How I defied the odds because I started a community interest company

What I have achieved should never have been possible for someone like me. 

 After the Cornish tin mines closed my area plunged into deprivation. My tin miner father, who had been at the front of the fight to keep the mines open, left my home when I was 6. My mother struggled through serious illness and a period on state benefits before she managed to get through college and into a low paid admin job to ensure we had enough. I watched my older sisters, have children young, suffer domestic abuse and for one, serious substance misuse. 

 I was always in the bottom set in school. My dyslexia and ADHD were overlooked and so was my potential. My area had the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe in the 1990's. Only 30% of the kids in my school would make it out with C grades and above. 

These are not the conditions in which children thrive. But I did. Because you could flip the above depressing story to read something very different... My father showed me to fight for social justice. My mother showed me that you can pull yourself up with hard work. My older sisters showed me how to survive. They are all extraordinary people. All defied their odds. 

For a long time my family saw getting degrees as the route out of poverty. I was the first to go straight from school but others went later in their lives. 

Not knocking uni. I loved my time there, mainly in the student union. But it wasn't the sure way to succeed it was hyped to be and as times gone it's even harder to earn a living as a graduate. 

I played the game. Got my degree, topped it off with a masters and then a professional qualification and became a probation officer.

That was meant to be the gold at the end of the rainbow. What an anti climax! 

£30k a year, 30 years on a one bed flat mortgage to pay, 6 weeks holiday a year, 9-5 flexi time. Great 👍 

7 years in I was 30 years old and a colleague told me to start a community interest company and apply for awards for all to fund my Rap Therapy rehabilitation project I'd developed. 

I got my CIC set up and funded around the time my management decided I would be specialising and gave me a caseload of child sex offenders. I thought f this and quit. 

The best decision of my life. 

It's been hard at times working it all out myself. But I've had a hell of a ride over ten years with my CIC. 

Now I also have two LTD companies that have directly grown out of my CIC. One has renovated rental properties, which I have funded with my earnings from grants and the other LTD is right here, it's my CIC consultancy business. 

I still have 4Elementz CIC and I'm still doing cool creative projects. 

Altogether, I'm turning over over a hundred grand now and I plan my schedule down to working part time.

What I am passionate about with CIC's is their opportunity to enable people to beat their inequalities and beat the system. 

Whether you have an illness or disability that limits you, or your a parent juggling a family, or your from a poor socioeconomic background, or from a minority that's historically suffered racial inequality or you have a past such as prison or addiction. None of this goes against you when you grow a CIC. 

Infact, it can be to your advantage. 

You can now create a career using your life experience to uplift others like you or represent marginalised people. You can now work on your own terms for yourself and not have to deal with people talking down to you or seeing you as a problem. 

You don’t have to wait to be hired or promoted. No qualifications needed. You just go and create it. 

Helping others is powerful and creates great happiness. Liberating yourself from other people's targets for your work and setting your own. 

Mad thing is the mainstream system now goes to CIC's to do what they can't. Social services, police, schools are chucking money at the alternative working and thinking CIC's because we get results. 

The underdog becomes the big dog! 

If you play the game right. Take all the grants and perks of a CIC. Be smart and take as much money as you can in pay. Invest wisely. Create your own professional portfolio that turns you into an expert. Become the go to person in your field. Use the legitimacy a CIC gives you. Use the investment it gives and leverage yourself up. 

You will have a huge impact on the community you serve if you grow your CIC and that will bring you tremendous happiness. As will having personal financial freedom and more free time. 

Kexx 🫶🏼