Get Paid to Travel the World - The Tropical MBA

A Framework for Hiring and Managing Employees

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Tue, 21 May 2013 16:39:44 +0000

If you are reading this post elsewhere, click here to see the video presentation (~15 minutes).

How do you know when it’s time to hire somebody?

Until recently, I’ve never had a consistent rule-of-thumb for knowing when to hire. Every single time it was a one-off call– often based on hope or hubris.

There are few questions in my career that have been so consistently complex. Even seasoned business owners seem to find hiring decisions laced with anxiety. As Felix Dennis quips in the excellent How to Get Rich, “overhead walks on two legs.”

A new approach…

My gut feeling approach to hiring was challenged recently when we brought on a new team member. I recounted the story on this episode of the Lifestyle Business Podcast. We had taken the lessons from a book called Work the System to heart and wrote down– in detail– how to execute the processes that delivered value to our customers.

Those processes helped us to look at a small bundle of standard operating procedures (SOPs), figure out about how much they cost us to execute, and then say (for example): we should hire somebody to execute SOPs #1, 2, and 3, assuming their salary is in x range. We felt empowered to step back and take an objective look at our business. Should we automate this with software? Should we hire a consultant to do this stuff? Should we be doing it at all?

If you don’t give the job to somebody else, it’ll be yours.

The system I created for my new small business was inspired mostly by Sam Carpenter’s Work the System. I very much recommend you read the book if you plan on doing this. You could also take a look at Gerber’s The E-Myth Revisted, although it’s a bit redundant after reading Work the System.

The punchline– most small business owners are above-average at their craft. Baking cakes, getting #1 rankings for websites, designing logos, writing sales pages, etc. The problem comes when those business owners conflate their sought-after skill set with the skill set of entrepreneurship.

One of the best ways to go from “small biz owner” to “entrepreneur” is to get good at building systems.

For many of us our most powerful points of leverage will come from building SOPs from scratch, day by day, spreadsheet by spreadsheet.

Outlined in the video you’ll see some of the following benefits we’ve seen in our business:

Increased precision. Our conversations and the actions we take are more elegant. Why are we doing this? When are we doing this? What precisely do we do? How much does it cost us?
Increased modularity. It’s much easier to outsource elements of our business, hire new team members and train them, or to leverage ourselves out of lower value tasks.
Added legacy to our conversations. Every important decision, principle, and process in our business is recorded on our live document so our conversations build out assets for our business. We see business failures as failures of process, and that give us an opportunity to address those problems in a positive way.
Reduced email volume and removes some of the need for project management software.

An example of a Standard Operating Document (SOD).

You can see it here.

Want to implement the Strategic Operating Document (SOD) in your business?

Copy the contents of this document into your own and bookmark it in your browser toolbar. This will get you started!
Read Work The System when you get a chance.
Come back to this post and let us know how it’s going! :)

The biggest issue I have not addressed in this post is how to get team buy-in and compliance. Many of our listeners have had challenges in this regard. In general, it’s very important to use systems your team already uses. They are unlikely to implement this stuff if it means more work. In our case, Google docs for the win!

We are currently applying this system to our larger company and are finding a few more challenges (but more upside!). Hopefully we’ll have more to report on that shortly. These are live documents and we continue to evolve how we work with them on a day to day basis.

Cheers,

Dan

PS, if you’d like to receive emails about the stuff we do off the blog, just put your email address into the form below:

TMBA33 – What is the Best Place for Location Independent Families?

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 12:31:48 +0000

–>Click here to subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio in iTunes.
–>Leave me a message, question, or comment for the show.

It’s time for another Tropical Talk Radio podcast, which gets published every Friday afternoon (Hong Kong time). Here’s the link to subscribe in iTunes if you haven’t already done so. This week Dan reels in David and Carrie McKeegan from Greenback Tax Services to learn how they’ve managed the location independent lifestyle with two young boys. Not only do they say it can be done, but that it’s been an enriching experience for their children.

Listen to this episode and hear about:

The mindset necessary to travel with young children.
How Carrie and David dealt with the situation they feared most – and it wasn’t so bad after all.
The top spots you and your family can live for $1,500 -$2,000 a month comfortably.
Creative ways to get qualified and caring nannies or babysitters in foreign countries.

Get your voice or question on TTR:

Want to be on Tropical Talk Radio? Leave me a message. It’s easy to do, simply record a quick .mp3 and click above to send it in.

Mentioned on this show:

People on this show:

Dan (@TropicalMBA)
David McKeegan (@Mck_Dave)
Carrie McKeegan (@CPMckeegan)
GreenBack Tax (@Greenbacktax)- Meet Us

Episode length: 36:51

Other download options:

Download from iTunes and Subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio by clicking this link.
If you don’t like iTunes, here’s the MP3 file–> [DOWNLOAD MP3]
Android, Apple, Palm & other listeners can listen on Stitcher Radio

If you’ve found the podcast at all helpful or entertaining, we’d love if you could click over to our iTunes page and give us a positive review, or visit Stitcher radio and give us the good ol’ Thumbs Up. I’m always happy to hear critical feedback as well. Please feel free to email me if you know some ways we can make it better dan at tropical mba dot com.

TMBA32 – Subtle Social Media Tactics That Could Change How You Generate Leads

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 09:00:39 +0000

–>Click here to subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio in iTunes.
–>Leave me a message, question, or comment for the show.

It’s time for another Tropical Talk Radio podcast, which gets published every Friday afternoon (Hong Kong time). Here’s the link to subscribe in iTunes if you haven’t already done so. This week follows up from last week’s podcast where James and Dan laid the groundwork for a strategy that would require about 10,000 unique visitors a month to get a successful blog-based business off the ground. To follow up on that topic, Dan invited Jodi Ettenberg of Legal Nomads on the show to talk traffic and engagement.

Over the last few years she’s built a passionate following and traffic over 4 times that 10,000 visitor baseline. They discuss some of the social media strategies– in particular Twitter and Facebook– that helped her drive big numbers and a unique level of engagement. Although she promotes a personal brand, there’s a bunch of lessons to be learned for brands and boostrapping entrepreneurs alike.

Jodi’s Social Media Recommendations

1) Twitter

Think of Twitter as the place to infuse your brand with personality.
Follow the people who provide you with content you crave and use lists to keep track of the rest.
Keep track of what works using Bit.ly links and services like Tweriod or SocialBro to figure out the best time to tweet based on your followers’ locations.
5-10 tweets a day is the sweet spot, not including ongoing conversations.
Tweetdeck or Buffer are helpful for scheduling tweets.
Use “via @____” intsead of RT “@_____” and add your own editorial.
Limit hashtags to events and other special occasions.

2) Facebook:

Use the subscribe function for personality-based businesses to drive traffic using your own profile. This enables certain links or albums to be available to public subscribers.
Fan pages still serve a purpose for gathering readers and coordinating events but with Facebook’s upcoming changes to their news feed, they will be less prominent.

3) Content Curation

News.me – Sends you a daily email based on your twitter feed’s contents.
GetPrismatic.com – iPhone app and website culls the best from your networks.
Feedly.com – Perhaps the new Google Reader.

Get your voice or question on TTR:

Want to be on Tropical Talk Radio? Leave me a message. It’s easy to do, and if you mess up, you can easily edit your message until you are ready to send it.

Mentioned on this show:

Followerwonk or Findinfluence.com – Help you find potential followers and influencers.
Creating Twitter Lists
TweetDeck or Hootsuite – Use to manage your social media accounts.
Ed Yong – (@EdYong209)
Brain Picker – (@BrainPicker)
Donald Trump – (@realDonaldTrump)
Kanye West – (@Kanye West)

People on this show:

Dan (@TropicalMBA)
Jodi Ettenberg – (@LegalNomads) – Legal Nomads – On Instagram – On Facebook
James Clark – (@NomadicNotes) – Nomadic Notes

Episode length: 24:47

Other download options:

Download from iTunes and Subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio by clicking this link.
If you don’t like iTunes, here’s the MP3 file–> [DOWNLOAD MP3]
Android, Apple, Palm & other listeners can listen on Stitcher Radio

TMBA31 – Is it Possible To Travel Forever?

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 09:00:35 +0000

–>Click here to subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio in iTunes.
–>Leave me a message, question, or comment for the show.

It’s time for another Tropical Talk Radio podcast, which gets published every Friday afternoon (Hong Kong time). Here’s the link to subscribe in iTunes if you haven’t already done so. In this week’s episode Dan sits down with James Clark, the digital nomad behind Nomadic Notes. James is rocking the solopreneur lifestyle with no employees and an affiliate marketing business that supports continuous travel.

Listen to this episode and hear about:

A framework for setting up as an affiliate marketing solopreneur and traveling the world.
How traveling and starting a business can be the safer option compared to the 9-5 job.
If James and Dan had to start over tomorrow, here’s how they would setup their affiliate empire.
The step-by-step plan for getting to $2,000 a month on affiliate income.

Get your voice or question on TTR:

Want to be on Tropical Talk Radio? Leave me a message. It’s easy to do, and if you mess up, you can easily edit your message until you are ready to send it.

Mentioned on this show:

People on this show:

Dan (@TropicalMBA)
James Clark – (@NomadicNotes) – Nomadic Notes

Episode length: 28:07

Other download options:

Download from iTunes and Subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio by clicking this link.
If you don’t like iTunes, here’s the MP3 file–> [DOWNLOAD MP3]
Android, Apple, Palm & other listeners can listen on Stitcher Radio

TMBA30 – Why Location Independent Entrepreneurs Love Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 22:00:09 +0000

–>Click here to subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio in iTunes.
–>Leave me a message, question, or comment for the show.

It’s time for another Tropical Talk Radio podcast, which gets published every Friday afternoon (Hong Kong time). Here’s the link to subscribe in iTunes if you haven’t already done so. In this week’s episode Dan runs down David Hehenberger from Shopping Cart Labs in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam. The guys talk pros and cons for Ho Chi Minh City as a hotspot for location independent entrepreneurs.

Listen to this episode and hear about:

Financial plans for living in Ho Chi Minh City for bootstrappers, ballers and families alike.
The cultural differences in Saigon that could have profound effects on your lifestyle.
How you can balance food, city life, coffee shops and travel expenses to live on $1,500 or less a month.

Get your voice or question on TTR:

Want to be on Tropical Talk Radio? Leave me a message. It’s easy to do, and if you mess up, you can easily edit your message until you are ready to send it.

Mentioned on this show:

People on this show:

Dan (@TropicalMBA)
David Hehemberger – (@Davidhme) – Shopping Cart Labs

Episode length: 26:26

Other download options:

Download from iTunes and Subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio by clicking this link.

If you don’t like iTunes, here’s the MP3 file–> [DOWNLOAD MP3]

Android, Apple, Palm & other listeners can listen on Stitcher Radio

Hope you have a great weekend!

Cheers,

Dan

PS, you can get on my private mailing list by putting your email in the form below:

As requested, here’s some pics from David:

TMBA29 – How to Get (and Keep) 1000′s of Blog Subscribers

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 12:00:48 +0000

–>Click here to subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio in iTunes.
–>Leave me a message, question, or comment for the show.

It’s time for another Tropical Talk Radio podcast, which gets published every Friday afternoon (Hong Kong time). Here’s the link to subscribe in iTunes if you haven’t already done so. In this week’s episode Dan rounds up some of the crew from Davao and discusses content marketing in depth to help you rev up your content engine. Join Dan Andrews, Justin Cooke, Joe Magnotti and Damian Thompson in going through this ten point checklist that will give your content marketing a boost.

Listen to this episode and hear about:

How you can stay true to your character and build your persona online.
Why your blog needs customer service and the best approach to the readers.
The signs you should watch for to determine if your blog is dead on arrival.

Get your voice or question on TTR:

Want to be on Tropical Talk Radio? Leave me a message. It’s easy to do, and if you mess up, you can easily edit your message until you are ready to send it.

Mentioned on this show:

Marcus Buckingham’s book – First Break All The Rules (Affiliate Link/Non-affiliate Link)
Gary Vaynerchuk – Customer Loyalty

People on this show:

Dan (@TropicalMBA)
Joe Magnotti – AdSense Flippers (@AdSenseFlippers)
Justin Cooke – Outsourcing for Startups
Damian Thompson (@DamianThompson) – Linchpin

Episode length: 32:53

Download Options:

Download from iTunes and Subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio by clicking this link.
If you don’t like iTunes, here’s the MP3 file–> [DOWNLOAD MP3]
Android, Apple, Palm & other listeners can listen on Stitcher Radio

If you’ve found the podcast at all helpful or entertaining, we’d love if you could click over to our iTunes page and give us a positive review or visit Stitcher radio and give us the good ol’ Thumbs Up. This will help us to get more listeners and invest more in the podcast! If you know some ways we can make it better, please send us an email: Dan at Tropical MBA . com.

Hope you have a great weekend!

Cheers,

Dan

PS, you can get on my private mailing list by putting your email in the form below:

2 Location Independent Jobs : Join Our Team or Live for Free in a Resort in the Philippines

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 12:50:27 +0000

Summary: this post describes two job opportunities. The first is a full-time position and a direct report to me. We’re looking for somebody to help manage and improve our community. The second is a part-time gig. Candidates will be offered 4 months of free rent and 3 meals a day at a resort in the Philippines in exchange for one day a week of work and consulting. If you have any friends who would be interested, I’d appreciate you forwarding this post to them. Thank you!

* * *

Background: The Tropical MBA started in late 2009. My first post was a job listing for an intern. At the time I was cash strapped and I couldn’t afford to pay somebody a US level salary, but I knew I needed smart people to help me grow my business. A virtual assistant wasn’t going to cut it.

I could, however, afford to pay somebody enough money to be a backpacker style traveler. I figured if I’d let somebody travel while they worked, they’d work for much less then they would back home. Back in my mid 20′s, I used to search Craigslist looking for “jet set entrepreneur seeks protege” type opportunities. The concept made so much sense to me– I was desperate for access to a community of people who had managed to create lives where they had a great deal of personal freedom– but I never found anything. TMBA type job opportunities were created with that inspiration in mind.

Since 2009, in one way or another, we’ve sponsored over 10 “internships” (each job posting has different terms, some are not internships but jobs– please read the listings carefully). So far, nobody who has joined a TMBA job opportunity has ever returned to conventional employment. When I started TMBA, I didn’t have much of an online track record (our first intern, Sean Ogle effectively risked his life flying to Thailand after only a Skype call or two… cheers Sean!).

Since that time, I’ve recorded 100′s of podcasts, so it’s pretty easy to get an idea where I’m coming from. In a nutshell: I read the Four Hour Work Week in 2007 and decided I needed to start a business. Since that time, my business partner and I have built small handful of businesses, and have had a lot of fun in the process. You can get the broad strokes here.

Ok. Ready to hear about the gigs?

Job #1 – Community Manager for Dynamite Circle

The Dynamite Circle is an online community for digital nomads and location independent entrepreneurs. There are close to 600 qualified members in the DC (we call ourselves “DCers”). We help each other with our businesses, organize long term meet-ups in cities around the world (I’m currently hanging around in Saigon with a bunch of DCers all because of one thread started by Jon Myers), and collaborate on weekly mastermind phone calls.

We also have conferences every 6 months– this year in Berlin and Bangkok– where we all get together, enjoy talks from luminaries in our community, and (ahem) have a little bit of a party.

As the DC grows, our needs continue to evolve. We need more good team members to help us to serve the community better. That’s where you come in.

You will manage the following processes:

Front line customer service. Including billing, records keeping, CRM, Paypal account management. The way our community is set up means you’ll need to log into your computer every 12 hours to keep customer inquiries up to date.
Basic technology management. Including upkeep of our websites related to the DC. You’ll work with our contractors to ensure timely delivery of new technology features.
Moderation. You’ll help moderate the DC forums, including facilitating masterminds, event planning, content flagging, conflict resolution, and content curation into Wikis, resource posts, link round-ups, and other useful resources.
Member concierge. We spend a lot of time helping our members out. You’ll be the front line for organizing requests from our members and helping them get what they need. You’ll get a lot of messages from DCers saying things like “I need x!” and we’ll expect you to jump to the task with enthusiasm.
DC Publications. You’ll help curate content for our regular publications letting DCers know what’s going on in the community.
DC events. You’ll be helping us organize our conferences. You’ll be the boots on the ground, booking the venues, making sure the AV equipment works kind of support.
Reporting and communication. You’ll be responsible for articulating regularly to the rest of the team precisely what is happening with our business. You’ll generate weekly, monthly, and quarterly reports outlining our progress.

General expectations of you are:

You must be based out of South East Asia. For three reasons: 1) you’ll be able to cultivate in-person relationships with the highest concentration of DCers on the planet, 2) we’ll be able to collaborate with us (myself, Elisa, and Ian) from time to time in person and 3) the initial compensation is at such a level that you’ll live a decent lifestyle in SEAsia, but not likely other regions of the world.
You must be interested in a full time position with tons of growth potential. This is not an internship. I expect you to put your full effort into helping us grow our business. For the right person, there are a great deal of opportunities for you to increase your level of responsibility, fun, and compensation. I’m not interested in hiring people with robust side projects or businesses. I’d like somebody to work with us for a few years and help make our community something we can be extremely proud of. The DC is full of some of the most creative, interesting, and helpful people I’ve ever met– from artists, to brilliant programmers, to multimillionaire investors. Your job will be to help them achieve their goals on a daily basis.
You’ll be expected to make your way to a few meet-ups every year. We’ve got two big conferences every year, plus many regional meet-ups. We’d love to bring somebody on the team who wants to be a part of our in-person events.
We’ll be looking for somebody with a high emotional intelligence and an outgoing personality. We want to hire somebody who loves hanging out with entrepreneurs, creative people, and fellow adventurers. We’ll be seeking people who has a high level of empathy and tolerance for conflict resolution (a difficult combo!) If you don’t like to socialize, build relationships, connect people who can help each other, and advocate for DC principles in general, this isn’t the right position for you.
Observant and articulate. We want an extra set of ears to the ground, listening to what our members want and developing ways to get it for them. We’ll need you to be excellent and reading and writing– you’ll be doing them both all day long– hanging around in our forums, helping us to articulate policies, proceedures, new content, and other fun stuff for our members.
Excellent with computers. You don’t need to write a lick of code, but if terms like CPANEL, DNS, HTML, CSS, SEO, Squeeze Page, and the like are unfamiliar to you, you probably don’t have the level of technical know-how we are seeking.
You must be available to start working at the beginning of April. You don’t need to show up to SEAsia at that time for this gig, but we do expect your full time effort to begin April 1st, 2013.

Logistics:

The compensation for this full time job is just enough to to live a good lifestyle in a city like Saigon, Hanoi, Manila, Bangkok, Chiang Mai, etc.
Application deadline is March 12th, 2013.
Full time job starts April 1st, 2013.

Here’s how you can apply:

STEP 1 : Record a 1:00 video of yourself. Tell me why you’d be a great fit for this job. Set the video as “unlisted.”
STEP 2 : Fill out this form, and be sure to have your Youtube (or other video sharing service) link handy.
STEP 3 : We’ll do our best to get back to you about our decision by March 17th.

Good luck! If you have any questions, please ask them in the comments so everyone can benefit from the answers.

* * *

Job #2 – Live at a resort in the Philippines for free for 4 months.

A photo of your new front yard, courtesy of Tommy Schultz.

Since we started the TMBA, my good friend Sean has graciously hosted 4 online marketers at his resort. If you are interested in how this works, you must listen to this podcast interview with him. The last guy, Ben Krueger, has been here almost six months, and just like the interns who preceded him, has managed to turn 4 months of free food and board into a jumping off point to bootstrap his own business.

There is hardly a better spot on the planet to baseline your expense, relax, and focus on your work. This model has been proven, is a great time, and works for a certain kind of individual— namely— one who’s dead set on not having a job. That means you might have a little something going already, perhaps you’ve got a big nut saved up, or maybe you just want to chill out on a tropical island for a few months.

There’s no question— you’ll be treated like a king (or queen!) Included in the deal is a free room at Badladz resort, 3 full meals a day, free laundry service, and free use of the Badladz motor scooters.

We are looking for helpful team players willing to be part of the Badladz crew, plus put in a rock solid 8 hours every week doing online marketing for the resort. Everyone in Puerto Galera will get to know you and you’ll become part of the family here at Badladz.

You will manage the following processes:

Train our local staff (including a new developer) how to maintain our websites.
Provide technical assistance with on site hardware.
Regularly update marketing for websites.
Help launch our “Adventure ESL” marketing package.
Continue ongoing marketing campaigns.
Implement additional booking agencies
Create one new Marketing strategy
You’ll be working on Sean’s Youtube channel, Resort Rebel, Badladz, among others.

General expectations of you are:

You are sales and results focused.
You’ve got no problem with tech and marketing stuff– content, SEO, Aweber, affiliate programs and all the rest.
WordPress literate. The whole business runs on WordPress, we are looking for people with a demonstrated track record with the platform.
Excellent with computers.
Functional SEO for websites and YouTube videos (Sean’s videos have over 700,00 views!!!).
The Philippines is a crazy developing country, candidates will do well to address the “fit” issue and let us know why they are drawn to live in a random island in the Philippines (or show some kind of experience or drive to do so).

