Kara Goldin

On engagement rings and a new take on water.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:13):
I want to talk about. As far as engagements go,
a woman should absolutely have input in what her ring
is going to look like. This should be something that
happens long before the actual purchasing of the ring. It
should be something that is discussed in theory with rip
out magazines in windows and stores and fantasy trips. And

(00:34):
then shut up like he chose it, that was his idea.
Just like most relationships, you know what I mean, it's
really your idea, but you want to make the other
person think it's their idea. Happens in business all the time,
where you want to sort of position something so the
other person feels like it was their idea. It was
a really great idea you had that we should do
a cushion cut diamond with a micropavey halo around it,

(00:58):
set in rose gold. I thought that was great, and
then leave it alone. But when you want to know
about engage the rings, here's what you need to know.
Ovals and pairs look the biggest. Okay, oval and pair
look the biggest, So you'll see a lot of flashy
cash the showy people getting ovals and pairs because they
look the biggest. Ash or cut, which is like a square, emerald,

(01:21):
a cushion looks the smallest round looks fairly big, because
if you think about it, with a round and a
pair and an oval, it's really mostly about the surface
area on top, and then you see that point on
the bottom. With emeralds or other shapes, it's not quite
the same proportions. Also, you could get a ring that
is really big looking for its size. These are the measurements.

(01:45):
There are many sections. There's a color section. The color
goes D all the way to Z, and Tiffany has
D through I. I is still near colorless and will
still look white. There are many famous people who have
eye rings. The one that Chris Humphrey soul that was
Kim Kardashians was an eye ring um and you can
get more bang for your buck out of an eye,

(02:06):
but like I said, Tiffany carries it. It's still near colorless.
So the eye is the color. Color matters more in
different stones, So color matters less in an oval a
pair around because they have all that brilliance and fire
so that you're catching all that light, and so the
color is a little more forgiving in a ring like
an emerald cut, where it's all that surface area. It

(02:28):
should be closer to the you know, D E F
G h I. D E F is like investment stones,
Like a D stone is an investment stone, meaning most
people would never know the difference between a D and
an F G h I. You're gonna get better value. Um.
But then there's another section that has the measurements. And

(02:48):
so I had an emerald cut ring for example, that
really looked really big, But that's because the measurements are
not totally the best proportions, meaning there's less on the
bottom and that do think that's great, it's top heavy.
The problem is it didn't have a lot of light
that went through it because of the way that it's cut.
So a cut is really important, and you will a
diamond will speak to you. You will actually it will

(03:08):
sing to you. You will understand if it's for you.
Market's a gorgeous cut also looks very big like a pair,
and an oval and heart shape also looks big and
is not as good of an investment because people don't
buy them as much in the resale. People don't buy
pairs as much in the resale. People don't buy markets
as much in the resale. But you might be able
to get a really interesting stone at an interesting price.
When you see someone I call it schmaltz who has

(03:30):
that the diamonds around the diamond the main diamond, that's pavey,
or there's a diamond halo they call it. When you
see that around the main diamond, that schmaltz makes the
diamond look bigger. So a lot of times people use
a smaller stone and schmaltz it once and that makes
it look bigger. Schmaltz it twice, that makes it look
even bigger. And then people will sometimes have side stones

(03:50):
within the schmaltz, and schmaltz around the side stones, and
smelts around the band and schmaltz around the base. All
of that is designed to make it look bigger. And
some people even have big, big stones, but still they
just can't resist. They have to keep going with the
schmaltz to make it look bigger. The real word schmaltz
is fat in Yiddish. It's like chicken fat. But I
call it the schmaltz in this case, and yes, I'm

(04:11):
the only person in the world except for jewelers I've
worked with, that call this the schmaltz. But the single schmaltz,
a double schmaltz. So if you are on a budget,
my advice to you would be to get a stone
in the g h I category that speaks to you,
that has good proportions. And if it's not going to
be that big and you care about size, go Oval,
go pair, go Marquis. And if you still care about size,

(04:35):
because you really want more bang for your buck, do
some sort of nice, delicate halo. If you have a
really stunning, beautiful, amazing stone, I wouldn't schmeltz it up.
Pick side stones that really accentuated. Um. If you want
side stones that make it look bigger, that would be
sort of like the half moons or the triangle, because

(04:57):
if you're talking about around square any shape, those are
gonna like sort of blend in with the middlestone. It's
all trickery. The side stones sort of accentuate the middlestone
and will blend in and make it look like one
bigger stone. In addition, uh, if you have a stunning stone,
but you do just like that little sparkle, you can
also do all that micropavy and that schmaltz only on

(05:18):
the band and on like what I call the scaffolding
of the building like the underbelly. It's called a drop tailo,
so it's not showing from the top, but from the
side you can see it and it comes sort of
up on the PRONX. I have a lot of experience
at this, I know a lot about this topic. I
like this topic. And then, last, but not least, if
you really don't have a budget and you can only
have a small stone, you can surround that small stone

(05:42):
with like with larger stones, meaning you could use a
small sliver emerald and then um put slightly smaller sliver
emeralds around it and it brings the eye to think
that it's one large emerald. That's another brand of trick
or so focus on the setting more than, if not

(06:05):
just equal to the main stone. If you're on a budget,
which most people are, it's amazing what you can do
with a good design. It's like clothing. You'd rather have
less expensive, well fitting clothing than expensive ill fitting clothing.
So don't just get a good stone and then have
no room in your budget for a setting. Have enough
budget so that the whole entire picture and the frame

(06:28):
around it looks beautiful. Well, my guest today is Kara Golden.
She is the founder and CEO of Hint Water, a
flavored water brand that focuses on practical solutions for health.
She also wrote the book Undaunted, about how she started
this brand and made it into a nationally known beverage.

(06:50):
I loved hearing about the journey of creating an iconic
and popular product and how she used her network to
launch her business to the next level. I know you're
gonna love what she has to say. Very very smart cookie.

(07:12):
I'm excited. I'm really excited. I know I am too.
So just being able to pour through your background and
you know, read about your childhood is so interesting. I
have to say, well, thank you so much. I mean,
my my podcast is a little bit smaller than yours,
but uh it's uh it's called The Carre Golden Show,

(07:32):
and I if you're interested, I'd love to have you
on because I feel the same way about you and
thank you. Yeah. So it's uh, you know, it's not
easy to kind of uh not only build a brand,
but also just a lot of it is is uh
not actually knowing what I was doing, but willing to
put in the work right and go and figure it

(07:54):
out and ask a ton of questions, and I mean
that is really that's the secret sauce. You didn't know
about the beverage business, or you didn't know if you
could sustain in the health area, or because you had
it seems like you had a really strong sales background
in your family and in your own life, which is
really an interesting part of your sort of biography. I

(08:16):
didn't have any experience in the beverage industry, and I
knew that I was launching a new brand. What I
didn't know until a couple of months into this, after
meeting with buyers and hearing from consumers, was that we
were also launching a category. I did the exact same thing.
That's so funny. I didn't even think of it that way.
You launched a new category, and the beverage industry where

(08:38):
you were, the margins are way more difficult than in
in cocktails. Where I was, it was as competitive and
also a new category. But where you are, the margins
pennies make a difference. I mean, I just watched Warren
Buffett's UH documentary and he was talking about one penny
more per bottle of Coca Cola was billions of dollars. Yeah, exactly,

(09:01):
and I think that the big difference, and again I
don't pretend to sort of know about alcohol or mixer
industry other than you know, just barely. But but you know,
the differences is that our average consumer once they actually
started drinking our product, Like at Google, for example, there's
probably a few people that weren't drinking it at Google

(09:22):
when we first got in there, but it just became
this kind of cultish thing to drink, and they were
drinking between They told us six to nine a day.
This is amazing. Well, right, a product like that that's
fun to drink, that is so good for you, it's
just water, right, And and so people were drinking it,
and Google was thrilled because they felt that their consumers

(09:45):
or you know, their employees were getting healthier. And you know,
leave it to Google to sort of track it as well.
That they came, they told us, you know, since we've
brought hint in there's people are not a sick any more.
You know, they're not taking sick to so all of
these things that again, it wasn't our intent to sort

(10:07):
of fix those things. I had seen it in my
own life when I gave up drinking diet soda. How
it changed my health. But yeah, so anyway, it was.
It was, you know, sort of an act. I called
myself an accident and entrepreneur because I didn't intend to
go and be an entrepreneur or launch a beverage company.

