Interview Replay: Kara On ThriveMore with Roger Martin

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be I want to be you just want to make sure you will get knocked down but just make sure you don’t get knocked down knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control control control. Hi everyone and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go Let’s go. Today’s episode is a bonus episode. Enjoy.

Roger Martin 0:45
Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Kara Goldin on the podcast you are going to love this because she is so authentic and real. And how she speaks about building her company hint water. Yet that hint water. She’s also the author of a wonderful book called undaunted, overcoming doubts and doubters and you’ll hear how she literally took on Coca Cola, Pepsi and big sugar in this interview. Check it out.

ThriveMore Announcer 1:14
Welcome to thrive more with Roger Martin, your go to podcast to help you grow your business, improve your health and increase your wealth. Together we will explore a wide range of topics that help you crush your goals and achieve new heights. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, a corporate leader, health enthusiast for simply someone who just wants to live a better life and thrive more. This podcast is for you. And now your host Roger Martin. Currie

Roger Martin 1:44
is the founder and the former CEO of hint incorporated best known for the award winning hints water, which is the leading unsweetened flavored water. She has received numerous accolades including being named EY Entrepreneur of the Year in 2017, and one of in styles 2019 badass 50 I love that I just love that. Previously Kara was VP of shopping partnerships at America Online. She hosts the podcast the Kara Goldin show. And her first book undaunted, overcoming doubts and doubters was released October 2020, and is now a Wall Street Journal, and Amazon Best Seller. Kara, welcome to the Thrive more podcast. How are you doing?

Kara Goldin 2:21
Very good. Thanks for having me.

Roger Martin 2:23
Oh, my gosh, the pleasure is all mine. You have an amazing story. And the listeners always love to hear not just what’s happened now that you’ve arrived, so to speak. But how did it all start? From my research? It sounds like you were looking to live a healthier lifestyle, you needed to make some changes. And that’s kind of what hint was born out of. But can you take us back to the beginning of kind of what puts you on the path to where you are now? Yeah,

Kara Goldin 2:51
you know, it’s always sort of a twisty road, right? And so there’s no one right answer as to how I got here. But more than anything, you’re right, I was trying to get healthy. And I had had a very nice career and tech, I was at a company called America Online, if you remembers, you know, all those disks that we got in the mail over the years, and I was helping build out the we call the electronic commerce, what would be known as direct to consumer today. And it was a great run, built an incredible business for America Online and was trying to figure out what I was going to do next. And that’s when I took a little time I didn’t know how long I was taking it was probably I thought maybe a couple of months have ended up to be a few years. And I was paying a lot of attention and really enjoying spending time with my young kids. I had three kids under the age of four. I was trying to do what I think many parents do, which is try to feed their kids the right things. And that included their drinks and I had gotten very focused on trying not to give them so much sugar. I figured out very quickly that when I would take my kids to the park, and after they had had a sippy cup filled with juice that it just wasn’t good for any of us. And so I was trying to figure out alternatives, but water was just super super boring. for them. It was boring for me. I grew up in Arizona where I should have been drinking a lot more water, but had substituted my water consumption with diet soda and had been drinking a lot of it never calculated how much I was drinking until one day I thought I’m going to quit and that quitting made me sort of realize how much I drink Diet Coke all day long. And when I looked at the ingredients of diet soda, I saw that it was a lot of things I didn’t recognize. I didn’t know If they were healthy or not,

Roger Martin 5:01
if he can’t pronounce it, probably not. Right, right. And I would never

Kara Goldin 5:05
give it to my kids. I wasn’t giving my kids you know, diet sweeteners. So, you know, I started to think, why would I give it to myself? And that’s when it was kind of a combination of trying to figure it out for my kids, like, what would I give them that I also thought, oh, this would be great for me too. I wanted to figure out a way to flavor water, without sweeteners. And without preservatives, so limited ingredients. And again, this was 19 years ago now. So no one was talking about this.

Roger Martin 5:42
Yeah, you’re way ahead of the curve on the sugar thing. And for clarity, like you don’t have a background in chemistry or in food, nothing, right? No.

