Joker

Naturally, I’m a little tired of writing about marketing, but I still love to write. So this Friday, I’m telling a story instead of my usual carefully disguised Global Media Assets propaganda.

Everything I’m about to share is 100% true... and although a little crazy, I feel like this is what can happen when you have absolutely no plan.

It was June 9th, 2023—my 23rd birthday. I found myself landing in Madrid, fresh off a flight from Marbella. But the day had started much earlier, at the Spanish/UK border in Gibraltar. I crossed legally, but not without apprehension—Gibraltar has, allegedly, the least restrictive immigration controls. You see, just 90 days earlier, I’d been banned from the EU for 90 days. Working between Spain and the U.S., I had fumbled my visa process and, in trying to fix it, got kicked out of the country.

Getting back to Spain was, without a doubt, the most stressful, nerve-shredding experience of my life. I flew to London to regroup, then to Gibraltar, where I spent a couple of days plotting my return before finally touching down in Madrid. It took me seven days to get from Denver to Madrid—not because of the logistics, but because I couldn’t wait to return while simultaneously dreading what I had to face when I did return. For more than one reason I was trapped in a net-negative position in Spain, and something had to change.

Seven days of anxiety culminated at my birthday dinner—a gathering of traveling friends, work colleagues, and some of the people closest to me. On any other night, this would have been perfect: a warm summer evening in the heart of Spain, which at the time Madrid had my whole heart. However, the work I was doing had become a source of misery, forcing me into dishonesty and pushing me to betray my core values. I was drowning in depression and anxiety.

I won’t detail the exact events that led up to this, but at some point during that night, I broke. I returned to my apartment, where I’d been living and working for the past year, and decided enough was enough. I packed whatever I could, hailed a taxi to the airport, and by 4 a.m., I was in Terminal 1, buying a ticket for the first flight out: Belgrade, Serbia. As the plane taxied down the runway, I quit my job via email and frantically Googled everything I could about Belgrade.

It was June 10th, 2023, and, as many of my friends in Colorado will remember, the Denver Nuggets were playing in the NBA Finals. Their star player, a 3-time MVP, was a Serbian local. On a whim, I commented on the Denver Nuggets’ Instagram, “HEY SERBIA. I am flying to Belgrade to watch the finals with you, anyone have a place I can stay??” To my surprise, someone replied—Nikola Matic, who would soon become a great friend.

After getting robbed by a taxi driver, spending a night in a hostel full of cats, and climbing Serbia’s tallest mountain, I finally met Nikola in person. He took me under his wing, showing me around Krusevac, sharing Rakia, and letting me crash at his place. On the way back to the airport, we stopped at a small gas station. Out front, a round glass drink fridge caught my eye—the kind you might see in an old-timey movie. Inside were “Joker Guaranas,” a Serbian energy drink made by Knjaz Milos, with Nikola Jokic’s signature and logo plastered across the can. It was an eire feeling at first, as I held the can I had a faint glimpse into the possibility of delivering these to my friends in Denver. However, I was immediately brought down to earth with the reality that "No way in hell has no one thought of this, or there must be a legal issue, or... wtf."

Well for the next year, Nikola and I worked tirelessly to bring Joker Guarana to the U.S. For a handful of hilarious reasons, no one had imported this drink to our markets, regardless of the massive potential.

Exactly one year later, on June 11th, 2024, our first shipment of Joker Guarana left Krusevac, Serbia, bound for Denver, Colorado. – And now, it has arrived.