MALK Organics CEO Jason Bronstad on Simplicity, Purpose, and Building Teams that Deliver

[00:00:00] Roy Notowitz: :Hello and welcome to How I Hire, the podcast that taps directly into the best executive hiring advice and insights. I'm Roy Notowitz, founder and CEO of Noto Group Executive Search. You can learn more about us at NotoGroup.com.

As a go-to firm for purpose-driven companies, we've been lucky to work with some of the world's most inspiring leaders as they've tackled the challenge of building high performance leadership teams. Now I'm sitting down with some of these very people to spark a conversation about how to achieve success in hiring and create purposeful leadership for the next generation of companies. Jason Bronstad is the CEO of MALK Organics, a clean label, plant-based milk and creamer brand that's nationally distributed and likely in your refrigerator right now.

He joins me on the podcast to talk about values-driven hiring, shaping culture, keeping it simple and more. Jason's career began at Sara Lee, and from there he established a track record of scaling food and beverage brands. Jason served as the VP of sales at Mike's Hard Lemonade and the president of Mighty Swell Cocktail Company before joining MALK Organics in 2020 as CEO.

Jason, thanks so much for joining me. It's great to have you here.

[00:01:21] Jason Bronstad: Roy, it's an honor to have the opportunity to have a conversation with you.

[00:01:25] Roy Notowitz: Let's dive right in and maybe you can sort of take us back to the beginning of your career and what sparked your interest in the industry and you know, how did that evolve into the career that you've built?

[00:01:40] Jason Bronstad: Wow. Boy, I can go back generations on this one. I share the story that when my family immigrated from Norway in the late 1800s, they settled in a small central Texas town and my great, great grandfather opened a general store, and I like to say I've been in the consumer packaged goods industry for generations, although like most things you fight against trying not to do what the family's done before.

Ended up going to University of Texas-- hook 'em horns-- graduated there with a finance degree and I ended up going to Crossmark, so I jumped into a management training program at Crossmark, which was a phenomenal starting point for my career, getting exposed to a lot of brands, understanding the industry better for someone coming out with a finance degree, right?

I love numbers and what I've found is I love engaging with people in this business. I transitioned over to Sara Lee food and beverage, and I had an incredible opportunity to grow through that organization between managing brokers, calling on key accounts. During that timeframe, moved from Dallas to Denver, Denver to Chicago.

Working at various functions within Sara Lee. Then at one point, I was in my late twenties, I got a call from an old boss who said, "you want to move home to Texas to sell alcohol?" I'm like, "yes." Didn't know the brand at all. It happened to be Mike's Hard Lemonade. So I ended up running through a career there and ended up moving back to Chicago again as a head of sales for Mike's Hard Lemonade.

You know, my heart is always pulled back to Texas as a fifth generation Texan. My kids are sixth generation Texans. Moved back in '16, ran a beverage startup for a couple years, then transitioned over to a frozen food manufacturer under the Sovos banner of Michael Angelo's. And then October of 2020, I was given the chance to step in and start working as a consultant with MALK Organics. And it's been a fun run over the last five years.

[00:03:30] Roy Notowitz: It's an incredible product and big fan of the brand. So thanks for all the work that you and your team are doing over there at MALK for sure. So, what a story. So when you reflect on your career and leadership journey and the work you've done developing leaders around you, what core beliefs, values, or guiding truths have become part of your leadership playbook?

[00:03:54] Jason Bronstad: You know, there's been three things that I've always leaned on. It's interpersonal communication, analytical ability, and passion. And those three really are, I believe, the absolute keys to success. And I, I've told people from, you know, going back to 20 years ago, I can teach you two of those. I can teach you how to communicate and I can teach you how to analyze data, but you can't teach passion. It's got to come from within.

[00:04:23] Roy Notowitz: That's true. How does that show up in the work or within the leadership team?

[00:04:28] Jason Bronstad: The passion of identifying opportunities and going and creating solutions, it's pretty easy to step into, especially bigger companies, and just be a cog in the wheel. And you know, it's monotonous and people get bored and tired because they're not creating the next opportunity.

They're not saying, I see a challenge there. I see an opportunity and let's go attack it. One of my favorite ones, and I was reminded of it just a few weeks ago: when I was at Sara Lee, so this would've been circa 2009, and I was working on the Jimmy Dean brand. We had discontinued Jimmy Dean Bacon, which was a staple in the southeast.

And we fought aggressively to bring it back to life. And some 16 years later, it's still on the shelf because there was a group of salespeople that, you know, they rallied me and said, "Hey, we need you to be our internal voice. Let's go make this happen." And we did. Because we weren't going to sit idly by. And it's really at the end of the day, what can we deliver that consumers want and need?

Today, consumers need clean, simple ingredient products, and there's such a beautiful momentum across all categories that people are going there. You know, I was fortunate enough to be able to step into a leadership role here at MALK where it had been the ethos of this brand for five years before I ever stepped in, and I was given the, the responsibility to continue to do that and carry it forward.

[00:05:57] Roy Notowitz: So let's talk about that and the connection to the mission. Obviously, you know, it in a brand like MALK is, is prevalent. So how have you experienced that? What's that been like? How is that different than selling alcohol or something like that?

[00:06:11] Jason Bronstad: It's fascinating. You know, ironically, I, I stepped away from consuming alcohol over two years ago now. At the end of the day, as I stepped into this journey with MALK, I was stepping into my own health and wellness journey, which allowed me to actually be connected and aware of what consumers were looking for, and to be able to connect with the desires of our consumers and to be able to help translate that and to be able to truly listen to what they were looking for has helped us in our journey to not only bring in the right people to support the growth, but also to make the adjustments and adaptations that we've needed to make to dial things in. Consumers have talked to us. When we launched our chocolate SKUs, we launched both an oat chocolate and an almond chocolate.

We launched with four grams of sugar and consumers came back and was like, "Hey, it's, it's too tart. Like it's not sweet enough. Chocolate should be sweet." So guess what we did? We reformulated, we took the almond up to eight grams of sugar and we discontinued the oat chocolate because it just wasn't meeting their needs.

[00:07:19] Roy Notowitz: When you think about just the team and motivation for the team, you know, how do they connect with the mission?

[00:07:26] Jason Bronstad: Our mission is clear that our positioning is to deliver the cleanest, organic, plant-based products available, and they have to taste amazing, and that's really hard when you have just three, four, or five ingredients to make it taste really good.

You have very few dials to turn. I understand it must taste good to be adapted into somebody's routine.

[00:07:50] Roy Notowitz: It's funny how simplicity by design is actually really hard to achieve. So, and that's true across all of the consumer segments that we work in, whether it's apparel or food and beverage or personal care and things like that.

[00:08:02] Jason Bronstad: One of my favorite axioms is: what we do is simple, but never confuse simple with easy.

[00:08:08] Roy Notowitz: Yeah, a hundred percent. What role has talent played in growing brands or turning brands around and, and what's the biggest lessons that you've learned around hiring and, and building teams along the way?

[00:08:22] Jason Bronstad: You know, I've been very fortunate with the board of directors I partner with here at MALK, and we have always hired at least 9 to 12 months in advance of the specific need so that those people are up going and performing at the level that we need to when we need it. So that has been a huge benefit in our ability to continue to accelerate our growth.

[00:08:50] Roy Notowitz: Yeah, so it's like hiring ahead of the curve basically, is what I would call that.

[00:08:54] Jason Bronstad: Yeah. You have to hire ahead of the curve, and at the same time you also have to have a, a talent review process that when it's time to make a change, you've got to be willing to make it. And as a, as a heart driven leader, that is one of the hardest things to do.

[00:09:12] Roy Notowitz: Yeah, absolutely. It is tough to make those decisions. How do you determine whether or not somebody could benefit from maybe some development, leadership development or skill development, versus maybe finding a different role for them within the organization or helping them find a role outside the organization? What are the different types of filters that you use to determine the potential and whether or not somebody's a fit within a role?

[00:09:40] Jason Bronstad: We, we've continued to iterate on this, and I don't think there's a perfect answer. A few years ago we rolled out, you know, just a few questions.

Are they delivering results? Are they a culture fit? And would I enthusiastically rehire them today? And when you start to ask those pointed questions and you're in a room with leadership, and if there's hesitation, why did you hesitate? Why wouldn't you hire them enthusiastically today? And as we continue to evolve, we want to make sure that their, our reviews are integrated with how are they performing versus their specific KPIs? How are they at upholding our company core values?

We want to continue to evolve as we grow because what we needed two years ago is very different than what we need two years from now.

[00:10:36] Roy Notowitz: A lot of people ask me, what exactly do you do at Noto Group? We partner with entrepreneurs, founders, executives, investors, and boards to help them build high performance leadership teams that excel and endure. We've had the privilege of working with more than 250 leading brands, from early stage innovators to global icons, and we've placed hundreds of executives along the way. As a certified B Corp since 2013 and proud 1% for the Planet member, it always starts with your mission and values and finding leaders who can bring those to life. If you're curious, you can find out more by visiting our website, NotoGroup.com. Thanks, and now let's get back to our episode.

So looking back on the teams that you've built, and you've built several now over the years, what have made certain hires truly game changing, or what patterns or instincts have guided you as you think about some of those high performing leaders that you've been able to attract?

[00:11:41] Jason Bronstad: You know, it's understanding who they are at their heart, right? You know, there's always the metrics: "I've achieved this, I've achieved that." But through just good, honest conversations and interviews, you start to get to the root of who a human is. I want to understand when they're faced with challenges, how do they react? Are they going to shut down or are they going to double down and engage and lean in?

I've hired both types and I've seen the impact of when that person shuts down the negative impact that it has, not only within that department, but cross-functionally. And I've also seen the opposite, when you bring in someone that says, "Hey, we got a problem. I'm going to own this and I'm going to need you, you, you and you looking at other departments to step into this journey with me."

There was no direction for me to do that. They just knew it was the right thing to do, so they stepped in and that's where you have this multiplying effect because the organization, when you make changes --and people changes always disrupt the culture. always have the risk to disrupt the culture but when you start to build the repetitive nature of, yes, we made some changes in this department, and then 3, 6, 9, 12 months later, you start to see a significant elevation in the results. It goes, "Okay, I get it. I trust this leadership team to make these changes. They see things that we don't, and to that point, we've got to be transparent and have the, you know, the open conversations with the team when we do make changes."

One of my favorite things, and I've always worked to stay connected with our team, is to have one-to-ones, you know, all the way down at the individual contributor level, all the way through my direct reports. And I used to have the questions in this order, what are some dreams wins? So what are you personally excited about?

What are some work wins? What are questions that you have for me? And then where is work friction? And, and the fatal mistake I made is we didn't always get to number four. So we didn't address the work friction. So as I've rebooted these one-to-ones just a few months ago, we're leading with where is there work friction?

And to give, you know, people in a one-to-one environment the opportunity to say, "you know what, I'm struggling with this." It has opened up the communication flow and we're moving faster to resolve challenges.

[00:14:03] Roy Notowitz: You can't really ask those questions unless you're willing to take action towards those too. That's really amazing. So what traits or behaviors or competencies do you most value in your direct reports?

[00:14:16] Jason Bronstad: Radical transparency. You know, that is the single must have with any executive team. And a collaborative heart. They've got to be willing to work cross functionally because there is no one department that will take us to the growth and the size that we aspire to get to. We must work together. 15 years ago, I did everything I could to avoid conflict. It's like, "oh, I'm the peacekeeper. No, no, no. We don't need -- I'll take care of that." And we're massaging the tough issues. Instead of going, "oh, no, no, we got a problem. Let's hash it out. Let's have this real conversation right now. Let's understand your point of view, your point of view, the why behind it, and let's lean in so we can find a way that we can move forward together."

