In this episode, Kay chats with Kara Goldin, founder and former CEO of Hint Water. Kara is the author of the best-selling book, "Undaunted," and her success puts her in a league of her own. "Undaunted" is the perfect word to describe her vision, tenacity, and relentless positive mindset. Kara doesn't give up, as you'll learn when she shares specific examples of roadblocks - both personal and professional - that would have stopped others in their tracks. Kara believes life is supposed to be fun, and wakes up every day asking herself what's next. As Kara puts it, "Life is a puzzle, and I don't think it's ever supposed to be finished." Listen and be inspired!
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Kara Goldin is the Founder and Former CEO of Hint, Inc., best known for its award-winning Hint water, the leading unsweetened flavored water. She has received numerous accolades, including being named EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2017 Northern California and one ofInStyle’s 2019 Badass 50. Previously, Kara was VP of Shopping Partnerships at America Online. She hosts the podcast The Kara Goldin Show and her first book, Undaunted: Overcoming Doubts and Doubters, was released October 2020 and is now a WSJ and Amazon Best Seller. Kara lives in the Bay Area with her family and 3 labradors.
Contact:
http://Linkedin.com/in/karagoldin
http://Karagoldin.com
Order Kara's book (an Amazon and WSJ Best Seller): Undaunted: Overcoming Doubts and Doubters.
Twitter: karagoldin
Kay Miller interviews women in sales with proven track records, as they share their experiences, success strategies and tools you can use to crush your sales goals. Kay has a history of sales success, earning the nickname “Muffler Mama” when she sold more automotive mufflers than anyone in the world. Kay and her guests deliver actionable insights and real-world tools that will help you overcome obstacles, adopt a winning mindset, and maximize your sales results.
Kay is the author of the book, Uncopyable Sales Secrets – How to Create an Unfair Advantage and Outsell the Competition. Go to Amazon.com and search “Uncopyable Sales Secrets” to order the book, or click the link below.
Contact:
kay@uncopyablesales.com
linkedin.com/in/millerkay
Order Uncopyable Sales Secrets: amzn.to/35dGlYZ
In this episode, Kay chats with Kara Goldin, founder and former CEO of Hint Water. Kara is the author of the best-selling book, "Undaunted," and her success puts her in a league of her own. "Undaunted" is the perfect word to describe her vision, tenacity, and relentless positive mindset. Kara doesn't give up, as you'll learn when she shares specific examples of roadblocks - both personal and professional - that would have stopped others in their tracks. Kara believes life is supposed to be fun, and wakes up every day asking herself what's next. As Kara puts it, "Life is a puzzle, and I don't think it's ever supposed to be finished." Listen and be inspired!
--------------------
Kara Goldin is the Founder and Former CEO of Hint, Inc., best known for its award-winning Hint water, the leading unsweetened flavored water. She has received numerous accolades, including being named EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2017 Northern California and one ofInStyle’s 2019 Badass 50. Previously, Kara was VP of Shopping Partnerships at America Online. She hosts the podcast The Kara Goldin Show and her first book, Undaunted: Overcoming Doubts and Doubters, was released October 2020 and is now a WSJ and Amazon Best Seller. Kara lives in the Bay Area with her family and 3 labradors.
Contact:
http://Linkedin.com/in/karagoldin
http://Karagoldin.com
Order Kara's book (an Amazon and WSJ Best Seller): Undaunted: Overcoming Doubts and Doubters.
Twitter: karagoldin
Kay Miller interviews women in sales with proven track records, as they share their experiences, success strategies and tools you can use to crush your sales goals. Kay has a history of sales success, earning the nickname “Muffler Mama” when she sold more automotive mufflers than anyone in the world. Kay and her guests deliver actionable insights and real-world tools that will help you overcome obstacles, adopt a winning mindset, and maximize your sales results.
Kay is the author of the book, Uncopyable Sales Secrets – How to Create an Unfair Advantage and Outsell the Competition. Go to Amazon.com and search “Uncopyable Sales Secrets” to order the book, or click the link below.
Contact:
kay@uncopyablesales.com
linkedin.com/in/millerkay
Order Uncopyable Sales Secrets: amzn.to/35dGlYZ
Speaker 1 (00:00:00) - Welcome to Uncopyable Women in Sales. If you're looking for actionable insights and real world tools to turbocharge your sales starting tomorrow, well, you're in the right place. Your host, Kay Miller, earned the affectionate nickname Muffler Mama when she sold more automotive mufflers than anyone else in the world. In this podcast, Kay will talk to another superstar women in Sales as they reveal Uncopyable strategies you can use to rack up more leads, snag dream clients and take your sales numbers through the roof. Stay tuned and get ready to make more sales. And how about this? Make more money.
Speaker 2 (00:00:39) - I am super excited about my guest today. Kara Goldin is the founder and former CEO of Hint, best known for its award winning Hint Water, the leading unsweetened flavored water. And by the way, it's delicious. She's received numerous accolades, including being named one of Instyle's 2019 Badass 50. She hosts the podcast The Kara Goldin Show, and her first book, Undaunted Overcoming Doubts and Doubters, was released in October 2020 and is now a Wall Street Journal and Amazon best seller. Kara lives in the Bay Area with her family and three Labradors. Thank you for coming on the podcast and welcome.
Speaker 3 (00:01:26) - Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:01:27) - My first question: you call yourself an accidental entrepreneur. What do you mean by that and how did that impact your path of taking hint water to where it is today?
Speaker 3 (00:01:40) - A lot of people ask me if I always planned on being an entrepreneur and looking back, it looks that way because I worked for a number of different startups, different sized startups that I was supporting entrepreneurs. And that's one way to become an entrepreneur. I have frequently heard from people that they always were doing things that were very entrepreneurial as a kid. Again, like, I never really thought about myself that way. But looking back, I think that there were many times that I it look that way. But when I think about how I got to become an entrepreneur, it was really when I had a solve for a problem that I saw in front of me. And I frankly tried to give the company away multiple times thinking that I wasn't good enough.
Speaker 3 (00:02:46) - I probably had some imposter syndrome in there too, that I didn't have the right experience. I hadn't worked at one of the big drink companies, so therefore I wasn't going to be able to go start a company. I'd never started a company before either. But one of the reasons why I call myself an accidental entrepreneur is that I think that there's a lot of people like me out there that might have ideas for a company. I wasn't even calling my idea, my company Hint a company at the time, I was calling it a product and thought it'd be a lot of fun to get it on the shelf. So that's the story of Hint and like said, think it's a story for a lot of people. And probably the difference is that I took an idea that I had and just first got it on the shelf and then just kept going, even though, as I always say, I got knocked down along the way, but I got back up and just kept trying to figure out what else could we do.
Speaker 2 (00:03:47) - And this really was from the beginning, a passion project for you, right? Because you were looking for an option. You had been hooked on diet soda and just couldn't find what you wanted in the marketplace and you said, dang it, I'm going to create it, right?
Speaker 3 (00:04:05) - Absolutely. I think you know the story for people who are not familiar with hint, it's an unsweetened flavored product. If you happen to be looking at it on a video, I have the cherry hint right in front of me. But I wanted a product that tasted great, that made water taste great. I knew that water was better for me, but I was not a water drinker. I should have been a water drinker. I grew up in a hot climate in Arizona where I should have been drinking a lot more water, but I never did because I thought water was so boring. And so one day after a career in media and also a career in tech, I was at home in my house in San Francisco, and I had young kids at that time, three under the age of four.
Speaker 3 (00:04:56) - And I was really focused on making sure that they had the right things, that they were consuming, that not only food but also drinks. And I was really focusing on how I didn't want them to start out life just being so addicted to sugar and sweet. And I certainly wasn't giving them diet sweeteners because I had it in my mind that wasn't good for them early on. But at some point I started to look at my own kind of habits, and one of the habits I had was with Diet Coke, and I had been drinking it for years thinking that it was better than full fledged sugar soda. But it was when I was really trying to focus on my kids health that I started thinking, This probably isn't that great for me there. Maybe I should stop. And that's when I looked for an alternative to diet soda. And frankly, I really hadn't paid attention in the beverage aisle very much because had just been going right to the red cans. Right. And I was that's what I was most focused on.
