The Real Story Behind "Million Dollar Weekend": What Noah Kagan Won't Tell You | Part 1
You have so many business ideas, how to pick the right one? Million Dollar Weekend breakdown. • Part 1 • Wisdom Hit #6
You requested content about business, so this Wisdom Hit is dedicated to that.
Noah Kagan promises you can start a million-dollar business over a weekend. Here's what he doesn't tell you about why that might not work for most people.
Don't get me wrong, "Million Dollar Weekend" is packed with actionable steps, practical challenges, and value. But after breaking down each chapter, I realized there's a gap between Kagan's advice and reality for most people.
This breakdown is too extensive for one post, so I'm releasing it in two parts. I'll show you what works, what doesn't, and why you should still read the book yourself. Get it here (affiliate)
This post has the format of:
Intro
Lesson
Summary
Chapter’s challenges
Chapter 1: Just fu*king start
Noah’s Background: He went to Berkeley and was the 30th employee at Facebook, from which he was fired later.
Neat start that comes with a packet of skills and knowledge. Then he talks about his successful businesses. In short, there’s a lot to learn from this man.
Every chapter has its own challenges that will be listed at the end of each section.
Lesson:
What actually stops people from starting?
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:
Fear of starting
Fear of asking
Start. That’s the whole lesson. Start without overthinking. Start when you aren’t ready.
Is there a right time for having kids? Probably? But surely not now? The same is true with business, and it’s much less scary than having kids.
I’ve written about this many times on AchievR (like here or here, for example).
To give you the wider picture, let’s list the most common causes for not starting and the cure for them:
I’m not ready, I don’t know enough yet. Just start!
I will fail. You will fail. You will learn. You will fail less. Just start!
I’m not cut out for this. What’s that presumption based on? Was it enough to determine? Just start!
There are so many things that could go wrong. Most of them are in your head. Just start!
I like the term “wantrepreneur” Noah is using. Don’t be one.
The freedom number.
It’s a number that will allow you to cover all the necessary expenses. It’s not the number for getting rich (yet), it’s the number that buys freedom.
I’ve had mine in mind for a long time. and believe everyone should have one. Come up with one for yourself (remember—starting).
From my eighteenth birthday until I turned thirty, my monthly Freedom Number was $3,000. Why $3,000? Because adding up what I paid for rent, the cost of the tacos and steak and wine I liked to eat and drink, and the plane tickets that would let me work from Argentina or Korea or Thailand, all together that came to a little less than $3,000 a month. At the time, that’s what my living expenses were. Roughly speaking: $1,000 for housing, $1,000 for food and travel, $1,000 for savings and investment.
Summary:
Act first and figure stuff out along the way. There’s no better lesson than failing and iterating on your own.
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! […] Any analysis ahead of action is purely speculation.
Chapter 1 challenges:
Ask someone you know for a dollar investment in you and your future business—one measly dollar!
Ask one person you respect for a business idea.
Choosing your Freedom Number.
Chapter 2: Embrace rejection
Noah tells a little story about his dad, who sold copiers with a hard, foreign accent.
“Love rejections! Collect them like treasure! Set rejection goals. I shoot for a hundred rejections each week, because if you work that hard to get so many noes, my little Noah’le, in them you will find a few yeses, too.”
Lesson:
Ask. That’s the whole lesson. Because what’s the worst that can happen? Noah doesn’t say it that directly, but—have no shame in asking for what you want.
Most people don’t directly ask for what they want. They drop a hint here and there, and then are disappointed they didn’t get it.
We cringe at people like this, but we’re jealous after the question is answered.
Rejection is scary, it hurts. But it also doesn’t matter. None of those people who made fun of your cold DM will come to your funeral. Even more, they won’t remember it tomorrow.
Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-hyuk turned a decade of no’s into a chart-beating hit. Whatever you are doing, it won’t take 10 years for you.
Who is the type of person that starts a million-dollar business?
The type of person who asks for what they want.
If you want a new job at a new company, you have to ASK for it.
If you want more money from your boss, you have to ASK for the raise.
If you are selling something, you have to ASK the customer to buy it.
Even at home, if you want your spouse or kids to treat you better, you have to ASK them.
I once did sales training for various renewable energy companies. This involved identifying homes that looked like they needed upgrades, knocking on doors, making small talk (which I hated), and then pitching our product (which was a solid offer). Some people were scared, others were rude, and a few were downright hostile. But it was an experience that made cold DMing people online feel like a peaceful walk in the forest by comparison.
This is going to suck, but there’s something very satisfying about casting this net.
What do you need?
Persistence: most nos are actually a “not nows.”
Follow up: a lot.
Selling is helping: If you believe your product or service improves the lives of your customers, selling is just education. And here’s when I have an ask:
Summary:
Ask. Ask a lot. Ask despite discomfort.
Chapter 2 challenges:
The Coffee Challenge: Go to any coffee shop or anyplace in person. Make a simple purchase and ask for 10 percent off.
Chapter 3: Finding million-dollar ideas
The chapter starts with another story—about the business that flopped, sank $100k+, and how that led to $15 million opportunity.
It is deadly to build a business without first verifying that there are paying customers
Lesson:
…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.”
[..]
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?
The core lesson here (which repeats in the book many times) is that you need to test your idea first, to see if customers are there and if they will pay for the solution you provide.
Founder first vs customer first approach:
Okay, you have an idea for a dog-walking app. How would you go about doing it? Here’s the way most people—most wantrepreneurs—would do it:
Spend hours at home thinking about the app (and coming up with clever names for it).
Set up an LLC
Spend $100 hiring their cousin to draw a cool logo. Set up an LLC.
Watch YouTube videos about apps and programming and business. And dogs.
Consider signing up for a developer boot camp and quickly realize coding is hard.
Buy the domain name for the snazzy website they’re going to build.
Look into hiring a developer on Upwork, and quickly realize it’s prohibitively expensive.
Give up. Again.
vs:
Call or text three people right now who have dogs and ask them to pay you to walk their dog.
Turns out none of these dog owners have problems walking their dog. You discover their real problem is finding dog sitters when they’re traveling.
Ask for their next travel dates and have them pay you a deposit.
They pay: jackpot!
Personal network.
Long story short: Noah describes how he launched AppSumo (discounted software bundles) by emailing the Imgru founder and an important person at Reddit. I can’t help but notice this part is not relatable at all.
Email to Chris Slowe, Reddit’s founding engineer:
Wanted to treat you to a breakfast at Pork Store Cafe to give you some suggestions on the site and run by a cool promotion I’m working on with Imgur.
You free this Wed at 9am?
If any mortal like me and you were to do this, we would never get an answer. And that’s when the brilliant plan would stop.
However, the lesson is there. And it’s valuable—use your existing network. People you already know can be a great potential. You are on some WhatsApp groups, Discords, etc. Everyone knows this, few use this. Combine with the lesson from before—asking.
Finding business ideas.
And the 3 questions you need for that:
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 . . .
Business is all about solving problems, pains, frustrations. You’ve got enough of them, and some are shared with other people, some you know way more about than others. Solve your own problems, win-win.
A tip I really liked is latching onto existing products. Like stickers for an iPhone, PS5 custom controller skins, or cool Lego displays.
It’s easier to sell to a large group of people who’ve already spent money on a product or service.
Summary:
Ask. Ask a lot. Ask despite discomfort.
Chapter 3 challenges:
Top three groups. Let’s write out your top three groups to target. Who do you have easy access to that you’d be EXCITED to help? This can be your neighbors, colleagues, religious friends, golf buddies, cooking friends, etc.
Solve your own problems. Use the questions (above) to find three ideas.
Write down two accessorizing ideas in your MDW Journal.
Use search engine questions and Reddit forums to find two more ideas.
Chapter 4: One-minute business model
Students of Noah’s Monthly1K challenged him to make $1k in the next 24h from the ideas they chose. The beef jerky idea was the winner. The next 2 chapters show how this business was later sold for $120k.
In this chapter, you will learn how to determine if the idea has $1M potential.
Lesson:
3 questions to help you decide on the business:
“Is this a million-dollar opportunity?” You’ll research the market to find out.
“What’s my model?” You’ll create a simple budget by sketching out revenue, cost, and profit, so you know how many units you’ll need to sell and for how much to make $1 million.
“What if it turns out it’s not going to work?” You’ll pivot and evolve: You’ll use customer feedback to adjust the variables of the business (pricing, model, offer, category—all that) into something bigger and better.
Find customers that will pay.
You, dear reader, are a surfer. What you’re selling—the product or service—is your surfboard. The market is the wave, and the wave is what matters most.
Even if you’re a great surfer with an amazing board, you will still fail if you don’t have a good wave to ride.
You don’t have to hop on a new trend. There are many examples in the book, including selling dog treats and cookies. Students are generally broke, solving rich people’s problems pays—you get the idea. Example:
…Robert Samuel. After getting fired from his customer service job at AT&T, he noticed the frenzy created by every new iPhone release. So he put an ad on Craigslist in 2012 to validate whether anyone would pay for him to wait in line. When he was paid $325 for his first fifteen-hour stint, he knew he had a wave.
Today, his business Same Ole Line Dudes (SOLD) employs thirty dudes and dudettes, charging a $50 minimum up to two hours and $25 for each additional hour to wait in line for everything from hot new sneakers to the DMV to the newest iPhone release—and Robert himself takes home $80,000 a year.
To have a million-dollar business, you need a million-dollar opportunity—how do you prove you have one?
Is the overall market dying, flat, or growing?
Is this a million-dollar opportunity?
For 1:
Use Google Trends/Ads Manager, as well as Facebook Ads. Keyword research, any other tool to determine the market’s potential.
For 2:
Pick a price point you think will be ideal for your customer.
Multiply that by the number of ideal customers.
Does that equal at least a million dollars? Yes or no?
Noah gives an example of beard oil.
Problem: Beards are itchy
Solution: Beard oil
Google Trends: Flat with some growth
Size of market: 2,500,000 people
Cost of your product: ~$50
Total Value: $125,000,000
Million-dollar idea? Yes!
How to generate your own $1M?
As you won’t take 10, 5, or even 2% of the market—what would it take for $1M?
Revenue (all the money you make) — Cost (how much it costs to make it) = Profit (what you get to take home)
Our Beard oil sells for
$ 50.00
Cost to make, package, and ship
$ 37.50
Profit per unit sold
$ 12.50
Target Profit
$ 1,000,000
Profit per unit sold
$ 12.50
Total sales needed
80,000
This will never be that easy, but it gives you a rough mental image that you will base further decisions on.
AND, we are skipping the competition aspect here, which in this example is massive.
Pivot and evolve.
Coming back to jerky:
1 Bag of Jerky
$ 20
Cost to acquire, package, and ship
$ 15
Profit
$5
Uh-oh . . . That meant:
Target profit
$ 1,000
Profit per unit sold
$5
Total sales needed
200
In 24h? Too much. Solution: recurring sale—subscription.
I also realized that if I sold to offices that offered snacks, it would be easier to find customers with larger disposable budgets. Plus, I figured I had a lot of close friends at companies who could buy for their employees or refer me to their office managers.
Once again, connections. A huge part of business. Pitching offices to buy your jerky sub would definitely take more than 24h.
One-time sale: $20/1, 200 sales needed after costs.
6-month subscription: $120/1, 33 sales needed after costs.
AND, we are skipping the burnout aspect. Not that difficult to find a high-potential idea, very difficult to find an idea that won’t burn the absolute shit out of you.
If you do a non-obligatory thing that you don’t care about for the pure sake of money, you will burn out. Profitable ideas are often boring as hell! Does doing taxes for crypto traders sound sexy? I bet there’s money in it.
Overall, the book has a lot of shortcuts. Worth reading, solid, but some aspects are simplified to the maximum.
If all this info is overwhelming. I recommend coming back to it a few times. Chapter 4, steps 1-4 in the book if you want a deeper dive. Now let’s move on.
Summary:
Validate the idea before starting anything.
Chapter 4 challenges:
Find your $1M idea, like above.
Chapter 5: Validate your business by getting paid
You wonder how that 48h jerky challenge ended up?
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