Kara Goldin 5:50
And I had, as I mentioned, I been in tack. And prior to that I was in media, the only thing that kind of comes close to it is my dad had been a food executive had actually grown up in the food industry, he had developed inside of armour food company, if anybody remembers that company, he had developed a company called Healthy Choice. And it was actually called Dinner classics initially, and then they were acquired. Armour food company was acquired by a larger food company called ConAgra. And so he spent his career at ConAgra, then, and building up that business. And so I never really thought that I would be doing what my dad was doing like in the industry. And certainly there are differences, which I’ve learned over the years of starting my own company, like what it’s like to have, you know, the big brand halo over you and lots of cash to be able to go into the stores and, you know, buy into a planogram versus actually fighting for shelf space, as we were doing and the early days of hint and still doing it today. But anyway, going back to my story, it was when I saw that, after making this product in my kitchen, I saw that there wasn’t anything like what I wanted in the stores. And I thought maybe it’s just not in San Francisco, where I was living, maybe I need to go to the East Coast, maybe I need to go to some other markets in the US. And I could not find it, I really believed that it was me, not them that couldn’t find the product. And finally, when I realized that it truly wasn’t out there, that’s when I decided I didn’t even call it like becoming an entrepreneur, I didn’t even say I’m gonna go start my own company, like a lot of entrepreneurs do. For me, it was, I wonder if I could get this product on the shelf. Because I know so clearly, that this has helped me drink water. It’s changed a lot of my own health issues that I was trying to fix. And it also was great for my kids, like anyone could drink it, there was nothing wrong with it. And maybe I should just go start. Again, wasn’t calling it a company that maybe I can just go get it on the shelf, that whole foods they just opened in San Francisco, and how hard could it be? And I remember trying to get it on the shelf at Whole Foods initially, at this point, friends were saying, Oh, that’s so cool that you’re starting a company. I’m like this, this is not a company. This is like America Online as a company. This is a, you know, product that I’m just trying to get on the shelf. But getting it on the shelf at Whole Foods was one thing. I mean, it’s not easy to make that happen. But it was when I really thought okay, now I’m gonna go expand. I want to get it into Safeway. I remember calling my dad and saying, so how do you get it like on the shelf at Safeway and, or, in his case, get it in the frozen food case that at Safeway, he’s like, I have no idea. And now is the first moment when I realized that if you’re inside of a company innovating and developing a product, it’s like you’re fighting internally with the other brands for the space. And you’ve got a certain amount allocated to you inside of a big chain that you can allocate to all of your brands because you’ve paid millions of dollars in order to kind of own that space. And a lot of consumers don’t realize this. But when it came to my situation, I didn’t have that big halo over me and so my dad was like, I have no idea. I mean, I don’t know how you would get outside I’d have, you know, the space that would be allocated to ConAgra. Because I’ve just never been an entrepreneur. So that was the first moment that I realized that things were a little different for me and would be a little different without having that larger company above me.

Roger Martin 10:16
Yeah, just take us back. How did you feel, though, when you because you know, you say I wasn’t that hard to get into Whole Foods. But that’s a win. I mean, that’s a win. So there had to be a phone call an email, something that said, yeah, well place your product. How did that feel? Well,

Kara Goldin 10:29
I had been kind of joking around with the guy that was stocking the shelves, that whole foods for months, like thinking first I was inquiring whether or not this product was even there on the shelf, and maybe I was missing it somewhere. And what I found that was really interesting and somewhat, you know, engaging in many ways was that what I was talking about was really sort of highlighted the confusion for not just consumers, but also people that were stocking the shelves, because there was this product called vitamin water, that was in Whole Foods. And it had just gone into Whole Foods. And it was, when I looked at the ingredients, they didn’t even have a diet version of vitamin water. It was healthy perception versus healthy reality. And I asked the buyer, like, shared with him the ingredients. And here I had been looking at my diet soda ingredients. And so I became really good at reading labels. And but I recognize that vitamin water had more calories, more sugar, but also equal calories to a can of Coke. And here this guy was, he was the guy, right, that was doing the work of making the decisions to go on the local shelves in San Francisco, there was a portion that he actually had saying it versus the national level. And so he was surprised that it wasn’t as healthy because he felt like a lot of consumers were buying it. Because they felt like it had vitamins in it. It was healthy. And then, you know, we found out later that it probably wasn’t as healthy. But it tasted great. And so there was kind of this tongue in cheek sort of conversation and education that was going on that, you know, I had with him for months. But I kept sort of threatening that I was going to, you know, go and launch, I’m going to just develop this thing on my own. But how many times do we actually say, I should just go do this, but I don’t think you took me very seriously. And it wasn’t until the morning where my son, who we were just talking about is going off to college now was I was having a plan C section. And I didn’t have to be at the hospital until that afternoon. And so I said to my husband, maybe we should try and get it on the shelf at Whole Foods before we actually go to the hospital because I can get some of the water that’s sitting in my garage. And so then I don’t have to have street parking in San Francisco, like, of course, I’m planning the whole thing out, there’s a reason for all of it. And he said, whatever, if that’s what you want to do, and you want to go to Whole Foods, I’ll go with you. And so he had the dolly, you know, to wheel the cases in. And I think he thought I had it all planned out with this guy. But truth was I talked to him a couple times. I wasn’t even sure if he was working that day. But he was. And when I went in, I said I did it. I like created this product. And now can we get it on the shelf? And he said, Wait, you have it with you? And I said yeah, this is my husband. And he’s, you know, really nice. He’s brought it he’s take the day off because I’m having a baby this afternoon. And he said, Oh, wait, how do you know you’re having a baby? And I said, Oh, I’m having a plan C section. He was like, oh, what’s the plan C section. So my husband is like, horrified. Like why he’s like, Oh my God, she’s really going to go there and tell this guy like, Where do babies come from? And, and so he walked away for a few minutes. And I explained what a Plan C section was. And then I was heading over to the hospital after this. And it would be really amazing if he would get it on the shelf. And so I didn’t know when I left the store that day I left him 10 cases, and I didn’t know whether or not he would. But I said I’ll just leave the cases. And he said yeah, I’ll do my best. No guarantees. But it wasn’t until the next day. In the hospital. Justin was born, everything was fine. We’re hanging out in the hospital. And he called a call my cell phone and my husband answered the phone and I said Who is it nuisance the guy I from Whole Foods, and I said, Oh, no way. So what do you say? And he just said, the product is gone. And I said, who took it? Right? So I get the guy on the phone. I’m like, who took the product? And you said, no, no, it’s gone. Like, we sold it. So do you guys have a team that can come and replenish the product? I’m like, my husband will go, I’m still in the hospital. But yeah, we have cases in our garage. And he was like, Oh, that’d be amazing. Because my boss is coming in this afternoon. And there’s a space that I, you know, cut you guys into the planogram. I’m like, Oh, my God, we’ll be right over. Yeah. So I mean, that was really exciting. And I think in some ways, we thought, oh, my gosh, like, yeah, we won, right? And we’re off to the races, we got it on the shelf. Everyone’s buying it. You know, we’re gonna be as big as that Vitaminwater in no time, right. Another lesson learned, which is, it always takes longer.

Roger Martin 15:59
Right, always costs more and takes longer. It

Kara Goldin 16:03
takes longer. And you’re gonna run into all kinds of challenges along the way. You know, you have, like I said, it’s a windy road, you have definitely wins along the way. And then in the same day, you know, the ceiling drops. Right. And that is the way it is

Roger Martin 16:23
it’s business ownership. Yeah. I want to commend you just on your courage, because you literally wheeled in product that they have not bought yet. And just assume the sale. That’s outstanding. I mean, that’s true. Entrepreneurship, just I’m going for it. Yeah,

Kara Goldin 16:38
but you know, I think it’s funny, if you sort of, you know, I’ve said before, if you think about the end, you’ll never get past the beginning, right. I’ve always thought like, if you think things out a little too much, like, life is actually really scary. Right. And I think I’m known for, as my husband likes to say I, you know, live with one foot off a cliff. Right. And that usually works out. Right. And I’m still here, right? But I think it’s definitely, you know, to somebody who isn’t used to doing business that way. It’s definitely not for the faint of heart. But I think what I’ve realized is that, when you actually do take those risks, and you go and not overthink things, but instead go out and try, it may not turn out exactly the way that you had planned. But it may turn out better, it may turn out different. Right. And I think that you just have to go for it and realize that, you know, what’s the worst that can happen? I love

Roger Martin 17:49
that you said it may turn out better, because we so many of us certainly meet can ruminate over what can go wrong? Versus like, gosh, what can go right that I can’t even see right now. That I can’t even visualize? Yeah, yeah. So this is awesome. So you’re in Whole Foods, tell them a hospital crazy story? How does it start to escalate and grow from there?

Kara Goldin 18:12
So we were doing really well in Whole Foods, we started to get into, you know, some other local markets in San Francisco as well. We just hadn’t really figured out how to produce this product. I mean, I had been producing it in my kitchen.

Roger Martin 18:30
I was gonna ask about supply chain and how you kind of put that together? Yeah,

Kara Goldin 18:34
supply chain was so far from our vocabulary at this point. Because, again, we have been dealing in bits and bytes. My husband who joined me, like that day at the hospital pretty much because he was like, I’ve got to help you, because you can’t do this on your own. We didn’t have that team, that whole foods, you know, was saying, Oh, can you just ask one of your people from your team? Sure. You know, we didn’t have that. I mean, this was truly bootstrapped. And we were funding it on our own, you know, everything from the production to, you know, we weren’t taking a salary early on. I mean, this was like, it was just very exciting. But it was also so new that, like I said, earlier, I didn’t even call this a company, I thought it’d be really fun to get it on the shelf. But all of a sudden, I’m like, Oh my gosh, like, it’s a lot of work to go and do all this. And then while it was successful, what we were figuring out is we didn’t really know how to determine shelf life testing. And so I keep referring my husband was he was an attorney. And he was helping me out. He was sort of on a hiatus. He had left being an attorney. He had gone to a startup that was a technology startup in the healthcare space. And that company had sold and so He was like looking at ways to determine what he should do next. And so he was helping me out but never intended on becoming the chief operating officer of the company and jumping in and that way, but he had as part of his initial job in law, he had actually worked on another beverage company, it was called Odwalla and Odwalla juice company. And they had had a very bad situation early on, where there were, sadly, some kids who had died from E. coli contamination. And so when I started this product, and wanted to do a product that didn’t have preservatives in it, the first thing, you know, that he thought of was like, you have to have insurance, you better be careful, like, you know, you’re playing with people’s lives. Of course, I knew that. But he sort of knew it from a legal perspective, watching another company, he was a young associate at the time, but knew enough that he was fearful, right, and didn’t want me to get in a lot of trouble. And, you know, said like, you know, I want you to be aware of this. So, we always from day one, we had a Food Lab in South San Francisco that we went down to, it’s not such a great neighborhood. So he would always like say, you can’t drive down there by yourself. But, you know, we have to drop off samples daily, like I’ve said, this to many entrepreneurs, like we had no idea what we were doing. But we actually, safety for us was like, front and center. But what we were seeing, although we were testing the product every single day, in order to get a shelf life, read on sort of, you know, before things started to turn, and we couldn’t get it to actually turn from a bacterial perspective. But we started to see visually on the shelf in some of those early days at Whole Foods That there was sort of this cloudy mass in the water. And again, like we kept taking it to the lab to try and test it and nothing would actually come back as dangerous. It ends up again, 19 years ago, this was before Ken Bucha. And some of the other products that are out there that have bacteria in them. I mean, blue cheese has bacteria and that right? But it just doesn’t look very good. And water and Whole Foods had started to say to us a couple of these buyers, you know, you can’t really sell back, like, okay, it might not be unsafe, but it just doesn’t look good. Right? People don’t like their water having like mold in it. They may not call it mold. But it’s not a good look, we sort of started to realize like our days were number, right, like, there was a lot that we didn’t know. And we also felt like a lot of the bottlers that we were dealing with, didn’t really know how to run this product to get a longer shelf life without putting preservatives in it. In fact, they didn’t want to touch it. So for our ability to actually expand if, for example, Whole Foods wanted to take this nationally, was really limited. And so we were frustrated, because we felt like we had seen local success. But we didn’t know how to actually scale this without having a longer shelf life, under the specs that I had set up for, you know, success for where I wanted this product to be. And so that’s when we finally I was sharing this with a girlfriend of mine. And she said, You know, I was sitting next to this guy on a plane who was a major executive at Coca Cola. And maybe he would talk to you because it sounds like you’ve like thought a lot of the stuff out. And obviously, you were a Diet Coke drinker, and you’re not anymore. And so he lost a lot of revenue from you. And so, I mean, why wouldn’t you talk to you? And I’m like, Oh, my God, that’d be amazing. And plus, he has all these trucks, like maybe we can get our product on the trucks. And, you know, I was dreaming, right? So that’s when she called him and he said, Sure, I’d be happy to talk to her. Why not? So I’m really excited, super prepared for this meeting. You know, little did I know what that conversation would be like? So I’m happy to share the story. Tell us

Roger Martin 24:50
about that. It sounds like this is the inflection point, right? Yeah.

Kara Goldin 24:53
Well, it was the inflection point of when I really realize that I was in or out of Right, like it was definitely, I was a little bit stuck that I thought, I don’t know how to scale this on my own. I mean, we’re gonna have to go out and raise money. But it was I don’t even know if I can find the plants to actually do this. So maybe these really smart people in the beverage industry could actually go and figure it out. I’ve got a great idea. And I’m going to talk to the sky and see what happens. He agreed to a phone call. And so I’m got my sales hat on telling him how great it’s doing. Everything’s perfect. We’re in Whole Foods, you know, Coke is not in Whole Foods at the time. So it’ll be terrific. And he interrupted me about 15 minutes into the conversation, and maybe 10 minutes into the conversation. He said, Sweetie, Americans love sweet. This isn’t going anywhere. And I was like, wait, what? Did he just call me, sweetie? And I was like, Wait, excuse me. And he said, I mean, no one wants an unsweetened drink? Who would want that? It tastes terrible? And I’m like, oh, no, no, our drink tastes great. I’m happy to send you some it tastes really, really good. And he said, No, nobody wants it. What they want is they want less calories. And so you know, we have Diet Coke. And we have some of these other diet drinks. And you know, they want healthier things. Maybe but you know, you’re so far ahead of where this is at. And this is before Vitaminwater was actually acquired by Coca Cola. And so what I realized as he was talking, and I sort of zeroed back in on the conversation, was he was sharing with me what he believed, and I really think he believed it. I think he believed that. He had been saying this, and he had put stakes in the ground to his, you know, company, what he believed that, you know, they were not going to do anything to damage the mothership billion dollar brands. Yeah. Right. And I heard it so clearly. And I think in many ways, maybe even growing up around, you know, conversations that I overheard my dad saying, right about how big companies think about things, and having grown up in a different industry, but inside of large companies, and kind of hearing how people think about things was super, super helpful to me. So instead, I just thought, I’ll just listen to him for a while, because then I’m going to get some more information and some strategy on how he thinks about things. And, I mean, I can predict it. But I mean, if he’s going to tell me exactly how he thinks about things, then I’ll know how much time I’ve got to actually, you know, get going on this before he realizes that, oh, maybe she was actually on to something. And so that’s what I did. And basically, you know, like, was very humbled in many ways, by his message of that I was totally wrong, and that I should go back to tech, and that I should not be doing what I’m doing right now. And I hung up the phone, and, you know, I did feel like my balloon had been popped a little bit, because here was this, you know, very senior person, very respected person, who was telling me that, you know, my idea was nothing, and that there was no way I was going to be able to pull this off. And, you know, I was an anomaly that I was, you know, not drinking diet coke anymore. And that’s not going to be the case. And so, I really thought at that point, I have a choice. Like, I can either listen to what he’s saying and internalize it and believe it, or I can take that information and throw the gas on and keep building. Because if I don’t do that, then I just confirmed that he’s right, right, that’s a choice that I could make. But if I really believed it, if I really believed that not only this product could actually help a lot of people but it actually was creating a category that was not being done and I saw so clearly that you know, they were not going to go and create a category and I think that that’s another thing that sort of at that moment I realized when I would share this with friends like what the conversation wasn’t even shared it with my father he was so stuck on the fact that he called me sweetie, he was like, Oh my gosh, good thing you were not sitting in the room. I probably wouldn’t have gone over really well. I mean, it was good thing I was on the phone but you It was at that moment when I really thought, you know, sometimes people say things to you, because they’ve been saying it so long to themselves that they’ve talked themselves into thinking that they’re right. And no one else can possibly be right. You know, and being able to tell me that I hadn’t been in this industry, so therefore I was wrong. When you look at most new ideas and most innovation, it actually comes from outside of the industry. Yeah, they’re all disruptors. Yeah. Right, from every industry, whether it’s beverage, or tech, or whatever, it’s like usually those people, you know, maybe they had been an engineer at one place, but then they went on, and they were thinking about this idea. They’re self motivated initially, and they have a problem that they have a solution for solving. And that’s where it comes from. So I always share with entrepreneurs that I worried early on that here, this, you know, big Goliath was going to catch me, right? Like he was eventually going to know, we didn’t have any competition, we were the category for years, there was nobody else who is around, what I would say now is that you should always be aware of the big guys, the ones with like, lots of cash. But the reality is, it’s like the scrappy people around you that you cannot even predict that they’re out there. And the key thing is figuring out how do you just keep moving forward? And how do you keep, you know, making sure that you’re listening to the consumer, and that you’re solving problems for the consumer, you’re staying sticky with the consumer that is probably much more important than actually worrying about, you know, when Coke or Pepsi was going to get out of their own way, which I think is what most entrepreneurs and, you know, frankly, most investors that entrepreneurs talk to, too, that’s what they worry about. And the reality is, is it’s rarely the case,

Roger Martin 32:16
up to this point in your story, like what I’ve heard is, so textbook entrepreneur, you didn’t create a product, you created a solution, that you had a problem. And you created a solution to it that happened to be, you know, delicious flavored water. without preservatives, and without sugar. That’s where the best products are born is I personally have a problem. I’ve got a pain point. And I seek to solve that. And then that’s where companies are born, you know, from where they’re born. And that sounds like that’s exactly what happened with you.

Kara Goldin 32:45
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I didn’t think to like, take on Coke or Pepsi, or, you know, take on big sugar. Right, but I guess that’s what we were doing right in many ways. And so I think that, that in some way, made it easier, you know, for me to kind of build, because if you actually stop and put those roadblocks in front of you and say, oh, gosh, you know, that’s a very crowded industry. And it’s going to be super daunting, you know, to go out and do something like this, or I just would never think it through enough to sort of allow myself to not keep building. Right. And I think that that’s an important point is that we get in our own way, right? We already have our own difficulties with trying something new, or getting up that hill getting through that challenge. But if you talk to too many people, they’ll feed into that, right? And you’ll get even worse, right? Because you’ll be thinking, Okay, what am I going to do next? And maybe I shouldn’t do anything because everybody says, I’m going to fail. And after a while, you know, it starts to get to you. So I think it’s definitely you have to be careful about paying too much attention to what everybody says versus actually just going out and just trying.

Roger Martin 34:14
Amen. Amen. That’s just such a natural segue into your book. If I’m understanding your core message, it’s just don’t listen to the haters. Don’t have to use the doubters as fuel. Can you just speak to that? Because I don’t even know if you realize you said it. You said you know, he’s taking on Coke, Pepsi, and big sugar. I can’t think of three more powerful enemies to take on, you know, David versus Goliath. I mean, those are three well funded, you know, well lobbied companies and industries that you’re competing against. So kind of talk to us about that.

Kara Goldin 34:50
Yeah, I mean, I think for me, it probably started in tech. You know, it was interesting. I think moving from tech Over to the food industry or the beverage industry had its own challenges, because I felt like they sort of operated differently. I think Silicon Valley had sort of gotten the hang of Silicon Valley, even though America Online was not based in Silicon Valley, I was based out here. And I felt like, we always like wanted to know what everybody was doing, like I knew people at Yahoo, and Microsoft, and, you know, we would hang out together and you’d be smart enough not to tell everybody what you were doing exactly. But you sort of, there was this camaraderie that existed. And when I jumped into developing my own, you know, beverage company, I felt like there was this, oh, we can’t talk to you because you’re the enemy, right? You don’t have enough experience. And so therefore, you’re going to be a failure. So you’re not worthy. And I really like felt that which was so different than what I had experienced in tech. I felt like prior to that, I was in media. And I felt that a little bit and media, I was just starting out, I had worked at time, and then went to CNN, and CNN was like, it was a mid age startup. It wasn’t late stage, it was an early it was like right in the middle. But we were definitely the underdog. And I didn’t feel like I knew a lot of people at ABC or NBC. But I didn’t feel like they wouldn’t speak to us. And I think that, for me, was probably the most shocking situation that I felt like, you know, it was really unnecessary, that people thought like, I’m the best, and therefore I can’t speak to you. It’s like, sort of, I don’t know, I felt like it was kind of childish. And frankly, I think it’s the same today, I don’t think it’s changed much. I think there’s this kind of elitist mentality that exists in CPG. And that they don’t typically, like balanced between companies like you do in tech anyway. So that was the thing that I started to see early on. And I thought, personally, I don’t really want to subscribe to that. And so I just kind of was friendly with everyone. You know, I tried to do whatever I could to not be that way. Because again, like, I think having spent time in an industry where it sort of worked like that I didn’t see the need. So I think that was for me, something that I really saw that kind of was different about this industry in particular. Yeah.

Roger Martin 37:37
Can I ask you that? How did that shape your culture? So you’re building this company? I imagine at some point, you decided to say, Okay, I’ve got a company, right? This isn’t just 90, and I’ve got a company, this is a real thing. And that means we have to start hiring people creating values, creating a culture, because if we don’t, it’ll create itself. And that’s not always the best thing. So how did you go about from, you know, just scrappy as can be. I mean, I love the story that you’re going in for a C section and your husband’s wheeling in a doll. It’s just that’s classic. That’s out of a movie. So how did you intentionally then start building, hence incorporated in building the culture within that company? Because you had a very different approach than the big guys.

