Thanks to his father, he was working for himself in a very real respect. As David Greising put it in I’d Like The World to Buy a Coke: The Life and Leadership of Roberto Goizueta, “… before Goizueta began work, his father had one last request. He wanted Roberto to buy shares of stock in Coca-Cola. ‘You shouldn’t work for someone else, you should work for yourself,’ his father said. He suggested that Roberto should buy 100 shares of Coca-Cola, and lent him the $8,000 he would need for the purchase. The shares were placed in a custodial account in New York, where they remained until his death.” Adjusted for inflation, that’s roughly $58,300 in today’s terms. Before home ownership, before establishing credit, before a fancy car or furniture, the Goizueta family was primarily interested in ownership – whether that meant the acquisition of a company outright, holding a minority stake in a private business, or purchasing shares through the stock market, they understood that the easiest way to amass substantial wealth is through business ownership.
By the time he had rising to the office of Chairman and CEO of the Coca-Cola Company, Roberto Goizueta owned more than 9 million shares of Coca-Cola common stock, and he had never sold one of those original shares. It was practically religious scripture that he wanted to own as much of the company as he could.
