How Zevia’s CEO applied high-stakes strategy to relaunch a CPG company

[00:00:11] Jim Freeze: Welcome to Right Decisions, Right Now, where we explore the choices that define a leader's career. I'm Jim Freeze, Chief Marketing Officer at Anaplan, the only AI-driven scenario planning and analysis platform designed to optimize decision making in today's complex business environment. In each episode, we unpack a pivotal decision. What drove it, what impact it had, and the human story behind it. You'll hear from leaders at companies like Gap, Zevia, Citi, and more, sharing details about impactful decisions, bold breakthroughs, tough calls under pressure, and the moments that shaped their careers and their companies.

[00:00:51] Jim Freeze: On today's episode, we're joined by Amy Taylor, the CEO of Zevia, a mission driven beverage company focused on zero calorie, zero sugar drinks, which I love. Amy has an incredible background, having spent over 20 years at Red Bull, where she coordinated iconic brand initiatives including the famous Red Bull Stratos space jump. She's now applying those high stakes lessons to her current role leading a brand transformation at Zevia. Amy, welcome to the show.

[00:01:20] Amy Taylor: Thanks so much. Thanks for having me.

[00:01:22] Jim Freeze: Are you drinking a Zevia?

[00:01:24] Amy Taylor: Always. Maybe, almost always.

[00:01:26] Jim Freeze: I had root beer last night. It's my favorite. Oh, it's so good. It's perfect.

[00:01:29] Amy Taylor: A little treat.

[00:01:30] Jim Freeze: I love it. We're thrilled to have you. So your career is kind of a masterclass in high stakes decision making. You inherited a challenging situation at Zevia, and since then have led a major turnaround. Can you take us back to some of your initial moments when you first took over the reins at Zevia, and then what were your top priorities?

[00:01:48] Amy Taylor: Sure. Just as a little bit of context, I joined the board originally at Zevia, and I believed in the mission. And just like what I saw at Red Bull, Zevia was right on time for that consumer. The consumer of today and the consumer of tomorrow. Red Bull was that for Gen X, and my belief was and is that Zevia is that for today and tomorrow's consumer. So with that presumption, I took a board seat and I quickly realized that conversations were moving from me talking about a CEO succession plan to me actually becoming the CEO succession plan. So I eventually took on the role of CEO about a year after going public, and we set out to establish the brand as like the radically real people's champion, right? Taking it from niche to mainstream.

[00:02:30] Amy Taylor: But to your point, as you indicated in the intro, we had several challenges to address before we could realize that scale. And they were real fundamentals like data transparency, inventory visibility, supply chain logistics, and all of it kind of laddering up to something as basic as unit economics, all of which was fixable. But they had their roots in organizational capability, right. And systems, networks, and processes like all of these, including org capability, were built ad hoc, as needed in a fast growing company and all wildly inefficient. And so while there was a lot of proverbial low hanging fruit, it was really challenging to fix it after the company had already gone public.

[00:03:10] Amy Taylor: And with time pressure mounting and at the same time, the landscape was changing rapidly. You know, new beverage players were coming into the space seeing the same opportunity that we did. Younger consumers were rejecting traditional soda laden with artificial ingredients, but they still wanted a bubbly treat that tasted great. And so we were in the running to win their attention, and their purchase decision and their hearts right.

[00:03:33] Amy Taylor: And I wanted our top priority to be brand building. But for the first let's call it 18 months to two years, the top priority became resetting the foundation — portfolio optimization, supply chain redesign, cost reduction, reporting, data transparency, and ultimately organizational capability. The top priority became transformation. And long before we could ever really take our shot at brand building and expanding our user base, we had to kind of re-pour the concrete, and that was really challenging.

[00:04:06] Jim Freeze: From a sequence of events, it makes a ton of sense. You don't want to start investing in brand building before the foundation is built. Which kind of leads into my next question. So when you reflect back on your time so far at Zevia, are there certain principles or ways of thinking that consistently help you make some tough calls? Because you obviously had to make some.

[00:04:23] Amy Taylor: I would say that's evolved as I learn as well. I hope I will always say to you, like when we chat in ten years, I hope I'll still tell you that I'm evolving and learning. But first of all, just as context my job is to get the vision clear, to hire, engage and maximize the team, and then to set priorities and continue to steer us in execution against those. So through that lens, the principle that helped me make tough calls was to ensure that I was doing my job as what I'll call the convener. It was my job to convene the subject matter experts to ask the right questions of those right people at the right time, and then require them to come up with solutions that were sufficiently vetted.

[00:05:00] Amy Taylor: If you work for me, you know you're empowered. You know you're expected to own your own function. And I would like to think that's inspiring. I aspire to operate with the right mix of humility and confidence, which kind of gets to the heart of your question. My principle is I seek to operate with the right mix of humility and confidence.

[00:05:18] Amy Taylor: So the humility to know I don't always have the right answer, but the confidence in the idea that I will get to the right answer through the convening of my team around the right priority, whether it was a problem or an opportunity. And, you know, examples range from enabling our current CFO, who's been in seat about a year and a half now, who is capable of driving transformation, to drive exactly that in a way that's fitting to a turnaround or differently to empower our CMO, a true CPG expert with CPG chops, to make fundamental changes to packaging design, portfolio composition, even after we were well established in close to 40,000 outlets. So I haven't always come to the right conclusions fast enough, but with the right mix of humility and confidence, we're getting faster and therefore more effective at every turn.

[00:06:04] Jim Freeze: That is fantastic advice. I'm going to steal that.

[00:06:07] Amy Taylor: Feel free.

[00:06:08] Jim Freeze: So it's pretty clear you think having the right people in place is pretty important. How do you make sure that the decisions you and your team are making align with your financial objectives?

[00:06:18] Amy Taylor: Well, that's certainly a group effort as well, though I have to and do take ultimate responsibility. We always talk about the fact that you can do anything, but you can't do everything. And of course every leader talks about prioritization. But I think where sometimes we get it wrong is if we only focus on eliminating what's not right. What you really have to actively eliminate is what's the least right. There are plenty of ways forward that could provide solutions, but how do you get disciplined enough to eliminate what's the least right.

[00:06:49] Amy Taylor: So we framed it up like this in the midst of transformation and then shifting into a scaling effort. Anything we endeavor has to either support our foundation transformation — so cutting from the back, cutting costs out of the back to invest in the front meaning — invest in growth. Or, it must support our growth through marketing and quality new distribution. So sometimes an initiative can do both, but usually you're picking among trade offs.

[00:07:17] Amy Taylor: So what we had to do is get to a point where we had an aligned strategic plan that clearly stated as few objectives as possible that were implementable. And we were governed by that plan. So as an example, most new packages that we introduce are margin accretive. Back to your question around financial objectives. Selectively however, some of the SKUs that we would introduce, some new packages would represent an investment in a top priority like trial among new users. So if we understand the trade offs and their collective net impact on the PNL, like collectively adding all up, we can do both. We can grow the base and become increasingly more profitable. And that's exactly the inflection point that we are reaching right now. And we continue to make trade offs.

[00:08:01] Amy Taylor: Some SKUs will do all the jobs of adding profit from a percentage perspective and bringing in new users and others have to be an investment to bring in those new users.

[00:08:11] Jim Freeze: I love that, that's great. So, I want to pivot. Before you joined Zevia, you were involved in some truly high stakes situations at Red Bull. One of the most famous was the Red Bull Stratos project. And for those of you who don't know, that's when Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner literally jumped from the edge of the stratosphere, breaking the speed of sound. What was it like to be a part of that team? Were there some pivotal decisions along the way you had to make?

[00:08:37] Amy Taylor: Yeah, I mean, it's funny, in business you can always say things like, oh, you know, it's not like it's life and death, you know, it's just soda. It's just bubbly water or whatever. But this one was life and death. And so we had the responsibility to manage the project with that level of gravity.

[00:08:50] Amy Taylor: And it certainly wasn't my project alone, but I was responsible on the ground as the Chief Marketing Officer at the time within the United States, where we executed the project, to manage that through the lens of project management, budget management, execution, and then maximizing its impact for the brand. And it was, as you said, a formative experience. And when I think about what I learned from it as it relates to decision making frameworks, you know, there were several failures along the way to what ended up to be a worldwide massive success filled with world records, and firsts for humankind and for technology. But we won't spend a lot of time on what those were like.

