Speaker 0 00:01 Welcome to digital detox secrets. Those three words can change your life today. I had a pretty stressful day, so I decided to get up and just get outside. I went and walked around my neighborhood for about 63 minutes to be exact and listen to one of my favorite podcasts besides digital detox secrets. Of course. Okay, not really a, that podcast is called hustle and flow chart. If you're interested in check it out. I got in almost 10,000 steps, escaped my brain, changed my attitude, and came back refreshed and ready to record this intro, so digital detox secrets. It's a book and now a podcast. My name is Lisa buyer. I'm the author of the book and now the host of this podcast because the struggle is real when it comes to balancing life in the digital world. Welcome to the latest episode. My special guest is one of my all time girl crushes in the business world.
Speaker 0 00:52 Her name is Charlene Lee. And I actually met Charlene when she was a keynote speaker about 10 plus years ago at an internet marketing conference. And she was talking about one of her best selling books called groundswell. And I've been following her ever since on LinkedIn. And um, she's just a great inspiration when it comes to female business disruptors. And speaking of disruptors, her latest book is called the disruption mindset. And I was on a webcast with her talking about her book and she mentioned that she had attended burning man this year. Not only did she attend burning man, but she went with her 20 year old son. So Charlene, um, is like I said, very inspirational. Bernie man is one of my digital detox secrets listed in the book. I haven't been. So I thought I would invite Charlene on to talk about what all happened at burning man, how it was one of her digital detox secrets and some of the inside info. So stay tuned and meet Charlene.
Speaker 0 02:03 Hey Charlene, I'm so happy that you were able to join me for the digital detox secrets podcast and I've been stocking slash following you since groundswell days when I first saw you speak at a conference. So thank you for joining me. Thank you so much for having me here. And I'm just want to share with everybody your latest book is, um, the disruption mindset, which I absolutely love. And, um, so before we get started about the topic I wanted to talk to you about for digital detox secrets, can you just share with us your journey since I met you, when you were speaking about groundswell, how you got started and where you are today with, um, the D the disruption mindset here. Um, I started as an analyst at Forrester, uh, for about 10 years in the middle of, uh, towards the end of that I wrote groundswell because I thought it was a big story to tell about how companies were using social technologies. After
Speaker 2 02:59 that, I left and started altimeter, um, a it analyst firm and then kept writing books and 2015. So the affirm to profit, I'm still there. And just happened writing books. Um, and, and I'm really intrigued by the role of technology and society, uh, but also how it impacts our relationships and
Speaker 0 03:18 leadership. Yeah. So, and that's a very common ground for me too. And I wrote social PR secrets and had a very early start into, um, jumpstart from PR into digital and social and SEO. And that was when I met you and how digital has transformed our business lives and our personal lives and you know, in a good way and in a bad way. Right. So, um, it brought me to Wright's digital detox secrets and really, um, kind of go in depth on how people use digital to their advantage and how they can create these boundaries, um, to help them get through digital. So we were in a, in a zoom call and you mentioned that you went to burning man. And that's actually in the last chapter of the book. It's one of my favorite digital detox secrets. Not because I've been, but I've been very intrigued about a lot of people, a lot of entrepreneurs that I know have been. So I was like, okay, I got to get together with Charlene and find out the backstory on this and how you decided to go and how it came about. So can you share that with us?
Speaker 2 04:26 Yeah. I ran to some friends about 12, 15 years ago and they said, you've got to go. I'm like, this sounds so much fun. And then I realized that it was doing the same weeks as my kids first weeks in school. So I was not able to go because I can't leave my kids and not go and help them with their first week of school. So I decided at that point to just wait until I could actually have a free weekend. This year was the year that I didn't have to do anything with kids. So I said, I'm going to go. And uh, and so I've always wanted to go. And uh, partly because there are such a different type of community where people can really dig down deeper into what it means to be a part of a community. And also because there's basically no digital signal. There was no wifi. There's hardly any electricity unless you bring it. And um, it, it, and it was, I was just wanting to see what it was like more than thing else to just be able to connect with people on a deeper and um, level and be more present with each other.
