Manoj Bhargava: 'Why Chasing Money Isn't the Answer and What Truly Matters in Business'

If I— if I have somebody in my company who wants to take risks, I say, "Oh no, no, go work somewhere else." There's only one thing you can do 8 hours a day, and that's work.

I mean, my friends were some of the richest people in the world, and they were a little bit— they weren't really together.

People ask me, "When do you want this?" and my usual answer is 3 o'clock.

Follow your dreams, but make sure it's the right dream. You know, if your dream is to be a serial killer, please don't do that.

If you're going to go out there and sell it, do you use it yourself? Does your family use it? And if they don't, why are you selling it?

If you aggravate, you gotta go. It's that simple.

There should be something to do that's useful. That's something that says, okay, I did something.

It's like anything else. If you ask a customer what they need, they'll give you the wrong answer. My first question usually is to an MBA, how are you going to get over it?

He's an Indian-American businessman and philanthropist. He's the founder and CEO of Innovations Ventures LLC. He has an estimated net worth of $1.5 billion. He's Manoj Bhargava. And here are his top 10 rules for success.

Somebody asked me, I think we were just having an interview, and somebody asked me, well, should we have risk takers? You know, entrepreneurs, risk takers. And I said, no, no, no, no, no. Entrepreneurs are not risk takers. You know, if, if, if I, if I have somebody in my company who wants to take risks, I say, oh no, no, go work somewhere else. You know, our job as entrepreneurs is to minimize risk.

To manage risk, to give it to somebody else, not take it.

If you want to take risks, go to Vegas. You know, it's a really simple concept. But if you tell people you should be risk takers, they go out there and just blow your money. I mean, that's— it's really dumb. Yeah. And again, like I said, you know, our other principle is please don't do dumb.

I think there's a misconception that if you're a billionaire, that must be— you must lights go out and your butler brings you tea in the tea garden or something. I get up, you know, I get ready, pour a bowl of cereal. What's your favorite cereal? I'm not gonna start with that. But, you know, I put the milk in, I eat the cereal, drive to work, and then I work like hell. I work hard if I can, you know, if there's work to be done, I'm doing it. And at the end of the day, I mean, it's really not that different. I mean, there's somebody who said there's only one There's only one thing you can do 8 hours a day, and that's work. And what if you enjoy your work? I mean, to me it's football, basketball, cricket all in one. Work is great fun.

And I'm, I kinda, we've made our business so that it is fun.

You know, everybody there enjoys it. And we have certain conditions in the company that if you don't enjoy it, go work somewhere else.

So why do you drop out of Princeton?

Well, I was—

first of all, I don't hate Princeton. That was a misrepresentation. It was a misrepresentation by somebody who went to the University of Pennsylvania.

Okay, so beyond the college rivalry or the school rivalry, why do you drop out?

Well, I mean, the Princetonian just interviewed me a few days ago, and I wanted to clear the air because I never said they were bad.

Yeah.

And the purpose really, to me, was, look, I got— it was great for a year. And they said, why a year? I said, look, it's the same reason why nobody stays for 5 years.

Why 5?

Why 4 years? I mean, it's an arbitrary number. I got what I needed out of Princeton in 1 year, and after that I didn't think it was useful. Partially because, look, you go to school and the primary reason is you want to make some money. You want to get a good job and you make some money. It wasn't important to me. I mean, I thought— I mean, my friends were some of the richest people in the world. And they were a little bit— they weren't really together, they were sort of messed up, a lot of them. And I thought, what is this? I'm trying to be like them? That makes no sense. So then I thought, okay, I don't need this, and let me find something that's more useful.

Planning is— I mean, it has to be related to something. In other words, if it's product, is it— so you have to look at it that way. We look at it simple. If a product idea comes in I can't plan for a product idea to come in that's slam dunk. If a product idea comes in, we're ready to go execute right now. And the way we do it is on the planning side of execution, you know, a bunch of stuff they say, well, this is gonna take 6 months. And I don't allow that because what people do is wait 5 months or 5 and a half months and then start. I want to know, people ask me, when, when do you want this? And my usual answer is 3 o'clock. And every day, my view is the next day, what can you do today? Do your maximum right now, today. And so unfortunately, some planning can actually go backwards because they say, well, you know, everybody else takes a year. How is that relevant? You know, to me it's like, no, no, 3 days, 4 days, let's go. So there's a lot of areas which planning is actually counterproductive.

