I’ve realised that the very first step to playing the money game successfully is to realise that it IS a game. And a really fun one at that.


You see, the majority of people make a living as an employee and therefore have little control over their income beyond asking for a pay-rise or changing jobs. But self-employed people know that their income is completely up to them. If we can find a better way of providing more value to more people and a good way to charge for it, we can increase our income.

If we want more money for something in particular like a holiday or a new car, we can give a push to some aspect of our business and go get it.

And when you realise that there are many different ways to package and deliver what you do, you can start getting creative about it. You can play with it.

Choosing the right form and right price could make you 10, 100 or even 1000 times what another one will.

So you might discover that selling your kindle book for 59p makes you more money than selling it for £8 (as author John Locke discovered when he sold one million kindle books in 5 months). Or that giving it away for free for a fixed time could benefit you financially in the long run.


An example from my own business is the creation of the 30 Day Challenge. Instead of only helping people one to one, creating the 30 Day Challenge with Selina has allowed me to help 200 people at once, to have fantastic fun doing it, and bring nearly £30,000 into the business in one month. And having 200 people on the 30 Day Challenge makes it all the more powerful experience for the people taking part.

This is the real delight of playing the money game creatively – everybody wins.

So, having spent the last couple of years sharing how to find the work you love, now I want to explore this money game with you and share some of the fun stuff I’ve learned in my ten years of self employment – so that you too can play the money game and win.



How is your game?

I’d love to know where you are with the money game. Whether you’re already making a living without a job or still planning your escape, where do you get stuck most in the money game?

And if you’ve managed to play the money game well, what was the breakthrough for you in getting there?

Leave a comment to share it with us…

One of the most surprising discoveries is just how much people can get done in a short period of time when you really focus. 

On the challenge we teach how to make real progress on what matters to you in as little as 20 minutes a day. 

One of the challengers, Sarah Davies from New Zealand, captured the power of focus in this lovely, simple graphic she created as part of her project to illustrate the benefits of being time poor. 

This Wednesday Wendy will be showing us:

• Why your brain is programmed to divert focus
• A simple tool to aid focus and creativity (at the same time!)
• How to design your days and weeks to help you get more done
• How to conquer your email overload

Join Scanners Night in advance for just £1 and attendance at this event is included – read all about it here:

So I asked our special guest expert for this month’s Scanners Night, Simon Horton, to give some advice.

Simon Horton is author of the Amazon best-seller Negotiation Mastery and has taught negotiation skills to everyone from hostage negotiators, to some of the biggest law firms in the world and purchasing departments for many Blue Chip companies.

He is also a Visiting Lecturer at Imperial College and a mentor on Oxford University’s Saïd Business School ‘Emerge Lab’ accelerator programme.


Simon has developed a 5 step process for negotiating better rates for your work. Here’s how to get started:

Negotiating a better rate for your work – by Simon Horton

We can all earn more. 

Yet even people who are highly skilled in their specialised area can feel quite uncomfortable negotiating their rates, simply because they haven’t had the training in what is a very complicated skill.

So if you are a project manager, or I.T. contractor or management consultant working on an interim or contract basis. Or you are a lawyer or accountant or graphic designer or trainer or yoga teacher or, indeed, anyone who has to quote for their work before getting it, you may well be in the same position.

So, to help you get your best deal the next time you are negotiating your rate, I have collated 5 top tips to de-mystify the process. Here are the first two:



Tip 1. Do your research

It is imperative to do your research and the very first thing is to know your market. Find out the typical rates for your field, for your locality and your level of experience. There are usually market surveys available or internet sites that can give benchmarks. But also ask fellow practitioners. Pay should not be a taboo subject, this tends to keep rates low.

Know the market trends too. What is happening in your field that is going to impact rates? Look at the big picture and look at the detail too. How will these trends impact you and your customer specifically.

And research your customer. What is going on in their world? How desperate are they? Get to know the problems and the opportunities they are facing. Put figures to them. If you can link your proposition more directly to these, you will be able to charge higher.



Tip 2. Ask high

Of course, your research will show a range of rates, quite a large range in some instances. And, naturally, you will want somewhere near the top of that range. But, at the same time, you don’t want to price yourself out of the job. What do you do?

In most cases, you should be the first person to mention a figure and it should be your Maximum Plausible Position (MPP). This should be the highest figure you can justify, and have your reasons ready to hand. Why should you be the first? Because it means you set the reference points. You will get a better end-result if you negotiate down from £100 p/h than if you go from £50 upwards.

If you are worried that this figure will scare them away (and only if), you can imply this figure is negotiable. You can say things like “Typically, my rate is £90 p/h” or “I know some jobs in the area go for up to £100 p/h, so I’d be looking around the £90 mark”. These imply your MPP is a starting point for the conversation and is open to discussion.

As well as knowing your maximum, you also want to have a clear idea of your minimum. What is the lowest figure you would be prepared to work for? And look at the range in between – where on that range are you starting to smile more and where are you beginning to get a bit grumpy? Its important to know what you feel about each possible price point. If you are doing the negotiation over the phone, it is worth having a rate card written down next to you for reference.

And the best way to have a high minimum and also a well-justified maximum, is to have a strong Plan B so make sure you are looking at other opportunities at the same time. It also helps to build up some cash reserve so you aren’t desperate and having to take the first job at hand.

When I first set up as an independent consultant, I was offered my first contract at a very good rate. As soon as I finished the conversation, the phone rang again and I was offered another contract elsewhere. The next day, a third contract came in. As a result of having more than one option available to me, I was able to double my rate in the course of a week.

Now, if you start the discussion with your MPP, they may say that’s too expensive. Fine, ask them their budget and (if it is above your minimum) you will probably end up at the top of their budget range.

What is more, any concession you make, make sure you get something in return to justify it.



Get The Rest Of Simon’s 5 Step Process At Scanners Night This Week

Spend a whole evening learning from Simon Horton how to get paid what you’re worth (and other secrets of “Negotiation for Nice People”) this Wednesday at Scanners Night, my monthly London event for anyone who wants to do what they love and get paid for it.

Buy tickets in advance for just £15 – or better still, become a member for just £1.






Not in London?

Become a member of Scanners Night for £1 and watch the event live online or get the video and audio recordings afterwards. Learn more here

It’s the jewel in the crown of everything we do at Screw Work Let’s Play – and participants tell us every week how it has changed their life.

And right now it’s at a special discounted price

Watch this video to get a feel of it:

Find out more

Click the button below to read all about the challenge - before the discount ends!

You’ve been told to sit and think about what you really want out of life until you know exactly what it is, then set a big goal to achieve it, plot a methodical course to get there, and do the actions on the plan every day.


So why is that all the most famous, successful, and interesting people in the world didn’t do this?

Not Steve Jobs. Not Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Not Richard Branson. Not JK Rowling.

Richard Branson didn’t start out with plans for an airline. He started a student newspaper. Then a not-for-profit student helpline. Then a record mail order business. Then a record label. Then a chain of megastores. And then an airline.



What did all these billionaires do? They did projects that excited them.

They started with one project they really wanted to do and they did it. Then they did another. And another. Along the way, a few flopped. They changed direction. But they kept going.

What success really looks like

Here’s an image you might have seen doing the rounds on facebook and elsewhere. It sums up the truth about success (BTW it’s attributed to author, actor, and Perrier award winning comedian, Demetri Martin)

Success depends not on thinking and planning before making a single move, but on experimenting and playing.

It’s built on doing one project you want to do and following through on it. It’s about starting small and growing it iteratively.

So given this, why are people still telling you you should know exactly what career you want? Why are people telling you to plan the next 5 years of your life before taking a step?

Why are people still telling you to think it out when what you really need to do is play it out?



What really works

At Screw Work Let’s Play HQ, what we’re interested in is what really works – and it’s obviously not what you’ve been told to do by careers advisors and the like.

Having helped thousands of people on the way to doing what they love, we’ve learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t. And we’ve finally put everything we’ve discovered into a programme you can start straight away and play through on your own.

- so that you can find the answer to the question, “What work would I love so much, it feels like play?”

We call it Screw Work Let’s Play: IGNITION. And it will show you how to get clear on what you really want to do with your life – and start doing it right now.


Here are just a few of the comments we’ve received already from people using Ignition:

“Ignition has helped me strip back to the very core of what it is that I enjoy.
As soon as I did that, ideas came flooding in!” – Tony S

“I haven’t felt so light in my life for such a long time.” — Roberto

“I wasn’t originally going to get the Ignition package. But then I heard so many great things on Twitter and Facebook that I decided to get it.
And I’m really glad I did - Nina

Our 24 hour January Sale starts this Thursday

This Thursday we are having a January sale. For 24 hours only, Ignition will be half price.

If you dragged yourself back to work in the new year with a heavy heart,
don’t let another month go by without doing something about it.

Look out for our IGNITION announcement email on Thursday morning.

PS. In the meantime, if you happen to be in London tomorrow, come and meet me and 40 creative, friendly people at my Scanners Night event. If you’re a fan of the wonderful TED talks, come and learn from Sarah Lloyd-Hughes How to speak like a TED talker.

I remember one year I had a go at one of those elaborate exercises to review the previous year, set lots of goals for the new year, and plot a methodical course to get there – but I lost the will to live before I even finished the exercise.

Here’s something more fun and potentially far more effective…

Let’s take the year off.

Imagine this: you just got handed a cheque for a year’s income and you get to take the whole of this coming year off work. You don’t have to do anything to earn money for the next 365 days.

Welcome to freedom

What will you do?

You might break out the champagne. Then perhaps take a month or two to go on holiday, rest, catch up with friends, get all that stuff done off your To Do list that’s been hanging around forever.

But then what?

Will you really sit on a beach sipping cocktails for a year?

What will you do when you’re finally rested and start getting bored? What will you itch to do? Write a book? Throw yourself into your love of photography, art, or design? Do something geeky like building an app? Go learn something you’re fascinated by? Have a go with that business idea you’ve been thinking about?

(Oh and to help remove any other obstacles, imagine you have a blank cheque for anything you need to do these things – to buy that castle you want to renovate, the round the world air ticket, the home studio)

Grab a scrap of paper (or your ‘Playbook’) and start writing.

Share it with us

Leave a comment and share something of what you’d do on your year off.

Next week we’ll look at how to make it happen – even if you don’t win the lottery.

Wishing you a very happy and playful 2013.

John

Kindle and iBooks editions of Screw Work Let’s Play

At long last, Screw Work Let’s Play is now available on both Kindle and iBooks in the UK, the US, and elsewhere.

Get Screw Work Let’s Play on Kindle in the UK here

Find the iBooks version in the iBookStore and US kindle version on Amazon.com.

The bestselling book is has now been translated into 7 languages around the world: Italian, Dutch, Czech, Russian, Thai, Korean, and Marathi.

Judith Morgan is one of the UK’s most respected mentors

Have a listen to our discussion covering topics such as:

• What is really holding you back from making more money in your work
• How to work out whether a business idea is worth pursuing or not, and…
• How to charge more for what you do

CLICK HERE TO PLAY THE AUDIO



Check out Judith’s Club 100

Judith has just launched an affordable group to get the benefit of her financial and entrepreneurial wisdom monthly.

And if you join Judith’s Club 100 TODAY (Tuesday 18th December), you can kick off with an induction session tomorrow in Judith’s last available time slots before Christmas.

READ ABOUT CLUB 100 HERE

But what if you don’t know what you love?

You can end up stuck for months – even years – not knowing what direction to go, and unable to take even the first step. And that means you stay stuck in your current work – no matter how much you want to get out.

So we created something to help you discover work that feels like play.

We just declared war on boring jobs and ho-hum lives!

And our weapon is the new Screw Work Let’s Play: Ignition programme, available today.

Is this you?

If you’ve read Screw Work Let’s Play but you’re still don’t what you want to do…

If you’re thinking “I just don’t know what my passion is”…

If you know that no one thing is ever going to keep you interested…

If you want to start a business but have no idea what it could be…

If you’ve struggling to believe you can make a living out of anything other than what you do now…

Then we created IGNITION for you

↓ Click the IGNITION Logo below to learn more ↓

Tim Nicholls had had what most people would consider a very successful career and had even made the move into independent consulting and yet he still knew there was something else he should be doing – but what was it?

Every time he tried to think of a better option, a business idea, or new career, he couldn’t see how he could be sure he could make it work. After all, he has a family to support.

Tim was stuck. He couldn’t see any direction to move in. So he wasn’t moving anywhere.

And then he discovered our tricks and processes in the Screw Work Let’s Play: Ignition programme and things started to happen – quicken than he ever could imagine.

Here’s what happened (and how he ended up interviewing his favourite author for the Economist and being followed on twitter by the Fonz!)

Tim’s results sound magical. But there’s no magic required. Just a new approach to work that produces dramatically superior results to anything you’ve been taught at school or by run of the mill careers and business advisors.

Now it’s your turn

This Friday we are releasing something for the first time that reveals our process to finding the work you love in an affordable programme.

We want to supercharge the Play Revolution and get as many people as possible doing the work they love.

So Screw Work Let’s Play: Ignition goes on sale this Friday at noon at a massive £100 off – for 24 hours only.

Put the date in your diary now:

Screw Work Let’s Play: Ignition

-  The Launch -

FRIDAY 12 NOON GMT – for 24 hours only

IGNITION IS AVAILABLE NOW – READ THE WHOLE STORY HERE

If you’ve read Screw Work Let’s Play (or you love the idea of getting paid to play) and yet you are still stuck…

If you still don’t know what work you would really enjoy…

If you can’t work out what business you could start…

If you have no idea what your passion is…

If you just can’t get started on doing what you love and getting paid for it because you don’t know what you love…

Then we have something for you.



Check out this video:

THE SECRET’S OUT!
SCREW WORK LET’S PLAY:IGNITION
HAS LAUNCHED