Remote/Local Community Building

Finding Communities When Travelling

I love to travel. Sometimes I end up in a strange city all by myself, knowing absolutely no one. That's when I go out to find an existing community that I can join. Because it's really difficult to build any sort of community if it's just you. Luckily, if I'm interested in something, there's bound to be people out there interested in the same thing, regardless of location.

Finding communities isn't just for my own pleasure, of course. Whenever we land in a new city with my company or whatever group I'm travelling with, I'm quickly able to spearhead our integration with the local population. I can find the good restaurants and entertainment, shops and groceries, and the best places to work and meet great co-workers.

Here are some of my favorite methods for entering new communities. These work in any mildly developed city.

1. Meet People On The Street

This is something highly personal to me. When I started my journey around the world, I didn't know anyone. I had very few professional contacts, practically no friends and no idea what to do with my life. I very literally went out and chatted up complete strangers if they looked interesting. I met some beautiful girls (which obviously this was my main motivation at first), but very soon this very crude and inaccurate way of networking landed me my first real marketing gig.

2. Visit Co-Working Spaces

Nowadays, whenever I travel to a new city, I look up the local co-working space. More often than not, co-working spaces are hotspots for entrepreneurs and interesting people. It's a great way to quickly immerse myself into local communities and invite people into my own communities.

The Impact Hub in Budapest has become my favorite base of operations in the area. Every time I go there, I meet some amazing person or come up with a new business idea. It's been the birthplace of many amazing events.

3. Find Common Hobbies

It's surprisingly rare that people would look for friends through common hobbies. Especially people who spend a lot of time on the computer often forget that almost every city has a community for their particular hobby, however rare the hobby might seem. In Zagreb I had a difficult time finding poker players, so I made a deal with a local pub to host a poker evening on Tuesday nights. It was never a problem filling up the table, so eventually they started hosting a game every night. Met some crazy people that way!

Poker is quite popular these days, so finding a game isn't difficult. Another somewhat niche-community we created in Budapest was "NES Players Budapest," where we gathered up with a dozen or so people to play old Nintendo games once a week.

4. Find The Local Toastmasters

Toastmasters is an international community of people who give speeches to each other. They have a contingent in nearly every city. It's a great way to not just meet people, but keep your socializing skills sharp. Forcing yourself to speak about a topic for 5-10 minutes in front of strangers is a wonderful way to stay non-complacent.

If there isn't a Toastmasters to be found, you can easily create a local group. It's a great way to get together with people who love to challenge themselves and grow.

5. Visit A Fun Restaurant

You gotta eat, right? Talk to a local guide and find a good restaurant that the locals frequent. Ask the waiter where they go after hours. Ask the bartender what they do for fun. A restaurant is a lively space with all sorts of random visitors, you're bound to find your next adventure here.

My Professional Communities

When I was working as a freelancer, one of my main ways of getting clients was joining a local community related to Wordpress development, Javascript, AI tools or whatever project I'm working on at the moment.

Here are some of the communities that we started.

Digital Marketing Community Barcelona

What started as 5 guys meeting up to talk about Wordpress, grew into a local digital marketing meetup. My content marketing expertise was enough to become a sort of local authority on the topic, which lead to a handful of client relationships.

Private Investors Budapest

Spending time at the Impact Hub, I found myself teaching and learning from many entrepreneurs. Among them were private equity investors, looking for startups to invest in. We decided to create a brainstorming group to think of business ideas and possible targets of investment capital.

Freelance Copywriters of Budapest

I was trying to make it as a freelance copywriter at one point in time. But I found myself

Digital Marketeers - Budapest

Because of my involvement with Thrive Themes, I had a lot of knowledge on the content marketing front. Again, at the Impact Hub, I realized plenty of people needed help in this area. So we started meeting up every week to workshop a particular marketing problem. We became the Marketeers of Budapest.

My Online Communities

As a marketer, I have to know how to create and manage audiences online. While I'm much more comfortable meeting up with people in real life, some of my coaching endeavours have resulted in online groups of decent size.

2017 - Heartful Entrepreneur Community

During my endeavours to become a 6-figure freelancer, I met a lot of copywriters. While I was supposed to pitch my copywriting skills to potential clients, I found myself coaching existing copywriters instead. I created this group for freelancers and copywriters who are fiercely independent and want to do their own thing. The point was to share advice on building a personally branded business, which is incredibly important in copywriting. The group was a mild success, with 5k people at one time, but has since died down.

2020 - Youtube Channel For Introvert Relationship Advice

At one point, I wanted to become a Youtuber to help introverts and developers form healthy relationships, romantic or otherwise. I created 100 videos about relationships and mature emotions. The channel had 2000 subscribers at most, but it was attracting a crowd I didn't feel comfortable with so it's been on hiatus ever since.

I feel there's a way to build a relationship coaching community with healthier fundamentals, and I may return to the project if I ever find that way.