Tropical MBA: Entrepreneurship & Founder Lifestyle

Today's podcast is about a topic that near and dear to our hearts and one that we've actually written a book about in the past. Longtime listeners know that roughly six years ago we sold our product business, and in the years since we have spent a considerable amount of time processing that decision and examining what happens not only at the core of successful exits but in the aftermath of them as well. John Warrilow is the author of a trilogy of books about this very subject, including Built to Sell, The Automatic Customer, and his most recent book The Art of Selling Your Business. He has also spoken with hundreds of entrepreneurs on his own podcast (including our very own Bossman) about their experiences exiting from their businesses. John joins us on this episode to discuss what makes a successful exit, how to build a business with the intention of selling, what he has learned from speaking to entrepreneurs about exits over the years, and so much more.

Since the start of the year, we've been focusing heavily on stories about starting new businesses as well as what we believe are the "fundamentals" of being an entrepreneur. When we received a video message from today's guest, who was telling us how excited he was to finally join our private membership group The Dynamite Circle, we knew we had to hear more about his story. In just a few short years, Sam Hill has grown his company E Comm CFO to nearly $300,000 in annual revenue, and he was able to do it by straight-up hustling on the freelancing platform Upwork. This week, we've invited Sam onto the podcast to share the origins of his entrepreneurial story, the nuts and bolts of how he was able to grow a business on Upwork, and some of his guiding principles for entrepreneurship.

We've been spending a lot of time over the past few weeks talking about the "business fundamentals", or the everyday habits that we believe entrepreneurs should be practicing. In keeping with that theme, we've decided to revisit some specific concepts that we've spoken about on this show in the past, and that we have seen at the core of so many successful entrepreneurial stories. On today's podcast, we'll be sharing four frameworks for how to get started with a profitable business idea in 2021. We'll be exploring each of these philosophies, as well as citing some specific examples of how each of these frameworks have been used successfully by the entrepreneurs that we have featured on this podcast in the past.

January is one of our favorite months of the year because it's a time for starting over, setting new goals, and making plans for how to achieve them. It's no surprise then that our inbox starts filling up with messages from excited entrepreneurs who are looking for new ways to push forward with their businesses. This week, we're reaching into the mailbag once again to answer questions submitted by Tropical MBA listeners around the world. We'll be discussing a series of topics specifically related to starting new businesses, finding new revenue streams, and making new moves in your business in 2021.

Every once in a while a book comes around that completely captivates us and leaves us with more questions than answers. When we discovered "The Price of Tomorrow" by Jeff Booth, we knew we needed to hear more from the man who wrote it.  Jeff is a Canadian-based entrepreneur who has built and invested in numerous companies, including BuildDirect, which he helped grow to $220 Million dollars in annual revenue. We were absolutely taken by the ideas he presented in his book, as well as Jeff's perspective on the future of the global economy. Jeff joins us on today's podcast for what turned out to be an incredibly poignant conversation about the global financial system, inflation and deflation, technology, and so much more.

This is the time of year when so many people are making goals and resolutions. These types of things are great, but we've always believed that the best way to is to see real progress is to create healthy habits and practices. Successful athletes do this by continuing to practice their fundamentals, the core skills that are most important to their game. Today we're going to be looking at how we can practice our business fundamentals so we can improve our daily habits and set ourselves up for success in the new year. We'll be sharing some specific ways that you can improve your finances, your time, your relationships, and much more.

To say that the last twelve months were unpredictable would be a massive understatement. For ourselves and so many other entrepreneurs, the COVID outbreak not only threw a wrench into our plans for 2020, it completely changed the way that we did business this year. Many of us were operating in industries that were adversely affected by the pandemic on a profound scale. Others, particularly those in eCommerce, experienced one of the most successful years of their entrepreneurial careers. In today's episode, we are revisiting some of the highs and lows of a wild and unforgettable year. You'll hear our opinions on how the year has played out on a broader scale, some insights into how our own businesses have fared over the year, and some highlights from our favorite moments on the podcast in 2020.

Like so many other entrepreneurs, we are fascinated by cryptocurrencies. We are naturally drawn to the technology because we believe it has the potential to cause some serious disruption in the financial sector. You might recall a few years back that we interviewed Nathaniel Popper about his book Digital Gold, which chronicled the origins of Bitcoin. Today's guest has written what feels to us like the next logical chapter of that story. Jeff Roberts is the author of Kings of Crypto, a book that details how the cryptocurrency startup Coinbase drove crypto out of the shadows of the internet and into the mainstream financial industry. Jeff joins us this week to talk about how the book came to fruition, crypto's evolving place within mainstream finance, the ideological battles happening within the space, and so much more.

Even though 2020 has been a difficult year for some entrepreneurs, it has arguably been an all-time year for many people running eCommerce businesses. Longtime listeners know that we first cut our teeth in the eCommerce space, and we love keeping tabs on how that industry continues to evolve and innovate. It's no surprise then that today's guest made his way onto our radar. Aaron Rubin is a longtime veteran of eCommerce. Aaron's growing annoyance with the shipping costs related to his business drove him to create ShipHero, a remote company that offers outsourced shipping fulfillment services and warehouse management software to other eCommerce businesses. Today, more than 1 in every 200 eCommerce packages delivered in America are shipped through ShipHero. Aaron joins us today to share his story. You'll hear how his first eCommerce business nearly went bankrupt, how a need to "scratch his own itch" led to the creation of ShipHero, and Aaron's somewhat insider take on where the eCommerce industry is headed in the future.

We are reaching back into the mailbag this week to answer questions submitted by Tropical MBA listeners around the world. In this edition, we'll be focusing on three specific questions that we believe get to the core of what it means to be resilient as an entrepreneur. We'll be discussing how much money you should save as a "runway" if you plan on leaving your job, the fundamental differences between hiring freelancers and hiring employees, and how you can navigate questionable business advice on the internet. You'll also hear an update about the new products that we are launching over at Dynamite Jobs, and why we are somewhat optimistic about events returning in 2021.