Interview Replay: Kara on Leadership Lab

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. I hope you enjoy it. And please make sure to tune in Monday for a brand new episode of the Kara Goldin show. Enjoy.

Patrick Leddin 0:52
Welcome to the leadership lab podcast episode number 189. I’m Patrick Leddin. And I have the honor of being your host in the leadership lab. This podcast is for leaders. And that means this podcast is for you. Because leadership has a lot more to do with choice than it does with title. Regardless of your role, you can first choose to lead yourself and then perhaps you might lead others whether you do it formally, or informally. I truly believe that we can learn lessons about leadership from a wide range of sources. And it’s with this in mind that I invite guests to join me in the leadership Lab. I’m joined today in a leadership lab by Kara Goldin in 2005. Kara just wanted to break her soft drink addiction. But today she is the founder of hint Inc, a $220 million a year beverage producer of fruit infused waters and lifestyle goods that offers a healthy alternative to sodas and artificially sweetened drinks. In our conversation, we talked about how this former AOL executive became an accidental entrepreneur. And we learned insights about how you can start a business from scratch and how you can fight through some of the challenges along the way. You’re going to want to grab something to write with sit back and prepare to take some notes. It doesn’t matter if you want to start your own business, or start a project in your organization. Kara will share with you insights to help you do it more effectively.

Hey, Kara Goldin. Thanks so much for joining me today in the leadership lab.

Kara Goldin 2:20
Super excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Patrick Leddin 2:23
Oh, my pleasure. I’m super excited to talk to you, the audience should know that this was supposed to start recording 28 minutes ago. So you and I have been talking for 28 minutes, which to me, that might be the longest pre pre recorded conversation I’ve ever had. But there is definitely a relationship, I think between the length of the pre interview conversation that we have before I turn on the recording and the value we bring to the audience. So let’s prove that today. I love it. So Kara, one thing I love about talking to somebody like yourself, and there’s nobody else like yourself, but you know what I mean? Other people who have started and grown businesses themselves, is to get to know a bit of their origin story. So some people might know your name. Some people might recognize a little bit about what I talked about introduced you. But I bet you a lot of people know your product. So tell them a little bit about yourself in the business you built.

Kara Goldin 3:14
Yeah, so the product I founded is called HINT HINT water. And it’s an unsweetened flavored water. And so what does that mean? It means that 17 years ago, when I was looking for a drink that would help me drink water that tasted better than water. Everything had either sugar, or diet sweeteners in it. And lots of other stuff too. food colorings and things that I didn’t really want to have. I had been drinking diet soda for years Diet Coke for years, and really wanted to get off of not only drinking soda, but also the diet sweeteners. So I went to the grocery store and looked for the product and couldn’t find it. So I thought, What the heck, maybe I should make this product and get it on the shelf. How hard could it really be? The only problem was that I didn’t have experience launching a product. I was tech executive was a media executive right out of college but soon found myself as a tech executive had been in the early days of direct to consumer working for a small startup idea that was a Steve Jobs idea that spun out of Apple. We were acquired by a company called America Online and I was asked to run the direct to consumer relationships for for shopping on America Online. So built that from very, very small to over a over a billion dollars in revenue and so kept thinking when I left After seven years that, you know, I was a tech executive, because everybody was calling me a tech executive, and what am I going to do next and, and when I stopped for a couple of years and took some time off to have kids, that’s when I really started looking at my own health, and my kids health, my family’s health, and thought, you know, there’s this hole that I see. So clearly in the market that I have an idea for, I should just go in and launch it, if nothing else, to keep me busy, and keep my head and in, in the business game. But I think like many entrepreneurs, the fact that I not only had an idea, but also was super curious about how all of these things worked, you know, how do I produce a product that doesn’t have preservatives in it? How do I? How do I get distribution? How do I get past a, a planogram, that is sitting in front of me in stores that says that unsweetened flavored water isn’t recognized. So you know, the negotiations of all of those when not only did I, you know, not really know what I was asking for or what I was doing, but also the fact that I didn’t have the experience that not only people expected out of me, but maybe I expected out of myself. So, so the story of you know, taking an idea, and just going and trying. That’s that is the story of of building Hinton, by the way, hint today is the fastest growing flavored water in the US today. We not only started a product, and accompany but also an entirely new category called unsweetened flavored water. And still leading that that category, even though there’s some competition out there. But not only have we done the impossible coming from somebody who didn’t have the experience, but started it in our kitchen, to, you know, really not only helped me and my family get healthy, but also lots of other people. That is really what we’ve done. And what we hear from people constantly that, you know, they drink this product that helps them drink water, it’s, you know, they’ve really shifted away from things that were not making them so healthy. So it’s a, it’s a drink that, and an idea that I’m super proud of every single day.

Patrick Leddin 7:45
I’m just wondering, like, as I listen to a story, it’s a great story of about a number of things, I jotted about 10 of the downs you were talking about. But one thing is, you said I was creating a category didn’t know I was creating a category didn’t know that much about planograms. And how valuable Do you think it is to not know sometimes?

Kara Goldin 8:05
I think it’s incredibly valuable. I think it’s really scary, though, because we are trained from a very young age to, you know, gain experience, right. And sometimes, though, if we look at things with a different lens, in fact, most great entrepreneurs actually don’t come from the industry that they’re starting a company in, right. They’re just very curious people. And they feel like they don’t have much to lose, right. And I think that that is a that’s a consistent thread. Yet, it’s not commonly known, in fact, you’re gonna have what I found, and I think most entrepreneurs would agree with this, too, is that when you’re trying to do something new, that is unusual that maybe you’re the only one in the category. There’s there’s a lot of people who will say, What did you do before? That’s like the first question, and when they hear that you don’t have the right experience, they’ll add to your own discomfort of the fact that you don’t have the right experience. This is a terrible idea. If it was such a good idea, then somebody else would have done it. But I think that what I realized and you know, think about a lot today, it isn’t the the experienced and established people that are going to be the ones that kind of you have to worry about more than anything. It’s the people that are really curious, the people that have fought that have fallen down have failed, and they figure they really don’t have anything else to lose because they’ve you know, had to get back up and it’s it’s the scrappy ones, right? Are those are the ones that are not afraid to ask questions not afraid to be the least knowledgeable in a room of people that are the ones that are really they’re the ones that ultimately are asking the question, What can we do in order to go out and achieve their goals?

Patrick Leddin 10:19
Do you find that when there were people saying to you, you couldn’t do it? Did you? Do you have a natural inclination to say, You’re wrong? I can? Do you have more of a? I want to figure this out? Because I think it can be done. Do you have a little bit of like, oh, that person’s tape is now playing in the back of my mind? I mean, how do you react to those type of situations? And what thoughts might you have for those who are listening about how they might react to situations where people say, Oh, no, you can’t or it can’t be done? Or don’t you think somebody else would have already done this?

Kara Goldin 10:47
So I’m grateful for my parents being sort of starting this process for me, although when I was younger, I didn’t actually, I would never have thought I would have said that. But I was the last of five kids and my parents were excellent. Okay,

Patrick Leddin 11:05
I’m the last five kids to Alright, there’s a connection,

Kara Goldin 11:09
that connection. And so they were excellent at saying no, I had two brothers and two sisters. My brothers in particular, were

Patrick Leddin 11:16
okay, I have two brothers and two sisters, too. Oh, this is crazy.

