Scale a Community

This article takes you through my experience with learning how I helped scale Rebel Meetups, an in person meetup community for founders, creators, freelancers + rebels of all kind. Detailing how the project started, my experience with it and the surprising transferable skills gained. 

Key Summary

• The power of networking is real, you never know where it will lead

• Find win, win situations wherever possible

• Trust yourself and in your ability to learn

• People are just that people, no matter what someones position you will always find something you can help with or relate to

• Smile and be open

• Help others to help you, be clear on what you do and how you want to help

How the project started  

Without knowing it, I've been a community builder for most of my life. It certainly wasn't a natural path anyone would have expected me to take.

Growing up, I was very timid and shy, afraid to stand out. While I enjoyed being around people, I hated being the centre of attention, especially with those I didn't know. In fact, at primary school, they created an entirely new 'social speaking class' just for me, so you could say I was an extreme introvert back then. 😅

It's funny how that big "weakness," which I always felt ashamed of, has now become my biggest driver and strength. I intimately understand the desire to fit in while simultaneously wanting to remain invisible.

For me, community building isn't about being the loudest voice in the room; it's about creating spaces where every voice can be heard.

Professionally, my work revolves around learning new things and building confidence in myself and others. This takes many forms - from operations, project management and learning design/ development to community building, and events management.

Regardless of my role I help connect the dots and design environments where everyone's voice can be heard.

So what does this have to do with Rebel Meetups? 

Well, Rebel Meetups is an organisation that facilitates completely free local networking events between creative minds and those those who do things a little differently.

In my opinion, networking needs a rebrand, it’s not a room of businessmen with gelled-back hair and dark suits, looking to sell you anything they can shoving business cards down your throat. In my experience, it’s about genuine connections. Every day people like you and I looking to help another person and share their own experiences and learnings. 

You network every day without ever attending an event, from chatting with your local plumber to meeting a new friend whilst travelling. Each time you meet someone new you add to your ‘network’ of people. Those you know a bit about and who might also know a little bit about you. Networking events are just ways to expand that pool in an intentional setting, and, a bit like a good diet, variety is the spice of life! 

Power of networking

In fact, the power of networking can be demonstrated in my introduction to Ash, the founder of Rebel Meetups, who was introduced to me by our mutual connection Aušrinė, who was first introduced to me by my previous boss Fiona! (small world) 

At that time, I had just finished at my old company and was feeling lost about my next career steps. In fact, I was so unsure that I nearly didn't take a call with Aušrinė because I didn't want to waste her time! However, I'm so glad I did. During our conversation, I expressed my uncertainty and shared my desire to build my own non for profit community called ‘Bristol Connect.’ to bring together the sports, skills, and voluntary opportunities that Bristol has to offer. 

Aušrinė was also mentoring Ash at the time and knew he was looking to transition out of Rebel Meetups to start a new startup and needed someone to step in and take over. Recognising the similarities in our mission to bring together and introduction was made,

One coffee meeting later and the project had began!

My experience with it

Introduction to the company

Our first coffee took place at the Square Club, the venue for our Bristol event.

We spoke about both my background in helping to grow and build The Portfolio Collective, a community platform focused on the future of work, and work creating a leadership development course in the States and how I was now looking to connect more people locally in Bristol.

Ash told me about his vision for Rebel Meet-ups being in every city across the world and its sister brand DFFRNT, the community platform that helps build the soft skills of todays leaders and the leaders of tomorrow.

It all just fit.

I wouldn't have looked for this job, I could never have predicted it was out there. However here we were, and the timing couldn't have been better.

What we started with

When I started we had just one active event, the original Bristol Meet-up, hosted by Ash every 2nd Monday of the month.

COVID had put a halt to all of the international events so despite having 23,000 in our database we were essentially starting from scratch. DFFRNT our membership community had also been dormant for a while, with plenty of room to grow.

Myself and Ash had many a strategy session, both figuring out what direction we thought the company should take, along with what company structure it should have (ie should it remain limited, become a community interest company or charity) and what our partnership would look like. Taking the time to understand how we both worked, our strengths and weaknesses and the gaps we would need to fill at the different stages of it's growth.

One thing that connected us both was the impact we knew it could have.

Most of the UKs' startup funding and ecosystem is still very London centric, we had both seen first hand what local networking events can bring to communities and how those ideas can have massive ripple effects on the local ecosystems, with new business being founded and bringing new work to local areas.

Our first priority was to raise the profile of the events in the UK and reactivate the members we did have.

At my first event, in Bristol April 2023, we had 5 sign ups by the April of the following year we had grown consistently whereby we now consistently get a healthy mix of new and regular attendees - so much so we cap our waiting list to 100 members.

We did this in a few ways,

Firstly, by making sure the events were the best they could be, with interesting fireside chat guests and making sure attendees would want to return and spread the word! But also by:

• Updating our internal messaging on our event platform to make it even more fun and inclusive

• Created email campaigns to remind people to turn up and the benefits of attending the event

• Posted about the events on Linkedin and worked out a larger social strategy

• Unified all of our brand imagery across our Meet-ups to ensure they were all set up the same

• Updated the host handbook, to create a process all hosts could follow when setting up their own events

• Updated the website so it was easier to read and navigate

• Actively searched out new hosts and venue partnerships in other cities

How we scaled:

When Bristol started picking up traction, we worked hard to initiate new cities.

All of our events rely on superstar hosts who are passionate about bringing together their local communities, it's a great way to build a strong personal brand and get even more connected to local businesses in your area.

We also rely on some incredible venues, who volunteer their space out to support the mission, whilst raising their own profile with those who may look to book the space out for future parties, or at the very least buy a drink or two on the night.

however even with an army of volunteers (including ourselves) the steep increase to certain event platforms pricing and additional operational costs meant we struggling to break even.

Alongside Bristol, we created campaigns to attract more superstar volunteers and incredible host venues. Each event runs on a completely voluntary basis. We raise the profile of the

Alongside Bristol I got to launch my very own event, Brixton. I was up in London on another job and with TCN offering up

Not only that but we worked on reactivating dormant groups, and scouting out new locations, with many more in the pipeline.

If you can't find your city please do reach out, we'd love for you to become a host!

We have made a commitment to keep these events completely free and accessible for anyone to attend, regardless of their background.

This does present one problem, that's right money…

To scale these events we would need to find alternative avenues of funding that could support it's expansion, as even with an army of volunteers (including ourselves) the steep increase to certain event platforms pricing and additional operational costs meant we struggling to break even.

How do we scale at the same rate, whilst maintaining our mission?

Since starting we've approached many models, sponsorship with talks with large corporate sponsors such as American Express, Tik-Tok and Barclays to smaller local organisations. We've explored community grants, Patreon and even angel investment. Each conversation and has been super valuable in how we shape and structure the organisation and we're forever grateful to the sponsors who've kept us going 💕

We both believe that any arrangement should have a clear win-win outcome for each party. From the brand awareness and recognition of our INCREDIBLE volunteers and venues, it's so much fun thinking of ways to recognise people and bring them together.

For now we are concentrating on 3 things, sponsorship, gaining more members to the DFFRNT platform and looking into switching up the company structure from a limited company to a CIC community interest company (CIC), Charity, or Community interest organisation (CIO) among others.

The most memorable and creative connection of a win win win scenario was with a Whiskey tasting event we facilitated in support of the launch of the local spirit shop in Bristol, Spirited. This brought likely customers to the shop and improved their brand recognition, Connected local business people in the area for a fun night of learning and also allowed us to keep them in the loop with what we were working on and our future plans.

Through this process I learned

• Navigating compromise in uncertain agreements with transparency and trust.

• Growth marketing + comms structure

• How to value my time, a company and understand investors

• Fairness

• The impact networking has

• business structures and when to use them

• user experience, workflows and data modelling

• power of people and volunteers when behind a mission

• public speaking and launching an event in a new city

• partnership management

• helping train volunteers, create resources and empower them to make asks and grow their communities.

• help individuals feel comfortable at events.