Podcasts about jenn grace

2095 - Jenn Grace

Welcome to the first author panel for my rebranded podcast, the Biz Book Publishing Hub! I'm thrilled by the results from my last Kindle Cross-Promotion Campaign around Amazon Prime Days. 77 business books from 70 authors were lowered to 99 cents or $1.99.  We worked collaboratively to spread the word and were able to boost book sales. 70% reached the Top 10 in at least one category, and 30% reached #1 Best Seller in at least one category. Before the campaign began, I took screenshots of my books' sales rankings. I was amazed that one of my books went from #466,306 to #27,638, and another went from #227,051 to #14,600. This is further proof that our efforts led to sales. The best part is that our collaboration hasn't ended. Nearly every Amazon Prime Days Kindle Cross-Promotion Campaign author opted to sign up for an author panel after the event. These panel discussions focus on the ROI of publishing a business book. With me today are three authors: Jenn T. Grace, author of “Publish Your Purpose: A Step-By-Step Guide to Write, Publish, and Grow Your Big Idea” - she's also a publisher and one of the Biz Book Publishing Hub Founding Partners. Cornelia Kawann, author of “Change Your Energy - Change Your Life” Tom Collins, co-author of “I Am Perfectly Flawsome: How Embracing Imperfection Makes Us Better” All three books reached #1 Best Seller during the campaign. Well done. Please join me in welcoming Jenn, Cornelia, and Tom. In this episode, our panel discusses:

Mark McBride-Wright, author of "The Safe Leader" and Founder & CEO of EqualEngineers, joins Jennifer,  Jenn T. Grace of Publish Your Purpose, and Eduardo Placer of Fearless Communicators to discuss the critical importance of diversity, equity and inclusion in the engineering and STEM fields. Mark shares his journey of writing the book, the support he received from Jennifer, Jenn and Eduardo along the way, and his mission to change the culture in engineering to one where everyone can feel safe to bring their whole authentic selves to work. The group explores how creating psychological safety is key to making progress on DEI goals and reducing the unacceptably high rates of suicide and mental health struggles prevalent in the engineering industry today. Mark's work provides a new vocabulary and framework for tackling these challenges and has the potential to revolutionize the way we approach DEI across all industries.

In this episode, Jenn Grace, Founder of Publish Your Purpose, assumes the hosting duties, engaging in a dynamic interview with Julina on launching her book, Money Confident Girls.  They address the journey of the writing process and the insights toward fostering financial empowerment for girls.Show Highlights:The inspiration to write a book (3:12)Why the focus on women for the podcast and girls for the book (5:17)The experiences that led Julina to a career in finance (7:54)What shaped Julina's money mindset (11:10)Messages at a young age that shape the money mindset (14:14)How to encourage girls to be more financially inclusive (17:29)Who the book is appropriate for (19:08)Why the book targets parents/guardians (19:54)Strategies around money relevant to children (20:37)Advise on investing (22:53)Allowance (27:25)Tools for parents (27:56)To Order Money Confident Girls:https://www.amazon.com/Money-Confident-Girls-Financially-Children/dp/B0CRWZ8YQ8/ref=sr_1_1?crid=30OTOAAQQEGX5&keywords=money+confident+girls&qid=1706802320&sprefix=money+confident+girls%2Caps%2C81&sr=8-1Connect with Julina Ogilvie:Website- principlewealthpartners.com/teamEmail- jogilvie@principlewealthpartners.comYouTube- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTISXBl6sK8JsJn0ZhmQfkAFacebook- https://www.facebook.com/principlewealthpartnersLinkedIn- @julinaogilvieThe information provided is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice and it should not be relied on as such. The statements and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the author. PWP cannot guarantee the accuracy or completeness of any statements or data. For current PWP information, please visit the Investment Adviser Public Disclosure website at www.adviserinfo.sec.gov by searching with PWP's CRD #290180

Join founder Jenn Grace on "Publish Your Purpose" as we dissect authorship's core challenges: common hesitations, prevalent mistakes, and the pivotal role of mindset. Uncover the secrets to effective writing processes, the significance of thorough editing, and the diverse spectrum of publishing options available.  Show Highlights: The most common hesitancies of authors (10:49) Common mistakes authors make (13:00) The importance of the mindset (16:46) The target reader (21:12) Suggestions for creating a writing process (23:54) The importance of the editing process (26:54) Options of how to publish (29:44) Usage of AI (35:15) Questions to ask a publisher (37:48) The success of Publish Your Purpose (40:33)Connect with Julina Ogilvie:Website- principlewealthpartners.com/teamEmail- jogilvie@principlewealthpartners.comYouTube- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTISXBl6sK8JsJn0ZhmQfkAFacebook- https://www.facebook.com/principlewealthpartnersLinkedIn- @julinaogilvieThe information provided is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice and it should not be relied on as such. The statements and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the author. PWP cannot guarantee the accuracy or completeness of any statements or data. For current PWP information, please visit the Investment Adviser Public Disclosure website at www.adviserinfo.sec.gov by searching with PWP's CRD #290180

In this episode of "5 Minute Advice for Authors," we're joined by Jenn T. Grace, author of "Publish Your Purpose." As the author of 7 books and the owner of an innovative publishing house, Jenn brings her perspective on navigating the complex journey of book writing and publishing by emphasizing the need to have the right support system in place and outlining the need for three key roles: a strategist, a therapist, and a cheerleader. She shares her insights on how these roles can provide the necessary encouragement, strategy, and emotional support to persevere through the challenges of writing a book. Jenn also shares about the importance of preparing for the unexpected, and suggests adopting a proactive approach to help authors anticipate and navigate potential obstacles, ensuring steady progress towards completing their book. Never afraid to share vulnerably, Jenn also recounts her favorite moments about creating her audiobooks, providing a glimpse into the lighter side of the production process.Learn more about the best podcasts for authors, and how to become a thought leader worth listening to at http://5MinuteAdviceforAuthors.comSubscribe to our YouTube Channel for more wisdom: Twin Flames Studios

In this episode, Dean Newlund and Jenn Grace discuss:Why you should find your nicheWriting for your target clientHow you can start writing nowBenefits of writing a bookKey Takeaways:Find your niche by evaluating the data points in your business, looking at your client base, and seeing what they all have in common. Going niche and narrow is the only way to go.Don't write for everybody. Start with the question of who you are writing for, and ask what problem you're solving. You can make a book by writing one word at a time. Start with a mind map. Try out transcription if staring at a blank page terrifies you.The process of writing, editing, and publishing can often be brutal and will take a lot of time, but the organization of your concepts and your establishment as an expert in your niche will be worth it.    "What's beautiful about going to the process of actually creating a book is that it forces you to create a model, a process, a system to bring the reader through." — Jenn Grace.  See Dean's TedTalk "Why Business Needs Intuition" here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEq9IYvgV7I  Connect with Jenn Grace:   Website: www.publishyourpurpose.com  Connect with Dean:YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgqRK8GC8jBIFYPmECUCMkwWebsite: https://www.mfileadership.com/The Mission Statement E-Newsletter: https://www.mfileadership.com/blog/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deannewlund/Twitter: https://twitter.com/deannewlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/MissionFacilitators/Email: dean.newlund@mfileadership.comPhone: 1-800-926-7370

In this episode, we host Jenn Grace, Founder and CEO at Publish Your Purpose Press. Jenn shares stories from the time when she struggled to empathize with her daughter and sister. Guest Bio: Jenn T. Grace is a nationally recognized business strategist, speaker, and author. Guided by the mantra, “Change happens in business,” Jenn believes social change happens first in the workplace before spilling over into mainstream society. She has been featured in Forbes, The Huffington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and CNBC. Jenn passionately believes the more raw and real we can be—the deeper the connections we can experience. This drives her fierce commitment to bring voice to the invisible stories that free people from their isolation. She is committed to giving underrepresented voices power and a stage to share their stories, speak their truth, and impact their communities. She is the Founder of Publish Your Purpose Press, a publishing company that includes the PYP Academy, with programs that teach aspiring authors how to publish their books. In addition to publishing 60+ books that share the stories of others, Jenn has written six, including her memoir, House on Fire (September 2020). A marathon runner, animal lover, and novice birder. She lives in Connecticut with her family. Jenn can be reached at: https://www.publishyourpurposepress.com or jenntgrace on social media channels Music License: Where The Light Goes: License #67783979559 In Peace And Harmony: License #67783979559 --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/realizempathy/support

In this episode, Dave sits with Jenn Grace and Stephen Higgins who have combined their Practices to make a book called "I Am Me", co-authored by 100 children from 4-8 years old.

Jenn T. Grace is a nationally recognized business strategist, speaker, and award-winning author. Guided by the mantra, “Change happens in business,” Jenn believes social change happens first in the workplace before spilling over into mainstream society. She has been featured in Forbes, The Huffington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and CNBC. Passionate about helping people share their stories of adversity, Jenn is the Founder of Publish Your Purpose Press, a publishing company that includes the PYP Academy, with programs that teach aspiring authors how to publish their books. In addition to publishing 60+ books that share the stories of others, Jenn has written six. In this episode of The Queer Profits Podcast, host Diane Conklin and guest Jenn Grace discuss how she has made it her purpose to be the voice for marginalized voices. Jenn shares her experience coming out professionally and her experience as a gay woman in the corporate environment. And they discuss the important topic of how to bring more inclusion and diversity inside the queer community.

In this episode, you’ll hear a lot about purpose from a fresh, positive voice. Our guest is Jenn T. Grace, business strategist, speaker, and author. You’ll also get to know Jenn as strategist, therapist, and cheerleader. You’ll understand what this eclectic list is all about when you listen to the interview. :) Like me, Jenn is a “recovering management consultant”, has published six books, and has been known to create extraordinary professional “deliverables” in the middle of the night. You’re gonna love the part about Jenn being the “Dark Lord”. We have 9 “fun nuggets” from the interview: #1: Publishing is a journey with many milestones (e.g. baby is born, baby develops, baby creates a legacy, etc.) #2: Discrimination is equivalent to “lack of safety” (learn more about the fundamental importance of safety in this interview about Brainspotting with Deb Antinori: https://makeeverythingfun.com/radio/e080-deb-antinori/) #3: It’s not what you say: it’s how you make people feel #4: Raw and real is good for the bottom line (how? recruitment, retention, engagement) #5: “Change happens in business” (Jenn’s mantra) #6: Adversity creates opportunity #7: Hybrid publishing comes in all shapes and sizes (it is diverse, to match a theme of the show) #8: Publishing is about creating change #9: Purpose is to Jenn what Fun is to Kathryn: the fuel that gets you through the challenges and adversity in life About Jenn Grace Jenn T. Grace is a nationally recognized business strategist, speaker, and author. Guided by the mantra, “Change happens in business,” Jenn believes social change happens first in the workplace before spilling over into mainstream society. She has been featured in Forbes, The Huffington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and CNBC. Jenn passionately believes the more raw and real we can be—the deeper the connections we can experience. This drives her fierce commitment to bring a voice to the invisible stories that free people from their isolation. She is committed to giving underrepresented voices power and a stage to share their stories, speak their truth, and impact their communities. She is the Founder of Publish Your Purpose Press, a publishing company that includes the PYP Academy, with programs that teach aspiring authors how to publish their books. In addition to publishing 60+ books that share the stories of others, Jenn has written six. Links: https://www.publishyourpurposepress.com https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B089DNDB56/ Pick Your Publisher Guide: https://www.pickyourpublisher.com/optin1602602639818 See also: Author Survey- scroll down to Author Compass Resources on this page: https://makeeverythingfun.com/look-before-you-leap/ (Allison, please remind me to put the surveys on this page before this episode goes live) Interview with Laura Putnam (Workplace Wellness that Works): https://makeeverythingfun.com/radio/laura-putnam-talks-workplace-wellness-works/ Thrive by Design: https://www.amazon.com/Thrive-Design-Neuroscience-High-Performance-Cultures/dp/1946633062/ref=sxts_sxwds-bia-wc-drs1_0?cv_ct_cx=thrive+by+design&dchild=1&keywords=thrive+by+design&pd_rd_i=1946633062&pd_rd_r=7497e6a5-440d-4c07-996f-bf56d426db45&pd_rd_w=J6h9P&pd_rd_wg=0HnES&pf_rd_p=b7852788-5d03-4c9e-b3bb-ea48b74af616&pf_rd_r=RQKBTQTV6Q5CRF80PA3S&psc=1&qid=1605063329&sr=1-1-5e875a02-02b1-4426-9916-8a5c26cd5a14

This extra episode of Graying Rainbows is an interview with author and entrepreneur Jenn T Grace. Jenn is the founder of Publish Your Purpose Press and her latest book is called "House on Fire: Finding Resilience, Hope, and Purpose in the Ashes." If you have ever wanted to write a book, you won't want to miss this episode. Links and References: Jenn T Grace: https://jenntgrace.com Publish Your Purpose Press: many free resources House on Fire: Finding Resilience, Hope, and Purpose in the Ashes by Jenn T. Grace Cracked Open - Never Broken: A Memoir by Iman Gatti Are You Sure? The Unconscious Origins of Certainty by Virginia "Ginger" Campbell Announcements: Sign up for the FREE Graying Rainbows Newsletter Send email to grayingrainbows@gmail.com or post voice feedback at http://speakpipe.com/docartemis. Please support Graying Rainbows via Patreon at http://patreon.com/grayingrainbows Connect on Social Media: Twitter: @GrayingR Facebook page: https://fb.me/grayingrainbows Public MeWe page: https://mewe.com/p/grayingrainbowscomingoutlgbtlaterinlife Email Dr. Campbell for an invitation to our new group on MeWe.

In this special episode of Brain Science host Dr Ginger Campbell reads an excerpt from her bestseller "Are You Sure? The Unconscious Origin of Certainty." While it might seem ironic to talk about certainty during these extremely uncertain times, understanding how our brain generates the feeling of knowing or certainty is actually more relevant than ever. Are You Sure? The Unconscious Origins of Certainty is based on several early episodes of Brain Science and highlights the work of retired neurologist Dr. Robert Burton. Both physicians are fascinated by the surprising discovery that most of what our brain does is outside conscious awareness. They explore the evidence behind this claim as well as its implications. Ultimately they agree that this discovery could encourage us all to have more compassion and tolerance for both ourselves and others.   Links and References: Are You Sure? The Unconscious Origins of Certainty by Virginia "Ginger" Campbell, MD (Click here to buy) A Skeptic's Guide to the Mind: What Neuroscience Can and Cannot Tell Us About Ourselves  (2013) by Robert Burton On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not (2008) by Robert Burton Project Implicit at implicit.harvard.edu Dr. Campbell video with Jenn Grace: https://youtu.be/-ZY2Tah8EIU Recent podcast appearances by Ginger Campbell Neural Implant Podcast Brain Inspired #74 More coming soon   Please Visit Our Sponsors: TextExpander at textexpander.com/podcast The Great Courses Plus at thegreatcoursesplus.com/ginger Announcements:   Thanks to the support of loyal Brain Science listeners, Are You Sure? was the number 1 release in Neuroscience on Amazon for several days and it  reached #4 on the Neuroscience  best seller list. Click here to buy the book. Learn how you can support Brain Science at http://brainsciencepodcast.com/donations Sign up for the free Brain Science Newsletter to get show notes automatically every month. You can also text the word brainscience to 55444 to sign up.  Check out the free Brain Science Mobile app for iOS, Android, and Windows. (It's a great way to get both new episodes and premium content.) Send email to brainsciencepodcast@gmail.com or post voice feedback at http://speakpipe.com/docartemis. Connect on Social Media: Twitter: @docartemis Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/brainsciencepodcast Contact Dr. Campbell: Email: brainsciencepodcast@gmail.com Voicemail: http://speakpipe.com/docartemis

Jenn T. Grace is a nationally recognized business strategist, speaker, and author. Passionate about helping people share their stories of adversity, Jenn is the Founder of the Publish Your Purpose Press and the PYP Academy, a publishing company with programs that teach aspiring authors how to publish their book.    What We Discuss with Jenn Grace: The impetus behind establishing her own publishing company How she walks her clients into their publishing journey Her goal to be the anti-predatory publisher that exist in mass quantities Some pitfalls to watch for about traditional publishers Marketing strategies for first-time writers How to smoothly educate people about sensitive topics like gender diversity  An overview of the general editing and publishing timeline The importance of setting clear goals for putting your book out there   Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!

Jenn T. Grace is a business strategist, speaker and author specializing in the LGBTQ market. Her work guides corporate and non-profit clients as they navigate the space where doing business and managing the workplace intersects with LGBTQ issues. She has written multiple Amazon Best Selling books and is a nationally recognized speaker and podcaster. She is also the Founder of the Publish Your Purpose Authors Academy and Publish Your Purpose Press. Listen in to this episode of Women Inspired where you will learn about: What a publisher looks for in selecting an author What an author must pay attention to The top mistakes a first-time author makes The importance of visibility in marketing your book Full show notes

Jenn Grace is a nationally recognized business strategist, speaker and author. Guided by the mantra, “change happens in business,” Jenn believes social change happens first in the workplace before spilling over into mainstream society.

