Manish Patel helped create the $300 Million sports nutrition brand Nutrabolt and joins us today on our 2nd podcast. Real estate is his first love, and while he's made lots of mistakes in business, he's never failed in real estate. Listen in as Manish shares with us a few of the thoughts and things that he attributes to his success in business. Manish is also an active investor in early stage ventures.
Todays guest is Manish Patel. Manish is Co-Owner and President of Nutrabolt Life Sciences, a sports nutrition company.
1:39 Manish plays to his strengths, he’s a quick thinker, makes decisions quickly and he believes cashflow is critical when it comes to a startup.
2:38 His greatest financial success is Nutrabolt, which turned over $250 million in revenue in 2015, but he doesn’t regard this as his number one success - that goes to the company he founded straight out of college - which was a legitimate cash flow business in real estate out of literally nothing.
4:51 In a startup, Manish looks for smart people who will work hard and can think in the same mindset as the consumers in the target market they are going into. True entrepreneurs have a deep instinct to know what people want at some level - or equally who know what people will want and can get out ahead of it. Its a two pronged approach - you have to be street savvy and be ready to move snappy, and then you’ve got to be academic and know when its time to test.
7:11 Manish doesn’t take credit for inventing the category of the pre-workout drink, he tells how a competitor did that - but what his team did was put out a better version of that product that had an ingredient that resonated with his customers with improved clinicals. His strategy consisted of pricing competitively and winning relationships at the register first and foremost. Providence saw the competitors product getting pulled off the shelf - and Manish’s product was well placed to fill in the void.
10:01 Theres a lot of ego in the startup world considering that most startups haven’t done anything. There is a difference between being confident and humble, and being over-confident and thinking you know anything. The most successful entrepreneurs are very humble - you hire people who tell you what to do as opposed to you telling them what to do, otherwise you’ve hired the wrong people! These entrepreneurs are not afraid to explain their situation and ask for help.
12:04 You gain confidence with momentum. Small wins add up. When you know you can cover your lifestyle and expenses you can become very daring and dangerous.
13:52 Manish steered away from a tech startup because he knew that 90% of tech startups would fail. So in his opinion at an early stage of a career its best to play safe until you have your mortgage and lifestyle covered - then you can be more adventurous. Don’t start trying to build a huge company - start small.
15:33 Manish believes that failure is an opportunity to move in another direction. However he never really failed in real estate and encourages any Entrepreneur to dabble in.
17:29 He isn’t as routine oriented as most successful people, he is actually very spontaneous. He has a diversity of companies that he dabbles in on a daily basis, and has a variety of things to do everyday - he has no consistency.
19:01 He is always prioritizing however - but mainly in his head - he only writes down things when he gets a bit academic about things. He’s already decided in his head what way he wants things to play out so he’s just living in the moment each day when he sits down to do work on projects.
20:06 His favorite books include Napoleon Hill - Think and Grow Rich - thats his bible; The Laws of Success, also by Napoleon Hill; Rework by Jason Freid and David Heinemeier Hansson; The Art Of Work by Jeff Goins; Pitch Anything by Oren Klauff.
22:04 Some Growth Hacks that he has employed include in the early days of Facebook he took advantage of Facebook before Facebook could work out that it was being taken advantage of. This enabled him to launch products with millions of impressions and thousands of sales.
22:40 Manish tends to look at leaders in startups as opposed to products when he’s taking an interest in new companies.
26:02 Tech is a tough industry, so guys that have been successful in tech are smart guys and they are guys you want to align yourself with.
28:00 The accelerator model is changing so the next few years will be very interesting to see who comes in and who leaves the field. Align yourself with the individuals in an accelerator who can help you, choose those people carefully - it will always be two to three individuals in the company and not the company itself.
29:18 Number one productivity hit is out loud asking himself ‘What do I need to do right now’. If you can accomplish 2 or 3 big things every day that adds up to a lot during a week.
30:30 Technology that interests Manish include - Artificial Intelligence is going to be huge over the next few years he’s sure; Everything thats happening in the world of home automation is interesting to him as well as the entire ‘take your home with you’ movement. He is on the look out for a good real estate technology company.