Ep. 394 The hunger for real connection: why community is a competitive advantage

Estimated reading time: 15 minutes

Something is shifting for solopreneurs and independent experts: the hunger for genuine human connection is growing, and it’s not being satisfied by another webinar or WhatsApp group. In this episode, Anna Lundberg explores what’s driving this trend, why community is a genuine competitive advantage for independent workers, and what investing in real connection can actually look like in practice.

Key moments

[00:00] Introduction: The growing hunger for genuine human connection among solopreneurs

[01:31] Anna’s first in-person dinner event – what happened and why it landed differently

[04:01] Three forces driving the shift: AI noise, transactional networking fatigue, and community as strategy

[05:52] What real connection looks like in practice: the supper club, founder gatherings, and deliberate openness [08:11] The difference between independence and isolation – and why it matters for your business

[09:22] Seasonal permission: how Anna’s own relationship with connection has evolved

[11:31] Practical starting points: how to invest in community without overwhelm

[13:57] Offscript: Anna’s community for established independents

Key resources

• The Other Table – Anna’s quarterly supper club for founders and leaders
• The Spark at the Foundry – Monthly founder gatherings in the Poole/Bournemouth area, via Dan Ware’s local community
• Offscript – Anna’s community for established independent experts: offscript.club
• Book a free clarity call with Anna: onestepoutside.com/call

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Solopreneur community building

When I first started out, both in my corporate career and in my own business, I learned pretty quickly that doing more isn’t the same as moving forward. I want to talk today about something that I’ve been noticing – both in myself and in the clients I work with, and to be honest in the broader conversations I’m having. There’s this real and growing hunger for genuine human connection. It’s not networking – I don’t like that word – it’s not another webinar, not a content feed or a WhatsApp group that’s mostly noise, but it’s something more real than that. And I think it’s really worth exploring, especially for us as solopreneurs, both what’s driving this trend or this pull, and what it might actually look like for you in your business and life in practice.

Why solopreneurs are craving more real connection

So let me start with something that happened – well, now it’s back in March. I hosted a dinner. It was my first in-person event that I actually organised myself since, I don’t know, 10 years ago when I tried to launch a workshop when I first became a coach. I tried and failed, I should admit – only one person signed up because I had no audience, no experience, but it was a great taster. And since then I’ve run many, many online workshops with greater success, but there you go.

Founders, leaders, interesting people I know here locally. And what I loved about it was that I actually know a lot of interesting people locally – so that was a good sign in itself. And I booked a private dining room. And then I put questions on the place cards, things like, what are you postponing until things calm down? Or what’s a goal that you’ve outgrown but haven’t let go of? And then I kind of had people just sit with those questions. I’d framed the dinner in an email the day before so people knew what to expect. And I had actually planned a bit of a structure. But it very much flowed naturally.

And the feedback was they just loved meeting other people – not having that formal kind of exchange of business cards and go around the table, give your elevator pitch, sign up to the email list. So in our case, we sort of sat with those questions. And people really came back to it. So of course I let the chat go where it did. But people were really sitting with, oh, what does success mean to me? And, you know, would 18-year-old me still be proud of what I’m doing now? And so on.

And it’s something that I was struck by, which is how rarely we create that space to ask the important questions that matter, away from the urgency, the to-do list, and the next thing. And so I really felt that the conversation was genuinely different from anything that happens online. Not better in every way – obviously online has its own value – but different in a way that I think a lot of us are craving. So it’s more present, more honest perhaps, less performative. Nobody was thinking about how it would look on LinkedIn, although I have to admit, I did film some footage that I shared on my Instagram. Can’t help myself.

But I’ve had the same thing from so many people recently – the sense of wanting more of that. Certainly I feel it: more real rooms, more genuine conversation, more of the feeling that you’re not figuring all this out entirely alone. And as I said, this was a mix of founders and leaders. It wasn’t the solopreneur audience necessarily that this podcast is more directed at. And it wasn’t in any way linked to a funnel of selling to them at all. It was really just this kind of pull towards meeting interesting people. And you never know what connections will happen. But there’s no ulterior motive as such.

Three forces driving the shift towards genuine connection

And I don’t think this is coincidental timing. I don’t think I’m alone. I think there are really specific things happening right now that are driving this hunger. And the first, of course – I have to talk about it again – is AI. Because the online world has become significantly noisier in the last 18 months or so. More content, more output, and increasingly content that was generated rather than thought. Your LinkedIn feed, your inbox, the newsletters you receive – more and more of it has that certain feeling that tells you a human being wasn’t entirely behind it. And in that context, the genuine stuff – the real thinking, the real conversation, the real relationship – really stands out more, not less. It becomes more valuable.

The second, I think, is a kind of fatigue with a transactional version of networking. The connection request with the immediate pitch, the coffee catch-up that’s actually a sales conversation, the online community that’s just a funnel. A recent thing that I’ve been lamenting with some colleagues is that I’ve been invited on a podcast and I fell for it once – and where it turned out, it was really just bait and switch. It was them wanting to sell to us. Now I still have the podcast and it was interesting and I have some content, but basically that’s what they were doing. So more fool me for falling for that, but you live and learn. And people have got better at recognising this pattern, and we’re tired of it. Instead, what people want is something that actually feels like it’s for them – not just serving someone else’s conversion rate.

And then the third, and this is something I’ve been sitting with personally, is the realisation that community is actually a competitive advantage for independent workers – not just emotionally, although it also matters emotionally, but strategically. So the people around you, the ones who challenge your thinking, open doors you didn’t know existed, tell you when you’re in your own way – those relationships are some of the most valuable assets in your business and they really don’t happen by accident. You have to curate them and nurture them.

What solopreneur community building actually looks like in practice

So I want to be concrete here, because I think “build community” sounds very nice but it can feel abstract and overwhelming. So what does it actually mean to invest in real connection as an independent expert, coach, consultant and so on? For me right now it looks like a few specific things. So I mentioned the supper club – running the next one in June, called The Other Table. It’s quarterly, it’s small, it’s sort of curated, but it’s not like there’s an application process. I’m not advertising it at all. It’s really through connections. It’s a private dinner, and the purpose is to have that real conversation – not to network or pitch or produce anything. And the response to the first one, the way people leaned in, the conversations that continued afterwards, the energy in the room really confirmed that this is worth doing.

The second one is some founder conversations that I’m doing via Dan Ware’s local community here down in Bournemouth, which is called The Spark at the local foundry, the co-working space. And it’s a monthly gathering – term time only for me, because I have school holidays to deal with, as do many, many others as well. So it’s a monthly gathering for founders here in the Poole and Bournemouth area, been running now for a couple of months. And the format now is sort of one question, a bit like the supper club, but a much more facilitated conversation – still no slides, there’s no agenda other than thinking well together. So it’s a room for founders to step back from the day-to-day for one evening, 90 minutes.

And then more broadly, I’d say it’s being more deliberately, intentionally open to conversations and collaborations than I have been in recent years. So saying yes to the exploratory call that might not lead anywhere immediately, or following up with people I meet and nurturing those relationships rather than just collecting connections. Because I have to say, having been so fiercely protective of my time over the years – which you have to be – you know, in the early stages of beginning your business you have to be open and talk to everybody. But soon you realise oh, most of that doesn’t lead anywhere. And as a parent of young children or managing a chronic health condition, or just not feeling particularly energised by all that networking and having a business to run, you can’t just fill your calendar with all those free coffee chats. But I’ve just recognised that actually in this season for me there is again this more expansive sense of wanting to open up and see what comes. And that’s actually quite exciting.

Independence versus isolation: the distinction that matters

Now none of this is complicated, but it does require intention because it doesn’t happen on its own. And I suppose here’s something I want to push back on directly, because I think it’s a story a lot of people tell themselves. There’s a version of independent working that kind of fetishises the solo – the lone wolf who doesn’t need anyone, the person who’s built everything themselves, answers to no one, needs nothing. And yes, independence is genuinely wonderful – the autonomy, the flexibility, the ability to design your work around your life. I have built my entire existence around it and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. However, independence and isolation are completely different things. And I think a lot of people, myself included at some points, have quietly confused the two.

And I think to be successful, and particularly to sustain your business in an enjoyable way as an independent, you can’t be isolated. You need to build deliberate communities around yourself. A mastermind group that you trust, a peer you can think out loud with regularly, a room – physical or virtual – where you can say the thing that you can’t perhaps say to your clients or to your family or on LinkedIn, and then get a genuine response from someone who gets it. That’s not a nice-to-have. That really is important, critical infrastructure for your business.

Giving yourself permission to change with the season

And as I hinted at, the other layer for me is this kind of seasonal angle and the permission to change – because it’s relevant to my own story, and it might be relevant to yours too. So as I said, I’ve spent several years being very protective – young kids, working school hours, term time by design. And the only way that model works is by being very intentional about what gets my time and energy. And that of course means saying no to a lot of things – collaborations, conversations, events, opportunities that might have been interesting but didn’t fit the constraints. And that was right for a very long period of time. I want to be clear about that. The constraints were real, they are real. And the choices make sense at a certain point.

But as I’ve said throughout this episode, I’m really noticing that something is shifting. For me, the children are a little bit older, I have a little bit more capacity. And I’m in a different, more expansive kind of growth stage of my business again. What I’m finding is that I actually want more of the human stuff as well – more conversation, more collaboration, more genuine connection and not less. So of course there’s an element of wanting to grow the business and therefore those collaborations and opportunities are important. But there’s also just the immediate need and desire to connect with people. And it’s so nice to build a little bit of kind of micro fame locally – having someone say oh, I’ve subscribed to your podcast, loyal founders who come to all the events. It’s just really, really nice to have that in a way that you just don’t experience in the same way online when you’re chasing people with emails and they’re maybe showing up with their video off on a webinar.

So one of the things I come back to with the work I do around success scripts is this idea that we keep running the same patterns even when the context has changed. We keep operating the way we did in the previous season because we never stopped to notice that the season had changed. And I’ve picked myself up on this. The fierce protection of my time was right; the openness feels right now. And I think that’s worth naming as a kind of permission for yourself. If you’re someone who’s been operating with your head down for a while, protecting your calendar, keeping things tight, that might have been right for where you were – but it is worth asking, is it still right for where you are now?

How to start investing in real connection as an independent expert

So if this has resonated, if you’re feeling the pull towards more real connection and community like I am, what are the next steps? Well, start small and specific. It’s not “I need to build community,” which is very overwhelming and very vague. Perhaps one thing – one regular gathering that you could attend or create, one person you keep meaning to have a proper conversation with and never do, one peer relationship you could invest in more deliberately. Think about what kind of connection actually energises you. For some people it’s one-to-one – a thinking partner, a mentor, a peer they speak to regularly. For others it might be the group energy of being in a room physically together. Neither is better. You just need to know which one you’re actually hungry for before you go looking for it, or even in my case, building something.

And if you’re in the earliest stages of building independently, or you’ve been building alone for a while and the loneliness has become a background hum that you’ve kind of got used to, just know that there are rooms being built specifically for people like you. You don’t have to create everything from scratch. And I don’t know if it’s just that my eyes have opened up to this, but literally in the last few days and months and weeks, I’ve seen almost every time I open up LinkedIn someone sharing some amazing community for female founders or whatever the particular angle is – a local group. And it’s just so wonderful to see.

So as I said, I’m continuing my little supper club – a little drop in the ocean, but that’s a quarterly event. It’s also in your personal life, right? I do these – well, I’m part of a racquetball league, which sounds far more professional than it actually is. I no longer practice, but I do still join. It’s a ladies’ racquetball. We come together every two months and play in teams, and that’s just really fun. And we have a dinner together. You know, it doesn’t have to be committing to a weekly night of doing something or everything in-person – conferences, retreats, etc. You can start small and start with something that works for you. So supper club, the social stuff, maybe sports and things. We’re doing sea dips over the summer, especially when the weather is better. And that’s a fun little community in itself.

Offscript: a community for established independent experts

And then Offscript is my community that I haven’t publicised publicly. I’ll be talking more about it hopefully in the coming weeks. But I had the founding cohort join last quarter. And speaking of loneliness – a couple of members that come to mind who joined: one is based remotely over in Asia, and someone else is a digital nomad. And loneliness was actually not really on my radar so much when I opened up the community. But of course that’s a key reason as a solopreneur to join a community like this. It’s not a hugely expensive programme, it’s not a massive commitment, it’s not loads of content and courses and all that. It’s really coming together lightly as and when needed, with a regular cadence – a rhythm of calls, accountability, check-ins, and above all just having other people to bounce your ideas off. So that’s Offscript. And if you’re interested, there will be more on that, but you can check that out at offscript.club as well.

And of course you can always message me to have a chat. But I’d love to hear from you anyway if this is resonating with you – in terms of having this hunger for more in-person connection. I’m even starting to think, oh, could I do a retreat, which isn’t something I’ve thought about for the last 10 years either. So I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but it’s quite exciting to start thinking in a different way, not constrained by the limits I had before. I have such a global audience – it’s always been very difficult. And who am I to think that people will fly in to meet with me? But obviously as I said, I’ve got more of a local network here in Dorset. London is only a short train ride away. So I can go there. You can come here. And if you do fancy a retreat on the south coast of the UK, then let me know and maybe we can make it happen later in the year or next year. So let’s see.

You can get in touch on my socials – Anna Lundberg – or you can reach me at podcast@onestepoutside.com. Thanks so much for listening and I’ll see you next week.

If this resonated, if you’re an established independent who wants exactly that kind of room – people to think out loud with, genuine accountability and connection – Offscript is the community I’ve built for that. We’re taking on new members soon. Head over to offscript.club to find out more.