YouSaid · the spoken record

Manoj Bhargava

lines on the record: 47
first: 2017-03-13
most recent: 2017-03-13
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Well first use your common sense. Do not use MBA speak. Second, you have to be totally determined. I hate the word passionate because You get hit in the face a few times. Passion seems to fade. Determination means basically your face hits the floor 20 times you get up 21 times. You just get up every time, no matter what happens, you get up and do it again. If you have those two, and the third thing you need is a sense of urgency. Do it now. Don't wait. Don't delay. If you have those three things, those are all you need.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To me, what's exciting is to see, for example, we gave these bicycles out as a test. And there was a widow with three little kids. And, I mean, she was busy all day with the kids. So now with the lights in her house, she's able to sew till midnight. And that gets her five bucks a day. And with that, she feeds her family. They even have money for school. I mean, that's a thrill”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I've found out that the bottom third of the world doesn't even have electricity. You know what I mean? Do you know what it would be like to just at the end of the day, after six or seven o'clock, to just sit there in the dark? You can't do anything, it's more than a billion people. So I created this thing called the invention shop. And we've created equipment to go into these houses. It's really cheap that'll give them electricity. It's actually a hybrid bicycle. You pedal for an hour and you'll have electricity for a day.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not a whole lot. I mean, basically, you know, I get up in the morning and pour myself some cereal. Go to work. I do have the most expensive hobby in the world, which is to work for the people that don't have much. So, no, believe me, that's a really expensive hobby.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. Everybody else does. Why, you know, in order to make a good worthwhile life, You have to have the confidence. The only way you can have confidence is to do it yourself. So to make children miserable is not, I think, the job of parents. And actually, I mean, I was lucky because he said, great. I don't want anything. And so he kind of grew up as a Cheapskate. He's the cheapest guy I know.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Basically, there's an old saying that if you raise your child to be useless, why give him money? And if you raise your child to be useful, why does he need money?”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You have signed the giving pledge, which means you promised to give away, is it 99% of your wealth, is that right? And so 1% will be left. And you have a child. I mean, are you going to make sure that your son will have a life of comfort? Or are you basically saying, nope, you're not getting anything?”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, not really. I think one of the traits that you have to have to be an entrepreneur is to be able to take the heat of failing. Because, I mean, there were so many projects I tried that people used to ask me. I said, how do you get up and do it again? So I said, look, I fall so many times. I've got pavement marks on my face. So what? Just get up again and do it again. And I went through probably 20 different products, big failures, little failures. And if you can't do that, then you should just go work in a large company.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“While there's also the other part, you still have to have some skill and some resources. You have to still get it in front of people. I mean, the start of a successful product is the product has to be great. That's just the start. But then there's the second part. The second part is you have to understand the distribution systems. You have to understand how to get it out there and you have to work at it. Like I said, you have to do everything else at that point right. Both the great product and that comes along, then you have a success. If you don't have a great product, you could do everything right and you'll still fail.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, whenever people ask me what product are you like, I said, look, we're WD40. It's not a category. We own that category. We're the guys.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Everybody came in and said, oh, we can do this. You know, Coke came in with a product that was a shot. Pepsi, Red Bull Monster. They all came in with shots, you know, with two ounce bottles. And certainly they have better distribution muscle than we have, and they have more resources than we have. And so people tried, and they even came in at a lesser price than us. When they all came in, actually our market share dipped from about 93% down to 67% And everybody tried their product. However, the one thing they all forgot was you have to have a great product.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, and again, we do sell a bunch, but if we sold it to everybody that needed it, we would be 20 times our size.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's different kinds of normal. So if you're working two jobs, if you're driving truck, if If you're on Wall Street and working 16 hour days, if you're in Los Angeles on a movie set, all of those guys work really long hours At that point, it's really not a choice. It's like, okay, I got to survive somehow. There's just enormous number of people that looked at it and didn't sort of believe the media hype. But you're right. The bottle makes it, and because it's up front, people look at it and say, oh, I don't know. I don't know if I should try it.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's in there, but nobody can find it. So there's so many different issues that happen in the beginning that you have to sort of just get through. I mean, it's like business. Business is one of those things. You have to do everything right and then you have to get lucky. I mean, anybody says that luck is not part of it is just arrogant.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's all kinds of interesting problems. You have to advertise, and yet it's not everywhere. So if you advertise, nobody can find it. We'd get complaints. They're like, I don't know where it is. And then you go to, you know, let's say you put it in a drugstore and you say, okay, you can find it at this drugstore. And then the customer goes there and there's nobody there that knows where it is. Can't find it.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just people tried it word of mouth. There were a lot of exercise people that buy it GNC and GNC has very limited customer base. And so for them to be doing 10,000 a week was astounding. And so then we went to the drug companies. We went to RydAid and Walgreens. And then now we're pretty much everywhere.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, no, no, not at all. No, not at all. Because first week, I mean, you know, nothing sells that great. So, six months later, we just waited and sold GNC only. And at the end of that six months, it was selling ten thousand bottles a week.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, not really. I mean, I didn't advertise at all The first week it sold only 200 bottles. Which was horrible. Yeah. And this is a thousand stores.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right at the cash register. And it just belonged there. You could tell it just looked that way that it should be there. And it was small.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think one of the great parts is not having a background in the industry because those who have great backgrounds in the industry always think it takes forever. Always slow things down, so it turns out GNC always is looking for new products because once the product gets mass, GNC is sort of out of it because if it's in Walmart and everybody else, nobody's going to buy it at GNC.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“While we went to the largest vitamin store, which is DNC, And so we went to them and they said, okay, sure. We'll keep it.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I didn't pay attention to the advertising guys who said, oh no, it's the branding, it's the imaging. You know, you should name it zip or zap or something, you know? I said, no, no, no. I don't care. To me, I understand function, and that's what we're going to do. So we named it Five Hour Energy. It's not a very clever name because my thought was that you have less than half a second for the consumer to either buy it or not buy it. You have to communicate during that half second. What are you? What do you do? What are you about? And so we named it five hour energy.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it took less than six months You know, we tried the product, had it tested, had a bunch of people take it. So then we find a bottler and we say, okay, you make these things. Had a design guy who designed the label and so on. And then off we went. We made the first batch. Functionally, it was great, but it tasted horrible.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I thought about it and I said, look, if I make another drink, first of all, I got to fight for space in the cooler. against Red Bull Monster. I could also fight Coke Pepsi and Budweiser. So you're pretty much dead if you want to try that. And so I said, okay. And the second thing that came to my mind was, well, if I'm tired, why am I thirsty also? I mean, it'd be like Tylenol selling 16 ounce bottles of Tylenol. I mean, no, I just want to do it quick. I don't want to drink this whole thing. And at two ounces, it's really not a drink. It's a delivery system.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so, what we created was something that had really not much to do with energy. But it had everything to do with focus. I mean, the first thing I do is, I mean, unfortunately, everybody laughs at me in the company as well, is I try everything on me. Because if I'm not going to take it, then I'm not going to expect anybody else to. So I tried it on me and see if it actually does what it's supposed to do and it does give. Better focus, better clarity. Every product we make, or I may get involved in, if I can't use it, if my family doesn't use it, I don't want to do it because then you're just a con men. You're just selling people stuff you don't use.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, no, obviously I still had a company, and so we had labs and so on. What I did wasn't really rocket science. People always ask you, oh, did you have a science background? Did you have a background in nutrition? Yeah. No, that only messes you up further. It doesn't really help you at all. Because most inventions have been made by people who didn't have a background in whatever they were inventing. If you look at throughout history, the great stuff was made by people who didn't follow the rules of the experts. Experts are great for telling you what you shouldn't do, and for that they're useful. But what you should do, they don't have a clue.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, when they list the ingredients, they don't tell you how much of what? So you have to figure that out. So I said, ah, you know, how hard can it be? I'll figure it out.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I kind of looked at it and said, okay, I should be able to figure out very quickly. So yeah, I looked at the label and I said, okay, this is a good starting point.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was a big drink, it was a 16 ounce drink. And it was amazing for the next hours and hours. I was just felt great. So I thought, okay, I could sell this. So I went back to them, and these are science guys, PhDs, and so on. And I'm just a lowly business guy. So they just basically sell get lost.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Actually, the other way around, I went to the trade show to see if I could find something that I can buy or license. Right. So I went there and it turned out I had a meeting with these guys that had some products. So after the meeting I left and then it was like two in the afternoon. I thought, oh my God, I got meetings till 10 at night. You know, I'm not going to survive. I'm tired already. So then they had some energy something. So I said, you know, I went back to them. I said, you know, you said you had energy product. Can I get some? So they gave me a little bit. And my God, I took it and I said, whoa, this is amazing.