I thought I had achieved that elusive work-life synergy where every part of your life feeds the excitement of and engagement in every other part of your life. To some degree, I still think I had, but keeping so many balls up in the air is a tenuous thing. Small missteps can have major consequences.
I remember one night that busy spring when that became clear. I had arrived home one evening at the end of a weeklong, multi-country trip across South America, and Maura and I set aside the night to reconnect. For us this was a critical routine. During the two years we dated while in graduate school, our two years in Memphis, and the four years we lived in El Salvador, we had always found time and made it a priority to stay connected and to reconnect after time apart. The first day we were back together, we’d take a hike or go on a long walk or crack a bottle of wine and spend the evening listening to music, just us. We were amazed at how out of sync we could become after just a few days apart and at the same time how quickly we could reconnect, if we made the effort to do so. With two young girls, and my travel schedule, these moments became more difficult to arrange, and time after the kids went to sleep was golden.
That night, I had arrived home in time to help Maura feed and bathe our little girls and I read to them, played with them, scratched their backs, and sang them to sleep. Now the rest of the evening was ours. The music playing from our stereo echoed throughout the dining room and garden. I opened a bottle of wine and poured us each a glass. There was a cool breeze blowing through the dining room doors, and the view over San Salvador was spectacular. Maura’s love of intimate, uninterrupted candlelit dinners, inherited from her parents, had converted me, and I usually relished this intentional disconnection from all the other stresses in our lives.
As a rule, I turned my phone off for every dinner but these days, with only a couple of months before the Fancy Food Show, I felt the need to be on call. With dinner fresh on the table, my phone rang and I saw it was my sister Mary Beth. Maura said not to answer but I reflexively hit the talk button instead and stepped away from the table. I knew Mary Beth was working feverishly to complete the packaging design, a critical item for us to meet our launch date. If it didn’t get done, we ran the risk of missing the show, so for me there was no question; I had to take the call.
I was on with Mary Beth for no more than ten minutes. Sitting back down at the table, Maura was silent for a few moments, and then she put both hands on the table, sat up straight, and said slowly in a clear, strong, unequivocal voice, “It. Will. Not. Be. This. Way.” She continued, “It will not be this way. It will NOT BE THIS WAY!” Her tone changed to one of deep concern and caring. “This is not what it’s about, Mark. You’ve been away so much. You’re always working. We’ve had so little time together. You hardly see the girls or me. We have got to draw some lines. What’s the point if we have no life?”
My first reaction was to be absolutely pissed off. Didn’t she understand how important this was? It was only a brief phone call. What would happen when things got really tough? Didn’t she know I was doing this for us? For her? For the girls? Didn’t she share the same dream? Had she forgotten how big this opportunity was? How much we had invested personally? The impact we could make on the world?
I thought of a million things I wanted to scream at her, but thank the heavens I bit my tongue. I was quiet and stared out to the city lights in the distance. I took a few deep breaths to calm myself and just listen: to her, to everything around me and inside of me. It all became clear. I looked across the table at the woman I loved, and said, “Okay. I get it. You’re right. You’re setting the bar higher. The question is: how do we make Zico a success and not lose what we have? How do we build a successful business while staying sane, together, connected, healthy, and happy? How do we make it work for us?”
That evening Maura drew her line in the sand and I decided how I wanted to live my life. We talked into the night about the damage starting a company might do to our personal lives, about supposedly successful businesspeople and entrepreneurs who had healthy bank accounts but toxic lives. The measure of Zico’s success, we agreed, couldn’t only be tallied at the end of the venture. You don’t live life in retrospect, and we wanted to build a business that would be rewarding in real time. If we achieved that, if we were healthy, together, and truly happy, then we couldn’t lose—even if the long-term financial rewards didn’t materialize.
I knew of course there would be many late nights, weekend events, trips away. I knew it would be intense and stressful. But could I be present in the midst of that? Be aware and conscious of the choices I was making? If I chose to do something for work, then my goal would be to truly be there, not wishing I was and regretting I wasn’t home. If I was home playing with my girls, then I would truly be there, not scheming the next big sale and worrying about inventory. We also knew there were risks. That this experience was going to test us in so many ways. But that night we reaffirmed our decision to go for it.
I also decided that night I would measure and manage life like I did my business: How many nights did I want to be home? Was I taking vacation time? Time with extended family? Meditating? Exercising? Reading? Taking time to just think? Those were equally important measures, and I would build them into a scorecard and track them just like sales and profit and loss.
This would be our goal. The intention we set. We’d soon have a chance to see how our ideal would play out in reality. Looking back this is one of the most critical moments in the history of Zico, in our relationship, and in our lives. It was a fulcrum point that led to where we are today. The truth is that there would be many other “it will not be this way” moments, and each time we’d have to find a way to get back on the same page. But we kept coming back to our intention to achieve success as we defined it, to recommit to reaching higher.
THE POWER OF HABITS
When young entrepreneurs ask me about the early days of Zico, soon after the questions of where the idea came from, how we launched, and how we came up with the name come the ones about work-life balance. They want to know if and how I managed to stay healthy, sane, married, and be a good parent, especially through the crunch times. They want tips and solutions. I tell them there’s no magic formula and there are also no rights and wrongs, just decisions and consequences—but healthy habits certainly help.
That night after Maura declared that it will not be this way, I knew I needed to operate differently or I’d never get everything done at work and home. I didn’t want to be an absentee husband or father with a two-year-old and a newborn. Looking back, I realize a few things I did right at this stage that allowed me to get through this time, accomplish what I needed to do, and that helped me survive and even thrive during the insanity that would be our Zico journey and is the case for most start-ups.
PLAN, PRIORITIZE, EXECUTE, REPEAT
Early in my career, I used to have the bad habit of putting off my most important tasks until the end of the day. My logic was to clear the decks in order to give my most challenging projects my full attention. So I’d begin my day by writing my to-do list and then start working through my e-mail queue, which would lead to phone calls and inevitable meetings. The problem, as you might guess, is that the deck never seemed to get clear. I’d try to get to the key tasks at the end of the day, but I was inevitably tired, not clearheaded, and anxious to get home and see Maura.
I finally started to take to heart the advice of Stephen Covey to do first things first. I would start my day by deciding what were the most important two to three objectives for the week: What tasks, if I accomplished them, would move the needle, and would I celebrate that night? At the end of the week? At the end of the month or year?
This way of thinking about my goals necessitated me being clear about what I wanted to accomplish. What was really important? What would move the business forward? What was aligned with my boss’s goals? Maybe it was one or two big deals that were in the works, or a major new marketing in
itiative or sales tracking system. Once I was clear on those (and my boss agreed), I’d work on the top priorities every morning for a few hours without looking at e-mail or even answering the phone. I felt an immediate sense of purpose and accomplishment that energized me for the rest of the day. I could be more present and aware in meetings or on calls or plowing through e-mail knowing I had already accomplished something important. I got home at a more reasonable hour. I began to see results, and my boss and co-workers took notice. I began to take fifteen to twenty minutes in the evening and on Sunday to look at my list of objectives for the year, month, and week, and reorganize or reprioritize what was most important.
I started to apply this process more generally to my life: What did I want to accomplish personally? Learn other languages? Travel to countries? Write a book? Make a positive social impact? Achieve financial security? I started to apply this planning and commitment to first things first to everything. Friends and family would laugh that I was a planning junkie, especially since they had never known me to be the most organized guy. This was the new me.
By the time we were gearing up for Zico, my daily routine was prioritized by putting the most important things first, so I dove in even further, getting very clear written goals and priorities, and began to add techniques I learned from reading Jack Canfield (i.e., identifying limiting beliefs), Tony Robbins (all you ever need is inside you now), and other personal productivity experts.
Remarkably, you can survive, even prosper, in a corporate environment with incredibly poor work habits. The organization has its own momentum, and if you’re good in a meeting and responsive to the day-to-day requests for your attention, you can cruise along for quite a while. It’s amazing how you can fill ten-, twelve-, or fifteen-hour days doing very little that is really important, and in fact do so for years or for an entire career. With the momentum of your start-up completely on your shoulders, however, this sort of work style spells certain death, which was a lesson it would take me a while to learn.
TIME TO MAKE THE LEAP
Two hours after our plane landed at Kennedy Airport, we walked into the cavernous Javits Center. The place was a beehive of activity with thousands of workers and entrepreneurs from around the world busily setting up their booths. I was again struck by the fear that our effort would get lost in the noise of all this activity. Using the published map of the conference room floor, I saw Zico was in booth number 5250. We went to that booth location. There was a booth set up—but it wasn’t Zico. The guide was wrong! Our location was two aisles over. I grew even more worried.
When I finally located the Zico booth and took a look, I thought, “Thank you, Sister!” I had seen pictures of all the pieces, but all put together it was a visual and functional masterpiece. Among all the crude booths and cheesy Kinko’s-produced banners, Mary Beth had created a visual and physical oasis. The ten-by-twenty-foot space had a mythical, tropical sky-blue background that was exactly like the Zico packaging and a white floor with a large oval table at the center with three round recessed coolers, one for each flavor: natural, mango, and passion fruit. Bar stools surrounded the table, and there were expansive benches framing the booth, which doubled as storage bins and were topped with inflatable cushions in Zico blue.
The show opened to the public at nine a.m. the following morning and we were there at eight a.m. to make sure everything was set. Mary Beth was making last-minute tweaks to make the booth perfect. Maura was getting the badge scanner set up and organizing pamphlets. Roberto and Jose were loading coolers with product and had roped their wives into helping. Mercedes was putting out sampling cups. Jon Osmundsen had press releases to take to the media room, where reporters and others from the press would gather. Everyone looked great: the guys in matching white, Cuban, athletic-cut Guayabera shirts, women in light blue Zico tees and white pants.
I gathered everyone around and went over the plan. Watch people’s badges, I reminded them. Red was for retailers and yellow for press. Green are other exhibitors so less important, but everyone should be treated as a potential consumer. Remember the key messages and stay focused, no distractions in the booth area like food or cell phones. Take a break when you need to but make sure two or more people in the booth know where you’re going. Scan badges of people who want more information, and if you take business cards, write a little note so we can remember who someone is and what they were interested in. If the Zico is not cold, don’t sample it but even then remember, there will be some people that hate this stuff! If they look like they’re going to gag, take them by the arm and politely escort them to the side and remind them it’s an acquired taste for some people. Get them away. No spitting out the product inside the booth!
By eleven a.m. we had people three deep and we were handing out samples at a rate that made me worry we wouldn’t have enough to last. I wasn’t sure that the people in the back of the crowd knew what we were giving out; was it food, beverage, or new hand cream? But once the booth had created a certain amount of social gravity, the crowd’s excitement seemed to feed off itself.
The interest was so intense it was a task just to scan badges or take business cards and keep track of who we were talking to. The people coming to the booth were from every conceivable side of the global consumer goods business—store owners, distributors, buyers for chains large and small. There were writers, reporters, and college students learning about the industry. There were marketers, ingredient producers, consultants, and lawyers.
I got in so many conversations that, at times, I wasn’t sure if I was selling or being sold. Many of these first conversations were a little embarrassing. Much of the lingo of the business was new to me, and I had to walk the line between using these encounters to become better informed and not looking like a complete idiot. Questions that I either didn’t understand or couldn’t answer were coming my way every other minute. Often, the best I could do was take their business card, scan their badge, and promise that I’d get back to them with an answer soon.
Worse yet, I often didn’t realize exactly who I was talking to and therefore how high the stakes of the conversation were. At one point Roberto introduced me to “Brian from Fairway.” Breezily, I started to tell him all about how coconut water was the best way to rehydrate after workouts, completely missing that this was the Fairway where I had wandered the aisles and a critical New York account. Meanwhile he just wanted to order a pallet load of Zico.
After two days of working the show, Maura and I retreated to our hotel room, physically and mentally drained. It was impossible to know exactly what that constant whirlwind of activity had added up to. As we were relaxing and getting ready for a celebratory dinner with our team, we had CNBC on in the room. Suddenly, the host introduced a news segment about the convention. I recognized the long wavy gray hair and mustache of the reporter. He was at our booth asking lots of questions, but I didn’t have a clue who he was.
“So, Phil,” the host intoned, “anything interesting at the Fancy Food Show this year?” When the camera turned to Phil Lempert, the so-called Supermarket Guru, he was sitting at a desk with a number of products in front of him. My eyes went straight to the little blue Tetra Pak that clearly said Zico. Phil started in by talking about a new salsa and a tasty new cracker line. Then he held up a package of Zico and said, “And then there’s coconut water. Known as a natural source of electrolytes, replenishment, and nutrition across the tropical world. I think coconut water is going to be the next big thing. Watch for it.” The host was back on camera and, with an expression that suggested he was far from convinced, said, “Ah, yeah, I was just thinking that I needed some coconut water.” He chuckled. “I guess we’ll just have to wait and see on that one, Phil.”
For the two-minute segment I sat on the edge of the bed with my mouth open. Maura had the wherewithal to grab her cell phone and snap a picture of the screen. After it was over, Maura put a hand on my shoulder. “Well, if we needed a sign, that was it,�
� she said.
She continued, “Time to go all in. How long until you can quit IP?”
We had booked out the back room of a cool, funky restaurant and bar in the Meatpacking District called Son Cubano to celebrate with the team. We ate, danced salsa and merengue, and drank enough Zico-ritas to fill a bathtub until the wee hours of the morning. We were about to embark on a wild ride and we knew it.
CHAPTER 6
GIVE UNTIL IT HURTS
Not long after the New York show, I flew to Memphis in July 2004 to meet my boss and resign from my IP job in person. When I told him I was resigning to start my own business, he was taken aback. “But I have just been working on your potential next move,” he said. “Can I at least tell you about it?” He told me he had a plum new assignment for me: head of International Paper’s global tobacco packaging business. IP sold the rolls of paper that went to make cigarette packaging and carton boxes to everyone from Philip Morris to local producers in Indonesia. It was a billion-dollar global business.
This was a big promotion and considered one of the key roles along the way to becoming a senior executive. Do a great job for a few years and I’d have all sorts of opportunities. One of my career goals was to run a billion-dollar global business. But certainly not this one. I smiled and thanked him profusely for considering me but, I told him, my mind was made up. Had I been wavering in my decision in the slightest, the prospect of taking that job would have sealed it. A high-paying corporate job running packaging for tobacco was my personal nightmare—a true selling-my-soul scenario.
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