Tropical MBA: Entrepreneurship & Founder Lifestyle

Dan and Ian 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 , Noel Andrews , and John Ainsworth about how they pulled off one of the best al...

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 “The DC” DC Black Global events Hire remo...

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....

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 finan...

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 ho...

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 imp...

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 busin...

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 cha...

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 bootstrapp...

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 qu...

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 l...

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 g...

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 entrep...

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....

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, Publishi...

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 som...

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 recen...

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. To...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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. Tod...

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 se...

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 t...