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About The Guest
Kara Goldin is a purpose-driven, inspiring entrepreneur. She is a former AOL executive and the founder of hint®, the leading lifestyle brand of naturally flavored water. Goldin created the San Francisco-based beverage company as an alternative to soda and sugary beverages. hint® has also recently launched a sunscreen spray that is oxybenzone and paraben-free and scented with fruit essence.
Goldin has been named among Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs and Forbes’ 40 Women to Watch Over 40. The Huffington Post listed her as one of the six disruptors in business, alongside Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg. Her latest book, Undaunted: Overcoming Doubts and Doubters, is a Wall Street Journal bestseller and is a rare opportunity to gain insights and proven advice, unlike anything you’ll find in the conventional business press. Kara combines real, honest stories from her life with observations that might just change how you think about your own.
Further accolades include EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2017 Northern California (one of), San Francisco Business Times Most Influential Woman (one of), Fast Company Most Creative People in Business (one of), EY Winning Woman 2012, Fortune Most Innovative Women in Food & Drink 2015, the Gold Stevie Award for Female Entrepreneur of the Year, AMEX OPENforum’s Women to Watch and the Marketers That Matter award for Brand Building, Small Company.
Talking Points
- 00:00 – Introduction
- 04:12 – What Is Kara Goldin’s Origin Story?
- 39:51 – What Made Kara Successful?
- 43:35 – Why Did Kara Choose Her Book Name Undaunted?
- 54:13 – How Did Kara Manage To Start A Flavored Water Company?
- 01:01:26 – Which People Are Supposed To Read The Book Of Kara?
- 01:07:15 – What Was The Biggest Challenge In Kara’s Life?
- 01:08:35 – Who Is Kara’s Mentor?
- 01:09:32 – Kara’s Podcast Or Book Recommendation.
- 01:12:30 – Kara’s Advice For Young Entrepreneurs.
- 01:13:17 – What Does Success Mean To Kara?
Show Links
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/karagoldin/
- Kara Goldin 🍓 (@karagoldin) / Twitter
- https://karagoldin.com/
Podcast & Newsletter Sponsors
- Factor https://go.factor75.com/plans (Code: Success120)
- Hubspot https://hubspot.sjv.io/successstorypod
- Shopify https://shopify.com (Code: Successstory)
- Indeed https://Indeed.com/successstory
Watch on YouTube
What is the Success Story Podcast?
On this podcast, you’ll find interviews, Q&A, keynote presentations & conversations on sales, marketing, business, startups, and entrepreneurship.
The podcast is hosted by entrepreneur, business executive, author, educator & speaker, Scott D. Clary.
Scott will discuss some of the lessons he’s learned over his own career, as well as have candid interviews with execs, celebrities, notable figures, and politicians. All who have achieved success through both wins and losses, to learn more about their life, their ideas, and insights.
He sits down with leaders and mentors and unpacks their stories to help pass those lessons onto others through both experiences and tactical strategy for business professionals, entrepreneurs, and everyone in between.
Website: https://www.scottdclary.com
Podcast: https://www.successstorypodcast.com
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/scottdclary
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LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/scottdclary
Machine Generated Transcript
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, thought, business, book, started, building, felt, called, company, entrepreneurs, success story, hint, drink, Shopify, undaunted, job, grow, CNN, podcast, story
SPEAKERS
Kara Goldin, Scott D Clary
Scott D Clary 00:00
Welcome to success story the most useful podcast in the world. I’m your host Scott D. Clary. The success story podcast is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. The HubSpot Podcast Network has incredible podcasts like the gain grow retain podcast the podcast is hosted by Jeff Bruns, Bach and J Nathan. Now gain grow and retain is built to inspire SAS and technology leaders who are facing the day to day challenges of scaling hosts, Jeff and Jay share conversations about growing and scaling subscription businesses with a customer first approach. If any of these topics sound interesting to you, you’re going to like the podcast creating more brand advocates SAS as a predominant model for business, customer success at scale, or the challenges of integrating new tools with CSM some of these topics pique your interest, you’re going to love the podcast you’re going to love gain grow, retain, go check it out wherever you get your podcast remember, gain grow retain on the HubSpot Podcast Network. today. My guest is Kara Goldin. Kara is the founder and CEO of hint she’s a purpose driven, inspiring entrepreneur. She was previously at AOL, she was in the tech space before she pivoted into starting hand building out a consumer packaged goods empire. She created hint as an alternative to sugary beverages sodas. She also started to build other products that tailor to a lifestyle of people that wanted to use products that were better for their bodies. She has an incredible list of accolades outside of just building hands an incredible company. She has been named amongst fortunes most powerful women entrepreneurs, and Forbes 40 Women to Watch Over 40 Huffington Post listed her as one of the six disruptors in business alongside Steve Jobs. And Mark Zuckerberg her latest book on daunted overcoming doubts and doubters is a Wall Street Journal best seller and is a rare opportunity to gain insight and proven advice. unlike anything you’ve ever seen in a conventional business book or in conventional Business Press. She combines stories from her life observations that may change how you think about your own we speak about her book in the podcast. Some further accolades include EY Entrepreneur of the Year in 2017 San Francisco Business Times most influential woman Fast Company’s most creative person in business he wise winning woman 2012 fortunes most innovative woman and food and drink in 2015, the gold Stevie Award for female entrepreneur of the year AmEx, open forums, woman to watch and the marketers that matter award for brand building put out by small company so a ton of absolutely incredible accolades and incredible career. And then on top of that, she has built hint to a business worth over a billion dollars and now you can see him literally in wherever grocery store, you go. So what do we speak about? So we spoke about her story how she pivoted from a vice president of shopping and E commerce partnerships at AOL, pivoted from tech into CPG. And the story that lit a fire in her and got her to basically take him off the ground with no experience in retail or CPG. We spoke about a lot of lessons that she speaks about in her book on daunted why she named it undaunted, and how undaunted is going to teach entrepreneurs to think outside the box and think differently to pursue things that perhaps they may have not ever felt comfortable pursuing. And the attitude and the perseverance and the tactical and the strategy that takes to actually be successful. And basically, I don’t want to ruin it. But we just went into all the lessons that she experienced while building hint, and then how those can be applied to other entrepreneurs that are trying to start their own thing and grow an empire. So let’s jump right into it. This is Kara Goldin. She is a podcaster author and founder CEO of hint water
Kara Goldin 04:11
so I grew up in Scottsdale, Arizona, I was the last five kids and I like to say I was an original settler in Arizona because it was it was there weren’t very many of us. We did have cars there. We weren’t just, you know, riding horses around but it was it was significantly smaller than than it is today. And I think being the last five though, it’s funny I I was I to CES. I have two sisters and two brothers. But we almost had two different families. I have a brother and sister that are 15 and 16 years older than me. So while I was just this annoying little squirt like barely out of diapers they were you know, in high school and really annoying to have like Little, little, little sister, brother most of the time, not all the time, but. But I think for me, I just, I really felt like they get to do a lot more things than I was able to do. And so I watched them get their first job and get their paycheck and buy, buy a car, like all of these things along the way. And I was like, you know, four, and saying, When do I get to go? Right? And that was me. I was always like, put me
Scott D Clary 05:28
in business from the get go. Yeah, right. From right, from four years old. You want to go after? Okay. All right.
