Episode 006
Kara Goldin
Kara Goldin didn’t set out to build a beverage empire; she just wanted a drink that didn’t have diet sweeteners. Today, Hint Water is a household name. Join Alice Tang as she dives deep into Kara’s journey from a San Francisco kitchen to the shelves of Whole Foods and beyond.
This conversation is a must-watch for any woman who feels stuck in her current career or is afraid to take the leap into the unknown. Kara proves that with enough curiosity, you can build the plane while you’re flying it.
Highlights include:
-The First Million: How it felt and why Kara immediately looked toward the next five.
-Breaking the Bias: Navigating the challenges of being a female CEO and a mother of four.
-The “Why Not” Philosophy: Turning rejection into an invitation to innovate.
"I've never really focused on climbing the ladder or making money. I always focus on continous learning & enjoying what I'm doing."
[00:00:00] Welcome to women’s million dollar conversations with Alice Tang, where we share stories from successful business women who have saved, earn or sold over a million dollars and discuss how they build their success and insights to help you achieve your goals. Now let’s join the conversation.
[00:00:20] Alice Tang: Hello everyone. I’m Alice Tang. Welcome to women’s million dollar conversations. When I Googled a while back, I found less than 10% of our population, are millionaires in the United States. A million dollar might not be a lot of money to some of us. However, for many we have not seen it yet.
How can more of us or more women believe that they can get there? The goal of this project is to change the mindset by having conversation with role models that we are interviewing. For example, Kara Goldin, today whom, we can relate to.
Our goal is to see more women crossing that million dollar mark. [00:01:00] Today we are very happy to have Kara Goldin, CEO and founder of Hint Water with us. Welcome Kara.
[00:01:07] Kara Goldin: Thank you. Very excited to be here.
[00:01:10] Alice Tang: Kara, would you tell us a little bit about your company?
[00:01:14] Kara Goldin: Sure. Well, 17 years ago I was a tech executive. I had not been in the beverage industry before, and that is when I decided that I wanted to do something a little bit different. And I was uh, taking a break after I left my tech role at America online. And I was staying home with my children for a couple of years.
I had three young children under the age of four. When I think back on it, for me, it was the idea for Hint really came about when I was reading the ingredients that I was happening upon when I was trying to feed my children and I wanted to [00:02:00] feed them the best possible things.
And that included eliminating sugar from their diet. And one day I felt like I was a bit of a hypocrite because I was reading ingredients for their products, but not for my own. And I looked at my diet soda and saw that diet Coke in particular, that it had lots of ingredients in it that I didn’t understand.
And I had to go in and do a Google search in order to understand a lot of these ingredients. And so I thought. Maybe I should eliminate it from my diet just like what I’m doing for my children. Little did I know that just by eliminating the diet soda from my diet, that I would clear up a lot of health issues that I was trying to address over the last couple of years, including I had adult acne that I had assumed was something that I was putting on my skin.
And that’s why I had this cystic acne. I had also [00:03:00] gained a lot of weight with childbirth with having a few kids and had just assumed that was the way it was. And when I switched from diet soda to plain water, what I realized was that water was boring for me. And that was why I was drinking diet soda.
So much of it because I figured there’s water in there somewhere. But, after two and a half weeks of just making this shift and thinking about how do I get myself to enjoy water? Because this is really a drag. I started slicing up fruit and throwing it in the water and I was not gonna go back to diet Coke because I cleared up my acne after two and a half weeks.
And I also lost in those first two and a half weeks, 24 pounds that I had, assumed was just part of my life. And so I decided that, this wasn’t regular sugar that I was drinking. This was diet [00:04:00] sweeteners, and I had assumed that diet was better for me. And so I wasn’t gonna go back to drinking diet drinks anymore.
And so I went to my local store looking for the product that I had made in my kitchen which was an unsweetened flavored water, and I couldn’t find the product. So I thought I’m not working right now. And I’m bored. So why don’t I just create this product? What’s the worst that can happen.
And I was curious about why none of the drinks that I had created in my kitchen, nothing like it was in the local markets where I live in San Francisco. I looked on the east coast assuming maybe I’m just not looking in the right stores or on the right coast. So I looked for it there couldn’t find it.
