Interview Replay: Kara on Marketing For The Now

0:00I am unwilling to give up, but I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. You just want to make sure you will get knocked down, but just make sure you don't get knocked out.

0:14Kara Goldin:So your only choice should be, go focus on what you can control. Hi everyone and welcome to the Kara Goldin Show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world's greatest leaders. We'll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can't wait to get started. Let's go. Let's go. Today's episode is a bonus episode from when I went on Gary Vaynerchuk's podcast, Marketing for the Now. It was super fun and exciting, and definitely, I think you'll get a few things out of it. All right. Our next guest is the incredible Kara Golden.

1:00She is the CEO and founder of Hint. And Kara is a super woman. She was named the EY Entrepreneur of the Year and was one of, I love this, InStyle's badass 50 list. Check out her podcast, The Kara Golden Show, and get her book, Undaunted, Overcoming Doubts and Doubters. Welcome, Kara.

1:22Kara Goldin:Hi. Great to see you. Great to see you. How you been? Good. How are you? Good. Cara has built an amazing company. Most of you who are watching right now are very aware of Hint. I got to meet Cara over a phone call very early in that journey and was so impressed with the way they got distribution for that product. I remember being on a beach or something and talking to you about getting into Starbucks and things of that nature. And just, it's been really a joy to watch you build this company. Thank you. I remember that call as well. So why don't you tell people really quickly, because I'm sure it'll be at least 5 % that don't know the brand.

2:00Let's start there. And then we'll go into what you're seeing in the streets for the rest of 2021.

2:05Kara Goldin:So I have it here in case people are wondering what the heck it is. So it's an unsweetened flavored water that I started actually 16 years ago for so for people who are thinking that there's overnight success stories. I mean, it takes time to build quality and great brands. And I'm really proud of what we've done. And yeah, started 16 years ago. In addition to building a great product, we've built a different way of actually going to market over 50 % of our business is direct to consumer. So when you look at the beverage industry as a whole, there are certainly companies, the big soda companies that are selling on Amazon and Box and others, but having a direct business and having that direct relationship with the customer is something that we've built for the last eight years.

2:56Kara Goldin:And it's a solid, incredible subscription business that many, many people are using. What stood out for you before we go into what's happening in 2021? There's been a lot of contextual COVID conversations. Anything stand out from you? Anything catch you off guard? Was anything a pleasant surprise from a consumer behavior standpoint? Yeah. So at the beginning of the pandemic, actually right before the pandemic hit, I guess the end of 2020, we were really focused on automating a lot of our plants. And so most people in the beverage industry were like, why are you doing that? By the way, I didn't come from the beverage industry.

3:35Kara Goldin:I came from the tech industry. And my husband is our chief operating officer, and he also came from the tech industry. So we kept thinking about, well, what if somebody sneezes on the line, right? As we're filling a bottle, we don't have preservatives in the product. What happens? So we wanted to get the people out of the room. We've been working on this for four years to get the people out of the room. By the end of 2019, we had everybody out of the room and automated and got those people away from where the actual fill was. By the time the pandemic hit, we learned that as an essential product in a pandemic, you have to be running your plants 24 hours a day.

4:15Kara Goldin:You have to do your best practices to best efforts to actually supply the store shelves. So people were hoarding toilet paper, but they were also hoarding water, bottled water and products like Hint. So being able to actually run our facility without any hiccups because we had planned it out was a tremendous, tremendous advantage. In addition to that, we do everything here in the U.S. So we've always believed that get things as local as possible. We blow our own bottles on the lines where everything has been done in the U.S. So when the pandemic hit, we got a phone call from Costco and they said, hey, do you guys do everything local?

5:05Kara Goldin:Because we're having a lot of problems with suppliers that are supposed to be getting cans from China and they're not coming. So can we put you guys nationwide with Costco? So in addition to going nationwide at the beginning of 2020 with Walmart and Sam's Club and other huge retailers, we went nationwide in April. So you got extra distribution because of the localization. Yep. And also just because we were, you know, automated as well. And so one of my one of my predictions really for remainder of 2021 and going forward is supply chain. It matters. Automation, localization, and pretend that there's another pandemic coming.

5:48Kara Goldin:Because the more that you can rely on, or I should say, the more you can rely less on people being in the room, that is where you protect yourself and your company. What about from a marketing or just what consumers are doing with products or consumption of media or marketing? What are you seeing? What are you kind of predicting over the rest of this year, maybe into 2022? Yeah, so for, as you know, for years, I've been telling people, drink water, not sugar, and get the sweeteners out of your life. And health is really important. And lots of people listen, but there were some people where it went in one ear and out the other, and they just did whatever they wanted.

6:32Kara Goldin:Today, I think if anything great came out of the pandemic, it's that people want to stay healthy. Nobody wants this virus. If they got the virus, they don't want it again and they want to protect themselves in any way that they can. And so health and wellness as a category is accelerated, but it's here to stay and it's just gonna get bigger. And what I'm most excited about is watching companies that are going to be developed out of how do we help people stay healthier? Obviously, we've seen companies like Hint and Peloton and lots of other segments of that. But I think it's just going to increase.

7:14Kara Goldin:And I think consumers are listening now and they want it. And I think it's so important. And I think also the direct relationship with the consumer. So I think e-commerce is here to stay. And I think we're going to see companies that have not really embraced it because they think, well, you know, there's still these relationships with stores. We've got them. We've got lots of space. But another pandemic comes, you start to, you know, shut down fast food restaurants, universities. You start to see that, wow, what can I do to protect myself? Having that direct relationship with the consumer has become more and more important.

7:57I mean, even pre-pandemic, just having the actual data, when you're a big brand and you're selling your product through Albertsons or Kroger's or EBJ's or Costco or Walmart, you don't actually know who's buying it.

8:11Kara Goldin:Totally. And that's the thing too. I mean, the other thing that we've seen, Gary, is that the consumer that is going online and buying Hint from us or from Amazon, they'll also walk through a Costco store and they may not go there every week, but they may go there every month and they see, you know, a variety pack that they can't buy from us online and they're going to pick it up. Right. And so our sales, our direct to consumer business tripled in the last 17 months. Our overall business grew by over 50%, 50%. So it's, it's crazy what's going on, but I think it also speaks to another trend that I think is really, really important, which is that the consumer is really looking for authentic brands to guide them.

8:59Kara Goldin:And so, you know, I know you love talking about storytelling. I'm a huge believer in that as well. But it's also about how to lead consumers. So for example, we started our company with Hintwater. And a few years ago, I had a scare with skin cancer, and I came out with a sunscreen, the number of brands or the number of soda brands that were saying, what is that tech executive doing? You know, she's coming out with the sunscreen brand. That was never my purpose. My purpose was to service the customer and help customers understand that here's a great product. We never even stuck it on the beaches anywhere to sample it.

9:43Kara Goldin:We just said, hey, you like Hint Water? come and try this Hint sunscreen. We had like an 80 % return on, you know, just an email that went out to these consumers because they trust the brand. The brand. They believe in it. I'm a big fan of horizontal expansion for brands. I think a lot of brands have a lot of permission to go into other categories and haven't gone there. That's a little bit of a prediction for the next decade. Cara, continued success. Great to see you. Thank you. Thanks again for listening to The Cara Golden Show. If you would, please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit.

10:21Kara Goldin:And of course, feel free to subscribe so you don't miss a single episode of our podcast. Just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms at Kara Golden. I would love to hear from you too, so feel free to DM me. And if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal bestselling book, Undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building, Hint. We are here every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Thanks for listening and goodbye for now.