Kara Goldin 05:33
Yeah, but I think that the other thing that I was able, you know, to see, too, was that just being curious, and asking a lot of questions. And, and, you know, I, lots of people would be in and out of our house. And, you know, they were a lot of them didn’t have younger sisters. So I was amusing to them. But being able to ask like, oh, you know, what are you going to do when you graduate from high school or college or whatever? And why did you pick that, like, I would just always be asking these things. And all along the way, I would also be learning. And so anyway, fast forward, I went off to school, I went to school in Arizona, it was, you know, the price was right, it was in state tuition. And I had been an athlete, my whole life, either. Always running, playing, playing sports doing gymnastics. And by the time I went off to college, I think for me, I really took, I wanted to take a passion of mine, which was writing and, and my curiosity and become a journalism major. So. So that was my major in school. And I’ll never forget, when a few of my friends, my new friends in college, were taking business courses. And they were, frankly, becoming much more educated than I was around finance. And so they would come and talk to me and my sorority, I would hear I’m talking about, you know, EBIT, da, and business planning, and all of these things that I had always felt really smart, until I started hearing them talk about these things. And I thought, Oh, maybe I should take a class in finance. And I remember people saying, What are you doing as a journalism major taking finance classes, and I, I thought, well, I want to be able to learn something, I don’t want to major in it. But I want to be able to learn something. And it’s something that I share with people who especially college students today is, don’t be afraid to find those things that kind of scare you, right, especially when you’re in school, or maybe you think they’re stupid, and you don’t even know why they exist, like a marketing course, maybe you’re an engineer, and, you know, to be able to understand kind of the basic elements of lots of different things is a very valuable thing. It doesn’t mean you have to do it on a, you know, daily basis. But to be able to understand, you know, what is EBIT? Da? What is business planning? How do you do basic code, all of these things, I just always believed that it would be nice to be able to go try it, even if I don’t like it. It’s not what my major is. So how bad could it be? And so I graduated with a minor in finance, which, you know, still sort of like made me laugh because I, they were the hardest things, the hardest classes that I took in school. And so when I graduated, I thought, I’m going to blend what I’ve done in journalism with my minor in finance, and I’m going to go to New York, and I’m going to get a job at Fortune magazine. I felt like Wall Street Journal was the other thing that I was reading constantly. But it was just a little too much type going on. There were no pretty pictures anywhere and No, no real stories that I guess all financially related stories. But I thought I’m gonna send a letter to the managing editor of Fortune, and, you know, see what happens and get a job.
Scott D Clary 09:13
That’s the first that’s the first job you want to get out of college. Yeah,
Kara Goldin 09:18
yeah. wasn’t coming on. Fortune magazine wasn’t coming on campus. I just sent a letter. And I think that surprised a lot of people that I that I mean, people would ask me and still asked me to this day, how did you know how to send a letter to the managing editor? And I’m thinking, are you really asking me that? I mean, I You just open up the magazine, and there’s an address and email, people and you just figure it out. I mean, this is kind of like before Google before, it was really easy to do this. So anyway, Marshall, Lowe wrote me a note back and said, Hey, if you’re ever in the New York area, and so that was my invite To be in the New York area. Little did I, I never really thought that that was like a brush off. No. Instead, I thought, well, yeah, if I go to New York, I’m gonna, I’m gonna go meet with Marshall Obon. I mean, he’ll meet me and for sure he’ll give me a job. And, of course, you know, my brothers were my sisters. were cracking up, my friends were like, really? Like, you really think that’s what it says? And I’m like, I’m not gonna ask I mean, of course,
Scott D Clary 10:28
that’s, that’s not that’s not that bad. That’s not that bad. A response? Like, you just take it at face value. I think that’s pretty net positive.
Kara Goldin 10:35
Right? Exactly. I thought, what’s the worst that can happen? He doesn’t see me. But why focus on, you know, the, the negative more than anything. So. So that’s when I, you know, figured out how to get to New York and ultimately marched into the HR office, isn’t that where you go and when you’re looking for a job is, you know, I’m this college kid. And none of it is is that fortune wouldn’t see me. They didn’t have a job. I wasn’t on the books to actually meet with Marshall Loeb. But what I asked the head of HR while I was there, I thought I might as well make good use of the time, is there any other jobs. And that’s when I ended up interviewing with Time Magazine and scored a job at Time magazine. It was never my plan. I never walked in to the building at the time. And it was nothing, you know, crazy. It was an executive assistant role. But I thought, I’m going to I’m going to have a job in New York City, it’s a lot better than a lot of my friends have. And I get, you know, benefits and all of that. And more than anything, I get to work in New York City, I mean, that I just was so excited that I was able to do that. So anyway, worked there for a few years and was in circulation. I thought at that one point, I’ll, I’ll move over to the editorial side. That never happened. I was recruited out by what I now term as late stage startup called CNN. It was this guy, Ted Turner.
Scott D Clary 12:13
Why do you call it Why do you call it a late stage startup?
