Pamela Slim is an award-winning author, business coach and speaker. She spent the first 10 years of her business as a consultant to large companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Charles Schwab and Cisco Systems, where she worked with thousands of executives, managers and employees. In 2016, she co-founded The Main Street Learning Lab with her husband Darryl, where she works with business owners to remove obstacles to small business success and test and try new business ideas.
In 2005, Pam started the Escape from Cubicle Nation blog, which is now one of the top career and business blogs on the web. Through her blog, Pam has helped hundreds of entrepreneurs to start successful businesses. Her first book Escape from Cubicle Nation: From Corporate Prisoner to Thriving Entrepreneur was released in the Spring of 2009 and won Best Small Business/Entrepreneur Book of 2009 by 800 CEO Read. Pam’s book Body of Work gives a fresh perspective on the skills required in the new world of work for people in all work modes, from corporate to non-profit to small business. Pam’s latest book, The Widest Net, delivers a method for building an engaged and mutually beneficial network. The Widest Net won Best Business Book of 2021 in the category of Sales & Marketing by Porchlight Books. Pam is frequently quoted as an expert in publications such as BusinessWeek, The New York Times, Money Magazine, and Psychology Today.
Transcript:
Bryan Wish:
Pamela polka dot Slim. Hi, Pamela. Nice to see you.
Pamela Slim:
Nice to see you too.
Bryan Wish:
That reference was to the beautiful polka dots that she’s wearing, and I just wanted to call it out. So Pamela, I’m thrilled to have you on the show today. You do some really, really interesting work. And I’d love to know though, what’s the one away moment that you want to share with us today?
Pamela Slim:
What came to mind right before we jumped on this call is actually something on the personal side. Now let me think. I’m 55, so it was probably, maybe, I don’t know, 20, I don’t know, eight years ago or something like that. But I had been in a very toxic relationship as one does in their 20s sometimes, through the learning journey. And had gotten to a place where it was really just becoming untenable. And I had never visited a therapist before. And my mom threw little subtle hints, was like, say, “Maybe that would be a good idea.”
So I was living in San Francisco at the time and I drove to Marin County, which is where I grew up, in California. And I went to see a therapist, and it was one of these really deep conversations. And she looked at me at a certain point and she said, “I’m really not supposed to say this, especially at a first therapy session, but you’re talking as if you’re a hostage and you need to get out right away.”
And something happened in that moment where all of a sudden I started to see this vision of a particular spot in a lake that I used to go to as a little girl. It’s called Phoenix Lake. And I don’t know if your listeners have ever seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It’s an old movie. Great, great see, but about visits from extraterrestrials. And there’s a character who keeps seeing this vision of a mountain in his head, he just becomes obsessed by it and he keeps seeing it and seeing it. And building it out of dirt and mashed potatoes and all these things.
I got that vision of this one place at Phoenix Lake after that conversation. So I got in my car, I drove to Phoenix Lake, that was about 30 minutes away. And I started walking around the lake like I used to do as a little girl. And it was surreal, because it was as if I could just hear the heartbeat of the earth. There was something that was happening where I just felt there was movement underway that was way beyond a normal experience.
I kept walking around the lake and just being called to this vision that I saw, this particular spot that I hadn’t visited in a really long time. And I came around a corner and I looked when I saw this one spot, which is right where a river was feeding into the lake and everything just broke down internally. I just started sobbing. It was just this huge release and breakdown from many years of being in a toxic relationship.
So I went there, I sat by the water, cried it out. And then something I’ve never experienced before in my life as if I could physically feel like there were hands at my back. It was pushing me and I was like, “Okay, this is the time in which I’m going to get up. I’m going to walk back to my car and I’m going to leave right now.” So, that’s what I did. I walked to my car, drove back home, packed everything in garbage bags, X-ed out of there.
It’s one of these spiritual epiphany moments that I will never forget. It reinforced for me the drive of freedom of just how precious of value that freedom is to me. And how who knows what was at play to make sure that I remained free. And I’m very thankful, very, very thankful for whatever that was. And my agency in listening to it and in leaving a toxic situation.
Bryan Wish:
That was unbelievable. Incredible. I mean, I got chills multiple times as you were talking, more offline, but wow. So thank you for sharing that, so vulnerably and also for sharing that experience. So formative. Okay, can I unpack that a little?
Pamela Slim:
Bring it, yeah.
Bryan Wish:
All right. Okay. So you were at your therapist, it’s the first visit. She said something to you about being a hostage. Which just opened you up and to have this spiritual moment to go somewhere. What I would love to know is, what were some of the lead up moments to … What did feeling like a hostage feel like? What was toxic? Where you got to the … Because it sounds like the end of the road where you didn’t know which way to turn?
Pamela Slim:
Yeah. It was in this particular relationship a lot of emotional abuse, frankly. A lot of really outbursts a lot of really vicious words, a lot of controlling and manipulation in terms of preying on my greatest vulnerabilities I think that I had. And exploiting them in a way that would make me feel scared and trapped. And also at the time I was without just sort of, for personal reasons, not describing everything super specifically, but was super involved in an organization at the time where I had huge connection and love with the work that I was doing that was also related. The other person in the relationship was also related to that. So some of the hostage situation was like, “How in the world could I ever leave this which I’ve invested so much time and energy and leave the people who I do love, even though I know that this particular relationship is one that is literally destroying my sole sense of worth wellbeing, health, all of it?”
Bryan Wish:
Yeah. It’s like stripping that whole sense of home that maybe other people have provided relationally organizationally to go create that maybe sense of independence or reclaim the personal power as one may say. Okay, so you were in this toxic relationship, you knew it was toxic. You knew you were being exploited emotionally.
Pamela Slim:
Yep.
Bryan Wish:
By the way, if this is too much, you can tell me to stop, but I mean, let’s go back to maybe childhood. You showed up in the relationship, probably because of certain patterns passed down or ways you grew up where it got to a breaking point where you had to just take such a courageous move, which by the way, incredibly brave. What do you think maybe contributed to how you even showed up in the relationship in the first place, or patterns that you look back on and say, “Wow, I, would have never done that if I had known that,” and some equality work?
Pamela Slim:
Yeah. It’s a good question. I’ve thought about it a lot, because for anybody, really male or female, I tend to run across more folks that might identify as non-binary. I find that more women I talk to could be in this situation necessarily than men, but I’ve talked to a lot of folks who have. I didn’t have any classic markers necessarily of like, I had a very loving relationship with my parents. I had a fantastic relationship with my dad who was a very deep ally advocate. Was super supportive of me my whole life. My parents split when I was about five. And that was definitely something that was traumatic. For any kid to have your parents split up, especially it was a highly visible thing because my dad was mayor of our town at the time when it happened. So it was just a one of those things that was really, really hard on my mom and challenging for my dad too. But he really had to break out of it for his own reasons. And through time both parents have said they ended up in good places.
So, that could be it of some wounding, loss, need for male approval. Some of the classic things you might see in a case where there is a strong, loving relationship. In this case I had with my dad where some of that was fragmented. So maybe there’s a little bit there. There’s another part of it, frankly, that is just mysterious, because I always had been a very self-directed person. I was always very confident. I was really adventurous early on. I was an exchange student in high school traveling huge risk taker, very much a liberated woman, feminist, grew up with having really strong feelings around that. And part of what’s interesting in analyzing I think a situation for anybody who’s ever been in it. And I’ve run across it on the personal side, but also in an organizational side, is discerning between, are there certain conditions that can predispose somebody to make poor decisions about getting in a relationship that potentially is toxic, which we all take accountability, right?
For different getting into a personal relationship, getting into an organization where maybe part of your instinct is telling you that maybe this is not the right fit. Or maybe I need to ask more questions. There’s another side to it, which is narcissist are fucken manipulative as hell and can take people who might have an instinct toward kindness, caring and maybe a need to be loved and valued, which I think all of us have and manipulate it in a way that I had never before had an understanding of. I had never met somebody, of course, who is a complex person, not a 100% terrible. Nobody is, right? Person had their own set of trauma, which I totally deeply understand. But there was a dimension to that, which is, I don’t know if I ever could have seen it coming, because there is another side that has lots of charisma, lots of connection, lots of ways in which there are positive things in the relationship. So it’s a good question, but yeah.
Bryan Wish:
Well, totally. I mean, so I guess two things, one, I think we all have these experiences that create a script for us growing up. So we enter into things, maybe a little unconsciously and then we get to, we get a little deeply in them and you’re like, “Wow, this is a shit show. And what do I do now?” But you kind of maybe understand the past, it’s like you’re carrying weight that you don’t real realize you’re carrying and [inaudible 00:11:49].
And then two, I’m also, I’ve been noticing a lot. The more I talk to people whose parents divorced when they were younger, this, it seems to be, it’s like if I could go do a PhD and take two years away from my work, I would probably study this, but it’s this lack of worth in a way. You may have functional confidence, but it’s this lack of worth in a way from the divorce and then entering into relationships, almost feeling a little powerless. And it’s just fascinating to me, right? Where if you grow up in a stronger, I should say a more stable home environment, your worth in development is a little more, I think, strongly rooted or based on healthy relationships. Because you know what that looks like.
So it’s interesting. Again, I’m not trying to tell you, I’m not certified in anything, but I definitely love hearing and understanding stories. And what you shared is so powerful, but also, and I think powerful in the fact that how … Can I ask, how old were you? You said you were in your 20s when this toxic relationship ends?
Pamela Slim:
Yeah, I think, oh maybe my early, early 30s. So yeah, it was probably maybe 31 or 32, something like that. Yeah.
Bryan Wish:
And was this your kind of first spiritual awakening per se?
Pamela Slim:
I think, no, it wasn’t, it wasn’t. It was the second.
Bryan Wish:
Okay. All right. Okay.
Pamela Slim:
You can ask about the first, if you want.
Bryan Wish:
Yeah, sure. Can we?
Pamela Slim:
We have too many. That’s fine. But yeah, I mean, it was interesting because I think I’ve only, the ones that come to mind are probably just these two, maybe three in my life. But the first one was when I was in high school and pretty early on in my early teens got into smoking weed and then doing a little bit harder drugs, mainly just coke and weed because in the place where I lived there were people, it was very abundant. A lot of wealthy people, even though we weren’t particularly in my household. But the access to drugs was really available. So that was just part of how I was in my teens. I think of it now having teenagers and I can’t believe it, but I get high in the morning, at lunch, after school every single day.
And so I was a junior in high school and I had actually been up all night the night before. And I could just feel things were getting a little bit more out of hand. And I walked to the restroom from English class and I was walking back down the hallway and I saw this vision of two paths and I felt it really strongly, like there is a path that I can choose to take right now, which means leaving here and really not having harm come to me. And there is a path where I could just feel, I didn’t necessarily see images of destruction, but I could feel there was something really bad that was going to happen. And in that instant, on the way from the restroom back to the classroom, I made the decision to stop doing drugs. I never have done any since. And this was after doing every day for multiple years.
The next week I went to a meeting of exchange students, because my brother had been an exchange student for a summer through a program. I went to a meeting at my high school, actually met the student who was in Switzerland, which is where I ended up going. Made the decision there very vehemently that I was going to go, because I knew I needed to get out of that environment. And I ended up spending my senior year as an exchange student, which completely changed my entire life’s course. Just opened me up to all kinds of new things and was a really seminal moment. So, that was another time.
Bryan Wish:
Well, it seems like that internal voice really beats hard at your door and you seem to listen to it.
Pamela Slim:
Yes.
Bryan Wish:
So I love it. That’s so powerful. Well, thank you for sharing. Okay, I want to go back to your second spiritual moment, but I thought we should get the first one out of the bag too. So do you have any idea we were going to talk about any of this this morning?
Pamela Slim:
No, I didn’t, which is part of the fun of it. I like spontaneous shares. It’s fun. It’s fun to go back. Because it has informed, both of those have informed a lot of, I think where I am in my life now.
Bryan Wish:
Yeah, no doubt. Super cool. So you had this moment, you went to Phoenix lake or a lake in Phoenix, Phoenix lake, had a great session and just cried it out in the best way. And you went and you packed your bags up. I assume you were living with your partner?
Pamela Slim:
Yeah.
Bryan Wish:
So take us there. What happened next? You went home. You packed everything up. Where’d you go? What was the reaction on the other side? What did you do? What was next for you?
