Lessons

Lesson Info

Backstage Interview With Pam Slim

I am joined now by Pamela Slim, who just had a fantastic presentation on the main stage. Let's welcome her. And, uh, so awesome presentation on the made stage, A lot of nuts and bolts. How to backstage. I think we're gonna keep it a little more the That's the how this is gonna be a little more of the why for entrepreneurship. And I really love your personal story because you made the leap from safe corporate cubicle nation into the uncertain world of entrepreneurship in a time when it wasn't necessarily Vogue to do so. Tell us about the mid nineties when you made the leap from Barclays tussle. But what you're doing there and it's a huge deal into the uncertain world of of entrepreneurship. Yeah, So I was, uh, living here in San Francisco and I was working for Barclays Global Investors. I actually love my cubicle. I know it's scandalous for being the escape from Cubicle Nation lady, but I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with corporate life. Ah, I was the director of traini...

ng for the financial services investment firm, and so I got to learn about all kinds of things that were totally new to me. I would hang out with the traders. Early in the morning, I learned all about organizational change in development. We scaled the organization, so it's actually a really interesting time, and I really loved my job on the side of my job. It was before I even knew to call it a side hustle. My side Hustle was actually as a martial artist. I was the executive director of a nonprofit martial arts organization for a couple with it, which is the Afro Brazilian martial art. And so I would be in a dark blue suit with pearls and earrings during the day and nylons and heels. And then I would run off to the mission and I would change into my cuppa waiter outfit, and I would teach classes or take classes for a couple hours. We started a youth program here, starting with one kid, Jimmy Hopkin, from Nicaragua, and we ended up growing that program to serve about 250 youth within the Bay Area. So I was doing all of these things grant writing and, you know, teaching classes and trying to expand our program. But to me was always just It's just what I did. It was a volunteer thing that had a huge just passion for me. So what happened is I turned 30 and I got pneumonia. I think from working, like, 100 hours a week for about 10 years straight. And I just wait, went through an acquisition. It was actually when Barclays came over to take over the company and it just felt like, you know what? I just want to change. I have no idea what it is. And the interesting thing. Waas. I never thought that I had what it took to be an entrepreneur because I was a liberal arts major. My major was community development in Latin America. I didn't. You can major in that. You can exactly right. It's like you can actually major in that community development in Latin America, right? I lived in Colombia. I worked on projects looking at education as a tool for social change. I was passionate about social justice and economic development, so it made perfect sense to work for an indelible We're gonna come back. Yeah, talk about that. Right. But, you know, it's it's, um Yeah, so you know, I think It was just It was something. I just was really ready to make a change. And I just quit with no plan, no idea about what I was going to do. I thought it was going to go look for other jobs because it just didn't even cross my mind to work for myself. So I started looking for other jobs. Nothing sounded interesting. A couple months went by and finally I called my old manager, who had worked with at Barclays, who had moved on to Hewlett Packard. And I said, You know, I kind of short a little bit of cash. Do you have anything going on? Maybe I could just do a little project for you. So I started to work with her, and it was in creating the worldwide management development curriculum at HP. And I had this moment I kid you not. I remember it so clearly. I had to get my business license and I had done an assignment when I did a classic U. C. Berkeley on a train setting up a training business. It was based on the Dr Seuss book. If I ran, the circus was about as sophisticated as my business education was at that point. So like based on, if you could do anything that you'd want to do, what would it be? And I said I would want to be living in a Victorian in San Francisco and sipping lemonade and you know, lot A's and working with clients, you know all over the place, and I will call my company Ghana Scott. This is a Spanish word that I learned a lot in America. That means intense desire to do something in her motivation drive. It's that good burning passion feeling that you have. And I want to call my company gonna. And so I remember the day I had to get a business license because I was an independent contractor. I was like, Oh, my God, like I could actually do this. And then what I realized with for 10 years being the volunteer executive director for an organization, raising funds, marketing, the business growing programs was actually entrepreneurial. You'd already done it, and I know it sounds absurd, like it's so obvious, but I actually had never drawn the correlation between that work. Is a volunteer actually being entrepreneurial? That's, you know, going back this was the mid nineties when it entrepreneurship wasn't so in vogue. Entrepreneurship