Daina Trout: Co-Founder & Chief Mission Officer of Health-Ade
Episode 294
Daina Trout has come a long way from brewing kombucha in her college dorm at Tufts University. After getting her Masters in both Nutrition and Public Health, she developed her own personal philosophy that health is less about science, and more about what makes you feel good and happy. Fast forward a few years, she decided to launch her product idea, Health-Ade, with her Co-Founders, husband Justin Trout and best friend, Vanessa Dew. With a commitment to brewing the best tasting and highest quality kombucha on the market, starting in farmer’s markets and growing rapidly across the US, hear how Daina tirelessly created, launched and scaled Health-Ade to the brand that is today. So many lessons here. You won’t want to miss listening to this incredible episode. Today on #TheKaraGoldinShow.
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List of links mentioned in this episode:
https://www.instagram.com/dainatrout/
https://www.instagram.com/healthade/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dainatrout/To purchase Health-Ade:
https://health-ade.com/
Transcript
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. Hi, everyone. It’s Kara Goldin from the Kara Goldin show. And I’m so thrilled to have my next guest. Here we have Daina Trout, who is the co founder and chief mission officer of health aid. And if you are not familiar with health aid, then you have been living under a rock and you should definitely go to your local, wonderful store and pick it up. Daina started brewing kombucha while she was back in college at Tufts University. And after getting her master’s in both nutrition and public health, she developed her own personal philosophy that health is less about science and more about what makes you feel good and happy. I totally agree. Fast forward a few years she decided to take her idea and philosophy to all and with her co founders, husband Justin trout, and best friend Vanessa do decided that it was time to launch her idea. So health aid was created and with a commitment to brewing the best tasting and highest quality Canna Bucha on the market. So Daina is the co founder and chief mission officer, and I just can’t even wait for you to hear her incredible story. She’s super, super awesome. I have to say, as a founder and somebody who has grown a brand in the beverage industry, there aren’t very many women in this industry, either that are sort of sitting at that seat. So I really, really appreciate everything that she’s done to found this company and grow this business and scale it etc. So, anyway, very thrilled. So welcome, Daina. How are you?
Daina Trout 2:28
I’m awesome. Thanks for having me, Kara.
Kara Goldin 2:30
Absolutely. So let’s start at the beginning. First of all, I would love in your words to hear what is health aid if you ran into somebody on the street saying, you know, I don’t know what health aid is what is
Daina Trout 2:42
while healthy. It is a company makes bubbly, delicious drinks that are good for your gut. We’re most famous for our kombucha. Our Kombucha is a bubbly, delicious treat. It’s fermented tea. So it’s naturally rich and things like probiotics, prebiotics, and organic acids or post biotics and these things all support gut health. And the reason you care about that is gut health basically is connected to every aspect of health, not just digestion, as you might think, or expect but also immunity, energy, metabolism, inflammation, you name it sleep. And so fermented foods are sort of like a superfood for the god Kombucha is one of the strongest ones. We think we make the best one on the market. So that’s how you might know us but that’s a little bit about kombucha if you haven’t had it. It’s bubbly. It’s a little tarts little sweet. It’s delish. I have one every day at 3pm
Kara Goldin 3:34
Why? 3pm I’m curious. You know,
Daina Trout 3:37
everybody’s got their own time for when they drink kombucha I have like, definitely have like a 3pm slump almost every day. I don’t know, between lunch and dinner, I just like have this thing that happens at three or I’m like, a little bit low on energy. I want a snack. I don’t know. I’m like getting distracted. And I just find that’s like the perfect time for me to have this sort of cold, crisp, bubbly drink that like wakes me up a bit and somehow gets me through to dinner without even like, like, it just totally pivots that energy. But a lot of people love it. You know, with lunch or in the morning. There’s really no right time or wrong time to have it. A lot of people do it. And instead of drinking wine or beer, you know, over dinner. That’s just what I do it.