Jenn T. Grace is a nationally recognized business strategist, speaker and author. Guided by the mantra, “change happens in business,” Jenn believes social change happens first in the workplace before spilling over into mainstream society. We discuss: How to find your voice as a consultant How to determine where the optimum value exists within your skills and experiences Why systems and processes are the key to successful transitions How a delegation system is key to growing and scaling How to analyze recurring revenue opportunities so that you price them effectively Jenn is a Best Selling author and has been featured in Forbes, The Huffington Post, The Hartford Courant and CNBC. Passionate about helping people share their stories of adversity, Jenn is the Founder of the Purpose Driven Authors Academy and Publish Your Purpose Press. A marathon runner, animal lover and novice birder, she lives in Connecticut with her family. Learn more about Jenn at Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/publishyourpurposepress/) . (http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/smashing-the-plateau) Facebook Twitter LinkedIn 0Shares

#100: The Big 100th Episode - What's Next?   Jenn T Grace:              You are listening to the Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional Podcast, episode 100.   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 100 of the podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and today is a monumental episode. We are at episode 100. This podcast began back in January of 2013 and we are now in December of 2016, so it has been four solid years of podcasting with you. And I so appreciate those of you who've been around since the very beginning. I know you are out there because I have heard from you, and I continue to hear from you, which is amazing and awesome and I so love you for that. But today I do have a couple of announcements that are going to change the direction of what's happening, so I want to just kind of be honest with you, and keep you up to date, and fill you in on all of the things that are evolving and have been evolving for the last couple of months or so.                                     You may recall throughout the last year or so I have been introducing topics around authorship, and focusing a little bit on content marketing, but really focusing on authorship and writing books, and building a personal brand platform that has to do with being an author, which is such an important way to kind of have yourself stand out from the crowd, especially as we're entering 2017. So over the last year I have been sharing this information with you, and you may recall that I started the Purpose Driven Author's Academy back in February, so February of 2016. And that academy has been morphing, and evolving quite substantially over the last almost twelve months or so, and what I have decided to do- and have already done actually, so you are the first to know this because this podcast is airing at the end of December, 2016. So I haven't made this public announcement yet, and I plan on doing so in January, but I have started a full-fledged publishing company called Purpose Driven Publishing. And I'm super excited about it, and have been for a while. I decided to start this company back in August, and since then I've been working on the structure, the service offering, how I'm going to differentiate myself in the market, who I'm going to work with, and while that's been happening I've been really doubling down on what the Purpose Driven Author's Academy looks like, and it's really, really exciting is all I can tell you. Just super, super exciting. What I want you to know as a listener of this podcast, and somebody who is likely LGBTQ, and you're trying to figure out your personal brand, one of the things that I want to make sure is super clear is that the Purpose Driven Author's Academy and the publishing company in particular are 100% for you.                                     The company and the academy are completely designed around helping people who have a purpose, they have a mission in life, they have a desire to educate people on their topic, and a lot of the people that I have worked with in 2016 have been part of the LGBT community. Naturally since my audience is the LGBT community, I've had a lot of people that I've been helping work on their books for the last twelve months or so, at least since February in this formal academy capacity. Previous to that I have been working with LGBT people writing their books for- actually since about 2012, 2013. So it's been happening in a very informal capacity. As you likely know if you've been listening to this podcast over the last couple of months, you know that I've been kind of sharing this journey with you, and a little bit of the history of this. So I'm excited about this because I want to work with anyone who has a story to tell that is purpose driven, or mission driven, who is trying to use the authorship and writing a book, and being a respected person- a respected thought leader in your space to really use a book to be the foundation of what your personal brand stands for. So if that is something that you're interested in and want to know more about, I totally recommend you go to www.PurposeDrivenAuthorsAcademy.com. Hopefully by the time you're listening to this, the new site will be up. Can't guarantee, at the very least it will redirect you to some information on my current website that will give you information on that. And then also www.PurposeDrivenPublishing.com. That also will send you to my website currently, but I'm hoping by the time you listen to this it will go to the new website that gives a little more information about the publishing company, and what I plan on doing, and all that fun stuff. But I did want to share that with you because I really still want to continue working with LGBT people, or LGBTQ people I should say, and I want to do it in just a little bit different of a capacity.                                     So the things that I wanted to share with you is that my business is constantly morphing and shifting, and I think that that is the case for many people, and it's morphing and shifting a little bit as we enter 2017. Obviously first and foremost starting a publishing company, that is going to compete for my time when it comes to the business strategy related stuff. However I still will be doing LGBTQ business strategy related things. What I want to be clear on is that in 2017 I'm really looking for working in consulting capacities, or in speaking capacities at conferences for Fortune companies, for nonprofit organizations, whoever it might be who is in need of a message around LGBTQ. Those are the things that I'm going to be focusing on. So I'm excited about it but it's equally a little bit scary to be kind of venturing away from focusing on helping people market specifically. I've recently begun a re-positioning of my messaging, and really what that looks like for my business, and as you may recall my tagline for a very long time has been 'I teach straight people how to market to gay people, and gay people how to market themselves,' and I have since changed that to 'Because change happens in business.' And I firmly believe that change happens in business, and I think we all believe that, so I've changed my tagline accordingly. I've also added a little bit of a qualifying statement if you will to my Professional Lesbian logo. So the logo is my signature, and it says Professional Lesbian, now under that it says LGBT Business Strategist. So it gives a little bit of an idea of how the direction is changing, and like I said it's going to be away from the marketing now and really focused on consulting, business strategy, speaking and helping people, specifically LGBTQ and then a little bit more broadly anyone with a purpose that really wants to make an impact on the world, helping them author or publish their books.                                     So this is a little bit of a departure from what has been going on. The reason I'm telling you all of this is because it is going to impact the podcast. So we're in episode 100, it has been 100 episodes, four years, I've had incredible guests on the show from the very, very beginning, and what I am going to be doing is going on a bit of a hiatus. And I am being super honest with you in telling you that I'm not 100% how the return from my hiatus will happen, when it will happen, what's going to result from that. I'm a little bit unclear on that but I wanted to record this episode, this final one of 2016, and just say to hold tight, I'm not going to be producing any new episodes in the near future, I'm trying to figure out what this podcast might look like, however I do have 100 episodes. And I actually have more than 100 because in 2013 I did a special series called '30 Days and 30 Voices: Stories from America's LGBT Business Leaders,' and I recorded thirty interviews with thirty people over the course of thirty days, and I launched them in June, and 99% of the content from those interviews is 100% relevant now as it was three years ago in 2013. So most of the content, and most of the interviews that I've done, they're timeless in so many ways. In marketing we call it evergreen content. So it's content that just kind of keeps on churning, and providing value long after it's been recorded, so there's not much of an expiration date if you will.                                     So what I do plan on doing is essentially reusing a good amount of old podcasts for the start of 2017 at the very least. So if you have listened to every single podcast I have ever recorded, all 130 of them, you're amazing and you need to email me right away because you're a super fan and I would love to talk to you. But if you haven't listened to all 130, I'm going to be repurposing some from a while back, so I'm going back into the archives and I'm pulling out some good information from people that shared amazing stories in the past that you might have not listened to because for one reason or another you didn't know that they existed, or you never made it that far back. So in looking at my schedule, my line-up if you will for what I'm going to be repurposing in 2017, and some of the stuff that I'm going to do is going back to the basics of LGBT terminology. So it could be something of interesting to you, it might not be, and if it's not just don't listen to it and maybe the next one is going to be of more interest. But I do have things about building a strategy and a plan for your LGBT outreach, answering a lot of questions, tips and tricks about online marketing, talking about diversity and inclusion, and how LGBTQ kind of intersects with that, and then I have a lot of interviews. So I have interviews from out trans leaders, out lesbians, people from the Human Rights Campaign, I have people from the Williams Institute, nonprofit leaders of True Colors, a lot of LGBT entrepreneurs, people who work in supplier diversity, Out & Equal, and yeah out gay jewelry designers. So there's definitely a lot, a lot, a lot that I plan on repurposing in 2017. Like I said, this is more of kind of a hiatus. I don't want to say this is the end of the show because it's not. It's just evolving and I have to figure out how it's evolving in a way that I can feel comfortable and confident that you're still getting good information from me. So I don't want to half-ass it while I try to figure out how my consulting business interacts with my publishing company. I don't want to half-ass it so I would rather provide you with the best of the best previous interviews that I've done in shows that I've done, the top listened shows that I've had, and bring those to your attention for you to listen to present day. And if you have any requests, or any- if you have a topic that you want me to talk about at any point in time, I can jump in and record a new episode for you. So if you're dying and aching and itching for a new episode, don't hesitate to reach out to me because I will happily hop in and do that.                                     If you head over to my website at www.JennTGrace.com/thepodcast, you have access to all 130 episodes so you don't have to wait as I re-release them going into 2017, you can just find any of them at any point in time that anything that is of interest to you. And of course all of this information is on all of my social media channels, so whether it's Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook, I am there and I'm consistently there, so you can certainly find the information there as well. So I'm not disappearing, I'm not going away, I'm still plugging away doing a lot of LGBTQ strategy work, I already have a lot of big contracts in place for 2017, because I don't think I have to tell you this. I think we are all in the same place with the outcome of the presidential election here in the United States, and I think we probably are all- well I don't want to say we're all in agreement, but I'm sure if you're listening to this there's a fair chance that you fully understand what this new presidential situation, how that's going to impact LGBTQ equality. So the work is far from over, we have a ton of work to do, a ton of work to do and I think now more than ever our voices are really important and need to be heard. So my voice, your voice in whatever capacity that's in. So if you've been listening to the show for a while and you're trying to find your voice as it relates to the LGBTQ space, and figure out what your personal brand stands for, I encourage you that now is the time to just get started. You don't have to know exactly what your voice is going to be, just jump into the fray and get going. So if you've been dreaming about starting a podcast, or you've been wanting to start a blog, or you've been wanting to do a video, whatever it is now is the time that your voice needs to be heard. And I really, truly mean that. If you've been dreaming about writing a book, check out the academy, and I'm not saying that in a self-serving way. Genuinely if you're really thinking about now is the time that I need to write this book because I understand that my message is so important to be heard right now. There are so many LGBTQ people who are in unsafe spaces right now, and I think our voices as professionals, as entrepreneurs, as business leaders, now is the time that we really have to be vocal and visible so we can help impact the community any positive way as we are going to hit some really challenging times in the next four years. We all have a responsibility and a duty in many ways to just kind of stand up for the voiceless and get our messages out there. It's going to be challenging, it's going to rough over the next four years, but now is the time to take action. So if you've been thinking about it, I want you to actually really, really truly contemplate whether or not you're going to take action in 2017. And I am always available for a free thirty minute phone call, so if you want to go to www.MeetWithJenn.com you can see my online calendar and we can set up a time to chat quick, and if there is any way that I can help kind of push you over the edge, and push you into figuring out how you're going to start that conversation, how you're going to start your platform whatever that looks like, whether it's starting a podcast, I'm happy to spend thirty minutes with you and just dig deep, brainstorm and just send you in the right direction that's going to help you accomplish your goals. Because ultimately back in episode 82 of this year I specifically talked about how my number one goal is to impact a million people, and I want to impact a million people as it relates to LGBTQ. So if that means I can have a conversation with you, and I can help you impact 1,000 people then I am one step closer to my goal. Or if I can help ten of you impact 1,000 people, that's ten steps closer to my goal and that's ultimately what it's all about. We have to be in this together. It's kind of a- I don't want to be dramatic and say a do-or-die scenario, but it's really going to be a rough road ahead. So if I can hop on a call with you and help kind of square you away and get you started in the right direction, I would be more than happy and honestly honored to help you with that.                                     There are two additional things that I want to at least mention while I have your undivided attention, before I kind of go into a hiatus mode. And one of them is an offering, and it's a new- it's not really a new service, it's really kind of under consulting and business strategy, but I just want to share with you a win that I recently had because you might be working for a corporation who needs this help, or you might know of a corporation who needs this kind of help, and I would be honored to help kind of guide and steward the organization in the right direction. But this is more a little bit about the win that this company that I've been working with just recently had. And I can't say their name because of liability reasons, and nondisclosure agreements, and all that fun stuff that I have signed with them, however the principle applies.                                     So I've been working with this company that is a Fortune 100, and I've been working with them for a couple of years, and they recently hired me back in the spring- or actually winter. They hired me to help them improve their Corporate Equality Index score for the Human Rights Campaign's CEI. If you are unfamiliar with the CEI I encourage you to go to my website, www.JennTGrace.com and search CEI and a lot of information will come up about it; why it's important, how this is beneficial, all that fun stuff. The short of it is that I have been working with this company for over a year because I was working with them in a marketing capacity before I started helping them with their CEI. And when we started this process we officially really began in April, and the Human Rights Campaign needs the survey that really is what the Index is based off of, they need the survey completed by August. So we had from April to August basically to figure out how on earth we were going to take this corporation that had a 10 previously on the CEI, and get them to a respectable level. And going into it in all honesty I thought it was going to be a David and Goliath type of scenario where there is this group of dedicated people who are really amazing, really awesome, who want to gain LGBTQ equality for their employees, for their coworkers, and I thought it was going to be them versus kind of the corporate board of directors, the people who are out of touch. I had like this very specific impression in my mind of how this was going to play out. I do always enjoy a challenge, and just because there might be a disconnect between the people on the ground, in the weeds, just because there's a disconnect between them and maybe the executives, that doesn't mean that there isn't a path to success in my opinion.                                     So I had this impression that it was going to be really, really hard to create change. Again change happens in business. I thought it was going to be really tough, and I cannot begin to explain to you how pleasantly surprised I was that while it was still tough work in order of getting all of the policies and kind of just the logistics in place, this corporation went from a 10 to a 90. And the new 2017 CEI was released in November, so just a month ago from the time that you're listening to this, and I'm so, so pleased to see that they have a 90 now on the Corporate Equality Index. This is a corporation that has like 17,000 employees so having sexual orientation, and gender identity, and gender expression, and all of those necessary things- transgender healthcare benefits, all of those necessary things in place for those 17,000 employees is amazing. Because while yes the LGBT community is representing like less than 4% of the population, so 4% of those 17,000 employees are going to be directly impacted by this corporation taking that awesome next step into having full equality in their workplace for their people. I feel like this is amazing, I'm so excited and so proud of them. I really look forward to engaging with them again in 2017 to help them get to 100. My real goal is on the 2018 CEI, this company has 100%. So they would have gone from a 10 to 100 in two years' time. And I think any company is capable of this if they have the right people, and the right leadership to say, 'Let's do this, let's get this done' basically. And in this particular instance, this corporation, they had the buy-in from senior level executives, they had the buy-in from the CEO, and they had all of the autonomy and authority to get this done, which I think is entirely why they were so successful in doing this because there was that top-down agreement of, 'This is something that's important to our organization, and we are going to do this.' I was privy to an email that an LGBTQ person within this company sent to the CEO, and I was able to see it and it was just a very simple, 'Thank you. I'm proud to be an employee of this company.'                                     So there's a huge impact that can be made. So if you're working for a corporation that you know is not doing well on the CEI, there is total hope for you. Total hope, and if you are interested and want me to have a conversation with your, or with them, or anybody, I'd be more than happy to do that. I found out of everything that I worked on in 2016 in addition- or other than to the working with my authors on the publishing side, if I look at all of the LGBTQ projects that I worked on in 2016, this was hands down one of the best because every time we got a little bit closer to a better score, it was just a huge sense of victory. And I've been behind the scenes, out of sight. This company and the people within it are all the true champions, I just gave them the guidance and kind of the general direction of like, 'This is what we have to do, this is who you have to talk to,' and all that. But they made it happen and now they're positioning themselves as a market leader, and they can attract LGBTQ employees and top talent because they have protections that those employees are looking for. So this was such a rewarding- and such an interesting way, just such a rewarding project to have worked on, especially if we look at my business. It's very much kind of equally- I think it's equally behind the scenes versus equally on a stage speaking. This was straight up behind the scenes and I loved every minute of it, and the people who work for this company- the marketing people, HR, everyone, they're just really genuine, and sincere, and authentic people, and it's just been seriously amazing. So I'm so proud of them to have a 90%. If at any point in time I can tell you who they are, I'd be more than happy to because they are amazing and I would love for you to do business with them. But for now I shall keep their name.                                     Although that leads into the second thing that I wanted to tell you. I am working on my next book, and it should be out in 2017- in winter of 2017 is what my hope is, and I'm hoping that I can possibly name this company by name in the book, I'm working on trying to figure out how I will do that now. But this is- and I screw up the number every time I say it, it'll either be my third book or my fourth book. I can't quite determine which one it is.                                     You may even wonder how on earth I could possibly not know how many books I've written, and the reality is that I have written two print books. So it's the first book which was 'But You Don't Look Gay: The Six Steps to Creating an LGBT Marketing Strategy.' And then I wrote my second book which was 'No Wait, You Do Look Gay: The Seven Mistakes Preventing You from Selling to the $830 Billion LGBT Market.' And then I wrote a third book that is not in print, it is only an electronic version. So I never know if I'm going to count that one as a book or not, and that book is 'Marriage Equality Marketing: Five Questions You Must Ask to Sell to the $884 Billion LGBT Market.' So because that one is not in print I always- sometimes I want to include it as a third book, sometimes I don't. Either way those are the three I've written. The 'Marriage Equality Marketing' book is free, it's completely free on my website if you go to www.JennTGrace.com, a popup will pop up in your face and ask you if you'd like to download it, and there's information about it in a couple of different places.                                     So I highly encourage you to at the very least go get that book for free, but I am working on- we'll call it my fourth for the sake of this discussion. So I am working on my fourth book, as I mentioned I'm hoping that it will be out in winter of 2017. My goal is for it to be out probably in late January, maybe early mid-February. It's a little bit tricky right now trying to figure out the editing process, and I'm in the throes of it right now just editing it. So it's nine chapters as it stands at this very moment, and I'm in the process of editing chapter eight, so I'm almost there. And then I have to figure out all the other fun logistics of who's going to write the forward, and testimonials, and all of that fun stuff that goes with writing a book.                                     This book is a little bit different than the others. If we look at the other three books, they've all been a little bit of a hybrid of LGBTQ audience and straight ally audience. My audience this entire time I've been doing this, which goes back to- at least this iteration of my business, to 2012. And if I look at my experience in the LGBTQ space, generally speaking that goes back to 2006, but this entire time I've spent a lot of time equally focused on helping allies reach the community and then helping people within the community just be better at marketing themselves. And this book is different, it's really different, and the reason is it is designed purely for allies. Just for allies. I have never done anything that is only intended for allies. Any LGBTQ person could pick it up, of course you could learn from it, there's always something I think that can be learned, but this is very much communications based. There is no- we're not talking about marketing necessarily, it's very much how to get into the mind of an LGBT customer, and how to make sure that you're authentically approaching the market. So it is in a large, large part very much what I've been preaching and talking about for the last four years on this podcast, and in my blog, but it's written in a very different way. It is really a book designed to be a cheerleader for an ally who genuinely wants to reach our community in a way that is true to them, that's going to serve us well, and that it really is a win-win situation. It really is kind of a champion, and it's a cheerleader helping that ally kind of get through these mental blocks, and help them understand why we're using the stereotypes that we're using, or why people are covering their identity, or all of these very emotional things, very psychological things. I'm really excited with how the book is turning out. When I first started this, and I started the re-write really officially back in the end of October, and my original intent to be honest with you was to take the first two books that I've done, and just kind of blend them together and create like a new updated version of that, that was really almost I would say 80% the same content. And when I did that, I just didn't like the way it felt. I feel like it wasn't the book that was needed in the marketplace if you will. And I started writing it before the election, so I started writing it in the end of October, the election was the second week of November, and yeah everything just kind of blew up in a not so pleasant way. So I had written the first draft basically before the election, and when I went back to edit that first draft, it just was kind of like, 'Oh hell no this is not going to work anymore.' The election has changed- I don't want to be so dramatic, but the election has changed everything in my mind. It's been a complete and utter game changer. So when I went back and looked through it I was like, 'Nope this is not the book that needs to be written,' and I just kind of scrapped a lot of what I had written, I deleted a ton of information. So the first three books that I have that exist, all of that is still kind of minding its business. This next book will have very little overlap, if any overlap to those other books. If anything I'm just kind of referencing, 'This is covered in the first book. Feel free to go get your copy here' type of stuff. But I think the election has changed a lot, and I'm hoping that this is the book that an ally who's like, 'I need to be an ally,' or someone who doesn't even know that they're an ally yet, but they're like, 'I know I need to help the LGBT community right now. I know I have to, how do I do that? I need the manual.' So this is kind of the manual to help people reach the LGBT community.                                     So I do look forward to having that available in February or so. As I get that information up on my website it will be there, so www.JennTGrace.com. The information will be there. I am looking for people to be book ambassadors which basically I will be giving you kind of a free preview, a free copy in exchange for helping me promote the book during the launch. And again, I don't know when the launch will be, I'm guessing probably somewhere in February is my best guess, and I will need people to help me kind of promote it and make sure that it makes sense within particular audiences. And again it's designed for the straight ally but an LGBTQ person could pick it up and absolutely learn from it. There's definitely stuff to be learned from, but it's really written to a straight person who means well and wants to do the right thing and just needs that guidance and kind of a support system there to tell them that when they do something it's not the end of the world, and here's how to counteract what you've done, and all that kind of great stuff.                                     That was a mouthful. I fully understand that it was a lot of information that I've just thrown out at you, and I did so in a not 100% cohesive way. I think I bounced around a little bit, but that kind of sums up this final episode of 2016 and we will speak again in 2017, I'm just not 100% when that is. So I do hope that you enjoy going back in time listening to some of the amazing old archives that I have pulled out for at least the first couple of months of 2017. So keep in touch with me, keep telling me what's going on. If you want to be a book ambassador please reach out. I've also redone my entire email series, so if you join my mailing list I have redone it in a way that it is super, super educational. It always has been but I went back and just redid it so there's a lot more intent behind it. So and the intent there is to help educate you, it's not trying to sell you on things, it's really just focused on how do I take the 500+ blog posts and podcasts collectively that I have, how do I make sure that I'm giving that information to you in a way that logically makes sense? Rather than just telling you to go to my website and just start looking around. You could be looking around for weeks and still not cover all of the information that's there. So the new email is really just designed to help specifically and strategically guide you in the right direction to enhance your business, enhance your personal brand, all of that great stuff.                                     With that being said, again this is not a final goodbye, but this is a goodbye, we're on hiatus for a little bit. If you're interested, check out my website, www.JennTGrace.com. If interested check out www.PurposeDrivenPublishing.com or www.PurposeDrivenAuthorsAcademy.com. All of those places I will be there, and again www.MeetWithJenn.com will bring you to my online scheduling calendar, and I'd be honestly happy to help kind of brainstorm and kickstart you in the right direction. So if you would like to talk to me please do so.                                     With that being said I so appreciate your listenership for these last four years, I hope the end of 2016 has been good for you, and I hope 2017 kicks some serious ass, and we will talk again very soon. Have a great New Year.                                     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.  

#99: Are We Innately Driven to Serve Others With Matt Kidd Jenn T Grace:              You are listening to the Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional Podcast, episode 99.   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 99 of the Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional Podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and I am almost stunned that we are at episode 99 and the next episode will obviously be 100, that will be the last one of 2016 and it's almost a big monumental time to be hitting this 99th episode before going into the triple digits.                                     So as I have been doing for the last couple of months, I have another interview to share with you and it's with Matt Kidd, and he is the Executive Director of Reaching Out MBA which is an organization that is focused on LGBTQ folks who are pursuing MBAs, and we really just had an amazing conversation that kind of went back and forth between LGBT culture and some of the challenges that we see, and personal brands, and how people can be change makers, and advocates, and really it was just a very fascinating conversation to be had. So per usual I will not dilly dally here with the introduction and we can just dive right into today's interview with Matt, and I will see you in episode 100, but for today please enjoy this interview with Matt Kidd, and if you would like to find information about this episode, see a transcript, any of that, you can do so at www.JennTGrace.com/99 for episode number 99. Thanks so much and enjoy the interview.                                     Okay so I want to start off with just having you give the listeners a little bit of a background about yourself, maybe what you've done in the past, what your current position is, and then we can just kind of dive into other interesting topics from there. So why don't you just kind of take it away.   Matt Kidd:                  Sure so my name is Matt Kidd. I'm currently the Executive Director of an LGBT organization called Reaching Out. A lot of people know us also as ROMBA, and the organization itself is effectively the now global organization for LGBT MBA both students and professionals. And it's something that I've been in this role now for a little over three years, but prior to that was on the board. So I've been involved with Reaching Out now probably for- gosh going on about eight years. But I would say for me being part of kind of the LGBT community is something that has gone on really since I was a teenager in some ways, which I can talk a little bit about later, and I have to say as I came to this role it really was because I was at a time in my life where I started really thinking about what difference can we make in the world? To be honest I'd gone through my own MBA business school experience, I was working at Tech Startup, and about two, three years after I'd been at that company I was number one kind of getting a little bit bored and I was thinking about what do I want to do next? But number two, I actually lost my mother and so at that point I'd lost both my parents. And when you go through something like that I think it forces a lot of self-reflection and kind of thinking about what is your purpose in the world? Why are you doing this? What really matters? And I think that was one of those moments. And so it was kind of probably about a year after that, that the organization was going through this big change where it went from what was effectively an all-volunteer model with a volunteer board, and using students to run basically one event to an organization that really wanted to have a larger scope, wanted to run year round, and [Inaudible 00:04:33]. And I vividly remember we were sitting in a room with some consultants that we were working with and one of them pulled me aside and said, "Hey would you consider raising your hand for this," and my gut reaction was, "No that's ridiculous." And then I think I went home and thought about it, and a couple weeks went by, and I just kept coming back to it. It was this really interesting part of me, 'What can we do with this? Like if I did this, why would it be interesting and why should I do this?' And it all kind of came back to in a weird way- I view my time at Reaching Out really in a weird way is working with some sort of startup or something entrepreneurial because I came in and it had been this established product which was this conference that's been going on now for nineteen years, but it really didn't do much else. And so it kind of gave me a blank slate to come and then say, 'Well what do we want to do? What impact do we want to do?' And as soon as I kind of had some of the conversations that made it clear that we really would be able to move forward quickly rather than kind of in the traditional slow nonprofit way, I threw my hat into the ring and lo and behold three years later we've built up a staff of three, we're doing probably close to twenty events a year, we have a scholarship program that's giving away over a million dollars a year to LGBTQ students in business school. So we've been able to accomplish a lot, but that's kind of how I got to where I am, and kind of a little bit about what's going on in my world.   Jenn T Grace:              Do you think with your kind of gut reaction of like, 'Oh hell no I don't want to go down this path,' and then somehow that being the path that you end up on, do you think that like if you look back it's just kind of really kind of changed the trajectory of your ability to make- create purpose and change kind of in your life?   Matt Kidd:                  Yeah I do. The reality is I probably won't be in this role forever. Some people do ask me, "What are you going to do next?" And I think in a weird way this role has made me really reflect on what would make me happy in life, and what would not? And I think some of that has to do with the type of organizations that you work for. I think there's something inherently nice about working- for me at least, for a small to mid-sized organization rather than kind of a giant corporation. I think it tells you a little bit about kind of the impact that you can have. I think particularly when you're talking about a nonprofit or a v-corp or something like that, then I think in those cases you're doing more than just having an impact on the business line, you're having an impact on kind of the greater community. I think at this point- and I think it's- I alluded to this before, I think it's been true really since I was much younger, but now I consciously think about what can I be doing to make somebody else's life better at the end of the day? And I think some of that comes from mission driven work, and where you work, but some of that just becomes frankly how you treat people, how you talk, how you position yourself, and I think being in a role like this makes me hyper conscious of that and that's something that regardless of what I'm doing next, I that's had just had a tremendous impact really on my life. And like I said it can be just something as simple as how are you talking to other people? Are you kind of taking into consideration their priorities, their needs, how can you help them, how might they be at a disadvantage to you? Every conversation now in some form, that goes through my thinking.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah and I know that you have kind of information from early back as we were talking before we hit record, do you think that for people to come to the realization that like their purpose in life is to really kind of serve others? Because that's really at the crux of what you're talking about, is serving others. Do you think that it requires some kind of pivotal moment to cause that? Or do you think that's innate to some people? Like what are your thoughts on that, and then of course how did you realize that about yourself?   Matt Kidd:                  Yeah I think it's ultimately at the end of the day in everyone. I think there probably are varying degrees of it, but I do think it takes something in somebody's life really to kind of recognize it. And so what we were talking about before we recorded today is October 12th and so it's the eighteenth anniversary of the murder of Matthew Shepard, and I really vividly remember an experience when I was probably a junior or so in high school, and this was in Memphis, Tennessee so fairly deep south in kind of the late nineties, and I remember this experience, and I apologize for my language here but there was a teacher who kind of came in and basically said, "That faggot deserved it. He probably had Aids anyway." And you know, at the time I was not really out at that point, I would say I was exploring my sexual identity in some capacity and I think some people probably suspected, but I just remember that just first of all making me feel so little, but then I think the more I reflected on it, it started to make me angry. And a couple years ago I had the pleasure of sitting down with Judy Shepard, and we were talking, and my comment to her was the murder is obviously horrible, and I think everybody would go back in time and change it if they could, but there is a silver lining that comes of horrible incidents like this, and that's I think it gets a lot of people to reflect on their own purpose and kind of have a reaction. And so I would say if you look at a lot of my peers, particularly in the LGBT social justice faith now, a lot of them would say a moment to them where they realized that this was something that was important to them, something that moved them that made them care, was Matthew Shepard’s death. And so for a lot of us, kind of my generation, so people who are in their mid-thirties, I think that was a moment that sparked this idea of, 'This is wrong and I want to change that.' Now how people went about doing that, I think it takes a lot of different paths. And sometimes you'll see have you multiple encounters, like for me a second spark really was my loss of both my parents, that a moment where for me it was like, 'Well why am I on this earth? Like what am I meant to do?' And so I think you do have those points, and I think it's what you decide to do with them that really matters.   Jenn T Grace:              So I have a friend of mine who's writing a book, and it's really about what you're talking about of really kind of taking that challenging situation and turning it into that silver lining. And there's a whole concept around it called post-traumatic growth, and it's really that we grow from those really traumatic experiences that we kind of face. Do you think- because I too am in my mid-thirties looking back at Matthew Shepard, and that being in 1998, and I was also a junior in high school. I remember it really vividly as I think most people our age do, and do you think that there- because I think that Judy Shepard really, really made it her life's mission to use that incident and her experience as a grieving mother to really be a catalyst in so many ways across the board for LGBT equality. Do you think that because it was 1998, if we look back Ellen had come out a couple of years before, LGBT was so not on the forefront as it is now. If we look at something like what happened in Orlando in June, do we look at that as possibly one of those pivotal moments for people now? Like because I know for us, like I definitely- of course we all had a reaction to Orlando, but do we think that that is actually one of those defining moments for maybe the youth? Especially as you- with reaching out working with students, I'm curious just kind of your perspective and hearing stories that you might have heard from any of the students that you work with.   Matt Kidd:                  Yeah you know I think at some level it did, I think that there are certainly differences kind of as you alluded to. In the nineties, LGBT- obviously being LGBT, being out, much less acceptable than it is now. And I think in many ways, Orlando in particular exposed people to this concept of we're still vulnerable. I think one of the things that I see in a lot of students, and it's a little bit horrifying for me to see some students who are kids now getting into the nineties, but some of them have never grown up in an age frankly without Internet, which I think for a lot of LGBT people kind of opened a community, opened kind of access to free communication that you might not otherwise have, and I think they've grown up in an environment thanks to people like Kevin Jennings where a lot of them have seen GSAs in their schools and stuff like that. And so they've always grown up in this environment where it's been acceptable, and I think that there's always this danger that people become a little bit complacent, and so I think it moved a lot of people to think, 'Okay there's still a lot of work to do.' Because I hate to say this, but let's be honest, the fact that not all states have workplace protection for example, it's actually not as sexy to at least a lot of my students because most of them are going to go work for corporations or multi-nationals who regardless of whether the state they're in has work protections or not, they're going to be protected by their companies. And so they're not really impacted by something like that so it's not as sexy. But this idea that there are people out there who want to do you harm, and it's like this in other places in the world, and that particularly is something that I think [Inaudible 00:14:00] people start to get with something like Orlando, I think it gets them to move, to act a little bit and it does spark something like that. I mean my true thought, and we saw this last week, we had our annual conference last weekend, and one of the speakers was this guy Darnell Moore, and Darnell Moore is kind of at the intersection of queer and Black Lives Matter as a lot of the Black Lives Matter are themselves. And he really talked about kind of the racial inequality within the LGBT movement and there were a lot of conversations following that, and I think that in a lot of ways Black Lives Matter is kind of the equivalent to some of the LGBT rights issues that we saw in the nineties, including the Matthew Shepard murder, and I think that's actually going to spark a lot of people towards just kind of general social justice movement. So it may not be precisely LGBT focused, but I think that there's a broad- if people are not being treated equally, that's a problem that people are starting to get in tune with, in part because of Black Lives Matter actually.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah I feel like it's a collision- there's definitely a colliding of the Black Lives Matter movement and the LGBTQ movement all kind of boiling to a point at the same time, which if we look back just from a historical context, obviously I think it goes without saying that the Black Lives Matter should not be where it's at right now, this should not even be a movement currently. And I think there's a lot of power in the two communities trying to kind of raise one another up. I'm sure there's plenty of problematic areas too of we're all trying to fight for the same thing, but I think more often than not there's definitely a synergy, and a harmony if you would even want to call it that, of it's just injustice across the board, equality across the board, and I think that seeing these two different vantage points is actually I think helping one another in some degree from a media standpoint, or at least what's kind of being talked about because I think maybe the first time in history that these two things are so on the forefront every single day in any media outlet that you look at.   Matt Kidd:                  I'd add gender equality to that as well, I mean if you look at what's going on with the whole Trump campaign kind of implosion if you will, a lot of that centers around gender equality. And I think that the fact that people are more attuned to this- you really can't talk about people like that, you really have to treat people equally. If that wasn't going on I feel like unfortunately this wouldn't be as big of an issue as it's turned into over the last week or so.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah I feel like there's just so much going on, the political landscape. By the time this airs I think we will be post-election, and who knows what exactly that will look like. Good God let's all hope here, and I'm sure anyone listening to this is on the same page, I can't imagine that I would have any listeners who were not, but who knows. In looking at just kind of maybe how even just the election cycle has kind of gone in terms of opening awareness to all of these mass amounts of issues. Because I really feel like there's a lot to attribute to the Trump campaign of just kind of raising the collective consciousness of, 'Wow there are so many problems.' Whether or not there's any kind of resolution to anything that's been brought up over the last year and a half, who knows? But it will be interesting to kind of see how this all plays out as it relates to any number of disenfranchised communities. Obviously LGBT being kind of the one that we're discussing.   Matt Kidd:                  Yeah the Trump campaign on LGBT has just been frankly very confusing, I mean to me as the whole Trump campaign has been. But I do think that it is kind of forcing people to really look at these issues, and the thing that at least is I guess slightly comforting to me is that this election cycle, LGBT has kind of taken a back seat in some ways. That to me means it's being used as less of a wedge issue, or kind of people view it as less of a wedge issue. I think that's promising. I think that there's also an inherent risk to that, which I alluded to in one of the last questions. I mean if you look at workplace equality, housing equality, transgender rights, look at what's going on in North Carolina; there's a lot that we really need to still accomplish. I think to the extent that people feel like, 'Okay we got marriage so we can move on,' which frankly is what a lot of people from the kind of straight- or to be more politically correct, non-LGBTQ population, that's how a lot of them view it is, 'Okay they got marriage last year so they're all set.' The reality is that's not true, but I also understand- kind of like you said the fact that we're still having some of these race inequality issues, essentially fifty years after we went through a whole racial equality movement, is just absolutely insane to me. And to me when people say, 'Well what do you think the importance of LGBT organizations-' like mine going forward are going to be. I think number one there's still stuff to accomplish, but number two, if we look at women's equality movement, and the black equality movement in particular, those are still ongoing, and to think that we're done and that we're going to politically at least get to a point where we're in the clear, we have nothing to worry about, I think it's naïve. I think the reality is we need to continue to be a pretty cohesive community, and I think that there are a lot of ways to do that, and the way that my organization kind of thinks about that is we want to bring these students together who are ultimately at the end of the day most likely to go onto jobs that are well-positioned within corporations, and pay well, and presumably they'll amass some sort of power, and I think one of the things we're really starting to focus on is how do we plant that seed that gets them to think about how they can number one, support each other, but more importantly, how can they support the rest of the LGBTQ community that may not have that same power, privilege and money? How can they essentially be giving back to their peers who are not as privileged as they are? And I think that's kind of the next wave of LGBT movement, is some of us are doing exceedingly well, particularly if you're a white, cisgender, gay male. Some people are not in as good a position, and how do we lift those people up?   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah I feel like you've kind of said so much because it's almost like you're helping enable an army that can kind of infiltrate from the inside of the corporate walls. And I think that with marriage equality, or even to some degree kind of the non-discrimination legislation that is still kind of in limbo, but the states that have adopted some kind of policies to protect their LGBT work force, so many of them have done so under the pressure of the corporations within those given states. So this seems like it's definitely the long term game strategy that you're kind of viewing, but it really- I think to some degree only takes one individual LGBT person, or even ally within an organization to really affect the type of change that's needed in order to continue to kind of propel things forward.   Matt Kidd:                  Yup absolutely, and I spent a day last week at the Out and Equal Workplace Summit, and a lot of the conversations that I was either part of or sat in, really kind of talked about how it's at the end of the day, particularly within corporations, getting stuff done, getting influence can come from two directions, it can come from kind of top down or bottom up, and it really takes passionate individuals to make that happen. The challenge that I think a lot of corporations right now face is that yes you're having these C-level folks, somebody like a Marc Benioff really step it up and taking some bold, bold actions. And you have some really passionate kind of lower level employees particularly amongst the millennials. But then you kind of have this layer of middle management, and frankly in my opinion to be middle management in a corporation sucks. You're getting a lot of pressure to perform from both ends, you can't take as many risks as you want, and so that is actually where I think a lot of kind of social justice movements within corporations kind of hit friction. It's not actually because of the C-suite, it's because of middle management, and it's essentially a fear, it's a fear for their own careers. And so I think as we think about who we want to influence and whom we should be talking to, I think those are kind of the key stakeholders. As we think about how we can leverage corporations in particular for this. I think yes, if you can get the attention of the CEO that's great, and it lets you make what I would essentially say are like headline plays. Something that you do that kind of is there for a day or two and then potentially goes away. To make something that's really long-lasting, you really need to build it into the culture, and a lot of that deals with middle management and influencing them. And so I think as we think about whom we should be talking to, and where we can make relationships personal, I think it's with those middle managers that really is key.