MBA1699 What is Clubhouse and Can It Help Your Business?

Let me tell you about Intuit QuickBooks. When I was starting out my business, I remember sitting at my desk late at night not working on my business but cleaning up numbers, tracking and reconciling payments and wondering how this became my life. But once I automated the admin side of things of my finances, those nights had disappeared and I felt a whole lot better. Outdo it with intuit QuickBooks QuickBooks is the trusted end to end solution that businesses rely on for getting paid, managing finances, paying employees, finding new customers and more. QuickBooks provides a team of AI agents and trusted experts, so doing it yourself no longer means doing it alone. Their payment agent gets you paid faster, their customer agent finds leads, follows up and secures more sales, and the accounting agent automates and categorizes transactions. Get your critical business jobs done with QuickBooks on the Intuit platform. Ready to save on new tech? It's time for Dell Tech Day's annual sales event celebrating our customers with fantastic deals and benefits provide perks include Dell rewards, free shipping, premium Support and more. PCs like the Dell 14 with Intel Core Ultra processors will help you do more faster and with a premium suite of monitors and accessories, you can upgrade your whole setup with amazing savings. Visit Dell.com deals. Hey O welcome to the 100R pump up the volume for powerful business insights every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the $100 MBA, a complete business training and community online over at 100mba.net and in today's lesson you will learn what is Clubhouse and can it help your business? Clubhouse is a new social media platform. More specifically, it's an audio based social media platform that's actually currently in private beta. You might have heard some chatter about Clubhouse on other social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter. People sharing that they're on Clubhouse, asking each other can I get an invite? What's all the hype about? What is this thing called Clubhouse? Why are people excited? Does it have any potential in helping your business and your customers and do I think you should get on there now? Or is something that you can put on the back burner? Not every opportunity, every new thing is worth jumping on immediately. Some might call these distractions, but sometimes these new tools can be opportunities to help you grow, to help you serve your customers, to help to get your message out there. Is Clubhouse one of those opportunities? Well we find out in today's lesson. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

Is it time to reimagine your future? The right business skills may make a difference in your career. At Capella University, we offer a relevant education that's designed to focus on what you need to know in the business world. We'll teach professional skills to help you pursue your goals like business management, strategic planning, and effective communication, and you can apply these skills right away. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella. Edu.

Clubhouse is an all new social media platform. It's currently only on iOS devices and it's only in private beta. The only way to get access to it is to get an invite from somebody who's already on there. I got an invite and then I got onto Clubhouse and then they gave me some invites to give out to other people in my network. Now I want to stop here and just say it's worth just trying to go through this process. If somebody give you an invite, go for it because it gives you an understanding of what is one way for you to launch a new product. Even if you're not going to go into software, this is a good way to kind of test the waters and do some sort of soft launch and create buzz for your product. To only make access to it invite only. Even if you had to charge for it. It's worth going through the process. So what exactly is Clubhouse? Well, the best way I can describe it is group calls around a certain topic. Some people called it like live podcasting. I don't really see it as live podcasting. I actually feel like it's more like conference calls, sort of like an online meeting that's audio only and all see is people's avatars and you see who's speaking, who's not speaking, who else is in the room just listening. I've been through a few rooms and it's interesting because you'll find some pretty famous people in some of these rooms, some quite popular people like Daymond John from Shark Tank. He was in one of the rooms and contributing to a conversation. It's quite interesting to see that happening already. Now what I want to mention is that it strikes me as something different than another social media platform like Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or Snapchat. Because as this idea of exclusivity, meaning that you are in a room with people, this is very similar to like a group on Facebook. Now they have something else called clubs which is very similar to a group. But I want you to just imagine that it's a group of people in a call. The first thing that struck me the most was that you're not just able to partake in the platform and produce content as easily as you would with something like Instagram or Facebook, where you could just post anytime you want. You have something to say, you post it. You have a picture you want to post, you post it. You got a video you want to upload, you upload it. Clubhouse takes some forward planning. You actually have to schedule a room and schedule a call. You have to invite people. And then once you're in the room, it's not like anybody can participate whenever they want. Only one person can speak at a time. So you can be in a room with 700 people listening, but one person can speak at a time. So it's a very passive type of platform where people are mostly listening. And, yes, people can ask questions and participate, but one thing is happening at a time. Now, I don't think that's a bad thing. I actually think this can serve a lot of businesses in a big way because it's really conducive to groups. So if, for example, you are a coach and you want to do a clubhouse room once a week to answer questions for your clients, you can easily do that. And you could spend, you know, one hour, you know, answering all the questions. And you people can just get up and speak, use audio and speak their questions. Everybody can hear it. And then you can go ahead and answer via audio as well. You can also see this as an alternative to, like, a live conference. If you go to a live conference, there's a bunch of rooms. People are talking. This is like a virtual, you know, conference with a bunch of rooms. So in that regard, I think it has purpose. I do think you should just sign up, like I said, to see the flow of, you know, doing a soft launch of beta, but also just reserve your username just to have it there. And then you can decide later if you want to start partaking and, you know, start some rooms and conversation. Now, I mentioned there's something called a club, and this is like a group, I would say, and you can invite people to the group, and you'd have to do a weekly call or weekly room to keep this group alive. This is kind of a requirement that they have. And in order for you to start a club, you actually have to do three calls or three rooms first. And then you can apply to open up a club. And then within a club, you can create several rooms, and you can see these as, like, threads inside of a group or a group chat. So that, in a nutshell, is what Clubhouse is all about. Now, like I said, you can use it in your business if all your clients are on Clubhouse. And then you can go ahead and create a group and do some Q and A, you can do a workshop. Again, this is audio only. You can have an open discussion. Heck, you can even have an open discussion with family members if you want to do something outside of business, like a family reunion. But the point here is that this is not going to be really viable until it's available to Everybody and on iOS and Android. But you can get started by getting used to the app. Now, if you get an invite. Now, I want to just remind you this is a totally different type of media or medium, I should say. You know, there are no images, there's no video, there's no text. Right? There's no way for you to write down your thoughts. It's all audio. And to be 100% honest, I'm actually a little bit skeptical about how this will actually help other businesses. And I'll tell you why. First of all, the reason why I think podcasts are so powerful is that it really hits a lot of important points. Number one, there's a lot of pre production and planning in a podcast to make it tight so that you're getting only the important information when you're listening. Okay, With Clubhouse, there's a lot of wasted time because it's not pre recorded, it's not pre planned, it's live. So people ramble, they babble, it goes on forever. People take 10 minutes to ask a question. It's just a little bit strange and it's really noticeable because it's not as tight and refined as a podcast. Number two, it's all live, so if you miss it, it's over. There is no other conversation to be had. There's no way to participate, there's no way to kind of really consume it. Podcasts are evergreen. You can listen anytime, whenever you want, when it's convenient to you, at the gym and your commute, all that kind of stuff. So it kind of is not 100% a podcast. And it kind of has a lot of drawbacks by being what it is now if you want to use it to do workshops, I personally think, why would you do that? If there's no visual aids, you can't share your screen, there's nothing to show, there's no video, you can't have a lot of things happening at the same time, meaning you can't have the hosts, co hosts, the presenters speak at the same time while other people are chatting, while an offer gets revealed, while a handout gets displayed. That keeps things lively and keeps it engaging. But when I'm on Clubhouse, I'm just sitting there listening to one person at a time and it lacks that connection that video has. I actually prefer do a weekly webinar or do a weekly meeting with my group with my clients. It's not more or less effort than Clubhouse and my group would get more out of it because there would be visuals and a whole lot more interactivity. Now, having said that, the app may develop, may change, may improve. So it's worth just keeping an eye on. I actually do think Clubhouse is going to be a very popular app for socializing for those family reunions I talked about for those catch up calls. For example, I do a catch up call with my mom and two sisters every single week and it wouldn't be a bad idea to make it a room and clubhouse. And that way other people in our family can jump in, my aunts, my uncles, if they feel like it's and it says scheduled time every week. That sounds pretty cool. So I actually think it's going to thrive on a personal social level, which is interesting because that's really what social media was supposed to be all about.

Is it time to reimagine your future? The right business skills may make a difference in your career. At Capella University, we offer a relevant education that's designed to focus on what you need to know in the business world. We'll teach professional skills to help you pursue your goals like business management, strategic planning and effective communication. And you can apply these skills right away. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella Edu.

So it's no secret. I'm the founder of Webinar Ninja webinar platform. But in all honesty, I went to the Clubhouse hoping I can really use this in my business somehow, but I kept on going back to well, I just would prefer to do a webinar. There's more value, there's now I'm not really going to be participating in the same way with a family reunion talk. I don't need to show slides, so that's why I'm kind of open to using it from a social point of view. I'm going to follow this space for sure. I think it's something interesting that's happening. And to be quite honest, I spent less than three or four hours in total exploring the app. It will require a few more months of me exploring to really see. Maybe there's something I'm missing. But I wanted to give you my initial thoughts as this is starting to come up and become a popular app on social. Now. What I found very interesting, though, about Clubhouse is I read an article on Social Media examiner about this app and some of the worries that people have, some of the discussions that people are having on Clubhouse about what's going to happen when it's out of private beta. A lot of people are saying that it's going to get ruined by marketers, that all the rooms are going to be just sales pitches, all the rooms are going to be infomercials, and they're wondering how is Clubhouse going to protect people or protect the experience people are having socially on Clubhouse, I'm going to be very interested in seeing how that unfolds, what Clubhouse will do, if anything. I'm also interested in seeing how they're going to overcome some of the challenges, like how you can just jump into the social media platform when you want, how you want. For example, you can go on Twitter and just see what's going on, what's trending at any time. You can look at some of the tweets from the people you followed, even if those tweets were three days ago. But with Clubhouse, it really sounds like you have to jump in. When it's time to jump in, they'll give you a notification, this room has started. Jump in. What if that's not when you want to get on social? Very interesting. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. I hope today's lesson helped you. If it did, Share this on your favorite social media platform. Even talk about it on Clubhouse if you want. Let other people know why you love the podcast. It's the best way to pay it forward. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. I'm super cautious about a new product, a new service, a new social media platform, and jumping in two feet first. Anytime I'm going to be spending time, I need to be super, super careful. Because if I'm going to be spending time on Clubhouse, I'm not spending time somewhere else. My efforts, my time, my attention is being spent somewhere else. I want to make sure that I'm betting on the right horse. That's the best use of my time. Even if it's like, hey, I'm going to be using Clubhouse five hours a week. What if I spent that five hours a week producing a weekly podcast or a great blog or a YouTube channel would my results would buy ROI on my time be better. That's something you need to answer for you and your business opportunity cost is a real thing. This is why you need to be super critical and not just jump in two feet first every time something new comes out. We've seen this happen recently with things like Periscope and Snapchat and TikTok, so be wary of how you spend your time. It's your greatest asset. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you with tomorrow's episode Q and A Wednesday. I'll see you then. Take care.

Is it time to reimagine your future? The right business skills may make a difference in your career. At Capella University, we offer a relevant education that's designed to focus on what you need to know in the business world. We'll teach professional skills to help you pursue your goals like business management, strategic planning, and effective communication, and you can apply these skills right away. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella Eduardo.