Kara Goldin 38:18
You know, it’s interesting, I didn’t even call it culture, when, you know, we were first building the company, I think the word culture really started to kind of become a thing, somewhere in the middle of hint. But looking back, I think that my experiences working in a number of different types of cultures, like I didn’t go to these companies, like I think some people think about today, like they want to go because of the culture. I went to these companies primarily because there were interesting jobs. And they are, were great products, my dad was always kind of instilling in my mind, the power of brands. And so he always felt like, you know, when you don’t know what direction to go in, you find a brand. And so my first job out of college was that time, and I didn’t, I loved the product. I love the brand. I didn’t know until I started working there, that the culture would not necessarily be my vibe. Having said that, I still have friends today that I met there, which is another piece like you can always find people in every culture that maybe are trying to figure stuff out, you know, for themselves too. But it was a lot more stuffy, very Ivy League. Like it just was not me, but I didn’t know that until I was there. So I think the moral of that story is, you know, kind of like being an entrepreneur you go try and don’t be afraid because sometimes you figure out what you like and what you don’t like and there were aspects What I really liked about it, it was a great brand. And there were really smart people that were working there. Then I left, I loved media still. And I went to CNN, now talk about the opposite cultures. And here was a guy, Ted Turner, who worked primarily in Atlanta. But he came up to New York a lot. And I was in sales at CNN, totally different side of things. But, you know, he’s wearing cowboy boots with his suit, you know, never would have seen that at Time Magazine, but it was very seat of your pants, very bright, didn’t care about education levels, there were people who had great education at CNN, but that was not what was going to make them successful. That was the first place that I really saw the power of having a founder around, you knew when Ted got off the elevator, you didn’t even have to know that he was coming in. There was just, you knew he was there. And he believed when we had moments where we didn’t know whether or not CNN was going to make it. It was in 40% of households. At the time, I think it was, like 12% of countries across the world. And he believed every day, there was never a doubt, you know, and it was almost comical, like, you know, those people, and that was Ted. And he believed everything about it. He believed that it didn’t matter that it was all in English, and many parts of the world and speak English doesn’t matter. Nope, it’s like all gonna have more. I don’t know if it’s gonna happen. And then it did. Right. And I happened to be there when I saw it. And there was an energy about working in a founder led company that was incredibly powerful. So when I decided to move to San Francisco, my husband graduated law school, we moved out to San Francisco, I liked the energy, I still wasn’t calling it like, I want to go find a job that is in a founder led company. But I went back to kind of what my father had said, when you don’t know where to go find a brand. And I was like, what is the brand that I think of? When I think of San Francisco, Apple, I had had a Macintosh when I was in college, and I didn’t connect the dots between me going to work. I thought, Okay, I’m not an engineer, so I’m not going to be able to get a job at Apple. But I had heard about this guy, Steve Jobs, who I thought he’s a founder. He’s like a Ted Turner, Ash guy. He’s probably very different. But he in my mind, but the biggest sort of gating item for me was I was living in San Francisco and Cupertino is like 100 miles away. And I thought, I’m not going to actually work there. But while I was looking up information on Apple, and trying to figure out how I was going to get a job there. That’s when I saw this little startup. That was a Steve Jobs idea that had been spun out by a group of people that had worked at Apple. Anyway, doing CD ROM shopping. I didn’t even really know what a CD ROM was. I just heard shopping. And I saw that they’re going to be working with catalogers. I’m like, well, maybe there’s something there in sales that I can do. And so it was an article that was written in The Wall Street Journal by Walt Mossberg. And there was a guy quoted in the article, and I cold called them. And I said, Hey, I was just curious if you guys have jobs. I mean, this is like, no one had websites. And he was like, what do you do? And I said, Oh, well, I just work for this company called CNN. And he said, You’re kidding. Like, did you work with Ted Turner? And I said, I did. Like, I didn’t work directly for him. But yeah, and he was like, I love Santa. It’s amazing. And I said, Did you work for this guy, Steve Jobs. And he said, I didn’t. And I said, Well, can I take you to lunch? Like, he was like, really? And I said, Yeah, I just moved here from San Francisco. And he said, Oh, that’d be really fun. I’ll tell you what we’re doing here. And I was like, okay, and then Little did I know that I would actually be getting a job offer and stock options and it was insane. You were there at the beginning then. Wow. Yeah. And so they were probably I mean, depending on how you look at it because they had sort of started it inside of Apple. And then they had spun it out. But there were you know, five guys that was another P used to the culture that they were wearing jeans and T shirts, like very different than working in New York where it was just like, there was an again, we didn’t necessarily think about that as culture. But, you know, they were getting as much work done. They just weren’t, you know, wearing suits. And I thought, Oh, this is California, like, it’s just different in some way. Anyway, long winded story, but work there. The founder wasn’t really there, although he had, you know, been inside of Apple. So, yeah, I mean, he was a founder, this guy, Tom Burt, that had spun out of Apple. And then it was acquired by this company, one of our investors, America Online, that was, again, like a medium size. At that point, underdog, Steve Case, probably wouldn’t appreciate this. But they were, you know, not number one. At that point. They were behind prodigy and CompuServe. And I sort of knew what they were, I didn’t know about America Online. But they were acquiring us one of their investments, because we had a ton of relationships that I had set up with a lot of the catalogers. And so I went inside of America Online, again, another culture, one that was different than any of the others. But I also saw a part of a culture when you go from, not zero, I wasn’t there in the very beginning. But how you go through that hockey stick, I’d never been through a hockey stick. It was, you know, much more gradual at CNN. But at America Online, it was like every week, we were adding, you know, hundreds of new employees. And it was just like, it was crazy, right? And just trying to kind of keep up. So how things change and how, you know, one of the things that I loved about America Online was, it was okay for you to not go into meetings, if you didn’t think you had to announce that you were not going to go into these meetings. But you know, if you didn’t feel like it was a good use of your time, then you shouldn’t go into the meetings. And I thought, if I ever start a company, that’s definitely going to be something that I’ll take with me. So anyway, long winded story of saying, there’s pieces that I saw along the way that I felt like, when I eventually started a company, I’m definitely going to do that. I think anyone who worked at hand knew that I always felt like, don’t have a meeting for the sake of having a meeting like every Friday, it’s such I mean, stupid. It’s like you shove a meeting because you want everybody in the room, and you need to get consensus right on the best direction to go. And so things like that, obviously, not wearing suits every day, or dresses every day, in order to work. I always thought that was kind of silly. You know, we were doing remote work even before COVID hit. I mean, a lot of people were we had offices in San Francisco. But we were also used to we had, you know, over half of our team was remote. And that’s partly the beverage industry and sort of being all spread throughout the country, especially in sales. But I think we were also used to working in either situation, we all had laptops, I mean, we were sort of used to being able to do it. Anyway, as long as we got the job done.

Roger Martin 48:33
What I clearly heard is along the journey, you picked up the things that you wanted to bring with you and build hint with. And I think we all learn if you’ve been in corporate America, there are things we don’t want to bring with us. You know, there’s practices that because I think corporate America kind of gets a bad rap sometimes, because at least I’m very grateful for what it taught me. But it also taught me what not to do. And I want to bring with me.

Kara Goldin 48:56
The other thing I’ll say really quickly, with each of these companies that I worked with, and the ones that had the founder around, I think it was even more powerful. You could really sense it was when there were challenging times when there were like bumps in the road. I think having somebody who reminds the team about the mission and the purpose, right? Because that’s why people join, right? Like, you know, you’ve got some crazy idea to start a beverage company that doesn’t have sweeteners in it, right? You’re getting incredibly talented people that could do other things, but they’re gonna hit bumps in the road that maybe they haven’t seen at other companies because they’re more established. The puzzles already formed at this point for them within those companies. But here you’re breaking new ground and I had seen that firsthand. And the power of it how, you know, great leadership can kind of help people, you have to have sort of a core kind of belief and ability to do that. But you have to be reminded, right at certain times along the way. And I think that that’s where, you know, founder led companies are just incredibly powerful, you know, for, like I said, in every industry that you really see it,

Roger Martin 50:30
like we see, because people need to be reminded of the mission, and nobody can remind them with more passion than the founder, who was there wheeling in the dollar, you know, they want like, there’s just there’s power in that for sure. And I know, there’s a lot of cliches out there, and you know, one liners, but if you had to give a single piece of advice, you know, a real critical piece of advice to a young entrepreneur, not an age just in tenure of a business. You’ve been through a lot, what would you offer up and say, you know, hang on to this nugget right here. Because things will get hard things. It’s never easy. Like you said, it takes longer than you think it costs more than you think, what would be your piece of advice to someone that is just getting started and realizes holy moly, this is hard. Two

Kara Goldin 51:15
things, it has to actually no matter what you do, if you have an idea, it really has to be solving a problem, right? The problem may not be something that people recognize as a problem yet, like, in our case, but it has to be a problem that you are sure is one, that it’s actually a problem out there, I saw that these diet sweeteners, and I really believed and I knew I was early, but I believed the diet sweeteners or go going to be, you know, seen as the culprit of many health issues. And I had read a lot about it, I had seen firsthand that, that it was not making me as healthy as I wanted to be. Once I gave it up, I lost over 20 pounds in a very short amount of time. And I thought, you know, if I could actually do something that is not only going to help me, but also help a lot of other people. Like, that’s my legacy. I mean, I really believed that. And so during those really challenging times, if you can start a product, start a company that really helps people in some way. And that could be b2b, that could be b2c. But that is a very powerful thing, especially when things are rocky, right? Like, you know, you can’t raise money or you lose your, you know, 40% of your business because it was wrapped up with one customer, whatever that is along the way. I think that when you come back to your purpose, and you think I’m helping a lot of people, I’m solving this problem for a lot of customers. And that helps you get back up again, that helps you know that, you know, your time is not wasted, right doing this. And I think that I’ve seen this over and over again, in a number of different entrepreneur stories, companies were having a mission, having a purpose for doing something, versus just creating a company to go make money and flip and sell. Like, you’ll be able to do all of that. If you have the purpose. And the front end, you have that figured out, then you’ve just got to figure out how to get it working in the right way. And I think that that is the key thing that I’ve learned, because you’re right. I mean, it takes more time, takes more money. You know, lots of things come up along the way that you didn’t expect. But I think if you go back to, I mean, the number of people who still stop me today, oftentimes, interestingly enough, they don’t recognize me. And you know that they’ll have heard my story, they’ll tell me the story back but they will not recognize me when you know everything from being on a ferry boat and Massachusetts to be on an airplane or whatever it is, people will, you know, see me drinking a hint. And they’ll talk to me about the brand who talks to people about brands. Right? It’s a very powerful thing. And again, for me as a Brander. And as a marketer, I mean, I’m fascinated, like by the number of people who you know, not only talk to me about the brand I created in my kitchen, but also how They use the same word, which has helped. I always hear that word. Right, and whether it’s helping them get healthy, drink more water. So if you can create a brand to where somebody says, it really helped me, right, like that is incredibly powerful,