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah and I had an experience this past year. So I have a corporate client that's a Fortune 100, and I've been helping them- I did an LGBT training for their staff, just kind of marketing wise how to get their salespeople communicating in the right ways. And it was kind of a really fun experience, and that was- I don't know, maybe two years ago, and earlier this year they reached out to me to say, 'Hey we recognize that our CEI score is atrocious, and we see that we're not able to attract the right type of talent because it's just so bad and we're really putting people off.' And it's not that they weren't practicing it internally, but the number on the page was- it was a ten. So I worked with them, and their HR department, and their marketing department, and they had top down buy-in. So I was expecting kind of a Herculean effort to be had of like this is going to be a slog, we're working with an all-white male board of directors who isn't really all about diversity, let alone LGBT, and I was beyond shocked with how easy it moved through because the top executives were saying, 'This is something that's important to us, this is what we have to do.' But it's what you were saying, it was the mid-level manager which is usually where things kind of go to die when- any type of initiative. Like somehow it just doesn't either get passed going upward, or doesn't get below going downward, and there's always- obviously I'm making a broad generalization, but in my experience anyway, this is what I've seen happen. And it was because that mid-level management was like, 'You know what? This is important. It's important to us from a how do we position our business as- how do we position ourselves as the employer of choice?' And it's amazing that they managed to get themselves up to a ninety with just working with me for six months to really just kind of get their internal stuff together, because again they were already doing it, they just weren't really getting the credit for it. So I think that there's a lot to be said because it was one marketing person in that organization of like 18,000 employees who was saying, 'Our CEI sucks. We have to do something about it.' And she's an ally to the community no less, not even part of the community and was like, 'We have to fix this.' So I think that that should give hope and inspiration to a lot of the young people that are students and going through Reaching Out because they really do have an impact to change so many people, it's just I think if you time the messaging right, you time the conversation at the right time, you talk to the right people eventually- and I'm sure my particular contact was having these conversations for quite some time before I was able to actually come in and deliver, but it took her to stand up to be like, 'This isn't right. We need to fix this.' And I think that anyone has that true potential, but in a lot of ways I feel like the stars have to kind of align to really kind of see that such quick progress. Because especially in corporate it does take a lot of time to do anything usually.   Matt Kidd:                  Yeah, you know I think that there is increasing pressure on some of these organizations to really look at diversity numbers, metrics. When I throw around the word diversity, generally speaking I'm really talking about recruiting. I think if that pressure continues, and I think the pressure on that will actually fall on middle management, that by default is going to start making this part of the culture because people will think about, 'Well what can we be doing to affect this?' So I think setting some metrics in the hopes of companies essentially to task for you know, 'Gosh you really have no women.' I think it's a really important thing to do and I think over time that will start to change the culture of these organizations inherently as well.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah and I think it's great that your focus is on MBA students because like you said, they are well-positioned by the time they hit the corporate workplace, so they automatically have an added layer perhaps credibility kind of bringing to the table, even if they are kind of in a very low position, you know that they're going to inevitably kind of succeed through the ranks based on what they're setting out to do.   Matt Kidd:                  Yeah absolutely.   Jenn T Grace:              So switching gears just a little bit and thinking about earlier on, you were talking about for you, Reaching Out is likely not going to be something that you're kind of tied to for life. Do you think about how- like right now is your name- I'm just going down a path of personal branding here. In looking at your name, are you finding that it's becoming synonymous with Reaching Out, or Executive Director of Reaching Out? And are you consciously trying to think about how to gradually- not disconnect because of course your name is everything and it certainly plays a huge factor into your role, but just kind of from a general standpoint of thinking of like, 'How would I actually unravel this down the road should I need to?'   Matt Kidd:                  Yeah, no I think that is top of mind for me lately. I think that actually if you look at a lot of LGBT organizations you have people who in a lot of ways, the person is interchangeable with the organization. So you look at like Out & Equal, and you think of Selisse Berry. You look at Out Leadership, you think of Todd Sears. And there are numerous cases like that, and unfortunately I think that there's a danger not only to the individual I think as they think about kind of their next chapter, although for some of these folks there may not be another chapter, they may decide to retire. But I think there's kind of a challenge for somebody like me where this certainly is- hopefully, knock on wood, not going to be the last chapter of my career, and so at one level you want to be associated with this but you don't want it to be your entire brand. I think there's also a danger for the organization because if it becomes so entrenched in kind of my personal brand, then the organization risks- if I'm not there and not present, people could say things like, 'Oh it was not the same as it was when Matt was there,' and I don't think that's good for the organization either. I increasingly as we do events and trying to do things to put a spotlight on our other stuff [Inaudible 00:2926] are students, because I think at the end of the day those are the people who are working equally as hard as I am, and maybe aren't always the face and voice but I think we should position them more to be in those kinds of situations. So there is a risk and I am thinking about how we slowly kind of unwind that a bit, and I think essentially lifting other people up is a huge component of that.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah and I partially asked the question because in- everything is always clearer in hindsight, but when I was running the Connecticut LGBT Chamber of Commerce which I did for quite a number of years, and I was the Executive Director I remember that when I left that position the organization essentially imploded, and it took awhile to kind of regain its legs, and it certainly- this was a number of years ago at this point, so everything is on the up and up now, but it definitely was a significant hit because- and it wasn't anything that I intentionally had done from the onset. I wasn't trying to build the organization the Jenn way, it just happened to be a very small organization, not a lot of people. I relied heavily on volunteers and our board, and it was just a matter of we've got to do what we've got to do to get these events going, to get our members happy, and it just happened to be me that was always in front of people. So I think that that's a risk generally for anybody in a position like you're in now.   Matt Kidd:                  I think it's a risk for any kind of small to mid-sized organization really to be honest, and part of why we built out our staff is certainly because if we continued on the trajectory that when it was essentially just me as a staff member with some contractors and volunteers, I was going to burn out which would not benefit anyone, and we wouldn't be able to expand and grow the way that we wanted to. But the second is like it essentially puts the institutional memory of an organization really in that one person, and if you lose that one person, back when we were kind of that staff of one plus some contractors, if I got hit by a bus not that the organization wouldn't continue on, but that would be really problematic. Today knock on wood that's not going to happen, but if it did I have full faith that between kind of the staff embers that we have and how we've kind of been able to lift them up and then have them kind of take over some things, I think that frankly things would go on without missing much of a beat.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah which is such a good sustainable place to be in, which is not always what is accessible to every organization because they're not really kind of thinking about secession planning and what lies ahead, or if this key person were to not be here for whatever number of reasons, how do we kind of carry on without skipping a beat. And I would imagine- my gut says, and based on people that I know in Executive Director positions for other nonprofits, I feel like most of them are not necessarily thinking that forward in terms of 'what would we do in the situation?' So rather it's a reactive versus proactive.   Matt Kidd:                  Yeah and you know I'll be honest, in the LGBT space in particular, I think we have a responsibility to start to think about secession planning, and the large reason actually is that if you look at the vast majority- not all, but the majority of LGBT social justice organizations, they're run by white cisgender gay men, and I don't think that that's the face of the movement going forward. And so I think we really need to kind of pause as a movement in general and think about how can we bring in the faces and the voices that maybe aren't heard as well right now, and put them into leadership roles? And I think we're really at an inflection point where it's time for those of us who- kind of going back to what I was saying before, are fairly privileged within the LGBTQ community, to lift up those who are not and make them heard, and I think that's one way that we can do that. And so I hope that as a lot of other LGBT organizations have [Inaudible 00:33:27] retire, or switch to something else, that that's something that they're starting to think about.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah and so I'm curious to hear your thoughts, and if you've been paying attention to this at all, but I had someone from BuzzFeed reach out to me last week- and again we're recording this on October 12th, so whenever this does come out, it's obviously all a little bit in the past. But I had somebody reach out for my comment on the After Ellen platform kind of disbanding. So what you're talking about I think really kind of goes into that entirely of the face of the community is really gay, white, cisgender men, and we know that that is by far not the reality of the community. But when we look at something like a website, like After Ellen which was kind of a flagship type of lesbian driven centric platform and content generator for so many years. So for that to kind of no longer exist in the capacity that it did, and the reason being is that there just wasn't enough advertiser interest, it's almost like how do we combat that from recognizing that it's not just what this kind of stereotypical highly sought after demographic is, when we ourselves are kind of continuing to perpetuate that that is all there is when we know that that's not.   Matt Kidd:                  Yeah, no I do know what you mean. The After Ellen thing is frankly a little surprising to me. I think some of what they struggled with is the business model issue, but some of it is- and also from firsthand experience, one of the things that I'm really focused on and the organization is, is really frankly trying to drive more LBTQ into business school and business in general. And so we started an initiative about probably three or four years ago now that we call Out Women in Business, and we hold a conference in New York, and it's a challenging audience to attract. I think each year it gets a little bit better, and there are some people like Leanne Pittsford with Lesbians Who Tech, who have something really special and magical there, but I mean Leanne will even tell you, like for her trying to attract an audience sometimes is a challenge as well. And so that's kind of a community thing, and I think it all starts with kind of visible leadership, and I think slowly but surely with folks like Megan Smith for example, we are carving out a space and leadership examples for the LBTQ community in particular, so I think that that's kind of a key component to it. But there aren't a lot of sources. After Ellen was one, there are what, maybe a couple- three or four others that are significant that are left, and that's pretty shocking. And then you get into other pretty gay-focused media sources; like to me, Towleroad or something like that is frankly pretty gay-focused. So that is a disturbing thing when you consider the fact that particularly bisexual women I think are the majority of the LGBTQ community. And so that's one of these moments where we should pause and say, 'Are we really reflecting what's out there, and is that part of why something like After Ellen isn't failing, it's because there's a representation issue.'   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah I feel like it's interesting because if you look at just kind of general demographic data, it shows that women are more likely to be the primary purchasers of households. So even in just looking at that as women as a more influential audience for buying whatever it happens to be, it seems like it just doesn't add up. And then I think about it, and I wonder if gay men, or any male within the LGBTQ community, is it because there is a bigger sense of community of like actually gathering that makes it easier to see them as a demographic to reach versus women are far more just kind of blending in with the individual cultures in which they live, whether that's geography, or whether it's different areas of interest. It's just really fascinating. When I was talking to the woman at BuzzFeed, I was just saying like, 'This is my lesbian perspective, but you should probably reach out to a cisgender gay male and get their point of view as well because there's got to be some underlying thing that's kind of here, and I do get the question quite often of how do I target lesbians, or how do I find lesbians to market to? And most often my advice is you just have to market to them as women first typically, and then go from there and be inclusive in that approach. But that's not necessarily what's going to be really kind of sexy to an advertiser to say, 'Oh this is a demographic I should invest in.'   Matt Kidd:                  Yeah and you know, I think it goes back beyond just media. So if you look at a given city, and you look at like a nightlife scene for example, generally speaking you'll probably find a handful, probably three or four of what you would consider kind of 'gay bars,' and you might find one bar that caters towards LBTQ women. And I think that's there- I think it goes back to your clusters of people, you see them more visibly, and again I think the more that we can think about how we bring communities together, who's representing them; I think these are all really, really important things for the movement as we go forward, particularly with social justice organizations.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah, absolutely. And do you see any kind of influence or impact on like the Reaching Out students? Because they are MBA focused, that obviously puts them in a different kind of track, but do you see that that's being another avenue for just kind of shedding light and awareness on all of this?   Matt Kidd:                  I think interestingly enough we're at the point where we even have cisgender men kind of saying, 'What can we do to be getting more women here?' So like it's becoming front of mind for people. I would say for us probably even as recently as five or six years ago, we were the white gay male conference. And you know, I looked at the metrics this year, it's getting better. It's still not there, I think we were slightly under 50% Caucasian, so that's in my mind kind of a good change, although I think a lot of that frankly is being driven by international students who are at business schools. But the number of women in these programs is picking up a little bit each year, but we're not talking- we're talking like a percent each year. So the difference between like 26% and 27% and we really need to be focusing on it. And for me, I mean this is one of my big passions, is how can we drive this and we're fortunate to have a board chair who is a lesbian identifying woman herself, and both of us feel very passionately about it so we've convinced everyone to really put some money behind our mouths on this. And I think we're slowly making progress, it's just not as fast as I think any of us would like, and to be honest we just haven't figured out the silver bullet. So I'll say if any of your listeners know, please feel free to reach out because this is something that- it's not that we don't want them in business school, we actually desperately want them and so frankly do the business schools. I think the challenge that we run into, number one is a little bit of marketing to them, which like you said I think it starts with just marketing to women in general, and I think it gets a little bit more specific. But the other thing is, as I talk to a lot of LBTQ women and say, 'Hey have you ever considered business school?' the responses are pretty much, 'No that's not something that's really top of mind,' and ultimately when you kind of keep pushing it comes down to they're not seeing a community like themselves so they feel like it's not a place for them to be. And so it's a little bit of chicken or egg, but we've got to tell them that, 'This is a place where you're wanted,' and frankly if we start talking about the trans community it gets even harder. I had a conversation with the Executive Director of Campus Pride probably about a month ago now, and he was saying when he talks to his trans students- so these are all undergrad students, he says, 'What do you want to do in the future?' He said it's maybe one in a hundred that's saying some form of business, and the rest of it is something that might be more in the social justice space, or arts space, or even legal, and the fact that this really isn't on their radar and they don't see it as a place for them is a big problem.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah and I think it's more of a systemic issue that is much broader than LGBTQ. It really kind of stems from what children are exposed to, and what classes they are exposed to in their elementary schools for example, and just kind of going through and in Connecticut we have a lot of stem type of schools that are popping up. So if either of my children who are in third and fourth grade, if they were interested or showed any inclination toward that stuff, then we could absolutely kind of push them in that direction. But I feel like school is so watered down now that there's just- it's focused on like the bare necessities and not really exposing children, and middle or high school to all of the things that they could be. And I feel like- and Lord knows that is going to be a fight that is not going to be won anytime soon. But I feel like it really- there's just such a systemic issue at play, and the LGBTQ community is really just a microcosm of a bigger- of the community of everyone. So I think we just see the issues because we are such a concentrated microcosm of the larger kind of landscape that we're all operating in.   Matt Kidd:                  I agree. Totally agree.   Jenn T Grace:              Well it's already- we've already been chatting for 45 minutes which seems crazy at this point. But I would love to kind of ask you a final question and then just give you kind of free reign to tell everyone how to go about finding you.   Matt Kidd:                  Sure.   Jenn T Grace:              But my question would be if we're thinking about people who are listening to this, who may be business owners, maybe they're in a professional sphere, they're LGBTQ, they're trying to kind of make a first step, or a first foray into identifying and really kind of honing in on what's meaningful to them, and how that might translate into their own personal brand, or the positioning of what they're doing. Do you have anything that maybe you've learned through your career that might be helpful that could kind of shortcut that process for them?   Matt Kidd:                  Yeah I think what I have found kind of throughout my career is that- and I know this sounds kind of cliché, particularly for kind of any LGBTQ folks, but authenticity sells. By talking about stories that I've really gone through, and that's why I'll use something like my experience around the day when Matthew Shepard died makes it more relatable and it makes people kind of understand you and what you're doing a little bit better. And so I'll say from kind of a personal brand point of view, I'm one of these people that for the most part I'm a pretty open book and keep it that way. I think even about like social media. If a student wants to add me on Facebook, go for it because frankly at this point I live pretty authentically and intentionally so because it makes me more human and it makes me more real and it makes people more willing to collaborate and to connect with you. And so I think don't be afraid of that, don't try to hide that because I think the reality is it probably opens more doors than it closes at this point. So never forget that, and always just kind of go back to your roots and kind of what you care about. At the end of the day, that is what it's all about, and if you don't care about something you probably shouldn't be doing it.   Jenn T Grace:              I feel like that's such good wisdom. Really being mindful of what you stand for and just being transparent from the onset. It certainly will save you a lot of headache later.   Matt Kidd:                  Absolutely.   Jenn T Grace:              So for anyone who was inspired by this conversation and interested in connecting with you, how would you go about directing them to do that?   Matt Kidd:                  Yeah please. So Reaching Out is online at www.ReachingOutMBA.org. Please visit our website. If you're an MBA yourself, we do have an online community that you can join. It's on that website and it's called Reaching Out Connect, so it's our individual member platform, so we certainly encourage you to do that. If you're part of the LBTQ community, we certainly would welcome and love to have you with us at the Out Women in Business Conference in New York which will be March 31st of 2017. So certainly join us because like I said, we do want to bring that community together, and that is open to non-MBAs so you don't need an MBA to be there, and I would say less than half of the folks who are there have an MBA, so you're certainly welcome for that. And then people can always find me online, LinkedIn, Twitter and if you search very carefully you can find me on Facebook. I'm usually pretty open to adding people on any of the platforms so you can hear what I have to say about things, because like I said I am my authentic self out there.   Jenn T Grace:              That's awesome. Well thank you so much for spending some time today, and I feel like there's a lot that can be gained for the listeners from our conversation, so thank you for that.   Matt Kidd:                  Absolutely, thank you Jenn.   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.

