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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The cold brew coffee market has exploded over the last few years, with sales reaching $738 million dollars in 2017 alone, popularized by major chains like Starbucks.When Matt Bachmann and Ben Gordon met at Columbia Business School a few years before the cold brew craze, they knew that they wanted to start a business, but had no idea what to build. As their friendship grew over the next 6 months, they realized they both shared an interesting passion - really more of an obsession. Making their own cold brew coffee at home. Over the next year and a half, while still in school, they developed what would become Wandering Bear Cold Brew Coffee, launching a first of its kind boxed coffee in the process (think Franzia for coffee). In this episode we breakdown how they came up with their minimum viable product (first consistently good tasting batch of coffee), and what they did to test various go to market strategies for their business. We uncover how they identified an opportunity to rapidly generate revenue for their business, and the steps that they took to end up in over 1,000 stores across the United States, landing major partnerships like Fresh Direct, Whole Foods, Target, and more.
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At 27 years old, Julie Smolyansky found herself leading a 12 million dollar public company. Her father had died suddenly of a heart attack, and just 24 hours later she was addressing all of her employees as their new CEO. Over the next decade, Julie would go on to grow the company to one of the most recognizable food brands in the world, earning a spot on Fortune Magazine's '40 Under 40'. Since then she has launched a non-profit, produced several documentaries, and authored The Kefir Cookbook, sharing her entrepreneurial story and over 100 globally-inspired sweet and savory recipes using Kefir.Many doubted Julie's ability to run a public company at such a young age, but her confidence came from having incredible role models in both of her parents. After emigrating to America, her mother opened a small Russian Deli to support the family. This eventually grew into a larger food distribution business working with Russian stores all over the United States, securing exclusive contracts like the right to distribute a then little known brand called Nutella in America. Her parents got the idea to bring Kefir to America after visiting a trade show in Germany to source food for their delis. The Russian population in Chicago was growing, and they knew that their would be growing demand for this staple Russian drink. In our conversation with Julie, we uncover how her parents created their own recipe for the drink, and the steps that they took to turn Lifeway Foods into a public company within only 2 years of inception. We also discuss the importance of having the right mentors in your life, and why a strong network of support contributes more to success than experience.
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Entrepreneurs can spend years working on the wrong thing because they failed to test their assumptions along the way. We look for positive indicators when entering a new relationship, or evaluating a new job opportunity, so why do many of us skip this step when starting a new business? Because starting a business is a lot like having a baby, and when you're so attached to something it can be difficult to admit when it isn't working.Lean startup, design thinking, and agile development are just a few principles that have been developed to address this very issue, and to underscore the importance of validating a business concept before investing resources into developing it. In this episode we walk you through how we were able to test completely different types of business ideas before spending any time developing the actual product. We also highlight stories from the early days of Airbnb and Uber, proving how any smart entrepreneur can use very little resources to validate or invalidate an idea, even if that idea requires a lot of capital to be fully developed. We also tell stories from the founders of Netflix and Kayak, and how they were focused on constant communication with their customers, even after gaining success, to continue to iterate on their business model, building sustainable innovative enterprises along the way.
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The Soviet Union was not a very supportive place for entrepreneurs - especially in the 1960s, on the heels of Stalin's dictatorial regime. In fact in the decades leading up to the collapse of the Soviet Union, many were jailed for circumventing the law by starting their own businesses. Free thinkers, creators, and innovators had to find other ways to apply their minds. Our father, Samuel Zakharovich Revzin, was one such thinker that was simply born in the wrong era and in an inconvenient part of the world. Despite all of this, he was able to rise to prominence and create one of the most innovative education institutions of his time. Decades later, his work can still be found in the Russian State Library in Moscow, and his legacy lives on in the students whose lives he touched. This is the first episode in a series that will chronicle our father's life, and the stories he began to document in his unfinished autobiography before his death. His entrepreneurial drive and instinct had a profound impact on our lives, and the stories throughout provide incredible lessons for any creator that must overcome obstacles on their journey. The story starts with two major themes - how to create experiences for yourself to find your passion, and the importance of having relentless focus on building value versus an obscure goal. You'll hear stories of how our father was able to create opportunities for himself to do what he loved at a very young age in a communist country where many were forced to follow a predetermined path. These lessons will help you rethink your own path, and hopefully provide some guidance on how to find purpose in everything you do.
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We're taught to associate failure with getting fired, when often times it is the very catalyst that allows us to experience incredible progress. In this episode you will learn techniques to fills gaps in your resume, how to build skills to help you change your career, and use getting fired as an opportunity to create new and exciting experiences for yourself. While losing a job is inherently a stressful experience, it's critical to start seeing it as a life changing event - for the better.We discuss how to rewire your brain to embrace the loss of a job, and create opportunities for yourself that will help you grow and skip multiple rungs on the ladder of your career in a short period of time. You'll hear stories about some of the most profoundly successful people on earth, like Oprah Winfrey, J.K. Rowling, and Bill Belichick, and how getting fired directly helped the growth of their careers. We also tell you our personal stories of getting fired, and how we leveraged the free time that we had to transition careers and massively increase our incomes. Getting fired can help you become unstuck, and take on completely new experiences. For Sergei, it was getting a chance to act in an ABC pilot. For me, it was having the opportunity to speak in front of over 1,000 people. Both would never happen if we weren't forced to act and move forward. At every step of the way, you control your own story. In this podcast we also discuss how to create a narrative about your experience that fits the roles you're looking for, and how to effectively bridge any gap created in your resume. A career is not always linear, and humans are born to have varying interests. Getting fired can give you the push you need to explore a completely different lifestyle for yourself, or to learn entirely new skills. Arnold Schwarzenegger made his millions as a body builder, brick layer, and real estate investor before he ever got into acting and eventually politics. We're all allowed to rewrite our own path, and getting fired can be the best way to start.
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When Murtuza started consulting on the side with his co-founder Hari to fund the startup they were building, he didn't think of it as a business - simply a way to be able to pay his bills. Soon he had so many clients that he had to hire help, and he realized that he actually enjoyed working on different projects day to day. Within a few years, he closed his first 6 figure contract. Now he runs F22 Labs, a 22 employee full-stack mobile and web development company in India that's able to charge the same prices as American dev shops. In this episode we discuss how he was able to start landing clients so quickly and consistently, his approach to building relationships, and the iterative work that he did on his business in the early days to stand out from the thousands of engineering shops in India. If you've ever considered building an app and outsourcing the engineering work, this episode is a must listen. Murtuza gives us a blueprint for building software products from scratch. He also breaks down exactly how business, engineering, and product teams should work together to ensure that they build a successful product, providing incredible insight into how business and technical teams should operate together. The products his team has built have been featured in New York Times, Mashable, TechCrunch, Business Insider, and more.
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What's the easiest way to find a co-founder? Have a twin sister. This week on The Mentors we have our first ever 'twinesode' where you'll hear identical twins brother entrepreneurs (yours truly) interview identical twin sister entrepreneurs. Aside from being one of the funniest episodes yet, this discussion covers the story of Hey Lady shoes, and how two sisters with no background in fashion design started a ladies shoe company that has grown to over a million dollars in sales, almost entirely through word of mouth. Within 3 years of starting, the business was growing incredibly fast, when Jessica was diagnosed with stage 4 terminal cancer, leaving the weight of the news and running the business on Emily. Hear Jessica's miraculous story of beating the odds, surviving the disease, and rejoining the business only to help reinvent it and grow it to completely new heights. People often invent elaborate stories for why someone else is successful - connections, money, luck. On countless occasions Emily and Jessica's story proves that each of us must be in control of our own destiny - when you're dealt a bad card in life, it's up to you to figure out how to play the hand.
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When Sufia Hossain started experimenting with hot sauce recipes in her kitchen, she was already working full time on building a jewelry business. But, whenever she had some free time she would start tinkering with different ingredients again. Within one year, her now sought after Silly Chilly Hot Sauce is being sold in one of the busiest shopping markets in the world - Chelsea Market.In this episode we uncover what it takes to start a food business, Sufia's relentless approach to getting her hot sauce on the shelves of stores all over New York City, and the steps she took to get distribution through one of the largest distributors in the world, W.B. Mason. As usual, we break things down to specifics, from understanding initial investment numbers to learning about how ingredients are identified for a product like this. One thing is very clear - it takes incredible passion and persistence to succeed with any business, but especially a food business in one of the most competitive locations in the world. Sufia's story is a perfect example of how to rally support from experts around you and find mentors that can help catapult you to success.
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Max Altschuler is redefining what it means to build a successful career. When most people were busy trying to land internships in college, Max got his school to agree to pilot one of the earliest bike sharing programs. When that business failed to raise the necessary capital to get off the ground and Max found himself without a job as he graduated into one of the worst economies of the century, he started a social media consultancy that generated revenue within its first 30 days. In this episode we break down how these experiences led Max to become a self made millionaire by the age of 30, forever changing how he thinks people should approach their careers. In his new book "Career Hacking for Millennials: How I Built A Career My Way, And How You Can Too" Max tells his own inspirational story and gives highly specific actionable advice for anyone that needs direction with where to take their career. We also talk about how he was able to overcome some incredibly difficult moments in his entrepreneurial journey, and how he's designed his life to be able to run three businesses at once - Sales Hacker, Career Hacking, and Sip Sutra.
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When Bobby Thakkar started Grupacity Consulting in his senior year of High School, he was able to attract customers like Uber, Redbull, Chanel, and Spotify within the first three months of business - all with zero marketing. How does an 18 year old jack of all trades accomplish what many seasoned specialized professionals struggle to attain? By spending years meticulously building a network and a following. It all started when a sports injury forced him to stop playing tennis 8 hours a day. Instead of retreating to his friends, or spending his free time playing video games, he decided to focus on growing professionally. In this episode we uncover how he created a massive community of 25,000 people in his sophomore and junior year of high school, and the steps that he took to quickly create a profitable business before he even got accepted into college.
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