Speaker 3 (00:06:10) - And finally, when I started looking around, I started seeing that not only was it very confusing that we live in a place where it's healthy perception versus healthy reality, as I started to think about it and when I just wanted a water with some taste without any of the sweetness, none of the diet sweeteners, but also none of the sugary either. I didn't realize until that moment that there wasn't anything like that out there in a still format. There was carbonated versions that were like seltzer waters and things that had carbonation. But I felt like in order to really have as much consumption of water every day and I was also faced with the options at that time, 18 years ago, they all had a lot of sodium in it. That's changed with many of the carbonated waters. But so I was really developing something that wasn't out there. Little did I know when you're actually developing a product that's not out there, and especially a product in a huge category like beverages. I was actually creating a category within an industry, within beverages that no one had done, and little did I know how hard that would be.
Speaker 2 (00:07:35) - And we will get into that. I do want to point out again that your book, Undaunted, really describes both your eclectic background, which is very interesting, and your journey through this whole process. So we aren't going to be able to get to all of it today, obviously, but I highly recommend anyone listening or watching by the book undaunted, because it's just packed with gold and it's really an interesting read. So I appreciate you writing it. Thank you. You know that the audience for this podcast is Women in Sales, so I am sure that becoming an entrepreneur took a lot of selling. And I read a couple of those examples in the book and I'd love to have you share a couple of your examples of selling Hint and the concept selling the product sales in general.
Speaker 3 (00:08:33) - Yeah, you know, it's it's interesting. First of all, I had been in sales back in my kind of second job out of college, which was at CNN and. I had always learned that the most important thing was really understanding what was on the other side of the table and what problems were they facing that I could potentially solve.
Speaker 3 (00:08:58) - So little did I know that was going to be amazing kind of history to be able to go and start my own company, because not only when you're trying to educate and describe to buyers as I was when was starting the product, what the heck I was doing and why this was an important thing for them to actually give space to on the shelf that was selling from day one. But what I was also facing was that there were these things called Planet Grams that were in stores that the buyers that I was dealing with were faced with dealing with a set number of SKUs that they would put on the shelf, different categories that they were recognizing. So I was trying to sell them into understanding why what I was doing was really important, right. And that everybody's going to be like me. There's going to be a lot of people shifting from diet soda to plain water, but isn't going to have the choices that they really want out there to be healthy. So I believed what I was doing, which I think in when you're selling anything, you have to believe in what you're doing.
Speaker 3 (00:10:18) - But it was still difficult, right? There were a lot of no's and there were a lot of roadblocks that were in front of me and frankly, didn't know how to always get by those roadblocks in the beginning because didn't know how to get a buyer to change the plan a gram. But what I did know was that just because somebody said no today didn't mean that they were going to say no tomorrow. And I had to figure out how do I get a yes from somebody else, not necessarily somebody else within that company. Like I wasn't going directly to their bosses. Instead, what I figured out is instead of going to Whole Foods, maybe I figure out how to go to Sprouts or one of the other stores that was out there, and then maybe I could use that win to go in and share with somebody that had said no what was going on. So there were definitely experiences within sales that were super helpful. One of the stories that you and I were discussing before we started recording was my story was Starbucks and Starbucks.
Speaker 3 (00:11:38) - Had I always when I went in for my coffee at Starbucks, I would always look at the case and see that there were beverages that were not Starbucks beverages in the case. And while I'm waiting in line for coffee and I'm trying to understand like how those got in there, and after meeting a few of those brands over the years, I understood that just like a store, they have a buyer that allows you to pitch your item and they only take a few items. It's very competitive and. So ultimately, it's a longer story than this. But ultimately, we ended up the.
Speaker 2 (00:12:23) - Book by the book, the whole thing, and.
Speaker 3 (00:12:26) - Ultimately we ended up getting in there. It's actually this part of the story was pretty funny. We flew from San Francisco up to Seattle and the buyer had been very specific with us. We were going to be meeting with her and a few other people that they were interested in potentially using hint for a kids alternative option, and they wanted to put hint in. They wanted us to put it in boxes.
Speaker 3 (00:12:55) - So the basically what we do today with Hint kids, but we did not have that out there at the time. So competitive with the apple juice boxes and the Capri Suns out there. But we didn't have that alternative out there at the time. She said, when you come up. Please don't bring the hint bottles with you because we're just talking about the boxes at this time. And this would be an exclusive that we would have you working on for Starbucks. And I said, okay, we'll just bring a couple bottles so the other people can try the product. And she was very specific that we should not actually bring any bottles with us because they'd all tried hint and that we were just really talking about how it was packaged because they wanted the exact same product just in the boxes. There would be no difference between the two. So I remember landing in Seattle and getting ready to go to Starbucks and my husband said to me, Who's our chief operating officer? He said, Are we going to stop at.
