How John Fieldly, the CEO of Celsius, turned the company from a penny stock to a stock-market lightning rod with 6,000% growth.
Category
🤖
TechTranscript
00:00At Celsius I've been here almost 13 years. I have two cans a day, so that's over 9,000
00:04cans of Celsius I've drank so far, and we're still going. Love the product, really refreshing.
00:09I have to go old school. I got to go with orange. Orange is one of the original flavors. It is
00:13phenomenal, but the teams have been coming out with some amazing flavors lately. 7-Eleven,
00:17we got a green apple cherry, and then the Cosmic Vibe, which is that sparkling fruit
00:21punch, is out of this world. Hello, my name is John Fieldy. I'm the president and CEO of
00:25Celsius Holdings, 44 years old. These are the secrets of my success. I was born in Newburgh,
00:30New York, but grew up north of Tampa, Florida, in a town called Pasco County. My very first job,
00:35I tried, actually when I was 13, I tried to start a lawn mowing business, because in Florida,
00:40grass grows like crazy. Was not successful, so I wound up, my first job was working at Mancini
00:46Car Wash at 14. I am a USF grad. I did night school. During the day I worked at Eckerdrugs,
00:50so that's where I did about eight years. I actually worked through Eckerdrugs through
00:54the end of high school, all the way through college. I wound up being, towards the end of my
00:59stint at Eckerdrugs, I was part of a turnaround team that helped rebuild underperforming stores,
01:04and I did that all through college while I was going to USF, and that taught me a lot about
01:09consumers, their purchasing patterns, how to upsell at retail, really understanding,
01:15you know, consumer shopping patterns, demographics of consumers, making sure you have the right
01:19product in the right store. Once I graduated from USF, I got my accounting degree, and I was able
01:23to get a job as a staff accountant at LeBar Freeman, the B2B publishing company. I worked
01:27for a biotech company for a little bit that was publicly traded, so that's when I had the
01:31opportunity to really work on some SEC filings, which I was really excited about. I got involved
01:36in Celsius back in 2012, and it was really part of a turnaround story here. The original investor
01:41tried to sell the business, couldn't find any buyers. All their investors lost their money
01:45in the company, and one thing the main investor wanted to do is make everyone whole again,
01:50so that was the main thesis. I was introduced to the company by a gentleman called Jerry David,
01:55and he joined as the original, as the turnaround CEO, and he wanted me to join him on the journey
02:00as his CFO, and the goal was to get the company back listed on NASDAQ. It was on the OTC pink
02:06sheet companies, more of a penny stock, really. We basically got delisted out of all the retailers,
02:12so it was a really troubled time. I probably only thought it, maybe I had another six months or a
02:17year left at the company. It was troubling, asking investors for payroll for the team. We had a small
02:23team, but we were all fully committed. We knew we had a great product. It was just trying to find
02:28our niche in the industry to be able to scale and grow the business. When I started with Celsius,
02:32we had 12 employees, and today we have close to 800 employees nationwide and around the world.
02:37It's amazing. Right around mid-2015 is when we got the company at a breakeven level. When I started
02:44as an investor, basically I had a $5 million commitment through a line of credit to get the
02:48company to break even. That was the initial strategy to make those investors whole. There
02:53was a line of credit for $5 million that we could use to invest in the business, to grow and scale
02:58it, and to drive it to profitability, and we achieved that in late 2015. Prior to really
03:032020, the company was growing at probably around 30% to 40%, which is great, but we really saw an
03:09uptick in sales right around the COVID pandemic. That's really when we changed the strategy
03:15from being more scientific to really being a fitness lifestyle brand and a fitness lifestyle
03:20company. The liquid has to be more than the ingredients in the can. We really wanted
03:25Celsius to stand for a global iconic brand. We want Celsius to be that Apple logo,
03:30iconic monster claw. When you look at Starbucks logo, that was really important. That's one thing
03:36that when you look at kind of the turning point was really focusing on the overall brand and this
03:40fitness lifestyle that's really been able to connect with a broader consumer than ever before
03:45versus prior, we're really going after more diet and sports nutrition. So we took the brand and
03:50really made it mainstream and it's taken off. Sampling has been really critical because we knew
03:55we had a great product, but sampling in the right locations. So we focused on first responders,
04:00nurses, firefighters, police officers. We focused on social media through a variety of different
04:05influencers, a variety of different platforms from Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok. The team does
04:11some really good stuff of in-office activation on TikTok and that has gone really well. Still
04:16focusing on our core and fitness. So further partner with Barry's Bootcamp and Gold's Gym, 24
04:22hour, but really positioning the company for a broad lifestyle position. I transitioned from CFO
04:28to CEO in 2018. Jerry wound up retiring. He was getting up there in age. I think the stress of
04:34travel and running a public company took a toll on him. So actually for about a year and a half, I
04:39was the CFO and the CEO. The company was looking for a CEO at the time. They actually went through
04:45a variety of interviews. After the third try, third attempt, I told them I wanted in on the
04:50interview process. I did a presentation. I talked about the consumer, talked about the targeted
04:54consumer, how we're going to tactically approach the consumer to create daily loyalty and I won
05:00it over. So I wound up becoming a CEO of the company in 2018 officially and backfilled the CFO role.
05:07So how I turned Celsius around once I became CEO is really focusing on a disciplined approach.
05:13Continue to focus on core markets, really focusing on the financials to our activation, to our
05:20tactics, driving with a focused approach on the core consumer that we were looking at. When we look
05:25at our plans and our strategies, we control dollars and execution based on targeted consumer
05:34tactics on communities we're looking to activate. We've been profitable since 2015. We have always
05:41focused on financial discipline and there's a really difficult in the beverage industry to find
05:45success. There's over a thousand new beverages that come to market every year. Less than
05:4910% will make it to $100,000 in sales and then maybe 10% of those make it to a million dollars
05:56in sales and to get a brand to do a billion dollars in sales is practically near impossible.
06:01When I took over Celsius as the CEO, we did $36 million in total revenue for the year and just now
06:08in 2023, we did $1.3 billion. Celsius' secret success is connecting with consumers in a meaningful way
06:17about living fit, living life to the fullest, and accomplishing your health and wellness goals.
06:22That's been the DNA of the brand. Consumers want more function in the foods they consume.
06:26Celsius delivers on that and fitness is hip, cool, sexy, premium,
06:30and connects with a broader consumer than ever before.