I did alot of thinking at the beginning. Thinking was free and having no money, the one thing I did have was time to think. Having followed the advice, enthusiasm and inspirational ideas from David Cameron and his Big Society solution in 2010 to getting the UK back on its feet, a true social enterprise was born.
The first problem we encountered when setting up our social enterprise was we had no money. This was soon dispelled by using our expertise as recruitment veterans to take note of what Cameron said and become capitalists with conscience. With the help of an angel investor, we set up a boutique headhunting company, supplying talent to investment banks in both Russia and London. The plan being in order to promote sustainable business, Wilson Purviss, would back a social enterprise that was free and would benefit people everywhere in the bigger picture. A more positive, motivated UK.
After our own difficulties and finding ourselves penniless and having to start again on the dole in middle age, we had spent five years living without money.
During this time we worked for free, helping the homeless and inspiring women to swap clothes and recycle. ITV and BBC followed our story and as a consequence of this we were offered guest appearances as common sense life coach and stylist on Channel 5, The Trisha Goddard Show.
We then pitched a live swapping and styling on a budget show to Butlins, The Hollywood Look For Less Live Show, using clothes collected at car boot sales and charity shops we performed for a year season which after much positive press got picked up by P and O Cruises. We were on our way back selling the virtues of positivity and on a budget health, wellbeing and styling. The show caused a lot of attention even provoking a Trinny and Susannah online mockumentary What They Did Next. In 2010 the spoof documentary was snapped up by Channel 4 where the pair were seen trying to revive failing careers by performing at holiday parks and on cruise liners. Better to be talked about than not as the Oscar Wilde quote would say.
Meeting and touching pretty much the whole of the country and seeing how recession and poverty had zapped the life out of everyone, leaving them miserable broke and broken, we felt compelled to do something on a mass scale to help. It made us feel really good using our creative talent and savvy shopping skills to put smiles back on peoples faces.
Once the new headhunting company was set up the social enterprise had to be web based, free to the user, non-profit and full of valuable information gained from experience of being homeless in Hollywood that would help people take some personal responsibility for their own choices. The country had a growing obesity problem and having spent a lot of time meeting and trying to style the nation at Butlins we got massive insight into what was needed to stop the epidemic getting worse, facing the brutal truth had saved us.
A free for all, common sense, brutal truth life coaching website was the idea, the technical part, an online private journal, a tool for the user to begin facing some of their own truths all based on how we had helped ourselves through self therapy. Through word search in the content and life coaching common sense tuition the virtual life coach, helped guide and keep the user on track to achieve their goal. i.e. Lose weight, give up drinking, get a job etc.
It was important for us to make this a real social enterprise. We had to get people on board with the necessary skills to offer their expertise for free in order to help and give back in the bigger picture. We didn't have any money to pay for what we needed. We approached our local university, De Montfort, Leicester, told the dean about our exciting free life coaching site idea as a social enterprise that once up and running companies using our head hunting service, their recruitment spend going towards the massive task of marketing it to the nation. The university agreed to participate and assigned a student as part of their degree course to give us a working website with a journal that we could add to and create with all our content
Having proved without money that a purposeful social enterprise supported by big business and those with skills and a conscience (the big society idea) was truly possible, we wanted to give Mr. Cameron our model. If we could get David Cameron to see that his idea, which he got completely slaughtered for, actually could work, he could get behind it and help everyone during these difficult times. So we wrote to him.
After 5 benign letters from his office, various other letters, a meeting with our local MP, Andrew Robatham, (now a member of the house of Lords) who told us he and many of his colleagues had no idea what the big society was, and a completely dysfunctional offering from the health secretary at the time, Andrew Lansley, I am now convinced it was the government that needed life coaching.
Having failed to offer David Cameron a free solution to at least help people to start thinking about themselves and their choices, we approached the prison service and then mental health charities and finally our local council but no one was really interested.
Fast forward 9 years. VenusCow is now a thriving Made in Britain sustainable fashion brand, with a hero product The PBL, worn by women all over the globe and still very much so a social enterprise offering free one to one life coaching for anyone looking to change the way they think in order to find lasting happiness and personal success.
In 2019, little old me, Shirley Yanez published my 4th book, The Mind Detective, part memoir, part self help book, the nuts and bolts of how I survived my suicide attempt, worked myself out of a mental health hell for real and came back self actualized to build a whole new kind of business without money and experience happiness in a whole new way.
It's actually 10 years to the day David Cameron, then British PM delivered his controversial Big Society Speech. We took him at his word and in 2021 The Hollywood Look For Less Show returns as an ethical fashion made for TV format where a live audience enjoy competing with each other to pick up the best Rescued Luxury on the planet, to ultimately save the planet and give fashion hungry stylistas everything they love ethically and all on a budget.
Coming soon to a TV near you.
Photo by: Guillaume de Germain Unsplash