On Tuesday evening the team at the West Lancashire Investment Centre hosted another great event ” Golden Opportunity for your business”.www.westlancashireinvestmentcentre.com Over the past 12 months, they have hosted some top entrepreneurs such as Deirdre Bounds and it was great to see her return to the North West on Tuesday evening and hear her story once again. For anybody who does’nt know Deirdre’s story – Deirdre is now one of the most prominent female entrepreneurs.  She built the world’s largest gap year company which became a multinational, award-winning organisation. In 2007 she sold the company to a FTSE 100 Company. Deidre is also now a successful writer and recently published her first book ” Fulfilled A personal revolution in 7 steps. www.deirdrebounds.com We were fortunate to also welcome a new speaker to the North West –   Gerald Ratner. In the mid 80’s Gerald became one of Britain’s best known businessmen. He transformed Ratner’s the jeweller’s from 130 stores with sales of £13m to a public company with 2,500 stores and sales of over £1.2bn. In 1991, Following a widely reported gaffe in which he compared his products to M&S prawn sandwiches, Gerald was forced to sell the business. He has now turned his fortunes around and his rollercoaster journey is intriguing and there are many lessons to be learnt from this gentleman. I know that behind the scenes of these hugely successful events, Lisa Ratican, Clare Joynson, Alice Grieve, Paula Hubber and Bernadette Montague work really hard to bring these inspiring, motivational events together and I look forward to seeing the calender of events for 2010.  P.x