What’s up everyone! In this episode, I am joined by Pamela Slim, speaker, business coach and award-winning author of Escape from Cubicle Nation and Body of Work. Pamela joins me to share her story and how her brick and mortar learning lab empowers diverse entrepreneurs. The core of everything is that we all need each other and we work together from our diverse ecosystems. For over 20 years, Pamela has worked with thousands of entrepreneurs to support them in launching and growing their businesses. Even with the evolution of online courses, many business owners are still stuck with the same problems Pam has been helping them solve for years. In 2016, she started the K’é Main Street Learning Lab in Mesa, Arizona, which is a community-based leadership development lab that supports and strengthens local small businesses. Since launching the Learning Lab, Pam has hosted over 200 events led by 38 community leaders for her more than 4,000 community members. Listen as Pamela shares her insights about building a community, being physically present with your members, and small business solutions. Episode Quotes "Never trust short term success and never assume that short term failure lasts forever." "There is huge power in physically being present." "Our problems as business owners are large and varied and they require a lot of solutions." "The core of everything is we realize that we all need each other and we work together from all different sectors of our communities. " Listen to Learn 00:56 - Getting to know Pamela Slim, Rapid 5 Questions 05:31 - Pamela's entrepreneurial journey 12:23 - Impetus of creating The Main Street Learning Lab 17:27 - Physical space vs. online courses 28:49 - The power of interdependent ecosystems over empire culture 35:36 - Practical tips for course creators 46:34 - Awesome things coming up from Pamela Connect with Pam PamelaSlim.com The Main Street Learning Lab Learn more about Pam’s books Follow Pam on Twitter! Looking for the Transcript? Episode 118
What’s up everyone! In this episode, I am joined by Pamela Slim, speaker, business coach and award-winning author of Escape from Cubicle Nation and Body of Work. Pamela joins me to share her story and how her brick and mortar learning lab empowers diverse entrepreneurs.
The core of everything is that we all need each other and we work together from our diverse ecosystems.
For over 20 years, Pamela has worked with thousands of entrepreneurs to support them in launching and growing their businesses. Even with the evolution of online courses, many business owners are still stuck with the same problems Pam has been helping them solve for years. In 2016, she started the K’é Main Street Learning Lab in Mesa, Arizona, which is a community-based leadership development lab that supports and strengthens local small businesses. Since launching the Learning Lab, Pam has hosted over 200 events led by 38 community leaders for her more than 4,000 community members.
Listen as Pamela shares her insights about building a community, being physically present with your members, and small business solutions.
Episode Quotes
"Never trust short term success and never assume that short term failure lasts forever."
"There is huge power in physically being present."
"Our problems as business owners are large and varied and they require a lot of solutions."
"The core of everything is we realize that we all need each other and we work together from all different sectors of our communities. "
Listen to Learn
00:56 - Getting to know Pamela Slim, Rapid 5 Questions
05:31 - Pamela's entrepreneurial journey
12:23 - Impetus of creating The Main Street Learning Lab
17:27 - Physical space vs. online courses
28:49 - The power of interdependent ecosystems over empire culture
35:36 - Practical tips for course creators
46:34 - Awesome things coming up from Pamela
Connect with Pam
Looking for the Transcript?
Pamela Slim: One of the things I believe really deeply, and always in community work that I've done, is people have to see people who have shared lived experience, cultural heritage, you know kind of life experience in positions of leadership in order to fully really see themselves in that role. I think it's really important for young people.
Janelle Allen: Welcome back to Level Up Your Course, where we pull back the curtain on what it takes to create learning that transforms lives. You will hear stories from business owners like you who share their success and their struggles. This is not where you come to hear passive income myths, friend. This is where you learn the truth about building a profitable learning platform. I am your host, Janelle Allen, and this is today's episode.
Hey everyone. Today I am speaking with Pam Slim, award-winning author, speaker and business coach. Her two books, Escape from Cubicle Nation and Body of Work both received rave reviews. She has coached business owners for over 20 years and most recently opened a small business incubator, Mainstreet Learning Lab in Arizona, which we are going to dig into today. Pam, welcome to the show.
PS: Thank you so much for having me.
JA: I'm excited to chat with you. You know, before we started recording, we were just chatting about knowing some of the same people and everyone speaks highly of you and you know, you've been doing this work for a while, so I'm really excited to get into it. But before we get too deep, we have a tradition on the show called the Rapid Five, five quick questions to help listeners get to know you. Are you ready?
PS: I am ready.
JA: First one is easy. What did you have for breakfast?
PS: A bagel.
JA: Okay. What is the last rule that you broke?
PS: The last rule that I broke. Oh my God. Which day? Oh, that's hard. I mean, I feel like I break them all the time. I guess, there's one, I was just reading something about etiquette, you know, and like what's the right way to do things is to always introduce a person with the most power in a circle or something. Which I was like, what? As a community builder, that didn't make any sense to me. So I always liked, I think I like to break the rule of being highfalutin and focusing on people with power and actually really always focusing on the awesome people who are around and treating everybody as equals, which they all are. So that's the one that jumps to mind right now, but I'm sure there have been other things.
JA: Well, congratulations. That is the first time I've asked that question. It's a new entrance into the rapid five and you did wonderfully, so thank you. All right, number three is a serious question. All laughter aside, this is where we're at. The zombie apocalypse has hit, Pam. You have six minutes to grab three essential items to survive. Not people. All of your loved ones are okay. Three items, six minutes to grab them. What do you pick?
PS: My computer with my body of work in it. That would probably be it. There are some precious photographs and artwork that our son has done, but we've watched way too many episodes of Walking Dead to be worried about that. You know what I'm saying? We're not going to be carrying paintings and photographs with us if the zombies are coming, so I'll stick with that and probably some food. Yeah, probably food.
JA: I'm glad you made that addition at the end. I love this question because it's just so, so revealing, especially about us as you know, Americans and we always go for the tech first. My Air Pods, you know, my computer…
PS: It's like I didn't even think about that, but I'm like that I can go anywhere. I can work from anywhere as long as there's wifi, but we are obsessed in my household with the Walking Dead, so I know a lot about zombies.
JA: I love it. Okay. Number four, fill in the blank: When I was a kid, I wanted to be a blank.
PS: I wanted to be a teacher.
JA: Okay, nice. Well alignment, there. Last one. What is the hardest lesson you have learned as an entrepreneur so far?
PS: The hardest lesson is to never trust short term success. And the flip side of that, probably the easiest lesson and the best lesson is also to never assume that short term failure is going to last forever. But having lived through a couple of very significant economic swings, the last one being in 2007, 2008 that really especially hit my husband's business, boy, you know, things were looking really good and heading a certain way and so we made big investments. It was a big construction business and the fall was hard. It was so hard, you know, to not just think, Oh yeah, I have a bunch of work right now. It's always going to be that way, just to be discerning and to be a little bit more risk averse and sometimes not be quite so optimistic.
JA: That's a heavy one. We're going to have to probably come back and talk about that.
PS: There's deep stories in there. If you want to go there, I will.
JA: Definitely. Well, we'll save that. I think that'll be great for the bonus segment because I think there's a lot of concern about especially the economy and what's going to happen in the next year or so. So I think it'd be good to talk about that.
PS: I'd love to.
JA: All right, so right now let's talk about your entrepreneurial journey. How did you get here, Pam? I know you were a corporate director of training and development and then what?
PS: Yes, I was, and I loved my job and I loved my cubicle. I had a great team, an amazing director and VP. And so contrary to what many people think based on writing the book, Escape from Cubicle Nation, eventually, I actually really did love my work. My leap was in 1996 and I had turned 30, I got pneumonia. I had been running a Afro-Brazilian martial art group for a capoeira in the San Francisco Bay area for about 11 years as a volunteer executive director. So basically I'd work, you know, a hundred hour weeks. I do 17 classes a week, you know, it was just a maniac as one is in their twenties and so I turned 30 I got pneumonia, my amazing team, my director, my VP left the organization when we went through a merger and I just decided to change jobs. So I quit my job without a plan, which I don't recommend, but I ended up actually going back to work as a contractor consultant for my former director who had moved on to Hewlett Packard to design their worldwide management development curriculum, and that was one of those weird things where I never considered myself an entrepreneur, but once I was working independently in the field, which I have always loved, which is training and development, and then doing it independently, that I'd actually been developing that skill running a nonprofit, right? As a volunteer executive director and not realizing that those skills were entrepreneurial. That's where I feel like I just fell into my magic zone and I have not looked back. It's been 23 years.
JA: That's interesting that you said that about nonprofits because I've noticed that a lot of people who, at least when they start running a nonprofit, they don't equate it with running a business, being a business owner, and I just have always found that so interesting.
PS: It's weird, isn't it? I know. It's weird that I did not see the correlation, but basically we created new programs. We did huge marketing campaigns. I raised grant money, you know, we were building IP, building curriculum within the art, doing performances, everything, it -- the exact kinds of things that you would do in a business. And I think the other thing about it that I really admire about a lot of people in the nonprofit world is you also learn how to do things with few resources. That was the part that I love so much is because I was consciously doing it as a volunteer endeavor. Then there really was just an open, you know, landscape in order to be doing the kinds of things we wanted to do. So we ended up creating a youth program with 250 youth that was amazing and so exciting and inspiring, you know, and just kind of did it our way. That's, that's where I got that taste of creative flexibility and freedom.
JA: Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to come back. I have some thoughts and you know that whole doing things with a few resources I think can be a double edged sword.
PS: Totally.
JA: You know, it, it can of a certain mindset. I was in Detroit recently and I did Airbnb and I was staying with a woman who does run a nonprofit for artists, it’s an artists’ workspace. And you know, it was so interesting because she was talking about her work, but also talking about the city of Detroit and how you know in Detroit that -- what I'll never forget. She said, we're so used to having less and you know, it just hit me. So when you said that about nonprofits, I thought, yes. And it's a double edged sword because I've met so many nonprofit founders, directors who struggle to create a business model, struggle to do things outside of seeking funding. But that's a whole other conversation. And that's why I almost was like, ah, should I hold this?
PS: We'll turn it back around. But I mean, these kinds of things to me are so significant. I don't know if you know Hodge Fleming's who's from Detroit, who's amazing, who's a partner that we work with here with an initiative that he's formed with WordPress called Rebrand Cities and Hodge is an amazing digital brand strategist and does a lot of work with his beloved city of Detroit. But really in having the elements that have to do with you know, grit and tenacity but then also really challenging the narrative. You know, that Detroit is is as you said, right? Kind of like always positioned that way and we could get super analytical, right, about the reasons behind it, which is a whole other conversation that's truthful and part of this country's history. I think that's the part of being conscious at every stage of development as an entrepreneur there is a really beautiful thing of making things happen and taking action that are not totally dependent on resources, but then there's also conscious decisions that you make about what you're building and on the nonprofit and the business side, that really have to do with different stages of business and what you want to build. And I believe in sustainable nonprofits, right? Sustainable businesses. And so I think sometimes it's getting things off the ground where you have to be a little bit more scrappy, but you can't do that forever.
JA: Yeah, absolutely. Well said. Okay. I'm not going to let you off the hook. We're going to go back to your story, because when did you start to develop your online presence and become, you know, the business coach to small business owners and really start putting yourself out there in that way after you were doing the consulting or contracting?
PS: Yeah, so I did the consulting for 10 years, which was super interesting. I loved it so much. I was able to work with so many different kinds of businesses and what I found is there were always people inside large companies, some of them who had hired me to come in to help retain their employees who would pull me aside at the end of a strategic planning session or something like that and say, how did you do it? How did you quit your corporate job to start your own thing? I really want to do it, but I'm scared. I felt like that was 10 years of market research for people who were in that situation. So in 2005 I started my blog, which was Escape from Cubicle Nation and the intention was specifically to start a coaching business where I could be helping people to make the transition from corporate to entrepreneur. And so that led me on a magical mystery tour. I had no idea what a decision that would end up being for me and my family. It was just a great thing. It ended up leading to my first book deal, which was Escape from Cubicle Nation and allowing me to work with thousands of people all over the country and all over the world to launch businesses.
JA: That's how I first heard of you. I remember seeing Escape from Cubicle Nation, so it's kind of a, a full circle moment for me to be speaking with you now. You know, one of the things that I, when I was checking out your website and found out about Learning Lab, there was something that really just jumped out
at me. I'll read the quote; you say, “As I spoke with friends and fellow small business influencers, all of us were getting concerned that business owners were drowning in an ever-growing sea of information, online courses, and sales pitches.” So of course as an instructional designer, as someone who helps people create courses and sell courses. I want to know more about this statement. So fast forward to you know this time when you were having these conversations, what specifically was it that made you concerned and made you say, okay, how can we do something different?
PS: Really the founding story has a couple of components to it as to why my husband and I opened this space. So that the first piece was in 2015, his research for the book that I'm just finishing their proposal for now, like literally hopefully this week, I did a 23 city tour of going to different cities and teaching community building skills that were really based on community building principles that I had learned over 30 years. That was actually my major in college was economic development, grassroots development with a focus on non-formal education in Latin America. So it's really looking at education as a tool of social change, which starts to make sense, right? As you kind of see how the threads come together. I definitely knew that I didn't want to be doing expatriate aid work, you know, especially the more that I got into it, did some of that work in college, it just didn't make any sense to me as this like 19 year old white girl from California, you know, like what did I have to contribute to very knowledgeable communities in Columbia and Brazil and right? Other places. I was. So that route of really believing that education is an activating tool for social change that really is led by and for the people has always been a core principle in just about everything that I've done in organizations and in the nonprofit and then in the entrepreneur world. So when I was doing that tour for some reason, the first session that we did in Berkeley, California, I asked how many of the participants had ever been at a business conference and seen a Native American business presenter that was presenting as a business expert. And so I asked that same question in every city that I did on the tour over a period of about four months and the grand total was seven and four of those were in Vancouver, Canada. So that was very disturbing, as the parent of Navajo and Anglo children, my husband's Navajo. And one of the things I believe really deeply in always in community work that I've done is people have to see people who have shared lived experience, cultural heritage, you know, kind of life experience in positions of leadership in order to fully really see themselves in that role. I think it's really important for young people. And so I was like for our kids and for my nieces and nephews and for our extended relatives, like what does that mean when nobody ever, ever sees somebody in that position of leadership? Now, because my husband was a business owner, there are plenty of events that do have all kinds of Native business owners, but it's only focused on that community, right? So there was a stark contrast for events that would, there would be around town that were not specifically focused and driven by the native community. And so we really looked at each other and said, what are we going to do about that? This is something that we really want to be proactive about. So that's why we opened the brick and mortar, is we wanted to have a place specifically to be highlighting the leadership that already exists in communities that are usually not really featured in positions of leadership here in Mesa, Arizona. So that's African American community, native American, Latinx, LGBTQ. And from a very specific design perspective, it's really interesting that I would find, you know, as a white woman, especially many white counterparts that would come and talk to me about what we were doing. Their assumption always was that I was the one who was leading training of these leaders in order to build their leadership capacity. And I would always correct them and say the problem from a training analysis perspective is not that they lack skills or knowledge. The problem is the perception is that they do. And we just need to be featuring them in the positions of leadership that they already hold. And so everything here, all the classes that we have are really run by and for the community, by these leaders. And that I think has been something that's allowed us to be super successful in just having a super engaged kind of community. And then my husband and I do everything we can, you know, to support it, to encourage, to build community, to build connections and then to really make connections with the bigger projects that are happening here so that people do have considerations like featuring people on panels or introducing projects, funded projects to business owners who could be bidding for that kind of work.
JA: I'm curious, why was it so important for you? Why did this manifest as a brick and mortar solution as opposed to an online community?
PS: Because there is huge power in physically being present. And it sounds like a metaphor, but it's not, like we're literally in the center of main street. And when you think of it, when you think of it metaphorically, when you think of it literally where you have communities that are all around our downtown area who do not consider their downtown to be their downtown because they don't feel safe, they don't feel wanted, right? There's specific things that are happening in their community. They don't ever see themselves in positions of leadership. And so having a physical presence where it is a space that's going to be celebrating and creating a vibrant community where people can come, after a while, right, where more and more people are coming to downtown, it begins to take on the feel of this is my place and I'm not the only place, there's other wonderful places downtown that most people didn't know about, right? Jared’s cafe that's a few doors down that's owned by Jared who's Apache, you know, is like super welcoming, amazing environment. And there's a lot of other places too, but having the brick and mortar where people physically can come together. And I think in the nature of work in community building, you can do a lot of community building online. You've probably done the same thing, right? I've, I've built really strong relationships with people over the years that have been in classes and that had been friends on Facebook. It sounds sort of superficial, but it's actually not. I've had really deep, profound conversations with people. I've coached people for many years who I've never met in person, so there's a lot that you can do online, but when you're talking about specifically local economic development, local community development, I think it does matter to be in person and in particular looking at my husband's Navajo community, it's very important. We do a lot of cultural events in addition to doing business events that are the kinds of things that's much more, it's not so transactional, right, of just kind of coming and learning something and going. There's a lot about building this connection with each other, getting to know each other, sharing food, sharing cultural events and teachings that then ends up also getting people really comfortable to be participating in business activities.
JA: I like what you said about changing the narrative of the space and downtown. It made me think about here in Chicago, there's a neighborhood called Boystown and it is where one of the premier LGBTQ centers center, center on Halstead is located. And it is interesting because when I first moved to Chicago, I did a lot of work with them. And one of the things that always came up was Boystown is very much a white gay male locale.
PS: Yeah.
JA: And so for queer youth LGBTQ of color who did not feel safe or had to, let's just be real, Chicago's a very segregated city. It's not only segregated, it's uh, there's tremendous structural racism, particularly when you talk about public transportation. And so for queer youth who were trying to come to a place where they thought they could be safe, there were a lot of barriers.
PS: Yeah.
JA: Connecting to what you said, changing that story allows more learning opportunities to happen. It allows people to begin to see themselves in different ways and really opens up possibilities. And so there is something that's super important because otherwise we all tend to kind of stay in our own corners, right? And just sit there with what we know and who we see every day. And you know, our own safe space, which is exactly what happens in Chicago more often than not. So I'm just really interested in what you said there. I think that there's, there is something about coming together physically that's, you know, come -- going back to Detroit. That's one of the things that I love about Detroit is just that ethos, that spirit of this is our community and we come together physically, we come together, we dig in and we, we're not gonna let this thing die. We're going to change the narrative.
PS: It's so, right. I really always like to look at situations, like you said, from the structural, you know, the biggest picture. I mean, a big lens that I look through in, in community work is the lens of white supremacy, you know, and the patriarchy and just different pillars that you have of white supremacy culture in particular within, as you're saying it, in some cases, there can be structural issues around real estate, around transportation that prevent people from moving in between certain areas, right? Like the most prosperous areas where you have business. Within Native communities, you know, one of the pillars of white supremacy is in visibility, which relating it back to the earlier story is pretty chilling and profound, right? Knowing that it's not by accident that we don't ever see any Native American business owners. Right. There's been huge effort to make that story invisible in our country to pretend that it didn't exist. Everything about manifest destiny, right? You know, just a lot of the foundational stories that we have are really fiction, you know, in terms of what happened to the people who were here. So there's very deep profound things that can happen that have huge trauma related to it. And that also when you are doing it in a thoughtful way, an engagement with community can also have healing because there's the reclaiming of ancestral land. You know, main street is sitting on Native land, right? There are stories that elders will tell within the tribe that is here, that where that land is. There is a history, you know, about the land and about the use of the land. There is a history about different communities that are around Main Street that is often a story that's not told. So there's a lot of, I always think of Maxine Waters and reclaiming my time, reclaiming my place and thinking about that. In particular for people who may have not been welcomed. And I find just in having the conversations and listening to stories that it is something that most people don't know. And sometimes when people are able to hear the stories, then I think that's where we can begin to have some type of, you know, truth and eventual reconciliation. But to me it, it always starts with truth first, right? Let's really talk about what's happened, what are some of the areas that are getting in our way and then start to really do, do something about it to learn more deeply and connect more deeply.
