Name: How the Celsius CEO turned a cult-favorite energy drink into a stock-market lightning rod with 6,000% growth
Uploaded: 2024-07-15
Duration: 6 min 34 s
Description: How John Fieldly, the CEO of Celsius, turned the company from a penny stock to a stock-market lightning rod with 6,000% growth.

How John Fieldly, the CEO of Celsius, turned the company from a penny stock to a stock-market lightning rod with 6,000% growth.

How the Celsius CEO turned a cult-favorite energy drink into a stock-market lightning rod with 6,000% growth

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How the Celsius CEO turned the company from a penny stock to a stock-market lightning rod with 6,000% growth.

How the Celsius CEO grew the company by 6,000%

At Celsius. I've been here almost 13 years. I have two cans a day. So that's over 9000 cans of Celsius. I've drank so far and we're still going love the product. Really refreshing. I have to go old school. I got to go with orange, orange is one of the original flavors. It is phenomenal but the teams have been coming out with some amazing flavors lately. 7-Eleven, we got a green apple cherry and then the cosmic vibe, which is that sparkling fruit punch is out of the Hello, my name's John Fieldy. I'm the president and Ceo of Celsius holdings. 44 years old. These are the secrets of my success. I was born in Newburgh, New York, but grew up north of Tampa Florida in a town called Pasco County. My very first job I tried, actually, when I was 13, I tried to start a lawn mowing business because in Florida grass grows like crazy. Was not successful. So I wound up, my first job was working at Mancini Carwash at 14. I am a US F grad I did in night school during the day. I worked at Eckerd Drugs. So that's where I did about eight years. I actually worked through Ecker Drugs through the end of high school all the way through college. I wound up being towards the end of my stint at Eckerd Drugs. I was part of a turnaround team that helped rebuild underperform stores. And I did that all through college while I was going to US f and that taught me a lot about consumers, their purchasing patterns, how to Upsell at retail, really understanding, you know, consumer shopping patterns, demographics of consumers, making sure you have the right product in the right store. Once I graduated from USF, I got my accounting degree and I was able to get a job as a staff accountant at Labar Freeman for the B to B publishing company. I worked for a biotech company for a little bit that was publicly traded. So that's when I had the opportunity to really on some sec filings, which I was really excited about. I got involved in Celsius back in 2012. And it was really part of a turnaround story here. The original investor tried to sell the business. I couldn't find any buyers. All their investors lost their money in the company. And one thing the main investor wanted to do is make everyone whole again. So that was the main thesis I was introduced to the company by a gentleman called Jerry David and he joined as the original, as the turnaround CEO and he wanted me to join him on the journey as his CFO and the goal was to get the company back listed on NASDAQ. It was on the OTC pink sheet companies. Uh More of a penny stock really. We basically got delisted out of all the retailers. So it was a really troubled time. I probably only thought it maybe I had another six months or a year left at the company. It was troubling asking investors for payroll for the team and had a small team. But we were, we were all committed. We knew we had a great product. It was just trying to find our niche in the industry to be able to scale and grow the business. When I started with Celsius, we had 12 employees and today we have close to 800 employees nationwide and around the world. It's amazing right around mid 2015 is when we got the company at a break, even level. When I started went on investor. Basically, it had a $5 million commitment through a line of credit to get the company to break even. That was the initial strategy to make those investors whole. There was a line of credit for $5 million that we could use to invest in the business to grow and scale it and to drive it to profitability. And we achieved that in late 2015, prior to really 2020 the company was growing it probably around like 30 to 40% which is great. But we really saw an uptick in sales right around the COVID pandemic. That's really when we changed the strategy from being more scientific to really be fitness lifestyle brand and a fitness lifestyle company. You know, the liquid has to be more than the ingredients in the can. We really wanted Celsius to stand for a global iconic brand. We want Celsius to be that apple logo, iconic monster claw. And when you look at Starbucks logo, that was really important. And that's one thing that when you look at kind of the turning point was really focusing on the overall brand and this fitness lifestyle that's really been able to connect with a broader consumer than ever before versus prior. We're really going after more diet and sports nutrition. So we took the brand and really made it mainstream and it's taken off. Sampling has been really critical because we knew we had a great product but sampling in the right locations. So we focused on first responders, nurses, firefighters, police officers, we focused on social media through a variety of different influencers, a variety of different platforms from Snapchat, Instagram, Tik Tok. The team does some really good stuff of in office activation on tiktok and that has gone really well, still focusing on our core and fitness. So further partner with Barry's boot camp and Gold's Gym 24 hour, but really positioning the company for a broad lifestyle position. I transitioned from CFO to CEO in 2018, Jerry wound up retiring is getting up there in age. Um I think the stress of travel and running a public company took a toll on them. So actually for about a year and a half, I was the CFO and the CEO, the company was looking for a CEO at the time. They actually went through a variety of interviews after the third try, a third attempt, I told them I wanted in on the interview process, I did a presentation, I talked about the consumer, talked about the targeted consumer, how we're going to tactically approach the consumer to create daily loyalty and I won it over. So I wound up becoming a uh CEO of the company in 2018 officially and D filled the CFO role. So how I turned Celsius around once I became CEO is really focusing on a disciplined approach. Continue to focus on core markets, really focusing on the financials to our activation to our tactics, driving with a focused approach on the core consumer that we were looking at. When we look at plans and our strategies, we control dollars and execution based on targeted consumer tactics on communities. We're looking to activate, we've been profitable since 2015, we have always focused on financial discipline and there's really difficult in the beverage industry to find success. There's over 1000 new beverages that come to the market every year, you know, less than 10% will make it to $100,000 in sales. And then maybe 10% of those make it to a million dollars in sales. And to get a brand to do a billion dollars in sales is practically near impossible when I took over Celsius as the CEO we did $36 million in total revenue for the year. And just now in 2023 we did $1.3 billion Celsius. Secret success is connecting with consumers in a meaningful way about living, fit, living life to the fullest and accomplishing your health and wellness goals. That's been the DNA of the brand. Consumers want more function in the foods they consume. Celsius delivers on that and fitness is hip, cool, sexy premium and connects with a broader consumer than ever before.