The Science of Success Podcast

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(B) Shark Tank’s Kevin Harrington on Building Your Dream Team

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In this episode, we explore the power of mentorship to transform your life with our guest Shark Tank’s Kevin Harrington. 

Kevin Harrington is an entrepreneur, author, an original "shark" from the show Shark Tank, the creator of the infomercial, pioneer of the As Seen on TV brand, and co-founding board member of the Entrepreneur's Organization. His work behind the scenes of business ventures has produced more than $5 billion in global sales, the launch of more than 500 products, and the making of dozens of millionaires. He’s authored and co-authored several popular business books including the most recent Mentor to Millions: Secrets of Success in Business, Relationships, and Beyond.

  • How Kevin went from a kid sitting on his couch to one of the most successful direct to consumer entrepreneurs in the world.

  • How do you finance your business when no one will lend you or give you any money?

  • An easy place to find a mentor - start with asking your advisors, lawyers, bankers, and vendors to help you. 

  • Bring in a retired banker as an advisor to help you raise money for your deals. (Kevin found a retired bank president) 

  • Going from a college dropout with nothing to a $500mm company. 

  • Leapfrogging your biggest challenges. Mentors can be an absolute game-changer. 

  • 2 big breakthrough moments in Kevin’s career

    • Getting in the door at the local cable provider to create and shoot infomercials 

    • Finding a financial mentor to help him raise money

  • How to create the right “dream team” to help you achieve any goal. 

  • A dream team is a shortcut to achieving your goals. 

  • Begin with the end in mind.

  • Creating a billion-dollar asset in 90 days 

  • Ask yourself: who can help you best in what you’re trying to do?

  • Strategy: Source from trade associations and look at thought leaders, industry providers, etc who may be able to be mentors or advisors for you. 

  • Associations, publications, existing relationships, legal advisors, bankers, etc. Leverage your network. There is often huge untapped value sitting in your existing network, you have to tap it and unlock it. 

  • What should you do to be a great mentee?

    • Be the mentors BEST student

    • Execute on the action items that your mentor tells you to execute on

    • Be thankful and appreciative. Show them that you’re thinking of them and you’re thankful

  • “Don’t tell me you don’t have the time when you want some of my time"

  • Homework: Write down the date you would want your mentor by, and the qualifications you want in that mentor. 

  • "Whatever you vividly imagine, ardently desire, vividly believe, and enthusiastically act upon must inevitably come to pass."

Thank you so much for listening!

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Episode Transcript

[00:00:04.4] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to the Science of Success, the number one evidence-based growth podcast on the internet, bringing the world's top experts right to you. Introducing your hosts, Matt Bodnar and Austin Fabel. 

[00:00:18] MB: Hey, it’s Matt. I’m here in the studio with Austin. We’re excited to bring you another business episode of the Science of Success. We just launched Season 2 of our business episodes. If you want to learn more about what these are and why we're doing them, be sure to check out the Season 2 teaser that we recently released. With that, Austin, tell us a little bit about how these episodes are different than our traditional Science of Success episode.

[00:00:42] AF: Yeah, it’s important to note that you're still going to get all the great contents you've come to know and love from the Science of Success every Thursday. These are bonus episodes with added value, specifically centered around business. We've interviewed some true titans of business and multiple industries from multiple walks of life and what we're going to focus on are the habits, routines and mindsets that made them successful titans that they are today.

That said, these are lessons, routines, stories, best practices that anyone can learn from and apply to their life. You don't have to be a business owner. You can be an employee. You can be a student, or you can, of course, be a business owner. Come check them out. You're going to come away with a ton of valuable takeaways, but we do have a bit of a business focus on these specific business episodes in Season 2.

[00:01:25] MB: With that, let's get into the episode.

[00:01:28] MB: Welcome to the Science of Success, the number one evidence-based growth podcast on the Internet with more than 5 million downloads and listeners in over a 100 countries.

In this episode, we explore the power of mentorship to transform your life with our guest, Shark Tank's Kevin Harrington.

Are you a fan of the show and have you been enjoying the content that we put together for you? If you have, I would love it if you signed up for our e-mail list. We have some amazing content on there, along with a really great free course that we put a ton of time into called How To Create Time for What Matters Most In Your Life. If that sounds exciting and interesting and you want a bunch of other free goodies and giveaways along with that, just go to successpodcast.com. You can sign up right on the homepage. That’s successpodcast.com. Or if you’re on your phone right now, all you have to do is text the word smarter, that’s S-M-A-R-T-E-R to the number 44-222.

