We were honored to have Seth Goldman, founder and TeaEO of Honest Tea, as our guest for a Seller community webinar last week.  Seth shared his experience from starting and growing Honest Tea over the past 11 years to $50mil in sales. Share he did. Seth was candid and inspiring. He provided a slew of lessons and answered several questions from our community.

Joya of joyababy summed it up best ” Seth was very helpful and inspiring! Which for a fellow entrepreneur is fuel to keep going!! I could pick his brain all day, being in “the thick of it” as we speak”.

I will limit this post to highlighting three points that just scratch the surface of his insight:

1. Before raising money, leverage your suppliers -Seth was asked about how to go about raising outside capital. His first reaction was to emphasize partnering with your suppliers. He told the story of negotiating with his bottle supplier for extended terms so he could make it through his slow season. Smart cash management and a lean staff allowed Seth and team to raise only a minimal amount of outside capital.

2. Keep customer interaction in-house – Seth was personally out sampling at retailers in the early days and to this day will leverage his interns enthusiasm versus hiring outsiders. I remember getting the hard sell from grocery stores to use their sampling teams, it is far easier to sign on the dotted line and having their team do it than getting out there yourself. But the Honest Tea team can pitch their product with passion and that interaction is priceless.

3. Packaging sets expectations – Seth recommended the following excercise to determine if your design is having its designated effect. Put the package in front of people and ask them what they expect the product to taste like (obviously without actually sampling it). Brilliant idea. I have personally spent countless days refining packaging and have seen the same debate linger too long at other companies. This is is an intuitive way to get quick feedback.

We will be posting a link to Seth’s talk in each Seller’s dashboard. Thank you again Seth for your time, wisdom and encouragement.