Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / Hint Founder Kara Goldin shares the secrets behind her empire’s major success

Transcript

Hint Founder Kara Goldin shares the secrets behind her empire’s major success · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  This is Cara Golden for Female Startup Club. Hey everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. I'm your host, Doon Roshin, and joining me on today's episode is Cara Golden, founder of Hint. Hint.
• 0:25
  This is an incredibly special milestone for me as it is our 100th episode. I really can't believe we got here in just seven short months. I started Female Startup Club to help other women in progress like myself learn and be inspired by women who are building badass businesses and changing the world. So I'm really extra thrilled to be speaking with an entrepreneur who has built something super incredible over the last 15 years.
• 0:54
  Born in San Francisco, Hint was founded in 2005 by entrepreneur Cara Golden. It started as a healthy lifestyle brand best known for its flagship product, Hint Water, a delicious, unsweetened, flavored water. Cara started the company with a simple idea, to make water that tastes great, to do away with all the sugar and diet sweetness, and to give her family and friends something better that they would truly love.
• 1:23
  Today, Hint is going beyond water to give people better, healthier experiences that they can enjoy and share together. We chat through her mission for building this business, what propelled her forward in realizing that she would need to create and educate in an entirely new category, and her advice for entrepreneurs with a big idea. This is Cara for Female Startup Club. Hi, Cara. Welcome to the Female Startup Club podcast. Hi.
• 1:52
  Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be here. Me too. And today is a super special episode for me because it's actually our 100th episode. So I am just thrilled to have you here on the show to share your journey with Hint and celebrate with us here at Female Startup Club. Thank you so much. Super, super great. For those who might not know who you are yet, can you introduce yourself and what your business is?
• 2:19
  Yeah, so my name is Kara Golden, and I'm the founder and CEO of a, initially a beverage company, although we're a little bit more than that. I have my beverage here in case anyone can see this, but otherwise it's an unsweetened flavored water that I started 15 years ago in the US and basically started the company because I was trying to get off of diet sweeteners.
• 2:48
  I had an addiction to Diet Coke and Diet Coke was my buddy and I loved it and I'd wake up every day and I would drink my Diet Coke and it was great. And then finally, when I was trying to get healthier, I decided to really test some things that I was doing every day.
• 3:09
  initially in food and I started looking at different diets, I had gained over the course of many pregnancies, I gained a lot of weight and was never able to lose it. And so since I was in university, I had gained 55 pounds that I could not lose. And I'm a pretty small framed person. And so for me, it was just a lot of weight. I was really tired all the time. My energy levels were low.
• 3:35
  And also I had developed terrible adult acne. I think that was like the ending point. I thought, what is going on with me? This is just not normal. And that's when I really started to read labels and try and figure out exactly what was going on. So anyway...
• 3:51
  It was really a health issue that kind of started this whole idea. I should mention that prior to starting Hint, I was a tech executive. I worked for a company called America Online and ran their e-commerce and shopping partnerships for seven years. And then prior to that, I actually started my career in media and worked at Time and then CNN. And then when I moved to Silicon Valley from New York...
• 4:16
  I worked for a guy that I just was totally inspired by. Actually, not him, but an idea that was created inside of a company that you all know called Apple. And it was a Steve Jobs idea that was doing CD-ROM shopping. And so that was really my first taste of startup land. But still, I call myself an accidental entrepreneur because even though I had worked...
• 4:39
  early in the CNN days and then worked for an idea that was a spin out of Steve Jobs idea. And then an America Online that was maybe a little bit later startup. I didn't think that I would go and start my own company. But when I had this health issue that basically I swapped out the Diet Coke for plain water, two and a half weeks later, I lost 24 pounds, almost half of the weight that I was trying to lose. It was insane.
• 5:06
  And again, I wasn't drinking full-fledged soda. I was drinking diet. So then I started to think, wait, this is diet. Diet means health. Why is this a problem that I've been tricked, right? To think that it's actually better for me.
• 5:23
  And my skin cleared up, my energy levels went back. And that's when I started looking for this product that essentially I had made at home, which was to get myself to drink more water. I started slicing up fruit and I throw it in the water. And I wasn't counting calories. I wasn't, you know, it was just kind of just to get myself to drink water. And when I went to the store, everything had a sweetener in it.
• 5:47
  And whether it was sugar or some sort of diet sweetener, and I thought, that's not what I want. I want something that just is for taste. And when I saw this hole in the market,
• 5:59
  I had taken a couple of years off from AOL and I had three kids at the time under the age of four. Then I committed to this idea that I would develop a product and try and get it on the shelf at this local store called Whole Foods that had just come into my area in San Francisco. And then I found out I was pregnant with my fourth. And so I thought, ah, do I, like I've kind of written the business plan. Do I actually go for it or what should I do? And then I thought,
• 6:27
  Well, I'm not having a baby for another six months, so I'll just keep working as hard as I can and try and get it on the shelf. I had no idea what I was doing. Again, had never launched a company, had never launched a beverage company or a food company, but I thought...
• 6:43
  If, you know, I should just try. Because if nothing else, it would, I'd be a great dinner conversation. They'd say, hey, Kara, what have you been doing since leaving tech? I'm like, well, I launched a beverage company. And I thought, I don't know, it'd be kind of funny, right? Like, what if it failed? I thought, who cares? It'll just be great. Instead, I could tell people why it inspired me, why I wanted to work on this every day. And that was really the thing, too, that I realized is that,
• 7:13
  When I jumped into this industry super by accident, I knew nothing about it. And that's what made me excited because I was learning. And I never would have said this when I left AOL, but I think part of the issue with so many people is that you get into this, you know, you start a job, your first job out of school, and then sort of the...
• 7:39
  aspirational end game is to become the CEO, right? Or some C-suite executive or a manager, right? And there's a lot of people that get into those positions and all they're doing is actually teaching and mentoring, which is great. But after a while, I think that
• 8:00
  I needed to be learning. I needed to go back to the bottom, right? And be able to learn. And I've stumbled upon this new industry that I felt like was just so exciting because I just knew nothing about it. I mean, something as simple as these little caps that I'm holding in my hand.
• 8:21
  I thought that they were called caps. And then six months later, I find out by accident that they're called closures. And I'm like, the world opened up when I was like, I mean, all of a sudden, all this information, it was like a board game that all of a sudden you had just like flipped the code. And then you got all this more information. I was like, yeah.
• 8:41
  And I'm telling my friends in tech, I'm like, I finally figured this out. You know what I mean. When you go and figure something out that you're just like, and people are like, are you okay? And I'm like, I'm super good. I got to go back to work right now because I'm just so excited right now. Like, I feel like I just hit the gold mine. So anyway, that's how it started. And today where they...
• 9:02
  Still, I'll always be the founder, but I'm still the CEO. 15 years later, we're the largest non-alcoholic beverage in the US that doesn't have a relationship with Coke, Pepsi or Dr. Pepper, Snapple. And we started out in still version with just fruit in it. And we also have a carbonated version. We also have a caffeinated version, no sweetener. So our deal and our purpose and our mission is really to help people enjoy water and help people get healthy.
• 9:32
  And that's what we do every day. And from day one of getting it on the shelf at Whole Foods, that was what we were hearing from consumers, exactly what I had experienced, which was, you're helping me drink water. We heard from a number of people. Remember, this is 15 years ago, a number of people
• 9:53
  who were saying, your product is helping me control my type 2 diabetes, which was like 2% of the population in the US at the time. I'm like, how could we be helping so many people with type 2 diabetes? I mean, this is tiny. Today in the US, 40 to 45% of the population has type 2 diabetes or prediabetes in the US. And so again, it's a global...
• 10:18
  It's not a pandemic, it's an epidemic. And it's an issue that we hear more and more may not actually be caused by sugar, but may be caused by other things, including diet sweeteners that are out there that people just don't get and they just don't seek this information. So our purpose has really been to create great products that don't have diet sweeteners in them or sweeteners in them.
• 10:44
  What a great mission to be impacting so many people and on such a deep level, you know, 40%, that's a crazy statistic to have. And what a change from two to 40, my goodness. I'm interested to go back to that early time in your business and really understand what you were doing at that time to get the word out there and educate those consumers and have people start buying your product and what was driving them buying it off the shelves.