Kara Goldin 4:18
Obviously this didn’t happen overnight. We heard that you were in you went to university and then you did you know you were going to be an entrepreneur. I mean, you’re getting your master’s in nutrition. But did you think that this was what you were going to end up doing?
Daina Trout 4:35
No, not at all. Yeah, I learned how to make kombucha as you’d said in graduate school where I was studying nutrition and there. It’s easy to be a nerd about food, you know, because that’s all you’re studying. I thought then I was going to be an academia. I was actually doing my PhD at the time in Nutritional Biochemistry, studying probiotics and their impact on health. I was working mostly with rats, which it turns out didn’t go A while with my personality. And I was like, this cannot be my life, even though I’m really fascinated about food and nutrition, and I love healing, with food, cooking with food. You know, eating food with others, like food is like a passion of mine. And healthy food like whole healthy foods. That’s a passion of mine. Even though all of that was true, the reality day to day of working in the lab was like not aligning with that. So I actually moved out of the Ph. D. program finished with two masters and in its place, and sort of moved into what can I do, where I combine people and food together. And at first I, I approached public health as sort of a career choice. But I learned it was very difficult to change behaviors of populations, and there’s very little funding there, I had to private school degrees to pay off and it just wasn’t gonna work. So I actually got like a corporate job at a pharmaceutical company, which is really, you know, not what you’d expect, given my background, but they were looking for nutritionists, because they had just launched a sort of arm of their company that had pharmaceutical grade nutraceuticals, or like, so specifically, they had launched an Omega three that was like, really strong. And it was, it was for triglycerides. But anyway, they wanted to bring nutritionists on that could help essentially write the marketing and help sell the product. And so it did actually make a little bit of sense for me to take that job. And so that was my first job and the only job I had before starting health aid. So it was a good 10 years after I learned how to make kombucha that I started health aid.
Kara Goldin 6:42
So the first days, maybe you’re working at this pharmaceutical company, while you’re incubating health aide in your kitchen, is that kind of where it started?
Daina Trout 6:53
Yeah, I mean, it’s kind of a cooler story than that. And I think it’s worth mentioning, because it’s a testament to the importance of agility and, and being willing to pivot. So Justin, you had mentioned, Justin and Vanessa, were both co founders that Justin was my husband, Vanessa was my best friend. And Justin was working on the side he was in, he’s a musician, but he was working on the side, just to make some ends meet. For an entrepreneur who had a lot of success selling a hair loss product. The product itself wasn’t even that effective. But yet he was so successful. And Justin was like, man, imagine if we made something that was effective. And me being a believer that like food can cure all things. I said, There’s got to be something out there food derived that can stop hair loss, or help slow it down. And so the three of us got to working on what will regrow hair. And we found in all parts of the world, in particular Asia, people using the culture that you make kombucha with. So you might not know about fermentation. But just as a quick sidenote, to ferment tea, you have to add a culture to it. And that culture then transforms the tea into a new liquid. And that new liquids can Bucha. And a weird sort of byproduct of that whole process is it makes another culture so you have this culture you started with. And then you have the baby culture, if you will. And now you have two cultures from which you can make two computers with and then you have four and 16, and so on and so forth. So if you started making kombucha at home, you’d have more cultures. They’re also called SCOBYs, if you’re in the world of kombucha, but you’d have more cultures, and you know what to do with. And I of course, it may come Bucha for 10 years, right? So I was well aware of this, anyway, we find in the world of the internet, that people are using this culture on the head, to regrow hair, and that somehow this this culture has some potency in it too. Who knows maybe increase the integrity of the cells who knows what it’s exactly doing. But people were reporting increased hair growth after putting the scoby on the head.
