Building Trust and Wiring for Success: PawTree’s CEO on Leadership and Innovation
Roger Morgan, the visionary founder and CEO of pawTree, is redefining how pet products are sold with his innovative direct sales model. Inspired by serving a decade as CEO in the pet industry, Morgan witnessed the limitations of traditional retail and the impact of profit-driven decisions on pet well-being. Determined to create a better way, he launched pawTree in 2014, offering customized, premium pet nutrition while empowering independent pet professionals to build businesses through direct sales. Under his leadership, pawTree has grown into a trusted brand serving customers nationwide, combining cutting-edge pet care with a revolutionary approach to product distribution.
SSN: You had a successful career in traditional retail before pawTree. What led you to choose direct selling as your distribution model?
Roger Morgan: The transition was actually a big leap for me. Even growing up in Utah, I wasn’t very familiar with the direct selling industry. I was aware of MLM companies but could probably only name a couple of them and didn’t know anything about them.
Before I got into the pet industry, I was a management consultant for five years with Boston Consulting Group. One of the practices I learned there was looking at analogs from other industries when solving problems. If we were working on a healthcare challenge, we might look at automotive solutions and think about how to adapt them creatively.
That’s really what happened in my journey to starting pawTree. Through my experience in the pet space, meeting with many people and seeing consumer trends, I recognized there was an opportunity to do better for pets through better nutrition. People generally want to do the right thing for their pets, but most of the time they don’t know what that is. It’s a super complicated space—nobody is a health expert for their own health, let alone their animal’s health.
It would have been very easy for me to launch this product in traditional retail. I could call the head of merchandising for Walmart, and she would take my call. Same with the CEO of PetSmart or Petco, they were on my speed dial. But I was thinking long-term. What I know about pet consumers is that pet food is among the most brand-loyal of all consumer products. The good news if you sell pet food is once you get them, you’ve got them. The bad news, if you’re trying to establish a new brand, is how do you ever get them? They’re already loyal to something else.
Research shows there are two resources people will generally listen to when it comes to their pet: their vet, and friends/family, people they know and trust. Traditional marketing channels like end caps, advertisements, and circulars are a distant third, fourth, and fifth in effectiveness. For various reasons, I dismissed the vet channel as it was very fragmented and difficult to penetrate. So I focused on that second powerful influence: friends and family.
I started thinking about how I would launch this new brand and get people to share it with others. That led me to explore referral programs, and ultimately to the direct selling industry, a $40 billion industry just in this country alone. I called Mike Lohner, the chairman of Stella & Dot, who was the only person I knew who had spent his career in the space. He shared insights about direct selling margins, field operations, legalities, compensation plans, and introduced me to others in the industry.
The vision actually got bigger as I thought about making this an MLM. The product alone was an amazing vision—we could make a huge impact on pets’ lives and quality of life. But once I paired direct selling with that vision, I realized we weren’t just creating another premium pet food brand. We were creating an entirely new channel of distribution for pet products. Taking the $140 billion pet industry and the $40 billion direct sales industry and combining them in a compelling way—that’s the big idea.
SSN: In such a crowded and competitive pet products market, how does your product break through to consumers?
RM: The consumer is just overwhelmed with choices when it comes to pets, and honestly a little bit numb to even know what to do. I’ve literally watched people come to the pet food aisle and just be totally overwhelmed. It’s no different online. It’s even more options, even more saturation. How do you even decide what to buy and who to trust?
We’ve developed a customized approach through our pet profile system. The way I describe it to people, it’s like sitting down at a round table with top nutritional experts and veterinarians. You tell us about your pet, we’ll recommend which of the pet foods is best for you, and which nutritional supplements might help with specific issues like itchy skin, bad breath, or loose stool.
This customization spans both the consumer’s and direct seller’s needs. We know most consumers and sales representatives won’t have the patience, desire, or ability to learn all the technical details about pet nutrition—why lower levels of amylase in their saliva make it difficult for pets to break down corn, or the specific benefits of different probiotics. Instead, we make the pet profile the message and our Pet Pro the messenger. All they have to do is say, “Hey, I know you love your pets. Fill out this pet profile and see what’s recommended.”
The trust factor is crucial here. Just because we have a pet profile tool, anybody could put something online and say “fill it out.” Why should someone trust that over what Amazon or a store clerk tells them? That’s where the relationship aspect of direct selling becomes powerful. When somebody who knows and trusts someone says, “Hey, you ought to fill out this pet profile, it changed my pet’s life,” that creates the trust needed to try something new.
We back this up with a 100% satisfaction guarantee because we’re that confident in our recommendations. Try what’s recommended, and if it doesn’t change your life, get all your money back and consider it a free sample. If it does change your life, you’ll forever be grateful that you tried it.
SSN: How has your approach to the field evolved with changes in the direct selling industry?
RM: The industry has changed significantly even in the past five years, and we’ve evolved to meet those changes. Take for example, the practice of having an enrollment fee for a starter pack. For most of us, this is a sacred cow we don’t want to touch. The reality is that even when people pay a big enrollment fee, many do nothing with the business. It’s a head-scratcher to all of us, why would somebody pay that kind of money and then not engage? But it happens all the time.
I’m also completely opposed to the philosophy that you need separate programs for affiliates vs. direct sellers. Sure, we absolutely need to change our language and sometimes our programs to appeal to the next generation of sellers, but creating a whole different comp plan or sales experience for them doesn’t make sense to me. In my experience of 11 years, when people join, the vast majority have no idea if they’re going to be a seller, a builder, or a leader. Most people join because they want to get a discount on the product or earn a little extra income. They don’t join thinking they’re going to be the next top leader.
So we’ve created one compensation plan that’s very appealing to sellers. If you’re an affiliate marketer these days and you want to get your link and share it on your website along with five or six other brands, we’ve made it really easy. There’s no barrier to entry. Get your link, share it. What we’ve found is that some of these people discover they’re having success, it connects to their core values, they know lots of pet people, and they naturally go deeper into the business. Before long, they’re building teams.
The affiliate marketers of today don’t expect to pay an enrollment fee. That’s part of the ick factor that plagues our industry. When you think about today’s affiliate marketing landscape, it’s clear that affiliate marketers can coexist within traditional direct selling or social selling. It’s just a matter of how you do it.
SSN: You’ve been pioneering brand collaborations in direct selling. What have you learned?
RM: I believe firmly that as an industry we are stronger together than we are apart. The industry has experienced some headwinds the past few years. Coming together can help us move forward faster and stronger. Most of our respective fields are looking for more than one side gig. That’s just the nature of what’s changing in our industry. The idea of a brand collaboration allows two direct sales companies to partner together and share their respective products with both fields and both customer bases.
I’ve approached more than a dozen CEOs with this idea, and it’s interesting. It’s almost an immediate yes or no. Some find it very intimidating and concerning; they don’t want their field exposed to somebody else’s product. Others are open-minded and excited to try something new.
We’ve kept our collaborations simple with two main approaches. The first is a product bundle. For example, we partnered with an essential oils company, combining our pet calming product with their pet-safe essential oils. We didn’t change packaging or branding, we just offered a limited-time bundle that both fields could sell through their respective platforms.
The second approach is more of an “enter to win” promotion. Both companies contribute products to a prize package, create a compelling marketing message about why these products complement each other, and run a limited-time sweepstakes. The entrants opt into marketing from both companies, allowing each company to expand their reach to new prospects.
The primary lesson I’ve learned is to just do something, try something. Some people overthink it, overcomplicate it. The industry is changing quickly, and doing nothing isn’t an option. If you can find a company with shared values and vision who’s not afraid to try some new things and take some risks, something positive will come of it.
SSN: What’s been your biggest challenge at pawTree, and what did you learn from it?
RM: We had a poor IT solution that crippled our growth, and it was awful. We’ve been through three IT platforms. The first one we launched with was fine, but it wasn’t the right one for us to scale and grow. We converted to one a couple years in, and it was terrible. I mean, in some cases we would ship Mrs. Smith’s order to Mrs. Jones and vice versa.
What we tried to do to work through it was obviously having transparency with the field and customers. It was super critical. Just being honest. People really respond well to honesty when you can just be humble. There’s always that balance of wanting to show confidence and not give people a reason to go, ‘Oh my gosh, this company is awful and I’m going to leave.’ But people get it that things happen that aren’t what you plan.
We ultimately found a new solution, but changing your entire IT platform is not a quick fix. We fixed the big gaping holes like shipping the wrong customer orders with the current provider, but ultimately we realized we just chose the wrong provider and needed a new solution. It took almost a year from start to finish to work through those challenges. That was in 2017.
What I learned from it on the positive side was that whole transparency and honesty with people really validated our approach. But what we didn’t do, that I learned going forward, was better background checks on vendors. Making sure you’re not the guinea pig, that somebody can actually show you they’ve done what you need, not just promise they can do it. We probably depended too much on their salespeople telling us what they would do vs. past clients telling us what they did do. Now I make sure to have in-depth conversations with their clients. It’s kind of like an employee hire. You want to make sure when you hire somebody that they’ve done that job for somebody else, the job you’re wanting them to do for you.
SSN: What’s your perspective on CEO leadership in today’s direct selling environment?
TW: For good, strong leaders, I don’t really see the role of CEO evolving much at all. The industry needs transparency, trust, vision, and commitment to the channel more than we’ve ever needed it before. Those were great characteristics of a great CEO in the past and are in the present.
What’s needed more today is the willingness to try new things and be open to new ideas. In a changing and challenging environment like we’re in today, we don’t have time to plan for one new big strategy change that takes two years to implement. We need to move fast, try new things, and learn and iterate.
I gave a talk once from a direct selling stage called “Fail Fast.” I’m a big believer in test, learn, iterate—do it over and over. Failing on lots of things fast will help you find the good things that will help you succeed faster. Think of business as one big experiment: Do pilots, run tests, try things.
When it comes to keeping communication channels open with the field, I’m a big believer in what I call “wiring for success.” You’ve got to create structure but also leave room for flexibility. For example, we have a monthly VIP call for our top leaders, and in the past I’ve done a monthly fireside chat. We’ve got a top leaders text thread where they communicate a lot with each other, and I’m on there too. I don’t always respond, but I can see things and jump in when needed.
Then there’s the flexible part. If I’m traveling and I’m in somebody’s city, I’ll reach out to a couple of top leaders and say, “Hey, let’s meet for lunch.” Things always come from that communication. Or I’m watching the leaderboard, and yes, we have formal recognition like every company does, but when I see somebody’s name that catches my attention—maybe they’ve really embraced something new or I’ve seen them two months in a row—I’ll send them a quick note that says, “Hey, I see you. That’s awesome.”
One thing that’s really important to me is that when somebody promotes to certain leadership titles in our comp plan, I personally call them. There’s always something interesting I learn from those calls. It’s about wiring for success so you don’t forget and get busy and out of touch, but also sprinkling in some of that personal, flexible connection.
The key is maintaining that connection while implementing changes. If you share why you’re doing things and how it’s going to help the field, people are open to that. They see the headlines, they understand the industry is evolving, and they appreciate leadership that’s willing to evolve with it, as long as that evolution maintains the core values of transparency, trust, and commitment to the channel.
