The Mentors

One of the biggest issues permeating the business and political landscape in America today is that of student debt. More than 44 million Americans collectively have over $1.5 trillion in student debt, $521 billion more than total credit card debt. We recently wrote about this issue on Harvard Business Review, and today we had a chance to talk to David Chang, the CEO of Gradifi, one of the companies that's actively working to reduce that massive number. 

David has an impressive background. He's been a leader at Goldman Sachs, Paypal, TripAdvisor, and several other enterprises. He's also invested in over 40 companies, and has worked with student entrepreneurs at some of the top business programs in the world - Harvard Business School and Babson College. This work lead him to realize that students and recent graduates today are at an unfair disadvantage, and when the opportunity to lead Gradifi (a First Republic company) came he decided to stop all of his other projects to focus on the opportunity help remove this unfair disadvantage. 

In our episode we talk through David's dynamic career and what he's learned from being part of 5 acquisitions. We also dig into what affects someone's decision to start a company, and what angel investors look for in startup founders before deciding to give them money. Finally, we attempt to breakdown how the problem of rising student debt can be curbed, and what options are currently available for those that need debt relief.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we caught up with Kyle Bergman of Swoveralls (from episode 44) to learn about what's been happening with his business after his episode on Shark Tank aired a few weeks ago.

You'll hear an update on how much revenue he's generated since then, the new challenges he's tackling as he grows, and who he needs to hire in the next few months to continue to build his clothing empire.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After just one month at her new sales job at Costco, the CEO promoted Becky to Head of Global, running the business across 10 countries. In part 2 of our new live event series - Scaling Mentorship - Becky Frankiewicz, President of ManpowerGroup North America, talks about how she was able to accelerate her career time and time again as she rose the ranks to become an executive leader. 

Two main themes come up through out the episode. The importance of finding mentors and people that you can learn from to help you make the right decisions, and the value of being willing to take on challenges that other people avoid and jobs that other people have failed in. 

We get into specific stories about how Becky navigated difficult moments in her career and what she did to be able to change jobs multiple times, with directly actionable advice for anyone that's looking to make a change in their lives and do something they really want.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Talking to important people can feel intimidating, so in this edition of the 5 Minute Pick Me Up, we decided to talk about why it's actually easier than most people think.

Sergei tells a story of how he navigated a conversation with a billionaire, and we dive into some of the things we learned in our recent conversations with leaders of major companies in our Scaling Mentorship series, to hear their thoughts on approaching seemingly unapproachable people. 

Part of it has to do with understanding real vs. perceived risk, a topic we talked about in more detail this Friday on the Jordan Harbinger Show.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Andrew used to be the kind of person that didn't speak unless spoken to, never seeking to be the center of attention. That all changed in High School when he decided to run for class secretary and won, which opened up other opportunities like getting to meet President Jimmy Carter when he visited the school. From that moment, he was a people person. 

This is the first of a series of live interviews we're recording with corporate leaders called Scaling Mentorship where we dive into how leaders of large and successful organizations choose to run their companies, and the steps they took in their careers to get to where they are. 

Our interview with Andrew starts with his formative years of working for his father's sandwich shop, and how this was his first experience with leadership. We then dive into how he climbed the ladder at Nixon Peabody as it grew from 100 people to 1,500, and $530 Million in revenue. We get actionable advice on how a network can turn into business opportunities, and why the key to building trust with someone is repeat interactions over a long period of time. 

Andrew is unlike most lawyers, and his propensity to go against the grain is what helped him create a different type of organization - one that focuses on developing people based on their unique abilities.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week I got to attend a screening of "Of Mics and Men", a new docuseries on Showtime. After a show like this gets made, the director and talent will go on the road to promote it, and in this case present it to professionals in the entertainment industry for Emmy consideration. 

After the screening I got a chance to meet and talk to RZA, one of the founders and leaders of the group. In this week's 5 Minute Pick Me Up we talk about what we learned from the story of the Wu-Tang Clan's rise to prominence in the early 90s from the streets of Brooklyn and Staten Island, and why RZA, despite his busy schedule, stayed and networked with professionals and fans on Monday late into the night.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How do you grow to half a million users in 6 months? In Part 2 of our interview with Wayne Mackey of Statespace he details how he set out to build a different type of technology company, and why he thinks that's contributed to his fast growth.

After joining the Expa accelerator Wayne and his team quickly focused on building their product and releasing it to real users as quickly as possible to get feedback. Their main distribution channel was Steam, but unlike other gaming products they were pushing live product updates 3 times a week, something that the engineers he recruited were not accustomed too.

In our conversation Wayne discusses the other methods he used to grow his users early on, his obsession with communicating with every user that reaches out, and how he was able to raise a million dollars in the course of a few weeks.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Entrepreneurship is hard, and sometimes we need to show our loved ones why we we’re working on something that to them might seem like crazy. On this week’s episode, we talk about the importance of having a close support network and how to show the people in your life the value you’re creating through action and results. 

As an example of how having positive support and reinforcement can help you get to move forward, we talk about how a meeting with a close friend this week (also an entrepreneur) sparked a new business idea and why we were compelled to act on it quickly. 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When Wayne got fired from Applebees for a new hand tattoo, he didn’t know that less than a decade later he’d be naming a new part of the brain. In Part I of our two part series with the founder of Statespace we hear about why being obsessed with video games and training as an MMA fighter prepared him to start a video game analytics company as a young Neuroscience postdoc at NYU.

Wayne’s story starts in high school where he taught himself how to code for fun, but the rest of his path to being a tech founder is anything but usual. Growing up in a small town in Ohio he originally didn’t set his eyes on college, instead working various jobs in sales, customer service, and management. By the time he went back to school towards his 30s, starting with ITT Tech and a community college, he realized he could capitalize on his computer science knowledge.

This episode details how he went from that small community college to getting a PhD in neuroscience at NYU, and how he came up with the idea for his startup, a product that uses neuroscience to help people get better at video games. In Part II, we’ll discuss how he raised capital and grew his business to hundreds of thousands of users in his first year.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Creatives are 2x-7x more likely to come up with something radically different. In his book Originals, Adam Grant explains that in a study of thousands of Americans - entrepreneurs, scientists, and inventors typically had one thing in common - they all had other creative interests like playing an instrument, writing short stories, painting, acting, etc.

In this episode we discuss how indulging in pursuits outside of your regular vocation or area of expertise actually opens up your mind to think in different and new ways, and to seeing new opportunities.

We discuss why Galileo was the first to realize that the moon had mountains, what Conan O’Brien does to keep his comedic brain sharp, and the characteristic that makes Nobel Prize winners different. We also talk about how making parody videos helps us in other areas of our lives and in business.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.