2023 Updates YTD - High-Level Communities, Podcast Updates, and More
Grab a coffee or your favorite sparkly water, I’ve got a lot of news to share.
We’ve been working our dang tails off!
Save for one week in April - when I spent full days floating in a rubber ducky in Playa del Carmen - I’ve been doing my best impression of a business person.
HEY YA’LL, CALL ME ABOUT THAT DEAL!
We’ve gone through a tremendous amount of change as a team and a company. Hopefully, you’ll start to see the fruits of that in our products and podcast.
Here are just a few things top of mind…
We are opening a community for 7 and 8-figure founders.
Over the past few years, starting a higher-level community has been the top request I’ve personally heard from our customers.
Many listeners of the show join other communities like EO, YPO, Vistage, or Hampton and come back and say “Can we get a DC version of that?”
So yeah. We got that now.
It’s called DC Black.
You might be a good fit if you can show us a signed P&L with $1,000,000+ in revenue for the trailing 12 months.
All members must go through a phone screen and (of course) pay an outrageous membership fee.
BUSINESS BABY!
There are already over 20 of us ready to go, and we’re seeking a few handfuls of other members to round out our founding group. If you’re curious about it, schedule a call with us today.
The deadline to join is June 1st.
We’re helping founders get to 7 figures with DC Scale.
You might be thinking, “My business is not currently doing 7 figures, how on earth can I get there so I too can pay outrageous membership fees!?”
Great question.
Instead of exploring ancient ruins and having authentic travel experiences, we pounded the keys and cooked up a group-based learning community called DC Scale.
It’s like Traction and Scaling Up had a baby, and that baby wanted the freedom to travel.
Whether your challenges are operational, financial, or strategic, we can help you take the next steps toward professionalizing your enterprise so you can focus on growth.
Our next cohort will launch in July. You can indicate your interest by dropping your info into this form.
Typical clients have mid-6 figures in revenues.
For larger companies, we offer a 1:1 version.
40 companies have already joined us (and over half have extended for the remainder of the year!).
DC Community Updates
Have you seen our new website?
It’s a miracle.
For over a decade, the DC had no website. We relied 100% on word of mouth and a few random Quora threads to serve as documentation for all the incredible things that happen in our community.
Have I mentioned we are amazing at business?
I’m particularly excited to simply document and display some of the things that are going on in the DC. For example, we now have an events page and a blog where we’re able to post things like our 2023 Mexico City event recap.
We’ve got a lot going on. Our semi-annual mastermind matching campaign starts today, we’re currently hosting 20+ meetups every month, and a bunch of larger events coming down the pike, including Lisbon, London, and Bangkok (just to name a few).
We recently updated our forum and launched a locator app that shares where members are traveling to. Pretty cool!
The DC currently has over 1,000 members.
The minimum revenue is $100,000 but the average is more like $500,000 and 30% of the membership turns over more than $1,000,000 annually.
We’ve recently pulled a lot of demographic data - like 40% of members have kids, 88% have home bases, and more. If you’re curious, our team can share more with you. Just drop me a line.
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You might be asking, what about Dynamite Jobs Dan? You talked about it so much last year that I rage-posted at We Work Remotely!
I’m glad you asked.
Dynamite Jobs and Remote First Recruiting
As faithfully reported on the Tropical MBA Podcast, our jobs sites got absolutely clobbered in Q4 and we made it through Q1 with a re-org and a lot of difficult staffing decisions.
We updated our RFR website with clearer value propositions, and have been focusing more on lowering our up-front pricing through contract to hire options. It’s easier than ever to book a non-salsey strategy call with our recruiting team and talk through your strategic hiring challenges, whether you need a few assistants, a developer, or general manager.
It might be premature of me to say, but I think this year is going to turn out pretty, pretty good.
So far our YOY revenues are down 40%.
But our morale is higher than ever, April was a very good month, and ya’ll seem to be back hiring again.
Tropical MBA Podcast
If you didn’t listen to episode 701 - “Your 5 Closest Friends” you could have missed that producer Jane has parted ways with the show.
Jane has done so much for the TMBA over the years, producing the majority of our total episode catalog. We wish her well on her future adventures and projects, and hope to see her in a few months in Bangkok for DCBKK.
MY GOODNESS I HAVEN’T EVEN MENTIONED DCBKK (400 of you are coming to Bangkok in October, it’s surreal to type that…)
You might be thinking, what will change at the podcast?
We’re not 100% sure.
But we’re going to keep the show going.
Because we love it.
Even if somebody gave me one gazillion dollars in my bank account today, or if 1000’s of you signed up for our exorbitantly priced membership community tomorrow, I would still do the Tropical MBA podcast because it’s damn good work.
And the two things I love most are damn good work, and sitting in rubber duckies in Playa del Carmen.
Personal updates
I am packing my bike in a travel bag this summer, and I will be assembling it in the following places:
Paris
London (for DCxLondon Event)
Barcelona / Girona
Pyrenees (Location TBD).
Tuscany
So I am currently training for my vacation.
If you know a good place I should add to my 3-month summer extravaganza, I’d love to hear from you. If you live in one of these places and want to ride, let’s do it.
One final thing, your emails inspire so much of what ends up on the Tropical MBA Podcast. If you have thoughts, feedback, or have an interesting story or question for the show, let us know!
We’ll talk soon,
Dan
P.S.
On today’s TMBA pod, we had a really fun conversation with our friend Jay Clouse (@jayclouse), founder of Creator Science, and former TMBA guest. He went from 30K in revenue in 2017 to being on target to hit $700K this year. He shares a ton of meaty info with us, from the value of capping memberships to how he got the whole thing started in the first place. Plus, he gives us and other founders some advice on how we can follow in his footsteps. Check it out.