• 11:09
  Yeah, so just the moment that I got it on the shelf, I, you know, it's a funny story. I mentioned that I was pregnant with my fourth and I actually have a book out that just came out October 20th. And it's one of the stories in the book that I think a lot of people read
• 11:26
  start laughing a bit. I was living it. I didn't view it as funny at the time. Now I look back, I'm like, yeah, I guess it's going to happen. But of course, when you launch a product, it's always delayed. It's never on time, right? And so that was the case with Hint. And we were about two weeks delayed and I was working out of my house. And so I
• 11:49
  I'm having a plan C-section on May 27th, 2005. The product shows up at my house. This big truck drops a pallet into my garage. I have a two-car garage. At the time, we were living in San Francisco. So parking is really, really tight. And like street parking is almost non-existent where we lived. And so I have two cars and I'm thinking, there's a pallet in one of the spaces. When I go to the hospital and I'm coming home with my young baby and,
• 12:18
  my fourth child, this is not going to work. I need this stuff out of my garage. And so the morning I wake up, I have to be at the hospital at 2 PM. And I, and my husband said, what do you want to do this morning before we go to the hospital? And I said, I would like to go to Whole Foods and see if we can get a product on the shelf. And he said, I was thinking a brunch or a walk
• 12:44
  Nope. I, you know, I want to, I want to go to Whole Foods and see if we can get the product on the shelf. So he said, okay. And so he drives me and we go there and I'm waddling into Whole Foods, trying to find the guy that I had been asking all these questions in my research. And my nice husband's carrying the cases in, we have a dolly, he's bringing them in. And the guy said, I said, hi, do you remember me? And he said, what?
• 13:13
  wow, you are really pregnant. And I said, I am. And he said, are you going to deliver your baby right here in the store? And I said, gosh, I hope not. I'm having a plan C-section in a few hours. And he said, what's a plan C-section? And I hesitated and I said,
• 13:35
  do you mean like the difference between a plant C-section and an emergency C-section? Because I've had both so I can explain it all. And he said, yeah. And I said, okay, so after you have an emergency C-section and I went on to explain the difference and my poor husband is backing up into the fruits and vegetables section. He leaves the cases there. He's walking around horrified that I'm actually having this conversation. And he comes back 15 minutes later and the guy looks at
• 14:05
  And looks at me too and said, thank you so much for explaining that. I've always wondered. I've heard people talking about plan C-sections and now I know. And I said, no problem at all. I said, by the way, can you get our product on the shelf now? Can you put it in the cold case? And he said, I don't know if I can do it.
• 14:25
  And I said, gosh, it would be amazing if you could. And my husband said, stop selling. We need to go to the hospital. So I go to the hospital, not knowing whether or not it actually went on the shelf. And then the next day he called me and in the hospital. Of course, I think it's like my family or friends. No one calls when you have your fourth child. They're just like, she's just gone for a couple of weeks and...
• 14:51
  And so I hear the phone ring and my husband said, it's the guy from Whole Foods. And I said, what's, what did he say? And he said that the product is gone. And I said, give me the phone. And I said, who took the product? And he said, no, it's gone. And I, and I.
• 15:06
  I said, what do you mean it's gone? And he said, it's sold. You guys need to get some product back in here because I'm going to get in trouble with my boss unless there's more product. I said, you sold 10 cases overnight? And he said, yeah. He was like, it was crazy. People were looking for your product. And so, of course, at that point, we check out of the hospital. My husband goes and delivers some more products so that they have more product. And
• 15:35
  I thought that the rest was history, right? I would, you know, the next kazillion dollar brand, right? But then that's when, and this is something I talk about in the book, is that I certainly doubted, right, that I was going to be able to get that first bottle on the shelf at Whole Foods. But then also the doubts start to pour in, right, when you start to hear that.
• 15:59
  Like family and friends are the worst. They try and be helpful, but you say, oh, this is really hard. And then they're like, wait, why are you doing this again? Why? Maybe you should go back to your job in tech. Maybe you shouldn't work, right? Maybe you shouldn't do all these things. And again, I was really excited. It was hard, right? There were challenges. But I also, like we couldn't figure out shelf life, for example. We needed a longer shelf life. That's what the guy was saying at Whole Foods.
• 16:28
  And I said, okay, how do I find that out? He was like, I don't know. I mean, that's your problem. And I was like, okay, I'll figure it out. I had no idea. And then, and here I was, I was a tech executive that, you know, the youngest female tech executive at AOL, one of the only females. And, you know, now I'm, I'm sitting there talking.
• 16:55
  carrying cases in to Whole Foods, trying to figure out a shelf life, trying to figure out a distributor. It was crazy. And again, I...
• 17:05
  I wasn't sure whether or not I was going to be able to figure this whole thing out. I felt really, I had fears, I had doubts. I was less afraid of failing because I felt like I could always go back to being a tech executive, right? Like that issue was not as big of a deal. The challenge with me though was that I just felt, I felt like,
• 17:29
  It was just so hard and I was tired and I just thought I'm just not going to be able to do this. And so that's, that was really when I just decided that I would share with a friend that I was having these issues. That's another story in, in the book where I ended up meeting with an executive from Coca-Cola. And it was a really pivotal point in my history where I kept thinking that somebody, people with experience. Yeah.
• 17:59
  Like people who were from some large company would wave their magic wand and solve all of my problems. That's what we do, right? When we start a company, we think that somebody is going to be there that is going to solve all the problems because they have more experience. And that's when I...
• 18:21
  I ended up connecting with this gentleman. And I'm thinking that because he's got all this experience, he can solve all my problems, including shelf life issues and distribution. And I mean, I was ready to just give him the company at this point. And 15 minutes into the conversation, he interrupted me and said, sweetie, Americans love sweet. This product isn't going anywhere. And I was like, whoa, what?
• 18:49
  What did he just say to me, sweetie? And I'm so thankful for that moment that he said this to me because I started listening and recognizing that he was speaking to me in a way that was...
• 19:07
  rude, condescending, whatever you want to say, but different than how I had imagined it would go, right? And all of a sudden, I was a little shocked. So then I really started listening because people have asked me, why didn't you just hang up on them? We weren't meeting live. We were meeting over the phone. And I said, well,
• 19:27
  I don't know. Like I just started listening even more. And he went on for the next 45 minutes to say all kinds of things, including that people wanted less calories. They weren't interested in an unsweetened diet.
• 19:43
  And here I had consumers who were writing me saying, thank you so much for developing this product. You've helped me drink water. You've helped me control my type 2 diabetes. And everybody was talking about health. My purpose and my mission was health. He never said the word health the whole time. And so I get off the phone with him and I'm thinking, wow.
• 20:05
  okay, I was about to give up an hour ago. And now what I realized is that I have a choice to make. That is, I can be bothered by what he said and stop, quit, or I can keep going because I'm on a totally different mission, river, whatever you want to, however you want to talk about it. And so I decided to keep going. And so that is...
• 20:34
  Part of the reason why I decided to write this book, frankly, was that there's so many stories like this along the way that I've shared with entrepreneurs. In my talks that I've given, I've shared many of these stories. And the book is called Undaunted Overcoming Doubts and Doubters. It's great for entrepreneurs. It's great for students. It's great for people who are
• 20:57
  just curious people who are trying to figure out what they want to do and be a lifelong learner. I've never really thought about that. But I figured that by sharing my stories, that people could get inspired to ultimately know that you can do it. And I've always said like that story with the Coca-Cola executive, consider the source, right? I mean, I'm like,
• 21:24
  People have said stuff to me my whole life. And at the end of the day, you have to figure out if it matters or not. And that is really, there are so many stories like this of stuff that people have said, doubts I've had, I've had doubters, I've had fears, I've had failures along the way. But if you just figure out
• 21:45
  Instead, to be driven by your curiosity and listening to your customers, that is the most important thing that you can do when you wake up every single day and really start and run a company. And so that is what I'm doing. I love it. And I'm super excited to read your book. I'll also be linking it in the show notes below. Yay! When you look back, what is it that you attribute your success to? And what is your superpower?
• 22:17
  I would say it's definitely curiosity is my superpower. And the idea that, I don't know, I'd say multiple curiosity and also just the ability. I mean, people have called...
• 22:32
  It resilience. Yeah, maybe. I mean, I think I'm just relentless at going and figuring out what is it that is in front of me that I need to solve. And I sort of I now look at so many stories and so many entrepreneurs that I've met. I had this opinion that you have to have experience in an industry to actually go in and start your own company. And that's one way to do it.
• 22:58
  But so often it's the people that are curious like me that come into it from a consumer perspective, that they're trying to solve their own health problem or some other problem that they have. And those are actually the people, while you may get discounted, right, that you don't have industry experience, you don't know what you're doing. You're a mom of four young kids. I had that one too along the way. The fact that
• 23:25
  you're looking at somebody who actually has this curiosity and this itch, it's dangerous, right? You should look closely because depending if they're competitive, if they're driven, right? If they've gone and done it in some other industry, don't discount that they can't go and get this done. Totally. Absolutely. What advice do you have for women who have a big idea and
• 23:55
  I think don't be afraid to start small. So especially during the pandemic, I've talked to so many people who are in that position where they're trying to figure out like, gosh, I want to go start something or I've got this idea. Just go. Starting may actually be as simple as going on Google and really understand your.
• 24:16
  if someone else is doing this product, right? Or the service. And when I started Hint, what I didn't realize, I knew that I was starting a new company and I was launching a new product. That's like climbing a mountain, right? But what I didn't know until a couple of months in was that I was starting a new category. And that's like climbing Everest.
• 24:37
  That's a whole different deal. And the problem, if you've never really thought about this, and that's such a key thing when you're thinking about starting your idea that you don't believe is out there, is that you have to educate the consumer. You often have to educate, if you have a product similar to mine, where you're reliant on a grocery buyer, if they don't
• 25:01
  think that they need an unsweetened flavored water. If they're sort of in the camp of the guy that I met from Coca-Cola, who's saying Americans love sweet, we don't need this product, then you've got to figure out how do I get over the wall? How do I crush the wall? How do I get around the wall? Right? You've got to... You...
• 25:21
  your job is strategy. You've got to have a great product and have confidence, but you've got to sit there and figure out where is this consumer? In our case, we grew up, we grew as best we could in grocery stores, but we actually grew up inside of Google and Facebook and purely by chance. I was being recruited by Google. And I, again, had this tech experience and
• 25:46
  a friend of mine was actually interviewing me. And after a while, I just said, Omid, I don't know how to tell you this. I'm starting my own company. And I think he thought it was like competitive with Google after he had been really sharing a lot of information with me. And I said, just to let you know, it's not competitive at all. And I pull out of my handbag, this bottle of hint. And it was, and he said, wait,
• 26:12
  you're starting a beverage company? And I said, I am. And he said, that is so crazy. And it was like, how did you decide to start this? And what was fascinating, I'll never forget Omid. Omid was like the first employee behind the founders, one of the first employees behind the founders at Google. And he was asking all the same questions that I asked. He said, don't you have to
• 26:35
  understand like distribution and how to get a shelf life and all this stuff. And I said, yeah, and it's really hard. And you cannot, I mean, you can't make this stuff up, like the stuff that I'm figuring out. And this little thing that I thought was a cap is called a closure. And he said, really? And I said, yeah. So anyway, he introduced me to the chef at Google because he said, we're going to,
• 26:56
  start cooking for our employees? Because what we figured is that it takes so long for them to go out to lunch. And we thought, we'll just cater in lunch and then people will have healthy stuff to eat, but we don't have like a drink. So maybe you can talk to the chef. I don't know. So he made the introduction and then the chef said, Hey, I love Omid, drop off 10 cases. He said, do you have a
• 27:19
  Me, I'll drive it to you. I'll give you 10 cases in my Grand Cherokee. And he said, okay, like, how do you know a meat? I said, oh, I used to work at America Online. He was like, wait, you're delivering beverages now? Really? And I said, I am. I know, it's crazy. And so anyway, it started at Google. And then Sheryl Sandberg left Google and went to Facebook. And I remember her assistant called me and said, hey, can we get some of the...
• 27:49
  the hint stuff like inside of Facebook because Cheryl would really like it. And I was like, sure. And I, anyway, so funny. So we, we became the number one beverage, uh, in, in all tech firms, but then tech firms were spread across the U S and so we just kept growing with them and then other offices and whatever. So crazy, crazy growth. I, amazing. So yeah.
• 28:15
  What an incredible story. My goodness. And what a journey. Holy moly. The business is huge today. Yeah. And it's been, I mean, I think, like I said, the key thing that I really want entrepreneurs to know is that being an entrepreneur is really tough. We always hear about the unicorns and the failures, but the stuff in between the critical points that
• 28:39
  really the dots that you have to make decisions at. You have to look at how do you ultimately get things done, even if you were going right, and then it suddenly, that's not the right way to go. You have to figure out, I need to move.
• 28:54
  Right. You have to navigate. It's like it's like driving an automobile. Right. Where you've got to make really adjustments. Do you stay? Do you go? What do you do ultimately? And that's the way I view entrepreneurship. And these are the one, two, three things that you've got to go do instead of.
• 29:15
  What I do through my book is actually share my own story and show people that you've just got to go try and you can't be afraid of failure to be an entrepreneur. You've got to know that through the challenges and the failures, that's where you're going to learn. And hopefully...
• 29:34
  you end up, if you do do something that is really stupid along the way that you wish you, like, don't beat yourself up over it. Learn from the experience and go on to the next time that you're faced with a challenge. And now you've got reasons for doing what you're ultimately going to do.
• 29:53
  That's incredible. Thank you so much for taking the time to join me today. It was so nice to meet you. Yeah. And let me know. Hopefully you'll all get to listen to my book on Audible or read it. And I'd love to hear from you. I'm on social at Kara Golden with an I and have a great rest of the week, everybody.
• 30:18
  Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
• 30:42
  And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
• 31:05
  As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that.
• 31:21
  Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
• 31:46
  And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
• 32:08
  As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show, and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that.