The playbook for building billion-dollar consumer brands

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ROHAN OZA: I started looking around to see who could help make Vitaminwater cool and broad, because the product was great, the package was great, but it didn’t have that zeitgeist.

JEFF BERMAN: Rohan Oza’s new job was to make Vitaminwater stand out in a crowded beverage landscape.

OZA: So in 2004, the two guys at the height of the game in music were 50 and Jay.

BERMAN: If you know, you know, but if you don’t, that’s rappers 50 Cent and Jay-Z. But Vitaminwater was a scrappy young brand. How could they possibly afford a global superstar as their spokesperson?

OZA: The vision was to get 50 in the room and figure out how Fif could be the face of the brand. I said to Fif, “I can’t afford you, but I have an idea.” I said, “We can do an equity game. I’ll give you skin in the game if you’re willing to do this.” And he was like, “I’m in.”

BERMAN: This is Masters of Scale.

[THEME MUSIC]

I’m Jeff Berman, your host. This week on the show: Rohan Oza. If we were erecting the Mount Rushmore of consumer marketing for the 21st century, there is no question that our guest today would have a spot on that monument. He’s the mastermind behind more than $8 billion in exits, the guy who brought 50 Cent into Vitaminwater with an equity deal that changed not only the way that brand grew, but also the way celebrities and influencers ultimately play in the world of brand. More recently, he was the co-founder of Poppi, which had a $2 billion exit to Pepsi, and the co-founder of CAVU, a consumer brands investment fund where you also partner with founders. So, Rohan, thrilled to welcome you to Masters of Scale.

OZA: Thank you. It’s quite the intro.

Copy LinkRohan Oza’s origin story

BERMAN: I’m really excited to dive in with you on the journey you’ve had. Just take us back and set the stage: Where do your entrepreneurial roots come from?

OZA: Probably my family. I’m originally Indian, born and raised in Africa, educated in England, and now I’m American, so I’m like the immigrant American dream story. My family were all businessmen. It’s in the blood, it’s in the culture, and initially the thought was that I’d join my father’s business. You know how Indian families are: Dad starts it, or granddad starts it, and you join it.

BERMAN: What kind of business was that?

OZA: That was the problem. It was in agricultural equipment and hardware, things that I was, one, terrible at and, two, had no interest in. One of the things I push for is being passionate about what you’re doing, if you’re allowed to do that. Sometimes you just have to work to get a paycheck, but if you’re blessed enough to be passionate about it, I think you can be a lot more successful. So I realized that if I did this, I would do okay with my dad, but I would never do really well. So I transitioned into consumer products via engineering. Meaning, I started in manufacturing with Mars M&M’s, and then I went from there to Coca-Cola.

BERMAN: Why manufacturing with Mars M&M’s?

OZA: Mars has created some of the most iconic consumer brands in the world. The power of brand is one thing that I espouse a lot, and Mars is a great place to understand that. How have you created such legacy brands that, 100 years later, are still massive?

BERMAN: So why am I not sitting here talking to the head of manufacturing for Mars M&M’s?

OZA: Yeah, because they fired me. So I went there, I started in manufacturing, and I wanted to pivot to marketing. I was like, “What do I do?” I came to the States and went to Michigan.

BERMAN: So why business school?

OZA: Business school is not for everyone, by the way, but for me it gave me the intellectual maturity that I needed. It allowed me to shape where I wanted to go.

BERMAN: And why Coke? Why did you choose to go there?

OZA: I gravitate toward iconic brands, and that’s why I think in my career I’ve tried to build iconic brands, because that was my foundational learning. Other than Mars, the other company that had some of the most iconic brands in the world was Coke at the time.

BERMAN: Why do you think Coke took you and said, “We want to make a bet on this guy”?

