Interview Replay: Kara On The Uncopyable Women in Sales

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

Kay Miller 0:45
Thank you for coming on the podcast and welcome.

Kara Goldin 0:49
Thank you for having me

Kay Miller 0:51
it my first question, you call yourself an accidental entrepreneur? What do you mean by that? And how did that impact your path of taking hint water to where it is today?

Kara Goldin 1:04
A lot of people ask me if I always planned on being an entrepreneur. And looking back, it looks that way. Because I worked for a number of different startups, different sized startups that I was supporting entrepreneurs. And that’s one way to become an entrepreneur, I have frequently heard from people that they always were doing things that were very entrepreneurial as a kid, I again, like I never really thought about myself that way. But looking back, I think that there were many times that I It looks that way. But when I think about how I got to become an entrepreneur, it was really when I had a solve for a problem that I saw in front of me. And I, frankly, tried to give the company away multiple times thinking that I wasn’t good enough, I probably had some imposter syndrome in there, too, that I didn’t have the right experience. I hadn’t worked at one of the big drink companies. So therefore I wasn’t going to be able to go start a company. I’d never started a company before either. But one of the reasons why I call myself an accidental entrepreneur is that I think that there’s a lot of people like me out there that might have ideas for a company, I wasn’t even calling my idea, my company hint a company at the time I was calling it a product, and I thought it’d be a lot of fun to get it on the shelf. So that’s the story of Hinton, like I said, I think it’s a story for a lot of people. And probably the difference is that I took an idea that I had, and just first got it on the shelf, and then just kept going, even though, as I always say, I got knocked down along the way. But I got back up and just kept trying to figure out what else could we do.

Kay Miller 3:11
And this really was from the beginning a passion project for you, right? Because you were looking for an option. You had been hooked on diet soda, and just couldn’t find what you wanted in the marketplace. And you said Dang it, I’m going to create it right?

Kara Goldin 3:29
Absolutely. I think you know the story for people who are not familiar with hand. It’s an unsweetened flavored product. If you happen to be looking at it on a video, I have the cherry hint right in front of me. But I wanted a product that tasted great that made water tastes great. I knew that water was better for me. But I was not a water drinker. I should have been a water drinker, I grew up in a hot climate in Arizona, where I should have been drinking a lot more water. But I never did because I thought water was so boring. And so one day after a career in media and also a career in tech, I was at home in my house in San Francisco. And I had young kids at that time three under the age of four. And I was really focused on making sure that they had the right things that they were consuming that not only food but also drinks and I was really focusing on how I didn’t want them to start out life just being so addicted to sugar and sweet. And I certainly wasn’t giving them diet sweeteners because I had it in my mind that wasn’t good for them early on. But at some point I started to look at my own kind of habits and one of the habits I had was with Diet Coke and I had been drinking it for years thinking that was better than full fledged Sugar soda. But it was when I was really trying to focus on my kids health that I started thinking this probably isn’t that great for me there, maybe I should stop. And that’s when I looked for an alternative to diet soda. And frankly, I really hadn’t paid attention in the beverage aisle very much because I had just been going right to the red cans. Right. And I was, that’s what I was most focused on. And finally, when I started looking around, I started seeing that not only was it very confusing that we live in a place where it’s healthy perception versus healthy reality as I started to think about it. And when I just wanted a water with some taste without any of the sweetness, none of the diet sweeteners, but also none of the sugar either. I didn’t realize until that moment that there wasn’t anything like that out there. In a still format, there was carbonated versions that were like seltzer waters, and things that had carbonation. But I felt like in order to really have as much consumption of water every day, and I was also faced with the options at that time, 18 years ago, they all had a lot of sodium in it, that’s changed with many of the carbonated waters. But so I was really developing something that wasn’t out there. Little did I know, when you’re actually developing a product that’s not out there, and especially a product in a huge category, like beverages, I was actually creating a category within an industry within beverages that no one had done. And little did I know how hard that would be.

