An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Set out to achieve large audacious goals and work with your team as the experts they are to break down the steps to achieve those goals into quarterly, monthly, and weekly plans. I think this is particularly important in an increasing remote labor environment. The more aligned we are on the task at hand, the more supported each of us will feel and the more accountability you can expect from your team.
As a part of our series about “How Diversity Can Increase a Company’s Bottom Line”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Eddie Simeón.
Eddie Simeón grew up in a multicultural family in Oakland, California. Throughout childhood, connecting to his roots meant cooking and eating foods from both his Mexican and Filipino heritage. So it made sense that he got his start at one of the Bay Area’s trendiest fine dining establishments, À Côté; not in the kitchen, but behind the bar as a barback. It was there at the green age of eighteen that he was first introduced to the delightfully bubbly and bracing Bitters & Soda that he is best known for today.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive into the main part of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit more. Can you share a bit of your “backstory” with us?
Absolutely. It’s a pleasure to be here. I’m the CMO and a co-founder of Hella Cocktail Co. We make botanically inspired mixers and beverages. Before starting the company, I was on a commercial career track developing websites for large media companies like MTV, ADWEEK and Martha Stewart. And before that I was an audio engineer working in Los Angeles. Interestingly, I can draw a through line between all three chapters: the intersection of business and creativity.
Can you share the funniest or most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? Can you tell us the lesson or take away you took out of that story?
Sure! Since Hella’s inception, we’ve seen partnerships as fundamental to our growth. And in our 10-years of business, we’ve had some amazing partnerships. But one sticks out as the most interested and, honestly, surreal. My partners, Jomaree, Tobin, and I were once cast to feature in ads for a global Gin brand along with a handful of other small businesses. Additionally, I guess to ensure that everyone on camera looked good, they had a bunch of professional models on set. It was super exciting to participate in the professional photoshoot but in the end most of the ads just had models! One shot, however, featured me prominently locking eye with one of the models. What’s not obvious in the picture is that the model was so much taller than me that they had me sitting on a booster seat! That was fun. And it was funny/interesting/strange to see my mug plastered across billboards for a few months throughout NYC.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you tell us a story about how that was relevant in your own life?
Malcom Gladwell’s quote, “Who we are cannot be separated from where we’re from,” gains more and more relevance for me personally each year. As the grandchild of immigrants, I have inherited a certain instinct to assimilate. But, as the quote would suggest, I don’t feel I could live my values completely–personally or professionally–without remaining connected to my heritage and my history. That’s why I’m so proud of the brand we’ve built at Hella Cocktail Co. Our mission is to inspire confidence so that people can bring their most authentic self to the celebration. And for many Americans, that means bringing the unique tastes of your culture into the celebration too.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are?
Without a doubt I would not be where I am today without the support and encouragement from my wife, Rebecca. I jokingly call her my biggest investor, but she truly has enabled me to focus on my business for the past ten years and never let me lose sight of the true meaning of success: to remain fulfilled in my work and to keep learning.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
While Hella Cocktail Co. is the only minority-led beverage company for sale in all fifty states, I’ve learned what makes us truly unique in the beverage world is our focus on profitable growth. Launching a beverage brand is extremely capital intensive. As such, many new entrants in the space start by raising a lot of capital from investors and spend down on that in order to grow quickly in time to raise the next round of financing. Lately, I’ve heard this approach described as the boom bust cycle.
Hella Cocktail Co. never had the vision– or the opportunity–to run our business this way. Instead, we took the slow and profitable road. For the past decade, Inventory, Marketing, Operations have mostly been funded by Sales. This cashflow approach combined with our inclusive message is what makes us so unique in the beverage business.
Are you working on any new or exciting projects now? How do you think that might help people?
While we’re always looking to the future, the latest investor announcement with Uncle Nearest is focused completely on increasing and accelerating sales of our existing product portfolio. One exciting project slated to go live in the third quarter is a new Pop-up event in Brooklyn! There you will be able to learn about the craft of Bitters and how it connects to the modern cocktail culture.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
Doing good with our success is a priority for the business and for each of us as individuals. In order to solidify a culture of doing good, we are committed to giving 1% of our Time, Talent, and Treasure to social causes focused primarily on the issue of Voting. Voting is the keystone of our American Democracy and we believe the more people we can influence to be informed and vote the better this world will be.
Ok. Thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the main part of our interview. This may be obvious to you, but it is not intuitive to many people. Can you articulate to our readers five ways that increased diversity can help a company’s bottom line.
Increased diversity absolutely helps the bottom line. Here are five examples of how Hella Cocktail Co.’s approach to diversity has made an impact in our business.
- Diversity amongst the founding team has led to amazing partnership opportunities. From American Express to Diageo, partners understand that Hella’s story of diversity and inclusion resonates with a broad audience of consumers. The results have, honestly, been beyond our wildest dreams. Jomaree was featured nationally in an American Express television commercial that brought massive referral traffic to our website. And the entire team was present in Tanqueray billboards throughout NYC. I attribute this attraction from partnerships in large part to our interesting and diverse team.
- Often the largest company have government commitments to award a certain percentage of contracts to certified diverse business, such as Minority Business Enterprises and Female-Led businesses. So if you goal is to land a very large account like an airline, sports stadium, or distributor always check to see if they have a dedicated diversity team and what their goals are. In the past, Hella has been told that if our bid was tied in quality and price with a competitor that our MBE status would give us the edge.
- Diversity as a strength in leadership builds loyalty among a diverse staff and broadens your talent pool. At one point prior to the pandemic, Hella Cocktail Co. had 15+ brand ambassadors in-house. Their job was to facilitate retail sampling events in key retail accounts like Total Wine & More and Whole Foods. The fact that the Hella executive team is diverse led to increased pride and confidence in the team of brand ambassadors who were also from all walks of life. In turn, shoppers responded well to the enthusiastic and confident connection to the diversity of the founders.
- Diversity allows a brand to multiply its efforts in marketing. While Hella Cocktail Co. has a single mission, because the team is make of a multitude of cultures we can retell our story through each unique perspective. This approach increases the volume of content we can create with less effort while remaining on brand.
- Investing in Representation puts your brand and company-culture on the right side of history. There are so many forces in America today that are pulling us apart. I, for one, as a busines leader choose to build a company with an inclusive narrative intended to bring people closer together again. If entrepreneurs only capitalize on a homogeneous cultural story, we run the risk of alienating ourselves further. The more cooperative and connected we are, the more we can prosper together in an economy built to elevate more people from all American backgrounds.
What advice would you give to other business leaders to help their employees to thrive?
Make 1:1 facetime (virtual or in-person) a priority. Create a process where each employee has weekly 1:1 check-ins with their boss. Sometime these sessions will have an agenda related to performance but it’s just as important to remain available for more casual/personal conversation. The latter often reveals some of the greatest insights.
What advice would you give to other business leaders about how to manage a large team?
Set out to achieve large audacious goals and work with your team as the experts they are to break down the steps to achieve those goals into quarterly, monthly, and weekly plans. I think this is particularly important in an increasing remote labor environment. The more aligned we are on the task at hand, the more supported each of us will feel and the more accountability you can expect from your team.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this 🙂
Ever since its inception I’ve been very interested in the B-Corp model. And since meeting with other founders has always been my preferred method to learn what to do with my own business, I’d say breakfast or lunch with the likes of Mark Cuban or Blake Mycoskie would be a huge honor.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Please follow the brand on Instagram @hellacocktailco.
Thank you for these excellent insights. We wish you continued success in your great work.
Eddie Simeón Of Hella Cocktail Co: How Diversity Can Increase a Company’s Bottom Line was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
