What is Clubhouse?

In the episode, we cover what Clubhouse is (2:47), my experiences with it this past week (14:23), and how to grow your following on Clubhouse (23:09). 

Audio Transcript

Hi everyone. Welcome back to The Wanderlover Podcast. This week, we are going to be talking all about the newest app that’s all the rage: Clubhouse.

(46s):
I hope everyone had a love filled Valentine’s day, whether with a loved one or pampering yourself with self-love. I was debating whether to do like a Valentine’s day episode or a clubhouse episode, but I feel like I have so much more to say about clubhouse then Valentine’s day. And I figured I would just update all of you guys in the beginning about where we will be for Valentine’s day. And I guess since this episode, we’ll launch the day after to speak in past tense. So you guys don’t get confused. I have to do this every once in a while. I’m like, Oh, I need to speak like in the past, even though I’m speaking about the future.

(1m 28s):
Okay. So this year it rags and I spent Valentine’s day in Hawaii and we actually landed a hotel job with our first hotel property of 2021, the surf Jack hotel, located in Waikiki steps away from the beach. They have a gorgeous pool, live music. We’re spending three days here and we’re promoting their staycations and getting to spend time with each other, which is always such a blessing on the job, working with rags because he is my photographer, our videographer, and he just does such an amazing job showcasing properties and locations, or obviously going to be documenting all of the sanitary procedures that they have in place.

(2m 14s):
And hopefully this encourages a safe amount of local tourism, so that these amazing properties, you know, still get to say a floats during these hard times, you can follow along and get the whole experience on my Instagram, the wander lover, if you don’t already, please also follow my podcast page, the wander lover podcast, where it’s full of inspirational quotes to motivate you, to take action and also all the tropical vibes. So now let’s dive into clubhouse. In this episode, I’m going to cover what exactly clubhouse is my experiences and opinions on the app, and also give some tips for you if you choose to download it, how to grow on clubhouse.

(3m 5s):
So clubhouse is an iPhone app. It’s on iPhone only right now, and it allows people to host and join conversations with other users. So when you’re on the app, your homepage, you first select your interests. So whether your interests are like business, entrepreneurship, travel mindset, lifestyle sports, you know, they have so many different interests and they populate your homepage with different rooms, according to your interests and the people that you follow. So every homepage is curated. And when you see a room that you’re interested in, you have the option to join it along with, you know, every other person that chose to join the room.

(3m 49s):
And once you enter these rooms, you’re automatically a listener. So you’re in the audience and you’ll see at the top of each room, there are speakers and moderators, and it’s possible for an audience member to raise their hand, to become a speaker where you can share your thoughts or just talk about whatever the room topic is about. Or you can just sit silently in the audience and listen to the other speakers. So there have been really big names on here the other day. I think Elan Musk started a room and the whole app crashed. I’ve heard Gary Vaynerchuk speak like I was in the same room as Gary Vaynerchuk, you know, and that’s such a special thing in this day and age to be able to virtually connect live with someone.

(4m 38s):
I’ve seen Virgil Abloh on a lot of people in the tech and entertainment industry, but no matter what you’re interested in, of course like my feed is curated, you know, to my preferences, but in, especially the coaching and creator industry, you know, all my colleagues are on the app. There are people I admire and aspire to be that I follow. And it’s just this new up and coming social media app that I feel like has so much value because right now the app isn’t incentivized, there’s no ads on it. I don’t know exactly how the app is making money, if any. So it’s in the really beginning stages, like think when LinkedIn was starting or when Instagram was starting, this is the stage that clubhouse is in right now.

(5m 26s):
And the thing with clubhouse is that it’s invitation only. So there’s this exclusivity factor. It kind of reminds me of back when I was living in New York and before I had met rag, there was this like app called the league and it was kind of like Tinder or it was a dating app, but it was also by invitation. And everyone was like, Oh my God, like we’re on a wait list. And it really creates this exclusive feeling to it, which is why I feel like there’s also so much commentary around it because there’s a handful of people who can’t get on it. And everyone else like me, or like creating content about it. However, you know, the longer you use it, the more invites you have.

