Marta Sylvester: When Conscience Becomes Your Business Plan

The following programming is sponsored by Marc J. Bernstein. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of this station, its management, or Beasly Media Group. Entrepreneur, founder, author, and financial advisor Marc Bernstein helps high-performing business owners turn their visions into reality.

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Good morning, America. How are you? This is Marc Bernstein. This is Founders Forum.

And it's a very interesting time. It's before the holidays in 2025. I don't know when you'll be listening to this as a podcast. But if you're listening on the radio, it may even be a couple weeks from now.

But a lot of interesting and not always great things going on in the world right now. And we we do two shows often in a day, and this is the second time we'll be talking about this topic. But our guest today is Marta, and I'll introduce her fully in a few minutes. But the word of the day is clarity.

And given where you are right now in this moment, what does clarity mean to you? Wow. So for me, clarity really is about kind of slowing down a little bit. I think especially today, we're running so quickly from one thing to the next, from one news media cycle to the other, from one innovative solution to the next.

And sometimes we just kind of need to slow down and think about things in a very clear fashion, right? So for me, that's today that's what clarity means. Just kind of slow down and think about things a little more clearly. So the so it's a technique slowing down to gain clarity.

Correct. Right? Yes. Good.

That's good because we've talked about, you know, um there's clarity can be applied to all kinds of things. Clarity of purpose, clarity of intentions, clarity of uh just your schedule, you know, and all the things. But but right, you it's hard to get clarity unless you can slow down. And that's that's right where I am right now, too.

So I so I get it. So let's let me introduce Marta to you. She is Marta Sylvester, founder and CEO of Nu Gen Packaging, a packaging solutions provider, changing the way brands think about sustainability. With more than three decades of experience, she brings both expertise and fresh perspective to how packaging can drive impact in today's market.

And Marta is from well, you're living in New Jersey, Central Jersey, North Jersey, West Orange, West Orange, Northern Jersey. And your company's also based there as well. In Morris County in uh Florin Park. Right, up Florence Park, got it.

So and so she drove down to Balkanwood PA today, which I really appreciate. And uh you know, Marta, so you have an interesting story about how you got into this business. And it starts with you being a mom, a stay-at-home mom, I think. And why don't you tell us the story from there?

Yeah, so I just had my son, um, my older son, and I was home for a couple of years, and it became quite evident uh very soon that we needed another income. Uh we were in Brooklyn at the time, and I knew that at some point uh Michael would require a private school education because he was an incredibly curious kid. And so we thought, well, uh, I gotta get out there, I've gotta get a job. But I wanted something that would allow me some flexibility so that I could still be a part of Michael's life academically, you know, just I just wanted to be a part of it as well.

And I wanted something that would give me some more control over how much money I could make, right? So that th those were the things that were really important to me. But I hadn't completed my degree, so getting a job in marketing or sales was quite difficult without that degree, especially as a woman in the business world. So and this is when in the 1980s, maybe in the in the early 90s.

In the early 1990s, and so um I ended up finding uh a job as an assistant to the marketing manager. And I thought, well, you know what, it's it's a step in the right direction. I'll I'll take it and we'll see what happens. And I loved every minute of it.

They had me making uh cold calls and really, you know, working um throughout the entire time in every aspect of the business. And then finally I was given an opportunity to go into sales. Um, I was actually the one that pursued the opportunity. And when I sat with the CEO, um he said, you know, fine, let's give it a chance.

Um he was giving me three months to see what I could do. And then, you know, the story goes on from there. I was successful uh doing that and continued in packaging, primarily because it fed me so much. I really loved what I did, and I loved seeing the you know, the end result.

Uh so stayed doing this and then in 19 uh sorry, 2010, sitting with my kids, we were talking about climate change, which is something that's you know really important to us. And my son, you know, just looked at me and said, Hey, mom, uh, exactly how many tons of plastic are you personally responsible for that are sitting in a landfill today? And I thought, oh, that hurts, right? And and it hurts because I was very responsible in switching uh customers from metal closures to plastic closures.

So, so yeah, it it it really hit home. Um and and I'm not gonna lie, initially I thought, you know, you ingrate who do you think paid for for all your private school education and everything else, right? But you know, by the way, I know you have a conscience and I know you're you're an ethical person and all that, but I I appreciate your honest response. As a parent.

Right, sure. Yeah, yeah. It's kind of hey, wait, what's going on? Um But it it really it it weighed.

It weighed on me, and for a couple of weeks, I I knew that I had to do something. And so I went to the company that I was working for. I was VP of sales and marketing and said, hey, can can we just carve out a little area for sustainability and and I'll tend to it and see if it grows? And they wanted none of it.

They were looking to sell their company. And so they really wanted me to focus on growing the sales so that they would be more marketable. So I ended up just jumping off of the entrepreneurial cliff. And you know, I thought, hey, I either there's gonna be a splat, I'll pick myself up and I'll find a job, um, or I can be successful um and we'll see what happens in a year if everything is good.

How many years into your career was this? Oh 20, about 20 years. Oh twenty years, okay. Okay.

Twenty some odd. And were you is you're st it was still the secondary income in the house or the marital situation changed? So yeah. So I at that point I was divorced.

Okay. And it was the I was the primary income. But uh but I had a little bit of a nest egg to kind of keep me going. Gotcha.

Okay. So I you know, I figured we could do that. I talked to a few customers and I I knew that I would still have to stay um within that plastic environment for a little while until I figured it out. Right.

Um and I did, and today I can I can happily say that that scale has tipped dramatically, and uh 80% of our business is now in sustainable materials other than plastic. That's and how long did it take you to get that going? Um so started in 2012, uh and it's just been about three years where there's been just a huge shift in the brand mentality because consumers are expecting more. So I'm gonna say this tongue-in-cheek, but the motto of the show is entrepreneurship is a smooth ride.

Right. So I wish you could see her face. No way. Right, of course it's not.

So tell us about that, the challenges that you had in building your business. Aaron Ross Powell Right. So I think the biggest challenge that we had was getting uh brands to really understand the importance of sustainable packaging, right? That was the the thing, like finding the materials and then trying to sell those materials to the brands.

And when you say brands, describe who your your customers are. So the end customers, so nutraceutical companies, pharmaceutical companies, uh companies in the OTC bracket, so pain meds, allergy meds that are over the counter, and personal care. Um do some cosmetic type things or kind of not really cosmetics, more personal care, so like um shampoos, lotions, that that sort of thing. In in the natural space.

Right. That's kind of where we've always been in that natural space. Aaron Ross Powell And and you're using, I know, aluminum packaging to a certain extent. Correct.

So how do you do that with with with shampoo as an example? So uh with shampoos, we typically are using aluminum bottles and then some kind of pump as a dispensing mechanism because you can't really squeeze any of the product out with an aluminum bottle. Aaron Ross Powell And they're recyclable, obviously. Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.

They're 100% and infinitely recyclable, which is the thing that we love about aluminum. We can honestly say that 72% of all aluminum ever extracted is still in use today. It's huge. So the pump is aluminum as well?

No. So the pumps are typically uh plastic. Yep. And so we like to use monomaterials so that they can be uh they're recyclable also then.

Gotcha, gotcha. So you can put the whole thing in the recycling bin and it's and it's good. Yeah. Uh that's great.

That's amazing. So um so again, challenges. So what other kind of challenges? Do you have a lot of employees?

So nope. We we're we're very lean and mean. We have um most of everything that we do is outsourced. Yeah.

Um accounting is outsourced, but we have a great team. And and and I think um what I would say the important thing about hiring outside, and that that was a challenge until I kind of figured it out. Contracting manufacturers? Uh Manufacturers, yes, but also just our um, you know, like finance and our third-party logistics companies.

