Nevadan At Work: Lennon leads Xyience to success

Imagine all the people who have riffed on John Lennon's name.

No, not that John Lennon. We're talking about the John Lennon who's guided local energy-drink maker Xyience since 2010.

Lennon had worked for a who's who of beverage makers, from Nestlé to Guinness, when Xyience tapped him to turn around sales, branding and marketing for its Xenergy drinks. The company filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January 2008 to discharge $42.3 million in liabilities, and it needed an executive to chart new distribution and growth plans.

In Lennon's two years in charge, Xyience has expanded distribution from half the country to almost all of it, and expanded sales in Canada, Europe, South America, Australia and Asia. It now ranks among the top 10 in U.S. energy-drink sales. And the company plans to roll out new products at the National Association of Convenience Stores' trade show at the Las Vegas Convention Center in October.

Lennon was named after his father, who was not a Beatle. He was 9 in 1964, when the Beatles made their American debut on "The Ed Sullivan Show.'' He's been a big fan ever since - even after his family had to unlist its phone number to avoid constant calls from screaming teenage girls.

Question: What comments about your name have you heard for most of your life?

Answer: Usually, when people meet me, it's, "Oh, I thought you were dead." That one grows old. I also get, "I love your music," and, "Does anyone ever say anything about your name?"

Question: Do you have anything in common with John Lennon?

Answer: I always liked John Lennon. I fell in love with the Beatles, no doubt because of the name connection. I came of age when the Beatles dominated entertainment. Whether we had the same name or not, I would still have liked the band. The commonality is the Irish name. My grandparents were from Ireland and Lennon's father was from Northern Ireland. My father's name is John Lennon. It's a fairly common name in Ireland. I have cousins named John Lennon.

Question: What's your favorite John Lennon song?

Answer: The song my wife and I chose for our wedding: "In My Life."

Question: You've spent your career in the beverage industry. What's your favorite drink?

Answer: The one I'm working on now, Xyience. I have a can every afternoon. I like coffee in the morning, but when I need an energy pick-me-up in the afternoon, I drink a 16-ounce can of Xyience. As for beers, my favorite would be Beck's, which is an excellent beer. Guinness is unique and wonderful. And Budweiser is amazingly refreshing.

Question: What's it like to turn around troubled companies? Is it more stressful or fun?

Answer: It's both. We're out of the challenging period at Xyience, but when a company is in the middle of financial problems, no one likes picking up calls from creditors. There are two Xyiences. There's the Xyience that went into bankruptcy, then the Xyience that emerged out of bankruptcy. We put together a plan and we have very good financial backers for our company committed to investing in and growing our company. I look at Xyience more as an early stage company. It has many of the challenges early stage companies have. We compare ourselves to other energy drinks that have been successful. Monster has done very well. We track their financial performance, and if you look at the way we're trending now, we're trending at the same rate Monster did in its early stages.

Question: What are the challenges of an early-stage company?

Answer: Working capital. Your sales grow very fast. You have to produce product to meet growing sales, so you have to make sure you have enough cash flow to produce product. You may need to make tough decisions about things like marketing programs. Maybe you can't market a certain way this month. You have to make decisions big companies don't have to make. Being the official drink of the UFC has been terrific. It gives us a good story to tell to new distributors. The beverage business is very tough these days. Getting a distributor is not as easy as it used to be. As a promotion partner, UFC has been very effective in helping with marketing.

Question: Any secrets to a successful turnaround? What works? What doesn't?

Answer: It's better to be a mile deep and an inch wide than a mile wide and an inch deep. You have to keep your business model very focused. If you try to grow too broadly too quickly, you can get ahead of yourself and not be able to support growth. If you move into too many markets at a time, you use too many resources. You also need to be very prudent about making financial expenditures, and you need to be very effective in your marketing. Make sure your marketing is working. Don't spend a dollar unless that dollar is producing new consumers or selling additional product.

Question: What have you liked best about getting a business back on track?

Answer: The satisfaction of knowing the company was struggling and that you've been able to sort of right the ship. Typically, companies that go through financial problems have to lay people off. It's always a difficult time. But then you reach a point where you can keep people on, and you're able to hire new people and give a little more economic security to existing employees and to those coming on board.

Question: What's ahead for Xyience?

Answer: We're on a very good path. We are building distribution in our core markets west of the Rockies. When the company went through financial problems, it retrenched from the east, and now we're moving back into the east. It's very satisfying for me, being from there, to have cultivated a distributor network in New York, New York City, the metro area and Philadelphia. Seeing the brand back on shelves in the marketplace is very good. If you look at data statistics like Nielsen, we are ranked among the top 10 energy drinks in the country. We're ranked sixth or seventh in most markets in consumption and in purchases of product in supermarkets, drugstores and convenience stores. If you look even deeper into the numbers, we're the fastest-growing top 10 brand. It's very satisfying to see the brand start to take flight. Xyience is in a very good position, and that means we're in a position in which we can get more involved in the Las Vegas community. This is our home, and we're very excited about that.

Question: What's your biggest career accomplishment?

Answer: Generally, any company I've been involved with was in a much better place the day I left than it was the day I arrived.

Question: If there's a John Lennon quote that describes your philosophy, what is it?

Answer: Imagine.

Contact reporter Jennifer Robison at jrobison@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4512. Follow @J_Robison1 on Twitter.