So I thought, why don’t I just go and develop the company? Actually I don’t even think I called it a company at the time. I said, why don’t I just go [00:05:00] develop the product? And start there and then see what happens. And I focused on a little store called whole foods that had just come into San Francisco and I just started bothering the person stocking the shelves saying how do I get my product on the shelf here? And had no idea what I was doing, but more than anything, I was confident in my abilities to get stuff done in tech. But again, I had never done anything in the beverage industry, in the consumer products industry.
So I thought I’ll give it a try and if it doesn’t work, then I can tell everybody. When I go back to tech, what I was doing for the last couple of years besides watching kids. And so that was the early days and a little bit of history around Hint.
[00:05:49] Alice Tang: That painted a beautiful picture for an accidental entrepreneur.
[00:05:52] Kara Goldin: Exactly.
[00:05:53] Alice Tang: That describing your book. So the first question for Kara is what is the value of your of money for you?
[00:05:59] Kara Goldin: [00:06:00] I think to some extent you and I discussed this a bit. For me money just means the ability to be able to do things that you enjoy doing.
So I feel very fortunate that when I decided to. Start my own company and also do something that was different where I knew that I didn’t have the experience, but I had the curiosity to be able to launch a product. That being able to do that and take that risk to some extent was because I had made some money prior.
So I’ve always thought of money for me as. Being able to take those chances and being able to take those risks and continue learning in some way. So one of the things that I think is really an overlooked area for people is that, I think that so much focus is on, especially for women, but I think it’s true for men too, is climbing the ladder.
And so I’ve never really [00:07:00] focused on climbing the ladder. I would say that I haven’t really focused on making money. The two things that I have focused on is continuing to learn and enjoying what I’m doing. And I think that if you’re not curious that if you don’t keep yourself curious, which means that in my mind, like learning new things all the time, along, along the way, then you start to get bored.
You start to get depressed about the career that you’re in. And I see this all the time in people. And so actually for me, switching industries. Moving into an industry that I was curious about that I didn’t have any ideas, what I was gonna be encountering. And I was learning along the way that for me, allowed me to, really be able to see what I could do next and get excited about what I was doing next.
And again, The freedom to be able to do that really came from, being able [00:08:00] to make money along the way. But I think that there are different ways to make money. But I think if you enjoy how you’re making money along the way, and maybe to some extent gamifying that in some way to say let me see how much further I can get in the project. See how many more bricks I can build along the wall. And see, more than anything, what can come next?
[00:08:24] Alice Tang: I love what you say about, how far I could go, how many more blocks I can build and how can we make the world better? And imagine that you never take the curiosity about your water, right from the soda to the water, to adding the slice put in it, Hint might not be here today, 17 years later. So thank you for doing that is a great demonstration of curiosity.
[00:08:49] Kara Goldin: Thank you.
[00:08:49] Alice Tang: So I’d like to take you back to when you first hit your million dollar revenue. And I know building the product, we hope that the customer will form a [00:09:00] line as we are building so when we open the door, oh there is so many others waiting for my product. And obviously there are a little lag, we need to share our product and people like it. So when you hit your first million dollar of revenue, how does it make you feel?
[00:09:16] Kara Goldin: You know, it’s interesting. I think when you sell your first product, the first one is really exciting.
Then you hit a hundred, then you hit a thousand, then you start to think, okay, how much money am I making along the way too? It’s just, again, you’re continuing to raise your own bar along the way. So I’m not sure if a million was actually where I, knowing me at that point, I was thinking about, okay, now how do we get to 5 million? How do we get to 10 million?
And so being able to think about what are the next steps I think is something that every great business owner, every great entrepreneur thinks about. But I think it’s also [00:10:00] thinking about the strategy of how do move along. So probably I would say that my my biggest fault, if that’s a, if that’s a fair statement, is that I’m constantly celebrating the small wins along the way, or maybe the big win, but then I’m constantly looking at, okay, great. We did this. We didn’t think that we were gonna be able to get to a million dollars, but let me see how we get to 5 million.
So I’m constantly thinking about how do I keep going. I was always the kid growing up. I was a gymnast. I was an athlete. And so I was ultra focused on being able to, do something on the vault.
And then constantly I was thinking about, okay, How do I do the next thing? And, people would say, you just learned that weren’t you satisfied? No, not really. I learned that now I need to keep going. And so I think that it’s constantly being able to be your own advocate. Right?
