What’s been going on?!

The past couple of months have been busy but frustrating for me and this has been characterized by the problems I have had getting this blog post written. I’ve tried starting several times, but have found it difficult to get into the right frame of mind, or I have started and then needed to do one of the many household things a mum has to do.

But are these just excuses?

They probably are. I just haven’t had the umph in me to really get going. It’s there in the mind, but not in practice.

It probably hasn’t helped that I have been ill. At the beginning of November I suffered a recurrence of the post-viral fatigue that kept me off work for an extended period three years ago. Although this time my symptoms are not quite as severe, it has still been enough to mean that I have not been at work for a month and the doctor has signed me off work until the start of the new term.

One of the main problems I have found has been the ability to concentrate for any period of time as it often leaves me feeling extremely light headed. The doctors have said that the best way to recover is through rest.

This has left me thinking about how I can move forward in small blocks of time.

For several years I have subscribed to Flylady. It began as a site to help get your home decluttered, but has grown to be much more than that.

One of Flylady’s sayings is “You can do anything for 15 minutes – except whine!”. I have that posted up on the wall over the computer, so I see it regularly. Although I have taken some of the ideas on board and tried to do the things that she suggests, I have not been particularly disciplined with it. Perhaps that is why I am still living with lots of clutter around me!

That is also true for working online.

Time and time again I have read that you must have goals, be disciplined, put in regular effort etc etc. My head knows that, but I so often find excuses and don’t carry through with what I had intended to do. Yet once we actually start those jobs which we think will take us a really long time, they take a lot less time than we expected.

So why do we do this to ourselves?

For my own part I know that I am not as disciplined as I should be with my time management. I use the excuse that as a mum I have so many other calls on my time and energy which often change at the last minute. I don’t have the luxury of being able to put everything else on one side whilst I concentrate on writing a blog post or article, working on our online business etc.

For example as I write this I have washing in the washing machine, Christmas letters and cards to write (it’s the last posting date to USA, Australia and New Zealand today and I haven’t written any cards, letters etc!) as well as the 101 other things I have to do to keep the household running smoothly. Yet I know that I have used this as an excuse and even a small change in the ACTION I take on a regular basis will make a huge difference.

It is a year since I began my coaching with Alex Jeffreys who is giving away free places on his next coaching course. One of the first things that he taught us was to make our plans and to be disciplined in keeping to them. I’ve done this in my head, but have I done it in practice? Not really and that is where I have come unstuck.

A couple of nights ago I clicked on the links in my blogroll to the other blogs set up by Alex’s students a year ago. I was saddened, but not really surprised to find many of those blogs where the domain had lapsed. For several others the last post on the blog had been at the beginning of 2009.

I was more heartened to see those where they were not posting on the original subject of the blog – i.e. the list building that we were learning with Alex Jeffreys and that particular type of internet marketing – but they had found a new route to take and were using the blog for their new line of business.

One or two blogs were still providing the useful and entertaining content that I have become accustomed to over the past 12 months.

It is not my role to speculate about why this has happened – it is merely an observation; but as for me, I have not been as consistent in posting as I should have been. My blog is metamorphosing (very slowly!) into a new area, but I am still here!

Added to all of this I have been working together with my husband Richard on our new enterprises. We attended the Entrepreneurs Bootcamp run by Andrew Reynolds at the O2 Arena in London at the beginning of October and we signed up to Brett McFall’s Warp Speed programme.

The good thing about this is that we have begun to work together on this enterprise. We have different skills and if we put them together we can cover more areas. At the moment we are not as accomplished with this as we could be but by practising a little each day we can improve.

Isn’t this what life and business is about?

I had intended to write about our new enterprises in this post, but I think my musings have gone on for long enough now. I’ll start a new post about what we are doing and save it for later publication – now that would be a first! But in the meantime if you want to have a quick peek at what we are doing you can look at our Eminently Ebooks site or at our Positive Lifestyle Choices site. We’d be interested to know what you think about them.

So what are your ideas on this matter? Is it just because we are all human and have so much to do that we don’t dedicate the time we need to if we say that we want to have our own online business? Or are there other factors that stop us in our tracks?

I’d be really interested to have your feedback and comments on this.

Allowance Secrets – To Give or Not To Give?

As you may know by now, I have a passion to help young people become financially well educated and some while ago I met another entrepreneur on the internet who is also passionate about helping kids with their money.

Let me introduce her:

“Amanda van der Gulik is a homeschooling momepreneur and very savvy young woman who is giving away a terrific e-book called, “Allowance Secrets: To Give Or Not To Give?”, which will help you make up your mind on whether or not to give your kids an allowance.

She has spent months compiling over 200 pages of valuable and helpful information about the financial repercussions of giving your children an allowance, or not.”

Amanda knew that I shared the same vision, although I am focussing more on teenagers upwards and she asked me to write a chapter for her “Allowance Secrets” ebook.

I was extremely flattered to be asked as I am still just getting involved in this area, but I wrote my chapter and I have since had the opportunity to look at this ebook myself.

It is an amazing and thought provoking collection of ideas and suggestions about allowances. Most importantly the overall idea behind the book is that there is no right or wrong answer to this question and that parents should make their own decision about what suits them best.

This is a really useful book which is broken down into various sections so that you can look at the one that suits your own ideas and read what each author has to say, but you can also look at the other sections and have the information to weigh up for yourself.

With the amount of work that has gone into this ebook I am surprised that Amanda has decided to give it away, but she, like me, is passionate about getting this information out to those who need it. By not charging for it she can make sure that those who will benefit from it can have access to it.

I applaud what she has done and I would definitely recommend that you download a copy for yourself or for someone you know who has children or grandchildren – or might be planning to have children!

Here is what Amanda has to say about the book itself – I thought that I would let her own words speak for themselves:

Kids Allowances

People seem to ask the same questions about kids allowances again and again.

“Should I give my child an allowance?”

“How much should I give my child as an allowance?”

“When should I start giving my child an allowance?”

“Will an allowance ruin my child’s entrepreneurial spirit?”

Allowances are a very touchy subject and it really comes down to each individual’s personal strategies for financial education for their child. Teaching children about money can be very difficult and confusing for the parent as well.

Most of us were raised with the value that “money is evil”, or “you don’t need to have money to be happy.” But have you had a good look around you lately? Can you find me a family who are in a lot of bad debt that are not stressing about their finances? Maybe money doesn’t make you happy but not having money will make you a lot more unhappy, I can tell you that for sure.

Just imagine, you have a recurring income of more than $10,000/month. How would that feel? Would you feel stress-free because you are now able to pay off all of your expenses and thereby not create any bad debt? How will you feel when you have money left over at the end of every month instead of living paycheck to paycheck?

What if you were financially able to give away 10% of your income, every month, without even noticing the financial impact? What would you give it to? Who would you like to help? How would it feel to be able to help others in need with the extra money that you are earning without even feeling the financial impact? It would be a pretty awesome feeling right?

So how does this tie into the topic of allowances?

Some people suggest that allowances are a way to teach their children about money. Others suggest that allowances gives their kids the chance to learn to handle money without losing their shirt.

Here are some of my own suggestions on the topic to get your financial juices flowing.

Maybe when we give our child an allowance it might start to create the feeling of entitlement in our child?

What if by giving our child an allowance we were actually hindering their financially creative minds?

Would they be so used to just getting money that they wouldn’t even bother to come up with creative new ways to earn their own money?

And what about pride of ownership that comes when we are finally able to acquire our dreams by our own means instead of just as a gift from someone else?

These are just a few of the topics discussed in Allowance Secrets.

Allowance Secrets is the ultimate Guide to allowances. Over 20 experts have contributed to this project.

I would love to hear your feedback about this book. Was it useful to you? Did you learn something new? Did it make you change your ideas about allowances? Was anything missing that you would like to see?

I can then pass this feedback on to Amanda so that together we can all help to get the best information out to as many parents and grandparents as possible. After all these will be our future business leader, bankers, politicians etc!

Continuing to learn

Wow, what a response!

I went away for three days on family business and when I got back the comments on my last post about what we should be teaching our children massively outweighed my original post.

This is just what I had hoped for!

This sort of response gives me so much to ‘get my teeth into’ and so many things to learn.

I have now come back to writing this post which I started a few days ago. I have so much more information buzzing around in my head that I need to order it all so that it will make sense!

Well my first response HAS to be to Nikki Stephen’s rant. Thank you so much, Nikki, for being honest here about issues that affect you personally. I have to say that I agree with you about so many of the inequalities to be found in our system in the UK and the resulting mindset.

I caught part of a TV trailer last night for a programme set in a school where one of the girls was pregnant and the boyfriend referred to the fact that baby = house and money, kerching! What example is this setting? I admit that I didn’t see the programme so I don’t know how it was played out, but…

Children need to be taught the basic values of honesty and integrity, and that hard work pays off.

I really couldn’t agree more Nikki, and that is really behind what I am looking at here. We as parents should be teaching our children these things, but I know from the experiences I have had working with my students that many of them have not had that parental input, sometimes because the parents do not understand these things themselves.

We can moan about this, or we can get on and do something about it and help those who have not had a chance to learn so far. Surely this will help future generations, even if the current generations do not understand these principles?

I know what it feels like when a student I have been working with tells me that they bunked off school, but now realise that they have to work hard at their literacy / numeracy etc if they want to be able to move forward in their lives.

I know the encouragement that I am able to give them and the sense of achievement when they say to me “I finally understand that now”. I want to be able to help young people like that, who perhaps have not had the best start in some of these matters.

But I also want to be able to provide help and resources for young people like my own children and others who have good, positive parental or other support but would like somewhere to go for resources and other information. I believe that these two areas can cross over, but it is something that needs to be worked on and that has given me a goal to work towards.

Other ideas to come out of the comments on my last post include:

Internet safety – I couldn’t agree more and I know that I have perhaps made the odd comment that should not have been made, so I will need to go back and cover my tracks there.

Thom Swartwood made a great observation:

I think it is great they want to get out there and blog, just remember there is nothing better in this world than a concerned parent, a parent that watches over what their children are doing. Communication is the key.

Other commenters also expressed the same concerns and I agree that we must do our utmost to make sure of the security of our young people on the internet.

I was particularly interested by Stephen Bray’s comments:

In my work as a family therapist, lately consulting almost exclusively to business owning families I found:

Children of successful business owners frequently are cared for by a host of au-pairs or nannys, go on to boarding school, and may well develop a dislike for their entrepreneurial parents and their enterprises.

The parents frequently cannot understand that the time and effort that they put into their businesses is no substitute for regular quality time at home. Indeed they believed that the long hours and work they undertook to build a better future was an act of love.

Obviously this is a situation that we want to avoid wherever possible and must be borne in mind – and I think that this applies not only to entrepreneurs. However if we can teach about the balance between working and living, that is a really important step forward.

I have just read a Quick Reads book (106 pages) by Richard Branson called “Screw It, Let’s Do It – lessons in life” (ISBN 0-7535-1099-5) which has some wonderful short thoughts at the beginning of each chapter as well as the information he gives about his philosophy in life.

In Chapter 7. Value Family and Friends he says:

Whatever you might think of him, Richard Branson has built up and run a very successful empire and his views towards the making of money are refreshing.

So if you want a quick morale boosting read, I really would suggest reading this book – I read it in just over an hour, but will be returning to it regularly.

I have been doing some other researching since I made my last post and I have discovered that there is some excellent information out there already for young people. Some of it has to be paid for, but much of it is free.

As I have gone about this research, I have realised that I do not want to be reinventing what is currently available, especially when some of it is already so well researched and tested.

I have decided at the moment that I am going to follow one of the available programmes with Lizzie and hopefully also my son, so that I can have a better understanding of how this works.

The programme is run by Chris and Jenny Ford whose three girls have all started their own businesses whilst at elementary school.

You may have heard of “That Internet Girl” on YouTube – their 12 year old daughter:

Anyway if you want to check out the free information they have and the programme they offer parents and children do have a look at www.cash-smart-kids.com. I will try to make regular posts about how this programme is going for us so that you can follow us and see if it will work for you too.

I have already found a number of really useful sites, blogs and other information. I have decided to put this together in the form of an ebook, so I shall be working on this in the next couple of weeks.

If you have any other information, websites, blog, links etc that you have not yet sent me please let me know so that I can add it onto the list and I will acknowledge you as the contributer of a link or information. I will also be emailing the commenters on my last post to request permission to use quotations from those comments, where appropriate.

At last I feel like I am getting my teeth into something that I feel passionate about!

There is a long way to go, but learning begins early in life and should continue throughout it.

Important – What do we tell the children?

Or more importantly what should we be teaching our young people?

You may have seen the comments on Gary Simpson’s blog about both the educational system and also whether we are teaching our young people the things that they need to know to survive and flourish as they grow.

This was partly prompted by a comment that my daughter Lizzie left on Gazz-Man’s blog about the motivational moments video he had produced (go and take a look if you haven’t seen it yet!).

Lizzie has been following my journey with Alex Jeffreys with interest and has started her own blog. Initially it was a free one where she had to have adverts, but now I have bought her own domain name and sorted out hosting for her. Do have a look at http://lizziedickinson.com (there is also a link to her blog under ‘Blog Links’ on the sidebar) and leave her a message.

The upshot of this comment and Gazz-Man’s replies including:

and:

is that I have been thinking about this issue of helping our young people.

Both Garry Parkes and Denis Caron have children in the same age bracket who want to follow their parents and have their own blogs.

In general the responses have been to encourage them to do so, but with the proviso of some overseeing by us as responsible adults. In this way we can teach them the things they really need to learn.

So what I would like to ask you all is:

Do you think it is a good idea to allow our children to follow us in what we are doing and to have their own blog?

What do you think we should be teaching them, both on and off line that is not taught at school?

Do you think it would be a good idea to have a junior community supported or encouraged by the adults in initally the F500, but could be further extended? Are there enough young people interested?

I had been thinking about a niche of my own and am still definitely thinking down another line. I had started drafting another post about that, but I felt that this was even more important at the moment.

As many of you know I teach at a Further Education College with students of 16+. Many of them come in with poor literacy and numeracy skills as well as often non existent study skills. It is my job to help these young people to learn these skills which will help them in their daily life as adults.

The more I have thought about this over the weekend, the more I have been wondering if this is the route I should take at the moment, to be someone who could oversee the development of our young people whilst they learn alongside us.

Perhaps they could have their own version of Garry Parkes’ excellent Profit Pulling Newsletter with articles written both by them and by adults to help them on this road including information on how to balance a cheque book etc.

What do you think? I would really love to have your opinions about whether you think this is something we should be doing and if it is possible to do.

I haven’t really thought it through fully yet, so your ideas would be really useful to me.

I felt the need to post this whilst the issue was still fairly recent. However I do apologise that I will not be able to answer you for a couple of days as I shall be going to the Midlands early tomorrow and will be without internet access (unless I can sneak off somewhere!).

We moved my elderly aunt into a sheltered flat near to us last August and I shall be spending the next couple of days with my sisters sorting out the house ready for sale. It has been a big job already and we are hoping to complete it soon.

However I really hope that when I return there will be lots of comments and my email box will be overflowing with your replies and thoughts.

Our children are our future. Many of us, including me, have taken this course so that we can be at home more with our children, whilst earning enough to allow us to live more easily. We really cannot afford to ignore them and their whole education as they grow.

Thank you for your help.

I’ve got competition!

I haven’t posted for a week because I have been busy doing other things (like Tax Returns – due in the UK by 31st Jan or we get a £100 fine!)

But I’m going to have to up my work rate because I have competition!

Now I know that so many of the other F500 students are so much further ahead than I am, but I don’t really think that I am in competition with them.

In fact I have been quite clear in my comments here and on other blogs that it is important that we are ourselves and work at our own pace as long as we keep moving forward.

So why the concern now?

I know I have contributed to this because I have spent the past two evenings helping my daughter to get her Wordpress blog set up.

One of the best ways of cementing your own learning is to help someone else to do what you have learnt yourself.

I still used Dean Holland’s excellent eBook on how to set up your blog, but this time I was able to take several shortcuts through adding plugins, setting up a blogroll and editing posts because I have been doing them myself for the past seven weeks.

Yes there were things I couldn’t remember how to do and initially we set up the Wordpress blog and exported it to her own domain where we had to edit some of the things – like finding a new theme.

We also copied over a couple of posts and responses from a blog she had set up by herself on a free website. Some of those comments reflected the issues she had with her blog because she couldn’t do what she saw me doing, but she was delighted that the Gazz-Man (Gary Simpson) had come over and left her a message – she’s even added him to her list of Cool People (along with me of course!). A link to her blog is under blog links if you’d like to see what she is up to and leave her a comment.

But this has made me particularly aware of a couple of things.

I’ve just been over to Ian and Becky Carter’s blog and had a look at their video for the competition which I think really sets out what is important to them. Like so many people this is their first attempt (mine is still to come). But importantly, their motivation for taking this journey and following what Alex Jeffreys is teaching us so brilliantly, comes in the shape of Becky’s two sons (and they are cute!).

My children are a little older, but I see how important it is that we not only do our best in what we say to them, but also in letting them see what we do.

If they can see us working hard, learning, interacting with others and hopefully also benefitting financially, what better model is there for them to walk down the same path, hopefully to their own financial independence?

What do I want for my children (and I’m sure so many of you do for yours)?

For them to have a good, healthy and happy life. But also not to have to struggle financially as I saw my parents doing (though that gave me a good grounding in looking after my money) and as we have had to do for so long.

Our children are our future and I want to help them to be winners too. Yes, I’ve shown my daughter Gary’s latest post on 20 Big Differences between Winners and Losers. (I also showed her the responses to my comment there – thanks Gary!)

My professional life is spent working mainly with young people and I do get a buzz out of helping them to learn something they have not previously understood. Why should it be any different with my own children?

So the competition?

My daughter wants us to see who can make the most money from what we are doing. If I’m not careful she will quickly overtake me as young people are so quick to learn new things.

But in the same way that Ian and Becky are sharing their journey, I now have a companion on mine in my own home. I know that I have lots of companions in the F500, but it’s good to share face to face.

She’s asked me if she can do Alex’s course because she’s heard so much about it.

I’m sure that Alex will not mind if I let her see the videos. I will ask him, but I am certain that he is the sort of person who will be only too pleased to know that his teaching is already filtering down to the younger generation and hopefully setting her off on a path of financial independence she can eventually bring to her own family. After all he is a father too.

So my plan now?

To get off my backside so to speak and really plan out what I and we are going to do. My daughter has already said that she wants to help me with the video and I have some ideas that I want to get going on. So if I can get some peace and quiet for a little while tomorrow, I hope to work on it then.

Once I have made some plans I will share them here as I really think that it is helping me to be accountable to others.

And my next move?

To get the men in the household involved in what we are doing – four of us will be stronger than one or two.

Watch out! We may become a force to be reckoned with (if I have my way!)