The Story So Far
Thanks to Paulo Coelho for the inspiration.
Sometimes I needed it ….
…… particularly on those mornings driving into the office, feeling my mind projecting through the day as automatically as the gearshift in the company Mercedes.
My name is John Macaulay – and these are the people, the places and the life that brought me to The Alchemy Agency.
I’ve spent much of my career looking for the gold at the end of the rainbow, and, at age 32, I invested over £30,000 to study for an MBA qualification at two of the world’s leading business schools.
I studied hard for the MBA at Manchester Business School and on the other side of the world at China Europe International Business School in Shanghai.
I thought, maybe if I study the conventional way, it would be handed to me…guaranteed.
The awards, the adventures, and the friendships I formed with people from 32 different nations were worth the cash investment.
But was the 1st class pass to my destiny I had expected handed over on graduation day?
No.
I had an idea, a concept that wouldn’t go away. It was one of those crazy and illogical plans that mean you need to become deaf to the opinions of everyone you meet!
I thought of those people and their fears, as I sat on the runway at 5pm on a grey April afternoon – seat 24C, KLM Flight 893 – bound for China, taking a rock band I believed in to people who had never before had the chance to feel what I had felt in that small, smoky Manchester venue when those drums started banging and those cymbals started crashing.
26 minutes into the gig I had a ‘moment’…. standing at the side of the stage with Mani from The Stone Roses, I looked out at 1000 young Chinese, banging, rocking, feeling free.
The ticket for 24C is still on the wall in my office. The moment created my destiny.
I travel the world from that office in Manchester, UK, “the city with everything except a beach’’.
I love the city, the energy, the enterprise and the people who don’t negotiate.
The football team that draws 75,000 of us to Old Trafford on match days, those 11 men… every kid in every park wants to be them.
A local railwayman’s football team become a global currency. Bands like Oasis, Morrissey, The Stone Roses, New Order and now Puressence made the journey from backstreet pubs to a global currency.
They all sat where we sit, not so long ago.
But it isn’t just sports stars that need a team of performance coaches to give them the competitive edge. Many high-profile people who achieve greatness in their own individual way use the best coaches to bolster their performance. So I set about assembling a crack team of thought leaders – matching the people with ideas and remarkable experience to those with the desire to achieve became The Alchemy Agency.
“I didn’t find IT – IT found ME.’’
Maybe my agency is not what you expect – but maybe we should in 2011 search for the unexpected.
My little trip so far has taken me to many places, alongside successful people in business, music, sport and life. Ordinary people creating so much in the world by doing extraordinary things, but this kind of magnitude doesn’t land by accident.
Fortune really does favour the brave and inquisitive – and not all the answers we need are found in a textbook……
One person can change a LOT.
Ten PEOPLE can change EVERYTHING