Allison Ellsworth (’09) has always been determined.

“I've always felt like I can do anything in life,” she says. “When I was a little kid, I was always told yes — even if I was in my Sunday best about to go to church. If I wanted to go play in the dirt, my dad would be like, ‘Go do it. You're going to have consequences from that.’ So, learning to push boundaries from a young age really impacted me as an older child. I am built a little bit different than most people because fear doesn't stop me from doing anything. I usually say yes and figure it out later.”

That fearlessness propelled her, along with her husband, Stephen Ellsworth, to create a beverage brand with healthy attributes that quickly sold out at a Dallas farmers market. Then a 2018 appearance on Shark Tank — when she was nine months pregnant — boosted the brand. Now called poppi, the drink boasts low calories, five grams of sugar, colorful branding and strong social media content — and it has become the one of the fastest-growing non-alcoholic beverage in history. It was sold to Pepsi for $1.95 billion this spring.

Ellsworth has taken risks and worked hard her whole life. Growing up in Wichita Falls, she came to UNT for the dance program. She toiled in multiple jobs and paid her own tuition and books. But she realized she didn’t want to teach dancing.

“I had this, ‘What am I doing with my life?’ moment,” she says. “So I took a year off and moved to Spain by myself. I dropped my classes, and I took that money and I bought a one-way ticket. And what I learned in doing that was there's a big beautiful world out there and I was ready to experience it.”

When she ran out of money, she returned to UNT and pivoted to sociology. After graduation, she worked as a contractor for the oil and gas industry. The frequent traveling in that job led her to health problems. She lacked energy. Her skin was a mess. She felt bloated all the time.

“So, I started drinking apple cider vinegar. I didn't like the way it tasted, so I was like, ‘I need to make this taste better.’”

She and her husband concocted several versions in their kitchen.

“And then it got to the point where we were so obsessed with it. I was like, ‘How do I share this with as many people as possible?’”

At the Dallas farmers market, it sold out the first week and they ran out of the doubled batch the next week. The third week, a buyer from Whole Foods told them the beverage needed to be sold at grocery stores.

“It was the first time I realized I had a business and it wasn't just a hobby. I looked at my husband and said, ‘We're going to go all in on this. I want to max the credit cards. I want to open a manufacturing facility.’ I was three months pregnant and we’d just bought a house and he told me I was crazy. But we went all in and then we got into Whole Foods and started having a real business.”

After they made a $400,000 deal with investor Rohan Oza on Shark Tank ­— and she delivered her second child two weeks later — they took nine months off to rebrand, changing the name from Mother Beverage to poppi. The drink was scheduled for a national rollout in March 2020 — just as COVID-19 hit. But the Ellsworths turned it into an advantage. Since many people were worried about their health, they touted it as an alternative to their full sugar competition. They also reappeared on Shark Tank for an update, snagging more publicity. At the time, many national companies weren’t on TikTok, but poppi began posting on the social media channel and went viral.

As it gained popularity, poppi has had a few bubbles burst — such as when consumers didn’t like its root beer flavor.

“Many founders let their ego get in the way and are hesitant to change or evolve their product,” Ellsworth says. “If we're calling ourself a soda, we have to have a killer root beer flavor.”

They changed the flavor, taking a year to compile consumers’ opinions and changing the packaging.

With the deal with Pepsi, poppi now has one distributor instead of 180. It can be sold in stadiums and on college campuses.

While the whole experience has been a wild ride, Ellsworth — who gave birth to a third boy while poppi was growing — says, “I like chaos. I like thinking from a disruptive and different creative perspective. When I hear no, it means I'm talking to the wrong person. I'll get my yes. I always will be very confident. But with all of that said, I feel like it’s essential to lead with humanity and kindness through it all.”