Because if there's conflict-- and I've let conflict fester for too long, honestly, too many times. So now how can we lean into this conflict and make us all better? And once we align as an executive team, we move forward as one and not a, "well, we're going to do this because the sales team wants it." Or, "can y'all believe operations did this? Or, "you know how much money marketing's spending?"

You know, those are all not real examples, but you can imagine that in any company there's going to be that cross-departmental tug. But when the executives for each one of those departments are walking out aligned, the power of that unity, it's a beautiful thing.

[00:15:43] Roy Notowitz: I like transparency. That's a good one. So how do you assess whether someone's the right cultural fit?

[00:15:50] Jason Bronstad: You know, I failed more times on building culture than I've succeeded, so I, I like to say that my experience is my teacher, and I've found that every culture that I've had the opportunity to build is different because there's so much of it that is industry aligned.

So I think there's just an inherent different culture in a beverage alcohol company than there is in a plant-based milk company. And it's being open as a leader to say, what worked over there isn't going to work over here. If I look back at the way I was trying to build culture, and it was through a dogma of delivering results only, and if results weren't delivered well, you are a persona non grata, and I didn't have patience for anything except delivering results.

So I thought that culture was built through success of sales because I came through the sales side of the organization, and that's an easy, trackable deliverable. Instead of understanding how truly being at the heart center and understanding what moves, motivates and inspires people and leading from that point versus just the dogma of "go deliver this result." It changes everything.

[00:17:11] Roy Notowitz: I love that. That's such a great insight and it's true. Purpose and mission have become so central.

[00:17:17] Jason Bronstad: I want to give a shout out to a buddy of mine, a friend here in Austin, Chris Hall, the CEO of Poppi.

[00:17:23] Roy Notowitz: Oh yeah.

[00:17:24] Jason Bronstad: I had the opportunity to have coffee with him a couple years ago, and as I continue to to watch his journey and his success, I love how every time that they do something unique and special, he's right there with a smile on his face. Now he's on the front line. Be it a, a campus tour, and it's just a reminder for leaders that you need to be present at the front line. Anything that you ask your team to do as a leader, you need to be ready to do yourself so you at least have an understanding of what it is they're doing.

[00:17:56] Roy Notowitz: Yeah, that, that's great. It's so helpful to surround yourself as a leader with a community of other leaders and entrepreneurs. So what part of the MALK culture makes you most proud?

[00:18:08] Jason Bronstad: As a heart-centered leader, I watch when people lift and support each other up. We follow a dreams win approach and it means that we are here working and giving our all professionally to MALK Organics. But we're doing that for other reasons. We're doing that because we want to do things with our partners. We want to do things with our kids, we want to do things for our family. And we call those, they're not bucket list items 'cause there's such a mortal dynamic to it. This is like, what lights you up? What inspires you? What dreams do you have? And then how can we help you do that?

[00:18:44] Roy Notowitz: Yeah.

[00:18:45] Jason Bronstad: And it's not just about, you know, the 40 to 45 employees that we have here at MALK. We touch 120 plus family members as you start to add children and partners and spouses into the mix. So, you know, we're impacting a lot of lives, and I love that we've seen team members take those dreams to their families. So what are the little things that we can do as an organization that can help you achieve those?

[00:19:10] Roy Notowitz: Yeah, I love it. So are there any quirky or unexpected traditions that your team has or anything that makes you laugh?

[00:19:19] Jason Bronstad: You know, we give her the title of Minister of Culture, our Head of Sales, Heather does a really amazing job quarterly of bringing us together for quarterly happy hours, and we're a virtual company.

[00:19:30] Roy Notowitz: Oh, that's cool.

[00:19:30] Jason Bronstad: So she finds unique ways for us to be able to gather, be it trivia, I think Caboodle is the name of one of them that she does. So she finds unique ways for us to engage in a non-traditional format. So it's an hour and a half a quarter that we get on a, on a Zoom call. It's like, "Hey, we're just going to have fun with each other for a little bit."

And you know, I would love to say that quarterly we all meet up, but that's not a reality with the size that we are. But we do meet up annually every December as we think about wrapping up the year and projecting into the next year. That's a super important one. This will be our fourth year this year of doing that. Our first one, we had eight. We'll have 40 at this one. So it, it's fun to continue to watch it grow and evolve into where we're going.

[00:20:15] Roy Notowitz: That's awesome. So what's your definition of success and how has that evolved over the course of your career?

[00:20:22] Jason Bronstad: Success early in my career was all about titles and paychecks.

As I think about success today, personally, it's the ability to make an impact and to prioritize time with my family. To me, that is success. That is richness in my soul because I won't let anything bump into that. It's about the future. It's about showing your kids what matters. I know my parents were always at my sports games, and I will not let my career ruin my relationship with my children.

[00:21:01] Roy Notowitz: Yeah, you've got to enjoy every moment. What advice do you have for the next generation of CPG leaders, people who are coming up through the ranks right now?

[00:21:11] Jason Bronstad: I would say that 10 to 15 years ago everybody was all about what's the next giant brand? And instead of building to transact a brand, build a brand for the right reasons that are meeting consumer needs and is a sustainable business. You used to watch investor money get lit on fire for growth. I'm very proud that as of last year, MALK has transitioned into profitability after eight years of losing money, that's a long time of leveraging our investors' capital. Now we are building the brand for sustainability and growth to last a lifetime, not to be a one hit wonder.

[00:21:55] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. So what are you most excited about as you ponder the future and, and what's next for you?

[00:22:03] Jason Bronstad: What I'm excited about is what the sales team has accomplished to date. You know, five years ago we were in around 1,250 stores. Right now we're sitting at around 15,000 stores. And there are 67,000 stores that sell plant-based milk in America.

[00:22:21] Roy Notowitz: Okay. Opportunity right there.

[00:22:24] Jason Bronstad: So we have a brand that resonates with what consumers are looking for, and we've got a runway to go meet that demand, and that's our mission. You know, anywhere that a consumer is shopping for plant-based milk, they should have the opportunity for an organic, clean, simple brand in MALK.

With that, it's continuing to lead this organization with compassion. So whenever my time here is done, that what we stand for won't change because the leaders in the organization. will continue to march forward and deliver the simple promise of a great tasting, clean, simple ingredient organic product.

[00:23:04] Roy Notowitz: That's awesome. Well, thank you so much for taking time to, to share about your leadership philosophy, and I've enjoyed getting to know you over the last few years and look forward to continuing this conversation.

[00:23:17] Jason Bronstad: Absolutely Roy, thank you. Thank you for what you do and your assistance to building great organizations. It, it's a testament to who you are and understanding the most important part of any business, and that's the people. So appreciate your mission to continue to help build great companies.

[00:23:34] Roy Notowitz: Yeah, it's been a passion and as you know, building leadership teams that excel and endure is not an easy thing. And then connecting that to purpose and mission is a whole other level. So I feel really fortunate that we've been able to intersect all of those things and I'm a huge fan of you and your product. So thank you again so much for being on the podcast.

[00:23:57] Jason Bronstad: Thank you so much, Roy.

[00:24:00] Roy Notowitz: Thanks for tuning in to How I Hire. Visit HowIHire.com for details about the show. How I Hire is created by Noto Group Executive Search. To find out more about us, visit NotoGroup.com. There, you can sign up for our monthly email job alert newsletter and find additional job search strategy resources, as well as more content on hiring. This podcast was produced by Anna McClain. To learn more about her and her team's work, visit AOMcClain.com.

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