Steve Ball of Zesty Paws: Five Things You Need To Know If You Want To Build, Scale and Prepare Your Business For a Lucrative Exit

An Interview With Jason Hartman

Remember to recognize and celebrate. Start-ups and high-growth companies are driven by small teams and hard work. Recognizing the value and contributions of each team member at every level, and providing growth opportunities for all, keeps motivation going. Celebrating small and big accomplishments, as well as personal moments of our team members, is a constant at Zesty Paws and brings us closer as a team.

As a part of our series about “Five Things You Need To Know If You Want To Build, Scale and Prepare Your Business For a Lucrative Exit, I had the pleasure of interviewing Steve Ball.

Steve Ball is an experienced CEO, Board Member and entrepreneur in the health and wellness industry. Ball is currently serving as CEO and Board Member at Zesty Paws which, under Ball’s leadership, has experienced record growth and continues to be a leader in the pet health and wellness category.

In his entrepreneurial career, Ball has co-founded and ran several consumer products companies such as Natpets, LLC (dba “I and love and you”), which launched in 2012 and pioneered bringing ultra-premium pet store quality food and treats to the convenience of grocery. After Natpets, Ball embarked on a turnaround venture as CEO and Board Member of Convergent Coffee, a ready-to-drink nitro cold brew coffee company that had been struggling to find growth and secure capital.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

I’ve been involved in the pet industry for more than 10 years and I have a passion for building consumer brands. I founded “I and Love and You” in 2011 as a pioneer in bringing ultra-premium pet store quality food and treats to the convenience of grocery. After leading “I and Love and You” through some exceptional growth and ultimately selling a majority of the company to the private equity group L Catterton, I embarked on a turnaround venture as CEO and Board Member of Convergent Coffee, a ready-to-drink nitro cold brew coffee company that had been struggling to find growth and secure capital. In 2019, I joined Zesty Paws as CEO at a critical point on its growth trajectory, which ended up being both a nod to my roots in the pet industry and an opportunity to create and scale a nascent product category.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

Well, this story wasn’t funny at the time, but I think you can find jest in any learning moment with enough time…when I first started at Zesty Paws, we were primarily focused on supplements for dogs and recognized we wanted to enter the feline supplement space. Using our expertise on dog supplements, we quickly launched our cat line of products and couldn’t wait to hear what our feline parents thought! It turns out that cats are a lot pickier than dogs and the factors that made our dog supplements delicious didn’t directly translate to cats’ picky palate. Thanks to our amazing Customer Care team, and learning from our social media followers, we gathered feedback right away and pivoted to a reformulation with better results on palatability. This was a lesson for me on not taking certain market tests for granted and on investing more time on the front end of a project when we are entering new categories or in this case seeking to appeal to new fur friends.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

One life lesson quote that resonates with me is “Put people at the center of all you do: your customers and employees will see it and drive your success.” I’m a big believer in our value of “Collaboration,” working as one team, and Zesty Paws’ strong and growing leadership team and our team members are what drives the company’s success and innovation every day. As a CEO, I often found myself trying to solve problems on my own without asking for help from others…only to later realize that the secret to success was getting input from our consumers and help of other team members. Our team is our most valuable resource.

Ok super. Thank you for all of that. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. Can you tell us a story about how you were able to build a business from scratch, scale and sell it to a bigger firm?

Zesty Paws was founded by entrepreneur A.J. Patel as a digitally native, online only company with a disruptive form factor and vibrant brand. I came on board to Zesty Paws in 2019 with the vision of expanding Zesty Paws from online to an omni channel brand, available wherever pet parents shop for their pets. By bringing the right talent and team onboard, and implementing EOS across all levels of the organization, we started seeing traction across the board: from retail expansion incremental to our online business, to building tremendous brand awareness through careful consumer segmentation and messaging, to strengthening our operations and logistics, and to putting financial disciplines in place. As a result, in only 18 months we gained full national distribution at PetSmart with over 17 SKUs and in most stores with double and triple placements; we expanded our Target store presence and assortment and continue to make inroads in both brick and mortar and online retailers that are focused on pet wellness. Our recent acquisition by the international health and nutrition company H&H Group was a pivotal moment in the brand’s evolution and a testament to the amazing work of each and every member of the Zesty Paws team. We are excited about the proven platform for International expansion that H&H brings and are thrilled to share that, starting in November of 2021 Zesty Paws will be available in Canada, launching in partnership with PetSmart.

Based on your experience, can you share with our readers the “Five Things You Need To Know If You Want To Build, Scale and Prepare Your Business For a Lucrative Exit”. Please give a story or example for each.

It all starts with the People. Recognize early what skills, experience, and talents you’ll need in the team to bring the vision to reality. Establish your values and build a team that will honor them

We established our values early on: collaboration, growth mindset, bias for action, inquisitive, and kindness and use then as a guide to attract talent that fosters these values throughout the organization

Set an ambitious Mission and work with focus every day on the top 3–5 strategies that really move the business towards realizing that mission. Focus drives traction.

When I joined Zesty Paws the mission of being the world leader in health and wellness for dogs and cats seemed very lofty. With incredible focus on key initiatives, and an amazing team we are launching internationally 2 years later and have found a parent company with solid international experience that can take Zesty Paws a step closer to world leadership.

Lead with humility. Surround yourself with a talented team and make it your job as a CEO to empower them to make the right decisions.

Establishing a strong senior leadership team was one of my first objectives when I joined Zesty Paws. We selected each individual based on their proven experience, unique talents, and ability to form and lead a successful team. I learn from each one of them on a daily basis and work on removing obstacles and fostering a growth environment around their strategies and teams.

Understand the importance of recognizing both successes and failures, and pivot accordingly. High growth companies are constantly faced with unknown challenges and opportunities, and it is equally important to dive into those new opportunities as it is to know when to kill a project or strategy that simply doesn’t work, in favor of focusing resources on what really matters.

At Zesty Paws, we believe in testing and scaling. Sometimes the products and strategies we test end up failing. This allows us to stop working on dead-end projects and to refocus our energy and resources on products and projects with more powerful outcomes.

Remember to recognize and celebrate. Start-ups and high-growth companies are driven by small teams and hard work. Recognizing the value and contributions of each team member at every level, and providing growth opportunities for all, keeps motivation going. Celebrating small and big accomplishments, as well as personal moments of our team members, is a constant at Zesty Paws and brings us closer as a team.

In your experience, is there a difference in approach for building a service based business versus a product based business when you have the intent to eventually sell the business. Can you explain?

I don’t have extensive experience with service based businesses, but I do think product based businesses can scale more efficiently. If you’re running a service-based business like dog grooming or boarding, I have to believe the unit economics require more capital and more time to optimize, whereas in a product based business like Zesty Paws, we were able to profitably test and rapidly iterate our products on Amazon, and once we found out what worked, grow exponentially from there give the scalability of selling products on ecommerce platforms.

How does one go about the process of finding a buyer?

When you start or join a company early on, it’s critical to set your vision, mission and values, which will guide the decisions of the whole team. At the point of selling the company, finding a buyer with a shared vision makes a big difference. Engaging a strong investment banking firm is key to finding the right buyer given their network, expertise, and experience in guiding companies through the process. It is important to talk with a few investment banks to see who is the right fit and who has the relevant experience with potential buyers for companies in your industry. Start the process of talking to banks early so that you can get a good feel for them and not have to make a rushed decision when you’re ready to sell.

How can one decide if it is better to build a business in order to exit, or if it is better to stick around for the long term and let the company bring in residual income, or if it is better to go public?

All of those avenues are great outcomes and whether one is more appropriate for one company versus another is particular to each organization. What is a constant regardless of the ultimate exit strategy, is the importance of building a strong brand and a thriving team that works together around a common vision.

Can you share a few ways that are used to determine a good selling price for the business?

There are a number of ways to determine the market value of a business but ultimately, it’ll be different and unique for each business. I have found that a strong and well defined brand, healthy margins, innovative and disruptive pipeline of new products, exciting growth prospects, and a talented and collaborative team will allow you to reach a higher value for your business every time. Buyers are acquiring both the current status of the company and the opportunity they see ahead for the brand, and sophisticated buyers know the role that brand strength, innovation, and a great team play in realizing the company’s full potential.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

If I could inspire a movement, it would be for everyone to live a healthy and active lifestyle. Living in Colorado, I dedicate a lot of my free time to hiking, biking, skiing, camping, and being outdoors. I believe everyone should take a moment out of their busy lifestyle to do something active outside to better themselves and reconnect with nature.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

Readers can follow me on my Linkedin page (https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-ball-6ba166/) or follow Zesty Paws on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/zestypaws ).

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.