Ep. 1: Rotten · Michael Fisher on Cease & Desist Letters, TikTok Shop Success, & Executive Coaching

Welcome to the Long Isle, where we go behind the scenes with the founders and operators building CPG brands for the long haul, exploring how they think, how they live, and what keeps them going. My name is Lucas Balisi, and today my guest is Michael Fisher, founder and CEO of Rotten, a better for you gummy brand with 60% less sugar that looks like a crawled out of a 90s Nickelodeon fever dream. He built it from his kitchen with zero food science background, and has since expanded into retailers like Sprouts, Safeway and Zoomies. In this conversation we talked about what it felt like to get a season to assist letter from Ferrara, makers of nerds, and how he navigated that moment. The shift from running solo to building out a leadership team, trying to keep his physical health in check, and how hiring an executive coach was a game changer, or as he calls it therapy, except you just talk about work. And how is guilty pleasure for the real housewives has become the one thing that turns his brain off. I don't want to give away too much more goodies from this episode, but I had a lot of fun chatting with Michael, and I hope you enjoy it. Michael, amazing to have you on the show, man. I think it was New York fancy food show. I saw the booth. I guess were you there? Yeah, yeah, I was there. Okay, so it was you. I was like, the show was closing down. I found you guys. And I was like, okay, I'm taking every one of these samples. Yeah, and we were probably like, take them. Yes, you are. You truly were. And I had one walking and I was like, oh my god, this is incredible. And then I think it has gone down as like the best thing I've ever brought home from a food show for my wife. She's also a huge fan. But you came into this with no food science background, no team. I know you're doing this solo for a long time. I got asked, what made you think you could do this? Delusion. No, I think it's a, I think it's a good question. I mean, I think that's what entrepreneurship is though, is just a belief that you can do it or in that all of the things you don't know, you are capable of learning quickly and figuring out how to do. Even if I came into this company with CPG experience, I would still be faced with so many moments of having no experience in the exact issue we were facing or being in a different phase of the business than I had ever been in before. Like there was always going to be this newness factor. And so I try and, I try and feel confident in my ability to learn things that I don't know. And that's, I think, what kind of drives it forward. Yeah, I mean, there is some, you brought CPG experience and I think there's something to be said also of digging into something without thinking, oh, I've done this. There's a playbook and sometimes that's true, but to your point, not knowing maybe is also just, you're like, cool, I got to figure this out. Totally. Yeah, like you don't, I think also, I think people talk a lot about like, oh, when you are new to something, you don't necessarily follow the path that everyone else does and that can be really helpful. And I think that's true, but I actually think an even bigger piece of it for me and Rodins journey has been like it makes me ask so many questions. And so even if we're going down the same paths that everyone else is, because it's new to me and I, everyone knows it's new to me, like I just get to ask a lot of more questions about how work or why they work that way or why we're paying X for something. And I think it leads to different outcomes when you just ask a lot of questions. Yeah, I heard you talk about this idea of chasing symbols of success and avoiding that trap versus just thinking about fundamentals. What does that look like for you in practice? Yeah, I think a big piece of that, I mean, is honestly just core to our brand. We have a natural product with a brand and aesthetic very far from the norm in the natural products industry. And for a long time with Rodin, I didn't necessarily feel like the people in that industry were excited about what we were doing or loved it because we didn't look like the products, I mean, they were wanting to buy or that they were creating themselves. So I think, and a lot of the things that exist for early stage startups to get validation or whatever that looks like are coming from the natural products industry. And so I think had to feel comfortable knowing that if we're not getting those things, that's okay. That's not, I don't only want to build a product for the natural product space. We were in sprouts and sprouts is an incredible partner and I love sprouts and we're going to keep growing and investing in sprouts. But like I don't only want to live in that world. Like I want to build something that can appeal to a lot of different people. Yeah, I mean, there's something special about what I find to be pretty cool about what you guys are doing is there's a type of person out there who has not. That sought out better for you options. They just eat what they like because they probably aren't connecting with those brands. And then you guys show up and now they're like, this is sick. Let me try. And then it's like, oh, what's the situation going on here? It's something that you then want to, you already want to share with your friends, but then there's this kind of the nutrition facts that maybe they hadn't paid attention to. It's like the other part of this story, which is super exciting to me. It's funny. I did get this sprouts though. I have got a couple in front of me. Yeah, I remember. There was like a two for something special. I was like, I'm grabbing two of those today. But was that a big, yeah, tell me more about the choice. I think it's called gross out culture, which is, yeah, I didn't. I found that term getting ready for this show and I was like, that is so sick. But tell me about, was that part of it in taking this bet and taking this journey into this better-fue product that just doesn't look anything like what you'd expect? Yeah. I mean, like to kind of go into a little what you were talking about and then I can get to the gross out piece. I think a really important thing I did when designing the product and the brand was like, think about the purchasing drivers for our consumer in order of how I wanted them to happen. Like, I knew there were a lot of products out there on the market, our competitors, where very clearly the way they were positioned is they were thinking that their consumer, the main purchasing driver was the fact that it was better for you or it had some nutritional attribute, like the fact that it had three grams of sugar in the bag. Like they wanted that to be the main reason you bought it. And I think really importantly for us was deciding that like, hey, number one, I want someone to look at it and think that looks like it's going to be delicious. Like I want your perception of taste and the product experience to be number one. And I want number two to be like, that looks really cool, that packaging is awesome, that art is sick. And then I want number three to be like, oh, wow, it's also better for me. Like I feel physically better after eating it. I feel mentally better. And like that kind of like helped guide a lot of the decisions we made with the product because it's like, great, what do we want to prioritize as a company and what do we want the customer to be thinking about when they look at our product? So a lot of that defined, great, that means like we want a brand and we want packaging that don't lean super heavily into the health and kind of just product attributes. And so started working with an artist here in LA and looking at a bunch of references and kind of like trying to determine the vibe of the brand and ultimately found this like world of 80s, 90s gross out culture and references like garbage pill kids and creepy crawlers, Dr. Dreadful, a ton of old Nickelodeon. And it was just like this. Just like Nickelodeon nightmare is like a, it's awesome. Yeah. It felt like discovering that just felt perfect because one, it was like, whoa, this is different. I don't really see much out there today that has this look, has this aesthetic of this feel to there was a whole world of references for us to pull from creatively. So like there was just so much inspiration for us in that kind of gross out world. And then three is, well, it just feels incredibly nostalgic for millennials and millennials are a core customer group for us. And so it just kind of like hit on a lot of stuff for us and that kind of made it the perfect. like reference area for us to build the brand on top of. - Yeah, you know, I love that 'cause I've always been into gummies and I can remember eating tire bags of trolley gummy worms and my gums, just like the sugar does wrecking my mouth, peeling. I mean, it's like crazy. Anybody who's into the, you gotta know what I'm talking about. But the place that you pick these up are like before movies, you know, that's like you run into like a CVS or Walgreens or something, you grab a bag of candy, you sneak it into the movie or you grab it out the movies. And then I went to the transition of like the Black Forest gummies, which I was like, it's just healthier, still decent. But it's so not cool. Like I'm the, you know, like when you're with friends going to see movie, I loved them broken for a long time. We go see movies, you're like at the store and then it's like, I'm gonna get these and it's like, yeah, this is like cool to you. Yeah, really? - Yeah, really? - So I love that and I think, you know, I got a tote at that show, which I wear and love when people ask me about it. But what's cool is it is like a, there is a, like when you can take a brand and you see like a merchandise opportunity, I think that's a sign that you're building something special just from an aesthetic perspective, which I think is super cool, like t-shirts. I don't know if you guys have them, but like totally can see awesome t-shirts and stickers and all this stuff that people are just like, I just want to show this to people, which is great. But so you're growing this thing and maybe like the, I'm sure you've seen a lot of milestones and compliments, but maybe the best one is Ferrera sending you that season to assist. Well, that was last January. I think, or at least that's when I saw, it earned you some fast company coverage I saw. The wacky woman man candy brand is taking on nerds is what that, yeah, it happened. Yeah, I think in the like second half of 2024 actually. Okay, so tell us about that. What did that look like? I mean, yeah, I mean, I, of course, the thought crossed my mind when I had those crunchies and I've told anyone, I'm like, it's like a nerd rope in a circle, but better. So yeah, how did that all go down? What were you thinking about when you opened, whatever communication you got? I'm sure all kinds of thoughts are going through your head. Yeah, it was a very scary moment for sure. We had actually just come out of our first big trade show that we'd ever done, Sweetson Snacks. So that was in May of 2024 and we were working on our gummy crunchies product at the time and we had like a flyer. We didn't have samples of it yet, but we had a flyer shown at that show and we were showing customers kind of a new product that we were coming out with and ended up leaving that show and later on that year getting the season-dissessed letter from them. So I think a mixture of holy crap, this is really scary to get and also maybe in the back of my head, like, whoa, they, someone there knows who we are. That feels like- - And they threatened. - Yeah, yeah, and they're threatened and that feels like I guess in a weird way, a cool moment for us, but I think particularly coming for a product we hadn't even launched yet and we didn't