Pangolia CEO and Founder Simon Tolle

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.”