This week’s episode is for the business finance and idea nerds. We’re joined this week in a business breakdown session with Alexej Pikovsky of Alphawellbrands.com. Alexej raised 4MIL to build a CBD marketplace. They were forced to pivot and have currently acquired an Amazon FBA brand and started up a success agency in the process, the combined revenue of both is on track to be over 4MIL this year. We’ll dig into the Peter Paul problem– how to choose where to focus your energy when you have multiple businesses? We’ll also cover his perspective on what happened in the Amazon aggregator space. How did so much capital implode so quickly? (Thrasio raised 3 Billion dollars and provided exits to many TMBA listeners). Is there room for smaller roll-ups that work in 2024? Takeaways ● ● Transition from a CBD marketplace to an SEO agency and FBA brand. ● The aggregator model faced significant challenges post-COVID. ● Many D2C brands are struggling with profitability and valuation. ● Acquiring the scented candles brand was a strategic move in a declining market. ● The agency provides valuable insights but distracts from brand focus. ● Investor relations are crucial for long-term success and exit strategies. ● The e-commerce landscape is evolving, requiring new strategies for success. ● The agency's role in the overall business strategy is under review. ● Future growth may depend on focusing solely on the brand. Useful links: Access our free business resources (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) Connect with other entrepreneurs (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) Coaching for $250K+ founders (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-accelerator) Community for 1M+ founders (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Mike Michalowicz, Greg Crabtree, Jordan Gal Additional episodes you might enjoy: “The 4 Most Eye-Opening Lessons I’ve Learned From My Coaching Clients” (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/4-eye-opening-lessons) “You’re Gonna Mess It Up The Way Everybody Messes It Up” (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/everybody-messes-it-up) “When is my LTV good enough?” + Founder Mode for Bootstrappers (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/ltv-good-enough) $100K MRR in 12 Months… Can They Do It? (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/100k-mrr-12-months)

Selling your product or service requires using words to convey what you offer. But words alone don’t convert on-the-fence prospects into paying customers. Great conversion copy is a mix of persuasion, UX, and decision-making psychology. Sound hard? We promise it isn’t. Chris, the founder of Conversion Alchemy (https://christophersilvestri.com/), takes us for a deep dive into all things copywriting and how the power of your messaging can impact your business growth, for better or worse. Plus, he shares a simple five-step copy audit process that transforms agency websites into lead generation machines, with principles you can apply to improve your own marketing collateral. Tune in for writing tips, principles, and examples you can copy. Newsletter subscribers (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) will get the 5-step worksheet to help you create your own offer in 30 minutes. Takeaways - Empathizing with the client's problem, understanding your audience's language, and identifying audience awareness levels is crucial for effective messaging. - A clear value proposition resonates with prospects’' goals and increases engagement. - Clarifying what you do and how, backed with empathy, builds trust with potential clients. - Contextual proof enhances credibility and addresses objections, creating a smoother client experience. - Shielding clients from risk reassures them during the decision-making process. - The “coffee table test” helps tailor messaging to the audience. - AI can assist in drafting copy but should not replace personal insights. - Tripwire products can effectively lower barriers to entry for clients. - Analyzing successful agency websites can provide valuable insights. - Dynamic frameworks for copywriting are more effective than rigid formulas. - Leveraging testimonials can significantly boost credibility. Useful links: Access our free business resources (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) Connect with other entrepreneurs (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) Coaching for $250K+ founders (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-accelerator) Community for 1M+ founders (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Mike Michalowicz, Greg Crabtree, Jordan Gal Additional episodes you might enjoy: “The 4 Most Eye-Opening Lessons I’ve Learned From My Coaching Clients” (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/4-eye-opening-lessons) “You’re Gonna Mess It Up The Way Everybody Messes It Up” (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/everybody-messes-it-up) “When is my LTV good enough?” + Founder Mode for Bootstrappers (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/ltv-good-enough) $100K MRR in 12 Months… Can They Do It? (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/100k-mrr-12-months)

Dan and Ian talk to 100s of listeners a year via 1:1 coaching. In this episode they distill those calls into 4 breakthrough ideas that can change your quarter for the better. Newsletter subscribers will get our GPS (Goals/Plans/Systems) worksheet. Sign up for the newsletter. (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) Takeaways ● Be sure you pack enough underwear for your next trip abroad. ● Getting aligned on goals is easy, but aligning on plans is hard. ● Hiring should be based on unique business needs, not generic roles. ● Confidence is essential for entrepreneurs, especially in challenging times. ● Discipline in financial management is crucial for sustainable growth. ● Regularly reviewing financials helps maintain business health. ● Accountability in coaching can drive significant progress. ● Sacrifices are often necessary to achieve business goals. ● Effective hiring requires a clear understanding of ROI. ● Facing reality and challenges can build confidence. ● Entrepreneurship allows for a lifestyle designed by personal choice. In honor of traveling to DCBKK this week, here’s Dan’s original packing list (https://tropicalmba.com/articles/digital-nomad-packing-lis/) from 2010. And an updated list (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/packing) in 2015. Is it time for a new list? Chapters - (00:00:59) Dan’s Packing List Ahead of DCBKK - (00:02:28) 4 Breakthroughs From Our Coaching Calls - (00:05:20) The Importance of Goal Alignment - (00:09:54) Hiring for Unique Situations - (00:16:36) Good Confidence vs Bad Confidence - (00:21:03) Discipline in Entrepreneurship Useful links: Access our free business resources (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) Connect with other entrepreneurs (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) Coaching for $250K+ founders (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-accelerator) Community for 1M+ founders (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Mike Michalowicz, Greg Crabtree, Jordan Gal Additional episodes you might enjoy: $30K a Month on Upwork in Less Than 2 Years (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/30k-a-month-2-years) “You’re Gonna Mess It Up The Way Everybody Messes It Up” (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/everybody-messes-it-up) “When is my LTV good enough?” + Founder Mode for Bootstrappers (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/ltv-good-enough) $100K MRR in 12 Months… Can They Do It? (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/100k-mrr-12-months)

Dan considers why many of us are resistant to a certain type of business idea even when it’s been proved time and time again. He’ll also explore that often what stands between your business and positive change is some structured thinking. Lastly, we’ll hear from a listener who’s working to take his lifestyle brand to $1M and what his plans are to get there. Featured in this episode: Founder Robby McClung of the McClumsy (https://mcclumsy.com/?srsltid=AfmBOoovUif485xIc7NQ559s51c7sWaSSF_z4jDBNR4eGd0yub7TWUmA) lifestyle brand. This week’s episode brought to you by Smash Digital (https://smashdigital.com/). They’ll build you a scalable SEO growth strategy to earn the juiciest high-authority backlinks on earth. No, really. Useful links: Connect with other entrepreneurs (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) Coaching for $250K+ founders (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-accelerator) Community for 1M+ founders (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow us on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Mike Michalowicz, Greg Crabtree, Jordan Gal Additional episodes you might enjoy: $30K a Month on Upwork in Less Than 2 Years (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/30k-a-month-2-years) “You’re Gonna Mess It Up The Way Everybody Messes It Up” (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/everybody-messes-it-up) “When is my LTV good enough?” + Founder Mode for Bootstrappers (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/ltv-good-enough) $100K MRR in 12 Months… Can They Do It? (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/100k-mrr-12-months)

Dan paid big money for a business coach who only gave him one piece of advice. Listen to the episode to find out what it was and if it worked. Connect with us: Dan: @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) or [email protected] Ian: @AnythingIa (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan)n or [email protected] Chapters (00:00:22) The Perfect Storm for Entrepreneurs (00:03:41) Introducing the System (00:05:37) Implementing the System in Your Business (00:06:50) Defining Roles and Outcomes (00:09:51) The Hiring Process Revolutionized (00:11:01) Performance Conversations and Team Dynamics (00:12:53) Leveraging the System for Business Growth (00:16:37) Recap and Final Thoughts Useful links: Connect with other entrepreneurs (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) Coaching for $250K+ founders (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-accelerator) Community for 1M+ founders (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow us on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Mike Michalowicz, Greg Crabtree, Jordan Gal Additional episodes you might enjoy: $30K a Month on Upwork in Less Than 2 Years (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/30k-a-month-2-years) “Lifestyle Business” vs “Real Business” (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/lifestyle-vs-real-business) Only 3 Ways to Grow…What Would Plato Do (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/three-ways-grow-business)

Dan & Ian get real about what it takes to create and maintain a successful business. They’ll walk you through their Goals/Plans/Systems (GPS) worksheet that’s specifically designed to help you plan for business growth. They use it with their coaching clients on a weekly basis. Newsletter subscribers can download and complete their very own GPS worksheet. Through completing this worksheet, you will: Discover key insights about the state of your business that you probably didn’t realize before Define clear goals for your business moving forward Develop a plan based on your historical data and a cadence for tracking your progress regularly Plus: Ian talks about his cool and expensive hobby. We talk about a founder who doesn’t take meetings and still has a profitable business. We share some insight on how we managed our business during a crucial operational tipping point. Connect with us: Dan: @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) or [email protected] Ian: @AnythingIa (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan)n or [email protected] Useful links: Connect with other entrepreneurs (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) Coaching for $250K+ founders (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-accelerator) Community for 1M+ founders (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow us on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Mike Michalowicz, Greg Crabtree, Jordan Gal Additional episodes you might enjoy: $30K a Month on Upwork in Less Than 2 Years (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/30k-a-month-2-years) “Lifestyle Business” vs “Real Business” (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/lifestyle-vs-real-business) Only 3 Ways to Grow…What Would Plato Do (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/three-ways-grow-business)

“Manager mode is so tempting…” Dan & Ian discuss Paul Graham’s most recent essay titled “Founder Mode”, and how lifestyle bootsrappers can harness the power of founder mode to grow their businesses. They’ll also address a question they get asked all the time: “But when is my LTV good enough?” How to figure out your LTV to CAC ratio and more in this week’s episode. Subscribe to the newsletter to access Dan & Ian’s business resources used with their coaching clients. Subscribe to the TMBA newsletter. (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) This week’s episode brought to you by Remote First Recruiting (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/). Hire your next team member in 30 days or less. From the episode: Paul Graham’s Founder Mode (https://paulgraham.com/foundermode.html). ‘Old Man River’ reference from The 5 Approaches for Getting Rich + Budgeting for Wealth (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/5-approaches-getting-wealth) Connect with us: Dan: @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) or [email protected] Ian: @AnythingIa (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan)n or [email protected] Useful links: Connect with other entrepreneurs (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) Coaching for $250K+ founders (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-accelerator) Community for 1M+ founders (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow us on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Mike Michalowicz, Greg Crabtree, Jordan Gal Additional episodes you might enjoy: $30K a Month on Upwork in Less Than 2 Years (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/30k-a-month-2-years) “Lifestyle Business” vs “Real Business” (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/lifestyle-vs-real-business) Only 3 Ways to Grow…What Would Plato Do (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/three-ways-grow-business)

Many founders think they have an operations problem - delivery, trust, staffing, leadership. But Dan thinks you might actually have a sales & marketing problem. Dan & Ian also talk about becoming better leaders and how to fight against the erge to control your team. Last but not least, Dan shares the invaluable relationship advice he learned from President Barack Obama and reflects on the benefits of owning a lifestyle business when it comes to parenting. Want to work through your current challenges with Dan & Ian? TMBA listeners can apply to get business coaching from Dan & Ian live on the pod (it’s free). Apply here. (https://14sd8k3d6c1.typeform.com/to/aX9YfmGH) Get access to Dan & Ian’s business resources that they use with their coaching clients when you sign up for the newsletter. Subscribe to the TMBA newsletter. (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) This week’s episode brought to you by Remote First Recruiting (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/). Hire your next team member in 30 days or less. Connect with us: Dan: @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) or [email protected] Ian: @AnythingIa (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan)n or [email protected] Useful links: Connect with other entrepreneurs (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) Coaching for $250K+ founders (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-accelerator) Community for 1M+ founders (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow us on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Mike Michalowicz, Greg Crabtree, Jordan Gal Additional episodes you might enjoy: $30K a Month on Upwork in Less Than 2 Years (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/30k-a-month-2-years) $100K MRR in 12 Months… Can They Do It? (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/100k-mrr-12-months) “Lifestyle Business” vs “Real Business” (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/lifestyle-vs-real-business) Only 3 Ways to Grow…What Would Plato Do (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/three-ways-grow-business)

This founder started an Upwork agency less than 2 years ago and is making $30K a month… JUST on Upwork alone. We talk about how to take it to $80K a month and beyond in the next year. In this week’s newsletter, we include our ICP exercise. Your next breakthrough in under 30 minutes. TMBA email subscribers can also apply to get business coaching from Dan & Ian live on the pod (it’s free). Subscribe to the TMBA newsletter. (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) Today’s guest is Phil Kuehnen, founder of Rev Gravy (https://hey.revgravy.com/welcome). Connect with us: Dan: @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) or [email protected] Ian: @AnythingIa (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan)n or [email protected] Chapters (00:00:00) Introduction and Overview (00:00:35) Current Revenue and Pricing (00:05:11) Financial Goals and Challenges (00:05:32) Strategies for Revenue Growth (00:05:40) Acquiring and Retaining Customers (00:07:11) Key Value Proposition and Benefits (00:07:33) Identifying Obvious Growth Opportunities (00:10:50) Creating a High-Ticket Front-End Offer (00:12:37) Focusing on the Business Model (00:19:33) The Importance of Sales Calls (00:21:12) Building a Machine for Growth Useful links: Connect with other entrepreneurs (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) Coaching for $250K+ founders (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-accelerator) Community for 1M+ founders (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow us on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Mike Michalowicz, Greg Crabtree, Jordan Gal Additional episodes you might enjoy: “1,000 Customers from One Channel” (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/1000-customers-one-channel) “Lifestyle Business” vs “Real Business” (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/lifestyle-vs-real-business) Only 3 Ways to Grow…What Would Plato Do (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/three-ways-grow-business)

These co-founders want to more than triple their revenue in the next 12 months. Despite stagnation the past few years, they believe they can get there. Dan & Ian dissect their plans to achieve this goal and offer some counterintuitive advice. They cover repackaging a product for a higher cost, focusing on your premium customers, and how to lead a sales call. In this week’s newsletter, we include our favorite resources for getting started with sales calls. TMBA email subscribers can also apply to get business coaching from Dan & Ian live on the pod (it’s free). Subscribe to the TMBA newsletter. (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) Today’s guests are Elburz Sorkhabi and Colin Gibson, founders of The Interactive & Immersive HQ (https://interactiveimmersive.io/). Connect with us: Dan: @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) or [email protected] Ian: @AnythingIa (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan)n or [email protected] Chapters (00:00:00) Introduction and Overview (00:04:40) Financial Goals and Challenges (00:06:07) Current Revenue and Pricing (00:07:51) Strategies for Revenue Growth (00:10:13) Acquiring and Retaining Customers (00:12:45) Key Value Proposition and Benefits (00:14:36) Identifying Obvious Growth Opportunities (00:16:06) Repositioning the Product for Customer Goals (00:18:32) Repositioning and Repackaging for Revenue Generation (00:24:17) Creating a High-Ticket Front-End Offer (00:34:02) Focusing on the Business Model (00:39:40) The Importance of Sales Calls (00:44:00) Building a Machine for Growth Useful links: Connect with other entrepreneurs (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) Coaching for $250K+ founders (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-accelerator) Community for 1M+ founders (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow us on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Mike Michalowicz, Greg Crabtree, Jordan Gal Additional episodes you might enjoy: “3 Million in Revenue is a Death Zone" - Financial Strategy with Greg Crabtree (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/3-million-death-zone) “Lifestyle Business” vs “Real Business” (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/lifestyle-vs-real-business) Only 3 Ways to Grow…What Would Plato Do (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/three-ways-grow-business)

Go from being trapped in the job you’ve built for yourself to building a wealth-generating machine. Dan & Ian challenge service businesses to determine their LTV to CAC ratio so they can improve their cashflow and run a “real” business that gives them the lifestyle they want. Calculating the LTV to CAC ratio may sound hard (and boring), but it’s no harder than solving all those other things you’re struggling with in your business. Also, Dan’s hot take on the digital nomad ratio and being “relatively” wealthy. Plus, one lucky listener (and email subscriber) will win a free ticket to this year’s DCBKK (over $1,000 value) in October. Details on how to enter in this week’s newsletter. Subscribe to the TMBA newsletter. (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) Connect with us: Dan: @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) or [email protected] Ian: @AnythingIa (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan)n or [email protected] Chapters: (00:01:00) Free Ticket to Our Next Event (00:04:49) Business Breakdown Series (00:06:50) Understanding the LTV to CAC Ratio (00:08:08) Scaling a Service Business (00:18:33) Lifestyle Business vs Real Business (00:20:40) Easier to Run a Real Business (00:26:00) Understanding Key Metrics (00:29:47) High Fidelity Problem-Solving (00:35:03) The Digital Nomad Ratio (00:36:10) Living Like the Wealthy Useful links: Connect with other entrepreneurs (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) Coaching for $250K+ founders (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-accelerator) Community for 1M+ founders (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow us on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Mike Michalowicz, Greg Crabtree, Jordan Gal Additional episodes you might enjoy: “3 Million in Revenue is a Death Zone" - Financial Strategy with Greg Crabtree (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/3-million-death-zone) The Anti-Agency Agency + High ROI Customer Acquisition (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/anti-agency-high-roi) The Secret Weapon to Pricing Power (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/secret-weapon-pricing-power)

Dan & Ian talk to a listener who’s running a SaaS business that within one year got to $8K MRR. The business is full of potential and opportunities, but the risks involved with having all of your customers come from one channel looms heavily in the background. They discuss topics like how to build relationships with customers, increase average cart value, how to grow your business when you’re not a sales and marketing expert, and more. Dan & Ian brainstorm ideas about how this founder can future-proof his business while still maintaining his ideal lifestyle. TMBA email subscribers can submit their business to be reviewed with Dan & Ian on the pod. Subscribe to the TMBA newsletter. (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) Today’s guest is Pavel Schoffer, founder of Beaver Codes (https://beaver.codes/#:~:text=My%20name%20is%20Pavel%20Schoffer,our%20CTO%20and%20founder%20%E2%80%93%20Pavel.). Connect with us: Dan: @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) or [email protected] Ian: @AnythingIa (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan)n or [email protected] Chapters: (00:00:13) Introduction and Background (00:08:23) Building a Successful Lifestyle Business with Beaver Codes (00:09:50) Navigating Platform Risk and Diversification (00:11:04) Expanding the Business: Leveraging the Passionate Customer Base (00:13:34) Reaching Out to Customers and Gathering Insights (00:23:49) Managing Online Reviews and Filtering Options (00:25:50) Automating Review Responses and AI Integration (00:33:59) Balancing Platform Risk and Diversification (00:35:41) Upselling Premium Features to Existing Customers (00:37:39) Identifying Personal Passion and Building Relationships (00:42:02) Recognizing Expertise and Hiring for Growth (00:42:52) Bringing in Talent and Sharing Wisdom (00:44:28) Maximizing Personal and Business Potential Useful links: Connect with other entrepreneurs (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) Coaching for $250K+ founders (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-accelerator) Community for 1M+ founders (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow us on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Mike Michalowicz, Greg Crabtree, Jordan Gal Additional episodes you might enjoy: “3 Million in Revenue is a Death Zone" - Financial Strategy with Greg Crabtree (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/3-million-death-zone) The Anti-Agency Agency + High ROI Customer Acquisition (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/anti-agency-high-roi) The Secret Weapon to Pricing Power (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/secret-weapon-pricing-power)

Dan & Ian talk to a listener who’s running a $1M D2C e-commerce business about the challenges and opportunities he faces as he plans for future growth and a potential exit down the road. They discuss topics like decreasing customer acquisition costs, increasing profit margins, the absolutely essential role of a CFO, and not letting your passion for the product get in the way of your growth. At the end of the call, Dan & Ian will recommend key next steps this founder should take in order to scale their business effectively and aggressively. TMBA email subscribers can submit their business to be reviewed with Dan & Ian on the pod. Subscribe to the TMBA newsletter. (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) Check out the fluora plant (https://fluoraplant.com/) we discuss on today’s show. Connect with us: Dan: @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) or [email protected] Ian: @AnythingIa (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan)n or [email protected] Chapters: (00:00:27) Introduction and Business Overview (00:02:18) Transitioning to D2C E-commerce (00:05:59) Scaling and Future Plans (00:13:11) Becoming a Software Company (00:14:17) Challenges and Future Growth (00:18:06) The Role of a CFO in Financial Management (00:28:28) Developing an Expensive Product for Customers (00:32:48) Improving Profit Margins and Considering Tax Implications Useful links: Connect with other entrepreneurs (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) Coaching for $250K+ founders (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-accelerator) Community for 1M+ founders (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow us on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Mike Michalowicz, Greg Crabtree, Jordan Gal Additional episodes you might enjoy: “3 Million in Revenue is a Death Zone" - Financial Strategy with Greg Crabtree (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/3-million-death-zone) The Anti-Agency Agency + High ROI Customer Acquisition (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/anti-agency-high-roi) The Secret Weapon to Pricing Power (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/secret-weapon-pricing-power)

Tackling one of the biggest problems entrepreneurs struggle with: separating their business from their own narrative and looking at it with fresh eyes. This episode will uncover the simple but hard truths to every business and reveal the three (and only three) ways to grow any business. We talk about customer acquisition, order value, retention, risk-free offers, and more. TMBA email subscribers will get access to the platonic business calculator discussed on today’s show. Subscribe to the TMBA newsletter. (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) Connect with us: Dan: @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) or [email protected] Ian: @AnythingIa (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan)n or [email protected] Chapters: - (00:00:45) Introduction - (00:02:24) The Platonic Ideal of a Business - (00:04:18) Simplify, Focus, Execute - (00:10:27) The 3 Essential Ways to Grow a Business - (00:12:47) Understanding the Numbers - (00:29:07) Better-Than-Risk-Free Offers - (00:32:53) Conclusion Useful links: Connect with other entrepreneurs (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) Coaching for $250K+ founders (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-accelerator) Community for 1M+ founders (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow us on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Mike Michalowicz, Greg Crabtree, Jordan Gal Additional episodes you might enjoy: Winning and losing Millions with Nathaniel Eliason (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/winning-and-losing-nathaniel-eliason) Less Than 5% of Businesses Get to 1MIL+ - A Process to Reach the Goal (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/process-to-reach-goal) The Secret Weapon to Pricing Power (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/secret-weapon-pricing-power)

We speak to hundreds of entrepreneurs every year through one-on-one coaching and live events. Many of those entrepreneurs have gone on to become very wealthy, and throughout our conversations with those people, we have found some common threads to the ways that wealthy people behave. This was one of our most popular episodes of 2019 so we’re bringing it back with updated thoughts. This week, newsletter subscribers will get Dan’s personal monthly budget template. Sign up for our newsletter to receive TMBA-exclusive business-building resources weekly. (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) Chapters ● (00:02:20) Every Dollar Has a Job ● (00:09:30) Deals. People. Energy. Luck. ● (00:14:42) Strategic Identity Creation ● (00:21:22) Comprehensive Arbitrage ● (00:29:03) Old Man River ● (00:33:15) Shovel Stamper Connect with us: Dan: @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) or [email protected] Ian: @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) or [email protected] ([email protected]) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Mike Michalowicz, Greg Crabtree, Jordan Gal Additional episodes you might enjoy: Winning and losing Millions with Nathaniel Eliason (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/winning-and-losing-nathaniel-eliason) Less Than 5% of Businesses Get to 1MIL+ - A Process to Reach the Goal (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/process-to-reach-goal) The 7 Most Common Money Mistakes for Bootstrappers (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/7-money-mistakes)

In this week's conversation, Dan and Ian discuss 10 ideas that provide valuable insights and strategies for entrepreneurs looking to grow their revenue to $1 Million and beyond. From years of experience and countless coaching calls, Dan and Ian cover topics such as finding a product with a tailwind, getting out of delivery, hiring a key badass, understanding your business model, optimizing your marketing funnel, and much more… These strategies can provide a roadmap for entrepreneurs to focus on the most impactful areas of their business and make informed decisions to drive growth. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: Our book: Before the Exit (https://www.amazon.com/Before-Exit-Thought-Experiments-Entrepreneurs/dp/1980628823/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3E5PMCCM0TDZ0&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.GnIb36rltn6NgcjHBCs8zg.waeKvE3zKoAbCt6Adoo5o5vv7M4PDyOj9pMXE7dM82A&dib_tag=se&keywords=before+the+exit+dan+andrews&qid=1711510466&s=books&sprefix=before+the+exit+dan+andrews%2Cstripbooks%2C101&sr=1-1) The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Accelerator (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-accelerator) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Chapters: (00:00:49) Introduction and Setting (00:02:02) 10 Ideas for Reaching $1 Million in Revenue (00:03:46) Finding a Product with a Tailwind (00:11:11) Getting Out of Delivery (00:17:57) Hiring a Key Badass (00:23:48) Knowing Your Numbers (00:25:05) Understanding Your Numbers (00:29:27) Creating a Resident Offer (00:32:46) Optimizing Your Marketing Funnel (00:38:50) Identifying Key Metrics (00:40:51) Patching the Leaky Boat Links: Diagnostic & Goals | Plans | Systems Work sheet (https://docs.google.com/document/d/15eai16-JiRqUDYyKBdG6Za-vIs_xLCnGRcLYYcbrGDE/edit) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Mike Michalowicz, Greg Crabtree, Jordan Gal Additional episodes you might enjoy: Winning and losing Millions with Nathaniel Eliason (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/winning-and-losing-nathaniel-eliason) Less Than 5% of Businesses Get to 1MIL+ - A Process to Reach the Goal (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/process-to-reach-goal) The 7 Most Common Money Mistakes for Bootstrappers (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/7-money-mistakes)

This week’s conversation revolves around the book 'Crypto Confidential' and explores author Nathaniel Eliason’s experience during the crypto mania. From the moment he decided to go all-in on crypto and the impact it had on their personal life, Nathaniel delves into the mechanics of farming and the process of launching decentralized exchanges. Enjoy insights deep insights from the crypto world including off-ramping, the risks and challenges of early wallets, the mindset of crypto whales, the experience of losing and making millions, the rise and fall of the Titan project, and the author's biggest win in developing a crypto game. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: Our book: Before the Exit (https://www.amazon.com/Before-Exit-Thought-Experiments-Entrepreneurs/dp/1980628823/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3E5PMCCM0TDZ0&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.GnIb36rltn6NgcjHBCs8zg.waeKvE3zKoAbCt6Adoo5o5vv7M4PDyOj9pMXE7dM82A&dib_tag=se&keywords=before+the+exit+dan+andrews&qid=1711510466&s=books&sprefix=before+the+exit+dan+andrews%2Cstripbooks%2C101&sr=1-1) The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Accelerator (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-accelerator) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Chapters: (00:16:41) Going All-In on Crypto (00:20:53) Exploring the Mechanics of Farming and Decentralized Exchanges (00:26:35) The Role of Social Media in Spreading Information and Attracting Investors (00:34:37) The Influx of Money into Crypto: Motivations of Investors (00:35:22) Challenges of Off-Ramping Crypto and Early Wallets (00:36:01) The Mindset of Crypto Whales (00:41:13) Lessons from Losing Money in the Crypto World (00:42:59) The Rise and Fall of the Titan Project (00:52:42) The Author's Biggest Win: Developing a Crypto Game (00:59:50) Choosing Fulfillment over Financial Success: The Decision to Focus on Writing Links: Crypto Confidential: Winning and Losing Millions in the New Frontier of Finance (https://www.amazon.com/Crypto-Confidential-Winning-Millions-Frontier/dp/0593714040) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Mike Michalowicz, Greg Crabtree, Jordan Gal Additional episodes you might enjoy: Less Than 5% of Businesses Get to 1MIL+ - A Process to Reach the Goal (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/process-to-reach-goal) The 7 Most Common Money Mistakes for Bootstrappers (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/7-money-mistakes) Unlock Wealth Through Financial Fluency (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/unlock-wealth-financial-fluency)

Dan and Ian discuss the fundamental principles of change and how they apply to both weight loss and entrepreneurship. The conversation explores the three key components of successful change: knowledge, accountability, and identity. Listen in for how these principles are practical and applicable to your business growth, cause ass we know breakthroughs in our business don’t happen through epiphanies, they happen through small and consistent accumulations of change. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: Our book: Before the Exit (https://www.amazon.com/Before-Exit-Thought-Experiments-Entrepreneurs/dp/1980628823/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3E5PMCCM0TDZ0&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.GnIb36rltn6NgcjHBCs8zg.waeKvE3zKoAbCt6Adoo5o5vv7M4PDyOj9pMXE7dM82A&dib_tag=se&keywords=before+the+exit+dan+andrews&qid=1711510466&s=books&sprefix=before+the+exit+dan+andrews%2Cstripbooks%2C101&sr=1-1) The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Accelerator (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-accelerator) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Chapters ● (00:00:54) Introduction and Catching Up ● (00:02:42) The Need for Change in Business ● (00:04:40) The Pyramid of Change ● (00:10:34) The Three Components of Successful Change ● (00:10:53) The Power of Accountability ● (00:12:31) Changing Practices and Relationships ● (00:14:23) The Importance of Accountability ● (00:17:27) The Role of Knowledge in Change ● (00:18:01) Different Types of Knowledge ● (00:22:16) The Power of Identity ● (00:28:57) The Priority of Change ● (00:29:45) The Promise of Change Links: Dr. Layne Norton’s YouTube Channel (https://www.youtube.com/@biolayne1) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Mike Michalowicz, Greg Crabtree, Jordan Gal Additional episodes you might enjoy: The 7 Most Common Money Mistakes for Bootstrappers (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/7-money-mistakes) Unlock Wealth Through Financial Fluency (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/unlock-wealth-financial-fluency) The Secret Weapon for Pricing Power (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/secret-weapon-pricing-power)

Dan and Ian discuss the biggest money problems they’ve seen in their own business and hundreds of other bootstrapped businesses. Learn how to craft a sustainable financial model, the importance of owner compensation, how to avoid being under-invested, and more. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: Our book: Before the Exit (https://www.amazon.com/Before-Exit-Thought-Experiments-Entrepreneurs/dp/1980628823/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3E5PMCCM0TDZ0&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.GnIb36rltn6NgcjHBCs8zg.waeKvE3zKoAbCt6Adoo5o5vv7M4PDyOj9pMXE7dM82A&dib_tag=se&keywords=before+the+exit+dan+andrews&qid=1711510466&s=books&sprefix=before+the+exit+dan+andrews%2Cstripbooks%2C101&sr=1-1) The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Accelerator (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-accelerator) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Chapters ● (00:00:45) Introduction and Setting the Stage ● (00:01:13) The Importance of Money Attitudes and Metaphors ● (00:16:08) The Startup Spending Mindset in Bootstrapped Businesses ● (00:29:39) Focusing on the Wrong Problems ● (00:31:25) Strategies for Affording to Start a Business ● (00:34:28) Starting Early and Investing in Yourself ● (00:38:18) The Importance of Owner Compensation ● (00:41:15) Setting a Salary Cap ● (00:45:12) Avoiding Being Under-Invested Links: - Derek Sivers article “Shed Your Money Taboos” (https://sive.rs/mn1) - Venkatesh Rao article “Ancient Rivers of Money” (https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/11/05/ancient-rivers-of-money/) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Mike Michalowicz, Greg Crabtree, Jordan Gal Additional episodes you might enjoy: Unlock Wealth Through Financial Fluency (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/unlock-wealth-financial-fluency) The Secret Weapon for Pricing Power (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/secret-weapon-pricing-power) How Healthy is Your Business? (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/how-healthy-is-your-business)

In this episode, Dan and Ian discuss the credible and reliable ways to build wealth through your business, based on the work of author Keith Cunningham. The conversation emphasizes building a financially sound foundation for your business by understanding and applying financial principles, planning effectively, managing risks, and maintaining financial discipline. As Cunningham says, "Building a business without mastering the financial statements is like building a house on the beach. It’s not if the tide will come in, it’s when. And the tide always comes in." Enjoy this week's episode as you consider how to build a durable business for long-term success! Dan & Ian’s Stuff: Our book: Before the Exit (https://www.amazon.com/Before-Exit-Thought-Experiments-Entrepreneurs/dp/1980628823/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3E5PMCCM0TDZ0&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.GnIb36rltn6NgcjHBCs8zg.waeKvE3zKoAbCt6Adoo5o5vv7M4PDyOj9pMXE7dM82A&dib_tag=se&keywords=before+the+exit+dan+andrews&qid=1711510466&s=books&sprefix=before+the+exit+dan+andrews%2Cstripbooks%2C101&sr=1-1) The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Accelerator (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-accelerator) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Chapters ● (00:00:44) Introduction: Credible and Reliable Ways to Build Wealth Through Your Business ● (00:04:09) Building a Durable Business for Long-Term Wealth ● (00:04:54) Mitigating Risks: Excess Capacity, Client Concentration, and Key People Dependency ● (00:11:49) Understanding the Language of Finance for Business Success ● (00:19:01) Sustaining a Business for the Long Term: Commitment and Adaptability ● (00:20:53) Understanding Finance and Starting a Business ● (00:33:50) The Role of Culture in a Company ● (00:35:29) The Responsibilities of a CEO ● (00:37:42) Growth Priorities for Business Success ● (00:39:09) Capital-Efficient Strategies for Wealth Generation Links: - Keith Cunningham's book 'The Ultimate Blueprint for an Insanely Successful Business' (https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Blueprint-Insanely-Successful-Business/dp/0984659250/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2D3HYVG2XIL8E&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.6wdrFdtbm0DM4YXd9z-7Eg9hSx7g-qEqNSc6mcRKhvXX5LeVKUFI7s-Mk6ogS9nCRgWK7FKyBUgHkvR1APe1B31DvYgxvuzLLkQwBDZBD2tblhHNOTc_y_Vw9xOdloAH7wg8rVbWShf0bIQzv1Eulxpq3ei0imX87F7HTMkKwub58NAwIRQUmKyZSsY7It-Ab6jzcJb_9U0L5HKNFaAU7AFfrelF6YpYbSuWDwxdgN0.zbX1oiTeTlGx2AUi1Kuq6ypRgpMAVFunKIDtssU7QOI&dib_tag=se&keywords=The+Ultimate+Blueprint+for+an+Insanely+Successful+Business&qid=1718197927&sprefix=the+ultimate+blueprint+for+an+insanely+successful+business%2Caps%2C59&sr=8-1) - Keith Cunningham’s book ‘The Road Less Stupid’ (https://www.amazon.com/Road-Less-Stupid-Keith-Cunningham/dp/0984659269/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1QSYA03DUPLBS&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.38XR5RwqaXyMwB0ZdJAPnpC1BdgaQLvjMsWtoc6-iSYa8RzEhdSYSPVoqaJhB_aU6WeLIm30lN90exgwyi3UHvBIsrBMb60JkLdYnFVMt1nfog5uR8VVMRmfhz3blxqJzdKLlZjMn95jmKfFi0Lz5NcEEQ1Lgo-knbxKX8PzCe120eDSKl4oLgUWNCLD2NcdUk0E0pCzYTfYbC5yXvi_n77TZUCp-sKAdTplHRxsTH0.YFtfbChtHiVP11ILE_7VTO-SWC2jte-ZLHlxaDrzWqw&dib_tag=se&keywords=The+Road+Less+Stupid&qid=1718197959&s=audible&sprefix=the+road+less+stupid%2Caudible%2C68&sr=1-1-catcorr) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Mike Michalowicz, Greg Crabtree, Jordan Gal Additional episodes you might enjoy: The Secret Weapon for Pricing Power (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/secret-weapon-pricing-power) How Healthy is Your Business? (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/how-healthy-is-your-business) The Million Dollar Service Business Playbook (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/million-dollar-playbook)

Dan and Ian explore the concept of power in business and how businesses can transition from being a grind for the owner to having sustainable pricing power. Derived from the book 'Seven Powers' by Hamilton Helmer, they delve into the idea of cornered resources as a source of power and discuss examples of cornered resources such as patents, unique brain trust, and exclusive partnerships. You’ll be challenged to consider how you can identify and leverage counter positioning, networked effects, distribution, and brand to sustain margins and pricing power over time. This is an essential conversation for building and maintaining a competitive advantage in any industry. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: Our book: Before the Exit (https://www.amazon.com/Before-Exit-Thought-Experiments-Entrepreneurs/dp/1980628823/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3E5PMCCM0TDZ0&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.GnIb36rltn6NgcjHBCs8zg.waeKvE3zKoAbCt6Adoo5o5vv7M4PDyOj9pMXE7dM82A&dib_tag=se&keywords=before+the+exit+dan+andrews&qid=1711510466&s=books&sprefix=before+the+exit+dan+andrews%2Cstripbooks%2C101&sr=1-1) The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Accelerator (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-accelerator) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Chapters ● (00:01:07) Understanding Business Power and Transitioning Camps ● (00:09:44) The Importance of Cornered Resources in Business ● (00:19:59) Leveraging Distribution as a Source of Power ● (00:36:03) Unleashing the Power of Brand Links: - The 7 Powers: The Foundation of Business Strategy (https://www.amazon.com/7-Powers-Foundations-Business-Strategy/dp/0998116319) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Mike Michalowicz, Greg Crabtree, Jordan Gal Additional episodes you might enjoy: How Healthy is Your Business? (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/how-healthy-is-your-business) The Million Dollar Service Business Playbook (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/million-dollar-playbook) Run Any Business with Just Two Simple Things (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/run-business-two-simple-things)

Dan and Ian challenge listeners to answer five questions about your business that will help you evaluate how healthy your operations are. They cover everything from doubling down on what’s working best to effective resource allocation and working “on” your business instead of “in” your business. You’ll also be challenged to ask yourself: “What would a skilled entrepreneur do with my business?” Take out your pens and notepad (very important), and consider this episode a free coaching session and a little taste of DC Accelerator. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: Our book: Before the Exit (https://www.amazon.com/Before-Exit-Thought-Experiments-Entrepreneurs/dp/1980628823/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3E5PMCCM0TDZ0&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.GnIb36rltn6NgcjHBCs8zg.waeKvE3zKoAbCt6Adoo5o5vv7M4PDyOj9pMXE7dM82A&dib_tag=se&keywords=before+the+exit+dan+andrews&qid=1711510466&s=books&sprefix=before+the+exit+dan+andrews%2Cstripbooks%2C101&sr=1-1) The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Accelerator (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-accelerator) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Chapters ● (00:00:33) Working on Your Business vs. in Your Business ● (00:02:35) Evaluating Your Team's Value Creation ● (00:17:24) Doubling Down on What's Working Best ● (00:19:42) Maximizing Return on Investment ● (00:22:00) Effective Resource Allocation ● (00:27:29) Unprecedented Growth: What Would a Skilled Entrepreneur Do? ● (00:36:31) Evaluating and Refining Your Business with Diagnostic Questions Links: - 30 Business Diagnostic Questions (https://docs.google.com/document/d/15eai16-JiRqUDYyKBdG6Za-vIs_xLCnGRcLYYcbrGDE/edit) - Kaco Gel Pens (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B38DQSR3?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details) - Artist Sketchbook (https://www.amazon.com/Sketch-Book-9x12-inch-Sketchbook/dp/B09DY4YXJ5/ref=sr_1_2_sspa?crid=3VJ67LSLM35A3&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.raKeN3UEcKz3cJlFHsgfRQpwBUGvS6ucnINB81efOFRZWmaTyzU7Mfgr_n3XkugVIE5e6StRM29r09h3thJlD4HsAudN79rsggQ-aENfplzZko939hReFkgATVwqm7a1vMRt1ICHW8VHftcp565cai5dqRGJpPKtqSOzF66oosmomE5r9R6_5zn6H9pCE7m2S3hF3YI36KQyO3IOvdkR_lniN8_rlITwr7D8jNWpOqHROay_B2J-sHABlQJZHOuGYmzRUy_n6o6b_3H-e3qrX9_ZKOT82C_5i6B5SPfVYBg.ysu6QA7UyXAMZH5rZNnAr-yrg-CH-G5l7NSmy6HnJyg&dib_tag=se&keywords=artists%2Bnotebook&qid=1716915717&s=office-products&sprefix=aritists%2Bnoteb%2Coffice-products%2C542&sr=1-2-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&th=1) - Simple Numbers by Greg Crabtree (https://www.simplenumberscri.com/books) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Mike Michalowicz, Greg Crabtree, Jordan Gal Additional episodes you might enjoy: The Million Dollar Service Business Playbook (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/million-dollar-playbook) Run Any Business with Just Two Simple Things (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/run-business-two-simple-things) Mastering Consistency with Adam Gilbert (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/mastering-consistency)

In this week's episode Dan and Ian discuss the importance of the concept of Labor Efficiency Ratio (LER), to scale your business to a million dollars in revenue. They highlight the challenge of transitioning from being a craftsperson to a CEO and the importance of building a profitable business model that can operate without the founder's constant involvement. They continue this concept by focusing on the importance of financial planning and analysis (FP&A) in growing a business. Having someone to provide structure and make data-driven decisions can lead to some shocking discoveries and help you identify areas for improvement and optimize your business performance. The conversation concludes with a recap of the DC Mexico event and a call for referrals for future events! Dan & Ian’s Stuff: Our book: Before the Exit (https://www.amazon.com/Before-Exit-Thought-Experiments-Entrepreneurs/dp/1980628823/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3E5PMCCM0TDZ0&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.GnIb36rltn6NgcjHBCs8zg.waeKvE3zKoAbCt6Adoo5o5vv7M4PDyOj9pMXE7dM82A&dib_tag=se&keywords=before+the+exit+dan+andrews&qid=1711510466&s=books&sprefix=before+the+exit+dan+andrews%2Cstripbooks%2C101&sr=1-1) The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Accelerator (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-accelerator) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Chapters ● (00:00:42) Introduction and Catching Up ● (00:01:40) DC Accelerator and Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) ● (00:07:28) Using Labor Efficiency Ratio (LER) to Scale ● (00:14:49) The Challenge of Transitioning from Craftsperson to CEO ● (00:21:50) The Importance of Profitability and Compensation ● (00:25:06) Building a Profitable Business Model ● (00:28:19) The Role of Hiring and Financial Planning and Analysis ● (00:29:20) Differentiating Financial Planning and Analysis from Bookkeeping and CPA ● (00:40:05) Recap of the DC Mexico Event Links: - Books by Greg Crabtree (https://www.simplenumberscri.com/books) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Mike Michalowicz, Greg Crabtree, Jordan Gal Additional episodes you might enjoy: Run Any Business with Just Two Simple Things (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/run-business-two-simple-things) Mastering Consistency with Adam Gilbert (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/mastering-consistency) Lessons From an 18-Month Trip Around the World on $100 a Day (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/18-month-trip)

Dan reflects on his trip to Mexico last week where he hung out with 200 founders and listeners of the pod. Vulnerability, lessons from exiting a business, and a secretive membership called “being parents” were common themes. Another major topic was the launch of our new coaching program, DC Accelerator. Dan talks about how getting to $1M and beyond takes not just willpower or desire, but most importantly, it takes discipline. He shares the two tools required to run a business of any size. Whether you’re a 1-person operation of have 1000’s of employees, these two tools remain the same. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: Our book: Before the Exit (https://www.amazon.com/Before-Exit-Thought-Experiments-Entrepreneurs/dp/1980628823/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3E5PMCCM0TDZ0&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.GnIb36rltn6NgcjHBCs8zg.waeKvE3zKoAbCt6Adoo5o5vv7M4PDyOj9pMXE7dM82A&dib_tag=se&keywords=before+the+exit+dan+andrews&qid=1711510466&s=books&sprefix=before+the+exit+dan+andrews%2Cstripbooks%2C101&sr=1-1) The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Accelerator (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-accelerator) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Chapters ● (00:00:48) Introduction and Simplifying Operations ● (00:04:54) The Transformative Journey of Parenthood ● (00:07:09) Vulnerability and Exiting a Business ● (00:15:37) The Nuts and Bolts of Our Coaching Program ● (00:22:35) Every Business Needs a Cashflow Forecast and a Plan Links: DC Accelerator (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-accelerator) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Mike Michalowicz, Greg Crabtree, Jordan Gal Additional episodes you might enjoy: Mastering Consistency with Adam Gilbert (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/mastering-consistency) Lessons From an 18-Month Trip Around the World on $100 a Day (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/18-month-trip) The 1 Million Dollar Question (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/million-dollar-question)

Health and wellness is the ultimate productivity hack, impacting every aspect of life. Adam Gilbert, founder of My Body Tutor, discovered that consistency is key, and accountability, mindset, and personalized plans help clients stay on track. It’s also what sets his business apart. My Body Tutor has been generating demand for their service for 17 years, having a flawless reputation, and obsessively focusing on getting clients results. In this episode Adam shares his strategies for pricing demand, how to handle client churn, and balancing family life with his passion. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: Our book: Before the Exit (https://www.amazon.com/Before-Exit-Thought-Experiments-Entrepreneurs/dp/1980628823/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3E5PMCCM0TDZ0&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.GnIb36rltn6NgcjHBCs8zg.waeKvE3zKoAbCt6Adoo5o5vv7M4PDyOj9pMXE7dM82A&dib_tag=se&keywords=before+the+exit+dan+andrews&qid=1711510466&s=books&sprefix=before+the+exit+dan+andrews%2Cstripbooks%2C101&sr=1-1) The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Accelerator (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-accelerator) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Chapters ● (00:06:29) The Impact of Health and Wellness ● (00:12:10) The Importance of Consistency ● (00:16:57) Evolving Pricing Based on Value ● (00:28:39) Recruiting, Training, and Retaining Coaches ● (00:33:10) The Importance of Regular Meetings ● (00:44:17) Caring and Mission-Driven Approach ● (00:45:30) Starting Small in Entrepreneurship Links: - https://www.mybodytutor.com/ (https://www.mybodytutor.com/) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Mike Michalowicz, Greg Crabtree, Jordan Gal Additional episodes you might enjoy: Lessons From an 18-Month Trip Around the World on $100 a Day (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/18-month-trip) The 1 Million Dollar Question (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/million-dollar-question) “The Death of the follower” + Make 250k in 3 Days a Week (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/death-of-follower)

This week we had the pleasure of sitting down with Barry O'Brien, a global traveler, as he shares his 18-month journey to 15 countries on just $100 a day or less. Barry tells us stories about his experience in Vietnam, the most surprisingly underwhelming destination he visited, the most expensive and inexpensive destinations, how he saved, prepared, and what he learned in the end. He discusses his journey from following Dave Ramsey's steps to discovering the FIRE movement and combining the principles of both to pay off $51,000 of debt, and give him the financial freedom to pursue his dream trip. He talks about the importance of passive income, his philosophy of focusing on one thing that you can do well, the process of obtaining US citizenship, and the challenges and opportunities it presents. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: Our book: Before the Exit (https://www.amazon.com/Before-Exit-Thought-Experiments-Entrepreneurs/dp/1980628823/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3E5PMCCM0TDZ0&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.GnIb36rltn6NgcjHBCs8zg.waeKvE3zKoAbCt6Adoo5o5vv7M4PDyOj9pMXE7dM82A&dib_tag=se&keywords=before+the+exit+dan+andrews&qid=1711510466&s=books&sprefix=before+the+exit+dan+andrews%2Cstripbooks%2C101&sr=1-1) The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Accelerator (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-accelerator) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Chapters: (00:03:21) Your Ticket to One Million - DC Accelerator (00:14:59) Exploring Western Europe on a Budget (00:26:13) Indulging in Peru's Food and Culture (00:30:15) Managing Travel Costs to Extend the Trip (00:34:41) Finding Peace and Financial Independence (00:39:10) The Competitive Landscape of US Citizenship Links: DC Accelerator (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-accelerator) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Dave Ramsey Solutions (https://www.ramseysolutions.com) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Mike Michalowicz, Greg Crabtree, Jordan Gal Additional episodes you might enjoy: The 1 Million Dollar Question (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/million-dollar-question) “The Death of the follower” + Make 250k in 3 Days a Week (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/death-of-follower) What is the Most Simple OS for <$5M? (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/most-simple-os)

Crafting your value proposition into an irresistible offer is not an easy task. Andrew Jacoby, entrepreneur and visionary behind Growth Era, a thriving outbound sales company, knows this all too well. Andrew shares his journey, highlighting the pivotal role of Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) in driving business success. Discover the power of focusing on what you know best and building a business around recurring services as Andrew unveils the concept of risk reversal and its impact on skyrocketing conversion rates. From navigating the challenges of educating a market to the transition from CEO to operator, Andrew offers practical strategies for building a robust team and fostering deep community connections amidst a nomadic lifestyle. Tune in as Andrew delves into the core values of moral fiber and virtue in business, underscoring the true essence of freedom and happiness. Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur or seasoned business leader, this episode promises a wealth of wisdom to elevate your sales game. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: Our book: Before the Exit (https://www.amazon.com/Before-Exit-Thought-Experiments-Entrepreneurs/dp/1980628823/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3E5PMCCM0TDZ0&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.GnIb36rltn6NgcjHBCs8zg.waeKvE3zKoAbCt6Adoo5o5vv7M4PDyOj9pMXE7dM82A&dib_tag=se&keywords=before+the+exit+dan+andrews&qid=1711510466&s=books&sprefix=before+the+exit+dan+andrews%2Cstripbooks%2C101&sr=1-1) The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Chapters ● (00:00:47) Introduction and Background ● (00:04:19) Growth Era: Company Overview ● (00:04:47) Andrew's Sales Background ● (00:07:29) Challenges and Successes in Outbound Sales ● (00:10:29) Understanding SDRs and Their Role ● (00:12:14) Types of Businesses that Benefit from SDRs ● (00:16:59) Developing an Attractive Offer ● (00:18:15) Growth Era's Business Model ● (00:19:37) Finding Success in Familiar Territory ● (00:23:55) The Importance of Serving People ● (00:25:04) Pricing and Confidence ● (00:25:44) Choosing Between Being an Operator and a CEO ● (00:26:43) Knowing When a Company is Ready for Adults ● (00:29:45) Deep Work and Problem Solving ● (00:32:49) The Nomad Lifestyle ● (00:35:34) The Importance of Community ● (00:38:18) The Pursuit of Virtue and Love ● (00:39:42) The True Meaning of Freedom and Happiness Links: - Andrew Jacoby - Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-jacoby-b2131a16a/) - Nick Huber Twitter (https://twitter.com/sweatystartup?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor) - firstfishermenmedia.com/ (https://firstfishermenmedia.com/) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Mike Michalowicz, Greg Crabtree, Jordan Gal Additional episodes you might enjoy: “The Death of the follower” + Make 250k in 3 Days a Week (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/death-of-follower) What is the Most Simple OS for <$5M? (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/most-simple-os) Do Things That Don’t Scale (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/things-dont-scale)

