Heroes in Business - John Sculley fmr CEO Pepsi Co is interviewed by David Cogan of Eliances Heroes radio show amfm.

Episode Date: March 15, 2024

John Sculley fmr CEO Pepsi Co is interviewed by David Cogan of Eliances Heroes radio show amfm. Sculley talks about his book "Moonshot: Game-Changing Strategies for Building Billion Businesses" and how his time at Pepsi changed his life from starting as a route truck driver to CEO. Sculley shares the secret to creating everlasting success.

Welcome back to Alliances Heroes, where heroes in business align. To be part of our super community and find out more about Alliances, visit www.alliances.com. Now, back to our super host, David Kogan, founder of Alliances. That's right. This is David Kogan, and it's all about heroes, those that make a difference in the community, those that are making a difference in the world. And what a morning it has been. We just had the business icon and number 66 on the richest people in the U.S. That's right, John Paul DeGioia.

We'll be ending the show, too, with another special guest, but I can't tell you yet who that is. But without further ado, make sure you listen real carefully, because we got a legend. Have we got a hero? Everyone on planet Earth will have heard of our next hero's company, where he was the ceo and that company is pepsico and our hero is the one and only john scully so john i've got to ask you we've got to know what it was like your first day as ceo of pepsico being one of the most recognized brands in the world what it was like? Well, to be perfectly honest, I don't remember my very first day. My whole life at that time was wrapped up in Pepsi.

It was just an incredibly exciting time to be in the soft drink industry. When I had joined Pepsi back in 1967, it had just merged with Frito-Lay, and it was a very small company. The Pepsi-Cola division, which I was a part of at that time, was a little over $100 million of revenue. The company was really a strong regional brand in the United States. It's hard for a lot of people to imagine that today, given where Pepsi is. But in those days, we were outsold 10 to 1 in 50% of the U.S. And so it was a small company. It was fighting to compete with Coca-Cola. And during the decade of the 70s, I became marketing VP in 1970. That decade was the Cola Wars. And at the end of that decade, Pepsi had passed Coca-Cola as the largest selling consumer packaged goods in the United States.

So we were pretty excited to have worked at Pepsi during that era. I mean, an incredible accomplishment. And you could reach John Sculley by going to sculleespeaks.com. accomplishment. And you can reach John Sculley by going to sculleyspeaks.com. That's S-C-U-L-L-E-Y S-P-E-A-K-S.com. Or you can go to Eliance's website. We'll have the clip on there too, E-L-I-A-N-C-E-S.com. What would you say, though, that you learned most about being the CEO of PepsiCo? Well, what I really learned when I was at Pepsi was how important it is to build and nurture a brand. And it was one of the things that attracted Steve Jobs to recruit me to Apple because we had a saying at Pepsi, perception leads reality. And Coke was reality.

Its advertising in that era was Coke is the real thing. We said, there's no way we can compete on reality with Coca-Cola. They had far more resources. So we had to compete on perception. And so we created a campaign called the Pepsi Challenge. And the Pepsi Challenge totally annoyed Coke because they were kind of saying, well, how can this company totally annoyed at Coke because they were kind of saying, well, how can this company challenge us? We're number one. And of course, that only built up the attention and the excitement and only got more people paying attention to little Pepsi. And I mean, when you started at Pepsi, what was your first position there? first position there? Well, I was recruited as the first MBA in the company. And back in 1967, when I first joined, they weren't quite sure what to do with me, David. So they put me out on a

route truck and I drove a truck. I had to join the Teamsters in order to do that. And I was put in Pittsburgh first. I reset shelves in the middle of the night. I would go to work every morning with the union guys, a terrific bunch of people there. And I learned a lot. And then they sent me off to Phoenix, Arizona. And in Phoenix, I had a chance to work there, resetting shelves. Again, most things in Phoenix in the summertime were done in the middle of the night because it was so hot in the daytime. And then I was sent on to Las Vegas for training, and I was there for several weeks. And then I was sent to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. So I got to see a lot of different markets. And those lessons, and it's really, I think, a lesson that

