hi everyone I'm Nicola tangan the CEO of the Norwegian so wealth fund and today

I'm here with Deborah crew the CEO of Dio now

Dio one of the most successful brand builders in the world they have a portfolio which include things like smov Guinness Bailey's Johnny Walker lots of great tequila brands and tanker in the Gin sector

we own 2.2% of the company equivalent to $1.3 billion

pleasure to have you here

it's great to be here thanks

Deborah what's happening in this Bears industry just now

first of all we see a really long runway for growth in beverage alcohol and particularly in spirits

and you know and it's it's Total Beverage alcohol has been growing consistently for 20 plus years

and alcohol is a percent of discretionary spending and percent of consumer kind of discretionary wallets is quite modest it's less than 2% and that's been very consistent over time

uh no doubt right now the the industry is quite challenged and it's challenged because of the the cyclical kind of economic uh pressures the uh inflationary the prolonged inflation that that consumers are having to navigate um has compressed that kind of discretionary wallet and that's really impacting the volumes of the industry

that being said people forget just how resilient the industry is

and so you know we do see this it's cyclical it's going to come back and this resilience can really be explained because of the kind of underlying structural drivers of demand um that really give us Tailwinds are if we look at some of the uh some of the things which are happening just now uh are young people drinking less than before

are young people drinking less than before

so what we're seeing is um so gen Z are expressing um and and that they prefer to moderate

that being said the actual behavior um we what we're seeing in Behavior is more of what we would call zebra striping which is um you know I go into a bar um I order a Guinness first I'm still out with my friends and so uh the next thing I'm going to order is a Guinness z00 that's how I'm moderating um but at the same time I'm staying very much within Guinness I'm staying in the moment I still feel like I'm part of it

and so we're actually seeing that Jin Z behavior um you know they're not moderating as much as what um uh you know people think um and so they drink like every other alcoholic non-alcoholic drink yeah and and they're clearly my friends are not gen Z though well and they're also they're coming into Spirits faster

so the other thing that we're really experiencing is that while maybe overall they are um you know moderating through some behaviors they are they're actually coming into Spirits faster um and that's because of drinks like rtds they're coming into tequila faster uh because they're drinking Spirits with food

um so there's you know it's one of those that we see it as much of an opportunity as we see it as um a headwind

the other thing going on is lifestyle so that's what what you're kind of getting at is this moderation area

so but I'll start by saying first of all social socializing and kind of that uh the social dynamics that unite us and the local nuances of that socializing is a big part of how how much of your sales would be in you know in restaurants bars and how much would be at home

so that's one of the trends we we should talk about because what we're seeing is actually more occasions we're seeing an expansion of these socializing occasions coming it like and they're quite Diversified now

it used to be a lot of restaurants and bars but now you see more and more socializing occurring at home they're smaller it's kind of a smaller setting there's maybe fewer you know it's more informal setting but we are seeing more occasions coming home um and that's not just a CO Trend we were seeing we've been seeing this trend for a long time

Co clearly kind of made home as Fortress but that is a big part of what we're also seeing a rise of what we call the third spaces

so what that is is you're not in a bar you're not at home but maybe you're out at a sports kind of Arena or you're at a festival um this is big for kind of ginz they're out and about when they are consuming alcohol they're often out in these third spaces

and so what we're seeing in the industry is there's more formats and Siz and you know this is like Rise of rtds and some of this that you're seeing is all uh the industry really capturing those occasions and that's another big kind of Tailwind for us

but just if we take these two two things so one uh young people drink less how how how significant is that

yeah so let's talk about moderation for a second because it's not just we've we've been tracking this trend for quite some time we call it mindful consumption

um so I talked about how value has been consistently growing beverage alcohol for a long time within that though and by the way popularity has not waned it's actually been quite strong 70% of households participate in that's been a pretty steady Trend as well

but volume per caps actually peaked in 2012 and then they've been slightly but steadily kind of declining really since 2012

now what I mean by slight it would be like from 2012 till now it's like a bottle of wine so it is slight but it is coming down and we've seen that moderating trend for a long time time

so we drink less but more expensive stuff yeah and actually that's exactly what we say we say people want to drink better not more and we've set our whole growth strategy really around that