Kara Goldin 9:01
And while never vote. This is why Yeah,
Daina Trout 9:05
yeah, so I’m like, I know how to make SCOBYs you know, and we didn’t have any money. We didn’t have experience in business. But we did feel really sort of like we had this angle of like, hey, we can make a hair loss product made out of kombucha SCOBYs that actually works. And so that prompted me to start making a lot of kombucha because I needed to make those cultures and we were going to use Justin as our guinea pig as his hair was starting to thin so it was perfect, sterile and we were going to save the world from baldness. Anyway, you know, we made so much kombucha it was taking over our apartment. We thought it was like you know this byproducts. I mean, I always made terrific kombucha, so I never threw it out. But basically three weeks down the road. We got a call from a friend of Vanessa’s who ran a farmers market and she was trying to integrate more packaged goods into her farmers Mark and not just have farmers goods. So she called us saying, Hey, I know your is your hair loss thing done like yet because we would love to have that at the farmers market. And we just said yes. Even though we didn’t have a product yet, but we figured we would get one in three weeks by the time she needed us. Long story short is we didn’t develop a product in three weeks. And we were sort of like, oh, shoot, how are we going to, you know, figure this out? We already said yes to the farmers market. But we had all this kombucha, right. We had made cases in cases of it. So we decided let’s hand label these. We’re going to go out there, give it our best shot and let’s just see how it goes. And I think the the contract for the farmers market was for three months. So we had three months of kombucha. We went out there we gave it our best shot. We called it healthy. We literally scotch tape labels on there, because we were pretty broke. I had mentioned Justin was a musician. I had a pretty good job, but I was still relatively entry level and I had to cover the two of us in very expensive Los Angeles. So like, we didn’t have any extra you know what your post by the way. This was 2012. So we start in the farmers markets and it’s just like the farmers market had a totally different story for us. People loved our kombucha. We sold the shit out of it. I mean, we nobody could walk through this farmers market without trying our kombucha. We wouldn’t allow it. You know, I made sure. Vanessa major we all just had it covered Jericho, and we were introducing most people to kombucha for the first time but some we were converting and the farmers markets just became a roaring success. And it was very clear after two, two months that we had something and we weren’t expecting it to be something right. We still thought the real business was in hairloss. But that that summer told us something different. It told us consumers wanted kombucha it told us we were good at selling it. It told us we had landed on a on a good name with a product and and so we we ditched the hair loss idea and we quit our jobs. And we went full force with kombucha first at the farmers markets. And we did farmers markets only for the first year. I mean, it was crazy hard work, but and we were broke. Because of course our jobs were now gone. And the money that we made at the farmers markets, we didn’t have any extra we had to put it into making the next batch of kombucha for the following farmers market. So it was a crazy first few years. Oh my gosh.
Kara Goldin 12:27
So you talked about not having the money to put the labels on you’re reliant on scotch tape and doing all of that at what point did you go out and raise money then?
Daina Trout 12:39
Yeah, we raised money relatively early, at least from private equity quite early. Luckily, we made a buzz a little bit. We had a little buzz around health aid, I think because the farmer’s markets in Los Angeles in particular, are no constant thing. It’s a little bit of a press often will snapshot celebrities and stuff at farmer’s market. So we actually had like quite a few celebrity moments already with our kombucha. I think that helped. But regardless, we got we caught the attention early on, of private equity. And we were inexperienced. And this is something I think I learned and I would do differently next time. But we were a little inexperienced about cash. And by the time we realized we needed it,
Kara Goldin 13:20
we were a little late. Yeah.
Daina Trout 13:24
You know, our credit card was cancelled. I was like, oh, we can’t even meet these orders. Shoot, what are we going to do? So we started to reach out to friends and family for cash, but we needed it fast, like 30 days. Yeah. And it just so happened that we had caught the I already have some private equity groups, and kombucha the category had caught the eye of these private equity groups. And they, you know, they found as we found them, and it just sort of worked. But we were early. So as your two, two and a half. And we were doing only about, you know, 700,000 in revenues at that time. But that was pretty impressive coming all from farmers markets. We were definitely successful for just having been in those spaces. That’s
Kara Goldin 14:07
incredible. So you felt like the first I mean, obviously, you hadn’t started a company, any of you before, so you didn’t really know who you should talk to either. Right? So did you feel like people were kind of whiteboard like, who
Daina Trout 14:20
are our rich friends?
