This Entrepreneur Who Started Her Kombucha Business in an Apartment With $600 Has a Message for Struggling Entrepreneurs You're not failing, you're changing.

By Linda Lacina

Health-Ade

How Success Happens is a podcast featuring polar explorers, authors, ultra marathoners, artists and more to better understand what connects dreaming and doing. Linda Lacina, Entrepreneur.com's managing editor, guides these chats so anyone can understand the traits that underpin achievement and what fuels the decisions to push us forward. Listen below or click here to read more shownotes.

Health-Ade kombucha is a fast-growing probiotic drink on the shelves of 10,000 stores across the country, including Whole Foods. It raised $25 million in funding and operates not one, but two plants.

Related: Hear How This Woman Coached Herself Through a Near-Death Experience to Become a One-Person Fitness Brand

But five years ago, the company was just one of a slew of ideas brainstormed by three friends uninspired by their day jobs in an entrepreneurship club they'd formed. Kombucha, inexpensive to make and sell at farmers' markets, was intended as a side hustle to get them started, something that would fund a larger venture.

Related: Podcast: Why This Leadership Expert and Former Aviator Says 'Courage is Just Fear That Held On One Minute Longer'

This company launched with just $600 but quickly gained traction, taking over co-founder Daina Trout's apartment until she and her now-husband (and co-founder) were finally evicted.

"Our two-bedroom apartment became a full-on brewery," says Trout. "There was a bed and then a brewery."

Related: Podcast: When PowerPoints Weren't Working, This Powerful Exec Passed Out Comic Books Instead

In this week's podcast of How Success Happens, Trout shares Health-Ade's early days, and how the founders pushed through any number of roadblocks, taking conference calls in her car and bartering with local businesses for brewing space.

To subscribe to this podcast, find us on the following platforms: SoundCloud, Stitcher, iTunes, Google Play.

Linda Lacina

Entrepreneur Staff

Linda Lacina is the former managing editor at Entrepreneur.com. Her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Smart Money, Dow Jones MarketWatch and Family Circle. Email her at llacina@entrepreneur.com. Follow her at @lindalacina on Twitter. 

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