OZA: This was an Olympics year, so they didn’t do a full summer internship. It was more like an abbreviated internship. One of the guys there, Carl Sweat, who actually ended up becoming one of my mentors, was like, “Look, this guy is high risk, high reward. We don’t know if he’s going to be brilliant or a train wreck. He’s going to be one of the two. He’s not middle of the road. Let’s just take the gamble on him.” So I was the last man picked from gym class.

BERMAN: Did you understand why they would consider you high risk, high reward?

OZA: As I’ve grown up, I’ve realized I’m high risk, high reward, but at the time I didn’t quite understand it.

BERMAN: What led to the next step for you there?

OZA: The next step was that I ended up on the Sprite brand, which I loved. And that’s where I learned what became one of my mantras, which is to influence the influencer, because Sprite had suddenly become this super-cool brand. We did stuff with Kobe Bryant, Missy Elliott, and Tim Duncan. In the African American community, Sprite became super-cool because of all the hip-hop we were doing, which, by the way, I had to learn while doing it, and I learned from super-smart creative people. After that, I got on to Powerade, and I redefined Powerade because no one really cared about the brand. It was like a dying brand. So it was like, “Sure, what harm can Rohan do?” I put an excellent team together, revamped the whole thing, and the brand took off.

Copy LinkHow Rohan Oza made Powerade pop

BERMAN: So what did you do? What did you take from Sprite and apply to make Powerade pop?

OZA: First of all, it was packaging and redesign. Your package is the brand you walk around with. So we redesigned the brand and the packaging. I brought an influencer strategy to the mix. We brought in different athletes because I think, at the time, Powerade was just picking what Gatorade didn’t want. I’m like, “That’s not a strategy. Picking up leftovers isn’t a strategy. Go find people you want and drive forward.” And so, with new product, new packaging and an influencer strategy, I was able to get the Coke bottlers, who are critical to Coke’s success, to actually get behind the brand again.

BERMAN: On the product and packaging side, I sat with Jeff Kearl from Stance Socks several years ago, and he talked about walking up and down aisles at grocery stores, at Target, at Walmart, etc., to look at what products all look the same and where there is an opportunity to differentiate. What was your process for figuring out how to reimagine the product and the packaging so it would stand out in the marketplace?

OZA: It’s funny you bring that up. My wife gets very upset when I go to the grocery store because it takes me two hours. I spend so much time going up and down, looking at product packaging. And she’s like, “I just sent you for four things. Can you get back here quicker?” But yes, I think it depends on the brand and the need. The key thing is you have to stand out, so the product has to pop. There’s no one thing. I think, one, you have to have a vision for what that brand needs to stand for. Then you’ve got to put a strong creative team together. And then, in the end, there’s a gut feel because if it’s just research, then everyone’s going to have great packaging, because you have the same research agency and you’ll show them 10 designs. I think finding the right designer and going with your gut is a big part of what makes packaging cool.

BERMAN: On the celebrity side, going back to Powerade, it’s not like celebrity endorsement was a new thing. Celebrities have been endorsing products long before you and I walked the earth.

OZA: Correct.

Copy LinkThe key to influencer marketing

BERMAN: What did you see as the opportunity to do differently, to evolve or reinvent, to make Powerade stand out with your engagement with celebrities?

OZA: I think what I started to learn at Powerade, and I took it forward with me, is the importance of engaging celebrities or influencers — because celebrities were the influencers at that time — who felt your brand. Sometimes people just signed on a celeb because, “Hey, let’s pay the money and get it done.” But they didn’t feel the brand. And I think it’s important for them to feel the brand because, when they do, they go above and beyond. And as we go forward, and I’ll talk about other brands, it makes a massive difference, especially on entrepreneurial brands.

BERMAN: How do you know when they feel the brand? Is that gut? The energy?

OZA: I think you have to sit with them. A lot of it is the interaction. I sat with 50 on Vitaminwater and Justin Timberlake on Bai. We sat with Alix Earle on Poppi, and you can see how they react to the brand. Big difference. You have to sit with them because, a lot of times, if you just go through the agent and you don’t connect with the actual artist, you have no idea how they react to your brand.

BERMAN: I think this is a really critical piece because, whether it’s an agency or an agent or a manager or a lawyer, whoever the celebrity’s working with, part of their job is to protect the talent, to protect their time. They don’t want you to have direct access to them. God forbid you pitch them something they wouldn’t recommend or they don’t get credit for.

OZA: True.

BERMAN: You, at this point in your career, can get in the room with anyone. But for an entrepreneur who’s not known, who doesn’t have your track record, how do you advise them to navigate that maze?

OZA: It’s all about relationships. First, make sure you have a good relationship with the agent because you can’t go around the agent. The agent’s their go-to person, so there’s no going direct to artists. Foster that direct relationship with the agent. And I’ve done that a lot over time, and that was number one. With 50, it was Chris Lighty. It was Rick Yorn with Justin. I established the relationships because then they trust you and they know you’re not going to try to do a sideswipe pitch on the artist. And then a core part of the final negotiation is, “I’d like to sit with the artist,” because, in the end, they’re representing our brand. So all the upfront negotiation, you’re never going to get there. But it’s almost like a house: before you write the check, you’ve got to do a final inspection.

BERMAN: Okay, so Powerade pops. Coke is starting to see the high-reward, not the high-risk, side of having you on the team. What happens next?

OZA: So the brand’s rocking and rolling, but this is the high-risk part. I’m probably a little too cocky at this point because my team is the one running the show, and instead of Coke moving me up the ranks, which I felt I deserved, they put someone above me.

BERMAN: I just want to pause you for a second here because you are murdering it at Powerade. Things are happening, you’re hard-driving, you’ve got real vision. The best of companies would say, “Hell yeah, this is a lap in we’ve got. Let’s go figure out what’s the next brand we can give them to go do it with.” Why are they layering you?

OZA: Corporate America — a lot of chess moves. They get nervous. When you move very fast, I was too entrepreneurial in my approach, which is difficult to do within the confines of corporate America.

BERMAN: I think this is just super relatable for a lot of intra-preneurs.

OZA: Oh, I like that phrase, intra-preneur. Right.

BERMAN: I mean, inside of a big company. Okay, but you get layered. What happens next?

Copy LinkTurning Vitaminwater into a cultural phenomenon

OZA: At the same time, a guy called Mike Repole had reached out to me. Mike’s a super successful entrepreneur himself. He was the number two guy at Vitaminwater. He’d come in super early, and they needed a CMO, and he’s like, “This is the guy.” And Mike’s also a gunslinger himself, so we got along very well. And so I’d received that offer, and I’m like, “You know what? Things happen for a reason.” I went to Vitaminwater and became the CMO and started what was the next, and probably most important, chapter of my life to lay the foundation for my future.

BERMAN: Okay. So what happens at Vitaminwater?

OZA: It was an incredible product at the time, but the biggest problem was no one knew about it. How do you do that? At the time, I took my Sprite experience, which was very much an influencer strategy. With Sprite, you and I are old enough on this. The influencers back then, by the way, were radio DJs.

BERMAN: Oh, yeah.

OZA: Remember back in the day?

BERMAN: Sure.

OZA: Back in the day, I flew in about 80 DJs from the top 60 markets in the country into Vegas for a recording session and every artist around an award show. So every artist could hit 20 cities in an hour and a half.

BERMAN: So you basically created a Super Bowl radio row around an award show.

OZA: Exactly.

BERMAN: … that was a product promotion opportunity.

OZA: Ahead of its time.

BERMAN: Yeah.

OZA: So I took that same approach and started going to radio DJs.

BERMAN: Wow.

OZA: I did partnerships across the country. I hired a whole set of field marketers who were cool and felt the brand — young, hip, dynamic. They knew the radio DJs, they knew the hot bartenders, and it was a lot of street marketing because the digital world didn’t exist then. So I started looking around to see who could help make Vitaminwater cool and broad, because the product was great, the package was great, but it didn’t have that zeitgeist. I looked at two guys. This is 2004. The two guys at the height of the game in music were 50 and Jay. A friend of mine, Seth Rodsky, actually had 50’s number, or Chris Lighty’s. I had neither. I was a nobody. So he goes, “I can get you to Chris Lighty.” Chris and I bonded. Remember I told you the importance of building relationships? He and I became good friends. Incredible guy, super smart, came from the streets. He had a hard life.

BERMAN: The guy gets pitched 20 times a day. What broke through? How did you get Chris to pay attention?

OZA: I actually think the product and package did the work for me in a big way, because he saw it and then I painted the vision. The vision was to get 50 in the room and show how Fif could be the face of the brand. Before that, he’d done sports and Reebok and music, but actually being the face of a beverage brand was a first. Here’s the problem, though. I said to Fif, “I can’t afford you. But I have an idea. We can do an equity game. I’ll give you skin in the game if you’re willing to do this.” And he’s like, “I’m in.”

BERMAN: That quickly?

OZA: I was shocked. He’s a very smart individual, so he understands business cold. And he knew what he was capable of more than I did, because I had a number in my mind of what I thought 50 could make, and I think he made 10 times that.

BERMAN: Wow.

OZA: Because I also didn’t think the company would sell for $4 billion, and Fif got fully behind it. That was a big part of it. He owned it. It’s funny, when he actually met Darius, the founder, Darius walked up to him and said, “By the way, I’m the real founder of Vitaminwater,” and 50 cracked up. Because Fif basically just put it on his back and said, “I’m Vitaminwater.”

BERMAN: He basically refounded it.

OZA: Yeah. But it was fine. It lifted the brand.

BERMAN: Still ahead, more with Rohan Oza on how he turned his beverage brand playbook into multiple massive exits. 

[AD BREAK]

Welcome back to Masters of Scale. You can find this conversation and much more on our YouTube channel, and be sure to check out the show notes for a link to our newsletter. 

Copy LinkWhy Rohan Oza founded CAVU

The Vitaminwater deal with 50 Cent fueled a wildly successful trajectory for the brand’s parent company. It led to a $4.1 billion exit to Coca-Cola in 2007, but Rohan knew that working inside a giant company like Coke was not the right place for him. Instead, he took his winning playbook and built something new. It’s called CAVU Consumer Partners, and CAVU blends traditional investing with hands-on help for brands. The result: dozens of success stories for health-conscious companies like Poppi, Once Upon a Farm, Noom, and The Farmer’s Dog. The list of companies you know well goes on and on. Rohan credits his co-founder for seeing the potential to make CAVU something different.

OZA: My business partner Brett saw it. He was a hedge fund guy. He wanted to pivot into private equity, and he’s like, “But I’ve got to do it differently,” because hedge fund guys always want an edge. What’s the edge? In his opinion, just raising a fund to deploy — there’s no edge. He saw what I was doing, and he’s like, “Ooh, this is a vision.” So he approached me and said, “Look, let’s go create a fund where we can provide real value-add to the companies we invest in.” So we created CAVU.

CAVU stands for Ceiling And Visibility Unlimited. It’s a flying term. I never knew that. What it means is that we help entrepreneurs, assuming they’re flying their brands, through turbulent times to clear skies. So when you get on a plane and a pilot says it’s CAVU, that’s going to be a nice flight. We created CAVU around his vision, which was, “How do we leverage, Ro, what you and Steve have been doing and now do it on a much bigger scale?” That’s why I pivoted, because before I was writing much smaller checks. Now, as a fund, we could really go disrupt the landscape. And the mission for CAVU was to democratize better living for all humans and their families. That was our mission.

BERMAN: Is it that founders come and pitch you, and you fall in love with the founder, you fall in love with the idea, or you fall in love with both? What’s your process for choosing where you’re going to invest your money and your time?

OZA: That’s a very good point.

Unfortunately for me, no one ever just walks through the door and says, “Hey guys, I’m here. I’m brilliant.” To find the best, you really have to go find them. It’s a hunt. So we have a great team that goes out there, and it’s a hunt. We’ve got to find the best brands, and then you bond with the founders. It’s their company. We’re not running it. Let’s be clear. We just become the wingman or wingwoman to them on their branding journey. And by the way, think of a Swiss Army knife. I don’t have to fix everything on your brand. You pick. You want packaging? I got you. Influencer? Amazon, DTC, billboards? We’ve got all these things in the mix where we can offer you either great pricing, great relationships, or we do it ourselves. It really varies. They love it because they’re like, “Oh, I’m getting money. Oh, and you guys can help me with the brand.” And brand is king. Brand is king. If you don’t have that brand moat, what do you have?

BERMAN: Yeah, right.

OZA: I think part of it is also having a real conversation with the founders. Are they willing to work together? Again, not my show, their show, and they should run it 80% to 90%, but they should be willing to work a little bit on the stuff where we can provide value. And I think 90% of the time, the founders have.

Copy LinkWhy Poppi began with a bold brand reset

BERMAN: So let’s use Poppi as an example here. How does Poppi become Poppi in your world?

OZA: Let me step back a little bit. I went on Shark Tank. I was a Shark on Shark Tank. The funny thing is, I did that as a pay-it-forward because I’m blessed. I’m living the American Dream. I’m an immigrant. I’ve come to America. I’m an American now. I’ve been very successful. And my personal belief — I don’t care what side of the aisle you sit on — is that this is the greatest country in the world to be an entrepreneur, hands down. Almost nowhere else on earth can you create products from scratch and in five years be worth $2 billion, $3 billion, $5 billion.

BERMAN: I think it’s inarguable. This is not a political statement. The environment for entrepreneurs in the U.S. — all the conditions for it — are better than anywhere in the world, and there are literally thousands of examples to back that up.

OZA: Yeah, and we’re blessed. For me, part of it is that I wake up every day and think, “I’m blessed to have been able to do this.” So I go on Shark Tank and try to pay it forward. Sometimes you don’t know it, but when you do that, it actually gets paid back to you, which is crazy. So I’m sitting there, and I had always had this vision, because understand, I started my career as a soda guy. I love soda, but I stopped drinking it because I’m like, “Too much sugar. I don’t want the artificial sweeteners.” I always wanted a soda that I could feel good about. So with every deal on Shark Tank, I basically lost money. Then this one deal comes on, and I’m like, “Here we go again, another beverage.” It’s called Mother Beverage. First of all, I don’t like the name. It’s a terrible package. It’s in a glass bottle, which no one can carry around because it breaks, and no dice. But the entrepreneurs seem cool. Great vibe, good-looking couple, straight out of central casting.

BERMAN: Husband-wife founders.

OZA: Husband-wife founders. She’s like seven months pregnant. I’m like, “That’s commitment.” She’s on the show. She’s about to give birth. So they make the pitch. I like the founders and Mother Beverage. I tried the product, and I liked two of them. The one I liked the most was the orange one. It’s still my favorite today. For me, it was a cross between Fanta and Orangina. I’m like, “Oh my God, those are two drinks that I drank as a kid. I can now drink this every day and not feel bad.” It’s got fiber, it’s got low sugar, natural ingredients. There’s zero guilt. It’s what I call permissible guilt. It’s completely permissible. It’s all good. So I said, “I’m in.” But what am I in for? I’m in for a brand that has no scalability in a package that’s terrible. I give Allison and Stephen a lot of credit. I said, “Guys, we’re shutting the company down, and we are going to create a new company together.” That’s a lot of faith on their end.

BERMAN: Yeah. That’s a scary moment for an entrepreneur.