wasn't a word that people use. You were a small business owner. You're at a mom and pop shop or a barbershop or whatever. And so that really was The concept of a side hustle just didn't really exist. So tell us how tell us a bit more about, like how the other entrepreneurs can kind of use that side house just a little bit about as a starting point to kind of test the waters and get some entrepreneurial experience before jumping. Yeah, before going. It's really what I recommend for most people now, and I think for me, you know, spending all of that time running a business essentially on the side, even though I didn't get paid, was a way to be developing very specific skills. And it's kind of I feel very strong and passionate about it these days because I think that the world of work is never going to be have the same kind of stability that we've seen in prior decades of prior generations. I don't think it's necessarily bad. It's like gone done. Yeah, we can either morning or we can accept the fact that right world has changed its chain and the contracts roll relationship or the implied contract you have with an employer is just different. And that's you. You lose a bit of stability, but you gain a lot of flexibility. You get to design your own life as opposed to have toe lock into the corporate. 9 to 5. Exactly, and there's nothing wrong with being in a corporate. It's just we're all self employed. Always, there's no guarantee of employment, even if you work for somebody else. Even if you work for a university, even if you you know, whatever you're doing, they're just different work modes. So the more you think about it that way, you really want when you have some kind of a side hustle, when you're always developing skills, you have a backup plan, you have an idea and you want to test it. And I my basic philosophy toward my life is my definition of success. Personally is enjoying my life while I am living it, and it sounds just basic or like well, of course you want enjoy it, but I take it quite seriously. It drives most of the things that I do decisions that I make about what I choose to do, whom I choose to work with If I want to scale my business or not How I want to be his apparent If I'm gonna be present if I agree to do something, I want to be here and I want to do it. I want to enjoy it. I want to talk to people. I want to really enjoyed the experience being a martial artist. I call it the full contact Full color life, right? I want to be halfway here and be annoyed and like be checking my my IPhone and ignoring everybody that's here in the room, you know, being all fancy. I mean, that's not who I am, right? I'm gonna enjoy it. But if we have a real kind of connection, so you know, I think that's just part of the whole experience of when you're able to really be developing skills and making sure that you're highly employable and you know, doing things on the side, learning things, building connections outside of your networks, that that's the way that you can actually build a lot of opportunities and what happens when you begin to build a side. Hustle is maybe today what you have is not perfect, but your job. Can you convey your own venture capitalist? Your job could be the engine that ends up funding. Whatever idea that you have on the side, the killer thing is when you're sitting there complaining and bitching and moaning about how horrible everything is being totally better, I don't recommend it. I mean, tell your best friend, Tell your spouse that's totally fine. If you're gonna be somewhere in somebody's paying you to be there, do your very best to be there. There's a tool like use of my coaching clients. I call it the loathing scale. So if you have a scale from to 10 1 is like Everything's totally cool. You enjoy your job. 10 is you get physically ill when you even think about going into work and believe me, it happens. It happened. It happened to make people get very, very ill. So when you start to get in the 7 to range of the loading scale like you better make a decision pretty quick, right? You're gonna get your physically damaging yourself. You're physically damaging your new one of two things you're gonna physically sick or you're gonna do it. Jerry Maguire, you're gonna give a speech, you're gonna grab the goldfish, and you're gonna walk out and ask who's going with me. And I do not recommend that as entertaining as it is, Tom Cruise, I do not recommend that you do that. Yeah, So you have, I think, along with Tim Ferriss are kind of one of two of the primary authors in my mind who are talking about redefining what success is in the workplace and in life. And the four hour workweek is originally about creating space to enjoy the things that you most care about in the world. And you have a very, very similar thing. Talk about how you've seen with the changing contract of work change, how more people are embracing your definition of success and kind of maybe some of the stories that you've you've seen, you know, people go through your program. Yeah, you know, in the first of all, I think we one of the things we all need to define for ourselves is our own. I mean that that's really what works for me and and that's what's important is that I thought about it and I've talked about it with my husband. You know, as a family, we kind of have that definition. Everybody's definition of success is really different, which is part of what you want to be considering when you're when you're setting up your life in your work structure to me and I don't know that Tim For Tim, it's not. He's not necessary. People know him as sometimes, thinking that you just work a tiny bit and then you just go off in your at the beach and you play all the time, which is really not what what he's about him is one of the hardest workers I've ever exactly puts an incredible amount of time exactly so to me, really, what? What ends up happening when you begin to focus on things that you're interested in is you really get invested, the power of creation and to me creating is where everything, everything this interesting happens. It's where we learn and grow. It's where you get energized. It's where when you have the earlier in my presentation, I talked about the Valley of Death when you have your idea about what you want to do when you're just panicked to cross through to do the first thing to get it started, right? As soon as you begin to actually create something, that's where all the magic happens. Um, believe it or not, I was watching CNN and that Piers Morgan was interviewing L l Cool J right before the Grammys because he hosted the Grammys. He was during the elections. And we're all like yelling at each other online and, you know, being unpleasant, as we tend to do recently for some reason. And, uh and so if here said, you know, L l like what? How can we keep America great, like, how can we kind of bring America back to greatness? When I think of people who I want to give advice on the future of the company l l Cool J. I knew it would be. That's why I knew that exactly what you'd be surprised, smart guy. And he said, He said, You know, first of all, America's always great, you know, as is the rest of the world. But what we need is we need to be creating for the kids that have way too much money in the Hamptons that are just running around, causing havoc, right? They need to create something they need to have something to create for kids that are in the neighborhoods where they don't have anything to do. They need to create something. And I thought in my experience running martial art organization, working with a lot of kids that came from rough situations, parents in jail, you know, members of gangs really, really rough poverty, abuse what got them over that Valley of death into a really positive direction. And I'm proud to say all of the kids we initially worked with graduated from high school, which was not at all the norm. Right for kids in their situation was creating something. Was being excited by the art of couple WETA, seeing what their bodies could do, working with other people, you know, feeling the music and creating and doing something. So I think it's human beings. That's actually what we want to be doing. I get really bored. I love the beach, but I spent my whole life just sitting around doing nothing. It wouldn't be exciting. That's where we develop mastery that's where we challenge ourselves and where we grow. So I think that's that's really the essence of. And when it comes to figuring out what you want to do and how you want to do it, really what you create, what my new book is actually about your body of work. What what's that body of work that you want to create in the world? And then what work mode do you want to use in order to do it? Sometimes it's great to be an employee. I learned so much about training and development and organization, change and coaching and everything from being funded by a really wonderful organization that I work for. And then when I was ready to go on my own. I've learned other things that way absolutely. And I think that is, ah, real fundamental value for those of us here. Creativelive is the the art of creation, and the process of creation is really the mode by which we improve not only the world, but also ourselves. And we're really focused on this this trend of creative entrepreneurialism. Um and I think you, your, um entrepreneurial do zero or positive entrepreneurialism or what's your What's your, um you have a phrase. I have my notes here that you are. I forget what I said on April Optimist. Yeah. Entrepreneurial optimist. Yeah. And this idea that, uh, you know, the things that we create can improve the world. Is it just that it's a great outlook and a great, uh, mindset to approach every day with? Yeah, well, you know, I think this is probably, you know, some of it my like hippie Northern California and growing up in Marin County roots, you know, but also having a background in community development. You know, we have a beautiful planet. We're kind of mess things up a lot. There are a lot of people that have huge needs. We have some really significant social issues economic people, issues there. A lot of people that have a really rough life and one of the things that I think entrepreneurship can do, first of all is to really forge connections with people you know who who have ideas who need help to get access to resource Is everything about the move toe. Online education makes me so happy because it really, really removes the barrier a lot for people to just get access to information. It's not that they don't have the same intelligence and creativity and enthusiasm. They just lack access to mentors and into education. And so where were able to use our superpowers for good? As my friend Maryland Scott Water says, right where we're able to do things that actually help contribute to making the Earth of happier, healthier place to be. To me, that's That's the place that I like to play again. Not everybody is that way. Some people are totally excited by business, you know, making money. That's that's their thing and that's okay. But to me, it's really like, What are we doing this in service of? And I think that when we get away from some of the root of understanding, like what actually are things that can bring us closer together and help us solve real problems. You know, that's where I start to get excited. We're using technology in sight, disruption, innovation to be solving some things that actually can be solved if we just put a priority on them. So to me there's tremendous opportunity to do that, and I think that's exactly the type of opportunity that we're trying to go after here at creative life were about connecting people from all over the world for free with the best experts in a particular field and providing access to skills that can help individuals change their own lives. And and that's my my personal motto is, you know, or personal model for creative lives that were changing the world one life at a time. Yeah, and that's really inspiring for me to get up in the morning and come to work and stay late, because I know that some kid in Nicaragua is gonna see ah, photography expert that is going to inspire him to create his own photography Exactly. Or is going to, you know, watch yourself and get tips and advice on how to cross the value that how to take that first step toward an entrepreneurial journey. Um, we had ah, woman on the couch just before you. Alana Rivera from, uh, Billy soaps, who is her main passionate is so making E have it every year. She gave me this gift, and this is her side hustle. She still has a full time day job. She is making soaps that appear in, um, boutiques all over San Francisco and are starting to a little bit of national attention. And she's at that point of fear. Where when did she take it? The full leaf and how does she go? You know, full time. So I just sort of babbled on for a little while. I get I get passionate and just kind of go off, but love it, that's what it's about. That's what it's about. Maybe you could talk a little bit about about overcoming the two things eso maybe a little about year in overcoming for I know you did a lot of that on the main stage. And number two, how do you What's the worst? My philosophy on ownership. If you can handle the worst day Yeah, and you're prepared for the worst day, you're gonna have a lot more opportunities to experience your best days. What's the worst day you've had as an entrepreneur? And then how do you personally or what? Do you you know, maybe some example of other people overcoming fear? Yeah, sort of. The worst phrase question. I totally blew my Jon Stewart. I totally got it. See, I'm a coach so I'm totally right. But afterwards you can coach me how to do it better. And Stewart is my maiden name. Actually got the Jon Stewart, but fear so fear is actually so fascinating in the work that I dio I didn't know that this was gonna be the case when I started out, But fear is actually a huge element of the work that I dio in being a martial artist. Now I do mixed martial arts, which is different than cup weta. But being a martial artist, that's one of the things you get very familiar with his personal fear. An actual fear of a fist in your face. You know, which I've had many times, you know, being taken down by big people or the last belt test that I did in m m A. You have to close your eyes and have these, you know, huge guys that I'm training with and my teacher that would just attack me randomly from different sides, right? Choke me from the side and I have to get out of those, um, those situations, in order, prove myself. So it's very scary and fears really, you know, always coursing through my body. What I've really learned is is it is part of the creative process, and one of the things that you need to learn about it is it's actually there as a protective force so that we have, ah, well, have a lizard brain or lizard brain kind of the, you know, early stage of our brain development that we have right of the course of our brain is constantly flashing. Hundreds, if not thousands of times a day signals that there's not enough and somebody's gonna get you not enough. Somebody's gonna get danger, right? And the reason why it's there is so that we don't die off. That's why we're still around, right? It's a protective force to make sure that we don't do anything really foolish. So when you know that what I like to do is like having a little imaginary dialogue with my fear, you can animate it. You could give it a name, right? Whatever you want, But you can say, Yeah, I don't have a name for my fear, but you know it's helpful to give it that. And you could really say Okay, like, what are you afraid of? I'm afraid if I quit my job. In the case of our wonderful soap making entrepreneur, if I'm afraid if I quit my full time job, I'm gonna live in a van down by the river. Right? Right. That's mostly what we're afraid. It will be 35 divorced and be in a van down by the river, as Chris Farley said on Saturday night Live. So, um, then you ask yourself, Well, why why do you think that's gonna happen? Well, because I'm not making enough sales. Okay, well, you've made some. So what do you concerned about? Oh, well, you know, I don't have time to do it, or I don't really know how to sell into this market, even though it's really big. As you start to go in a diagnosis, the fear all of a sudden it becomes a practical tactical question that you can ask somebody with more experience, and it becomes a problem that can be solved, right? And if it can't like, some people should not quit their job at all right now, right? If they haven't proven their concept, if they don't have a profitable idea, if they need to have a regular paycheck it may not be the time to do it, but I know personally, you know, it really gives me strength, actually, having worked with so many people in my own journey, you know, my husband's an entrepreneur as well. He has a construction business in Phoenix and he does, you know, really hard working. An amazing, amazing person has the talk about a positive attitude. Nobody like I never met anybody like him. And we had just expanded our business, his business. He had bought brand new equipment, huge heavy equipment. He was doing all kinds of projects throughout the valley. In Phoenix, I had a brand new baby. Our baby was just been born, Um, Angela and, um, I got a book deal. So I was running my business, had a book to write Congratulations. And then 7 4008 the entire economy collapsed, and we went from, like being totally comfortable and safe to being in a complete and total financial disaster. It was the scariest thing I have ever experienced in my life. And the interesting thing my dad actually told me, You know, during that time, I really produced so much anxiety because out here. I was writing a book about why you should quit your stable corporate job to start a business and in the meantime, my own financial reality at that moment, not from my business but from our families. Situation was really, really tough, and I just It's times I was like, I can't write this book like I just can't do it And my dad said, You know what? You're gonna write a better book because of this experience and what I The way I took that situation is to say, this is serious. Like, if I tell somebody, you know, if I help them to evaluate whether or not they want to leave, just leave their job to start a business. I want to be giving them very good advice. I'm not going to sugarcoat things, we were saying before the interview. It's not all unicorns and rainbow. It's tough, it's hard, it's could be very financially devastating at times. But you know, if it's important to you, if you really want to stick with it, then it's going to be worth it to do it. You know, a leader is a possibility. This isn't a joke. A lot of like most businesses fail within the first year. Yeah, and its eyes wide open. But if you are passionate about something on you, done a side hustle for a while, you can remove some of that risk. If you have validated, then you can get a little closer. And then what comes? You'll find yourself at this edge of Wow, this is really viable. And then making that leap isn't such a big leap as Waas. From the very beginning, you have to just cut the cord. And exactly And you know, and it's not just in the beginning, it's as you get going because you know my husband's case. He already had a really successful business. It was growing, you know, and everything seemed to be good. But the economy shifts or your biggest client goes away or you get sick or a spouse gets sick. There's so many things that can happen. So I think the biggest lesson that that I haven't when I always teach my clients and those I work with is you know, fear is not something to pound through to avoid. If you are scared, that's okay, it's protecting you. But what we learned in martial arts is you lean into it. Not the kind of Cheryl Sandberg rain in. But like if somebody if you lean, but But actually you want to lean in and avoid the punch, but you're gonna be more safe if you're in close rather than if you have the whole reach of somebody's fist that's in your face, right? You want to be close to the person in order to see what's going on is the way that you're really gonna stay protected. I'm sort of as we're going through having these conversations. I'm kind of bullet pointing the lessons secrets from Silicon Valley, if you will. And earlier this morning, one of the secrets was ask for help. This is a rial community where people share information and if they don't know something, they go to their network and they find help, test and be willing to fail. And this 3rd 1 about a year as a signal, I like to think of the year here as, uh so I want to steer interfere. If here is signaling to you that there is danger, it's like like ice, you know, you're driving on ice on a winter road and you start to start to skin you steer into to the direction of the skin. And so I find in my own life that if I direct my energy word, my fear toward overcoming things my my Senate problem, I was on a roll. Their Teoh real emotional, um, that if I steer into the course of my fear that that's a good signal that okay, I'm gonna put my, you know, here creativelive my attention towards the things that I worry about the things that keep me up at night. Like, Are we gonna do be ableto do this thing, that thing And by steering towards things that scare me the most, it you can make progress against him. And you can, you know, askew. Check. Check off the boxes toward that fear you. You take him away, you build success, you move