work

Double Your Salary …Without losing your soul!

June 25, 2019 by Mark Anderson Smith Leave a Comment

Picture of Hardback book: double your salary and ebook

I’m excited to share that the hardback of my next book: Double Your Salary …Without losing your soul! will be released for sale on 1st August 2019.

I believe that doubling your salary is possible when you understand who you are and what you are capable of. Sharing my story of how I doubled my salary three times, Double Your Salary also gives advice drawing on my experience, beliefs, theories and knowledge to enable you to do the same.

Book Description:
Doubling your salary is possible when you understand who you are and what you are capable of.

Like many people, Mark felt trapped in low paying jobs, struggling to get interviews. When he did, he was unable to prove he was the right person for the job.

Sharing the three goals that changed his life, Mark gives an honest and frank account of a journey to find purpose and meaning, revealing doubts and fears while giving advice and encouragement.

He shares his experience, his beliefs, his theories and knowledge, examining what he did, and why, to enable him to find his ideal career and ultimately double his salary three times. Each section is followed by prompts and suggestions to help you examine your life and plan for the future, in the hope this will help you on your journey and enable you to avoid the dangers that pursuing wealth can bring.

Double Your Salary seeks to motivate and encourage you to believe: You are capable of transforming your life!

The hardback edition will retail at £14.99 and can be ordered from all bookstores.

If you would like more information on the book or would like to interview the author, please use this contact form.

Back to work?

August 16, 2017 by frozbie Leave a Comment

I’ve been in the fortunate position this summer of being able to stop looking for work, to spend more time with my family and also work on my next novel.

I knew I only had a limited time, but am now wondering if that time needs to come to and end sooner than expected.

I had two phone calls yesterday, both asking if I was interested in contracts. One was only a short job – a couple of days working for an organisation to modify an application I developed. The other role could go up until March next year. There’s no guarantee I would get that role if I went for it, but I’m also very aware that there is no guarantee another role will become available.

If I start work in the next week or so, it will take me longer to finish the sequel to Fallen Warriors. That might not be a bad thing. I have been wondering if I need more time for research.

I’ll need to make a decision today whether to apply for the second role or not…

Looking back

June 5, 2017 by Mark Anderson Smith Leave a Comment

Growing up I was taught to look back, to consider what I’d done. My father worked as a printer and I would help him in his printshop. At the end of the day he would take stock of what he had achieved: 5,000 pages numbered; 2,000 sets of carbon sets collated; 500 tickets printed…

He looked at what he had planned to achieve and what he had actually managed to achieve. Comparing those two allowed him to see whether his estimates were accurate or needed refinement, to see whether he needed to charge more for the work he was doing.

It’s a valuable habit to get into. Reflecting on what we planned to achieve against what we actually achieved and then considering whether we should change how we manage ourselves based on that analysis.

More about this tomorrow…

The importance of relevance

May 30, 2017 by Mark Anderson Smith Leave a Comment

Everything we say and do (and write) will only matter to someone else if it is relevant to them.

I’ve seen this before with my writing. My original blog used to get the odd hit every other day, often from Eastern European countries or Russia giving the impression that only bots were landing there. Every now and then though, I’d post something and manage to share it with the right people and see a huge spike in hits.

I found this happen again this weekend. Two weeks into this new blog, daily hits averaging around seven a day and then I post my notes from Amazon Academy…

250 hits in one day. All because I posted useful notes for writers and shared that post with other writers…

This other screenshot is also encouraging. I wanted to reach out to English speaking writers and saw the greatest hits from UK, US, Canada and Australia:

Whatever we do in life, relevance to others is vitally important. As a writer, I want to sell books to readers who will enjoy what I write. That means I need to identify how to reach those readers, what sort of books they are already buying and work out what they need to hear to encourage them to try my books.

But the same principles can be applied to whatever we do. In your day job, working out who your main customers/stakeholders are (hint: your boss will be number one!) is vital. Learning what they want and trying to improve on that is a way to get noticed and make your customers happy.

I can also see this applying to my relationships. How can I be more relevant to the people that matter in my life? Are my words and actions meeting their needs?

How about you? Can you see ways to be more relevant?