And a dash of sugar. Im ali velshi in washington, d. C. And this is real money. This is real money coming to you from washington, d. C. You remain the most important part of the show. Tell me whats on your mind. Russian president Vladimir Putin and chinese president signed an historic International Deal in shanghai valued at 400 billion. China commits to buy russian natural gas for 30 years to power its growing economy. The worlds second largest after the United States. Todays deal connects russias northeast t through siberia. Todays deal has huge implications for u. S. Engagement in the world. Now in a stroke of a pen today russia got some strategic space to breathe and its confrontation with the west in ukraine. This weekend vote necessary ukraine go to the polls to elect new leaders. At the same time pro russian separatist agitate for secession in the east. Right now threequarters of russias exports go to europe through ukraine. The good nick news helps putins standing at home as russia continues to slide into a recession. Todays deal improves chinas president in asia. Its no coincidence that china sees its more of a threat and sees it as a threat with with japan and philippines, u. S. Allies. While a Major Energy Deal between russia and china makes perfect business sense to both countries, dont kid yourself. This deal is about much more than business. Few are more qualified to comment on todays chinarussia deal and what it means for u. S. Policy than former National Security adviser Samuel Sandy Berger he is now chair of the albright stone bridge group here in washington, d. C. Good to see you. Good to be here. Lets talk about this gas deal, first of all. On one level it makes a lot of sense. Russia has ample gas. China is going around the world looking for energy where it can find it, but as i implied there is more than politics here. These are two major powers pushing back against the United States and the west right now. This has to be seen as a marriage of converging interest, not enduring love. The sinosoviet relationship is a troubled one over the years. They have fought wars, their borders are quite unstable, but circumstances now make the deal right. Putin has wanted this deal for a very long time as an Eastern Market for his energy. I subject when the price is revealed china got a good deal. Well see here. Does this hurt the west, particularly the u. S. Trying to impose greater sanctions on russia because of its incursions into ukraine now that he has breathing room . He knows somewhere that gas can be sold. I think both sides, both parties seek a strategic advantage. Putin wants a little elbow room to the east as he gets squeezed on the west. I think china wants a bit of push back against the United States as they look at this rebalancing and pivot as a sign that were trying to contain china. But i wouldnt overread it. On putins side he still needs the european market. None of this oil is available. Its in the ground. He needs to build the pipeline and he needs to get it to china. He still needs the european market. This is not going to ease his problem on the european front if he continues to be aggressive in what he does with ukraine. It might buy him more diplomatic support from china but there is not much that china can do to help him. On the chinese size they obviously see this pivot, the rebalancing to asia, but the pivot has always had two elements. Its a rebalancing in two ways. Its a rebalancing from the middle east to asia, but its a balance within asia that i think the administration has been pretty clear about. The balance between our other friends in asia and the u. S. China relationship. And the u. S. China relationship does not shrink. It gets better and better. Its still the most important bilateral relationship in the world. There was a deal between the bank in russia and the bank in china to settle transactions in rubl es or yen. Is that convenient . Is that an important shift away from the dollar as the World Reserve currency . I dont think so. Its insignificant in financial or economic terms. The brits have riled with the currency being in dollar. The chinese have. But contracts are all in dollars dollars. I dont think well see in any near term an shift. The chinese are troubled by the fact that they have trillions of dollars. Theyre not interested in anything that devalues the dollar. Not in the short term. Over the long term i think they would like to see more of a currency but thats over the horizon. Ultimately, this energy deal between russia and china, this currency settlement deal between russia and china, if youre in the white house, you have to watch this, would you be more alarmed if youre in the white house watching all of this and say, what should be our reaction . No, you have to watch this very carefully, but you still have to be focused on two things. I would still be focused on what is russia going to do in the ukraine. Thats still a very dangerous situation. If they continue to disrupt things in ukraine, if they try to stop this election we may have to go to another level of sanctions. No one is talking about nuclear power, no one is talking about it, but there is a ceiling. Reporter if we went to another level of sanctions it would have an impact on the global economy. Thats one danger. On the other side obviously the u. S. China relationship continues to be extraordinarily important relationship. Its a delicate relationship. My own view of this relationship is there are so many dimensions to it that no single dimension now can tear it down. Are we allies . Are we adversaries . My phrase is its too big to fail, and we have to manage it very carefully. Thank