I’ve been helping a friend earn more money, and tonight was a breakthrough.

Here’s what happened…

My friend has a full-time job, but recently she’s been doing some freelance project management on the side for a small consulting firm, where she earns $25/hour.

After a while, she realized that $25/hour doesn’t really add up to much, and she was getting frustrated with the owner’s poor management skills. (You know how it goes: Very disorganized, non-responsive, took days to get back to emails…)

But I encouraged her to stick around for 2 things: to get referrals and raise her rates. The client knows my friend has been doing a superb job, so she was happy to refer her to a colleague at a different company.

At this point, my friend talked to the new person — a guy who runs a different company — but was skeptical of getting too involved. “I don’t really want to do this for $25 an hour,” she told me. “And I realize that it’s not just the time I’m working…I have to deal with managing clients, who are just really unresponsive.”

I suggested a few things she could do. She went into her first meeting using my Ask Without Selling technique. Then she then went back to him with a proposal.

“You wouldn’t believe it,” she told me on the phone. “I quoted him $50/hour and he didn’t even blink. Shit! I should have asked for more!”

I love it.

There are several non-obvious things going on here:

1. When you get referred to someone, you don’t drop your rate — you raise it. Many people mistakenly drop their rate, thinking that the referrer will divulge the rate they currently pay (they won’t), or that you should discount for your client’s friend (you shouldn’t). In fact, you should raise your rate since your client has removed all risk by vouching for you.
2. There are many other options besides quitting. If someone’s paying you — even if it’s under your desired wage — you don’t just quit. Quitting is one of the worst things you can do. There are many other clever ways to help your client and yourself — like asking for referrals.
3. By charging more, you get a higher-quality client: First, they can afford your higher rate, which means they’re more financially successful and therefore probably have better business skills. Second, since they’re paying you more, they don’t want to waste your time.

So the guy didn’t flinch at $50. How does my friend get to $75/hour?

She needs to package her services properly

I suggested she offer her baseline services at $50/hour, as she discussed, but also offer 2 higher tiers: For example, she could include marketing services for $60/hour, and project-manage the entire project for $75/hour. I just made those options up — she knows her business best — but the important point is to offer increasingly valuable options.

Do you know why it’s critical to offer more than one package? There are 2 reasons, actually:

1. He might actually pick a higher tier, which would be money in your pocket — and a new hourly rate
2. By offering 3 options, she’s shifted the prospect’s decision from “Should I buy her services or not?” to “Should I buy $50, $60, or $75/hour?”

Imagine how implementing even one of these techniques could change your earning power forever. If and when my friend closes the deal, even if it’s for $50/hour, she’ll have doubled her hourly rate. That lasts forever — and it only goes up.

You can use these same techniques to earn more money, whether you have an idea yet or not. And the techniques I covered today only scratch the surface.

I teach my very best techniques in extreme detail — including scripts, videos, and case studies — in my Earn1k course. Get a free sample of my Earn1k course here.

Today, I’ll share a behavioral-change technique that’s helped me create a New York Times best-selling book, a blog that’s been read by millions of people, and a course on earning money that has helped my students earn hundreds of thousands of dollars on the side.

In 1954, researchers Hastorf and Cantril published a seminal study in The Journal of Abnormal Psychology called, “They Saw a Game: A Case Study.” What they discovered would change the way we look at rational behavior forever.

Yet decades later, much of that research has not trickled down to ordinary people — most notably “experts” in various fields, including personal finance. We continue to ignore the lessons in Hastorf and Cantril’s study. Why? Because it challenges our worldviews about perception, psychology, and behavioral change.

For example, nobody ever wakes up, stretches, clears their eyes, and says, “TODAY I REALLY WANT TO GET FINANCIALLY LITERATE!!”

It just doesn’t happen. Nobody wants to be financially literate…they want to be rich. Nobody wants to learn about stocks and bonds…they just want their money to be doing the right things, automatically. (Just like nobody wants to go to the gym…they just want to lose weight.)

Yet virtually every college course on personal finance is pedantically called “Financial Literacy 101″ or “Managing Expenses” — yes, the things we “should” do, but the last thing anyone actually wants to do. Witness how most personal-finance books treat people as robotic automatons whose only goal is to consume structured information on stocks, bonds, insurance, annuities, and other pointless encyclopedic topics.

Today, I want to show you something I’ve learned over the last 10 years of writing this blog and systematically developing my skills in behavioral change. This will change the way you view personal finance — and changing others’ behavior — forever.

What do people want to do with their money?

Last week, I asked what was wrong with this page in the Wall Street Journal.

The 100+ responses were terrific:

It seems overly complex and could cause analysis paralysis. Reader thinks ‘it’s all too much effort’

The reporters and columnists are telling me ‘how-to’ do all this stuff, when I don’t know ‘why-to’ do it.

I feel overwhelmed just looking at that page! A ton of acronyms and frankly, gibberish to most people. But I feel like the most important part they overlook is that money is really about emotions. There are no emotions on that page.

…the essential problem is that it isn’t going to reach anyone…few of your fellow undergrads would show up to your personal finance classes because they didn’t think they needed the help or didn’t want to admit that they did.

What’s going on here?

To understand, let’s go back to the 1950s…to a psychology experiment on, of all things, football.

The Hastorf & Cantril study: How Ivy League football explains personal finance failures

In the famous study, the two researchers analyzed a 1951 football game between the Dartmouth Indians and Princeton Tigers. The game was unusually rough, with the Princeton quarterback being injured so badly that he had to leave the game.
One week later, researchers questioned students who had attended the game to understand their perception of what had happened. Who played dirtier? Who was responsible for the fouls and injuries?

