Million Dollar Weekend” is the perfect book to turn you from wantrepreneur to entrepreneur in forty-eight hours

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Find a problem people are having that you can solve</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Craft an irresistible solution whose million-dollar-plus potential is backed by simple market research</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Spend NO MONEY to quickly validate whether your idea is the real deal (or not) by preselling it before you build it</li></ul>

Three steps of the Million Dollar Weekend Process

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Fear of starting</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Fear of asking</li></ul>

2 main fears that hold people back

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Ask someone you know for a dollar investment in you and your future business</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Ask one person you respect for a business idea</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Choose your freedom number, an attainable number (money) that you need to enjoy the freedom you want</li></ul>

Start it

There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth … not going all the way, and not starting.

Customers want solutions, not ideas

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Who you are selling to?</li><li class="ql-align-justify">What problem you’re solving?</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Where they are?</li></ul>

Start with 3Ws

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Look for something working in one category and bring it to another</li><li class="ql-align-justify">When in doubts, solve your own problems. If you are willing to pay for a solution, it’s likely others are, too</li></ul>

Finding million-dollar ideas

Focus on Zero to $1, get that first dollar, that will create your momentum and build your belief in what you’re working on

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">The best entrepreneurs are the most dissatisfied. They’re always thinking of how things can be better</li><li class="ql-align-justify">The crucial first step toward entrepreneurship is to study your own happiness and to think of solutions (aka business opportunities) for you to sell</li></ul>

Become a problem seeker

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Solve your own problems</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Thing about problems that you have</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Bestsellers are your best friends</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Think about some accessorising ideas for existing bestselling products</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Visit a marketplace</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Find ideas by studying marketplaces where people are trying to spend money. It can be Facebook marketplace, Etsy, or other local/ global marketplaces</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Look at search engines queries</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Find our things that other people also search for online</li></ul>

The idea generators

Step 1: Find $1 Million worth of customerStep 2: Is this a million-dollar opportunities?Step3: The one-minute business model

The one-minute business model

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Is the market growing or dying?</li><li class="ql-align-justify">How many potential customers are there?</li></ul>

Step 1: Find $1 Million worth of customer

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Find the size of market, cost of your product/ service, and total value</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Size of Market X Cost of Product/ Service = Market opportunity</li><li class="ql-align-justify">See if it’s a million-dollar idea or not</li></ul>

Step 2: Is this a million-dollar opportunities?

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Know your target profit (e.g. $1,000,000), profit per unit sold, and total sales needed</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Revenue - Cost = Profit</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Target Profit ÷ Profit per unit sold = Total sales needed</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Ask yourself, if this is going to be a one-off purchase, something customers buyu here and there when they want to consume it, or can you make it a monthly recurring sale?</li><li class="ql-align-justify">It’s always better to be in the reorder business</li></ul>

Step3: The one-minute business model

Average order value: Increase the amount someone purchaseFrequency: Increase how often someone will buy your servicePrice point: Increase or decrease your price point to affect total salesCustomer type: Approach a more Lucrative/ wealthier customer segmentProduct line: Add additional products to make the business more attractive to startAdd-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?

6 ways for you to reach the goal easier

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Pick one business idea</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Make sure it’s a million-dollar opportunity</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Confirm your business idea is profitable</li></ul>

The million-dollar opportunity challenge

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Ffind three customers in 48 hours who will give you money for your idea</li><li class="ql-align-justify">You’re allowed only 48 hours</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Collect money upfront</li></ul>

Validate your business idea by getting paid

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Direct preselling</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Use marketplaces</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Use landing pages</li></ul>

Three methods to validate any business idea

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Use social media to build an audience who will support you for life</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Pick a platform (e.g. Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc)</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Create content for your core circle</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Send emails with effective copywriting</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Get your first subscribers with a landing page</li></ul>

Make money while you sleep

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">A checklist that can be used to properly perform something</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Atemplate for determining something (e.g. a business’s profit margin)</li><li class="ql-align-justify">An advanced guide that gives further into the details of a subject</li><li class="ql-align-justify">x ideas to do something</li></ul>

Create and use a lead that magnet gives people an incentive to join your email list

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Set a single hyper-focused exact goal</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Create your marketing experiment list</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Double down on what works</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Make your first 100 customers happier</li></ul>

The growth machine

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The founder and CEO of AppSumo.com, Noah Kagan, knows how to launch a seven-figure business in a single weekend—and he’s done it seven times. Million Dollar Weekend will show you how. Now is the best time in history for entrepreneurship. More than ever, the world needs new businesses and it’s cheaper than ever to create them. And, let’s be frank: most day jobs suck. People spend too much time doing too much work for too little money—and they know it. They want out. But, if the barriers to starting a business are getting lower and lower, why is it SO HARD TO DO for SO MANY PEOPLE? Why are there so many wantrepreneurs playing at business on social media and so few entrepreneurs actually running them? Ask yourself: <ul><li>Do you want to work for yourself, or start a side-hustle, but it all feels too risky and unpredictable? </li><li>Have you spent time or money on things like websites and logos, but still have no customers? </li><li>Are you brainstorming endlessly and waiting for the perfect idea to strike? </li></ul> All those Frequent Excuses are solvable. The plan is simple—so simple it can be completed in a single weekend, but so powerful that Kagan has used it to build seven businesses now worth more than $1 million: <ul><li>Find your Creator’s Courage to overcome your fear and have fun! </li><li>Use the "Million Dollar Weekend" Process to get customers EXCITED to give you money. </li><li>Automate your business so it can grow while you sleep. </li></ul> By Monday, you’ll have a market-tested, scalable business idea and you’ll be a entrepreneur on the path to seven figures. Million Dollar Weekend is the path to creating your dream life and attaining financial freedom. LFG.

Discover the world of business and economics.

economics

Economics

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Entrepreneurship

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Business

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Startups

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Books

Noah Kagan

Million Dollar Weekend

In 1999, Metcalfe, J. and Mischel, W. from Columbia University proposed that there are two types of processing—hot and cool cognitive system. A 2-system framework is proposed for understanding the processes that enable—and undermine—selfcontrol or "willpower" as exemplified in the delay of gratification paradigm.

Hot/Cool-System Analysis of Delay of Gratification: Dynamics of Willpower

A cool, cognitive "know"system is cognitive, emotionally neutral, contemplative, flexible, integrated, coherent, slow, and strategic. It is the seat of self-regulation and self-control. The cool system is narrative, weaving knowledge about sensations and emotions, thoughts, actions, and context into an ongoing narrative that is coherent, goal sensitive, and strategic.

Cool system (Cognitive)

A hot, emotional "go" system is the basis of emotionality, fears as well as passions—impulsive and reflexive—initially controlled by innate releasing stimuli.The hot emotional system is specialised for quick emotional processing and responding on the basis of unconditional or conditional trigger features.The hot system is largely under "stimulus control," characterised by rapid automatic triggering, conditioned responding, inflexibility, stereotyping, and affective primacy.

Hot system (Emotional)

Hot spots and cool nodes have different characteristics, different qualities, different connectivities to one another, lead to different responses, and are linked respectively to the hot system and the cool system gain-control mechanisms that filter or amplify the input activation on the specific nodes within their spheres of influence.

Spots/ nodes in the hot/ cool system

A subset of the internal hot nodes is contained within the hot system. Hot spots can be thought of as fragments of feeling. They may lead to “hot” responses. The responses determined by the hot spots are typically either approach or avoidance patterns.

Hot spots/ nodes

Apart from the hot nodes, there is also a subset of cool nodes within the cool system. They are typically not immediate or direct approach-avoid patterns but rather verbal or nonverbal descriptions, statements, assertions, and commentaries—reflections rather than reflexes.

Cool spots/ nodes

<ul><li>Developmental Factors</li><li>Stress</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Chronic Environmental Factors </li><li class="ql-align-justify">Dispositional and Organic Factors </li><li class="ql-align-justify">Pharmacological Factors</li></ul>

Determinants of Hot- Versus Cool-System Dominance

The hot system develops early, whereas the cool system develops later. Thus, during the earliest years of life the hot system is functioning, whereas the cool system remains largely undeveloped. As the person ages, there is a shift of dominance from the hot to the cool system.

Developmental Factors

When the stress level increases, the cool system becomes increasingly dysfunctional, leaving the hot system to dominate processing.

Stress

Environmental factors, such as chronic stress, has been shown to be correlated with volume decreases in the hippocampus (Sapolsky, 1996), a brain structure associated with episodic memory, which is a central function of thecool system. Chronic stress might result in a systematic shift from the hot-system to the cool-system.

Chronic Environmental Factors

Endogenous conditions, innate predispositions, physiological conditions, and diseases can impact selectively on the relative functioning of the cool or the hot system with predictable cognitive, emotional, and behavioral consequences.

Dispositional and Organic Factors

Certain drugs may selectively augment or decrease hot/cool system functioning. For example, epinephrine or adrenaline appears to enhance hot-system processing. Propranolol, a drug sometimes used to alleviate hypertension, may have the opposite effect.

Pharmacological Factors

In this paper, the hot/cool analysis on delay of gratification is conducted with the example of the marshmallow test. It is an experimental design that measures a child’s ability to delay gratification. The child can choose to have one marshmallow immediately or two if he/she is willing to wait a bit. The minutes or seconds a child waits measures their ability to delay gratification.

The marshmallow test

Not exactly. According to the marshmallow experiment, exposure to the hot stimuli (marshmallow) made it virtually impossible for most of the children in the experiment to attain their chosen outcomes (wait for two marshmallows), defeating their efforts at willful control and leaving them disappointed.

Does showing the reward help people delay gratification?

Yes. By decreasing the activation of the Hot Spot Leading to impulsive action, it helps facilitate the ability to control oneself and persist to attain instant gratification. According to the marshmallow experiment, when the rewards (marshmallows) were out of sight, 75% of the children were able to wait the full time (15 min).

Does obscuring (e.g., covering) the tempting object facilitates delay of gratification?

Yes. When avoiding attention to the rewards, it reduces the stimulation to the hot system and facilitates delay of gratification. According to the marshmallow experiment, those who attended to the rewards, thus activating the hot system more, tended to delay for a shorter time than those who focused their attention elsewhere, thus activating the cool system by distracting themselves from the hot spots.

Does avoiding attention to the rewards with internal-self control facilitates delay of gratification?

Maybe. If the distracting object were itself intriguing, it would have an even greater effect on diverting activation away from the relevant hot spot. Also, it is important to note that, the exposure to external stimuli should only activate non-relevant hot/ cool system networks. If the distractor activates the cool node that leads directly to the hot spot, the “go” response may be triggered, causing the person to pursue instant gratification.

Does physically presenting distractors facilitates delay of gratification?

Yes. Self-generated cognitive distractions can serve to enhance control and attenuate the power of the hot stimulus as effectively as externally provided distraction. According to the marshmallow experiment, the children were asked to think about something fun, and the average waiting time was more than 12 minutes.

Does self-generated cognitive distractions facilitates delay of gratification?

It is worth noting that when exercising self-control with internal distractions, we tend to think about the reward more if we are told not to think about that reward specifically. The explicit mention of the not-to-be-thought-of object would prime the nodes for that object and thereby draw activation toward it, resulting in the increasing activation of that hot spots/ nodes, and leading to a "hot" response.

Effect of counter priming

Yes. Take marshmallows as an example, a “cooler” version of it can be a photo of marshmallows. The photo contains the cool information about the object, such as its appearance, color, and shape, but it lacks the consummatory fragments that make it desirable and that elicit the “go” response. As one child put it, you can't eat the picture.

Does the exposure to "cooler" versions of the stimulus facilitates delay of gratification?

Yes. According to the marshmallow experiment, even when exposed to the real rewards, the children waited for them almost 18 min if they imagined them to be pictures rather than real. Likewise, delay was dramatically reduced when the children transformed the pictures into the real objects. It was their mental representation of the stimulus, either as real or as a picture, not its physical presence and reality, that controlled their behavior.

Does "cool" self-generated ideation about the object of desire facilitates delay of gratification?

Yes. Delay of gratification tends to become less difficult and more likely with increasing age. When age increases, the cool system becomes more well-developed. The activated hot spot will automatically activate corresponding cool spots. This will prevent leading directly to a hot response.

Does control becomes easier with increasing age?

Yes, because the hot system is increasingly potentiated by stress, whereas the cool system is potentiated by low levels of stress and inhibited by high levels.

Does stress prevent delay of gratification?

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

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Personal Development

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Motivation & Inspiration

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Habits

Metcalfe, J. & Mischel, W. (1999). A Hot/Cool-System Analysis of Delay of Gratification: Dynamics of Willpower, Psychological Review, vol.106, no. 1

Gratification is the emotional reaction to pleasure or satisfaction, which is generated in the brain’s dopamine motive system. A fulfilling experience causes the neurotransmitter dopamine to surge, causing the feeling of pleasure.

Gratification?

Instant gratification is the urge to choose immediate pleasure at the expense of long-term rewards, driven by neurological responses such as dopamine surges in the brain’s pleasure centers.

Instant gratification?

Immediate gratification influences decision-making in favor of short-term gains.

Effect on decision-making

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Checking social media accounts rather than spending time with family</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Snoozing the alarm to sleep in 5 more minutes and not arriving at the workplace on time</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Eating unhealthy fast food instead of sticking to a healthy diet</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Making impulse purchases and incurring debt</li></ul>

Examples Of Instant Gratification

Humans are innately prone to seeking immediate pressure and avoiding pain evolutionarily. Neurobiologically, temptation causes a rapid surge in the neurotransmitter dopamine, making immediate pleasure more salient and discounts distant rewards.

What Causes Instant Gratification?

This surge in pleasure, combined with low self-control, contributes to instant gratification.

<ul><li>Label Your Child “Patient”</li><li>Do Not Lie To Your Child</li><li>Teach Situation Selection Strategies</li><li>Teach Situation Modification Strategies</li><li>Teach Attention-Focused Strategies</li><li>Teach Response-Focused Strategies</li><li>Teach Mindfulness</li></ul>

How to help children avoid instant gratification?

Being labeled “patient” helped children build a positive self-image. Their positive self-concept turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

1. Label Your Child “Patient”

Being lied to causes uncertainty. When children are uncertain about the future, they become risk-averse and apply temporal discounting to reduce perceived values of future rewards.

2. Do Not Lie To Your Child

Situation selection involves choosing environments or social contexts that minimize exposure to temptations and promote goal-directed behavior. This strategy is about proactively avoiding situations that trigger unwanted impulses.

3. Teach Situation Selection Strategies

Situation modification involves altering the existing environment to reduce the impact of tempting stimuli. This strategy is about actively reshaping the immediate context to support self-control.

4. Teach Situation Modification Strategies

Attention-focused strategies involve directing attention towards goal-relevant stimuli and away from tempting stimuli. These strategies help regulate the focus of conscious awareness.

5. Teach Attention-Focused Strategies

Response-focused strategies involve modulating one’s behavioral responses to tempting impulses. These strategies are employed when a tempting impulse is already underway.

6. Teach Response-Focused Strategies

Mindfulness allows children to reflect on and regulate their thinking and behavior.

7. Teach Mindfulness

Instantly gratified children, examples, help children overcome low self-impulse and strengthen control.

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Health

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Mental Health

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Problem Solving

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Science & Nature

Instant Gratification: Definition, Examples, and How To Help

A dilemma is a situation requiring a choice among alternatives or options, none of which is ideal or perhaps even desirable. No matter which option is selected, there will be undesirable consequences.

There are 5 dilemmas in Entrepreneurship Pedagogy

Having a structured environment is easier for both the entrepreneurship educators and students, but it creates an artificial academic environment that bears little resemblance to the uncertain and even chaotic environment within which entrepreneurs must operate. This will undermine students’ entrepreneurial training and can lead to inaccurate perceptions of entrepreneurial careers.

#1 Pedagogical Structure < -- > Experience with Uncertainty and Ambiguity

Entrepreneurship educators face a dilemma in deciding if the learning environment should be more unstructured or not.

Giving realistic feedback to entrepreneurship students will help them address their weaknesses but this may affect their self-efficacy and confidence in starting a business.

#2 Entrepreneurial Self-Efficacy < -- > Realistic Feedback

Entrepreneurship educators face a dilemma in deciding how much honest feedback they should give to their students.

Entrepreneurship education needs to be anchored in real world environments (Edelman, Manolova, & Brush, 2008), but university-level education is generally less vocational.

#3 Practicality < -- > Universality

Entrepreneurship educators can cover practical topics to better prepare students for an entrepreneurial career and lower the threshold for starting their first business, but it is difficult for an instructor to be well-versed in all of domains of practical entrepreneurship knowledge.

Entrepreneurship educators face a dilemma in deciding if their teaching should be more practical or universal.

Entrepreneurs often copy the success of others. Imitation is an important, valid, and (usually) ethical technique employed by entrepreneurs. But the risk for entrepreneurs in imitating the success of others is that they may not fully understand how that success was achieved.

#4 Imitation Skill < -- > Understanding

Students generally do not have a full understanding of that which they are copying. Unlike entrepreneurs, they do not have access to “real world” feedback to guide trial and error learning.

Entrepreneurship educators face a dilemma in deciding how much to encourage and facilitate imitation.

Entrepreneurship educators face a dilemma in deciding whether or not to encourage students to become entrepreneurs.

#5 Fostering Entrepreneurial Preferences < -- > Finding Entrepreneurial Preferences

If entrepreneurship educators encourage all students to become entrepreneurs, then they may direct some students to careers that are not right for them.

Powell, B. c. (2013). Dilemmas in Entrepreneurship Pedagogy, Journal of Entrepreneurship Education, vol. 16, pp.99–112

education

Learning & Education

Backcasting is a research method in future research to plan the future, which involves envisaging alternative futures.

Essence of backcasting

Backcasting involves envisioning a desirable future and then working backward from that future to the present. This approach helps determine the feasibility of ideas or projects. Essentially, it’s about planning for the future by starting from the end goal and figuring out the steps needed to get there. 🌟

How does it work?

Backcasting is a research method that plans the future, which starts with defining a desirable future and then works backward to identify policies and programs that will connect that specified future to the present. It is used to assess the feasibility of an idea or project.

Unlike forecasting, which predicts the future based on current trends, backcasting envisions a specific future outcome and determines the steps needed to achieve it.

Forecasting vs Backcasting

Typically backcasting is applied on long-term complex issues, involving many aspects of society as well as technological innovations and change.

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">the problem to be studied is complex, affecting many sectors and levels of society</li><li class="ql-align-justify">there is a need for major change, ie. when marginal changes within the prevailing order will not be sufficient</li><li class="ql-align-justify">dominant trends are part of the problem, these trends are often the cornerstones of forecasts</li></ul>

Use backasting when...

The result of a backcasting study is usually an alternative images of the future, thoroughly analysed as to their feasibility and consequeces. For example, they are made to high-light polarities, like solar Sweden VS unclear Sweden.

Result of a backcasting study

A backcasting study is meant to provide input to a policy-forming process, with many actors. It is addressed to many actors such as political parties, governmental authorities, municipalities, organisations, private enterprises, and an informed general public.

Stakeholders of a backcasting study

Backcasting studies should aim for a widening perception of possible solutions among various actor, and highlight consequences of strategic choices in society.

Aim of study

Dreborg, K.H. (1996) ‘Essence of backcasting’, Futures, 28(9), pp. 813–828.

Million Dollar Weekend

Metcalfe, J. & Mischel, W. (1999). A Hot/Cool-System Analysis of Delay of Gratification: Dynamics of Willpower, Psychological Review, vol.106, no. 1

Instant Gratification: Definition, Examples, and How To Help

Powell, B. c. (2013). Dilemmas in Entrepreneurship Pedagogy, Journal of Entrepreneurship Education, vol. 16, pp.99–112

Dreborg, K.H. (1996) ‘Essence of backcasting’, Futures, 28(9), pp. 813–828.

Aki Lau