THENEWYORKER, NOVEMBER 4, 2019 27
cisely, to trap unpleasant odors in the
toilet, below the surface of the water,
and to release pleasant natural fragrances,
including citrus, lavender, and tropical
hibiscus, in their stead. Its ostensible
mechanism is depicted in an animated
video on the product’s Web site, in which
cartoon bombs and missiles plunge into
a toilet bowl, detonate, and trigger an
efflorescence of vines, daisies, and but-
terflies. In 2012, Poo-Pourri formed its
first national partnership, with the
home-shopping network QVC. In 2014,
it made its first national brick-and-mor-
tar appearance, at Bed Bath & Beyond.
Earlier this year, it rolled out at Costco.
The company recently expanded into
shoe odor, and also released a line of
cleaning products, called Supernatural,
which sold out within two hours of
premièring on Gwyneth Paltrow’s life-
style site, Goop. Scentsible L.L.C., the
parent company of Poo-Pourri and Su-
pernatural, is projected to generate a
hundred million dollars in revenue in
- Batiz owns ninety-seven per cent
of the company, and her three children
own the remaining three per cent.
There are many remarkable things
about this story: that a toilet spray could
make someone as rich as Reese With-
erspoon, with whom Batiz is tied on the
Forbes list; that Batiz, who has no back-
ground in consumer goods, created not
just a successful product but also an en-
tirely new product category (Poo-Pourri
is not so much an air freshener as an air
prophylactic); and, perhaps most sur-
prisingly, that Batiz no longer sees her-
self as a mere businesswoman, but as a
spiritual explorer whose medium just
happens to be business. Linking finan-
cial success to spirituality is nothing
new: it’s been done by people from the
productivity guru Stephen Covey to the
basketball coach Phil Jackson. But Batiz
is an especially improbable example of
the C.E.O. as spiritual leader—her gos-
pel is late capitalism taken to its ex-
treme.“Business, for me, isn’t just some-
thing I do. It’s a purpose,” she told me.
“This is not a rags-to-riches story. It’s
a spiritual-evolution story.”
B
atiz, who is fifty-five, has large blue
eyes and wavy blond hair, and speaks
with a soft twang. Although she lives
in Dallas, her clothing style is reminis-
cent of a Venice Beach moon-circle fa-
cilitator: she favors rock-band T-shirts
and silky floral dusters. She lives in a
fifteen-thousand-square-foot, century-
old restored Methodist church, which
she bought after the end of her twenty-
six-year marriage to her third husband,
Hector Batiz. She overheard someone
at a hair salon talking about a church
that was on the market, found the list-
ing, and called the owner, who didn’t
take her seriously. “People who have the
money lack the vision, and people who
have the vision lack the money,” he told
her. She replied, “I might have both.”
She purchased the church over the strong
objections of her real-estate agent, who
told her that it was a bad investment in
a bad neighborhood.
Five years later, after several million
dollars’ worth of renovations, it’s a se-
rene, light-filled space, with white brick
walls, cathedral ceilings, and pine floor-
ing. It’s also a shrine to wellness and per-
sonal growth. Batiz calls her home the
Temple of Transformation. “I’m only
about transformation,” she said. “That’s
just what I do. That’s my whole life. I
transform poop into smelling good.”
Two enormous trees, named for Dolly
Parton and Willie Nelson, flank the for-
mer nave, which serves as a living and
dining area. Upstairs, there’s a sauna and
a massage room. Batiz set up a labora-
tory in the former Sunday-school class-
room, with a wood table where she keeps
essential oils for experimenting with
aromatherapy blends, bath products, and
perfumes. Her kitchen counter, which
used to be an altar, holds a cluster of
devotional candles and a row of jars con-
taining wild-blueberry leaves, collagen,
lion’s-mane mushroom, cordyceps, and
other ingredients for a tea that Batiz
drinks every morning. (She calls it her
“little potion.”) The former choir loft is
a sitting room with crystal singing bowls
for sound baths. The former parking lot
is a Zen garden, complete with Buddha
statues, fountains, and a beehive rescued
from inside the church walls.
Batiz sometimes hosts personal-
development workshops for women,
and occasionally she shares her home
with young female entrepreneurs “in
transition.” Katie Anderson, the founder
of Save Water Co., a data-based water-
conservation firm, was one such entre-
preneur. “I woke up to aspects of my-
self while staying with Suzy,” Anderson
told me. “She’s tapping into herself in
a place of authenticity: What does self-
care really look like? What does authen-
ticity look like? And self-inquiry?”
When I visited Batiz, in August, we
ate breakfast at her enormous dining-
room table: scrambled eggs with toma-
toes and arugula, prepared by her chef.
My plate came with toast grilled with
coconut oil, which Batiz called “a game
changer,” remarking wistfully that she
wished she could “heal enough” to eat
gluten again. Next to both of our plates
was a little dish containing a vase with
a yellow flower, a crystal, and a statu-
ette of Ganesh, the Hindu god revered
as a remover of obstacles.
Batiz is proud that Poo-Pourri shat-
tered a taboo. “I remember one day I
was sitting on the plane with an attor-
ney. He’s telling me all these poop sto-
ries, and he goes, ‘I can’t believe I’m a
sixty-something-year-old man and I’m
sitting here talking to you about poop!’”
she said. “We don’t want to talk about
our shit. We don’t want to smell it. We
don’t want to face it.” But she sees the
company’s goal as something larger.
“It’s not just a toilet spray,” she said.
“The underbelly is transformation.”
W
hen Batiz tells her life story, it
hews to a particular American
narrative—redemptive, merging New
Age corporate mysticism with the tra-
ditional recovery speech. It’s a Horatio
Alger story for the new millennium.
Her father, a musician who opened for
Buddy Holly, was a bipolar alcoholic.
Her mother, an artist who got pregnant
at eighteen, suffered from depression
and became addicted to pain pills.
Batiz was raised in the Church of
Christ, an evangelical denomination.
She was taught that God loved her but
wouldn’t think twice about consigning
her to Hell for wearing shorts. On movie
nights, the kids were shown films about
Armageddon. Batiz rebelled. In 1981,
when she was seventeen, she had an idea
for denim pumps that matched jeans,
and made a demo pair. She received so
many compliments that she called Guess,
the clothing company, to suggest that
it manufacture a similar item, and was
invited to come to New York. (She didn’t
go; her mother told her, “You’re just a
little girl from Arkansas. They’ll chew
you up and spit you out.”) At nineteen,
