Brian Dyson

Brian Dyson passed away this weekend. He was 90 years old and lived an incredible life.

Most of the business world knew him as a senior executive at The Coca-Cola Company. Born in Argentina, he took over Coca-Cola USA in 1978, when the business was under siege — the Pepsi Challenge was winning, share was slipping, the franchise model itself was under threat.

Over the decade that followed, Brian helped remake the entire Coca-Cola system: a new bottler contract, Diet Coke, the rise of Sprite, the New Coke storm and the triumphant return of Coca-Cola Classic, and the founding of Coca-Cola Enterprises, which he led as its first CEO. He set the table for one of the great growth runs in the company's storied history.

I first knew him as the man behind a metaphor that helped me reprioritize and focus on what matters most.

In a commencement speech at Georgia Tech in 1996, Brian shared this:

“Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling five balls. You name them — work, family, health, friends, and spirit. Work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it bounces back. But the other four are made of glass. Drop one and it will be scuffed, nicked, damaged, or shattered. It will never be the same.”

Do yourself a favor and read the whole speech. It’s about 1,600 words, it takes five minutes, and it’s better than almost anything else you’ll read this week.

At the height of the pandemic, I reorganized my entire life around those five balls and their relative fragility. That's how powerful and meaningful the metaphor is.

The 5 Balls of Life is the framework I share with my own teenage daughters, to help them think about finding a career, and a life, that they actually want. I reference it with our team at Big Green Egg too, hoping to give them clarity and a safe place to make decisions when the glass balls in their lives are at risk of shattering. Brian inspired me to start a weekend passion project to share the 5 Balls of Life more broadly, so we can all understand and apply his wisdom.

A couple of years ago, I took a chance and reached out to Brian through a mutual friend, Humberto García-Sjögrim. It was a long shot that I'd get to meet one of my intellectual heroes — but Brian generously agreed to sit down and talk about his life and his philosophy. Unhurried. A man who had run one of the largest enterprises on earth sat with me as if there were nowhere else he needed to be. It was a highlight of my life.

I have footage from that conversation I'm working to edit. I plan to share it, along with the passion project, this fall.

For now, this:

— Dan Gertsacov