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Listen to the founder of Scanners Night, John Williams and discover how to have your best year yet as a scanner or multi-faceted creative person.

Have a brilliant year as a Scanner without New Year resolutions, career plans, or SMART goals - and make more money than you have before!

Listen to the whole talk and you’ll go away with your own Back Of An Envelope Plan for the year that’s simple, exciting, effective, and doesn’t box you in.

Is this the year you make your own business work?

Do your plans for the year include finally making good money from work you enjoy?

Whether you’re self-employed and want to boost your business, or you’re in a job and looking to launch your own thing, don’t miss the chance to discover John’s Blueprint to do what you love and get paid for it.

Read about this month’s Scanners Night event here

Bestselling author and entrepreneur Seth Godin outlines a common creative affliction: sabotaging our projects just before we show them to the world.

Godin targets our “lizard brain” as the source of these primal doubts, and implores us to “thrash at the beginning” of projects so that we can ship on time and on budget.

Make this the year you start turning your ideas into real world projects. Find out how at January Scanners Night

A Guest Blog Post by Ian Sanders, author of ‘Juggle! Rethink Work, Reclaim Your Life’

The question ‘what do you do?’ is something many of us struggle with. An increasing number of us lack a simple one word answer to that question; we find it difficult summing up our role because we do more than one thing.

Many of us are carving out plural work lives where we juggle more than one role. Whether you work for yourself, for an employer or you’re seeking a career change, jugglers are busting the old myth that specialism rules!

Throughout our education we were always encouraged to do just one thing, to specialise in a narrow range of subjects and choose a singular trade or profession. I never liked that. So when I left school, I relished the ability to mix things up, working at a radio station, for a music business and taking a class in photography all at the same time. That gap year before I went to university was when I learnt to juggle and throughout my life, both working for organisations and for myself I have continued thinking and acting plural, juggling writing books with running a business. Advising a fashion brand one day, a rock band the next.

If you carve out a work life that reflects your multi-dimensional talents you can be more fulfilled and also more enterprising. My book Juggle! Rethink Work, Reclaim Your Life advocates that we bust those myths about what you should or shouldn’t do so that we can go beyond a fixed job title to create a role juggling our talents and passions.

Kevin Roberts features in my book. Kevin is CEO Worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi, one of the world’s largest creative organisations, but he also blogs, writes, sits on the boards of other companies and guest lectures at business schools - there are no limits to what he does. He’s carved out a unique role driven by his passions where the ‘Work Kevin’ is the ‘Real Kevin’:

‘It all starts with knowing when you are at your best and playing there all the time.   I focus on those things I’m good at and try to get world class at them. The stuff I can’t do I ask others to handle and choose people who are brilliant at it, significantly better than me at least”.

But juggling is not just for successful CEOs. Rachel is a Commercial Director at a media company 3 days a week and makes handmade jewellery the rest of the week. Dave juggles being a photographer with working in a camera shop. Sam is a sales executive, but has a web-based hobby business he runs in his spare time. In a recession, juggling can prove to be a good survival strategy; if you have more skills to offer the job market or an employer, you can be more of an asset.

So if you’re stuck in a job you don’t like, try juggling; start by reframing your role to take on a new responsibility or task. Or if you have a desire to start your own business, a recession might not be the best time to make rash decisions and quit your job but why not start your business idea in your spare time to start?

Here are 5 tips to creating a Juggle-based career:

1. Be Flexible: Forget a rigid career plan, be flexible to embrace opportunities that fit with your talents and desires. Change your mindset and start thinking plural.
2. Stay Focused: being a good juggler is not about being a ‘jack of all trades and master of none’. It’s about being committed and dedicated in all you do. Manage time well to deliver on all fronts.
3. Shout about your talents: develop a personal brand and use social media to communicate your talents to clients, recruiters and employers.
4. Be Passionate: put passion at the heart of all you do. If you love what you do, work is less of a chore.
5. Go beyond a job title: carve out a unique you-role. Do it your way, be authentic. Let the Work You be The Real You.

Happy Juggling….

Ian Sanders is ‘Chief-Juggler’. He’s a writer, ideas-producer and business & marketing consultant. Ian is author of ‘Juggle! Rethink Work, Reclaim Your Life’ and ‘Leap! Ditch Your Job, Start Your Own Business & Set Yourself Free’.

Follow him on Twitter @iansanders

Videos, blog and more information at iansanders.com

Video of Ian talking about Juggle

Change This ‘Juggle’ Manifesto

If you’d like to meet 30-40 other Jugglers in central London,
come to the monthly Scanners Night

We Scanners hate to focus on one thing for too long yet if we don’t focus at all, how can we ever bring all our great ideas to fruition?

At October Scanners Night Nina Grunfeld showed us the secret to “Effortless Focus”; how to find your natural way to focus without making yourself crazy with boredom! Nina Grunfeld is a Scanner and yet has created a business, Life Clubs, running weekly workshops in 12 locations around the UK and has still found time to write 3 great books.

Nina is a also an enthusiast of the Enneagram and explains why Scanners are “Epicures” and what that means.

Do have a listen - just click the play button below.

Nina runs an exercise in this recording with the balance chart. You can get your copy to fill on the LifeClubs website here.

Read more about Life clubs and find your nearest one here

NEWSFLASH: Scanners Night is running its first ever one day workshop called “Find your story” - read more here

Here are several superb new videos from Barbara Sher who originally coined the term “Scanner”.

These were shot on her recent Scanner Retreat in France which she runs several times a year. The next one is in Corfu.

They’re short and well worth watching.

What you love is what you’re good at

Barbara Sher talks about Happiness Levels

Barbara Sher talks about Resistance

Barbara Sher: Do you like to Design, Execute, or Maintain?

You can follow Barbara on twitter as @barbarasher. And while you’re at it, why not follow me with news of Scanners Night and other creative tidbits - @johnsw.

Find out how you can use the power of youtube and twitter for your projects and businesses at July Scanners Night.

What a great night January Scanners Night was!

Over 70 of us were packed in there to hear Suzy Greaves tell us “How to have your best year yet - without planning, goals or God forbid, new year resolutions”.

Suzy really hit the nail on the head when she said that it wasn’t achieving some goal in the future that’s going to make us happy. So what will?

Click HERE to listen to the recording of her talk.

To get more of Suzy’s insights into life, work and the whole shebang with her free 90 day Big Peace coaching program. (It’s good!)

Do you have an idea for a book, a business or other project? Barbara Sher (Queen of the Scanners) says that “Isolation is the dream killer”. You don’t need self-discipline and you don’t need self improvement if you’ll just get other people to support you and hold you accountable.

Judith Morgan (our July Scanners Night Special Guest) runs a great membership site to do just this. It’s lonelyentrepreneur.com and if you’re one of the first 1000 joiners, you get to be a member for life for FREE.

Here’s what you get: Access coaching calls with Business Coach Judith Morgan, get coached live, ask your questions and get answers, update us with your progress, be held accountable, get pointers, audio classes, business plan guides, millionaire ideas, and wealth creation strategies. Network with other solo entrepreneurs; give and receive wisdom; become part of a Mastermind Team.

And all for free if you join right now. Why free? Because we want to reach a critical mass of 1000 people so that the site will have huge value to everyone who joins. There are currently nearly 800 members. At the current rate of signups, we should hit our target very soon. (So get in fast before we hit 1000 or you’ll have to pay to join!)

This is also a good way to contact other scanners.

Start getting expert advice and other people’s help to make your idea happen. Join now at:
www.lonelyentrepreneur.com

The only way to make time for all your interests as a Scanner is to outsource the dull stuff to someone else. I do some of this with Ben, a smart 16 year old with good design sense, an ability to write copy and who is generally over-talented in a way that would really grate if he weren’t such a nice chap.

Ben does chores, makes calls, and does PC/website stuff for me at £5-£10 an hour. If you happen to be in North London, see his website (built by himself with a bit of help from me) at BlitzYourTodoList.com