It takes a village to raise a child, and it takes a bunch of communities to build a freelancer from coworking spaces to online communities to conferences.
#Freelance life is a never-ending lesson - here are the many communities I need to be able to thrive!
It has taken years to find them, build relationships with them and sometimes even have to kiss and make up.
Why Do You Need A Community?
So there I was, gazing out the window of my studio in Mile End London.
The tree outside my window was mesmerising me as I ponder about all the things I have to do.
Running a business, project or getting any endeavour going is a hard and lonely thing.
To get it in perspective, not hard like a shot in the face like Malala, but hard in an 'I'm a white male living in London' kind of way.
I look at each job, and I'm amazed at how fast the answers come to me about who to ask and action to take.
But this has not always been the case.
The leading cause in the dramatic plummet in my mental health ten years ago was working from home on my own.
I was seeking to connect and suffered not having people to bounce off. It has taken a long time, but these days I have people all over the world.
These are people I work with, bounce off, and they help me keep my independence as a freelance consultant.
It's a list, and here we go.
1. Mainyard Studios
(Weekly Community Lunch at Mainyard Studios Bow)
Of course, I am a big fan of coworking; it is the industry where I do all my marketing consulting.
Mainyard is the coworking space I work from in Bow.
It has been open since last July, and I was the first person to sign up I have the smallest studio - I have the broom cupboard.
Every day is full of short and lively conversations in the kitchen. We talk about websites, podcasting, movie making and music.
We shout book titles at each other and eat lunch together every Wednesday; it is fun, fast and affordable.
Join the free open coworking and lunch every month here.
Mainyard in Bow is also HQ to all the meetups I run, which leads me to...
2. Meet Up
(Monthly Podcast Meet-Up At Mainyard Studios Bow)
I've now been on Meetup.com for over 12 years. Some of the best people in my network have come from here.
Pretty much every month for 12 years, I've run a meetup, and for the last five years, I've run one every week.
They are all there on this page HERE We have Write Club, Podcast Meet up, Art Club and the Co-living Meet Up.
A whole range of people come and talk about what they are creating, working on and support each other.
The support is best at Write Club, people write together and then help each other out on writing struggles.
3. London Coworking Assembly
(February 2020 Breakfast at Air Space on Oxford Street)
The group started in a Facebook group 2014 after Coworking Europe in Lisbon the Facebook group was up and down for years until we moved it to Mighty Networks.
Then in 2018, we began to meet for breakfast every month in a different coworking space.
See the video below for how much the Lisbon Conference fun that was!
