A longstanding joint passion for positive thinking eventually compelled sisters Berni and Anne Sheridan to become business partners.

When they conceived their business idea, a positive psychology programme for children called Magical Minds, Berni was working at management level in a challenging corporate environment. A qualified psychotherapist, Anne had worked within the Health Service and was responsible for developing a number of exemplary mental health programmes. "I have a degree in Psychology and Anne has one in Social Science," says Berni, "and while for a time our careers went in different directions, we always shared a conviction, which went back to our student days, that children would reap enormous benefits from a positive thinking learning programme. Such initiatives are generally directed at adults, but we both firmly believed that the philosophy of positive thinking would have a greater impact if it was introduced to young minds."

It was only when the sisters both became registered life coaches that the idea for Magical Minds truly materialised. They began to develop a tiered learning programme for five age categories, from pre-school up to young adults which would teach five core values: Contentedness, Strong Self Belief, Joy, Acceptance and Awareness from within.

"Our flagship product is the pre-school programme which comes as an animated DVD," explains Berni. "It is essentially a home learning device, which contains a number of exercises designed to be shared between children and their parents. The other programmes will be formatted according to the specific age groups." Berni was accepted onto the Transform programme at the foundation stage of their company.

"For us Transform literally transformed an idea into an operational business," says Berni. "Although I had high level business experience I'd never actually had to construct a business plan or a marketing proposal. Transform taught me how to make Magical Minds a viable commercial enterprise."

And that is exactly what the company has become as early response to the system has been extremely positive. The sisters plan to expand their sales base into other English speaking countries so that children throughout the world will have the opportunity to benefit from the Magical Minds concept.