THE MONEY MOVE · ISSUE #012 · THU JUN 18
Hey-
John here. This issue has the highest-paid weekend play I've sent yet: one-fifty from one coworker by Sunday. Two-minute read.
Before the play, two quick asks. Each takes 4 seconds, and your answers shape what I send next Thursday.
1. Hit reply with the word "IN" if you're going to run this play this weekend.
2. Or reply with SKILL 1 / SKILL 2 / SKILL 3 if you'd rather I send you plays for a different stage.
What's in this issue:
Why mid-year review writing is the highest-paid weekend play yet — and why corporate buyers don't blink at one-fifty.
The Builder Prompt that turns 8 answers into a self-review their boss will actually read.
The Slack DM to send Tuesday — one message that books 2 to 4 of every 10 coworkers.
The math: how one yes per Friday turns into nearly eight thousand a year.
73% of employees say their review didn't capture their work.
That's Gallup's number. Three out of four people sit down to write their self-review, stare at the cursor for an hour, and turn in something that undersells everything they did.
Their boss reads it in 90 seconds and moves on.
The market for fixing this already pays. JobSauce charges three hundred for a self-review rewrite. Upwork writers run seventy-five to two hundred. You don't have to beat them. You just need to show up at a hundred and fifty with a one-day turnaround and a single Slack message.
Claude does the heavy lifting. Eight questions in, four solid paragraphs out. Thirty minutes of work. Paid by Sunday.
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Heads up: at most US companies, self-review windows open between June 21 and July 5. That gives you three working days to ship one and prove this play works before next week's issue drops.
Got a friend white-knuckling their job right now? Forward this - one-fifty by Sunday is the first paycheck that didn't come from the job they're surviving.
The play
Mid-year self-review rewrites. Sold to coworkers and adjacent teams. The pitch is one Slack message:
"Hey - saw the mid-year review email this week. I rewrite self-reviews with AI now. One-day turn, one-fifty, your wins reframed to actually land with your manager. Want me to send a free one-paragraph sample of your strongest bullet first?"
The sample is free. The price is half what JobSauce charges. They were already going to dread this for a week. From my own tests, expect 2 to 4 of 10 coworkers to say yes to the sample. Most of those send the money before you've finished editing.
// THIS SPACE NEXT WEEK
Your screenshot. Your one-line quote. Your win. Reply with how it went and you might be the one quoted in #013.
The three prompts
1· DISCOVERY (run after they say yes)
"Ask me 8 short questions to learn enough about my client's role + their last 6 months at work to write a confident self-review for their mid-year performance review. Questions should surface: 3 specific wins with numbers, 1 stretch project, 1 setback they handled well, the company values their team obsesses over, and the manager's top 2 concerns. Conversational, not corporate. Then confirm tone in one sentence before writing."
2 · BUILDER (paste with the 8 answers)
"Write a 4-paragraph mid-year self-review. (1) Lead with the single highest-impact thing they shipped this period. Quantify in the first sentence. (2) Two more wins with numbers, in ownership language ('I led' / 'I shipped'). (3) One growth area framed as ownership, not weakness. (4) One sentence on next-period focus tied to company priorities. Tone: calm senior. Confident, not bragging. No 'leveraged' or 'circled back.' Cap at 320 words."
3 · SELL (the 3-message Slack DM sequence)
"Write a 3-message Slack DM sequence to send to coworkers in my team channels and adjacent orgs. Mid-year reviews are due in the next 10 days. Message 1: one real observation, the offer (one-fifty, one-day turn), free sample. Message 2 (48h later): one-sentence acknowledgment they're slammed, offer again, sample link. Message 3: the exact reply when they ask 'how does it work?' — Discovery, Draft, Edit, Paste. Venmo before delivery. Peer-to-peer tone. Each message under 50 words."
The math
This weekend · one coworker yes · one-fifty in your account by Sunday
Month one · three reviews plus one referral · six hundred
End of year · review season twice plus retainers · about eighteen hundred a month
One yes per Friday, twelve months - about seventy-eight hundred a year. From a single weekly Slack message.
Five steps. One weekend.
Tonight · Run the Builder prompt on your OWN mid-year. Save the output. Now you have a sample and you've actually tested it.
Tuesday · Post on LinkedIn: "Just rewrote my mid-year with Claude. Cut three hours of writing to thirty minutes." Show a before/after of one bullet. The DMs come to you.
Friday · Slack DM ten coworkers (adjacent teams too). Use the pitch above. Don't edit it. Send before noon.
Saturday · First yes → Discovery → send draft in twenty-four hours.
Sunday · Collect. Send the final. Ask: "Know anyone else dreading their review?"
One pro move
After three happy clients, offer a "manager tier" - three hundred for a manager writing reviews for their five direct reports. Same prompt, scaled. The positioning move: don't sell it as "AI rewrites." Sell it as "I'll give you back the Saturday you were going to lose to this." Managers will pay it the day they see the first sample - they hate this even more than ICs do, and they're the ones with budget approval.
One last thing
You don't need a portfolio. You don't need a website. You don't even need a side business.
You need one coworker who's dreading their mid-year. That's the whole gate between you and one-fifty this weekend.
Hit reply and tell me how it's working. Did you DM 10? 1? Zero? What did the first reply look like? I read every response — it directly shapes what I send next Thursday.
Reply with how it went → Even one sentence helps. "Sent 10, got 2 yes" is plenty.
"The review is the easy part. The Slack DM is the hard part."
Send the Slack message.
See you next Thursday!
P.S. — If this helped, the single biggest favor: forward it to one person who'd find it useful. That's how this newsletter grows. Real moves only. |
Sources: Gallup · JobSauce · Upwork · Anthropic Claude |
