Rock once said to a tequila company... "I want 2/3 of your business to represent your brand"

They rejected him and it turned out to be a huge mistake after he went on to to found the $6bn Teremana Tequila

So I found out about this story while watching an Alex Harmozi video (link). And basically the tequila company that the Rock had approached with his offer was Alex’s friend.

Alex’s friend obviously thought that Rock’s proposal of taking 66% of his company just for adding his pretty face was absolutely ridiculous.

Especially since the company was quite big and doing well.

So instead the Rock said sayonara and started “Teremana Tequila”, which is now valued around the $6bn mark.

If the company had accepted the Rock’s offer, their 1/3 stake would have been worth ~$2bn today. Which is probably around 40x what it was worth at the time he made the offer.

40x return in 3 years? Who would have guessed?

About Teremana Tequila

The company announced in mid 2023 that they’d passed the million case mark in annual sales. And it was only founded in 2020.

This made it the fastest growing tequila of all time!

The Rock, of course, knows almost nothing about tequila. Rather he partnered with the Lopez family, which is one of the most established names in the tequila industry.

And so they came up with the taste and how to operationalize it all.

Its ‘super premium positioning’ ended up hitting the market just right and it blasted off right from the start.

Of course having Rock promote it constantly in all channels he appears on played a handy role.

Influencers in the old days were all about the ad dollars

The game has cardinally changed. Back 10-20 years ago the actors like the Rock were still all about the ad dollars.

It was fast cash. And a top actor could perhaps earn $10m or so.

I remember seeing in the 90’s and early 2000s on my visits to Japan.. faces like Harrison Ford representing all kinds of stuff.

It was good money. For the time.

Influencers these days are all about the equity!

Many folks say it was Micheal Jordan that changed the game with his Nike deal. He famously told the Nike execs (who were competing against Adidas for him)… “I want a piece of every shoe that is sold with my name on it for eternity.”

Nike was nothing at the time.

Much of the management team at Nike thought the deal was crazy. A first of its kind that would be a horrible mistake.

It ended up being the deal that made Nike the behemoth it is today.

And now…. everyone in Hollywood seems to have caught wind. They’re all about the equity because they know that they carry the power of ‘distribution’.

So yeah… maybe the Rock was a bit arrogant when he said… “Give me 2/3 of your biz because i’m the Goddamn Rock!”

But then again… who the hell argues with the Rock? :)