being an optimistic entrepreneur. I was like, oh my goodness, look at today, it's 10% or 90%. So we've moved the dial. And there are other people in it. Procter and Gamble just came into the space this year. So it's great to have that help getting the word out that there are safer options.

Gresham Harkless 9:51

Yeah, that's great to hear, being an innovator and a disrupter, especially I think that's one of the beautiful things about being able to use your purchasing dollar to support whatever you want as soon as you touch on is like if you want to support a woman-owned business, which is definitely growing and the number of women that are growing businesses as well, we've had infographics on our site as well that have shown that number is increasing. And people want to support that. And just using your dollar for whatever you now can decide, like, Oh, I agree with that mission or agree with that company. I agree with that founder, because of x,y, and z.

So I want to actually do something to support that, I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. And this might be an app or book or habit that you have, but something that makes you more effective and efficient.

Kari Warberg 10:38

Well, probably one of the biggest hacks that I've learned is to only spend 20 minutes a day worrying. And so I created this habit of every morning, when I get to work, or officially say I'm at my desk, right? I'd spend the first 20 minutes, on everything I was worried about. And then I drop it. And I could do no more than that. And it basically wiped out all my nighttime waking up going, oh, all the things that you think are gonna go wrong, because there's a lot of fear on the entrepreneurial journey in the beginning, especially with everything you have is on the line, and it's all very fluid. And I think it gets easier as the business grows, and you have some breadth and depth to it. But to help that was really transformational for me, growing it now, the most transformational hack I have is I spend the first five minutes of every day before I get out of bed, listing 50 things I'm grateful for.

Gresham Harkless 11:45

Yeah, and I think that a lot of times, especially with worrying because there are so many things that pop up in our surroundings that a lot of times people will try to just ignore them or say they don't exist, but I love the fact that you actually list them out. Because once I guess they become real and you understand that you can't do anything about them, it gets sick, you correct me if I'm wrong out of your head off of your shoulders, and all of those places, and then it's actually on that page, and you can just continue on with the work that you should be doing. I appreciate you for sharing that with us. And now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this is a word of wisdom or piece of advice. Or if you can happen to be a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?

Kari Warberg 12:23

Probably one of the most powerful things I've learned that I can share with others is that 70% of all decisions made in business, don't consider values. And I teach decision-making to my employees because people whenever somebody asks, well, how do I do this? there's so much this how-to, if people just dial it back and go, Okay, what is the reason I'm here like for us, but make it easy for people when they're controlling pests. It informs every decision we make in the company from how we go to market, how we package the product, how we are to work with what we say on the phone, all of it. And so that alone, I wish I would have known that earlier. But it can make a huge difference.

Gresham Harkless 13:13

Yeah, that makes sense. And is it because a lot of times this is what I feel but I don't know if you would feel the same way is that there are so many things going on that when you have that understanding that mission that strong why, whether you're any stage or part of the company, you're able to understand no matter what tasks you're doing, how it aligns, but also, as you mentioned, if there are tough decisions, you can put it against that measure. Now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Kari, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Kari Warberg 13:49

So to me, the CEO is Chief Environmental Officer. Right? So for me, it's about creating environments for the transformation of lives and livelihoods.

Gresham Harkless 14:01

Absolutely that makes perfect sense because a lot of times you have to create that in order for you to help out your consumers the people that are your team and everything so I appreciate you for doing that and sharing that definition with us. So, Kari, I wanted to pass you the mic so to speak just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know and then of course how they can find out about you and everything you're doing and of course get in here more information about Earth Kind.

Kari Warberg 14:27

Sure. I am so curious about the most frequently asked question from readers, and viewers after the interview I'd love to take a stab at that. If you know when is going to be coming up and people can find us on earthkind.com Our product brands are stay away and fresh cab and we keep pests out without poisons or without killing them. Our products are 100% guaranteed and I'm happy to say we have amazing retail partners that believe in our mission and what we're doing. So you can find our products on all the lowest shelves, you can find them at all the Ace Hardware stores, and you can even get them at your John Deere dealer. Of course, you need it for tractors.

And we were in some Target stores, we're in RV and automotive and all of those. So I appreciate everybody that wants to use our products and support what we're doing. And it's our goal to reduce the amount of poisons sold for pest control to 50%. By 2023. It's a tall order, considering over 100 million homes are still just using something toxic kill because they don't know about our product or the other new ones coming out.

Gresham Harkless 15:55

Absolutely. Well, I definitely appreciate your time appreciate you, telling your story and, having such a strong mission to help out the Earth Kind, but also so many other business owners and entrepreneurs. So, I definitely think and you've definitely done a phenomenal job. I appreciate you and I hope you have a great rest of the day.

Kari Warberg 16:13

Thank you. You're doing a great job, Gresh, that's fantastic. Love this. Thank you.

Outro 16:20

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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