Annie Cooper:
Hey, everyone. Welcome to The Annie Tunes In Podcast. This podcast is all about going after what you truly want in life. We have some pretty amazing guests on, such as top athletes, business owners, entrepreneurs, health experts, and more. Stay tuned.
Kara Goldin:
[inaudible 00:00:13]
Annie Cooper:
Yeah, well thank you so much for sitting down with me today. I really appreciate it.
Kara Goldin:
Yeah, totally. I'm excited.
Annie Cooper:
Yeah, so I have your book right here. Love the product, so Kara is a CEO and founder of Hint, one of the leading unsweetened flavored waters. So I want to hear a little bit about your background and how you got started.
Kara Goldin:
Yeah. Well I didn't start out in the beverage industry. I started out actually in media and publishing. I had my first job at Time Magazine and then I moved on to work at a little startup called CNN back when it was just getting started.
Annie Cooper:
Wow.
Kara Goldin:
And then when I moved, I met my fiance when I was in New York and he was graduating from law school and he really wanted to do this thing called technology law. So that's what brought us out to San Francisco and it's funny, the only person that I sort of kind of thought about related to San Francisco was a gentleman named Steve Jobs and I thought, "I'm not an engineer, so there's no way I'm going to be able to work at Apple. But more than anything, I think it would just be really fun to try and figure out how to meet him or I don't know." It was like a small little goal that I thought would be a lot of fun because I had one of the first Macintosh computers and I kind of geeked out at the fact that it was cute and small. Not as small as they are today, but a lot smaller than anything else around at the time.
Kara Goldin:
So as I was researching how to try and meet him and try and understand his vision and his thinking, that's when I stumbled upon a little startup that was doing CD-ROM shopping, it was called 2Market and it was actually incubated inside of Apple and was a Steve Jobs idea, little-known idea that they ended up not continuing. Not because Steve didn't want to but because Apple just decided they weren't in that business and so when I cold called the guy who was starting ... A bunch of guys that had worked at Apple that decided to start this, that's when I just said, "I'm super curious." I think secretly kind of wondering whether or not Steve was there in the office and he wasn't but I said, "May I take you for coffee or for lunch?" I've never been afraid to just pick up the phone or send somebody an email because I figured -
Annie Cooper:
That's so awesome.
Kara Goldin:
Yeah, like what's the worst that can happen? I mean they say no. I mean maybe even on like the worst case scenario, I guess the worst worst is that they don't respond, but the worst case scenario is they sort of act really rude or whatever and then I would just think it was funny that -
Annie Cooper:
Move on, yeah.
Kara Goldin:
Yeah, and move on and respond in some way. And so he wasn't rude at all, he just said in fact, "Sure, I'll go to lunch with you." I said I'm new to San Francisco and I had no idea what I'd stumble into, nor did I have any idea that by the end of this coffee that he would offer me a job, and I thought, "What in the world would I do here?" And I remember coming home to my fiance Theo and saying, "So they offer me a job and I was getting something called equity." I didn't even really know what equity was and he was like, "Wait, what? They're offering you Equity? Like do they even know that you aren't an engineer and you don't have any experience?" It was such a crazy story.
Kara Goldin:
So I ended up taking this job, figuring again what's the worst that can happen, maybe they'll find me out eventually that I'm not ripe for the job, that I don't have an engineering major even though I had never pretended that I did. But pretty soon I was running this business development for this company and going out to all these retailers and trying to get them signed up. Go ahead.
Annie Cooper:
Can I ask how old you were at this point?
Kara Goldin:
So I was ... Let's see 25.
Annie Cooper:
Okay. Just to get an idea. All right.
Kara Goldin:
Yeah, it was just ... Yeah, so I was 25 and just having a lot of fun and again, figuring out along the way, like I just never felt qualified. But I just thought, "I don't know. I'll do this until I figure something else out." Anyway, about a year into this role, I was part of the team that was acquired by another company that you now know called America Online. America Online, everybody ... I told everybody, all my friends, I said, "I'm going to work for a company America Online." And everybody is like, "American Online? Like what is it?"
Kara Goldin:
I don't know if you remember that when you were little, little that it was like so crazy. I mean we were doing chat rooms online and everybody was like ... It's such a cool thing, but at the time I mean they were like number three. They weren't number one, Steve Case probably doesn't like to hear that but the truth is is when I joined it was like number three and soon it became number one and everybody was on America Online, doing the chat rooms and buying stuff online. I was responsible for all the partnerships, so dealing with the J. Crews and the Gaps of the world. I was the youngest vice president at America Online, one of the few women in that position as well, and loving what I did, but never home. I was never in San Francisco, I was constantly traveling and trying to build out this online mall. That was the best way that I described it.
