Sold To Coca-Cola And Started Again!

Seth Goldman (00:00)
startups are intense and require a lot of work, sacrifice and stress.

my wife and I just had had our third son about eight months prior to launching Honest Tea.

my wife had brought our second son to the doctor,

she walked in that day and the doctor had said, it turns out his aorta is constricted.

so it was going to have to have a stent put in, which is a major cardiac surgery

I remember thinking, gosh, maybe this is just not the right time to launch this business.

I don’t know that there is balance. Life happens and the business happens

our family is the thing I take the most satisfaction from, proudest of.

it helped me appreciate how different people are. I can’t manage all people the same way.

Focus on the outcome

that you’re hoping for rather than the means to get to the outcome.

Kevin Rice (01:05)
Welcome back to CEOs and ABCs. Today I’m joined by Seth Goldman, the founder of Honest Tea, which he built and sold to the Coca-Cola company in 2011. Today he’s the current CEO of Just Ice Tea, and he sits on numerous boards of purpose-driven consumer brands like Tony’s Chocolonies, Beyond Meat, and he’s also the co-founder of

Plant Burger, a multi-unit restaurant serving plant-based alternatives. In this conversation, Seth shares what it really takes to build and rebuild an iconic company, from launching Honest Tea out of his home, to scaling it with Coca-Cola, to now stepping back in years later to create Just Ice Tea with an even deeper mission. We also go behind the scenes of leadership and parenting. Seth opens up about what was happening at home while Honest Tea was really taking off, including a major family health scare early on.

and how he stayed grounded through intensity and stress and long days. He reflects on raising three sons and the reality that balance isn’t always possible and how family life made him a better leader because it taught him that people learn differently, they process differently and they succeed differently. So Seth, thank you so much for being here today.

Seth Goldman (02:15)
Thanks, Kevin. Nice to be with you.

Kevin Rice (02:17)
You have done so many amazing things in your career. I’m really excited to talk about all of it ⁓ from, you know, Honest Tea to your new company, Just Ice Tea, Why don’t we start out with what’s life like today? Where are you at in your career? You’re building this new company.

Seth Goldman (02:31)
and

Well, it’s very full in a fulfilling way. ⁓ know, Just Ice Tea is now in this explosive growth mode because we’re launching nationally in Kroger, Safeway, Publix, all this coming season. So lots to do, signing up new distributors, making sure we have the production capacity. And we’re also building this health clinic in Mozambique, which we’re very excited about. so…

trying to figure out how to get there to make that happen at the same time we’re doing all these things. But those are all things I’m passionate about. And then Beyond Meat is interesting, going through an interesting evolution where we’re expanding beyond just the name Beyond Meat to Beyond. And so we’re exploring new categories and spaces ⁓ and new products. And that’s been fun to see. then

Plant Burger, which I’m also a chair of, going through a growth cycle again, looking at new stores and so thinking about how we approach that. And then Tony’s Chocolonely is an interesting place because I’m chair of the Mission Guardians because the price of cocoa for the first time has been sort of at the highest it’s ever been. so

that changes some of the dynamics of the cocoa market and just thinking about that. And that’s all the work side of it on the personal side, which is certainly how I define most of my happiness. ⁓ My wife and I, we have a granddaughter now and so we actually got to get out of work a little early yesterday and take care of her for a few hours and that was just so much fun. it’s ⁓ really, you forget once your kids grow up

what fun a new life is in the house and how it really refreshes everything. So I feel like a lot’s going on, but a lot of good energy happening.

Kevin Rice (04:17)
Yeah.

amazing and we’ll certainly want to get into kind of all of the social responsibility that’s underpinning all of those businesses that you just talked about. But before we do, being a new grandpa, what’s that like? You get the best job, right? Because you get to come in, have fun, and then you get to leave after you load them up with sugar or pass their bedtime.

Seth Goldman (04:46)
It’s so fun. You just see someone learning, in front of your eyes, you see her learning new words and new concepts and being able to do things this week that she wasn’t able to do last week. And it really does keep you sort of

thinking on your own way, wow, can I learn new things that quickly, right? And so just sort of having that, going back to that learner’s mind, I mean, she is the ultimate learner in absorbing everything. So that on its own is just a wonderful thing to watch. And it’s also just wonderful to see our son and daughter-in-law evolve as parents. I think within all the things I’ve done over the course of my…

not my career, but my life, certainly

our family is the thing I take the most satisfaction from, proudest of.

so ⁓ seeing that expand, extend now is really fulfilling.

Kevin Rice (05:47)
Well, let’s talk about your kind of like first work baby. when you started Honest Tea, tell us about the journey. What inspired you to start that company?

Seth Goldman (05:52)
Sure.

Yeah, so I always did have an entrepreneurial edge going back even to, you know, my earliest days, we were, you know, classic lemonade stand going up and then ⁓ starting up organizations in high school and in college, and a business school. So was trying to think about, you know, what’s a new need that could be fulfilled. And ⁓

Kevin Rice (06:08)
Dice.

Seth Goldman (06:22)
when I had graduated from the Yale School of Management, I did take a job in a, mission-driven mutual fund company. So they had a whole portfolio of investments ⁓ that they offered to investors to be able to invest in companies with better environmental records and avoiding, ⁓ whether it was tobacco companies or companies with bad environmental records.

And it was fulfilling work. It was the mission driven part, but it wasn’t entrepreneurial. And so I was just started to think about what would be something entrepreneurial I could create. And after giving a presentation on behalf of the company, it was called Calvert was the name of the funds. I went for a run and after the run, I was thirsty. And then I realized there was nothing in the beverage shop that was going to quench my thirst. And so I reached back out to my business school professor, Barry Nailbuff, ⁓ where

when I had been his student, we had talked about this missing gap. actually done a case study of the beverage industry and mutually recognized there should be a drink that isn’t as sweet. And at the time we had talked about maybe a juice and seltzer. But after this run, two and a half years after I had been in Barry’s classroom, when I reached back out to him, Barry had just come back from India where he’d been studying the tea industry and he’d come up with the name Honest Tea. And for me, that was kind of the…

the breakthrough, the name that could give me license to create a mission-driven beverage company. In my mind, the risk profile, I was ready to do something like this. I certainly had the aptitude for it. I was just finding the right idea and this felt like the right idea. I took the leap and left Calvert and started Honest Tea out of my house, but it as humble the beginning as you can imagine with

five thermoses of tea and an empty Snapple bottle that I managed to bring to the local Whole Foods buying office and made a presentation there and they were open to it. So that was how we got started. But it was, you mentioned as a baby, because

my wife and I just had had our third son about eight months prior to launching Honest Tea.

So it really was bringing up this fourth life in the house and not in a bad way. mean, our son’s

had thought of Honesty as sort of the fourth brother and they were they were as Probably of all the people who were sad when Honest Tea eventually did get discontinued. They were I would say some of the most emotional about it

Kevin Rice (08:47)
Yeah, I mean, my own experience as I built my company and then you sold it and it was no longer mine, brings up a lot of feelings. For me, it was pretty transactional. And that’s because I’ve shared about how I kind of went into this place of like robot mode for the last couple of years. There was just so much stress in building this company.

Seth Goldman (08:47)
you

Hmm. Hmm.

Kevin Rice (09:09)
At the same time I was a single parent, COVID was happening. And so by the time I sold the company, it just didn’t really land for me like I thought it was going to. I’m curious, what was your experience like after building this business and then selling it off to Coca-Cola company? Like what emotions did that bring up for you?

Seth Goldman (09:09)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Yeah, yeah.

yeah.

we were always very attached and I say we, because it was my family attached. proud of Honest Tea. we were very early when Coke first invested. This was when they invested, were at about 23 million in sales. So Just Ice Tea today is already larger than Honest Tea was, but it was 23 million in sales. So it was still very early. We’d been doing it for 10 years.

And so it was very sad and I stayed very engaged really through. So that was 2008 when Coke invested through 2015, I still ran the business and it was very satisfying to see it grow so quickly. We grew to over 170 million in sales. And so seeing the Coca-Cola impact of seeing the brand spread into airports and

national chains, and then Honest Kids, which is still around, seeing that spread, and Honest Kids today is in McDonald’s and Wendy’s and Subway. Thank you. Yeah, and I say thank you. It doesn’t do anything for me personally, but it is still, we’re still very proud of Honest Kids. And by the way, my name and my son’s name are still on the package. So it is an authentic product and yeah, and it is really democratizing organic drinks. so it is the, by far,

Kevin Rice (10:17)
I’ve got some in the fridge right now.

It’s a legacy, yeah.

Seth Goldman (10:43)
the most democratized, the most widely available organic product there is, because it is, as I said, in all these national restaurant chains. And so, you know, when a parent takes their child to McDonald’s, they’re not necessarily thinking, let’s go get some organic food, you know, go to McDonald’s, but there it is. Yeah, exactly. But that’s what they’re getting. That’s the default, you know, choice in the happy meal. So ⁓ that is exciting to see that. so…

Kevin Rice (11:00)
This is the last thing you’re thinking about when you’re going to McDonald’s.