When asked, “Do you believe the game was clean and fairly played or that it was unnecessarily rough and dirty?” a staggering 93% of Princeton students responded “Rough and dirty,” while only 42% of Dartmouth students agreed.

When asked, “Which team do you feel started the rough play?” 86% of Princeton students surveyed responded that Dartmouth had. Only 36% of Dartmouth students blamed their own team.

In a clever twist, the researchers then asked students to watch a film of the game and report how many infractions were made. Both groups watched the same game on video, but Princeton students reported twice as many infractions as Dartmouth students did.

These students watched the objectively same game, yet had astonishingly different perceptions of what “actually” happened.

Please read that last sentence carefully. You’ll notice that I wrote they perceived the game.

That is indeed what happened. Even though they physically “watched” the very same game, each set of students — Dartmouth and Princeton students — were unconsciously affected by their group membership and beliefs. Despite what we think, we do not objectively see what happens around us. You and I could be watching a clown walk across the street, and we would perceive two VERY different things. Our perceptions are colored by a variety of factors, including our beliefs, history, group membership, culture, and more.

That might seem obvious. But now think about politics, the most fertile ground for misunderstood perceptions. Most people believe they are rational and know what’s “really” going on. Obama is a socialist! You’re a crackpot Tea Partier! But have you ever considered that the other side has a legitimate reason to believe what they believe? Again, if you put two people in front of the same situation, they will perceive it very differently. One is not right or wrong or smart or dumb — to him, his perceptions are true and indeed, very real. But they are nonetheless surprisingly discrepant from someone else’s views of the identical situation. (Read more about political marketing.)

No matter how simple or clear-cut or objective we think a situation is — whether a simple football game or a complex political belief — the person next to us is likely seeing it totally differently.

What does this mean for personal finance?

It means that experts in personal finance have gotten fat and intellectually lazy by writing bullshit like, “The 7 types of bonds.” In general, facts do not change behavior. Nobody cares about “objective” advice that’s not tailored to them.

But it’s easy to write a post on “the 7 types of investments you should hold” and call it a day, isn’t it?

Imagine a regular person clicking around and ending up on The Wall Street Journal, or Smart Money, or even this blog. Most “experts” think, “Well, he’s here. He needs to understand how stocks and bonds work and how they fit into his portfolio!”

Meanwhile, the person does not give a damn about stocks or bonds. In fact, he doesn’t even know where stocks and bonds fit into his universe of options. He simply knows, “I just got screwed by my bank on late fees and I really need to figure this out.” How effective do you think it is to throw a kitchen sink of terms and definitions at this person?

99% of people care about their money and couldn’t care less about “learning” about personal finance in general.

Unfortunately, personal-finance “experts” are obsessed with their own encyclopedic knowledge and seemingly take any opportunity to intellectually masturbate about the depth of their knowledge. ‘Why yes, I CAN present a glossary of terms like CAGR, NPV, Black-Scholes, and derivatives. Will this change anyone’s behavior? Who knows! But I sure sound smart!’

If your goal is to write a glossary, just take your pen and paper and throw them in a fire. You can save yourself the trouble. But if your goal is REAL BEHAVIORAL CHANGE, you need to model an approach that resonates with your readers.

When it comes to money, what do people REALLY want?

I’ve spent the last 10 years trying to understand this. I’ll share some of the things I’ve learned here:

People want…

• To not worry about money
• To be in control
• To occasionally live extravagantly
• To dominate their friends (virtually everybody neglects the social aspect of money)
• To get relevant, tailored information for their personal situation (this doesn’t necessarily have to be via a person…think also of Amazon-like personalization/recommendations)

People do NOT want…

• To have to “learn” about personal finance as a whole — they just care about their own situation
• To learn what stocks, bonds, interest rates, or ANY OTHER TERMS are
• To be told they CAN’T do something (this is probably the #1 biggest mistake personal-finance “experts” have made in the last 50 years: turning money into a conversation of “no”s, which elicits reactance)
• To wait 50 years to see results
• To have to manually “throw money away” into a savings account
• To ignore their emotions about money

Each of those seems deceptively simple, but they are deeply complex when you dig into the psychological underpinnings. (And there are a few other insights that I’ll keep to myself, since I’ve spent years discovering and refining them.) Here are more specific examples.

GOOD: “Here’s a 4-step process to start investing”

BAD: Let me explain what stocks and bonds are and how they work (NOBODY CARES)

GOOD: “Here are 2 ways to pay off your debt, and this is the way I recommend the best”

BAD: Let me explain how debt works (NOBODY CARES)

GOOD: “Here are scripts to use to negotiate against your bank. Read them off and watch the customer-service rep melt like butter”

BAD: You should really negotiate stuff (LAZY)

GOOD: Here is what YOU need to be doing, Mr. 26-year-old dude who I deeply understand and therefore know that you spend a significant portion of your income on drinking

BAD: Here is a comprehensive list of things that everyone should be doing: Insurance, retirement, estate planning, tax optimization, family planning… (BROAD AND WORTHLESS)

GOOD: Spend extravagantly on the things you love, but cut costs mercilessly on the things you don’t

BAD: Keep a budget (HAS THIS EVER WORKED?)

(The last one really makes me mad. So many “experts” write nonsense like “Keep a budget” or “Stop spending on lattes!” that lets them wipe their hands clean — “I’ve done my job!” — WITHOUT ACTUALLY CHANGING ANYONE’S BEHAVIOR. For example, this article says: “We need to start a new tradition for Valentine’s Day, one that includes a focus on personal finances rather than consumerism to demonstrate our love.” Right. I really want to talk to my girlfriend/boyfriend/husband/wife about money on Valentine’s Day. YOU might think that’s important, but nobody else does…and as a result, it won’t even get cognitively processed, much less cause behavioral change.)

Personal-finance “experts” need to get off their asses and start talking to the people they’re writing for to understand what they’re really looking for. For example, I could write the most technically brilliant article about asset allocation, but if people are afraid of investing or don’t believe they have enough to get started, none of my brilliance matters. IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU. IT’S ABOUT YOUR AUDIENCE.

Case study: The WSJ How-To Guide

Let’s go back to the WSJ image I posted above.

Can you now see what’s wrong with it?

When I asked a few days ago, lots of commenters harped on the lack of automation, earning more, or even the order of the presentation. Frankly, that’s stylistic. But there’s something far more damning — but you have to look deep beneath the hood to understand.

Several commenters said, “They don’t write about the why.” This is true, but incomplete. For example, how many of you have had parents emphasizing how IMPORTANT IT IS TO START INVESTING RIGHT NOW??!? Yet you ignore them. Because of both the source, and the way they communicate the information. Explaining “why” is critical — but not enough. There’s something else.

Here it is: Each of the topics is me-focused. The editor thinks understanding bonds are important…but ordinary people do not. And so they will not read this page.

In other words, the editors did a terrific job of simply listing off topics, much in the same way an encyclopedia editor organizes and lists off material. But the encyclopedia editor doesn’t expect anyone to ever read his material.

The average person comes to this page with dozens of inherent biases:

• “I know I should be doing something with my money, but I don’t know what…” (and throwing complicated terms at me will just cause me to shut down)
• “I keep hearing about paying off credit card debt, but they don’t understand. My situation is different — I have [details that are actually very similar to everyone else but SEEM different to them]“
• “I need to figure out all my stuff before sitting down and really starting to invest”
• “I’ll do this later”
• “I’ll let my husband/wife do this”

And so on.

Now, you also have Wall Street Journal readers, who are likely far more sophisticated than the average person. One of my commenters, Wren, said it best:

“Typical WSJ readers aren’t going to look at a how-to guide because they already think of themselves as above-average investors (even though they’re probably losing money trying to pick stocks or buying shares in the latest hotshot mutual fund). Even if they made it to the page, the first article on “What is a bond” would convince them that there was nothing to learn there. If instead the WSJ paid more attention to its audience and titled the page “Little Known Tips for Skilled Investors” the page views would be through the roof and readers might actually learn something.”

By the way, I’ve made this mistake myself. When my book was published, I spent hours working with my publisher carefully crafting the copy on the front and back cover. When it was published, I noticed that this back-cover copy had slipped through the cracks. See the problem?

Nobody wants to be financially literate. They want to be rich.

Personal finance needs better marketing

Marketing is not a bad word. In fact, it’s one of the reasons that I Will Teach You To Be Rich readers use this site to implement real behavioral change, instead of just reading about money over and over again.

After reading your book, I’ve now signed up for my company pension plan (target lifestyle funds too!) and am on my way to automate my savings.

I got the bank charges reversed 3 times

Negotiating credit card interest rates: I went from 27% to 6% with one 20-minute phone call

I’m the only person within my group of friends (I’m 23) who already has $1000 saved for a wedding

The biggest you have taught me, is that personal finance is 95% psychological. The tactics are pretty simple, it’s more about getting over the mental barriers we place on ourselves.

…haggled him down about from $4500 to $2500…

Pay off $12K in student loan debt in 18 months rather than 10 years.

This stuff works.

Why do you think these people were able to change their behavior? Why do you think I can sell a $1,000+ course to help people earn money… to a group of people who ordinarily never buy anything online? Why do you think of ALL the “earn more money” courses online, this one helped my students get off their asses, find a profitable idea, and earn money (sometimes to the tune of thousands of dollars/month)? I will tell you why: Because I spent years understanding people’s REAL needs to get people to STOP READING and START EARNING MORE — not just write high-level BS about “10 different ways you can earn money” and “You should get business cards and a Twitter page.” And now my students are earning money, when 3 months ago, they would have never imagined they could.

Marketing matters. It works in persuading people to change their behavior, unlike simply “putting the information out there” or claiming that “you have to really want it to change,” which embraces a highly ineffective persuasive mechanism where you simply list out the info and hope people “get it.” Good luck with that. People don’t respond to pure information because they have frame information based on prior experiences, culture, group membership, etc.

Yet even though the corporate world knows that marketing works, ordinary people think marketing is a bad word. “Ugh, that’s just advertising,” they’ll say (then, amusingly, claim that advertising does not affect them).

No. Marketing is not just advertising, or writing copy for brochures. Marketing is the end-to-end customer experience, from deciding what to build all the way through the design and delivery process — including deeply understanding your audience’s biases, beliefs, and barriers. As an example, here’s a terrific TED video — “Rory Sutherland: Life lessons from an ad man” — illustrating how marketing adds value every day.

Personal finance needs better marketing. What personal finance needs is less people who think that “information” alone will change behaviors, and more people with marketing and psychology backgrounds who know that it’s critical to connect with people in order to change their behaviors. More information alone won’t do. Education is not the solution to personal-finance problems.

Banks need to stop sending out useless campaigns on the importance of saving and investing. We “know” that. Why aren’t we doing it? Do banks really know? Why aren’t they sending me lifecycle communications when I get married, buy a car, buy a house, have kids, and other personal situations?

Why do credit unions continue to talk about how they’re different than banks? Nobody cares. Talk to me about ME, my problems, and how you can solve them for me.

