CMO Spotlight | Kara Goldin - Hint Water
The CMO Spotlight is a chance to get an inside look into the minds and journeys of high-performing marketing leaders.
Setup CEO Joe Koufman virtually sat down with Kara Goldin, the CEO of Hint Water and the author of Undaunted. The full conversation includes how she transitioned from tech mogul to extremely successful CEO + how she leveraged her doubts and harnessed them into themes of her book Undaunted.
“ I thought if I could actually create a product that has just fruit and water in it and get people to buy it, then maybe that would help people get healthy.”
WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW AND READ THE RECAP BELOW.
Q1 Tell us about your personal and career journey.
Goldin began her career as a writer. She initially started working for Time Magazine, then was recruited to work for CNN. She eventually moved to San Francisco to seek a job in the tech industry. Though she had no experience in that space, she envisioned herself working for a big tech influencer like Steve Jobs. In her research, she found a startup operated by people who previously worked for Steve Jobs putting shopping catalogs on CD ROM disks. She was really intrigued by this idea so she cold-called the company, and after their conversations, she secured a job. The company was eventually acquired by America Online (AOL) where she was invited to stay and run a program called Shopping Partnerships. After seven years, she decided to leave the company to focus on her family and personal growth.
Along with taking time for her family, she also focused on taking care of herself and her health.
“I was drinking a ton of diet soda and never really thought that was a problem. I was having some stomach issues but more than anything I gained a bunch of weight over the course of a few years, and consistently with all my pregnancies, couldn't lose the weight.”
When she recognized the dangers of diet soda and its effects on her body and health, she decided to make the switch to water. She stated that when she made the switch her “body was ready for that change” and all the health benefits followed. She saw firsthand the benefits of drinking water, but there was something about the taste that she thought was “boring,” so she started adding fruit to the water to enhance the taste, and was surprised that no company had thought about producing a product like that.
“I never sat there and said, ‘I’m going to go be an entrepreneur, I’m going to quit this Tech job, I’m going to take on big soda [companies]’ or any of those things. For me, I just wanted this product on the shelf.”
Q2 What is your superpower?
Goldin stated that her superpower is being curious. She also stated that “the most important thing is to always be learning.” She emphasized the importance of this notion especially for her team at Hint. She explains that she encourages her managers “to build out their teams” full of curious people, and even encourages her high-level employees to hire younger mid-level employees that are more knowledgeable than them to give them an opportunity to learn.
Q3 What was your reason for writing Undaunted, and what do you want readers to get out of it?
“I was doing a ton of public speaking and traveling and I started journaling- the journaling really stemmed from a lot of talks that I was doing where people would ask questions during the Q&A - and I would use those questions as my prompts.”
Kara eventually turned these questions into chapters in her book. She shared that she “initially wanted to bind the journal and just give it to people” because she found that the personal stories she wrote in her journal and shared with others really helped them to overcome their own doubts. She also realized that there were people who could benefit from her advice and couldn't attend her public speaking events. She created the book to ensure that her advice was reaching a larger audience.
Q4 What does it mean to you to take those doubts and turn them into the idea of being Undaunted?
Goldin recalled instances where she was told by successful beverage industry professionals that if her product was taken out of a retail space that would be the end of it. (p.s. Hint was removed from Target nine times!) Goldin stated that when she's in doubt, “One question [I ask myself] is ‘What can I do here?’ and you know if you sit there and lead with that question every time you're doubting yourself or you're doubting your situation, then what I think you will realize is that you will figure out a way to move forward.”
Q5 What advice do you wish you had gotten earlier in your career or would you give someone starting out?
Despite being very ambitious and self-motivated, Goldin stated “No one ever told me just go try.”
Luckily, she didn’t necessarily need that advice because her own self-determination led her to try so many things.
Her advice to other entrepreneurs and professionals is to “just go figure out that there are a million different things that you can do, and that the trick is figuring out what are those things that you really enjoy doing every single day.”
For more leadership advice and motivation for entrepreneurs and marketing professionals, check out the full interview with Kara Goldin, and keep an eye out for more insights from our CMO Spotlight series.