A Lot of Questions

So what was most challenging for you? What was so different about actually starting a company, and what were some of the hurdles you had to overcome?

So I think that the key thing for me was I had no idea what I didn't know -- more than anything. I mean that that just is a blanket story about the beginning. In the end it's it exactly so but I was willing to really take time to figure it out and I you know, I look back too on probably, you know, the hardest thing about this was that I didn't know anything. And I was always asking questions and then, you know, people would give a response and then I'd say, "Well why is that?" And now I look back on that and think that because I didn't have experience in the beverage industry and when I asked that question, "Well why is that?" Then they thought, "Okay, well she's never had experience in the beverage industry so she's being sincere about actually asking," and then people would tell me, "Well this is why..." or they'd say, "Gosh, I don't know actually. I usually deal with people who actually just assume that it's right."

So people would stop and kind of catch themselves along the way just by communicating with me on sincere questions of, "Well, why is that?" And I think that that was really the most helpful but that was probably the most challenging thing. Here, I had sort of grown up at AOL in many many ways and felt like, I had a couple hundred people working for me I was sitting at the top I was one of the youngest vice presidents at AOL, I had this big group and, you know, nice gig going, and then suddenly I'm going back down to the bottom. Even though I'm the CEO There's just me running a company and lifting cases, actually running product and doing everything, you know, just like every possible thing that there was to to do inside of the company -- the only one do that.

You were a company of one.

A company of one. My husband actually joined me early on. I think he felt sorry for me, that I was the only one doing it. I had four kids under the age of six and, as you know, I had childcare helping me out, but I was like, I tell him to come in the car with me while two kids are in the car seat so that I could run into the store while he waited in the car with the kids. And I mean it was it was crazy, but it was great.