Logistics:

The compensation for this job is free room and food for 4 months.
Application deadline is March 12th, 2013.
Full time job starts April 15th, 2013. We’ll ensure we’ve got some boots on the ground to get you trained up on all the systems at the resort.
The deal extends from April 15th to August 15th. With an option to extend or grow your position if things are going well.

Here’s how you can apply:

STEP 1 : Record a 1:00 video of yourself. Tell us why you’d be a great fit for Sean’s resort. Set the video as “unlisted” and grab the URL.
STEP 2 : Fill out this form, and be sure to have your Youtube (or other video sharing service) link handy.
STEP 3 : We’ll do our best to get back to you about our decision by March 17th.

* * *

That’s it! Thank you for your interest in our jobs. If you have any questions about the offers above, please ask them in the comments so I can answer them for everyone’s benefit.

Cheers!

Dan

PS, if you’d like to be sure to never miss another opportunity like this, be sure to put your name on our mailing list:

TMBA28 – A Method For Outsourcing Your Job and Living in the Developing World

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 12:00:09 +0000

–>Click here to subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio in iTunes.
–>Leave me a message, question, or comment for the show.

It’s time for another Tropical Talk Radio podcast, which gets published every Friday afternoon (Hong Kong time). Here’s the link to subscribe in iTunes if you haven’t already done so. In this week’s episode Dan has a sit down chat with Joe Magnotti from Adsense Flippers and Outsourcing For Start Ups to talk about taking control of your future with outsourcing.

Listen to this episode and hear about:

Why you need to keep your Dilbert job and propose outsourcing to your boss.
A cost savings loophole exposed that you can use to relocate and sell your boss on your new program.
The marketing style that has made Adsense Flippers and Outsourcing For Startups a success.

Get your voice or question on TTR:

Want to be on Tropical Talk Radio? Leave me a message. It’s easy to do, and if you mess up, you can easily edit your message until you are ready to send it.

People on this show:

Dan (@TropicalMBA)
Joe Magnotti – joe (at) outsourcingforstartups.com – Outsourcing For Startups

Episode length: 26:54

Download Options:

Download from iTunes and Subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio by clicking this link.
If you don’t like iTunes, here’s the MP3 file–> [DOWNLOAD MP3]
Android, Apple, Palm & other listeners can listen on Stitcher Radio

Hope you have a great weekend!

Cheers,

Dan

PS, you can get on my private mailing list by putting your email in the form below:

TMBA27 – Use The Recurring Revenue Test to See If Your Product is Dead on Arrival

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 08:00:50 +0000

–>Click here to subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio in iTunes.
–>Leave me a message, question, or comment for the show.

It’s time for another Tropical Talk Radio podcast, which gets published every Friday afternoon (Hong Kong time). Here’s the link to subscribe in iTunes if you haven’t already done so. In this week’s episode Dan has a sit down chat with Joe Magnotti from Adsense Flippers about turning your marketing budget into an asset for you, and testing whether or not your product has legs.

Listen to this episode and hear about:

Dan & Joe’s advice for Mark from Slipstopper.com. (@slipstopper)
Why just selling a product often isn’t enough in today’s world.
How to amplify your offering with up sells, cross sells and recurring revenue models for your target customer.

Get your voice or question on TTR:

Want to be on Tropical Talk Radio? Leave me a message. It’s easy to do, and if you mess up, you can easily edit your message until you are ready to send it.

People on this show:

Dan (@TropicalMBA)
Joe Magnotti (@adsenseflippers) – Adsense Flippers

Episode length: 14:29

Download Options:

Download from iTunes and Subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio by clicking this link.
If you don’t like iTunes, here’s the MP3 file–> [DOWNLOAD MP3]
Android, Apple, Palm & other listeners can listen on Stitcher Radio

Hope you have a great weekend!

Cheers,

Dan

PS, you can get on my private mailing list by putting your email in the form below:

TMBA26 – Offshore Incorporation 101 For Internet Business Owners

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 12:00:16 +0000

–>Click here to subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio in iTunes.
–>Leave me a message, question, or comment for the show.

It’s time for another Tropical Talk Radio podcast, which gets published every Friday afternoon (Hong Kong time). Here’s the link to subscribe in Itunes if you haven’t already done so. In this week’s episode Dan has a sit down chat with Joe Magnotti from Adsense Flippers about offshore incorporations and when you as a startup entrepreneur need to start bringing on bookkeepers, tax consultants and everything else.

Listen to this episode and hear about:

Use Greenback Tax Services.
Check out Soverign Man.com.
Why you need to do your own research and verify our suggestions.
Never break the law. Building businesses is about getting freedom, not losing it.

Get your voice or question on TTR:

Want to be on Tropical Talk Radio? Leave me a message. It’s easy to do, and if you mess up, you can easily edit your message until you are ready to send it.

People on this show:

Dan (@TropicalMBA)
Joe Magnotti (@adsenseflippers) – Adsense Flippers

Episode length: 19:07

Download Options:

Download from iTunes and Subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio by clicking this link.
If you don’t like iTunes, here’s the MP3 file–> [DOWNLOAD MP3]
Android, Apple, Palm & other listeners can listen on Stitcher Radio

Hope you have a great weekend!

Cheers,

Dan

PS, you can get on my private mailing list by putting your email in the form below:

TMBA25 – Meanwhile, in the Philippines, A Resort Owner Receives 3,000 Youtube Views a Day

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 00:00:19 +0000

–>Click here to subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio in iTunes.
–>Leave me a message, question, or comment for the show.

It’s time for another Tropical Talk Radio podcast, which gets published every Friday afternoon (Hong Kong time). Here’s the link to subscribe in Itunes if you haven’t already done so. In this week’s episode Dan catches up with Sean Cooney, a resort owner with an impressive Youtube presence and some interesting projects on the horizon. Tune in.

Listen to this episode and hear about:

Sean’s Puerto Galera Resorts – Badladz Resorts
Resort Rebel – Business, travel and life in the Philippines
Sean’s First 5 videos:
DC Meetup in Puerto Galera at Badladz Resort – February 27th – March 4th

Get your voice or question on TTR:

Want to be on Tropical Talk Radio? Leave me a message. It’s easy to do, and if you mess up, you can easily edit your message until you are ready to send it.

Mentioned on this show:

John McIntyre – Dropdeadcopy.com

People on this show:

Dan (@TropicalMBA)
Sean Cooney

Episode length: 17:08

Download Options:

Download from iTunes and Subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio by clicking this link.
If you don’t like iTunes, here’s the MP3 file–> [DOWNLOAD MP3]
Android, Apple, Palm & other listeners can listen on Stitcher Radio

Hope you have a great weekend!

Cheers,

Dan

PS, you can get on my private mailing list by putting your email in the form below:

A Confirmed Failure at the Age of 38

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 13:32:51 +0000

Ulysses Grant’s first stint in the military ended early. At the age of 32 he was forced to resign his post as a captain. Binge drinking was suspected. A string of business failures and separation from his young family (he couldn’t afford to bring them to his post in the western US) had surely contributed to his misery.

Back home in St. Louis, the next 6 years were financially trying for Grant, his wife, and 2 children. During that time he failed at both farming and real estate. He was in debt and without consistent income until his father, who owned a leather store, intervened. He was offered a job as a clerk.

Take it or leave it.

Grant was out of options. He took the job, and moved his family to a the quiet northwest corner of Illinois.

At the age of 38, Ulysses S. Grant was a confirmed failure.

* * *

On April 15th, 1861, following an attack on Fort Sumter, President Lincoln put out a call for 75,000 volunteers to join the military. Grant, being the only man with professional military experience in his quiet little corner of Illinois, helped rally volunteers and was given a ‘fluke’ promotion to colonel.

As a military commander in the new struggle he found quick success, later being described as a man with “dogged determination and iron will.” His straightforward manner and decisiveness on the battlefield created results.

An unexpected and early turning point in the war came at Fort Donelson where Grant confidently commanded a victory for the Union– and took over 7,000 confederate prisoners in the process.

Grant’s failings– his drinking, his forced resignation, his business muck-ups, his loser job– realities that would crush the desire of many to act, seemed to fade into the background.

His slate clean, and the stakes higher, he continued to make mistakes. Here’s an account of his attack on Fort Donelson, taken from Shelby Foote’s classic The Civil War : A Narrative (emphasis mine):

[Grant] had started behind schedule… men had frozen to death because of a lax discipline which let them throw away coats and blankets in fair weather, that individual attacks had been launched without coordination and been bloodily repulsed, nor that the commanding general had been absent from his post for better than six critical hours while one of his divisions was being mauled, the other two having been barred by his own orders from lending assistance.

[The only thing the public noticed was] the sweep and slam-bang power of a leader who marched on Wednesday …. and received the fort’s unconditional surrender on Sunday.

By finding the right field of play, and deploying simple and confident instructions to those who needed them, despite many (deadly) errors, he went on to continued success and eventually was the one responsible for forcing the confederate surrender at Appomattox, ending the US Civil War.

He wasn’t done there. Grant’s deeds had made him the most popular man in America. In 1869 he was elected president.

In 8 short years, Grant had gone from a store clerk in northwest Illinois to the presidency of the United States. He spent his two terms in office working successfully to maintain the union he had fought to preserve.

* * *

I love stories of people changing their lives radically through hard work and determination. If you have any other good ones, please share them with me!

Cheers,

Dan

PS, you can sign up to receive emails from me by putting your email in the form below:

TMBA24 – “If You Cannot Exercise This Kind of Control in Adult Life, You’ll Be Totally Hosed”

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 13:30:25 +0000

–>Click here to subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio in iTunes.
–>Leave me a message, question, or comment for the show.

It’s time for another Tropical Talk Radio podcast, which gets published every Friday afternoon (Hong Kong time). Here’s the link to subscribe in Itunes if you haven’t already done so. In this week’s episode Dan hands off the mic to a recording of David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech given in 2005 to Kenyon College in Ohio. It’s inspiring and thought-provoking. Give it a listen.

Listen to this episode and hear about:

This is Water – David Foster Wallace
The Unfinished - On David Foster Wallace’s life and work.
Great and Terrible Truths – A friends reaction to the death of David Foster Wallace
Farther Away – Another friend’s reflection on David Foster Wallace’s suicide.

Get your voice or question on TTR:

Want to be on Tropical Talk Radio? Leave me a message. It’s easy to do, and if you mess up, you can easily edit your message until you are ready to send it.

Mentioned on this show:

Hat Tip to Dylan Hassinger for the audio

People on this show:

Dan (@TropicalMBA)
David Foster Wallace

Episode length: 26:08

Download Options:

Download from iTunes and Subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio by clicking this link.
If you don’t like iTunes, here’s the MP3 file–> [DOWNLOAD MP3]
Android, Apple, Palm & other listeners can listen on Stitcher Radio

Hope you have a great weekend!

Cheers,

Dan

PS, you can get on my private mailing list by putting your email in the form below:

TMBA23 – The Rule of 6 (Plus 5 Sociopathic Tactics)

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 13:20:51 +0000

–>Click here to subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio in iTunes.
–>Leave me a message, question, or comment for the show.

Listen to this episode and hear about:

Whether you’re a freelancer or CEO, you only only have 6 high-bandwidth relationships in your life.
Choose these relationships deliberately or they will be chosen for you.
Cultivate and nurture these relationships to get the maximum value out of them.
Establish clear system and processes for how you handle each of the 6 people in your life and how it affects your business.
Don’t hold yourself back by saying growing your business means more stress. Remember, it’s always 6 people.
Empower yourself by creating more systems and deliberately cultivating these relationships.

Get your voice or question on TTR:

Want to be on Tropical Talk Radio? Leave me a message. It’s easy to do, and if you mess up, you can easily edit your message until you are ready to send it.

Mentioned on this show:

People on this show:

Dan (@TropicalMBA)
Rob Hanly (@robhanly)

My Notes on Rob’s Breakdown

Talk less.
1. They tell you more about themselves.
2. They feel more in tune with you.
3. While they are doing this, you need to build a strong rapport.
  1. Go on. Can you tell me more?
  2. “To be be interesting, be interested.”
Change the way you dress.
1. “One peg theory.”
2. You should always dress one peg above the people you want to influence.
  1. Specific tactics.
  2. Not make anyone feel intimidated or out of place to be around you.
  3. If you understand what they respond to, you’ll develop empathy because you’ll see them.
  4. You can sometimes go the opposite way.
Create contrast within your actions. Alter your behavior.
1. When you want to make a point it’s important that you contrast your behavior.
2. Cultivate an image and a personality, but allows you to be relaxed and grab attention when you need it.
“If you want a relationships with powerful people, you need to be worthy of the relationship.”
1. Always be worth being in the relationship.
2. Provide massive amounts of value. Improve the quality of someone else’s life.
3. You are of a high enough status in your society to provide value to other’s.
  1. Compliment.
  2. Send them things that will improve their lives.
Stay short, sharp, clear, and enjoyable. Don’t waste people’s time with email.
1. Understand the value of other’s time.

Episode length: 20:52

Download Options:

Download from iTunes and Subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio by clicking this link.
If you don’t like iTunes, here’s the MP3 file–> [DOWNLOAD MP3]
Android, Apple, Palm & other listeners can listen on Stitcher Radio

Hope you have a great weekend!

Cheers,

Dan

PS, you can get on my private mailing list by putting your email in the form below:

TMBA22 – 4th Dimension Copywriting (and Why You Shouldn’t Bother with Keyword Research)

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 10:27:01 +0000

–>Click here to subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio in iTunes.
–>Leave me a message, question, or comment for the show.

Listen to this episode and hear about:

How to scale some of the most “unscalable” parts of your business (and a powerful way to make sales).
Why you should get a job!
What the “on stage” test is, and why it’s the last question you need to ask yourself before going after a niche.
My perspective on the USA after being away for so many years.
“4th Dimension” Copywriting, and why copywriters often act different than they talk.

Get your voice or question on TTR:

Want to be on Tropical Talk Radio? Leave me a message. It’s easy to do, and if you mess up, you can easily edit your message until you are ready to send it.

Mentioned on this show:

People on this show:

Dan (@TropicalMBA)

Episode length: 18:50

Download Options:

Download from iTunes and Subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio by clicking this link.
If you don’t like iTunes, here’s the MP3 file–> [DOWNLOAD MP3]
Android, Apple, Palm & other listeners can listen on Stitcher Radio

Hope you have a great weekend!

Cheers,

Dan

PS, you can get on my private mailing list by putting your email in the form below:

Getting it Wrong (5 Entrepreneurial Fallacies)

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 14:21:23 +0000

Ray Dalio, who has been called the Steve Jobs of investing, wrote a fascinating PDF document called “Principles.” One thing that sticks out is Ray’s ongoing concern with “reality,” and his strategies for being as accurate as possible.

“Bad opinions can be very costly. Most people come up with opinions and there’s no cost to them. Not so in the market. This is why I have learned to be cautious. No matter how hard I work, I really can’t be sure.”

But who really loses more when a poor series of judgments is made? Ballin’ Ray Dalio or the aspiring entrepreneur, artist, or small business owner who wants to change their life and experience a whole new level of personal freedom? What’s a bigger tragedy– Dalio dropping a couple million, or the upstart entrepreneur not managing to get their dream off the ground?

I’ve said it myself in passing– entrepreneurs do seem to “good at reality.” Afterall, their job is to manipulate it. That’s what we mean when we say “create results.”

Dalio’s “Principles” got me thinking of some of the most common entrepreneurial fallacies that keep us from the truth. Here’s 5 I came up with, let me know if you can think of more.

Diagnosing business and life problems with non-falsifiable statements.

A non-falsifiable statement is one that cannot be disproven. “All swans are white” can be falsified if a black swan could be found, but “this photo is beautiful” is non-falsifiable. There isn’t a particular piece of data that would, in-theory, change your mind. Jeff Bezos said recently: “people who were right a lot of the time were people who often changed their minds.“ By ensuring that you use falsifiable statements to diagnose business problems, you keep yourself open to data and experiences that can change your mind.

“Everything happens for a reason.”

Unfortunately this isn’t often used with ruefulness or jest like c’est la vie! The “everything happens for a reason” attitude asserts that the purpose of outcomes will be revealed to us in good time. This perspective pre-disposes the speaker to a ‘suck it up’ mentality. Why not instead try and discover the truth of the matter and try to discover increased level of control in the future?

Mistaking objectives for strategic actions.

Business owners often lay out their quarterly objectives with no mention of the strategy that they suspect will achieve them. I’m going to make $4500 in personal income by the end of March isn’t a particularly useful objective if it isn’t accompanied by a strategy that you can test and measure.

Instead, accompany your objective with a concrete strategy and a time to stop and test for effectiveness. I’m going to make $4500 in personal income by the end of March by attending twice as many conferences over the next quarter. My data says that’ll add 10 more customers to my roster, and with that workload I won’t need to increase my operational costs. At the end of the quarter, I’ll measure my progress.

Don’t forget the cost of implementing your strategy, especially if your objectives are income or profit oriented.

Essentializing ourselves and our roles in organizations.

Being a business owner is a consistently humbling and often confusing experience. On the one hand, we are supposed to be driving the whole thing. On the other, once businesses get started they can often take on a life of their own. Although I’ve taken the same actions in a large number of product niches, I’ve encountered an almost equally large range of outcomes. I’ve lost money, made money, made people mad, made people happy, and operated under false pre-tenses there. Often people who’ve been trying at business for a few years and failing put much of the burden on themselves when it’s actually market conitions that are preventing their success. Why try to change yourself when you can change your venue?

Confusing relevant experience (intuition?) with taste.

Sometimes going with your gut can be great, and other times it can be disastrous. One of the coolest things about having a business is that it provides you with a relatively small and propriety version of reality. You’ve got proprietary data and customer information– stuff that tells you how reality works– and over the years that can lead to a solid entrepreneurial intuition. I find I struggle with this a lot. Intuition at it’s best is an incredibly powerful tool for making judgements. How do we separate that from our opinion, which it has been well documented, means very little when it comes to the success of our endeavors? :)

Those are just some that came to mind. I’d love to hear if you know about any other entrepreneurial fallacies.

Cheers,

Dan

PS, here is a download link to Ray Dalio’s “Princples.”

PPS, if you’d like to receive emails from me, you can put your email address into the form below:

TMBA21 – Spotlight Marketing (+ Have We Found the Community Marketer’s Secret Weapon?)

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 08:37:09 +0000

–>Click here to subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio in iTunes.
–>Leave me a message, question, or comment for the show.

It’s time for another Tropical Talk Radio podcast, which gets published every Friday afternoon (Asia time). Here’s the link to subscribe in Itunes if you haven’t already done so. In this week’s episode I respond to a few reader emails I received this week.

Listen to this episode and hear about:

The #1 SEO strategy that always works.
The best choice for online communities.
How to start from square one with a product idea and make it a reality (examples included).
Why you don’t need a social media presence until you have a clear value proposition.
Is your blog a winner, loser, passion project, or all of the above?
Spotlight Marketing – why you need exactly 1 central hub on the web.

Get your voice or question on TTR:

Want to be on Tropical Talk Radio? Leave me a message. It’s easy to do, and if you mess up, you can easily edit your message until you are ready to send it.

Mentioned on this show:

People on this show:

Dan (@TropicalMBA)

Episode length: 23:35

Download Options:

Download from iTunes and Subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio by clicking this link.
If you don’t like iTunes, here’s the MP3 file–> [DOWNLOAD MP3]
Android, Apple, Palm & other listeners can listen on Stitcher Radio

Hope you have a great weekend!

Cheers,

Dan

PS, you can get on my private mailing list by putting your email in the form below:

What Kind of Person Reads 14 Books a Month?

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 14:37:49 +0000

If you want to become an entrepreneur, you’ve got to get hardcore about your personal budget. I don’t have too many soft spots for over-spenders and rationalizers.

Seemingly innocuous decisions like signing a lease, a loan, or getting (and using) that new credit card can profoundly define the trajectory of our lives and limit our entrepreneurial options.

To illustrate this to our October Tropical MBA attendees, I decided to dig out my actual budget spreadsheet from way back in early 2007– a time when I was just starting to see entrepreneurship as a real possibility for my life. The next financial step seemed logical: get out of debt.

The debt I had accumulated was all the lazy and normal middle-class trappings– retail therapy and stuff I thought I “deserved.”

All of these purchases, loans, and commitments were made under the assumption that I was going to have to job for a long time to come– something I was starting to doubt.

* * *

The debt reduction strategy that worked for me was one advocated by Dave Ramsey— he calls it the “envelope system.” Here’s how I implemented it:

I cut up my credit cards.
I made a detailed spreadsheet that outlined my desired expenses per pay period, including savings goals.
I set up auto-pay on all my bills and loans.
Each pay period I went to the bank and took out a whole wad of cash for my daily expenses.
I split the cash into different areas of my wallet (or into different “envelopes” depending on what the money was for– food, fun, dining out, etc…).
When the money was gone, it was gone. I couldn’t resort to an ATM or credit card.

