How to Overcome Doubts and Doubters with Kara Goldin, Founder of Hint Water
In this episode, we talk all about the importance of taking proper care of yourself, why it's so important to share your story with the world, How Kara has adapted her leadership style through the pandemic and why it's critical to be sharing your story with others. Kara is the founder and CEO of Hint Inc., known for its award winning Hint flavored water. She has been named EY Entrepreneur of the Year in Northern California, one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business and one of Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs. She’s also the host of The Kara Goldin Show and the author of the book, Undaunted.
“It is really hard to have it all and there are going to be days where you have to focus on one thing, more than another" – Kara Goldin
Highlights
💫 2:34 A little about Kara's career journey
💫 15:02 As women, we need to make sure we're taking care of ourselves
💫 16:05 What does it mean to be 'undaunted'?
💫 17:42 If 'they' can do it, so can you!
💫 22:52 The value of sharing your story
💫 26:22 How Kara has adapted her leadership style through the pandemic
💫 39:23 Three takeaways from today's conversation
Connect with Featured Guest, Kara Goldin
Website: https://karagoldin.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/karagoldin/
Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kara-goldin-show/id1327208777
FREE Masterclasses and Workbooks: https://bit.ly/3xXy8Um
Schedule your Career Discovery Call Today: https://bit.ly/3OnuLLO
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What It Truly Means to be Undaunted
So your book, “Undaunted: Overcoming Doubts and Doubters” is a Wall Street Journal bestseller and Amazon Best Seller. It's been out for over a year. Tell us a little bit, what does it mean to be undaunted?
Well, I think for me, when I started hands, as I alluded to, I didn't know I was going to become an entrepreneur. I had worked for some incredible entrepreneurs over the years, including Ted Turner and CNN, and Steve Case at AOL. And kind of indirectly, I guess, in some ways for Steve Jobs, although I never worked with Steve at all. But I felt like I never thought that that was like a training ground for me to go and start my own thing. But I think I feel really fortunate to have worked for people like that, because they're just real people trying to solve problems, they saw a problem. And they were each way ahead of where the rest of consumers were. And they decided to take that risk, use their tenacity and their creativity, build the team to go out and try.
They were clearly not positive at times that it was going to actually work, but they thought if they can keep getting traction along the way – and I think that is the thing that I think is really missing from so many people who maybe want to go start a company, but don't have the guts or don't have the courage or the fearlessness, which is what I've been called for years. I think if you are able to work for somebody who's actually doing exactly what you want to do, you're able to see that they're just normal people, they're just willing to just go try, and they're all also willing to fail.
And I think that that's something that a lot of people feel like they would be embarrassed by, or maybe they're not going to be able to do that and in a way that maybe matches with what they've been able to accomplish today. And I think that's the toughest thing for people, especially successful people who have gone out and worked inside corporations, being the number one in their division or whatever. And then suddenly, they think, “Oh, I've got to start from scratch, from nothing, and figure out how to create a product, or figure out how to distribute a product.” If you're thinking about starting a beverage company, which is what we did in our case, I had no idea that I was creating a new category, until probably two months into actually launching the product when none of the buyers would actually put it on the shelf because we didn't match their planet ground and what they were really looking for.
So when you're trying to move forward and get traction, and then some days, you end up going backwards. It's frustrating, right? And you have to figure out, “How do I get back up again? How do I brush myself off?” And keep moving forward in a way that really makes sense. And I think that something that I've always thought about is you just have to remain undaunted, and you have to figure out how do you break down those walls that are sitting in front of you that maybe at times get so high that you just don't even know how to get over them or get around them, but you have to figure it out. And so I think through sharing my story, that is the best way to show people that if I can do it, you can do it too. You have to set your mind to it. And you have to figure out how to recognize the successes along the way. Know that you're going to have failures, know that you're going to have challenges, know that you're going to learn a lot of lessons along the way and make mistakes along the way. But the only way to actually ultimately get successful and achieve your goals is to have those moments and I really believe that and I've seen that in so many people that are successful today.
