♪ haslinda: hello and welcome to "high flyers," the show the gives you a 360 degree view of asia's markets. numerous high-profile agencies, but that hasn't stopped him from reaching for the prize like building australia's largest online retailer. him. meet

>> he thought like an entrepreneur. he knew that the only way he could have something was to earn it. he taught himself to think outside the box and set up a string of ventures while still in his teen years. his challenge to the status quo continues to this day. he will not join us on the singapore flyer to tell us about his past, present, and ambitious future. ♪ haslinda: welcome to "high flyers." you have this big idea, this lightbulb moment while shopping for an lcd tv at age 23. what happened? happened while i

was studying in miami a bit before that. i noticed all the local kids were buying everything online. they were buying it for much cheaper prices and the international students. we go to walmart to buy our stuff because that is what the university told us was the best marketing economy to scale. then i see they're buying things online for much cheaper. i realized that a small online retailer can operate with greater efficiency than a goliath like walmart. a few months or years later, i was searching and looking to buy an lcd tv. i saw that i could not afford one that -- they were really expensive at the time. i decided to contact some factories out of china. i told him i wanted to buy 100,000 tvs hoping they would give me a quote. then i would ask them for a sample, and i was going to be my tv.

when they start a provided quote, i saw there was a huge gap in the market. a dvi could get in australia for $1000 was selling in the shop for about $3000. i noticed that gap and thought back to my days in miami. i thought online tvs are a perfect product. online retailer is all about maximum value per cubic centimeter. here your's shipping a thin box around the country. it is perfect for the just ask. like my job and started importing tvs. haslinda: you needed to convince the chinese supply to provide you with a small number of tvs and other products as well. how did you convince them? ruslan kogan: things can play halt pretty quickly because after i had chosen the factory to work with i contacted them and said i don't want to do in order for 100,000 tvs.

i want to do one container of 80 tv. i was in ad at me tough position because i quit my job. the fact which it telling me that we can't do 80 tvs for you because china is all about mass production. haslinda: you did something for them first. ruslan kogan: correct. to make him a business is all about win-win. how can i make this a win-win? out of all of the factories i spoken to in china, these multibillion-dollar organizations, a lot of their -- he didmaterial was not make sense. none of the images were aligned. this spreadsheet had numbers -- i don't like it when people send numbers. numbers need to be right in line with decimal places. i read did all of this for them. i translated the chinglish to english. makes sense.hing

i annotated it. i made it look like a professional, western document. i said it back and said -- that might not be any value for you in my timing order of 80 dvds, but there are other ways i can add value to this transaction. result, they replied a few hours later thanking me and accepted my order. they gave me an even better price than they previously negotiated. not everybody is buying into the story. you have flaws of criticisms. among them coming from your own rivals. some said that you don't respect intellectual property rights. fromiggest criticism came jerry harvey. he said your a con. your response? ruslan kogan: to get that reaction out of jerry, i take that as a compliment. [laughter] haslinda: is there truth in that? ruslan kogan: that we are a con?

we operate a business of millions of customers in a country with an amazing legal system. if we were a con we would've been found out by now. instead, we have millions of happy customers. we respect all intellectual property law. we have never had anyone prove otherwise. doubt we willno have critics for stock we are changing the way retail is done in australia. was not: your mom convinced. and you try to start your own company, you had a full-time job says why are you leaving a well-paying job to be a tv salesman? ruslan kogan: not only did she say that, she started crying. [laughter] tough, i'mn: it was trying to explain to a crying mother that i'm not really about to be tv salesman. i'm starting a direct to consumer online retailer. we deliver them for better prices.

she didn't really understand. now she understands what we do. she's very happy. back then, it was tough to convince her. i just had to go out on a limb and do what i thought was right. haslinda: what is the biggest setback you faced? ruslan kogan: i should've bought day one..com domain on i didn't buy that, we expanded internationally than i had to m for a number with a lot of zeros on it later. [laughter] ruslan kogan: that is a mistake. i learned how important intellectual property is. how important it is to protect all of intellectual property. mistakes happen along the way. the most important thing is that from every mistake, you learn the hard truth. you'd knowledge the fact and then you ensure that it never happens again. ♪ >> coming up,

ruslan kogan: when the social network movie came under four want to be in entrepreneur. which is weird, i did not want that ♪

♪ haslinda: ruslan kogan equates unconventional. looking for ayone job would be better not send e-mail by hotmail. why is that? ruslan kogan: chances are, they set their e-mail up 15 years ago and have just never bothered to look at what else is out there. newer technologies of come along like gmail. that lets you search or e-mails much easier. we use that internally in our organization. also, we look favorably people that have their own domain name. somebody who purchased their name and uses that as their e-mail. we wants tech savvy people.

people who know how to research online. people who keep up with technology, whose one against currents. -- who swim against currents. we believe the e-mail address says a lot about you. we have logical reasoning tests that we send to everybody who applies. haslinda: is it fair to say that the typical profile of your employee is either the gen y, the millennials? haslinda: it would be. but the internet are much more likely to succeed when they apply for a job benefit don't know -- then if they don't know. haslinda: the average age of the 26 -- would be 26? ruslan kogan: 26 average 27, i am one of the oldest. haslinda: that is ok, because you're the boss. you say all the answers are right there. google. ruslan kogan: correct.

we think formal training is for people that wants to look like they're learning. googled is for people who actually want to learn. for a lot of our senior managers , formal training isn't an option for the most of the things we're doing there is no formal training. somethinge someone -- get into a university degree, it is all information. whereas, if a new piece of software comes out today you can learn about it tomorrow on google. we are solving problems for the first time. that is why we need to teach our staff not to rely on others for information but to go out there and get it themselves. haslinda: you don't reward your employees in a natural way. there is no one time we look at promoting them or rewarding them. anyone is able to walk up to you and justify a promotion. ruslan kogan: when i worked in the corporate world, i knew -- i

learned a lot about what not to do to keep staff motivated. and to feel the great workforce. one of those things was the annual review process. once a year in september he set down with your boss and they discuss things and give you a 5% pay raise. -- in augustff to everyone is there at 7:00 a.m. and going home and 9:00 p.m. and is working so hard. learned that to run a meritocracy. member, we don't care how old you are. whether you are male or female, what university degree you have. we care about degrees will be hire you because a university degree means you can read and write and commit to something. but beyond that we don't care what you have done in your previous job. we care about what you're are doing right now. as a result, we have staff who

have had six pay raises in six months. there was 119-year-old, six pay raises in his first six months earning six digits of the senior management team. we value what your actual performance is other than any external bureaucratic commissions. haslinda: nine years ago, it was one store. now you have just still one store but grandpa one employee to almost 200. how big do you think kogan will become? haslinda: your spot on -- ruslan kogan: you are spot on. we will still love one store. we're all about scalability. we're building our online presence. if he said to me five years ago, how big will kogan be in five years time? i couldn't have guessed it would be where it is today.

turning over hundreds of millions of dollars come if he said was a going to be in five years i'm not even brave enough to have a guess. haslinda: when was it that you knew that you had something big? ruslan kogan: the business kogand by selling true brand tvs. they grew a little bit in the electronics range. when we started that growth come i realize that this business model works for whatever product we decide to put through our manufacturing and supply chain. at that point i realized that the growth potential of this business is enormous. haslinda: a $1 billion company in no time, is that possible? if youkogan: look, choose the graph for what was done in the last nine years, you would have a billion dollars within the next few years. anlinda: you are entrepreneur. but more and more people are calling themselves that. do you think the term is been

diluted? ruslan kogan: i have never called myself in entrepreneur, as such. that is more a title that others call me. i facebook says i am a toilet paper manager. i still change the toilet paper rolls. you have to do everything in a business when it is growing fast. network" moviel came out and made entrepreneurship more glamorous. going by this movie, two hours ago mark zuckerberg has zero now he has tens of billions of dollars. everybody wanted to be the entrepreneur after that movie. i did not watch "spider man" and decided want to be a spider. that movie made entrepreneurship glamorous. that is a great thing. what people fail to it knowledge this makesribution

to society. there is an entrepreneur behind every product or service, losing sleep, taking how do i make it better? haslinda: how much sleep did you use -- lose trying to grow your company? ruslan kogan: i voluntarily jump out of bed every single morning. it is tough. i've had some people come to me and say things like you know what? i want to be an entrepreneur like you. i am second head of the 40 hour week. that just makes me laugh -- sick and tired of the 40 hour week. that makes me laugh. the last time i did that was in the corporate world. haslinda: you work up to 100 hours a week. ruslan kogan: sometimes more, usually between 70-100 hours per week. i love what i'm doing. i jump out of bed. i jump out in the middle of the night if i have an idea. i write myself an e-mail. it doesn't always make my girlfriend happy, but it is a

great feeling. ♪ >> coming up -- ruslan kogan: you get addicted to the game. that's what make you jump out of bed. ♪

♪ ruslan, yours is almost the perfect immigrant story. your family left russia and came to australia with 1989 with just $90 in their pocket. appreciate it so much more now. i have grown up and i get to understand what they went through. of whatow credit a lot toave achieved with kogan the life lessons they taught me. anything about what it takes to be an immigrant, or an entrepreneur, they're very similar. to be an immigrant, you have to drop everything you have and make a massive risk traveling into the unknown. thework your butt off, and archer bernard is the exact same thing. watching my parents arrived and

$90 in work three or four jobs each, my dad worked as a taxi driver during the night. would be a cleaner at one cafe, a waitress at another. they were studying english as well as trying to educate themselves for a better life for their kids. it made me have an incredible work ethic, and determination. i knew from a young age that i can't do anything -- can do anything as long as i work my butt off to do it. qualifiedmom was medical come your dad was an engineer by training. how did you feel seeing your dad and mom holding those jobs when they were highly qualified back home? years kogan: i was 5.5 old to did not click with me. i didn't understand. my dad has a masters in engineering, and here he is driving a taxi.

working at the victoria market. the same with mom, it just doesn't click. you learn to appreciate those things as you get older. you reminisce about it. i think about it now when i -- i thank them every single day. haslinda: in the early days, you live in public housing. ruslan kogan: we grew up in the housing commission flats in melbourne. haslinda: tell us about that canal and how significant it was. ruslan kogan: as a little kid come all the bigger kids were jumping over it. i would always climb the barbed wire fence and try to jump. i would come home with a wet shoes. i finally managed to jump over it. it also ran to the golf course. you would find washed up golf balls. i would collect them. i could sell them back to the golfers. that was the first money that i ever earned myself. haslinda: since then, you

started about 20 or so benches. that was the start of your entrepreneurship. ruslan kogan: from a young age, my parents taught me that if i wanted something i have to earn it. it wasn't af balls, big money. it was $10 or $20, but that makes you king of the milk bar. i would buy whatever candy i wanted. to my parents led give me five dollars to watch their car. we were in a shopping center and they saw a big billboard that said carwash -- half-price only $40. i thought hang on a second, i am getting ripped off. i printed up his business cards and drop them off the neighborhood. i packed a hose in a few sponges and walked around and people are paying me $15 to watch their car. i started taking bookings in

hiring some of my friends because i cannot do it all on my own. there was that, then mobile phone repair. there have always been a lot of benches along the way. the culminated in kogan.com, which is my baby. haslinda: you're worth about $350 million and counting. one of the richest young people in australia, has life changed? it would be a lie if you say it hasn't. ruslan kogan: certain things changed. i never got to go into the high flyer before. [laughter] are,n kogan: here we seeing all of singapore. i fly at the front of a plane now. i drive a nice car, yes. it is a modest apartment. the things i really enjoy come of money hasn't really changed. i love fishing. i wish the fish new how much money is my back account, but they don't.

i don't catch anymore. haslinda: isn't it cliche to say the money isn't -- doesn't matter when you already have it? ruslan kogan: if you look at business people around the world. steve jobs kept going until it a few weeks left. why, because he really wanted the money? why is richard branson turning up to work? why is rupert murdoch working? i could retire right now and ever work another day in my life. i could have whatever i want, my kids would never have to work, and their kids, and their kids come and their kids. you get addicted to the game, and you love the challenge. entrepreneurs create all the products and services that enhance their lives. they thrive on competition. that is what makes me jump out of bed in the morning. haslinda: you put a down payment of $200,000 to go to after space. ruslan kogan: when i saw the virgin galactic program launch,

it struck a few chords with me. you little kid, you say want to be a national. i the time you reach 1050 new -- 10-15 years old you realize that is not going to happen. at the age of 28, i realized that might happen. the other one being that both u.s.sia nd th -- and the people into space and the spent almost five and $2 billion on their program. that is over $1 billion per person into space. richard branson is doing it for $200,000. i am a capitalist, i love free markets. this is a perfect symbol of what a private enterprise can achieve. and of what government can achieve. richard branson is sending 5000th into space for 1/

of the cost of what governments have done in the past. based on that, i felt an affinity to the program. haslinda: but mom is it like the idea? [laughter] mom keepsan: telling me you're not going to go as long diameter live. -- i am alive. what i dide to do with skydiving, where i flew to new zealand saying i have a few business meetings and went skydiving then she saw the video on youtube. she nearly killed me. she taught me -- told me not to go skydiving either. i might just say i'm going camping in the mojave desert the move was it what happens. would you like to be remembered? ruslan kogan: that it's a good question. probably by the things that are most important in life. i want to be remembered as a good son and a good brother.

that is the most important thing at the moment. haslinda: techie so much for being on "high flyers." ♪

♪ haslinda: hello and welcome to high flyers. a show that gives you a 360 degree view of asia's business in the east. on today show, we are joined by a woman whose mission is shaking up the environment. she drew on personal experience to set up asia's vast marketplace for employee benefits. it is attracting the attention of worldwide business leaders