Why do personal-finance magazines continue to talk about investing in stocks? Well, that’s easy — they have 2 customers: Advertisers first, then readers. But even they could do an infinitely better job and still make tons of ad money.

I’m not trying to highlight myself as the best at this. I have a lot to learn and I’ve only scratched the surface of behavioral change, which I will continue to study for the rest of my life.

But one of the main reasons that “I Will Teach You To Be Rich” has been so widely read and shared is that I try to use classic marketing and psychology principles here, rather than pedantic lecturing of the same old boring topics (lattes, budgets, start early, blah blah kill me). For example, you want to spend $21,000/year going out? Do it! Let me show you how to automate your personal finances to do it.

Remember: Nobody wants to read an encyclopedia. Next time you’re trying to change behaviors, don’t fall into the trap of writing a me-focused article that highlights what you think is important. Nobody cares, especially your audience. They have their own filters and biases filtering any information they receive. To execute real behavioral change, you must understand and address these concerns first.

If you want to read more of my essays on personal finance, psychology, and behavioral change, you can join 45,000 other people on my free newsletter.

Have you ever wanted to quit your job and work on the stuff that really interests you? How can someone afford to do that?

Today, another Masters of Earning More, the series that brings you case studies of people who are earning more money. You’ll learn how they did it — including both tactics and the critically important mental side of earning more money — and how you can start earning more, too.

The reason I like today’s Master of Earning More is that she didn’t have it easy. She hated her mind-numbing job. She wasn’t sure how to turn her writing skills into income. And she was plagued by self-doubt and insecurity.

And yet she just quit her job, doubled her income, and works for herself, doing what she loves.

I don’t know about you guys, but when I think of non-technical people trying to earn money, I usually just think of sad examples of people who have no business sense struggling to make more money, resorting to increasingly frantic and pointless exercises like setting up Twitter accounts and Facebook pages.

April shows us that doesn’t have to be the case. Even if you’re not a hardcore programmer, you can take your non-technical skill and turn it into significant income.

Today, Susan Su interviews April and gets the real story. I especially like this quote from the interview below:

“When you leave a company, you learn a lot about people’s dreams and how they’ve compromised them for illusions of security or because of self-imposed barriers. I guess you’re safe to talk to when you’re on your way out, or they relate to you because you’re doing what they hope to do. These are some truly talented, creative people I believe in 100 percent, but I can see where they’re at in this process because I’ve been there. I was scared to leave a steady paycheck, too. I thought, “What if there’s a month when I don’t make my current salary?” But I had to turn that thinking around. “What if I’m making my current salary in a bad month, and in a good one I’m making two times more?”’

A few more things to note below:

• April was simultaneously working full time, doing yoga-teacher training, freelancing on the side, and doing my course on earning more, Earn1k. So how did she manage to scale UP her freelancing business to the point where  she’s now doubling her income and quitting her job? (See her comment about the time-optimization techniques that completely changed her productivity.)
• April was one of my Earn1k students, but one who was on the fence about joining the course until literally minutes before the deadline. Now, she’s spent over $7,000 this year in self development…but she’s earning tens of thousands of dollars more per year.
• I like her comment about tossing around ideas for months and months, but never getting anywhere
• It wasn’t just finding an idea and learning some shiny tactics. She had to go through the gut-wrenching work to change her attitude towards selling and self-worth

* * *

Susan Su interviews April Dykman on earning more

April, what do you do for a living?

I write web content for high-traffic blogs and sites, mainly in personal finance and health/wellness verticals. I’m also a blog editor for a new blog launching in the fall.

Compared to last year, are you on track to make more or less money in 2010?

I’m on track to more than double my day job salary with recurring assignments and contract work, but I expect some one-off projects with one client will make that figure higher.

Wow, ok. Huge difference. Let’s go through that. Back when you were still working your regular 9 to 5 job, what was your “Aha!” moment? I’m talking about the moment when you finally realized you could be doing more for yourself, earning money on the side?

I’ve always wanted to own my own business, but I finally got serious about it last year. I realized that when I was frustrated at work, I’d start making all sorts of plans to start a business. But eventually the frustration would wear off, and I’d get complacent again.

I recognized that pattern and decided I wouldn’t let up, even when I was feeling good about my job. There are good things and bad things about every job, but if you’re on sites like IWTYTBR and reading articles about how other people are making money, you probably have an entrepreneurial spirit and won’t be satisfied until you are running your own business, whether it’s on the side or full-time. It’s empowering.

Also, my body was physically rejecting my job. I developed wrist pain that would shoot up my arm and into my shoulder. I also started getting chest pains, but after 48 hours hooked up to a Holter monitor, the cardiologist said that I was in perfect health. In one week, three health practitioners asked about my stress level. I joked that my body was forcing me to quit my job.

What action did you take next? How did you come up with ideas? Were any of them viable? We’ve been talking a lot about idea generation on IWT this week.

For months all I brainstormed ideas. I read interviews on sites like I Will Teach You To Be Rich. I even conducted an informational interview with the yoga instructor featured on this site. I bounced ideas off my husband and parents, read books like Escape From Cubicle Nation, took online personality tests, kept a spiral notebook with business ideas — you name it. The problem was that most of them weren’t a good fit, and no matter how excited I’d get initially, they weren’t clicking.

I also should note that I was wary about jumping into a business because I did that once before–In 2005 I got my real estate license and spent a year in the business. Unfortunately, real estate was a horrible fit, and I hated every minute of it, even when I had clients. I wasn’t comfortable with that type of sales environment, and I didn’t like driving people around in my car all day–especially people I barely knew. Holding an open house by myself made me feel unsafe. I found out that some creep I’d never met kept my business card and was telling people I was his girlfriend (our business cards had our photos on them). Awful, awful, awful. So I was terrified to leap again without being sure. Really sure. Because I wanted whatever I did to eventually be a full-time gig.

The one thing that I kept returning to was writing, but I didn’t know what to do with it. I’ve always been a writer, and I majored in feature writing journalism and had published several articles, but it wasn’t something I thought I could do for a living. The assignments were too few and far between, and my favorite professor even told us that feature writing is something you do on the side–few can do it for a living. But writing was a constant. When I talked about business ideas with people who knew me well, they weren’t too excited about most of them. More than once I heard something like, “You’re a really good writer. Why don’t you do something with that?” It just took me awhile to hear it.

One thing that helped me to eliminate options was to consider my ideal lifestyle. I wanted a location independent business that allowed me to work from anywhere and set my own hours. When I kept coming back to that, I could cross ideas off the list. Someone who owns a store or manufactures a product usually can’t be location independent, so ideas like those were eliminated.

Hmm. A lot of people dream about their ideal lifestyle, but that’s all it is — a dream. How did you connect actions to that dream? How did you stop dreaming and start doing?

You have to be willing to try things out to stop dreaming and start doing. One thing that I’ve never really shared is that it was important to me to do this before my husband and I thought about having kids, mainly because I know a lot of moms who want to stay home with their kids, but don’t have that choice. They have to go back to work after three months, sometimes sooner if they need the money. If I have kids, I want that choice, so that created a real sense of urgency for me. The other reason it felt so urgent is that every year that slipped by was another year I wasn’t doing something I cared about. It reminds me of a quote from Fight Club, “This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time.” Would I finally do it at age 40 and regret spending 15 years in a cubicle? I don’t want any regrets, and there was no reason not to start living the life I wanted to live right now.

What were your biggest barriers to getting started?

I believed it was nearly impossible to make decent money with writing, and that those who did it were rare. Also, I didn’t know where to start and lacked confidence, so I wasn’t starting at all. I wasn’t talking to people who could send me business, I wasn’t even thinking strategically about who my clients could be and what their needs were. I was wasting my time on crap that didn’t matter–starting (and abandoning) blogs, writing business plans, “researching” my business and industry–so I wouldn’t have to address the big stuff. Like the scary “sales” word.

What about the scary “sales” word? How exactly did you feel towards sales?

In real estate, we learned sales tactics that never sat well with me. It wasn’t that you were trying to trick the client, just nudge people who wouldn’t make a decision, but I hated that. I felt like sales was about trying to part someone with their money or sell them something they didn’t need. I equated sales jobs with used car salesmen, people no one likes or trusts.

And, how did you eventually get past it? I auditioned to be a staff writer for Get Rich Slowly. I had been a reader for a few years, and when J.D. Roth, the editor, said he was auditioning for one or two writers, I was excited. I knew I could do this; I knew the blog so well.

And then I was terrified that I’d fail. I’d try out and not get the job, or I’d get it and then not be able to deliver–those were the thoughts in my head. I went back-and-forth about whether to even e-mail J.D. to ask to be in the running. The reason I finally did it, and I swear it was Ramit’s voice in my head, is that I told myself if I couldn’t send a simple e-mail then I needed to shut-up about wanting my own business. If I couldn’t at least do that, I wasn’t serious, and I didn’t want this badly enough. But I did want it, so I sent what I now recognize to be the crappiest pitch, ever, but thankfully I had writing samples, as well!

Do you still have this pitch? Can I see it?

Oh Jesus. Let me see if I can pull it up on Gmail. I’m e-mailing it to you.

What made you think you could try something on the side, especially while your coworkers did the same old thing — nothing?

I read the case studies online and in books, and I kept thinking to myself that there are people out there doing it, so why not me? Who says I can’t do this? Who decides that I have to work in a cube for 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, doing 30 to life? I stopped listening to the people who weren’t doing it, and started listening to the people who were. Most of those people were online, by the way, and I’ve never met any of them. When I felt like I wasn’t making progress and worried that I’d never leave my job, I’d spend my lunch hour reading my favorite case studies.

And here’s another tip: Be careful when you share your plans. This is obviously a good idea because you don’t want to tell someone who could blab to your boss, thereby putting your company loyalty into question, but I don’t really care about that part.

When you share your plans with some people, you get a lot of reactions that are entirely about them: their fears, their self-imposed barriers, their dreams. One person told me they were skeptical about the GRS try-out articles because they weren’t paid.

This person does some freelance work themselves and is an incredibly talented designer, the type of person that should run their own graphics business full-time and work for big companies, but he likes the security of the day job and doesn’t think freelancing can be a full-time gig. He would never work for free, so he thought that writing a couple of guest posts for free sounded like I was being taken advantage of. But I knew J.D. from his blog, I knew GRS was huge, and I thought, if nothing else, it will put my work in front of a big audience.

A week after being selected, a major marketing company contacted me, and I’ve been working for them ever since. On a side note, that marketing company contacted me after clicking through my website, which was something I threw together in one day so I could have a website to link to from GRS. You don’t need to spend weeks tinkering with a website. All I’ve done with mine is updated my writing samples every few months. I don’t blog about writing, either. My clients don’t care that I’m writing about writing.

I started to question myself, but I had already committed to it. It turns out that one e-mail snowballed into me leaving my day job.

Were there any mental / psychological techniques that helped you to get past the mentality of the ‘ordinary’ person (ie, your coworkers who surrounded you every day)?

I quit believing my own excuses. In fact, I got effing sick of them. I was sick of saying them out loud to my husband, and I was sick of saying them to myself in my head.

What were some of these excuses? What did they sound like?

• I don’t know what to do or how to get started.
• I don’t want to try something that won’t work and “waste my time.”
• So-and-so said they knew someone who tried freelancing and couldn’t make ends meet, so that person went back to the cube farm.
• Maybe a job isn’t that bad. Yesterday was a good day.
• I need to have a website/blog/whatever before I can pitch a client.

When you leave a company, you learn a lot about people’s dreams and how they’ve compromised them for illusions of security or because of self-imposed barriers. I guess you’re safe to talk to when you’re on your way out, or they relate to you because you’re doing what they hope to do. These are some truly talented, creative people I believe in 100 percent, but I can see where they’re at in this process because I’ve been there. I was scared to leave a steady paycheck, too. I thought, “What if there’s a month when I don’t make my current salary?” But I had to turn that thinking around. “What if I’m making my current salary in a bad month, and in a good one I’m making two times more?” The illusion of security would probably pay me 3-5% more each year that I spent my days in a windowless, gray cube. Why would I accept that? What if I could make more money and control my own schedule? What if I could afford to travel more easily and not have to ask permission to use my allotted vacation days?

The other thing that helped immensely was yoga. One year ago I started a daily practice. I’d get up at 5 a.m., step to the front of my mat, and I’d set the intention to figure out what to do with my life. I didn’t believe in setting intentions, to be honest. I was still pretty new to yoga, and I’m skeptical by nature. But I was willing to give anything a shot, so every morning, I set that intention. I’m now a certified yoga teacher, and I encourage everyone who wants to bring some sort of change into their lives to try yoga. But if you have zero interest in yoga, consider getting up in the morning and just saying your intention to yourself, even if you don’t believe it will work. Over time, your attitude slowly shifts from finding reasons why something won’t work to finding ways to make it happen.

Can you describe your typical day at your last ‘regular’ job vs. describing your full-time freelancing day? Well, I’m still at my day job (my last day is July 19th!!), but I’ve had a taste of what my days will be like as a freelancer.

Regular job: Wake up at 6 a.m., leave by 6:45 p.m. Commute is 45-50 minutes, depending on traffic. Arrive at work at 7:30 a.m. Check e-mail, go to required meetings (dear Lord I won’t miss those meetings!), work until around 12, take lunch break, work/meetings until 4:30 p.m. Go to 6 p.m. yoga class, 40-minute drive home.

Freelancing: Wake up at 6:30 a.m., make breakfast and chai tea, read the news, return e-mails, create plan of action for the day, go to 9 a.m. yoga class, work until lunch–from anywhere, just need my laptop, eat lunch out or make it at home (I love to cook and love being at home to make a lunch instead of packing one in a morning rush), work a few more hours until I hit a stopping point that makes sense, not until I’ve sat in a chair for eight hours. I’m thinking of adding a daily swim to this routine, or a morning hike. Something outdoors!

Ok, let’s talk about managing your time. How did you freelance, do your fulltime job AND do the Earn1k course?

It wasn’t easy. I already had a little bit of freelancing work, I had the full-time job, I had Earn 1K, and I was working on my yoga teacher certification. There were definitely times when I wondered what the hell I’d gotten myself into. But then there were times that completely validated what I was doing, like when, at work, no one got bonuses and raises were meager. I’d just given myself a $500/per month raise with my freelancing work. I was really proud of myself for that.

To fit in everything, I made priority lists, but sometimes that felt insufficient, so thankfully Earn 1K had some great information to help me. Susan’s class on time management gave me a few ideas I could implement immediately–my favorite tip was about how to take a break. To me, a break meant I could surf around on the Internet, but 15 minutes would turn into an hour. It was a huge time suck. Susan’s advice about taking the right kind of break–something like washing the dishes or going for a walk–vastly improved my productivity. It sounds minor, but it was extremely effective.

Out of curiosity, what ended up being your new break?

Washing dishes, cooking, or just sitting outside while my cat explores the yard and chases grasshoppers.

Have you ever invested in yourself via a training course, books, etc?

Before these last 12 months, the only thing I’d invested in was books. But between yoga, E1K, and B1K, I’ve spent more in the past year on training and courses than I have in my entire life–almost $7,500.

Each time I spent a chunk of change, I was really nervous. That’s no small amount of money–it pained me to part with it! I worried it wouldn’t work out and I’d be out the money and feel stupid, especially with the online courses.

Ok, so what helped you to overcome those worries, in the end?

I have read nothing but quality material at I Will Teach, and I believed Earn1k would be no different. Plus, there was a money-back guarantee, so I could try it out and see if this was something different than the stuff you get on the Internet for free. And it really was.

In truth, that investment was the smartest thing I’ve ever done. I knew what I didn’t know. I knew how to write, but I didn’t know about sales or how to overcome my fears. I didn’t know how to get in my client’s head. I could tell myself I should know these things and should be able to do it on my own, or I could cut the B.S. and get stronger in the areas where I’m weak. I wanted to know what worked so I could get clients as soon as possible.

* * *

What now?

1. Take the course that helped April earn tens of thousands of dollars and quit her fulltime job. Click here to join Earn1k.
2. Stuck on an idea? Get a sample from Earn1k. Check out my free Idea Generator Toolkit.
3. If you’ve earned $500+ in the last 3 months and want to be featured as a Master of Earning More, click here.

Today, I’m launching a new weekly series, highlighting case studies of people who are earning more money. It’s called Masters of Earning More. You’ll learn how they did it — including both tactics and the critically important mental side of earning more money — and how you can start earning more, too.

Today, Susan Su interviews Ciaran Lyons, a web developer who’s begun earning more money. I love this quote:

“I was earning a good salary, but never seemed to be able to afford to do the big things we wanted to do as a family – traveling, and more.”

Things to note below:

• Ciaran has a family, so it’s not like he has a ton of free time. So how is he earning $100k+ and on track for much more?
• Ciaran was one of my Earn1k students. Then he pitched me on an idea, and now I’m sending him thousands of dollars of work. How’d he stand out among so many people?
• He acknowledges that he was always busy — but he was “busy on the wrong things.” When he’d look back at the last week, or month, he’d realize he hadn’t actually achieved his real goals. That probably sounds familiar to every one of us.
• He got a job copywriting, but transitioned into a much more sophisticated job managing analytics. This is key: When you first secure a client, if you’re good, you can rapidly add on responsibility…and compensation.
• He talks about mental barriers a LOT. A lot of people just want more and more content/tactics/tips, which is a red flag for someone who just wants more information but doesn’t really want to do anything. Ciaran points out that once he changed his perspective, he started earning much more.

Susan Su interviews Ciaran Lyons on earning more

Can you tell us what you do in a nutshell?

Web development, digital marketing, and code monkey for a small digital agency. We’re a web shop – if it’s on the Internet, we can do it.

The freelance stuff is now closer to consultancy – getting in really deep into business problems and identifying issues, and then proposing tech solutions to tackle them.

Now, let’s get right to it. What’s your income looking like these days?

I earned about $100k last year. I’m currently on track now to increase my income by at least 10%, and I’m just getting started.

Ok, let’s back up and work through it. Think back to when you were working your regular 9 to 5 job. What was your “Aha!” moment where you started thinking about doing something to earn money on the side?

One baby in the house and plans for a second. Time to start knuckling down and shoring up our finances against the flood of additional expenses – schools, insurance, etc.

Can you remember a single event or moment when you finally realized, ‘hey, this complaining about money isn’t helping me?’ What finally made you take action?

We were never poor, but never rich. So when Ramit’s Earning More posts started coming in, they really struck a chord.

It was a culmination of small things, but the best thing was these niggling money pressures. I was earning a good salary, but never seemed to be able to afford to do the big things we wanted to do as a family – travelling, and more.

Speaking of niggling money pressures, toddler’s school fees can be really over-priced!

What were the next immediate steps you took? How did you brainstorm ideas, and how did you know which were any good?

First step was before I wanted to earn more, and that was just trying to gather up some of the money we had floating around that wasn’t doing anything. Bank accounts with small sums in a couple of countries, unpaid invoices for a couple of ad-hoc freelancing jobs I had done for friends and family, that sort of stuff.

Then when we found that we had scraped together a couple of thousand dollars in wasted/dormant money it made me realize that I kinda liked the feeling of having more money.

Alright, so you got the first taste of what it was like to have a little extra money, and it was good. What was your biggest barrier to getting started with earning extra money on a consistent basis?

Feeling too busy. Me telling myself “I’d love to do this and this, but I’m just so busy. I’m working all the time, etc.”

When you say that one of your biggest barriers was “feeling” too busy — let’s dig into that. There is the actual fact of being busy, and then there’s the ‘feeling’ of being busy, which is more like being overwhelmed. That can really stop people in their tracks, whether or not they’re actually busy or accomplishing things. Were you actually too busy?

I was actually extremely busy. Long hours, late nights. But, I was busy on all the wrong things. I started asking myself, “Is this really the BEST use of your time right now?” And if it wasn’t, passing it to someone else to do. Not shirking work, just delegating better.

Do you think you were allowing yourself to be busy on the wrong things just by accident? Sometimes people will let themselves ‘get busy’ as a way of avoiding doing the important stuff.

Not even ‘by accident’, I think. More like a self-imposed barrier that’s almost ‘on purpose.’ Maybe it’s to avoid ‘real’ work, meaningful work.

Ok so how did you eventually get past it (the barrier of feeling so busy)?

I realized that by being so obligated to my day job – extra hours, taking on too many projects – I wasn’t doing the company I was working for, or myself any favors. So I started really re-prioritizing – delegating a lot more, saying no a lot more.

What made you think you could try something on the side while your coworkers did the same old thing — that is, nothing?

I work at an agency, so we contract a lot of freelancers. Over the years, I’ve had plenty of people ask me to recommend freelancers to them.  And we’ve even hired a bunch.  And you know what, they’re not all that great. So I decided to be a bit more selfish and look for opportunities for myself. Hmm, selfish is not the right word, but you get what I mean — looking out for what I personally could get out of it more.

Ok Ciaran, I know you also work for clients all around the world. Does being a remote freelancer make it harder?

Working remotely is actually better in a lot of ways. There are fewer distractions in the evening and night-time. You’re online while other folks are doing their thing in other time-zones.

Most importantly, when teams are working remotely, everyone has to give each other the information they need to do their tasks.  In an email, or a document or something.  Which means there are (so far) less mis-communications – like “I thought you said you were going to do that thing when I passed you in the hallway even though you thought I was talking about that other thing but anyway why isn’t it done?”

When it comes to earning more money, what are most people afraid of? We’ve seen that there is a lot of fear around earning more — much of it deep-seated, unconscious fears. (By the way, this is crazy. Why be afraid to EARN MORE MONEY??) Why do you think people are so afraid to earn more money, and what would you tell those people?

I think a lot of people are martyrs to their situation. It’s like Person A: “I have this problem”. Person B: “Here are some things that you can do about this problem”. Person A: “But I like my problem!” (I can’t recall which cartoon I stole that from)

I was the same way, grumbling over how busy I was, and how I couldn’t do anything about it. And how all the bills were mounting up, etc.  But really that was just an excuse to Do, I dunno, nothing really. Except grumble.

I think a lot of people are afraid they won’t have the motivation. Do you ever just not feel like doing stuff? I mean, do you ever look at your friends at Cisco, or who work for the government, and think, “Wow, I wish I could just kick back a bit too?”

As part of my day job, I work for a lot of clients who have it pretty sweet. Knocking off at six, plenty of perks. But that doesn’t mean I’d like their job. Corporate structure, career starts here at year X and ends here at year Y, just clock in and clock out.

I definitely feel like I have to be pushing a little harder than that.

I work on the internet – the pace of change there just makes you feel really old and slow if you’re not doing something to keep up. And that means challenging yourself a little.

It sounds like you get a lot of motivation from the environment and people you work around.

Definitely, and that’s why working remotely has been so good.  You can draw on resources from smart people around the world – you’re not restricted to just the people that work in your office.

Ok, a lot of I Will Teach readers WANT to earn more, but to them, their main barrier is finding the right idea. What would you tell them?

The idea is nothing. Finding ‘the idea’ is just a crutch. Doing something, anything, is the only way to get started. And then as soon as you start, the idea changes, and the plans change and new ideas come along and it just snowballs until “Yay! This is great fun and  I’m making money and there’s still a bunch of opportunities ahead.”

I totally agree. So my last question just has to do with how you WON a contest pitching Ramit during Earn1k, and actually got him to hire you through your winning pitch. A lot of people actually did’t participate in the contest at all, but you did. Why do you think some people would shy away from the contest?

Well, when I entered I was kinda peeing myself a little. I’ve listened to some of Ramit’s tear-downs and they can be a bit intimidating. So I can fully understand that people didn’t want to be on the receiving end.

But then, that’s why we joined the course and paid the money. So I forced myself to do it. And enjoyed it.

I think as well that a lot of people felt that they didn’t have the right skills to contribute. But I deliberately pitched Ramit on a copywriting job (even though I’m not a writer) as I reckoned that was an easier job for him to say ‘yes’ to.

And then what happened? You’re not doing copywriting now.

It’s all about the foot in the door. Once Ramit said ‘yes’ to the small job and I was able to begin working with him, I saw a whole host of opportunities where I could add value and make things better for I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

So I suggested this and that and got a couple more little projects, until we reach the point today where Ramit’s contracted me for the next three months and I’m doing the work that really matches my skill-set.

What do you think was so good about your initial pitch? Did you spend a lot of time studying Ramit or I Will Teach?

For a start, I had no idea that I was in the running – I didn’t think it was that great a pitch. But I did try to put all the lessons from the Earn1k course into it.  I dug right down into I Will Teach and read a lot of articles. And I tried to get into Ramit’s head (like Earn1k was constantly telling us) and break things right down so that he could see he wouldn’t need to spend a lot of time managing the project. And finally, I wanted to add some extra value, so I proposed a consultation where I could tell him my recommendation for his blog (without actually giving away what those recommendations were. I guess the intrigue worked in my favor a little.

Ok to recap, how many freelance clients do you have, and how much time do you spend freelancing?

At the moment, only 2 1/2 clients. And I’m spending around 10-15 hours a week.

Wow, pretty manageable. That’s less than the time you were spending on freelancing before, right?

Less time, better rate, better work. And these clients actuallly pay their bills, which is a plus. It’s around 25% less time, at a 25% better rate.

Ok, so you’re spending less time, and making more money — sound about right?

That’s about right. And much less time on non-productive busy work, which is easier on the soul too.

Have you ever invested in a course, books, etc? How much do you spend on training materials each month?

I’m an information scavenger, so I pick up bits and pieces from a lot of blogs and things that I follow. And then I try to implement them..  And I’ve bought a few books here and there but nothing hard-core.

The Earn1k course was the most expensive one-off purchase I’ve made for self-development (and it was a bit of a challenge convincing my wife that I was going to splash out on an online course). But I had followed the blog for a long time, and really grooved on the Earn1k preview stuff. And in line with the other changes I had been making, it felt like the right thing to do. And so far it’s totally paid off.

I think the most important thing for me was just to take action. Don’t beat yourself up over your job or your situation and make a small change for the positive. In my case, it started with the decision to not to be in the same place doing the same thing 12 months from now. Once I overcame that barrier, things really started rolling.

1. Get featured in an upcoming “Masters of Earning More” case study: If you’ve earned $500+ in the last 3 months and want to be featured, click here.

2. Stuck on finding an idea to pursue? Get my free Idea Generator Tool.

I got this amazing comment from a guy named Mike on a recent post:

I have to disagree with all those who rail against coupons. My wife has the last 4 months of inserts filed in our filing cabinet with a spreadsheet that she downloads that inventories the contents of each weeks insert. She then compares our grocery list to the coupon inventory, pulls the correct coupons and goes shopping. the best savings are on the staples we use (cereal, shampoo, etc..). Our monthly grocery bill for a family of 4 is ~$320.

I swear to god, as much as I make jokes about cutting coupons, I would like to first meet this person, then marry her.

Ok, let’s play a game. Who is this person? Where does she live? What is her job? Her husband’s job)? What life experiences brought her to such a level of mastery?

Let’s all just stipulate that she is Asian (who else would be so diligent?). The rest is fair game. Have at it in the comments.

We can all learn something from my future wife.