Interview Replay: The Dave Crenshaw Success Show

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 out, knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can 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. I hope you enjoy it, and please make sure to tune in Monday for a brand new episode of the Kara Goldin show. Enjoy. He said, which I put on the business card? I said, I don’t care. Actually, whatever you want to put on the business card. I mean that that sounds great, and he put Chief Operating Officer, and that was how it happened.

Dave Crenshaw 1:07
That was it. In this episode, you’ll get to know Kara Goldin, the undaunted entrepreneur, and you’ll hear the story of how she turned her concern about her family’s health into a multi million dollar beverage empire. I’m Dave Crenshaw, and this is my success Show. Welcome back, friends, to the Dave Crenshaw Success Show. This is where I speak to some of the most successful people I’ve met in my life’s journey. And I’m on a mission to find universal principles of success that can help both you and my family succeed. In case it’s your first time here and you’re not familiar with me. I’m a best selling author. I speak around the world to Fortune 500 companies, and I’ve taught millions of people how to be successful through my online courses, in particular on LinkedIn. Learning with this show, I wanted to create something a little different, a legacy project, to help my family succeed, in particular, my children, but I thought you’d also enjoy learning along with them. And I interview people who have multi faceted success in many areas of their lives. So they’re not just financially successful and don’t just have a great career, but they also have a wonderful, well rounded life as well. And if you think of someone you think would make a great guest, you can email your suggestion to guest at Dave crenshaw.com now as you listen to today’s episode, I want you to do something important. Look for something you can do. Look for an action you can take today or this week to make my guest success story a part of your success story. And today’s guest is very special. Kara Goldin is the founder of hint Incorporated, best known for its award winning and I’ll add delicious hint water, the leading unsweetened flavored water. She’s been named one of Fast Company’s most creative people in business. Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs and E wise Entrepreneur of the Year in Northern California. She’s an active speaker, author of The Wall Street Journal, best selling book, undaunted, and host of the podcast the Kara Goldin show. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and enjoys hiking and spending time with her husband and kids. Kara, it’s such an honor to have you on the show today. Thank you for being here. So

Kara Goldin 3:23
thrilled to be here. So very nice for you to invite me. It’s

Speaker 1 3:28
not often that I get to interview someone where I’m a huge fan of their product, and so if you can’t see on video right now, but I’m holding up my two favorite hint water flavors. I’ve got crisp apple and then the clementine hint, plus, I am not getting paid for this. I’m just a huge fan of what you created, so it’s a real honor to talk to you. Thank

Kara Goldin 3:51
you. Well, those are two of my favorites, although I will tell you that the crisp apple one, every time we have it in our refrigerator, my dogs end up wanting that one. I swear they can actually look at it or smell it when I crack it open. And they’re they’re obsessed with apples, and so I always take the crisp apple on hikes, and they ended up consuming it. So they don’t really like the clementine one as much, but they also don’t like clementines very much, but they’re obsessed with apples and they smell them and it’s, yeah, they go crazy. Well, we

Speaker 1 4:28
have a cat that acts like a dog, but I’m not sharing this with him at all. So to start this off, I always ask every guest the same question, which is, it’s the question that we got asked when we were kids, when you were young, what did you want to be when you grew up? Where were you thinking you were going to head with your career? I

Kara Goldin 4:49
thought I was going to be an attorney. And that started I have a brother that’s 14 years older than me, and I think I I was partly inspired. By watching him start his journey and going to law school, and I thought it was really hard, but really interesting. And then, frankly, as he started to practice law, I became less interested. So I had it in many, many ways, having somebody who was that much older than me, I was able to really watch and take notes on what I wanted to do and also what I didn’t want to do. But he also had an entrepreneur side of him too, so I think he definitely had an impact on me.

Speaker 1 5:37
That’s interesting, that you were that observant, though at that age and taking notes for me, there was a time where I thought I was going to go into law, and then I realized it’s not Matlock. You’re sitting in the office and going through

Kara Goldin 5:49
paperwork. And I ended up marrying an attorney. Oh, okay, I laughed, because he says he’s a recovering attorney. He became our chief operating officer of our of hint. So

Speaker 1 6:00
you started to decide that you didn’t want to be an attorney. So what did you end up studying in college?

Kara Goldin 6:08
I was a journalism major, and I don’t know if it’s that I didn’t have as much exposure growing up or I think the high school that I went to in Arizona, was pretty good at math, but I just never really focused that much on math as much as I was focusing on writing and storytelling. And so I just hadn’t really used that side, the sort of finance side of my brain. But when I went off to university, it seemed like a lot of my friend group was in finance classes. And so I had an opportunity, because it fit into my schedule to take some finance classes, and they were the hardest classes that I was taking in university. I was just really buried in so much work, journalism and all my writing classes were fairly they weren’t easy, but they were easier than the finance classes. And ironically, I was taking so many of these classes because maybe the competitive side of me started to come out too that I’m like, I can do better than than this. And so I ended up getting a minor in finance by the time I graduated.

Speaker 1 7:18
That’s fascinating, and I’m going to call this out. If people have been listening to the show for a while, here we go again. We have someone who’s highly successful. And what did they do in school? They spent time studying business. This is a I’m bringing this out Kara, because this is a recurring pattern. Part of what I’m looking for are patterns of success. Studying business is one of those that not all, but most of the people that I interview do. So I tell my kids, they can study whatever they want in school, but at least a minor in business is a requirement if I’m going to help them pay for that education. Sounds like you’d agree with that.

Kara Goldin 7:54
I totally agree with that. The one other thing that I would add is that you know, you want to take that opportunity. It’s something that I say to my kids and any of their friends who will listen to me, you want to take that time to find things that are interesting to you, that you want to learn. Like I could have continued in my major and done what I was doing, but what I found is that if I went and challenged myself a little bit with something that I didn’t have that much knowledge about it, and when else are you going to learn that? Right? When else would I have taken these finance courses? So and I do agree with you that the people, especially the people that I’ve met along the way, who have started a company inside of Silicon Valley. You can’t be an engineer, and you could co found a company. That’s definitely happened, but you’re not going to run your own startup unless you really understand business fundamentals. You will have that company taken away from you in about four minutes, right? And so I’m always encouraging people, especially when I’m interviewing on college campuses, find those classes that you just don’t really understand. When you’re in a circle and people are talking say you’re an engineer, you’re talking about marketing, go take some marketing classes and really understand how does what you know how to do that you’re pretty good at that things are a little easier for you. Your brain has adjusted to it. And go find those things that you don’t know much about it. And I think that that’s you’ll be a better business person for it, but you’ll also be much more receptive to people down the road who are doing different things than you.

Speaker 1 9:42
That’s a fantastic perspective. Thank you for sharing that. So when you graduated from college, where did your career begin? What did you start doing? I

Kara Goldin 9:52
had been reading the Wall Street Journal and also Fortune magazine. So when I was graduating, I thought maybe there. A way to actually take both my communication and writing skills and my interest and minor in finance. And so I reached out to Fortune Magazine, and I looked in the mascot of the magazine, and ended up reaching out to the managing the then managing editor, and said, I’d love to work for your publication, and I’d love to be a writer. And he wrote me a very nice note back and said, if you’re ever in the New York area, let me know. And little did I know that that was sort of a brush off a dear John. He never thought I was going to actually come out to New York. I was this girl in Arizona, and so I but I did, and I wrote him a couple of times, and I just figured he’s not responding back. He must be very busy, because he puts out a great publication. And so instead, I’ll just go to the time and life building where they were housed, and go to the HR department, because isn’t that where jobs are? So that was sort of the start. I never did get a job at Fortune Magazine, but it was during that try that I said, and I was in the building and the head of HR for time publications, which included fortune. I said, Is there anything else available in the building? It was after that question that the head of HR said to me, well, there is a role at Time Magazine, so maybe that is something you would want to interview for. I said, Sure. Why not? There

Speaker 1 11:41
are a bunch of things that I want to unpack here with this story. First of all, that willingness to go wherever you want, to go, to forge your own path and not wait for someone to come to you right. Like you said, Fortune wasn’t at Arizona State. They didn’t set up a booth. You said, I want to go work for them. So you went and pursued it. That’s the first thing. The second thing is, when you got there, asking the question, is there anything else available? I think a lot of people, when they get that, no, they give up, and they go back home, they lick their wounds, they feel bad for themselves. And what you’re doing is going, Okay, well, if this didn’t work out, but what’s the next possible opportunity, right? And you kept pursuing it. And then that aspect of you saying, here is my ultimate goal, here’s what I’m aiming toward, and eventually I’m going to get that. There’s a lot of drive in there. And I know even you use the term undaunted for yourself. Where did that come from? For you? Was that nature, or was it nurture, or was it a combination of both? So

Kara Goldin 12:47
being the last of five kids, I think has a lot to do with it. I don’t know if it’s if I was born with it or not, but I think having that experience as the last of five kids also, I always felt like my older brother and sister were getting more opportunities than me, so I always felt like, why do they get to do things? And I don’t get to do things, and even though I was significantly younger. So my parents would always say to me, Well, you know, if you want to go do something, then you need to go figure out how you’re going to do it. And that was great training, I guess, to be an entrepreneur, because I look back on I mean, a great example of this was I wanted to be able to buy things. I wanted to be able to go and buy clothes. I didn’t have any money. I’d get a very, very small allowance, but I didn’t have any money, and so one of my parents said to me, Well, if you had a job, then you could actually save some money and be able to do all of those things. They probably didn’t think that. I took that very seriously, and that’s when I went down to ABC toy store and applied for a job at age 14. Little did I know I thought I was doing the cash register on Sundays, which I thought would be a really cool job to be able to work. But little did I know that the owner of the small toy store in Old Town, Scottsdale, actually needed more help, including taking me to buying experiences for toys. Here I was a 14 year old kid, right? I knew a lot about toys, and she picked up on it very, very fast that I should actually go with her to figure out what should the merchandise be in the stores, because I had a really good eye for it. I

Speaker 1 14:42
love that your supervisor saw those gifts in you and gave you an opportunity to express them even at a young age. I think that’s pretty insightful, and not a choice that many leaders make, right? They hold people back because they’re not old enough or don’t have experience of that sort of thing. But I think we all have opportunities to encourage someone who’s new or fresh, regardless of their age, to express their gifts and grow. It sounds like that was a formative moment in a small way in your future career.

Kara Goldin 15:13
I think another and you’ll probably relate to this that, I think another piece that I was really exposed to was that everybody around me, my dad, my other people that I talked to whose parents were working inside of large companies couldn’t believe that I got a job at age 14, and I was given all of this experience. I mean, I learned about margins on different categories, like all these things that I wasn’t learning as a 14 year old in school. And the thing about that, I take away from that, and again, the dots connect later on in life, is that that was an opportunity to work for a small business. So she was running the store. I mean, there wasn’t some big corporation. You weren’t talking about Toys R Us or Amazon, and so she could kind of do whatever she wanted, and at the end of the day, she needed somebody to solve these problems for and I think it’s the advantage, really, of working for a small business versus a large corporation. You’re able to see just different things and kind of show up and there aren’t as many rules, there aren’t as many barriers, I guess, on on the sides, to kind of keep you in your lane. That’s

Speaker 1 16:29
a great point about the value of working for a small business. People often talk about, you know, go support your small business by buying things from them, but that’s beautiful, that you also gained career lessons by working for a small business. I love that. Let’s shift gears to go back to the beginning of your career in media industry. I know that the early 2000s are a big part of your origin story for hint water. Can you talk to us a little bit about how the genesis of that idea came about. So

Kara Goldin 17:03
I left media, not really consciously. I went from time to CNN and then moved to San Francisco, worked for a little startup that was a Steve Jobs idea that was a spin out of Apple, and in 2001 I said, I’m spending way too much time on the plane, and I live in San Francisco. My husband was an attorney. I’d passed the California bar, so we weren’t gonna go and move to another state at that point, and we were just starting our family. I’d had my second child, and was pregnant, actually, with my third and that was when I said, You know what? I think I’m going to spend some time trying to figure out something that’s much more local. So that was kind of where the thinking was. I never thought I was going to start a beverage company. I actually really thought that I was going to go and do something else in tech, but it was when I started living my life, waking up every single day, and looking at the food and drinks that I was putting into my young family system, that’s when I really started to kind of question, why would I put apple juice in my child’s sippy cup and then go to the park and have them bouncing off the walls? I’d start to see patterns. But what I found was that I started really looking at ingredients without consciously looking at ingredients and seeing that sugar was something that we had quickly addicted our kids to. So that was the moment when I thought, maybe water is actually better, but I couldn’t get them to drink water, so I started throwing fruit in the water and again. Still didn’t think of this as a business. I had been drinking my own sweet stuff, but not really thinking that it was sugar, but it was definitely sweet, and it was diet soda. And so when I decided that I was a hypocrite, that’s when I started drinking exactly what they were drinking. I was having my homemade hint. That was the early days of kind of incubating a company, but not really knowing that I was actually doing it at the time

Speaker 1 19:33
that was affecting your health as well, right? Yeah. So

Kara Goldin 19:37
I noticed, like many women who have children, it’s my whole system had changed. I had been a gymnast and a runner growing up, I never had a weight issue, but I was excellent at gaining weight through all of my pregnancies. I was terrible at losing weight. And I’d had kids really close to one another, and it just compounded. Right? So. Yeah, it was something that bothered me, and none of it made sense to me, so I kept kind of digging for do I need to go running more? Do I I never really looked at what I was drinking. I had been looking at what I was eating, and I think that the reason why I wasn’t looking at what I was drinking was that I had been fooled by the word diet. I thought diet equated to health, and I finally switched over to my hint concoction that I was making in my kitchen with water with sliced up fruit, and I was drinking it. My kids were drinking it. People were coming over for play dates and parents as well, and it was really just for taste more than anything else. Hey, Kara, here we are thrilled. You are listening with us, and I hope you’re enjoying this episode. I have had the pleasure of interviewing so many amazing guests over the past few years, and there are so many more to come, I cannot wait, and my focus is on entrepreneurs and CEOs, real innovators and leaders who are making a difference. That’s what I’m looking forward to bringing you. One of the reasons I enjoy interviewing many of my guests is that I get to learn. We all need to hear stories that teach us to be better, inspire us and help us get through those challenging moments. I can’t remember the last time I had a guess that didn’t leave me feeling like a major hurdle had been overcome. We just don’t hear these stories enough, and when we do, we learn to be smarter and stronger. Don’t you agree episodes are concise but packed with amazing info that you will surely be inspired by. Do me a favor and send me a DM and tell me what you think about each interview that you get a chance to be inspired by. And if you are so inclined, please leave one of those five star reviews for the Kara Goldin show on one of your favorite podcast platforms as well. Reviews really, really help. Now let’s get back to this episode.

Speaker 1 22:12
How do you go from that to the prototype of I mean, that’s a big jump in my mind from making it in my home with a pitcher of water to creating something that can be bottled. So how did you get to that first prototype version of hint that could found a beverage company?

Kara Goldin 22:34
So I convinced myself that I had no idea what I was doing and at that point and that I was a tech executive. I was not a beverage executive. And so while this was an area that I was very curious about, and when I went grocery shopping, that’s when I used the grocery shopping experience as kind of my research center in my lab, and I started looking for a product like hint, and I was amazed at the fact that there wasn’t anything else like this on the shelf. And so I started creating it in my kitchen and buying bottles and trying to figure out, like, how can I get some sort of prototype for it. I kept thinking that if I actually go through this process of developing a prototype, it was sort of satisfying my curiosity, but it was also I kept thinking that I would find the product, and so I wasn’t actually sure that I would be the one that was launching what would be known as hint. Instead, I thought, you know, maybe I should just actually get it as far as I can get it. And then I’m sure somebody else is doing this that’s going to know a lot more than me. It’s interesting, because we ended up moving from I got the bottle on the shelf at Whole Foods that had just come into San Francisco, and that was, you know, super exciting on many levels. But the key thing is that I didn’t understand, and I kept doing research on was like shelf life. So I was doing it in my kitchen. Initially, we had gotten a small bottling manufacturer down in Santa Cruz who was helping us. Do you know, the early cases of hint. We also had somebody that we were testing without in Chicago, so that was doing some early aseptic filling, and so I was learning a lot of this terminology that I wasn’t that familiar with, but we still hadn’t kind of mastered it. And that’s when I decided I’m going to reach out to Coca Cola because they must have a lot of people like me that have moved from diet into trying to drink water. I can’t be the only person out there. And so friend connected me with somebody at Coca Cola who clearly understood. It about consumers and about buying trends. I feel like I had been immersed in that. And I felt like if I could just get him on the phone and talk to him about how he’s missing certain consumers like me, maybe he would launch this product. And frankly, I practically gave him the company. I mean, and he wasn’t interested. Yeah,

Speaker 1 25:22
I was gonna ask about that. Like the risk associated with that of sharing this amazing idea with someone? Was there any concern on your part that they could just take it and run with it themselves? I’d

Kara Goldin 25:31
be interested to hear what you say about this. But I think that that was another really early lesson that I’ve learned along the way, is that ideas are a dime a dozen. I mean, I have a million ideas going on. It’s like you have to take that extra step with that idea and commit, right? You have to actually go and figure out how you’re going to execute on that. So people have been, over the years, so concerned about ideas. Ideas aren’t really what ultimately you should be worried about and giving these ideas away. It’s your ability to actually execute. Now, Coca Cola had a lot more money than I did, especially back then, to go and a lot more people, and they had a lot more experience, but they also had other products that they had invested in that were basically they weren’t ready to see that consumer go to the next thing. And I think that that’s, you know, another lesson learned as well that I I share with new entrepreneurs is if you can actually get those opportunities to talk to people who maybe you perceive as your competitors, maybe you perceive as somebody that’s eventually going to buy you, however you want to look at it, it’s a very, very valuable they’re not necessarily handing you everything that they’re going to do, but when you understand somebody’s thinking, you’ll start to understand the strategy, and especially if they’ve invested in a certain strategy, maybe they’re running a team or a company right around a certain thought, for them To actually completely pivot and go in a different direction, or a side direction, they probably won’t be doing that very fast.

Speaker 1 27:27
And there’s that undaunted theme, again that we saw originally when you were applying to Fortune. Now we’re seeing it here you go to a place you’re trying to work with Coca Cola. They’re saying no, and you’re not giving up you’re saying, All right, well, I guess I’m going to have to make this happen myself, right? And that says a lot about who you are.

Kara Goldin 27:48
Yeah, absolutely. And I think there definitely is a theme. I think I took that as a challenge, right? That that was I was seeing signs that they weren’t going to do this right away, but then I had a choice at that point. I either not continue to move forward, or I could throw my foot on the gas and go as fast as I can, because eventually he’s going to get it. He’s very smart, and he’s got lots of people and team, and he’s going to see what I see, which is that, when this consumer figures out that diet, if it’s not getting them hydrated, if it’s not helping them with their weight issues, then why are they drinking it? Yeah,

Speaker 1 28:35
and there we go again. Your ability to recognize patterns and see these things happening that inspired you to create this business. Let’s talk practical, pragmatic for a second. That’s a very difficult leap to go from someone making their product in their kitchen, putting in a grocery store, to now scaling right and creating a product that you can distribute around the country that sort of thing, and have the team. Did you bootstrap? Did you get funding? How did you make that initial leap and put your foot on the gas?

Kara Goldin 29:10
So you have to understand, I was known as a tech executive. I think this is, this is something that maybe people can relate to, whether you’re a tech executive or something in an industry, right? People categorize you because it’s easy, right? You’re, you know, you’re a beverage person, you’re a this, you’re a this. And I kept thinking, I didn’t intend I didn’t graduate from school, thinking I was going to go be a beverage executives. But why is it that everybody feels that I’m a tech executive? It’s not that I hated being a tech executive. I learned a ton. But how did I get here, and do I want to stay here for the rest of my life? So I felt like I couldn’t really go and raise money for this idea, because I wasn’t even. Sure that I knew what I was doing. There were so many questions in front of me that I every day I woke up and I was super interested to solve that I didn’t feel comfortable actually asking people to hop in and invested this idea. Because if in my mind, I didn’t believe that if you have a ton of questions, that’s okay, right? That, as I say, you fly the plane as you’re building it, right? I thought you have to have them all solved, right? Doesn’t every entrepreneur have all of these questions solved? So until I have all the questions solved,

Unknown Speaker 30:41
absolutely not is the answer no.

Kara Goldin 30:43
And and the best entrepreneurs, I think, keep coming up with new questions to solve, or, as I always say, like, expand the puzzle, right? Keep building on it. That’s, that’s how you end up growing your business. You

Speaker 1 30:57
said you weren’t comfortable with going and asking people, so was that self funded? Did you get loans? Like, how did you get the funding necessary to scale?