Kara Goldin 12:15
Because it was we were, I mean, at the time, this is the early 90s, we were in probably 40% of the country had cable systems, right and in their homes. And so I mean, it seems so foreign today, to think about that. But the only reason why I had cable was I lived in New York in this apartment building, and I wouldn’t have been able to have any reception if I didn’t have cable. And so most of my friends, like thought that that was, you know, pretty like ritzy to have it. And I’m like, I gotta I don’t know anybody in New York, all I do is work all the time. And I’ve got to have some sort of communication with the world. So I had cable and when they called and they said, Do you know what CNN is? You probably have never heard of it. I’m like, oh, no, I like watch the news. It’s great. Because I’m never home at six o’clock at night. So I can’t, I can’t watch it. And they said, Oh, that’s great. And so I ended up interviewing and, you know, I, I talk about that roll a lot, because it was the first very different culture, first of all, from time very buttoned up very, you know, primarily Ivy League at time versus CNN. Here’s this guy running around the halls and cowboy boots and a suit. And, you know, he’s, he’s a, I call it a late stage, our startup is nobody termed the company, it was just this, it was this underdog company that was going up against ABC and NBC. And people would say to me, like, oh, maybe you’ll get experience from CNN, and then you’ll go, you know, to the big networks. And I was like, maybe, I don’t know, like, it seems kind of cool. I mean, and and the thing that I think back on those days that really was so impactful for me as even an entrepreneur today is that seeing a visionary entrepreneur, like Ted Turner, he wasn’t there all the time. But when he was there, you kind of listen because he was he was funny. He could storytel He had this idea that the world needed 24 hour news. And there were days when we said, I don’t know, like, maybe they don’t a lot of people say they don’t need 24 hour news, and I was there at the company when a when a government learned that eye rack learned that their country was being bombed. And it was that day when the head of Iraq called the White House and said I just learned that my country is being bombed. I was watching CNN. And so that just that moment, and that’s what it takes to make the visionary entrepreneur, the crazy one, the one that nobody believed. That’s what makes people believe it’s those moments. And so to be able to have witnessed when that kind of thing happened, again, I didn’t get it, then I just thought, Oh, we’re doing better now people actually want to buy advertising on on CNN. But until that moment happens. It was it was, you know, this late stage startup. So the company grew continued to grow. I was there for another year and a half got engaged, moved out to San Francisco with my with my fiance wanted to do this thing called technology law. No one was doing it in San Fran, New York, everybody said Go west, you can come back to New York and Ambit. And so the the only name that kind of came to mind and kind of company that came to mind. I, again, grew up in Arizona didn’t really know people in Northern California was Apple computers. So I had saved all my waitressing and babysitting money from growing up to buy a Macintosh to do all my papers and journalism. And so I had been kind of quietly obsessed with Steve Jobs. And had, you know, the the, the difference between a regular, you know, computer that was out there by IBM and Xerox and some of the others versus a an Apple computer was huge. I mean that it was just a beautiful little thing, not as little as they are today with a nice, cute little apple on it. And it was awesome. You know, it was the iMac, it was just it was great. And not very many of my friends had one, but I was lucky enough to have one. So I thought, How do I get a job with Apple when I come to the Bay Area? So I’m living in San Francisco, and then I figured out that Cupertino, where they were based, was pretty far away. So I thought, Ah, I don’t know, it’s kind of far. But in my research about the company, I found that there were these five guys that had worked at Apple, and they spun a project that was a little known Steve Jobs idea out into the separate small company, and it was called to market. And I thought, I’m gonna just reach out to them, because what do I have to lose me, maybe they’ll know how I can get a job at Apple and meet Steve. And, and, and so I cold called a guy that was quoted in an article. And I said, Hey, do you, you know, can I take you to lunch, I just moved here from the Bay Area, I’m really interested in what you’re doing. And it was a CD ROM disc, that was like one of three in the market at that point. And it was the focus was basically getting people to shop on this disk. And so Steve had this idea that inside of apple that if if you could get all of the graphics put on a disk and just tell consumers to insert it in their computer, then then, you know, bandwidth and all of those things, broadband was not out. I mean, all of we’re in dial up, you could barely stay in, you know, a chat room, right. And it was just, it was I thought it was just really interesting and really genius. And again, I wasn’t an engineer, I felt like it was just something that every day I could go in and and be intrigued if I could ever get a job there. So I also really, we talked about culture before. And I think that that’s where I saw my the Third Culture, very different where everybody had always worn a suit in my jobs in New York. And when I moved out and and ultimately after my coffee with this gentleman to market there. They were, it was such a different atmosphere that I saw on
Scott D Clary 19:19
such a startup startup, it was like, yeah, yeah. And it
Kara Goldin 19:23
was like jeans and T shirts. There were two people with PhDs, you know, engineers, product managers. All of a sudden I walked in the door, the only woman, first of all, but also they were they were excited to talk to me and kind of hear more about my experience in New York.
Scott D Clary 19:45
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Kara Goldin 21:29
but also excited to hear about my experience working for a company that they perceived as Apple like, which was CNN. And about, they wanted to know what Ted Turner was like. And they had all of that. And I’m sitting here Wait, you are for the God right Steve over there. And here. They were like, oh, Steve, oh, he’s fine. He’s like, super, you know, and, and so all of a sudden, we had this like marriage where we both wanted to know about each other’s experiences. And I hadn’t been doing sales at CNN was the last role that I had. And, you know, I asked him like, how do you guys make money? And on this, I mean, you’re going out to J Crew, and LL Bean and all these catalogers. But what are the economics of it? And at CNN, that’s what Ted cared about, right? He cared about making money and and just when I saw these, like five guys in a room in Silicon Valley, and like, how are you guys gonna stay in business? Like, I mean, this is, this is crazy, you know, and, and, again, I knew nothing about equity, or any of the stuff that I you know, later learned. But But more than anything, I think I learned that contributing, and as long as you can contribute to the project, that I was interesting, right? That I was that if I was willing to go out to these retailers, if I was willing to set up a business model, one of the guys said, we’d love to make money, we just don’t really know how yet. We’re just building the product. I mean, show us how to do how
Scott D Clary 23:08
hybrid passionate, hyper passionate.
Kara Goldin 23:10
So how can we monetize this project? I was like, Yeah, cuz you’re not going to be able to pay, like for very many salaries if you’re just giving this away all day long. So anyway, so that ended up one year into working at to market one of our investors was this little company called America Online. And everybody I remember calling my mom and saying, okay, like, whatever the startup she’s like, Well, why not? Time? And CNN? I mean, like, why, why did you guys move to San Francisco? And I’m like, Yeah, we just got acquired by this company, America Online. And I’ll never forget, she just kept saying, American, is it American online? And I was like, No, and they said, it’s like, they teach you how to get on the internet, it’ll be great. Like, there’s a new chat rooms, it’s like, it’s perfect. And they wanted me to run this thing called shopping this button. And they’ve done a little bit with with E commerce and shopping, but basically, they were watching what we were doing and thought like maybe we just acquire these guys who we’ve invested in and and, you know, kind of take the team and see if we can build out a much bigger marketplace. So what I laugh about still to this day, is that I didn’t even have a revenue target. Like I had, they were like, just, you know, just do your best like, everything’s gonna be fine. And and at some point, people started waking up a couple years later, they I mean, it was it was really the first time that I had seen a rocket ship go at you know, the, the pace that had had CNN it seemed it was it was a slow rocket ship. It was like there was the plane was flying and then it turned into a rocket ship and then it sort of, you know, level off a bit, but but for me, AOL was just like, every day, we were, you know, adding people every week 1000s of people. I mean, it was just, it was an insane, you know, thing to sort of witness. And at the end of seven years, I was running their ecommerce and shopping partnerships. At the end of seven years, it was almost a billion dollars in revenue that we were bringing into the company. And it was at that point, when I thought, you know, this company is based in Virginia, I knew it was based in Virginia, but I live in San Francisco, I had, I had two kids at this point, I was pregnant with my third and I, I said, You know what, I’m going to take some time. And it wasn’t, I didn’t hate anyone, I wasn’t, you know, having a bad time in tech, and nothing like that. I just really wanted to live in San Francisco, I didn’t want to be on an airplane all the time. And I had these young kids that I really wanted to see and experience. And so it was during that time that I was really focused on everything around my young kids, like, what kind of diapers do I use, you know, what kind of formula I had never thought about any of this. I mean, even when I was babysitting, when I was growing up, I, I laugh because it was like, somebody else buys the diapers, somebody, you know, use us, whatever, you don’t really think about nutrition, and, and all all of that. And it was, it was really during this time that I started to think about what you put in your system is representative of how healthy and, and active and all that kind of stuff you can be. And, and I really, really believed it. And I believed it for my family. But I didn’t practice it for myself. And so for, for me, I started at that moment really looking at, you know, on a scale of zero to 10. I’m sitting here telling my kids don’t have sugar, don’t do this, don’t do this. And then I’m like, Wait, do I practice that and I started, you know, I didn’t have a job. So this was like my new job. I’m like, I’m going to keep track of this whole thing. And I was always exercising and, you know, and keeping up with with that. But I more recently developed this terrible adult acne, which I never even had as a kid, a teenager. And I was also just had a really bad stomach. And I thought maybe I should really take a look at everything that I’m eating and start reading ingredients. And I also had gained a bunch of weight through all my pregnancies, I was excellent at gaining weight, I was terrible at losing the weight. And so it was at that moment when I thought, Okay, I’m going to keep track of all of these things. Maybe I’m going to go on one of these diets. Everybody’s talking about these different diets. I’ll see what happens there. And while I was in this process, that’s when I looked down at my favorite friend by diet coke that I had been drinking since I was 15. I never thought there was anything wrong with my diet coke. I drank anywhere from eight to 12 cans a day. I mean, I always had to have my stash. People now tell me that when they were in meetings with me if I didn’t have a Diet Coke, like I was different, right? I would definitely not be able to, you know, think and focus if I didn’t have it, which is ironic, of course, they never said that to me at the time. But I really was attached to my diet coke. And so when I looked at my all the ingredients that I had been putting in my body, I thought if this were food, I wouldn’t actually have it. So why am I giving it a pass for brewing for being a drink? And so I thought, I’m going to take two weeks and I’m going to put it to the side and I’m going to drink water. And I remember saying to my husband, I’m going to drink water and I’m not going to drink diet soda anymore. And he was like, how like how are you going to do that? I mean, yours cold turkey you’re just going to do and I’m like yep, it’s like gonna happen and, and it was really hard. I was super miserable for you know, first few days were the hardest and then I got used to it. I’m like, just make sure I’m not having it and I’m not cheating along the way. And what I realized was that water for me the reason I didn’t drink it was it was super boring. And I growing up in Arizona, I should have been drinking a lot more water but I didn’t do it and I swapped it out for with this diet soda. And so I started slicing fruit, threw it in the water to get me to enjoy water. And that’s when two and a half weeks later, I lost 24 pounds in two and a half weeks. My skin cleared up. My stomach was better, my energy was better. And I thought Oh my gosh, like, Why isn’t anyone talking about this? Like, why are so many people drinking these diet sodas? This was 17 years ago. And you know, and I would, people would see me they hadn’t seen me in a few weeks and see, I look like a different person when you lose that much weight in two weeks. I mean, you look like borderline sick, right? You’re your body’s trying to catch up with what has happened. And this detox almost right, yeah, like, it’s nificant. But I felt so much better. And so I would share with people that it really wasn’t the food that I was eating, it was this drink, that was spiking my, my insulin levels, I had always thought that insulin, by the way, was only the thing that people talked about if you had diabetes. And you know that that was like, you know, people are concerned about it. But it ends up when you put something sweet in your body, that it doesn’t just mean sugar, it means anything that’s sweet, that actually triggers your brain to produce this thing called insulin. And there’s some people that are better at processing it than others. And, and again, I knew a little bit about science, but science wasn’t my major, I certainly wasn’t a nutritionist, but I knew enough to sort of make me curious, make me interested and what I was stumbling upon. And I, I started to look at these, you know, multi billion dollar companies, Coca Cola, Pepsi, you know, that all the juice, all the soda that was out there. And I also looked at all of these diets that were out there, and there was just big money, and behind all of them, and and, you know, all these, all these diet sweeteners that were out there, were constantly changing, they were getting better, how were they getting better? So again, I didn’t have a job. So this became my job that I just became so passionate about it. And I remember thinking, like, why am I so passionate about it, because there’s all this new information to me, I’m learning so much. But also, I felt like, I was seeing something so clearly that so many other people that I knew, didn’t have an opportunity to see, which was if there were, if there was a change in the availability of these diet sweeteners, or if consumers actually knew what I knew, and and had gone through the experience that I had experience with the diet soda industry be so big, would this new disease called Type Two Diabetes actually be in it growing at the rate that it was growing? Would you know, these diets that were out? Would people with the consumer be buying into these diets, if they actually figured out how their body reacted to sweet as I had, and I thought I should take this water. Because it, it was pretty easy for me once I started slicing up fruit and throwing it in water to get water to drink
Scott D Clary 33:09
it and replace the diet sodas and whatnot.
Kara Goldin 33:12
Yeah. And so I thought, I’m gonna just, there’s this brand new store called Whole Foods, and I’m going to go up to Whole Foods. And if they don’t have that product, then I’m going to talk to the guy who’s stocking the shelves, and I’m going to say, hey, how do I get a product in here and see what happens. And I’ll never forget, like doing just that. And on my shopping trip, right? I’m all by myself, but I’m like, got my cart. And he’s like, I don’t know, I just work here. And I’m like, but like, there’s a lot of brands in here that aren’t in sort of, you know, regular grocery stores. And he said, Oh, yeah, there’s like a local program that we have that. He was like, here’s, here’s who you talk to, and about getting your product in here. And I was like, oh, and so you just talk to a person. And then you can get your product in here. And he was like, Yeah, you know, that’s how it is. And then a couple weeks later, I came back and he said, you just like, really educated me about you know, I’ve been drinking vitamin water for the last couple of years, my quinoa, these were all this weight. And then I just stopped and I realized, like what I was doing, and I never really thought about it. And I was like, I know me too. Like it’s just, it’s all this healthy perception that’s out there versus healthy reality. And it’s just not right. And he was like, I totally agree. And so weird conversations like that would come up where I felt like I was touching on something that nobody had really thought about. Yet. If I could actually get the product out there and get people to see what I was seeing by and how easy it was just by drinking something that solved the problem for them around the taste of water. Then I could change a lot of people’s health. And and that was my purpose, then it’s my purpose today. So when people say to me, you know, how did you decide to start a beverage company? For, you know, coming from tech like, what were you crazy? Like, why? Why would you do that and I was like, I had this massive purpose, sitting in front of me that I, I saw an opportunity to go and change, not only an industry, but multiple industries, the health industry, the, you know, tackling these diet sweeteners, in a really being a consumer advocate, to help people do what they didn’t really see. And I think I go back, I’ll say one, one more thing when I talked about, you know, Ted Turner, and I didn’t work directly for Steve Jobs, but indirectly, for people who had worked for him or indirectly, for Steve Case, thinking back on these visionary entrepreneurs. During a time when people thought it was crazy, why do we need another drink? You know, how is this different from Vitaminwater. And, you know, and all, what I didn’t realize, until a little bit in, like a month into launch was that I was not only launching a new company and a new product, but also a new category. In an industry, that was a multi billion dollar industry, that is a massive undertaking. And if somebody would have told me, before I launched, I would have said, uh, that, that’s for some other girl to do that, that’s like, not what I’m gonna do. But when I saw how much I could help, when I listened to the consumers, who were saying, how much they enjoyed drinking water, again, how much this product was helping them control type two diabetes, which was a tiny percentage of the population, which is now 40% of the population has type two diabetes or pre diabetes, it’s the, you know, number one scary thing to have when combating COVID. You know, that is most of the cases of people who are in hospitals today have some sort of complications, stemming off of type two, type two diabetes, or type one diabetes. But again, I saw this as much bigger than a beverage industry. And every time I hit those challenges, every time people would look at me as the visionary entrepreneur, I would think back at those other entrepreneurs, who I had witnessed, being called the same thing. And I thought, until, until it makes sense to people, you’re considered crazy, right? You’re considered, you know, people will have their doubts, but when they get it, the beauty is then they come back. And they say, we always knew you’re on to something, you know. And it’s, it’s what people do. So it’s a I think, I never really thought of myself as one day I’m going to be an entrepreneur. But I think being able to work for entrepreneurs being able to see, you know, people who were doing the impossible until it was possible, was so helpful and allowing me to do what I do today. So long, long journey story, but an important one.
Scott D Clary 38:37
I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today’s episode, HubSpot. Now, the new year might have you thinking ahead to what you want out of your career. So when you think about your success story, what do you actually picture? Is it retiring early with a beautiful view of the skyline? Is it leaving a legacy with your name on it? Or maybe it’s helping influence and change some of the world’s most pressing issues? Whatever it is writing your success story starts by working smart because when you work smart, your success story writes itself. A HubSpot CRM platform helps your marketing campaigns work harder and smarter. With intuitive visual workflows and bot builders, you can create scalable, automated campaigns across email, social media, web and chat so your customers hear your messages loud and clear. Are you tired of your content not adapting to mobile, making it difficult for your customers to absorb your message a HubSpot CRM platform optimizes your content for multiple devices so that you can reach your customers wherever they are, which is just smart. Learn more about how you can transform your customer experience with a HubSpot crm@hubspot.com is a very it’s very important story. I think. I I’m gonna I’m gonna ask a couple questions out of that. But the one thing that I noticed that really, really is such a such a great trait that you have is you mentioned a curiosity. but also just taking massive action. Like every single thing that you said you did in your life, it was a new job, it was figuring out how to get hands into Whole Foods. It’s just, you just, you’re curious, and you just do stuff, you just do a whole bunch of shit. Like, that’s it, and you’re, and eventually, like, not everything’s gonna work. But if you if you take enough action, if you do enough activities towards the thing that you want to do it Start things start to fall into place, things start to start to come together. Right. And that’s really that’s, I think that of course, you know, being successful, there’s a lot of different things that contribute to that. But I think that that’s probably one of the main things that I pulled out that you just do continuously, that probably got you a lot of the things that you are, you have right now just taking that action again, and again, and again, as opposed to just ruminating on it thinking on it. In Whole Foods, you know, like it used instead of like worrying about the process, you just went up to some guy who’s talking shells, and you’re like, hey, how do you do this, versus trying to, like cold email, uh, you know, maybe trying to figure out like, filling out forms or like, I don’t even know what the process would be if I even had to start but just like that, why not? Why not ask the guy sock in the shells? Right? Like, why not do it? I love it.
Kara Goldin 41:10
I think even writing a book, I think you start to think through a lot of these, you know, yeah, these things too. And, you know, people had asked me for years, just in interviews for hint, like, you know, how were you fearless? How were you? You know, so brave. And I think, early on, look, my parents were 40 Back when they had me, the last kid and that was old. I mean, that was like, nobody had parents that were as old as my parents. And and I think they always let they gave me a lot of rope. Right? They basically said you can do stuff, but you you know, you have to think about it, you have to explain it, you have to go and kickstart it in some way. Like I remember even signing up for gymnastics classes, I would figure out like I there was nobody who was going to sit there and say, Okay, well, here’s your choice, you have Monday or Wednesday, I be like, I need your checkbook. Like now, because I need this I need to get in this class now. And I was always used to advocating for myself that I could make it happen. But I didn’t have the helicopter. You know, parents owe me saying to me, here it is. Instead, I just, I would always look at life. As you know, I can probably figure it out. It wasn’t that my parents weren’t there, that if I needed help figuring stuff out. But I also got a lot of pride and actually going and figuring stuff out when other people waited. And I think that, you know, it’s something that I think about today when when things just seem a little, you know, tough or hard and in some way. I my my next step, I guess is to go and talk to people go and figure it out. Like how do I make it happen? I am constantly I do not allow the minute I start watching that wall. And it still happens to this day in various, you know situations. But when I see the wall starting to build, and it starts to get higher, and it starts to get scarier. I stop it. I try and figure out how do I you know, knock it down? How do I did mystify it in some way?
Scott D Clary 43:33
Yeah, how I want to ask you I want to this is a good, this is a good spot to just ask about undaunted about that word that you chose. Because you describe all these other emotions you describe fear, you just like a little bit of imposter syndrome mixed in there. Confidence, tenacity, persevere, like all these things that have allowed you to be in anybody to be successful, really. But what is what is undaunted mean to you? Why did you choose that word for your book versus something like fear that maybe fearless is already a book? I don’t know yet to choose something? Oh, yeah, well, I’m D’Antoni.
Kara Goldin 44:07
I mean, even when I turned in my manuscript, I didn’t have a word for I didn’t have a title for the book. I mean, I had been, you know, tossing around fearless, relentless. I mean, think, words that people had called me over the years and had called me who, or who had sort of shared what I do that is different than what they can’t do. And I would always have these, you know, one or two liners that I would say to people, you know, whenever I’d hear people say, Oh, I could never do that. I think back on things like, yeah, I’ve thought about that, too. Like, you know, getting over a fear of heights. You know, I’ll go and hike the Grand Canyon and people are like, Whoa, you’re you’re afraid of heights. Like why would you choose to do that because I don’t want to live in fear. I don’t want to not understand finance. So I go and take classes. I’m constantly looking for those things that I fear. And I think, over time what those things do, when when you take on situations, when you take on things that scare you, and you go achieve those things, they don’t necessarily always turn out the way that you thought. But what they do do is allow you to know that it wasn’t as bad and it wasn’t as scary as you thought it was. Right? And so I think over time, people, people would say to me, but but how do you do that? And, and that’s when I really thought about, you have to be undaunted, right, you have to sort of like purposely push yourself into that position, because no one else is going to push you to do it. Right. You don’t push somebody who is afraid of heights to go and hike the Grand Canyon, it has to start with you. And it has, and you have to do it because it’s something that you, you know, want to get over. Right? And I think it’s the same thing about people are like, how did you decide to be an entrepreneur? Like, I think for me, I saw it as I’d seen other people do it, which I think was helpful. But I also, it just, it didn’t seem as scary to me because I had watched these other people, but I thought, every single day, I’m waking up and thinking about doing this, and I’m making progress, you know, I go to Whole Foods, I barely start talking to the guy stocking the shelves. And then he hooks me up with this guy that, you know, is talking to me about their local program, and I and then I, it was fairly easy to connect with that person. And then I get like the next steps. And then every day, I start on the steps. And I find that like two weeks before, I didn’t know what I was doing. And then I just got in, and I started moving it forward. So again, if you don’t choose to live unwanted, you’re not going to hike the Grand Canyon, you’re not going to start a company. I have a lot of entrepreneurs, especially female entrepreneurs who say to me, like I can’t raise money. And I’m like, it starts with you. Right? I’m a female entrepreneur, I’ve raised a ton of money hasn’t been easy. Do I meet with twice as many people that a guy meets? Well, I don’t know. Because I’ve never been a guy. I don’t I know
Scott D Clary 47:24
you’re saying but you’re saying you know what, if you do, you just do it, you’re doing it anyway. It may not be it may not be the may not be perfect, it may not be the best, but you’re doing it, you’re getting it done your next step, you know, one foot in front of the other,
Kara Goldin 47:35
don’t believe that you can actually achieve anything, then then it doesn’t get done. Right? It starts with you and people can read it. They can if you don’t believe if you walk in to go raise money and you believe like, oh, you know, experts, very low percentage of women, you know, are able to raise money. And whatever it is, if you have that in your head, it’s never going to happen. I can guarantee you it will not happen. My daughter is in is in college now. She’ll kill me for talking about this. But she’s she’s majoring in storytelling. She’s at Brown. She’s an incredible writer. And she’s tried out for a few things and hasn’t gotten them. And you know, she’s she’s chosen to live undaunted, picked a profession of storytelling and theater and, and wants to do this, it’s a choice. And it’s, it’s hard, because rejection is really hard. But I think that what I’m sharing with her, too is you have a choice, you can actually it’s a numbers game, you got to just keep going. Or you can just decide, I’m not going to do it anymore. I’m not going to try out for any more plays. I’m not going to submit my manuscripts to festivals anymore to try and you know, get money. And I she was really bummed out at me, by the way, what I she was talking to me about this last night. I said, You know what, you’ll get exactly what you want, you’ll get the play that we’re electing you’ll you’ll get your script picked up. But then you know what will happen? And she said what? And I said you’ll be happy for a week, and then somebody will somebody will review it and they’ll say it was terrible, right? And I said and and this is the world, right? And if you let these things take you instead of appreciating the journey that that you’re on and continuing to figure out how do I keep going, how do I keep moving forward, then you won’t live the life that you’ll be totally happy with. Instead, go figure it out. Go figure out what you want to do try it and if Nothing else. I always said to people, when people, people would say to me when I was launching a beverage company, you don’t stay out of tech for very long, because you’ll never get back in, you’ll never you’ll be you know, people think you’re, you know, not focused. You don’t have experience, whatever I’m like, 10 minutes ago, you were telling me, I’m awesome. And you were recruiting me for a job, like all of a sudden, you’ve decided, you know, based on me telling you that I’m going to go and start a company, all the skills, all the things that I learned along the way, if it doesn’t work out, and they’re like, Well, I don’t know. I mean, they’ll stay off for more than six months. I’m like, why six months? I don’t know. Like, I’m like, have you? Are there statistics about six months? Maybe it’s a year, I’m like, You have no idea what you’re talking about, at the at the end of the day. And anyway, I just think like, the, the challenges of of, you know, building a startup, some of these stories that I’m sharing, now are things that I really wanted to write out and in my book, too, because I think no matter what you think about entrepreneurism, it’s way harder than you ever are setting out to, to think about, yeah, and you know, there’s, there’s plenty of unicorns out there. But there’s way more way more failures. And the journey, even if you’re a failure, it, it could mean that you had a product that didn’t do well, during the pandemic, you could have supply chain issues that, you know, you relied too much on Asia, which, whose factories shut down for whatever it is, could sink your company. But I think that that’s another thing that I talked about, too. It’s just it’s not, it’s not black and white. It’s not that you’ve got the unicorns or you’ve got the failures, it’s the people that get back up again, are really the ones that you have to watch.
Scott D Clary 52:03
I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today’s episode, Shopify, and don’t you love that sound as the sound of another sale on Shopify be all in one commerce platform to start, run and grow your business use Shopify gives entrepreneurs the resources once reserved for big businesses, so upstarts startups, and established businesses alike can sell everywhere synchronize online and offline sales activity, and effortlessly Stay informed you can not only sell your product, but you can reach customers online and across social media networks. With an ever growing suite of channel integrations and apps including Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok Pinterest and more. You can gain insights as you grow and detailed reporting of conversion rates, profit margins, and beyond whatever you need to track Shopify can track for you. And remember Shopify was built to liberate commerce for entrepreneurs and big businesses alike. Shopify is tirelessly reinventing tools of growth and scale for over 1.7 million businesses of 1.7 million businesses trust Shopify. To help them organize their online and synchronize with their offline sales. You should be able to use it for your business as well connect with your customers drive sales, manage your day to day, accept all major payment methods and integrate with any third party app you could possibly think of. If you want to try out Shopify right now go to shopify.com/success story that’s all lowercase for a free 14 day trial and get full access to Shopify, his entire suite of features grow your business with Shopify today, go to shopify.com/success story right now. Remember, success story is all lowercase. That’s shopify.com/success story. Can I ask you one more? One more startup? One more startup question and then I’ll and then I’ll do a couple. We can close with some like rapid fire is really good. And honestly, I feel like you have so many stories that we could probably go for like a while. I realized I did like a part two sometime in the future. When you do. I do one for your podcast doing for your next book, whatever. I want to know when you have a passion like what you have. So as opposed to a founder that’s coming from they just did an exit and they are very technical founder and they’ll analyze a market you know, need to find a total addressable market to find product market fit will take the market. That’s not the founder that I’m trying to help. I’m trying to help the founder that has a passion like you had with water with flavored water. What in the world do you do to figure out how to take that to market when you have no experience in that category or that industry? That to me blows my mind how you were able to do that? Because you didn’t come from five other beverage companies. You came from tech and you just had a passion and you did it. So what’s what would be the I don’t know pick pick 123 most important things. I don’t know what it would take So what did you do?
Kara Goldin 55:01
I think, be ready to be humbled. By all you don’t know. And with that, being able to ask questions, I think my ability to ask questions is, I think people struggle with wanting, especially as you get older, and the more experience you have, wanting to look smart, right? And versus actually being inquisitive. And I think that for me, I just always felt like, get being inquisitive was where you were going to learn the most. So here I had in the tech industry, I was getting recruited by Google and Yahoo, and all the rest of them who were out at the time, you know, looking for somebody to go do e commerce, but I felt like I was teaching a lot and mentoring a lot, and not learning. So this obsession, this passion that I had around drinks, I, I, you know, saw this like, huge, huge mountain in front of me that I had to learn about, but I was also so energized, how I had stumbled upon, you know, this world that I knew nothing about when I need so much about the tech industry, and new so my whole network was in the tech industry. The other thing was, was that I was obsessed with the fact that, you know, I knew what Coke was, and Procter and Gamble and some of the others, but I didn’t really know people in that industry at all. So for me, the first step was, how do I actually know what the lay of the land is? I go to this new store called Whole Foods, I’m already like, they’re shopping. And you know, why not? I’ll just start talking to people and, and the, the combination of being okay with not being, you know, the most knowledgeable in the room, coupled with the ability to go and ask a lot of questions when you are willing to be vulnerable show that, you know, you’re not trying to people would ask me like the guy stocking the shelves, you’d say, so you’re interested in launching a beverage company? Did you used to work at Coke? No. What’d you do? Oh, I was in tech. He’s like, okay, she’s in tech. He didn’t even ask me like, What was your title, what you do, and tech, he just knew I was some like, lady, you came to Whole Foods and went shopping. And so I he discounted me before I even started, which was great, because I thought the bar is so low. Nobody thinks that I’m going to be able to do this. So nobody’s even watching all my friends in tech. They didn’t know anything about the beverage industry. They sort of, you know, quietly ridiculed me and said, I don’t know, like, she’s either staying home with her kids, or she’s like, I don’t know, stirring some beverage thing. I don’t know, it tastes pretty good. But I Who knows, I have no idea. She’s funny. And, you know, whatever. And, and, but that was. So I think that that that’s probably the most important thing is being able to be able to ask questions and humble yourself and and surround yourself with people that are going to teach you versus you feeling like you’ve got to teach everyone else.
Scott D Clary 58:14
Like, that’s good advice. That’s really good advice. So you just you just, you just humbled and that’s actually something that people have a lot of trouble with, especially if they’re coming from any sort of experience in another industry. Yeah, humbling themselves and realizing they don’t know.
Kara Goldin 58:30
And here’s the thing, too. I mean, I was pretty tapped into, you know, the whole tech world speaking at a lot of these conferences, and, and now I’m going into the beverage world. I’m trying to figure out, you know, what are the conferences where I can start to talk to people and network and it was so fun. Like, I just bought a ticket. I wasn’t speaking. I didn’t know Jack, right. So I’m, I’m like, sitting there going, I’m, I’m just like, price of admission. Okay, I’m gonna fly out there and go check it out. But again, like, I would just meet people that say, Oh, what did you do before? Oh, I was in tech. I, they wouldn’t even I wouldn’t say I was at AOL. I built ECommerce. Like they, they just immediately were like, Oh, you didn’t work at Coke or Pepsi? Okay. She’s kind of a waste of time. And so I’m not even I mean, she seems nice. Maybe I’ll have a beer with her. But that’s it. Why should I spend any time with her? Because, you know, she’s not gonna make it. It’s not it’s not so though. But so again, like, I just kept talking to people and kept weaving a lot of those conversations together. And more than anything, like I loved it, that no one knew who I was because I thought it’s awesome. Like, people would know who I was at the other ones and I loved being, you know, this like anonymous person who was just trying to do something that, you know, is was was different. And, frankly, I mean, people have said to me, do you spend a lot of time like at the beverage conferences and food conferences? No, I I mean, I think for me, I’m constantly looking at places, not only where my customers are. So, you know, we’ve grown to be the number one beverage in Silicon Valley when offices were open, and Google and Facebook and all the rest of them. But I wanted to be where my customers were. Because I felt like that’s where I can learn not just about how to produce a product, but how do I continue to service them? And so I’ve always thought about, if I can figure out, for example, if people are drinking hint, are they wearing Warby Parker? Glasses? Are they what, you know, you, you might find me at an apparel show, where I’m sitting there listening to somebody talk about direct to consumer, or building brand or whatever. And then again, like they’re like, What do you do? I’m like, Oh, I’m the CEO of hint, you know? And they’re like, Oh, the water? What are you doing here? No, nothing, I’m just learning, right? You go find these environments that actually teach you something that you don’t know. And you become wiser you become smarter, you become you know, more confident, you get a bigger network, all of those things that ultimately I think has helped significantly.
Scott D Clary 1:01:22
And last question on on this as it’s more just on the actual the the book that you put out, if somebody is going to pick up this book, who would you want to read that book, what was like the ideal reader, and then what you want them to learn from it.
Kara Goldin 1:01:33
It’s so it’s so interesting, I knew that this would be a great book for people who were starting a food and beverage company I’ve had, I’ve mentored many food and beverage entrepreneurs and other entrepreneurs over the years and starting their companies. And more than anything, I felt like if I could actually take what I had written some of my notes and put it into a book, I could help a lot of those people. What happens since the book came out is we’ve now had entire, you know, classes, schools, UPenn, Arizona State University, Yale, Harvard, Berkeley, lots of people have actually bought the book for various classes. So they’re studying it, which is super awesome. So even getting to the entrepreneurs before they’re even thinking about being on two printers, but the group that I’m most fascinated with is the people who were kind of like me, who were sitting in the C suite. Inside of companies, I’ve had a number of people who had never thought about being an entrepreneur, but they have run a public company for many years, they’ve, you know, they, they don’t feel like they’ve really taken any risk. And yet, if they’ve got one more gig and um, you know, then maybe they should actually be following their passion going and doing something to better society in some way. And so if, if my book can actually help people get out of the gate, and just go try and not allow the walls around them really kind of focusing on you know, themselves and sort of what they fear and why they’re not doing it, then I’ve done my job much more than I ever thought it would. So I’m very, very excited to hear from so many people that this book has kind of helped them rethink what was important to them.
Scott D Clary 1:03:31
I love that that’s that’s a good that’s that’s a good mission to have. I think that’s important. It’s very important. If people want to connect with you if people want to obviously the book I’m assuming anywhere you can buy books Amazon or any other place you’re gonna look for undaunted you’ll find it podcast or your socials your website can you drop those so people can check you
Kara Goldin 1:03:55
all Kara golden with an eye? And yeah, I’d love to hear from you as well. And my podcast is called the Kara golden show. And it’s all about interviewing other founders and CEOs and their journeys more than anything i i like to pick up on the journeys of people that have had challenges admit the challenges failures along the way. And people that have gotten back up and gone and done what others won’t do where they thought was impossible. So it’s a it’s really fun and educational for me and so many times I do this right 100% And and I learn every single time I’m talking to to the guests too. So again, always be learning always be challenging yourself, always be raising the bar a little bit higher. And also always be drinking hint. So I have to still still Run and always will be the founder, but is still run the amazing. Yeah,
Scott D Clary 1:05:05
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Kara Goldin 1:07:23
Biggest challenge was, was it’s hard to do that in a rapid fire. But really look, I know, I know. I know. Yeah. That’s okay. But really, you know, looking trusting myself that I could go figure it out. I think that that for me, 17 years ago, I had assumed that I had really, you know, been in tech and was kind of labeled as tech, and therefore I had to stay in tech. And so I, you know, went out and tried to find lots of different experience people who knew a lot more than I did. And what I realized is that when you’re starting something, especially a new category, that those experience, people typically haven’t done your stage. Right, they haven’t, they haven’t rolled up their sleeves and pulled cases of hint out of the backroom at Target or, you know, run the run in the bottles at a plant and tried to figure out when the pH levels were, you know, too high, like what was going on, like be being able to kind of solve problems, I think is is much more key than then actually having experience. So that was probably the biggest mistakes in the early days of hint.
Scott D Clary 1:08:34
I love that. If you had to pick one person, obviously, there’s been many people that have been influential in your life, who is that person? And what did they teach you?
Kara Goldin 1:08:44
I probably say my husband, and it sounds so corny in many ways, but, you know, my kids laugh because we met at a bar in New York and it can happen. And 26 years later, we’ve been married and and accompanies our Chief Operating Officer. So we’ve done you know, there’s definitely when people meet him we’re very different. There’s definitely Ying and Yang and and I think more than anything he appreciates me for me. Right and and feels like if you know that I’m smart in my own way. He’s smart in his own way and together. We’re undaunted. So I think I’m you know, thankful for that.
Scott D Clary 1:09:32
A book or podcast or audible or some source other than your own that you’d recommend people go check out.
Kara Goldin 1:09:39
So many I’ve so many up here on my wall.
Scott D Clary 1:09:47
Pick one you read recently or one it just stuck with you something that you’d recommend people go. Yeah,
Kara Goldin 1:09:53
well, one, actually I just interviewed him for my podcast, this and I reread this book and I actually I hope Every reading books because I think I oftentimes, like I put it down for a couple of years and then go back. But sky, Scott Harrison who started Charity Water, and about the same time, frankly, that hint started, and the book is called thirst. And it’s a really interesting book. And in some ways, you know, similar to hint, in that he came from a totally different career, he was opened over 40 nightclubs in New York and was partying like a rock star and thought that, you know, just being able to sit next to Jay Z, he was like, you know, that was the key to the kingdom. And what he realized is that actually helping people and changing people lives for the better in some way was something that, that he needed. And so it’s a, you know, pretty powerful, I think he’s in 29 countries, now he’s providing clean water, and to over 70 million people. So it’s a, again, something where it wasn’t obvious to people that he was going to be able to do it and had a lot of, you know, challenges along the way. But that’s a great book, and it’s a great story of following your passion, and doing good. And it’s, he’s a not for profit company. But I, I think it’s, it’s also something that, you know, people I think should be aware of to that you can do good for profit. It doesn’t have to be a nonprofit. So anyway, there’s that it was a good podcast, it’ll be out in a couple of weeks, but
Scott D Clary 1:11:43
I love his so I know him. I don’t know him what personally sorry, I but I know his story. It’s actually really interesting. Because you came from the nightlife scene, and then just like total pivot,
Kara Goldin 1:11:53
yeah. In many ways, I think he thinks that he sort of mentally bottomed out, right, like he, you know, achieved what he wanted. And then all of a sudden, he’s like, is this it? You know, and I think it’s a, it’s a good story, especially for people who might be feeling like, you know, I’m working at the best company and making a great salary, and I’m just not feeling it. Right, then then I think you, you have to live undaunted, you have to go out and change and, you know, change your scenery and do what you’ve got to do until you figure it out.
Scott D Clary 1:12:28
Great. I agree. If you could tell your 20 year old self one thing, what would it be?
Kara Goldin 1:12:36
continue asking questions along the way. I mean, I was always asking questions, as I mentioned, and I think that, you know, it wasn’t always an asset. I mean, I wasn’t a total like pain in the ass, but I was. I think sometimes people, especially when you’re when you’re in classes, and you’re constantly asking people questions, my hand was always the one to go up, not because I, you know, felt like I, I no one else was asking questions, or I wanted to get attention. I really was curious. And so continue asking questions along the way. And, and don’t be afraid what other people think.
Scott D Clary 1:13:15
I love that. And then last last question, what does success mean to
Kara Goldin 1:13:18
you? I think, being fulfilled and I think that that can come in a lot of different ways. And, you know, just going off of Scott’s story to at Charity Water, it’s not about money. It’s about it’s about doing what you want to do every single day. It’s about having people around you that love you for who you are and who you love as well. I think it’s, it’s, it’s a, that to me is is are really the key things to success.
