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$3,000 to $1,000,000 in 15 months: HOW TO DO IT

Idea threads

MJ DeMarco

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Most people overestimate what they can do in ONE year and underestimate what they can do in FIVE years.

This is because of exponentiality ... the struggle is year 1 and 2 where nothing can happen, it's easy to give up, and start over redoing 1 and 2.

The explosion happens later after the grind.

iu
 

Lex DeVille

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This is because of exponentiality ... the struggle is year 1 and 2 where nothing can happen, it's easy to give up, and start over redoing 1 and 2.

The explosion happens later after the grind.

iu

Yup. Once you figure out all the crap that doesn't work, you're kind of left with what does.

Just be sure to note what doesn't work along the way or risk repeating it.

Exponential growth happens when positive effects compound on one another.

If mistakes keep getting repeated, then it creates a compounding effect in the opposite direction!
 

Finance_Machine

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This is because of exponentiality ... the struggle is year 1 and 2 where nothing can happen, it's easy to give up, and start over redoing 1 and 2.

The explosion happens later after the grind.

iu

I have had a similar experience. I've recently brought in a partner that hasn't started a business before and he will often call us a start-up. We are at a stage when the phones are ringing, hundreds of emails per day, and our growth and growth prospects are incredible. Moreover, there is never a time where we are sitting around wondering about if we are on the right track. Wondering if we have the right strategy or worried there won't be any interest and nothing but a big pile of spend.

The true start-up phase is when the phones aren't ringing, the emails aren't there, and you are wondering if this is really something you should be doing with your life.

I can say that something magic happens around year 3. I can only speak for myself, but in my last business it just seems that in years 1 and 2 there was a lot of support from people that wanted to help (or work with) a small business. In year 3 it is almost like people re-arranged their brain and just treated us like any other business in the space. So, we were able to capture true "market" pricing, even though we didn't have the same overhead or scale as the "market." And that is when we started making very real money.

People will only justify paying so much to an individual. When we were thought of as a couple of dudes, we might hear "you guys shouldn't be able to make that much!" But, add a little branding and the perception that we had a "real business", and then all of a sudden they would pay many multiples of what seemed absurd just a year earlier. BUT, there was no real underlying change to the business. Just a change in perception.
 
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MJ DeMarco

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This thread is so damn old, I mentioned MySpace as viable social network on the first page. :rofl:

Over 10 years old, has 19+ pages, and since it continues to get "bumped", so I have to guess there has to be something in here.

So I'll mark it NOTABLE.
 

HackVenture

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Omfg....

I am 17, being for 2 years interested in "another way" and I've told myself that there MUST be a way to make 1 000 000 $ in 15 months. I am literally 24/7 reading, working and making screenshots around the forum (+300 now lol). I am in my first month and then something like THIS comes up. I am in my first month now and have a plan.

I don't believe in destiny but damn...amazing coincidence...

God bless you guys, keep the work up! [emoji108]

Gesendet von meinem GT-I9060I mit Tapatalk

How did this go? I must admit I get skeptical when someone claims to "literally 24/7 reading, working and making screenshots" and I promise I'm not taunting you but with the chutzpah you had a year ago, it would be great to to see if some incredible progress has been made?
 
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jon.a

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How did this go? I must admit I get skeptical when someone claims to "literally 24/7 reading, working and making screenshots" and I promise I'm not taunting you but with the chutzpah you had a year ago, it would be great to to see if some incredible progress has been made?
lacrim was last seen:

Sep 13, 2016
 

B. Cole

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This thread is so damn old, I mentioned MySpace as viable social network on the first page. :rofl:

Over 10 years old, has 19+ pages, and since it continues to get "bumped", so I have to guess there has to be something in here.

So I'll mark it NOTABLE.

This thread was great, Twitter was’t even big enough to get a mention when it started. Congrats on leaving legacies MJ.
 

Real Deal Denver

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Hey, I'm late to the party - sorry. I just read it for the first time. Please leave it up.

It actually gave me a few ideas on how to actually accomplish that. I would share them here, but they're so good they might work, so sorry again...
 
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BlokeInProgress

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This deserves another bump...
 

Lionhearted

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This is because of exponentiality ... the struggle is year 1 and 2 where nothing can happen, it's easy to give up, and start over redoing 1 and 2.

The explosion happens later after the grind.

iu
Same graph you see in rocket energy use. The largest amount of energy is used on take off. Once it's in orbit it uses very little energy to keep it there.
 

QuantumLeap

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I see several methods to acheive this.

Method 1# the instagram hussel



But I'll go like this.
month 1-3: post themed memes on instagram (and then hopefully acquire a huge following of people with special interests that I could capitalize on through a dropshipping webshop )
month 4-6: build a shopify dropshipping ecommerce store and then depending on the crowd I targeted with the memes. I would find a supplier that could sell the products that the crowd I targeted with memes would require.
Meanwhile I would continue uploading one meme a week on instagram + be posting transactional messages there as well.
month 7-15: Open a youtube channel + write a rap song about the product I'm selling + make videos about the product + I would probably also set up a newsletter with subscription bait in the form of an ebook.
And in month 15 I would probably flip the business.

Method 2: I'm a LOL godlike player!

Step 1. Dedicate all my sparetime to be playing LOL (League of legends).
Step 2. Get really good.
Step 3. Drop outta school and go pro!...

The rest of the methods must unfortunately wait as the clock is currently 6 here.
 

QuantumLeap

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Okay let's continue with the methods:
The Danish Joint manufacturing company:
Now I will only recommend you do this if you're in a jurisdiction with legal weed (Canada, Colorado, Washington, the Netherlands, Uruguay.)

But the process is super simple:

Step 1: Learn to roast tobacco (this is a danish thing we do this to all our tobacco before we mix it with weed here)
Step 2: spend maybe $1500 on weed, $750 on cones and $750 on smokes.
Step 3: roast all the smokes
Step 4: mix the weed with the tobacco and fill the cones.
Step 5: Find some shops who sells weed and offer them your joints.
Step 5.5: Invest all the profits from the first batch in more weed, more smokes and more cones.
Step 6: rinse and repeat.

And now I will go make a joint so I will keep this thread posted later.
 

BBarakti

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Okay let's continue with the methods:
The Danish Joint manufacturing company:
Now I will only recommend you do this if you're in a jurisdiction with legal weed (Canada, Colorado, Washington, the Netherlands, Uruguay.)

But the process is super simple:

Step 1: Learn to roast tobacco (this is a danish thing we do this to all our tobacco before we mix it with weed here)
Step 2: spend maybe $1500 on weed, $750 on cones and $750 on smokes.
Step 3: roast all the smokes
Step 4: mix the weed with the tobacco and fill the cones.
Step 5: Find some shops who sells weed and offer them your joints.
Step 5.5: Invest all the profits from the first batch in more weed, more smokes and more cones.
Step 6: rinse and repeat.

And now I will go make a joint so I will keep this thread posted later.

In the US cannabis industry, it is currently against the law to mix tobacco with cannabis, at least at the commercial level. Due to the federally illegal status of cannabis and numerous state legislation to make sure that canna companies don't step too much on the toes of a federally approved mega-crop, tobacco.

Also, getting a license to deal with cannabis is pretty difficult (and very expensive) in most places. If it's not difficult to get the license, it's difficult to be profitable.
 
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sparechange

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I just wanted to bump this post, LOL at MJ mentioning myspace, awesome thread...old as heck
 

sparechange

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There's someone that operates in a similar niche of mine and pretty much did a similiar strategy that MJ posted. They grew to 7 figures in under a year from scratch on a subscription based product with some genius affiliate marketing.

Product itself is only a few bucks...... sheez
 

Mark_Entr

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Great post ... I'm formulating a strategy and will post it when complete.

In the meantime, a young man created the following page with the same aspirations

MillionDollarWiki
Million Dollar Wiki

As of this post, he's recorded 450+ entries. At $100 apiece, thats $45,000 or 4.5% to his goal. Not sure how old the site is, but its been growing steadily. Novel concept and I commend the young man for being enterprising.


I like the idea from a viral marketing perspective, but I think it violates the value principle, I think the people who payed a 100$ to be on that wiki didn't get real return for their investment.

I would love to hear your perspective @MJ DeMarco :)
 
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Ing

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Here is how I would do it.


  • Since $3K is not a lot of dough and it must churn to $1m, our scope of options is limited.
  • Our business must be internet based since inherently, we must reach and impact A LOT of people with our product/service.
  • Our business must use FREE, open source software in our site development with the our capital allocated toward custom applications.
  • Our marketing must have a solid affiliate program with decent compensation to encourage affiliate marketers to participate.
  • Our product/service must have "sizzle" or a marketing "hook" that is newsworthy. Can be something entirely new, or a new spin on something old.
  • Our product must go viral through the use of home grown videos that can be uploaded to video sharing sites.
  • Use of social networking sites like MySpace / Facebook to promote and go viral.
  • Use of press releases to promote the sizzle.
  • Our product/service must have a easy to remember domain name that can be rehashed and vocalized quickly and easily.
  • Our website must incorporate upsells and/or other affiliate programs to monetize the site traffic - most popular being Google Adsense.
  • The final piece -- finding that product or service that fills a need, or fills an old need, better. Clever marketing (like the pet rock) can take you places and even get you to your goal of $1mm, but its longevity is finite.

There's a guy that started selling vodka -- his hook was "new colorful packaging" -- it was a new spin on something stale and old. All of the techniques above are capable of generating great traffic, without spending a dime on CPC or Banner advertising.
Great.
 

woken

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the thread is old and long, but in case nobody else mentioned it :
MJ DeMarco’s idea from Unscripted will stand as long as currency will exist.

If you want 1M in one year or hell, even faster, all you got to do is sell 100$ Notes for $50.


Don’t be offended, it’s from the book.
 

Ing

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Where the hell do I get 10000 100usd for 3000?

Great thread!
 
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Guest-5ty5s4

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Do a really massive project or a couple of massive projects and only hire contractors.

Have the payment terms set up where you get maybe 25% at the beginning, 50% when you’re a quarter of the way through, 25% halfway through, then the final 25% on project completion. Something like that. A big chunk of that should be profit anyway.

This would work in any kind of construction related industry, or where you’re supplying a product in bulk and need to move a lot of it. Let’s say you need barges delivering product - that’s going to cost a lot. But you structure the payments this way and make it happen! You can even include renting the barges in your costs. If you can buy it, rent it, etc, you can use it in your business and include it in a quote / bid / proposal!

You don’t necessarily need to have all the money in the bank before you embark on such an endeavor.

Truth is, the hardest and most complicated businesses make the most money - like the ones I’m describing.

This isn’t a gift shop or retail store! We are thinking bigger.
 
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Ing

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1. Buy a fittnesstudio with bankruptery . Sell the inventory on ebay.

2. Get offers for nutritional supplements with your own branding

3. Take the emails from the fitnesstudio and send offers to the Studios customers for nutritional supplements of your brand.

4.When you sold a good amount, let the nutritional supplements pack and send to the customers.

-I m sure, you ll get some customers buing your stuff.
-When you have some success, you can build a homepage for your brand.

5. repeat

you ll have your first m after 18 mont or sooner or later!
 

MJ DeMarco

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This thread is nearly 15 YEARS old... funny how the advice can change over time.

Interesting because what worked 2 years ago, doesn't necessarily work today, much less 15.
 
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Guest-5ty5s4

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This thread is nearly 15 YEARS old... funny how the advice can change over time.

Interesting because what worked 2 years ago, doesn't necessarily work today, much less 15.
The first time I came on this forum and saw posts from 2007, I thought “no way, those are fake posts.”

I had no idea the forum had been around this long, or your books! I only heard about them starting around maybe 2016.
 

sparechange

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This is because of exponentiality ... the struggle is year 1 and 2 where nothing can happen, it's easy to give up, and start over redoing 1 and 2.

The explosion happens later after the grind.

iu

Whenever I watch shark tank it's a very common theme to see.. very inspiring aswell.

I've seen a bunch of companies on that show talk about their numbers and it generally goes something like this, year 1.... 20k sales, year 2...100k sales..... year 3 1 million.. and so on
 

Antifragile

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Invent a time machine. Go back 15 months and buy crypto alt coins.
Done. You are welcome.

Jokes aside. The key is exponential nature of compounding and 15 months is not likely to work for $3k to $1M. What I mean is odds are not on your side to do this in 15 months. It's too short and being a 17 year old in school, means not that much free time, experience or network (influence) etc.

If I was to give my 17 year old past self advice on this, I'd say - read MJ's books before starting your first business. Don't worry about making $1M, worry about just getting into the Fastlane.

The journey is just as important as the destination. There is something amazing about building a business, it is definitely not all about the money.

Oh, and I can't believe this thread is as old as it is - crazy! Crazy cool.
 

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