Kara Goldin 31:06
Yeah, so we self funded. It initially, some of it with money that we had in the bank, but then as we started to really scale the company in the first few years, that’s when we use credit cards. American Express was my best friend. I encourage everybody to make sure that you have good credit, because we just kept making sure that we paid down our balances so that we could actually continue to take out more. My husband had left his job at Netscape as well and was helping me, but it wasn’t until we actually launched the product that he said, Gosh, you need a lot more help. You have four kids under the age of six that you’re trying to manage your really interesting questions that you’re coming up with, but you know, these are questions that I’m super interested in, in helping you. So that’s when he he said, I I’m delivering cases to whole foods as well. And they keep asking me for a business card. Remember business cards right way back when? And so he said, which I put on the business card? I said, I don’t care, actually, what whatever you want to put on the business card. I mean, that sounds great, and he put Chief Operating Officer, and that was how it happened. That was it, what

Speaker 1 32:31
was a mistake that you made during some of those early years, something that you go, Well, I really had to learn from that, that once you, once you learn from that mistake help things get better in the future.

Kara Goldin 32:46
Yeah, probably one of the biggest, I would say, it was a mistake, but then it was also a massive lesson, and something that was sort of a meant to be, was our story with Starbucks. So we got into Starbucks. I had wanted to get into Starbucks for probably a couple of years, and I kept, you know, working really hard to try and make that that happen, cold calling them. No one was returning our phone call. Finally, I ended up getting an email back from somebody at Starbucks who said, so we’re super interested in launching a kid’s product, and we know that you do hint water and you know these 16 ounce bottles, so could you do a smaller version of the product? And I said, sure. She said. So I said, we’re gonna have to do a prototype for you. And she said, Great, while you’re doing it, can you do it in like a Tetra box, which, by the way, is a lot, right? But I thought, okay, it’ll be a couple months for us to actually go and figure this out, but I’m sure we can figure it out. Because again, I thought there’s a Starbucks on every single corner. So once we actually got the prototypes figured out, we actually didn’t put the hint water in there for the prototypes, but we got the packaging done and sort of mocked it up so that they could see what it was look like in the case. And that’s when we went to Starbucks. And I’ll never forget that the buyer said, By the way, when you come into the meeting, it’s really important, don’t try and sell us on hint. And I said, What do you mean? I mean we’re we’re doing, uh, hint, kids, is exactly the same. We’re not changing the product at all. And she said, I know, but this is something very specific. We’re not going to put hint water in to the cases. We’re only going to be putting hint kids, if anything, into the cases. And I said, okay, sure, no problem. And I remember flying up to Seattle from San Francisco, and my husband was with me, and we had this, you know, big meeting with the prototypes from. Kids. And he said, So let’s run to Whole Foods and bring some hint with us into the meeting. We weren’t in airport locations yet, and I said, Oh, but we can’t bring any hint into the meetings, because the buyer from Starbucks specifically said, don’t bring any in to the meetings. And we ended up bringing in the bottles of hint. I thought we were going to get kicked out of the meeting, and I figured I’ll just start drinking hint and see what she says. I’m not trying to sell them. I just have it. And that’s when another person that was in the meeting said, Hey, do you have an extra one of those? By any chance? I’m really thirsty. And I said, you know, is this a trick question? And so, of course, I handed them the bottle. The meeting ended, we thought it went really well with showcasing the TETRA packs. And then they called us and said, so we’re not going to put hint kids in, but we’d actually like to put hint in. So you always have to be prepared for, you know, plan B, I guess, is, is the bottom line.

Speaker 1 36:09
So when we started, we were talking, and you asked me the question, How did you first get introduced to hint as someone who uses the product regularly? And for me, it was at the airport. I even remember what I drank first. It was the pear one, and I had it, and I thought, Oh, that was so fantastic. And so I kept buying it, of course. How have you found the best way to get new customers? Has it been through organic experience like that? Has it been through advertising? What’s worked best? One

Kara Goldin 36:41
of the key distribution points was Google. And it’s funny because as I was trying to solve this puzzle around shelf life and coming out of very frustrating meetings with people that I felt knew a lot more than I did, somebody who was working at Google, who had actually worked with my husband at Netscape, and knew what I had been doing at AOL, and was interested in potentially having me join Google, and he kept reaching out to me, and I thought, What the heck? So I decided to go and meet with them to potentially talk about doing something at Google. And I had a bottle of cucumber hint in my bag, and I took it out, and while he was talking to me, that’s when I started drinking the cucumber hit. And he said, What are you drinking? And I said, Oh, I’m drinking this product. It’s called hint. And he said, I’ve never seen it before. Where did you get it? And I said, Well, I actually make it. And he said, Wait, what? You make this product? And I said, yeah, no, it’s kind of crazy. And he said, Wait, tell me about this. I thought you know you were at America Online. I didn’t know you were creating beverages. And I said, Oh, it’s just kind of a side hustle. We didn’t call it that Ben, but I didn’t take it that seriously. And I explained to him why I had been so curious about this industry and explaining my journey of having kids, and just decided to go and try. And he’s like, Okay, this is so crazy that you’re talking to me about this right now, because he had been tasked with getting some chefs to come in and cook for people so they don’t have to go out for lunch. But we haven’t sort of thought about drinks yet. And we thought, well, we should probably have some drinks, but I don’t even know where to start with the drink side of it. And I, I kind of joked, like, oh, well, I’ll solve that problem for you. And he said, uh, there’s this guy that is sort of our lead chef. His name’s Charlie at Google who Charlie became very famous for the micro kitchens and really changed tech firms and sort of the expectations for offices around having food. And so he said, Call Charlie and see what he says. And so Charlie said, Omid dropped a few samples to me, and I love it. And can you deliver or have your distributor deliver? And few cases, and I said, I don’t have a distributor. I make it in my kitchen. And he was like, Wait, what are you a chef? I mean, how did you know how to do this? And so we got to this whole conversation, so I drove 10 cases down to him. He paid me right away and said, Let me we’ll give it a try. And the next day, he called me and he said, he said, Can we get 30 cases end of the week? He said, I think we should get 50 cases. And I’m like, Okay, how much do you guys think you’re going to be ordering? Because I don’t have that much in my garage right now. And little did I know that what was happening right there at Google. Became our largest retailer. You mentioned,

Speaker 1 40:02
you’ve mentioned several times the influence that your children had and the business idea and how you were juggling spending time with them. Can you talk a little bit about how you’ve made that work, making sure that you’re there for your kids while you’re growing such a successful business?

Kara Goldin 40:19
You know, I mentioned small businesses, and that experience that you gain from working in small businesses, it’s not that you don’t work as hard or as long hours, however, you know you you view it starting your own company, for sure, you probably work a lot harder and have longer hours, but you have the flexibility to really look at your schedule and create the schedule that you need. And so my schedule would be a little earlier in the morning before they got up and got moving, and they were at that point all headed off to school. And so I was able to really work on things while they were at school. And you know, as time went on, after school activities, I had a nanny for sure through this entire process. But as they were doing things like tennis tournaments and things, I made time to take a break so that I could go and watch them. I don’t think if I was working in a large company, that I’d be able to to do that. What I didn’t know until much later, because I certainly had that guilt, like I they’d go to bed at night. I was continuing working, trying to figure different things out. You know, we were still very much a startup back in those days, but I didn’t really realize how much kids were sponges, right? I i would be listening to all of this regret that a lot of people had, like, you know, don’t lose these years, which is true to an extent, but nobody said to me that your kids are watching you, and what they’re learning from you by watching you grow a business will be incredibly valuable for them. I didn’t learn until much later, and I’ll never forget my son, Kenan, was in high school, and he, I think he was watching Sheryl Sandberg talk about how women, very few women, run companies. And he said, Gosh, I didn’t realize that women don’t run companies like you’ve always ran a company ever since I can remember. And so we had this discussion around it. And he said, Well, why isn’t it that women run companies? And so I jumped into that. And he said, Well, none of that makes sense. I mean, it’s sort of he quickly equated this, by the way, to something that he spent a lot of time doing, which was tennis. And he said, Well, that leads me to, why is it that we can’t play with women? Why aren’t women put in in tennis and our high school tennis teams, as you know, the best players, because there’s clearly women, some women, that are better than some of the men. And instead, you know, we can practice with them, but we can’t actually play. And it was kind of like patterns and critical thinking that made him start to really think about that. And so he’s graduating in a couple of weeks, and a business major. I don’t know if he’ll be an entrepreneur or not, but he’s thinking differently about things for sure.

Speaker 1 43:32
So unfortunately, we need to wrap up here. I could talk to you for hours about this, but I do want to ask before we wrap up, what’s ahead for you? If you look five years into the future, where do you want to be at that point?