Kay Miller 6:58
And we will get into that I do want to point out again that your book undaunted, really describes both your eclectic background, which is very interesting, and your journey through this whole process. So we aren’t going to be able to get to all of it today, obviously. But I highly recommend anyone listening or watching by the book undaunted, because it’s just packed with gold. And it’s really an interesting read. So I appreciate you writing it. Thank you, you know that the audience for this podcast is women in sales. So I am sure that becoming an entrepreneur took a lot of selling. And I read a couple of those examples in the book. And I’d love to have you share a couple of your examples of selling hint on the concept selling the product sales in general.

Kara Goldin 7:57
Yeah, you know, it’s, it’s interesting. First of all, I had been in sales back in my kind of second job out of college, which was at CNN. And I had always learned that the most important thing was really understanding what was on the other side of the table, and what problems were they facing, that I could potentially solve. So Little did I know that was going to be amazing kind of history to be able to go and start my own company, because not only when you’re trying to educate and describe to buyers as I was when I was starting the product, what the heck I was doing, and why this was an important thing for them to actually give space to on the shelf that was selling from day one. But what I was also facing was that there were these things called planograms, that were in stores that the buyers that I was dealing with, were faced with dealing with a set number of skews that they would put on the shelf different categories that they were recognizing. So I was trying to sell them into understanding why what I was doing was really important, right? And that everybody’s going to be like me, there’s going to be a lot of people shifting from diet soda to plain water, but isn’t going to have the choices that they really want out there to be healthy. So I believed what I was doing, which I think in when you’re selling anything you have to believe in what you’re doing. But it was still difficult, right? There were a lot of noes. And there were a lot of roadblocks that were in front of me. And frankly, I didn’t know how to always get by those roadblocks in the beginning because I didn’t know how to get a buyer to change Change the planogram. But what I did know was that just because somebody said No, today didn’t mean that they were going to say no tomorrow. And I had to figure out, how do I get a yes, from somebody else, not necessarily somebody else within that company, like I wasn’t going directly to their bosses. Instead, what I figured out is, instead of going to Whole Foods, maybe I figure out how to go to sprouts or one of the other stores that was out there. And then maybe I could use that when to go in and share with somebody that had said, no, what was going on. So there were definitely experiences within sales that were super helpful. One of the stories that you and I were discussing before we started recording was my story was Starbucks. And Starbucks had, I always when I went in for my coffee at Starbucks, I would always look at the case and see that there were beverages that were not Starbucks beverages in the case. And while I’m waiting in line for coffee, and I’m trying to understand like how those got in there. And after meeting a few of those brands over the years, I understood that just like a store, they have a buyer that allows you to pitch your item, and they only take a few items. It’s very competitive. And so ultimately, it’s a longer story than this. But ultimately, we ended the book by the the whole thing. And ultimately, we ended up getting in there. It’s actually this part of the story was pretty funny. We flew from San Francisco up to Seattle, and the buyer had been very specific with us, we were going to be meeting with her and a few other people that they were interested in potentially using hint for a kid’s alternative option. And they wanted to put hint in they wanted us to put it in boxes. So the basically what we do today with hint, kids, but we did not have that out there at the time. So competitive with the apple juice boxes and the Capri Suns out there. But we didn’t have that alternative out there at the time. She said when you come up, please don’t bring the hint bottles with you. Because we’re just talking about the boxes at this time. And this would be an exclusive that we would have you working on for Starbucks. And I said, Okay, well, we’ll just bring a couple bottles, so the other people can try the product. And she was very specific that we should not actually bring any bottles with us. Because they at all tried hint. And that we were just really talking about how it was packaged, because they wanted the exact same product just in the boxes, there would be no difference between the two. So I remember landing in Seattle and getting ready to go to Starbucks. And my husband said to me, who’s our chief operating officer, he said, Are we going to stop at Whole Foods where we have hints? And I said, No, she was very specific about not bringing any bottles of hands with us. And he said, What are you talking about? And I said, she said, we’re just talking about packaging, we’re not going to be talking, we’re not going to be sampling the product. And he was like, That’s ridiculous. I want a bottle of him anyway, let’s stop at Whole Foods on the way. So I said okay, fine. When we got there, I, they were some cold samples, I threw them in my purse. And then sure enough, we go into the room to meet with her. And I’m have my bottle of hands that I’m drinking. And one of the people that was with her that was senior to her said, Do you have bottles of hand to show us and I thought is this a trick question? Is she gonna throw us out of the room? And I said, I do actually and I brought them out of my bag. And you could see that this buyer. Like she specifically had given me some kind of direction. So it was a little bit awkward, actually, but but at the end of the day, everybody seemed everybody else in the room seemed very happy with us. And but I left the meeting thinking I don’t know how this whole thing is going to turn out or not. But we had to do the right thing for us and for the brand and obviously there were two other people who had not given they didn’t know about those directions. Maybe that she had given us. And so it was a few days later, she called the One, the woman that I had been talking to. And she called me and said, I have great news. And I said, What? And she said, good news and bad news. We’re actually not going to do the kids product. We’re going to do the hint product. The the other managers that were here, decided that hint would be terrific to have in the case. And and I was like, oh, okay, totally did not plan on that happening at all. And she said, it’s just a small test. It’s going to be in just a few stores initially. And I said, Well, it’s terrific. We’ve got to start somewhere. It’s wonderful. And then she phoned us a couple of weeks later, and she said, we decided that we wanted to do a full rollout. And in all the stores, that was a

