1. Find a problem people are having that you can solve. 2. Craft an irresistible solution whose million-dollar-plus potential is backed by simple mar… - Noah Kagan

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!

Overthinking seems like the “smart” way to launch, but it’s far less effective. Super-successful people do the opposite — they take action first, get real feedback, and learn from that, which is a million times more valuable than any book or course. And quicker! Most people: Overthink first, act later. Every successful entrepreneur: Act first, figure it out later.

When most people decide they want to start a business, their first intuition is to learn more — read a book, take a course, seek out advice — and then take action after having carefully considered all the facts. After all, there are a ton of top-rated MBA programs, $10 Udemy courses, free YouTube videos, and entrepreneurship how-to books — so why wouldn’t you learn all you could? That’s got to be a whole lot safer, and it probably makes you a lot less likely to fail, right? Wrong. Overthinking seems like the “smart” way to launch, but it’s far less effective. Super-successful people do the opposite — they take action first, get real feedback, and learn from that, which is a million times more valuable than any book or course. And quicker!