Kara Goldin:
And so after seven years, it was a billion dollars in revenue to AOL. I was now a tech executive, I didn't know how I got there, I had a team of people that were running around, working for me and I'm like, "Wait, but I live in San Francisco, I have a family now." I was pregnant actually with my third at the time and I just said, "I'm signing off. Like I want to do something that is less travel, I want to enjoy San Francisco and my husband and my young kids." So at that point, I kind of signed off and said, "I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm going to kind of look around and try and figure it out. There's a lot of tech in Silicon Valley, so maybe I'll find something there."
Kara Goldin:
What's interesting is I really enjoyed being a mom. Like I felt like it was a very important job and I had to figure a lot of stuff out as I share with so many people who are young, who have young kids, it's like I never felt so stupid until I had my own kids and I used to babysit and do all those things but when it's your own, you feel like your kids are going to break. Like something is major, you got to have the right diapers and the right stroller and all these things along the way.
Kara Goldin:
So that was me, and I ended up taking four years off, and people were constantly asking me, "When are you going to come back to tech? When are you going to do something?" I just ... I don't know, for me I felt like is that who I am? I mean everybody defines me as a tech executive, but I really felt like I kind of got there on accident, and I never really intended to be there. I enjoyed it, it was amazing, but I thought, "Is that it? Can I actually go and do something in another industry and use the skills that I learned in tech to really build from nothing to something?"
Annie Cooper:
So you didn't feel fully fulfilled technically when you were there. You felt kind of like something was missing.
Kara Goldin:
Well, I did when I was there. It was when I took some time off and I really started to think about what I really cared about and at the time I really cared about my young family. I mean I was just ... That's what I was focusing on and then I think one day as I was really paying attention to what my kids were eating and drinking, that's when I started looking at all these ingredients that were in all of the foods. I never really paid attention when I was growing up. I never had a weight issue, I was in sports, I was constantly working out and I was never ... I just never thought about it, I never worried about it. Then one day, I looked down at the ingredients in my drink that I was constantly drinking, diet soda, Diet Coke in particular. I had been drinking Diet Coke since I was 13 years old.
Annie Cooper:
Oh my gosh.
Kara Goldin:
Yeah, and I was ... I grew up in Arizona, so I should have been drinking a lot more water to stay hydrated, I was a gymnast and a runner.
Annie Cooper:
I have the same background. That's really cool.
Kara Goldin:
Yeah, and so I was ... But I didn't, and I drank Diet Coke all the time, and I mean now it's funny because people from AOL say that they wouldn't even be in meetings with me unless I had a Diet Coke. People would say, "Can I get you a Diet Coke from the kitchen?" And I'm like, "Yeah yeah yeah, definitely." Like I was so addicted to this stuff.
Annie Cooper:
That was your thing?
Kara Goldin:
That was my thing, and so when I sort of shocked myself and was appalled with the fact that I had been drinking it for so many years, that's when I thought, "Okay, I'm going to quit." Like literally one day, I just said I'm quitting, and my husband said, "How can you just quit? I mean you've been drinking it for so many years," and I'm like, "Thanks for being supportive." But anyway, we're now looking at water and it's so boring and every day I would complain about this water that I was drinking and it was like two weeks of really ... Almost like a detox I guess that I was going through, just to try and get myself off of this craving for Diet Coke. So while I was going through this process, I thought, "If the trade-off wasn't so bad and boring, maybe it wouldn't be so bad." So I started slicing up fruit and I threw it in the water, and that's when I really started thinking about I wish there was a drink that was already made that just had this. Because I'd be totally fine, I don't need bubbles, it's like a still water and when I went to the grocery store, we had a brand new Whole Foods that had just opened in San Francisco, and I was like, "This is the kind of store that would have something like this, that is good stuff and doesn't have sweeteners in it."
Kara Goldin:
When I went to the store I felt like everybody that I would meet in these stores, that was stocking the shelves, they looked very official. I would educate them about what I had found about the ingredients and they were like, "I never really paid attention," and then they'd show me a drink like vitamin water and I would say, "See what I mean? There's so many ingredients in this drink." At the time, they didn't even have a diet version of vitamin water either and so that's when I really started thinking, "Gosh, someone needs to do this drink." I still didn't think that that was me. I really just wanted to purchase this, and so long-winded story of a lot of people asked me, "Did you always know you wanted to be an entrepreneur?"
Kara Goldin:
And I call myself an accidental entrepreneur because I really wanted to purchase this drink, and even still, I think one of the things that maybe I'm a little unique in this respect because I come up with ideas all the time and most of the time, they're things that I would purchase. And then I don't have time to do them, or I don't think that I'm qualified in some way to do them, and then no one will do them, and then I just ... I give the idea away. I'm like, "You should go do this product because ... And here's what you should do." And then even when I gave this idea away, if people take too long to do it, then I just go do it.
Annie Cooper:
I love that.
Kara Goldin:
Yeah, I'm just like, "Somebody's got to do this because I want to purchase this kind of product." And that was the story of Hint basically that I wanted someone to do this product. I even thought when I finally got it on the shelf at Whole Foods, that local Whole Foods, when I got it on the shelf, I thought, "Well maybe I'll get it on the shelf and then people will ... Somebody will just buy the company or I can give it to somebody," and I even tried in the very early days to give it to Coca-Cola and got connected with somebody very senior and they didn't want it, and that's a whole other story that I share in the book, but it's definitely a ...
Kara Goldin:
For me, even though I had worked for incredible entrepreneurs including ultimately ... Whether directly or indirectly, Steve Case, Steve Jobs even though I didn't work for him but worked for people who worked for him and then Ted Turner. I mean incredible founders who started from nothing and then built it to something. I think that that gave me the confidence frankly to just go try and -
Annie Cooper:
I think when you're surrounded by those people, it's like you see what they're doing and you're like, "I can do this too." It's almost like -
Kara Goldin:
Yeah. Well but they seem ... I mean all of those people I think to some extent, maybe not to all people but they seem almost like godlike, and that's what, right? Untouchable in some ways, that they came up, and I guess I had been immersed in their journeys where the importance of putting stakes in the ground, where I mean even Ted Turner, he wasn't always in the New York office where I was working, he was usually in Atlanta, but it was interesting thinking back because CNN was ... They didn't even have this term back then, but it was a late stage startup. We were in like 40% of U.S. households, so we were not even in 50%. So it was a nice to have. Not everybody had cable like they do today and it was still a time when friends of mine would say to me, "So you work for CNN? Why don't you work for ABC? ABC, like primetime." That was considered like the big-time, but there was no way without experience that I'd be able to get a job there.
Kara Goldin:
So I thought, "Well maybe I'd go work at CNN for a while and then kind of get beat, get known, and then I can go work for those companies." It's ironic to see like today that I think people would be ... Maybe even happier working for CNN versus some of these other news networks. Maybe, maybe not, but it was interesting thinking back on when Ted would come into the office, there was this energy, that he was like, "Everyone in the world is going to have CNN," and some of us were kind of ... Some days, we'd be like, "Yes, they are," and other days we're like, "I don't know."
Kara Goldin:
There's a lot of problems, and ultimately I think being able to think back on those times, being able to see that it starts with an idea, it keeps building, it didn't happen overnight is something that definitely helped me to know that I could go try and do but it also made me realize too that it's a lot of hard work and I think it's something that a lot of people who maybe aspire to be an entrepreneur don't really see or realize, that the key is getting in and starting something but there's so many things that come along the way that could tank it. You could not raise the right kind of money, you could have a bad product, you could have a pandemic.
Kara Goldin:
You could have lots of things that come along the way that that's why it ended, and I think part of the reason why I really wanted to write that book too is sort of sharing that you have to live undaunted, that things are going to come up along the way, I'm not an entrepreneur that is fearless, that has never had challenging times happen to me. I'm not a fearless risk taker either, I'm just a person that had an idea based on really a mission to kind of solve a problem for myself that I really felt like had a place in the market, primarily that could help people get off of diet sweeteners as well. So that's where it all came about.
Annie Cooper:
I think that's the biggest thing with any business, any successful business is uncovering what it is that people need, figuring out a solution, and making that happen, and I love that it stemmed from your kids and learning what's in the water, how can we make this happen, and doing it, and I read in your book that you would sit at Whole Foods and wait for distributors to come in.
Kara Goldin:
Yeah.
Annie Cooper:
Tell me a little bit about that.
Kara Goldin:
Well it's funny because it was ... Like I had gotten it into Whole Foods and I was really excited. I think I probably had some moments when I thought, "Okay, we're going to be the next vitamin water," and that was like the hottest thing on the market at the time, and I remember ... I felt like every day, I would walk into Whole Foods, I almost didn't want to see the buyers because then they would say, "Okay, we're raising the bar again." They would never say those words, but I felt like it was like ... They kept moving it, the chalk line further away. That I would feel like, "Okay, I met that goal," and then suddenly they'd say, "Oh, well do you have a distributor yet?" And I'm like, "You didn't tell me to have a distributor," and then they'd say, "I didn't? Oh, well you have to have a distributor by next week." And I'm like, "Oh. Well do you have somebody's phone number?" And they're like, "That's on you. You have to go figure that out."
Annie Cooper:
Oh my gosh.
Kara Goldin:
And I'm thinking, "I'm a tech executive. They're threatening to kick me out of Whole Foods after I had just gotten in there and I'm feeling great about it," so then I'm like, "Oh shoot. What do I do?" It's interesting because the first thing that I thought was, "Well maybe I'll stand in the aisles and just wait for the people either distributors or people who worked for other beverage companies to come in and I could ask them for some phone numbers or emails or whatever for different distributors."
Kara Goldin:
I was also trying to figure out how to get a longer shelf life on our product and what I quickly figured out was that things like shelf life, people just accepted it as you can't do that, you can't get a longer shelf life without preservatives in it just as another piece of it. And I felt like I could always get my answers from other people at Whole Foods. Like I would go to the chip aisle and I would start talking to people who seemed to work for whatever, Kettle Chips or whatever, and I'd start talking to them and I'd be like, "Hey. I'm Kara. I run a beverage company and I was just curious, like how did you find a distributor? Or how did you find somebody to do this work?" And what I figured out was that there was ... People who were in kind of the distribution or worked for one company, sometimes they crossed over into another category.
Kara Goldin:
And so I would just start talking to them and sometimes it would work and sometimes it wouldn't work, they'd say, "Oh, well my buddy Jim works at this company. Let me call him and see," and I was just really good at sort of piecing together these networks and again sometimes people just blew me off or wouldn't talk to me, thought I was just freakish, that I'm walking up to them and just start talking, but most of the time it worked. And I felt like growing up in sort of the media and technology industry where they were really kind of these entrepreneurs like Ted, like Steve Case, even Steve Jobs, they saw the future and those industries accepted that there was better. When I got to the beverage industry, it was like, "Okay, we have a planogram that goes on the shelf and it's going to be water and enhanced water all have sweeteners in it, so you don't fit in there either. And then there's soda which you're obviously not and then there's diet soda."
Kara Goldin:
So while Whole Foods was kind of unconventional and we got in the market, as I started to expand, I started to figure out that we had not only created a new product and a new company but also a new category. So I was trying to change an industry and get an industry to accept something that was an idea. And again, there was no textbook for this. Like I had seen it done in media and in tech, but I had not ... They were not accepting this in the beverage industry, and that was like for me ... It was very frustrating, but I also felt like it was the puzzle. That I would come home every single day and people would say, "Oh, you look really tired," or, "You're staying up late with your kids," and I'm like, "No, I'm just thinking about this problem and where else I can go."
Kara Goldin:
And I've really always been good at sort of thinking about, "Okay, what else can I do?" That I just keep going until I kind of figure out ... It's like a clue. You just keep winding through and I would almost gamify it I guess in some ways, from even a young age, and have a good time with it and meet people along the way. I mean those were all skill sets that I had, but definitely I felt like working in the store and kind of wandering around the aisles, the worst that could happen I figured out, I would always be thinking about that was like maybe the people at Whole Foods would kick me out. They never did. Like creepy lady on aisle six.
Annie Cooper:
Yeah, she won't leave.
Kara Goldin:
[inaudible 00:23:17] she won't leave, she's here all the time, and she's not buying anything. But they never did. So I was just always like hanging out in there and every once in a while I still do the same thing. I mean I moved on from Whole Foods, I now hang out at Target which is really dangerous.
Annie Cooper:
Love it.