I would love to pass on to others, is that never take for granted that you're doing something that won't be valuable later on. Because I learned, because I'm a curious person by nature, you know, I learned, you know, so what's the better way to set the shelves? And out of that, when I eventually became marketing VP of Pepsi, and I studied industrial design, I actually worked on designing the new beverage shelves, particularly when large plastic bottles came out. And that has to this day become the way in which soft drink beverages are displayed in every type of market. You can imagine mass merchandisers, drug chains, as well as grocery stores. So those experiences as a trainee were invaluable for me. And I feel kind of

disappointed when people think they can learn business on a spreadsheet. You really got to get your hands into it. And I was so lucky to have had that chance to work in those different markets and get my hands into it and work alongside the people who are actually part of the system. An incredible story, John. Incredible. And you're listening to Eliance's Heroes. Are you a hero in business? Go to Eliance's.com.

That's E-L-I-A-N-C-E-S.com, the place where entrepreneurs align. We have John Scully, the former CEO of Pepsi. John, did you ever imagine that you would become the CEO when you started at Pepsi? I mean, and if so, at what point did you say to yourself, you know what, this is attainable? Well, it's interesting. You know, my aspirations was not to be a CEO. I was trained as an industrial designer. I worked in marketing.

I went to business school and worked in data analytics. And so I had skills that weren't necessarily the skills that a CEO needed, but they were skills that let me have an impact on the business back at a time when I used to be called the high wire act, meaning that I was totally unqualified for every job I was ever put in. But this was back when the soft drink industry was in a different era and when Pepsi was a small company. And so the good news was that I got jobs that I was really not qualified in. And yet I was able to live up to expectations, the world is different now. There's so many more people who have skills that you've got to compete with for those

jobs. I'm not sure I would have gotten all the really good jobs today than I got back when I started out in business. Well, you've had an incredible career, in fact, too. Not only that, you're also an author. Well, you've had an incredible career, in fact, too. It's not only that, you're also an author. You've got the book titled Moonshot, Game-Changing Strategies to Build Billion-Dollar Businesses. I'm holding this incredible book right now, which can be purchased on Amazon.

In summary, what would you say, though, we want our audience listeners to know about this book and why you wrote it? First, it's not an autobiography. It's really sharing the experiences that I've had and that many entrepreneurs I know well have had where we talk about our mistakes, not about our successes. We talk about the things we learn, and we want to pass them on to the next generation. We're going to take on many of the same challenges that we had when we started out. And so I want to give them some mentoring along the way. And the big insight, I think, is that we're in an era today unlike anything that I've ever seen before. We have

these incredible technologies of cloud, of mobility, of big data analytics, of the internet of things. These are technologies that are growing exponentially. That means at such a fast pace that we can barely keep up with it. And it means that every industry is exposed to being reinvented, that there may be a better way to do things than the way they're done now. And the big message that I have in my book, Moonshot, is that it's all about the customer. That today with social media, customers are able to see a transparent view of a company in terms of its products and services. They hear what other customers think. They read opinions. And

they're more influenced, David, by the opinions of other customers than they are even of the established reputations of the best companies in the world. And again, you could reach John Sculley, former Apple and Pepsi CEO, and so much more going to sculleespeaks.com. Make sure that you pick up his book called Moonshot Incredible. You could pick it up on Amazon. And you've done so much with your life. You were also, again, the CEO of Apple.

You've been a founding investor of MetroPCS, which is now a multi-billion dollar public company on the New York Stock Exchange. It's been acquired by T-Mobile. You also built NFL Research from $25 million to $550 million in revenue. I mean, the list just goes on and on. We've got a little less than a minute left here. If there was one secret to being so successful, what's the silver bullet? What do you think it really takes when you bring it all down?

Well, it starts with insatiable curiosity. Why are things the way they are? And why can't there be a better way? It takes a motivation to work really, really hard. You know, the good ideas come all the time. There are many, many smart people, particularly when you go to Silicon Valley, you see smart people. You think because you're a valedictorian, you're unique. Everybody's a valedictorian.

So it's not just the cool ideas. It's having a passion to do something that will impact society and to work really, really hard. Being an inspired business leader who could take an idea and turn it into a strategy and build multi multi-million billion dollar businesses author and investor is surely a hero and john scully certainly is one and when we return we're going to have a very special guest in the studio thank you david kogan with alliances