Tropical MBA: Entrepreneurship & Founder Lifestyle

http://www.tropicalmba.com/greenbelly/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/greenbelly/ Podcast 31:36| Download | Stitcher | iTunes | Comment After taking a brief sabbatical, we return to the show this week with a very unique guest. Chris Cage (Chris@GreenBellyBar.com) is an avid hiker, biker and outdoor enthusiast. Chris started Greenbelly in 2014 and has been creating high-calorie meal replacement bars ever since. He recently crowdfunded $20,000 on...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/tokyo/ This week on the show, I'm talking to Chris Kirkland from the Hobo CEO podcast. His show explores the philosophical side of the digital nomad movement. Chris is a veteran of the location independent scene, having founded his first location-independent business Artweb in 2005. One of Chris' more recent ventures is TokyoCheapo.com, a content-based business dedicated to educating travelers and expatriates on how to live in Japan on the cheap. We'll be discussing some of the common misconceptions about living in Japan and the benefits and challenges of managing a content-based business model.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/apprentice/ One of the most frustrating parts of the entrepreneurial life script is that when you first hear about it and understand the benefits, you probably aren't ready to start a business. You know the answer is starting a business, but you aren't quite sure how to get there yet. We have long been advocates for seeking out an apprenticeship, but it's not always that easy. How do you get an apprenticeship, where do you go when you find one and what happens after you get one? Over the last couple of years, Vincent Nguyen from GrowthNinja.com has gone through all of these stages himself. I've invited him on to the show to talk about his experiences as an apprentice at Empire Flippers and how he has managed to transition from being a successful apprentice into owning his own business.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/swas/ I recently came across an article on TechCrunch that caught my attention, all about the rise of "Do-It-For-Me" businesses. Big businesses have been doing "Do-It-For-Me" for decades, but small businesses remain a relatively unconquered frontier. This is essentially about selling time to entrepreneurs, and I don't know anyone who does that better than Mat Newton from The Web Agency Podcast. He recently started what he calls a SWaS, or "Software With a Service" business called Tourism Tiger. Mat is joining us this week to talk about what the SWaS business model is and how it has changed the way that he does business.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/art/ Is it possible to build a business and monetize your art? This is a question we get asked a lot. One of our listeners got in touch with us this week and challenged us to speak about how we would apply some of our entrepreneurial principles to a career in art or music. If you are an artist of any kind, this is the episode for you. We'll be talk about what we believe it means to be an artist, how to support your art through a job or business, and how you can leverage 1,000 true fans to build a career doing what you love.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/studentloandebt/ Last week I was on vacation in Southeast Asia with my family, and we are all huge Penn State fans. I spent some of my most formative years around State College in Pennsylvania. I was thrilled when one of who listeners named Brian, who teaches at Penn State, reached out to us and asked us to answer some questions for his students at the university. In this episode Ian and I lay out a three-part plan to become a location independent out of college, talk about how why you should be looking for an apprenticeship instead of a job, and finally answer one of the questions we get asked the most: why cat furniture?

http://www.tropicalmba.com/dropshippinglife/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/dropshippinglife/ Podcast 29:33 | Download | Stitcher | iTunes | Comment This week Dan is on vacation in Asia with his family, so I’ve invited Andrew Youderian of eCommerceFuel onto the show to talk about what it means to be a bootstrapper and the differences between a bootstrap business and funded business. We also share our thoughts about the...

http://www.tropicalmba.com/workwithus/ Today we are gonna do a Tropical MBA first, as we've decided to record a podcast about a new job listing. If you're interested in coming to work for our team, we encourage you to listen to this episode. We're also taking this opportunity to talk about team building and the back story of the Tropical MBA. The first blog post that we ever published on this website was a job offering. We're gonna talk about what inspired that and the position that we were in when we made that decision. We're also gonna debate the value of having team members in-person versus a location-independent team and whether or not it's a good idea to support your employee's side projects.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/bizquestions/ We've received a ton of great feedback from last week's Q&A session on relationships and lifestyle. This week we've decided to reach out to our listeners for questions pertaining to business. Ian and I are gonna be talking about everything from productized services to offshore business, management philosophies and our own personal outlooks on the future of our business.

http://www.tropicalmba.com/behindthescenes/ This episode is a pretty unique one. In this week's newsletter we reached out to our listeners and encouraged them to ask us just about anything that was on their minds. It turns out an overwhelming number of people wanted to know more about our lifestyles and what goes into the creation of the show. Ian and I are going to take you Behind the Scenes on this week's episode. We'll talk about the difficulties of having relationships on the road, what it's like to live as an expatriate, and we'll even answer a few gossip questions about what we do with our time.