kind of know what the reception was going to be and all of that was still playing out. It was definitely scary of this moment of like, oh, wow, are we ever, even gonna be able to bring this product to market? But obviously that was in the case. We were able to launch and have launched our product and worked through that issue, but it was quite scary. And I think as a startup, I at least underestimated the amount that legal can play a role in building a company and how expensive it can be and you're dealing with competitors that are oftentimes much larger than you. And then you're also dealing with a whole slew of new like consumer complaints that come out against companies or it's for ADA claims or marketing claims on your packaging or all these new things. And so I definitely kind of underestimated how prevalent that can be. Yeah. So at the time, you're running the show by yourself, correct? Yeah. Had you built a circle or a network of people, like who do you call in that moment? There's gotta be somebody you're like, this just happened, I have no idea what to do. Yeah. Having advisors has been like the best game-changing decision I ever could have made from day one with Rotten. I was like I said, newly industry, so it was just trying to learn quickly and I was out there reaching out to whoever I could that had any knowledge or experience and chatting with them and as relationships developed, oftentimes formalizing that and bringing them on as advisors. And then we would meet regularly and discuss things and those people were really helpful for issues like this. I think we had really good legal counsel that was also helpful. But to some degree, there's just still the unknown. Like even people who have been in experience like this before, you don't know how the other party who sent you that letter, how they're gonna react or what their next moves are gonna be or anything like that. So it's definitely a stressful situation. Is there any routines or practices that you have that kind of keep you grounded day to day? 'Cause this, I can relate, not quite that, but things can come out of nowhere. Your day can go from riding high to the lowest of lows in minutes. So what does that look like for you? Is there any kind of grounding routine or thing that you try to practice to just say, "Hey, today was a success regardless of anything else going on?" Yeah. Getting an executive coach has made a world of difference in that sense. I think the mental game of it, like the highs and the lows and trying to remain positive and confident about this thing you need to be building when all this is happening is really challenging. And I think, I waited to bring on an executive coach until we had a team and I was managing people and dealing with that new layer of things. But I think even bringing someone on earlier would have been amazing. And it truly is therapy except you just talk about work. Right. Yeah. And I've talked about life with mine. Like, you're all just one person just having to be doing this. But sometimes I'm like, "This is going on." And just got to tell you where I'm at mentally, you know? Yeah. And I mean, that's the thing about business and starting a business and all of that is your mental state and how you react to things is in some ways everything. Because again, you're going to be in new situations where the answer isn't clear. And so you need to be in the best place you can be to tackle that issue. And so it is therapy, like completely. And therapy gets, you know, I think it's changed over the last like 10 years. Let's call it. But I think everyone needs some level of therapy. Let's just be real. So that's awesome. Is there like a typical day at this point? And you're now, especially bringing other people on board, is there kind of a flow of events that's happening? What does that look like? Not completely. I am traveling a ton now, like more than ever before. Which is, in some ways, I enjoy it. Like, you know, I like going to the shows and conferences. I like going to our plants for trials and, you know, spending time with management and ownership there. And I like going and meeting our key customers for our reviews and, you know, being able to have a relationship with those buyers. So it's a lot of travel doing all of that. But I enjoy that. I think as our team has grown, I've been doing a lot of work trying to like figure out the best way for all of us and most efficient way for all of us to be working together because definitely like unchecked, I think, just a lot of meetings started getting added. So my usual day is like full just back-to-back meetings. And it's, as I like started this new year in 2026 and looked back and like, I don't love these days where like I can't get up from my laptop and I'm constantly on a video call. Definitely like thinking about ways to, change that dynamic because I guess going back to like needing to be in a good mental state to you know be making good decisions for your business like I want to I want to you know enjoy my days and enjoy the the building process and obviously there will be lots of times where it's not enjoyable but I think just generally and broadly like want to set myself up for success in that sense. Yeah I mean long-term right it's the things that happen today it's it can be harder to take back from later. What was that? So you said earlier when we were chatting it's a team of six leadership folks or team of six. Yeah. How how quickly did that happen and like go from one to six because that is talking about meetings. You're I'm just thinking about your life must have gone from like calling all the shots like I'll take this or I won't take this to like now you've got everybody like we've got to talk about things. Yeah we've got to have calls right. Yeah. Yeah. It's a it's a big change I think I mean it happened in a span of three months. Fairly quickly and I think I think the biggest part was like defining these defining meetings where we can come together as a group and problem solve to avoid a dynamic of like everyone needing to have a one-on-one with someone else in the company because then that just created so many meetings. Right that makes sense. What's something you're protecting in your life with all of this going on even when the business is pulling you away from it. Yeah I am trying to better protect my like physical health. I don't I don't know if you've ever like heard of or gotten one of those you know Dexa body scans where it tells you body composition but you know like like I said I'm pretty into being healthy and working out weightlifting and as part of building rotten I'd say particularly in the last year like I think I've gotten into a habit where work is so exhausting and takes so much from me that like at the end of the day I make very unhealthy food choices because that's like a comfort and release and so recently found out that was getting out of hand and so I'm definitely like clawing back finding I think other other ways to find comfort and kind of manage manage the work and and one of those is again like looking at how we're structuring our time and are there too many meetings like another is like I said just having an executive coach and like having an outlet to talk to some of these issues to someone about and then those kinds of things. Is there anything you believed when you started that you've completely abandoned at this point? I think I don't know if this is a complete answer to your question but I know like one thing that I totally underestimated was supply chain and it's just the most important thing like being able to scale your product as you're growing and improve the quality of the product and make it more efficiently and ensure that you have inventory of your product when you need it those are all really really hard complicated things and they're things that don't get any easier as you grow like they kind of like it's not like you know it's not like software where you know you build it and then it can just scale easily like this is like the grunt work of scaling is the supply chain and I most definitely underestimated how how difficult it was and I think also just how how important it is to invest in was there any setback or milestone that woke you up to we've got to focus on this or this is now number one in terms of priorities yeah I mean we spent like the second half of last year 2025 dealing with consistent out of stock issues we're dealing with quality issues like we'd product that's we can't sell and we're having to write off we're still dealing with some of that product now we ended up with hundreds of thousands of dollars over 200,000 dollars of gummy worms from our manufacturing partner that weren't manufactured to spec and they're super sticky and you know we weren't able to work with them on a resolution to that and so the product still tastes really good it's just really sticky to eat and so we actually have like spun up a whole TikTok shop campaign around that now where there's a product called mutated worms and it's you know heavily discounted because it's sticky and we make videos about that and amazing it's actually like blown up and it's opportunities every setback can be an opportunity exactly I mean I wouldn't say all of them have turned into opportunities this one we were able to but but I think like again like this this little thing of okay maybe we don't have the right manufacturing partner or we don't have the right oversight over them and then you end up with over 200,000 dollars worth of products and you're like what do I do with this like I can't just write this off that's too much money and so again like little supply chain mistakes they snowball into issues that will truly like shut your company down and so I think it's all all of these have been important learning experiences how much are you talking to customers I'm just thinking about that and people do people know to reach out and say there's an issue because they might never have had this product before so how much are you out there talking to customers learning you know not necessarily about a product issues but just what their reactions are with their loving yeah no it's a good question I mean we're out there all the time in a lot of different ways so every show that I go to we're sampling and I get to watch someone live eat our product I get to see them are they like struggling to open the bag like is our bag not open what's their reaction when they see it like what does what do all of these but what does the candy look like inside when they're opening all these bags so that's that's incredible I think you know we'll be demoing in some stores soon and that will be again more great experience to get customer feedback with our customer service we're frequently reviewing all the messages we're receiving from people how are those changing over time social listening tools that's another great one like we have a tool plugs into a Slack channel for us I get a message every single time our brand is messaged on TikTok or Instagram and I I look at every single one of them so that's I think another way for me to stay close to like how are people seeing and interacting with our product out there in the wild that's cool I mean that can be overwhelming at times I imagine I don't know how much that's feeding and disliking but I'm imagining what that could look like yeah it is I I have a I don't know at this point I have a high tolerance for just note case I can look at quick one and well that's all it takes with mistakes is or any that you've made that you're grateful for now I mean it's a it's a tough question right because in some ways every mistake we've made has you know let us to where we are now and has taught me an important lesson I don't know if there are any mistakes where I would honestly choose choose to have them whappling again they were all you know they were all really painful but but for sure I think you know how can you how can you grow how can you do anything and not make a lot of mistakes right like unless you're doing unless what you're doing is you know and I exact replica of something you've done before which just will never never be the case so I think I think the biggest thing is like trying to do my best to evaluate what happened that led to that mistake and learn from that and even trying to create that culture internally with our team around like small small misses when they happen because they're gonna happen like it's not the end of the world but let's make sure we do let's make sure we chat about how did that happen why did that happen and what are we gonna do differently next time so it doesn't happen again and holding our partners that we work with from manufacturing etc like to the same standard yeah feel that quite a bit when you're not thinking about rotten which might be never what what is life look like Yeah, I love skiing. So I'm actually, there is a big candy show that happens in Germany starting on Sunday. And so I'm actually heading a bit early later on this. I'm going to go to Shamanee in ski. It's like epic. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, very, very excited for that. I'd say the more regular thing is I have become very obsessed with or addicted to the real housewives, TV franchise. So that is like a sure fire away for me to turn my brain off from thinking about work and drama. Incredible. That's why we asked these questions here. Amazing. I got to ask how did that start? I'm not skiing. I could imagine. But yeah, I don't know. I think a friend just showed it to me. It's just like next episode. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's just snowballs from there. And I've never watched it. So I need to go give it that. I'm like afraid. Maybe I should it. I just don't know. Yeah, maybe you should stay away. There's a lot of seasons. But something you're currently under investing in that you know matters. I think we have under invested in social. Like a core thing when building the brand was like building a brand that could be like an entertainment brand for people. And a big part of that is making fun, entertaining content. And I think we've under invested in executing on that, which is changing right now. So hopefully we'll have some some exciting updates on that front, you know, later on this year. Yeah, it's going to use the word ripe, which feels somewhat appropriate. But it's ripe for that. The brand is ripe for that sort of thing. So I'm excited to see what you guys do with that. You're the first guests on this iteration of this podcast. And I want to close with a question that I'm going to try here with everybody 10 years from now. What do you hope those close to you say about how you how you spent this chapter? Yeah, I hope I hope they say. I think that I built the brand in a really thoughtful way. What does thoughtful mean to you? I think it means building the brand in a way to last. This isn't some chase to exit tomorrow. This is something that. Yeah, that's some sort of power. Even aside from an exit, like that the brand is built to be a lasting brand. And the way we're growing is a healthy, thoughtful way to grow the lasting brand. I don't know. There's a lot of things out there that feel like they've grown too quickly. Yeah, I say exit because it implies that somebody takes just quickly takes over and whatever happens happens. But of course the brand can be intact during that period. But you're just getting started. It's incredible. Yeah, we are. Anything else you want to share with folks who are listening, who maybe haven't had rotten or love rotten? Anything that's important to know? Yeah, I think one piece we didn't touch on really was product innovation. And that's really like core to how I want to continue developing and growing this brand is like I really do not want to have the exact same lineup of products as other better few brands. I don't want our next product to be another low sugar gummy bear. There's a lot of protein gummies. Come on out there. So I think it's important for us to be innovative with tastes and textures. And not even just bringing a better view aspect to something popular but truly innovating on the actual candy itself as we are just a candy brand. We're not a better for you candy brand or just a candy brand. Yeah, I love that. When you think about innovation, what's the process or mindset to make sure that that's happening? It's easy for it to not happen in any business, right? Especially if things are going well. Why try things? So how do you make sure that that's easy to say, but how do you make sure it actually happens? Yeah. Good question. I think we are at a point where we will start to build some sort of lightweight process around it. Like to be totally honest, the reason it happens now is because it's something I enjoy doing. I love it. It's how it gets a priority for you. So that's enough. It's a priority for me. I love the food science. It's just super interesting to me. I love the innovation. I like going to plants and trying to commercialize something and understanding how that all works. But I think to your point, I think it's important to find ways to ingrain those values in the company beyond just saying it's important to me. Michael, I appreciate you joining the show. Great chatting with you today. I'm sure I'll see you this year at some shows, but regardless, excited to watch you guys grow and crush it this year. Awesome. Thank you. It was really fun to chat with you. Appreciate it. Thanks for listening to The Long Isle. If you enjoyed this conversation, please consider following and rating us wherever you listen to your podcasts. It helps us continue having great conversations. And if you know a CPE founder or operator who'd be a great fit for the show, please send them my way. Until next time, keep building.