75. What It takes to Build a Community w/ Jonty Brown

A

lot of people who are listening to this, and I know you and I probably are resonating a lot with this as well, who are not only just taking part in communities, but trying to build their own community as well.

You've clearly done a fantastic job at it.

It's been one of the, as you just said there, one of the leading pillars of when you first started.

The first two years was... all about getting back into the community, shaking hands and having coffees.

Is that still something that you still prioritize now as like a value and a pillar as you've grown to this size now?

Yeah, definitely.

Like we've only just started, it feels like, which is exciting.

But we're...

You know, we have this amazing thing that we're very proud of called the Run Leaders Retreat, which I think you guys have come to before.

It's just a way that we try to bring all different run club leaders together.

And that way alone is you bring in different run communities together.

Because when we first started, there was a bit of bickering between clubs.

There was like West Side Story.

Yeah.

but we didn't want that at the end of the day it's just running yeah who cares yeah just go for a run and have fun definitely make a safe space for people enjoy each other's like communities and help each other grow again better together like thank you for also doing that by

the way because yeah awesome yeah but also it then feeds down right like you say because that's the leaders but then within the community we can then take that back and share all of those things with people exactly it's a bit cliche and cringy but there's room and space and there is a need for everyone and everyone club to do well and just because one you know is doing well or one and there's another one on the same day as yours it doesn't take away from anything no we all have the same values we all want to help people and be inclusive hopefully so yeah well there's millions of people in London right well exactly and there's

yes there's a lot of run clubs but not every run club's for you one of the reasons why we do run clubs I'm guessing same as you guys but London can be a very lonely place yes I don't know what your like part of your community are but it's for us it's people from all over the world they come to London how do you meet friends when you're an adult yeah it's quite difficult yeah so you go to a run club try and find your people yeah and then it's a way them and then you'll see them go on holiday together yeah or like go for lunch and dinners and it's like that's why we do it because it's we're trying to find people's families within spaces that isn't their original home yeah We've

spoken a bit ourselves.

We actually did a webinar.

Something we spoke about in London where it's actually quite bad is the urban design of London.

There's no, there's not no, but there's very limited, the third spaces, which are more common in like European cities.

Yeah.

Where it's like the third space where people will naturally congregate like a square or a plaza, that sort of thing.

Yeah, yeah.