She has built a successful career balancing the demands of family and running her own company, as well as trying to imporve the business and training prospects in the region. Caroline Hughes, managing director of training organisation Click-Here, talks to Deputy Business Editor Julia Breen about the unusual business course that transformed her life.

BY her own admission, Caroline Hughes got where she is because she is "a bit gobby". The Lancashire-born businesswoman met a man who helped change her life on the Common Purpose business course.

She said: "When I was doing a wealth creation course I met the then chief executive of the Tees Valley Business Link, George Rafferty, and I was being a bit gobby.

"George remembered me, so when the Government decided they were going to rejig Business Links and needed new directors, he came to me and asked me to apply."

Ms Hughes was already running ClickHere, a company she set up because she felt she was not seeing enough of her children.

Through Common Purpose, she met people - including Mr Rafferty - who helped her become chairwoman of Business Link Tees Valley, and from that, she became non-executive director of Connexions, the careers service.

She then became chairwoman of the skills group of the Small Business Council, in London, a government advisory group.

"It really is quite influential - it is basically to influence the Government's decisions regarding small businesses," she said.

"Government is so huge, it is impossible for everyone to know what is going on. It is basically telling the left hand what the right hand is doing."

Ms Hughes arrived in the North-East from Wigan in 1987 to go to Teesside University - then a polytechnic.

"I did it because I liked Newcastle," she said.

"But Middlesbrough at the time was no Newcastle. There wasn't even a McDonald's I don't think, and my room was in an old RAF store cupboard at Teesside Airport.

"But despite that early horror, I ended up staying and working for British Steel, then a small software company, and then a larger one in Leeds, but I was still commuting from the Tees Valley.

"I never saw my children awake and I thought: 'There is a reason to go through life and this isn't it'.

"So I set up ClickHere. But at the time, I was ignorant of the help and support available.

"I would never have dreamed of being on all the boards of all these things.

"I couldn't even get a bank account or any money to start out. All I wanted to do was open a bank account and everything seemed to count against me at the time - I was young, had no track record in business, and was female. But we crossed that barrier."

Ms Hughes became aware of Common Purpose and the struggle it had to get small businesses involved because of the funding issue. She applied, and was accepted on the course.

"A lot of the people you meet on Common Purpose you come across in all walks of life," she said.

"You don't really understand what you get out of it until much later when you realise how it all links together. There are lots of different strands to it, which include shadowing other people on the course, which helps you understand what your fellow Common Purpose trainee actually does day-to-day.

"If everyone knew what everyone else was doing the world would be a much better place.

"It isn't the cold, hard facts that you learn as such, so you have to really open your mind to it. If you want to make the world a better place it is great.

"It wasn't the help I got business-wise, but as a person, it really developed me.

"If you go to college, your horizons are suddenly much wider. It doesn't matter if the evening class is underwater basket weaving or whatever, the world suddenly becomes your lobster and you can do whatever you want."

Not only has Ms Hughes developed her personal skills, but her business has taken off in the past few years.

ClickHere provides training for small to medium-sized enterprises as well as large companies such as Huntsman.

"A lot of what we do is filling in gaps for people," she said.

"People don't always know what is out there to help their business - pots of money open and close before you even know it exists, and the world revolves around government agencies. We can help with that."

Despite her Lancastrian roots, Ms Hughes is settled in the North-East and loves her home town of Saltburn.

"The region offers a great quality of life," she said.

"It's so different from how it used to be. There is huge optimism in the North-East.

"It's slow, but people have a more positive attitude, and slowly the shops and everything are starting to improve.

"There's a mentality in the region where people don't want to put their head too far above the parapet, but slowly, people are believing in themselves and starting businesses.

"We talk a lot about engineering and manufacturing, which are important, but we must not concentrate solely on that at the peril of businesses we will be relying on in five years' time. There are really big things happening. It seems to be bubbling under the surface.

"Common Purpose gave me the confidence that what I am doing will help long-term.

"Once you get a grounding of the background stuff, you're laughing teacakes, aren't you?"