Helen Georgio Shares Buzz Talent and Plans Of ‘This Is Icon’ 2023

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In advance off London Fashion Week, we sat down with owner of Buzz talent and This Is Icon Helen Georgio to discuss her plans for the celebrity Gala and awards ceremony taking place on the 17th February 2023 at the Connaught rooms Grand BallRoom in aid of raising significant funds for Prost8. Prost8 is a UK based charity that was formed in 2019 to address the fact that far too many men are being overtreated for medium grade prostate cancer when there are world-leading minimally invasive treatments available in the NHS right now. Their aim is to give men the access to the very best treatment options and resources. With such an amazing celebrity line up of talent attending the event from actor Anita Dobson (Lady May) to singers Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Matt Goss, Samantha Fox and DJ Cuppy, we knew we just had to secure an interview with Helen to find out more about the eventide event.

So for those that may not know about you, Helen, can you share a little about yourself and what you’re about?

Okay, so my name is Helen Georgio. I am a business owner and I own Buzz Talent, which was the first agency to advocate inclusion and diversity and from that was spawned ‘This Is Icon’ which is a music and events organisation where we fuse music and fashion to raise money for charities. This event is something very dear to my heart, and I know yours, which is Prostate Cancer. I’ve been in the industry for about 30 years and have met some weird and wonderful people along the way and I’ve got many stories to tell. My vision is to raise awareness around the world with my aim to get bigger and bigger and go worldwide with the events. 

You love to bring people together and ‘This Is Icon’ is in its third season. What can attendees expect from this year’s event? 

Well, we’ve always tried to do things a little differently. The first Icon event that we had, we had the brilliant Grace Jones performing and five up and coming designers (LFW 2021 below). Our headline and my vision for everything is to put people that are up and coming on a platform with well established people to give them that platform for exposure and hopefully to help them increase their business.

This event we’ve done slightly differently, whilst it’s in London Fashion Week, it’s also on schedule as well. What I decided is to take the Icon brand with what it stands for, which is music and fashion for charity and award people that have used their platform in any one of those areas or spaces for the benefit of others and honour them with a nice award, i.e. the Icon Award.

What I’ve noticed a lot in the industry in general is there tends to be a lot of negativity and selfishness and when I went into the high end fashion, it was one of the things that I was determined to change. From what I believe we were one of the first shows ever to raise money for charity in that area. Especially in such a large way i.e. with Grace Jones, so it hit the headlines, and it was a lovely way of using my very small platform and the bigger platforms of others to raise awareness for different charities.

Passion for a charitable cause certainly is something that draws the crowds in. What does fundraising for prostate cancer mean for you? 

I wasn’t aware that the statistics for prostrate cancer was so dramatic. Just to give you an idea one in eight white men and one in four men of colour will have prostate cancer in their lives. If it’s hereditary, the statistics go down to one in four white males and one in two men of colour. For whatever reason it’s genetic men of colour that are more likely to die from the disease. Prostate cancer normally is treated with quite invasive treatments and this small charity Prost8 has this new technology which is called HIFU which can treat the less severe cases of prostate with a high focal treatment, which means that it doesn’t give the side effects such as erectile dysfunction and incontinence. 

For me even though it’s a male dominated illness, what you have to remember and what we’re trying to put out there is that this affects everybody because it affects the wives, the families, and it’s not just segregated to men. We are one in this whole kind of search for ideally a cure, but if we can look at some treatments like this that can make it less invasive and that it doesn’t affect people in such a dramatic way when it doesn’t need to, I’m all for that.

Now you have an incredible celebrity lineup on board for this year’s event. Tell us more about the process of getting them on board? 

Well, the first thing you do is you go to your friends and families, don’t you! So I’ve been fortunate enough to be in those circles through work and people have been really, really forthcoming. Everybody loves London Fashion Week, they love a charity event, they love drink, they love food. So what I’ve done is just put it all together to fundraise for Prost8. I suppose I’ve chosen the most in time to be out if that makes sense. Everybody wants to be part of it. I’m lucky that I’ve got a big network and we’ve got the okay to use the hashtag for LFW.

It’s not always easy sailing. What has been the hardest aspect of putting on your next ‘This Is Icon’? 

I think I’m the problem if I’m honest because it starts off as a very, very small idea of oh, you know what, we’ll do a little show at London Fashion Week and as Toby will know and all my staff, I wake up at four o’clock every morning to work. I normally have these light bulb moments in the bath and my staff normally get messages from me at sort of five past five saying I’ve had an idea and it just tends to grow and my little creative mind doesn’t know any boundaries which has its flaws as well as its benefits. If anyone ever says to me that you can’t do this, I will do it 10 times over and take a picture and send it to them. Pushing boundaries is a pro and a con so never give up on your dreams.

So for those branching out into the industry, what advice would you give them? 

Everybody’s journey is different. I don’t think there’s any hard and fast rules especially if you’re in the creative space. You need to go with your gut instinct. Consistency is key and never take no for an answer. One of the other things is that you will fall down, you may fall down seven times but you will get up eight.

It just means that it’s not right and don’t get attached to anything. I’ve made the biggest mistake of getting attached to my businesses and things and people and that’s the biggest mistake you can ever do. You’ve got to do what makes you happy. If it’s not working, it doesn’t mean that you’re a failure. It just means that you’ve been steered in a different direction for whatever reason. So, never ever feel that you’re a failure if something doesn’t work out, because like with babies, they fall down until they learn to walk.

I think there’s a lot of egos, you’ve got to lose your ego. If it doesn’t work, let it go. You know, it’s no big deal, it’s not a failure. In fact, you’re a success because you’re willing to try and the majority of people don’t even have the try and I’ve always said this, I’d rather regret something I’ve done rather than something I haven’t. 

Besides ‘This Is Icon’, you’re also the owner of an award winning agency Buzz Talent. What do you look for in new talent? 

When I started Buzz, I noticed that people will go for the same type of people. So if anything, I look for anyone that is different. When I first started, people only used to take on people that had been to stage school and trained. With the bringing in of reality tv, there were all these wonderful, eccentric, different people. Which I could say, that I’m one of those and I always knew even back then that there was going to be a place in the market for them. 

I don’t look for people that are very much the same. I look for different people and I do believe and I know that I have put people in jobs that they would never have got, had they not had me. When I was at school, you had to go to stage school. I was a very talented singer, dancer, and actor. What they call in the industry a triple threat but I chose the educational route because of my parents. 

Growing up I saw so much raw talent from people that their parents maybe couldn’t afford to send them to stage school and I just realised that there was all this talent that was getting lost just literally because there was this kind of sort of hierarchy in place where you had to do this to get here and I thought no, I’m just going to try out that middle bit where you have to do XYZ and being able to be that person. Our job is about not what you know, it’s who you know. One thing I know I’ve got is a lot of contacts, which I’ve put into practice now and helped a lot of people.

What is next in the pipeline for you? 

Oh, God, we’ve got a few things lined up. Two things I can’t talk about because I’m under NDA, but this is going to blow everybody’s mind. I will reveal it to you when I can, okay. This event has taken the last month out of us, so we’re gonna have a little break after ‘This Is Icon’. Get back to the normal run of the mill on the talent side and just wait until I get my next light bulb moment at four o’clock in the morning in the bath. There’s so much more I want to do. I would like to do something internationally. My biggest goal is to raise a million pounds at a charity event.

Now the big one to finish off with is what would you like your attendees to take away with them from your next ‘This Is Icon’ event on Friday, the 17th of February. 

I want them to take away that it’s good to give back. There’s so much selfishness in the world right now and I think that we’ve all got so much more than we actually need. I hope we can put a smile on peoples faces in a very positive way and promote a positive message. The whole thing for me is pay it forward or give it back. We just want everyone to have a good sense of charitable causes and that you can have fun. Just to give back that’s really what we want and more importantly to raise funds at the auction. I want them to walk out of there saying “Jesus Christ I’m skint, I’ve given all my money away to Prost8”.

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Quote of the day – Take it slowly if you must but whatever you do don’t give up, excel and remember if you are not excited, change your direction, life goes fast and it’s important to spend it feeling inspired.

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