Unknown Speaker 14:21
Yeah, we’re gonna call them those people.
Daina Trout 14:22
I mean, really, it was, in many ways, I look back and I think, well, we had no idea what we’re doing. But isn’t it cool? You don’t really need to do you don’t really need to know what you’re doing. Because once you rely on your problem solving skills, which you may have learned in many places, yeah. And you’re just sort of like innate talents and characteristics. That can be enough.
Kara Goldin 14:46
Yeah. Well, and I think, you know, to some extent, you said you do things a little bit differently. But I always say it’s like, if you think too much about the end, you might not get past the beginning, right? Because you said now I don’t want to do this Did you know you were just throwing a bunch of stuff at the wall just to see what would stick? Right. And I think that’s what I always share with entrepreneurs is look at the friends and family first get your product into a place where you were not just selling it in the farmer’s market, but you were doing sampling and people saw the buzz, right. So you didn’t have to do the sales pitch. They had seen how people were reacting to it. So I think that’s also super, super helpful. And, and, you know, I’ve heard stories like this to where, and, you know, this definitely happened to hint over the years where when stores start calling you, when investors start calling you. I mean, it’s a very different conversation, right? That versus you pitching it. So if you can figure out a way to put your brand into that position, I think that it’s just going to be a different situation. And really, really interesting to hear your perspective on that. So you created health aid. And with your co founders, a lot of people think, okay, founders just snap their fingers, you know, she, she was Dinah was, you know, in great job. And first, she totally knew what she was doing. And it’s all like, it just she was lucky, or, you know, it just happened, just ended up perfect. But we all know that isn’t the case. And what I’d love to hear any stories that you have along the way, where you just thought, what the heck am I doing?
Daina Trout 16:38
Oh, my God. I mean, so many stories come to mind. You know, yes, it’s not glamorous. In particular, when you’re building it, you know, when you were saying that, the story that was coming to mind was the time that I was literally choking on liquid that was exploding at me from a air compressor I had bought from Home Depot for our new filling line, I had no idea how to build it. So you know, let me tell you the story of it, because it’s a good example of like something you would never have seen on the outside looking in. So we manufacture our own kombucha, it’s a big part of our business. It’s a challenging part, but it has it pays its dividends, because you can control the quality really well. And you own the manufacturing. So there’s a lot of benefit to that. The challenge is you’ve got to scale it and meet the demand. And that’s very difficult to do. Because we were making it in our kitchen at first in the farmers markets. And then we went to our first kitchen. And then the next one, the next one. Fast forward to today we have you know, 100,000 square foot brewery in Torrance. And it’s running like a charm. But yeah, I had no idea how to build that in the beginning. That was a stepwise iterative process to get there. And in one of our first breweries, we we were done with filling by hand. And you know, we just couldn’t do it anymore. We were up all hours in the night, pumping kombucha, literally with us with a hand pump into the bottles, and we’re like, there’s got to be a better solution. So you know, Googling, like, kind of beverage filling lines, we we end up finding a few companies, we interview them, we finally land on the one that’s right. For us. It’s $100,000. Where are we going to get that money? This is before investment, we get the first one, but we’re not going to pay to have it installed because that would be $200,000. So I’m going to figure it out, you know, so Justin and I were we’re putting this thing together doing our best we’re not mechanical Hanzi you know, handyman type of people. But we’re figuring it out. And you know, lo and behold, we need some kind of air compressor to run this thing. So I go to Home Depot, I’m like, Hi, sir, can you show me where the air compressors are? You know, he shows me there. I’m like, I’ve no idea what I’m looking for. I’m trying to figure it out. You know, use my intellect and whatever, land on one, hook it up to the filling line. I don’t know if you know this, but if you hook up an air compressor wrong, this like black liquid shoots out, like a bass,
Kara Goldin 19:02
we’ve been there. Yep, I know exactly what
Daina Trout 19:07
I swallowed a bunch of it. And I remember sitting there on the floor. This had been days, I had marks on my arms from carrying this stuff. Meanwhile, we’re still needing to, like meet the demand at the farmers market. So it’s like this is above and beyond your normal day. And, you know, this thing explodes on me. And I’m just like, What am I doing? What am I doing? You know, I and that’s just one day. You know, that’s one day or one week in the life of that building. And I could tell you a story like that with every aspect of building our company. Really. I mean, it’s it’s almost it’s funny, right? I mean it via a funny meme or something. But you just don’t have the money at that time or the experience to hire that out. And I think we were so focused on just getting the job done that it was like we’re gonna figure this out, you know, that was sort of the mentality.
Kara Goldin 20:02
That’s crazy. I remember one of our I haven’t told the story, actually, it’s, it’s pretty funny. Early, early days, we were looking at this plant, and we’re sitting at this table talking to this guy at this plant. And he has a bunch of ammunition boxes behind his desk. So I’m just staring at the I mean, I’m trying to have a conversation with them. And I just keep looking at these, like ammunition boxes thinking. I mean, is it? Is that the wall? Is it sort of like, not really ammunition boxes? Is it supposed to be decorative? I don’t know. So Mike, do you have guns in the ammunition boxes? My husband looks over at me like, Wait, What? What? What is she talking about? And he said, and the guy said, yeah, it’s my side project. I sell guns. And I was like, Huh. I mean, it was, you know, it was just like, what, what kind of guns do you sell? And of course, like, I didn’t wake up that morning thinking this was gonna happen. I’m just wanna go pack my product, right and bottle it. So yeah, he went on. He said, I got everything. I’ve got ak 47. So I’ve got all the you know, all the stuff. I’m like, Huh? Okay, good. And so we never co packed there, though, actually. Because we were just I don’t know, it was just like, really weird. And yeah, again, like, I think that’s the, you know, my husband and I start with, there’s so many stories to your point where, you know,
Daina Trout 21:38
I mean, it’s endless. It’s truly endless.
Kara Goldin 21:40
I mean, it’s wild, these stories, and it’s part of the sickness of being a founder to where, you know, especially in the early days, when, you know, people won’t talk to you, not everybody’s going to co pack your product or make your product right, I so I totally get it. But I I love your story. That’s amazing. But so, being an entrepreneur, obviously, is tough way easier ways to make money. But what do you think, like, Why do you stay? Are you a creator? Obviously, you you believe in what you’re doing? You have a mission, you have a purpose. But what do you think it is that keeps you staying and going and wanting to kind of figure out this problem and scale the company?
Daina Trout 22:27
Yeah, it’s a great question. And I think it has evolved over time. In the very beginning, my drive was to prove I could do it. I think, for whatever reason, in my life, I had received the message that this is something a woman can’t do or doesn’t do, or, and I had this innate drive in me to prove that wrong. So that was the drive in the beginning was sort of like everybody’s telling me I can’t I have to say that I have to show I can. And maybe even perhaps that was part of my own self saying I couldn’t do it. And I had to squash that part of me down. I don’t know exactly. I’m sure there’s a whole kind of psychology to it. But that was the drive for me. In the beginning. It was like life or death. You prove it you I had this drive to prove it, I don’t know. And then there was a point where the business grew enough that it was it was now a company of people. And as soon as it became a company of people, my drive shifted to almost like the purpose was to serve them. And to serve the business too. It was like, I kind of found myself in a role I was CEO for the first 10 years. The business is 11 years old. So most of my career health aide has been a CEO. I don’t know how to explain it, except that I got up for the team. Like I got up for health aid. And for the team, it was almost like a service role. Hard to explain, but maybe you can understand. It felt like my only job was to make health aid succeed, and to do right by its people. I wanted to build a company that people wanted to work for, that just killed it. That was built on unconventional or not necessarily conventional grounds. You know, like, I didn’t care if you had pain care. I didn’t care if you had didn’t graduate college. If you were smart problem solver. You had the right attitude. We have values that we look for in people if you showed those and that was enough. So I wanted to build that kind of company one that was like different new one I could be proud of. And that was the drive for a long time. A part of it along the way was to you know, get financially free my whole life. I’d live paycheck to paycheck, and I wanted to acquire my own wealth and you be free from needing to sort of wait for that, you know, monthly paycheck to like, you know, buy that thing that I wanted, like that was an important driver for me along the way. And today, you know why I stay is is now like a much bigger reason, or I guess more mission driven, like, I’m super passionate about gut health. I always have been, but it wasn’t the true driver of me starting health aide back then. But it kind of is the reason I go to work now. And with a smile on, you know, I feel this desire to, like close the gap on knowledge around gut health. Kombucha is, you know, obviously healthy for the gut. But I think our platform, we’ve built a really strong platform of consumers. We sell more than, you know, four or 5 million cases a year now at this point. So I have an ability to access people and and possibly, you know, educate them a little bit on gut health. So that’s not what kind of brings me to work. I want to see health aid grow to be a very sort of not just big name and revenues, but a name that means something to people. long winded answer, sorry.
