Stay ConnectedThe Mentors follows twin brothers Vadim and Sergei Revzin as they seek to uncover how successful people build their businesses and careers from day one. Twice weekly, the brothers bring inspiring stories from entrepreneurs, artists, business leaders, and entertainers they meet in NYC, to tell never before heard stories of how people get started, even when they have nothing.
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Turns out running a drug cartel is a lot like running any major business enterprise. In this week's 5 Minute Pick Me Up, Vadim shares what he learned from watching Narcos Mexico over Thanksgiving break. We learn: 1) How a Mexican drug leader was able to motivate every other drug boss to work with him2) The importance truly understanding what drives the people you work with3) How you can apply this to your business to inspire others to work with you
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Every entrepreneurial success story has a strong visionary that's able to recruit countless others to help them along the way. Being willing to ask for help isn't only critical in the early days of building something. It can help you avoid mistakes at every level, filling any gaps in your knowledge, your network, your experience, and much more. Still, for many asking for help is not natural. It's easy to feel like you're inconveniencing someone while adding no value to them. Fortunately, this is mostly a false line of thinking.We start this episode by discussing how to get over this initial feeling of self-doubt by first understanding that every successful person has gotten help from someone else to get to where they are, and by using negative visualization to realize that the worst that can happen if you ask for help is, well, absolutely nothing. Next, we break down the most effective way to get others to help you, especially if you're approaching important people. Start by using whatever you can to your advantage (your friends, classmates, colleagues, your expertise, etc.) and prove to others that you're serious about what you're trying to accomplish. Lastly, we suggest offering value whenever you can, giving examples from our past, and being as specific as possible when asking others to help you. In the spirit of Thanksgiving we wanted to close this episode by thanking a few of the people that helped us in impactful ways this year, including Jordan Harbinger of The Jordan Harbinger Show, Sarah Green Carmichael of HBR, Georgie Mihaila of Goalcast, and Tanya Klitch of Forbes.com.
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Instacart recently announced a $271 Million funding round, and Sergei is reminded about a very similar concept he wanted to start around the same time that Apoorva Mehta started Instacart in 2012.The only difference was that Apoorva had a way to execute immediately, and Sergei did not. That's why the idea didn't matter, in that case, as much as the immediate ability to put something into market, and see if it's viable. And that's exactly what Apoorva did.Listen to this edition of the 5 Minute Pick Me Up on The Mentors Podcast to hear the whole story.
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How do you know if it's the right move to give up on a business you've been working on for over half a year? When Evan Stites-Clayton was approached by his co-founder Walker to give up on their business, a job site for college students, to work on a completely new product, a t-shirt company, he had to make this difficult decision. While throwing away months of hard work was painful, the new project was difficult to ignore. It had generated thousands of dollars after just one weekend of work, while the original business idea had no clear demand or differentiation after six months.Soon, the pair was working on the new business idea exclusively - a way for businesses to raise money from their online audience (crowd-funding) by selling merchandise - specifically T-Shirts. Teespring was born. In this episode, Evan outlines exactly how this idea was conceived, and what the team did in the early days to find customers. We also uncover how they stumbled upon a new marketing channel that would go on to grow their business from $250,000 dollars a month in sales, to over a million dollars a day. Evan and his co-founder Walker's meteoric growth helped them raise over $65 million from some of the top investors in the world, like Andreessen Horowitz and Khosla Ventures, but as the company scrambled to keep up with investor's demands to maintain their hyper growth, the company started experiencing issues. In our interview, Evan opens up about some of the pitfalls of growing too quickly, and how other founders should carefully think about the choices that they make especially when they're raising money from major institutional investors at high valuations. He has incredible insight into the trials of scaling a company, and provided us with a sincere reflection of how others should manage growth while understanding their own true wishes and intentions with the company they are building.
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The company I had been advising was just served a cease and desist order from a major brand to change their name, and it was about to put at risk their chance of having the Shark Tank episode air that would likely make the difference between success and failure for their fledgeling startup. It was the Friday night before the Monday deadline by which the startup had to have this issue resolved, that in a last ditch effort I decided to cold email an executive in the brand that held the startup's entire future in their hands without even knowing it.
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Performing alongside Jim Gaffigan and Dennis Leary at The Boston Garden would be a massive accomplishment for any comedian. For Jared Freid, it felt like a bar mitzvah. It was clearly a new milestone in his life, but it was also just one night - a fleeting moment that would mean nothing without continued focus and dedication to his craft. Since leaving his job in insurance to pursue comedy full time Jared has treated his career like a business, constantly putting out new content while building relationships and forging partnerships that would lead to new opportunities like his iTunes Top 100 JTrain Podcast, a show about modern dating called U Up, a SnapChat show called How Low Will You Go that lets him travel the country attending college football games, massive sold out live performances and more. In our live recording event we breakdown the process that has lead to Jared being featured on NBC’s The Today Show, MTV, his live recordings at the Comedy Cellar and more. We also discuss how Jared first started his career as a comic writing weekly columns for major online publications, and how he continues to stay motivated by focusing on small realistic goals. You can find Jared on Instagram at @JaredFreid, and on Twitter @JTrain56. He releases new episodes of the JTrain podcast every Tuesday and Friday and his tour dates can be found on https://jaredfreid.com/
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The upcoming election on Tuesday inspired us to talk about our first ever entrepreneurial pursuit in High School that ended up teaching us many lessons that we still use when starting businesses. As sophomores, we found out about a political debate club, Junior Statesmen of America, that taught kids how to debate real issues in congress style debates, and decided to bring it to our school. The only problem was that our principal decided not to sanction the club. That meant that we had to learn how to raise money, how to promote the club and do everything in between all by ourselves. Little did we know that by being forced to figure out how to bring this club to our school without any support from the administration, we were doing something very entrepreneurial that would teach us how to build businesses later on. With this episode, we hope that you decide to become a more active member in your own community, even if it's just volunteering, because it's guaranteed to pay off in ways that you can't even imagine in the future.
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As a first time entrepreneur it's easy to doubt yourself, or come up with excuses for why something will not work. Maybe you don't know the industry well enough, or you can't find a technical co-founder, or you've never done sales. When starting Minibar, Lindsey Andrews and Lara Crystal didn't have experience in any of these areas, but they saw a massive opportunity and simply focused on execution instead of letting doubt consume them. Four years later they're in 40 states, servicing 90% of the U.S. population. Listeners of The Mentors can get $10 off of their first order on Minibar by using the code THEMENTORS at checkout. Download the app at: https://minibardelivery.comIn this episode we talk through how the cofounders decided to quit their jobs to focus on making their liquor delivery service a reality. Within six months of coming up with their idea they got initial funding from an investor and launched their app, generating revenue on day one. We discuss how they ended up closing a $1.8 million seed round for their business, and what they would do differently if they were fundraising today. We also cover their customer acquisition strategy in detail, and how they strategically focused on on-boarding liquor stores in different areas of each city, one city at a time. The team has been featured on NY Times, CNBC, Forbes, Fast Company, and more.
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Busy leaders have to make dozens of important decisions on a daily basis. While everyone’s process is slightly different, there are some common practices that almost every successful CEO and leader follows.In this episode we talk about:1) Removing unimportant decisions from your day2) Practicing being uncomfortable3) Why meditation can help you avoid acting on impulse…including stories from successful comedian Bill Hader and former President Obama.
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It's not often that a book can change the way you approach your day to day life or impact some of the most important decisions you make. Once in a while you come across something so timely that it feels like it was written just for you - just for this exact moment in your life. In this episode we discuss three incredible books that shaped our outlook on life and the way we approach our businesses and careers. We start with Dale Carnegie's How To Win Friends and Influence People, which taught us how to interact with people in a way that helps build stronger relationships. We then discuss how Richard Branson's story in Losing My Virginity taught us to take risks and be open to opportunities we would normally say no to. We conclude the show with a review of Victor Frankl's brilliant story of survival and finding purpose in Man's Search For Meaning and how this book shifted our perspective of the importance of having meaning behind everything you work towards.
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