We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kat Vellos. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kat below.

Kat, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you tell us about a time where you or your team really helped a customer get an amazing result?

My signature program, Platonic Action Lab, is a 2-month bootcamp focused on cultivating hyperlocal and hyperspecific friendships, and Maria’s story truly demonstrates what’s possible by applying the lessons I teach in the PAL program.

Maria had just moved to her new city six months prior and wanted to have friends and community locally. Over two months, I worked with Maria to specify her passions, wishes, and action plans to cultivate connection around those priorities.

By applying the lessons in my PAL curriculum, Maria was wildly successful. She had a meetup and met six people who were also passionate about slow food and community. She hosted two potlucks for two different groups at her apartment. She was invited to a pizza night by a new friend who also introduced Maria to her friends. She had spontaneous tea with neighbors by staying open to connection opportunities. She’s developing a community group around slow food and conviviality. And she increased her sense of optimism about the availability of connection in her world.

She said, “All this is happening because I was not trying to do it all by myself. Because I had the support of Kat and the class behind me. If you dream of having: more friends, better friends, a good community, PAL is a fantastic foundation for big dreams. You deserve the connections your heart is longing for. We all do.”

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m the author of the book We Should Get Together: The Secret to Cultivating Better Friendships and in my business as a speaker, educator, and coach, I help people build their capacity for bringing durable friendship and community into their lives. Since my book’s release in January 2020, it’s been helping adults around the world heal from disconnection and loneliness, and create more fulfilling, thriving friendships.

Everything in my life and career prepared me to do what I do today. I have twenty years of experience creating and facilitating communities where people find belonging and authentic connection. In addition to my experience as a community builder, the other wing of my career was in qualitative research and design. I blend together the logistical, left-brain, pragmatic, efficient approach with the inventive, emotive, creative, design approach — and this helps me help you develop friendships that are both fulfilling and most likely to succeed.

One of the best compliments I’ve received about my approach is that I take things that are abstract or theoretical and transform them into something practical, relatable, and usable. I’m proud of that, because that’s the goal!

One of the things that brings me joy as a creator is that I can express this work in so many ways:
– I’ve made books, conversation cards, and calendars, that people can get at my website and start using right away to improve their connection habits and the quality of their friendships.
– At the next level up, I have a signature program (Platonic Action Lab) for working with people in a group setting that helps each person reach their connection goals.
– And at the next level up, I speak to large audiences (like at conferences and retreats) to reach people at scale, sharing usable insights and practices they can use to bring more fulfilling experiences of friendship and community into their lives.
No matter your busyness or your budget, I have a solution that can fit into your life and help you start taking steps to build strong friendships today.

We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.

My absolute favorite way to keep in touch with clients and foster a sense of loyalty and connection is through my weekly newsletter. Although I’ve spent a fair amount of time on social media and have audiences there (10k on Instagram, ~3k on LinkedIn), it just doesn’t compare to the depth that’s possible when I can connect via email with the people who want to learn from me.

Whether it’s the one power-packed DM that I drop into their email inbox once a week, or the responses and questions they send to me, the conversation is much more nuanced, thoughtful, and deep than what typically happens on social media. Social media is a place where we go for ephemeral, entertaining, or shallower types of interactions. So it’s quite fulfilling that the most effective way that I cultivate my relationships with my clients/readers/students is also the most enjoyable way — through my newsletter, the thing that helps us both spend less time on social media.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

The entire existence of my business is the result of a pivot. I was working full-time as a senior product designer at Slack when my book was released. I researched and wrote it during nights and weekends over the previous five years. When the book came out, I expected that I would just continue going to work and doing my day job. But almost immediately, the world responded to my book by asking me to take a bigger step, by fully committing to the mission that my book extols — and that meant doing this work full-time.

I had to choose between keeping my day job or pivoting entirely to this new journey of entrepreneurship and doing this passion-based work full-time. That was a huge decision! It was also something that I didn’t expect.

If you’ve ever walked away from a 9-to-5 to embrace entrepreneurship, you know what a leap that is. It’s a huge pivot. It’s an identity change. It’s a risk. But for me, it was absolutely a risk worth taking and something that changed my life. I’m grateful for the job I had before — and I’m grateful that I get to be my own boss today, doing the work that matters most to me and that makes such a big difference in people’s lives.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://weshouldgettogether.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katvellos_author
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katvellos/
• Twitter: https://x.com/KatVellos