PepsiCo

“A Frito-Lay chip will turn 40, 50 times a year. Beverages might turn 60 to 70 times a year. Toothpaste turns 12 times a year. Cookies turn 10 times a year.”

“When we had our second activist investor in the stock, it was a crisis for the company because nobody likes to have an activist in the stock. I did a town hall, and I told everybody, I said, look, I'll give you regular updates on the activist. You'll see it on…”

“When your consumer sees the product on a shelf, that's the media talking to you. So to me, the media you own is very important to the consumer because the media you rent is your TV and your advertising. Many people don't see it. But they see that billboard eff…”

“We see certain levels of people have to have at least eight reports or 10 reports.”

“If there are five people competing to be CEO, and only one is made CEO, typically what happens is other companies grab them. Especially for a company like PepsiCo, which has a great leadership development, people came and grabbed them. And so they go off to be…”

“When I stepped down as CEO, I told the board I wouldn't be chairman for more than two months max, and then I'm out, because I wanted the new CEO to have Total flexibility to do whatever he wanted.”

“Think of it, in PepsiCo, in the bottom layer, probably 14, 15,000 people. By the time you get to CEO minus two, you're at about 60 or 70. CEO minus one, you're down to 15. So you've gone from 15,000 to 60 to 15 to one.”

“So why don't we look at this white paper as a free consulting report? And let's pour through it. If he has any ideas that we haven't implemented in the company, let's take those ideas. But we're not going to make big changes to the company just because Nelson …”

“Second, any acquisition, the deal process is just 10% of the whole process. The whole work is in the post-merger integration.”

“Had we not bought the bottlers back at that time in North America, we'd still be fighting with the bottlers, and the pie would be shrinking. Because we're not serving the consumer, we're fighting each other.”

“Sometimes selfishly, I look at this and say, I'm actually better off if this person goes and gets this completely different experience, because I can bring them back. So you always look at this in a nice, selfish way. I don't mean in a negative, selfish way. I…”

“So, I've never been part of such a customer-obsessed company, ok? PepsiCo was consumer-focused, but these are customer-obsessed companies, first.”

“We always had internally stretch goals, and we promised the street something more reasonable. That way, we never got paid if we didn't make the stretch goals, the bonus. We never paid out bonuses without the stretch goals.”

“We started to move from what's the color of the package on the shelf to how is this product going to be consumed? How is it going to be used? How is it going to be carried? How is it going to be stored on the shelf? How is it going to be stored in the pantry a…”

“I think there's about three or 400 that were corporate assets, and one watched them all the time, because these are people who in 15 years could be CEO.”

“We were using two and a half liters of water to make a liter of Pepsi.”

“So if you don't understand the business at the most granular level, you come at it in a very different perspective, and people don't understand you because you're talking in tens of millions and hundreds of billions, and they're like, I'm selling a 25 cent bag…”

“I think there's about three or 400 that were corporate assets, and one watched them all the time, because these are people who in 15 years could be CEO.”