(6m 8s):
So if you’re one of my listeners and you really want to check out the app, DME and I might have an invitation for you, I’ve been on the app since December 30th. That’s when I first joined of 2020. And I think I took a few weeks off. You know, we were in New York, we were preparing to leave to Hawaii and I just didn’t really have the time to get settled in with it. But now I’ve been pretty active on it, the past one and a half weeks. And I’m going to be sharing all the experiences I had in that amount of time and my opinions on it. But yeah, if you need an invite just DME and we will talk.

(6m 48s):
So I hope that gives a general, like, it gives you a general understanding of what clubhouse is. And now I want to talk about my experiences and opinions for the app. So the first time I heard about clubhouse, I think I read it somewhere. And as soon as I read about it, I downloaded it. So that just happened to be December 30th of last year, I guess, which is crazy because I’ve seen people on the app, you see the date that they joined and people joined in like March of 2020. And I’m just like, how, how do they know, how are they so ahead of the curve where like, where is this information I’m missing?

(7m 29s):
And I guess my sources just aren’t as up to date, but that really put into perspective how much other people know before you. And I’m sure if you’re listening to this episode, maybe like, you don’t know what clubhouses yet, and that is totally fine. And I’m just really honored to be the person that breaks it to you. So this phenomenon is exactly a real life depiction of what I learned in business school called the technology adoption life cycle brings me back to my college business days. But essentially if you imagine a bell curve, right? So you have a flat X axis and you have this curve on top, that looks like a perfect distribution curve.

(8m 10s):
So it’s low towards the left. Then it goes up to the top and then back down to the right under each of these segments are different percentages. And one, two, three, four, five different stages of technology adopters. So in the beginning, think about where you classify. There’s five different categories on the, in the beginning, on the left hand side, what they say is 2.5% of people are innovators. After that 13.5% of the population are known as early adopters and then 34% after that.

(8m 51s):
So it reaches more than halfway are called the early majority. Then after the fourth category, there is 34% of those as well called the late majority. And then the last bit, all the way at the end, you know, at the end of this cycle, what’s remaining is 16%. And those people are known as the laggards. I remember being in college and thinking that I fell into the late majority, because if you listen to last week’s episode, you’ll know that I was really different growing up, going through college, even working in corporate finance than I am now.

(9m 35s):
I knew that I was probably part of the late majority because a lot of times I was always skeptical. I had questions. I had doubts I needed to be proven. Like I needed people to prove to me that whatever the new technology was was worth my time before I actually invested in it, invested my time and money to try it out for myself. And I think at that point it was fine for me. I was like, whatever, like I’m part of the late majority that doesn’t bother me and I’m happy with my life. Now I look at this graph and I’m like, Oh my God, get me to innovator or Tufts. Or like, I want to be the top 10%. Because being in the late majority, I feel like just is you lose so much time.

(10m 21s):
And so much of the new information that you’re only going to be left behind. That is like my new point of view, how technology, how social media and the internet and different things are, are, you know, getting so innovative. So fast. I do not want to be left behind. And because I am a creator because I work with creators, this is the exact curve that comes to like, I can basically rename the tech adoption curve to the creator platform, adoption curve or the new apps adoption curve, right? There’s always going to be people who are the innovators who basically invented the app, who beta test it. And they are on top of it.

(11m 1s):
Those are two, 2.5% of people. Then there’s a 13.5% early adopters, 34% early majority, 34% late majority. And then the laggards. I do not recommend anyone listening to this to be a laggard, especially, but also try not to be the late majority, right. Aim to be an early adopter. There’s always going to be those people. When something new comes out, they’re going to be like, this is stupid. This isn’t going to work. They’re skeptical. I know this because that’s the, exactly who I used to be. The same people existed when Facebook was invented. You know, when Instagram came out, when LinkedIn came out, when Tik TOK came out, but it’s those people who were early adopters, who literally were ahead of the curve and now have millions of followers have their online brand and businesses.

(11m 54s):
They were the ones who started from the beginning and grew their brand from there. This is also the time to join in on something, because you know, if you are a late adopter, you’ll find it’s harder. It’s more competitive. Most other people have already built successful businesses on it. And it’s harder for you to break in. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but like, for example, on YouTube, I get so many people asking me, how do I create a YouTube channel? And we’re not saying it’s late, but it’s going to be harder than if you created a YouTube channel in 2010, but most likely in 2010 people, weren’t making livings off of YouTube the way you know, that it’s possible today.

(12m 40s):
There, they probably face a lot more criticism, similar to how people today start on clubhouse, you know, face criticism. So I’m just drawing a comparison and trying to make a point that it’s never a bad idea to just give it a shot. And if you are in my Facebook group, you will be surrounded by so many other people who are innovators and early adopters. I had a poll this past week asking what everyone thought of clubhouse. And most people, the majority were like still trying to figure it out, but they’re already on the app. And a few people said, I love it. And only two people said that they didn’t know what clubhouses.

(13m 23s):
And those are actually the two people that inspired me to make this episode. Because if there are some people in the wander lover, community, Facebook group, who don’t know about this app, I’m sure a lot of you guys listening don’t know about it either. And if you aren’t in the Facebook group, go on Facebook and come join us. We will be doing lots of clubhouse trainings, Facebook lives, and just getting to support each other on our journeys as we all learned about clubhouse. Okay. So that was basically my spiel about how you should always be on top of new platforms, especially as a creator, because instead of, you know, Googling and researching and asking people whether or not you should download and try out an app, just try it out for yourself.

(14m 10s):
Even if you don’t stick with it, at least you will know whether or not it works for you because what works for someone else might not work for you. What doesn’t work for someone else might work for you. So the best course of action is just to download it. Okay. So now let’s go back to what my experiences are or have been this past week, week and a half. So like I said, you have the option to join in on a room, or you can create a room of your own or even schedule an event. So you don’t have to do it like right now, you can schedule an event in the future. So the first room I actually created was there’s an option where you can just start a room where it’s only yourself and it pings all of your followers.

(14m 54s):
It just shows you too, like maybe some random people’s homepages that you started a room. And my intention was to just figure out how all the controls worked. So the first room I ever started, I don’t think anyone knows about this was just by myself. I started a room, no one joined. It was maybe for two minutes before I really followed anyone before I had any followers. And I just started a room and started talking to myself and trying to figure out, you know, how to invite people, how to navigate, how to unmute myself and whatnot. Then I left the room. So that was my first kind of trial run. After that, I was like, okay, it’s kind of awkward.

(15m 37s):
If I start a room by myself, let me ask my dear friend Lianna. You guys may know her or see her, all my stories. She is a life coach based in Bali. We both serve, we both jam on the ukulele. I love her so much. And I was like, Hey, let’s start a room. So that’s when we planned our first room and we had an amazing turnout. We had lots of questions and I just was obsessed with the whole community aspect of it and meeting people that I wouldn’t have normally met online after that. My third and last room that I hosted was a few days ago with my boyfriend rags. And it was so funny.

(16m 16s):
It was literally, we were in our living room and I was like, Hey, babe, you know, we should just try starting a clubhouse room together just for shits and gigs, because we had nothing to do that night. And I was on clubhouse. And I really wanted to talk about, you know, being a digital nomad, talk about Hawaii and surf and business. Since we both have our own online businesses. So I went into our bedroom, he stayed in the living room and we started this room and it was insane. Like by the end of the night, we had gifted someone, a flight to Hawaii. We like held this competition game show with this investor that joined.

(16m 56s):
And it was just so much fun. The dynamic, the laughs and like inviting people up on stage. We had voters in the audience where I just learned so much that night too. You know how to engage other people, how to speak, how to, you know, turn the whole thing into a game show. You can clap on clubhouse. So if you like mute and unmute your speaker really fast, I learned that’s how you clap. What else did I learn? Oh, in the audience, if you want them to vote, they have the raise hand feature. So you can tally up how many people raise their hand to vote for a specific contestant. And so, you know, the group dynamic, the rooms were all so different than three times that I hosted one and each single time I learned something different about the app.

