Woman goes from care system to owning businesses

"Being able to go to Greggs on my lunch break in my Range Rover and put it in my little Gucci bag - all these little small things are such a [part of] a bigger picture."

Business owner and mum-of-three Paige Brookes is looking both forwards and back this spring.

She is preparing to open a new community space to support others following her own difficult experiences, including an adolescence in care.

The 23-year-old's Behind the Trend venture began as an online community group for female-only events and has since grown into the wider enterprise in Stafford. Transforming a former gym into a community facility had not been easy, she said, but she had felt driven to do it.

Her experiences of growing up in care and difficult relationships had led to the female-only events, she explained, adding she hoped to host more in the new venue.

Her business journey began after using an insurance pay-out from a broken television to help buy a machine which she used to make customised keyrings and acrylic boxes that she then sold.

Her success with that project led her to sell personalised drinkware and establish a business consultancy firm as well as an events company.

Of the community venture, Ms Brookes said she principally had in mind meeting new people and making friends rather than pure profit.

"I think this is what made my business so successful, I didn't start it to sell to people, I also started it to make friends.

"So, now I've got 100,000 women [and] we all feel like friends," she told BBC Radio Stoke.

Turning again to her challenging past, she said: "I was sectioned when I was younger for over a year.

"I was bounced around the care system, and then when my dad was killed by a motorbike accident when I was 15, that was [losing] the only friend I had.

"My younger self honestly didn't think I'd make it past 16."

But less than a decade later, she says she feels "privileged" and "lucky", and wants to share that feeling with others.

"Every day, I wake up and think 'how can I make this space inclusive to other people, what can I do to give this feeling to other people?' - that's all I aim to do."

Meanwhile, at the overhauled gym, she said, pool and ping pong tables had been delivered, with the venue repainted from green and black to pink.

The new community space is set to open in May.

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