Tropical MBA: Entrepreneurship & Founder Lifestyle

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.

We know that Dan and Ian are consumate consumers of information and business theory. So it was a bit of a somber moment earlier this week when we learned that Dr. Stephen Covey, the author of 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People, had passed away. Covey’s book “has been a top-seller for the simple reason that it ignores trends and pop psychology for proven principles of fairness, integrity, honesty, and human dignity” per the description on his website. Couldn’t agree more.

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 Karol’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.

Dan is all about the public peer pressure on Ian. Getting him to sign up for email lists. Getting him to go to NYC with him in September. Getting him to divulge his espionage trade secrets in a future episode. What else is this podcast gonna get Ian into?! This week the guys are slowly making their way to meeting up with each other in Saigon for a couple weeks before the next Tropical MBA session in the Philippines in August. As they work on getting back in the same space, they discuss the various niches and products they have pursued over the years (they edited out the 30 minutes of feisty heated discussion in circles) and how they decided to pursue them.

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

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

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

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

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

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