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Fighting Social Isolation And Loneliness: The Importance Of Good Processes And Hosting In Community Leadership
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- [00:02]
New Books Network Host
Hey, NBN listeners. We're running our 2026 New Books Network Audience Survey, and we'd love just a few minutes of your time. NBN has been bringing you in depth conversations with authors and scholars for over 15 years. We haven't done a comprehensive audience survey since 2022, and a lot has changed since then. It's time to hear from you again. Here's why we're asking. We want to understand who's listening, what subjects and podcasts you love most, and where you'd like to see us grow. Your responses help us tell NBN's story to the publishers, libraries, and institutions we partner with when we can show that our listeners are serious readers, lifelong learners, and heavy library users. It opens doors to new partnerships, better resources, and ultimately a stronger NBN for everyone. And one more thing. If you leave your email address at the end of the survey, you'll be entered to win a $100 gift card to bookshop.org, a chance to stock up on books while supporting independent bookstores at the same time. The survey takes just five minutes. Your answers are confidential and your email will never be shared. Head to newbooksnetwork.com to take the survey today. We really appreciate your support. Now go take the survey.
- [01:15]
Alexander Goldman
Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:20]
Richard Lucas
Normally on this channel, you'll hear Richard Lucas interviewing interesting guests. In this one, you'll hear Richard being interviewed on another podcast about community management and leadership, a topic close to his heart. Many thanks to Alexander Goldman for giving permission to share his podcast here on the NBN Friendship Apps Akai. Community, Belonging, Happiness, Family, Passion Connecting Beyond Apps and AI.
- [01:57]
Alexander Goldman
Welcome everyone to the podcast Connecting Beyond Apps and AI. Today we have Richard Lucas, whom I met through a mutual community called the Social Connection Collective. He's a business and social entrepreneur and we'll talk about how he interacts with communities and creates and manages communities and what he's learned and all of that. For more of an introduction, I will turn it over to Richard. So Richard, thanks. Take it away. Tell us a bit about yourself.
- [02:23]
Richard Lucas
Nice to be chatting again, Alexander. So, yes, I'm Richard. I'm 59 years old, dual national, Polish, British. I live in Portugal in Lisbon right now. And in terms of what I do, it's always a little bit complicated because I do many different things, but broadly speaking, in entrepreneurship. I started my first business when I was a schoolboy and then, as always, was into the idea that business was an easier life than working for other people, which I'm not sure is true, but that's what I believed when I went into it. And so I've set up more than 35 ventures in my life. I'm an expert in failure reject bankruptcy, not personal bankruptcy, but many of the ventures I started failed. The ones that have worked have around 100 million euros revenue. That's slightly more than $100 million revenue. B2B tech companies in the United States and Europe, primarily in parallel to that. I call myself a social entrepreneur because I've always been active in doing things beyond the stuff that just happens, organized by other people. I was a TEDx organizer. I organized 30 TEDx events under license from Ted.com in Poland when I lived there. I have been active in entrepreneurship support ecosystems and then also in recent years, projects more to do with fighting social isolation and loneliness, which is the dimension through which we met. And looking back at it, I would say the reason I got involved in all the entrepreneurship and social isolation stuff was that I was addressing problems that I'd experienced myself that as a. As a child I was quite isolated for various I went to a boarding school in the holidays, I was in a village where I didn't know people. And when I was interested in business as a child, there was absolutely no one in our social circle. My parents knew who was active in business. So I was very aware of the fact that it's good to be able to have access to people who can support and advise you in the things you're trying to do. Yeah.
- [04:20]
Alexander Goldman
And kind of diving into some of the social connection work that you do. I know you organize open coffee meetups in Lisbon. There's a Cambridge Alumni Entrepreneur network that you coordinate. And there's also a Newcomer Welcome Club in Lisbon. And first question is just what unites those three social enterprise things?
- [04:42]
Richard Lucas
So I suppose what unites them? I'm the founder of them. It's my. My approach approach. And I've got. I'm a very ambitious person in the sense that if I'm trying to do something, I want to do things that are better than things were before. So a lot of the entrepreneurship events and the community events that I see organized in different contexts around the world have organizational problems, which means that even though they're better than nothing, they're not as good as they could be. And I give particular credit to the Ted.com organization in the way they support TedX is that if you go on to TedX.com and do put a link in the show notes, there's a section about how to organize a TEDx and it's extremely detailed and structured. And as a business person, I really appreciate good processes. And it explains everything from team management to how to organize a venue to how to do registration, how to do marketing, how to find speakers, how to prepare speakers, there's a battery, it's like a manual for a franchise, like how to do a business. And so one of the things that unites these projects, the Newcomers Welcome Club, the Open Coffee Meetups, and the Cam Entrepreneurs Project that supports business and social entrepreneurship among Cambridge University and others worldwide through volunteer led chapters, is a lot of attention to the participant experience. We don't call them attendees, we call them participants. And that includes things like really clear welcoming processes. So as people arrive within seconds, obviously we might get things wrong, but in principle what we're aiming for is that within seconds someone will walk up to them. And then I train people in how to welcome them. So opening question is something like, have you come for the event? And people typically, they're looking at their phone, at their registration ticket and they're ready to show it to someone and say yes. And then just a joke like, well, congratulations. And they say, well, what? You've succeeded in your objective. You wanted to come to open Coffee Lisbon, you succeeded, well done. And just that sort of like a little light joke and then sort of question like giving people a nice big badge with a logo on, writing their name nice and big so it's easy for see. But then follow up questions, not just like, where are you from, if you don't mind me asking? Like, there's a lot of intolerance and discrimination based on nationality. This is, although it's particularly bad in some countries at the moment, it's not a new thing. And I always say, like, if you're a white, I guess you're a North American, I'm a white North European, you may be quite used to being welcome. But if someone comes from Afghanistan through to Zambia, if someone says, where are you from? If you don't mind me asking? And then wherever they're from, you say, well, you're really welcome here. That might be something that we're used to feeling, but someone from Chad or from, you know, Kuala Lumpur may not always get that. So these little touch points make a difference. I always say we turn the participants into the product. So as people arrive, one of the other questions in the playbook is, do you know many people here? And if that, usually people say no. And if they say no, you say, well, don't worry, let me introduce you to someone. And you grab the, you just Take them by the elbow, steer them towards someone else who's there and say, look, this is Alexander from Seattle. He just told me he doesn't know anyone here. Can you be nice to them? And then the key thing is you retreat. People look a bit surprised. And there's a passive aggressive joke in that playbook because the implication subconsciously is had I not asked that person to be nice, it was not on their agenda. But they don't realize, so it slightly tickles their sense of pride. And, and you know, you sort of see people, of course I can be nice, like how dare you imply that I couldn't be. But they're not. That's in there going on in their subconscious. Yes, of course, but then you can go back to welcoming other guests, but what you're doing is then shaping the room. Because as new people arrive, they walk into a room where people are talking to each other. And if you leave people alone, and this is a point I make again and again against the laissez faire approach to an event organization, if you leave people alone, the two things they'll do is either get out their phone because they don't want to look like they don't know anyone, or they'll talk to the people they already know, which isn't good for the people who don't know anyone. And I say as a guideline, we want to make our events work for the shy person who might be wondering whether they should even come to the event, because if it works for them, the self confident people who've got contacts already will already know people. I know because we talked about this before. There's a book called the Art of Gathering by Priya Parker about the importance of having a sense of what the purpose of a gathering is. But in my case it's bringing people together. So you, you have structure and process designed to facilitate that. And things like regular icebreakers where you clap your hands or blow a whistle, say describe your favorite relative and why and people don't normally do that. And as you get people talking about these topics, the idea is you're making, as I said, the people who are in the event the product, but also getting people away from just being passive receivers of information, but co creators and discovering interesting things about the other people that.
- [09:51]
Alexander Goldman
Yeah, so, so a lot to dive into there first is I'm actually planning on doing a TEDx talk sometime this year, so I'm very excited.