Learning From People’s Stories of Success and Challenges
I can relate so much to what you're saying. Because I spent 15 years in corporate America. And just like you said, the people that are very successful, and I earned four back to back president's trips and earned region Manager of the Year and when I decided to leave corporate, I was terrified. I pushed back for a long time on being an entrepreneur. And it wasn't till I was working with a recruiter and she said, “Danielle, stop looking for a job. You need to be a career coach, this is what you're passionate about. This is what you're really good at. So, you know, take this endeavor and take a risk.” And I don't think I realized the insecurities I had and how I had covered up my insecurities with the awards and accolades until I went on my own. And I said, I didn't realize just how terrified I was, and how much I doubted myself. And it's one of the reasons why I relate so much to your story and how I've been grateful that you've shared your story, because we all experience doubt in our lives. We all have, you know, these limiting beliefs that we have in our lives. But it's not until people share their stories where we realize that we put some people on these pedestals or we see them where you're at today, where you've had this business for 16 years. But we don't always know the journey and how you got there, and the successes and failures you've had along the way. But you're very gracious to share these with us.
I really do believe that over the years that it's in sharing those stories, first with friends and employees, as well as entrepreneurs, students; when I've been out speaking, I think that that's when I started to get emails after events saying, “You know, you really helped me with this hard issue.” Oftentimes, they weren't beverage executives, or even food executives, they weren't changing careers from going from TAC to the consumer products industry, in the food and beverage industry. They were just people that were going through some hard challenges. And just through hearing my story, they related.
And that's what I figured out, that if I could share more of these stories. Ultimately, that's why I decided to write a book as I had taken my notes after each of these events, and I started jotting down notes. Like if I had to answer something a different way, when people had asked me questions, how else could I have answered that? And so over the course of about four years, that ended up to be about 600 pages. And so as I was sharing some of these stories. One day, I just decided, you know, there's a lot of people that are not inside of corporations where I might be speaking or at conferences; and instead maybe they're on social media following me, but maybe they don't know I exist. And I thought if I could put this together in a book and really help people – maybe while they're developing their own company, or maybe they've just had a failure, maybe they just don't even know how to get out of the gate, and they're really just trying to figure something out that I've been through – I could help a lot of people just by sharing my story since that was my main purpose for writing Undaunted. It was just to really help people which is frankly no different than why I started Hint. I mean, I never started Hint because I thought, “Oh gosh, I want to be the next Vitamin Water Red Bull.” For me, it was really about a mission to help people just how I had been helped just by having a drink like Hint.
Yeah, it's a powerful book because you talk about your career journey, you talk about your creative ways of getting your first job, and some of the things along those lines. And then, like you said, starting your business and where you're at today, and some of the bumps you've had throughout that process. Now, you're speaking all over the world. And this is really something I can tell you're passionate about. And you've been speaking to leadership. And specifically, over the course of the two years, there's been a lot of changes. And you can relate to not only trying to juggle running a business and being a mom, also leading a team through this uncertainty of how we're going to do manufacturing while working remotely, and things like that. So tell us a little bit of how you've adapted through this journey through the pandemic, and how that reflects your leadership style.
Adapting Through the Pandemic and Other Challenges Along the Way
I think first of all, my kids are a little bit older now. So when I first started Hint, I had little ones, which was definitely challenging. But I think I have never been through a pandemic and have been through other challenging times, for sure. Not only did I have four kids under the age of six when I started Hint, but also, I went through times of trying to figure out exactly how to break into this industry. I come from a tech industry, which wasn't very dominated by females. So I mean, it's not too much different in the beverage industry. But more than anything, just trying to figure stuff out, I felt like being an outsider. There were so many people that wouldn't even give me the time of day because they just immediately discounted me because they didn't have experience in the industry. Maybe you can, anybody who's listening can relate to that, that maybe you have an interest in doing something but you just don't really have that experience. And you start trying to figure out how you can kind of help you think about it. And they're like, “She's never going to do that. I mean, there's just no way.” But I think more than anything, what I found was that if I just kept figuring out how to make some progress along the way, and also take breaks along the way – I mean as I was trying to manage my kids, while I'm running a business; early on I had babysitters that were helpful for me especially when I needed to focus on some stuff or had meetings, but I think I knew that I couldn't do everything – that maybe it was going to take me a little bit longer at certain points along the way, but I thought that it was really, really important for me to be able to have some kind of sanity along the way too.
And I just mentioned that because I think so many people, especially women, who have been trying to work and trying to have a family and have it all, you know, I've realized for myself that it is hard to have it all right. There are days when you have to put more focus on one thing or the other. If your kids are sick, for example, or whatever that is that you have to be able to take a break along the way.
And I think when COVID hit when so many of our employees had families, we're trying to figure out exactly what to do. Much of our team had been remote. So over half of our 250 people were remote anyway, because there were sales people that were throughout the country, but they had differing issues, right? There were different state issues where there were lockdowns in certain states, not in other states, but everybody was trying to keep their family healthy, trying to keep themselves healthy. And we're running a company and these people are working for a company that is a water company where we've got to stock the shelves with water and make sure that there’s supply, and we also have other issues. We're an FDA regulated company too. So there's different manufacturing issues that maybe other food and water companies don't deal with because they don't have fruit in their products so they're not dealing with that. So, again, none of this was stuff that we had actually dealt with before. But instead, I was willing to roll up my sleeves and figure it out. And while I couldn't actually relate to having children during a pandemic, before young children, I should say what I could relate to was that we all have to just keep figuring out how to move forward the best we can, and there's going to be different stresses along the way.
And you know, more than anything, I think that you have to raise your hand when things are getting really hard and tell people more than anything. So I think the biggest lesson that I feel like I learned early on was that we couldn't group people into maybe, like, “this is the supply chain group versus this is the sales group,” because people were all trying to deal with having differing issues and at home versus work. And we had to look at the individual and figure out exactly what it was, and how could we help our employees to actually be feeling better about getting up every day and staying motivated, and being okay, and know that different triggers along the long day would affect different people differently, too. And so just recognizing that more than anything, I think taking kind of a one-on-one approach with people – I think knowing that we understood, and we were empathetic – was really, really important.
And then always just checking back in with individuals just to make sure that they were getting the support that they needed from their managers was really more than anything that I learned through this time. So I think there's a lot of leaders that acted that way. I think that more than anything, I don't think anybody would say that they knew exactly how to manage during this time, but they did not roll up their sleeves and they decided, “I have a decision to make. I have options – I can either let it get to me or I can figure out how to do the best I can." And I think that that's the right mindset more than anything. And I think when you're used to dealing with challenges along the way, you've had them before, you've got to figure out how to keep moving forward.
And no one's really – we've never really experienced that pandemic before. And so you're spot on, I think back when I was working for this fortune 500 company, and I was leading the team when the pandemic first hit. And you know, there were some people on my team where they're terrified to go out and they're trying to juggle Zoom, learning it for their kids, and then you know, also working and trying to survive that. And then I had some people on my team that were eager to get back in the field because I was leading a sales team. And so they want to get back in the field right away. And some people didn't have kids at all. And you're just you're navigating through supporting each person, where they're at. And each of those conversations is totally different. And the ones that really thrive through all of these are the ones that were able to adapt and molded and changed as everything's continued to change, because we're still in it. I don't necessarily know when this is eventually going to go away, or we're just going to find a way to work through it. But yeah, the individuals that are able to adapt and be resilient through this and keep their mind focused and positive, are always typically the ones that make it through in the end.
How Important Taking Care of Employees Is
Yeah, and I think also just looking out for your employees and making sure that they're being taken care of first, I felt like that was the goal. Somebody said something to me the other day, “Did you focus on you know, hitting the numbers? I mean, were you all work?” And I said, “Yeah, but I also felt like I would never be able to hit the numbers if I wasn't making sure that the people aspect was taken care of first.” And so taking care of your people was always important to me, but it became even more magnified because I felt like if you figure out how to do that part, then the rest will come. And because otherwise, if they're not happy, and if they're not healthy, if they're not feeling like they're supported, then they're not going to be able to achieve what the company needs to achieve. And I think that was really the key thing that I saw to kind of distinguish great leadership from, “okay leadership” – if people are sitting here saying, “Wait, we've got to get this number. We've got to do this, we've got to do this.” And if they're not really focusing on the people, I think even when you look at like supply chain issues, which everybody's had differing issues depending on if you're getting supplies from outside of the US versus inside of the US, but it really leads back to the same thing – that there's only so much you can do about getting a container, for example, from Asia. I mean, we actually do everything in the US.
But I was just talking to a friend earlier today where her cost of getting a container from Asia went from $5,000 to $30,000. And so what are you going to do about it? I mean, that can actually dramatically affect your business. But you can sit there and figure out, “Okay, how do I shift my manufacturing and supply chain stuff into the US and cut that cost out?” But also, what's going on with your people? Because maybe you've been really focused on making sure that your people or your labor forces are maybe less expensive? That's why you're using products coming from Asia or whatever it is. But I think focusing on could you actually figure something out over here in the US, and shifting that dynamic a little bit? First of all, where are your people in this situation? And what is the labor force? Can you hire more people that are really interested, for example, in working in a non-online environment, which I think is sort of going to be the conversation coming forward? There's going to be some jobs that are online? Is it not online? And it's I think, there's a lot of people that, certainly Gen Z's and and many young millennials in particular, that maybe don't have families at home, they really do want to have a social network and be working with other people. They don't want to be sitting here looking at a screen all day long. So whatever that is, I think, really figuring out how can that shift your business in some way and how can you figure out how to make that an asset for you versus looking at it from the standpoint of just pure costs.
Yeah, they're calling this era, the great resignation. And, you know, obviously, unemployment has been higher, historically, and really where it's affecting women. And it's because women are trying to juggle the home life and kids, and they're really requesting, “If I'm going to come back to work, it's about being flexible.” It's about being able to provide flexibility so that you can do both. And I think why I'm such a big advocate of supporting women and getting into leadership roles is because we need people that can relate with that struggle so that we can create a culture, and environment, and organization that supports flexibility. And I think that's where a lot of where these companies are starting to kind of get the eye opening to going well. If we want to continue to grow, if we want to continue to retain employees, it's about creating flexibility within working remote, or at home or flexible hours, whatever that is. So well, you've shared so many great nuggets with us, what are three things that you want our listeners to take away from our conversation today?
(Re)Gaining Your Confidence and Overcoming Doubt
Focus on what you want.
→ Whether that's starting a company or focusing on, you know, the best work environment for you. Maybe you've been trying to figure out exactly what excites you, what you would really like to be doing every day which is another thing that I get people thinking about a lot, which is a choice, right? You can have a job that just helps you get a paycheck and puts food on the table and a roof over your head. But I think part of what the great resignation is today is rethinking now that so many jobs are remote. And there's so many different opportunities for people to really have a much more flexible work-life. I really think that that's an opportunity for people to try and think about – Am I actually supporting a company that believes in what I believe in, that is maybe selling a product or service that I can stand behind that I really enjoy? Am I working with people that I feel like, really get me and want to support me in some way, whether that's with my family, or flexible time, or benefits, or whatever that is? So I think the options are definitely out there.
Figure out a role for you that really makes you happy.
→ One of the things that I talk about in my book is actually taking a little bit of time off. I used to think so many people said to me coming from when I was a VP and at America Online, everybody said, “Don't take too much time off to be with your family, because then you get off track, and you'll never be able to get back on.” I still don't think that's true. I think that if you want to take a break, then you should take a break, right?
You're in charge of your own self and your mental health.
→ Talking about mental health does not mean that you're “mental” in some way, right? I mean, it's also just saying that maybe you need time to think, maybe you need time to reset in some way to figure out exactly what you're meant to be doing. And that is okay to do that.
