Failure Is An Opinion Not Reality : Story of Susan Boyle

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9 hrs

"#subo!! #crieff hydro #wedding"

Photo posted on Instagram today but believe it was taken on April 19. We have another photo from Crieff that day with her wearing the same outfit.
http://instagram.com/p/oPCOGQge9b/

Thank you for sharing, Fansinternationalinc.

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SusanBoyle Fansinternationalinc

3 hrs ·

Check out Susan in her new Tartan outfit, ready to be Chieftan!

Photos by Other Images Press

Susan's Family Tartan Plaid.

More pictures on the link below:

http://press.otherimages.com/search/text/serie:1013034373:susan-boyle-wearing-the-boyle-family-tartan:5009

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This is brilliant! Susan Boyle singing "You Have To Be There"

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Posted by:

Jappreet Sethi HR & Strategy Consulting for Start-Up Firms.

Failure Is An Opinion Not Reality : Story of Susan Boyle

How long can you dance to someone else’s tune, it’s time that you try dancing to
your own tune. Go through the records of most successful people and you would discover that some of them were branded as failures at one or another time in their life’s journey.

They could have sulked, cried and taken the opinion of the few naysayers to their heart to relinquish their dream.

The victorious choose a different way; they see failure as an opinion and not a reality.

Susan Boyle is a story of a middle-aged ,not so highly educated woman who has been recently diagnosed to be suffering from Asperger’s syndrome, a form of Autism .

Susan by her sheer determination catapulted herself in five minutes to an international arena mostly reserved for the glitterati.The church volunteer from a small Scottish town became a global sensation when she sang the “Les Miserables” number “I Dreamed a Dream” on TV contest “Britain’s Got Talent” in 2009.

The clip of her audition in Britain’s Got Talent has been viewed more than 500 million times, probably making it one of the most viewed ones in the history of web.Her debut album titled “I Dreamed a Dream” was a super hit, along with her subsequent releases she has sold more than 14 million albums worldwide

Who is Susan Boyle?

Susan Boyle was a small town girl raised in the unknown town of Blackburn, Scotland. Her Father was a miner and a veteran of the Second World and her mother was a shorthand typist. Susan Boyle was the youngest of nine siblings – four brothers and five sisters.

It is said that Susan was briefly deprived of oxygen during a difficult birth resulting in a learning disability. Boyle says she was bullied as a child, and was nicknamed “Susie Simple” at school. In an interview she told one newspaper that her classmates’ jibes left behind the kind of scars that don’t heal.

She did not have an easy life, for most of her adult life she was unemployed and earned a living by performing at local churches and pubs. Nevertheless she won numerous awards at the local level. Boyle is unmarried, and she dedicated herself to care for her ageing mother until she died in 2007 at the age of 91 ,just before her daughter’s seemingly overnight success.

It is said that Boyle abandoned an audition for The X Factor because she believed people were being chosen for their looks. She almost abandoned her plan to enter Britain’s Got Talent believing she was too old, but her coach O’Neil persuaded her to audition.

Susan Boyle says that she entered the musical career to make her mom’s wishes come true and pay tribute to her. That was her calling – so it didn’t matter what others were saying about her looks, age or societal status. She was focused on what she wanted and overturned all the odds to make a new life for herself.

Susan says - “I made a promise to my mum that I would do something with my life, Spiritually, she’s with me all the time. She has had a word with someone upstairs because I wouldn’t have had this otherwise.”

If you watch the audition video you would notice the sneers, looks, judgments, and assumptions that nearly everyone makes – including the respective judges when Susan Boyle comes to the stage. Susan Boyle in her audition declared to the judges and the audience that her dream was to become a professional singer. Everyone frowned including the judges. This did not unnerve her, in fact, it made her will stronger to make it happen.

Within 7 days her audition video had been watched more than 66 million times. Within three years she had sold 14 million records and earned more than US $25m. Is anybody laughing at her now?

Watch Susan Boyle in action

7 lessons from Susan Boyle’s life story

Don’t make age an excuse for not doing something great
Don't use your medical condition as crutches - Everything is possible
Never give up , Never give up , Never give up
Believe in your dreams big time - make it happen
Be focused on what you are doing, don’t let other’s comments derail your plans
God has gifted all of us, in one way or another – We need discover it
Be grateful to God - He has plans for everyone

Human spirit is indomitable by design; we set our targets high or low. What is stopping you from dreaming and making it big in life like Susan Boyle? .

Vince Lombardi said “ The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack in will.”

Human spirit is indomitable by design; we set our targets high or low. What is stopping you from dreaming and making it big in life like Susan Boyle?

If you liked this post, please share it and click the FOLLOW button to stay connected for more.

You can follow me on twitter @TopHRBlog or visit my website - Humanresourcesblog.in for other career resources and tips.

Thanks

Jappreet Sethi

Image credit - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Susan_Boyle.jpg

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graysea

“Million Dollar Arm” Movie Review

18 May 2014

0

Million Dollar Arm Hits a Home Run

In a last ditch effort to save his career as a sports agent, J.B. Bernstein concocts a scheme to find baseball’s next great pitching ace. Hoping to find a young cricket pitcher he can turn into a major league baseball star, Bernstein travels to India to produce a reality show competition called The Million Dollar Arm. With the help of a cantankerous but eagle-eyed retired baseball scout he discovers Dinesh and Rinku, two 18-year-old boys who have no idea about playing baseball, yet have a knack for throwing a fastball. Hoping to sign them to major league contracts and make a quick buck, Bernstein brings the boys to America to train. While the Americans are definitely out of their element in India — the boys, who have never left their rural villages — are equally challenged when they come to the States. As the boys learn the finer points of baseball – Bernstein, with the help of his charming friend Brenda — learns valuable life lessons about teamwork, commitment and what it means to be a family.

Jon Hamm (left to right), Madhur Mittal, Suraj Sharma and Pitobash star in Million Dollar Arm. (Photo: Disney Entertainment)

Million Dollar Arm is an easygoing, entertaining baseball drama in which Mad Men’s Jon Hamm plays J.B. Bernstein, a Los Angeles sports agent who has recently started his own company with Indian American partner Aash (Asif Maandvi), but faces imminent closure if the doesn’t snag a major client.

While channel surfing one night, he switches between an Indian cricket match and Susan Boyle singing I Dreamed a Dream on Britain’s Got Talent, and he gets an idea: He’ll stage a contest in India in search of a cricket bowler with enough speed, accuracy and power to become a major league baseball pitcher.

Bernstein launches a $1 million reality TV competition called The Million Dollar Arm to find two players he can bring back to America and train for a major league tryout. He travels to India without Aash, where his local help informs him that preparations are running “on time and smoothly,” concepts that Bernstein soon learns are relative in Mumbai, where negotiations are more apt to take place in a clogged city street with a quiet bribe than with lawyers and contracts.

Soon Bernstein hits the road across the Indian countryside, where he and his grumpy scout, a compulsive napper Ray (Alan Arkin), audition thousands of young men. With prospects looking bleak, two possibilities eventually emerge: Rinku Singh (Suraj Sharma from Life of Pi), a javelin thrower who strikes a yoga-like pose before throwing the ball, and Dinesh Patel (Madhur Mittal from Slumdog Millionaire), whose delivery job with his father pales compared to dreams of success in America. When Bernstein brings the two back for training, their rural Indian upbringings lead to several funny mishaps like fish out of water in the big city – they are particularly intrigued by elevators and pizza delivery, thing they don’t have in their rural Indian villages. They get kicked out of their hotel and move in with Bernstein, cramping his fast bachelor lifestyle.

Bernstein’s face rarely breaks into a smile, his voice a hoarse growl as he briskly tells his charges to work harder and faster, even as they suffer from homesickness and isolation. Luckily, Bernstein brought along baseball fan and aspiring coach Amit (played by Bollywood star Pitobash) as his right-hand man with the boys, although Amit is often caught up in the cultural divide with the boys. Not only is the game itself difficult to master, but life in the U.S. with a committed bachelor makes things even more complicated for all of them.

Luckily, Bernstein has some voices of reason including throwing guru and USC pitching coach Tom House (Bill Paxton) and his beautiful tenant Brenda (Lake Bell), who lives in his carriage house. She helps Bernstein understand what the boys are going through and helps him help them. While Singh and Patel learn the finer points of baseball and American culture, they teach Bernstein the true meaning of teamwork and commitment. Ultimately, what began as a purely commercial venture becomes something more and leads Bernstein to find the one thing he was never looking for at all — a family.

How many heels does it get?

Million Dollar Arm is Jerry Maguire meets Slumdog Millionaire. Except this tale is based on the real-life story first brought to light by sports producers Neil and Michael Mandt. Director Craig Gillespie and screenwriter Tom McCarthy took some liberties in bringing the tale to the big screen. Bernstein’s sports agency wasn’t going under, as in the movie, and his neighbor, tenant, had a different job in real life, for starters. Million Dollar Arm doesn’t break the mold of come-from-behind sports movies — indeed, it obeys every convention of the genre, but it does so with understatement, style and an exceptional group of actors. It is an inspirational, enjoyable, old-fashioned family film. Rinku and Dinesh eventually became the first Indian players in Major League Baseball and signed with the Pittsburgh Pirates. Rated PG. Opens May 16, 2014

Posted in link below:

http://dconheels.com/?p=24498

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Notice the birthday cake has Susan's Family Tartan ribbon around it.

Susan BoyleFans added a new photo.

3 hrs ·

Thank you, SusanBoyleFans!

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Susan Boyle Photos - TommyUSA Video.

Thank you, TommyUSA!

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Million Dollar Arm' winds up as much more than a baseball movie

May 16, 2014 12:00 AM

Ron Phillips

Jon Hamm in "Million Dollar Arm."

By Barbara Vancheri / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Watching TV late one night and switching back and forth between cricket and surprising songbird Susan Boyle on “Britain’s Got Talent,” J.B. Bernstein dreamed a little dream himself.

What if the sports agent could find a hard-throwing cricket bowler in India and turn him into a baseball pitcher? And then bring him to America to train and sign with a professional team, expanding the base of global fans of the sport by, oh, a billion people courtesy of the population of India?

'Million Dollar Arm'

Ratings explained

Starring: Jon Hamm, Aasif Mandvi, Lake Bell, Suraj Sharma, Madhur Mittal.

Rating: PG for mild language and some suggestive content.

That was the baseball brainstorm of Mr. Bernstein, whose story is told in the feel-good comedy “Million Dollar Arm.”

Jon Hamm leaves the increasingly angsty 1960s of “Mad Men” behind to play Mr. Bernstein, a Los Angeles bachelor who pitches his idea to his business partner, Aash (Aasif Mandvi). After all, he reasons, look at how Yao Ming helped basketball gain a foothold in China and beyond.

A throwing guru and coach, Tom House (Bill Paxton), concedes that J.B.’s plan is not impossible, just “highly improbable.”

J.B., more marketing specialist than salary negotiator, heads for India to produce a reality TV competition called “The Million Dollar Arm” and discovers that early advice to be patient applies to everything, including the search for someone who can bring the heat in the sometimes stifling heat.

But locating pitching prospects Rinku Singh (Suraj Sharma, “Life of Pi”) and Dinesh Patel (Madhur Mittal, “Slumdog Millionaire”) who can make a grumpy scout (Alan Arkin) sit up and take notice is just the beginning.

They are not just underdogs but that other movie favorite — fish out of water in America. Their lives are transformed but so, too, is J.B. Bernstein’s, played by Mr. Hamm with just the right amount of doggedness, confidence, self-centeredness and eventual recognition about what matters in life.

“Million Dollar Arm” is an inspirational, enjoyable, old-fashioned family film that’s rated PG and even has a Pittsburgh connection. Moviegoers should be aware that a small amount of dialogue is in Hindi with English subtitles across the bottom of the screen.

The Indians, including single-name Pitobash as J.B.’s eager right-hand man, are true innocents abroad, amazed at such modern miracles as pizza delivery guys and elevators, which didn’t exist in their small farming villages. You cannot help but root for them to succeed on any level given the magnitude of the gamble they take, how hard they work and how far they are from home.

Director Craig Gillespie and writer Tom McCarthy took some liberties in bringing the tale to the big screen. Mr. Bernstein’s sports agency wasn’t going under, as in the movie, and J.B.’s neighbor, Brenda (Lake Bell), had a different job in real life, for starters.

However, “Million Dollar Arm” seems to be the rare movie deserving its “based on a true story” label. As always, there is more to the Cinderella story than 124 minutes will allow, and sometimes the slipper fits for just a while, although wearing it can be transformative.

If you have any doubts, sit through the closing credits (you will want to see the photos anyway) or track down the book of the same name in which Mr. Bernstein concludes, “Looking in unexpected places for the extraordinary expanded my field of vision and changed how I saw the world.

“In the end, the whole enterprise wasn’t so much about finding the best pitchers. It was about giving people a chance to surpass what is expected of them and what they expect of themselves to achieve much, much more.”

That is a lesson that stretches beyond the boundaries of the baseball diamond or the cricket field.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/ae/movie-reviews/2014/05/16/Million-Dollar-Arm-winds-up-as-much-more-than-a-baseball-movie/stories/201405130233#ixzz31tPssaUW

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Cameron Mackintosh says Britain’s Got Talent is saving musicals – Best theatre auditions!

May 16th, 2014 by Lisa McGarry.

Simon Cowell and his reality TV shows have many times been accused of ruining the music industry and causing problems for artists around the world, however in a new interview this week, acclaimed theatre producer Cameron Mackintosh has insisted that shows such as Britain’s Got Talent could be helping to save London’s West End.

It’s been a hard few months for musicals in England’s capital, after Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new show Stephen Ward and Simon’s own X Factor production I Can’t Sing both closed early due to poor record sales.

However, despite the tough climate, Mackintosh is preparing to re-launch his hit show Miss Saigon at London’s Prince Edward Theatre, 25 years after the original production. He claims that shows need to reach out to an attract younger audiences in the 18-30 age bracket and thinks that musical inspired performances on series’ such as BGT helps introduce these new fans to the genre.

Cameron told The Daily Mail:

‘Audiences are getting younger. This is a huge change. When I was a child, musical theatre wasn’t a hip thing for kids, unless it was something like Hair! or Jesus Christ Superstar.’

‘Now, since people have been seeing all these TV shows like Britain’s Got Talent, it’s all about theatre and performance. And young people want to go to see a show and even be in it.’

‘The huge advance we have for Miss Saigon has been tickets bought by young people.’

Some of Britain’s Got Talent’s best auditions over the years have been inspired by songs from musicals, with Les Miserables being a popular choice.

Susan Boyle performed I Dreamed A Dream from the hit show, Collabro recently sang Stars from the production and just a few weeks ago, former X Factor contestant Micky Dumoulin sang Bring Him Home for the panel.

Susan Boyle: Singer and Now Businesswoman

By Marie Sheahan Brown

Who can forget the YouTube masterpiece? She strode and sashayed onto the stage with golden stature and confidence. She sparred wittily with the three famous judges, wearied by their long day of auditions in Glasgow, Scotland. She didn’t look the part of a “professional singer,” although one might perceive that being “currently unemployed” at forty-seven left little extra for beauty-shop pampering. Was she, rather, a comedienne? Susan Boyle audition

Then she sang. The formerly skeptical audience stood enraptured, tears welling as she belted out “I Dreamed A Dream” from Les Misérables with stunning clarity and passion.

More than five years after the seven-minute audition video aired on Britain’s Got Talent on April 11, 2009, and promptly hit worldwide news feeds, multitudes in America and beyond remember Susan Boyle. Since she first broke Amazon pre-sale records in September 2009, millions have bought her albums. Each year, a new carefully crafted album has been released in time for Christmas. Since 2009, five albums have garnered sixty-three gold and ninety-four platinum sales levels in forty-two countries. Her sixth album, Hope, will be released on October 21 in the United States.

Scottish and United Kingdom audiences thrilled to Miss Boyle’s first full-length concert tours in 2013 and 2014. Now she’s coming to America—home of an immediate and strong support base—starting in San Diego on October 8, and singing her way across the southern half of the United States at venues in twenty cities. A sweep through the northern states could likely follow in the future.

See http://www.susanboylemusic.com/us/events

Many have written about Susan Boyle’s difficult and graced life. Her 2010 autobiography, The Woman I Was Born to Be, is a good source. Now fifty-three, she carefully revealed late in 2013 that, after decades of mistaken assumptions, she had finally been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. The relief of self-knowledge strengthens and encourages her after a lifetime of dealing with debilitating anxiety and panic attacks, and some difficulty in handling emotions and relating comfortably to people.

“This is a point: People may have problems,” she states in a documentary, “but they’ve got other things as well. And they’ve got a lot more to offer.” (Gammon, Lottie, produced, filmed, and directed. “There’s Something About Susan.” Firecracker Films Ltd. for ITV, 45:37 minutes. 2013)

Fewer analyses have considered her role as a small businesswoman and philanthropist whose personal success has enhanced the lives and small businesses of countless others not only in her native Scotland but also in, for example, America.

Miss Boyle, easily mistaken for a stately five feet ten in the famous video, is, in fact, barely over five feet tall with soft, dainty hands and feet—a huggable China doll. So she does qualify as a smallbusinesswoman despite her multimillions in sales, which also benefit business giants like Sony Music Entertainment UK Limited; SYCOmusic (Simon Cowell); Simon & Schuster, Inc.; Amazon; and, more recently, concert tour bus companies. In significant other ways, she retains her focus on the little ones.

The woman who had “never been married, never been kissed” and remains a virgin has, since 2009, given birth with astonishing fecundity. Lewis Hyde well describes her kind of gift and fertility in his 1983 classic, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property: “I have hoped . . . to speak of the inner gift that we accept as the object of our labor, and the outer gift that has become a vehicle of culture. I am not concerned with gifts given in spite or fear, nor those gifts we accept out of servility or obligation; my concern is the gift we long for, the gift that, when it comes, speaks commandingly to the soul and irresistibly moves us.”

Mr. Hyde first explores traditional “gift economies,” in which citizens are considered wealthy not according to how much they acquire but how much they give. In fictional form, Jean M. Auel’s well-researched Earth’s Children series (The Clan of the Cave Bear and five sequels) describes the creativity and ingenuity that led people to survive, to form communities, and to work cooperatively for mutual benefit. Goods, services, storytelling and musical talents, art, and many other gifts were appreciated in deeper ways than they might be in a typical “market economy.”

According to reviewer JoAnn Schwartz, “Above all, Hyde is interested in examining the effect our current immersion in the market economy and the myth of the free market has both on our view of gifts and on our ability to give and receive them. The market economy is deliberately impersonal, but the whole purpose of the ‘gift economy’ is to establish and strengthen the relationships between us, to connect us one to the other. It is this element of relationship which leads Hyde to speak of gift exchange as ‘erotic’ commerce, opposing eros (the principle of attraction, union, involvement which binds together) to logos (reason and logic in general, the principle of differentiation in particular). A market economy is an emanation of logos.

“In a market economy,” Ms. Schwartz continues, “one can hoard one’s goods without losing wealth. Indeed, wealth is increased by hoarding—although we generally call it ‘saving.’ In contrast, in a gift economy, wealth is decreased by hoarding, for it is the circulation of the gift(s) within the community that leads to increase—increase in connections, increase in relationship strength. Through this book, Hyde helps us focus on the importance of gifts, their flow and movement, and the impact that the modern market place has had on the circulation of gifts.” (http://southerncrossreview.org/4/schwartz.html)

Susan Boyle does appreciate the financial security that she had never known, especially in the fearsome years after her mother died in 2007, when Miss Boyle kept her house cold so that she could afford the heating bill. Yet more important, Susan Boyle has said all along, “I sing to make people happy.” When she was a girl, the gift spoke “commandingly to the soul”—her soul. She honed, honed, honed the gift to perfection over decades of world obscurity. She sees with gratitude and humility the effects of this gift on people worldwide. When this gift is pointed out to her in personal conversation, she bows her head and lowers her eyes shyly. “Thank you.”

Miss Boyle’s fame and financial success have boosted tourism modestly in West Lothian, Scotland, with its pastoral more than spectacular scenery, a region that has suffered from bouts of economic depression and unemployment over the past few centuries. In February 2013, for example, following a centuries-old pattern, the main employer in the area—Halls of Broxburn meat processing plant—was closed by foreign owners, leaving 1,700 unemployed.

Lorraine Campbell co-owns and manages The Balbairdie—a nicely refurbished old hotel and pub in Bathgate, West Lothian. When the economy suffers, The Balbairdie feels it. Asked how she copes, Ms. Campbell replied, “You just keep going.” Happily, the local economy has improved some since 2013, according to Ms. Campbell in April 2014.

Miss Boyle has engaged experts like Andy Stephens, manager; Nicola Phillips, publicist; and Andrew Panton, creative and vocal director, to name a few. She has provided jobs for local personal assistants who handle correspondence, scheduling, wardrobe consultation, and myriad other details; gardeners; carpenters to renovate the council house she grew up and still lives in (her first big post-Britain’s Got Talent purchase); a housekeeper; women who fix her hair, do her nails, and apply her makeup for special public appearances and photo sessions; and others who tend to basic needs of a now-busy celebrity who still prefers to live in her home village, stop in at her favorite small shops and establishments, and take the bus.

Miss Boyle has also given seed money and sponsorship for creative business and charitable ventures in her local community and beyond. One start-up, Boyle’s Boutique, is an extended-family cottage industry that sells, among others, products featuring the new Boyle Tartan created for the family. Products may be ordered online.

Susan Boyle’s very capable personal assistant Sadie Boyle (no relation) says Miss Boyle gets about four hundred emails weekly, many requesting her generosity. This kind of response to another’s fame and fortune is not uncommon.

More unusual, and a clearer example of the fruits of the “gift economy,” is the generation of a worldwide community of Susan Boyle supporter-fans who have formed friendships, discovered or rekindled their own creative gifts, invested thousands of volunteer hours, spread financial generosity, and—to a small extent—started creative cottage enterprises for profit or merely to cover expenses.

Several unofficial Susan Boyle fansites live on the Internet. The first and largest, still flourishing, is www.susan-boyle.com. On April 11, 2009, Paul Wood, a London construction worker, watched Miss Boyle’s audition on TV and immediately put up a website. Starting within hours after the audition aired, people from many continents to whom Susan Boyle’s gift spoke “commandingly to the soul” were “irresistibly move[d]” to find out anything they could about her on the Internet. They frequently stumbled across Mr. Wood’s hastily launched site with its prolific discussion threads generating hundreds of written comments every day in the first two months of Miss Boyle’s fame.

To bring some order to the conversational chaos, Mr. Wood launched a companion Forum in June 2009 with more sophisticated software, accessed through the main website. Anyone could (and still can) join for free. The main rules are that one not be an Internet troll (a term and experience many had never heard of), that one behave reasonably civilly as outlined in posted guidelines, and that one not use the Forum itself for commercial purposes (more on that later).

Volunteer moderators and techies keep the discussions and online experience on an even keel. Online advertisements generated by Google AdSense and Amazon sales linked to the website (“SuBo Store”) help pay for the normal operational expenses.

In early 2010, Mr. Wood announced that he was going to auction off the website (some fifty thousand registered members) and its Forum (a few thousand registered members at the time). The worldwide member community could not bear the prospect of being taken over by some unknown commercial entity with other goals. So they decided to bid on the fansite themselves. A few members—by no means wealthy—each voluntarily loaned trusted fellow members a few thousand dollars to buy the fansite during the auction. The effort succeeded in July 2010.

Navigating through some tensions and hurt feelings (typical in any community anywhere), the worldwide Susan Boyle Fans International, Inc. (SBFII) community established itself as a non-profit corporation registered in Delaware, USA. SBFII elects a multinational volunteer board of directors; keeps meticulous financial records and files annual tax returns; maintains bylaws; and holds online annual meetings and elections engaging active members. Technically not a charity, SBFII uses AdSense and SuBo Store income to cover modest expenses and keep a healthy bank balance. Funds left over from voluntary collections (often for tasteful gifts for Miss Boyle for special occasions) are donated to a charity of Susan Boyle’s choice, frequently benefitting children in Scotland. By December 2011, SBFII repaid all interest-free loans given by members to buy the website; it remains debt free. No member gets paid for services to SBFII or personally benefits financially.

From the beginning, even silver-haired grandmothers proficient only with email learned to navigate the fansites in order to participate in a community of people who have experienced an inexplicable response to Susan Boyle—both her singing and her unique way of being—unlike their response to other favorite singers. Within months, members began gathering in person around the globe (often in restaurants, boosting local economies). They attended (and surreptitiously filmed and posted to the fansites for the enjoyment of those who could not attend) Miss Boyle’s performances in various cities (Britain’s Got Talent tour venues in the UK; Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Tokyo, and more). Supporter-fans flocked to these events even though—until only 2013, when she first tried her own full-length concerts in Scotland—Miss Boyle was slated to sing just one, two, maybe three songs. These gatherings supported local hotels, B+Bs, restaurants, cab drivers, shops, and other travel-related businesses.

Miss Boyle and her team soon experienced that supporter-fans who came to these early events were older or at least more mature than stereotypical rowdies at, for example, Justin Bieber concerts. They saw that typical Susan Boyle supporter-fans are responsible, respectful, fun loving, generative. They include retired or active professionals—teachers, nurses, techies, writers, musicians, artists, farmers, truckers, businesspeople, social workers, radio hosts, professors, lawyers, homemakers, construction workers, postmasters, foresters.

To most gatherings (usually at restaurants) supporter-fans bring homemade memorabilia to share, including commemorative buttons and red scarves to identify themselves in various venues. The popularity of such items led SBFII to add another linked site, “Fan Creations,” linked in turn to the creators’ individual websites. Products include non-Susan-Boyle-related fan creations. Currently, three members offer SuBotique Hand Painted Apparel; Creative Images by tweek (Buttons, Mugs, etc.); and Susan Boyle Professional Singer chronicles gathered from news and other sources.

SBFII members often post creative ideas and images to discuss in writing with one another. Memorably, in 2009, a member from Texas, one from Iowa, and other volunteers, coordinated an international quilting bee. Supporter-fans from every continent, including Antarctica, created and mailed squares for a handmade quilt presented to Miss Boyle at a brunch following her debut solo appearance on the Todayshow on November 23—the day her first album, I Dreamed A Dream, was released in the United States and quickly broke world records in several categories.

Members can upload Susan-related videos that they have created; share poems that they’ve written; upload posters that they’ve designed digitally to document Miss Boyle’s career and accomplishments; upload news reports of supporter-fan activities, complete with photographs; post fine pencil drawings or paintings displaying talent the artists had only recently discovered; and offer a place where members can contribute their own essays. These essays, sometimes written in French or other non-English languages, often try to explain how the wee singer with the big voice; the shy woman who communicates profoundly—cor ad cor loquitur—through music others have written; the multimillionaire who stays in her small lifelong home and still takes the bus—the essentially inexplicable Susan Boyle—“irresistibly moves” them.

SBFII and other volunteers take responsibility to daily and positively post or re-post Susan Boyle news, photos, and encounters on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media. Their Internet involvement began immediately when Miss Boyle became famous—and once again experienced the bullying known since childhood, only this time inflicted by some members of the media and anonymous commentators. She writes in her autobiography, “What I didn’t know then, because I didn’t have a computer at the time, was that every time there was a mean comment about me in the press, a dozen messages of support would appear in response. On the Internet there was a growing community of fans. I had no idea how many people out there in the world felt moved to stick up for me, and I want to thank everybody for that.” (The Woman I Was Born to Be, pages 188–189)

Miss Boyle’s professional team also encourages creativity from fans. Starting with the first documentary of her life, Susan Boyle: I Dreamed A Dream, produced in 2009 by Talkback Thames, fans were invited via the official www.susanboylemusic.com site (picked up and promoted by volunteer sites) to send short videos of themselves saying “Hello, Susan!” with backdrops representing their locations. Several clips from around the world were chosen for the documentary. As a lead-up to Miss Boyle’s second album, The Gift, she held a worldwide “Susan’s Search” competition, inviting any amateur singer to upload a brief selfie singing “Silent Night.” The winner, Amber Stassi, a thirty-three-year-old paramedic from Brewerton, New York, sang “Do You Hear What I Hear?” with Miss Boyle on the album and at the 2010 outdoor Today show appearance in New York City.

In the 2013 and 2014 concert tours in Scotland and the United Kingdom, Miss Boyle and her team selected local choirs to serve as back-up choruses in every city, receiving standard financial compensation. Already individual choir members in the United States are tweeting: “Aaliyah Buchanan ‏@Itsuko_Sora I’m to pumped, i get to sing for Susan Boyle!!!!” and “Drew Mikuska ‏@DrewMikuska Hahahahaha I’m singing backup for Susan Boyle.”

Already in the twenty cities spanning the southern United States, supporter-fans from as far away as Australia and Scotland are buying tickets. They are organizing pre-concert dinner-camaraderie gatherings for supporter-fans, some of whom they have never met in person but know through their written posts on fansites. Restaurants, hotels, theaters, airlines, public transportation providers, cab drivers, and many small businesses will benefit. Susan Boyle, her team, and numerous music-related vendors will profit.

Yet in Susan Boyle’s “gift economy,” which she neither forecasted nor manipulated, money can facilitate but cannot possibly buy the greatest benefits to the community in which she finds herself to be the generator and principal member. In this higher economy, she is both blessed herself and a blessing to countless others.

As recently reported on her official website, Susan says about her upcoming United States concert tour: “This is a brilliant moment for me. The past five years have been incredible, and it just keeps getting better. I have spoken so often about wanting to tour America and be able to visit different cities for the first time—I’m so excited. This really will be fantastic, and I can’t wait for October. The US embraced and supported me from the beginning, and it really feels like a second home. So I can’t wait to get on the road and perform there.”

Source:Small Business Exchange Northeast