Part 1 - Why Kara Goldin Almost Gave Up On Hint

Welcome to this edition of the Million Dollar Mastermind podcast. This is where we pick the brains of high achievers from all walks of life and get their hard earned real world insights on winning. I'm your host, Larry Wydell. Let's have some fun today because we have Kara golden on and Cara is just a phenomena. I still remember, have great memories of the first time she joined us and was so happy she had the time to come back and talk again because gotta be busy doing a podcast and running a company. The number one has become, I don't think it was at the time, but the number one leading brand of unsweetened water in the country. But since our first podcast interview, I notice Hint and I see it at store. I think of you every time I go into stores and I see it, see it on the shelves. And airport, airports, being able to buy flavored water for the plane flights, to me that's a must. Never get on a plane without your own water.

Absolutely.

You never know what's going to happen anyway. It's just been, I've been noticing your rise from a distance, but also on social media and everything. And your footprint is spreading. And I know there's a lot of lessons and challenges that go along with that and competitors, not everybody's happy that you're someone else is doing well. And so, you know, there's a lot of ideas, solutions you come up with that other people say, well, I can do that and you got to stay on your feet, you got to improve, you got to get better and you're doing that. So congratulations, Kara.

Thank you. Thank you. Well, and so there's a little bit of a change. So I am not actually running Hint right now. Ran it for 17 years. And so I'm still involved, I'm still on the board. But I think that it really goes back to kind of why I sort of started this company, why the success is what it is today in that I really wanted to have a water that just tasted better. And so drinking the pineapple right now, wish I could send one over to you. Maybe that'll be that way in a few years. But more than anything, I think the last few years have allowed people to really appreciate good health. And the way that you stay healthy is to continue to put good things inside of you. Not just products like Hint, but also good food, et cetera. And so I think that as a product, it's really, there's a lot of things that have helped it to become what it is today. But more than anything, one of the things that I like to do, in addition to mentoring and talking to other founders about how I did it was is really to share my own story around some of the things that lots of people said was not possible. And so that's what I do.

Well, you really did do the impossible. But over the last few months, couple of years, this process, 17 years, there's a, you brutalize yourself really to build a business and you know, balance is really usually a joke. You do your best you can, but then you try and restore order to the chaos of the universe that you built for yourself. When you get a little time, you get a little money, you get a little staff help, but then if you go on and you, you move to where you actually sell the company, all of these have been experiences that have got to be eye opening for you. And, and what do people who have, you know, you can, you're in a unique position be able to share with people what to look forward to on the road and the challenges. But also if you break through to the other side, how it can be worth it, how you don't have to say if you're in a certain terrorizing moment business wise or business situation or financial thing, or your staffing problems or distribution nightmares or government regulation coming in crashing in. You're really not going to have to deal with that on a minute to minute, day by day basis the rest of your life if you just stay in what you know, stay in there and fight your way through. And there is another side to the journey and that's what you're just really starting. And so speak to that, if you don't mind.

Yeah, well, we didn't sell. So the company is still privately held. Yeah, so it is still privately held. So I think that, look, one of the things that I have realized over the years is you always think that if we get a little bit bigger, things are going to get easier.

Right.

But a little bit bigger brings new issues. Right. And so I think that the number one thing that, that every great entrepreneur has shown me over the years is that if that you're always going to continue to face these things and you've got to figure out how to tackle them. And that is such a key thing. So you don't walk into entrepreneurship thinking eventually this is all going to be in a nice neat bowl, right? You're what you do. If you want to grow your company and you want to get better, then you're going to face things that are new, that are challenging, whether that's a new Competitor, whether that's a crazy economy, whatever that is. So I think that is such a key thing for people to hear too, because the number of entrepreneurs that I've spoken to who have said to me, like, even at the million point, they're like, so at what point could you not worry? Right? Never. Right. And so, you know, I wrote this book Undaunted a few years ago. I think that's when you and I first talked, when I was first on. And I think that the thing that I've heard most about that company is it's probably the most real account of an entrepreneur's life. And coupled with if you're trying to raise a family and all of, all of these pieces, there's all of that, and there is no balance. That's another thing that I've talked about. I mean, when I used to hear that all the time, like, find your balance, I'm like, I don't have any. I mean, some days I do, but there's many days where it's just. There's a lot of chaos.