The problem with everyone is they follow fashion, right? You do what's everybody, all your peers think it's cool, and things, you know, this is right now it's cool to start a business in Silicon Valley and get rich. That's the— when I was in the late '60s, early '70s, it was entirely the opposite. It was get out, drop out, do something else, right? So people tend to both have Both are really irrelevant, you know, in the sense that fashion isn't what should define your life. What everybody does, what everybody says shouldn't define life. The ideal thing is to do something that has value, right? People say follow your dreams. I think one time I gave a speech, I said, follow your dreams, but make sure it's the right dream. You know, if your dream is to be a serial killer, please don't do that, right? So it's sort of think Think with your head. Although I know movies say, no, think with your heart. No, think with your head. Do that which has strength, which has meaning. And if you do that which has meaning, your life is better.

Most businesses are the same. Whether you're selling energy products or any consumer products. If it's useful to people, the rest is just business. So if you find something or invent something that's really useful, At that point, it's really common. Whatever you're selling, the process is not that different. And our process is maybe a little bit different because we really don't have MBA-type processing. We basically— common sense. You know, we look at businesses really in a simple way. You make good stuff and you sell it. You know, instead of all the highfalutin words, which I really don't understand, like brand awareness and brand equity and, you know, all the fancy terminologies people use, that they don't have a product. So what we did was simply stick to fundamentals, which is you make a really good product, and 80% of marketing is making a really good product. And then you go out there, and if people like it, they agree with you, then they buy. Actually, you'll find most of the products that they say are good are marginal. Most of the folks that come up with products usually use some kind of a gimmick. In other words, gee, let's make it pink if it's for women, or let's make, you know, what's-his-name famous person endorse it. The products themselves are marginal, and then they say, well, no, it's a good product. Well, my question is, do you use it? If you're going to go out there and sell it, do you use it yourself? Does your family use it? And if they don't, why are you selling it? You know, so really you'll find most of the fellas that say we have great products, we didn't get success, is they really don't use the product. They think everybody else should, but not us. We're superior to our own product. So there's a compromise amongst people about the quality of what they sell. And quality is also a misunderstood. In other words, quality starts with— if the customer doesn't need it, it doesn't provide something that they're going to pay for. We have different technical terms. I mean, our technical terms are slam dunk. You know, everybody understands what that is. You got a slam dunk product or do you have a good product? For us, we get pitched several products a week. If it's a good product, we don't go go out there and sell it. It's got to be slam dunk. It's got to be where nobody will refuse it. And then you have a hard time with it. So the flaw is really they don't have good products. Definition of a good product is it will do well. Now, there's some amount of execution, but I would say that if you don't have a great product, any amount of execution is going to only buy you a little time. After that, After that, everybody will figure out that this is not that good and not buy it anymore.

We have what I call when I hire somebody or that's going to join our firm, we have what's called the prime directive, which is if any of you have ever seen Star Trek, there's a prime directive. And the prime directive in our company is no aggravation. Okay. Nobody gets to give us aggravation. Whether it's customers, vendors, employees. If you aggravate, you gotta go. It's that simple. Because, and it's really business because usually it's the 1%, you know, some customer that's got 1% of your business and he's driving you nuts and he's taking up 80% of your head. How is that business? So aggravation is the largest cost in business. To me, it's really simple. We live here at the work. If an employee is such that they're going to cause all kinds of havoc, they're going to aggravate, we need to go. One time, one of our senior guys yelled at a receptionist. So I called him in. I said, look, you can't yell at her. You can fire her. She's that bad, they need to go. But we live here. Don't mess up this place. And I've found that aggravation is if you avoid it, not only do you have fun, but it is, it's a great place to work and nobody quits. I mean, we can't get people to quit. We have basically, I mean, out of those 70 people, I think we lose about 1 a year and it's to a non-job. You know, it's like, okay, they don't wanna work anymore. They're going to 3 days a week or we have almost no turnover. Because there's no aggravation there. So there's huge benefits come from a simple concept.

Most of the people that watch this are relatively rich people, right? I mean, and most of them are going to earn a living. They'll eat, they'll live, you know, they'll be fine. Beyond that, there should be something to do that's useful, that's something that says Okay, I did something. I didn't just work on a door latch all my life or something. Not to say door latches are bad, I mean, I'm sure guys work on door latches and it's awesome, but at the end of your life you wanna say, did I do something of value? Or in the beginning or in the middle. If every day you go to work and it's like Office Space, where, yeah, do I care, does anybody care? If that's what it's gonna be, then get paid less. Do something useful. You're gonna be way better off. And chasing money, I never chase money. You know, people ask me, well, when did you decide to give it away?

I never, the problem is I never was interested in having toys, right?

But it's one of those, if you're trying, don't try, it happens. It's the cool factor, you said, right? It's sort of—

when I was young anyway, if you were trying to be cool, you weren't, right?

It's so— it's, it's sort of if you do that which has value, you're much better off.

The first step of thinking things through is to go to the customers, find out what they need. Don't just ask them. It's like anything else. If you ask a customer, ask what they need, they'll give you the wrong answer. You have to go there and really think through what happened, and then you'll see what's really needed is so obvious. We have— I mean, we have our own jargon to some extent. Like, for example, somebody comes to me with a project or a product that we're going to go sell, or some project. I ask them, is it slam dunk? You know, and no, it's really good. I said, no, no, is it slam dunk? So, but, but it really, it's a good product. And what it does is totally clarifies their mind that, oh no, it's not slam dunk. Then, then I say, well, why are we gonna do it? So our standards are high. We have these simple things which, which, uh, clarify the mind, not totally, you know, mess up your mind. Or have so much jargon that nobody knows what you're talking about, but yeah, you got all the right words like ecosystem, whatever. Uh, you know, everybody's got ecosystems here, you know, or, uh, you know, value propositions. No, no, no, guys, just good, sell good stuff to people who need it, you know? Uh, so all of that jargon, all it does is bury common sense. Uh, so the idea is that you get simple. So somebody asked me in the interview, I said, what does an entrepreneur really need? So I said, they only need two things, common sense and a sense of urgency. That's it. And they asked me, who should we learn this stuff from? And my answer was, from your mom. Because she's probably done more management than your MBA professor. She's got a budget. She's got all these kids running around, hard to manage. All of this thing has to be done every day, 7 days a week.

Now that's work.

That's hard work. That's learning on the job. And people say, well, she's just a homemaker. That's a lowly thing.

No, it's not.

That's great media. And people say, oh no, you're saying, well, women should be homemakers. No, no, that's the hardest work there is. It's the most talent. You need us, the guys go out there and work 8 hours. That any idiot can do that. So it's sort of thinking based on description. In other words, if you look at any word and you really think about it, then you understand it. Otherwise you just use these words that everybody uses and they think, okay, now this guy must know something after all, you know. He knows what an ecosystem is. So our approach to things, like I said, is different. You may agree with it. I'm sure I'm going to get some MBA professor to— I mean, one time the U of M, University of Michigan Ross School called me to speak. I said, you guys kidding? So I said, I think of MBAs, I think it's totally useless. So he said, no, no, come over. So I said, fine, that's what you want. So I went over there and kind of defined it. I said, look, I mean, I'm not saying that they don't teach anything of value. I mean, I think they teach this much that is useful, then teach this much that is useless, and then they teach this much that's harmful. So overall, you know, average is on the useless side. Because you come out of school and you actually think you know something. Really. You know, and that's dangerous because you really don't. So I never hire people out of fancy schools for that reason. My first question usually is to an MBA, how are you going to get over it? So, and I'm not I'm really not alone in this. The good guys I've met, the chief executives I've met of really large companies that are, you know, that don't— usually they get in front of podium and it's all PC lawyer, you know, lawyer-cleared stuff, so they don't say anything. But the good guys that I've met, they're all sick of MBAs, really. They're not really enamored of this whole thing because, you know, look, it's a simple thing. If you're going to learn plumbing, Go learn from a plumber that's actually seen a pipe, you know, has fixed a leak, not just written about pipes and lectured on pipes and researched pipes. It's, it's so— I'm not for theoretical plumbers.

Thank you so much for watching. I made this video because NickTheGreek82 ask me to. So if there's a famous entrepreneur that you want me to profile next, leave in the comments below and I'll see what I can do. I'd also love to know which of the top 10 rules was your favorite, had the biggest impact on you, and why. Leave it in the comments and I'm gonna join the discussion. Thank you so much for watching. Continue to believe, and I'll see you soon.