Kara Goldin:
Because I end up buying stuff at Target along the way, but I find ... My kids were horrified at, they're still horrified, they don't go to Target with me very often because I'll walk in the backroom and usually get yelled at the managers, they're like, "Hey, you can't go in the backroom." I'm like, "Oh no no no, I work here," and they're wondering why I'm not wearing a red apron or whatever. I'm like, "No no no, I work for the brand," and I'm always able to walk in the back and look like I know what I'm doing. But anyway, I just ... Again, like I think the more you can gamify things and just know that it's not going to be perfect, you're not going to have all the answers, especially at the start, but then I think like the other piece of it too that I always share with entrepreneurs is sometimes when you have those hard days where you feel sort of challenged in some way, you look back on kind of what you've achieved.
Kara Goldin:
Like look back a month ago and sort of see in your calendar what you were really trying to figure out. What meetings, whatever. What was your problem back then that maybe you've gotten a little further. Maybe you don't care about it anymore. Like that to me is just always really interesting and thinking about why did you invest so much time in it, was it worth the investment, the stress, whatever it was and so that was to me ... I mean the beverage industry especially from the beginning and a lot of what I wanted to share with other entrepreneurs to, just to ... Hopefully inspire and motivate people to know that they're not alone, and that you have to just do what you can in a day and don't stress if you can't get it all done.
Annie Cooper:
Yeah, and that's honestly one of the most fearless things. I know you said you're not fearless, but for you to have the confidence to ask questions and not ... A lot of people act like they know it all or they're afraid to ask questions and the fact that you realized, "Okay, I need to learn more about these things. I need to ask people questions." That's so inspiring. I mean a lot of people can't do that. They don't have the guts to do it and I think that's such an amazing quality and so at this point, were you a one man team? Or was your husband -
Kara Goldin:
My husband joined me. He primarily joined me because ... Particularly we're married, and at this time, and we have a ... I'm taking $50,000.00 out of our bank account to buy bottles and fruits and he's thinking, "She knows how to spend a lot of money very fast and this could be really dangerous on bottles," and, "This might be one of her crazy ideas." And he wasn't working at the time, he had actually been with a company called Netscape and was an intellectual property attorney and I mean he also sort of thought it was odd that I decided that I was going to go start a beverage company but also was kind of like, "Wow, that's really interesting, really, that they have planograms and they won't let you on the store shelves unless you fit into these categories?"
Kara Goldin:
All these new discoveries about the way we buy things that are supposed to be healthy or maybe we're paying more in certain stores than other stores. I mean I guess if we really thought about it, we started to maybe think about it a little bit more but for us, it just posed a lot of questions. Like why are things more expensive just because they're healthy? Why do people think that the word diet or low fat? We still to this day call them healthy perception versus healthy reality. We just are trained to think about certain words as being better for us than not, and so again, kind of geeking out a little bit at these conversations, I would go to dinner with my friends in tech and they'd say, "What is it like being a mom?" People didn't recognize or even acknowledge that I was starting a beverage company. This was a side hustle except that was the only thing I did all day besides being a mom and it's funny because I was just ...
Kara Goldin:
Again, like really energized, really curious, really motivated to do this company because I felt like if I could actually get people to understand what I understand and get people off of these diet sweeteners and really understanding the benefits of drinking plain water or a product like Hint, then I believe that I could really change health for the better, and today, I mean one of the number one topics under the ... Well there's a lot of topics, but under the Biden administration is how many people in the U.S. can't afford insulin. I mean the number of people with Type 2 diabetes today, when I started Hint, one of the things that I refer back to a lot was a customer on the first day that we were in Whole Foods, a customer called our 1-800 line and he was so excited about the product and of course he thought that I was probably ... Had this big customer service department.
Kara Goldin:
I was like the only one that was answering the phone, and I remember him sharing that he had been looking for a product like Hint for a while because he had this thing called Type 2 diabetes, and I had never heard of Type 2 diabetes. This is 16 years ago, and I had heard of Type 1 diabetes, I knew a few people who were born with it but Type 2, I'm like, "What is that?" And he explained it to me and how he had really been good about watching his calories, counting his calories and only having diet things and yet his insulin levels still spiked or blood sugar levels still spiked, so he needed the insulin. So it was fascinating to me because he felt like he really should get off of diet sweeteners and it's funny. I was never diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes but there's a lot of things that he shared with me that I think I was probably what's called prediabetes and it was just a ... I caught it before it really became a problem and I had to take anything for it, but it's fascinating today how that's risen from being one and a half percent of the population to over 40% of the population has Type 2 diabetes or prediabetes.