forward. Yeah, I don't know. So I think maybe that's the third thing is lean into it or steer into the fear and like and work towards acknowledge it and work towards overcoming it exactly. And diagnosis. It's like really separating out what is just, you know, a kind of irrational fear and it's interesting working with people. There's I've talked to folks who have no debt their houses fully paid for. They have three years worth of savings in just a separate savings account in addition to retirement income and all of that right. And they could be petrified toe leave their job to start a business, even though, right, I know people who have, like one week savings if that you know, lots of lots of debt, but they're like they're ready to go, they're ready to take the risk. So a lot of it is just, you know, understanding your risk tolerance in separating out. What is a fear that is really realistic that you should be afraid of, Like we're often trained to avoid the fear and don't listen and crush it. I That's terrible advice. No, Like you said, understand it. Figure out what actually is the real danger. Protect yourself against the dangers that you need to. But then when you begin to understand the answer, the questions that are related to irrational fears, that's where you keep moving forward, right? I'd love to go to the audience. I kind of prepped you guys earlier that if you had any tactical questions, Obama would be a great resource to ask those any any questions from the students right now. Just tell us Ah, does your name a little bit about you know, where you're from, what you do and then fire away. My name is rolling from Sacramento on financial services and trying to figure out how to, ah, take financial services on a new old school business model and kind of transform it with this new technology today. And so my question is not so much about what I'm doing, but mawr of, ah, and how would you balance? Ah, Pamela, you know your passion, you know, in your purpose and paying the bills and especially if you were fortunate enough to have a spouse who is also entrepreneurial minded, which which in most cases, is that's not the case. So how do you balance that? I love that question. My dad grew up in Yuba City, which is right up there by the Sacramento area. So you know, the the balance is, I think in many times when you have, it's really important, I think, to have a driving purpose in a in a passion for what you're doing. It also needs to meet very specific market need. And you know, people that you want to serve. Sometimes a lot of it can come down to how it is that you actually break down your plan and how it is that you choose to fund it. And I was giving that example before sometimes of being your own venture capitalist, there could be times where it is so prudent to be staying in your full time job, right? Get very specific about what you need to learn in order to execute your business idea and then slowly develop it on the side. You know, to the point where you really think that you can grow often if you have, you know, just massive passion for something, and you can't find the business model in it and you're not making any money. That's where I try to, like, move you as quickly as possible into what is one way that you can monetize what you're doing, right? Maybe it's not exactly the way. Maybe it's not gonna be an app for a whole different way. You're using technology yet, but as you think about who it is that you want to serve, you know, with the idea of a different model for financial services. Is there one way that you can start to kind of have a test where you could be providing a service that people will pay for and over time? You know, some kinds of businesses do take a whole bunch of time to develop conceptually before the money comes. But other businesses, especially something that can have a service component to it, you can actually have the money that's coming in a lot easier, you know, on the side that has to do with family relationships. I did a whole chapter in my book about that, cause it's massively significant, right? When you go into business, your whole family goes into business, right? So you need to have really open, clear communication. Figure out exactly what everybody's concerns right? What are the numbers that makes sense to you? If, for example, you decide to go full time, you can say all right. Either six months goes by or we get to this level of our savings account. And then here's Plan B, right? I'll goto. I'll go back to work. No problem to build up a little bit more cash. Or maybe if your spouse isn't working, your spouse goes back to work. The key is that you really talk through what are the concerns? And I remember once I had a client who was kind of upset at his spouse, like, you know, she doesn't support me. She doesn't support my creative dreams and I said, Well, tell me specifically why And he said, Well, every time I go, I want to run a business like she just really negative about it And I said, We'll talk to her about it He went and he talked to her, came back. It turns out her dad had had this whole series of failed entrepreneurial ventures when she was a child. That caused tremendous stress and anxiety for her as a child, and they had a family. They had small Children at home. So it wasn't that she wasn't supportive of his creative dreams. She was terrified of giving her kids the same kind of uncertainty and insecurity as she had had growing up. That's a totally different situation. When he knew that he could be much more compassionate and then they could build a plan together. So I think a lot of times through communication, if your spouse is a woman, a lot of communication, many conversations right could happen. But you really want to get to a place where you have some agreement and you know, occasionally there times where I know not in your case. But occasionally there are times where when people really start to pursue what they're interested in, some of their relationships change. Right. Sometimes marriages end or friendships, and and and sometimes it's actually because in the long term, they're not really, you know, aligned for the new direction. I don't want that, ever. But you know it. You have to make sure that both of you are really aware of the risks and that you make mutual decisions around it, and then you have a plan next question high. You just, um, lead right into my question, which is moving from Barclays Global Investors to entrepreneurship. You not only had to change your job and what you were doing, but your social circles, I'm in the process of making a similar transition. My name's Maggie. And what advice would you give yourself? Um, if you think back to the making those transitions of your social circles in your network, especially being a pioneering woman in entrepreneurship, very well phrased question. Maybe you should come up in later next time. Certainly the interview. No, you're doing a great job, but yeah, it's, uh, it's a huge, very surprising thing. Sometimes I think we don't really realize it, and it can actually be upsetting both when you're the entrepreneur and it also could be for your friends around you. So I think a couple things around it, one of them is you can absolutely maintain great friendships and connections with people that have always been, You know, your friends. I have friends I've known since preschool, you know, still not everybody but a few of those kind of folks. So some people, you maintain the relationship with them. Um, you don't want to become that boring person who's constantly talking about their business ideas with a bunch of folks who are entrepreneurs, and you end up annoying all of them, right, because you're constantly talking about your ideas. They may not be interested. They might not have the experience. Some people get threatened. It never usually our intention, but they might say, Well, wait a minute. If you're really going out there and you're following your dreams and what you're saying is I'm a loser for not following mine and they get very defensive sometimes very negative about your ideas. So there are always gonna be people I found personally that help kind of follow you through that transition. But what you want to do quickly is to establish a new peer network to really be working your business ideas and that I mentioned earlier in my presentation this morning. You think about three different circles. You have your peer mentors, people who are doing similar things. I like identified a woman when I was first starting my block. Don't even know what a blawg waas we met in a marketing class. She her cited entrepreneurial MD. And she's a former medical doctor who has worked with doctors to help them start businesses was kind of a similar type of thing, but different markets, So she and I talked once every two weeks for a year as we were getting our blog's in our businesses off the ground we shared resource is, you know, we had similar kinds of situations going on on, and that really, really helps. So you want your peer mentors. You want new technical mentors doing things like attending creative live events, Go to interesting conferences, you know? And then then you have your high Council of Jedi Knight members, people who you really, really admire. You know, for me it's got Kawasaki and Dan Pink and Nancy Duarte and people who you can really admire for the level to which they've you know, they've grown and developed. And that way you just start to get connected with a whole new ecosystem. But don't forget folks, you know, some people won't cross that bridge with you, so you can really honor, you know, honor them, but also realized that all relationships are not meant to necessarily follow you through your entire life. And that's OK. I would just be his gracious as possible about it, which I'm sure I'm sure that you are, but its okay, some friendships will end, and unfortunately, that's part of it. I think we are about out of time. Thank you so much for coming in and hanging out with us on the couch. Um, maybe just before you go, How are you enjoying your time at creative life? So far, I am having a totally fantastic time because, remember, this is my hometown. The first of all, coming into San Francisco is wonderful, but also because I'm so excited by creative ideas and creative people. It's kind of the like Mecca of off all of that where we're creating things and having great conversations. So I'm excited. I get to come back in July. You have a little promo for your course. Doing three full days on Escape from Cubicle Nation for July 10th 11th and 12th is a matter of fact that for a promo hasn't awesome. Pro people could connect with you directly. At Pam Slim and Twitter and Pam slim dot com, it's actually escaped from people proclamation dot com Big hand for Pamela's. Let everybody