Jeff Shardell: Founder & CEO of Humble Brands

Episode 708

On this episode of The Kara Goldin Show, we’re joined by Jeff Shardell, Founder and CEO of Humble Brands—the clean personal care brand that’s redefining what “natural” can (and should) be. From deodorants that actually work to sustainability initiatives that go far beyond the label, Jeff has built Humble into a trusted name at Whole Foods, Erewhon, and thousands of other retailers across the country.
Before founding Humble, Jeff was a Silicon Valley veteran—part of the early team at Google and co-founder of Gloss.com, which sold to Estée Lauder. But it was a radically different chapter of life that sparked the idea for Humble: a decade spent storm chasing and reconnecting with the basics. That journey led him to start making clean, effective deodorant out of his kitchen—and the rest is history.
We talk about why Jeff left tech to start over, what it really takes to build a brand from scratch in the crowded wellness space, and how a simple formula with four ingredients launched a national movement. He shares how Humble has grown thoughtfully—without compromising quality, values, or his own vision of what health should look like.
If you care about clean living, purpose-driven business, or the wild twists that can lead to a breakout brand—this one’s for you. Now live on The Kara Goldin Show.

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Transcript

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. I want to be you. Just want to make sure you will get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked out, knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control. Control. Control. Hi everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs and really, some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go. Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Goldin show. Today’s guest is someone who’s taken an unexpected but familiar path from tech executive to storm chaser to clean personal care entrepreneur. I’m joined by Jeff chardel, who’s the founder and CEO of Humble, or Humble Brands, as the parent company is known, the company behind an excellent aluminum free deodorant that actually works and is now found in over 11,000 stores nationwide. Of course, you can also buy it online. But before launching Humble, Jeff spent many years at major tech, innovative companies like Google and Netscape, and then co founded an incredible company called gloss.com which was acquired by Estee Lauder, but it was a cross country storm chasing trip That inspired a lifestyle shift and ultimately a business idea. So he started making Humble the deodorant in his kitchen, and landed on a simple and effective formula, and the rest is history. So I can’t wait to get into how he’s scaling the brand and kept it has kept it clean and sustainable through the scaling of almost 10 years now and what it takes to win, in his opinion, in a crowded CPG category without losing soul or purpose. So welcome Jeff. So nice to finally connect with you.

Jeff Shardell 2:16
Yeah, thank you. Thank you for having me. Kara. Really great to connect with you and me to you live. And I love the fact that we really both have taken a similar trajectory, you know, earlier days in media and tech, and then both of us starting CPG companies. And I don’t know if you went through this when you started your company, but when I started Humble, a lot of my friends from the tech industry thought it was crazy. Like, why would you be Why would you leave this? Why are you doing that instead? But, you know, we all Tech was a great jumping off point for other things. And, you know, sort of it was just been fun to be able to pursue things, other things that we’re passionate about, other than tech. So it’s fun to see that similar trajectory we’ve taken.

Kara Goldin 2:58
You know, I’ve said that. I think that the thing that I learned, I learned a lot of things working in tech companies, but it was always like, what can we do, right? That there was just no because things in tech are typically not created yet, so you’re trying to figure out the next frontier, right? And so I think that was the thing that I really found different in that industry, versus coming into CPG, where it was like, No, you can’t do it that way. That’s not the way it’s done. This is what we need and there. And so I really am grateful for that experience in Tech because of exactly that, that the ability to think, you know, what else can we do here? So okay, so let’s start with the origin story. How did Humble begin, and what was the spark that made you commit to building it? Can you share the story?

Jeff Shardell 3:53
Yeah. So after spending, as you said, bunch of years in tech, I ended up heading out to the central plains and storm chasing. I’d always wanted to see a tornado. I convinced a friend of mine to fly out to Denver with me. We chased for a week. We ended up getting the most amazing, picturesque tornado in an open farmer’s field, and and I was hooked, and so I started storm chasing and and I did that for a few years, and I actually started a storm chasing tour company for a while as well, where I would take people out and, you know, have them experience life on the road and seeing a tornado. But one of the things I discovered that really kind of hit home is at life, the whole life on the road. I love being on the open road, but how you can really boil your life down to the simplest things. When you’re on the road, you’ve got a car, you’ve got a bag, you’ve got toiletries, and that’s about it. And I just wanted to apply that same kind of simple living concept to other elements of my life and and it kind of coincided with a. Me looking at all the other things that are in our lives that we would consider toxic. And there was that movement that had happened or started probably 10 or so years prior to starting Humble, where people were creating better for you, food products, you know, there’s a big shift towards organic and non GMO and, you know, healthier chips and things like that, and but people hadn’t really applied that yet to the personal care space. And so it was kind of this, this kind of coming together, of simplifying things, trying to have better for you ingredients in your life. And really the fact that no one had done that in the personal care space yet, and I tried the couple of natural deodorants that were out there, and they didn’t work for me. And I just figured there had to be a better way. And so I just went in my kitchen and started mixing different ingredients. And over a six to nine month process of me using myself mainly as the test guinea pig, but also giving it to friends and family and getting feedback from them. I launched originally, it was called Jeff’s pit butter, and it was going to be just a little fun side project where I can make products for myself and give it to again, friends and family. And then other people I didn’t know started asking for the product. And so I decided, let’s, let’s make this a legit business. And that was the that was how, how Humble was born.

Kara Goldin 6:22
That’s incredible. So, so the name Humble, you ended up, I guess, transitioning from Jeff’s butter. You called it the pit butter, but, yeah, butter. Okay, so Jeff’s pit butter to Humble. So how long before you changed to Humble? And how did you come up with the name?

Jeff Shardell 6:41
Let’s see, I would say, from when I started with Jeff’s pitbullter, until we launched with Humble, it was probably, probably a two year period, two year kind of transition period. And then as I was looking at different names for the company, I know the the trademark people will say, You got to come up with some crazy name that doesn’t mean anything and that no one’s ever heard of before, right? But none of those names were sitting well with me. And then just the the the word Humble hit because of simplicity of our products, you know, it’s a Humble set of ingredients. And again, if you look at the original formula, which I created 12 or so years ago, it’s still the basis for the formula that we use today, corn starch, corn starch, baking soda, beeswax and fractionated coconut oil, and that’s it. And then essential oils for the scented version. So yeah, it really means just a Humble set of ingredients that will still that you understand and that will still work for you.

Kara Goldin 7:41
So what is it about a physical products industry that I I’ve talked to many people who have gone from you know, as I used to describe my previous career of selling bits and bytes, right? It’s like to a physical good. I’m sure you’ve, you’ve definitely heard back from consumers that that they love the product, and, you know, they buy it, and, you know, they, they, you know, almost grasp it more than than a tech company. I never used to hear, Oh, wow. Like, that’s some people would say, Oh, you work today. Well, like I, you know, their shopping is better than the other shopping platforms, whatever, but there’s this obsession with physical goods that I think is, you know, really energizing in many ways. I’d love to hear what you think 100%

Jeff Shardell 8:37
it’s funny. You talk about the bits and bytes, though, is a lot of my friends will say that they want to just deal in bits and bytes with their businesses. They don’t want to deal with atoms, right? But, but we’re creating atoms, and we’re mixing them in a certain configuration and selling them. Yeah, it’s very different, but I don’t know maybe you experienced what I experienced, which is, I always want, wanted to create something that could be come a household name. I didn’t want it to be Jeff’s anything, or shardell anything. I didn’t want my name to be in it. But I just there’s something that drew me, that’s always drawn me to create a product that everyone could say, oh, I know that company. I use that product. I like that product, and that that is what I really find. And it can happen in tech as well. But you we always would say when I was at Google that people were one click away from searching with another search engine, right? And the same thing can happen in a physical product. But I feel like once you create a loyal customer base and you do the right thing for the customer, you’re going to have them for a long time, if not for life. So there’s something just about creating that tangible product that becomes a household name that people love and want to use, and with their muscle memory time and time again in purchase that has always excited me.

Kara Goldin 9:55
You were at the right place at the right time with so. Many companies, and you know, in the 90s, at Netscape and Google, and then you co founded gloss.com That was your first entrepreneurial adventure of sort of running things versus actually working for incredible people as you did. But what did you learn from gloss.com that helped you to maybe do better in launching Humble one of

Jeff Shardell 10:28
the things I learned is what not to do. And we did a lot of things right there, but when we started gloss, it was back in the very heady days of internet, where people were going and raising huge amounts of money, and then you thought the next thing that you had to do was create this amazingly beautiful but yet expensive office space and pour a lot of money into these big launch parties. And I learned to not necessarily do the same thing for Humble for whatever company I wanted to start after that, because it was a lot of money that, you know, for a very small pop, it was a lot of money. And so I’d rather take that money to create better products and get the message out to the market that we have better products. I think just kind of use of funds. You know, I learned what did work and what didn’t work, and that was, I would say, a big lesson that I took with me from gloss over to Humble

Kara Goldin 11:29
so skews. How many skews Did you launch with? And how has that changed in your company? Because I bet you learned a ton with gloss.com

Jeff Shardell 11:37
Yeah, we, we launched with five SKUs, five full size deodorant in plastic packages, and that was it. And we’ve since, since shifted over, boy. I don’t even know the number now. It’s probably in the 60s or 70s, something like that. Different types of packaging, plastic packaging that’s made out of 80% post consumer, recycled plastic, paperboard packaging, full size, small size. We have lip balm. We have soap now, we have a bunch of other fun products we’re coming out with later this year as well that I would love to talk about yet, but my marketing team doesn’t like me to talk about those things, so stay tuned. But yeah, so a lot of products, and I think one of the things that I do want to do better at as a company, and I don’t know if you went through this with I would hint, but is skew, rationalization. Every new product we create becomes kind of your new baby, right? And so you feel like you never want to get rid of products, but sometimes we have to make the tough decisions. And this happened a couple of years ago where we came out with a product that I loved. It was a scent. It was a tonka bean deodorant. And most people don’t know what it is, but there’s kind of a coffee, sort of chocolatey, vanilla smell to it. It’s an amazing Bean, and we call it forbidden tonka bean, because tonka beans, the actual beans, are illegal in the US, but the essential oil is legal. That goes back many years to some archaic laws they have. But it was a fun product. Love the smell of it. Eventually, though, people didn’t love it as much as I did, so we had to get rid of it. So it was tough getting kind of, you know, getting rid of our baby there, you know, and cutting it out of the the product

Kara Goldin 13:20
line. Do you think people didn’t like it, or did they not understand it? Because I think that, you know, with hint, just as an example, we had many flavors over the years. One of the first ones that we launched was a honeydew hibiscus. And I grew up in Arizona, so I knew about hibiscus, hibiscus. I mean, the Latin culture, Mexican culture, in Southern California as well as in Arizona. You know, we grew up with sun tea and using flowers in order to create that. But I think, you know, we had distribution. We couldn’t sell a bottle, and maybe we sold a couple of bottles in New York, but we definitely sold it in in California. But it was it. I really think that it wasn’t that people hated it, it’s that people just didn’t understand it. And I think if people have to think about, oh, what’s that gonna smell like? Maybe there’s not a sample there. Then they’re gonna go to something that they know. Yeah,

Jeff Shardell 14:28
yeah, no, I agree, and I when we first launched the company, there were a lot of other companies out there that had scented products, not just in deodorant, but other areas. But they would, they wouldn’t say the name of the scent or the flavor. They would call it something else, you know, sea breeze. And it’s like, well, what does sea breeze really what does it mean? What does it smell like? Right? So I made the decision to actually put the names of the essential oils on the product. But to your point, though, I think it probably backfired me. Be a little bit with tonka bean, because 98% of the population doesn’t know what tonka bean is, or they don’t know what it smells like. So yeah, there is some of that that That definitely happens. And so when it’s on the shelf, it’s a little bit easier, because people can pick it up and smell it. But I think it was something they don’t know a lot of times they may they may not even want to reach for it to begin with, because it seems like something maybe too crazy or too foreign for them. So you

Kara Goldin 15:29
were starting this in your kitchen. You had dealt with direct to consumer businesses. Clearly, when you launched, what was the initial strategy? You were just selling it online, besides giving it to friends to try, were you did? Were you just d to c, and at what point did you look at going into retail? Yeah, yeah.

Jeff Shardell 15:49
So when I started, we were just online, as you mentioned, but very quickly after the folks at Erewhon chain, down in Southern California, high end grocery chain had discovered the product, and they brought it in, and that was a great relationship for us, and it still is a great relationship for us. The nice thing about a store like that, or a chain like that, is shoppers, retail buyers from other larger, different chains, shop stores like Erawan, to see, kind of what the new trends are, what’s up and coming. And so that really opened up the doors for us to get into retail, on the shelf, brick and mortar retail pretty quickly. And so most of the companies I’m talking to that have been around, and we’ve been around 10 years, and kind of, as you see their their growth trajectory, it comes from D to Z, but ours very quickly switched, and we were getting most of our revenue from brick and mortar, and that’s still the case today. About 85% of our revenue comes from on the shelf in store sales, versus a combination of our website and Amazon,

Kara Goldin 17:02
that’s incredible. So personal care space, the deodorant space in particular, but I know you’ve gone beyond that is pretty crowded. What do you think has made Humble really stand out? I mean,

Jeff Shardell 17:15
part of it is we started earlier, before all these other companies came out, so people started learning about us. But really it’s more than that. It’s us trying to deliver the message again, that what you put on your body is as important as what you ingest, what you put in your body. So know the ingredients of whatever it is you’re putting on our body, everything in our product, all the ingredients are really safe enough to eat. But then beyond that, if the product doesn’t work, people aren’t going to come back and make a second purchase, and so the product has to work. So I would say the message of simple set of ingredients and the fact that we do have, and I didn’t realize this, you probably went through this with hint and discovered it. But how connected people are to scents, right? I just thought at first, oh, you throw a couple different products out there, a couple different scents, you’re good to go. But people become passionate about their scents. They really do. And so if you have something that works, and it’s a great smell, which is what we have, I feel that has what that’s what’s really kind of set us apart from a lot of the other companies that are out there. And I also wanted to start a company and tackle the hard thing right away, like anyone can create, let’s say, a lotion company to begin with, because lotions will hydrate at different levels, but it’s going to hydrate to some, to some extent. But deodorant is very binary. Either it works or it doesn’t work, right? Either you sweaty, you don’t sweat, you smell, you don’t smell. But I felt like, if I could create a better for you product that worked, we would then create a loyal following of customers, so we can then launch these other products.

Kara Goldin 18:55
That’s that’s so, so smart. I mean, I think it’s like, really focus on that category and do it well and then move on to others as well. So sustainability from day one has been such a key part of your mission overall. Do you feel like consumers are caring even more about that today. What? What do you hear that is kind of the biggest, I guess, push or trend in the in the beauty industry?

Jeff Shardell 19:31
Yeah, so early on, the push and trend that we saw and that we leaned into was again creating or having ingredients that weren’t just better for you, but as you said, were sustainable and had all the right certifications and making sure that it wasn’t just being rubber stamped. But now the big trend that we’re seeing is beyond that. It’s the packaging, really, and people shifting away from in a big. Way, single use plastic, and we still have plastic packaged deodorant, but as I mentioned before, it’s made out of 80% post consumer recycled plastic. But we now have launched it. A couple of years ago. Have our paper board package deodorant, and we just launched this past March our paper board lip balm. And so if you look at those products, they’re 100% biodegradable. Percent biodegradable, everything down to the ink on the outside is biodegradable, and a lot of people companies that have paper board packaging, it’s still lined with plastic on the inside so the oils don’t leach out. But that’s just a form of green washing, because if or when that package hits the environment, you’re still going to have micro particles of plastic being introduced into the environment. So we didn’t want that. So we it took us a while. We finally found a company that produced a paper board package that’s lined with the biodegradable natural silica on the inside. So but that’s where things are going. A pet project that I’ve had for a long time that it’s just not ready for prime time yet, but is to eventually find a good, reliable bio plastic that we could use so we can shift our plastic packaged deodorant completely away from, you know, sort of virgin percentage of virgin plastic and something over to a biodegradable bioplastic. That’s definitely my hope. However, I just did want to say though, that I believe the number is about six. We’re saving about six tons introducing six tons of virgin plastic into the environment every month because of the recycled plastic that we’re using. So we’re trying to do the right thing where we can

Kara Goldin 21:41
that’s awesome. You’re also part of 1% for the planet. How do you choose which causes or causes or nonprofits to support for that?

Jeff Shardell 21:54
So the there are different causes we support. The cause that we support or put the most money into is a cause called Charity Water. And they go into developing countries. So many people in these countries are drinking water, surface water. You’ve got an animal defecating 1020, feet up, and then they’re pulling their surface water out and drinking that same water. And so many people, especially children, die in these countries from waterborne illnesses. And the reality is, almost all these places have fresh water 50, 100, 200 feet below the surface. And so I loved the fact that we could really make a difference in people’s lives, and not just villages, but a lot of the women, too, the women and girls, were the ones that would have to walk miles every day with jerry cans to get the water and then bring it home. Meant that they couldn’t have an education. It meant that they couldn’t really even have any kind of a career or a business doing anything, because they’re just getting water that is make that may kill them or their family anyway. So just the impact that something like clean water has in these developing towns and villages is really exciting to me. And that’s that’s it again, and we put our money into other causes. That was the first one that we started working with and and one that that really is near and dear to my heart. You know, again, just because, living in the United States, we take it for granted, you turn us the tap on and the water is going to be safe. You know, there’s so many parts of the world where that’s not the case.

Kara Goldin 23:34
Yeah, definitely. We actually had the founder of charity water on the podcast few years back, so he’s he’s awesome. So you built a business with a purpose, and I’m sure that’s not always easy along the way. Is there any great stories? Maybe to give some founder out there who, you know, screwed up on their production, or didn’t get their, you know, right, closures for their for their lotions, or whatever it is, and having a really crummy moment in their founding history.

Jeff Shardell 24:13
Let’s see, well, I think back to kind of the history of the company and decisions we made. And, you know, I what? I think it ended up being a good decision. But when we first started getting all these retail orders coming in, we I use a third party manufacturer for the first couple of lots that I produced and but these retailers who were coming in were saying that they wanted, they wanted the product in three weeks. And the comans were saying that it would take 13 weeks to get the products. I went back to the retail buyer and said, Can you wait 13 weeks? They said, No, we want them in three weeks. So we decided, okay, let’s make the product in house. So we ended up doing that. And. And at the time, it’s been a bit of a challenge when you don’t just sell a product, but you actually physically make a product. But I think it ended up becoming one of our strengths, and because we can control, certainly, the timing of making products, you know, based on demand fluctuation, but we can also play around and launch new products, do smaller batches, and put it out in the market, and get feedback from people and see what what consumers say, where it’s harder to do that when you’re working with large mOqs, minimum order quantities from CO manufacturers, and you’re dealing with a multiple month lead time. So I think that was definitely one of the more challenging decisions I had at the time, but that ended up being a good decision for us.

