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 com...
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 a...
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...
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, th...
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 al...
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 som...
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...
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. ...
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.c...
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 decid...
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 (Chris@GreenBellyBar.com) 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 so...
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 yo...
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" busi...
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 leverag...
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 ...
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 w...
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...
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...
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 y...
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 en...
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...
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 o...
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 t...
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 Tay...
