5-Hour Energy: Manoj Bhargava

After living as a monk in India and running a plastics company in Florida, Manoj Bhargava decided to launch something new: a one-shot energy drink in a bright, battery-shaped bottle. Today, 5-Hour ENERGY is one of the most recognizable energy drinks in the world. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Guy Raz?

  Were people trying to copy the concept?

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Yes, there were somewhere, I think, sort of the knockoff market became like sort of 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.

• 0:37Guy Raz?

  From NPR, it's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 0:49Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and on today's show, how a former Hindu monk turned a tiny bottle of caffeine and vitamins into a billion-dollar business.

• 1:05Guy Raz?

  OK, full disclosure, I have, on the rare occasion, swallowed the contents of a five-hour energy bottle. I mean, I host two podcasts, and sometimes I've just got to get stuff done late at night. And I bet a lot of you have bought a bottle of this stuff at the airport or pulled up to a gas station late at night and added it to your pile of Twix and Doritos and Diet Coke, right? So how does it work? Well, I don't exactly know. I mean, caffeine is magic, right? But I can tell you, this little bottle made Manoj Bhargava a billionaire. And when he turned 14, this is in the late 1960s, Manoj's dad decided to come to the

• 1:49Guy Raz?

  US from India to pursue a degree. So the whole family packed up and moved to a tiny apartment in West Philadelphia and started life all over again. And they didn't have a whole lot of money, so every kid in the family had to work after school. And when Manoj was old enough to get a driver's license, he scraped together enough money to buy a dump truck.

• 2:12Speaker 01

  It was the worst dump 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.

• 2:26Guy Raz?

  Wow, sounds like a nice truck.

• 2:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I would park it in the evening and it would, everything would leak out by the end of the morning.

• 2:35Guy Raz?

  So, wait, why did you buy the dump truck?

• 2:37Speaker 01

  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 didn'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.

• 3:05Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 3:06Speaker 01

  It was probably the toughest job I've ever had.

• 3:08Guy Raz?

  So how much money did you make doing this? Like, was it really worth the money?

• 3:13Speaker 01

  Well, I made $500 for the summer and then I sold the truck to somebody for $350. So I got all my money out of the truck.

• 3:22Guy Raz?

  But you turned a profit.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  Well, 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.

• 3:33Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 3:34Speaker 01

  So I wouldn't say it was incredible amounts of profit there.

• 3:37Guy Raz?

  Okay, so you do this, I guess, you know, as you are thinking about college and then, and then did you apply? You applied to college?

• 3:46Speaker 01

  Well, I applied to a few schools and ended up at Princeton.

• 3:50Guy Raz?

  That's pretty good.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was okay, you know. I mean, I think my father was happier than I was.

• 3:56Guy Raz?

  You weren't happy?

• 3:57Speaker 01

  Well, I, I mean, I was obviously honest, I mean, 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. And so I really wasn't interested in the trappings of a better job. So I said, I don't, I don't need this. This doesn't make any sense. So I said, I gotta find something better. And so after I finished the first year and I left.

• 4:31Guy Raz?

  You, you dropped out? I mean, didn't your parents freak out?

• 4:34Speaker 01

  Pretty much.

• 4:35Guy Raz?

  Yeah. I would imagine. What did they say to you?

• 4:38Speaker 01

  You know, they were not happy, for sure. They were like, what are you doing? Of course, I, I pretended I'm just taking a year off.

• 4:44Guy Raz?

  So, so what did you, like, what'd you do? Did you go back to Philadelphia?

• 4:50Speaker 01

  No, actually, for the next several years, I, for lack of a better word, I'd say I became a monk, kind of a monk.

• 5:00Guy Raz?

  Like a monk in a monastery?

• 5:02Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 5:02Guy Raz?

  Huh.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  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, that's pretty much all I'm gonna say about that.

• 5:19Guy Raz?

  Yeah. I don't wanna pry too much into the, into the details of it. I just wanna, I mean, it sounds like that had such a profound effect on who you became that period of time.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  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, 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.

• 5:52Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 5:52Speaker 01

  You know, whatever our parents taught us, whatever our society taught us. Well, all of that was taken away. Start from scratch. And that's a perspective, actually, that takes years. And then, then you look at things differently.

• 6:07Guy Raz?

  Did you work hard during that time? Did you do labor?

• 6:09Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Lot of work. It was really tough discipline. I mean, because you were never off, ever. Day and night, you're never off.

• 6:17Guy Raz?

  Yeah. How long were you away from the US?

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Oh, for a lot of years. A lot of time. But, anyway, let's move on.

• 6:26Guy Raz?

  Okay, no worries. But what did you do when you got back to the US?

• 6:30Speaker 01

  Well, I guess my thought process at that time was that, you know, I need to probably earn some money so I can support all the work that is being done, you know, in India. And then I bought a business that was going under.

• 6:48Guy Raz?

  It was a, what kind of business was it?

• 6:49Speaker 01

  It was a plastics business.

• 6:51Guy Raz?

  Wow. Did you, did you know anything about plastics?

• 6:54Speaker 01

  No, but, look, business is really, like most things. It's just about, really about common sense.

• 7:00Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 7:00Speaker 01

  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.

• 7:09Guy Raz?

  So what was the business called?

• 7:11Speaker 01

  In the end, I called it Prime PVC. Well, their biggest product was chair straps. You know, the kind that are outdoor furniture? You know, the straps?

• 7:19Guy Raz?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  So they, they invented the strap.

• 7:22Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  They made that, and then they got competition, and then they got into trouble.

• 7:27Guy Raz?

  Now, how did you even begin to think that this was what you could do? Like, because I'm, you had this incredible experience in India, but I'm assuming you did not have any background in plastics?

• 7:39Speaker 01

  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 costs. I can figure that out. You cut away that stuff, which is losing money. All of a sudden, you're making it.

• 7:53Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  So it's, you know, 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.

• 8:03Guy Raz?

  Yeah. How long did it take for you to turn that company around to make it profitable?

• 8:09Speaker 01

  Oh, that was 30 days.

• 8:11Guy Raz?

  30 days? Just by cutting costs and cutting the production time and?

• 8:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, 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?

• 8:26Speaker 01

  Again, like I said, it's just common sense. You say, OK, I spent $10,000 on this. Well, why? Is it making anything? No, then cut it out.

• 8:34Guy Raz?

  So how long were you running this company?

• 8:37Speaker 01

  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.

• 8:48Guy Raz?

  Wow. So you sold that company?

• 8:51Speaker 01

  Yes, I kind of retired from it first. I said, OK, I've done this already. All right, I gotta go do something else. So I left town.

• 8:59Guy Raz?

  So I'm assuming that when you sold this company, you were financially secure for the rest of your life?

• 9:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, pretty much.

• 9:13Guy Raz?

  OK, so how do you go from semi-retirement in the plastics industry to five-hour energy?

• 9:21Speaker 01

  OK, so after my retirement, I thought, OK, 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.

• 9:33Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 9:34Speaker 01

  You can either find an invention, or I can invent something. Otherwise, you don't have a business. So I thought, there's two ways to do it. One is to 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 found this technology. I found it in a natural products trade show.

• 10:04Guy Raz?

  Where was it?

• 10:05Speaker 01

  This was in California.

• 10:07Guy Raz?

  So you went to this trade show thinking, maybe I'll do something in the natural foods world?

• 10:12Speaker 01

  Well, actually, the other way around. I went to the trade show to see if I could find something that I could buy or license.

• 10:18Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 10:18Speaker 01

  So I went there, and it turned out, I had a meeting with these guys that had this, some products. So after the meeting, I left. And then it was like 2:00 in the afternoon. I thought, oh, my God, I got meetings till 10:00 at night. You know, I'm not going to survive. 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 you, can I get some? So they gave me a little bit and my God, it was, I took it and I said, whoa, this is amazing.

• 10:50Guy Raz?

  Would these were just people displaying a product at the trade show?

• 10:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 10:54Guy Raz?

  And it was an energy drink?

• 10:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was a big drink. It was a 16 ounce drink.

• 10:59Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  And it was amazing for the next, you know, hours and hours I was just felt great. So I thought, okay, I could sell this. So, so I went back to them and, and these are, you know, science guys, PhDs and so on. And I'm just a lowly business guy. So they just basically sell, get lost.

• 11:18Guy Raz?

  What did you say? You said to them, hey, I want to work with you guys. I want to license this thing. I want to buy this from you. And they said, no, we're not interested.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  Correct. So I, 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.

• 11:34Guy Raz?

  What was, what was on, what was in the drink?

• 11:37Speaker 01

  I mean, in, in, when they list the ingredients, they don't tell you how much of what.

• 11:40Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 11:40Speaker 01

  Right? So you have to figure that out. So I said, ah, you know, how hard can it be? I'll figure it out.

• 11:47Guy Raz?

  So, so you, you go back to where you live and you start to tinker with a recipe to try and recreate a version of this drink?

• 11:55Speaker 01

  Right. My thought was, you know, if these guys come up with this, I can do better than this.

• 11:59Guy Raz?

  Where, where were you doing this? In like a kitchen in your house?

• 12:03Speaker 01

  Well, no, we, we, obviously I still had a company and, and so we were, we had labs and so on. So what I did wasn't really rocket science. It's, it's, people always ask you, oh, did you have a science background? Did you have a background in nutrition?

• 12:15Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  No, that only, that only messes you up further. It doesn't really help you at all.

• 12:19Guy Raz?

  Okay.

• 12:20Speaker 01

  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, what you shouldn't do. And for that they're useful.

• 12:39Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 12:39Speaker 01

  But what you should do, they don't have a clue.

• 12:42Guy Raz?

  So what was some of the ingredients? Just, I'm just curious that they had that you were working on. What did, what were you putting together?

• 12:48Speaker 01

  Basically they were vitamins, amino acids. They're, they're, I mean, in layman terms, it would be vitamins for the brain.

• 12:55Guy Raz?

  Okay.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  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, unfortunately, everybody laughs at me in the company as well, is I try everything on me.

• 13:08Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  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 you better focus, better clarity. Every product we make, or I may get involved in, is 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 man. You're just selling people stuff you don't use.

• 13:35Guy Raz?

  I'm curious, because around this time, and this is the early 2000s, there were lots of energy drinks out there on the market, right? So how were you going to differentiate your product from others that were already out there?

• 13:49Speaker 01

  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.

• 13:57Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 13:58Speaker 01

  Against Red Bull, Monster. And I got to also fight Coke, Pepsi, and Budweiser. So you're pretty much dead if you want to try that. And so I said, OK. 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 2 ounces, it's really not a drink. It's a delivery system.

• 14:26Guy Raz?

  So how did you take it from this thing in the lab to bottling it up and then trying to sell it to stores? How long did that process take?

• 14:34Speaker 01

  I think it took less than six months. We tried the product, had it tested, had a bunch of people take it. So then we find a bottler, and we say, OK, 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.

• 14:58Guy Raz?

  What did it taste like?

• 14:59Speaker 01

  Well, it tasted like cough syrup. Bad cough syrup. Not even good cough syrup. It was really bad.

• 15:08Guy Raz?

  In just a moment, how Manoj Bhargava turned that cough syrup into liquid gold. Stay with us. It's How I Built This from NPR.

• 15:33Guy Raz?

  It's How I Built This from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. First of all, isn't it totally nuts that the guy who invented Five Hour Energy sounds like he has never had a Five Hour Energy drink? I mean, talk about chilled out. Anyway, at this point, Manoj had a company and a product that he was still tweaking. And the only thing left was to come up with a name.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  You know, 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.

• 16:21Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  You have to communicate during that half second. What are you? You know, what do you do? What are you about? And so we named it Five Hour Energy.

• 16:30Guy Raz?

  So how did you even begin to sell the product? Where did you go initially?

