2021 - What A Year! An Introduction To Us!

First of all, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! What a year it has been eh?

I've been wanting to start writing a blog for this business for a long time, and I'm glad that in the relative calm of the holiday season I can do just that! It's my first one though so please bear with me.....

I suppose I want Plexus Wellbeing to be more than just a business, businesses are everywhere and over the last couple years alone so many people have started a business for something they feel passionate about on some level. This is about more than creating another entity to profit and grow. There's an idea I have on a much more supportive community, a vision of a world where we have all our local businesses thriving, where people are healthier and happier than ever before, and where we all live for something more than ourselves. Pretty ambitious right?! And I'm certainly not stating that universally and calling everyone unhealthy, unhappy, selfish and being careless of the small businesses doing their bit. It's just so easy to have the wool pulled over our eyes, to take the easiest option with the least effort that works best for ourselves, regardless of the impact. A lot of people have made a lot of money doing that to us, and a lot of damage has been done to our people and our planet as a consequence.

Anyway, venting over on the current state of the world! We can all come together as a community, I believe that and it's exactly what Plexus Wellbeing has been brought into life to do! We're a Community Interest Company, which means that we act as a normal business but need to engage and invest in the community too. It's perfect really!

2021 has been a big learning curve for me in creating this business. We didn't officially exist until late October but I've been working on this all year! Our goal? To create an ecosphere of health and wellness, where people and businesses thrive.

This whole year has been about seeing how that goal above can be achieved, and the answer I have so far isn't simple. There isn't one thing to change, there's loads, so now it's my mission to take this on. It's started with a look at health and fitness, asking the question, how can more people be engaged in their health and wellness? The current answer to that which I have is to add value to fitness, make it rewarding in a way that measures (in some way) up against the effort you have to put in and the tiredness after. Keep doing that and eventually people will feel good for the exercise and that extra value is just icing on the cake. So let's make health rewarding. Bringing you our service of giving rewards for health challenges. Be consistent with your activities and then get back offers to different businesses, but the twist is that all these businesses are local to Leeds or small online shops/brands. This gets our community involved! That's now in development with a target release of Jan 2022, so watch this space because it is so exciting!!

But there's so much more to this endeavour. Our community is filled with different businesses from our people who are providing great products and services. I didn't really know just how many until I started looking, and I'm sure that's the same for a lot of people. So the service mentioned above will certainly help bring some of these businesses into the light, but what more can be done? This is where you get into things like events, competitions, marketing campaigns and more, but my biggest focus right now is collaboration. Each business in Leeds knows some people, so lets get them all together and spread the love. No business in Leeds is in this world on it's own. I guess I just want to be the one to bring them all together.

This is off to a great start as well! We held our first get together/networking event on Dec 16th at Eat Your Greens, Leeds (check them out btw!!) and it was so great for me to see those who came chatting and getting to know each other. Now because of our most recent strain of Covid (I was going to have to mention the pandemic eventually), we didn't get everyone there, but I know the next one will be even bigger and better! It makes me wonder why no-one did this sort of thing before (maybe someone has?). So this has me excited for 2022, with the next event in planning for mid-late February.

Now I wanted to have this first post being a summary of the year, but I suppose it's become more of a heavy introduction to Plexus Wellbeing and why we're here. I hate seeing people and businesses struggle, always have. The pandemic has made that much more real and now I'm going to do what I can to help and support our community. Our health, mental well-being and community are key to our prosperity. I feel good when I've got my physical health in balance, my head is clear and emotions are embraced. I also feel good when I shop local, whether that be a café with a staff of 10 people, or an independent creative selling their creations at a market stall.

I don't want to appear all high and mighty as the above bit may make me appear to be. I'm vulnerable too like all of us, but this isn't the post to delve into it all.

So this year, Plexus Wellbeing is born, making it's first iteration web-app, hosting community events, learning about our community and planning a lot for 2022. I'll certainly try and share what we're doing through this blog, being as real as I can about it all so you know we're not just a business, but real people too!

Thank you all, to those who've supported me personally and to all the new people/businesses I've met this year. You're all the best!

Jordan - Founder