Ever wonder how successful people get to the top of their game? What the heck do these high-achieving CEO’s have that you don’t have anyway? For one, they are always learning. What if you could bottle the best of their knowledge or in this case box it up? That’s exactly what MentorBox is offering with a thoughtfully curated book subscription box. No matter what your goal, if you're looking for inspiration or a road map for building success you can tap into one of these handpicked experts, gurus or best-selling authors. We asked CEO, Alex Mehr Ph.D. about how Mentorbox can help us achieve more by learning from the masters.
What exactly is Mentorbox?
MentorBox is an online platform for continuous business education from top nonfiction books, best-selling authors, professors, CEOs, industry disruptors, self-development aficionados and thought leaders. It's also a monthly subscription box service which aims to reignite the spark of learning in a way that will immediately impact the trajectory of our subscriber's lives. Along with the physical books, MentorBox uses a multimedia approach to learning, including video seminars featuring the authors themselves, laminated cheat sheets, study guides, audio summaries, and workbooks.
What was your inspiration? How did you get started curating these books and lessons?
I've been an avid book reader all my life. Naturally, I've gifted a lot of incredible books to my friends over the years only to find out that they - despite being very smart and educated - end up just putting them on their bookshelves without ever reading them. Last year I had an “aha moment” after gifting Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond to a friend who didn't even open the book. I identified two significant culprits that are preventing people from reading: 1) They are too busy, and 2) Many learn differently, processing better through video and audio as well as through kinesthetic exercises (workbooks). So I set out to design a product that accomplished exactly that, i.e. we bring in top selling authors and thinkers to create video and audio materials that perfectly summarize the key takeaways of the books and also develop workbooks to help people personalize the main concepts and apply them to their own lives and businesses.
How do you decide which books make the cut?
This is still evolving, but we currently use four main factors:
1)Is this book a must-read? Does it deliver powerful thoughts and ideas that will immediately impact the trajectory of your professional or personal life in a tangible way?
2)Is the author (who we will bring onboard to create multimedia educational materials) charismatic? Articulate? Accomplished?
3)Do our customers want this book? (measured via feedback, analytics, and polling)
4) Our editorial discretion: Does it fit our mission? Our current theme and topic?
Do members choose the books included in their Mentorbox? Tell us about the Themed boxes?
Our main physical subscription box is one size fits all. We poll our users and research the current market trends before curating the same box for everyone. We have recently rolled out a separate product, themed boxes as one-off purchases which a customer will select to address a sector of her life she wishes to improve. Current choices are mindset, leadership, entrepreneurship, happiness and financial planning.
Who are your favorite authors?
Oh! Quite a few names come to mind, but I'd rather not name specific people so I can maintain my objectivity.
Is there a subject or lesson that you found particularly inspiring?
I'm specifically fascinated by social psychology. As a businessman, I find applications of social psychology in business, sales, and marketing incredibly powerful and massively underestimated.
When it comes to the books written by CEOs, is there an underlying common thread, personality trait or daily habit that led them all to succeed?
I’ve seen at least three common threads that typically hold true in any successful CEO you will encounter.