We posted an Instagram video of what happens on one of our Hyde Park walks last week and it went…kinda viral. We weren’t expecting it, we just wanted to create something which showed those looking to attend what they could expect. 

And the initial reaction Dan and I had was, wow. It was almost a proof of concept. It made us both feel really good. As two guys who have to use social media a lot, for both the community and our personal projects, we can often fall into the trap of using it as a means to validate the messages we put out. 

But, having taken a step back, that isn’t what success looks like for us.

Success for the community isn’t ever going to be measured in social media metrics, or clicks, or anything digital at all. It’s about creating meaningful relationships and deeper connections amongst our members. In the real world. 

We would trade a million views on social media for one genuine friendship. And since we’ve been running this group, we’ve seen a lot of those develop - and that’s what makes this worth getting out of bed for. 

It’s worth saying that creating attention and noise around the community is beneficial for us. We’re growing, quickly. And those big viral moments help bring in more members, but also they get the group noticed by influential people. 

As we’ve grown, this has turned into a full time job for both of us. And we want to do everything we can to avoid charging everyone for access to the group. Currently, we make the equivalent of a few hundred pounds a month each from the optional membership tier we have, and we haven’t taken a penny from that so far - it’s all been reinvested back into the community. 

By getting noticed, it means we have more brands interested in working with us, or organisations looking to bring us in to speak to them about the group, our values and everything we’ve learnt. 

Those opportunities then lead to revenue, and revenue means we can make this community sustainable, reward our incredible Connectors, and invest in opportunities like the Pride march in July, or our advocacy work. 

But ultimately, revenue allow us to focus on further growth, which ultimately helps us impact more men, and build more of those meaningful connections we see as the key success metric. Our ambition is to have an S2S member on every street in the UK, and the only way we’ll be able to achieve that is through sustainable growth. 

Tom 

A reminder all of these events are hosted on our dedicated S2S platform: shoulder.mn.co 

We’ve seen huge numbers of new members sign-up to the platform in the last couple of weeks. If you are one of these people - you’ve joined for a reason, and that’s because you want more friendship and connection in your lives. 

We normally see people take around eight weeks from joining to showing up to their first event. And once they show up, they keep showing up. 

The weather is improving, so now’s your chance. Just turn-up. We know how intimidating or daunting it can be, but we can promise you, this community has the power to genuinely make your life better. You’ve just got to take that first step. 

Thanks

Dan and Tom