Tropical MBA: Entrepreneurship & Founder Lifestyle

In this week's episode, we've invited one of our favorite bloggers and thinkers to pull up a virtual chair and share some of the burning issues he’s been writing about. Nat Eliason is the founder and CEO of a marketing agency called Growth Machine, as well as the author of a fantastic blog at NatEliason.com. Nat is not only a successful agency owner, but he has some incredibly fascinating theories about entrepreneurship and scaling a multi-million dollar agency that we were just so excited to pick his brain about. Nat joins us this week for a wide-ranging discussion, where he opens up about his aversions to "struggle porn", the distinction between money and wealth, and the true nuts and bolts of running a successful agency.

One of the silver linings to the strange times that we've been living through in the past few weeks, is that we've been able to reach out to some of the brightest minds in our community and get a sense of how they have been responding to the crisis. Travis Jamison is no stranger to longtime listeners of this show. Travis is a bonafide SEO expert and the founder of Smash Digital. He has also successfully exited a business for 8 figures and is a very active investor as well. Travis recently shared something of an essay on Twitter that we felt captured a lot of our feelings about the current situation that we are all facing. We invited Travis on to the show today to explain those thoughts a bit further and to talk about how we might survive the economic downturn that so many of us are bracing for in the coming months.

As we've been practicing social distancing, the majority of our discussions about business and entrepreneurship keep coming back to the COVID-19 outbreak. In this week's podcast, we've invited one of the most prescient minds about this topic on to the show. Taylor Pearson is a long time friend of the show and has been sounding alarms about the coronavirus for much longer than most. Like us, Taylor is a huge fan of the writings of Nassim Taleb and joins us today to talk about why Taleb's writing has been so relevant in thinking about the ongoing crisis, the global economic impact of events like this, and what the future might hold for us in a post-outbreak world.

The topic of today's podcast is unavoidable. We simply have to address one of the biggest stories of our lifetime, the global shutdown brought about by Coronavirus, or Covid-19. The impact that this pandemic has had on businesses around the globe, including our own, has been enormous. In today's podcast, Dan and Ian are talking about their decision to cancel DC Austin, which would have brought 150 entrepreneurs from around the globe to the city of Austin, Texas in just a few short weeks. You'll also hear our thoughts on the economic implications of the virus, as well as the challenges and opportunities that such a radical event presents for entrepreneurs everywhere.

In today's episode, we are reaching into the TMBA mailbag yet again and responding to some interesting questions and comments we've received from our listeners. There is a word that gets tossed around in the entrepreneurial community, and it's actually something that is worn as a sort of badge of honor. We see it on t-shirts and social media, and it's usually represented by entrepreneurs who have rejected working for an employer at a job where they held no equity. But is it really a good thing to be "Unemployable?" You'll hear our thoughts about that on today's episode, as well as some insight for people who have become frustrated by meet-ups and networking events that aren't providing enough value.

One of the biggest challenges of running a remote team is communication. After all, "watercooler conversations" rarely happen when your team is scattered across the globe. Joe Magnotti is the co-founder of Empire Flippers, a marketplace for buying and selling online businesses. Together with his partner Justin Cooke, they have built a team of over 70 people who are entirely location independent and are located all over the world. Joe joins us on today's podcast to talk about his experience managing a remote team, and how holding twice-annual team retreats has been paramount to the success of Empire Flippers.

We've recently been revisiting some of our favorite business books on this podcast as part of a series we like to call "The Re-Readables". What makes this week's installment of that series so special is that we have been joined by the author of the book himself. M.J. DeMarco wrote The Millionaire Fastlane in 2010, and since then, the book has continued to grow in popularity. The basic premise of the book is that the most successful people have found ways to step off of the "slow lane" or the "sidewalk" to join the "fast lane", usually through entrepreneurial endeavors. M.J. joins us today to talk about the legacy of The Millionaire Fastlane, why it is still as relevant today as it was when it was released, his thoughts on the FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) movement, and much more.

Will Roman is a veteran entrepreneur who has worked in a number of different fields including eCommerce, physical products, software, and even cryptocurrency. At the end of last year, Will made the decision to leave his crypto exchange business to start Chisos, a product company that manufactures and sells designer cowboy boots. Will joins us on the podcast this week to talk about his stressful exit from that company, why he decided to start Chisos, what he has learned from his first year of manufacturing boots, and a whole lot more. 

We often talk about the "1,000 Day Principle" or the idea that it will take about 1,000 days to get a new business off the ground before it replaces the income from your 9-to-5. But what happens after those 1,000 Days? Chris Cage's 1,000 Day Journey has been well-documented on previous episodes of this podcast. Chris is the founder of Greenbelly, a company that manufactures high-quality meal bars for hikers. Greenbelly is now over 5 years old, and Chris is facing a whole new set of challenges. Chris joins us this week to talk about how he has handled the "Middle Game" of entrepreneurship. You'll hear about his first full-time hire, how he has created a repeatable process for getting clients, why he is taking time away from the business, and much more.

One of our favorite things to do on this podcast is follow up on some of the entrepreneurial stories that we've covered in the past. This time last year, we recorded a podcast with Tommy Joiner. In that episode, Tommy spoke about the genesis of his productized content generation service ContentPros. Fast forward a year and Tommy has made some massive changes in his life. Not only has he sold ContentPros, but he also chose to part ways with his business partner. In today's episode, Tommy returns to explain why he decided to move on from ContentPros and to share some insights into the exit process as well.