8 Stages of Clubhouse Enlightenment

Love it or hate it, Clubhouse is here to stay. At this point, you’ve either:

1. Tried it and stayed with it.
2. Tried it, hated it and left.
3. Rationalized a reason strong enough to not try it at all.

The question is: Have you made the right decision about Clubhouse for you and your business?

My name is Marty Dickinson. I downloaded the Clubhouse app to my iPhone in early January 2021. I heard about it in November, 2020, but the last thing I needed on my plate was another shiny object to distract me away from what I was already focusing on in my business. Finally, I gave in and tried it, with the hope I might be able to advise my connections and clients properly if Clubhouse was worth their time or not.

Today, I am well beyond being skeptical whether or not Clubhouse is worth my time. I co-moderate a weekly session every Monday with Lois Creamer and R.J. Jackson called Make Money Speaking. For two hours, we discuss current trends and strategies for using speaking to build your business and advance in the professional speaking industry. Each week, I am guaranteed to have spend two hours with dozens of new, emerging and established professional speakers (my target audience).

The two hours I spend in the Make Money Speaking club is about 80% of the time I give Clubhouse each week. Once a week, or sometimes once every two weeks, a discussion topic will catch my eye and I’ll sit-in for a half hour or so.

My limited time and focused participation was not always so streamlined.

Dues Paid

I too, like so many before me, spent half and full days listening to Clubhouse discussions. My initial quest was to get to 100 followers in a week and then 1,000 followers in a month. I wouldn’t drive anywhere in my car without listening to, and participating in, a Clubhouse session.

Working while participating on Clubhouse didn’t go well. I would try to listen and get sidetracked by the focus needed for work projects and giving direction to my helpers. Then, suddenly, I’d hear through the speaker on my phone, “Marty, what do you think about that?”

The embarrassment is real when you’re caught not paying attention to a discussion on Clubhouse! My work productivity decreased by half during any Clubhouse session because I had to make sure I was listening carefully to every speaker.

I almost quit using Clubhouse!

Due to my lost hours each week, I almost quit using Clubhouse entirely, but then I came across the Make Money Speaking room. Since then, I’ve enjoyed a full six months (at the time of this publishing), of meeting on Clubhouse every week with one of the most well-known and trusted speaking business advisors, Lois Creamer.

Learning from Lois, and participants who have contributed to the conversations on Make Money Speaking, has reignited my interest in being involved as a speaker in the professional speaking industry, rather than just a marketing services provider for speakers.

Just over the past three months, for example, I:

• Gained complete clarity about my speaking topic and the message I can bring to the world. Title: Action is Not Enough Anymore: The New Way to Build Any Business in a Post-Pandemic World.
• Launched a Facebook group called Speakers Speak Club to support others wanting to build their businesses with speaking.
• Created a private podcast called Million-Dollar Nugget featuring selected speaking business experts.
• Started a Wednesday weekly virtual live practice session on Zoom for new and emerging professional speakers called Speakers Speak LIVE.
• Updated my speaker one-sheet and speaker page on my website.
• Developed and launched a document called Get Speaking: The Ultimate Checklist for Entering or Re-Entering the Professional Speaking Business, with contributions by Lois Creamer, Frank Kitchen and Mike Domitrz.
• Got invited to guest two podcasts and am proactively ramping up my outbound marketing to podcast hosts to guest on more.

None of this would have happened had I not originally bit the bullet and got started with Clubhouse. None of it!

It’s Really Not About Me

The point of this post is not to focus on me, the time I spend on Clubhouse, how much money I’ve made from Clubhouse, how many followers I have or even to promote Make Money Speaking. My example is fairly common to others where Clubhouse has helped them progress in their businesses. Rest assured, this post IS about you and YOUR time spent on Clubhouse and whether you should get started or continue building your participation.

Defining Your Progress Toward Clubhouse Enlightenment

What might help with your decision is to have a better understanding of the eight stages people go through with Clubhouse. I believe everyone goes through them. Some reach the highest level of enlightenment (the Anchor stage), while others never make it far enough to even see the opportunity potential. Let’s start with a main graphic to illustrate those stages.

