39 | Yes, You Can Make Your Creativity A Business w/Pamela Slim

Pamela Slim is a dynamic beloved thought leader and has been in the trenches with creative businesses for decades. Her breakout book Escape From Cubicle Nation hit the scene in 2009, and since then she’s launched many creative projects, including founding a beloved brick-and-mortar small business incubator, The Main Street Learning Lab at K’é, and two more books, Body of Work, and her latest The Widest Net.  Get Pam's free workbook: https://pamelaslim.com/the-widest-net/

If you want to connect with customers but the idea of building an empire makes you queasy, you will adore this episode. We cover so many practical ways to build a values-based creative business including:

• How Pamela has allowed herself to keep learning, growing, and changing by following the work itself, even though her first book Escape From Cubicle Nation was quite sticky
• How she sees herself as an author practitioner
• The branding and audience building price creatives have to play when making pivots
• How justice, inclusivity, and equity are baked into everything she does and shape her creative choices
• The complex dynamic of her identity and really understanding the appropriate role to play in community building and issues of human rights and justice
• Her willingness to take on complexity and hard topics in her work
• How her latest book The Widest Net uses community building as a framework for finding an audience or customers for a business
• The creative process as putting pieces of a puzzle together
• Struggling through the creative process when writing The Widest Net and how she overcame writer’s block
• Why she wanted to bring The Widest Net framework out into the world as an alternative to all the empire-building, crush it, smash it, look at me, hustle, influencer stuff, which can be harmful and play into white supremacy culture and the patriarchy
• The harm people experience when searching for a singular life purpose and how she uses the metaphor of finding roots as an alternative
• The guidance in being drawn toward things that evoke a strong emotional reaction, paying attention to clues for where you might want to contribute through your creative energy
• The power in focusing on how and who you’re going to serve
• How introverts can build relationships while staying true to their natural wiring
• A deep dive into what it means to build a business ecosystem and how
• Ways to get support in building your business ecosystem
• How her book launch strategy has changed from book to book
• The heartbreak of evolving your business, changing relationships, and the emotional skills required to navigate it all
• Why Pamela is learning about crypto and NFTs while recognizing the disturbing components  

 

Get a copy of Pamela’s book here:

Escape From Cubicle Nation

Amazon

Bookshop

 

Body of Work

Amazon

Bookshop

 

The Widest Net

Amazon

Bookshop

Or get a free copy here: https://pamelaslim.com/the-widest-net/

 

Visit jenniferlouden.com/podcastkit to get instant access to a collection of audios that will

• help you with some of the most common struggles we creatives have to manage including fear of choosing,
• falling into compare and despair, managing the inner critic (s),
• and feeling too exposed and vulnerable when you put yourself or your work into the world.