Bookclub - Million Dollar Weekend

Entrepreneurship is hard 🧱. We glorify the end goal, but it is a challenging journey that often seem too elusive and daunting. Like.. how do you even start? how hard is it actually? am I ready?

In his “Million Dollar Weekend” book, Noah Kagan shares his roadmap and perspective on how anyone can start a business (in a weekend!). Noah’s optimistic approach to the topic made the journey seems less daunting and essentially strikes me with a mindset that I have more than enough to get going. 🗺️

Chapter 1: Just Fu**ing Start

• Failure forces us to experiment, play, and find our own path.
• Define yourself by the things you do each day (the process). Measuring yourself by the end results sets you up for a loosing game of comparing yourself against others and getting your motivation eaten away.
• NOW, Not How (aka fuck around ‘n find out)
  • Taking action and learning >> overthinking and speculating

Chapter 2: The Unlimited Upside of Asking

• Confidently ask for what you want. 📣 Then follow up! Ask muscle is crucial everwhere (sales, negotiations, personal relationships).
• Set rejection goals (25 a week). Work hard to get the NOs - it’s growth. Give no fks. It has nothing to do with your self-worth. It’ll eventually become a yes.
• Mindset: Sell to help and educate. If you believe your product improves lives and fulfills a true need, it’s your moral obligation to sell it.
• Challenge: Go to any coffee shop in person, make a purchase and ask “Can I get 10% off”. That’s it. Get past the rejection and realize how capable you are.

Chapter 3: Finding Million-Dollar Ideas

• Focus on an aspect of a customer’s life that doesn’t work. Be a pain-killer.
• Idea don’t matter if customers don’t need it. Only their opinions matter
• Founder First obsess over the customer (ask), whereas MVP obsess over product. (making things because they want to)
  • Your launch should be reaching out and talking to potential customers.
• Focus on Zero to $1. Start with 1 customer, scale later.
  • ie. Offer your skill > Include Paypal link > Fulfill orders
  • Start within your zone of influence, people you can reach today.
  • Challenge: Name 3 groups in your context that you’d be excited to help?
• Ideas / opportunities Problems/frustrations! Endless things can be better. Ideas:
  • Recommend you X based on your requirements (ie. cars, accomodation, restaurants, table tennis racket, travel).
  • Making expensive services cheap (ie. interior designers)
  • Find best-selling products or most popular questions (or lack thereof). Can you accessorize it / sell service to those people?
• Challenge: pick 3 best ideas. That you excited about + easiest to implement?

Chapter 4: The One-Minute Business Model

• Find a million-dollar market 🌊 for your product 🏄‍♀️ to ride on. Your job isn’t to create demand 🌊
  • Look at changes/derivatives of demand.
  • Use Google Trends to evaluate market size / growth potential (flat / growing).
  • Audience size (ie. check Facebook Ads) * price point >= 1,000,000?

Profit = Revenue - Cost

＃ sales needed = 1,000,000 / profit per unit

• What if it turns out it’s not going to work?
  • Pivot . Look for adjacent opportunities.
  • Try tweaking revenue dials ⚙️: Average order value, frequency, price, customer type, product line, upsell add-on services

Chapter 5: Validate your business by getting paid

• Get paying customer first 🤝, fulfillment is the easier part.
• Validating your idea: Time box it ⏱️, get your money upfront 💵, iterate 🔄
• Challenge: Find 3 paying customers in 48h, either by:
  1. Preselling: Meet people, tell them what you’re selling, ask money, see how they react (reach out to 10 prospects from your zone of influence)
  2. Post an ad in Marketplaces before you launch
     • ie. think of rentals, virtual products, products you’ll have someone else make for you, services you could do, things you can teach.
  3. Landing pages. Don’t overthink design, just focus on getting people to buy.
• This is not sales pitch, but a conversation to learn about how you can help them and if they’ll pay you for it
  • Start with questions that gets them talking about their problems. Listen. Summarize and capture the pain points. More pain more value
  • Then suggest options / solution. What if I do this?
  • If they’re excited, make the offer! Offer: Price + Benefit + Time. Presell works if there’s clear expectations / good deals.

“For $69, I will teach you how to write better in 2 hours”

“Hey - I remember you liked X” (…) “I’m working on a project with x, think you’ll love it. You down to be my first customer, only $y a month.” (…) “Why don’t you transfer now so I can confirm you. Only taking ten orders as the first batch”

• Flipping rejections to learning opportunity (feedback is gold):
  • 'Why not?’ Their criticism is exactly what you want to know
  • Ask referral: ‘Who is one person you know who would really like this?“
  • Ask for ideas: 'What would make this a no-brainer for you?’
  • Ask them to set the price: ‘What would you pay for that?’

Chapter 6: Build an audience who will support you for life

• Build 1000 true fans by connecting with people whose challenges overlap with your skills and passion. Has a lifetime value. Created through generosity; giving value and helping them without immediate return and expectations.
• build a personal brand Be real. Share yourself honestly and transparently.
• A good content works for you while you sleep
• Challenge: What’s your unique angle? (who are you / why you can be trusted / your passion / what unique thing can you do to give value)
• Challenge:Choose a platform to reach your audience (Blog, Linkedin, IG, X, Dribble, Podcasts, Youtube). Where is your audience? What medium do you enjoy creating content in? Rewrite your bio to reflect your unique angle pitch.
• Challenge: Create a Content Circle Framework - Become a reliable source of information for a core circle (very narrow audience of passionate niche). Slowly expand to broader audience and circle of influence.
  • Finding your niche: any strong takes? what is nobody talking about / biggest mistakes made by people in your target market? Show your unique viewpoint.

