Hi Subscriber First Name,

Last week I wrote about measurement, about the metrics we inherit and whether they actually serve us. The exam grades, the follower counts, the performance ratings. And I ended with the idea that the richest parts of a human (or the broader natural world) can’t be measured.

This week that thinking’s expanded into something bigger than the individual.

‘Community’ has been a concept I’ve become increasingly curious about and I've noticed the different metrics people use to measure its success. We count members, followers, ticket sales, open rates. And those numbers can look very healthy right up until the moment you actually need people and then find out how many of them were really there.

The true measure of a community is much simpler and much harder to track, who shows up when the chips are down? Not when it's fun and photogenic but when showing up costs something.

Last week I was at the amazing You Are The Media Creator Day in Poole which is my friend Mark Masters' annual gathering of creators, writers and people who've chosen to build something worth saying. The theme this year was community. YATM itself is a great example of what genuine connection looks like where people invest in each other, not just in being seen.

I'm an active part of this community and was privileged to host a short film screening during the day. Made by talented local filmmaker Arianna King called ‘Brewed by the Coast’ and it told the story of a small local brewery that was loved but by the end of the film we learned it had closed.

It didn’t close because the people who loved it didn't show up, they did. But there weren't enough of them. Many people choose chain offerings over independents because we've learned to follow the path of least resistance. And the quirky, characterful and human things slowly become unviable, not through hostility but through indifference. Through a million small choices made in the direction of convenience (each one perfectly reasonable in isolation) they become collectively devastating.

I've long admired the work of Jon Alexander, who wrote Citizens and speaks directly to this theme. So I was genuinely delighted to meet Jon in person for the first time last week…

Like me, Jon spent the early part of his career in marketing and advertising before having a deep reckoning that redirects a life. His argument is that we've been living as ‘Consumers’ - passive, waiting, choosing from menus prepared by others. But he makes the point that we're capable of living as ‘Citizens’ - people who actively shape the places, relationships and organisations we belong to.

Many of us want the independent brewery to survive, we just don't always behave like it.

And all of this makes me genuinely grateful to be part of the communities I belong to and to be co-creating new ones.

At the hardest points in my life, I didn't really have much community. I shut myself off for my own survival and I became an island to avoid the pain of being disappointed or abandoned. Much of that stems from losing my mum at the age of 17, she was the leader of my familial community and when she died I was left with very little. I didn't have the energy to belong to something that could ultimately vanish again.

But my journey of healing has given me the strength to be vulnerable, to show up and grow with people rather than watch from the sidelines. I also came to see that when I had a big marketing budget in my corporate days, I sometimes thought I was in a community but I wasn't. I was a sales target for people who lacked integrity.

So when I look back at my mum’s notebook I found in a box, I'm reminded of her wisdom. She was an OG hippy who talked about systems change, social injustice and how change comes from reciprocity and hope.

Or in other words, love and connection. That idea now sits at the heart of all my work.

Here's something from her notebook:

Seems relevant and important to remember when the world feels heavy.

It connects to something I read a few years ago. In ‘How to Resist: Turn Protest into Power’, Matthew Bolton argues that the great figures of history like Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King and Gandhi were never solitary acts of heroic courage. They were people embedded in rich cultures of community organisation, long before the moment history remembers them for. The courage was theirs but the infrastructure of solidarity belonged to everyone around them.

The people on the fringes learned something essential, that they had to show up for each other because nobody else would. Reciprocity wasn't a nice idea for them, it was survival.

I find that hopeful because it means real community has always been built from the edges inward. It has never needed to be large to be powerful, it has needed to have meaning for the people involved.

That's what we're building with The Natural Network as it’s not a business model but something the people who want to work and live differently genuinely need. And it's what I love about being part of the community at Four Acre Farm.

What Kate and Molly have built there isn't just a market garden, it's more like a collective dream coming into being. The volunteers who come to weed and mulch aren't just helping, they're contributing to something that exists partly because of them. The seasonal rhythm of the gatherings isn't marketing, it's the ritual that holds the thing together.

And if you'd like to be part of these emerging communities, here's what's coming up:

Upcoming Events

The Natural Network at Patch

28th May: 10am - 12pm at Patch. Tickets here

This month our guest speaker is Dr Sukanya Ayatakshi-Endow from Bournemouth University, whose work on inclusive entrepreneurship asks exactly what we’ve explored today - what would it look like if we designed our business communities the way healthy ecosystems work?Rather than around one dominant species thriving at others' expense, but around diversity, reciprocity and the invisible relationships that let the whole system flourish?

We’d love you to come and join us.

The Natural Network at Four Acre Farm

26th June: 9.30am - 1.30pm at Four Acre Farm. Tickets here

To take this thinking even further, we’ll be gathering again on the farm. This feels like a community where people have a stake in the flourishing - the more we share, the more we get back. And the momentum definitely feels like it’s growing.

If you’d like more information, please reply to this email and we can arrange a no pressure chat about the day. Plus, as a newsletter subscriber you get a £20 discount using the code - Naturalnetwork20

Wrapping up

The people who loved that brewery showed up and the community was real. It just wasn't quite big enough to hold the thing it loved.

That's not a failure of people, it's a question about choices - the small, daily ones most of us make without thinking. Where we spend our money, which businesses we walk past and which we walk into and whether we buy from the person we know or click the easier option at midnight.

None of those feel like political acts in the moment. But collectively, they're the difference between a community that sustains itself and one that gathers to mourn what it lost.

So maybe the question is simply this - does how I spend my time, my attention or my money reflect what I actually value? And if not, what's one thing I could do differently this week?

Until next week, keep tending to those roots.

Nick

Well that’s it for another week. But we don’t have to stop there.

Here’s how we can continue the conversation:

• If you like this newsletter, please share it with someone who might like it too.

• If someone forwarded this to you, please Click here to subscribe.

• If we’re not already connected on LinkedIn then come and find me here.

• Instagram more your thing? Please come and follow me here.

• Looking for a deeper connection and would like to work with me? Just reply to this email or click here to start a conversation.