Kara Goldin:
People don't talk about. Like they're almost embarrassed. It's like a private issue for people because they're living a normal life but they've got to watch it and I think what's so sad today, insulin, there's just not enough for people to be taking or people can't afford it and so the Biden administration is really trying to get pharmaceutical companies to make it cheaper and has threatened to not give patents to many of these pharmaceutical companies and I think the challenge is is like should we actually be looking at limiting the price on things like that so people can make it affordable. We should definitely make it affordable, but should we also be looking at is there something wrong with the sweeteners, and the things that people are doing that actually ... They didn't think that diet soda was a problem. They didn't think that these low fat things were a problem. They were doing what they thought were supposed to be doing and yet they've got these chronic diseases that they think they have to live with and the reality is is that Type 2 diabetes can be reversed, but you have to wake up and really pay attention to what you're actually putting in your system.
Kara Goldin:
So I think for me, today I was at a moment where kind of I was willing to ... I had weight to lose, I had terrible adult acne, and I really wanted to create my own change and that's something that I say to people today, like you might not know that there ... I never thought that Diet Coke was an issue for me. But yet the way my body processed it, I was probably creating way ... Too many issues in my system and that's what was causing the extra weight and my blood sugar levels were going up all the time that I was drinking these diet sodas. Yet again, like I didn't know that things like ... When I was really tired in the middle of the day, I was crashing, and I didn't realize that kind of stuff. Because again it's diet. Diet for me meant health, and so again like it was a problem that I had solved for myself and I thought, "There's a lot more people like me. I would have never thought that Type 2 diabetes would be where it is today." But again, I think it's something that I think of myself as not just a beverage executive but somebody who is really like creating change and creating a world where we can help people get healthy. We can change something that we see that's wrong and so that is what I'm doing.
Annie Cooper:
Yes. I think the way these products are marketed, all this diet stuff is the complete wrong way and I think that people don't think that healthy foods and clean drinks, things like that can taste good, and they try to go for these diet things because they're sweet, they taste amazing, whatever and they're low calories and if people transition into not worrying so much about the calories and just clean whole foods, it would make a huge difference. So I think what you're doing is so amazing and I wanted to ask you a little bit about your book and kind of what the goal for the book was.
Kara Goldin:
So it was about six years ago when I was out talking about the company and how I built it along the way that it was ... It became obvious to me at the end of a lot of these talks where people would stand up and ask me a question and I would answer the question and I typically would answer the question not with yes or no, but with a story that I had lived through in my journey and I felt like so often that was the best way to kind of get people to sort of see exactly what I had been through. Not absolutely telling them the answer but instead asking them or really showing them why I thought this way.
Kara Goldin:
I would go back to my room. Oftentimes my hotel room if I was speaking at conferences or inside of companies, and I would write out ... I would almost use those questions that I didn't know were coming as prompts, and I would think, "Can I answer that another way?" And there's always another way to answer something, and so I started writing. Well, this ended up to be my journal that I brought with me on the plane and I would just think of questions, I would read something in the newspaper and then I would just keep writing out and sort of think about why I thought the way I thought and I was never a big journal writer. I mean I didn't intentionally start keeping a journal like maybe some people do. But after a few years, I one day just started counting the pages and it's funny because I never numbered the pages, that was really stupid. So one day I'm going through all the pages, trying to count how many I had, and there were 600 pages. It was crazy.
Annie Cooper:
Oh my god.
Kara Goldin:
So I asked a friend of mine who has written three novels and totally different type of author but I said, "How do I bind all these notes into something where I feel this could help a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs or existing entrepreneurs?" And she said, "You mean write a book?" And I'm like, "Oh no. That's way too daunting. I mean how could I ... Like I'm running a company, I mean how could I do that." And that's when she said, "I think you've got at least one book. Probably two books in here."
Annie Cooper:
That's so cool.
Kara Goldin:
"And I think the key is that you need to get somebody to kind of help you think about exactly what this is." The interesting thing is is I didn't even know the name of this book until I actually turned it into the publisher that I chose, and it's funny because I think it's sort of ... So many people are like, "Oh, did you always want to write a book called Undaunted." I'm like, "No." I mean I think for me I just wanted to help people and I feel like still to this day, if you can help people through a product like Hint, just there's many people that maybe don't even think about Hint as helping. It just tastes good, it keeps them quenched, hydrated, whatever. But I thought if there's even a few of those people that think, "This is helping me to deal with Type 2 diabetes. It's helping me get through cancer treatments."
Kara Goldin:
Right now it's Breast Cancer Awareness Month. We're huge supporters of breast cancer awareness. The number of people who have written to us over the years who have shared their story, I always think it's so interesting how they think they're the only ones that I had possibly heard of over the years who shared that Hint helps them get through chemotherapy treatments. When you're going through chemo you get this metallic taste in your mouth that is awful and you have to drink water in order to get rid of the metallic taste. If you drink anything with sweeteners in it, like those drinks that you were talking about before, it actually enhances the metallic taste and you can't get rid of it. And so people have shared with me that they start drinking Hint and it's sort of this underground thing that has gone on where people are like, "Oh. You should try this drink Hint. It really helps get rid of this taste." So many of those people have shared, all different kinds of cancers, but many of them have shared that Hint has really helped people get through breast cancer and so it's something that we've wanted to support for years and we have.
Annie Cooper:
That's so amazing. So what is next for you and for Hint? Do you have more products coming out? I know you have a lot of hand sanitizers, sunscreens, all that type of stuff.
Kara Goldin:
Yeah. So we launched these other products again accidentally. It was not like ... We never thought of ourself as having line extensions or anything like that, but when I had a tiny skin cancer on my nose a few years ago and I started thinking about, "Well why is it that I don't wear sunscreen on my face?" And I was really reliant on a lot of the foundations that have SPF in it, and they just weren't doing the job and it ends up that a lot of those SPFs are so watered down. I mean whether or not they're even [inaudible 00:39:41] by the time you actually put it on your face, it's not just enough, and I felt like I needed to wear sunscreen but nothing that was out there was really kind of ... Either clear or I didn't like the consistency of it. A lot of the zinc ones were really heavy and I just didn't want to wear them. And then the other option that I really saw as ... Maybe a better alternative until I read the ingredients were sunscreens that had this ingredient called oxybenzone -
Annie Cooper:
Oh yes.
Kara Goldin:
And so nobody was talking about oxybenzone when we developed the sunscreen and I had done some research and found that the oxybenzone actually in the 1970s, we were one of the few countries in the world that actually approved oxybenzone. So if you go outside of the U.S., there's many countries where you cannot have oxybenzone in any of your products because it's a known carcinogen and we've had it in our sunscreens for years. And I thought, "Here I'm putting on sunscreen. I think I'm doing better, and then I'm getting cancer, right?" And how many people are out there that are taking their money, their hard-earned money, and going and buying it. Maybe they're even going to dermatology offices like I did and finding a product that doesn't have oxybenzone in it but is like $70.00 a bottle. I just thought like even if you could afford it, it's just ... I want to create a product that doesn't have oxybenzone in it, that's clear, that smells better than an unscented sunscreen which some of them smell kind of funky, and that's affordable. And how can I do this?
Kara Goldin:
So I went back to my kitchen, and I started creating and I never really thought of it even as a Hint product. For me, I really thought about it as can I develop something that helps people get healthy and stay healthy, and it started with me, it started with a purpose, and still to this day, we have it available on our website, it's on Amazon as well. We're really not in stores. I mean we don't have a sales force that actually goes out and sells it. It's sort of got this cult following though.
Annie Cooper:
That's so awesome.
Kara Goldin:
People run into me all the time on the planes or they're like, "Oh my god. I drink Hint water but I'm obsessed with the grapefruit sunscreen," and it runs out of stock constantly, so it's a good product.
Annie Cooper:
That is so cool. So do you have any other products that you want to do that you have in mind that you're thinking about late at night?
Kara Goldin:
The key one that we did at the beginning of the pandemic was hand sanitizers. It was the same kind of issue where I was just so tired of these hand sanitizers that smelled so terrible and I kept saying, "They smell rancid. They're probably not," but it ended up that they were.
Annie Cooper:
They do.
Kara Goldin:
There were a bunch of them that were recalled and they were just ... They were terrible. Or one of my favorite stories, I went to visit a friend of mine and she had a doorman building in San Francisco and I walked in and there was a hand sanitizer in the lobby and I used the pump and got some hand sanitizer and it was ... My hands smelled like tequila, and I said to the guy at the front desk, I said, "My hands smell like tequila," and he said, "It is tequila," and I was like, "Oh my god." I mean it's just ... Like I'm going to get pulled over for a DUI because of my hands, right?" Like it's just ... I mean it was straight tequila and I put like ... I don't know, probably five shots on my hands, right, by the time I was done. It was cheap tequila too which is like the worst kind.