Kara Goldin 26:12
No, I love it. I’m sure you’ve had this experience I just had I was on a I just got back from vacation. And I was in Martha’s Vineyard. And my girlfriend had never been to Martha’s Vineyard said, oh, let’s go over to Nantucket and I’m like, Okay, there’s a ferry that goes over to Nantucket. So we’re on the ferry. And we were sitting on the boat. And these two women were both drinking hands. And they were, you know, right neck. And I’m sure this has happened to you with health aid. And so the woman was like, Oh, my gosh, I love cherry. And then the other woman was like, Oh, my gosh, I love Blackberry. And then one of their friends said to them, I’ve never heard of hint, what is it? Here’s the founders right in front of them. And I’m just like, so curious if they can describe it. And she said, Oh, it’s incredible. It says unsweetened flavored water. And she was like, I started drinking it years ago. And she said, there’s this woman who started at two, I mean, this is just sitting right next to me. And I’m like, she and my girlfriend is sitting next to me. And she’s kind of smiling. And she was wondering if I was gonna say anything. I’m just like, just listening. And you know, what was interesting is, it was it was amazing to hear her talking about the brand, right? And it’s like, I always tell people when I was in tech, or people who are in tech, it’s hard because you don’t have a physical product. When you have a physical product, there’s something. And I’m sure you’ve got those stories with health aid, as well, where consumers are, they just love it. But the fact that this consumer was owning it and saying that, you know, she tried it years ago, and she knew all about it, and she had taken the time to really understand it. I thought it was just fascinating.
Daina Trout 28:00
Absolutely. And isn’t the greatest feeling
Kara Goldin 28:02
right, and to have a mission, and have somebody grab hold of that mission? And say, it’s really helped me a lot to drink more water, which is what she was saying. And I’m sure you’re hearing people say, you know, it’s really helped them a lot with gut health or, you know, whatever they found it really helped them with to know that you inspired people and you helped people. That’s a powerful position. Right? And like you said, maybe it didn’t start out there. But it’s there now. It’s really cool. It makes
Daina Trout 28:34
all those things along the way worth it. Totally. I met somebody in an airport just last week that had our logo tattooed on her arm. Oh, that’s wild. Yeah. And what’s wild is that’s not the first one I’ve met with that. But like you said, it had changed her IBS issues. And she’s like, she just loves anchors and whatever. Anyway, I remember being like, I just want to say thank you. Yeah, no, I
Kara Goldin 29:00
mean, what else can you say? But it’s like, it’s such a powerful thing to know that you’ve built something that’s it has legs, it’s theirs. It’s a legacy brand. I mean, it
Daina Trout 29:11
so grateful. I’m so grateful for that, Kara. So, so
Kara Goldin 29:14
powerful. So what do you think is something that you didn’t know, when you started? What are like the top couple things that you would say to people who are thinking about starting a company that you learned along the way?
Daina Trout 29:29
I mean, first, I just want to say that like, building a company is non stop lessons, it’s non stop falling off the horse problem solving it. So that question is a great one. But it definitely makes you go into the place of like, oh, gosh, you know, there’s trillions, probably trillions of lessons along the way, or challenges or problems you have to solve. That’s all it is. But yeah, I mean, the spirit of the question I get, and I think I alluded to one in the beginning when I said, we were inexperienced, and by the time we ran out of cash, it was Too late. So it’s related to that. I think, given we didn’t have experience in finance and running a p&l, and a business, finance, like your finances and your accounting, it’s an easy thing to put on the back burner when you build a business. And I think when I do it again, I will not do that. Because because, you know, not only is cash King, and when it’s too late, it’s too late to raise money. But when I hired my first true CFO, I realized I was like, five years too late and doing that. And so that’s what I would definitely share as a big lesson. We had a strong finance lead, I guess you’ll call it, who kept the books in order and close the books on time, and we had stuff to deliver to the board. So there was no red flags. But what I learned a true CFO does is helps you, you know, manage cash, get cash well, before you’re in need, forecast properly, help you really see what’s ahead. You know, good, bad, ugly, could choose your adventure plan. Like I mean, there’s, it’s truly a copilot when you find a strong CFO. And when I got that into my business, we turned profitable within a year, we, you know, we’re able to forecast properly, I started to see, Whoa, my business unlocked when I hired that CFO, and I should have done it five years prior. So that’s one lesson well, and a good CFO.
Kara Goldin 31:29
I mean, that’s, that was the other piece of it, because I think like, you know, you can hire somebody who plays the part. But it’s not actually doing all the things that you’re identifying as, you know, critical.
Daina Trout 31:43
Fair. Yeah. And then in there is a mini lesson of don’t wait to you need cash to get cash. Yeah, definitely. Because then you’re in distress. And it’s very difficult to raise money on a medical terms, or get money, debt, money, anything, whenever you need it, it’s too late. So you got to be so far ahead thinking with capital. And then I think the second is more of a personal one, I think would apply to even beyond entrepreneurs. And that’s just one of where does yourself fall into the priority list. Being a founder, you know, if you want to throw parenthood into that, and anybody in a busy job with a lot of responsibilities, I think can probably relate. But sometimes it’s easy to put yourself at the end. And, you know, over time, you start to, you know, experience all kinds of bad things. And, you know, the umbrella term would be burnout. But I had that I had that along the way. And I was losing my mojo, I was losing what made me happy, I’ve really lost myself in the journey, giving it almost all to health aid. And my two kids who were very, very young babies, and I just had to learn to build that back. And when I did simple what you feed grows, right, so I just had to simply carve out time for me, not easy, but simple. When I did that, you know, the business didn’t suffer. Nobody suffered, the only person suffering with me not doing that was me. So it was a real lesson to like, I’m never going to go back to that place where I am selflessly giving to my business where perhaps the identity of the business is no different than my own identity. So the lesson there is it’s important for you to have your own identity outside the business, it’s important for you to still give yourself the things your your body needs to be yourself to be your best self. Otherwise, everything kind of crumbles and it’s just not worth it. That is
Kara Goldin 33:38
such great advice. And I think it’s so often that people forget that. And I think especially hearing it from fellow founders, it’s just it’s such an important piece. So well thank you for all of this. We will put information about you on how to connect and health aide in the show notes as well. It was such a pleasure, Dinah you are just like, amazing, amazing. You’re somebody who’s come up with an idea scaled an idea. I mean, so beautiful in so many ways. So thank you again, and thanks for such an honest conversation as well. Thank you so much, Dinah. Thank you, Kara. Thanks all for listening to this episode. We hope you enjoyed it. And I want to thank all of our guests and our sponsors. And finally, our listeners keep the great comments coming in. And one final plug if you have not read or listened to my book undaunted, please do so you will hear all about my journey, including founding, scaling and building the company that I founded hint we are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thanks everyone for listening and goodbye for now. 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 right 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 Pentwater 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