And I think it's the perfect golf shot. Every now and then you'll hit one, but.

Right, right. But you don't walk into entrepreneurship, right, thinking that one day, maybe you do. But the best entrepreneurs learn that you just, if you want something that you haven't achieved yet, you're going to face hurdles, you're going to face something new that you don't have experience hitting. And you've gotta, you've gotta go through the mud. And I think that's a real thing.

The fluidity. You know what? This is what I have against the people who, the fake experts who write the books with formulas, how you handle this and how you handle that. Because they've interviewed a bunch of people, tellingly, they've never done anything themselves. They're writing a book for you. And it's easy to come up with a formula that'll work in a perfect environment. But the thing is, life is, I mean, like, even our families, with our kids, we could do everything we know, right, Perfect, and then it still goes to hell. Then you have to respond, you know, it's just like, now what? And so running a business is exactly the same. And that's if you're just running the normal business. But as you, as you come up through the ranks, you get systems in place, you get, you learn how the situations repeat and you develop ways of handling it. But it's funny how those don't always Translate when you're 2 times bigger, 5 times bigger, 10 times bigger. You have to come up with new, go to solutions and the complexity is just never ends. And so you're a smart person. I'm sure people told you that. I'm sure you knew that before you headed into it. Was it still a surprise for you, the level of that as you know, went headlong into these growth issues and you were, you had these challenges coming at you.

Yeah. It's interesting. I often say if, if I would have known what I know today, I might not have done it. Right. I mean it's another, it's a chapter that I talk about a lot in life that it's like if you know too much about the end, you'll never get past the beginning. Right. Because you just. But you have to commit to diving in.

Yeah.

And if you dive in, if you go through the hard stuff, that is the space that I look back on and think about my own growth and about what I accomplished during that time when I thought that it was a very challenging time, I didn't know how I was going to be able to deal with it. It's easier to look back on, I mean life, but also your business life and look at those times that were so challenging at the time. But the only way to get through it is to actually go through it. And so I think that's. You can be the smartest person in the world, but if you're not committed to weathering a storm, rolling up your sleeves and getting in there and doing what it takes. And I think for me, what the other piece that I've learned is that you can get all of this advice. I love talking to people and especially people that have. I feel like maybe they've been through it. When I look back and think about a lot of that advice, first of all, it never will solve my problem. Exactly. Right. It's always a tiny bit different. There's something that's different about it.

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But I think that the other piece of it is that I'm not looking for people to solve my problem either. That's another thing. You wouldn't be an entrepreneur if you thought, I just call up Larry and he's going to just make a phone call and he's going to fix it. Right? You actually want to break new ground. You want to do something different. And I think that is such an important piece for people to remember. But sometimes people need that reminder, right? I think that's what I try and do, especially as I talk to entrepreneurs, if I speak to a larger audience, is that if I can be that person that reminds them why they're here and what they've been able to weather, then I think I can give them back that energy to be able to.

Have so many things for us to keep in our head and everything. And so it's not that you don't know it, but if you talk with, have that conversation you're talking about, and maybe you just help them get there, reorganize their priorities or reestablish their priorities or their sequences or help them get back on track. It's the way they ordinarily operate, but they maybe haven't realized, you know, we get knocked off track a lot of times. We're not aware of it or just kind of caught up in the confusion forest for the tree situation. But humor me for a minute. If you were going to write, you said the success of Undaunted was because you told the real world of really how it went. Can you think of giving an example of since you wrote the book and, you know, has since taken the company even bigger and bigger and expansion and this we won't even. I can't even begin to itemize all of the things that you've had to face and deal with and navigate. But one particular, a particular example of something big you ran into, an example that since you wrote the book, that and how you handle that, how you approached it, how you unpeel the thing.

