While it is one of the most commonly repeated points I’ve come across, that is the guru’s tell you, you need to focus. Recent events have made me look this over from another point of view. What should I be focusing on?

It’s not a one size fits all type of a proposition.

A recent death of a close family member has brought certain things into focus that were not central before but have become so now. Other things faded away.

It’s important to review your priorities from time to time. What you think is important might have changed or might need to change as your point of view changes with life’s sudden events.

There are many ways to make extra income on line, some require finance to get up and running. Others can be carried out using completely free resources using a bit of imagination and homework to find them and set them up.

Over the next few months, I will be testing different opportunities and reviewing them here on my website. I look forward to sharing with you what happened and what worked.

Of course, it goes without saying that people are different and highly individual. Freedom of choice and taste can make one method someone’s dream come true while another person could think this is the most boring thing they had ever come across and want to move on quickly.

It will certainly be interesting to test drive these opportunities.

Entrepreneurship is a journey. It is a mindset, a lifestyle, and an adventure.

It is a never-ending course of learning that no school on earth could possibly teach. You must live it to understand it.

You must be willing to take a leap down a rabbit hole that leads to a place where everything goes against what the average person believes.

Once inside, you will experience disappointment, failure and, sometimes, even disaster. However, it is a path you must be willing to take if you truly want to experience independence and absolute freedom.

I didn’t write these words. But I found them and they communicated, so I kept them.

2015 is a new year and new chance to make it the best year of adventure, and expansion towards dreams and make illusions in to reality, and the spirit of the above, I am looking forward to it.

I hope you are too. May it be a good year for you.

Been catching up with family today at a get together to celebrate a 90th birthday in the family.

It was a fascinating glimpse through the generations of people I have known for all my life and some whome i had never met before. The generations change, and cultures and customs too, yet some things are a constant. Family, friends, love, happiness, hardships shared and illnesses endured and survived… or not sometimes.

How do we change with the passing of time, and what brings us back together in the dance of life through the ages?

As I write this, it is the eve of the Referendum on Scottish Independence. Tomorrow,the residents of Scotland will vote on how they wish their future to be. We will find out soon after what they collectively decided.

Independence is the Scottish dream, one every Scot grows up with, and kept alive by the folk songs and monuments to William Wallace, the Scottish hero, who led the Scots to stand up to, fight back and challenge the rule and power of the English King.

Wallace himself was betrayed, captured and died in the attempt, in London, where he was hung, drawn and quartered. But he set in motion a movement which could not be stopped, culminating in the victory of Robert the Bruce at the Battle at Bannockburn in 1314. The English fled.

Scotland won back its independence, and the right to rule itself as a proud nation under Robert the Bruce, King of Scots.

Not everyone in the United Kingdom knows the story, especially in England, as English children are not taught Scottish history prior to 1603 when a Scottish King, James Stuart, King James VI of Scotland was crowned King James 1, of England.

The reign of the royal English line of Tudors came to an end after Henry VIII and his daughter Elizabeth 1, who never married, hardly a surprise when she saw what Henry did to his spouses. Ironically a Scottish King was next in line to the English throne And that is how it came to pass that Scotland and England came together
under one crown while still retaining their own legal systems, different religions, banks, education system and other cultural elements.

It would certainly be ironic if if the two countries were to become separate again
under another Elizabeth, some 700 years after the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314.

Lots of people, however, saw the film “Braveheart” starring Mel Gibson; a stirring tale immortalising a somewhat romantic version of the life and struggles of William Wallace in his fight for freedom, a fight to the death. It may have been told with Hollywood licence, adapting some details here and inventing some others there to make a rousing, good movie. But the important details of the story were true enough.

And tell about the importance of freedom and independence to the Scots, a message that stirs in the souls of many others around the world.

Man has his dreams and seeks to be free. He has no wish to be a slave to a machine, to a boss, to the clock, to another power.

It is one of those fascinating and enduring curiosities: what makes the difference between living a life of wealth and a life of poverty. Is it all down to luck, or the accident of birth, or Fate? Can we do something about it? What could we learn and do to improve on our own personal circumstances?
Many people have researched in depth to come up with useful insights as to what factors can make or break your success. Tom Corley is such a person. He made a 5 year study of the daily activities of233 wealthy people and 128 people living in poverty and he reveals some key points in his No 1 bestselling book “Rich Habits- The Daily Success Habits of Wealthy Individuals”. In this book, he identifies over 200 daily activities that in his words, separate the “haves” from the “have nots”.
From his vantage point as a Certified Public Accountant and as an expert in taxation, he comes into contact with a number of wealthy people and has had the opportunity at first hand to familiarise himself in detail with different aspects of their lives as well as having access to facts and figures such as the Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finance.
For example, the top 5% of households in America control 60% of the nation’s wealth according to the Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finance. Yet this same 5% of households pays 57% of all income tax according the Tax Foundation.
Tom also noted that although this top 5% have more income, 67% were frugal in their lifestyle, 64% lived in a modest home 88% were savers and 94% of them balance their checkbook each month.
However, one key difference is that 80% pursued a major goal and 94% engaged in daily self-improvement.
Your DREAMS are important. Taking steps toward them brings happiness, fulfillment and apparently also goes along with becoming wealthy.
Keep your dreams bright and shiny and go for it.

Starting out by selling on Amazon or Ebay is one of the simplest ways to get started making extra income on line. If you get familiar with it and find it suits you, there are a lot of opportunities and ways to scale it up depending on how much income you want to make. What makes it so attractive is that it can be done from almost anywhere in the country anywhere in the world. You can fit it around your other time committments. And you can get yourself up and running with little start up costs and scale up as time and resources and needs change.

That being said it, it is also worth getting helpful and useful advice from those who have been there, done it and are willing to pass on their valuable experience and know-how.

Amazing Selling Machine is a high end training programme which will kickstart you on Amazon into stratospheric levels. Unfortunately, it has just closed its doors on its current training class.  However, it’s not for every one as the training course itself is expensive and there are other costs you need to cover to get the programme rolling as you go through the training steps.

At the other end of the spectrum, there are four people who come to mind who offer excellent training on Amazon at a fraction of the price. All are personally successfull. All have excellent reputations as honest, trustworthy individuals as well as their excellent reputations for producing effective quality training programmes that will teach you the skills and know how to become successful. Some have additional back up support with forum, facebook groups, one-on-one mentoring sessions available.

Over the next few days, I will be writing about some other low cost, effective Amazon training programs which will get you up and running as a seller online on Amazon.

It’s a wonderful place where a person can learn traditional arts and learn them from true professionals who can do what they teach. The  School was founded in 2004 by HRH The Prince of Wales as one of his core charities.

The Prince’s School was established on the work of Professor Keith Critchlow who pioneered a teaching programme in 1984, at the Royal College of Art, based on the practice of, and research into, the traditional arts.

The Prince’s School recently started offering an Open Program to the general public who may enrol for short periods of training with some of their wonderful tutors.

Courses are arranged to be accessible for the working person by being held on week-ends or mid week evenings or for the period of a one week so it can be fitted into a holiday. During the summer months, by custom a holiday period, some of the short courses are again on offer. There are also one day taster courses providing an introduction to various disciplines and subjects.

The work is exquisite and the tutors are masters of their techniques. So, the teaching is demonstrated by professional example. The coaching is precise and exact and as the classes are small, the attention is personalised and sufficient to make real progress while learning the basic simple techniques and how to perform them within a short period of time.

Courses on offer include Oil Painting: Methods and Materials, The Flemish Technique – The mixed method of tempera and oil paint, courses on Gilding, Medieval Illuminated Manuscript, Ikon painting according to the Russian school, Persian and Indian miniatures, and Celtic Design. There are also applied arts such as parquetry, stained glass window, natural dyes, weaving, knotting, ceramics, including tiles as produced in different schools such as Zillij (Moroccan Ceramic tiles) Iznik (Ottoman Ceramic Design).

Geometry is a fundamental to much of the training and so several courses on geometry are available and form part of some of the tasters.

This is a unique opportunity to learn true methods and tested techniques from people who are devoted to the study of their subjects and excellent in their own professional accomplishments and high quality standards. It preserves these skills and this knowledge which was becoming lost to future generations, now, before it is too late and gone forever.

Came across something different today. It’s called eBook University and is the inspiration of Phil Gosling.

Phil has a wealth of experience in making success in the home publishing world. It started 20 years ago, in his own words when “I found myself with no job, no usable qualifications, a serious health condition, two small mouths and a very large mortgage to feed”.

When he started out, in the days before the internet came into existence, this meant writing his book, then then getting his book printed on paper in order to publish and distribute them. A costly process.

Today, anyone can sit at home, or at the beach, or in the garden, or on trip and write an ebook, and distribute it to a worldwide audience for a fraction of the effort of handling a physical product and little or no costs.

And this is what Phil will show you how to do successfully, so you can leverage this to make some extra income or build it up to a full life-support system for you financially, doing something you enjoy.vTaht has to be the perfect home business.

Want to know more?

One of the simplest ways to create success is to find someone who is successful and copy and learn from them. In a new field of opportunity such as we have now with the internet, there are individuals who have gone on to achieve stellar success. An examination of what they did and how they did it will give insights that can lead others to success by inspiration, information and example. This can be at a distance through books or word of mouth–and as as result, is diluted and second hand. Sometimes one comes upon an opportunity to learn directly from a successful source. Such an opportunity is to be grabbed and utilised to its fullest.

Such an opportunity is available now with John Thornhill’s Partnership to Success program. John has recently opened the doors to his special training program in which he personally takes the members of his program through the steps he followed to achieve his own resounding success on line as an internet marketer, producing his own information products.

John’s story is simple. He worked in a car factory. When the internet came along, he saw that this provided him with the opportunity to get of the trap he was in. He went for it, and worked at it relentlessly till he had changed his life, quit the day job and moved on to a better life.

It took hard work and persistence. It took time. It took self-discipline.
It was fun; it was financially rewarding; it was fulfilling.

Now John helps other people achieve new skills and better lives through on-line training and personal mentoring he provides, one on one and in group situations such as weekly webinars where he takes you behind the scenes in his own on-line business.
He’s been there — so he knows how bad it can be and how good it can get and he can help you.