Tropical MBA: Entrepreneurship & Founder Lifestyle

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?”

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.”

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.”

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”.

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.”

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.

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).

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”.

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’.

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”.

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”.

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.

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”.

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”.

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. And the main issue was .. there was a five unit apartment building and a two bedroom house, but they were on the same tax lot and share the same water tap. So there was plenty of money in there, as long as you are willing to pay to dig up the water and sewer line, and then pay the $13,000 to the water utility to get the water metres separated … then you could sell off the house, you could fix up the apartments, and functionally double the rent”. Jeff also shares some inside stories and insights from the very first DSki, which took place in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

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.

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’.

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?”

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.”

‘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”.

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%”.

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.”

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”.

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.”

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 we talk about conception, we talk about what value it delivers to a small number of people today … and that value proposition is going to be clear to me on day one, so you got to start with a clear conception”.

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 processes. And building a service that is highly repeatable … but in a SaaS, it's less about process, it's just much more about building. And every single month there's something new. It’s not only just building new features, but what's the next marketing channel that I can try to tap into and unlock a new pocket of customers.” You’ll also hear about Brian’s decision to take funding this time around, having always bootstrapped before and selling Audience Ops without using a broker. Plus, And the return of one our favorite participation games - ‘donate a business idea’.

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 this episode Dan and Sam cover the importance of ‘parlay’ in your career, the downsides of ‘Financial Independence, Retire Early’, how he chooses topics to write about, and much more. “I try to write about stuff people care about. You can write about ‘The Five Best Travel Credit Cards’ but, come on, you just need one or two credit cards. Or you can write about ‘How To Get Paid Full Time While Working Only Two Hours A Day’. I mean, that's so much more interesting.” Disclaimer This episode is a personal discussion, it in no way constitutes financial advice - but you knew that, right?

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's been powerful, but it hasn't been transformational. It hasn't altered fundamentally how businesses operate. The last piece of the puzzle really was cryptocurrency, because it allows us to store, process and transfer economic value without human intervention … autonomy is the ultimate competitive advantage”.

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 the United States in more than two years. Through it all, we have been fortunate to talk to some incredibly captivating entrepreneurs on this podcast in 2021 and to hear their stories of resilience, innovation, turmoil, and triumph. In today's episode, we are revisiting some of our favorite moments on the podcast this year. You'll hear about how you can write better content for the internet, insights into the future of finance and money, the unique mental health challenges that entrepreneurs face, and so much more

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 their hats, which are consistently the most sought-after swag at our Dynamite Circle events. Their story is not your typical "4-Hour Workweek" startup tale. What started in a small shop in California, has turned into a business that generated over 2 million in revenue last year. Lisa joins us this week to share the origins of Authentic Leather Patch Co., how they were able to grow their company to the heights it has reached today, how they have navigated the supply chain issues and uncertainty of Covid, and a whole lot more.

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 built her agency as a lifestyle business with the intention of complimenting her career as a competitive powerlifter. When the time came to sell that business, a social media consultancy that was founded around her name, not only did she have a very successful exit, she was able to walk away without any type of earnout period. Jodie joins us on this week's podcast to share her story. You'll hear about her strategies for landing different types of clients, how she was able to remove herself from "The Jodie Show" that she had created in her business, and a whole lot more.

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 building an 8-figure business in the near future. The second segment is an in-depth look at the dreaded "I word" that we've been hearing so much about lately: Inflation, and the ramifications that it is having on entrepreneurs everywhere. Finally, we'll be wrapping up the episode with some lighter conversation, as we talk about some of our favorite locations for digital nomads and open up about our event schedule for 2022.

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 years, and we're fascinated by his ability to remain ahead of the curve when it comes to social trends on the internet. Tynan joins us this week to discuss his history in the controversial Pickup Artist subculture, his unique philosophies on wealth and personal finance, and what it truly means to live outside of your comfort zone.

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 startup, and finally running a successful business of his own. It wasn't all wine and roses, though. Bunty encountered some harrowing mental health struggles along the way, and he joins us on the podcast this week to share his very personal story. This conversation touches on many of our favorite topics as well, including why it's important to put yourself in the room with seasoned entrepreneurs, how getting a job can be an excellent way to uplevel your business chops, and much more.

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 an unexpected turn when he decided to take on a co-founder, after he had already been operating his business for five years. Tommy joins us on today's show to explain how his feelings of being "cornered and surrounded" led to the decision to seek out a late-stage co-founder, what he was looking for in a business partner, how they negotiated equity, and a whole lot more.

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 updates about our own businesses, our crypto portfolio, and a whole lot more.

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 trends start to emerge in the community. In today's episode, we are highlighting 10 new trends that we've identified in the location-independent community. You'll hear about business models that becoming popular, how entrepreneurs are moving forward in the wake of the pandemic, and hot locations for digital nomads in 2022.

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 the show this week to share his thoughts about the upside of running an agency, specifically how it can provide you with unique insights into your market, improve your professional network, and help you start earning revenue fast.

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 offers cleaning services for residential homes and AirBNB rentals. Neel joins us today to discuss why he chose to use the EOS system in MaidThis, the steps he has taken to implement it, and how smaller businesses can utilize a "Lite" version of EOS to help manage their teams.

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 helps Americans abroad prepare and file their taxes. She and her husband Dave have been living outside of the United States for many years, raising their children as "Third Culture Kids", a subject that has become increasingly popular in our online community. Carrie joins us this week to talk about what it's like educating children abroad, why she decided it was time to "reinvent education" for her kids, and how the book "Traction" by Gino Wickman has shaped the way that she manages her team.

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 relationships that we develop to the things that we learn together, there are so many reasons why entrepreneurs can benefit from being together in the same place. We've invited our longtime friend Jeff Pecaro back onto the show this week, to reflect on what the past few years have been like without DC events, how things have changed since the last time we've all been together, and why we've chosen Mexico City for our newest event.

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. He soon found himself under a mountain of credit card debt, with his marriage to his partner of five years ending in divorce. Benny joins us on this week's podcast to share the details of his personal journey. You'll hear about his battle with clinical depression, the steps he took to get back on his feet, and how his business was able to survive through such a tumultuous period in his life.

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 course creators who are looking to increase the revenue of their business. John joins us on today's podcast to share the specific steps that he has been using with his own clients that have helped them see immediate results in their sales funnel.

This week's podcast is inspired by a blog post that we published back in 2014. That post was titled "What is the Real Cost of the Permanent Travel Lifestyle?" and many of the points we touched on in that article are still being discussed by people in our community today. One of those people is Jesse Schoberg. Jesse is the co-founder and CEO of DropInBlog.com, and he is all too familiar with the challenges of bootstrapping his way up the "Lifestyle Ladder". Jesse joins us this week to share his thoughts on location arbitrage, financial freedom, and what he believes the "Lifestyle Ladder" of the permanent traveler looks like in 2021.

We've seen a lot of great conversations take place in our private community The Dynamite Circle as of late. One of our favorites came in the form of a thread titled "Is Digital Nomadism Possible to Combine With Having a Family?" While there were many insightful responses in that thread, one member, in particular, caught our attention. Steven Ladek is the Principal of E-Learning Advocacy for a company called Open LMS. He's also a longtime entrepreneur and has lived outside of the United States for 16 years. Together with his wife Dana, they have raised three children in Hungary, Costa Rica, Thailand, and Mexico. Steven joins us this week to talk about what it's really like to balance parenting with nomadism, and the unique challenges that expat families face around the globe.

We are once again reaching into the mailbag this week to answer some pressing questions from the Tropical MBA audience. This is a somewhat unorthodox episode, as we are "shooting from the hip" on a variety of items that have come across our desk in the past few months. We'll be discussing how to structure your teams (specifically in an agency), tips for staying focused on what's important in your business, and how to avoid the dreaded "D-word" in your business: drama.

Today's guest has been on an incredible journey that touches on so many of our favorite entrepreneurial milestones. Derek Pankaew is the co-founder of Mythia, a financial startup that has partnered with banks to create a debit card aimed exclusively at gamers. He has experienced just about every entrepreneurial path, from running a "4-Hour Workweek" business built on passive income, to seeking out more ambitious projects in the San Francisco startup community, and eventually raising roughly 2.2 million dollars in venture capital funding. Derek joins us this week to take us through the steps of his incredible journey, and to share some of the fundamental differences between bootstrapping and running a venture capital-backed business.

Today's episode is particularly insightful for entrepreneurs who are looking to improve their social media or content marketing game, and for those of us who are interested in the property investment space. Moses Kagan is the co-founder of Adaptive Realty, a boutique real estate private equity firm based in Los Angeles, which has about $200 Million in assets under management. He is also an extremely savvy Twitter user and has successfully leveraged that platform to build meaningful relationships, many of which have led to massive investment deals. Moses joins us this week to talk about his strategies for social media and content marketing, the principles he has used to drive the success of his real estate business, and so much more.

This week, we are once again diving into the world of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. Gerbz is a regular contributor to this podcast and our go-to guy for all things crypto. He is the founder of BitLift.com, and the host of the brand new BitLift podcast, which aims to guide people down the crypto rabbit hole. Gerbz joins us this week to discuss the world of "Decentralized Finance", or "DeFi", where smart contracts and blockchain technology are being used to replace traditional financial institutions. He'll also be answering 5 pressing questions that we have about the state of crypto in 2021. Disclaimer: These are just our opinions, and are presented for informational purposes only. They are not intended to be considered as financial advice.

The term "Digital Nomad" has been beaten to death over the years, but it still means a lot to those of us who have identified with that label. James Clark is certainly one of those people. He's been a full-time nomad since the early 2000s, and we've shared many great memories with him around the world. James is also the author of a brilliant blog called Nomad Notes, where he recently published an article that captured our attention. The post was titled Digital Nomadism History, and in it he chronicles the start of the digital nomad movement through today, touching on all of the most important milestones. James joins us on today's podcast to talk about the history of digital nomadism, what inspired him to write that blog post, and a whole lot more.