Kara Goldin 25:50
You talked a bit about this when you launched the deodorant, and you really focused on that category before expanding beyond but what was the moment when you said, Okay, this Humble Brands business, this is working. We need to hit the gas and go and innovate and start developing new categories

Jeff Shardell 26:15
the moment that things, let’s see, I would say it’s when we started getting onto the shelves of bigger retailers, is when I realized that, you know, and started getting feedback from people also. And we have a we so is a combination of getting on the right shelves, but, but we have a good feedback mechanism, or loop in our company, where we would get feedback from consumers and feedback from retail buyers. But it excited me, and still excites me, that our customers individuals are passionate enough about what we’re doing to want to let us know what else they would like to see from us, you know, and and the fact that these people can take the time to sit down, call us, email us, you know, just get contact us and let us know, meant a lot to me. And so all of you listening out there, keep, keep the feedback coming in, for sure, but, but that was really kind of a big turning point as well, listening to what people were saying. But realizing that people cared enough to want to come and tell us what they wanted was a time where I really, I realized it was time to, you know, put put gasoline in the fire, and really start looking at other products as well that we could come out with.

Kara Goldin 27:36
Yeah, definitely. I think that customer feedback is is so key. And I think, you know, so often people might come from a larger company, and you know, somebody else does that customer service stuff, and it’s, it’s a lifeline, right for for founders, and those founders that don’t pay attention to the feedback, I think are really missing out, and not only for information, but also for energy, right? That you know that you’re doing something right, or, you know, there’s too many of people coming writing in about a certain scent or flavor or or packaging or whatever, that’s where you find out where the issues are,

Jeff Shardell 28:20
yeah, yeah, definitely. And we’ve formalized that process a little bit more now is Every quarter we have meetings now with key buyers and brokers that work with us and work for us, to hear what they’re hearing at the store level, what people want to see in our products, what, what, what they like, what they don’t like, and so we’ve really tried to formalize that process even more. Yeah, that feedback is critical. It really is. Otherwise, it’s so easy to just work in a bubble, right? And you just think this is what people want, but it doesn’t mean necessarily it is what they want. So,

Kara Goldin 28:56
yeah, definitely. So last question, what’s the one thing you want listeners to remember about Humble Brands that they walk away thinking that Jeff is just a rock star. But, you know, Humble Brands, they’re killing it and and what, what would you like them to really remember?

Jeff Shardell 29:19
I think the most important thing. It’s not just, doesn’t just pertain to Humble but it really pertains to kind of a lifestyle. And just be sure to pay attention to not only the ingredients of what you eat, but also the ingredients of what you put on your body. And again, it goes way beyond just Humble Brands and our ingredients, and we don’t know necessarily, what kind of health benefits some of these things, these toxic chemicals, that we’re putting on our body, we don’t know what kind of detrimental effect they’re going to have on our bodies. And we won’t know for 10 or 20 or 30 years it’s going to be a cumulative effect. It’s. Just be sure you know what’s going in your body and what’s going on your body.

Kara Goldin 30:05
Thank you so much, Jeff for the super thoughtful conversation, super purpose driven, powerful just everything that you’re doing at Humble Brands, it’s really, really great. And to everybody, everyone listening, go check out [email protected] or find them in retailers nationwide, and as always, if you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend, leave a review and until next time, thank you. Thank you so much,

Jeff Shardell 30:32
Jeff, thank you Kara. I really appreciate you taking the time and everything that you do as well.

Kara Goldin 30:36
Thank you so much. Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show, if you would please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit. And of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast. Just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms. At Kara Goldin, I would love to hear from you too. So feel free to DM me, and if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal, best selling book, undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building. Hint, we are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thanks for listening, and goodbye for now. You.

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