647: Tai Lopez Owns 50% of $89/mo MentorBox.com, 800 Units, $80k In Initial Test for Self Help Box with CEO Alex Mehr

Alex Mehr. He’s the founder of Zoosk, which filed to go public in 2014. His current venture is MentorBox, a unique and new self-help concept. Before that, he was an aerospace scientist at NASA.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – How to Win Friends and Influence People What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos Favorite online tool? — Trello Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— I try at least 8 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “To take more risks”

 

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:10 – Nathan introduces Alex to the show 01:43 – Zoosk announced to go public for $200M 02:24 – Zoosk decided to stay independent, so they didn’t pursue going public 02:44 – When you go public, you make projections about the growth rate and what you want to do financially 03:05 – The expectations from the public market for tech companies who go public are different than those who do not 03:14 – Alex and the team didn’t want the company to push hard for a quarter by quarter growth 03::50 – Zoosk was launched in 2007 04:00 – Alex and his co-founder split everything 50/50 04:21 – Alex and his co-founder have worked for 8 years and they never had a problem 04:40 – Alex and Shayan have different domain expertise and they respect each other’s’ domain expertise 05:30 – Zoosk has grown rapidly until 2014 05:36 – “But the company was not profitable” 06:40 – Alex still has his equity and is part of the board 07:36 – Zoosk is growing again 07:53 – MentorBox is a self-education self-improvement education box 08:07 – Alex has always been a book reader his whole life 08:33 – Alex would gift his friends books all the time 08:43 – 10% of the population’s primary method of learning is reading 08:50 – There are 4 methods of learning: auditory, visual, reading, and kinesthetic 09:20 – The idea of MentorBox is a subscription for business books that Alex thinks everybody should read per month 09:38 – MentorBox makes the information concise so that you can study the main concepts in 10 minutes 09:46 – MentorBox delivers in 4 formats 10:28 – Tai Lopez is Alex’s co-founder 10:41 – 7 years ago, Tai and Alex met at an online gaming conference 11:05 – It turned out that Tai reads 1 book a day 11:40 – Tai and Alex have a 50/50 deal with MentorBox 12:03 – Alex had a landing page to test MentorBox 12:19 – They had a video that explained the product 12:27 – Tai has a large social media following so he tested his ad on his social media 13:05 – In the first test, they were able to sell $80K worth of product 13:22 – MentorBox is priced at $89 a month 13:50 – MentorBox’s retention 14:14 – MentorBox’s space is education subscription 14:40 – Average retention in the space 15:12 – Tai and Alex knew that MentorBox would be a sustainable business 15:38 – LTV and CAC are both high 16:18 – MentorBox also relies on word-of-mouth marketing 16:37 – The cost per box drops depending on the volume 17:26 – MentorBox buys from distributors and publishers directly 17:48 – MentorBox is looking at getting directly from the author 18:18 – The number of books MentorBox has bought from Ryan Holiday 19:15 – The Famous Five

 

3 Key Points:

The public market’s expectations for companies that go public are very different and can put on additional pressures that, otherwise, wouldn’t exist. Do what you love AND share what you love doing to other people. Be a risk-taker – you’ll learn more that way.

 

Resources Mentioned:

The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives