How I Built This with Guy Raz - How I Built Resilience: Kara Goldin of Hint

Episode Date: April 1, 2021

After giving up diet soda, Kara Goldin started adding fresh fruit to her drinking water to make it more fun. This inspired her to create Hint water, a line of unsweetened flavored water beverages that are now available in over 30,000 stores nationwide. Kara shares how sales have almost doubled as Hint invested in e-commerce during the pandemic, and offers her advice for entrepreneurs trying to break into saturated market spaces like the beverage industry. These conversations are excerpts from our How I Built Resilience series, where Guy talks online with founders and entrepreneurs about how they're navigating turbulent times.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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with iconic entrepreneurs and change makers, plus immersive networking sessions designed to help you build and grow your community of support and, of course, your business. You can learn more about the summit and get tickets at summit.npr.org, and I cannot wait to see you there. Thank you to GoDaddy, the presenting sponsor of this year's summit, and to our supporting sponsor, Dell Technologies. Hey, everyone, and welcome to How I Built This Resilience Edition from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. Each week, on Thursday, we invite entrepreneurs and other business leaders to come onto the show to talk about how they've been building resilience into their businesses this past year. And you can join us each Thursday at 9 a.m. Pacific

12 Eastern on the How I Built This Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube pages to hear the conversation and ask questions as well. And today, my conversation with Kara Golden, the founder and CEO of Hint. Hint is probably best known for its fruit-flavored waters, but it also makes sunscreen, hand sanitizer, and body care products. Hint water was at one time dubbed the unofficial drink of Silicon Valley because it was stocked at the offices of Google, Uber, and other tech companies. And now it's a available in more than 30,000 stores nationwide. And since the pandemic, their sales have almost doubled.

I first asked Kara about how she got the idea for Hint. I was a tech executive. I was not a beverage executive. I have never worked in the beverage industry outside of Hint. And when I left my role at America Online, I was running their e-commerce and shopping partnerships. and when I left that role, that's when I started looking at my own health. And I was trying to get healthy.

I had a bunch of kids. They had three kids under the age of four at the time. And I couldn't lose the weight. I had terrible adult acne. My energy levels were low. So I started looking at dieting and counting calories and working out. And what I figured out was that trying those things was a great first step, but nothing worked for me.

And so one day I looked at it. my diet soda can and saw that there were a lot of ingredients I didn't understand. And at that time, diet drinks were 10 calories. They hadn't perfected zero calories. So I decided to put it to the side, just to do a test, to see what would happen to me just by giving up my diet soda that I had been drinking for years. And when I did that, I was thirsty. So I started drinking water. And I said, you know, water is great, but it's so darn boring. So let me slice up some fruit, throw it in the water. Two and a half weeks after doing this, my skin cleared up and my energy levels were back. I just had switched the drinks. And I actually grew up in Arizona where I should have been drinking a lot more water, but somewhere I had sort of justified my diet soda thinking there's water in there somewhere, but not really thinking about the other stuff and what that was doing to my health. People notice when you've changed that significant in this short of time. Again, my whole network was tech executives, and I was taking a break at this

point to be a mom and try and figure out what I wanted to do. You and I were talking about traveling. I was traveling 180,000 miles a year that year with AOL, and I thought, I'm done. I'm going to go back to San Francisco with Liv. But the thing for me, after kind of thinking on this for about a year, I thought, you know, if there was just a drink that I could go to the local grocery store and buy that just had fruit in it that didn't have sugar or diet sweeteners in it, I'd be set. Yeah. And I missed going to the store and buying that six or 12 pack of diet soda. And I went to my local Whole Foods and I said, how do I get a product on the shelf?

And again, I'm a customer. I'm not a beverage executive. And he said, well, I don't know. We have this program that was for local companies. And I thought, it'd be kind of fun to just go and just start a company, get a product on the shelf, and see what would happen. I had no idea what I was getting into. But my purpose and my mission was never to start a beverage company. Being a beverage company was a tool to health.

And that's how I thought about it. And I thought, if I can just get a product on the shelf, I could help other people drink water. Obviously, the diet industry and the diet soda industry was so big. And yet I had no idea. I knew I was starting a company and launching a product, but I had no idea that I was launching a new category. And you've interviewed tons of people, and I know you know this, that launching a category, the problem with that is that you're not, not only launching, you know, a new company where you've got to explain and build a brand, but launching a category, you've got a ton of education, not only with the consumer,

but also with the buyers that were gatekeepers for me to actually get it on the shelf. Yeah. So there were so many things that I didn't know about it, but more than anything, my curiosity and my sort of interest in really being a lifelong learner, I was fascinated by this industry and how it really was the gatekeeper to health in me and so many people. How did you, I mean, I think at the beginning, you actually kind of dipped into your own savings, right? I mean, you had left AOL and so maybe you had a little bit of money there and you self-financed at the beginning, right? Yeah.

I remember saying to one person, they said, hey, let me invest in what you're doing. It sounds really interesting. I said, don't do that, actually. I want to still have dinner with you. I have no idea what I'm doing right now. And so I talk about the first two years as getting my MBA and beverages and really trying to understand exactly how to do what I wanted to do. In addition to launching a product that didn't have sweeteners in it, I also wanted to launch a product that didn't have preservatives in it. And again, I kept asking people, so why do you need preservatives?

And the go-to for so many people was, you just do. And I thought, okay, but why? I came from the tech industry. Just tell me, why do you need preservatives? And they said, well, if you're using real fruit, then you need preservatives in order to get a shelf life. And I said, okay, but why is that? 95% of the people that were bottling beverages said, listen, lady, you have no idea what you're talking about. You're asking questions that I don't know the answers to.

I just do. And I said, okay. But then a few of them said, I don't know the answer. I'm really curious, too. If you ever find that answer out, come back and let me know. And so we were the first beverage using real stuff to actually produce a product that didn't have preservatives in it as well. Kara, I want to ask you about the past year because obviously it's been a tricky year for so many businesses. Forget about the economy for a moment, just legit. I think many businesses have been surprised or pleasantly surprised at actually how they did in 2020, with the exception, of course, of travel and restaurants and, you know, many small mom and pop businesses. But some businesses have done okay. Before we talk about how Hint did last year, tell me what, I mean, as, I mean, San Francisco where you're based, because I think your offices are in the Marina District. I mean, San Francisco is the first city to shut down, to lock down in the United States in. I think it was like March 17th of last year because, as you know, I'm in the Bay Area. And so I remember that. What did you think at that time? I mean, were you thinking, oh, my God, this is going to be a disaster for us?

I was in New York a few days before that. And we actually shut down our office on March 12th last year when we really saw our employees pretty concerned. We have an office in New York and Tribeca as well. And I remember flying back. on Friday the 13th and dropping into a Target store because I had started to see customer service complaints saying you're out of stock in Target, which is a huge customer for us. So I stopped in as soon as I landed at SFO and saw that our shelves were empty. Yeah. And I remember calling our head of sales and I said there's no backstock. You know, what do we do? And I went to the manager and I

said, are you reordering off of the register data? And the registered data was actually showing that everything was fine. So that was the point that I really knew that we had an issue. And so the next morning, I stopped at a few other target stores. And I'm like, Houston, we have a problem. We have a huge problem. So we went out to our team and we said, my biggest pet peeve is saying, we've got a problem. And I don't want to be the recipient of we've got a problem. And instead, we went out to all of our stores across the country. And we said, hey, can we send in a truck? If you guys are out of stock and something's not working with the software, I don't know what's going on. But can we just send a truck in? And like 70% of our customers said, sure. And I said, we'll figure out the invoicing

later. But we were just, that was the weekend before all of the stuff was going on. When we come back in just a moment, more of my conversation with Kara Golden and how the company has dealt with the pandemic. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This Resilience Edition from NPR. The New York Times bestselling book How I Built This is now available. It's a great read and a great gift for anyone looking for ideas, inspiration, wisdom, and encouragement to have the courage to put out an idea into the world. It's filled with tons of stories you haven't heard about how some of the greatest entrepreneurs you know and respect started out at the very bottom. Check out how I built this, the book, available wherever you buy your books.

Hey, welcome back to how I built this Resilience Edition. And I'm talking with Kara Golden. She's the CEO and founder of Hint. In March of 2020, as the pandemic started shutting things down, Kara noticed that Hintwater wasn't on the shelves at her local target. And she realized the company had a big problem. It needed to get product on trucks and in stores right away. Building a brand from scratch and having the ability to be scrappy, we basically bypassed all of the way that we had been doing business and went back to our roots and said, let's just get the trucks in there. And we started reaching out to different trucking companies.

The interesting thing was that there were a lot of trucking companies that were actually. having lots of issues because their customers were not using them. So we were able to find the trucks pretty quickly. But in addition, being an essential product, there are things that we have to do as an essential product that other companies don't have to do. We have to remain in stock as an essential product on the shelves. And so the good news is that we had planned on a pretty big year this year. We were going into large retailers like Walmart and Sam's Club and Aldi. And so we wanted to make sure that our production was really solid. We do everything in the U.S.

A lot of companies buy cans, a lot of the canned manufacturers are in China. We don't do any of that. We do everything locally. And so when all of this was hitting, the good news is that we had done a lot of work for the last four years to automate. So our production lines, when we're actually filling the product, don't have people in the room. Right. So they are very, very automated. And so there were a lot of things that we did right along the way, obviously not knowing that it was going to be a pandemic. But it definitely benefited us. And finally, I think, you know, the key difference talking about employees is that being an essential product, while everybody was hearing that they should shelter in place and stay home, I was saying to our employees, here's your N95 masks that we have left over from the fires and your hand sanitizers and your gloves and you need to work. You need to get out there and work, which I was not the most popular

person on the planet. Yeah, what do you mean? I mean, you wanted them to go back to the office? No, to merchandise, to get into stores and go and help. And so I remember a couple of my employees reached out to me and said, and, you know, obviously pretty comfortable with me, they said, are you trying to kill me? Yeah. I mean, it was, right? It was, it was at a time when they were being told. And, and so I had never managed during a pandemic. I had never seen, you know, anything like this. What did I do? I put my Lula lemons on and my hint jacket on, and I went out to stores. And so I started, I went back to my roots of taking on a route in Marin County, where I live. And I started to really look at what is the situation? Because if it really, really got scary in these stores, I didn't want my team

to be in that situation. And so things, tiny little details, like I went to a manager and I said, hey, I know you guys open at 7 a.m. Can I come here at 6.30? There's probably somebody flipping the lights on at 630. And he said, sure. So then I reached out to my team, and I said, you can go at 630. That's what the manager told me. You just need to ask. And so just little things like that, I think not only allowed us to do our job better, but also be supportive to grocery stores who were really having a challenging time and also help our team feel safe. How about now? Are people coming back to your offices? Are Are your employees working at your headquarters again? So we are not officially back in the office, probably the earliest is the fall at this point.

But it was interesting because a few of our employees on both coasts reached out and said, hey, can we go back into the office? Because I think that the challenge is that so many people are either living alone or they're living with roommates. right, or they don't have, you know, the right Wi-Fi or whatever it is. And, you know, we've made it clear there's nobody really in the office, so you're not getting community. And, but it's quiet. You can go in if you want, so we've kept them open. But we didn't furlough anybody during this time. We reallocated. You had mentioned Google, for example, one of our biggest customers. And obviously, when Google offices closed, that business for us went away. It was about four.

15% of our overall business. And so with that, we said to our team, we don't want to lay anybody off, but we might have to reallocate your role. And pretty much everybody was okay. With that, we had a few people who just said it wasn't and they decided to leave. But in addition, with that 15% of business that we knew we were going to lose, we already had a direct-to-consumer business that we started seven years ago. And so we said, how do we, what can we control right now the direct-to-consumer business? So we threw the gas on the direct-to-consumer business. So that business, you mentioned, our overall business almost doubled.

That business tripled for us since last March. And it really, I think because we had it all in place and we were ready to go, that really made a difference. A question from William Tangora, William asks, do you have any advice for breaking into a space like beverages that is so saturated, how do you break into a space where people assume their saturation? And should you avoid that? We actually have a whole episode

about this very issue coming up on the show on Monday, but I'd love to hear your answer. Yeah, I mean, I think that the core thing that I share with entrepreneurs is you have to have an idea and you have to have a problem or you have to have a solution to that problem to fix it.

And then you have to start. You have to start somewhere. And I think that I view entrepreneurship as it's a puzzle, right? And I think it will really frustrate people if you need to have the picture and you need to know that there's an end point. Every single day, great entrepreneurs will tell you that the puzzle keeps changing, keeps adding on. It's constantly moving.

Maybe people take puzzle pieces. is away from you and you don't exactly know when they're coming or if they're coming back. But you have to figure out how do you continue adding on? So I think it's just it's a matter of trying and it's a matter of are you the person that really wants to dig in to a challenge and, you know, satisfy your curiosity. And then I also think that you have to have the ability to build out a team or get a partner that knows how to build out a team. I mean, hint is not just me. I have an incredible team behind me now of over 200 people

that I would not be able to do what I do every day without them. And I think that that's the missing piece. You can have a great idea and a solution to that idea. But if you cannot build out the team, then it's not going to happen. Yeah. Kara, before we go, what is something that you kind of have implemented? over the past year, that because of the pandemic, that you want to kind of carry forward in the company or the culture of the company or how you work into the future?

I think the last year has really magnified for me this idea that we have to keep trying, that there will always be a little bit of uncertainty. There will always be, hopefully not another pandemic, but there will always be this uncertainty, not really exactly sure what to do, but you have to go and try. And that is something that not having the experience when I started hint, I actually think helped me. And I think that that is so clear to me now that it's like you don't need the experience. You don't need to have all the eyes dotted and tees crossed.

You need to just go and try. And that's the key thing. That's an excerpt from my live conversation with Kara Golden, CEO, and founder of Hint. If you want to see the full interview or any of our past live interviews, you can find them on the How I Built This Facebook page or at YouTube.com slash NPR. And if you want to join our conversation live and maybe even ask questions, they happen every Thursday at 9 Pacific, noon Eastern. If you want to find out more about the How I Built This Resilience series or other virtual NPR events, You can go to NPR Presents.org. This episode was produced by Liz Metzker with help from Ferris Safari,

J.C. Howard, Bruce Grant, Elmanian, Gianna Capadona, John Isabella, Julia Carney, Neva Grant, and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is Janet Ujong Lee. Thanks for listening. Stay safe and I'll see you in a few days. I'm Guy Raz and you've been listening to How I Built This Resilience Edition from NPR.