I just told you about the importance of asking. Well . . . To get my book into the hands of the people who need it most, I need your help. If my book has been helpful, can you take thirty seconds right now and leave a short review? Think back to why you decided to pick up this book and give it a chance. Maybe it’s because a five-star review on Amazon or Goodreads caught your eye. Leave a review and give someone else the opportunity to start their Million Dollar Weekend. Before I started writing this book, I met Matt, who works security at the Austin airport. He has the same dream as you, to create a business so he can change his life, but he may never hear about this book. Your review means the world to me AND it could change the world of someone else, like Matt. Feel good about yourself knowing your brief review can change someone’s life forever. The review costs you no money (my favorite price) and only takes thirty seconds. You can go to the book’s page on the Amazon app or desktop site, or wherever you bought it, and leave a review there. On Kindle or an e-reader, scroll to the last page of the book. On Audible, go to your library page and click Write a Review. BTW: I read every single review. And when your review happens, an alarm goes off in my office, my mom tells me about it, and our entire team celebrates like we just won the Super Bowl. Now back to your Million Dollar Weekend. — Love you forever, Noah
Become a Problem Seeker The best entrepreneurs are the most dissatisfied. They’re always thinking of how things can be better. Your frustrations — and the frustrations of others — are your business opportunities. Great ideas come from being a problem seeker. Analyze frustrations in your day, including the things that bother you at home, waste your time on your commute to work, or online. Here’s a list of things that bother me: What to make for breakfast that’s quick, healthy, and full of caffeine How to find a reliable house cleaner Where to go to dinner with my partner How to find my next therapist What kind of investment to make with some extra cash I received And these are just the problems I’ve encountered today. I could go on and on . . . and that’s the point! The number of things that can be better are endless — which is a gold mine for newbie entrepreneurs. The crucial first step toward entrepreneurship is to study your own unhappiness and to think of solutions (aka business opportunities) for you to sell.
That we eventually succeeded is a byproduct of the fact that we just try more things, period. That’s what I call Creator’s Courage. I believe everyone is born with this courage, and for those who have lost it, this book will help you rediscover the ability to come up with ideas (starting) and have the courage to try them out (asking).
Here are the six Revenue Dials you can use: Average order value: Increase the amount someone purchases. Frequency: Increase how often someone will buy your service. Price point: Increase or decrease your price point to affect total sales. Customer type: Approach a more lucrative/wealthier customer segment. Product line: Add additional products to make the business more attractive to start. Add-on services: If you’re selling a product like cookies, can you offer a service like setting up birthday parties or cooking at the person’s home?
That’s why, when it comes to generating business ideas, customers come first. Before the product or service. Even before the idea. To build a business, you need someone to sell to. I can’t tell you how many times someone has emailed me saying, “What do you think of this business idea?” My auto-reply? “Have you asked what the customer thinks?” Steve Jobs said, “You have to start with the customer experience and work backwards.” Jeff Bezos, too, insists everyone at Amazon use a Customer First Approach to generate ideas and decide which to develop. The first of his sixteen Leadership Principles — Customer Obsession — starts by saying, “Leaders start with the customer and work backwards.” Working backwards prioritizes access to a group of customers (a group you probably belong to) and focuses on an aspect of a customer’s life that doesn’t work. If you do it this way, you’re assured of nailing the three Ws of business right from the start: Who you are selling to What problem you’re solving Where they are Your goals in this chapter are to use the Customer First Approach, to narrow in on three markets that you’ll target, to use your knowledge and experience of these markets to generate lots of ideas, and then to choose the three you think are the most likely to succeed. It’s the first step in the three-part Million Dollar Weekend process, in which you’ll learn to sell ideas to a small early adopter group before you’ve built the product (or spent a cent) in order to validate that there is a market that will pay. Repeat, fast and cheap, until it hits. Experiment, experiment, experiment — BOOM!
six reasons why email is the best: My company AppSumo generates $65 million a year in total transactions. And you know what? Nearly 50 percent of that comes from email. This percentage has been consistent for more than ten years. Don’t believe me? I have 120,000 Twitter followers, 750,000 YouTube subscribers, and 150,000 TikTok fans — and I would give them all up for my 100,000 email subscribers. Why? Every time I send an email, 40,000 people open it and consume my content. I’m not hoping the platform gods will allow me to reach them. On the other platforms, anywhere between 100 and 1 million people pay attention to my content, but it’s not consistent or in my control. I know what you’re saying: “C’mon, Noah, email is dead.” Now ask yourself, when was the last time you checked your email? Exactly. Email is used obsessively by over 4 billion people! It’s the largest way of communicating at scale that exists today. Eighty-nine percent of people check it EVERY DAY! Social media decides who and how many people you’re seen by. One tweak to the algorithm, and you’re toast. Remember the digital publisher LittleThings? Yeah, no one else does, either. They closed after they lost 75 percent of their 20,000,000 monthly visitors when Facebook changed its algorithm in 2018. CEO Joe Speiser says it killed his business and he lost $100 million. You own your email list. Forever. If AppSumo shuts down tomorrow, my insurance policy, my sweet sweet baby, my beloved, my email list comes with me and makes anything I do after so much easier. Because it’s mine. It also doesn’t cost you significant money to grow your list or to communicate with your list, whereas Facebook or Google ads consistently cost money.
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PRO TIP: Don’t base your happiness or your self-worth on being the smartest, the most successful, the richest. Being so focused on the end results sets you up for a major fall because there’s ALWAYS going to be someone who’s smarter, more successful, or richer — and every time you see that you’ve fallen short, it will eat away at your motivation. Defining yourself by the things you do each day (the process) will get you to where you want to be quicker and more joyfully than measuring yourself against others.
The Idea Generators So let’s open the net wide and get down to generating ideas . . . I mean problems! Here’s what the process of coming up with a million-dollar business idea does NOT look like: Getting on TikTok or YouTube and mindlessly copying whatever the influencers say is working for them Getting struck with the perfect vision for a genius new product Meditating, following your passion, and brainstorming Following any other woo-woo method that promises inspiration in a box Here’s what the actual process looks like: What’s the most painful (aka valuable) problem you can solve for people . . . That you also have passion for and/or unique expertise in . . . For the largest niche possible that you belong to and understand . . . Simple enough, but takes some light and fun brainwork. Remember to focus on your Zone of Influence here (your existing community): the 150 followers you have on TikTok, the 200 in your local Taco Aficionados group, the 300 in the WhatsApp group for your mountain biking club (not to mention the 143,000 in the subreddit r/mountainbiking). Your job as a problem seeker is to go to a community of yours. You can access all the idea challenges and more examples at MillionDollarWeekend.com. Now it’s your turn. Use the following four challenges to come up with at least ten potentially profitable ideas:
What’s your unique angle in thirty seconds or less?” In other words, why would anyone care to read his newsletter? I know that sounds harsh, but that’s the first question you have to answer before you put yourself into the public sphere. Pressed into defining his unique angle, Ben paused. He rumpled his face up, laughed nervously, and shrugged. This is hard! Finally he spoke, slowly, and then with confidence. Listen to how Ben defined his angle, his sauce: “I’ve been a performance coach for the last fourteen years, working with the best athletes in the world. Helping people perform better is my groove. I want to help anybody who wants to have a great day and shift them into the mentality to dominate their life. I have information to share when it comes to dealing with the best.” That is beautiful! Both in its heartfelt honesty and authenticity, but also in its clarity. Let’s pick it apart and look at what he did in those four sentences: He defines who he is, Why you should trust him, What he is passionate about, and What unique thing this prepares him to do for you. It is clear, approachable, direct, and short. The first three sentences define what makes him special (fourteen years helping the best athletes in the world perform better!), and the fourth (how he’s solving his customers’ problems, teaching mindsets needed to dominate life) defines the kind of love and attention he’ll generously dispense to cultivate a community. Take a minute, and as Ben has done, write out a pitch in your journal describing your special sauce. CHALLENGE Write out your unique angle. There are no right answers here. You can change these any time you’d like. Who are you? Why should people listen? What are you passionate about? What will you do for people?
Still stuck? Here are four questions to get you going: What is one thing this morning that irritated me? What is one thing on my to-do list that’s been there over a week? What is one thing that I regularly fail to do well? What is one thing I wanted to buy recently only to find out that no one made it? I