In the inaugural episode of the Launch Yourself Podcast, I interview Pamela Slim, author of Body of Work and Escape from Cubicle Nation. She walks us through her current launch strategies for a successful book launch.
The success of Pam’s first book has helped many unhappy corporate workers become thriving entrepreneurs. She has been instrumental in my own career – first from afar, providing me with the idea that you can create your own work path outside of the traditional route, and then as a mentor and coach – helping me define my own body of work.
In this episode, Pam will share so many rich nuggets of wisdom, not only about her current book launch strategies but also about how to define your own Body of Work.
Topics discussed include:
- Career development post-economic “apocalypse.”
- Specific details about her book launch, including:
- Activities to reach new markets while still engaging and interacting with your fans.
- Converting fence-sitters into fans
- Obstacles that have come up during this launch and how she’s tackled them
- The power of networking and tactics to consider when you make the Big Ask
Resources Mentioned During this Episode:
- Pre-purchase Body of Work
- Escape from Cubicle Nation
- Pamela Slim – Pam’s new online home
- Press details page – a good model for any launch
- Tim Grahl of the OutThink Group
Want to get in touch with Pam?
More about Pam Slim
Pamela Slim is an award-winning author, business coach, and speaker. She spent the first 10-years of her business as a consultant to large companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Charles Schwab, and Cisco Systems, where she worked with thousands of executives, managers, and employees.
In 2005, she started the Escape from Cubicle Nation blog, which is now one of the top career and business blogs on the web. In the last 8-years, she helped hundreds of entrepreneurs to start successful businesses.
Pam’s first book, Escape from Cubicle Nation: From Corporate Prisoner to Thriving Entrepreneur, was released in Spring, 2009, and won Best Small Business/Entrepreneur Book of 2009 by 800 CEO Read. Her new book, Body of Work, gives a fresh perspective on the skills required in the new world of work for people in all work modes, from corporate to non-profit to small business.
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Melissa Anzman (00:00): This is a launch yourself podcast with Melissa Anzman episode. Number one, featuring Pamela slim.
Melissa Anzman (00:08): Hello, and welcome to the launch yourself podcast. Career business and brand advice to help you be seen make an impact And deliver at your maximum potential. And now here's your host, Melissa Anzman
Melissa Anzman (00:26): Welcome to the launch yourself podcast. I'm Melissa, Anzman your host. And today I am here with one of my favorite people in the entire world. Ms. Pamela slim, she is an award winning author, speaker and leader in the new world of work. She has spent the first 10 years of her solo practice as a consultant to large corporations, such as Hewlett Packard, Charles Schwab, and Cisco systems, where she worked with thousands of employees, managers, and executives in 2005, she started the escape from cubicle nation blog, which is now one of the top career in business sites on the web. She has coached thousands of budding entrepreneurs and businesses ranging from martial arts studios to software startups and everything in between her new book, which she is on here to speak about today. Body of work will be released with penguin portfolio on December 31st of this year. And before I officially welcome Pam, I just want to say that she has, in my opinion, the single handedly helped more people really live the work that they were born to do more than anybody else on this planet. So she is a favorite person of mine. It is kind of a full circle moment for me to have been a follow or a reader of escape from cubicle nation way back when to having her here and knowing her as a person. So Pam, it is my pleasure and honor to welcome you to the show.
Pam Slim (01:50): Well, I am so delighted to be here and thank you for that lovely introduction.
Melissa Anzman (01:55): You're welcome. You're welcome. So let's get started. I define a launch yourself as a specific point when you purposely decided to take action to fulfill your maximum potential in your career biz or brand, and you have a fabulous launch that you're in the midst of right now that I think we would all learn so much from peeking behind the curtain of what's going on with your new book, body of work. If you could tell us a little bit of why you're launching that and more about the project itself before we get started.
Pam Slim (02:28): That sounds great. So yeah, there's, there's a couple of different layers to it. And so maybe we'll look at the meaning body of work, no pun intended a layer of it first and giving it a bit meadow because that's the topic of the book. But as you mentioned in the intro for the last eight years, I've been focusing pretty exclusively on escape from cubicle nation, which is how I've really been known. I did have a consulting business for 10 years prior to escape from cubicle nation, but that was really run as a referral business. So it was almost before the internet. It was, you know, 17 years ago when I started it and we didn't use social media and branding and Google and all that in order to get known, it was much more just based on personal relationships. So the way that most of the world has known me on the internet is, has been around the brand escape from cubicle nation, which has also been a really important and fun part of the work that I have done is specifically helping people in the very early stages of entrepreneurship to grow their business.
Pam Slim (03:26): But because I've been in the world of work for so long and a couple of decades of always focusing on the human side of business, I was feeling after so many years of focus just on early stage entrepreneurship, that there was some bigger issues that I really wanted to be talking about. And in particular, as it relates to career development, now post economic apocalypse that we all live through and do thousand seven, 2008, what it felt to me, especially talking to many of my clients is that we really had some old ways of looking at career paths and even about business. And you and I have had conversations about this, where if you, if you followed the traditional career advice for being a good employee, much of it has your focus being just within the organization where you work and in today's day and age, I think that's actually kind of dangerous advice.
Pam Slim (04:20): It's great to be focusing on adding value where you are always and knowing as much as you can about your organization, but everybody also must really be, for example, developing lots of relationships outside in case you get laid off or downsized or there's, you know, mergers or all kinds of things that happen now within the world of work. And I think the same thing is true for people that have been working for themselves. There are many people who find it's not the ideal lifestyle that they don't like, the uncertainty and the risk and the unpredictability of entrepreneurial life. And some want to go back and work in an organization, but it's often hard for people to know how they can go back and present themselves as a strong candidate. So it was just as a means of observing our current situation within the world of work.
Pam Slim (05:08): I got excited about sharing a new framework for how it is that we can approach things. And that's really where the roots came for the idea of writing the new book body of work. Now that said, if you think about it from a branding perspective, it's also an expansion and an extension of the work that I've been doing, because I've been delighted to have been known as the escape from cubicle nation lady, but at the same time, that can be limiting, right? If I want to go speak in front of corporations, most of them have not been excited to hire me because they think which is not true, but they think that I'm anti-corporate. So it's kind of an exercise in branding in addition to really actually launching a physical product.
Melissa Anzman (05:51): Absolutely. And you know, I knew you originally from escape from cubicle nation reading the book, and then we have, we have similar circles of people we know and, and so on, and you are so much more than that. And you know, even from my perspective of working with you in that realm, it doesn't even touch your capabilities and your knowledge and your focus and what you deliver. So I'm really excited that with this book, you are able to expand who you touch and who resonates with you as well as help deliver your brilliant, which I say a lot when I talk about Pam, but to deliver your brilliance really, to more people than just that person, who's looking to leave their cubicle and start, you know, their own business, but really what's more than that. And how can we look at it from an internal perspective and what that means? So I'm really excited about it.
Pam Slim (06:48): I appreciate that so much. It's, it's really helpful to hear that. And it's one of the things that choices that we make often when we're in business is it does make sense from a business perspective to be focusing in on a narrow niche. As many business folks will tell you in order to get a foot hold and be known for something and develop that particular body of work within an area. But it does feel like I'm able to really spread my wings now and talk to different folks. So what's interesting about that is when you're doing a launch and in this pace of launching a book, I am consciously wanting to be doing some different activities to be reaching different markets. Now, there is the market, which is so beloved to me, what's your people who have been in my community for a long time.
Pam Slim (07:31): And that includes clients and readers of my blog and my book and partners. I call them peer mentors as a term. I often use people that are within my ecosystem that write about from a similar kind of perspective about business or about entrepreneurship. And there are I'm working with Tim Grahl, who's been a really essential part of my launch strategy. Tim runs a firm called out-think, and he works specifically with authors who are launching books and also have products. I've worked with Tim for about the last three years. And in particular, we're working on this book launch and he's really helped for us to craft a particular strategy. And this I think is very useful for, for any of you that are thinking about doing launches. You can have some distinct groups of people you're trying to reach, which often means that you need to use different kinds of information in order to reach them.
Pam Slim (08:21): So for your hardcore already sold, you know, friends, they feel like family many days, right? People that you have a really great relationship with often for reaching them. It's just a matter of being clear and being excited to say, Hey, I have a new book coming out. And, and in particular, we've done a prelaunch campaign to make it really easy for people to buy the book and get a lot of good extra stuff. So people that would probably buy it anyway are going to be more, even more inclined to do that when they see that there's some good benefits to doing the preorder. And that's always that you want to do is cultivate your biggest fans. Now in doing that, there are some specific things that Tim has set up. For example, when you do participate in in the prelaunch program, you have to just, you know, purchase the book, you send a receipt to a certain email address, and he has it all wizard of fide where, you know, automatically get tagged and Infusionsoft and all those cool stuff happen.
Pam Slim (09:19): But then how did you do that?
Pam Slim (09:21): Then you are brought to a page where you can share, and there's some pre done tweets and places that you can share on Facebook to let folks know, Hey, I've just purchased this book and there's some great preorder goodies, and here's where to go. And that was something that we actually hadn't experimented with before in different products or programs that I've marketed. And it was fantastic. I'll never forget when we first announced it to my list. I sent an email out to my list and it was amazing to look at Twitter and on Facebook. And I just saw tons and tons and tons of sharing. And that's only right there, right? I mean, sharing can only translate into sales, but when you know that part of what you're trying to do in a launch is just to get exposure and reverberations and introduce yourself to other people that was really a big part of the success.
Pam Slim (10:08): So that's kind of one piece of what we've been focused on first is just providing regular, consistent information to people who were, I already have a connection with. And then, and we can talk a little bit more specifically about some of that in terms of like the six weeks leading up to the launch, the second group of people who they might be there, they're the fence. Sitters is the way that Tim describes them. So maybe they've heard of me, maybe they know a little bit about my work. They're not totally convinced, you know, I know what I'm talking about. They're not convinced my message might be resonant for them. And so for those folks, that's often really can do a couple of things. One of them is to be partnering with other people who they respect. We call them influencers or thought leaders, whatever you want to be really get some exposure, especially during launch week or in some cases prelaunch week so that people can be writing about the fact that they endorse the work.
Pam Slim (11:03): And that's very powerful in today's market. If you really respect somebody and they recommend somebody else, if you are offensive or you've maybe heard about the person before, that's often what, it's all that it's going to take in order for that to tip. I noticed that when I share information about other people, as I often get direct messages on Facebook and, you know, on Twitter, people saying, Hey, I saw you posted about that. What do you think about this person? You know, what you endorse this. So it can be very powerful way to do that for other people. There, there are just the general folks out there in the world who have no idea who I am and have no kind of connection we can and do create information for them. I've been doing a lot more outreach with companies. I'm doing a webinar this week with Citrix and their go to training channel where we're talking about storytelling and how you use that in training. And, and that's a chance to reach out and, and really meet a lot of people who don't know who I am at all. It's not specifically focused on launching the book, but it's a topic that's related to the book. And then I'll be kind of plugging in after. And then I'm looking at something else like doing a manifesto on change, this, which is run by 800 CEO read that's another chance just to have something shareable and interesting that might pique the interest of people who don't know who I am.
Melissa Anzman (12:20): I love it. They're living in a closet if they didn't. And he believe that the world is big, the world is big. I love that. And you know, one thing that I admire a lot from you in particular is you do try so many things and you're not afraid at all to reach out and ask and say, Hey, this is something I haven't tried before, or you may not know who I am, but I want to get to know you. Is there fear around that for you? Or is that something that just comes natural as part of this is my excitement around the project?
Pam Slim (12:57): It's the way I view it is I for my personality type and who, who I am and what I value. I'm definitely a relationship person. I, I generally think through networks of people and I really value and nurture relationships. And I'm a connector in the Malcolm Gladwell, tipping point perspective of that. I like to be connected with many people and I like to connect people in my network to each other that said, I think very carefully about who I would actually ask for things. So the way that there's a big continuum and everybody's different about this every day, I get solicitations from people I've never met in my life that are asking for things. And I always give them kudos, right? I mean, Hey, they're asking the reaching out and doing it. What, what I think is important is that you begin to build relationships with people that are not just strategic for you, but truly people that you admire and that you want to have a relationship with that is based on reciprocity.
Pam Slim (13:57): And for some of the people, for example, who are we're contributors to blurbs on the back of my book, you know, Seth Godin, Dan pink, Nancy Duarte, Susan Cain. Many of these are folks that I've known for years and years, and I've been a huge fan of their work. I continued to be a huge fan of their work. I've also made a conscious effort to be supporting and sharing their work with a world for a long time. So by the time I get to a place where I'm willing to make a big ask, if it's somebody that I know gets asked a lot, or you know, anybody, I always want to make sure that I've really laid a good framework and a groundwork with getting to know them without any expectation for anything, making sure that there's a mutual benefit to our association. And then the other thing that's very important to me that is just maybe a bit of a style perspective, but I always like to reiterate in an email introduction that is perfectly okay if it's not a fit, right?
Pam Slim (14:57): Because sometimes if you are friendly with somebody and you have connected and you know that they've been supporting your work, then it can feel awkward. Sometimes if you know that that's not the right thing to share with your network, sometimes it's just not right. That not everybody has somebody who has a carefully cultivated platform. That's sharing information that's relevant to their audience is because they're doing a great job of cultivating. What kind of information should be shared. So sometimes it's not the right fit and it doesn't have to be something personal. So I always like to make it clear if for some reason this is not a good fit for your audience. No problem. I just wanted to ask because it seemed like it was a good fit. So that's a long winded answer to your question, but I think it's important to acknowledge that had I not built some of these relationships for a long time and already felt like we had trust and connection with each other, I probably would be very nervous approaching somebody with a favor because I don't think that's the best way to do it.
Melissa Anzman (15:58): [Inaudible] Definitely. And that actually plays into one of my big tenants, which I'm sure matches up well to your book. I haven't yet read it. I'm excited to of networking of exactly what you said. You don't network. When you need something, you network, you build relationships and make connections before you need something before you need that job. So it sounds like the same thing can be said for outreach in general of, you know, leveraging relationships, spending time in those, building that before you need to do the big ass.
Pam Slim (16:31): Yeah. And it's getting away from the idea of the transactional relationships. I think this is really, really important and it's actually quite central to everything that is in the new book, which is if the purpose of your life is to create a body of work that you're extremely proud of. That is the best reflection of you and your skills and strengths, and that you can create things that you're really proud of, that you're thoughtful about, and that you live your life in such a way that you can really feel good about it, that it's in harmony with your values. You're only going to want to be surrounding yourself with people that really resonate with your perspective and that share values. You can be different. I want to just highlight that for a second because we don't all have to agree with each other, come from the same political perspective or any other kind of one, but we do need to make sure that people that we're partnering with in every level that do resonate with generally how it is that we view the world or how we want to treat our customers and things like that.
Pam Slim (17:33): So you want to be thoughtful about the kind of people that you surround yourself with. And personally speaking, I like to be inspired by those who I admire. If there's somebody who has a gigantic mailing list or is really popular in a New York times bestselling author, but they happen to be kind of a jerk and dirty to their spouse and they're mean to their audience. And it doesn't matter if they end up writing a really glowing review of my book, that's probably not going to be the kind of relationship that's actually going to be enduring that will contribute to developing my own body of work. There's so much more resonance when you're connecting with people that you would connect with anyway, even that you would be honored and delighted to be in the same room and to have conversations with are interesting. And they're exciting.
Pam Slim (18:20): And I really encourage people listening to be thinking about that because you want to trust your instinct. Sometimes we meet what my, my son, Josh calls them, fancy people that are rich or famous or whatever we admire. And you get to meet the person in person. And you find, you just have a bit of a strange feeling. It doesn't feel right. You feel awkward and you're stumbling over yourself. Not because you're a fan girl or guy, which I love stumbling over people because I'm so much in awe of them. And I do it all the time. But it's more that you get the sense that something is just not right. The person doesn't really feel right to you. Trust that instinct no matter how fancy somebody is or how much influence they have, if they're not somebody who fundamentally feels good to be around, stay away, no amount of traffic, books, sales, product sales, anything it's worth building a relationship with somebody that makes you feel that way.
Melissa Anzman (19:17): Absolutely. I love that because, you know, it seems from the outside perspective we have to do that. We have to say yes to the big fancy people. I like that I'm going to steal Josh's term or that we have to, you know, reach out to those people or pitch those people or else our book or product or service won't be successful. So I love that it really falls back to not only being yourself and being unique, but being true to your people and your purpose and what you stand for for longterm success. I love that
Pam Slim (19:52): There are plenty of people that fit the criteria of having big influence and audience who also resonate with your own values. As a parent. My criteria is somebody depending on the nature of the engagement, of course, but, but somebody who I would trust watching my kids, right. You know, that they have that kind of integrity that they, you know, you could trust them that way. So there are plenty of people that, that can have influence that can help amplify your message. But it's, that's not the only criteria that they're rich, famous, or have a lot of people on their mailing list.
Melissa Anzman (20:23): Right. And how would you take that same advice and approach and apply it for somebody who's at a company. So they're in a job and they just are, or maybe they're going through the interview process. How do you align that in the new age of work with corporate work?
Pam Slim (20:43): I think it's the same. I think it's the same skillset because if you at the kind of networking and connecting that you want to do in a professional sense, if you're an employee at a company, I do not see any difference at all, than what you would do as an entrepreneur. The reason I say that is I remember back to my days at Barclays global investors, when I had a real job 17 years ago, and there were very senior people that were in the senior management team. There were very interesting folks that worked on the trading floor that were subject matter experts, even within the company you know, 17 years ago was smaller than it is today, but what you need to do in order to have an intelligent conversation with the CEO when you're in the elevator with him or her, if you, if you feel confident enough to set up an appointment with your chief legal counsel, because you're interested in what they do, and you want to learn more about the company, right.
Pam Slim (21:36): Things that can actually prepare you to be better in your job, to be more connected. Those are the exact same feelings and skills that you'll have when you're an entrepreneur. And I, like I was mentioning earlier about the premise of body of work is you should be connecting with other people who are experts in your industry or related industries outside of your company. And it's an art. I have many friends that I know from my corporate days that are really, really skilled at this, but that make an effort to have coffee with other folks that will join associations or be involved in coalitions and things like that, of people that are across a range of different companies within their industry. And I also encourage people from a creativity and innovation perspective to be connecting with folks that are also not in your industry, where you might have a really cool performance artist that's in your local community.
Pam Slim (22:32): And if you can get brave enough to convince them why they should spend 30 minutes having coffee with you, or if you want to go down and see their open studio or whatever it is, that's something that's going to be building your confidence in your capability. So if further down in your career, you decide that you want to be an entrepreneur work for yourself. You already have that skill set down. It's pretty much the art of writing, a great compelling email, not bumbling over yourself and not wasting somebody's time researching about the person. So that you're very clear as to why you're interested in connecting with them. What I've found is that most people are actually quite interested to be sharing about themselves. And this may be a little bit more true in the corporate world where you have people who are very influential, but they're not necessarily internet famous, right? So somebody who is internet famous gets a million emails a day because they have a really popular blog. Whereas somebody who is deep genius, financial investor, or some legal mind, that's incredible is very well known within their field, but they don't often get the chance to sit back and talk to somebody about their own career or advice they have about you know, moving throughout the industry. And I find in general, people are often very generous and they like to be sharing that kind of stuff.
Melissa Anzman (23:49): I agree. Absolutely. And it's interesting. I do find that those within corporate are eager to talk about even more so than the people that, you know, we quote unquote think in the online world would be open to sharing and getting the word out and needing the publicity and stuff, because it's more about really sharing knowledge, then getting something out of the deal I have found. Yeah,
Pam Slim (24:13): It's very true. And those kinds of relationships can be so valuable if you want to get a job somewhere else. Let me tell you the way to do it is to have really great relationships with people all throughout your company. And by that, I mean, folks that are peers, folks that are in other departments people within senior management all, all around, because often there is somebody that's going to know somebody else that works for the organization that you want to get hired in. And if you've developed a really great relationship, you do good work, you deliver on your promises in your job, then that's, what's going to allow you to have somebody write a great recommendation. And usually it's picking up the phone without hesitation and saying, Oh yeah, I can totally vouch for Melissa. She's awesome.
Melissa Anzman (24:57): Yeah. I love that. I want to get back on track with, I have two questions, two more questions for you. I promise I'll keep us on time. But I wanted to talk a little bit more about the launch itself since you're in the midst of it and that's sort of the focus what obstacles have you come across so far? I know it's not quite live and, and breathing and out there. It sort of is, but how, what have you stumbled upon so far?
Pam Slim (25:25): The, the part that's the most challenging for me right now, I think is just in maintaining a quick turnaround pace for managing a huge spreadsheet, full interactive. Because as I said, as a connector in somebody who already has a broad network of very generous people who are willing to help, basically the, there are two factors. One of them is just staying on top of the process so that I follow up immediately with somebody who says that they're willing to help and, and thoughtful about what's a good mutually beneficial way that we can do something. So I might propose, you know, if I'm going to do a guest post or a podcast or whatever way that I can connect with them in order to share information, I need to stay on top of those interactions. And this is a suggestion that's actually based on me, generally being the one who's in the interviewer seat or somebody who's approached a lot about helping with launches or books or things like that is the more that you can organize your information to make it super easy for the other person.
Pam Slim (26:28): That's going to make it easier for people to say yes to your request. And what I mean by that is we have, we've just put together a page for the book. If you want to check it out, it's Pamelaslim.com/bodyofwork/press. And I did that. So it has a summary of the book. It has a downloadable picture of the book for people who want to put it in a podcast or a blog post or something. And then there are key ideas from the book. There are testimonials from people that read it, you know, that folks can use for social proof. There are sample interview questions. So if people haven't gotten the chance to read the book yet and want to know there's all that information there, then we have some shareable pictures with quotes from the book. If anybody wants to include that in their social channels.
Pam Slim (27:13): And what it does is it makes everything organized in one place so that when you do reach out and you ask folks, it makes it easy for them to go there. I'm amazed. Sometimes at people will ask me to do an interview or something, and I have to run all over the place to gather up all the information and it's okay. I actually consider it my job as the person who's, who's doing the interview to prepare for it. But if something is on one page and it's easy, that really makes me happy, which generally makes me more excited about the interview. So that's out for people. The other challenge I have found has been sometimes in making the big asks, and this is where Tim will push me really hard where saying, you know, if there's somebody who I've been friendly with for a long time is pushing me a little bit further than I normally would to maybe ask for something a bit more bold, right?
Pam Slim (28:03): To send an email to their list as opposed to a blog post or something like that. And I think because I have such a value in wanting to make sure that there's reciprocity and not overstepping bounds, that sometimes I get a little bit shy. And that's where Tim is like, you know, glaring at me over Skype and, and which is why you always need to have somebody, somebody in your corner. The other thing I think that probably will be the case. Once we get closer to the launch itself is really the amount of writing is that one of those things of the workplace hazard for a writer, but you need to be witty, sharp, responsive on demand. So as I'm getting more requests for interviews that I need to be able to turn things around very quickly and just get used to being more in a production mindset, right.
Pam Slim (28:48): Because it is how really coordinating everything. That's important to remember for a book. There is a coordination that we're doing for the launch week, because there is a possibility that we can get it on the New York times list, which would be fantastic doing it, the ethical, not buying our way in kind of, yeah, exactly. That's often why we do want to do as much as we can to give the book the best shot possible in the first week. But after that, the book should really live a long and healthy life. And I think that the best thing you can ever wish for a book is that it's going to sell consistently over a period of years. It's not just about the launch week. And the same thing would be true for those people who are wanting to launch a product of don't get so caught up in just your initial launch week or your, the couple of days of the launch that you lose sight of the fact that a good product that you create that maybe have some evergreen capability is something that you should feel comfortable and confident, nurturing along and marketing for the long haul.
Pam Slim (29:47): I think a lot of people get really focused in how many seats did I sell, or how many products or how many books did I sell just in the first week? And you can completely burn yourself out with that perspective.
Melissa Anzman (29:59): Absolutely. And then you're not also honoring all the time and commitment you've put into that work to be everlasting, right? You didn't want to just create a product or write a book for a five minute flash in the pan. You want it to live. You want it to impact others so that
Pam Slim (30:15): It is, it is a marathon, not, not a sprint, but there's a critical, it's the I've never run a marathon. So I'm making all this up,
Melissa Anzman (30:24): Me neither so you're in good company
Pam Slim (30:26): Like using marathon metaphors. If I've never run a marathon, it's awesome. But it's like the, the mile 20 people say, right, that's where you need to have it. It's worth it to put the effort and energy into making it as, as successful as possible. And then with that, you need to really learn just to let go and be very appreciative. I tell this to clients all the time, it's really a huge mistake. If you get so fixated on whatever your number is, if it's heading to New York times list, if it's selling 500 seats, whatever your, your target is, what people often do is if they miss that target, then they're totally disappointed. And in the meantime, you have all of these kind gracious people who are excited to have bought what it is that you sold that are totally behind you. And then you just become this bitter person.
Pam Slim (31:12): Who's like, if I didn't get that metric of success, it's a total failure. And that is a huge mistake because you will lead with that kind of energy when you are serving those people. And I've had situations in my own professional career where I've had one person, two people sign up for something. And what I've learned to do is just to do the hell out of whatever that is. If it's a teleclass or whatever kind of offer you, give it your all, because those people have invested their money with you and they have given you their trust, and you really want to be honoring that. And that's the way also, you can still get so much pleasure just as you were describing to get the root of it, to the root of why you're doing it in the first place. It's not just to sell huge amounts, it's to make an impact. And it does make an impact even reaching one person.
Melissa Anzman (32:00): Absolutely. And in full transparency, Pam gave me very similar if not exact advice last week. So it is something that, since I know, I struggle with that fear that I'm sure others do. So that's great advice for people listening to have. So I appreciate you sharing that and I'm glad I'm not the only one I should say. Not at all. Yes. So I'd asked you what's next, but it sounds like we know what's next, the big, big launch for body of work, the book, which please purchase the pre-purchase goodies are amazing. And she keeps adding to them. So for instance, I purchased the book, I think the first it came, it was allowed to be, and it came via email to the subscription list. And then I saw earlier, this was it last week, maybe they added a new goody and I was like, if I apply more, if I buy more copies, do I get more chances to win it? Cause it's so good. Seriously kind of nerded out on that, Pam. So I really recommend everybody going and pre-purchasing the book so that you do have access to those pre-book goodies are amazing. And knowing how great they are. I can't even wait for how fabulous the book itself is going to be.
Pam Slim (33:13): I can't wait to get it in your hands. I'm really excited to hear what you think.
Melissa Anzman (33:17): Awesome. So Pam, can you just remind everybody where they can reach you online?
Pam Slim (33:22): Yes. You can reach me online on Twitter @Pamslim. And I love to say hi, I'm on Twitter frequently on Facebook. It is facebook.com/pamslim is my Facebook page. And currently my main online home is still escapefromcubiclenation.com, but we are migrating and updating Pamelaslim.com in this month. And that's where it'll be a little bit more of a, an extended extended present as I am, as I said before, really extending and expanding my, my own brand to reach different audiences.
Melissa Anzman (33:57): Great. I'll be sure to include all those links in the show notes. And I just want to say again, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's fabulous to talk with you and have your great advice shared. And I really appreciate you taking time out of your extremely busy launch schedule right now to chat with us.
Pam Slim (34:16): It's my pleasure. And I'm excited for everything that you're doing to help people learn how to do launches effectively, because it's a huge, important skillset for so many people. So I am very thrilled to be here and I'm excited about the podcast too.
Melissa Anzman (34:29): All right. Thanks Pam. I hope you enjoy today's episode with Pam slim. She's been so influential in my own career that I'm honored by how many awesome launch tidbits she shared with us today. If you'd like to get the show notes for this episode, you can go to launchyourself.co/session1 again, that's launchyourself.co/session1. And again, if you enjoyed it, please be sure to subscribe on iTunes or leave us a review until next time. Thank you.
Melissa Anzman (35:00): Thanks for listening to the launch yourself. Join the conversation at www.launchyourself.co
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This is a great podcast Melissa! I love how Pam emphasizes the value of relationships. I also loved her tips re: cultivate your biggest fans and providing regular consistent information before launch. Extremely valuable.