So I wrote the book actually right before COVID And I think that Covid, for any business leader, was a. It was a big unknown, right? And for me, what I figured out in any challenging situation in my life is that I have to see it. I have to get in there and really understand what the problems are. I can listen to my team. I can see what's going on. So moving out of my place as a CEO and then actually getting into the stores and Understanding the out of stock situations. The EDI electronic data transmission that was showing up at the register, but not really showing up at the register in many of these stores, because they were just so backed up, especially in our category, water. So authorizing that trucks just get out there and go to stores, bypassing distributors, even so that we could get the stores filled. Things like that. I think it goes back to. Sometimes you have to throw the rules out. Right.

There you go.

And you have to be able to look at how do I service the consumer. Not just the consumer that enjoys the product, but the consumer that's actually trying to fill their shelves. Because we really have both consumers in a product like hint. And so being able to. Nobody wrote a manual for that when we were going through. And not just me, but for anybody who was dealing with that successfully. I think dealing with COVID successfully from a business perspective, I think that's like a. That's a time. And I think also being able to be an authentic leader, that is. I don't think you can ask your team to go and do things that you're not willing to do yourself. So here I was asking people to go into stores at a time I know nobody really wants to think about this time, but the stores were scary, especially in the B and people are wearing masks. So there were a few people that were like, wait, you're sitting in your office, sitting on a zoom call with us, and you're not actually going into stores? And I couldn't do that. I mean, it's the same. Like, I would not. I think that is the other thing that I've recognized about leadership. And I'm sure there's some books out there to your point, that talk about this, but I really saw firsthand, how do you build trust with your team? You put yourself in the arena. Right. You have to. And especially when things are scary.

Yeah.

And I think that is a key situation that I saw. And we grew substantially because there were a lot of other leaders in our industry who weren't doing that, and they were not servicing the stores like we were. And they lost space, and it took them a long time to get it back. Back, if ever.

Yeah. I'm reminded of legendary coach Bear Bryant at Alabama. And over the years, he got more and more removed from his players and where at the time, at the end of his career, he went through the practice, not on the field, walking around with a whistle and talking to the players and moving them around, he. Or even the sideline, he was up in his tower, looking down he thought I could sit and look. And then he lost touch with the players and the whole program kind of soured there a little bit towards the end. It just wasn't out. Same Alabama. They did have the magic. But the thing is that, let's see if you'll agree with it. One thing to realize when people, you know, you're going to go through it, everybody listening, you're either going to, you're going to go through it on the way down or the way up, you're going to run into major issues, right? Yeah, it's good if you get a game plan or an idea about how to handle it. Number one, you're not going to figure it out all at once. You're not going to go to the mountaintop with like Moses and come down with 10 commandments to solve your business, because even if you did, your people wouldn't listen to you because all of a sudden they're not involved in any of these solutions. And so it's not. You're not going to come at all the genius. You're not going to be Leonardo coming up with this solution no one's ever thought of, and you're going to solve it. It's like you go through. It's like you're reading a book one page at a time. You get up, you go to work, someone comes in, a phone call comes in, you respond. You look at an email here, you respond and you start working your way through it. And so you don't have to. So don't get overwhelmed with, what am I going to do? You don't need to know. You just need to know the next step. And the other thing is you're the smartest person on your company to make these kind of decisions. And so the smart way to look at it is to get yourself out there in front of the issue and let the answers come to you. If you're there and you see it with your own eyes, not filtered through somebody else telling you, see with your own eyes, it's like all of a sudden your experience, your knowledge, your skill set will kick in. It's like, okay, now I know. Now I know what we need to do. Okay, I've seen it. I got it. Then you can move forward. So it's a process. That's another way. So I'm interested in your feedback on that.

