Customers and employees

Nurture enthusiastic long-term customers and healthy, highly motivated employees.

In 1998, Seth Goldman founded Honest Tea, a beverage company that sells organic, fair-trade, low-sugar tea. The company now makes more than $70 million in sales each year. So how did Goldman achieve such phenomenal success?

He realized early on that the company’s success didn’t just depend on him – it also depended on the enthusiasm and engagement of his employees and customers.

One way of nurturing healthy and highly motivated employees is to lead by example.

You need to be a role model for managing the stresses of the start-up life. When you’re getting a start-up on its feet, you may be tempted to overwork yourself. But if you live an unhealthy lifestyle, your employees will try to keep pace with you, which will make the whole organization unhealthy. So it’s crucial to take time off when your stress-levels get too high.

When Goldman started Honest Tea, he felt like he had to work non-stop. But because he wanted to communicate a philosophy of work-life balance to his employees, he did his best to leave the office every day at 5:30 to spend time with his family. That way, his employees could see it was okay for them to leave early, too.

Another thing you’ll need for a successful start-up are enthusiastic long-term customers.

No matter how small your start-up is right now, the customers you already have are crucial to your future, because they establish your reputation in the market. Do whatever you can to keep them enthusiastic about what you do, and turn them into customers for life.

Goldman realized that if he could get children to consume his brand from a young age, they would stick with it when they got older. So he started Honest Kids, a fruit juice for children, to encourage them to drink Honest Tea later in life.