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Book club questions for Undaunted by Kara Goldin takes a closer look at many of the ideas and concepts introduced into the book. For more context about her story, check out my review first.
I made it a goal read more nonfiction this year. After all, I know many book clubs love the genre, as evident by the continued success of Glennon Doyle’s Untamed.
So when I received the opportunity to read Kara Goldin’s Undaunted, I thought it would be a good fit for the site. I think it’s especially of interest to people who have an entrepreneurial heart but not sure what the next steps should be. Kara really lays out the groundwork for how they were able to successfully launch Hint. And she experienced plenty of setbacks and doubters along the way. But she kept moving forward and now the company is a huge success.
The Synopsis
Undaunted will inspire you to move past your fears and defy the doubters. It doesn’t matter whether you feel confident; it matters what you actually do.
Author Kara Goldin turned her unsweetened flavored water into one of the most successful beverage businesses of our time and has been named one of InStyle’s Badass 50, Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business, Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs and EY Entrepreneur of the Year for Northern California.
Undaunted is a rare opportunity to gain insights and proven advice unlike anything you’ll find in the conventional business press. Kara combines real honest stories from her life with observations that might just change how you think about your own.
Whether you want to get healthy, start a company, break an addiction, find a new career or just grow in life, Undaunted will inspire you to just go for it and help you find the courage to get there.
As she started to achieve her goals, Kara found herself being called “fearless”, “confident” and even “unstoppable,” but nothing could be further from the truth. In Undaunted she shares real stories about her own fears and doubts, the challenges she encountered and what she did to overcome them to eventually build a great business and a life she loves.
Her secret? Be Undaunted. Deal with your fears. Move forward despite uncertainty. Turn criticism into motivation. Just go for it!
Setbacks will come, but Kara shows you can learn from failures and frustrations and keep advancing toward your true purpose. What if not having “the right” credentials or vast industry experience was the secret to making things happen? And what if we didn’t let our fear of failure stop us?
Part autobiography, part business memoir and lots of insights on self-development, Undaunted offers inspiring stories that impart lessons that any reader can apply to their own path. While most motivational business and life books try to offer quick fixes, Undaunted focuses on long-term success, showing you how to take control of breaking down barriers and moving forward. Undaunted won’t solve your problems and challenges. You will. But it will help you see through other’s experiences that it’s possible to do so.
Accept your fears, but decide to be Undaunted.
Undaunted Book Club Questions
- Were you familiar with Kara Goldin and the brand Hint prior to reading the book?
- What were some of the key takeaways from the book for you?
- Was there a phrase or quote that really resonated with you?
- When talking about her experience with CNN, Kara mentioned that it wasn’t a kind place and she realized how important kindness can be in business. Why do you think kindness isn’t mentioned so much in the business environment? How would businesses improve if they focused a bit more on kindness?
- Kara is motivated by the idea of—what the worst that could happen? How could you apply that same thinking to your own life and career goals?
- Why do you think developing Hint water was the right business fo Kara?
- Do you have an entrepreneurial spirit? What do you think is holding your back and how can that potentially be overcome?
- Kara writes, “I’m here to tell you that, sometimes, if you think too much about the end, you will never get past the beginning.” What is she saying here and can this apply to our own lives and career goals?
- Something that is important is also bringing a personal story into a brand’s identity. Why do you think the personal story is so significant to brand loyalty?
- What does being undaunted meant to you?
- If you could ask Kara one question about her business, what would it be?
More Recommendations
Hope you enjoyed book club questions for Undaunted! Here are some more recommendations along with links to book club questions.
Untamed by Glennon Doyle
Another engaging nonfiction read is Untamed by Glennon Doyle.
There is a voice of longing inside each woman. We strive so mightily to be good: good partners, daughters, mothers, employees, and friends. We hope all this striving will make us feel alive. Instead, it leaves us feeling weary, stuck, overwhelmed, and underwhelmed. We look at our lives and wonder: Wasn’t it all supposed to be more beautiful than this? We quickly silence that question, telling ourselves to be grateful, hiding our discontent—even from ourselves.
For many years, Glennon Doyle denied her own discontent. Then, while speaking at a conference, she looked at a woman across the room and fell instantly in love. Three words flooded her mind: There She Is. At first, Glennon assumed these words came to her from on high. But she soon realized they had come to her from within. This was her own voice—the one she had buried beneath decades of numbing addictions, cultural conditioning, and institutional allegiances. This was the voice of the girl she had been before the world told her who to be. Glennon decided to quit abandoning herself and to instead abandon the world’s expectations of her. She quit being good so she could be free. She quit pleasing and started living.
Soulful and uproarious, forceful and tender, Untamed is both an intimate memoir and a galvanizing wake-up call. It is the story of how one woman learned that a responsible mother is not one who slowly dies for her children, but one who shows them how to fully live. It is the story of navigating divorce, forming a new blended family, and discovering that the brokenness or wholeness of a family depends not on its structure but on each member’s ability to bring her full self to the table. And it is the story of how each of us can begin to trust ourselves enough to set boundaries, make peace with our bodies, honor our anger and heartbreak, and unleash our truest, wildest instincts so that we become women who can finally look at ourselves and say: There She Is.
Untamed shows us how to be brave. As Glennon insists: The braver we are, the luckier we get.
You can order the book on Amazon here. Check out my book club questions here.
A Promised Land by Barack Obama
I think one of the best nonfiction books out there is A Promised Land by Barack Obama. A must-read!
In the stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency—a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil.
Obama takes readers on a compelling journey from his earliest political aspirations to the pivotal Iowa caucus victory that demonstrated the power of grassroots activism to the watershed night of November 4, 2008, when he was elected 44th president of the United States, becoming the first African American to hold the nation’s highest office.
Reflecting on the presidency, he offers a unique and thoughtful exploration of both the awesome reach and the limits of presidential power, as well as singular insights into the dynamics of U.S. partisan politics and international diplomacy. Obama brings readers inside the Oval Office and the White House Situation Room, and to Moscow, Cairo, Beijing, and points beyond. We are privy to his thoughts as he assembles his cabinet, wrestles with a global financial crisis, takes the measure of Vladimir Putin, overcomes seemingly insurmountable odds to secure passage of the Affordable Care Act, clashes with generals about U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, tackles Wall Street reform, responds to the devastating Deepwater Horizon blowout, and authorizes Operation Neptune’s Spear, which leads to the death of Osama bin Laden.
A Promised Land is extraordinarily intimate and introspective—the story of one man’s bet with history, the faith of a community organizer tested on the world stage. Obama is candid about the balancing act of running for office as a Black American, bearing the expectations of a generation buoyed by messages of “hope and change,” and meeting the moral challenges of high-stakes decision-making. He is frank about the forces that opposed him at home and abroad, open about how living in the White House affected his wife and daughters, and unafraid to reveal self-doubt and disappointment. Yet he never wavers from his belief that inside the great, ongoing American experiment, progress is always possible.
You can order the book on Amazon here. Check out my book club questions here.
Happy reading!
