Michael Fisher of Rotten: Notes from The Long Aisle
This post originally appeared in my weekly newsletter, BL&T (Borrowed, Learned, & Thought). Subscribe
Borrowed,
"Curiosity is powerful fuel for motivation. But curiosity is also a competitive advantage. That's because curiosity will take you places where nobody else can go."
From "The Heart to Start" by David Kadavy [Book]
Learned,
The other day, I found a note I wrote to myself in 2023 outlining a concept for a newsletter or podcast series that would highlight the ideas and perspectives of the industry people I regularly spoke with at the time. I even had mock interview questions written out. Other things took priority, and I never did anything with it. Honestly, I forgot it existed.
Looking back, this idea was a catalyst for what became The Long Aisle, the podcast I launched last week, going deep with CPG founders and operators on how they think.
Everyone from Oprah Winfrey to Jim Carrey has stories about committing your goals to paper as a path to achieving them. But maybe it doesn’t have to be a formal goal. Put it down as an act of working through; let it sit; trust that if it’s important enough, it will stay with you and you’ll find your way to it. All said, finding that note just after launching The Long Aisle made it feel like less of a beginning and more of an arrival.
On Wednesday, the first episode went live. A conversation with Michael Fisher, founder of Rotten, a better-for-you candy brand that looks anything but. I first came across Rotten at the NYC Fancy Food Show last year. As a sour gummy fanatic who loves what Fisher calls “gross out” aesthetic, but for me, looks like motorcycles and rock n’ roll, their booth stopped me in my tracks. The product did the same. It was a pleasure to chat with Michael about his journey.
After we recorded, I kept coming back to some key ideas Michael shared. Rather than let these takeaways live in a podcast, I decided I'd make a habit of committing them to writing after every episode goes live.
Here’s what I took from this one.
Not knowing is a strength.
Michael came into CPG with no background in it. No food science, no industry relationships, no playbook. When I asked what made him think he could do it, he didn’t overcomplicate the answer. “Entrepreneurship is just a belief that you can do it and that all of the things you don’t know, you are capable of learning quickly and figuring out how to do.”
Reading between the lines, what Michael is talking about is belief and curiosity. A belief in what he wanted to create and an openness to figuring it out as he went. And because everyone around him knew he was new, he felt he had permission to keep asking questions. Why does this cost what it costs? Why does this retailer want it done this way? Why is everyone in the natural products space positioning the same way? Nobody expected him to already know. So he just kept asking.
I find this idea fascinating because the upside of curiosity is always there. The problem is when we feel we’re supposed to already have the answers. We stop asking. We’re afraid to look like we don’t know. As an agency or service provider, this is a slippery slope. When we don’t ask, we risk getting in too deep with a client and still not knowing what they’re really trying to do as a business. Inexperience is a strength in that way. The trick is not letting experience take it away.
Know your purchasing drivers and sequence them.
Before Michael designed the packaging or settled on a name, he worked out the exact order in which he wanted a customer to decide to buy. He called them purchasing drivers, and the sequence mattered as much as the drivers themselves. “A lot of the products out there, the main purchasing driver was the fact that it was better for you. We decided that’s not what we want to be number one.” He goes on to explain:
- Taste first.
- Cool packaging, second.
- Better for you, third.
That order drove every downstream decision and still does today. The gross-out aesthetic, the old school Nickelodeon references, the deliberate choice to look nothing like a health food. He knew what he wanted people to feel first and let that guide everything else.
As much as I appreciate this for CPG, it applies to running any business. An agency like Barrel may not have packaging, but we still have purchasing drivers. I love the idea of sitting down to think about what we want our customers to experience first, second, and third when they encounter us. Not what we want to say about ourselves, but what we want them to feel. That sequencing shapes everything else, whether you’re conscious of it or not. For a product that looks and feels like Rotten, it’s no surprise Michael made it conscious from the start.
Build your circle before you need it.
In the second half of 2024, Rotten received a cease-and-desist from Ferrara, makers of Nerds, before its Cruncheez product had even launched. They weren’t even showing samples at the time, just a flyer at Sweets and Snacks. To me, it was a signal that they were worthy enough to be a threat to a behemoth like Ferrara. For Michael, it was a mix of fear and quiet validation. Someone at one of the biggest candy companies in the world had seen them coming.
When I asked what it felt like to receive that letter, he talked about the support of his advisors. People he had cold reached out to early, built real relationships with, and formalized over time. That circle includes an executive coach he describes as “therapy, except you just talk about work.” A different kind of advisor, but the same idea.
“Having advisors has been the best game changing decision I ever could have made from day one.” Not because they had all the answers. Nobody could predict how Ferrara would respond or what their next move would be. But when something lands out of nowhere and your day goes sideways fast, you need people who already know the full picture.
I’ve been lucky to have Peter and Sei-Wook, the co-founders of Barrel, act in this way, especially as I’ve taken over as CEO. However, there are many others I’ve sought out to serve as guides in various aspects of the business and even in my life. It’s incredible how useful these relationships become in the moments you least expect. The common thread is that none of them were built in a moment of need.
The hidden tax of scaling.
Michael went from running Rotten largely alone to leading a team of six in just three months. What followed was a lesson in what that actually demands of you. Unchecked, meetings multiplied. He looked back and didn’t love what he saw: days locked to a laptop, back-to-back video calls, no room to think. He was also getting a wake-up call about his own health around this same time. He was building a better-for-you brand while quietly letting his own health slip.
Both things pointed to the same challenge. When you scale fast, the default is chaos unless you design something better. For Michael, that meant asking harder questions about how the team operates, where the time actually goes, and whether the structure you have is serving the business or just filling the calendar. “I don’t love these days where I can’t get up from my laptop, and I’m constantly on a video call.” Getting intentional about that, defining how the team comes together, what gets a meeting, and what doesn’t, is the work underneath the work.
I think about this a lot as Barrel has grown. The instinct is to add people and assume things get easier. Sometimes they do. But the communication surface area grows too, and if you’re not deliberate about how you operate together, the calendar fills up before you know it, and you’re the bottleneck in every room.
Stay curious about what a problem might make possible.
In the second half of 2025, Rotten ended up with over $200,000 worth of gummy worms manufactured out of spec. The worms tasted fine. They were just extremely sticky, too sticky to sell as a normal product. The manufacturer wouldn’t work with them on a resolution. And writing it off wasn’t a viable option. As Michael put it, “little supply chain mistakes, they snowball into issues that will truly shut your company down.”
So what did Rotten do? Built a TikTok Shop campaign around a product called Mutated Worms, heavily discounted, with videos leaning into the stickiness as the whole bit. It blew up.
Michael was careful about how he framed it, though. “I wouldn’t say all [mistakes] have turned into opportunities. This one we were able to.” What he is describing is a posture, staying curious about what a problem might make possible instead of just absorbing the loss.
I try my best to live by the mantra that every setback is an opportunity. It’s a maxim we talk about at Barrel and something I try to practice in life. You can’t go back and avoid a misstep, but you can learn from it, or turn it into a future that never would have existed without it.
Build like you plan to still be here.
I close every episode of The Long Aisle with the same question. Ten years from now, what do you hope the people closest to you say about how you spent this chapter? After a long pause, Michael didn’t reach for something polished. He said he hoped they’d say he built the brand thoughtfully. I pushed on what thoughtful meant. “Building the brand in a way to last.”
Thoughtfulness isn’t just something Michael says; it’s something he does. You can see it in the actual decisions he makes. He doesn’t want Rotten’s next product to be another low-sugar gummy. “There’s enough out there.” When he talks about product innovation, he is clear: “We’re not a better-for-you candy brand. We’re just a candy brand.” This is someone who has thought hard about what they’re building and what they’re not, and who is deliberately protecting that distinction.
In a space full of brands chasing trends, that kind of clarity is its own strategy. And it starts long before the ten-year question. It’s in the purchasing drivers he mapped out before anything existed. It’s in the circle he’s built around him. It’s in the way he’s thinking about his team before the wheels come off. Thoughtful isn’t a personality trait. It’s a practice. And Michael seems to know that.
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I hope these conversations become a resource for CPG founders and operators at every stage of building.
Check out the full conversation with Michael wherever you listen to podcasts:
And if you enjoy it, rating, reviewing, and sharing make a real difference this early on.
& Thought
Am I still asking questions?
