Advice Line with Ben Goodwin of Olipop

**Guy Raz** (0:01)
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Hello and welcome to the Advice Line on How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. This is the place where we help try to solve your business challenges. Each week, I'm joined by a legendary founder, a former guest on the show, who will help me try to help you. And if you're building something and you need advice, give us a call and you just might be the next guest on the show. Our number is 1-800-433-1298.
Leave us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you'd like help with. All right, let's get to it. Joining me this week is Ben Goodwin, co-founder of the prebiotic soda brand Olipop. Ben, it's great to have you back on the show.

**Ben Goodwin** (1:22)
Guy, absolutely a thrill to be back with you again.

**Guy Raz** (1:25)
So, Ben, you were first on the show not that long ago, 2024, when you told the story of Olipop, of course, and you spent years developing a completely different sort of brand that you then had to walk away from, with very little in return. But you eventually, after much struggle, rebounded from that experience and created Olipop, a brand that is, it's so hard, it's amazing, it's now valued at over $2 billion, maybe more, that was the last I saw, which was last year.
It is such a great story, and as always, for those of you who have not heard that episode, we will put a link to it in the show notes, so please do listen to Ben's episode if you haven't heard it, the story of Olipop. It is so good. Ben, before we get to today's callers, just a couple questions for you. You guys just launched a kind of a rebrand, right, like a refresh packaging and a national ad campaign. Tell me about the thinking behind that.

**Ben Goodwin** (2:14)
Yeah, no, thanks for noticing, Guy.
Look, I think that if I reflect on where Olipop's been, stronger and weaker since its inception, I think we've always been a really great pull brand, and a lot of that is the kind of original packaging and brand ethos. And then there's a great tasting product that once you tried it, it kind of was a delight how good it actually tasted, and that kept people coming back, and that made people want to give to their kids. And so that's been amazing for us, because it's created a really, really strong foundation. That being said, it's always been a really significant goal of mine to take the layers of our brand mission and to kind of competently translate them to the consumer, which I had never really felt satisfied with the level at which we'd done that prior. And so we have a new refresh to the visual identity, which speaks to all the layers of benefits you get out of Olipop, a new sonic identity, which I'm really, really proud of, and a new fiber education campaign. And I'm really happy with how the early traction is going. We're reaching men at a higher rate, we're reaching older demos at a higher rate. It's the most effective advertising put out to date.

**Guy Raz** (3:33)
And correct me if I'm wrong, I think you guys are an entirely remote distributed organization, right?

**Ben Goodwin** (3:38)
Yep, that's right.

**Guy Raz** (3:39)
You don't even have a central office.

**Ben Goodwin** (3:41)
No, we don't.
David and I, when we first started the company, we're a little loathe to commute or to force people to commute. And then you get this logical push from your investors, hey, you could really use an office. And then COVID hit, and we spent about a year and a half or two years or whatever it was learning how to create a remote culture that could really thrive. And then once we had that rolling, there never really seemed to be a good reason to revert.

**Guy Raz** (4:08)
It's really remarkable. Given your sort of the valuation of the company and your sales figures, I suspect I think you run a pretty lean team. How many overall employees do you have?