Be your own, what else can [00:11:00] I be doing? Where else can I be learning? Where else can I be challenging myself along the way? And again, I also think that it’s important to celebrate the small wins along the way. But not for very long.
[00:11:13] Alice Tang: Very good. Very good. You made me recall, my dad is also an entrepreneur and one of his customer before he sold the business was Disneyland.
[00:11:21] Kara Goldin: Oh wow.
[00:11:23] Alice Tang: He speak very broken english. He started learning in his thirties. So he used one finger to type his invoice back. That is typewriter, no computer. So one of the things he shared, which is really aligned with what you just said, he said in business, If you are not growing you’re shrinking, there is no maintaining. So when you’re in the game, like you said, just now. One, how do I get to five? Five, how do I get to 10? But you say I’m staying at one. I maintain. There’s nothing maintaining. It’s so hard work. Why don’t you grow?
[00:11:58] Kara Goldin: Yeah. And I think that’s the [00:12:00] case. When you start, I remember even getting our first bottle on the shelf at whole foods.
It wasn’t that it wasn’t exciting. But then I started to look at. We have one bottle on the shelf and people like Coca-Cola have a thousand bottles on the shelf and you know that, however, I looked at it that day, but then I would start to figure out, okay, how do I get there? For me, being able to find my goals and figure out what they’ve done and how they’re doing things and figure out how that equates to to my business. And how do I get to that point?
And sometimes it means looking at your data and looking at their data and showing it to the buyer in our case. We do higher sales per square foot in some cases than some of our competitors. So why aren’t we getting the opportunities that they’re getting. And sometimes they’ll say [00:13:00] because you aren’t right, but other times, being able to really show the data and show what makes sense and tell the story. That’s what I’ve found has really been helpful.
So just taking no for an answer as my dad uh, said to me many times growing up, is not fair to you. Instead, what you need to do, is if you don’t think something’s fair, then rather than screaming that something isn’t fair, tell me what your argument is.
Tell me why you think that you deserve to go somewhere, stand a shot, whatever that is, get more space on the shelf. And I think that you know, giving people the benefit of the doubt, if they’re the gatekeepers to allowing you to do something has always been a good thing, in my case. And being able to share with people exactly why they should do something has has been really useful.
[00:13:55] Alice Tang: That’s wonderful advice. Now we are turning to this year’s international [00:14:00] women’s day theme, is break the bias. So what is the biggest bias that you have faced in your journey to success? And of course, you said your journey to success is work in progress. I remember in your book.
[00:14:13] Kara Goldin: Yeah. I think that people have underestimated me and I think that it’s a along the way. I remember I was the last of five kids and I always wanted to be able to go out and get a job before I was 16, or I wanted to be able to, run before I could walk.
I wanted to be able to read before I was supposed to be able to read. I mean, I was constantly pushing and pushing. And so I think the most frustrating thing I remember when we were launching Hint and I had just had my son, Justin, so I have four children and I had four children under six, and everyone was telling me that you can’t, [00:15:00] start a business. This is not the right time to start a business while you have four children.
And I said, why not? I was fortunate enough to be able to have help. And maybe more than anything else, I wasn’t gonna be working full time, but what was the rush?
It wasn’t that I couldn’t do it. More than anything I thought maybe it’ll take me a little bit longer. Maybe I need to not be so hard on myself to be able to accomplish everything overnight. And be able to slow down because I wanted to be a part of my family’s life, but I also wanted to start a business.
And so I think that was something. And I still believe this to this day. Sometimes people are not in the same journey that you’re in. So maybe you’re talking to people when you’re starting your company and they don’t have any kids. They just assume, because people have said, oh, you can’t have young children and start a company or you can’t be a [00:16:00] female CEO. You can’t raise money when you’re a female CEO.
I’ve never accepted it. In fact, when I hear somebody say that you can’t do something, that to me has been an invitation to say, why not?
[00:16:16] Alice Tang: Let me, Let me prove you wrong.
[00:16:20] Kara Goldin: I don’t even know if I would, I don’t typically go as far as even to say, let me prove you wrong, but I ask questions.
[00:16:28] Alice Tang: Why not?
[00:16:29] Kara Goldin: Why not? And a lot of times people would say well, you can’t. And as my parents used to say, that’s not really an answer. Right? I mean, Why do you think that? And then people catch themselves in their own thinking.
I remember when we were starting Hint and I wanted to create a product that didn’t have preservatives in it. And so we went to plants across, you know, the U.S. to try and [00:17:00] use real fruit, in water, no sweeteners and no preservatives. And when I went to bottlers and said, here’s the specs for the product that I want. They said, we won’t touch this product because we always create products with preservatives. And I said, why? And I was amazed that people did not know the answer.
They’re in an industry. They’re creating products every single day. And they were adding things to drinks that were not necessarily necessary. And so when I asked them why most of them said you just can’t. And again, I’d say why not same situation.
And when you keep asking those questions, eventually I believe you find out the answer. But I kept asking and I couldn’t find out the answer because people had accepted it, as that’s just the way things are. And again, when you live, when you say that question to me or that statement to me [00:18:00] just because, that to me is not an answer.
And so we actually created the first product that was using real fruit that didn’t have a preservatives in it just by changing the way that we thought about actually bottling the product. And so to this day we don’t use preservatives. We use pasteurization, so we’re not adding ingredients to it, but so sometimes you have to look a little bit harder to change the process, which is a whole other podcast, probably, but it’s, but I think it’s an important piece that don’t accept.
What other people think as impossible or you shouldn’t. Instead look for yourself and try and figure out what the answer is.
[00:18:47] Alice Tang: What I’ve gotten out, is question, the status quo. Show me the data. Show me the proof, rather than just saying.
[00:18:53] Kara Goldin: Totally.
[00:18:54] Alice Tang: We have done it this way for a million years, or this is exactly what I’ve done [00:19:00] in the last 40 years, or your dad has done it. So why not you?
[00:19:04] Kara Goldin: Absolutely. Absolutely.
[00:19:06] Alice Tang: Great. Great. How do you process big decision when the stacks are high? Do you have a process?
[00:19:16] Kara Goldin: How do I process big decisions? I think it more than anything allowing, a problem or a decision to get so big that you get paralyzed, right? You don’t wanna move forward. Is very dangerous.
And so I constantly try to break down how exactly I can move forward. And what are those steps that I can figure out how to move forward? So maybe you want to. Start a business or you want to get your business to a million dollars. You have to understand who your customer is. You have to go out and figure out what are the 10 steps in [00:20:00] order to figure out who my customer is.
Do I need to watch customers a little bit more? Do I need to go into a store and figure out who these customers are and what they’re thinking about? Whatever it is, I think that if you focus too much on the end, sometimes you’ll never get past the beginning. And that is something that I think about a lot and really is a block for many people and something I talk about in, Undaunted, as well, that it’s like, if you don’t break things down, you’ll never be able to reach your goals because you have to be able to start somewhere and in order to start somewhere, you cannot get so caught up in what your overall goal is.
That doesn’t mean that you don’t have a goal or a north star. Maybe you put it up on a shelf high somewhere to say one day I’m gonna get there. But what I found is that when you focus on the little steps and then you celebrate the little wins along the way, and [00:21:00] what you figured out, then you see that you’ve made more progress.
Than you ever anticipated, and you’re closer and closer to that goal.
[00:21:07] Alice Tang: Well, I like to say it back to you that, yes, you need to have the steps in your head, but do not focus on so much on all the steps, but just take the first step and then you figure it out. I remember in your book, you talk about, getting in an airplane while building it.
[00:21:24] Kara Goldin: Absolutely.
[00:21:26] Alice Tang: So, great. Great. What is the number one piece of advice from you for our woman entrepreneur or professional woman who want to get to their million dollar goal?
[00:21:37] Kara Goldin: I think finding something that you’re really curious about.
And that you’re excited about and that you wanna work on every single day. And frankly, that’s the hardest thing. I think so often maybe we have this goal, like we wanna be an entrepreneur or start a business or be it a millionaire or whatever that is. But I think more than [00:22:00] anything realizing what you really enjoy doing versus, Going out and getting a degree in finance when you don’t even like what the roles are that you may be doing in finance.
Maybe instead you want to do something that maybe your friends aren’t doing, maybe your parents don’t necessarily think that is what you should be doing, but instead, try and figure out that thing that you’re curious about, that when you ask yourself, I wonder how that’s done.
Maybe I can have impact. Maybe I have ideas. Those that is the area where you’re most curious about where I think that you can have the greatest impact and ultimately will make the most money doing it and be the happiest doing it too.
[00:22:48] Alice Tang: Well, You are just singing to my heart because I was curious before I got all my financial industry license about, how can I, really keep more dollars in my pocket than Uncle [00:23:00] Sam basically, you know, leverage the tax to the extent that is.
[00:23:04] Kara Goldin: I love it
[00:23:04] Alice Tang: within the tax code. So I went ahead and do a lot of research and all these. And little did I know that is super helpful because I had that background even before I had my license.
[00:23:17] Kara Goldin: Yeah, which is great. But you were curious about those things, right? And that was something that helped you to be who you are today.
[00:23:25] Alice Tang: Yes, absolutely, absolutely.
So when you want to quit, there are moments that life is really tough. Business is tough. If you ever had a moment you want to quit, what makes you keep going?
[00:23:36] Kara Goldin: You know, I think focusing on, first of all, on other times when things have been really tough and understanding from those experiences that the dark days, the challenging times never stay that way. And believing that instead, you just have to figure out [00:24:00] how to move forward. You have to find those steps to figure out. You know what you’re curious about what your goals are all of those things. So I think that, that’s the thing that I think about whenever I’m challenged or having a hard day or a hard, period in my life that more than anything, focusing on your past, focusing on, those other challenging times where you felt that way.
And. It’s not as big today, maybe as it was back then, because you got through it. And understanding that you can make it through things if you just keep moving and not staying complacent.
[00:24:38] Alice Tang: Very good. Keep moving. Think about the past experience you’ve done it. You can always deal with what is in front of you today.
[00:24:45] Kara Goldin: Exactly.
[00:24:46] Alice Tang: And keep going. So last question. What is the one piece of very good advice or very bad advice that had made the biggest impact in your life?
[00:24:56] Kara Goldin: It’s interesting. I think, so many people [00:25:00] had told me that experience is really the most important thing. Go out and get experience and, experience is gonna be the thing that really helps you.
But I think instead, I would say that realizing that curiosity and passion really trumps any type of experience in, in my mind, because those are the people that are thinking differently that are constantly coming up with new ways of doing things. So experience doesn’t necessarily bring the highest value.
Instead, sometimes those people are the ones that have the most experience are the ones that are staying complacent. Instead it’s the people that are thinking differently about something, that they can see around corners. They can do things a little bit differently. That’s what I would say today is really my guide for success more than anything.
Don’t sit there and try to go out and have the most amount of experience, because [00:26:00] you could easily be bypassed by people that are just curious, that are doing things differently that are not afraid to go out and live Undaunted and add value in other ways and find something that they’re most interested in. So I think that would be my biggest lessons that I’ve learned along the way.
[00:26:18] Alice Tang: Very good. Critical thinking. Ask why not? Continue to move.
[00:26:22] Kara Goldin: Exactly.
[00:26:22] Alice Tang: Lead with curiosity. Do something we really love to do and enjoy doing every day the money will come and you’ll get to a million.
Thank you so much Kara for being with us today.
You have been very generous with your time.
[00:26:37] Kara Goldin: Thank you so much.
[00:26:39] Alice Tang: Thank you.
Kara Goldin is the Founder of Hint, Inc., best known for its award-winning Hint® water, the leading unsweetened flavored water. She led the company as CEO for 17 years and continues to serve on the Board. She has been named one of InStyle’s Badass 50, Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business, Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs, Fortune’s Most Innovative Women in Food & Drink and EY Entrepreneur of the Year for Northern California. The Huffington Post listed her as one of six disruptors in business, alongside Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg. Kara has successfully navigated the world of large companies and startups in many industries including media, tech and consumer products. In addition, she understands retail and direct to consumer well. She is an active speaker & writer and hosts the podcast The Kara Goldin Show where she interviews founders, entrepreneurs and other disruptors across various industries. Kara’s first book, Undaunted, was published by Harper Leadership in October 2020 and is now a WSJ and Amazon Best Seller. She lives in the Bay Area. Follow Kara on all social channels @KaraGoldin