Pamela Slim:
Yeah, he was gone. He was actually out of the country at the time, which was part of where I just felt like I had this opportunity. And so I called my mom and she ended up coming and helping me pack. So we were just putting everything in garbage bags. As I said, there was this real feeling, even though I knew that he was thousands of miles away, there was just a whole energy that felt very scary. So I remember just feeling really terrified as I was packing up, but just knowing that I needed to get everything out of there. We packed up stuff in my mom’s Volkswagen bus and then drove down the road. As soon as I left I felt this immediate relief. There was like something just kind of fell from this, felt like a spell or something of control.
And we went to one of my good friends, Maryanne’s house first. I stopped for some tea. I think I stayed with her for a couple of nights before I ended up then going and spending a little bit of time with my moms before I found another housing situation. But it was a feeling of instant relief. And I just do really remember where I had been living for so long with this nagging dread in the back of my head and anybody who’s listening has ever had the experience, you know what I’m talking about. It’s just, you’re always waiting for another shoe to drop. You’re always waiting for some explosion, something to happen that’s going to set you on edge where you have to make things okay. So, just not having that and realizing that I had made that decision, I felt a lot of my strength and fortitude come back.
What’s interesting about it is that there were many ways in which I operated in my life. Even being in that relationship where I had that strength and clarity and fortitude, I think there’s a lot of misunderstandings about people who could be in situations part of navigating. It was almost like other parts of my life, when I was in them I felt more fully present in myself, except for the situation where it was so toxic. So leaving that just felt like really coming home to myself. And then, it was the whole process of he was obviously very upset and I had space for a while and then there was some of the stuff that happens in breakups, the phone calls, repeating phone calls. And I set some really clear boundaries and it ended up not having anything terrible happening.
And there were some repercussions in terms of the organization that I was working with, but it all worked itself out and it was okay. And it was just a gigantic relief for me, just a whole new chapter. After that experience is when I joke with my husband about it now because something switched inside me where never, ever, ever, ever was I going to be in a situation where a man was going to exert any kind of control. And one time my husband was just joking early on when we were dating. And he said, “What’s wrong with you?” He’s a very gentle kind person, literally just joking. And I sat him down for like 30 minutes and I’m like, “Nothing is broken. I don’t need to be fixed if you think I need to be fixed, I’m out of here.”
I was super clear. It was just like this sword coming out, not in a way to attack him, but to set totally incomplete, clear boundaries. “I don’t give a shit how much power that you’re trying to wield, but I will not take it anymore.” And that’s been a good warrior sense that has served me well. I always like to approach life with love and compassion, but I also have a really clear edge of justice. And it has helped me to speak truth to power, which is a lot of the work that I do today and really dismantling some oppressive systems that sometimes hold the same type of energy as I was feeling in my personal relationships.
Bryan Wish:
Wow. Good for you for maybe starting to feel that feeling of trapping per se and kind of setting a hard boundary to say, “Hey, this is my experience and what I’ve learned. And for us to have a healthy, existing coexisting relationship, this is what I need,” which-
Pamela Slim:
I didn’t say it in such a nice way.
Bryan Wish:
Of course.
Pamela Slim:
But you know, it was important.
Bryan Wish:
Maybe you weren’t as healed or processed in it, but you knew what you needed to say nonetheless. Very, very cool. Well, I mean, and transformation. Well, I think I’ve learned as well is there’s so many people who just go through life and they never address some of these things. They never take the hard path of reconciliation with themselves and the healing journey. That seems like you prioritize that and say younger age the most to maybe set yourself up for what sounds like, I don’t want to imply, but a healthy relationship with kids and creating maybe a beautiful family that you never saw for your own self growing up. So sounds like a lot to be proud about.
Pamela Slim:
It’s true. I had a beautiful family growing up. So just to be really clear in terms of divorced families …
Bryan Wish:
Sure, sure. It’s more [inaudible 00:22:13].
Pamela Slim:
… I’ve had. Yeah, it is a point of view and I know everybody has a different experience. I think it does make a difference where there’s a healthy relationship at home sometimes, for kids to have the experience of parents together. However, there have been plenty of folks who have had situations where they’ve suffered emotional damage from being in parents that are together. And there are plenty of kids who have had come from a home where there’s been divorce, who have not made the same kind of choices that I made. So I know it’s not a binary in terms of one or the other, but I it’s really important to me. Because looking at the journey that my parents made and for people in my life that have made the choice to divorce, there are clear, difficult consequences, and there are ways of navigating that. That can still be very strengthening.
And I think I know my parents really did a great job in not tearing each other down, maintaining strong relationships with us. So I had a very good, strong family life, even though it had some really hard parts and it was maybe not conventional.
Bryan Wish:
Totally, absolutely. I appreciate you giving clean clarity. So wasn’t trying to suggest it was one way, but thank you. So I want to maybe transition a little bit to who you are today and some of the work you’re even doing. And how maybe formative moments and experiences really shaped that path? And how you show up with work and what you actually do today? And how that goes into your … I guess my question to you is, this happened to you in your early 30s. You mentioned you’re in your early 50s-
Pamela Slim:
Mid-50s. Yeah. I’m 55.
Bryan Wish:
I would say, I would say early mid-40s.
Pamela Slim:
Well, thank you. I’m proud of all my years though.
Bryan Wish:
Yeah. Proud of all your years. So how would you, if you were to describe yourself today at, I think you know, whatever age, mid-50s versus who you were in the early 30s, what do you think the biggest difference is?
Pamela Slim:
Well …
Sorry about that. How is this now?
Bryan Wish:
It’s good.
Pamela Slim:
Okay.
Bryan Wish:
We’re going to be fine.
Pamela Slim:
Okay.
Bryan Wish:
I’ll pick up. Are you ready?
Pamela Slim:
Yeah, maybe pick up.
Bryan Wish:
I was going to say, Brent, delete everything. I’m going to restart the question I just asked and then just make a fluid transition. Those are recording notes. All right. So Pamela, you made this, you’ve had these crazy spiritual journeys. You’ve been down a lot of roads, you’ve come into your own, it happened in your early 30s, today you are in your mid-50s. How would you say you’re different today? How would you describe yourself today versus then?
Pamela Slim:
There are components of how I was then that I feel have carried through the way as I’ve described earlier that I’ve always known myself of being very adventurous and tolerating huge amounts of risk, loving people, loving my work. The difference I think is really having a lot of agency, of personal agency, of not tolerating relationships and not perpetuating relationships that have an unhealthy dynamic in terms of poor boundaries or manipulation. I feel the work I do every day as a coach, I am [inaudible 00:30:18] clients about the nature of the role that I play and how it’s really my job to help support their own growth, development, make them better, stronger, more capable. And I do not like to approach the work from the position of, “I am here to make you better, or I’m going to direct what you’re doing.” Because that goes back to this feeling of, I know how much I did not like trusting my own sense. I love to have a partner, where I do have a wonderful partner. Now, my husband Darryl’s an amazing person, an amazing spouse, amazing dad.
There’s lots of trust in partnership where I never feel like there’s a power over. He’s not telling me what to do. I’m not telling him what to do. So that’s a component, I think that is different. And just with age comes caring less about what people think and probably leaning more into the kind of transformational work that to me is really important. And a lot of it is just helping to dismantle systems in business that have been really ineffective that are more manipulative or oppressive. I call it empire culture in my work now.
Bryan Wish:
Yeah.
Pamela Slim:
Where there’s this feeling of crushing, dominating. And now you can understand, given my personal history, why I do not like domination. I don’t like to perpetuate models of domination. And I like to call out where there’s inequity and support folks who are working toward healthier, more just and equitable spaces.
Bryan Wish:
Totally. Yeah, I think it’s powerful to understand how you want to help and support other people. Sounds like you’re not here to control. Similar to how you don’t want to be controlled, you don’t want to control other people’s growth and development and let them show up how they are and show them them path perhaps if they want to follow along. And they maybe suggest and let them define it for themselves. Let’s go into that a little bit. So tell the audience a little bit more about, or tell me and the audience a little bit more about the work you do, the coaching, what you’re doing? I love how you talked about dismantling empire culture, but where has this trajectory of all these personal experiences, you have the personal agency, where is that taking you now? It sounds like you’re making a big impact on people’s lives.
Pamela Slim:
Yeah, so my main things that I do, or I’m a business coach. So I work with people who are generally building something that is significant in creating something that specifically is doing something to create a better, more equitable just world. So it can range in things like I have a data scientist client who is building a whole model about how to reduce bias and data equity. And so I love, my background is in training and development. So I love conceptualizing models, helping to build a model of how to do something, which is what I did with her. And then help her build a community around that. Or I have a doctor client who has this amazing approach to how it is that people can understand their brain and really manage their lives more effectively. So with those kind of folks, my jam is really helping them to understand and scale.
So are there things they’re doing where they want to grow more, they want to have more impact, they want to have more income? And that’s really the work that I do with individuals. I’m also a writer. So I’ve written three books. I’ve been self-employed for 25 years, the first 10 as a management consultant, the last 15 in the capacity of doing startup work. So I did lots of early stage startup for my first book, Escape from Cubicle Nation. Then I wrote Body of Work in 2014. That’s more this heart of, what are you creating? What’s this impact of work that you love to create? That’s part of what work I love to do. And then the latest book, The Widest Net, which is about building a specific audience and community around that work. Looking at it from the perspective of ecosystems and interdependencies, as opposed to empires. That my husband and I are co-founders of the space.
For anybody, if you have video that you’re showing, which is that main street learning lab, which is right here in downtown Mesa, and we do all kinds of things of really hosting events that are led by especially BIPOC entrepreneurs. And we do a lot of really on the ground ecosystem building here, which has been a super fun part of my work for the last five years.
Bryan Wish:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I guess two things, right? You’re getting to work with people very intimately that sounds like in a way that they’re pursuing their most daring passions. How do you go build this? How do you go do this? How do I take those and write to it and share around it? And then, on more communal level, I love what you said. You’re creating the foundational pieces ingredients for community to really come together and nest and be one. Just by putting in that effect of all the relationships that come out of that, the fortuitous serendipitous moments to help others. It’s a really rewarding place to be. And just everything you’re saying, you just, you speak from a place of, I think a lot of congruence or alignment. And from a place of inside out. And it takes a lot of work to get there. So my question to you is, where in your work, whether it’s ecosystem building or working with diverse entrepreneurs, doing, building very incredible products that align with your mission, where do you find yourself coming the most alive?
Pamela Slim:
It’s actually all of it. The only things that might drag me down a little bit in my work are usually I call the last 2% because I’m a huge, quick start. I love being in the moment coaching, I generally tend to at this stage, really have a clear idea about where I can be the best coach and the best fit with a client. So I tend to just totally enjoy the work that I’m doing with them when I’m in the moment of coaching. The last 2% can be things like following up with a couple little details that I have to send, or right now I’m leaving on vacation tomorrow with a family. So I’m like, “Oh man, I have to write all these like titles and blurbs for talks.” Those things can just be a bit of a bummer.
It’s part of what I have to do, so it’s okay, I totally can own that. But that’s probably the only part where I might feel my energy dip a little bit. And I just need to get right with myself when I’m doing it to just realize it’s all part of that habit and practice of discipline of running a business. But in general, is equally as enjoyable for me to have the front door open and have a random person walk in, have a deep conversation with them about what they’re trying to do, welcome them to the neighborhood. That is for me to be working in the details of some proposal where a client is excited to be licensing their materials to a big company for the first time. It’s like that, it’s just all of that kind of work is super, super enjoyable to me.
Bryan Wish:
Yeah. Well, I love what you said. And it’s so funny how sometimes the about 2% weight that 2% can sometimes feel like the 20% weight. Because it’s just all the little things, it’s just, doesn’t bring out the best. But I so get what you’re saying and it’s neat. It’s neat, most people can’t say that only 2% of their work is, we’ll hold some back, so. Or not holds them back, but just the things they don’t want to do. So, so cool. What inspired you? You’ve written three books and I’d love to know what inspired each book and yeah, let’s start there?
Pamela Slim:
The way I describe my own author journey is I’m really a author practitioner. I started my blog Escape from Cubicle Nation in 2005. So, that was a specific purpose. I had taken a class about building an online presence in 2004 by Suzanne Falter. And creating a blog name and creating a blog was an assignment for that, which thank God I’m so thankful. Like way back when, when it was the early stage days of content marketing and all of that I kind of got in early. And so I started by writing my blog when I was transitioning out of being a management consultant. I love that work, but I met my husband. We moved to Arizona and we knew we wanted to start a family and I didn’t want to be on the road all the time. So that I’ve always loved writing, but I never would’ve imagined that I would be an author writing books.