[00:09:24] Amy Taylor: As you said, folks can look that up, but the failures and delays along the way, which as with anything really worth doing, there will be those things, they were largely reported as technical ones. But I'm here to tell you, and we've talked about this publicly before, my greatest learning from that endeavor was actually that the root cause had everything to do with people and leadership, rather than technology. The issue was, and the issue that we addressed successfully once we understood it, was that the key contributors to the mission defined the mission itself differently.

[00:09:56] Amy Taylor: So you had NASA and Air Force vets that were defining the project as a space mission. And then, as you can imagine, we had sports marketing and media professionals that were defining it as a really high skydive. And how you start, how you think about it defines how you project manage, how you set budget gates, how you establish redundancies, right. Sort of safety nets and backup plans. And then most of all, how you manage people.

[00:10:21] Amy Taylor: And so once we realized how different key members of the mission leadership team were defining the mission itself, we brought them into the room to strip it back down and listen to each other. Here's what I, as a sports marketing or a media expert, have learned about very high skydives. And here's what we believe is applicable here. And then on the scientist side of the NASA and Air Force side. Hey, well, here's what's essential to a space mission. And here's what we believe is applicable here. We saw some huge gaps in how we were setting out to let's say stage gate or manage budget, etc. when taking on a scientific endeavor or a space exploration endeavor where there are lives at stake, you don't hold stage gates and budget, line items rigidly firm.

[00:11:04] Amy Taylor: You have to have flexibility to adjust as you go. I have to say, I've applied this lesson to every major endeavor since then, and only honestly, in retrospect, do I realize how relevant it was in my discovery that Zevia was at first a turnaround and is now an opportunity to scale success.

[00:11:27] Amy Taylor: So we had to pick the right people, make the right priorities, like fiercely prioritize. Remember cutting what's the least right in a turnaround environment? And now differently, we've had to pivot and think about, all right, we are now on the path to scale success. We're going to line up our decision making frameworks quite differently as a result.

[00:11:43] Jim Freeze: You're kind of getting into my last question, which is when you look at your collective experience from Red Bull to Zevia, how has your approach to making high stakes decisions changed?

[00:11:53] Amy Taylor: It's definitely changed. And like I said before, hopefully, if you ask me that again in 5 or 10 years, I'll tell you, oh, it's changed again. I'm always evolving, right?

[00:12:03] Jim Freeze: That's a good thing.

[00:12:04] Amy Taylor: I've always believed that I could lead cross-functionally with a GM or a CEO hat on. Right. It's a must for a general manager, and I've always believed that I can lead cross-functionally, including across subject matter, that within which I wasn't an expert, let's say. But now as CEO with whom the buck stops, I realize you have to go deeper on every single vertical.

[00:12:27] Amy Taylor: You must find your kind of minimum viable level of expertise, even in one's flat spots, to truly captain the ship, especially in an early growth stage or a turnaround environment. So what remains consistent for me is that my job is, again, to set the vision to assemble, inspire and maximize the team and then to coach on priorities and keep us focused. I'm the leader and I'm the convener. And if I operate with the right mix of humility and confidence, we will be successful. You know, my organization will be healthy and will be smart strategically and then agile enough to adapt to a wildly changing landscape.

[00:13:05] Amy Taylor: And it's rewarding to see Zevia now operating on that healthy foundation with so much upside as we accelerate investing in brand and thus in growth. But I really needed to learn that there is a minimum viable level required of you as a leader in a growth environment or a turnaround environment in every single vertical, including, for me, IT, operations and finance, which were not in my background. And in applying that now, especially over these last two years, we have defined the mission all the same way at one stage, a turnaround, and now and one that we will scale, and thus we're building and executing plans together to do that together. And so I think that's really how I've evolved to understand what the role of the general manager or the CEO really is, and how to adapt my approach. Going deep enough accordingly.

[00:13:52] Jim Freeze: That's fantastic. I can't thank you enough. I think your story and your collective professional experience is just fascinating, and I love the fact that you're committed to continue to learn and adapt based on additional experiences. We really appreciate you taking the time to share your story and insights. Thank you, Amy.

[00:14:11] Amy Taylor: Awesome. Thank you so much for having me, Jim.

[00:14:17] Jim Freeze: Thanks for listening to Right Decisions, Right Now. If you've enjoyed today's conversation, follow the show so you don't miss our next deep dive into the decisions that make or break great leaders. For more insights on decision excellence and its impact on the financial performance of leading organizations, visit anaplan.com. I'm Jim Freeze. See you next time.