The 8 Stages of Clubhouse Enlightenment by Marty Dickinson

Stage #1: Skepticism

We all go through it. We hear about it. We’d like to think it would be worth while. We’d like to think, “This is just what I’ve been waiting for to solve all my problems!” Then, we get married and it’s all over!

Sorry, couldn’t resist. I’m just kidding. I’ve been married 31 years to my high school sweetheart so I certainly mean no disrespect to marriage!

You can literally fill in the blank, though, to any get-rich-quick offer you’ve signed up for in the past. They almost always fall short and you get that same defeated feeling as described in the paragraph above.

When someone hears “Clubhouse” for the first time, those same feelings of being lured into yet another time-suck start, pyramid scheme, spam exploder, guaranteed system, start churning in your stomach.

You might reply to the person who told you about it with, “Alright, so I’ve kind of heard about it, but what exactly is Clubhouse?”

Then, the friend tries to articulate in text what the heck Clubhouse is. Something like this is the result:

“Well, imagine a free tele-conference call, without video or Zoom, but everybody eventually talks and introduces themselves, although it might take a few hours of waiting before you get to introduce yourself, but you really don’t want to be too salesy when you do introduce yourself or provide a share, but think of it more like a social media where you talk instead of type about discussion topics, and people continue the conversations on Instagram DM…oh and sometimes there are 10 people on the call and sometimes a thousand.”

I mean, really, how many times have you found yourself trying to describe Clubhouse to someone who hasn’t been on it before? It’s really a challenge! No wonder first-timers are so skeptical. It’s just too weird of a concept to be so simple. Therefore, it MUST be a scam or at least a severe time-suck with no reward.

The way I describe Clubhouse to people is this: A virtual gathering place for people who want to leapfrog their professional and personal relationship building in minutes, what would normally take them months.

And, if that doesn’t work, I suggest, “I’m sending an invite your way. Just do it, you’ll thank me later.”

Stage #2: Discovery

The free app is finally available for Android and iPhone. So, anyone with a smart device should not be technically limited from getting started on Clubhouse. Simply go to wherever you download apps for your phone or tablet and download the free Clubhouse app and install it.

Once you download the app, the fastest way to get officially welcomed into Clubhouse as an active member is to ask a friend to send an invite to you from their cell phone. Tip: That person will need to have your name and cell phone number in their contact list to send the invite.

Once Clubhouse is live on your mobile device, you are ready to dig in. The first discovery you’ll make is how nothing is difficult to use or technically challenging about using Clubhouse. Coming from a complete technophobe like myself, that says a lot. If “I” can figure it out, truly anyone can!

Perfecting Your Clubhouse Profile

A point of interest to be aware of as you discover features of Clubhouse will be your profile.

Let’s put it this way: Your Clubhouse profile is GOLD.

Much of your success or struggle using Clubhouse will be determined by how well your profile is structured and written. Our Clubhouse Best Practices will help. The good news is that your profile can be extremely customized. You can change your profile anytime and the changes take effect immediately.

Here is an example of one of my early profiles. I had just finished hosting my first room where we discussed best practices for using Clubhouse. So, I accumulated my notes, added a blog post to my website and made a graphic to promote to my social networks.

At least a few dozen times, I’ve talked about a subject in Clubhouse and a person has said, “Where can I find that resource?” My answer will be, “Give me just a moment and I’ll add the URL in my profile.” As a result, several participants in the discussion choose the option to “Follow” me by tapping a button, and then they go to my profile to see the URL I have suggested.

They’re also getting introduced to the *rest* of my profile at the same time where I might feature my book title, name of my business, URL to a Facebook group I founded. The list of resources to provide in a profile can get extensive.

Tip: A Hidden Benefit of Clubhouse Nobody Talks About

One of the hidden benefits of being active on Clubhouse, and getting familiar with its operations, is that so many people want to know how to best use it. You can use what you’ve learned to help others get introduced to Clubhouse.

When you discover something that works for you, post it to your blog and let your social connections and list subscribers know about it. A little bit of SEO and you’ll suddenly have a little more traffic to your website and serve as a resource of knowledge for your potential customers.

Here is an example of a near-top search position for my website for the search phrase “clubhouse best practices.” Only LinkedIn and one other post has outranked mine.

Discovering One-on-One Connection Opportunities

Making connections is the next discovery a new Clubhouse participant enjoys.

