Ten years.
It feels strange even writing that.
When The Business Culture Hull & East Yorkshire began in January 2016, I had an idea in my head that was actually much bigger than networking.
I wanted to bring people together.
Not just businesses. People.
I remembered a time when communities felt like communities. When people knew each other, looked out for each other and felt that they belonged somewhere.
I wanted to recreate some of that within the business community of Hull and East Yorkshire.
A place where your background didn't matter. Where the size of your business didn't matter. Where whether you employed 200 people or worked from the spare bedroom didn't determine your worth in the room.
And I wanted there to be a real sense of pride in Hull and the surrounding area.
I also wanted to bring two worlds closer together that, at the time, seemed to operate almost independently of one another - business and culture.
That was actually where the name The Business Culture came from.
Business was always secondary
That might sound like an odd thing for someone running a business organisation to say.
But I genuinely believe it.
Business is secondary. People come first.
Because when people get to know each other, something happens.
We begin to trust each other.
We understand each other.
We want to help each other.
And eventually, quite naturally, we do business together.
You don't need to force it.
You don't need targets telling people how many referrals they must pass. You don't need to measure the value of every conversation.
Build the community first.
The business follows.
That was the idea in 2016, and ten years later, we believe it more strongly than ever.
Maybe our backgrounds had something to do with it
Michelle and I come from fairly ordinary backgrounds.
I grew up on a council estate. Michelle grew up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.
Different places and very different experiences, but there was something our childhoods had in common.
Community mattered.
People knew their neighbours. People talked to each other. There was a sense of belonging and of looking out for those around you.
Perhaps that's why this has always mattered so much to both of us.
The original idea for The Business Culture may have started in my head, but Michelle shared the vision from the beginning.
Her question was a very practical one: "It sounds great, Tony... but how are we actually going to make any money from it?"
And to be fair, it was a very good question!
Because I wasn't thinking about building a conventional networking business. I was thinking about building a community - and working out how you turn that into a sustainable business was another matter entirely.
But we did.
And a couple of years later, Michelle believed in what we were creating enough to leave her job and join the business full-time.
From then on, we've continued to shape and build The Business Culture together.
The original vision became our shared mission - and ten years later, the belief behind it is stronger than ever.
Somewhere along the way, we've become less connected
There is another reason why I think community matters even more today than it did when we started.
We have never had more ways to communicate with each other.
And yet somehow, we've become less connected.
Our phones are rarely out of our hands. Algorithms compete constantly for our attention. Television, social media, streaming services and now AI can keep us entertained without ever having to leave the house.
Walk down the street and you'll see people wearing headphones, looking at screens and disappearing into their own individual worlds.
Sometimes we don't even look up.
Families can sit together while everybody looks at a different screen.
We can have hundreds or thousands of online connections and still feel lonely.
And somewhere amongst all this incredible technology, I think we've forgotten something very simple.
Humans need humans.
We need conversation.
We need laughter.
We need companionship.
We need someone to notice when we're unusually quiet.
We need to sit across a table from another person and talk - sometimes about business, sometimes about absolutely nothing.
We need to feel that we belong somewhere.
Technology can connect devices.
People connect people.
Creating somewhere to belong
A few years ago, we went through a rebrand.
As part of that process, the consultant spent a lot of time simply talking to Michelle and me. They wanted to understand who we were, what motivated us and what The Business Culture actually stood for.
Eventually they told us that our two dominant archetypes were Everyman and Nurturer.
We looked at each other and thought: That's us.
Everyman is about belonging, being down-to-earth and making everyone feel welcome.
Nurturer is about caring, supporting and helping others.
It explained something we'd struggled to put into words.
We weren't trying to build a networking organisation.
We were building a community.
That's when words such as Business Community and Business Family started becoming much more prominent in how we talked about ourselves.
But in reality, they had been there from the beginning.
We just hadn't had the words for them.
So, what have we achieved in ten years?
This is normally the point in an anniversary article where we're supposed to give you lots of impressive numbers.
How many members we've had.
How many events we've organised.
How many people we've brought together.
How many introductions we've made.
But I'm not going to.
Because those numbers don't tell the story.
The real achievement is much harder to put into a spreadsheet.
It's the person who walks into one of our events nervous and walks out having made a friend.
It's two members who originally met through us and are still working together years later.
It's seeing somebody's confidence grow.
It's watching people support another member when they're having a difficult time.
It's receiving a phone call that has absolutely nothing to do with business because somebody simply needs a chat.
It's introducing two people and watching a relationship develop without knowing where it might eventually lead.
It's bumping into someone who hasn't been a member for years and still greeting each other like old friends.
It's the messages, conversations, coffees, introductions, laughter, disagreements, hugs and friendships.
That's the ecosystem.
Some people have been with us for years.
Some stayed for a short while.
Some moved on.
Some came back.
But so many of the people we've met along the way remain part of our lives.
And we're incredibly proud of that.
Ten years later, the idea hasn't changed
The Business Culture has changed enormously since January 2016.
Michelle and I have changed too.
We've made mistakes. We've learned. We've tried things that worked brilliantly and probably a few things we'd rather forget!
But the fundamental idea hasn't changed at all.
People first. Business second.
Create somewhere people feel welcome.
Help people connect.
Look after each other.
Make introductions without expecting something in return.
Be there when somebody needs support.
And create a community where no one should feel alone in business.
Ten years ago, that was an idea.
Today, when we look around at the people who have become part of The Business Culture, we can actually see it.
And perhaps that's what Michelle and I are most proud of.
We didn't build a networking group.
Together, all of us built somewhere to belong.
And we're only just getting started.
