SoBe beverage founder dispenses advice

John Bello (LA '68), a co-founder of South Beach Beverages, urged students to take advantage of their luck and take risks at a talk on Wednesday afternoon.

The mantra has served Bello well: the company he founded in 1996, known as SoBe, now sells 40 million cases of health drinks each year; in 2001, it was bought out by PepsiCo for $370 million.

Bello, the first speaker in a new series designed to highlight the achievements of Tufts graduates, attributed the success of SoBe to a combination of good timing and innovation.

He explained that drinks like SoBe had been around since the '60s and '70s, but consumers at the time were more interested in sodas.

But attitudes about health and food gradually changed. "It has now become a popular trend to walk around with a bottle of water and walk out of a health store with $400 worth of vitamins," Bello said. In such an environment, "healthy" drinks like SoBe thrive.

But Bello said his company's success was not by chance. He explained that creative packaging and unusual flavors attracted customers' attention and separated SoBe from other beverage companies such as Snapple and Fuze.

An "aggressive, fun, playfully irrelevant attitude" also helped, he added.

Bello, whose first sales job was selling hotdogs at baseball games, was also persistent. "You gotta show up," he said. "And we showed up every day."

One of the most essential elements in getting a business started, he said, was putting himself into the marketplace. He related anecdotes of taking cross-country road trips for sampling tests and instances when he was banned from stores because of his aggressive promotional tactics.

"He made it seem like such things were really possible," sophomore Timothy Singer said. "You just have to know how to go out there like he did and push people around."

Before founding SoBe, Bello worked for 14 years at National Football League Properties, the marketing arm of the NFL. His other experiences include working for Pepsi-Cola in marketing and General Foods in strategic planning. He was also product director for Keds footwear.

Currently, he is president of JoNa Ventures, an early stage investment and strategic management company he founded with his wife, Nancy (Nelson) Bello (J '69).

In 2001, Ernst & Young named Bello National Entrepreneur of the Year in the Consumer Products category.

Following the talk, Bello attended a reception with students and faculty. At the reception, Entrepreneurial Leadership Program Director Pamela Goldberg announced the Tufts Entrepreneurial Network.

The program is intended to assist aspiring entrepreneurs by establishing a network of alumni and faculty to connect students with the business world.

More than 100 students and faculty gathered to hear Bello speak. His speech was the first in the Lyon & Bendheim Alumni Lecture Series, which will bring one alumni lecturer to campus each semester for the next three years. Future speakers are to be selected by students.