Books: seeking out good ones, talking about them, and implementing some of the things we discover in their pages has long been a theme of this show.

The summer of cycling and tapas in Barcelona, Spain has come to an end. Dan and Ian are back in Austin, Texas inspired by the conversations and feedback they’ve had over the past few weeks as listeners and friends have dropped by one of our favorite European cities.

Today’s show started, as so many of them do, as an in-person conversation in a dark bar in a cool city. That’s where Dan met Brent Zahradnik, founder of Amazon PPC agency AMZ Pathfinder.

The ‘Stair Step’ approach to entrepreneurship is a recurring theme on the TMBA. Coined of course by Startups For The Rest Of Us host Rob Walling. Essentially, it describes how you can build up your business chops by for example, starting a freelance business, then parlaying some of those clients into running an agency and then maybe Software as a Service, and so on.

What began as a window cleaning service he started at college has now spun into a multi-million business for today’s guest Johnny Robinson. In January 2022 he co-founded Home Services Academy, a 90 day program and ongoing community which coaches others to reach five figures MRR by either starting their own cleaning business, or making an existing one more profitable.

The COVID pandemic saw many online businesses boom, especially those centered on E-commerce. But entrepreneurs running in-person events really took a hit.