“You can tell a lot about a fellow’s character by whether he picks out all of one color or just grabs a handful”
Ronald Reagan
Why Ronald Regan had Jellybeans
Ronald Reagan took up eating jellybeans to give up his pipe-smoking addiction, and this small decision caused many interesting ripple effects.
Firstly, a small Oakland based company called Goelitz Candy Company started supplying Ronald Regan with jellybeans when he was the Governor of California. The company wasn’t making its ties to Reagan publicly known, but then a Times reporter snapped a photo of Reagan eating jellybeans with the Jelly Belly logo clearly in the shot.
This small candy company was moving along steadily for a little over 150 years, and then suddenly they explode onto the US American mainstream. Their profits double year over year and they have to invest in new manufacturing facilities to cut down their 77 weeks behind the production schedule.
Jelly Belly eventually shipped three and a half tons of jellybeans to Reagan’s inauguration and supplied President Reagan with jellybeans his entire eight-year presidency. With this help from the Reagan office, Jelly Belly is still a household name today.
Lessons in Career Growth
The entrepreneurship and career lessons here are:
- To do the work ahead of time: Jelly Belly having its delicious Jelly Bean process done.
2. Seize an opportunity for potential success: supplying the popular governor with an alternative to counter his smoking addiction.
3. Use that initial opportunity to generate sustainable success: supplying the White House for eight years, and capturing the attention of the American people.
This part of the story is a good reminder to continually develop skills and seize opportunities when they come our way, even if we aren’t 100% ready for them. We can always develop into the role.
Lessons in Character
The second interesting point relates to the quote at the top.
“You can tell a lot about a fellow’s character by whether he picks out all of one color or just grabs a handful”.
Ronald Regan
This can be interpreted in many ways with different connotations. If someone grabs just all of one color you could call them picky, or they know what they like, or risk-averse, or commanding.
This relates to the fact that at a meeting with the President of the United States, the jellybean flavor you eat is a small, tertiary issue. So, if someone is taking the time to pick out each flavor they like, it means they are very detail-oriented.
In conversations about how the American Government should run, these people will be very particular about all of the small details that pertain to the argument. If they knick-pick their Jellybeans, they will most likely knick-pick the issue at hand.
If someone grabs just a handful, it could mean they acknowledge there are more important issues at hand, and they would prefer to focus on that. Perhaps, they may even want to see the bigger picture with the end goal in mind, which would require a different tactic to talk with them.
Reflection
This raises an interesting reflection point. What kind of jellybean eater are you?
Personally, I have my favorites – taking a moment here to praise Toasted Marshmallow and Very Cherry. With that acknowledgment in mind, if I was meeting with the President, I would focus on grabbing a handful and moving on – the jelly bean flavor doesn’t matter too much.
However, you know I would look first to see where the highest concentration of flavors I like is located and grab out of that pile – making the most of my handful for my favorite flavors!
Action item
How would you interpret Ronald Reagan’s Jellybean quote? What kind of Jellybean eater are you? Take 5 minutes today to reflect on these questions.
