Hey, do you want to step into the minds of successful people to see how they can empower your life and career? Then you may be interested in reading some of the books they have written, or rather, in this case, get the gist of what they are trying to deliver. In today’s MentorBox review, we are going to take a look at a disruptive innovation and find out if this product is truly worth your monthly investment.
MentorBox at a Glance
Back in the good old days, we would buy books from the store. Gradually, the trend shifted to online book stores, audiobooks and now, snippets conveniently played on your device without having to read the entire book.
And that’s what Mentorbox is all about. A monthly subscription of self-empowering books that not only provides knowledge, but also leveling up your skill sets in the areas of personal development, finance, and social life. But what makes it different is that you don’t need to read an entire book because the program is designed with videos and cheat sheets that enable you to absorb an entire content within a shorter time frame.
Nope, it’s not speed reading, but rather, an extraction of important points from a book delivered in an engaging way to help you learn and emulate successful people. So instead of spending one week reading Warren Buffett’s book, you can now pick his brain faster by going through a short course that has been carefully curated based on the book’s content.
Inside a course (or a book title), you would get a mixture of video presentations, audio downloads, workbooks and a link to Amazon to purchase the physical book, if you want to. The type of genre that you would find inside the library are;
- Entrepreneurship
- Leadership
- Money Management
- Personal Life
- Sales and Marketing
- Business Management
- Fiction Lessons… and some case studies
How Much Does It Cost?
Since it’s a subscription service, you will be billed on a monthly basis for $7 per month or $59 per year, if you don’t sign up for other programs (more on that later). But they are nice enough to let you try free for 3 days before committing for the long term.
What I Like About MentorBox
So I took the program for a test run and actually discover a few golden nuggets inside.
1 – The course is filled with a lot of brainy and motivational stuff which are dissected into smaller topics for easy digestion. I think this technique works great with books that require heavy reading or with the highly complex subject matter if you are into those kinds of things.
2 – Once in a while, they would get the authors to come in and have a chit-chat about their books and discussed the purpose behind their creation. There is Arianna Huffington (we all know who she is), Anik Singal from The Lurn Insider and Russel Brunson from ClickFunnel, just to name a few.
I was also excited to find Mark Manson in one of the videos, talking about the idea behind his highly rated book called “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life”. It is the first (audio) book I picked to read for this year – as a motivation to start a more productive life for 2019 – and I totally love it!
Not only is it entertaining, it also makes a lot of sense about the different situations that many people are facing in their life nowadays. The humor is intertwined with small doses of wisdom that we have sometimes forgotten. If you resonate with the title, you should so read this book. Anyway, I digress.
3 – The entire course is designed on Teachable, which is one of the more reputable platforms for creating online courses. Hence, the design layout is very smooth (even on mobile devices) and the user navigation isn’t clunky. It would have been great if they’ve created an app for the program, but navigating from the website is fine too.
What I Don’t Like
Now, I hardly don’t-like anything that promotes knowledge, but this one is an exception and I’ll tell you why.
1 – Whenever I pay monthly for any products or services, I like to see some level of good maintenance and/or added value as a consumer. This goes with my website hosting service as well as my audiobook subscription. When it comes to MentorBox however, I am kind of in-the-dark about what gets added to the service on a monthly basis.
There are currently 250+ courses in the library and since they are not being stamped with any dates, I don’t know when they are being produced or what’s the latest in the collection. I wish they would provide more information about this so that I know if things are being updated or not. The only indicator that date was ever-present was in the footer of their main website, dated 2017. Yup, you can go check it out yourself.
2 – From the outlook, it’s easy to assume that this is just another normal subscription service. Yet, as you walk through the entire membership registration, the true color of their marketing strategy will reveal itself. I am talking about upsells here.
In case I failed to mention, one of the co-founder is actually Tai Lopez, a successful online entrepreneur who’s also well-known for funneling visitors to his high-ticket products. I guess that’s why we are seeing the same elements with MentorBox as well.
During the process, I encountered 5 upsells and 1 downsell in between. Even when you declined an offer, a new promotion page keeps coming. Let me show you what they are;
Upsell #1 – Right after you enter your credit card details, it is the Audiobook Nuggets which gives you unlimited access to the entire audio library. The fee = $89 per time. Since I already have an audiobook subscription, I’ll pass on this one.
Upsell #2 – But wait! They invite you to join their exclusive business training program that has more in-depth courses on topics that are surely going to boost your business by ten-folds. The fee for Entrepreneur Academy is only $19.95 per month (although it’s not stated in the print, I am guessing this is a monthly subscription too).
I am quite happy with my current online business training program which has been around for a long time, so I am not interested in joining a new one anytime soon. Pass.
Downsell #1 – Are you sure you don’t want to join? You’ll be learning from some of the best business minds in the world. This will be the last chance for you to register at $9. Nope – pass.
Upsell #3 – What about if we give you a chance to meet the authors? You can get coaching, mentorship and also participate in live Q&A sessions. The Mentor Network only costs $37 per month. Hmm…this whole thing is starting to sound a bit fishy. Pass.
Upsell #4 – Okay, what about if we throw in the real stuff for you – like literally delivering hard-cover books to your doorsteps, every month for $139? Guys, the reason I am going digital is because I don’t want to buy physical books. They take up too much space and heavy to carry around. So pass.
Upsell #5 – One last one. Perhaps you’d like to learn the latest wealth investment strategy with real estate and cryptocurrency. Our top advisors can teach you. The Money and Investment Club only cost $6 per month. *Shaking my head* – pass.
I totally understand that to think like a CEO, one has to undergo training, do some networking and also invest in big niches. But for someone who came in with the intention of learning from some good books, these offers are seriously putting too much on the plate.
Fortunately, I’ve been through all these types of tactics before – just never see them with book services though – so I wasn’t too alarmed. It’s what a typical marketer like Tai Lopez would do – dishing out different types of dangling carrots. You just need to pick one and you’d be cruising along with them, whether you like it or not.
So, Is MentorBox Worth Your Time?
The verdict is sort of 50/50 here and this is how I would summarize it.
For people who are looking to make advancement in their life, whether it’s personal or business, the courses offer some pretty good and even empowering titles/individuals to learn from. The best part is, someone will read, digest and pass the valuable information to you in small chunks. For a small amount of fee, you get to save time and still improve on knowledge.
However, if you are totally new to online marketing and are not careful during the registration process, you could end up clicking the ‘other’ buy buttons and end up racking a bill of about $200 per month. That’s fine if you feel the need to network with successful people, but if your intention is just to access some good self-improvement books, that’s a very hefty price to pay.
Will I continue to subscribe to MentorBox? Well, there are a few titles worth checking out so I might stay a little longer. As for all the upselling hypes, I hope you wouldn’t fall for them so easily because these are usually just the tip of the iceberg of something unexpectedly bigger and more expensive.
If you truly want to network and get good training in building an online career or improve your financial situation, go with an experienced platform that is beginner-friendly and can really guide you all the way through. Wealthy Affiliate has been around since 2007 and they are constantly creating successful entrepreneurs from regular people just like you. There’s no upselling whatsoever, so I highly recommend that you check them out.
Do you have anything else to add to my MentorBox review? I look forward to reading them in the comment space below.
This is a great review you have here. I’m a big fan of self-help and personal development materials whether it’s books, video or audio. This is my first time getting to know about MentorBox and I’m really fascinated by their offers. I think it’s a great idea that they provide snippets in such an engaging way that people can easily digest the content of a book.
I don’t see any timeline from your review. Are the courses conducted on demand?
Yes, Bolaji. The discussion snippets for each book/topic can be viewed on demand. There’s no timeline whatsoever and you are free to jump from one course to another.
I don’t think I will be buying the MentorBox. I have a strong aversion to anything which adds so many upsells, or even downsells – that makes me think that the original offer is not worth the money. I see so many programs which add upsells that they say will make their original offer work better.
It makes me wonder why they think their original offer is worth bothering about, do you agree? The other day I saw an offer that would not even let you buy it without buying an upsell too. So of course I did not bother with it.
I agree that not knowing whether the app/site is updated regularly could be a point of concern for some, but does that truly matter?
250 courses can’t be completed in a month, no matter how concise they are. So, even if they never update it, you are still getting access to a wealth of premium knowledge (yes for a monthly fee, which is just smart business for the creator)
You want the information cheaper, listen and read more often and faster. I don’t see that as a downside, more as motivation to get through it all. That could just my opinion, however.
The idea of MentorBox seems appealing to avid readers who are into personal motivation type of reading. The registration process, however, scares me a bit – $200 is no small amount of change- and that could add up to quite a bit of debt if you didn’t select it on purpose. I think I much prefer subscribing to audiobook services instead. They usually come with unlimited access which I think offers a better deal.
I kind of like the idea of reading something where only the essential parts are extracted. I kind of read like that anyway – skipping to the important part of the book. The $7 a month fee is not a lot. But I do get what you mean when you say there is no added value each month.
You are basically paying $7 a month for the same information that you can just go thru and read what you want. What I don’t like is certainly the up-sells, and yes that can be tricky for some and unfortunate. I know that I have accidentally done that, and it is very hard if not impossible, to get refunded for a “clicking error.”
Hello Cathy,
So this is what MentorBox is all about. I am a self-help, self-improvement, be your best-self type of gal, and I am all for any program or literature that promote that so this digital product is right up my alley. I am also an audio/kinetic learner so their process of creating snippets to conveniently play on my device without having to read the entire book, is an appealing factor.
I like the idea that it takes away the heavy and complex subject and present them in small bite sizes. This method of reading and the exposure to good literature will save time and allow me to gain and add self-improvement titles to my library.
The up-sells tactic is a bit discouraging though. I believe the best products sell themselves and all these marketing is unnecessary in the first place. Regardless, I’ve bookmarked your site and will definitely take a closer look at what MentorBox has to offer.
Thank you for sharing the review.
Cathy, I am a subscriber to MentorBox and I find the service to be quite rewarding so far. I actually learnt a great deal from their course topics and would recommend their books to people who aspire to learn more about building an online business or getting financial help. Having said that, I’m not really into all their offers.
This is the first time I am hearing about MentorBox and even though the monthly subscription of $7 is affordable, I think the upsells need a second consideration. Those programs look somewhat scammy and irrelevant from the perspective of a consumer who’s merely looking for some good motivational books to read. I can understand the audiobook promotion stuff, but the rest is too far off. I wonder how many people actually sign up for those kind of offers…
Looks really cool. I got to know little about mentor box from a friend few weeks ago, but not into detail like this. The amount for subscription Is kind of cheap to me, compare to what it offers. About wealthy affiliate, I just joined, and there is so much one can from that platform.