When Kara Goldin stepped into the kitchen to make a new type of flavored water, she wasn't looking to strike it rich or build a big business. She just wanted a healthier, tastier way to get her family to drink more water.
Goldin, the CEO of Hint, joined HuffPost Live to discuss how she transformed her idea into a beverage line that is now sold in 20,000 stores nationwide.
"I really developed this product out of my own interest to get this product in my own house," she explained to host Nancy Redd. "I was really doing it to get myself and my family drinking more water, and what I found was that in the marketplace, this product didn't exist. And all of the flavored waters that were in the marketplace had some kind of sweetener in it, whether that was sugar or Stevia or, at the time when I started the company, aspartame."
Concerned about both her own and her children's health, Goldin set out to create a sugar-free, preservative-free, naturally flavored water drink. And since she was creating this beverage for her children, she asked them directly for feedback.
"They're our number-one fans and critics. And they'll tell us when a certain flavor doesn't taste right," she said.
Goldin, who is featured in a new book by Rachel Hofstetter, Cooking Up Business, added that one of her kids even inspired an entirely new line of drinks.
"Our carbonated beverage, which we launched two years ago -- one of our kids in particular really likes carbonation, and so we used to take our products and put it into the Sodastream machine and carbonate it. We thought, 'why don't we just have a carbonated product? It's still water. It's just carbonated water.' So today we have both a carbonated version of Hint, which we call HintFizz, as well as Hint."
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