A few years ago, I was at a mastermind in the Philippines and the people that were involved were a pretty intense group. At that event one entrepreneur stood out that was a little bit different than the rest of us. For must of us, we are always in the hustle mindset and we will do anything that it takes to grow our business. Mark Brenwall is almost the polar opposite. Lifestyle is very important to Mark and he abides by a strong set of personal rules about what he will and won't do for his business. In the two and a half years since Mark has become an entrepreneur, he has built a business called Wod Nation that currently nets him $20,000 a month in profit, and he did it all without compromising his beliefs. I invited Mark onto the show this week to share both his inspiring story and his unique approach to business.

This is an exciting episode for us. Bossman and I are pleased to announce that we have sold our product business. The sale process was over a year and a half long, and we are going to be telling some pretty interesting stories about what happened along the way. We'll also be talking about what we have learned from exiting a business that has been such a big part of our life since 2007. On this episode, we'll be sharing seven things we wish we would have known, that we hope other people will consider when selling their business.

Today I posted our first ever public ticket offering to DCBKK. We've launched so many of these events now, and we've learned from a lot of our mistakes over the years. I wanted to take an episode to sort of walk through some of the lessons that we've learned in doing our product launches, and specifically doing event launches. I've invited Damian Thompson from SalesAbility.co on to the show to talk about the evolution of our DCBKK event. We are also going to be taking quite a bit of time to talk about what goes on at DCBKK, the types of people who come to the event, and what sets DCBKK apart from other conferences.

Ian is on vacation this week in Greece, and I am getting ready to fly back to the United States. I was in the process of packing my bags, when I received a call from a listener named Josh who was curious about what kind of stuff we have been traveling with recently. I have written about my travel kit many times on the blog, so if you don't want to hear me talk about what I keep in my backpack, this might not be the episode for you. I do know that there are some of us out there who spend a lot of time thinking about this stuff. If you're like me and you want to know more, I'm gonna walk you through some of the things I'm packing tonight and why they are part of my travel kit.

A lot of people have been saying that our recent episodes have been targeted towards beginners. This is because we're fascinated by how people use a business model to go from scratch to building revenue. We thought it would be appropriate to do a 300 level course for our 300th episode. Today we're going to talk about how to create a culture that allows you to manage a multi-million dollar business while you travel. Ian has managed to do this over the last year with just six hours of phone calls a week, and our business is still growing. We're going to be talking about how to build the kind of culture that holds everyone together, and keeps everyone productive, while you are living your rock and roll lifestyle.

One of the things that I've always loved about the Tropical MBA is that our listeners have found so many different ways to interact with our show. Today we're going to be talking about how to get out from behind your computer and connect with people in real life. I've invited Chris Reynolds and Alex McQuade on to the show this week to talk about just that. Alex is the Director of Operations for the Dynamite Circle, and was an integral part of our Barcelona event. Chris is the founder of The One Effect and has recently started kind of an entrepreneurial revolution in Barcelona. There are 22 entrepreneurs who have moved to Barcelona to live in apartments that Chris has set up. We'll be talking about some of the unique ways we have been able to interact with our listeners in the real world, sharing strategies for digital nomads who want to connect with people in real life, and listening to some firsthand testimonials from people who have been living in the DC Barcelona House.

A common misconception in business today is that you have to build an audience of hundreds or thousands of people in order to sell something successfully. The fact is, when you're getting started, you won't have an audience like that. We have talked over and over again about why we believe in starting with ten true clients. One of our longtime podcast listeners, Sophia Bera, has found great success doing just that. Sophia is the founder of GenYPlanning.com, where she provides affordable financial planning services for people in their 20's and 30's. This week we're talking with Sophia about how she has managed to replace her income in just over two years, why she didn't agree with some of the practices in the financial planning industry and how she was able to turn that into an opportunity.

This week longtime friend of the show Taylor Pearson drops by to talk about his new book, The End of Jobs. We don't typically invite guests on to the show to promote their books, but Taylor has had such a huge part in the growth of our product business. His new book also stemmed in part from some discussions that the two of us had after the Dynamite Circle Conference in Bangkok last October. On this week's episode, we're gonna talk all about why Taylor decided to write this book, the books that are defining this exciting location-independent movement, and why the jobs that were once considered the safest are now being called into question.

After taking a brief sabbatical, we return to the show this week with a very unique guest. Chris Cage (Chris@GreenBellyBar.com) is an avid hiker, biker and outdoor enthusiast. Chris started Greenbelly in 2014 and has been creating high-calorie meal replacement bars ever since. He recently crowdfunded $20,000 on Kickstarter, but despite this success Chris has been rather isolated in his entrepreneurial adventure so far. The Bossman and I have invited him on this show this week to open up about his business. We’ll talk about how Greenbelly came to fruition, how he has managed to achieve his success, and help Chris make some hard decisions about what he can do to take this business to the next level.

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

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

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

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

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

This week Dan is on vacation in Asia with his family, so I’ve invited Andrew Youderian of eCommerceFuel onto the show to talk about what it means to be a bootstrapper and the differences between a bootstrap business and funded business. We also share our thoughts about the drop-shipping model and where we see that headed in the next few years, and we discuss the community that Andrew’s building over at eCommerceFuel, where he has been helping entrepreneurs build online eCommerce stores.

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

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

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

Ian, Taylor Pearson and myself can't stop listening to Alex Blumberg's new podcast called Startup. If you haven't heard it yet, stop reading this and go listen to it. If you listen to a lot of podcasts or radio at all, you've probably heard Alex's work on shows like This American Life and Planet Money. We decided we wanted to create an episode that would serve as a companion piece to this fantastic series. The three of us are talking about how the show inspired us, what we see as the ironies in the venture capital world, the distinctions between being and artist and an entrepreneur, and what this series represents in the podcasting world.