"Britain medical exam → studying and productivity → Product review”

“How to clean cooler → How to choose laundry detergents for new home owners → Best family vacuums

• Be the guru guide
  • Document what you think they should do what you do. Show your process.
  • "How to..” “How I..”
  • Make them want to participate with you
• Challenge: Post a content today!

Chapter 7: Email is for profit

• Write email that’s FUN. Aim for 20% open rate. You own that channel.
• Setup landing page that communicate value proposition & capture emails (ie. sendfox.com, mailchimp.com, convertkit.com)

“I sleep bettter than you. Get my 1 free tip a week to improve your sleep”

• Get first 100 subscribers. Use your existing network, plug it at every point of contact (email signature, social bio); you can track conversion with bitly.com, inform your followers, ask them to refer a person (with a specific description) who might like it
• Challenge: Create email lead magnets in your content.
  • Lead magnet examples: a checklist/template/guide, advanced guide, a book, expert recommendations. Offered for free if you sign up.
• Set an autoresponder for your new sub right away while they’re fully engaged. (i.e. welcome email / best content / with a question or actionable)
• Challenge: Law of 100 - Commit to 100 reps before you even think of stopping! Ignoring the results, Quantity > Quality because they iterate more. (ie. practice for 100 days, pitch to 100 people, make 100 contents) Just put it out.

Chapter 8: Growth Machine

• Set 𝟏 hyper-focused goal & prioritize strictly
  • e.g. X email addresses, X subscribers, X net revenue, X clients.. and by when?
  • A clear destination makes route planning easier, and allows you to say no to a lot of things 🚧📍. With your # and timeframe, break it down to small wins.
  • e.g. x per month & y profit a unit -> z units per day
• Create a marketing experiment list
  • List various marketing strategies, and for each, write the expected sales and actual sales (test it out)
  • Test different marketing experiments. If it work, double down. Otherwise kill it and move on (30 days is more than enough to get results).
• Ideas:
  • email personal network, partner/giveaway with clubs/influencers to setup sales, marketplace, FB ads, content marketing, cold outreach, collaborations
  • Make your existing customers happy is also a lever to double down
    • Overdeliver and focus on customer retention and referrals
    • e.g. good customer service, hand-written notes, ask for feedback (“What is one thing we can do today that will make you twice as happy with us?”)

Chapter 9: 52 chances this year

• Your why? freedom / you want things to happen
• Design a system to optimize for your overall happiness/fulfillment.
  1. Create a ‘dream year checklist’, that includes specifics like where you’re living, what you’re doing or experiencing, how you feel, etc. Don’t worry about the how. Just create the big vision for yourself.
  2. Make yearly goals: Shortlist the things that excites you most. Categorize them.
  3. Visit your goals often: put it in your phone lock screen / daily notes
• The calendar reflects your goal and time allocation
  • Categorize and color code (ie. work, health, personal, travel). For quick insight.
  • Pro tip: Focus on main goals earlier in the week. Use your lazy days to prioritize things to outsource / stop doing. Activities on repeat forms habits.
  • Spend 25 min Sunday planning out weekly activities + revisiting yearly goals.
• self-made team-made.
  • Connect and help each other, you need to have the right group for support, partnership, learning, accountability.
  • Accountability buddy (Hawthore effect) - send a weekly progress update to someone who replies, support and celebrate you.
  • Find ‘prefluencers’ whose work impress you + don’t have a ton of attention + a way you can help them. It’s about where they will be, not where they are. Start by complimenting, if they respond, open the dialogue for (future) colab.
  • Build your network with referrals: After meeting someone new, send message on highlights/take-aways, follow-ups, request for referral.

“Thanks for meeting with me. You = awesome. 3 epic lessons I learned: … I’m curious: Are there 1-2 other people you believe I should meet? Thanks again.”

“Hey x, you are the most impressive friend I know, and I’d love your help in expanding my network. I love … Who’s 1 person you think I should connect w? If no one comes to mind, no pressure.”

“Hi… My good friend x said you’re his #1 pick of someone I should meet next. Plus, I love your work on… (How you can help them..) How’s next Tuesday at 10 am at .. for you? Or whatever’s most convenient to you. I’d also be happy to… (more offering). Thanks. P.S. About me: (social proof)”

Final note: if you do fail, start again. Have the courage to test out ideas.

If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail - Benjamin Franklin

Thoughts.

A solid book, tons of takeaways. Looking back at myself as a developer, I’m used to the fuck around n find out loop but I get stuck. I build something cool and ends it there.

More than building things, starting a business is about making the impact. Asking the right questions to the right people, and solving frustrations big enough that they would love to pay you for it. Rather than spend months before validating what you built, validate it within the next 48h then fulfill your offering.

The book offers good templates on how I can start creating and growing audiences (although that would come after my first customers).

I would also love to try out setting a system for myself. Goal-setting, color coding calendars, revisiting them weekly, and talking to more people.

Books like this make you realize you have LOTS of room to grow.