Kara Goldin had a serious Diet Coke addiction. Looking for healthier alternatives that didn’t involve artificial sweeteners, Kara started tossing fruit into her water. Little did she know, she was concocting the first recipe for what would become Hint, a $100+ million beverage brand, right in her kitchen.

As the former VP of Electronic Commerce and Shopping at AOL, Kara wasn’t lacking in business experience or online retailing know-how, but she had zero experience in the beverage industry. She didn’t let this stop her, though. Kara knew she had the answer to a problem many people didn’t know how to solve and believed “Hint could actually change health in America, and the world, by getting people to enjoy water again.”

Hint had the unplanned advantage of launching in “the Silicon Valley of beverage brands,” beginning in Whole Foods and specialty markets in the Bay Area. It took off when, during a job interview at Google, Kara shared about her newfound interest in the beverage industry. One thing led to another, and Google soon became the largest “store” for Hint water at the time, serving the drink to its employees. As Google employees moved on to other jobs, many requested a steady supply of Hint water for their new offices, further catapulting Hint’s brand.

Kara spent Hint’s early marketing dollars on consumer education rather than flashy billboards or TV commercials. She wanted consumers to taste the difference and, in a world dominated by sugar-laden or diet drinks, it wasn’t cheap to educate consumers about a brand new product category.

While the direct-to-consumer business model often struggles to balance profit with shipping costs, Kara struck a deal early on with FedEx. This has made it possible for Hint to reach customers outside of local grocery stores and retailers.

Kara never set out to challenge large soda brands — she genuinely wanted to help consumers make healthier choices. “I felt like if I could get more people to know about this, it would actually help them get healthy.”

Featured Challenger👩🏻‍🦰 Name: Kara Goldin

⚙️ How she challenges: Kara is helping consumers lead healthier lives as the CEO and founder of Hint, a company that creates fruit-infused flavored water made from real ingredients, is free of sweeteners and means what it says on the label.

🚰 Company: Hint

💎 Noteworthy: Kara’s new book, “Undaunted,” not only shares her path to building Hint but also encourages readers to understand that entrepreneurship and innovation are within easier reach than people typically think.

🔍 Where to find Kara: Twitter | Instagram | LinkedIn | Facebook

Challenger Wisdom 💡 Having the advantage of telling people your ‘why’“As I always share with entrepreneurs, I think it’s a competitive advantage for entrepreneurs versus large companies — no matter what industry you’re in. So often in these large, public companies the founder’s no longer around, and they have been gone for a long time, so there’s less of a story as to why they started the company and what their purpose is. I really think it’s a competitive advantage for companies that are able to bring their story out and tell people their why.”

💡 Forget the word ‘failure’“I’ve always said, to myself and others, if we didn’t know the word failure, what would we do? We are so afraid to go start something because we’re afraid of not being able to do it, or we’ll be embarrassed or lots of other things. What I found in my own career is that if you actually go and try, then you might find that you are going to be a lot more successful than you thought.”

💡 The issues in existing product labeling“I think it’s somewhat criminal that we live in this world of labeling where there are these words — whether it’s diet, vitamin, water, low-fat, baked — and we automatically assume that someone’s done the work in making sure that they really are healthy. What I was realizing from a consumer perspective was that I had been marketed to and ultimately fooled.”

💡 Following the road you feel passionate about “I had no intention of starting a company but, while I was searching for another role, I felt like I kept getting sidetracked by my interest in working on something that I felt not only helped me make a difference in my life, but my family and, ultimately, could also help other people. So this was really like a side hustle.”

💡 Break from traditional marketing“I can’t say that we didn’t spend any marketing dollars on building this, but it was not in the traditional marketing sense that we spent the money. A lot of people will launch a brand and go out and buy a bunch of advertising — whether it’s digital, billboards, or print. We decided we really wanted consumers to taste the difference and didn’t feel like they were giving up something by having a product that was unsweetened.”

💡 Self-doubt is inevitable, but don’t let it consume you“When we first launched, I didn’t have any experience in the beverage industry so people were like ‘oh, you’re going to be roadkill for sure,’ ‘you have no experience doing this,’ ‘you’ll never be able to figure this out.’ … When you’re hearing these doubters, you probably have your own doubts, right? There’s always a little grain of truth that you’re thinking, ‘maybe this isn’t going to work out,’ but it’s not helpful for you to hear all of this negative feedback.”

💡 Competition is helpful, especially with new product categories“When Coca Cola launched their first competitor to us, we really thought [it was] game over. They have way more money than we do and they had a better relationship with some of the retailers we were wanting to get in. What we realized is that as long as we truly believed that we had a better-tasting product, and consumers felt like we had a better-tasting product, it actually helps to have competition because you grow the category.”

💡 Do exactly what your customer is doing“What we realized is that if you’re really wedded to one retailer or one way of doing business, the consumer isn’t. The consumer will shop online, they’ll shop on your site, go to Amazon, go to Costco, go to Target or Kroger. So we thought ‘why are we sitting there just servicing the customer in one way?’ We need to actually act like the customer — we are the customer — we do exactly what they do … We knew we were a challenger brand, but we suddenly said this is the way ultimately to fight the battle.”

Top quotes:Quote #1

“It doesn’t matter what industry — if you think there’s a problem that needs solving and you have ideas about how to go solve it, why don’t you do it?”

Quote #2

“When you’re an idea within a large company, oftentimes you’re developing something because you see a white space in the market. You’re not really doing it thinking about the consumer’s problem. You’re thinking about what else can I sell the consumer?”

Quote #3

“I’m sure there were days where I felt a little overwhelmed, but I always felt like there was just amazing stuff going on.”