I’ve been looking back over my blogs this week and realised I have never discussed the UK TV programme “Dragons’ Den.” The sixth series has just started on BBC 2 and for those unfamiliar with the concept the programme sees up and coming entrepreneurs and inventors pitching their ideas to a panel of rich investors in the hope of getting one or more of them to invest in to their idea.

I like this programme as it takes you the viewer through the process of pitching an idea and what the experience can be like. So as well as being entertaining it is also educational. It shows you how important your presentation skills are as it is not always the best business ideas that do well but the ones that are well presented normally fair well.

The first episode of the new series also linked in to my many blogs regarding the changing scene of the music industry. The episode saw Peter Jones invest £75,000 in to a band called Hamfatter who had come on to the show looking for money to produce their new album in return for giving away 20% of future profits from music sales. It was brilliant to see a music group go on a business programme and show a different route to success in the music industry. With not even having to have a physical CD in the shops to get in to the top 40 gone are the days where you need a record label to achieve success. With a good product, good promotion and money behind you, you can achieve great things in the music world. Following on from the show Hamfatter have been getting interviews and press coverage everywhere so not only was it a good financial decision but also great for PR.

I enjoy the show as it is very inspiring to see people who have nothing but an idea and a desire to take that idea to the next level putting themselves out there to achieve the next level of success. I think there is an inventor and entrepreneur inside of us all and I love seeing what people from across the UK have come up with and designed. With wages not going up in line cost of living on the whole being an entrepreneur is a way of escaping low salary jobs but with the credit crunch hitting the business world some would argue it is even harder to be an entrepreneur in today’s climate.

Dragons’ Den is a great programme to watch if you are thinking of starting up a business as it will give you some basic ideas and knowledge. Dragons’ Den also provides many talking points which are discussed the next day in work places, schools and the media. It’s good to see what other people thought of ideas and businesses to see if there was something you overlooked. Getting people talking about investment, inventions and enterprise is great and a lot better than people talking about shows like Big Brother and Eastenders.

Do you watch Dragons Den? What do you like about the show? Ever tempted to apply to go on? We want to know and you can share your views by joining in our topic of the week:

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=506

Adam Sibley
Founder of the Talented Young People organisation
www.talentedyoungpeople.com
"Envisage it, Believe it, Achieve it!"

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.blogspot.com

This week saw the launch of one of our most important projects to date the Talented Young People – Youth Manifesto.

With teen crime making daily headline news and with many people at a loss to what to do to combat it we had to step in. We could no longer sit idly by waiting for someone else to try and solve the problem we had to act. No longer could we continue to debate the rights and wrongs of government policies or national laws. The time for debating is over the time for action is now.

This week the government seems to be focusing on what to do to punish and re-educate young people carrying or using knives. We however believe prevention is what is needed as if we keep on trying to cure the problem we may never solve the problem. The point of our Youth Manifesto is to encourage, inspire and motivate young people not to carry knives with them or feel the need to carry knives. We want to equip young people with the ability to achieve great things.

Another way in which our Youth Manifesto differs from others is that it’s not just aimed at young people it is aimed at all sectors of society with sections dedicated to many different sectors. For us to change this world we need to all work together and not leave it up to one sector to do all the work as this is not a problem that can be solved by one sector alone.

It’s not policies or funding which is going to solve the problem it’s everyday people working together, taking a stand and putting in action behind their words. If we all come together we can still have a huge impact on this earth we live on. It’s now our time to put the power back in our own hands.

To find out how you can get involved with the Youth Manifesto go to:

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.com/youthmanifesto

Adam Sibley
Founder of the Talented Young People organisation
www.talentedyoungpeople.com
"Envisage it, Believe it, Achieve it!"

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.blogspot.com

This month will see McFly trying to expand their fanbase by giving away their latest album for free through The Mail on Sunday through which they expect their album to reach three million homes in the UK. We have already seen the likes of Prince giving away his album through the Mail as well as Radiohead offering their album in exchange for a donation on the internet but it now looks like pop acts are getting in on the act.

As the way in which we consume music changes the industry needs to change with it so I am always interested to see what new and innovative ways companies and music acts are using to distribute music. However I feel that when a handful of acts start giving their music away for free and doing it in a mainstream way it affects the whole music industry. If one act can afford to give away their music for free then the general public start to think they should be able to get music from other acts for free and not paying for music becomes an acceptable activity.

Another problem which occurs when music is given away for free is that music becomes worthless. Music instead of being a saleable product it just becomes a form of advertising and promotion for a band to sell merchandise and tickets to live events. By making music worthless it becomes harder for the smaller acts to make money. The bigger acts benefit from doing it as they run live events at big indoor venues and make a lot of money from merchandise but small acts who only tour small venues need the income that record sales provide.

There needs to be systems and services put in place which can give people access to music at a reasonable price without having a negative affect on smaller acts. With the credit crunch how it is it is right for the music industry to react in a way that makes music more affordable but it is just a shame that crunch will probably affect how much money is invested in to new acts. I think new unsigned acts have to capitalise on their ability to produce music and promote it on the cheap thanks to new tools on the internet as record companies no longer have big budgets to establish artists with. That’s the one advantage for unsigned acts is that their music is cheaper to produce than a signed artist so they can afford to give away heir music more cheaply.

The internet has revolutionised the way in which we buy, watch and listen to music, TV and films we just need to make sure that the way in which we are consuming media is fair to the artists and the production companies. For some time I feel the industries have been to kind to the artists and not kind enough to the consumer in the way things have been priced and profits made but we need to make sure we don’t go in completely the other direction where it becomes unfair to the people creating media. As for us to have good quality entertainment we have to have people making it who are fairly paid.

What do you think about bands offering their music for free with newspapers or online? Does it make you less likely to pay for other music? And you think it is a positive thing for the music industry? Let us know by joining in our topic of the week by going to:

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=494

Adam Sibley
Founder of the Talented Young People organisation
www.talentedyoungpeople.com
"Envisage it, Believe it, Achieve it!"

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.blogspot.com

During my weekly media consuming I came across a new programme on a channel called “Fiver.” The programme was called “Living Lohan” which is a fly on the wall docu-soap / reality programme on Lindsay Lohan’s younger sister Ali. The programme follows Ali through her home life as she tries to make a career in the music business and this programme got me thinking for this week’s blog.

This is not the first programme of its kind and there have been many like it since the popularity of “The Osbournes” series. However when these shows were first used merely as entertainment c-list celebrities, washed up celebrities and relatives of celebrities are now appearing in their own reality programmes to promote an album or to try and get a career in an entertainment field. Music stars or wannabe music stars think instead of having to travel the country to promote themselves or an album they can just get a camera crew to follow their home life and it can be broadcast to the masses with little effort on their behalf.

The problem now comes that in order for a reality show to be successful and get a deal on a major network it has to be controversial and entertaining. This means that situations have to be created and aspects of their life manipulated in order to keep their audience happy which means they can start to lose control of their image and messages they are sending out in the hunt for TV ratings. This is where the lines of fiction and reality become blurred and where people who appear on these shows are left acting like they do when the cameras rolling when they aren’t. The pressure of a TV series which follows you around everyday has taken its toll on many families like the Hulk Hogan family from “Hogan Knows Best” I believe that if it wasn’t for their reality series then some of the problems and issues in their current lives could have been avoided.

I think these type of programmes are declining in popularity but because they are so cheap and easy to make there will be lots more to come especially on the random channels on Sky that seem to import anything from the US. I think viewers are now savvy to the ways in which these programmes are edited and filmed to make the show controversial and not a reflection of everyday life.

Now in balance there have been some fly on the wall programmes I have enjoyed which have followed by sporting teams, dance schools and other assorted groups. I just don’t enjoy programmes which over sensationalised and that are about celebrities or creating celebrities

Adam Sibley
Founder of the Talented Young People organisation
www.talentedyoungpeople.com
"Envisage it, Believe it, Achieve it!"

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.blogspot.com

I was at home the other day and for the first time in ages turned on daytime TV for some background noise and happened upon a chat show that was discussing: Is Second Best? The argument put forward was whether having to deal with defeat or finishing in second at an early stage of your career more helpful in the long term than instant success? This got me thinking so I wanted to share my thoughts with you on this subject.

Personally I feel instant success can be detrimental to long term success. There are exceptions to this rule but on the whole the quicker success is achieved the shorter the success lasts. Finishing in second place or losing out to others in things like competitions, job interviews and auditions is a test of character. It is at this time where we find out if the thing we are pursuing is truly what we want to do with our life. When this happens we can either accept it and say that we aren’t good at something or we can actually be proactive and tell ourselves we want to be the best and work even harder to become better than the competition. The one thing we can’t do is keep going in to competitions, job interviews and auditions thinking we are the best when we are getting knock back after knock back just hoping that one day we will win something, you have to earn the right to call yourself the best and you do that by working hard and delivering the good when it matters.

Having to go through a period of finishing second makes us appreciate it more when we finally win as we know what it has taken to get there and we know the experience of finishing second all to well. It is also good to start by finishing second and then finishing first as it shows your development and progress whereas if you have finished first from the start it has harder to see how you have improved. To succeed in this world it’s not just your talent that will get you to the top as you also need a strong character to make it happen.

Without a strong work ethic and support success can be taken away as quickly as it is gained. Take TV talent contest winners like Hearsay, David Sneddon, Steve Brookstein etc All these guys were thrust in to the limelight after winning singing competitions just for them to have short term success followed by a fall from fame within a very short space of time. If you compare Hearsay to Liberty X who finished second in the Popstars series who went on to have more chart success or David Sneddon who finished first in Fame Academy and Lemar who finished third who again went on to achieve more chart success. Its not about the position you finish in it is what you do after the result that counts.

If you ask most successful people they will tell you tales of times where they didn’t get the part or win the competition. Just because you only see someone on the telly when they are famous don’t assume that happened over night and they won everything on the way to getting there.

So in summing up to me finishing second is best when you are developing your talent as it can teach you much more than winning ever can and when you are developing your talent it’s not success that is important, its learning which is the important part.

What do you think? Do you agree? Have you experienced finishing second? And has finishing second motivated you on to better things? Let us know by joining in our topic of the week by going to:

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=479

Adam Sibley
Founder of the Talented Young People organisation
www.talentedyoungpeople.com
"Envisage it, Believe it, Achieve it!"

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.blogspot.com

The credit crunch is hitting the world hard. Prices of everyday items are going up, prices for petrol are rising and so on and so on. I don’t want to look at this from the affect this has on the economy or the general public, I want to look at this from the affect that it has on young people achieving their dreams.

When there is a global credit crunch the government have less money to invest in youth related projects. A big source of income for the government is based on the spending of the general public and when they aren’t spending it hurts the economy which the government have to support. Unfortunately funding and spending on youth projects is way down the list of priorities when governments do budgets so this means that youth projects supported by the government or by other funding bodies disappear or run a smaller service due to the lack of money. These youth services could be anything from art to sport projects.

Then we have youth charities which rely on donations to keep running. During a global credit crunch the public have less money so their income from donations dwindles and again affects the way in which they can operate. Similar to this we have youth organisations which require their members or the families of their members to pay a fee or a subscription to keep the organisation going. Because these organisations rely so heavily on subscriptions the inability of just a couple of families to pay fees could make a huge difference to the service they provide. The costs of running youth organisations are going up but because of the situation of their members many youth organisations can’t raise their fees.

We also have to look closer to home. If the family budget is tighter with more money spent on everyday things it means there is less money for parents to spend to help their children reach their dreams. This could be anything like buying a new pair of football boots, taking a child to an audition or paying for a child to attend a club.

In these times it is stories like that of George Sampson who won ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ become more common place. George performed dance routines on the streets of Manchester to raise money to put petrol in his parents car to get to shows and auditions because his family couldn’t afford to take him otherwise. Then in one night his life changed as he won £100,000 to help his mum pay her mortgage.

George wasn’t the first person to fight through financial adversity to achieve their dreams and won’t be the last. Young people and their families need to now be more creative with their thoughts and ideas and need to do more research on how they can help their young child to achieve their dreams on a shoestring budget as believe you me there are ways and it can be easily done. Buying someone the best guitar doesn’t make them the best guitarist. If you have talent and can find a way of showcasing it then you have a great chance of achieving greatness no matter what your financial situation is.

Adam Sibley
Founder of the Talented Young People organisation
www.talentedyoungpeople.com
"Envisage it, Believe it, Achieve it!"

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.blogspot.com

Many countries across Europe are currently enjoying following their national football teams in Euro 2008 where us English people have to watch other countries enjoying the party whilst wishing we were there as every game gets screened live on terrestrial TV.

When England failed to qualify the national board the FA promised a what they were calling a root and branch investigation to get to the bottom of our nation’s failures over recent years to compete on the worldwide stage as well as the current lack of English born players currently plying their trade in the Premier League.

As many of you are aware I am actively involved in youth football in my local area so I was interested to see what changes if any were going to be made at grassroot level. So now months on from that investigation and I receive some news via local channels on new rulings from the national FA board.

For year’s professional football clubs and county organisations have ran academies. This is where they select the best players from the area to get trained by them and use their facilities whilst competing in a fixture programme against other academies. For girls football it use to be that girls could play for an academy side whilst still playing for their local youth side but now the FA are soon to either vote on or pass a regulation saying that if they play for an academy they can no longer player for their local youth side.

Now this may work in big cities where they have a wealth of players but when you are in a small region which is only just emerging with a handful of local youth teams with some of those teams struggling to get enough players for a full side an academy could kill the development of girls football dead in that area. The fifteen or so girls you have in the academy could turn in to great players but after they have gone through their will be no other players coming through as there will be no leagues for them to play in. To improve girls football there has to be access for all.

Instead of taking the easy option of just working with a select group of players if county organisations and professional teams could invest time in setting up good local leagues for girls it will give more players access to football and a lot better in the long term. Having a competitive league of ten teams would see a minimum of seventy girls playing football on a weekly basis which is nearly five times the amount that would be catered for by the academy.

If local youth teams get their best talent cherrypicked by academies then are they going to bother continuing without them? If this is the case what if that player gets let go by the academy half way through the season and she comes back and she has no club to play for? By taking one player from a team could spoil football for many girls. Young people become better players by playing with and against good football players.

So there you go that’s my rant of the week have you guys experienced situations like this where national organisations have passed down rulings which don’t help at local level? We want to know and you can share your views by going to our topic of the week:

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=470

Adam Sibley
Founder of the Talented Young People organisation
www.talentedyoungpeople.com
"Envisage it, Believe it, Achieve it!"

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.blogspot.com.

Did you stay in all last week to watch Britain’s Got talent? If you have been watching the series then you will already know about some of the amazing talented youngsters we have in this country. However this week I am not dedicating the blog to the winner George Sampson who I personally thought was amazing but an act that made me proud to be Cornish that being beaten Semi Finalists the dance act known as Flava.

In a society that puts young people across as a group of self obsessed wannabes who want to have everything but not put in the hard work to get it Flava were a breath of fresh air. As everyone else on Britain’s got Talent were pushing stories of personal hardship, pleading for votes or support and then getting upset about any negative comments or crying when they found out they hadn’t made it Flava stood out as a shining example of how young people should behave.

When young people are trying to make it in the world of sport and entertainment they are normally pushed to be as competitive as possible, to only care about themselves and to beat all competition at any costs. Flava showed that to get to the top you don’t need any of these characteristics, you just need to be dedicated to your talent and they showed that being a good role model can get you further than trying to stomp on all the competition to get to the top.

In a self obsessed world it was great to see them celebrate with “The Cheeky Monkeys” the young children that the judges put through ahead of them and to then lend their support to acts like “Signature.” When you are in the public eye like they have been they have showed that getting ahead in life is not all about winning competitions as I know they have now had many offers to go and perform for and work with many different organisations because of their performance on the shows. If you compare their behaviour to fellow semi finalist act ‘Per Diem’ who basically threw a tantrum after receiving negative feedback and then you start thinking “I bet they didn’t get many offers for work after the show.” This thought wasn’t based on their performance as they were both talented musicians but it was a prime example of how not to act when receiving feedback and to do that on national TV is career suicide.

When young people enter shows like this they have to remember that only one act can win so if it isn’t them that win they have to make sure that they get the best out of their appearance and put themselves in the best position to get work out of their appearance. Young people also need to be aware of the lives that their performances and actions on TV shows like this can have on young viewers and the power they have to inspire and motivate young viewers.

I wished that Flava were given the chance to perform in the final but by losing in the semi-finals it gave them a chance to show the world how inspirational they are as young people in the way they took defeat and they showed how you can turn defeat in to victory.

I can’t wait to see what the future holds for Flava.

Adam Sibley
Founder of the Talented Young People organisation
www.talentedyoungpeople.com
"Envisage it, Believe it, Achieve it!"

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.blogspot.com

Does anything really change? Last week it was discussed in the news whether funding for youth related projects and schemes had actually made a noticeable or quantifiable improvement to the lives of young people or not.

It is hard when you read the headlines over the weekend of murdered teenagers to actually imagine that funding is helping but how do you gauge the national and overall success of a project when you have stories like this to contend with?

No matter how much good is done the news outlets will always highlight sensational and extreme news of the minority of young people committing crime. This will in turn lead people in to thinking that this is what young people are up to across the country.

Although we all hate figures, statistics and having to measure success I think in some cases it is needed. If you as a government are going to invest millions of taxpayers pounds they have to know they are getting a return for their money. It is hard to stop extreme cases like we have seen on the weekend but what needs to be done is to make sure that these stay isolated and minority events, it is when these incidents become the norm is when we have failed. One teenager dieing is far too many but you can’t stop wanting to better or to improve things as we only lose when we stop trying

These events need to remind us that no young person is safe and we all need to be doing are all to make sure every young person leads a safe life. We can’t rely on funding or education to solve the problems we all need to take an active role within our communities to make sure we are all safe.

When every young person has the same access to funding, education and support is when we will be able to judge change properly and see real change on a national basis. Success with young people is only temporary and we can never afford to forget it. That is why we need continual funding and continual monitoring for the improvement of young lives in the UK. Just because a project has been successful for a young person and changed their life it doesn’t necessarily mean that if support was pulled away that they would continue to be a success.

It may seem like nothing changes but it is a much better world than if funding and support was to be taken away from youth projects and programmes. Just remember that just because you may be reading the same headlines every year it doesn’t mean change isn’t being made or happening.

Do you think anything is changing in regards to the success of support for youth related projects and programme? We here at Talented Young People would love to know your views and you can share them by joining in our topic of the week by going to:

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=457

Adam Sibley
Founder of the Talented Young People organisation
www.talentedyoungpeople.com
"Envisage it, Believe it, Achieve it!"

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.blogspot.com

As you are all aware there was no blog last week because I was away on my travels to work in Israel for the week. Hope it has been a productive fortnight for you since my last blog. My experiences over the last week are the topic of this week’s blog and the topic is what travelling can do for your personal development.

In a world which is getting smaller and smaller by the minute where we have the ability to interact with, do business with and find out about people from other countries we can’t afford to lose our want to travel. You can learn a lot from your bedroom but the most important learning comes from experience which you can only get from actually going to another country.

By visiting another country you can find out about how people of a similar age to you act and behave. You can also find out about their attitudes and the standard of their education. It is interesting to see how young people who have more or less opportunities and support than you do cope with their own personal development. You can take bit from their approach to life which you can bring back home with you and sew in to your life to improve your self development.

One thing I noticed from my trip to Israel was that a high percentage of the population spoke both the native language of Hebrew as well as English fluently whereas in England there is only a small percentage of the population can speak two or more languages fluently.

By visiting foreign countries we have never been to or by going to countries in which we don’t speak the native language it gives us a sense of adventure. Putting ourselves in these situations challenges our problem solving skills which is a good skill to test but if you do plan on doing something like this be sure to do your research and to keep safe. To succeed in life we need to encourage our adventurous side.

Visiting other countries can give you inspiration. Seeing a famous landmark, beautiful scenery or experiencing something different that you can’t do or see back at home can be very inspirational. It can spark the inspiration to try something new when you get back home or to do better in things you already do.

And finally an important thing travelling does is build memories. Memories are a strong emotional factor which can help you achieve great things. The way you create memories is by trying new things and experiencing things you never normally would in a regular day.

So if you get the chance to broaden your horizons and go and experience new places you never know where it could lead.

Adam Sibley
Founder of the Talented Young People organisation
www.talentedyoungpeople.com
"Envisage it, Believe it, Achieve it!"

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.blogspot.com