Lessons - Finding Your Life-Changing Mentors | Tressa "Azarel" Smallwood - CEO of Megamind Media

In this Lessons episode, learn how to build a strong foundation for any venture by aligning with the right mentors, filtering out distractions and staying committed, discover why giving back, building genuine relationships, and lifelong learning are essential to success. This episode also redefines success for young entrepreneurs, focusing on practical knowledge and long-term growth. That's an incredible story, and I think there's a lot of things that have come naturally to you that I think people should pick up on, and if they don't come naturally to people, they do want to be successful. They have to pick up on these clues, like these hints that you dropped, about building a solid foundation, aligning with mentors, but the right mentors, and ignoring all the bullshit that's out there that you just have to stay away from, but also leveraging and learning from people that have done it before. These are all great lessons. In summary, building an incredible book and film empire is no different than any other entrepreneurial venture, obviously, and all the things that you... Sorry? Yes, I know. It's honestly the same thing, because in the beginning for me, I can't... Self-doubt will sink in when your journey to doing something new. It was always going to be that little person on your shoulder saying, you can't do it. You don't know how to do it. Don't do it when you're wasting your time, and so it's good to know that you can. It's good to hear from... If I can do it, anybody out there can do it, because I literally did not have a background, and anything film related. Nothing. Let's ask some classic entrepreneurial questions, and I want to figure out your motivations for some of the... Not motivations, excuse me, your drivers. How do you stay motivated when, for example, things aren't going well, or you're not getting, for example, results that you're looking for? What's your go-to? Yeah, I think for me, it's my faith. My faith is strong. I do realize that every single thing that has happened in my life, then my steps are ordered by God, for sure, because none of this is normal. I think you and I've just said, over and over again, no, that's not normal. No, that's not normal. The realization for me is that nothing that is happening in my world is normal, so I need to just stay the course. I spend a lot of time helping people and giving back. I do believe that that is a big key to my success. I get a lot of great... I get a lot of great things coming my way. You know, phone calls that come that I'm like, is that such a such calling me? Why? But I do believe it's... I'm getting back what I put out, so I do believe that people need to understand that if you're someone that you're looking for help to start your business, but other people have reached out to you to ask for your help, how did you handle that? Because you get back, you get period. Energy is everything. I love that. Okay, another, another tip. How do you find... You said you found people that have done it before mentors that have really helped you? How do you separate the good versus the bad? What's your process? Yeah, so I think number one is gotta start with credentials, right? That's the number one. And then what... For example, IMDB Pro. If you're... This is for all my creators. I know this is a podcast, but tons of entrepreneurs, but if you're in the world of... There's some out there, for sure. Yeah. IMDB Pro. Look at somebody's credits. Right now, my publicist could have emailed Scott and said, hey, trusted us all these movies, etc. You can go to the IMDB, and if I only have two movies there, it's like, well, you said you did 14, but I only see what's going on. Ask questions, ask questions. I get tons of people who send me messages, and it's never... It's not true, but I research everything. So, I would start there. Number two, after credentials, let's move to just personality and who people are. Before you go into business with someone and ruin a situation or get yourself tied up as it's something that you should not be tied up. Again, research, who is this person? Sometimes you can learn a lot about a person just from our lunch. And it's like, oh, okay, I see now. You just punched the waiter because you didn't get the lemon in your water. Okay, may not. Business. Yeah, you got to... Because people are so hungry now for what I wanted. I want it. I want it so bad, but you have to step back and make sure that it's right for you. You can get yourself into a lot of really bad situations if you don't study it and research the situation. And if it's specifically, I'm speaking to my younger entrepreneur is out there right now. The younger folks tend to want the microwave success stories. I want it right now. I see this person on social media. They are over here in Dubai. And I'm like, no, they fell to shop there. They were acting not in Dubai. So, I always try to tell my youth, stop wondering, stop watching what everyone else is doing. Run your own race, worry about what you're doing, and do what makes you happy. Because all of that other stuff is short-lived. But the goal of down to what is true, what is factual, so check credentials. And then the last question I had about some of your processes was for education and for research, how do you research? How do you educate yourself both on people you work with? But also something new you want to do. Yeah, so I can start with the people that I work with. I fact check everybody. I mean, at this point in the game, I have a lot of relationships with different network, different executives, other producers, well-known directors. So, you know, the industry, although it seems massive, it's very close, it's close knit in this small. So, you know, Scott, if you were a director in the industry and I wanted to get to you, I would literally go to your IMDb and say, oh, Scott worked with Marshall. Oh, I know Marshall. Oh, he did a movie with, oh, let me call him. And I mean, it's pretty easy now. You can really get to anybody. So, I typically will ask questions, how, you know, what was it like working with them? You know, would you hire them again? Like, I asked the real deal questions before you even go to the person. So, that's how I typically bring people into my world, whether they are a crew for me, whether they are even for actors, you can be the best actor actress ever. And if you have a band rep in the industry, I probably don't want to hire you for my set, because what's the point? What's the point? Don't need to do it. It's too short to work with city people. So, hey, I'm not really interested in that. Yeah, my family will see me working. I want to stick with it. So, that's for me hiring other people. And then for me educating myself, again, I share, I'm a big one education. I will never stop learning. I will never stop learning. If I'm this, I have been to business school, I have business degrees. You know, I shared, I have masses of education, undergrad degree. I mean, I am always learning. I'm thinking about going back to film schools, Scott. I just got a car at the time. And not necessarily because I want to be a director, but I just want to add another layer of knowledge so that when I'm on set and hiring certain people, I have that knowledge behind me. That's just what I love. I think I'm a professional student, for sure. Yeah, and I think that's what you have to be successful. And you want to be successful in your career or in building your own business. I think that's a really good attitude. I love that professional student. I really love that. That's good. And then something that you mentioned about young creatives, let's talk about the education that is a status quo versus what type of education people should be learning when they're young. What's broken in education? I'm sure you have opinions on that too. Yeah, I really do. I mean, when I think about all the things that you should know, I'm coming out of school. Most of our youth, they don't know. Let's just talk about something basic like writing a check, right? I remember I sent my daughter to deposit a check for me and it was a pretty big check. The money never showed up in my account. And I was like, well, it's not here. She deposited that like three days ago. So I'd go to her bank account, it's in her account. Now she didn't do it maliciously. She was like, well, you tell me that you need there's a certain account number for certain, and I'm like, no, but I gave you this deposit slip. So I didn't know what that. So certain thing, they don't teach you those kinds of things in school. How many, how many students are in school learning that about investing? You don't learn that, right? You learn. So I just feel like in education, you're taught the basics. So for me, a child that is only learning when they're at school is your education is going to be broken period. If you don't, learning does not continue when you get home. We have a plan. And what do you do to? No, I agree. I agree 100% to how do you how do you fix that? How do you how do you fix that? Our parents and communities have to step up and understand that's why I teach, you know, entrepreneurship, you know, often every summer I partner with the mayor's youth program in the Washington D area. And I do mentorship classes. Last year we did them all on zone because we were in in COVID prior to that, we had them face to face. But this was so great for the students because it's youth between the ages of like 17 and 21 and they're right at that stage where they want fancy cars. They want all these things that they see, but they don't understand the process how to get it. They don't understand well, you need good credit to have to get a good interest rate to get this car. And you don't understand when you drive that car off the parking lot, it's now depreciating instantly. So when they learn this from me, the reason why it's very relatable coming from me is because they desire to be authors. They want to be movie producers. They love the world that I live in, so they both receive it from me. Like, hey, I like nice cars too. I like these things, but what's important in life? And let's start there. This is what you do. This is how you make it happen. You want all your own business? This is where you start. So by the time they leave, they have names for their businesses, they leave with an incredible amount of motivation. And a lot of them follow through, you know, they DM me on social media and they're like, hey, I got you know, I did it. I started my blog or did this. And so it's really inspiring for me just to know that I could have an impact on the students and not still teach in the class. So, you know, although I'm not a teacher and no longer in the classroom, I am still doing it on a daily basis out here while still following my dreams. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.