Tropical MBA: Entrepreneurship & Founder Lifestyle

What began as a window cleaning service he started at college has now spun into a multi-million business for today’s guest Johnny Robinson. In January 2022 he co-founded Home Services Academy, a 90 day program and ongoing community which coaches others to reach five figures MRR by either starting their own cleaning business, or making an existing one more profitable. Johnny talks to Dan about their sales process, the pros and cons of implementing the ‘Scaling Up’ operating system, and why he feels he held on to his former business model for too long: “If you've been plugging away, and you're not seeing the growth, maybe it's time to take the skill set and what you've learned somewhere else … What I've realised, after building a few different businesses, is when you're in the weeds of things you start to find problems within that industry that are very, very niche. But you're like, ‘Well, that would probably be a better business than the one I’m running’”.

The COVID pandemic saw many online businesses boom, especially those centered on E-commerce. But entrepreneurs running in-person events really took a hit. Today’s show focuses on one of those stories, and narrates how one owner re-invented what his company was doing by becoming a ‘Value Added Reseller’ (VAR) software service. Dan Taylor is the CEO of AppsEvents, a ‘Google for Education’ partner whose company previously ran a huge number of conferences worldwide before diversifying into VAR: “There are different ways you can get into it. Some of the selling is direct with Google, some of that work is with a distributor but, essentially … The ‘value added’ part means you can sell your services on top. So you can sell ongoing support services, you can do setup services, you can do customization, that's kind of what the business model is.”

This show is a ‘drop in’ to the kind of conversations Dan and Ian have been having all summer long in their co-working space in Barcelona, as fellow entrepreneurs have come by the city. And today they’re joined by one of our favorite guests, AppSumo founder Noah Kagan. The idea is a simple one - let’s just have some fun, and hopefully useful insights, rating some of the popular business memes and ideas that have taken traction in the online business world. Which ones are overrated, underrated or appropriately-rated? The discussion includes - the value of coaches, the necessity of hiring a Chief Technical Officer, cold email outreach and more: “Where it's like, ‘I have a great idea. I just need a technical partner’, 100% overrated. Because when you're starting any business what you're really focusing on is - what is the actual problem you're solving, not a technical need. What often happens is people are using that as an excuse for rejection. And they're using an excuse from fear”.

One growing theme in the TMBA community has been the search for increased options for location independent families to provide education for their children. Traditionally it’s been home schooling, international or local schools, and very little in-between. But increasingly parents are coming together to try to create new solutions like pop-up schools, employing tutors and more. On today’s show teacher and entrepreneur Elliott Zelinskas offers his views on a range of emails and comments we’ve received on this subject, including thoughts about whether the COVID pandemic might have accelerated the drive for change: “I'm curious about the post COVID situation .. How did that change our world, not about how we think about viruses, but how we think about our lives, our families, our business .. The power structures got shook up, and I think there's been this kind of collective reflection on life. And you just don't really see people going back to normal in terms of their work. And I'm seeing it more with education too”. There are also some updates from Dan and Ian about Dynamite Jobs, and their thoughts on a recent ‘digital nomad debate’.

‘Rip, pivot and jam’ is a recurring theme on this show. It’s a way of overcoming the pressure of needing ‘the best business idea ever’ by taking a model that’s working elsewhere and applying it in another field. And that’s exactly what today’s guest Justin Tan did when he founded his productised video editing service Video Husky. Through his previous freelance career in Facebook advertizing, Justin had seen the growing importance of video creation as a marketing tool. And Russ Perry’s unlimited graphic design offerings at ‘Design Pickle’ inspired him to try that approach for clients who need regular video editing. Justin talks to Dan about the challenges and rewards of building, and recently ‘retiring’ from Video Husky over a four year period: “The key thing is being able to accept when your assumptions are wrong, ideally quickly, and moving on from them versus - I would hold on to certain key assumptions for the longest time, even though they weren't true. And so what I found was really helpful was getting in front of a lot of customers”.

Who doesn’t want to maximize results, and spend less time - or just make better use of it - in their business? On this week’s show Dan and Ian discuss five possible ways to make this happen from their own experience growing Dynamite Jobs. They include reaching out to an expert practitioner in your field, someone who has experience and insight at the level you want to grow to, creating tight ‘backward looking’ financial accountability that gives clarity on where your money is, and should be going. And there’s more, of course. It wouldn’t be a TMBA episode without five points. It’s the law. ‘We’ve reached out to several industry experts in the job space. And I think some relationships are going to come out of that … And I think the most valuable thing that's starting to change for us, it's just the product roadmap. So if you can identify somebody that's an industry expert in your field, a lot of times they can shave years off your product development cycle.” Listen and learn: ● Why reaching out to an industry expert in your space could be so helpful ● ‘Scaling Up’ by Vern Harnish v ‘Traction’ by Gino Wickman ● Choosing where to have a ‘work vacation’ ● The power of a system to get inside your business financials

The TMBA ‘summer in Barcelona’ continues with a long-standing guest visiting the city, and hanging with Dan and Ian. His name is Travis Jamison, founder of Smash Digital, and investor in numerous other companies. He’s a badass entrepreneur who exited his previous business AMZ tracker, a SaaS for Amazon sellers, for ‘a life changing’ amount of money, a story we told on this show. Today he talks to Dan and Ian about choosing where to live when you stop nomading, why Travis thinks agencies are highly underrated business models, ‘Defi summer’, and lots more.

We’ve received some great email responses prompted by last week’s episode ‘The Europe Question’. So on today’s show Dan and Ian will be reflecting on some of those comments. They’ll also be mulling over a recurring dilemma posed by a listener, one which is very much in their minds as they grow ‘Dynamite Jobs’: “David and Goliath or Dynamite Jobs versus Indeed.com .. At one time you mentioned how just hearing the word Indeed gave you anxiety, maybe excitement … (this) resonated with me. My partner and I are currently building a software product that will likely go head to head with some fairly big names, and they have at least a decade head start on us … The only thing that keeps me going back is that I've spent the past decade in entrepreneurship, always staying in safe little buckets of protected small niches .. Small niches are often easier to start but are easier to hit a ceiling in terms of market size. Having experienced growing our businesses to the upper limits of the markets we're in, we have our eyes on the bigger prize where the bigger players are players that really know what they're doing”.

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.”