When You're Alone, Your Goals Feel Impossible

Before we get into today, this time last week was Chanukah.

This video of Zohran Mamdani being welcomed into a family’s kitchen to cook latkes and light candles says everything about welcome and new beginnings. Three minutes of warmth I wanted to share before the year was out.

When you’re alone, your goals feel impossible.

When you’re in a room with others doing the same thing, they become obviously normal — because you’ve got proof all around you.

I’ve tested this for years. The value was never information. The value was that being around people doing the same work made my own work feel like something I was actually allowed to do.

Manic Monday

In August 2017, we started a Manic Monday group at At Work Hubs in Euston. Freelancers, consultants, and micro business owners gathered every Monday to talk about where we were going. We used the 12 Week Year book as a baseline.

I’ve been meeting with Karen Hayes every Monday morning for a ‘WAM’ since then. This is where I met Fiona Ross, who later became integral to the London Coworking Assembly and helped us get through COVID.

That time at At Work Hubs with Philip Dodson was the best of times and the worst of times.

I don’t mean it was the worst because I worked with Philip. 🤣

It was the worst because I was battling my way out of depression. I was writing about it online, and people would read those posts and come to our meetups and share their own struggles. That formed some very long-lasting bonds.

But it was also the best — because there was always a group of people around, going on a journey together. For about five years, around 50 randomly interconnected people would come to whichever coworking space or bar one of us was running an event in.

We were an unidentified community, always in flux, connected by meetups, tweetups, hashtags, and whatever the next thing on someone’s calendar was.

Art Club

Art Club happened because Doug Shaw turned up to a TAGtribe breakfast meeting in At Work Hubs and tested his new art idea on us.

His point: the last time most people did any drawing was at school. He got a group of us making art and transformed how that room communicated.

Which led to Phil running down Tottenham Court Road, buying up the contents of every art shop he could find.

We ran Art Club where people just came and made things. Eventually, artists turned up and ran classes for free. I did linocut printing for the first time since school.

• Same building: Write Club.
• Same building: podcast meetups.
• Same building: Ouishare events.
• Same building, some real flops!

We hosted podcasts in the meeting room every week. This was how I first met Coworkies — they knocked on the door in 2015 and minutes later were in front of a mic. Baroness Jenny Jones and Sian Berry came by for a podcast and a cup of tea. Mark Williams came in to celebrate 20 years in business with Pensar IT — next March, we’ll celebrate his 30th.

Write Club

For ten years, we ran Write Club across coworking spaces in London. 10–20 people around a desk. Just a meetup and an email list.

It was like Fight Club, but with writing.

People came and wrote books. And published them. Dissertations. TV shows. Poetry. Business plans. Songs.

I first met Sangeeta Pillai (Soul Sutras) in 2018 at our Write Club, held at Bathtub 2 Boardroom on City Road by Old Street.

Sangeeta came to our podcast meetups, and one day, she mumbled something about filling in a competition page on a Spotify website last night - then the Masala Podcast erupted into the world, followed by her Bad Daughter book in 2025.

Nobody taught anyone how to write a book. People just came, week after week. Like a Sunday league football team, or a community orchestra, or parkrun on a Saturday morning — different people each week, but the thing keeps going.

If I’d pitched Write Club as a course or an event or a “pick what you want from the menu” — the experience would have been different.

Not everything has to be a product.

London Meetup Organisers

Some other organisers and I ran the London Meetup Organisers Group.

We met at the TalkTalk Hub in Broadwick Street, hosted Social Media Week London events, and couldn’t stop talking about community — how to build it, how to keep it going, how not to fuck it up.

We met through events and Twitter, back when Twitter was the most fun thing ever. Alex Butler, Andy Bargery, Gina Romero, Dave Clarke, JULIE HALL, Julius Solaris, Benjamin Ellis, Lloyd Davis, Su Butcher, also Paul Wilkinson, who ran @Be2camp with Martin Brown, FRSA — a real unconference where “the built environment met web2.0”, where I also first met Antony Slumbers, brandishing a spectacularly colourful shirt, calling people out on their bullshit.

That era is gone, but the friendships and energy remain. Twitter was fun, Instagram was new, and hardly anyone had Bluetooth headphones.

We were all trying to figure out the same thing.

One day, Andrea Murphy from meetup.com messaged me. Scott Heiferman, the founder of Meetup, would be in town. Could we host something?

I was based in an office in Farringdon and talked them into giving us the whole venue. Over 150 meetup organisers came.

We got food from our local café — one of the biggest orders they’d ever done. A few organisers shared their experiences in a Q&A with Scott. Then, every single person in the room got to say their name and what their meetup was.

Yoga. Photography. Union organising. Shy people learning to talk to strangers. Writers. Runners. Coders. Parents. Food. Music. Language. Politics.

It was the most accurate representation of London I’ve ever seen. Every kind of human being, every part of the city, every level of gregariousness and shyness.

I was crying by the end of it.

It had never occurred to me how many different ways you could get groups of people together. All using the same simple thing — a platform, a room, a time — shaped by the people who needed it.

Coworking works the same way.

Drive Network

I’m part of an online network called Drive the Collaborative Network. Some of us have known each other for 15 years. We’ve evolved together.

We had our annual goal-setting conversation recently. The jacked-up, pumped-up, delusional 10x stuff was more absent than ever. People talked about intent, why they work this way, and whom they want to work with and what they need to work out in order to do that - I felt very calm at home.

This year, #Supercoolwife set me an appointment, and I got my ADHD diagnosis. I never would have made that appointment on my own, and when the results came back, I could see why.

I’ve been working with my therapist, my doctor, and Helen Lindop to understand how to operate with this new information.

I didn’t realise how brutal the mental consequences of missing a goal could be for me — whether it’s £5 million in revenue or running to the end of the street. If you want to understand this, look up rejection-sensitive dysphoria.

Any time you get a diagnosis like this, get someone to work with you. This is the most extreme example of ‘not going alone’ I can find.

If I’d spent all that time on my own, I would have been crushed.

Sitting around with groups of people has been life-saving. If you’re neurodivergent, if you struggle with mental health, if your brain works differently — being around others doing the same work isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s how you stay alive.

February 24th - The World’s smallest Coworking event.

On February 24th, we’re hosting Unreasonable Connection Going Live in London — 150 coworking community builders at BLUE GARAGE 💙 in Lewisham, BarCamp-style, where everyone shapes the agenda.

No keynote speakers. No panels. No pitches. Just people who run spaces working through real problems together.

It’s not a conference. It’s a conversation.

If you’ve been thinking this is another coworking industry event, it isn’t. It’s the continuation of everything you’ve just read.

The week before Christmas, we ran a 48-hour flash sale. I was asleep by the time it closed on Friday night — and woke up to find over 40 people already in.

Ticket sales reopen in mid-January. Join the waitlist here.

The people who bought tickets? They’ve been coming to things for years. They know who else will be in the room. The trust is already there.

They’re owners of coworking spaces in the London suburbs or in towns outside the city. They’re vocal about the business rates fiasco.

They run beautiful, vibrant communities and work overtime to connect with their local areas — hosting ACTionism screenings, inviting MPs, running events that bring people together.

They know what they’re doing. And they still want to be around others doing the same thing. Because the struggle is normal. And being around others makes it feel normal, too.

These are people who practice what they preach. They build communities, then find other communities to help them keep building. They don’t have time to sit on stages telling founder stories. They’re too busy doing the work.

Find Your Voice

One of my favourite books is Stephen Covey’s The 8th Habit — not the productivity one, the one about finding your voice and helping others find theirs.

That’s been the bloodline through everything. Doug Shaw getting adults to draw. Write Club, where people published books. The Scott Heiferman event, where 150 London Meetup organisers got to say who they were.

Find your voice. Help others find theirs.

You might think you’ve already found yours. But every time I think I’ve found mine, something else happens. It’s a never-ending story you’re writing.

Thank you to these companies for supporting people to attend Unreasonable Connection Going Live on February 24th:

Cobot | Coworking Software, Nexudus, Designed Learning, NOOK Event Pods®, techsapiens.

We’ll do this three or four times a year, so you always have somewhere to come, someone to talk to, and someone to help solve your problems. It’s not an exclusive coworking club; it’s for coworking community builders committed to their local area.

The continuity matters. Art Club worked because people kept coming back. Write Club worked because of the informal connections between meetups.

This isn’t a global launch. This isn’t a conference.

This is the London Coworking Assembly backyard barbecue, with some out-of-town guests.

We’ve got the coals and the fire. You bring what you have.

Join the waitlist here. We open tickets again in mid-January.

ACTionism

One thing we’re advocating: show the ACTionism documentary.

Invite people from your local area who may not need a desk — but who will understand what you’re trying to build.

Projects like Library of Things, parenting groups, men’s groups like Talk Club, women’s groups like The WI (National Federation of Women’s Institutes) already meet in local coworking spaces. They help you create the community that’s the gateway to your business succeeding and your local area thriving. It’s not about work anymore.

The relationship between Wigan Youth Zone and Weave Coworking - created by Lee Dalgleish and Anthony Gennadopoulos - is one of the strongest examples I’ve ever seen.

Your Monday Domino

Think of one person who’s been on a journey with you — someone who’s watched your process, whether you succeeded or not.

Send them a message this week. Tell them what it meant to have them there.

Bernie’s Picks

🕎 Zohran Mamdani cooking latkes with friends — Three minutes of kitchen warmth.

🎬 ACTionism — The documentary about finding your people by the Re-Action Collective and friends with Ellie Meredith and Jon Alexander.

🤝 Unreasonable Connection — Our monthly online gathering for coworking community builders.

🎙️ Trevor Noah with Malala Yousafzai: The Real Malala — Jeans, crushes, and healing.

📖 Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman — Public discourse in the age of show business. Get it here.

📖 Bad Daughter by Sangeeta Pillai (Soul Sutras) — one of the best books you’ll ever read, I promise - Get it here.

🇬🇧 London Coworking Assembly — February 24th waitlist - get in!

Thank you for your time and attention today - see you next year!

Bernie 💚🍉