you very much for being with us. Yes. My next guest says you may bang for your buck by pumping up the middle class. Plus a comeback story about an underdog american city. After years of flight middle class families are slowly returning to philly. This doesnt match the story we have of a hollowed out philadelphia. Its anything but. There are probably certain areas that are hollowed out but i guarantee theyre being gentrified as we speak. Rockys middle class story continues. Keep it here. Al Jazeera America presents the system with Joe Berlinger mandatory minimums are routinely used to coerce plea bargains mandatory minimums the whole goal is to reduce gun crime, now weve got people saying this isnt fair. Does the punishment always fit the crime . Had the person that murdered our daughter got the mandatory minimum, he wouldnt have been out. The system have been out. The system with Joe Burlinger the Performance Review. Have been out. The system with Joe Burlinger that corporate trial by fire when every slacker gets his due. And yet, theres someone around the office who hasnt had a Performance Review in a while. Someone whose poor performance is slowing down the entire organization. Im looking at you phone company dsl. Check your speed. See how fast your internet can be. Switch now and add voice and tv for 34. 90. Comcast business built for business. Were following the stories of people who have died in the desert the borderland memorial day marathon no ones prepared for this journey experience al Jazeera Americas critically acclaimed original series from the beginning experiencing it has changed me completely follow the journey as six americans face the immigration debate up close and personal. Its heartbreaking. Im the enemy. Im really pissed off. All of these people shouldnt be dead. Its insane. The borderland memorial day marathon only at al Jazeera America protesters demanding higher minimum wages took the fight to mcdonalds headquarters. Police arrested some of them for trespassing. Activists flooded around the headquarters theyre fighting for wages of 15 an hour. Thats double the federal minimum wage of 7. 25 an hour. The average wage for mcdonalds workers is 9 an hour. That means half earns more and half earns a less. Well, stagnant wage growth has been weighing on american households and the economys recovery not just at lower income levels. Median house income is now 53,000 a year, thats 4,000 lower than it was before the recession began in 2008. Its 2,000 lower than it was when the recover reagan in june of 2009. Economist Stephen Moore said that the real problem for u. S. Growth is not a flat minimum wage but a declining middle class paycheck. Steve with the think tank heritage foundation. Welcome. Its great to be back in washington. Youre not saying dont worry about the minimum wage. Youre saying increasing ma minimum wage will hit the middle class harder. Well, making a slightly different argument that i think the minimum wage is a die version. The truth is 95 of americans make more than the minimum wage. The real issue that we should be talking about in this country, and let me go back to the minimum wage for a minute. The truth is most people who make the minimum wage, not all but most, its a first or second job. Younger people, a lot of teenagers, those are not the people economically we should worry about. Were not worried about people earning that in the beginning right. We should be worried about the middle class. There is angst and anxiety about the numbers you just showed us. They still have not recovered from the recession. Theyre 4,000 behind. We talk about the middle class a lot on this show. You road an oped with senator rand paul. You talked about the minimum wage and middle class workers. The problem with the minimum wage that has got everyone ignited, its not that first jobs, but its those who are much later in their career. People are doing jobs and it doesnt seem fair that you cant earn a living wage working as an airport baggage. There is no recovery. Thats the point that rand and i are making. If you want the high wage jobs back. Thats what i want. I want americans to be the highest paid workers in the world. We have to bring jobs back, make the economy more dynamic. Maybe doing more in the energy industry. Those are some of the highest paying jobs. But my concern for the minimum wage, if we can go back to that for a minute. Most people watching this show are people like myself. I was earning 2. 50 an hour, but that first job is important because then you get your second job and third job and learn job skills. People under the age of 21, 22, i wonder if you should agree with me, we should have a training wage or teenage wage. I think thats what happens is when youre 50. Right, the bill that the president is talking about does not have that teenage wage. That will take a lot of people out of the workforce entirely. Now back to the middle class. Is this wage stagnation . You look at wages in the United States. They have gone up. The pile of money paid to the pile of americans is bigger than it was. The problem is the way the economy bu bifurcates, theyre not sharing in that growth. Thats new, by the way. There is a mythology, the president said this has been going on for decades. Thats not true. We started to separate in we started to separate in 1970. Not really. Thats where i would disagree with you. If you look at the 1990s, the middle class did pretty well. We had upward mobility. That seems to have stalled in the last ten years or so. Median wages have been flat. We can give you a graphic to show you this, but youve seen upper class wages, the top 20 have grown in a way we would all like. Thats true but its misleading. In the United States we have a lot of immigrants and we plenish people a replenish at the bottom. So if you look at families over time and say how are they doing five or ten years later we do have a lot of mobility. Thats slowed down a little bit. Weve seen a study by harvard and stanford saying that upward mobility in the United States now lags canada and australia and other places. Other places for whatever reason your dream of being able to move up that ladder, this is what i worried about in the middle class. Me, too. This dream is being diminished. You talk about your story at 2. 50 and hour, a family in Small Business but you lived the American Dream. I did. I wonder if its wage stagnation. That study that youre referring to, i have some problems with it, but the whole story of the American Dream is that anyone can start with meager means and rise up. The big problem right now is the people on the bottom 20 , ali, theyre having a hard time moving out of that, this permanent poverty class. That has a lot of factors behind that. The education system, the welfare system, all of these things. Anyone who works a fulltime job youre going to be surprised when i say this. If you work a fulltime job in this country, you got kids, you shouldnt be living in poverty. I dont think the minimum wage is the best way to solve that. Earned a income. Some kind of worker credit so the government will supplement your income if youre working. Working is key. When you talk about that bottom 20 half of them dont have anybody working in the household. If no one is working, you wont be able to climb out. Youre at the heritage foundation. Youve influence politics for decades in this country. And we are coming up to a Midterm Election where we need solutions, countered the ones the president has if you dont like them but they sound Like Solutions as opposed to were not going to worry about this bottom 20 , we need the dream more than we need the facts. We need people to believe that they can keep on moving. Will we hear that from conservatives . This is why rand paul and i wrote this piece. Its not enough to criticize the president s ideas. I dont agree with most of his ideas but the republicans have to be a solutionoriented party, and they have to speak to the middle class. Saying look, we have solutions for you that will help you rise up. Ill go back to the energy revolution. I think its crazy why not build the keystone pipeline. Why not continue to develop our resources in the country. Thats just one example. Do you think its going to be built . I think its a nobrainer. Its not just keystone. We have pipelines all over. We already have them. There was a big story that i that did not get enough attention. The deal between china and russia, theyre going to be building this huge pipeline. We were just to sandy berg er about it. The coauthor of a book that you need to read regardless of what your political stripes are. Its just a good book. In the movies rocky balboa was the gritty, determined underdog who refused to give up. That describes philadelphia middle class families who endured through decades of decline. This particular area that im in right now were tripled. Thats 300 increase. Ill have more on these challenges and hopes for the future as my series on rockys middle class continues. And the worlds biggest election. Well get insight on indias new leader Narendra Modi from investigating a dark side of the law they dont have the money to puchace their freedom. For some. Crime does pay. The bail bond industry has been good to me. Ill make a chunk of change off the crime. Fault lines. Al Jazeera Americas hard hitting. Theyre locking the door. Ground breaking. We have to get out of here. Truth seeking. Award winning, investigative, documentary series. Chasing bail only on al Jazeera America on techknow. Im at the National Wind institute, where they can create tornados. A greater understanding. We know how to design for the wind speeds, now we design for. Avoiding future tragedies i want a shelter in every school. Techknow every saturday, go where science, meets humanity. This is some of the best driving ive ever done, even though i cant see. Techknow is there an enviromental urgency . Only on al Jazeera America all right, we have spent the last couple of days telling you about the new face of philadelphias middle class. It is smaller than it was 40 years ago, but its better educated and more diverse. The middle class in philadelphia has finally stabilized. Big question is how do you expand a crucial core group of a citys residents when the city itself is struggling on so many fronts. For a city so celebrated philadelphia still has many hurdles. Reporter ask the average middle class resident living in the suburbs of it philadelphia theyll say youre crazy to live downtown. Bad schools, high taxes. When you look at how philadelphia fares on poverty and crime it ranks monk the worst lingering at the bottom of the list with cities like detroit and baltimore. Drive through parts of philadelphia and you might think that youre in detroit. Vast blight. The hollowing. Phillys middle class is no more evident in parts of West Philadelphia or lower philadelphia once bustling middle class communities. The exodus of 400,000 middle class residents is clear. But they didnt go far. Economies have grown significantly over the past four years. Their success has come at the expense of philadelphia. Reporter there are vibrant parts of the city. Now comes the task of luric bag the middle class people back to a city thats starting to stabilize. Gentrification and a flush of jobs from universities like