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There's a name for what I was feeling...
​read time 6 minutes

A few years ago, my life looked great from the outside.

Decent job. good money. Friends in the city. Full social life.

I had just landed my dream job as a newly trained UX designer working for a startup remotely.

But, after a year and a half journey retraining and trying to get this job, I realised after just a few months that it didn't light me up.

I spent all my time in front of the computer. I could barely go outside during working hours , and even though my boss was cool, I still felt kind of chained to my laptop.

And on top of that, although my social life was good I'd still go home most evenings feeling kinda alone.

It's fair to say something was missing.

I spoke to a friend about it who is feeling the same way, and he described it better than I ever could. He called it living box to box.

Work from home to gym. Gym to pub. Pub to home.

And as it happens, that feeling has a name:

Involuntary loneliness.

Not the kind where you're actually alone. The kind where you're surrounded by people yet still feel lonely.

I'm going to skip forwarding the story now because if you're reading this newsletter, you probably know my story already, but essentially to get over this feeling of loneliness I ended up throwing an event, which three years later, turned into my community of thousands and fully fledged business, Guiris de Mierda.

Now I can say that I've been in this biz a while, and I've spoken to many other community leaders too, and here's what I've grown to learn:

Most communities are born out of a place of need from the people that create them.

I wasn't trying to build a business, I was building the thing I was missing.

And I reckon that's exactly why it worked.

Because all the other community leaders I speak to pretty much have the exact same story:

The guy that wanted to run and meet people with healthy habits starts a run club. Or the girls that wanted more female entrepreneur friends starts a girls-only group.

They fix their need and then, as a side effect, it ends up fixing the same thing for a lot of other people too.

I want to tell you all of this because, on July 5th, I'm running a free live workshop about exactly this.

It's for you if you've ever thought, "I'd love to build my own community, but I don't really know where to start."

We'll cover:

• Why the friendship recession is real
• Why building a community beats joining one
• How running events makes you a recognisable name in your city without needing a huge following
• How to find your people by designing the room for them
• How the thing that fixes your social life can quietly turn into a real income stream
• What your first event could look like, and how stupidly simple it actually is to run one

There'll also be a live Q&A at the end, so you can ask me anything about community building, business in Spain, or using a community model to promote whatever you're working on.

Also, I'll be straight with you. At the end of the workshop, I'm going to be telling you about something I'm launching called the 21-Day Builders Challenge.

It's a 21-day cohort that strips away the theory and gives you one practical task a day. By day 21, you've launched your first event.

So yes, there's a pitch coming at the end. I'm telling you that now so you can't say I didn't warn you (hehe).

But the workshop itself is going to be packed with value, and it's completely free. Even if you walk away straight after the Q&A and never think about the cohort again, you'll still leave with lots of value.

I'm opening early access to the cohort for newsletter subscribers today, the first 20 people get a reduced price.

Reduced price of €99 for the first 20 people

If you've been sat on a community idea for a while, this is the push.

That's the titbit for today.

Tom

I work with content creators on a one-on-one basis to help them build a personal brand that monetises and allows them to live a life on their own terms, just like I have.

If you'd like to apply to work one-on-one with me, take this short quiz, and if it's a match, we can book in a call 👇

Take the 4 minute quiz

The Builders Pod

Curious about building community and personal brand? I reckon you'll like the Builders pod 🚀

In this week's pod, I speak with Yussef, a globetrotting entrepreneur form Argentina who came to Spain to set up a business with no intention to stay... but never left.

He's also a Golden Guiri ;)

Check it out!

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