it was, it was definitely a woohoo. And I got off the phone. And I thought, oh, my gosh, good thing we actually brought the samples be prepared, I guess is the is the moral of the story. So we we rolled out in Starbucks, I remember asking the buyer, this is part two of the story. I remember asking the same buyer, what is success, and now that we’re going into full rollout, because we’re trying to figure out production numbers, and we want to be prepared. We don’t want to miss any supplying any Pio that we’re getting, etc. And she said, if you do a bottle and a half per store per day, you’re doing incredible. So the first couple of weeks was slow, I thought, wow, I don’t know when we’re going to do a bottle and a half per store per day, it took us about six months to get to that volume. And then we were cranking we were hint was it was all across the country. 6000 stores, we are military bases, it was incredible. And it really exposed us to a ton of consumers where they didn’t have Whole Foods, they didn’t have the stores that we were in, we didn’t have big distribution and many states across the country and cities across the country. So we were really feeling pretty good about the relationship with Starbucks, and frankly, so good because it was about 40% of our volume was sitting in Starbucks, and it was the next phone call a year and a half into this business that we got. And it was from a new buyer. So the buyer that we had been dealing with the one that told us not to bring samples in, had actually left. And they had a new buyer and the new buyer was really excited about Hinch, she drank him all the time. She said, unfortunately, I have some bad news for you. And I’m like, what’s the bad news and she said, we are going to be putting sandwiches into the case which has higher ring better margins sounded great for her and and her brand. But it was really more of the economics of the deal with us. And she said it’s possible that we may end up doing a bigger set with more beverages. But we’re not going to do that right now. I didn’t know what to say it was all of a sudden, to your point we had been Yay, we’re in Starbucks, we’re doing great. And then all of a sudden, the buyer change. And we’re out. And I think that’s a story of any salesperson. There’s lots of lessons learned. Number one, it hurt really bad because 40% of our overall business was sitting in the hands of one brand, right Starbucks, and so their decision to actually discontinue us because they had bigger plans that we were not privy to. It was, you know, a good decision for them. It was a terrible decision for us. And that can happen it anytime you can have buyer changes anytime you can have a strategy changes anytime, and you’re going to be the last to know. And so there’s not a whole lot that I could have done about that. But what I could have done was figured out how to not allow this to be 40% of our overall business because when you have a big chunk a big weight of your plan, maybe have a customer that is taking all of your time. Right and you haven’t had a chance to get any new business going out there. When And they make those calls or maybe somebody else in the company is making those calls, you’re out of luck. And that hurts. So, so that was a big part of the Starbucks story. But I think that the last part of it, do you want to hop in? Yeah,

Kay Miller 20:17
I wanted to hop in. Because really, I love the point that you never would have gotten into Starbucks unless you broke the rules, really, you separated yourself from everyone else. And my book, of course, talks all about being uncopyable. And, of course, that was a judgment call on your part and your husband contributed to that. But really being in Starbucks for so long, gave you so much exposure, and so many chances for customers to try it, I would still consider a win. And then going back to the stores when you were calling on and trying to get shelf space, and maybe had to take no for an answer from this store. But then you went to another one and you gathered success stories. And then you were able to go back with a track record. The word for it is undaunted, because you just found another way, you were always willing to find another way. And I think that’s really a big part of your book, and your success and your philosophy. Yeah,

Kara Goldin 21:22
and I think it really speaks to it, it really speaks to not allowing it something negative to be final. I think that’s what it really points to. And I think it’s I was just explaining this to somebody the other day, I remember, as, as a kid, I was a gymnast, and My poor mom would sit outside of the gym, because I would never allow when I screwed up on something that I didn’t think was going to happen. But maybe I fell off the bars or something happened. And I’d be tired and frustrated. But I never would leave the gym until I could find the good light, I want to leave on a good note. Right? And I wanted to do the best I could because I thought if you carry the negative, you know, with you, that’s what you’re gonna go to sleep with. Right? And instead trying to figure out, how do you find the light? Right. And I think that has always been my perspective. And that, for me is a lot of what the meaning of on Donta does, too. But it’s something that we can all do, and find the good. And that doesn’t mean that you’re overly positive all the time, it means that you can always find a little bit of good that the example of Starbucks is, you’re absolutely right. They exposed us to many markets, they paid on time, they grew our brand significantly, and ultimately, really helped us to gain the attention of somebody else, another Seattle brand Amazon when we ultimately went into their grocery business, and who knows if that would have happened, right? If we right, been as big with that partner. So I think that’s there’s lots of lessons there. And I think it’s just all part of the journey, you focus on the things that you can really have impact on in some way. But also know that what’s really important, I think, to look around the corner a little bit and see, are you doing things that if that business went away today, would you be? How would you feel like, are you vulnerable? In some way? Is it good to be this vulnerable? Because I think we can always sit here and focus on if you’ve got a partner, if you’ve got somebody that a customer that you’re calling on, and they’ve got a giant chunk of business, even when it looks good, what if that person goes away and decides to go to another job, they’re not going to tell you that they’re looking for a job necessarily. Right, but they might achieve and don’t have your eggs in one basket.

Kay Miller 24:18
Don’t have all your eggs in one basket. And there’s a story I think it might have been I swear I read about this in college. That was a long time ago. I think it was Montgomery Ward, who there was a supplier or maybe more than one supplier that was all of their business. And then when that company decides to make a change or it goes out of business. Yeah, you’re really stuck. So diversification is definitely huge. And of course now you have so many channels to buy your product that Yeah, you don’t take that risk. You do talk about that. You do have fear and doubts at times. It sounds like from your upbringing and your gymnastics to worry that you aren’t the kind of person that looks at the positive. And not everyone’s like that some of us have to work harder than others. And I don’t know if you have any tips, but how do you overcome your fear and your doubts,