For the record, this worked very well. (Cheers Dave!)

As I was taking a look at my old spreadsheets, I came across a figure that delighted me. Despite my aggressive efforts to pay off debt, I budgeted $200 monthly for books. At the time a huge figure– over 10% of my take home pay.

I remember a few friends guffawing. One said, “given you are trying to pay off debt, isn’t that kind of a luxury? What kind of person reads 14 books a month?”

I didn’t say it at the time, but looking back, the answer is: somebody trying to change their life.

Shortly thereafter, one of my first official moves as a business owner (set up in late 2007) was to move the book budget onto the company books. After that was agreed upon, I promptly went to a downtown San Diego bookstore and made a major haul, causing a few eye rolls back at the office. Education was going to be an important part of whatever we were doing! ;)

I’ve listed some of my favorite books from that time period below. I’d love to hear your recommendations for me!

Cheers,

Dan

Here’s some of the books I read in the early days of my business that were particularly inspiring.

Purple Cow, The Art of Seduction, The Ultimate Sales Machine, Maverick, Getting Real, The No BS Guide to Direct Marketing, Dreaming in Code, The 4 Hour Work Week, Getting Things Done, Good to Great, How to Get Rich, The 80/20 Principle

Here’s some books I’ve read or bought in the past few weeks that I’m excited about:

(Pre-ordered) Mastery, Future Perfect : The Case for Progress in a Networked Age, The Rum Diary, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (Audio Book), Everyone Loves You When You’re Dead, On the Shortness of Life, Good Strategy, Bad Strategy

PS, if you’d like to receive emails form me you can put your email address into the form below:

TMBA20 – What Is the Best Place in Southeast Asia for Internet Entrepreneurs?

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 10:55:20 +0000

–>Click here to subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio in iTunes.
–>Leave me a message, question, or comment for the show.

This week I totally geek out on one of my favorite topics: how do various locations in Southeast Asia stack up to each other for internet entrepreneurs?

During the conversation I share a lot of anecdotes from my last 5 months on the road, along with a few new pieces of information I’ve picked up along the way. Hope you enjoy and curious to hear your thoughts as always.

Listen to this episode and hear about:

Why “Heads Down in Hoch” might make Vietnam the #1 destination of 2013.
If Bangkok is the real capital of lifestyle entrepreneurs in SE Asia (or is there a dark horse candidate)?
What’s up with the Philippines???
The magnetic pull of Bali, in all it’s sketchy interwebs glory.
The next tier of ballerdom: Singapore, Hong Kong, and China.

Get your voice or question on TTR:

Want to be on Tropical Talk Radio? Leave me a message. It’s easy to do, and if you mess up, you can easily edit your message until you are ready to send it.

Mentioned on this show:

People on this show:

Dan (@TropicalMBA)

Episode length: 31:05

Download Options:

Download from iTunes and Subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio by clicking this link.
If you don’t like iTunes, here’s the MP3 file–> [DOWNLOAD MP3]
Android, Apple, Palm & other listeners can listen on Stitcher Radio

Here’s some photos of the places mentioned in the show…

Bangkok, Thailand

Chiang Mai, Thailand

Pattaya, Thailand

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Davao City, Philippines

The Philippines

Bali, Indonesia

Hong Kong

Shenzen, China

Singapore

Hope you have a great weekend!

Cheers,

Dan

PS, you can get on my private mailing list by putting your email in the form below:

Oh The Places You’ll Go! (Tropical MBA News)

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 13:48:32 +0000

Over the last fiscal quarter, I haven’t posted much on the blog. In October, after a nearly 2-month hiatus, I started to get some emails from worried readers. What’s up Dan? You okay?

One community member said to me, “no offense, but more interesting stuff happens in the community in one week than has ever happened on your blogs.” No offense taken. How can you compete with 450+ fascinating people doing amazing stuff with their lives?

When I started this blog I wasn’t sure where it would go. It seems that, without much deliberate planning on our part, our community has become the best place on the webs to meet up with other legit, bootstrapping, traveling, internet entrepreneurs. People who are actually living the location independent lifestyle.

These entrepreneurs are incredibly earnest, positive, and helpful people. There isn’t a ton of room for sarcasm and cynicism when you are in a position to articulate things you love, and then make them happen in the world.

Over the past 5 months, this blog has been like an iceberg– all of the action is under the surface.

Some of the highlights for me:

Hosting over 40 entrepreneurs on a remote island in the Philippines to work together and to have some crazy adventures.
Meeting 100′s of blog readers in places like: Bali, Manila, Davao, Singapore, New York City, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Bangkok, Pattaya, Chiang Mai, Hanoi, Saigon, and many more.
Hosting our first “serious” event, where over 120 people showed up for an opening party in the hip Aloft hotel in Bangkok. An unforgettable weekend of entreprenurial learning was made even cooler by appearances from Derek Sivers, Simon Black, Joe and Justin, Chris Ducker, Brendan Tully, Ian Borders, Travis Jamison, and many more amazing people. This was easily one of the best weekends of my entire life.
Going on an entrepreneurial pilgrimage to Chiang Mai with a huge number of DCers and other internet entrepreneurs.
Adding some inspired new full-time team members and seeing our business click over to a multi-million dollar run rate.

For today’s post, I wanted to take you through some of the photos I’ve taken since June and show some of the behind the scenes stuff. If you aren’t interested in TMBA news, check in Friday afternoon for another episode of Tropical Talk Radio.

* * *

June – our first in-person Tropical MBA class.

One weekend, sitting around in our house in Bali, the idea came up (and I can’t remember who first had it)– wouldn’t it be cool if we invited entrepreneurs to the Philippines and worked directly with them for a few weeks in-person? This blogging stuff doesn’t work nearly as well as sitting down with somebody 1 on 1!

The next day, Ian and I got on the horn to record this episode of the Lifestyle Business Podcast, where we basically fleshed out the product concept during the show. This particular show also includes one of my favorite LBP moments of all time. I asked Ian how much we should charge and he said “two to three thousand bucks.” That was way less than I thought he would say, and I thought 2K was reasonable. We made sure the price would work from a cost perspective and had the sales page up within a week. When we turned the sales page live and the end of the week, we ended up selling out two full sessions before the weekend was through.

At the time, all we had was a concept and a buy-now button. We were then faced with the challenge of pulling together the product. There were a million open questions. Who was going to show up? What on earth were they going to think of the Philippines? Could we help them in a meaningful way with their ventures?

After packing up my stuff in Bali, and leaving our beloved villa with a few months to spare on our lease, I headed off to the Philippines to get down to business.

Wow! What a classy crowd. That’s Dan Norris from Inform.ly, and Tim Conley from the Foolish Adventure Show at our first Tropical MBA event.

Here’s a pic from one of our first sessions. It looks like Ian is up at the front of the room, so he’s probably talking about money or manufacturing.

We learned so much during this first TMBA session. We saw a lot of amazing businesses get off the ground (and some even make sales!). We cut our teeth on public speaking while developing two weeks of content on the fly. Our goal was to try translate some of the most important lessons we’ve learned in the last 5 years of business to our attendees.

As was the case with all of our TMBA events, so many of the students had incredibly unique skill-sets and experiences, so just being in the same room with each other was incredibly valuable.

I feel close to many of the attendees of these events just because of all the time we spent together and experiences we shared. Not only did we work very long days, but we risked our lives together on crazy boats, motorcycles, and all the rest! For a long time I’ll be nostalgic for the good times had at these events.

It was near the end of the event that Ian and I decided two things regarding our own business: 1) we needed to get to Hong Kong in order to do some banking / business related stuff and 2) we needed to nix the Cambodia motorcycle trip we had been planning to fly to Thailand to finalize arrangements for a kick ass event for our Dynamite Circle members (in retrospect, a pretty good idea). That takes us to…

July – Hong Kong, China, Vietnam, and Thailand.

Me and the boss love Hong Kong! This place is so baller– $3 noodles in the shadows of huge skyscrapers. Ian had our HK trip well planned out– we spent two full days pounding the pavement, meeting with a variety of financial consultants, accountants, and bankers. Not exactly my idea of fun, but we got to stop for plenty of noodles and managed to do some people watching at Hong Kong’s wonderful bars in the evenings. While we were doing all this, we were waiting for our China visas to be finalized. We were over-due for a few factory visits.

China

Ugh, gotta say I’m not the biggest fan of going to China anymore. The trip was 100% worth it, but only to hang out with Matt and Jamon from HighCappin’ who were super generous and showed us a fantastic time (Matt and Jamon also came to our next TMBA event to present on manufacturing, and also were attendees at our DCBKK event. Thanks guys!)

As I was touring China, I decided that I’m pretty much ready to emotionally move on from our product business and focus full-time on our work with entrepreneurs. To that end, I wrote an article that served as my swan song to China factory visits (and hot-ass green tea).

Vietnam

After we squared away stuff in China, we hit the escape hatch for Vietnam– one of our favorite places to travel. There we saw many beautiful things…

But the most beautiful things in Vietnam aren’t the mountains, beaches, or people. It’s the food! :)

After touring Vietnam for a while, we put our working hats on. We had to get to Bangkok to finalize our arrangement with the Aloft for #DCBKK. That part of the trip is a little boring… so after all that, we had to get back to the Fils!

August – Return to the Philippines!

It’s amazing how different all of the TMBA groups were. Our second group was probably the most diverse, with many successful entrepreneurs mixed in with people just starting out. I could write 10′s of thousands of words about all the things I learned by working directly with so many talented and passionate people, and in one way or another I probably will. My aim is to take many of the lessons I learned, processes we developed, and content we pulled together to create an online university that takes all the best parts of our in-person events and delivers them to students virtually.

Joe Bauer is a freakin’ beast!

As much as I would have liked to stay in the Philippines and travel around with many of the attendees (many of them are still in Asia or came to the #DCBKK event!), I wanted to get back home to visit my family and some of my best friends.

September – New York, Long Island, Pennsylvania to visit family and friends.

Since I knew I would be in New York City, I decided to post an event in our forum. Anyone want to meet up? Turns out that 15 DCers came out to hang on a rooftop and talk biznass. Big ups to DCer Hunter Hewitt for supplying such a great meeting spot for the group. Many of us ended up hitting the town afterwards as well!

I spent a few weeks in Brooklyn visiting my best friends. They know how much I like hipster stuff, so as a bonus to hanging in Brooklyn, they planned a trip out to Montauk. We rode bikes around, stayed at one of those dirty-dancing type hotels, ate lobster rolls, and generally had a blast.

After a few weeks state-side, it was time for me to rock the long-haul back to Manila. I watch the clock when I’m in the states in order to qualify for the FEIE.

October – Back again for our final Tropical MBA class of 2012.

This photo was taken on White Beach in Mindoro Philippines during a pizza run with the Tropical MBA crew. I didn’t know it at the time, but it’s a bit poetic since the sun was setting on these special events. I feel now, after having worked with 40+ entrepreneurs for weeks at a time, I can successfully pull out the processes that work and scale them effectively. It’s possible we’ll do alumni events or something, but I doubt we’ll keep the format we worked with this summer.

Here’s a comment I saw on Facebook about our event…

The October group of cats was unique from the others in that almost everybody was just at the beginning of their entrepreneurial careers. That helped Ian, Elisa, and myself to focus in a little bit more on the issues that folks making the entrepreneurial transition were having. Being on our third event, we had a lot more content as well (over 30 presentations!).

I don’t know about everyone else, but I had a freakin’ super blast at all of these events, and many of these jumpers pictured above I have continued to see after the event, both in #DCBKK and in Chiang Mai. The Tropical MBA was just the beginning of our entrepreneurial journey together.

Riding on the top of the jeepney was our preferred way of transport.

After our October event, it was time to get to Bangkok and organize our first ever “grown-up” event!

Mid-October – Our event in Thailand (#DCBKK).

Here’s the boss working on his speech. For both Ian and myself, this was the first time we ever addressed a large group of people. Ian’s speech turned out to be one of my favorites at the event.

Meeting with old friends before the event– Elisa Doucette, Joe Magnotti, Travis Jamison, and the boss.

One of the best parts of #DCBKK was our expert panel (it turned out that the whole room was full of experts!). During this portion of the event, we had people give super-fast presentations on their business challenges, and then we publicly tore apart their approach. Good times!

Strategy sessions at the Aloft with our paid traffic consultant Dave Huss.

Huge relief at the after-party with Jamon and Joe.

Ian and I took the speakers out for a nice dinner on the town to say thanks for all the time they put into their presentations. Here’s Brendan Tully and Travis Jamison.

Bangkok is a pretty amazing place.

That’s Derek Sivers. For many #DCBKK attendees, Derek’s Q&A session was one of the most memorable moments of the year. Derek’s honesty and transparency was so appreciated by a packed room of fellow entrepreneurs.

We had regular coffee and snack breaks between sessions, it was tough to get these guys to stop talking shop! So many cool people in the room. Here’s Rob Hanly, Chris Ducker, and Taylor Pearson.

Great food, great company.

One of the most helpful and knowledgeable DCers, Brendan Tully, pictured here dropping knowledge bombs. Brendan has been such a huge part of the DC, that it would have been weird if we wouldn’t have been able to present. His talk was great.

Something interesting must be happening…

Getting set up…

An amazing group…

Chris Ducker kicked us off with the fascinating story of his career as an entrepreneur. (0 to 300+ employees in 5 years, WOW).

What a great group… and, while I’ve been away from the blog I’ve continued to see posts this one roll in….

After decompressing for a few days with the boss (and talking some strategy), I knew I needed to see what all the fuss was about in Chiang Mai. Look what one little post in the DC can create. I often say that DCers are like a school of fish– hyper mobile and prefer to travel in packs– if you give them a good reason to go somewhere, or to meet up with you, there’s a good chance they will!

Chiang Mai

This post inspired probably 25 to 30 of the BKK attendees to crash the already vibrant internet entrepreneur scene in Chiang Mai.

Chiang Mai is one of the best places in the world to lay low, save money, and get some work done.

Speaking of laying low and getting work done, look what I saw in the forum this morning posted by Jon Myers (who is a boss, btw)… ”the Hoch” [HOTE-CH] is Ho Chi Minh City, and that’s a call for DCers to show up there and help each other reduce “lifestyle overhead” by identifying great places to stay, work, and play. It doesn’t hurt to have a whole handful of super-smart entrepreneurs around to help you when you need some advice or inspiration.

You can count on me being there… wouldn’t want to miss out. You know what they say when you can’t find a cool party… throw your own.

November… home.

After a short few days in Chiang Mai, there was only one thing on my mind. “Going home” and focusing on my work. There was only one place I wanted to go.

I had proven that I don’t need solitude, but I’m a true introvert and longed for a routine of reading, writing, and walking around (that’s how I roll!). So I booked a ticket…

And took a walk.

And got a place.

And after 5 months, made it back home.

What’s next?

That red bracelet is something we gave out to attendees of #DCBKK so we could identify each other out on the town. I’m still wearing mine– partly because it’s not a bad status symbol! :) — but also to remind me of all that I learned at #DCBKK, and how much I want to up our game to try and help fellow entrepreneurs more.

It’s been about 8 years in the trenches for me, both in jobs and working my own companies. During that time I’ve helped grow a small business from 2 to 6 million, and grown my own company from 0 to 2 million in annualized run rate in just under 5 years. I’ve got my 10,000 hours in, and now I feel committed to transitioning full-time to help other entrepreneurs along on their journey.

Specifically, that’ll mean finishing a book, working to create a better DC (and DC2013!), and an online Tropical MBA starting this January.

If you would have told me 5 years ago that I could have written a blog post like this, I’m not sure what I would have thought. Maybe an incredible sense of relief. It really is possible….

This shit takes a long time. That’s why I’m glad we are all coming together and helping each other out.

If I met you over the last few months, or you attended one of the events, or we exchanged emails or tweets, thank you for being a part of all this.

I’ve never been more excited about business, and it’s potential to transform our lives for the better.

Cheers,

Dan

PS, behind the scenes happens on my mailing list. Here it is:

TMBA19 – The 2% Fallacy and 10 Business Red Flags

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 10:56:43 +0000

I’m back in Bali hoping to take advantage of the inspiring scenery and lifestyle to get a ton of work done. I was excited to hop on the mic solo-style this week and address those of you who plan to spend the weekend hustling away.

In this week’s show I talk about some digital nomad hot spots as well as 10 business red flags that prevent you and your business from achieving maximum velocity.

Click on this screenshot to subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio in iTunes.

Listen to this episode to see if your business suffers from one of these red flags:

The 2% fallacy.
A “cool look” is not a differentiator.
Traffic is almost never the problem.
Douche networking.
Would you be willing to go to war with your business partner? You should.
The difference between strategies and goals for your business.
The best tactic to see if your product is valuable to your market.
Buy now button in 7 days or bust.
Get an accountant or a new business.
Stop dousing your business with yourself.

Get your voice or question on TTR:

Want to be on Tropical Talk Radio? Leave me a message. It’s easy to do, and if you mess up, you can easily edit your message until you are ready to send it.

Mentioned on this show:

People on this show:

Dan (@TropicalMBA)

Episode length: 22:09

Download Options:

Download from iTunes and Subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio by clicking this link.
If you don’t like iTunes, here’s the MP3 file–> [DOWNLOAD MP3]
Android, Apple, Palm & other listeners can listen on Stitcher Radio

Hope you have a great weekend!

Cheers,

Dan

PS, you can get on my private mailing list by putting your email in the form below:

The 5 Types of Lifestyle Designers

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 13:31:18 +0000

Have you read Simon Black’s post about the 7 Types of Expats? I thought of it yesterday as my friend was buzzing me through the mountains near Chaing Mai, Thailand (beautfiul!). We got to talking about the lifestyle design “scene.”

Make no mistake— it’s a scene for sure. Here in Chaing Mai there are easily 100’s of nomadic internet types. One well-placed tweet will land you at a cafe where the conversations will hover loosely around topics like Singapore vs. Hong Kong, Galaxy S3’s vs. iPhone 5’s, Pandas, Penguins, Paypal policies, and link building strategies.

One thing unites us all— love it or hate it— nearly all of us have read the 4 Hour Work Week and have a lot of varying opinions about the book and “lifestyle design” in general. In the book, Ferriss doesn’t offer a concise definition for the term he introduced, so I’ll take stab(ish) at one:

Lifestyle design – n – the state of affairs created when basic living wages can be earned with an increasingly tenuous connection to time-input or physical location. This ‘modularity’ of personal income calls into question those lifestyle elements which traditionally correlated more closely with earning— namely— time, mobility, purpose, passion, and autonomy, among others.

The criticism that “lifestyle design has always been around” is fair enough then, but it’s only really been available to rich people– people with property, companies, or other assets that generate cash without their assistance. What used to take a company, employees, start-up capital, can now get done with a website and a Paypal account. It’s easier than ever to try and strike it rich, and I guess in a way that’s what lifestyle designers are after. But unlike previous generations of business owners, they aren’t just counting cash.

Here’s some of the types of lifesytle designers I’ve met in my travels. What type are you?

The Gamer. Gamers are very often poker players, affiliate marketers, SEOers, or paid traffic guys. Gamers are often very bright, and are attracted to the opportunity to “hack” everything. They often find it difficult to build a business that scales. They tend move on to new money-making challenges fast.

What do Gamers think the 4 Hour Work Week all about? Using data driven strategies to put up effective offers on the web. Launch, test, optmize, and repeat.

The Passionate Practitioner. Much like many of my blogging co-horts, I thought the biggest promise of the 4 Hour Work Week was the opportunity to trade income and mobility in order to win back time. PP’s are excited about the opportunity to make money from work that they’d want to be doing anyway. Copywriters, bloggers, product designers, public speakers, fans of parkour, juicing, or practically anything under the sun can now dream of monetizing their passions without signing any leases.

What do Practitioners think 4 Hour Work Week all about? Earning back your time so you can do what you are truly passionate about.

The Entrepreneur. Probably the most natural audience for the book, the 4HWW movement caught legs and extended much further beyond the over-worked business owner in the bay area. That said, I can’t tell you how many multi-million dollar business owners I’ve seen putting up e-book landing pages (some to great success!) after having been exposed to lifestyle design concepts.

Entrepreneurs are business people first, so they enjoy freeing time to do more business oriented side projects, or to spend time with family and friends. Given their history growing organizations and cash-flows, entrepreneurs don’t struggle as much with “filling the void.” In my experience, it’s entrepreneurs who have taken the impact of 4HWW most in stride. “Yeah, I put up a blog and backpacked through Europe— now what?”

What do Entrepreneurs think the 4 Hour Work Week all about? Asking yourself what your business can do for you and not the other way around. Your business should empower you to find the things you want to do, not dictate a list of things you should do.

The Natural. Naturals, either by extraordinary personal experience, luck, special DNA, or necessity, are compelled to live outside of inhereted cultural scripts for making a living, educating themselves, and identifying projects to take on. The natural was doing it since day 1.

