SCANNERS NIGHT

April Scanners Night was wonderfully inspiring. Our 4 speakers have all created a business and a lifestyle unlike any other in the world and you can listen to the recording of how they did it right here:

Click to listen to April Scanners Night

Sophie Boss, Beyond Chocolate

Sophie Boss created Beyond Chocolate with her sister Audrey. Beyond Chocolate shows women how to ditch diets forever, transform their relationship with food and lose weight in the process. Sophie and Audrey are author of the Beyond Chocolate book published in 2006 and are now recruiting “Chocolate Fairies” to take their mission nationwide of helping women start to enjoy food again.

Petra Barran, ChocStar

Choc Star is Britain’s only touring choc-mobile – converted from an ice cream van. Petra tours the country, making delicious chocolate goodies from local ingredients to sell from the van. She’s just completed a Chocstar Tour of Britain meeting strangers all over the country who invite her in for dinner in return for one of her hand-made chocolate desserts. Her next mission: to take the van acrosss America.

Sam Bompas and Harry Parr of Jellymongers

Jellymongers create fine English jellies, design bespoke jelly moulds and curate spectacular culinary events. Previous projects have included creating the wobbly Millenium bridge in jelly and an entire scale model of Barajas Airport in, you guessed it, jelly. And they’ve only just started. In April, Sam and Harry are creating Alcoholic Architecture with a walk-in breathable cocktail in Central London.

March Scanners Night was buzzing last night. Joanne Mallon showed us how to get publicity for our projects and businesses without spending £5000 a month on a PR company.

We then did a little bit of Scanner-style networking to help everyone get key contacts and ideas for their current projects. Some of the results were remarkable!

You can listen to the recording of Joanne’s whole talk by clicking the link below:

Joanne Mallon: Scanners Night March 2009

I really recommend signing up to Joanne’s newsletters which are full of interesting tidbits. Joanne’s website is medialifecoach.com. Also check out her blog.

And if you’d like to be interviewed on TV about what you do but don’t know how to make it happen, take a look at this.

The next Scanners Night is planned for Wednesday May 13th – read the full down here.

Be sure to enter your email on the front page to get notified of future Scanner Nights.

All profits from tickets sales for December Scanners Night will go to The Brain Research Trust.

Why The Brain Research Trust?

Speaking personally, I have known too many people struck down by the terrible diseases addressed by the Brain Research Trust; close friends with Multiple Sclerosis and spinal cord injury, and lives (like my Grandmother’s) altered or ended by Stroke.

I am still shocked to think that I chatted with one of my favourite musicians Simon Jeffes of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra and only a short while after, a brain tumour claimed his life. And I have seen scores of fellow patients of the Human Growth Hormone programme destroyed by Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

The Brain Research Trust directly funds research into Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Brain Tumour, Head Injury, Stroke, MS, Motor Neurone Disease, and CJD. Pretty much all of us have known someone with one of these terrible diseases and will appreciate the value of research to find treatments.

The BRT supports University College London’s (UCL) Institute of Neurology by funding peer-reviewed research and PhD studentship programmes. You can read a list of current research in their last annual report (PDF).

Aside from all this, we Scanners are a brainy bunch – we like to think and learn and dream and create – so it seems appropriate to support this particular cause. Please book now to come along and please tell others about it so we can get as many people as possible.

How does the money work?

I’m sure some people will want to know the details of how your ticket money reaches the Brain Research Trust (and how much of it) so in the name of transparency here it is:

You can choose to pay £7, £10, or £13. The ticket is exactly the same but you get to choose how much you want to donate to the BRT.

All tickets sales go through Paypal who take a small commission. This is 3.4% of the amount plus 20p. On a £10 ticket, this adds up to total charges of 54 pence. So your ticket of £10 donates £9.46 (over 95%).

Additionally, I have paid a £30 deposit for the use of the Lounge at the Old Crown Pub. I will only get this back if we spend at least £300 at the bar between us. If we don’t, I will deduct this cost from the total ticket income before making the donation. (So please drink a lot on the evening in the name of charity!)

I also pay over £50 a month for the systems that support the running of Scanners Night including shopping cart system, emailing system and website hosting. I will however absorb this cost myself and not deduct it from the donation.

The Paypal account for the ticket sales pays to my limited company, EG Consultancy Ltd. Once all the payments are in, I will make the a payment of the total profit within 7 days (probably sooner) from my business account to the Brain Research Trust.

According to my accountant, they additionally benefit from Gift Aid on the donation meaning they get back the tax I normally pay in earning that money.

I will email everyone on the Scanners list with confirmation of the payment when it’s done.

Hope that’s clear – phew!

Hope to see you with us on the 11th.

Click here to read details of the event and book your ticket.

John

Going self-employed or starting your own business takes a lot of work in the early stages.

You can start to feel like a hamster on a wheel running faster and faster and not going anywhere.

Before you know it, you’re working all the hours available to you (and a few more) and still not seeing much return.

Part of this is inevitable when first launching something. Ask NASA; the Apollo rockets used the vast majority of their fuel just to lift off and travel the first 20 miles. The rest of the 240,000 miles were a breeze in comparison.

The problem is that it’s easy to get used to working hard and being very very busy – and not checking whether what we’re busy with will actually produce the results we want.

Unfortunately, the way we assume business works when we first try it for ourselves is not always correct. I know I invested considerable effort into projects early on that didn’t pan out the way I expected. That’s why it’s great to get tips from people who have been there before us, because it’s like taking a sneaky shortcut.

On Wednesday November 19th you can come and learn from 3 experts who have tried all the stuff that doesn’t work in launching a business and have then found the stuff that does. Mike, Judith and John of the Creative Entrepreneurs Club will be boiling down all those years of experience into 3 critical things that will help you make twice the money in half the time (and have some fun while you’re doing it).

Come to November Scanners Night and find out how to step off your own hamster wheel.

Book your place for November Scanners Night now.

This picture shows the 4 step system to making money on the Internet. It shows how you can create a one page website, instantly switch on a stream of carefully targetted visitors to it and sell a product you don’t have to deliver and don’t even have to create.

The picture is from Daniel Wagner’s talk at October Scanners Night. If you weren’t there, you might need a bit of explanation! That’s OK, because we managed to record Daniel’s complete talk and you can listen to it for free right now.

Click the play button below to hear Daniel’s explanation of how you can implement this 4 step system on the Internet for yourself.

Special Offer on Daniel’s One Day Workshop

Daniel has made a special offer to the Scanners who want to learn this complete strategy for making money on the Internet. His one day workshop is normally £297 but if you use the special link below, you can save a total of £200 and grab a place on this intensive course for just £97.

PLUS you can take a friend for free (and that makes it less then £50 each)!

The workshop is nearing capacity so click the button below to read all about it and grab the discount now.

PS. Daniel’s workshops are the best way I know of learning how to productise what you know so you can start to make money from your expertise without turning up! If this appeals to you, please do check out this one day workshop.

July’s Scanners Night was on the theme of “Making Money From Your Many Ideas”. I gave an intro talk before we got into the live brainstorm with Judith Morgan. You can listen to my intro, a beginner’s guide to making money from your ideas right now for free.

The Beginner’s Guide to Making Money from your Ideas

Click the link below to play the recording:

Play “The Beginner’s Guide to Making Money From Your Ideas”

Prefer to download the MP3?
Right-click and “Save As” the link above.

PS. Has this got you thinking about your own great ideas? If you want to find out how to make your own idea make money, click here for details of my Idea-to-Income Coaching Programme