Is it possible to bootstrap a high-level business if you’re broke? Listen to Dan & Ian’s take on what kinds of businesses are best to start when you’re starting with basically nothing. Also, what the hell does a visionary do? Dan suggests that the best visionaries have integrator tendencies. They’ll consider how Kevin Kelly’s “100 True Fans” can lead to sustainable revenue through a concept called “The Death of the Follower”. Lastly, Dan pitches a business idea that requires zero startup cost, 3 days a week of effort, and could easily net you $250K. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: Our book: Before the Exit (https://www.amazon.com/Before-Exit-Thought-Experiments-Entrepreneurs/dp/1980628823/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3E5PMCCM0TDZ0&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.GnIb36rltn6NgcjHBCs8zg.waeKvE3zKoAbCt6Adoo5o5vv7M4PDyOj9pMXE7dM82A&dib_tag=se&keywords=before+the+exit+dan+andrews&qid=1711510466&s=books&sprefix=before+the+exit+dan+andrews%2Cstripbooks%2C101&sr=1-1) The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Chapters ● (00:00:39) Introduction and companies over title’ing ● (00:04:00) Starting a Bootstrap Business When You're Broke ● (00:08:29) The Role of Visionaries in Company Success ● (00:14:55) The Death of the Follower & Engaging with Social Media Algorithms ● (00:19:54) The Future of Search: AI and Personalization Links: - Nick Huber Twitter (https://twitter.com/sweatystartup?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor) - Kevin Kelley - Article - A Thousand True Fans (https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/) - The Death of the Follower (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zUndMfMInc) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Mike Michalowicz, Greg Crabtree, Jordan Gal Additional episodes you might enjoy: What is the Most Simple OS for <$5M? (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/most-simple-os) Do Things That Don’t Scale (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/things-dont-scale) Three Phases to 1 Million in Revenue (https://tropicalmba.squarespace.com/config/)

The hard part shouldn’t be how to implement an OS in your organization. The hard part is answering the question: Are the right people in the right roles at your company? In this episode, Dan and Ian share their own OS that’s extremely simple. It’s called GPS. They’ll explain how GPS helps you put a plan in place to meet your goals, and deliver on that plan. That’s it. Also, hiring for specific tasks, the impact of remote work on hiring, and more. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: Our book: Before the Exit (https://www.amazon.com/Before-Exit-Thought-Experiments-Entrepreneurs/dp/1980628823/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3E5PMCCM0TDZ0&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.GnIb36rltn6NgcjHBCs8zg.waeKvE3zKoAbCt6Adoo5o5vv7M4PDyOj9pMXE7dM82A&dib_tag=se&keywords=before+the+exit+dan+andrews&qid=1711510466&s=books&sprefix=before+the+exit+dan+andrews%2Cstripbooks%2C101&sr=1-1) The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Chapters ● (00:00:41) Introduction and 'Meaty Shorts' Format ● (00:06:48) Hiring for Specific Tasks in a Business ● (00:15:55) Minimum Viable EOS (GPS) Implementation ● (00:16:27) Implementing the EOS System: The GPS Framework ● (00:18:54) Using Scorecards for Clarity and Accountability ● (00:25:06) The Importance of Regular Check-ins and Standing Meetings Links: - Dan Martell - Who to Hire Next (https://www.danmartell.com/who-to-hire-next/) - The EOS Business Model (https://www.eosworldwide.com/eos-model) - Scorecard template (G doc) (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vJdgiTXIrtnGJB-ywe4goraLyQhp3oHMOCeKHbBOuAY/edit?usp=sharing) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Mike Michalowicz, Greg Crabtree, Jordan Gal Additional episodes you might enjoy: Do Things That Don’t Scale (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/things-dont-scale) Three Phases to 1 Million in Revenue (https://tropicalmba.squarespace.com/config/) Quiet Crypto, The Demand Question, and Difficult Decisions ft. Jordan Gal (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/quiet-crypto-difficult-decisions)

In this episode, Ian and Dan discuss the concept of doing things that don't scale, inspired by Paul Graham's influential article 'Do Things That Don't Scale.' They explore the idea of taking risks and gambling in entrepreneurship, and how it relates to increasing one's locus of control. The conversation covers various strategies for founders, including recruiting users manually, building something fragile, delighting users, focusing on experience, and niche marketing. In this conversation, Ian and Dan discuss Paul Graham's article 'Do Things That Don't Scale' and explore the principal themes and takeaways. They cover topics such as the idea of scaling, fabricating products yourself, consulting and acting as an anchor client, going manual and doing unscalable laborious tasks, the illusion of big launches and partnerships, vectors vs. scalars (ideas and execution), and the temptation to gamble and the importance of locus of control. Our book: Before the Exit (https://www.amazon.com/Before-Exit-Thought-Experiments-Entrepreneurs/dp/1980628823/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3E5PMCCM0TDZ0&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.GnIb36rltn6NgcjHBCs8zg.waeKvE3zKoAbCt6Adoo5o5vv7M4PDyOj9pMXE7dM82A&dib_tag=se&keywords=before+the+exit+dan+andrews&qid=1711510466&s=books&sprefix=before+the+exit+dan+andrews%2Cstripbooks%2C101&sr=1-1) The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Chapters ● (00:00:47) Introduction and Waking Up Early ● (00:01:58) The Concept of Taking Risks and Gambling ● (00:03:52) Introduction to Paul Graham and Y Combinator ● (00:05:37) The Importance of Doing Things That Don't Scale ● (00:10:00) Recruiting Users Manually ● (00:12:48) Building Something Fragile ● (00:20:48) Niche Marketing ● (00:23:02) The Facebook and the Idea of Scaling ● (00:24:53) Consulting and Acting as an Anchor Client ● (00:27:17) Going Manual and Doing Unscalable Laborious Tasks ● (00:30:08) The Illusion of Big Launches and Partnerships ● (00:34:54) Vectors vs. Scalars: Ideas and Execution ● (00:38:36) The Temptation to Gamble and the Importance of Locus of Control Links: - Paul Graham’s Article “Do Things That Don’t Scale” (https://paulgraham.com/ds.html) - Lao Tzu - Philosophy (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/laozi/) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Mike Michalowicz, Greg Crabtree, Jordan Gal Additional episodes you might enjoy: Three Phases to 1 Million in Revenue (https://tropicalmba.squarespace.com/config/) Quiet Crypto, The Demand Question, and Difficult Decisions ft. Jordan Gal (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/quiet-crypto-difficult-decisions) “3 Million in Revenue is a Death Zone" - Financial Strategy with Greg Crabtree (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/3-million-death-zone)

Dan and Ian discuss the different phases of bootstrapping a business and the common challenges that arise at each stage. They walk through three phases: Zero to $250k “Mindset”; $250k to 1 million "We're seeking a reliable/repeatable source of new customers"; and $1 million + "We need to hire, fire, improve/change team members more effectively”. They explore everything from adjusting the offer to the marketplace and developing a strong customer base to making a rule that the founder should be responsible for growth up to $5M. They also explore the crucial role that team composition plays in the professionalization of the company. Finally, they discuss the decision between maximizing profitability and scaling the business. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: Our book: Before the Exit (https://www.amazon.com/Before-Exit-Thought-Experiments-Entrepreneurs/dp/1980628823/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3E5PMCCM0TDZ0&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.GnIb36rltn6NgcjHBCs8zg.waeKvE3zKoAbCt6Adoo5o5vv7M4PDyOj9pMXE7dM82A&dib_tag=se&keywords=before+the+exit+dan+andrews&qid=1711510466&s=books&sprefix=before+the+exit+dan+andrews%2Cstripbooks%2C101&sr=1-1) The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Chapters ● (00:00:43) Introduction and Era Change ● (00:04:28) Mindset for Early Stage Bootstrapping ● (00:08:35) Running a Shit Ton of Experiments ● (00:19:34) Customer Development and Adjusting the Offer ● (00:23:37) Founder's Responsibility for Growth ● (00:24:28) Founder's Role in Growth Until $5 Million ● (00:25:29) Following Strategies That Work for the Majority ● (00:26:41) Celebrating the Achievement of $1 Million in Revenue ● (00:29:18) Transitioning from $1 Million to $5 Million ● (00:34:07) The Importance of Team Composition ● (00:34:22) Shifting Focus to Managing a Team ● (00:39:19) Maximizing Profitability vs. Scaling Links: Simple Numbers by Greg Crabtree (https://www.amazon.com/Simple-Numbers-Straight-Talk-Profits/dp/1608320561) Exploitative Play in Live Poker (https://www.amazon.com/Exploitative-Play-Live-Poker-Manipulate/dp/1909457922) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Mike Michalowicz, Greg Crabtree, Jordan Gal Additional episodes you might enjoy: Quiet Crypto, The Demand Question, and Difficult Decisions ft. Jordan Gal (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/quiet-crypto-difficult-decisions) “3 Million in Revenue is a Death Zone" - Financial Strategy with Greg Crabtree (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/3-million-death-zone) A Podcast About Shiny Object Syndrome (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/shiny-object-syndrome)

Dan talks to Jordan Gal, founder of Rally and co-host of the Bootsrapped Web podcast about challenges in the ecommerce space, product-market fit and demand, partnerships and veto power, the quietness of crypto, risking other people’s money, and more… There’s one thing that founders tend to really struggle with when it comes to growing their business and that’s getting the right team in place. Listen as Jordan shows Dan how and why he fires unfit team members. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Chapters (00:04:22) News Update (00:05:58) From Player to Coach (00:06:50) Jack Welch (00:12:10) Bootstrapping vs Raising Money (00:15:52) Product-Market Fit and Adjustments (00:18:57) Partnerships and Veto Power (00:20:42) Deciding When to Pivot (00:36:27) Firing and Personnel Decisions (00:43:30) The Quietness of Crypto (00:48:05) Challenges in E-commerce (00:57:30) Impact of Having a Family Links: Bootsrapped Web podcast (https://bootstrappedweb.com/) Jordan on Twitter (https://twitter.com/JordanGal) Rally (https://rallyon.com/) Winning (https://www.amazon.com/Winning-Jack-Welch/dp/0060753943/ref=asc_df_0060753943/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312243616995&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=11970474335439880872&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9007527&hvtargid=pla-450103671560&psc=1&mcid=a2b7a51b49653a50bccb79bc40fad30e&gclid=CjwKCAjw7-SvBhB6EiwAwYdCAdfAqSQ363qg9bY5hlyYGlv0cq2jEW-yDnybdlYnB8VXaJLA1SiDbBoCpEAQAvD_BwE) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Mike Michalowicz, Greg Crabtree, Jordan Gal Additional episodes you might enjoy: A Shopify Software Business Success Story (Jordan Gal) (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/jordan-gal-carthook-shopify) How Transparent Should You Be? Thoughts on Queen Bee Roles & a Ticket Giveaway (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/transparent-queen-bee-role) A Podcast About Shiny Object Syndrome (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/shiny-object-syndrome)

Dan & Ian talk to John Doherty, the founder of Editor Ninja, former owner of Credo, and cohost of the Working Sessions podcast about three major trends he’s seeing in the agency space that could impact your strategy and profitability for the year and beyond. John talks about the challenges of running a full-service agency, a shift towards specialization in productized services, the need for outsourced strategic layers, focusing on profitability, and more. Stick around for the guys to reveal six productized-service business ideas. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Chapters (00:02:04) News with Dan & Ian (00:05:20) Introducing John Doherty (00:06:46) Starting Credo and EditorNinja (00:09:30) Trends in the Agency Space (00:11:27) Building a Strategic Program (00:28:10) Focus on Profitability (00:30:40) Importance of Work Quality (00:31:55) Categories for Business Opportunities (00:32:42) Software Quality Assurance as a Service (00:35:57) TikTok Titan: Leveraging TikTok for Business (00:38:54) SAAAS: Systems Automation as a Service (00:40:28) Managed VA Service for Social Media (00:43:57) Fractional Business Strategist (00:45:23) Financial Dashboard as a Service (00:50:44) Workbooks for Business Metrics Links: Find John on Twitter (https://twitter.com/dohertyjf?lang=en) EditorNinja (https://editorninja.com/) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Mike Michalowicz, Greg Crabtree Additional episodes you might enjoy: “3 Million in Revenue is a Death Zone" - Financial Strategy with Greg Crabtree (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/3-million-death-zone) How Transparent Should You Be? Thoughts on Queen Bee Roles & a Ticket Giveaway (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/transparent-queen-bee-role) A Podcast About Shiny Object Syndrome (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/shiny-object-syndrome)

Transitioning through the death zone requires careful execution and a focus on profitability. The $3 million dollar mark is a critical milestone for businesses, and many struggle to push through it. In this episode, Dan talks to Greg Crabtree, author of Simple Numbers, Straight Talk, Big Profits! about how founders can push through the death zone (otherwise known as the messy middle) and grow their profit far beyond that $3M mark. Some of the common mistakes made by founders include not understanding profit truth, not investing in finance and accounting, and not effectively managing labor efficiency. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Chapters (00:00:39) Introduction and the Death Zone (00:05:26) The Impact of Paying a Market-Based Wage (00:06:53) Behavioral Economics and Profit Truth (00:10:34) The Definition of a Fully Capitalized Business (00:12:39) Transitioning through the Death Zone (00:13:16) The Three Steps to Business Success (00:15:04) Remaining Profitable in the Death Zone (00:15:50) Different Capital Profiles and Cashflow (00:16:53) The Emotional Challenge of Spending in the Death Zone (00:19:52) The Executional Problem of Growth (00:20:27) Getting Through the Black Hole (00:21:51) The $3 Million Mark (00:23:15) The Worth of Going Through the Zone (00:26:22) Managing a Marketing Agency Past $5 Million (00:31:16) Common Mistakes Made by Founders (00:33:25) Understanding Profit Truth (00:40:23) Investing in Finance and Accounting Links: - Apply to win a free ticket to DC Mexico! (https://forms.gle/WwhhV1Qax4axKuj67) - Simple Numbers, Straight Talk. Big Profits! (https://www.amazon.com/Simple-Numbers-Straight-Talk-Profits/dp/1608320561/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?dchild=1&keywords=simple+numbers&qid=1629149662&sr=8-1-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUEyVlo4RVBLT0FMUFhTJmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwMDkwMjA5MTJKMTgxTFhRUVlETCZlbmNyeXB0ZWRBZElkPUEwNzk1ODE0MTRWWldFWFhTNlBDUiZ3aWRnZXROYW1lPXNwX2F0ZiZhY3Rpb249Y2xpY2tSZWRpcmVjdCZkb05vdExvZ0NsaWNrPXRydWU=) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Mike Michalowicz Additional episodes you might enjoy: How Transparent Should You Be? Thoughts on Queen Bee Roles & a Ticket Giveaway (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/transparent-queen-bee-role) A Podcast About Shiny Object Syndrome (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/shiny-object-syndrome) Spotting Taboo Business Ideas Through the Overton Window (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/building-business-ideas)

This week Dan & Ian share a few thought experiments you can do to improve your business and reach your next breakthrough. They cover the value of a writing-first culture, the Queen Bee Role & how transparent should you be with your team? Plus, a ticket giveaway to one qualified founder. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Show Notes (00:00:41) Intro (00:01:33) Business-changing events for founders (00:10:54) Writing is more important than you think (00:14:57) Writing culture vs meeting culture (00:20:49) The Queen Bee Role exercise (00:32:37) Thoughts about sharing revenue with team members Links: Apply to win a free ticket to DC Mexico! (https://forms.gle/WwhhV1Qax4axKuj67) Clockwork by Mike Michalowicz (https://www.amazon.com/Clockwork-Revised-Expanded-Design-Business/dp/059353817X/ref=asc_df_059353817X/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=564832755269&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=14688969837843805374&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9007527&hvtargid=pla-1458241186746&psc=1&mcid=fac3caaaf3b230ca867fab0bb153b2c4) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Mike Michalowicz Additional episodes you might enjoy: The Anti-Agency Agency + High ROI Customer Acquisition (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/anti-agency-high-roi) A Podcast About Shiny Object Syndrome (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/shiny-object-syndrome) Spotting Taboo Business Ideas Through the Overton Window (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/building-business-ideas)

Going deeper on shiny object syndrome, Dan & Ian open the mailbag to read responses to last week’s episode. A listener shares his success story with shiny object syndrome, revealing how he pursues his entrepreneurial impulses without growing crazy. The listener emphasizes the value of muscle memory when it comes to going from zero to one successfully. Dan & Ian will also discuss how to use societal and scene shifts to gain traction on an idea and even build a successful business out of an idea that might seem a little stupid (to everyone else) at the time. Plus, we’re looking for our next TMBA team member! If you love reading and writing about business topics and think working alongside Dan & Ian might seem like fun (or a little stupid!), let's talk. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Show Notes (00:00:54) Intro (00:01:13) If you love reading and writing about business, come work with us at the TMBA. (00:09:17) The two most popular roles that bootstrapped companies are hiring for right now and how much they're paying. (00:14:55) How founders get derailed by the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect (00:19:50) Why even your heroes’ businesses are shit shows (00:20:33) How one listener channels his shiny object syndrome to grow his million-dollar business (00:26:27) What founders often regret about selling their business (00:30:30) Identifying societal disruptions can be a way for bootstrappers to be disruptive and successful (00:30:42) What Mark Manson, Patt Flynn, and Muhammad Ali have in common (00:39:54) Having a strong perspective could be what you’re missing Links: Sign up for a DC Black Q&A virtual meeting (open to all) (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeiQICoIOs5q_Ut6__qzlSN2dwxEDHrN_AfHufjP9zr2Czkiw/viewform) Join us in Playa del Carmen, Mexico this May (https://dynamitecircle.com/event-collection/dcmexico-2024) The Anti-Agency Agency + High ROI Customer Acquisition (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/anti-agency-high-roi) Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/Working-Backwards-Insights-Stories-Secrets/dp/B088MFRK1H/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1MXQBAQIK8D5G&keywords=working+backwards&qid=1707870869&s=books&sprefix=working+backwards%2Cstripbooks%2C105&sr=1-1) The score takes care of itself (Bill Walsh) (https://www.amazon.com/Score-Takes-Care-Itself-Philosophy/dp/1591843472) You can have two Big Things, but not three (https://longform.asmartbear.com/two-big-things/) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Mike Michalowicz Additional episodes you might enjoy: Business Basics: Revenue Durability, “Small” Goals, & High-Leverage Meetings (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/revenue-durability-meetings) Non-Obvious Ways to Grow Your Business + Favorite Moments of 2023 (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/favorite-moments-of-2023) End-of-Year Brainstorming, Goal-Setting, and a Mexico Meltdown (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/end-of-year-brainstorming)

Dan & Ian delve into the complexities of combating shiny object syndrome, a challenge that plagues all entrepreneurs at one time or another (or all the time). They’ll talk about six strategies for tackling “the syndrome” and how to harness your skill of going zero-to-one to grow your business to the next level. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Show Notes: (00:00:33) Intro (00:03:05) How to connect with other founders by the beach (come to DC Mexico in May) (00:11:08) DC Black is now accepting new members year-round (00:17:54) Can shiny object syndrome be cured? Or am I doomed? (00:20:31) Why entrepreneurs are great at the 0 to 1, and how to apply that skill set towards the next phase of your goals (00:26:27) Six approaches to solving and harnessing your shiny object syndrome Links: Podcast producer job post (https://dynamitejobs.com/company/tropicalmba/remote-job/podcast-producer) Sign up for a DC Black Q&A virtual meeting (open to all) (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeiQICoIOs5q_Ut6__qzlSN2dwxEDHrN_AfHufjP9zr2Czkiw/viewform) Join us in Playa del Carmen, Mexico this May (https://dynamitecircle.com/event-collection/dcmexico-2024) The Anti-Agency Agency + High ROI Customer Acquisition (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/anti-agency-high-roi) Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/Working-Backwards-Insights-Stories-Secrets/dp/B088MFRK1H/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1MXQBAQIK8D5G&keywords=working+backwards&qid=1707870869&s=books&sprefix=working+backwards%2Cstripbooks%2C105&sr=1-1) The score takes care of itself (Bill Walsh) (https://www.amazon.com/Score-Takes-Care-Itself-Philosophy/dp/1591843472) You can have two Big Things, but not three (https://longform.asmartbear.com/two-big-things/) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Mike Michalowicz Additional episodes you might enjoy: Business Basics: Revenue Durability, “Small” Goals, & High-Leverage Meetings (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/revenue-durability-meetings) Non-Obvious Ways to Grow Your Business + Favorite Moments of 2023 (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/favorite-moments-of-2023) End-of-Year Brainstorming, Goal-Setting, and a Mexico Meltdown (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/end-of-year-brainstorming)

In this episode Dan uncovers The Ultimate TMBA Business: a productized service business built on a skill set. Tom Kent started his business based on a very specific skill set of his: he was good at getting jobs. Now Tom is the founder and CEO of Career Nerds, a 7-figure productized service that he’s doubling every year because of his precise lead generation strategies and very clear goals. In this episode, Tom gives us a roadmap for turning a skill into a powerful productized service business. Plus, how he avoids the distraction of other target markets and opportunities and stays focused on his goal. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Show Notes (00:00:55) Intro (04:39:02) How to turn a skill into a business (06:16:09) Personal branding and networking strategies on LinkedIn (15:24:08) Scaling LinkedIn lead generation with a focus on targeting and outsourcing (19:12:00) Sales process and lead generation for high-dollar products (24:19:04) Sales strategies and conversion rates (30:27:09) Building a sales team and identifying a niche market (44:09:05) Influential books, networking, and travel Links: Career Nerds (https://careernerds.com/) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Mike Michalowicz Additional episodes you might enjoy: Business Basics: Revenue Durability, “Small” Goals, & High-Leverage Meetings (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/revenue-durability-meetings) Non-Obvious Ways to Grow Your Business + Favorite Moments of 2023 (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/favorite-moments-of-2023) End-of-Year Brainstorming, Goal-Setting, and a Mexico Meltdown (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/end-of-year-brainstorming)

Vince Nguyen joins Dan to share how he resurrected his agency from semi-retirement and in the first month resumed making 5+ figures per client. He runs his agency solo and shares some of his biggest hacks for success. Vince essentially delivers a masterclass in running a successful solo-agency as well as how to improve Facebook Ads for your business (hint: it’s pretty simple!). But first, Dan & Ian have some fun catching up about some big company news and how to operate on a profit-first system from day one and why that’s actually critical for scale. They also talk about two trending ways for finding and connecting with customers that are leading to more sales, that you can implement as early as today. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Show Notes (00:00:45) Intro (00:03:16) Profit first and financial modeling for businesses (00:07:53) Scaling your business with financial rigor (00:14:05) Hiring a full-time producer for the Tropical MBA podcast (00:15:33) The new DC Black coaches (00:19:10) Masterminds, business growth, and clarity of goals (00:25:46) Sold out an event in under an hour using WhatsApp (00:27:04) Why aren’t more businesses talking to their clients on WhatsApp? (00:32:32) Outsourcing SDRs in LatAm is what SEO was 10 years ago (00:49:04) Why more isn’t better when it comes to your agency’s skillset (01:02:58) How to get premium clients for your agency (01:20:55) Advice for running profitable Facebook Ads from an expert Links: Profit First (https://www.amazon.com/Profit-First-Transform-Cash-Eating-Money-Making/dp/B0C9NPP4ZQ/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2WPFNGE0FG2LI&keywords=profit+first&qid=1706649874&sprefix=profit+firs%2Caps%2C112&sr=8-1) Simple Numbers, Straight Talk, Big Profits! (https://www.amazon.com/Simple-Numbers-Straight-Talk-Profits/dp/1608320561/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?dchild=1&keywords=simple+numbers&qid=1629149662&sr=8-1-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUEyVlo4RVBLT0FMUFhTJmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwMDkwMjA5MTJKMTgxTFhRUVlETCZlbmNyeXB0ZWRBZElkPUEwNzk1ODE0MTRWWldFWFhTNlBDUiZ3aWRnZXROYW1lPXNwX2F0ZiZhY3Rpb249Y2xpY2tSZWRpcmVjdCZkb05vdExvZ0NsaWNrPXRydWU=) Hire an SDR in LatAm (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/hire-sdr-in-latin-america) Growth Ninja (https://www.growthninja.com/) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Dana Lindahl, Anthony Fasano, Adam Palmeter, Carrie & Dave McKeegan, Mike Michalowicz, Vince Nguyen Additional episodes you might enjoy: Business Basics: Revenue Durability, “Small” Goals, & High-Leverage Meetings (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/revenue-durability-meetings) Non-Obvious Ways to Grow Your Business + Favorite Moments of 2023 (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/favorite-moments-of-2023) End-of-Year Brainstorming, Goal-Setting, and a Mexico Meltdown (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/end-of-year-brainstorming)

Dan interviews business author and entrepreneur Mike Michalowicz, delving into the transformative concepts from Mike's books — "Profit First," "The Pumpkin Plan," Clockwork", and more. They explore the power of prioritizing profit and why most small businesses are often “crushed” by the owner. Mike discusses his concept of the Queen Bee Role and advocates for specialization to scale effectively. Stick around as Mike reveals the three horsemen that keep businesses right on the brink of success, often never finding breakthrough. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Show Notes (00:00:49) Intro (00:07:10) Take profit first and hide it from the business to force it to run within expenses (00:13:35) Profit First case study: What happened to the Savannah Bananas (00:17:44) The most important function in a business is the one that supports the brand promise (00:23:53) Owners try to be the “superhero” instead of stepping back and building structure (00:29:33) A minority of customers represent the majority of profitability (00:30:20) Focus on becoming a specialist in your market (00:35:50) Each stage of growth requres different levels of management and leadership (00:38:03) Over-selling can lead to organizational death (00:41:50) Three common causes of businesses not achieving success Links: More about Mike (https://mikemichalowicz.com/) Profit First (https://www.amazon.com/Profit-First-Transform-Cash-Eating-Money-Making/dp/B0C9NPP4ZQ/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1BYR120EW2QLF&keywords=profit+first&qid=1706071513&sprefix=profit+%2Caps%2C472&sr=8-1) The Pumpkin Plan (https://www.amazon.com/Pumpkin-Plan-Strategy-Remarkable-Business/dp/B082FQGMWZ/ref=sr_1_8?crid=2RDBYOP0537OA&keywords=fix+this+next+book&qid=1706071549&s=audible&sprefix=fix+this+next+%2Caudible%2C186&sr=1-8) Clockwork (https://www.amazon.com/Clockwork-Revised-Expanded-Design-Business/dp/B0B2B7WLXV/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2VNLTUEXR628Z&keywords=clockwork&qid=1706071594&s=audible&sprefix=clockwork%2Caudible%2C150&sr=1-1) Fix This Next (https://www.amazon.com/Fix-This-Next-Mike-Michalowicz-audiobook/dp/B082LLS1L9/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1W2UD3LBA2VTD&keywords=fix+this+next&qid=1706071649&s=audible&sprefix=fix+this+next%2Caudible%2C5262&sr=1-1) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Dana Lindahl, Anthony Fasano, Adam Palmeter, Carrie & Dave McKeegan, Mike Michalowicz Additional episodes you might enjoy: Business Basics: Revenue Durability, “Small” Goals, & High-Leverage Meetings (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/revenue-durability-meetings) Non-Obvious Ways to Grow Your Business + Favorite Moments of 2023 (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/favorite-moments-of-2023) End-of-Year Brainstorming, Goal-Setting, and a Mexico Meltdown (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/end-of-year-brainstorming)

“Noah’s new book Million Dollar Weekend has so many nuggets for aspiring and mature entrepreneurs alike. Specifically, if you’re launching a new product, starting a new business, or you want to keep things simple for your team, you’ll find tangible guidance in this book.” - Dan In this episode, TMBA host Dan Andrews sits down with Noah Kagan to talk about operating an 8-figure company at scale, something Noah does every day as the CEO of AppSumo. Noah dives into specific processes around leadership, managing team members, setting achievable goals, making room for creativity, personal growth habits, and a whole lot more. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Show Notes (00:00:33) Intro (00:02:47) Setting goals and managing expectations for a successful business. (00:07:43) Setting and achieving business goals with room for experimentation. (00:08:51) Tracking progress on goals and regularly reviewing progress to avoid anxiety and stay motivated (00:13:46) The importance of personal inputs relative to the company's top priorities, with each leader in the company having their own top three priorities to focus on. (00:15:02) Everybody can see everybody’s scorecards (00:17:34) Leadership means setting clear priorities and empowering others to choose their own destinations. (00:20:09) Motivating employees through optimism, rather than demotivating them with criticism. (00:22:03) The importance of consistency in personal and professional settings (00:25:15) Monthly leadership survey to gather feedback and improve as a leader, with a focus on providing solutions rather than complaining. (00:28:31) Core operational documents and processes needed to run a business (00:30:11) Find your own “AppSumo” way Links: Million Dollar Weekend (https://www.amazon.com/Million-Dollar-Weekend-Surprisingly-7-Figure/dp/B0C6YF9YJX/ref=sr_1_1?crid=SX1TWA2A1MA1&keywords=million+dollar+weekend+noah+kagan&qid=1705448385&sprefix=million+dollar%2Caps%2C203&sr=8-1) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber Additional episodes you might enjoy: Business Basics: Revenue Durability, “Small” Goals, & High-Leverage Meetings (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/revenue-durability-meetings) Non-Obvious Ways to Grow Your Business + Favorite Moments of 2023 (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/favorite-moments-of-2023) End-of-Year Brainstorming, Goal-Setting, and a Mexico Meltdown (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/end-of-year-brainstorming)

Today Dan & Ian challenge you to consider: How durable is your revenue? They’ll explore the concepts of profit now vs profit later, investing profits to build durability, network effects, marginal profitability calculation, and more. But first, in some lighter conversation, Dan argues that setting smaller goals and reconfiguring your team meetings can lead to higher productivity and higher yield in your business. Plus, the 6 principles to a high-leverage meeting learned from running millionaire masterminds. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Show Notes - (00:00:43) Intro - (00:02:15) A strategy for higher productivity and higher yield in 2024 - (00:03:29) Focus on three things: Who, what, and when. - (00:04:15) Make your meetings so good you could sell them - (00:10:08) 6 principles we learned from running millionaire masterminds - (00:11:34) Common blind spots for founders - (00:13:34) “I don’t know how to set goals” - (00:15:26) Specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, timely - (00:24:59) Are boring businesses as durable as they seem? - (00:25:54) Investing profits to build durability & adapt fast - (00:29:45) Profit now vs profit later Links: - Jean-Baptiste Say (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Baptiste_Say) - The Bezos 6-page meeting (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e47wAgIhZ7o) - Bill Gurly’s article (https://abovethecrowd.com/2011/05/24/all-revenue-is-not-created-equal-the-keys-to-the-10x-revenue-club/) - 7 Powers (https://www.amazon.com/7-Powers-Foundations-Business-Strategy/dp/0998116319) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Dana Lindahl, Anthony Fasano, Adam Palmeter, Carrie & Dave McKeegan. Additional episodes you might enjoy: How to Have Your Best Year $$$Wise Ever (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/have-your-best-year) Non-Obvious Ways to Grow Your Business + Favorite Moments of 2023 (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/favorite-moments-of-2023) End-of-Year Brainstorming, Goal-Setting, and a Mexico Meltdown (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/end-of-year-brainstorming)

This week, Dan reveals a strategic approach to decision-making intervals for achieving top-line revenue and personal income goals. Join him as he explores how this decision-making cadence serves as a compass in navigating the challenging 'messy middle' of entrepreneurship. What’s the messy middle? You’ve found some type of product-market fit, customers are buying, and you've set revenue and profit goals. Yet, you lack an exit strategy, millions in your bank account, and an executive team running your company. In this episode, Dan invites you into his end-of-year meeting with co-founder Ian Schoen, unveiling the inner workings of their quarterly reviews. Discover the three key questions they always address and learn how this framework can guide you out of the messy middle, ensuring this is your best year money-wise ever. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Show Notes - (00:01:16) 14 years of the Tropical MBA - (00:01:38) Setting and achieving business goals in the messy middle - (00:05:01) The framework for 90-day quarterly reviews - (00:07:30) Does your business make financial sense? - (00:11:36) Do you have the right people in the right chairs? - (00:21:55) Are you performing well in the business? - (00:24:08) How to focus on the one thing you’re best at Links: - Public Quarterly Review Framework (https://docs.google.com/document/d/18nV-AaMBqn7o88WnYVkjPk8Xvr_Ouq8mxNyppNGQtDM/edit?usp=sharing) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Dana Lindahl, Anthony Fasano, Adam Palmeter, Carrie & Dave McKeegan. Additional episodes you might enjoy: An 8-figure exit and revisiting the 1,000-day principle (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/1000-day-principle) Non-Obvious Ways to Grow Your Business + Favorite Moments of 2023 (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/favorite-moments-of-2023) End-of-Year Brainstorming, Goal-Setting, and a Mexico Meltdown (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/end-of-year-brainstorming)

Can you make a life-changing decision based on assumptions that you pulled off the internet? This question and many others are answered in today’s fascinating interview with two of Dan’s mentors and longtime friends, Carrie & Dave McKeegan. They recently exited one of their businesses (they’re still running the other!) for 8-figures and they share the details of their process from deciding to sell, preparing for the sale, vetting acquirers, and what happens after. Hear how they spun up another business on the side and are maintaining the cash flow from that as they sit on the cash pile from the sale. But perhaps their biggest accomplishment of them all is raising three thoughtful, curious kids while running their two incredible businesses and living all over the world in places like Bali, Costa Rica, Spain, and more. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Show Notes - (00:00:42) Intro - (00:03:03) Revisiting the 1,000 day principle and questioning the 3,000 day principle - (00:03:52) Career milestones in entrepreneurship - (00:09:18) Maintaining pricing power in a productized service - (00:10:24) Setting financial goals and getting real with personal expenses - (00:16:36) Retirement planning with financial planners - (00:19:05) Selling a business: approach to sales process - (00:21:48) Selling a business: acquisition process and unexpected offer - (00:28:59) Selling a business: legal and financial aspects - (00:34:46) Selling a business: emotions and negotiation process - (00:37:10) Scaling a new business and selling a golden egg - (00:44:05) Parenting, wealth, and financial priorities - (00:46:06) Raising entrepreneurial children Links: - DC Mexico tickets (https://dynamitecircle.com/event-collection/dcmexico-2024) - Greenback Tax Service (https://www.greenbacktaxservices.com/?utm_agid=50399785149&device=c&placement=&utm_source=google-ads&utm_campaign=&utm_term=greenback%20tax&utm_medium=ppc&hsa_acc=5600283327&hsa_cam=1037640375&hsa_grp=50399785149&hsa_ad=383750717455&hsa_src=g&hsa_tgt=kwd-350021491337&hsa_kw=greenback%20tax&hsa_mt=e&hsa_net=adwords&hsa_ver=3&gclid=CjwKCAiAvoqsBhB9EiwA9XTWGX3yjEL3T5cUl3IWqbREs2F6GPX-Q2ek3cnxzSZyxgq_zloZahFq0RoClgMQAvD_BwE) - Cleer.tax (https://www.cleer.tax/) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Dana Lindahl, Anthony Fasano, Adam Palmeter, Carrie & Dave McKeegan. Additional episodes you might enjoy: #733 End-of-Year Brainstorming, Goal-Setting, and a Mexico Meltdown (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/end-of-year-brainstorming) #618 Exploring Alternative Education Options for Nomadic Families (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/carrie-mckeegan-alternative-education) #565 The Origins of the 1,000 Day Principle (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/david-mckeegan-1000-day)

As 2023 comes to a close, Dan & Ian reflect on how their business did in 2023 and share some of their favorite moments from the year. They’ll also talk about what makes a compelling offer, the “non-obvious ways” to grow your business in 2024, and why you should dream bigger than the numbers when goal setting. But first, Dan shares the top business books and podcast episodes that inspired him this year just in time for your holiday travels. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Show Notes: Intro Dan’s favorite business books in 2023 The podcast episodes that inspired business decisions this year Gift list for entrepreneurs An undervalued business-improving idea that anyone can do Why did our tweet go viral? Our search for speakers and facilitators is turning into quite the contest Our new product and how you can copy it 2023 business updates Favorite moments from the year Links: - DC Mexico tickets (https://dynamitecircle.com/event-collection/dcmexico-2024) - DC Black Facilitator position (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1g3xhYYZ2TaqK0FnTkM8fCFQ7XfqLUeY-waKQAChlYso/edit) - DC conversation cards (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA/status/1737135545237520450?s=20) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber Additional episodes you might enjoy: End-of-Year Brainstorming, Goal-Setting, and a Mexico Meltdown (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/end-of-year-brainstorming) What is the Michael Jordan of Business Models? (https://open.spotify.com/episode/7hFJQOO1u8bLaGhgYoYcuh?si=c84515d1ce834f02&nd=1&dlsi=4311cf9394564648) Insights from DCBKK 2023: The UI vs API of a Location, How Bootstrappers Are Getting Wealthy, 2024 Business Strategy, and More (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/dcbkk-2023)

Dan & Ian offer up some end-of-year thought experiments for founders, including how to re-visualize your business, capitalize on strategy, and ensure that you are in the right role in your business. Most founders assume they are the “executive” in the business, but more often than not, their daily behaviors are that of a director or manager. Understanding where you sit in your organization can make a huge difference in your ability to scale. Plus, explore the business diagnostic: what would a PE firm do with your business? A helpful exercise to get you thinking objectively about the decisions that need to be made in your business. Lastly, the guys relive the Mexico Meltdown, otherwise known as the DC Mexico launch. Tune in to hear what went down. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Show Notes - 0:00:52 Intro - 0:01:22 We’re hiring mastermind facilitators - 0:02:20 DC Mexico meltdown - 0:08:10 What would a PE firm do with your business? - 0:15:32 Using org charts to change your business - 0:26:47 New trends and a business idea - 0:30:13 3-year goal setting for year-end Links: - DC Mexico tickets (https://dynamitecircle.com/event-collection/dcmexico-2024) - DC Black Facilitator position (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1g3xhYYZ2TaqK0FnTkM8fCFQ7XfqLUeY-waKQAChlYso/edit) - Personal budget spreadsheet (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Li7LuETq2k8tfXSC9WrB-xTwtm_YOkxZOFBOT-bk8CM/edit#gid=1403848959) - Lighted par 3 golf courses are the future (https://twitter.com/DoerflerJared/status/1734275376984052205?s=03) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Dana Lindahl, Anthony Fasano, Adam Palmeter Additional episodes you might enjoy: Can Org Charts Be Sexy? + NYC Drinking Stories (https://open.spotify.com/episode/4j1RqZGwG2YjJS98sTajDK?si=0a14af6b700c487b) What is the Michael Jordan of Business Models? (https://open.spotify.com/episode/7hFJQOO1u8bLaGhgYoYcuh?si=c84515d1ce834f02) Dissecting the American Dream & Business Lessons from the Elon Musk Bio (https://open.spotify.com/episode/5RXLdCW0pxKFdrjfWU32PT?si=8fb1984eba354acd)

Dan & Ian unravel the complexities of job titles and organizational frustrations post-DC Black event, offering solutions through org chart brainstorming, a new business idea, and how much you should be investing into networking strategies based on your income. Plus, see what UI and API score they give NYC after spending the weekend there. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Show Notes - 0:00:59 Intro - 0:08:05 UI & API score for NYC - 0:11:01 The danger of inaccurate titles for employees - 0:18:55 How to use org charts as a brainstorming tool - 0:25:47 New business idea: Be the money person - 0:28:46 How much $$ to invest in your network - 0:37:21 Meet us in Mexico in May Links: Get your tickets to DC MEXICO 2024 (http://dynamitecircle.com/news-and-blog/dc-mexico-2024) Jeremy Giffon on Invest Like the Best (https://open.spotify.com/episode/0Vdv5i250hF6EfzOTML9RE) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Dana Lindahl, Anthony Fasano, Adam Palmeter Additional episodes you might enjoy: Insights from DCBKK 2023: The UI vs API of a Location, How Bootstrappers Are Getting Wealthy, 2024 Business Strategy, and More (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/dcbkk-2023) The Freedom Line, 7+ Figure Founders, and Extended DCBKK Recap (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/dcbkk-recap-2023) What is the Michael Jordan of Business Models? (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/michael-jordan-business-model)

In this special Tuesday edition of the pod, Dan & Ian make the hard sell for listeners to meet them in Mexico. If you’re into five-star resorts, good food, frosty drinks, and nerding out about your business, consider this your official invite. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Show notes: (00:00:00) Intro (00:00:57) Meet us in Mexico Links: Get your tickets to DC MEXICO 2024 (https://dynamitecircle.com/news-and-blog/dc-mexico-2024) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber Additional episodes you might enjoy: Insights from DCBKK 2023: The UI vs API of a Location, How Bootstrappers Are Getting Wealthy, 2024 Business Strategy, and More (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/dcbkk-2023) The Freedom Line, 7+ Figure Founders, and Extended DCBKK Recap (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/dcbkk-recap-2023) What is the Michael Jordan of Business Models? (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/michael-jordan-business-model)

This week, Dan continues delving into the world of coaching with a story about one company that provides highly paid professionals with a low-stress way to earn a living in the sunset phase of their careers. Dan also interviews Sarah Weaver, a real estate investor and entrepreneur, who has achieved an impressive monthly cash flow of over $10,000 from her real estate portfolio in under five years. Join us to glean insights from Sarah's journey, as she shares strategies for cash-flowing retirement through smart real estate investments. Sarah talks about how she bought 19 properties, the six metrics she evaluates before investing in a specific city, building a brand around her experience, and more. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Show notes: (00:00:56) Intro (00:01:14) The DC Black event is happening now (00:01:44) A new Mexico event (00:02:30) Loom use cases for async companies (00:07:13) Ways to generate cash flow (00:10:15) The steps to 10K+ cash flow per month from rental properties (00:11:59) Cash flow investing vs appreciation investing (00:14:17) What metrics to look at before you invest in property (00:25:30) Don’t meet your heroes, get paid by them (00:28:43) House hacking from abroad (00:29:38) Building a brand around your personal experience (00:37:49) How to skip right past imposter syndrome (00:39:44) Mistakes people often make in real estate investing (00:41:53) The no-brainer bucket list experience you should go on Links: - Dcbkk recap (https://dynamitecircle.com/news-and-blog/dcbkk-2023-recap) - The Upwork Hustle w/ Sam Hill (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/sam-hill-upwork) - CEO Coaching International (https://ceocoachinginternational.com/) - www.sarahdweaver.com (http://www.sarahdweaver.com/) - 30 Day Stay. (https://store.biggerpockets.com/products/30-day-stay)Use SARAH for 10% off. Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber Additional episodes you might enjoy: What is the Michael Jordan of Business Models? (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/michael-jordan-business-model) Dissecting the American Dream & Business Lessons from the Elon Musk Bio (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/american-dream-lessons) Mailbag: Hang-ups, Power-ups, and Cheat Codes for Entrepreneurs (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/hang-ups-power-ups-cheat-codes)

All we can say is that it’s extremely powerful and extremely profitable. Dan and Ian nerd out on what might be the GOAT business model of all time. They analyze some of the best examples of said business model, and talk about ways that you can rip, pivot, and jam these ideas for your own business. Plus, two books you should pick up that Dan simply couldn’t put down. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Show notes (00:00:45) Intro (00:03:11) What do you think of our vacation policy? (00:05:01) The GOAT business model with extremely high margins (00:09:08) The businesses doing this amazingly well (00:32:11) Why now is the best time to implement this strategy (00:42:00) Two books you should read over the holiday Links: Our PTO policy (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wfydwLC8qF4aeyAKebLKUo7l_sV_eP8nikQNj3HHr3k/edit?usp=sharing) Traction (https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Gino-Wickman-audiobook/dp/B00A9Z973M/ref=sr_1_1?hvadid=241617657767&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9028277&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=6782292471515285360&hvtargid=kwd-132659762660&hydadcr=22531_10353738&keywords=traction+eos&qid=1700623157&sr=8-1) Scaling Up (https://www.amazon.com/Scaling-Up-Verne-Harnish-audiobook/dp/B00PMCI89Q/ref=sr_1_1?crid=CQMFJKFKZE1A&keywords=scaling+up&qid=1700623168&s=audible&sprefix=scaling+up%2Caudible%2C100&sr=1-1) Rachel Rogers (https://helloseven.co/) IFS (https://ifs-institute.com/) Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom (https://www.amazon.com/Superintelligence-Nick-Bostrom-audiobook/dp/B00LPMFE9Y/ref=sr_1_1?hvadid=241886445826&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9028277&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=15790631008120846026&hvtargid=kwd-310248068568&hydadcr=16434_10305513&keywords=superintelligence+by+nick+bostrom&qid=1700623231&sr=8-1) The Ride of a Lifetime - Robert Iger (https://www.amazon.com/The-Ride-of-Lifetime-Robert-Iger-audiobook/dp/B07QW2LHN4/ref=sr_1_1?crid=37HUZQKE4YSOZ&keywords=The+Ride+of+a+Lifetime+-+Robert+Iger&qid=1700623272&s=audible&sprefix=the+ride+of+a+lifetime+-+robert+iger%2Caudible%2C134&sr=1-1) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Dana Lindahl, Anthony Fasano, Adam Palmeter Additional episodes you might enjoy: Mailbag: Hang-ups, Power-ups, and Cheat Codes for Entrepreneurs (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/hang-ups-power-ups-cheat-codes) The Freedom Line, 7+ Figure Founders, and Extended DCBKK Recap (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/dcbkk-recap-2023) How to Build an AI Startup with Jodie Cook (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/build-ai-startup)

Dan & Ian open up the metaphorical mailbag to answer some listener questions. They reveal cheat codes for bootstrappers and how to activate them, the top reasons people can’t scale to 7+ figures, and the difference between F U money and Freedom Line money. All that and more, including a big announcement regarding Ian’s car collection. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Show notes: (00:01:08) Intro (00:02:42) The major ways people fail to scale their business beyond 6 figures (00:18:44) The Cheat code for entrepreneurs (00:30:22) What do you do with the F U money (00:39:09) How to get the most out of a business community (00:43:02) The community space has changed… sort of (00:46:48) What’s next for our community (00:48:27) Power ups for entrepreneurs (00:52:31) Dan’s definition of an entrepreneur (00:55:51) It always comes back to the entrepreneur-mobile Links: Before the Exit (- Before the Exit) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Dana Lindahl, Anthony Fasano, Adam Palmeter Additional episodes you might enjoy: 4 types of business coaches for 7+ figure founders and reflecting on our 15-year partnership (4 types of business coaches for 7+ figure founders and reflecting on our 15-year partnership) Dissecting the American Dream & Business Lessons from the Elon Musk Bio (Dissecting the American Dream & Business Lessons from the Elon Musk Bio) Brian Balfour’s $33M Growth Insights: Product-Market Fit, Durability, & Knowing Your Natural Limits (Brian Balfour’s $33M Growth Insights: Product-Market Fit, Durability, & Knowing Your Natural)

This week Dan & Ian talk about a topic that came up countless times at this year’s DCBKK: Whether to exit or stay in your business. They’ll revisit frameworks from their book Before The Exit and discuss how to figure out what's best for your business. After that, Dan chats with DCBKK Master of Ceremonies Adam Palmeter about his experience at this year’s event compared to years past. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Links: Apply for DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) DCBKK Recap Video Sam Corcos on Tim Ferriss (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtrkDoQFArU) Adam Palmeter (https://adampalmeter.com/) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Dana Lindahl, Anthony Fasano, Adam Palmeter Additional episodes you might enjoy: Insights from DCBKK 2023: The UI vs API of a Location, How Bootstrappers Are Getting Wealthy, 2024 Business Strategy, and More (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/dcbkk-2023) 5 Things Founders Often Misunderstand about Exiting Their Business (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/5-things-to-know-when-exiting-your-business) Dissecting the American Dream & Business Lessons from the Elon Musk Bio (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/american-dream-lessons)

Dan & Ian are back in Austin and have fully recovered from what was the biggest event in DC history: DCBKK 2023. Over 400 entrepreneurs gathered in the world-class city of Bangkok to swap stories, participate in masterminds, and fuel each other to reach new business heights in 2024. In the episode, they covered many topics, including a framework for analyzing locations by their UI versus API, why Thailand's UI beats America, and what’s next for DC Black, a community for 7 & 8-figure founders. Dan & Ian also share their biggest conference takeaways, some of their business strategy for 2024, and three trends happening in the community and the industry at large. Stick around for some of their favorite stories from DCBKK 2023. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Show notes: (00:01:42) Intro (00:02:32) The UI vs API of a location (00:15:06) DC Black re-opens (00:19:09) Conference woes and funny stories (00:24:14) Pulling the CEO card backfires (00:32:39) We have a branding problem (00:35:27) We had the horsepower to run an epic event (00:36:40) The space is more competitive than ever (00:39:35) Increased financialization in the bootstrapping space (00:43:58) It’s time for the 3,000 day principle (00:48:15) Favorite DCBKK stories Links: Apply for DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Does the American Dream Still Make Sense? (https://rameerez.com/does-the-american-dream-still-make-sense/) What’s Up With Austin? (https://perell.com/essay/whats-up-with-austin/) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber Additional episodes you might enjoy: 4 types of business coaches for 7+ figure founders and reflecting on our 15-year partnership (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/15-year-partnership) Dissecting the American Dream & Business Lessons from the Elon Musk Bio (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/american-dream-lessons) Brian Balfour’s $33M Growth Insights: Product-Market Fit, Durability, & Knowing Your Natural Limits (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/33mil-growth-insights)

This week, Dan is joined by a listener who wrote in with some compelling insights on community, camaraderie, and what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur. Anthony Fosano, founder of Engineering Management Institute, built a 7-figure brand with a coaching business and a YouTube and podcast network that has garnered over 3 million downloads. They cover many topics like how to leverage skills and resources from your full-time job to start your own business, how to build a business around a very niche audience, and why many entrepreneurs might find themselves coming “full circle” in search of community. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Show notes (0:01:07) Intro (0:03:43) Start a business using your existing skills (0:08:18) Start the hustle before you quit your day job (0:11:51) Build for scale from the get-go (0:14:41) Playing the podcast long game (0:16:52) Make sure your brand represents the right audience (0:23:00) What playing sports says about us as entrepreneurs (0:33:02) What it takes to be successful Links: Engineering Management Institute (https://engineeringmanagementinstitute.org/) Engineer your own success (https://www.amazon.com/Engineer-Your-Own-Success-Extraordinary/dp/0578082284) The Good Life (https://www.amazon.com/Good-Life-Lessons-Scientific-Happiness/dp/198216669X) The Score Takes Care of Itself (https://www.amazon.com/Score-Takes-Care-Itself-Philosophy/dp/1591843472) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Anthony Fasano Additional episodes you might enjoy: Hyper Niche Business Ideas with Big End Game Potential (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/hyper-niche-business-ideas) Dissecting the American Dream & Business Lessons from the Elon Musk Bio (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/american-dream-lessons) Brian Balfour’s $33M Growth Insights: Product-Market Fit, Durability, & Knowing Your Natural Limits (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/33mil-growth-insights)

This week Dan invites Dana Lindahl, founder of Legendary Podcasts, as a special guest on the pod. They’ll discuss how you can generate cash flow and demand for your product immediately using cold email and identify high-earning potential business ideas by seeking out hyper niches. They’ll also talk about the difficulties of running service businesses, plus the opportunities and the end games, including a strategy called the “Split and Sale.” Dan & Ian’s Stuff: The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Show notes 0:01:09 Intro 0:03:22 How to get on a podcast 0:07:18 Stumbling into a business idea 0:11:05 What is the arbitrage window 0:21:55 Cold email as a profitable skillset 0:22:20 The new wave of cold email pitches 0:23:56 The best marketing channel for service businesses 0:26:27 How not to suck at email personalization 0:35:04 New business idea 0:44:59 The split and sell method 0:47:35 TMBA is on the blacklist Links: Legendary Podcasts (https://legendarypodcasts.com/) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber, Dana Lindahl Additional episodes you might enjoy: When Your Lifestyle Business Can No Longer Support You (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/lifestyle-business) The Problems Of Being Both An Arsonist And A Firefighter As A Business Owner (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/firefighter-as-a-business-owner) 4 types of business coaches for 7+ figure founders and reflecting on our 15-year partnership (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/15-year-partnership)

