Mario Peshev Podcast Transcript
Mario Peshev joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, Home of The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Mario Peshev. Mario Peshev is the CEO of DevriX, a global WordPress agency providing scalable long term technical partnerships along with marketing and business consulting. Peshev is the author of the new book, MBA Disrupted, your step-by-step guide to bootstrapping 1 million plus digital businesses.
Since 2015, DevriX has consistently ranked among the top 20 WordPress consultancies worldwide, scaling both world known enterprise brands and high traffic publishers with up to 1 billion monthly page views on top of WordPress.
Well, good afternoon, Mario. Welcome to the show!
Mario Peshev: Thanks for having me, Brian. It’s a pleasure!
Brian Thomas: Absolutely. I appreciate it. And I know you’re a globetrotter busy man running around the globe. And I know today you’re doing the podcast from Bulgaria. I’m here in Kansas City. So, I appreciate the, the international podcast today. So, Mario jumping into your first question here. Your book, MBA Disrupted, quickly rose to the top 10 on Amazon’s charts.
Can you share the inspiration behind writing this book and what you hope to achieve with it?
Mario Peshev: I’ve, I often refer to myself as a learnaholic. It’s one of my passions. I spend a lot of my time actually reading and thinking about the world recently, I’ve been thinking that I may as well label myself as a business philosopher, just brainstorming and kind of reminiscing what happened and what’s about to come, especially in these uncertain times that are happening right now.
So, over the past 15 years, I’ve been blogging extensively. And ever since my previous book 126 steps to become an entrepreneur, I started directly working on more business-related guides, a more tactical book related to talking about management strategy, sales, marketing, recruitment business operations, and all the other key principles that a company’s dealing with on a daily basis.
So, I spent the past few years working on that and testing it along with my agency clients, consultancy clients, startups that I invest in. And I’ve been refining all these guides as standalone articles and essays. And at the end of the last year, I said that it’s about time to package it in the new book.
So, for the past five months or so, I’ve been working heavily on consolidating all that together and making it a comprehensive guide for everyone and anyone who wants to start a business for people who work full time jobs and are looking into side hustles and even existing business professionals who are now in need of investigating and exploring new channels.
New market launching new products and new services and generally trying to leverage some of the latest opportunities in 2024.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I appreciate that. And in Mario again, this is your 2nd appearance on the podcast, but she did mention previously that you are. And an ongoing continual learner, which I think is amazing and that’s what really inspires a lot of us here on the podcast.
So, I love the fact that your book has risen to the rank it is today and looking forward to getting my hands on it and spreading the word as well. So, Mario, in the book, MBA disrupted, you discuss the modern state of MBA programs. What are the main gaps you identified in traditional MBA curriculums and how does your book address these gaps?
Mario Peshev: Well, first off, some universities do offer great MBA programs that outline the core foundations of managing businesses, right? And this is also supplemented with existing internship opportunities in tier one corporations, alumni network instrumental for successful all students learning there and so forth.
The Ivy League is a great primer on what MBA and interpretation. entrepreneurship programs should look like. Some of the best ABA programs I’ve seen are in universities such as Harvard and Stanford, and there’s no doubt that they provide the right level of opportunities for students studying there.
However, these opportunities are also limited at best. You have to commit yourself to four to six, sometimes more years of full-time study, relocating far from home or even abroad, tuition fees in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and let alone the accommodation and living expenses, which are essentially prohibitive to mere mortals.
So local universities try their best to compensate, but curriculums are outdated and often adapted to corporate needs. and not modern management practices or entrepreneurship principles. And today we know that savvy teenagers can effectively run their own ventures, providing freelance services, running content for digital businesses, conquering social media to influence our marketing, building no code SaaS applications, or even seven figures drop shipping stores.
So that disconnect between what traditional management looked like last century and the unparalleled opportunities of the digital realm, especially in the era of. Artificial intelligence, these require a more holistic and accessible approach for everyone from students to the full time who is looking to side hustles to all those traditional entrepreneurs who are looking into new ways to pivot their own ventures.
Brian Thomas: Thank you, and I’m glad that you are out there helping people with how business has transformed. We do have obviously, as you mentioned, we have a lot of great. Universities that are teaching great MBA programs, but at the end of the day, they’re not hitting the mark and you’re showing people how business has transformed in the last 30 years.
And I think that’s something that we need to highlight and get ahead of that. So I appreciate that. And Mario, you’ve distilled 25 years of digital experience into this book. Could you highlight some of the key strategies from your book that have been most effective in your own career?
Mario Peshev: MBA Disrupted is designed to consolidate its 25 years of practical experience building, scaling, managing, and selling digital businesses.
It provides a clear breakdown of the core principles of launching a digital company from market and persona research through comprehensive overview of 12 different business models such as software service, e commerce, service businesses, marketplaces, to incorporating an LLC, recruitment, creative effective process, and Some key tools and apps to start with after working with thousands of clients across my different businesses, I’ve distilled this key principles of launching and running digital companies, creating compelling offers, testing fast, you know, true agile way, pricing models, marketing and sales channels that deliver results, common challenges that small and large companies struggle with.
and ways to mitigate and optimize for that. After the past five years, creating training resources, standard operating procedures, and different playbooks for my teams, startups, and our clients we, we managed to thoroughly test and refine all these playbooks. multiple times in a row, effectively making sure that they work in both bull and bear markets, switching between preservation mode and high growth cycles, and making sure that they’re as valid and as applicable as it can.
Studying the core principles essentially provides the two sets required to effectively mitigate risks and leverage opportunities. So even though the book has been written in 2024, I believe that it’s going to be just as applicable in the next 10 or maybe even 20 years.
Brian Thomas: I really love that. And you have some real-world examples that you’ve, again, accumulated over the last 25 years.
And that is so helpful for especially many young entrepreneurs that can jump in, read a book and get some great, really some coaching directly from the book. So I appreciate that. And Mario last question of the day. MBA Disrupted also aims to build a community of business leaders. How important is networking in community for an entrepreneur? And what advice do you have for those looking to build their network?
Mario Peshev: This is one of the lessons that I learned later in my career. I definitely tried to build it solo. I started as a full-time freelancer as well. And later on, I realized that if you want to go fast, you have to go alone. If you want to go far, you have to work with a team, which is a common sentence out there.
So, entrepreneurship has gone through a number of phases in the past 20 years, from obscure to trendy and glamorous to even evil in the past year with high tech doing all these layoffs or liberating for entrepreneurs and side hustlers. And executives build their own circles of trust with other founders and entrepreneurs through professional communities like YC or EO to masterminds coaching programs, one on one calls with other industry leaders and collaborations with Negro to tap into the right opportunities.
Examples are channel partnerships, collaborative campaigns, mutual webinars, virtual events, co-hosting panels together, and the list goes on. My businesses have closed seven figure deals through partnership opportunities alone, specific clients that we landed through some of our strategic partners. I also work myself with two veteran business advisors as a sanity check and gathering different insights.
I’m in a dozen different business Slack communities and several specific programs with other business leaders, agency founders, Marta experts, constantly staying in touch with the latest macro trends, recruitment challenges, or growth opportunities. So as a solution to that, to make the, the, the book more practical and extending the longevity of the book in the long-term, I’m opening up my Slack community.
To book readers, launching their own ventures as a peer group to support and brainstorming and my personal involvement in sharing new frameworks. Playbooks, contract templates, and recent trends, increasing the odds of them making successful in the process.
Brian Thomas: I really love that, Mario, you, you’ve been a successful entrepreneur, but on the backside of this, I do know you care about people and care about others and their success. And the fact that you’re opening up a lot of these tools and resources for these entrepreneurs, it’s just amazing, And I really love that. Love that you are giving back and helping the community, Mario.
Mario Peshev: Thank you.
Brian Thomas: You bet. Absolutely. It was such a pleasure having you on again, and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Mario Peshev: It was a great pleasure and I’m wishing good luck to everyone involved in the entrepreneurship in 2024 and onward.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Mario Peshev Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s podcast page.
