Ben Goodwin is founder of functional soda brand OLIPOP. My wife Jenn and I like to keep a pretty clean lifestyle, which becomes especially important when you have children who can start to reach for things in the fridge and the pantry!

But we hate the idea of handing people a drink with 40g of sugar or, on the flipside, a bland sparkling water. OLIPOP is the perfect middle ground, and we’ve been big fans of the brand (Jenn literally has a subscription) for over a year, well before the opportunity for today’s interview even arose.

In 2018, Ben – alongside his business partner David Lester – launched OLIPOP as the world’s first clinically-validated soda that’s good for digestive health. Their brand has taken off, and they’re well on their way to evolving a soft drink industry that’s worth $40 billion in the US alone, toward not just a new product but a new category.

Raised on the standard American diet, and enduring a traumatic childhood, Ben had an epiphany at 14 where he began focusing on exercise and nutrition for the first time. Through that process, he lost 50 pounds and developed a love for how the things we put in our bodies contribute to physical and mental health – especially the human microbiome.

Today, OLIPOP is available in more than 20,000 stores (including Whole Foods, Walmart and Target) and has an A-list of investors such as the Jonas Brothers, Camila Cabello, Priyanka Chopra, and Gwyneth Paltrow.

It’s been heralded as the most disruptive innovation in the soda category since Diet Coke in 1981.

Ben has dedicated countless hours aligning with academic researchers, medical professionals, dietitians, and other luminaries in their fields to make sure OLIPOP is the best product it can be. He’s also been developing digestive beverage products for more than a decade. Not bad for a college dropout.

In this episode:

• How a traumatic childhood shaped the man he is today
• Ben’s best entrepreneurial lessons
• What he’s doing to remain one step ahead of the competitors, and
• How he built OLIPOP into a disruptive powerhouse.

Let’s WIN THE DAY with Ben Goodwin!