Business origin stories that'll make you want to run through a brick wall. Released every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Enjoy.
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Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is the man. The college-football-star-turned-wrestler-turned-actor is the highest-paid movie man in Hollywood. In 2016, he won the highly coveted sexiest man alive award. He bought a football league. He has his own TV comedy detailing his childhood. He’s the most followed man on Instagram. He might be in the best shape of any person, ever. And he’s done it all after hitting rock bottom (pun intended)—when he found himself with just $7 in his pocket after giving up his lifelong dream of becoming a pro football player...  Over time, The Rock has built a loyal fan base. He's using that fan base to fuel his entrepreneurial ventures. Within the next few weeks, he'll be launching his healthy energy drink company, ZOA. Last year, he started Teremana tequila. Celebrity spirits are not a new concept, by any means—especially when it concerns tequila. When you think of tequila, a brand that might come to mind is Casamigos, which was started by George Clooney. He and his friends were down in Mexico, and—naturally—they were drinking a lot of tequila. They couldn’t find a single brand with the perfect kick that also went down smoothly, so they did what any of us would do. They called up a distillery, and they made their own. They called it “House of Friends”. Eventually, they were ordering so many bottles of Casamigos from the supplier that they received a phone call. It was the distillery's manager. He said, “You either drink more tequila than anyone I’ve ever seen, or you’re giving this stuff away. You need a license.” Clooney got the license, slapped a price tag on the bottle, and the rest is history. Casamigos was sold for over $1,000,000,000. Ryan Reynolds did something similar with Gin. He bought into a company called Aviation. He used his star power to propel the brand forward and sold the company for over $600,000,000. The Rock hasn’t sold the company, but it's already obvious at this point that the man who created the people’s elbow has also created the people’s tequila. The Rock recently shattered records with his tequila company, Teremana, selling more than 300,000 cases in the first year. That deserves a Teremana toast. **Read more FS Stories here. If you liked reading this article, you might also like The Wedge: a quick-to-read weekly e-mail newsletter with awesome business stories that'll increase your creativity and resourcefulness just by reading them. Learn more and sign up here. Comments are closed.
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