What do Naturals think the 4 Hour Work Week all about? “Me!”

The Tourist. The tourist is drawn into the community by the most immediate and compelling promise of lifesytle design— the prospect of unlimited world travel. The tourist often cashes in assets or takes a step back in their career in order to test out life on the road. The tourist isn’t yet sure about owning their own means of production, or what that might mean exactly. But screw it, let’s travel!

What do Tourists think the 4 Hour Work Week all about? Working your whole life away is a waste, we should go after our true passions– like travel– while we are young and still able to enjoy it. We’ll figure out the income thing later. And anyway, those jobs aren’t going anywhere. Are they?

Got any more?

Cheers,

Dan

PS, sometimes readers are dissapointed because they miss out on events, jobs, and new stuff we are doing (we’re finishing a book and a graduate level entrepreneurship course by the end of the year!). The only way to keep 100% up to date is to subscribe to our mailing list:

Members of our inner circle get early action announcements on everything we do, and that was the case with our Bangkok meet-up. We ended up selling out all spots inside our forum so the offer never went public.

PPS, thanks for reading my blog yo!!!

PPPS, You can follow some other stuff I’m doing on Facebook, Twitter, RSS, and Tropical Talk Radio.

TMBA18 – 5 Media Created Distortions About Successful Internet Ventures

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 13:36:29 +0000

We had a blast at the DCBKK conference over the weekend, but we’ve got more big plans lined up. The CEO-yeah is heading back to the good ole’ U.S. of A. and I’m heading up to Chiang Mai to do a little scouting and see if it could be worthy of being the next TMBA compound.

Starting this week, I’m holding my feet to the fire and saying that all you weekend warriors will be getting a brand new episode of Tropical Talk Radio in your earbuds every Friday to keep you jammin’ on your business all weekend long.

In this weeks episode, we get called out on our Modern Cat Furniture business by listener Shayna and invoke the “do as we say, not as we do” maxim. We reveal our 3 step process on how to know when it’s time to hire and the differences between what we do, small businesses, and startups.

Click on this screenshot to subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio in iTunes.

5 Media Created Distortions About Successful Internet Ventures:

The difference between making money and getting money.
Why not to be a minority shareholder in a small business.
Why we don’t invest in lifestyle businesses.
The most important factor for choosing a business partner.
Why your NIV (Network Independent Value) isn’t at the Boyz2Men level, and what the means for your business idea.

Get your voice or question on TTR:

Want to be on Tropical Talk Radio? Leave me a message. It’s easy to do, and if you mess up, you can easily edit your message until you are ready to send it.

Mentioned on this show:

People on this show:

Dan (@TropicalMBA)
The CEO (@AnythingIan)

Episode length: 35:26

Download Options:

Download from iTunes and Subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio by clicking this link.
If you don’t like iTunes, here’s the MP3 file–> [DOWNLOAD MP3]
Android, Apple, Palm & other listeners can listen on Stitcher Radio

Cheers and have a great weekend,

Dan

PS, you can get on my private mailing list by putting your email in the form below:

“Be Your Own Boss, Do It From Anywhere, and Make a Lot of Money”

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 13:16:34 +0000

“It’s difficult to watch— other people’s successes.” - Donald Pollock in The Devil All the Time

This guy became a writer when he was 45. He’s now 56 and has published 2 books. He said that during 32 years of working at a paper mill he didn’t think about being a writer. That all changed when he watched his father retire from that same plant.

Donald resolved to be a writer because he assumed:

You could be your own boss.
You could do it from anywhere.
You could make a lot of money at it.

During the interview they laughed at that last point, but I wouldn’t. I identify with Donald’s story because being an artist who wants their work to be seen by others is very similar to being an entrepreneur. As an artist, your team doesn’t scale and the distribution channels are for the most part apparent, so you focus your energy on work that scales (writing, painting, songs), and ideas that get passed on by your audience.

Toward the end of the interview, Donald was asked if his self image changed since he became a published author, and he said it really started changing over a decade before he got published. Here’s the sequence:

He stopped drinking alcohol. Things like alcohol, health, being a part of destructive relationships and so on often have the potential of being “lynchpin” habits. If you can address them directly and aggressively, a broad range of other things can fall into place.
He became a responsible employee and started taking his work seriously. A job is a great barometer for your ability to go out, work hard, and drag it home. If you aren’t excelling in your work as an employee, and you think it’s going to be easier as an entrepreneur, you could be wrong. It’s not so dissimilar from thinking that if I could just move to Thailand my life would be better.
He got an education. Robert’s story involves him going to a university, probably in part subsidized by the union he was a part of. Nowadays, I would not say to go back to some state university if what you want to do is grow a business that helps you earn from anywhere. If you go to university to learn this stuff, you’ll be just like everyone else there— clueless on how to get it done. Get an apprenticeship with somebody doing exactly what it is you think you want to do. Then you should work as hard as you can for them.
He copied successful people who had done exaclty what it is he wanted to do. I love this part. Donald said that he didn’t learn to write during his college education (go figure), instead he started typing out— verbatim— his favorite stories from authors like Hemmingway, Flannery O’conner, and others. Who says we don’t have the opportunity to learn directly from the best and brightest? He did this for a few years.
His highest expecations always remained with the work. Donald told his wife that if he could just write one short story that was good, he would consider himself a successful writer. I like this point. I like the feeling of finding work you value in and off itself. For me, that’s earning $1,000 a month by writing and helping others. When I decided that’s all I needed to be successful, my career took a major turn.

* * *

I gravitate to stories like this one because my lifestyle is similar. Many people who meet me in person are surprised to find out that I don’t spend my days barking into phone receivers (only my mornings ;). I live a writer’s life. I wake up most mornings and walk to a coffee shop, where I gather the notes I made the day before. Almost every day I sit down I write 1,000 words (often more). So little of it gets published at this blog because I’m still learning how to write. My stuff ends up all over the place:

On this blog.
As outlines and key concepts for podcasts.
As emails to my friends, our staff, and to my business partner.
As documents to help my friends and fellow entreprenuers.
As posts or responses in the DC.
As actionable ideas and concepts in my head (which very often get communicated to my friends and team members).
As a lump of un-published raw material that will form my first book.

“In this dark and wounded society, writing can give you the pleasures of the woodpecker, of hollowing out a hole in a tree where you can build your nest and say, ‘This is my niche, this is where I live now, this is where I belong.’ And the niche may be small and dark, but at last you will finally know what you are doing.” - Anne Lamott

That bit about creating concepts— that’s the most fun for me. I don’t do it often, but every once in a while I’ll stumble on a thought-framework that helps our business or one of our students change their future.

And it’s a weird thing to actually believe about writing. That if you are smart about it, and work very hard at it, you can be your own boss, you can do it from anywhere, and you can make a lot of money.

What’s more likely: that it isn’t true or that most people aren’t willing to work hard enough to make it happen?

Cheers,

Dan

@TropicalMBA

PS, if you’d like to get on my mailing list, you can put your email address into the form below:

Fund Your World Travels Starting Today – 2 New Job Opportunities

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 11:03:11 +0000

Between working on our October DC event, planning for our October Tropical MBA, and working directly with the attendees of the August TMBA (which is wrapping up today), I haven’t made much time to write.

Things have been pretty crazy, which is why we are hiring. If you know anybody who’d like to work for our company, please forward this post to them!

* * *

Job Opportunity #1 : “Online Marketing Manager For a 7 Figure e-Commerce Business”

You might have gathered from pervious job opportunities we’ve posted on this site — we don’t pay a lot and the work ain’t pretty, but you sure as hell will learn a lot.

You’ll have as much responsibility as you’d like to take on. You’ll be in charge of sites like ThePortableBarCompany.com. Eventually, you’ll know how every product works, understand the environment in which it’s used, and know more about these industries and products than any other online marketer. Great marketing isn’t just about keyword research.

To be an effective marketer on our team you’ll be:

Developing relationships with online publishers
Building strategic linking partners
Monitoring our Google rankings on a weekly basis
Developing and testing on-site optimizations
Working with our California sales team to craft and execute marketing strategies and
Interacting directly with my business partner @AnythingIan to get it all done.

Let’s call a spade a spade– this is a job. Our business has more than doubled every year since it’s founding, and we want to keep it that way. We don’t have a lot of time or tolerance for people who aren’t passionate about results.

I am all about entrepreneurship, but if you sign up for this role I’d like you to be able to emotionally commit to spending a few years working for our company. I want you to express your best ideas through the context of our organization and help us to get to our goal of a $4M run rate business by the end of 2013. If you can be a major player in our success, the opportunities for you will be explosive. It isn’t for everyone, but it’s been our particular experience that the best way to become an entrepreneur is to work for one.

When you are ready to start your own thing, after helping us double or even triple our efforts, you’ll get our 100% support.

When you join our team, you’ll be trained on a broad range of skills including: SEO, PPC, email marketing, WordPress development, and copywriting. You’ll be creating weekly reports about our organization’s online footprint (and it’s performance) every Friday. It will be challenging.

We prefer that you are Asia based, since we’ll be here for much of 2013 and we want to work directly with you. We’d like you to make it to the October 1st Tropical MBA in Puerto Galera, Philippines. We’d also love to have you at the DC BKK meet-up on October 19th directly after. We have no required hours, no required locations, but we’d like somebody focused on the work 100% — so if you need some help securing a sweet place somewhere in South East Asia, we’ll do our best to tour you around and help you find the spot.

Here’s how to apply:

We will only accept applications via Youtube video. The quality of your video is not important. You will not get extra points for fancy editing.
Please keep your video under 3 minutes – talk about yourself and why you are uniquely qualified to join us. Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
In the description of the video, link to other projects you’ve been working on, your personal website, blog, or resume.
Let us know the date you are available to start.
Send us a link to the video– your preferences should be “unlisted and can only be viewed by those with a link”– to “Dan@TropicalMBA.com and copy Ian@TropicalMBA.com” with the subject line format: “[First and Last Name] TMBA Application [Job Opportunity I’m Applying For].”
Application deadline is August 21st, 2012.

* * *

Here’s Jono, myself, and Joe at the August TMBA hanging out in your new front yard.

* * *

Job Opportunity #2 : “Live at a Resort in the Philippines For 4 Months for Free”

So far my good friend Sean has graciously hosted 3 online marketers at his resort— the last guy, John McIntyre, has been here almost a year, has made some insane progress, and has started his own freelancing copywriting business. John also does some of the work here at the Tropical MBA, inlcuding our Tropical MBA Crash Course, and some work for our Tropical MBA in-person events.

This model has been proven, is a great time, and works for a certain kind of individual— namely— one who’s dead set on not having a job. That means you might have a little something going already, perhaps you’ve got a big nut saved up, or maybe you just want to chill out on a Tropical island for a few months. There’s no question— you’ll be treated like a king (or queen!) Included in the deal is a free room at Badladz resort, 3 full meals a day, free laundry service, and free use of the Badladz motor scooters. It’s a good time!

So what’s the catch? Well it’s not all fun and games— you’ll be expected to spend one whole working day serving as the resort’s marketing director per week. You’ll also be expected to help out as the resident ‘expert’ on a day to day basis. This isn’t for people who are counting hours. We are looking for helpful team players willing to be part of the Badladz crew, plus put in a rock solid 8 hours every week doing online marketing for the resort. Everyone in Puerto Galera will get to know you and you’ll become part of the family here at Badladz.

When Tropical MBA events roll into town, you’ll be expected to notch it up and help out with the event planning and execution. We might even toss you a few bucks for your help— but don’t expect it. Like I said, we are cheap bastards! But here’s the catch— in our little econsphere there are tons of opportunities— including the immediate ones to help market the resort as an event location. In fact, my buddy Sean is such an entrepreneurial lad he’d be more than willing to cut a commission deal with you if you can bring any big groups to his resort.

That’s all going to depend on what kind of entrepreneur you are, but what you can count on is 8 hours, once a week, focused on the basic marketing tasks of the resort:

Sales oriented
Working with online booking websites and online merchant services
General tech support around the resort.
Event Marketing, Event Manager
Super WordPress literate
Functional SEO for websites and YouTube videos (Sean’s videos have over 350,000 views!!!)
Willing to help out in a big way for Tropical MBA events (that might even require traveling to Manila to help meet and greet students + help organize workshops and events etc…)

If you apply for this position, you’ll get bonus points if you are availalbe to be here in Puerto Galera by the time our next in-person Tropical MBA event starts— October 1st, 2012. You’ll get trained directly from John McIntyre himself!

Here’s how to apply:

We will only accept applications via Youtube video. The quality of your video is not important. You will not get extra points for fancy editing.
Please keep your video under 3 minutes.
In the description of the video, link to other projects you’ve been working on, your personal website, blog, or resume.
Let us know the date you are available to start.
Send the video– your preferences should be “unlisted and can only be viewed by those with a link”– to “Dan@TropicalMBA.com” with the subject line format: “[First and Last Name] TMBA Application [Job Opportunity I’m Applying For].”
Application deadline is August 21st, 2012.

* * *

As always, thank you for your interest in the opportunities here at the Tropical MBA, and thanks for sharing it with your friends!

Cheers,

Dan

@TropicalMBA

PS, if you’d like to get on my private mailing list, and be sure to never miss another job opportunity again, just put your email address into the form below:

TMBA17 – How We Increased Email Subscribers 257% By Making it Harder to Opt-in

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 16:29:06 +0000

How does a lazy blogger increase their email subscription rate by 257% and in the process get an automatic sales machine working for them and generating sales in their sleep?

Well– you could hire John McIntyre– but for those of you who have teams or willing to do it yourself, we invited John on the show to get the details on how he did it.

It’s also time for us to offer another Tropical MBA internship here at Badladz resort in Puerto Galera, Mindoro (sorry, so much for the “no more interns” thing), so it’s good timing to ask John about his experience here in the Philippines plus the business and skills he’s been building over the past year.

Key points you’ll hear about:

Learn the #1 regret of bloggers and online marketers (and what to do about it).
Why your readers don’t want to be on your list (and what to do about it).
How we increased our email subscriber sign-up rate by 257%
Why nobody wants to read your ebook and what to do about it.

Subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio in iTunes:

Subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio in iTunes

Get your voice or question on TTR!

Leave me a message. It’s easy to do, and if you mess up, you can easily edit your message until you are ready to send it my way.

Quick links:

People on this show:

Dan (@TropicalMBA)
Ian (@AnythingIan)
Ben Hoban (@HennBob)
John McIntyre (@JohnMcIntyre_)

Listen to show:

Jump to the top of the page and click the javascript player.
Subscribe and download on iTunes.
Download the MP3 file (right click and “save as”)

Thanks for listening to the show!

Cheers,

Dan
PS, you can get on my private mailing list by putting your email in the form below:

TMBA16 – Becoming a Mini-Mogul

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 14:58:16 +0000

Happy Friday everyone! Today Ian and I are joining you from Puerto Galera, Philippines. We found a few minutes away from the events here at the Tropical MBA to discuss a topic that’s been on our minds lately: How do we frame up this new style of multi-national small business entrepreneurship, and what are some related business opportunities?

A lot of people have been talking about this trend lately, we dug up this article to serve as the basic structure for this episode. We believe the opportunities to create services and products for people just like us– global-thinking lifestyle entrepreneurs– is massive.

We also take a few minutes to discuss some of the feedback we received on our last episode.

There is a new Tropical MBA style internship in China:

Matt Kowalak and his business partner Jamon are offering a TMBA-style internship in China. We trust these guys and are confident they’ll provide whoever gets the gig a life-changing experience. Check Out The High Cappin Internship Details Here

Key points you’ll hear about:

Why how you spend your days might look more like Sir Richard Branson than a “normal” small business entrepreneur.
Why we think drop shipping directly from China and other similar services will be a huge opportunity for lifestyle entrepreneurs.
Why and how to make blogging hugely profitable.
A few specific niches that we think will be huge in the next 5 years (and how one might get involved).

Subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio in iTunes:

Subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio in iTunes

Get your voice or question on TTR!

Leave me a message. It’s easy to do, and if you mess up, you can easily edit your message until you are ready to send it my way.

Quick links:

People on this show:

Dan (@TropicalMBA)
Ian (@AnythingIan)

Listen to show:

Jump to the top of the page and click the javascript player.
Subscribe and download on iTunes.
Download the MP3 file (right click and “save as”)

Cheers,

Dan
PS, you can get on my private mailing list by putting your email in the form below:

TMBA15 – Is Starting a Personal Blog Hazardous to Your Entrepreneurial Health?

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 10:46:51 +0000

Happy Friday afternoon! We are back with our weekend podcast with the hopes of giving you a little fuel for your projects over the next few days.

Today I discuss with the CEOh-yeah and issue we’ve brought up a few times before. One of the biggest questions we get asked is: should I start a personal blog for networking purposes?

I don’t think these are benign decisions and I take this question very seriously. When you are just getting started and need to find strategic levers to get as much energy channeled into your business as possible, and your decision on when and how to blog or otherwise put content onto the interwebs can have a big impact on your future.

Listen to this episode and learn:

When it comes to blogging, why focusing your energy on premise generation is the best way to succeed.
The reason why certain types of personal blogs actually hurt your chances to success.
Hear about some ways to approach business blogging that can jump-start your entrepreneurial career.
Why blogging for networking is often overrated.

Click on this screenshot to subscribe to TTR in iTunes.

Get your voice or question on TTR!

Leave me a message. It’s easy to do, and if you mess up, you can easily edit your message until you are ready to send it my way.

Quick links:

People on this show:

Dan (@TropicalMBA)
Ian (@AnythingIan)

Listen to show:

Jump to the top of the page and click the javascript player.
Subscribe and download on iTunes.
Download the MP3 file (right click and “save as”)

Cheers,

Dan
PS, you can get on my private mailing list by putting your email in the form below:

17 Predictions About the Future of Internet Marketing

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 14:49:11 +0000

It’s common to hear entrepreneurs say “execution is all that counts”– but it’s not. The premises under which your are executing count even more. I’ve been building customer relationships in a broad range of industries for the last 5 years. The quality of my execution seems consistent, yet we are wildly successful in some niches, and barely alive in others. What’s the variable? More and more, I’m looking to the quality of my initial premises.

Winning business strategies often combine proven business models with unproven or trending customer acquisition models.

In other words, take your membership training site, affiliate blog, or seminar coaching series, and add a twist by betting on a trend or emerging model to attract customers to your product.

To try and help with this type of brainstorming, I’ve listed 17 trends I’m seeing in the “internet marketing” world. Internet marketing (also called “make money online”) is one of the more monied niches online, and as a result it’s also one of the most innovative. Many products in niches like “productivity” or “passion” or “blogging” or “lifestyle design” and countless others are, at the core, internet marketing products as well.

Your customer’s track record will become more important than yours. More than ever before, you need to have a home run answer to the question how much money do you make and what have you done? That’s just the beginning, in the coming years it’ll matter even more how your customers are fairing.
Niche specific tool sets will be huge. Suites of online tools that empower entrepreneurs will no longer require massive scale to develop, so it’ll be much easier (and more profitable) to create custom or white labeled tools to fit niche communities.
Expensive ebooks are dead. I’m sorry. Stop writing that $97 ebook right now. It’s not going to work out. Build a real product, then consider the ebook as a marketing tool, if necessary.
Cultivated and proctored communities will start popping up everywhere. The readers of the TMBA often cite “100 True Customers” as one of our most useful articles. There you’ll find a pretty clear plan for making $40,000 a year as a content producer. I think this appraoch will get utilized a lot more in the coming years.
$2,000 DVD training courses are dead. You know what I mean– they aren’t dead, they are like “Microsoft dead.” They’ll continue to work for people with deep pockets and for those who are in the game. If something like this is your idea of how you are going to get a foothold in a market, I’m on my way to bet against you.
Podcasting is the new blogging. Instead of starting a blog, start a podcast. Recently, Pat Flynn reported the the number of unique visitors to his blog was surpassed by the number of podcast enclosure downloads of his podcast. (Balla Pat!) I’m not surprised…
Blogs will continue to be the most powerful brand building force new online ventures have. They’ll also continue to be the most resource intensive. So it goes. It’s no wonder solopreneuers who use blog-marketing as a customer aquisition strategy end up just being full time blog-marketers.
The market value of chops has never been higher. Podcasts as such powerful marketing tools because even on the 3rd episode of a new podcast, you’ll have an immediate idea of how much you trust the speaker. You’ll also have a clear idea of how knowledgeable they are. If you don’t have chops, don’t worry, you’ll just have to buckle down and do some real work.
Personal freedom is slowly starting to be articulated as “personal sovereignty.” That space will explode in the next 5 years. Get in while the gettin’ is good.
Your customers will need to use your product and be successful for you to have a sustainable online marketing business. I always thought it was dip-shitty when internet marketers feigned complaint that their customers never “implemented their product.” Those conversations will go the way of the dodo. If your customers “don’t implement your product” you’ll “go out of business.”
In-person events and training will explode. Events provide a ton of value, it’s cheaper to move around, and your target market has a more flexible income. Easy call.
The daily podcast format will become prominent. James Shremko is already testing it out (take a walk, listen to this episode, and tell me you don’t run back home looking for a notepad!). People will write me one year from now and ”hey you were right about that daily podcast thing!”
More and more, content will need to be delivered with high-level consulting. No more $2,000 DVDs, instead I’ll get on the phone with you once a week and walk you through a deliverable. This is way better than some worksheet or video. Even Frank Kern is doing it.
More 4th wave internet marketers will emerge. They will be selling you blog networks, software suites, audiences, ad campaigns, e-commerce sites, niche websites, blogs– you name it.
University educations will start to look more like internet marketing training, and internet marketing training will start to look more like university educations. They’ll converge and find a middle ground in the coming decade.
If you want to start a blog about entrepreneurship or personal development and you don’t have an angle that gets everyone in the room FREAKING PUMPED and saying they’d buy products from such a publisher… don’t do it. It’s getting harder. The good news is that it’s easier to spend your energy on creating a great premise than it is publishing blog posts into the inter-nether world.
Apprenticeship is back. We aren’t all about internships anymore, but this next decade will be.

As always, I’m curious to hear your thoughts as well.

Cheers,

Dan
@TropicalMBA

PS, if you’d like to receive emails from me, you can put your email address into the form below:

TMBA14 – 5 Ways to Produce Expert Level Content (Even If You Aren’t an Expert)

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 13:18:16 +0000

Hey there weekend warriors! This week’s happy hour drink sponsor is Orangina, a beverage with a special place in the heart of @AnythingIan.

Today we are going to talk about high level content strategy. First, it’s worth taking a look at Karo l’s notes from reading Turning Pro. Many of you know I’m a huge War of Art fan, and I just got started with Turning Pro today based on Karol’s suggestion.

“The amateur allows his worth and identity to be defined by others. The amateur craves third-party validation.”

Ouch that’s harsh! In this episode we’ll explore strategies content marketers can employ to avoid the amateur trap.

Listen to this episode and learn:

Why the advice to “cut out distractions” it’s often good-hearted but misguided advice that will land you in amateur-land.
One of the most important tactics to employ (especially for really smart people).
Thoughts on creating a compelling body of work (and why that’s the new branding).
A hot new format for podcasters (that could be an opportunity in and of itself).
And how to develop a trustworthy track record even if you haven’t had any big wins yet.

Click on this screenshot to subscribe to TTR in iTunes.

Get your voice or question on TTR!

Leave me a message. It’s easy to do, and if you mess up, you can easily edit your message until you are ready to send it my way.

Quick links:

People on this show:

Dan (@TropicalMBA)
Colin from iBuyCameras.net

Listen to show:

Jump to the top of the page and click the javascript player.
Subscribe and download on iTunes.
Download the MP3 file (right click and “save as”)

Cheers,

Dan
PS, you can get on my private mailing list by putting your email in the form below:

The Last Time I Paid $15.00 for a Sandwich

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 13:42:23 +0000

The last time I paid $15.00 for a sandwich I was at JFK international airport. Something got screwed up with my flights, so I got stuck at the airport for the night. Even though the airline gave me a food voucher to make up for it, the only shop open in the airport wouldn’t take it.

At the time it was just another frustration to add to the list, but later I always used to think of it as an illustration of the different types of currencies– time, cash, and mobility– and how they work together as a system.

How the hell do they charge 15 bucks for a sandwich?

Their customers, sorry saps like me who were stuck in the airport, had no time or mobility.

It’s plausible to think that if I had an abundance of time and mobility, and I was willing to spend them on the task, I could have found myself a free sandwich.

Who says there’s no free lunch?

* * *

Thinking of cash, time, and mobility as a system is useful for those of you seeking to employ people as well, as our experiments with various types of internship have shown us. Here’s some ways to think of the system as an employer:

“Professional” = Jobs that maximize for income, but stifle time and mobility. Examples are lawyers, doctors, executives.
“Expeditionary” = Jobs that maximize for mobility, but stifle time and cash. Examples are tour guides, flight attendants, certain outside sales positions, foreign office posts.
“Transitory” = Jobs that maximize for time, but stifle mobility and cash. Examples would be bartenders, baristas, retail clerk.

You could also take the system and apply it to modes of being or stages in your life. Here’s some examples:

“Hustling” = maximizing for cash by sacrificing time (working a job, doing client work, or building less scalable businesses) and mobility.
“Building” = maximizing for time by sacrificing cash and mobility.
“Traveling” = maximizing for mobility, sacrificing time and cash.

When I first heard about the way these currencies interact with each other, there was one combination that stood out above all the others:

If I can reduce my cash needs, and optimize my location, and I can regain my time.

It’s possible to build a business that replaces the type of income you’d see from a high paying professional job in about 3 years of full time work. If you are frugal, and work full time at it, you could be making enough to pay the rent sooner than that.

I’ve seen it happen 100′s of times now, but I think even way back in 2006 I knew it instinctively that the only thing between me and earning money from anywhere was time.

Of course, there are issues of mindset, confidence, and priority that prevent people from taking the entrepreneurial leap, but if we could see it as just a matter of time, it might be easier to get to work.

Cheers,

Dan

PS, I love Twitter, you can follow my favorite articles and books everyday if you follow me.

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Lessons Learned From 7 Years of China Factory Visits

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 16:05:48 +0000

It’s been almost two hours now. There is a hot-ass cup of green tea sitting on the conference table in front of me. A large free-standing air conditioner unit is blowing warm air. Everybody (except me) is barking at each other in Chinese. We’ve been looking at the same mechanical sketches for an hour. The English translations offered by our sourcing agent are remarkably succinct. 5 minutes of aggressive back and forth in Chinese is time and time again reduced to statements like: “This product very difficult to assemble.”

Ya don’t say?

30 or so minutes later, while still on the point of assembly, and idea comes to me: I don’t need to do this ever again.

We’ve got better people in our company that ought to be here instead. Here’s a decent business maxim: stop taking on aspects of projects in which you provide no unique value. And sitting here in this steamy room, I feel secure that I am providing no unique value.

I’m here today in the largest manufacturing base in the world for two reasons. First, to show face and to say “thanks for making our stuff guys.” Second, we’re on a mission to get a better pricing and payment terms for some of our most important product lines. In China, these are not short conversations.

Consider this a passing of the torch, whether you are on my team (hey guys!), an aspiring e-commerce or product entrepreneur– I wish you many quality factory visits. Here’s hoping it’s not all hot-ass green tea and boring conversations.

You’ll know you are doing something right when you end up in a decidedly scandalous Karaoke party in an equally surprising luxury hotel. When you find yourself at the Ritz, don’t act surprised– appreciate it– because hanging out in China is mostly about hot-ass green tea.

So without a tinge of nostalgia, here’s some stuff I learned over the the last 7 years visiting what feels like and endless string of factories in China and Vietnam.

This guy welds products that we sell on our e-commerce stores.

* * *

Walk the floor. No factory visit is complete without the factory walk through. You’ve risked your life to get here, now take the time to survey the floor. Feel free to take photos of anything. Nobody cares. Pick up stuff. Poke it. Stage cool video shots of products being stamped out to post on your website. Make sure to keep an eye out for competitors products stashed in the corners. If you see something interesting or fishy, ask.

Hang out and lounge around. It takes time to get good information. It’s okay to just hang for a bit. Drink another cup of that piping hot green tea. Take another spin around the factory floor. You are basically going to hang there until lunch hour, or happy hour…

Give them a million reasons to lower the price, even if they don’t make sense. ”We need to get another 20% off of the price because of a new competitor that just entered the market.” Let them think about that one for a bit. 15 minutes later say, you’ll need to get that 20% off so “you can go back to the United States.” Does that even make sense? No it doesn’t. Don’t worry, your role is to generate reasons. Anything. If they are going to back off their quoted price, they’ll need reasons. Absurd reasons work just as well as real ones and often better, especially if the real reasons are insulting. Another supplier offered us the 20 point price reduction. Leave that one for email later. It won’t play well in person.

Have a factory facing brand. I know it looks cool for you to have your logo posted all over your packaging, but these guys aren’t dummies. They will look at your websites and try to reverse engineer strategic pricing for you. Prevent this by creating a unique China-facing brand, cards, and contact information. Also consider blocking China IP addresses from your e-commerce stores. This is easy to get around, but it’s probably worth doing anyway.

Understand that China is extraordinarily cash-focused. Factory owners don’t care about your big plans, ideas, or market opportunities. They’ve met you before. Everyone has big plans. They care about cash, period. If you want to get terms, discounts, or preferred pricing, you need to put options on the table that involve cash. If your top end order quantity would, in theory, be 300 units, negociate hard for 50 or 100 units, then offer a 300 unit order (later by email) if they can can deliver on your final price request or if they can offer special terms.

The way to get your price is to know what it is. Conversations about ‘getting their best price’ won’t get you anywhere. The strategy that works best for us during the product development state is to simply let them know the price we need.

If you hang around long enough with the engineering team (this process can take hours), they can generally present you with alterative manufacturing options that can help reduce the price. The engineers you are talking to are very rarely thinking about business strategy– they are thinking about manufacturing processes.

As an example, just 1 hour ago we learned that the color of the paint of a new product was killing our price point. The color of the paint!? This issue was neither something that the supplier or us thought to bring up proactively to lower the price. The supplier thought we needed white, and from our perspective, why is white paint a problem?

It took us slogging it out for a few hours, being clear about the price we needed to get an order done, and listening to the particular issues their engineers were facing to learn this information. If you are insisntent that you need a particular price point, and that you are fleixble on engineering, you can often work to radically reduce your cost.

They aren’t being jerks, they have an entirely different set of concerns. I’ve found that what I often interpret as a stubbornness or arrogance, is often me missing my supplier’s scope of conerns. (In other words, I’m being stubborn and arrongant…. oh irony).

You are talking to guys that run factories for a living. Their margins are tight. They care more about the assembly procedure of your product than the broader opportunity of working with you. Keep that in mind while you are trying to play hardball. They’ll respond well to opportunities framed up in two ways 1) conversations aimed at understanding the design and manufacturing process of your product (therein helping their team to adapt it to their specific concerns or capabilities), and 2) cash.

It was a surreal to see over 20 + workers and a full production floor filled with our products. I thought to myself how crazy it was that all this came from a little bit of keyword research…

* * *

Most of the hard hitting stuff will get resolved via emails after the discussions at the factory. You probably won’t come to agreements at the factory, and that’s fine. The idea is to feel each other out and get information from each other. Despite all the back and forth, a few tense smiles, and pages full of notes, most of this stuff will be resolved virtually when we are back home. And that brings me to the most important point…

Don’t even think about refusing lunch. You have not been on a factory visit until the management staff has taken you to a private room at a local Chinese restaurant. Blowing it out on lunch is an insitution in China, and a very nice one at that. Surprisingly, I don’t think anything significant from a business perspective has really happened at these often hours long lunches. Just enjoy the never ending carousel of delicous dishes, and make plenty of fun of yourself. Chopsticks! What are these!?

Maybe things are changing in China. Nobody managed to get a buzz on, and there isn’t too much food left. It’s common to have a feast sitting on the table after lunch.

* * *

If you are serious about manufacturing in China, @AnythingIan does a monthly mastermind call, and our good friend Matt runs a serious sourcing business based in Shenzhen. Please don’t kick his tires if you can help it.

Cheers,

Dan

PS, you can get on my private mailing list by putting your email address into the form below:

TMBA13 – The “Never Launch Strategy” – A Profitable Approach to Information Products

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 13:17:30 +0000

This post’s photo was taken by @AnythingIan not 40 hours ago near Sapa, Vietnam. Do visit if you get a chance.

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.

–> Take one of the final 4 spots of for the October 1st Tropical MBA event.

In this episode I’ll get on my soapbox and offer an alterative to the militaristic “launches” happening around the web.

I’ll also share one of my favorite interviews from the recent Tropical MBA event. My new friend JP recently confirmed he’ll be quitting his job and traveling after having solidly proved his business concept over the past few months. Congrats JP!

Click on this screenshot to subscribe to TTR in iTunes.

Listen to this episode and learn:

What most launch gurus just gloss over.
How to decide when you are ready to launch your product.
Why talking about benefits over features can actually screw up your launch.
How to find and cultivate super profitable affiliates.

Get your voice or question on TTR!

Want to be on Tropical Talk Radio? Leave me a message!! It’s easy to do, and if you mess up, you can easily edit your message until you are ready to send it my way.

Quick links:

People on this show:

Dan (@TropicalMBA)
Jingping Ji (Here’s JP’s Facebook page)

Episode length: 27:39

Subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio by clicking this link.

If you don’t like iTunes, here’s the MP3 file–> [DOWNLOAD MP3]

Cheers and have a great weekend,

Dan

PS, you can get on my private mailing list by putting your email in the form below:

An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Being Productive

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 14:55:33 +0000

What stands between us and many of the things we desire in life is the amount of work we can produce.

The loser in us fantasizes about a chance encounter with a luminary at a cocktail party. Perhaps we’ll get an invite to the next event? Maybe we’ll get ‘in’ with that crowd.

We all know people who build their lives around these fantasies– “lottery ticket thinking” as my buddy Tim Conley calls it.

Meeting people doesn’t mean anything if you haven’t done any work.

It makes sense then that entrepreneurs are obsessed with finding ways to improve their productivity. It’s everywhere. The life hackers and the time trackers. There’s endless articles about “how to build your business after your job, commute, family stuff, and other activities.” Less people seem to be pointing out the obvious– if the work is so important, why do you have a job, commute, family stuff, and other activities?

The best strategy for productivity is pretty boring– make producing valuable work your life’s top priority. All the modafinil in the world won’t add up to one intelligent decision, one key hire, one decision for a strategic focus.

I’m not supposed to be writing this blog post.

I should be editing the sales letter for the October Tropical MBA class. A few moments ago, while I was getting ready to do that task, I got distracted and headed over to the Dynamite Circle, as I often do. While poking around I started reading a fascinating thread about productivity.

Many members have been inspired by Sebastian’s 90 day productivity experiment.

I started to explore that idea. And that’s when this article got started.

When the winds of passion are blowing, put your sails up.

An old version of myself would have fought the impulse to write this article. I don’t fight that kind of stuff anymore. If I want to build something, write something, make a movie, write a song– I do it right then and there.

If you are unhappy with what you are doing, stop doing it.

I recently had a friend tell me that for the past few months he’d been phoning phoning his work in. He wasn’t doing work he was interested in. The past few months. Now I not some productivity saint here, but I’m sure during that time this guy was rocking the Pomodoro technique, going for inbox zero, and all that producto-porn stuff.

There’s a slew of higher callings buried in all of us. A bigger challenge, a hidden lever, a more profound passion that we are missing right now. If you want to optimize anything, how about finding a way to uncover these broader visions?

Get good at creating culture.

The culture of your business is a process that helps many employes self-direct. Highly productive entrepreneurs can’t spend the most productive hours of their days delegating tasks to team members. This basic almost cliched business advice is consistently overlooked by producto-gurus, as it should be. It would put them out of business. There is nothing so profound as another intelligent vinegar-pisser (or two) helping to build out your vision.

Get good at letting little bad things happen.

I was reminded of this great Tim Ferriss quote by my friend Tim Conley. He claims that every 100M+ entrepreneur he’s met is good at this. I thought of this as I was laying in bed last night re-considering a customer service email I recently sent.

I got to thinking that over the years I’ve probably had 1,000′s of customers that were miffed at me in one way or another, and that this state of affairs was inevitable. No amount of extra attention to the matter would change that inevitability. And so any attention spent on it was time wasted.

I reminded myself that this was a very different thing from not paying attention to the details. And then I went to sleep.

Before you go to bed, write down the three big, proactive things you’d like to get done the next day.

Articulate them as “next actions” and not projects. That means “write a sales letter for new SEO service” becomes “start a new post @ Tropical MBA and write 100 words about my new SEO service.” Are you going to procrastinate writing 100 words? Ok. Well, some people can’t be helped. :)

Consume a ton of amazing content, even if it’s immediate usefulness isn’t apparent.

I’m worried that in general consumption of content is disproportionally scapegoated as preventing people from taking action because of it’s apparent oppositional relationship with production. I’m tired of hearing this messages that disparage voracious consumption of entrepreneurial information. Most of the top producers I know are also the top consumers. So read one dear web surfer! Here’s a good one.

Cheers,

Dan

PS, please put your email address into the form below if you’d like to receive emails form me:

Why I’m No Longer Running Internships

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 15:38:57 +0000

Our little company was just starting to pick up steam back in November of 2009. That’s when I first considered the idea of running paid internships.

Even though we were starting to get some momentum, we never thought to pay ourselves more. Our first priority was always to build our team. To this end, we offered design internships for college credit back in our California office, and traveled to Asia in search of affordable software developers and online marketers.

While seeking software developers in the Philippines, were having an absolute blast– daily tennis matches, motorcycle trips, beaches, and parties I could would never write about.

Just a few years before, I would have done anything to have be a part a business like ours. My guess is that the conversation that sparked the intern idea was a Filipino PHP guy telling me he wanted to make $1,000 a month.

A few years ago, I would have absolutely worked for 1,000 bucks a month to live this kind of lifestyle.

I did what any sensible internet marketer would do. I logged into my GoDaddy account.

It’s like getting your MBA, but in the Tropics.

* * *

It wasn’t long before I became known as the intership guy.

We tried our best to facilitate this model, helping Chris Ducker, Sean Cooney, and Joe and Justin from the AdsenseFlippers.com (among others) to recruit some amazing talent to join their businesses in the Philippines.

As far as I can tell, their efforts so far have been extremely fruitful. A lot of effort, resources, and trust have been committed by all parties.

We’ve also done alright ourselves. In one way or another, we’ve had 9 young people join our company here in Asia. Some as light duty consultants (read: beer drinking buddies), and some as heavy-lifting full time employees.

“When are you going to run your next internship?”

Because of our track record, I recieve 2-3 emails a week from aspiring entrepreneurs asking when our next internship will be. My answer lately has been crappy.

I don’t know…

Since day one, we’ve always had way more applicants than mentors. Many of our internship opportunities have received over 50 applications.

We’ve learned that it’s not so easy to host an internship. Despite many entrepreneurs telling me it’s a great concept, telling me it’s a bigger idea, I just can’t convince more people to do it.

In business it’s often more important to watch people’s feet than their mouths.

Our experiment with TropicalWorkForce.com (now defunct) taught me further that I shouldn’t be pushing this stuff. Too much was at stake to connect people who I didn’t personally know and trust. So here’s my final word for a while on internships:

We’ll continue to recruit new team members from the blog. Those opportunities, as they have been since day one, will be few and far between, and posted here in detail as they come up. No position is currently on my dashboard.
For entrepreneurs considering hiring their own intern with a method similar to the Tropical MBA model, please give it a try. Our experience with our TMBA interns has been nothing short of life-changing. I’m sure much of the success our business has seen in the past 24 months is due to the bright people who took the time to work with us.
My mission isn’t fundamentally to dig up internships, it’s to help people grow great businesses. And I am putting more resources to that end than ever before. Currently we are working through our podcast, our private forum, and our brand new Tropical MBA. How do you travel the world from your laptop? Our new answer will be: You develop a tight network of knowledgable, supportive colleagues who can help guide you to the success you seek. The jury is still out on whether or not this experiment will work. I’ll be working hard to make sure that it does.
If you want an internship, you’ll need to go dig one up (and I know you can do it). I could give you a roadmap but Charlie already created one. For people looking to get their start in entrepreneurship, this is one of the single best pieces of content I have ever seen on the web. Grab some popcorn and take some notes. If you think I help you in your pursuit of an internship, don’t hesitate to drop me a short and specific email.
And if we ever do meet in person, and you are legit-sauce entrepreneur, know that I will still try to convince you to create a paid internship of your own. And I will offer to promote it for you. And I will write about it. And I will wait for you for a few years until you do it. Because it’s just so dang hard to convince you guys, but it’s totally worth it.

So for now, if you want to learn how to grow a business from me, come join me in the Philippines. I have no idea when our next internship will be, or if we’ll ever have one. Anyway, next time we’ll be looking for a “team member,” not an “intern.”

Onwards and upwards.

Cheers,

Dan

PS, I love twitter.

PPS, you can hop on my private mailing list here:

TMBA12 – Our Mindset Manifesto : Lessons From 5 Years of Running a Business

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 13:51:57 +0000

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.

Click to Subscribe

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.

Listen to this podcast and learn:

Why mindset issues are more important than market issues (and how to identify them).
The true cost of paying attention (and how to protect it from the Vampires in your life).
Why if you can’t “find your 5 hours” I’ll bet against your ability to grow a successful business.
And the one thing I wish I would done differently when I was just getting started.

People on this show:

Dan (@TropicalMBA)

Episode length: 22:10

Subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio by clicking this link.

