Turn your idea into income

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Have you got a good idea you’d like to make happen and perhaps even make some money out of?
Have you already launched your grand idea but not quite got the result you wanted?
Have you turned your idea into a business but want to find a way to make more money out of it?

Scanners Night this Wednesday is The Ideas Lab

It’s a virtual meeting on a teleconference line and it’s going to be a lot of fun. We’ll cover as many people’s ideas as we can in the time and for each one, I’ll give my best tips for making the idea fly and also ask everyone else for helpful contacts and advice. If you’ve never experienced a Scanner brainstorm before, you’re in for a treat.

What’s your idea?

  • Want to write a book and win a great book deal?
  • Want to be a professional blogger?
  • Want to launch a killer website?
  • Want to get yourself, your business, or your music on the radio?
  • Want to turn your expertise into highly paid consultancy?
  • Want to add some ‘passive income’ to your current business?
  • Want to start a live event but don’t know how to get people to come along?
  • Want to build a following on twitter without resorting to tacky tricks?
  • Want to know how to double the number of people who know about your business/band/artwork/invention/book?

I’ve had experience of making all these ideas happen and with the help of everyone else on the call, you will be amazed at the connections we will make.

Come to The Ideas Lab and get your idea supercharged

Or just come along and help others.
All for just £10!

Read how it works and book your seat now

Social Media, Memes and Mashups

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At July Scanners Night blogger, designer and creative thinker San Sharma showed us how to use Social Media to make a splash, build a tribe, and supercharge your scanner projects.

You can listen to San’s entire talk for free right now – just click the play button below.

Follow along with San’s slides

Go to SanSharma.com (opens in a new window) and click the link on the front page under “Free Download…” to open his slides so you can follow along with the audio.

Photos of Scanners Night

If you’ve never been to Scanners Night, click here to see what one looks like (opens in a new window).

To book for the next Scanners Night, click here.

Barbara Sher: 4 Great Videos for Scanners

Artists, Creativity, Making money, Productivity, Scanner resources 1 Comment

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 says, building a successful life begins with seeing the importance of doing everything you love.

Barbara Sher talks about Happiness Levels

H-Levels are one of the many ways to find what you love.

Barbara Sher talks about Resistance

Barbara introduces the theme of Resistance. Getting to know the nature of your inner obstacles is one of the steps to building a life you will love.

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

Who you are will determine how you do your best work. Are you a designer, or do you love turning plans into reality? Maybe keeping things running is what you do best…

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’s your archetype?

Making money, Scanner Nights 4 Comments

Creative people, particularly Scanners, tend to have a lot of different interests and run multiple projects simultaneously. This keeps life interesting but makes it difficult for us to easily capture what we do in a way that potential contacts, clients or customers can grasp.

At May Scanners Night, John Purkiss showed us how to pull the various strands together, using a simple model based on Jungian archetypes.

Are you the Caregiver, the Creator, the Explorer, the Hero, the Innocent, Jester, the Lover, the Magician, the Ordinary Guy, the Outlaw, the Ruler, or the Sage?

You can listen to his entire talk for free right now – just click the play button below.

Read the archetypes list

Read the complete list of archetypes in an extract from Brand You here.

Get the book

Brand You Book
John Purkiss and David Royston-Lee, a business psychologist, have written a book entitled BRAND YOU – Turn Your Unique Talents into a Winning Formula.

The book will be published on May 18th. Find out more at www.brandyou.info.

John studied economics and has an MBA. He has worked in banking, management consultancy and software. For the past 12 years he has been an executive search consultant or headhunter. He occasionally invests in the companies for which he finds finance directors and other board members. As well as writing books, he takes photographs. See www.johnpurkiss.com

Come to Scanners Night

Scanners Night is an event for creative people who love to learn new stuff, have many interests and get bored easily.

Scanners Night is on the 2nd Wednesday of every month and each one features a different speaker on a fascinating topic.

Read about June Scanners Night with San Sharma here.

How to turn your wild idea into a business

Making money, Scanner Nights 1 Comment

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.

How to make money out of your ideas

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Ever had a great idea for a website, book, product or business come to you in the bath or while you’re doing the washing up? What did you do with it?

Did you put it on the back burner, thinking something like…

“I’m sure someone else has already thought of it”

“Someone else is better placed than me to do that”

“I wish I could do something with that idea but I haven’t got the money / skill / staff / premises / time / energy to do it”

I know I have.

Once or twice I’ve then seen other people a couple of years later go ahead with the same idea and create a hit record or a best selling book or a thriving business. That stings!

We all have good ideas from time to time. But it’s too easy to allow the myths of creativity stop us following through.

“What you actually do within 24 hours of having a creative idea
will spell the difference between success and failure”
— Buckminster Fuller

Bring your idea to my idea “hotshop”

Discover how you can start to make something of your good ideas – join me at 7pm on Wednesday 1st April

I’m running an Idea Hotshop over the phone and I’ll be telling you the top ten myths of follow through and how to break through them.

And I’ll show you how to get started right now with…

  • no money
  • no staff
  • no premises
  • no time
  • no energy
  • no flippin’ business plan
  • …and how you don’t even need your own original idea to go do something interesting

I’ll show you how to tell if an idea is worth pursuing and how to make money out of it if that’s what you want. And if you have more ideas than you know what to do with, I’ll show you how to choose which one to do first.

Whether you want to create a business, an income stream on the side, an event, an art project or a global movement, many of the principles are the same. I’ll tell you what they are and how I used them to make my own ideas a reality including:

  • escaping full-time work to become an independent consultant who only worked 3 months of the year
  • getting my own extended-length article published in the Guardian newspaper with no previous writing experience
  • getting my experimental sound-art played on radio stations around the world
  • becoming recognised as the UK expert on Scanners with a packed event every month in Central London

But this isn’t a lecture, it’s a “Hotshop”

It’s an interactive workshop where you have a chance for us to work on your idea if you are willing to share it. There’ll be a group of no more than 20 of us on a telephone conference line together.

Once you’ve booked, if you tell me in advance what your sticking point is on making your idea a reality, I’ll address it during the course of the call.

Please note I will be recording the Idea Hotshop call for others to listen to.

Date: Wednesday 1st April
Time: 7pm (finishing by 8pm)
Price:
Tickets are just £10

Book a ticket now to be sure of a place. You’ll receive full details of how to take part once you book.

Please note that I can’t give refunds once you’ve booked but you will be to listen to the recording if you have to miss the call.

Book Now

How to make yourself famous

Making money, Scanner Nights, Scanner resources 3 Comments

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.

Map of a Scanner’s presence online

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I’ve now got so many things I am doing online, I can’t even remember them myself!

So I decided to create this mindmap with the rather cool Mindmeister.com site.

Clear on the little arrows to open the links in new windows

You can open it a bit bigger here: www.mindmeister.com/12591420

Pants to the recession!

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Is the economic doom & gloom in the media wearing you down?

If so, there is a way to get a lot more business (or visitors to your web site, or people at your gig, or eyeballs on your art project) which costs next to nowt.

Think about this. What proportion of people in London (or even the world) currently have ever heard of you? A tiny fraction. And yet all your customers/clients/buyers/fans come from this.

So what would happen if you tripled or quadrupled the number of people who had heard of you?

And all without spending a penny on advertising.

You too would be saying “Pants to the recession!”

This is what Media guru Joanne Mallon will be teaching us in 12 days’ time at Scanners Night.

(Aside from all this she will also tell us her quick guide to give good interviews on radio and TV should you finally land your well-deserved 15 minutes of fame)

Plus we’ll be giving you a way to tell other Scanners what your current project is and get what you need to make it work.

Please bear in mind the last Scanners Night sold out so book in advance if you want to be sure of a ticket (and save £5 too). We will have seating for everyone this time – hurray!

Book a ticket now

How to have your best year yet

Productivity, Uncategorized 1 Comment

Suzy GreavesWhat 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!)

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