What's Our Dream?
A film to launch community wealth in the hearts and minds of the world.
This as a draft of “The Plan” to take community wealth mainstream. If you’re interested in people, purpose, and planet over profit — you’ll be interested in this simple strategy — and maybe even want to help make it happen. Or another version of it for your part of the movement. (DM me *immediately* if either of those are the case!)
Community wealth, if you’re not yet in the know, is a strategy for inspiring and incentivising ordinary people to cocreate with the solutions that are already there (circular/solidarity/regenerative/social economies, doughnut economics, ABCD models, etc. etc.) by using business models as a means of simultaneously levelling up their own lives and communities. Using what’s familiar. And eliminating the complex jargon. (I’m looking at you, academics!)
In other words, making it accessible.
People are already doing side hustles, dreaming of starting businesses, and volunteering for charities and communities. These strategies and diversion to local resources, point them in the right direction and purpose, and with The Peoples Agency, combining databases with other orgs, and systematically telling the stories and funding our highest leverage projects, with storytelling at the forefront, we can catalyse this movement on a grand scale.
We can Help Create Wealth Together with Purpose.
It’s a simple concept: use profits for purpose and community instead of feeding investor’s coffers. But its the getting there that’s missing. For that we need to inspire millions of people — and give them the tools to take actions that both help themselves and their communities while adding up to systemic change.
“Those who tell the stories rule society.”
So let’s tell those stories. Stories that give people hope. After all, 3.5% of people aligned along a shared purpose have never failed to bring about change.
And that’s fewer than the number of Taylor Swift fans.
One film could reach them all.

And so the genesis of the plan is a short film. Not just any film. This story is the nexus of three separate tales coming together:
First, the story of Simon Squibb, who started as a homeless teenager, created a gardening business to survive, and became a multimillionaire and now global Tiktok celebrity with over 9 million followers, and founded a company, HelpBnk, which helps people start their own businesses for free. He goes around on the street asking people, “What’s your dream?” and gives them funds to get started. HelpBnk uses its profits to fund people’s dreams and Simon believes in returning the world to “Give Without Take.” That’s community wealth and even if he doesn’t name it, he describes it in this video.


Second, the story of Kieran Wallace, a Liverpool local who despite a rough upbringing that set him on a path to spending years of his life in prison, decided to change the course of his life when he saw one of Simon’s videos. He started out pushing a lawnmower down the street and has now worked his way up to a van. He dreams of opening a community garden centre, the home base of his business, and a place where people following a similar path can go to for help starting their own gardening business, and inspiring others to stop trading their time for money and build businesses for purpose.
Third, the story of community wealth in Liverpool, how the solidarity found there in hardships like the Thatcher era and the Hillsborough disaster culminated in a city that inspired love songs about her that proclaim “Everyone’s on the take, but this place she’s a giver,” is renowned for her friendliness and diversity, and just recently has shown the power of community, with Zoe’s Place being most of the way to their 6.4m goal in less than a month after the focused and dedicated effort of Liverpudlian people. And how organisations like Kindred and people like Kevin Lovelady with Partnering for Purpose have been laying the groundwork for years for the burgeoning social economy.
Kieran pawned his bike for a train ticket to Twickenham to pitch his dream to the doorbell there. HelpBnk posted it, I saw it — and now all our stories have come together to tell a larger story.


I speak about leverage a lot, and this film is one of the highest leverage actions we can take, especially since Simon Squibb has already expressed interest in seeing it. And, after pitching at his doorbells on two continents and on stage, showing up and helping in his community for nearly a year now, and sleeping under the aforementioned staircase, all while homeless (more of that story to come, and I’ve started telling the tale here), I believe when he sees it, he will also share it with his nine million followers.
It will only take a few global influencers and thought leaders in community wealth to create a few films like that to spark a movement of people and communities reclaiming their agency and cocreating sustainable systems that ensure a path to prosperity for all. But they have to include a crucial piece. One that has been missing from the efforts so far.
Because this strategy isn’t about awareness alone. People are aware that our livelihoods and societies and our planet are veering rapidly toward collapse.
They may even be aware of community wealth, social trading organisations, circular economies, social entrepreneurship and the like. But even with acute awareness they still wouldn’t necessarily know the next steps to take.
Some people just don’t believe that they can follow their dreams or create the world and life they want.


But, as has been proven by Simon Squibb’s interviews, and my personal experience helping Kieran with street interviews, everyone does has a dream.
That’s why this film and Simon’s videos also have a call to action and a funnel, and ours will have a small change that makes all the difference (that’s a key theme here btw!)

With Simon’s videos, people are channeled to HelpBnk.com, a platform where you can give and get free business advice. And free masterclasses on Simon’s Youtube channel to go with it, with influential people like Richard Branson and Rory Sutherland divulging their secrets.
But that’s where it stops. And that’s the gap we can uniquely fill.
The model itself of creating a movement around a media and an influencer is extremely high leverage. We see something similar with Mr. Beast’s model of philanthrocapitalism. It’s THE strategy to take, as described in detail on the spectacular End of Charity podcast.
But there is a flaw. When a campaign stops at knowledge, it creates a gap that organisations like Kindred and Partnering for Purpose fill. Because we know that no matter much knowledge you can get from millionaires for free, that will never be enough.
It’s only even half of the information equation, because third sector leaders have just as much if not more knowledge to throw at this problem as millionaires.
And you can throw all of this information, and even funding, at a small organisation, but creating an organisation that’s sustainable needs 1:1, hands on, on the ground, support to reach that point.
How The Peoples Agency differs from HelpBnk is that it functions as what I call a “connection engine.” When people sign up there (which you can now btw, though it’s a waiting list essentially at this point), you take an assessment that identifies your needs, skills, values, locations, and the stage of your project.
While there will be some tools and community on the platform, as well as other supports, it’s primary function is, based on the assessment information, to divert you to the communities and resources that already exist in your area or are most aligned with you and what you want to achieve.
So that you can either grow and contribute to similar projects already going on or get the help and support of a community that gets you and is intrinsically linked with your success, which brings people from a place of individualism to cocreation, and naturally aligns with Cormac Russell’s ABCD model, something they likely would never have otherwise heard of, but since they’re inspired by a story and incentivised to start an organisation, through our system they get to start taking part of orgs that know it well and adapting it into their systems.
Update: Also want to give a shoutout here to Cooperation Hull and Local Futures for their meta-organising.
Allowing communities to more freely create change for themselves, so we can see more and more community brands, cooperatives like the Driver’s Cooperative in Colorado, and companies using creative economics to make basic needs free like Freewater.io, hit the ground running.
We also facilitate short-term and one-off help for projects that are parts of a whole or just getting through the ideation phase through a sharing / trading system on the platform and by utilising existing platforms like Simbi and Barterchain.
There are other moving parts here, but in summary, this is actually very simple tech, everything is downstream of lead generation, to get those leads we need stories, and to keep and nurture those leads and turn their small actions into big ones, we need a platform that funnels them to existing resources, to people who have been doing this for a long time.
All businesses are Marketing + Product, so the film is the marketing, and the product is connection to the help that’s already there, with a few extra tools to facilitate connection.
And that’s pretty much The Plan. Tell real stories of this happen while educating people on the leverage and systems theory behind why it works. And why it changes everything.
Back in March, my community fundraised for me to go pitch my dream on stage at the Power of Community Event that HelpBnk put on. I gave a 90 second speech, and I won.
I was sure Simon would show the recording of that video and that would be it. I’d no longer be homeless. But he didn’t and, in retrospect, I hardly think even MLKJ could spark a worldwide movement if he had only 90 seconds to relay his message. (It’s going to take *many* MLKJs this time around anyway!)
What it makes me think of now is how wild it was to go from speaking on stage with a celebrity and millionaire to facing sleeping in a train station that night (Which I didn’t end up having to do because Danny Barber found me and drove me the four hours back to Liverpool!).
And how, earlier that day, just two blocks away, I stumbled upon a place called Seeds Hub quite by accident. Curiosity drove me to go in and ask them what it was all about and they kindly scheduled time with me and told me about the free programs they had for underserved people starting businesses.
Wildly, here I was attending an event where people were seeking free business help and where the leader had been recently talking about building HelpBnk centres across the country to facilitate that.
He, nor anyone else there, seemed to be aware that one of those centres already existed and was right under our noses!
That those places and organisations are everywhere.
The answers and the help we need are all around us, if we just know where to look.

As of the time of this writing, I am currently in the US in Ohio editing what I’ve filmed so far and working on splicing it together into a cohesive narrative that simultaneously educates them on community wealth and the power of social trading organisations (STOs) to change their lives and the world.
For those of you not in the know, I am still essentially homeless with no income, though I do have a roof and now food. I am down to the last place in the US where a friend has agreed to house me. I’ll be here for November.
I have been playing a game for a couple years now, ever since I went homeless when my startup to democratise manufacturing ran out of runway. I’ve been running the standard visitor visa in the UK to its limit because most of my community — and the community wealth movement — is there, especially in the North (look what’s just popped up in Hull! and Community Wealth Building has been there for ages).
I’m allowed to come back from the beginning of December, as long as I have the funds, and this time can stay a straight six months while I build out this company, contribute to the work in the social economy in Liverpool, spend time with loved ones, and work on a pathway to a visa so I can finally stay for good.
All of that is dependent on this film.
My laptop is a bit outdated. I lost a bunch of the film because I was having storage issues with my phone. I am looking for 1:1 sessions to help refine the outline and any scripting, as well as editing help for the final film and find free to use film clips of Liverpool to substitute for the shots I’m missing.
I also need to build a landing page for Kieran Wallace / his company, Swan Landscapes and set him up a GoFundMe. I want to release this film within two weeks, because he’s also working on outdated equipment and needs at least £600 to upgrade so that he can do his work twice as quickly and employ more help to take his business one more step towards sustainability — or at least make sure he has the momentum he needs to maintain his business through the winter without undue hardship.
If you can help out, please do let me know.
Thanks for reading, and no matter what you’re doing to help cocreate a better world for all, whether it’s with this part of the movement or not, thank you for your commitment to this. All of the effort you’ve put in, even if you haven’t seen many payoffs yet, matters and contributes to the whole.
Never underestimate the power of a dream, especially our shared dream of a better future.
xoxo
Friday
P.S. Ways you can help:
Share this article with anyone you know who might be interested in a media company and connection engine to give the philanthrocapitalism model the missing pieces it’s needed and catalyse the community wealth movement.
Email for 1:1 help with the film or Kieran’s website/GFM setup: jess@jfriday.com
Donate Links: https://jfriday.com/#donate
This is exactly the kind of thinking we need more of, thinking that is practical, hopeful, and rooted in real community power.