Dan Andrews

My name is Dan Andrews and I am an entrepreneur. I provide digital marketing services for my own company which is a product design firm. I also do a bunch of other stuff, like read books, play tennis, golf, travel (a lot!). You can follow me @TropicalMBA on twitter.

Want to join a TMBA mastermind group? Here’s your chance.

by Dan Andrews
February 21, 2017March 8, 2017

Behind the scenes at the TMBA, we work with a handful of service providers on a weekly basis (like copywriters, tech folk, sound engineers, etc).… Read More »

Can You Become Wealthy in Just a Few Years?

by Dan Andrews
February 7, 2017February 14, 2017
13 Comments

This week on the podcast, we’re inviting a guest who’s had an incredible amount of success building Amazon affiliate sites. In just a few short… Read More »

“The Lifestyle Design fringe is actually that unevenly distributed future”

by Dan Andrews
January 31, 2017February 14, 2017
5 Comments

Last February, on the TMBA podcast, we published a conversation with Venkat Rao, author of Ribbonfarm.com. I enjoyed talking with him very much, and listeners… Read More »

How Others Can Help When You’re First Starting Your Entrepreneurial Journey

by Dan Andrews
January 24, 2017February 14, 2017

I was on the phone with a friend this week who aspires to get his PhD in the next few years. They are notoriously difficult to complete… Read More »

Chiang Mai is a Great Place For a Winter Cycling Training Camp

by Dan Andrews
January 10, 2017January 7, 2019
14 Comments

Chiang Mai is a hotspot for those who run businesses online (and, perhaps infamously, for those who’d very much like to do so). When I was there… Read More »

Happy Holidays From the TMBA

by Dan Andrews
December 27, 2016February 14, 2017

This is one of the few weeks of the year that the entire TMBA team doesn’t come together in our virtual office. But I wanted to… Read More »

The Inbox Arms Race – Is There a Downside to Tracking Personal Emails?

by Dan Andrews
December 13, 2016December 27, 2016
18 Comments

About a year ago, somebody mentioned that I should install software that would tell me when people who emailed me were tracking whether or not… Read More »

What’s a Simple Way to Lose 10 or 20 Pounds?

by Dan Andrews
November 29, 2016November 29, 2016
23 Comments

This year, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about diet, and how to drop a few pounds. And by “thinking” I mean googling terms… Read More »

What Advice Do You Have for Students?

by Dan Andrews
November 15, 2016November 15, 2016
4 Comments

A writer friend was recently invited to speak in front of a group of students. He was asked to share his opinions on how to… Read More »

What I’m Doing Now

by Dan Andrews
November 1, 2016November 1, 2016
6 Comments

This is a now page. I’m writing it because the question I get most from readers, when we meet, is “what are you up to now?”… Read More »

Join Our Team – Seeking a Part-Time Customer Service Professional (Location Independent)

by Dan Andrews
October 25, 2016October 27, 2016
4 Comments

I always love writing “we’ve got a job opening” posts. Back in the day, Ian and I used to rely almost exclusively on Craiglist to… Read More »

Our Annual Event, DCBKK, in 25 Photos

by Dan Andrews
October 18, 2016October 27, 2016
22 Comments

Creating business conferences isn’t something I thought I’d be doing 10 years ago. I never liked conferences, why create one? Perhaps we thought we’d do… Read More »

Have You Ever Considered Traveling With Large Computer Monitors?

by Dan Andrews
October 11, 2016September 28, 2018
41 Comments

Click around the web and you’ll find estimates, all over the map, about how much screen size affects our productivity at work. The real numbers will… Read More »

A Two Week Travel Itinerary – An Introduction to Asia

by Dan Andrews
October 4, 2016October 3, 2016
11 Comments

If you only had two weeks of vacation, and wanted to use them to visit Asia for the first time, where should you go? How should you… Read More »

Could You Replicate Your Education For Free – PhD or Podcast?