If you don’t like iTunes, here’s the MP3 file–> [DOWNLOAD MP3]

Cheers,
Dan

PS, we always release TMBA launches to the DC before we release to anyone else – if you want pre-pre-notification (usually 24 hours before) then it’s probably worth it to sign-up

Everyone thought I was nuts, lucky, or both…

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 13:03:18 +0000

“Entrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources currently controlled.” - Howard Stevenson

A few days ago one of the new guys in the DC stopped by to chat about business and life. As the evening wore on, we found ourselves discussing a familiar topic– entrepreneurial loneliness. His friends and family think he’s nuts!

I could relate to him. When I got started everyone thought I was nuts too.

He asked what my people thought of me now, 5 years later.

I guessed: Lucky?

“Yeah it was easy for you because…”

Way back in 2006, after doing a little web marketing and reading a bunch of blogs, a simple idea got stuck in my head: you can make a living from your laptop.

The more I learned about entrepreneurship, the less it seemed crazy, risky, or even weird. It was just an option.

The opportunity to make my way around the world as an expat was something I valued more than living like the others around me.

I was also at the point where I didn’t feel like I had much to lose. It would have been at least another 5 years until I made my way to the corner office– and nothing against the guys who made it there, but I didn’t really want to be like them anyway.

Why pick a script when you can write one?

Every time you want to make any important decision, there are two possible courses of action. You can look at the array of choices that present themselves, pick the best available option and try to make it fit. Or, you can do what the true entrepreneur does: Figure out the best conceivable option and then make it available. – From Breakthrough Entrepreneurship (ref) by Jon Burgstone

That has a hell of a ring to it. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could move around the planet when you wanted and take on projects that interest you?

I think so too.

Of course my friend and I have been on the winning end of a million lucky breaks. You gotta be. So does the doctor, the lawyer, and the new father with the corporate gig.

When we heard about the opportunity to make money from our laptops, we believed it. We made it a daily priority and, one way or another, we made it happen.

I can understand how these things look like luck when you don’t see them coming.

But like I said, there’s a couple blogs out there that made it clear:

You can make a living from your laptop.

Cheers,

Dan

PS, I micro-blog on Twitter.

PPS, you can hear about the products I’m creating for entrepreneurs (including residence for entrepreneurs in South East Asia) by putting your email into the form below:

5 Reasons To Love Vietnam

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Wed, 30 May 2012 13:46:35 +0000

Relative to it’s neighbors, Vietnam is short on superlatives for people planning trips. Want great beaches? Thailand. Want amazing temples? Cambodia. How about great surfing? Bali. Business opportunities? Philippines. Awesome big city? Bangkok. And so on.

Pile on the somewhat salty reputation of the Vietnamese, and the indisputable reality that low level vendors will try to rip you off (it’s getting better…), and we’ve got a little bit of a PR problem.

Even though those superlatives are essentially true, I think if you are planning a short to medium length trip to South East Asia, Vietnam is where I would suggest you focus your time.

Vietnam was the first place I expatriated to back in 2009, but my love affair with Vietnam and it’s culture started way back in 2001. At that time I recall the immigration officer in Hanoi slowly looking at my passport, and then up at me and I sort of got the “what are you doing here?” look.

A few days later my friends and I were effectively detained for 4 hours for for taking a photo of a government building from a busy street. That kind of thing won’t happen much anymore. A few weeks ago I decided to sneak back to Vietnam to have a look and to visit some old friends.

I was only going to stay for a week, but I ended up extending my trip. I pretty much had to be drug out of the place.

Here’s 5 reasons I love Vietnam:

Food.

I can’t walk by a food vendor in this entire country. I’ve never been anywhere where I enjoy eating more. I’m certain I gained 5 pounds in the past week just looking for excuses to eat. Mealtime in Vietnam is every time I walk by something that smells good. Elemental and fresh, Vietnamese food is a concert of elegant herbs, noodles, lovingly prepared broths, and expertly prepared meats– and best of all– it’s eaten on the street.

The food intelligence of the average Vietnamese person is astounding.

Internet.

WIFI in South East Asia is improving rapidly. The speeds in Vietnam were easily 3 to 4X what they were when I lived there in 2009. We all know it’s possible to run your world-class web business from Singapore (duh) and now Bangkok– I’ll officially add Hanoi and Saigon to the list. I can run conference calls from both (randomly selected) hotel rooms I’ve stayed at. I didn’t ask if they had “good” WIFI– I just asked if they had WIFI at all.

Cafe culture.

For those of you not familiar with Vietnam, you might be surprised to hear that it has the best cafe culture I have yet to experience. Coffee and tea are a huge deal here. There’s a cafe on every corner. Pick your taste– hip joints that are open 24hours, secluded garden terraces, business cafes– they’ve pretty much got it all. WIFI signals are abundant and you won’t get the stink eye for camping out at a cafe– it’s a national pastime.

Great cities.

I’ll try to give you an impressionistic tag cluster:

Hanoi: cafes, tree-lined streets, backpacker beer joints, Ho Chi Minh’s moseleum and the temple of literature, lakes and seasons, chilly winters and summer floods, NGOs and government officials, festivals and boutiques on the street, proud.

Saigon: nightlife and big bowls of Pho, China Town and markets, American Chamber of commerce and HSBC capital managers, motorcycle madness and the biggest mall in a mini-Singapore, international airport, rich, loud, and friendly.

Aside from the numerous places I’d suggest you visit while in Vietnam, there probably aren’t too many places entrepreneurs would want to base themselves outside of the two major cities. One notable exception to this would be Nha Trang– a beachy ‘lifestyle’ oriented town that’s great fun, just an overnight bussride or short fligh from Saigon.

If you do plan to visit Vietnam, I’m happy to answer any questions you might have. Also if you’ve got some favorite spots in Viet, I’d love to hear them. I’m heading back in July for some serious traveling! :)

Cheers,

Dan

PS, I love twitter.

PPS, you can get on my mailing list by putting your name in the form below (if you do so, I’ll send you the first 50 episodes of my podcast):

Could Renouncing US Citizenship Become Business as Usual?

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Tue, 22 May 2012 13:00:56 +0000

You can subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed here. I also like to tweet a lot.

Last week a huge media-storm erupted as it became public knowledge that Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin had filed to give up his US citizenship.

When I heard the news I didn’t even think twice about it. I guess I’m in a bit of an entrepreneurial bubble. My friends and I talk about citizenship, banking, and taxation on a daily basis. I do understand why these issues inspire heated debates, but for many of us who have lived abroad for long periods of time, issues around foreign residency and citizenship are matters of fact.

There’s a lot of great things about being an American who lives abroad– those are pretty well documented. There are also a lot of downsides.

Here’s a few:

Americans are taxed on their worldwide income. “The United States is the only major country which taxes based on citizenship rather than residency.” [source]
Americans need to tell the IRS about any bank account or company they have any control over. It might sound like no big deal, but add a few small investments to your portfolio and all of a sudden you’ve got a big headache on your hands. What makes it even worse is that…
The US tax code is terribly complex, confusing, and expensive to comply with. This is the case even for highly experienced professionals in the game for decades.
Many banks and overseas professionals won’t deal with Americans. It’s looking like this is about to get a lot worse. “The foreign banks also must provide an annual report of the account balance, gross receipts and gross withdrawals of the U.S. account holders.” [Source: MSN]

It’s no wonder that many long term US expats would prefer to take on another citizenship. So far, the US hasn’t looked kindly on individuals who have made such a decision. Recently, Senators Casey and Schumer have gone so far as to suggest that the penalty for citizens leaving the USA for tax reasons should be a lifetime ban from re-entering.

It’s already pretty bad, check out these current policies for US citizens who decide to renounce:

In 1996, the U.S. changed its immigration law to include a provision to “name and shame” renunciants… In 2008, Congress enacted… an “exit tax” … effective June 2008, U.S. citizens who renounce their citizenship are subject under certain circumstances to an expatriation tax, which is meant to extract from the expatriate taxes that would have been paid had he remained a citizen. [source]

A lot of blogs bemoan the “big brother” tendencies of the American government.

I see their point, but I also see a lot of the US government’s legislation efforts as part of a power dialectic. The government is responding to the unprecedented level of freedoms its citizens possess.

In the 1980′s, you couldn’t just jump on a plane and open up a few offshore companies for your small internet business. The US never really had to compete with Hong Kong before for small business entrepreneurs.

The decision to renounce American citizenship will ultimately come down to business as usual.

Remember way back in the early 2000′s when you and your family members would argue about whether or not companies should send their manufacturing to China? (oh wait, that was me!) 5 years later when they went to Best Buy to buy a cheap plasma screen, they probably didn’t care at all where it was made. And last Christmas when they went to get a new smartphone, they didn’t think for a moment where it was manufactured.

It’ll likely go the same way with citizenships. Who can do it better and cheaper?

If American legislators continue to be a royal pain in the ass in the coming decades, and entrepreneurs continue to gain power and agency (and it’s the type of power they can successfully maintain abroad), they will likely continue to renounce in record numbers.

Why not let people leave peacefully and invite the best and the brightest who really want to contribute?

Schumer and Casey want to ban people like Eduardo– a guy who helped build perhaps the single most important American company in the past 5 years– from ever returning to the USA. (Ok, maybe he didn’t build it, it’s been a while since I’ve seen the movie).

Here’s something I know from my experience of living abroad– being an American citizen and passport holder is one of the most desirable distinctions in the world. For every one Eduardo there’s 100′s of thousands of intelligent, ambitious entrepreneurs all over the globe who would kill to do the same thing he did– build the next great world-changing company on American soil.

We should get more aggressive about opening our doors to them. If after they have a billion dollar IPO, they decide to go elsewhere, let’s try not to be jerks about it.

Cheers,

Dan

PS, over 9,000 “people” follow me on Twitter. Join them and follow my nascent comedy career.

PPS, you can get on my mailing list by putting your email in the form below:

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Audio Content – How (and Why) To Create a Great Podcast

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Tue, 15 May 2012 12:12:50 +0000

As many of you know, I’m a podcast fanatic. I was listening to podcasts years before I ever started recording my own shows (you can read about my podcasts at this link).

If you are just getting started, don’t feel like you missed the dance. When I started a podcast in 2009, a lot of people were saying that “podcasting was dead.” ಠ_ಠ

By the end of this article I want to:

Help you make all the basic technology decisions in less than an hour so you can get started creating a great show as soon as possible.
Share with you the most important podcasting strategies and tips I’ve learned in the past few years.

With any luck, a little bit of my irrational enthusiasm for the medium will wear off on you. I’m a firm believer that podcasting can get you money, friends, lovers, ideas, advice, quality karma, and good times. Sound good? If you are at a sticking point in getting your podcast off of the ground, let me know in the comments, and I’ll do my best to help you.

Let’s get started…

“There’s all the difference in the world between having something to say, and having to say something.” ― John Dewey

Before you hit record, make sure you have something to say.

Even if you have a crappy microphone and a mediocre blog design, you can create a meaningful podcast and change people’s lives for the better.

Most people who start a podcast will focus on their design, their sound mapping, what kinds of guests they are going to have, and the promotion. How am I gonna tweet the crap out of this podcast?!

You shouldn’t be worrying about that stuff. You don’t need that crap. You need something to say. You can’t phone it in like a lot of the big guys. Nobody wants to hear the next interview unless you are somebody. The way to being a somebody is having something to say.

Here’s some strategies for developing a voice:

Don’t like something that’s popular? Fix it. Does the Lifestyle Business Podcast grind your gears? Good. Start a podcast that’s better. You’ve got the format, the basic topics, subject, and even the basic content structure. All you need to do is improve it. Focus it on bloggers? Cool. Have a live call format? Awesome. Sick of those douchey hosts? You can solve that. Rip, Pivot, and Jam!
Focus on solving specific problems. A great hack to having something to say is focusing your energy on specific problems. Even if you are boring at the beginning (it’s tough not to be!), we’ll still listen because we want to hear the goods. Worried you won’t be able to come up with something to talk about every week? Join the club. Sure it’s hard– just because your podcast is about “link building” doesn’t mean you can’t talk about the things that matter most to you. Really. I’m serious.
Talk about a scene. There aren’t enough podcasts that focus on ‘scenes’ on the internet. Everybody still thinks we should be focused on creating evergreen or cornerstone content. That’s fine and good. Let everyone else do that. By focusing on stuff that’s topical, you can hack your way to something to say.
Be a thoughtful filter. This is an idea that Jay and Sterling focused on in this episode of IBM. They give an interesting example of “Latest in Paleo” as a great podcast that acts as a filter for all kinds of paleo information, even though the host isn’t a world-recognized expert.

Speaking of strategy…

After 4 months of podcasting and hard work, only 30 listeners subscribed to my show.

I started the Lifestyle Business Podcast at the end of July in 2009. I just checked my Feedburner stats: by the end of December 2009 it looks like I had about 30 people listening to the show via an iTunes subscription.

After 4 months of work and 18 episodes of content… 30 subscribers.

How did I feel about that? To be honest, I think I was pretty pumped. That’s 30 more people than had ever listened to me before.

And you know what’s what? I recently learned that two of those 30 listeners were Rob Walling (the entrepreneur) and David Hehenberger (the guy who’s helping me grow my business). Isn’t that something?

* * *

The benefits of podcasting over written text.

I wonder about our recent hyper-fast launch of the TMBA start-up sessions (I didn’t even get to put up a public sales offering at the blog) as an example of the power of audio as a selling tool. The product was complex. It also asked that customers put a great deal of trust in us. If I were to put out another product like that, and I could only create a sales letter or an audio podcast, there’s no question I’d chose podcast.

Here’s some more benefits of audio I’ve noticed over the years:

It’s easier to build trust with your audience. I feel more affinity towards podcasters than video publishers and blog writers. It might have something to do with the total amount of time I’ve spent with them. Written and video content competes with everything else on my computer. Also, I’m looking at video publishers, whereas I’m living with podcasters. They are accompanying me on my drives, my walks, eating lunch with them discussing topics that are important to me. My engagement level is much higher.
It’s easier to display your chops. There’s a lot popular business bloggers who’ve never laid eyes on a balance sheet. Once you fire up the mic, it’s tough to fake it. Separate yourself from the poseurs by talking through your listener’s problems live.
When it counts, listeners are more likely to convert. When it comes to high value conversions, like meeting up in person, attending live events, or buying high ticket products, I’d take a much smaller podcast audience over a broader written blog audience. Again, no science here, just food for thought.

How do I get rankings in iTunes?

I don’t know. But here’s some things that I think I’ve learned.

If you can get a great podcast badge to associate with your mp3 files and audio feed, do so. When you launch your podcast, design a great 300 x 300 graphic (it’s possible Apple employees review them) and try to get people to mail for it. Total downloads, velocity of subscriber increases, and quality of graphic seem to be factors. If you have any information on this, I’d love to know.
Diversify your ID3 tags on your mp3 file. Don’t just call every episode “The Me Show 01.” People will go onto iTunes and search for terms they are interested in, and if your show has those keyterms in it’s title, it’s likely to pop up. If a particular episode is addressing something useful, be sure to mention it in the title.
Ask your listeners to review your podcast. Again, I just think this has something to do with it. Ian and I read our 5 star reviews on our show and I believe this has inspired a lot of our listeners to take the time to head over to iTunes and support our program.

There’s more– iTunes isn’t a great traffic diver.

I just took this screenshot 5 minutes ago. Not bad placement at all. This is the screen users see when they go to iTunes and click the “business podcasts” menu. Hello, Dave Ramsey.

We aren’t on the top page every day, but I’d say we’ve been showing up consistently for the last 6 months or so. I suppose a lot of our listeners find us through iTunes, but we aren’t getting hundreds of new subscribers every week or anything close. From my experience the best ways to get new listeners is to create a great show and get your listeners talking about it to their friends. The next best way is to go onto other shows.

A featured placement on iTunes is nice, but it likely won’t make or break your brand.

5 elements of a great podcast performance.

Switch topics fast. Don’t close every thread. Leave stuff and “call it back” like a comedian. Consider the way Howard Stern never lets a conversation linger. Howard’s greatest skill isn’t being interesting (that’s Adam Carolla’s talent), it’s guiding each conversation to where it’s most interesting. If your point loses steam, drop the thread and leave it open. It’s tough at the beginning– just dropping uninteresting stuff and moving on– it gets fun once you get used to it.
Give your listeners hooks to hang their hats on. This is a concept pulled from Adam Carolla, one of my favorite podcasters. Your show can easily become an indistinguishable chunk of sound to the listeners. Your job is to segment that wall of sound. We do this through creating sections: intro, news, shouts, meat and potatoes, and quick tips. We also make sure to segment our meat and potatoes segment by providing lists, or by hinging on a few key points or definitions.
Balance personal updates with useful with useful and inspiring content. As you progress, people will likely want to hear more about your life and projects. When you are trying to get momentum at the beginning of your show, don’t bother asking what your co-host is up to unless they are doing a bong rip.
Consider the role of narrative in your show. Narrative is an undervalued part of great podcasts. Having narrative keeps listeners engaged over the long haul, and keeps your content from feeling random or non sequitur. An example of how you could do this on an interview show (where it is often thought to be difficult to inject narrative), is to ask every guest a set of similar questions, a la Inside the Actor’s Studio. You could play guests off each other by creating a debate, or you could invite people to pre-arranged discussions that fit into a series you are producing. Most great radio shows don’t hand over their show to their guests, they have their guests on their show. There’s an important distinction that many podcasters miss. The great interview podcasts, Fresh Air for example, spend hours of collective research before each guest comes on the show. Also notice that at the beginning of Fresh Air, Terry rarely gives the guests a chance to say “Thanks for having me” after she says “Welcome to Fresh Air.” Nice touch.
If you fee like an idiot, join the club. I remember feeling lame after recording the “Tao of the Hustle“– to date one of our most popular shows ever. That said, Ian and I have thrown away at least 10 episodes that we didn’t feel were up to par. I have no idea how to tell the difference between throwaways and sleeper hits. I still feel like an idiot. Again, join the club.

The 80/20 approach to great sounding audio.

I’m the first to admit my sound quality isn’t always the best. I travel way to much to keep conditions consistent. That said, I’ve learned a lot about audio production over the past few years.

Never record audio from your sound card. The circular hole on the side of your computer goes directly to your sound card. You don’t want to record on microphones that go there. You want a mic that plugs in with USB. If you are alone, or recording conversations on Skype (use Pamela for PC, Call Recorder for Mac) use this Logitech USB mic. You can sound like a pro on this thing, just make sure you put the mic just above your nose. That’ll remove the “pops.” If you want to record people in a room, I recommend the Blue Yetti. If you are going to be traveling, the Yetti won’t work. I use a little Sony recorder like this one, which works really well. Cliff Ravenscraft has some suggestions on this front. Don’t get caught up with the gear. As long as you aren’t going through your sound card, and are using a ‘real’ mic (not you computer mic) you’ll sound good. If you have to record directly from your Macbook, the quality of the mics is getting pretty good, so it’s not a dealbreaker. Don’t let the issue of mics stop you from creating a show.

You can rock your podcast from these bad boys.
Ambient noise is a lesser sin than wind and echo. Especially with good quality mics, having a little bit of noise in the background can be fine. Almost all of our Tropical Talk Radio podcasts have ambient noise and they are fine. What kills your audio tracks is echo and wind. Avoid them at all costs. Quick tip: NPR reporters often do interviews in their cars in order to get a great sound environment.
Keep your files in WAV format until the last export. This one is tough for us to follow since we travel a lot and .wav files are tough to transfer to our editor. Podcast files are .mp3 format, which reduces the quality quite a bit. Using mp3s in the editing stages often creates funky sounds when you process the sound, so if you are having your interviewee send you their side of the audio, make sure they send you .wav not .mp3.
If you have more than one person on your podcast, apply the levelator. This is a problem we’ve often had in our show, one of our voices is much louder than the other’s. More than being annoying, this can actually hurt your listeners ears. Send your audio file through the levelator algo and all should be right in the world.
***MOST IMPORTANT TIP FOR PRO SOUND: Apply “lead vocal EQ” and “multi-band compression” to your podcast audio. If you are using Adobe Audition, apply “multiband compression” and “lead vocal EQ” to your podcast. That’s the magic bullet– the difference between mousey podcasters and professional radio jocks. Compression. Most drive time DJs absolutely compress the crap out of their audio (as well as increase the bass for a deep tone). Do the same to your WAV recordings and you’ll instantly start to sound like a radio DJ yourself. More importantly, your listeners will be able to listen to your show and a high volume without hurting their ears. Compression takes away audio “spikes” that hurt listener’s ears. Our first 50 episodes didn’t have compression. They suck to listen to in cars and on airplanes (where the ambient noise is high and listeners need to jack up the sound). Adobe Audition is great at this, but the FREE Audacity works as well, you’ll just need to spin the knobs a bit on the EQ and compression effects in order to get something that sounds pro. The basic effects of “bass boost” and “compression” will work fine if you are trying to get something listenable out the door.

The nuts and bolts stuff we use.

Use iTunes to attach your podcast badge and description tags

Ideally, you’d use Adobe Audition ($300+ USD) which has some awesome features. If you aren’t balling though, there is no reason to not just use…
Audacity with LAME plugin so you can export your show as an .mp3.
Logitech headsets (most of the time), the Blue Yetti (for when a 2 or more people are in the room), and the Sony ICD recorder for travel interviews. Note the Blue Yetti mic is cool, but is huge and weights a million pounds. Not for travelers.
Podcasting plugin. For publishing audio content to your WordPress blog and making sure the show gets to iTunes.
Feedburner to syndicate the show to iTunes.
Use iTunes to add ID3 description tags (like Title, Genre, Artist) to your .mp3 files. Be sure to add a picture!!!
Kall8 for a cheap and simple way for listeners to leave you voicemails.

Two final thoughts on podcast production.

Mp3 Badges (the image associated with your show) are often undervalued: Your 300 x 300 podcast badge. It looks badass on an iPhone (make sure you associate the image with the mp3 file during final export!) and I’ve heard rumors that Apple employes personally review them for quality and inclusion on notable lists.
Sound mapping is often overvalued: Intro music, sound mapping, and transition clips aren’t important. They are nice and all, but I’ve actually seen a handful of new podcasters get hung up on this issue for weeks. Please don’t do that. All the intro music in the world isn’t going to change how good your content is. I’m going to be able to tell right away whether or not I trust you. Whether or not you know what you are talking about. Focus there. Put great content up with limited production and get the ball rolling. Work in music when you have the time, resources, and assurance that you are going to keep going forward. If you want some music bedding for your first show, I recommend you can export some really nice pre-made stuff directly from Garagband and use it until you want to go pro. Some of the biggest shows in the world are just the jock introducing the show over a basic music bed.

Not interested in creating your own podcast but want to listen to some great ones?

Here are some shows that I love listening to (NOTE: all links will launch iTunes). I’ll focus on business shows today. The full list is pretty overwhelming. If you already listen to any of these shows, consider clicking through to give the publisher a 5-star review. I’m sure it would mean a lot to them.

My shows: Lifestyle Business Podcast, Tropical Talk Radio.
Startups for the Rest of Us (Bootstrapped start-ups).
Foolish Adventure (Content marketing).
Mixergy (In-depth interviews with entrepreneurs, mostly in the internet space).
Internet Business Mastery (Content marketing and audience based businesses + mindset).
Smart Passive Income Podcast (Transparent online marketing practices and tools).
Adsense Flippers Podcast (Niche sites, Adsense, outsourcing, living in the Philippines, being a boss).
Podcast Answer Man (Podcasting, mindset, online marketing).
This Week in Startups with Jason Calicanis (Venture backed startups, angel investing, news, interviews).
Web Domination Podcast (TBD, first episode was awesome).
This is Your Life Podcast (Mindset)
BlogcastFM (Interviews from around the blogosphere).

Please let me know if you have any suggestions for me!

Not done yet? Here’s some further reading:

“How to Launch a Podcast in One Day” by Dan Norris
“How I Reached #1 on iTunes : A Guide to Launching a Podcast” by Glen Allsopp
Anything on Podcast Answer Man.com (I haven’t yet talked to Cliff about it, but I know he has a private podcasting mastermind. I’m sure it’s great).

That’s it! If you’ve got any questions or hangups, let me know in the comments.

Cheers,

Dan

@TropicalMBA

PS, you can get on my private mailing list by putting your email address into the form below. If you do, you’ll instantly get a download link to our first 50 podcast episodes:

Want to use this cool iTunes subscription panel on your website? Here’s a free PDF download.. Just make sure to take off the Lifestyle Business Podcast graphics! :)

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10 Things You Need to Give Up to Be an Entrepreneur

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Tue, 08 May 2012 13:52:16 +0000

There was a nice post about being happy that was everywhere on Facebook last week. One of my favorite bloggers, Rob Walling, did a great job of adapting it for entrepreneurs on his podcast. It got me thinking of some of the things I’ve given up in order to build a business. Here they are:

1. “Success.” I wasn’t able to quit my job until I gave up on the vague ideas I had about success. Stuff like having a good job and making a good salary. I remember saying to myself: it’s possible that nobody will ever think you are successful.

When my answer was finally “screw it,” I quit. At the time I did not realize how fulfilling it would be to work directly with customers and products I was passionate about.

2. Over-worrying about screwing up people’s lives (or being perfect for your customers). If you try to make meaningful change with your business, you will create collateral damage. Period. Even relatively benign assertions like: “if you want to make some extra money on the side, try building some niche sites” can waste a year of somebody’s spare time. I’ve seen it happen. Seems harmless, eh?

3. Reliance on cultural scripts for decision making. I’ll share something embarrassing: one of my biggest concerns with following the entrepreneurial “weird expat” path was that I wouldn’t be able to find a wife. The cultural script I was working off of said something like: position yourself in a nice secondary US city, have a high-quality job, and watch the wife candidates flow in.

To hardcore entrepreneurs, this might sound like a petty concern, but to me it was a meaningful fear I had to overcome. I know more than one guy who never followed his dreams of being a musician or of traveling abroad or of starting a small business because they thought it would hurt their chances of meeting ‘The One.’

4. Your desire to make money. This might be different for other professions, but for entrepreneurs, money focus can destroy businesses. Money forces you to compromise your values, which should be at the core of great products and company cultures.

A money focus inspires short-sightedness. If you could just do something and ::: BOOM! ::: make money from it, it wouldn’t be that valuable. Entrepreneurs focus on value. Specific, elusive, unseen– it can’t be bought and sold on the open market.

Have you ever spoken to full time investors in financial markets? These are generally people 100% motivated by money. Ask them “if you had a great year, what percentage would you make on your money?” You’ll hear answers ranging from 11 to 20 percent, generally. Now ask the same question to an entrepreneur. 20% would very much be on the low end.

5. Your desire to avoid feeling like an idiot. A month ago I set up a writer’s mastermind group (which has been hugely useful to me). We’ve all tried to address this issue of “feeling stupid” head on. It’s been liberating to post half-baked, ambitious projects in our group chat.

I put a lot of stuff out there, and I suspect most of it doesn’t work. I’m dumb and dangerous, and that’s probably the way it goes for many entrepreneurs. The punchline is that the small percentage of good stuff that sticks around and gets refined, re-worked, and cultivated. One day you wake up with something great. Speaking of dumb, go ahead and download my first 50 podcasts if you want a confidence boost!

6. Your fear of change. I was listening to (a must-listen) Mixergy episode today and Robert made a point. Let’s call it the “paleo theory of fear.” His point: we are wired to fear change. I suppose that’s because back in the good old days, when things changed, you died. Now, not so much. Learning how to both enjoy and engineer change is the foundation of business success. I’ve found that over the years the idea of re-working everything becomes more thrilling and I seek change out.

7. What you are doing right now. Something popped out of my mouth the other day as my good friend (and US expat tax guy) David McKeegan was interviewing me for his podcast. He was asking me about hiring and said “why do business owners find it so difficult to relinquish control and let other people run their business?”

My response got us laughing: “they aren’t having a hard time relinquishing control, they are having a hard time finding something better to do.”

9 times out of 10 that’s true. It’s one of the things I love about creative pursuits in general– you are always at square one. You are always in danger of utter failure. Where you play, there isn’t any sure thing. Read this book and watch a software legend bomb. Listen to John Mayer talk about how songwriting is a great equalizer.

It’s the same with writing and entrepreneurship. Falling back on your cash flows is the same thing as falling back on a job. Often I’ll fail, but I’m always looking for ways to move on and find something more important to do. Hopefully I can backfill the space I create with processes and team members.

8. Your self-focus. Or: putting your immediate needs in front of the principle or the project. This is the part of the post where I diverge from the hoards of broke-ass personal development bloggers telling you to express yourself more fully or follow passion and stuff like that. Yes, I’m all about that. But we are talking about being Samurai’s here– it’s tough to stay focused on meaningful projects when our passion for Youtube lurks! Entrepreneurship is a strange mix of personal drive and egoless ear-to-the-ground care. It’s a dichotomy I’m fascinated by.

9. Following the advice of others. Have I ever ever mentioned the sharks or the dolphins thing on this blog? Sharks and dolphins are two different types of entrepreneurs. There’s a lot of things that distinguish them. Here’s one: dolphins listen to advice, sharks watch it. Be a shark. Or rather, watch me to tell you to be a shark.

10. Your desire to avoid conflict. For all the kumbaya talk in the blogosphere, you’ll notice that when you meet-up with some of your favorite peace, love, and change bloggers that they’ve got some teeth. I’ve met some of the kindest online personas (and most popular) on the planet, and despite what you see online, they are very often the object of controversy, conflict, extortion attempts, petty attacks, and outright jealousy.

Get in line. It’s par for the course. Asserting yourself in the world means you’ll have detractors. Some of them might even be those closest to you. It’s okay. I try to be thankful for the attention in the first place, pick the places I ought to improve, and try to understand precisely which elements of the feedback are about my projects and which are really a reflection of their own ideas about themselves.

That’s it. I’d be grateful to hear yours.

Cheers,

Dan

PS, if you liked this article you can follow my nacent comedy career on Twitter, or do the Facebook thing (this will be good for photos from our TMBA summer session).

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Stuck at Niche Selection – A Sign of the Resistance?

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Fri, 04 May 2012 13:37:40 +0000

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about resistance and how it manifests in our lives.

Resistance is more than mere procrastination– it’s our deep inner fear of expression often masquerading as productive tasks or “stuff we have to do.”

It’s the VA you hired to write your copy. It’s the Indian development firm working on your web app. The resistance is the birthday party you needed to attend. Resistance is having an emotional obsession with the President’s job performance.

I know– I’m going a little McCarthy on the resistance. It’s probably overkill. Today, an extreme idea popped into my head: is our obsession with niche selection a symptom of the resistance?

Uh oh.

* * *

There’s a bunch of well-documented problems with niche selection. Here’s some:

Selecting one is seems to be the #1 sticking point for people hoping to be an entrepreneur.
It’s hard to fail with a niche. You might hang around the thing (failing) for years.
Selecting a niche feels too permanent. It’s difficult to emotionally commit.

It’s no wonder so many people can’t get past niche selection.

Now I know that might not sound all that revolutionary, but I’m not kidding around here– instead of thinking about a niche, you should be thinking about a specific product or service.

You’ll likely be in a bunch of niches over the years. The equity you build up over the years can follow you from niche to niche. Over the past 4 years I’ve sold everything from portable bars to cat furniture to SEO services to website development to make money online to outsourcing consulting — YOU NAME IT I’LL SELL IT! !!! :D

Thank god I didn’t select a niche! I selected products. Here’s two techniques I use to do that:

Rip, pivot, and jam – Identify products in a space you are interested in. Figure out if they make money. If they do, figure out what they don’t do. Or how you could do something similar but different. Better. More expensive. Different color. Different market. Different channel. Then GO! (That’s the jam part).
Brainstorm a nexus benefits / price / and rhythm – Instead of putting yourself through long walks week after week trying to decide if you really want to go after your passion of personal development, or entrepreneurship training, or personal fitness, just start pulling together a benefit cluster of a product or service you think should exist. Example: BENEFITS: -1 hr on the phone, 30 page ebook, 3 email follow-ups, forum access with 24 hr answer service. PRICE: $17 dollars RHYTHM: monthly recurring.

Then walk around for a few days asking everyone you come in contact with (call them if you must): will you buy this from me?

A few years later, when you are cash flowing and hiring people to keep up with the demand, you can take a long weekend and figure out what niche you are going to get into. :)

Cheers,

Dan

PS, last week I bought Twitter. It’s pretty cool. The fish photo is form my buddy Tommy Schultz. I think he wants to rank for Bali Surf Photography, or something.

PPS, you can get on my mailing list by putting your email address in the form below:

31 Weird Phrases We Use in Our Business

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Wed, 02 May 2012 12:47:26 +0000

I was so surprised by the cool introduction that Elisa helped to make for our 100th podcast episode. She combined a bunch of funny outtakes from our past episodes. Listening to the intro made me realize we’ve developed our own lingo over the last few years.

In this post I’ll outline some terms that are often used in our business and immediate group of entrepreneurial contacts, including members of the DC, listeners to the podcast, and folks we hang with here in Asia.

I enjoy finding fresh ways to say stuff, even when they often don’t work out as planned. I’m sure I stole most of these terms from other people. If you like any of these, I invite you to do the same. Some are unique, some, not so much.

If you have any cool words or phrases that you love to use in your business, I’d love to hear them.

Bench pressing - building every single functional area of a a new revenue stream in a short amount of time– by yourself.
Cambodia cash – a more precise definition of “passive income,” residual income from web properties that doesn’t require phone support or synchronous customer service.
“There’s no margin in it” - Used more broadly in personal situations, means “it’s not worth it.”
“GTDin it” - A reference to Getting Things Done, the most important productivity book I’ve read so far.
Delegate or delete - an aggressive approach to GTD principles where a creative entrepreneur either forwards inbox tasks onto a team member, or deletes the email altogether.
Exit velocity - The collective sum of resources, cash, experience, and traction that an entrepreneur has when they quit their job. A single guy who has never had a job who moves to Thailand to build Adsense sites has a low exit velocity, whereas former executives with industry experience bootstrapping a software business would have a high exit velocity.
Legal drug money - profits created from mundane high-margin products that are relatively easy to source, produce, or create. Software tools, ebooks, financial products, etc.
Balla - n. one who displays extraordinary entrepreneurial prowess. adj. Very cool, admirable.
“Entrepreneur” - anyone with a website.
Boss socks – awesome or great.
Baselining – Reducing your expenses as low as possible to increase your runway.
Runway – How long you can afford to live without having to get a job.
Entrepreneurial Michael Jordan – Matt Bellemare.
Chops index – how talented of an entrepreneur others perceive you to be.
Kids – employees who are younger than you.
The silent majority – The 99% of the consumers of your content or products who never present themselves to you via Facebook, Twitter, email, telephone, or the comments section of your blog.
Biznass - business.
Gas (also: “gasin’ it) - “give a shit.” To “gas it” is apply yourself with extreme focus on a task. (Also: grind, jam, bang).
DCer – An active member of the Dynamite Circle forum.
“Noted with thanks!” - A uniquely Chinese (and often parodied) way to express that you’ve received an email.
Bustin’ a shin – Not fully committing to an action or a decision. “I busted a shin on that last sales letter, I should have made it longer.”
Yeah buddy – A way to agree with gusto.
Half stack – A mediocre employee with no vision or proactive attitude.
The 1000 day principle – The business theory that suggests it will take 1000 days from when you issue your first invoice to when your bootstrapped start-up will replace a professional level salary.
Geeks on the beach – codename for any entrepreneurial meet-up in Puerto Galera, Philippines.
A retail blog vs. a wholesale blog – This distinction can apply to podcasts, bands, authors, and a lot more. “Wholesale” indicates that advanced level consumers, industry insiders, or other serious practitioners follow the content/personality etc. “Retail” content generally has more mass appeal. The Lifestyle Business Podcast, as an example, was always intended to be a “wholesale” blog. We wanted to speak to our peers, not “teach people the way!” The Pixies are a famous wholesale band (other band leaders listened to them for ideas), whereas Nirvana was a more retail effort.
Derps – hapless entrepreneurs, contractors, or employees.
Flips – Filipinos.
The Internet marketing vortex – the trap many marketers get into, making money by teaching people how to make money. Few survive.
EOM – end of message. Used in the subject line of emails that have no body text.
“Thanks in advance” – a universally douchey and presumptuous tactic used in email by people with boring corporate jobs.

Got any other fun ones?

Happy hustlin’,

Dan

PS, I’m currently winning at Twitter.

PPS, thanks in advance for signing up for my mailing list:

Affiliate Commissions Are Like Exclamation Points

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Tue, 01 May 2012 14:39:29 +0000

There’s been a lot of excitement around the interwebs about the latest Only72 sale. There’s also been a lot of groaning. I saw somebody on Facebook say “these types of launches are so two years ago.”

I’ve got nothing but love for the guys behind this product and think the thing is brilliant. Hearing about the sale got me digging through my drafts folder. I’ve written some half-baked thoughts on adding affiliate margin to your information products. I figured now is as good a time as any to share them.

Ever hear the old copywriting tip about exclamation points? It says that exclamation points are often an indication that words preceding the exclamation are not strong enough. For example:

This new book is really amazing! vs…
This is the best book I’ve read in 2012.

I think you can say something similar about adding a wide margin to your information product for affiliates. Doing so often indicates that your product isn’t strong enough to sell itself. It’s not compelling enough for people to distribute it without payment.

I don’t think enough people question the dogma that you need to have an affiliate program. Many people have told me I’m nuts for not having an affiliate program for the Dynamite Circle.

My response has always been: if I added a margin in for affiliates, first off it would be way more expensive, but perhaps even more importantly, people would just recommend it to anyone. The people being told about it wouldn’t know if they were being told because of the money or because it was actually a good product for them.

This to me seems as obvious as the internet marketing orthodoxy of “you must have an affiliate program!”

I suppose if I were asked for advice on the matter I’d say: if your information product sales depend on your relationship with your audience, you shouldn’t have affiliates.

Yes, you’ll make more on launch day, but I believe you are turning off more people than you think.

The reason is twofold: 1) you aren’t giving them a good deal and 2) you are compromising your integrity by mentioning stuff just for the money (and inspiring your colleagues to do the same).

If you double your info product price for affiliates, you are asking your audience to fund your inefficient distribution. That works for you. Not them. We all know you could take a little more time to figure this out for your customers (instead of forwarding the costs on to them) and give them the same great product at a great price.

If you did, maybe you wouldn’t have to launch so much.

* * *

I’m not trying to be a business moralist here-- I think it hurts businesses to launch relationship-oriented information products that require affiliate participation in order to be a success. You’ve gotta keep launch launch launching! Meanwhile you are probably burning out your affiliates and readers. Why not just build something that has enough value that people might mention it to each other?

It’s almost a patronizing thing to say, but there are so many internet marketing dogmas that few seem to question. Not have an affiliate program? Offensive! Stupid!

What I find offensive is paying double just for the privilege of having heard about it.

* * *

When to use affiliate approaches? I believe affiliate commissions are a great way to move your product, and part of the reason I’m thinking about this stuff is that we’ve been talking about increasing our use of affiliate links here at the blog.

In the case of Only72, Baker and Karol used their stature in the blogosphere to cut a deal that customers could not have cut for themselves. That’s a great value for people who wanted those products. I’m not 100% clear where I draw the strategic line here: do I feel great about paying a small portion of the ticket price to help fund the distribution for Bluehost or Virtual Staff Finder? Sure.

How about ponying up a couple hundred bucks for the next big mega-launch? Not so much.

What’s the distinction I’m looking for here?

Cheers,

Dan

PS, I’m the mayor of Twitter.

You Should Be Careful

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 13:01:42 +0000

People often say to others who are making big changes to ”be careful.” Sometimes they’ll follow up with something casual like: “you might mess up your career.”

Thanks.

Last week, when I was being told again to “be careful” in a situation in which it seemed completely irrelevant, I got to thinking: What would being careful even mean right now? Probably shutting up and doing nothing.

What is she really trying to say to me?

Unless the person urging you to be careful is being precise (e.g., when you install Windows 7, be careful to backup your old files) 9 times out of 10 “be careful” just looks like advice.

It’s a buzzkill, a downer– a show of no-confidence. In some situations, it’s a dream-zapper.

(Them) “55 in the fast lane”: “What are you gonna do about that new company you’ve been talking about?”

(You) “Action Jackson”: “I’m going to quit my job next week and finally focus full time on my start-up. I can’t freakin’ wait!”

(Them): “You should be careful…”

(You):

9 times out of 10 translation: “I’m not really entirely clear on what you are up to, so I think you should weight your options before you do anything rash. In the meantime, I’ll continue to be worried and or skeptical.”

By the way– the “meantime” ends when you start making money. Or get on Oprah. Both are pretty tough.

* * *

As I try to think back at the times people have told me to be careful with no precision, it’s almost 100% from the good of their hearts. They really care. They don’t want me to get into trouble, to sound like an idiot, or to do something I’ll regret. (By the way– too late, too late, and too late.)

When I explained my big plans to quit my job and start my own business, the #1 piece of advice I got was: be careful about that, you shouldn’t do it yet.

Be careful not to screw up everything you’ve worked for.

Be careful not to go down a path that would ruin your retirement.

Be careful not to anger your current employer.

* * *

It’s our most fragile ambitions and dreams that are attacked by “be careful.” Most of the time we bring it on to ourselves.

I’ve noticed the amount of “be carefuls” I receive are directly related to the amount of permission seeking I’m doing. If you know that people will be threatended or unsettled by your projects, don’t talk about them. Pros don’t ask for permission.

Of course, I’m not a pro yet. I’m a blabber mouth.

So I say to myself: stop talking about your start-up. Your book. Your big ideas about the future of that one thing. Your friends are just saying “I care about you.” And you’ve given them a chance to show it.

You want to build businesses? Write books? Tour the US playing rock music?

Go ahead.

Nobody is waiting.

It’s just you.

