Nothing can stop me, impossible is temporary, the future is tomorrow.

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Saturday, 18 February 2012

Choosing the right path...

As I'v mentioned in my other posts I'm working on which career path is the correct one for me. I come from a very creative background, I performed in entertainment shows since I was 11, dancing, singing and acting. From this I went onto my first professional tour as a stilt walker and then onto studying technical and production management at Central School of Speech and Drama, somewhere along the line I managed to find myself in sales, in a gym. Two places which I would never have guessed. For starters I had never even entered a gym before, I found them intimidating and sales, I knew absolutely nothing about.

I really need to pin point exactly what career path I want to take, I am extremely interested in marketing, advertising and the media. I feel these are the industries that will play to my skills the best, they are creative posts but at the same time academically and professionally challenging. I have skills that will fit into each of these industries but I first need to make contact with professionals from each of them. This is where LinkedIn comes in.

By searching different buzz words such as advertising, media, sports advertising ect I received a list of people and exactly what position they are in and what company they work for. Now remember, although I am here ultimately to kick start my career I don't want to pester these people on the first point of contact and shove my CV in their face, that would be a bad move. I need to build a professional portfolio of connections in order for me to gain trust within each of these corporations. The main company that I would love to work for is Adidas and so I messaged a few marketing executives and brand managers for The Adidas Group. Taking the basic principles that I talked about in previous blogs always remember, you need to be pro-active, jobs and connections aren't just gonna come and grab you out of the blue, your need to go in there and discover and build them.

A book I read by Chuck Bauer, Sales Mastery, taught me that people buy into people first, not the product or the company, the person. And so what I got from this is that you need to build and create a brand for yourself, define exactly how you want to come across to people and put the plans in motion. I started this process by thinking which brand I would associate myself with, defiantly Adidas, it's fresh, its vibrant, its original. I carried this through to creating my brand and then played around with creating a logo for my brand identity. The logo introduces very minimal letters, all in line, giving a very sleek and professional feel, this logo represents how I want to be perceived by other professionals. I would defiantly recommend creating a logo for yourself. It helped me immensely in becoming comfortable with understanding how I want to be put across to others.

Ok, so from today I feel confident that I have decided on an industry sector that I want to focus on, marketing, advertising, and media, now I just need to define exactly what career path I want to pursue within these industries. To make sure I am positive on what area to go into I first of all need to research the different roles there are within the industry. In a few days time I should have a solid base point on what career path I will pursue. Nothing can stop me.

Until tomorrow bloggers,

Jordan ;)

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Friday, 17 February 2012

Finding your true passion...

I have huge passions for sports, fitness, health and well being. I have huge passions for business and my career. What I want to achieve in my career is clear, I want to be successful and at the top of a fantastic organisation. One thing that isn't clear to me at all, is what type of role I want to fulfill within each of these passions, operations, human resources, purchasing, research and development, sales and marketing or retail.

I always approach every job with as much energy and passion as the day I was old enough to start work. I went to university in 2010, I only lasted a year, I needed to feel job satisfaction, to be out there earning money I realized this when I started to work in the local leisure center, Swiss Cottage Leisure Center. It was a job to pay my way though university, but indeed it was the start of my career.

I have never been clear on exactly which career path to take, although I always gave it my all in every job I was in. I quickly found myself in a career path that I was good at because I put the extra hard work in but one that I didn't choose. One thing led to another and I quickly found myself spiraling to the top of my game, a game that I didn't know I wanted to compete in. My last sales position in Dubai I have spoken about recently has helped me realize that I didn't choose to be in sales, but that I just pushed myself to compete because I was placed into sales early on in my career. That's another reason why I left, to re-evaluate what my true passion is.

I have an immense passion for business, I love working in business and I love reading about business. I have recently started reading "Onward" by Howard Schultz, the story about the Starbucks coffee company. I am only a quarter of the way through it and already it has taught me that passion about the company you either own or work for is vital, nobody will believe in the product that you are involved with if you don't have passion for the company, let alone the product, look at the products you are producing, selling or advertising as an extension of the company that you are involved with. Its a great read so far and I would defiantly recommend it to anybody.

Yesterday I attended my first ever Webinar on How to Land Your Dream Job in Sports with author and sports industry specialist Lewis Howes. He talked about how to grow your connections with sports executives through sites such as LinkedIn and Twitter. He said something that has stayed with me and makes so much sense. Too many people are relying on these massive employment sites in which you upload your CV and directly apply to jobs. Think about it, how many thousands of CV's are uploaded to those sites every single day? I doubt that anybody has ever actually landed a job that way. Lewis taught everybody on that site how to utilize your LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook to your advantage. If your not on LinkedIn.com already, you should definitely head over there straight away, I have made connections with people working in places such as The Adidas Group and Equinox Fitness. Its a perfect tool to use!

Take the points I have made today, and make a difference in your career. Utilize every single tool you have to its full potential, you wont get anywhere if your always thinking about what you could do, instead of actually doing it! Start making those positive steps today and take those small but lasting steps that will inevitably get you to reach your true career passions.

Speak soon dudes!

Jordan ;)

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Thursday, 16 February 2012

It All Began In Starbucks...

I gathered that If I want people to know the exact motivations and actions I took to be sat on a couch in North Yorkshire instead of sat on the beach in Dubai, then I realized I need to tell everybody the exact story of how it happened.

It was Wednesday 8th February and it was my day off. I had a lot of thoughts and feelings about work and the way it was going at work. I was very unhappy and uncharacteristically demotivated towards my job, I was unsure at the time on what the best options for me to do so I went and cleared my head, I bought a notepad and pen and found a small quiet Starbucks in the back of a Borders store in The Mall of The Emirates, I figured that If I need to make a decision on what to do next, I first need to get everything out of my head onto paper so I can see it in front of me and decide what the best option for me is.

There was three headings on the page;

Move back home and re-evaluate.
Move straight to the US.
Stay in Dubai but move company.

Next to each point I had written the pros and cons of each one. It seemed very clear which would be the best option for me, move back home and re-evaluate. Lets look at the pros; I get to spend time with my family and friends getting their valuable advice, I would have no stress of having to find and pay for a new place to live, I would have plenty of time to re-evaluate exactly what I want to do within my career and the best point I made, I could be able to see the birth of my sisters baby, Mia.

After talks with my friend in Dubai, Azad, he was thoroughly trying to convince me to stay in Dubai but move company, he said that we hadn't given Dubai a chance and that there are plenty of fantastic opportunities out there for us, but I knew and had done for a long while, that Dubai wasn't for me. There was no hustle and bustle, there was no vibrancy, just dessert and slave labor everywhere.

Wednesday 8th February was the day that I decided that I was leaving Dubai and travelling back home. It was one of my brightest days in Dubai, as I had no pressure on my shoulders, and I knew that I was making the right decision. The point I'm making is, that even if you think you've made it in your career, you haven't, the road to success is always under construction. Making big decisions is one of the molding qualities of life, if you don't learn how to make big decisions fast you will get nowhere.

Soon after many very deep intense discussions on our future and what moves to make next, me and Azad, booked a flight for 4:35am on Sunday 12th February 2012 to Cairo. We were getting out of Dubai. I went to work on the Saturday knowing that it would be me last day there, just nobody else knew that. We caught the connecting flight to London and arrived at Heathrow on Monday 13th February 2012 at 12:39pm.

Back in the UK, Its good to feel the cold again.

People, don't be scared to make the right decisions, just because it will mean you'll be taking a small step backwards. It will ultimately help you succeed in the future. I always had this is mind and will always remember those few simple words.

Any questions bloggers, you know the score,

Jordan ;)

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Wednesday, 15 February 2012

The start of the epic journey...

I'm Jordan, I'm 20 and I will one day become the youngest CEO in history.

In this blog I'm gonna write about my ups and downs within my career and the different steps that I will take in order to achieve my ultimate goal. This isn't going to be easy and I certainly don't expect it to be. In fact I would be very disappointed if my race to the top of the business world is a walk in the part. I have experienced a lot for a young age already and I want to inspire other young businessmen and women to do the same. Too many people complain that they hate their job or there is no jobs out there. I think, "well do something about it then".

I come from a small town in North Yorkshire where there is no opportunity to progress professionally unless you envisage yourself washing pots for the rest of your life or working in a supermarket stacking shelves for next to no pay.

We are here to live. Not to just exist and get by.

People always tell me how lucky I am and how jealous they are of what I have achieved, but I always tell them I never got what I achieved given to me on a plate. You need to go out there and find those achievements to conquer them and then you need to conquer them as admirably as you can. I am not the type of person who just sits around and complains that I don't have a job. At 17 I had my own entertainment business, fair enough it was a very small business and didn't really become profitable, but it gave me life experience of running my own business and put me in good stead for when I came to work in other businesses later down the line. I knew that I wouldn't be able to find a good job for me in Scarborough and so I took drastic action and moved to London. Whilst there I worked as a Customer Service Assistant or CSA as they called us, this was my first sales role, and my first professional job. It was a high pressure job but seeped great job satisfaction, it was my job to consult and recruit people to become members of the gym, we had to find out the needs of each client and consult them that joining the gym is the best option for them. It's a great feeling seeing one of your past clients in the gym and they are 15kg lighter and looking happy as can be.

After a few months in this fantastic role I was offered an even more prestigious job in the health and well being with the worlds leading health and fitness brand, Fitness First UK. I went to work in their flagship club, Tottenham Court Road Black Label. This role was practically the same as the last but I had total control over my client base and I was responsible for developing my own business. At the time I was only 18 and had fantastic opportunities to work clenching corporate deals with big global companies such as Google and Saatchi and Saatchi. I was the corporate guy within the office handling and escalating negotiations for corporate deals for the gym. I worked here with the same energy and passion I put into all of my roles and through hard work and dedication to the role I managed to gain a promotion within 3 months of being with the company.

I went onto being offered a role with Fitness First Middle East based in Dubai as a Senior Membership Consultant heading up a sales team of 3 in a brand new 1000sqm complex within the prestigious Green Community in the European Business Center. As the sales manager within the role I had progressed very quickly and soon saw myself completing daily reports and forecasting sales from ratios and different data all at the age of 19. I completed daily training with my team and developed them to their full potential. In the operational month of January within the new club I drove my sales team to achieve 156% of the club budget to become the number one club within the whole United Arab Emirates for that month and also trained and developed one of my consultants to become the number one sales consultant within the United Arab Emirates achieving 264% of his personal budget. Whilst in this role I successfully implemented training programmed within my sales team and took pride in the fantastic team that I surrounded myself with. I left the company in February 2012 due to professional differences and promised contractual agreements from the company that were not delivered.

I have subsequently returned to the UK to develop my career further and find the right career for me. My career goal this time is to move to the United States for employment within a large global company. This blog is the story of my road to employment again and the different plans and actions I put in place for me to make sure that I achieve that goal. This is the start of my epic journey...

To start off please add me on Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook

Twitter - https://twitter.com/#!/jordanlonsdale

LinkedIn - http://ae.linkedin.com/pub/jordan-lonsdale/45/561/6

Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=757852375

Also any questions please feel free to email me anytime at Jordantlonsdale@gmail.com

I hope you guys find my blogging an interesting journey!

Until next time bloggers.

Jordan! ;)

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