Podcasts about grace episode

This month's theme is “Grace”Romans 3:23-24"Since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus"(RSV2CE Translation)Two previous memorized verses on Grace:Episode 14: 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 (“My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness…”)Episode 47: Hebrews 4:16 (“Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace…”)***“Memorize Scripture” Book NOW AVAILABLE!Get 10% off!Link to Order:https://avemariapress.com/?ref=JACKIE10PROMO CODE: JACKIE10****PATREON: For downloadable and printable PDFs of each scripture verse, support us on Patreon at Patreon.com/JackieandBobby at the $5/month level!

This month's theme is “Grace”REVIEW Episode: all 4 scriptures from the month read through twiceTwo previous memorized verses on Grace:Episode 14: 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 (“My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness…”)Episode 47: Hebrews 4:16 (“Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace…”)***“Memorize Scripture” Book NOW AVAILABLE!Get 10% off!Link to Order:https://avemariapress.com/?ref=JACKIE10PROMO CODE: JACKIE10****PATREON: For downloadable and printable PDFs of each scripture verse, support us on Patreon at Patreon.com/JackieandBobby at the $5/month level!

This month's theme is “Grace”Ephesians 2:8-9“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from you; it is the gift of God; it is not from works, so no one may boast.” (NAB Translation)***Two previous memorized verses on Grace:Episode 14: 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 (“My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness…”)Episode 47: Hebrews 4:16 (“Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace…”)***“Memorize Scripture” Book NOW AVAILABLE!Get 10% off!Link to Order:https://avemariapress.com/?ref=JACKIE10PROMO CODE: JACKIE10****PATREON: For downloadable and printable PDFs of each scripture verse, support us on Patreon at Patreon.com/JackieandBobby at the $5/month level!

This month's theme is “Grace”John 1:14, 16“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth…and from his fulness we have all received, grace upon grace.”(RSV2CE translation)****Two previous memorized verses on Grace:Episode 14: 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 (“My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness…”)Episode 47: Hebrews 4:16 (“Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace…”)***“Memorize Scripture” Book NOW AVAILABLE!Get 10% off!Link to Order:https://avemariapress.com/?ref=JACKIE10PROMO CODE: JACKIE10****PATREON: For downloadable and printable PDFs of each scripture verse, support us on Patreon at Patreon.com/JackieandBobby at the $5/month level!

This month's theme is “Grace”Romans 5:20“Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.”(RSV2CE translation)Two previous memorized verses on Grace:Episode 14: 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 (“My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness…”)Episode 47: Hebrews 4:16 (“Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace…”)***“Memorize Scripture” Book NOW AVAILABLE!Get 10% off!Link to Order:https://avemariapress.com/?ref=JACKIE10PROMO CODE: JACKIE10****PATREON: For downloadable and printable PDFs of each scripture verse, support us on Patreon at Patreon.com/JackieandBobby at the $5/month level!

Beyond the Mirror: Understanding Body Dysmorphia and Finding Healing Through God's Grace (Episode 147) What happens when the image you see in the mirror doesn't match who you are? In this raw and real episode, I sit down with author, spiritual coach, and recovery advocate Brit Eaton to unpack the heavy topic of body dysmorphia. We dive into how societal pressures, trauma, and even church messages can distort our view of ourselves. (Plus a few deep theological discussions). But it's not all dark! Brit shares her powerful journey to healing through God's grace and reveals how reclaiming her true identity changed everything. Whether you've struggled with body image or know someone who has, this episode will equip you with hope. Tune in to discover the power of grace in restoring how we see ourselves.

Spencer Arnold, head coach of Power and Grace, shares his journey into strength and conditioning and how his faith shapes his coaching philosophy. He emphasizes the importance of community and humility in coaching and highlights the need for coaches to continually learn and adapt. The athlete-coach relationship is pivotal and Spencer talks about the learning that you do as a coach alongside athletes. For those who want insight on programming for high-level athletes, Spencer Arnold discusses the benefits of velocity-based training (VBT) in strength and conditioning. He explains how VBT helps athletes develop force and rapid force development, and how it can be used to progress training over time. Spencer is preparing to coach Jourdan Delacruz in Paris 2024 Olympic Games. THE GRITTY DETAILS Community and humility are essential in coaching and leadership. Programming for high-level athletes requires attention to detail and individualization. The athlete-coach relationship is crucial in weightlifting, and coaches should focus on developing a partnership with their athletes. CONNECT WITH THE GUEST  Learn more about Spencer Arnold and Power and Grace Performance. EPISODES YOU MIGHT ENJOY Episode 16: Athletic Independence Episode 27: Competing with Grit and Grace Episode 32: Building Community Through Sport CONNECT ON SOCIAL Follow the Podcast on Instagram Follow your host

Mary Theisen-Lappen is an athlete and coach and is pursuing a spot on the Team USA Olympic Weightlifting team competing in Paris 2024. Mary is a standout example of transferable skills from Track and Field contributing to her success in a new discipline as an elite Weightlifter. If you are newer to the sport, Mary breaks down the similarities of the two sports to help athletes think about how to approach transitioning sports disciplines. Mary also talks about the challenges of training for international competitions and the importance of emotional and mental preparation and discusses the psychological impact of overcoming an injury. She emphasizes the camaraderie among competitors and the support they provide each other. Mary shares advice for athletes aspiring to make an international team. Mary advocates for women of all sizes and backgrounds to feel confident participating in strength sports and not worry about societal expectations. Lastly, Mary discusses the role of faith in her sports journey and how it helps her stay grounded and focused.  THE GRITTY DETAILS Transitioning from one sport to another can bring unique skills and experiences that contribute to success. Faith can play a significant role in an athlete's journey, providing peace and perspective during difficult times. Overcoming setbacks and injuries requires patience, trust in the process, and a focus on areas for improvement. Having a strong support system is crucial in overcoming challenges and building confidence. CONNECT WITH THE GUEST  Follow Mary Theisen Lappen as she pursues her goal of being an Olympian for Team USA on Instagram EPISODES YOU MIGHT ENJOY Episode 17: From Tumbling to Weightlifting Episode 27: Competing with Grit and Grace Episode 38: Empowering HerAthlete CONNECT ON SOCIAL Follow the Podcast on Instagram Follow your host

Jourdan Delacruz is a 2020 Olympian and has been a dedicated athlete in the sport of Weightlifting. If you follow Jourdan, you might notice that she is focused, gritty, and mature as an athlete in training and in competition. In this episode, Jourdan gives us the inside scoop on her journey of weightlifting. We talk about finding the right coach and developing a team as the foundation for her success. Jourdan emphasizes the importance of nutrition and mental health in her athletic performance, the unique needs of female athletes, and the growing popularity and accessibility of Weightlifting. She also discusses her brand, HerAthlete, and the importance of being a role model and cultivating a healthy sports culture.  THE GRITTY DETAILS Understanding the goals in a data-driven programming process can help athletes embrace different phases of the training cycle. The coach-athlete relationship is built on trust and transparency. Nutrition and mental health play a significant role in athletic performance. These should be components of every athlete's plan for longevity in sport.  Success in sports is a team effort and requires a supportive network. CONNECT WITH THE GUEST  Follow Jordan Delacruz as she pursues her goal of being a two-time Olympian for Team USA on Instagram Find more information on sports nutrition and performance for female athletes at HerAthlete. EPISODES YOU MIGHT ENJOY Episode 18: Finding the Value in Sport Beyond ‘Winning' Episode 27: Competing with Grit and Grace Episode 34: The Growth and Evolution of Olympic Weightlifting CONNECT ON SOCIAL Follow the Podcast on Instagram Follow your host

If you follow me on Instagram, you've probably heard me use the phrase, "do it tired". It caught on as a mantra but I wanted to share in this episode what I mean when I say do it tired. I don't mean not listening to your body if you got 4 hours of sleep and doing a heavy gym day anyway. Sometimes rest days are the best option for you that day. However, your future self will thank you if you keep the promises you make to yourself despite feeling tired. Listen in as I explain further and let me know what your thoughts are!   Time Stamps:   (1:20) The Too Tired Thoughts (2:15) Grit vs Grace Episode (4:10) The Baby Itch (6:06) Caveat to Do It Tired (10:00) Mind Over Matter Mentality (11:26) It's Never One Thing (26:28) Sometimes Rest Days Are Better For You (27:45) Example From My Life (32:50) Do It For Future You --------------------- Where You Can Find Me: @joellesamantha Nutrition & Fitness Coaching: @leveltencoaching Fitness Coaching Software: @fitcoachpro

High Magic is the most powerful birthplace of what's possible and where your deepest desire to have everything that lights you up begins.What is High Magic? It is working with complex rituals, ceremonies, and spirits from altered states of consciousness to see beyond the veil. It is a switch to help create massive change and kickstart a cycle of transformation in your life.Join Tahverlee for exclusive High Magic Immersions in 2023. Explore your deepest desires; anything is possible when working with Magic, the elements, spiritual planes, and energy. Travel deep into the ethers to create and birth your BEST year yet. Say a holy YES to true transformation!Learn more about High Magic Immersions and submit your application today.Listen to Grit & Grace Episode #183, Living an Intentional Life.Tahverlee is a Social Impact Entrepreneur, High Priestess, Ritualist, and Initiate of the Sacred Way. Visit Moon Temple Mystery School for ancient teachings for our modern world, spiritual coaching, and everything you need to know as you walk your awakening path. Journey with us during The Witching Hour, a FREE evening of enchantment to explore the mysteries that remain an ever-evolving field of knowledge.Join us in Mystery School:· Dip your toes into the waters of your own inner knowing with Wake the Witch. · Awaken the healer within in The Sacred Wheel.· Activate your highest level of potential in The Witch's Mastermind· Discover which characters form your identity in Archetypes· Reclaim your own inner Witch in the High Priestess / High Priest path· Experience transformational magic to alter the course of your life with High Magic ImmersionsSpeak your truth in our digital coven, Witch Power; for witches of any path or level of experience who are ready to stop playing small and step into their full power.Learn more about Tahverlee:Moon Temple Mystery SchoolContact Tahverlee directly:Tahverlee@MoonTempleSchool.com Follow Moon Temple Mystery SchoolFacebookInstagram Join our Digital Coven on FacebookWitch Power Follow Tahverlee:FacebookInstagramTikTokTheme Music by Les Konley | Produced by Les KonleySee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Let's Talk About Racism with Ken and PuckJoin a candid conversation on race with friends and colleagues Ken Wetmore and Furman 'Puck' Fordham, Jr.For more from Puck please don't miss his message on our sister podcast 'Speaking of Grace', Episode 143: I'm On My Way to the Canaan Land, and our deeper dive into that message right here on 'This Is WholeLife' Episode 349: I'm On My Way to the Canaan Land. Let us know your thoughts by reaching out to us with your questions and comments using the information below:■ Text/Voicemail: 407-965-1607■ Email: podcast@wholelife.churchDon't miss Puck's message that preceded this BONUS Episode. SUBSCRIBE NOW to our weekly podcast Speaking of Grace to listen to the message this podcast was based on - https://speaking-of-grace.captivate.fm/listenlinks - Episode 143: I'm On My Way to the Canaan Land and our deeper dive into that message right here on This Is WholeLife in this feed, Episode 349: I'm On My Way to the Canaan Land.As referenced in this episode, Dana Edmonds message to WholeLife Church and subsequent podcast episodes can be found below:Speaking of Grace Episode 94: ‘God Knows What He's Doing - https://speaking-of-grace.captivate.fm/episode/god-knows-what-hes-doingThis Is WholeLife Episode 300: ‘God Knows What He's Doing - https://this-is-whole-life.captivate.fm/episode/god-knows-what-hes-doingTo find out more about WholeLife Church, visit our website: https://WholeLife.Church#WholeLifePodcast #WholeLifeReflections #ThisIsWholeLife #ThisIsUS #WeAreFamily #FollowMe

Metamorphoo - Practicality of Grace Episode 6 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-lights-house/message

Practicality of Grace - Episode 5 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-lights-house/message

Metamorphoo - Practicality of Grace - Episode 4 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-lights-house/message

Guilt vs Grace Episode : https://link.chtbl.com/_zFTlPXq Enjoy the Episode and thanks for listening! Find us on Social Media @churchvoicepodcastVisit us at christiancenter.org/church-voice-podcast

In this episode, Chris Rivers and Jacob Cook discuss Jacob’s journey in discovering what it means to be an Authentic Man. They talk about how Jacob's understanding of responsibility and the force of community on his life broke his relentless pursuit of “power” and “importance.” Here are also some other key concepts Jacob communicates during this episode: 1. We can be doing all the right things, but still feel empty. Jacob realized his heart was not where it needed to be and he was relying on his own strength. All of his attempts at gaining power were to bring glory to himself, not God. Is there anything you are doing that is causing you to rely on your own strength instead of God’s strength? If so, what next steps could you take to move towards God in that area? 2. Most men tend towards passivity or self-reliance. Self-reliance creeps in when we try to be responsible for everything in our own power and try to manage things we are not really responsible for. In what ways do you personally struggle with passivity and self-reliance? 3. The only way to truly be powerful is allowing God to be powerful through us. When we allow Him control, it leads to true life change and maturity in our walk with Christ. Where have you seen God’s power manifested in your life or the life of another authentic man? What stands out to you about the change that you have experienced or have observed in someone else? 4. When we spread ourselves too thin and try to be responsible for all of the people and situations around us, we miss the opportunity to be truly known by others. This aspect of community is crucial in our growth as men and as believers. What does Biblical community look like for you? Read Galatians 6:1-3, Acts 2:42-43 and share some key ideas that stand out to you in those two passages. Where do you need to move in this area? Men of Grace | Episode 6 Study Questions - https://bit.ly/3ynPAj4 SCRIPTURE MENTIONED “Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you your heart’s desires.” Psalms 37:4 NLT RESOURCES MENTIONED: Men’s Roundtable: This teaching can be found by visiting: gracechurchsc.org/mrt Marriage Matters: This teaching can be found by visiting: https://resources.gracechurchsc.org/teaching/marriage-matters Bridge: The ministry can be found by visiting: https://gracechurchsc.org/connect/discipleship/bridge Kairos: The Summer Internship can be found by visiting: http://gracechurchinternships.org/summer-internships Join a men’s roundtable study by finding a campus near you and register for Authentic Manhood by visiting: gracechurchsc.org/mrt If you know a man that would benefit from hearing this episode, share it with him. Having intentional conversations around these principles is a great way to disciple and help others move towards Christ. Have questions or want us to discuss a topic? Email us at menofgrace@gracechurchsc.org.

TW: Mention of suicide within this episode. Welcome back for another episode! I'm so excited to bring Jacob onto the podcast. Jacob is the husband of my beautiful friend Grace (Episode 5) and so I was excited to bring another male voice into the ever evolving conversation around sexuality, spirituality, the masculine, the feminine and the list can just go on! In this episode we chat about the stigma around mens health, learning to tap into the feminine, pornography, and Jacobs 4 Pillars of Strength program for men. Tune in, send it to your male friends, this is one hell of an episode! Jacob is a Mens Coach who guides men into being confident, fulfilled and happy human beings through teaching them to become stronger within their physical bodies, their mentality, their emotions and their spirituality. After experiencing multiple failed relationships, cheating and being cheated on, a suicide attempt and the almost destruction of his business, Jacob quickly learned what it was like to be ‘stuck in the rut'. Through years of personal development, internal work and developing systems and strategies to move through his own challenges, he now coaches men across the country who have low self worth, no confidence and no direction and turns them into truly STRONG men. Instagram: @jacob_weatherley YouTube: Jacob Weatherly Journey of Strength Podcast Did you love this episode? Leave a review by clicking here! Instagram: @conscioussexuality Facebook: Conscious Sexuality Website: www.conscioussexuality.com.au

The Purpose of the Spirit of Grace - Episode 2   Please fill out our survey - https://survey.libsyn.com/cdmaudio

‘The Bible and Me’ S04 Ep7: Peter Bond- Gazing upon his Grace In this episode of ‘The Bible and Me’ podcast, Nigel Watts sits down with Peter Bond Pastor of The Lighthouse Fellowship in Burnham on Sea. After almost losing sight in both his eyes, Peter talks of the blessings of his limited vision and what our nation has lacked in sharing Read the Rest... The post Peter Bond – Gazing upon his Grace- Episode 7 appeared first on Precept UK.

Amanda Polick continues the discussion from last week and settles into how we can create space for those tired hearts, why it's important to assume the best of even the "worst" people, and what to do when faced with our own game-changers. Welcome to The Grace Episode. >>> https://www.amandapolick.com

Amanda Polick continues the discussion from last week and settles into how we can create space for those tired hearts, why it's important to assume the best of even the "worst" people, and what to do when faced with our own game-changers. Welcome to The Grace Episode. >>> https://www.amandapolick.com

On today's Equipping you in Grace Episode, Dave Jenkins and Jim Newheiser discuss the present and future of biblical counseling, his work at RTS Charlotte counseling program and IBCD. What you'll hear in this episode About the Guest Dr. James (Jim) Newheiser, Jr., is the Director of the Christian Counseling Program and Associate Professor of Christian […]

On today’s Equipping you in Grace Episode, Dave Jenkins and Jim Newheiser discuss the present and future of biblical counseling, his work at RTS Charlotte counseling program and IBCD. What you’ll hear in this episode Dr. Newheiser’s role at RTS Charlotte and information about the counseling program there.The ministry of the Institute of Biblical Counseling and Discipleship ministry, how it began, and what is distinctive about this ministry. What biblical counseling is.Some distinctives of biblical counseling over and against other models of counseling.What the differences are between CCEF, ACBC, and the Biblical Counseling association. About the Guest Dr. James (Jim) Newheiser, Jr., is the Director of the Christian Counseling Program and Associate Professor of Christian Counseling and Practical Theology at RTS Charlotte. For 25 years, Dr. Newheiser served as the Preaching Pastor at Grace Bible Church in Escondido, California. He is also the Director of the Institute for Biblical Counseling and Discipleship (formerly CCEF West) and an Adjunct Professor of Biblical Counseling at The Master’s College. Furthermore, Dr. Newheiser serves as a board member at both the Biblical Counseling Coalition (BCC) and the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors (ACBC). Dr. Newheiser will oversee all the counseling degree options, including the 66 credit-hour MA in Christian Counseling (MACC). He will also teach many of the counseling courses as well as some practical theology courses. Jim has been married to his wife Caroline for 36 years and they have 3 adult children. Subscribing, sharing, and your feedback You can subscribe to Equipping You in Grace via iTunes, Google Play, or your favorite podcast catcher. If you like what you’ve heard, please consider leaving a rating and share it with your friends (it takes only takes a second and will go a long way to helping other people find the show). You can also connect with me on Twitter at @davejjenkins, on Facebook or via email to share your feedback. Thanks for listening to this episode of Equipping You in Grace!

On today's Equipping You in Grace Episode, Dave Jenkins and Matt Perman discuss the importance and relevance of the intercession of Christ to the Christian life and ministry. What you'll hear in this episode What the intercession of Christ is. Why the intercession of Christ is so vital for the Christian life and ministry. Why the […]

On today’s Equipping You in Grace Episode, Dave Jenkins and Matt Perman discuss the importance and relevance of the intercession of Christ to the Christian life and ministry. What you’ll hear in this episode What the intercession of Christ is. Why the intercession of Christ is so vital for the Christian life and ministry. Why the intercession of Christ has been so neglected in the church today. The Book of Hebrews and the High Priestly Ministry of Jesus. The connection between Jesus’ High Priestly Ministry, the Intercession of Christ, and the ministry of Christ as Advocate. The Intercession of Christ and the Christian’s prayer life. How the Intercessory ministry of Christ helps the Christian in trials, temptations, and in all of the Christian life. Some of what the Church has taught on the Intercession of Christ. Subscribing, sharing, and your feedback You can subscribe to Equipping You in Grace via iTunes, Google Play, or your favorite podcast catcher. If you like what you’ve heard, please consider leaving a rating and share it with your friends (it takes only takes a second and will go a long way to helping other people find the show). You can also connect with me on Twitter at @davejjenkins, on Facebook or via email to share your feedback. Thanks for listening to this episode of Equipping You in Grace!

On today's Equipping You in Grace Episode, Dave Jenkins and Christopher Yuan discuss theological anthropology, union with Christ, relationships, and his latest book, Holy Sexuality and the Gospel: Sex, Desire, and Relationships Shaped by God’s Grand Story (Multnomah, 2018). What you'll hear in this episode What theological anthropology is and why it's so important to understand. […]

On today’s Equipping You in Grace Episode, Dave Jenkins and Christopher Yuan discuss theological anthropology, union with Christ, relationships, and his latest book, Holy Sexuality and the Gospel: Sex, Desire, and Relationships Shaped by God's Grand Story (Multnomah, 2018). What you’ll hear in this episode What theological anthropology is and why it’s so important to understand. What holy sexuality means and why it’s important to understand. How the local church can do better at teaching and supporting singles in our congregations. What things Christians should and should not do when they minister to those identifying as gay. How the local church should reach out to those who have same-sex attraction. Union with Christ and the identity of the Christian. The importance of a biblical understanding of God to understand gender roles. The importance of Christians caring for one another in the local church. About the Guest Christopher Yuan, DMin, has taught at Moody Bible Institute for more than ten years, and his speaking ministry on faith and sexuality has reached five continents. He speaks at conferences, on college campuses, and in churches. He coauthored with his mother, Angela, their memoir Out of a Far Country: A Gay Son’s Journey to God, A Broken Mother’s Search for Hope. Dr. Yuan graduated from Moody Bible Institute in 2005, Wheaton College Graduate School in 2007 with a Master of Arts in Biblical Exegesis and received his doctorate of ministry in 2014 from Bethel Seminary. He has been interviewed in many media outlets, including Christianity Today, In the Market with Janet Parshall, The Eric Metaxas Show and The Christian Post. Visit christopheryuan.com for more information. https://www.facebook.com/christopheryuan/ www.Twitter.com/ChristopherYuan www.youtube.com/user/christopheryuan Subscribing, sharing, and your feedback You can subscribe to Equipping You in Grace via iTunes, Google Play, or your favorite podcast catcher. If you like what you’ve heard, please consider leaving a rating and share it with your friends (it takes only takes a second and will go a long way to helping other people find the show). You can also connect with me on Twitter at @davejjenkins, on Facebook or via email to share your feedback. Thanks for listening to this episode of Equipping You in Grace!

On today's Equipping You in Grace Episode, Dave Jenkins and Tim Chester discuss how the Trinity relates to knowing and communing with God, along with his latest book Enjoying God: Experience the Power and Love of God In Everyday Life (The Good Book Company, 2018). What you'll hear in this episode Why it's important that Christians […]

On today’s Equipping You in Grace Episode, Dave Jenkins and Tim Chester discuss how the Trinity relates to knowing and communing with God, along with his latest book Enjoying God: Experience the Power and Love of God In Everyday Life (The Good Book Company, 2018). What you’ll hear in this episode Why it’s important that Christians understand the two principles of knowing the Trinity and how the Trinity is the basis of our community with God in experience. Counsel to help Christians prepare for times of suffering and as they face challenging times in their Christian life. How the Bible is a means of Christian’s communion with God. The difference it makes when Christians view the Bible as a means of communion with God. Repentance as the gateway to the pleasures of God. How the principle of three in one and the principles of union and communion with Christ transform Christian’s relationship with God. About the Guest  Tim Chester is a pastor at Grace Church, Boroughbridge, UK, an author, and faculty member of Crosslands Training. He is married to Helen and has two daughters. Subscribing, sharing, and your feedback You can subscribe to Equipping You in Grace via iTunes, Google Play, or your favorite podcast catcher. If you like what you’ve heard, please consider leaving a rating and share it with your friends (it takes only takes a second and will go a long way to helping other people find the show). You can also connect with me on Twitter at @davejjenkins, on Facebook or via email to share your feedback. Thanks for listening to this episode of Equipping You in Grace!

On today’s Equipping You in Grace Episode, Dave Jenkins and Collin Hansen discuss what New Calvinism is, along with the strengths, weaknesses, and future of this movement. What you’ll hear in this episode What New Calvinism is. Strengths and weaknesses of New Calvinism. The future of New Calvinism. Collin’s proposals to the weakness of New Calvinism. The importance of the Word of God and the local Church to the Christian life. About the Guest Collin Hansen serves as editorial director for The Gospel Coalition. He is the author of several books, including Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist’s Journey With the New Calvinists and A God-Sized Vision: Revival Stories That Stretch and Stir (with John Woodbridge). He earned an MDiv at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and an undergraduate degree in journalism and history from Northwestern University. He edited Our Secular Age: Ten Years of Reading and Applying Charles Taylor and The New City Catechism Devotional, among other books. He and his wife belong to Redeemer Community Church in Birmingham, Alabama, and he serves on the advisory board of Beeson Divinity School. Subscribing, sharing, and your feedback You can subscribe to Equipping You in Grace via iTunes, Google Play, or your favorite podcast catcher. If you like what you’ve heard, please consider leaving a rating and share it with your friends (it takes only takes a second and will go a long way to helping other people find the show). You can also connect with me on Twitter at @davejjenkins, on Facebook or via email to share your feedback. Thanks for listening to this episode of Equipping You in Grace!

On today's Equipping You in Grace Episode, Dave Jenkins and Dr. Joel Beeke discuss what Reformed experiential preaching is from the Bible, church history, and in practice, along with his book Reformed Preaching: Proclaiming God’s Word from the Heart of the Preacher to the Heart of His People (Crossway, 2018). You can also pick up […]

On today’s Equipping You in Grace Episode, Dave Jenkins and Dr. Joel Beeke discuss what Reformed experiential preaching is from the Bible, church history, and in practice, along with his book Reformed Preaching: Proclaiming God's Word from the Heart of the Preacher to the Heart of His People (Crossway, 2018). You can also pick up a copy of Dr. Beeke's book for $20 dollars at RHB here. What you’ll hear in this episode What Reformed experiential preaching is. A few of the major elements of Reformed experiential preaching. A few of the best practitioners of Reformed history and what they help us learn about Reformed experiential preaching. How Pastors and teachers of the Word of God keep the objective and the subjective in balance with each other. Where effective application begins and how pastors and teachers begin to implement this into their teaching ministries. How pastors and teachers of the Word preach the gospel to the heart of their hearers. How pastors and teachers of the Word preach for the holiness of their hearers. About the Guest Joel R. Beeke (PhD, Westminster Theological Seminary) has written over one hundred books. He is president and professor of systematic theology and homiletics at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary, a pastor of the Heritage Reformed Congregation in Grand Rapids, Michigan, as well as the editor of Banner of Sovereign Grace Truth, the editorial director of Reformation Heritage Books, the president of Inheritance Publishers, and vice president of the Dutch Reformed Translation Society. Subscribing, sharing, and your feedback You can subscribe to Equipping You in Grace via iTunes, Google Play, or your favorite podcast catcher. If you like what you’ve heard, please consider leaving a rating and share it with your friends (it takes only takes a second and will go a long way to helping other people find the show). You can also connect with me on Twitter at @davejjenkins, on Facebook or via email to share your feedback. Thanks for listening to this episode of Equipping You in Grace!

On today's Equipping You in Grace Episode, Dave Jenkins and Jonathan Leeman discuss the relationship of the love of God to the Christian life and the ministry of the local church, along with his book, The Rule of Love: How the Local Church Should Reflect God’s Love and Authority (Crossway, 2018) What you'll hear in […]

On today’s Equipping You in Grace Episode, Dave Jenkins and Jonathan Leeman discuss the relationship of the love of God to the Christian life and the ministry of the local church, along with his book, The Rule of Love: How the Local Church Should Reflect God's Love and Authority (Crossway, 2018) What you’ll hear in this episode Why it’s so important to understand the character of God to understand biblical love better. Why love and authority clash against our most basic intuitions. The God-centeredness of the love of God. How the love of God relates to the mission of the church. How local church’s decisions about what to pray, sing and pray reveals what they think of the love of God. What it looks like for a church to display the love of God by loving one another as Christ has loved us day to day. About the Guest Jonathan Leeman (PhD, University of Wales) is the editorial director for 9Marks. He has written for a number of publications and is the author or editor of several books. He is also an occasional lecturer at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and adjunct professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Jonathan lives with his wife and four daughters in a suburb of Washington, DC. Subscribing, sharing, and your feedback You can subscribe to Equipping You in Grace via iTunes, Google Play, or your favorite podcast catcher. If you like what you’ve heard, please consider leaving a rating and share it with your friends (it takes only takes a second and will go a long way to helping other people find the show). You can also connect with me on Twitter at @davejjenkins, on Facebook or via email to share your feedback. Thanks for listening to this episode of Equipping You in Grace!

On today's Equipping You in Grace Episode, Dave Jenkins and Sidney Greidanus discuss how chaos-cosmos helps Christians to develop a biblical worldview, and some effective ways to preach the chaos-cosmos theme from the Scriptures, along with his book From Chaos to Cosmos: Creation to New Creation (Crossway, 2018) What you'll hear in this episode What chaos […]

On today’s Equipping You in Grace Episode, Dave Jenkins and Sidney Greidanus discuss how chaos-cosmos helps Christians to develop a biblical worldview, and some effective ways to preach the chaos-cosmos theme from the Scriptures, along with his book From Chaos to Cosmos: Creation to New Creation (Crossway, 2018) What you’ll hear in this episode What chaos and the cosmos are in the Scriptures. How studying the chaos-cosmos theme from Genesis to Revelation helps Christians to develop a biblical worldview. How the chaos-cosmos theme helps Christians to read the New Testament in light of the Old Testament. In what way does the chaos-cosmos helps Christians get a better understanding of the already/not yet of the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus. Some effective ways to preach on the chaos-cosmos theme. How the chaos-cosmos helps Christians grow in their understanding of the person and work of Christ. About the Guest Sidney Greidanus (PhD, Free University of Amsterdam) has taught at Calvin College, Calvin Theological Seminary, and The King’s College. Since his retirement from full-time teaching in 2004, he has devoted his time to writing commentaries specifically for preachers. He is the author of many books, including Sola Scriptura; Preaching Christ from the Old Testament; and The Modern Preacher and the Ancient Text. Subscribing, sharing, and your feedback You can subscribe to Equipping You in Grace via iTunes, Google Play, or your favorite podcast catcher. If you like what you’ve heard, please consider leaving a rating and share it with your friends (it takes only takes a second and will go a long way to helping other people find the show). You can also connect with me on Twitter at @davejjenkins, on Facebook or via email to share your feedback. Thanks for listening to this episode of Equipping You in Grace!

On today's Equipping You in Grace Episode, Dave Jenkins and Scott Redd discuss the importance of the Christian's identity in Christ, what it means to truly delight in the Lord and His Word, along with his book, The Wholeness Imperative: How Christ Unifies our Desires, Identity and Impact in the World (Christian Focus, 2018). What […]

On today’s Equipping You in Grace Episode, Dave Jenkins and Scott Redd discuss the importance of the Christian’s identity in Christ, what it means to truly delight in the Lord and His Word, along with his book, The Wholeness Imperative: How Christ Unifies our Desires, Identity and Impact in the World (Christian Focus, 2018). What you’ll hear in this episode Why Dr. Bavinck’s contrast between being and becoming cuts through so much confusion about Christian identity and life. Why it’s important to understand how biblical simplicity springs from the heart of God. Why it’s so important that the Christian’s delight in the Word be heartful, joyful, and satisfying. The dangers of an over-intellectualized faith. The five diagnostic principles that highlight pious talismans in the Christian life. How the Apostle John’s teaching helps Christians understand the nature of true confession and repentance in the Christian life. Why it’s vital that Christians both build the Kingdom and populate it. About the Guest Dr. Scott Redd is the President and an Associate Professor of Old Testament at the Washington, D.C. campus of Reformed Theological Seminary. Subscribing, sharing, and your feedback You can subscribe to Equipping You in Grace via iTunes, Google Play, or your favorite podcast catcher. If you like what you’ve heard, please consider leaving a rating and share it with your friends (it takes only takes a second and will go a long way to helping other people find the show). You can also connect with me on Twitter at @davejjenkins, on Facebook or via email to share your feedback. Thanks for listening to this episode of Equipping You in Grace!

On today's Equipping You in Grace Episode, Dave Jenkins and Kim Riddlebarger talk about the life, ministry, and influence of B.B. Warfield on Reformed theology in his day and today, along with his book The Lion of Princeton: B.B. Warfield as Apologist and Theologian (Lexham Press, 2016). What you'll hear in this episode A brief sketch […]

On today’s Equipping You in Grace Episode, Dave Jenkins and Kim Riddlebarger talk about the life, ministry, and influence of B.B. Warfield on Reformed theology in his day and today, along with his book The Lion of Princeton: B.B. Warfield as Apologist and Theologian (Lexham Press, 2016). What you’ll hear in this episode A brief sketch of B.B. Warfield’s life and importance to American evangelicalism and the greater Body of Christ. What we can learn from how B.B. Warfield’s approach to dealing with and responding to criticism. How Warfield’s work on the doctrine of Scripture helps Christians respond to attacks on the doctrine of Scripture today. What Christians today can learn from B.B. Warfield’s response to attacks on the person and work of Christ along with his approach to engaging these and other issues. What B.B. Warfield can teach those deeply committed to the task and work of theology in the local church about loving and caring for our wives and families. What contributions the Old Princeton theologians like Warfield made to the Church of his time and continued to make on the Church today. The legacy B.B. Warfield has left for theologians today. Why we need men again like B.B. Warfield and what these men look like in their approach to the Christian life and ministry. Learning to understand and engage the thought of others for the purpose of contending for the faith. About the Guest Kim Riddlebarger (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is senior pastor of Christ Reformed Church in Anaheim, CA, and has been a visiting professor of systematic theology at Westminster Seminary California. He is author of A Case for Amillennialism and The Man of Sin. Subscribing, sharing, and your feedback You can subscribe to Equipping You in Grace via iTunes, Google Play, or your favorite podcast catcher. If you like what you’ve heard, please consider leaving a rating and share it with your friends (it takes only takes a second and will go a long way to helping other people find the show). You can also connect with me on Twitter at @davejjenkins, on Facebook or via email to share your feedback. Thanks for listening to this episode of Equipping You in Grace!

On today's Equipping You in Grace Episode, Dave Jenkins and Josh Moody discuss the place and importance of the Scriptures in the Christian life and ministry, along with his book, How the Bible Can Change Your Life: Answers to the Ten Most Common Questions about the Bible (Christian Focus, 2018) What you'll hear in this episode […]

On today’s Equipping You in Grace Episode, Dave Jenkins and Josh Moody discuss the place and importance of the Scriptures in the Christian life and ministry, along with his book, How the Bible Can Change Your Life: Answers to the Ten Most Common Questions about the Bible (Christian Focus, 2018) What you’ll hear in this episode Learning to ask good questions of the biblical text from having sound biblical convictions about the Bible. Chronological snobbery and the living Word of God. How Christians can learn to place themselves under the Word of God. Some strategies for Christians beginning to read the Bible daily. Discovering whether people are audio or visual learners and helping them to use the right tools to help them grow in the grace of God. How church leaders and pastors can use the Scriptures effectively in their local church. Helping Christians begin to think in biblical categories and from a biblical worldview. Christians, college, and the life of the mind in the Christian tradition. Learning to contend for the faith with the Word of God. A Christian view of tolerance and engagement in the public square. An attitude of humility towards reading and hearing the preached Word of God. The importance of reading and studying the Bible in its proper context. How our convictions about the Bible affect our view of preaching the Word of God. Having a long-term strategy of training future church leaders who can think in biblical categories and from a biblical worldview. About the Guest Josh Moody (Ph.D., University of Cambridge) is the senior pastor of College Church in Wheaton. He is a pastor, author, conference speaker (Moody Founders Week, Basics Conference), and college campus speaker (Yale University, University of Illinois, Durham University, Cambridge University, Oxford University, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Southern Theological Seminary, Moody Bible Institute, Gordon Conwell Seminary, Union University, Criswell University). He is the president and founder of God Centered Life Ministries. His books include 7 Days to Change Your Life (Abingdon Press 2017), How Church Can Change Your Life (Christian Focus 2015), Preaching to the Affections (Christian Focus 2014), Journey to Joy (Crossway 2013), Jonathan Edwards and Justification (Crossway 2012), No Other Gospel (Crossway 2011), and The God-Centered Life (Regent 2007; IVP UK 2006). He was an associate fellow of Jonathan Edwards College, Yale University (2007-2011), and his Cambridge University doctorate in Theology was published in 2005. Pastor Josh grew up south of London in England, became a follower of Jesus in the Church of England, was an undergraduate at Cambridge University where he was president of the Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union. He is married to Rochelle and they have four children. Subscribing, sharing, and your feedback You can subscribe to Equipping You in Grace via iTunes, Google Play, or your favorite podcast catcher. If you like what you’ve heard, please consider leaving a rating and share it with your friends (it takes only takes a second and will go a long way to helping other people find the show). You can also connect with me on Twitter at @davejjenkins, on Facebook or via email to share your feedback. Thanks for listening to this episode of Equipping You in Grace!

On today's Equipping You in Grace Episode, Dave Jenkins and Justin Huffman discuss the biblical foundations and biblical practices of local churches, along with the importance of mentoring, and with his book, Adorned How To Grow A Biblically Beautiful Church: An Exegesis of Titus 2 (DayOne, 2018) What you'll hear in this episode The foundations for […]

On today’s Equipping You in Grace Episode, Dave Jenkins and Justin Huffman discuss the biblical foundations and biblical practices of local churches, along with the importance of mentoring, and with his book, Adorned How To Grow A Biblically Beautiful Church: An Exegesis of Titus 2 (DayOne, 2018) What you’ll hear in this episode The foundations for a healthy church. How Titus 2 addresses the local church. How churches can implement Titus 2 into the life and ministry of the local church. How essential is it that sound doctrine is taught, modeled, and practiced for the life of local churches. The role preaching should have in the life of a local church. Why it’s necessary to have an objective and transcendent standard by which to measure and motivate good works. Why Paul’s teaching in Titus means preaching must be accompanied by godly living in the preacher. The core truths Paul articulates in Titus 2 as central to the Christian gospel. The role the community of the local churches plays in good works towards one another in the local church. The dangers of living an isolated Christian life apart from the local church. Why the local church is relevant to the life of every Christian. Why every Christian needs to sit under the preached Word of God. The role of ministry leaders in mentoring others in the local church. How older men can mentor younger men and how older women can mentor younger women. Why asking for help from other Christian is a mark of Christian maturity. About the Guest Justin Huffman is a Christian, husband, father, pastor, speaker and author and thankful to God for each. A graduate of Reformed Theological Seminary, he has pastored in the USA for over fifteen years. His writing has been featured on The Gospel Coalition, Servants of Grace, For the Church, Third Millennium and elsewhere. He blogs at justinhuffman.org. Justin has been married for over twenty years to Chau, and they have four children. Subscribing, sharing, and your feedback You can subscribe to Equipping You in Grace via iTunes, Google Play, or your favorite podcast catcher. If you like what you’ve heard, please consider leaving a rating and share it with your friends (it takes only takes a second and will go a long way to helping other people find the show). You can also connect with me on Twitter at @davejjenkins, on Facebook or via email to share your feedback. Thanks for listening to this episode of Equipping You in Grace!

On today's Equipping You in Grace Episode, Dave Jenkins and Tim Chester discuss the Reformation and how it continues affects the Christian life and ministry today, along with his book, Reforming Joy: A Conversation Between Paul, the Reformers, and the Church Today (Crossway, 2018). What you'll hear in this episode How the Reformation was a rediscovery of […]

On today’s Equipping You in Grace Episode, Dave Jenkins and Tim Chester discuss the Reformation and how it continues affects the Christian life and ministry today, along with his book, Reforming Joy: A Conversation Between Paul, the Reformers, and the Church Today (Crossway, 2018). What you’ll hear in this episode How the Reformation was a rediscovery of joy in the Lord. Why it’s important that during the Reformation ultimate authority in Scripture alone was rediscovered and clearly. The dangers of relativism and subjectivism inside and outside the church. The significance of Luther’s discovery of the righteousness of God for his own life and for the Reformation as a whole. Why the rediscovering of preaching the gospel during the Reformation was so essential, along with implications for this rediscovery in our own day. Why the doctrine of adoption Is central to a robust understanding of the gospel and how Christians can grow in their knowledge of this doctrine today. What it looks like in practice for Christians to walk in the Holy Spirit. Connections between Galatians, the Reformation, and the Holy Spirit. About the Guest Tim Chester (PhD, University of Wales) is a faculty member of Crosslands and a pastor with Grace Church, Boroughbridge, North Yorkshire. He is an author or coauthor of over thirty books, including A Meal with Jesus; Reforming Joy; and, with Michael Reeves, Why the Reformation Still Matters. Subscribing, sharing, and your feedback You can subscribe to Equipping You in Grace via iTunes, Google Play, or your favorite podcast catcher. If you like what you’ve heard, please consider leaving a rating and share it with your friends (it takes only takes a second and will go a long way to helping other people find the show). You can also connect with me on Twitter at @davejjenkins, on Facebook or via email to share your feedback. Thanks for listening to this episode of Equipping You in Grace!

On today's Equipping You in Grace Episode, Dave Jenkins and Dr. J.P. Moreland discuss the dangers and challenges of scientism, along with how to confront it, and how it effects young adults, along with his book, Scientism, and Secularism- Learning to Respond to a Dangerous Ideology (Crossway, 2018). What you'll hear in this episode In what […]

On today’s Equipping You in Grace Episode, Dave Jenkins and Dr. J.P. Moreland discuss the dangers and challenges of scientism, along with how to confront it, and how it effects young adults, along with his book, Scientism, and Secularism- Learning to Respond to a Dangerous Ideology (Crossway, 2018). What you’ll hear in this episode In what way scientism is not a doctrine of science but a doctrine of philosophy, specifically epistemology. In what way scientism is not only self-refuting but also the enemy of science itself. A definition of scientiism. How Pastors and ministry leaders can help Christians understand the challenges and dangers of scientism. Why it matters that Christians have a good understanding of the Christian faith and science. How Christians can combat scientism with a biblical worldview. What effect scientism is having in public schools, specifically on college and university campuses with young adults. About the Guest J. P. Moreland (PhD, University of Southern California) is distinguished professor of philosophy at Biola University. He is an author of, contributor to, or editor of over ninety books, including The Soul: How We Know It's Real and Why It Matters. Subscribing, sharing, and your feedback You can subscribe to Equipping You in Grace via iTunes, Google Play, or your favorite podcast catcher. If you like what you’ve heard, please consider leaving a rating and share it with your friends (it takes only takes a second and will go a long way to helping other people find the show). You can also connect with me on Twitter at @davejjenkins, on Facebook or via email to share your feedback. Thanks for listening to this episode of Equipping You in Grace!

On today's Equipping You in Grace Episode, Dave Jenkins and Dr. Benjamin Quinn discuss how Christians can learn to connect their faith to their work, how to deal with challenging situations in the workplace, along with his book with Walter Strickland, Every Waking Hour An Introduction to Work and Vocation as Christians (Lexham Press, 2016). […]

On today’s Equipping You in Grace Episode, Dave Jenkins and Dr. Benjamin Quinn discuss how Christians can learn to connect their faith to their work, how to deal with challenging situations in the workplace, along with his book with Walter Strickland, Every Waking Hour An Introduction to Work and Vocation as Christians (Lexham Press, 2016). What you’ll hear in this episode The importance of every member ministry in the local church. How work is the hand that animates the glove of vocation. The importance of having a good balance between work and rest in the Christian life. Learning to deal with a difficult employee as a manager. Having good and clear expectations of volunteers and employees in ministry. Talking to your boss about issues in the workplace. Learning to deal with difficult situations with your manager as an employee. Advice for Pastors and Christians looking to connect their Christian faith to their work. The relationship between Kingdom, mission, discipleship and the Christian life. How Pastors can learn to equip the people of God in their day to day work. About the Guest Benjamin T. Quinn serves as associate dean for institutional effectiveness and assistant professor of theology and history of ideas at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and The College at Southeastern. Quinn received his PhD in theology from the University of Bristol, UK, and lives with his wife and three children in Wake Forest, NC. Subscribing, sharing, and your feedback You can subscribe to Equipping You in Grace via iTunes, Google Play, or your favorite podcast catcher. If you like what you’ve heard, please consider leaving a rating and share it with your friends (it takes only takes a second and will go a long way to helping other people find the show). You can also connect with me on Twitter at @davejjenkins, on Facebook or via email to share your feedback. Thanks for listening to this episode of Equipping You in Grace!

On today’s Equipping You in Grace Episode, Dave Jenkins and Dr. Bryan Chapell discuss what expository preaching is, challenges facing pastors today, along with the third edition of Christ Centered Preaching Redeeming the Expository Sermon (Baker Academic, 2018). What you’ll hear in this episode What expository preaching is and how pastors can be sure they are preaching expository sermons. A brief history of expository preaching. Some of the most significant challenges for the young man fresh out of seminary and beginning to preach. The biblical convictions behind expository preaching. Some of the most significant challenges facing pastors in the current cultural climate. The role spiritual disciplines should take in sermon preparation. What a redemptive approach to preaching should look like as pastors prepare expository sermons. Principles of application that should guide pastors as they work on the application section of their sermons. About the Guest Bryan Chapell (PhD, Southern Illinois University) is senior pastor of Grace Presbyterian Church in Peoria, Illinois, as well as president emeritus at Covenant Theological Seminary and distinguished professor of preaching at Knox Theological Seminary. Chapell is a widely traveled speaker and the author of numerous books. Subscribing, sharing, and your feedback You can subscribe to Equipping You in Grace via iTunes, Google Play, or your favorite podcast catcher. If you like what you’ve heard, please consider leaving a rating and share it with your friends (it takes only takes a second and will go a long way to helping other people find the show). You can also connect with me on Twitter at @davejjenkins, on Facebook or via email to share your feedback. Thanks for listening to this episode of Equipping You in Grace!

On today’s Equipping You in Grace Episode, Dave Jenkins and Matt Perman discuss how the sufficiency affects how we approach the Christian life and ministry, and respond to attacks to the sufficiency of Scripture. What you’ll hear in this episode A definition of the sufficiency of Scripture. How the sufficiency of Scripture helps Christians live before the face of God and for His glory. Implicit and explicit denials of the sufficiency of Scripture by how we live and behave. A consistent approach to the entirety of Scriptures. The biblical counseling movement and secular psychology. An orthodox view of Scripture and biblical counseling. The problem with scientism and evolution in light of a biblical worldview. How biblical convictions help Christians to develop a biblical worldview. The Roman Catholic Church and the sufficiency of Scripture. The sufficiency of Scripture and church history. The sufficiency of Scripture and knowing God’s will. The sufficiency of Scripture and growth in the grace of God. The sufficiency of Scripture, major life decisions, and seeking the advice of fellow godly Christians. The sufficiency of Scripture and the importance of daily Bible reading. The sufficiency of Scripture and life and ministry in the local church. Subscribing, sharing, and your feedback You can subscribe to Equipping You in Grace via iTunes, Google Play, or your favorite podcast catcher. If you like what you’ve heard, please consider leaving a rating and share it with your friends (it takes only takes a second and will go a long way to helping other people find the show). You can also connect with me on Twitter at @davejjenkins, on Facebook or via email to share your feedback. Thanks for listening to this episode of Equipping You in Grace!

Show notes for this episode can be found at: transformingmission.org/014 Are you a disciple? In this episode, we explore six characteristics of a disciple. Briefly, a disciple of Jesus is someone who: 1) Embraces the mission If our mission is to make disciples of Jesus Christ and transform the world, embracing the mission involves helping people become more like Jesus. 2) Practices the Faith This is embodied in the heart, mind, and work of Christ. 3) Is in a Relationship with Christ, a Christian community, and their local context Here we talk about the three-fold relationships that exist. You might find it easier to remember it this way: the Up, In and Out relationships. 4) Is Present Being present is about living an integrated, authentic life. 5) Serves with Others  Here you ask the question, what can we be doing that no one else is doing? We also explore the simplest act of service EVERYONE can do. 6) Embraces their Local Context Knowing and embracing the local context around the local church. Remember, a disciple loves like Jesus because they've been loved by Jesus. Mentioned in this Episode: Episode 013: The Mission of God - We Are Sent People HOPE Episode 002 - HOSPITALITY: Responding to God's Embrace Episode 003 - Offering Christ: Uncovering God's Grace Episode 004 - Practices: Growing in Grace Episode 005 - Engagement:Sharing God's Love in Service The Seven Questions Episode 007: Setting the Foundation with Purpose and Presence Episode 008: Bridging the Needs and Assets of Your Mission Field Episode 009: Leveraging Relationships and Partnerships for Kingdom Impact Episode 011: Sorting the 7 Questions The homepage for LeaderCast is at TransformingMission.org/podcast  

Jenn T. Grace – Episode 93 – How Are Your New Year’s Resolutions Holding Up As We Enter the 4th Quarter?     Jenn T Grace:              You are listening to the Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional Podcast, episode 93.   Introduction:              Welcome to the Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional Podcast; the podcast dedicated to helping LGBTQ professionals and business owners grow their business and careers through the power of leveraging their LGBTQ identities in their personal brand. You'll learn how to market your products and services both broadly, and within the LGBTQ community. You'll hear from incredible guests who are leveraging the power of their identity for good, as well as those who haven't yet started, and everyone in between. And now your host. She teaches straight people how to market to gay people, and gay people how to market themselves. Your professional lesbian, Jenn - with two N's - T Grace.   Jenn T Grace:              Well hello and welcome to the Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional Podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and today we are in episode 93, and it is the middle of September of 2016. So I have a whole host of podcasts that I am about to record for you. So for the last I would say probably five, six, maybe even seven episodes I have had those kind of ready to roll for a while, and now I'm in the middle of batch recording a whole bunch of new awesome guests for you as well. However that is just about to begin as we're in the middle of September, so what I would like to do for you today is replay an episode from earlier this year which is episode number 75, and my intent here is to just give you an update on some of the things discussed in 75, then you can listen to episode 75 itself, and when you come back for a new podcast episode number 94, it will be a brand new interview. So I've really been trying to focus all of 2016 on bringing you amazing interviews with just really awesome people, and I want to continue that trend. So for the remainder of 2016 I really want to be bringing you interview after interview after interview of just really amazing people, and I have a whole awesome line-up of people to do just that for you.                                     So quickly in episode 75, which I believe was the first episode of 2016, I was talking about New Year's resolutions and essentially what things that I was up to, and I recently saw an article that said that people in September start to re-visit their New Year's resolutions essentially because now that the summer has long come and passed, people are going back to school, people are getting back into their work routine, that now's the time that people are starting to think about where they are in relation to accomplishing their New Year's resolutions or not. So for me, I had talked about three specific resolutions, two of which I thought were going to be fairly low-key if you will and not too difficult to achieve, and in reality I found out that it's a little bit harder than I thought. And then the third one just was difficult to begin with, and I'm actually still sticking to it quite well.                                     So the first one that I had mentioned publicly in January that my plan was, was to only have one cup of coffee per day for the entirety of 2016. I can tell you that I'm still doing pretty good on that, I was only having two cups a day so it was not a major crisis, and actually I'm trying to do half decaf now because I recognize that caffeine is a drug even though it's a common drug that we all use, and I'm just trying to be mindful of my health and all that fun stuff. But I'm doing pretty good. So the status update on that one is that I'm doing pretty good, I'm sure there's been a day or two here or there that I've had more than a cup but generally speaking I'm totally on track with that.                                     The second one that I talked about was not drinking in 2016, and I thought I was going to be a little bit better at this than I was. So I last had a beer on New Year's Eve, and I still haven't had any beer since, and we are in the middle of September. However I did fall off the wagon if you will in the middle of July. I fell off the wagon- and mind you when I say 'fell off the wagon' it's not like I started binge drinking because that's not the case, but I did start drinking gin and tonic again in July. So I did make it seven months before having a drink of any kind. So prior to that, from January through July, I did not have a single drink and I was really proud of myself on that, until one day my wife said to me, "Why are you doing this to yourself? It's not like you have a drinking problem, it's not like you needed to do this, I don't know why you continue to torture yourself over whether or not you should have a drink," and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it hit me that she was so right. So thinking about it I'm like, 'She's right, why am I doing this to myself? Do I have a reason for not doing this one activity that wasn't a problem to begin with?' So I decided what the hell, it's really not a big issue, I'm just going to go back to my norm which is having like maybe a drink or two at most in a given week. So again it's not a real issue.                                     But anyway, I did want to share that with you that I indeed broke my own resolution. So not everyone is perfect, and despite your best intentions sometimes your resolutions aren't really aligned well and they're not really helpful, and I think that goes for business as well. Sometimes we make goals that aren't in our best interest, and we stick to them out of ego and not necessarily because of any other reason. So I think this was one of those things that I had this resolution based on ego, based on just being able to say that I have done it, and in reality it was kind of stupid to do to being with. So I just threw that one aside.                                     Anyway the third one that I wanted to mention to you is that I declared publicly in January that I would be training for a full marathon, and that full marathon is on January 8th of 2017. So I am about four months away from running a full 26.2 miles, and that training is still going really, really well. At the time of this recording which is just a few days before the 15th- actually you'll be listening to this on September 15th which is Thursday, I just finished another half marathon on Sunday, and obviously I haven't run it yet so I don't know what my time is but I'm hoping it's better than the last one I did.                                     So I wanted to just kind of share that with you, especially for people who've been listening to this podcast for a really long time now, because I remember specifically when I decided I was going to start running, and that was August of 2013, on a whim I just decided randomly that I was going to start running, and I really was talking a lot about that journey, and that process, and how related it is to business, and kind of entrepreneurship, and all that stuff when I started doing that. So all of those old podcast episodes definitely have snippets of me kind of talking about the progress, and what I'm up to, and I still have people asking me about it. I was just at a conference a few weeks ago and I had people asking me like what the status of my running was. So I appreciate that you do pay attention to those things, and it is of continued interest to you. So as long as you are still interested, I will keep sharing.                                     So now you'll listen to the previous episode and hear me rambling on and on about all my reasons why I decided to put these two- these three resolutions in place, and now you at least hear the reality of what actually happened for them.                                     So one other thing I want to mention before I just hop into episode 75, is that I am still going gangbusters on helping people write their books in 2016 and beyond. So a lot of what's talked about in 75 is around the benefits of writing a book, what it can do for your brand, how it can help build your business, why today is the best day to just kind of start and get it done. So I wanted to just kind of share that with you because as of right now on September 15th I have helped twelve more people since January. So when I first recorded this in January I had already worked with a bunch of people previously, but as of this time now nine months into the year, I've helped twelve new people with their books. One person has already published hers, and that is Lindsay Felderman, and her book is referenced in the interview I did with her in episode number 87. Her book is titled 'Walking through Walls: Finding the Courage to be Your True Self.' So in episode 87 I kind of interview her on what it was like to put her book together, and really it was actually a really fun episode to produce.                                     And then I have another author who is about to publish her book in the beginning of October, so she will be one of the interviews that is to come in probably October or maybe even November, we will be hearing from her specifically on her experience with publishing a book, and what that's doing for her personal brand and all that great stuff.                                     So I'm really happy that I have helped twelve new people in the last nine months get their stories out into the world, at least get them started on the path of helping them write their books. So I bring this up because on October 3rd, that is when I am launching the third session of this year of the Purpose Driven Author's Academy. You've certainly heard me talk about it on the show, on previous shows, in my social media, if you're on my mailing list you've certainly seen it there too. So the Purpose Driven Author's Academy is really my online program that walks you through the entirety of getting your book concept narrowed down, to writing the book, to publishing it, to marketing it. So the whole gamut. It's a fourteen week program and the next session starts on October 3rd. So this will be the third one that I have done in 2016. All people who've participated in it are doing amazing, kicking some ass, it's really awesome. So if you're interested in that you can certainly go to www.PurposeDrivenAuthors.com, www.PurposeDrivenAuthor.com, or you can just go to www.JennTGrace.com and there's a button right on the homepage that will bring you to information about the program itself.                                     So that is all I wanted to share with you in today's episode, so if any of this is interesting, please feel free to reach out to me via email, Facebook, any social media, you name it I am there, and I am here to serve you. So please enjoy this repeat of episode number 75, and I will see you in a brand new episode in number 94 at the end of the month. Thank you so much and I'll talk to you soon.   Well hello and welcome to the New Year. I am looking forward to a great 2016, and I hope you are too. Now that we're in the new year, you're probably thinking of all the new year resolutions you could be focused on, or should be focused on, and today I want to share with you a couple of the resolutions that I'm working on, but actually how that's going to parlay into my new business focus for 2016, and basically how the podcast ducktails into that focus in 2016. So for my loyal listeners, what I'm going to be doing in 2016 is slightly different than previously in the last four years that I've been doing this podcast, but it really still kind of falls in line with much of what I've been doing.                                     But what I want to start with today is talking to you about a couple of the resolutions that I have for 2016, and none of them are too far of a stretch if you will from what I'm already doing. So I'm feeling pretty confident that I'll have a fairly high success rate. But what I've noticed is that unfortunately a lot of people create these monster resolutions; like just completely out of any realm of possibility, and when you do that, you're creating this wildly unattainable goal, and you're likely not going to hit it, and that's not what I want to share with you. What I want to be sharing with you are ways in which you can attain your goal. And I've noticed that people create these really unattainable goals for just a couple of different reasons. Most of the time it's because they aren't in the right frame of mind to achieve them, so when they create this goal it's not even something that they can really achieve, and sometimes this is done intentionally and sometimes not. And then a lot of times it's because people don't really have the right skillsets to pull it off, and they're not really committed to developing those skillsets to pull it off. So this is absolutely going to kind of fall into place with what I am going to be doing in 2016, and what I'm going to share with you.                                     But to start, here are just a couple of my non-business New Year resolutions if you will.                                     So for example, one of them is to drink only one cup of coffee a day versus two. Like I said, I'm not stretching too much with most of mine, and I'm only going to share three of them because the third one is going to be what really kind of plays into what I'm up to. But going down from one cup of coffee- I mean from two cups of coffee to one isn't much of a stretch, although I say this now and I'm not really sure how the caffeine withdrawals will go down. But as of right now it doesn't seem like it's that much of a stretch. I've already had my one cup of the day and I'm on to green tea, so I'm feeling confident that for the last four days- because today is January 4th as I'm recording this, I've been able to achieve that goal. So fingers crossed, goal number one, resolution number one should be attainable.                                     Now resolution number two on the other hand is to not have- this is going to sound crazy- not have a single drop of alcohol in 2016. And I've been hemming and hawing over whether or not I wanted to do this resolution for a couple of weeks thinking it's really not that difficult for me to not drink, because I'm not a heavy drinker in any way, so I might have a drink, maybe two, three at most in any given week, and I know people who drink that on a daily basis. So to me, it's not really- I don't think it's that difficult to not have any, however I don't know that for certain. So I've been thinking and hemming and hawing saying, "Is this really worth having a resolution over because what am I going to gain from this?" It's not like drinking is a problem in my life that I need to tackle or handle, but at the same time I'm really focused on my health and I know that extra sugar from alcohol is really not helping me, so why am I going to take in additional calories over something that I'm not even really enjoying so to speak? So that is another goal. And again, it's pretty much for purely health reasons, not because I have a problem that I'm trying to curb or anything like that, but really I just want to keep continuing on the path of getting healthier as I go. And 2015 I did I think a really good job continuing my health, et cetera, that I had previously been doing since back in 2012, 2013. So I'm still on a really good path in terms of my health.                                     Now this is where the third resolution comes in, and it's much more of a beast, and I have not publicly shared this information with anyone yet, so you my loyal listener are the first one to hear it other than my poor wife who deals with my random ramblings, and then a couple of close friends. But 2016 is going to be the year that I actually train for a full marathon. And now for you who may have been listening since the early beginnings of this podcast, you may recall that I started running mid-way through the first year of this podcast. And I was scared out of my mind, I had no idea what I was doing. I willingly shared all of my fears, and my trepidations with 'should I be doing this? Should I not be doing this?' And the reason I started running, and the same reason why I'm going to try not to drink in 2016, is for health reasons. So I had lost a lot of weight in 2012 and 2013, and it was about fifty pounds, and I just wanted to make sure that I could keep the weight off, and I've had no trouble doing that since 2012. So I feel fortunate that I'm going on a fourth and into a fifth year of keeping weight loss off, but a lot of it has to do with running because it's just a great activity, it's a solo activity or you can make it a group activity if you choose to. But I prefer to run solo because it gives me time to think about what I need to be doing, how to prioritize my business, and I think the best thing is that you're only competing against yourself, you're not worried about other people's time. So it's really kind of a solo 'let me try to see how good I can be and not compare myself to other people,' which I find to be really kind of peaceful in a lot of ways; and I am a very, very competitive person, as is my wife so it's a good thing she doesn't run because she would be the one person on this earth that I would be trying to compete against. So fortunately for me she does not. So anyway- a little tangent.                                     So tying this into the business, and tying this into today's episode, I wanted to share with you a little bit about this third resolution on my list, and it's not to run the marathon this year, which is 26.2 miles for those of you not familiar with marathon distance. But it's how I'm going about breaking down this really BHAG- as people call it in the business world, the Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal. That big monster of a goal, how I'm breaking it down to come up with a very clear plan that is attainable for me to achieve this goal. And now I won't be doing this until this time- almost exactly this time in 2017. So the race itself is on January 8th of 2017, and this is being released on January 7th. So I had to break down this goal into a variety of bite-sized chunks, and it really just started with picking a couple of races that I wanted to run this year which were half marathons; so that's 13.1 miles. And I ran two half marathons last year, and I'm planning on doing two more this year. So going back to the whole resolutions being attainable, running two this year should be no problem whatsoever, because I did two already last year. But what I'm trying to do is increase my speed just a little bit. So I'm not trying to go nuts, and I'm not going completely haywire, I'm really just focused on something that I think is attainable to me personally.                                     So for me this goal is something that I have to work on the entire year in order to be successful in doing it. If I do not stick to my plan, it's going to go rogue- I'm going to go rogue and it will go off the rails really quickly. So I spent about three hours over the weekend and I put together my plan. I started off with where I'm going to be racing, when I'll be racing, how many miles I have to do every week, how many times I have to run a week, and I went to my Google calendar and I put every single one of those in there, and I time blocked every single spot. So I know that every Sunday morning at or around 9:30 in the morning, that's when I'll be doing my 'long run,' which is usually seven to 26 miles at this point. It could be anywhere in between. So I have my plan super clear, super focused for what I want to achieve for my physical fitness in 2016.                                     Now it's a matter of figuring out what your goal is going to be for 2016 and how you could be laser focused on it too. Because I swear to you if you asked anybody in my life, and you can still ask them now, if they think Jenn plus running equals a good idea, I'm convinced that the vast majority of them would say, "You're out of your mind. Jenn will never run, Jenn has never run," et cetera. Like I had a pretty good reputation growing up as an athlete, but I was a pitcher for fast pitch softball, therefore I spent most of my time on the mound and helping control the game rather than physically running. And my softball coach happened to also be the track coach, therefore he had us doing running exercises that I felt were irrelevant to the game of softball, and I was terrible at it at all times. So my point being, if I can run a full marathon, I swear to you there is nothing in your life that you cannot physically do, or mentally tackle, or emotionally tackle, if I can do this. I am hell bent convinced of that, and I would love to talk with you if there's something that's really kind of blocking you, and you feel like you can't achieve it. Because if you break it down into bite-sized, manageable, day-to-day tasks, you can totally do it. In the case of running, it's honestly a matter of putting one foot in front of another for 26.2 miles. Of course there's a lot of other things that go into it, but basically speaking it's one foot in front of another.                                     With your goal, I don't know what that goal might look like at this moment, but what I want to talk to you about is authorship, and how writing a book can be your goal for 2016. And if it is your goal in 2016, how writing a book and running a marathon are identical processes. It might sound completely strange at this moment and so early in this podcast, but I can assure you that doing both of them are very, very similar processes. And my goal in 2016 is to help figure it out for you, and make your life a hell of a lot easier in writing your first book.                                     So now hopefully I have your interest piqued in this whole authorship thing, and how this kind of ties back into my business and the podcast. So just for a little bit of a recap, this podcast is going into its fourth year; so I did it all of 2013, all of 2014, all of 2015, and now we're entering into the fourth year. And I have done 74 previous episodes as we are in our 75th episode right now. Each of them, they're 45 minutes to an hour long. I also had another thirty episodes that were about a half an hour each that were part of a special series I did back in 2013 called '30 Days, 30 Voices: Stories from America's LGBT Business Leaders." So this is really kind of the 105th episode if you will of content around what my business does. And my tagline is that I teach straight people how to market to gay people, and gay people how to market themselves. Much of this podcast, and much of my business has really focused on the former, with really helping straight allies market to the LGBT community in an appropriate way, in a proper way, in an authentic way being genuine. So I really focus on helping people communicate better and market better. And most often I'm working with individuals who are in some kind of service-based business. So they are an attorney, or they're an accountant, or a financial advisor; a lot of people that have longer sales cycles. So it takes longer to build a relationship, therefore it also makes- it gives you more of a window of opportunity to kind of stick your foot in your mouth, and get yourself in trouble. So I have spent a lot of time really focusing on that aspect of my business, and that's really what my two- actually three. The two print books that I have, and then the eBook that I have, all three of them really focus on communications, marketing, really tactical stuff for how to avoid putting yourself into situations that is uncomfortable, makes you uneasy, et cetera.                                     Now while the focus has been to help straight allies in this, I've also helped LGBT people in this process as well, because there's a lot of things that even LGBT people are doing that weren't the most ideal thing. So while the focus has kind of been on the former of I teach straight people how to market to gay people, I've really been teaching gay people how to market themselves as well in very similar ways that I've been teaching the straight allies too. So the previous 74, or 104 if you're counting the Thirty Days series. They've all really been focused on kind of a combination, and it's all been around marketing, it's all been around how to get to your target audience, how to talk to them the right way, how to communicate to them in the right way, et cetera. So in early 2015, I think it was in February actually, I made a conscious effort in my business to say, "You know what? I'm want to focus a little bit more of my time on coaching individuals, coaching LGBT people, and working on the second half of that tagline, of teaching gay people how to market themselves more specifically than my advice that kind of crosses over to the ally community as well."                                     Now with that being said, I realized that there's a very clear pattern with who I work with. With the type of business owner, or the type of entrepreneur, or LGBT person that I work with. It seems like there's a very clear commonality that took me a little bit too long to see the pattern in all of them. But now that I have seen the pattern, it's very clear to me anyway that this is where I need to focus my business in 2016, and focus this podcast as well in 2016. And for allies listening to this, that does not mean in any way that you will not find really good, relevant information that is designed for you. You will absolutely still find a lot of value, I assure you of that. However I am focusing on story telling. And guess what? LGBT people or not, everyone has a story to share. Everyone has some kind of message that they want to get out to the world, and a lot of people are dreaming of being authors but they are frozen in fear with all that comes with being an author.                                     So while I'm talking specifically about wanting to help LGBT people share their stories, if you're an ally and you're listening to this, and you have a story that you want to share too, and you want to be an author to benefit your business, you listening to this podcast shows me that you are open-minded, that you're an ally, that you are someone who likely has a really good story to share, and I want to help you too. I'm not excluding you in any way, shape, or form, so please don't take this as feeling exclusionary because that's not my intention at all. And as I start talking about some of the books that I've been working on, helping people with, you'll see that it's been a really good mix of helping LGBT people and allies. So there's really no exclusion there by any means, because I do love you and I adore you.                                     So now what I've noticed is that I have been working with a lot of authors, and it kind of happened in a very unintentional way. And I've always realized that I work with a lot of creative people. So I really like working with creative people because I personally feel like I'm a pretty good balance of right brain and left brain, so while I can get on these paths of shiny-object-itis if you will, and really excited about something, and want to try all these new things and be really creative, I'm also equal parts logical, and reasonable, and rational, and think, 'Okay is this something that I should really be doing right now?' So I've managed to kind of tap into being able to use both sides of my brain, and it's benefited- I think, and I'm sure they would say too, it's benefitted the people that I've worked with individually a great deal because I can connect with them as the creatives that they want to be, but I can also say, "Alright let's be realistic about this and figure out how you can actually do any of what you're talking about doing right now." And writing a book is one of those things that's just- it seems like a really incredibly daunting task, and you might even be thinking right now, 'Why would I want to put myself through the hell of writing a book?' And I say you should absolutely do it because it will be a life-changer and a game-changer in your business, I can attest to that personally. But I also know that to be true for those that I've worked with.                                     So let me just share with you a couple of the projects that I've worked on, and you'll see very quickly the patterns and the commonalities here, even though it took me a little bit longer to recognize that this is absolutely where I should be focusing my attention. So like I said in early 2015 I had reached out and said, "Hey I would love to work on some more one-on-one coaching," and as a result of just sending an email to my list I had a handful of people say, "Yes I would love to work with you one-on-one." Out of that handful of people, about 30% of them were thinking about writing a book. So I don't know if it's because I have written a book that others have just trusted in me that I can help them write a book, but somehow that's kind of evolved over time. And in 2013 I wrote my first book, and that one is, 'But You Don't Look Gay,' and I'm sure you picked up on the humor and the sarcastic things that come out of my mouth, so I really kind of started that one off strong with, 'But You Don't Look Gay.' And there is reason for why I titled it that, it's written about in the book, and I've certainly talked about it on the podcast at great length. But it's really the six steps to creating your LGBT marketing strategy. And again it's designed for allies, but it's really applicable to LGBT people too. That was the first time that I had written a book, and I had not a single clue as to what I was doing. Literally no clue whatsoever. I've always enjoyed writing, and when I started this iteration of my business if you will, I started in November of 2012 writing blogs. And I was writing blogs addressed to people that I knew who had questions who needed answers, and I knew if I could answer their one question in email, why not throw it on the blog and educate some other people in the process? So that's really how my whole business started.                                     So I started writing this book when I started blogging basically. So I put all of the blogs aside, and I started to just kind of create this library of content, and then after I had probably- I want to say it was at least over 100 blog posts, I said, "Let me kind of organize this, add to it, take things away, and make a book out of it." And that was really the first book in 2013. Now I still had no idea what I was doing in terms of organizing the content, in terms of how do I get it on Amazon, how do I get a book cover designed, how do I get an ISBN number, how do I market this? Marketing is my background so the marketing piece actually was the easier piece, but everything else I honestly had no idea what I was doing.                                     So fast forward to 2014 when I write my second book. That one was a breeze comparatively, and it's also- it's not quite twice the length, but it's significantly larger than the first book. So it's just knowing what I know now, and knowing what I did in 2013, all of the mistakes I made because I made every mistake you can possibly hit, I think I did. But when I went to do it again in 2014 it was so easy; so, so easy. Now the hard part is actually writing the book. That to me is the harder part. So physically writing is what you need to focus on. So if you want to write a book, I can help you, I can shortcut everything but the actual physical writing part. However I do have some tips and tricks around that, too. But in 2013 I was working with a small group of other marketers, and just kind of a Mastermind group if you will, where we get together once a month, and we still do, and this goes back to about 2013. We still get together, and we just brainstorm ideas and I had shown them that I had written my first book, and one of the people in my group- or it's a couple, so the husband and wife, two people that I work very closely with, they decided that they also wanted to write a book. So when I began helping them, it was in a very informal way, and it was really just me wanting to help peers of mine shortcut the process. So I provided my template that I used for my first book, I said, "Here it is, it's in a Word document, here's the font I chose, here's the heading font, here's the paragraph font." I had very specific reasons for why I chose those based on design principles, and I just said, "Here. Take it, use it as a template, make your own book out of it." And then of course as they were going through it, I was one of the proof-readers for it, I gave them a testimonial; like we really just kind of worked together, again in a very informal way. So their book has been out for going on three years. I think they put it out in 2013, I could get up from my desk and walk over to it and tell you exactly, but I will put a link to their book in the show notes on today's podcast episode which you can get by going to www.JennTGrace.com/75 because we're in episode number 75. So if you want to check out that book you could certainly do so by clicking on that link, and it's on Amazon. So that was kind of the first time that I helped somebody else, and it was really just me helping friends get their stories out there.                                     So this happened a second time within that same group, but it wasn't until earlier in this last year, in 2015. So somebody else in my group who is also a marketer; he was working on his book and we basically did the same thing. So it's the same two people in that group and him, so now it's the three of us teaching this one other person in our group what we did. So I shared my stuff with Mike and Maria; they're the ones that did the first book. And then myself, Mike, and Maria showed the other Mike in our group how to do his book. And now his learning curve was shortened dramatically as well because Maria and Mike had gone through all of the same kind of hiccups and failures and successes of what they used from my starting point when I gave them my book information.                                     So as you can see, the more times this kind of happens, the easier it really becomes for everybody involved. So Mike- the other Mike was very grateful and acknowledging me as helping him in getting that book done, I did a good proofread of it, I edited a little bit, and that came out in early or mid-2015 I want to say. So that book also available on Amazon which I will include in the show notes.                                     So now I had my two books, and their two books already, so that's four we're already at. And then I had a third eBook that I'd released in 2015 earlier this year about marriage equality. So five books already kind of under the belt.                                     Now the process for all five books was a little bit different, and it really just kind of varied based on the size of book, what the intention of the book was, so am I writing this to get more business? Am I writing this to become a well-known authority in my space? Am I writing this to give it to my clients to just give them something to hold them over between coaching sessions? Or between projects? So there's a lot of different reasons you might want a book, and it's a matter of kind of identifying what those are, and then creating the best book that's going to get you that end result.                                     So now if we talk about 2015 a little bit more, I have been working with three people in particular throughout all of 2015, and we'll be going into 2016 on books of theirs. So one of theirs was previously a guest on this podcast, Ann Townsend. She has written a book called 'LGBTQ: Outing My Christianity." She and I have been working together for about going on I think a year and a half or so, so we've been working together for a while. She already has one book written, she's working on a couple of others, and we work in a one-on-one capacity, and just helping her just kind of shortcut the process where possible, making introductions to her to people in my network that could be good contributors. So it's again, while it's in a formal coaching capacity, I'm really kind of just sharing my knowledge and wisdom to a friend, and just trying to help as much as I can just make the process a little bit easier for her. And since she's already done one book, it's made life a little bit easier for her because she kind of already knows how the process works.                                     So that's just one person that I have been helping in a somewhat informal capacity. But then the two people- the two books that I have worked on in 2015 have been in a very, very, very formal capacity. And one of them just launched in November, so just a couple of months ago, and it's by Tony Ferraiolo and his book is called 'Artistic Expressions of Transgender Youth.' And his book is on Amazon now, and I helped him with the entirety of this book. From choosing a book cover, to figuring out what stock and weight of paper that we wanted to use, what size, what printer we wanted to go with, how we were going to get it on Amazon, how we were going to market it, who the end audience is; you name it, we have worked on it together, including putting together a book signing that was in December of 2015. So his book has been really, really hands on, very, very tactical, here's how I shortcutted the process for me, but what we learned in the process is that Amazon does not print hard cover books. So if you want to go use CreateSpace which is an Amazon book creation tool, there are no hard cover options; or at least when we were looking for him, or the size that we were looking for. So we had to go print separately which just creates a whole other level of chaos, complications, et cetera. It's also more expensive, but we've been going through that process for much of 2015, and now that is down to a science. So he is going to be working on volumes two, three, and I think a fourth one; all of which are going to be as easy as can be because we've already learned from doing the first one of that type of style- that style of a book if you will.                                     Now it was at Tony's book signing that I knew for a fact that I needed to focus on helping people share their stories in 2016. There is no two ways around it. If I could identify an epiphany or an 'ah-ha' type of moment, it was absolutely at his book signing. So his book- and he's also been a guest on this podcast as well, so I'll put a link into that in the show notes too, and the book. But his book is a picture book, and it is art drawn by transgender children who range from as young as six to as old as I think 21. And he asks them a question, "If you had all the money in the world, what would you buy?" And they're kids, they're young people, so they just draw what they feel. And then they write what their drawing means on the back of it. So we compiled all of this into a picture book. So I think a good marketing play for us would be to be packaging the book with tissues because it is a tear jerker, I assure you of this. And it's so good, so if you're doing anything in the transgender space of the LGBT community, this book is seriously amazing, and I don't say that because I had any part of it. It's just the content of it is amazing.                                     So for his book we did a book signing in New Haven, Connecticut, and one of the kids who is in the book showed up with their mother, and we had a special stack of books waiting for the kids who were in the book to come and get a special signed copy of the book. Additionally Tony had his own copy where he wanted the kids that were in the book to sign their page of the book. So for Tony, this is a life changing experience to produce this book, because it's so much of his hard work, and so much of his story, and the kids that he works with and their journey, put in a very neat package for the outside world to understand. However, it didn't occur to me- and I guess it did but it wasn't as profound as the actual physically being there for this to happen. I guess it didn't really hit me of how impactful the books would have on those who are included in them. So there are dozens of children whose artwork are in this book that is really deep and meaningful to them, and one of them as I had mentioned- actually more than one, there was a handful of them that were all there for the book signing. One of them was kind enough to be helping me swipe credit cards to sell the books which was really cute because I think he's nine. So yeah, so fun, had a great time. And one of the kids came in- and mind you they're walking behind their mother, a little bit timid, a little bit shy, I don't know this kid at all. I've run into them at a couple of Tony's events that we've thrown, et cetera. And I was sitting behind the table with all of the books, and I was watching them interact with Tony, just kind of seeing everybody's crying, everybody's teary eyed because the book is so emotional. And then I am watching them go out of the small book cafe that we were at. And as they were turning the corner to go out the front door, kind of walking a couple steps behind their mother, they had put the book which is just this very nice, hard cover- you know like a children's picture book landscape. They put it up to their chest, and I could see the biggest sigh, like you could just see their body, kind of their shoulders rise up and then exhale, like it was the biggest, deepest breath that I could see from about ten feet away, that no one else caught because no one's paying attention to people leaving, everyone's chatting. And I knew in that moment, my hair on my arms stood up, I had chills, I had tears in my eyes thinking, 'Holy shit, this book has changed that person's life.' There is no doubt in my mind that that book is a game changer for that one individual child.                                     Now knowing that all of the blood, sweat, and many tears that Tony and I put into getting his story out there; there is not a single dollar amount in this world that could replace the experience of seeing that one kid who's featured in that book, and how much that's changing their life. Like there is just no way of counting how incredible that experience is.                                     It was in that moment, like truly in that moment, that I realized, 'Holy hell, I need to use my process oriented, operationally focused brain in helping people like Tony, and like others that I've worked with like Ann, and Mike and Maria, and the other Mike, and helping them get their stories out to the world. Because I've done this as many times as I have at this point, that to me the actual logistics, the nuts and bolts, the BS of it, the stuff that makes people want to bang their head against the wall and pull their hair out; that's the stuff that I love doing, that's where I thrive. So knowing that I have that skillset, and somebody with such an incredible story has something to share, and it's that lack of skillset that's stopping them, it was truly that 'ah-ha' moment where I was like I have to do this. I have to focus 2016 on helping you get your story out. So there's a couple of other things that kind of dovetail into this epiphany, and like I said I didn't realize how many authors I was already kind of working with. And I have another author who I am not mentioning by name yet because I'm waiting specifically for when her book is out, I cannot wait. I really- just like with Tony's book, I felt just as proud of having Tony's book released as I did my own. Like I honestly felt that much pride for his work as I do my own work, and it's going to be the same thing for this other book that I'm working on. And this one's been really different because it's equal parts manifesto, it's kind of corporate focused. There's a lot of interesting nuances to this book, and one of them being is that this particular author isn't really a fan of writing- or she's a really, really good writer actually, but she just doesn't have the time or the focus to sit down and write. And just that thought of having to write just really kind of stressed her out for a long time that she kept putting it off, and putting it off. So we found a really good solution to have her basically be interviewed by somebody, which is then the basis of ghost writing that we can use to put into a book. And now this book is being more traditionally published if you will. So everyone else that I've worked with has been down the self-published road, which at this point you're much better off going self-published because the royalties of a traditionally published book are so high that if you're trying to make money off of publishing a book, it's certainly not going to be going down a traditionally published path, or at least in my experience. I'm sure there's many people who would debate me on that, but in my experience it's just- it's really costly. So with her, we found a way to really kind of navigate her busy lifestyle, and get somebody else to write the meat of the book, but in her voice because she's actually spoken it to somebody who's recorded it, and now they're using the transcripts to write the basis of the book.                                     So there's that one that I will be talking much more about on this podcast as it progresses. But I think what I would say that my toughest- yeah I would probably say my toughest hurdle to cross in 2016 as it relates to book writing is that I started writing a fourth book in early 2016. It's around LGBT, around how to leverage your LGBT status as a business owner, and really finding new opportunities, all that kind of stuff. It's probably 70% written I would say, but it hasn't been a strong enough priority for me to get it through that last 30%. So it's just kind of sitting shelved for right now, that I'll get back to it at some point. What book it ends up being, I have no idea, but it'll end up being- it'll end up coming out at some point.                                     However what I did have is another epiphany over the Thanksgiving holiday, and I realized during Thanksgiving that I needed to write a book that has nothing to do with LGBT, and co-author it with my wife, who has no desire to be an author really because she's an educator. She works in special education, she's a behavioral specialist, and we realized that we needed to write a book about the trials and tribulations and judgment that we face as two people trying to raise a child with mental health needs. And this was truly an epiphany, and it was more of an 'I have to write this book for my own well-being,' like 'I need this book in the world because it doesn't exist.' So my wife and I are working on that, and I think that it's not really challenging so to speak for the book writing aspect because we're collecting stories from twenty to thirty other families in similar situations to ours, so I'm going to be getting a lot of content from other places. But we've been talking about how are we going to use this book to help position my wife in more of an authoritative space so she can use this as somewhat of a launching pad into potential new opportunities for her. We have no idea what that looks like right now, none whatsoever. However, we're constantly talking about it, we're just going to keep kind of ruminating on it and figuring out where that's going to bring her, but that's going to be getting her to have the status of being an author, which will be a game changer for her in her community, because authors in her community are likely far less than in the business community where- I don't want to say everybody has a book, but a lot of people have books now, so it's not that uncommon to have a book. It's almost- it's becoming more common to have books, or to feel the need to have a book, to just basically stay afloat and keep up with a lot of people, of course depending on what niche you're in. So this is going to be definitely more challenging to figure out how to get her brain to wrap her head around how we're going to do this. So that's something that I'm focusing on in 2016 around authoring and doing more in this space.                                     So I tell you all of this, and I don't mean to over-simplify and try to pretend that writing a book is not a total pain, and I'm not going to try to sugarcoat it, because it really still is a pain. It totally, totally is. And even for me who I've done- I've been involved in a handful of them at this point, almost a dozen of them at this point. There's nuance in all of these basically. So what I want to emphasize I guess is there are ways to shortcut this process, and what I've realized is that I only have a limited amount of time because I am working with people one-on-one, I have Fortune sized clients, I have some larger consulting contracts; so I'm kind of a little bit all over the map in terms of what it is that I'm doing, but it's all still around LGBT; that's totally the core of what I do.                                     Now what I wanted to do, and what I am doing, is on February 1st I am launching a group program, and it's only for twelve people at most. Twelve people, that's it. And I've chosen twelve people specifically so I can make sure that everyone's getting enough one-on-one attention. But it's going to be in a group format, and it's going to go for ninety days, and my goal is to walk twelve individuals through the process of becoming an author in ninety days. Now the end goal for some people is to have a book done and launched by the end of those ninety days. For others it's a matter of getting them organized, and giving them the information that they need to then write their book at the end of the ninety days, and use that information to take it across the finish line. So everyone has a different goal, and I'm not trying to force people in saying, "If you're part of this program you have to have a book in ninety days." I know that's not realistic, I know that's not attainable, and I'm not going to put pressure on people in that way. So a couple of weeks ago before the holiday chaos kind of hit us, I had sent a quick email to my list, and five people responded within like a matter of an hour. And of those five people I have four of them who've already committed to the group, and I have a fifth person who is like a 95%. So I already have five people committed to this group that starts on February 1st. It's going to go regardless of the number of people who end up in it, but twelve is the cut-off. So I have room for seven more individuals who want to put a book out there in 2016.                                     Now I'll tell you a little bit about what the course looks like, just so you have a general idea. And I don't have a name for it even, it's that new of an idea, and just talking with five people and all five of them saying, "Yes, for the love of God, yes I need to do this. I need to get my story out there." That validates everything to me. It validates absolutely everything, and that this is the right path to go on. So it's so new that I do not have a name for it. I'm calling it the Author Program Live right now, because it is a live program. It's not a, 'Here, log into here and just watch some videos.' It's really- it's me, it's you, and it's eleven other people learning how to do this at the same time you are. So the benefit to that is everyone's kind of at a different stage of what they're doing. So one person I talked to has about 85% of her book written, and she just needs to figure out how to get that last 15% written, and then how to do all of the dirty details of 'how do I actually publish it? Where do I go? How do I get registered with the Library of Congress? How do I get an ISBN number? How do I market it?' Et cetera, et cetera. So there's just a ton of weedy details that people hate that I already have figured out that I can just completely shortcut, you don't have to stress about.                                     So it'll be ninety days, so from February 1st to April 30th. It will be a good kind of first quarter, going into the second quarter project. And it's going to be kind of sharing things like the tools of the trade, how to re-purpose your existing content if you have it, deciding on what you're going to write, how to position yourself as an expert if that's what you want to do, deciding if traditional publishing is better than self-publishing for you, although much of it will focus on the self-published road. And working with an editor, how to figure out your publication date; all of these really kind of annoying details, in a lot of ways, very annoying details. And the more I guess the one-on-one component of it, is that it's going to have twelve sessions- so it's really about twelve weeks, and they're going to be sixty minutes, maybe up to ninety minutes via a webinar on Tuesday nights at 8:30 Eastern time. And I have chosen that time based on the availability of the five other people who've committed to this, and I would love for you to be able to attend live. But if you can't it's not a big deal because I am going to record it and make it available to you after the fact. It will be available the following morning, if not that night. And each week is going to discuss some kind of topic in detail, it's going to have open Q&A so if you have specific needs that you need answers to right then, bring them to the table, we'll talk about it. We'll also do some laser coaching to get you over any particular humps and hurdles that you have. And then occasionally we're going to have some guest speakers thrown in who have already been where you are, and need that extra push to- you need that extra push from them to kind of help you get through this. So it's not just the live webinars once a week, it's also a Facebook group. And I chose Facebook because everyone's there, I'm not going to try to set up some separate site that you have to remember the log-in info for, completely forget it, and then have to be a total pain. So Facebook is a likely source that you're already on, so I'm doing a private Facebook group that will be with me, my assistant, and the up to twelve participants that you can ask questions at any time. You don't have to wait until we connect on Tuesday nights, you can just ask your peers what they think. So if you're in the process of designing your cover for example, why wait? Throw it up there and say, "Hey everyone, here's cover A, here's cover B, which one do you like?" So you can do a lot of stuff like that, or "Hey I really need somebody to look at my intro and tell me if this makes sense." Or "I just wrote the book outline, I don't think the chapters are in the right order, but I don't know how to put them in the right order. Can you help look at this?" So really it's a matter of having this- and not just me because I don't have all of the answers, I just happened to have done it enough times that I know where to find the answers. But now you have eleven other peers who are in this group, who can totally help you shortcut the process too.                                     So- and one of I guess the really exciting things I'm personally excited about, and this actually came as an idea from one of the people who've already decided that- 'sign me up,' is you're basically forming your own tribe of people. So now if you have eleven other people in this group with you, and your mailing list has maybe 200 people; so it's not a lot of people, but for your business it's a healthy size and it's great. But you also have somebody in your group who has a mailing list of 20,000 people for example. And they're really excited, and engaged in what you're doing, that they can- when you're doing your book launch, you can reach out to them and say, "Hey can you share my book with your list?" And you can figure out a whole bunch of different affiliate marketing types of things, and commission, and there's a lot of things that I'll go into in this course. But just from a general standpoint, you now have eleven people who have audiences who may have a connection to what you're writing about, that can then amplify and magnify your reach exponentially, and to me that is so amazing. So you're getting actual support in the weeds of getting it done, but then when it comes time to launch the book, you can shoot yourself to best-seller status on Amazon very, very, very easy by having this amplification of other people's tribes to help you get there. And I'm really excited about that, because I got both of my books to Amazon best-seller status, and it was not an easy feat, there are ways to do it I think more efficiently than I did it, and I know this is one of those ways. So it's just a lot of stuff like this that I'm just really, really excited about, and this is why I know that doing this is the right path for me personally.                                     So I do want to point out really quickly who the program is not for. Honestly, because there's a couple of types of people in here that I don't want part of the group, and I do want to have a conversation with you first prior to you joining. So if you're looking for a magic pill to just snap your fingers and all of a sudden you have a book, it's not going to work. I assure you of this. Or if you're resistant to changing your ways, it's also not going to work. So we're really going to- you have to be willing to shake things up. You want to be reaching outside of your comfort zone, and say, "This is a priority for me, I can make these certain changes in my life to accommodate this priority." And then if you're just comfortable and complacent, and you don't really have any drive or desire to be kind of reaching higher heights and peaks in your business, this probably isn't going to be for you. So I wanted to point that out because I'm not allowing people who don't have the right chops if you will to be in the program. Because having somebody who's kind of lackluster about it, it's just going to kind of be a wet blanket on the rest of the group, and I really want to protect the sanctity of what we're out to accomplish here in this particular group.                                     So if any of this sounds interesting to you, the only website I need you to remember other than you can just go to my website and contact me there, is going to www.MeetWithJenn.com, and that brings you to my calendar, and you can schedule a time to talk to me between now and February 1st and tell me if you would like to participate in this program. And it's just really a matter of me- for you and I getting to know each other, just for thirty minutes or so, to find out if you're a right for this program. And if you are then hop on in and we will make sure that you get your book in 2016.                                     So that my friend is the lay of the land for 2016. So really my commitment to running a marathon is going to be similar to your commitment to writing a book if that's what you so choose. So if that is one of your goals, I want to help you achieve that goal. If writing a book is not part of your goals, there are plenty of things in this podcast throughout this year that are still going to absolutely be relevant to you. For example one of the- actually the next podcast on January 21st is going to be with Dorie Clark. So if you don't know Dorie Clark, she is a marketing strategy consultant. She writes for the Harvard Business Review, Time, Entrepreneur, the World Economic Forum; she's kind of all over the place, and she's a recognized branding expert. So she has two books. One is called 'Reinventing You,' and then she has a second one which is called 'Stand Out,' and it was named the number one leadership book of 2015 by Inc. Magazine. And I don't know about you but I love Inc. Magazine, and I love Entrepreneur, they're two of my absolute favorite magazines. And she also happens to be an out lesbian who's making a huge impact on the world. So she's the first interview that I have in 2016, and it's very kind of my standard interview format that if you're a listener of this podcast you are very familiar with. But we talk a little bit about her book and writing content. So to me a book is just one more form of content creation, and that's the one I'm going to focus on, for me helping people in 2016. But all other forms of content creation are absolutely going to be coming up in this podcast, so don't think that I'm only going to talk about book creation on this podcast, because that is likely not going to be the case. It's going to be likely similar to what's been going on in the past, where I bring to you information that I think is going to be relevant to helping you market to the LGBT community, or market yourself within the LGBT community. So either way there's going to be plenty of information for you, I promise.                                     So as I mentioned, all of the things that I talked about, links to certain places, links to my calendar, past interviewees that have been on the show; you can go to www.JennTGrace.com/75 or you can just go to the website and click on the free podcast link in the navigation bar. Either way, you will find yourself to the page with all of the information. So if you are looking to share your story, and you think what I've been talking about makes sense for you, please reach out to me. For me personally, having a tangible outcome from somebody that I'm working with is honestly the best feeling, reflecting back on that experience with Tony at his book signing. If I can be the conduit to creating more opportunities like that in 2016, it would be an honor, truly an honor to be part of that journey no matter how big or small, part of that journey with you. Honestly, seriously can't wait. Cannot wait for 2016, I'm really excited about this.                                     So anyway, until the next episode, I hope you have a great week, keep your head held high, and go out and just kick some ass in your business, will you? Have a great one, I'll talk to you soon.  

Jenn T. Grace – Episode 92 – Build Your Brand by Following Your Intuition with Rick Clemons     Jenn T Grace:              You are listening to the Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional Podcast, episode 92.   Introduction:              Welcome to the Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional Podcast; the podcast dedicated to helping LGBTQ professionals and business owners grow their business and careers through the power of leveraging their LGBTQ identities in their personal brand. You'll learn how to market your products and services both broadly, and within the LGBTQ community. You'll hear from incredible guests who are leveraging the power of their identity for good, as well as those who haven't yet started, and everyone in between. And now your host. She teaches straight people how to market to gay people, and gay people how to market themselves. Your professional lesbian, Jenn - with two N's - T Grace.   Jenn T Grace:              Well hello and welcome to episode number 92 of the podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and today marks I believe the twelfth episode in a row of interviews. So here we are, yet again having another interview. I believe the record started in February of this year, and now we're already into September, and we're still going strong with interviews. Today's guest is Rick Clemons who is the coming out coach. He is a speaker, he is an author, he has his own podcast, he's really kind of made a mark in this world around helping people come out for whatever reason that may be, which isn't necessarily LGBT, which he talks about in our time together. Also one of the things that is interesting is that in the 92 episodes of this podcast, I don't think I've ever talked in detail about intuition, following your gut, understanding your soul's purpose or your journey in life, and all of that kind of stuff. And it's really great to take I guess 92 episodes to finally get here, but Rick shares such incredible wisdom, and guidance, and you could totally tell that he's a coach just the ways in which he articulates things in such a clear way for people to understand. I feel certain that you are going to really, really enjoy what Rick talks about. So I hope you enjoy the interview for sure, and as always if you're looking for links to today's episode you can go to www.JennTGrace.com/92 for episode number 92, and there you'll find the transcript, any links we talk about, ways to contact Rick, all that great stuff. It will all be there and accessible to you. So without further ado, let's just dive right into today's conversation with Rick Clemons.                                     So I am thrilled that you're on the show, so if you can just give a high level overview of who you are and what you do for the listeners?   Rick Clemons:             Well my name is Rick Clemons and I'm a lot of different things, but I think the thing that I'm most aligned with in my current work is I'm a coming out coach. And of course the assumption that's going to first be made by most people that hear that is, 'Oh he works with gays and lesbians, helping them coming out of the closet.' And that is true, but it is also true that we all have challenges in life, and things that we're hiding from that we're all coming out of. And I feel very blessed that I've found the parallels here to not only doing the beautiful work that I've been blessed to do with individuals who are coming out of the closet in their sexual orientation, but to also now have found a parallel path to working with entrepreneurs who are trying to escape cubicle nation and be their own thing, or working with someone who's in a relationship that's very challenging and helping them to come out to the truth of, 'I don't need to be in this kind of relationship.' Or it could be, 'I want to be a stay-at-home mom and I want to come out of feeling guilty for wanting to be a stay-at-home mom and not contributing to my family's 'income' in the traditional manner.' And I feel really excited that every day I get to wake up and help someone come out, own their confidence, see their unique space in the world, and do something that I call make their quirks work, whatever that quirk is. Your quirk could be your beautiful talent, or that thing that other people tell you you can't do, and I love helping them come out to be themselves and make their quirks work.   Jenn T Grace:              And how did you figure out that this was kind of your calling? Like how does one decide one day that they want to help people come out? Where did that stem from?   Rick Clemons:             Well it came from my own journey. I was 36 when I really faced my truth. I had been looking at it for numerous years, I had come out to my family- or at least my parents, not everyone. I had come out to my parents when I was 19 years old in college, and I wouldn't say we were ultra-religious but there was a religious element to them saying, "No you can't be that, that's not who you're supposed to be," and I went back in the closet. And I went- so without a lot of kicking and screaming so to speak I went and said, "Okay well maybe this isn't who I am." And even from that moment that I stepped back in, I knew I was in denial. I didn't realize the magnitude of the denial because it was more self-preservation to step back in, and then as each day moved, and then life became what I thought I was supposed to be; get married, have kids, have a successful thriving career. I worked all over the globe for a software company for six years and then I started working for a startup, and it was in those critical years of those two positions that I got laid off, and the second layoff was really the opening of the new closet door. I'd already come out of the closet as a gay man, been through a divorce, become a single parent, I'm getting used to that with two very young ladies; my kids were eighteen months and six years old when I came out. And then suddenly here I find myself laid off right in the midst of my divorce, and no real possibilities of what I needed to be doing in sight for a career, but I knew one thing. I knew I was done building other people's businesses. I was going to go find something and I was going to make it mine, and that was the beginning of the calling Jenn, that was really when I was like, 'Hm something's happening here, and I'm going to pay attention to it.'   Jenn T Grace:              And now how did you know what things to pay attention to? Like you felt that entrepreneurial itch and recognized that working for someone else was not your path, but you definitely felt this calling. Was it small kind of breadcrumbs that led you to your direction? Or was it more of a big kind of like hitting you in the face type of obvious things?   Rick Clemons:             I think it was a mixture of both. There was definite small breadcrumbs where as soon as I got laid off from the last position I thought, 'Okay well I'm just going to start doing some consulting type work.' I'd been a marketing guy, I'd been branding, I've helped develop brands, and so I started doing that. And this was in 2005-2006 so the age of the Internet was really just beginning to take off, social media was becoming the thing, so I followed what I knew how to do. But what was so interesting, and this was probably the first big like whack upside the head, was as soon as I started doing that I could feel the just- this isn't what I'm supposed to be doing. I'm tired of writing copy, I'm tired of designing brochures, I'm over hiring PR agencies. And of course by then I'm working for very small businesses, and I mean small like mom and pops on up to maybe businesses with maybe 100 to 200 employees at the most, just helping them as an ad hoc marketing person. And I was just- I was getting internally frustrated and it made me realize something was missing. And at that moment, as I'm kind of knocking on the door going, 'Okay universe, God, my lovely gay angel, somebody tell me what I'm supposed to be doing here.' At the same time I became surrounded by other individuals- mostly men, a few women, who were coming out, who had been married, most of them had kids, but they were surrounding me, coming to me and saying, "Hey you've done this pretty well. You seem to have a decent relationship with your ex-wife, and you have a relationship with your kids. What's the secret sauce so to speak?" And the more I was surrounded by those people the more I started going, 'Well this is interesting. Everybody seems to come to me and I enjoy giving them advice, asking them questions,' and then the next thing I knew in my practice- or in my consulting practice, I started getting quite a few coaches; life coaches, business coaches, and I saw the light. Like wow, I like what these people are doing. And it was ironic because back in 1996 when I went to work for the software company I had actually been integral in working with a coach in our organization because we were going through a triple merger, so we had purchased two other companies and there was a lot of egos in the room so to speak, and so we brought in an executive coach and I was pretty integral in having her work with her teams. And I thought, 'Wow I really like what she's doing, that would be really cool, I wish I could do something like that.' And I even talked to her about it but I'm like, 'Wait you just got hired on here, you're just getting going, you're going to go screw everything up and jump ship?' And so it's interesting how the universe kind of delivers that stuff. And then literally five years later when I got laid off from that job, ironically one of the first things that I got in my email was an invitation to check out a coaching program. I'm like, 'Wow this is kind of ironic.' And I looked at it, and of course when you're laid off and no sign of income coming in, and you're trying to pinch pennies and make sure money isn't just floating out the door, and you're in the middle of a divorce and learning to have to pay child support and alimony, I just kind of looked at it and said, 'Yeah that's a nice thing but I can't do that right now.' So the universe heard me and took it away. But then suddenly here we are now, 2006 - 2007, all these people are surrounding me wanting help, and all of a sudden I have clients that are coaches, and my clients started saying, "You're so much different than a consultant. Yes you do that sort of thing, and you help guide it, but you're asking us questions that make us really think deeply about our businesses. You really need to think about becoming a coach." And that was when the lightbulb went off.   Jenn T Grace:              Interesting. So that's awesome that the universe- like you were saying kind of took it away and then brought it back when it was the right time to be brought back.   Rick Clemons:             Well I think there's that phrase the universe is going to keep teaching you the same lesson until you finally listen. It's going to keep showing up and I actually now believe- wholeheartedly believe in that. Even as I'm doing this podcast with you there's stuff going on in my life right now that are lessons that I've been hearing and listening to, and it's almost a daily, 'Okay are you going to finally step in and listen to that message?' And when I- typically when I do that, I mean it's a rare, rare occasion that if I do that then it doesn't work. But when I fully align and step into that, that's when really amazing stuff happens in my life.   Jenn T Grace:              And is that something that you feel can be taught to people? So I absolutely listen to my intuition, and I firmly believe everything happens for a reason, that the universe gives us signs. And I've kind of always felt that way but I've been on more of a path to really kind of hone in on that even more specifically, but I feel like a lot of people think it's all like woo woo and none of it really makes an impact. For you, was that always kind of the case for you, that you recognized that the universe was telling you these things? Because I feel like this is in so much alignment with running businesses, like having clear goals, and having very specific things that we're trying to achieve, and if we're not- if it's in any type of misalignment then it's not going to happen. But how did that kind of evolve for you, or was it just always there?   Rick Clemons:             Well I fully and 100% believe it's always there. What I know now, and I'm not saying I'm some guru who is the end all be all, but what I do know for myself now is- it's always been there but what I was incapable of was accessing it in the way to really appreciate it. And now I realize when I access that energy, and when I access that intuition, and I act on that intuition- and I know this to be true not just for me. I have good friends, I have mentors, I have clients that I've watched this occur with. When we trust our gut intuition, almost 100% of the time- I'm going to say 100% of the time that's when what we need most actually happens. That's when the success steps in, that's when the relationship shows up, that's when we quit living in doubt and in fear, is when we trust our intuition. Our intuition to me- again this is just my perspective, is our greatest guide to being fully in alignment with our soul and our purpose here on this planet. And that can be in love, it can be in business, it can be in relationships, it can be in your calling, but when you are in that kind of alignment, anything becomes possible.   Jenn T Grace:              I totally, totally agree on all of those fronts. Is this part of what you are sharing with your clients, this type of stuff?   Rick Clemons:             Absolutely.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah.   Rick Clemons:             Oh yeah, absolutely. Because what I've found through the coming out process- and mine was a long journey and everybody's is different, but through- and none of us ever stops coming out, so I want to really caveat that because there are still moments that as a gay man I'm coming out every day in different ways, in different groups, in different things, and so it's a very interesting journey. But as I have gone through this, there's a couple things that I have learned. Number one, I am who I am, and that's what makes me unique in the world. Now some would say, "Yeah you're not the only gay person." I realize that, but being gay the way I'm gay and how I make it a part of my life is my unique way of doing it. Secondly there's this beautiful piece of owning that uniqueness in the world. And it's not that I'm unique because I'm gay, there's a lot of things that I'm unique. I'm unique because like you I can do a podcast and it's just a flawless thing I can do. I can put myself behind that microphone and I can just go. I can go stand up on a stage if somebody were to knock on my door right now after we do this podcast and said, "You're needed on a stage in twenty minutes to give a speech," I could go do it because I just know that this is some of my innate uniqueness that I need to tap into that power and go with. The third thing I know is confidence resides within each of us. How we access that confidence, and how we use it is the key critical piece. And when you put all those magical things together- so knowing that you're always going to be good at something, that you have a unique space that you take up on the planet in a very beautiful way, and that confidence is at your disposal any time you want to access it. It becomes pretty powerful that then is when you can stand in your own beautiful space and are capable of doing whatever you set your mind to.   Jenn T Grace:              So how do you get somebody out of that they've never kind of operated like this? Like what is your first point of recommendation to them to kind of push them out of that comfort zone and into a space that they've never really operated in before?   Rick Clemons:             Well the first question I ask someone is what is it you most want, and why? And the why is very important. I mean one of my favorite authors and guy that just has always inspired me is Simon Sinek and his book, 'Start With Why.' To me the 'why' is the key critical piece. The 'how' you can figure out, the 'when' you can figure out, the 'what' you can figure out, but if you're not clear on the 'why.' I know why I do what I do. I do this work because I love the feeling of watching someone else step into who they truly are without guilt and shame, and it brings me pure joy and happiness when you can see someone do that because it reminds me of the reflection in the mirror of what I'm meant to be doing in my own life each and every day, being exactly who I am, and that's why I do it.   Jenn T Grace:              Absolutely.   Rick Clemons:             There's too many people on our planet walking around not doing what they're meant to be doing and being what they're not meant to be because they bought into everybody else's idea of, 'Well you need to be this way, or you need to be that way.' I want everyone to just be themselves. That doesn't mean- that doesn't mean we're all going to like what each other is, but that's okay.   Jenn T Grace:              That's what makes it great.   Rick Clemons:             Yes, absolutely. But the first step is that 'why.' Really get clear on that 'why' because I think too often- and I know you've probably seen this Jenn yourself in the work that you do, the first question most people face is, 'Okay well what should I do? Or what should I be? Or how am I going to do that if I decide that's what I am?' We can get really caught up in those questions but then when you turn and ask someone the question, "Okay the 'what' and the 'how,' but why are you doing this? Why do you want to be that? Why is this important to you?" Those are the really big questions.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah and all the details that can be completely sorted out later. And I like that the 'why' is the first thing that you talk about because one of my keynotes is about 'why.' You know really trying to get to the crux of why you're doing what you're doing, and I ask it regardless of who my audience is. So I have my straight audience and I have my LGBT audience, and it's still always the same question. So for the straight audience any time I'm in any type of consulting capacity, or a sales- like a prospect meeting or anything like that, my first question is, 'Well why do you care? Why the LGBT community? You could be marketing to any other community, why this?' And that's my way of weeding out if I'm going to work with a company or not, because if their 'why' is really crappy and it's not genuine, then I'm not putting my name and my reputation on the line to help somebody that has that inauthentic approach. Versus the company that is coming from a really great place with good intentions.   Rick Clemons:             Yeah I had the really beautiful opportunity last evening to attend a movie premier for a friend of mine who his film just premiered here in Los Angeles at a film festival. And I knew the name of the movie, I knew he was the producer of it, and so we get there and the movie gets ready to start, and then lo and behold he's actually one of the actors in the movie. I didn't know this. And as I watched him perform- and we're not super good friends, we go to a networking event together once a month and so we've become casual acquaintances, and as I watched this person that I've had really cool conversations with portray this character, and knowing that he was the producer, and he was the writer, and played a lot of roles in this film, it just really brought the question forward of 'why.' Why did you step into the role of acting? So the movie ends and as they do at film festivals they bring the directors, and the producers, and the cinematographers, and some of the actors up and they have the Q&A. And the first question that somebody asked is, "So why did you do the acting in the movie?" And it was so beautiful because he wasn't intending to be in the movie. They kept trying to cast- they shot the movie in Brazil and they kept trying to find the right person to cast in that role, and they just couldn't find the person that they thought would really, really, really fit. Now they're already in the whole production crew, and it's a small production crew but it's an hour long short film so it's a rather- it's a pretty big thing for them to have flown people to Brazil, and they've got a cinematographer, and different people. They've probably got a crew of about fifteen people just waiting around, but they don't have this character. And he stepped into it and when somebody said, "Why-" when that question got asked he said, "Because this is what you do to get the movie made." I thought that was such a beautiful response. It was just wow, this is what you've got to do to get this made. Now of course as he talked more he goes, "And I realized I'm a piece of each of these characters. I'm a piece of this character here," and there's only four characters in the movie, and he talked about how there was a piece of him in each of the characters, but the one character that was missing was the piece of himself that was the most himself. And it was just ironic to hear him say that, and the 'why' was not only to get the movie made, but it was kind of to bring full circle who he was in all four of these characters in the movie so that (I loved his 'so that')- so that everyone who ever watches this movie can somehow truly relate to all the pieces of themselves that may be showing up in two people, three people, four people, ten people. But so they can see the complete essence of themselves in others.   Jenn T Grace:              That's brilliant. That's so awesome. And it kind of shows that entrepreneurial spirit too of you have to do what you have to do to get the job done, and sometimes that's pushing your own limits and putting yourself in a role where it wasn't really your intention but to get the show to go on you had no choice.   Rick Clemons:             Yeah. Amazing stuff.   Jenn T Grace:              So in terms of kind of what you were just saying of people showing up as one person, two, three, four; I find that to be very common in the Internet marketing space, online marketing, even people who do speaking. So how do you- especially doing something so significant that you're doing, how can you or do you see people showing up differently? Because I think one of the things, especially because you have an online presence, you have a podcast, you have a following, you're out speaking in places; how do you stay grounded I guess maybe is the question. How do you stay grounded and make sure that you're always kind of representing your true authentic self, whether that is on your own podcast, on this podcast, on a stage, at a networking event? Because I think that is a very hard balance for a lot of people, and it's even more so when you're more in the public eye. So how does that look in your world?   Rick Clemons:             Well it's all based in my journey. It all stems from the 36 years that I wasn't myself. That I hid and couldn't seem to get beyond what other people expected from me. And I remember the day that I first came upon one of my own personal mantras that really sums up the answer to your question. And my mantra is this; trust in yourself to be yourself is the greatest gift you can give yourself. And as long as I stand in that phrase to the best of my ability- and I always caveat it with that because nobody's perfect, but as long as I can trust myself to be myself in every way, every day, and give myself that gift, then that's what people are going to get. Whether it's this podcast, my podcast, whether I'm writing an article, whether I'm doing an interview, whether I'm standing on a stage; as long as I can trust myself to be exactly who I am, then there's really nothing to worry about. Now others could say, "But what about what other people think?" Well I trust myself to not worry about what other people think. "Well what about if you screw up?" Well I trust myself that if I screwed up on something then that's exactly what I'm supposed to be doing in that moment. Is it easy to stay in this space? Hell no, it's not easy because we all get faced with challenges. But that became the key mantra for me is I lived for 36 years not trusting myself to be who I was. I trusted myself to be everything that everybody else wanted me to be, but I didn't trust myself enough to take a stand and to say, "This is me and you can either be with me or you can not be with me, and that's okay." I think that's a big thing too, is to realize as someone- and I know you've written books Jenn, and all of us approach this differently. I personally will read my reviews, I won't react to most of them because I don't see the point in it, and I had to really learn to trust that I'm not going to be everybody's cup of tea and that's absolutely okay. It's okay to not be the end-all, be-all, the Holy Grail for everyone, but be who you need to be first and foremost for yourself, because when you are who you are for yourself, your energy reflects that you're okay with everyone else being who they are for themselves, and the right people that are supposed to come into your world whether it's your friendships, whether it's your relationships, a working relationship, your followers; then those are exactly the people who are supposed to be there. Where we get hung up is when we try to bring everybody into being who we want in our life and then suddenly it's like it becomes that, 'I need, and I compare, and I've got to be like such-and-such,' and man, in my opinion that's when everything crumbles.   Jenn T Grace:              I just genuinely love what you're saying because I feel like these are all things that I think about, and I to some degree follow in my mind, but you're articulating them so clearly that I am loving it right now. This is awesome. So as we're talking about personal branding, because this is what this podcast is about, is really personal branding for LGBTQ professionals, or business owners, or whatever they might be doing. I find that it can be really challenging for people to really kind of understand what their personal brand stands for. What is that meaning that they're associating with themselves that they're going to go out there and market, and sell, and get people to follow them? Obviously when people are in alignment with their soul's journey even, when you're really aligned with what you're supposed to be doing in life, it makes things so much easier. But I find that most people are not that aligned. So from a personal branding standpoint, if there's somebody who's listening to this and they're like, "I can't even begin to follow what Rick and Jenn are saying right now. I'm just not there." Do you have any thoughts for them in terms of helping them kind of build and grow their personal brand from that place of authenticity? Because I think that's so incredible important, is the authenticity for anybody, but it feels even more so when we're relating that back to the LGBT community.   Rick Clemons:             I love to have people start with something- it's going to sound really funny, but I do what I call the Do You Like Cookies exercise.   Jenn T Grace:              Okay.   Rick Clemons:             And what that is, is 'do you like cookies? Yes or no?' 'No.' 'Okay do you like ice cream? Yes or no?' 'Yes.' 'Really? What kind of ice cream do you like?' They tell me. 'What is it that you like about that ice cream?' They'll tell me. 'And if you could have all that ice cream that you wanted, what would that make you feel?' And then they tell me. Same thing could happen with the cookies. When they get done they're kind of looking at me like, 'Okay what does this have to do with me and my personal brand or how I show up?' I said, 'Because what you just did is you were completely authentic about what you liked. So why aren't you doing this in everything you're doing about what you do in your work, and what you want to be doing? Why aren't you being really honest with yourself about what you like and how you like to show up? So now let's do the exercise a different way. What do you like to do for work? What is it that really turns you on? What is that you go to work and you get lost in that you go, 'I could do this all day long.' Because that's the stuff you need to be paying attention to. I know for me if I could wake up every morning and do exactly what we're doing here all day long; the podcast, and radio show, and talk, and do talk interviews, and show up this way and then go hop on a stage and talk- if I could do that all day long, man I'm in my bliss point. Now that doesn't mean I don't get to do that, but there's a lot of things that come along with that, and that come along with my personal brand. But what I had to get used to doing is saying, "Yes I accept this is what I really like." This is what I really enjoy doing because when I'm dialed in to what I really enjoy doing, and I go do it, guess what starts to happen? Knock, knock, knock; opportunity shows up. And I think that's what a lot of people miss.   Jenn T Grace:              I totally agree. Do you know of any particular assessments or tools that have helped clients of yours kind of identify their likes? Because I think that's another thing, is that not everyone even truly knows at the root of their being what they like and don't like because they've been so pre-programmed in so many ways to kind of be somewhat of a lemming and just following everyone else's path and not really paying attention to their own.   Rick Clemons:             Sure there's a friend of mine who is now deceased but he has a beautiful brand that his wife has continued to carry forward now, and this is just recent, he just passed in the last year. But his brand is called Live Your Legend, and if you go to I believe www.LiveYourLegend.net, I don't believe it's a .com. But Live Your Legend, just Google it, you'll find it because he's done a Ted Talk and all these things. But he has this really beautiful passion exercise, and I remember doing that, and that was something that really helped me when I was doing some shifting within my brand trying to find some things. It helped really get pinpointed. The other thing that I have found- and this is a tool that I use for my coach's training, is an assessment- it's an energy assessment, it's called the Energy Leadership Assessment. I know people listening will go, 'Well what does that have to do with finding stuff?' Well what it does is it pinpoints how you show up in the world, your beliefs, your values, your purview, your lens that you're looking at things through so that we can see where the hidden roadblocks are. Because until we know what the hidden roadblocks are, we can't start to get them out of the way. But if you can get the roadblocks out of the way, then you start to move closer towards what you really are meant to be. So let's just take kind of the setup you just gave me, Jenn. Let's say someone shows up and says, "I'm really- I just don't know what my passion is, and I don't know how to even put a finger on it." Well I would do the assessment with them because I want to see what belief systems are they holding onto? How do they see the world? How are they approaching things in life? So one of the statements that they rank- and you rank these statements from totally agree to totally disagree, and everything kind of in between, but there's about six marks between there that you can rank things. So one of the statements is, 'The world is perfect just the way it is.' Now one person might say, "Hey that sounds great, I'm going to say I totally agree." Another person might say, "Oh no, I totally disagree." And another person might say, "Well I somewhat agree." But when you can see how somebody ranks that and you can dial in and let's go back to the person who says, "I totally disagree." What is it with the world that you see the world in this way, that it's keeping you from seeing it as perfect? Well they may have a belief system that says nothing can be perfect. They may have had a situation in their life where someone that they loved dearly was taken away from them, and their view is this is unfair, this is not the way the world's supposed to be. But then you take the person who says, "I totally agree that the world is perfect just the way it is," and you start to ask them the questions, "Explain to me why you have that outlook on the world." "Well because I have a belief system that says everything happens for a purpose. And everything we get to encounter in this world is for our best interest." So when you can start to see these things in individuals, you can start to help them go, "Okay based on that outlook, now if you believe everything happens in the world for a purpose, then how does that affect your view of you not being able to land on your passion? There may be a disconnect right there." If they believe everything happens for a purpose but they're like, "I think it's unfair that I still haven't been able to figure out my passion," well there's a big disconnect between those two things, and that's where we would start to do the work. Because as soon as we can release that block and bring more of, 'I see the world, and it's happening, and everything being done for me,' then maybe not finding your passion is being done for you so that you will get to it when it's meant to show up in the world. And I've seen this happen with a couple of my clients that have kind of been in that scenario. One of them was very much, 'Oh yeah, everything happens for a very beautiful reason, but I'm just so frustrated I can't figure out what I'm supposed to be doing.' And then suddenly as soon as we started working in that arena and she started going, "Oh I see I have a really big disconnect in my belief system to what I'm actually in action doing," literally within a month she started to figure out what she really wanted to be doing because that block had been put in a light, the spotlight was shining on it and she saw the inconsistency between how she was showing up, and she started making a very conscious effort to go, 'Even in my pursuit of my passion, it's happening exactly the way it's supposed to be happening for me,' and it was amazing to watch her release and her energy just shift so much, and literally a month later she was like, "I think I'm going to pursue this thing in photography," because she had a huge passion for photography, "and I'm going to trust that by telling the universe I'm following this, that somehow the right thing is going to show up that I get to-" and she was very smart; MBA, very smart business person, high up in her corporate position. She trusted that somehow the photography was going to interact with her corporate position and the ironic thing was she started to create programs internally where she took people that were very business focused, very logical, just that whole almost type A, like everything has to happen this way, and she started doing some very beautiful creative programs within the organization to incorporate photography, and drawing, and poem writing, and all these things to kind of loosen up the environment, and it ended up raising not only the consciousness within the organization, but started destressing and getting more communication happening. But it took her starting to see her own possibility before any of this could begin to happen.   Jenn T Grace:              Wow, I feel like you just said a mouthful.   Rick Clemons:             I did.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah, I feel like everyone needs to go check out those resources that you were mentioning, so I'll make sure that I put them in the show notes. Because I do think-   Rick Clemons:             Yeah, absolutely. www.LiveYourLegend.net is definitely- and then on my site you're going to see it's called the True You Process, and within the True You Process is that Energy Leadership Assessment that's just- it's so powerful. I've done it twice on myself, and it's amazing to see the shift you make. I do it with all my clients, that's the first thing we do. We do this assessment so I can see how do they think? How do they approach things? And whether they work with me a month, whether they work with me three months, six months, a year; somewhere along the way when I feel like the time's right, I do the assessment again and it's amazing to see the shifts in numbers because it gets them out of victim mentality, it helps them reduce conflict in their life, it guides them through the energy of just kind of settling and being okay, and being kind of, 'Things just happen because that's what's supposed to happen.' They don't make excuses any longer, and it moves them into a very conscious frame of mind of, 'I'm doing this and how can I do what I'm doing and making it a win-win, not only for me but for everyone else?'   Jenn T Grace:              I love that. So your website is www.RickClemons.com and that's only with one M. So again, those will be in the show notes. And you said the Energy Assessment is on your website.   Rick Clemons:             Yeah it's called the True You Process.   Jenn T Grace:              True You Process.   Rick Clemons:             So when you get to the services page it's called the True You Process and you can get a glimpse of what that's all about.   Jenn T Grace:              Excellent, alright I'll make sure that that's linked up properly.   Rick Clemons:             And for anyone who might be interested in doing this Jenn, I usually charge $159 to do that assessment, but I would give them my friends and family discount on that one, and I would do it for $99.   Jenn T Grace:              Nice. It sounds so good because it really is an assessment, it's not just a 'Hey I took this online quiz that told me that I'm the yellow color.' It's more in depth and you're using it as a metric which I think is what most people are missing in their businesses generally, and even more so from a marketing side of things, is that they're not measuring anything that they're doing and then they're wondering why they're not seeing any type of needle moving.   Rick Clemons:             Exactly.   Jenn T Grace:              So as you were talking I pulled up your website, so now I'm going to derail us a little bit and ask you about your book. So I know that you've written a book and it's obviously in complete alignment with what you're doing. Can you just share with the listeners a little bit about that, and maybe about that process?   Rick Clemons:             Sure, so it's been interesting. I tend to be somewhat of a spontaneous guy; ask my husband, he'll wake up on a Sunday morning and I'll have half the house torn apart with a hammer, "Guess what we're doing? We're remodelling this room today so go get recruits."   Jenn T Grace:              I love it.   Rick Clemons:             Put junky stuff on and here we go. But I wouldn't say that the book was that much of a spontaneous thing, but I do remember sitting down one day and going, 'I'm going to start writing.' And I've always had a passion for writing ever since I was fairly young, and I knew this book was within me given my coming out journey, and also because I'd started doing this work with other people. And I just felt like there's things that I needed to say, and I wasn't just going to do 'Here's Rick's memoir of coming out.' I could have done that, nothing wrong with that, but I wanted to do something more. I wanted to do something that said, 'Okay here's a glimpse of my journey, and then based on that glimpse of the journey, in this next chapter here's how you can go through that yourself. Finding your own path through it, but here are some recommendations, here are some things to explore, and then now let's jump back into the journey.' So that's basically the format of the book; every other chapter is memoir, and then the other chapter is practical how-to's in that arena. What I'm most proud of with this book is I feel that I've taken a very heavy subject, it's not pretty, and I'm the first to admit I'm a jerk and I'm an ass for what I did to a very beautiful woman. I also caveat that with until you've stood in someone's shoes who was given the societal pressure that many of us have been to do the right thing and be the right person, and then you add the faith-based sort of stuff, and numerous other things. And some of you might think, 'Oh he's making excuses.' I'm not making excuses, I'm just stating the facts. Until you've lived in those shoes, be very careful how you start to ridicule or judge someone. But what I wanted to do was do this in a way that said, 'This is a really heavy subject but there can be some humor along the way in this.' And not making fun of the journey but having fun with it. I mean there's an alter ego to mine, her name is Lemonade Pop, she's my inner diva, and she shows up throughout the book. She has this sarcastic flair to her. If I could create her in real life- I'm a big guy, I'm 6'4" I'm almost 300 pounds, so I'm a big guy, I'm a big linebacker guy. She would be a big African American diva, probably with platinum blonde or bright pink hair or something like that, and she would be sassy but yet very forthright. She's a little mix of- if anybody knows who Iyanla Vanzant is from Oprah's 'Fix Your Life.' She's a little bit of Iyanla with a little bit of Oprah mixed in, but then a very quiet almost like serene piece of- I don't know, hard to say, maybe like that shy Barbara Streisand who really doesn't like being on stage. There's that element to her as well. So she can be real sassy and out there, but then she can come to center really quickly. So that's what I brought into the book. A lot of my own experience, the laughter, the humor, the sadness, the authenticity- I feel like it's very authentic, and I'm just really proud of what I produced. And it wasn't like, 'Oh let's go do this' and it was done. It was done in like less than six months, I mean I wrote the book in less than six months. But then it sat there on the shelf for a couple years because I was in the midst, and for all you entrepreneurs out there, yes I was in the midst of chasing lots of bright, shiny objects trying to figure out who is Rick, and what is Rick's brand going to be? And I was trying to walk away from the coming out stuff because I'm like, 'I want to be more, I want to be doing something different,' and then it's so ironic to me that now- basically six years down the road from when I started as a coming out coach, and then kind of got derailed, and chased different things, and then the book was being written, and then a year ago I said, "I just want to get this book published." And now here we stand and I am fully embracing that I am the coming out coach, I help people come out of numerous things, I am an expert in that arena, and that the core of who I am is around uniqueness, and confidence, and making these quirky little things in our life work, which so aligns with coming through the closet doors and saying, "Frankly my dear, I'm gay." That was like the big impetus to everything. So in a weird way it all worked together. I feel really proud of it.   Jenn T Grace:              And what did writing a book do for your business and for your speaking? What type of impact did you see once that was kind of out there in the world?   Rick Clemons:             Well first of all for me personally, it was very cathartic. And there's even moments now when I will be at a book signing or a book reading and I'll read something and I'll kind of go, 'Wow I really wrote that. That's kind of scary that I put that out there in print the way I did.' But as far as for my business, what I've seen- and in fact this was really beautiful. I got to LA yesterday morning and there was a text on the app WhatsApp. I don't know if anybody's familiar with it, but WhatsApp is a beautiful texting tool you can use when you're travelling, especially out of the US. It's free and it helps you text and stay in touch. And I noticed there was a text on my WhatsApp, and it was obviously from a foreign country, I could tell by the number, and the message was this. 'Hi Rick, I've received your book. I've been reading it profusely and I just need you to know that it's helped me see that everything I've been thinking and feeling is exactly okay to be thinking and feeling. I'm a father of two, I love my wife dearly, but I realize the rejection in myself has to quickly in the near future come to an end. I look forward to meeting you someday, and hopefully when I can do it, possibly working with you.' And this was from a man in Barcelona, Spain.   Jenn T Grace:              Wow. That's amazing.   Rick Clemons:             And those moments there, when you say, 'What does your book do for you and your business?' It’s become the calling card in what I believe I was put here on the earth to do, which was be a support, be a warm embrace, be a different way of looking at things when you're deep in the heart of that thing that's got you in the clutches that you just believe you can't come out and say, 'This is who I am.' Again whether it's coming out to say you're gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender; I don't care what it is, or you're saying I need to escape cubicle nation and I need to go start my own business. All these things are the things that it's done for me in my business. It's helped me get really clear on how I go take this to the next level, and what the evergreen conversations are that I can now have because it's my calling card. It's the thing that says, 'This guy has some expertise in this arena and he's worth listening to.'   Jenn T Grace:              That is so beautifully stated because that really I feel like is what it's all about. It's not about selling a million copies, it's about impacting the lives of individual people who need to hear your message to better their lives.   Rick Clemons:             In fact I purposefully carry- you may do this too Jenn. All of us authors kind of tend to do this whether we're with a big publishing house or not. I carry a box of books with me in my car wherever I go.   Jenn T Grace:              I do the same.   Rick Clemons:             And I find it really interesting- yes I have them available if somebody wants to buy them of course, but I've found it very interesting how many times I've been having a conversation with someone and I just feel compelled to say, "Excuse me a minute, I want to go get you something." Because I just feel like I want to hand them this book and just say, "I think this might help you in some way." And it's interesting because yes it's geared toward the late in life bloomer who's been married, coming out so to speak. But two things that have shocked me the most- or I shouldn't say shocked, I mean I guess I'm just in amazement is number one, the number of heterosexual friends and acquaintances of mine who have bought the book to support me, but then they have turned around and they've actually read it. I know that sounds really weird. It's like, "Yeah I know you're just buying the book to support me and you're never going to read this." But it's amazing that they have read the book, and they have come back to me, and a couple of them have even posted these reviews on Amazon unsolicited saying, 'I'm a heterosexual female, single mother of three, and I know this sounds weird that I would be reading this book, but this book opened my eyes to my own sexual orientation stuff as a heterosexual woman, that I didn't realize I'd never dealt with. All the stuff from teenage and puberty that I still have not really contended with, and Rick helped me see how beautiful it is to just be who I am.' Those are the ones that I get really blown away by. The second one that really surprises me is I intended this book to be the 35 on up crowd. I've had more young people- so now I'm really aging myself when I'm going to say, 'You know people in their twenties, young people,' who have come up to me and said- in fact the last networking event I was at, a young guy bought my book, he's 26 years old and he goes, "Yeah I think I really need to read this because I just came out last year and I'm kind of late to the game." And I'm looking at him going, "Hunny, 25 years old, to me you're kind of early to the game." But in his mind, many of his friends came out when they were fourteen, seventeen, eighteen, twenty, so in his mind he's a late bloomer. And so I think that's just really powerful stuff to see how a book, no matter what you, the author- what frame you put it in, it has so many more different ways that it can reach out and really impact people.   Jenn T Grace:              And I think that books are amazing because they will stay around long after you're gone. So I think for me it's kind of knowing that my words will live on if I am not around; they're still impacting people, and that's really kind of the ultimate goal that many of us have, and I think that's why you and I connected so well when we did, was that we both have this much bigger purpose in life than just ourselves.   Rick Clemons:             And you know to that point Jenn, I wish people would embrace that to leave a legacy, whatever that is and however big or small it is, is part of your purpose here on earth. Every one of us has a legacy to leave. Even if your legacy is somebody saw you stop and pick a ladybug up in the middle of a sidewalk, and move it over onto a plant so that ladybug continued to have life. If that's the only legacy you ever leave on the planet is someone saw you do that, then own that, and be it, and let it be. And I think often we think we have to have these grandiose things we do. Yes I agree with you 100%, I know there's words that I have now written that are there. They're never going to die. Someone, somewhere- I mean how do we have all these beautiful works of the masters still that we can see and read? It's because someone said this was important enough to keep around. I think each of us has words, and pieces of ourselves that are important enough to keep around, and that's another reason why I do the work I do, is to help people realize you have something to leave, and you have an impact to have on this planet.   Jenn T Grace:              I love that. I feel like this is such a good way to end it. I feel like we could talk all day, and I feel like you have- and this is not a back-handed insult, you have the voice for radio. You have such a soothing quality to your voice that I feel like the listeners could probably listen to you all day as well.   Rick Clemons:             Oh well thank you.   Jenn T Grace:              So for those who want to get in touch with you, how- what is your preferred means of them doing so?   Rick Clemons:             The best way is probably to literally either hop on my website, you can fill out a form on my contact page, but I really like the direct contact. You can email me at Rick@rickclemons.com, and again as Jenn said that's Clemons with one M, -ONS. So just think C and then lemons, that's the easiest way to always remember that Clemons. Rick@rickclemons.com. Shoot me and email and say, 'Hey I heard you on Jenn's podcast, and I just wanted to connect,' and especially if you want to do the True You Assessment make sure you say, 'I want to do the True You Assessment, I heard you on Jenn's podcast,' that way I can get you that $99 rate to do that, and I'd love to be a part of that and bring that into your life to help you open up to all the beautiful possibilities of what it is for you to be truly you.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah this is amazing. Thank you so much for spending the time today. I feel certain that the listeners are going to love this.   Rick Clemons:             Well thank you for having me, Jenn. It's always a pleasure and I look forward to many, many things we're going to do together.   Jenn T Grace:              Oh you bet. Thank you for listening to today's podcast. If there are any links from today's show that you are interested in finding, save yourself a step and head on over to www.JennTGrace.com/thepodcast. And there you will find a backlog of all of the past podcast episodes including transcripts, links to articles, reviews, books, you name it. It is all there on the website for your convenience. Additionally if you would like to get in touch with me for any reason, you can head on over to the website and click the contact form, send me a message, you can find me on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter all at JennTGrace. And as always I really appreciate you as a listener, and I highly encourage you to reach out to me whenever you can. Have a great one, and I will talk to you in the next episode.    

Jenn T. Grace – Episode 88 - Building a Niche Online Community with Dr. Gloria Brame Jenn T Grace:              You are listening to the Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Podcast, episode 88.   Introduction:              Welcome to the Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional Podcast; the podcast dedicated to helping LGBTQ professionals and business owners grow their business and careers through the power of leveraging their LGBTQ identities in their personal brand. You'll learn how to market your products and services both broadly, and within the LGBTQ community. You'll hear from incredible guests who are leveraging the power of their identity for good, as well as those who haven't yet started, and everyone in between. And now your host. She teaches straight people how to market to gay people, and gay people how to market themselves. Your professional lesbian, Jenn - with two N's - T Grace.   Jenn T Grace:              Well hello and welcome to episode 88 of the podcast. I am your host, Jenn, with two N's T. Grace, and today I have another interview for you. So this is four interviews in a row, all of which have had amazing content. I really appreciate the feedback that you're giving on the guests, and the topics, and all that great stuff. So today we are talking to Gloria Brame who is a certified sexologist. She has been writing about sex education, sex therapy, BDSM; you name it, she's been writing about it for a very long time. She started the first Internet group back in 1987 that was an online community for people in BDSM. So she has quite a historical perspective of the Internet, how she's used it to grow her personal brand, and her platform, and she's one of the most recognized and cited sources on the topic, which she talks about in the interview, which she really thinks has a lot to do with the fact that she is an academic and she has a PhD in the topic, and it was just a really, really fascinating interview to hear all of the ways in which she's been able to really get her message out there. And she talks specifically about social media strategy, we also talk about the difference between doing traditionally publishing a book, or doing a self-published book. So it's just honestly a wealth of information, and the topic was really interesting to talk to her about. So overall I really hope that you enjoy this interview, and she provides information on how to get in touch with her, but as you're listening to this if you're on a treadmill, or in the car and can't write it down, you can go to www.JennTGrace.com/88 and that is for episode number 88 of the podcast, and there you'll find the links of anything we discussed, her books, all that good stuff. But anyway I really hope you enjoy this interview, and feel free to reach out with any questions or comments. Thanks so much and enjoy.                                     Alright yeah so if you can just kind of start off by telling the listeners who you are, and what you do, and then we'll go from there.   Gloria Brame:             Okie dokie. My name is Gloria Brame. I have a PhD in Human Sexuality. I'm probably best known for being the lead author on a book on BDSM called 'Different Loving' which came out originally in 1993. I just did a 23-year follow-up I called 'Different Loving Too.' I started out just as a kinky person writing about kinky sex from an academic point of view because I was actually an English professor at the time, and that's really my background. But then I found it was very difficult to get any jobs once I've written a book about BDSM. So I decided to go back to school, I got a PhD, I made my dissertation project- I had a research project and a dissertation all about BDSM so you could say I have a degree now in BDSM.   Jenn T Grace:              Nice.   Gloria Brame:             And about a year after I was graduated I became a certified sexologist, which means I'm certified to work in the field of either sex therapy, or sex education, or public sexual health, any of those things. So I hung out my shingle and decided to become a sex therapist, and basically that's how I make a living even though I continue to write and publish books.   Jenn T Grace:              Nice. So when did you become certified, was it 2002?   Gloria Brame:             Yeah. I became a certified sexologist.   Jenn T Grace:              And you started your business shortly thereafter?   Gloria Brame:             Fourteen years ago. Right I had been doing really since the nineties what I guess I would call peer counseling because I founded a BDSM support group online way back in 1987, and before it was called BDSM. But it was for kinky people, and I founded it and I had such a huge membership, and a lot of the people were so encouraged- you know how it is, I was like the leader of the chat so I started doing a lot of peer counselling there because people would start writing me an email. So I started to think about- I really just wanted to write because that's my true love. I just wanted to write, but you really can't make a living as a writer unless you have phenomenal success. Like 'Fifty Shades of Gray' maybe. Or you're Stephen King, or something. But most writers do not make a lot of money. Most of us have to do something to earn money, so instead of teaching I wanted to do therapy, and that's been really awesome.   Jenn T Grace:              And have you used I guess the learnings and the knowledge that you've gotten by working with people one-on-one? Has that influenced what you've written about in any way?   Gloria Brame:             You know I see all of my life, and my life work really, as like just one big bowl that on the very inside, the inner rubber band if you will, is the writing. But everything is built up to a point where I feel that everything is about sex, and everything is about speaking my various truths about sex. So I've written academic types of books like the ‘Different Loving’s are more on the academic end. You know I'm working on a trilogy, I have one more book to write, called 'The Truth about Sex,' which is basically my twenty years of knowledge as a sexologist and theorist packed into three short volumes that sort of re-educate people on sexual diversity as a norm, and not binary heteronormative sex as a norm, because it never really was. And then I also have published some autobiographies where I talk about my sex history, because that's another piece of my work, my belief that what happens to us early in life impinges on sexual choices we make as adults. Not sexual identity, but choices.   Jenn T Grace:              Interesting. And now you've obviously written a handful of books, and right before we hit record I was saying that you must have some insights around how you've really positioned yourself as a sex expert, especially since you're frequently cited- one of the most frequently cited in the world.   Gloria Brame:             I came from a humanities background. I was a literary nerd, probably like many of the writers who are listening, we all start out as readers, and that was really my thing and I never really even went close to the sciences. I was okay in science but I wasn't even interested in it, and after writing 'Different Loving,' which I wrote because for one reason only, I didn't feel that anybody had written an honest book about that type of sexuality, and I was two or three years into being out, and I was really rah, rah, rah and I felt like, 'This is a terrible thing, nobody knows what it's really like.' So I said about writing that book. In the process of writing that book, I totally became hooked on sex history. I mean totally became hooked on my topic. I mean what could be better for a writer? I mean you write what you know, but then the more you know about it, you suddenly realize you want to devote your life to it. And I think what really got me in 'Different Loving' was just going back and reading all these nineteenth century source documents about what people originally said and how they studied homosexuality, or transgenderism, or fetishism, or what they later called sadomasochism; and their theories were completely kooky. And yet based on those kooky theories the psychiatric community has held sexual minorities in this death grip of disapproval for a hundred years. You know? So the more I learned, and the more I wrote, and the more I researched, the more hooked I became, and then I felt like well if I'm going to be a sex expert, I'm going to read everything I possibly can, and that's really what I did for like ten years.   Jenn T Grace:              Wow so you went all in for sure.   Gloria Brame:             I went all in and I didn't write any books during that time.   Jenn T Grace:              Interesting. So now what are the types of organizations or publications that are reaching out to you that are looking to quote you as a sex expert?   Gloria Brame:             Well I've been very academically successful, I've been incredibly successful in my practice, and my first book 'Different Loving' really set me up as an expert in that particular field; in a field where very few people except for pro-doms for a long time were really- most people were not comfortable admitting they were into it. And I was totally out of the closet since 1991 under my real name and everything. And I had a degree. One of the reasons I went back to school and got a degree in sex is because I felt that it would lend more authority to the books that I write.   Jenn T Grace:              I was actually going to ask you that question.   Gloria Brame:             Yeah, you know it's like okay this is just a kinky, poly, bi woman who's writing everything from her perspective, as opposed to oh this is somebody with a PhD in the subject. And I felt that definitely enhanced my ability to get my message out, and I really- I'm not entirely sure how my name has gotten out that much except that I've always positioned myself from the start as somebody who knew a lot about BDSM, and from there it grew, and I have always kept a high profile on the Internet, or as high a profile as a private person can.   Jenn T Grace:              As far as your high profile status, or trying to still have a low profile but being really heavily involved on the Internet, if you were to look back at what you were doing- because I feel like we have technology also kind of complicating things, but also enhancing things at the same time. So the fact that you had started an online group in 1987 is so amazing because it shows how in a sense cutting edge you were then. So have you been I guess keeping up with, or leveraging, or taking advantage of just the wide world of information that's out there right now. Has that helped you?   Gloria Brame:             The main thing of course- and this is where writers really fall down on the job, and a lot of artists, because they don't understand the Internet. Although I don't think that's going to be a problem to anybody under the age of 35 anymore, but I would say consistency and it's fluidity because in the early 1990's I hosted this- I was teaching classes for Netscape. Now does anyone even remember what Netscape was?   Jenn T Grace:              I do.   Gloria Brame:             You know it was the router that everybody used in the 1990's that was crappy and went away. So but at the time they thought they were going to take over the world, they thought they were going to be what turned out to be Google or something, and they had classes. So I was the first person to teach online BDSM, you know what I mean? A few years later Netscape was gone, then AOL merged with another platform, and again a lack of at the time people who had academic credentials to back up their expertise in BDSM. And then we jump ahead to blogs, and then you jump ahead to Facebook and LinkedIn. So I have a consistent presence on every new media platform, or every new platform that has emerged really since 1987.   Jenn T Grace:              Wow I feel like that's impressive.   Gloria Brame:             I tried Myspace, totally not for me. Totally not for a sexologist adult. But you know places like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, I consider essential. And Pinterest. I mean you have to be where there are going to be readers, and I think part of why I have a good reputation is I've also always offered a lot of free content.   Jenn T Grace:              Which is totally key in building a personal brand, is the more content that you put out there for free, and dripping it out to people when you have something that is paid for, I feel like you're going to have a higher likelihood of people wanting to buy from you because you've been giving away so long.   Gloria Brame:             Yeah and my goals as a writer because I used to teach creative writing, was to get myself locked onto routines and disciplines, things that I did every day. One of the hardest things for me was when blogging first emerged, to actually have something to say every day. You know I felt like, 'Oh my God.' You know or even something to say three times a week it felt overwhelming. So for a while like I switched to an all visual blog, after like a couple years of trying to write something new for my blog every day, it became impossible. So I switched to all visual, but by being all visual and being a sex person, I got banned like on all the search engines.   Jenn T Grace:              Interesting.   Gloria Brame:             So I learned my lesson. And now I've switched back to commentary, but now I use my blog- I would say 50% to 60% to promote my books.   Jenn T Grace:              And how often are you blogging? And what is it about? Have you found a new routine that seems to be working for you right now?   Gloria Brame:             I have. My routine is I now share with the public what I did for those ten years of not writing, which was I used to track every single new sex study, and I would take like post-graduate education modules online in sex, and so I was keeping up with everything. I still read the sex news every single day, I just got into the habit. So now I share on my blog. And sometimes really it's just a link. Like today there was a historic event in transgender history in the Philippines. Geraldine Romano, a trans woman, was elected to a Congressional office in Manila. So like that's a big thing. So something like that, all I need to say is congratulations. But there's always something that keeps people coming back to my blog, and of course to the right of my blog are links to my various books, and lots and lots of content to keep people there if they want to stick around.   Jenn T Grace:              And are you finding that Google has been good to you now with the amount of information that you have on your website in terms of ranking high?   Gloria Brame:             Yeah I actually had to write to them and all of that, but I got McAfee to take me off their banned website list.   Jenn T Grace:              Oh wow.   Gloria Brame:             And that was really important.   Jenn T Grace:              That's a big thing.   Gloria Brame:             Because you couldn't read me in other countries. I'm still banned in some countries, but that's okay. It's the nature of my work. When you're writing sex books, and talking frankly about sex, and you're not coming from a heteronormative perspective, you should expect to encounter pushback and censorship.   Jenn T Grace:              Now how does that play out on Amazon for example? Do you have any pushback or problems with them carrying your books?   Gloria Brame:             No, not so much on Amazon. I really don't. I haven't had any problems. You know again, I think some of it has to do with your credentials. I'm really grateful I have the credentials, that's all I can say. You know I'm really glad that I'm so nerdy that I could stand going back to school at age forty and getting a degree in something.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah.   Gloria Brame:             Because the payoff is that I do think that mainstream media are always going to be more comfortable with somebody who has the PhD or Dr before their name, or some kind of impressive to them credential, whether you're the founder of something, or whatever it is. And that's how my name has spread I think.   Jenn T Grace:              Do you think that that was partly why McAfee was willing to take you off their black list so to speak?   Gloria Brame:             It was, I'm sure of it. I was able to say, "Look go to my site." You know I stopped running the images, and I went back to just talking about it, and I said, "Well please look at the totality of my site. I'm a sex therapist and yes, I talk about frank things in frank language, and there it is." And they de-demonized me. They unblocked me.   Jenn T Grace:              I feel like that's a victory. Yeah that's a big one.   Gloria Brame:             That is a big one. But again, you know if the women and men listening to this are planning to do let's say erotic fiction for which they don't need any kind of degree because it's all about your creativity, but if you're doing that kind of- it's going to be hard to get noticed and branded.   Jenn T Grace:              And now-   Gloria Brame:             Whereas if you write self-help books you might be able to do without the degree.   Jenn T Grace:              I was going to say- yeah my audience is definitely more of the nonfiction side of things who might be writing some kind of self-help book rather than some fiction-related stuff.   Gloria Brame:             Yeah. So I would say that part of branding is making sure that people associate you with what you do, and not just erotic writer which is- but like something more specific like Queen of the Lovology Institute- pardon me, I think there is a Lovology Institute. But you know, something like that, something that is memorable.   Jenn T Grace:              So they think your name and they think exactly, very specifically what you do so that way they can find you when they're looking for you online.   Gloria Brame:             Right you know there are plenty of my peers, and colleagues are sexologists, but I always put that out there. Because it's not that common a word but it turns out to be a word that everybody sort of understands.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah.   Gloria Brame:             And sort of like they're involved in sex but it isn't too dirty because they're helping people.   Jenn T Grace:              I know you throw 'ologist' onto anything and it seems like it works.   Gloria Brame:             Yeah.   Jenn T Grace:              Do you think that if somebody were to be starting to do something even remotely similar to what you're doing now without having that PhD that they may encounter any type of resistance like you faced earlier on? Or do you think some of that's been a little bit lifted.   Gloria Brame:             Well it depends on where you go. Like for example I'm very, very frequently quoted but when I've tried to get 'The Truth about Sex' published, no mainstream publisher wanted to touch it because they felt that it was just too far out. They felt it was too far out for me, and this was like back in 2010 or 2011 to be saying that sexual diversity was normal. You know? And they felt- at least one place, that had marketing- at a place that had formerly published me said, "I can't sell a dominatrix in today's environment." Whatever that meant. You know because I've never hidden that I'm involved in BDSM as a topic. So it depends on what you're selling. If you're a lesbian and you find a sympathetic lesbian editor who wants to publish articulate books, you know about the lesbian experience, you may not experience any pushback. But if you go someplace mainstream and they're like, "Oh well we already had two lesbians this year," you know what I mean? You may experience marginalization, pushback, people not really taking you that seriously, and for me since all of my stuff is like cutting edge, you know I feel lucky that I actually got my first book through a big publisher. And in recent years I just moved to self-publishing.   Jenn T Grace:              I was just going to ask you about that. So when the big publisher shuts the door in your face, the solution is to self-publish. Can you just talk a little bit about that experience compared to the traditional publishing experience?   Gloria Brame:             There are a lot of great things about self-publishing and there are a lot of great things about commercial publishing. I don't want to discourage people because the bigger money usually is to be made in big publishing, although again I'll note 'Fifty Shades of Gray' I think started out as a self-published 'Twilight' fanfic and I believe sold enough copies on Amazon that it got a publisher interested. That happens once in a blue moon, but it does happen. Mainly the advantages of going with a commercial publisher are very simply- and you need an agent to get into a commercial publisher by the way, because I operate only with an intellectual property lawyer, I don't have an agent anymore. Fired them, too. You have to have an agent, an agent takes 20% of your money, all your money. The advance, residuals, everything.   Jenn T Grace:              How about services that you provide, or other products?   Gloria Brame:             Right that they provide. But they can get you into- they'll know who to send your manuscript to, hopefully they'll know the right people to show your manuscript to, and they have an in with those people so those people will actually read your manuscript. So if you send a manuscript in blind, you may never get read. You'll never get higher maybe than a reader for the editor who is a grad student or something like that. You know? But if you can get through in commercial publishing, they'll do all your publicity, they'll create your publicity campaign, they'll tell you where to show up, they'll sign you up for any book signings and readings, they'll do all of that. They'll do all of the backend work on copywrite and production. You may not even get a choice in the book cover they slap on you, but maybe. You know and they take all of that stuff, all the financial end, and the creative end of production, and they do it all for you. So basically you submit your manuscript and other than having to re-edit it to their like several times, you kind of work for them once they pay you for your book. With- and you also have your best chance, finally the most important thing is distribution. They distribute your book across the country, and make sure it gets on Amazon. If they like it enough they'll really push it harder and try to get book sellers interested.   Jenn T Grace:              So in your experience, the 20% that the agent would take, did it seem worth it for at least the ones that have gone through that traditional publishing route?   Gloria Brame:             Yes, it does. You may not be happy if you're not seeing a big number and what you end up with is really not that great, and then you may really resent 20%, but overall the value of getting into a commercial publisher, you know there are many positive things about it. Unfortunately there's also a tremendous downside to commercial publishing. And the first downside of course is that it's very hard to get a book published, and even when you do, if they tell you to change it, you have to change it. And my first book, 'Different Loving' was really censored, and at the time I accepted it and I don't think I would today.   Jenn T Grace:              Interesting. And how much did it take away from what you were talking about from that censorship standpoint? Did it like really dilute the message that you were trying to convey?   Gloria Brame:             I don't think it diluted the message itself, but it definitely diluted what the sexuality was about and how extreme it could get. Because they made us remove a chapter on people who into some really edgy, edgy play. And anywhere there was really edgy play, they wanted it to go. So to somebody who's in BDSM that edgy, edgy play didn't seem that edgy, but to straight people it scared the bejesus out of them. So- and lawyers said, "You know we're going to see a million lawsuits on this, and blah, blah, blah."   Jenn T Grace:              Interesting.   Gloria Brame:             So we let them cut us down, and you know the basic message is this stuff's okay, and then we just weren't able to include all of the interview material and that was kind of sad. And one chapter had to go on edge play. So you know that was sad, but then I found even when I wrote a very mainstream book called, 'Come Hither,' which was like a basic introduction to the community, and how you can tell if you're kinky, and it was really like a fun book for couples who were talking about kink together. Even there, you know with a different publisher, and even though they signed up with me because I had written 'Different Loving.' You know they really reigned it in, and their PR plan for me fell apart when the editor and then the head of PR left. New people came in, and they didn't really care about my book. So that's the peril of being at a big house, is that even when you land that contract, in the end you may not see the money you were expecting because if they pay you up front you have to earn it back in sales. And not a lot of books earn back their advances; that's why publishing is in shitty shape. You know it's very hard for them to make profits these days on book sales. And with self-publishing you have total intellectual freedom, and total creativity, it can be the book you wanted to write, but the downside is you have to do everything yourself. You know if you sign up with like- the place I signed up with actually treats me like a publisher not a vanity press. In other words I don't pay them anything and they do things for me because I was a known entity and they felt they could sell my books. So my deal with them is 50/50 profits. I don't invest anything, and they don't charge me anything, and we share profits 50/50 down the line from the day the book starts selling. I pick the cover, they do the copywrite stuff in the background, I have to do all my own marketing.   Jenn T Grace:              Interesting. So they'll take care of all the logistics if you will.   Gloria Brame:             They take care of all the logistics. This particular company works with you if you can submit a cover, they can suggest a cover, they have volumes and volumes of clip art, they can design with you or use your designs. They will also make sure to file for all the important copywrite and ISBN data for your book, they do all of that stuff.   Jenn T Grace:              And do you find that there are-   Gloria Brame:             And they get it on Amazon, they get it on all of the online book stores, Barnes and Noble, and they do a digital version as well.   Jenn T Grace:              Do you find that there are a lot of companies similar to what they're offering? Is this kind of a new- it's not even really a new frontier but you know what I mean.   Gloria Brame:             It's not even a new frontier, no. There are lots of places and the degree of your own autonomy there is according to place. Like I believe some sites you have to fill out all the paperwork and you're just using them to print your book literally. You know? Or you can go to Amazon which I believe now has its own print-to-vision for authors, and you can work directly with Amazon and make sure it gets on Amazon automatically. Or you can use a service where you would pay a nominal fee like $300 to $1,000 depending on the level of service, and they give you a la carte services like, 'Well we'll do this, and we'll do that, you can pick all the way up to- we'll give you a fancy cover design.'   Jenn T Grace:              So are there other benefits to the self-publishing road other than what you described?   Gloria Brame:             Well for me I prefer it because A) I will always write niche books. In other words I doubt I'll ever have- my books will have ever have universal appeal even though my blog may. Because you know on my blog I write about women's sexual health, and just everything that is newsworthy in the field of sex. But my books are really pretty specific to a more queer, and then sometimes BDSM perspective.   Jenn T Grace:              So knowing what you've been talking about, for somebody who- maybe they're just starting out, and they're just trying to figure out the lay of the land for how they can make their name synonymous like we were talking about before with what it is they do. What do you think the number one thing, or the first step that would be worthwhile for them to take, into really kind of building their online community, which is what you have. It seems like you have a really big online community.   Gloria Brame:             First I would recommend before they go to their blog, is that they start building their social networking platform that they believe will be a great place to promote any free content they're going to be doing. So like if they're going to be posting covers of their book, they want to have a Pinterest board. Like I have a Pinterest- in addition to all my sex history, and [Inaudible 00:30:05] pictures, and kittens, of course there must be cats. But I mean in addition to all of that I have a board devoted to 'Different Loving,' you know a Pinterest board. And all my book covers as I'm designing the book, or any pictures of people who are in the book, or anything like that goes on that board, so that's one place. I have a Tumblr account, all my blog posts go there. My blog posts auto-post to a Facebook fan page which is dedicated only to my work. My LinkedIn page which is dedicated only to my work; I will not use LinkedIn anymore for chat or even for networking because I didn't find that it did a damn thing for me.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah for your industry.   Gloria Brame:             But what does do a thing for me is when I post a blog post as an article on LinkedIn, you know? In other words just making sure that word of my free content appears everywhere, and on Twitter. And there's a program you can use called www.IFTTT.com.   Jenn T Grace:              Yes I've heard of that before.   Gloria Brame:             Okay.   Jenn T Grace:              How are you using it?   Gloria Brame:             I use IFTTT and I advise it for anybody who wants to get writing and news of their books out in a very targeted way. IFTTT is an online software program that allows you to automatically re-post your post from let's say Twitter, or from your blog, to all of your other social media. And they actually have a much wider range of social media platforms than I ever use because I'm not on everything, you know? But you could probably use it to- if you're on everything you can- you just set it up one time and then every time you post on a particular place, that particular content will go out to ninety social media platforms. And you may only get one or two hits on some of them, but it's worth it.   Jenn T Grace:              It's still exposure, right? It's still getting your message out.   Gloria Brame:             It's exposure and you keep doing it, and you can't really rely on other people these days to promote you, or that a single promotion in any one place is really going to change your life. It's just not like that anymore because the Internet is drowning in content.   Jenn T Grace:              So as the Internet is drowning in content, how do you think the best way to stand out in this kind of flood of information? Have you found any particular way that seems to work for you?   Gloria Brame:             Well I find that- I've shifted a lot. I mean I'm constantly adapting. Like the reason I ended up with IFTTT was that I just spent a year casually just sort of browsing media impact on my numbers. You know? Just sort of watching to see what was more effective, what seemed to get more hits to my website, where was I selling more books? And I found like Twitter was useful for that, so whereas I used to use Twitter for the usual kind of banter that people get into, or personal things. I never got into what was for lunch, but you know what I mean. Yeah just like random comments on Twitter. I stopped that completely. I only use Twitter now as a promotional tool for my free content and my work. Period. No chatter, no nothing. Because I think that in such a busy world people really need to know who you are, and what your identity is. It's like you know Kim Kardashian, what's her brand really? Well it's being Kim Kardashian but I think it's having insane outfits and always looking perfectly coiffed. You know? Or deliberately looking great when she's disheveled too.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah.   Gloria Brame:             So I mean it's all about looking good.   Jenn T Grace:              So what I'm hearing, and you're saying that you're using Twitter to put out content, it's not always asking for something- for people in return. You're just saying, "Here is my free information."   Gloria Brame:             You know like when I say 50% to 60% promotes my stuff, like today I'm writing a thought piece on redefining BDSM that's going to go up on my blog a little later this afternoon. And there were opportunities because they were relevant, opportunities to talk about an opinion that I had in one of my books on this subject. You see what I mean? So I'm not doing a big promotion for my book, I'm not going to include a big picture of my book, or anything like, but among the various things that I'm linking to including other people's articles and thoughts, I'm including a link for my book.   Jenn T Grace:              Yes I think that's the key.   Gloria Brame:             I feel that in exchange for getting people to see that there's a link to my book, they're getting five or six paragraphs of provocative reading that they don't have to pay for.   Jenn T Grace:              Yes. Yeah I think that's the key. So you're not telling people to just go out there and start spamming people saying how great your book is, you're giving valuable content that's related to what your book is providing, and everyone's winning because you're giving out stuff. You've spent time and energy writing, and writing well, that you want people to see that free content, which then just gets your name in front of them more often.   Gloria Brame:             Yeah, you know I'm sixty years old, I'm like a different generation and I'm really uncomfortable praising myself. I'm really uncomfortably going and saying, "I'm the greatest-" you know whatever I may think at home with people who love me and forgive me, whatever flights of fancy my ego may take here. I think it's really rude, and crass, and ugly when people just get up and start telling you how fucking fantastic they are.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah for real.   Gloria Brame:             You know it's just like- and who's the judge of that? You and your mother?   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah. There needs to be a balance for sure.   Gloria Brame:             So I don't do that. I mean I do believe that my work contains important stuff, or relevant stuff, or fun- whatever my books contain, I will push the content, but I'll push the content by showing rather than claiming, if you know what I mean. I'll give them some content to show what I'm talking about. However that said, I will say that on Twitter, I don't know if it's not a hit on my blog, but on Twitter and on my Facebook fan page they like getting promotions. People respond positively to promotions. They don't on LinkedIn, not nearly as much.   Jenn T Grace:              You're paying attention to your audience. I think that's so important is that you're not just splattering it.   Gloria Brame:             So seeing that people will like or even love when I create- I create a lot of funny ads for my book, so I'll create a funny ad and even there I hope it's not just 'go and buy my book,' but 'here's something that will make you giggle, and please buy my book.' Or 'here's an excerpt from my book, don't you want to read more?' That kind of thing.   Jenn T Grace:              That makes a lot of sense.   Gloria Brame:             And I don't do it a lot, I do it a couple times a week because I have seven books that I really want to sell.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah so we're already getting over forty minutes here so I would love to have you spend a couple of minutes just talking about your new book that you were mentioning, and letting everyone know where they can find more information about you since we're really kind of talking about your community, and all the places that you are. I'd love for people to be able to know exactly how to follow you should they want to.   Gloria Brame:             Well I'm really easy to find, just Gloria Brame into Google and you can find me on Facebook and Twitter or www.GloriaBrame.com and once you get to my website you'll see my blog link and you can subscribe to it, or you can- anything that goes on my blog goes out to social media, so if you follow me @DrGloriaBrame you'll see links to all of my free content. Now the new book, I wasn't sure if I wanted to ever write a sequel to 'Different Loving' to be honest, because it was an enormous, enormous task and it took three people almost three years to write that book.   Jenn T Grace:              Wow.   Gloria Brame:             So I couldn't do that now, I couldn't commit three to six years. One of our collaborators died in the interim, et cetera, et cetera. But what I did want to do is I really got interested some years ago about doing like what happens to people after they've been in the scene for twenty years? Because I first got involved in like 1985 or 1986, now it's 2016, I'm still involved in my community to some degree. I don't really appear many places anymore, I don't attend conferences much because I'm older and I have my BDSM community in my home with my partners. But so I've evolved enormously even in terms of how I play, or how I live. One of my partners is a woman, you know that was kind of unexpected, I thought I would be partnered with men. So you know things really changed and I really wanted to know how things changed in the lives of other players, and I was in touch with- I don't know about a half dozen or more of the original interviewees over the years, hooked up on Facebook. So I decided that was the place to start. I was going to start not by trying to look at the overwhelming phenomenon of BDSM online that has completely transformed our community, but first to go and see how many of the old interviewees I could find twenty years later. And I found about twenty of them which was awesome.   Jenn T Grace:              How many were in the original?   Gloria Brame:             The original was like sixty or seventy that appeared in the book.   Jenn T Grace:              Wow that's a good percentage, yeah.   Gloria Brame:             And for this one I actually found more, I found 25 but some people had withdrawn, a number of people had died, and some people just didn't want to be in this book. They were living very different lives and they didn't want to be defined as BDSM publicly anymore. So I added to those nineteen, twelve people who hadn't been in the book who were a lot younger, but who also had been at least- had at least twenty years' experience. And so our youngest participant was a woman of 37 who started out when she was 17. And I decided that the best way to chronicle like what had changed in the BDSM world- because that was the real question, is where are we as a community now 25 years later, was to chronicle it through individual stories. So I did in-depth interviews with 31 different people across all of the orientations; trans people, trans men, trans women, gay men, lesbians, bisexuals and straight people. And then I went and I did on Facebook general community surveys where I asked like 200 BDSM friends to contribute their answers to a range of questions on BDSM subjects. And that was like my research base; using those interviews and then all of the rafts of community dialogues as I called them about different subjects like what does consent mean to you, or what's your bottom line in a relationship, or what have you learned? I asked everybody I interviewed in depth, 'What would you say now to the person you were 25 years ago after everything you've learned?' And then from there I just treated it like a sexologist by looking at some of the science that submerged in the twenty years, how the culture has changed in the twenty years, how growing acceptance of sexual diversity means that we couldn't even count the number of people in the BDSM worlds if we counted like every fetishist out there, et cetera, et cetera. So that's really what the book is about. It brings 'Different Loving' circa 1993 into the 21st century.   Jenn T Grace:              It sounds fascinating.   Gloria Brame:             Where we now- what has the journey been like, what's our real history, with some predictions of mine on what future sex will be like.   Jenn T Grace:              Wow that sounds really interesting. So if somebody were interested would it make sense, or would you still recommend that they read the first one and then read the second one?   Gloria Brame:             You know it really depends on the person. You know if they're a BDSM-er they probably want to start with number one, and then go to number two. If they're coming to BDSM as scholars or just people who have friends involved who are just kind of interested in it, DL Too is the 21st century of BDSM. So it's kind of like do you want the whole historical perspective? Because the original volume really goes into the history- like I'll have a chapter on bondage and then we look back to ancient practices, and what people have written about BDSM, what they had written about it in the seventeenth century, and the nineteenth century, and so forth. The new book is definitely rooted and based in the 21st century.   Jenn T Grace:              Wow.   Gloria Brame:             And it's a look back at where we were and where we are.   Jenn T Grace:              It sounds really interesting just from the historical standpoint of it, just to get a lesson.   Gloria Brame:             Yeah it's really cool to me because I feel it's- I mean the next best thing to a real longitudinal study, which has never been done. You know I mean it's just never been done that you look at this particular sexual population and then you come back to them twenty years later, and interview many of the same people, and find out how massively their lives have changed without their sexual orientation changing.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah, wow that's so interesting.   Gloria Brame:             Yeah I mean a lot of them are just doing all new things, things they weren't doing, and many of them have partners they never expected to have.   Jenn T Grace:              Yourself included, right?   Gloria Brame:             I can't tell you- like a lot of people have become poly, something that would have been really out of the box twenty years ago.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah this is really interesting. I have a client who does a lot of work in terms of education around the poly community, so I think that she would love this book, so I'm certainly going to send her to your website. She probably already knows about you for all I know.   Gloria Brame:             Yeah one of my favorite interviews was a woman who had been married like two or three times, and they'd all failed, and she was really depressed, but she also had this secret life as a spanking fetishist. She had done movies as a spanking fetishist. Well- and that was her interview, was based on she's this star of spanking fetish movies back in the 1990's. But now when I meet her in 2015 I guess was when I spoke with her, you know she couldn't find anyone, she couldn't find anyone, she finally said, "That's it, I'm done with straight marriages." And then she met a man and his female partner and she fell in love with both of them.   Jenn T Grace:              That's awesome.   Gloria Brame:             And now they're a three way marriage. They found a place to get married as a three, as a triad. And she said, "I never would have imagined I could be this happy. Who knew?"   Jenn T Grace:              That's so nice to hear, right?   Gloria Brame:             I mean she vaguely knew she was bisexual, or so she thought until she fell in love with a woman. So you know, people's lives- I think that once you allow yourself to be sexually free, that you know, the potentials for your life are just genuinely transformed.   Jenn T Grace:              I think it's just trying to not put yourself in a box or feel the need to label yourself, which is something the LGBT community certainly struggles with in a lot of ways.   Gloria Brame:             Correct. You know?   Jenn T Grace:              Wow so for folks-   Gloria Brame:             It's funny because the blog piece I'm writing today is about I'm tired of people defining BDSM as bondage and discipline, dominance and sub- you know because actually most people, I don't even know how many people still even do bondage and discipline. People have moved on, they've evolved, you know? And the reality was, is while it was a very politically effective acronym to use, you know because it seemed to unite us, you know millions of us don't do any of the stuff in that thing, and being defined- as the gay rights movement knows, being defined by the things you do in bed sends a really creepy message.   Jenn T Grace:              Absolutely.   Gloria Brame:             As opposed to who you really are as people. You know or your right to have dignity and equal rights in society.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah labels do us a disservice.   Gloria Brame:             So I think even there, I mean we're still growing.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah, absolutely. I feel like this interview has been so good because I feel like just having such a historical context for even social media, you're bringing so many very perspectives to us, and also just knowing about your book. So for people who- I know that you had given your website, is there a different place to send people to get your books, or still just straight to your website directly?   Gloria Brame:             I have a shop on my site but of course the cheapest option is Amazon, and you can just type Gloria Brame into Amazon and hopefully my author's page will come up with- oh that's another place every writer should be of course, is have your own author's page on Amazon, have your own author's page on Goodreads.   Jenn T Grace:              Yes absolutely.   Gloria Brame:             So I have an author's page with a bio and a picture of me with a flower I believe, looking very mature and professional.   Jenn T Grace:              That's awesome.   Gloria Brame:             And there it is. I would appreciate and love if your listeners would support my work because I'm out there.   Jenn T Grace:              Absolutely. Been putting yourself out there for a while. Well I sincerely appreciate your time today, this has been great and I'm sure my listeners are going to love this.   Gloria Brame:             Thanks so much Jenn, it was a great interview.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah thank you so much.   Gloria Brame:             Alrighty.   Jenn T Grace:              Thank you for listening to today's podcast. If there are any links from today's show that you are interested in finding, save yourself a step and head on over to www.JennTGrace.com/thepodcast. And there you will find a backlog of all of the past podcast episodes including transcripts, links to articles, reviews, books, you name it. It is all there on the website for your convenience. Additionally if you would like to get in touch with me for any reason, you can head on over to the website and click the contact form, send me a message, you can find me on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter all at JennTGrace. And as always I really appreciate you as a listener, and I highly encourage you to reach out to me whenever you can. Have a great one, and I will talk to you in the next episode.  

Jenn T. Grace – Episode 85 – Jacob Tobia Shares How to Build a Personal Brand Platform with Meaning   Jenn T Grace:              You are listening to the Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional Podcast, episode 85.   Introduction:              Welcome to the Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional Podcast; the podcast dedicated to helping LGBTQ professionals and business owners grow their business and careers through the power of leveraging their LGBTQ identities in their personal brand. You'll learn how to market your products and services both broadly, and within the LGBTQ community. You'll hear from incredible guests who are leveraging the power of their identity for good, as well as those who haven't yet started, and everyone in between. And now your host. She teaches straight people how to market to gay people, and gay people how to market themselves. Your professional lesbian, Jenn - with two N's - T Grace.   Jenn T Grace:              Well hello and welcome to episode 85 of the Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional Podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and today I am so excited to bring you an interview. It's been a couple of episodes since we've had an interview, and this is going to be the first of probably eight or nine to come over the next couple of months. So I'm really excited, and I'm not going to make this intro long at all, but I do want to let you know that we are talking with Jacob Tobia today who is a leading voice for genderqueer, nonbinary and gender nonconforming people. We discussed in great length what it means to be genderqueer, or gender nonconforming, and talked to some degree about the political landscape that our country is in right now. Jacob is originally from North Carolina, so we got a chance to talk a little bit about the bathroom bills in North Carolina. But what we really focused our time on was really just kind of dissecting this whole spectrum of gender, and the fact that it is a nonbinary spectrum. And I asked a lot of pointed questions and Jacob had some amazing, amazing answers to them. So I really hope that you learn something from this interview, and then also follow Jacob on social media; they're on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr, Instagram, all over the place, and the website is www.JacobTobia.com and you can get all sorts of information about them there. And yeah, so I really hope that you enjoy this interview, it was really awesome, and I will talk to you in episode 86. Thanks so much, and enjoy.   Jacob Tobia:                At a 30,000 foot view, I'm Jacob, I am a genderqueer writer and speaker and media person, and some would even say a personality perhaps. And I grew up in North Carolina and went to school in North Carolina, and now I live in New York City. And my sort of mission right now, and my mission probably for a good bit of my life, is just sort of getting beyond this idea that there are only two genders. Getting beyond the idea that gender is somehow this oppositional exercise, but there are only two options that you can understand yourself within. And starting to see what a world could look like that understood gender as thousands of possibilities as part of the spectrum, as it actually is. You know? And it's something that the idea of sort of like convincing the world of this feels daunting at times, but then other times I also have to remind myself that historically there have been points throughout the world, and across cultures, and across time where people already understood this. I don't think that what I'm saying is necessarily anything new in the context of like people and history. I think it's just something that in sort of the modern world that we live in, and particularly in the context of the United States, is something people need to hear again if that makes sense.   Jenn T Grace:              I think so.   Jacob Tobia:                I do a lot of different kinds of work around that from- I did like reality TV last year, I was on an episode of MTV's True Life, but I also do a lot of writing, and [Inaudible 00:04:24] and that kind of work, and then do some political organizing, and also I'm working on a book, and all that kind of stuff. So it's a broad range of things, and all that's leading towards I think the idea of gender nonconforming, and gender nonbinary folks being able to reclaim our full humanity.   Jenn T Grace:              So if someone's listening to this, and this is a podcast about kind of personal branding for LGBTQ professionals, and if someone's listening to this and they may not be completely entrenched in what it means to be genderqueer or nonbinary or gender nonconforming. How would you give kind of a high level overview of the best way to describe that, to get somebody who may not fully understand what you're saying to really just kind of land the plane for them?   Jacob Tobia:                Yeah I mean I think nonbinary gender is really brilliantly simple when you get down to it, right? Every system in nature, every system in the world that we live in has nuance and is built across a wide array of representations, right? Anytime you categorize something, there are going to be things in between the categories that you've created. Especially when you create two categories for a wide array of types of people. So I think a lot about gender like I think about color. The visible color spectrum, if you try to divide the visible color spectrum into two types of color, you're going to have a very difficult time parsing out many of the shades, and figuring out sort of where they belong. And I think what the nonbinary movement, and what genderqueer people sort of claim is that it's okay to sort of say, 'Well we have this world where we're classifying people as warm colors and cool colors, and I'm actually kind of like a yellow green.' Like I'm somewhere in the middle of that, and actually all of us are somewhere in the middle of that, and no one of us really matches the architype of this sort of general thing that we've created. So in short form, I think that's a kind of good way to explain it and a good way to conceptualize it. The idea that lumping people into two categories of gender is sloppy. People fall all over the map.   Jenn T Grace:              And just as you were talking I was thinking about how there have been times where my wife and I will be talking, and both trying to- because I feel like there's this stereotype that in any type of same sex relationship, that somebody is going to be the more masculine one, or somebody's going to be the more feminine one. There's just kind of the people want to put us all into these very rigid buckets, and we've had conversations before where neither of us fall in either direction to an extreme. Like we're both in this very much a gray area. So that's for us who are more enlightened to the varied spectrum, if you will. What do you say to the straight folks who may be falling in this gender spectrum somewhere, but don't even recognize that they're falling in it? Have you had audiences where you're talking to folks like this? Because I think of- if I think back to a job I had well over a decade ago, there was a woman who I worked with who everyone made this assumption that she was a lesbian, everyone did, and she was not, she was married to a man and just happened to fall on this gender expression spectrum, and everyone just assumed that that's who she was and she was hiding. So do you encounter people that need education around I guess that type of component to it as well? Am I making sense?   Jacob Tobia:                Yeah so I have a few reactions to that, right? I think one feeling that I have increasingly is that there's a really strong degree to which sexuality and gender identity have been conflated in pop culture that's really to the detriment of everybody, right? Because a lot of times- and I think it's really interesting when you look at sort of discourse through the nineties and early 2000's around LGBT rights, or a lot of times in that period, gay rights. A lot of things that we're talked about as anti-gay were actually anti-femme, right? Or anti a certain kind of gender expression. And they used the word gay as a sort of coverall, but like I think it's really interesting talking about this woman at your office who was more masculine and was assumed to be a lesbian. Like the adversity that she faced has probably little to do- like the primary root of the adversity she faced was that she was gender nonconforming, right? Not that she had- the perceived sexuality came secondarily to that, right?   Jenn T Grace:              Correct.   Jacob Tobia:                So I think that it's interesting when we talk about gay and lesbian folks in the context of gender diversity, and oftentimes there are deep gender issues within the community that impact some people and don't impact others because we aren't good at applying the label gender nonconforming to ourselves and others, right? Because it's interesting when you sort of said like, "Oh well how would you talk to straight folks about this?" First my gut reaction, my initial reaction was like well actually I mean how do you talk to gay folks about it? Like I actually think that in this sort of modern understanding of gay and lesbian identity, most gay and lesbian folks that I know are relatively attached to their identity as men or women. Most people who use the word gay or lesbian that I know don't dis-identify with the gender binary.   Jenn T Grace:              Good point.   Jacob Tobia:                Don't identify outside of manhood or womanhood. And so I think that there's a lot of education that we need to do within our own community around creating safer spaces for gender expression, and allowing people the ability to express themselves. So I think it's making the imperative for understanding one that only applies to heterosexual folks is really limits the scope is a way that doesn't keep the LGBT community accountable to its own prejudice, because we have a great number of prejudices baked into our community because we are a really wide diverse community, right? Like there have been masculine gay men who have been worse to me as a femme than straight men have been. Like and I think it's important to mark that, that this isn't- like gender nonconformity is not innately understood by people because they are gay or lesbian if their gender identity has always fallen within the lines. So there's sort of that thought. I know it's a complicated kind of like answer.   Jenn T Grace:              No I think this is great.   Jacob Tobia:                The other thought that I have around sort of how you talk to people who identify in a binary way about the fact that they are also on a spectrum of gender. And I think it's actually not very hard. I don't think it's rocket science to talk to people about where they fall on the gender spectrum because everyone, even people who identify as men or as women, have had moments where their gender was policed, or they've policed the gender of somebody else. And the one thing that's been really cool that I've seen involved in my work over the past year or so, I started doing more and more speaking, more and more public speaking, and talking all kinds of places. I gave a talk at Princeton Theological Seminary to a very religious audience, I've given talks to high schools and middle schools, I've given talks at colleges to radical queers, I've given talks to corporate audience; I've been talking in a lot of different types of rooms, but it's interesting because every room, no matter what the sort of political leanings of the room are, or how queer the room is or not, it's been incredible that kind of the same core message resonates with people in the same way. When I ask people, "When was a time when you were told that you were not good enough because of the way you were performing your gender. When was a time that you were told that you couldn't do something because it wasn't something that boys or girls do?" And every single person I have ever spoken to in my entire life has an answer to that question, and has a moment they remember when their gender was policed. And I think that that's where we can really think about like this is something that's fundamental to all of humanity, right? Like everyone experiences this, and it doesn't take a lot of effort to sort of mainstream the discourse because it necessarily is baked into everyone's experience. So I just got better at tapping into that and talking to people honestly about that. And probably my biggest moment of triumph in that regard was that I spoke to a high school in lower Manhattan actually, and I was talking to this group of high schoolers, and gave my whole presentation, and at the end of it I said, "I'd love to hear from some of you. Like when are moments that you have had your gender policed, or been told that your gender was not acceptable?" And it's easy I think given where we come and sort of how we talk about femininity versus masculinity culturally; it's easier for young girls to talk about ways in which their gender has been policed or their gender has limited them. I think that young women and femmes are taught from an early age to think about their gender broadly, right? I think to think about their gender as a [Inaudible 00:13:20]. Whereas I think that a lot of young boys and young men and young masculine people aren't taught to think about their gender as something other than a static entity. They're not taught to interrogate it or think about it. So in the context of a high school assembly, it's pretty easy for a girl to stand up and socially acceptable almost for a girl to stand up and say, "Oh well I was told that I couldn't play this sport because that wasn't girly enough." Or "I was told that I wasn't allowed to wear my hair a certain way because that's not what girls are supposed to do." But getting young men to stand up in front of their peers in a classroom setting and say something about how their gender has been policed is a lot harder, and one of the biggest markers of success for me, is if I can get men in the audience to talk critically about their gender, then I know that people have really heard me. And I was in this assembly, and I was talking to 150 high school students, and it was the end of the assembly and at the end of it I asked that question, and a few girls answered, and then I said, "Is there anyone who identifies as a guy who would be willing to answer this? Is there anyone who's courageous enough to step up to talk about it? I mean I've told a million examples in my life of when this has happened, but like is someone willing to talk about this in their own experience? Because I know that ya'll have been through it." And this one guy just raised his hand and he seemed to be like one of the cool kids or whatever, and he was just like, "Yeah I'm Brazilian, and in Brazilian culture guys dance a lot. And when I moved to the US, people told me that I wasn't- that it was too girly to dance the way that I dance. But like I'm going to keep dancing the way that I dance because I'm awesome." And I was just sort of like- it was a real moment for me when he felt able to speak to the ways in which the policing of masculinity had hurt him, or had sought to interfere with his authenticity. So I think that this bridge is not that hard to build, we just need to create the space for it. I think you just need to create the time and the place for people to think about these things critically.   Jenn T Grace:              And do you find that there are more people or even a percentage of people within the LGBTQ community that are more critical of what you're doing? Because for me personally, I find that there is a very big divide, a little bit of what you were touching on a few minutes ago, between people who identify as lesbian and gay versus even people who identify as trans. There seems to be this divide that not everyone understands each other. And then there's the argument that not everyone should be lumped under the same umbrella. So for you who this is what you're doing for a living, you are out there advocating on behalf of this particular subject, do you find that trying to move the needle within the L, G piece of the community tends to be a rough road at times?   Jacob Tobia:                To be frank, I generally have really positive interaction with folks who identify as lesbian. Because I think that within queer women's communities and within lesbian women's communities, there has always been kind of baked in an appreciation for gender diversity, and like you could be butch or you could be femme, and if you're a queer woman both of those are attractive positions. Like I know butch women who date other butch women, I know femme women who date other femme women, I know butches who date femmes, like I know femmes who date butches, and that is sort of baked into the experience of so many queer women that I know. And there's sort of this- I think this real freedom there in queer and lesbian women's communities that I deeply admire. I don't think that most of the queer lesbian women that I've talked to have really had any kind of deep issues with the message that I'm bringing. Because also I'm very quick to note that the message I'm bringing into the community is not really a new one. It's not a new one at all. Like gender nonconforming people have been part of the queer community since the queer community started, and will always be. I think it's just that in the context of the current LGBT movement, one that has focused for a decade now on assimilation and sort of mainstreaming our bodies and ourselves- and making ourselves palatable to the 'moveable middle.' I think that in that context we've really lost a lot of our roots. We've really lost a lot of the natural and fabulous understanding of gender diversity that queer community has always had in the interest of gaining political rights. So the people that I really have issues with are the gay men. What it really comes down to for me is just unresolved trauma. There are so many gay men out there who were just bullied mercilessly, or have felt isolated for their entire lives, and they finally get to a city where they can feel okay, and then they have a very defensive, aggressive and closed minded masculinity that when they see someone who's femme and unashamed and happy about it like I am, it can be hard. Because it's kind of like when you haven't recovered and you haven't healed, and you see someone who's done that healing, it can engender a lot of jealousy, it can bring about a lot of pain, or there's like some trauma that you just haven't coped with that you don't know how to cope with, and you're not ready for someone like me to sashay in the room and remind you of that.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah.   Jacob Tobia:                And you know my thing is I'm kind of like- it's hard for me because I want to get angry and frustrated with cis gay men for being so exclusionary, and in the context of political worlds I do. Like I also am a queer historian in my academic community, and the sort of degree to which gay white men in particular sort of whitewashed and masculine washed the gay rights movement, and made gay something synonymous with being cisgender, and with being gender conforming, and with being two dudes in tuxes at a wedding alter. Like the way in which gay men proactively created and then recreated images of the most palatable types of gay men I think is an incredible front against our own community that like one day I think we'll be able to see in its full historical context. Right? Like I think one day we'll be able to understand the fight for marriage equality as a fight that deeply harmed so many within our community, and told so many within our community that they did not have worth or value in the quest of getting those who wanted mainstream worth or value, who had not healed from their isolation as children, who had not healed from their queer trauma, to sort of stay in a place where they didn't have to feel. I don't know, I get all heavy about it, that's where it lives, that's where these things live. And I think that the proof in the pudding is just that like if you go on any sort of dating app, if you look at any gay magazine, like what bodies are there? Who is celebrated and who is excluded? And it's not hard, you don't have to look far. One of my friends, Jamal, is currently directing a film called 'No Fats, No Femmes,' and it's all about exploring these mysteries and these lineages of white supremacy and masculine supremacy, patriarchy and body shaming within the gay community, and how we got to a place where all of those things seem to be so profoundly socially acceptable.   Jenn T Grace:              And they're perpetuated in advertising and marketing. Yeah I totally agree. So I am not a queer history buff in any way. I have my own experiences and I have at least my limited knowledge, but my thought now is that I should be looking into it because I feel like if we look at what marketers and advertisers are doing, or large corporations, or even big and small companies that are reaching out to the LGBT community, they're really reaching out to that one segment of the community that you were just speaking so specifically about. Where it's masculine men, white, in perfect shape, and people are like, 'Oh yeah, we're LGBT friendly, or we're welcoming of the community,' and in reality all they're really looking at are affluent gay, white men specifically who are very specific in gender conforming. So I guess maybe that's where all these marketers and advertisers originally got that thought that that's how they should do it, is from what you're describing now.   Jacob Tobia:                Yeah and I think the view is just so deeply myopic. Right? And this is something that even in my own work, like right now I'm working on selling a book proposal, and it's interesting because I think that a lot of people who in sort of the corporate world particularly, it's not just that they have so little imagination. It's that they've been taught for so long that these are the stories and the ways that you have to talk about being gay. And I still think using the word gay is important there, or being trans even now, I think there's starting to be some of a discourse around that, that it has to be kind of this very polished, rounded out, self-serious reverent thing. And that like the only worthwhile endeavor than to building a base within the LGBT community are tapping into the rich, white, gay men who buy vodka. Like it's sort of- I think that that's really the approach that people take in a lot of the corporate world, at least when it comes to sort of marketing. And it's interesting because I think that that actually creates this really nasty feedback loop where what we have now is we have this series of corporations that are used to telling gay men- particularly gay men what their desires are, and then gay men learn those behaviors and see those behaviors modeled by others. And then like you have this sort of feedback loop of a company says, 'Oh you want to buy a lot of vodka and fancy underwear and designer jeans, and those are the things that matter to you as a gay man. If you're going to blend in, you need to be able to deal with all of those, right?   Jenn T Grace:              Yes.   Jacob Tobia:                And then the companies say that to you, and all the magazines that you're reading like if you go to Out Magazine or Advocate or something and look at the ads. And then you internalize that as a gay person, and then create the demand for that to be advertised more. And so I think that we have this way in which the sort of marketing endeavors that have been undertaken by a lot of consumer brands aimed at the gay community specifically have created a specific kind of gay identity that is so bad for us as a group, right? And it's just funny to me because it's like when are we going to sort of disrupt that economy? Right? When are we going to say that we're not playing that game anymore? When are we going to acknowledge that there's an entire generation of young people for whom that has no resonance? There's an entire generation of young people for whom Tumblr and social justice meme, and Gender Fabulosity, and Gender Transgression, and authenticity, and power, and talking about feeling and all those things is much more relevant than any vodka ad could ever be.   Jenn T Grace:              Absolutely.   Jacob Tobia:                How do we create a broader, more expansive public face around all of that?   Jenn T Grace:              So when we're looking at what you're doing. So you had started off saying that you have been in corporate environments talking to people, and just kind of educating them around this stuff, and you've been in environments where it might be a middle school, high school, college. For you personally, where are you getting the most enjoyment as far as knowing that you're making a difference? Because I feel like- so my whole thing is teaching around the LGBT community kind of at large, and I also am in corporate settings as well as speaking with schools. So I have my own frame of where I think you can really make an impact, but I feel like everyone just has that 'I love talking to this particular audience because I can just see the lightbulb moment,' or whatever it happens to be. So for you, like where are you really finding that you're just completely inspired and want to keep giving of yourself, because you can see the impact happening so quickly.   Jacob Tobia:                Well I think there are two answers to that, right? The speaking engagements that feel most difficult are often the ones that are most rewarding, right? But the ones where I have to really sort of work where I'm sort of like dodging bullets the whole time, where I'm kind of doing a unique sort of acrobatic to make sure that my message is heard by everyone in the room. Those are definitely more challenging, and certainly aren't as comfortable, but are I think probably the most important kind of work that I do. So for example, if you start saying what is the most naturally energizing, fabulous place for me and the kind of stuff that I do? The most fabulous engagements that I do are definitely on college campuses, right? Because people are at a point in their identity in their development, they're at a point in their lives where they are ready for the kind of analysis that I'm bringing and they're energized about it, and they want to hear it, and we are moving this thing together. So those spaces are really exciting and rewarding but they're also relatively easy, right? Like I'm not scared going in to speak to a college queer straight alliance. Or a queer student union at a university. Or even like a women's studies conference. Like none of those things are particularly scary for me because I know that I'm going into really sort of friendly territory where people are not only like capable of hearing what I'm saying, but they like actively want to, right? The rooms that are a little more challenging are the corporate engagements that I do, and the primary school engagements that I do. So like talking to high schools and middle schools is definitely a unique challenge because you are constantly going back and forth between making sure that you're speaking in a way that isn't going to bother administrators, but also acknowledging that actually the students you're speaking to are way further along in their development than their administrators want to admit. Right? So learning to sort of find a way to make these complicated ideas about queer liberation, and all that stuff accessible to a really young audience in the context of being super biased by teachers and administrators. Figuring out how to do that dance takes a bit of choreography, but sometimes when you're able to pull it off it feels like more of an accomplishment because you're balancing something that's more nuanced. And I think the same thing goes for corporate spaces, right? Where you have to be able to challenge people just enough. Like there is sort of- and you have to be able to have just the right amount of the irreverence, and just the right amount of sort of outside instigator energy without sort of turning people off completely. Because the change in the corporate world matters. Also I can be transparent about the fact that corporate audiences can be a challenge because a lot of times in corporate audiences I may be speaking to an organization where a lot of their structure and what they do in the world is something that I don't- I'm not really here for all the time, right? But do I know that a lot of the bad behavior of Corporate America comes from the fact that patriarchal people with a lot of masculine trauma are running it? Absolutely. And is me being able to be there hopefully a step towards healing some of that trauma for people and creating a space where men are able to interrogate the way that masculinity has traumatized them, and think about how that's shaped their behavior and the way that they feel they must relate to the world? And then will that in turn potentially help them think about how they think masculinity has informed the way they feel they must approach business, and must approach other people, and must approach accountability, and community in the broader context? I sure hope so. It's hard to say at any point if you're really making the transformation that you want, but that challenge too is more rewarding when you're able to do it right because it is such a challenge.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah. So let's go back for a second. How did you decide- because in looking at your bio, and knowing that you're from North Carolina I'm not going to not ask you about the bathroom situation at some point. However, in looking at your bio, you have a lot of places that you've worked, everything's advocacy related. At what point I guess did you realize that you had a voice that could be bigger than you, and that you had a platform that you could stand on and go in and start speaking publicly? And then also the fact that you're working on your book proposal right now. So I guess was there a specific point in time where you just knew that you almost had the obligation to bring your message to the world to help educate people around this?   Jacob Tobia:                I don't think that I really came into it with an understanding of obligation really. It was more that like I wanted to be able to be myself and feel good in that, and necessarily had to learn to explain that to other people. It wasn't like I sort of came about all this work necessarily selflessly. I think it's that I sort of tried to enter into the professional world, I tried to sort of like start moving, and I realized how little space there was for people like me, and I realized how hard the world was fighting to keep me in a box I guess. To keep me within sort of a safe, masculine space. And really what that did for me, was I realized look, if you ever want to sort of be able to be yourself, you're going to have to explain this to people, and you're going to have to figure out a way to do it. And you can do that in this sort of bubble, like you can explain that to a small number of people and create a safe space for yourself, and feel good in it, like build your cool queer community in New York where you can feel good, and don't worry so much about everybody else, but that never felt satisfying. I don't like the idea that I can only be accepted or heard, or affirmed, or seen, or valued in one small specific space. Like I don't like that idea at all. And so I think it was also for my own stubbornness, about being like, 'Dammit I should be able to go anywhere and speak with anyone, and be fully validated and heard and understood by them. Like that should not be something that is impossible, or should not seem difficult in the world.' And so I think that a lot of that is what really inspired me to sort of push into this advocacy work, and to take it on in a substantial way which was just a desire to get my humanity back. And a sort of unwillingness to accept a world where I'm supposed to be erased. And so I think it's necessarily gone more public because- the other thing I'm deeply committed to is when I always think about my activism, I think a lot about my younger self. I think about kids growing up in suburban or non-major urban center areas, who have a sort of culture and an understanding of gender that is informed so much by national media, and by what national media is telling them around how gender is allowed to exist. And I want to make sure that my work is able to be heard and seen in those communities, like the ones I grew up in, right? Which is why I refuse to just find my safe community in New York, and stick with that. I want to build my safe community here, and use that as the sort of strength for me to then go out into the rest of the world and really stick it to them.   Jenn T Grace:              So in talking about the media, what do you think those messages- at least from your vantage point, do you think that young queer LGBTQ, gender nonconforming, however we're defining that; what do you think those messages are that they're getting in those suburban areas? Especially when we look at the really heated political landscape that we're in right now, and the fact that even our Attorney General made such a profound declaration just a couple of days ago as we're recording this in May of 2016. What do you think- do you think that younger people are getting- I guess it doesn't even have to be younger people. Do you think people are getting mixed messages? Or are they getting a really kind of clear cut message that's not inclusive? What is your kind of take on that?   Jacob Tobia:                No I think they're definitely getting mixed messages. I think that in most of the country, MSNBC and Fox are seen as two legitimate sides of the opinion. And in that context, like what the hell are you supposed to think as a young person, or as any person, right? When both perspectives are seen as fully valid, and one is deeply transphobic and the other is deeply supportive of the trans community? I think that trans people right now are in this moment of visibility that is healing and builds awareness to some extent, but also creates as many challenges of actually living as trans, as some of the invisibility did, right? Like I think that as a community we have been flying under the radar for a long time, and now we're out in the open and that's a vulnerable position. I think that vulnerability is starting to come out, and that's what all this bathroom bill stuff is about. Like when you come out of the shadows as it were, although I would argue that trans people have never been in the shadows, but when you come into a kind of mainstream visibility there's going to be a reaction because you're putting yourself out there in a major way for the first time. Or at least for the first time in recent memory. And so I think that what's happening right now is that half of the world is telling young trans people, 'Oh there are all these role models and icons, and trans people are making progress, and you should be proud of who you are, and you should own who you are, and that's wonderful.' And then the other half of the world is telling young trans people that there's nothing to be happy about, and that they are abominations, and that they don't deserve the same rights and freedoms as everybody else. It's definitely a step forward from where we were, where most trans people prior to this were just told by everyone that their identity was an impossibility. Right? So it's better to have conflict than nothing, certainly. But I think it's also important to remember that like that conflict is real for people. It takes a lot of emotional energy to navigate, and it's not going away anytime soon. Like this is a much, much longer, more prolonged conversation, even than gay rights or LGB rights were, right? Like I think that if we think that the trans community is going to see progress at the same rate as like the sort of gay and lesbian community has, I'm not even sure about that because we're talking now about gender, and not one aspect of gender nonconformity, but about all of it. And so the other thing I think about too is I worry that right now particularly the visibility of trans people, there's only a certain kind of trans person who's very visible right now. And for the most part, the trans people who are visible are passing gender conforming trans men or trans women. And those are who are held up as sort of the icons of the community. And while I don't see gender conforming and gender nonconforming trans people as in opposition, I think that the desperate visibility that's imposed on our community gender media is a challenge that we're going to have to overcome and think about, right? And think about how do we respond to this as a community in a strategic way, not just sort of like accept that it's an inevitability and move along. Because right now the most marginalized trans people are not even close to visible. Because I think about the bathroom bills issue. Like think about whose selfies have blown up, like whose have gone viral, or who's been the big spokespeople around this bathroom bill stuff; most of the spokespeople have been passing trans folks who actually aren't in a lot of risk when they use a public restroom anymore, right?   Jenn T Grace:              Correct.   Jacob Tobia:                And the people who this bill is mostly targeting, and the people who have issues in the bathroom, and have issues in either bathroom no matter which bathroom they go into, are gender nonconforming people, genderqueer people, and lower income trans folks who cannot afford to transition in a way that 'allows' them to pass. So I think that that's kind of the conversation we need to be having in this new media landscape around trans identity, is which people in the trans community are being heard, and which people in the trans community are being silenced, and who is imposing that silence, and who is granting that visibility, and how do we engage with all this?   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah, how do we engage with the folks that are being silenced, and have their voices recognized? Because no one's recognizing them currently.   Jacob Tobia:                That's a tough question. I'm not going to act like I have all the answers at this point.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah and I don't think we can compare it completely apples to apples between the L and the G of the community to the T in terms of covering and passing and all that. But I do see that there is a parallel within the L and G specifically when the conversation comes up of people who are passing as straight. So the perhaps masculine looking man, or the feminine looking woman who doesn't 'look' gay. So there is that- I feel like there's that perception that the media kind of continues to portray as well, which is also harmful. I don't think it's nearly as harmful as what's happening within the trans community, but there's definitely that happening as well.   Jacob Tobia:                Well it's ironic, right? Because actually what's happening now in the trans community is the same thing that the gay community did to the trans community in like the eighties and nineties and 2000's, right? The people who are gender nonconforming are being pushed to the back, and that's what's been happening in the LGBT community and the queer community for decades now, right? In the nineties, the logic was like God forbid we put a gay man with a lisp as a spokesperson of anything. Or a gay man who has like slightly more fluid wrists as a spokesperson for anything. God forbid we put an actual stone butch woman as a spokesperson for anything in our community, or ever as sort of a focus of media attention. And the same thing is true- and that was about gender conformity or gender nonconformity, right? Gender conforming gay and lesbian people were picked to sort of be the voices. They were the only voices that really 'made sense' in the time. And now we have the trans community doing the same thing to itself that was done to it by other people, where we are only preferencing the voices of gender conforming people and pushing gender conforming and passing trans people to the front of the line, and ensuring that anyone who's gender nonconforming- like God forbid you wear lipstick and have facial hair. Like we're pushing those folks to the back, and so I think the very radical proposition of genderqueer and nonbinary activists right now is just sort of refusing two things. A, refusing to be pushed out of the trans community or silenced as a member of the trans community. Like ensuring that we don't sort of have to create this world where trans is seen as trans people are trans binary people, and nonbinary genderqueer people are something else. Right? Like sort of rejecting that logic, and also just rejecting invisibility. Just refusing to be invisible and using all the tools within our power to refuse that. It's an exhausting fight, sure.   Jenn T Grace:              Of course.   Jacob Tobia:                But it's the most worthwhile fight that I've participated in in a while.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah, absolutely. And where do you think- and I'm trying to figure out what the best way to phrase this would be, but where do you think the folks who are part of the trans community who have 'assimilated,' and they truly want nothing to do with the fight for equality within the trans community? So the people who are passing as gender conforming, the person that you 'would never know' that's part of the trans community, and it is the people in the media right now that you were just saying are getting the most attention when they're doing the selfies in the bathroom. It's the folks that you would just never guess. So where do you think- and those people are obviously advocating because they're taking selfies in the bathroom to prove a point. But what about- and I don't know what percentage of the trans community people would fall into in this, but I know plenty of trans people who have no desire to be labeled as such, or have any involvement in moving this equality needle, moving forward?   Jacob Tobia:                I mean my view about that, it's an issue of coming out. It's the same question of like, 'Oh do all gay people have the responsibility to come out?' It's that sort of same interrogation, it's just in the life cycle of a trans person you have two opportunities to be in the closet. In the story of the binary trans man or trans woman who has access to the resources necessary to transition in a way that allows them to pass. You have two choices about being in the closet. You have to come out of the closet when you decide to transition, and then you have the option to go back into it, and then sort of go stealth after you've transitioned and you are able to sort of embody the gender in a way that doesn't flag for others your trans experience. And when it comes to coming out, like I'm not going to prescribe for anybody what they should do. I'm not going to tell anybody that it's wrong to want to finally live your life and feel happy in it. But I am going to say that like we need to not kid ourselves if we act like a world in which trans people have to be invisible [Inaudible 00:42:03] after they transition. Like let's not kid ourselves and act like that's a world where we're free, right? But let's acknowledge that people have an incredible amount of hurt and pain, and sometimes after a long journey you want to rest a little bit, you're exhausted a little bit. And you know I think I do something equivalent to that, but it's on a more day to day basis, right? You know there are definitely moments when I'm just like, 'I don't have the energy for this right now. Like I'm not going to wear a dress. I kind of want to, but I'm not going to because I'm exhausted.' When I travel, I almost always wear like jeans and a tee shirt and I look like just a normal dude. Because I just don't- I'm like traveling is so exhausting already, I don't want to have to deal with TSA in a skirt, I just don't. You know? And so I have my own moments when I sort of re-assimilate in order to just like feel okay for a little bit. And so I think those moments, we're allowed to have them, they're an important part of healing actually. But for me it's about I do that so I can save my energy for a longer fight, and for bigger battles, right? Because it's like I don't need to engage in every small battle every day. I don't need to advocate and explain everything to every person who stares at me or catcalls me on the subway, or whatever, right? Like I need to save my energy for the real battles, and for the big battles that I can do. Like I need to save my energy for my activism, and my advocacy, and my broad structural work. Because if I try to fix every little thing every day, then-   Jenn T Grace:              You'd be exhausted.   Jacob Tobia:                Yeah, and I think the same thing goes for gender nonconforming or for passing trans people, right? The idea of whether or not to sort of disclose or live into the fullness of your identity is a daily decision that you have to make based on kind of like where you're at, you know? So I just don't want to moralize about it. I don't want to act like one position is this really moral high ground, and the other is somehow shameful. I think it's about us being exhausted, and I think it's about us having struggled for a very long time.   Jenn T Grace:              It's about finding a balance.   Jacob Tobia:                Yeah and sometimes just wanting a release from struggling for a little bit. You know? I'm not going condemn any trans person for how we curate our identities and think about them, because it's tough. It's tough out there.   Jenn T Grace:              I think that was very well put. So I know that we're getting close to an hour of recording, and I honestly feel like we could record for five days because there's so much to talk about. But one of the things in your bio on your website I thought was interesting, and I thought maybe you'd share a little bit. Is that you have worn high heels twice to the White House. I'm more curious- less about the high heels and more curious about what brought you to the White House to begin with.   Jacob Tobia:                So every year since the Obama Administration started, the White House has an annual LGBT pride reception that happens in June during Pride Month. And so I've been to it twice, once when I was a little baby queer in 2012. It was the year of Amendment 1 in North Carolina which was an amendment that banned all legal recognition of same sex relationships in the state, and it passed in 2012. And so the White House extended a lot of invitations to North Carolina activists who had been fighting it. And so I got to go as part of that. And I wore a big pair of like- they were black, leather five inch heels.   Jenn T Grace:              Jeez.   Jacob Tobia:                I was like if I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this.   Jenn T Grace:              All in.   Jacob Tobia:                And then last time I went this past June, and that time I had a really cute pair of slingbacks that were I think only three inches. So a little bit more modest. So it was fun though. It was cool sort of like strutting around the east wing, and all that stuff. Like looking at all the pictures, and sort of being in that space, and being like as queer and as fabulous as I am. But also it's not like- that certainly doesn't- I think everyone has complicated feelings about the White House as an institution, but I think that there's been some incredible work that's been done. So it was certainly really fun to go, and they had lovely snacks.   Jenn T Grace:              It's all about the food, right? So if someone who's listening wants to reach out and connect with you, I know you are available on a lot of different social media outlets, but where would your preference be to have people connect with you?   Jacob Tobia:                If you want to reach out to me, just go to www.JacobTobia.com and there's a little contact path that you can send a request to, and we can get in touch that way. You can also email just info@jacobtobia.com and that should go too.   Jenn T Grace:              Perfect. Well thank you so much, I feel like this was such an enlightening interview for my audience, and I really appreciate all of the work that you're doing for the community, because we know that it's not easy day in and day out. So I feel like you're onto something amazing.   Jacob Tobia:                Well thank you, it was great talking with you, Jenn.   Jenn T Grace:              You are very welcome, I appreciate it. Thank you for listening to today's podcast. If there are any links from today's show that you are interested in finding, save yourself a step and head on over to www.JennTGrace.com/thepodcast. And there you will find a backlog of all of the past podcast episodes including transcripts, links to articles, reviews, books, you name it. It is all there on the website for your convenience. Additionally if you would like to get in touch with me for any reason, you can head on over to the website and click the contact form, send me a message, you can find me on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter all at JennTGrace. And as always I really appreciate you as a listener, and I highly encourage you to reach out to me whenever you can. Have a great one, and I will talk to you in the next episode.  

CLIMB ABOARD THE MURDER TRAIN. Start 2016 off with a doozy as we tear apart the iconic disaster that were How I Mother's two part finale episodes. Join your hosts @maurae and @lafergs along with guests @galfridian and @kgrhymes to discuss the suspected murder plots hatched to get rid of the Barney/Robin marriage, The Mother, and the show's entire premise. AS REFERENCED IN THE EPISODE: ROBIN'S KILLER BLUE DRESS: http://bit.ly/1mWaQqF COBIE SMULDERS IN WALKING TALL: https://youtu.be/l7dUazpVsLk FRESH PRINCE'S DAD LEAVING SCENE: https://youtu.be/1ZPsfO2I4bo BARNEY'S DAD SUCKS SCENE: https://youtu.be/fmeMbelaZGk BARNEY'S A DAD SCENE: https://youtu.be/wnMJoZ7lqis HOW TO USE PORTABLE HOTSPOTS: https://youtu.be/THvTpqF52ls THE PUSSY POSSE FEAT. DAVID BLAINE: http://bzfd.it/1P7RSE3 OUR LOST EPISODE: http://bit.ly/TTV-E007 OUR WILL & GRACE EPISODE: http://bit.ly/TTV-E064 MARSHALL'S DAD DIED: https://youtu.be/o-8Dy_Q4zkE THE LEAP: https://vimeo.com/34899170 COBIE & NPH'S INITIAL FINALE PRESS: http://bit.ly/1RfUdBt NPH THEN & NOW: http://i.imgur.com/8FdPzLy.jpg Rate, Review, & Subscribe on iTunes! bit.ly/TTV-iTunes Going to use that gift card you got for Amazon this holiday? Shop through us and support the show: amzn.to/1uEVTFg