We recently connected with Kasey Armstrong and have shared our conversation below.
Kasey, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you tell us about an important lesson you learned while working at a prior job?
The lessons that we both learned in our previous careers working in nonprofits are in a large way what shape our business practices. We created Loam because like so many of us, we had personally experienced the challenges of social impact work. Having each spent years working in various nonprofits, we struggled with fatigue and burnout, being overworked and underpaid, and navigating workplace cultures that were pretty dysfunctional. These experiences led us both to study how to equitably design and implement sustainable change within organizations, with the goal of better aligning work practices and cultures with the values an organization is trying to cultivate in the world. So, at Loam, we focus a lot on modeling this. If we say we value spaciousness and emergence, that is how we operate internally as a team. We consciously slow down, rest, and allow for changes and unanticipated pivots to our goals, operations, and strategies. We put our relationships before the work, always, never compromising on the importance of trust, empowerment, and accountability to one another and our clients. In short, the lesson we learned from our nonprofit work is that practicing what you preach can be extremely difficult, but it is absolutely vital and requires an ongoing commitment to learning, unlearning, and practice.
Kasey, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Loam is a social change organization that empowers leaders and leaderful teams to practice relational change through education, coaching, design and facilitation. We (Kasey Armstrong and Sam Novak) are honored to be supporting humans and organizations who are doing the sacred work of changemaking to bring about better, more beautiful futures. Through the lens of relational change, we wield our learning journeys and experiences as facilitators, reflective practitioners, and collaboration designers to build community, deepen relationships, and support leaders in building resilient teams and thriving cultures.
The word “loam” means “nutrient-rich soil.” To us, soil represents the interior spaces we occupy that shape what we grow on the surface. Whether that space is within ourselves, within our relationships, within our organizations or communities, relational change – the framework that underpins our work at Loam – is a framework that looks to Earth’s wisdom as a guide for cultivating soils rich with interdependence, belonging, resilience, and emergence. We envision a world where social change leaders are cultivating community at every scale, and we believe that centering reverent relationship to each other and Earth is a pathway to a thriving and liberated future.
We don’t sell quick fixes, magic bullets, or superficial outcomes. Relational change requires attention, spaciousness and time. Whether in a peer-learning workshop, one-on-one coaching session, or team-building retreat, Loam approaches education, coaching, and culture craft with joy, creativity, courage, reflection and radical love.
We believe learning gets at the heart of what it means to be human. We design all of our courses and curriculum through an equity lens and invite whole person learning centered in praxis: the overlapping and ongoing process of reflection, theory, and action.
We believe leadership is a practice, not a position. We know large-scale-systems change happens when all scales- including the individual- are aligned. We coach folks to see their own lives as the front lines and most fertile grounds to practice being in reverent relationship.
Lastly, we believe changemaking is a sacred act that takes time, courage and commitment. We know that every individual, team, and organization is brilliant and wildly capable of co-creating change. We craft culture in long-term relationships and measure success in terms of greater collaboration, care, resilience and results.
Check out our website, follow us on socials, sign up for our newsletter, shoot us an email, or join us for a free community hike in Baltimore to connect with nature and each other. We look forward to learning, practicing, and leading social change with beautiful, powerful folks like you!
Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?
We (Kasey and Sam) met while studying living systems thinking in the Graduate Programs for Leadership and Change at Antioch University’s Center for Creative Change in Seattle. Years later, after moving back to Baltimore, Sam was feeling disconnected from my community of living systems thinkers. She invited alumni of our program from all over the country to build a virtual community of practitioners and explore opportunities for collaboration, care, and support. Kasey tuned in from Massachusetts. Over time the rest of the group slowly dissipated, but we became fast friends and a desire to work together emerged. We entered into a joyful, experimental partnership in which we supported one another on our various work projects. Sam began working at Impact Hub Baltimore, where we co-designed and Sam piloted Systems Thinking for Social Change workshops and Adaptive Leadership retreats. Meanwhile, Kasey was facilitating peer learning programs and designing network building strategies for the Green Infrastructure Leadership Exchange, and regularly leaned on Sam to consult on and co-design her work. In December 2021 we made the decision to take the leap and in February 2022 we officially founded Loam. We love our backstory because it really represents the ways in which we show up to relationship building and honor emergent processes throughout our work.
Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?
For us, word of mouth is the name of the game. We invest a lot of time in building trust and strong relationships with the people we work with – whether that’s organizational clients, workshop attendees, or partners – and we have found that referrals from those folks are not only how we get introduced to a wider audience, but how we get introduced to the right fit audience for our work. When we meet prospective clients because they found us on the internet, or because we applied to a project or opportunity without a previous connection to it, we often find that it’s not the best match for us. When we were starting our business, we did an “independent study” of sorts on marketing, and one thing that really resonated with us was the idea that there is a “perfect moment” in which to meet your customer. That could mean many things: it could refer to a situation they are in, a problem or challenge they have identified, or the willingness and capacity to receive support. One thing we have been able to identify is that our “perfect moment” involves a deep recognition of and desire for the way we approach our work. In other words, beyond just the impact or outcomes we offer, our best-fit clients want to work with us because of the process, pace, and style that we bring to the table. And this is most often what is being communicated in the referrals that our network generates.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.growwithloam.com
- Instagram: @growwithloam
- Linkedin: linkedin.com/company/growwithloam