#844 4 Ways to Start a Business From Scratch in 2026
Tropical MBA: Entrepreneurship & Founder Lifestyle
Dan Andrews; Ian Schoen
4.9 • 527 Ratings
🗓️ 5 February 2026
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dan and Ian respond to a listener's email about strategies for going from a 9-5 to full-blown entrepreneurship, and why mindset is far more important long-term than ideas if you want to start a business.
LINKS
Bento will beat your current email bill — up to 70% off or $300 in credits
Million Dollar Weekend by Noah Kagan
Meet lifestyle founders inside Dynamite Circle
Hang out exclusively with 7+ figure founders in DC BLACK
CHAPTERS
(00:00:00) Intro and Listener Email
(00:05:58) Path 1: “Hold Your Nose and Jump”
(00:11:43) Path 2: The Coast Side Hustle
(00:14:16) Path 3: Intrapreneurship/Apprenticeship
(00:18:14) Path 4: Job Hopping
(00:30:05) Product-Market Fit, Passion, and More
(00:38:58) Overrated and Underrated Entrepreneurship Tips
CONNECT:
Dan@tropicalmba.com
Ian@tropicalmba.com
Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Lucy Bella.
PLAYLIST:
Bad Hiring Advice That Can Actually Work: 9 Tactics for Lifestyle Founders
What We Learned From Running a 7-Figure Remote Business in 2025
The 9-5 is Dead, This is the Socially Acceptable Lottery Ticket
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | At the top here, I wanted to shout out our sponsor, Bento. |
| 0:17.0 | So many TNBA listeners are using Bento because it's a solid no BS email and automation platform built for how founders are actually running businesses in the AI era. |
| 0:28.2 | If you're already sending real volume of email and want something simpler and more effective, check them out at bentonow.com slash TMBA. |
| 0:38.0 | Happy Thursday morning, everybody. |
| 0:39.2 | Welcome back to the Tropical MBA podcast, the OGPod for Lifestyle Founders. |
| 0:44.3 | We are hopefully going to create a few more today, Ian. |
| 0:46.8 | Today's topic comes direct from the inbox, as many, many do. |
| 0:50.5 | We appreciate your emails, by the way. |
| 0:51.8 | Our email addresses are Dan and Ian at tropical MBA.com. Our favorite emails to receive our topic suggestions, good things happening, challenging things happening. We recently were shared a college syllabus that includes the Tropical MBA podcast on it. So our poisonous reach has invaded the academy. |
| 1:12.5 | That's so cool. |
| 1:13.2 | We appreciate your emails. |
| 1:15.1 | Today's episode would not exist without them. |
| 1:18.2 | So today's topic that we're going to be reaching into, Ian, is typical paths for replacing |
| 1:23.8 | your 9 to 5 income with entrepreneurship. |
| 1:27.3 | And we are going to rank and rate them |
| 1:29.3 | based on risk profile and the difficulty and sort of the effectiveness of each and then we're |
| 1:34.6 | going to talk about some overrated and underrated ways to start your next or your first business. |
| 1:40.9 | So for those of you listening to this that are advanced entrepreneurs, perhaps we can |
| 1:45.3 | jog a new idea, a shiny object loose from you today, or also a lot of people have friends and |
| 1:52.0 | family who hit us up all the time. They're like, hey, how can I get some of this Instagram |
| 1:55.9 | money that I'm seeing, the side hustle money going for myself? So today is the episode for those folks. Correct. Everybody listens to this show that's got a really successful business. I think that happens to them quite often. They're like, man, what do I have to do to be you? Is it just scroll Instagram all day? Because that's kind of what I'm up to right now. Is that where the business idea is going to come from? Can I get paid to scroll Instagram? |
| 2:19.1 | Because I'm awesome at it. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Dan Andrews; Ian Schoen, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Dan Andrews; Ian Schoen and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.