Kara Goldin 25:13
I think when you push through any doubts and fears that you’ve had, it’s, you remember that feeling that you get that you had when you actually push through and how you felt about it. And I’ve had so many in life that, as I also talked about in the book, being the last of five kids where, you know, my parents said, they’re great parents, but they always said, You need to go figure this out. And you need to try and take responsibility. And I joke that I think that they were tired, right, like they had to file by or figure it out. But I used it as an opportunity to actually go and try a lot of things. And some things worked. And some things didn’t work. But more than anything, I wanted to figure out ways to get better at things or try new things. And I was able, I had the freedom to be able to do some of the those things, but I think it’s it really boils down to remembering those feelings and and how you felt when you were able to push through those one of and I should also mention that it’s not just in business, too, I’ve always believed that life is not so separate, where it’s this is my business life. And this is my personal life, even if you’re not a startup founder, or an entrepreneur, or CEO, or how many of us have friends from work, right? They’re still your friends, they’re not, there’s not the separation that goes on where there’s just the work for most people, work people and personal people. So I’ve always felt to be able to have a life where you’re learning things along the way from both sides of your life is really important to reflect on more than anything else. But one of the things that I talked about in the book that I think has really helped me in business is to push through a lot of those moments where I felt super fearful about things and heights, for me has always been something that I have not been very comfortable with. And I finally growing up in Arizona, I had always kind of thought about the Grand Canyon, when people had said, Oh, we’re gonna go hike the Grand Canyon, or we’re going to go down the Colorado River. But first we’re gonna go hike the Grand Canyon, and I thought, okay, I could do the Colorado River, but I could never hike the canyon. And then I would catch myself almost traumatizing myself about like this idea of being able to go and do something that I think I would really enjoy. But I if there wasn’t this one component. And so I literally train myself to go, and and I didn’t seek help to do it. I said to myself, I need to keep finding places where I can get some height and see how I feel to see and push myself to see whether or not I’m capable of it. Running a marathon, right? You’re I was literally training to be able to do it. And once I got confident that I was actually going to pull it off, then I started tell people that I was going to do

Kay Miller 28:29
it for accountability, then you can’t back out right. And

Kara Goldin 28:33
I couldn’t back out exactly. My daughter was going with me too. And my sister and a bunch of our friends were going as well. And I remember being at a soccer game with my daughter a couple weeks before we were actually traveling and telling one of the other moms on the sidelines, she had asked me to do something that weekend I said, Oh, we’re actually going to hike the Grand Canyon. And she said, Oh, wow, how are you doing now? I’m so terrified of heights. I think I would freak out. And I said, Oh no, it’s going to be fine. She said, What have you looked down? And I don’t know she, for some reason was creating this visual that not a lot of people had done for me. I hadn’t done it for myself, but she was passing her own fears off on me. And intentionally, but it was really sinking in. And I remember her saying something to me like, Oh, it’s too bad that it isn’t dark outside. And all of a sudden I’m like, I called my sister and I said, Listen, I am freaking myself out. This lady freaked me out, but it sunk in. So can we start at four o’clock in the morning? And she was like, wait, what? I said we have to start at four o’clock in the morning and we’ll be out earlier because we have a long hike. And she said okay, fine. And I said okay, great. So then everybody was like why? At four o’clock in the morning, that’s so early, okay, but great, it’ll be beautiful, the sun will rise, whatever. So figuring out ways to actually achieve this anyway, you can read the whole story in the book. But the net of it is that I’ll give you a little glimpse that I was so focused and so worried about this height issue, and very consumed by it. That what almost took me out that I had never thought about, I had the right shoes, I had clothing all of these things, but a herd of goats almost at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, on the way down, before you go across the bottom, a herd of goats came down the hill, and jumped over my sister and I, and my gosh, and almost killed us. And like little and the two of us were laughing so hard, because we were like, can you imagine I was a headline in the newspaper, we had the right shoes, we had my sister had her walkingstick, we had everything, like we had the headlamp, everything. So you can be so prepared. Right? Right. Imagine

Kay Miller 31:15
you can imagine all the boulders coming down the hill, and then the one that actually comes down the hill is one you’ve never thought of

Kara Goldin 31:22
one you’ve never thought of right. And so there’s a lot of different titles in my head for this one. But it’s like you, if you think too much about the end, right? You’ll never get past the beginning is one. But also, you just have to take chances, right, you have to go and do it, you’re not going to be you’re not going to have everything figured out. And I think that times like this where something almost happens doesn’t happen is is just a great example of you can be so prepared, and then something is going to come up and you just have to do the best you can to get through it.

Kay Miller 32:06
And you pushed yourself through it. And I totally agree. I actually went on a mission trip to Guatemala in May. And at the end of the mission trip, we did a zipline. So I also have a fear of heights. But I think your point of not overthinking it too much is great. Because I just got myself into robot mode, right? And I’m thinking, Okay, we’re in this third world country, what kind of regulations do they have for safety and everything. And I just made myself do it. And it reminds me of what you said about what remembering that feeling you got when you make a sale, you feel proud of that. And we don’t ever, I don’t think we feel pride, true pride. For anything that isn’t difficult. That isn’t a stretch. So I think thinking of those feelings of pride, and when you have overcome things help you to have more courage the next time, and you’ve been through so many roadblocks, and pushed yourself through it. And another thing I totally believe and I’m sure you agree is that the only way sometimes to get through something that you’re afraid of is to just do it, just push yourself through it. So it’s not that you’re fearless. You can only be courageous when it’s something that scares you. Otherwise, you don’t need courage. Absolutely.

Kara Goldin 33:30
And I think it just, there’s a important component to this too, which is what’s about just starting, right. Sometimes you might say, Oh, I’m not prepared enough, I’m not ready. And the reality is, things are going to come up along the way in these meetings, and you do the best you can to actually prepare. And but I think more than anything, understanding what’s on the other side of the table, but also that things might come up that you don’t know about along the way, and you can’t beat yourself up about it. Because I think more than anything, what you have to realize is that I think more than anything, you have to just keep moving forward. And you have to figure out how to do that in a way that that you survive, right. Whether that’s the Grand Canyon or whether that’s building your company and know that to some extent this journey is I think just really is about staying alive, right and figuring out being quick on your feet to figure out okay, that just happened. Okay, we have to keep moving forward because there won’t be a second herd of goats that is going to come off of the mountain right

Kay Miller 34:45
likely not similar animal.

Kara Goldin 34:49
Yeah, let’s get out of here and let’s figure out what else can we do to keep moving forward. So I think there’s just little things like that along the way that like I said you can learn things in your personal life that really helped you in your professional life too. But I think that story in particular is one about, you can feel like you’re so prepared, you can spend hours you can not get started, I would have been if somebody would have told me about the herd of goats, I probably would have. I don’t know, maybe that would have been another reason not to go down the mountain in the dark. Right? I would have been like, Oh, my God, what if they come down? We won’t see them. The reality is they whether it was totally laid out, I saw them and there was nothing I was going to be able to do and it didn’t happen. So move on.

Kay Miller 35:37
Do you have any last words before we say goodbye?

Kara Goldin 35:40
So I think more than anything, just know that life is supposed to be fun, right? Life is supposed to be a puzzle of some sort. And I think that if you view it that way, if you figure out, what else can I do in order to solve this puzzle for me? Right? How is my life going to expand? If I think about it as finalizing the puzzle in some way, I don’t think that the puzzles ever supposed to be finished, right? You’re supposed to just keep expanding on things and figuring out what else can you do, so that you’re engaged so that you have a lot more interest every day to wake up and be able to think about what else can I do in some way. And so I think if, with that mindset, it doesn’t matter if you’re an entrepreneur or you’re on a sales team, or you’re a sales manager, it’s the same mindset that I think is a good one to have to be able to live a life in that way.

Kay Miller 36:52
Thank you so much for being here and sharing your wisdom. I really appreciate your conversation with me.

Kara Goldin 36:59
Thank you so much. 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