Why Friendship Might Be Your Greatest Business Advantage

Last Thursday, we finished the YATM year with our YATM Summer Party, it was a silent disco.

If you’d told me a few years ago that one of the highlights of a business community would be people dancing around with headphones on while friends were in charge of the channels, I’d probably have laughed.

On paper, it doesn’t make much sense. It isn’t networking and it certainly isn’t learning.

Yet I’m convinced it will become one of the moments people from YATM remember most this year. Not because of the music, but because of who they shared that moment with.

I was nervous beforehand. We’d never delivered a silent disco before and dancing feels very different to karaoke. Everyone was completely in the moment, knowing everyone else was too.

People were dancing indoors, and there were people outside on a summer’s evening, just enjoying what was happening in the groups they were with. It felt joyful because everyone knew they were part of something together.

As Seth Godin said recently, “If it’s worth our effort, it’s worth raising our standards.”

I’ve spent years thinking about content. How to make it useful and how to show up consistently.

AI now makes creating content easier than ever, but that’s not a bad thing.

Content will always matter because it’s how people discover us. Increasingly, I’m finding newsletter subscribers through ChatGPT. When people understand your viewpoint and keep coming back, a relationship begins.

I’m starting to understand that something else matters even more. People remember the moments they shared more than the content they consumed.

Think about the business events you’ve attended over the years. You probably don’t remember every keynote, you might not even remember every speaker. I’ll bet you remember the conversations and people you spent time with.

The conversation over lunch that carried on long after the event. The walk back to the station where someone shared what was really happening in their business. Those are the moments that stay with us. 

This is what I mean. Content starts relationships, shared experiences strengthen them.

Trust is always big on the agenda when it comes to marketing. When you don’t have it, people won’t subscribe, join you, work with you or tell other people about you.

I now look at trust as the beginning of someone’s journey with you, it shouldn’t just be something we aim for anymore. What has deeper meaning today is what happens when someone has made that decision or small commitment. This is the moment when people stop feeling like strangers and relationships deepen. 

Trust starts the relationship. Friendship transforms it.

For instance, a path could be someone who connects with you on LinkedIn, but rather than every interaction being there, they move over to subscribe to your newsletter and, when they start to feel familiar, commit to a live event. 

I’m not suggesting every customer or connection becomes a good friend, that would be unrealistic.

It’s something much simpler. The best businesses create the conditions where genuine friendships can emerge.

You can organise events, or create online spaces, or help facilitate conversations, but you can’t schedule friendship. This is what happens when someone forgets they have their work head on or thinks they have to show up with the business persona, always on.

Community can be designed, but friendship can’t.

You can’t automate it, manufacture it or force it. All you can do is create the conditions where it becomes more likely.

You give people a reason to spend time together where everything is centred on shared experiences. That’s why so much of YATM happens in person. Creator Day, Lunch Clubs and even a silent disco aren’t just events. They’re shared experiences where people arrive as themselves first and their business second.

Friendship isn’t something a business owns. It’s something people build with one another.

Think about the business spaces you enjoy being part of. It’s rarely just because it’s about the format or the delivery. 

We often say people buy from people. I’d like to add that we don’t buy friendship, but we often buy from people we’ve become friends with.

I see this happening inside YATM.

Matt King recently stepped into the role of Managing Director at Euroflo. Over the past few months, he’s brought people from the YATM community into projects covering digital, IT and communications.

It wasn’t because they happened to be in the same community, it was because they’d already spent time together.

Familiarity became trust, and trust became the confidence to work together.

Most businesses optimise for transactions, but better businesses optimise for relationships.

The best businesses help relationships happen between other people and that’s much harder to copy.

What people can’t easily replicate is years of shared experiences between hundreds of people. Products can be copied, pricing can be matched, and even content can be imitated. Years of shared experiences between hundreds of people cannot.

That’s why businesses that bring people together have an advantage that becomes stronger over time. It means we can all feel a part of progress. People decide to step into the space because it feels right with them and over time, as connections build, it becomes easier to reach out and for people to work together. 

Friendship is a business advantage. Friends support, recommend, introduce, stay and help create momentum together.

Perhaps the most valuable thing in the coming years isn’t creating content, or building trust, or nurturing community, it’s making the conditions where friendships happen naturally. An AI filter will never take this away from us. 

I am looking at a future where the question that is front and centre is,  “What kind of experience would help two people leave knowing each other better than when they arrived?”

That’s what people remember, and that’s what they’ll come back for. 

Your format and content might introduce them, but the memories they create together are what make a place matter.

The businesses and communities that will win will be those that won’t simply create content. They’ll create moments people remember together. 

Friendship isn’t the by-product of a great business. Increasingly, it’s the advantage.