Seth Goldman (11:11)
we still take a great deal of pride that Honest Kids is doing what we had hoped Honest Tea would do. And for that reason, it was a sad moment when I heard Honest Tea was being discontinued because it wasn’t just me, all the people who had put effort into building it were sad that that happened. so for a week we were sad. And then after that we realized, well, wait a minute, actually this is an amazing business opportunity.

If we handle this right, we could take advantage of this huge vacuum that’s going to be created. It’s very rare you get the chance to launch a business with the market already established, but with a huge hole in it, the way the void was for Honest Tea. The irony was that ⁓ certainly Honest Tea was ahead of its time. We came out at a time where people didn’t know what less sweet tea was, they didn’t know what organic was, they didn’t know what fair trade was. By the time,

know, 2022, by the time Honest Tea was discontinued, that market was only growing. And so Just Ice Tea was able to take advantage of all that work that had been done. And, you know, there were some other brands in the market, but we have now reclaimed the title as, top selling brand in the natural tea category. And what we’re doing is now leveraging that into mainstream channels.

And so that’s, as I said, we’re expanding into all these national chains and it’s really exciting.

Kevin Rice (12:42)
I love the just uniqueness and the underlying like connotations of both of the brand names, honest tea and now justice, just iced tea. it creates this real big umbrella platform for you to expand into a lot of other arenas, especially social causes. So I imagine both of those brand names were very deliberate as you were coming up with them, but they’re just so magical.

Seth Goldman (12:51)
Yeah.

Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Yeah. Yeah.

Thank you. And yeah, absolutely. It is absolutely what we’re about. And as I said, we’re I would say just iced tea is leaning in even harder to the purpose of the brand. so whereas Honest Tea started with some organic ingredients and no fair trade ingredients, but evolved to those things, just iced tea from day one, all organic, all fair trade ingredients wherever we could.

and with this now commitment to build this health clinic in Mozambique, which is our largest sourcing partner. We really want to own that and make sure that we’re leading with purpose.

Kevin Rice (13:50)
Amazing. When you were first starting, you have three kids, you’re building your first company. What was life like behind the scenes?

Seth Goldman (13:58)
yeah. Well, first

of all, as I said, the kids were, they still are, like the source of my greatest joy in life, our family as a whole. So it was always great to have this diversion because, you know,

startups are intense and require a lot of work, sacrifice and stress. And ⁓ when we were launching in 1998,

So as I said, we had a first presentation. It was in March of 1998. And in February, my wife had brought our second son to the doctor, and he had had a real big differential in his blood pressure. One arm was very high. One arm was very low. And so when

It just so happened that when she brought him for the second follow-up checkup in March, it was the same day that Barry and I were in the kitchen making samples for my first Whole Foods presentation. But she walked in that day and the doctor had said, it turns out his aorta is constricted. His aorta basically is the size of not even a penny, really, really narrow.

And so it was going to have to have a stent put in, which is a major cardiac surgery for a, this was 1998, so this was for a boy who’s just turned four years old. So that all of a sudden, kind of like, whoa, what? And I remember thinking, gosh, maybe this is just not the right time to launch this business.

Kevin Rice (15:14)
Yeah.

Seth Goldman (15:31)
Maybe I should have stuck with a mutual fund company, which was a much more stable,

business, I could probably take some kind of family leave. But I had jumped in, so literally I’d be sleeping over in the hospital, keeping an on my son and working on the business plan. At the same time, I had ⁓ someone helping me with formulations who would literally come in, I’d meet them in the lobby at midnight and taste formulas. ⁓

Kevin Rice (15:36)
Yeah.

Seth Goldman (16:00)
and then go back up and be with my son. So it was just intense and there’s no way around it. That is ultimately sort of when you’re building an enterprise like this, you…

I don’t know that there is balance. It’s just it’s what happens. Life happens and the business happens

But for what I found over the longer term is actually they each helped keep me balanced that, you whenever things got too crazy,

the family was a great outlet to give me new sources of joy or distraction. then, yeah, healthy distraction, right? Yeah. then, you know, I mean, obviously the business made sure I had purpose in my work. But even as our family grew older and our youngest son started to play baseball and I became the head coach for his travel baseball team, which was unusual because I…

Kevin Rice (16:31)
Hmm.

Distraction. Yeah, there you go. Healthy.

Seth Goldman (16:54)
I didn’t play baseball growing up, I realized it was about ego management more than anything. And that was always humbling because these eight-year-olds had no interest in business. So I could leave the business behind and throw a ball around on the field with these eight-year-olds. just that was so much fun. And so it was just a really good way to help keep things in perspective.

Kevin Rice (17:13)
Hmm.

Yeah, it’s a really nice kind of not distraction or escape, but just kind of juxtaposition as you’re a leader in an organization and all eyes are on you and expecting you to be, you know, showing up with value and leading with decisions. And now all of a sudden you get to just go play and just enjoy the spirit of children. And it just kind of helps balance you out. I struggled to be honest. When I was building my company,

Seth Goldman (17:31)
Yeah. Yeah.

and ⁓

Yeah.

Kevin Rice (17:51)
Like you I was working, you know 12 14 hour days traveling non-stop and what I found was that when I would come home I’d have a really hard time getting into like parenting mode and turning off the work but in talking to you I know that family is so important and Being present and intentional was really something that you put a lot of like effort and intention into I think it’s something a lot of executives struggle with so You know, how did you?

Seth Goldman (18:04)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Kevin Rice (18:20)
maintain those boundaries and how did you show up for your family at the same time building this wildly successful company? Because I’m genuinely ⁓ trying to learn from all the guests because it’s something I struggle with today.

Seth Goldman (18:27)
Yeah.

Well, I think the one thing I was able to do well was extend the learnings. So my family, know, fortunate, all three of our sons are so different and they all learn differently and act differently. And

it helped me appreciate how different people are. And so it certainly helped me understand, you know, I can’t run, I can’t manage all people the same way.

I’ve got to work with people as they are rather than try to mold them into certain things. That I think helped make me a better manager. I think it also helped give me, I want to say compassion, but just more understanding because especially as you have your own kids and now my kids are in the work world and thinking everybody is someone’s child. Just understanding people.

always want to try to do well, right? No one comes to a job saying, I’m going to see if I can screw this up. So trying to find the ways to help them succeed is important. And if you just sort of have a very black and white measurement of whether or not someone’s doing their job, you may miss the talents someone has to give.

Kevin Rice (19:28)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, right.

Seth Goldman (19:48)
and so trying to work with them that way is helpful. But I also ⁓ got our kids exposed and involved in the business too. So they came with me, we took a family trip to India, to Darjeeling, to a tea garden, which is one of the most spectacular places on earth. And they got to see that and experience it and understand why I’m so passionate about it.

We always joke we never made it to Disney World or Disneyland as a family, but we did get to Darjeeling, which is a magical place on its own magic kingdom. and they got to the bottling plants and they came to sales meetings. So they really got exposed to the business in a way that they understood what went into it, but also we got to see all the people.

In the starting years, we had the person who was helping me formulate the drinks and set up the business. He lived in our basement for more than a year. So he was almost like an uncle. They just got to be around the business in a way that didn’t ⁓ feel like it was their childhood was sacrificed to it or anything like that.

Kevin Rice (20:53)
Yeah, I think that’s the balance, right? As, kids grew up so fast these days and I have a son like you who has a juice stand. He’s always trying to figure out how to make money. actually just recently, now that he’s nine, I started implementing like kind of household contributions that he can complete in exchange for compensation. But I kind of wanted to wait for a while because

Seth Goldman (21:10)
⁓ Yeah.

Kevin Rice (21:16)
while all my friends’ families, they implemented a chores system, probably by the time the kids were six, I just didn’t want them to miss out on being a child because you have your rest of your life to learn responsibilities. But now that he’s nine, he wants to earn money, he’s got a juice stand, he’s figuring out how to use ⁓ a wood spinning ⁓ lathe to carve out Harry Potter wands and he’s trying to sell those.

Seth Goldman (21:27)
Yeah.

wait, yeah. ⁓ wow.

Kevin Rice (21:45)
So he’s very

entrepreneurial, but I’m like, I’m trying to kind of, ⁓ tap the brakes a little bit and still like, so I want to support his, his goals and his desire to learn business and economics and how to make money. But at the same time, I want him to be a kid. Did you kind of have that conscious thinking of like, ⁓ this is really fun to introduce them to the business. But at the same time, I don’t want them thinking too much about like their future and corporate life while they’re still kids.

Seth Goldman (21:52)
Yuck.

Yeah, I don’t think they ever,

no, I don’t think they ever felt pressure to think about the corporate life. I mean, for me, I, well, my wife and I really stressed was making sure they, develop resilience as young people. So, as I’ve said, lot of sports, a lot of, things that require real work ⁓ or practice and dedication, but also responsibility in the house too. We,

Kevin Rice (22:23)
Mm.

Yeah.

Seth Goldman (22:38)
There’s no, no one waits on anybody. ⁓ People clean up after themselves. so making sure they did have chores and responsibilities is important. ironically, one of the fun things we did is

They were growing up when The Apprentice was kind of a popular show. They had seen a few episodes, but we would do our own version of The Apprentice at dinner where I’d sort of give them a challenge and say, you come up with a name for this or come up with a product that solves an issue. And then they would each present their ideas and then we would talk about it. you ⁓ know, that was some.

Kevin Rice (23:11)
That’s so fun. I

just started watching Jimmy Fallon’s new show called On Brand and ⁓ he pulls together kind of just some average people and then they pitch real concepts and my nine year old is watching that with me and I can see him connecting the dots of like, ⁓ like this is how those commercials that I see on TV get made. This is how like this whole system starts to work. And he’s already just, you

Seth Goldman (23:19)
yeah!

Thank you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Kevin Rice (23:40)
understands so much more than I did at his age.

Seth Goldman (23:42)
our kids love tasting products. They love giving impact on labels, but it’s important that Honest Kids really was inspired by my son, the second son I mentioned. He was the one who had, we had brought out a product called Honest Aid, which was like a lemonade, limeade. And he wanted to bring that to his school lunch because he liked it so much, but he would always come home with it half.

And when he didn’t bring that in, I was putting Capri Sun pouches in his lunchbox. And he’s like, how come you’re selling healthy drinks to grownups, but you’re giving me these really sweet drinks? And that’s really led to the inspiration for Honest Kids. ⁓ that, which as I said, is ultimately, you know, where the lasting value of the Honest brand is. So they had some great ideas. then our whole involvement in Beyond Meat traces back to our oldest son.

who became a vegetarian at the age of eight and ⁓ got excited about this idea that, ⁓ you know, if we can meet our dietary needs without having to kill animals, why wouldn’t we try to do that? And he convinced all of us by the time he was 13 to be vegetarian.

Kevin Rice (24:47)
That’s amazing.

You mentioned earlier, teaching your kids resistance or resilience is a value resilience. I think resilience is, is probably that the most important thing that we can be teaching kids today as the world is changing. Yeah. And, ⁓ you know, it’s something that I try to consciously and intentionally kind of create

Seth Goldman (25:10)
Yeah, resilience, resilience. Yeah, yeah.

my gosh, especially as an entrepreneur. Yeah.

Kevin Rice (25:29)
opportunities for my kids to build resilience and grit and work ethics. I’m like artificially trying to create scenarios that can push them through this because they don’t play a lot of traditional sports. ⁓ so I’m like finding activities to, work on teamwork or some things that they can only do together as a two person activity. Or like if we go on a hike, just trying to get them to go.

Seth Goldman (25:31)
Hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Kevin Rice (25:54)
five minutes further than last time or 10 minutes further than last time and then, you know, telling them stories about my own overcoming adversity. What were some of the ways that you helped teach your kids about resilience or any other like values that were important to your family?

Seth Goldman (25:56)
Yes. ⁓

to

I mean, that’s one of the most important things a parent can do is be with your child when they undergo moments of disappointment or loss and help them navigate through it. And so, as I said, that they were involved in a lot of sports and other sports. I did coach baseball. like I said, wasn’t about baseball was just a medium for teaching ⁓ life lessons. My oldest son,

did wrestling, went out to, place in the state tournament and went far much farther than that. Wrestling is an incredibly intense sport because it’s all on you. helping both sort of, occasionally having setbacks and overcoming those was was really helpful. And then, you know, ⁓ now they all are doing different entrepreneurial things. And so helping them.

Understand when it’s working, not working, and how to adjust and adapt is important too. I think modeling it is certainly one of the key ways to do it and talking it through with them. But certainly, there were plenty of opportunities for them to experience disappointment over the course of growing up. If you’re doing it right, we were.

Kevin Rice (27:23)
as we all have

with life. ⁓

Seth Goldman (27:24)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that

life life presents enough opportunities and you just got to learn from them. So.

as much as it’s important to deal with loss, it’s also important to find ways to be optimistic, to find reasons to recreate hope. And that happens in business on a daily basis. As I said, we’re getting a lot of wins right now, but we certainly have had disappointments along the way that you learn from and eventually grow from.

Kevin Rice (27:54)
Yeah. Were there any moments where maybe one of your kids was struggling with something? And if so, like, how did you show up in that moment for them?

Seth Goldman (28:02)
Oh yeah.

So absolutely, is the main answer, but our oldest son is dyslexic. And so he was, very good athlete, great verbal skills, but he could not learn to read while all his classmates were reading and he thought he was dumb. And he would say, oh, I’m stupid. I’m like…

Kevin Rice (28:20)
Mm.

Seth Goldman (28:21)
What? Like how? No. And so what we did was first, you know, get it diagnosed. So we understood that’s what was going on and then helped explain that to him and said, you just learn differently and you have you have certain skills that are you can see things in a way that others may never see and helping him. So first thing to understand, gain that understanding, that’s empowering and then kind of hacking it like understanding how to get around it. OK.

Kevin Rice (28:47)
Yeah.

Seth Goldman (28:52)
you’re going to learn differently, here are some tools you can use to make sure you’re gaining the same content. Or if you’re not going to read, here’s how to dictate and then edit. This was before AI was around. then he goes up ⁓ to college as well and just sort of finds ways around it. So that kind of unaddressed, then that could have just been a very

kind of devastating thing to learn. To think you’re, you know, it’s six years old and that you’re stupid and unable to learn would have been really tough.

Kevin Rice (29:28)
Yeah, I imagine

that would feel pretty heartbreaking as a parent. And dyslexia is something that’s often misdiagnosed, right? Early on, it’s misdiagnosed. so there’s, did you guys know what was happening right away or?

Seth Goldman (29:32)
Yes!

my gosh, so often. Yep.

No, no, we didn’t. just, you know, and it was frustrating because we were trying to help. You know, he wasn’t interested in school for obvious reasons. And so trying to keep him on task was just hard. But once we got it diagnosed, it became he got empowered and it was able to address it. And we initially had brought him to a school where they sort of focused on that. And once he hacked, kind of hacked it and understood it, he’s like, want to go back to the main high school, the public high school. I know how to do this. And he did.

So.

Kevin Rice (30:12)
Yeah,

that’s really awesome to help him see what initially felt like a disability and turn it into like a superpower because he could have easily gone down the path of just being a victim and just saying, I’m stupid. don’t need to go. There’s no reason for me to go to school because there’s something wrong with me. But instead you helped him see the opportunity to overcome it and really develop that grit. ⁓ That’s amazing.

Seth Goldman (30:21)
Yeah.

Yep. Yep. Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Absolutely.

Kevin Rice (30:40)
That’s probably the same process you would use in a leadership role, right? Like if you had employees who were struggling, right? And do have any ⁓ experience with employees where you had to show up and support them through a similar challenge?

Seth Goldman (30:44)
Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Absolutely. Yeah.

Well, so we had a, had a sales leader during the Honest Tea days who, who, you know, was very strict about paperwork that, people would submit. ⁓ and one of our really standout guys, like he actually still works with me at, ⁓ Just Ice Tea, but at the time he was struggling to get the paperwork in. I, sort of sat down with our, manager. said, well, is it the paperwork or is it the work? Right. So

I understand he’s not filling out the forms, but is he getting the shelf set the right way? Is he going out and finding new sales opportunities? He was. said, then let’s give him the camera and let ask, know, get him. This was, you know, really before cell phones were just everywhere. Send it. Have him just send in pictures of the new shell before and after. And if he’s getting that done, who cares whether or not he’s filling out the forms the right way?

Kevin Rice (31:44)
Mmm.

Seth Goldman (31:45)
So, know, again, and he may, for all I know, be dyslexic too, but like, just understanding people learn and information and process it differently. And so having enough awareness to sort of work with the people as they are, not as you want them to be.

Kevin Rice (32:01)
Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, and instead of, you know, micromanaging and punishing and saying, well, you’re not filling in, for us, it was always about time sheets. These five people don’t have their time sheets in. How are we going to punish them? What are the consequences? and in your case, it was just, you know, finding a solution that, realize like the

Seth Goldman (32:14)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kevin Rice (32:25)
the issue isn’t that big of a deal. And then, you know,

into his actual strengths. Yeah.

Seth Goldman (32:28)
It’s the ultimate product. Yeah. Focus on the outcome

that you’re hoping for rather than the means to get to the outcome.

Kevin Rice (32:35)
Yeah, yeah. Well, now you’re building a similar company and this time around you’re doing it with a lot of experience, a lot of lessons learned, probably a lot more relationships. So if you look back, what were some of the maybe two or three biggest lessons that you learned the first time around that you are now able to do things differently as you’re building your new company?

Seth Goldman (32:47)
yeah.

was nice.

