Start Your First Business In A Weekend
Noah Kagan teaches us golden tips to start a business over the next weekend in his book ‘Million Dollar Weekend’
When I started the book, I found the chapters attract you and make sue you don’t ditch the book in the middle.
The first chapter says: Begin before you’re ready.
Do not wait for the right idea.
You first start a business and then you find a process to come up with the right idea.
Just like there’s no right or wrong time to have kids. Similarly, there is no definite right time to start a business.
Most people think first and act later.
Most successful entrepreneurs act first and think later. You really do not understand a thing unless you have done it.
Think: what is the smallest action you can take right now?
E.g. Most people do not start writing thinking what am I going to write about. I was the same way until I just started writing about the everyday news and then I understood my audience and my interests and have been loving to write from then on.
This is the emotional support.
Second chapter: Build it
You are not trying to find an idea for a business. Rather you are trying to find who are the people you would like to serve.
Definition of Business:
A business solves a problem for someone who’s willing to pay for that problem to be solved.
The problem we face for the starters is trying to build something without first verifying that there is someone out there willing to pay for that thing.
Ask:
a. Who are you going to sell to?
b. Do they have money?
c. What are their problems?
Uber started because someone called saying that he is unable to find a taxi.
May be the customer is not interested in your product and service. This doesn’t mean your product or service is no good; it just means the pain point is different.
The author gives an example of dog walking. If you want to build a service-based business helping dog owners, you may that they don’t have a problem with walking their pets on a regular basis. However, their pain point is walking the dog when they are out on a trip.
A Founder First approach would
- straight away get into launching a website,
- hire a developer at insane rates to construct an app,
- spend hundreds on marketing the service only to realize that the demand isn’t as high he had expected.
However, a Customer First approach would
- reach out to dog owners and offer his services.
- Upon realizing the actual problem, the service can be tweaked, and
- that’s how you launch your business with testimonials from your very first customers.
How to get business ideas?
Suppose you discuss a business idea about starting a bakery with your friends at a party and ask them what they think about it. Human psychology says, the person will most likely say yes. Then you ask them if they are willing to pay for it. It is now that you get to know how good your business is.
You want to know:
a. Are they actually paying for it?
b. Have they pre-ordered the thing?
c. Would they be willing to be your first customer for a 50% discount with a money back guarantee?
Also, if something is a problem for you, it is most likely a problem for others as well. Ask yourself:
a. What is one thing this morning that irritated me?
b. What is one thing on my to-do list that’s been there over a week?
c. What is one thing that I regularly fail to do well?
d. What is one thing that I wanted to buy recently only to find out no one made it?
Conclusion:
i. Finding a problem
ii. Find people willing to pay for the solution to that problem
iii. Talking to those people quite a lot
iv. Offer them a pre-sale discount/ money back guarantee in case they are not contended with your solution
v. Analyze what went wrong and go back to Point i
Whatever you do, keep talking to your customers more and more.
That’s how you realize the things you perceived as blue need to go red.
That’s how you know where the actual market is.
And that’s how you build your brand.
