Meet CocoVinny Zaldivar

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful CocoVinny Zaldivar. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with CocoVinny below.

CocoVinny, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
Resilience can come from a few places.  Where I’ve gained most of my resilience is from, what I like to call, good old fashioned on the job training. There’s a phrase that we have coined at CocoTaps and that is “every setback is a setup for a comeback.” It’s not always easy to get kicked square in the coconuts by life, but as you are out on your road to victory never be afraid of an uninvited challenge or surprise, because WHETHER you like it or not, if you aren’t building resilience then you probably aren’t setting high enough goals for success.

One of my first lessons for gaining resilience was when I was 15 years old. My father went to prison and was sentenced to 25 years to life for a nonviolent crime. We lost it all, house, cars, money, and security of knowing what to do and we had to figure out how we weren’t going to become homeless. My mom and I and my little sister had to figure it out. Immediately, while still in high school I decided that being a victim of circumstance was not an option. I worked two jobs and went to school and that still wasn’t making ends meet. So naturally I did what any 16-year-old would do – I became an entrepreneur. I had decided that if we were gonna make it that it was gonna be on my terms. I wrote out some goals for money I wanted to make, car I wanted to drive and career I wanted to have.
Long story short, it took me two years, but we bought our first house together when I was 18. From there the challenges didn’t stop coming. My dad’s court challenges continued, and all his appeals had been denied. Since we couldn’t afford the proper legal counsel, and without a lawyer, I decided to lobby the Supreme Court and do it myself. After eight long years I was able to get my dad on the pardon board agenda and he was pardoned and released. At 23 years old I learned that even when they say it’s impossible, if you are willing to go for it anyway, they can be proven wrong. I’ve always had this thought – that we are all dealt the same hands in this game of life but with different cards. The gift is being grateful to play the game anyway and know that it’s not necessarily the cards you are dealt, but how you play them. You’ve gotta be willing to risk a few hands here and there to make your own breaks. Going by the book and never taking chances is a recipe for a really boring life. Life doesn’t reward those who play their hands avoiding loss. My advice to everyone is that we’ve all gotta play to win.

Another life event that taught me resilience was when 5 successful entrepreneurs on Shark Tank all said these two words to me “I’m Out”. After that devastating moment at Sony Studios in Culver City California and the cameras shut off, I was absolutely devastated. I thought for a brief moment that my world was over. After crying backstage, I took a week to lick my wounds and finally pick myself up off the ground. It wasn’t easy because I felt embarrassed, humiliated and an array of failure type emotions. It’s been 6 years from that horrific experience, and I can proudly say that even though they didn’t see what I saw, we are now a multimillion-dollar business that will make history over the next decade as the most successful Zero Waste minority owned and operated Beverage Distribution company in the country.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
After many successful and unsuccessful startup adventures, I discovered the beverage industry. We became the trail makers for the first ‘made in USA’ patented coconut water, ready to drink, fresh beverage for resorts and retail. This very difficult road has led us to becoming the best tasting canned coconut water, called CocoLoveWater. We are focused now on scaling our beverages nationwide into all kinds of different verticals. From retail convenient stores to cruise ships, CocoLove is our “Whydration”. We call it that because it provides people the best hydration, along with our mission driven purpose to help people and the planet. Every can of CocoLove sold helps women and children and our mission to plant one million coconut trees in the USA. We invite everyone to drink it forward with us and order a case for their homes and offices. With no added sugar and only one ingredient, CocoLove water makes us proud, and I hope you can taste the CocoLove and soul that our team and I have put into this. It usually takes 10 years to make an overnight success and I’m so happy that our 10-year anniversary is coming soon.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Looking back, the three skills that we all need to be equipped with in our bag of tricks are thick skin, a short-term memory, and a positive attitude. Never be to proud to admit that you don’t know something and never be afraid to make mistakes. Failing forward fast is better than not taking action due to analysis paralysis. I’ll invite failure due to action over lack of action any day of the week, because you can’t learn to drive by just reading a book. You must actually get behind the wheel and hit the gas pedal in order to develop your road experience. It takes courage, and even though it’s scary, don’t let the fear of getting into a crash prevent you from enjoying the open road!

To close, maybe we can chat about your parents and what they did that was particularly impactful for you?
Although many of our parents didn’t have all the tools or play book, I’ve always been grateful to my parents for always being supportive and encouraging about my ideas. I’ve been lucky enough to learn from some of my parents’ mistakes and life lessons that have greatly improved my life. Learning what not to do is just as important as leaning what to do. I learned how to take risks from my dad and learned how to unconditionally love from my mom.

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