Explore every episode of the podcast Tropical MBA: Entrepreneurship & Founder Lifestyle
| Title | Pub. Date | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| #776 The 4 Most Eye-Opening Lessons I’ve Learned From My Coaching Clients | 10 Oct 2024 | 00:30:18 | |
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. Takeaways In honor of traveling to DCBKK this week, here’s Dan’s original packing list from 2010. And an updated list in 2015. Is it time for a new list? Chapters
Useful links: 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 “You’re Gonna Mess It Up The Way Everybody Messes It Up” “When is my LTV good enough?” + Founder Mode for Bootstrappers | |||
| #775 A Business Idea That Might Actually Work | 03 Oct 2024 | 00:51:41 | |
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: This week’s episode brought to you by Smash Digital. They’ll build you a scalable SEO growth strategy to earn the juiciest high-authority backlinks on earth. No, really. Useful links: 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 “You’re Gonna Mess It Up The Way Everybody Messes It Up” “When is my LTV good enough?” + Founder Mode for Bootstrappers | |||
| #766 “I’m Scared to Raise the Price” | 01 Aug 2024 | 00:36:57 | |
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. Check out the fluora plant we discuss on today’s show. Connect with us: Chapters:
Useful links: 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 | |||
| TMBA 676: Let’s Talk About DCBKK2022 | 17 Nov 2022 | 00:38:36 | |
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?” | |||
| TMBA 675: The Art of Personal Blogging Redux | 10 Nov 2022 | 01:06:40 | |
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. | |||
| TMBA 674: Going Viral For Saying ‘I Live Better In Thailand Than I Did In The U.S.’ | 03 Nov 2022 | 00:36:02 | |
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. | |||
| TMBA 673: Side-Hustle to Multi-million Inc500 #98 Business | 27 Oct 2022 | 00:47:24 | |
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’. | |||
| TMBA 672: Marketing by Building In Public: From Hobby to Major Business Opportunity | 20 Oct 2022 | 00:40:27 | |
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.” | |||
| TMBA 671: The Rewards Of Finding Your Niche | 13 Oct 2022 | 00:38:41 | |
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”. | |||
| TMBA 670: Business Updates: Remote First Recruiting, How Much Is Enough, And a Return To ‘The Europe Question’ | 06 Oct 2022 | 00:40:08 | |
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’. | |||
| TMBA 669: Working Backwards And The ‘Write First’ Culture | 29 Sep 2022 | 00:42:35 | |
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. | |||
| TMBA 668: 5 Small Ways To Go Big | 22 Sep 2022 | 00:43:34 | |
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). | |||
| TMBA 667: Catching The Right Wave At The Right Moment | 15 Sep 2022 | 00:45:53 | |
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. | |||
| #765 Only 3 Ways to Grow…What Would Plato Do | 25 Jul 2024 | 00:34:49 | |
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. Connect with us: Chapters:
Useful links: 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 Less Than 5% of Businesses Get to 1MIL+ - A Process to Reach the Goal | |||
| TMBA 666: Following The Signs In Your Business | 08 Sep 2022 | 00:45:02 | |
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. | |||
| TMBA 665: Reaching A $4M Run Rate In Less Than A Year | 01 Sep 2022 | 00:36:48 | |
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’”. | |||
| TMBA 664: Pivoting From 'In Person' To A Software Business | 25 Aug 2022 | 00:32:45 | |
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.” | |||
| TMBA 663: Overrated and Underrated Business Concepts with Noah Kagan | 18 Aug 2022 | 00:55:59 | |
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”. | |||
| TMBA 662: Expanding Education Options For Nomadic Families | 11 Aug 2022 | 00:32:43 | |
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’. | |||
| TMBA 661: The Rewards Of Challenging Assumptions | 04 Aug 2022 | 00:47:16 | |
‘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”. | |||
| TMBA 660: Five Easy Ways to Work Smarter (Not Harder) | 28 Jul 2022 | 00:40:54 | |
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 | |||
| TMBA 659: The Power of Diversification and The Welcome End of DeFi Summer | 21 Jul 2022 | 00:48:07 | |
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. | |||
| TMBA 658: Let’s Talk Fish And Ponds | 14 Jul 2022 | 00:48:04 | |
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”. | |||