For a while.

My be careful list:

You need to be careful that…

you try to create your best work.
you go deep on your most important projects.
you don’t miss the opportunity.
you don’t shy away from difficult decisions.
you don’t waste your life.
you appreciate things.
you don’t let your immediate emotions highjack your life and work.
you have fun and play.
you have the confidence to do what you want, not what others think you should do.
you don’t self-destruct. That you don’t become your own impediment to success.
you don’t offload responsibility for your opinions and actions to others.
you don’t cultivate blind spots about your personality and capabilities.
you never become jealous or hateful of others around you.
you never keep tabs for the gifts you give.
you don’t complain too much.
you don’t talk to much.

Full of care.

My grandma used to have to the serenity prayer posted in her garage. I always thought it was cool. Here it is re-written for entrepreneurs:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the misgivings of those with inappropriate experience or perspective

The courage and sensitivity to identify the useful concerns (that are morally compelling)

And the wisdom to know the difference

(Also, while you’re at it please consider delivering on to me the undying stamina to make it happen).

Amen!

Dan

PS, would have preferred a better blog post? No problem! Here ya go:

Go Deep Young Man <– I think about blogging much like this blog describes. My work isn’t as good, though.
The Future of Blogging <– Ideas on how one might go deep.
The Story of My First Online Business <– The in-depth story of somebody who embodies it.

PPS, If you follow me on Twitter, I’ll try to make you laugh once a week. I’ll fail, mostly. But it’ll be fun.

You can get on my private mailing list by putting your email address into the form below:

Why Your Information Product Will Probably Fail : The Cambodia Cash Paradox

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 13:47:15 +0000

“Information products” are the bread and butter of 1st and 2nd wave internet marketers.

You know– ebooks, video series’, pamphlets, newsletters, high pressure sales pages, step-by-step membership sites, all that.

For all the talk of how great info-only business models are, I don’t see a lot of success in-person. I know my sample size is limited, but it got me thinking– maybe making the entrepreneurial leap with an info product is harder than we think.

I get it– info-ambitions are sexy. Did you hear the one about that guy who sells a hundred $97 ebooks a month? Wouldn’t you love to have a business like that? All you gotta do is record a few interviews and put up a sales letter and…

We’ll yeah, and I would love to have this car:

The problem? They’re difficult to get. I’ve done the research.

Same thing with a $100,000 ebook business. Good luck with that.

And I know what you are thinking: what about all those folks with $100,000 ebook businesses? Well, that’s true, there are a bunch of people doing that stuff. But I’m most concerned with identifying strategic approaches to success for bootstrapping entrepreneurs.

If you came to me and told me you were going to quit your job and start selling ebooks, I’d say, sure, you can. But my guess is that you are making it hard on yourself.

Having a successful information product is like dunking an alley-oop.

It’s an easy shot– if you can jump high enough. It’s not just that info products are the first thing to roll off of the tongue of anyone fresh off the Four Hour Work Week, it’s that they are structurally difficult to sell– and that’s not only because information wants to be free, man (although that’s a huge issue worth of a post itself… it’s reasonable to believe the value of your ebook or DVD series could dramatically drop from year to year).

Here’s two structural problems I’ve seen with bootstrappers starting with information products:

1. Spitballing with results oriented language.

Don’t use “results” language when you should be using “process” language. I often say it in conversation, “you’re confusing the result with the process.” By focusing on the process, you’ll get a better feel for the real costs involved.

Here are some examples:

Results (not always useful): Information products are a great way to monetize an audience.
Process (more likely to be useful): If you build a huge audience that trusts you over many years of work, they’ll want to buy a broad range of products and solutions from you.

Results: Ranking #1 for x key term with a hypothetical 2% opt-in rate will lead to a business with x in sales.
Process: Based on our research, SEO seems to be a viable distribution channel for our product line.

Results: I’ll build up a group of people who follow me then survey them to see what they want to buy, the product will build itself.
Process: If you solve important problems for people over the course of a few years, they’ll eventually start to pay you.

Results: I’ll build expert status in this niche buy interviewing other experts and then sell and info product that’ll be gangbusters.
Process: Become an expert.

2. Underestimating the effort required : The Cambodia Cash Principle (and Paradox)

PRINCIPLE : “Generally, the more appealing the source of income, the more resources you need to expend to get it.”
PARADOX: We are attracted to business models with highly leveraged income because we want to free up our time, but we have to spend an extraordinary amont of time (relative to other approaches) in order to develop the type of income that we see as “freeing.” Hopefuls often end up under-estimating the cash runway required to create those cash flows, and fail to make the entrepreneurial switch.

CORRELATE #1: The more appealing and scalable your product, the more resources it takes to create.

As a worker, the product you are creating is yourself as an employable person. That might start as you as a cubicle cowboy. That doesn’t take a lot of resources. You’ll probably make a resume, dress up nice, and show up.

As you move up the value chain, your evolution could like like this:–> freelancer –> consultant –> service provider –> creates products –> creates tools –> creates platforms.

The type of of income you create would evolve accordingly: salary –> contracts –> products –> recurring contracts –> Cambodia cash –> equity or shareholder value –> passive income.

CORRELATE #2: The more hands off your sales process, the more difficult it is to convert leads into sales.

This is a dead horse I love returning to. Most of the conversation in our circles revolves around stuff like SEO, PPC, and creating expert resources. That’s because those are the domain of our beloved passive income businesses. They are, however, not as effective at converting leads into paying customers.

What’s the best way to convert a lead into a sale? Having a personal relationship with them. It evolves from there: personal relationships –> sales meetings –> phone –> Skype –> email –> interviews –> social media –> SEO –> ads –> expert resources.

Ultimately blogging is a better way to reach your target market. What most of us don’t realize at the outset is how resource intensive scalable marketing practices are.

Implications of the Cambodia Cash principle:

If you never want to have a job again, you potentially hurt your chances by focusing on “passive income” style businesses at the start.
If you aren’t making a living from your website, the most explosive thing you can do is to start talking directly with your visitors.
The biggest barrier to developing more appealing types of income from products with scalable marketing is your immediate cash needs. The more time you spend putting food on the table, the less time you spend planting seeds that will take years to come up.
If you don’t have a huge and trusting audience of fans or affiliates, give away all your information, including whatever you were planning on hiding behind an opt-in.
An info product that provides the majority of the income for a business is much more likely to happen in businesses with developed cash flows, not a bootstrapped start-up situation.

It’s not unlike real life– Cambodia is the last stop on the train. And even when you get there, you’ll probably only want to stay a few weeks.

Cheers,
Dan

@TropicalMBA

PS, you can get on my private mailing list by putting your email address in the form below:

TMBA11 – What are Your Chances of Having $1,000,000 in 5 Years? (Hint: They Might Be Higher if You Move to China)

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 07:32:47 +0000

NOTE: Both of our TMBA summer start-up dates have sold out. Thank you for your support. I didn’t expect to see that. I thought I’d we’d be rocking a huge sales letter by now.

Click to Subscribe

This week I decided to get back to my roots, fire up my dorky headset, and do another Tropical Talk Radio (iTunes link).

Today we ask the question: do you think it’s likely that you’ll have $1,000,000 in your personal bank account in 5 years? You might be surprised by the way some young entrepreneurs answer the question.

I was first introduced to my guests Tim and Nick by my friend Sean Ogle, and since that time I’ve enjoyed following what they are up to in China (I’m also proud to call them DCers!).

These guys talk about doing business in China, and accelerating your entrepreneurial career by making the jump to Asia. I like the metaphor Tim and Nick use: “lose the [corporate] ladder, take the elevator.”

Tim and Nick from the Elevator Life

One of the most useful pieces of small business advice I’ve ever heard is: “9 out of 10 small businesses track with market.”

I believe the same principle can apply to your life and career. A rising tide lifts all boats.

Listen to this podcast and learn:

Why Tim and nick think it’s easy to just up and move to the world’s fastest growing economy, despite what outsiders might think.
Why you might not even need an business or working visa to get your start in China.
The monthly expenses of somebody living and working in China.
Some concrete tactics and approaches to moving to China yourself.

People on this show:

Tim and Nick (@TheElevatorLife)
Dan (@TropicalMBA)

Episode length: 15:39

Subscribe to Tropical Talk Radio by clicking this link.

If you don’t like iTunes, here’s the MP3 file–> [DOWNLOAD MP3]

Cheers,
Dan

PS, you can sign up for our mailing list and receive our first 50 podcast episodes by putting your email address in to the form below:

Our First Tropical MBA Class – Let’s Launch a New Business (or Product) Together

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 14:35:39 +0000

A few weeks ago Ian and I recorded a podcast where we asked the question– what if we invited a small group of entrepreneurs to a tropical island this summer and help them launch their startups?

The response was great– 50 people contacted us regarding the program in one way or another. One of the biggest pieces of feedback we heard was why wait?

Fair enough! Let’s get started!

What will the first Tropical MBA be?

You can hear more of the thinking, attitude, and approach in our podcast. But here’s the broad strokes:

An intensive 8-week program with your peers, my team, and expert mentors from our network. Great for new start-ups or existant businesses looking to get to the next level.
2-4 weeks in person instruction in the Philippines (2 weeks required, you can stay at the resort for a total of 4 weeks rent free, we’ll include that in the price).
1 on 1 coaching with Ian and myself. We’ll help you determine your minimum viable products or next level business strategy. We’ll be comprehensive and pry for all the details of your particular situation. We’ll be 100% honest with you and demand that the whole group operate the same. No ego padding allowed– successful businesses depend on great information, not flattery.
2 weeks of detailed instruction, masterminds, and planning before you venture to our quiet resort in the Philippines.
4 weeks of post-trip follow-up sessions, including a private sub-forum in the Dynamite Circle (including 6 months of free membership).
100% support and guidance from our technical and design team (some of whom will be on location). Nobody is going to get snagged up with basic technology issues.
Ballpark price for this event will be 2K. We’ll be including 4 weeks of lodging and 2 weeks of healthy food.
Not only tons of fun, but my personal goal is that attendees would feel that their time spent with us this summer was some of the most productive of their life.

Why is the price so low?

View from resort balcony.

I know it probably sounds like I’m full of crap, but the biggest piece of feedback I received from people is “raise the price!” A lot of people have asked us how we can make money at this price point.

The truth is, we won’t make money on this project. We are truly lucky to have a growing business on our hands (our Q1 annualized run rate is 1.5+ mil), so we don’t have build a ton of margin in to our fun projects.

This is what I’d want to do with my time anyway! I just want to make sure we cover our costs and have a little left over to make it worth our energy and team’s time.

I want to keep this fun, inexpensive, and effective. We hope that your 2 or 4 weeks spent in the Philippines will be cheaper than what you’d spend back home. The price of the event will include coffee, tea, snacks, and 3 awesome meals a day. You don’t need to spend a dime beyond that if you don’t want to.

I need your help now if you’d are thinking of attending (You’ll get an email notification with the detailed offer before the offer goes public):

Based on the feedback I’ve received so far, we are making arrangements for 10 start-ups to join us in the Philippines this summer. If you have any real interest in being one of those 10 start-ups (and paying 2K for 8 weeks of instruction, guidance, and room / board in the Philippines) I’d like you to send me an email within 48 hours. I need you your advice on the following:

* * *

Fill out my online form.

If the form above doesn’t load in your browser, you can follow this link.

* * *

We’ll email anyone who filled out the form this weekend and give them a chance to reserve a spot before we publish the offer publicly next week.

On Friday night I’ll send an email out to members of our Dynamite Circle. They’ll have first dibs to reserve spots. On Saturday or Sunday I’ll emailing the readers who filled out the form.

Cheers and thanks for reading!

Dan

PS, if you want to price check flights, you’ll be flying to Manila, Philippines. (MNL)

The view you'll see right before we'll start our evening brainstorming sessions...

You Need an Angle, Not a Logo – 3 Easy Steps to Your First Customers

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 14:12:19 +0000

Hi! If it’s your frist time here, thanks for dropping by. I hope you’ll join the 2000+ readers on our RSS feed, or follow me on Twitter. On this blog I write about starting honest-to-goodness businesses from your laptop. I try to write from my experience, but sometimes I get bullshitty.

Speaking of Twitter, I was already thinking of getting customers when I saw this:

“When you first started your podcast, or any other product, how did you get your first 5 customers. I know you talk a lot about cold calls, any other broad tips? Adwords seems to be getting expensive.” via @Ryan Gough

First off, I’m pretty sure our first 20 podcasts were listened to a grand total of 20 people.

Starting a brand like the TMBA or the Lifestyle Business Podcast is a bad idea if you are just getting started with online marketing. A lot of people write me saying they want to do similar stuff, and that’s fine, but helping people build businesses, secure clients, design lifestyles, or build wealth isn’t a winning strategy.

The handfull of people online who started meaningful careers this way have an excess of either grit, gall, or personal debt.

Here’s a quick 3 step process to shaking down your approach to content marketing. Once you’ve got these three steps completed on a basic website, it should be relatively easy to contact publishers, bloggers, and prospective clients in your niche. It’ll be like shooting fish in a barrel! Live your passion baby!!!

STEP 1: Dedicate your site content and tagline to solving task flow problems in your market.

This is where most people fail. The fewer resources you have, the more “angle” your content needs.

You can be an exception to this if you have a ton of money, experience, or friends. If you don’t, try making the key marketing tagline of your business the answer to a specific task flow problem.

TASK FLOW PROBLEMS —> CLIENT PROBLEMS —> MARKET PROBLEMS

“Beautiful WordPress headers” —> ”WP site management ” —> ”WP themes that convert”

“HK corporations cheap” —> ”HK virtual services” —> ”Asset protection for internet age”

“Easy expat tax returns” —> “Biz and personal tax plans” —> “A better way for expats to file”

“Increase ebook sales” —> “easy self pub production” —> ”lifestyle design biz strategy”

Ok, it’s not science, but I want to drive the point home. You don’t “design stuff.” You make $200 WordPress headers. You don’t help people “manage their assets.” You set up Delaware C corporations. You don’t “help people live the life they’ve always wanted” you help them “lose 10 pounds with a juice fast.”

Having an angle gives people a reason to stick around. Once you get customers in the door, you can broaden your offering and brand message. Solve a few 1000 task flow problems over the course of a few years, and you might find youself owning a company that solves market problems.

It’s a great case study so I’ll say it again– it should not surprise us that the AdsenseFlippers have 100′s of people lining up to join them on webinars, 4000+ subscribers in just over a year, and 10′s of thousands of podcast downloads. If you follow their blog, over the past few months you’ve read articles about travel, niche sites, link building, productivity, internships, life in the Philippines, and the internet marketing industry.

That’s a broader range of topics that you can expect from your neighborhood personal development blogger– and they did it under a brand that focuses on Adsense.

STEP 2: Clearly articulate a product.

Since we started with physical products, we got used to creating well-defined products that were positioned strategically against the competition. Many content marketers operate as if they weren’t competing against anyone else. Not so hombres.

Start with the product (not 15 blog posts). Write at least 5,000 words about every single benefit, feature, anxiety, and question that your traget customer might have. Don’t let up until you are done. At the end of you 5,000 words, you’ll need to put a price and a Paypal web standard buy-now button. Don’t bother blogging until you’ve done it.

STEP 3: Focus on building a legible body of work.

One you put up a simple product that solves task flow problems (even if it’s a simple consulting phone call or webinar), people will refer others to the resources you’ve created.

When you help out people who are influential for free (nice marketing!), they’ll click over to your site. If you’ve got 20 articles about the particulars of website header design theory, I’m impressed.

These types of sites are exactly the type that big publishers like to highlight as experts. Who would you rather hear on Pat Flynn’s podcast? The guy who tested 1000′s of different email opt-in variants and has developed unique insights into what converts, or a story of a guy who travels the world making adsense niche sites?

Cheers,

Dan

PS, consider skipping opt-ins on a new site. You don’t have any trust yet and you can’t afford to put your best content behind a wall. Put it out there and build a relationship through supplying great content. Pop up an opt-in when you have a big guest post or JV.

PPS, here’s a how-to guide to 15 minute logos ;) via Clay.

PPS, speaking of opt-ins, here’s my private mailing list. Got a lot of stuff coming up this week about our first Tropical MBA start-up mastermind, so if you are interested, worth hopping on.

A Note to My 18 Year Old Self – “College is a Waste of Time”

Dan@TropicalMBA.com (Dan Andrews) — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 13:00:23 +0000

Although I had a great time in college, I wish I would have been smart enough to skip it. In the end, I feel it unnecessarily disciplined me into believing that I wouldn’t be capable of making any real contributions or decisions for another 4 to 6 years.

If you aren’t going to school for something that specifically requires a credential– like practicing law in the state of California– those timeframes are pointless and extraordinarily expensive to follow.

I can’t help but thinking about where I’d be today if somebody told my 18 year old self that there is not such thing as “being ready” to be a real person.

Today, a young blog reader who is currently enrolled in university sent me an email asking me “how do I get out of this mess.”

Hi Dan,

I’m studying computer science in Europe, living at my parents house, have a girlfriend that I love, building iPhone apps for business (but not making a living yet). I obviously have too much on my plate. I also hate university. It’s not the topic, I just hate the way they teach stuff. I’m a really good developer and make iPhone apps with a friend / business partner.

How do I get out of this mess? I know quite a lot about internet marketing and I even know exactly what I want to do for business. The problem is that I can’t figure out how to liberate myself from the university and other responsibilities because I depend on my parents for a living. What do you suggest?

1. Re-set your expectations about the interpersonal difficulties of being an entrepreneur.

I know parents– especially good ones– can be tough to cross. They’ve done everything for you.

Here’s the thing– if you think disagreeing with your parents is tough, try firing a good employee who has kids. If you are good at this entrepreneurship stuff, someday you’ll probably have to do it. That’s just the beginning.

Since we’ve started our business, we’ve been subjected to physical threats, awkward office yelling matches, public humiliations, a pathetic extortion attempt, and plenty of other interpersonal crap.

Making tough personal decisions is a huge edge for an entrepreneur. It’s a rare and valuable ability, and it starts at home.

You’ll be one hell of a lucky guy if your competition turns out to be less ruthless than your parents.

2. The conversation is over once you’ve got cash flow.

I often think of Derek’s article zipit because I’m a big talker. It was common for me to read some stuff, take a little action, and then sit around the dinner table and run my mouth about all the things I was so excited about. “And then in October I’m gonna…”

I wish I would have shut up and worked.

I could have come to the dinner table 2 months later and said: “So I made $1,500 last month working 10 hours a week on my apps. I calculate that if I spend 60 hours a week on it I’ll be making $5,000 a month by the end of the summer. It’s a calculated risk, but I’m going for it.”

3. University is a speed limit that you don’t need.

Parents generally default to cultural scripts to have confidence that what they are suggesting and supporting for their children is good.

Did you ever hear that story about Steve Jobs? He hung around his college campus and attended classes that he thought would be interesting. He did not enroll!

To your parents, that might sound ridiculous, but to me it sounds like a brilliant plan. When I think back, that move would have saved me time and an embarrassing sum of money. All of the meaningful relationships I built in university could have been built without officially enrolling.

If you want to develop apps for the next few years, you need a credential from the app store, not a university.

4. “Don’t look the gift horse in the mouth.” Finding a profitable cash flow is a unique, fleeting, and special moment.

Figuring out how to make a buck on the internet isn’t the toughest thing on the planet, but it’s easy for smart people to bang their heads against the problem for years and not find a reliable source of cash flow.

Part of the reason I started the Dynamite Circle was that a small group of friends on my mastermind call basically told me “you need to start this. We want a place like this, and you are the guy to do it. Don’t mess it up because you’ve got some emotional issues about online marketing products.”

And it was true. I was shy to start a private forum. But when you find people who are willing to pay you for something you can do, it’s a rare, special, and magical thing. Take a hint!

I can guarantee you this: universities who are looking to fill up their class rosters and commit cash to their bottom line aren’t so special. They aren’t going anywhere and you can always go back.

5. Do not suspend or outsource judgments about your life. Responsibility for your career trajectory lies 100% with you.

Let’s say you think you want to develop iPhone apps for a living. You have a belief that the best way to create that outcome is to spend up to 60 hours a week writing Objective C. Your parents understand your desire, but suggest that your outcome could be reached if you spend 10 hours a week coding and 50 hours a week on your university coursework.

It’s a common situation to find oneself in. It’s common for people, in all walks in life, to suspend judgment, assuming my parents must know something and continue on with your path and wait for more information to emerge.

Don’t do that.

Entrepreneurs see extraordinary rewards for pursuing paths before society has made it legible in a “script” that can be passed around.

Some would say it’s dangerous advice to give. So here’s my qualification:

Let’s assume you are committed to reality (you aren’t a dream thinker) and are good at being honest with yourself (and not feeding yourself short term ego-junk food): if you see a path to what you want that nobody else sees– you are experiencing the entrepreneurial moment.

You’re right where you need to be.

Go. Go. Go.

Cheers,

Dan

PS, last week I took over twitter.
PPS, you can get on my private mailing list by putting your email right here: