In a Nutshell...

 

Over the last few years I have joked and chatted to friends about starting a friendship site but never bit the bullet as it was just a vague dream.  When you read the 'About' pages of Daniel and myself you will see what inspired us in more detail but this is our history in short...

 

Basically, after Daniel shared his life story and some of his work with me I wanted to start something that would help promote hidden talent.  Our conversations started off as 'fun chatting' but quickly grew into hours of daily brainstorming sessions which led to the skeleton of this site and choosing the name 'LeanOnUs'.  Our dream was to support people not only on a personal level but also new talent or businesses.  Eventually it developed into sharing personal experiences, tributes and providing helpful information on any of life subjects.

 

Our name, originally inspired by the song 'Lean On Me' by Bill Withers (yeah, I know! corny), changed into 'Lean On Us' as it wasn't primarily about Daniel and myself.  We wanted to create a safe haven and a future community that would provide support to each other in various ways like commenting on forum posts, sharing stories and providing encouragement generally on whatever subject was of importance at that time.  AND I chose the .co to represent 'community' as our aim was to be universal! :)  Not to mention that all the important, big people in the world have already bought the .com's!!! Actually, I originally bought LeanOnUs.co.uk but as mentioned above our aim wasn't limited to the UK or The States as we would like to include people from all countries.

 

Anyway, we know we are far from reaching our goal of a global community but it is slowly building with the help and support of our friends and the contacts that we have made on Twitter and other networks. We have met some amazing and interesting people and have been greatly encouraged by the kind comments we have received and the contributions made to the site.

 

Now for the sad part... after a few weeks I realised that due to personal circumstances and family commitments that Daniel was struggling to contribute his time and ideas to help the site grow so he agreed to bring Shauna on board.  So since July/August 2011 Shauna has become an official member of the team and has contributed greatly to the site which now has over 100 pages.  Without her help and support our dream would have crashed as I was about to give up. So, on behalf of us all, I would like to convey a huge 'THANK YOU' to Shauna for helping us to keep this dream going and helping us reach our first 'milestone' - the 1st Anniversary of LeanOnUs!

 

Sonya