Making it in any industry is a feat in itself, but it is significantly more challenging for solo entrepreneurs. Today’s guest did just that and more as a woman entering the largely male-dominated space of alcoholic beverages. Donna Katz is the Founder of G’s Dry Hard Ginger Beer, an organic, healthier option to the classic brewed drink. In this episode, she joins Elliot Begoun to share some of her experiences venturing into the space along with valuable lessons she gained along the way. Donna talks about the inspiration behind her brand and the challenges she faced establishing her business, from fundraising to sourcing materials and more. Be inspired by her journey and be moved to action as she offers tips for aspiring solo entrepreneurs. Don’t miss it!

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Listen to the podcast here

Donna Katz’s Journey In Solo Entrepreneurship As The Founder of G’s Dry Hard Ginger Beer

I am looking forward to this conversation because 1) Donna is one of the coolest human beings that I know. She was this total Renaissance woman badass. 2) She has done something that has boggled my mind. That messes me up every time. For those who know me well, I grew up in a Jewish household. Yiddish was something that was often spoken, and Donna is growing up that way, but in Australia, they speak those same Yiddish words with an Australian accent, which makes them completely unintelligible to me.

This is the most bizarre thing to hear Yiddish with an Aussie twang. They still add these same O or I E at the end of all the Yiddish words, but we’re going to have a cool conversation, and I’m looking forward to it. Before I turn it over to Donna to introduce herself, G’s Ginger Beer, and all of that, I want to take a moment to mention a couple of important things. We are trying to change the way this industry funds early brands. For those of you who are investors in this industry, either Angel, part of a fund, or want to be investors in this industry, I’m inviting you to join me in being part of that change.

The TIG Venture Community is a rolling fund that is aimed at earmarked dollars going into these brands to help them bridge that chasm so that they can get to the point where they have optionality and they can jump on the venture train and go for broke. Maybe they are now accessible to commercial lending and other forms of debt financing, as well as potential private equity dollars, etc. None of that happens unless we help these fantastic entrepreneurs and good brands bridge that gap.

I’m confident there is a way to do that and a model that works that also shows a good return for LPs. Please consider joining the rolling fund. It offers incredible flexibility for LPs. If it’s something you have always wanted to do, if you always wanted to be an LP in a fund and be a participant in supporting the industry that you love, this is a great way to do it. I’m getting over my own trepidation and uncomfortableness with asking for money and can be as bold as I am right now and say if you’re at all beneficiary of this industry and considering investing, please reach out and have a chat with me or with Jenny about the TIG Venture Community.

The other thing I want to mention is the TIG Collective, and that is this cool vessel that is trying to help surround these entrepreneurs with great advisory support while also changing the makeup of our future boardrooms in this industry. They look a lot less like me, a middle-aged White dude, and a lot more like the communities that we live, work and represent.

The TIG Collective invites tremendously bright advisors in and provides them with necessary education on board dynamics, governance, and fiduciary responsibility. The entrepreneurs, on the other side, are learning how to work with advisors and present their business cases, etc. Brands come into the collective issue. Their agreement advisor shares with the collective, and the collective have reciprocal advisor agreements with the advisors.

The advisors participate in the aggregate upside of the shares that go into the collective. It’s a cool shared way for a community to go support these emerging brands and these entrepreneurs. Those are my two pitches. They almost sound like commercials, but I guess, in a way, they are. They are passion projects of ours, and we would love to talk to you about either and share more. That’s it.

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Donna, please share with everybody a bit about you and G’s, and we can get into the conversation.

My name is Donna Katz. I’m the Founder of G’s Hard Ginger Beer in the San Francisco Bay Area. We are addressing the needs of the growing movement of people who are seeking cleaner alcohol options to support active and healthier lifestyles. That’s what G’s encompasses. We have been in the market since 2018. We are the first in the market with ginger-based beverage alcohol. It’s an exciting time to be in this space and to have by design when it wasn’t exactly one of the cool things to do necessarily, but bring a compelling and different product to market with such versatility that these are.

I’m a fan of yours, but I am also a big fan of the product. It’s inherently drinkable and different. I almost can feel the naturalness of it as you’re taking it in. You shared this with me, but the purpose of this is to not keep that information between us. Tell the folks reading how this came to mind, how it started, and how it all germinated.

I’m an Australian native. They’re like, “Are you from the South? People like you are from the South.” I’m like, “I’m from so far South.” I grew up in Australia. I left Australia in 2004 and moved to London, where I had been a commodities trader. I have been a commodities trader on trading floors here in the US as well as the UK. In 2013, I moved myself out to California to be closer to the land. I was enamored by all things vineyards, land, the season, and what we see in the life cycles.

Did you grow up that way? Did you grow up close to the land?

No, not at all.

You were a city girl.

This is up until moving up to St. Helen, the smaller city I’ve ever lived in my life. It was 3.5 million people. It’s city to city, and then now into wine country. There was something that captured me about living amongst the vines like this and living the seasons through the life cycle of the vines. When I came out here, on a sabbatical, I decided I needed to take a little breather. I have gone through a bit of grieving.

As we all do from time to time, I have a little bit of a reset and found myself wanting to get immersed in this culture, life, and lifestyle. I foraged a lot, think around, and played with things in my kitchen, beverage, food, alcohol, fermentations, and all sorts of things. I found a little block of grape vines. I started dry farming, this small block of grape vines organically by hand and making a restrained star wine.

I anchored myself here in the vineyard and dove deep into understanding what it means to care for the land and immersing myself in all things, living and fermentation. It was eye-opening and inspiring. I decided that I wanted to get deeper into it. Caring for the land was a big part of it. Winemaking and fermentation, in general, opened my eyes but also piqued my interest in the nutritious side.

I was also going through some gut health issues at that time. I specifically started fermenting ginger for my gut health. Everything grows wonderfully abundantly here in California. I’m combining fruits, botanicals, and seasonals, both foraged and local, into these ginger fermentations. I was blown away at the quality of the beverage, and it’s reminiscent of an experience we have with wine.

Aromatics that open and live in the senses, a palette that is you taste it, you feel it as well while you’re tasting it in a structural link that’s memorable. I was getting this through these ginger fermentations. I realized I was making something that I couldn’t buy. It was something that had no sugar in it. It uses only agricultural ingredients. The Australian in me was like, “Why isn’t there any alcohol in these clean and tasty beverages?”

That’s when I endeavored to roll up my sleeves, take this category, and bring this category to market as something that’s clean, delicious, and compelling. I have wakened this sleepy household category called ginger beer that’s ridden with sugar and artificial ingredients, be innovative and do something compelling.

That moment of insanity has led you here. What have you learned on that journey? It’s an amalgamation of your life. Your life as a commodity trader, this business person day in and day out to the other chapter of your life, where you’re close to the land and doing things in a much more holistic way. You put the two together and leverage both sides of your experience. You are trying to manifest that into something bigger. What have you learned about the blending of those two elements?

That’s a lot tastier blending beverage alcohol than it is blending oil and products. That’s for sure. I find myself constantly gravitating back towards some of the trading principles. Being a commodity trader means that you are in the thick of every single bit of every day of managing physical commodities and moving them physically around the world. Mitigating, managing, and hedging that risk as well as on the paper side and what we call down the curve.

You’ve got to think about where the markets are going in the future. What are the dynamics? What are the fundamentals? What are the things that are out of your control? You control what is happening in the broader markets and the macroeconomics. Being an entrepreneur, I found it is similar. You are caught up as a founder and as a bootstrap founder when you’re certainly solo as a team of one and in every day of what you need to do about every bit of every detail.

Your mind also has to think down the curve, “Where is this brand going? What is the vision? What does it mean to me? What do I feel is going to resonate with other people? What will resonate with other people? What are the things that are out of my control? What are the things that I might be able to influence?”

I realize, understand, and know that man made his way to the moon, but it was navigation. It wasn’t a straight shot. It’s continually being at the front of the curve and bringing it every day as well as looking at what the vision is and that things can shift. I bring a lot of the trading floor to what I do, and it’s holding me in good instead. It’s also nice to be connected to that because I love those years on the floor.

There got to be some similarities in terms of the adrenaline, the chaos, one moment, one day, and not looking anything like the next. What is it that experience as a trader has brought to you to make you more resilient as now an entrepreneur in this space?

When you start to take risks in the way that we did on the floor and have the mandate to take the risk, you’ve got to ask yourself whether or not you can even stomach that risk. It took me a little bit of time to become comfortable with what taking risk means. That is not that I understand it completely necessarily, but what I do understand is that I need to respect risk. If at the point at which you don’t respect risk, that is when she shows that she gets the better of you, certainly on the floor.

You can be humbled quickly. It’s very humbling being a founder and entrepreneur, and realizing how vulnerable you are, but on the same side as how tenacious you are and the audacity that you need. The adrenaline is for sure there. I wake up every morning now. On some days, it’s hard. Is the momentum there? Is this the right way to go? Do I have people surrounding me in support?

The resolve and the resilience, and the other way. You wake up, you get an email, and it might be something small from someone who’s outreached through the website going, “I discovered your beverages when I was visiting California. Can you please come out to Colorado?” Things like that used to go. They are the cool moments. That’s when you know you’re attaching people and mean something.

I continue to bring both of them and bring myself back down to the earth by saying, “There are a lot of harder moments.” On the trading floor, it’s easy to lose money in some ways and a lot harder to make it or keep it. That’s what’s on your shoulder and that bit of doubt that you sometimes talk about. It’s right there, but it’s also helping to steer you in a good direction.

I’m switching gears slightly. Bev alcohol is a hard space with a three-tier distribution system. It’s even a harder space, I would imagine, as a female entrepreneur. What has it been like to be this radical disruptor in this space and in a space that I would imagine is fairly misogynist?

I felt it more from the move of wine through to beer, but I didn’t feel it as much. My wine project is something that I have gone out. Personally, I had never worked for a winery or a large organization with a wine footprint. Trying to do something a bit different first and foremost, was a barrier, and I never saw being female as a barrier. I’m like, “I have done all this research, and I got a compelling product. People are enjoying it. It’s tasty. I’m going to put it to market.”

I don’t think I ever consciously thought, “I’m a female. Does that mean that I’m going to have a hard go of it?” I didn’t look at it like that. I discovered more of that after the fact. It’s like, “I see now it is more difficult sometimes for females in the brewing world.” Trying to find a brewery that would do something different was the harder part versus, “Are they going to do this because I’m a female.”

I do see that it is more male-dominated. There is much of this, “We have buddies here and there.” That’s where I started to feel it more on the beer side. There’s a long way to go, but I’m encouraged to see more women that are getting in. It is brewing because what we do is brewing, but it’s more fermenting, and it is a specialty beverage alcohol. It’s not traditional beer. You’ve got the government that dictates that you have to make your product in a certain location. Whereas if you strip away some of the traditional words, maybe some of those preconceived ideas would fall away.

The closer you move to the distribution side of the business, the more that good old boy network exists too.

In traditional beer distribution, that’s the case. I’m fortunate to be with a distributor here in California now that is across all beverage alcohol. There is a number of strategic reasons why I wanted to go with this specific distributor. One was because they were across all beverage alcohol. That also, by definition, meant that there was more actual diversity, like representation of life.

It’s rapidly changing because the consumers who are on the other end are demanding more diversity in the products. They want different things. That is not going to come from the same minds who have been delivering Coors, Bud Light, and BBR. If you could go back to when you started this, knowing what you have learned along the way, you have given yourself some sage advice at the beginning that would have saved some time, pain, suffering, or dollars. What would that be knowing now what you have learned?

This world of fundraising has been an interesting journey to be in and amongst. I bootstrapped this project only several months ago. I was incredibly naive as to the amount of money that it would take to build a brand, let alone a beverage alcohol brand. This is an awesome product with great real ingredients. We’re completely transparent about what we’re doing. All of the above.

I didn’t even know and understood enough about the dollar side of it. I didn’t come from having people around me that were more entrepreneurial to have opened my eyes to some of those challenges early. I possibly would have done something a little bit different at the time. Also, not saying I would have necessarily gone out trying to raise money pre-revenue, but some of the early learnings around product quality, fermentation, and the actual startup dollars that you would need to figure some things out.

I knew nothing about food science. I probably incorrectly assumed that I may have been able to muddle my way through with research by asking questions and finding resources. I would have done it a bit differently. I know I would do it differently now from that perspective of finding the right resources to help with some of these gaps.

I knew I didn’t have, but I equally didn’t understand how to spend the smart money there and go out and go, “If we do some of the more food science sides first, it will save in maybe dollars, time, etc.” Having said that, the upside was that I had a huge learning curve. If that’s how this had to play its way out, that’s how it’s played its way out. I understand, learned, and am much more acutely aware.

One of the things I have witnessed in my years working with entrepreneurs here is that many of them didn’t start necessarily for the business and the financial aspect of it. They started a passion for it. They realized that the transactional side comes with it, and there is a lot to learn. I say this often, and I do believe that spending several years as an entrepreneur in the CPG space. I will put those several years against any several years you spend in an MBA program anywhere. You’re going to learn a lot more about business and yourself than you would if you were simply a student behind a desk.

The other thing critical is that you do have to follow on that. You do have to be a student of the industry and business. It’s such a disadvantage to go into fundraising not understanding capital, structure, what it all means, and how it all plays. You have to be committed to being a student there because I have seen many mistakes made. Mistakes that wind up becoming the limiters. Yes, it’s hard to raise money, but you have to understand what money you should be raising.

For example, there are a lot of brands that aren’t going to be and don’t want to be $100 million or $200 million brands. They don’t want to run and get distribution as fast as they can. If you drive a Toyota Camry, you wouldn’t stop and fuel it with rocket fuel. When you build that brand and you go and get big venture dollars who expect justifiably soak because that’s what they do a return, you’re going to have to drive that Toyota Camry at 1,000 miles an hour. The likelihood is that before you get to your destination, the wheels are going to fall off. It’s one of those things.

The resilience side of it and the amount that you learn as a founder because you choose to, but because you have put yourself in this position, you are forced to it. You were like, “I didn’t even know I needed to know some of that stuff.” It’s a gift to discover these things. It’s a gift to realize that there’s so much more that is out there.

You become a bit more mature in your own skin a little bit each day to go, “I learned that bit and now what’s going to put me in better stead for going forward.” I don’t like to regret the trade. I believe we all make the best decisions we can with the choices we have available to us at any given point in time and we continue to navigate around it, but you look bad. You go, “There are some things that if I hadn’t spent that $10,000, I have that much more money now as a runway. I could put that to a different use.” It doesn’t serve a purpose to regret trying that. That was the decision you made. That was the learning that you needed.

One of the hardest lessons in entrepreneurship, but in life, in general, is that you have to recognize that there is nothing you can do that is going to change the past. There is little that you can do to influence the future where your power and influence lie. What is important to focus on is this moment. What can you be doing at this moment?

There is not much benefit in worrying about what might happen or wondering, “What if I did this differently type thing in the past?” It’s not going to happen. I say that and sound like I’m an evolved being. No, I suck at that because I do both of those things. I constantly go back, re-examine, re-evaluate past actions and spend an inordinate time worrying about what might come. When I can slow myself down, I can remind myself clearly, “There is nothing I can do on those two ends of the spectrum. What I can influence and what I can do is act now. What action do I take now? I find that helpful.”

The other thing I find helpful, and I don’t know if you have any of these internal talks with yourself, but in those moments of doubt that you mentioned earlier, and sometimes, it’s almost a crushing weight of feeling overwhelmed or immobile. The self-question and the mantra I asked myself is, “What’s the worst that can happen?” Your first answer is not enough. You keep doing that. What’s the worst that can happen if the business fails? I will lose the money that I invested, and I will lose my investor’s money. You keep doing that.

Eventually, for most of us, what we come down to is that at the worst, not that we want it, we’re going to be okay. It may be different and look different, but we’re going to be okay. You got to tear it down. Sometimes it’s helpful to have a partner do it with you or somebody to do it with. Even in yourself, in front of a mirror, you go down to that level where you hit the floor. It may take you to ask that same question 10 to 15 times.

You get to the floor, and you think about it, “If all of those things I said and every one of them happened, which is probably highly unlikely, but even if they did, I’m going to be okay.” Suddenly, that overwhelming sense of almost paralysis or doubt eases because there is no way to get rid of this. Why have you guys chosen as entrepreneurs?

I don’t know now. It might be in a couple of days. In the morning, I do my breath and meditation work, and I have a gratitude process. One of the things I always say is that I feel lucky to be working to empower you guys, those of you who are on the front lines of doing things that are helping human health, climate action or justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion. I admire that. When you’re in those moments, stepping back and knowing the route that you have chosen, the things that you are all doing, every one of you reading, it’s hard as hell.

It’s hugely gratifying. I genuinely love what I do. It has been hard. In some of the journeys that I’ve been through, you go through peaks and troughs. We are still an emerging brand, but you have got your own salt. You are confident, and it keeps you going. You are positive. There are days that it hurts. You do keep going because you love what you do. At the end of the day, it’s going to be okay.

When I wake up every morning, I’m incredibly grateful for where I have chosen to live right now and the life and lifestyle that I’ve created and crafted for myself. Hopefully, I can sustain it. It doesn’t have to be fancy, but it’s lovely, and I get to say, “I created it, and hard work does pay off.” I would like to believe that also shit shouldn’t be hard always. I wake up in the morning and I’m grateful for my little boy. I will always say that he is the best thing his mom ever did.

What a fantastic lesson you’re giving him. That’s the thing that I don’t think we celebrate enough as a mom, what you’re showing your son. Yes, he’s young now. I have got 3 grown kids and 2 grandchildren. They watch you. They know. They absorb way more than we think they do, even at a young age. He is watching. He is going to continue to watch that resilience, independence, stick-to-itiveness, resolution, and all of those things. Those are going to be the skills and the traits that he absorbs and emulates, more than likely, as he goes out and charts his own path.

It’s such an incredible gift. We don’t talk about that enough, in my opinion, but teaching entrepreneurship, showing that following our passion, being willing to lay it all on the line. It’s awesome. Let’s talk about the business aspect a little bit. Where do you see G’s growing? Where is the consumer most likely to find you? You’re the avatar of who that consumer is, the person that’s going to be the routine drinker of G’s. Where are they? Are they in that independent grocery, in Target, or everywhere? How do you intersect with them on that continuum we talk about?

I’m still figuring that out, to be perfectly honest too, and trying to surround myself with people to help, try and figure some of that out because I don’t want to twelve gauge it and be too broad, but focus on more. We have been over-indexing in independent retail and natural grocers. It is a perfect fit for the “natural space.” We choose organic first, and we’re transparent about our ingredients.

They are household ingredients. They are things we know. They are juices, fruits, botanicals, and spices. We are seeing a crossover into more of the broader retail and the conventional retail. We do have a core mandate at Target, and they have been a great partner. They have allowed us to succeed and have wanted us to succeed within the small footprint that we’re with right now. We see more uptake in Whole Foods and Natural Grocers.

When we do find that crossover, people want something that they understand what is inside the package. There is a double standard in beverage alcohol. It’s different from food and beverage. You don’t have to be transparent about your ingredients in beverage alcohol. That’s a double standard that should go away. We should all have the right to know what is in the alcohol that we are consuming.

People want to understand that. They are going to gravitate to products, brands, and people where they can see that information and understand it. I wasn’t exactly one of the cool kids on the block several years ago, bringing out a “better for you” beverage alcohol product. People are more inclined to look at quality now instead of quantity. Why have a dry January if you can moderate more year-round? That’s why we’re seeing a rise in the No- and the Low-Alcohol Movement.

You can get options, and it’s great to have options. We see ourselves as being another option. We’re standalone, a delicious beverage, and we also cross into the mixed drinks. We don’t have any sugar in our beverages, and that is by design. It’s not because it’s a trendy thing to do. It’s because mama nature has gifted us with ingredients that provide flavor, taste, and balance.

What we do is find that balance to give this profile to these beverages. They are awesome cocktail mixers. I say to people, “Do you want a fun fact? Ginger beer is the third most popular cocktail mixer in the United States.” It’s a household category, but people don’t typically think about it so much. I keep hearing, “Ginger beer is super sugary and I can’t drink it.” We’re doing something different and compelling.

This is a standalone beverage for occasions that you might be rolling up your yoga mat. You might have knocked off work and want something light and delicious that’s not going to give you the highs and lows of sugar that comes with alcohol. It mixes well with cocktails. We use flavor profiles that make it delicious standalone. Sometimes we hear that people love hard kombuchas and you don’t like a kombucha, that can be even more niche because you need to like that sourness and that profile. Whereas we’re a bit broader than that. We do hit different demographics.

What are they switching from? What are they choosing instead?

Certainly, on the male side, I hear a lot of guys saying, “I love drinking your ginger beer because it doesn’t make me feel bloated.” Now guys can feel comfortable in their own skin about saying, “I feel bloated.” It was an anti-masculine thing to say in the past, but now guys were like, “I feel a bit bloated and a bit shit drinking too many beers. I don’t feel that way about drinking your beverage. I like that. It gives me a little bit of a buzz, but not too much. I can keep going in my day. I can enjoy it in the evening. I can put it in a cocktail. It makes me feel good. It doesn’t make me feel bad.” We get a lot of that from guys.

We get a lot of women saying, “Thank you. Finally, there’s a moderate alcohol beverage that’s available because when I used to go places and all of these wine lists, they are all male-centric.” A male-centric world doesn’t exist amongst human beings. It’s wine lists. It’s beverage alcohol lists. You go into most locations. They’re typically male-centric. Now we’re giving the cross-population more options and we don’t necessarily have to be a replacement beverage. We can be another option.

It’s another option along for cider drinkers, hard kombucha drinkers, and hard seltzer drinkers.

That touches on all three from a competitive advantage standpoint. From a competitive advantage standpoint, we don’t have residual sugar that is inherent in most hard ciders. We don’t have the artificial ingredients in the GMOs that you find in most hard seltzers. We’re not called storage dependent, like hard kombuchas. I drink hard kombuchas, but I can drink hard kombuchas. Whereas people say, “Without beverages, it’s not like they have to limit themselves to one because it’s such a distinct profile of a taste.”

Why we’re seeing this low and no movement? It’s because the Gen Z-ers are more moderate with that. It’s less about the buzz, social interaction, and all of those things.

They want quality and they want to feel the connection. They don’t have the FOMO issues that some of the other generations above them have. They are not quite as entitled as some of the other generations. It’s interesting to see how generationally, we’re all that little bit different.

I have two Millennials and a Gen Z-er. It’s an interesting thing to see the difference between them. In addition to fundraising, what are some of the pain points here that you’re struggling with as you try to build this?

Resources and team. I don’t say that we’re all in high inflation and struggling to get resources perspective, but not being from here and also not being of a beverage alcohol background has meant that I haven’t had the network, connections, and doors to open. Rolling my sleeves up and doing the hard work myself is never a problem. That doesn’t bother me one bit, but it has been terribly difficult to find resources and ways to continue to open doors.

It could be raw ingredients, supply chain, or marketing. I’m talking about paid support. I’m not asking people for freebies. You want to resonate with people. You want to feel like they are likable. You are alongside the same journey. I’m a big believer that it’s not about who gets the biggest slice of the pie.

It’s about how we all make our pies bigger. We can but you want to give someone a go and go, “It looks like they are doing something pretty cool in this marketing thing.” That takes time and then you go, “That was the only connection I had. I’m going to give it a go.” It turns out to maybe not be right. That’s another 3 or 6 months. The limited amount of networking and resources have probably taken longer to get things to places where I feel like they could have gone because I haven’t had the doors to open to those sorts of resources.

How do you overcome that? Is it by leaning in and doing more yourself, putting more on yourself, or is it ratcheting down expectations and being more patient? Is it yes to blend between the two?

It’s all of the above. You are splitting your day between, “I want to surround myself with not just like-minded people, but other founders. Support other founders and be a support to other founders.” How do I carve that out in my day when I got to get to every bit of the supply chain? I don’t have this raw ingredient and where to look. I had much pressure as a soap. Up until several weeks ago, I didn’t have anybody else working with me in building this brand. Managing time and expectations is a big part of it and hard on myself, as far as what I expect “Should be doing and how far I should be along.” It’s not to say that it’s the hockey stick perspective. You just can’t carve out the amount of hours in the day with the things you need to get done.

What I have learned is not to expect too much of myself by spreading myself too thin by trying to achieve too much at once. I have to learn to trip back something. Something has to give. What is working? If I know what’s working, I know that on paper the right thing to do is to dive more into what’s working. Let some of that out of the staff go by for a minute because I can come back to it.

Yes, I need to spend part of my day devoting it to networking because every door opens another door. I used to say on the trading floor and it’s no different in this environment or any environment. Trading leads to trading. One door opens another. You’ve got to be in it. Even a big present, you’ve got to be in it. Sometimes it’s a challenge.

I’m an extrovert-type person, but more of an introvert-type person. I got to push myself to get myself out there more because often, I like geeking out in my kitchen, messing around in innovation land, and doing all those things. That gets my senses going. That put me in my little happy place. I’m going to music gigs and being on the Hawaiian Islands. They are the sorts of things that I might gravitate to because I feel comfortable.

I know that what I also need to do while I balance my life is that ideally as well as network more and get more involved in communities, other CPG-related communities, or ones that I feel resonate with me or with what we are doing because together, we are all going to figure out our ways. It’s not that I felt like I had to dig in and do it by myself. When you don’t have the money or the resources, you figure out ways to do things.

It becomes the necessary approach. You don’t have an alternative, but it’s important to be intentional around networking. I always encourage people to think of networking differently. I look at networking as an opportunity to give, not get. Get out there and you figure out how can you help others. What can you do? What can you put out in the universe that is beneficial?

The karmic boomerang rule that I believe in is that if you do that without expectation of reciprocity, the universe, somehow in some way shows that reciprocity back to you. It makes networking a little bit more palatable and exciting instead of drudgery. There are some people who are inherently good networkers. I would put myself in that other bucket that if I felt like all I was doing was going to things to try to extract or collect, it was too draining for me.

I always felt that there are things that I know I’m not great at and have to work even harder at it. Networking is one that I’m okay at. I do enjoy genuinely connecting with people for the sake of connecting with people and understanding more about them, who they are, what makes them tick, and what they get excited about. That’s cool. The other person’s perspective is cool. Not hearing my own voice so much.

Jenny will give me appropriate crap at times because, in this setting where I often play the role of the misguided college professor, I’m quick to speak, but truthfully, I’m a whole lot more interested in being a listener than I am being a speaker. It’s a lot more fun. Getting back to that point where I want to make, and this is a pack for everybody is that one of the things when you talk about wanting to carve out time for networking, studying the business, lifting your head up, and working on instead of in your business. I’m physically putting that on a calendar and holding it as sacred time and treating it as if were in me, no less important than a meeting with a buyer or investor. That’s the time.

In almost every case, the only way that I see entrepreneurs get that stuff done regularly and make that progress is because you are willing to sacrifice those things. Sometimes, we confuse activity with results. One of the ways entrepreneurs tend to put solutions to all the wounds, all the cuts, scrapes, bumps, and bruises, we get around in this journey that solves those wounds is activity.

If we work, busy, and heads down, it seemingly somehow numbs all that pain. As soon as we slow down, we feel every one of those cuts. We can trick ourselves into, “Networking is a nice to have, I can blow that off. Being a part of a community and spending some time in support of other founders and other founders being in support of me, feels good and it’s important, but I’ve got to get some of this shit done. I’ve got to fire off these emails.” It’s easy to get confused by activity and not results.

In order to get results and move the business forward, that networking, that building, and being part of a community, are the forced multipliers that do it. You have to create those serendipitous opportunities and you’re not going to create serendipitous opportunities by sitting on your ass in your kitchen. You’re going to create serendipitous opportunities by making and carving out the time to do that networking and being part of a community. Those types of things, but it’s hard.

It’s neat because I have found more that I’m incredibly inclined to make time for other founders, as opposed to making the time for myself. As a founder, that makes sense as other founders have maybe reached out to me with pleasure, and time on my calendar, but if I try and carve out time on my calendar to be proactive, I find that more difficult.

It has been neat to engage in chat with other people who are not as far along in their own journey. Talk through things with them and see things through their eyes. If there is a bit of information that they can glean from some of my learnings, it’s awesome. It’s not that I have the answers, but we all learn from everybody else’s learnings, successes, and some failures and learnings along the way. I wonder if there is a little reverse action in that, where I may not have done it well by myself. I will put it on my calendar. The founder time, Donna, note to self, reach out to other founders, Calendar reminder, do it. I still don’t necessarily do it. If someone reaches out to me with pleasure, let’s put it on the calendar.

You have to commit to having those times as sacred. On my calendar, I have focus time and prep time. I have time in my calendar every day for my run. All of that stuff is there. I treat it in most cases and maybe it’s the way being raised culturally Jewish. We jokingly say between my wife and me who were raised Catholic, that we inherently understood each other, because we were both raised under the same framework, which is guilt.

I always feel guilty when I say no to someone because if it was during one of my protected times that in theory could have given up and so forth. In the long run, what I have learned is that inherently, it’s the best thing for everybody to do it. It’s a practice. I’m not perfect. Trust me, I do it. I have the help of Charity, who guards my schedule and doesn’t allow me to have those moments of weakness, which is ironic because she’s one of the kindest human beings on the planet. She helps me be a little bit more resistant when I need to be.

The thing I love so much about this industry is as you’re reaching up for the next rung on the ladder to climb, your other hands behind you reach that next person down and try to pull them up. For that next person down, that next person is coming into the industry, launching, and starting. What words of wisdom can you impart to them?

People come with such a passion and we want to foster passion in everyone. You’ve got to do your research, but raise your hand and ask. Be that inquisitive person. Know that we’re all human and we don’t have the answers. Other people have been through the journey, and please put up your hand, ask more of the questions and seek more of your own answers for yourself by gaining data points and information through other people to find what you need to find to help your journey progress. Maybe not as hard.

We all have to go through the learning in our own way and we have all got our own journey, but if we don’t surround ourselves with people, even if we can’t afford to bring them on board as an employee, a consultant, or whatever it might be. Surround yourself with good people and they are out there. They are the ones that are going to help you through some of the harder times and some will be alongside you through the successes.

Never be afraid to be inquisitive and put you in like, “I don’t know the answer to this question and I’m not sure where to go for this.” As a sole entrepreneur and founder, even though it is still very much your own journey, you don’t have to go at it 100% alone the whole time. If you seek that support and come across good communities like this, you will be grateful that you are heading in the right direction. Take your passion, do your research, surround yourself with good people, and have loads of fun.

The most important question, especially given the fact for those of us here in Nor Cal that is walking into this holiday weekend with a historic heat wave. It’s going to be brutal here. For those interested in having some G’s, where can they find it? How do they learn more about the brand and you? If those are interested in potentially investing, supporting, or collaborating, how best?

I am available. You can find me by email at Donna@GSGingerBeer.com. Our Instagram is the same handle, @GsGingerBeer. We are at most Whole Foods throughout California, Northern, and Southern. You will find us in the fridges. We’re at Target here in the Bay Area, with many of your trusted, independent, Natural Grocers, Berkeley Bowls, Good Earths, and all of those who have been a huge support to us since day one. If you shop at BevMo! and Total Wine, you will also find us there. We’re gratefully distributed throughout California, and yes, it’s going to be an absolute scorch every weekend. We’re refreshing. G’s is a good way to kick it off. I do welcome people, please reach out. There is so much we can contribute together.

I also had the privilege, and I use that word very intentionally, “privilege,” of sharing a bottle of Donna’s wine with her not that long ago in San Francisco. It was amazing. Not only is her G’s Ginger Beer awesome, but her wines are also beautiful and so is she. She is super cool. She is one of the most giving folks in the community and fun. I’m glad you joined me. Thanks so much.

Thank you, Elliot.

Thanks to everybody who is reading. We will see you all next time.

 Important Links

• G’s Ginger Beer

• The TIG Venture Community

• TIG Collective

• Donna@GSGingerBeer.com

• @GsGingerBeer – Instagram

 About Donna Katz

An Australian native, Donna moved to Napa Valley, California in 2013 after ten years on the commodities trading floor in the UK and US. In 2014 she began dry-farming a small block of grapevines organically, by hand and making restrained style wines.

Donna started fermenting ginger for her own digestive health, often incorporating foraged and seasonal ingredients and quickly came to realize she was making beverages she couldn’t buy – ones that had no added sugar or sweeteners and crafted with only real ingredients. Then the Aussie in her was like well why isn’t there any moderate alcohol in these tasty beverages!?

With ginger having well-proven wellness benefits and consumers wanting cleaner alcohol options, Donna saw a problem, found a solution and rolled up her sleeves.

First to market with a new category of clean and functional ginger-based beverages, G’s shelf-stable brews combine fruits, flowers, citrus, spices and botanicals that are absurdly aromatic, tasty and refreshing. Crafted with organic ingredients G’s have no residual sugar, no added sugar or artificial sweeteners or additives, are gluten free and vegan with 0g carbs and only 87 calories per 12oz serve.

In the fastest growing beverage alcohol segment, ready-to-drink and at the intersection of better-for-you and beverage alcohol, G’s award winning dry hard ginger beers are addressing the needs of the growing movement of people seeking cleaner alcohol options that support their active and healthier lifestyles.