The Mentors

Why are New Year's Resolutions so popular? Because we always have hope that things can get better. It's how we survive. The start of a new year can feel a lot like moving to a different city and starting over. Opportunities seem endless, and you can develop yourself into someone completely different. Unfortunately, most resolutions tend to fail unless they're properly managed. It's important to first understand that changing your life and acquiring new habits is more of a cyclical process - a constant back and forth. In our experience, we've found that there's a few critical things you can do set yourself up to achieve your resolution goals.

In this episode we discuss our 2018 resolution - what we called "The Year of Content" at the beginning of the year, and break things down into four main takeaways:

1. Have a big purpose, but make sure your resolution is actually an achievable goal
2. Create systems of external accountability
3. Create a process you can stick with so it's not easy to quit
4. Reward yourself and celebrate your wins to increase the chances of forming new habits that stick

We tie these concepts into the creation of The Mentors Podcast this year, and why we think we were able to make big progress towards our "year of content" goal this year. We also make parallels to other popular resolutions, like weight loss, and talk about how successful entrepreneurs like Scott Belsky of Behance (acquired by Adobe) get past potential points of failure/giving up when things seem very uncertain.

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Highlights from 5 of our most popular episodes of the 75 released this year. On this New Year's Eve we've decided to review the top 5 episodes since The Mentors podcast was launched at the beginning of 2018. You will hear some of the main lessons learned from our most popular interviews and stories that really resonated with our listeners throughout the year. 

In this episode you will hear about: 

Episode 32: The Secret to Finding Big Opportunities, with Carey Smith of Big Ass Fans

Episode 8: Building a 90 Million Dollar Business After 50, with Larry Petretti

Episode 13: How to Start a Successful Coffee Shop in One of The Biggest Cities in The World

Episodes: 22, 28, 30: How To Do What You Love In A Communist Country, a three part series about our father, Samuel Revzin

Episode 7: Becoming Unstuck - How To Finally Get Started

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Entrepreneurship is almost never a straight line. Much of the experience is unpredictable, and while you can usually weave together a cohesive story of how a successful business was able to get there, in the moment it's anything but cohesive. This is why Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, is famous for saying that "an entrepreneur is someone who will jump off a cliff and assemble an airplane on the way down."

In Part 2 of our interview with Micah Brown, he details how he went from having incredible momentum in his business, to nearing the brink of failure on more than one occasion. In each example, persistence and continued execution is what kept him afloat, allowing him to survive until a lifeline seemingly came out of nowhere to keep his business moving forward.

We also discuss the work that Micah is doing to develop highly technical talent, focusing on building out their communication skills to teach them how to turn complicated ideas into massive, fundable opportunities.

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Is it risky to start a business based on a trend? Maybe, but if you want to start a business and you see an opportunity to meet customer demand that's currently not being addressed, it's riskier to keep waiting for another idea to find you. 

In this episode we talk through three businesses that are following currently popular trends, and why they have the opportunity to become big. We also discuss why it's more important to first focus on the hard part of building a business (getting a product to market and finding customers) and why it's okay to worry about how you will turn it into a big business later.

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You don't have to wait until you're struck with a brilliant business idea to start scratching your entrepreneurial itch. There are plenty of opportunities to create efficiencies and solve impactful problems that aren't being addressed when you're working for someone else. This not only makes you a more effective entrepreneur in the future, but it can help you earn more money and skip several steps in your career. 

Micah Brown grew up in South London, and started coding for fun at just 14 years old. But when he graduated college at 20 years old as a Royal Honoree in the UK, finding software engineering jobs wasn't easy. He decided to exercise his entrepreneurial instincts at his first job out of school working as an admin assistant at Aon. His ingenuity would go on to save the company $56 million. 

In this episode, the first of two parts, we discuss how Micah Brown used his expertise as a database engineer to run product at massive brands like NBC Universal and Viacom, and how this led to him starting two companies in his mid 20s, both of which were eventually acquired. In next week's episode, he talks through how he negotiated the sale of his businesses and what lead him to launch a $5 million Deep Tech and Neuroscience fund this year. 

You can find Micah on Instagram @micahbrownofficial and twitter @micahapbrown

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Today we reflect on the sad news of Colin Kroll's passing, founder of Vine and creator of HQ Trivia, and discuss the reality of being an entrepreneur and the importance of finding productive ways of dealing with the various difficulties that might come along the way. 

You will learn: 

1) Tony Robbin's technique for neutralizing emotions during especially trying times, from his first book Unlimited Power

2) The power of practicing daily gratitude

3) The importance of speaking with others to work through your issues, and some of the options available today for connecting with experts, like MyWellBeing and TalkSpace (used by celebrities like Michael Phelps)

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Failure has long been embraced by entrepreneurial minds, and some of the most successful inventors, businessmen, and creators credit their ultimate triumphs with their ability to endure repeated failure. As startup founders, musicians, podcast hosts, and self proclaimed "jacks of all trades" we're no strangers to failure. 

In this episode, we take a stroll back to our very first attempts at venture creation, starting with our college days of trying to launch an affiliate marketing platform called AdLobby. We discuss the massive mistakes we made as first time entrepreneurs, including selling our car to pay for engineers that we couldn't even speak to. We also talk about the next two business we tried to start, and how we almost got into the top accelerator in the world after recruiting an MIT technical co-founder. 

With each of our failures, however, we were able to leverage the experience to not only avoid making the same mistakes again, but even turned them into lucrative job opportunities with other tech startups in both Boston and New York City. Tune in to learn how you can start looking at failure differently, and what you can do to position it as a positive experience to others. 

We leave you with this quote: 

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." -Thomas Edison

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Going to a Russian bathhouses is a very unique experience, but we didn't expect to get a lesson on sales and customer relationships after our trip there this weekend. In this week's 5 Minute Pick Me Up, we explain why we think everyone should try the banya, and the valuable business lessons that we learned. 

In this episode you will learn:

1) The importance of finding ways to engage with customers over and over again and seeing up-sell opportunities

2) How being flexible can help you generate more revenue

3) How high pricing can create perceived value

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

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