Adam Kroener’s life changed with one revolting sip. In May 2018, Adam and his wife, Amanda, were at a lake with friends when one of them handed him a hard seltzer. The slim white cans had just begun to flood the market and Adam was intrigued. The label promised low carbs and low sugar, after all, which meshed perfectly with the keto diet the couple had recently adopted.

One sip, though, was more than enough. The drink was overloaded with carbonation and light on flavor, Adam thought. “I actually spit it back out in the lake,” he says now. That moment crystallized an idea: If this was the best option for the legions of people like him who wanted to enjoy alcohol but also to limit carbs, calories, and sugar, then certainly someone could develop a product with more flavor.

Within days, Adam, now an Entrepreneurs’ Organization member through EO Wisconsin, started blending his own carb-free, sugar-free vodka lemonades at home. That first batch begot CarblissOff-site link., a budding, nine-figure beverage empire Adam and Amanda co-founded. The company has ranked in the top 50 of the vaunted Inc. 5000 listOff-site link. of America’s fastest-growing companies two years in a row while twice placing as the top company in the Midwest. (Carbliss ranked seventh in 2024, 35th this year, and was the highest-ranking EO-member-owned company on both lists.) Having achieved so much, so soon, Adam keeps his focus trained on methodical growth rather than basking in success.

“I do enjoy it for about five minutes,” he says of Carbliss’s ever-expanding list of accolades. “But I think Patrick Mahomes said, ‘You win the Super Bowl, and you have dreamed about it your whole life — and then you realize that high only lasts for a few days. After that, you just want another one.’”