Kara Goldin 43:46
I’m constantly looking at different businesses. I’m a creator, and I love launching ideas, and with each of them, they have, you know, pluses and minuses and I’ve learned just a ton. I’m still very involved in boards, including being on the board of the company that I ran for 17 years, hint. So I want to disrupt. I want to continue to disrupt and show people that things can be better. I’m I would say that, unlike when I launched hint, I’m very interested in health. I think that health is something that, if you don’t have, it seems impossible. And so if I can do something that really helps people to gain health, helps their family gain health, in some way that for me, I think would be a really powerful thing.

Speaker 1 44:44
Well, thank you for creating a product that’s helping people get healthy. I know it’s helped me get healthy, healthier, I should say. And thank you for always innovating and looking to create companies that help people with that. Okay, so. So now is the point in the interview where I want to point out some possible action items for people. So the perspective I come from Kara is that while it’s wonderful to hear the story and it’s wonderful to gain the knowledge, it’s most important that someone who is listening to this take an action, do something they can do today, something this week, so they can make your success story a part of their success story. So what I’m going to do is, based on the interview that we’ve had so far, I’m going to suggest three possible actions that stood out to me, and then after that, I’d like you to add one additional action that you would suggest someone can take immediately. Sound good? Yes, all right, so the first thing is going back to our conversation about your education and what you did in college and how you explored new things. And so what I would suggest someone can do is to challenge themselves, as you said, to try something new. Try a new class, something that isn’t required. Now, maybe someone listening to this, they’re not in school anymore. Well, a lot of people who are listening to this take my courses on LinkedIn learning, and I would say, take a course that doesn’t relate to the work that you’re doing. Just take a course that just looks interesting to you and explore it and that will challenge you to try something new, and maybe it will create new opportunities that you hadn’t considered before. The second one is to reach out to people and make a connection. We saw this pattern in Kara story as she reached out to Fortune, she reached out to Coca Cola, she reached out to lots of people and didn’t wait for them to come to her, she went and made that connection happen. And then that either opened up new opportunities or it just taught her something new that she didn’t have before, and that helped push her success forward. And then the last one is, it’s sort of a follow up to this, but to be persistent or, to use Kara word, undaunted, the idea that when you have these connections and it doesn’t work out and it doesn’t go the way that you wanted, you say, well, what could work? What is a possible next step that I can take and just keep going and doing that will open more doors for you. So those are three that stood out to me. Kara, what’s something that you would add as a possible action? I

Kara Goldin 47:28
think that one key thing is that you don’t have to have all the answers, right? So if you’re sitting here thinking to yourself, there’s no way I could go and do a company, or I couldn’t try something new, because that’s just not my personality or or whatever it is. I think that the key thing is just to take a step and see what happens and be very, very consistent about taking steps and be willing to make mistakes, turn around, go another direction, and I think that, coupled with Have fun, enjoy what you’re doing along the way. Because I think that if you don’t enjoy it, it’s very hard to venture into new you’re going to do all of the things that you mentioned, meeting new people, you know, trying new things, all of those things. But the key thing is, is that if you’re not really enjoying what you’re doing, then it’s very hard to kind of put yourself out there and try new things and fail and spend a long, long hours doing all of these things too. I think it’s just if you can sit there and hone in on what you really love and what you’re curious about, you’ll be better off for it. Yeah,

Speaker 1 48:50
that’s so true. When you’re passionate about what you’re doing, you’re willing to do the work that others will not, because you just keep going because you’re having fun. Why not? Right? Kara, what’s the best way for people to follow you? Certainly to subscribe to your podcast, the Kara Goldin show, right? What Are there any other places you would like people to go who want to follow you and continue to learn from you?

Kara Goldin 49:13
Absolutely, on all social channels, especially for business, I talk on LinkedIn, whether it’s motivation or stories, and you can always DM me there. Fantastic.

Speaker 1 49:26
Kara, thank you so much for taking a moment from your very demanding schedule to share your wisdom with all of us. Thank you so much, and thank you everyone for listening. Remember, it’s not so much about the knowledge that you gained, but it’s more about the action that you take. So do something from what you heard from Kara story, and you’ll make her success story a part of your success story. Thanks for listening.

Kara Goldin 49:55
Before we sign off, I want to talk to you about fear. People like to talk. 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 like 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. Goldin, thanks for listening. You.