It was at first a vehicle for sharing ideas to connect with potential clients. So, because I had made the decision to specifically work with people, leaving corporate to start a business, hence Escape from Cubicle Nation. So that journey was one of real discovery and it was just a magical mystery tour of connecting with so many people. When I realized what the online world was like, it was just a magic filled with possibilities that time in the internet and really deep in Web 2.0 was actually super exciting, very collaborative. And I feel like that’s really where I found my writing voice. And I ended up getting my book deal because my editor from Penguin Portfolio had actually listened to my podcast at the time first and then had read my blog. So it’s like the writing drew in a book deal. But the writing was based on daily conversations that I was having with my clients.
What were the issues they were concerned about? What were patterns that I noticed? And so that has been a journey that I’ve had for books is I write what I know that my clients are asking for. And usually it’s first through sharing ideas, having conversations, creating maybe coaching tools, writing about it on my blog. And then when I feel that call to codify it and put it together, it ends up taking the shape of books.
Bryan Wish:
Yeah.
Pamela Slim:
So that’s when one, and one just leads to the other. There’s kind of a trilogy that I didn’t notice before when I was writing my latest book. But when you think about it, where Escape from Cubicle Nation is helping people to just leave the construct of corporate so they can be on their own in a financially viable way, just getting out, which is a huge transition for people.
Once they’re self-employed the next questions that start to emerge is really, “What am I creating? How can I actually create something that’s meaningful?” And that’s the whole main purpose of Body of Work was what I call the love letter to creation and really helping people deeply understand who they are, what do they want to contribute to the world? And also, mitigating a little bit of the entrepreneurship is the only way to be cool, creative and free. Because I think that’s bullshit. And people can create meaning in many different work modes. Working in an organization, working in a government, university. So it’s more about being conscious about what you create and then always when people hone in and they’re like, “Yes, I got it. This is my vision. This is what I want to build.” The next question is, “Where’s my audience? And how do I actually build it in a way that feels authentic, that’s not empire culture, that’s not being a smarmy marketing person?” And that’s really where The Widest Net came.
Bryan Wish:
Wow, it all builds. Like you said, the one thing led to the next, but it’s so cool that you started out in Web 20 so early, building relationships on the inner webs following that. And I love what you said. It’s like, I go do the work and it kind of formulates and comes together. And I realize it’s time to write the book. Whereas you’re not like the person’s like, “I just need to go write the book on this to become an author.” It’s like, “No, let me take my internal experience, codify it and put it out there in the world.” That’s usable, equitable. And I can use on my own the story. It seems like your personal experience has driven a lot of the narratives for what you’ve put out there, because that’s your truth and you can own it.
Pamela Slim:
It is. And there are different viable paths as you know well, in the work that you do for reasons why people write and how they write. I do make a really big distinction between being an author practitioner. So it’s like, I have a good friend, Nancy Duarte who has a firm Duarte in Silicon valley. She’s done a lot of work around communications, slide design, everything about where she lives, she’s living in breathing that because she has a large agency, where people are producing content all the time. And she’s talking with clients. Then there’s friends like Dan Pink or Susan Kane who I actually worked with for a long time. Who’s last book was Quiet. She has a new book coming out called Bittersweet. And for them, they could be really interested in a particular topic. Dan’s latest book about regret, The Power of Regret just came out.
And for him, he’s a journalist. So he will do copious amounts of research in order to explore interesting dimensions of a topic. And I think Susan also, Susan’s more of a, yeah, really thoughtful person where she’ll notice a pattern happening. And she has this beautiful dichotomy between research, but also poetry just in the way that she approaches it. So I think there’s space for different kinds of writers. I can never understand when I’m talking to people they might have their first book, it comes out, you have to market it. And they’re like, “Oh, I can’t wait to be done with this so I can get onto the next book.” And for me I’m always like, “What, a book is the beginning because I write it so that I can then apply it and see how it works in the world.” Because I’m an author practitioner, because that’s why I write books is to have frameworks that are helpful, because this is work I’m doing every day. So it’s just a little different approach.
Bryan Wish:
Yeah. And there’s no right way. That I was leaning into saying you take a lot of that lived experience and how I make it applicable for others, which is super rewarding. Not to say that Dan Pink or an Adam Grant type. Incredible authors, incredible authors.
Pamela Slim:
Yeah.
Bryan Wish:
Just maybe a different way of doing that type of work. So anyhow, I was trying to celebrate more of the fact that how you’re bringing in your personal experience.
Pamela Slim:
Yeah.
Bryan Wish:
Lived experience to help others.
Pamela Slim:
Yeah. Because it is what I don’t enjoy within the world of books and the world of a lot of folks working around the world of books, is the idea that if you want to be an expert, you just have to write a book or you just have to come up with some catchy idea that will sell to a publisher or will sell to people, without having any grounding and either research or really live practical experience of working with people. But I’m always conscious about who’s listening and there are so many different ways in which you can come to the same end of bringing your workout into the world. And just thinking about for me, I know that’s the way I operate. I couldn’t imagine researching a topic without actually having lived experience with it. It wouldn’t be fun.
Bryan Wish:
No, I couldn’t agree more. And by the way, I really enjoyed this conversation. I didn’t know where we were going to start. I didn’t know where it was going to go and how we’d kind of bring it all together.
Pamela Slim:
Me either, which is part of the fun, right?
Bryan Wish:
So let me ask you one more question then you can share where all the people need to go find you. Take me, again, I love the work you do, I think it’s a lot of things from the heart. So I’m not asking you to say, tell me your life perfectly in 10 years? But let’s just say, five to 10 years out, what are some of the dreams of yours that you want to manifest?
Pamela Slim:
I think I’ve been thinking a lot about it, because it is a really cool time, I think from like 55 to 70 where there’s tons of focus and agency and energy. My kids are getting a little bit older, but it’s still really fun to hang out with them. So in part of the 10 years on more, the life family side is just doing a lot more travel. We’re actually, we’re taking up tomorrow for a European John. So we’re going to London, Scotland and Paris, which will be so fun. My family’s never been, I’ve been myself, but my kids totally love to travel. They’re completely open to it. And knowing that there is that enthusiasm and energy and that both myself and my husband can do work from anywhere. I see a lot more adventure of maybe taking a couple months living somewhere, just traveling together more as a family, as they go into college and so forth.
We’ll figure out if they want to travel with us. We all get along really well. So I have a feeling that they will if there’s no other obligations. But a lot more adventure travel, like meaningful connection with each other and with people in different places in the world. And of course, just being more safe to travel now that the pandemic is finally waning a little bit.
On the work side, I am getting much more clear that my work is shifting even more to being in that mentor role. I do a lot of work in particular with black and brown women. I do a lot of, my husband is Navajo. So we have a really strong community here of native entrepreneurs and also Latinx entrepreneurs. And I feel really clear and strong of just wanting to support the growth and development of leaders.
I feel like I have one just superpower of just being able to see potential and just notice where there are amazing people. And so supporting that leadership, growth and development feels really important just to be able to strengthen businesses of leaders, helped everything, get people more active and visible in general, in the business community. Because there’s such low visibility of the experts that actually exist.
Bryan Wish:
Yeah.
Pamela Slim:
And so just that’s the core mission we have here at the learning lab, but really doing concrete things in order to support that growth and development and network building between people who are doing that work. There probably is another book. My intuition is, Whisper To Me, that usually there’s a little prize inside from one book to the next, which is without knowing it I put one concept in one book that ends up becoming the next one.
So within Body of Work there was a chapter on avatar’s, ecosystems and watering holes that end up being part of the framework for The Widest Net. And in The Widest Net I have a section in one of the chapters about leadership and just that different stages that you have as you’re walking, navigating your body of work. And how do you make decisions and how do you understand yourself? How do you navigate uncertainty and how do you stand for what you believe? That feels like that will be the next book. But I am in no way ready to even think about working on it. [inaudible 00:50:03] just came out a couple months ago. But I can receive very strong messages from the universe. And definitely this one is saying, that makes a lot of sense. And those are the kinds of conversations that I’m having with my clients now who have scaled. Those are the kind of things they’re navigating.
Bryan Wish:
So cool. Wow, I am excited for your next chapter or your 55 to 70 chapter.
Pamela Slim:
Me too.
Bryan Wish:
And so cool. You’re going to be exploring travel, family and what a fun way to start the morning. Thank you for your time. Pamela, where can people find you?
Pamela Slim:
You can find me at pamelaslim.com. That’s where all my contact info is. If you’re a social media person, you can find all my handles there.
Bryan Wish:
Awesome. Well thank you for your time.
Pamela Slim:
Yeah, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.