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Lesson #5: Change the Rules of the Game

Article Overview: “If I had the chance to do it again, I probably would have liked to go to school,” says van Stolk as he reflects on his career. “However, the benefit from not going to school is that I look at things differently and I listen differently.”

Lesson #5: Change the Rules of the Game

“If I had the chance to do it again, I probably would have liked to go to school,” says van Stolk as he reflects on his career. “However, the benefit from not going to school is that I look at things differently and I listen differently.”

Van Stolk is an eagerly sought after public speaker these days. Despite being a college dropout, what does he give as advice to up-and-coming entrepreneurs? “My suggestion is to go to school. It will teach you the framework. It teaches you the game.”

He adds one caveat, however. “Life teaches you how to bend or break the rules to get what you want. If you only follow the rules of business, then you’re always going to follow what your competitors do.”

Van Stolk has become a successful businessman because he learned all the rules of the game quickly, but almost as quickly he also learned how to break them. Instead of trying to follow in the footsteps of Pepsi and Coca-Cola, van Stolk decided to do things differently from day one. And, despite outside pressures, he never gave into their trends. For instance, where the two soda giants both decided to start inserting vitamins into their beverages, van Stolk refused.
“Jones is an indulgence, and we want to be an indulgence,” he says of his higher-priced beverage. “We will try to be a premium soda and be a niche soda.”

That is all part of van Stolk’s strategy of working for the wins he can get and letting the rest go, something, he says, even the biggest companies do.

“Pepsi is bigger than Coke in a lot of ways,” he says despite outward appearances. “Pepsi is now a better overall beverage company than Coca-Cola. That’s a fact. If you look at it, Pepsi’s brands are Tropicana, which is #1 versus Minute Maid; Gatorade, which is bigger than PowerAde; and Aquafina, which is bigger than Coke’s Dasani.”

In fact, the only area where the Pepsi brand is less popular than its main competitor is Pepsi versus Coke. “Pepsi made the switch when they said they were okay with losing the cola wars. They decided to win everything else,” says van Stolk. “When they took the approach that, ‘We’re not going to play the game any more,’ they won the game because they changed the game. That’s what I think is really cool. Companies have to change the game.”

So Jones Soda might not have vitamins, it might not be as cheap as the next drink, and it might come in funky flavours, but that is precisely what van Stolk thinks he has going for him. “I think companies that spend all their time trying to figure out what the other guys are going to do will become really good at following. I will never be Coke or Pepsi in a million years, and I don’t really want to,” he says. “I’m always trying to figure out how to change the game.”

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Article Tags: aquafina, beverage company, caveat, coca cola, coke pepsi, cokes, college dropout, footsteps, gatorade, indulgence, minute maid, pepsi, pepsi versus coke, powerade, public speaker, rules of the game, successful businessman, tropicana, van stolk, what your competitors



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