Life is for living ……..

Hi there and thanks for visiting my website. My name is Dave Menzies (It’s an old Scottish name and is pronounced Ming-us – but spelled differently. I know this is confusing so I’m happy with Men-zies as well. (Life’s too short for semantics!)

The badge on the right is the Clan Menzies emblem. I like to try and live up to the ethos of the clan by being honest, reliable and dependable in all my dealings with people.

I am an Internet entrepreneur and mentor running my own online business from my home on the west coast of Scotland (or wherever I Happen to be) I love nothing more than helping people to create their very own digital lifestyle and online home based business. I live with my partner Mo who runs her own driving instructor school which I help her to market online. My parents and brother live not far from us as does Mo’s family so we are able to spend time with all the nephews and nieces as well as to travel often.

Anyone Can Start An Online Business 

We are just a couple of hardworking, fairly ordinary people who love to travel and make music. Running our own businesses has not been an easy option but for us as individuals it has been the best decision we ever made. We are far from being millionaires but can see our dream of owning property abroad coming true in the not too distant future thanks to being able to generate income online from anywhere thanks to The Six Figure Mentors and Digital Experts Academy training. In fact we have recently been able to move from our home town of Glasgow to a beautiful spot on the west coast of Argyll.

From an early age I was entrepreneurial to some extent – paper rounds, part time jobs, and money making schemes like egg sales and car washing. My motivation was never just the money but what I could do with it. You see I wanted to be a rock star and rock stars need guitars, hairstyles, and amplifiers. The list goes on.

My Band Cactus Rose

Later I got involved with a few franchise type businesses like door-to-door frozen food sales. Again the profits were ploughed into recording sessions and equipment.
Later again with the rapid advances of home computing: I should say at this point that I am a child of the sixties so I’ve seen a time before computers were commonplace and the internet didn’t exist. I was able to arrange tours for my band in places like Denmark without ever meeting the promoters until we arrived. With email and the odd phone call I was able to arrange equipment hire, transport and accommodation and to negotiate fees. This is when I first realised that the Internet was going to be the future……

…….Just Look at the Internet Now!  

Suffice to say although some great times were had (I might get round to writing a book about it some day) and a small level of success ensued, I did not become a rock star and turned my energies to the world of work. I always liked a roof over my head so the life of the suffering artist was not for me!
I spent a number of years in the Audiovisual Industry – first in telesales then as a technician and project manager then back to sales as a business development manager for a large national AV group. Nice company car, decent salary and in all a good, enjoyable life. Then the recession came along……

Me in a penguin suit presenting an award at The Catering Excellence awards (I can be smart if required!)

Redundant at 45 In a Recession……. 

Long story short I was made redundant. Budgets for live events went through the floor and most AV companies were – and still are – struggling to keep the business they had.
I had already decided that I wanted to be my own boss and that I wanted a home based business – preferably Online. In 2009 I bought an online franchise – an affiliate style Internet store selling wine, really a shop front for a lot of big name wine merchants like Majestic and Laithwaite’s. The store came with a lot of training geared towards attracting free traffic by ranking highly with Google.

In the first few months I made some sales and was quite excited by this. It works! But pretty soon the sales dried up as the SEO methods being taught were very out of date (hindsight is a wonderful thing) and Google’s continually moving Goal posts made even more of a nonsense of those methods……

…..The Old stuff just don’t work no more 

The traffic generation strategies used consisted mainly of article spinning and back linking. Seriously tedious stuff and not at all what I had imagined life as an online business owner would be like. I will say though – when you make that first few quid online it is very exciting. I have heard some very big name “guru’s” saying the same.

My First Online venture – An Online Wine Store

Luckily I was able to sell the store and I believe it’s still out there – hopefully making money for someone else. Being an enterprising chap I had asked the franchisor if I could do some referral work for them in exchange for some free SEO and built up a good relationship with the sales guys who later joined my next venture.
The aforementioned next venture was with n online advertising company that created a unique affiliate business enabling anyone to get a share of the online advertising industry. 

I did well with that business for a time. I built up a small team under me and grew the account to the stage where it was paying well and I was still able to scale it month on month. When the company started to have problems with payouts, which stretched into months, I realised I needed to have another string to my bow.

Get Your Own Online Affiliate Business

I have spent and lost money on various online schemes I must admit. They look attractive and simple on the outside and lots of people recommend them. I mean the “magic button”, “passive income” type of things and I’d urge you to take it from me – they don’t work. They usually rely on you building and supporting a team and they offer unrealistic and unsustainable profits to lure people in. Yes if you are lucky you can get in at the start – make some profit and get out before it folds – but not many do. Just be warned.

During all this it became very obvious to me that I needed another REAL online business and more than that I needed to learn how do this online marketing stuff in a joined up way.

Learn how to Market Anything You Want Online 

While doing some networking on Facebook I said hello to an online marketer who I know from Skype rooms – A great leader and experienced online business guy who I had met at a convention earlier in the year. He has a very successful online business so I asked what he was doing and he sent me a link to the Six Figure Mentors. When this guy buys into something it is worth listening as he does his homework and knows what he’s talking about.

The Six Figure Mentors and the Digital Experts Academy give you everything you need to create a solid online foundation. The training and business systems are incredible. It’s a steep learning curve and you need dedication and commitment but what you end up with is a serious online presence and the strategies, know how and tools to make you a financially independent digital entrepreneur.

Please have a look around the site and feel free to contact me if I can be of help or with any queries you may have.

To your success!

Dave