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A fter starting eight million-dollar businesses myself (Kickflip,
Gambit, KingSumo, SendFox, Sumo, Tidycal, Monthly1K,
AppSumo), I wanted to PROVE I could teach others to do the same.
In trying to share the process I realized that it consists of just a few core
steps. I call these three steps the Million Dollar Weekend process:
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 market research.
3. Spend NO MONEY to quickly validate whether your idea is the real
deal (or not) by preselling it before you build it.
I knew I was onto something, because early on everyone who followed
the process eventually launched a profitable side hustle or business.
People like Michael Osborn, who used the three steps to turn his interest
in real estate into an $83,000-a-month consulting business.
Or Jennifer Jones, who launched a $20,000-a-year side-hustle cookie
business (chocolate chip for me!).
Or Daniel Reifenberger, who turned working at the Apple store into a
$250,000-a-year business tutoring people in how to use technology.
The problem was, for every Michael, Jennifer, and Daniel, there were a
thousand wantrepreneurs in my social media feeds who could never get
started. It was a big mystery to me: If all the information you need to start a
business is freely available, if the Million Dollar Weekend process works if
you just commit to it, why is it SO HARD TO DO for SO MANY PEOPLE?
In 2013, I set out to solve that mystery and launched a course called
“How to Make a $1000-a-Month Business.” I started with a group of five
beta testers—a programmer, a horse trainer, and three people with ordinary
day jobs—all of whom had everything they needed to start their own
business.
Two weeks after we started, I was shocked to discover the entire group
practically made ZERO progress. To understand what had happened, I got
everyone in a room together and did some entrepreneurial group therapy,
breaking down what was holding them back.
It turns out, it wasn’t a lack of skill, desire, or intelligence.
The whole group was derailed by the same two fears:
1. FEAR OF STARTING. At some point people are told
entrepreneurship is a huge risk, and you believed it. You figured more
preparation, more planning, and more talking to friends would help you
overcome your insecurities. But that inaction only breeds more doubt
and fear. In actuality, the best way to learn what we need to know—and
become who we want to be—is by just getting started. Small
EXPERIMENTS, repeated over time, are the recipe for
transformation in business, and life.
2. FEAR OF ASKING. Soon after starting, the fear of rejection emerges.
You have some impressive skills, an amazing product, every advantage
in the world, and you’ll never sell a thing if you can’t face another
person and ask for what you want. Whether you want them to buy what
you’re selling or help in another way, you have to be able to ask in
order to get. Once you reframe rejection as something desirable,
the act of asking becomes a power all its own.
I helped that early group and thousands since then to overcome these blocks,
and if you stick with me through this book, I will help you overcome these
fears and start your million dollar business.
From now on, everything you do in this book, and after, should be viewed
as an experiment. This has been a profound shift for people who worry that
“starting a business” is this big daunting thing. Experiments are supposed to
fail. And should they fail, you just take what you’ve learned and try again a
little bit differently.
Take me and any of the super-successful entrepreneurs and side-hustle
champions I’ve met over the years. It’s uncanny, but the one commonality
nearly all of us share is the crazy number of seemingly random things
we’ve tried to launch—stretching back to our childhoods. Online courses,
self-published books, consulting, Airbnbs, affiliate marketing, YouTube
channels, a college dating site, and many more . . .
And for all of us, almost all of these projects failed!
So what’s the connection between all these random failures and the
success we ultimately achieved? It’s clearly not our expertise. No, it’s
because of our willingness to run small experiments.
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).
Looking back on the early years of your life, it’s easy to think of “scary”
things that became not so scary as soon as you tried them. Remember the first
time you tried to ride a bike? Hold your breath underwater? Climb a tree?
Walk? The messiness of such trial and error may seem uncomfortable now,
but the days when we weren’t afraid to leap into the mud and dirty up our
hands were when we learned the fastest (and had the most fun!).
Leaping is all that matters. The most courageous creators just leap more
—in spite of their fear—and successful creation eventually follows. If you
trace back every big company to its beginning, it all started with a leap into
the unknown and a tiny little experiment:
Apple: Started as two guys who tried to build a computer kit that you can
carry
Facebook: Started as a weekend project similar to Hot or Not for
college students
Tesla: Started as a prototype of an electric car to convince car companies
to go electric
Google: Started off as a research project
Airbnb: Started off in a weekend as a place to crash in someone’s living
room during conferences
Khan Academy: Started off as a set of ten-minute videos Sal Khan
created for his cousins
AppSumo: Started as a way to get a deal on software I liked
Most people never pick up the phone, most people never ask.
And that’s what separates, sometimes, the people that do
things from the people that just dream about them. You gotta
act. And you gotta be willing to fail.
