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What really clicked was a study my business professor Barry Nalebuff had done of the tea industry in India. He said we could even call it Honest Tea. When you have the opportunity to do something that's socially responsible, you have an obligation to do that.

So we brewed up some tea and took it to Whole Foods, and the buyer said, OK, we'll take 15,000 bottles. Now we really had to make the tea. Slotting fees? I couldn't do that. The business was me and these thermoses. We still got into our first set of stores. We eventually became the best-selling tea in the mid-Atlantic region. Then we became the best-selling tea in the natural foods category. And now we're in the Inc. 500.

Why did we call it Honest Tea? It is a less sweet drink. There's a social and health benefit to this. Look at the rise of juvenile diabetes. I try not to sell you as much on the brand as on the business. But there are bottled drinks out there where one bottle exceeds the U.S. RDA for sugar. Our teas are organic. There are no pesticides or herbicides. That's important because tea is never washed. The first time tea is washed is when you add hot water to your tea. Those are nice benefits. Honest Tea is the first company to have a fair trade bottled tea. Every time we sell a bottle, we have a positive impact.

We also try to create an authentic, honest product. We don't oversell. We try not to. We try to let people see what's in the product. We disclose as much as we can. There's nothing in here you can't pronounce. We try to sell a product that is what it says it is. That really inspires me and our company, but it isn't easy.

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