(10:29):
I really wanted to bring health into a lot of
people and that was my mission. It's still my mission today. Well,
that's interesting that it's sort of you're saying, it's sort
of like a happy accident. So that wasn't by design
that you would get it into the tech companies and
that that would become sort of its own niche world.
That's so it's so random but so specific that you

(10:52):
would have that this beverage hint beverage. For anyone at
home who doesn't know exactly what we're talking about, we'll
get to it specifically, Um, that this bridge, this bottled
beverage would become a cult Silicon Valley favorite. That's so
random and so specific at the same time. So how
does that happen? Did you know people there and you

(11:12):
just dropped off cases? How did that work? So it's
a crazy story. I came from the tech industry. I
was running America Online's e commerce and shopping partnerships, and
I had taken a few years off and I live
in San Francisco. I was kind of halfway talking to
people about different roles in Silicon Valley, but not really

(11:34):
that serious. When I left A well, I actually had
three kids under the age of four, so I was
in crazy town, right. It was just I was enjoying
being a mom. I was I knew I wanted to
go back and do something, but I wasn't that serious
about actually going and jumping in. My husband is a
Silicon Valley attorney. Uh now works at HINT as our

(11:56):
chief operating officer full time. But but in the early days,
he hadn't introduced me to this guy that worked with
him at Netscape, who was one of the first employees
at Google, a Mead Cortessani. And Omead and I became
friendly and he said, you know, you should come and
talk to me about working at Google. And so when
he was recruiting me pretty heavily, and and that's when, uh,

(12:20):
you know, I felt bad because I really liked him
a lot, and I felt like I was kind of
wasting his time just by going and meeting with him.
And then finally I pulled a bottle out of hint.
I had been doing it for about eighteen months and
trying to figure out a lot of things. And I said, listen,
I I know this is going to seem really crazy,
and it is a little bit crazy, but I'm launching
this beverage. And he said, wait, what I mean you

(12:41):
couldn't believe it? And I said, yeah, I know it's crazy,
but I had given up drinking diet soda and tried
to drink water and found water really boring. So I
developed this product. And you know, we've gotten an into
about twenty stores around San Francisco and Whole Foods and
some of the others. And he said, oh, it's really interesting.

(13:02):
He said, I'm working on this initiative inside Google that
to help our employees get healthier. And uh. And you know,
this was not his job. This is sort of his
side project that they asked him to get involved in.
And he said, I should introduce you to this guy, Charlie,
who runs all of the food and he's a chef
and he's going to make healthy things. But I don't

(13:24):
think they've done anything about the beverages yet. So again,
it was kind of an accident. He didn't sit there
and say, oh, I'm gonna hook you up with these
people and they're gonna serve, They're gonna serve hint inside
of Google. But when Charlie called me and said, oh
I love oh Mead, you know, I'd be happy to
give it a try, you know whatever, drop off a
couple of cases. The next day he called me and

(13:46):
he said, do you have thirty cases? The next day
three cases. We were the only beverage in Google for
a couple of years. Yeah. It was crazy. And and
so you know again like they became our biggest retailer.
And and when like Cheryl Sandberg left Google and went
to Facebook, I got a call from her assistant and
she said, oh, Cheryl lives the fizz, the carbonated product,

(14:09):
and and she was wondering if you can have hinted
side of Facebook two. And I'm like, oh, let me
think for a minute. Okay, Sure. So it became the
drink of Silicon Valley. And and you know, truly was
by by accident. As I tell all entrepreneurs, you know,
connections can get you into places, but they can't keep

(14:31):
the beverage alive, right, you can't. I mean they can,
I'm sure you would agree with this too. Unless you
know you're good or your products good, right, you're not
going to be able to just stay collecting dust. I mean,
and you can get them into the restaurant, but if
the food is not good, they're not coming back and
they're not going to be a regular customer exactly. And
that's the story. You chose to find your way in

(14:55):
another path. You could have just gone in and inter
move for the job and not thought of that. I mean,
that's you know, that's pretty remarkable, I would say. I mean,
you just always be networking, you know. And I say
a lot of people can't afford their own publicist and
they think it's like this wizard's job. I have a
great publicist, but I used to be my own publicists.
I used to watch TV and then see who produced

(15:15):
something and then say that's a human being somewhere and
call their office, call their assistant, maybe send them cookies
when I used to bake wheat, egg and dairy free cookies.
And then you know, you get a meeting people. Most
most people are accessible, I think, I totally agree. And
also having really a can do attitude as well. I mean,
in the early days I was loading up my grand

(15:36):
Cherokee and throwing cases in the car. And you know,
there were a few people that knew that I had
been an executive. I was the youngest vice president of
America Online and one of the few females at that level,
and especially people in Silicon Valley knew that I was
The people that knew that I was launching a beverage,
at least they knew what I had done before. But
I was willing to be scrappy. And it's interesting, Bethany.

(15:59):
I think that the thing that I really realized, and
something that I talk about in my book, is that
when I was leaving a O well, I had been
through you know what's termed a hockey stick, right. It
was a crazy time for a well, crazy growth, and
then it started to slow down. It was just sort
of leveling off naturally. But I was starting to feel

(16:21):
a little bored and I had grown something great, but
you know, I felt that I was in the mode
of teaching and managing all the time and again, which
was fine, but I had stopped learning and I didn't
get it at that time. I was just sort of
doing the same thing. It was like groundhog day every

(16:41):
single day. Doing the same thing when I ran into
the beverage industry. When I stopped drinking diet soda die
coke in particular, and started drinking plain water, what I
realized about my own life was that water was super boring.
I had been told for years drink more water, drink
for water. I grew up in Scottsdale, like I should

(17:03):
have been, you know, in Arizona. I've been drinking much
more water than I was, but I wasn't because it
was boring. So when I started slicing up fruit throwing
it in water, after two and a half weeks, I
lost over twenty pounds. I had been for years trying
to with all of my child births. I couldn't lose
the weight, and I had developed terrible acne. I had,

(17:26):
uh you know, my energy levels were down all of
these things. And then finally, when I put fruit and water,
I realized not only was I getting healthier, but in addition,
it was not that hard. And I realized how addicted
I had been every day too, you know, this can
of diet soda. I mean, it was just it was crazy,

(17:47):
and I just didn't want to live that way. But anyway,
when I finally looked at my local Whole Foods that
I just opened, and looked for a product like this,
a water that just had fruit in it, no sweet ners,
no preservatives in it. It wasn't there, And so I
just thought, God, should be fun while I'm trying to
figure out my tech job. Let me just see if

(18:09):
I can get a product on the shelf at Whole Foods.
And you know, if it doesn't work, then I don't know,
it would be a funny dinner conversation. How I tried
to do that and it didn't work. But you know,
people always said, especially the people early on when I
was thinking about launching this, they'd say, isn't that really risky?
And I believed then that two things. I was learning

(18:31):
so much. Every day I would get up and I'd say, Okay,
how can I make a little more progress? And for
me personally, it was it was what I needed. I
needed that growth, but I didn't know I needed it
because I was a big VP. I was you know,
fancy titles, all this stuff, and yet I stopped being

(18:51):
in a mode of learning. Well, the muscle gets atrophied
and all. It's like changing your shampoo. You use the
same shampoo every day your hair looks fine. One day
you change and you're like, oh wow, look at this
vibrance or something, and it's exciting, right, And and that
was the thing that I really appreciated. And and then,
you know, when people would say to me, isn't it
really risky to not be in tech and you know,

(19:12):
go and launch this beverage company. And I remember saying
one day to a front I'd say, well, that would
be assuming that I did a really poor job when
I was in tech. Well, that's it's funny because people
don't see people outside of their box. When I started
doing relief work in a major way, in the beginning,
I couldn't get, you know, a box of flip flops

(19:36):
or rainboots donated. And now I get, you know, millions
and millions and millions of dollars and millions from major
companies and and and high profile celebrities because I've established myself.
But some people don't see you in that new box.
But once it clicks, then they make the sense and say, oh, wow,
she was really good at being in the tech world,
and so she's probably gonna be good at anything. And
then it can it can really click and and we

(19:59):
have in common where you say, if people say you
shouldn't be doing it, then maybe you should be doing it.
That was how it was with me for relief for
and you I read that you sort of have that
same sort of philosophy that if if, if you know,
if people say you can't do it, that's probably why
you should. Yeah. And I, you know, always share with
people that there's always gonna be doubters right and in

(20:21):
the world, and they're gonna, you know, maybe a few
of them would say, oh, she was successful in the
southern industry, but now she's gonna, you know, go into
this industry and be successful. There's a lot of probably
more people that say I had more people saying early on,
and thankfully they don't say it too often these days. Uh.
You know that I was an arrogant tech executive and

(20:44):
I thought I could just go and launch a beverage company.
And you know, to some extent you just have to
brush that off and just move on. But you also,
you know, you hear it. If you're human, you hear
the feedback, and yet you know you and allow it
to affect you, or you can just keep moving. And
I think the thing that really saved me was from

(21:06):
day one of getting my product on the shelf a
whole Foods, I would hear from customers I had, you know,
in tech, we always had some sort of way to
communicate with the customer and have some sort of dialogue.
So from day one I put a phone number and
an email on the bottle and don't tell anybody, but

(21:27):
I was the customer service that was answering the coils
and the phone number, and and so people would call
me and they would say things like I've been trying
to drink water for years, thank you so much for
developing this product. Or the other thing that they told
me that I was just starting to hear about fifteen
years ago was uh, the sink called type two diabetes,

(21:48):
which is you know, different from type one diabetes and uh.
And the number of people who would talk to me
about this disease, how they had thought they were really
healthy and you know that somehow they're doing something wrong,
and it was just it was fascinating to me too.

(22:09):
And again going back to the point I made earlier,
how much I was learning about consumers and that there
was this feedback going because I didn't have that customer
feedback and that loop. Um. You know. Still to this day,
it's whenever there's challenging times, I go back and connect.
You're connecting, yeah, exactly beyond you have to connect with them.

(22:30):
They're there. You have to get the product in people's
mouth and see what they think about it. I mean,
I always say getting into supermarkets is like the mafia.
The same thing with the liquor business. It's controlled by
certain people. It's like you know, big Corporate America. It's
like anything that was like big tobacco. People have the
power and they've got the real estate and getting an
end cap and Walmart or Target for anyone who doesn't

(22:51):
know an end cap is like that good end of
the shelf space. It's all it's like a marquee on
top of you know, a theater. It's hard to get
that real estate. It's all intertwined and like anything else,
it's networking and connecting and power and she's smoothing. But
you have the power of people you know, wanting the product.
And now you're into other products, which I think is interesting.

(23:12):
How far you have sunscreen, you have deodorant, you have
hand sanitizer, and they're all natural and they all have
this fruit packaging, so it's on brand. So how far
into other categories are you going to go? Well, it's
a good question, I mean, you know, it was. It
was interesting because my intent was never to kind of
create this platform which we have frankly today. But I

(23:35):
had basil selk skin cancer on my nose and I
remember going to my dermatologist and finally getting it removed,
and it was a pretty scary situation. And finally she
said to me, you know, why don't you wear sunscreen?
And I said, because, I mean I wear it on
my skin, on my arms and but and maybe my chest,

(23:57):
but I don't wear it on my face because I
don't want it to mess up my foundation. And she said, well,
you better figure this out. And I said, my foundation
has SPF in it, and she said it's it's not
enough and you need something else. And that's when I
really started looking at the sunscreen market, and a lot
of the sort of better for you sunscreens were not

(24:19):
only kind of too thick and I just didn't like
the consistency of them, but also they were expensive. And again,
even if you can afford uh sunscreen, I mean, the
ones that I could find were at dermatology offices for
you know whatever, sixty bucks or something, and I thought, gosh,
it's crazy that people who actually need to wear sunscreen

(24:41):
are you know, it's it's too expensive. And I thought,
it's really not okay. And I started seeing this industry
with really the same problem that I had seen when
I created Hint water was it is so hard to
get healthy. Forget about that it's expensive. I mean, I'll
I have a lot to say about that, because I think,
you know, you can go and buy a bottle of

(25:03):
Hint at Target for a little more than a buck,
so you can actually get a quality, good product that
is healthy and better for you, and you know, it's
not sort of crazy priced. But it was at that
moment that I really saw this, this problem in the
sunscreen industry, and so I actually went home and started
creating my own sunscreen, as crazy as that sounds. And

(25:27):
a friend of mine that used to work for Lorille said,
you know that this has to be approved by the FDA, right,
And I said what do you mean? And she said,
because you're gonna produce this for Hint right, And I
said no, I wasn't intending to do that, but wait,
what do you mean I have to go on? And actually,
all sunscreens are approved by the FDA. So I took

(25:49):
some of the fruit essences from our waters that we're
sitting on my counter, and I threw the grape fruit
in and I said, you know, why is it that
sunscreens all smell like tropical or incented and there's nothing
in between. Maybe I want grapefruit, maybe I want something
that actually smells really good. But also people are putting

(26:09):
vitamin SEE serums on their body to help from to
prevent sun damage anyway, so you're putting that in there. Yeah,
And so that's when I, um, you know anyway, applied
and and they needed a name, and and then Hint
was born. For those at home that are getting into

(26:36):
businesses or want to invent something or come up with something.
You're in a consume not not that people are eating
the sunscreen, but you're in a consumable business, meaning people
are drinking the water that so the stores have to
re restock. People are putting on the sunscreen, so they
have to keep rebuying. Those are good businesses versus for
everybody like I'm in the pots and pans businesses and
they've they've sold out it, you know, home goods, and

(26:56):
I'm thrilled. But you don't buy pots and pans every day,
and you don't by you know, toaster ovens and things
like that. Presumably you hope that they're gonna last. So
there's just different types of businesses to be in. And
Caro happens to be in a great business because people
are plowing through water and plowing through sunscreen because sun
damage becomes more and more of an issue. So that's
those are good businesses. Everything you're self hand sanitizer. Also,

(27:20):
you know, I'm not always thinking about the coffee maker,
but I'm thinking about the skinny girl coffee that goes
into the coffee maker people keep drinking and buying. Yeah,
and that's really what I thought about. I mean, you
know people always say, or do you want two thousand
products on this platform? You know, I'm like, I don't know,
Like I I look for problems, I don't even look
for them. They find me. Well, it looks like it's

(27:41):
practical solutions for health. One of my business is practical
solutions for women. But these are all solutions to make
people's lives healthier and prevent cancer and obesity. And diabetes
and feel better and sleep better. I mean, this is
a great business you're in and it's you know, profitable,
and you're successful. So it's like, what a great thing
when you can be successful and be contributing to the

(28:02):
world and helping people. It's a great way to go
to sleep at night. And that's that's another thing that
I found just in being an entrepreneur, to that there's
all different types of entrepreneurs, there's all different kinds of
things that you can do. I mean, I've I've learned
a lot about water over the last fifteen years. So
I'm working on an initiative in Washington around clean water

(28:24):
and around the fact that our water, uh is not
as clean as maybe we would like to think it is.
And so I've learned a lot from We have eight
plants throughout the US, and obviously we put our water
that we bottle through huge processing um filtration systems, pasteurization systems,

(28:47):
so it we clean it up. But I kept thinking
about all the people that just turn on their faucet
and learning more and more about that. So I'm working
with Congresswoman Jackie Spear on this initiative that we're actually
hoping to take before Congress actually at the federal level,
to try and get something called p fast out of
the water, which is a known carcinogen by the NIH
and the Center for Disease Control. That's amazing, And yeah,

(29:09):
no one really knows anything about that. We're just happy
to be drinking any water. I want to talk about
your relationship for a second. You're in business with your husband,
So do you communicate a lot about work or are
you in such separate factions that he has It feels
like you're both autonomous in your own way. How does
that work in the relationship and how have you sustained

(29:32):
a relationship with four kids with the serious business like
that can't be easy? First of all, it's not for everybody,
but for us it works. We never intended on, you know,
working together. I was pregnant with my fourth when I
started HINT And as I mentioned before, my husband's an
intellectual property attorney, and I've always been more on the

(29:53):
branding and marketing and sales side, and he's very you know,
detailed intellectual property, you know, really kind of the nuts
and bolts more than anything, and dotting the eyes and
crossing the teas and so when he saw that I
had this idea, and obviously he had seen that it
really helped my own health, uh and just drinking more water.

(30:16):
That's when he became curious. But he also wanted to
be supportive. I mean, he wasn't arguing with me when
I said I want to take fifty dollars out of
Barbek account and go buy bottles and caps and fruit
and try and do this product because I had made
some money in my previous job at a well. But
he didn't think it was the greatest idea, and he
also recognized what I did as well that it was

(30:38):
super challenging. But he said, you know, you're just really interested.
Every day you're waking up and you're thinking about what
am I going to do? And I mean, who wouldn't
want their spouse interested, right, and and really engaged in something.
And but he was nervous about it, and so in
his spare time, I mean he was working at the time,

(30:59):
he just said, hey, let me help you. I mean again,
I was super pregnant while I was thinking about this idea,
and so he was going with me to the plants
and kind of you know, walking behind me, sort of listening.
But then he would say, hey, what about that? And
when I finally delivered our son justin actually on the

(31:19):
it's a longer story that I shared in the book
about I delivered him on the afternoon after getting our
first cases in two Whole Foods, and that's when, uh,
we found out that we sold out of ten cases
overnight at Whole Foods. And he said, hey, let me
go and deliver your product to the store and got

(31:39):
a business card at fed FedEx Kinko because everybody was
saying to him, hey, do you have a business card?
And uh, he did it as a joke. I mean,
frankly got the chief operating officer uh card on there
and said, hey, uh, Karen, I'm I'm the chief operating
officer of Hint Water. And I mean it was you
can imagine. It was funny. It was just, you know,

(32:00):
he didn't really think of it as as kind of
a serious thing, but when he started really seeing what
my purpose and what my mission was, I mean, the
almost using the water as a tool to help people
know not only that water can be enjoyable it doesn't
have to have sweeteners in it, but also that he
would run into people who saw him stocking the shelf

(32:24):
at Whole Fits and they'd say, oh my gosh, this
is this new product. I love it. And the passion
and knowing that you're actually helping somebody, I mean that
that is like, that's such a huge thing. I mean
when people say to you, Bethny and your products as well,
like gosh, you've really helped me. That that is the
that is just the mecca, right that where if somebody

(32:47):
says that to you, and even in your relief efforts too,
I mean that that's it doesn't matter if it's a
physical product of service, whatever you're doing, it's just it's purpose.
It's fancy days that. Yeah. But your husband also in
addition to liking the mission and the cause and helping people,
he knows you, so he can help be your chief

(33:10):
operating officer because he understands how you operate, how your
mind works, the vision for the brand, etcetera. It takes
a step out for other people that are not inside
the veil. And you know, the fifty thou dollars um
it was if he felt like he was included, and
it's a team decision, it's a family decision. I think
that's probably you know, helpful for people at home. Not

(33:30):
everyone wants to work at their partner's spouse. But if
if your partner feels like they're part of it and included,
then they feel more supportive. And you have a major,
hundred million dollar business. So have you taken in investors money?
If you take, have you felt you've taken too much?
Has it been like? How have you handled that? And
what have you done with it? So we finally took
money after a couple of years. And I totally agree

(33:51):
with you that you have to. I I counsel entrepreneurs
all the time. When you know they say, oh, I
have to go raise money. I'm like, why do you
have to raise money? Because you really you should really
ask yourself that question and can I grow this product,
if or service if I actually have capital? And I
think Mark Cuban would probably say the same thing, right,
he said, what are you doing with the money? Are

(34:13):
you doing well? You're making money? Yes, I have no debt,
he said, so then why would you take it? Sometimes
you're just like, let me take a pile because I
have been stretching and who knows what's going to happen
to the world? And is this you know? I over
ahead of my skis. I mean, you know that better
than any Yeah, and so you don't have to take capital,
but we did because we knew that we needed to.

(34:34):
We needed to build the brand. And again, like I
was saying before that building a category is just We
not only had to educate consumers, but we also had
to educate these buyers that were basically just they were
decision makers on whether or not we would get it
on the shelf. And we were launching an unsweetened flavored
water which didn't fit in their sets that were essentially

(34:56):
the money for you, your real use for the mon
and so we and and also we did street teams
and we call them field marketing where they were out
there sampling all over the place. And so anyway, so
we yes, we did raise money. We had a outside
capital from a family office outside of the US, the

(35:17):
Stella Beer family that was interested in that was through
a connection that we had. Uh. They were our first
outside investors. And then what was interesting over the years,
we would run into all these fans that would reach
out to me. Sometimes I was answering the emails or
the phones, but John Legend was one of them, had

(35:38):
our product at Starbucks and re called the office, and uh,
it was transferred over to me. I didn't know who
John was at the time, this before Chrissy or anybody.
So John has been a longtime investor in the brand.
He just really believed in it. And uh, also, you
know the value of drinking water when he's on tour,
and you know, people have said to me for years, Bethany, like,

(36:01):
how do you get John to put the bottle of
Hint on the bench right next to him? And I'm like,
we I mean, I don't control that. He's gotten his rider,
you know, but I didn't write it into his rider.
He puts it in there. I mean, he loves Hint
and he loves the product. And so again, like finding
these investors that are really passionate about your brand. We

(36:21):
have over two hundred investors in the company. UM all
have different stories. I know them all, um and uh,
I don't know all of them super well, but they're
all people a lot of Silicon Valley people as well,
and people who just love the brand and wanted to succeed.
And so it's a very different model than Again, maybe

(36:45):
other investors have UM or other entrepreneurs have have taken
but that's our path and it seems to work really well. Well.
I love it, and I think you're you know, it's
an education. You're providing people healthy products that make their
lives better, improve their health, and your inspirational personally. And

(37:09):
I love that it's just been a grassroots business that
has evolved from having a good product, having a good idea,
executing it, not taking no people saying no, creating a
new category, being innovative. And there's so many things that
people can can can grasp onto here for them, And
I love that you've done it while raising four kids

(37:31):
and keeping a marriage and a family together. So I
applaud you for your healthy lifestyle, for your successful business,
for just your message, and um, I have loved getting
to know you and and researching you and your journey.
So I can't wait to see what happens next. Who knows,
maybe we'll do something together. But I love listening to speak.

(37:51):
I love it. That is so nice. Thank you so much,
Thanks everybody. Karat Golden was fascinating. She has really taken
her own personal health and built that into a brand,
a lifestyle solutions for people. She has used her background

(38:14):
in tech in Silicon Valley to create relationships and build
an over one million dollar brand. Uh you know, she
moved from the tech space to the beverage space and
Karat Golden is a mother of four. She's happily married,
She works with her husband, she cares about health and

(38:37):
has lost a lot of weight and switching from sodas
to healthy fruit flavored waters. And then that's how hint
was born. She is now in Skincare, sunscreen, hand sanitizer.
All just sort of happy accidents with her playing around
her kitchen and caring about people's health and well being
as connected as she has been working an environment like

(39:00):
a o l in a major way and her husband
working at Netscape and her being in the heart of
Silicon Valley. It really doesn't matter unless you have a
good product. You can be on television every week. There
are dozens upon dozens of housewives peddling products that don't work,
proving that television is not enough. Media is not enough,
a platform is not enough. You have to have a good,

(39:22):
solid product. And I found it interesting to talk about
what it is like working with your spouse that is challenging,
and working in the home with your husband at times
when you have four kids to raise, so I just
thought it was very interesting, very relatable and different. Definitely
a household name brand that you've probably all seen if
you haven't bought. I'm just floored by what people can accomplish,

(39:44):
starting from the bottom ending up here and just with sheer, will, determination, passion,
drive and quality. Please remember to rate, review and subscribe
to Just Be with Bethany. We love hearing from you,
and we love getting your ratings and reviews because it's
good feedback and we poured right back into the show

(40:06):
for you. Thank you. Just Be is hosted by me
Bethany Frankel. Our managing producer is Fiona Smith, and our
producer is Stephanie Stender. Sarah Katnak is our assistant producer,
and our development Executive is Nay and tar Roy. Just

(40:28):
Be as a production of Be Real Productions and Endeavor Content.
This episode was mixed by Sam Bear. To catch more
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