Kara Goldin 11:19
Yeah. So they had a lot of fun. And so my parents when I, you know, wanted to go to a party or stay up past 11, you know, I’d have to it was an association with my parents constantly. And what I realized is that, when my parents, I had to ask them at the right time, right, if I wanted to do something that was sort of, you know, not typical. But also, as my dad used to say, that he always was afraid to say maybe to me, because that would leave a little window, where I would eventually keep going. And I would get him to Yes. And, and, you know, he said that the problem is, is that no, never means no to you. You just keep going. And you keep trying to figure out different angles to ask me like, What if I do this, and everything was a negotiation? So I think, having had that experience, I was used to trying to figure things out, right. And when I went into, you know, not only not only starting my own company, but also but also getting my first job. I mean, it was I thought, you know, everybody’s saying, No, there’s nobody. I had my first job in publishing, I talked about in my book undaunted, where the time, Time magazine was not coming on campus, that I went to school at Arizona State University, they weren’t coming on campus. I wanted to work in publishing. So I got a plane ticket and went to New York. And my goal was to figure out how do I get an interview? And I thought, there’s an HR department, I gotta figure out, how do I walk in the door, and actually start talking to people, because I know that if I can start talking to people, then I can probably get somebody to pay attention and try and figure out what problem I can solve for them. And I and I did and, but I think that, you know, just thinking about what you do in terms of negotiation, it’s, it’s very, it’s very applicable to many, many different situations that ultimately help you to become the best entrepreneur ever.

Patrick Leddin 13:46
I think I don’t maybe it’s wired in me in some ways, too. And I’ll ask you, what if it’s not what do I do in a moment, but it’s wired to me a little bit that like, it’s a game. And I have to figure out how to get what I want in this game, or get what we’re trying to achieve in this game, or even help somebody help themselves. Sometimes you don’t realize that I can be helpful to them or whatever it might be. But it’s like this game or a problem to solve. And to me that makes it like this. It becomes fun. It’s like, I want to grow this business, or I want to do this, whatever I want to help the students see their potential or whatever it might be. Every one I’m like, it’s a problem that can be solved. And it’s kind of fun to do it to jump in and try to figure that out. Is that the type of thing you get yourself into?