OZA: And the company wasn’t big, but for them, that’s still a lot of money, obviously.

BERMAN: Sure.

OZA: So I give them credit for that trust. Basically, Allison, Stephen, me and Stevie sat down and, with CAVU’s backing, basically co-founded Poppi.

BERMAN: Wow.

OZA: So we got a bunch of packages and designs, and to be fair, I actually picked a different package than this. It was very similar, but it was reverse knockout. The name was Stevie’s, and the package we did together. I went in as a Shark because I had to invest myself. Then I spoke with Brett, and he said, “Look, if you’re doing a beverage, CAVU is in, so we’ll back it.” As a team, we co-founded Poppi, which is a unique and different scenario. So you take the original founders, who had a great idea and product. I brought the vision, which was modern soda. Stevie designed the package and the marketing DNA, and CAVU funded it.

Copy LinkHow Poppi scaled as a digital-first company

BERMAN: And even with a great product, phenomenal packaging, capital behind it, and a category that is basically being invented here, you’re effectively inventing a new category. As someone who’s 17 years cold turkey, I mean, I haven’t had a Coca-Cola in that long, and I loved Coca-Cola, I deeply appreciate Poppi in the market. It doesn’t just happen. So what are the inflection points that get Poppi to where you’re ultimately selling it to Pepsi for nearly $2 billion?

OZA: Yes, very, very good point.

The world has changed. It’s all very digital. So Allison, Stevie and the team all went into full digital mode, and I think that was exacerbated by the fact that we launched Poppi in March 2020.

BERMAN: I can’t remember what was happening in March 2020.

OZA: Yeah, something went wrong.

BERMAN: It was a big thing.

OZA: Two weeks later, retailers called me and said, “Sorry, we’re not carrying you. The world shut down.” So suddenly we’re pivoting and forced to pivot. So we’ve got the influencer strategy, we become digital-first, Amazon-only, and take the old-school influence strategy and make it modern. That was an amazing team that pulled that together. So immediately, there was a zeitgeist to the brand.

BERMAN: Rohan, I remember Poppi popping in part because you had a founder who made a video that took off, but it feels like there was a really intentional, almost laddered influencer strategy here. How did that work? How did you approach digital and social in that COVID era as Poppi was launching?

OZA: Because of COVID, we had to go digital-first, and it forced us to become a modern digital marketing company right off the bat. The first thing that happened was Allison created a TikTok that went viral. So immediately, you’ve got a founder who’s creating a TikTok that goes viral, and you get buzz off it. Then we have an incredible team that we hired, all young, dynamic women who live the brand. We’re not using an agency, we’re not going external, we’re doing it all in-house. So Stevie’s writing the DNA, and you’ve got an incredible team around that actually executing it. What happened is that resulted in an incredible community, and Allison and the rest of the team all worked on building this incredible Poppi community, which exists today, by the way. Then it started laddering up to the point that big names like Hailey Bieber and Kylie Jenner were all just drinking the product.

BERMAN: They weren’t even being paid. They were just walking around, paparazzi snapping them with the product.

OZA: Correct, and they love it. So that’s when we went for the, call it, mega influencer. To be fair, she took a risk on us, and we took a risk on her, but Alix saw the vision. Alix saw the vision really early. Stevie, Allison and the team all loved Alix. In fact, to be fair, I was being educated on Alix at the time, so I can’t take credit there. But she’s one of the first influencers that did an equity strategy the same way 50 had done it as an artist back in the day in Vitaminwater, and that’s what changed the game. Now every influencer wants an equity plan the same way that artists and celebs wanted it back in the day.

BERMAN: There’s a point at which, if you are out of the demo or out of the core of what the product is marketing to, you just have to hire the right team and trust them. Is that part of this?

OZA: For me, it was, I was cool 20 years ago. I’m not cool now. So I can see cool, but someone else has got to create the cool.

Copy LinkKnowing when founders should be the face of the brand

BERMAN: The other question that comes up a lot with consumer brand founders is, do I have to be the influencer? Do I have to be the face of the brand? When you’re looking at a brand to invest in for CAVU and partner with founders, is that part of the inquiry for you?

OZA: It varies. In some brands, like in Bai, for example, the face of the brand became Justin Timberlake. Not every founder wants to be the face of the brand. They want to be recognized and get credit, obviously, as they should, for the brand they create. But in Poppi’s case, Allison was front and center as well. There were a bunch of influencers, but she was the founding influencer face of the brand. So it worked. In some circumstances it doesn’t. In this case, it did. In Vita Coco, Michael’s an incredible operator, Mike Kirban, but Madonna was the face of the brand. I think he recognized that Madonna was probably a better face than he was.

BERMAN: Most of us would recognize that.

OZA: Yeah, exactly. But he’s a brilliant operator. I mean, he’s got a $3 billion brand-plus now.

BERMAN: Before I have to let you go, Bessemer is one of a set of venture firms known for an anti-portfolio. Is there one that got away? Is there one that you had a shot at investing in that you passed on where you go, “F me, I can’t believe we didn’t do that one”?

OZA: Probably a couple. One was a product called The Ordinary.

BERMAN: Sure, yeah.

OZA: It’s a beauty product.

BERMAN: Great product, yep.

OZA: I love the founder. Shame. Rest in peace, poor guy. He and I bonded. It was our first fund, it was a big check, and he was, to be fair, a high-risk, high-reward guy. I think we got too corporate. We got too nervous because we were like, “If this doesn’t work, we’re out of the game,” because it was a third of the fund.

BERMAN: You had to be safer at that stage.

OZA: Safer.

BERMAN: Yeah.

OZA: And that went on to sell for north of $2 billion. That fund alone would have tripled off that one deal.

BERMAN: Yeah. Another one with a great product, great packaging.

OZA: And the other one was probably a brand called On. We had a deal on the table.

BERMAN: Oh, the shoe company?

OZA: Yeah.

BERMAN: Yeah.

OZA: It was a little broader than our spectrum, but it was adjacent to what we’re doing. We had a deal ready to go and founders ready to sign, and that day they announced Roger Federer.

BERMAN: Oh, I was going to ask if it was before or after Federer, and that changed it.

OZA: Literally every single investor re-upped. We were blocked out.

BERMAN: Wow.

OZA: And that would have been about a six- or seven-bagger on a big check.

BERMAN: You referenced several mentors along the way. Was there a moment where one of them gave you a piece of advice or gave you an insight into the world, the market, or you personally that is still with you today?

OZA: I don’t think there was one piece. I think it’s an amalgamation of me learning by watching, so I looked at a lot of guys and how they did it and what they built. To this day, whether it’s from Coke, what I learned about how to do cool marketing, or learning from Mike Repole at Vitaminwater how to create the right corporate culture, or even today from Chris Hall, how to actually operate and run a tight ship, I’m constantly learning. So I think, for me, you should never feel like you know it. You should always be a student. And that’s actually a phrase I got from Darius, who’s like, “Always be a student of the industry because it’s a continual learning exercise, and as the world evolves, you have to keep learning.”

BERMAN: Well, I’m grateful to be a student sitting with you. Thank you. I hope we can have you back on to dive deeper into a lot of this, but it was awesome having you on Masters of Scale. Thank you.

OZA: Thanks for having me.

BERMAN: Thanks again to Rohan Oza for joining us. It is inspiring to see how Rohan is still evolving his brand-building playbook to supercharge better-for-you products in nearly every grocery aisle. And if you want to hear more about Poppi’s scale journey, be sure to check out the Masters of Scale episode we did with its other co-founders, Allison and Stephen Ellsworth. We’ll put a link in the show notes. I’m Jeff Berman. Thank you for listening.