Speaker 0 05:30 So for those that may not, might not know what Bernie Mann is, how would you describe it and where exactly is it located?
Speaker 2 05:35 Imagine you're in Reno, you go eat drive about an hour and a half, two hours Northeast. And he ended up in this national park, uh, called black rock. And it is an ode seabed. It is completely flat and it is just sand, um, dirt dust. It's all white, chalky kind of dust. There's nothing there. And in the middle of that, they set up a city called black rock, city of 70,000 people. So before you get there, it looks like there's nothing. And about a month after you leave, there's nothing left. There's no trace of it. And so out of this, of this nothingness comes this huge community all beautifully laid out with some principles to guide it. And it is an expression and experiment of vatical self-expression and radical self-reliance, uh, that literally people from all around the world coming and become this community. And how long do you go for it?
Speaker 2 06:31 Is it a certain amount of time everybody has to go for or how does that work if some people would just come for the day? Um, but it stretches from Sunday till the Monday after labor day. Uh, and there's activities all week long. A lot of people may come just for the last three days. Other people want to avoid that crush of people. So they come early in the week and then leave before the majority of people get there. So it goes to about a week, about 10 days all together. And you mentioned that you went with your son. How did that turn out or come about and how was that? Wow, the kids knew that when I first originally wanted to get out, I wanted to bring them, I heard about something called kids camp. So they have a place where you can bring your kids and it's like a safe, fun environment for all the other kids.
Speaker 2 07:19 And so he's been hearing about gurney man since he was a little kid since he was like five or six years old. And now I took my 20 year old son because he said, Hey, you're actually going to Bernie Mac, can I come? And I went, sure, if you want to come to Bernie man with your mom, let's go. So we went and had a great time. It was just a really nice way to spend some quality time with my son who was already out the house and in college. So it was a nice way to see him in a way to end the summer together. And what was it like preparing to go? So what do you bring to something like that and where do you sleep and how do you like daddy get food? Yeah. My, my original plan was to join this one camp.
Speaker 2 08:01 I had reserved a minivan that turned into a camper. So it has a bed in the back that you can flip up into seats. There's a little kitchen that you can be in the back view level up the top of the van. And I didn't get into the camp. And so I was looking at having to camp out on the edges of burning man by myself and being completely self reliant. And I just thought lost it. Not for my first year, I said, so I begged my way into what they call a plug and play camp. You basically show up with your stuff and they had shelter, food, water, you know, toilets and everything all set up. So it was pretty luxurious and very expensive. And I just figured I'm not going to go at this last minute, so I have to said, okay, I'll do it.
Speaker 2 08:47 I'm planning in a camp next year where it won't be so plug and play and be a little more resilient. But a lot of people show up with RVs. I'm just a bit more protection from the wind. Other people have, uh, yurts or something called a shift pot. It's like an insulated tent. Other people just tent, they put up a tent. Uh, it is hot. It is dusty. There were a huge wind storms where you have to wear goggles and like a face mask or um, a bandana across your face. And then, uh, there are also sometimes right and everything turns to much. We were very lucky this year. It wasn't that, that hot, we didn't have any major, um, wind storms and dust storms. So it, I was like, this is not too bad. It's very dusty. But, um, if you don't mind dust, it's, it's a pretty incredible environment.
Speaker 0 09:39 And how would you describe like what was a day in the life of you wake up and what happens?
Speaker 2 09:43 You wake up, you go out and explore. It was a lot of art. Um, there were a lot of camps offering food. So we went on food tours around burning man and then it round in those classes. Um, I went to a yoga class with live music. Um, you know, there were other classes and talks and you ride a bike around cause it's pretty big. It's a couple miles across and wide. So it's a lot easier if you can bike around. It's completely flat. So super easy to get around. And then at night there are a lot of um, activities and they have called things called burns. So that'd be a beautiful wood structure. And then they brought it to the ground at there are also a lot of soundstages so lots of music and dancing. But I think my favorite thing are these art cars, these big, huge cars made out of buses, sometimes semi truck trailers that people have turned into dragons and tell sailing ships in the space shuttle and you get on one and you're not quite sure where you're going to end up. And I think that was something I learned. I learned to give up any sort of planning. I um, I didn't try to schedule myself, plan anything, uh, would wake up and just say, what do you feel like today? What are you up to today? Maybe we'll go do something, you know, so look to learn, learn to live in the moment, um, 80 day, moment by moment to see what would inspire you to go do something. Right.
Speaker 0 11:17 I'm in a mastermind and this year with the past two years, burning man has been right before the mastermind. So a lot of the, my group came straight from burning man and they were like just very, um, they had gone through a lot in a very positive way, but it was just a lot. And so a lot of them were exhausted but in a good way. So what did you get out of it? What were some of the takeaways from it?
Speaker 2 11:42 I remember driving up to the gate where they welcome you and that there were not very many people there cause we, we tried to time it so we wouldn't go at a busy time. And we saw the people in the car in front of us get out and give great big hugs to the people who are greeting them, these sweet people. And I'm like, Oh, that's so nice to know each other. And I realize watching all the other people are at the gate, everybody was doing that. And I realize this is how you get welcomed to black rock city. It's not like, hi, you know how you're doing big, huge, gigantic hugs. And when you go and meet people, they also are like, hi, what's your name? They give you a hug and you start talking at a deeper level than you could before. So I think that's, um, one of the things that's pretty important too to understand. Hold on for a second. I'm just going to turn off my pants.
Speaker 2 12:35 So, um, and then the other thing that was really interesting was it again, this, there's just things that you would just never say. So at at night it's completely pitch dark, so you have to put lights on yourself and on your bike, otherwise you'll get run over because if they can't see you. And I came up from my cap and onto one of those stages where they had a lot of people listen to music and dancing about a thousand people or so. And of course they all had their bikes all ringing the soundstage. And it was like one of the most beautiful things I saw ever Sade where all these bikes lit up in neon, some of the flashing and others, others not. And they look like these crazy constellations. I'm a sea of black of the desert. And it was absolutely Saudi. Uh, so to be walking around in the middle of the desert and then have those neon contraption about our car coming at you.
Speaker 2 13:27 I wasn't know out of nowhere or to come across some sort of sound and light art piece of work that you didn't see until you were right on top of it. The sense of discovery and all was was pretty incredible. It sounds amazing. Did you miss having the connection to text messages and email and all of that or what was that like? No, I kind of, you paired myself and I remember going up there like, okay, this is the last signal, this last email. I'm like, okay, done, done until next week. So I went in on Tuesday, came out early Sunday morning and I just didn't, my son and I was just like, let's agree. Even though we're in signal not to look at our phones, like we'll just, we'll just not, we'll text our family, my husband and my daughter, like we're, we're alive, we're back, sure of us.
Speaker 2 14:20 And uh, we're back. And so we just kind of pushed it to the side and I'd already been on a pretty good diet. I turned off my notifications. I turn off, um, my media, I'm a, I called, I said I am on a social media diet, digital diet. It doesn't mean I don't have any, but I'm really conscious of when I use it and how I use it and try to be really, um, really thoughtful and intentional about when and how I use digital because I want digital and social to work for me. I don't want to be a slave to it. And I think that's a lot of what you talk about in the book too as well.
Speaker 0 15:00 Yeah. And it's almost like, because you know, you were an early adapter of digital and technology. Um, I was too. And it's like just, I get to a certain point of like, like burnout where you know, you can only take so much and it's almost like it's not the same as it used to be. Like being on social and from a social standpoint, it's almost like more of a, like I now I want to reclaim my privacy back. I don't want to post everything that I was posting and you know, it's, it's almost helped me take a step back and use it more, more strategically for business then for personal and for personal, I'm more protected as much as I can be. Do you have any other tips that you can share of what you do personally to, to kind of create those boundaries or,
Speaker 2 15:45 I don't post on Facebook. I simply don't post anything personal. Um, I'm, I'm very active on social media for my work, but I share almost nothing personally. So it's, it's, it's unfortunate. I don't feel it's partly because so much of my, many of my social channels are public. I found out early on that trying to combine my personal, my professional especially on Facebook was just such a mess. So I just basically don't post personal things. I use a lot of instant messaging and, and, and private groups. Um, I have a pretty large WhatsApp group for my extended family. Um, so I'll post things into there. Mmm. And it's just other types of, I think, again, tools like Snapchat, what's app, um, are really great cause a much more private than the public. And I think that's a place where I think our, our generation Z are much more comfortable sharing those kinds of things as a public persona. You'll have fun with that. And then the real relationship building aspects of things are much more personal to a much smaller circle of people.
