 So excited to be here with Pamela Slim. Pam, so good to see you. It is wonderful to see you, George. It's been a while. It has been a while. And I'm so excited because your new book is coming out. And I've already preordered it. I can't wait just like everybody else. It's called the widest net. And it's about your method of helping people build new audiences or grow their audience. And that's what you help lots of entrepreneurs do. You are a business coach that just has worked with so many entrepreneurs. Some people watching this or listening to this may be familiar with your, it was your original book maybe or the one that put you on the map originally is Escape from Cubicle Nation. And then after that, the next book that people loved is The Body of Work. And you in fact help a lot of entrepreneurs create licensing for their body of work. And now your next book is the widest net. And you have been kind of applying your own method as you've been doing this book launch. So there's so much we can talk about. Oh, you were also the founder with your husband of Main Street Learning Lab. So that is sort of like a community think, community-based think tank for small business kind of economic acceleration in the community. It's beautiful, beautiful vision. So, okay, well, I know a lot of the folks here are wanting to grow their audience. They have a message that they know is important for the right people. They have a modality. They have a product or service that they'd like to really help many more people with. So maybe I'll start there. It's like, if you could summarize, if it's possible, you wrote a whole book. But if you could summarize what the widest net means in whatever length you want, how would you summarize it? And I'll pepper you with questions after that. I love that. I love that. Yeah. So I think conceptually, let's start with conceptually, just with it with a bit of a kind of contrasting. What I found, and I know following your work for a long time in a lot of years, I really resonate with the way you approach business too. And that is that a lot of common business language is language of empires. So we literally say things like I want to build an empire. I want to dominate. I want to be, you know, crushing it. And so with a little bit to my friend, Gary Vaynerchuk. I love Gary too. But yes, we don't have to agree with the language of everybody we support and love. That's right. And it's so funny, isn't it? Like sometimes you can have a personal relationship with people and then you can have a different philosophical business approach. But what's interesting in it in just, I think for me, a lot of the heart of the work I do, which is very intersectional, inclusive community building and development with many clients that come from lots of different backgrounds is that the language of empires and empires in general are very good for the people at the top of the empire, not so good for many other people. And in business, when we start to talk about growing an audience, that idea that in empire language centers, I am the expert. I am the sole person who can help you achieve your goal. In many ways, I would need to place myself in direct competition. So you and I would be direct competitors where it's like, I'm not going to go talk to George because what if he takes my clients? Why would I do an interview with him? I don't want my followers to meet. Right? You can notice there's just such a power in language. I know as a coach and a writer for a long time, when we look at that kind of language, I think it does have an impact. I also just don't think that it's true. There's rarely a person I've ever met that has done significant work in the world that did not have really significant help, either within their own team or within a whole pool of collaborators. So we use this empire language when we're talking about building an audience, which can be problematic in many cases. And then to me, the contrast and the really the central idea of the widest net is that instead of centering ourselves and saying everybody come join my empire and follow me, we center our customers. And I think they live in a vibrant ecosystem where they are surrounded by experts and organizations and media they consume and helpful tools and services that they purchase that help them reach the goal that I as a service provider also help them reach. So as a business coach, when with clients and as you've said throughout the, you know, 15 years I've been doing start up coaching, I've been in business for 25 years. But for the last 15 years, whether I'm doing really early stage start up, or doing work now around scaling, I literally cannot do my work without CPAs, intellectual property attorneys, web developers, copywriters, and other experts. So many of my friends and colleagues have really interesting, relevant books and ideas and websites and podcasts that help my clients to reach their goal. So to me, the idea when we're talking about building an audience is going to places, I call them watering holes, so places in person and online, where people have already done the hard work of assembling a really wonderful, vibrant community that's also interested in similar things. So you and I here today, right, you have a beloved audience, community, people who love your work, share with each other, by me coming today and having a conversation with you, I'm connecting with your community and then you'll do the same when I invite you over to have you share with my community. To me, that's a much more effective strategic way to build audiences rather than just yelling in the internet, hey, does anybody want to join my empire? Because I have all the answers. Oh, my gosh. Thank you. Thank you for doing this, for spreading this message, because I love the ecosystem idea. And just like any ecosystem, it's not like one part of the ecosystem is not detached from another part. And within one ecosystem, there are lots of vibrant species that actually need each other to keep the ecosystem intact. And it's really, I mean, actually, Pamela, I'm thinking about, I started this business 12 years ago. And I'm thinking about, really, sometimes I just think about the people that I started with. The previous joint venture partners and collaborators, many of them aren't around. I mean, they're still alive, I hope. But they're not in their business anymore. They're not active. And so it's like a loss of collaboration opportunities. It feels like there's only a few people that I started with that are left, almost, that I can actually still go to. So it is absolutely, thank you for saying that. And I think those who are here are grateful for this idea that, okay, so it's not like we service providers are situating ourselves in a partnership format, partnering with the customer, the consumer, the person, the end user, which is what all of us are. And we're partnering with each other. And therefore, we can actually, therefore bring the best. Because the problem of the empire thing is like, I don't want you knowing about something else that might actually be better than what I provide. It's like, even though I shouldn't be, like, you know, it's like, this person is better at this thing. It's like, right? Like, I just interviewed Greg Faxen about SEO. He's really good at it. And I'm like, yeah, I'm going to send more people to you about that. It's like, why should I try to pretend I'm, no, it's like you're good at it. I should send people. So why this net? All right. So when someone starts that process, and of course you're going to, I'm going to be reading your book and those watching this should read the book for the details. But give us a quick overview. Like, okay, if I were to start this process of the widest net, what does that mean? How do I, how do I start? You know. Yeah. So there are, there are 10 different steps in the process, which I won't go through every single one, but each step is really a chapter. I'll talk about really the, the foundation, kind of the foundational steps, which is where most people start. And it really is the place of mission of really understanding beyond making a profit. What really are you here in the world to do, but in particular, what is that bigger problem that your business solves? So I know for me, one of my just really driving deep roots around mission is in just reducing this, this feeling of economic insecurity of just the feeling that people have that communities have when they are unable to put food on the table, the stress that comes of, you know, just not being able to provide for yourself for your loved ones. It is, it is something that's just the universal, you know, condition, unfortunately, right on the earth that we all live with. And within that, I am just have been passionate about small business, because it is the area where I feel there is the most possibility for the most different variety of people from different educational backgrounds in just every way. There are many creative ways that you can alleviate, right? An economic insecurity by building your business. So I'm just passionate about that component of small business. But that's an example of like a deeper mission that really everything in my business and here at our learning lab that we're really connected to in terms of an overall purpose. The values, which is the next step is really in how is it that I really want to be operating. And this is so essential before you do anything about reaching out and connecting with others, which is going to go a little bit to your earlier point sometimes about other partners, that it's so critical that you really identify what is the way that you operate and how you do the work, what's essential to you, what's essential in that relationship that you have with your beloved community and your customers, that trust, that connection that you have is so important. And we have probably all experience, right? When that trust is violated, if values are violated, sometimes you might partner with somebody who doesn't share those same values. It doesn't mean they're a terrible person necessarily, but it means that you are not going to be in alignment with your own community. So before really doing any kind of connection, you want to be thinking about what's really important to me, what's essential and how I operate as the foundation. The next steps, you know, three and four, the steps three is really about how you identify your audience in a really specific way. And that is by defining it in terms of problem or challenge. So for example, if I were to say in the work that I do, you know, I do work, if I define my audience like many marketing folks, you know, might tell us to do, which is I work with, you know, women between the age of 20 to 40 that live in San Francisco and New York, that really doesn't, if you were interested in working with my audience, it wouldn't really give you any entry point to know how it is that you could help. As opposed to if I'm defining my audience where I work with people who have big, really world changing ideas, who have gotten to a place in their life where they're ready to share those ideas more widely. And knowing that, you're like, okay, world changing ideas, sharing more widely, ooh, maybe I could be teaching something around, you know, Facebook ads or all the amazing social marketing that I do. We need to be defining our audience in terms of their problem or challenge as the entry point for knowing how it is that we're connecting with other people. So from that is where a lot of other steps really come to play of looking at other people who are also solving that problem in a highly complimentary way. That's great. I love that. I love that you're always connecting this to collaboration. So what if somebody, and you probably have heard someone say, well, what if my message isn't really about solving problems? What if it's like an experience I want to share with other people, or it's like a transformational journey where they're going from, they're going from, yeah, things are okay to, wow, my life is so fulfilled. I mean, I'm just giving you one example. But yeah, how do you think about that? For sure. It's a good addition, because I generally tend to say problem challenge or aspiration. I do find people approach the world different ways, those that are in the engineering mode, are kind of looking for problems. I'm a problem solver, so it doesn't have a negative connotation. It can absolutely be an aspiration. And that is the way that I really view a lot of the work that is world changing is very much a transformational journey. I was talking with, I think, do you know Michael Margolis, the CEO of Storyed? Yeah, not well. I was just talking about a project I was working on and he said, well, you know, you are really leading people through a transformational journey. And as a coach for a long time, you think I would really understand that. But when I really stepped back, it was like, you're actually right. It really is massively transformational. If somebody is going through an experience through their business of bringing their work out into the world in a bigger way, there's all kinds of personal transformation that happens. There's all kinds of things required of leadership in order to do that. All kinds of limiting beliefs and, you know, exciting things. So I'm totally with that. I think that is, that's actually the way that I described like when you're building your offers, your offerings, whatever they are from somebody. So somebody might go from being totally disorganized and panicked about money to being somebody who is fluent, comfortable organized. That could be a, you know, a bookkeeper, a CPA is kind of a promise, right? You can go, you can take that transformational journey. You can go from somebody feeling stuck in their cubicle and knowing there's more to life to being a thriving entrepreneur. So that, that transformation I think is important. And, you know, I'm sure there's science behind it. I'm always fascinated by what is it that actually makes somebody one day say, this is it, or either no more, or I am ready for the next step, right? That sometimes can come from that lightning strike of just seeing the possibility in a really magical way. And then for other people, it's just having this one experience where you're like, I just never want to have that experience again. I never want to not raise my hand and speak up or whatever. I'm tired of sitting in the audience. I want to be on stage. So that kind of moment is the thing that often moves people into a transformational journey for real. Yeah, beautiful. So we've got the first step being the mission clarification and values clarification. And then, and then sort of like three and four are the audience definition. Oh, sorry, audience definition and then kind of like problem challenge as aspiration. So what's after that? So then you start to get into the design of your offering. So it's like that when the audience is defined by problem challenge or your aspiration, then you are looking at really defining your offerings and creating your offerings to help them take that, that complete journey. And where this opens the door for the next step, which is looking at the ecosystem that surrounds them, is where you say, and I use the example of Intuit, right? As we all know, that creates TurboTax and in the QuickBooks, right? As an example, their, their mission is powering prosperity. Okay, so big aspirational mission to power prosperity. It's another example, sort of the the opposite spectrum, but linked to what I'm saying of reducing economic insecurity, right? So with that definition, when you think about it, in order for their customers to make a complete transformation from being worried, not capitalized enough, not having money, you know, money mindset issues to really being prosperous in all ways, people need all kinds of things to get that done. So they might need bank accounts, they might need money mindset coaching, they might need to read books from people like I'm a bad ass at making money, you know, from Shenzhen Chiro, they might need a CPA, and they may need to have software that helps them to organize their receipts and prepare to file with the IRS in a timely manner, and you know, maybe use the tax software in order to do that. That's the way when you're defining everything they need to actually do to reach the mission is where you can begin to see where these ecosystem partners exist. And not to me is somebody who's done a lot of work with brands, right? In the in the world of small business, it's where you can start to see where there is this connection. So very often I know a lot of the small business brands I work with, go daddy and, you know, work with for a long time, keep infusion soft, you know, other folks like that. In order for them to help their customers do what they need to do, they need to have somebody like me who's a business coach who has really feet on the street, you know, experience to talk to their customers to engage them to be sharing tools in order for them to truly deliver on their mission and in order to really help their customers do everything they need to do. So you can start to see this interdependent reality. To me, it's like, I used to love all kinds of like fantasy books and fairy tales and everything. I really come from that perspective. You know, when I was a kid I would read them all by the fireplace. I love Star Wars, like all that. And to me, it's like, all of a sudden you can start to see, like, everything was just invisible before. And all of a sudden, when you begin to look at the world that way, you just begin to see that all of these partners appear. Yes. You know, like the High Council of Jedi Knights, like all of a sudden like, oh my gosh, well, of course it makes sense that I would be partnering with a company that serves so many of my customers known and unknown where I can be delivering a webinar for them, right? Because we're perfectly natural partners. Oh, well, maybe I should tell the web developer, you know, that does great work, talk to them and see if there's a more formal way that we can have referrals to each other because all my clients are always asking me, do you know a good trusted web developer? So that's really where the system begins to come alive is where you can notice these, I call them peanut butter and jelly partnerships. So very natural complementary partnerships that open up channels and ways that you could be connecting and sharing. Right, right, yeah. And it's like you become a trusted resource for your customer, consumer and user because they realize, oh, you know, Pam can actually connect me. It's like if I, you know, it's like Pam can connect me to the right people, to the right brands, to the right companies, to the right tools. And then you're also helping your partners becoming a trusted resource for their people too, you know, by being able to put people to you. That's beautiful. So what's, what's are the final, I don't know, several steps then after that. So really from there, you begin to just get more refined in the way in which you really work the process. So I know I call it the accordion principle. Some things like that. You know, when you begin to really open up and the ecosystem model and you see, you might have thought like, why I don't see any customers anywhere. And all of a sudden you're like in the middle of the jungle with just like every life form you can possibly imagine, you feel overwhelmed that part of it is going out really big and then coming in more specific and focused, right. So you can take an assessment of all the possibilities and then do some kind of prioritization of where some good places to start in your, your favorite customers. Who else do you work with? Is there anybody else you love working with that's essential for you reaching your goal and on the same thing that I'm helping you with. And that could be a way just to maybe begin to bubble up a referral process. But the, you know, the other steps then become much more clear about how it is that you share your unique point of view about how you solve the problem in the ecosystem. So it's funny when I think it's like chapter seven now about beacons. I spent a lot of time in the book helping people to see how they're part of this broader ecosystem that centered on their customers. You and I know at a certain point there is nothing wrong whatsoever with clarifying like this is my point of view about how it is that I think this particular part of the problem should be solved. This is my method. This is my body of work to quote myself. And so from that there are so many different vehicles we can use to share and communicate that I always recommend having a beacon, which is a primary communication vehicle through which you share your thought leadership. So on an ongoing basis for some people that's choosing between an email newsletter as a primary beacon, a podcast as a primary beacon, we can see somebody like Brené Brown sort of gone all in as of late on podcasts as really being the main way in which she shows up. And in some cases we can see people, somebody like Brandon from New York that might use Facebook as a beacon. We all know just the downside sometimes on that can just be if algorithm changes or, you know, God forbid anybody gets kicked off a certain site that they don't own that you can lose a lot of audience that way. But that's a way I think once you know really where you fit and what you can contribute, you want to be very clear and really be sharing your thought leadership. And then from there it really goes into steps where you're aligned and congruent with the way you've been marketing. How do you build partnerships? And then finally how do you really operationalize this because in so many other areas of our business we really look at business operations as being essential, especially financial operations. Because if not we get audited and bad things happen. Our credits war goes down. Marketing is one of those areas that a lot of folks kind of ignore until you really need to do marketing and then you do a wave of activity. And my one of my main premises in the book and my work in general is that we really want to create marketing operations really to make it part an essential part of how we build our business. So that really our day to day tiny marketing actions little seeding activities that we do are really the main way we create an ongoing sustainable business. But it has to be based on doing some of that strategic analysis and up front in order to know which activities are the most likely to lead to the best sustainable results. Beautiful and again I'm really looking forward to the book I want to share it on the screen so that people know what to look for what to look for when they're shopping for it. So the widest net unlock untapped markets and discover new customers right in front of you. It's still pre-launch right now nobody can read it yet so obviously there's no reviews yet but and do you have there's a Kindle version, there's an audio book is there a paper version coming or is there there's a hard cover so there's not a paperback yet they're doing hard cover for the first edition usually they wait a year or so after the first edition hard cover to come out in paperback so I'll check with my publisher at McGraw Hill about that I just recorded the audio book which is very exciting great time doing that I'm going to get the audio book too so do you have a program to support people if they read the book or whether or not they read the book like do you have some how do you support somebody who says I want to do the widest net process with you yeah well it's really fun so there'll be a couple things that are be available at time of book launch which is mid October if anybody is coming back to this or later you'll find it already there but one is I will have just more of a companion of just walking through a little bit more in a self-study perspective how to walk people through the exercises because I find that could be helpful that's just more of a self-directed study and then another cool thing is I'm doing a course with Maven that company is called Maven it was actually one of the featured case studies in the book with my very dear friend Wes Cao and now she is a co-founder but with a couple other co-founders one who founded Udemy for this new cohort based course kind of whole process and software so I actually featured them in the book as a case study because it's really interesting in the chapter about offerings the way in which they specifically really followed before knowing it was the widest net process but before they really were founded in order to create their particular software so we'll be doing a cohort based class starting probably early November people can just reach out if they want just on my contact form we're kind of going through the design process now which is September and it will be ready probably in November and so I'll be doing that probably a couple times a year and then I'll intersperse it in other quarters with my tiny marketing actions class which is a really fun action based in opportunities with a really beautiful community of other entrepreneurs so all that will be on my website as I'm getting everything rolled up for the getting ready for the book to come out awesome yeah thank you so much for just your generosity and how you do your work and I'm looking forward to it personally and I have the Kindle version I'm going to also be listening to it because I think that's probably easier for me to consume and any closing words of encouragement as we all go out and aim to grow our impact yeah you know first of all I just appreciate you so much because it is really good to know whenever I'm like out there on the internet knowing that your heart isn't in place that's really aligned the way you treat your customers your community I just really appreciate it and it is very encouraging when you can have that kind of feeling that like ah okay George is out there sometimes you could be fighting a little bit with you know the forces of telling you that you must just be constantly driving and you know crushing everybody I think the biggest the biggest thing for folks that I think is more an invitation to be curious an invitation to begin to spend some time just like listening and observing and when you can think about centering your ideal customers and just asking a simple question which is if this than that right which would be something like this if you know again my example is a business coach if I'm going to be helping my clients to do something like create a certification or a licensing program you know around their book if I'm doing this then what else do they need so if I'm doing this what do they need right away I know they're going to need a sales page in order to do that they're going to need a web developer to do that and you can first just start in your own head because the other thing that's so helpful is just to ask your customers maybe three questions so one would be what is the favorite podcast that you listen to on the topic of you know whatever you're working with them on growing a business getting your finances in order marketing your business whatever because on a podcast you're going to have all these guests that are basically ecosystem partners when you look at who people are connecting with what are your favorite service providers that you have worked with and why did you really love working with them if people are comfortable you have a trusted relationship they could tell you some other really great referral partners and then the third can be maybe in the world if we ever really go back to things like live events or very well known virtual events you know what was the best event that you ever attended and why and that could be an example of that if you're working with new project or new projects and you have connected events are a way again that you have this vibrant ecosystem if you're presenting at those events your fellow presenters are amazing peer peanut butter and jelly partners the sponsors of the events often can be brands that you can partner with and often the entire audience can be perfect prospects and customers for your individually, begin to collect some of that information in an organized way, and then maybe just reach out one day, you know, and say, hey, brand or hey, partner, I would just love to spend 15 minutes having a conversation with you. You know, my friend George told me that you were the best accountant that he's ever met in his life. Tell me a little bit more about your business. Who's your ideal client? What you know, why do you love this work? And you never know, you could develop a really good referral partnership. Wow, thank you. I'm going to be listening to that again. And and I look forward to seeing more the details inside the book. So Pam, thank you for your work and to be continued. Thank you, George.