In our previous episode, we brought on neuroscience expert, Rick Hanson, to share incredible insights about how your thoughts can change the physical structure of your brain and so much more.

Now, for our interview with Kevin.

[00:02:47] MB: Kevin Harrington is an entrepreneur, author, an original shark from the show Shark Tank, the creator of the Infomercial, pioneer of the As Seen On TV brand and Co-Founding board member of the Entrepreneur’s Organization. His work behind the scenes of business ventures has produced more than 5 billion dollars in global sales and the launch of more than 500 products. He's authored and co-authored several popular business books, including his most recent book, Mentor to Millions: The Secrets of Success in Business, Relationships and Beyond.

Kevin, welcome to the Science of Success.

[00:03:25] KH: Hey, Matt. Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

[00:03:27] MB: Well, I think you have the honor of being the first shark from Shark Tank that we've had on the show.

[00:03:31] KH: I love that. You mean, I beat Mr. Wonderful to the punch?

[00:03:35] MB: That's right.

[00:03:37] KH: He's a funny guy. I always joke, you know why he calls himself Mr. Wonderful? Because nobody else will.

[00:03:44] MB: That's a good one. I like that. Well, that's awesome. Well, we're obviously super excited to have you on. You're a tremendously successful entrepreneur and have done so much and built so many different companies. One of the things that I’m earlier in my career than you are and I think a lot about mentors and who are the mentors in my life? What does it take to find a mentor? How do you even define a mentor? I’m curious, in your journey in your career, have you had any mentors that were really impactful for you personally and helped you really shape your journey?

[00:04:16] KH: Great question. I’ll go back to the earlier days when I was an entrepreneur. It's crazy. When I was in high school, my dad said, start a business. I started a business in driveway ceiling in Cincinnati, Ohio. Then I started a heating and air conditioning company in college. The earned incomes, I had to pay for my own college and room and board and car and insurance. One day, I’m watching TV and I was watching Discovery Channel and it went dark for six hours. When I called the cable company to see what was wrong, they said, “Oh, Discovery's a new channel. It's just an 18-hour a day channel. They don't have a budget for 24 hours.”

That's when I started putting products on Discovery Channel and cutting a deal with them. All of a sudden, the world of infomercials and As Seen On TV was created and took off and boom, boom, boom. In the beginning of all of that, I was a very headstrong entrepreneur. Wanted to do it all myself. Thought I knew everything. We were having success and was a good salesman and all of that. What happened is we were getting all these orders for products. We had the Jack LaLanne Juicer, we had the FoodSaver, we had Ginsu Knives, Tony Little Fitness.

I was having to finance all the inventory. I was going to banks and I was going to investors and couldn't get money. I started thinking, well, what's the problem? I had a 50 million a year company making more than 5 million a year in profits. We were young in startups, so we were still spending money on first-time cost things. I mean, had a nice profitable business, young entrepreneur, doing good, but nobody would touch me for money.

I said to a few people, “I need some help.” I started reaching out. One of my connectors, I believe that we all have potential mentors and in the business I was in, I write checks to accountants, to lawyers, to phone services, to media companies. I said, who do I write checks to and I should be able to call them and ask for advice, because I’m paying them, right? My lawyer said, “You need to get a good fundraiser in there. Maybe somebody that worked in a bank at a high-level, and maybe a retired banker that could help you.”

I was at a Chamber of Commerce meeting back in my hometown and I’m out talking to people going, “Hey, I need to raise money.” Boom, here I am, sitting in front of a retired bank president. He looks at me and says – I give him the story and he said, “So, how much were you trying to raise?” I said, “I’ve been to five banks. I’ve talked to dozens of other investors. Can't get a dime. I’m trying to raise 3 to 5 million dollars.”

We sat and he looked at the business and he looked at it. He said, “I’ll tell you what, I got a deal for you.” He said, “I’m going to raise you the 3 to 5 million. Let's start with 3 maybe.” He said, “I think I can raise it from one of the people that's already turned you down.” He said, “I’m not going to charge you a dime for any of that. There's going to be 3 million dollars sitting in your account and you're going to then come to me and say, “Man, I need this guy to be part of my company.”

I said, “If you can do all of that, we're going to be sitting down and you're going to be part of my company.” Four months later, I had 3 million dollars in the bank. I made him COO of the company and we grew the company to 500 million dollars from there. This was a time for me that I had to seek a financial mentor, because I didn't graduate from college. I dropped out of college, not because I was stupid, okay. I had a 3.85 GPA, but I didn't like school and I was building a business. I had 25 employees my junior year and I said, “But I never had the skill set of business planning and raising capital and all of that.” Make a long story short, that was the first move. It was a great move and ever since, I’ve decided I need mentors in all the areas of my business that I don't have the skill set for.

[00:08:19] MB: Such an incredible story. There's a couple things I want to break down from that. I mean, even just the simplicity of that idea. It's incredible, find a retired banker, or in your case, it was genius to find a bank president, somebody who's already been immersed in that world, who knows people, who has the connections, who speaks the language. What a fantastic way to leapfrog what was one of your biggest challenges.

[00:08:41] KH: Yeah. I love it. That's in other areas of my life. I have probably, I’d say half a dozen mentors and coaches in my life and some of them are free. They don't charge others. I pay. Because at the end of the day, if you've got to get to the right person and they can do amazing things for your business or your life, it's worth cutting a deal to compensate them for the process. Because at the end of the day, I have an attitude of if something's for free when they're available and on their schedule and their game plan, whereas if I can actually cut a deal to have a contract for having somebody in my life and X amount, I mean, I’m a mentor to dozens of companies. I sign deals, in some cases, where I’m going to do X amount of weekly interactions, X amount of quarterly phone calls, personal meetings on an annual basis, etc., etc.

I can share some of the successes I’ve had with some of the companies I’ve mentored if you'd like at some point here, but the bottom line is I have more than finance mentors. I have them in legal and operations and personal finance, investments, etc., etc. Having a mentor can be a game changer. For me, put me into a very successful club of having quite a few business successes. I love it and it and I recommend everybody out there to explore it, if they're in a point in their life where they need it.

[00:10:18] MB: Great advice. I want to back up and get a little tidbit from this story, because it's such a fascinating journey to begin with. How old were you when you pitched Discovery Channel on, selling their empty ad space?

[00:10:29] KH: I was in my 20s. I don't remember the exact year. I’m 63 now, so it was close to 40 years ago. I think I was in my mid-20s.

[00:10:39] MB: Okay. You're in your mid-20s, you're sitting on the couch watching Discovery Channel, how do you one, get in the door, how do you have the credibility to present to them and how did you ultimately position yourself to close that sale?

[00:10:52] KH: Cable first launched back in the early 80s. I ordered their 30-channel package. I go through all 30 channels, CNN, news 24 hours a day. ESPN, sports 24 hours a day. MTV, music 24 hours a day. Discovery Channel was number 30, the 30th channel, nothing on six hours a day. I just called the local cable operator and said, “Hey, there's a problem. I’m not getting Discovery for six hours a day.” They're like, “Oh, it's only an 18-hour a day channel.” On the phone I said, “Well, if I had something to put in there, would you be interested?” They said, “Absolutely. Come on down.” It's just unsold media.

I went down and then I found out that the local cable company was Warner Cable in Cincinnati and this is back in the early 80s. They had a mandate when they signed the contract to provide cable service that they had to put one channel that was a local access channel, that provided access to the local entrepreneurs, restaurants, whoever it might be, to be able to put their – could be high schools who want to show sports. It was a local access rule.

When they're telling me this in the meeting, I’m like, “How does that work?” They said, “Well, we have a big incentive to deal with local entrepreneurs.” I said, “Well, I’m a local entrepreneur and I want to take some of your time.” He said, “You won't believe this deal that I got.” I said, “All right. I want to fill the time.” They said, “With what?” I said, “Let's do some commercials for some products and put them in there.” They said, “Okay. But look, you got six hours. Let's not do one-minute spots. Why don't we make these like TV shows?”

We're talking through this and yeah, I’ll interview people and have products. We'll demonstrate the products and then we'll sell them at the end. That's how it all started. I was the host. The very first deal, I said, “Okay. I want to shoot a 30-minute show.” They said, “Great.” I said, “And I want to run it.” They said, “Well, we have six hours a day. We'll come back to you with a proposal.” I get the proposal a couple days later for $800. They were producing, shooting, editing, producing in their studio, all-in, $800. I thought, “Wow, what a deal that is.” But wait, there's more. They're going to run it 30 times for the same $800, okay. They're going to shoot it and run it.

They're going to give me 900 minutes of air time and all the production for a 30-minute – we didn't call it an infomercial, because that word didn't exist. 30-minute advertising commercial to sell products. We sold for $800, $26,000 worth of goods. That's when my life changed, because I said, “I no longer want to be in the heating and air conditioning business, or whatever I’m doing. I’m now going to be putting things on cable television.” That was the beginning.

Then I went to Discovery National. This was just local in Cincinnati. After I had credibility, the local operator was like, “You have created a new industry here.” I said, “Can I talk to somebody at corporate, cut a deal with corporate?” They gave me six hours a day on Discovery, 365 days a year for a 1,000 bucks a day, $365,000 under a multi-year contract on Discovery Channel. That was doing 20 plus million dollars in annual sales, that block a time. Pretty good investment. Again, $365,000 investment for 20 million dollars in sales.

This was the game changer. This launched the infomercial industry. This was the early days and that's when we started going for all the Billy Mays, Tony Littles, Jack LaLannes, George Foremans, everybody that had a product, we were rocking and rolling. By the way, this was years before Amazon, nine years before Amazon went B2C, many years before QVC ever started. This was the pioneering days, the early days and had a lot of fun creating some great product successes.

[00:15:14] MB: That is insane, the amount – why were the production costs so cheap to film these infomercials and why were the stations, both the local station and Discovery Channel broadly willing to part with that media for such a low cost?

[00:15:27] KH: Because this got down to this push from their ordinance. They had a contract with the city of Cincinnati for an exclusive cable contract, but they had to provide local access on one channel to local entrepreneurs. To this day, this exists still in many of the cable contracts, by the way. I can go into 150 markets around the country and get 30-minute time blocks for a $100 to a $150 across the entire city on local cable access. They were incentivized and they needed good PR, because when cable first hit, there was a lot of bad stuff out in the market about cable and how this and that.

They needed to show the community that they were embracing local entrepreneurs and hey, for me, it was a great thing. I was there featured profiled entrepreneur that they were helping build some amazing stuff through local cable access. It wasn't about making money for them at that point. It was about being good to their agreement with the city to provide assistance to local entrepreneurs.

[00:16:38] MB: Totally makes sense. You had this tremendous opportunity, where you saw something and came across this unsold media that nobody was monetizing, nobody really even understood, and that's in some sense, why it was so cheap for you to then turn around, looking at Discovery Channel, for example, for you to then turn around and pay $300,000 a year and monetize it for 20 million worth of sales.

[00:17:01] KH: Exactly. Let's put it this way, Matt. I know we've been talking about mentors and why people need a mentor. If you get the new book that I have coming out called Mentor to Millions, it talks about how to get a mentor, what to look for in a mentor, also, how to be a good mentee. Because I’ve mentored some people that I did after a session or two, didn't want to have anything to do with them anymore, because they weren't following up on my advice and instructions and just wanting to do it their own way.

This is why I think a good resource guide for people that are in business, that are entrepreneurs, that are seeking some help would be to pick up a copy of Mentor to Millions, because there is where we pretty much lay it all out for you, the how to's of getting the right folks in your camp and being mentors to your business. Plenty of stories to tell along the way here, but it's obviously very powerful if you get – I call it creating the right dream team. If you can do that, which I’ve now been able to do successfully in many situations, it's a long way to success without a dream team.

With a dream team, it's a shortcut, because the people have been there. I’ll just give you one example also. The bank president guy that I brought in, he actually had some exit experience also. I always say, when you're launching a business, you always got a program with the end in mind. What's the end in mind? To have some an exit. In many cases, this is what a lot of people want. It's good to get somebody on your team that knows how to sell a business and knows how to make it happen. That's a powerful way to do it.

[00:18:49] MB: Absolutely. I want to dig into both some of the lessons for how to find mentors and also how you can be a better mentor and be a better mentee. Before we dig into some of those specifics, I’m curious, tell me a little bit about what was another either challenge that you personally faced, where a mentor was really valuable and helpful, or a company or someone that you were mentoring and how you helped them really leapfrog through whatever the major hurdle was that they were dealing with and overcome that problem?

[00:19:21] KH: Was this for one of my own companies, or for somebody else?

[00:19:23] MB: Either one. Whatever you think is going to be more interesting and impactful.

[00:19:27] KH: I’ll give another example of a big challenge we had. Then I’ve got examples of maybe we could do both, but let me start. I built – this business was very successful. We were north of a 100 million in sales. A 100 million in sales, we're doing 2 million a week in sales, 50 weeks a year. We didn't have a lot of cash sitting in the bank, but we had millions of dollars that would turn week-to-week to fund the media and the inventory and things like that.

One Monday morning, most of our sales came from the weekends, because that's when a lot of the unsold media was Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Monday was always a big day. We literally for the weekend, would be sitting on a couple million dollars in sales, generally. That money would hit our account on Monday. One Monday, the CFO came in to me and he's like, “Hey, we got a big problem. The bank did not send us the 2 million this Monday. They're holding it and they're not going to let it go. They're holding it for reserve against returns in our business.” I’m like, “What do you mean they're holding it?” He said, “Well, they cited a clause in our contract with them. We've had some higher returns happening and they're concerned as a bank that they have to give the returns to the people, because they've cashed the credit card and they want an extra 2 million.” They're just going to sit on our money until some future date that they may choose to give it back to us, okay.

Now imagine that. 2 million dollars swept out of your account almost is what it is really technically what happened, because it was sitting in our account. Instead of them sending it to us, they swept it to them. Now I’m sitting on the verge of closing the company down, because that's my operating capital. Now we ended up taking a look at what was happening and where the problem was. What it was, we had 12 products that we’re running on various levels. 95% of our business was solid, but we had one of those products that represented 5% of our company that we were having big defective issues, because the manufacturer had delivered us a bunch of product that had not been quality-assured properly.

Now these people were calling the bank, charging back, asking for their money back. On that particular product, our returns went from a normal 10% up to 30%. It was such a small part of our business, for us, it really didn't affect us, but the bank was getting this onslaught of nasty calls and chargebacks. That's why they instituted this policy. Boom, we're going to grab Kevin's 2 million bucks.

Now I got a mentor. We checked it out. What are we doing wrong? How do we solve this? I brought lawyers in, accountants in all around. Make a long story short, we presented to the bank the fact that just this one product was causing the problems, why put us out of business for this? This is our solution. We want a separate merchant account for every single product, so we can't lose our whole company when we have one apple to spoil the whole bunch. That's what we did. They bought into it. They released 1.6 million and we then gave them an extra 400 grand for reserve, but we were able to survive and live through all of this.

Make a long story short, this was another situation where we needed to come through this in as good of fashion as possible and we did. We survived. We didn't close the company down, but we were close. That was a pretty amazing story. Again, some great advice, some great mentors came in. When you think about it, Matt, I don't know if you've ever been in the product selling business, but you should have a separate merchant account for each product, because things can blow up. This is a high recommendation I have for any entrepreneur out there listening right now, separate in separate silos, so that you can't lose your whole company because of one issue.

[00:23:40] MB: Yeah, that's a great piece of advice. I's amazing. Any business success story, when you look back, there's always a series of moments where it seems like everything was on the line and you had to find a solution and it's never as easy as it looks from the outside.

[00:23:56] KH: Exactly. You said it best.

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[00:24:33] MB: I’d love to quickly hear as well a story of how you were able to with one of the companies that you were mentoring or advising, helped them overcome a big challenge as one of their mentors.

[00:24:43] KH: Okay. This was in the book, Mentor to Millions. It's about a company I got involved with a few years ago called Celsius. Have you ever heard of a company called Celsius? It's a healthy energy drink.

[00:24:56] MB: I have not.

[00:24:57] KH: Okay. Well, a few years ago, nobody had heard of it because it was a startup. I came in as a board member and energy drinks, Red Bull, Monster, etc., they're sold in retail stores. That's where you buy them. I got involved with this company and I said, “Retail. That's great. Yeah, you can go down that path. That's one way to sell.” I’m in the business of direct to the consumer. I said, it would be great if we could start putting direct to the consumer programs in place, influencers, micro-influencers, fitness influencers, celebrities.

I started down that path of creating additional revenue streams for the company. The company was a little public company that had a couple million-dollar value. I joined them at the startup mode, when they were pretty much just getting off the ground, a couple million bucks in assets. We're going retail, but we're also going to be direct to the consumer, which includes Amazon and direct sales.

Now let's fast forward. We built this company. It's taken off. It took off like crazy. Doing well. It grew to over a 100 million and then a 120 million. Then all of a sudden, we got into here we are, COVID hits. We're in May of this year and the stock was around $3 a share. The market value at $3 a share still built the company now to a couple 100 million dollars, okay. We went from literally zero to a couple hundred million by implementing a lot of the ideas that I was just talking about direct to the consumer, as well as retail, influencers. We brought in Flo Rida, Khloé Kardashian, all these little fitness influencers, etc.

Now during COVID, stores were closing and people said, “Wait, I can't get my Celsius.” But wait, there's more. Yes, I can. Because we've implemented all these direct to the consumer channels, we were crushing it on Amazon, etc., etc. The word got out that Celsius was on fire and the stock hit $14 today over a billion dollars in value, went from a couple hundred million to a billion in the last 90 days. I’m not familiar with any other company that's had any turn like that that's unbelievable.

Here I am, one of the co-founders of the early days of this company and of course, I made a few bucks along the way, because we created a billion-dollar asset. You just can't sit and wait. It's not always going to be the same way. You've got to go for it and figure out new ways, think outside the box as I say, direct to the consumer, fitness influencers we're crushing it. We've got a really solid business. It's called Celsius. The symbol is C-E-L-H. Amazing team. They have an amazing board, amazing CEO. John Fieldly had a great CEO that started that was involved with the company for many years. Jerry David.

Look, as I mentor, I’m on boards, I’m never going to sit here and take all the credit for anything. It's always a collaborative effort. A lot of folks had a lot to do with that. I will tell you, the direct-to-the-consumer strategy and that's the business I’ve been in for 40 years, that was the real hook that created a major juggernaut at Celsius.

[00:28:31] MB: That's amazing. That's a pretty rapid amount of value creation and especially during such a turbulent economic time. I want to come back to some of the practical ways to start implementing this. How did you think about and having been in business for so long and been so successful, how do you think about going about finding a mentor? What are the best strategies for finding one? Even maybe zooming out a little bit, what exactly is a mentor? I mean, as a mentor someone who you have coffee with once a week? Is it somebody who you speak to once a year? Is it somebody who gives you one piece of advice one time? How do you think about what a mentor is and then how do you really think about the best strategies for actually cultivating and finding and building relationships with them?

[00:29:12] KH: Great question. By the way, this is all discussed in our book, Mentor to Millions. Anyone that is listening can hear my response, but they also have a chance to go get the real detailed process in the book. Bottom line is this, it's all of the above, Matt. It might be a one-shot deal. It all depends on what you need and what the mentor is looking for.

I have a gentleman I’m mentoring right now, for example. His name is – I’ll think about in just a second here. Been mentoring him for about eight months now. An amazing guy. His name is Matt George. He runs Children's Place in Peoria, Illinois. It's a home for homeless children. They feed and house 1,800 children on a monthly basis that go through the doors there. They have a massive budget.

Matt George is an amazing guy who really cares about the kids and he's been successful raising money for children's home. Sometimes you hit a plateau. I said to Matt, “Look, this is going to be my give back for your group.” I’ve been working with him, helping him build some ideas, because at the end of the day, having a good visibility is important in a community. Matt has been out there, but I said, “You've done such amazing things, Matt. You should write a book. You should start putting a profile, raising your profile in the community, because you do so much for so many people that I think it's important you should start putting your own podcast together.”

I mean, the first question you ask, how do you get a mentor? Go to your chambers of commerce, go to all the associations you're involved with. I’m a co-founder of an organization called The Entrepreneur’s Organization. It's called EO. We have chapters in 50 countries, a 150 cities. When you join EO, we give you a board of mentors. It's called your forum. To get a board of advisors that are going to be your advisors going forward.

There's all kinds of ways to get mentors. One of the things I mentioned earlier, who do you write checks to? Ask them who might be able to help. I have five law firms I write checks to. I write checks to credit card processors, to fulfillment centers, to media companies, to TV networks. You reach out. Hey, you don't have to say, “I write you a check. I need some advice.” Just, “I’m one of your customers. I need some advice. Could you help me grow bigger? I need a guy in finance. I need someone here. Do you have any connections? Any ideas? Boom, boom, boom.”

Anyway, make a long story short, I got the finance mentor at my chamber of commerce meeting. I also belong to lots of organizations. Joe Polish has a group called Genius Network. and Roland Frasier has a group called War Room. These are mentoring groups that you can join. Board of Advisors is Mike Calhoun. You can join Board of Advisors and get great advice from the other members. These are all the different places you go. At the end of the day, it's a one-on-one discussion you have with the mentor.

Some mentors don't want to do anything more than say, monthly. Others don't mind weekly. Some want to meet you on a regular basis. Others want to do it via phone or Zoom. Now today, obviously with COVID it's a lot different. Everybody's staying away from other people, so it's a little bit tougher, but it's generally virtual in today's world. Lots of great places to get mentors and you can't do it sitting at home. You got to get out and start turning those rocks over to find the mentors.

[00:32:53] MB: Yeah, that makes total sense. I think the big takeaway from that is this idea that what a mentor is is something that's highly flexible. It changes. It could be there's a huge, really broad definition. You can find mentors across, whether it's an organized mentor group, which I’m a big fan of something like War Room. Roland Frasier's actually a previous guest on our show. Roland is the man. Whether it's something really structured like that, or whether it's finding somebody locally, it seems like what you're saying is that there's a tremendous amount of ways that you can find a mentor, what you really have to do.

Obviously, it's a little harder in some ways with COVID, but it may be easier in other ways, because you don't ever have to leave your house. Is you have to get out there. You have to start turning the rocks over. You have to start connecting with people. You have to put yourself out there and be willing to ask for help and call up the other people that you're already doing business with and see who they know that might be able to help you in some way.

[00:33:44] KH: Yes, exactly. Perfect. It's a process. I’m going to say this at one time, you're the only one as the entrepreneur running the company that can do it. You can't go to somebody and ask them to go get you a mentor necessarily.

One quick last story, a guy that was needing some help. He was in the business of selling products to the military. I live in Tampa, Florida. He's like, “Can you give me some help?” I’m like, “Yeah, I can.” I said, “Part of my help is bringing a dream team to your company.” I said, “I know MacDill Air Force Base is right here in Tampa and they have all these retired generals.” I said, “What is a retired general? What's his business model? He wants to consult companies, get paid some fees and use the credibility he has to be a former general inside the US military.”

MacDill Air Force Base is central command for the United States. I said, “Let's go out to MacDill and see if we can meet some ex-generals.” We did. We got Chip Diehl. General Chip Diehl had just retired. He was looking for some relationships. He joined our board of advisors, opened up amazing doors inside the military down at [inaudible 00:34:57] down in Dallas.

Again, if you're in the business selling to the military, who can help you best? Somebody high up in the military, is no longer in the military. Because if they're in the military, they can't consult you or advise you. That might be a conflict. You just got to think outside the box. I could tell any person really how to go get a mentor for their own particular business. Again, my book Mentor to Millions, we teach you all of that in there. I think anyone out there listening should go get a copy for sure.

[00:35:32] MB: Yeah. That's in many ways, that actually shares a lot of commonalities with your own – one of your first big mentors, the retired bank president that you found. Seems like maybe a really rich vein to mind when you're searching for a mentor is to figure out who used to be really prominent, really successful in that industry, or that particular niche and they've since retired and go try to seek those people out and get in front of them. It seems like they have a really potent mix of powerful rolodex and also, they're in the stage in their life, in their career where they're not as busy. Maybe they're looking to give back a little bit more. They're looking to help and teach people and pass on what they've learned and what they know.

[00:36:08] KH: Exactly. Yeah, you hit it. Thank you.

[00:36:10] MB: Is there any way, or any strategy in particular, I mean, you've mentioned things like local chamber of commerce, just networking through the people you know, etc., but to find – If I said today, “Hey, I need to find the retired, let's just say, bank president to help me scale my business to the next level,” how would you go about finding that person?

[00:36:29] KH: Well, let's take the industry that I’ve been, was part of for 35, 40 years, the As Seen In TV industry. There's a trade association in As Seen In TV that was started. I was one of the co-founders. It's called the Electronic Retailing Association. Now that existed for about 30 years, very successful. It ended up morphing into something else now recently. The bottom line is that there was hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands of members of what was called ERA, Electronic Retailing Association.

If you were Procter & Gamble and you wanted to get a mentor in the world of As Seen In TV and electronic retailing of which Amazon was a member in eBay and QVC and HSN, there's a board of directors of ERA. Then there's a listing of suppliers and service providers. A lot of people would call ERA, “Hey, I’m Procter & Gamble. I got a shampoo that I want to do an infomercial for. I need some advisors, mentors. Who do you have?” “Oh, well we have these lawyers, we have these producers, we have these, this.”

I mean, associations are one of the great places to start. I do a ton of business in the world of housewares and hardware. I go to the house for a show, the hardware show and I network with the International Houseware Association. One other place that's really good, there's a publication called HomeWorld Magazine, that is the publication that exists for the world of anything housewares. There's a guy named Peter Giachetti that's the publisher and editor and chairman of HomeWorld Magazine. I’ve known him for 35 years. If I need anything done in the world of housewares, I call him. “Hey, I need a good manufacturer for toasters. Who should we be talking to?” Get an answer right back.

Bottom line, associations, publications, your existing relationships in legal and accounting, all kinds of great ways. You'll never run out of them. I always say, just you got to keep going until you get the right ones. Once you find the right ones, it's going to blow you away. It's really powerful.

[00:38:46] MB: Yeah, that's great advice. There's often so much untapped potential in your network that if you're not asking, if you're not putting yourself out there, if you're not trying to uncover who do they know that might be really helpful for me, you're really leaving a lot of value on the table.

[00:39:01] KH: Absolutely. Yeah. You know it. Absolutely.

[00:39:04] MB: Really quickly, what are some of the key things that you need to do to be a great mentee?

[00:39:09] KH: That's a great question. The first thing I say is you should be the mentor's best student, okay. Because when you think about it, I think I mentioned earlier that it's not exciting for a mentor to – I’ll give some advice and I’ll say, okay. Here's four action plan items before we talk next. Now, the first thing I do when we start the next conversation is let's go over the four action items and how did you do with those. “Oh, well. Got the two of them. I didn't get the other two. Sorry.”

It's like, well, what's wrong with this picture here? That's not a good mentee. I want a good student. I want somebody that's really eager. I don't mind a challenge, or why is what you're saying the right way to go, you're certainly allowed to do that. Don't tell me you just didn't have the time, but you want more of my time. It's important that you communicate well, that you thank mentors, you're appreciative, send them nice notes, maybe a little inexpensive gift every now and then. It could be a Starbucks card for 20 bucks value or something.

Just that you're thinking about them and things like that, or a donation to their charity. I had a grueling three-day event that I did in Vegas and 80 meetings over three days. I keynoted two of the days. I was scrambling to get through the airport, to get home on a late-night flight. I’m sitting in the airport eating a quick bite before I jump on the plane and a young kid comes up to me, handed me a $100 bill. He said, “Mr. Harrington.” He said, “I was at the event. I watched you the whole time. I tried to get to you a dozen times. I never could. I’m just a young entrepreneur starting out. I need some help. I’m not looking for anything for free. I’m going to give you a 100 bucks, because I’ve got a couple questions I’d like to ask you. I don't even need your time right now, because you look busy, you're eating. Take my 100. Can I call you some time and ask you a question?”

I was blown away by that. Number one. Secondly, handed him his 100 back and said, “Look, you approached me the right way. I’m going to give you the answers to your question and I’m not going to charge you a dime and I really appreciate what you did and God bless you.” I mean, those are the things for a 100 bucks, you got to deal with a shark, okay. That was a very smart young entrepreneur, I’ll tell you that right now.

[00:41:41] MB: Kevin, I know we're wrapping up here, but where is one place that listeners can go to find the book, to find you, to find your work online and what is one action step that you would give them to begin implementing some of the things we've talked about today?

[00:41:54] KH: Okay. Great question, Matt. Go to kevinmentor.com and that's got all the information about the book. You can pre-order it. We got copies are just coming out soon. Book will be out in no time. We actually have eBook versions also. Lots of great stuff there. Kevinmentor.com. Also, my website is kevinharrington.tv. Tt's another place they can get some great information also. Kevinmentor.com is a really good place to start.

This is what I’d like to challenge everybody out there right now to make a step. This is for the people that don't have a mentor. I want you to write down a date that you'd like to have a mentor by, and I’d like for you to list the qualifications that you would like in that mentor. Now, I have a saying I wake up every morning to this. Whatever you vividly imagine, ardently desire, sincerely believe and enthusiastically act upon must inevitably come to pass.

That was a saying by an old mentor of mine way back. It's just powerful and I just have to say that believe in yourself, believe in your idea and the steps that I mentioned, vividly imagining, that's easy. People can imagine themselves getting a mentor. Ardently desire, you desire it. You vividly imagine it. You ardently desire it. You sincerely believe that you need a mentor, that you want a mentor, but you don't enthusiastically act upon it. This is where most people fall down.

Now, put a plan of action together and with my book and a plan of action, you're going to have great success. You'll get your mentor and you're going to turn things around in your business. On that note, Matt, I want to thank you for having me. Been a great event here to share some of the ups and downs that I’ve had over the years. I shared a couple stories that sometimes I don't like to share about how tough it was for me. but I really appreciate you having me today and I hope anyone out there can go to kevinmentor.com to get some information about getting a mentor in their life.

[00:44:08] MB: Kevin, thank you so much for coming on the show, for digging into some of your incredible backstory and sharing all of these lessons about how we can find mentors.

[00:44:16] KH: Thank you, buddy. Talk soon.

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