Adam Torres and Shaan Patel discuss Prep Expert Digital SAT Playbook.
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Show Notes:
What does a $1 billion scholarship mission look like? In this episode, Adam Torres interviewed Shaan Patel, Founder & CEO of Prep Expert. Explore Shaan’s $1 billion mission for the release of his new book, Prep Expert Digital SAT Playbook: Winning Strategies to Achieve Your Dream Score along with his experience going on Shark Tank and working with Mark Cuban.
About Shaan Patel
What does a $1 billion scholarship mission look like? In this episode, Adam Torres interviewed Shaan Patel, Founder & CEO of Prep Expert. Explore Shaan’s $1 billion mission for the release of his new book, Prep Expert Digital SAT Playbook: Winning Strategies to Achieve Your Dream Score along with his experience going on Shark Tank and working with Mark Cuban.
About Prep Expert
Prep Expert is a leading national test prep company that has helped over 100,000 students improve their SAT & ACT scores, receive admission into top universities, and win over $100 million in college scholarships. As seen on Shark Tank, Prep Expert offers online SAT & ACT courses, 1-on-1 academic tutoring, and college admissions consulting.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest on the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today I have Sean Patel on the line. He is founder and CEO over at prep expert.
And I’ve been looking forward to this. I’ve been looking forward to this in this interview for a while. I’ve been seeing Sean. I got to tell you, Sean first off, hold on before I get into it. Welcome to the show. Yeah. Thanks for having me, Adam. I’ve been looking forward to doing this interview with you for a while.
Congrats on all the success and growth with Mission Matters. Man, I’ve been watching your videos on Instagram, you had one edited the other day, and I was like, I, first off, I know what you do, I know, I’m, I’m a fan of it, of course, I know you I’ve been watching your journey for a while now, and I was like, and I was still, like, drawn in, I’m like, oh, tell me more, Sean, tell me more, it was awesome, I was like, I’m not, I’m not looking to take a test, but I was just, I just gotta say, man, congrats, I love the way the content that you’re putting out there is coming, it’s good.
Thank you. Yeah, I’m really, really excited and you know, we’ve been able to help a lot of parents and students with test prep and S-A-T-A-C-T college admission scholarships. You know, it’s all very stressful stuff and, and my job is to make it less stressful for parents and students out there. All right.
So this 1 billion scholarship mission for your new book, Prep Expert Digital SAT Playbook. I know you, you’re a go getter. When I think of, when I just even read that the first time, I’m on like, I’m like 1 billion scholarship. Man, how do you even dream that up? Oh, man, so, yeah, you know, as the founder and CEO prep expert, it’s been an amazing ride over the past 10 years.
We’ve actually helped students win over a 100Million dollars in college scholarships. Yeah, it’s crazy. We just got an email the other day. A student got a full ride scholarship. To UVA, which is like we’re 350, 000 off one scholarship, you know, so absolutely. Yeah, it’s just life changing for the students, the parents, the families we work with.
And so, you know, over the next 10 years, I want to go bigger than 100 million. I want to do a billion dollars. I want to reach more parents, more families, more students. Help them improve their test scores, scores, scores, so that they can get merit based scholarships to all these colleges, get scholarships from companies like Coca Cola, Toyota, McDonald’s.
That’s really my specialty because, you know, everyone thinks about these tasks standardized tasks as being for college admissions while, you know, I think it’s important. I think it’s even more important to actually get college paid for through scholarships and it’s something I’m really passionate about.
I went on a full ride scholarship to USC myself, and I didn’t have to go on any student debt. I know everyone knows, you know, student debt. Thank you for bragging about that, by the way, Sean. I appreciate that. Thank you for that. Huh. Go ahead. Well, I mean, everybody has student debt, whatever they’re like, they’re, they just, they just hung up.
Yeah. Well, they should, they should have come. Yeah. They should have come to prep expert when they were in high school, you know and so no, but I mean, it’s such a big problem, right? It’s almost 2 trillion in student debt. The average cost of a public university is over a hundred grand, private’s over 200 grand.
So my passion is to help students reduce those costs, reduce that student debt. And so that’s why I’m on a billion dollar scholarship mission. I want to get my PrepX for Digital SAT playbook in as many people’s hands as possible so that they can raise their test scores and get those merit based scholarships.