Ian and Dan agree that partnerships can create polarized outcomes, either leading to a successful collaboration or a complete failure, depending on a few essential factors they’ve learned over the years. Find out whether they think business partnerships are a net positive or negative amongst the most successful businesses we've seen, and why every partnership would benefit from a business coach. Stick around for a free business idea ripe for the taking. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Show notes: - 0:00:43 Intro - 0:02:09 Who speaks at DCBKK? - 0:02:31 Why getting in the right room can be the best thing you ever do - 0:06:36 The highs and lows of business partnerships and if it’s right for you - 0:07:29 Pros and cons of 50/50 partnerships - 0:07:41 Questions to ask yourself before you get a business partner - 0:21:19 Dan’s experience with business coaches takes a positive turn - 0:25:46 How business coaches can help your business partnership - 0:26:08 Types of business coaches and their roles - 0:30:56 Here’s a free business idea - 0:31:47 Tell us how you did it on the TMBA podcast - 0:32:17 Shout out to DCBKK sponsors Links: Mark Zhang (https://www.linkedin.com/in/markxzhang/) Einar Vollset (https://twitter.com/einarvollset) Lucy Simkins (https://twitter.com/LucyBellaEarl) Patt Flynn (https://twitter.com/PatFlynn) Internet Business Mastery (https://www.internetbusinessmastery.com/) - DCBKK (https://dynamitecircle.com/event-collection/dcbkk-2023) is happening next week - DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) reopens in November Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber Additional episodes you might enjoy: Business Partnerships and 6-Figure Launches: A Conversation with Mark Webster (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/business-partnerships-6-figure-launches) TMBA 693: 5 Things We’ve Learnt From Speaking With 50 Business Owners (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/5-things-from-50-business-owners) Brian Balfour’s $33M Growth Insights: Product-Market Fit, Durability, & Knowing Your Natural Limits (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/33mil-growth-insights)

This week, Dan & Ian talk about the early days of digital nomadism, what it says about the future, and how to spot new opportunities in life and business. They'll also explore new topics like compound startup theory, why focus can steer you in the wrong direction, and whether TikTok is the blue ocean Amazon was in 2014. Stay tuned to learn about the new AI feature, enabling founders to make connections more swiftly than ever. All this and more in today's fully booked episode, so buckle up and charge your earbuds. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Show Notes: 0:00:53 Intro 0:02:58 Childhood lessons that helped us succeed in business 0:08:35 The biggest DCBKK in history 0:10:55 Dan & Ian’s travel tips & never agains 0:13:22 The new AI feature that helps you connect with relevant founders instantly 0:16:04 Is TikTok what Amazon was in 2014? 0:20:39 The problem with limiting definitions and the theory of the compound startup 0:28:20 Reacting to Steph Smith’s take on the history of digital nomadism 0:30:20 A brief history of digital nomadism from our perspective 0:45:54 What does the future look like for digital nomadism? 0:48:40 Why understanding key trends ahead of their time can make for a highly successful business Links: The Secret (https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Rhonda-Byrne/dp/1847370292/ref=asc_df_1847370292/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=343187902048&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=13419185491195641939&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9028277&hvtargid=pla-318206917580&psc=1&tag=&ref=&adgrpid=66484626902&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvadid=343187902048&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=13419185491195641939&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9028277&hvtargid=pla-318206917580) Dave’s Vice segment about dumpster diving (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR6XFDAfLuk) Dave’s business (https://www.buffalobottlecraft.com/) - Herb Kelleher on Founders (https://open.spotify.com/episode/1gItcgy8FHgOF46TiEjKBL?si=ea68855e8b9c49e0) The Elon Musk biography (https://www.amazon.com/Elon-Musk-Walter-Isaacson/dp/1982181281/ref=asc_df_1982181281/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=658715255517&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=17403256148468025508&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9028277&hvtargid=pla-2273195873232&psc=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwgsqoBhBNEiwAwe5w0_Gqotj7nmjvYjFfde0GI_2jCNCQNu6co-Q2PCqA8iskrxbNemtf9BoCSvkQAvD_BwE) Steph’s episode (https://open.spotify.com/episode/1zB29YPDEA8GprPU5pRs7Y?si=47981881a9fd4a5a) TMBA History of Digital Nomadism (https://open.spotify.com/episode/5bF2L6M2rTgcZfXhQNyK6O?si=8a9yWNoBSTevLUIHXotYmA) James Clarke’s Full History (https://www.nomadicnotes.com/digital-nomad-history/) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour, Nick Huber Additional episodes you might enjoy: The History of Digital Nomadism (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/digital-nomadism-history) Digital Nomad Cities for 2023 and Choosing Between ‘Scaling Up’ And ‘Traction’ (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/digital-nomad-cities-2023) Brian Balfour’s $33M Growth Insights: Product-Market Fit, Durability, & Knowing Your Natural Limits (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/33mil-growth-insights)

Dan & Ian react to a viral article that asks the question: Does the American Dream still make sense in 2023? They point to the internationality of the concept, and muse about how the American Dream is changing and how it’s particularly relevant to digital nomads and founders. Dan also gives a rundown of the Elon Musk bio and extracts the business lessons he gleaned from the book. Lastly, with DCBKK less than a month away, Dan & Ian reminisce about why they started this event in Bangkok over 10 years ago, and why it’s still worth the trip. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Show Notes: 0:03:12 You can find community in different places - hobbies, church, work, or the DC 0:08:04 The reason we went to Asia and not Silicon Valley back in the day 0:10:20 Is Asia the land of opportunity? 0:14:47 Choosing the prestigious career track or the DIY track 0:16:22 What’s going on with DC Black? Our community for 7 & 8-figure founders. 0:21:20 Breakdown of the Elon Musk bio and The Algorithm 0:33:32 Does the American Dream still make sense? Links: Does the American Dream still make sense? (https://rameerez.com/does-the-american-dream-still-make-sense/) The Elon Musk biography (https://www.amazon.com/Elon-Musk-Walter-Isaacson/dp/1982181281/ref=asc_df_1982181281/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=658715255517&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=17403256148468025508&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9028277&hvtargid=pla-2273195873232&psc=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwgsqoBhBNEiwAwe5w0_Gqotj7nmjvYjFfde0GI_2jCNCQNu6co-Q2PCqA8iskrxbNemtf9BoCSvkQAvD_BwE) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour Additional episodes you might enjoy: Moving Back to America… Was it Worth It? (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/personality-disorders-and-making-money-krd4l) Brian Balfour’s $33M Growth Insights: Product-Market Fit, Durability, & Knowing Your Natural Limits (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/33mil-growth-insights) Millions for Podcasts and Jay Clouse on Memberships (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/jay-clouse-on-memberships)

Join Dan for a wide-ranging conversation with Brian, the Founder and CEO of Reforge, as they dive into critical points in his remarkable journey and gained insights from his experience as the former VP of Growth at Hubspot. Brian has started multiple VC-backed companies and shares his wisdom through detailed essays on growth and user acquisition and in a new podcast, Unsolicited Feedback. In this episode, they discuss the factors contributing to growth, what it feels like to have product-market fit, and the keys to building a durable business. They also address the unique challenges bootstrapers face when scaling their revenue to the next phase. Brian's valuable insights are essential for any business founder seeking business growth. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Show Notes: 0:04:38 Do podcast appearances drive business value? 0:07:38 People follow people, not companies. 0:09:39 What is distribution, and why is it important? 0:10:15 The new distribution playbook 0:17:46 Explaining how the loop concept leads to compounding growth 0:19:36 Know when the buying moments happen and ensure you’re engaging until they do. 0:23:13 How important is founder talent in terms of business success? 0:24:31 Founders need to focus on the 0-1 phase. 0:27:23 “Data can mislead you from customer energy” 0:28:34 Mistakes when trying to unlock the next level of growth0:26:25 Critical customer feedback vs. nice-to-have ideas 0:30:25 That feeling when you find product-market fit 0:38:47 Do you stay or do you grow? 0:39:11 How to build a durable business 0:41:05 Retooling after raising capital 0:42:48 Taking calculated bets on the quest for growth 0:49:46 How to get the most out of on-the-job experience 0:51:28 The best content Brian’s consumed lately Links: Reforge (https://www.reforge.com/) Unsolicited Feedback (https://open.spotify.com/show/7FzVEIBamWnExyJpJ2LCwF?si=f8271632cc704802) Business Hypothesis Canvas (https://brianbalfour.com/essays/business-hypothesis-canvas-reforge) Brian’s essays (https://brianbalfour.com/) Brian on 20Growth (https://open.spotify.com/episode/5Dh7hMhrCQhgXQd5X7d16y?si=F4izBr76RrCjxgwH8Q4znQ) Brian on Noah Kagan Presents (https://open.spotify.com/episode/5PQZhItT41J5BR9Cqw5cTk?si=f_qU2lRPQUujmZlFZuY-DA) Brian on Scale or Die (https://open.spotify.com/episode/5Y1ks7h1hgtmE8yVAnqGQY?si=ZamZlnUFQzO947wuBdCI_w) The Changing World Order by Ray Dalio (https://www.amazon.com/Changing-World-Order-Nations-Succeed/dp/1982160276) Parker Conrad’s Theory of the Compound Startup (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJ3DT_7jzds) Acquired Podcast (https://open.spotify.com/show/7Fj0XEuUQLUqoMZQdsLXqp?si=ef1069d9d1e04d6d) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins, Brian Balfour Additional episodes you might enjoy: What Got You Here Won't Get You There (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/what-got-you-here) Millions for Podcasts and Jay Clouse on Memberships (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/jay-clouse-on-memberships) 3 Simple Ways to Improve Your Business (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/3-ways-improve-business)

Dan and Ian host a dynamic summer roundup episode, sharing business highlights, dissecting the "nomad's dilemma," and offering their top picks for books and podcasts of the season. Stick around for the latest community news. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Show Notes: 0:01:54 How to have relationships back home and abroad 0:03:56 Co-locating makes everything better 0:09:51 The anti-Traction manifesto 0:12:12 How to work ON not IN your business 0:16:57 Having goals is crucial at any size 0:23:24 Why you should get serious about meetings 0:30:51 Having an audience is underpriced 0:34:12 Serendipity is underrated 0:35:21 Creating value for your customers in the long term 0:41:03 A true story about entrepreneurship 0:44:59 Our first DC Black exclusive event has launched 0:45:32 Other Community News Links: DC Events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) The Costco episode (https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/costco) Jeremy Giffon episode (https://www.joincolossus.com/episodes/79714195/giffon-special-situations-in-private-markets?tab=transcript) Mutiny on the Bounty (https://www.amazon.com/Mutiny-Bounty-Novel-Charles-Nordhoff/dp/0316611689/ref=asc_df_0316611689/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312151238048&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=11889139160277637423&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9028287&hvtargid=pla-466732863543&psc=1&tag=&ref=&adgrpid=61316181079&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvadid=312151238048&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=11889139160277637423&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9028287&hvtargid=pla-466732863543) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan Additional episodes you might enjoy: Moving Back to America... Was it Worth It? (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/personality-disorders-and-making-money-krd4l) Mailbag: What Can Scorecards Do For You? Equity Split Dilemmas (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/how-to-create-employee-scorecards) The Money Theory of Location And Why Employee Scorecards Are So Helpful (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/money-theory-location-employee-scorecards) Deceptively simple ways to have a better business (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/simple-ways-to-actually-improve-your-business)

YouTube creator, English teacher, and CEO Lucy Bella Simkins joins Dan on the pod to share some of the behind-the-scenes challenges, strategies, and reflections on turning a passion project into one of the world’s largest language learning YouTube channels and a thriving 7-figure+ business. She also shares the challenges and pitfalls of building an operation of 15 team members capable of turning viewers into customers. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Show Notes: 0:00:00 Intro 0:06:32 Nurturing your audience 0:08:02 Growing a course business 0:16:06 The turning point 0:22:44 Maker vs manager 0:43:07 The spreadsheet experiment Links: DC Events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) English with Lucy (https://www.youtube.com/@EnglishwithLucy) Data Driven Marketing (https://datadrivenmarketing.co/blog/how-to-increase-your-revenue-by-being-data-driven/) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan, Lucy Bella Simkins Additional episodes you might enjoy: What Got You Here Won't Get You There (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/what-got-you-here) Millions for Podcasts and Jay Clouse on Memberships (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/jay-clouse-on-memberships) 3 Simple Ways to Improve Your Business (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/3-ways-improve-business)

Summer in Barcelona comes to a close with a game of Would You Rather featuring the CEO of AppSumo, Noah Kagan. Dan challenges him to choose between distributing equity to employees or advisors, investing in “boring” businesses or tech, owning or renting a primary residence, and more. Dan also poses a question to listeners that’s been on his mind: how long should summer vacations be? Dan & Ian’s Stuff: The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Show Notes: 0:00:00 Intro 0:02:23 Sports over 40 0:03:59 Vacation poll 0:08:26 Would You Rather 0:32:37 Community news Links: DC Events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Darren’s essay (https://upstartist.tv/diaries/in-between/) AppSumo (https://appsumo.com/) 37 Signals profit share (https://37signals.com/why-we-choose-profit/) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan Additional episodes you might enjoy: What Got You Here Won't Get You There (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/what-got-you-here) Overrated and Underrated Business Concepts with Noah Kagan (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/business-concepts-noah-kagan) Millions for Podcasts and Jay Clouse on Memberships (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/jay-clouse-on-memberships) The Europe Question (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/europe-question)

Dan flies solo this week in a 3-part episode where he circles back to a few hot topics that caught some listener’s attention over the last few months. Back in May, Dan shared insights from a book he read called the 5 Types of People Who Will Ruin Your Life. Today he’s sharing a recent story where this came into play. He also shares lessons from the best business book he’s read in the past 6 months (of which he reads about 3 each week). And last but not least, he reaches into the mailbag to share a story from a listener about their Mexican Fisherman Moment. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialTropicalMBA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Show Notes: 0:00:00 Intro 0:01:44 Too old for basketball 0:04:33 Personality disorders 0:11:07 Leadership 0:24:30 Mexican Fisherman Links: DC Events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Language Mentoring (https://www.languagementoring.com/) Clockwork by Mike Michalowicz (https://www.amazon.com/Clockwork-Design-Your-Business-Itself/dp/0525534016) The Checklist Manifesto (https://www.amazon.com/The-Checklist-Manifesto-audiobook/dp/B0031Q9ZWY/ref=sr_1_1?hvadid=241601530794&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9003540&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=9562829446745895865&hvtargid=kwd-14787969625&hydadcr=9803_10377300&keywords=the+checklist+manifesto&qid=1692177815&sr=8-1) Scorecards (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/how-to-create-employee-scorecards) Traction (https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Gino-Wickman-audiobook/dp/B00A9Z973M/ref=sr_1_1?crid=19A7QTUHDLFXW&keywords=traction&qid=1692178108&s=audible&sprefix=tractio%2Caudible%2C231&sr=1-1) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan Additional episodes you might enjoy: TMBA 688: Mailbag: What Can Scorecards Do For You? And Equity Split Dilemmas (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/how-to-create-employee-scorecards) TMBA 695: The Money Theory of Location And Why Employee Scorecards Are So Helpful (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/money-theory-location-employee-scorecards) TMBA 707: Deceptively simple ways to have a better business (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/simple-ways-to-actually-improve-your-business) TMBA 702: Millions for Podcasts and Jay Clouse on Memberships (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/jay-clouse-on-memberships) TMBA 689: Re-visiting Our Conversation with Seth Godin (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/seth-godin-akimbo)

Dan raises the question: if you only had to implement one simple framework to improve your business, what would it be? In other words, what’s your minimum effective dose of operational practices? Sometimes–most of the time–one simple change can make a huge difference. Today’s guest represents this line of thinking to a T. Lydia Machova talks about the ROI of spending a month implementing one simple idea, developing an integrator/visionary relationship, and the minimum effective dose of operational practices that improved her business. Lastly, Dan & Lydia talk about how founders often confuse assistance with delegation and how Lydia built an operating system that empowers her team to take ownership, solve problems, and send fewer Slack messages. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHPBISaCA5pVb_U1dq088KA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Show Notes: 0:00:00 Intro 0:02:02 Systems are too complicated 0:04:23 Scorecards, scorecards, scorecards 0:07:20 Delegation vs assistance 0:08:32 DCBKK updates 0:13:42 Becoming an entrepreneur 0:21:48 Perfect integrator 0:27:07 ROI of process 0:37:25 Meeting tempos 0:39:09 Accountability chart 0:42:46 The issues list 0:48:05 Get out from under Links: DC Events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Language Mentoring (https://www.languagementoring.com/) Clockwork by Mike Michalowicz (https://www.amazon.com/Clockwork-Design-Your-Business-Itself/dp/0525534016) The Checklist Manifesto (https://www.amazon.com/The-Checklist-Manifesto-audiobook/dp/B0031Q9ZWY/ref=sr_1_1?hvadid=241601530794&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9003540&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=9562829446745895865&hvtargid=kwd-14787969625&hydadcr=9803_10377300&keywords=the+checklist+manifesto&qid=1692177815&sr=8-1) Scorecards (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/how-to-create-employee-scorecards) Traction (https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Gino-Wickman-audiobook/dp/B00A9Z973M/ref=sr_1_1?crid=19A7QTUHDLFXW&keywords=traction&qid=1692178108&s=audible&sprefix=tractio%2Caudible%2C231&sr=1-1) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan Additional episodes you might enjoy: TMBA 688: Mailbag: What Can Scorecards Do For You? And Equity Split Dilemmas (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/how-to-create-employee-scorecards) TMBA 695: The Money Theory of Location And Why Employee Scorecards Are So Helpful (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/money-theory-location-employee-scorecards) TMBA 707: Deceptively simple ways to have a better business (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/simple-ways-to-actually-improve-your-business) TMBA 702: Millions for Podcasts and Jay Clouse on Memberships (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/jay-clouse-on-memberships) TMBA 689: Re-visiting Our Conversation with Seth Godin (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/seth-godin-akimbo)

Dan (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) and Ian (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) give the inside scoop about their upcoming events strategy and the realization that prompted them to relaunch their hiring search not for an events planner but a business-minded community organizer. In light of resetting the event strategy for 2024, Dan also chats with the DCx London hosts Seonaid Beckwith (https://www.perfect-english-grammar.com/), Noel Andrews (https://jobrack.eu/), and John Ainsworth (https://datadrivenmarketing.co/) about how they pulled off one of the best all-time DC events in London last month. They also give their thoughts in response to a listener's email: should you optimize for revenue growth, profit growth, or both? Dan and Ian share frameworks for thinking about this and how they think about revenue and profit in their business. Plus, stick around til the end for a first-timer's guide on how to max out your DCBKK experience if you're going (or thinking about going) for the first time. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHPBISaCA5pVb_U1dq088KA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Show Notes: 0:00:00 Intro 0:02:40 Profit vs revenue 0:06:05 Revenue growth to exit 0:06:35 Conflating profit with personal income 0:07:21The Bezos strategy 0:08:19 Profit first 0:12:35 Classic systems 0:14:00 Superhero profitable 0:15:50 ROI framework 0:21:44 Our 2024 event strategy 0:24:18 Join our team 0:30:05 How to throw a great event 1:05:53 First-timer’s guide to DCBKK Links: Join our team (https://dynamitejobs.com/company/dynamitecircle/remote-job/community-event-coordinator) DC Events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) 7 Powers by Hamilton Helmer (https://www.amazon.com/7-Powers-Foundations-Business-Strategy/dp/0998116319) Profit First by Mike Michalowicz (https://mikemichalowicz.com/profit-first/) The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker (https://www.amazon.com/The-Art-of-Gathering-Priya-Parker-audiobook/dp/B07B4HV9K7/ref=sr_1_1?hvadid=580651322835&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9003540&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=8471998563066358848&hvtargid=kwd-425637140099&hydadcr=21934_13324197&keywords=the+art+of+gathering+priya+parker&qid=1691583933&sr=8-1) The 2-Hour Cocktail Party by Nick Gray (https://www.amazon.com/2-Hour-Cocktail-Party-Relationships-Gatherings/dp/B0B679PZ89/ref=sr_1_1?hvadid=631492202808&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9003540&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=5362937297423595432&hvtargid=kwd-1674748472321&hydadcr=7665_13589719&keywords=two+hour+cocktail+party&qid=1691583978&sr=8-1) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan Additional episodes you might enjoy: TMBA 688: Mailbag: What Can Scorecards Do For You? And Equity Split Dilemmas (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/how-to-create-employee-scorecards) TMBA 702: Millions for Podcasts and Jay Clouse on Memberships (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/jay-clouse-on-memberships) TMBA 689: Re-visiting Our Conversation with Seth Godin (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/seth-godin-akimbo) TMBA 711: “Money is Your Responsibility” + News Updates (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/money-is-your-responsibility) TMBA 707: Deceptively simple ways to have a better business (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/simple-ways-to-actually-improve-your-business)

Dan Andrews (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) talks to Coachvox.ai founder Jodie Cook (https://twitter.com/jodie_cook) about her methods for building an AI startup from scratch, how to have the most productive and enjoyable month of your life and more. Jodie is full of experience and wisdom, and this was a fun one. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: The Newsletter (https://tropicalmba.com/subscribe) “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHPBISaCA5pVb_U1dq088KA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Show Notes: 0:00:00 Intro 0:09:42 The Lifestyle Design Game 0:18:29 Being a Change CEO 0:23:47 Building an AI coach 0:28:19 Client Alignment 0:35:16 Team User Manuals 0:40:25 Work & Wellness Holiday 0:45:36 Polarized Travel Links: Coachvox AI (https://coachvox.ai/) AI business coach (https://www.jodiecook.com/ai/) How to think like a founder (https://www.forbes.com/sites/jodiecook/2023/04/19/how-to-think-like-a-billionaire-founder-7-powerful-mindset-shifts/) How Elon Musk solves problems (https://www.forbes.com/sites/jodiecook/2022/12/01/how-elon-musk-solves-problems-4-key-frameworks/) How to use AI to revolutionise your business (https://www.forbes.com/sites/jodiecook/2023/04/27/how-to-use-ai-to-revolutionize-your-business-4-simple-steps/) The biggest business challenges for ENTJ / INTJ entrepreneurs (https://www.forbes.com/sites/jodiecook/2023/01/09/the-7-biggest-challenges-entj-and-intj-entrepreneurs-face/) Living on a beach resort (https://www.jodiecook.com/beach-resort-lifestyle-experiment/) Ten Year Career (https://www.jodiecook.com/ten-year-career/) Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan Additional episodes you might enjoy: TMBA 627: Building an Agency You Can Exit From (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/jodie-cook-agency-exit) TMBA 702: Millions for Podcasts and Jay Clouse on Memberships (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/jay-clouse-on-memberships) TMBA 678: Evolving An Agency, With SaaS Mistakes Along The Way (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/evolving-an-agency) TMBA 712: Business Partnerships and 6-Figure Launches: A Conversation with Mark Webster (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/business-partnerships-6-figure-launches) TMBA 707: Deceptively simple ways to have a better business (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/simple-ways-to-actually-improve-your-business)

Dan Andrews (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) talks to Authority Hacker co-founder Mark Webster (https://twitter.com/markwebster1) about successfully transitioning from an agency model to a multimillion-dollar course business. They talk about navigating 50/50 partnerships, why starting a course business isn’t for everyone, and what you can build with a laptop, a dream, and cheap accommodation. Dan & Ian’s Stuff: “The DC” (https://dynamitecircle.com/join-dc/) DC Black (https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black) Global events (https://dynamitecircle.com/events) Hire remote talent (https://remotefirstrecruiting.com/) Find a remote job (https://dynamitejobs.com/) Listen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHPBISaCA5pVb_U1dq088KA) Follow on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tropicalmba/) @TropicalMBA (https://twitter.com/TropicalMBA) @AnythingIan (https://twitter.com/AnythingIan) Show Notes: 0:00:00 Intro 0:11:01 The audience is the hard part 0:18:47 The start of authority sites 0:28:52 Becoming business partners 0:35:38 Outgrowing your agency 0:44:59 Getting to 7-figures quickly 0:50:40 50/50 partnership pros & cons 0:56:48 You made it, now what? Links: ● Authority Hacker: https://www.authorityhacker.com/ ● The Ultimate Product Launch Plan: https://videofruit.com/blog/product-launch/ ● American Icon: https://www.amazon.com/American-Icon-Mulally-Fight-Company/dp/0307886069 Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Tommy Griffith, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Travis Jamison, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Tynan Additional episodes you might enjoy: TMBA 706: 5 Things Founders Often Misunderstand about Exiting Their Business (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/5-things-to-know-when-exiting-your-business) TMBA 702: Millions for Podcasts and Jay Clouse on Memberships (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/jay-clouse-on-memberships) TMBA 695: The Money Theory of Location And Why Employee Scorecards Are So Helpful (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/money-theory-location-employee-scorecards) TMBA 678: Evolving An Agency, With SaaS Mistakes Along The Way (https://tropicalmba.com/episodes/evolving-an-agency)

Two months ago, Dan & Ian were limited by their lack of visibility into their business finances. They fired their bookkeepers, hired a financial professional, and with their financial house in order, they’re able to agree on top-level strategies and move with speed. Plus, friend of the pod and financial expert Sam Hill (ecomcfo.co), shares what 7-figure agency owners should be paying for financial services and expertise. Pull Quote: “It's your responsibility as the owner, period. It's the management's responsibility for the numbers. And if you're not getting what you want from the person that you've hired, whether it's in-house or outsourced, it's your responsibility to fix it.”

Dan and Ian have had hundreds of conversations with founders in 2023 so far. In today’s episode, they share two major challenges that are coming up for 6 and 7+ figure founders. They’re calling these challenges the Wheel of Despair and the Paradox of Growth. Contrary to what the popular business literature says about overcoming these challenges, Dan and Ian offer some alternative frameworks for how you as the founder can address them. “The secret is: that is not the question you need to answer. It is: where's the next million in revenue coming from? That is the question that needs to be answered. And I think that's where the bravery, the excitement, and the fear come in. You don't always know, and you’ve got to figure it out. That's your job as a founder.”

This week’s guest is a TMBA all-timer. Taylor Pearson is an entrepreneur, writer, and co-founder of Mutify Funds. He joins Dan to catch up on what he’s been up to lately, and shares five frameworks he’s adapting in his business after “messing up” over the last two years. “...like many people, I've sat down and read the business book and thought about the principles of the business and what are important and written them down and had this very nice, you know, Google Doc, with examples of these principles being followed and these principles not being followed. And I have put that Google doc into my nicely organized standard operating folder, and then that Google doc has sat there for months or years without seeing the light of day.”

Today’s guest is one of Dan’s favorite people to talk business with. Justin Tan grew his productized video-editing agency to 7 figures in 2 years and “retired” in 4. Now he helps burnt-out mid-6-figure agency owners become 7-figure passive owners without the 60-hour workweek grind. Join Dan and Justin as they geek out on the pumpkin plan, the trouble with blindspots, and some common mistakes business owners make. Justin just so happened to give Dan and Ian some pro bono consulting last summer in Barcelona, so they’ll chat about how that advice is panning out… Plus, we’re hiring an Events Manager to help us take our global community events to the next level. Head to dynamitejobs.com to apply or refer a friend. “You keep on promoting people you are familiar with because you like that dynamic. You are familiar with that dynamic. I am their boss, I tell you what to do. But at some point, you need to make that mentality switch. And this goes back to the operator owner where I tell them what to do. Instead, it needs to be they tell me what to do or what is needed, and I am the one who enables them to do that.”

In today’s episode, Dan talks with agency owner John Ainsworth about how implementing seemingly small, simple changes allowed him to take most of last year off, while his business still grew 30%. They discuss the modern business philosophies of Traction and Scaling Up and how sometimes those books leave you feeling overwhelmed. Dan’s perspective is that sometimes the biggest ROI comes from the changes that are deceptively simple, maybe even boringly simple. “People think of traction as a mechanical system that all works together and fits together. So, when you get to the end of the book, you think three things. Number one, I have to do it. Number two, I am definitely a visionary, not an integrator. And number three, I'm guilty relative to the percentage of all this that I've implemented. And so my philosophy is really just take one thing and do it, and your business will be better in the morning.”

Some bootstrapped entrepreneurs are fortunate enough to exit their businesses for life-changing money, but that’s not always the case. Today Dan talks to Einar Vollset, about the key mistakes founders often make when exiting their business. Einar is the Founder and Managing Partner of Discretion Capital, a Partner at TinySeed, and YCombinator alumni. In his experience, he says that many bootstrapped and startup founders alike often have blindspots that prevent them from having the best exit possible. “In some cases, bootstrappers end up with basically a stagnating business and one of the main mistakes you can do in terms of m&a is to wait and just let your business stagnate because it really hurts the value of the asset that you have.” Stick around til the end when Einar shares the 5 things founders often get wrong when exiting their business.

Today Dan and Ian analyze different frameworks for developing a good business idea, and reflect on how they didn’t always follow their own advice. They cover 6 idea frameworks: ‘Find a Channel, Not an Idea’, ‘The Classic Entrepreneur’s Venn Diagram’, ‘The Slippery Slope Arbitrage’, “Make it Incredibly Difficult and Pointlessly Complicated’ and ‘Polarize Your Range’. “You only need to answer one question, which is not do I hustle? Or do I chill? Or do I have the spirit or am I creative enough? It is simply, can I reliably and repeatedly get customers?” Stick around until the end of the show for a walk with Dan and Ian down the Boulevard of Broken Dreams, aka their domain registrar account.

In what could be a polarizing conversation for the pod, Dan and Ian discuss one of the most popular threads in the TMBA community this year: Is living in America worth it? They address the pros and cons of life in the US vs abroad and challenge the bigger questions about the values that pull some of us back to our home country, and the luxuries that make the digital nomad life so appealing. We’d love to hear you stand, and what other topics you want to hear on the pod (tweet us @TropicalMBA). We’ll be back next week with our regularly scheduled business programming (we promise).

Dan and Ian deep dive into the high-conflict personalities that could derail your business and how the role of finance changes as you grow out of one phase of your business and into the next. Lastly, in a throwback to the early days, Dan shares his latest “travel tips” as he prepares for summer in Europe. “...a lot of what having a good life is, from my perspective, is not wasting your time, not getting caught up in problems, and avoiding people who could derail your ambitions. Sometimes it's a little bit harder than advertised, because it can be subtle. So having a framework for anticipating it and avoiding it in advance before you get into any kind of problems, I think is extremely powerful.”

Dan Andrews (@TropicalMBA) talks with Jay Clouse (@jayclouse) about his $400K membership site, becoming a professional creator, and winning CEX Content Entrepreneur of the year. Jay Clouse, founder of Creator Science, long-time listener, and former guest of the pod is back. In early 2018, Jay joined Dan and Ian on the show to talk about some of the challenges he was facing as an early-stage entrepreneur just eight months into his journey. Fast forward to today. Five years later. Jay is back to update us on how he went from barely scraping by in 2018 to building a waitlisted community of 200 creators, and being an influential professional creator himself. He also gives Dan some advice on how to be good at Twitter.

On today’s show Dan tests out the theory that the most important factor in your business success might be choosing the 5 key friends you put yourself around. This idea was prompted by a conversation with Simon Treulle, founder of digital media site Pangolia and the e-commerce pet furniture brand Hepper. When he was 19 years old Simon heard about an SEO conference that was happening in Chiang Mai. So he took a chance, bought a plane ticket, and left his home city in Denmark to put himself around people who might help him on his entrepreneurial journey. Today Simon has a team of over a hundred and very successful businesses. He strongly believes the support and ’tough love’ from the friends and mentors he found in that beautiful walled city in the North of Thailand was instrumental: “One of the first days I was lucky enough to go to a Korean barbecue with two of my good friends today. And they pretty much grilled me on my business. Because my business was pretty much failing at that point. So they were like, ‘Hey, why are you overpaying for content? Or why are you doing it this way?’ I was super overwhelmed …. I've been working for a couple of years on this online marketing and content stuff and here I am sort of being told that what I do is not really the way to get success with it. So that was hard to swallow …. because I wanted this lifestyle so much. I wanted to live in Chiang Mai.”

On today’s show Dan shares some of the highlights of bringing together 200 entrepreneurs in Mexico City for this year’s DCMEX. And he also invites ‘friend of the show’ Travis Jamison to play the ‘Biz Model Mock Draft’ game asking, ‘If you had to ‘draft’ one of these to be your top business model to create or invest in for 2023, what would it be: Software as a Service, Agency, Communities, Publishing and Courses, Fund, Ecommerce or Marketplace?’ ‘Communities are probably more robust, assuming you get a good one. As the internet gets weirder and weirder (and) AI upcoming everywhere and taking over everything, you assume that most content is going to be AI generated. With all the deep fakes … you won't be able to trust any opinion, just like when you search “best vacuum cleaner” on Google …. So where do you go for authenticity? Small groups, people you trust, curated groups. And so communities become more valuable that way.’

Design is often, strangely, one of those things that bootstrappers tend to think about either too early or too late. Today’s show offers the case for integrated brand design from the get go. And it doesn’t need to cost thousands of dollars. The TMBA site recently got a fresh lick of paint with a new logo. This week Dan talks to its creator, Sharif El Komi, founder of Komi Studio. Sharif shares some of the mistakes he’s seen brands making when it comes to design, why he thinks the recent ‘Wise’ re-brand is a triumph, and how being daring can immediately give small business an edge on bigger competition: ‘It's a lot about risk as well. That's why branding is also a very strong weapon for the smaller guys to use. Because doing the crazy thing … with your logo, but also with your general brand, even non design stuff, like copywriting, all the kind of funnels into your brand, doing the crazy stuff and … doing the edgy, risky moves, the big guys aren't doing that in any industry because … it's really difficult for them to change anything about their logo, their colours, the voice of how they do any copywriting because if they do, they risk losing big.’

It’s an evolving economic landscape out there: interest rates are up, high paying tech jobs are down. One bank has collapsed and crypto doesn’t seem to be the panacea that some wished. On this week’s show we’re talking investing - the opportunities, possible pitfalls and safe bets. Travis Jamison is founder of the SEO agency Smash Digital, and also owns an e-commerce supplement brand. But in recent times, through his newsletter and online community Investing.io, he’s been focusing on investing in other online business opportunities and also assets like stocks and crypto. He talks to Dan about where he’s currently putting his money and who he sees as the winners and losers in the current economic situation. “Cash gives you optionality. People like to say that it allows you to buy deals when things are cheap. That's definitely true … but it also keeps people from making bad decisions. Liquidity is everything. You don't want to be forced to sell, especially when stuff is really bad. That's the worst time to sell. So keeping a cash, a heavy cash position, can just help you wait out the dips without the bad times and just stay invested in compounding over the long term. That's how you win over time.”

The story of how Property Hub, now a multi-7 figure online community and real estate acquisition and management business, was built from a podcast, a book, and a strategy of abundance. When Rob Dix started co-hosting The Property Podcast a decade ago he had no idea of the traction it was getting until they announced their first ‘in person meet-up’ for listeners and hundreds of people showed up. Today the show is downloaded by 400,000 each week. Rob Dix talks to Dan about the reasons he continues to create most of Property Hub’s content himself, and the schedule he uses to achieve it. They also discuss why Rob decided to sign a two book deal with a major publisher and why he believes their ultimate ‘competitive advantage’ is ‘giving more away for free than anyone else’.

The first quarter of the year has been volatile for many large US-based tech companies, with thousands of staff layoffs. Inflation and the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank have added to the sense of uncertainty. Yet, through all of this. bootstrapped businesses have proved remarkably resilient. On this week’s show Dan talks to Tiny Seed founder Rob Walling about how the economies of running smaller online businesses enable them to be nimble and resourceful in all circumstances. They also discuss Rob’s forthcoming book The SaaS Playbook, what it takes to build a Unicorn (and do you want to go there?) and the potential impact of AI: “It’s both over-hyped and under-hyped. Just like I think the Web was and just like I think with Web3, and crypto and blockchain … (they’re) not dead. Like I hear people saying, ‘Is crypto even worth anything anymore?’ It's still a thing. And I don't just mean Bitcoin as a currency but the idea of a blockchain, these have applications that will carry on. That's how I think of AI. I think if I was an employee today, or I was doing low skilled work, I would be shaking in my boots. For smart entrepreneurs, it is much like offshoring was - being able to hire a developer in the Philippines in 2009 changed the way I could operate business. I think AI is the same”.

The ‘Money Theory of Location’ argues that calculating 4x the average salary in the place you choose to live, whether that’s Mexico City, or Bangkok, or New York is a good indication for the amount of money you’ll need to achieve a great standard of living there, and a lot of potential for freedom in your life.. On this week’s show Dan and Ian talk location arbitrage, including their regrets about moving to San Diego and not San Francisco when they were straight out of college: “There's a little bit of naivete, a lot of naivete, in a 21-year old Dan saying, ‘Just because California is a state with opportunities, because there's a lot of big houses there and stuff, that that means that that has anything to do with you’. You have to decide what you're doing, and how that would align up with that small tribe of people that are doing those things, and where those people are”. They also offer some thoughts to a listener who has moved his freelancers to full time contracts. He’s seeing some decrease in productivity and is wondering what to do about it.

How one entrepreneur has achieved huge growth in his business by ditching the low-cost ‘productized service’ model and pursuing upmarket enterprise clients. That person is Harry Morton, founder of the podcast production service Lower Street. Harry talks to Dan about how pivoting has allowed him to reach a low to mid seven figure annual revenue, and grow a team of over 20. They discuss why building a network and evolving a strong company culture has been so crucial, the importance of getting a grip on your financials, how accepting who you are and what drives you is crucial, and the challenges and opportunities afforded by AI: ‘I think that while AI is coming for all of our lunches it's coming for the productised end first because you have a very clearly defined list of deliverables and you point Chat GPT or whatever at it and it's not going to take too long, I don't think, for that to catch up and make the make the drop the price even further. So I think for anyone in an agency business, certainly something I spend a lot of time thinking about is: How is AI going to affect us? How do we incorporate AI? How do we embrace it?’

Today Dan and Ian reflect on some of the key observations they’ve taken away from calls with over 50 business owners during the launch of their implementation program ‘DC Scale’. And, this being the TMBA, there are 5 categories: ‘The $500K Stall’, ‘The Solo Recording Artist Mentality’, ‘Pulling Punches’, ‘Grade A at Hiring But Grade B at Managing’ and ‘The Cloak of Invisibility’: ‘Even today, when there are more people to follow then followers, and everybody's a brand … Most of these entrepreneurs are just not brands. And they really don't need to be. The vast majority of people we spoke with have a personal network, they are using channels like events, industry contacts, and referrals to bring in the key relationships that they need in their business. They're not necessarily using internet marketing funnels to bring in customers’. Dan and Ian also give their take on how and why the ‘Visionary vs Integrator’ definitions came about, and how useful they are, and share thoughts on the pros and cons of the ‘4 Day Work Week’.

The story of Going touches on so many themes we’ve been following on this show for over a decade. Going’s original incarnation, ’Scott’s Cheap Flights’, came on the scene in 2013. And it started out mostly as a newsletter for digital nomads seeking the most cost effective ways to travel around the world, nerd out on ‘mistake fares’ by airlines, and other things of interest in the travel space. Today Going has over 60 employees and is a very substantial business, offering a range of options to its subscribers. On this week’s show Brian Kidwell talks to Dan about his personal journey from solopreneur to CEO of Going, the challenges of making that transition, the importance of seeking product market in whatever you’re working on, and finding time for ‘deep work’: “How can I have enough hours in the day to give the proper thinking, my best thinking, to the things that I need to work on? Because those things now have much more downstream impacts than before. It's like editing code, or responding to somebody - and I'm not trying to downplay them, because those are very important - but it was different for my brain … Now I can't work as long as I used to … I can't provide great thinking for 12 hours a day.”

TMBA has followed Tommy Griffith’s story for nearly a decade, watching his ‘dorky’ side-hustle teaching weekend SEO classes evolve into ClickMinded, a substantial online education portfolio. On today’s show Tommy talks to Dan about how ClickMinded has evolved further, with the help of a new CEO, to a white label documentation provider which turned over $2.3M last year. And he reflects on why he seems to have taken almost every ‘incredibly difficult and complicated option’ to get to where ClickMinded is today: “I think it was arrogance. We had this idea that we were an Ed tech company, that we were creating these online courses. I think there was also some sunk cost fallacy going on. I mean, we had 85 hours of HD videos, seven instructors, and some universities were using our courses … The product was great, we were super proud of it, and it took a lot of work to do. So the fact that people were saying, ‘Actually, can I just pay for all of these Google Docs’. It was a little hard to face that music.”

When starting a business or advancing your career, or even just seeking to increase your public profile, it’s a savvy move to build momentum through content, and specifically by focusing on a particular channel. Today’s guest is an expert at doing just that. Steph Smith is the author of ‘Doing Content Right’. She’s also the host of the a16z podcast and ‘The Sh*t You Don’t Learn in School’. Steph talks to Dan about the opportunities being a creator opens up, tips on how to choose the right channel for what you’re trying to achieve, and why being data driven is so fundamental to achieving growth: “If you are doing a good job with growth, data should rule the day. You should be able to clearly say, ‘here's an aspect of our funnel that we want to run a test on, because we believe it has this upside’. And you run the test …. I've gone on to other companies that were way less data driven. That's honestly something that I really struggle with because when you are in situations where you are having to kind of say, ‘hey, let's do this project, I think it'll maybe have some impact’. It's just not compelling to me. I think most things at a company should be pretty data driven”.

Today's guest has been massively influential on Dan and Ian from the very start of their journey. Seth Godin is something of a legend in entrepreneurial circles, and he hardly needs an introduction.His books about marketing, creativity, building companies and personal development include Purple Cow, Meatball Sundae, The Dip, and Linchpin. They are frequent recommendations on this podcast and have long been shared among our listeners. In addition, Seth has founded an intensive four-week alternative online MBA called altMBA. He has also created several podcasts including the popular Startup School and Akimbo. Today's show features a wide-ranging interview, which touches on a variety of topics including Seth's history as a writer and podcaster, what the business world can offer society and much more.

“This is an exciting podcast about traveling to tropical islands. And we're talking about employee scorecards.Why?” On this week’s show Dan and Ian share why they’ve introduced employee scorecards to their business, and how they’re helping establish more accountability, creativity and legibility in many different ways. They discuss the practicalities and principles of scorecards, the reasons they are so useful for both full-time staff and contractors, and why they are often welcomed by team members. They also give their thoughts in response to a listener email about one of the most frequently raised dilemmas in the startup world: how to handle equity splits when one person is doing the lion’s share of work while the other business partner still retains a full-time J-O-B.

As Dan recently reflected in the annual TMBA review, he and the Bossman saw their business almost double its revenue last year. On this week’s show Dan and Ian reflect on some simple principles or strategies that might help them and other business owners achieve the same in 2023. Now, as this is the TMBA podcast, they have to come in 5’s. Dems Da Rules. They include niching down to blow up, why playing with pricing dynamics can be so powerful, and the opportunities lifestyle businesses often miss by not defining clear strategies: ‘What is a strategy? It is a painful constraint about your mission in the marketplace, and how your entire operation is roped into that promise … (it’s saying) our strategy is going to be 100% organised around this deliverable. And because the whole organisation is organised around that, we can't be copied easily. That's the idea. We cannot be copied, we will sit alone in the marketplace.”

As Dan prepares to leave Barcelona after a month-long stay, this week’s show is all about being able to take time away from your business. Because that is, after all, one of the reasons many listeners to this show are creating lifestyle businesses - whether it’s for parental leave, to pursue a sport or hobby, or perhaps some very necessary mental health wellness. Both Sam Floy, founder of Cofruition, and Neil Callanan, founder of LooseGrip, have planned and executed successful sabbaticals. They share the reasons why, how they planned for it and some of the positive impacts it had on their businesses: “Maybe this is a male thing but you are less important than you think you are. And that was abundantly clear. I like to feel important, and I like to feel like my clients need to talk to me, and I need to set the direction for our team when working on a creative project or software thing. Turns out that's not actually true at all right? The team did great without me. Clients didn't feel a dip, really.”

Agencies: creating them, the opportunities they offer, and some of the issues running them can create has been a long running theme on this show. Today Dan talks with Matt Gartland who ran a successful creative agency for eight years before partnering with one of his then clients, Pat Flynn, and eventually becoming CEO of Smart Passive Income (SPI). Matt discusses how he’s helping SPI develop further as a diverse media brand, ways of managing a growing team, and how he sees online communities evolving: “The primary value of these community based experiences is less the content, even though the content is important. It's more the network, the network of the people, the peer to peer interactions, the habits and experiences that you ritualize within these communities based on experiences. You need good people to be able to facilitate and foster those.”

Business processes and systems have been an emerging theme on this show recently, and today Dan reflects on why, and where they fit into the entrepreneurial journey. This often starts with personal growth through things like maximizing your health, reading, making connections, and maybe therapy. The second stage of advancing small businesses is frequently through different sorts of coaching. But, at some point, owners tend to hit roadblocks that can only be overcome by deploying systems rather than constantly fighting fires. Today’s guest, Aaron Lynn, has dug deep on this, at colleges, in businesses he’s founded and as a business systems consultant. He joins Dan to talk about the importance of quick wins as well as long term strategy, the difference between personal and business productivity systems, the importance of meeting cadence, and a whole lot more.

Happy 2023 to all our listeners. The focus of this show has always been freedom, whatever that means to you. This pod is a judgement-free zone. It might be freedom to travel, to spend more time with family and friends, to work in a certain way, or with certain values, to give back to your community, or to support loved ones. Or just not to have a traditional J-O-B. Today’s guest Davis Nguyen initially founded My Consulting Offer, which helps people get management consulting jobs, to raise some ‘money in hand’ to pay a family member’s emergency medical bill. But it’s grown into so much more than that - a business that allows him harass his skills and to live life on his own terms, terms that just weren’t open to him when he was working for top consulting firm Bain & Company: ‘I loved the management consulting job. I love the fact that you get to work with really smart people … I just didn't like the fact that I couldn't take time off as much as I wanted … I remember my first year I literally went to negative vacation days because I wanted to take a trip to Japan. And, by the time I came back, basically HR said, ‘Alright, Davis, you have negative five days. Now basically, you can't take vacation for the next year.’

2022 has been the year that we all got on the road again. Dan and Ian spent the summer in Barcelona, Spain and hundreds of members of the Dynamite Circle met up to forge new friendships and partnerships, socialize, swap stories and strategies, and a whole lot more. Through it all, we have been fortunate to talk to some incredibly captivating entrepreneurs on this podcast. In today’s episode, we are revisiting some of our favorite moments and themes from the podcast this year, including thoughts about investing, the challenges of systemizing your business and motivating a team, what bootstrappers can learn from private equity firms (and vice versa), thoughts about the ‘anti-work movement’ and the amazing opportunities offered by living in a place with a lower cost of living than the West but equally great resources.

As 2022 draws to a close Dan and Ian are in a reflective mood. In this week’s show they ponder the ‘lifestyle business take’ on ‘The Parable of the Mexican Fisherman’ and come up with an alternative interpretation involving YouTube. They also discuss some the positives and negatives of their own business year including the results of their ambition to scale Dynamite Jobs, the power of reconnecting in person with colleagues, friends and mentors, and why alignment between founders is critical: “I think we can up the leadership game a little bit. And a lot of that is about figuring out these concepts and ideas that scale through the organisation and create alignment. It’s creating empowerment and autonomy in each individual actor to know that they're doing meaningful things on a day to day basis. That level of leadership is a tough nut to crack”.

On this week’s show Dan and Ian respond to some listener comments and questions including non-competes and potential conflicts of interest with your current employer when you’re thinking of starting an entrepreneurial side-hustle: “You’ve got to understand that, hey, there's three lawyers sitting in that office down there. If I take this vulnerable idea to them they're gonna say, ‘No’. I am not going to allow my life to be affected by a Mall Cop, or whatever .. when we say risk in entrepreneurship, it's the emotional risk of owning that and not asking for permission”. They also give their takes on the rewards of creating B2B versus B2C business, and why SOPs haven’t been mentioned on the show for quite some time.

On a recent show Dan and Ian touched on ‘the lifestyle ladder’, and what different levels of personal wealth can mean in your life. Following that they received an interesting email from today’s guest Matt Paulson who today shares why he’s found that achieving substantial personal wealth raises fundamental questions about how you want to spend that money, especially in relation to assessing investment opportunities, raising a family and contributing to a community you value: “My strategy is to create as normal of a childhood as possible for my children. So our house cost half a million dollars … I walk my kids to elementary school every morning. We fly private sometimes, we stay in fancier hotel rooms but the day to day is pretty normal .. I think if I can not set unrealistic expectations about what life is like when they're young, they'll carry over to when they're adults”. Dan and Ian also discuss the incredible opportunities opened up by the recently launched Open AI tool ChatGPT, and some exciting news about their latest product DC Scale, created out of their own frustrations establishing operational management systems within their own businesses.

When Johnathan Solorzano, founder of Solo Media Group, joined us on the podcast just over two years ago his agency focused on broad ‘white label work’, which he aptly described as ‘doing all the work and then someone else passes it off as their own’. Today, through what he learnt from doing that, he’s niched Solo Media to focus entirely on Shopify clients. Jonathan talks to Dan about how this evolution has provided him with a much more stable portfolio and revenue, and also why he feels ‘got distracted’ and wasted a year trying to develop some ‘Software as a Service’ products. He also discusses how creating a social media presence has helped his personal and agency profile, and why you don’t need to have thousands of followers to achieve that: “I’m not doing it for clicks. I'm not doing it for likes, and I'm not doing it for followers. I’m literally doing it to answer questions that I know people have. So some of my videos are like, ‘Whoa, this was like a $20,000 question’. If the right person sees this and sees they can save so much money .. To me, that's enough.”

Some call it ‘revenge travel’, others just call it ‘getting back to normal’ but people in the location independent community are, for sure, hitting the road again. In this week’s show, Dan and Ian look at what factors feed into creating ‘digital nomad hotspots’, and the possible new emerging cities suggested by listeners of this podcast, and members of the ‘Dynamite Circle’. They also discuss how they are going about implementing systems in their newest business, ‘Dynamite Jobs’, the pros and cons of those prescribed by ‘Traction’ and ‘Scaling Up’, and why they chose to work with a facilitator: ‘We did some of the exercises wrong. It's not that we didn't understand them. But maybe we didn't understand the intent and how they fit into the bigger part of the picture. So I found it really helpful to do the exercises with someone because we were exposed to a bunch of exercises, and now we get to pick and choose based on the way that we filled it out. So I felt, in a lot of ways, we condensed it by having a facilitator help us’.

It’s been three long years since DC members were able to gather in Bangkok to share great food, experiences and talk business. And DCBKK2022, our ten year anniversary event, with almost 400 attendees, was not only our biggest event but also such a blast. So this week Dan, Ian and Jeff Pecaro get together to talk about not only the highlights of DCBKK20220 - one of which was definitely a 100 strong Tuk Tuk parade which ferried people through the streets of Bangkok to the closing party - but also takeaways, trends spotting from the conference floor, and things that are up for improvement next year: “We're always gonna have speakers, we're always gonna have meetups, we're always gonna have presenters, we're always gonna have structured conversations. But one of the pieces of feedback that we've been getting for years is: how can we bring people together to just do things?”

There are big changes in the wind at Twitter, with Elon Musk suggesting he might further open the platform to longer form pieces, and also paid content. Might this open up greater opportunities for those with established blogs, or looking to start one? On today’s show we revisit a favorite episode from our back catalogue focused on personal blogging and what it means to write on the internet. And to help tell this story, which is close to his heart, Dan invited two writers who both have a long and rich experience in the blogging space. Taylor Pearson has been a frequent guest and contributor on this podcast. He is the author of The End of Jobs, and he runs an excellent blog on his website. Amanda Cook is an author, a podcaster, herbalist, and the founder of a business called Wellpreneur. Over the years, she has published online about a wide variety of projects, but the one consistent thing is that she’s always had an excellent blog, which you can find at AmandaCook.me. Join us for this round table discussion about the past and future of blogging on the internet, tips for those starting out with a personal blog, some of our favorite blogs to read today, and so much more.

When Jesse Schoberg, Co-founder of DropIn Blog, shared his thoughts about the huge benefits of living in Bangkok with CNBC, as part of their ‘Make It’ series, he had no idea it would go viral - both inside Thailand and abroad. The piece, titled ‘I live better in Thailand than I did in the U.S. — here’s how much it costs’ received lots of appreciation but also a stream of more negative comments from some members of the backpacking and expat retiree communities. They criticised how much Jesse chooses to spend on accommodation, food and travel in a place often seen as a mecca for cheap living. “A lot of people were like, ‘Oh, for $8,000 a month, you can live anywhere … no, you cannot live like we live here in New York, which is an equivalent city, for $8,000 a month. When we were in New York recently, the apartment we were staying in was a small studio, and it was $4,200 or $4,400 a month. It was nothing near the type of service or quality that we would get in Bangkok for much less.” On today’s show Dan and Ian talk to Jesse about why he decided to participate in the series in the first place, the very different reaction he received from the Thai audience and some possible reasons why ‘spend shaming’ exists.

Side-Hustles, which - with a lot of hard work - evolve into full-time businesses are a theme of many entrepreneurial journeys. We’ve covered a fair few on this show. But Brenden Marquardt’s story is particularly interesting for a few reasons: even though he was in a well-paid finance job, and knew he wasn’t great at ‘ideas’, he did the groundwork to be ready for when the opportunity he was looking for presented itself. On today’s show Brenden, Co-Founder of Homestead Brands talks to Dan about how a chance click on a website led him to buy Lori Beds, his methodology for working ‘on’ not ‘in’ the business “When I hired my first executive team member Dodes, who manages our product - the manufacturing, relationships, logistics and things like that. Even before I hired him, just talking with him, I realised we had set our goals way too small, because I didn't know how to do any of those things that he spent every day doing in the furniture industry”. And why Brenden takes inspiration for working with other family members in his business from ‘The Sopranos’.

It started as a hobby at college, and was also the way he met his wife but now ‘Dumpster Diving’ has become a major business opportunity for Dave Sheffield, Founder of Buffalo Bottle Craft. In today’s show Dave talks to Dan about how a Vice documentary, currently watched by nearly 1.5M people, and subsequent media interest has made him consider the many different ways a ‘Dumpster Diving’ enterprise could grown: from selling physical products from dumpster finds, to creating online content showing how others can do the same: “If I find some new material in the dumpster that I know that I can source at scale … I just make a video and I say, ‘Hey, guys, look at this cool thing. What do you think I could make from it? What would you make from it?’ And that's my product research right there.”

This week Dan is speaking to Andy Morgan, creator of RippedBody, a blog and coaching program targeted at committed but frustrated fitness trainees who have hit a stall in their progress. What’s interesting about Andy’s story is the way he’s found a niche not only in the fitness space but also in the market in Japan. Andy discusses why he only does bi-weekly email check-in with his clients, how a DC mastermind has prompted him to start hiring coaches, and the methodology behind his successful Instagram strategy: “The problem was I had too many content possibilities and I couldn't decide what to create each day. The solution that I came up with was to list the topics that I could talk about, the types of content that I could create and the formats that I could create in and then rotate through them. And so what that did is - it constrained my choices and allowed for tight creativity”.

In this week’s show Dan and Ian share their Q4 business updates, including the reasons why they have decided to launch an agency - Remote First Recruiting, which is targeted at startup founders, under the Dynamite Jobs umbrella. “The best customers of a job board typically have super strong hiring practices that are built over the years … (they’ve) hired for the same position multiple times. Whereas with an agency customer, which are typically startup founders, they're seeking to buy those systems into their business. They know they need to hire, they might be hiring 10 times a year. But every time it's a little bit different, and they want to purchase the systems. That's what the agency does.” Plus, responses to some great listener questions, including: how much money is ‘enough money’, the mindset challenges of living off capital, and some further reflections on ‘The Europe Question’.

Books: seeking out good ones, talking about them, and implementing some of the things we discover in their pages has long been a theme of this show. However, as longtime listeners will know, Dan is often disappointed by one category in particular: business books. But one he read recently, ‘Working Backwards’ by former Amazon executives Colin Bryar and Bill Carr, really blew him away. And he was thrilled when one of the authors, Colin Bryar, agreed to drop by the show. Colin joined Amazon in the late 90s, and worked closely with Jeff Bezos. That time at the company covered a period of incredible innovation - Kindle, Amazon Prime, Amazon Echo and Alexa, and Amazon Web Services Dan talks to Colin about the principles and practices, many of them counterintutive to traditional business thinking, that drove that incredible succes, and how they can also be applied to the smaller businesses many of us are growing. They include: ditching the powerpoint in favor of narratives at meetings, why it’s essential for your best people to take on key projects in ‘single-threaded leadership’, and much more.

The summer of cycling and tapas in Barcelona, Spain has come to an end. Dan and Ian are back in Austin, Texas inspired by the conversations and feedback they’ve had over the past few weeks as listeners and friends have dropped by one of our favorite European cities. One of those people is someone we’ve had on the pod before, telling the early part of his story. So much has happened in his life that we thought it was high time to catch up with him again. Coran Woodmass’ entrepreneurial journey has spanned ecommerce, building a successful business brokerage, to multi million dollar deal maker at Billion Dollar Exits. He’s also an investor. Today he and Dan are going to discuss ‘Five small ways to go big’. These include why it’s sometimes necessary to ‘slow down to speed up’, the power of doubling down on your core entrepreneurial skill and the power of investing for cashflow. And just a caveat: as with all discussions about investing, this is not advice, it’s just some perspectives you might want to think about (or not).

Today’s show started, as so many of them do, as an in-person conversation in a dark bar in a cool city. That’s where Dan met Brent Zahradnik, founder of Amazon PPC agency AMZ Pathfinder. Now ‘the agency model’ is a recurring theme on this show because they can be spun up in a weekend, are often very profitable, and they can provide side income to what you’re already doing in a business. But done poorly, agency owners can find themselves trapped in the grind of ‘wrong’ clients and staffing woes. But Brent seems to have nailed it, and found a profitable business that also allows him to live in Montpellier, France and enjoy the great outdoor lifestyle that Mediterranean city offers. Topics covered include: the mistake of not getting ‘A players’ on your team earlier, why Brent feels his nomadic lifestyle held back his business for a while, and some ideas for agencies you could start today.

The ‘Stair Step’ approach to entrepreneurship is a recurring theme on the TMBA. Coined of course by Startups For The Rest Of Us host Rob Walling. Essentially, it describes how you can build up your business chops by for example, starting a freelance business, then parlaying some of those clients into running an agency and then maybe Software as a Service, and so on. But honestly, you can apply a similar approach in many different ways, including applying it to one brand, which is what today’s guest Ben Dziwulski, founder of WodPrep, which helps CrossFitters improve their techniques, has done over the course of many years. He talks to Dan about how WodPrep has grown into a $1.1M business that also allows him to enjoy the outdoor lifestyle he loves.

What began as a window cleaning service he started at college has now spun into a multi-million business for today’s guest Johnny Robinson. In January 2022 he co-founded Home Services Academy, a 90 day program and ongoing community which coaches others to reach five figures MRR by either starting their own cleaning business, or making an existing one more profitable. Johnny talks to Dan about their sales process, the pros and cons of implementing the ‘Scaling Up’ operating system, and why he feels he held on to his former business model for too long: “If you've been plugging away, and you're not seeing the growth, maybe it's time to take the skill set and what you've learned somewhere else … What I've realised, after building a few different businesses, is when you're in the weeds of things you start to find problems within that industry that are very, very niche. But you're like, ‘Well, that would probably be a better business than the one I’m running’”.

The COVID pandemic saw many online businesses boom, especially those centered on E-commerce. But entrepreneurs running in-person events really took a hit. Today’s show focuses on one of those stories, and narrates how one owner re-invented what his company was doing by becoming a ‘Value Added Reseller’ (VAR) software service. Dan Taylor is the CEO of AppsEvents, a ‘Google for Education’ partner whose company previously ran a huge number of conferences worldwide before diversifying into VAR: “There are different ways you can get into it. Some of the selling is direct with Google, some of that work is with a distributor but, essentially … The ‘value added’ part means you can sell your services on top. So you can sell ongoing support services, you can do setup services, you can do customization, that's kind of what the business model is.”

This show is a ‘drop in’ to the kind of conversations Dan and Ian have been having all summer long in their co-working space in Barcelona, as fellow entrepreneurs have come by the city. And today they’re joined by one of our favorite guests, AppSumo founder Noah Kagan. The idea is a simple one - let’s just have some fun, and hopefully useful insights, rating some of the popular business memes and ideas that have taken traction in the online business world. Which ones are overrated, underrated or appropriately-rated? The discussion includes - the value of coaches, the necessity of hiring a Chief Technical Officer, cold email outreach and more: “Where it's like, ‘I have a great idea. I just need a technical partner’, 100% overrated. Because when you're starting any business what you're really focusing on is - what is the actual problem you're solving, not a technical need. What often happens is people are using that as an excuse for rejection. And they're using an excuse from fear”.

One growing theme in the TMBA community has been the search for increased options for location independent families to provide education for their children. Traditionally it’s been home schooling, international or local schools, and very little in-between. But increasingly parents are coming together to try to create new solutions like pop-up schools, employing tutors and more. On today’s show teacher and entrepreneur Elliott Zelinskas offers his views on a range of emails and comments we’ve received on this subject, including thoughts about whether the COVID pandemic might have accelerated the drive for change: “I'm curious about the post COVID situation .. How did that change our world, not about how we think about viruses, but how we think about our lives, our families, our business .. The power structures got shook up, and I think there's been this kind of collective reflection on life. And you just don't really see people going back to normal in terms of their work. And I'm seeing it more with education too”. There are also some updates from Dan and Ian about Dynamite Jobs, and their thoughts on a recent ‘digital nomad debate’.

‘Rip, pivot and jam’ is a recurring theme on this show. It’s a way of overcoming the pressure of needing ‘the best business idea ever’ by taking a model that’s working elsewhere and applying it in another field. And that’s exactly what today’s guest Justin Tan did when he founded his productised video editing service Video Husky. Through his previous freelance career in Facebook advertizing, Justin had seen the growing importance of video creation as a marketing tool. And Russ Perry’s unlimited graphic design offerings at ‘Design Pickle’ inspired him to try that approach for clients who need regular video editing. Justin talks to Dan about the challenges and rewards of building, and recently ‘retiring’ from Video Husky over a four year period: “The key thing is being able to accept when your assumptions are wrong, ideally quickly, and moving on from them versus - I would hold on to certain key assumptions for the longest time, even though they weren't true. And so what I found was really helpful was getting in front of a lot of customers”.

Who doesn’t want to maximize results, and spend less time - or just make better use of it - in their business? On this week’s show Dan and Ian discuss five possible ways to make this happen from their own experience growing Dynamite Jobs. They include reaching out to an expert practitioner in your field, someone who has experience and insight at the level you want to grow to, creating tight ‘backward looking’ financial accountability that gives clarity on where your money is, and should be going. And there’s more, of course. It wouldn’t be a TMBA episode without five points. It’s the law. ‘We’ve reached out to several industry experts in the job space. And I think some relationships are going to come out of that … And I think the most valuable thing that's starting to change for us, it's just the product roadmap. So if you can identify somebody that's an industry expert in your field, a lot of times they can shave years off your product development cycle.” Listen and learn: ● Why reaching out to an industry expert in your space could be so helpful ● ‘Scaling Up’ by Vern Harnish v ‘Traction’ by Gino Wickman ● Choosing where to have a ‘work vacation’ ● The power of a system to get inside your business financials

The TMBA ‘summer in Barcelona’ continues with a long-standing guest visiting the city, and hanging with Dan and Ian. His name is Travis Jamison, founder of Smash Digital, and investor in numerous other companies. He’s a badass entrepreneur who exited his previous business AMZ tracker, a SaaS for Amazon sellers, for ‘a life changing’ amount of money, a story we told on this show. Today he talks to Dan and Ian about choosing where to live when you stop nomading, why Travis thinks agencies are highly underrated business models, ‘Defi summer’, and lots more.

We’ve received some great email responses prompted by last week’s episode ‘The Europe Question’. So on today’s show Dan and Ian will be reflecting on some of those comments. They’ll also be mulling over a recurring dilemma posed by a listener, one which is very much in their minds as they grow ‘Dynamite Jobs’: “David and Goliath or Dynamite Jobs versus Indeed.com .. At one time you mentioned how just hearing the word Indeed gave you anxiety, maybe excitement … (this) resonated with me. My partner and I are currently building a software product that will likely go head to head with some fairly big names, and they have at least a decade head start on us … The only thing that keeps me going back is that I've spent the past decade in entrepreneurship, always staying in safe little buckets of protected small niches .. Small niches are often easier to start but are easier to hit a ceiling in terms of market size. Having experienced growing our businesses to the upper limits of the markets we're in, we have our eyes on the bigger prize where the bigger players are players that really know what they're doing”.

Recently Peer Richelsen tweeted ‘Ok, serious question: what keeps the average American (that can afford it) from moving to Europe?’. By the next morning he’d received hundreds of different responses. On today’s show Dan and Ian, who have just arrived in Barcelona for the summer, offer their thoughts about ‘The Europe Question’, a topic they think will be increasingly discussed as more mainstream American workers have increased opportunities to live and work remotely outside the United States: “We have a whole new graduating class on our hands … people went to school, a lot of people that used to be teachers, administrators, bureaucrats, waiters, bartenders …They decided that they don't want to go to their in person jobs anymore, they wanted an online job. At the same time, a lot of companies that had knowledge workers realised that they needed to allow those people to work from home during COVID. Those people didn't want to come back to the office so they needed to keep allowing them to work from home. And now all of a sudden, I think these questions aren't so much what does the digital nomad, who's this edge case traveller, want to do, we’ve got this entire graduating class of the mainstream, who are asking themselves the digital nomad question: why don't we live in Europe? It's so nice. They have public transportation. Why haven't we been there yesterday? Why don't we move here this year?”

Last time Dustin Overbeck came on the show he talked about why he chose to live in Transylvania, Romania with his family whilst growing an agency and ‘Town Web’ which helps local governments in the US build and re-design their websites. Today he tells Dan about why he felt it was vital to institute structural changes to the way he worked and hire a General Manager, and about his new software business ‘Hey Gov’: “I realised Dustin is now an arsonist. But he's also a firefighter. He's creating problems that only he can solve … And sometimes you just have to step back and realise that smart people will figure out the solutions. And that's what I did.”

Today Dan talks to one of our favorite writers Sam Dogan, the man behind ‘Financial Samurai’. And Sam has recently written a book called ‘Buy This, Not That’, laying out the ideas and strategies he learnt not only from his decade long career at Goldman Sachs but also investing personally and interacting with the many millions of visitors to his blog. This week’s discussion ranges from why the traditional ‘Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE)’ model, of which Sam was an early pioneer, is now outdated; the reasons you can’t just ‘set and forget’ your financial planning but need to think about opitimizing it for the different decades of your life; and what it’s like to be involved in writing a book for a major publisher: “One of the reasons why I don't want to write another book is because it's so painful. A lot of cooks in the kitchen. They're all on your side, they want to make the book amazing, inclusive and a success. But I'm not used to that, I’m used to waking up at 5am writing, and then I'm done. I send it to my dad and he makes some edits. And we’re good.”

Do you remember when you had to pretend that you had a dental appointment just to be able to attend a job interview? Dan and Ian do. With so many more people working remotely, even within large corporations, those days are gone. And good riddance. But a listener emailed the show asking our thoughts about what they see as a more challenging aspect of the increasing numbers of people, especially Americans paid in dollars, now able to work from anywhere: skyrocketing rents and real estate prices in European cities like Lisbon and Barcelona, often pushing locals out. And an update from Dynamite Jobs where the team has been hard at work on an applicant tracking system (ATS) to try to help with the problem of the huge amount unsuitable applications many business owners receive when they are trying to recruit, and also a new innovation that allows users to gauge the potential number of suitable applicants for a specific role that they can expect to access when using DJ : “Our goal is to kind of demystify the results that you'll get if you post with us. I want you to know, hopefully, what you're gonna get before you post with us, especially if it's for the first time”.

The ‘post-COVID’ location independent summer is beginning. We’re seeing more and more posts in the DC forum that begin: ‘Who’s in Medellin this month?’, ‘Anyone in Poland or the Balkans’. Traveling and navigating new cities, and regions is very much the theme of today’s show, which is a discussion for those thinking of visiting Bangkok, and Thailand in general, later in the year. And, of course, we’re hugely excited for our first DCBKK event in three years, coming in October. With that in mind we’ve asked Kyla Gardner and Jesse Schoberg - both of whom have lived in Bangkok, and other places in Thailand, and attended a fair few DCBKKs - to share their thoughts. We’ll cover: where to stay in Bangkok for a great vibe and delicious food, where to consider going after DCBKK, how to manage your time around events like DCBKK, and much more: “I don't know whether to advise people to just accept that you really just have to go really hard, you’re not going to sleep, you're going to be exhausted but it's going to be worth it. Or advise them to try to take some power naps … it is just so stimulating, so much fun.”

The 4-Hour Workweek was, and continues to be, a life changing inspiration to many seeking more freedom in their lives through the path of entreprenuership. But, prompted by listening to a recent podcast featuring a conversation between its author Tim Ferriss and Cal Newport, Dan and Ian reflect on what they see as ‘the elephant in the room’ in the book, in relation to others seeking to emulate the path it lays it: “Tim is talking to people who already have a lot of enterprising know-how and other resources like industry relationships … But the book’s audience extended well beyond the well heeled and gainfully employed. It also appealed to those of us who didn't have businesses, established cash flows, or other traditional advantages”. And this episode also includes responses to a related question posed by a listener, one that often pops up in the TMBA mailbag: how to have an impactful career as a solopreneur.

Today’s guest, Sherry Walling, is a respected clinical psychologist who specialises in entrepreneur mental health. She’s also the host of Zen Founder, a podcast where she is sometimes joined by her husband Rob. Those who have listened to Zen Founder know that Sherry has been sharing movingly about the upheavals and losses she’s gone through over the last few years - in 2018 she lost her father to cancer followed, six months later, by her brother to suicide - and how it's affected her, and their whole family. On today’s show Sherry talks to Dan about how she tried, in some way, to make sense of what happened by penning a book “Touching Two Worlds: A Guide To Finding Hope In The Aftermath of Loss” “The events of the past few years have been so strange to me that I must force myself to study the story, like something I am learning from the outside in, like something that happened to someone else ”. It’s a moving account of what she discovered, including some great practical suggestions for others finding themselves in a similar place and struggling to cope. In Sherry’s case this included joining the circus (evenings and weekends only).

Unless you’ve been living in a cave recently (and if you have, hit us up because we’d love to hear about that), you’ll be aware that crypto has been on a wild (at the time of writing mostly downward) rollercoaster. As we’ve mentioned before, it is a volatile investment, especially when viewed short term. But today’s show isn’t about that. It’s about how crypto can be - *insert an important ‘health warning’ here: this is not advice, it’s just thoughts and views - a practical way to fund other things, like buying a house, and even be set to be a relatively low ‘management threshold’ investment, as today’s guest did when she had a baby. Cathryn Lavery is well known in the entrepreneurial community as the CEO of Best Self which produces stylish and imaginative planning, goal setting and relationship journals. She talks to Dan about how a painful business break up, in part, lead her to create a practical course for those who want to learn more about investing in crypto, called ‘Zero to DeFi’: “It was such an emotional drain for me. The crypto stuff, just learning about it and getting into it, was something exciting for me … I didn't even talk publicly about crypto. Because there's this vibe of scammy. Like how do you go from Best Self to talking about crypto …And then, at the end, I was like: screw it I'm just gonna start talking about this stuff. Because I think, as entrepreneurs, we get interested in different stuff. And so if I'm excited about working on something, then hopefully other people are excited about it as well”.

On today’s show Dan and Ian are reaching into the mailbag to reflect on some topics that listeners have asked about. These include an update on the incredible response to our upcoming DCBKK, things to consider when thinking about business models, and how to manage your net worth without hurting your brain: “I have been guilty in the past of overcomplicating my financial process with too many credit cards, too many bank accounts, too many clever tax manoeuvres, and I would have been much better off to keep it super, super simple’.

Today’s show challenges bootstrapped entrepreneurs to think about lessons they can draw from high-income private equity funded business, especially about structured forward planning and accountancy. But it also covers what lessons PE funded companies could learn from the other side of the tracks. This week’s guest is Jason Long, a valued member of the DC community, well known for being always open to sharing the highs and lows of his long experience of founding agencies, creating Software as a Service businesses and, most recently, from accepting a job as a ‘turnaround CEO’ for a private equity group. He talks to Dan about how the devastating effects on his agency of the 2008 financial crash caused him to diversify his portfolio, and the pros and cons of that decision. Plus why working with a multimillion PE firm has enhanced his experience both as a leader and entrepreneur: “This is a team that had been passed from CEO to CEO, from leader to leader, who just had failed them over and over and over again .. And so when I came in, I said, ‘I’m not gonna I'm not gonna fire anybody’ .. And I brought in a lot of methods to make sure that there was transparency with the top level all the way down to the frontline workers .. so everybody felt like they were knowledgeable about where the company was going. And I felt like that made a huge difference in the trust”.

Lots of entrepreneurs and listeners to this show are inspired to create ‘The 4-Hour Workweek’ type businesses by founding e-commerce stores and agencies, creating money and value entirely online. Today’s guest, Alex Pantich, has chosen a different path with the business he co-founded. Upshift provides hospitality venues with vetted temporary W-2 hourly workers who are able post online the days and hours they are available for work. Alex talks to Dan about how this double-sided marketplace works, the equity share scheme Upshift deploys, and why he thinks so many entrepreneurs are missing out by not considering blue-collar, location dependent opportunities: “When you're getting online and into E-commerce, you're competing with your peers. If you go into the real world, you're competing with baby boomers. Are you telling me the baby boomer who doesn't know email is going to beat you at any sort of innovative business game? They're not. I prefer going into areas where I see tonnes of opportunity and not as much competition”.

This week’s show is kinda a de-brief of our recent in-person event in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. Dan chats Jeff Pecaro, who has worked with us for nearly a decade, and continues to do an amazing job helping our speakers deliver the kind of presentations that our attendees tell us they want to hear: “It’s not a traditional business conference audience in the sense that they don't want to hear your theories, and they don't want to hear your grand success story, they're looking for the things that they can take, and give to their team on Monday morning to help them grow. So it's really much more of a community of peers than it is a captive audience. And I think that's a big adjustment for a lot of our speakers. Expect to hear: thoughts on PDC as a venue, some common themes that we’re seeing in our community as its revenue aspirations continue to grow, and some takeaways from the awesome on-stage presentations.

Have you ever wanted to get a regular review process going but just never get round to it because it seems so overwhelming? This show is for you. Dr Anthony Gustin, chiropractor, e-commerce entrepreneur and farmer, has been honing his annual review system for over 10 years. It’s available, completely free, online and has greatly influenced people like former AppSumo CEO, and recent TMBA guest Ayman Al-Abdullah. So, why not click on the link and follow along as Dan talks to Anthony about the six steps he suggests for those struggling with identifying and achieving goals in both business and personal lives. “A year is such a long time. It goes by like that. When you look back at what you can get done in your day to day, it seems like you're not making any progress but you look back on the year, it's insane how much you can get done”.

One of the themes of this show has always been ‘learning by doing’, and evolving your businesses based on that. But what about when your circumstances change and, through necessity, that places different pressures on what you need to achieve? Dan first met Dana Lindahl a decade ago when Dana was just starting out as a 21 year old copywriter, creating a decent amount for living in Bali. In today’s episode he shares why feedback from that resulted in him starting Legendary Leadgen, plus how a move back to the US led him into the podcast industry with Legendary Podcasts, which has seen such rapid growth that it quickly showed up some of his personal challenges: “I just had this sort of lifestyle agency, that was a good job for me, and I was happy there. And then all of a sudden, I was thrust into this situation where I needed to employ a level of skills that I hadn't quite developed And that's what I'm spending a lot of my time this year doing”.

On this week’s show Jeff Fruhwirth talks to Dan about how a failed foray into e-commerce, and a change in personal circumstances, caused him to pivot into real estate investing with little capital or experience. Today he has a portfolio of multi-unit buildings, which he’s expanded by learning about the hidden potential within different sorts of properties: “One of the best ways to make money is to kind of take on deals that no one else wants to touch. I looked at a building last summer that had been hanging on the market for quite a while. And the main issue was .. there was a five unit apartment building and a two bedroom house, but they were on the same tax lot and share the same water tap. So there was plenty of money in there, as long as you are willing to pay to dig up the water and sewer line, and then pay the $13,000 to the water utility to get the water metres separated … then you could sell off the house, you could fix up the apartments, and functionally double the rent”. Jeff also shares some inside stories and insights from the very first DSki, which took place in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

This week Dan and Ian share updates about progress at ‘Dynamite Jobs’. Drawing on some sage advice from recent guest Ayman Al-Abdullah, they’ve been focussing on the ‘P’s that really matter, namely breaking through plateaus by building strong foundations through ‘product, promotion and process’. The idea being that will enable them to move on to the next stage in their business, from ‘player to coach’: “One of the points that Ayman made is, ‘Look, you are the last star player, you're ever going to get on a rookie contract’, everyone else is going to work less hard than you, is going to care less, and is going to demand more money”… So when you're ready to pick up the clipboard, you have to have a rock solid legacy in place in terms of product, promotion, process and people … And now all of a sudden, we're not jumping the gun. I want to flag this up because I see a lot of people trying to get to that mid eight figure seven figure business by jumping the gun on bringing in the executives that are kind of doomed to failure, because there's no clarity on how the business will grow”. And stay tuned to the end to hear Dan and Ian’s thoughts about resume gaps and ways to fill them.

The last time Allen Walton was on the show he talked about the origins of his e-commerce business SpyGuy grew out of a difficult period when he was living in his parents’ basement struggling to make a living. Today Allen talks to Dan about some of the challenges he’s had which, despite the considerable success, has caused him to consider if it’s time to re-orientate what he’s doing and focus more on his new venture FlyGuy: “Spy Guy is a hard business to run. Like a lot of e-commerce businesses we've been facing supply chain problems, shipping shortages, our costs have really gone up … And I think about Tony Hsieh’s book ‘Delivering Happiness’, he talks about poker playing, and how you could sit at a table and you might just keep losing, losing, losing against the people you're playing with. One of the best things you might do is just get up and move over to another table. You might find out that you're playing way better there. And I kind of feel like that might be the case for me”. And, later in the show, Allen gamely agrees to play our favorite fun challenge: ‘Donate A Business Idea’.

One of the biggest challenges we discuss on the show is how to take businesses over the “five figure” hurdle. Today’s guest Ayman Al-Abdullah has done that in his time as former CEO at AppSumo, and he shares his major takes on achieving that with Dan. “You're essentially crafting your rock band. What more important job than who I'm hanging out with on a daily basis and hanging in the tour van, I think the most important job of the CEO is: ‘Who is in the van?”

On today’s show, GrowthHit’s Jim Huffman talks to Dan about the pros and cons of running a successful agency, and how he’s recently been encouraging and enabling his team to create new products via an internal ‘startup studio incubator’. Interestingly, he’s done this, in part, to incentivise people, and offer a creative and rewarding work environment in this increasing competitive job market: “It’s potentially a path to allow really good team players and employees to make their own decisions and part carve their own path within a company, maybe without taking on some of that initial risk .. how can you create this hybrid that meets those people where they're like, ‘Hey, I want to work remote, I want to like do my own thing, but I'm down to have this structure’. It's like, ‘Ok, we need the agency work to get done. But we have a budget to allocate if you have a good idea and if that becomes something, then you have a significant stake in it.”

‘Side hustles’ are a long running theme on this show: those ‘weekends and evenings’ projects that many entrepreneurs have in their back pockets. Many don’t work out but when one does, it’s a great opportunity to run with something which has the possibility to evolve to the next level. But how do you decide when that tipping point is? In today’s show Ben Dowling joins Dan to describe how coding a simple API, to solve a problem he was experiencing while working as the CTO of Calm, lead him to found a Software as a Service called IPinfo, which create datasets about IP addresses: “So many projects I shipped .. felt sort of uphill pushes. And some of them had some moderate success, but it was always an effort. Whereas IPinfo, the traction was sort of straightaway .. And so I think if people are struggling with a project, ‘Hey, do I just need to keep working hard on it?’ It may be best to try something different .. I had no expectations for IPinfo .. but it very quickly sort of started going in that direction”.

Back by popular demand, Dan and Kyla Gardner blow the dust off their bookshelves, and fire up their Kindle and Audible libraries to share some of their favorite recent reads. In this episode, they’ll be talking about what sustained them through the long months of COVID containment. And Kyla also shares her experiences of writing fiction under her pen name Kyla Sharp. “There are so many people making so much money from fiction. Obviously, anyone can self publish, so it has a bad rap and there's a lot of junk out there. But sometimes you can't tell the quality difference because people hire professional editors, they get professional cover designers. They run it through their readers to make sure everything makes sense and they don't have typos. And then they self publish it and they get 70% of those royalties from Amazon instead of traditional publishing where you have to pay back your advance and you might be getting something like 5%”.

Affiliate Marketing businesses have been around way longer than this podcast, and it’s a model that receives its fair share of criticism, especially of those selling ‘courses on how to sell courses’ on the subject. However, one thing is for sure: thousands of entrepreneurs continue to support their families from income generated by affiliate marketing. On today’s show Dan talks with Niche Site Project’s Doug Cunnington about how the model has changed since the early 2000s, ways to seek out good niches and why, even if affiliate marketing isn’t your end-goal, it can be a great place to start: “For example, if you start a niche site, and you're not sure if it's going to work out .. you learn about setting up a website, you learn about keyword research .. and all these different skills that can be really helpful in the future. You may figure out that you're really good at hiring writers, and managing them. And that could turn into a whole different business.”

The ‘AntiWork Movement’ has been with us for decades but, through the pandemic, it’s gained a new traction over at the online discussion forum ‘Reddit’, where the r/antiwork subreddit group (slogan: “Unemployment for all, not just the rich!”) has over 1.7 million subscribers. Just recently, a controversial media interview by one of the moderators caused the thread to be temporarily locked. Today Dan and Ian discuss why, in some ways, they’re sympathetic to some of the AntiWork Movement’s points but not necessary the ways they go about addressing them: “We have a lot of the same founding premises, maybe in 2007/2008 timeframe, we'd say, ‘Hey, we're gonna quit our jobs and start a lifestyle business because we don't want to be subjected to the poor outcomes, and the poor treatment, a lot of the American workforce sees. But also, we saw a changing tide in technology and globalisation, and a necessity to employ a new strategy to be able to achieve wealth and freedom in this new environment”.

Tiny Seed co-founder Rob Walling joins Dan to share insights about why bootstrapped businesses, particularly Software as a Service (SaaS), are becoming increasingly desirable to investors, partly due to the ‘downside protection’ they offer. They also discuss the pros and cons of serving ‘two sided marketplaces’ and why Rob has recently updated his ‘Stair Step Approach’ to entrepreneurship: “One thing that has changed is that there are a lot more opportunities to do ‘step one’ businesses that are recurring revenue from the start, like Shopify add ons .. If there's already a marketplace in place, it takes a huge amount of complexity off your plate .. it allows you to build the business and then learn the other stuff as you go.”

In this week’s episode Dan and Ian respond to some listener questions, thoughts and comments, including: managing relationships within a team as it grows larger, some updates about Dynamite Jobs, and what’s involved in running masterminds and creating a community: “It's a really bad idea to copy something that's already successful but not copy what they did in the early days to be successful. When we talk about conception, we talk about what value it delivers to a small number of people today … and that value proposition is going to be clear to me on day one, so you got to start with a clear conception”.

Productized or Software as a Service? A hot topic often discussed on TMBA. Of course, there’s no right or wrong answer but on today’s show Brian Casel talks to Dan about the factors that contributed to him changing from one to the other by selling Audience Ops and starting ZipMessage and also the different challenges of the two: “With a productized service, it really was much more about the processes. And building a service that is highly repeatable … but in a SaaS, it's less about process, it's just much more about building. And every single month there's something new. It’s not only just building new features, but what's the next marketing channel that I can try to tap into and unlock a new pocket of customers.” You’ll also hear about Brian’s decision to take funding this time around, having always bootstrapped before and selling Audience Ops without using a broker. Plus, And the return of one our favorite participation games - ‘donate a business idea’.

For our first episode of the New Year Dan talks to one of our favorite writers in the investment space, Sam Dogen, author of Financial Samurai. Started in 2009, just as he was trying to dig his way out of losing 35% of his net worth due to the global financial crisis, Sam has been discussing investment strategies on his blog ever since. But ‘Financial Samurai’ is about so much more than that. In this episode Dan and Sam cover the importance of ‘parlay’ in your career, the downsides of ‘Financial Independence, Retire Early’, how he chooses topics to write about, and much more. “I try to write about stuff people care about. You can write about ‘The Five Best Travel Credit Cards’ but, come on, you just need one or two credit cards. Or you can write about ‘How To Get Paid Full Time While Working Only Two Hours A Day’. I mean, that's so much more interesting.” Disclaimer This episode is a personal discussion, it in no way constitutes financial advice - but you knew that, right?

In today’s show Dan talks to Jake Ryan, CIO of the crypto hedge fund TradeCraft Capital and author of ‘Crypto Asset Investing in the Age of Autonomy’, about why he believes the convergence of cryptocurrency and new technologies is creating a transformational environment as significant as the ‘Information Age’. “What we’ve seen, over the past decade or so, is innovation around automation. And that's been powerful, but it hasn't been transformational. It hasn't altered fundamentally how businesses operate. The last piece of the puzzle really was cryptocurrency, because it allows us to store, process and transfer economic value without human intervention … autonomy is the ultimate competitive advantage”.

2021 has been a landmark year for this show, and for entrepreneurs all around the globe. Though the Covid pandemic has lingered on, we have seen borders slowly start to open up and digital nomads finally start to become nomadic once more. We even closed out the year by connecting with listeners of this show at our Dynamite Circle Holiday Party in Austin last week, the first event of its kind in the United States in more than two years. Through it all, we have been fortunate to talk to some incredibly captivating entrepreneurs on this podcast in 2021 and to hear their stories of resilience, innovation, turmoil, and triumph. In today's episode, we are revisiting some of our favorite moments on the podcast this year. You'll hear about how you can write better content for the internet, insights into the future of finance and money, the unique mental health challenges that entrepreneurs face, and so much more

This week's guest has done something that so many entrepreneurs aspire to do: they have turned a bespoke creative shop into a truly successful internet business. Lisa Norman is the co-founder of Authentic Leather Patch Co. Together with her partner Ian, they have been manufacturing custom leather patches for clients around the US, which they stitch onto a variety of products. We personally love their hats, which are consistently the most sought-after swag at our Dynamite Circle events. Their story is not your typical "4-Hour Workweek" startup tale. What started in a small shop in California, has turned into a business that generated over 2 million in revenue last year. Lisa joins us this week to share the origins of Authentic Leather Patch Co., how they were able to grow their company to the heights it has reached today, how they have navigated the supply chain issues and uncertainty of Covid, and a whole lot more.

Today's episode is all about building, scaling, and ultimately selling an agency. We know agencies don't usually get a lot of love on the show but they can be a great way to get started, and an incredible stepping stone in your career. Jodie Cook describes herself as an "athlete, writer, and entrepreneur", and when she says athlete, she means it. She has represented the UK internationally, and she built her agency as a lifestyle business with the intention of complimenting her career as a competitive powerlifter. When the time came to sell that business, a social media consultancy that was founded around her name, not only did she have a very successful exit, she was able to walk away without any type of earnout period. Jodie joins us on this week's podcast to share her story. You'll hear about her strategies for landing different types of clients, how she was able to remove herself from "The Jodie Show" that she had created in her business, and a whole lot more.

We've been receiving a lot of requests from our listeners lately for an old-school "talking shop" type of episode. This week, we're doing just that, and in typical Tropical MBA fashion, we are focusing on three specific topics that are top of mind as the year comes to a close. We start the episode off with a discussion about whether we believe we are on the correct path to achieve our goal of building an 8-figure business in the near future. The second segment is an in-depth look at the dreaded "I word" that we've been hearing so much about lately: Inflation, and the ramifications that it is having on entrepreneurs everywhere. Finally, we'll be wrapping up the episode with some lighter conversation, as we talk about some of our favorite locations for digital nomads and open up about our event schedule for 2022.

There is nothing we love more than an entrepreneur who operates outside of convention, and this week's guest is no exception. Tynan is a bestselling author and the creator of CruiseSheet, a website that helps travelers find great deals on cruises. He is also a former Pickup Artist or "PUA", and at one point was a professional gambler. We've been following his terrific blog at Tynan.com for many years, and we're fascinated by his ability to remain ahead of the curve when it comes to social trends on the internet. Tynan joins us this week to discuss his history in the controversial Pickup Artist subculture, his unique philosophies on wealth and personal finance, and what it truly means to live outside of your comfort zone.

Today's episode is all about an emotional journey that was born out of this very podcast, and the unique mental health challenges that entrepreneurs face. Bunty SomRoy took a huge risk back in 2015 when he decided to volunteer at one of our Dynamite Circle events in Bangkok. Since then, he has gone through many stages of the entrepreneurial journey; hustling as a freelancer, taking a job at a startup, and finally running a successful business of his own. It wasn't all wine and roses, though. Bunty encountered some harrowing mental health struggles along the way, and he joins us on the podcast this week to share his very personal story. This conversation touches on many of our favorite topics as well, including why it's important to put yourself in the room with seasoned entrepreneurs, how getting a job can be an excellent way to uplevel your business chops, and much more.

When today's guest spoke at our recent event in Mexico City, we were taken by his story because it presented a captivating alternative to the traditional bootstrap business partnerships that we've encountered over the years. Tommy Griffith is the founder of ClickMinded, an online SEO training course, and he has joined us many times over the years to share the story of that business. His story took an unexpected turn when he decided to take on a co-founder, after he had already been operating his business for five years. Tommy joins us on today's show to explain how his feelings of being "cornered and surrounded" led to the decision to seek out a late-stage co-founder, what he was looking for in a business partner, how they negotiated equity, and a whole lot more.

We are once again reaching into the mailbag this week to answer questions from the Tropical MBA audience. We'll be answering questions that our listeners have submitted on a broad range of topics, including how to stay motivated after your business has met your goals, and how you can better your chances of being selected as a speaker at a conference or a podcast guest. You'll also hear some news updates about our own businesses, our crypto portfolio, and a whole lot more.

It was such a breath of fresh air to see so many entrepreneurs in Mexico City last week at DC MEX, our first in-person event since 2019. We had so much fun catching up with old friends, meeting new ones, exchanging stories, and working together to move forward with our businesses. One of our favorite parts about these events is that we get an up-close-and-personal look as all kinds of exciting trends start to emerge in the community. In today's episode, we are highlighting 10 new trends that we've identified in the location-independent community. You'll hear about business models that becoming popular, how entrepreneurs are moving forward in the wake of the pandemic, and hot locations for digital nomads in 2022.

Today's podcast is all about a business model that sometimes gets a bad rap on this show: "the agency". We recently bumped into our friend Johnathan Solorzano at MicroConf in Austin, and he had quite a bit to say about the subject. Johnathan is the founder of Solo Media Group, a remote agency of web developers that focuses primarily on Shopify and WooCommerce projects. We've invited Johnathan onto the show this week to share his thoughts about the upside of running an agency, specifically how it can provide you with unique insights into your market, improve your professional network, and help you start earning revenue fast.

In last week's podcast, Carrie McKeegan shared how she has been using author Gino Wickman's EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System) to help her grow and manage her team. This week, we're diving deeper into the topic by speaking with an entrepreneur who has developed their own customized version of the very same system with impressive results. Neel Parekh is the founder of MaidThis, a business that offers cleaning services for residential homes and AirBNB rentals. Neel joins us today to discuss why he chose to use the EOS system in MaidThis, the steps he has taken to implement it, and how smaller businesses can utilize a "Lite" version of EOS to help manage their teams.

We've spoken at great length on this podcast about how the Covid pandemic has forced us to make changes in the way that we run our businesses. This week, we're going to speak to an entrepreneur who used the landscape of Covid as an opportunity to provide an entirely different educational experience for her children. Carrie McKeegan is the CEO and co-founder of Greenback Expat Tax Services, which helps Americans abroad prepare and file their taxes. She and her husband Dave have been living outside of the United States for many years, raising their children as "Third Culture Kids", a subject that has become increasingly popular in our online community. Carrie joins us this week to talk about what it's like educating children abroad, why she decided it was time to "reinvent education" for her kids, and how the book "Traction" by Gino Wickman has shaped the way that she manages her team.

It has been nearly two years since we've hosted an event for the members of our private membership forum The Dynamite Circle. DCMEX, our first official event since 2019, is just a few short weeks away, and we couldn't be more excited to see so many listeners of this podcast in Mexico City this October. In-person events are so important to those of us in the entrepreneurial community. From the relationships that we develop to the things that we learn together, there are so many reasons why entrepreneurs can benefit from being together in the same place. We've invited our longtime friend Jeff Pecaro back onto the show this week, to reflect on what the past few years have been like without DC events, how things have changed since the last time we've all been together, and why we've chosen Mexico City for our newest event.

Today's episode is all about mental health, depression, anxiety, and the effect that these things can have on the way that we run our businesses. Benny Lewis is the founder of Fluent in 3 months, and he recently opened up about his own struggles at our unofficial DCx event in London a few weeks ago. While his business was "successful" by many traditional metrics, his personal life was far from it. He soon found himself under a mountain of credit card debt, with his marriage to his partner of five years ending in divorce. Benny joins us on this week's podcast to share the details of his personal journey. You'll hear about his battle with clinical depression, the steps he took to get back on his feet, and how his business was able to survive through such a tumultuous period in his life.

This week's episode is full of actionable advice for anyone who is looking to improve their revenue and optimize their sales. We were taking notes throughout the entire conversation with today's guest, and by the time it had ended, it felt like we had taken part in an incredible workshop. John Ainsworth is the founder of Data Driven Marketing, and he has recently started a group that coaches course creators who are looking to increase the revenue of their business. John joins us on today's podcast to share the specific steps that he has been using with his own clients that have helped them see immediate results in their sales funnel.

This week's podcast is inspired by a blog post that we published back in 2014. That post was titled "What is the Real Cost of the Permanent Travel Lifestyle?" and many of the points we touched on in that article are still being discussed by people in our community today. One of those people is Jesse Schoberg. Jesse is the co-founder and CEO of DropInBlog.com, and he is all too familiar with the challenges of bootstrapping his way up the "Lifestyle Ladder". Jesse joins us this week to share his thoughts on location arbitrage, financial freedom, and what he believes the "Lifestyle Ladder" of the permanent traveler looks like in 2021.

We've seen a lot of great conversations take place in our private community The Dynamite Circle as of late. One of our favorites came in the form of a thread titled "Is Digital Nomadism Possible to Combine With Having a Family?" While there were many insightful responses in that thread, one member, in particular, caught our attention. Steven Ladek is the Principal of E-Learning Advocacy for a company called Open LMS. He's also a longtime entrepreneur and has lived outside of the United States for 16 years. Together with his wife Dana, they have raised three children in Hungary, Costa Rica, Thailand, and Mexico. Steven joins us this week to talk about what it's really like to balance parenting with nomadism, and the unique challenges that expat families face around the globe.

We are once again reaching into the mailbag this week to answer some pressing questions from the Tropical MBA audience. This is a somewhat unorthodox episode, as we are "shooting from the hip" on a variety of items that have come across our desk in the past few months. We'll be discussing how to structure your teams (specifically in an agency), tips for staying focused on what's important in your business, and how to avoid the dreaded "D-word" in your business: drama.

Today's guest has been on an incredible journey that touches on so many of our favorite entrepreneurial milestones. Derek Pankaew is the co-founder of Mythia, a financial startup that has partnered with banks to create a debit card aimed exclusively at gamers. He has experienced just about every entrepreneurial path, from running a "4-Hour Workweek" business built on passive income, to seeking out more ambitious projects in the San Francisco startup community, and eventually raising roughly 2.2 million dollars in venture capital funding. Derek joins us this week to take us through the steps of his incredible journey, and to share some of the fundamental differences between bootstrapping and running a venture capital-backed business.

Today's episode is particularly insightful for entrepreneurs who are looking to improve their social media or content marketing game, and for those of us who are interested in the property investment space. Moses Kagan is the co-founder of Adaptive Realty, a boutique real estate private equity firm based in Los Angeles, which has about $200 Million in assets under management. He is also an extremely savvy Twitter user and has successfully leveraged that platform to build meaningful relationships, many of which have led to massive investment deals. Moses joins us this week to talk about his strategies for social media and content marketing, the principles he has used to drive the success of his real estate business, and so much more.

This week, we are once again diving into the world of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. Gerbz is a regular contributor to this podcast and our go-to guy for all things crypto. He is the founder of BitLift.com, and the host of the brand new BitLift podcast, which aims to guide people down the crypto rabbit hole. Gerbz joins us this week to discuss the world of "Decentralized Finance", or "DeFi", where smart contracts and blockchain technology are being used to replace traditional financial institutions. He'll also be answering 5 pressing questions that we have about the state of crypto in 2021. Disclaimer: These are just our opinions, and are presented for informational purposes only. They are not intended to be considered as financial advice.

The term "Digital Nomad" has been beaten to death over the years, but it still means a lot to those of us who have identified with that label. James Clark is certainly one of those people. He's been a full-time nomad since the early 2000s, and we've shared many great memories with him around the world. James is also the author of a brilliant blog called Nomad Notes, where he recently published an article that captured our attention. The post was titled Digital Nomadism History, and in it he chronicles the start of the digital nomad movement through today, touching on all of the most important milestones. James joins us on today's podcast to talk about the history of digital nomadism, what inspired him to write that blog post, and a whole lot more.

Longtime listeners know that Dan and Ian have been business partners for many years, and sometimes it's hard for us to imagine what it would be like to run a business on our own. So many entrepreneurs do choose this path, though, and the quest of a "Solopreneur" can be a long and arduous one. Darren Joe is the director of TouchMBA, a service that matches prospective students with MBA programs. He is also the author of a new book called "The Fail-Safe Solopreneur", where he offers some insights and practical exercises to help navigate the journey of the solopreneur. Darren joins us on today's podcast to talk about his own journey as a solopreneur, what inspired him to write this book, why he has chosen to make Ho Chi Minh his home, and much more.

We aren't usually the type for navel-gazing, but this summer marks an important milestone for us. 10 years ago, our desire to "find our tribe" led us to form the Dynamite Circle, a private membership community of location-independent entrepreneurs. Since then, there have been dozens of DC events all over the globe, and it has truly become a life-changing adventure for so many of the people involved in the community over the last decade. We've invited our good friend Jeff Pecaro on to the podcast this week to look back on the ups and downs of the last ten years of the Dynamite Circle. We are also going to pull back the curtain a bit and discuss the behind-the-scenes details of what it's really like to run a private community and the unique challenges that these types of businesses present.

This week's episode was inspired by a question from a listener. Katie recently graduated with her master's degree, and while she appreciated the insight that we've shared in the past about how to get a remote job, she wanted to know more about what it takes to succeed at a remote position once you get it. This got our wheels spinning, and we put together a list of five important factors that can help employees become "A Players" in their remote positions. This conversation is of keen interest to remote employees and employers alike. You'll hear about the difference between good employees and great ones, why "B players" have been struggling with remote positions, and a whole lot more. We'll also be sharing some news about our first event in nearly two years.

Nick Huber has been on a wild ride since we last spoke to him in 2019. Nick is the host of a podcast called The Sweaty Startup, and at the time he was running a business called Storage Squad, a storage company that helped students store their belongings at universities all across America. Covid threw that business for a loop, but Nick was able to make some fast decisions that allowed him to sell that company and pivot into a new endeavor, a multi-million dollar real estate private equity company called Bolt Storage. Nick joins us on this week's podcast to share what happened when the coronavirus pandemic shut down most of his business, why he has decided to pivot into the real estate business, how he utilizes Twitter to help find investors, and a whole lot more.

Summer is here, and it's starting to feel like things are returning to "normal." For many of us in the community, that means that we're finally going to have the opportunity to pick up our backpacks and return to nomadic life. Jesse Schoberg is the co-founder and CEO of DropInBlog.com, a Software as a Service platform that helps users add blogs to their websites. Jesse has been a full-time nomad for over 7 years, and he joins us on this week's podcast to discuss how he was able to transition from running an agency to creating a product, and why he finds the nomadic life so appealing. If you're ready to get back on the road, or perhaps you've decided that it's finally time to double down on entrepreneurship and go remote, this is the episode for you.

A few weeks ago we said something on this podcast in jest, but one of our more attentive listeners latched onto it. "I find myself some days waking up and saying 'are we going to make it?'" Our good friend John Ainsworth heard this and he reached out to us with a little bit of concern, hoping to find out more. What exactly does it mean when we ask that question, "are we going to make it?" We'll be seeking the answer to that on today's podcast, as well as sharing five principles that we have been employing recently in our quest to grow an 8-figure business. Stick around to the end of the episode to hear a tribute to one of our dearest friends.

We've learned over the years that being a part of a community of like-minded people is one of the most valuable experiences that you can have as an entrepreneur. This was our core motivation for forming The Dynamite Circle, our own online community of location-independent entrepreneurs, back in 2011. We originally built that community on a platform called Ning, largely because it was the best option on the market at the time, and it served us well for many years. Gina Bianchini is the former CEO of Ning. She recently decided to leave that company to create Mighty Networks, a sophisticated platform aimed at helping creators build their own online communities. We've invited Gina on to the podcast today to talk about the challenges of building and running online communities in 2021, how communities on the internet have evolved over the past decade, how to grow an 8-figure remote business, and more.

This week's episode is full of so many recurring themes that we've seen over the years on this podcast, from the unique struggles that SaaS businesses face, to the decision between bootstrapping and funding, and much more. Derrick Reimer has had a long and storied career as a software entrepreneur, but he is perhaps best known as the technical co-founder of Drip, which he built alongside our good friend and former guest Rob Walling. Since exiting Drip three years ago, Derrick jumped headfirst into his next project: a team-chat software named Level, which he ultimately chose to walk away from in 2019. Today, Derrick joins us to talk about why he made the decision to shut down the product that he has spent a year building, as well as the details of his newest project, a sophisticated scheduling tool named SavvyCal.

