From Clare O’Connor’s new Fortune profile of Manoj Bhargava, the inscrutable force behind the 5 Hour Energy empire:
“Bhargava says he spent his 20s traveling between monasteries owned and tended by an ashram called Hanslok. He and his fellow disciples weren’t monks, exactly. ‘It’s the closest Western word,’ he says. ‘We didn’t have bowler haircuts or robes or bells.’ It was more like a commune, he says, but without the drugs. He did his share of chores, helped run a printing press and worked construction for the ashram. Bhargava claims he spent those 12 years trying to master one technique: the stilling of the mind, often through meditation. He still considers himself a member of the Hanslok order and spends an hour a day in his Farmington Hills basement in contemplative silence.
Bhargava would return to the U.S. periodically during his ashram years, working odd jobs before returning to India. For a few months he drove a yellow cab in New York. When he moved back from India for good, it was to help with the family plastics business at his parents’ urging. He spent the next decade dabbling in RV armrests and beachchair parts. He had no interest in plastics whatsoever but devoted himself to buying small, struggling regional outfits and turning them around. By 2001 Bhargava had expanded his Indiana PVC manufacturer from zero sales to $25 million (he eventually sold it to a private equity firm for $20 million in 2006). He decided to retire and moved to Michigan to be near his wife’s family. ‘Nobody moves on purpose to Detroit,’ he says. His retirement lasted two months. He knew from his plastics success that the chemicals industry was ripe for exploiting. ‘Chemicals are really simple,’ he says. ‘You mix a couple things together and sell it for more than the materials cost.’
Bhargava takes a shot of his creation every morning and another before his thrice-weekly tennis game. He shakes his head at the suggestion that taking shots infused with caffeine is at odds with his quest for inner stillness. ‘5-Hour Energy is not an energy drink, it’s a focus drink,’ he says, turning one of the pomegranate-flavor bottles around in his hands. ‘But we can’t say that. The FDA doesn’t like the word ‘focus.’ I have no idea why.'”
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“Sleepy? Groggy? Dying for a nap?”