Dennis sent me a message not too long ago asking what I was currently reading.

I told him I was about to be done with MJ DeMarco's Millionaire Fast Lane – catch the review of that here.

He quickly then encouraged me to grab a copy of Noah Kagan's Million Dollar Weekend. And so I did.

So here's my take on that.

Million Dollar Weekend: Fail Fast & Pivot to Success

Here's the overall premise behind Million Dollar Weekend: You have to try to get 3 customers in 3 days for your startup. If you can't do that, that means your startup is doomed to fail.

Now, this is my elevator pitch that I'm giving you in just one sentence. There's a whole lot of meat behind this simple one-liner, but this is kind of like the overall gist of the book.

You may have a good idea, or you may think you have a good idea. But good ideas don't always make the cut to become million dollar businesses. And so, if you can't get three customers to buy your product or service from you in three days, then you should try to ask people why they're not buying from you and pivot from there.

I think there's some truth to what Noah is saying. Though I can't possibly imagine some startups being built in just a weekend. Look at Zirkels... We've been at this for years now.

Though I will say that we got paying customers just a few days right after launching. So, I guess that validates our startup, right?

A tip for coming up with a valid startup idea from Noah's book? Solve one of your own problems. And this I can definitely vouch for.

Dennis and I have been heavily invested in Options Trading. And one of the things we couldn't get around to do was managing our spreadsheets in a non-clustered way.

What did we do?

We built Option Track as a way to solve that problem for ourselves. And of course, we're also helping other traders do the same.

The Content Circle Framework

By far one of the greatest things I'm taking away from Noah's book is his explanation of the content circle framework. There are a few chapters in the book where Noah talks about how to scale your startup, and a good way of doing so is by switching up the type of content that you're writing about.

Here's the thing: when you're starting your business, most of your content should be trying to capture people's attention within your core circle. Noah gives the example of how Ali Abdaal – a well-known productivity Youtuber – built up his following by helping doctors in the UK pass their medical exams.

How did he scale his audience? He then started doing content for his medium circle, which would consist of more general types of videos such as how to prepare for an exam, which encompasses a bigger audience of students, not just doctors. And then, he went full-on making videos for his large circle, things as wide as how to use mechanical keyboards to type faster and be more productive.

Genius.

All in all, Million Dollar Weekend has been a short but fun read. You can power through this book in two or three hours, and it has some good silver nuggets that you can take with you.

A good 7/10 for me!