Rhonda Klch: The Entrepreneur Bringing Real Mentors to the Next Generation of Founders

Rhonda Klch describes herself in four quick strokes: “serial entrepreneur, philanthropist, mom of five, just a little bit crazy.” The fourth may be the most useful one. After two decades in financial services, real estate and business growth, she spent the past stretch working on her next project “underground.” It is now coming above ground as MentorBox 2.0.

“Right now, on a mission to create as much impact as possible for all of our entrepreneurs,” Klch told 1NFLUENC3’s Richie Hosein. The idea is simple to state and harder to build: put real operators in front of founders, live, instead of in a 10-minute video or a 45-second reel.

A career built on capital and credibility

Klch is President of Equity First LLC and VP at 3F Financial. She works across credit optimization, capital acquisition and real estate development, according to her website. She advises startups, small businesses and larger companies on funding strategy and growth. She also works with a nationwide network of investors, lenders and industry experts.

She hosts The Unfiltered, a show about credit, finance and business, and publishes The Unfiltered Magazine. She is the author of Girl on Fire. She also mentors founders on Go Fund Yourself and coaches with Fund Launch, Black Card and Wealth VP. Her site lists board roles with the Sports Philanthropy Network and Race for Kids.

MentorBox, take two

MentorBox first launched in 2016, and for the last few years it sat dormant. Klch said a client gave her the chance to bring her own vision to it. The result is MentorBox 2.0.

The relaunch already has a public face. MentorBox.com now carries a “Coming Soon: MentorBox 2.0” page under a new tagline, “Real Mentors. Real Results.”, with links to follow the platform on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube.

She calls it “the first of its kind trust platform.” It “takes real leaders and entrepreneurs, embodies them into mentorship, and then they go live on our platform.” Her comparison is the attention economy: “Instead of watching a YouTube video for 10 minutes or a TikTok reel for 45 seconds, imagine being able to log into a platform where all of the best of the best live, and you have access to them live.”

The mentors she named include speaker Tim Storey, entrepreneur Dave Meltzer and real estate investor Justin Colby. “You have billionaires, millionaires and people who have direct access to get mentored by these folks,” she said.

She built the mentor side as carefully as the subscriber side. Mentors get a mastermind, a private WhatsApp community and what she calls “four layers of marketing” to grow their own brands. “I thought about myself and the people that I work with,” she said. “What is it that I actually want to build that I’d want to be part of?”

The hype guy and the grinder

Klch’s case for live mentorship rests on one distinction. “When people want to learn from people who are doing it every day, there’s a difference between somebody who’s your hype guy and the person who’s grinding every day,” she said. “Imagine learning from somebody who does it every day, not somebody who pretends to be somebody on TV.”

Her advice for young founders follows from it. “Do your homework. Just because somebody looks like they are killing it on social media, that’s what social media is for,” she said. “Take the time to ask questions.” The biggest mistake she sees in the younger generation is that “they’re so impressionable and they’re not asking enough questions,” and many are burning out.

Asked what she would tell her younger self, she didn’t hesitate: “Don’t trust everybody you meet.” She was “a handshake person,” she said, who assumed people would do the right thing. Now she looks for consistency, and for whether someone treats a relationship as “a two-way street.”

“I’m about collaboration, not competition,” she said. “So we’re either going to grow together or we’re not going to work together at all.”

What’s next

Klch keeps her own network small on purpose: one or two new relationships at a time, with a follow-up and a way to add value. If she can’t help, she looks for someone in her ecosystem who can. MentorBox 2.0 is that habit at platform scale. To follow the relaunch, she said, “Follow us at MentorBox 2.0 on all social media channels.” Updates are posted at mentorbox.com.

Rhonda Klch spoke with Richie Hosein for 1NFLUENC3. Video produced by 1NFLUENC3 Media. Learn more at rhondaklch.com and on Instagram at @rhondaklch.