Tropical MBA: Entrepreneurship & Founder Lifestyle

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’...

‘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 s...

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 maki...

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 Pro...

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 D...

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 th...

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...

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 proces...

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 t...

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'...

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 th...

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 th...

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...

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 buil...

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 ye...

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 star...

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...

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 u...

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 tre...

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...

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...

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 h...

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 rela...

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....

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 cours...