YouSaid · the spoken record

Ben Goodwin

lines on the record: 79
first: 2024-09-02
most recent: 2024-09-02
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I knew I needed a business partner, you know, I think most folks, most institutional investors would probably say, hey, this guy's brilliant, but I'm not sure that I trust him to manage my money.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's right. That's right. And then, you know, we got to the end of this two-year period, and it was just hundreds and hundreds of experiments. We actually thought that we had failed. We thought that we had tried so many different things. And it got to the point where we were actually breaking down the lab because we were like, all right, Jim, we got to pack it up. We've done so many iterations. I'm so over my skis on money. And I was breaking down the lab and there was this. Literally, this experiment in the corner of the lab that I hadn't tried. And I said, hey, what's this? I haven't tried this one. He's like, oh, yeah, it's this new one that blah, blah. And I drank it. I was like, are you kidding me? Is this stable? Delicious”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I didn't totally have that part nailed down at the beginning. So at a minimum, it's like I could make this kind of a delicious, sparkling, fruity beverage that's fermented. I don't even just...”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, it was a four year RD time period front to back. The first two years, I was focused on cracking the code around the fermentation. The second two years, I was focused on I have this thing, now I wanted to make it taste like a soda. And I would say I probably spent about three to $350,000 out of my own almost entirely out of my own pocket over those four years.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A little well, yeah, until you see like 400 bioreactor bags filled with God knows what hanging from the walls. I mean, it was absolute madness. It was also very fun.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, it wasn't perfect, but we had like a little heat and cool. Yeah. It looked like a scene out of, you know, the hive in aliens.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so you take whatever you're using as your culture base and then you pour whatever you're experimenting with into the vessel. So we want to try these three chemicals and we want to try this food source and we want to try these microorganisms. So let's put that in a bag. Let's do 10 different versions of it that have minor differences and let's literally staple them to the wall of the shed.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, it's plastic fold up tables. I mean, here's how insane it was. So you need bioreactors if you're going to drive fermentation, right? Bioreactors are quite expensive and they're quite technical. We would go to like ACE hardware and the aquarium store. You buy a bunch of Ziploc bags because they're pre-sterilized. And you get an electrostatic gun and you run the electrostatic gun over the Ziploc bags to create micro punctures. So all of a sudden you create this sterilized”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is where stuff started to get serious. I was working three different income streams. I would have the SEO going, the web design going, the product development going. And I spent every extra dime I had to pay for this gentleman to fly out, put him up in a hotel for a couple months, and then to create this low budget microbiology lab”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so his name was Jim Ledere, and he would get hired to go down to Central and South America and test different plants for interesting bioreactive compounds that could end up having like pharmaceutical or other utility. You know, if you're out in the literal jungle trying to... Create these extractions and do these projects, you don't exactly have access to the best equipment. That's perfect for me because I didn't have two or three hundred thousand dollars to build out like an appropriate microbiology lab.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, one of the. So I ended up working with a genius microbiologist and organic chemist in this process. And one of the ways that he described fermentation, especially fermentation that's this complex, is it's more like animal husbandry than anything else. You know, you basically have these different microorganisms and they've got to eat correctly and they've got to rest correctly and they've got to stay in the right balance. And if they get sick, it could be devastating. So, you know, for a lot of brands that have scaled fermentation, even in yogurt and stuff like that, they'll inoculate their culture banks against viruses, for example, that could come in and just wipe out the culture bank. It's scaling complex fermentation is a very labor-intensive and complex endeavor.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's the dairy version. Right. And then there's a non-dairy version that actually was originally harvested from cacti. So that's where it started. I'm like, I'm fascinated by the idea of a water kefer style beverage. And I really need to figure out how to actually make it sustainable because I had had enough experience with fermentation at that point that I knew some of the pitfalls of trying to scale up fermentation.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. Well, okay. So great, great point. That yogurt taste is lactic acid. And so my goal was, how can I create a scalable kind of water kefer style beverage that doesn't have that funk to it?”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it started with this concept of I really enjoy fermentation. I still think there's something really, really important about fermentation for human health. And I had started to observe some of the weaknesses in kombucha as well. I was like, okay, here's this culture. It's got five today, eight different organisms in it. It's got the strong vinegar taste. It's actually pretty high in sugar. So my first question was, can I make a more interesting and just delicious fermented beverage? And I ended up focusing on something called water kefir. So a lot of people are familiar with dairy kefir. Yep. Yeah.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I left kombucha botanica, and there's a couple kind of Evolved out of a difficult childhood to be more than good enough at taking care of myself and being healthy. And a lot of this for me comes down to, you know, how do you create a higher quality world? I think it's really difficult to feel truly free and alive as a human being if you are struggling with your health. So I wanted to create products that at scale could start to offer that higher quality of health to more people in the country.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, the digestive microbiome is in the gut, and that's the most important microbiome arguably for human beings. And then the other thing about the microbiome is there's something called the brain gut axis. So we produce the majority of our hormones and our neurotransmitters in our microbiome. Those have a marked impact on how we feel, on how we think. And that's powerful.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“100%, but why are the probiotics important? Right? Like, and so that was the most important, I'd say, kind of conceptual aha that came out of the experience of kombucha botanica was learning about the microbiome.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“100%. So my main area of focus was managing the production side, especially the fermentation side. And to your point, you know, kombucha is really interesting because there is the entry level ease to getting into it. But really, the most salient thing that came out of that experience was when I started looking into what is kombucha supposed to be doing anyway? You know, why is it in theory good for people?”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was familiar with kombucha. I didn't know much about how it was made. And she's like, he just started. He really needs some help if you want to chat to him. And so, of course, I did. And then I started working with Adam in kibucha.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was working at a local health food stores produce department, which was my hack at that time for getting all the fruits and vegetables I wanted without, you know, because I wasn't making a lot of cash, but I wanted to eat really, really well. And so I work in a produce department, and then that problem solved. And then I had started basically developed an interest. And look, this, I think, is. Part of the siren song of the beverage industry because obviously so many people go into the beverage industry so few were successful, but I felt drawn towards beverage. But I realized that I had no idea where to start. And I had a friend who had at that time a boyfriend. His name was Adam Goodman. And she was like, hey, my boyfriend's starting a kombucha company.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, the timing was really good because I'm sitting here struggling with this. I feel like there's a bunch of stuff I could be doing, but I'm not 100% sure what it is. And then I picked this book up for whatever reason, and I'm reading it. And, you know, the essence of the philosophy is you can do the thing that everybody else does, or you can carve your own path. And by the way, that's where a lot of the most interesting things can happen. And it's unique to you in your footprint. And obviously in the end, Cliff Bar did that through creating a health and wellness product company. And it really opened this pathway to me like, oh, I guess I'm going to go, I can just go be an entrepreneur and I can create a product. It's perfect.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I dropped out almost immediately. You know, I know enough about myself to know that I'm never going to do something and stick with it because it's, quote, what I'm supposed to do. My personality is such that if I'm really engaged in what I'm doing and why I'm doing it and I'm fascinated by it, I'll tell you to the ends of the earth. But if I'm just doing something because that's what's next up on your dance card, I'm really going to struggle to see it through.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Factory farms and I went vegetarian and kind of from there. But that was this, you know, interesting event that really started to shift things for me”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like, that is what are you like? It was just, she was just like, it was just one of those okay Ben moments, but that moment will always stick in my mind where I was just like, why the hell M I sitting here eating a bowl of peanut butter? This is just stupid. It was almost like this awareness entered my mind in this like kind of split second epiphany of I actually have a choice about what I'm doing and I was also having all sorts of existential crises about what happens after you die and what's the meaning of life and that was all floating around in my head and so I just kind of got down to the point where it's like look I don't know what we're here for. I don't know what happens when we die But I want to have a good life and that what I'm doing right now is not going to create a good life and I just woke up the next morning it was like that's it I'm changing everything I'm going so I started with a diet it started with going on long walks then I learned about”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, look, I think that, you know, there were obviously a lot of really intense negative emotions that I was experiencing and simultaneously, obviously I was also overweight. The drugs of choice shifted for the stepfather figure. So he went from being very angry and explosive to very subdued. And it was really during that time where there's that shift in tone in the house where a lot of kind of fighting for my survival shifted to more like self-destructive tendencies, right? And a lot of anxiety at 12, I had severe insomnia and wouldn't sleep well for like five days in a row, right?”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, that's what's funny because it's technically kind of a high end area, but we didn't really have the money to live there. And so we kept getting evicted from houses and moving to new houses. So yeah, there was a real financial, we grew up very poor as well.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Would say third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade in my life is when the abuse really started to ratchet up. And I was hit quite a bit. I was locked in my room. I called every name you could ever imagine. It was very bad. So as that ratcheted up, then I started to become more isolated. I started to become, you know, it's like the other kids can kind of tell that something's wrong. And I think the other aspect of that as well is, you know, my mom did work really hard, but we were constantly out of cash. So I moved something like 13 times, I think I counted once, which is almost unfathomable. We were moving houses almost every year.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Little well, yeah, until you see like 400 bioreactor bags filled with God knows what hanging from the walls. I mean, it was absolute madness.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The first two years, I was focused on cracking the code around the fermentation. So we want to try these three chemicals and we want to try this food source and we want to try these microorganisms. So let's put that in a bag. Let's do 10 different versions of it. And let's literally staple them to the wall of the shed. It looked like a scene out of the hive and aliens.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT