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The Startup CPG Podcast

#88 Undaunted Leadership with Hint Founder Kara Goldin

The Startup CPG Podcast

Startup CPG

Startup, Food, Business, Beverage, Cpg, Entrepreneurship

4.9642 Ratings

🗓️ 25 April 2023

⏱️ 37 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Today’s episode is really special - Kara Goldin, the founder of Hint, agreed to come on the show to talk about leadership! Kara founded Hint in 2005 and the company is best known for being the first unsweetened flavored water with no preservatives on the market. She scaled Hint to over 30,000 retail locations and over 150 employees, including growing Hint 40% during 2020. Kara has been named one of InStyle’s Badass 50, Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business, Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs, EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year 2017 Northern California, and in 2021 Hint was named one of Inc.’s Best-Led Companies in America. She’s also been featured on How I Built This (a great interview that I recommend), and her book “Undaunted” has been a WSJ and Amazon best seller. And actually, due to some technical difficulties, my time with Kara was cut a bit short, so I’ve included at the end of the episode a bit of a “book club” where I share some of my favorite pieces from Kara’s book, which I highly recommend. Listen in as Kara shares about: - Leading during tough times and her mindset - Stories from leading during the pandemic and how Hint grew 40% during 2020 - How Hint expanded business with Costco, Sam’s Club, Walmart, and Aldi during the pandemic - The early days of growing Hint and leveling up as a leader and how lack of industry experience can be an advantage - Communicating effectively and with transparency, especially during uncertainty, and how follow up is critical - Managing Employee growth and development as a leader - And more! This episode was sponsored by Promomash + Crisp. Go to promomash.com/startupcpg This episode was sponsored by Social Nature. Go to business.socialnature.com

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hey there, this is Kim on the startup CPG team.

0:03.0

Did you know that over 70% of in-store promotions are not effective?

0:07.0

And over 80% of brands will fail while promoting at the shelf.

0:11.0

But you have to run promotions with retailers.

0:13.0

So what's the solution?

0:15.0

Thankfully, Promomash, the only all-in-one promotion management platform,

0:19.0

and Chris, a leading retail data platform that

0:22.6

integrates with over 40 retailers, have developed a joint solution that gives CPG brands

0:27.5

a level of visibility and control they've never had before over their trade spend and

0:32.6

promo performance. A free 30-day risk-free trial is available exclusively for startup CPG members.

0:39.5

Just go to promomash.com slash startup CPG.

0:44.1

Promomash is spelled PRO, M-O-M-A-S-H.

0:49.0

To see for yourself what more effective promotion planning looks like, that's promomash.com slash startup CPG, or the link is in the show notes.

1:01.7

Just because somebody has a lot of experience doesn't mean that they have experience taking a company from zero. I don't know. Maybe we were like 100,000 in sales to 200,000 in sales,

1:14.6

and then to a million and then 5 million. Welcome to the startup CPG podcast. I'm your host,

1:20.7

Jesse Freytag. Today's episode is really special. Kara Golden, the founder of Hint,

1:25.9

agreed to come on the show to talk about leadership.

1:29.1

Kara founded Hint in 2005, and the company is best known for being the first unsweetened,

1:35.7

flavored water with no preservatives on the market.

1:39.3

She scaled Hint to over 30,000 retail locations and over 150 employees. Kara has been named one of

1:46.4

in-style's badass 50, fast company's most creative people in business, Fortune's most

1:52.1

powerful women entrepreneurs, EY's entrepreneur of the year 2017 Northern California, and in

...

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