When a founder decides to build an impact driven organization, at some point they have to make an important decision on whether to structure it as a for profit entity or a non-profit. While a for-profit can maximize financial upside to the founding team and shareholders, a non-profit by definition can focus more of its effort on the impact it wants to have in the world. 

In this week's episode bring back Darrell Silver, the founder and former CEO of Thinkful, a for-profit education venture, to talk about why the model of the non-profit freeCodeCamp is so innovative in its funding and impact model, and why he is now a major donor and supporter of the organization that was founded with a similar mission to his. 

In this rare interview, we got to dive into some of the nuances of how nonprofits are managed and how freeCodeCamp has been able to deliver 1.1 billion minutes of instruction with just a 12 person team by making their education model open source. We also discussed how people who want to improve their career prospects and pick up a technical skill can best decide whether to learn online for free or pay tuition for an instructor guided education experience if they can afford it. 

Tune in to hear our interview with Darrell Silver about the story and future of freeCodeCamp.

If you want to support their work, you can donate as little as $5 here which will directly contribute to 250 hours of free education!

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Kevin Urrutia decided to teach himself to code while in college so that he could turn all the different business ideas he had into reality. Little did he know that after years of building apps and websites and trying idea after idea, he would need to completely change his mindset about how to get ideas off the ground to have his first entrepreneurial success.

Kevin left his home in New York to go to Silicon Valley and work as a software engineer for Mint.com and later a little known startup called Zaarly where he would learn the power of SEO and marketing. 

After reading every marketing and sales book he could find, he moved back to start an online maid service called Maid Sailors. In this episode he talks about how his new found love for marketing helped him scale Maid Sailors to millions of dollars in revenue, and truly kicked off his entrepreneurial career helping him launch several more startups, including his digital marketing agency Voy Media.

This show is brought to you by School16, a tech career accelerator for professionals interested in roles in Product, Marketing, Sales and Operations at top tech firms and startups.

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Online education has been around since the 1990s but when Andrew Clark decided to start a fully remote accredited college, students weren't yet used to the idea of going to a school without a campus. His solution? Raise money to buy a small liberal arts school with a central campus that students could choose to visit any time, with the option to complete their education completely online.

In this episode we talk about Zovio's origin story (formerly Bridgepoint Education) and how Andrew was able to convince a private equity investor to give him $20 Million to build his vision after knocking on doors to raise capital for over a year. Andrew proved his credibility with his decade long management experience at University of Phoenix and his profoundly forward thinking approach to education.

We discuss how his team created a highly sought after program by standardizing their curriculum and allowing students to enroll any week of the year, and talk about his outlook on the future of remote learning given the rapidly changing global environment that's forcing all higher education institutions to move online. 

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When Dan Porter started his second company he had every intention of building a massive business and getting rich. In 2013, after creating one of the most viral mobile games on the planet he achieved his goal and sold his business to Zynga for $183 million. And now he plans to go even bigger with his new company Overtime. 

We got a chance to hear him speak last week to a small group of entrepreneurs that Sergei works with at the eLab at NYU, and we were inspired to share some of the insights and wisdom that Dan bestowed on us during his 60 minute conversation with the group. 

In this episode you will learn: 

1) How to compete with massive established companies and win

2) How to make products designed for a niche group, mainstream

3) The importance of relationships and how to cultivate them

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The founders of Facebook, Slack, and Twitter all started off building something completely different. How is it that they stumbled into creating some of the fastest growing and most impactful products of our generation? 

In this week's 5 Minute Pick Me Up we discuss why you should simply focus on getting started on creating something instead of waiting for some big idea to strike, and how opportunities eventually start presenting themselves once you're in motion.

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A lot of people want to start something, but most never actually do. Why? They simply don’t want it or need it enough, and find happiness in other ways.

But, some of us never get started for a handful of simple reasons.

• We don’t know what we want to do.
• We don’t know our own strengths.
• We doubt ourselves.
• We worry about what others think.

