The Dream Dean

MDW – Million Dollar Weekend

Before I share results, here are my takeaways from Million Dollar Weekend’s Chapter 5: “The 48-Hour Money Challenge” and Chapter 6: “Social Media is for Growth: Build an Audience Who Will Support You for Life.”

• Insight #1: The Golden Rule of the Validation Process requires you to find three customers in forty-eight hours who will give you money for your idea. Benefits of Validation Process:
  • You don’t waste time.
  • You save money.
  • You find out if you can actually get customers for your idea.
  • You get money up front.
  • You light a fire under your butt to get moving.
• Insight#2: You’re not trying to invent demand; you’re trying to see how excited people are about what you’re helping them with. Validation is a conversation. Not a sales pitch, but a chat to learn about the customer, see if you can help them, and if they’ll actually pay you.
• Insight #3: Three Methods to Validate Any Business Idea
  • Method #1: Direct Pre-Selling. Create your Dream Ten List for Pre-Selling your idea. Include:
    • Name
    • Company
    • Phone
    • Email
    • When contacted
    • When to follow up
    • Notes
  • Method #2: Marketplaces. Validate your product or service on marketplace sites like Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, Reddit, or whatever else you have locally.
  • Method #3: Landing Pages. Create a landing page using a cheap or free service. Limit your your work to create it to forty-eight hours. If you go this route, don’t overthink the design, the name, the language, the ads, or any of that. Just focus on seeing if you can get people to buy your product.
• Insight #4: Three Part Framework to Validate your Solution with your Dream Ten:
  1. Listen. Use what or how questions to encourage more open dialogue versus why or yes/no questions, which can limit your learning. Examples questions:
     • What’s the most frustrating thing about what’s currently going on?
     • How would having X make your life better?
     • What do you think that X should cost?
  2. Options. Now that you’ve uncovered the problem, it’s time to suggest options that can solve their problems – and what’s they pay for it.
  3. Transition. You know their problem and you know an option to fix it. Now it’s time to transition to the sell. You can distill your offer down to three parts: Price + Benefit + Time. Examples:
     • For $25, I will teach you how to save an hour a day on your Mac, in just 20 minutes.
     • For $69, I will teach you how to write better in two hours.
     • For $10, I will send you a PDF with ten mind hacks that will change the way you think in ten minutes.
     • For $180, I will provide six months of tasty jerky to your office this week.
• Insight #5: Always follow-up by sending an email to your first customers asking for feedback. Feedback is a gift you can continually use to improve yourself and your business.
• Insight #6: Dealing with Rejection. Every rejection is an opportunity; you can use it to take a deep dive into customers problems. Rejections are TREASURE! Four-question script that flips the “no” into new knowledge, new ideas, and maybe even new customers:
  • Why not? Their criticism is exactly what you want to know?
  • Who is one person you know who would really like this? Always, always, always ask for a referral.
  • What would make this a no-brainer for you? They may not want your product; maybe they want something related to it.
  • What would you pay for that? Get potential customers to say what they’d pay.
• Insight #7: Pick a Platform. Ask yourself three questions when choosing your platform:
  • Which site has the audience you want to connect with?
  • What medium do YOU enjoy creating content in?
  • What disproportionate results will you get compared to the work you put in?
  • Here are a few platforms to consider:
    • Instagram
    • Podcasting
    • LinkedIn
    • Blogging
    • Twitter
    • TikTok
    • YouTube
• Insight #8: Be the Guide, Not the Guru. People don’t want to be lectured at by an all-knowing guru – they want to tag along with a guide. The goal is to document what you do, not what you think everyone else should do.

Challenges

• Challenge #1: Validation. Your Challenge is to get at least three paying customers within 48 hours.
• Challenge #2: Write out your unique angle.
  • Who are you?
  • Why should people listen to you?
  • What are you passionate about?
  • What will you do for people?
• Challenge #3: Update Your Bio. Choose your one platform, and using your unique angle pitch you wrote out in Challenge #2, clean up and rewrite your profile/bio on that platform to reflect who you are and how you help your ideal customer.
• Challenge #4: Create your own Content Circle. Who are the customers you want to appeal to and what’s the outcome you can create content for? What’s the unique point of view in your content they’d be excited to hear about? Formula = Outcome you’ll deliver + target market.
  • Core Circle
  • Medium Circle
  • Large Circle
• Challenge #5: Post one piece of content. The piece of content can come in any format.
  • Your Unique Angle
  • The Platform you’re going to post on
  • Your Content Circle – the narrow audience who you’ll laser target.
  • Post it TODAY!
  • Don’t worry about scripts, camera equipment, or even if it gets any views. The important part is taking the first step at building your community.

Bill’s Results

• Challenge #1: I decided that I would reach out to schools where I’ve facilitated two- and three-day trainings and ask if they’d like a refresher on Life Design Catalyst work. I asked five schools – one said “no,” two wanted to think about it, and the other two didn’t respond. Even if I get one school, that’s a plus.
• Challenge #2: I’ve helped faculty, staff, and especially students find purpose and meaning in their lives for 34 years. Helping people figure out what they want to do with their lives brings me joy and makes my heart sing. I want to help older adults create strategies to live their best life – on their terms. I’ve created over one-hundred activities to make this process easy – and want to share it with everyone!
• Challenge #3: Revising my “About Me” page with my Unique Angle Statement.
• Challenge #4: Content Circle
  • Core Circle: Catalyst Champions
  • Medium Circle: Life Design Catalyst Community and The Dream Dean Blog Subscribers
  • Large Circle: First Year Experience Listserv, Specific NACADA Subgroups.
• Challenge #5: I’ve been posting the results of the MDW Activities every week on my WordPress blog.

Joanne’s Results (in a different order than above)

• Insight: A reoccurring theme is that business is always starting with the customer. Therefore it wasn’t surprising when he asked me to list ten people that would buy my product. If I couldn’t think of ten people to sell to I should pivot my idea. Since my idea is purposeful career counseling I could think of ten people, schools and agencies that I know that could benefit from it. I realized it would be helpful to ask my ten people in what format they wanted my career coaching. Do they want to buy a subscription? Would a longer or shorter or group session work better for them? Accept rejection and of course he tells you how. Ask them:
  • Why not?
  • Who is one person that could use this?
  • What would make this a no brainer?
  • What would you pay for that?
• Challenge #1: A challenge was to ask three customers for business within 48 hours. I altered this slightly.  I decided to ask ten parents that I know if they would pay me at least $100 a session to meet with their kid to identify a purposeful future career or pathway for a minimum of 6 sessions. They unanimously said yes and that they would consider paying more than that. Win!! More data and testing.
• Challenge #2: The next challenge was to create a Unique Angle Statement:
  • I empower individuals to transform their lives. I live and work at the junction of a possibility champion, HR Recruiter/Manager, and career counselor. I’m passionate about guiding people to accomplish their dreams by first understanding their core selves, then serving profoundly and connecting with the right opportunities. My individual coaching and group workshops challenge clients to define who they are before exploring career paths, shifting the focus from simply finding a job to consciously creating a meaningful life. Embark on this vetted curriculum based on the work of the famous Bill Johnson and choose to live your most authentic and intentional life.
• Challenge #5: Next I was challenged to think about social media. I think more people need to live in the real world to accomplish their dreams…however he had a point about creating a Facebook network. So it looks like hiding is no longer an option. I’ve spent substantial time building up LinkedIn, but it seems I need to start Facebook as well because I need to start connecting to those in this field. The author illustrates that having my niche audience already created is the goal.
• Insight: So glad he talks about the three groups to appeal to. This gives me permission to learn and grow outside my niche.
• Challenge #4: Content Circle
  • Core – early career starters in America and those after college/grad school that couldn’t find work in their major.
  • Medium- career seekers/ changers.
  • Large- anyone wanting to make positive change in their lives trying to find purpose.
• Insight: Be a guide not a guru is gold. Showing others how I do something leaves them room to use me as a guide but to still apply the strategies to their lives in the way they find most helpful.