Say No to the Naysayers

What would you say are some of the biggest fears or doubts that hold people back from pursuing their dreams?

I don't have experience. You know it's, it's too hard I don't I don't know the answers. I don't have money. You know lots of different things. I mean you know, I think back, probably the hardest thing for me to hear after I had been in industry and been successful in different categories suddenly I walked into the beverage industry and there was just so many naysayers. I'd really, kind of growing up in Silicon Valley in many ways, just didn't feel like there was this energy around tech that I felt was like, "Oh that's great that you're with a little startup and let's see what happens." Instead I walk into the beverage industry and people would ask me, "So where did you come from?" and they would immediately size up that you know, size me up to figure out that I was not going to be able to be successful.

What kinds of things were they saying to you?

They would you know, they would say, "Oh you got your product into Whole Foods. I mean that's really easy to get it into Whole Foods and just wait till you try and get it into the big conventional grocery stores like Safeway." You know you hear that enough times and then of course there's that there's a part of you that says, if enough people say it to you, "Maybe they actually do know what they're talking about."

But then I would go back to the stores that we were really successful in, and then I'd run into customers that were like, "Oh gosh, you're really helping me to drink water. You're really helping me to change my health." And so it was really the customers, I think, that helped me to really believe that I ultimately could get something done here. You know thinking back on it, I think that what saved me in many ways was to just say, "Okay well there's enough believers on this side. There's enough doubters on this side but I should just keep going."