It was an honor to work with Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson on The View, and with vitaminwater, the day he launched Formula 50 — the grape formula he created — live on national television.
Star Jones and Meredith Vieira interviewed us together, and it remains one of the most memorable interviews of my career. What made it land was not the product. It was that Curtis and I are both dads, and we both had our sons with us on the show that day to tell their own stories. Two fathers, on daytime television, arguing that teaching young Americans about nutrition is not a luxury — it's the whole ballgame.
The company put $100,000 behind that message through the vitaminschool program, and giving that money away to empower people around the country was a great, great use of a collaboration.
The lesson I still carry
Curtis is, to this day, one of the smartest business minds I have ever been around, and I look to him as a mentor as I build Zero Hunger Water®. He didn't take a paycheck — he took a stake. He held a small equity position in Glacéau, the company behind vitaminwater founded by J. Darius Bikoff, and when Coca-Cola bought Glacéau for $4.1 billion in 2007, that stake was reported to be worth an enormous windfall.
That is the model: believe in the formula enough to own part of it. It's exactly how I think about Zero Hunger Water® now.
Curtis kicked off my vitaminwater chapter — and Kelly Clarkson wrapped it up. I met Kelly after Curtis, and together we shaped the pink formula and the vitaminschool contest that gave away another $100,000. Two artists, two formulas, one very long-running idea: what you drink matters as much as what you eat.
Photo: Jorge Cruise with Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson.