Joining Clubhouse, The New Social Media Platform, And Our Thoughts On Business Ethics

Jan 13, 2021

MGU 173 | New Social Media Platform

 

The best way to live life is often through radical experimentation, expanding ourselves by trying out new experiences. As life experimentalists, Jason Wrobel and Whitney Lauritsen are doing it in real-time. In this episode, they share the new social media platform that they are joining called Clubhouse, where they chat with people live, collaborate, and brainstorm through audio. They talk about testing the platform and then take a deep dive into ethical entrepreneurship and mindful monetization that they have observed in the business world and wellness industry. Jason and Whitney also explore the things that are ethically dubious and need to be called out — from the concept of over-promising and under-delivering to creating content because they are popular versus creating content that serves your core. Follow along to this conversation on business ethics and more!

—

Listen to the podcast here

 

Joining A New Social Media Platform And Some Thoughts About Business Ethics

We are doing something different with this episode that is trying out a brand-new social media platform called Clubhouse app. It is a new platform that lets people chat in real-time, share stories, collaborate, brainstorm and its audio. You can name these chats. It’s like an audio-based forum. It appealed to me for two reasons. One is because we’re podcasters and we’re using audio anyway. Two is because I love trying new social media platforms and Jason was open to sharing and trying it out with me. What we’re going to do is do our very first Clubhouse. It’s called Creating a Room and you go on there and talk, you can set it that only people you can join and listen, or we can open it up to the whole world, like anybody on the Clubhouse, which as of January 4, 2021, it is invite-only, but that might change.

If we get any extra invites and you want to join Clubhouse and you haven’t been able to get one, hit us up. We might have an extra one to share. Now, I used mine. My only invite went to Jason so he could try it out. I’m going to see what happens. We get to share in real-time the experience of being on this new platform. We created a room called Ethical Entrepreneurship and Mindful Monetization. If you are in the Clubhouse, hit us up. I’m under Eco-Vegan Gal.

Jason, I didn’t tell you this before I got my invite, I claimed my username Whit Lauritsen, which is the username I want to have, but I did it under my business phone number. I then got invited to The Clubhouse through my phone number and because I reserved my Whit Lauritsen username, I wasn’t able to use it. It’s complex because this app is new. Long story short, I’m temporarily stuck with @EcoVeganGal. We haven’t created the Wellevatr account because you’re not supposed to have multiple accounts on this platform at the moment. I’m @EcoVeganGal. If that changes, I’ll let you know as a reader. Jason, what’s your username?

I’m @JasonWrobel. It’s interesting you talk about this naming thing because there’s only one platform that I have, which is not just my name that I had to modify and that’s Facebook because there are many Jason Wrobel floating around the world that I have yet to assassinate. I don’t know what they’re doing with my name.

They probably feel the same way about you. They’re so annoyed that you’ve claimed Jason Wrobel as a username across the web.

I have and in every single platform is Jason Wrobel, except for Facebook because there’s some dude in Wisconsin with my name floating around, I couldn’t get it. My Facebook is @JasonWrobelOfficial.

Before we hit Let’s Go, which is the terminology they use to start a room on the Clubhouse, I would love to discuss a quick tactic, like when we did our Instagram Live. I think with live content, people are going to be coming in and out. I don’t even know if anybody is going to listen. That’s going to be the interesting thing. We might have to continuously disclose. Here’s what I’m thinking. As you and I are getting on here as an experiment, we have no idea how long we will do the Clubhouse. I don’t know if people call it The Clubhouse? I have no idea. We’ll go on and see what happens. We might get people joining. For the reader, one of the cool things about the Clubhouse is other people can raise their hands and join the conversation.

You all have that on speaker and, Jason, we should turn off our mics and on because we don’t want any echo. We’ll have to be mindful about that. We might have to repeat ourselves a bunch. Heads up to the reader because people might be coming in and out of our Clubhouse room. It’s very likely Jason and I will repeat ourselves for new people as we would on Instagram Live or any other live platform. It’s not something that we typically do on the show. It is standard practice for live video. Do you have anything else that you want to discuss to set us up for success or should we jump in and see what happens?

Knowledge without implementation, consistency, and practice doesn’t turn to wisdom. Share on X

In the practicing what we preach in terms of radical experimentation and being life experimentalists, we talk about that on the show, we’re doing it in real time live with you. It could be great, disaster, annoying and enlightening. We never know. I always love to have my Jasonisms. Before we begin, I will leave you with this Lao Tzu, the great Chinese philosopher said, “Act without expectations.” Here we are trying something new, going on a brand-new social media platform I’ve never been on. We’re going to jump in and talk about ethical entrepreneurship and mindful monetization. Our perspectives on what we’ve observed in the entrepreneur world, the wellness industry. Some things we’ve seen that work well and some things that we think are ethically, dubious and want to call out. That’s what we’re going to focus on.

It should be fascinating. If anybody joins us, hopefully with the speaker, the show we’ll hear. Jason, what I will do is hold it up to my mic and you can type in the chat if it sounds okay. Mute yourself when you’re not talking and I’ll have mine on the rest of the time. If anybody joins the room, we should disclose to them that we’re recording it for the show. There might be some people we know there who might be strangers. We have no idea what’s about to happen. I feel a little nervous. I’ve got some butterflies in my stomach. I feel like I’m going on stage. How do you feel now, Jason?

I don’t care.

You’re so you who can just dive into things. I get nervous right before I do something new.

We’re on the great unknown. Let’s go for it and see what happens. In that aspect though, Whitney, from a technical perspective, do you want me to mute my audio on my phone? I should mute the audio on my phone, correct?

I guess. We’ll see what happens.

Readers, if this is a train wreck, thank for being with us. If it’s great, if it’s amazing zeppelin in the sky, that’s great too.

Maybe this will be a new trend. We’ll go and try different things on the show and record our experiences with it. I’m hitting Let’s Go on Clubhouse and I have no idea what’s going to happen next. I’m in, Jason, I hit the plus sign. I’m inviting you in. I can ping you in. How does it feel in here so far? I’m curious to hear the recording of what this will sound like. What we should do is, hang out and then if anybody joins, we jump into the topic because maybe no one will join us. I liked the headshot that you chose, Jason. What’s the story behind that headshot, Jason?

MGU 173 | New Social Media PlatformThe story behind that headshot is my salon here in LA called Liberated Salon, which is something you introduce me to, Whitney, years ago. That was in 2012. I’ve been going to see Brandon Balderrama, if anybody’s in the LA area and wants to support an amazing ethical, conscious, eco-friendly sustainability-minded salon. They’re my favorite in town. That was after a haircut I had in 2020 before the pandemic hit and they have like a backdrop with a ring light and different colored backdrops. I was feeling myself that day. I was like, “I got a fresh new cut. I got my Jean jacket. I’m feeling sexy. That’s a headshot from the salon in the selfie booth they have set up there. That’s not a professional headshot but legit though.

Since we are talking about ethical entrepreneurship, one thing that I always endeavor to do is seek out businesses that are in alignment with my values. If I know that my money as embodied energy is going to support something that I believe in that stands for social justice, human rights, animal rights, sustainability. I’m going to keep going. It’s why I’ve been nine years with the same guy because his life philosophy and his values are in alignment with mine and I want to keep giving money to somebody like that. I know you feel the same way because you’re the one who introduced me, Whitney. You’re the one who brought me to Brandon.

I love it when you shout out somebody. It’s sweet. The observations on Clubhouse now, I’m surprised that nobody has joined unless people are able to join without us seeing them. That’s one thing I don’t know. I don’t how this app works. It reminds me of when you and I did Periscope for the very first time. We were in my kitchen and we set up Periscope on a tripod and the person I remember being on that live video was from Dandies Marshmallow.

Do you remember our first live video with Periscope? I’m guessing that was 2013 and like we’re doing with Clubhouse, we’re experimenting to see what something is like and I’m excited about this. I asked my friend that I met through TikTok, Sam, to do a Clubhouse with me and we’re having a meeting to discuss it. I’ve never met her in person. TikTok is bringing us together. We’re going to explore the idea of doing a Clubhouse together. She’s also on the cutting edge of social media. She has a great Instagram account and TikTok. I’m glad that we’re doing this together, Jason, because it’s like getting our feet wet. I had no idea what was going to happen. Going back to expectations, I’m surprised that nobody’s joined the room, not coming from my ego, but I expected that people would come in out of curiosity. Is the title not pulling people in? Is it because it’s us and we don’t have a lot of followers? Is that not how people use this app? What are your observations of it from this so far?

Any time you join a brand-new social platform or at least brand new to us, it’s a crapshoot in the sense that it’s going to take trial and error. It’s going to take experimentation. It’s going to take consistency and repetition and that’s something that’s come up a lot for me too. It’s consistency and repetition. You and I have talked about this ad nauseam on the show and also in our program, The Consistency Code of we can have all of the knowledge and the training. Work with the right mentors, pay $10,000 for the coach and do all the things. If discipline, consistency and repetition, isn’t a part of our daily habitual behavior, we’re not going to see the manifestations in my opinion of a lot of that knowledge.

Knowledge without implementation, consistency and practice, it doesn’t turn into wisdom. It’s like reading a book, take a new course, working with a coach and being like, “I did that. I checked that box off.” I say this because whether that’s the coaching you and I do or something that I started, which was musical instruction. I didn’t expect during the pandemic to have a side hustle as a guitar instructor. I’m not an advanced guitar player. I would consider myself an intermediate guitar player, but through some interesting avenues, I suddenly found myself with two clients and teaching them guitar. I was like, “This is uncomfortable,” but it’s holding me to a higher standard of me making sure that I am on top of my game as a musician, as learning so that I can pass that knowledge and that wisdom along to other people.

The other thing too, Whitney, and this is part of our conversation about ethical entrepreneurship and mindful monetization, I’ve been very mindful and aware of not wanting to over promise and under deliver things. In the sense that if someone’s going to come to me, we’re talking about musical lessons. They’ll like, “I want you to teach me Arpeggio Sweeps. I want you to teach me to tap like Eddie Van Halen and work with the mixolydian scale and Middle Eastern music.” I would look at them and say, “I can’t help you.” Rather than, “I could teach you that stuff. I can jump in and do that.” The issue that I see and I’ve done this in the past, as a younger entrepreneur, very hungry, desperate and deep in the hustle culture was revenue generation.

Even if I didn’t deliver on what I said, as long as I got the contractor and got the enrolment, I need to take responsibility. If I look back at my career for all the times that I will fully drop the ball for people because I was obsessed with making money or making ends meet. I remember the first year I hit six figures, I was psychotically obsessed with hitting that number. Did I do some things that were intentionally malicious? No. Did I over promise and under deliver? Absolutely. I’m being mindful of not doing that, not just in business, but in life, where maybe we want to please people.

If you find the silver lining in something, then it becomes worthwhile, and you might actually carve out a niche you weren't even expecting. Share on X

People pleasing is a huge thing. We have fear of rejection, abandonment and not being a part of the community. As business owners, it’s really easy to make big claims and to want to help people, but then overlook the details and overlook the promises of what we’ve shared with people because of the revenues coming in. There’s something about when you start making a decent amount or a lot of money where I found that shit starts to fall through the cracks. I think that’s a good kick off to say like, “I don’t want to do that anymore.” I’m being mindful not to.

I’m glad that you brought up this idea of not overpromising because I put this into action with a client of mine. I was doing the onboarding process with a new social media client. I like this person. I was excited to work with him, but he seemed to have a lot of big expectations. I was feeling concerned. I was concerned that the level of what he thought I was going to do with the amount of money and time was not going to be up to par with his expectations. I said to him in my email through the onboarding process that I would like to under promise and over deliver because then I feel like I can more easily exceed expectations. He appreciated that. It was a great way to onboard a client because I learned that from working at Apple. Going back to observations on Clubhouse, are you having trouble finding the mute button, Jason?

Yeah, I’m afraid to touch anything on this screen.

Why? What are you afraid of?

There’s a plus button and there’s a hand that’s slapping a piece of paper. The only thing that’s labeled is a Leave Quietly button. I’m like, “I better not press the icon that has a hand slapping down on a piece of paper. Should I hit that? What the hell is that button?”

How differently we use apps because I touched everything I’ve used the Leave Quietly button before because I’ve been in other rooms. That’s why I had this expectation that people would join our room within a matter of minutes because that’s typically how live videos work. Usually, you get a few people but this one must be about your following. You must need a big following to get people to join in. I’ve been in rooms. I’ve used the Leave Quietly button, which is interesting to me because I enjoy that term leave quietly. I wish that that would be implemented at more live events or Zoom events in general or digital events because many people would like to come in and out and they’re making noise and they’re in the chat room and they’re not being respectful to the speakers or the panelists.

I think it’s a cool button to have. Going back to the hand slapping symbol, it is like a hand with a piece of paper. I tapped on it already and you can too, Jason. Know that you’re not so afraid of it. It’s whether or not you as the moderator allow people to raise their hands and participate. You and I could be here on the panel and people could be listening. If a stranger joined our room, then they could come on and raise their hands to speak. As moderators, you and I could allow them. The plus symbol, we might want to try, because we’re trying to experiment here. We could hit the plus symbol and you can do this on your end and we can ping somebody and invite them in the room. My friend Devin is here. Here’s which’s interesting. I keep getting a poor connection signal, are you getting that on your end?

My connection is pretty strong and when I hit the plus button as an example because it’s not scary anymore. Our dear friend, who’s also an ethical entrepreneur, is our friend Kelly Bennett. She was our second guest here on the show, which is a fantastic episode. Kelly is live now. We could ping her into the room and see what happens. She might be like, “What the hell are they doing?” Do we want to try it and see what happened?

MGU 173 | New Social Media PlatformI tried it and I don’t know fully how it works because I hit the plus sign and I tapped on some people. I nominated my friend, Devin, Kirk, Monica, who he also had on the show, and Sam who I mentioned from TikTok, could also ping Jason Horton. This is fascinating in live time. This is like, “Welcome to Clubhouse Experimenting 101.” I tried to ping Jason Horton and it says his notifications are off, but I can use message. I think that means I can text him. Let me see what happens. Jason Horton’s also been on our show and he’s the one that invited me to Clubhouse to begin with. Jason, you’re our very first guest on this and I’m excited about this. I can’t believe how quickly he joined. We are in full disclosure recording an episode on Clubhouse. This is our very first time doing a room and we are going to link to your episode on our show for the reader who has not read your episode yet or wants to reread to it. Hopefully, you can hear us, Jason Horton. You’re welcome to raise your hand. You can join the conversation if you like. We’re playing around here and I also want to thank you for inviting me on the platform because I invited Jason Wrobel on the show.

The number of Jason’s we have had on the show and continue to have, I realize in the ‘70s and early ‘80s, it was up there with the most popular baby names, there’s a lot of Jason’s floating around. Interestingly, tangentially speaking, because I have no idea what I’m doing now. The origin of the name, Jason is Greek in etymology and it means healer, which I thought was pretty cool because that’s one of the things that I’m very passionate and we’re passionate about. It’s one of the reasons we do this show and do social media is to encourage people to explore their own healing path and that’s something. I’ve been making a lot of headway in trying to do new things with my mental health. Speaking of entrepreneurship and social media, I’m still trying to navigate my way through talking about mental health online because I’m not a psychotherapist. I’m not a psychiatrist.

I’m not a licensed mental health professional. Although sometimes I think I should go back to school and get a Master’s degree or a doctorate or something. It’s this weird reticence that at times I feel like I want to pivot my brand and also Wellevatr more, to be honest with you. More niche into mental health and emotional wellness, but I get scared sometimes. We talk about over promising and under delivering of we’re not qualified medical professionals who are in the mental health field. I still feel like a reticence to fully dive into that because I don’t know how people would receive myself or us going into a deeper exploration of mental health resources when we’re not technically professionals. I felt a weird resistance to that.

Before I answer your question, I tried to invite Jason Horton as a speaker and then he disappeared. I don’t know if he left the room purposefully or if he to go into some holding room. I imagine that he has no idea what’s going on either. Jason, now is a good time for you to invite somebody in because what I was going to say before Jason Horton joined in is that I hit the plus sign. I pinged him. He immediately came on. I’ll try again. I don’t know what’s happening. When I tapped on someone like Monica Schrock, who’s awesome. It’s weird. I’m curious what your experience is. It seems buggy. I’m going to switch over away from my Wi-Fi because I wonder if my Wi-Fi is getting in the way. Hopefully, it doesn’t kick me off, maybe the connection will be better because I’m getting a spinning wheel. While I might be having tech difficulties, can you experiment with inviting somebody in and see who shows up? Let’s nominate Kelly Bennett.

Kelly it says that she hasn’t been on for ten minutes.

You can send her a text message. If you tap on her, does it give you an option to send her a text?

Embrace your behavior. Give yourself more grace to either be that way or not be that way or flow back and forth between it. Share on X

“Her notifications are off so we can’t reach them for you. Use message.” It auto-populates a message that says, “You should join this room. I am talking with Whitney Lauritsen about ethical entrepreneurship and mindful monetization,” then sends a link. I send it and see what happens?

Yes.

Let me customized it because that is just so cold, the robot.

She’s in Clubhouse. This is going to be the normal way that we invite people so it can’t be that weird.

I’m going to send it and see what happens. It’s a crapshoot. We’re going to try it out and see. We are practicing what we preach in doing real time experimentation, trying things we’ve never done before and getting uncomfortable. I talked about that on Instagram Live, whether it’s learning a new instrument or doing a new social media feed or starting a podcast, discomfort, confusion and the general, “What the fuck am I doing,” is a think necessary part of starting any new endeavor. It’s this weird idea that if we’re going to be starting an entrepreneurial adventure or picking up an instrument, all the examples that I mentioned, it’s going to be clunky and weird for a while. It’s important to not focus on the people who’ve been in the game for years and have a flow. It’s going to be uncomfortable, painful, scary and weird most things that we start, wouldn’t you agree?

I’m having fun with this, but there’s part of me that gets triggered, the perfectionist side of it of, “I don’t want to do things wrong.” I think this is good practice. I’m so annoyed because I don’t know what happened to Jason Green. Did he choose to leave or did he want to stay and got confused and could he hear us? Remember the early days of live video going back to that. There was Periscope but then there was the heyday of Facebook Live, which was 2014 maybe and I remember how awkward that was.

Another comment I have on Clubhouse is that it’s in a lifetime, which is not the case with most other live platforms. Video streaming usually has a delay and this is zero delays. When you’re talking on Clubhouse, I can hear it on my speakerphone. It’s in perfect sync with hearing from you on Zencastr, the recording platform we use. I would say overall Clubhouse feels intuitive. My next question is how do you build a following? That question is one of my favorites to answer because I love exploring social media and I have ups and downs. I don’t know if everybody can say this. I guess not everybody, but I’ve had my fair share of ups and my fair shares of flops and downs.

I’ve gone through stages of losing followers and gaining followers and staying stagnant for a while. I talked about it a little on the show on how my account on TikTok grew rapidly due to posting about non-alcoholic drinks, which has been interesting. The other side of this is the experimenting. I’m grateful to you, Jason, for being willing to experiment with this because one thing that could happen is that you and I did this session together and we both thought, “Nothing happened. It’s not worth it. I’m not going to try again.” For the reader, whether or not it’s Clubhouse, TikTok or any platform that you either have never tried or tried once and gave up on, I encourage you to experiment more and be more open and not attached to the results. You and I found a clever way to experiment mindfully, which is to record an episode about this. It’s not like wasted time.

One could sit here and be like, “We’ve been on Clubhouse for twenty plus minutes and only one person joined and then it got weird. We don’t know what happened. I’m never trying it again.” My hunch is that Clubhouse requires you to put in a lot of effort, which makes it very appealing. Whereas several social media platforms, especially when they’re new, they’ll reward you a lot at the very beginning. That’s what I was expecting here. I have a feeling that the Clubhouse is going to be confusing because it’s a new type of platform with audio only.

Second of all, a lot of people aren’t comfortable with audio as we are. I want to remind the reader that Jason and I have done a lot of practice. We’ve done over 100 episodes of this show. That’s a ton of practice, but we’ve also been content creators on video for over ten years each. If you’re feeling like you don’t have the confidence that we have, you can build that up. It is a skill that you can learn and Clubhouse might be a great place because another plus for me about it is there’s no video and it’s very easy. Aside from some of these like minor questions we’ve had, it was very intuitive and quick to set up. Wouldn’t you say, Jason?

Compared to some of the other platforms of the past that might’ve been non-intuitive, I think the UI the User Interface experience with this is clean and intuitive which I like. The other thing that you mentioned, which is interesting, Whitney, is you had said you were getting some strange error messages that were coming up. I got a text from Kelly that said, “I just joined Clubhouse I’ll join it.” Kelly said she’s going to join. We’ll see what happens. I got a barrage of bizarre error codes that jumped up in my Clubhouse, strange codes came up on my account. I don’t know what that means.

It means that we are such early adopters to this platform that we’re experiencing all the error messages they have, which is a sign that they’re still beta testing and they’re still working out kinks. That’s exciting for me. I’m getting requests, timeout and all these weird error messages. It’s cool to be able to see a platform in its infancy. Looking back on the history of platforms, as I said, Periscope, because you and I got on there early. I don’t know the timeline exactly of how long Periscope had been out before we got on there, Jason. It was fairly soon. It took a while. It’s going back to the confidence side of it. It took time for people to create and build that confidence to do live videos.

It was scary. I remember I was coaching people on that and it was also cool, unlike this platform where if you went on Periscope and Facebook and all that people would join to see what it was like to watch a live video. It’s common that we take it for granted because almost every platform has a live element now. This platform could be cool for us as podcasters because maybe our readers will join Clubhouse and they can listen to us live. I’ve been looking for a live way for us to podcast anyway. Maybe that becomes our thing where we always do Clubhouse and then we build from there. Going back to another thing I said, when you’re trying something new, it’s not working and you’re not getting the results, see if you can add in another level of a reward system like another benefit.

MGU 173 | New Social Media PlatformAnother example of that could be chatting with your friends. I’m excited that we had Jason Horton briefly. We might have Kelly Bennett on here, we can catch up with her and hang out. It’s an excuse. I’m going to do a Zoom session and get to know Sam on another level and maybe do a Clubhouse with her. That’s cool because she’s introducing me to her fans and her followers or her friends even. You can think about all these different ways beyond the numbers. That reminds me of one other thing as we wait to see if Kelly joins us, is that it’s easy to judge our performance based on social media, but we never know what’s working for us and in some ways against us. On Instagram, it’s well-known that we have this algorithm that has all these calculations into account about who sees your posts and when.

Just because you post something on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, whatever platform and people aren’t seeing, it doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with your content or yourself. It means that you are not within the constraints of their algorithm. I’ve noticed this big time on TikTok, which I’ve been on for over a year now. It took me all this time of experimenting and going through phases of consistency and inconsistency to gain some momentum. I don’t know how long that momentum will last or where it will lead me. My point is that I had to keep trying. If I’d given up, I wouldn’t have experienced this. We never know when it’s going to hit and we need to work on not judging the value of ourselves or our content based on whether or not we’re being rewarded on social media. We have to find another driving force.

the other thing too, and this is anecdotal evidence, but it’s something I’ve observed over and over again. I’ve noticed, Whitney that on Instagram particularly if I had to go back maybe to 2018 or so there are a few exceptions to this. That’s why it’s not a hard and fast rule. I’ve noticed that algorithmically speaking when I post a photo of myself or a human being right in the photo with me, it’s almost guaranteed. I’m going to get an exponential amount, more likes, and engagement from posting a photo with a human face usually mine in some context, versus if I post about something like, the plant-based meal plans from our friends, Michelle and Tony, or I post something about the 80/20 app or the bundle that we’re doing.

It’s more of like a graphic type of static photo posts. If my face is in there or my face isn’t prominently featured as the focal point of the content, I have noticed that my engagement is dramatically lower. A question that comes up and we talk about ethics now of presenting our content of, if I can throw this in, for lack of a better umbrella, more of a narcissistic category that we see people being rewarded for posting photos of their bodies, their faces. You look at certain people’s feeds that it’s them. Their entire feed is just them. If we know that the algorithm, or at least in my anecdotal evidence looking at my posts, being favored, featuring photos of my face or my body, Then, on one hand, I could say if I want to keep my engagement and my followers going, I ought to keep posting photos of my face and my body.

What if creatively or artistically I don’t want to do that? What if I want to feature a wider variety of content and not that? It becomes this strange ethical consideration of, “Do I create content because it’s going to be popular and I know it’s going to please the algorithm or do I create from my center or my core, and fuck the results?” Not on Instagram, but I think in social media, in general, it’s becoming this dubious consideration of, “Do I try and rig the game and play to the algorithm even if it means me denying certain things I want to post because I want to “win?” I don’t want my whole feed to be photos of myself, my body and my beautiful girlfriend or whatever. I want to put things on there that I feel are more heartfelt, authentic and post, whatever the hell I want. It brings up a strange consideration, especially if you’re a business owner and you’re trying to grow on social media of, “Do I please the algorithm and feed the machine or do I post what I want?”

That’s the ongoing question. I’m finding myself in that same place, Jason, especially with TikTok because as we discussed in that episode we did, I didn’t expect to make a mocktail video, a non-alcoholic cocktail to become so appealing to many people. I then made another one, that had a big viewership and now it’s like, have I accidentally boxed myself into something? I’ve been reflecting a lot on that because I don’t want to be known as a mocktail creator on TikTok. I certainly wouldn’t mind. It’s not against it, but in the long run is this my passion, not at the moment. It could become my passion, but I doubt it. My intention is not to be a mixologist for a non-alcoholic drink, but I guess I’m exploring it because as I said in our other episode, it feels good to help people. It feels good to include people. It feels good to support them to open their eyes and to teach them. As I was saying before about trying new things, if you find the silver linings in something, then it can become worthwhile and you might carve out a niche you weren’t even expecting. I think that’s very authentic because maybe you’re being guided in that direction. Another example that this reminds me of is I’ve been working on my new eBook, The Mindful Mug, and that’s the concept I have had on my brain for months. It all came out of feeling inspired to create a new eBook for 2021.

I thought, “What’s the subject matter I’m passionate and I can easily share about?” It’s coffee. It turns out that this project is not nearly as easy as I thought it was going to be. I have had much resistance to it, which I haven’t spoken to you about it. I set up this whole schedule for myself and I’m like, “I’m going to get this book done on this day. My goal is to get it done by the end of November 2020.” It didn’t happen. My goal was to get it done by January 1st, didn’t happen. My goal is to get it done January 4th. That didn’t happen. Part of me was like, “Whitney, this is what happens when you procrastinate.” I’ve been beating myself up about it and feeling like not a failure, but feeling discouraged or disappointed with myself.

I had to look into why and there are many factors about why been procrastinating. On the other side of it, this is true of much. I know for my personality, I tend to procrastinate things even when I enjoy them. Even when I don’t find them hard per se, or when there’s a lot of benefits of them like yoga is my classic thing. I procrastinate taking my yoga classes all the time, even though I feel great after taking them. With this eBook, I finally sat down. That was my plan. I’m going to wait until the eleventh hour and I’m going to write this eBook. I started to do it, I enjoyed it and I gained that momentum. It was like, “Where was this feeling weeks ago, months ago.”

I still need to do more exploration of being an eleventh-hour person. I also wonder simultaneously if, what if it’s okay to be an eleventh-hour person. I think I have this weird dual mindset and you can relate to this, Jason, of not liking a quality of myself, but simultaneously accepting it and wondering, “Maybe there’s nothing wrong with me.” Entrepreneurship is putting these boxes of like, “You should be prepared and you should be on top of things. You should be on time.” As we talked about in the episode with Tricia about should, if we let go of the shows and embrace our behaviors, maybe we give ourselves more grace to either be that way or not be that way or flow back and forth between it and ultimately, who cares? We talked about this in an episode with Melissa and we are talking about overall inclusivity, acceptance and allowing people to be who they are in this question of like, “Why do we care so much?” Most people don’t care nearly as much as we think they’re going to. We might as well show up in life the way we want to and that to me is authentic.

I want to comment on this point because I have been having deep conversations about this subject of being an eleventh-hour person in the context of how sometimes being the eleventh-hour person can create a lot of chaos and stress in life for not only oneself but the people around you. I wonder sometimes whether being a procrastinator or being an eleventh hour or pushing things to what I call like a critical mass of, “You must take action now,” is something that we learned as a coping mechanism as kids or that chemically we’re getting off on the adrenaline rush and the chemical rush by doing that. I’ve been thinking a lot about mechanisms from our childhood of how we learn to do things and a couple of examples of, Whitney, that I wanted to bring upon the subject because I have been talking about it and thinking about it a lot l.

If you’re in school and you realize that you’re the type of student that can excel waiting to the last minute to study, wait until the last minute to write a paper. You’re like, “I get mostly As and Bs why should I over-prepare then? I can wait till literally the last minute. I know I’m going to get a good grade.” In some ways, as we get out of school and we become adults, that that paradigm doesn’t necessarily serve us in every aspect of our life. As an example, if we transpose kind of like this, this procrastination or like, “I’ll take care of it later,” mentality, you have a car and you wait until your brakes are failing or it’s metal on metal with your rotors.

You’re like, “I better get the brakes fixed now.” When months ago the brakes were squealing telling you, “You need to get new brakes,” or maintenance on a car or perhaps taking care of your taxes or doing something. I’m not saying this to encourage fear around repercussions or the punitive aspects of life. I have found that pushing things to the eleventh hour and procrastinating generally creates more chaos and stress for me than is worth it. I’m trying to do a much better job at handling shit at the moment and getting it done now. It doesn’t mean I’m perfect at it or it filters into every aspect of my life but my version of what you’re saying is I’m trying not to do that because I’ve noticed when I engage in eleventh hour behavior, I feel stressed, anxious and crazy that I don’t like that feeling. I’m curious for you if you enjoy that feeling, the adrenaline, the rush and the additional pressure that paradigm creates for you.

I think I do enjoy it. I wouldn’t show up that way if I didn’t. It’s something maybe would need somebody to like, do a full analysis of me on or I’d have to like read a book on to fully figure this out, who knows where it came from. I don’t know if there’s anything wrong with it. I saw something about how oftentimes our desires to constantly improve ourselves in itself can be a coping mechanism or a trauma response. This desire to constantly change ourselves, optimize ourselves and figure ourselves out might not be great for us. What if instead of trying to change me and no longer be an eleventh-hour person, what if I allow myself to be that and accept it. Maybe I’ll change it, maybe I won’t. That mentality helps me more because I don’t need to change it. The consequences haven’t been big enough for me to change. It doesn’t need to be changed. It’s not a priority in other words.

If nobody cares, then why do you need to change? Share on X

It comes down to the results in our lives and not in the results of what our immediate aim or goal is. I want to use this as an example of mechanisms that we see “work” in our lives. There’s a mutual friend of ours. I don’t want to name them personally, but she has a tendency and a way of being that she’s very aware of in business and her personal life all across the board. It’s not a mutually exclusive thing where it’s one aspect of it. It’s in her life that I have pointed it out and multiple close friends have pointed out that for her to feel safe and in control, that she feels the need to bulldoze people and ramrod them and dominate them to get what she wants.

It’s worked in business. She’s doing very well for herself and it’s when you have a way of being, or you have a way of operating in the world and you see results like, “I’m making money. I’m doing well. My business is scaling. This must be working.” If we broaden the viewpoint to see, “Maybe this approach of bulldozing and steamrolling people and dominating them to get what I want is alienating some of my relationships.” It’s like it works in business, but, “My relationships are being fractured, frayed and stressed by the same approach.” I say this because sometimes I think as humans, we see a practice or a thing, we implement work in one aspect of life and get the results we want and then think, “We can transpose that and then apply it to other aspects of life,” but I don’t think it works that way.

There’s a lot of nuance in this type of thing of whether it’s eleventh hour or whether it’s being a very dominating person in the business. I don’t think one thing necessarily can work across the board in all aspects of our life. Even if we are saying to ourselves, “I’m getting the results I want.” I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with any of these approaches. It’s important to try and take a bird’s eye view of how it’s affecting all aspects of our life, not just our business.

I show up that way in a lot of capacities. At this point, the awareness is there. Unless somebody asked me to show up differently or requires me to show up differently, then I don’t see a need to change it. That’s my ultimate viewpoint. If somebody comes to me and unless this is your way of saying that to me, Jason. If somebody had come to me and said, “You being an eleventh-hour person is painful for me or it’s getting in the way.” If somebody brought that up, certainly I would make the changes.

I’m trying to think of examples if anybody’s approached me that way, but the best one would be sometimes I show up as an eleventh-hour person when like, I’m timing out something and deciding what I’m going to leave and where I’m going to arrive. I’ll get there right on time or a minute beforehand. That’s typically how I am. I’m rarely early. There are some people or some occasions in my life where I go out of my way to show up early because that’s important to them or show up right on time so I am not late and I’m always willing to do that. If a job requires me to show up early for some reason, I suppose I would. The thing is nobody does, on time is on time.

Being the eleventh hour, isn’t late, it means that you have an intense work period and it might be an hour or it might be a few hours. Maybe eleventh hour is the day before or it’s minutes before. The downside I see is that it does cause stress and it can lead to delays. For example, my eBook is delayed, nobody seems to care. That is my barometer, I suppose. If nobody cares, then why do I need to change? That’s my approach. If somebody cares, I will absolutely change. I will modify, adapt, shift or whatever word you want to use. If I don’t see a lot of people caring, then my effort or my effort to do things differently is not fully there.

That makes sense. If we’re not causing undue stress, trauma, pain or suffering to the people in our lives or ourselves for that matter, why modify a behavior? This does come back to your point, you raised, Whitney, since we are talking about, some of the ethical aspects of entrepreneurship and mindfulness around this is how many programs and books and courses and coaching programs are positioned sometimes very subtly around, exacerbating someone’s feelings of not enoughness. “You ought to enroll in this program. You ought to take my coaching. You ought to buy my book because of my formula, my program, my twelve steps and my this, my that. Look at all the testimonials, look at all the results.” We’ve had these conversations and want to be increasingly mindful of our languaging and positioning of not exacerbating or agitating someone’s feeling of lack or not enoughness or that they have a problem that we can solve for them.

This pseudo messianic savior complex that bluntly, I see a lot of people on the internet that are like “Why should they change? They’re making a ton of money.” Money, profit and success at the expense of psychologically manipulating people are not worth it. I see a lot of what I feel is very unethical things in our industry and it turns my stomach and it makes me sad. Beyond focusing or demonizing people for me, I want to continue focusing, as I said, on delivering things in integrity. Keeping my word, not over promising and under delivering and being honest about what I can support people with and not being like, “I can do that thing for you I’ve never done it before.” You and I have talked ad nauseam about how many people we see doing that.

It’s a call for people to check themselves and keep their desires in check. We all want to be making a lot of money. Money allows us to do things in the world. We all would like a measure of success, acknowledgment and recognition and importance, but we can’t try and strive for those things at the expense of taking advantage of people being dishonest, over promising, not delivering. I’m saying that as a call to whoever’s reading, who is in business or who is a content creator, please let’s all be very mindful together of how positioning ourselves, how we’re talking to people and not subtly demeaning them or diminishing them to sell them a product.

Anybody reading can appreciate that because nobody wants to be lied to or manipulated just so that somebody can make money off of them. Operating in integrity is incredibly important to us, at least. That’s the interesting thing as we experiment with Clubhouse and reflect on it. One thing I’m noticing is it’s a privilege to be in an app like this from the get-go. Getting invited to something like a privilege. It’s a club now but it’s also a privilege to get people to pay attention to you. It’s very humbling when they don’t like for us not having any strangers listening is a surprise. I went in with this expectation, but now I have different expectations because of what we experienced.

Next time I do a Clubhouse, it’ll be the same experience. Maybe it’ll be different. I don’t know. It allows me to let go of expectations and be humbled by the fact that I’ve had the privilege of having an audience for many years on other platforms and now it’s starting from square one and scratch. I’m interested to see how Clubhouse develops. I’m curious, whatever happened to Kelly, she said she was going to check it out. It was an error you think? Was it not a time sensitive thing? That’s the other thing I don’t know. I did hear from Jason Horton, he texted me and told me that he was at the post office and that’s why he couldn’t turn his audio on.

If we're not causing undue stress, trauma, pain, or suffering to the people in our lives, then why modify ourselves, for that matter? Share on X

I don’t know about Kelly. I’m going to text her back and check-in. She’s a good friend of ours, maybe the next time we do this, we pre invite people and let them know we’re going to do it, Whitney, so we can start to invite more people. Maybe that’s a strategy of inviting friends that we know to be on these calls and these group chats on Clubhouse and that’ll be a momentum builder to attract more people. Since it’s a new thing and we’re experimenting with it, we don’t know what their algorithm is or if they even have an algorithm. I don’t know what I suppose the tricks of the trade to build an audience on this platform but why not try it. We go back to starting this episode of radical experimentation.

We don’t know what we’re doing, but let’s try it and see what happens. That’s ultimately, as we wrap this episode, the spirit that we want to leave you with dear reader, don’t think you have to be perfect. Don’t think you have to get it right on the 1st, the 2nd, the 3rd, the 20th, the 50th try. Consistency, determination, resilience and experimentation, we can apply this to many aspects of our, we’re on this thing. It’s our very first one and maybe we can be a little bit more intentional and pre-invite people next time. We’ll try things out and see what happens. It’s a crapshoot. It’s the Wild West. We don’t know.

MGU 173 | New Social Media PlatformIt’s funny because you can minimize while we’re in our room, you can click on it at the top of all rooms. When I did that, two showed up for me on the feed, because the feed similar to any other platform, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. The two that show up at the top of mine, one that says, “RIP Clubhouse,” with a laughing emoji symbol. The one underneath that says, “My Clubhouse is broken. Can anyone see this?” We happened to join Clubhouse at a time where it wasn’t functioning properly. Maybe that explains everything and that goes back to my original point is sometimes the circumstances are not in your favor for whatever reason.

You’ve got to let it go and flow with it and try it again because it could be very different the next time. Thank you for, Jason, experimenting. I’m going to go listen into one of these Clubhouses and see if I can find out. I love your idea of scheduling them in advance. Since we might do this while we’re recording episodes, perhaps, we do this with our guests on the show. We can record on there. The audio we’d have to figure out how to optimize it properly. It is a pain recording and being on Clubhouse are using two different speakers and two different microphones, overall at one pretty smoothly. I’d be open to doing this again and planning it in advance.

I can’t wait to experiment more and I’m curious how things have developed between this recording date and the episode comes out because social media changes rapidly for all we know Clubhouse could be broken and be a permanent thing. We could be part of the Clubhouse nostalgia just like Myspace. We’re documenting a time that we have no idea what it’ll mean in the future. Thank you, Jason, for being open to it. I appreciate your positivity and enthusiasm. I wasn’t expecting that. I thought you were going to be, “There’s no way I’m joining another platform, Whitney. To hell with that,” but you said yes. That challenged my assumptions and that went beyond my expectations and I’m grateful for that experience too. Thank you to Kelly Bennett for at least saying yes, even though it didn’t work out. Thank you to Jason Horton. Thank you to our other friends and previous guests. You can find this easily on Instagram under @Wellevatr. We’re also on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, all the major platforms and TikTok, unbeknownst to you.

We’re wrapping up our episode and it’s speaking of eleventh hour, it was perfect timing based on the theme, because we were talking about doing things at the eleventh hour, sliding at the last moment, Kelly, and I love that. It’s what happened as we’re wrapping up. I posted a TikTok video on the Wellevatr account of me sharing an embarrassing moment. Thank you for reading. Thanks for being open and following our journey with Clubhouse.

 

Important Links

*We use affiliate links in our show notes. This means we receive a small sales commission if you purchase an item based on our recommendation.

 

Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!

Join the This Might Get Uncomfortable community today: