Tropical MBA: Entrepreneurship & Founder Lifestyle

Hey there weekend warriors! I’m happy to announce that Tropical Talk Radio (iTunes link) will now be a weekly show for entrepreneurs seeking some weekend inspiration. That means I’ll try to get you new episodes by happy hour on Friday evening. This week I’m joining you from from Vietnam’s capital city of Hanoi. Tiger beer (via nearby Singapore) is my unofficial sponsor. If a brand manager is reading this post, why not send me a tank top or something?! QUICK NEWS: Most of you know we opened up our October Tropical MBA event 24 hours ago to the readers of this blog. We currently have 4 spaces open for the event. If you’d like to join us, I’m hoping you are able to make a decision fast. I’d like to sell these spots so I can get down to business with the crew! If there is anything I can do to help you make a decision, drop me a line Dan at TropicalMBA.com.

Dan and Ian have been busy hopscotching across SE Asia the past couple weeks (Bali, Philippines, China, Vietnam) and have plans to continue the journey later in July with a motorbike excursion in Cambodia. All this travel got the guys thinking about the places they go and the things they love/hate about each place. More importantly, how a location independent entrepreneur can live and work from these locations and still be straight hustlin’.

Dan and Ian are jet-setting around Asia for the next month between Tropical MBA sessions, currently doing some money biznass in Hong Kong. After the first Tropical MBA was so much fun and so successful, not only did they decide to host yet another session in October 2012, but the effectiveness of the program caused them to stop and re-evaluate their online priorities. All good businesses grow and change, and Tropical MBA is doing that as well.

This week Dan and Ian were reminded of a great project that you have all helped us to grow in the Lifestyle Business Podcast community. To date you guys have raised over $5000 on Kiva micro-funding businesses and entrepreneurs in developing countries. That’s pretty baller. Check out our Kiva page to pay it forward cause that’s what entrepreneurs do. What else do entrepreneurs do? Well, what an entrepreneur does depends a lot on what type of entrepreneur they are.

Want to be the first to hear the details of our October Tropical MBA? You can check out the information here, and we’ll email you the final details on Friday. I managed to sneak away from the start-ups here at the first Tropical MBA in Puerto Galera Philippines for a few minutes in order to share some of the lessons we’ve been learning together. Today we ask the question: what mindsets are critical to developing to ensuring your business success? You might be surprised by some of the answers we’ve developed.

We’re a few days in to the first Tropical MBA Startup Session here in Puerto Galera and the entire team is buzzing with excitement and motivation working with these guys. Basically Dan and Ian just wander around with huge grins on their faces helping the guys with their startups. If you walked in to the think tank on Monday night of 11 entrepreneurs with their noses buried in laptops hustlin’ their little fingers off on keyboards. Most past midnight. They were up by 8-9 AM the next morning and back at it. Entrepreneurs hustle hard. Which means they need to party hard too. And last night the folks at Badladz Resort did it up right and threw a party, complete with amazing live band and Filipino delicacies like balut & fried chicken heads. Which left some folks a little fuzzy headed this morning. This Tropical MBA thing seems to work. The participants are working, learning, growing, building, and spending some time escaping all that with people who are going through the exact same thing. Talk about a cure for entrepreneurial loneliness! Does this make you a little misty that you weren’t able to sign up for our summer sessions? Well. There’s good news for you. We’re going to be hosting another session in October of this year. Drop your email in the form below to sign up for early notification and get the details privately by email before we announce them to the public.

Dan and Ian are together again at the infamous Badladz Resort in Puerto Galera, Philippines. This week they are joined by special guest Tim Conley from Foolish Adventure who will be working with the first group of folks here for the TMBA Start-up Summer project. Stay tuned in the next couple weeks for updates about these guys, their projects, and our Start-up Summer. This week they got a question from Shayna at EspressoEnglish.net: I run a website that teaches English as a Second Language, and I feel like I’m competing with the zillions of pages all over the internet. I’m having trouble pricing my products for a global audience and trying to compete with all the free sites out there. The most important thing about competing with free products when you’ve got something quality to offer is that you will always be fighting downhill when you do that. No one wants to fight downhill…you usually fall. Instead fight uphill and you’ll find it much easier

It is a sad day in the LBP world. After a year of pool parties, long nights of discussion and brainstorming on the deck, and countless DCers and LBP listeners visiting and crashing on our couches, the time has come to say good-bye to our Bali House (aka TMBA HQ). It’s been good times on the good old Jl Drupadi in Seminyak. We’re not giving up the compound dream, though. In fact, it’s getting bigger. And Dan & Ian are on the lookout for a resort or 10+ private room compound to turn into TMBA HQ 2.0 for the upcoming year. If you have any leads let us know! This week, after yet another 5-Star iTunes review showers the LBP with love, Dan & Ian decided it was high time to start sharing some of the secrets that has enabled them to become six-figure full-time income bloggers (much to Ian’s mixed elation and dismay). None of this is new stuff – but it will help you to be more effective with content. What’s the most important private label secret? It’s about Social Media and SEO.

This week Dan and Ian are dreaming of Ferraris. A slight departure from their regular dreams of Porsches and BMW’s. Ian might even by considering taking up a bartending job to bootstrap his new ride. Maybe he can get a gig working a portable bar somewhere? Mostly they are planning the shenanigans set to transpire when they are both on the same continent (in the same place even!) later this month at Badladz Resort in the Philippines. In this episode Dan & Ian once again get such a humdinger of a question that it’s a full serving of meat & potatoes to chat about! Dave (who is dreaming big in Japan asks: I’ve toyed with “make money online” stuff for a while, but now I realise that I haven’t been serious. I want to get serious. So: given resources of basically zero dollars, and 25 hours a week to spare, what ideas would you suggest to start earning $500-1000 a month asap and go from there. I’m not looking for a blueprint or a sure thing, but some lateral thinking or just your perspective. Well Dave, better than a blueprint we’ll give you and our listeners a full checklist for lateral thinking.

This week Dan and Ian are acting like expatriot snitches, unleashing an Offshoring 101 course onto the listeners of the LBP community. Blasting through conversation ranging from why you should and shouldn’t incorporate your business in the US to Earned Income Exclusions & FBAR’s and all the juicy details in between, including some important things they’ve learned along the way, the guys are getting into some serious business discussion. This episode is definitely one to pull out the pen & paper/Evernote for!