Yeah, well, as you say, the relationships make a big difference because when we started Honest Tea, we had no relationships. So I was, you know, begging distributors to carry our product and if they ever did return my call, they were kind of the lowest performing distributors in the market, you know, this time around, because Honest Tea had graduated up to I could start with the top tier of distributors and they knew who I was. They knew what I was about. so got on board.

quickly, which was a huge gift. so one of the big lessons to me was show up authentically and treat everyone as you’d want them, you want to be treated yourself because you never know what’s going to come back around. And in this case, all these relationships, all these things we invested in paid off. again, I never,

treated people well at Honest Tea because, 10 years from now, I’m going to ask them to be our distributor and hope they’ll return my call. But this has been a huge return on karma that we invested in with Honest Tea. I think also leading with purpose, finding things you care about, and like we did with Honest Tea as the first fair trade brand and now being able to go back in, these things always

there’s no downside to doing that. mean, yes, it does cost money to make fair trade part of your purchasing criteria, but ⁓ it builds something much more meaningful to the consumer and to the employees. That’s something they can be proud of. so that kind of investment is worth it. It’s worth it to me personally, but it’s also worth it to our organization.

Kevin Rice (34:31)
Mm-hmm.

obviously it was purpose driven, mission driven initially. this time around, is it, is it more about creating impact? Cause I imagine you’re probably not in a place where you’re starting this company for financial reasons. And it’s, it’s gotta be more about like the impact you’re trying to create. And if so, like what’s your ultimate vision for like the

Seth Goldman (34:58)
Yeah.

Kevin Rice (35:02)
the change you’re trying to create in the world.

Seth Goldman (35:03)
Yeah, well, the impact, is about scale, right? I don’t want to just be a model of, it’s nice we can build this little health clinic in this little community, and that’s the end of it. The only way this becomes what I hope it will become is when we bring this to scale. ⁓ we do want to be in every store we can be in, and we want it to be a powerful vehicle for getting healthier products, organic products into people’s hands, for transforming agriculture wherever we can.

Kevin Rice (35:22)
Sure, yeah.

Seth Goldman (35:33)
Then yes, this health clinic in Mozambique is an important first step, but what more can we do when we bring it to scale? This is a business. It’s not about the successes and defined by the dollars, it’s just the scale of the reach. I have a great ambition for what we’re building here. This isn’t to prove.

Kevin Rice (35:42)
Mm.

Yeah.

Seth Goldman (36:00)
I want to prove we were right about Honest Tea, is to say that this can be a way people can gain both hydration and nutrition for themselves, but also to make choices that are in line with the way they hope to see the world.

Kevin Rice (36:17)
Do you think that you are maybe in a place where you can inspire other organizations and leaders to be more purpose and mission driven?

Seth Goldman (36:26)
Yeah, I hope so. Yeah, in fact, we’re joining next month, we’re formally unveiling something called Purpose Pledge, which will be a it’s an initiative. It’s right now it’s in pilot mode where 10 companies have committed to make these commitments, 10 commitments all around purpose in the business. so codifying that and making it part of how we ⁓ act and operate will be ⁓ hopefully a new standard of what

companies can aspire to do and we’d love to be a model for that.

Kevin Rice (36:56)
Yeah. I don’t know why popped into my head, but are you familiar with the brand Newman’s own? Yeah. I think it’s just such an interesting case study. I can’t cite the exact specifics, but, ⁓ at some point, the founder became financially successful enough that he wasn’t relying on the business anymore. And he converted it into, you know, it is still a commercial entity, but it also is really designed to drive their foundation.

And all of the profits are given to the foundation. And then that foundation, you know, does, does good in the world. think it’s just such an interesting, concept for somebody who has achieved financial success to now turn around and say, okay, now this business is purely about doing good in the world. yeah, yeah, exactly. ⁓ but very interesting. It’s something I’ve thought about is,

Seth Goldman (37:23)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, the founder is Paul Newman, the actor that was the. Yeah.

Kevin Rice (37:52)
You know, we have so many of these, ⁓ wildly successful entrepreneurs and, it would be amazing to see more businesses using that kind of structure to do good in the world.

Seth Goldman (38:02)
Yes, yeah,

for sure. We certainly hope we can inspire others to follow our lead. you know, part of that is you got to succeed. this isn’t going to work if we don’t, if we don’t succeed and we don’t inspire anybody to follow us.

Kevin Rice (38:09)
Amazing.

Sure.

Right. You still have to run a, tight business. So this time around, you’ve got a lot more relationships. People are taking your calls. what were some of the like pitfalls on the first time around that, you know, the, traps you fell into that now you have that foresight to avoid this time around.

Seth Goldman (38:27)
Yeah. Sure.

The biggest one with Honest Tea was that for six years, we owned a portion of a bottling plant. It was a totally different business than running and building a brand. So we invested in the bottling plant because we thought we needed to assure we had the capacity to make our product. What we’ve since learned is if we have a great partner,

who is someone we go close in a relationship, but they can own the burden of the bottling plant, all the worry about change parts and labor shifts and water quality, all of those things that have very little to do with building a meaningful brand. That’s a much healthier balance. And so that’s what we have. Great partners at our bottling plants around the country. And we let them worry about those details and we worry about building a brand. That’s a huge relief. The other one is that

Kevin Rice (39:22)
It’s hard to run two different

business models at the same time.