We've shared a lot of stories on this podcast from entrepreneurs who have started their own businesses, but one strategy we've increasingly seen to accelerate the path to wealth is to purchase a business that already exists and to leverage debt to do so. Today's guest is an expert at that. Shakil Prasla has been acquiring businesses through his company SZ Ventures for nearly a decade. He started with a loan from the Small Business Administration and now has a team of roughly 80 people who are managing niche eCommerce companies. They are selling anything from high-end business cards to their most recent acquisition, Gloves.com. In today's podcast, Shakil shares the story of how he purchased his first business, how he has grown to where he is now, strategies for taking advantage of Small Business Administration loans, and much more.

Today's episode is all about creating content, in particular, how to create written content that people actually want to read. David Perell is the co-founder of an online writing school called Write of Passage, and he is an expert at teaching people how to cultivate ideas and distill them into writing. He's also an extremely savvy marketer, with tons of important insights into the future of social media and internet marketing. David joins us on today's podcast to share specific writing strategies that have worked for him, what it really takes to grow a Twitter account that has the potential to change your business, and a whole lot more.

This week's podcast is a little bit out of the ordinary. While we have been busier than ever this month over at Dynamite Jobs, we still can't help but find things on the internet to get worked up about. We thought it would be fun to take a look at five specific news items and ideas that have recently come across our desk that we just can't stop thinking about. These topics range from how to deal with FOMO, why it's important to get powerbrokers involved in your business, the "muddy middle" of freelancing, and so much more. We hope that these five topics can help inspire you to make the next great move in your location-independent business.

Welcome back to another episode in our long-running series The Re-Readables, where we revisit some of our favorite business books to find out if they stand the test of time. How to Get Rich was written in 2009 by author and entrepreneur Felix Dennis. Felix was the founder of Maxim magazine, and he aimed to create a book about getting rich from "someone who didn't need to write it". The result is incredibly funny, direct, and thought-provoking. Joining us this week is our good friend Coran Woodmass of TheFBABroker.com, who has just read the book for the very first time and is eager to share his thoughts. We'll be discussing the finer points of How to Get Rich, what we believe has aged the best and what has aged the worst, some of our favorite quotes, and much more.

This week's episode features insider knowledge on the processes behind hiring and recruiting remote talent from someone who has been deeply involved in the industry for over a decade. Greg is the Senior Recruiter at Dynamite Jobs, as well as one of The Bossman's closest friends. Avid listeners might remember his name from the "ferret story" that we've shared on this podcast in the past. (We'll touch on it again in this episode as well) His addition to our team has been pivotal as we've been developing our flat-rate done-for-you recruitment services. Greg joins us on the podcast this week to talk about his history in the job recruitment industry, how and where he finds the best candidates for jobs, which skills are in the hottest demand right now, and so much more.

This week's episode is another installment of "The Re-Readables", a series in which we revisit some of our favorite business books to find out if they stand the test of time. Greg Gerber has become something of a regular contributor here on the Podcast. Greg is the founder of BitLift, and he is our go-to guy for all things blockchain and cryptocurrency. Greg joins us this week to talk about a book that has become eerily prescient, particularly among the cryptocurrency crowd. The Sovereign Individual by James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg was published back in 1997, but the insights and topics in the book were not only far ahead of their time, but they remain eerily relevant today. In today's podcast, you'll hear our thoughts on why this book is still so important, why it's important for entrepreneurs to be able to see into the future, and how we can consider the ideas within The Sovereign Individual when attempting to look to the future ourselves.

We've been seeing some truly explosive growth at Dynamite Jobs since the start of 2021, and we've been helping more businesses than ever find great remote talent for their teams. When our friend Brendan Tully reached out to us on Twitter recently with some suggestions on how we could help candidates find better jobs, we knew we had to talk to him. Brendan is the CEO and founder of Robotmedia, which helps small businesses get more traffic and better conversions. He has been doing quite a bit of hiring recently, and he has developed some strong opinions about the hiring process, particularly in how we can better educate job prospects who are applying for remote positions. Brendan joins us today to talk about what he looks for when browsing candidate resumes, what a great resume looks like, and what he believes that candidates can do to have a better chance of getting a great remote job.

What if your knowledge as an entrepreneur could benefit you as an investor? We've talked about cryptocurrency and unorthodox investments in the past on this show, but the traditional financial system is still something of a mystery to a lot of entrepreneurs. Enter Simon Stock. Simon is a longtime friend of ours, who cut his teeth as an entrepreneur running eCommerce businesses. These days, Simon is a full-time investor, and his approach to the stock market is not unlike the way that many of us have run our own businesses. Simon joins us this week to talk about what entrepreneurs can stand to gain from investing in the stock market, what investment strategies have worked for him in the past, and how our entrepreneurial skillset can help us when investing in the traditional financial system. Disclaimer: The ideas discussed in this podcast are for entertainment purposes only and should not be considered financial advice.

Our good friend Noah Kagan recently published a video that caught our attention. Noah is the founder of AppSumo.com, and his YouTube channel has been one of our favorite destinations as of late for thoughtful content about entrepreneurship and creating wealth. That video was called 10 Surprising Things About My Richest Friends, and in it, Noah outlined some specific habits that he has seen time and time again among the wealthiest people in his social circle. We were so enthralled by some of the unorthodox ideas that he presented in that list, that we knew we had to talk to Noah to dig a bit deeper into what he had learned. In today's episode, Noah joins us to discuss the types of habits that the super-wealthy have cultivated, how people become wealthy in the first place, and what we can do to emulate some of these behaviors ourselves.

We always love receiving thoughtful questions from Tropical MBA listeners around the world. A few weeks ago, a winter storm in Texas forced us to re-run one of our favorite episodes of this show called 7 Things to Consider When Selling Your Business, in which Dan and Ian describe the process of selling their eCommerce business back in 2015. Our decision to revisit that particular story elicited a ton of responses from those of you who had never heard it before, and from those who were listening to it with a fresh perspective nearly five years later. This week we are responding to several listener questions about that story, discussing our feelings on the exit nearly five years later, addressing how long it really takes to "fire yourself" from your business, and a whole lot more.

We've been devoting a lot of time on this podcast recently to SaaS or "Software as a Service" businesses. That's because we love the upside of SaaS, including the potential for generating recurring revenue and creating life-changing exits. But is it possible to create a software business without knowing how to code? Alan VanToai is the founder of CrewFire.com, a brand ambassador and influencer management platform. Alan has very limited technical expertise, but that hasn't stopped him from creating and exiting from multiple software ventures. Alan joins us on today's podcast to discuss how you can start a SaaS business without a technical partner, how to attract a technical partner when the time comes, and some personal feelings about one of our very favorite places in the world: Vietnam.

When it comes to entrepreneurship, failure can often be more important than winning. So many of the greatest success stories start with failure because it's what we learn from those failures that ultimately leads us to the success that we seek. Today's guest describes himself as "an expert at failure". Sean Markey started his career as a special education teacher and spent the better part of a decade bouncing between jobs and going into debt, all the while trying to find a way to earn a living online. Despite several high-profile failures, Sean managed to hone his skills at SEO and started creating and building websites that earn affiliate income. He recently sold one of those websites for what he described as "life-changing money". Sean joins us this week to discuss some of his greatest failures, how he was able to learn the skills that ultimately led to his success, and why failure itself is such an important part of the entrepreneurial journey.

When we received an email from today's guest, we were fascinated by his story and we knew that we had to speak to him. Curtis Boyd is the founder of two incredibly unique businesses. The first one is a bespoke consultancy for high-level service companies and the second one is a software as a service business called Objection.co. Both of these businesses were created with a singular goal in mind: to identify and dispute fake reviews on the internet. Curtis began by disputing a single review for his first client and soon found himself competing in an arms race with fake reviewers in what has become a multi-million dollar industry of deception. Curtis joins us this week to discuss how a chance encounter led to his unique consulting career, why he decided to go back to school to learn about artificial intelligence, tips for identifying fake reviews, and a whole lot more.

After a wild and dramatic week in Austin TX, we are excited to return to our regularly scheduled programming and to highlight an entrepreneur with a unique career trajectory. Casey von Neumann started out as many of us do, by freelancing, teaching music classes to students in Atlanta, G.A. As her client base grew, she began scaling her services into a full-blown music school called Eclectic Music and has since built multiple businesses in the education space. It wasn't long though before Casey discovered that she had trapped herself in the day-to-day operations of her business. She was forced to come to the difficult realization that she was a "bad boss" who needed to make fundamental changes to the way that she interacted with her team. Casey has recently begun sharing what she has learned from that experience by coaching entrepreneurs in an area where so many of us struggle - building, keeping, and managing a team. Casey joins us this week to share her entrepreneurial origin story, what it means to be a "bad boss", and how we as entrepreneurs can take steps at the onset of our business to create a better work environment for ourselves and our employees.

Austin, TX was hit by a very unique winter storm preventing the team from putting out a full episode this week.

This week's episode features a story with a lot of familiar themes.  Today's guest started out as so many of us do, with a weekend side hustle.  Amar Ghose is the CEO of ZenMaid, a niche scheduling software for maid services that he co-founded in 2013. When his first attempt at launching a maid services company failed, Amar was able to use what he learned from that experience to pivot into a software product designed for other businesses in the maid services industry. Amar joins us this week to talk about the origins of ZenMaid, what playing online poker has taught him about running a business, how he has applied digital marketing strategies to a blue-collar industry, and a whole lot more.

Today's podcast is about a topic that near and dear to our hearts and one that we've actually written a book about in the past. Longtime listeners know that roughly six years ago we sold our product business, and in the years since we have spent a considerable amount of time processing that decision and examining what happens not only at the core of successful exits but in the aftermath of them as well. John Warrilow is the author of a trilogy of books about this very subject, including Built to Sell, The Automatic Customer, and his most recent book The Art of Selling Your Business. He has also spoken with hundreds of entrepreneurs on his own podcast (including our very own Bossman) about their experiences exiting from their businesses. John joins us on this episode to discuss what makes a successful exit, how to build a business with the intention of selling, what he has learned from speaking to entrepreneurs about exits over the years, and so much more.

Since the start of the year, we've been focusing heavily on stories about starting new businesses as well as what we believe are the "fundamentals" of being an entrepreneur. When we received a video message from today's guest, who was telling us how excited he was to finally join our private membership group The Dynamite Circle, we knew we had to hear more about his story. In just a few short years, Sam Hill has grown his company E Comm CFO to nearly $300,000 in annual revenue, and he was able to do it by straight-up hustling on the freelancing platform Upwork. This week, we've invited Sam onto the podcast to share the origins of his entrepreneurial story, the nuts and bolts of how he was able to grow a business on Upwork, and some of his guiding principles for entrepreneurship.

We've been spending a lot of time over the past few weeks talking about the "business fundamentals", or the everyday habits that we believe entrepreneurs should be practicing. In keeping with that theme, we've decided to revisit some specific concepts that we've spoken about on this show in the past, and that we have seen at the core of so many successful entrepreneurial stories. On today's podcast, we'll be sharing four frameworks for how to get started with a profitable business idea in 2021. We'll be exploring each of these philosophies, as well as citing some specific examples of how each of these frameworks have been used successfully by the entrepreneurs that we have featured on this podcast in the past.

January is one of our favorite months of the year because it's a time for starting over, setting new goals, and making plans for how to achieve them. It's no surprise then that our inbox starts filling up with messages from excited entrepreneurs who are looking for new ways to push forward with their businesses. This week, we're reaching into the mailbag once again to answer questions submitted by Tropical MBA listeners around the world. We'll be discussing a series of topics specifically related to starting new businesses, finding new revenue streams, and making new moves in your business in 2021.

Every once in a while a book comes around that completely captivates us and leaves us with more questions than answers. When we discovered "The Price of Tomorrow" by Jeff Booth, we knew we needed to hear more from the man who wrote it.  Jeff is a Canadian-based entrepreneur who has built and invested in numerous companies, including BuildDirect, which he helped grow to $220 Million dollars in annual revenue. We were absolutely taken by the ideas he presented in his book, as well as Jeff's perspective on the future of the global economy. Jeff joins us on today's podcast for what turned out to be an incredibly poignant conversation about the global financial system, inflation and deflation, technology, and so much more.

This is the time of year when so many people are making goals and resolutions. These types of things are great, but we've always believed that the best way to is to see real progress is to create healthy habits and practices. Successful athletes do this by continuing to practice their fundamentals, the core skills that are most important to their game. Today we're going to be looking at how we can practice our business fundamentals so we can improve our daily habits and set ourselves up for success in the new year. We'll be sharing some specific ways that you can improve your finances, your time, your relationships, and much more.

To say that the last twelve months were unpredictable would be a massive understatement. For ourselves and so many other entrepreneurs, the COVID outbreak not only threw a wrench into our plans for 2020, it completely changed the way that we did business this year. Many of us were operating in industries that were adversely affected by the pandemic on a profound scale. Others, particularly those in eCommerce, experienced one of the most successful years of their entrepreneurial careers. In today's episode, we are revisiting some of the highs and lows of a wild and unforgettable year. You'll hear our opinions on how the year has played out on a broader scale, some insights into how our own businesses have fared over the year, and some highlights from our favorite moments on the podcast in 2020.

Like so many other entrepreneurs, we are fascinated by cryptocurrencies. We are naturally drawn to the technology because we believe it has the potential to cause some serious disruption in the financial sector. You might recall a few years back that we interviewed Nathaniel Popper about his book Digital Gold, which chronicled the origins of Bitcoin. Today's guest has written what feels to us like the next logical chapter of that story. Jeff Roberts is the author of Kings of Crypto, a book that details how the cryptocurrency startup Coinbase drove crypto out of the shadows of the internet and into the mainstream financial industry. Jeff joins us this week to talk about how the book came to fruition, crypto's evolving place within mainstream finance, the ideological battles happening within the space, and so much more.

Even though 2020 has been a difficult year for some entrepreneurs, it has arguably been an all-time year for many people running eCommerce businesses. Longtime listeners know that we first cut our teeth in the eCommerce space, and we love keeping tabs on how that industry continues to evolve and innovate. It's no surprise then that today's guest made his way onto our radar. Aaron Rubin is a longtime veteran of eCommerce. Aaron's growing annoyance with the shipping costs related to his business drove him to create ShipHero, a remote company that offers outsourced shipping fulfillment services and warehouse management software to other eCommerce businesses. Today, more than 1 in every 200 eCommerce packages delivered in America are shipped through ShipHero. Aaron joins us today to share his story. You'll hear how his first eCommerce business nearly went bankrupt, how a need to "scratch his own itch" led to the creation of ShipHero, and Aaron's somewhat insider take on where the eCommerce industry is headed in the future.

We are reaching back into the mailbag this week to answer questions submitted by Tropical MBA listeners around the world. In this edition, we'll be focusing on three specific questions that we believe get to the core of what it means to be resilient as an entrepreneur. We'll be discussing how much money you should save as a "runway" if you plan on leaving your job, the fundamental differences between hiring freelancers and hiring employees, and how you can navigate questionable business advice on the internet. You'll also hear an update about the new products that we are launching over at Dynamite Jobs, and why we are somewhat optimistic about events returning in 2021.

This week's episode is about something that is incredibly near and dear to our hearts: personal blogging and what it means to write on the internet. To help us tell this story, we've invited two of our favorite writers who both have a long and rich experience in the blogging space. Taylor Pearson has been a frequent guest and contributor on this podcast. He is the author of The End of Jobs, and he runs an excellent blog over at TaylorPearson.me that has been required reading for us for quite some time. Amanda Cook is an author, a podcaster, herbalist, and the founder of a business called Wellpreneur. Over the years, she has published online about a wide variety of projects, but the one consistent thing is that she's always had an excellent blog, which you can find at AmandaCook.me. Join us for this round table discussion about the past and future of blogging on the internet, tips for those starting out with a personal blog, some of our favorite blogs to read today, and so much more.

We've been receiving a ton of requests recently from listeners who want to hear an "old school" episode, so this week Dan and Ian are jumping on the horn to talk about the progress that they've made with their remote jobs business Dynamite Jobs. Since the start of the summer, we've been building a new software platform designed to make the hiring process a whole lot easier for entrepreneurs. Just a few weeks ago, we finally started onboarding users into the platform. So far the results have been remarkable, but the challenges immense. In today's episode, we're sharing four specific things that we've learned from creating a brand new software product. You'll hear updates about some key figures in our business, how running a SaaS business has differed from a lot of our other ventures, and a whole lot more.

For our money, there is nobody quite like Kevin Kelly. Not only is he one of the co-founders of Wired Magazine, but he is also the author of some of our favorite pieces of writing about technology, including What Technology Wants, New Rules for the New Economy, and the brilliant essay 1,000 True Fans, which has been discussed countless times on this show over the years. This week, Kevin is joining us for a conversation about technology and how it informs our lives and businesses. On this podcast, Kevin shares his thoughts about why we have to stretch our imaginations more, what we can learn about technology from the Amish, why you should focus on "Being the only", and so much more.

Today's podcast is all about one listener of this show who took the concept of productizing and applied it incredibly well at a very high velocity. More than that, it's a story about endurance, applying systems intelligently, and the power of community. Ian Horley left a long stint at a successful corporate job in 2014 to create his own web agency, but he ultimately found himself incredibly stressed and unhappy. Today, Ian is the founder of HubSnacks, a productized service which offers unlimited tasks on the HubSpot platform for a fixed monthly fee. In this week's episode, Ian joins us to recall his tale of leaving the corporate world, why he struggled with the day-to-day of running an agency, and how productizing has finally allowed him the freedom to create a business on his own terms.

Longtime listeners know that this is typically the time of year that we host DC BKK, our annual Dynamite Circle event in Bangkok. Each year, hundreds of entrepreneurs flock to the capital city of Thailand for the chance to meet and share ideas with like-minded people from across the globe. This has always been sort of a magical time for so many of us in the community, and to say that we are disappointed that we can't take part in it this year would be a huge understatement. It has become something of a tradition that our good friend Jeff Pecaro sits down with us after the event to crack open a beer and talk shop. Jeff is an incredibly talented copywriter and the founder of MostlyStories.com. He is also the man behind the content at most of our in-person events. This year, Jeff is joining us virtually on the podcast to commiserate and share some of our favorite memories, thoughts, and insights into the history of DCBKK.

It goes without saying that as internet entrepreneurs, we are fascinated by the future of money, and it's hard to talk about the future of money without talking about cryptocurrency. Greg Gerber is our go-to guy when it comes to simplifying the complicated world of crypto. We've invited Greg back on to the show this week to talk about the state of crypto in 2020. As this conversation unfolds, you'll hear about the philosophical differences between Bitcoin and Ethereum, the emerging lending industry in the crypto space, and how Greg hopes to help more people go down the crypto rabbit hole with his newest venture, BitLift. Disclaimer: These are just our opinions, and are presented for informational purposes only. They are not intended to be considered as financial advice.

We've been devoting a lot of time to talking about software businesses in recent weeks. One of the reasons we are so fascinated by them is that despite how difficult it can be to start one, these types of businesses can have tremendous upside. Jordan Gal is the founder of CartHook, a software company that helps Shopify merchants present offers to shoppers at checkout. Jordan first reached out to us back in 2015 with an investment opportunity (and we turned him down!). It really shouldn't come as a surprise then that Carthook has grown exponentially in the years since, with its user base having made more than a billion dollars worth of sales. Jordan joins us on today's podcast to share the story of CartHook.

Today's episode is all about software startups, and there are very few people more capable or qualified to talk about them than today's guest. Simon Payne first joined us on this podcast back in 2016 to talk about his role as the technical co-founder of Leadpages. Since leaving Leadpages in 2016, Simon has gone on to found multiple software companies, including a video tool called Convert Player, and a ticketing tool that we regularly use in our own business called EventsFrame. But, as you will hear on today's podcast, the results of these endeavors have ultimately been a mixed bag.  Simon joins us this week to share the details of his entrepreneurial journey over the last few years, to discuss how the relationships between developers and marketers can make or break a software business, and to explain why he's recently decided to help us build our own software platform at Dynamite Jobs.

Today's episode features a longtime friend and mentor who shared an idea with us many years ago that changed the way that we thought about entrepreneurship. David McKeegan and his wife Carrie are the founders of Greenback Expat Tax Services. David first joined us on the podcast back in 2013, and he is singlehandedly responsible for introducing us to one of our all-time favorite concepts, The 1,000 Day Principle. This idea that it takes 1,000 days of full-time effort to replace the income from your day job has since been dissected on this podcast countless times over the years. David joins us this week to fill us in on the many developments in his business, to share his personal tale of an entrepreneurial identity crisis, and to discuss the lasting legacy of The 1,000 Day Principle.

We talk quite a bit on this podcast about services businesses and the sorts of problems that they seek to solve for their customers.  You may recall that Eagan Heath joined us to share his thoughts about this back in 2018 on an episode titled "The Knowledge Gap vs. The Efficiency Gap Revisited". In that episode, we spoke about whether it is better to serve your customers by filling a "knowledge gap" and teaching them why they need your services or to fill an "efficiency gap" by helping them optimize something that they are already doing. Since then, Eagan and his team have decided to move on from filling "knowledge gaps" for local businesses in Wisconsin and to focus on servicing "efficiency gaps" by providing digital marketing services to eCommerce businesses with his new company Caravan Digital. Eagan joins us this week to share the reasons he's chosen to change his approach to this philosophy and why he feels like the "efficiency gap" strategy has ultimately prevailed.

One of the promises of entrepreneurship is that there are opportunities to make money all around us if we can learn how to recognize them. Laurence Taylor has recognized some of them himself. Laurence and his wife are the founders of HipTen, a SwaS (Software with a Service) consultancy that works exclusively on the Salesforce platform for the insurance industry. Prior to getting into that niche, they were struggling, as many small startups do, to find their place in the market. Laurence joins us today to talk about the pros and cons of SwaS startups, what it's like working with your spouse, how they saw an opportunity work in the insurance industry, and much more.

We love hearing from listeners of this show. We put out the call a few weeks ago for listeners to send us your stories, and you responded to us in abundance. Our mailbox has been positively chock full of listener voicemails about all kinds of topics. In today's episode, we'll be listening to several of those voicemails and weighing in with our own thoughts and observations. The topics range from how much location really matters, why hustle is the ultimate entrepreneurial muscle, the value of being an "intrapreneur", and love in the age of COVID.

One of our favorite things about this podcast is that we get to talk to people who have inspired us and entertained us over the years. Matt Farah is certainly one of those people. Matt is somewhat of a pioneer in the automotive journalism community on the internet. His long-running YouTube channel The Smoking Tire and his podcast of the same name are both incredibly popular, and among our very favorites. Matt was gracious enough to talk to us on this podcast back in 2016 about breaking through on YouTube, and since we last spoke to Matt a lot has changed in his life. Matt joins us today to talk about how his YouTube channel and podcast have grown over the last four years, and why he is choosing to diversify the money that he earned on YouTube into a somewhat unorthodox brick-and-mortar investment.

A few weeks ago on this podcast, we mentioned that we had started writing a new book based around The 1,000 Day Principle, a recurring topic we've talked about many times on this podcast. In doing research for that book, a few common themes have started to become apparent to us. There are several different paths to becoming wealthy, some of which follow traditional social norms, and others exist in the fringes of society that many listeners of this show might find themselves in. On today's podcast, we are discussing three specific strategies for acquiring wealth that we have come across time and again. These are by no means the only ways to become wealthy, but they are three of the most common methods that we have seen people use to get there. Stick around to the end of the episode to hear some thoughtful and funny listener messages we received in response to last week’s call for ‘Coronavirus related stories’, including one listener who shares the very real challenges of working from home with small children.

As the dog days of summer are coming to a close, we've decided to address several interesting topics that have come across our desk throughout the month of August. One such topic came in the form of an article by entrepreneur and author James Altucher, who discussed why he thinks ‘NYC is dead forever’. He argues that COVID-19’s effects on the business and social dynamics of New York are so far-reaching that the city will never recover. But we see it a bit differently - less as a terminal decline and more as an opportunity for reinvention. We'll also be discussing some fundamental issues that we are seeing some remote job seekers face now that so-called ‘digital nomads’ have had their wings clipped. Finally, you'll hear some of our thoughts on the "new normal" and what the future might look like for digital nomads in the wake of COVID-19.

In past episodes, we've talked about "Founder Fit", or the idea that you should be running the type of business that is best suited to your own personality and lifestyle. But what happens if you're not doing that? It turns out that having a bad fit between you and what you're building can potentially lead to a whole lot of pain. Jesse Hanley is all too familiar with this experience. Jesse is the founder of an agency called TalentTree, and he recently made the decision to shift the focus of his agency to a productized service model in order to fund the development and growth of his new software company Bento. Jesse joins us this week to share the emotional toll he experienced running that agency, why he decided to make drastic changes to his business to improve his quality of life, and how he has been able to find a large portion of his clientele on a rather unexpected platform.

Rob Walling is no stranger to many of the listeners of this show. Rob is the host of a brilliant podcast called Startups for the Rest of Us, where he has shared stories of entrepreneurial ingenuity and struggle, and many concepts that we have discussed on this show have origins on that podcast. He is also the co-founder of a conference called MicroConf, which is a community and conference for bootstrap SaaS founders. After a rather impressive exit with his last startup, Drip, Rob has moved on to his newest project, an accelerator designed for early-stage SaaS startups called TinySeed. Rob joins us this week to discuss some high-level concepts like the emotional challenges of entrepreneurship, to finer details like finding the right pricing models, and how they decided on the right deal terms for TinySeed companies.

On today's podcast, we are sharing some personal updates, as well as three specific updates about our core businesses. We are also announcing that for the first time in nearly five years, we are hiring a Community Facilitator for our private membership group The Dynamite Circle. Later on in the episode, we'll be exploring the idea of the moment in a business that Seth Godin refers to as "The Dip". You'll hear why this "middle period" of running a business is so difficult, how it feels to be in that dip, and why so many people just can't get out of it.

Productized services have long been a subject of discussion on this podcast. They are a relatively attractive business model, especially among first-time entrepreneurs, and we've shared many examples over the years of how to create these kinds of businesses and scale them. Meryl Johnston, founder of the online bookkeeping firm Bean Ninjas, recently started a rather lively debate in the members' forum of our online community The Dynamite Circle with a post titled, ‘Are Productized Services Overrated?’ We've invited Meryl on to the show to find out why she decided to raise that question and to hear her thoughts on a business model that she has personally followed for the last five years. Meryl joins us today to discuss what a productized service really is, the strengths and weaknesses of the model, and why she's wondering whether her own company needs to evolve past it.

Christopher Gimmer is the Co-Founder and CEO of Snappa, a SaaS (Software as a Service) business that allows users to create online graphics quickly and easily. Christopher caught our attention recently when he opened up with a post on Twitter about the emotional cost of being an entrepreneur. We invited Christopher onto the podcast this week to discuss his own journey as an entrepreneur, how difficult it can be for entrepreneurs to find and maintain what he calls "a healthy equilibrium", and how he works to achieve his own balance. You'll also hear why Christopher feels that having a business partner has been key to Snappa’s eventual success and what he sees as the pros and cons of SaaS businesses.

It started with an innocuous-looking image of a yellow aeroplane and ended with a number of threatening letters from a law firm on behalf of the travel site Expedia. In today’s episode, we bring you the denouement of the story of why we decided to remove ‘that plane’ from our branding. And, to find out whether we really needed to do it, we’ve invited back our good friend and Intellectual Property (IP) attorney Sarah Kornblet Waldbuesser from Destination Legal. You'll also hear Sarah's thoughts on the best way to protect your brand or logo, how to differentiate between "trademark scams" and what should be taken seriously, and a whole lot more.

On today's podcast, we're excited to finally reveal that our remote jobs platform Dynamite Jobs is officially a ".com business". After three years of running the company with a .co domain, that .com marks a huge symbolic change for our company, but it didn't come cheap. Enter Rob Barbour of DomainSOS.com and DomainVIP.com. Rob has worked in the domain space for over twenty years and he owns a substantial portfolio of his own domains. He also specializes in helping people acquire domains that are difficult to obtain. In this week's podcast, Rob joins us to talk about his history as a domain broker, how the industry has changed over 20 years, and how he helped us secure DynamiteJobs.com for our business.

If we had to pick one word as our greatest motivation, it’s ‘freedom’. Freedom to live life on our terms, where we want, with the people we choose. Ali Marsland is the director of ‘The Effective English Company’. Ali began chasing her own freedom at the age of 18, as she traveled around the world for a year before embarking on a successful career in corporate communications. The corporate world eventually made her feel trapped, and when the opportunity arose to become a freelancer, she decided to chase that freedom once more. Ali joins us on this week's podcast to describe how she ‘stair-stepped’ her way into entrepreneurship by first becoming an on-site freelancer to outsourcing work, and eventually growing her own successful agency.

At the beginning of the year, we recorded a podcast where we outlined some of our business goals and aspirations for 2020. We're now halfway through the year, and it's safe to say these past six months have been a period of disruption for entrepreneurs all over the world. Given the unexpected circumstances that we've all experienced, we thought it would be interesting to revisit those goals that we shared on this podcast back in January. In today's episode, we're looking back at how our business goals have played out thus far in 2020, how our plans have changed since we first recorded that podcast, and what we've learned from the last six months.

In 2009, we published an episode of this podcast called 10 Great Software and Tech Services We Use to Run Our Business. Over 10 years later, we've been challenged by one of our listeners to revisit that list and to talk about the core software and services that we are using to run our company today. In this week's episode, we are sharing ten of the most important tools and services that we are using behind the scenes in our business. You'll hear the specifics of how we are using these tools, and why they have become an everyday part of our business in 2020. 

We've talked about the '1,000 Day Principle' at great length on this podcast. The idea is that it takes around three years of full-time effort for an entrepreneur to replace the income from their day job. But what does that principle look like in practice?  Johnathan Solorzano is the founder of Solo Media Group Inc., a remote agency of web developers that are primarily based in Latin America. Johnathan joins us this week to share the story of his first 1,000 days running an agency, how he has found clients and fostered relationships with them, and where he plans on focusing his energy for the next 1,000 days.

Here at the TropicalMBA podcast we have been inspired and motivated by the stories of resilience and adaptation that you’ve been sending us. One such story that we received recently resonated strongly with us, in part because it was about an industry that we have been working in for years. William Griggs created Virtual Reality Rental just over four years ago. He built a ten-person team that brought VR experiences to conferences, parties, and other corporate events across the United States. Then COVID-19 struck and it all collapsed literally overnight, forcing him to reduce his staff by more than half. William joins us today to share his strategy for waiting out the current uncertainty in the events industry, and how he's challenging his remaining team to grow into the new roles that are necessary for these times.

What do you do when you lose over half your Annual Recurring Revenue and test positive for Coronavirus, all within 48 hours? Jim Huffman described this exact experience in a post on his personal blog titled "The Hardest Day of My Career". Jim is the CEO of GrowthHit and co-creator of FunnelTeardowns, and when we discovered his blog post we knew we had to talk to him. Jim joins us on today's podcast to share his insights on how to create a successful marketing agency that aligns with your lifestyle, the strategies he deployed to save his company after facing such a dramatic event, and his plans for the future in the 'new normal'.

"Dropshipping" is one of the most used and abused terms in Digital Nomad circles. It refers to the practice of selling items without keeping inventory on hand, relying instead on a third-party manufacturer to ship the items directly to the customer. The term recently reached a much broader audience through a widely-shared piece in Wired magazine by Sirin Kale titled “‘It’s bullshit’: Inside the weird, get-rich-quick world of dropshipping”. On today's podcast, Dan and Ian weigh in with some of their own thoughts about the article, whether dropshipping can be used to create long-term success, and the pros and cons of the business model itself.

In our book Before the Exit, we reflected on many 'thought experiments' that we wished we had run before we sold our business in 2015. One of those experiments was called 'The Mediocre CEO Test', which questioned whether it was smarter to hire someone to run your business than it was to sell it. Today's guest did just that. JP Ji is the founder of Pro Teeth Guard, an eCommerce business that manufactures custom dental mouth guards. When JP decided to shift his focus away from Pro Teeth Guard, he chose to hire a General Manager to take over the day-day-day operations of the business. In today's podcast, you'll hear why JP decided to hire a general manager, the challenges of finding the right candidate, and why that relationship ultimately didn't pan out. 

One of the most widely read and recommended books about business management is Gino Wickman’s 'Traction'. When Gino’s team reached out to say that he had a new book coming out that was aimed at helping would-be and early-stage entrepreneurs, we jumped at the opportunity to invite Gino on to the podcast to talk about it. On today's podcast, Ian sits down with Gino to discuss the ideas raised in his new book, ‘Entrepreneurial Leap’. In this wide-ranging conversation, you'll hear Gino's thoughts on the value of going to college, whether you should be following the passion or the money, and why not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur.

Whether you’re saving a runway for a new business, or you need to cut your expenses to the bone due to the current economic climate, we know a lot of people are being forced to make some difficult financial decisions right now.  On today's podcast, we are revisiting one of our most popular concepts, and something that we've discussed many times over the years as a sure-fire way for an entrepreneur to live a little more frugally. We're talking once again about the "Entrepreneurmobile", or how you can get a reliable car that is generally inexpensive to maintain and fix, and that can save you a lot of money.  In this episode, we take a comprehensive look at what makes a great Entrepreneurmobile, which cars you should avoid, 10 cars that are great deals under $10K, and some luxury vehicles that are extremely affordable as well. 

One of the things we love about our online community of entrepreneurs, the Dynamite Circle, is that the members of that community are not only incredibly globalized but oftentimes deeply ingrained in the cultures and economics of the places they live. Brian Miller is the founder of Easy China Warehouse, a third-party logistics company that helps entrepreneurs who sell online consolidate products in China. Brian was in a rare position where he was able to see the Coronavirus unfolding as he lived and worked in Shenzhen, China. Brian joins us today to talk about his experience in China as the virus began to spread, the trajectory that China has been on since January, and what the future could possibly look like for the rest of the world.

In this week's episode, we've invited one of our favorite bloggers and thinkers to pull up a virtual chair and share some of the burning issues he’s been writing about. Nat Eliason is the founder and CEO of a marketing agency called Growth Machine, as well as the author of a fantastic blog at NatEliason.com. Nat is not only a successful agency owner, but he has some incredibly fascinating theories about entrepreneurship and scaling a multi-million dollar agency that we were just so excited to pick his brain about. Nat joins us this week for a wide-ranging discussion, where he opens up about his aversions to "struggle porn", the distinction between money and wealth, and the true nuts and bolts of running a successful agency.

One of the silver linings to the strange times that we've been living through in the past few weeks, is that we've been able to reach out to some of the brightest minds in our community and get a sense of how they have been responding to the crisis. Travis Jamison is no stranger to longtime listeners of this show. Travis is a bonafide SEO expert and the founder of Smash Digital. He has also successfully exited a business for 8 figures and is a very active investor as well. Travis recently shared something of an essay on Twitter that we felt captured a lot of our feelings about the current situation that we are all facing. We invited Travis on to the show today to explain those thoughts a bit further and to talk about how we might survive the economic downturn that so many of us are bracing for in the coming months.

As we've been practicing social distancing, the majority of our discussions about business and entrepreneurship keep coming back to the COVID-19 outbreak. In this week's podcast, we've invited one of the most prescient minds about this topic on to the show. Taylor Pearson is a long time friend of the show and has been sounding alarms about the coronavirus for much longer than most. Like us, Taylor is a huge fan of the writings of Nassim Taleb and joins us today to talk about why Taleb's writing has been so relevant in thinking about the ongoing crisis, the global economic impact of events like this, and what the future might hold for us in a post-outbreak world.

The topic of today's podcast is unavoidable. We simply have to address one of the biggest stories of our lifetime, the global shutdown brought about by Coronavirus, or Covid-19. The impact that this pandemic has had on businesses around the globe, including our own, has been enormous. In today's podcast, Dan and Ian are talking about their decision to cancel DC Austin, which would have brought 150 entrepreneurs from around the globe to the city of Austin, Texas in just a few short weeks. You'll also hear our thoughts on the economic implications of the virus, as well as the challenges and opportunities that such a radical event presents for entrepreneurs everywhere.

In today's episode, we are reaching into the TMBA mailbag yet again and responding to some interesting questions and comments we've received from our listeners. There is a word that gets tossed around in the entrepreneurial community, and it's actually something that is worn as a sort of badge of honor. We see it on t-shirts and social media, and it's usually represented by entrepreneurs who have rejected working for an employer at a job where they held no equity. But is it really a good thing to be "Unemployable?" You'll hear our thoughts about that on today's episode, as well as some insight for people who have become frustrated by meet-ups and networking events that aren't providing enough value.

One of the biggest challenges of running a remote team is communication. After all, "watercooler conversations" rarely happen when your team is scattered across the globe. Joe Magnotti is the co-founder of Empire Flippers, a marketplace for buying and selling online businesses. Together with his partner Justin Cooke, they have built a team of over 70 people who are entirely location independent and are located all over the world. Joe joins us on today's podcast to talk about his experience managing a remote team, and how holding twice-annual team retreats has been paramount to the success of Empire Flippers.

We've recently been revisiting some of our favorite business books on this podcast as part of a series we like to call "The Re-Readables". What makes this week's installment of that series so special is that we have been joined by the author of the book himself. M.J. DeMarco wrote The Millionaire Fastlane in 2010, and since then, the book has continued to grow in popularity. The basic premise of the book is that the most successful people have found ways to step off of the "slow lane" or the "sidewalk" to join the "fast lane", usually through entrepreneurial endeavors. M.J. joins us today to talk about the legacy of The Millionaire Fastlane, why it is still as relevant today as it was when it was released, his thoughts on the FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) movement, and much more.

Will Roman is a veteran entrepreneur who has worked in a number of different fields including eCommerce, physical products, software, and even cryptocurrency. At the end of last year, Will made the decision to leave his crypto exchange business to start Chisos, a product company that manufactures and sells designer cowboy boots. Will joins us on the podcast this week to talk about his stressful exit from that company, why he decided to start Chisos, what he has learned from his first year of manufacturing boots, and a whole lot more. 

We often talk about the "1,000 Day Principle" or the idea that it will take about 1,000 days to get a new business off the ground before it replaces the income from your 9-to-5. But what happens after those 1,000 Days? Chris Cage's 1,000 Day Journey has been well-documented on previous episodes of this podcast. Chris is the founder of Greenbelly, a company that manufactures high-quality meal bars for hikers. Greenbelly is now over 5 years old, and Chris is facing a whole new set of challenges. Chris joins us this week to talk about how he has handled the "Middle Game" of entrepreneurship. You'll hear about his first full-time hire, how he has created a repeatable process for getting clients, why he is taking time away from the business, and much more.

One of our favorite things to do on this podcast is follow up on some of the entrepreneurial stories that we've covered in the past. This time last year, we recorded a podcast with Tommy Joiner. In that episode, Tommy spoke about the genesis of his productized content generation service ContentPros. Fast forward a year and Tommy has made some massive changes in his life. Not only has he sold ContentPros, but he also chose to part ways with his business partner. In today's episode, Tommy returns to explain why he decided to move on from ContentPros and to share some insights into the exit process as well.

Entrepreneurship is something of a gamble, and perhaps very few people understand that better than today's guest. Mike Jackness is a widely respected figure among the eCommerce community and is the host of a brilliant podcast called ECommCrew. Mike has owned and exited several successful businesses, the most popular of which being ColorIt, which manufactured and sold coloring books aimed at adults. On today's podcast, Mike joins us to talk about the highs and lows of his entrepreneurial career. You'll hear how an obsession with poker turned into Mike's first major foray into entrepreneurship, how he founded and eventually sold ColorIt, and some of the biggest pitfalls that entrepreneurs face in the eCommerce space today.

We here at the Tropical MBA are always fascinated with people who raise questions that challenge the social narratives that most people follow. It's no wonder then that Christoper Ryan caught our attention. Christopher is a New York Times bestselling author, the host of a brilliant podcast called Tangentially Speaking, and is perhaps best known for his 2010 book Sex at Dawn. Christopher recently published a new book called Civilized to Death, which argues that so-called "progress" has actually adversely affected the way we live. He joins us today to talk about his unconventional path to becoming a published author, and why civilization might not represent progress.

Last week, we spoke to Mark Brenwall about why he left his job in San Francisco to move to Asia and start WOD Nation, an Amazon FBA business that sells CrossFit products. Today's podcast is the conclusion of that interview and in it, we speak specifically about Mark's entrepreneurial "code". In this conversation, Mark shares some of his unorthodox business philosophies, as well as some specific insights into the Amazon FBA platform, and why he almost decided to sell his business last year.

Mark Brenwall is the founder of WOD Nation, an Amazon FBA business that sells CrossFit products. A few years ago, Mark joined us for one of our favorite conversations we've had on this podcast in an episode called "The Power of Under Optimization". That episode was all about Mark's unconventional business approach, which prioritizes lifestyle and happiness over aggressive growth. Today's episode is the first in a two-part series where we revisit Mark's story. In this first part, we explore some of the personal and professional circumstances that led Mark to leave a seemingly great life in the United States for the unknown.

A year ago, we kicked off 2019 with a somewhat self-indulgent podcast full of updates on our ongoing projects as well as some of our business goals for the year. As the decade draws to a close, we’re taking stock of the year and asking ourselves “did we meet those expectations”? In today's episode, we are revisiting what we accomplished (and failed to accomplish) in 2019, as well as showcasing some of our business highlights from the year. Stick around to the end of the episode to hear five specific plans and goals that we have in store for our projects in 2020.

As we prepare to celebrate the holiday season, we thought it would be fun to revisit some of our most memorable moments from the podcast in 2019. In this week's episode, you'll hear highlights from some of our favorite interviews, as well as our thoughts on five specific entrepreneurial themes that continue to resonate with us as the year comes to a close. Make sure to stick around until the end to hear some outtakes from recording the podcast in 2019.

Some entrepreneurs have a secret. Adopting a pseudonym, or a "pen name", is a common practice on the internet. Even one of the hosts of this show, Dan Andrews, has been using a pseudonym for many years. Some people do it because their name is difficult to pronounce, others are worried about being stalked, or because they want to improve their Google rankings. We've also spoken to people who regret having taken a "fake identity", and believe it has started to adversely affect their lives. In today's episode, you will hear from several entrepreneurs who have adopted pseudonyms as they share the reasons why they chose to do it, the pros and cons of taking on a pseudonym, and much more.

For the first time in a decade, Dan and Ian are recording a podcast from one of their favorite places in the world, the Philippines. The Philippines has been an integral part of their business for many years, and it continues to have a strong influence on the lives of so many entrepreneurs in the location-independent community. On today's podcast, they'll be discussing their history in the Philippines, what the country has meant to their business, and whether it still makes sense for entrepreneurs to build teams in the Philippines in 2019.

We've seen a lot of conversations recently in the location independent lifestyle space about something we like to call "The Digital Nomad Lie". The general concept is that being location independent is not everything that it's cracked up to be, and that the idea that you can have it all while sipping coconuts on the beach is simply a myth. It's not surprising then that we've seen a rise in blogs and think pieces by digital nomads that are exhausted from travel and yearning to settle down. But why are people feeling this way? At the heart of it, there may be many misconceptions and mistakes that we can make in the way that we think about travel. We've invited our good friend and esteemed author Kyla Gardner on to the show this week to share some of her experiences living a location independent lifestyle, her biggest travel mistakes, and whether the promise of the digital nomad lifestyle is fact or fiction.

So many people listening to this podcast are looking for the kind of freedom that allows them to travel the world. It's no wonder then that Recreational Vehicles or "RVs" have become increasingly popular in the entrepreneurial space in recent years. If you recall, last year we spoke to Ian's friend and mentor Corey Reueth on this podcast about his experiences buying and selling cars and recreational vehicles. In today's episode, Corey and Ian are having an in-depth discussion about the RV lifestyle. You'll hear about the different types of RVs on the market, the benefits and drawbacks to each of them, how much it costs to purchase an RV, and what RV living actually looks like.

Today's podcast is another installment of our ongoing series called "The Re-Readables", where we revisit some of our favorite business books to see if they stand the test of time. This week, we've invited author and online entrepreneur Kyla Gardner back on to the show to talk about the classic marketing book Purple Cow by Seth Godin. Kyla joins us this week to discuss which ideas from Purple Cow have aged the best, which ideas have aged the worst, and how we have utilized some of the "Purple Cow" strategies in our own entrepreneurial careers. 

We first spoke to Kevin Graham on this podcast two years ago in what ended up becoming a somewhat controversial episode about building generational wealth on Amazon. Since then, it has become a sort of annual tradition for Kevin to return to the show and update us about his entrepreneurial journey. Last year, he shared his thoughts on "The Helsinki Bus Theory" and his decision to start a web hosting business, which has since become SiteArrow. Since we last spoke, Kevin had adopted a bold strategy of rapid growth, acquiring 9 different businesses in less than a year. That plan ended up being more than he bargained for, though, and he found himself working long hours, getting into unhealthy habits, and ultimately feeling extremely burned out. Kevin joins us today to talk about the perils of chasing growth, the steps that he's taken to course-correct, and the three principles that he has adopted to avoid getting burned out in the future.

A few weeks ago, we hosted hundreds of listeners of this podcast in Bangkok for our eighth annual DC BKK event. Every year we learn more about the entrepreneurs that join us in Thailand. We get to have conversations with some extraordinary people, hear about their successes and their struggles, and get an inside look at the way that internet businesses are being run. On this week's episode, we are sharing five specific insights that we took away from our experience in Bangkok this year, and discussing what those insights mean about the entrepreneurial community at large in 2019.

A few weeks ago, we shared a conversation about "Sweaty Startups", and how we can use internet business skills to compete and win in traditional, physical services industries. This topic really struck a chord, and we've received a ton of feedback from listeners who want to hear more about these kinds of opportunities. Enter Eric Gilbert Williams, an entrepreneur who grew his Canadian-based roofing company to 6 million dollars in annual revenue before he sold it last year. In his teenage years, Eric dropped out of high school and got arrested for selling drugs before eventually turning to entrepreneurship as a source of redemption. Eric joins us on today's podcast to share his remarkable story.

In last week's episode, we took a look at the early days of Dan and Ian's relationship and the circumstances that led to their business partnership. Today's podcast is the second part of that series, and it's all about the next chapter. In this episode, you'll hear how Dan and Ian bought their business partner out of their product company, the origins of this podcast, how they started their membership community The Dynamite Circle, and much more.

In the ten years that Dan and Ian have been recording this podcast, the number one thing that they hear from listeners is that they want to know more about their story. Today's episode is the first part of a two-part documentary series where Dan and Ian open up about their own personal history. In this episode, you will hear why they each decided to move to San Diego, California, the circumstances that led to their meeting, how they became friends, and ultimately how they decided to become business partners.

One of Dan and Ian's favorite things to do is to reach into the mailbag to answer questions from listeners of this show and today they are doing just that. On this week's podcast, you'll hear answers to listener-submitted questions on a variety of topics including how to think about cash flow in your business, what makes a good entrepreneurmobile in 2019, and more. Stick around until the end of the episode for an in-depth update on Dynamite Deals.

A few weeks ago, Dan and Ian invited Nick Huber on to the show to talk about his storage business Storage Squad. During that conversation, Nick shared the story of how he built a successful "old school" business by applying his technical knowledge to a less competitive market. After we stopped recording, that conversation took an interesting turn when Nick started opening up to us about his philosophy for building labor-intensive businesses that he likes to call "Sweaty Startups". On today's podcast, we've invited Nick back to share some of those philosophies, with a focus on the types of business models that he is attracted to, as well as the ones that he isn't particularly fond of.

Dan and Ian opened up on this podcast recently about a cease and desist letter that they received. Today's guest heard that episode and was compelled to share his own story about a similar legal battle. Dylan Smith is the co-founder of Keg Smiths (https://www.kegsmiths.com/), a company that manufactures and sells mini beer kegs, and he has received his fair share of cease and desist letters in his entrepreneurial career. Dylan joins us this week to share a riveting story about how a cease and desist letter led to his products being removed from Amazon, the ramifications of that experience, and how he was able to ultimately win out and get his products back on Amazon. Make sure to stick around until the end of the podcast to hear this week's Dynamite Deal (https://dynamitedeals.co/), which includes a deep discount for legal services for entrepreneurs. 

Today's episode features an in-depth look into one particular entrepreneurial journey that Dan and Ian have been following for a decade. Longtime listeners will certainly be familiar with Travis Jamison. Travis has joined us on this show many times in the past, and you've likely heard ads for his newest company Smash Digital on the show in recent weeks. Travis has been on a pretty epic journey since we first met, not just living and working in many countries, but he has become a hugely successful entrepreneur as well. We invited Travis back on to the show this week to share his unbelievable story. You'll hear how he started a supplement company and scaled it almost entirely through SEO, how he transitioned to SEO services, how he then shifted into SEO for Amazon sellers with AMZ Tracker, and how he made some judicious exits from those companies, which has allowed him to take equity stakes in a dozen or more start-ups with the investment arm of his new company.

One of Dan and Ian's favorite things to talk about on this show is the role that technology plays in our lives. They are particularly curious about the ways that new technology and social media can affect our ability to be productive and successful entrepreneurs. Today's guest is a bonafide expert when it comes to technological addiction and how to fight it. Nir Eyal is an accomplished and thoughtful writer on the topic of behavioral design. Nir gained notoriety for writing the book Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products and he is also the author of an excellent blog at NirAndFar.com. We have invited him on to the podcast today to talk about his new book Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life. Indistractable is all about making sure technology takes an appropriate place in your life, and how we can find more space in our own lives to be present and productive. Stick around to the end of the show to hear a brand new feature on this podcast, which includes a very exclusive offer for listeners of this show.

A listener of this podcast recently reached out to Dan and Ian to let them know what he was up to. They were so inspired by his story of "old-school" entrepreneurship that they knew they needed to invite him on to the show to share it. Nick Huber is one of the founders of Storage Squad, a storage company that he started with his business partner Dan in 2011 and has grown to nearly 3 million dollars in sales. Recently, they have begun diversifying into self-storage as well. Nick joins us this week to share the story of Storage Squad, how he and Dan got it off the ground while they were still in college, how they have expanded it to other colleges throughout the United States, and the advantages of running a location-dependent business remotely.

Dan and Ian are well aware that the entrepreneurial journey isn't made up entirely of success stories. Many entrepreneurs listening to this podcast are struggling right now. They might be on the fence about becoming an entrepreneur or reconsidering their decision to become one in the first place. We've talked many times on this podcast about the "1,000 Day Rule"; this idea that it takes roughly 1,000 days of serious hard work to replace the money that you make from your job. Anders Ronnau recently posted in our private community The Dynamite Circle about his own twist on this idea, which he calls "The 4,000 Day Rule". He proposes that after 4,000 days, or roughly ten years, if you haven't had meaningful success building a business for yourself, then you probably need to get a job. We've invited Anders on to the show this week to talk about that rule and to share his own story about how running a business isolated him, and why he ultimately decided he needed to stop being an entrepreneur.

Today's episode is all about something that Dan and Ian still find magical about entrepreneurship. That is, if you find the right thing to write about, the internet will still allow you to make a great living off of it. This week's guest was able to do exactly that with essentially one blog post. Ryan Robinson is the host of a podcast called The Side Hustle Project and he runs a fantastic blog over at RyRob.com. He recently wrote a piece on his that blog about how to start a blog and make money from it, and that post went on to become the most successful piece of content he has created. On today's show, Ryan joins us to share some great insights about that post, as well as some strategies for creating content that makes money, and some actionable tips for getting started today.

Dan and Ian recently came across a question in their private forum, The Dynamite Circle. "How important has your network been to your success?" The power of having the right connections is absolutely fundamental to growing a business, especially a location independent one. On today's episode, we are sharing some of our own personal approaches to networking. These are useful whether you're going to a conference, picking up a phone, or talking to people in your industry. We're also going to discuss some specific networking archetypes we've seen, and how you might develop your own personal strategy for networking.