It's interesting. I've thought a lot about the word smart, and I wouldn't say that I'm dumb, right. And I'm not trying to take. Take myself down A few levels, but I think that leadership is great. Leadership is empathy, right? And you see the empathy. And I think a lot of what you're talking about is that there's a lot of gut, there's a lot of trying to figure, there's problem solving, but there's also thinking about other people, right. Whether that's the consumer or that's your employees. And you're sitting there thinking about is this the right thing to do? Right. And I think that, that there are a lot of smart people in the world who don't have that gut and don't have that skill. And I think that it really boils down to caring as well. Right. And I think, I mean, that's another thing that I often, if anyone listens to me, I say to my kids who are in their 20s, like, you gotta work on something that you care about. Whether you go start a company or you're walking into a business, it's great to get a big paycheck and maybe you do that for a certain period of time. But if you don't really care about what you're doing, if you're not interested in and the people that you work with or the product or the service, I mean, it's going to get old. You're not going to be coming up with the solves for when you're hitting these roadblocks. And again, this is not just as a CEO, this is also, I think, just in day to day life. Like you have to be interested in what you're going to spend the majority of your day working on. And if you're not, then I think it's pretty tough to be, to really have that empathy.

Well, you won't get any enjoyment out of it if you don't care about it. You're not going to make the effort. And when you do accomplish something, it's not going to mean anything to you. And so you're not going to get the satisfaction that somebody who really cared about the project is getting by seeing it actually happen and take place one step at a time. You're just not going to enjoy it and so you better go find something else.

Well, and I think that's going back to leadership too. I think it's, look, there's a lot of founders that I've met and some of them very successful, some of them not or have had challenges or failures or whatever and along the way, but I think that the thing that most of them have that you can just see it in their soul is this, they care. Right they have this, they have this idea that they want to get out in the world because it's going to help people or it's going to solve a problem for people. And I think that the challenge for people who are not empathetic leaders is that when you don't have that, that founder caring about what the next step is and thinking about it, that's where you often see companies kind of hit the bumps in the road. Because there are leaders, very smart people who will come into to companies, but those aren't typically the people that are going to turn things around or lead in the same with the same caring that a founder entrepreneur. I mean look at Apple. Apple had go back to the Steve Jobs analogy, right? I mean they didn't care about the company in the same way as Steve did. Steve just like ate and breathed.

It's like I've heard this phrase, I'm sure there's been books written on it too. I'm sure you have skin in the game. It's like, do they have this. Entrepreneurs have skin in the game. They lifeblood is in there. And, and so when you bring in these, well, that's a lot of time. The problem with outside consultants and experts, you think you're in a problem and you got someone over there that they're telling you they're going to solve it. They've done this, they've done that and you want to trust them. You know you're looking for help and you bring them in, you find out they're just bringing, you know, it's kind of like a decorator. You've redecorated your house where you get a decorator and they have the same style, they just go and they use the same kind of tones, the same furniture and same look. And they just take that look and they put it down in a beach house or they take maybe a little modification. But this designer pretty much you're going to do their thing. But it's kind of like you see that with a lot of consultants or a lot of experts, even bringing in a new CEO or a new person for whatever you like. Oh, I can't wait. Look what they did in the past. Well, they're just going to bring in and import everything they did in the past. But that's old, that's old information and maybe ill fitting. Maybe this isn't your situation at all.

I think that's so true and I think it's applicable not just to consumer products companies. I think it's also going back to your analogy of sports teams. I mean, I think that's true, too, that if you don't have somebody who's coming in who really cares about the players and understanding of what's going on overall or where the deficits are, even to some extent, who their families are, what they care about, all of those kind of things, I think, bubble up into being an empathetic leader, I guess, and an authentic leader, because if you show that you have an understanding and get to know people along the way, too, then you're going to have a lot better results out of your team. And again, whatever your team is.

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