Kara Goldin 14:28
Totally? Yeah, I mean, here’s, here’s a great I have a couple of examples. I’ll give you first one from my younger years that a few of my friends that I grew up with have reminded me about, I wanted to make more than my allowance and I wanted to go to the mall. I wanted to have money. And so I decided at age 12 to start a summer camp. I grew up in Arizona and Scottsdale, summer in Scottsdale, Arizona is very hot and So I wanted to do it in, you know, our backyard. We had a swimming pool but and we had sprinklers and things like that, that I could start this camp for kids. But I decided I needed a partner. So I went to my friend Robin. And I said, Robin, let’s start a summer camp, and we’ll make money. And it’ll be great. And she said, So where are we going to? What are we going to do as an activity? And I had no idea that she was going to ask that question, right? So I was, I was thinking for a minute, I had to make it up. And I said, Okay, so there are these large boxes at the grocery store, where they, they unload paper towels from them, we’ll get a bunch of boxes, and we’ll build a city of these boxes, and all the kids will color them will be will create them, it’ll be great. And she said, okay, but like, what are we going to charge? For this? I hadn’t gotten that far. But I said, $5. And she said, Why $5 $5 a day? And she said, Why $5 today? And I said, Well, I don’t really know that that’s the exact amount. But let’s try it and see what happens. And if we have too many kids, then we charge more. And she said, Okay, and so we went on the corner with our sign and $5. And still amazing to me that people drop their kids, right, they didn’t know, we were to a bunch of 12 year olds. And, you know, this went on for like three months. And it was, you know, it was it was a blast, it was a lot of fun. It was a negotiation every single day, because we had no idea what we were doing. I mean, that was probably the earliest days where I look back and say, Okay, I was an entrepreneur, I was, you know, trying to figure this out there were, you know, challenges every single day that you just had to overcome. But you figured out how to do those things. Fast forward to starting hence, we, you know, there’s great days, in the journey, one of them was when we got into Starbucks, and Starbucks, you know, was definitely a big goal of ours to try and get in all of those Starbucks locations, we finally achieved that. And they were going to roll BlackBerry hint into all Starbucks locations. So we’re in over 6000 locations, we’re on all the military bases, it was amazing, a year and a half later, after understanding from them, that that the goal really, for us, that they would be terrifically happy with was a bottle and a half per store per day. Now, it took us about six months to get there. But we got to three bottles per store per day. And so I was feeling very confident, I was feeling so confident that, you know, 40% of our overall business was being run through Starbucks. And you know, we were, it was great. We didn’t have any other distribution and cities like Chicago and South Dakota, and you know, lots of places that we were introduced to consumers through through Starbucks, and they paid us on time. And you know, it was it was a beautiful business. So a year and a half in, they get a new buyer who decides that she wants to change things up. And she wants to bring food in to the case, they didn’t have any food in the case, this is in 2011. And so she called to say that they would be removing us from the case. And I said, we’re doing double what you said was great. And she said, But we change strategy. And you guys are going to be kicked out next week. So sometimes things happen along the way, that they’re not fair. They’re not. You know, they’re not what you expected. strategies change people change along the way. And it was definitely a bad day in the timeline of hint for sure. But more than anything, focusing on the problem that I had, which was I had $2 million worth of product that was about to go back. And, and, you know, investors sitting in the background that I was, you know, really responsible for. And so I had to figure out what am I going to do with this product and ultimately, ended up getting a phone call Um, you know, after probably praying a little bit and hope hoping and ended up getting a phone call from Amazon, and the buyer said, I buy your product all the time at Starbucks, I didn’t know whether or not that was that I should share with them that we had been removed from Starbucks. But we ended up getting rid of the $2 million worth of cases sitting in the warehouses, and became one of the top products on Amazon. And that was really the start to our direct to consumer business. So I think it’s also a story of the things work out, right? They don’t always work out the way that you want them to work out. But you have to figure out, what is the problem? What’s the, what is the triage, that is really stressing you out, when there’s a lot of things that are beyond your control, and focus on that, and focus on solving that problem. And the rest of the things may even work out for the better. Hey, Kara, here, we are thrilled you’re listening with us. And I hope you’re enjoying this episode. I’ve 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 to guess that didn’t leave me feeling like a major hurdle had been overcome. We just don’t hear the 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.

Patrick Leddin 22:30
You know, it’s interesting, you say things work out because they don’t work out, oftentimes without action behind it. Right? So you could have sat back there and said, Boy, I really do hope the phone rings from Amazon, which was a great thing that happened. But you were probably doing a lot of other things in that moment as you were triaging this thing, trying to figure this thing out. And oftentimes, when you think about triage, it’s like, alright, we have to stop the hemorrhaging. Or we need to normalize something, or we’ll talk about optimizing later on. But when you’re in those throes of the moment, tickets in your mind, how do you? How do you? I don’t know, do you calm the madness yourself? Do you go for a walk? What are some? What are things? Yeah. Do you look at the values that you identify for the organization? Do you reflect on? You know, why did we start this in the first place? I wonder? How do you do that, because we all have those moments granted, not as big as 40% of your business from Starbucks. So that’s a big thing. But we all have these things that kind of knock us down the call to does come in that we didn’t expect or knock stuff off our own strategy. And we did nothing wrong. In fact, we were doing things really, really well. But we get that Kodaly How do you process that?

Kara Goldin 23:33
Well, so a few things. First of all, you mentioned the 40% of the business again, it’s great to have all your eggs in one basket when everything’s going well. But when it’s not, it’s stressful. Right? And you, you know, there’s that much more weight. And in the situation, when you have a lot, a bigger percentage. And so there was a lesson learned in that moment that, you know, frankly, we’ve never done again, right, that we’ve constantly been trying to diversify and figure out, you know, how do we not have all our eggs in one basket, because that was the story where, you know, we learned a very critical lesson when that business goes away. It’s one that I share with a lot of new entrepreneurs is that, you know, it’s great to get into, you know, a great retailer. But if your business if all of your time is spent focusing on that one retailer, if it goes away, would you miss it? Right, would it you know, what’s it going to do to your overall business. So it’s it’s a very, very important lesson there too. In terms of, I think, the more of these that you go through as you know, Steve Jobs used to say the dots eventually connect you’ve got you got to try So right that things do work out, you don’t always know how they are going to work out. And I think, again, if you’ve been through a lot of these over time, age kind of helps you, as long as you’re a person that does focus on moving forward and figures out what exactly as the problem that I need to be solving. And once I do that, some of the other dominoes will fall into place. I I hike every day, I, you know, purposely live in a location where I can actually get out in nature and think and go out, typically, with my husband, but often also with my dogs and go out hiking with them. And I, my house backs up to a state park. So it makes it very, very easy to be able to do that. And I think that’s really important, because I think sometimes, you know, we live in this world where, you know, we think that we’re never going to go outside of the house, we’ve got to focus on this problem versus actually going out and kind of exploring something totally new and get trying to get our mind off of it. And in some way. But, but I think that it’s I think the other thing that, as you say that, you know, you talk a little bit about sort of strategies, I think, I’ve never felt that staying complacent is the answer. It’s never helped to not move it that doesn’t mean that you can’t take a moment to sort of think about, you know, what is the triage situation? What is it that’s really stressing me out? But I think more than anything, I think it’s figuring out, you know, at some point, you’ve got to move forward, and you’ve got to make a decision, and it may be the wrong decision. Right? I

Patrick Leddin 27:03
like that idea, though, of having a bias toward moving. But, but not just reacting, right is it is that space where you go, Okay, I just got this phone call, whatever that might be in life, or whatever happened, came out of this meeting, or my boss said this to me, somebody on the podcast would be like, Yeah, you don’t know my boss, but my boss said this to me, pause for a second. Don’t react in the moment, do whatever you need to do to do possibly even disconnect, but then have that bias toward action.

Kara Goldin 27:33
Yeah, and I think what I’ve learned over the years, too, is, you know, the worst. Entrepreneurs are the ones that you have to put stakes in the ground, for sure. But if you can’t actually trust your gut and turn around, right, or take a right, when you are going left. That is your ability to pivot. Your ability to own it. And at each step along the way, understand that it’s time things are slowing down. Things are I don’t want things to come to a halt. So I need to recognize the patterns, and then take, you know, another direction. I think that having enough experiences and going through that process, I think actually, that’s the sign of a great entrepreneur is somebody who can actually say, you know, I really thought it, we were supposed to be going this direction. And so here I went, but then I started to really see that here’s why things changed, the new buyer came in, and you know, and therefore this was changing and or my we were selling much more than we ever thought. And I needed to go out and diversify in some ways. I mean, there’s, there are lots of examples that we’ve had in business at at hint where, you know, we’ve had to do great leaders have to make those hard calls and those hard decisions, especially when, when they’re looking at, you know, the overall picture and seeing that the umbrella is in a risky situation. How

Patrick Leddin 29:29
do you think you tease those things apart? Because I would imagine that, you know, this pivot makes sense. There’s times where I have to make a pivot, and I have to be open to that. But there’s other things that I probably need to be because other people might be telling me I need to pivot and I’m feeling like that’s core that’s essential, I guess I’m wondering is like, how do I know when there’s the time to pivot? To maybe, maybe, maybe there’s maybe that maybe it’s like, the problem we’re trying to solve is still the essential problem we’re trying to solve. We’re pivoting on how we’re going to do it, as opposed As to times where we might say we’re going to actually pivot away from the problem without we’re trying to solve, like, how do I figure out like, what is core the essence of what we’re doing? And I should try to hold firm to certain things. But other things about how we do it or why? I don’t know, you tell me like, is that makes sense? Like trying to?

