Charlie Ward launches a co-working community right before COVID, pivots to remote, and expands.

I launched an in-person, weekend coworking community and a few months later, COVID happened...

😬 Oof, that's rough timing. But @charlierward pivoted and made it work. And now Weekend Club has launched in the Americas time zones. 💪

🤓 Learnings:

• Stay flexible. Pivot.
• Your community is a huge resource.
• Sometimes the easy way out is even riskier.

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Anyway, here's how it went down:

Up until March 2020, my long-term plan was to expand Weekend Club into more spaces around the city, then more cities in the UK, and eventually more countries. I hadn't really considered a remote option, which seems crazy now.

Launching remotely was a big decision. It was scary, but it felt like the right thing to do. We already had a tight-knit community. Friendships were being made at Weekend Club and that inspired me. I thought it'd be a shame to shut things down and wait for COVID to pass. Potentially risky too — we didn't really know how long COVID would last.

So I pivoted to remote, reduced the price for early members a bit, and hoped nobody would leave. Luckily, most stayed.

It took a fair bit of iteration to update the format to work remotely. You can't just dump offline experiences online, you need to rethink things from the ground up. But with the help of the community, we did it. Just over seven months later, we hit $1,000 Monthly Recurring Revenue.

Now we've launched Americas time zone sessions. I felt nervous before the first one as it was a big moment, but like anything else you just get used to it. And luckily the reception has been great so far. We had about three times the normal amount of free trials, which was amazing.

🌮 Food for thought:

• As Charlie tells us, in-person and remote are not 1:1. It required an overhaul for him to make the switch. And while that may not have implications for every business, it has certainly impacted most of us on a personal level — remote work, remote birthday parties, you name it. Is there anything in your (remote) life that needs an overhaul?

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The Boot's Trap 🪤

Learn from indie hackers who are in the thick of it

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