So I always find this is super interesting to me. It’s like one where somebody else see they don’t they they see just like wrote routine, like let’s just say for example when I first went through and I took my first SAT or something like that many years ago and I remember I bought a book like, I didn’t see opportunity.
Like, I wasn’t even thinking opportunity, but at some point, like, you get introduced to this world and you see opportunity. Like, how does that happen? Yeah, 100 percent. And, and you’re 100 percent right in that when someone thinks of S A T A C T, they don’t see opportunity. They kind of ignore it. And that’s why the first chapter of my book is called The Journey, because I really try to tell students about the journey that they’re about to go on with their grades, with their test scores, with their extracurricular activities, and the opportunities that it opens up, not only with college admissions, but like we’ve been talking about with scholarships, scholarships.
Thank you. The opportunity for you know, college athletics for a lot of students. You know, I, I know so many of our prep experts students in the past that have just been able to get full ride athletic scholarships, just because they got a qualifying score or something like that. So there’s just all kinds of opportunity.
And, and, you know, it’s something I talk about in the book, which is you have to know. Your goal and that goes to what you said about opportunity, because if you don’t know why you’re studying for that, it’s going to feel like a drag. But if you know that it’s going to open up six figure scholarships for you.
I mean, I think it’s going to motivate you a little bit more to put in those extra hours. Oh, my gosh. I’m like, I’m sick. Because after that, see, so especially I feel that this is, Oh, my gosh. It’s definitely a problem if somebody doesn’t have any, like if their parents weren’t from like like they weren’t doctors, they weren’t engineers, if their parents didn’t go to college and you’re one of the, you know, first people to go to college in your family, like they don’t necessarily know the system.
So my parents, my mom, I mean, my, my mom has her master’s from university of Michigan, but I mean, that was, she took the long route. I mean, probably took 20 years of, you know, a couple of classes at a time before a program. So she didn’t have the, and she was already working in the field to get to that level.
So she didn’t have the typical go to college and come out, you know, lifestyle of, of like, of, of the workforce. So I didn’t really have that knowledge. So I didn’t know. What that prep was supposed to look like. So, I mean, I was in a true story, Sean, I was, I took the exam. The last time you could take it before starting college, which I was supposed to start that summer, cause I was starting earlier early to knock out some credits and some other thing.
And I find out after the fact, after I’m enrolled, everything else, I’m two points away from a full ride. And I’m like, and I was like, there, there literally, you just couldn’t schedule another one. It’s literally just scheduling. And I didn’t even study. And I don’t even think I’m that bright. I was just good at taking tests.
I was just good at taking tests. I didn’t even know I was supposed to study. I was already admitted. They told me it was just a formality, like yeah, take that. You’re, you’re fine. Your grades are, and, and I was a C plus student, Sean.
So that being said, it was just on scores alone. So I’m like, oh my gosh. So then, I think about me, maybe I was just decent at taking tests, not necessarily the best student, but I didn’t study, decent at taking tests, and and now I look at others who maybe don’t have that infrastructure around them and, or otherwise, and I think about your program and I’m just like, Man, if I would have known then I would have been like you just said, not these huge scholarships that who knows what would have happened.
But that’s why I’m so passionate. And by the way, for everybody listening, Sean knows none of this backstory, even though I’ve known Sean for a while. And this is one of the reasons why I was excited to get him on the show. So I could share that with them and share. And I’m with the audience as well because it’s not every day that you can fit in that type of story maybe unless you got the test, prep expert slash guru slash.
What do I call you man other than founder and CEO of Yeah, I know. I mean, thank you for sharing that. I mean, that’s you’re exactly who this pro like if I could take you back in high school. You’re exactly who my programs at prep expert, our books and courses are for. It’s for students that have the ability, but they just don’t see the path.
Like if I put you into a prep expert program, we would have gotten you those two points or way, way more than that sleep. You would have done it. And, you know, like even me, I, I, I didn’t get a perfect score on the SAT right away. I started out at average and then I worked towards it. So we’re trying to help students, he said right away, I got, I can’t glance, I can’t glance over that.
Thank you. And so that, but that’s the point is, you know, you can do well on these. You just need to have someone show you the path, be the role model, show you the journey, show you the opportunities that are open out there for you because they’re real dollars, real life changing. And you know, for a 15, 16, 17 year old kid, it can completely change their life.
So, so that’s why I’m so passionate about helping parents and students about you know, improving their test scores, getting into college, winning scholarships to reduce. Their cost of college, a prep expert. I want to, I want to pivot here slightly, and we’re going to come back to the, to that, to the story, by the way, because we got some other things to talk about that when it comes to shark tank, Mark Cuban, I mean, you got a lot of other things going on, but I want to ask the same question, but for some of our entrepreneurs out there.
So slightly different in terms of the, the the vein of the question. I asked the question the first time I took the SATs. I didn’t see the opportunity. We, we know that piece from the, from the student’s perspective. I feel like entrepreneurs ideas, like what’s done, you know, every idea supposedly already had, or people are already doing it, or what if somebody else doing it?
Like you come into a. And I’m not going to use the word saturated because I don’t know that but an industry that already had you know Test prep test prep books things like that you and you see opportunity. How does that happen? Oh, man. Yeah, this is a great question. I love it so for the entrepreneurs out there listening, I will say that I entered one of the most competitive industries Yeah, the SAT test preparation industry, you know, you’ve got juggernauts like Princeton Review, Kaplan, Khan Academy.
It is competitive. So I was right. Okay, it is. Yeah. I’m thinking about that. I go ahead, please. Oh, super competitive. Yeah. And so, you know, I had a hundred literary agents and publishers. The first time I tried to publish a SAT prep book, I got a hundred rejections by email. They said the SAT prep market was too competitive.
They said that you know, I didn’t have a platform to write such a book. And so, you know, everything was against me. I got a hundred rejections and I still went for it. And that’s really the path of every entrepreneur. You have to be willing to take a chance. You have to be willing to continue to work despite everyone telling you that it’s going to be difficult, despite getting rejections, et cetera.
And you know, to answer your crazy, like at that point, before we move on, did people think you were crazy? I mean, I thought I was crazy. But like, I’m not, I’m not picking on your family. I just mean anybody, like your support system, Ronnie, do they think you’re crazy? And like, what is this, what are you talking about, Sean?
Cause we took the SATs, like that’s just a test. What are you doing? A hundred percent, a hundred percent. And so everyone thinks you’re crazy, your family. I thought, I mean, I thought I was crazy. Yeah. I was like, everyone’s telling me it’s not going to work. Everyone’s telling me that you know, I should give up.
And there was something inside of me that said. You know, I’m really good at this. I improved my own score from average to perfect, and I’ve got some great insights, some great strategies, great techniques that I want to share with students. So what I did is when, you know, the world tells, you know, and they’re not going to publish your book and all that, I just took it into my own hands and I said, okay, I’ll just teach a course. Let’s see how it goes. So in the very first course that I ever taught, my students had an average SAT score improvement of 376 points. And so, you know, that was really good. That was taking a student from the 50th percentile and putting them in the 90th percentile.
How did you, how did you, how did you feel that first course, like, or that first class? Like, what did that look like? That had to be a scary, like, you’re sticking your neck out there. I almost, yeah, oh, I almost, yeah, I almost didn’t get enough students. I think we ended up getting, I mean, we ended up getting 18, which was great, but at the beginning I couldn’t, I couldn’t get getting the first person to purchase.
Oh my gosh, how did that feel that first? Yeah, how did it feel? I mean It totally changed my whole trajectory. I was I was ready to Call a shop because I was marketing for three months and I didn’t get one enrollment and i’m sure that’s how a lot of entrepreneurs feel But, you know, you just have to keep going.
You have to produce results and the marketplace will reward you once you produce results. So once I produced those results, then I started having more parents and students call me for courses. Then I had McGraw Hill, the world’s largest education publisher, asked me to write an SAT prep book that went number one on Amazon.
Did they reject you? Did they reject you previously? Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, I like to bring that up because I just for the entrepreneurs out there and I am a girl who amazing company. I’m no disrespect to them. But I just mean, like, you have to prove yourself. It’s a process. So you hear all the stories about people that want it.
funding or this or that. And they have to, you know, how many people they had to go through to, you know, raise capital. And it’s like, once you’re winning, like, like people will come up, will come along. So you are winning now. And now, you know, McGraw Hill had the opportunity to see you in a different light.
It’s amazing. Yeah, a hundred percent. And so, you know, I think that that’s really, really important that you produce results. And in the beginning, especially for the entrepreneurs that are just starting out, I mean, you have to be willing to just work for. You know, work for free if you need to. I would have just done free courses.
I didn’t have to at that time. But, you know, just do what you need to do to reward the marketplace. And then you can slowly start charging and doing the things that you want to do. But until you produce results, no one’s going to believe you. It doesn’t matter what your pitch is, what your email produce some results.
That’s what I would say is number one. Number two is, you know never, you know, go towards that ideology that, you know, it’s too competitive or it’s too crowded, et cetera, because the most unique thing about any one person is you. So you are the niche. What I mean by that is there is no other test prep company out there that has Dr.
Sean Patel who raised his score from average to perfect, to, you know, created all these strategies. So that makes me stand out right away because. I’m the niche. I’m the differentiator. And so I’d say that for every entrepreneur. Think about you. What makes you different about your business compared to every other business?
And I guarantee you there’s no one else in this world that’s quite like you. And so what’s your story? Leverage that. You know, don’t become a faceless brand. Leverage your personal story. I think that works so well for, for entrepreneurs. Did you start out full time, or was this kind of like a progression, or like, like, how did that piece of it work for you?
Oh, this was a side hustle that became a full time now. For how long? How long was the side hustle? Oh, side hustle was a long time. Yeah, I started it in end of college. And then I, I went to medical school. I went to business school. I went to residency. So that was like almost 10 years of side hustle. And now I’ve finally graduated from everything.
And now I’m full time CEO and founder and it was a great ride. I mean, side hustle was hard. Don’t get me wrong, but it also gave me the time to see a grow. It helped me become a good manager because I had to delegate a lot of things to employees and contractors. Especially when I didn’t, you know, while I was in school, man, that’s a great point.
That’s a great point. It forced you to be a good manager. Sometimes having too much time and being full time. Like I haven’t heard anybody say that in a long time. That might be your Achilles heel time to fail. Yeah. I mean, that’s one of the hardest lessons for a lot of entrepreneurs to learn, right. Is to allow some delegation.
Now, you know, I think it’s such a fine balance. Entrepreneurs need to figure out what to delegate and what they need to do. So there are certain things that I need to do. Like the most important thing is content, curriculum, innovation. That’s me. I’m not going to delegate that out. Nobody else can do that.
I write the books, et cetera, but customer service. Yeah, I can delegate that out. You know, so it’s, it’s figuring out what your strong points are. That’s going to really make a difference in the business and going all in on that. Where does how does Shark Tank fit into this equation? Like, and Mark Cuban, and like, like, how’d all that come about?
Oh man, yeah, that’s a whole nother, you got another hour, Adam? Come on, man. No, no. Give me the, give me the, I’ll give you the two minutes. So, so basically, I was a big fan of Shark Tank just like everybody else. Watching every episode. This was like back in 2016. So it’s been a while, but you know, one day just kind of clicked in my head.
I was like, you know, I’ve got a business that would make a great pitch for the show. I could use some investment to expand it. My prep expert company to more cities expanded online. And so I went to attend auditions in New York city, ended up getting on the show. The show went horribly for me because every shark didn’t think I could be a doctor and an entrepreneur.
But at the last second, Mark Cuban came in, offered me a deal for 250, 000 for 20 percent equity in the company. We closed the deal. He’s been an amazing investor, advocate, and partner for the company ever since. And yeah, prep expert, basically 10 X after we went on the show. So it was a great experience.
Great. You know, Mark and I have written books together. We’ve done co investment deals. We’re doing an, we’ve done entrepreneurship panels. We got 1 coming up with the Obama foundation. So, I mean, it’s been just amazing. Amazing to work with Mark and his team and Shark Tank was obviously a life changing experience and highly recommend for any entrepreneurs out there who are thinking about applying to Shark Tank.
Do it. You won’t regret it. Yeah. And one of the things I do love about your story is that just that continuum, like that you, you started in this apprenticeship phase, we can call it for, you know, a solid decade. And before you even went full time. And this is important, I feel, because many of the people that have these ideas, especially, especially in my experience, like, you know, doctors or individuals that have something that they went to school for a long time to accomplish.
So highly like they’re in, they’re in there, they put themselves and I mean this in a, in a way of affection, they put themselves in this box to have the privilege of being called a doctor or a lawyer or something else. But it doesn’t mean that you can’t, you know, you can’t do a side hustle or use a different word.
You can’t add value. to society by using your highly highly tuned brain in your case, personal perfect test scores. And I’m still a little salty on that one, Sean, but I’ll get over it. But, but seriously, to, to use your ability to give back in a way other than you think that you have to. Like you have ideas, you have inventions, you have other things you want to do.
And if your life dictates you to be able to do it on the side and delegate and use some of those skills, I feel that moves society forward versus thinking you have to only do one thing like in your, in your example is a perfect example. And, and technically speaking, Sean, correct me if I’m wrong. If at some point your vision didn’t grow to the point to where you wanted to be full time this could have been a really nice nest egg and that you could have delegated hired a ceo to run it day to day and it’s still you and you could have still Maybe done some creation, but you chose to be the face of it at the end of the day but if you wanted to continue on the other path you could have so but the point is you had options, right?
Oh, 100%. Yeah, I think that this is such a great point you make, which is every person out there has multiple skill sets and don’t box yourself into one skill set. You know, don’t get me wrong. It’s a lot of work, you know, working a full time job, but everything’s work. Oh, Sean, but yeah, what is it? Yeah, honestly, at the end of the day, if you’re if you chose one of those professions, you’re never not going to work.
You are an achiever, period. Yeah, 100%. You’re a high achiever. And so, but so that’s my point is that, you know, why not work those extra 20? 30 hours on, on your you know, side business and, and I, and I say side business or side hustle because I’m actually of the entrepreneurial mindset that that’s a great place to start because you’re not risking your job, you’re not risking everything, and you can see if it works because a lot of entrepreneurship, you’re gonna fail first.
And I know everyone says you gotta go in, you gotta go all in. Problem with going all in if you, especially if you have a good job already. And steady income is, it can be, you know really risky, especially if you have a family or children or anything like that. You know, it’s you know, balancing both.
And I think it’s actually easier than ever in today’s society with technology freelancers, delegation to be able to, to have effective side hustles. And I think that’s why that nomenclature has even come into society over the past few years more so than ever before. Yeah. Sean, it’s been great having you on the show.
How do people follow up? How do they, how do they, how do they learn more? Yeah, absolutely. They can find out more about my courses related to test prep. So, S. A. T. A. C. T. courses, college admissions, consulting, everything is at prep expert dot com. And if you’re listening to this podcast before Sunday, March, 3rd, I’m having a huge book launch event.
We’re going to have thousands and thousands of people online. You can register for free at prepexpert. com. And at the end of the event, you can pick up my new book, PrepExpert Digital SAT Playbook. The SAT is going digital for the first time in 100 years this year in 2024. So I got a brand new book to help students ace that exam.
If you’re the parent of a high school student or middle schooler, You’ve got to attend that event. So you can find out everything at prepexpert. com. Amazing. And for everybody that’s tuning in unlike Sean, the podcast space is definitely not saturated. There’s not a bunch of people. There’s not a bunch of competition.
So you definitely don’t want to hit that subscribe button because we don’t need your support and don’t want you to listen to future episodes. How’s that for my reverse psychology, Sean? You think it’s gonna work? I think everyone’s gonna subscribe. I mean, like, there’s no reason not to. It’s completely free.
It’ll help Adam. It’ll help me. So please subscribe. Man, you’re gonna pitch me. I might have to cut. I might have to cut that. That’s gonna be our loop. I’m gonna be like, and now you have my little dashboard on here. You’re gonna have a whole button on my dashboard. Where I’m going to be like, and now everybody listen to Sean.
Oh man. Thank you so much for coming out, Sean. I had a blast.