An Idea, a Book, and a Link.
In this week’s episode of the Lifestyle Business Podcast, Ian and I discuss in some detail the broad outline of a product we’ll present in a few weeks. It’s basically a “start a business this summer” mentorship product, with a full 2 weeks of in-person work and mastermind sessions in the Philippines (and 4 weeks of free rent). I’d love to hear your feedback on that idea.
People have often told us we should try to offer alternatives to traditional MBA’s, but it never clicked for me how we could do something like that. I’m not sure when the lightbulb went off, but it might have been where I listened to a great interview with the founders of Code Academy on Twist.
Three things that I loved about their model:
It’s sounds like tons of fun.
It’s obvious that students who were clear about their end goals (getting a job as a computer programmer) would see much better ROI with their program than if they pursued traditional CS degrees.
It’s profitable for the founders, and could potentially be scaled to help a lot more people.
It occurred to me that we should do something similar, except focused on our particular brand of location independent businesses.
Here’s the basic idea:
Tropical MBA Inaugural Class : Get Your Location Independent Start-up Producing an Income in 3 Months.
Proposed schedule:
May 1st- May 15th. Open up sales offer to DCers (first call) and TMBA readers. Try to sell 10 spots.
June 1st: Welcome phone call and in-depth interview session with Ian and myself. Focus on articulated MVP, clear problem you are working to solve, and the unique way in which your solving them. Establish clear revenue and profit goals.
June 15th : Introduce 10 start-ups to each other, talk about next actions, identify ways to help each other. Private forum in DC gets moving and periodic phone calls prepping for August.
August 1st: Everyone arrives in the Philippines for 2 weeks (or a month if you’d like) of intensive work on our start-ups. I want everyone to walk away from August saying “that was the most productive month of my entire life.”
* * *
A book.
A few days ago I finished Ron Davidson’s “The Fourth Economy.” Here’s his blog, here’s his twitter.
If you are like me, and enjoy reading Greg and Venkat’s blogs, you’ll love Ron’s book. I really had an enjoyable time reading settling in to it. At first, I was expecting a quick payoff– I was a little impatient for Ron to dish the goods on the 4th economy! What should I be doing to take advantage of new trends man?!
Eventually I settled in and found myself enjoying the detailed histories. I found myself starting to draw connections in my own life and business. I was jotting down implications for our 5 year plan like crazy.
I’d like to share some of those thoughts on the blog, but they’ll take me a while to distill. In the meantime, it would be great for you to pick up the book and let me know your thoughts!
Here’s a cool teaser of some of the concepts in the book:
Click to see Amazon listing.
I generally enjoy this kind of stuff...
Mithun's blog is full of amazing photos....
A link.
I’ve said a bunch of times, I’m a blog reader first. I love a lazy afternoon snooping around some of the wonderful blogs out there. A few days ago I stumbled onto an amazing personal travel blog written by a guy named Mithum. He’s the rare brand of blogger who documents nearly every moment of his trips. I absolutely love that format. I spent hours reading through his Philippines travelogue, and clicked over to his others as well. They are chock-o-block full of wonderful photos. Check out his Philippines travelogue.
Hope you enjoy the links, thanks for stopping by!
Dan
PS, even if you don’t regularly listen to podcasts, I’d love to hear your feedback on this week’s LBP.
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