Speaker 0 16:55 Yeah. And you're, I love what you post on LinkedIn. It's always very, very useful and relevant and, you know, it's just, it's very intriguing. And I, and I, sorry, I love everything that you post on LinkedIn. Um, so with your, the disruption mindset, I, you interviewed tons of different, um, CEOs and business leaders and a lot of them were technology companies or related to technology companies. What do you do? What is your, what do you seeing with technology companies as far as like how they're supporting or not supporting in this digital world? Like, I know Facebook, um, they have meditation rooms in some of their campuses and, um, Twitter, you know, similar. So are you seeing, um, these companies supporting their employees for the good or the bad and you know, waking up, you know, responding to emails at 10 o'clock at night. You can, they're coming on your phone that wasn't like that eight years ago or even five years ago as much as it is now
Speaker 2 17:55 under the boundaries, I think. What do you recommend? Yeah, I think two things. First of all, be really cautious that if you are a leader and you're doing work at night or two o'clock in one of whatever is your thing, that you signal the people very, very slowly. I'm not expecting you to do that. In fact, I encourage you to work when you can work, when you're most effective. So for some people it's late at night. So some people, it's really early in the morning. This is not a signal by any chance, any means that you need to get back to me right away. Um, work when you are most effective work to get all your work done. Do not work to put in the hours just to say I'm here. And when you put those kinds of values that we value the work that you get out, not the time that you put in, uh, that, that relieves a lot of that need to do things. I work with one CEO and he goes on a digital, um, uh, what does he call it? A sabbatical. Every Friday it's six o'clock and he will not be back again until sometimes he will open, open up on Sunday at six o'clock but typically not until Monday morning at eight. And he's, he's like, I need that time away to like be myself, be offline, be off the grid, you know, this is the CEO. And he said if there's something urgent, they know how to reach me, but otherwise I'm going to assume things are fine.
Speaker 0 19:20 Yeah. And I mean, it can be stressful getting emails, being there, being the receiver of an email and from a leader in your company and not knowing, okay, do they expect me to respond right now or can I wait and respond in the morning or, or whatever the situation is. So I like that too, to put it out there and let them know. And some of the advice I give my team is, you know, if you want to be working at midnight and that's when you're, you're on maybe just, we schedule those emails to go out at eight in the morning so that, you know, someone's not waking up to all these like, you know, bombarded by emails and thinking maybe something's wrong.
Speaker 2 19:54 Yeah, I think look at it and look at it this way. It's a really good communication tool to say, Hey, this is something I want to tell you about and this is Atlantic action on by a certain point. I also feel like communication platforms, like what's app, um, uh, Asana, Slack, Reich, all of these collaboration tools are fantastic because they don't have that urgency of being an inbox that you have to clear their instream. So when you want to go do work, you can do that. If it's more urgent, somebody needs something from you, they can message you from inside of that platform. And I find those to be so much better. So I try to push as much of my work into these collaboration platforms and out of my inbox, uh, I also use, um, a tool called superhuman for email. I'm an investor in the company, so I love, um, uh, it's like that, but it's super fast. Get through my inbox and my emails and it's almost fun I have to say to process my emails.
Speaker 0 20:57 Superhuman, I'm going to look into that because that is my biggest struggle. Like I have, I have, I have to get help to like get my inbox in order. But I like subscribing to things. I like to see like certain like brands and how they message and certain brands that I, I just personally like to shop with but also business things that I love. And then it's like, Oh my God, don't you have to like dial it back and like unsubscribed and get my inbox down. So I would, I'm going to definitely check.