Speaker 3 (00:14:06) - Whole Foods where we have hints. And I said, no. She was very specific about not bringing any bottles of hint with us. And he said, What are you talking about? And I said, She said, We're just talking about packaging. We're not going to be talking. We're not going to be sampling the product. And he was like, That's ridiculous. I want a bottle of hint. Anyway, let's stop at Whole Foods on the way. So I said, okay, fine. When we got there, I there were some cold samples. I threw them in my purse. And then sure enough, we go into the room to meet with her and I'm have my bottle of hints that I'm drinking. And one of the people that was with her that was senior to her said, Do you have bottles of Hint to show us? And I thought, is this a trick question? Is she going to throw us out of the room? And I said, I do, actually. And I brought them out of my bag.
Speaker 3 (00:15:02) - And you could see that this buyer. Like she specifically had given me some kind of direction. So it was a little bit awkward, actually. But but at the end of the day, everybody seemed everybody else in the room seemed very happy with us. And but I left the meeting thinking, I don't know how this whole thing is going to turn out or not, but we had to do the right thing for us and for the brand. And obviously there were two other people who had not given they didn't know about those directions maybe that she had given us. And so. It was. A few days later she called the one, the woman that I had been talking to, and she called me and said, I have great news. And I said, What? And she said, Good news and bad news. We're actually not going to do the kids product. We're going to do the hint product. The the other managers that were here decided that hint would be terrific to have in the case.
Speaker 3 (00:16:07) - And and I was like, oh, okay. Totally did not plan on that happening at all. And she said, it's just a small test. It's going to be in just a few stores initially. And I said, That's terrific. We've got to start somewhere. It's wonderful. And then she phoned us a couple of weeks later and she said, We decided that we want to do a full rollout and in all the stores and that was.
Speaker 2 (00:16:34) - A woo hoo.
Speaker 3 (00:16:36) - It was a it was definitely a woo hoo. And I got off the phone and I thought, oh my gosh, good thing we actually brought the samples. Be prepared. Guess is the is the moral of the story.
Speaker 1 (00:16:50) - Today's podcast is sponsored by the acclaimed book on Uncopyable Sales Secrets How to Create an Unfair Advantage and Outsell Your Competition by Kay Miller. Put the secrets in this book to work and you'll make more sales, grow your network and become a top earner. See the show notes or go to Amazon.com and search for Uncopyable Sales Secrets to order the book right now.
Speaker 3 (00:17:15) - So we we rolled out in Starbucks. I remember asking the buyer, this is part two of this story. Remember asking the same buyer, what is success? And now that we're going into full rollout because we're trying to figure out production numbers and we want to be prepared, we don't want to miss any supplying any that we're getting, etcetera. And she said, if you do a bottle and a half per store per day, you're. Doing Incredible. So the first couple of weeks was slow. I thought, wow, I don't know when we're going to do a bottle and a half per store per day. It took us about six months to get to that volume. And then we were cranking. We were. Hint was it was all across the country, 6000 stores. We are on military bases. It was incredible. And it really exposed us to a ton of consumers where they didn't have Whole Foods, they didn't have the stores that we were in. We didn't have big distribution in many states across the country and cities across the country.
Speaker 3 (00:18:28) - So we were really feeling pretty good about the relationship with Starbucks and frankly, so good because it was about 40% of our volume was sitting in Starbucks and it was the next phone call a year and a half into this business that we got, and it was from a new buyer. So the buyer that we had been dealing with, the one that told us not to bring samples in, had actually left and they had a new buyer and the new buyer was really excited about him. She drank in all the time. She said, Unfortunately, I have some bad news for you. And I'm like. What's the bad news? And she said, we are going to be putting sandwiches into the case, which has higher ring, better margins. Sounded great for her and and her brand. It was really more the economics of the deal with us. And she said it's possible that we may end up doing a bigger set with more beverages, but we're not going to do that right now. I didn't know what to say.
Speaker 3 (00:19:41) - It was all of a sudden, to your point, we had been, Yay, we're in Starbucks, we're doing great. And then all of a sudden the buyer change and we're out. And. I think that's a story of any sales person. There's lots of lessons learned. Number one, it hurt really bad because 40% of our overall business was sitting in the hands of one brand, right. Starbucks. And so their decision to actually discontinue us because they had bigger plans that we were not privy to, it was, you know, a good decision for them. It was a terrible decision for us. And that can happen at any time. You can have fire changes anytime. You can have strategy changes any time and you're going to be the last to know. And so there's not a whole lot that I could have done about that. But what I could have done was figured out how to not allow this to be 40% of our overall business, because when you have a big chunk, a big weight of your plan, maybe you have a customer that is taking all of your time, right.
Speaker 3 (00:20:56) - And you haven't had a chance to get any new business going out there when they make those calls or maybe somebody else in the company is making those calls, you're out of luck and that hurts. So so that was a big part of the Starbucks story. But I think that the last part of it. Do you want to hop in?
Speaker 2 (00:21:18) - Yeah, wanted to hop in because really, I love the point that you never would have gotten into Starbucks unless you broke the rules. Really. You separated yourself from everyone else. And my book, of course, talks all about being copyable. And of course, that was a judgment call on your part and your husband contributed to that. But really being in Starbucks for so long gave you so much exposure and so many chances for customers to try it, I would still consider a win. And then going back to the stores when you were calling on and trying to get shelf space and maybe had to take no for an answer from this store. But then you went to another one and you gathered success stories and then you were able to go back with a track record.
Speaker 2 (00:22:10) - The word for it is undaunted because you just found another way. You were always willing to find another way. And I think that's really a big part of your book and your success and your philosophy.
Speaker 3 (00:22:23) - Yeah, and I think it really speaks to. It. It really speaks to not allowing. Something negative to be final. Think that's what it really points to. And I think it's I was just explaining this to somebody the other day. Remember, as a as a kid, I was a gymnast and my poor mom would sit outside of the gym because I would never allow when I screwed up on something that I didn't think was going to happen, but maybe I fell off the bars or something happened and I'd be tired and frustrated. But I never would leave the gym until I could find the good. I wanted to leave on a good note. Right. And I wanted to do the best I could because I thought if you carry the negative, you know, with you, that's what you're going to go to sleep with.
Speaker 3 (00:23:22) - Right. And instead trying to figure out how do you find the light. Right. And I think that has always been my perspective. And that for me is. A lot of what the meaning of undaunted is to, but it's something that we can all do and find the good. And that doesn't mean that you're overly positive all the time. It means that you can always find a little bit of good. The example of Starbucks is you're absolutely right. They exposed us to many markets. They paid on time. They grew our brands significantly and ultimately really helped us to gain the attention of somebody else. Another Seattle brand, Amazon, when we ultimately went into their grocery business. And who knows if that would have happened, right, if we wouldn't have been as big with that partner. So think that's there's lots of lessons there and I think it's just all part of the journey. You focus on the things that you can really have impact on in some way, but also know that what's really important.
Speaker 3 (00:24:35) - Think to look around the corner a little bit and see are you doing things that if that business went away today, would you be how would you feel like are you vulnerable in some way? Is a good to be this vulnerable because think we can always sit here and focus on. If you've got a partner, if you've got somebody that a customer that you're calling on and they've got a giant chunk of business, even when it looks good, what if that person goes away and decides to go to another job? They're not going to tell you that they're looking for a job necessarily. Right. But they might leave and.
Speaker 2 (00:25:17) - Yeah, don't have all your eggs in one basket.
Speaker 3 (00:25:19) - Don't have all your eggs in one basket.
Speaker 2 (00:25:21) - And there's a story I think it might have been, I swear I read about this in college. That was a long time ago. I think it was Montgomery Ward who there was a supplier or maybe more than one supplier that was all of their business. And then when that company decides to make a change or it goes out of business, yeah, you're really stuck.
Speaker 2 (00:25:42) - So diversification is definitely huge. And of course, now you have so many channels to buy your product that, yeah, you don't take that risk. You do talk about that. You do have fear and doubts at times. It sounds like from your upbringing and your gymnastics story that you are the kind of person that looks at the positive. And not everyone's like that. Some of us have to work harder than others, and I don't know if you have any tips, but how do you overcome your fear and your doubts?
Speaker 3 (00:26:15) - I think when you push through any doubts and fears that you've had, it's you remember that feeling that you get, that you had when you actually push through and how you felt about it. And I've had so many in life that, as I also talk about in the book, being the last of five kids where, you know, my parents said they were great parents, but they always said, you need to go figure this out and you need to try and take responsibility.
Speaker 3 (00:26:47) - And I joke that I think that they were tired, right? Like they had five kids. They were like, oh, figure it out. But I used it as an opportunity to actually go and try a lot of things. And some things worked and some things didn't work. But more than anything, I wanted to figure out ways to get better at things or try new things. And I was able I had the freedom to be able to do some of those things. But I think it's it really boils down to remembering those feelings and and how you felt when you were able to push through those. One of and I should also mention that it's not just in business too. I've always believed that life is not so separate where it's this is my business life and this is my personal life. Even if you're not a startup founder or an entrepreneur or CEO, how many of us have friends from work, right? They're still your friends. They're not there's not the separation that goes on where there's just the work for most people, work people and personal people.
Speaker 3 (00:27:55) - So I've always felt to be able to have a life where for you're learning things along the way from both sides of your life is really important to reflect on more than anything else. But one of the things that I talk about in the book that I think has really helped me in business is to push through a lot of those moments where I felt super fearful about things, and heights for me has always been something that I have not been very comfortable with. And I finally growing up in Arizona, I had always kind of thought about the Grand Canyon when people had said, Oh, we're going to go hike the Grand Canyon or we're going to go down the Colorado River. But first we're going to go hike the Grand Canyon. And I thought, okay, could do the Colorado River, but I could never hike the canyon. And then I would catch myself almost traumatizing myself about like this idea of being able to go and do something and think I would really enjoy. But I if there wasn't this one component.
Speaker 3 (00:29:00) - And so I literally trained myself to go and and I didn't seek help to do it. I said to myself, I need to keep finding places where I can get some height and see how I feel, to see and push myself to see whether or not I'm capable of it running a marathon. Right. You're I was literally training to be able to do it. And once I got confident that I was actually going to pull it off, then I started to tell people that I was going to do it.
Speaker 2 (00:29:32) - For accountability, then you can't back out, right. And couldn't.
Speaker 3 (00:29:35) - Back out. Exactly. My daughter was going with me to and my sister and a bunch of our friends were going as well. And I remember being at a soccer game with my daughter a couple of weeks before we were actually traveling and telling one of the other moms on the sidelines. She had asked me to do something that weekend. I said, Oh, we're actually going to hike the Grand Canyon. And she said, Oh, wow, how are you doing that? I'm so terrified of heights.
Speaker 3 (00:30:04) - I think I would freak out. And I said, Oh, no, it's going to be fine. She said, What if you look down? And I don't know. She, for some reason was creating this visual that not a lot of people had done for me. I had done it for myself, but she was passing her own fears off on me and intentionally, but it was really sinking in. And I remember her saying something to me like, Oh, it's too bad that it isn't dark outside. And all of a sudden I'm like. I called my sister and I said, Listen, I am freaking myself out. This lady freaked me out, but it sunk in. So can we start at 4:00 in the morning? And she was like, Wait, what? I said, We have to start at 4:00 in the morning. We'll be out earlier because of the long hike. And she said, okay, fine. And I said, okay, great. So then everybody was like, what, 4:00 in the morning? That's so early.
Speaker 3 (00:31:03) - Okay. But great. It'll be beautiful. The sun will rise and whatever. So figuring out ways to actually achieve this anyway, you can read the whole story in the book, but the nut of it is that I'll give you a little glimpse that I was so focused and so worried about this height issue and very consumed by it that what almost took me out that I had never thought about. I had the right shoes, I had clothing, all of these things. But a herd of goats almost at the bottom of the Grand Canyon on the way down before you go across the bottom, a herd of goats came down the hill and jumped over my sister and I and my gosh. And almost killed us. And like literally and the two of us were laughing so hard because we were like, Can you imagine? I'd be a Headline in the newspaper.
Speaker 3 (00:32:04) - We had the right shoes. We had my sister had her walking stick. We had everything like we had the headlamp, everything. So you can be so prepared.
Speaker 3 (00:32:15) - Right, Right.
Speaker 2 (00:32:16) - And you can imagine all the boulders coming down the hill and then the one that actually comes down the hill is one you've never thought of.
Speaker 3 (00:32:24) - One you've never thought of. Right. And so there's a lot of different titles in my head for this one. But it's like you if you think too much about the end, right, you'll never get past the beginning is one. But also you just have to take chances, right? You have to go and do it. You're not going to be you're not going to have everything figured out. And I think that times like this where something almost happens, doesn't happen, is is just a great example of you can be so prepared and then something is going to come up and you just have to do the best you can to get through it.
Speaker 2 (00:33:08) - And you pushed yourself through it. And I totally agree. I actually went on a mission trip to Guatemala in May, and at the end of the mission trip, we did a zip line.
Speaker 2 (00:33:20) - So I also have a fear of heights. But I think your point of not overthinking it too much is great because I just got myself into robot mode, right? And I'm thinking, okay, we're in this third world country. What kind of regulations do they have for safety and everything? And I just made myself do it. And it reminds me of what you said about remembering the feeling you got when you make a sale. You feel proud of that. And we don't ever I don't think we feel pride, true pride for anything that isn't difficult, that isn't a stretch. So I think thinking of those feelings of pride and when you have overcome things, help you to have more courage the next time. And you've been through so many roadblocks and pushed yourself through it. And another thing I totally believe, and I'm sure you agree, is that the only way sometimes to get through something that you're afraid of is to just do it. Just push yourself through it. So it's not that you're fearless.
Speaker 2 (00:34:27) - You can only be courageous when it's something that scares you. Otherwise you don't need courage.
Speaker 3 (00:34:31) - Absolutely. And I think it just there's a important component to this, too, which is it's about just starting, right? Sometimes you might say, Oh, I'm not prepared enough, I'm not ready. And the reality is things are going to come up along the way in these meetings and you do the best you can to actually prepare. And but I think more than anything, understanding what's on the other side of the table, but also that things might come up that you don't know about along the way and you can't beat yourself up about it. Because think more than anything, what you have to realize is that I think more than anything, you have to just keep moving forward and you have to figure out how to do that in a way that that you survive, right? Whether that's the Grand Canyon or whether that's building your company and know that to some extent this journey is, I think, just really is about staying alive.
Speaker 3 (00:35:35) - Right. And figuring out being quick on your feet to figure out, okay, that just happens. Okay. We have to keep moving forward because there won't be a second herd of goats that is going to come off of the mountain, right?
Speaker 2 (00:35:47) - Not likely. Not like maybe some other animal.
Speaker 3 (00:35:50) - Yeah. Let's get out of here and let's figure out what else can we do to keep moving forward. So I think there's just little things like that along the way that, like I said, you can learn things in your personal life that really help you in your professional life too. But I think that story in particular is one about you can feel like you're so prepared, you can spend hours, you can not get started. I would have been if somebody would have told me about the herd of goats, I probably would have. I don't know. Maybe that would have been another reason not to go down the mountain in the dark, right? I would have been like, Oh my God, what if they come down? We won't see them.
Speaker 3 (00:36:28) - The reality is, is they whether it was totally light out, I saw them and there was nothing I was going to be able to do and it didn't happen. So move on.
Speaker 2 (00:36:38) - Do you have any last words before we say goodbye?
Speaker 3 (00:36:42) - So think more than anything. Just know that. Life is supposed to be fun, right? Life is supposed to be a puzzle of some sort. And I think that if you view it that way, if you figure out what else can I do in order to solve this puzzle for me, Right. How is my life? Going to expand. If I think about it as finalizing the puzzle in some way, I don't think that the puzzles ever supposed to be finished, right? You're supposed to just keep expanding on things and figuring out what else can you do so that you're engaged, so that you have a lot more interest every day to wake up and be able to think about what else can I do in some way? And so think if with that mindset.
Speaker 3 (00:37:39) - It doesn't matter if you're an entrepreneur or you're on a sales team or you're a sales manager. It's the same mindset that I think is is a good one to have to be able to live a life in that way.
Speaker 2 (00:37:54) - Thank you so much for being here and sharing your wisdom. I really appreciate your conversation with me.
Speaker 3 (00:38:01) - Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (00:38:06) - Thanks for listening to this episode of Uncopyable Women in Sales, Your Source for Secrets you can use to make more sales. Check the show notes for links and contact information. And if you enjoyed the podcast, please spread the word by subscribing, sharing and leaving a five star review. You can always learn more by going to Uncopyable sales.com/podcast. Until next time, go out and supercharge your sales like a true uncopyable rock star.