“I'm so grateful for this experience. I now feel more empowered that I can go anywhere and make friends and connections using the tools and ideas I learned here. I feel much less alone and am so so grateful.”
— Lindsey, PAL Alumni, Winter Cohort 2024
What we’ve been doing
This is a small snippet of the goals that PAL students arrived with, and accomplished, during 2024’s Platonic Action Lab cohorts
💗 Deepening Existing Friendships
“I want to deepen my connection with 5 people in my network, and create opportunities to develop new friendships or new communities.”
🏡 Housing & Films
“I want to make at least one local friend who shares my passion for tenant rights — and indie film!”
💃🏽 More Than a Mom
“I want to connect with other moms who don’t just want to talk about being moms.”
🕯️ Gathering 101
“I want to connect with like-minded local people and start hosting gatherings.”
🚶🏾♀️➡️🚶🏻♂️➡️ Walking Friends
“I want to form a neighborhood walking group with the people in my building or on my block.”
🎨 Craving Crafternoons
“I want to invite neighbors to come craft with me. Then eventually work up to having gluten-free, nut-free potlucks along with the crafting hangouts.”
🏋🏾 Fitness Friends
“I want to attend CrossFit regularly so I can meet folks who have similar fitness goals as do.”
🚴🏾♀️ Bikeable Third Places
“I want to learn how many third spaces are within a bikeable distance (4 miles) of where I live, then start spending time there.”
🐮 Small Town in the Big City
“I want to create a small-town vibe in a large apartment building.”
📈 From Acquaintances to Friends
“I want to initiate vulnerability in conversations with my acquaintances so we can become closer friends.”
🥬 The Slow Food Movement
“I want to form a community with people who care about sustainability and the slow food movement.”
🧘🏽♀️ Yoga/Dance Friends Happy Hour
“I want to get to know the other people who come to my yoga/dance class, and who usually all scatter as soon as class lets out.”
If you want either (or both) of these:
HYPERLOCAL FRIENDS
You want friends who are super close — i.e. walking, biking, scooting, rolling, strolling, or a tiny short drive away.
You want to easily spend time with friends who live in your neighborhood, and you want to feel a stronger sense of belonging where you live.
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.
HYPERSPECIFIC FRIENDS
You want friends who share your interests 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 crafternoons… or you wanna share pineapple pizzas in the backyard while discussing your favorite self-development books…or [insert your own delightfully specific wishes here.]
If you need help defining your connection goal, that’s fine too. Come with an open mind and we’ll workshop your blurry ideas to bring clarity — and friends who are a match — into your life.
…then Platonic Action Lab is for you.
Our next cohort of Platonic Action Lab is intentionally small to allow each person to receive lots of personal attention directly from me. Request a spot below and I’ll be in touch.
A small snippet of what people are saying (scroll down for more :)
I created PAL as a transformative blend of group coaching and an interactive course, because this is the best way to put your lessons into practice and get results.
— Kat Vellos, author of We Should Get Together: The Secret to Cultivating Better Friendships
“I have no regrets in joining PAL. Not only was support during defined PAL time valued, I feel I now have new skills, approaches, and energy that I can carry forward past our time in PAL, capitalizing on the momentum built here.”
— JJ, Platonic Action Lab, Spring 2024 alumni
What PAL is…
This group program is for adults 18+ of all genders who want to get hyperlocal and/or hyperspecific 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 friendship wishes, then this is the program for you.
You’ll:
✨ 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.
What to expect
At each of our workshops, I’ll teach you the PAL framework for turning your wishes into actions and outcomes. This program isn’t a bunch of hand-wavey theory, it’s about action — and you’ll start making progress right away.
While the core curriculum is based on my expertise in the topic of friendship and community-building, there’s also wiggle room to customize parts of each workshop around your specific areas of curiosity. And if there’s a special topic you want to explore that diverges or you simply want more time to dig into a specific topic more deeply, bring it.
This program is the best of both worlds: my proven PAL curriculum (with lots of satisfied customers below saying how it worked for them) and the ability to customize our sessions around your specific situation. It’s like taking a class and getting personal coaching at the same time.
My expectations for you, and what you can expect from me:
You’re expected to show up for all of our mandatory live workshop sessions. And 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 walk you through the PAL framework for how to do this).
Because of how I’ve designed PAL, everything you do will be customized to your situation, your needs, and your goals. If you want to take baby steps, you can — and if you want to take giant leaps, you can...both are valid and acceptable ways to approach a goal.
I’ll bring you the absolute best of my teaching, coaching, expertise, wisdom, guidance, honesty, feedback, and enthusiasm. I’ll be your encouraging and supportive guide, and I’ll be there to support you.
Commitment:
This is not a passive course. It can blend into your regular life but it is a robust immersion for people who are ready to take action (even if that makes you a lil nervous… that’s natural, you’ll get through it just like the other PAL alumni did). You’ll learn a ton in our live virtual workshops, and you’ll be doing homework and taking action in between our live calls. Drink your coffee and get ready to dive in!
“The biggest lesson I learned in Platonic Action Lab is that being quiet, waiting for the perfect opportunity to arrive in front of me, and not taking chances are not the right way to make friends. I need to put myself out there and be willing to take risks in order to meet other people.”
— Kim, Platonic Action Lab alumni
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’s 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, passions, 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.
“I felt very inspired by everyone in the program and I definitely cribbed language and ideas from our class materials and the PAL handbook. Really useful tools.”
— Brittany*, PAL alumni
🛋️ Tuition ☕️
If you spent six months complaining to your therapist about how you wish you had better friendships and more community, it would cost you $1200-$2400. By working with me in PAL, you’ll actually start to solve the problem, and you’ll walk away with skills and tools you can use forever.
Investment: $1200-$2400
Two payments of $199.50
That’s the price of 2-3 therapy sessions. Or a daily latte + tip ($6.54/day) for two months.
Join our next cohort
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 afterwards you’ll have a fabulous story to tell and the skills to recreate new friendships, and deepen existing ones, any time you want to.
Apply now for our next cohort. I’m so excited to work with you!
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
-
Commitment: This is not a passive course, it is a full-on immersive experience 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 meet weekly for one month. You're expected to take action on your homework in between sessions.
-
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.” In order to feel that sense of community, you need to show up and get to know me and your classmates. :)
-
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 payments. 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. (If you want my matchmaking event, it's over here.)
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 might draw upon the network of people you already know by deepening existing friendships, or it might mean meeting new people. We’ll discuss what feels right for you.This program is a bold experiment, designed to get meaningful results. It’s powered by a deep well of optimism, imagination, and determination. Like all experiments, a specific result is not guaranteed. But this one carries the possibility of sublime success — especially if you take the homework assignments seriously and proceed to take bodaciously bold action with what you learn.
Check out the testimonials on this page to see the range of results and outcomes that our past cohorts have achieved.
-
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 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 Busynesschapter 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 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 cancel before our kickoff and before you’ve received the PDF of the curriculum, you are entitled to a full refund.
Once you’ve received the downloadable PDF of the full curriculum, no refunds are possible, as it’s not possible to reverse the electronic transfer of digital information.
-
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.
You’re gonna love it.
Start your new year by bringing more connection into your life.