last year, i wrote a comment with one mid-year update And got many high-quality replies from readers.
This year feels very busy. Part of the hustle is travel, and for me, that’s back to pre-pandemic levels of travel once a month and a few extended stays abroad. Our business is just as crazy at times.
Growth and Challenges
Our full numbers haven’t been released yet, but it looks like we’re up almost 100%.I believe our sales will be a little under $2,000,000 when the final numbers come out this month (we don’t quadrupleas I wrote last year’s goal Ha ha).
Numbers aside, I’m proud of the habits we’ve developed as a team. The basics like having a clear strategy, agreeing on ideal client profiles, strong meeting cadence, agendas, clear financials, etc. In general, just “grow” as a business.
This year’s business theme
If last year’s theme was “Back to Basics”, then this year’s theme is “Alignment”.
Questions we frequently ask:
Does everyone on the team share the same core beliefs about the company? client? mission? Target? Are their daily actions consistent with these beliefs?
Bonding starts with Ian and I doing what we love best — digressing into long conversations about business and life (often, we’re talking and bantering for an hour before we set records on the podcast).
But this year, we upped the stakes in those conversations.We invited moderators, produced exam preparationcreate presentations, attend Counselingand wrote detailed documentation.
Team members are also better prepared – with KPIs, scoreboards, ideas and key questions. And it feels necessary.Find density Align with our language. There are many things that can be agreed upon.
Implement the right scale system
In 2023, we will continue to seriously educate on business best practices (to this end, expand The writing of Verne Harnish is particularly inspiring. It will be interesting to pick out the processes that are expected to have the greatest impact. A full SU implementation is overkill for an enterprise of our size.
I don’t think it’s necessary to follow accepted business building wisdom to grow a great lifestyle business. Still, in our case, it has opened up many possibilities. We are generally more cohesive as a team – so what we do can execute more strongly.
Additionally, I’ve found it useful for 1) knowing where you’re going when you’re uncertain and 2) being nimble enough to seize opportunities when they arise.Since installing some key processes in our business, it doesn’t feel like groundhog day nearby.
That’s the overview. Here are my 10 highlights:
1. DCBKK returns.
It’s crazy that our biggest annual event, DCBKK, started 10 years ago (2012) and we had to skip the past two years due to world events.
It was so much fun to come back to Thailand and spend time with almost 400 entrepreneurs. Their business continues to impress me. We celebrated the end of the event with a tuk-tuk parade to our closing party venue (laughs). Here is a video from JoelRunyon:
Also, I love this photo of our team at the opening party:
2. Tropical MBA brand renewal.
We haven’t even released it yet, but damn, I love it. We have long considered the idea of ​​rebranding to make it more “professional”. In the process, we toned down some of the fun travel elements of the TMBA brand.
One of the things that helped in making that decision was audience feedback and the realization that our main topic was actually talking about (mainly) seven-figure lifestyle businesses. This is serious enough for me.
So this year, we’re going to have the brand’s “cocktails and dreams” vibe and see how it goes.
it’s also cool to have our episode Picked up by webz in a somewhat viral fashion. I also really like this topic – individual entrepreneurship and some would-be entrepreneurs’ misconceptions about “starting point”.
3. Initial reaction to DC Scale.
In the fourth quarter, we launched a more expensive version dc community, focusing on business building. It is cohort-based, with expert coordinators, and also has face-to-face elements. It’s designed to help founders (and their COOs) address scale challenges.
The program sold out in just a few days. Astonishing!our waiting list Also very busy. For now, we focus on our first group. I’m excited to see how it goes and what we learn.
4. DCers meet globally.
Over the years, our member-led events have been spotty. Over the past year, it has been inspiring to see members get back together around the globe, from monthly meetups to member-hosted events to our annual holiday gathering.
2023 will be interesting as members in Asia will have the opportunity to restart their activities. So far we have Gold Coast, Miami, Colorado, Mexico City, London and Bangkok on our event calendar, with more cities to be added in the coming weeks.
It looks like our April event in Mexico City will be full, and we’ll have a large crew in London as well. It’s going to be a fun summer.
5. Trust depends on the boss.
From hours-long conversations in our office, podcast digressions, advisors, coaches, and therapists, it’s been a great year to engage the experts and learn how to be better entrepreneurs together.
Who knows if we got any better, but we had a lot of fun!
6. launch RemoteFirstRecruiting.com.
For those of you listening to the podcast, you know we’ve been blah blah blah about our job board, Dynamite work, for many years.But most of our business is a service for you, such as Flat Rate Hiring and guide to hire.
It wasn’t an easy decision to separate the agency from the jobs board, but we ripped off the Band-Aid and it’s worked out pretty well so far.
There are still plenty of crossovers. Specifically, our recruiters at RFR use our candidate database extensively. The growth in it is my next highlight…
7. Huge growth and availability of Dynamite Jobs remote candidate database.
I’ve been worried about our growth candidate database Just a vanity indicator (we now have over 225,000 profiles). But this year, our development team built internal recruiter tools (and in some cases we extended some of them to clients), and we’ve been getting meaningful recruiting positions from our database.
8. Find strategic alignment in our team (and work with people who enjoy coming to work).
It has been a pleasure working with the team this year. Our meeting is… pleasure. Lots of “scale up” type thinking improves conversations across the team.
One challenge that comes to mind for the new year is helping our teams thrive and develop their careers within our organization. I don’t think I’m good at that kind of leadership, and I’ll be more aware of that this year.
9. Barcelona.
My all-time favorite city is a surprising star this year.
Our summer vacation was filled with many close friends and business colleagues just passing by. The conversations we had over long lunches, bike rides, and co-working meetings led to much of our growth mindset this year. I love Zoom conference calls as much as the next micro manager, but there’s nothing like spending time on long-distance calls with smart, dedicated entrepreneurs.
Here’s more for 2023.
10. Books!
We haven’t been able to finish a book episode this year, which is usually a tradition. I’ve spent a lot of time reading this year, and here are 10 of my favorite books, in no particular order:
- in the weeds
- work in reverse
- Guns, Germs, and Steel
- 1493
- booth
- Nanjing Massacre
- expand
- Exploitative Games in Live Poker
- Chairman Mao’s Private Life
- glass kingdom
Speaking of books, we finally released a paperback book this year. Previously, it was only available for Kindle and audiobooks.
If you’d like a free PDF copy feel free to email me at Dan at this domain.
Finally, if you want to catch some TMBA podcasts from last year, here are some listener favorites:
That’s it!
Thanks for reading and best wishes for a better 2023,
and