penn, temple and drexel are beginning to show the beginnings of a new middle class. My house is the first house on the corner. Reporter long time owner of victors cafe in philadelphia. He took me on a tour of his neighborhood and said gentrification is happening quickly, and theres money to be made. So this doesnt match the story that we have of a hallowed out philadelphia. Its anything but. There are probably certain parts of the city that are hollowed out, but i guarantee theyre being gentrified right now. People are buying them up because people with do it. Reporter the city has decided to reassess its property taxes which for long time homeowners in the neighborhood could be a real problem. Gregs property tax has gone through the roof, so to speak. This particular area that im in right now were tripled 300 increase. But its not just property tax that is struggling the middle class. They have the second highest tax burden in the country second only to bridgeport, connecticut in. Its just part of the tax structure driving people from the center or from the city of philadelphia out to the suburbs because it is an enormous burden on many households. Reporter the key to seeding the middle class is this revitalize and they will come. It is about supporting Public Safety initiatives but its also about a waterfront. People will hear announcements how we further development the waterfront of the city of philadelphia. What im doing, what were doing is creating the infrastructure, changing the culture and investing in areas where we need that support to create a di veers, strong economy, jobs for people who want to be here, and an environment that says this is an honest government. This is quality of life that i want to have for my children and my families. I want to move my business here. Were lowering the tax burden for start ups and existing businesses in philadelphia creating a Better Business environment. Reporter larry studied this change and report on the middle class for the Pew Charitable trusts. What is your sense having studied the trajectory for philadelphia at this point . I think it remains to be seen. Philadelphia as story was pretty much managing decline. Now it looks like maybe philadelphia is not doomed to manage the decline. We consider that a promising but fragile goal. The mayor said revitalize and they will come. What do they have to do to attract people back to philadelphia. Joining me is roberta grass, author of several books on the renewal of cities, most recently battle for gotham, roberta, good to see you here. The battle between robert moses and james brings in differing views of what makes a city successful. But you say a good city cannot be attractive to the middle class without great Public Education and great public transit, both which philadelphia struggles with. Thats true, but it also requires the appeal of affordable housing. One of the things that philadelphia has in great numbers is vacant preworld war ii housing, which needs new owners. The reality is that what people are looking for is an affordable place to live, be able to send their kids to a public or charter school, and be able to get to work without being dependent on a car. Now philadelphia has spent a lot of money federal money in tearing down these neighborhoods with the mistaken idea in a lot of shrinking cities that demolishing blighted neighborhoods will help bring back a city. But it only helps the process of blight continue. It doesnt do anything positive. And the important thing is to create programs that make these homes available. The kind of homes that were once occupied, the traditional turn of the century preworld war ii housing, and there are ways to do this. There are ways of autopsyin auctioning them for a dollar a year. On the condition that the occupants bring them up to code and have them occupied like detroit is doing. Exactly. They almost pressure the federal government to let the money that is available to them for demolition be used instead for renovation. This is one of the cruel ironies. The money that theyre all wanting to have because its available, that money is only available for demolition. This is nuts. Its tearing down viable structures that need to be renovated, can be renovated at a better cost than building new by people who are willing to do the hard work themselves if you give them the opportunity. Let me ask you this, roberta, for those of my viewers who have read jane jacobs. Its not always the best use of land to demolish something and then put the most economically viable or most profitable thing on that land. Philadelphia does bifurcate. There are areas in philadelphia that look like its the finest city in america. And then there are other areas where nothing happens. This is a very familiar story. If you go back to the 1973 1970s in the books that ive written, thats when the turning point came away from the robert moses demolition at all costs, clear the neighborhoods, build new Public Housing , new highways, and basically hollowing out the city. The turn around started when people organically started moving back to neighborhoods, rebuilding those neighborhoods, defying the expertise of all the people who said the other way was the better way. This was when the jane jacobs approach took hold in a new way, and today we hear too much of the rhetoric and programming that we heard in an earlier time. The big projects, philadelphias water front may be fine, but its not going to bring back the middle class. And the big projects never live up to the expectations that they set for us, and the smaller projects, the jane jacobs approach always lives beyond its expectation. This is where the thinking at the top of our city governments across the country needs to change. You roberta, if you go in parts of downtown philly there is excellent housing being occupied by people who are priced out of new york or like the fact that philadelphia has a little more grit than new york does. I commute regularly between the two cities, which is a shorter commute than some of my colleagues who commute from connecticut. Its happening. You dont see it in a big way because these things start small, and i cant emphasize that enough. It is still below the radar of the experts. But you talk to some people in new york, and youll find that theyre all looking at philly as the sixth borough. People are moving there looking for the affordable opportunity for their business or their home. The cost in new york is so excessive that philadelphia, not a Long Distance away, and a shorter commute than a lot of distance connecticut and long island suburbs, is getting a lot of interest from new yorkers as well as it should be. And some of the neighborhoods that you referred to earlier in New Philadelphia that are gentry flying, what happens is that the gentrification pressure spreads out. As some neighborhoods get gentrified and more expensive, the nearby neighborhoods are still cheap and they will get the spill over. Thats how it happens. Observation proves that. Its not theory. Its observation, and its not what the experts usually tell you. Roberta, it breaks my heart that im not in new york because i would continue this conversation after the show. What a pleasure to have you here. Roberta gratz, author of many great books. Thank you. Ill be talking about Narendra Modi and what his probusiness agenda could mean for america and the globe. Coming up, the sweet smell of success. Every saturday join us for exclusive, revealing, and surprising talks with the most interesting people of our time. Abe foxman well fight for your right to be a bigot. If you are a bigot, youre gonna pay a price. Holocaust survivor and head of the antdefamation league. Theres an awful lot of hatred floating out there. And ending discrimination. As long as the children arent educated, its gonna maintain. Talk to al jazeera only on al Jazeera America these protestors have decided that today they will be arrested these people have chased a president from power, theyve torn down a state. Whats clear is that people dont just need protection, they need assistance. India is looking ahead to the inauguration of Narendra Modi next monday after his Party Formerly elected him Prime Minister yesterday. Modi heads bjp party, which swept to elections last week. Modi is headed to pakistan for the inauguration. It is seen as an olive branch. No word if pakistani president my sharif will attend. India is growing 5 a year compared to 10 in 2010. To succeed modi will have to make good on his promise to eliminate red tape to boost domestic and Foreign Investment in the country. There is a lot of at stake. A recent note citigroup called india the land of 1. 2 billion opportunities. A reference to the countrys fast growing population. Check out this graphic, and you begin to get the extent of the opportunity. Fewer than 5 of indians own a car or a laptop. Fewer than 15 have refrigerat refrigerators or washing machines, and fewer than half own a tv or bicycle. Thats a big, underserved market. No he expects modi does an enter job of adopting ideas than his predecessors and he joins me now from new york. Thank you for joining us. Good to see you, ali. Good to see you again. You say that modi and his corp is very much like an american politician with his feet planted on the ground. But there are real issues in india. Those reforms you were involved in, its just harder to do business in india than it is to do business in some places. Do you think hell do it in indian . I think hell intensify those reforms. I call it a second revolution in the making of the first one in 1991, as you correctly pointed out. That led to very rapid growth. But why . Because india started opening up in a very big way. Narendra modi was chief minister and reelected three times, he actually expanded to open markets. He also brought in a lot of Foreign Investment creating a onestop shopping for foreign investors. There is no antiForeign Investment or trade, and you describe him in your little an as probusiness. Its correct to say that hes not antibusiness because hes more than probusiness. He really has changed even social indicators dramatically because growth leads poor people out of poverty by giving them opportunities. Hes done that beautifully. The issue in much of issue and some of it are federal problems, but there is a legal problem issue where you try to do business there, you get stuck in the courts and it can take many years. The courts are backlogged. Weve seen examples of this. There are restrictions and there are politicians in india who are still antibusiness and antiForeign Investment. Can one man have effect over that . I think so. Hes charismatic now. Hes got a good track record. He has made it work and openness to trade and Foreign Investment are scalable. Nothing succeeds like success. I think hes got it made, and hes a guy with a lot of common sense. I think hell be able to negotiate this very nicely in my opinion. Now that youre saying all these good things, my ancestry is from there. So maybe ive got a few of these genes myself. But let me tell you, Narendra Modi was not able to come to the United States. Now it seems that he will be, but he was certainly suspected bby some not governing effective effectively during riots. His party has not always been that includesive. It was a Hindu National party. You were invited to receive an award but he refused to go. You didnt like him very much. No, but over the years he has been investigated by huge numbers of people, the Central Government has been against him , but found nothing against him. This time around when i invited him to go. I said how can you call yourself a liberal. Just because you assume someone is guilty if there is no evidence against him. So i did go, and i found on social indicators loculate ar like like literacy and nutrition, it was a place to start. I thought here is a guy i can really admire. I did go. And after that, he entered the national elections, and hes incredibly charismatic. When i talked with him, there was nothing that i really teach him because everything i suggested to him he had already tried and had done. He was extremely tough minded about it. Hes very different than a standard indian politician. He wants results. So this is what i want to know from you, then. India has a population that is growing at a rate faster than china. India by many estimates by the middle of this century be the most populous country in the world. Economic growth has slowed down but estimates are that it will pick up and grow faster. Give me your prognosis economically and cha do they need to change most urgently. I think india is posed to return to an 8 to 9 growth rate. It was literally cut in half, and thats what got the current government dismissed. While government was slowing down, the growth, revenue intake was going down. And they were spending more and more money on social spending. Turning everything into rights. Rights to food. Rights to shelter. If you wont spend the money the Supreme Court will tell you you got to spend the money because its a right. The result was massive expenditure unmet by growth and revenue. I think thats something that he has got to address right away. To try to slow down the social spending. Its not that he doesnt believe in it. He does believe in it. But we have the exact problem of the american republicans. To stop spending, and push from the monitoring side. In india we had spending, and the Central Bank Governor , a brilliant economist, was to break it. Its a very interesting contrast with the United States as well. Well follow it closely, and hopefully with you. Its good to talk to you. Dont be a stranger to our show. You know where to find us. Absolutely. Its been great being on your show. Professor at columbia university. Well, the sweet taste of success. Turning a passion for tea into a 100 million brand. Well talk to the cofounder of honest tea of how he did it and what advice he has for other Small Businesses. Weekday mornings on al Jazeera America we do have breaking news this morning. Start your day with in depth coverage from around the world. First hand reporting from across the country and real news keeping you up to date. The big stories of the day, from around the world. These people need help, this is were the worst of the attack took place. And throughout the morning, get a global perspective on the news. The life of doha. This is the International News hour. An informed look on the nights events, a smarter start to your day. Mornings on al Jazeera America is justice really for all . Like many successful entrepreneurs, seth goldman started his company from his home in maryland. Since he was making bottled tea it was in the kitchen, not the garage. 16 years later honest team is the top selling organning tea company. Imagine the challenge of bottling tea in a billion dollar bench market already overflowing with options, and lets make it harder by producing only organic and fair trade products. But thats what seth goldman and barry did. Honest tea grew out of a simple idea. In the crowded market of bottled beverages there were few options between unsweetened and too sweet. Seth goldman with an mba reached out to his former yale business professor to help create a bottled ice tee that is just a tad sweet with ideals and principles that barry taught in his glass. The missiondriven business in a profitdriven world. This helped him navigate building a business, marketing, distribution, to take honest tea to its first buyers which became whole foods markets. To cocacola, in 2008 the beverage giant bought 40 of honest tea for 40 million. Three years later it purchased the entire operation. Today the simple concept generates 100 million in sales. Sweet, but not too sweet. Honest tea is an independent unit of coke and its founders say coke has not interfered with its way of doing business. The Company Story is told in their best selling book. Mission in a bottle. Seth is a founder and teo of honest tea. I love that. Seth, good to see you. You have not lost your enthusiasm for this. Neither has barry. Weve had him on the show before. You guys are inventers, and corporate merge has not stolen that from you . No, its still a Mission Driven business, and this is an important mission. Were talking about addressing the health of the American Population bringing more Sustainable Agriculture to the developing world and Economic Opportunities and those issues are needed. Yet there are some people, like ben and jerrys, that you sold out. I look at it cleanly. I look at our impact. Are we reaching people . Before coke invested we were in 15,000 stores. Now were in over 100,000 stores. Were providing lower calorie drinks to more people and before coke invested we were buying 80,000 pounds of organi organic ingredients, and now were buying over 100,000 points. If selling out means buying more. Then ill sell out. Barry was using the idea of sugar in a beverage as marginal utility, an economic concept. The first spoonful of sugar does this, the second does this, and then you stop losing the benefit. How did that make a business. The market was filled with all those folks who had sweetened it up to five or six tea spoons. No one stopped at one or two. We knew that this was a differentiation strategy. We had a reason to get to the shelf. Then the challenge was to make sure that the consumer, number one, understood that, and number two, accepted that. It was not always that easy. People didnt necessarily take to it right away. The reason why i wanted to have you here. I think entrepreneurs should read your book. You guys made the same mistakes everybody makes. But its great to look at it as a success story, but it did not look all that successful. Someone read it and said this felt like a horror story because we were always on the brink of going out of business. What universal lessons or anecdotes can be transferred to someone else . Really understand what business youre in. We thought we were in production company, you know, bottling, we thought we were in distribution. No, we were building a brand. Building a brand that connected people to the natural world. You know, not even necessarily a tea company. Really understand what is the essence of what youre building. Not all the other businessrelated issues. Its so easy to get off track. You have this great tea and then someone said, it would be great if you make cranberry juice, and ill buy a thousand cases. Or if you have a bottling plant you can bottle other things, too. They want the cash flow. They want a buyer. No one wants to say no to someone who says i want to buy your product. The right area that we said no to was the right one. Someone said you should make it sweeter, you would sell more. In the short term that would have been true, but it would have diluted what we were trying to build. What did you say to one of the Biggest Companies in the world, you can buy it and you can pay us a lot of money, but you have to stick to what it is that we do. What i appreciate is they understood. Thats where the value was. We can make a sweet tea, but if we want to market a less sweet tea, thats not in our playbook. We need to stay with it and help be the ones who continue to build it. That was a wonderful case that we both greed thats what happened. You got into a scrape about the labeling of the high fructose corn syrup. Obviously cocacola uses that produc ingredient in their products. And we had a message that we do not make our product with it. To their credit, they honored the agreement. Simple matter. You have the bottle in your hand. The bottle design and the label design. Let me see that for a second. This is something that you all struggled with. You wanted a square bottle. Bottle. Its one of these deals you idealize the perfect product. We wanted a square bottle, front and back label. Then we realized that the square bottle would cost a lot more, cause production delays, and then we decided, you know, what this round bottle works just find. We appreciate your story and barrys story and the book is great. You are starting a Business People should take a look at it. Thank you. All right, its a tough economy, and restaurants are cooking up very weird ways to draw you in. You would not believe some of the gimmicks they concocted. Ill tell you one place where my hairstyle is very much in style. Now inroducing, the new al jazeea america mobile news app. Get our exclusive in depth, reporting when you want it. A global perspective wherever you are. The major headlines in context. Mashable says. Youll never miss the latest news they will continue looking for suvivors. The potential for Energy Production is huge. No noise, no clutter, just real reporting. The new al Jazeera America mobile app, available for your apple and android mobile device. Download it now start with one issue education. Gun control. The gap between rich and poor. Job creation. Climate change. Tax policy. The economy. Iran. Healthcare. Ad guests on all sides of the debate. This is a right we should all have. Its just the way it is. Theres something seriously wrong. Theres been acrimony. The conservative ideal. Its an urgent need. And a host willing to ask the tough questions how do you explain it to yourself . And youll get. The inside story ray suarez hosts inside story weekdays at 5 eastern only on al Jazeera America tgi fridays which has the same owner for 40 years is being sold to private investors. Ditto for red lobster casual dining industry is in a slump as customer habits change and promotions that once attracted customers seem a little tired. If restaurant want an edge they need to come up with perks that are shiny and new. Take the restaurant in calgary, canada, which gave a 5 discount to a family for their well behaved kids. It was even itemized on the bill. In the United Kingdom , take snapshots of your meal and you may get free food. Thats part of the Marketing Campaign from birdseye. I like this one. Discounts to bald men. Baldness is a delicate issue in japan and hes trying to change that. Baldness is a mans badge of honor. So i say to my friends embrace your baldness, and make room for me at the bar the next time i visit tokyo. Thats our show for the day. Im ali velshi in washington. Thanks for joining us. A busy market in china becomes the scene of a deadly attack. Dozens are killed. Hello you are watching al jazeera live from our headquarters in doha. Also ahead young voters in egypt refuse to take part in president ial election. Why they say the whole process lacks legitimacy. Dozens of people entrusted to keep children safe have been arrested in the u. S. For sharing child