Motivation
Selling An Idea To Coca-Cola for 4.1 Billion Dollars
A couple months back we featured an article called How 50 Cent Made A Killing Off Water which detailed the deal that went down between 50 Cent & Vitamin Water leaving 50 Cent with almost Half A Billion Dollars in his share of the Pie over at “Glacéau”. This article features the man himself “Mike Repole” the co founder of Vitamin Water & Smart Water explaining how he came about inking a 4.1 Billion Dollar deal with Coca-Cola to release his Glacéau Vitamin Water to the Billions around the world.
Mike Repole, 38, co-founded Glacéau, makers of Vitaminwater and Smartwater, with J. Darius Bikoff in 1999.
Mike Repole – “I’m the president and co-founder of Glacéau, the beverage company that makes Vitaminwater, and last year one of the largest companies in the world approached us with an exciting proposition that would turn out to be worth billions of dollars. Sometimes you can’t see the forest through the trees; I don’t know if I actually recognized how successful a company we had created in Queens, New York, in less than a decade. What I am certain of is that I barely noticed Manhattan’s skyscraper views on the last day of April a year ago. It was nine o’clock in the morning when I greeted executives from Coca-Cola at their top-floor boardroom on Fifth Avenue, and I was focused.
I prepared for the most important day of my life like any other day: I ate an egg-white omelet and a bowl of fresh fruit for breakfast, and I wore a black polo shirt and black slacks. It was the third full-day meeting of the week and the culmination of a five-month-long discussion, so I wasn’t really nervous. Anxious is more like it. I wanted to close this deal by taking our products global while still continuing to run the business in Queens. Somewhere in the midst of all that, Coke added their sports drink Powerade to the table–a brand I’d always competed against–and said, “How about you find a way to make this better than Pepsi’s Gatorade too?” A few hours later, we all shook hands on the deal of a lifetime. The lives of everyone involved with Glacéau changed in that moment. Each of our 497 shareholders and 352 employees would eventually receive a check worth thousands of dollars. My younger brother, Gerard, a New York City police officer for 13 years, had invested very early. He had one of the toughest jobs in the world, and I helped him retire early. I will never feel prouder.
When you sell something for $4.1 billion, you celebrate with a nice dinner. That evening we ate at Les Salons, the private room above the four-star French restaurant Le Bernardin. Because I was so excited, I ordered the most expensive wine on the menu. I don’t even know which bottle. The wine could have come from a box and I wouldn’t have known the difference. And then it was back to business as usual for us here in Queens, only now we’re in the process of hiring 300 new employees, evolving Powerade, taking our products to the next level nationally, and introducing Vitaminwater internationally. We’ll be global in five years, and we needed Coke to accomplish that. Not bad for a kid from Queens who graduated from St. John’s University with a 2.2 GPA and hoped to become general manager for the Mets. Here are my fundamental business lessons that I never learned in school.”
The dialogue in your mind is the battleground where your motivation lives and dies every day. In every moment, your words are either lifting you or sabotaging your success. Unfortunately, most people are losing this battle within themselves. They are using their most powerful asset — their mental energy — to beat themselves up, play victimization games, or stop themselves from sharing their passion. (more…)
If your company did well in 2018, you must be sitting there challenged with a thought inside your head – How can I continue the streak and keep up my marketing game this year? You have knocked yourself enough to meet your 2018 goals, and all you need now is a boost of morale to face all that 2019 has in store for you. (more…)
Someone asked on the internet how they can make their country better.
They considered themselves ordinary and felt that they had to be someone special to make a difference in their country, India.
Their question made me feel a bit emotional because I can relate. I too have also dreamt of making my country better.
The most common answer to this question is to get involved in politics.
Many of you reading this find politics really boring including me. I’ve learned through my own experience that politics is not the only way you can make your country better.
Here’s how you can make your country better:
Use your voice
When I was faced with the question “How do I make my country better?” I decided to use my voice.
It was this decision that changed everything. I spent every day using my voice to stand for something. I wanted to inspire the world through entrepreneurship and personal development.
So, I started using my voice by posting on LinkedIn. I used my voice and transcribed it into words to tell the citizens of my country what I think they needed to hear.
Using your voice is incredibly scary at first. As soon as you start sharing your thoughts, many people will say nothing. You’ll get almost no feedback. As your voice starts to get louder over time (probably years) the opposite will happen and you’ll attract trolls and critics.
The hardest part about using your voice is having the courage every day to use it and not being obsessed with the outcome.
By using my voice online through blogging and LinkedIn, I managed to get a 35,000 person bank to start talking about my ideas with staff and customers, and I was voted LinkedIn Australia’s Top Voice that year.
Using the power of your voice is the number one way you can change your country.
It’s in your experiences, ideas and thoughts that you can find what it is that can help your country.
In my country, Australia, we are quite well off, but we still lack a positive mindset. Some of us work jobs we hate and we like things that only money can buy. There’s a competition to get the biggest house or the most expensive car.
It’s not a problem everyone in Australia suffers from, but it’s widespread. I believe by using my own voice to inspire people to seek alternatives, I can change my country.
The results thus far suggest I’m well on the way to changing my country.
Be kind
Changing your country seems like a huge task. It sounds like something only a Nelson Mandela sort of fella can achieve. That’s not true.
A simple understanding of the power of kindness can change your country.
There was this guy I read about online that changed his country by giving out free hugs because he couldn’t run in the local marathon. He embraced his kind nature and ended up impacting millions of people in his country.
Being kind is infectious because we’re wired to do it. When we see one person be kind, we want to do the same.
The problem in my country (and many others) is that we’ve sacrificed kindness for greed.
We’ve let our country’s economy become the most important factor instead of measuring the way we treat people and the ability of a country’s nation to overcome adversity together.
Kindness is so important because every one of our countries will face adversity, and kindness is the solution to that inevitable problem.
Pick up the trash
This one seems even smaller in impact. It’s not.
I found that by picking up the rubbish I saw in places like my apartment lobby, I was able to show myself that I care about my country.
When we care about our country, we choose to make it look beautiful so others can enjoy it. Something simple like picking up the trash can take you a long way towards helping your country.
Every country has an environmental problem and picking up rubbish can help solve it. If we all picked up one piece of trash, then each of our country’s would be a hell of a lot cleaner.
Don’t think you can’t make your country better
A lot of what I’ve learned, by trying to make my own country better, has come from the belief that I can have an impact.
There are so many people who want to do nothing more than complain which wastes time and energy and doesn’t make anyone’s country better.
The way you make your country better is by believing you can and taking one or two small actions to start the process.
The people that change their country believe they can.
If you want to increase your productivity and learn some more valuable life hacks, then join my private mailing list on timdenning.net
In “The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop,” author Dan Charnas traces how rap grew from its obscure roots in the ghettos of 1970s New York to its culmination as the world’s predominant youth pop culture and a multibillion-dollar industry.
The event that epitomized just how far hip-hop had come was the headline-grabbing partnership between the rapper 50 Cent and the upstart beverage company Glaceau, the maker of VitaminWater. It may well have been the biggest deal in hip-hop history, propelling 50 Cent’s personal net worth toward a half-billion dollars.
In this excerpt, Charnas outlines how it happened. (more…)
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J.T.
Jan 20, 2013 at 5:06 am
Where is the rest of the article?!
Gabriel Do Camro
Sep 2, 2012 at 4:46 pm
THe lessons?
ANNA TEMU
Nov 7, 2012 at 10:27 pm
you can use other ways to sale your products especially soft drinks by packing into small packets and sale it like ice cream because many children prefer such things sold in chi pest way.Also can make coca-cola ice cream and milk.
fridah chlio
Nov 7, 2012 at 10:31 pm
Bravo.