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:

1. The public market’s expectations for companies that go public are very different and can put on additional pressures that, otherwise, wouldn’t exist.
2. Do what you love AND share what you love doing to other people.
3. 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