Semester II Open for Applications- Live on a Tropical Island For Free
Update June 1 2010: Applications for the semester II are now closed. Thanks to all who applied.
Update May 2010: Sean Ogle from the Tropical MBA semester I took a trip to Mindoro to visit Badladz. We took the time to record a podcast where we discuss the second semester and his experience with the first semester. Good stuff!
Lifestyle Business Podcast Episode #29
You can live on a Tropical island for next to nothing. We will pay for room and board. Travel, gadgets, nights out on the town, and local transport are on you. How much you spend per month will depend on your budget and goals. Here’s what you’ll get:
Room #6 at Badladz Adventure Resort, for free.
Free WIFI
3 square meals a day, and good ones to boot.
Access to Sean’s condo for 1 week a month in Manila.
Easy access to Sean and Dan’s advice, mentoring, and networks.
In return, you’ll work approximately 15-20 hours a week on our web projects (2-3 hours a day, we are flexible on this), which will include properties like TropicalMBA.com and Badladz.com. In the process of working for our social media projects we’ll reveal to you a broad range of techniques we use to make money online and work from anywhere on the planet.
To be clear: there will be no cash payment or allowance built in to this program. Its something to seriously take in to account when considering if this is right for you.
Semester II will start with a 3 month trial period. After that we’ll review our progress and if its working out for everyone we can extend it if everyone is having a good time.
You will be helping us build blogs. One site will be brand new– built from the ground up. We’ll be publishing premium content and doing SEO work and marketing a few of our existing sites. If you have advanced skill sets, including programming knowledge, we have some advanced projects in the works that you can help out with as well. Either way, you can count on a lot of writing. I think this work is pretty fun :)
Great candidates for semester II will love the web, learning, writing, and interacting with others online. You must enjoy communicating with your teammates and openly sharing information. You’ll likely be talking with me a lot on the phone. If you’d prefer to work more and get involved in our other businesses just to get your feet wet, I’m down with that too. There’s always opportunity to take on bigger challenges.
If you are an established entrepreneur, you can look at this as basically the cheap seed funding. Hopefully the work you are doing with us can be complimentary to your project or we can learn from each other.
This semester of the Tropical MBA lends itself to people who have a clear idea of the kind of work they want to be doing for the next 3-6 months. The first semester was much more guided because it was focused on a revenue generating business.
A lot of how this opportunity plays out will depend on the unique vision and desires of the candidate.
Important:
Mindoro is no doubt a tropical paradise, but its super quiet and way off the beaten path. This is described by Sean as an outpost and rightfully so… as Sean noted in the comments….”my resort started as a loose base for treasure hunters , explorers, innovators, and general freedom fighters…” That’s to say, there ain’t no full moon party :)
I want to make sure we set expectations well. There isn’t a big vibrant scene of internet marketers here in Mindoro, or even in Manila for that matter. There will be, on the other hand, plenty of travelers moving through, and LOTS of folks in the SCUBA industry. If you have an interest in SCUBA this is a world class place to be. This is a particularly good opportunity for somebody who is already traveling and wants to extend their time on the road. The vibe is hyper-laid back and islandy. There are plenty of festivals and miles of beaches to explore.
Puerto Galera harbor is a 5 hour journey on a bus and ferry to Manila (where I live most of the time). Whoever comes to live at Badladz will have a ton of free time and could, if they wanted to, go days without talking to others. I’d encourage you to think deeply about what that could mean for you and your work. You’ll have to have a lot of drive, an ability to be self-motivated, and a little bit of zen monk in you.
Other info:
You can see a little bit more about Badladz and the surrounding area by checking out Sean’s Youtube Channel.
Learn more about why Sean of Badladz is the prototypical lifestyle entrepreneur on this post.
Interested?
In order to apply, you’ll need to complete the following:
Send all materials to Dan at TropicalMBA.com.
Email me a 300-500 word blog post type article on why this opportunity is uniquely suited for you.
A 300-500 description of the projects you’d like to work on or what you’d like to do while in Mindoro.
Let us know in 3-4 sentences how you would go about making money with a site like TropicalMBA.com.
A 30 second to 4 minute video or audio recording taken of yourself and posted to a free webservice (private videos on Youtube works great) that gives us a brief introduction to your biographical background, especially focused background in travel, business, and internet projects. Send us the link in your application
Applications are DUE June 1st. Interviews will be conducted that week via Skype, and a winner will be announced by June 8th.
The Tropical MBA semester II will start no later than July 15th, so if you are the winner, we’ll want to coordinate with you to get here before that date. If your application must be an exception to that rule, please let us know in the application process.
Best of luck to everyone who applies, and if you know somebody who might be interested in an opportunity like this, please help us out with an email or tweet :)
Questions?
If you’d like any clarification or have a further questions, please ask for it in the comments so everyone can benefit from the information.
If you think this stuff is cool, pop on the mailing list and we’ll keep you updated on the stuff we are doing plus I’ll be sending out a huge list of resources and tools that help me run my global business from my laptop. That won’t be posted to the blog. Look for that within the next week or so.