A few weeks ago on this podcast, Dan and Ian were talking about some of their biggest pet peeves. In that episode, Ian lamented that the quality of flip flops available for purchase had drastically declined. What happened next should come as no surprise. A few listeners of this show reached out to us to let us know that they had started their own product business manufacturing flip flops. Jeremy Stewart is the co-founder of Hari Mari, which he started with his wife Leila. Hari Mari manufactures and sells premium flip flops across the globe. On today's episode, Jeremy joins us to talk about how their company was founded, how his experience as a political consultant helped Hari Mari grow, and how they were able to go from ground zero to having their products sold in big box retail stores.

Dan and Ian love hearing from listeners of this show. So many times, people reach out to us with thoughtful questions, and one of our favorite things to do is to answer them on this podcast. On today's episode, we are reaching into the mailbag to answer a variety of questions that you submitted to us via email or voicemail. We'll be discussing a broad range of topics including how long it really takes to get your business off the ground, leveraging locations at the various stages of your entrepreneurial journey, the dilemmas of sustainability, and a whole lot more.

Dan and Ian have seen it time and time again where entrepreneurs can sort of hit a brick wall with their business. But what if the problem doesn't lie with you, but with the type of business you're running? Sometimes people can possess all of the right skills to be successful, but they haven't put themselves in the right situation to succeed. Today's episode is all about "Founder Fit", or the idea that the business you are working on should be the right kind of project that suits your skillset. We'll be discussing four different founder archetypes that we've seen, what their secret weapons are, and which sorts of businesses we believe are best suited for each of these entrepreneurs. We'll also be sharing some of our favorite resources for each type of entrepreneur.

A few months ago, Dan and Ian asked the listeners of this show to respond to a survey about The Tropical MBA Podcast. We wanted to gain a richer understanding of the types of people who are listening to this podcast, so we can continue to create content that is relevant to their interests. We were surprised and delighted not only by the number of people that filled it out but by the types of responses that we received as well. We read every single response that we received from the survey and on today's podcast, we are going to be sharing our thoughts about those survey responses. We'll be discussing your insights, your criticisms, your positive feedback and the data that we learned about the listeners of this show. Stick around to the end to hear a little bit more about how we plan to implement what we learned from that survey in the future of this podcast.

Today's episode is unlike anything else Dan and Ian have ever recorded on this podcast. It all started with a cease and desist letter that we received via email at the beginning of the year. That letter was from an in-house counsel at a very large company and it alleged that The Tropical MBA Podcast was potentially infringing on their intellectual property. We decided to reach out to our friend Eric Misterovich from Revision Legal. Revision Legal is a law firm that specializes in working with businesses that make money online. Eric joins us on today's podcast to talk a little bit about intellectual property law, as well as the cease and desist letter that we received. Make sure to stay tuned until the end of this episode to hear more about the ongoing nature of this situation.

Dan and Ian are excited because they get to spend today's podcast doing one of their favorite things: complaining. This isn't just their everyday grinding of axes, though. On this week's episode, we are taking our own stab at a fun an unique concept popularized by the BBC in a classic television series called "Room 101". The term "Room 101" comes from George Orwell's 1984. In Orwell's fictional world, it was a sort of torture chamber that thought criminals are banished to. In this episode, Dan and Ian will each present three things that they want to complain about, and at the end of the episode, they are going to vote on which terrible things deserve to be banished to Room 101.

Hosting this podcast has allowed Dan and Ian to meet thousands of entrepreneurs over the last several years. Many of those entrepreneurs have gone on to become very wealthy people, and throughout our conversations with those people, we have found some common threads to the ways that wealthy people behave. One constant we've discovered is that you have to have a strategy for becoming wealthy and that there are several common strategies that people use to varying degrees of success. On today's show, we are going to be talking about five of the most common strategies to get rich that we have seen, which of those strategies resonate with us, and a whole lot more.

Dan and Ian love stories where creative people find success through entrepreneurship. Truthfully, it's not something we have had a chance to talk about much on this podcast, but art and entrepreneurship don't have to be mutually exclusive. In fact, the skillsets can actually be complementary. Today's guest has figured that out herself, as she went from working a 9-to-5 while living with her parents to traveling the world on her own terms. Cat Coquilette is an artist and illustrator who has made a career licensing her artwork and designs through companies like Target, Urban Outfitters, and Bed Bath & Beyond. On today's podcast, Cat joins us to share how she navigated the journey from her childhood bedroom to successful solopreneurship, without sacrificing her creative fulfillment along the way.

On this week's show, Dan and Ian are talking about getting real with yourself about what you need to do to succeed. Very few people are more qualified to talk about that than John Ainsworth. John is the CEO and founder of Data Driven Marketing, which builds, fixes, and optimizes automated sales funnels. Those sales funnels are the mechanisms that many online businesses use to communicate with customers and entice them to buy their products. As such, John has seen how a lot of businesses get it wrong, in particular, when it comes to knowing what their customer's problems are and figuring out how to solve them. On today's episode, we're talking about how to get in better touch with your customers, how to sell them what they want, and how to avoid getting distracted by shiny objects. As a bonus, John will also be nerding out about sales funnel information after the credits, so make sure to stick around for that.

Dan and Ian have been spending much of their time thinking about remote work these days. Ever since they started their new business Dynamite Jobs, they have been seeking more information about the remote work ecosystem than ever before. One of the things that they've realized is that remote work isn't necessarily for everybody. Just like the traditional office setting, it can come with its own set of challenges. Since they haven't worked in an office in many years, they thought it would be fun to spend a day in the office together and see how it compared to their typical remote workday. On today's podcast, you'll hear some on-location recordings from that work day, as well as an in-depth discussion about five of the most pressing questions that businesses should be asking about remote work in 2019.

On today's podcast, Dan and Ian are following up with the subject of one of the most popular episodes in recent years. Tommy Griffith is the founder of ClickMinded, an online SEO training course that he started while he was working at Paypal. Tommy joined us two and a half years ago to talk about how he started that business as a Saturday Morning Side Hustle. When we last spoke with Tommy in 2017, he was about to quit one of the best jobs in the world as the head of SEO at AirBNB to travel the world and focus on Clickminded full-time. It didn't go quite as planned, as you'll find out on this week's episode. Tommy returns to the podcast today to talk about what went wrong, and why he decided almost eight years into growing his business that it was time to take on a co-founder.

Dan and Ian have heard many variations of the same question over the years: "I want to be an entrepreneur, but how do I get started?" Today's guest has some really practical insight into what it means to take the leap into starting your own business. Dom Wells started out, as many do, building affiliate marketing sites. He's gone on to establish several successful spin-off businesses from what was effectively a side hustle, all while he was still working a full-time job teaching English in Taipei. This week, Dom joins us to share tips for getting started on the long journey of entrepreneurship, how to build a skillset and a network, and the mistakes that he made along the way.

Today's show is sort of like eavesdropping on a conversation that Dan and Ian often have when the microphones are off. Namely, that there are some things that people just don't tell you about entrepreneurship. Maybe it's because people in the entrepreneurial world don't like to come across as naysayers or know-it-alls, but the reality of what it's like to be an entrepreneur can often be hard to come by. Whether it's the fact that entrepreneurs undersell the amount of planning and work that goes into running a business or flat out ignore some of the cold realities of the entrepreneurial struggle, there are a lot of truths floating below the surface that would-be entrepreneurs aren't always aware of. On this week's episode, we're talking about those truths. Today's podcast is all about the stuff that people don't tell you about being an entrepreneur.

Recently, Dan and Ian have been revisiting some of their favorite books on this podcast in a recurring series that we like to call "The Re-Readables." This week, we are digging into a classic entrepreneurial book that was suggested to us by our friend, author, and frequent guest on this podcast, Kyla Gardner of KylaGardner.com. That book is Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad Poor Dad. In that book, Kiyosaki basically suggests that if you want to be rich and successful, you've got to ditch the middle-class mindset. Kyla joins us this week to discuss some of the controversial opinions in this book, which ideas in that book have aged the best and which have aged the worst, and much, much more.

Dan and Ian have shared a lot of business success stories on this podcast over the years. We love sharing those stories on this show, but sometimes the tough experiences that entrepreneurs have endured are the ones that we learn from the most. Freddy Lansky is the co-founder of iChess, which sells chess videos, courses and DVDs online. Recently, Freddy decided to leave that business, choosing to dissolve an eight-year business partnership with one of his closest friends. On today's episode, Freddy joins us to speak about the origins of iChess, what it felt like to be trapped in a business that was no longer fulfilling to him, and how he and his partner navigated their breakup.

A few weeks ago, Dan and Ian hosted their annual Dynamite Circle event in Austin, Texas. They met many listeners of this show who traveled from all around the world to attend that event. Those entrepreneurs shared some incredible stories, insights, advice, and feedback with us, and we can't wait to talk about them. On today's podcast, we're discussing some of our biggest takeaways from DC Austin 2019, including one of the most common recurring themes that we've heard from entrepreneurs there that we like to refer to as "The Six-Figure Slump". Stick around after the credits to hear some bonus reflections from our friend Shayna Oliveira, who spoke about the event on her own podcast, Entrepreneurs in Motion.

Dan and Ian are fresh off of hosting their fourth Dynamite Circle event in Austin, Texas last week. This year, they decided to do something different, by bringing together their entire remote team from all around the world for a two-day team retreat in Austin following the event. For anyone with their own remote team who is considering something similar, this episode is for you. On this week's podcast, they are sharing their reflections from that experience. You'll hear what they learned from that team retreat, the pros and cons of hosting a retreat for your remote team, and much more. Stick around after the credits for a bonus glimpse into Ian's personal man cave and podcast recording studio.

A few weeks ago, Dan and Ian introduced a new series on this podcast called "The Re-Readables". In that series, we are taking a look back at some of our favorite books with a fresh perspective. This week's book is all about the "Muse", creativity, productivity, and how to get your best work out into the world. The War of Art by Steven Pressfield was published in 2002. Since then, it has inspired countless entrepreneurs, artists, writers, and creatives around the world. On today's show, we are revisiting The War of Art, talking about why it was so influential, and asking whether or not the ideas in that book have withstood the test of time.

Dan and Ian speak with a lot of entrepreneurs on this show about the difficult decisions that they have to make. Today's guest is currently facing one of the biggest challenges in his business. You may remember Chris Cage from his previous appearances on this podcast. Chris is the founder of Greenbelly Meals, which manufactures high calorie, stoveless backpacking meals for athletes and hikers. Chris reached out to us about the recent troubles he's had hiring people. We thought it might be a good idea to record that conversation and share it with our listeners. This week's episode is all about hiring. You'll hear all about what goes into the decision to hire, the hiring process itself, and how to successfully interview and eventually hire the best people for your jobs.

One of our favorite podcasts to listen to lately is The Re-Watchables, a series presented by The Ringer, where the hosts look back on legendary films. They discuss why these movies had such an impact, what parts have aged the best and worst, and other categories which they use to assess what has made these films stand the test of time. We thought it would be fun to talk about some of our favorite books in a similar light. This week, we are looking back at the single most important book we read in our business. Getting Things Done by David Allen represented a paradigm shift in the early 2000s, and it was the first book that was truly written for information and knowledge workers. On today's podcast, we are revisiting Getting Things Done, talking about why that book was so influential, and whether the ideas in that book are still as relevant as they were at the time it was released.

Dan and Ian have talked a lot about business strategy on this show, but there are some business techniques that are so powerful, you have to learn them from a true master. Jason Cohen, the founder of WP Engine, recently wrote a piece on his blog ASmartBear.com titled Kung Fu. In that blog, Jason proposes that all entrepreneurs are essentially fighters. We are fighting to make a living, fighting to survive, and fighting to change marketplaces. Any good fighter needs to have a plan, and in that blog post, Jason shared his own "secret moves" for running a business. On today's episode, we are talking about some of Jason's secret business moves, and sharing a few of our own as well.

A lot of our listeners have been reaching out to us lately to ask about Dan and Ian's newest business venture, Dynamite Jobs. They have been running the business for the past six months, and it is still very much in the early stages. As the business has grown and changed over that time, they've learned a lot of things that they didn't expect. On today's podcast, we're sharing five things that we have learned in the last six months of running a new productized services business. Later on in the episode, we'll be discussing some specific numbers, goals, and takeaways from the first six months of Dynamite Jobs. You'll also hear three reasons why we think the remote hiring process isn't working for a lot of entrepreneurs.

Longtime listeners of this show know that Dan and Ian spent the early part of their entrepreneurial career building product businesses online. What you might not know is that Search Engine Optimization, commonly referred to as SEO, was one of the first skillsets that they learned when building those businesses. A lot has changed in the last decade when it comes to SEO, and this week's guest seems to be at the forefront of that progress. Tim Soulo is the Chief Marketing Officer and Product Adviser for Ahrefs. Ahrefs is a Software-as-a-Service company that provides a suite of incredibly useful SEO research tools. Their website is also host to one of the best SEO blogs on the internet. On this week's episode, Tim shares some keen insight on the evolution of SEO and how you can make SEO work for your business. We'll also be exploring some of the darker sides of SEO and content marketing.

Dan and Ian have shared many stories on this podcast of people who have escaped from the cubicle in search of location-independence. This week's episode is a little different, as today's guest left his 9-to-5 job in pursuit of entrepreneurial freedom, only to find that it wasn't what it was cracked up to be. Coran Woodmass left his job in Australia and moved to Chiang Mai, Thailand. He started building, buying and selling small web properties, but ultimately realized that it didn't make him happy. These days, Coran has moved into a field he is incredibly passionate about, advising and brokering quality deals for Amazon FBA owners through his new business, TheFBABroker.com. This conversation is about buying and selling Amazon businesses, but it's about a lot more than that too, specifically, what makes you feel satisfied and fulfilled.

On this week's episode, we are continuing one of Dan and Ian's favorite traditions on the podcast. Today we are talking about books, and in particular our favorite books that we have read in the past year. Last year, we invited our good friend and talented author Kyla Gardner to the show to talk about books with us. We had so much fun with that episode that we asked her to return this week. On today's podcast, Dan and Kyla are sharing their five favorite reads of 2019. This conversation also details how some of our reading habits have changed since last year, why Kyla has started writing fiction, and much more.

A few weeks ago, Dan and Ian had a conversation on this podcast where they shared some of their feelings about venture capital. This is an important topic to a lot of entrepreneurs, and it's one that we plan to cover a lot more throughout 2019. Some of the opinions we shared in that episode were rather controversial. Several of our listeners actually called us out on being a little bit vague about our thoughts, and we thought it was a good chance to revisit the topic. One of the people that reached out to us about that episode was Rob Walling. Rob is someone who should be very familiar to the listeners of this show. He hosts one of our favorite podcasts, Startups for the Rest of Us, organizes his own annual conference called MicroConf, and has previously owned and sold several startups, including a Software-as-a-Service company called Drip. Rob has also recently started his own startup accelerator fund called TinySeed, which is specifically designed to help bootstrappers grow their businesses. On today's show, Rob has joined us to share his thoughts about venture capital, bootstrapping, and what he hopes to accomplish with TinySeed.

On today's episode, Dan and Ian are delighted to welcome one of their favorite authors back to the show. Cal Newport is a Computer Science professor, who has spent his career writing about the intersection of technology and culture in the contemporary digital age. Cal joins us this week to talk about his new book, Digital Minimalism, which is all about the dangers and distractions of social media. This interview covers a broad range of topics, including the psychology behind the "Walled Gardens" of social media, why Cal invited 1,600 people to go on a month-long "Digital Declutter", how we can develop a philosophy to improve the way that we interact with technology in our lives, and much, much more.

"Success" isn't always what it's cracked up to be. Dan and Ian know this feeling all too well, as they have dealt with some of their own internal struggles after selling their product business. On today's episode, we are talking about five specific downsides to success. These aren't necessarily strategic elements, as much as they are about the mindset of success. You'll hear about some of the common traps that successful entrepreneurs often find themselves in, and how success itself can actually become a competitive disadvantage.

One of Dan and Ian's goals heading into 2019 was to feature more stories about China on the podcast this year. China is the primary location where many of the products that entrepreneurs sell are traditionally manufactured, and it has become a fulcrum for a lot of the stuff that online product-based businesses do. On today's show, we are excited to bring you some insights from someone who has been living and working on the ground in China for the better part of a decade. Brian Miller lives in Shenzhen, China, where he operates a third-party logistics company called EasyChinaWarehouse.com. He also runs a mid-six-figure Amazon FBA business, as well as a small China sourcing agency, so he is pretty diversified in the sourcing and fulfillment model that we have discussed so often on this podcast. What makes Brian's story unusual is that he actually started his working life within a Chinese state-owned enterprise or SOE, which is something that very few westerners have done. This isn't just a conversation about manufacturing in China, though. Brian also shares his experience living in the country, what it's like to interact with the Chinese people, and much, much more.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/plansfor2019/ Dan and Ian have decided to be a little bit self-indulgent with this week's podcast. On today's show, they are talking about their goals for 2019. In particular, they wanted to talk about what they have planned for their newest venture, Dynamite Jobs. On this episode, they will be sharing the single goal that they are working towards for Dynamite Jobs this year. You'll also hear what went into the decision to choose that goal, as well as some of our biggest business takeaways heading into the new year.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/brentbeshore2/ One of the things that Dan and Ian love about creating this podcast is that they not only get to talk to some pretty interesting people, but they also get to follow their stories as they build and scale their businesses. About two years ago, we spoke with Brent Beshore, the Founder and CEO of Adventur.es. Since we last talked, Brent's team has more or less doubled. They've made a decision to raise capital, bought a headquarters in Columbia, Missouri and Brent has written a book about buying businesses called "The Messy Marketplace". On today's episode, we are revisiting Brent's story and hearing how Adventur.es has grown since we last spoke. We'll also hear how things have changed since they have raised over 50 million dollars in investment capital, and why he decided to share the story of his business in his new book. 

http://www.tropicalmba.com/tommyjoiner/ Dan and Ian are back to kick off 2019, and looking forward to another 52 podcasts about how to grow better, more profitable lifestyle businesses. What better way to start the year than by addressing a topic that so many listeners are constantly reaching out to us about? On this week's episode, we are speaking with Tommy Joiner. Tommy is the co-founder of ContentPros, which is a productized business that offers high-level content generation services. Tommy joins us today to talk about how to create a successful productized business, rather than getting stuck in a freelancer, consultant, or agency model. This is something that we know a lot of entrepreneurs are struggling with, and Tommy shares some valuable insight into how he was able to make this transition, as well as his top 4 tips for starting a successful productized service.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/reflections2018/ Last week, Dan and Ian shared some of their favorite moments from the interviews that they've conducted on this podcast in 2018. This week, we wanted to get a little more abstract. On today's podcast, we are looking back on some of our favorite conceptual ideas that we've covered in 2018. These are the business and lifestyle themes that have been echoing throughout the Tropical MBA airwaves this year. We'll be revisiting some of our most talked about episodes of the year, and you will hear our current thoughts on some of those topics including investment, remote work, and the long journey of entrepreneurship.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/surprisesanddelights/ As we approach the end of 2018, Dan and Ian have been reflecting on some of their favorite conversations of the year, many of which happened on this podcast. They both feel incredibly fortunate to be able to speak to so many people that they admire and respect on this show. This year has been a landmark one for us here at the Tropical MBA, and on today's episode, we are revisiting some of our favorite moments from our very favorite episodes of 2018. We aren't just revisiting the highlights, though. Stick around after the credits to hear our 2018 blooper reel.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/helsinkibustheory/ Dan and Ian have spent a lot of time in Chiang Mai. One of the traditions that Dan has every time he visits is to touch base with Kevin Graham. You may remember Kevin from a previous episode we released in early 2017. In that episode, Kevin joined us to talk about the first major business that he co-founded, which was a suite of Amazon Associates affiliate sites. These days, he has been focusing on a different project; a web hosting business called Bulk Buy Hosting. In particular, he has decided to take a different turn with that business and we invited him on the show to talk about it. Today you'll hear about Kevin's experience with Bulk Buy Hosting, and why he decided to move into a completely new direction with it. Kevin also shares why he believes a bus station in Helsinki is has a strong connection to a topic that we've talked about a lot on this show - The 1,000 Day Principle.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/chinaredux/ Today's episode is about a place that has played a very special part in Dan and Ian's entrepreneurial journey. China has become one of the most important countries in the world for entrepreneurs. Chinese supply chains and manufacturing are the lifeblood of many online businesses around the world. Things have changed over the last several years in China, though, and arguably no one understands that better than today's guest. Matt Kowalak of China Ecom Boost not only works with manufacturers in China, but with major product companies and celebrities as well, helping them break in and market themselves into this enormous country. In this episode, we talk about culture, commerce, and Matt's trajectory, including why he has had a major re-evaluation about the kind of business he wants to be doing in the future, focused on the vast potential opportunities that he sees in China.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/keangraham/ Dan and Ian have said for years on this podcast that the most important thing your business should be doing is solving people's problems. Today's guest has taken that philosophy and ran with it. Kean Graham is the founder of Monetize More, a monetization agency that helps online brands optimize their ad revenue. Monetize More is 100 people strong, and it's safe to say that they lean into location independence. In fact, they consider it a key value in their company. On today's episode, we are going to explore the inside story of how Monetize More got started. You'll also hear the strategies Kean has used to grow that business, some of which could be considered pretty controversial.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/sambrowne/ Dan and Ian have encountered many entrepreneurs in their travels, from all walks of life. They first met today's guest back in April at our annual Dynamite Circle event in Austin, Texas. Sam Browne was the beneficiary of one of the scholarship tickets to that event. These scholarships have been donated by some of the more established entrepreneurs in the community as a sort of way to pay it forward. Sam is the founder of Find A Band, a New Zealand-based online booking agency for bands and musicians. He is also a talented musician himself, and you will hear some of his original music on today's show. Six months after attending our event, Sam wrote us to let us know that his experience at DC Austin had inspired him to dream bigger. His email was so exciting, that we just had to invite him on to this week's podcast to share his story.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/empireflippers/ Dan and Ian have been wanting to share the story of this week's episode for quite some time. Justin Cooke is one of the co-founders of Empire Flippers. Empire Flippers is an online marketplace where businesses are bought and sold.  Since their inception, they have grown their team to over 60 remote employees, and they have helped people buy and sell over $50 million worth of online businesses. It wasn't always like that, though. On today's podcast, Justin is joining us to share the story of Empire Flippers. On this podcast, you'll hear about Justin's background in the mortgage industry, how he joined forces with his business partner, how the market crash in 2008 left them with almost no money, and how they were eventually able to create one the largest marketplaces in the world for buying and selling online businesses.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/hiringapprentices/ It's no secret that Dan and Ian love hearing from the listeners of this show. This week, we received a question from Ben McAdam. Some of you might remember Ben from his earlier appearances on this podcast. Ben reached out to us to ask about our recent decision to hire a new apprentice. For those of you who are not aware, we brought someone new onto our team recently and we'd like to talk about it here today. On this week's episode, you'll hear all about why we decided to find a new apprentice, and what that process was like. We'll also be sharing a comprehensive list of "Dos and Don'ts" when it comes to hiring your own apprentice, as well as some quick tips on how you can find the apprenticeship of your dreams.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/themesfor2019/ Dan and Ian are still resting up after hosting 350 entrepreneurs at their annual DC BKK event in Bangkok last week. While they were at that event, they had the opportunity to speak to so many entrepreneurs about their business struggles and successes throughout 2018. In light of those conversations, we've decided to address some of the common topics we've heard throughout that conference on today's episode. This week, we are discussing the five trends that internet businesses need to consider for the upcoming year. We'll be talking location freedom, hiring practices, conference strategies, and much, much more. 

http://www.tropicalmba.com/presentations/ We are fresh off the heels of DC BKK 2018, our annual conference that we host in Bangkok. It's safe to say that in the many years of running that conference, as well as attending other conferences around the globe, Dan and Ian have seen quite a few amazing presentations from speakers. Not every presentation can be a home run, though, and we have seen our fair share of bad ones too. This week, Dan is talking about the science behind a great presentation, and specifically the five reasons your presentation might suck. The ability to give a great presentation is an important skill set for entrepreneurs. Even if you aren't planning on giving a presentation any time soon, learning these principles can help make you a better communicator in your business.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/hustleredux/ A few years ago, Dan and Ian published an episode of this podcast called The Tao of the Hustle. In the years since we still receive frequent questions and comments about our opinions on hustle and entrepreneurship that we shared in that episode. One of those questions recently came from a listener named Rob Sanchez. Rob loves creating products, but over the course of his career, he has failed to establish proper distribution channels as he's built those products. His insecurities about hustling have frequently led to less than stellar results when his products launch. On today's episode, we are addressing Rob's troubles, and revisiting The Tao of the Hustle. We'll be sharing six new elements to the Tao of the Hustle, as well as exploring the ways that our philosophies about hustle have evolved in 2018.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/michaellombardi/ Dan and Ian are always looking for new ways to gain insight into entrepreneurship, and sometimes that insight can come from some unexpected places. Michael Lombardi is an American Football executive and analyst. He also served as an assistant to the coaching staff of the New England Patriots, one of the most successful franchises in the history of the National Football League. While Dan was reading Michael's new book "Gridiron Genius", he realized it wasn't just a book about sports. In many ways, Dan found "Gridiron Genius" to be as much a business book as a football one. On today's episode, we are talking with Michael about the similarities between American Football and entrepreneurship, and some leadership strategies in sports that entrepreneurs everywhere can learn from.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/40percentrule/ If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you would know that one of the major motivations for Dan and Ian in life is creating the freedom to live life on your own terms. That freedom can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. On recent episodes, we have spoken about how entrepreneurship shares a lot in common with the FIRE (Financially Independent, Retire Early) community. One of the tenents of FIRE philosophy is The 4% Rule, which is the practice of saving and investing enough money that it will allow you to withdraw 4% of that income every year to live off of.  In order for that rule to work, though, you would need to save 1 million dollars to live on a modest income of $40,000 annually. That can be a tall order for people who are on a small salary. Enter Jase Rodley. Jase recently wrote a piece called The 40% Rule, which addresses this idea head-on. The 40% Rule is an investment strategy that allows people to concentrate on returns from modest investments, while still allowing themselves to "stay in the game". On today's episode, Jase discusses The 40% Rule, the business that he is currently building, and how his experience with that business has informed his investment strategies.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/costofbootstrapping/ Today we are examining a discussion that Dan and Ian have been having behind the scenes of this podcast for years. These conversations revolve around a question that everyone who is considering an entrepreneurial lifestyle needs to hear: What are the real costs of bootstrapping a business? The truth is that it is often much more expensive and complicated than writers and "thought leaders" let on. It can steal so much of our time, our opportunities for relationships, and sometimes our own well being. Justin Jackson knows this better than most. Justin is a well-known podcaster with a track record of shows like Product People, Build Your SaaS, and MegaMaker. He has also recently launched an integrated podcast service called Transistor.fm. Justin has been addressing some of these more "taboo" entrepreneurial concepts on his blog. A recent piece called The Bootstrapper's Paradox addresses some of the hidden costs of bootstrapping. On today's episode, Justin shares his thoughts on those hidden costs. He also challenges some of the narratives that legendary figures in the movement have built around themselves and opens up about his own struggles with mental health as an entrepreneur.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/stateofbitcoin/ Dan and Ian have spoken about cryptocurrencies before, and they have certainly been a divisive topic among the listeners of this show. The fact is that cryptocurrencies aren't going away. If you're interested in your financial future and really want to understand the nature of these markets and how to manipulate them, this episode is for you. We've invited our friend Taylor Pearson back to the show this week to talk about a recent article he wrote called The State of Bitcoin. On today's podcast, Taylor shares his thoughts on how cryptocurrencies essentially differ from other forms of investment, how to distinguish hype from opportunity, and why the "Bitcoin backlash" is happening.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/fivereasons/ Dan and Ian have been around the block a few times, and in that time they have seen many entrepreneurs come and go. What many don't understand is that the majority of entrepreneurial success stories don't happen overnight. Nearly every sustainable path to wealth and freedom is a journey that can take years, and often decades to achieve This week's episode is a list of the five common reasons that entrepreneurs will give up on their journey. If you identify with any of the reasons we mention on today's podcast, fear not. You can use the knowledge and information we share on this show to help you get over your obstacles and further sustain your journey as an entrepreneur.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/tomsawyer/ A few weeks ago, Dan and Ian published an episode of this podcast about The Peter Principle, which is the idea that everyone will more or less rise to the level of their own incompetence. Today, we are talking about a different principle. This one comes from a great 19th century book, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. This episode begins with an excerpt from the book, where Tom is forced to paint a fence and convinces others to help him, eventually tricking them into painting the fence themselves. On today's show, we're sharing our thoughts on how entrepreneurs can use this same philosophy to lead a great team without working in their business day-to-day. We'll also be talking about the progress we've made with our new business venture - Dynamite Jobs, and why many entrepreneurs spend so much time focusing on top-line revenue rather than profits.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/businessideasredux/ One of Dan and Ian 's favorite topics to discuss on this show is business ideas. In particular, they love brainstorming new business ideas with the listeners of this podcast. Coming up with a great business idea doesn't come naturally for all of us, though we believe it really is a skill that you can learn and get better at. Today, we are talking about the science behind a great business idea. In particular, we are sharing five techniques that you can use to develop your own business idea. We'll also be revisiting some of the business ideas that we came up with on an earlier episode of this show from 2015.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/riseaudiobooks/ Every week, for over 450 episodes, Dan and Ian talk on this podcast about business, entrepreneurship, and location independence. They do so because they love creating and consuming audio content. It's no wonder then that when Dan finally wrote his first book, Before the Exit, he was naturally very passionate about creating a narrated audiobook version. On today's podcast, we are talking about audiobooks. In particular, we'll be talking about how we recorded our first audiobook, as well as sharing some of the most popular highlighted passages in that book. You'll also hear how audiobooks have made an impression on us, and why we think audiobooks are becoming so popular in 2018.  As a special bonus, listen in to find out how you could be the recipient of a very unique gift. 

http://www.tropicalmba.com/citywhisper/ Dan and Ian have spent many hours on this show talking about location and in particular the cities that location-independent entrepreneurs choose to live in. A little while ago, Dan read an article called Cities and Ambition by Paul Graham which theorizes that the cities we visit actually send signals to us in a variety of unspoken ways. Afterward, he felt compelled to write a blog post about the ways that certain cities "whisper" to us. On today's episode, you will hear that blog post, as well as some thoughts and reflections on some of our favorite cities. We'll be sharing what we love about those cities, why we can't stop visiting them, and what each of those cities has been "whispering" to us.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/millennialrevolution/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/millennialrevolution/ Podcast 56:28 | Download | Stitcher | iTunes | Comment This week, Dan and Ian are talking about the very first step to creating a lifestyle business. Contrary to popular belief, that is not quitting your job or coming up with a business idea. It begins with your personal finances. We’re talking about treating your bank account,...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/mastermindthoughts/ On today's podcast, Dan and Ian are talking about one of the most critical elements to their own success in business: masterminds. We've talked about the importance of masterminds before on this podcast, but we believe it is an issue worth addressing again because we have seen the benefits that entrepreneurs can achieve from them firsthand. When taken advantage of correctly, the value of a great mastermind cannot be understated, and masterminds have played a vital role in the business journey of this week's guest. Ryan Heneise is the founder of Booster Stage, an agency that does web app development for startups. Ryan was a guest at our recent event in Austin, Texas and took part in his first official mastermind. On this week's episode, you'll hear from Ryan about how that event unfolded, and the benefits that he has seen from attending that mastermind. You'll also hear tips on how to get the most out of a mastermind, and how to create a successful mastermind yourself.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/analysisparalysis/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/analysisparalysis/ Podcast 33:44 | Download | Stitcher | iTunes | Comment Dan and Ian struggled (as many entrepreneurs do) getting on their feet and creating the kind of success that would afford them the freedom in their lives that they were seeking. None of that would have been possible if they had succumbed to the subject of today’s...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/remotelocalbusinesses/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/remotelocalbusinesses/ Podcast 33:26 | Download | Stitcher | iTunes | Comment Dan and Ian love sharing entrepreneurial origins stories on this show. Today, we are bringing you one from someone who has chosen an unusual entrepreneurial path. Neel Parekh is the founder of a cleaning services company called MaidThis, which operates all over Southern California. What makes Neel’s...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/peterprinciple/ On this week's episode, Dan and Ian are going to explore one of the philosophical concepts that they have been talking about increasingly on this show. The Peter Principle was originally published by Laurence J. Peter in 1969. The basic premise is that every employee or member of an organizational hierarchy will tend to rise to their own "level of incompetence". On today's podcast, we are talking about what this concept means for entrepreneurs, how it applies to us, how it applies to our businesses, and what we can learn from it. We'll also share some strategies for what to do if you believe that you've reached your own capacity for growth.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/retirementcult/ Dan and Ian share stories of financial freedom every week on this podcast. On this week's episode, they wanted to explore what that freedom actually means. To some, living a life of frugality can allow yourself to retire early, but does it really bring you freedom? One year ago, Dan wrote an article called The Cult of Early Retirement Meets (Or Strangely, Doesn't Meet) The Cult of Entrepreneurship. This article turned out to be fairly controversial, with many readers of our blog sharing their thoughts on early retirement, financial freedom, and more. Today, we are going to present an audio version of that article, followed by some opinions and reflections on the discussions that arose from it. You'll also hear our thoughts on why the writings of early retirement bloggers don't entirely click with entrepreneurs, why we believe our time is more valuable than money, and a whole lot more.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/spyguy/ Dan and Ian return this week with another unique entrepreneurial origin story. In fact, today's guest has built a business in the last four years that has revenues in the low seven figures and he now employs five employees. Part of the reason we like to share these origin stories on the show is that there's a moment for every one of us when we really truly did not believe that we could achieve this sort of thing. Allen Walton knows that feeling all too well. Allen is the founder of SpyGuy.com, an eCommerce business which sells covert surveillance technology. Allen grew up in the suburbs of Dallas, Texas, and he still lives there today. On today's podcast, you'll hear Allen share the story of how he grew SpyGuy.com to a seven-figure business, what happened when he cold-emailed Mark Cuban, and a whole lot more.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/tomhannon/ As many of you know, Dan and Ian love hearing from the listeners of this show. A listener named Tom Hannon recently wrote in with a question that we really hadn't addressed on this show before. We've talked a lot about selling businesses on this podcast lately, but what happens when you don't have a choice? What happens when you are forced to sell? As we started talking with Tom, we discovered that he has actually sold twelve businesses of his own, and the circumstances of each of those sales were entirely unique. We invited Tom onto today's podcast to share the stories of those exits, as well as the lessons that he has learned along the way.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/maitie/ Today's show is all about seizing opportunities. Last year, Dan and Ian invited Greg Gerber, who is a member of our community The Dynamite Circle, on to the show to talk about how he gifted an up-and-coming entrepreneur an all-expenses-paid trip to our annual event in Barcelona. This idea of "paying it forward" has really taken off in the community since then. At our recent event in Austin, TX, Meryl Johnston offered two free tickets on behalf of her company, Bean Ninjas. Dan and Ian contributed a few free tickets of their own, with others offering free airfare, coaching, and more. On today's podcast, you'll hear from one of the recipients of that gift. Jen Anderson is the founder of Mai-Tie, a company that makes unique, fashionable bowties out of vintage Hawaiian shirts. While her business is still in its infancy, she has a huge amount of experience in the startup world, and some interesting insights into that as well. This is the story of what it takes to find your people.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/hiringhelp/ Dan and Ian are back this week to respond to another listener-submitted question. Chris Cage from GreenbellyBar.com recently reached out to us with a problem that many listeners of this show have been struggling with: when is it the right time to hire somebody? This is a moment in the entrepreneurial journey that every entrepreneur will eventually reach, and it isn't always easy to make the right decision. Hiring can be expensive, from both a financial perspective and an emotional one. Fortunately, Dan and Ian have a rich history of hiring experiences, both good and bad. On today's show, they will be opening up about the mistakes that they have made, as well as the successes they have had when bringing people on to their team.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/knowedgeversusefficiencyrevisited/ A few weeks ago , Dan and Ian published an episode called The Knowledge Gap vs. The Efficiency Gap. In that episode, they tried to make a distinction between businesses that solve "Knowledge Gaps" for their customers and businesses that solve "Efficiency Gaps". "Knowledge Gap" businesses focus on educating their customers on how their business can solve new problems, whereas the businesses that solve "Efficiency gaps" for their customers are intent on providing more efficient solutions to their preexisting needs. A few of our listeners wrote in with some comments about that show. Nate Smith is the founder of AdmitScout, which specialized in paid traffic lead generation for addiction treatment facilities. Eagan Heath is the founder of a digital marketing agency called Get Found Madison, which is mostly aimed at businesses in Madison, Wisconsin. In this week's podcast, we've invited both Nate and Eagan on to the show to share their responses to that episode and to talk about how Knowledge Gaps and Efficiency Gaps have played a role in their own businesses.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/businessrelationships/ Dan and Ian love receiving messages and questions from listeners of this show. A few weeks back, one listener reached out to them about what the ownership structure of a business partnership should look like. This is a critically important issue for many entrepreneurs, and it's an incredibly complicated one to boot. Dan and Ian are business partners themselves, but they have seen many other partnerships evolve and dissolve over the years. On today's show, we are talking about five partnership styles that we've personally witnessed over the years, how those types of partnerships can affect your business, and how you can find the right business partner.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/entrepreneurialscript/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/entrepreneurialscript/ Podcast 34:19| Download | Stitcher | iTunes | Comment One of Dan and Ian‘s favorite parts about creating this podcast is being able to find real entrepreneurial stories that can inspire and inform others. It’s easy to forget sometimes that these real entrepreneurial stories, or “scripts” as we sometimes call them, are rare to come by. These...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/lifestyleladder/ Dan and Ian know that today's episode is about a rather sensitive subject. Not many people in American society feel comfortable talking about money. It's quite taboo in some social circles to share how much money you are making or to open up about your financial position. It's part of the reason so many entrepreneurs don't open up about selling their businesses. They think that nobody wants to hear them complain about how they made a lot of money. We've found that the types of people that are able to speak freely about these topics are often the ones who are the most successful with their money. In this week's podcast, we aren't holding back. Dan and Ian are sharing how they feel about money, how much money they want, and what actual financial freedom looks like.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/austintakeaways/ On today's show, Dan and Ian are going to be sharing some of their thoughts about the event that they recently hosted in Austin, Texas. Approximately 100 internet entrepreneurs got together in Austin last week to attend DC Austin. There, they took part in workshops and mastermind groups with other entrepreneurs and ultimately made the effort to take the next steps forward in their entrepreneurial journey. On this week's episode, Dan and Ian are going to talk about what they learned from that event, what the current entrepreneurial climate looks like, what is changing about it, and what kinds of opportunities exist for listeners of this show.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/knowledgevsefficiency/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/knowledgevsefficiency/ Podcast 34:08| Download | Stitcher | iTunes | Comment On this week’s show, Dan and Ian are revisiting a subject that they haven’t spoken about in four years. Truthfully, it’s the number one recurring topic that listeners of this podcast bring up with them in conversation, so we thought it was high time to take another look...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/twotomatoes/ Dan and Ian are all too familiar with the difficulties of completing projects. A few weeks ago, they spoke at length about how "resistance" can get in the way of achieving success in your entrepreneurial endeavors. Imagine if the solution to your productivity and creative woes could come in the form of two juicy, red pieces of fruit. On today's episode, we are going to be talking about the "Two Tomatoes Strategy" for getting the projects done that are going to make a difference in your career. For those who are just getting started on their entrepreneurial journey, those who are starting a new project, or anyone who is at war with the resistance in their own lives, this strategy is a great way to overcome your distractions and ultimately move forward in a successful and productive way in both your business and your life.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/sherrywalling/ Today Dan and Ian are going to talk about something that every entrepreneur has to deal with. That "something" is the anxiety that comes along with the entrepreneurial way of life and the overall challenge to our mental well-being. Owning and operating a business means responsibility, and those responsibilities can create all kinds of stress and mental fatigue. Very few people are as experienced in this topic as Dr. Sherry Walling. Sherry is a clinical psychologist and the host of the ZenFounder podcast. She also recently released a fantastic book on the topic called "The Entrepreneur's Guide to Keeping Your Shit Together". Sherry believes that the success of our businesses is intimately tied to our mental health. She has joined us on today's podcast to talk about why many of us aren't taking enough time to care for ourselves, and what we can do to solve that.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/resistance/ Dan and Ian know that one of the most difficult things about running a business is having the right mindset, especially in the early stages. One of the most powerful concepts about how to improve your creative mindset was presented by author Steven Pressfield in his book The War of Art. Steven poses that there is a force in the universe, which he calls 'resistance', that is manifesting itself in our lives and getting in the way of our forward progress. On today's episode, we will be talking about five ways in which this 'resistance' can appear in our day-to-day lives. Make no mistake, even the most seasoned entrepreneurs experience it. Learning how to identify 'resistance', and to eventually overcome it, is one of the most critical skills that you can learn on your entrepreneurial journey.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/dynamitejobs/ For many years, Dan and Ian have spoken about jobs on this podcast. After all, the TropicalMBA originally started as a job listing on this website. Jobs are an important facet of entrepreneurial life. Remote jobs and distributed teams have been a huge part of the successes that people have found in our community. A remote job can also offer a springboard to a long and prosperous career as an entrepreneur. On this week's episode, Dan and Ian thought it would be fun to talk about their own personal history of remote jobs. This podcast chronicles that history, from the first remote employee that they've hired, all the way to their latest venture, a remote job board that they have recently launched called Dynamite Jobs.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/sethgodin/ Today's guest has been massively influential on Dan and Ian from the very start of their journey. Seth Godin is something of a legend in entrepreneurial circles, and he hardly needs an introduction. His books about marketing, creativity, building companies, and personal development include Purple Cow, Meatball Sundae, The Dip, and Linchpin. These books are frequent recommendations on this podcast and have long been shared among our listeners. In addition to his books, Seth has founded an intensive four-week alternative online MBA called altMBA.  He has also created several podcasts including the popular Startup School. Seth's newest project is a brand new podcast called Akimbo. Today's show features a wide-ranging interview, which touches on a variety of topics including Seth's history as a writer and podcaster, what the business world can offer society, and much more. 

http://www.tropicalmba.com/finishbig/ Dan and Ian announced on last week's podcast that they are publishing a new book about the things they wished they had considered before they sold their business. In researching the topic, they were shocked to find that there were so few people writing stories about selling businesses and that the majority of those books were simply focused on trying to get a fair price for your business. Today's guest is Bo Burlingham. Bo is the author of several books, including a book called Finish Big, which Dan and Ian both wish they could have read before selling their own business. Bo is also a journalist, with over 30 years of experience as a writer and editor at Inc. Magazine. On today's episode, Bo shares his stories about interviewing entrepreneurs who have exited their businesses and explains why he believes that there is much more to the process of selling a business than a simple monetary transaction.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/book/ Dan and Ian have some very exciting news to share on today's podcast. Longtime listeners know that the two of them spent several years growing a business that they eventually sold. They have also spent countless hours on this show speaking to other entrepreneurs who have changed their lives by growing and selling their own businesses. Because of this, they have decided to share their unique personal experience on this topic in the form of a new book, which Dan has recently completed writing. They didn't choose to write this book as a business venture, though. They were driven by the idea that any entrepreneur can make these kinds of life-changing business deals if they are equipped with the right knowledge. On today's episode, you will hear all about their decision to write this book, what that experience was like, and how you can be one of the first people to read it.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/cryptocurrency/ A few weeks back, Dan and Ian shared an in-depth conversation about cryptocurrency. That podcast featured Greg Gerber, who spoke about the basic things that you need to know about Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other digital currencies. The response to that podcast was fantastic, and we thought we would follow up on the topic by inviting our longtime friend, and cryptocurrency enthusiast, Taylor Pearson back on to the show. Taylor's recent article "Why Is Bitcoin Valuable" was recently featured on the front page of Hacker News. On today's show, Taylor joins us to talk about that article, and to share his insights on the philosophy behind this new technological movement. This episode isn't all philosophical, though. Taylor also shares some great tips about how you can dip your toes into the crypto space if you are so inclined.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/marketingmethods/ Dan and Ian know better than anyone how important lead generation is to a business. After all, they used to end every episode of this podcast with the phrase "Go make a cold call." Every business needs to make sales to survive, and to make those sales, they need to have leads. Today we are going to speak to two people who specialize in generating leads and making sales. Dan Englander is the founder of SalesSchema, a consulting company that helps larger ad agencies win more business. Dana Lindahl is the CEO and Founder of Legendary LeadGen, a company that helps marketing agencies get in touch with their ideal prospects. We've asked Dan and Dana to join us this week to engage in a bit of a spirited debate about the two dominant methods of lead generation. On one side of the debate, there are people who believe that creating an amazing business that relies on word-of-mouth marketing will ultimately bring in more qualified leads. On the other side, there is the idea that cold email outreach is ultimately the superior way to get new customers and clients. Regardless of what you believe, we hope this episode will inspire you to go out there and take the necessary steps to grow your business.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/4hourworkweekcritique/ A recent episode of Tim Ferriss' podcast caught the attention of Dan and Ian. The title of that episode was "The 4-Hour Workweek Revisited". For those who are unfamiliar, Tim is the author of The 4-Hour-Workweek, which is easily the most influential book in our community of location-independent entrepreneurs. The book is ten years old, and perhaps because of its prominence, it has received quite a few criticisms, many of which Tim addressed in his podcast. In this episode, Dan and Ian discuss their thoughts on Tim's podcast, the themes presented in his book, and why The 4-Hour Workweek is still such an important part of the entrepreneurial zeitgeist a decade after it was released.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/consultingcorner1/ Dan and Ian receive a lot of emails from listeners of this show. They don't always have time to respond to them, but one recent email caught their attention. The message was from a listener named Jay Clouse. Jay wrote that he was struggling with some of the common issues that early-stage entrepreneurs face. Jay recently left his position at a tech startup and has started a new business facilitating mastermind groups. Rather than email him back, Dan and Ian decided it might be helpful to call Jay and talk about these problems. This episode is a great resource for those who are just starting a business. For those of us who are more experienced entrepreneurs, we hope that you will stick around and share your own advice for Jay and the people like him in the comments section of this episode.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/2018-news/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/2018-news/ Podcast 25:00| Download | Stitcher | iTunes | Comment Occasionally we’ll be putting out a ‘Tuesday podcast’ with some news and ways you can get involved beyond the main TMBA show. I’ll make some notes below but, if you’re interested in our new ‘finding your dream job’, attending one of our events, or hearing what’s...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/booksandwriting/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/booksandwriting/ Podcast 40:57| Download | Stitcher | iTunes | Comment It is no secret that Dan and Ian have an affinity for great books, and they know that the listeners of this show appreciate them too. Indeed, many entrepreneurs have built their businesses from the wisdom and insights that they have gained from the written page. Kyla Gardner...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/artofthedeal/ A few months back, Dan and Ian shared a conversation on this show about a failed negotiation that Ian was involved in for a used car. The response we received about that episode was pretty overwhelming, and the results were unanimous: people want to hear more about these types of dealmaking situations. In pursuit of that information, we decided to invite a very special guest on to the show. Corey Reuth is Ian's mentor in the world of wheeling and dealing. Over the past few years, Corey has greatly influenced the deals that Ian has made, and he has helped save Ian thousands of dollars. On this week's episode, Corey shares his stories, tips, and strategies about what it takes to make killer deals. These tips don't just apply to car sales, either. We believe that anyone that's listening to this episode can learn something that can help them make a deal and that learning these techniques can help you make great strides along your entrepreneurial journey. 

http://www.tropicalmba.com/threescripts/ Dan and Ian have decided to use today's podcast to talk about a particularly difficult, but common issue in our community.  One of the biggest challenges that entrepreneurs face is adhering to the "life scripts" that society has written for us to follow. The cold, hard truth is that people's lives often don't go the way that they think they are going to, and the social scripts that lead us into the corporate rat race can frequently leave us wanting more out of life. Today's guest is someone that Dan and Ian have known for over 8 years. We hired David Hehenberger as a TMBA intern back in 2010. Using the skills he learned during his apprenticeship, he left to become an SEO consultant and ultimately started his own successful productized business called FatCat Apps. David joins us on this week's show to talk about three specific life scripts that are uniquely tailored for entrepreneurs. These scripts will help us to create the kind of financial independence that will ultimately allow us to live the kind of lives that we want, on our own terms.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/parenting1/ Today's podcast is a very special episode. Dan and Ian are taking some time this week to celebrate the birth of Ian's new son. On this episode, you'll hear all about how Ian is transitioning to his new role as a parent. Ian isn't alone in this adventure, though. Many of our listeners and members of our entrepreneurial community are parents as well. Balancing parenting with entrepreneurship can be quite the challenge, and today's guest understands it as well as anyone. Martijn Reintjes is the CEO of a company called Team Croco, which provides done-for-you split testing services. Martijn and his wife Ryanne have a two-year-old son named Milo, who they have brought along with them to several of our events. Martijn shares a great deal of advice with Ian on today's podcast about what it means to be a parent and an entrepreneur.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/crypto/ Happy New Year and welcome back to all of our listeners. We hope that we can help make 2018 your best year in business ever. To kick things off strong, Dan and Ian are going to talk about one of the most popular and controversial topics in the entrepreneurial community today. Of course, we are talking about Cryptocurrency. Digital currencies like Bitcoin and Etherieum have made many members of our audience very wealthy, and have left the rest of us wondering what we are missing out on. Greg Gerber is an internet entrepreneur and cryptocurrency enthusiast. He owns a marketing company that has been accepting Bitcoin as payment since 2013. On this episode, Greg joins us to talk about the world of digital currency, the advantages to accepting these currencies as payment, and the future of money.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/7stages/ Dan and Ian are in a reflective mood this week. 2017 has been a hallmark year for the TropicalMBA, and we thought it would be fun to revisit some of our favorite episodes of the year. We'll be sharing some of our most memorable moments from the show this year, as well as re-examining those conversations in a discussion we like to call the "7 Stages of Entrepreneurship". These 7 stages are bridges that every entrepreneur will eventually cross on their journey. Stick around after the credits for a very special collection of TropicalMBA outtakes and bloopers from 2017. To all of our listeners: We wish you a very happy holiday and a fantastic new year.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/greenbelly2/ In the past, Dan and Ian have spoken on this podcast about specific "epiphanies" that entrepreneurs have had on their journey. You're not going to hear about a lightbulb business idea or an overnight success story on today's show, though. The reality is that even if these epiphanies happen, the day-to-day life of being an entrepreneur has nothing to do with a single moment of insight. In fact, quite often the opposite is true. Entrepreneurs frequently feel like they have no idea what they are doing or what they are supposed to do. Chris Cage first joined us on the TropicalMBA in 2015 to talk to about his company, Greenbelly Meals. Greenbelly manufactures and sells mega-calorie, high-nutrient meal bars for people that participate in activities that require a huge calorie load. When Chris last spoke on this podcast, there were many question marks about his path forward. On this week's episode, Chris talks about what has happened in his journey since we last spoke, what inspired his first book, how it felt to appear on The Joe Rogan Experience, and much, much more.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/nateginsburg/ Dan and Ian have spent many years on this show discussing the importance of surrounding yourself with supportive people who share your vision. Today's guest can attest to that philosophy. Nate Ginsburg has built a successful Amazon business over the last two years, which he recently sold for just under a million dollars. He didn't do it alone, though. On this week's show, you'll hear how a chance encounter in the rolling hills of Northern Thailand led Nate down an unbelievable entrepreneurial journey. 

http://www.tropicalmba.com/theservicesproblem/ Last week, Dan and Ian spoke to Greg Gerber on this podcast. During that conversation, Greg mentioned that he had recently interacted with many listeners of this show, and that a large portion of them owned services businesses. He also spoke about how he believed that those entrepreneurs were struggling to take the next step in their business. This insight into the audience of the show got our hosts thinking. What if they could help those entrepreneurs take that next step? On this week's episode, Dan and Ian will be talking at great length about what "The Services Problem" is, as well as sharing three strategies that entrepreneurs with these types of businesses can employ in order to solve it.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/gregsgift/ Dan and Ian have shared many stories on this show about luck, serendipity, and being in the right place at the right time. But what if that luck isn't totally random? Today's episode is about entrepreneurs (and specifically listeners of this show) connecting to help each other out on their entrepreneurial journey. It begins with Greg Gerber, who made a post in our private membership forum The Dynamite Circle offering to give one lucky entrepreneur an all-expenses paid trip to our annual conference in Bangkok, DC BKK. The recipient of that gift was Madeleine Lambert. Madeleine started a content marketing business called Content Refined last year. She and Greg have joined us today to share the story of Greg's gift and how Madeline's business has grown to $50,000 in monthly recurring revenue since she received it.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/vincent/ The theme of today's show is navigating the social pressures that so many of us feel from friends, family, and colleagues. Dan and Ian are certainly familiar with these feelings, and today's guest is no stranger to them either. Vincent Nguyen is the founder of Growth Ninja, a performance-based Facebook ads company. You may remember Vincent from an episode we published a few years ago about apprenticeships. Vincent has definitely paid his dues in the world of entrepreneurship, having apprenticed with Empire Flippers before starting Growth Ninja in 2015, all the while hiding the fact that he dropped out of college from his immediate family. This episode is a conversation about the tough decisions that many entrepreneurs are forced to make, what it means to sacrifice relationships, and what it really takes to get started in the world of entrepreneurship.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/amazon2/ This week's episode represents one of the most promising and immediate opportunities for starting a business on the internet. Dan and Ian have spoken at length about Amazon on this show in the past. Time after time, they have heard stories of success from other entrepreneurs. A year ago, they explored some of these same ideas on an episode that was one of the most popular and controversial episodes we've ever done. Kevin Graham joined us for that episode. He runs a portfolio of almost 60 Amazon product review websites, and is the founder of Bulk Buy Hosting. Kevin agreed to speak with us again today, along with Coran Woodmass, whose company TheFBABroker.com brokers Amazon based eCommerce businesses. On today's show, Kevin and Coran speak at great length about the types of successes that people are having on Amazon, the criticisms of Amazon based businesses, and what kind of opportunities exist in this marketplace for entrepreneurs of all types. 

http://www.tropicalmba.com/dcbkk2017/ Today Dan and Ian are going to be talking about their biggest weekend of the year. They are fresh off the heels of DCBKK, the annual event that they host in Bangkok for members of The Dynamite Circle. Hundreds of entrepreneurs, many of whom are listeners of this show, migrate to Southeast Asia each year to attend. They do so with the intention of focusing their time and energy on improving their businesses. On this week's episode, our hosts will be sharing their five biggest takeaways from this year's conference. You'll also hear them talk about what makes a profitable event and how they are planning on ramping up their events for 2018.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/municibid/ Dan and Ian have talked to many business owners on this podcast about what it takes to create a highly successful business, but what are we supposed to do once our businesses become successful? Today's guest is Greg Berry. Greg has been a very big contributor to our online community The Dynamite Circle, and has spoken at many of our events. Greg joins us this week to share the story of Municibid, a marketplace company that Greg founded when he was 26 years old. Since then, Municibid has grown to become a completely location-independent seven figure business. On this week's episode, we seek to answer a very high quality problem that many entrepreneurs end up facing: what happens after you actually build the business of your dreams?

http://www.tropicalmba.com/neversplitthedifference/ A few weeks ago on this podcast, Dan and Ian spoke about a failed negotiation that Ian went through when trying to purchase a car. Ian has said many times that believed he could have closed that deal if he just used the right tactics. Today's guest has spent a lifetime working on negotiating tactics, but he has primarily done so in matters of life or death. Chris Voss is a former FBI hostage negotiator and the author of "Never Split the Difference". Since leaving the FBI, Chris has devoted his time to a new business called Black Swan Ltd., which teaches people how to use the skills that he learned during his time as an FBI agent to improve their negotiation skills in business situations. On this week's episode, you'll hear Chris go into great detail about emotional intelligence, how to choose the right language to use while negotiating, and why you should never split the difference. 

http://www.tropicalmba.com/tencommandmentsrevisited/ Over the years, Dan and Ian have spent a lot of time on this show talking about travel. One particular episode of this show called The 10 Travel Commandments, has resonated quite a bit with our listeners. We thought it would be fun to revisit some of the concepts from that episode and talk about how their travel philosophies have changed in the five years since that episode was published. You'll also hear tips, tricks, and essential strategies on how to make any trip a successful one. 

http://www.tropicalmba.com/linjer/ Dan and Ian love physical product companies. After all, they started their own entrepreneurial journey by selling physical products. On this week's show, they have chosen to showcase the story of a mid-market luxury brand that has found massive success. Jennifer Chong and Roman Khan are the founders of Linjer. Linjer manufactures and sells beautiful leather handbags and watches, which retail between $200 and $500 USD. On today's episode, Jennifer and Roman speak to us about a wide variety of topics, including researching marketplaces, building teams, and making deals with factory owners. This is not just an episode about people who are passionate about selling great products, though. It's also a unique case study on how to use savvy marketing techniques to grow your business.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/amazingseller/ This week, Dan and Ian are going to be talking about one of the most successful platforms for building an online business, and one that has historically been under-represented on this show. That platform is Amazon.com, and the reason that you haven't heard much about it is because Amazon sellers have been pretty secretive about the ways that they have been using it to make money.  Today's guest has no problem sharing his knowledge, especially with those who are just getting started on Amazon. Scott Voelker is the host of an established podcast about Amazon called The Amazing Seller, where he offers insight and tips from his experience using the platform.  On this episode, Scott talks about how people can start making some side money on Amazon, and eventually grow to earn a full-time income. If you are interested in making money on Amazon, but you're not sure where to begin, this is the episode for you. 

http://www.tropicalmba.com/greenbacktaxservices/ For the past several weeks, Dan and Ian have been speaking about what it means to build a culture for your company. One of the most important parts to fostering that culture is managing a team, and almost no one does it better than this week's guest. Enter Carrie McKeegan. In 2008, Carrie and her husband Dave founded Greenback Tax Services. Since then, their business has exploded and they have expanded to include a 55 person fully distributed team. On this episode, you will hear about the challenges of starting a business with your spouse, why Carrie believes her corporate experience prepared her for entrepreneurship, and some essential insights into running a remote team. If you are looking to grow a meaningful business that isn't just going to pay the rent, but pay for retirement, then this is an episode you're going to want to stick around for.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/gfny/ Dan and Ian often use this show as a platform to talk about the things that they are most passionate about. This week, we are taking a look at two of Dan's favorite topics: cycling and event-based businesses. Uli Fluhme is the co-founder of GFNY, a cycling event in New York city that was the first of its kind in America, modeled after the traditional Italian Gran Fondos. On this episode, you'll hear Uli's story about the logistical challenges of creating an event like this, how he set out to achieve the ambitious task of shutting down the George Washington bridge for a cycling race, and how GFNY has managed to expand into a global brand. Even if you aren't into cycling, today's episode offers some unique insight into building successful events, and building a strong brand that you can license out to others or build a franchise around.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/seekingapprentice/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/seekingapprentice/ Podcast 20:26| Download | Stitcher | iTunes | Comment Dan and Ian are currently seeking a Business Development Apprentice to help grow The Dynamite Circle, as well as this very podcast. Over the years, they have hired many people who were listeners to this podcast, or who were referred by listeners of this show. They decided that there...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/showerthoughts/ Dan and Ian have often subscribed to the notion that some of their best ideas come from their most personal moments, and what moment is more personal than taking a shower? This week's episode is a collection of "shower thoughts" that the hosts of this podcast have been ruminating on for quite some time. You'll hear insights on what it takes to achieve life goals, why debt can be the #1 thing stopping you from reaching your potential, how to avoid the noise of information, and a whole lot more.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/noahkagan/ Dan and Ian are very fortunate to speak to one of their favorite entrepreneurs this week, and someone whose reputation certainly precedes him. This week's guest is Noah Kagan. Noah is the founder of AppSumo.com, and the host of Noah Kagan Presents. App Sumo is an extremely successful online business which offers daily deals for digitally distributed products and services. Noah's blog OkDork has also been a longtime favorite of the hosts of this show..  On this episode, you'll learn how Noah defines success. You'll also hear about his unique approach to hiring and team building, his investment strategy, and much more.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/dreamline/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/dreamline/ Podcast 36:53| Download | Stitcher | iTunes | Comment On this week’s episode, Dan and Ian unearth some important documents from 2009. Yes, we are talking about their original, old-school Dreamlines, written back when Dan and Ian first met. For those unfamiliar with the term, a Dreamline is a document that asks you to write down what you want to...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/convertkit/ On today's show, Dan and Ian are going to talk to an entrepreneur whose business is absolutely on fire right now. Nathan Barry is the founder and CEO of ConvertKit, an email marketing program for bloggers. ConvertKit currently has 28 employees, and is turning over 9 million dollars in annual recurring income. Nathan has built a long and storied reputation of being unafraid to confront and analyze the challenges of entrepreneurship through his blog at NathanBarry.com. On this week's episode, Nathan talks about a challenge that he is facing right now that many entrepreneurs would love to have. How do you create a company culture when your team is growing at a remarkable pace? It turns out the answer is brutal honesty. 

http://www.tropicalmba.com/jasoncohen/ Today's guest is one of the smartest business minds that Dan and Ian have encountered in their travels. Jason Cohen is the founder of WP Engine, a very successful company that provides managed Wordpress hosting. He is also the author of Dan and Ian's all-time favorite blogs, A Smart Bear. A few years ago, Jason made the difficult decision to step down from his CEO role at WP Engine, at a time when the company was more successful than ever. Jason recently spoke about this decision at our recent Dynamite Circle event in Austin, and we invited him on the show this week to expand on that talk.  On today's episode, you'll hear Jason share his insights about the struggles of growing at the pace of your company, the angst you can feel after you sell a business, and how he has been able to harness his "superpowers".

http://www.tropicalmba.com/nameyourbusiness/ This week's episode is about a question that Dan and Ian are struggling to answer right now: What is the best way to go about naming a new business or product? A lot of times you only get one chance to get people's attention. Choosing the right name could unlock the door to great success, and branding your business incorrectly could prove disastrous. Today's guest knows this challenge better than anyone. Alexandra Watkins is the founder of a company called Eat My Words, which specializes in naming brands and products. She is also the author of a book on the subject called "Hello, My Name is Awesome". This interview originally started out as a discussion about Alexandra's book, but it ended up taking a serious turn about halfway through, when Alexandra went to great lengths to help Dan and Ian find a new name for this podcast.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/400thshow/ Dan and Ian have spent a substantial amount of their life making this show, nearly 8 years to be exact. What better way to celebrate the 400th episode of this podcast than to return to one of their favorite episode formats: the good, old-fashioned Q&A. This week, Dan and Ian are answering more listener questions, and riffing on topics like "Comfy Bed Syndrome" and "The Golden Handcuffs". You'll also hear some retrospective thoughts on 8 years of talking about entrepreneurship.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/curiosity/ Today's show is the product of a dream that Dan and Ian both had, which inspired them to follow up with an old friend. The topic is a rather simple one. What if you could take your curiosity and energy about a topic and turn it into a serious business? In pursuing the answer, they both decided it was a good time to check in with their former business partner Jesse Lawler, who hosts a fantastic podcast called Smart Drug Smarts. Jesse didn't start the podcast with a PhD in medicine, or anything relevant to the medicinal field except a genuine desire to explore these issues, and he has had a tremendous amount of success in doing it. On this show, Jesse shares how was able to turn something that he was passionate about into a full-time business that generates real revenue. We hope this episode will inspire those of you who are passionate and curious to find a way to tell your own story.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/adbadger/ Dan and Ian often speak on this podcast about how businesses and entrepreneurs evolve. Today's guest, Michael Erikson, has certainly done that since the last time he spoke on this show. Michael's journey started, as many of ours do, staring at a blank Google search screen and typing in the words "How do I make money online?" Several years later, Michael has spoken at several of the Dynamite Circle events. He was on this podcast last December, sharing his journey of building a 6 figure services business called Search Scientists. Michael has recently started a new company called AdBadger, which is in essence a software version of his previous services company. On this week's show, you'll hear Michael share insight on how to do something that most services entrepreneurs dream of doing: selling a product.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/questions1/ On today's show, Dan and Ian are once again reaching into the mailbag to answer some questions from the listeners of this show. You'll hear practical answers about a whole slew of topics, including purchasing an"entrepreneurmobile", The 1,000 Day Principle, and what it means to be useful. You'll also hear advice on how you can go to conferences for free, tips for traveling to Southeast Asia with your family and much, much more.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/tmba2017/ As many of our listeners know, Dan and Ian hosted an event in Austin, TX last week that brought together entrepreneurs from all over the world to talk about their businesses. Today's episode features five of the most important takeaways from that event, focusing primarily on the cold, hard realities of what it means to be an entrepreneur in 2017. These subjects range from hiring A players to harnessing your "superpowers" and much, much more. You'll also hear a lot of news about the podcast, including an opportunity for one talented listener to win a $1500 cash prize.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/quittingentrepreneurship/ One of the dichotomies that Dan and Ian often address on this show is the difference between being an entrepreneur and having a job. Today's podcast is going to cover a rather taboo subject in some entrepreneurial circles, which is the decision to stop being an entrepreneur and go back to the daily grind of a 9-to-5. Anna Wickham is a former TropicalMBA intern, who traveled the world for nearly ten years and eventually started her own marketing agency called Charm House. Anna had been feeling pressure to remain an entrepreneur, even though she wasn't sure that it was the best fit for her. In this episode, Anna opens up to share her fears and hesitations about the entrepreneurial life, and why she ultimately decided that it wasn't healthy for her to keep pursuing it.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/richardjalichandra/ One of the things that Dan and Ian are most passionate about is finding great blogs and podcasts. These days, the internet seems to be getting smaller and smaller. You really need to dig deep to find unique content, and a lot of it is being made in the most remote corners of the internet. Once upon a time, though, there was a search engine that highlighted blogs themselves. Richard Jalichandra is the former CEO of Technorati.com, which at one time was considered by many to be the gateway into the blogosphere. During their quest for great blogs, Dan and Ian became curious as to why this company disappeared. On this week's episode, Richard shares the story of Technorati, as well as the details of his long and storied career in the early days of the world wide web.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/howtopitch/ It's safe to say that Dan and Ian get a lot of pitches in their inbox. These pitches come in a variety of forms, but the people that send these pitches often follow a lot of the same archetypes. In general, there is a whole lot of asking going on. On today's episode, Dan and Ian will be following up on their recent sales episode, and providing some useful, actionable information on how you can pitch people successfully through cold emails. First, they will be sharing some successful pitches they have received, as well as the types of pitches they dread seeing in their inbox. They will also be sharing a three-step formula to creating winning pitches that won't end up being archived or deleted.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/liveinthailand/ This week's episode is another chapter in a long-running series on this podcast, where Dan and Ian have been exploring the locations around the globe that entrepreneurs are moving to. Today, you will hear from two entrepreneurs who have made Thailand, and more specifically the northern capital of Chiang Mai, their home bases for the portion of a year. Philippe Bordeau is the founder of HammockUniverse.com. He shares his story, including the details of a Visa that he has acquired that allows him to be a resident of Thailand for up to 6 years at a time. Leanne Woodmass, along with her husband, runs an Amazon Fulfillment Brokerage. She has been living in Thailand for the past few years. You'll hear how a community of expats and entrepreneurs enticed them both to stay in Chiang Mai.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/productized5/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/productized5/ Podcast 43:29 | Download | Stitcher | iTunes | Comment Just over a year ago, Dan and Ian profiled a productized bookkeeping business called the Bean Ninjas. A lot has happened since that episode aired. In particular, the founders of that company, Ben McAdam and Meryl Johnson, have decided to part ways. This episode is...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/salestechniques/ One of the topics that Dan and Ian have repeatedly been asked to talk about on this show is sales. The reality for the majority of the entrepreneurs who listen to this show is that their businesses live or die by their sales funnel. It's also one of the number one things that entrepreneurs struggle to get good at. When Dan and Ian decided to do this episode, they knew there was only one person that they could call to talk about how to really get better at sales. John Logar is an extremely talented and successful salesperson, and he has always been very generous about sharing his advice on sales. On this week's show, John shares some of those insights, including a 4 step daily process that John guarantees will bring you more sales. This isn't going to be a drive by, top ten list type of an episode. This is a deep dive into the type of skills and habits that will help you build a better, more profitable sales funnel for your business.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/getstartedqanda/ One of the requests that Dan and Ian have received a lot on this show is to do more of an old school episode; the kind of one-on-one conversation that permeated the early days of this podcast. On this week's episode, they are doing just that. Dan and Ian are reaching back into the TropicalMBA mailbag and answering questions that listeners have submitted through the mailing list on a variety of topics, including advice for entrepreneurs who don't know where to begin, why being an entrepreneur means that you might lose a lot of friends, and what the two of them have been up to lately.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/strongtowns/ Dan and Ian are always looking for new ways to increase their productivity. In a lot of ways, Dan and Ian have often used this show as a means to explore places, though they have never explored those places in the ways that today's guest has. Chuck Marohn is the president of a nonprofit organization called Strong Towns. Through his work with Strong Towns, Chuck has helped to create a framework for how our cities and towns can become financially stronger and more prosperous. Today's podcast is an inspiring, and perhaps controversial, conversation about what kinds of towns and cities we want to live in, and what those places will look like in the future.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/stressfreeproductivity/ Dan and Ian are always looking for new ways to increase their productivity. Quite often, there is a mental cost that comes with any kind of productivity boost. Generally speaking, the harder a person works, the more stress is added to their life. But what if there were a few easy steps to increase productivity without these kinds of costs? Dan has recently traveled to New York City, and whenever he makes his way to the city, he always makes it a point to catch up with Taylor Pearson. Taylor is the author of The End of Jobs, and a very frequent guest on this show. On this week's episode, Taylor shares four productivity strategies that he has tested himself and teaches his students. He believes these strategies are the path to becoming more capable and productive without adding any stress to our lives.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/andorraandpanama/ One of the things that Dan and Ian discuss pretty frequently on this show are the places in the world that location independent people tend to gravitate toward. In this community a lot of people move around for lifestyle and social reasons, but traditionally business owners have moved to places that are offer low tax situations, or otherwise business friendly environments. On today's show, two of our listeners are going to share their experiences of living in a few of these countries; Panama and Andorra. Jase Rodley is a digital marketer for boutique hotels who visited Andorra with his wife Jess about 18 months ago and fell in love with it. Matt Landau owns his own boutique hotel in Panama, and he used his experience in that industry to create his own online business targeted towards vacation rental owners. You'll hear the two of them share their stories about why they chose to live these countries, and what makes them so appealing to digital nomads who are looking for a place to settle down.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/knotel/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/knotel/ Podcast 32:35 | Download | Stitcher | iTunes | Comment Generally speaking, Dan and Ian aren’t exactly fans of having a physical office. This is due, in large part, to the complications and difficulties that come with renting these kinds of spaces. Today’s guest is going to attempt to change their opinion. Amol Sarva is the...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/imposter/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/imposter/ Podcast 36:06 | Download | Stitcher | iTunes | Comment A recent thread in the Dynamite Circle forum really caught Dan and Ian‘s attention, and seemed to resonate with a great number of people in the community. One of the members introduced the idea of “Imposter Syndrome”, and asked the rest of the community if they...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/brentbeshore/ The toughest nut for Dan and Ian to crack over the last few years has been how to make money with your money. How do you successfully invest in small businesses without having to run them on a day-to-day basis? Today's guest has cracked that code. Brent Beshore is the founder and CEO of Adventur.es. Brent has managed to do something that our hosts have dreamed of doing for a long time. He owns a portfolio of different businesses, and he does little to no work in operating them. On this episode, Brent will share how he has built this portfolio and what things he looks for when deciding to purchase a business.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/romania/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/romania/ Podcast 29:02 | Download | Stitcher | iTunes | Comment Today, Dan and Ian are continuing their miniseries in which they look at the many different locations that people in this community have chosen to call ‘home’. In this episode, you’ll hear from someone who hasn’t just settled on a place but is also considering applying...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/calnewport/ If you are anything like Dan and Ian, then you have likely spent years geeking out on the writings of this week's guest. Cal Newport is a computer science professor, and he has been operating a blog on his website since 2007. He has also been writing books since he was in college, and his most recent book is called Deep Work, which is about the benefits and practical steps to getting more done in the internet age. This interview covers a wide range of subjects, including distributed algorithms at the extremes, why Cal uses walking to enhance his productivity, and why creativity is more workmanlike than most people realize.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/uglymail/ Dan and Ian have talked many times on this podcast about how the best ideas often come from scratching your own itch, or finding problems for solutions that you have experienced. Lately, Dan has had a very specific itch. Email tracking software has really been getting on Dan's nerves these days, so much so that he has even written a recent blog post about how much the industry is upsetting him. Enter Sonny Tulyaganov. Sonny was feeling some of the very same frustrations with email tracking software that Dan has been experiencing, but Sonny decided to do something about it. He developed a browser plugin called UglyMail, which allows you to see who is tracking your email. On this week's show, you'll hear the history of how Sonny developed this plugin, and the startling revelations about just how much of the information in your inbox is at risk.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/jordanharbinger/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/jordanharbinger/ Podcast 47:06 | Download | Stitcher | iTunes | Comment It’s no secret that Dan and Ian are radio enthusiasts. It’s the reason that they started making this podcast in the first place. They are also interested in learning how others have grown successful businesses through putting their voices on the air and by developing podcasts....

http://www.tropicalmba.com/splitly/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/splitly/ Podcast 39:10 | Download | Stitcher | iTunes | Comment On today’s show, Dan and Ian have decided to focus on something that has never been done on this podcast. They have interviewed many entrepreneurs over the years, but they have always wanted to document the story of a business. This episode follows the creation of...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/howdoesyourbusinessfeel/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/howdoesyourbusinessfeel/ Podcast 32:36 | Download | Stitcher | iTunes | Comment A short while back, Dan and Ian invited Rob Dix and Rob Bence on to the show to share their knowledge about property investment. During that conversation, the Robs spoke to Ian about a lot more than just investing in property. They have managed to build...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/hungaryandgeorgia/ A few weeks ago, Dan and Ian published their first episode of a new series on this podcast, where they decided to seek out the answer to a question that every location-independent entrepreneur has struggled with at one point in time: If I can live anywhere in the world, where should that be? On this week's episode, they will be focusing on two nations in Eastern Europe: Hungary and Georgia. Clayton Cornell runs his own lead-generation business online, as well as one of Dan and Ian's longtime favorite blogs called Spartan Traveler. On this podcast, Clayton shares his story about what led him to the capitol of Hungary, Budapest. You'll also hear from Dana Lindahl. Dana has chosen the nation of Georgia as his home base, as his wife has recently started a business there. You'll hear about what that process was like, as well as the entrepreneurial climate in this former Soviet country.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/makemoneywithamazon/ In the past, Dan and Ian have explored what they like to call the "Amazon Gold Rush" on this podcast. Today's show is inspired by someone that Dan recently spent some time with who is knee deep in that movement. Kevin Graham is the founder of Bulk Buy Hosting, but he has also made a considerable amount of money through his own Amazon affiliate business. The Amazon ecosystem is a huge opportunity, and is creating generational wealth for many crafty, young entrepreneurs. Kevin has had this kind of success, and on this episode, we will walk you through every step of how to create one of these businesses and get them ranking in search engines. This is one of the most business-focused episodes we have ever done on this podcast. If you are considering this path in your online business ventures, this is the episode for you.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/entrepreneurialpeople/ A few weeks ago, Dan and Ian sent out an email to the listeners of this podcast, in an attempt to get to know the audience a little better. They were excited to find out that many of the listeners of this podcast consider themselves to be entrepreneurial, but they don't have their own business yet. They were also excited to meet some young, entrepreneurial minds at a recent Dynamite Circle Junto, and they decided to start exploring what it means to be an entrepreneurial person. This week's episode is for those people. If you haven't started a business yet, but you are ready to find a way to turn your dreams into aspirations, this is the episode for you.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/spainandportugal/ This episode is the first in a series in which Dan and Ian attempt to answer one of the fundamental questions that all location-independent entrepreneurs eventually ask themselves: If I can live anywhere, where should I live? On this week's show, they will be focusing on two countries in Southern Europe: Spain and Portugal. To learn a bit more about Portugal, Dan reached out to Dr. Shannon Weeks, a Natropathic Doctor and Applied Kinesiologist, to share his experience about establishing residency in Portugal and his home city of Lisbon. You'll also hear Ian speak to Dan about a little bit of his own personal story, as both he and his girlfriend have established residency in Spain. Listen in as Shannon and Dan share their perspectives on visas, taxes, culture and more.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/waitbutwhy/ Today's guest is easily one of Dan and Ian's favorite writers online. Tim Urban is the man behind Wait But Why. He writes long-form, stick figure illustrated blog posts on a variety of topics. Better yet, he has turned his own procrastination into success. As you'll find out during this episode, Tim is more than just a blogger. He is a business owner, and all-around creative persona. His blog has even attracted people like Elon Musk, who enjoyed Tim's blog so much that he reached out to him directly to ask him to write about some of his projects. This week, Tim shares the story behind the creation of his blog, his business partnership, and what the future holds in store for him.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/hiremymom/ Dan and Ian know that all entrepreneurs struggle with hiring, and specifically hiring remote workers. One thing that they have learned over the years, through listeners of this podcast and members of the Dynamite Circle, is that stay-at-home moms tend to make model team members. On this week's episode, you'll hear the stories of three women. Kiri Masters is the founder of Bobsled Marketing. She shares some of her experiences finding great team members, and why that strategy revolves around stay-at-home parents. Louise Gray is one one of Kiri's remote employees. She had a very successful corporate career at Sony, before having a baby and reconsidering how she approaches work. Lesley Pyle is the founder of HireMyMom, a well-established agency that places stay-at-home parents at companies around the world.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/clickminded/ Dan and Ian have always been fascinated by people who can create ways to generate income quickly. Today's guest not only works for one of the most successful startups in San Francisco, but at the same time he has built a successful online side hustle in the form of an SEO training course. Tommy Griffith is the founder of ClickMinded. On this week's episode, you'll hear how he was able to create a successful side business by setting aside his Saturday mornings. Tommy also shares his thoughts about what you need to give up to be an entrepreneur, and why he thinks there could be opportunities for entrepreneurs in the educational space.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/tmba369-tropical-mbas-2016-year-in-review/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/tmba369-tropical-mbas-2016-year-in-review/ Podcast 29:28 | Download | Stitcher | iTunes | Comment It’s that time of year again. Our businesses slow down for the holidays, and we naturally get a little reflective about the past 12 months. This week, Dan and Ian have decided to revisit some of their favorite episodes of the Tropical MBA podcast in 2016. You’ll...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/christmas/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/christmas/ Podcast 19:28 | Download | Stitcher | iTunes | Comment On this very festive edition of the TropicalMBA Podcast, Dan and Ian have decided to put their own spin on one of their all-time favorite holiday songs, The 12 Days of Christmas. Their rendition is all about the 12 things that every entrepreneur is wishing for...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/businessideas3/ A few weeks ago, Dan and Ian mentioned that they would be inviting their friend Dan Norris back onto the program. Dan Norris is the author of The 7 Day Startup, and for lack of a better term, he is a business idea generating machine. There have been success stories on this show that came from many of Dan's business ideas. In this conversation, Dan donates a ton of business ideas, as well as sharing how he has been able to create a six-figure side hustle through self-publishing books. If you are looking for your next entrepreneurial adventure, this could be the episode for you.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/ricardosemler/ On today's show, Dan and Ian are going to be speaking with someone who has inspired them both for a very long time. In fact, he is the author of one of the most cited books on this podcast. Maverick is Ricardo Semler's account of how he was able to transform his family's traditional manufacturing business into an experiment that introduced the world to his innovative business practices. Even though the book is over 20 years old, today's entrepreneurs are still looking to it for inspiration. Ricardo opens up about what his life has looked like since the book was published, and how he has began to spread those innovations to other aspects of society. Transcript

http://www.tropicalmba.com/estonia/ On today's show, Dan and Ian are taking a look at one specific country. Estonia is a nation that, until this point, our hosts had very little knowledge of. They are a country that has started behaving like a startup, and has even started offering services specifically designed for location-independent entrepreneurs. In particular, they have developed a solution for our travel woes in the form of something called an "E-Residency". On this episode, you will hear from Estonian E-Resident, Joel Runyon. Joel is the man behind the fitness and mindset blog, The Blog of Impossible Things. You'll also hear from Estonia's Chief Information Officer, Taavi Kotka. The two of them will share their insights on how E-Residency could pave the path to the future of how nations, citizens, and digital nomads interact.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/sarahk/ Back in 2012, Dan and Ian hosted a two week seminar that was attended by 44 listeners of this show, and Sarah Kornblet was one of those people. Since attending that seminar, Sarah has become a very successful attorney for online entrepreneurs. This week's episode is really the story of what has happened in Sarah's life since that seminar. It is also the story of an idea, because every business starts with an idea. Sometimes we aren't ready for those ideas, or those ideas aren't ready for us.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/apprentice2/ On this show, Dan and Ian talk a lot about apprenticeships. In doing research about apprenticeships, Ian recently discovered that in many developed countries all over the world, there is a very robust apprenticeship culture that does not exist in the United States. On this week's episode, we are going to bring you the story of one such apprenticeship told from both sides. Jacob Puhl brought Corey Ames on as an apprentice at a company he founded called Firegang Dental Marketing. You'll hear how their relationship started and how it evolved to where it is today, as Corey is preparing to take over the reigns as CEO.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/businessideas2/ On last week's show, Dan and Ian spoke about how many entrepreneurs are finding success with productized service business. One of the reasons for that success is that these businesses can be started quickly and with little to no capital. On today's episode, they have asked their friend and expert idea generator Tristan King of Blackbelt Commerce to return to the show. The last time Tristan was on this program, listeners of this show took the ideas that were donated and turned them into successful businesses. Listen in to hear even more of Dan and Tristan's ideas for productized service businesses that could be started up this weekend.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/eventfive/ Dan and Ian are both recovering from their DC BKK event that they host every year in Bangkok. This year marked the fifth anniversary of that event, which has been a topic of conversation on this show every year since its inception. In this weeks show, they are going to talk about some of the themes of this year's DC BKK, what that they learned from this year's event, and the intimate connection that TropicalMBA listeners have formed with DC BKK over the years.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/claycollins/ Several weeks ago, Dan and Ian spoke with Simon Payne about his experiences as the technical co-founder of LeadPages, the number one landing page software on the web, and his decision to leave that company to pursue a new venture called ConvertPlayer. A few days after that episode aired, we were contacted by one of the other founders of that company, Clay Collins, who wanted to come onto the show and talk about one of his favorite things in life: marketing technology. We jumped at the chance to talk to Clay about his company's growth, why they decided to seek venture capital, and a whole lot more.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/greatbooks/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/greatbooks/ Podcast 37:39 | Download | Stitcher | iTunes | Comment A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, when Dan and Ian decided to start a business together, their first serious spending was on books. They knew that, in order to run a successful business, they would first have to read up on...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/propertypodcast/ Recently, Dan and Ian have been exploring the subject of investing in properties, and the many reasons and motivations that different investors have. It has been a few months since Ian purchased his home in Austin, Texas, and he is still trying to wrap his head around what it means to be a homeowner. This week, he decided to reach out to Rob Dix and Rob Bence, who have both been investing in properties in the UK for almost a decade. They also run a business finding and managing properties for others, as well as hosting a podcast about property investments called The Property Podcast. On this episode, the "Robs" share with Ian why people might want to invest in property, some of the archetypes of people who do invest in property, and their general feelings on the future of housing market.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/buffett/ Recently, Dan and Ian have decided to research someone who is a legend in the world of business. For a very long time, Warren Buffett was the richest person in the world. Dan and Ian both recently read Alice Schroeder's fantastic biography of Warren Buffett titled "The Snowball". They decided they wanted to dedicate an episode to that story of Mr. Buffett's life, and the unique business choices that he has made throughout his career.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/languagelearning/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/languagelearning/ Podcast 35:24 | Download | Stitcher | iTunes | Comment Hola! Like many of us, Dan and Ian spend a lot of time in foreign countries. As regular listeners know, Dan has recently moved to Barcelona and he’s starting to get more than a little embarrassed by his limited range lack of Spanish. But he...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/basketball/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/basketball/ Podcast 45:54 | Download | Stitcher | iTunes | Comment This week’s episode is the final instalment of our three-part series about people who have turned their passions (which just happen to be some of Dan and Ian‘s personal obsessions) into successful businesses. Today’s guest is the podcaster that Dan has listened to the most...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/rcr/ In the second part of our three-part series, Dan and Ian are talking to people that have turned their own personal obsessions into successful businesses. This week, you'll be hearing from someone that Ian has admired and wanted to talk to for quite some time. Mr. Regular is one of the hosts of Regular Car Reviews, a very successful YouTube channel that combines car reviews with pop culture references, social commentary, and much more. The results are both hilarious and impressive. You don't need to be a car person to enjoy this show. Mr. Regular shares his insight on what it was like to get started publishing content on YouTube four years ago and what the journey has been like since then.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/cycling/ In the first part of a new three part series, Dan and Ian are going to be talking about some of their personal obsessions and the people who have turned those obsessions into businesses. This week, you'll hear about one particular obsession that Ian introduced into Dan's life: cycling. Patrick Brady of Red Kite Prayer has become one of Dan's favorite bloggers and podcast hosts. Patrick has been able to make a living writing and speaking about cycling. This episode is about more than just riding a bike, though. Patrick shares his attitudes about generating revenue with his blog, writers he is inspired by, and much more. Those of you who are cycling enthusiasts should stay tuned for some bonus content after the credits as well, where Patrick and Dan geek out over some hardcore cycling stuff.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/dccommunity/ Starting a business can be extremely emotionally difficult. Dan and Ian are very familiar with the personal toll that the process can take on an aspiring entrepreneur. A lot of times starting a business means that you are broke, or relying on your friends, family or significant other to support you. For some, that can lead to stress and even depression. Christopher Sutton knows these feelings all too well. A few years ago, Christopher wrote a blog post about what it was like to experience the emotional roller coaster of starting his own business, Easy Ear Training. On this week's episode, you will hear Christopher talk about what that experience was like, as well has how he found support through this podcast and our community of listeners in the Dynamite Circle.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/soldfollowup/ A year ago, Dan and Ian published one of the most-listened to episodes of this podcast, titled 7 Things to Consider When Selling Your Business. In that episode, they detailed all of the ups and downs of the sale process, as well as some anonymous profiles of the people who were putting in offers and kicking tires. On this week's episode, you will hear directly from Tino Sage, the "CEO Sally" who purchased their manufacturing and import business. She'll explain what she was looking for in a business, what the process of buying our business was like, and how things have been since she took over the reins.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/thesubtleart/ Today's guest is one of Dan and Ian's all time favorite writers, Mark Manson. Many of you may know him from his blog at MarkManson.net, where he has written about a wide range of subjects including digital nomadism, living with anxiety, and toxic relationships. Recently, Mark made the decision to sign with Harper Collins and publish his first book, titled The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. Mark is going to be sharing a few excerpts from that book on this show, as well as talking about how he got into blogging, his values as a writer, what he thinks the state of the blogosphere is today, and much more.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/convertplayer/ Like all entrepreneurs, Dan and Ian have fantasized about putting their ideas out on the internet and making millions of dollars. Today's guest has actually done that. Simon Payne is the co-founder of Leadpages, the industry standard software in creating landing pages for websites. Dan and Ian originally met Simon in the Philippines, around the time that they were forming the Dynamite Circle. In this episode, you'll hear how that original meetup influenced Simon, as well as the true story of how Leadpages was formed, and what the future has in store for Simon.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/emailstrategies/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/emailstrategies/ Podcast 19:35 | Download | Stitcher | iTunes | Comment Email has been an all pervading part of entrepreneurial life for the last few decades. These days, Dan and Ian have mixed feelings about email in general. In exploring how to step up some of their strategies for dealing with it, they decided to talk to someone...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/podcastprocess/ About a year ago, Dan and Ian were working on their annual DC BKK event in Bangkok, and they were finding themselves strapped for time. They weren't putting the kind of resources or time into this show that the would have liked to, and they realized that the enjoyment that they were getting out of this podcast had started to wane. It was around that time that they decided they needed to drastically step up the production level of the show. They put out a call for a new producer, which was answered by a former BBC producer named Jane Beresford. This week's episode is the story of what has been going on behind the scenes of the Tropical MBA podcast since then. You'll hear about what led to the decision to increase production, and a step by step instruction on how they were able to take this show to the next level.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/bitcoin/ Dan and Ian have been talking a lot on the TropicalMBA lately about investments, and those conversations have led them down a lot of interesting paths. Most notably, that curiosity has led them to explore the future of cryptocurrency, and in particular, Bitcoin. What really compelled us to talk about the Bitcoin story on this show is the strange and incredible cast of characters involved. No one knows that story or those characters better than Nathaniel Popper, a New York Times business reporter and the author of Digital Gold. On this week's episode, you'll hear Nathaniel share the fascinating details of the history of Bitcoin, and the process of shaping a book based on so many of those crazy stories.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/estherjacobs/ One of the recurring themes on this show is freedom. The freedom to make personal choices. The freedom to travel. The freedom to create a business that allows you to live the lifestyle you choose to live. Dan and Ian have spoken to many people about what that freedom means, but perhaps Esther Jacobs has the most profound story about freedom that has ever been shared on this show. Esther is one of the youngest people in the Netherlands ever to be honored with the distinction of knighthood. Despite that event, Esther has a very unique story to share about how she was disowned by the very same country that named her a knight. Esther has an unbelievable story, and it could carry serious implications for digital nomads all around the world.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/notsell/ It's been almost a year to the date since Dan and Ian sold their business. They don't regret the decision, but in the time since then, the two of them have explored a lot of "what ifs" in their head. A lot of listeners have approached them recently who are considering selling their business as well. On this week's episode, you'll hear some of the questions that listeners approached them with, as well as five reasons why selling your business might not be the right idea for you.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/boutiquejapan/ Last week Dan and Ian talked about how they hosted a couple hundred entrepreneurs in Barcelona for the DCBCN conference. A lot of those entrepreneurs shared their stories on stage, which is an intimidating task. Andres Zuleta of Boutique Japan was one of those people. Andres started a business that sells boutique travel packages to people who want to visit Japan. He called in to this podcast and left a voicemail not too long ago and today Boutique Japan is on target to make $1.3 million in revenue. We invited him on to the show this week to talk about how telling his story has helped him make sense of the ride that he has been on.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/bcnconference/ Dan and Ian are hot off the heels of the DCBCN conference they hosted this week, where over 200 entrepreneurs gathered in Barcelona to participate in a series of dinners, workshops, parties and even bike rides. On this week's episode, they'll be talking about some of the trends that they are seeing in the lifestyle business space, as well as five things that they took away from the overall DCBCN experience.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/gimlet2/ Last week we teased a very special guest for this week's episode. Today, Dan and Ian are very pleased to reveal that guest to be Alex Blumberg, the CEO of Gimlet Media and the host of one of our very favorite podcasts, Startup. As entrepreneurs, many of us have grown up listening to Alex's work on shows like This American Life and Planet Money. His recent foray into the realm of podcasting has had a huge impact on how podcasts are being produced today, and you'll hear him talk all about that journey on this week's episode.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/meh/ Being an entrepreneur isn't all wine and roses. Frankly, a lot of it can be described in one word: 'meh'. On this week's episode, Dan and Ian are going to be sharing five of the most tedious and monotonous things to expect when running a business. These are five things that most entrepreneurs dread dealing with, and the day-to-day experiences that aspiring entrepreneurs can look forward to when starting their own business.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/property/ On today's episode, Dan and Ian are going to speaking with Paula Pant. Back when Dan was experimenting with renting a place on AirBNB, he stumbled upon Paula's blog at AffordAnything.com. She is incredibly transparent in her business model, demonstrating how she created a real estate portfolio that provides her with cash flow every month. You'll hear Paula share her story about how she started from scratch to build a successful collection of rental properties.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/diet/ This show has always been about finding success in your business and your lifestyle. We've talked about lifestyle in a lot of different ways, but one portion of our lifestyle that is so important, that we have rarely touched upon on this show is our health. On this week's episode, Dan and Ian are diving into a topic of health discussion that is as contentious as it is important: what we should be eating. Dan is fascinated by diets, and he has experimented with a plethora of them. He recently decided to go on a search for the greatest diet in the world. On that search, he discovered the work of Dr. Michael Greger M.D., the founder of NutritionFacts.org. Dr. Greger's unique and inspired approach to nutrition is something that we believe every lifestyle designer needs to hear.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/pickle/ One of the fastest ways to gain freedom from a location or a 9-to-5 job is to sell your skill set and your time as a freelancer. When you do that, you can create problems that might not rear their head for years. On this week's episode, Dan and Ian are speaking to Russ Perry from Design Pickle. He began his entrepreneurial career doing just that, and when we first heard from him in 2014, he was in the process of dissolving his first business and starting from square one. In less than two years, Design Pickle now has 20 full-time employees and just last month, they billed 90k in recurring revenue. On this show, you'll hear all about that journey, as well as a pretty in-depth discussion about our collective affinity for delicious pickles.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/mattfarah/ On today's podcast, Dan and Ian have decided to dig into a topic that isn't usually covered on this show. We are going to be talking about one of Ian's favorite things in the world: cars. If you don't consider yourself a vehicular aficionado, have no fear. This episode is about the journey of Matt Farah, a successful automotive journalist who rose to fame through his YouTube channel, The Smoking Tire. You're going to be hearing a pretty compelling story about how Matt bootstrapped himself into the position that he's in today. And yes, there is a little bit of car talk in there too. Stay tuned until the very end of the episode to hear a bonus lightning round of automotive questions.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/longview/ Dan and Ian have been speaking about the lifestyle of the Location-Independent entrepreneur on this podcast for over six years. During that time, they've found that people all over the internet tend to glorify this movement, and why wouldn't they? It's exciting to be a part of. On the other hand, there are very few people online who are talking about the challenges of being a digital nomad. Mark Manson and Stacey Herbert have both traveled the world as location independent entrepreneurs and have recently decided to put down roots for the first time in years. On this episode, you'll hear them share their thoughts and experiences on what some of the biggest downsides to the nomadic lifestyle are.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/investmentsfollowup/ On one of our recent episodes, Dan and Ian spoke with Joe Wirbick about some of their options for managing their money since they have sold their business. That episode elicited a very passionate response from our listeners. We got a ton of feedback from some really smart people about that episode, so we decided to do a follow up show. On this week's episode, you'll hear some specific feedback from our friend Laura Roeder, as well as Dan and Ian's feelings on managing their own money now that they have heard so many opinions on the subject.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/shayna/ If you have been listening to our show for a while, you will recognize this week's guest from an episode we did about a year and a half ago called "Is It Getting Harder to Grow a Successful Business Selling Info Products?". That episode ended up being one of the most popular episodes of this show, so Dan and Ian decided to invite Shayna of Espresso English back onto the program to follow up with her story. Shayna will be talking about a range of new topics, including pricing, positioning and marketing info products in today's entrepreneurial landscape.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/mmm/ On this week's show, Dan and Ian had the opportunity to interview one of their all-time favorite bloggers, "Mr. Money Mustache" Peter Adeney. Peter was recently the subject of a profile in The New Yorker, and you'll hear him share his opinions about that piece. You'll also hear how he was able to retire at the age of thirty, why he believes we should be optimizing for our own happiness, as well as his thoughts on achieving freedom through frugality. Stick around after the credits for a little bit of a bonus conversation with Mr. Money Mustache about how the Mustachian community holds events.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/productized4/ Longtime listeners know that one of our favorite things to do on the show is to ask our guests to donate business ideas to our audience. For the fourth part of our Productized series, Dan and Ian put out a call for anyone that has used one of those ideas to come on the show. On this week's episode, you'll be hearing from Ben McAdam and Meryl Johnston, otherwise known as the Bean Ninjas. They will be sharing how they took an idea that was donated on this very podcast and turned it into their own Productized Service business.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/youtube/ On this week's episode, Dan and Ian are speaking with Gabby Wallace. Gabby is extremely qualified at teaching English as a second language, and has spent many years doing so in Japan. She got fed up with the traditional ways of teaching language abroad, and she decided to start her own business called Go Natural English. Gabby's business has been built almost entirely through her YouTube channel, where she has over 150,000 subscribers. YouTube can be an incredibly powerful platform for location independent entrepreneurs and on this episode, Gabby is sharing all of her best tips and strategies for using YouTube to your advantage.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/theexit/ Jeff Giesea recently penned an article for the Harvard Business Review titled "Dealing With the Emotional Fallout of Selling Your Business". Needless to say, this article caught the eye of Dan and Ian, who have recently sold the largest business they have ever created. There are a lot of weird and conflicting thoughts that go through your mind when you go through this process. Dan and Ian invited Jeff on to the show this week to speak about his experience selling his businesses, and the trials and tribulations that entrepreneurs face when they make the exit.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/investments/ As many longtime listeners know, Dan and Ian have recently sold their business. This has put them in a rather unique and advantageuous situation, and forces them to ask the question: what do you do with your money once you have made it? Managing your money requires a completely different skill set from building a business, and even savvy entrepreneurs often have to seek the advice of a professional. On this week's episode, you'll hear from Joe Wirbick, the president and co-founder of Sequinox. Joe is sharing some of his best tips on how to evaluate financial professionals and how to identify whether or not they can help you.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/dhh2/ Today's episode is the second of a two part series in which Dan and Ian are speaking with the co-founder of Basecamp and creator of Ruby on Rails: David Heinemeier Hannson. This episode is all about business relationships. You'll hear about the origins of David's relationship with his business partner Jason Fried, as well as David's many interesting thoughts on business partnerships and how they can evolve over time.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/dhh/ Today's episode is the first of a two part series where Dan and Ian are speaking with David Heinemeier Hannson. David is the co-founder of Basecamp and the creator of Ruby on Rails. Truth be told, DHH has been a huge influence on the Tropical MBA podcast. In this episode, we're going to be talking about a subject that some see as a blueprint to getting rich, and others see as a dirty word: Venture Capital. Later on in the show, you'll hear from Zapier co-founder Wade Foster on his thoughts and experiences on seeking venture capital funding for his own company.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/ribbonfarm/ On this week's episode, Dan is speaking with Venkatesh Rao, Venkat is the author of RibbonFarm, a philosophy blog about technology and entrepreneurship. He recently launched an essay series called Breaking Smart, that explores the relationship between humanity and technology. Today's conversation covers a whole plethora of philosophical heuristics, including blind spots in the digital nomad community, the difference between passion and work ethic, what it means to be power-literate and so much more.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/amazongold/ Throughout the history of the internet, there have been many different entrepreneurial opportunities. People who got in on these opportunities early have historically found an incredible amount of success. What we've seen in 2016 is that the people who have gotten into the Amazon ecosystem early on are starting to see the fruits of that decision. This week, Dan and Ian have put together a unique round table discussion with a few of those people; Greg Mercer of Jungle Scout, Brad DeGraw of Amazon Sherpa and Kiri Masters of Bobsled Marketing. They will be sharing their tips, tricks and tools on how to make the Amazon platform work for you.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/nooffice/ There is a movement in the internet business world where some companies have decided to start getting rid of offices altogether. It might seem easy for small businesses to pull this off, but lately businesses have started to do this at scale. This week, Dan and Ian are going to be speaking to a few entrepreneurs who are growing real teams for their businesses without offices; Wade Foster, the co-founder of Zapier, and Michael Erickson of Search Scientists. Some of the issues that they will touch on in this episode include how to create a culture remotely, how to keep on top of what everyone is doing and how to make your employees feel like they are part of a team.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/oneforthewriters/ This week's episode is one for the writers, bloggers and creators. Dan and Ian have invited Jodi Ettenberg on to the show this week. Jodi is the author of a blog called LegalNomads.com, and she makes a full time living as a writer. She recently gave the closing address at the TBEX conference, where she talked about what it takes to make a living writing full time. You're going to hear why Jodi feels that strong narratives are so important, along with her views on the balance between making money, keeping your integrity and making great art. You'll also hear her thoughts on how travel writing might develop over the next few years.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/productized3/ Several weeks ago, we put out a call for someone who would be willing to start a productized service business on the show. Jeff Pecaro was the man that answered that call. This week, Dan and Jeff will be speaking with Brian Casel. Brian is an expert in productized services. He has not only found success with his own productized services businesses, but he has also helped other entrepreneurs launch successful productized services businesses as well. Brian will be sharing his expertise about productized services, freelancing, and how his new business has benefited from his experience running his first one.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/enough/ Being location independent means that you don't have a boss or a corporation telling you what to do, but it also means that you have to make your own decisions on how to spend your time. You have to decide how to make your money, and you have to decide when enough is enough. On today's episode, Dan and Ian are speaking with two entrepreneurs who have put a lot of thought into this idea. Daryl Mander and Nathan Berry have both proactively made the call to scale back their workload in order to improve their quality of life. They will be sharing their experiences, and their thoughts on when and how to say "enough is enough".

http://www.tropicalmba.com/michaele/ On this week's show Dan and Ian were originally going to be talking about the three different stages of entrepreneurship, but once Dan started speaking with Michael Erickson, he knew that this conversation was worth devoting an entire episode to. Michael trained hard and loved the career path that he was on initially, but a sudden change in his life-script drove him to become an entrepreneur. Michael's story is ultimately about how difficult circumstances can prompt you to change your life, and how transforming your mindset is the first hurdle to achieving entrepreneurial success.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/mentor/ On today's episode Dan and Ian are going to explore the most powerful, and potentially toxic relationship in entrepreneurship; the relationship between a mentor and a mentee. We're doing so by speaking with Tim Conley, a Dynamite Circle member who has quite a bit of experience in these types of relationships. We'll be talking about how to seek out a mentor, what makes a successful mentor, and how these relationships evolve over time,

http://www.tropicalmba.com/priorities/ This week we are chatting with Peter Griffin, a member of the Dynamite Circle who relocated to Austin, TX about two years ago. Peter is a prototypical digital nomad. Starting his own business has afforded him the ability to travel the world, but now that he's getting older, he is starting to figure out what is really important to him. We'll be talking with Peter about why he decided to move to Austin, and what happens to digital nomads when their priorities start to change.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/meetings/ In this episode Dan and Ian offer thoughts, suggestions and ideas on the best way to handle meetings as your business – and number of employees - grows. You’ll also get the chance to ‘listen in’ on a Tropical MBA/Dynamic Circle team meeting involving Dan, Ian, Jessica and Alex – and hear about Dan and Ian’s very different styles of management.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/smartdrugs/ Many entrepreneurs have dabbled with "smart drugs", also known as "cognitive enhancers" or "nootropics" but few have studied them as closely as Jesse Lawler. In his weekly podcast Smart Drugs Smarts, Jesse talks to range of specialists and academics about different aspects of brain chemistry, including the effects of smart drugs. In this week’s TMBA episode, Jesse shares what he’s learned about the effects of Smart Drugs, things to consider when using them, and their appeal for all ages.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/3dprinting/ In this week’s episode Dan and Ian invite you to share in one of Bossman’s many interests: 3D printing. This technology has been around for a while - mostly used by designers and engineers to conceptualize and test prototypes. But, as 3D printers become cheaper and more sophisticated, might it begin to revolutionize not only the world of retail but also DIY? What are the opportunities and potential pitfalls for entrepreneurs? Lawyers like Alan Rothenbuecher are already advising firms on how to handle the growing number of IP issues that crop up in relation to 3D printing. TMBA also talks to one of the co-founders of The Pirate Bay, Tobias Andersson, about why he thinks 3D printing is going to have the same impact on design as file-sharing sites have had on the music business.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/cutbait2/ Starting out as an entrepreneur can be scary – but it’s exhilarating and rewarding too. In the first part of series of episodes about the ‘different stages of the entrepreneurial journey’, Dan and Ian revisit some advice they gave Kiri Masters who, in 2013, was still in her day job as a highly successful corporate player whilst struggling to set up a business that would give her the lifestyle and kind of satisfaction that she felt she was missing. What advice did Dan and Ian give Kiri? Did she follow it? What's happening with her business today?

http://www.tropicalmba.com/tax/ One of the major issues that location independent entrepreneurs, who spend time outside their home country, grapple with is tax. Let’s be honest: we’re all looking for ways to pay less of that! Phil Hodgen is a leading lawyer in this field, advising his clients on the relative advantages of foreign earned income exclusion, acquiring overseas residency or even, in some cases, expatriation. In this week’s show we bring you advice that could save you thousands of dollars. And yes, we’re talking dollars. This guidance is mostly applicable to U.S. citizens but Phil also talks about general principles that other nationalities will find useful too.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/productized2/ A few weeks ago we spoke with Jeff Pecaro. Jeff is starting a productized service business and he offered to let us follow along with his journey on the show. This week we are catching up with him to find out how his business has progressed and he has managed to weather the storm of some tough criticism.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/writingabook/ Is it possible to go from being successful blogger to writing a book that tops the Internet charts within the space of a year? In this week’s episode Dan talks to Taylor Pearson, an author who has done exactly that. Tune in and find out how.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/laura/ Laura Roeder was one of our keynote speakers at DCBKK a few weeks ago and she really wowed the audience with her talk. Dan and Ian got a chance to sit down with her after the conference to talk about how she has been able to start Edgar, an extremely successful social media tool, with little to no experience in tech.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/speaking-at-a-conference/ Don't panic. We've got it covered with Dan and Ian's handy guide. It includes: how to handle nerves (yep), slide design, the pros and cons of bullet points and what to do if your Q+A session is greeted by a stunned silence (yep).

http://www.tropicalmba.com/productized/ Today we are going to be doing something really special. A new business is actually starting on this week's show. We've been having a lot of trouble with email marketing lately. We're on a very basic email marketing platform and we have kind of outgrown it. There are more robust email platforms out there, but a lot of them are really expensive and hard to operate. Eventually we discovered that Drip was the perfect platform for us, but we didn't want to commit the man hours to learning to use it. I reached out on Twitter to ask if anyone was interested in starting a SWaS business around the Drip platform. Jeff Pecaro was the man who answered the call. We invited Jeff on to the show this week to give our listeners an inside look on what it's really like to launch a Productized Service business.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/mailbagz/ A lot of our Podcast listeners write into us with questions. We've decided on this week's episode to play a round of TMBA Mailbag. Ian and I are going to take some time to answer a slew of questions from our listeners including whether we are planning on taking a break after selling our business, how selling your business can affect a marriage-model business partnership, plus a few more thoughts on what it takes to attract A Players to your business.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/aplayer/ This week we are talking about hiring. If you have a business that has less than 15 employees, every single employee has to be an A Player. You can't afford to have B and C level players working for you. This is specifically aimed at everyone out there who should be hiring, or has hired employees. This episode is full of 301 and 401 level material, and you absolutely need to pass this class if you are going to have a successful business. We'll be talking all about how to hire A players and how to purge B and C players from your business.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/underoptimization/ A few years ago, I was at a mastermind in the Philippines and the people that were involved were a pretty intense group. At that event one entrepreneur stood out that was a little bit different than the rest of us. For must of us, we are always in the hustle mindset and we will do anything that it takes to grow our business. Mark Brenwall is almost the polar opposite. Lifestyle is very important to Mark and he abides by a strong set of personal rules about what he will and won't do for his business. In the two and a half years since Mark has become an entrepreneur, he has built a business called Wod Nation that currently nets him $20,000 a month in profit, and he did it all without compromising his beliefs. I invited Mark onto the show this week to share both his inspiring story and his unique approach to business.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/sold/ This is an exciting episode for us. Bossman and I are pleased to announce that we have sold our product business. The sale process was over a year and a half long, and we are going to be telling some pretty interesting stories about what happened along the way. We'll also be talking about what we have learned from exiting a business that has been such a big part of our life since 2007. On this episode, we'll be sharing seven things we wish we would have known, that we hope other people will consider when selling their business.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/productlaunchlessons/ Today I posted our first ever public ticket offering to DCBKK. We've launched so many of these events now, and we've learned from a lot of our mistakes over the years. I wanted to take an episode to sort of walk through some of the lessons that we've learned in doing our product launches, and specifically doing event launches. I've invited Damian Thompson from SalesAbility.co on to the show to talk about the evolution of our DCBKK event. We are also going to be taking quite a bit of time to talk about what goes on at DCBKK, the types of people who come to the event, and what sets DCBKK apart from other conferences.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/packing/ Ian is on vacation this week in Greece, and I am getting ready to fly back to the United States. I was in the process of packing my bags, when I received a call from a listener named Josh who was curious about what kind of stuff we have been traveling with recently. I have written about my travel kit many times on the blog, so if you don't want to hear me talk about what I keep in my backpack, this might not be the episode for you. I do know that there are some of us out there who spend a lot of time thinking about this stuff. If you're like me and you want to know more, I'm gonna walk you through some of the things I'm packing tonight and why they are part of my travel kit.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/culture/ A lot of people have been saying that our recent episodes have been targeted towards beginners. This is because we're fascinated by how people use a business model to go from scratch to building revenue. We thought it would be appropriate to do a 300 level course for our 300th episode. Today we're going to talk about how to create a culture that allows you to manage a multi-million dollar business while you travel. Ian has managed to do this over the last year with just six hours of phone calls a week, and our business is still growing. We're going to be talking about how to build the kind of culture that holds everyone together, and keeps everyone productive, while you are living your rock and roll lifestyle.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/bcn/ One of the things that I've always loved about the Tropical MBA is that our listeners have found so many different ways to interact with our show. Today we're going to be talking about how to get out from behind your computer and connect with people in real life. I've invited Chris Reynolds and Alex McQuade on to the show this week to talk about just that. Alex is the Director of Operations for the Dynamite Circle, and was an integral part of our Barcelona event. Chris is the founder of The One Effect and has recently started kind of an entrepreneurial revolution in Barcelona. There are 22 entrepreneurs who have moved to Barcelona to live in apartments that Chris has set up. We'll be talking about some of the unique ways we have been able to interact with our listeners in the real world, sharing strategies for digital nomads who want to connect with people in real life, and listening to some firsthand testimonials from people who have been living in the DC Barcelona House.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/10trueclients/ A common misconception in business today is that you have to build an audience of hundreds or thousands of people in order to sell something successfully. The fact is, when you're getting started, you won't have an audience like that. We have talked over and over again about why we believe in starting with ten true clients. One of our longtime podcast listeners, Sophia Bera, has found great success doing just that. Sophia is the founder of GenYPlanning.com, where she provides affordable financial planning services for people in their 20's and 30's. This week we're talking with Sophia about how she has managed to replace her income in just over two years, why she didn't agree with some of the practices in the financial planning industry and how she was able to turn that into an opportunity.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/endofjobs/ This week longtime friend of the show Taylor Pearson drops by to talk about his new book, The End of Jobs. We don't typically invite guests on to the show to promote their books, but Taylor has had such a huge part in the growth of our product business. His new book also stemmed in part from some discussions that the two of us had after the Dynamite Circle Conference in Bangkok last October. On this week's episode, we're gonna talk all about why Taylor decided to write this book, the books that are defining this exciting location-independent movement, and why the jobs that were once considered the safest are now being called into question.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/greenbelly/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/greenbelly/ Podcast 31:36| Download | Stitcher | iTunes | Comment After taking a brief sabbatical, we return to the show this week with a very unique guest. Chris Cage ([email protected]) is an avid hiker, biker and outdoor enthusiast. Chris started Greenbelly in 2014 and has been creating high-calorie meal replacement bars ever since. He recently crowdfunded $20,000 on...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/tokyo/ This week on the show, I'm talking to Chris Kirkland from the Hobo CEO podcast. His show explores the philosophical side of the digital nomad movement. Chris is a veteran of the location independent scene, having founded his first location-independent business Artweb in 2005. One of Chris' more recent ventures is TokyoCheapo.com, a content-based business dedicated to educating travelers and expatriates on how to live in Japan on the cheap. We'll be discussing some of the common misconceptions about living in Japan and the benefits and challenges of managing a content-based business model.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/apprentice/ One of the most frustrating parts of the entrepreneurial life script is that when you first hear about it and understand the benefits, you probably aren't ready to start a business. You know the answer is starting a business, but you aren't quite sure how to get there yet. We have long been advocates for seeking out an apprenticeship, but it's not always that easy. How do you get an apprenticeship, where do you go when you find one and what happens after you get one? Over the last couple of years, Vincent Nguyen from GrowthNinja.com has gone through all of these stages himself. I've invited him on to the show to talk about his experiences as an apprentice at Empire Flippers and how he has managed to transition from being a successful apprentice into owning his own business.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/swas/ I recently came across an article on TechCrunch that caught my attention, all about the rise of "Do-It-For-Me" businesses. Big businesses have been doing "Do-It-For-Me" for decades, but small businesses remain a relatively unconquered frontier. This is essentially about selling time to entrepreneurs, and I don't know anyone who does that better than Mat Newton from The Web Agency Podcast. He recently started what he calls a SWaS, or "Software With a Service" business called Tourism Tiger. Mat is joining us this week to talk about what the SWaS business model is and how it has changed the way that he does business.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/art/ Is it possible to build a business and monetize your art? This is a question we get asked a lot. One of our listeners got in touch with us this week and challenged us to speak about how we would apply some of our entrepreneurial principles to a career in art or music. If you are an artist of any kind, this is the episode for you. We'll be talk about what we believe it means to be an artist, how to support your art through a job or business, and how you can leverage 1,000 true fans to build a career doing what you love.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/studentloandebt/ Last week I was on vacation in Southeast Asia with my family, and we are all huge Penn State fans. I spent some of my most formative years around State College in Pennsylvania. I was thrilled when one of who listeners named Brian, who teaches at Penn State, reached out to us and asked us to answer some questions for his students at the university. In this episode Ian and I lay out a three-part plan to become a location independent out of college, talk about how why you should be looking for an apprenticeship instead of a job, and finally answer one of the questions we get asked the most: why cat furniture?

http://www.tropicalmba.com/dropshippinglife/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/dropshippinglife/ Podcast 29:33 | Download | Stitcher | iTunes | Comment This week Dan is on vacation in Asia with his family, so I’ve invited Andrew Youderian of eCommerceFuel onto the show to talk about what it means to be a bootstrapper and the differences between a bootstrap business and funded business. We also share our thoughts about the...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/workwithus/ Today we are gonna do a Tropical MBA first, as we've decided to record a podcast about a new job listing. If you're interested in coming to work for our team, we encourage you to listen to this episode. We're also taking this opportunity to talk about team building and the back story of the Tropical MBA. The first blog post that we ever published on this website was a job offering. We're gonna talk about what inspired that and the position that we were in when we made that decision. We're also gonna debate the value of having team members in-person versus a location-independent team and whether or not it's a good idea to support your employee's side projects.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/bizquestions/ We've received a ton of great feedback from last week's Q&A session on relationships and lifestyle. This week we've decided to reach out to our listeners for questions pertaining to business. Ian and I are gonna be talking about everything from productized services to offshore business, management philosophies and our own personal outlooks on the future of our business.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/behindthescenes/ This episode is a pretty unique one. In this week's newsletter we reached out to our listeners and encouraged them to ask us just about anything that was on their minds. It turns out an overwhelming number of people wanted to know more about our lifestyles and what goes into the creation of the show. Ian and I are going to take you Behind the Scenes on this week's episode. We'll talk about the difficulties of having relationships on the road, what it's like to live as an expatriate, and we'll even answer a few gossip questions about what we do with our time.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/gimlet/ Ian, Taylor Pearson and myself can't stop listening to Alex Blumberg's new podcast called Startup. If you haven't heard it yet, stop reading this and go listen to it. If you listen to a lot of podcasts or radio at all, you've probably heard Alex's work on shows like This American Life and Planet Money. We decided we wanted to create an episode that would serve as a companion piece to this fantastic series. The three of us are talking about how the show inspired us, what we see as the ironies in the venture capital world, the distinctions between being and artist and an entrepreneur, and what this series represents in the podcasting world.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/meaning/ In a nice bit of serendipity, I was in Singapore last week and I ran into my friend John McIntyre. John is The Autoresponder Guy, but today he didn't want to talk about email marketing or autoresponders. We got to talking about what you do when you've gotten through those first few years of running a business and you've reached a certain level of comfort. How do you choose to live once you own your own time? We'll also talk about John's experience scaling in year three of a productized service business, and what you can get out of living in Chaing Mai.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/spain/ Not all of us came out of the womb wanting to start a business. Some of us were attracted to the personal agency and the freedom of being an entrepreneur. This week's guests all have a few things in common. They all had this similar dream of the freedom that comes from quitting their jobs and starting their own businesses, and all three of them have chosen Spain as their home for that journey this summer. Barcelona has recently become kind of a hotbed for the entrepreneurial community. I reached out to Chris Reynolds, Cristina Ansbjerg and Robert Brandl to get some insider info about what it's like to live in the city and why they have all fallen in love with it.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/wealthy/ This weekend Ian and I shared the room with 30 high-net worth individuals. We held our first ever wealth event for some of the most successful listeners of this podcast. It's not very often that you get to hang out with so many interesting and successful people in one weekend, so we've decided share some of the lessons that we learned from that event on this week's show. We'll be talking about how we got the idea for this event, why this is my favorite event I have ever attended, and the nine things that surprised us the most coming out of this conference.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/shopifyninjas/ A few weeks ago we did a show called "An Episode For Those Who Need a Business Idea". We got so much great feedback from that episode, and looking back at it, we realized it has become part of a series that we have developed about productized services. This episode is the natural progression of that series. The first person that I thought of when I wanted to continue that discussion was Tristan King from ShopifyNinjas.com. Tristan has a lot of thoughts on how you can build productized marketing services and scale them. He will also be sharing his view and advice for getting started from somebody in their third year of a productized services business, and a few of his business ideas that he believes could be winners for the TropicalMBA listeners looking to start a business.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/books/ I love books. I love to read and I know that many of you do too. This week we're going to have a simple, fun episode where we talk about our favorite books. I will be sharing five books that I think people might enjoy reading for inspiration or pleasure and our good friend Taylor Pearson will be sharing five timeless business books that he believes are worth reading more than once. If you are looking for new stuff to read, this is the episode for you.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/valetup/ In April 2013, Ian and I cut a deal with Jesse Lawler to found ValetUp.com. Nearly two years later we find ourselves on the other side of the looking glass wondering what went wrong. In today's episode, we're going to talk about what we learned from that experience, how we failed, and what we are going to do about it in the future. We're also going to hear from Jesse about his new project, PodcastPop, and how it is going to benefit podcasters who are looking to build a more organic connection with their audience.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/nofail/ Today's episode is all about facilitating high level masterminds, and nobody does it better than Taylor Pearson. It can be hard to figure out what it takes to succeed. Masterminds put you in a position to surround yourself with people who have common goals and will not allow you to fail. This is old school block-and-tackle business strategy. We're talking about what is important to consider when structuring a mastermind, success stories from the groups that Taylor has spearheaded and some of the most useful tools for organizing an effective mastermind group.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/businessideas/ Back when Ian and I were working a 9-to-5, we were dreaming up all kinds of ideas to start a business. Over the years, we've discovered what we like to call the Business Idea Paradox; When you need these ideas the most, they are the hardest to come by. Ian and I have decided to donate some of our business ideas that we don't have the time or resources to pursue. We've also reached out to our listeners who have donated some of their own business ideas for this episode and shared their thoughts about what kinds of businesses they would really like to see.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/family/ I'm in the beautiful South Philippines today and in this very location last year, I met today's guests: Paul and Becky Kortman. The Kortmans are a big family with a unique story. Paul runs his own digital marketing agency called Connex Social. Last year they sold their house and 90% of their belongings and decided to hit the road. They ended up taking 25 flights and visiting over 30 different locations. We're gonna talk about how location independence effects family, how it effects relationships and how it effects business. We'll also discuss how they rebounded from losing 90% of their revenue, and what the experience was like traveling with a six person family around the world.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/7daystartup/ Do you think it is possible to launch a scale-able start-up in just one week's time with no money invested? That might sound too good to be true, but Dan Norris has not only articulated an approach to this in his book, "The 7 Day Startup", he has also used it to grow his own business, WPcurve to close to $25K in monthly recurring revenue it his first year, and nearly 50K in monthly recurring revenue now. On this week's episode, I've invited him on to the show to share his unique insight about being an author, running a services business and how the story of his seven day startup has managed to become so successful.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/investing/ Bossman and I have taken the last few weeks off to recharge and prepare for our upcoming Singapore Event. We're back from our short break and ringing in the new year by discussing a question that Marc Cuban asked recently: What should the average investor do with $50,000? We'll dissect some of the ideas he proposed about financial investments, talk about how the location-independent entrepreneur can put them to good use, and explain exactly what makes our upcoming gathering of entrepreneurs such a unique sharing environment.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/builtajob/ With the help of our friend Taylor Pearson from TaylorPearson.me, we are continuing our 5 part series. The first episode was about making that first $1,000 of income. This episode is all about the next phase of a business, where you are starting to make a living, but you're trying to figure out how to scale that and turn it into a real asset. We'll talk about how we got out of our jobs and built a business, how long we were living broke for and the fundamental difference between building yourself a job and a business.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/remoteceo/ We are talking about what it means to be a remote CEO. This episode is essentially going to be story time with Ian. We discuss what it is like to leave the office for extended periods of time, and some essential mindset stuff that goes into being a successful remote CEO. We also talk about how our portable business has been able to grow five times year over year with Bossman and I living away from the office, and the dissect the steps that it takes to step away from your business and let it work for you.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/espressoenglish/ This week I've invited Shayna from EspressoEnglish.net to share how she was able to build a successful info product business that allows her to live anywhere in the world with just a laptop and $1,500 in capital. We're gonna talk about how Shayna drives hundreds of thousands of visitors to her site every month, how she turns those visitors into leads and customers, how she produces her info products and how she values them. We'll also talk quite a bit about lifestyle and her thoughts on the future of the digital nomad movement.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/patrick/ Patrick McKenzie from Kalzumeus.com has been one of my favorite bloggers for over half of a decade. Patrick has a storied history of writing long-form pieces about the experiences of starting bootstrap software businesses, and is an expert at optimizing for non-cash currencies. In this week's episode we dig deep into Patrick's business philosophy, including how he has been able to build a powerhouse blog that is followed by some of the most influential people in the industry. We also talk about his expertise around conversion optimization and email marketing, how not to suck at giving conference speeches, and Patrick's experience as a long-term expat in Japan.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/returntoapprentice/ Our old friend and former team member Taylor Pearson from TaylorPearson.me has come by this week to help us have a broad, round-table conversation about team building. We talk about the ways that Ian and I have done it, and Taylor shares some insider insight from having been on our team. We also answer a question from a young listener about whether he should be learning a skill set like SEO or diving headfirst into his own business.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/focus/ TropicalMBA is a podcast dedicated to the growing movement of location independent entrepreneurs. Every week, location independent entrepreneurs all over the world will leave us questions and comments in our voicemail. This week, we are answering a whole bunch of those voicemails, including questions about why you should be starting or joining a mastermind group, some of the best things about being an expatriate and why branding is really about building relationships with your clients.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/dcbkk2014/ Bossman and I are in Tokyo this week following our annual DC BKK Conference in Thailand. We are gonna be recapping how the event went, and reminiscing about some of our favorite speakers. We're also going to be talking about what we've learned about throwing events, what we are planning to do in the future and sharing our advice for people that are looking to get the most out of all these upcoming conferences.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/hustle/ In the aftermath of DC BKK, The Bossman hopped a plane this week on his way to Tokyo, so we've decided to re-visit one of our favorite episodes of all time. I was a little hesitant about this episode when we first published it three years ago, but since that time, we have received a lot of feedback about how important this episode has been to our listeners. This episode came at a time when we had our first $100,000 month, and we still stand behind these 6 key principles that make up our Tao of the Hustle.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/scale/ Bossman and I are in Bangkok, gearing up for DC BKK, and we are chatting with our friend Jacob Puhl this week. Jacob is one of our speakers here for the event, and he has built a really unique and successful productized service business, geared primarily toward the dental industry. He really has a lot of valuable knowledge on how to scale a business. We're gonna be talking about how to overcome the complications of investing in and expanding a service business and the five ways to turn your services business into a salable asset.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/canton/ The Canton Fair is taking place this October, so I was really happy to run into my old friend Matt Kowolak from HighCappin.com. Matt has been living as an entrepreneur in China for ten years, and he is the person I go to whenever I have a question about the country. We chat it up about the history of the fair, what it feels like to attend such a historic trade show and what kind of opportunities exist there. He also shares a broad overview of what living in China as an expatriate is like and how to take advantage of their entrepreneurial culture.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/semiprocycling/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/semiprocycling/ Podcast 35:04 | Download | Stitcher | iTunes | Comment This week, we’re going to talk all about how to find your unique voice in the marketplace, and how to build an entertaining and informative show that can help you generate a location-independent income. Damien Ruse from SemiProCycling.com is doing just that. He is a...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/fatcat/ I'm in Bangkok this week, getting set up for DC BKK and I was very excited to run into our good friend David Hehenberger from WPCast.fm and FatCatApps.com. His products help marketers drive conversions from their Wordpress sites. This is really a full-circle moment for us, as David used to edit the show in the early days of our Podcast. David has since downshifted to focus on building a software company that he felt would be sustainable and generate income on his own terms. We're gonna be talking with David about how he got his company off the ground, how difficult it really is to develop a software product, and the challenges of working within the Wordpress ecosystem.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/1konline/ With over 260 episodes, some of our listeners have been asking us which episodes of our show are the best to share with people who want to learn more about the location independent lifestyle. We thought this posed a pretty interesting challenge, and we've decided to create a five part series that people can download to get an overall sense of what the location independent startup community is all about. On this first episode in the series, we are going to be going over five key points on how to make your first $1000 online.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/gettingtraction/ On last week's episode, our good friend Taylor Pearson mentioned that one of the most universally fundamental traits that all successful entrepreneurs have is sales skills. We're gonna be talking about how to build that skill set so you can get your first 100 customers. We are also answering a bunch of listener questions about fighting the Amazon beast, how to get the most out of events, and our thoughts on visiting the U.S. after an extended time abroad.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/portablebar/ We put Taylor Pearson in charge of our Portable Bar company in its infancy, and he helped us grow our business 527% in the first 18 months, to the point where we are consistently having healthy mid 5-figure months. This week, Bossman is back and we are chatting with Taylor about what it's like to evolve from a small business that is just keeping the lights on to a real significant source of wealth. We're talking about the old-school tactics we used to grow our business, and how we have used the advice that we give in this show in real life situations.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/duckduckgo/ As entrepreneurs, Google has really become a huge part of a lot of our everyday lives. The privacy concerns that have come to light over the last few years are legitimate, and way we think about our internet use is changing. Gabriel Weinberg is the Founder of DuckDuckGo, a search engine that is steadily gaining market share by offering real privacy. He is also an angel investor, and has taken investments from some of the most successful venture capitalists in the world. This week, Gabriel and are going to be talking about what privacy means today and what Google knows about us, along with some really unique strategies for startups.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/travelfish/ This week I was lucky enough to catch up with Stuart McDonald, the founder of Travelfish, which one of the most respected sites on the web for South East Asia travel information. If you peak over the shoulder of a random backpacker in Bangkok cafes, expect to see a "TravelFish" URL along with Facebook blue.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/affiliate/ Bossman is back this week and we are talking about affiliate relationships. How do you get others to promote your products? We'll talk about how to "write the religion" and give potential content publishers a reason to tap into your narrative. We also field several listener questions, including what to look for when hiring your first employee, and the ins and outs of establishing business credit.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/mileage/ Bossman is on vacation this week, so I've invited my friend Erik Paquet from Abroaders.com on to the show to talk all about mileage, point redemption, how to fly business class as often as possible and much more. In the Dynamite Circle, Erik is widely regarded as the go-to guy for travel hacking. We are also going to be discussing how he has been able to use his unique set of skills to launch a productized service business.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/fail/ Will you succeed or fail as a digital nomad? Becoming a successful location-independent entrepreneur isn't guaranteed. Some of the skills it takes to become a successful digital nomad take years to develop. This week, we are talking about the four major differences we have seen between successful digital nomads and those who have failed.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/mastermind/ Having a mastermind group, and perpetuating a mastermind group, is a great way to handle some of the emotional struggles of having your own business. They are just as fun as a poker party, but they can change your life. Masterminds are the reason we started this podcast. We've done a lot of in-person masterminds, and they are a great way to grow a community and connect with your audience. This week, we're talking about the power, the pitfalls, and the process of in-person masterminds.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/ip/ We're talking about protecting our intellectual property and business through copyright, trademarks and patents. This stuff can be expensive for entrepreneurs, but it is incredibly important. There are so many reasons a bootstrapping attitude might differ from a more corporate or startup philosophy regarding these issues. We'll also chat about our upcoming event in Austin, T.X. and why we have decided to sell our cat furniture business.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/freetime/ We're getting into some advanced level stuff this week. As entrepreneurs, many of us have achieved what we've built by putting in insane amounts of hours on the phone or behind the laptop. How can we re-train ourselves to step back and enjoy what we have been working for? This week, we're outlining 5 different ways to go after some meaning with that time that you've been creating.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/quest/ This week, we're talking about the four elements of the "Hero's Quest" that every entrepreneur embarks on. This episode is all about looking back and understanding the first six months of taking off on a new project or a new business, the struggle that it is, and how valuable that can end up being on the narrative of your life. We also answer some listener questions, including one about cold calling a huge corporation to make a sale.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/bedphones/ Bossman and I are celebrating our 250th episode this week. We're also talking to our good friend Eric Dubs, the creator of Bedphones. Eric has found success in the consumer electronics market, despite facing competition from some huge brands. Eric has been able to build a genuine Four Hour Work Week product business through automation. We'll talk about what went into the creation of Eric's product, how he was able to get it featured on platforms like Dr. Oz and Good Morning America, and how his business has evolved to the point where he can operate it remotely.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/churn/ We're talking about Churn rate, and everything we can learn from it. Bossman and I are by no means experts on the topic, but we've dug up a plethora of information to share on Churn rate analysis. We'll discuss how to use this information to provide more value to your clients and keep them around for longer. We also answer some listener questions about the FBAR deadline and how we approach the frequency at which we create podcast content.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/lifestylebusiness/ This week, we're talking about John Reineck's "Steak Dinner Problem", and how we interact with our clients. We had a great discussion with Taylor Pearson about it in the comments of our recent article about The Coconut Cash Conundrum. We're gonna be sharing some advanced level strategies on how to handle this complex situation that entrepreneurs face when their business starts to dictate the orders. We'll also talk about how to identify one thing that benefits your business and maximize your efforts during your most productive hours.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/hire/ We're back this week, answering a bunch of listener questions about when it's the right time to expand your business and hire some new employees. We'll talk about why there's no magic bullet for getting through the hiring process. It's different for everyone, but there are ways to know when it's time to step up and start bringing in some help.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/blogging/ This week, we're digging into the archives and replaying one of our most popular, and controversial episodes. We're going to be talking about the perils of personal blogging and entrepreneurial journey blogging. A lot of people have interpreted this episode as a warning, but we consider it a challenge to bloggers to step up their game.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/sales/ This week, it’s all about making the sale. Bossman and I are exploring twenty random thoughts that we’ve had about sales. We talk about everything from salesmanship, to what that process looks like, what some of the key tactics that we use are, and how you can evolve by using these strategies.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/monies/ This week, we're talking about money. We've had quite a few listeners asking us about what to do when your business starts generating enough money for you to live comfortably. Bossman and I are not financial experts by any means, but we have experienced a lot as entrepreneurs, and we have our own opinions on what to do after you've started making money. Hope you enjoy and happy Thursday!

http://www.tropicalmba.com/knowledge/ Last week, we put out a challenge for listeners to email us there "1000 True Fans" business plan-- what they are going to be doing for their clients, how they are doing it differently than other providers, what they are delivering, and the prices that they are planning to charge. We got a ton of responses! Some were great, and some were problematic in our view. Among those, we tried to determine the most common mistakes being made. Bossman also predicts the collapse of our business somewhere in there! Hope you enjoy and happy Thursday!

http://www.tropicalmba.com/examples/ We got a lot of great feedback from last week's episode, but a lot of people were confused about how the 1,000 True Fans model works in the real world. On this week's episode, we are answering some listener questions about how to build your business to create "passive income" and what the equivalent of the 1,000 True Fans model is in the context of an information product.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/businessmodels/ This week we are going to replay one of our favorite episodes of all time, with a little bit extra thrown in for good measure. This episode has had a great impact on a lot of our listeners. Of all of the episodes we have recorded, this one has probably helped people improve their businesses the most.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/popular/ This week bossman and I discuss being unpopular in the face of pressure from friends, family, team members, and employees. Bossman references his new "entrepreneurmobile" gratuitously and we ponder the distinctions being 'know-how' and 'know-what' knowledge.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/deals/ We've seen a lot of really smart people making dumb deals. It's okay, every entrepreneur has been there. We're not afraid to admit that we've been guilty of some of these mistakes ourselves. On this week's episode we'll be talking about ten ways that you can avoid making a really terrible deal.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/saas/ People have been asking us to open up a little bit more about some of our specific business ventures so this week we’re going to be talking about our new software-as-a-service product, ValetUp.com. We’re 9 months into the company, and we’ve already faced some significant challenges. On this week’s episode we’ll be discussing the 5 things that we’d do differently if we were starting up a SaaS business today.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/locationindependent/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/locationindependent/ This week one of our listeners challenged us to explain the detailed costs of the location independent lifestyle. We’ll talk about how to set up your business so you can become location independent and some general principles we’ve learned over the years about the ‘live and work’ anywhere mindset. Listen to this week’s show...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/chinasourcing/ This week, one of our listeners challenged us to go more in-depth about Chinese manufacturing and how to get your first product manufactured. We're gonna dive right in and talk about where and how you can learn about outsourcing your product to China, and everything that it entails.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/updates/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/updates/ This week, Bossman is back on the scene, and we are going over a host of specific updates about our businesses. In particular, we really get into what kinds of challenges we’ve faced manufacturing our own product, how we’ve been handling our relationships with our Chinese suppliers, some ways that you can save money...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/heyladies/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/heyladies/ This week, Elisa Doucette joins me to talk about women in the location independent entrepreneurship game. Elisa runs the Dynamite Circle business operations. If you’re a lady sitting in your cubicle in the United States, listen closely. We have a fantastic network of women with similar stories that we hope will inspire you to explore these...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/flashbar/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/flashbar/ This week, Ian catches up with us from Mexico to talk about the struggles and successes we’ve experienced with our portable bar company over the last nine months. We’ll talk about our experience displaying our new flash bar at a recent trade show and the pros and cons of drop shipping as a business...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/college/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/college/ In this week’s episode, I’m answering some listener submitted questions. I’ve invited Jimmy Hayes and Josh Weinstein back on the show to add their two cents as well, as we discuss whether or not a college degree is necessary for someone who wants to become a location-independent entrepreneur, among other topics. Listen to this...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/roundtable/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/roundtable/ *** Are you interested in attending our high level mastermind in April or May? If you can fill out this brief survey, we’ll send you more details shortly. *** In this week’s episode, we’re decided to do things a little bit differently. I’ve invited several of my friends from the Dynamite Circle on to...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/fundamentals/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/fundamentals/ *** Are you interested in attending our high level mastermind in April or May? If you can fill out this brief survey, we’ll send you more details shortly. *** In this week’s episode, I’ve been reflecting about how far things have come since I began dreaming about working remotely. Staying true to that, we are...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/why/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/why/ Damian Thompson is back after the last episode with him absolutely blew up! Erik Emsley challenged us to help him explain to his family what this lifestyle choice is all about. Listen to this week’s show and learn: The fundamental belief system behind the entrepreneurial lifestyle. How much we value our time above all...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/table/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/table/ Ian is back on the Tropical MBA Podcast this week to talk about our next big idea, as well as answering some listener questions (thank you to all who’ve called our voicemail: 888-554-8428). Listen to this week’s show and learn: Why having the same amount of “skin the game” can be critical when networking....

http://www.tropicalmba.com/services/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/services/ Damian Thompson from Linchpin is back on the show this week (his first appearance here) talking with me about one of the biggest movements we see in the location independent scene. We talk about what Damian has learned during his first 1,000 days of being a business owner, and how listeners can utilize the lessons...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/cutbait/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/cutbait/ The boss man is back this week after a far too long hiatus and his timing is perfect for a topic we absolutely love. Kiri called in with some concerns about whether it’s time to cut her losses with her current business, or if there’s anything she can do to turn it around. Her...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/asia/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/asia/ Happy New Year! Ian is off celebrating the holidays with his family this week, and Kaiser Soze was here hanging out when a discussion came up that we thought would be good for the show. This show is mostly about lifestyle,  but in case you’re looking for the good old fashioned business talk, below...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/1k/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/1k/ Since an angry fish seemed to have cut the internet wire in the ocean, Ian and I are cut off from one another. In his stead, Jesse “The Dominator” Lawler has stepped up to bring value to the masses. The listener questions continue to get better and better, so The Dominator and I are...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/ecommercemistakes/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/ecommercemistakes/ We’ve been looking back a lot to the beginning of The Valet Spot now that we’ve released the info to the public and realized that although we did a lot right, we screwed up a lot too. We figured with some of the big changes and our growth trajectory coming up, it would be...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/valetparking/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/valetparking/ For a variety of reasons, Ian and I have never spoken openly about the first successful B2B business we ever started– TheValetSpot.com. This week we are going to change all that and go into the details of how that business got started, how we won market share, and what we are doing to grow...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/remote/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/remote/ I’ve got Joe “Hot Money” Magnotti on as my co-host this week in the wake of Ian’s much needed romp in Europe. Today, we’re passing the ball back and forth about the direction things are going regarding remote working and team building. We’ve been noticing that the old norms are shifting (some have been...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/email/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/email/ In the process of launching and iterating on Valet Up, our new SaaS app developed for valet companies, Ian and I have been working on refining our email marketing strategies and how we can snag some extra customers and improve our closing average. On top of this, an email came in from Mark from...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/thoughtexperiments/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/thoughtexperiments/ Ian and I are both in the “on the road” mindset this week– we’re both mentally preparing to head out traveling or a little while. In that casual spirit we’ve both been dreaming a bit about what the future might hold. We asked some team members and listeners to help us out with some...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/consulting/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/consulting/ We’ve gotten a few phone calls recently that set us off on a path to the discussion we had this week on the Tropical MBA Podcast. Making location independent income quickly is very doable, especially going the route of the consultant. There are a few keys to making it work the right way and...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/boat/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/boat/ Cam Collins runs a business that helps marinas manage their boat inventory. He recently sold the assets of the company in a strategic merger, and we’re pumped that Cam came by the podcast to share the lessons he learned during the process. Listen to this week’s show and learn: The difference between a strategic...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/carnegie/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/carnegie/ “Look out for the boy who has to plunge into work direct from the common school and who begins by sweeping out the office. He is the probable dark horse that you had better watch.” – Andrew Carnegie Ever dream of changing your life and getting ahead in the world? Andrew Carnegie gave a speech...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/conference/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/conference/ After this weekend’s incredible DCBKK event, Dan and Ian sift through the mountain of helpful information, solid business advice and entrepreneurial savvy to bring you the highlights of the event. This episode’s cup is overflowing with takeaways that the fellas gleaned from each speaker’s presentation.  You might want to grab a notepad for this...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/predictions/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/predictions/ As we approach DCBKK, we wanted to have a little chat about our predictions for the future of business as we know it. There’s a shift that’s slowly happening as we progress and we’re starting to see a massive rise in the growth of location independent, professionally run businesses. Kaiser Soze himself is hanging...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/prague/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/prague/ The fellas are switching things up and coming to you from Europe this week.  Having just finished speaking at the MicroConf event in Prague, they’ve got insights coming out of their ears and just couldn’t wait to share them with you. You’ll hear about some of the spotlight speakers from the event and the...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/distributed/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/distributed/ Hollywood filmmaker (with an imdb profile!), software programmer, podcaster, and most importantly, The Dominator of all things, Jesse Lawler is on the show this week to discuss a few of my favorite things. Jesse was working in L.A. as a filmmaker when the economy took a nose dive and no one would even think...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/crowdsourcing/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/crowdsourcing/ So many people struggle to get a great idea off the ground because they didn’t validate and ask the market to vote with their wallets. Jimmy and Doug from Minaal have completely turned this on its back. Not only were they meticulously calculated about the launch of their killer travel bag designed for location...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/rich/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/rich/ It’s not hard to see why Michael Covel (here’s my interview on his show) is a mega popular podcaster– he’s a scrappy entrepreneur who made good and isn’t scared to share his opinions. I’ve learned a lot from him through our conversations– about finance, world politics, and trading– but in this episode I really wanted...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/adwords/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/adwords/ Today Ian and I sit down with the one and only Dave Huss to talk about generating paid traffic to your site.  With so many recent changes in advertising platforms and capabilities to come, this episode is full of marketing avenues you should be using in your business. On the show this week: Why...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/readingmaterial/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/readingmaterial/ Ian and I have been wanting to bring an updated reading list to move your journey forward. On this episode, we wax a little philosophical about a variety of the best stuff we’ve been reading. On the show this week: How to choose your way forward like Calvin And Hobbes. The key difference between...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/productivity/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/productivity/ Back in the day, becoming productive– for me– meant locking myself in the house and putting the coffee maker on overdrive. We’ve learned since then a lot about the frameworks that empower exceptionally productive entrepreneurs, and in this episode we’ll share which ones we use, which ones we’ve discarded, and of course, which ones...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/passion/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/passion/ This week on the Tropical MBA Podcast we decided to give Mark Manson a call to dig further into his idea that “passion is practical.” Mark walked away from big income to focus on a project he was passionate about, and it ended up working out better in the end. Was it just a fluke? Did he get...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/dreamlines/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/dreamlines/ On Thursday mornings at 8AM EST, we publish the Tropical MBA Podcast (iTunes link). After recording this episode it occurred to me that the moment I became an entrepreneur had nothing to do with sales, product development, or legal structures. I became an entrepreneur the day I sat down and defined precisely what it...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/does-good-website-design-matter/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/does-good-website-design-matter/ On Thursday mornings at 8AM EST, we publish the Tropical MBA Podcast (iTunes link). You might have noticed that as we’ve been combining our two websites into one (we are gradually moving “Lifestyle Business Podcast” content over to this domain), we have been changing some of the design elements of this site. During this process,...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/welcome-lbp-listeners/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/welcome-lbp-listeners/ Every Thursday morning, 8AM EST, we’ll be aiming to publish one podcast at this domain, instead of the LBP and (sometimes) TTR at two. Starting next week we’ll have a little re-design of the podcasts as the Lifestyle Business Podcast and Tropical Talk Radio come together and are reborn into an even more focused,...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/last-traditional-episode/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/last-traditional-episode/ Just to be clear– we aren’t stopping doing a weekly Thursday morning podcast, we are just going to start (primarily) publishing it at TropicalMBA.com (our main domain). You can discuss this post and subscribe to our primary iTunes feed at these links (the old LBP feed will continue to work for some time):  ...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/focused-marketing-business-opportunities/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/focused-marketing-business-opportunities/ –>Click here to subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio in iTunes. –>Leave me a message, question, or comment for the show. It’s time for another Tropical Talk Radio podcast, which gets published Friday afternoons (Hong Kong time). Here’s the link to subscribe in iTunes if you haven’t already done so. This week Dan chats with...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/building-strong-communities/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/building-strong-communities/ Ian is back in the US of A hanging out in California, while Dan’s living the high life in Hong Kong. The guys are looking forward to joining up in Vietnam next week, but for now, it’s time for the LBP. This week’s topic came in from Trevor Pirtle from Real Life English who asked...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/concepts-help-build-wealth/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/concepts-help-build-wealth/ This week, Dan and Ian are talking about some chessmaster stuff. This is an episode all about making strategic moves in your business that you can implement right away and start building wealth. You’ll hear the five concepts that Dan and Ian have used to grow their business and steal their piece of the...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/creating-profitable-events/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/creating-profitable-events/ –>Click here to subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio in iTunes. –>Leave me a message, question, or comment for the show. It’s time for another Tropical Talk Radio podcast, which gets published Friday afternoons (Hong Kong time). Here’s the link to subscribe in iTunes if you haven’t already done so. This week Dan sits down...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/bootstrappers-guide-business-partnerships/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/bootstrappers-guide-business-partnerships/ Dan and Ian are coming at you today with some insight into what could be the most costly decision you’ll make in your business careers.  Many don’t think about it in terms of cost, but in this episode, Dan and Ian will make it abundantly clear why you should, and how to look at...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/21-century-financial-script/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/21-century-financial-script/ After spending some time back in the States, both Dan and Ian have been experiencing some different viewpoints on personal finance.  Many of which are based on 20th century circumstances and have survived the turn of the century in our society and our mindsets. This episode is dedicated to showing you some base level...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/sold-a-business-lessons-learned/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/sold-a-business-lessons-learned/ Dan and Ian’s dreamy voices are drifting into your earbuds this week to bring you some insight on a real life experience they’ve just been through… selling a business.  You’ll get to hear the fellas 7 points on what they did, and what they will do differently next time they sell a business to...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/a-fireside-chat/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/a-fireside-chat/ Dan and Ian sit down from opposite sides of the USA to bring you a nice, relaxing fireside chat and answer six personal business philosophy questions.  This episode is inspired by Joe Magnotti and Justin Cooke from the Empire Flippers and their 50th podcast episode, where they answer the same questions. You’ll get to...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/seo-sabotage-penguin-updates/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/seo-sabotage-penguin-updates/ –>Click here to subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio in iTunes. –>Leave me a message, question, or comment for the show. It’s time for another Tropical Talk Radio podcast, which gets published Friday afternoons (Hong Kong time). Here’s the link to subscribe in iTunes if you haven’t already done so. This week Dan and Ian...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/philosophical-conversation-get-paid-bank/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/philosophical-conversation-get-paid-bank/ Dan and Ian are joined on the show today by good friend and incredibly gifted entrepreneur Jon Myers.  Jon is a customer experience and user interface designer with an impressive client roster including some of the organizations to which you may pay taxes. The fellas dive into the concept of simply running a comfortable...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/tmba-34-a-roadmap-case-study-for-replacing-your-salary-in-less-than-half-a-year/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/tmba-34-a-roadmap-case-study-for-replacing-your-salary-in-less-than-half-a-year/ –>Click here to subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio in iTunes. –>Leave me a message, question, or comment for the show. It’s time for another Tropical Talk Radio podcast, which gets published  Friday afternoons (Hong Kong time). Here’s the link to subscribe in iTunes if you haven’t already done so. This week Dan talks to...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/1000-true-fans-100-true-customers-or-10-true-clients/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/1000-true-fans-100-true-customers-or-10-true-clients/ Dan and Ian dig into some of the most talked about and effective online business models for the bootstrapping entrepreneur.  They discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each but it also comes with a healthy dose of why you might not want to use particular business models. This episode is all about getting your...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/how-to-monetize-a-blog-or-podcast/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/how-to-monetize-a-blog-or-podcast/ Dan and Ian dive into a question that has been asked by millions ever since the advent of blogging and more recently podcasting.  They also address one of the core issues behind the basic question that separates those looking for a quick buck, and those looking to build a cashflow business. Click play above...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/episode-156george-washington-guide-to-being-boss/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/episode-156george-washington-guide-to-being-boss/ Dan and Ian switch things up a bit this week to present the life principles of an American icon and “The greatest and best of men”, George Washington.  The fellas talk you through his principled and altruistic standards and how they can directly apply to both your personal and professional life. Not only did...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/the-power-of-negative-action-optionality-convexity-antifragility/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/the-power-of-negative-action-optionality-convexity-antifragility/ Dan and Ian are coming at you this week after some intense reflection and mindset shifts.  This episode is all about the power of negative action and leveraging the inevitable changes in the world as a small business entrepreneur. Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book, Anti-Fragile inspires the content for today’s show and the fellas mold...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/profitable-niche-selection-rip-pivot-jam-redux/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/profitable-niche-selection-rip-pivot-jam-redux/ This week Dan and Ian are back in Saigon and are pumped to bring you this episode that’s chalked full of actionable methods and business frameworks.  The Rip, Pivot and Jam is one of the fellas’ favorite business concepts so this episode is dedicated to helping you get the most from it. Running a...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/potent-quotables-dc-ber-speakers/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/potent-quotables-dc-ber-speakers/ Dan and Ian come at you this week from Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, Vietnam with the highlights from the DC Berlin Meetup last week.  There were some absolute rockstar speakers at the event and the energy and excitement were electric. With topics ranging from smart drugs and focus optimization to SEO and...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/episode-152-10-travel-commandments/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/episode-152-10-travel-commandments/ Dan and Ian are drifting into your earbuds this week from Berlin where the DC BER meetup is in full swing.  With all the talk of people traveling in for the event, and some recent European adventures between Dan, Ian and both their parents there have been travel tips flying all over the place....

http://www.tropicalmba.com/tmba33-what-is-the-best-place-for-location-independent-families/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/tmba33-what-is-the-best-place-for-location-independent-families/ –>Click here to subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio in iTunes. –>Leave me a message, question, or comment for the show. It’s time for another Tropical Talk Radio podcast, which gets published every Friday afternoon (Hong Kong time). Here’s the link to subscribe in iTunes if you haven’t already done so. This week Dan reels...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/episode-151-social-feedback-strategy-adwords-landing-pages/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/episode-151-social-feedback-strategy-adwords-landing-pages/ Dan and Ian are coming at you from Italy this week with inspiration from the stately statues designed in Ian’s likeness.  The fellas have chiseled out their incredibly effective strategy for testing and launching physical products and will lay out the simple system for you in this episode.  Their method is an upgrade on...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/150-imperfection-getting-on-with-it/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/150-imperfection-getting-on-with-it/ Dan and Ian are back this week after an ill advised April fool’s joke earlier this week.  Don’t panic though, according to the fellas, the podcast is the best part of their business so they’re not going anywhere… except Paris where they’re hanging out this week. Rather fitting for this episode, Dan and Ian...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/5-tips-managing-software-development-project/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/5-tips-managing-software-development-project/ The LBP has changed hands as Dan and Ian have decided to “go in another direction” with their businesses and focus on the big picture in life.  Taking over are Rob Walling and Mike Taber from the podcast Start Ups for the Rest of Us.  This week they’ll take you behind the scenes of...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/subtle-social-media-tactics-change-how-you-generate-leads/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/subtle-social-media-tactics-change-how-you-generate-leads/ –>Click here to subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio in iTunes. –>Leave me a message, question, or comment for the show. It’s time for another Tropical Talk Radio podcast, which gets published every Friday afternoon (Hong Kong time). Here’s the link to subscribe in iTunes if you haven’t already done so. This week follows up...

Dan and Ian go deep during this week’s podcast and start talking long term strategy and revitalizing your entrepreneurial drive with a focus on the philosophy that motivates your actions. This isn’t an episode for passive listening so strap on your thinking caps. The fellas discuss the difference between their current drives and motives and what spurred them forward when they were first starting out in entrepreneurship. This combined with talk of narrowing your focus and thinking more strategically about your project involvement makes for a juicy episode. Pop in your earbuds and listen in for an eye opening adventure.

It’s time for another Tropical Talk Radio podcast, which gets published every Friday afternoon (Hong Kong time). Here’s the link to subscribe in iTunes if you haven’t already done so. In this week’s episode Dan sits down with James Clark, the digital nomad behind Nomadic Notes. James is rocking the solopreneur lifestyle with no employees and an affiliate marketing business that supports continuous travel.

Dan and Ian hook up from opposite sides of the world this week to bring you some down to earth advice in a cloud based time. Dan is hammering away in Ho Chi Minh City while Ian is getting things done on the ground in Las Vegas. Though we’re not sure what Ian spent his time doing after the show, the day hours were spent representing their portable bar products and doing a little industry research at the trade show. In this week’s episode, Dan interviews Ian on the old fashioned, hittin’ the bricks style of marketing he used at the trade show and why these industry shows can be incredibly profitable ventures for you as an internet entrepreneur.

It’s time for another Tropical Talk Radio podcast, which gets published every Friday afternoon (Hong Kong time). Here’s the link to subscribe in iTunes if you haven’t already done so. In this week’s episode Dan runs down David Hehenberger from Shopping Cart Labs in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam. The guys talk pros and cons for Ho Chi Minh City as a hotspot for location independent entrepreneurs.

Dan and Ian do a little bit of contemplating this week on their entrepreneurial habits. As humans, we’re all creatures of habit whether that’s hitting the neon lights at 5:01 every day or getting up a little early for some yoga. The fellas talk about the habits they have worked into their current lifestyles which have had the biggest effect on their businesses.

It’s time for another Tropical Talk Radio podcast, which gets published every Friday afternoon (Hong Kong time). In this week’s episode Dan rounds up some of the crew from Davao and discusses content marketing in depth to help you rev up your content engine. Join Dan Andrews, Justin Cooke, Joe Magnotti and Damian Thompson in going through this ten point checklist that will give your content marketing a boost.

Dan and Ian are breaking out of the usual format to bring you some first hand knowledge on expatriate and lifestyle business taxes. Yep, it’s that time of year again when Uncle Sam starts checking his ledger to make sure you don’t owe. Even if you’re not a US citizen, there are some golden nuggets in this week’s episode. On the show today, the fellas are joined by David McKeegan from Greenback Tax Services. He’s going to lay down the top five tax tips to help you save money on your taxes while abroad. Preserve your bottom line and get straight with Uncle Sam by utilizing some of these lesser known tips.

It’s time for another Tropical Talk Radio podcast, which gets published every Friday afternoon (Hong Kong time). Here’s the link to subscribe in iTunes if you haven’t already done so. In this week’s episode Dan has a sit down chat with Joe Magnotti from Adsense Flippers and Outsourcing For Start Ups to talk about taking control of your future with outsourcing