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Alice Liveing, 24, is a personal trainer, and passionate about exercise and clean eating. After turning her own life around, she is inspiring millions of others through social media, articles, and books she has authored. Read more of her story in this week’s blog post…  Clean Eating Alice, 23, is another big name in the game. Alice isn't vegetarian but her diet is very low in carbohydrate. ....
After a long time of living this way, she decided she was not going to continue just surviving like this, and took a stand to make a change. She transformed her diet, and started an exercise regime. Part of this involved uploading all her meals to Instagram as a creative way of keeping a food diary and keeping herself accountable. 
Now, she has racked up more than 636,000 followers on Instagram, and is now a qualified personal trainer and nutritionist. She has also authored three bestselling books, debuting with The Body Bible, which outsold greats like Mary Berry, Deliciously Ella, and Jamie Oliver! As well as this, she has shared her story of being diagnosed with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, which has helped many women with the condition to feel supported and championed. She also writes regularly for a number of high profile women’s health magazines.
She has recently collaborated with Primark, to become the face of their new gym wear collection.  This week, we are discussing with accountancy firm Beever and Struthers some of the success stories they have had from their apprenticeship program.  What is the biggest strength that school leavers bring? Their energy. I like to see that they are eager and they are full of energy when starting out on a massive career path that most or us are a quarter, or half of the way through. The frustration comes with the ones that don’t come with that mindset.  Some don’t appreciate the opportunity that they have. Some of them have made a conscious decision to not go to uni, and to take that approach to getting into accounting. Some are quite shy to start with, but the assessors from KAPLAN notice the change within certain individuals over about 12 months from a confidence perspective, and the way they carry themselves. This is very positive.  Dan Pope is a great example of that, because he joined us and he had been working for his dad’s business in landscape gardening, before he decided to come here and go down the accounting route. Dan has just flown from the word go, really. He has done very very well and really applied himself. He did everything he promised us he would do at the interview, which is really nice to see.  Before you start a new venture, make sure it is something you love and that makes you happy before you do anything. What do you love to do? Is there a way you could turn it into a business? Could you share it with others, and make yourself an extra source of income at the same time?
 
 After visiting a hair salon with her aunt – who has both physical and learning disabilities – Leach began to realise how stressful the experience was for both her aunt and the hairdresser; who didn’t know how to act around her. Yet her aunt wasn’t the only vulnerable person to face the same problem and, albeit a niche market, Leach realised that something needed to be done. With £6,000 in savings she went about launching Hair Bears with her mother; a hairdresser and experienced care professional.
Alongside this business, Jessica aged 23 runs another that offers a similar service to adults in their care homes – Hair Carers. She also provides training sessions for hair salons, so that businesses understand how to best meet the needs of customers with learning or physical disabilities 
 Jessica said: “While I had no business experience, I always knew that I wanted to start my own business and give back to the community. The PJEA gave me the confidence to set my own goals and taught me the skills required to achieve them. It brought the expertise and the mentoring that I needed to get my business up and running. It has created a network of like-minded individuals that I can turn to for support and advice.” Jessica’s businesses are extremely popular, and her list of customers is ever-growing. Her ambition is to continue to grow the business, and we wish her every success as she continues to change her customers’ lives.  Ms. Leach plans to expand her brand by training other hairdressers in the area to use similar techniques, and certify them to have followed her strategy and standards. She hopes to eventually have certified salons all over the country!  Along with her mother, Leach now travels to homes, care homes and hospitals to cut and style hair, using a mixture of distraction techniques and sensory therapy to keep customers calm and enable them to enjoy the process a lot more.
In the future, Leach plans to introduce training and accreditation for highstreet salons so that they can gain the relevant skills and customers can see that they are autism and additional needs friendly. In this post, we continue the discussion with accountancy firm Beever and Struthers regarding the challenges apprentices and employers face in the transition from the education to the working environment.  Partnership - Beever and Struthers Aside from time management and discipline, what is main difference between the school mentality and work mentality? From my perspective as a HR person, I think biggest is how schools have changed, and we as employers have to take on more of a counselling type role than we would have had to have done previously, because that’s kind of what they get in schools now. In my day, there was no such thing as assistance to help you if going through problems or whatever, cool-out rooms, or whatever it may be...  There is now more of an expectation that this becomes more of the role of the employer. There is a lot of talk in HR media about well-being programmes and welfare. It can be frustrating because often students want to come and off-load all their personal issues, but we don’t have the time for that, because we have a business to run, and clients to serve and none of us really are trained to counsel students… We are quite surprised that there are more displays of emotion from students that we are having to cope with.  The other big thing is the commerciality side of it. They sometimes struggle to see that they have a piece of work to complete in a certain amount of time, and that they need to sit down and just get it done. There is a tendency, unless they are actually pushed, to think they can take their time. They need to learn the mindset that you need to get things done within a certain timeframe. This takes a while to sink in for some people.  |
AuthorOur blog is supported and updated by the information team here at Curricula & Co, providing you with inspiring stories, quotes and education: Business
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