• 16:34Speaker 01

  Well, we went to the largest vitamin store, which is GNC. And so we went to them and they said, OK, sure, we'll keep it.

• 16:43Guy Raz?

  Wait, how does that happen? I mean, the largest vitamin store in the country. You have no background in this industry. How did you even get into the door?

• 16:50Speaker 01

  Well, 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. They 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, you know, if it's in Walmart and everybody else, nobody's going to buy it at GNC.

• 17:15Guy Raz?

  So you pitched GNC, you went to their headquarters and pitched them on this and like gave them shots?

• 17:20Speaker 01

  Correct. And so they put them in a bunch of their stores.

• 17:25Guy Raz?

  Just like right at the cash register?

• 17:27Speaker 01

  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.

• 17:33Guy Raz?

  And when was this? This is around 2004, 2005?

• 17:35Speaker 01

  This is, this is '04.

• 17:37Guy Raz?

  2004, OK. And how did they, did they sell right away?

• 17:42Speaker 01

  No, not really. I mean, I didn't advertise at all. The first week, it sold only 200 bottles, which was horrible.

• 17:49Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  And this is 1,000 stores.

• 17:51Guy Raz?

  And are you thinking, maybe this is not going to work?

• 17:55Speaker 01

  No, not at all, not at all. This first week, I mean, you know, it's like, you know, nothing sells.

• 18:00Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 18:01Speaker 01

  That great. So six months later, we just waited and sold GNC only. And at the end of that six months, it was selling 10,000 bottles a week.

• 18:10Guy Raz?

  How did that happen?

• 18:12Speaker 01

  Just people tried it, word of mouth. There were a lot of exercise people that buy at GNC and GNC, you know, 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, you know, we went to Rite Aid and Walgreens. And then now we're, you know, pretty much everywhere.

• 18:35Guy Raz?

  How long did it take for Five Hour Energy to become profitable company? Was it in that first six months?

• 18:43Speaker 01

  No, no, no. It took a few years. It took two, three years because the first part is always the hardest.

• 18:50Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  There's all kinds of interesting problems, you know, you have to advertise and yet it's not everywhere. So if you advertise and nobody can find it, we'd get complaints that 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.

• 19:11Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 19:11Speaker 01

  It's in there, but nobody can find it. So there's just so many different issues that happen in the beginning that you have to, 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.

• 19:27Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 19:28Speaker 01

  I mean, anybody says that luck is not part of it is just arrogant.

• 19:35Guy Raz?

  Why do you think it took off? I mean, why do you think people bought it? Because it's this weird little bottle. I mean, I will admit to you, I've used it. I've used it before and it is, it does work. But it's this weird bottle and you think, oh, should I really be taking that? Five Hour Energy, it's probably not good for me. Like, what do you?

• 19:55Speaker 01

  I mean, definitely the media has, has sort of looked at it and said, oh, God, you know.

• 19:59Guy Raz?

  Not the media, just a normal person looking at it would say.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  There's different kinds of normal. So if you're working two jobs, if you're, if you're driving truck, if you're.

• 20:11Speaker 01

  If you're on Wall Street working, you know, 16-hour days, if you're in the, in, on, in Los Angeles on a movie set, all of those guys work really long hours.

• 20:19Guy Raz?

  Hmm.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  At that point, it's really not a choice. It's like, okay, I gotta survive somehow. You know what I mean? So there's, 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, I don't know. I don't, I don't know if I should try it.

• 20:38Guy Raz?

  It's like next to the Slim Jims.

• 20:39Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 20:40Guy Raz?

  You know, unlike the Lighters.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, and again, we do sell a bunch, but if we sold it to everybody that needed, we would be 20 times our size.

• 20:49Guy Raz?

  Uh, I'm, I'm curious about competitors. I mean, were, were people trying to, trying to copy the concept?

• 20:56Speaker 01

  Yes, there were somewhere, I think, sort of the knockoff market became like sort of three to 400 of them.

• 21:03Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 21:04Speaker 01

  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, 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%.

• 21:35Guy Raz?

  Hmm.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  And everybody, everybody tried their product.

• 21:37Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  However, the one thing they all forgot was you have to have a great product.

• 21:42Guy Raz?

  So your market share dropped to 67% once all these competitors start to come in?

• 21:47Speaker 01

  Correct. And now it's back up to 93%.

• 21:50Guy Raz?

  That's insane. I mean, there is nothing that has a 93% market share.

• 21:55Speaker 01

  Well, whenever people ask me, what product are you like? I said, look, we're, we're the, we're WD-40. You know, it's not a category. It's, we own that category. We, we kind of, we're, we're the guys.

• 22:08Guy Raz?

  Right. But there are lots of really great products out there. I mean, you yourself admit that when you tried that energy drink at that convention years earlier, that was a good product. But that never went anywhere, presumably.

• 22:21Speaker 01

  Well, there's also this, 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, you can have a... The start of a successful product is the product has to be great. Okay, 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. And if 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.

• 23:01Guy Raz?

  What sort of trait or personality trait that you do you have that enables you to do this, to have the confidence to believe it? I mean, were you just incredibly optimistic that this thing was going to work?

• 23:17Speaker 01

  No, not really. I think one of the traits that you have to have to be an entrepreneur is to be able to, you know, to take the heat of failing. Because, I mean, there were so many projects I tried that people used to ask me. And I said, "How do you get up and do it again?" So I said, "Look, I've fallen 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 know, you should best just go work in a large company.

• 24:02Guy Raz?

  You have signed the giving pledge, which means you promised to give away, is it 99% of your wealth? Is that right?

• 24:08Speaker 01

  Pretty much.

• 24:09Guy Raz?

  And so 1% will be left. And you have a child. I mean, are you going to, you know, make sure that your son is, you know, will have a life of comfort? Or are you basically saying, "Nope, you're not getting anything"?

• 24:23Speaker 01

  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?

• 24:34Guy Raz?

  So you expect your child to do it all on his own?

• 24:38Speaker 01

  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 your 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."

• 24:56Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 24:58Speaker 01

  And so he kind of grew up as a cheapskate. He's probably the cheapest guy I know.

• 25:08Guy Raz?

  How has becoming a very wealthy person changed you or your lifestyle?

• 25:13Speaker 01

  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 now, believe me, that's a really expensive hobby.

• 25:34Guy Raz?

  What do you mean?

• 25:35Speaker 01

  Well, I found out that the bottom third of the world doesn't even have electricity. You know, I mean, do you know what it would be like to just, at the end of the day, after 6:00 or 7:00 o'clock, to just sit there in the dark? You can't do anything, right? That's a billion, 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, 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. To me, what's exciting is to see, you know, for example, we gave these bicycles out as a test. And there was a widow with three little kids.

• 26:17Speaker 01

  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.

• 26:37Guy Raz?

  If somebody listening to this is trying, is thinking about starting a business, they have no money, no connections, just an idea, what is it that they have to do? What is, what is the one thing that they have to have or focus on?

• 26:52Speaker 01

  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 you, your face hits the floor 20 times, you get up 21 times. You know, 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.

• 27:33Guy Raz?

  Manoj Bhargava is still the CEO of Innovation Ventures, which makes Five Hour Energy. And despite his past life as a Hindu monk and his general chilled-out sensibility, Manoj does drink Five Hour Energy. He says about five bottles a week. I am assuming you do not drink it before bedtime?

• 27:52Speaker 01

  No, that would be dumb. That would be pretty dumb.

• 28:14Guy Raz?

  And please don't turn us off just yet. In a moment, we're going to hear from you about the things you guys are building.

• 28:23Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back. It's time now for How You Built That. And you know, we've been doing this feature for a while, and we've heard about all kinds of products you're making: snacks, clothing, bags, bikes, apps. But somehow, we have overlooked this very vital and growing sector.

• 28:44Guy Raz?

  Chickens.

• 28:45Speaker 02

  It's early in the morning and right now I just fed them. They're getting their morning breakfast.

• 28:51Guy Raz?

  This is Diane Twining of Dripping Springs, Texas, where she keeps nearly 300 chickens in her very large backyard.

• 29:00Guy Raz?

  Was that a pig? Anyway, she got her idea for a business about four years ago when she and her husband, Monty, were on a road trip. And at the time, he was in the construction business.

• 29:11Speaker 02

  We were just kind of lamenting how not fun the commercial construction industry was. And we were brainstorming different ideas. And I said, "You should build chicken coops," or "We should build chicken coops."

• 29:25Guy Raz?

  Now, back then, Diane only had a couple of chickens in her one coop out back. And she started to tell Monty all the ways that that coop could be better.

• 29:35Speaker 02

  And so I just said, "Okay, build me a chicken coop." And it has to have, you know, easy access doors. It has to be easy to clean. And I just said, "Don't build something ugly."

• 29:45Guy Raz?

  So Monty went to work building a coop that was not ugly.

• 29:50Speaker 02

  And I said, "Okay, that's cute."

• 29:51Guy Raz?

  It was a coop with a rounded roof, not too boxy, with clean, simple lines. And Diane and Monty thought, "Hey, you know, we could start selling these coops to other chicken keepers across the country." Because as the local food movement started to take hold all over the country, more and more people, even in cities, wanted chickens.

• 30:12Speaker 02

  You know, people like the idea of fresh eggs. Even though it's just one item on your breakfast plate, at least you know where it came from.

• 30:21Guy Raz?

  But of course, if you are raising a chicken in a city, that could really bug your neighbors, which, says Diane, is why you need a very classy-looking coop.

• 30:32Speaker 02

  So we use cedar wood, completely different wood than anybody selling at a big box store or something like that. When you look at one of our coops, you're seeing the grain of the wood. They're just very pretty.

• 30:48Guy Raz?

  Anyway, back when Diane and Monty started their business, Monty made 20 cedar wood coops to start with. And they put them up for sale on Craigslist on a Monday. And by Friday, they were completely sold out.

• 31:01Speaker 02

  Literally Friday night, we're out there with our car headlights shining into the shop with our kids helping us assemble all of these coops.

• 31:13Guy Raz?

  So they had a business. Diane and Monty built an 8,000-square-foot shop in their backyard to make more coops. And during their busy season, which is right now, they have 10 people working for them. And last year, they sold 1,700 coops, which is enough to keep the family and the chickens going. The only problem? The entire operation has become, I don't know, their obsession.

• 31:38Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh. We cannot switch off. I mean, we do sometimes talk about other things, but I would say that a good percentage of our time is spent talking about Urban Coop Company.

• 31:52Guy Raz?

  That's Urban Coop Company, founded by Diane Twining of Dripping Springs, Texas. To find out more, head to our Facebook page. Just search "How I Built This" on Facebook. And as always, we love to hear and to share your stories, especially when we can play animal sounds. So please keep them coming. Go to build.npr.org. That's build with a D, dot npr, dot org.

• 32:17Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks for listening to the show this week. If you want to find out more or listen to previous episodes, you can go to howibuiltthis.npr.org. Please also consider subscribing to our show on iTunes. And do us a favor, write us a review while you're there. You can also write directly to us at [email protected]. And if you want to send a tweet, it's at howibuiltthis. Our show was produced this week by Ramtin Arablouei, who also composed the music. Thanks also to Neva Grant, Sanaz Meshkhanpour, and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is Claire Breen. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 33:10Guy Raz?

  I still think that's a pig.

• 33:19Speaker 03

  Hey, everybody. I'm Kelly McEvers, host of NPR's Embedded. On March 9, we are back with our new episodes about police videos.

• 33:28Speaker 04

  What did he do to deserve to be killed that night and shot so many times?

• 33:33Speaker 05

  People see what they want to see. Almost no one can see those videos from a neutral perspective.

• 33:39Speaker 06

  I was thinking, see the gun, see the gun. Don't you kill him till you see the gun.

• 33:44Speaker 03

  Find Embedded on the NPR ONE app or at npr.org/podcasts.