Platonic Action Lab™

(a.k.a. PAL :)

❤️ Come get this good stuff

Who Platonic Action Lab is for:

This program is for adults 18+ of all genders who want to get hyperspecific and/or hyperlocal to achieve their friendship goals.

If you want help taking action to make friends in your local area, or finding people (online or IRL) who are a match for your specific and unique friendship wishes, then this is the program for you.

✨ Get crystal clear about who you want to invite into your life, and create an action plan that you’ll start implementing right away.

✨ Connect with your local community more consciously, so you feel a deeper sense of place, have more friends nearby, and stop feeling like Where’s Waldo in a sea of strangers.

✨ Build your confidence for cultivating connection, while getting high on the expanded sense of possibility that comes when you see the fruits of your actions.

Our next session runs through May & June 2024. The tuition for this life-changing program is only two payments of $199.50. Apply today!

👯 PAL members have one or both of these goals:

HYPERLOCAL FRIENDS

You’re tired of dealing with traffic, parking, and plane tickets just so you can spend time with friends.

You want friends who are extremely nearby — via walking, biking, scooting, rolling, strolling, or a tiny short drive away.

You’d also love to have a third place — someplace other than home or work, where you feel cozy, comfortable, and able to access easy, spontaneous, informal socializing and feelings of connection.

squiggly pink lines

HYPERSPECIFIC FRIENDS

You want friends who share your interests and obsessions but you haven’t been able to find them yet (or you haven’t tried!)

For example, maybe you want people to discuss mystery novels with… or you wanna host Nerd Nights and crafternoons… or you wanna share pineapple pizzas in the backyard while discussing your fave self-development books…or [insert your own delightfully specific wishes here.]

If you need help defining your hyperspecific connection goal, that’s fine too. Come with an open mind, and we’ll workshop your blurry ideas to get to something that makes you feel all sparkly inside.

📅 Schedule & Commitment 🔒

🎁 Investment: Two payments of $199.50

That’s $6.54/day or the price of one fancy Starbucks drink a day, in case you were wondering. Not a bad deal to gift yourself the skills for cultivating hyperlocal and hyperspecific friendships forever.

Duration: The program is 9 sessions over two months (5 required workshops, and 4 optional office hours).

Schedule: Through May & June 2024, we'll be meeting on Fridays at 10am-11:30am PT / 1-2:30pm ET / 6-7:30pm GMT / 7-8:30pm CET.

Expectations: In between sessions, you’re expected to take action on the homework assignment that you design for your situation and that fit into your life. I’ll guide you on this and be there to support you along the way.

Commitment: This is not a passive course. It’s for people who are ready to take action (even if that makes you a lil nervous). You’ll learn a lot in our live virtual workshops, and you’ll be doing homework and taking action in between our live calls.

Applications close soon

How good would it feel to finally have the meaningful, easy-to-access local friendships you wish for — and friendships that feel like the right fit for you? I’ll virtually hold your hand through the entire process, and eight weeks later you’ll have a fabulous story to tell and the skills to recreate this for the rest of your life.

I'm currently in the process of going through applications and filling spots. Submit your application today!

Your cheat sheet to connection

All participants receive the 80-page Platonic Action Lab curriculum to guide you through crafting your bold intentions and creating your action experiments. It’ll be an inspiration treasure trove during the program, and it’s yours to keep forever.

It’s filled with loads of scripts, templates, ideas you can borrow, and illustrative stories about the best ways to succeed at the audaciously delicious goal of having friends who live near you and/or who feel like a cosmic fit for your vibe, personality, and quirky interests.

Bonus: Enrollment includes a free copy of the Connection Jet Pack which will give you tons of conversation starters to use with new and old friends, and activity ideas you can riff on or use as-is.

Here’s what Platonic Action Lab can do for you

Founder & Facilitator

Kat Vellos is a trusted expert on the power of cultivating meaningful connections, building friendships and community, and creating healthy work environments.

She’s the author of We Should Get Together: The Secret to Cultivating Better Friendships which was called “marvelous” by BookLife, a subsidiary of Publishers Weekly. Kirkus Reviews gave the book glowing reviews that were echoed by legions of readers. Since its release in January 2020, it’s been helping adults around the world heal from disconnection and loneliness.

A veteran facilitator, Kat has twenty years of experience creating communities where people find belonging and authentic connection. Kat also founded Better than Small Talk and Bay Area Black Designers which was profiled by Forbes.

Kat frequently speaks at companies, conferences, and in the media. Some of her press highlights include The New York Times, Forbes, NPR, Communication Arts, The Good Life Project, Design Observer’s The Design of Business | The Business of Design, The Wall Street Journal, and Hurry Slowly. She’s spoken at TEDx Talks, San Francisco Design Week, The Atlantic’s Pursuit of Happiness conference, Rosenfeld’s DesignOps Summit, and many more.

FAQs

  • Duration: The program is 9 sessions over two months (5 workshops, 4 office hours).

    Schedule: We'll be meeting on Fridays at 10am-11:30am PT / 1-2:30pm ET / 6-7:30pm GMT / 7-8:30pm CET.

    Expectations: In between sessions, you are expected to take action on the homework assignment that you design for yourself. (I’ll guide you on this.)

    Commitment: This is not a passive course. It’s for people who are ready to take action (even if that makes you a lil nervous). You’ll learn a lot in our live virtual workshops, and you’ll be doing homework and taking action in between our live calls.

  • We have a mix of mandatory and optional sessions held weekly. In the schedule shown below, ☀️ = Mandatory sessions; 🐸 = Shorter optional sessions that you can hop into if you want to.

    We'll be meeting through May and June 2024 on Fridays at 10am-11:30am PT / 1-2:30pm ET / 6-7:30pm GMT / 7-8:30pm CET.


    MAY

    ☀️ Friday May 3 - Official Kickoff and Workshop #1 (required). 90 minutes. You definitely don't want to miss this!

    🐸 Friday May 10 - Optional Drop-in Office Hours. 60 minutes.

    ☀️ Friday May 17 - Workshop #2 (required). 90 minutes.

    🐸 Friday May 24 - Optional Drop-in Office Hours. 60 minutes.

    ☀️ Friday May 31 - Workshop #3 (required). 90 minutes.

    JUNE

    🐸 Friday June 7 - Optional Drop-in Office Hours. 60 minutes.

    ☀️ Friday June 14 -  Workshop #4 (required). 90 minutes.

    🐸 Friday June 21 - Optional Drop-in Office Hours. 60 minutes.

    ☀️ Friday June 28 -  Closing session (required) You definitely don't want to miss this either! 90 minutes.

  • Sessions will be recorded and made privately available to enrolled participants during the two-month program, but this is not a reason to skip class!

    You will absolutely, indubitably benefit the most if you join me and the other PAL participants at the live sessions live. Trust me on that.

    As one of our recent members, Danica, said, “Platonic Action Lab felt like a community in and of itself, and when you've got folks going on this journey with you, it feels more accessible and possible.”

  • Your total investment in the life-changing Platonic Action Lab program is only $399 and to make it easier, the cost is split into two halves: You’ll make the first payment of $199.50 on the day you register, and the second payment of $199.50 will process automatically one month later.

    Hot tip: If you choose to apply some of the program learnings to cultivate your network of professional colleagues, you may be able to get the tuition covered by your employer’s tuition reimbursement program or personal development funds.

  • Nope, but you might make friends with other folks in the program because they're awesome.

    Platonic Action Lab is not a matchmaking program and it's not “get better at friendship” class. Platonic Action Lab is a program that will help you take bold action to accomplish one or both of these goals:

    • Making new friends in your immediate local community
    • Finding people who want to share the same kinds of friendship experiences that you want to share (either online or offline). This may or may not include deepening existing friendships.

    This is a bold experiment, powered by a deep well of optimism and imagination. Like all experiments, a specific result is not guaranteed. But it also carries the possibility of sublime success — especially if you take the homework assignments seriously and proceed to take bodaciously bold action.

  • It’s true, some folks are not a fit for this program. And I am not Coca-Cola trying to sell cokes to everyone on the planet, meaning that … this program is not for everyone.

    For example:

    • This program is not for folks who wanna sit on the couch taking zero action, then want to later bemoan the fact that nothing happened.

    • It's not for folks who'll only make one or two half-hearted attempts and then give up because their wishes didn't come true instantly. (You don't need to be a personal trainer to know that a two or three sit-ups won't deliver 6-pack abs.)

    • It's not for folks who are too busy to fit a fortnightly 90-minute call and some homework action steps into your life. If you're too busy for that, check out the Overcoming Busyness chapter in my book or sign up for Unbusy Camp instead.

    • It's not for folks who are super pessimistic. It's perfectly ok to be nervous, feel anxious, have doubts, or feel unsure — we can work with that! But extreme pessimism and entrenched cynicism are border walls that keep a mind closed… and they're not a fit for a class like this.

    • It's not for folks who can't articulate what they want… your goals can be simple or complex, but you need to know what they are. Specifying your goals is the first step in getting you closer to achieving them.

    If you read all of that and you're thinking, “Ok, makes sense, I can get down with that”, go ahead and add your name to the waitlist above. I can’t wait to meet you.

  • Reason #1, Hyperlocal: I created Platonic Action Lab to help you initiate easily-accessible, local, face-to-face acquaintanceships and friendships. The program doesn't match you with people — it helps you develop the strength, skills, and follow-through to go out and connect with people right where you are, with people who are walking, skating, biking, rolling, scooting, and strolling distance away.

    Reason #2, Hyperspecific: I created the Platonic Action Lab to help you realize that no matter what specific characteristics or activities you want to share with your friends, there's a good chance there are other people who want that too. Since the hyperspecific goal is based on a more limited set of “search criteria," we need to use a broader search area (ie not just your neighborhood), but there's a good chance we can find the people you’re looking for. They might not live on your block, but we can find them and connect you with them, wherever they are.

  • If you can’t swing the full price of the program, we have a limited number of Pay-What-You-Can scholarships available.

    To request a spot in Platonic Action Lab, apply here and mention how much you can afford to pay. We’ll follow up via email. Don’t be shy, reach out. 💛

    Folks who are flourishing financially and feeling generous are welcome to fund a scholarship, or can gift a spot to someone else in their life.

  • If you have any concerns or questions , you can send Kat a friendly note here.

Say yes to the adventure

In Platonic Action Lab, you'll be asked to try things you've maybe never done before. But when it's over, you might be able to tell a story you've never been able to tell before… a story about how the world cracked open...

A story about how you uncovered a sense of possibility and deep inner strength that you didn't know was there…

A story about how wonderful new people came into your life, and with them, an entirely new perspective about the availability of friendship and community around you.

Let’s write that story together.

Applications close soon so don’t procrastinate, homies.

A life-changing summer, for just two payments of $199.50? Heck yes.

Our Spring/Summer cohort meets on Fridays at 10am Pacific throughout May & June 2024. Be there.