—Steve Jobs
Business is just a never-ending cycle of starting and trying new things, asking
whether people will pay for those things, and then trying it again based on
what you’ve learned. If you’re afraid to start or ask, you can’t experiment.
And if you can’t experiment, you can’t do business.
This isn’t about willpower or self-discipline. No one is going to nag,
scold, or intimidate you into starting a business. My personal favorite way to
approach starting a business is to have fun!
People do all kinds of scary things in the name of fun. Entrepreneurship is
no exception. Make it fun and you’ll overcome the fear.
So let’s have some fun! Business is an amazing opportunity to learn about
yourself, play with ideas, solve your own problems, help other people, and
get paid all the while. Approaching it this way will free up your imagination,
make you less judgy and critical of yourself, and allow you to open yourself
up to the kind of playful experimentation I want you to practice.
This will be the most fun, most productive weekend you’ve had in years!
Why just a weekend? No time to chicken out!
I’ve found from thousands of students that limiting time to a weekend
(which everyone has) forces you to become inventive, focuses your attention
only on the things that matter, and shows you how much more you can do with
limitations. You have only forty-eight hours.
Each chapter contains tried-and-tested challenges I’ve developed to get
wantrepreneurs out of their comfort zones and into the end zone. As you
follow my instructions, tackle these challenges, and overcome your fears,
you’ll also be growing your million-dollar business, step by step.
Here’s how your Million Dollar Weekend journey is structured:
PART 1. START IT
You’ll work your way through part 1 in the three to four days leading up to
the weekend. These chapters will rekindle your Creator’s Courage,
preparing you to hit the ground running at the weekend.
In chapter 1, I’ll show you how to apply the NOW, Not How mindset
that’s critical to experimentation. And then calculate your Freedom Number,
so it’s clear what you are working toward.
In chapter 2, you’ll learn about Rejection Goals to help develop your Ask
muscle. You’ll do the life-changing Coffee Challenge that will show how
fearless you are and practice the skill of asking that will empower you to
build a million-dollar business.
PART 2. BUILD IT
This is it—your Million Dollar Weekend! Here, I’ll walk you step by step
through the Million Dollar Weekend process, where you will design, verify,
and launch your MDW business.
In chapters 3, 4, and 5 (aka Friday, Saturday, and Sunday), you’ll go from
Zero to $1 and land your first three customers. To get there, you will learn
techniques to generate profitable business ideas, determine which ideas have
million-dollar opportunities, and then take the 48-hour challenge to get your
first paying customers.
I want you to work fast and stay laser-focused on going from idea to first
customer. Can’t get any real customers to give you money? Awesome! We’ll
celebrate your victorious failure (that cost little time and no money) and look
to quickly validate your next idea. Remember, a weekend is all you need!
PART 3. GROW IT
What gets you to your first $1 will get you to your first $1,000. It’s the leap to
$100,000 and then to $1 million that requires you to create a growth machine.
The most powerful growth tool today for solopreneurs is a system of content
creation, audience building, and email marketing. We’ll set up this system in
chapters 6 and 7.
At the heart of each chapter is a challenge that delivers a concrete asset
for your business. In chapter 8, that asset is the Experiment-Based Marketing
approach that helped me grow Mint.com from zero to 1 million users in just
six months. It worked so well for Mint, I now use Experiment-Based
Marketing for EVERY new product, service, or company I launch.
Chapter 9 shifts the attention from the business back to your own personal
development. Now that you’re an entrepreneur, you’re responsible for your
productivity, your training, your growth, and your time. You’ll need a
different approach and different system to organize your days—one that
optimizes for your overall happiness above all else. (Or why do any of it,
right?) This, the final chapter, is about building not just a business, but a life
that you’ll love.
CHALLENGE
Million Dollar Weekend contract.
Those people who’ve found success from this material do one
thing: they commit to the process and they follow it exactly. I
want you to be successful and create a contract, promising
yourself to do the steps listed out in the book. This is your
time to create your dream life. This contract will get you
excited for the future and provide the necessary motivation in
times of need.
Contract with Yourself
I, ____________ (your name), commit to working toward my
dream, having fun throughout the experience, facing my fears,
and following every challenge in this book.
My dream outcome after reading Million Dollar Weekend is:
Signature: ___________________________________
Date: ___________________________________
FREE MDW JOURNAL, SCRIPTS, TEMPLATES, AND
MORE
If you want your very own journal to document your Million
Dollar Weekend, go to MillionDollarWeekend.com and
download the journal template.
One scribble in these notes could potentially be your million-
dollar business. The most successful students use their
journals to write down their progress to stay focused and
absorb the ideas.
I also included templates, scripts, and video tutorials of
everything in this book. You can also scan the QR Code if you
don’t like typing. It’s absolutely free. Enjoy.
MillionDollarWeekend.com