(17m 46s):
And so those people who don’t have the app, I know this sounds foreign to you, but then just look at it like this, right? I have one week’s experience on the app and I’m just learning these things. If you start today, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about talking about in a week, if you choose to do so. And then on the other days, when I wasn’t hosting a room, I will be joining random rooms. I once stumbled upon this Cornell mixers group. So my university has this one, moderator who posts nightly daily mixers, like every single night for Cornell graduates.

(18m 26s):
And that was awesome because I was just scrolling in my home feed and I see like big red, like the logo of Cornell and our bear. And I’m like, Oh my God. And then other nights I’ll be connected to different people in the podcasting industry, in the music industry and the coaching industry and the influencer industry. And it’s really fun. I personally have a really good time on it. I can see how it can be intimidating. At first, I promise, like I was so scared to raise my hand and speak on stage for the first time when rags and I started our room, he was also really nervous. So if you’re feeling nervous, that’s completely normal over time, you will feel more comfortable speaking up and that’s with anything, right?

(19m 12s):
Like you think it’s going to be some scary the first time you do it. And then you do it once. And you’re like, Oh my God, I didn’t die. Or like, no one laughed at me. And I didn’t make a fool out of myself. And after a few times of doing it, you’ll just feel completely confident. And if you need even more encouragement to, you know, download the app or speak even podcasting, I’ve said this in previous episodes, my first episode was almost completely scripted until I was like, this is taking too much time. I was so nervous. I thought I had to have every single word planned out. And now we are on episode 22. Oh my God.

(19m 54s):
20, like last year, if you were going to tell me, I, I will have recorded 22 podcast episodes, I probably would have thought you were crazy. But if you look at my notes for this week’s episode, I have a note open on my Mac. It says 22, what is clubhouse? And then I have three bullet points. What is clubhouse? My experiences and opinions on clubhouse, and then how to grow on clubhouse. And I have like a few tips under that one, which I am going to say in a little bit, but you know, going from a completely scripted transcript to these few words on notes, I think I’m improving.

(20m 38s):
I am improving and you will too. Okay. So I talked about my experiences and I just want to talk a little bit more about my opinions overall. I fully support clubhouse. I think it is a super valuable interactive social platform that has a lot of value. Especially if you have your own business, even if you don’t have your own business, there is just so much inspiration in so many people you can talk to that definitely will expand what you currently know. It also puts you in touch with people who are otherwise, you know, probably not going to be available to share their knowledge with strangers.

(21m 20s):
Like the other day I was in a room with guy Kawasaki and I was like, Oh my God, I can hear you talk. And it sounds like I’m in the same room or clubhouse as you and I want to address, you know, I’ve been in a few conversations where people were skeptical about the quality of the moderators and the speakers, because right now it’s still really new. There are I think, millions of users already, but in the grand scheme of things, clubhouse is still new. And so the thing with followings and people who have authority on the app, I think it mostly comes down to basically how active you are and how long you’ve been on the app.

(22m 6s):
And rags pointed this out the other day. He was saying how he was in a room with Instagram experts, you know, quote unquote experts. But then when you actually go on their Instagram, they don’t really have the authority or the experience or the social proof to be backing up what they were saying in that room. So take, you know, some groups with a grain of salt, don’t rely on these so-called experts, because I feel like there are rooms where anyone can just say that they are an expert. So be wary as with anything. However, overall, I think that addressed clubhouse is definitely something you should check out and just learn for yourself, whether or not you enjoy it or not give it a couple days, you know, give it a week or two and then decide for yourself.

(22m 54s):
But don’t be those people who immediately, without even learning what it is, dismiss it and be like that’s for children or that’s not going to work. You know, people said that about Snapchat, about tick-tock about Instagram and you do not want to be one of those people. Okay. So now I have talked about my experiences and opinions, and now I just want to give a few tips on how to grow on clubhouse and I’m going to be, you know, taking my own medicine, being fully transparent as I have through this episode that I have only been on it for a week or two. And so I don’t want you to be like, these are the only ways I can grow.

(23m 36s):
I just want you to try these out and see if they work. Because so far, this is what has worked for me. So for me, hosting rooms has been the one way that I have gained my followers. And it’s not to say that I have a lot. I think right now I have like 270. But as that number grows, I will be sharing more and more tips on how I have been interacting on clubhouse. So number one is hosting my own rooms. Number two is becoming a moderator in a room. So if you participate in a room with a lot of people and raise your hand, become a speaker and then get appointed to a moderator.

(24m 19s):
Or if you, you know, start a room with your friends and you are automatically in a moderator, that’s the second way that I have also gained followers. The third is just participating. You don’t really need to do anything except maybe raise your hand, speak a few sentences. And even sometimes like, even if you’re in the audience, the moderators will check out your page and see if they like what it is that you’re doing, which brings me to my next tip on how to grow on clubhouse. So aside from interacting and obviously, you know, giving value, when it’s your time to speak, sharing your story is to optimize your bio and your profile photos.

(25m 1s):
So for me, my username is the wander lover because that’s just what I am known as. And then my profile photo is the same as my Instagram. That’s what the hopes of everyone coming from Instagram will recognize my page without really having to check anything. And then in your bio. So the first two lines, what I’ve noticed is in rooms in different like previews, the first two lines of your bio will kind of be your headline on what people see you do. And like basically who you are. So you want to optimize those keywords. So let’s say you’re entering a group on podcasting. It’d be cool. If in the preview it said what your podcast is or that you’re a podcast host, right?

(25m 45s):
And then as you go, like when people expand on your profile, that’s where you want to say what it is that you do, who you help maybe have a call to action, have a lead magnet and definitely link your Instagram. If you’re active on Instagram, you also have an option to link your Twitter, but I’m not active on Twitter. And also no way to link your website just yet. But I’m pretty sure that that’s probably going to come in the future. So optimize your bio, your profile photo, add value and join in a lot of rooms. The last point I want to make just to clear up any confusion is that you can totally use clubhouse as a personal account.

(26m 31s):
You know, same thing with Instagram. There’s a difference between using a platform for per personal enjoyment, you know, hobbyist purposes versus using it as a business and everything that we covered in this episode targets using clubhouse as a business, which is why it’s structured. It’s optimized, it’s strategic. If you want to just sign up and listen to other people, talk, listen to famous people in the entertainment industry and you know, or listen to some tunes to help you go to bed. That is completely fine as well. I do not want to put the pressure on you. You’re like, Oh my God, I have so much to do. And I don’t know why I have to do this.

(27m 14s):
If that’s you like you don’t need to, but still check out the app. Maybe in the future, you have opportunities coming to you and you’re familiar with how to use it, right? And if you are using clubhouse as a business, it never hurts to know how an app functions and it never hurts to grow your brand and your awareness when tick-tock came out. You know, I created videos every single day for three months, grew my following of 15,000 and was like, you know what? I think I want to switch over to fully consult for businesses and social media. So I chose other platforms.

(27m 56s):
Instead, I chose to start a podcast, a Facebook group and things that were more in line. And now with Instagram and implementing reels, I can use everything I learned from Tik talk to create reels for my business. So same thing here, guys, you’re not trying to fully grasp what clubhouse will do for your business. You just want to have fun with it, connect with people, learn how it works and, you know, connect with me. If you want to start a room DME and we can see maybe there’s some synergies between us. I love connecting with new people. I’ve actually, you know, had virtual coffee dates with a few people from clubhouse.

(28m 36s):
I’m going to meet this Guinness world record holder for solving Rubik’s cubes while running a 5k, which is like these random people that I’m now connected with. It’s such a fun atmosphere. And I hope to see all of you on there. If you need an invite again, Z on me and see if I have any available. If you’re on clubhouse, you can find me at the wander lover. And if you have any questions about it at all, I’m not an expert, but I am sharing everything. I’m learning as I’m going along. Feel free to DM me with any questions and have an amazing week guys, hope to see you on clubhouse or see you on Instagram, sending you so much love,

~~~

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