- [09:58]
Richard Lucas
Well, I just, I'll say that if you, if you want, and you don't mind me being Blunt I've prepared more than 50 people to give a TEDx talk and maybe the TEDx has its own speaker prep program in which case they'll look after you. But if you want an independent person willing I like being helpful. Like for me it's a you know I've got so much experience in that area it's a pleasure to share it with someone new and also because I've met you a couple of times online and I know that you're doing interesting things I susp you'd be an interesting
- [10:24]
Alexander Goldman
person to work with at least around interesting people. Very least. But yeah, no, I love that. One of the questions that I was going to ask later and I think we started touching on this is simply what is a community And I think everything that you mentioned around this process, the inviting people to get involved, this very deliberate workflow almost for when someone arrives at an event to me highlights the fact that a community is intrinsically not about top down organization. It's about how people in the community connect with each other and that the top down focus is around facilitating that and establishing culture and ensuring that that culture is adhered to. But then it's also about inviting that participation because if there's no participation in that culture then people are simply attendees. They're not participants.
- [11:16]
Richard Lucas
As you mentioned I'm not what you might call a credentialed academic I'd say are built around shared experiences and share and there's a strong sense of being something you contribute to that. You know, if you're even if you're a member of a sports fan club you're showing up and what you're contrib you might be just showing up and cheering for your team. Avatar is like incredibly popular films. If you just watch it that's not you're not part of a community. You have something in common with the other people who watch it. But if you join a fan club of people who dress up as, you know, weird creatures like there's a Star wars fans community then you're part of something that you're. You're sort of you're consciously choosing to join. But importantly there's a kind of community infrastructure. Some of the key pillars of the community will be gathering places but there might be other resources information nodes like a notice board or a community Facebook group. In the days when Facebook wasn't quite as journalists, local politicians, the school institutions are part of the makeup of a local community. I think of it in terms of an ecosystem. If you're trying to start something New, you're looking at a. You. You feel there's an unmet need and understanding who can be your allies in that process is important. But also you might be treading on
- [12:38]
Alexander Goldman
people's toes, definitely, and bridging off of that. I think the point that you make about being a contributor and that's what it means to be a part of a community, is particularly question for a lot of people. They have this mindset of showing up somewhere as almost a consumer of an event. And if they are a contributor, if they are a participant, they are asked to do something that makes them go out of their way. There is for some people less of a. A social fluency around the value of that and a comfort with that in a world that's really transactional. But I think that gets us to this next interesting question, which is obviously you're a businessman, you are an organizer of communities, and it seems like the profit motive doesn't really drive your actions. In a lot of these communities that you organize, is business at odds with community? How do you reconcile these priorities? Do they live in the same world?
- [13:35]
Richard Lucas
There's an interesting and quite complicated question before we move on to that. When people sign up to the events I organize, I always try to make sure they're asked a question like are they interested in contributing? And different people have different things to bring. For some people, their contribution is simply showing up. And you're glad to have people who simply show up slightly. It might be so they're more of a consumer than a contributor, but if they loyally show up, that still is not nothing. I wouldn't be too binary on the community roles and contribution, but it's obviously you need to have people who are contributing and leading it. Coming onto the subsequent question you asked about, I don't see a conflict between business and nonprofit activity. And in the world I live in, there's a certain Persona of someone who's made enough money in business to be able to put time and effort into community projects without having to be too mindful of whether they're paid to do it. There are other people in this space for whom their community activities is their living. And there's a whole enormous industry of grant giving organizations, whether it's a local, national, international or foundation. And probably there are other categories I haven't thought of, but those are to my mind, the big oh, corporate sponsorship, people who put together projects we should call nonprofit projects, but they need grants in order to do them. I do recognize in a lot of the voluntary projects that I'm involved in that. There's a tricky, an unresolved issue. I'd say there are people who want to be involved but at some level they can't afford it. They've got their job. I have good volunteer team members quit because they're under pressure from their partners and to stop doing voluntary stuff when they're barely making enough money to pay the bills. So it's complex and there's no automatic conflict for some their idea of the community as a walled garden where they're only going to let people in if they've got enough money. And once you're in, you're going to mix with wealthy people. And there's a clear, there's a clear value prop for that. But it's a different type of thing than the thing I'm interested in. I think there was once an American society social psychologist who said the great thing about being in a free society is you're free to be wrong and people are free to go off in a direction that doesn't appeal to me. I don't want to stop them, provided they're not being damaging. Right.
- [16:02]
Alexander Goldman
So connected to that, a couple related questions. One is that oftentimes what drives the expansion of initiatives is. Is some kind of profit motive. So you have a business and then the business scales and particularly in the social connection space. I personally think that's a question that remains to be resolved around how do we drive expansion of successful initiatives or impactful initiatives beyond following that profit motive.
- [16:34]
Richard Lucas
I think this is an extremely interesting and important question and I don't know the answer. And I believe that everywhere around the world should have a newcomer welcome Club. Many of the biggest cities I've been to, there are a number of initiatives which to some extent meet these needs and there are people organizing stuff. Often the community organizers have got some kind of profit motive or they've got an ego motive. It gives them a chance to be somebody in there, be a sort of gatekeeper in their community. And you know, sometimes there's a venture venue they've got like it's a co working space. They see that this is a kind of funnel for people to come to their co working space. So the community stuff is positive PR suited for something that is for profit. Other times it's, quote, more genuine, unquote. You know, the person who founded the cafe genuinely wanted their cafe to be a community hub. I think that the key question, and if we both stay involved in this collective that we met through and it's something that I'm extremely Interested in exploring is ruthless transparency on how things are funded. Because I have the TED to TEDx model. TED and TEDx is a world of cross subsidy. TED charges a lot of money to go to TED events. Just a regular ticket to go to Ted is 12 and a half thousand dollars plus the travel and accommodation. So you know, you can imagine it's a $10 million budget if they, if they have 800 people going, a small fortune. But they do the TEDx project for free, they give away the licenses for free and TEDxS have to fund themselves locally. I always say that TEDx is a tremendous repulse to the idea that everyone does everything for money because you're not allowed to make money on your TEDx and sponsors are not allowed to speak. There are examples of really strong nonprofit initiatives that work at scale. The fact that it's locally resourced means that TED doesn't have to shop with a checkbook. And very often I see in the nonprofit space you get well funded initiatives that sort of grow quite nicely and then they, then the funding stops and the thing collapses. Several people who spoke on my TEDx stage were leading anti loneliness or antisocial isolation projects like Yorkie Dads for Dads Raising Children or the Chatty Cafe Scheme or Village in the City. And in each case the question of whether they were going to be raising money so people could pay themselves salaries to run the thing was important to me because you can get a big grant and suddenly you've got an office and you've got people on who've quit their jobs to run it and their priority can move from the thing they were doing to raising enough money to keep going. I don't know if you know about Khan Academy sale, the story of how as a hedge fund manager he was very proud about the fact he was doing it in his spare time and doing it for free. And some donor said this is not sustainable long run. You have to raise enough money to work at this full time and to hire people who are good. So I mean for me, Khan Academy model works, the TED model works. If I haven't found a way of scaling the things that I do beyond the quite sort of word of mouth level. So when people come to my events, I always say if you want to do this in another city, I will help you. In the case of my Cambridge University alumni project, it's, you know, this year we'll be launching in Tokyo, Singapore, New Delhi, relaunching in Warsaw and Istanbul and I can afford to go there to help with the launches, because I've made some money in business. But in the long run we need a donor to at least cover the expenses so whoever takes over from me can support it. So a long answer to a simple question, I haven't found the answer, but I think it's extremely important and making sure things are efficient and low cost and you aren't paying people just because you can. You're paying people to do things which really must be funded is really important. Yeah.
- [20:26]
Alexander Goldman
I think going back to everything you said about the TEDx model as well, the fact that they provide all of these resources and the clarity over what it means to engage with that TEDx brand and the process and the rules, I think is really relevant from a scalability question because if you have an initiative like TEDx, there is a way for that to grow because people want to be involved in that. But in order to be involved, there is a lot of protocol around ensuring that that brand isn't diluted and that the motives are clear, as you mentioned. Whereas imagine if there was like a fast food restaurant and anyone could open up a branch of it or say that they were associated with it. You would have no expectations or visibility into what actually brings people there. Next question we should go into is just really straightforward. What is a newcomer welcome?
- [21:20]
Richard Lucas
The idea is very simple, that when you arrive in a new place, it's great to have a place you can go where you will be welcomed. And in traditional English villages, sometimes you have a coffee morning organized by something like the Women's Institute in the local church hall or the village hall. But in this mobile global world we live in, there are an awful lot of people who are somewhere new. In a big city like Lisbon, there are a lot of digital nomads working remotely and. But this world, they have a lot of meetups with very little process and structure and they're very intimidating, very loud. And they're also not very inclusive because you need to have a bit of money to go and you're really better off if you're quite good looking and you're aged between about 18 and 35, there are people who feel too old or they don't quite fit in. And so the idea of a place to go where you'll be welcome is the first thing, but it's also for other people who want to welcome them. So it's for newcomers and welcoming people who want to meet newcomers. The second thing is that it's inclusive in the sense there's a lot of activities to make it work for people who are a bit shy. So icebreakers badges. A structured bit of the meeting where someone with a microphone, that's me or another host is saying, okay, find someone you don't know. Get into groups of three or four and talk about the favorite place in the place you're from or if you're, you know, a bit, you come from somewhere really shitty, the nastiest place in the place you're from and why. So you're engineering lots of interactions and we just do that for the first half of the meeting and then in the second half of the meeting people can follow up the people they want to chat to more. And a slot for community announcements. And I always say if anyone's got a community announcement, there's some kind of project they want to talk about. You have that in the programming. About halfway through, just let me know. And it's. It shouldn't be too commercial, but it's good to give people a chance to go on the stage. And that's the idea. It spread to one or two other places. But the issue of finding someone who has the commitment and the patience to do that. There's a concept of hosting skills. I already mentioned Mark McCo and I'm going to introduce you to him. He wrote a book on hosting and he's a member of a really interesting community called a leading member of something called Sunday assembly, which is a church for people who don't believe in God. And the two founders, Pippa Anderson and Sanderson Jones, were stand up comedians and they were on their way to a gig and just chatting. Found out that both when they'd been kids, there'd been churchgoers for slightly different reasons. But they said it's a pity I no longer believe because I really miss that sense of community around church. And then one of them said, wouldn't it be great if there was a thing like church where you didn't have to believe in God? And there was a bit of a silence and then they, for quite a few years they set it up and it was very successful and spread to multiple cities and it still exists. If you google sundayassembly.org or.com, one of their. But they instead of a sermon, they have an improving talk. Instead of hymns, they sing pop songs. Instead of prayer, they have a bit of meditation and then they have coffee and biscuits afterwards. And it's a really nice, attractive idea. But Pippa and Sanderson had hosting skills. This is something that Mark pointed out. And also had strong values and independent life out of this and in some of the chapters there were issues of culty type people and you know, what are the acceptable rules about touching and so on in my community, I make very clear in bold, this is not a singles dating night. And of course, you know, many people want to meet people, but we felt, I felt and the team felt that we need to be explicit that you know, this is not the purpose of our event. Our event is to get people together in sort of non dating types communities. And anyone who's looking at organizing this needs to think about this quite carefully because you need guidelines, housekeeping rules, you know, what happens if people violate them. The Newcomers Welcome Club is for newcomers in town and people who want to welcome them. And if anyone listening to this wants to have a chat about, you know, I've got slides and badges and ready made formats up to a point I might, you know, if a few people get in touch with you and say, hey, can I reach out to Richard? I might do a zoom briefing. I've done that sort of thing before.
- [25:36]
Alexander Goldman
Cool. Yeah. When I first heard the idea of the Newcomers Welcome Club, I think, oh my, I thought, oh my God, why doesn't that exist everywhere? So let's transition to sharing. If you have any stories from someone who came to the Newcomers Welcome Club and the impact that that club has had on people's experiences in Lisbon.
- [25:58]
Richard Lucas
Yes. I mean they don't just exist in Lisbon. Someone responded to my Seth Godin advert and I went to Spokane in Washington State. Sometimes there are things that important that can't be measured. There's. You can tell. I could just buy the feeling in the room. Comedians talk about being able to read the room and host can read the room that you can see that people are engaged and happy, talk in conversation with people. And I know that we live in a world in which there's a loneliness epidemic. And I also know that the way I or we run the events addresses a lot of the problems that people have if they go to a regular meetup. Also, I believe there's tremendous leadership development potential in organizing events that if you run a company, you've got the tool of money and hiring and firing people to motivate people. But if you're running a voluntary project, you're trying to motivate people to, to work to a common purpose through force of ideas, through inspiration. Learning how to get other people to work well and effectively is an incredibly powerful skill. And I see again and again and again in different, not just a Newcomer Welcome Club, but I can't. I'D love to be able to say that. I've got 171 people who measure, you know, moved up the loneliness scale. And Mark McCoy talked about the professionals slightly, maybe slightly pejoratively, when he was talking about community evaluators because he said that quite often you get people who have jobs to evaluate community building. And there are struggling volunteers who are trying to run the voluntary project as a side thing who really don't have the time to sit down and answer question after question after question about the impact. And so I would love to be able to say I can really prove it, but I know it's true even if I can't prove it.
- [27:54]
Alexander Goldman
I think that's a really good point, that there's also the outcome and the return for the person organizing and they have more of a clear sense. I also do think that there's direct metrics, which is repeat attendance and all of those factors. So let's transition to talk about positive futures and wrapping up. What would the world look more people could find and join good communities?
- [28:18]
Richard Lucas
Well, I would say it would look better than it does now. But in order for that to happen, people listening and people who are pondering how to make their lives better need to be more proactive and say what would happen if more people were proactive in forming and leading communities. And Derek Cyvers gave a fantastic TED talk called the First Follower where he said that an underrated form of leadership is find finding someone doing something incredible and helping them. The. The. He says the, the first follower turns the lone nut into a leader. And you know, it doesn't have to be you who founds it, but simply engaging with other community projects and helping, helping them. Whether it's welcoming people, writing badges, doing social media, doing videos, writing a blog post, volunteers are always looking for extra people. And so I'd say what it looks like is more people feel it's not just for someone else to solve, for the government to solve, for the local government to solve, but they have a co responsibility to do this. So I'd say what does it look like? And more people move towards being creators rather than consumers of community value. And the first thing is to engage at all. But as you engage, ask yourself the question, how can I help? And go to the people in charge and say how can I help? And the world just look, you know, the world becomes slightly less fragmented and slightly less lonely. And if it takes off at scale, then everywhere in the world does have a new coming welcome club. But right now I don't have the mechanisms in place to identify the right people to be those people. And I think even now, having done this for many years, a lot of people don't realize, just don't realize how much better an event can be if it's done with a bit of process and thought.
- [30:04]
Alexander Goldman
That's beautiful. And I think that that'll also serve as our wrap up question, which was what? What was the, what's the message you would like to leave listeners with? And I don't know if you want to add to that, but I also thought that your point about the importance of just getting involved and supporting others. Great point.
- [30:20]
Richard Lucas
Yeah. And I'd say that I have a few online resources like a community newsletter or blog that people can sign up to. I'm interested in working with leaders. People come to me and say, how can I help? That's great. But my biggest impact is working with leaders. So if there are people out here who like the sound of what they've heard and want to reach out, I will find the time to have a discussion. I can't guarantee I can help you, but I help a lot of other people. And so maybe someone listening do this, will do this. And if someone somewhere hears this and sets up a group in their town somewhere in Asia, Africa, Europe, South America, I'll be genuinely happy to think of that as a positive outcome. Because I love being useful and I love the idea idea that an idea can spread. As Isaac Newton said, if I have an apple and you have an apple and we swap apples, we've each got an apple. But if I have an idea and you have an idea and we swap ideas, we've both got two ideas. And there's a beauty about the low cost spread of ideas. And thank you very much, Alexander, for inviting me on the show.
- [31:22]
Alexander Goldman
Thank you, Richard. Thank you so much. Okay,
- [31:30]
Richard Lucas
Sam,