Building Something That Doesn’t Depend On You

For eight years, YATM Lunch Club happened in my local area.

It worked as we had familiar faces, people who kept coming back and something that felt good to be part of. I started wondering whether growth meant continually bringing more people into the same room.

The format was simple. We brought people together over lunch, explored a shared topic, and made sure everyone had the chance to contribute.

Over time, friendships formed and introductions happened. I was proud of what we’d created.

We could have focused on attracting bigger numbers in Poole and looked for a larger venue, but we already had our conference, Creator Day, as a larger gathering.

Instead, I wondered whether the idea could work somewhere else. If people in Poole found value in coming together, why couldn’t people in London, Bristol or Manchester have that same opportunity?

Rather than making one Lunch Club bigger, perhaps we could create more Lunch Clubs that remained small enough for people to get to know each other.

So that’s what we started doing.

This year, Lunch Club has moved beyond Poole into London, Bristol and Manchester.

Each place has the same foundations. We share food, listen to people’s experiences, encourage participation and give people the opportunity to meet others. Each location feels different. For instance, in London Lunch Club is in a famous pub in Wandsworth, where people naturally take the conversation to the bar after the event.

It shows me that Lunch Club can be the starting point for relationships that continue when the lunch is over. An idea doesn’t have to become bigger in one place to become more meaningful in many places.

However, taking Lunch Club to other cities has brought a different challenge.

I still have the main role in making everything happen. There are venues, people to contact, panels to put together, tickets to sell and the responsibility for making sure everyone has a good experience.

There’s a limit to how many places I can personally be in and how much I can take responsibility for.

The idea has travelled. The responsibility hasn’t travelled nearly as far.

If I continue expanding Lunch Clubs but remain the person who has to make every event happen, I’m not necessarily creating something sustainable. I’m creating more work for myself.

I’ve been learning this from the people who are already helping lead Lunch Clubs in other cities.

In London, Catherine Turner has introduced her own way of coordinating the event.

She uses Google Docs to make the whole experience easier for panellists. Everyone knows what’s happening, can prepare and feels comfortable about their contribution before they even arrive.

It might sound like a small detail, but it takes some of the uncertainty away from participating. Catherine isn’t simply following a set of instructions. She’s bringing something from her own experience that improves how the event works.

Judith Rafferty does this in Manchester, but in a different way. Judith is very much part of the Manchester community. She knows people, understands the area and has relationships that I don’t have. I saw it for myself when she hosted Lunch Club. People naturally warmed to her.

I can travel to Manchester and make people feel at home, but I can’t arrive with the same familiarity and local relationships Judith has built.

What I particularly appreciate is that Catherine and Judith bring their own strengths and give something of themselves. That makes Lunch Club better.

I’m beginning to see that other people don’t have to replicate how I do things for the original idea to work. In fact, the experience can develop precisely because they approach it differently.

This changes how I think about my own contribution.

For years, I’ve been used to being the person who brings people together, welcomes them, helps conversations happen and makes sure everything runs smoothly.

When you create something, it’s natural to take responsibility for it. You become accustomed to being the person people turn to.

There’s a difference between being needed to make something happen and being valued for what you’ve helped create.

I’m beginning to realise that I don’t need to be at the centre of every Lunch Club for it to be meaningful. Something is exciting about seeing people bring their own ideas and knowing the experience is better because of what they’ve contributed.

I want to reach a point where Lunch Clubs can happen without me needing to attend. It’s not because I don’t want to be there. I love being part of them.

But if I’m not in London, Bristol or Manchester, I want to know the experience can still happen, people feel welcome and relationships continue to develop.

I started the idea, but I don’t want to be the person who has to make it happen in every location. I want to become its custodian.

For me, that means protecting what Lunch Club stands for, while giving other people the confidence and freedom to take responsibility for how it works in their own towns and cities.

There still needs to be something people recognise wherever they attend. They should feel welcome, have the opportunity to participate, learn from others and feel that their contribution matters.

That doesn’t mean every event needs to look the same.

If every decision needs my approval, or every host feels they have to do things the way I would, then I haven’t really given people ownership. I’ve just given them jobs to do.

That’s a challenge for me to work through. None of this happens simply because I decide to step back. It needs support, trust and clarity about what people can take responsibility for.

It also needs to work commercially. More cities, more events and more activity aren’t signs of progress if they continually require more of my time and resources to sustain them.

I’m still working out how to make this happen, but I’m becoming clearer about what I want the next stage of growth to look like.

I started by thinking about how initiatives spread rather than scale. But taking Lunch Club to other cities has shown me that it’s not enough for the idea to travel. The responsibility needs to travel too.

First, you make room for more people. Then you make room for other people’s ideas.

I think this applies beyond Lunch Clubs. When you’re building a business or bringing people together, are you creating opportunities for others to contribute, or are you still trying to make everything happen yourself?

I still want to be part of Lunch Club’s future, but I just don’t want its future to depend on me.

The next stage of growth isn’t about what I can make happen, but what other people can make possible.