by Dan Andrews
September 27, 2016September 27, 2016
9 Comments

It’s been well over a year since Taylor Pearson’s book, The End of Jobs, was published. I thought of it this morning as I was replying to… Read More »

It Can Take 8 Months to Learn a Business, What About Building It?

by Dan Andrews
September 20, 2016September 6, 2016
12 Comments

Of the more than 500 posts we’ve put up on this blog over the years, the one I hear most about is “the 1,000 rule.”… Read More »

Buying Reliable, Safe Cars with Cash

by Dan Andrews
September 13, 2016March 26, 2020
18 Comments

Last week, Ian wrote over 3,500 words about his new home purchase. But he skimmed over what might have been his greatest motivation for buying… Read More »

The 9 Then 3 Lifestyle

by Dan Andrews
August 30, 2016August 30, 2016
14 Comments

One of the most intriguing ideas in The Four Hour Work Week is the concept of ‘mini-retirements.’ The possibility that, if you effectively automate your… Read More »

A Beginner’s Guide to Cycling Gran Fondos

by Dan Andrews
August 16, 2016August 16, 2016
14 Comments

Fair warning: what follows is 6,000+ words about road cycling, a hobby I picked up last year. These words poured out of my hands the morning after my… Read More »

Work With Us : Seeking an Email Professional

by Dan Andrews
August 9, 2016August 22, 2016
4 Comments

<Update: This job post has closed. Thanks to all of the applicants, we’ll be in contact with anyone who we’d like to talk to further>… Read More »

Long Live RSS

by Dan Andrews
August 2, 2016August 2, 2016
24 Comments

I was at a cafe in London, reading a gossip newspaper (I enjoyed it). My friend, who tries hard to only read paper books, magazines and… Read More »

How to Build a Portable Podcast Studio

by Dan Andrews
October 27, 2015February 10, 2017
52 Comments

Over the last few months, I’ve been working on building a portable podcast studio. This process has involved ordering a lot of useless equipment (sorry… Read More »

Tropical MBA is Hiring – Seeking Writer and Producer

by Dan Andrews
August 11, 2015August 11, 2015
23 Comments

Our podcast is over 6 years old. During that time we’ve produced over 300 episodes. On the whole, I’m proud of the work we’ve done.… Read More »

A Brief Guide to Being Bad at Email

by Dan Andrews
November 25, 2014October 8, 2022
17 Comments

I thought about email a lot over the past few weeks. Every morning, I watched messages trickle in and pile up. My replies were sporadic. I scanned… Read More »

10 Business Ideas You Can Launch in 7 Days

by Dan Andrews
November 18, 2014February 18, 2015
53 Comments

“The ability to learn from real data is why the 7 Day Startup works. You wipe assumptions off the table.” – Dan Norris Episode #183… Read More »

How Do You Organize Your Time When You Don’t Have a 9 to 5?

by Dan Andrews
November 11, 2014February 18, 2015
23 Comments

In 2007, in a beige cubicle in California, I used a spreadsheet to determine that I controlled about 20% of my waking hours. The other 80% were determined… Read More »

Are You a Sower or a Reaper?

by Dan Andrews
October 28, 2014February 18, 2015
25 Comments

Because it’s so easy to cut a crappy partnership deal, I have often quipped that “a partnership is a sinking ship.” An arrangement to be avoided if possible, and if… Read More »

Start Your Digital Nomad Journey Today (By Responding to This Post)

by Dan Andrews
August 26, 2014February 18, 2015
29 Comments

If you aren’t familiar with the Tropical MBA, our articles are mostly advice and stories to and from established location independent entrepreneurs. Historically, however, some of our most… Read More »

An Ode to the Accidental Workplace

by Dan Andrews
August 19, 2014February 18, 2015
36 Comments

I was not expecting it, but when I first moved to Asia I found that you could walk into a broad range of establishments— restaurants,… Read More »