Clubhouse is integrated with Instagram and Twitter. You’ll frequently hear people in Clubhouse discussions suggest to listeners, “Connect with me through Instagram,” or “Send a DM to me through my Instagram and I’ll get back to you on that.”

One of the most important things you can do on Clubhouse is to start an Instagram account (if you don’t already have one) and connect it to your Clubhouse account.

I’ve found many people do not even realize there is a direct messaging component within Instagram. Once on Clubhouse, expect to get proficient with this powerful tool of connection.

Of course, “connecting” with others can really only be done efficiently in one of two ways:

1. Hearing a participant speak inside a Clubhouse verbal discussion and you become interested in connecting with that person.
2. A participant hears YOU speak inside a Clubhouse verbal discussion and they become interested in connecting with you.

So, the real key to fully discovering that Clubhouse is something worth your time is to find rooms or clubs where live verbal discussions are happening and join in the conversations.

Stage #3: Opportunity

By the end of your fist hour of time investment, you’re going to start seeing the opportunity Clubhouse provides.

By simply listening to the people leading the discussions (moderators co-moderators), and the way they interact with participants (speakers), you will start whispering statements to yourself like, “Hmm, how cool is that? The person nobody knows just asked Les Brown a question! And, he answered!”

You’ll start noticing how people introduce themselves when brought up to the “stage” as it’s called. Experienced Clubhouse participants learn how to hone their introductions so that the rest of the audience knows what they do without trying to outright sell anyone. But, you know why the person is there. They’re hoping more people connect with them. Maybe one day a few of those who connect might opt-in to something and maybe possibly spend some money.

But, I’m saying it right now. This “maybe” and “someday” is NEVER thought about by first-timers on Clubhouse!

From Surly to Surprised!

Once you get your profile set and discover where to go for getting in on discussions, you’re going to do the same thing everyone else does! You’re going to quickly transition from surly to surprised! You got dragged into this Clubhouse thing and you were going to figure out a way to hate it. But, suddenly you become surprised.

Your eyes widen, your mouth takes the position of saying “ooooo,” your tongue sticks out and you get it! Kind of like a new gold panner of the old West, you say to yourself, “Woe! You mean I can get on a stage, introduce myself, give a special offer, have hundreds of people follow me because EVERYONE needs what I can give them, and then I can bounce out of that room and move to the next and do the same thing and then bounce to the next and the next?!!!”

“I can put all my marketing know-how into this and double my list in a month and triple my Facebook group in a week!”

Do you hear me yelling? Well, yeah, that’s what I mean. That’s exactly what happens. You start yelling with excitement that you’ve just found the next silver bullet for your company’s success.

People start neglecting their current means of marketing so that they can free up their days to spend more time on Clubhouse. After all, the more time you spend on Clubhouse, the more leads you’re going to get, right? Sales are sure to follow without even trying! And, you have not spent a single dime on Facebook ads to have a direct connection with your target audience.

You find yourself saying, “How exciting to have come across a complete replacement for all of my outbound marketing! All I have to do is plow all of my marketing and sales knowledge into Clubhouse and I’ll have all the business I could ever want!”

Hey, don’t laugh. It happened to me. It can happen to you too.

In fact, I’m not even sure there’s a way around this stage. Everyone has to go through the gold-panner experience with Clubhouse. And, don’t get me wrong, many have “made money” from their participation on Clubhouse. So, thinking about Clubhouse helping to boost your business is a realistic thought. If you’re at this stage, you’re just not ready to receive exactly how that happens yet.

So, keep reading!

Let’s talk about the next stage of the process; the stage of Monetization.

Stage #4: Monetization

I’ve been in business for 25 years. The only way I’ve been able to make that happen is for clients to eventually pay me for products and services.

You can be the most giving person in the world (and so many people are VERY giving on Clubhouse), but, there comes a point where you’re going to have to eat and put clothes on your family. Money comes into play with everyone, eventually, in all walks of life.

Monetizing Clubhouse will probably enter your mind early on in the Discovery phase. But, you might not take specific steps to make Clubhouse-initiated sales until your eyes are wide open and you’re salivating from the mouth — like a gold-panner who’s discovered some gold dust on his dog’s paws — in the Opportunity stage.

Everybody gets to the monetization stage of clubhouse. Whether they act upon it and start selling or skip this stage entirely is a different story. But, everyone on Clubhouse at least wonders, “There’s GOT to be a way to make money from this!”

Choose from Your Monetization Options

Some assemble a package only available to club members or room participants. Others use Clubhouse as the first stage of a funnel by creating a tripwire for new followers to get access to.

I’ve recently started taking notes of every Make Money Speaking session. Each week, I add the notes to topic-focused blog posts on my main company website. Attendees go there to get a recap and (hopefully) register to my LIFETIME FREE members area where they can get immediate access to Get Speaking: The Ultimate Checklist for Entering or Re-Entering the Professional Speaking Business or join my Speakers Speak Group on Facebook.

Those who decide to go deeper are invited to get on a phone call to see how we might work together help build their businesses. Pretty simple.

Sell More…with Faster Relationship Building from Clubhouse

What I want you to receive with this stage is that selling is selling. Monetizing is monetizing. You have to build relationships with people before they’re going to be willing to buy from you no matter what marketing vehicle you use. Nobody makes any money from Clubhouse, in and of itself. They build relationships faster with Clubhouse and get sales in a speedier time-frame than they would by relying on most traditional marketing tactics. That’s where the monetization potential happens.

Once you combine monetization possibility with the opportunity, like a miner trembles with excitement after finding a bit of gold dust, there’s little to hold you back from moving to the next stage toward Clubhouse Enlightenment.

Step #5: Obsession

This step can often be flip-flopped with the Opportunity stage. You might become obsessed with participating in multiple Clubhouse rooms. You might join dozens of Clubhouse clubs. You might wake up every morning and join a Clubhouse discussion before you even get out of bed. Listening in on a Clubhouse room might be the last thing you do before you close your eyes at night. You might do all of those things without making any effort to monetize.

The opposite possibility is also true. You might become obsessed to connect with and monetize every single connection you make on Clubhouse. You figure the only meaningful reward for you spending any time on Clubhouse is if you’re making sales from the effort. This means going completely overboard by following every single participant in a room or club and reaching out to that person on Instagram and attempting to start a discussion in hopes of making the big push to make a sale! In effect, you are poaching someone else’s Clubhouse discussion when using this tactic. But, you don’t care because you are obsessed with the ability to freely DM so many people without penalty like you might experience on other platforms such as LinkedIn.

If you’re on Clubhouse long enough, it’s easy to spot the people new to the process (and in the Obsession stage), whichever way they choose to pursue that obsession.

The Most Common Form of Obsession

Clubhouse is a lot like high school. Popularity is power! We tend to be impressed with people who are popular. We want to follow them, be part of what they’re involved in, and if possible, copy what they’re doing so we can become popular just like them.

How do you know if someone is popular on Clubhouse? The person will have a high number of followers.

Most of us have a long road to getting to the 100,000 follower mark, let alone 1 million! So, set your expectations appropriately.

A Good Goal to Shoot for

Most known professionals are able to gain 1,000 followers within a few months time, but you’ll still have to put in the time. There are not many shortcuts to gaining followers.

I’ve become acquainted with Jeff Stein over the past couple of months. Jeff joined Clubhouse in February, 2021, about a month after I did. Jeff has a professional background that includes broadcast radio. For him to become involved and do well in something like Clubhouse was a no-brainer.

Let me tell you some more facts about Jeff. He:

• Moderates a club on Clubhouse called Sunday Night Stories, which I appeared on as a guest speaker a few weeks ago.
• Hosts the Squares of the Roundtable podcast.
• Served as Master of Ceremonies (or Emcee depending on who you follow in the speaking world) for the Five-Minute Power Talk contest semi finals.

This morning while writing this, I asked Jeff how much time he spends on Clubhouse. He replied, “minimum 12 hours per week, but up to 20+ and it could even be 30 at times.”

I want you to see this very carefully if you’re feeling a bit down because your Obsession stage has not delivered as many followers on Clubhouse as you thought it should by now.

Jeff has extensive experience in broadcasting, spends 12–30 hours a week on Clubhouse and has earned 1,700 followers since he started in the first week of February.

My point is not whether that number is high or low. It’s not about whether Jeff could do better or that he does a better job than most at attracting followers.

What I want you to realize is that the key to raising follower numbers and gaining popularity is not obsession. It’s consistency.

“I’m Not a Loser!” Adrian in the movie, Rocky.

Truth be told: I am entering my 8th month on Clubhouse. I have only 361 followers! Does that make me a loser like you or I might have labeled an unpopular student in high school? Maybe so in the eyes of the more popular people on Clubhouse.

But, remember, I’m writing this article about the eight stages a person goes through as a Clubhouse participant. I’ve been through all of the stages. I am completely “Clubhouse enlightened,” as goofy as that word is to me and barely even part of my functional vocabulary.

My “obsession” stage was very short, lasting only about a week sometime back in February.

Then, reality struck.

I finally realized what Clubhouse meant — for me — and my business.

Inflating my numbers and sacrificing (investing) 60 hours a week just to get my follower numbers up was just not realistic for me to do, due to my work load and family commitments. Number of followers became zero priority to me.

Stage #6: Reality

There are several realities you will discover with Clubhouse. I’m going to cite what I feel are the three most important (for me) and allow you to consider some additional based on your resources and lifestyle.

Selling Should Not be Your First Priority on Clubhouse

If you go into every room jumping in to every conversation just so that you can “sell” your listeners, you’re going to get a rude awakening by being kicked out of the rooms you’re trying to participate in.

What’s worse is that your name will become known and recognized by moderators and co-mods to the point where they won’t even invite you up to the stage to speak anymore. They might even select you and ban you from the room or club entirely.

Vulnerability Sells in Clubhouse

The more vulnerable you are, the more people want to connect with you on Clubhouse. You’ll notice this in the early stages as a Clubhouse participant, especially since I’ve now made you aware to look for it.

If you want to test this, try something for me. Enter a Clubhouse room or club, hang around for a while and listen to the conversation a bit. Then raise your hand to be brought up as a speaker.

When you are invited to speak, say: “My question is….” and then give your question in less than five seconds.

Don’t say your name. Don’t announce what you do.

Just say “My question is…”

Watch what happens. There will be a pause of silence. The moderator might even experience fumble fingers for a moment before tapping the unmute button so she/he can acknowledge your question!

So many people come into Clubhouse conversations with an agenda to sell that moderators are surprised when someone does not. It’s like a breath of fresh air.

What will the moderator do next? Well, you will usually be asked to expand on your question. “Tell us more about the type of people you work with or serve so we can better answer your question,” you may likely hear.

Now you have an open door to craft your response so that people really do learn about what you do in your business, but in such a way that you are asking for help and suggestions. You can literally watch your follower numbers increase the more your discussion continues about your topic.

Isn’t it strange that people would choose to follow you because you DON’T know everything?

Just think about how backwards that is from Facebook or LinkedIn. You don’t see too many people promoting their businesses by complaining how terrible their business is going, do you? No, the posts are always bragging about milestones reached.

Clubhouse attracts people who really want to help each other.

Once you come to a point of reality with that one concept alone, your entire approach to participating on Clubhouse changes.

Consistency Brings Opportunity

By participating in the same rooms or clubs over time, your photo will become known to moderators and co-moderators. As you get more followers from participants who have been brought up to the stage to speak, Clubhouse will track that “speakers” have followed you. So, Clubhouse positions you higher in the audience so moderators can more easily see you are present. So, you’ll get invited to speak more frequently than someone just getting started in Clubhouse.

This recognition is only generated by consistency. You must participate consistently over time so that people leading rooms and clubs see your face repetitively. Then, of course, once you are asked to speak, you need to provide information of value. That’s what motivates the mods and co-mods to ask for your opinion on topics.

Nancy Giere appears in our Make Money Speaking Clubhouse Club sessions most Mondays. She doesn’t always appear the first minute when we open the room. But, when she does come in, either Lois, RJ or I invite her to the speakers area. Why? Because (yes, even with only 182 followers), all three of us recognize Nancy as one of the true experts in producing online courses.

We always seem to involve the topic of online courses somewhere in our two-hour Clubhouse sessions. If Nancy is not there at that particular time, we always say, “Where’s Nancy? She’s the expert on this topic!”

So, not only do we watch for her every week to appear, but we also MISS her when she’s not there!

The important thing here is how someone can get in the minds of moderators and co-moderators to the point where they *miss* the person if they’re not in the discussion! Just think about that for a moment and what that might look like to other audience members when Nancy does arrive!

Suddenly a party erupts! “YAY! Nancy is here! Quick, get her up to the stage!!”

However many of hours you choose to invest into Clubhouse, be consistent. Frequent the same rooms and clubs and get to know the mods and co-mods.

Collaboration Beats Popularity Any Day!

If there could be only one suggestion for me to share that you would receive and put to use from this long-winded article, it would be this: Collaboration is Better than Popularity.

Lois and I are not just co-moderators of a popular club on Clubhouse. Our relationship has grown far beyond that. I’m personally responsible for at least a few dozen sales of her book, Book More Business: Make Money Speaking. She is personally responsible for an equal amount of sales for my book,
Lions Always Win: How to Spot What You Want in Business and Life…and Get it Too.

Lois has been a guest on my private show, Million-Dollar Nugget inside my Speakers Speak Group on Facebook. We’ve referred people to each other. She’s even provided content for a document I use as an opt-in value component called Get Speaking!, which I described more in the monetization section of this post.

But, most importantly, what Lois and I bring to each other is credibility. She and I both have established credibility in different spheres of people. Together, we introduce our people to each other.

Watching our relationship build over the months has caused me to have extreme focus with Clubhouse. That’s why I don’t care about raising my numbers of followers quickly. That’s why I don’t need to spend 40–60 hours of my week on Clubhouse…and still be the recipient of enormous value from the, sometimes, only two hours a week participation on Clubhouse.

Stage #7: Focus

When you experience the Reality stage, a lightbulb ignites in your brain, kind of like the Grinch who finally realized the meaning of Christmas.

You realize that investing (or sometimes sacrificing) weeks or months of effort to gain popularity is not nearly as important as the one-on-one relationships that are out there waiting for you to initiate them.

Your realize having everyone, everywhere, following you might not be the best use of your time when it comes to following-up with those connections made.

You realize how your skills, knowledge and experience can best be shared on Clubhouse to support people who really need what you have to offer.

You realize you are only one person and need to maintain balance between work, your lifestyle and your family.

You decide to focus your time on Clubhouse.

Five Questions to Answer to Help You Gain Focus with Clubhouse

Consider using these criteria to identify how much time you will spend on Clubhouse per week and in what clubs or rooms you will attend.

1. What specific people do you want to get close to and potentially collaborate with?
2. What specific niche rooms or clubs do you want to become known in?
3. What demographic of participants do you want following you?
4. What kind of people do you want to follow?
5. What regions of your country or countries of the world do you want to be active in?

Stage #8: Anchor

Last week I attended an entrepreneurs club on Clubhouse where the same session had been going on for 60 — DAYS — 24 hours a day, seven days a week! The session had about 400 participants in the room when I joined in. The host had about 30 co-moderators running the show and what sounded like a long list of additional co-moderators formally scheduled in advance to keep the room going ’round the clock.

You might be thinking, “Who in their right mind?!!…..”

An ongoing session like this is an extreme form of the final stage a Clubhouse participant goes through. I call it anchoring.

Imagine an anchor dug into the dirt on land. It’s attached to the rope…and the rope is tied around you. It’s a long rope, about 200 yards in length. You decide to go swimming. The water cools you off on a hot day. You get in deep enough so you can go under water. But, then, when you get to the end of rope where danger could be ahead if you could go further, you’re reminded by the rope attached to the anchor that you’d better stay near shore so that you can enjoy both the sand on the beach when you want to build a sand castle and the water close to shore when you want to cool off.

As many co-mods as there were working that room, they were all anchored to the club itself, which connected to the overall topic of interest: entrepreneurs. They scheduled time in advance to be present for whatever duration they signed up for. They plowed the road in their personal and professional life so that they could be completely focused on the topics addressed in the session. My bet is that a lot of the co-mods were signed up for multiple time slots throughout the week, leaving little time for them to venture out too far in the sea for other clubs during the time of their commitment.

Anchoring in the Other Extreme

I see the same sentence on social media every week and hear it in discussions with people: “I used to spend a lot of time on Clubhouse but had to cut way back and just sit-in once in a while in my favorite rooms.”

This action is the opposite of anchoring to a 24-hour, 60+ consecutive day entrepreneurs club! The choice has been made to anchor to opportunities outside of Clubhouse…and just dip a foot in the water once in a while.

Hey, I’m no one to judge! You are welcome to pursue any extreme of anchoring you wish. The choice is yours. My point here is to bring to your attention that anchoring eventually occurs with every Clubhouse participant and I in no way am suggesting or demanding you go one way or the other.

What’s helpful is to know you are not alone when you get to the point of making this decision.

Anchoring Somewhere in the Middle

My anchor is the Make Money Speaking club. I build my entire week around being able to be present for those two hours on Monday nights, starting at 7pm (Eastern), 6pm (Central), 5pm (Mountain), 4pm (Pacific).

Sure, I might go a little deeper into the water throughout the week and swim left and right and visit a few other clubs and even participate in them occasionally. But, I have made the choice of how much time I can allocate to Clubhouse participation and the exact spot where I can contribute the most to an audience.

No matter what other Clubhouse room or club I explore, I do not go far from my anchor.

How to Find Your Anchor

Here are a few ways of developing your anchor on Clubhouse:

• Frequency: Attend the same room or rooms every week at the same time of day or night. Get a feel for the flavor of the room. What kind of people consistently attend? What is the culture of the room? What is the level of professionalism displayed?
• Support: Offer (or accept the invitation) to co-moderate a room that you frequently attend.
• Supply: Start your own room, host it, lead it and invite guests you know to cover topics you want to discuss.
• Lead: Start your own club and attract members and potential co-moderators to join so that they are alerted whenever your club goes live.
• Measure: Take an inventory once a month of people you’ve met on Clubhouse. Did any followers join your list, or Facebook group? Did they connect with you on Instagram or LinkedIn? Have you generated any invitations to be on podcasts or stages at speaking events? Can you track people from Clubhouse to becoming your customers or clients? What follow-up procedures have you adopted to your schedule instead of waiting for them to make the first move?

Reaching the Anchor stage brings a feeling of accomplishment and relief.

Attaining True Clubhouse Enlightenment and My Wish for You

In my view, Clubhouse is the most important web-based app for business connections to come along since Facebook. Avoiding and ignoring Clubhouse, without a thorough investigation into its potential, is a bit like saying you’d just rather stay with a horse than buy a car.

Clubhouse can help you leapfrog your professional and personal relationship building efforts in minutes, what would normally take you months of mining and cultivating on your own.

Spend and hour or two in the right room or club, with your ideal target audience, and you could find yourself with a list of appointments to converse further with people over the next week. And, you know what that means…potential sales you wouldn’t have had otherwise!

Clubhouse can get overwhelming and it can become addictive. So, you need to be careful of time spent on it and be mindful of the rewards you receive from it. Remember what’s important in your week and scheduling so that you can use Clubhouse in ways that add to your productivity rather than take away from it.

Realize everyone goes through stages with Clubhouse. Simply knowing what those phases are and seeing where you are in that sequence can be helpful to making Clubhouse work more positively for you and your business.

My hope for you is that you reach the final stage of Anchor. When you’ve reached that stage, you are truly aware of in which ways Clubhouse will be. of benefit to you as well as a sense of balance by serving others with value you provide during Clubhouse discussions.

You’ll reach a state of contentment that the time you’re spending on Clubhouse is enough. You really can do other things in your life, and you are excited to return to your anchor when that time of the week comes.

Maybe Clubhouse has already become your newly found ocean. It is your new identity. You are one of the many who’s names appear daily in the co-mod area or maybe you’ve started a club of your own and you operate sessions daily for several hours at a time. Hey, that’s fine too! If that time is rewarding to you in some way and you are content with the direction your Clubhouse experience is taking you, great. Continue serving and providing value.

My point is that everyone reaches that eventual decision when it comes to Clubhouse. You either love it, are still on the fence, or find any way you can to avoid it. Either way, expect to go through various stages and look forward to the day when you have reached Clubhouse Enlightenment.

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Marty Dickinson is the president of HereNextYear.com and is the two-time co-author of Web Marketing All-in-One for Dummies (Wiley). He works with individuals who want to scale their businesses faster by discovering their true expert method and sharing with the world so that red hot opportunities call them!