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:
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