#333 Red Bull's Billionaire Maniac Founder: Dietrich Mateschitz

**David Senra** (0:00)
Okay, so I want to jump right into this episode, but I have two very special announcements to make. I'll do so at the end, so make sure that you stick around to the end of this podcast. I'll give you a sneak peek now. One has to do with the first ever in-person Founders Conference that is happening in 60 days. I'll tell you why I'm doing it, what it is, and how you can attend after this incredible story of The Red Bull Founder. I'll see you on the other side.
Dietrich Mateschitz is one of the most successful entrepreneurs of our age. A man who single-handedly changed the landscape of the beverage industry by creating not just a new brand, but a whole new category, the energy drink. He is the visionary who brought the world Red Bull. In return for his innovation, the world has made him very, very rich. Over the last few years, he was taking anywhere from 500 million to 800 million a year in annual dividends. And he had a net worth somewhere between 20 and $30 billion. Mateschitz also runs an efficient enterprise.
In 2010, Red Bull employed just 7, 758 people, which works out to more than 667, in revenue per person. This success is the realization of a business plan that eschews conventional advertising in favor of marketing through its own events, shows, sports teams and publications. Red Bull has produced its own TV programs, films, magazines, websites, and a steady diet of videos online featuring snowboarders, rally cars, surfers, cliff divers, and concerts, and a guy jumping from space.
Mateschitz calls the multimedia salt one of the most important line extensions so far. As a major content provider, it is our goal to communicate and distribute the world of Red Bull in all major media segments, from TV to print to new media. Red Bull also owns four soccer teams. They have a NASCAR team and two Formula One racing teams. He finances the annual $200 million cost of his F1 teams out of the company's healthy operating income. And this is what he said about that. In literal financial terms, our sports teams are not yet profitable, but in value terms, they are. The total editorial media value plus the media assets created around the teams, that's such a good insight, plus the media assets created around the teams are superior to pure advertising expenditures.
He then launches into a spiel that he's been delivering for the past 25 years. He explains that Red Bull is not just a drink, instead it's a philosophy, one seemingly derived from his own outlook on life and a functional product used to improve strength and performance and to revitalize the body and mind. Those are his words. He is also quite serious, prone to beginning sentences with the phrase, it is a must, as in it is a must to believe in one's product. If this was just a marketing gimmick, it would never work.
And it is something that he believed on because he worked on Red Bull for over the last 40 years of his life. He just recently passed away. That's why I wanted to do this episode now. This is a little bit about the beginnings of how he discovered this idea. He was on a chance trip to Thailand in 1982, which would prove to be a turning point in his life. He was curious to know what attracted the locals there to an uncarbonated tonic, which they called a word in Thai, I'm not even gonna try to pronounce, which literally translates to Red Bull. He tried some of this himself and found that it instantly cured his jet lag. Not long after that, he was sitting at the bar at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Hong Kong, and he was reading a magazine. In the magazine, he mentioned that the top corporate taxpayer in Japan that year was the maker of such tonics. Suddenly, the idea hit him. He would sell that stuff in the West. He then approached a Thai businessman who was selling the tonic in Southeast Asia and suggested that the two introduce the drink to the rest of the world. With one crucial change, it would be carbonated. This is going to be his partners. His last name, I'm going to guess, is Yuvediha. And he liked the idea, and so the two agreed to invest $500, a piece to establish a 49-49 partnership with the remaining 2% going to Yuvediha's son. So when I said earlier that he was paying dividends somewhere between 500 and 800 million to himself a year, and his net worth was somewhere between 20 and $30 billion, that is from this 49% that he owned of Red Bull.