Work Hard, Call Your Parents, and Other Advice from Entrepreneur Mike Repole
Standing before a sold-out crowd in Babson’s Winn Auditorium, Mike Repole made an admission. “I have fear,” he said.
Such a confession might come as a surprise, as Repole is a serial entrepreneur who has found great success, most notably for selling two beverage companies he co-founded, Glaceau and Bodyarmor, to Coca-Cola in a pair of multibillion-dollar deals.
To have fear in business and life is nothing unusual, Repole believes, and it’s nothing to be embarrassed by. “If you’re nervous, that’s OK,” said Repole, now the majority owner of Nobull, a footwear and apparel brand. “If you got some fear, that’s fine.”
Fear is only an issue if it causes inaction, if it prevents someone from pursuing their plans and dreams. “If you’re nervous, worried, and have anxiety, and you have fear, and you really want to do something, and you do it, you’re fearless,” Repole said.
Wearing a Nobull T-shirt, Repole spoke at Babson last week. Over the course of two hours, he delivered a loose, honest, and funny talk, joking around with the students, staff, and faculty in attendance and answering their many questions. Len Green, a friend of Repole and a longtime entrepreneurship professor at Babson, served as moderator of the event. The two know each other from the world of horse racing. “For me to be here, I just feel at home,” Repole said, “and I’m with Uncle Len.”
In his freewheeling remarks, Repole spoke of his less than stellar academic career, of learning from failure in his entrepreneurial journey, and of his relationship with NBA legend Kobe Bryant, a leading investor in Bodyarmor. (Watching Bryant practice, Repole said, he was amazed at the consistent sound the ball made when hitting the net—“He was hitting it in the perfect spot.”)
Most of all, Repole returned again and again to the importance of hard work. “At the end of the day, it’s about work ethic,” he said. “It’s about working hard. It’s about learning. I want to inspire you guys to just do it.”
Here are some key takeaways from Repole’s visit to campus.
Learn and Live Entrepreneurship
Repole echoed a belief that’s common at Babson—studying and practicing entrepreneurship can prepare students for life, no matter what career they pursue.
“My opinion is entrepreneurship is probably the best major you can have,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what you are going to do in life. You might do sales, you might do marketing, you might do finance, you might do ops, you might do HR. When you take business thinking like an entrepreneur, you are going to be successful no matter what you do.”
For those students wanting to continue to grow and learn after they graduate, Repole suggested they join a startup rather than take a corporate job. “You go work for the guy who has a startup for four years, he’s got 22 employees, there’s a great chance he’s going to go out of business, and most likely he will,” Repole said. “But, if you are there for one year or five years, you are going to learn a ton.”
Stay in the Discomfort Zone
Repole asked attendees to think of two places. First, he said to envision their comfort zone, a place that brings them contentment. Then, he asked them to imagine somewhere that’s the opposite. “Think of a place that makes you feel uncomfortable, that gives you a little nerves,” he said. “Be in that place. Feel that. Feel that tension.”
Most people don’t want to feel that discomfort. Repole said that’s a mistake. “If you want to be successful in life, if you want to be happy in life, put yourself in that discomfort zone and work yourself out of that discomfort zone, fight through that discomfort zone,” he says.
In that fighting comes learning. “If you just put yourself in a comfortable place every single time, you are never going to grow, you are never going to learn, you are never going to know what you really could have done in life,” he said.
Repole thrives when he feels pressure. He can’t be too comfortable. “When I’m in the comfort zone, guess what happens? I go nuts. I live in the discomfort zone. I love it,” he said. “My wife, Maria, says the only thing worse than Mike having a million things to do is Mike having nothing to do.”
Surround Yourself with Intensity
Repole likes to surround himself with people who, like himself, seek to push themselves. He told a story of once receiving a phone call from Bryant. It was 7 a.m. on the East Coast where Repole was, which meant Bryant was calling at 4 a.m. on the West Coast. The Lakers star was in his car, and Repole asked him where he was going at that early hour. Bryant replied he was coming from his workout.
The response stunned Repole. “That’s what it takes to be incredibly successful,” he said. “Surround yourself with people who have that personality.”
When hiring, Repole follows the mantra “attitude over skills.” While skills can be taught, he asserts, attitude is innate. He wants employees who have drive, who learn a lesson from their failures and keep moving. “Are you a sore loser? OK, you’re hired. I want sore losers,” he said. “You like to lose, you go work somewhere else.”
At Glaceau, Repole used to play basketball with the company’s interns. He liked to hire those who played him hard. “That’s the intensity you need,” he said. “You push yourself to another level.”
Call Your Parents
After spending much of his talk discussing business and the pursuit of success, Repole turned his attention to what he considers to be the two things that are most important in life. “They are not the two things you think I’m going to say,” he said.
Those two things? Health and happiness. “I have that. I’m lucky. I have that with my family,” he said. “I’m 56 years old, and I get to call my mom and dad every night.”
Repole then proceeded to do just that. While the audience listened, he called his parents, who are in their 80s, and had a conversation with them. At one point, he handed the phone to an attendee who spoke French so he could talk to Repole’s dad, who emigrated from France.
Repole appreciates the time with his parents. He knows it’s fleeting. “That five, six minutes a day is the luckiest six minutes of my life,” he said. “I call my parents every single day, no matter where I am, no matter the time zone.”
Repole urged the students in the audience to do the same. “Think about how much sacrifice your parents made for you guys,” he said. “Just a simple phone call can make their day.”
Posted in Entrepreneurial Leadership, Insights
