Tropical MBA: Entrepreneurship & Founder Lifestyle

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 “The DC” DC Black Global events Hire remote talent Find a remote job Listen on YouTube Follow on Instagram @TropicalMBA @AnythingIan Show Notes: (00:00:00) Intro (00:01:44) Too old for basketball (00:04:33) Personality disorders (00:11:07) Leadership (00:24:30) Mexican Fisherman Links: DC Events DC Black Language Mentoring Clockwork by Mike Michalowicz The Checklist Manifesto Scorecards Traction 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 TMBA 695: The Money Theory of Location And Why Employee Scorecards Are So Helpful TMBA 707: Deceptively simple ways to have a better business TMBA 702: Millions for Podcasts and Jay Clouse on Memberships TMBA 689: Re-visiting Our Conversation with Seth Godin

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 “The DC” DC Black Global events Hire remote talent Find a remote job Listen on YouTube Follow on Instagram @TropicalMBA @AnythingIan Show Notes: (00:00:00) Intro (00:02:02) Systems are too complicated (00:04:23) Scorecards, scorecards, scorecards (00:07:20) Delegation vs assistance (00:08:32) DCBKK updates (00:13:42) Becoming an entrepreneur (00:21:48) Perfect integrator (00:27:07) ROI of process (00:37:25) Meeting tempos (00:39:09) Accountability chart (00:42:46) The issues list (00:48:05) Get out from under Links: DC Events DC Black Language Mentoring Clockwork by Mike Michalowicz The Checklist Manifesto Scorecards Traction 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 TMBA 695: The Money Theory of Location And Why Employee Scorecards Are So Helpful TMBA 707: Deceptively simple ways to have a better business TMBA 702: Millions for Podcasts and Jay Clouse on Memberships TMBA 689: Re-visiting Our Conversation with Seth Godin

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 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 “The DC” DC Black Global events Hire remote talent Find a remote job Listen on YouTube Follow on Instagram @TropicalMBA @AnythingIan Show Notes: (00:00:00) Intro (00:02:40) Profit vs revenue (00:06:05) Revenue growth to exit (00:06:35) Conflating profit with personal income (00:07:21) The Bezos strategy (00:08:19) Profit first (00:12:35) Classic systems (00:14:00) Superhero profitable (00:15:50) ROI framework (00:21:44) Our 2024 event strategy (00:24:18) Join our team (00:30:05) How to throw a great event (01:05:53) First-timer’s guide to DCBKK Links: Join our team DC Events DC Black 7 Powers by Hamilton Helmer Profit First by Mike Michalowicz The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker The 2-Hour Cocktail Party by Nick Gray 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 TMBA 702: Millions for Podcasts and Jay Clouse on Memberships TMBA 689: Re-visiting Our Conversation with Seth Godin TMBA 711: “Money is Your Responsibility” + News Updates TMBA 707: Deceptively simple ways to have a better 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 “The DC” DC Black Global events Hire remote talent Find a remote job Listen on YouTube Follow on Instagram @TropicalMBA @AnythingIan Show Notes: (00:00:00) Intro (00:09:42) The Lifestyle Design Game (00:18:29) Being a Change CEO (00:23:47) Building an AI coach (00:28:19) Client Alignment (00:35:16) Team User Manuals (00:40:25) Work & Wellness Holiday (00:45:36) Polarized Travel Links: Coachvox AI AI business coach How to think like a founder How Elon Musk solves problems How to use AI to revolutionise your business The biggest business challenges for ENTJ / INTJ entrepreneurs Living on a beach resort 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 TMBA 702: Millions for Podcasts and Jay Clouse on Memberships TMBA 678: Evolving An Agency, With SaaS Mistakes Along The Way TMBA 712: Business Partnerships and 6-Figure Launches: A Conversation with Mark Webster TMBA 707: Deceptively simple ways to have a better 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 Newsletter “The DC” DC Black Global events Hire remote talent Find a remote job Listen on YouTube Follow on Instagram @TropicalMBA @AnythingIan Show Notes: (00:00:00) Intro (00:11:01) The audience is the hard part (00:18:47) The start of authority sites (00:28:52) Becoming business partners (00:35:38) Outgrowing your agency (00:44:59) Getting to 7-figures quickly (00:50:40) 50/50 partnership pros & cons (00:56:48) 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 TMBA 702: Millions for Podcasts and Jay Clouse on Memberships TMBA 695: The Money Theory of Location And Why Employee Scorecards Are So Helpful TMBA 678: Evolving An Agency, With SaaS Mistakes Along The Way

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. “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.