Kara Goldin 30:13
Yeah, I mean, I think you really start to look for pattern matching, right? And see, you know, if if you’re heading in a direction, and I mean, let’s say that you’re that you’re heading in a direction, and you’re, like, making lots of progress, you’re doing 40% Better, I’m making these numbers up, but 40%, better, 30% better, over time, and then all of a sudden, you go down to 2%. Right. So what is going on? What is the what is the issue that you’re facing? So you have a decision? You’ve got a tree? I, you know, visualize that the tree at that point, do you stay the course and recognize that the numbers probably not going up? It’s probably going down from there. And is that acceptable to you or not? And then if it’s not acceptable, then you take a right, right, and you go and figure out some other new direction. I mean, that’s just from a growth standpoint. But I think, you know, it’s a real decision that I think many people have to be making as they’re growing their business. And again, I think it really goes back to if it I’ll give you another example. When I was starting hands, I got to a point. Two years in where there were so many things that I couldn’t figure out, I was super challenge couldn’t I wanted to create a product that didn’t have preservatives in it yet. No. bottler wanted to actually bottle the product because they didn’t want the risk, right? They had never, I mean, it was insane to ask them to put real fruit in a bottle and not actually put some sort of preservative in it in their mind. Nobody had actually talked about putting heat against a product in in a water product like I was producing yet I had seen in the juice category that they were yet the bottlers that were running juice were different than the bottlers that were running water. And so I was bringing this new concept, nobody wanted to touch it. Many probably, you know, hundreds of knows. And I knew that I just needed one yes, to test my concept. So I had to keep calling in order to try and, you know, get to that, yes. But a friend came to me and said, there’s this gentleman at Coca Cola that I met on an airplane very senior. And I was, you know, sharing a little bit about you that you had started this company, and that you had all these challenges that you were trying to figure out. So she introduced me to him, we ended up having a phone call, I was very excited. I basically thought if he wants to take the company over, I’ll give it to him. I mean, I just want this concept. They’re the big guys. They’re the experienced ones, they can go figure it out. I was very surprised on the phone call when he went on to tell me what the consumer really wanted. They wanted, they didn’t want to water that didn’t have sweeteners in it, or one that didn’t have preservatives in it. So what I was talking about was not only impossible, but it wasn’t interesting. And and what he believed that people were focused on was the was exactly what he was telling his company, which was that they wanted. They wanted to get closer to zero calories at the time, diet drinks were at 10 calories. So I’m thinking while he’s telling me this, I totally disagreed. I had seen over the last two years that consumers actually wanted to drink. Not everyone buddy realized this, but there were plenty of people who didn’t want sweeteners in it. But yet, he didn’t want to change the strategy. He wanted to sit here and keep those stakes in the ground and not waver because he had a lot at risk. He had told the whole company that this is what we’re doing, right. So sometimes when you’re leading, right, and even though you’re seeing that share has been taken away from you, people like me, who had been drinking diet coke for years, had left Wait, I, I was not that person that he was describing. I knew there were a lot of other people like me. Yeah, he was unwilling to hear, because he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to seem like he was wavering in some way. So I think that there’s, I mean, that’s a great example, where, you know, you see somebody that they probably should be mapping things out and changing force a little bit, but they won’t. Because ego. They believe they’re exactly what they’re saying. I don’t know. Like, it’s hard to it’s hard to say. But that it’s, that is the, you know, it’s the challenge of many large companies. Not only Coca Cola, but you know, we’ve seen Kodak and many, IBM, many others over the years that have run into the exact same issue. Who needs that? Well, if you’re looking at your own market and drinking your own Kool Aid, then, you know, you probably do believe that. But

