The Money Move · Issue #020 · Thursday, August 13
Hey —
John here.
Today's play: your kid just went back to school. That reclaimed window is worth two thousand dollars by Halloween if you use it right. Two-minute read.
Reply "WIN" if you tried a Money Move play this week. I read every one.
Here's the math nobody's showing you. Your kid just went back to school. Depending on your district, that's five to seven hours a day, five days a week, that used to be yours to manage. You just got roughly one hundred and twenty focused hours a month back for the first time since June.
Most parents will fill that time four ways:
Catch up on laundry, errands, and appointments
Doom-scroll (average adult: two hours a day of social)
Start "getting ahead" at their day job for no extra pay
Watch "make money with AI" videos and never build anything
All four are lose-loses. The laundry gets done anyway. The scrolling steals joy without adding income. The unpaid overtime disappears in the next reorg. And the videos keep you learning forever without earning once.
There is a fifth option. Pick ONE Money Move play. Any past play. And run it every school day for thirty days. Not a big lift. Ninety minutes a day. Between drop-off and lunch, or lunch and pick-up.
The math up front: Thirty school days. Ninety minutes a day. Forty-five focused hours. At fifty dollars an hour (below-market for anything productized), that's twenty-two fifty. Push it to seventy-five an hour and it's thirty-three seventy-five. Ninety-minute focused work at productized rates is real money. Two thousand by Halloween is a conservative floor, not a ceiling.
If you've been reading these plays and never running one, this is the issue that turns you into a person who runs them. If you're already running one, this is the issue that turns one weekend into thirty days of compounded momentum.
The 3 prompts:
Prompt tip: The Friday Review below is your first RECURRING Claude prompt. Save it. Paste it every Friday for the next thirty school days. Each time you run it, Claude has more history on your specific play and gives sharper feedback. This is how a chat becomes a coach.
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1. THE PICKER (run once, this weekend)
Based on everything you know about me, which of these past Money Move plays would produce my fastest first paying customer if I ran it for ninety minutes a day, thirty school days in a row: (a) the Storybook Play — personalized kids' books, (b) the Etsy Q4 Prep Play — listing rewrites for handmade sellers, (c) the Fall Fundraiser Play — letters for local nonprofits, (d) the Layoff Insurance Play — productized AI consulting for my industry. Score each on: fit with my existing life, speed to first customer, October to December revenue upside. Then tell me which wins. No "it depends." Every sentence must earn its place.
2. THE 30-DAY CALENDAR (run once, after Prompt 1)
I picked [PLAY NAME] from Prompt 1. Design me a thirty-school-day execution calendar. Assume ninety minutes a day, Monday through Friday. Each day should have ONE specific action I can finish inside that window. Batch outreach on Mondays. Delivery work Tuesday through Thursday. Follow-up and pipeline building Fridays. Weekends off — that's family time. Output as a numbered list, days one through thirty, with a two-line action per day.
3. THE FRIDAY REVIEW (recurring — paste every Friday)
Here is what I did this week for [PLAY NAME]: [paste the week's actions from your calendar and note what happened — messages sent, calls booked, deals closed, dollars in]. Given this week's data and everything you know about my play so far, tell me: what is the one action that produced the most, what is the one action I should stop wasting time on, and what should Monday's first action be. Under three hundred words. Every sentence must earn its place.
The plays to pick from (from your Money Move archive — each is a full issue with pitch scripts, 3 prompts, and 5 steps):
Issue #014 — The Storybook Play. Personalized kids' books written with Claude. Fifty per PDF, one fifty printed. Recurring buyers: aunt, grandma, best friend.
Issue #016 — The Back-to-School Fund Play. Thirty ready-to-post captions for local businesses. Four ninety-seven per pack. Recurring buyers: same shop, next month.
Issue #017 — The Etsy Q4 Prep Play. Listing rewrites for handmade sellers before Q4 traffic hits. Four ninety-seven per ten-listing pack.
Issue #018 — The Fall Fundraiser Play. Full campaign package for a local nonprofit. Four ninety-seven per campaign. Recurring: Giving Tuesday, holiday, spring event.
The school-day rhythm:
Monday: Outreach. Twenty new messages to prospects. Ninety minutes.
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday: Delivery. Build what the ones who said yes bought. Ninety minutes each.
Friday: Follow up with everyone who didn't reply. Run the Review prompt. Plan next week.
Weekends: Off. Family time. No exceptions.
This weekend: Run Prompt 1. Pick your play. Run Prompt 2. Save the thirty-day calendar somewhere you'll see it every morning. Start Monday.
That's the play.
"Ninety minutes. Thirty school days. Two thousand by Halloween."
Pick your play.
- John
The Money Move
@hustlepreneur.ig · theweeklymoneymove.com
See you next Thursday.