And I think what I ended up learning a little bit later, I I wish I'd learned that early on, is that I needed to interview these companies and really make sure that they were gonna teach me as well. Right. So not enough that they were gonna handle the bookkeeping and you know, all of the other financing things that that we I needed them to handle, but that they would be happy to teach me the things that I didn't know so that so that we could have more intelligent conversations, right?

Instead of do this. Well, okay, do this why. And and that was important to me. I learned a little bit later, but early enough.

So I imagine you had to cycle through some providers until you got there, oh yeah. Right. Yes. Again, I wish you could see her face earlier.

So I got you. Uh so so those are challenges. Now, how about you obviously you went through the pandemic and there there could be supply chain issues and things like that. Did you have any particular challenges through the pandemic?

We did. Um we we definitely had a lot of challenges. A lot of the product that we were selling at the time was coming from China, uh, was coming from India, Germany. So yeah, it there were huge uh bottleneck challenges there.

And you know, it's uh part of that Brooklyn scrappy nature. We, you know, we were always able to pivot. The thing that I will say, and and and we stayed afloat and we did well, we actually did well during the pandemic, but the thing that it allowed us to do was to focus more on innovation. So we had the time to talk to other manufacturers that were on the cusp of interesting things, and and that's kind of where we found our aluminum nutraceutical bottle company.

Now I have to ask you, now today you might have another challenge with tariffs because a lot of your materials come internationally. Is that still the case? Yes. That is definitely still the case.

And I know, and I'm not sure where it stands, but there's been specific conversations regarding aluminum, I know. Yes. And is that being heavily tariffed at this point? So it is being it is definitely being heavily tariffed, more tariffed from Asia, and we're not buying a whole lot of aluminum from Asia.

We're buying it from countries that are not as heavily tariffed. So that helps. Um so it definitely helps. Um we we would love to be able to buy these products here in the U.

S. Um, but uh uh all of these aluminum companies that are uh in the U.S. are overcapacity.

Like they just they can't keep up on the beverage side. So doing something innovative in my space was just not something that we could do. And while this may give rise to man more manufacturers in the United States, that will take time, I imagine, which seems to be one of the flaws in this policy a little bit. Right.

So so anything in glass or aluminum, while we would love to have them here, the that tends to take anywhere from two to five years. Um and if you can imagine companies having to wait five years in order to see uh you know a gain and and then not know what the next administration is gonna do is you know kind of puts a damper on things. Right. It's um we're just about time for a break, but in the meantime, I just want to observe that I I want to ask you about the strengths you've built from these challenges.

So you've mentioned a couple already. One was teaching your vendors to teach you so you could have intelligent conversations. Another one was innate, which was Brooklyn scrappiness, right? So that got you got to develop that further, I assume, from some of these challenges.

And I'd like to ask you what else you might have learned and what kind of strengths you've built as a result of that to handle future challenges right after this commercial. Still using the same old packaging? Time to wake up. This is NuGen Packaging.

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Your competitive edge.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ We are back on Founders Forum with my guest, Marta Sylvester. It's a fascinating conversation. And we're talking about, you know, the very few challenges that you've had in business, but they've been many.

And you've developed you've developed strengths. You guys okay in there? We're just we're having a little engineering issue. It's okay.

So um anyway, we um we talked about some of the things that you've learned. Are there any other kind of challenges lessons you've had that have turned into strengths, uh that you've developed traits that you've developed to handle what's coming in the future? Because there'll be undoubtedly more. Yeah, I think um the the biggest challenge that I think we had was really with clients and clients asking us to figure out ways that they could scale those materials that we were working with.

So aluminum being one of them. And um so trying to work with contract manufacturers and other companies that could allow us some line time so that we can work out those challenges. And and the the good news is that we did have, you know, we we find out we have a lot of friends in the industry. And those friends have allowed us to come in and sit with them and kind of work through these challenges in with innovation.

And and we love that. We love to be able to lean on and innovate with other manufacturers. And so, you know, you find out who your friends are, you find out who those companies are that are aligned with your vision. So collaboration and mastermind type approach to solving problems.

Um I want to ask you about something else, too, because you're a woman in manufacturing, and we've had one on recently, Karla Trotman, who's got an amazing story, but in all fairness, her well, her business is founded by her parents, primarily her father, um, but you're a founder of a manufacturing company, woman manufacturing-owned company. Um how has that presented any ch challenges of its own? Well, we don't manufacture, but we work closely with manufacturers. Right, I understand.

So um it really hasn't presented a problem. I I find that if you go in with a very open mindset and a collaborative mindset, um, most manufacturers, especially in this innovation space, really want to work with you, right? They they they understand that you have a strength that maybe they don't. And so if we can work together, we can create something really wonderful that is sustainable and and profitable, right?

So because of what you're doing, you're pre pre pre-selecting the companies you're working with, and they definitely by definition have to be open-minded, which helps a lot, I would think. Definitely. That's great. So and tell me about so you have some employees.

Is company culture important to you? Yes. So it's that's it's super important. It and and the thing that I always tell everyone as soon as they come in is A, we have to lift each other up, but also um you don't know what you don't know.

Like at my I have an open door. If there's something that you want to learn, if there's something that you're doing that you don't understand, come in. If I don't know it, we'll figure it out together. We'll learn together.

Um, so it's that that open door policy that I think is super important. Is it a literal door? Are you all in the same office or are you virtual? We're all in the same office.

Okay. Well, that's unusual these days. Yeah. Okay.

Our previous guest today, Ronica, clearly has she has a PR firm and it's totally virtual. And she described how you you can still create culture, and she does she works really hard on that. And I'm finding different, you know, there's all different variations of how people create culture today, which is which is pretty interesting. Um so let's look at the future.

So you are where you are. I think things are going pretty well for your company. Um if I were to ask you if this were three years from today, Marta, and we're talking, so it's December uh 17th of 2028, and uh we're having a conversation about what happened over the last three years, what would that look like for you business-wise, and it could be personally or family-wise as well. What would that what would that look like?

What would success over that three year period look like for you? So the thing um I I've I'm often asked that question, and the one thing that for me is super important is that that I've made a dramatic impact in the packaging industry where sustainability is concerned. That I've disrupted it to the point where we're moving away from plastic where it doesn't need to be. And there is room for plastic.

There, for sure, there are places where plastic is important, but not everywhere. And so I want to be able to be that company within the next three years to have made that dramatic impact with different materials, with aluminum, with glass, with paper. Uh, as paper continues to innovate, I think that's also gonna be that next horizon that is gonna require somebody that really understands innovation uh as it pertains to manufacturing and scale. And so that's kind of where I want to be.

I want to be that that innovator. I that's who we are. Aaron Powell You kind of are now already, right? And are you I it sounds to me like you're a leader as as in the industry as it goes, right?

Aaron Ross Powell, we are but but we're still in the infancy stage. And that's what I tell everybody, like you know, we're still we're still figuring it out, and that's okay. Yeah. That's okay.

That's how things start. Well and if if I can, I I'm gonna guess in three years you're still figuring it out, too. Doesn't mean but but it sounds in certain places, right, right. But you be because that's the nature of change, the nature of evolution, the nature of you know, the rapid changing world that we're in.

But at the same time, it sounds like you'd like to be when people think of sustainable packaging, you'd like the them to say NuGen is the company, right? Right. And oh my god, that Marta, she was crazy in twenty in twenty twelve when she said that aluminum was going to be the next uh the next phase in packaging for Neutra Pharma OTC. They all looked at me like I was crazy.

So you were the first in that? We were the first in the United States to have a That's already remarkable. In neutra and in OTC. Remarkable.

Anything else you'd add to that? So I like that it's not just about revenue growth. I like that it's not just about the normal things when you're growing a business. Anything on the personal side you'd like to see three years from now that Yeah.

So we're we're a women-owned business. And um I like that we can extend our hand to other women and be a place where they can cultivate their professional career. We want to be that company. Yeah.

And and and they don't necessarily have to be within our our company necessarily, but if there are other people that need a helping hand or that need some advice, I'm here for it. Aaron Ross Powell Do you have do you have a way of doing that? Are you thinking of a nonprofit or or Sure. So uh we're stepping it up.

I'm stepping it up personally in 2026. We are uh working very closely with We Bank. Um and I'm going to be an ambassador, if you will, for for WeBank because they're an amazing organization. They they're just really there for all the women and helping us with our pitch, with everything.

It's they're great. Aaron Ross Powell How do you think it's going? I just recently saw the Philadelphia Business Journal and they top CEOs, and it's by far the biggest group of women that I've seen, CEOs ever, and very diverse group of CEOs, women and men alike. Do you um do you think we've progressed a lot and and and and where do you think we are on the line of progress in regard to women leaders in business?

So I think what I'm gonna say is there, you know, like anything else, there are always ebbs and flows. Right. And so have we progressed a hundred percent? I mean, when I started, I was usually the only female in the room.

And now it's kind of cool. I'm, you know, sometimes on a video call with with a client and it's all women, you know, or it's a nice mixed bag of men and women, um, or young people and older people. I I I think that especially today, um progress looks really good. It it's, you know, aside from everything else that's going on in the world, I think from that perspective, we are seeing more women and men collaborating collaborating in a way that I certainly didn't see growing up.

I'm guessing you weren't really intimidated when you were the only being the scrappy Brooklynite, you weren't the only you weren't intimidated when you were the only woman in the room. No. But it probably is gives you some comfort to know that um you're surrounded by the other women leaders, I would imagine. Yeah.

I mean, I uh I'll say I wasn't intimidated, but I did sometimes question if I should be in the room. Uh yeah. Right? Like that imposter.

Well, lots of people have that, not just women. Yeah. So I we talk about that a lot. Yeah.

Yeah. And so we we've kind of talked about this already, but one of the questions that you wanted to be asked was thoughts about your legacy. And we kind of addressed that in terms of the business, but anything you would add to that? Um maybe not so much a legacy.

I mean, the legacy is about making uh substantive change in the industry and and really seeing things um you know move toward a more sustainable path. Um, but maybe maybe to be able to look back and say to my kids, hey, promise kept. Right, right, right, right. You told me to make a change and I and I and I did, and and here we are.

Look what mom did. Do they recognize that today? Yes. Yeah, I would imagine.

That's pretty cool. And speaking of kids, if you were talking to yourself as a kid, as a younger person, what advice would you give you? I would say um don't give up on that degree. Keep moving forward.

Even if it's one class at a time, you know, one class a semester. I think that's super important to do that. Um and it's the imposter syndrome. Don't worry about it.

Own it. You're good. If you don't know it, you don't know it. You know?

Um it's all good. Yep. Well, there's that thing of um if you if you you you become how you act. So if you don't have it, you you act that way, right?

Or you know, become what you think about. You know, and just but it's not just that. Like I tell my kids, like it's it's um you don't know what you don't know. Right.

But when you find out you don't know it, make sure you know it. Right, right. Right? Learn.

Right, right. Grow and learn. Yeah. Um just that were just giving me the the one-minute warning where I got it, I got it, but that's okay.

Um, you're a reader. What kind of books do you like to read? I love uh self-help books, I love um business books, and historical novels are probably my favorite, and the thing that I'm kind of leaning toward now, just to have a little bit of that, you know, that fantasy with some of that historical context and just a place where I can kind of relax a little bit. Well, I appreciate that.

I really appreciate having you here and your hearing your great story. Um, thank you for being here, Marta Sylvester. Thank you all for listening to Founders Forum, and we look forward to seeing you again and speaking to you again next week. We hope you enjoyed your time with Founders Forum today and you found value to take with you throughout your day.

Join us again next week for another episode of Founders Forum on WWDB Talk Radio and always at the Founders Forum show page at wwdbam.com.