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.
Music by: www.purple-planet.com
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This week we met an entrepreneur who told us about a side project he did that ended up making him and his partner $30,000 in just 2 months. The story is about how one young entrepreneur started an exotic car meet up in his home town that ended up growing to a sizable community, and how he eventually found a business opportunity in shooting high quality car videos for businesses.
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How do you become a venture capitalist with no previous VC experience? Our guest this week, Diego Berrio, was able to create a venture career for himself with no previous track record as an investor. When he realized he wanted to leave the world of traditional finance to become an investor after years of running finance at an education software company, he did what any savvy entrepreneur would do and created the opportunity for himself.In this episode we dive into Diego's early career, and how his decision to get a second Masters degree in his early 30s lead him on a path to creating a completely new career for himself as an investor. While he was no stranger to the world of finance, he knew that the barriers to raising a Venture Capital fund were high. VC investors convince massive institutions and wealthy individuals to trust them with millions of dollars of their money, and that type of trust typically requires a track record of success as an investor and/or entrepreneur. As any good entrepreneur, he didn't let these barriers stop him. Instead he focused on what would give him an advantage, like creating a differentiated offering and building out a deep trusted network that helped him attract other investors and highly sought after investment opportunities. Throughout this episode we also uncover his exact strategy for breaking into this field with syndicates, and the work he's now doing to raise a $20-$30 million fund in 2019 with his firm BrightSky Ventures.
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Jackie Chan is well known for breaking every single bone in his body throughout his successful career as a martial arts actor, but in this episode we talk about the little known story of the rigorous upbringing that turned him into the most daring stuntmen in the business. If you're facing difficulties in your life, your ability to be disciplined enough to push through is what will ultimately bring success your way. Jackie's entire career was fraught with ups and downs but he always kept pushing, eventually becoming as famous as his idol, Bruce Lee.
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Getting Sting and the CEO of Goldman Sachs to trust your business with their dogs is a pretty positive indicator. When the Great Recession hit in 2008, Mike Lavora and Adam Light were working on Wall Street. Within 12 months after being forced to leave their jobs, they were doing six figures in revenue with their new dog walking business. What started as a simple services company has now grown to 45 employees, and 7 locations across New York City. Turns out the market for pet care services in a place like New York is massive. There's an estimated 1 pet for every 4 households, and the team at Throw Me A Bone is just getting started even though they now service 200 pets a day. In this episode we discuss how Mike and Adam came up with their idea after Mike visited a pet care facility in the West Village, and was placed on a three month waiting list for his dog. We also discuss how they decided to approach the market to drastically reduce the capital they needed to create their business. Within a week of operation they had their first customer, and the momentum never stopped. Soon the pair knew they would never have to go back to their finance jobs. We also uncover how the two started to scale their business, seizing every major opportunity and partnership they came across along the way. After a decade, what was originally a lifestyle business is now becoming a quickly growing operation that has the opportunity for massive scale.Music source:ZitronSound - Lonely CowboyWild West by ZitronSound http://bit.ly/2nXGy9WCreative Commons — CC BY-ND 3.0 https://goo.gl/QHshNa
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This episode is a follow up to Episode 39 - Starting a Revenue Generating Training Business in 3 Weeks. Here we read you the exact email we used to get 10 meetings with coding bootcamps, to ultimately close our first contract just weeks later.
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Most founders will never raise a single dime from investors. This has nothing to do with your capabilities as an entrepreneur. It's simply the reality of venture economics and the fact that most businesses don't fit the requirements of a professional investor. The good news is that 95% of business are able to find capital through other means. In this episode we describe how most entrepreneurs raise capital through four main channels - credit card loans, bank loans, money from friends and family, and good old fashion side hustles (aka contract work). Yes, in 2017 alone VC firms invested $61 Billion in capital, but everything is relative. This money was deployed across 5,948 deals - virtually nothing (1%) compared to the 500,000+ businesses that were started that year. To help clarify the reality of fundraising, and to provide some data from those that are bullish on raising venture money, we also dive into the true motivations behind angel and venture investors, and what actually makes an entrepreneur fundable - a track record (previous exits), domain expertise, defensibility, a large market opportunity, and tangible go to market execution.
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There is no one size fits all solution that makes everyone productive. To accomplish your goals, you have to find what works for you, and create your own set of daily routines and rituals. The key is consistency. This episode was inspired by the book "Daily Rituals" by Mason Currey, and an article by Pia Silva entitled "9-5 Is Out. Try The 1-6 Instead."In this episode you will hear:1. How George Orwell changed his life at 31 to be able to work on his writing and support himself.2. What Albert Einstein's daily schedule was like as a University Professor. 3. The environment Maya Angelou needed to create for herself in order to write, and how we apply this in our own work
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Woody Allen famously said that eighty percent of success is showing up. Often times the most effective way to consistently get yourself to show up is to simply say “fu*k it”. This means putting insecurities and doubts aside. It means ignoring the voice inside your head that incessantly tells you why something might not work out. It means removing all expectations and letting things simply play out. In this episode we talk about how we were able to get fast and incredibly impactful results for our business by acting without fear. From following up with famed podcaster Jordan Harbinger after briefly running into him at a conference and getting him to feature us on his podcast which gets millions of monthly listens, to building relationships with Goalcast and Forbes to become contributing authors, helping us grow our audience. We also talk about how we were able to close the first deal for our software startup by changing our approach and saying “fu*k it - why not try something new.”If you have your own story of when you said “fu*k it” and got results, send us an email at vadim@thementors.co or sergei@thementors.co and we’ll feature it in a 5 Minute Pick Me Up episode.
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This is an update to episode 41, the recent episode about a new idea that we decided to test.
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Is it possible to build a successful business with your best friend? Stephen and Jeffrey of the Frost Gelato Shoppe franchise seem to think so. They’ve been friends since second grade and credit the deep trust that they’ve built up over their entire lives to helping them survive over 13 years of being in business together. But how do you go from never starting a business, to opening a Gelato shop in an underdeveloped part of Tucson Arizona and franchising the business within just three years?In this episode we learn about the early days of building their first location, and the set of correct decisions that lead the friends to enjoy consistently rapid year over year growth. The two founders explain how their ongoing success comes down to the advice they take from their family of entrepreneurs - their ultimate mentors. From learning about real-estate and location scouting from Stephen’s mom, to understanding where they had the most opportunity to be competitive from Jeffrey’s dad, these early lessons allowed them to focus on the other part of the business that was paramount to their success - obsession with the quality of their product.We hear about how they were able to get daily inquiries to franchise their business, and how they quickly learned about franchising to take advantage of the growing opportunity. To date, not a single franchise location has failed, and the Frost Gelato brand is now being enjoyed internationally. We got to try their gelato during the recording of this episode, given to us directly by their master gelato chef, Nazario, who was in the studio with us. Molto delizioso - and that’s not just the sweet tooth talkin’.
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