Speaker 2 21:23 Yeah, I think one of the ways to do that, I finally, anything I subscribed to, I use a special email and all of the emails. So it's just like a, an UPenn to the email and it automatically goes into a folder. So I only go open that photo when it's time for me to read. So I am not interrupted. I do the things I would normally do to go and file things. Right. So the most important thing you can manage is your focus. So what are you gonna focus on? And I don't want to be distracted. I have to like, Oh it's so cool I got my life paper newsletter, I'm going to go be that. Here are the five things to cook tonight from. There are times I love that going to be that, no, no, no. Those into the inbox, like the times when I want to, we'll read them.
Speaker 2 22:01 And what I can do with superhuman is I can have those show up at a certain time, um, so automatically delays at until a certain time and those things will pop up or I just want to look at it until it's time for me to go do that. Uh, so it, I find it's really helpful and so I may not be able to deal with something right now. So we schedule that email to pump, come up in my inbox at two o'clock, which is on my calendar when I have time scheduled to work on that email to do that work. So it's that kind of discipline to say, I'm not going to do it with you right now. I know this is important. I have it on my calendar to do it at this time. Um, and then I also make sure that I have my calendar blocked out a lot. I block out a lot of time to just do work, um, and schedule specific work to do. But it also means that when somebody needs to schedule something with me pretty urgently, I have room in the capacity in my calendar to take that kind of, uh, that, that last minute opportunity to talk to somebody.
Speaker 0 23:04 Yeah, that's great advice for entrepreneurs and all professionals to, to have that, that, that sort of balance in your calendar. Um, just one more question. Um, and so, you know, I, I work with a lot of startups, a lot of entrepreneurs and digital is impacting us in, like we said, good and bad ways, but there's a lot of stress that leads to depression that leads to like serious cases of anxiety, imposter syndrome. Um, and a lot of it is because it's like, Oh, we're watching all these things unfolding and digital, you know, what, what advice do you give to that to kind of like be able to peel it back and balance and offset the,
Speaker 2 23:46 the triggers that could cause you to go down? Yeah. I think the most important thing that we have to have is, um, is be aware of ourselves and in particular to have compassion for ourselves. That if you can't have compassion for the place that you are in, appreciate everything that you have done. No matter how much good work is coming back to you, that the feedback and everything, you can't hear it unless you have compassion for yourself first. And I'm one of the biggest people like, Hey, yeah, I definitely, my biggest struggle is impulsive syndrome. It's like, who would want to hear from me? Like, do I really is this working? And there's all these people who are so successful. Right. And you said there thinking like chatty, how can you have imposter syndrome? Right? Absolutely. I'm thinking, um, I, I'm in a group of called YPO.
Speaker 2 24:38 It's all CEOs and every single one of us suffers an imposter syndrome. We walk in this room are like, Oh my goodness, look at this person that started a company IP owed hundreds of millions of dollars. Like just like killing a great gorgeous house. And he's looking over here and I'm like, Oh my gosh, you wrote a book. I'm so intimidated by that. And I'm looking, we're looking each other. Okay mrs. admit that you are killing it and own that and so appreciate you for who you are. Have some compassion and appreciate yourself first. So we needed reminded this cause we live with our, somebody said it in a good way. We all have super powers, but just like any other super hero, they think that, yeah, I can see through walls. Can't anybody, can everybody else see through walls? Like it's not the most natural thing I can do.
Speaker 2 25:29 This doesn't feel like a superpower to me. So we don't really see our superpowers. We don't appreciate them because they lived with them every day. So I think it's super helpful to really know yourself and really know yourself and appreciate what your super power is because everybody does. I, one of the things I so appreciate are the small gifts of learning and compassion that they get from other people around me. And the just, uh, one of my favorite ones is, Oh, is that, um, I conference some South by Southwest and I'm, I was getting, waiting to be checked in to some press event. Hold on for a second. And um, the woman checked me and she was like attempt and helping some, some um, media company. And on her arm was a word that was tattooed on it that said adventure. And I said, why, why do you have that to two?
Speaker 2 26:25 And I was just really curious, like that's a really unusual one. She goes, I've been traveling the world for years and I finally said it was time to settle down. I needed to make some money, like really like get centered again. And so I sat here, I decided to settle here in Austin, but I'd never wanted to lose my sense of adventure. So he goes, I got that tattoo. So I would see it every day. I mean my, myself to find adventure no matter where I was every day because I made it one, her vision board was on her purpose and I just thought that was really interesting. You don't have to go on an adventure by traveling all around the world. You could have InVenture where you are only if you look for it. So I just thought that was beautiful. And unless you open yourself up to have those kinds of experiences, those kinds of insights and be curious about the world around you, uh, it can, it can feel really, um, staid and depressing and not wonderous. So I think one of the things that keeps me going is when I'm down, I'm kind of like out of it. It's just like overwhelmed. I try to get very curious about what's going on with other people cause it takes me out of my head, out of my funk. Yeah, that's smart actually helps me.
Speaker 0 27:43 Yeah. Like at conferences it's easy to stay in your hotel room and just go to what you absolutely have to have to, to go to. Sometimes I do that. I don't really force myself out to get like social and all of a sudden it's like that feeling's gone.
Speaker 2 27:56 Yeah. I was out for Halloween last night. I never go out for Halloween and I'm walking into a place, a party with one friend who I know no one else, and I just went, I went up to somebody with a big dinosaur, like he was a puffed up dinosaur. I'm like, what's your dinosaurs name? <inaudible> name. So just being curious. I have no, I have no idea who this person is. I figure I would just ask a question and be curious like, did you give it today? Did you not? Maybe we should name it. It's just having fun, being curious, just completely out of my element. I'm like, I could stand here and be awkward or at get engaged. Somebody else who's probably feeling just as awkward as I am.
Speaker 0 28:43 Yeah, I love that. I love that. Well, your book is the disruption mindset, so I'll let you just give a little recap of it. So in case somebody wants to go and buy it, I highly recommend it.
Speaker 2 28:56 Yeah, I'm, I wrote the book because people had been talking about disruption now for four decades and how do you actually create disruption? And I think many ways we've been approaching disruption backwards. We think there's some technology or innovation that can create disruption and it's actually growth out in, sorry, some disruption can create growth, but it's actually growth that is disruptive. And so companies oftentimes know exactly what they have to do to grow, but they don't stick into that strategy, into that space because it's going to be extremely hard. And so the book is really about how do you move into that space? How do you take on a disruption mindset that will carry you through those tough times? Because you have to first of all accept that it's going to be hard. It can't be easy. There's no easy button as I like to call it for, for growth. Uh, so that's uh, that's the, the high level premise of how you have to change your use of strategy of leadership and also of culture. I have tabbed at the empathy map. I love that. It kind of ties into what you're talking about is that, you know, you have to have the empathy for your, who your customer is and
Speaker 0 30:04 you know, without empathy, you know, where, where would you be from a business standpoint and
Speaker 2 30:08 personal standpoint. Right. Exactly. Exactly. So where can we find you next? Are you speaking at any conferences? I'm speaking all over the place. I'm actually flying to Brazil tomorrow. Um, and then I'm going to be in Philadelphia. I'm going to be in Dallas, a couple of different places and quite a few speaking gigs around San Francisco Bay area in the coming month out so you can find it. You can find out more by going to my site, Charlene lee.com of Alyssa, my appearances, um, more about the book or information that's on there.
Speaker 0 30:40 Okay, perfect. Well, safe travels. Thank you so much for taking the time to be a guest on digital detox secrets. I really appreciate it and I'm sure everybody else did. And yeah,
Speaker 2 30:48 we won't look for you on Facebook. We'll look for you on your website for sure. Okay, great. All right. Thank you Charlene.
Speaker 0 31:06 Thank you for listening to this episode of digital detox secrets. If you liked what you heard, check out the book on Amazon or follow our
[email protected] this episode is sponsored by the buyer group. A social PR agency is striving to keep our balance in the digital world, practicing yoga, meditation, and occasional wine drinking for the best creativity results.