Patrick Leddin 36:07
inertia is such a powerful thing sometimes. And fear of giving up, whether it’s giving up some ego or give it taking a risk on something different will often cause us to continue to move in a direction even at some point. When all everything around us blinking yellow lights at us. We just keep going for Absolutely. All right. So you have a book, I know you call it undaunted. And it did tremendously well. And I encourage people to pick it up. It’s been out there for a bit and continues to get traction, you and I were talking about how in the work I’m doing, I can see myself using undaunted with our students and with some of my clients as well. But in that you share real world stories about your fears and doubts, like we’re talking about today. I guess if I was going to name it after our conversation, Eric probably got you know, how do you go from Camp Cara, with grocery store boxes to hint with grocery store shelves, but nonetheless, I mean, you have kind of gone the full, the full circle with this initiative, this Don’t Stop it. No, this idea of like, I can persevere and figure this out. That started at a young age, it continues today in your business. And I can just tell from our conversation today that the desire to through your book and your presentations and speaking to do is to help other people see, yeah, we all have fears and doubts. But that shouldn’t stop us.

Kara Goldin 37:26
Totally. And I think it’s really, you know, asking yourself a question that I I asked every day, I mean, what do you want your legacy to be? Right? If we, if we started out in this life thinking, I want to do something that has impact, I want to, you know, do something that creates change that helps people? That’s a that’s a really good thing. How do you get there? Right? How do you take your idea and do something that is going to help you achieve those things? But you have to keep asking yourself that question. And in order to do that, you really do have to live undaunted, because unfortunately, not everyone is going to help you to recognize, you know, how you are going to be able to achieve those things, you have to do it by trial, and taking those risks and making mistakes along the way and failing. And people have their own ideas about what is going to be successful, what is going to be needed. Often it’s their own insecurities that I think come out. So you know, you’ll never really know. And the truth is, no one really knows, unless you try. And the greatest ideas, the greatest entrepreneurs are the ones that have had trials, you’ve had many of them on the show to that not just entrepreneurs, but leaders overall, you know, military leaders, whatever it is that that they encounter. There’s always this grain of I wasn’t really sure if it was going to work, I hope to did. I was betting that it did, but it might not have and your ability to sort of figure things out on the fly, take the unexpected. Take the you know, challenges of today and learn from them. Deal with them and move forward is absolutely key.

Patrick Leddin 39:44
I think it’s so when you just said there I don’t know if it’ll really will work. And I think the other part of that equation you taught us today is that but we’ll figure it out. It’s like I don’t know I don’t I don’t have 1,000% confidence in this particular thing being exactly right. But I have confidence in us and what we can do. And there’s a there’s a, you know, not knowing if the solution is exactly right is one thing not knowing if the team or your or your commitment to it isn’t right. That’s a whole different thing. And I just love how you brought that perspective today.

Kara Goldin 40:14
Thank you so much. Thanks. I

Patrick Leddin 40:16
enjoyed the conversation, folks pick up a copy of undaunted and learn from Kara’s brilliance and her life lessons along the ways. As she said, you know, we all have fears and doubts. The question becomes, what do you get your next? Thanks, Kara. Thank you.

Well, folks, that’s all I have. For today’s episode, big thank you to Kara Goldin for joining me in a leadership lab to share her story about starting and building her business. If you could think about one person who would benefit from hearing my conversation with Kara, I encourage you to share a link to this podcast episode with that friend, or that colleague. This is the fastest growing podcast on planet earth when it comes to leadership. In fact, it’s ranked in the top 1% of all podcasts worldwide. And it’s because people like you hear conversations like the one I had with Kara, and you think to yourself, I know somebody would benefit from hearing this. In fact, last week, Reggie from Indianapolis, Indiana sent me a note and said he heard my conversation with Coach dar and he shared it with a friend. So do like Reggie, share a link with a friend. Let me know about it. And who knows. I may even give you a shout out at the end of the podcast. That’s all I have for today. Thanks so much for joining me. My name is Dr. Patrick leaden. Now go make it a great day.

Kara Goldin 41:33
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