Fortunately, all of these obstacles can be overcome. In this episode, we discuss how to reframe your thinking to finally start acting towards your goals and dreams. We share our exact framework for getting out of the “funk” when you get to a point in your life when you’re constantly feeling unfulfilled.

We also give you specific examples of how we identified and improved on our respective strengths to gain the confidence to create.

Hear Sergei talk about how he got into acting, eventually landing a paid speaking role at an ABC pilot, and how Vadim became a lecturer at a University having never before taught in an academic setting.

The feeling of being stuck in your life can have a major impact on your overall happiness – follow these steps to quickly get out of that state of mind to continue to progress.

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Books can have the best mentorship moments. This week we have a story about Boris Berezovsky from The Oligarchs by David E. Hoffman. We recorded this episode on our drive from Boston to New York City this Sunday, so lucky for you Sergei's Nissan 300ZX makes a guest appearance. 

In this episode we discuss how it was possible for a career academic to become a billionaire, and how the same thing can be done today to create opportunities. 

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When you're inventing something completely new you don't have the benefit of following someone else's blueprint. So how do you know if you're on the right track? Patience, and good old fashioned trial and error. Within a few short years of coming up with his innovation for gluten free freshly baked bread, Tristaun LeClaire and his brother grew their business to half a million dollars in revenue and distribution in major stores like Whole Foods, but the business almost failed before they got their first major distributor. 

In our second interview recorded live at the FounderMade Discovery Show we chat with the founder of Simple Kneads about how he came up with the idea for his company, and the immediate demand he saw from the gluten intolerant community. We also talk about what happened when the company moved to North Carolina and hit a major obstacle when trying to scale production.  

Tristaun details how he got through that difficult moment, where they found their initial capital, and what the brothers did to get on the shelves of large distributors that quickly started generating cash flow for the business.

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People don't think their way into acting differently, they act their way into thinking differently. We recently heard that advice on the Armchair Expert podcast, and it reminded us of a story about our late dad. 

In this episode we talk about how after being diagnosed with cancer at the age of 72 and not working for over a year our dad ended up creating a job opportunity for himself when he decided to go back to work. 

We all come up with excuses that prevent us from acting, but how can we break out of that cycle? In this episode you will learn how to:

1. Make it harder for yourself to not follow through 
2. Give yourself a good enough reason to act now

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How do you take an idea for a new hardware innovation and attract funding for it? You have to start with the prototype. In part two of our interview with Kevin Yoo we find out how the founder of WearWorks became so inspired to work on the R&D for his product for several years, getting accepted into BMW's URBAN-X accelerator and attracting half a million dollars in grants and investment in the process.

We discuss the importance of branding, especially for a physical product where the experience of the consumer begins when they first interact with the brand, heavily influencing how they feel when they first handle the product. Kevin also tells us why he would be happy to work on this business for the rest of his life, and the vision he sees for the future of navigation and his company. 

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This week we were invited to attend the FounderMade Discovery Show in NYC where hundreds of founders of consumer brands in food, beauty, nutrition and more showcased their products to consumers and store buyers in a huge exhibition downtown. 

In this edition of the 5 Minute Pick Me Up, we let you listen in on some takeaways from Christine Saleh, the founder of Skinvolve, who started her beauty brand with her sisters in Miami, and told us exactly how she grew the company to ultimately get on the shelves of Anthropologie. She also shared a unique distribution channel that she found to get the product in front of millions of potential customers. 

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While most of us don't have everything figured out, there are others that seem to navigate life with the help of an invisible compass. This week we met with one such person, Kevin Yoo, the founder of WearWorks, which is creating the future of navigation using haptic feedback - ie, leveraging feel and touch, not sight. In college he already became an award winning industrial designer which quickly lead to opportunities to work on projects with large corporations like GE. It was during that time that he started to realize what his purpose was and what truly motivated him to act. 

In part one of our interview with Kevin we learn about his origin story and what prepared him to build a product designed for the blind and vision impaired, ultimately landing his team into NYTimes,The Discovery Channel, TechCrunch, and a TED Talk earlier this year. We discuss how he recruited an all star team and why he realized early on that his goal in life would be to bring people together to build things that matter. 

In part two Kevin talks about how he iterated on the original concept to turn it into a business, how his team was able to secure half a million dollars in funding, and the various applications of the technology they're building today that makes his new product revolutionary. If you're interested in supporting WearWorks consider contributing to their Kickstarter and get early access to their first product, Wayband. 

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What's the easiest way to notice lucrative opportunities? By keeping your eyes open in the industry that you're already an expert in. 

This week Vadim comes back from his trip to Italy and talks about a truck driver and chef turned entrepreneur that he met while at a friend's wedding in Tuscany. In this episode you will learn: 

1) How to find a niche in the industry you're working in

2) Why there is a massive competitive advantage to starting a business where you're a domain expert

3) What you can start doing today to understand where the opportunities are

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Great business leaders come from all sorts of backgrounds but the one skill that all of them prioritize developing over time is learning how to write effectively. The reason for this is clear - as a creator you're communicating through the written word all of the time - by writing speeches, landing page copy, job descriptions, thought-leadership content, business proposals, social media posts, etc. But how do you develop this skills if it hasn't been a priority for you? 

The best writers (and entrepreneurs) are voracious readers, so before you develop your own style you need to get into a habit of consuming the work of other writers, but the best way to get better at it yourself is to start writing every opportunity that you get. 

In this episode we discuss four main tactics for becoming a better writer: 

1) Write about what you know or care about

2) Get critical feedback on your writing early on

3) Pick a medium or format for your writing (like long form essays) to create constraints around the type of writing that you do

4) Make your writing public

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This is a new segment where we answer questions that we get from founders in private - the things that they're too afraid to ask just anyone. 

In this week's episode we tackle three questions that have come up in our recent conversations with founders. We discuss: 

1) How do I know if I'm building the right thing?

2) What can I do if my cofounder is not pulling their weight?

3) When is it okay to pay myself?

To answer these questions, we pull from our own experience and tell you the exact advice we've given to entrepreneurs in the accelerator programs we work with so you can apply it to your own business.

We discuss what you can do to know if you're on the right track with your business, how to have difficult conversations with your co-founder about the work that's being done and being honest with yourself about the work you're doing, and the right way to think about compensation in the early days.

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This week, we had a chance to hear from the founder of the popular app Foursquare, Dennis Crowley, when he came to speak to a group of entrepreneurs at NYU.

In this edition of the 5 Minute Pick Me Up, you’ll get the inside story of how Dennis came up with the original idea of a location-based check-in app back in 1999 when smart phones didn’t even exist, how he ended up selling that concept that he called Dodgeball to Google in 2005, and how he was able to start the concept all over again under the name of Foursquare in 2009 to grow it to tens of millions of users.

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James was 26 years old when he was promoted to managing director at a 900 person public relations agency. He spent the 4 years after college learning everything he could about the business, adding value wherever he could eventually becoming invaluable to clients that wanted to spend more money with his agency because of the work that he was doing.

In the third episode of our Scaling Mentorship series where we hold live interviews with corporate leaders, we get an inside look into how a leader is made in a business that is heavily relationship based. When James decided he needed a new challenge, he moved to Australia to help turn around a small PR company that was operating at a loss. Within 7 years he grew it from 15 people to over 100 with operations all across Asia Pacific. His experience traveling the world was instrumental in helping him create new business units across new geographies and cultures where the clients and their needs had to be relearned.

In our interview we also learn how the PR business has changed and what companies should be looking for when partnering with agencies today. James Wright speaks to the future of PR, where he sees massive opportunities, and what people should do if they want to break into the industry.

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Sure, David Letterman had his own hugely popular TV show that ran for 33 years. Yes, being one of the most recognizable personalities on the planet helped him quickly land a Netflix show shortly thereafter. But, David had his own issues, struggles, and obstacles. Even though he had one of the most popular shows on TV there were other entertainers out there that he was jealous of.

In this week's 5 Minute Pick Me Up we think back to when we got the opportunity to sit in David Letterman's old screening room earlier this year, and the feeling of excitement that we felt even getting to walk through the same halls as David, Stephen Colbert, and so many others. But, while acknowledging another person's achievements or even being envious of them is natural, it's not productive to dwell on it. In our episode we talk about how we all should focus on our own super powers, and why it's important to remember that you'll always have someone else to compare yourself to. Regardless of how successful you become there will always be someone else on a different level. Try to be grateful for your own accomplishments, and simply stay focused on yourself.

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Back in September we had an idea. Could we give a compelling talk to an auditorium full of thirteen year olds? Our motivation ran a bit deeper. Our nephew was about to head to high school, and this might be the last chance for us to give a talk to him and his classmates before sports, girls, and schoolwork completely took over his life. 

In this episode we discuss how the whole thing came together, from our brother's introduction to the school principal, to pitching him on the idea and trying to secure a budget for the speaking engagement. We also talk through exactly how we came up with the idea for the talk, and what we did in the final weeks to create one of the most engaging hour long talks we've done in a while. 

If you're interested in learning about how to convince someone to give you a platform to speak, what goes into putting on an event like this, how to plan and structure a long talk, and what it takes to create additional value for yourself (like video assets, potential press, and other speaking opportunities) tune into this episode and share with a friend that mind find it valuable. Throughout this episode we let you listen in on some of the calls we had to make this happen, and include excerpts from the actual talk we delivered last week.

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On April 26th, 1986 and the days that followed the Chernobyl Disaster, very few people actually learned about what had happened. This week we got a first person account from our mom, who was then taking care of infant 5 month old twins (us) when the media finally announced what had happened. 

We discuss the aftermath of the disaster from the perspective of normal citizens living in an oppressed regime that held control over large parts of Eastern Europe and Asia at the time. 

We also draw parallels to the relative omnipresent freedom that we have here in the United States, and why we should all take advantage of our ability to question the status quo and create change where it's necessary.

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By the time Callie and Kelly were selected to pitch at Shark Tank, Slumberkins had surpassed one million dollars in revenue, all with no outside investment. What started off as a weekend side hustle for these two new moms turned into a retail and content business with 10 employees and a potential TV deal that's in the making. 

Listeners of The Mentors can get 20% off of their first order of Slumberkins by using the code 'mentors' at checkout. Visit https://slumberkins.com/.

In this episode the founders break down exactly how they got their start, from sewing stuffed animals by hand every night and selling them at craft fairs to creating an online presence with a loyal following. Callie Christensen and Kelly Oriard describe exactly how they leveraged social media (namely Instagram) to grow their sales from day one, and how they divide responsibilities as Co-CEOs. They tell us what they would say to popular influencers to get them to promote their products and how they convinced a giant manufacturer to give them a chance. 

Before starting their business, Callie and Kelly had been friends for 20 years, and while their experience as teachers and therapists gave them the idea for their business, they had to slowly figure out how to become entrepreneurs and create a sustainable businesses. Their story is a testament to the fact that you don't have to have years of experience or deep business knowledge before you start building something. You do, however, have to start.

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In this edition of the 5 Minute Pick Me Up, we wanted to share a story of our family military history, and talk about why some of the biggest entrepreneurial success stories of the last century came from people who served in the armed forces.

We start off the episode with a Soviet military hymn and end with a few reasons why holidays like Memorial Day should inspire all of us to be our best selves.

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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.

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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.

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Almost all sources of conflict stem from someone feeling like they're not being heard. Sometimes this is knowingly perpetuated by two sides that are proactively unwilling to make concessions but other times we unknowingly ignore warning signs that a conflict is escalating.

In this episode we discuss two cases - a prisoner of war negotiation highlighted in Chris Voss' book Never Split The Difference and a story of a founder dealing with a partner that wasn't pulling his weight.

In both cases resolution was only achieved once the source of the problem was actively acknowledged, validating the concerns of the other side, and achieving the coveted "that's right" response.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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Part II of our interview with Gillian Morris starts with a cautionary tale about taking people for their word, and why a potential investment is never real until you have the money in the bank.

As with every obstacle in her entrepreneurial path, Gillian quickly learned the complicated and sometimes cryptic landscape of dealing with investors to raise more than half a million dollars in her first round.

In the second part of our interview Gillian talks about how she dealt with a co-founder leaving, and how her team ended up monetizing Hitlist to turn it into a profitable company. We also dig into how her job changed when the company had to adjust its focus on sales, and why she made the decision early on to have a distributed team with no central office.

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In business, as in life, we find ourselves in many unexpected situations where the natural instinct is to freeze up. 

In today’s 5 Minute Pick Me Up (that admittedly is closer to 11 minutes), we talk about the meaning of the phrase “the show must go on,” and how anyone can become better at dealing with difficult situations, just by learning how to move on, and keep going. 

We discuss a few moments in our lives, on the stage, in a debate club, and in a high-stakes business meeting, where an ability to move the show along really came in handy.

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Many entrepreneurs prioritize building a great product that people want but fewer prioritize building a great team that allows your business to grow. In this episode we talk about the importance of developing a business that's designed to work even when you're not working on it. The only way to achieve this is to move away from being an individual contributor and becoming a manager and leader that learns to effectively delegate.

This comes down to two fundamental principles. 

1) Having the right people in place

2) Investing the time upfront before you delegate 

Tune in to learn about the character traits you should look for in the talent you recruit and the preparation required to set them up for success. 

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Lots of people love to travel, but how do you turn a hobby into a real business? Gillian Morris had a full time job in Istanbul and she figured out that she could get her friends to visit her there if she found cheap flights for them for specific dates. Soon, she was getting weekly requests from dozens of people to send them cheap flight deals, taking up nearly all of her free time.

In part one of our two part interview with Gillian we learn how she was able to turn her idea into a real business after deciding to attend a conference in Europe that would lead to a press release that grew her user base to 25,000. Gillian talks about how as a first time founder she had to learn everything, from how to build a product and understand user data, to marketing and learning how to talk to investors.

In part two you will hear how she ended up getting her first investor, what she did to monetize the app, and why she decided to build a distributed team at Hitlist.

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This week has been full of events for us, culminating in a weekend charity brunch that was executed so well that we decided to do an episode about it.

You will learn:

• How to organize a big event in 3 weeks
• The importance of building partnerships throughout the process
• Why being an organizer is a great way to create other opportunities

Events do require significant effort to be successful, but it’s incredibly rewarding to get a bunch of people together in one place to create new relationships. If you've been thinking about organizing something (anything) we urge you to try it. Only good things can come of it.

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Darius was on stage with NYTimes columnist David Brooks in front of 2,000 people, and he couldn't be more in his element. Just a week before that, he found out from a Tweet that he was going to be in the opening Keynote of a major conference. I had a chance to catch up with him after his panel to hear his story and find out how he ended up on that stage.

At 25 years old, him and his co-founders (all friends from Georgetown University) have been able to build an impactful non-profit, GOODProjects, that's already transforming communities in Washington D.C., aimed at reducing gun violence and ending poverty in the area.

In this episode, Darius walks us through how the idea for his organization came about, from running their very first over-subscribed summer camp to growing to 25 team members, attracting major donors and even launching an investment fund in the process.

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If you really want something, don't wait for all of the stars to align to get started. 

That's the moral of the story for today's 5 Minute Pick Me Up about an entrepreneur we met from Ghana that's trying to build the Netflix of Africa. 

When he got the idea for this tech platform, everyone told him that he won't get anywhere without a technical co-founder. He could have let that slow him down, but instead he focused on what he can accomplish right now. 

In this episode you will learn how he: 

1) Outsourced the development of his technology until he found the right partner

2) Convinced local producers to provide him with content

3) Got a major distribution deal by focusing on what motivates a major corporate partner

We also discuss why sometimes finding the right market fit for your business simply means looking somewhere new, like a new geography or customer segment.

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For our 100th show we decided to go through some of our most popular episodes and pick out the best parts. If you’re a first time listener, this is a great way to get a feel for our classy style, and if you’re a veteran, we love you and hope you enjoy this trip down memory lane.

Here’s the breakdown of the clips featured in this episode:

Episode 7: Becoming Unstuck – How To Finally Get Started, on Sergei getting a role in a feature film.

Episode 8: Building a 90 Million Dollar Business After 50, with Larry Petretti, on what Larry did when he first started building his business

Episode 11: How to Network Like a Pickup Artist, on the three second rule of not giving a… hoot.

Episode 30: How To Make It In America (aka How To Do What You Love In A Communist Country Part III), on how our parents left their careers and took menial jobs to build a life for us in America

Episode 32: The Secret to Finding Big Opportunities, with Carey Smith of Big Ass Fans, on what to look for when starting a business from an entrepreneur that sold his company for $500 million.

Episode 24: How Julie Smolyansky of Lifeway Became CEO of a Public Company at 27, on how Julie took over Lifeway when her father died.

Thank you for listening, and see you next week. Love, The Mentors.

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For our 99th episode, we've got 99 problems on our mind, and we wanted to discuss some of the ways Vadim and I have tackled seemingly insurmountable problems in the last few years. 

In today's 5 Minute Pick Me Up (okay we know it's 10 minutes but shush) we describe the three quick ways to remove the burden of having big problems weighing on you. 

First thing you can do is to Act Fast. Here we talk about the accounting problem that almost cost our business, and how we acted fast to solve it with our lawyers. 

Second is to Cross Things Off by starting with the quickest and most fundamental next step in front of you, and here Sergei talks about how he was able to plan and execute an entire accelerator program just 2 months before it launched.

Third is to Be Solution Oriented. Especially in the workplace, no one wants to work with someone who just focuses on the problems. Here Vadim discusses how he was able to add value immediately at a startup he worked at by being the person who was willing to solve the CTO's major problems. 

Intro Lyrics to 99 (Business) Problems

If you got work problems I feel bad for you son

I got 99 problems, but my business ain't one

I got the tax patrol on the cash patrol

Foes that want ta make sure my biz gets closed

Music Credit: Youtube: MakerOfAllMusic1DS

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Some people have an uncanny ability to pitch themselves or their ideas so eloquently, it makes you feel like it’s an unattainable skill that they’re born with. While it may come more naturally to some, anyone can make significant improvements in this area by following a few simple principles.

We start this episode by talking about what you should avoid doing in an elevator pitch. This isn’t your time to tell your entire story, or to talk about everything that you or your product can do. The idea is to simplify things as much as possible by only focusing on the most important and impressive aspects of what you do while making it relatable to the specific audience you’re addressing.

We also discuss how to actually figure out what your target audience cares about and provide a simple framework for composing your elevator pitch. Throughout the episode we give specific stories of how we’ve helped entrepreneurs refine their elevator pitch which should help you apply it to your own story.

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Just because your idea or big vision isn't quite working out the way you thought it would, doesn't mean that it's not possible to make small adjustments to turn it into something that works. 

In this edition of the 5 Minute Pick Me Up, we talk about a founder with a big vision in the computer science education space who was able to turn her business around by listening to the market, and we share some quick tips on how to get better at knowing when to adjust course in with you venture.

We talk about how even Steve Jobs couldn't sell his initial vision of a personal computer in every home, and who he sold to at first while he waited for the technology, and the market to mature.  

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Reading Rainbow ran on PBS for 23 years and as the host of the show our guest LeVar Burton developed an immense appreciation for the importance of access to literature for young children. While his initial entrepreneurial skills were developed as a working actor, leading him to land roles in shows like Star Trek and Roots, after Reading Rainbow went off the air in 2006 he decided to buy its rights and made it his mission to leave an impact on future generations through reading.

We sat down with LeVar and Alicia Levi, the CEO of Reading Is Fundamental (RIF), a non-profit founded in 1966 that has 400,000 volunteers nationwide working to bring books and literacy resources to millions of people. We start by discussing how they think about risk taking and failure, and the best frame of mind to move past obstacles that paralyze you. LeVar tells us how Skybrary, the company he started in 2012, ultimately took off when the Kickstarter they launched raised their goal of $1 million in 11 hours instead of the planned 35 days.

We also learn how their massive new partnership came about, starting from a chance PSA that LeVar did for the non-profit in Los Angeles, and why investing into building your relationships can have life changing consequences.

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This week we got to interview LeVar Burton of Reading Rainbow and Star Trek fame. That episode is being released on Wednesday, but we thought you might want to know exactly how we got him on our show. 

In this episode we discuss the importance of building strong relationships and delivering on your promises to help you get the types of opportunities you're looking for.

We also talk about why taking risks and being willing to face rejection becomes an invaluable skill in this whole process

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Most of us assume that taking a step back in our career can be a fatal move but in reality it can actually help you skip several steps quickly. 

This week we decided to feature a story that was shared by sales influencer Kevin Dorsey (KD) during a live class at School16 about how taking a pay cut and a demotion in title ended up catapulting his career in technology sales, leading him to become a VP of Sales just a few years after he started working in tech. 

KD explains how he was able to take on responsibilities that weren't part of his job description to quickly get promoted to management and leadership roles and why having the confidence to take on a more junior role ended up paying off in the long run.

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Ever wonder what it takes to plan and run an 8,000 person conference? While attending SXSW EDU this week, Vadim got a chance to speak with the founder of the conference, Ron Reed. 

This episode covers the origin story of the education conference and how Ron saw a big opportunity to build a community for people interested in improving education. In our conversation Ron explains why the original event was double the expected size, and talks about how the conversation has changed over the years around education. We also dive into what it takes to plan and run a conference of this magnitude, which grew to about 8,000 attendees in 2019. 

Vadim also had a chance to watch the keynote address from renown author and New York Times columnist David Brooks, and found out how Ron was able to get David to speak at this year’s event. 

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This weekend we set an audacious goal for ourselves of writing, recording, and filming an entire parody music video for all of you by the time this episode was published. The only problem is that when we met to work on it, we started hitting roadblocks pretty much right away.

In this edition of The 5 Minute Pick Me Up, we discuss how we were able to use reframing to figure out why we weren't making any progress on our work, and to change our perspective in a way that led to the most productive 12 hours we've had in a long time. 

Please enjoy the product of our work session, our second parody titled "Friends Now", a story about why networking is important, sang to the tune of "These Days" by Rudimental.

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This week we have a returning guest, Olga Nesterova owner of DANCECLASS, who was one of the first guests on this show. If you want to hear her origin story, check out Episode 6: World Champion Dancer Olga Nesterova, from the UN to the NBA Playoffs Halftime Show. 

Listeners of this show can get 50% off of Olga's most popular 2 For 1 Deal Group Class by going to www.danceclass.today/deals and using the code THEMENTORS. 

In this episode we discuss a major change that she made in her business this past summer after running it for almost 4 years. Olga talks about how she identified a more lucrative opportunity, selling dance classes to other corporations, and how she learned how to sell to big companies in New York City. In less than 6 months, this part of her business is already generating half of her revenues.

She also talks about why companies find these classes so valuable, helping her provide a differentiated offering. Many corporations care about the wellness of their employees, providing activities like yoga classes, but learning how to dance at work is still a novel idea. Turns out it's not only fun for employees, but acts as a great social activity that helps employees get to know each other better, and makes them more productive at their jobs.

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