Roger Martin 55:23
homerun. Yeah. Yeah. One last question for you here when you wrote your book undaunted, which that’s a powerful word, by the way. authors write books for different reasons. When you wrote that book, what were you setting out to do? And I guess more, the real question behind the question is, what do you want to communicate to people through that book? What would make you feel like I fulfilled my mission with my book, when they put it down after they finished it?

Kara Goldin 55:50
Yeah. So I found that, like I said, Before, when I was jumping in, I didn’t feel like the industry, was that open to outsiders, right. And yet, I felt like there were things that happened along the way that I didn’t anticipate. I would talk about it later, typically, not in the same day, because sometimes I was so like, shocked by so many things that would happen along the way. But I felt like the stories really gave people kind of a glimpse into what the brand was about, and why it was so powerful, right to them later on, where they would go and share that story. They had met me, and then they would, you know, she was in Whole Foods, and she was stocking the shelves, whatever it was. And I felt like, it was a little bit of sharing the story. And the hard days, and the, you know, the underdog kind of mentality, that they very quickly, would figure out how it would help them either launch an idea, get through a challenging time, sort of rethink things in some way. And I think it sort of goes back to something I’m part of an organization called YPO. And I found that one of the things that we learned when I went into forum, you know, 20 years ago, and actually had started hint before I was in YPO. But it was very easy for me to catch on to is I’ve never believed that. While people might ask you, what should I do, I’ve never really believed people necessarily want you to solve their problem. They just want direction, right? They might ask you to do one thing, but then, you know, they don’t necessarily want you to go and tie it in a boat for them, they want to go do it, right, but they just don’t know how to do it. So sometimes, I found that through you sharing your story of how you did something, that they’ll apply it in their own way to their story and how they’re gonna go do something. And so I felt like that would help a lot of people. And the other piece of it, and it still is happening today is I don’t coach, there’s a lot of coaches out there. There’s a lot of mentors, I get asked a lot to mentor people. And I just, I’m an operator, I’m an entrepreneur, right. I’m a founder, I’m a builder, right. And I love doing that. I’m happy to share how I did something, I’m happy to give free advice to people along the way. But it’s not how I’m choosing to live. And I think, you know, time is the most valuable thing that anyone has. And I know that and I think for me, I thought that this was the best way to actually get the messages out that I would even have one on one with people was to share this book. And also I’m super active on social too. So also getting my messages out on social as well.

Roger Martin 59:21
I follow you on LinkedIn and I love you’re very inspirational. Very inspirational. Yeah. And maybe that’s a great way to wrap up. Where can people find you obviously, the book undaunted, overcoming doubts and doubters. It’s available anywhere books are sold, but where else can people find you and follow you?

Kara Goldin 59:36
All over social? Okay, so yeah, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, it’s all Kara Goldin

Roger Martin 59:43
tax now right now Twitter X.

Kara Goldin 59:45
It’s exactly, exactly. I’ll never get used to it.

Roger Martin 59:49
Nobody will. Nobody will. Well, we’ll put that in the show notes for the podcast so that people can just click right there and find you. I just want to say from one of my heart, thank you so much, you were just so open. So authentic? and you’re just the real deal. I almost made a joke when you said you know, I don’t coach. That’s because you actually are doing it. You’re doing it. You know, there’s so many coaches out there that haven’t done it, you’ve done it and ain’t bragging if you’ve done done it and you’ve done it. So thank you for your time and giving so graciously today. Appreciate it so much.

Kara Goldin 1:00:17
Thank you so much.

Roger Martin 1:00:18
Do you bet. Take care. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Thrive more podcast. Don’t forget to take a look at the show notes for any resources mentioned during the show. And if you haven’t already, be sure to hit the subscribe button and turn on your notifications so you have access to the latest and the greatest. I’d also like to remind you to check out our website thrive more brands.com. There you’ll find information on the brands we support and information on franchising. Thank you again for tuning in. And until next time, always remember to set your intentions for the day and strive to thrive.

Kara Goldin 1:00:50
Before we sign off, I want to talk to you about fear. People like to talk about fearless leaders. But achieving big goals isn’t about fearlessness. Successful leaders recognize their fears and decide to deal with them head on in order to move forward. This is where my new book undaunted comes in. This book is designed for anyone who wants to succeed in the face of fear, overcome doubts and live a little undaunted. Order your copy today at undaunted, the book.com and learn how to look your doubts and doubters in the eye and achieve your dreams. For a limited time. You’ll also receive a free case of hint water. Do you have a question for me or want to nominate an innovator to spotlight send me a tweet at Kara Goldin and let me know. And if you liked what you heard, please leave me a review on Apple podcasts. You can also follow along with me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn at Kara Goldin. Thanks for listening