JA: It's so interesting talk, you know, a podcast about online courses and we're having this deep discussion about physical space and how important it is. But I do think it is important, you know, particularly because a lot of people think that online education just democratizes learning. And it's not true, particularly when you talk about the digital divide and how everyone doesn't have access to online resources. It's easier now than it used to be say 20 years ago, but there are still parts of the country and people of all races who don't necessarily have access. So I think that that's something that we often forget. You know, those of us who have the privilege to have, you know, internet access and a laptop and all of these connected devices think, think of online education in one way that just connects to the power and the importance of the work that you're doing and people who are doing similar work of having physical spaces that are accessible to communities that may or may not have that online accessibility.
PS: Totally, and I do really see it all related because it can be, as you said, an issue of digital divide of just not having access. The other thing I think is pretty much the, the online learning world can just parallel a lot of what happens in the in-person world, you know, of totally creating workshops or thinking about frameworks. One of the things we have a lot of discussion about that's actually really the next stage of development for the leaders here at K’é, the leaders that are actually leading programs is really they believe so strongly that from the beginning when you look at designing and the assumptions that you make about learning and the stories that you use in examples of you know, for online classes and situations that you might understand, so much of the training like workshops that are given often in a broad sense or you know, online training, a few -- if you look at the general trend, obviously with some exceptions, right? But if you look at the general trend of courses that it really is dominated by usually younger white females or males, you know, that are kind of leading the charge for a lot of that that are just designing from their own perspective, right? Like from their own lived experience and perspective and you know, you see things the way that you see things, right? There's that old phrase I remember I read by Anaïs Nin when I was a 16 year old exchange student was we don't see things as they are. We see them as we are. So it's not necessarily an intentional design flaw, but like if you're not really considering that there are different worldviews and not everybody sees things the same, not everybody has the same set of values, then I think your base for instructional design is going to be lacking. So part of what I think is interesting is in having training in person and online that is designed by people who come from a whole variety of different communities, right? From lived experience, from cultural lens, from different learning situations. I know when we start to talk about for sure internet access and resources, when it comes to a lot of indigenous folks that live on reservations, you know there's definitely challenges in having consistent internet access and those kinds of things. And there's some really cool projects. There's an incubator in tuba city now that is on the Navajo reservation that's led by a Navajo woman. You know, that's looking at creating a coworking space and you know, having some hubs in which people can be doing work together. But to me that's the fascinating thing is if we start to peel back some of the layers before we jump into instructional design and some of the specific content, it actually goes back because there's just different ways that people can see the world, different ways that they might approach a problem and different ways that they can describe it that I think is going to make it compelling for all of us. You know, to me like as a white person, it's always more interesting to actually learn from perspectives about the community that is really here as opposed to only hearing about my own people, you know, for the majority of my life in education and in business, it's just, it's not reflective of actually how the world is. So to me, everybody benefits when you have the broader community reflected.
JA: I absolutely agree. And I like what you said about just kind of before we talk about instructional design, examining what are the assumptions, what perspectives are we bringing, you know, before we even sit down and put together a training, I want to switch gears a bit and go back to talking about small business owners, particularly with the work that you're doing with Main Street Learning Lab. I'm curious, are there differences in what small business owners need to succeed? Because there was something you saw that you felt was missing. I'm assuming you write about it a bit of, you know, there's all this information out there and people are still struggling. Why do you think people were still struggling and what is the solution to help ease that?
PS: Yeah, I think the solution is context. Like what people are missing is community. They're missing a broader context of really knowing they do have a circle of people around them that care about what it is that they're doing. That there's also a broader context in terms of how it is that problems are defined and solved. So almost every online class we're kind of taught to try to position it is the be all end all for all of your business problems, right? Take my class and never going to lack for a client again, which we know is not really possible. Our problems as business owners are large and varied and they actually require a lot of solutions. So there's a bigger systems kind of thinking. I call it the, you know, ecosystems thinking. It's actually the topic of my next book is really juxtaposing empire culture, which is really a lot of the way I think the online world has been built. So we're advised to literally, we use language like to build an empire and to put ourselves at the top and to just attract people to dominate, to crush, you know, to show -- and also just to show that we are the one expert. We have the one solution. I don't know about you, you know, I've been around the block, I know a few things. I've helped a lot of people, but I do not have the answer to everybody's question when it comes -- like I could never have all of that information. So to me, what is actually more of a reflection of reality is that we live in these interdependent ecosystems, right? I need you to have this specific expertise that you have in the way that you are looking at in your teaching people about online classes. Right? Then you might need me to be here as an example of, you know, maybe you want to open something in your local area, right? You want to be connecting with Hodges in Detroit, we, you know, both of us want to be learning something else about instructional design in a deep way, maybe from some kind of academic institution that's done deep work that we really do live in these interdependent ecosystems. And the more that we see ourselves as a part of it, and really it's the people who it is that we're serving. We want who we want to be working with, who are at the center of that ecosystem. It's their ecosystem. And we're really looking for these watering holes, places in person and online where we can place ourselves to be of the most, you know, help. To me, that philosophy, it does not fit with a lot of the way that empire culture is built. I always admire like, I think it's amazing when somebody can build a class and do a great job on the sales page and marketing it so that they make lots and lots of money. You know, I'm not, you know, we live in a capitalist society and so it's not saying nobody should ever make money or you can't build something really significant. That's great when you're able to do it and deliver something of value. But fundamentally I find it just leads a lot of people who are out there to be jumping from one class or solution to the next one, to the next one. And there's this like Mad Max road, like littered by my classes that people have like done 10 minutes of a, you know, 22 hour class and then they get frustrated and then they don't believe in training in general. And then they think that they're not built for entrepreneurship. And so it's where we're able to be in person with each other. We're able to have connection, we're able to have conversation and then be discerning about when and how we can access certain resources. You know, there's, I have one of my clients who's amazing, who I worked with when she was living in the Netherlands and she's one of these people that totally does all of the work in an online class. And she, because she was not in the U S she's, she's American, but because she wasn't here, she couldn't attend live classes or you know, things like that. So she did an amazing thing building her whole online platform. It's called Tilt Parenting, where, you know, she took a class on podcasting and she created an amazing podcast and she took these classes and really implemented them in an effective way. I find her to be a little bit rare in the world of online -- I don't know what your experience --
JA: Same. Yeah. I was thinking as you were mentioning her, I was thinking of two of my students. I teach a group program to help people create online courses. And my best students are those rare ones who say, I love being a student. Tell me what to do and I'll do it. And they do. They execute. But it's rare. It's usually one or two out of the group who just go at it. And you know, I think that when you talk about community and the power of having these physical spaces, part of that power is that it allows people to show up fully human, if I'm having a really difficult time, because online's often sometimes it feels like often sometimes it feels like…
PS: I know what you meant.
JA: I can't get behind. I've got to show up and do this work and do this work and do this work and I'm just on the computer. You don't… If as an instructor, sometimes it's hard to know what is my student dealing with, what are the obstacles, what are the constraints, what's holding them back from getting the work done? And I think there's ways to get to that online, but it takes a little bit more work than just someone showing up. And you can see, okay, what's going on with you?
PS: No, I think we, we could talk for like 13 hours on this. In fact I think we should because I feel like this is not the beginning and end of our relationship hopefully with each other if you'll have me because really there is so much richness in understanding this question because I think some of it, there can be people who are just wired a certain way where they really function well with a very structured environment of just getting everything done, right? There's other people, myself included, I think of the Kolby index, if you've ever taken the Kolby where I'm a really high Quickstart. So like I could be super excited to sign up for something and jump in and then my follow through is like a two out of 10 and so I feel like I'm fighting against myself sometimes, you know, in order to get through it. And there's, so I think there's this whole range of things of you know, modular learning and micro learning and letting people jump into what's relevant but yet trying to design in a way that gives them the big picture. I just was working with a client this week who flew in from Boston who were, you know, designing an online class and we were talking about some of these elements that I can never really find just one answer to where you're, in this case we're building a class based on a book and so there is a way to design it that's just very logical where one module and section depends on the other. But then we just know that many people are not going to access it that way, right? So then I think it becomes looking at designing sort of mini courses that can be self-standing but maybe enticing people to realize that if they had done the work in a prior module it would make it even stronger. You know, things like that. I mean I'm constantly on the quest for new interesting ways to look at it. What have you found?
JA: One of the things that I changed with my group program was to start with habits. Everyone goes through a module on habits where they, for three to five days, review how they work, noting down what they're doing, when they're procrastinating, when they're working, all of that, and that has been transformative for the people who do it. It's also been revealing for me because what has happened is ultimately as course creators, we're designing for the human element. That's what I've come to realize and by focusing learners on their habits before they jump into the work, the one to do the activity realize how they're getting in their own way. All of a sudden they're more aware and mindful as they go through and it kind of motivates them. Okay, I'm doing this thing again. And it's also for me a pro. It's, it's flawless in predicting who was going to finish, who's going to do the work and who's not. I'm telling you, it's so revealing. The people who skip the exercise, they usually drop out of the course. The people who do part of it, not all of it, they do the same thing throughout the course. The people who finish it and then email me and say, Oh my gosh, this was so helpful. This, I saw so many things. Those are usually the students who push through and I think that ultimately that's what I found is we're designing for the human element. We're designing for those, those habits. We don't do things linearly. The structure may be presented in that way, but ultimately you're looking at your learner as individual who is going to have, like I said, constraints, obstacles, all types of things going on in addition to them being in your course and you have to consider that.
PS: That’s so good. I love that. And I'm also a huge fan of habits. It's what my coach Mark Otto is always really been telling me we've been focusing a lot on is kind of this balance between getting really about what you do want and then becoming aware of your own creative patterns and habits. You know? And I mean as a coach it's like on one hand just have things that really fit with what is your natural pattern. And then on the other hand is really helping people to be a little bit more uncomfortable. Right? And there's like, there's more I think we need to do to be really selling the idea. And I don't mean selling just to get people to buy the course, but really to -- what's the benefit of the outcome, whatever it is that you're learning. Like what's the benefit of going all the way through it and how can you keep people engaged in that conversation and aware of what's happening. And like my best friend, Desiree always says, you know, help us understand that we can do difficult things. Like that's part of what learning is and that that's the balance, right? Is not just designing something so it's totally pop culture, you know what I mean, version of training and I love pop culture by the way. I listen to Bruno Mars, you know too. But like there's certain things when we do want to be developing deeper skills. Again, I think that's a choice that we make about what do we choose to do online and what's really good for that particular environment. And then what do we choose to do in person? Because sometimes to do that deeper level of work, you need to have that human in-person facilitation and then you can be using online resources in a way to really reinforce that learning.
JA: Yeah. You know, I think one additional thought or response to what you just said is it's also incredibly important to know the level of complexity for what you're teaching. You know, the level of resistance that students may encounter. If you are teaching something that is linear and pretty simple, you know, maybe it's a mini course, then you can absolutely present it in that way and kind of not worry as much. You know, you still need to know what obstacles they're going to encounter. But if you're teaching something that really is going to bring up some stuff -- and so again, for me, when I'm teaching my group program, Finish Your Damn Course, there is a lot of people in there who they struggle in several places. Number one, just talking to their audience. It brings up so many things and you know they struggle to market and it's just all of those things, the more complexity, the more resistance that's going to come up, it requires you to teach in a different way, you know? And that's why, you know, I have resisted making the course fully self paced because I know that there's so much resistance that comes up. But one of the things that teaching this program has taught me is that it's not always about completing. And that was eye opening. I used to be really obsessed about completion rates and that's not always it. You can get the transformation without completing sometimes.
PS: I agree. I think that's really deep. It is true. And I think about it for myself, there've been certain where I have not gone all the way through, but I have gotten tremendous value from it still. Right? Maybe diving into the module that I needed and there's been other experiences and I agree, having the guided, it can be a virtual guided course can be that thread that can make a real difference for people, you know, to be going all the way through. But it's probably for those of us, like everybody listening who really cares about this deeply, that's the hardest kind of pull of the heart if just wanting so deeply to be designing something that's really helpful and you know, engaging and enjoyable and just wanting people to have the experience of going all the way through so that they learn. But there's also this practice we have to develop, which is knowing that everybody is sovereign, right? They're going to do what they're going to do and obsessing over it, I think you can engineer it to a certain point and then you do have to let it go and know that we are dealing with adult learners. You know? Hopefully there's ways people can go back to materials maybe later as reference when they're ready for certain sections
JA: To bring it back to everything you've been talking about. I think that's where the power of community comes in because if you have developed this ecosystem, this community that nurtures and supports your audience, then they will go back. If it's just transactional, they buy the course, never hear from you again, that's when, you know, they may just leave it half finish, not get any transformation and that's it.
PS: That's right. And that is that really strong connection. I always talk about my best friend, Desiree Attaway because she's amazing in addition to be my best friend, but she's taught me so much about community building and she specifically talks about really being relational, not being transactional. And we can see that in relationships and business and in community building, right? Again, sometimes in the empire model it's just all about attracting people to buy your course. And in many times it's like it ends there, right? Like yay, I had a huge seven figure sale, you know, of my course. And then you're like, and what about the learning experience of people who were there and then what happens to people after you finished? Right? After you close that out? I was just yesterday, or maybe this early this morning, recently on Facebook chat with somebody from Australia who was in my very first class that I did when I first started online. And it actually wasn't even my own IP. I had trained many years ago with Martha Beck as a coach and so she had given permission to use her book, Finding Your Own North Star, that was a really helpful book for me when I was in my own career transition. And so I taught a chapter a week, so a 10 week course using her book as a resource. But that was a teleclass that was like before Facebook and you know, like before anything like that. And there was one of the participants somehow who found me. It was through my blog who is from then that has a, what is it called, the uh, data visualization company. You know, he had like built and sold one and you know, so he went through that process. He went through the class. We have been connected ever since then. It's been like almost 10 years and now he's going to come to New Mexico to do some type of study and you know, he's going to come over to Arizona and we're going to hang out. And all of these years through that initial course. In fact, I think just about everybody who took that original course with me, we are still connected. When I did the 23 city tour, I saw many of the people who were in that original, that original class and to me, as a community builder, like that's the beautiful part is we have that consistency of relationship with each other that's chosen. Don't get me wrong, like people who want to just take a class and then not be connected forever. That is totally fine. But for those that do, that's where we begin to have this continuity of learning and that's where I learned from them and I learned what they need and what are ways to be reinforcing the teaching. It's funny, I was just listening to in the car as I was doing like a rotation of music from iTunes, you know that would just randomly choosing songs and there were a couple of recordings there of actually Q and A sessions for my class I taught a long time ago called Power Teaching that basically it was just the foundations of how it is that instructional design, how do you create an online class and from that original teaching, so many things were spurred, you know, people that taught classes that started their business that way, like you find with your clients, right? With finally getting some kind of a class out there and then that has been the beginning of many other things in ways they've grown a business. So to me that's the part that is really interesting and that is what, what social media and ways that we can stay connected really means is we really do have that learning that we share over time. You know, when we choose to stay connected to each other.
JA: I love it. I agree with everything that you said and I love that phrase, continuity of learning. I'm probably going to steal that from you.
PS: I didn't make it up. I'm sure somebody smart did.
JA: All right, we are down to the final three questions fam. First one is easy. What is next for you? Anything exciting coming up?
PS: Yes. Finishing my damn book proposal. So please in whatever way that you send good thoughts and prayers, like send them all my way because that is something I am super ready and excited about is I've been working on this book for a long time in a good way and really like bringing it to life. The ecosystem model is exactly what my husband and I used in order to really build the foundation for community here. And so I'm really excited about it and I'm just excited to codify things so that I can help other people, business owners just to get to me a much richer and more effective way that they can be thinking about reaching their ideal audience, you know? But also in a bigger sense, right? Having a model that we can look at in Main Streets everywhere, right. As a lot of, I think places around the and around the world are going under this kind of economic revolution. And especially as we alluded to earlier with impending, you know, recession or decline. I mean the quick nugget around that is that just always is going to be the way things are. So there are things that are amplified. It is real. We have lived through it. It can be super scary when we do think that there might be an a significant economic blip or correction. But to me the way that we could be thinking about it right now, which at the time of recording is in the middle of November, 2019 is this is not the time to be leaning back, worried about you know, what's going to happen. This is a time to be leaning forward and finishing your damn course and planting seeds every day. Tiny marketing actions, right? To really plant those seeds. So that's, to me, is always where I get, where I can reduce anxiety about it and you know, spread out opportunities, develop plans A, B and C, sock away some money, you know, but like living in fear ends up contracting us and therefore when we contract it doesn't really make sense. But we're doing the opposite of what we should be doing, right? Which is seeding for next year. And because I've lived through so many economic downturns, thankfully my own business has always been fairly consistent. But I think a lot of that is just because of planting seeds really consistently all the time. You know? So those kinds of things are things that I'm really passionate about. And then I think for the Learning Lab, there's actually a call I'm doing today with the partner consulting company that is really looking at taking some action on this next stage of what we're doing here at the Main Street Learning Lab, which is beginning to build some of our own programs and things that we could be licensing to other communities that in particular want to do inclusive economic development for entrepreneurs. So the materials really can be designed by our amazing native American, African American, Latino, you know, leaders, people who working together I think can create some really unique materials. And the idea is doing it in a collaborative way where then we could be driving some great revenue for all the partners who were here, but also really providing some tools for other communities that want to do it. And that to me is like the perfect marriage of all the things I love. Community building, diversity, equity and inclusion and instructional design. It kind of just brings everything together.
JA: Tons of exciting stuff. We will be sure to share, especially for people who are in Arizona or in Mesa and particularly make sure that we share links to the learning lab and everything else you have going on. And speaking of sharing links, where can people find out more about you and your work?
PS: At pamelaslim.com
JA: All right, last question. Pam. What's your why? Why do you get up and do this work?
PS: My why is really in increasing economic security and wellbeing for all, so I -- and conversantly really reducing economic anxiety. I think it's something that is fundamentally damaging, you know, to our communities, to individuals, knowing what it's like when you do not know how it is you're going to feed your children. If you do not have stability, you know for your home. If you don't know if you can pay your rent or pay your mortgage where people are insecure as business owners, if they don't know how it is that they're going to be, you know, making their bills the next month. That is extremely stressful and we know that that is something that drives very health related stress. And it also drives this, it's we're powerful creatures, right? That if we're just listening to all these messages of, you know, the end is near and jobs are shrinking and everything's happening. Like there's many terrible things happening as I said, like let's focus on the truth and the facts. Absolutely, we need to be concerned and there's a lot that we can start to do. So to me, the core of everything is where, first of all, we do realize that we all need each other. We begin to work together from all different sectors of our communities and our ecosystems, right? Entrepreneurs working, a lot of the brick and mortar folks don't know a lot of the things that we've learned in the online world. We need larger companies. We need academic institutions, art institutions, government people working together to create this strength and to me that's the thing that I want. At the end of the day, something I've written or something somebody has learned is made a difference in them feeling more secure about how it is that they're going to be taking care of themselves and their family. That is my prayer for everybody. I do not want folks to have to worry about how they're going to take care of themselves and that's the thing that continually gets me going.
JA: Pam thank you so much for just sharing. This has been wonderful. I love talking about this and I'm glad that we had a chance to go deep, so thank you for being on the show and sharing a bit about your world and what you do with us.
PS: Thanks for having me. I've enjoyed the conversation too.
JA: All right, my friends, that is my time. Remember before you can level up your course, you must first level up your mind. As always, thank you for hanging out with me for another great episode. I do not take it for granted. I am Janell Allen, and this has been Level Up Your Course. Peace!