It shows us persistence and is a tale for modern times. I read recently that the contestant Jade Richards who performed Adele’s Someone like you had auditioned for the show on five separate  occasions. But she’d never quite managed to get through to the next stage. Can’t believe how, but that’s what happened apparently. However 6th time lucky – talent will out more like. She wowed the  judges with her rendition of this song, and the rest, as this old cliche goes is history….

You can catch it here Jade Richards – keep at your dream – don’t quit. Simply click on the link to the left here.

If you saw the show it’s hard to believe that this is true as Jade reduced Kelly Rowland from Destiny’s Child and Louis Walsh to tears and Gary Barlow said he thought her performance would “change” her life.  It really was an amazing audition.

It just goes to show that even the most brilliantly shining stars sometimes have a tough time making it through challenging times and this is not unlike the struggle that many talented individuals and businesses are goung through at the moment in what are challenging times. 

Work on your talent, hone it, develop it, polish it, refine it. Be the best you can be. Take pride in that and then make sure the world knows about it. Be a master of something, the world pays more for that than a jack of all trades.

http://www.associatedlearningsystems.co.uk/product_list.asp?Section=SELF DEVELOPMENT is where you’ll find our range of audio products CDs to help you grow that most valuable resource – you.

• 1816 – His family was forced out of their home. He had to work to support them (aged 7).
• 1818 – His mother died
• 1831 – His business failed
• 1832 – Defeated in Legislature. Also lost his job. Unsuccessfully tried to get into law school.
• 1833 – Second business failure. He was bankrupted. He’d borrowed the money to set it up from a friend. He spent the next 17 years of his life paying off this debt.
• 1835 – Was engaged to be married, his fiancée died. It was said his heart was broken.
• 1836 – Suffered nervous breakdown (hardly surprising) and was in bed for 6 months.
• 1838 – Defeated for speaker in state legislature
• 1840 – Defeated for Elector
• 1843 – Defeated for Congress
• 1848 – Defeated running for re-election to Congress (having got in, in 1846)
• 1849 – Rejected for job of land officer in his home state
• 1855 – Defeated for Senate
• 1856 – Defeated for Vice President nomination. Got less than 100 votes at party’s national convention.
• 1858 – Defeated for Senate (again)
• 1860 – Elected President of the United States

One of the famous quotes attributed to Abe was “having chosen our course, without guile and with pure purpose, let us renew our trust in God, and go forward without fear and with manly hearts.”

Slightly strange language by modern standards maybe, but given all the set backs he met in his life, you have to admire his resolve and determination to see his ambition through. A shining example to us all.

If you want to start this journey and develop your own life plan and personal goals, have a look at our self-development CDs.  http://www.associatedlearningsystems.co.uk/product_list.asp?Section=SELF DEVELOPMENT.    At just £34.99 each they could just get you going on the path to achieving your goals. And we hope you don’t have to face anything like the challenges that ol’ Abe had to face!

Good luck!

Certainly here in the Midlands Business Link is continuing to offer the excellent range of Transformational ICT seminars. OK, not the most catchy of titles (what do you expect from marketing in the public sector?!) But the seminars on a whole range of website building, e-mail marketing and other social networking are well worth attending.

You learn about some really interesting stuff, from some good, knowledgeable speakers and of course, you meet other business people facing the same challenges as you.

All in all thoroughly recommended.

Personal development is the key to happiness ?!!

Many are American of course, so it is great to find some great ideas that will benefit British people and British organisations right here in Britain. The work of Peter Thomson is something we think you should check out.

His work provides ideal content for those of you running businesses or interested in personal growth and development. We’ve attended seminars and sessions run by Peter and can highly recommend him. He is down to earth and friendly and yet you can tell he’s well rehearsed. What else could be more important in a trainer or speaker?! click on www.peterthomson.com/ to find out more about Peter’s work.

His area of specialism is around helping organisations develop better selling. He refers to himself as the UK’s leading strategist on business and personal growth. But have a look, have a listen and tell us what you think.

The case for training. Admittedly we sell training products so we might be seen to have an opinion on this. As customers become ever more sophisticated and demanding about what they want, so customer service becomes more important.

We came across a quote recently from the highly influential management book from the 1980s “the One Minute Manager” by Kenneth Blanchard & Spencer Johnson.

“You really have three choices as a manager. First you can hire winners. They are hard to find and they cost money. Or second, if you can’t find a winner, you can hire someone with the potential to be a winner. Then you systematically train that person to become a winner. If you are not willing to do either of the first two (and I am continually amazed at the number of managers who won’t spend the money to hire a winner or take the time to train someone to become a winner), then there is only the third choice left – prayer.” This books comes highly recommended. It is easy to read, it is written almost as a children’s book and so you will get through it in no time at all. Amazon is a good source for this book.

Follow this link to find out more http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_ss_0_14?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=one+minute+manager&sprefix=one+minute+man

The One Minute Manager - recommended by Associated Learning Systems

It doesn’t even need to cost you anything to get started. The rise of the internet makes this possible. In fact you can cast your net (to use a fishing analogy) and see what bites. You can even do this while working in a job if necessary. You might have an outside hobby or interest that you’re wondering if you could make any money out of.

Our top tip is create yourself a business profile on a site such as HotFrog. It is completely free and you can add searchwords and build your own business listing.  Follow the link http://www.hotfroguk.co.uk/ So if you’d like to try your hand at jam making, or buying and selling cameras or floristry or palmistry, you can do all this for free. Then of course if you start to get some responses it will tell you whether you have a viable business idea.

Never has the opportunity for starting out on your own been so good. Most markets are likely to get more buoyant so if you can build an effective small scale business model that works now, your prospects should grow over time.

Everyone has skills, things they’re good at. Now is the opportunity to tap into your entrepreneurial spirit and give it a go. Best of luck !

You are surrounded all day, every day by people willing to share their wisdom with you. So have a coffee with someone who has a business idea or a product or service that you could learn something from.

There are an increasing number of free seminars being run at the moment. Apart from a little time, what do you have to lose ? 

And networking meetings – a great device for meeting new people – some of whom will know of people who could benefit from your services. You may be thinking that you can’t devote regular time to a networking group, or you can’t afford it at the moment. However most groups are always interested in attracting new members so it is always easy to attend as a guest. You can even stand in for regular members often. This will merely cost you your breakfast.

So get out there and circulate and you’ll be amazed how many new ideas you can pick up easily.

Partially funded customer service training - through Train to Gain

At the moment they are looking to offer both free and partially funded training to organisations In Leicester, Northampton, Cambridge, Bury St Edmunds, Coventry and Birmingham as well as wider parts of Northamptonshire, Leicestershire plus East Midlands, West Midlands and East of England. If  this is of interest to you, follow this link to http://www.tomarket.co.uk/blog/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=51. This gives details of the East Midlands training, the West Midlands and East of England will go live we are told over the next 2 days.

But this really is a chance not to be missed so have a look at the details and sign up ! Maybe you’ll even get to hear some of the material on the audio CDs you will find on this site.

Have you ever found that you understand something, only to try and then explain it yourself, only to discover you’re not clear on it at all ?

Alternatively sometimes you can explain something to someone who then asks you some straightforward questions – which then makes you realise you are not clear on all the details.

This is all part of the learning process. If you really want to understand something, get yourself into a situation where you can explain it to someone else. You will often find that in doing this, you will have learnt more about it along the way. It really does work. To understand you have to teach !

Don’t you just hate it when people say “sorry I didn’t do that for you, I didn’t get time.” Sometimes followed by “I’ve just been so busy” or “I don’t know where the time goes – I really don’t ” ?

And it’s rubbish anyway. It simply means that it wasn’t important enough to them. You see time management is partly about motivation. If it’s important you will find time to do it. If someone says they didn’t get time your retort could be “well, if there was a million pounds for you if you’d done it – would you have had the time then ?!” To which the answer is “Ooh yes.” So it’s simply that we choose to do other stuff.

Be realistic, set realistic time frames, and acknowledge the fact that this task may or may not be that important to you, just don’t say to another human being “I didn’t get time !” There will never be enough time – get over it !

Time management is one of the important topics covered in the audio CDs on the Associated Learning Systems website, follow this link http://www.associatedlearningsystems.co.uk/product_detail.asp?ProdID=24 Buying is easy through PayPal and it will only set you back a few pounds – so click a few buttons and it could be with you by tomorrow.