Who Needs Followers When You Have Friends? How to Actually Use Clubhouse

Last March, I left my home in NYC with my then 8 week old, my dog and my husband for a quick "2 week" trip to Rhode Island. I am immunocompromised so we thought it was safer to leave NYC for a little, with the intention to return shortly after, once the pandemic "calmed down a bit."

I put these items in quotes, as we had no idea what was in store for us (neither did the rest of the world), when we packed our car with clothes only for a 2 week getaway. That was the last time I saw my apartment. My dad ended up moving us out of our home, and we ended up hopping from Airbnb to Airbnb for an entire year with our now 13 month old trying to navigate what it meant to live in this new world.

After 3 months of working full time and raising our baby full time, and trying to sneak in a glass of wine in between just to have a resting period, we decided to move back in with my family for 3 months for a bit of a change of pace and some trusted help! From July to September, I felt completely lost and isolated, even though I was surrounded by family. I had just raised money for my company during the pandemic, and had transitioned out as CEO after 8.5 years. I was in my old bedroom that I hadn't been in since I was 19. I was completely confused on what to do next with our company, CatalystCreativ which was 60% physical experiences since 2012. I felt disconnected from the world, and even from myself.

So when my friend Jacques-Philippe Piverger recommended that I check out Clubhouse, in early September, when there were less than 1 million users and I thought why not. I can at least listen to it while breastfeeding my baby 5 times a day. My first time joining, I ended up listening to a conversation about what it meant to be a modern parent with James Andrews, (an old friend), Catherine Connors and Kat Cole. I found myself in this room for 2 hours, hopping "on stage" and then back in the audience, talking about topics that I was grappling with as a new mom with people I loved and knew, and people I respected and didn't know.

I continued to learn more about Clubhouse, and found myself reconnecting with friends that I haven't been able to keep in touch with over the years. I don't use social media besides LinkedIn so a lot of my friendships have dwindled over the years as it's a lot harder to keep in touch by text than by instagram comment. I found myself in rooms with people I've been friends with for a decade like Nicole Patrice De Member and Wayne Price. I reconnected with my dear friend Stephanie Simon, who happened to be running community for Clubhouse.

And because Clubhouse was giving me so much, helping me feel a part of a community again, I asked how can I help? I started to see clubs being formed left and right, but a lack of connection between these clubs. While I have always been a part of many groups, like always I felt I had the opportunity to connect these groups and form collaborations, so I started a club of clubs, called The Snack Exchange.

During this process, I reached out to club leads and asked how I could help. I connected club leads with other club leads to support on programming and content, on collaborations "off campus" (off of Clubhouse), I led with what do you need and then just continued to give and give and give.

And from there, I was blown away by the genuine relationships I formed through this experience. I ended up on calls with 50 people (some old friends like Ethan Lipsitz, Zach Bell and Evan Walden) and with a lot of new friends like Liana Fricker, Rahaf Harfoush, and Julie Wenah). I ended up hosting and supporting spaces with amazing facilitators and moderators like Toni Thai Sterrett, Gina Belafonte, Francesca Hogi, Denise Hamilton, Lynnette Astaire, Natasha Valley, and Bomani X.

Now, Clubhouse has 10 million users, and a lot of the new users are obsessed with followers. They have rooms where they ask you follow them as a moderator, they have rooms where you can silently read each other's bios and follow, they have rooms where they literally just talk about how to get followers by asking you to follow them. But that's not the Clubhouse I am a part of. I see people coming together to create fundraising concerts for Texas (they have already raised $70,000): https://www.clubhouselovestexas.com

I see artists from all over the world coming together to create a full production of the Lion King, with a chorus, multiple band members, narrators, and a full cast with multiple 3 hour productions. I also see the Lion King cast hosting a session with families after the show to do a live Q+A with the families and specifically children about the experience.

I have been a witness to people learning French, sharing poetry, being vulnerable about their struggles with strangers. I have made friendships, partnerships, I even have joined advisory boards because of Clubhouse and got to meet amazing entrepreneurs like Evan Leaphart and Sonya Trachsel.

So how do you use Clubhouse? It can be a place where you build authentic, genuine relationships but it's definitely about leading with how can I help first, and then what can I gain second. When you operate from a place of giving, (and I don't mean giving away your services for free, I mean giving what feels good to you) and not taking FIRST, you will get more than you could ever imagine.

*As a sidetone, it's imperative on an app like Clubhouse focused on such an intimate way of connecting such as audio to know who you can trust. The best way I think to build trust and get to know someone is to give first, ask second. As you continue to give authentically, you will attract the right kind of people, and as a separate sidetone, all of the people I have mentioned in this article are people I personally endorse as trusted, wonderful humans doing incredible work in Clubhouse and off of Clubhouse.

So with that, let's stop focusing so much on the quantity of followers, and more so focus on the quality of the relationships we build from those "follows" (as just remember each follow actually represents a human being). At the end of the day, I feel when you have real friends, who you can build with, create with and feel supported by, you don't focus as much on the followers.