Pizza Money

There is an ancient principle of valuation attributed to Aristotle that goes like this:

“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”

This essentially meant that when separate components are combined they equate to greater value than their singular elements would if viewed individually. But Aristotle neglected to take one key example into account with his theory…

Pizza.

After doing some intense research on this subject (oh, the sacrifices I make!) I found that a local pizza place in my town that sells both whole pizzas as well as pizza by the slice easily disproves this valuation theory. Here are two items from the menu of the same pizza shop:

• One slice of pepperoni pizza for $3.68
• One whole 17″ pepperoni pizza for $14.00

Based on the fact their pizzas have 8 slices per pie, that makes the average individual slice of the whole pie just $1.75 per slice — but if I bought 8 slices at the individual rate, my cost would be $29.44 for a whole pizza.

Here’s my point

If you want to make more money from your ideas, products, and services — perhaps instead of bundling items together as “whole pizzas” you should be selling individual slices.

Rather than charging one “value price” for everything you do, try cutting your products and services into individual slices and selling them that way. Rather than charging a flat rate of $100/hour for “graphic design work”, charge a “per slice” rate by charging one price for logo design work and another for photo editing and another for ad design and another for web design, etc. based on the client demand and the individual value you can bring in regard to your talent.

Another example of this would be if you were trying to make a little extra beer and pizza money by selling some books you own, don’t pack them all in a box and sell them for a flat rate — list the titles individually and try to sell them a la carte. You can build more value on an individual one-to-one basis by offering Agatha Christie novels to mystery fans, a signed book by Seth Godin to marketing geeks, and a collection of Jeffrey Gitomer’s books on how to sell to someone looking to become a successful salesperson than you can just pitching a generic box of books to anyone who reads.

You want more ideas on how to make money by being creative and having a little fun?

For the first two weeks in September my friend Beck Power and I are teaming up to challenge a small group of people to earn some short term cash through creativity and hustle in a program called Money Game.

Beck and I will be available to bounce around ideas, offer advice and guidance, and be your biggest cheerleaders as we provide inspiration and motivation for you to collect more cash by creating a quick products, launching a simple service, selling off items in your house, flipping a domain, or whatever other method that you think is fun and profitable. The best part is that we’ll be playing right along with you!

But you have to register quick — we start on September 1st!
Click here for more details!
NOTE: This competition has ended.