about and by the way Spirits underneath of that per caps have held in quite quite good because Spirits is gaining from beer and wine we're gaining in like food occasions and some of this that you wouldn't have seen before that's kind of been a space for wine and beer

what about some of the health Trends and the anti-obesity drugs and so on how is that impacting you

yeah you know we're not seeing that as separate and distinct from those moderating trends that we've been seeing you know

so look supposedly 15 million Americans at any given time are are now on these or at least trying you know these type of weight loss drugs and and perhaps they're on for other reasons as well other health reasons um but we're not seeing a that trend line break so while people are being more mindful about what they're consuming we're we're not seeing that as as kind of this separate kind of break in that in the overall trend

are you seeing big differences between geographies is the trend in Europe very different from Asia

I mean not really I would say this is more of a developed Market phenomenon um and and so that is where we're you know where we're seeing that you know we do see these Trends do tend to go around the world and I would say in general we are seeing kind of premiumize and people thinking more about you know what they're what they're consuming

talking of which um is the legalization of Mariana having an impact on drink cons

well you know we're not really seeing that either it's kind of a different occasion you know this comes back to our occasions are more these social occasions that we talked about where you tend to be like so socializing 86% of the time when you're having a drink you're having it in the company of others so those are bigger occasions for us really than um quite often uh cannabis and some of this which has been legal now for some quite some time in in several states in the US and we're not really seeing once again A distinct you know break in sort of the trends that we've been seeing for quite some time now

now how does this impact the way you market and brand your products

yeah so we like I said we have grounded all of our uh strategy and growth strategies really within the spirits gaining occasions from beer and wine so expanding our Spirits occasions and premiumize

so our portfolio um is oriented more more toward premium now so almost I don't know 62% of our portfolio is sort of Premium Plus and that compares to the industry average of kind of being like 35%

so over time we've actually divested um kind of some of our more value Brands and we've actually invested in things like you mentioned our our tequila brands earlier those are kind of Ultra Premium priced so we've reoriented our portfolio to more premiumization

and then from a marketing standpoint there's there's six trends that we are that that we've kind of said we want to lead in shape

so not surprisingly moderation one so we've gone out we've acquired some non- out kind of spirit Brands so ritual in the US is one of those um convenience so this is sort of these rtds and you know if you're out in these third spaces what are you doing it's luxury so we're still seeing luxury as being um you know we're going to see by 2028 almost a quarter um of the category we think will be in these kind of more Super Premium Plus priced uh products so luxury is a part with food so you may go what is this you know I'm a Texan so um the best thing with Mexican food is a margarita it's not beer wine so those are the types of things we're going after what do you have with your steak um I would have whiskey for sure okay good a good Smoky like Isa whiskey

by the way what is your favorite drink

so you know I love all of the children um I you know so but not in the same glass at the same time yeah no no no no um I'm a big tequila fan I'm a Texan so you know so Don Julio I'm 1942 but I'm I'm also a big I like a pety scotch so I like our Johnny Walker black I like our lagavulin um you know in the summer I like a good genen and tonic I like a good Tanger tonic so pretty FX pretty flexible um now um I should ask you what your favorite drink is

well I'm I'm I'm actually uh a bit more of a wine drinker but if I were to hit one of your products it would probably be uh the Gonic does it matter if you're like traveling or no mainly that would be summer but but not very often that's your summer but not very often okay well we got to work on you totally totally anytime

uh tariffs

yes well I mean look we're in 180 countries and we're a big importer and exporter and so clearly we love free trade um you know however honestly over time we have dealt with a lot of Duties and tariffs and you know disruptions so we take a long view of these things and we look at it and say you know we've we certainly can navigate through the any of these things you know and I mean look there's been tariffs and and high duties on Scotch for years is an example going from uh Scotland into India um they're short-term disruptive no doubt um and it's probably the uncertainty that's the hardest thing to plan for is when you don't you know it's hard to mitigate those until you know exactly what those are going to look like so you know we're clearly staying very close on all of it and um you know but we see that from a long run we can absolutely mitigate those things we know what to do you know it's just really more of just navigating through the short run and you know how do we how do we mitigate that

when you buy Brands I mean you bought for instance uh tequila brand from George Clooney I think you paid a billion dollars so yes well done him uh when when do you when do you buy well done us it's been a great brand for us win-win um but when do you when do you buy a brand and when do you build it and how um you know what are what are the considerations here

yeah I mean you know look we do have a you know we've got 13 billion do Brands we're number one or number two in many of our of these categories so um I really love our portfolio you know that being said um you you know we do look for spaces where we don't have uh maybe a strong of a brand or a brand because we also are across price tiers as well um you know so that can be important as well where sometimes we don't feel like you know we have a premium enough brand or um like in the non-al space our most recent acquisition in ritual in the US uh we had seed lip that we took it was a big brand for us in the UK that was non out um but in you know in the US this ritual um seed lip is kind of more in the Gin space I would say and you know ritual uh had a brand that kind of spanned across as a tequila alternative a Jin alternative a whiskey alternative Etc and so that has been the number one we felt like we didn't have anything that could go there so we went out um and acquired that

likewise we we dispose of Brands um you know some of our disposals that we've done in India we disposed of kind of our value and popular kind of price point because we just see a long-term premiumization there and that part of the portfolio represented a lot of volume but it wasn't necessarily set to drive growth for the future

so acquisition wise we kind of look for where we don't have but but quite honestly most spaces we can really go after With Our Brands and and we've got a consumer Choice framework that helps us it actually looks at these socializing Trends it looks at um across we've got 37 markets that we track like 220 million occasions that we're taking a look at what they're drinking uh who they're with how they're drinking because it's look at socializing as well as what they're what they're doing

and how do you use that analytics so you have all this incredible data and we probably should inject here that you have your background from the intelligence service so you are really into Data

I do I I am into Data I love data and and and I love it because it really helps us do you know Precision marketing and when you get when you get that right when you get the right brand at the right time you know to the right person I mean that that experience it elevates the whole experience and that's what we're trying to do we're trying to elevate these moments for

so you have 220 million data points I mean what do you what do you what do we do with that

that helps us in deploying for for one it helps us see the best opportunities we marry that up with the Best Brands we make sure that we are you know marketing within that occasion and we serve up the best serve options for for people it you know it just helps us be much more precise about where to go and especially in these type of moments where it's quite volatile and you do have consumers Under Pressure being able um you know when we get this right consumers are willing to spend money because they see value and that they're getting great quality exactly what they want

um so let so let's take an example here so jny Johnny Walker yeah you have different types of Johnny Walker at different price points so how does is architecture work how do you think about it I mean Johnny Walker so the most expensive Johnny Walker what is that

yeah well we just launched the Vault did you see this so this we launched a um this is going to be a customized Johnny Walker blend for you it's 50,000 pounds for that privilege so it is at the tippy top of but it is a personalized experience around Johnny Walker and you get to go to to Princess Street in Edinburgh and we will craft this for you and so we you know this is a very special experience in and of itself

so we have all the way of that all the way to you know a Johnny Walker red which depending upon the market that you're in and in between you got blue and black we've got black we've got blue we've got green and gold we've got double black we it really spans and and I have to say I've been around marketing for a long time probably one of the most unique brands in the world how much because we span all of that credibly

how much more profitable is the expensive version versus the cheap version

we have great margins across scotch and part of it is um you know look you know it's how you make Scotch so remember for Johnny Walker black um if you want to be selling that uh 10 years from now you better have barreled it and put it in a barrel two years ago so it's a 12-year-old scotch and you know we have a a you know quite a competitive mode around that because of you know we're very good at blending and Distilling we're very good at maturing we're very good at bottling we're very good at getting this out around the world so our margins across Scotch are you know are very good whether we're selling it because remember if you're this like Johnny Walker red is not in a barrel for 12 years it's in a barrel for much less time so therefore all of these prices kind of correspond to you know what we've put into the product

so I think that's so uh interesting so when uh in the past when I studied this industry uh you kind of differentiate between white spirits and brown Spirits

