Why You Don't Need Experience To Build A Successful Business #scottsthoughts

Welcome to success story. The most useful podcast in the world. I'm your host, Scott DeClaire. The success story podcast is part of the blue wire podcast network as well as the HubSpot podcast network. Now, the HubSpot podcast network has incredible shows like the Hustle Daily. It's hosted by Zachary Crockett, Jacob Cohen, Rob Litterest, and Juliet Bennett Ryla. Now, the Hustle Daily brings you a healthy dose of a reverent, offbeat, and informative takes on business, tech, and news, and it happens daily. So, if you want to stay up to date on the latest and greatest, and some of these topics are interesting to you, then you're going to love the Hustle Daily topics like Amazon's grocery strategy. The rise of the ugly shoe economy is AI, the secret to love, and America's sleep deficit problem. So, if these are topics you want to get into and you love hearing up to date content, whenever you wake up in the morning, go listen to the Hustle Daily, wherever you listen to your podcast. What's going on, Scott? Here today, I am going to speak about passion and how to turn your passion into a project that's right. I'm going to teach you how to turn your passion into a project into a side hustle or into a business. Now, where did this topic come from? On the success story podcast last month, I was fortunate enough to have an incredible enlightening conversation with none other than Kara Golden. Now, Kara Golden is the creative mastermind behind the flavored water company, Hint. Kara began her beverage journey with a mission. Her goal was to create and sell drinks that would serve as a refreshing alternative to the more sugary soft drinks available on the market. Little did she know that her big ideas would yield incredible successes later down the line, but she had a problem. She had no industry experience, and this is something that happens to a lot of passionate entrepreneurs that want to start something. They don't know what they don't know. They don't have the experience to start in a certain industry. But she gave so much insight and wisdom in my chat with her that she unpacked how she took her passion for creating a healthier drink alternative and turned it into an actual project with almost zero industry experience. So I wanted to know how did she manage to reach her level of success? The answer that she gave was so insightful and so impactful that I wanted to share an entire video about her answer and then draw in some other examples of incredible people who have turned their passion into a project or a business. So if you are a person with a passion, but you don't have any industry experience to speak of, no major entrepreneurial successes under your belt, this is the video for you. Stay tuned. Now who is Kara Golden? Well Kara was named amongst Fortune's most powerful women, entrepreneurs and Forbes 40 women to watch over 40. Kara is nothing short of inspiring. Her creative vision behind naturally flavored water was a stroke of true entrepreneurial genius. Now before I dive into the lessons that I learned from Kara, let's go into Kara's story a little bit so you can understand what she's accomplished. She's the founder and CEO of Hint. Hint is a San Francisco based company that makes flavored water. She has no formal CPG training. She has business experience, but it came from tech. She's never built a business from the ground up. She was successful with Hint because she turned her passion for healthy living into a successful project. When she was pregnant with her first child, she was determined to find a healthy alternative to sugary drinks. She started making her own flavored water at home and soon became obsessed with the idea of starting her own business. She took her passion for healthy living and turned it into a successful project by starting Hint. She bootstrapped the company in the early years and has since grown it into a multi-million dollar business. Most recent records that I could find placed Hint somewhere in the 100 million plus dollars per year range. What really stuck out to me in this episode was the complete lack of industry experience that Kara had going into her journey with Hint. Going into her journey with Hint. She has never been involved in the sales of drinks or beverages before starting the company. Instead, what actually drove her was pure energetic passion for finding alternatives to sugar-based drinks. This prompted me to ask the question in the interview, is industry experience truly necessary when starting out on a new business endeavor? Common sense would point yes, Kara's story indicates otherwise. I dug deeper into the idea of the inexperienced entrepreneur to see whether experience was necessary to actually succeed in a business venture. We talk about experience and what it is and what it isn't. The actions we take in our day to day lives are essentially a manifestation of everything we've experienced as people. We respond to events happening around us by drawing upon our past. From this, we develop skills, values, beliefs that shape how we think, feel and behave. By this logic, it makes sense that having experience in certain areas of life can put us at an advantage when it comes to being successful. This can be seen through the simple example of learning a new instrument. Those who have never played an instrument before find it difficult to reach sheet music and make that music sound good. Obviously, however, for those that have been playing an instrument for years, the process is much easier because they have developed the skills, values, beliefs related to making music. In an entrepreneur's world, having prior experience in a field you're planning on starting a business in is often seen as a key ingredient to success, but it isn't the only way to move forward and to succeed. Interestingly, as I dove down this rabbit hole of inexperienced entrepreneurship, a simple Google search reveals an endless source of anecdotal evidence to back the idea that experience isn't a must in the entrepreneurial space. John Paul DeGario, the co-founder of Patron Spirits, with a net worth of $3.1 billion. Started his working life jumping between career and truck driving jobs. He had zero experience in the hair care industry before co-founding John Paul Mitchell systems and began with a loan of just $700. Sam Walton, the Walmart founder, once considered the wealthiest man in the US, had hardly any experience or assets to his name before opening his first store and developing the Walmart vision. Coco Chanel, founder of Chanel worth an estimated $7.1 billion, was a seamstress with no formal fashion training before starting her own line. She famously said, elegant is not the prerogative of those who have just escaped from school. It starts with simple things, good taste, good judgment, and a sense of proportion. Oprah Winfrey, obviously the enormous talk show host and entrepreneur with a net worth roughly of $3 billion. Had no TV experience once she created and launched her now iconic talk show. Add Cara Golden to that list and you've got a stellar lineup of entrepreneurial successes that have one thing in common. They started from scratch with little to no experience in their respective fields. The recipe for success when experience is lacking is an interesting recipe because we know now that prior industry experience isn't integral to success. So what is I ask Cara to pinpoint the factors to which she attributes her incredible success and triumph and her answers shed a new light on what it actually means to be an entrepreneur. And I am not saying that having some level of experience in an industry is a bad thing. I'm just saying it isn't all encompassing and it's not required. Here's what she said, number one, be ready to be humble. Humility is touted as a desirable trait in one's personal life. But as it turns out, being humble fits into the entrepreneurial life as well. To be humble is to realize that you don't have all the answers and that you're not above learning from anyone, no matter their experience level. When starting a business with little to no industry experience, it feels like you're at a disadvantage. However, embracing your inexperience can be one of your biggest strengths. It means that you're more likely to be open to new ideas and suggestions, which can only help you navigate your way to success. But that only happens if you're willing to be humble, bringing it back to personal experience when I jump into a new role, being humble and not knowing anything is by far my biggest strength. Because I ask the dumbest, the absolute stupidest questions you could ever possibly think of. And what does that do? That gives me all the information I could ever need. Because I ask the smartest people that have already figured it out. I never try and figure out something myself without speaking to somebody who's figured it out before. Of course, I research, I Google, I can do a lot of stuff on my own. But I've always found that my learning curve is expedited and exponentially and I get quality information. I filter through all the BS when I speak to people that have done it before because there's an unlimited amount of correct and incorrect information online, which obviously everybody has access to. But what is the benefit of working with somebody who's figured it out before and asking all those stupid questions? You understand what information is correct and you understand what information is applicable and then you understand the context of that information. The second thing, well, I kind of already touched on, but Kara's second point was be able to ask questions. So as Kara so eloquently put it, people really struggle with wanting to look smart. And it's true, many people turn their outward appearance and actions in order to feel a sense of security, they change who they are so that people perceive them as intelligent. Unfortunately, this often means turning down the opportunities to ask questions because people are worried that it's going to make them seem inexperienced or vulnerable. You could not be further from the truth and you're getting inside your own head if you think this ego is what you're displaying when you don't ask the right questions. And it's one of the great assembling blocks when it comes to the progression and success of your business or yourself. It leads to an intense fear of making mistakes and an inversion to asking questions or appearing to be inferior in knowledge, which is the number one thing that is going to inhibit your success. When you overcome those ego blocks and you start asking meaningful questions, research shows that questioning is directly linked to being a highly successful person. The third point that Kara brought that allowed her to be successful was to be energized by your passion. Beforehand water, Kara's expertise was never in the food and beverage industry. In fact, she was being hired by the likes of Google and Yahoo for work in the e-commerce sector. But she saw this huge, huge mountain in front of her. This is a quote from her. I saw this huge, huge mountain in front of me that I had to learn about, but I was so energized by stumbling upon this world that I knew nothing about, Kara explained. It wasn't prior knowledge or experience that motivated Kara to take her first steps. It was the passion she had for an industry she knew nothing about and that she was about to enter. And the excitement she felt at dipping her feet into something entirely new. Experience isn't crucial for success and passion isn't either, but being passionate about your endeavor comes with its advantages. For example, when disaster strikes, when shit hits the fan, your passion and your energy can be used as a support and source of motivation to keep going. Passion also encourages you to be persistent and relentless in your endeavors by tapping into your emotional drive. While excitement is finite, passion tends to come from a deeper part of who you are as a person. It isn't as likely to fizzle out. Motivation is always temporary. You have to find something much deeper than that that's going to carry you past all these tough times. And lastly, she spoke about vulnerability. So in her position within the tech industry, Kara took on the role of teacher and mentor to those less experienced than herself. Once she entered the food and beverage scene, however, the tables had turned and Kara decided to embrace the role of wide-eyed student. She wasted no time in making field observations, strolling the aisles of whole foods, buying tickets to conventions in the beverage industry. In many instances, Kara was disregarded as a waste of time in the conversations she was striking up with other people who were more senior or more experienced. But she laughed up the opportunity to set the bar low and make progress behind the scenes when you choose to be vulnerable as an employee, a number of things begin to fall into place. You'll learn through observation and introspection rather than attempting to dominate an industry. You'll grow through overcoming minor mishaps along the way instead of avoiding risk altogether. You'll develop empathy and understanding that allows you to gain perspective from everyone you interact with, example at conferences and meetings through connections. Literally everything is a learning opportunity and when you are vulnerable, you understand that and you accept that and you embrace every single learning opportunity that you come across. These were Kara's main points on attaining success without industry experience, nothing short of inspiring. Now moving forward, how can you take that entrepreneurial leap if you don't have experience? Well, definitely pay attention to these four points that Kara just discussed. My hope with this story that I brought out of Kara with her entrepreneurial venture with Hint and how she basically built it from the ground up to a success without experience is that it can encourage you to take your own leap into a business endeavor. Perhaps you're feeling a little bit held back by a lack of experience in your chosen field, maybe your hesitant to take the plunge into full-time entrepreneurship for fear of failing. Whatever your hesitation is, listen to Kara's story, listen to the points that she highlighted that allowed her to be successful and whatever your hesitation is, know that it's most importantly possible to be successful with no experience. You just need to be humble, ask questions, channel your passions and embrace vulnerability. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed these lessons from Kara Golden. She's an absolutely incredible person. Anybody can jump into anything they want and be successful if you embrace these four ideas. The idea of humble, channeling your passion, asking questions, embracing vulnerability, she is an absolute inspiration. If you enjoyed this video, of course, go check out the podcast and listen to the story from her. She does a great job of walking through all the things she went through as she built Hint and then obviously I want you to hit the like button, hit that subscribe button, leave some comments below about what you want to hear about all the lessons that you want to learn from incredible people. And I'll do my best to cover as many as I can. Have a great day. We'll talk again soon. Bye now. .