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, so after my retirement, I thought, okay, what do I do now? And so I thought the only way to have residual income, in other words, ongoing income, is to have something that you own. Right. You can either find an invention or I can invent something. Otherwise, you don't have a business. So I think there's two ways to do it, whether it's invent it yourself or the second is to find it. So I started a company that looked for great technologies worldwide in the chemical area. And we got thousands of submissions from PhDs all over the world. And then eventually what happened is we've found this technology. I found it in a natural products trade show.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, I kind of retired from it first. I said, okay, I've done this already. All right, I got to go do something else. So I left town.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I was involved in it for about seven years, and we grew it from basically from zero to about, I think, when I left, it was 23 million in sales.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just a bunch of common sense stuff. You know, you look at, all right, where are we spending money and why are we spending that much money? Like I said, it's just common sense. You say, okay, I spent $10,000 on this. Well, why? Is it making anything? No, then cut it out.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, you just look at it and say, okay, you know, I don't know this stuff. I don't know how to go and make the plastic itself, but I know what it cost. I can figure that out. You cut away that stuff, which is losing money. And all of a sudden you're making it. So this is what turnaround guys do. It's not rocket science. But if you use common sense, you're in great shape. If you use experts, you're in so much trouble.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the end, I called it Prime PVC. While their biggest product was chair straps, you know, the kind that our outdoor furniture, you know, the straps? Yes, yep, yep, yep, yep.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, but business is really, like most things, it's just about really about common sense. And we bought it for under liquidation value. So the bank financed the whole thing. And it was losing money. And I looked at it and I said, okay, I can fix it.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I guess my thought process at that time was that I need to probably earn some money so I can support all the work that is being done in India. And then I bought a business that was going under.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh yeah, a lot of work. It was really tough discipline. I mean, because you were never off, ever. Day and night, you're never off.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No doubt about it. That was actually my true education. It was sort of an education on what is life, how to live, and how to live is so fundamental because it affects how you do business, how you do interaction, how you do everything, but also how to look at some things in a very fundamental way. Most of us tend to just assume things, whatever our parents taught us, whatever society taught us. Well, all of that was taken away. Start from scratch. And that's a perspective, actually, that takes years. And then you look at things differently.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I went to a bunch of places all over the place, but certainly a lot of places in India. and found something which was really valuable. I practiced that for a lot of years. And that's pretty much all I'm going to say about that.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, they were not happy for sure. They were like, What are you doing? Of course, I pretended I'm just taking a year off”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I mean, I was obviously honest about it. And I said, look, this is great, but this isn't, I mean, you go to college for really one purpose. I know fancy people have different reasons like broaden your mind. Mostly everybody goes to college to get a better job. That's why you really go. So I really wasn't interested in the trappings of a better job. So I said, I don't need this. This doesn't make any sense. So I said, I got to find something better. And so after I finished the first year and I left.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, there was a lot of, I don't know if it's a profit because we worked 11 hours a day, five, six days a week, all summer for $500. So I wouldn't say it was an incredible amount of profit there.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I got a job to clean houses in the ghetto in Philadelphia. These were either abandoned houses or houses that were being built. So I hired somebody, some other kid, and we used to go and clean the houses, throw everything on the truck, go to the dump site, and try to dump this thing, which of course the dump doesn't work very well either. So we had to get on the top of the truck and push everything, jump up and down, and try to shove it down. Wow. It's probably the toughest job I've ever had.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was the worst daunt truck in the history of humankind. It cost me $350, so it was pretty beat up. It leaked every fluid possible, water, oil, gas, transmission fluid.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, they were somewhere, I think, sort of the knockoff market became like 300 to 400 of them. Everybody came in and said, oh, we can do this. Coke, Pepsi, Red Bull Monster. When they all came in, actually our market share dipped from about 93% down to 67%. However, the one thing they all forgot was you have to have a great product.”
2017-03-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · 5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT