When Your Community Gives Back to You

What 18 Years in Lewisham Taught Me About Recognition, Resilience and Giving Back

Some opportunities feel particularly meaningful because they bring you full circle.

I am genuinely proud and privileged to have been invited to join the shortlisting panel for the Mayor of Lewisham Business Awards 2026. Having built and grown our businesses in this borough for 18 years, it feels like one of those moments where the community you have poured yourself into quietly, consistently and sometimes exhaustedly over the years turns around and says thank you in the most unexpected way.

I did not start out thinking about recognition. In 2009 when we opened the doors of MindBody Therapy Centre, first at London Road in the basement of the gym, the focus was survival, making payroll, finding clients and figuring out how to be a business owner when nobody had given me a roadmap and the only qualification that mattered in those early days was the willingness to keep going when everything felt uncertain.

Eighteen years later I understand something I could not have articulated then. The businesses that endure in a local community are not just the ones with the best product or the sharpest marketing, they are the ones that become part of the fabric of that community. The ones that show up consistently, that adapt, that serve, and that keep their doors open through recessions, pandemics and every other season that asks more of you than you thought you had to give.

Lewisham has been that community for us. And with more than 2,000 nominations for this year's awards, it is clear we are not the only ones who found something worth building here.

What I most looked forward to as a panel member was not the shortlisting itself but the stories behind the nominations. Because awards can celebrate the outcome. They can put a trophy on a shelf and a headline in a newsletter but those of us who have actually run businesses know there is almost always a much bigger story behind every achievement. The failed idea that came before the successful one. The member of staff who stayed when they could have left. The decision made at 11pm on a Sunday that nobody ever sees but that changed the direction of everything.

That is the story worth recognising. And I feel genuinely honoured to be part of the process that does exactly that.

If you are a Lewisham business owner, whether nominated this year or not, know this. The fact that you are still here, still showing up and still contributing to this borough is already something worth celebrating. The rest is detail.

If you are building a business in your local community and would benefit from strategic support, financial clarity or a thinking partner who has done it first hand, I would love to hear from you.