Seth Goldman (39:25)
it’s such a, and it’s such a different,

exactly. It’s such a different business too. That’s the other thing.

And then starting with focus, understanding what we’re in, and then the great distributors just has really streamlined our speed to market to launch much more quickly.

Kevin Rice (39:40)
Yeah,

it’s nice to have that playbook to say, okay, we’re going to run it back now.

Seth Goldman (39:45)
Yeah. Yes.

it’s very rare. I feel very lucky that we have this opportunity. And not to mention with a lot of the same people. So we were people who I knew who were great at what they do, who were eager to come back in. There was no indentured servitude. No one had to come back. But this has been ⁓ fun and fast in a way that I really appreciate it.

Kevin Rice (39:51)
Yeah.

Hmm

Now we both have three boys and, my experience the first time around with my first son and still with my second son, as I would say, I wasn’t as conscious as a parent. was just kind of going through it. figured everybody’s a parent. It’s just something you naturally know how to do. it wasn’t until later that I realized there’s so much to learn about being a parent. And obviously I learned through experience, but also through like reading and taking courses.

by my third son, you know, I’m a very different father, and I approach things very differently, just like you have this opportunity to build a second company with, all of that experience. When you were raising kids, did you find that you had lessons that you learned with your first son that you applied to your second and your third? how did your parenting evolve as you were raising three children and learning through that experience?

Seth Goldman (40:58)
Mm.

Well, I think the best lesson I learned started with our first son when I realized everybody learns and acts differently. As I said, because he was dyslexic, we pretty early on understood he just saw the world differently than other people. We really saw the contrast when our second son was born and they just had very different temperaments and outlooks. ⁓

From then on, just knew, This is not a cookie cutter operation. This is everyone has got special strengths and skills of their own. so understanding that and being able to appreciate it fully without reservation and love them for who they are and what they are and then ⁓ empowering them to understand and feel good about all who they are.

Kevin Rice (41:28)
Yeah. Yeah.

Seth Goldman (41:53)
That is just such a critical skill to develop, and that’s something that I feel good about how we’ve done it with all three.

Kevin Rice (42:02)
Yeah. speaking of your children, now that they are grown, having kids of their own, they’re out of the house. How has your relationship evolved with them I use the parallel of like, have a signed authority and, authentic authority. And that’s kind of just like a business concept that we talked about in our company. As your kids are younger, you have a signed authority, like they depend on you. And as they get older, they don’t.

Seth Goldman (42:15)
Hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Mm hmm. Yeah.

Kevin Rice (42:25)
They’re not under your rules anymore. They depend on you less and you know, your relationship has to evolve. So what is it like today versus, when they were younger?

Seth Goldman (42:28)
Yeah.

Yeah,

I’d like to think we didn’t rely too much on the assigned authority. We tried not to. We tried to use reason and rationale. So we still have a lot. We still have a ton of engagement with them. still I’m communicating with each of them every day in some form, usually, you know, text or some other way. So they’re older and they’ve got, you know, their own partners in life, but but it doesn’t feel

Kevin Rice (42:37)
Great.

Seth Goldman (42:57)
like it’s any distance and I’ve never had to rely really on that assigned authority.

Kevin Rice (43:03)
Do you feel like they reach out to you as more of a friend today, as more of a mentor? Like what’s the relationship?

Seth Goldman (43:10)
Yeah,

sometimes they’ll just confide. They want to just talk about something, but other times, yeah, advice or, quick input or is this the right idea? And yeah. So, yeah.

Kevin Rice (43:22)
That’s, I mean, it’s

amazing because like that’s the ultimate success. It’s one thing to have career success, but have children who are grown adults that still want to share life with you. Like that’s, that’s the metric of success right there.

Seth Goldman (43:27)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Thank

you. Well, the other one, of course, is the fact that my wife has, our relationship is so strong. And that’s that, you know, to me, it’s kind of the underpinning of all of that dynamic.

Kevin Rice (43:43)
Seth, thank you so much for joining me today. This was just such a meaningful conversation about building companies with purpose and showing up both fully at work and at home. I’m especially grateful for your honesty in those kind of early struggles, the family moments behind the scenes, the lessons parenting taught you about leadership, empathy, resilience.

Your story is just such a powerful reminder that success isn’t always about the exit. It’s about the impact we have along the way.

So again, thank you so much for joining me today.