Annie Cooper:
That's horrible.
Kara Goldin:
Yeah, so I thought, "I have to come out with this hand sanitizer." Plus the fact that we have a team of about 200 people, they were working through the pandemic, we're an essential product, an FDA regulated essential product, the water is and so the team was out in scores through the entire pandemic and they were being as cautious as they could but we also wanted to not only give them masks and gloves but also hand sanitizers just so that they felt like they were doing what they could to stay healthy.
Annie Cooper:
Yeah, so as an entrepreneur, I know you work most of the time, you're very busy. What do you like to do in your free time? When you're not working, what's a couple of things that you enjoy?
Kara Goldin:
So my dogs. You can see Sadie in the background.
Annie Cooper:
Yes.
Kara Goldin:
So that was ... My dogs are my lifeline. My kids as well, although they're off at school most of the time. Two of them are away at ... Or actually three of them are away right now at school, so I only have one home at this time. But I would say ... I think hiking has always been something that is ... I think the outdoors, I grew up in Arizona where I really appreciate the outside and desert and things where I feel like they change every day, that I love new sounds and I love how trees change and bushes change and all those kind of things and so for me, I definitely love cities. I lived in New York for a while and lived in San Francisco but now I live in Marin County, I'm surrounded by forest and hiking trails and I have 100 acres of hiking trails out my back door, which I'm up there all the time, sometimes with my dog and my husband as well. So I think more than anything, I'm curious. I love to explore, I love to think about the way the world works and constantly trying to ... I always come up with new products every single day and new ideas but more than anything I think focusing on what makes people happy, what makes people healthy, I'm really thinking about that too. Yeah, so it's a lot of fun.
Annie Cooper:
Yeah. I love that you can be in the moment when there's so many things kind of being thrown at you and thinking about the next thing but you're able to enjoy this stillness and nature and letting things be and all that stuff so that's amazing. So my last question for you is what is one piece of advice that you would give to people that are starting a business that might feel stuck and kind of are like, "What is the next thing to get myself out there and to really kind of build something substantial?"
Kara Goldin:
Yeah, I think you touched on this in the beginning, but I think that there's this farce that's out there where everything has to be perfect and I think it's really a problem in particular for girls and women, where we won't go start something unless we think that it will actually work out. We won't go take a job unless we actually think that it's going to ... We're going to be able to be successful in some way, or we won't even apply for a job if we don't think we've got every single qualification versus men, many, many men will show up, they don't have the qualifications, they don't have all the things, it doesn't have to be perfect. So I think more than anything, know that it's not about being perfect, it's really about being willing to try and be willing to ask questions and be willing to be brave and take the journey and do something that you think could work out but something that you'll enjoy.
Kara Goldin:
Because if you do that, then I think that that's where you do a lot of great things for yourself. Hopefully you can change things for the better for an industry or a group of people or wherever. I mean it really can go along with almost any idea and I think that's the biggest thing that I want to spread to people that I think is really, really important is that if you don't go try, if you don't get out there and just try and do something that you think is a pretty good idea, then you'll never really know. It's like you almost have to ... I view it as like a room and then you can't get to the door until you sort of go through one thing, right? And you learn about things and then keep moving on along the way. I think that's the best way to think about it.
Annie Cooper:
Yeah. Your journey is so cool too. So it's really awesome to hear where you started and where you're at now -
Kara Goldin:
Thank you.
Annie Cooper:
So thank you so much for sitting down with me and where can they find you and Hint?
Kara Goldin:
Yeah. So I'm all over social at Kara Goldin with an I and Hint is at drinkhint.com. If you haven't tried Hint, it's super yummy. I'm having a pineapple right now and we're at DrinkHint or Amazon or lots of stores all over the U.S. as well and hopefully you'll get a chance to read my book to listen my book on Audible [inaudible 00:49:38]
Annie Cooper:
Yes. Undaunted. Yeah. Yeah yeah.
Kara Goldin:
Love it.
Annie Cooper:
Super fun.
Kara Goldin:
And yeah, and it's been a lot of fun just getting the book out there and hearing back from people. So if you get a chance, I'd love to hear from you as well and yeah. Thanks everyone.
Annie Cooper:
Awesome. Thank you guys. This is The Annie Tunes In pod -