White Spirit you go from a potato to cash in one week right right you can go I mean you can make V guy in one week right although you can from nothing well the brown the brown Spirits you need to seller and age and you have no sales whilst you do this so you it's you need to have pretty Deep Pockets right

yeah and it's a very you know and these are very different businesses but you take something like tequila which is both both a white and a dark spirit M but in Tequila you know you're spending seven years with the the the blue agave plant and then you age it so Reposado is one of our uh fastest growing kind of Don Julios right now and that's actually aged you know at least six months so that process if you think about from the from the seed all the way to you know that's so even in within white Spirits now you've got uh a range of things going on around aging um particularly on on tequila if you think about it that way although Reposado does start to get into more the the dark Spirits it's one of the reasons we're excited about tequila is because it goes from white to dark it goes across occasions Daytime Nighttime you know because his dark Spirits you tend to uh consume those in certain occasions so whiskies rums you tend to consume those in certain occasions and then likewise you know for white Spirits you know those are daytime occasions a lot although you have a good nightclub cocktails too so it you know it is quite interesting this expansion of occasions and where we're seeing drinks and how versatile Spirits is is one of the things

how loyal are we to Our Brands how loyal yeah we're very loyal you mean what kind of loyalty we see from consumers or yeah I mean like let's say now I'm I'm into one type of drink do I always drink the same thing

I consumers drink in repertoire for sure so and particularly you know I I I was listing some of the Trends we go after there's a whole Trend around exploration and experiences that we see people wanting to try new things and so quite often it's the reason um on trade in the industry is so important often people go with what bartenders recommend or what they see on a menu often people will go in and not really know what they're going to to purchase until they get sort of inspired by by something and that's you know like I said the versatility of spirits is one of the things that gives us a great long runway for growth

what's the brand what's the one brand you would love to have which you haven't got

oh I don't know if I'm going to answer that because you're going to buy it soon right I was going to say you don't want to you don't want to prepare anyone

do you think uh do you think about it like a portfolio like we think about the portfolio of companies we own do you think about your Brands like that

well we do I mean you know because this comes back to you want to be quite precise in your marketing so we have kind of the consumer Choice framework to where we see um like as we're expanding tequila around the world we see certain markets that we think are ready more or less ready for that right um but we also have a market growth framework as well that we look at markets that same way of just in general taking a look at the market and the you know the tax the regulatory uh the profitability that we can get out of the market and and we make those type of strategic allocations upfront as well to say um you know look there's certain bets you're placing for 10 years from now you know you look at we just opened up uh un 12 which is our Chinese whiskey Distillery um you know these are these are 10year bets that you're doing in something like that compared to you know we know that in the next you know couple of years we're seeing a lot more opportunity in some of the developed markets um because we're seeing kind of faster recovery um potentially coming out of some of of some of those markets in some of those areas

switching gear herbit Cora culture What's the corpa culture like in dio

yeah so if I if I came in I start to work what kind of things I would I would observe

yeah well we always say you know we've got 30,000 brand builders whether you're in Supply marketing Finance HR everyone is quite focused on Our Brands and building our brands

people love the history um we have a lot of passion around Our Brands and so if you look at our you kind of got a bar on each floor here right Nell we do we have and a shop in it's not on each floor but we do have more than one bar in the office so yeah so I mean people love it and it's but we've got four values we that that are very much I think help describe our culture we're passionate about consumers and customers value each other we're very collaborative culture uh proud of what we do I think we're very proud not only of Our Brands but also things that we do in the community you know around sustainability you know Etc

and then there is one value that so actually when I came in as um a COO and then uh was announced I would be CEO I actually went out to a bunch of our senior leaders not the executive team but a couple layers down and asked them to help me sort of assess our culture and values in various markets and across functions around the world in an effort to kind of reignite and sort of strengthen the culture

and there was one value that as they looked at we had a value called be the best which sounds great on the surface um and there's many great things about it but it was creating a bit of a culture of perfection um if it wasn't the best you know bad news didn't travel as fast um when you think about wanting to you know consumers move fast today it's kind of a volatile World needing Speed and Agility in the culture we felt like be the best was undermining us so we actually changed that to be better and subsequently rolled out behind some behaviors that would help us uh so we called them behavioral dialup how would we be better as a you know from a cultural standpoint it was about being externally focused collaborating but we put the word efficiently behind it so continuing to collaborate but having the right only the right people in the room instead of having kind of to get gain agreement from a cast of thousands before you would do something um act decisively was part of it as well um experimenting and learning

have you seen changes on the back of this

we have um it's it's difficult it's difficult to change corpor culture is um but we've changed you know what was great about it though I will say is this didn't come from me pushing this out or the executive team this actually came from across our organization this is what they wanted to change and that it's taking some of the best of be the best but also injecting kind of learning and continuous Improvement in it

so like we've changed some of our Global processes like Innovation where you know we had kind of the classic five kind of stage Innovation that particularly for things that are less risk we've gotten that down to two it's only two stages and it's we've really cut down on the number of people that have to weigh in it's helping us get Innovation out faster

so how much F how much how much faster do you launch new products now do you think that

well in that compared to the old we we were able to take out almost a year from some of our processes I mean that tells you something because some of these take longer you know when you're doing a big kind of breakthrough Innovation it's one thing but if you're doing we had that same process for almost everything and so therefore you know that's allowed us to take that out we're also failing faster and learning because this comes back to you don't have to be not everything will work and if we can fail fast and sort of learn from it and adapt um and actually we celebrate some of those now you know it's like this isn't working and here's what we learned from it and we're moving on

tell me something that didn't work a launch that didn't work which we supp total Fiasco we just had because we just had a a meeting on this um and we we celebrated it much like if you've heard of uh you know Dia deos muos The Day of the Dead you celebrate those things that you've killed um and so you know we've got a um a a ready to to drink Margarita that we had a brand on it um a straw that it was just kind of it just didn't work and so it was you know there was a poem read out about it what went wrong and then we all thanked it for what it had done for us and we were moving on you you know and we had you know there was kind of a a scroll of these that we have but it's you know it was quite a great way um this was at our senior leader meeting that we could sort of celebrate that we're out there experimenting and learning and moving on and by the way we've got a great we're launching KAS Amigos ready to drink in a can we've learned a lot from the prior launch and you know it enables you to just move on

have you had any big surprises on the upside um and the reason why I'm ask you I read this book about this drink which scored unbelievably badly on taste and it was then launched at a very high price per you know with small cans and is now one of the biggest sellers in the world is Red Bull

yeah I mean uh the tasting notes were just unbelievably bad yeah and so it's kind of shocking that it's taking taken the world right

have you had any like big surprises where you thought this is not going to particularly work and then suddenly Bang

Yeah I mean look I think um you know it's you know it's interesting because what you do have is a lot of times um you know there are things that when we launch it I think will do better or worse and so you do get surprised sometimes something that you think is going to do really well and then it just doesn't get you know it doesn't get the upt and then you know vice versa

um I'm trying to think if there's anything in you know that I've kind of seen lately that has really surprised me I you know I think you know quite often one of the most important things is to get things right kind of end to end and so sometimes you know it is about getting the system behind it it's about getting great brand work out to explain what what it what it is

um you know I think I've been surprised by just how well um things like you know Reposado is doing not that Reposado tequila isn't great but it's just it's been amazing how this is all of a sudden taken over kind of the world even more so than like AO which actually is aged a little bit longer and kind of has you know what in my opinion is a little bit smoother tasting note but you know but that seems to be the one that's really hitting it for consumers so I think sometimes you can't you just can't judge what is what is going to be really amazing although there will be people that will say I know exactly why and so you know a lot of times you have brand Champions within this the system that kind of you know keep plugging through

um you know we're launching right now we've got a a a Captain Morgan um sweet chili lime oh you know so that's quite an aggressive kind of different taste um but we developed it with Jen Z's and so you know I don't even in many ways I'm thinking I don't even know how to think about that right I'm possibly too old to to judge

um smof Tamarindo is another good one where we um this is actually taken over the world and this is one that the Mexico team launched a long time ago I remember when it was coming into the US the US was kind of going well we'll do it as a limited time offer we'll see and then over time that that ended up being a a real favorite it's one of the you know best flavors on smernoff so you do get surprised for sure

now some people um are kind of Old-Timers in their companies you have experiences from a lot of other consumer goods companies right you've been in craft nesle PepsiCo yeah right absolutely

how do you weigh the the positives and negatives of having a lot of experience versus being in one company the whole time

yeah I mean think you know we always look and I you know this is a unique industry and so it is it is very important that you have kind of deep industry knowledge in many ways it's also a very local industry so it's very important like it used to be when we would go around the world expanding our Brands it was like kind of expats on the move over time we're seeing you know if great Brands get built with local activation and you know resonating within culture and so having local knowledge is important and so over time we always want to make sure that we've injected enough local kind of experience as well even if they've had to come from outside the industry to kind of build that

um so we kind of have like a combination of deep Spirits experience local knowledge and then also bringing in new capability

I do think you know as you come in from sometimes other companies there's things that other companies are doing that you can kind of inject into the culture here

tell me something that you have brought from your your past history inia

yeah I think look um you know from working at places like Pepsi and you know um you know our our new CFO is is from Coke you know one of the things that's really popular right now are smaller sizes

smaller sizes in the industry used to be thought of is kind of only you know these are like think about things like the airline bottles you know these 50 MLS or like a 375 so kind of half the size of a normal bottle of of spirits those are those are driving the growth in the US right now in fact you know and and and they're being driven on premium Brands

so because the industry used to think about this as a value size we didn't put our premium brands in this now we've got 1942 Don Julio and these little 50 MLS these are so popular I mean they have to they have to put them behind the usually behind the cash register yeah that's because they're easy to steal right well but but still they're not stealing the other 50 MLS you know there it is just and it's not and these are not inexpensive

but but they've captured you know for one it's capturing this moment of it's a pressured wallet right and sometimes you only have a certain amount of cash um but it's also you know look you you may pay 15 even up up to almost $20 for this but you know but people look at that and go hey it's it's got some cache it's you know it's cute you can dip it over in a in a bottle so everybody knows what you're drinking you know that you so some of these type of things but of course Pepsi and Coke have been doing these various sizes for a long time and I think you know it's those types of things that you know sometimes having those injection of other ideas you need to understand of course the norms and sort of what's Happening underneath of it but you know we have found if you do it well you don't want to take you know you don't want to cheapen these brands in any way but if you still merchandise them well if they're in a nice glass bottle um it's actually meeting consumer needs right now

what's your leadership style like

yeah I mean um I always think it's hard to describe your own leadership style but if if I ask your colleagues

yeah I think look I you know one of the things that I learned so I my first kind of job out of college I was I was in the Army and so very different environment um but I think it has in kind of frankly informed a lot about how I think about leadership

you know when when I took my first job in the Army um you know you walk in you're a you're a brand new lieutenant everybody knows more about everything than what you do and all of a sudden you you figure out really quickly that it's about it's really not about you at all it's actually about making the team better

and so um you know it's about how do you get people at their best how do you get the team really working you know in the business world when you come in you tend to get promoted because you do something really well and then all of a sudden you're supervising people now that are doing that same thing so you kind of get functional expertise first

I do think I do always think about kind of leadership first and making sure that what am I doing to get the best out of the team and to maximize the team and so I am you know quite focused on that and it's it's just always been part of you know how I think it should be done

and so you know that's why you know when you ask me the question about uh what do we look you know uh as as we're hiring people or you know all of those types of things I I try to think about that team Dynamic it's not just one individual you know it is about the team

do you think there's a difference between American leadership style and European leadership style

I mean yes and no I mean you know there are some Universal truths I think about what people are looking for in a leader you know I think you know people want you know what I'm seeing is more generational differences than I'm seeing sort of geographic differences

I think um I'm seeing from younger folks they want more time with you and they really want to um you know that like like I felt like coming up I kind of wanted my boss to leave me alone you know um and now you see much more of um you know it's always sort of our younger uh folks that will ask the first questions in a meeting you know they you know they want to get they want to get to know you much more and in a much more intimate way I think it's social media you know they're used to just consuming and knowing a lot about a person um and so you know that's probably a bigger difference that I'm seeing versus Geographic

do people dare to give you proper feedback

oh yeah I always look at feedback as being you know like look they're just trying to help you you know so you go into a meeting you go into an investor meeting as an example and they're like uh you know I would have said it this way versus that or you know so quite kind of that more in the moment kind of feedback or that was really good I think next time if you hear you know people are always nice about how they say it to the boss you know you might want to say this or or that but you know a lot of times as a leader you have to ask for it sure you know some people don't feel as comfortable just kind of putting it out there but I I do always try to ask for it and I try to um you know when I come out of something or you know even I'll tell you last week before our senior leader meeting um you know I always try to test some of the messages to go is this what people are thinking about um just to make sure you know you land your message right

when you look back at your career what are some of the moments which were kind of like changing for you

you know probably the most recent one was even uh to kind of come back in you know so I I'd been CEO at rynolds Amer in British American Tobacco bodas and so I had I had left kind of being an executive and I was doing non-ex kind of board work I was doing PE work and um and then I got on the diio board and uh through various conversations you know I now in hindsight I I recognize you know Ivan and jav are both were trying to prod me into perhaps coming back as an exact it was a big decision I had to unwind a lot of things that I you know you set up board workor and you you're involved in various you know PE type of um uh you know roles and and so backing out from that and then uh you know coming back into to an exec and and really kind of taking a step back right because I had been a CEO and so then you know coming in uh you know as president of North America and uh so really kind of backing up but I I felt it was important because you this is a different industry and you got to get to learn the industry right

and so um did you have any did you have any mentors who helped you absolutely what's the key to good mentorship

yeah I think and I've had a lot of different mentors through my through my life that I've used at various times um The MENTOR that I'm using a lot right now so Susan Cameron who I was who I followed at Reynolds um was an incredibly successful CEO and um and helped me make that CEO transition and then you know um unfortunately because I you know I didn't get a transition um with Ivan really um it was great to have her to kind of lean on a bit um you know as I was navigating through you know that kind of CEO transition

I think in a mentor it's been helpful to have somebody who really knows me and kind of knows you know so to your point if people don't often get feedback you know or to have someone who will you know who will give you messages that maybe others won't give you um is really important

and then I you know I I love people with experience you know um uh you know Javier our our our chairman our ex-chairman now um you know knows the industry really well and so you know he is one that you know no doubt I'm going to go to lunch with and continue to you know pick his brain on things

so I think when they can provide you sort of um things that you don't know or make you think about things and in a new way but also know you well enough to know how you need to hear it and receive it I think is important

when do you wake up in the morning

when do I wake up depends on what time I I travel a lot so sometimes the hours are ridiculous um I'm still uh I like to work out first thing in the morning so I tend to kind of get up early to be able to do that before I go unless I'm taking a really early plane and then I don't work out

do do do you work out most days

I try to do it at least four times a week I think it's a great way to you know manage kind of stress and I I tend to it's good thinking time actually I'm I'm I like you know I run so it's quite solitary and you're kind of in your own head

and and how do you relax

I like to read and I read for fun I don't read terribly sophisticated books this is fiction this is fun um you know it really is more of an escape almost

um so and then you know I like I mean look I you know I do like to sort of travel and and see things it's hard when you're traveling for work you know sometimes you go into a market and you're like I could have been anywhere you know I was just in a hotel so I do try to see things along the way that you know um if I can you know when I was in China I went to go see you know the panda Reserve you know like I like to you know take a moment to really enjoy uh you know the world and what's out there

what kind of advice would you give to young people

yeah you know I've been I recognize I'm really fortunate in that I uh my mom and dad you know I was raised to kind of think I could do anything I mean it was like all possibilities were open and I know a lot of people don't have that you know so I feel quite privileged in that

that being said I know when I you know I think as as a kid and growing up and you know I always gravitated towards things I was just sort of naturally good at um um and then when I went into the army all of a sudden I was asked to do a lot of things I didn't know how to do and quite frankly I was terrible at it at first um I wasn't very athletic at the time I certainly didn't know how to shoot anything I didn't you know like these were very different tasks

and um but on the other side of that you know ultimately I learned I got you know I got pretty decent at it and and so that gives you an incredible amount of confidence and sort of resilience

so you're not a good shooter

I I actually am a really good shot it's a surprise but I am

but it is one of those things that I think the the amount of resilience and confidence that that has given me later in life of like and so I you know I always tell people try new things try things that kind of scare you a little bit because you might you're going to surprise yourself more often than not and get beyond that and I think that can be an incredible source of confidence and grit which I think you know is really important in this world

well deah it's been great having you on should we um hit the bar and try out some new thanks

absolutely I need to get you to try something Beyond wine wonderful thank you so much thanks

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