109 - Dietrich Mateschitz - How RedBull Gives You Wings

Nolan Wilson (0:00)

Dietrich Mateschitz was 41 years old when he started RedBull. 35 years later, at the time of his passing, he was worth over $27 billion, and RedBull was recognized. This little can was recognized by 90% of the global population. He is one of the most effective marketers and unique and enigmatic founders of our time, entrepreneurs of our time. And RedBull is one of the most successful brands of all time. What started as an idea that came to Mateschitz while he was looking at a Japanese newspaper on a work trip, while he was a marketing director selling deodorant, has taken the world by storm. RedBull has created sports, created sporting events, created an entire industry, really. They've taken over sports, like F1, for example, and they're one of the most recognized brands in the world. In this episode, we're going to study the man behind RedBull, Dietrich Mateschitz, how he founded it, what made him tick, how he lived and operated as a marketer and a founder, and RedBull, the actual brand and the marketing principles that they employed to literally sell billions and billions and billions and billions of cans of this little energy drink across the world. Let's dive in.

But believing in something and convincing the world to believe in it with you are two very different things. That's where Dietrich Mateschitz excelled. He took a strange, ultracaffeinated tonic from Thailand, reimagined it, and gave it a story and identity of purpose. He turned a drink into a lifestyle, a can into a mindset. Instead of competing with Coca-Cola and Pepsi in the trenches of traditional advertising, he created his own battlefield. Extreme sports, high-energy events, content that made people feel alive. He made Red Bull something people wanted to be a part of, not just something to consume. And that's branding at its highest level. That is an excerpt from the forward of the book we're going to go over today about the Red Bull story and its founder, Dietrich Mateschitz.

It's an incredible story. Dietrich is a very fascinating guy. Red Bull's story is absolutely incredible. There's so much to be learned about branding. This is going to be an interesting episode because it's really, there's not much information about Dietrich or Red Bull out there. They're very, very private company. They hold a lot of things to their chest. And that is because Dietrich Mateschitz, the founder who has since passed away, he was the same way. He was extremely mysterious. Somebody later at the end of the book said that they've never seen the internet so wiped clean of a person. He was very private, very kept to himself, intentional about interviews and things like that. And we'll get into him. RedBull is very much the same. So this book was kind of pieced together by the author. Let's see, Wolfgang Führerweger, Führerweger, however you say that. I guess that's Austrian or German, but he did a good job putting putting together as many pieces of the founding of the RedBull brand, what their intent, their strategies and tactics that we know of. And then also he dives into Dietrich as a person. What we'll do to start is to just kind of give you a rundown of the highlights, and then we're going to dive in a little deeper. But first, since this is about RedBull, just crack one open in honor of the episode, a little RedBull on a RedBull episode. Dietrich Mateschitz was born in Austria in, I can't remember the name, but it's the same area, same region, very rural region that Arnold Schwarzenegger was born, around the same time, near the end of World War II. Very moderate circumstances. Parents were not rich by any means. He studied marketing in college, and it took him 10 years, which I find to be very funny, and we'll get into a little bit of his personality and why that was the case. He worked at Unilever, which is a huge multinational conglomerate. He worked his way up. He was very competent in marketing. He always had a knack for it, so he worked his way up to a pretty high role in that company selling soaps and deodorants and stuff for a subsidiary of Unilever, I believe. This caused him to travel a lot, all over the world, and that's very important because his travels are ultimately what led him to the idea of RedBull. We'll get into the details, but he was on a trip and he saw this thing in the newspaper, and he was like, what's this? Then he looked into it, and then he tried it, and he's like, holy crap, this is the best thing ever, and then he ends up building the brand around it. But let's get into it. That's a little bit of the highlights of his life. First thing I want to note, as I mentioned, he worked at Unilever for a long time, like 10, 15 years. He was 38 years old when he came across the idea. I believe the company was founded when he was 41 years old. So think about that. This is a lesson that I've talked about many times, but 41 years old, he died worth like $40 billion, one of the wealthiest people in the world. Sam Walton was 44 when he started Walmart. James Dyson was 44 when he started Dyson Vacuums. He's now worth $15 billion. Sam Walton's family is worth $430. Estee Lauder was 38 when she founded Estee Lauder. Jim Sinegal of Costco founded Costco at 46 Ray Kroc founded McDonald's at 52 Harland Sanders founded KFC at 62 The lessons go on and on and on. There's so many examples of this, of people not coming into their own or not finding what it is their life's mission is or what they're going to dedicate the vast majority of the back end of their life to until they're 40, 50 years old. I think that's an important lesson because persistence is the most important virtue. Because it's the ability to stay in the game, to not give up, to have faith in the plan until the idea comes to you. It's very common in today's world, I think, for young men in particular, with social media and all the comparison and all the stuff that we have access to now, to see these young dudes, it's not bad, but you see these young guys doing very, very, very well. I mean, you've got the Snapchat founders, Mark Zuckerberg, all these young multi-deck of billionaires, and even guys on smaller scales that are multi-millionaires in their teens, in early 20s, in mid 20s, in early 30s. It's not always the case. And just because you have not found the idea, you have not created the wealth or provided the service, or built the value yet, if you stay in the game, it is entirely possible. And those are just a few examples of people who stay in the game and reap some serious rewards. So, the note here that I have next is world changing. I wrote life changing, and then I scratched that life and said world changing idea from a newspaper article. This is a profound story because it just shows, God will speak to you in very weird ways, very unique ways. You will glean or gain insight into a vision from very unique, interesting things that may seem trivial in the moment, but they can lead to life changing journeys. I believe Charlie Munger said something like, the key is to take a very simple idea very seriously, something like that. But to the book, one article in particular caught their attention. The magazine presented a ranking of Japan's top taxpayers. The managers found this quite amusing, but Mateschitz remained serious. He noticed that the top spot wasn't occupied by a global corporation like Sony or Toyota, but rather by an entirely unknown industrial firm called Taisho Pharmaceuticals.