| TMBA 657: The Europe Question | 07 Jul 2022 | 00:43:32 | |
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?” | |||
| #764 The 5 Approaches for Getting Rich + Budgeting for Wealth | 18 Jul 2024 | 00:42:22 | |
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. Chapters Connect with us: 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 Less Than 5% of Businesses Get to 1MIL+ - A Process to Reach the Goal | |||
| TMBA 656: The Problems Of Being Both An Arsonist And A Firefighter As A Business Owner | 30 Jun 2022 | 00:31:40 | |
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.” | |||
| TMBA 655: Deciding How To ‘Buy This, Not That’ | 23 Jun 2022 | 00:44:25 | |
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.” | |||
| TMBA 654: Mailbag: Digital Nomad Dilemmas, DJ Updates, and Memories of Having a J-O-B | 16 Jun 2022 | 00:43:28 | |
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”. | |||
| TMBA 653: Bangkok, Thailand and DCBKK. We’re Excited. | 09 Jun 2022 | 00:37:51 | |
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.” | |||
| TMBA 652: Mailbag: The Elephant in The Room with the 4HWW, and Can Solopreneurship Ever Make You Rich? | 02 Jun 2022 | 00:42:39 | |
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. | |||
| TMBA 651: Finding Hope in The Aftermath of Loss | 26 May 2022 | 00:42:51 | |
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). | |||
| TMBA 650: DeFi For The Long Game | 19 May 2022 | 00:43:06 | |
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”. | |||
| TMBA 649: Mailbag: Revenge Traveling, Founder Fit And Managing Net Worth | 12 May 2022 | 00:36:36 | |
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’. | |||
| TMBA 648: What Can Entrepreneurs Learn From PE Businesses, And Vice Versa? | 05 May 2022 | 00:56:18 | |
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”. | |||
| TMBA 647: The Opportunities In Bringing Technology To ‘The Real World’ | 28 Apr 2022 | 00:42:38 | |
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”. | |||
| #763 10 ideas for businesses seeking $1 Mil in Revenue | 11 Jul 2024 | 00:46:14 | |
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: Chapters: (00:00:49) Introduction and Setting Links: Diagnostic & Goals | Plans | Systems Work sheet 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 | |||
| TMBA 646: Key Takeaways From Our First Event In Playa Del Carmen | 21 Apr 2022 | 00:44:12 | |
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. | |||
| TMBA 645: Getting Started With A Regular Review Process | 14 Apr 2022 | 00:34:42 | |
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”. | |||
| TMBA 644: When Your Lifestyle Business Can No Longer Support You | 07 Apr 2022 | 00:38:30 | |
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”. | |||
| TMBA643: Don't Build Your Castle On Someone Else's Land | 31 Mar 2022 | 00:44:32 | |
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. Jeff also shares some inside stories and insights from the very first DSki, which took place in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. | |||
| TMBA 642: Breaking Through Plateaus, And Other Important ‘P’s | 24 Mar 2022 | 00:45:18 | |
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. | |||
| TMBA 641: Deciding It’s Time To ‘Get Up And Move Over To Another Table’ | 17 Mar 2022 | 00:51:29 | |
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’. | |||
| TMBA 640: Who’s In Your Van? | 10 Mar 2022 | 01:05:08 | |
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?” | |||
| TMBA 639: Agency Break | 03 Mar 2022 | 00:44:55 | |
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.” | |||
| TMBA 638: Judging When To Jump On The Tailwind Of a Side-Project | 24 Feb 2022 | 00:56:39 | |
‘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”. | |||
| TMBA 637: Our Favorite Books In The Time of Pandemic | 17 Feb 2022 | 00:54:59 | |
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%”. | |||
| #762 Winning and Losing Millions with Nathaniel Eliason | 04 Jul 2024 | 01:02:40 | |
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 Chapters: (00:16:41) Going All-In on Crypto Links: 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 | |||
| TMBA 636: Affiliate Marketing and The Stair Step Approach | 10 Feb 2022 | 00:49:13 | |
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.” | |||
| TMBA 635: The AntiWork Movement | 03 Feb 2022 | 00:43:02 | |
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”. | |||
| TMBA 634: The ‘Downside Protection’ of Investing in Bootstrapped Businesses | 27 Jan 2022 | 00:39:46 | |
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.” | |||