‘We’re Back.’ The crazy popular #WeLoveCLT speaker series returns next month
In January, Garrett Tichy sent an email with the subject line “Goodbye #weloveclt.” A year after launching the popular event series (and website, Instagram account, podcast and newsletter), Tichy announced that it would come to an end.
“This is officially the last letter you will receive from #weloveclt,” he wrote at the time. “… The speaker series, podcasts, have you mets and weekly newsletter will no longer happen.”
That lasted until 7 a.m. Thursday morning, when Tichy sent another email.
“We’re Back,” the subject line read.
Tichy announced that he was relaunching the #weloveclt speaker series. The next event will be Sept. 15 at Hygge Coworking, with Davida Jackson and Megan Peterson speaking. Doors open at 6 p.m. and speakers start at 6:30 p.m. And, just like before, it’s free, and NoDa Brewing beer will be pouring. You can RSVP here.
We’re back! Come to @Called2Connect & @mflynnpete talk at #weloveclt. Sept 15. RSVP here. https://t.co/6TLIFYmm6j pic.twitter.com/Mo8UboZkym
— WeLoveCLT (@WeLoveCLT) August 25, 2016
The concept of #weloveclt is simple: Bring people together in a room, have them meet each other and connect, then bring on a Charlottean speaker to talk about anything he/she wants to for about 20 minutes. In 2015, there were 10 events from January to November.
So why did Tichy, who owns Hygge Coworking and a marketing company, Ready at 7, decide to resurrect the series? I sat down with him for about an hour yesterday at Hygge to find out.
(Note: The conversation has been minimally edited for length and clarity.)
Did you ever expect to do #weloveclt again?
“No. … I shut it down and I fully expected that I would never touch #weloveclt again. … The Instagram account continues to grow aggressively — 30,000 and going. It’s crazy. … But no, never. It was exhausting and I was at a low point when I shut it down, personally.”
So how long have you been thinking about bringing it back?
“May. We hosted The Atlantic, the Renewal Series. … Corri Smith (owner of Black Wednesday who helped start #instabeerupCLT) was here and we were standing in the back and we were watching it and she was like, ‘Do you know what this feels like?’ And I was like, ‘#weloveclt.’ And she was like, ‘Why don’t you bring it back?’ And I was like, ‘Why?’ ‘Because people loved it. We all miss it. It was something we looked forward to.’ …
“So it was the end of May when I really started going like, yeah, yeah, we’re going to do this. I should do this, right? What does it look like? … What if I just boil it back down to its original form. What is the mission? … It’s taking people, from social media, from these channels, and putting them in the same place at the same time and just have them be open to having a conversation.”
In your goodbye letter you wrote about the overwhelming pressure you put on yourself and how you were “in a bad place.” Are you worried about that happening again, or doing anything to prevent that from happening again?
“I was at a different place. … #weloveclt existed during a time where (my wife) Jennie and I were going through one of the more difficult times in our relationship … and because of my obsession with the things that were happening and the fun that I was having, I was so ignorant to everything happening over here because I was having way too much fun over here. … I’m building this from the ground up, so it’s one event, once a month, there’s no weekly newsletters, I’m not creating content, I’m not doing all these things yet, if ever. … I thought I could do it all (last year) and I did do a lot of it. But I’m smarter than that now. I value my time way too much. …
“I’m excited. I’m really nervous about it. I have no expectations for it. … But with that said I would like for there to be a lot of RSVPs.”
Photo: Courtesy of #weloveclt
This story was originally published August 26, 2016 at 12:01 AM with the headline "‘We’re Back.’ The crazy popular #WeLoveCLT speaker series returns next month."