Show notes
October 27, 2022 / Mom &… Podcast Episode 94 / Guest: Kat Vellos Subscribe & Review Wherever You Listen to Podcasts Show Summary: Kat Vellos helps people make and maintain connections. In a time where we have access to numerous methods of communication, many people still struggle to develop lasting, meaningful friendships. We had such a great conversation about modern friendship, packed with actionable ways to improve your relationships. Kat has done a lot of things, from editorial design to non-profit work to user experience design, and now, connection coaching. She says they may seem unrelated, but in her mind, all of these experiences string together to inform her work today. No matter what she’s doing, Kat strives to make a positive difference, and incorporate service in all she does. Topics From This Episode: 2023 Better Conversations CalendarOther cool productsFriendshipChronic lonelinessPublic healthPandemicPop culture friendship vs. real life friendshipConversation startersWhy we should stop asking, “What do you do?”Protecting you peace vs. RSVP and VanishThe Nap MinistryHow to deal with social discomfortHow to prepare for social eventsThe Seattle Freeze and other cities/regions where it’s harder to make friendsWho’s Your City by Dr. Richard FloridaValuesNational Night OutMeetUpNiksen (listen to episode 6 to learn more!)Digital Wellness appsWhat do I want to do within my life? (Check out Morgan Harper Nichols) Look, Listen, Learn Susanne: Lord Business Lego Camp, aka – assembling and selling Lego setsLearning about updating her resume with the help of an expert, April Willis (Expert rec thanks to Shellie Hayes McMahon – go listen to Shellie and Crystal Mason talk about voter suppression and voter intimidation on Mom &… Podcast) Kat: Photo strollDivergent Mind: Thriving in a World That Wasn’t Meant for You by Jenara Nerenberg (audio version)Making clothes, including tiny doll-sized pieces to help with the design process Missy: See Ya Later Ovulator by Esther BlumFlu season is early – be prepared!The Midnight Club on Netflix More About Kat Vellos: Kat Vellos is the author of We Should Get Together: The Secret to Cultivating Better Friendships and its short addendum Connected from Afar: A Guide for Staying Close When You’re Far Away.She is a user experience designer, speaker, and facilitator who helps others transform disconnection and platonic longing into authentic connection. As a user experience designer, she’s worked for Slack and Pandora, as well as with the creators of Siri designing the first iteration of Samsung’s Bixby. Kat has been profiled in Forbes and quoted in FastCompany for her work as the founder of Bay Area Black Designers which was a professional development community for Black designers and UX researchers. She’s researched, designed, and advised on the user experience of apps and websites that serve millions of people worldwide. She’s now turned her UX expertise towards combating the loneliness epidemic, by helping people cultivate thriving friendships and community. Her experience with facilitation and interpersonal dynamics runs deep. Over the last twenty years Kat has created, run, and mentored a variety of communities focused on everything from spoken word poetry to photography to digital design to authentic connection and friendship. Her most recent are Better than Small Talk and Connection Club. She’s facilitated for numerous organizations including Adobe, UC Davis, The Power of Hope, and Young Women Empowered. She’s spoken at Design for America, UX Week, Social Good Tech Week, San Francisco Design Week, Lesbians Who Tech, the Transforming Loneliness Summit, and more. She’s also been a guest on numerous podcasts including The Good Life Project, Hurry Slowly, Rosenfeld Review, The Design of Business, Masters of Community, and Revision Path. Her interviews can be found in a variety of media outlets including The New York Times, Real Simple, Forbes, NPR, Communication Arts, The Good Life Project, Hurry Slowly, and Parents Magazine. Kat’s mission and legacy are to be a driver of creation cycles that educate, inspire, and empower others to live their best lives possible. Connect with Kat: Instagram: @katvellos_authorTwitter: @katvellosWebsite: weshouldgettogether.com Connect With the Mom &… Podcast Please subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts! If you’re so inclined to give us a 5-star rating, we’ll love you forever. Who couldn’t use a little extra love?Leave us a message – via voicemail or use our form – with your questions for experts, or suggestions for future episodes.Check out our website, where you can find links to all the things!Follow our Facebook PageJoin our private Facebook Group (All you have to do is ask to join, and then be nice once you’re in. So easy!)Follow us on InstagramBecome a patron – check us out on Patreon! Watch This Episode On Our YouTube Channel Musical Notes Our delightfully happy intro and outro theme music, “We Will Get Through This” is performed by Young Presidents, and used under license from Shutterstock. Transcript is auto-generated by a robot. Apologies in advance for misspellings or errors. [00:00:00] Susanne: Welcome to the mom anne.dot dot podcast. I’m Susanne Kerns mom, anne.dot dot writer, LGBTQ and sex ed advocate. And today I am an ACL music festival, Counter downer. I think it’s two more days. Yes. I’m not very good at counting down two days. [00:00:43] Missy: Well, and who knows what day it is because we had a day off and [00:00:46] Susanne: I know. And you know what? Zoe’s home today. I just scared the crap outta myself. I forgot because the, the lower grades are taking PS SATs today. So they sent the seniors home to do, I don’t know what [00:00:58] Missy: Oh, that’s nice. They made them go at our school. [00:01:00] Susanne: Well, they’re making ’em go back for like an hour this afternoon, but I totally forgot. And I was like, Oh. She left her light on and I opened her door and I was like, Her backpack, her backpack is here. How strange. And that I look up and she’s just staring at me to bed. I’ve almost screamed. So yeah, I do not know what day it is or which children are home. [00:01:18] Missy: Hey guys, there’s not more than two to keep track [00:01:20] Susanne: I know exactly. [00:01:22] Missy: Right. I’m Missy Stevens mom and dot.dot writer, foster child advocate. And this week, doctor Mom, I just sent one back to school today and hoping the other one doesn’t fall. Uh, [00:01:33] Susanne: flu be gone. [00:01:34] Missy: that’s Seriously, and this week we are so excited to be talking with Kat Vellos. Kat is a speaker, facilitator, certified coach, and the author of, We Should Get Together, The Secret to Cultivating Better Friendships, as well as connecting from afar, A Guide to Staying Close when You’re far away. I love that one. Since the early two thousands, Kat has been designing and facilitating transformative programs to help adults cultivate a greater sense of belonging in their personal lives, and she helps companies retain staff by supporting them to find a belonging and connection at work. In her former career as a user experience designer, she worked for Slack and Pandora and was profiled in Forbes for her work as the founder of the Bay Area Black Designers, which she ran from 2015 to 2020. She’s the creator and facilitator of better than Small Talk, an immersive experience of authenticity and connection that’s been held in Seattle, Oakland, and Berkeley, and is now available as a set of conversation starter cards that we are ordering. [00:02:31] Susanne: Well, I already ordered the calendar. I’m so excited. Yeah, it has a, a conversation starter a day. I’m so excited to get [00:02:38] Missy: I know, I love it. I’m getting it from my husband for his stocking because that’s his like biggest anxiety thing is how do I start conversation [00:02:46] Susanne: Yes. . Welcome. We are so glad to have you here. [00:02:50] Kat: Thank you so much for having me. It is great to be here with. [00:02:53] Susanne: Thank you. And now, as impressive as your bio is, we know that there is even more to cats. So can you share a little bit about where your career started and how it’s progressed? And I’m sure there’s been some things that have impacted your choices along the way. [00:03:08] Kat: Yeah, yeah, for sure. I’ve definitely, had a, a varying thread of things I’ve done in my career, but they all, uh, in my mind really do string together. So I got my degree in graphic design and I started out right after college doing editorial design in the publishing industry, working for an alternative news weekly in North Florida, which I’m proud to say was the only source of progressive news in, uh, an entirely generally conservative area. [00:03:34] Susanne: Yes. Flo. Flo, we’re in Texas, but Florida kind of out. Texas is Texas. Sometimes [00:03:40] Kat: Yes, Yes. So it was a super, super rad, very, um, progressive, very forward thinking, award-winning news weekly, and I was really, really glad that I started my career there. It really, that was one of the things that definitely impacted me along the way, and it’s something I think about almost every day. And then after that, I, I decided to leave that job and do a year of AmeriCorps. And after that I got involved with non-profit work for several years. Um, mostly working with youth, doing non-profit, youth empowerment, creative empowerment programs. cuz at one point I thought I wanted to be a teacher and I was like, No, I don’t really wanna be a teacher, but I, I enjoy giving back in this way. And then after that I was like, I wanna go back to design. But the world had changed dramatically in seven years. And so the type of design that I was really drawn to was user experience design, which is a combination of, research and, really investigating like, what is the problem someone’s trying to solve and how can we help them meet that need? Uh, it was, it felt like a mix of service and design. Um, and there is a thing called service design. But anyhow, yeah, so I did user experience design and product design here in the Bay Area for the last seven years or so. And so, I think that one throughline in all of those things, even though they might not seem connected, the thing that is clear to me is that they were each connected to my wish to make a positive difference in the world, to be creative, to be useful, to be of service, and generally just not feel like I’m wasting my life And that was the way that I wanted to, to be of service in the world. [00:05:06] Missy: Oh, we love that. We talk about that all the time. How Nothing we’ve learned is wasted. Nothing we’ve done is wasted. There’s so much to pull from. [00:05:14] Susanne: Yeah. Zibi Owens really was talking about that a lot when she was on as far as nothing goes to waste it all. It all serves you somehow [00:05:23] Missy: Yeah, it all informs everything we’re doing. and we really loved the intro to We should Get Together. It’s really relatable for a lot of adults. So why, why this topic and why did you wanna write it? [00:05:35] Kat: Yeah, that’s a great question. Um, you know, when I moved to the Bay Area, and I talk about this a lot in my TEDx talk, one of the things that was kind of, um, Interesting in a confusing way is that I was meeting lots of cool people all the time, but I was having a hard time holding onto my friendships. So it was very easy to meet cool people and be like, Wow, this is so great. I’m like meeting all these new people. But then when I wanted someone to hang out with, it was like, Oh, I needed to make plans six weeks in advance if I wanna see somebody. And that’s not to me what friendship is all about, [00:06:08] Missy: No. [00:06:09] Kat: And so I started digging into this topic using, uh, the same process I was using at work, doing user experience design and research and, and investigation and qualitative interviews. I started doing the same thing with friendship and I started doing that around 2015 to say like, why is it that so many adults that I meet say they have the same problem I’m having, which is like making and keeping their friends after they turn 30 basically. Um, and so it was popping up all over the place. I was studying it, I was researching it, and it. Troublesome to me that I didn’t find a lot of resources available on this topic. So for example, uh, one time I walked into a bookstore here in Oakland, a locally owned bookstore. And I, and I asked the woman at the counter, I said, Can you point me in the direction of your books about friendships? And she was like, We don’t have a section for that. We don’t have any books about that. And she was like, We have a section about romantic relationships. We have a section about family relationships, but we don’t have any books about friendships. And I was like, Is this a problem? And so then I went to Barnes and Noble, which is like big store, right? And same thing. I was like, Where are your books about friendship? And they were like, You can look in the psychology section. Like there wasn’t really a clear place to go, even though [00:07:19] Missy: knew what you were talking about. [00:07:20] Kat: And there was a really small number of books out there and you really had to like dig and dig to find them. And so I was like, Fine, I’m gonna write a book. And so it really felt to me like a conversation we needed to be having, not just because friendship is an important thing, but it is connected to the loneliness epidemic and the. Like far reaching public health impacts that actually has on our society. If we have people in a state of chronic loneliness for a long time, it’s really, it’s not good for them. It’s not good for our society. So, um, I felt like this was a conversation we needed to be having. And I, because I’d been looking into it for years, I also felt like this is something that’s gonna come to the top of people’s awareness. Like, this is a topic that’s gonna blow up. I don’t know what’s gonna bring it to people’s minds, but it’s gonna happen. And it just so turned out that the pandemic is the thing that brought it to people’s minds when, oh gosh, we’re in lockdown. What does it mean to be truly disconnected? What does it mean to really not see your friends? And how important does it suddenly, become to you when you are in that situation? So, that’s a very long answer. [00:08:18] Susanne: No, we, [00:08:19] Missy: an excellent [00:08:20] Susanne: there’s so much to think about there, and part of me just keeps going back and forth as far as like almost the pop culture feeling of friends. So even though there’s not a section of Barnes and Noble, thinking about friendship and really having a smart discussion about it, I mean, half the books out there, half the movies, you know, are about these friendships. even the show friends, but it always, the pop culture or the old TV sitcoms we used to watch are always just like these friends popping by, you know, or they just, you know, the doors open literally and they just kind of come in and out of each other’s lives. And I think a lot of us hold ourselves to that. Definition of a friendship and feel like failures because I can’t think at any other time. Cause except for maybe in college when literally like we had a door open, People might just pop in. In fact, like I get, I get a weird, like, ye like my whole body tenses up when I think of the idea of just someone popping by. So, So I’m just curious, like, is there this disservice with this way that, you know, pop culture or whatever defines friendship and what that actually looks like in someone’s day to day life? A meaningful friendship? [00:09:30] Kat: Yeah, that’s, I I love that you said that. I have a, a section in the book where I’d talk about how different the pop culture representation of friendship is. It actually looks like in our real lives. And what does it mean that we, you know, whether it’s the show f…
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