What the Biggest Brands Think about Marketing, Consumers, and Culture with Derek Lewis, Former President at PepsiCo North America

So I'm very interested in, first, like your corporate origin story, at least at PepsiCo.

You know, you started as a sales trainee there.

And I hear so many beautiful stories of people who started as an intern, started in, you know, as somebody who's mentoring me.

And then I ended up in one of the top seats.

And I wonder how that happens.

How do you start? an entry-level person and end up you know president in this way

Look, I was incredibly blessed to have a great career at PepsiCo.

First of all, getting recruited off campus, Hampton University, on campus at Hampton University, and then being able to start in Baltimore, Maryland, and essentially really get a great understanding of the business.

So I appreciate starting at the very lowest level so you can really get a feel for how things work and operate.

And then at the same time, I was allowed to sort of be myself and James W. charter my own course in terms of my progression and my development, things like that, and so I just kind of took off, I mean the business is very fast paced is very intense very dynamic.

James W.

The company was the same way, and so it was it was just this environment of pace and pace and so.

there were those that made it and if you you know certainly made it survive you you accelerated and there were those that that didn't make it and obviously chose to go you know work in other businesses other industries etc so it had a it had an early on an up or out feel it did to be honest with you i think we had some labeling of that inside i'm not sure that's always the case or was the case throughout my entire career.

Matter of fact, I know it was the case throughout my entire career.

But early on, you can get a feel that there was a lot of encouragement to, you know, want to get promoted, want to move up, want to accelerate.

And so that created really high performance expectations that, quite frankly, just stuck with me throughout my entire career.

So the bar never...

The bar, if anything, kept moving up higher and higher and higher as I took on each assignment.

I was able to challenge myself.

I was actually be able to be my hardest critic at the same time.

So therefore, there wasn't a challenge that I wasn't able to sort of mentally, emotionally take on and try to do my best to be my best and deliver, you know, solid outcomes.

You know, I imagine, and I've not sat in a corporate role as high level as yours was, but I imagine this is not like rocket science, but it's, what does it take then? Like if it doesn't, if it's not, you know, brain surgery or getting, you know, a spaceship off to the moon, what is it that separates people from who find success at the highest levels to those that don't?

Well, I talk about the three R's a lot, results, relationships, and reputation.

I think singularly those pillars in my mind as I've gone through all my Corporate experiences, I would use those three pillars as the keys to the success.

And there's a lot of double clicking that you can do on those things.