A118. Paying the Mentee to Be the Mentee: The Business Model That Flips Mentorship on Its Head - Jack’s Curated Business Idea - Jack Lookman

A118. Paying the Mentee to Be the Mentee: The Business Model That Flips Mentorship on Its Head

Every mentor knows the same quiet disappointment. You offer your time for free, someone says yes with real enthusiasm, and then they vanish, after one session, two reschedules, silence. The problem was never your teaching. It was that free cost for the mentee; so nothing is what they invest.

Jack Lookman's answer is blunt and slightly absurd; pay them. Not a discount, not a scholarship, but an actual stipend, paid to the mentee for showing up, doing the work and finishing the programme. He laid the idea out in a recent episode of Curated Business Ideas, in conversation with host Juwon Ogungbe, and it is one of the more interesting business-model tweaks I have come across this year.

What follows is the model in full, which is the mechanics, the seven revenue streams, the vetting funnel, the legal scaffolding, and an honest look at where the maths gets shaky.

The Problem This Model Solves

Free mentoring has a 90% dropout rate dressed up as "life got busy." Lookman's diagnosis is not that people are lazy. It is that a free commitment carries no stake, so it loses every contest against a paid one.

His fix has three parts, and they work together:

• The mentee pays a deposit up front to prove seriousness.
• The deposit is refunded in instalments as they comply.
• The mentor pays a completion stipend when they finish.

So the mentee is simultaneously a customer and an employee of sorts, because he invested at the start, he is rewarded at the end, and monitored throughout. Lookman's example: a £60 deposit refunded at £10 a month over six months, plus a £100 stipend upon completion. The numbers are illustrative, but the architecture is the point. The deposit filters out time-wasters before they cost you a minute; the stipend gives the ones who stay a reason to finish.

The Mechanism: Scored Tasks and Financial Sanctions

A deposit alone is not enough. Money down creates attendance; it does not create effort. So the model adds a scoring layer.

Mentees are given tasks periodically, and those tasks are scored. Weekly commitments are agreed up front, along with whether the arrangement is full-time or part-time and how long the mentorship runs. If a mentee falls below the agreed threshold such as low effort, poor attitude, missed submissions, then sanctions apply. Those sanctions are financial: part of the deposit may not be returned, or the completion stipend is reduced or withheld entirely.

This is where most people flinch. Isn't this punitive? Lookman's framing is that it is a rewards-and-sanctions structure that is designed to get the best out of the project, and that it exists to protect both sides. The mentee is protected because the refund schedule is written into the terms and conditions before they pay. The mentor is protected because the programme is not a one-way giveaway.

It is worth being clear about the ethics here. This only works if the terms are genuinely transparent, the scoring criteria are published in advance, and the refund promise is honoured without argument. A model that pays people to show up but quietly keeps their deposit when they stumble is not mentorship, rather it is a subscription with extra steps.

The Supermarket Analogy: Free Core, Paid Add-Ons

The obvious objection arrived in the Q&A, and Ogungbe asked it well: if you are paying mentees, how are you also charging them?

Lookman's answer is the most useful 90 seconds in the episode. Imagine going to the supermarket for sugar and milk. Two items. But you brought the children, and you come out with chocolate and chewing gum as well. The sugar and milk are the core proposition, and they are free. The chocolate is the add-on, and it is not.

Translated into the model: the core teaching, the basics, and access to the membership site for the duration of the mentorship are free. After the programme ends, continued membership access is paid. Deeper material, such as the extended ebook, the advanced course, the one-to-one tuition, is paid. Ogungbe called it a lead magnet, and Lookman agreed without hesitation.

That honesty matters. It is not a bait-and-switch; the free tier genuinely delivers value, and the paid tier serves the minority who want to go further. The trap most "free mentoring" businesses fall into is that the free tier is deliberately crippled. This one is not, which is precisely why it converts.

The Seven Revenue Streams

Strip away the philosophy and this is a business with unusually diversified income. Lookman lists them explicitly:

1. Upsells. Related products and services like ebooks, extended courses, premium membership are sold to mentees who want to go deeper into a specific body of knowledge.

2. Business collaboration. The strongest stream in the long run. After six months you know exactly who is serious, competent and reliable, far more than any interview tells you. You can then bring the best into a revenue-sharing project, where they contribute labour and you contribute experience and networks.

3. Content sales. The material you create for teaching becomes a sellable product like courses, workbooks, templates, recordings.

4. Donations. Successful alumni giving back, plus outsiders who value what the programme does. Not reliable revenue, but real.

5. Administration charges. A small, token fee to cover onboarding and processing like automated or semi-automated where possible.

6. Affiliate marketing. Because the content is digital, relevant third-party tools and resources can be linked with affiliate codes attached.

7. Advertising and sponsorship. Businesses that resonate with your audience pay to appear on your platform; sponsors underwrite a cohort or a year.

Add membership renewals after the free period and you have eight. The principle is deliberate: no single stream has to carry the business, which is what makes a free core survivable.

The Vetting Funnel: Ten Audits Before Anyone Starts

Recruitment happens entirely online, and it is not a formality. At application stage, Lookman runs an audit across ten dimensions:

Skills · Interests · Mindset · Exposure · Experience · Personality · Numeracy · Literacy · Information technology · Internet access.

That list does more work than it appears to. Numeracy and literacy audits tell you whether the curriculum is pitched correctly; mindset and personality audits predict who survives the sanctions regime; IT and internet-access audits tell you whether someone can participate at all, giving a filter that matters where bandwidth is unreliable and data is expensive.

The byproducts are upskilling and networking because applicants often leave with more than they came for, even when they are not selected.

The Scaffolding: What Has to Exist Before You Launch

The model is simple to describe and administratively heavy to run. Lookman is specific about what must be in place first:

• A legal framework, with expectations managed and agreed up front.
• A refund policy, agreed up front and written into the terms.
• A conflict-management policy, for when the scoring gets disputed, and it will.
• An exit strategy, with documented policies and procedures.
• A defined mentorship length and weekly commitment level.
• Checks and balances protecting all stakeholders, including a plan for refunds if the business itself winds up.

That last one is the detail most people skip and the one a regulator would ask about first. If you are holding other people's deposits, you are holding their money. A business that collects £60 from two hundred mentees is sitting on £12,000 of other people's refundable cash. Treating that as revenue is how this model turns into a scandal.

The supporting machinery is unglamorous: a periodically updated business plan, market and competitor research, a budget with a safety factor, and a funding decision which is self-funded, family, crowdfunding, investors or a bank loan. Legal structure is a genuine choice too because social enterprise, sole trader, charity or NGO, and limited company each fit a different intent.

Where the Model Gets Interesting, and Where It Gets Hard

Three things about this idea deserve more scrutiny than a friendly podcast Q&A gives them.

The cash-flow inversion is brutal. Most businesses collect first and deliver later. This one takes a deposit, holds it as a liability, pays out instalments, and only then earns from upsells. like financing participation before earning a naira from the majority who never buy. Lookman's answer, that collaboration and content sales carry the load, is true but means the model only works at volume. Fifty mentees will not sustain it. Five hundred might.

The sanctions regime is a reputational minefield. Score people, dock their money, and someone will post about it. The only durable defence is documentation which is published rubrics, recorded assessments, and a refund process that never becomes adversarial. Get this wrong once and the programme's name is finished on social media.

Digital delivery has real limits. Ogungbe pushed on this and Lookman conceded it. Theoretical material travels well online; practical skills do not. His fix is a collaboration layer, partner with local mechanics, technicians or practitioners so mentees get hands-on exposure in their own city. This is elegant, and much harder to run across multiple locations than it sounds.

Is it even mentorship, or a training programme with a stipend attached? Lookman's own framing suggests the latter, which is scored tasks, weekly commitments, thresholds, sanctions, and certificates. That is an apprenticeship, not the coffee-and-advice version most people imagine, and recognising it is what makes the model scalable.

Scaling: Niche, Language, Franchise

Once one cohort works, Lookman sees four expansion routes.

New niches. Run the same machinery for a different subject such as marketing, digital entrepreneurship, content creation, bookkeeping, then choosing whatever sits closest to your own competence.

New languages. Digital delivery makes translation cheap; the audience for a well-run programme in Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo or French is not small.

Collaboration. Bring in people who are stronger than you in an adjacent niche rather than pretending to possess expertise you do not have.

Franchise. Package the model, like curriculum, audits, scoring, terms, and license it to operators in other markets. This is the most ambitious option and the one that most depends on the documentation being genuinely good.

Who This Suits — and Who It Does Not

It suits someone with real, demonstrable expertise in a digital-adjacent field, patience for administration, and enough capital to fund stipends and deposits for a full cohort before any upsell revenue arrives.

It does not suit anyone who wants to start with zero cash, or anyone whose expertise is purely practical, or anyone unwilling to publish scoring criteria and honour refunds under pressure.

The unique selling point, as Lookman states it, is genuinely appealing like mentoring and coaching suitable mentees virtually for free, or helping disadvantaged people who could never afford a proper mentor. That is a real market. The people who cannot pay ₦200,000 for a mentorship programme are not a small segment, they are most of the market.

A 90-Day Pilot

If you want to test this rather than admire it, start small and unfunded in the ways that matter:

Weeks 1–2: Define one niche, write the curriculum outline, and publish the scoring rubric before you recruit anyone. Draft the refund policy with an actual lawyer or a template you have read line by line.

Weeks 3–4: Run the ten-audit application process on twenty applicants. Take twelve. Charge a modest deposit, one that is small enough to be payable, large enough to sting.

Weeks 5–10: Run six weeks of scored weekly tasks. Track completion, effort and drop-out. Pay the stipend only to those who finish, exactly as promised.

Weeks 11–12: Survey the cohort. Offer one paid upsell. Count how many people buy. That number, not the testimonials; tells you whether the business exists.

The Takeaway

The insight worth stealing is not "pay your mentees." It is  the price of participation that determines the quality of participation, and that free, is a price that attracts people who will not show up. Lookman's model adds a stake, a score and a reward to a relationship that usually has none of the three, then monetises everything around the free core instead of the core itself.

Whether it becomes a business depends on volume, documentation and discipline. As model design, though, it is genuinely clever, and it starts from a truth every mentor recognises; the people who need help most are often the ones who are least able to value it for free.

Ps: Artificial intelligence was leveraged in creating this content.

Jack Lookman’s Websites And Books 

Jack’s Redundancy Empowerment 

Jack’s Curated Business Ideas 

Suggested Products And Services 

Useful Links 

We also monetise through promoting 3rd party products and services via Affiliate Marketing Links. This is accomplished without additional cost to you.

At Jack Lookman Limited,Our mission is to Empower and Inspire Generations by Leveraging the Internet.

Ps: Artificial intelligence was leveraged in creating this content.

A117. The Bath Sponge Project (Remix): How a Simple Redesign Could Fix Your Daily Shower - Jack’s Curated Business Idea - Jack Lookman

A117. The Bath Sponge Project (Remix): How a Simple Redesign Could Fix Your Daily Shower

Introduction: The Most Ignored Object in Your Bathroom

Think about the things you touch every single day. Your phone. Your kettle. Your car keys. Now think about the one object that touches your skin almost every morning, and that is the humble bath sponge. You use it, you rinse it, you hang it up, and you never once stop to think about whether it is actually doing a good job.

That is exactly the kind of overlooked everyday object that Jack Lookman loves to pick apart. On a recent episode of the show Jack's Curated Business Ideas, host Juwon Ogungbe sat down with Jack to discuss something wonderfully simple; which is a redesign of the bath sponge. Jack calls it The Bath Sponge Project (Remix), and once you hear the idea, you will never look at your shower sponge the same way again.

This is not a story about high-tech gadgets or million-dollar disruption. It is a story about noticing a small, ordinary frustration and asking a better question. And those are often the business ideas that stick.

What Is the Bath Sponge Project?

In Jack's own words, the idea is straightforward; "It is basically  a redesign of the bath sponge which people use to bathe."

That is it. No complicated jargon, no futuristic promises. Just a fresh look at a product that has barely changed in decades, driven by a simple observation, and the two most common bath sponges on the market one doing half the job well, and the other half badly.

Jack frames the concept as a "remix." He had already created content around the bath sponge before, and even written a book on it, and also published on his blog. This new conversation was a chance to revisit the idea, gather fresh input, and look at it "from a fresh pair of eyes." Remixing, in other words, is not about starting from zero, rather it is about breathing new life into an idea you already believe in.

The Two Bath Sponges Everyone Owns

According to Jack, even though there are countless types of bath sponges available today, which includes the traditional Nigerian sponge that has been passed down through generations, overall the market really boils down to two popular designs.

1. The Round Net Sponge

The first is the round, bunched-up sponge made of net or mesh. It is often made from a synthetic, almost plastic-like material, and it looks a little like a soft ball.

Its strength is the experience. As Jack explains, the round sponge gives a very good user experience because it lathers well and feels pleasant against the body. Its weakness? It simply cannot reach your back. If you want to wash behind you properly, you have to grab a second sponge just to finish the job.

There is also a quality divide here worth noting. The cheapest versions cost as little as 50p to £1, but according to Jack, they fall apart after one or two uses. The pricier options, which are sometimes two or three times the price, tend to last for far longer.

2. The Long Net Sponge

The second common design is the long net sponge. It is made from a softer, cloth-like material that stretches, and it is flexible.

Its advantage is purely functional because it reaches your back. You can stretch it, pull it behind you, and wash areas the round sponge cannot touch. The catch, as Jack describes from personal experience, is that the long one does not feel as good to use on the rest of your body. He enjoys it less than the round one, except for that one crucial back-washing benefit.

So there you have it. One sponge feels great but cannot reach your back. The other reaches your back but does not feel great. Most people never question this trade-off. Jack did.

The Problem Nobody Talks About: You Can't Reach Your Back

Here is where the idea becomes genuinely thoughtful. The reason the round sponge fails for Jack is not just a design flaw, rather it is a human reality.

When Jack was younger, he could easily reach most parts of his back. But as he grew older, and with some health issues, reaching behind became harder. And he is not alone. Millions of people, like older adults, people with injuries, people with limited mobility or flexibility all share the same quiet frustration. There is a whole group of people "who might have that challenge of not being able to reach every part of their back as they would have loved."

That is the real gap in the market. Not just a better sponge, but a sponge that serves people whose bodies have changed. It is a small, kind insight, and it is exactly the kind of detail that turns a product into something that people genuinely need.

Bath Sponge Project 

The Big Idea: A Hybrid Bath Sponge

So what is the solution? Jack's proposal is a hybrid, a sponge that borrows the best from both designs.

His concept works like this:

● Use the material of the round sponge, because it delivers the superior washing experience that people already love.

● Shape it differently. Create something closer to a small, elongated or rectangular form rather than a sphere.

● Make it stretchable, so you can extend it to reach your back whenever you need to.

The unique selling proposition, as Jack puts it, is that "you can actually stretch it so that you can effectively wash the back and then at the same time enjoy the beautiful user experience."

In other words, you would no longer have to choose between comfort and reach. One sponge, both jobs. That is the entire magic of the idea, and it is beautifully simple.

The Materials Question: Elasticity Is Everything

Of course, coming up with the idea is the easy part. Building the actual bath sponge raises a more technical challenge, and Jack does not pretend otherwise. He openly admits that the design work is "more technical" than it sounds.

The central requirement is the right material. It cannot be a static piece of mesh that simply holds its shape. It needs to stretch, to give, to have elasticity, so that when you pull it, it extends and then springs back rather than tearing or losing form.

As the conversation explores, this is not purely the job of a product designer. It might also be the work of someone with a textile background, a person who understands how fibres, mesh, and weaves behave when you demand both softness and stretch. The design brief, stated simply, is: a material that works to the specification of stretching and elasticity while still delivering a lovely washing experience.

And it does not stop at function. Jack and Juwon both point out that the sponge has to look good, too. It is not just "a piece of material" , it needs to have attractive packaging and a shape that looks appealing sitting in your bathroom. A great product, after all, is also a visual object.

How the Hybrid Sponge Fits Into Modern Self-Care

Bath and body care has quietly become one of the most personal parts of daily wellness. More and more people treat a shower as a small ritual, like a few minutes of calm, rather than a rushed chore, and the tools they use matter to them. A sponge that is soft, lasting, and actually reaches where it should fit neatly into that shift.

It is not a luxury gadget; rather it is a better version of something that you already own. And when a product improves a routine you repeat every single day, the value adds up fast.

Who Is This Hybrid Bath Sponge For?

This is what makes the Bath Sponge Project more than a shower accessory. It is solving for real people:

● Older adults who have lost some mobility and can no longer reach behind them as easily as they once could.

● People with health conditions or injuries that limit flexibility and movement.

● Anyone who values a better daily routine and wants one reliable sponge instead of two.

● Households that want a durable product. The one that does not disintegrate after a couple of washes.

As Juwon puts it, "not everyone's the same," and "everybody should be taken care of in the marketplace." That single line is a whole business philosophy. Products designed around real human needs tend to find loyal customers.

From Idea to Product: Who Can Build It?

Jack is refreshingly honest that he is the ideas person, not the manufacturer. He explains that the people who could bring this sponge to life are:

● Chemical engineers who understand materials and polymers.

● Product designers who can shape, prototype, and refine the concept.

● Textile specialists who know how to make a mesh that stretches without losing strength.

This openness is a strength, not a weakness. Great ideas spread when their creators invite the right experts to collaborate. If you are a designer or an engineer reading this, the Bath Sponge Project is an open invitation.

Why "Remix" a Business Idea at All?

One of the most interesting threads in the episode is why Jack returned to an idea he had already explored. He gives three reasons:

● To gather fresh input, like hearing another person's perspective sharpens an idea.

● To reignite past content by bringing an older concept back into the light.

● To see it with fresh eyes because a new conversation can reveal details you missed the first time.

That is a lesson for any entrepreneur. You do not always need a brand-new idea. Sometimes you need to return to an old one, question your assumptions, and improve. Remixing is a legitimate business strategy, and often a smarter one than chasing novelty.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Bath Sponge Project? 

It is a business idea by Jack Lookman to redesign the everyday bath sponge as a stretchable hybrid that combines the comfort of the round net sponge with the reach of the long net sponge.

Why do people need a special bath sponge for their back? 

Many people, especially older adults or those with health conditions, find it difficult to reach every part of their back. A stretchable sponge makes proper back washing much easier.

What is the difference between the round and long bath sponges? 

The round, bunched-up sponge feels better on the body but cannot reach the back. The long net sponge reaches the back but offers a less pleasant washing experience.

What material would the hybrid sponge need? 

It would need a stretchy, elastic mesh, most likely requiring input from textile specialists, product designers, or chemical engineers.

Is this product available to buy? 

Not yet. It remains a concept and an open idea, shared to invite input and collaboration.

Are cheap bath sponges a false economy? 

Often, yes. According to Jack, the cheapest sponges cost as little as 50p to £1 but break down after one or two uses, while a sponge priced two or three times higher lasts much longer.

Final Thoughts

The Bath Sponge Project (Remix) is a reminder that innovation does not always arrive as a rocket ship. Sometimes it arrives as a sponge that finally reaches your back.

It starts with noticing a small irritation, asking why it exists, and refusing to accept a trade-off that everyone else has learned to live with. From that simple curiosity, a genuinely useful product can grow, like one that serves the young and the old, the able and the less able, the practical shopper and the design lover.

So the next time you pick up your shower sponge, pause for a second. Is it actually doing everything it could? If not, you have just discovered your own bath sponge project.

 

Jack Lookman’s Websites And Books 

Jack’s Redundancy Empowerment 

Jack’s Curated Business Ideas 

Suggested Products And Services 

Useful Links 

We also monetise through promoting 3rd party products and services via Affiliate Marketing Links. This is accomplished without additional cost to you.

At Jack Lookman Limited,Our mission is to Empower and Inspire Generations by Leveraging the Internet.

Ps: Artificial intelligence was leveraged in creating this content.