From Olympic Rower to Employee #3 at Momentous to Building the Water Brand Doing What Nobody Else Will
About this episode
Sara Hendershot has spent her career at the intersection of elite sport and early stage brand building. She rowed at the 2012 Olympics, was employee number three at Momentous before it became one of the most trusted names in performance supplementation, and is now employee number four at Loonen, a water company doing something nobody else in the category has been willing to do.
Loonen combines the highest quality spring source with the highest quality filtration, tests for over 350 contaminants across every production run, and publishes every single result. The FDA requires none of it. That's the point.
Sara joins Long Run Labs to talk about the athlete to entrepreneur journey, what she learned building Momentous from the ground up, and why the bottled water category is overdue for exactly this kind of disruption.
Jon and Sara chat about:
growing up in a competitive athletic household and finding rowing
making the 2012 Olympic team and what two very different Olympic cycles taught her
turning down Wall Street to pursue sport and then figuring out what came next
working at Smack Media and getting exposure to early stage sports brands
being employee number three at Momentous and what those early days looked like
how the athlete as creator shift changed the marketing landscape between 2018 and 2021
the therapy work that helped her transition out of elite sport and into the real world
why outcome based values are just goals in disguise
what empathy actually looks like inside a high performance team culture
the founding story behind Loonen and why Clara started it during IVF
why the FDA's bottled water requirements are shockingly low
how Loonen combines spring sourcing and filtration in a way nobody else has done
why fear mongering is never going to be part of their brand voice
showing up at Boston Marathon, Rich Roll live recordings, and Nike Skims events to build community one person at a time
the wave surfer surfboard framework for evaluating a startup
what success means to Loonen and what success means to Sara
Stay connected:
Sara on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahendershot/
Loonen Website: https://loonen.com
Thank you to our sponsors:
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