#98: Finding Your Niche & Brand in Consulting With Rhodes Perry   Jenn T Grace:              You are listening to the Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional Podcast, episode 98.   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:              Hello and welcome to episode 98 of the podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and as this is airing we are right around Thanksgiving time here in the US. And we're at the end of November of 2016, and I'm shocked really at how fast this year has actually flown by. I feel like the first part of the year felt kind of slow and sloggish, and now- I don't know, since September it's just really whizzing by. So I'm excited to be in episode number 98, and it has been multiple years in the making to get here, so this podcast will be turning four at the I guess beginning of January in 2017, it'll be four years that I have been doing this which seems a little bit crazy, but all good nonetheless. I have been keeping up with the promise of having interview, after interview, after interview, and today is no different. And the interview I have today for you is with Rhodes Perry of Rhodes Perry Consulting, and we had just a really kind of awesome conversation about personal branding; shocking since that is indeed the title of the podcast. It was really just kind of being an LGBT advocate, and a change maker, and a change agent, and really how that can be something that you can utilize as a benefit to yourself as you grow a business, or continue to grow your career in whatever avenue that might look like.                                     So rather than blabber on unnecessarily, I'm just going to dive right into the interview with Rhodes. I really think you're going to love it, and if you would like an introduction to him personally, feel free to reach out to me via LinkedIn, on Facebook, Twitter, go to my website, contact me however it is easiest for you to just reach out and get in touch with me. That would be awesome and I would love to put you in touch with him. So without further ado, please enjoy this interview.                                     Okay so let's just start off with telling the listeners just a little bit about who you are, what you do, how you came to be in your business as it looks today.   Rhodes Perry:             Sure. So my name is Rhodes Perry and I'm an LGBT strategy assistance guru. Basically what that means is I'm a management consultant, coach and speaker, and I work largely with clients who are in executive, HR, or diversity positions. And I really help clients transform their organizations into ones where LGBTQ people know that they're valued, and they know that they belong in the workplace. And I work all across the country, most of my clients are based in New York City. I'm actually living on the west coast so I also have a number of clients in the Bay area. And I've been fortunate, and much of the work that I do is informed by my time working in the LGBTQ movement as an advocate and building alliances with other social justice leaders. And I center a lot of that work around improving the lives for LGBTQ people and really focusing on raising awareness around the specific needs of transgender and gender nonconforming people, and as an advocate I help secure a number of victories, most importantly allowing same sex couples to marry. I also helped increase the number of states that prohibit LGBT workplace discrimination. And one thing that I'm really, really proud of during my time in the LGBT movement was starting the conversations with the Department of Education and protecting transgender and gender nonconforming students, which now if your listeners are aware of, there's federal guidance that basically mandates that most schools- schools receiving public dollars protect transgender and gender nonconforming students while there's a number of states that are putting forth lawsuits to protest that. And that work really inspired me to take the jump to work for government in an executive type position to take policies that have been passed at the state and local level, and take a look at them and implement them. So I had the opportunity most recently to work for New York City. I helped the systems that focus on foster care and juvenile justice look at these policies and from soup to nuts really take the spirit of these policies and develop a plan to basically implement them, to bring them into life, and to really make sure that staff are set up for success in understanding how to respect their LGBTQ peers as employees, but also to deliver services that are respectful for LGBTQ people that are dependent on them. So that's just a little bit about kind of my background and how it led me to recognize that there's a huge need for supporting many of these systems that aren't necessarily Fortune 500 companies which are absolutely ahead of the curve, at least in terms of developing policies and having staff to drive and implement them. But in smaller businesses, a lot of startups, and especially in government settings there's- I would say that actually looking at policies but in particular laws in states that mandate protecting LGBTQ, both employees and then folks dependent on receiving government services. There's not a lot guidance and there's definitely not a lot of support in making sure that these systems are compliant with the law. And so my business really helps fill in these gaps, and it's a lot of fun to really inspire people that want to do the right thing, just aren't sure where to start. I'm getting them started but also making sure that these policies are being implemented and sustainable over the long term.   Jenn T Grace:              Okay I feel like you've said so much already, so in thinking about you as just kind of an individual contributor in so many ways to policy and advocacy, and just kind of your career, and now founding your business; do you think that some people are naturally born to play an advocacy type of role? Or do you think that it's something that you have to consciously recognize of 'this is something that I really want to pursue and I'm going to kind of dedicate myself to doing it.' Because I think that there might be a couple of schools of thought to that, so I'm just curious how your path kind of came about to recognizing that your voice is really an important voice to be heard to eventually get to the place now where you're kind of filling those gaps in the marketplace.   Rhodes Perry:             Yeah, I think that's a great question, and I don't know if it's being an advocate or just a change maker. Maybe those are one in the same, but really I think when I look back on my career, most of my work has been entrepreneurial in nature, and that seems to have been coupled with being an advocate, and just trying to- whether it was working for government and trying to improve either employees treating each other with respect, and letting each other know that they value one another, or looking at the service delivery side of things and just kind of saying, 'We could be doing better, especially when looking at serving LGBTQ populations.' I see a lot of opportunities. In the past I certainly tried to take advantage of those opportunities and help those systems. But I think part of myself is identifying as an advocate absolutely, but looking at my business now it's really taking some of those skills and thinking about people that want to do the right thing, they want to be able to retain discerning LGBTQ talent, they want to be able to develop products that will appeal to LGBTQ markets. It's looking at those folks who definitely want to be identifying as- or they don't identify as an advocate most likely, they definitely don't want to be seen as pushing an agenda, but they need help in making a business case, or they know it's the right thing to do and they need some support around how to approach their leadership to get buy-in and to both do the right thing, but also to help their businesses out in performing better and having a competitive edge. And so I don't know if that answered your question necessarily but that's kind of how I see my role right now, is that I absolutely gained some skills as an advocate and I'm trying to translate those for businesses that are interested in having that competitive edge.   Jenn T Grace:              And from a personal brand standpoint- so many of the things that you were talking about in your kind of opening introduction of who you are in terms of different types of- whether it's the Department of Education, or whether it's working with the city of New York, or wherever it might be; in those settings you were still yourself, right? So you're still Rhodes Perry and people know you as your name. Did you consciously think about the advocacy work or change making work, however we're calling it because I think it is all kind of the same as you alluded to, did you look at that as you were doing those individual things in thinking about like, 'Okay here's just another kind of notch in my belt of things that I can do and things that make me a strong leader and a strong thought leader in this particular space.' And then as you kind of created your company, and calling it Rhodes Perry Consulting, obviously you're putting a big stake in the ground of this consulting is based on you as an individual. Was that kind of a conscious thought process? Did you model it after others that you kind of saw in the marketplace? What was just kind of going through your mind? And the reason why I'm asking is just thinking about people who might be in similar situations right now where they're thinking, 'Really this whole personal branding thing here, there's something to it and I should probably be pursuing this.' And I'm just trying to give them some guidance from people like yourself who've already done it.   Rhodes Perry:             Yeah I think that that's a great question. I think that why I chose my business name to be my name in terms of personal branding is so much of my past work has been about building relationships, building coalition, and building trust. And I think that my work in the past speaks for itself, and the folks that I had the pleasure of working with really benefited from what they learned. In starting my business many of my clients are those folks that I have worked with in the past, and so that's just a huge benefit for me. Also as I was making the jump I knew I wanted to focus in on equity in diversity and inclusion work, and I wasn't quite sure that time- how that could continue to evolve. In just this past week I had my first business anniversary so I've been in business for a year, and even over that period of time a lot of things have changed, but my name and my brand have absolutely attracted my dream clients I guess to work with who were specifically looking for support on doing the right thing, and either wanting to develop a policy, more taking a policy and actually implementing it and sustaining it over time, that that's really where I see a niche in providing this kind of mentorship, and accountability even more so than delivering skills. Because a lot of the folks that I do work with I've known for some time, they have the skills to do this work, they really need that kind of support and role modeling, but especially just kind of knowing the work that they need to do, but basically being held accountable, and having those kind of frequent check-ins. So I think that [Inaudible 00:12:00] thinking about maybe starting their own businesses, I think it's always good to- if you're not sure on a killer name that will be super clear on what you do, starting out with your own name and you can always kind of build off and build a 'doing business as' name later on down the road when things become a little bit more clear with who your niche market is, and what specifically you are doing.   Jenn T Grace:              And your website URL is Rhodes Perry, so I think that there's a lot to be said about just having your name rather than having the consulting on it because if at any point in time you chose to pivot and go in a different direction, then the URL always remains the same, and for the most part our names don't change. For the most part.   Rhodes Perry:             Right, for the most part.   Jenn T Grace:              Of course there's exceptions.   Rhodes Perry:             For your viewers, I am transgender and that's something that I talk about openly with my clients because a lot of the work that we're focusing on right now is how to support transgender and gender diverse employees, or people that businesses might be serving. So that's something that I am open about, and so I have changed my name, but that was a long time ago. But yes, there are times where if you are someone who's transitioning, or maybe you're thinking about getting married, maybe before you buy your URL, if you are planning to change your name, maybe hold off on that before you do.   Jenn T Grace:              I ended up buying all- everything I could before I got married, and thought that I was going to change my name, and then I was like I wasn't sure, and then I was going to hyphenate, so I ended up with probably 25 URLs that all cost like $10 a piece, and then eventually over time I'm like, 'Alright I'm just going to stick with the one.' And then just as a random side note is that the reason why it's just not www.JennGrace.com is because there's a photographer I believe who has that- or a videographer who has that already. So I was like, 'Well I'm just going to have to put the T in there reluctantly.' But it is what it is and at least I know that I'm not changing my name anytime soon so it does allow for that kind of pivot as we were talking about, because you never know- especially as entrepreneurs and I think as the landscape- especially as it relates to LGBTQ, the landscape is always changing, and we really have no idea what- we could predict, but we really have no idea what's on the horizon and how that is going to impact what type of consulting we're doing, or coaching, or what topics we're speaking on, and I think that that's kind of a- to some degree a fool proof way of just kind of protecting your brand over the long haul.   Rhodes Perry:             Absolutely.   Jenn T Grace:              So in looking at just kind of the many facets of what you're doing. I was poking around on your website before, and I'm curious on a couple of things. Like the first thing I'm thinking of is how people find you, and then recognize that they need your help, especially as like the individual change maker. Because there are opportunities- like you were saying, the Fortune companies are definitely ahead of the game in so many ways, but at the same time they're so not ahead of anything in terms of just- kind of like the changing landscape of business. So it takes- they're like moving a Titanic versus I think entrepreneurship where you're kind of navigating a speed boat on a day-to-day basis. But how do you get in front of those individual people who really need your help, and they're really going to be that internal champion, and that internal voice that's really going to make change in their respective industry, or organization, or wherever it happens to be?   Rhodes Perry:             I think that that's a great question. A few ways. One, I've been fortunate, as I had mentioned just having a lot of rich relationships from previous jobs. So many of my clients come to me word of mouth, and looking at business models over the long term I'm looking at other ways to market as well. So I also get a lot of referrals through online advertising. I do basic Google Ads. But one of the main ways of actually reaching out to newer audiences is locally I go to a number of different chamber of commerces in the Portland metro area, and also in Seattle just to build my network here because I recently moved from New York City out to Portland as I was starting my business. And so that's a really important way of just connecting with a number of businesses, but especially smaller businesses that haven't necessarily been thinking about the culture of their organization, or just want to be more competitive in reaching out to discerning diversity candidates proudly. So those are some of the ways that I get my name out there. Also through collaboration. I've been working with a number of other diversity and inclusion leaders here in the Portland area, and just looking at different projects where we can collaborate. By doing that I've had the opportunity of establishing newer relationships, both with the county and city government here, but also with a number of larger businesses in the area. So that's been helpful. But I do work across the country, so I try as often as possible to go to conferences, and when there's an opportunity to speak just to share a little bit more about the work that I do. So those are just some of the few ways that I try to get out there.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah and so I feel like on your website you have supplier diversity highlighted as something that you are educating around and helping people with. It is something that I have certainly brought up many, many, many times in the past on this podcast, but never- maybe actually it was probably episode six or something, and we're on- I think this is episode 98 probably. So it was a long time ago.   Rhodes Perry:             Congratulations.   Jenn T Grace:              Thank you, it's been many years in the making. But one of the things that I feel like is a missed opportunity, and I'm sure from a supplier diversity standpoint you might be coming from a different direction, but as a diverse supplier yourself. Somebody listening to this, who the majority of listeners are part of the LGBTQ community in some form or another, what are they missing by not really kind of having an understanding of what supplier diversity is, and what that can mean to them as a business, but also for just kind of the community at large?   Rhodes Perry:             Yeah I think- well one was supplier diversity, and one of the things that I do is educate my clients that I work with. So- and this is especially important for some of the county and local governments that I work with. So when folks are wanting to implement LGBT specific policies, they want to provide better services, one of the first questions that I ask is looking at contracts that they issue to diversity suppliers. So woman owned businesses, minority owned businesses, and sure enough with most government agencies they have set asides for those diverse suppliers. And so one of my first questions that I ask is encouraging them- well one, asking them if they know about the NGLCC, the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce certification that certifies LGBT owned businesses, and almost 100% of the time most people aren't aware of that, most of my clients are not aware of that certification so I do a little bit of education around that. And then I've had success in New York with some of the agencies there of doing set asides for LGBT certified businesses. So there's education happening on that side with my clients, I also work volunteering for the chamber of commerce here, and just supporting some of the LGBT certified businesses, and those businesses that are owned by LGBT people but aren't yet certified. And I explain a little bit about the work that I do largely with local and county government agencies around encouraging them to do these kind of set asides, also letting them know that many Fortune 500 companies have diverse supplier offices, staff that are looking specifically for LGBT owned businesses for a wide variety of services. Everything from printing, to professional services like I do, and just letting them know that one, the NGLCC is a great resource. They offer certification, they provide a ton of information to help you grow a business that's thriving, and I think with that- I've at least encouraged a few to go through the certification process because it does give LGBT owned businesses a competitive advantage, and if you're lucky enough to live in a state like Massachusetts and you do contracting work with state, there are set asides for those LGBT owned businesses, and I think that that's a trend thanks to the great work that the NGLCC is doing that I think more and more states will be trying to either pass executive orders through the governor's office, or legislation to actually provide the economic opportunities for LGBT owned businesses, which historically have been disadvantaged because of discrimination. So maybe that's a little bit more than you wanted, but I know that you talk about this a lot. So did that answer your question?   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah, yeah and it kind of leads into my next question a little bit. So we met through a mutual friend, and Jill Nelson has been a guest on this show as well, and I don't remember it but I will put it in the show notes of what episode that actually was. But we met at the NGLCC national conference in Palm Springs just a couple months ago, and one of the things that I wonder from your perspective is being an LGBT certified business, there's a lot of advantages to that from a business development standpoint. But in your perspective, how or how not do you feel like it maybe it is helping or not, just from a personal branding standpoint to be able to say that you are a- because you can say that you're an LGBTQ owned business, and that's got its benefits in and of itself for people who want to work within the community, but having that additional credibility of saying that you are a certified LGBTQ owned business. Where or how are you kind of using that, leveraging it? Is it part of your kind of daily conversation with people? I know that you're part of the local chamber so that kind of adds like another element to it. But just from a branding standpoint is it helping you in terms of attracting the right type of clients?   Rhodes Perry:             Yes, I think for the nature of the work that I do it absolutely helps me, it brings more credibility to the work that I do, it opens up a number of new doors that I wouldn't necessarily have had access to. Because of the work that the NGLCC is doing and continues to do, they're really expanding their reach, and I think for corporations that are aware of the certification, and for some of the government agencies that I work with, they're becoming more aware of it, maybe more because I'm constantly talking about it. But it is helpful. I would say though that if I were in a different industry- I grew up in the state of Florida, so if I was in a different industry and I still lived in the state of Florida, I think that there's still a long way to go. One in having this be an advantage, because stigma and discrimination still exist, there's a lot of education that professionals like myself have to continue doing to break down some of those barriers. And so I'm aware and I'm conscious that it's not always an advantage for every business owner, and that there could be challenges with that. One of the things that did give me hope and inspiration though is that when we were at the conference in Palm Springs, which was wonderful and it was great meeting you there, is- and I can't remember the business owners' names, but they are from Georgia and they were honored- I think they were the premier business at the conference, they're a pet store, right? And so they're in Georgia which as a state- it's a state that lacks a number of protections for LGBT folks. They're very out about who they are, it's a gay couple, and they're having a really positive and profound impact on the community just for holding that space, and they give back to the community, I think that they give back to a youth LGBT youth center there. So I digress a little bit but I do think that even when you are in a state or even a region of the country that might not be so LGBTQ friendly, there's still a power to certification, and being an LGBT owned business, and showing the possibilities for other emerging LGBT entrepreneurs that being out can be an advantage, and that there's strength in numbers. So I'm a huge proponent of the certification, but I do recognize that there can be or still are limitations to it as well.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah, absolutely. So I was looking it up while you were talking, it's Tailspin and they are in Savannah, so they're even in a more conservative area than maybe Atlanta would be. So yeah, and they were awarded an SBA award for like the best small business owner or something like that. So I think that you bring up a good point of depending on where we are geographically. So I'm in a really progressive state being in Connecticut, you're in a complete- especially going from like New York to Portland, I feel like there's so much differences even though New York is fairly progressive I would say. But how do we make it attainable? Because I have listeners in all fifty states, I have listeners in many different countries; how do we make it something that feels attainable to the person who might be in Savannah, or might be in Little Rock, who maybe they feel like they're alone, or they don't have a chamber of commerce that's really kind of focused on business impact, but maybe they have a pride center that they can go and be involved in. Is there something that you would say as kind of a natural step that they could take to just kind of finding their community of people that are looking to build companies and businesses even if that formal structure doesn't exist?   Rhodes Perry:             Yeah I think that that's a great question, and the first thing that came to mind is an online organization. Though they are based in San Francisco you probably know of them StartOut. So they provide- they're in the process of launching a virtual space for LGBT entrepreneurs to connect, and that certainly isn't a silver bullet in solving the kind of actual face-to-face connections that folks in certain parts of the country may be desiring just because they feel isolated. But I do think that at least online it's an excellent resource to start and just kind of building connection, talking about some of the challenges that they may be experiencing because of where they live. And chances are they may be- I grew up in Palm Bay, Florida so they can be in Palm Bay, Florida and maybe they're connecting with someone in Missoula, Montana which is actually a pretty progressive place. But they're able to span the distance and just have the commonalities of talking about some of the challenges of being in a less progressive part of the country, and kind of weighing the benefits and the costs of whether it's getting certified as an LGBT owned business, or if they're providing a service, and it's a place where people are actually going to a physical brick and mortar location, do you put a rainbow flag on the front of your door? These are things that I think as LGBT owned business owners we have to consider, but I do think StartOut is a good place to start.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah I feel like that's definitely some good feedback and tips there. So going back to kind of looking at the national landscape, since you do have experience kind of looking from a very high top down level, from a national perspective, in looking at the different fights for equality that are occurring kind of all over the place, I do find it shocking especially when I run into an LGBT person who isn't aware of just the level of discrimination that's just completely justified and fine by people in terms of workplace discriminations. So if we look at different states and different cities even within states. So you have Massachusetts where they're including LGBT suppliers in government contracting, which is the only state still, right? I think they're working on it in New York but it's not there yet. So that's happening in Massachusetts but then meanwhile you hear from people in Nashville who are still being fired because they came out, and this is somebody that I absolutely should have her on the show at some point, Lisa Howe who received an award at the NGLCC conference in August, and was commenting on how the second she came out after being an NCAA coach for like sixteen years, they fired her promptly thereafter. So- and that wasn't that long ago, that was only a couple of years ago. So if we're looking at the differences in each individual state, if somebody's just trying to figure out how can I make a name for myself because they want to grow their personal brand, they want to maybe establish a business, and make that kind of natural leap that seems very natural that you made in terms of like doing all this great work in different types of pockets and then you kind of created a company around it. Is there any kind of words of wisdom that you can provide them that would vary because if you're in California the fight there is way different than Tennessee versus Connecticut. Like I think of Connecticut being the second state with marriage equality in 2008, and I remember going to NGLCC conferences in 2009 and 2010 and talking to people who were in far less progressive areas thinking, 'Marriage equality is so not even on our radar. We are focused on economic opportunities because we don't have to focus on our basic rights to get married.' So what might be just a- I don't know, some advice or something that you might have learned along the way to kind of provide inspiration to people regardless of where in the US that they might fall, and how non-progressive or progressive that area might be.   Rhodes Perry:             Yeah I think that if folks are interested in starting a business, if they have the entrepreneurial spirit and they're LGBT, absolutely look into it and take action because by simply holding space, by creating your own business, you are creating economic opportunities for many people, and especially our own communities, our own LGBTQ communities. And I think that so many of us have had experiences of discrimination, or at least perhaps being treated differently as employees in the workplace, and knowing that if we had the opportunity of having our own businesses, or when we are creating our own businesses, or even for many of your listeners in our own businesses, that we have values that are embracing a spirit where we want everyone to bring their whole selves to work. And I think that because of the economic disparities that still exist for LGBTQ communities, one of the most powerful things we can do is if we have the ability to start our own businesses, and prioritize looking at folks within our own LGBTQ communities who have historically been disadvantaged and trying to prioritize ways of bringing job opportunities to folks in our own communities. I just think it's a real game changer for us to look at this aspect of the next era of the LGBT movement, and I think entrepreneurship should be a part of it. In my past I worked with a lot of LGBTQ youth, and so many young people that I had the pleasure of working with are entrepreneurial in spirit. Every day is a day of surviving and just to- we prioritize ways of translating those skills into skills where young people can at one point be their own bosses, I mean again I just think it's a real game changer and we should be examining aggressively ways to add this as a part of the work that the LGBT movement continues to do for the next era. Because I think just looking back over the past twenty years we have as a movement accomplished so much and so quickly, and yet I still look at the work that so many national and state and local LGBT groups are doing, and it's almost as looking at the young people who are protesting and resisting police at Stonewall, so many of those challenges still exist today when you look at family acceptance, or just trying to get an education in school, and dealing with things around bullying. We still have a long way to go and I think that the work that we do as business owners can help absolutely extend economic opportunities to more folks within the LGBT community.   Jenn T Grace:              So in looking at kind of a what's next, or what's on the horizon for you personally and for your business, like especially since you're just celebrating your first year which is so exciting. If you looked at what you were expecting to accomplish in your first year versus what you did accomplish and what you hope to accomplish in the next couple of years, how does that all kind of line up with what your vision was when you set out to do this?   Rhodes Perry:             Yeah I surprised myself in the first year. I've met many of my goals in terms of working with a number of clients that I didn't imagine working with, at least in my first year. So I'm happy with that. I really do over the next few years want to pivot more into offering services online, and so I'm starting to do that now with webinars, and I'm looking at next year having more of a master class available for executive HR diversity professionals that are doing the work but need additional support. And so I'm just looking at ways right now of creating more virtual communities, and I'm most excited about that just because there's only one of me and there's only so many hours of the day that I can make available for clients, and so I think this is another opportunity of just expanding my platform and really helping those folks that they already understand the importance of doing this work and they need that additional support. So I think that that's going to be- at least for my business, a real game changer and so I'm excited about that. And I also think making more time in my schedule to speak and go out to a number of different communities, especially- I'm really excited about going to more colleges and universities over the next year and talking more about entrepreneurship for LGBTQ folks, and I'm very, very excited about that.   Jenn T Grace:              That's awesome. I feel like the sky is the limit. I would love for you to reference back to this a year from now. Like throw it on your calendar and say a year from now to come back and listen to this, because my question is what do you perceive- and I don't want to deflate us at all, but in thinking about all of what you're setting out to accomplish, and I think that this is a question that the listeners are interested in, is what do you see as the potential kind of big hurdle, or some kind of road block that you feel like there's a chance that you're going to have to overcome in order to get to that next stage of what you're hoping to accomplish? Because I would imagine that there's probably a lot of similarity with what you think yours is and those who are listening. It makes us all human.   Rhodes Perry:             Yeah I think that a road block for me is I get excited by all of the opportunities, and I think as entrepreneurs we want to do all of the things all of the time. And so one just for me is finding my 'no' when it could be working with another great client, but to build in the time to- like I said, like really trying to expand more of my virtual presence. That takes time on the front end to do that, and so I think the biggest challenge is to kind of build in the time where I could be working with more clients right now doing that one-on-one engagement, but trying to just find my 'no' sometimes so that I can have that space to imagine and dream how to grow my business in a way that can help more people. And I think that having talked with other entrepreneurs early on in the journey, I know that that's a challenge for many of us, and so maybe offline we can talk more about how you kind of navigated that as well, because I know that you're doing such awesome work for so many folks trying to do a better job with marketing to LGBT people, and so I would love to chat with you about that.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah I feel like it's an ever evolving thing that everyone goes through, and if I look at- go back and listen to the first episode of this podcast which was in January of 2013 I think, it is a very, very different animal. And they're all available for people to listen to and laugh because it just takes time to kind of refine your message, and really I think learning to say no is probably one of the hardest things, especially as very stereotypically ADHD type of entrepreneurs where we're all chasing shiny objects every day, and especially when we're all coming from a place of truly trying to serve and really trying to help as many people as we can. I think that's where it becomes difficult to say no, because if you're looking at it from a purely dollars and cents standpoint of 'I have a threshold that I need to make $10,000 to go speak here, and if they don't meet it, then I don't do it.' That is not how at least the people that are on my show, and myself included, that's not how we operate. It's a matter of like, 'How can we accommodate? How can we make sure they still hear our message? How can we-' and then it just- it's a struggle and I think that we all kind of go through it even if it does look more polished on the outside. I think most of us are still kind of struggling with that day-to-day behind the scenes. At least for me anyway.   Rhodes Perry:             Yeah absolutely.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah and I think the audience kind of needs to hear these things and just kind of hear of the struggles that lie ahead as they're kind of figuring out what their voice is, and what platform they should be on, and how they should go about growing their personal brand because I think that personal branding, it's been around forever, but I feel like it just becomes more and more important in this day in age, even more so as an LGBTQ person because there's so much more at stake, and I think that all of us whether we want to or not, we're all kind of representing the community in our way. So if you do something stupid, or I do something stupid, suddenly it's the LGBTQ community that's stupid because of something ridiculous that you or I may have done. Even though that is so not what it should be, ultimately unfortunately that is just kind of the reality of it. So we all kind of have to navigate that tricky landscape as well.   Rhodes Perry:             Right, absolutely.   Jenn T Grace:              Oh good stuff. So if you could go back in time and maybe give yourself one piece of advice. Not necessarily the audience as a whole, but just really thinking of yourself. Is there kind of something that you would say or do that you think might have shortcutted some of the challenges that you've unnecessarily faced?   Rhodes Perry:             Yeah I think absolutely for me is- for my younger self to trust myself, to trust my entrepreneurial spirit. In looking back I'm glad that I had all of the experiences that I had leading up to the point of starting my own business, I think if I trusted myself and knew what was on the other side of having my own business, I probably would have done it maybe ten years earlier. You know? And it was really a fear of what the 'no' was, and I think going to college kind of slowed down the process of having my own business, because I actually- I had my own business before I went off to college, and then it just was the programming of getting a good job, and contributing to the workforce, and I didn't realize that I could be doing that as a business owner. So I don't know if that resonates with any of your listeners, but I definitely- I think for myself could have used that kind of pep talk maybe a decade ago.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah I would imagine that hits home for many people.   Rhodes Perry:             Yeah.   Jenn T Grace:              So in kind of parting here, anything that you would like to share in terms of how people can get in touch with you, how they might work with you, just kind of any number of ways just to make sure that we get a good kind of plug here for people to contact you.   Rhodes Perry:             Yeah thank you. Well my website is www.RhodesPerry.com so there's the personal branding there. And on December 1st I'm offering a webinar for my target audience which is executive HR and diversity professionals on setting vision for- a diversity and inclusion vision that's inclusive of LGBT employees and folks that are served by businesses or government agencies. So that's December 1st and if you go to my website, on my blog there's more information on how to register for that, and you can also just contact me at Rhodes@rhodesperry.com and I can share more information that way. And I also offer a free quarterly newsletter that just kind of keeps people in the know of what I'm up to, I offer a ton of free information there on just strategies on how to engage LGBT employees, how to develop an LGBT policy, how to sustain change over time; all of that stuff is included in my quarterly newsletters. And I just love to hear from folks, so if people have questions I'm available to just provide value and help people kind of get started on that path of building more inclusive workplaces.   Jenn T Grace:              That is awesome. And so for anyone listening, this is episode 98. I'm pretty sure I screwed it up earlier when we were talking, so you can go to the website at www.JennTGrace.com/98 and that will get you a transcript for today's interview, and then all of the links that Rhodes was just talking about. And I feel like it might be important to note that Rhodes is spelled R-H-O-D-E-S, not like Roads like a road. Just because I feel like- I want to make sure it's clear and people can find you, so that's good. Awesome.   Rhodes Perry:             Thank you so much, thank you for having me on the show.   Jenn T Grace:              You are very welcome, it was a pleasure chatting with you. 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.

How to Establish Your Personal Brand With Intention With Jennifer Brown Jenn T Grace:              You are listening to the Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional Podcast, episode 97.   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:              Hello and welcome to episode number 97 of the podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and today I have a really awesome interview with a very dear friend, colleague, mentor, just so many different things that we can kind of categorize her as. And it is with Jennifer Brown, and she is a third time guest on the show, so this will be the third time that we have heard from her, and every time that she's on the show we end up talking about a variety of different things, and I truly feel like the opportunities are absolutely endless with the different directions that any one of our conversations can go. So back in 2013 she was the first interview that I ever had on this podcast, it was episode number 4, which was indeed a very long time ago since we're in episode 97. And then I also had her on as one of the interviews for the Thirty Days, Thirty Voices project, and that was a thirty day series of LGBT leaders just doing really awesome things in the community. So in this third time that Jen is on the show, we really, really focused on the topic of growing a personal brand, growing a business, writing a book, publishing your thought leadership. We really just, just, just scratched the surface on so many possible directions that all of this can go. But I'm hoping for those who are listening to this, and you have found your way to this podcast because you really want to know more about personal branding. And while yes, the show is called Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional, these tips and advice really kind of resonate across the board whether you're part of the LGBTQ community or not. And Jennifer being in a diversity setting and having a business on diversity and inclusion, certainly talks about women, it talks about people of color, talks about LGBTQ people, and really all of the principles are very similar regardless of how you might identify. So I'm really pleased to share this interview with you, and we do talk about Jennifer's upcoming book and it's called, 'Inclusion, Diversity, the New Workplace, and the Will to Change.' And that is available on Amazon, it's available as of right now as you're listening to this, however I have been helping Jen with her book for about a year now, and we are finally at the place of having it be live, and my goal is to help her become an Amazon best seller, and I have no doubt that we are going to be able to do that. But I would love if after listening to this interview, and you're really kind of inspired by what she has to say because there is a lot of really meaty information that she talks about, if you do want to get a copy of her book I would love for you to put it on your calendar to purchase it on November 22nd. That is the day that we are trying to get everyone to buy so we can get her up in the rankings of Amazon best seller status. So I'm just really proud to have been a part of helping her with her book, and really helping kind of with this shift in personal brand, which we do talk a lot about. We talk about running a consulting business, and then also building a personal brand, and having both of those happen in tandem. There's definitely a lot of information in this. After you listen I highly encourage you to reach out to me as always. If you would like to get in touch with Jen, she provides all of her information at the end of the show, but if you would like an introduction feel free to email me, get me on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, you know how to find me. It's at Jenn T. Grace at pretty much any of those locations. So without further ado, let's just hop into the interview with Jen, and yeah I hope you enjoy. So I would love for you to just kind of start and give the listeners who might not know who you are just kind of a little bit of a background about yourself, about your consulting company, and then maybe a little bit about your personal brand, and then we'll just kind of take it from there.   Jennifer Brown:         Perfect. Yeah, I am Jennifer Brown and I've had my own consultancy for about a decade called Jennifer Brown Consulting, and we service mainly large Fortune 500 companies in the diversity and inclusion space. So whatever those companies need, and wherever they are in their journey, we maintain a team that develops strategies, delivers and designs training on various hot topics in the diversity and inclusion space like unconscious bias and inclusive leadership skills. And as well I have a new book out, and I am speaking and keynoting a lot. The book is called 'Inclusion,' the subtitle is 'Diversity, the New Workplace, and the Will to Change.' So I'm happy to be here today.   Jenn T Grace:              Awesome. Alright thank you. So for the loyal listeners of this podcast, this is indeed the third time that Jen has been on the show, and every time that you're on we end up going down a different type of rabbit hole in conversation about what you're doing in the land of LGBT-related stuff, and personal branding, and all that jazz. I feel like today it naturally would make sense to start the conversation with the book which you already led in with which is awesome, and maybe just kind of sharing what prompted you to even write a book in the first place. Because I know that JBC, your consulting company, is known for its thought leadership around white papers, but this is a book that is authored by you, not necessarily the consulting side of the business. So what was the impetus behind writing a book, and what was that experience?   Jennifer Brown:         Yeah, thank you for asking that, it's such an interesting question. I think having a book was part of my strategic plan a decade ago when I sat down and created my company. It was a piece that we expected to be a part of our arsenal but it took me a long time to get around to it, and boy are they a lot of work so that totally makes sense. However I know that in order to build the platform for my own personal brand as a thought leader and as a CEO, it's an important extension of that brand, and I know that it will open doors as books often do to a higher level of visibility, and opportunity, and really reputation building. It seems to excite people in a way that I have read about but I haven't really seen firsthand, and now I'm seeing it. Now that we're even speaking about the book which is not even out yet until November, the level of excitement that people have about it, and the legitimacy that it brings to everything you've already created, it's more than a cherry on the top, it's like- it sort of brings it in conversation. And for me, I want to evolve into more executive level conversations, I want to evolve through and past the corporate only conversations that I've been in as a consultant trying to influence that world. I really want to have more of a societal conversation, a political conversation, I want to tackle different domains so I do think that this will be a great way for somebody to get acquainted with who I am and what I care about. If they pick this book up, they'll understand why did she build the company? What is she about? What does she care about? Why is she an expert and who is she as a person? And I think armed with that I will be able to enter new communities to be a change agent within those communities. You know when I think about the choir that I have worked with and focused on for a long time, it's the change agent within the corporate structure, and the person that's running diversity and inclusion, or the- it's the LGBT, or woman, or person of color individual who's trying to get ahead and is looking to be empowered. And I still love that community and that's my primary community, but at the same time I need to take the message of everything I've learned and bring it to people that know nothing about what I'm talking about, and really make this message acceptable to them, and I think that's the work that all of us really should be thinking about doing who identify as change agents, is really getting outside of the choir and trying to reach that mainstream world out there that really needs to hear what this is all about.   Jenn T Grace:              So I have two questions as it relates to what you just said. So first of all, the book title as you mentioned is 'Inclusion: Diversity, the New Workplace, and the Will to Change.' So if you were to summarize kind of what inclusion is for the person who might be listening to this who for the most part is likely going to be an LGBTQ entrepreneur, or maybe a business owner of some kind, what exactly are you talking about when you say 'inclusion' as it relates to the new workplace?   Jennifer Brown:         Well if we're talking to business owners, entrepreneurs, people who are thinking about becoming an entrepreneur and also who identify as LGBTQ, the concept of it should resonate with us because- and I say 'us' because I am exactly that profile. Inclusion of us into the- really into the economy. You know something very basic as opportunities that we have or don't have based on maybe who we are historically, and also how competent we are and how we appear in the marketplace, how we bid on opportunities, how we are included. And I think diversity has so much to do with how we have been included or not included historically, and also how we have thought about our own story. Because we have been outsiders to so much because of our identities. So it is the same story as for women entrepreneurs, it's the same story as minority entrepreneurs. We are sort of outside of the insider circle that I think has started businesses and figured out how to grow those businesses and thrive. So we're coming at the opportunity very differently, and I think it's important to understand inclusion and exclusion dynamics for us as we build our companies, because it's very real for a lot of us and it's a self-talk, or a narrative, or what the stories that we tell ourselves. I mean that's an important part of the equation and what do we see as our own limitations because of our own identity, and because maybe we've been on the outside, and how do we overcome that, but also build resiliency, and skills, and take risk and actually see our diversity as part of what- of the magic that we bring to the companies that we build and the markets that we're capitalizing on, and the people that we are. So inclusion is important to understand for us because to not understand that and to deny that they're are elements of diversity and exclusion that are happening to us as LGBT business owners is not accurate. It's all around us, it's in the water. But far from feeling like- or being satisfied with, 'Well that's something that I need to minimize, or hide, or it's something that makes my life more difficult.' It might have made it more difficult in the past, but the cool thing these days is that it should be actually making you more talented, and more able to pivot, and be flexible, and capitalize, and have like deep emotional intelligence, and be resilient because we as LGBTQ people have had to figure out how to do all those things in order to survive in whatever environment we have been in, professionally and personally. So when we say, "I want to start a business or I want to grow my business," I think we ask deeper questions, we can come with an authenticity that truly draws people to us. I think we have a special tool kit, and then we have a special community certainly that is very loyal to us. So when customers and clients or however you define that, if they hail from the LGBTQ or ally community, they're going to resonate with us in a very different and a very deep way, and I've seen that really play out in my own business after going to LGBTQ conferences for years and feeling like I know many LGBTQ people in Corporate America, it's been a community that has truly believed my business up, and has been very loyal, and very invested in our success because the message that we're bringing is so important, not just to LGBTQ people but to all talent in organizations.   Jenn T Grace:              You have said so much, so one of the things that I feel like might be worth going down a little bit further is kind of this dynamic of the professional self and the personal self, and I feel like you really just kind of weaved in and out of those two areas. But somebody who- maybe they're just starting their journey on their personal brand, as it relates to the book and then maybe I guess how you're planning on repositioning yourself as this book comes out, was it difficult in some ways to find that balance of sharing your personal story as it relates to sharing this whole kind of professional side? Because the book does kind of weave in and out of, 'this is the landscape, this is the marketplace, here's the workplace that we're trying to change.' But it's important for so many reasons to be sharing your story, your personal story as it relates to all of this other stuff, and all of what you were just talking about. Was it difficult to kind of find that right balance of how much do you share versus how much do you hold back and vice versa?   Jennifer Brown:         Oh sure. Yeah it's difficult sometimes but I actually really enjoy the challenge of weaving in my story because it's so much a part of my credibility as a practitioner. It's so much not just what I know how to do, but it's who I am, and those two pieces- I think the reason we've had the success we have had is that our work is deeply personal at the same time as it is of professional value. So it's interesting to run a company whose mission and vision is so personal to me. It makes it very helpful versus I'm building- I don't know, I have to kind of work to bridge who I am and what I care about and my role as somebody who seeks change, and then this product that I'm building. But I think it always can be done regardless of what you call your product. For me it just happens to be I'm trying to create more inclusive workplaces where all kinds of people can thrive, and that was very much me as an employee before I had the company. So I remember those feelings, and I experienced that, and that energy fed the creation of the company, but it's still something that I am fighting. Every time I walk into a room with executives I feel under fire, I feel they're not going to listen to me, I feel that fear comes up, and I remember this is the fear that I am trying to change through having a company that is tackling that. And it feels very much like it's closing the loop for me as a person, and for so many others, it's improving the situation for so many others and that's always been our goal with the company. So I think there are some things about my personal life I don't go into in the book. So the journey of figuring out what parts of your personal story do you share, and when, and why, is I think what you're talking about. That really interesting gray area, and as we evolve and get more confident and more autonomous I'd say, and maybe even as you evolve your personal brand separately from the company that you've built if you have a company, or separately from the company that you work for; as you evolve those they start to separate. And you- what I hope for myself is I have more and more freedom to experiment, to not necessarily make my personal brand always support the company brand that I've built per say, but that it can speak more for the questions that I'm asking myself, and others. I mean I think almost the rawness and authenticity about what I don't know. Because I'm so busy in my company CEO role knowing what I know and making sure that I can bring people to a certain place and helping them with my knowledge and I need them to trust me implicitly. I have 150% confidence in me as somebody who is guiding a very large, typically large high stakes, high level people through this sort of process, and that's what we do on the consulting side. But as a personal brand it's like the metrics for success are so different. To me, what I'm learning about it is you do know a lot and your knowledge is so important, but who you are and being real about the things you are uncertain about, and the provocative questions you can ask, and the vulnerability that you need to show in order to resonate as a personal brand feels a little bit in opposition to the sort of expert stance that you have to have all the time in the circles that I run in right now. So I know Jenn, you and I have talked a lot about this dichotomy, it's really an interesting one. So I'm just looking forward to exploring that, and noticing the tension between those two. I'm not judging it, I don't feel badly about it, I am confident that I will figure out the right place for my personal brand to live vis a vis our corporate work, but I do think that there's some business there that I'm interested to kind of watch how that evolves. And deep in my personal work and really think about who I am to other individuals and not just who I am to the companies that we sell business to if that makes any sense.   Jenn T Grace:              Absolutely. And do you think that you had a benefit from the onset that you- your company being called Jennifer Brown Consulting, obviously your name is on the company, your name is on the door, but I feel like if I go back in time and think of when we first met which is probably seven, maybe eight years ago, it was a while ago, and just looking at you as a personal brand then. Even though it wasn't- well maybe it was and you can answer this, it didn't appear to be overtly intentional that you were trying to brand yourself as a person. You were- when we met you were under your CEO hat of Jennifer Brown Consulting, but I wonder for people who are listening to this and they have a company but maybe it's not so synonymous, it's not Jennifer Brown Consulting and Jennifer Brown. It's something a little bit different where they now are in a place where they have to bridge the gap to some degree to really start to pivot and position themselves as the brand rather than their company. Do you think that now as you're ten, twelve, fifteen years into this, that you have kind of a benefit because you really kind of positioned yourself as a thought leader so clearly and so early on that that now is just a matter of refining what that looks like today, versus maybe when it was when you started. Or do you feel like maybe your struggles of trying to separate the personal brand versus the business still to be very much the same struggle that pretty much anybody would be going through at this point in time?   Jennifer Brown:         Yeah, and there are so many ways to look at this, Jenn. You know that- boy I've been talking about do we rename the company for years. We realized that there are sort of implications either direction you go of having your name on the door, and maybe the difficulty then of pulling your name apart from the name of your company eventually if you know that that's what you're going to want to do, but at the same time every time I went to think about changing the name of my company and removing my name from it, something held me back from doing that. And I've always sought a lot of advice about it, and I think some quarters had said to me, 'You're the one that everybody knows,' and that's a blessing and a curse but it's actually been mostly a blessing for the company because I happen to be the kind of CEO that is out there speaking all the time, writing all the time, taking a position, I have a platform because I'm very extroverted. It's something that suits me from a personality standpoint to always have been pretty visible, and I was an asset to the company frankly, and still continue to be probably the biggest asset to the company. Other CEO's that are more I'd say operational or behind the scenes or tend to have a more analytical style- like say you're a technician, you're not the selling CEO, you're the person behind the scenes creating the magic, doing the product design and all that, and you rely then- or you will as you grow, you'll rely on that front facing head of sales, or that person who's managing your marketing, or who knows, maybe you're a CTO and you hire a CEO who's going to be that person that's in front of clients and customers, et cetera. Every company usually- unless your product is so magic and you don't need sales and marketing, most companies are going to need somebody that's facing the public. I happen to be the technician consultant that came through my education being the consultant who also enjoyed the sales and marketing side. And so it actually made sense I think the way we did it, I have to say it's been a conversation over the many years with my team, who depending on the year, and depending on the team, I have gotten feedback about when we walk into the room we're not Jennifer and that doesn't feel good, and that's been- we have talked about that and we have then kind of ended up though choosing to continue to have the full name in the name of the company. And some of those folks have rolled off because they never quite could embrace it, and that's that natural attrition, that's totally fine. It was not that it wasn't painful and difficult, but that's how you evolve to having the right team as well, and you have a team that supports you, and you have a team that actually celebrates the fact that your name is in the title and the name of the company because they're so proud. It's very important- we could talk about team development and selection all day long Jenn, and I know that's not the topic here, but it was a really important evolution for me to hear that, for me to think about what is my role vis a vis my brand and the company, do we want to keep my name there or do we want to totally change to another name that has nothing to do with me. Are we ready to kind of kick those training wheels off and have the company stand on its own with a completely other name? And you know, in ten years I haven't done that yet. I'm not ruling it out at all, and actually I think you just never know when the right moment is to actually really truly bifurcate and rename a company and remove your name from it. But that's a strategic choice, and really to me it depends on what happens with the personal brand, and whether we feel that there's a niche where we do that, and also whether we feel the company has built up its brand as an independent entity strongly enough that it can go on its own under another name and it's so good, and it's so recognized that it doesn't really matter, it's sort of a blip, it's a rebranding exercise, and it doesn't really hurt business. So you know I think that it is all kind of a question mark for me, and that's what's so exciting even ten years in to know that we're still evolving, we're still trying to figure it out. We have to see how that's going to go, but yeah that's my long answer to that question of what do you call your company, what's your role in your company, are you important to your company, are you the most important thing to your company? And you know, are you a front facing person? Is that a role you like to play? And will whatever you are building in your company help your personal brand when and if you're ready to set off on your own and take that name with you or share that name with a company for a while, and then kind of separate them a little more, how do you build that up? I mean I think to answer one part of your question, the reputation and the platform that I've built for myself is- I'm so grateful to have had the company to do that in. I've had that environment to establish myself. And I would say Jenn, that I think women, and people of color, and LGBTQ people- I don't want to speak for everyone, for me it took me a really long time to step to the front of my own company from a confidence perspective, and that's a long, long story and I don't talk about that a lot in the book, and we often joke, you and I, that that's book number two or maybe book number three. But it took me a long time and I felt that I somehow wasn't sharing or being generous with the company by calling it my name. I struggled with my position- being as bold as I really wanted to be, and as proud as I wanted to be, and as in the front as I wanted to be, and sort of building up the confidence to step out and say, 'I'm ready now to do a book,' for example and put my stake in the ground. 'I'm ready now to have a personal brand because I'm strong enough to do that.' It took a long time to do that, to kind of learn how to lead and be proud of being a leader.   Jenn T Grace:              I think that there's so much to be said about personal branding generally speaking. Personal brands have been around for- since the dawn of time, I'm sure of it. But I feel like it's becoming so much more important in the current days and years to follow because there's so much more about authenticity, and there's so much more about a company or an individual wanting to do a business with another individual. So I feel like there's all of that that's kind of like wrapped around this on top of it, so it's interesting because you have been in this for fifteen years or so, and you're coming at it from a completely different vantage point than somebody who is deciding right now today that they are going to form a business and kind of figure out what strategic direction do they go in? Do they use their name or do they come up with a different company name and build the company and their personal brand at the same time? Like there's just so many decisions that kind of have to be made, and a lot of people I think just fall into whatever that decision is without a lot of strategy behind it.   Jennifer Brown:         I think you need both. I mean I think you've got to think about both from the beginning, and you have to be really clear from the various roles and hats that you wear, vis a vis both. So like I said, I'm a selling CEO in my consulting business. I also happen to be a technician, but in the work that we do. Originally that was my training. So what my team tries to do now is- and I'm the one with the trusted relationships in our market. So everybody knows me and the trust is huge in the business that I'm in. It's not just your technical skills, it's do we trust her, do we trust her team? If we bring them in will they make us look good inside our company, our big corporation, et cetera. So all of that I think is that personal integrity piece that the company has earned and the team has earned but that I'm ultimately responsible for. So I have to- if I have my CEO hat on, I have to run a tight ship, I have to hire the best people, I've got to deliver on what we promise. I'm also out there creating thought leadership and reputation for the company. Then when you say, 'Okay what's your personal brand? Is it separate from that, is it the same from that?' I would almost say again it comes back to the role that you play best. For me it just made sense given that I'm so out externally focused, I'm so in the marketplace, I so want to be in the conversation on both fronts. But I'd say if you're not that kind of leader and those aren't your strengths or your passions, if you love to build, if you're sort of more of an engineer and you like- you're introverted and you like to sit alone and craft things all day long, your brand within your company is not going to be as visible as my brand is in my company. People aren't going to know you, maybe you don't want them to know you, maybe you want to lead with a concept or an idea, you want to lead with your team, you want to lead with your product. I think we've done a little bit of all of that, it's not like we don't lead with the product, but I'm sort of an indelible part of the product. And so it's interesting like the lines are so blurry for me, but I'll tell you as you get larger, if your personal brand in your company is very visible, as you scale your business it's harder and harder to maintain the intimacy that you have worked really hard to build, and that you really treasure and enjoy. And that's a hard part about getting larger as a company, is that you lose the high touch opportunities. We've got 8,000 now in our database and I've collected them over ten years as you know, Jenn, and I can kind of tell you the story about every single one of those people. You know, I know where I met them, and they heard me speak, and there's a million stories that they have about me, and I try to stay ahead of it but it's really difficult. So I think too just the difficulty of scaling a personal brand, at least in the consulting environment, is an interesting challenge. On the personal side though, if we build a personal brand that's really much more about the individual, whether that means I'm doing through coaching, or we're doing sort of a different business where I'm reaching in and working with people, not just companies, maybe we generate that intimacy again but in a different way, and they know Jennifer and they can spend time with me. But as my consulting company gets larger and larger it's more and more difficult for me to intersect and interact directly with clients and the people that I originally was influencing when I started the company ten years ago, and I was teaching every class, and I was meeting every person. So as someone who really cares about relationships and values that intimacy- and I get a lot from that intimacy. I don't just want to be a CEO that's somewhere disembodied. To me it has to still be organic, and I need to still be in the conversations because that actually helps me be a thought leader. If I can speak on a firsthand basis, not just reading reports from my teams that are doing the work, but if I can actually feel intuitively the conversation that's going on amongst my constituency, it enables me then to say, 'Okay we're on the right track, we're talking about the right things, we're providing the right services that are most urgent for people.' And for me to walk into an executive room or interview a CEO, I have a lot of credibility and depth that I pull on to make sure that I'm very connected to the conversation. So that's kind of the danger of growing a bigger company is that you lose touch with that, and I think that's so much a part of my brand, is the ability to really keep it real.   Jenn T Grace:              How do you find that balance though? Like what do you think- so for somebody listening to this who might be overwhelmed just at what you've been talking about, how do you find some kind of balance where you can continue to grow your company, but you can also still be involved in those conversations that will keep you on the forefront of whatever the industry is that somebody might be in?   Jennifer Brown:         Yeah, that's a challenge. I hear a lot of people, what they do to kind of satisfy that, is they do a lot of pro bono work for example. They kind of bifurcate it, they've got their business to run but then they do community conversations, they teach for example- not that teaching is pro bono but they're working with young people in some way, and that kind of scratches an itch for them in terms of continuing to keep their feet on the ground and really make a difference. For us at JBC, we make a difference constantly. Like every single thing we do is making this like transformational difference for people because we're giving them confidence and skills and helping them find their voice. So everything we do has impact. So I think for those on the phone who may not be running this kind of company, I'd say just to pay attention to how will you be satisfied and feel that you're doing your sort of heart work, because business can be exhausting and I think we can lose track of why we even started in the first place, we can get disconnected from what's most important to us or not make time or have time to do that. But I'd say pick and choose if you have a team, and even if you don't and you're a solopreneur, make sure that you're doing the kind of work at least for a portion of every day that really fulfills you, and really replenishes you. Because when you're running a business that has to make money, I would guess most of us in the audience and myself included, there are many tasks that we do during the day that deplete us whether we're managing conflict, or I don't know, trying to make hard hiring decisions, or dealing with difficult customers and clients, or managing cash flow, or things that- as I think through the things that deplete me versus the things that replenish me like investing in my community. Like for me- and that's evolving. What are the things that I really enjoy now versus a year ago? Versus four or five years ago? It's actually really evolved and there's not one thing I think that replenishes me from a work standpoint, there's a couple different things that I enjoy that I wish I had more time to do. Some of them make money for our company, and some of them are things that I would prefer to do just because I want to do them. So I think our own nurturing and pacing ourselves and sustaining our energy as founders and leaders, it just is so critical to seek those things that give us energy as opposed to taking it away, because business leadership and existing in a commercial world is a very difficult balance between kind of what needs to get done and what we really want to be doing every day. And I would say to sort of pay attention to that, journal about it, notice how you spend each day, each hour of each day, notice your energy. Are you tired? Do you have a headache after a certain conversation? I mean my body tells me a lot about what kind of zone I'm in at any given moment. I know what's hard, and I know what's easy, and like I feel like I could do it every day all day, and all of our goals should be to kind of shift our lives more towards the latter if we can.   Jenn T Grace:              Do you find, or have you had conversations that people- you know I have a client of mine that calls them gremlins, where you have those gremlins that are kind of in the back of your mind, or in the pit of your stomach that are saying, 'Who are you to say that you can work in your happy place all day? Who are you to say that you don't have to work with difficult clients?' Because I hear what you're saying and I think it's brilliant because I so feel the same way. You have to find what makes you happy, you really have to pay attention to what your body is telling you, because nine out of ten times the signs are there if you're just quiet and still enough to listen to them. But I also know that there are so many people who get stuck in their head and they start to doubt themselves and say, 'Well how come I can make this decision that I'm only going to work with this type of client that makes me happy?' Because people are somehow engrained in them that they have to be miserable in their careers or in their businesses. I feel like that's a large conversation that I kind of hear from kind of the periphery, because I'm all about working with people who are awesome, who are doing good for the world, and I don't want to work with people who give me a headache after being on the phone with them. How do you kind of I guess balance that as well, and have you personally had those experiences where you've even doubted your own intention or your desire? Maybe not current day, but perhaps it was in the past.   Jennifer Brown:         Oh yeah, so many times. I think as I said earlier to build your confidence as a leader and to trust your instincts, for me took a long, long time. I tend to listen to others too much, and I'm not tuned into what my sense is about things. Coming to that confidence was a really, really hard one and taken me much longer than it should have, and what I chalk that up to frankly is honestly being a woman business owner and being LGBTQ to a certain extent, and the lack of role models that I have been able to see that resonate with me that are available to me so that I could have gotten there quicker. And it's one of those things that is a shame, and it's not right, it was a missed opportunity for me, and I was delayed because of it. I was delayed in my development as a leader. It took me much longer to get my company to where it is now than it should have. But it's because of the messages I was getting or not getting, the mentors that popped up in my life, whether they happened to be all men, or whether they happened to be- which they were, or whether they happened to be people that didn't have my best interest at heart but I trusted them and I shouldn't have. You know there's so many mistakes that were what I call unforced errors like in sports, that I made that nobody caught me doing it and redirected me, because I just didn't have that guidance. And then to tune into yourself, and to learn to listen, to quiet it and say, 'Am I happy? Am I working on what I want to be doing? Am I noticing stress level? Am I fulfilled and how can I reorient my life, my activities, my company accordingly?' That takes the ability to listen to ourselves, and the confidence that the commercial market is going to appear if we do that. I think we have so much fear. 'Well I have to keep going, and I have to keep delivering this, and I committed to doing this, and this is my brand,' and we end up- the tail ends up kind of wagging the dog. So this dynamic is to shift the power dynamic and to take that power, and to know that when we do that and we put this powerful vision out into the world for whatever we're building, or bringing, or whatever service we're providing, the right clients will find us. And it feels very risky, it has always felt risky to me to do that, and I think you can't be foolish about it and completely ignore your market and what your market is telling you. So it's kind of an inside out, outside in dynamic. You've got to pay attention to both sides, but I think for me, I've been very reactive and I think I'm finally stepping into a proactive stance in the market, and the book is a big part of that proactive stake in the ground. It says here's everything I've learned in those trenches, and I'm going to not only share it, but I'm having an opinion about it. It's here whether you agree with it, disagree with it. I mean you know, Jenn, I've said to you I get hate mail and people who are challenging me, I've now put my sort of personal and professional vision out there, and I don't know what the reaction is going to be to it. And that is a huge overcoming of fear. To me that was all about I am finally strong enough and I have a wonderful team and community that's supporting me, and I can put myself out there, and what's the worst that can happen? And that ability to do that has taken a very long time to be ready to do that for me. It's an interesting feeling but I'm grateful that I'm finally there, even if it was delayed, even if there were a lot of detours, even if I had to learn the hard way about how to trust myself. And I'll say that- I did this class on feminine- it was called a Lean Startup Canvas, and it was seen through the feminine lens, and the permission- permission is really the key word to lead in the way you want to lead, and I think that versus the way that maybe we see a lot of businesses being led, and grown, and what we celebrate in terms of good business behavior, I think is still a very male paradigm that we are watching, that we are emulating. And it's enormously powerful to say, 'I'm a woman leader, I'm an LGBTQ leader. What's important to me, what does authenticity look like?' Trusting that and leading with that is the transition that I've been kind of coming to, and that's just going to get stronger and stronger I think. As people's reaction to what I've put out hopefully is a largely very positive one. It's an encouragement that's going to come back that's going to say, 'We need more leaders like you out there who are leading in a different way, who are building companies in a different way, who are having a different conversation, who are bringing their personal brand together with their expertise, and valuing that story, and integrating those pieces. We need a lot more business owners like that.' I think that would really change fundamentals of our society frankly.   Jenn T Grace:              If you could- because I know we're already coming up on our time, if you could distill one piece of advice, just- I'm sure you have- the conversations that you and I have just on an ongoing basis about entrepreneurship, and how to make the world a better place, I feel like we could just record those and I could air them and have plenty of material. But if we were to just kind of bring that down to one thing that you could give as a piece of advice to someone listening to this that is kind of where you were ten years ago, or fifteen years ago, what might that one kind of step be, or one thing that they could do or start to think about that could really maybe shortcut or bypass some of the hurdles and heartache and headache that you may have experienced?   Jennifer Brown:         Yeah I think we've kind of already touched on it. I think it is building a new habit to celebrate your LGBTQ identity, your diversity story, and really do some work- deep and I would say even spiritual work, however you define that, on the role of that story in creating the kind of leader that you are, or that you want to be. And I mentioned some key words earlier like courage, like resiliency, like flexibility, like emotional intelligence and sensitivity to others, like inclusion. I believe- I believe that LGBTQ people, but also entrepreneurs specifically, have this very unique opportunity to change the world. Whatever we're building, to me that's kind of secondary. We are role modeling every day with everything that we do so that others don't have to suffer in the way that we did. And I know that the suffering is on a personal level and a professional level, and the suffering on a professional is, 'Gee I don't feel that I fit in, I don't feel comfortable playing the game. What is the game? What are the rules of the game? What are people going to think of me? Are they going to accept me?' All of that narrative is swirling around as we're trying to do business, as we're trying to impress people so that they will give us their money frankly, because that's what it is at the end of the day. But we get in our own way as much as maybe our external world is preventing us. And I would say these days what I find mostly for LGBTQ people and entrepreneurs is there's some of us that are awakened to the huge opportunity in front of us to grab our power, to really own that story, be authentic, role model for others, be a force of change, and bring your business along that journey and it will thrive as you're doing that, because remembering it's as much who you are and the relationships that you're establishing, and sort of the shared trust that you're building, as much as it is what you are selling or marketing. And I would say do some work on integrating those pieces. Think about your personal brand, think about your company if you have one, or your product, and think about do they intersect? Are you keeping them separate? Is there sort of a one plus one equals three part of this equation that you are not exploring to the extent that you should, and that there's some magic there that you haven't yet even tapped into? And that would probably be- that would probably be my biggest advice for this community because it's really proven true for me. I know that it can work, and that it's been even unexpectedly wonderful and transformative for me both on the personal brand side and the company side, and it's very cool to see. But I think there's something there that could really apply for everyone in your audience, Jenn.   Jenn T Grace:              I love it, and I think that your book is a natural tool for a lot of people listening. While no, many people in this audience aren't going to be DNI practitioners, but I feel like a lot of what you were talking about is in the book in terms of just bringing your authentic self to the workplace, or defining your diversity story which I know is a chapter in the book too. So for those who are listening- so the book is available in November, and this is coming out on November 10th, so we are hoping to get Jen on the Amazon best seller list, so if you are interested in purchasing the book, you can do so on November 22nd which is when we're driving everyone to go there. But in the meantime, how would you advise people to get in touch with you? What is the best way for them?   Jennifer Brown:         For sure. So we've got our website that's our corporate website. I think we have- we're building and almost releasing Jenn, I think the personal brand website as well.   Jenn T Grace:              It should be live.   Jennifer Brown:         Yeah, www.JenniferBrownSpeaks.com, and that will have a lot more about the evolution of my personal brand, and my speaking, specifically highlighting a little bit more about me as a person. So there's multiple ways you can kind of keep in touch with us. We have newsletters, we've got our Twitter feed which is @JenniferBrown. We've got our LinkedIn presence, and our Facebook presence, and if you've got- from this audience Jenn, I would say I'm here to support you, and what you all could do for me is if you ever encounter corporate clients, any sort of companies that are building- even fast growth smaller companies are really investing in diversity and inclusion these days. We've got new clients that are 200, 300, 500 people for example, and they're trying to really build diversity into the core and the foundation of the company even though they're not very large. That's really an exciting conversation, and I enjoy even just mentoring and brainstorming with those kinds of founders and CEOs who are- a lot of them are straight, white men frankly, and straight women as well, saying, "I want to embed this in what I'm building, and I want to do it right, and diversity is important to me, and is important to our ability to grow and thrive." So that's a very exciting conversation, so I'd say if anyone on the call, on the podcast has interest in that, or has someone who needs help with that, please do reach out and we'd love to be helpful even just in an advisory capacity.   Jenn T Grace:              And that's where you get your energy from, is that kind of helping that grassroots organization that we were talking about before, where the happy place is and the energy.   Jennifer Brown:         Yes, I enjoy that because I can relate on a business owner level, and that's a big part of my identity in addition to LGBTQ, and woman, and all the other parts of my dimensions because owning a business is an experience like no other. It's really unique, it's really hard, it's really rewarding, it shapes you, it takes over your life and heart, but we are really the creators that are putting pretty important stuff out into the world.   Jenn T Grace:              Well thank you so much. I feel like we could have gone in so many different directions talking today, and in just 48 minutes or so we've just scratched the surface of so much information. So I really hope the people do go out and get your book when it becomes available, and at least follow you on one of those platforms because you do have a lot of good information to share with the world.   Jennifer Brown:         I do, I do. Yeah please do, and we like to give away a lot so please go read our thought leadership, our white papers, our articles. I'm a big fan of generosity in business, and I really believe in it. So maybe that's something that as folks are looking at how we've built our brand and our platforms, that level of we want to be able to be helpful first and foremost, not really sell first and foremost. We're trying to invest in the community, so I hope that's apparent.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah, maybe we'll have you on in 2017 and we can discuss that whole concept, because I think there's so much to be said about that, and it will be post book launch and it will be interesting to hear kind of what happened to that too. So we'll have to make a date for that.   Jennifer Brown:         Totally, thanks Jenn.   Jenn T Grace:              Cool, alright thank you. I so appreciate it.   Jennifer Brown:         Thank you, everyone. Thanks, Jenn.   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.  

#94: Building a Stronger Queer Community with the Debt Free Guys Jenn T Grace:              You are listening to the Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional Podcast, episode 94.   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:              Hello and welcome to episode number 94 of the podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and today I have an interview for you with the Debt Free Guys, David and John. We really kind of cover a whole gamut of topics starting with a little bit about their background, but then kind of diving into some really actual specific strategies around the best way to launch your personal brand, and really kind of leverage your personal brand. And then of course we talk about some deeper conversations around what's next for the LGBTQ community specifically. So this has been a really good episode, I hope you enjoy it, and if you are looking for information for the episode itself, if you go to www.JennTGrace.com/94 for episode number 94, you will find all of the information that you need right there. As usual if you have any questions, comments, thoughts, feel free to reach out to them directly, reach out to me, however you want to do it. I am on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, you can also go to my website, I'm pretty much Jenn T Grace on every platform so feel free to reach out with any thoughts that you have, and enjoy the show.                                     Alright so I want to focus today just kind of talking about you and your stories. I think when we were talking I had said that a client of mine found something that you had written in relation to personal finance, and then I discovered you and I was like, 'Oh look, how fun.' And since you so clearly state that you're husbands, and business partners, and the Debt Free Guys, and you just kind of put it all out there, I just want to start with your story and just kind of have you give a background for the listeners, and just kind of explaining how you got to where you are, and then from there we can kind of just organically continue on the conversation.   David Auten:               Yeah so I'm David.   John Schneider:          I'm John.   David Auten:               And we are the Debt Free Guys. John and I are bloggers, authors, public speakers, we have a podcast called 'Queer Money' and our focus is helping our community, the queer community, live bigger and better lives by being money conscious. Our primary belief is that a strong queer community is a viable strong queer community when individually we are financially strong. It allows us to focus on helping not only the community, but doing work in service and finding ways that we can help change hearts and minds of individuals who may not feel that a queer life is the best life, or a life that adds value to the overall community. And that's kind of our focus more recently, we've really started talking a lot about this. We believe that as a queer community it's time for us to step up and help our larger community because they've done so much for us in helping us get the rights and privileges that we have today. And so we want to do that, but we also believe that we can't be distracted financially whether it's student loan debt, consumer debt, or just hating the job that we go to every day. So we want to help people, like I said, live bigger and better lives.   Jenn T Grace:              So how long have you been doing what you do, and what was the original kind of spark that made you say that this- because if you think about starting a blog, it's such a long road to really kind of get your audience built and all that kind of stuff. So what made you think like, 'We have this message that we want to share. How are we going to go out and do this, and then how are we going to monetize what we're doing?'   John Schneider:          Sure. So David and I got together about thirteen years ago, and about a year and a half after we were together we realized that between the two of us we had a total of $51,000 worth of credit card debt, and the irony is that we were both in financial services. We were helping other people with their money, but we obviously weren't helping ourselves. So we decided that we weren't living the lives that we wanted to live, we had got wrapped up in the clubbing scene, the partying scene, and this wasn't really the trajectory we wanted to go with our lives. So we decided that we need to pay off our debt, and we created a strategy to do so in three years, and ended up actually paying off our debt in two and a half years. And then shortly thereafter we moved from a basement apartment to buying a house in a high rise that overlooks the downtown Denver and the mountains. So our lives completely changed and so we felt both based on our professional experience and personal experience that we could maybe help others live better lives as well. So we wrote a book called '4: The Four Principles of Debt Free Life,' and that kind of started our journey as the Debt Free Guys. We published that about two years ago, but about a year prior to that was when we started to dabble into the blogging space and our first account was on- was it on Blogger? And we had several iterations since then. So we've probably been the Debt Free Guys and been blogging for about three years, our book was published two years ago, but it wasn't until last year that we went to FinCon '15 which was in North Carolina. FinCon is a personal finance blogger conference that kind of merges bloggers, and media, and banks and brokerage firms together to all kind of give everybody an opportunity to talk and to network. And when we were there, there were probably about 800 people in all spaces, and we realized that you've got your mommy bloggers, and you've got your dads, and you've got all sorts of different niches that are trying to help their particular followers live better lives by spending wisely, saving wisely. But there was nobody that was reaching out specifically to the queer community. And so David and I thought, 'Oh we're queer. We know these people, we are these people, and nobody's reaching out to us.' And like David said, we do think that in order for us to be a strong queer community, one of the pillars of that strong queer community is that we are financially strong as individuals. And so we thought, 'Wow, maybe we should start to nuance our message.' When we wrote the book and we were blogging before, we didn't hide that we were a gay couple, but we just weren't as I guess out about it as kind of a by-product of our message. Well now since for about a year we've been really targeting the queer community. That's how the Queer Money Podcast that we started in March came about, that was the impetus for that.   Jenn T Grace:              So when you decided to create the Queer Money Podcast, what made you choose going with Queer Money versus some other word that you could use in place of the- or acronym that you could have used in place of queer?   John Schneider:          So there were a couple reasons. One is I was starting to have trouble to say LGBTQA, and everything that we add to it. So it doesn't fall off my lips easily and I don't think the branding is really appealing. It looks inclusive but it kind of gets lost and muddled. Especially if you're not in the queer community, you kind of don't know what all those letters stand for. And the other thing is we have so many nuances of gender and sexual orientation that it started to feel- that we're starting to bifurcate everyone, put everybody in different silos. And we thought we want to talk to the entire community, we want to talk to all the LGBTQ people. So we thought that queer just kind of was the most inclusive word that we could come up with. We know that a lot of people don't like that word, but we think that we can change the definition of that.   Jenn T Grace:              May as well, right?   David Auten:               Right, and to be honest I like that word. I like the word queer. I know that for a lot of people in the past it has a connotation of being different, and being odd, or being less than. But I think that when we look at ourselves we are different, and it's something that we're proud of, and it's something that we wanted to bring into our podcast was the differences. When we look at the financial differences of what it's like for a gay couple who want to have children. What are the financial nuances around that? What are the financial nuances around a transgendered man or woman who's going through transition? What are their financial decisions that they have to make? And then maybe you look at other parts of our community and the financial decisions that we have to make around marriage. And for individuals who live in the 28 states where it's still legal for someone to fire you for being gay, there are financial decisions and choices that you have to make when it comes to wanting to get married. So we want to cover all of that in our podcast, and we are doing that, and we think that by identifying as queer it allows us all to be a part of this inclusive group where we're talking together about what we need financially.   Jenn T Grace:              So I think all of that makes such perfect sense. So did you think that when you started out with this that you would become I guess personal brands in your own way? Because you are branding yourselves so succinctly as the Debt Free Guys, and then having Queer Money, was that kind of an intentional thing that you set out to do, or did it kind of happen organically as you've just been doing this?   David Auten:               It's funny that you ask that question because I would love to say we're smart, but no all of a sudden it wasn't until a few months ago that we started to realize that Queer Money is becoming its own brand. We had worked for three years to make Debt Free Guys a brand, and then all of a sudden we're like- and oddly enough Queer Money is becoming a brand much more quickly. And so it's purely by accident but we'll totally take advantage of that.   Jenn T Grace:              May as well, right?   John Schneider:          When we originally sat down and talked about becoming the Debt Free Guys, we did have a conversation that lasted for several hours around who did we want to be? And our story at the time was that we were a gay couple who got out of debt and we wanted to share that with other people, but we decided to leave gay out of the title, and I think because we were trying to appeal to a mass audience, but with Queer Money we know exactly who it is that we're looking at and sharing conversations of success stories, and mistakes that we've made, and how as a community- like we've said before, can be financially strong.   David Auten:               That said though, we do own the domain name Debt Free Gays.   Jenn T Grace:              Nice.   David Auten:               We might change that someday.   Jenn T Grace:              That could be funny. Actually when I had skyped you as we were about to start I just typed in 'Gys,' I mean to say 'Guys' but I'm like, 'Oh I actually could go for 'Gays' too.' So it's funny that that works out well.   John Schneider:          You're not the first person who has done that and said that to us.   Jenn T Grace:              I feel like to a certain degree- so if you were the Debt Free Gays, right? So would there be some level of it sounding disparaging perhaps? Because if we think back to how queer, in so many ways you are part of that movement that's reclaiming the word queer, so it is something that means something more positive than previous connotations to it. What about 'the gays'? I feel like 'the gays' is something that you hear crazy right wing, completely opposed to anything LGBT related, say. But it would be interesting to see how Debt Free Gays would go. What do you think would happen?   David Auten:               I think that that's one of the things that's part of our purpose, is that we want to change the conversation that even our gay community is having. One of the things that John and I have found is that especially gay men in our community, there is this strong sense of wanting to show everyone how fabulous our lives are. And unfortunately for a lot of people, a fabulous life does not also equal a debt free life. They hock themselves into financial ruin trying to live a fabulous life. But we want to share with people that gays can still have that fabulous life that is coming through the media. You know you see this on TV, every time you see a gay couple on TV they seem to be fabulous.   John Schneider:          White upwardly mobile.   David Auten:               Right, exactly. So we want to keep that idea that you can have a fabulous life, but you can also do this in a very money conscious way, a way that will allow you to live that fabulous life throughout your whole life.   John Schneider:          Yeah I think it's ironic because we have straight friends who call us 'the gays,' and it's a term of endearment. But I do see media and certain demographics who refer to that disparagingly. What was weird too when we had the conversation about whether or not queer was a smart option to choose, I posted something linking to one of our Queer Money podcasts and I simply asked the question of, 'Can saying I'm gay get you fired?' I chose those words because I had 120 characters to use, and it was really interesting how quickly other people in the queer community came back and said, 'Transgender people can get fired and lesbians can get fired, so why are you excluding everybody?' I'm like, 'I didn't really mean to, I just only had 120 characters and I just went with that.'   David Auten:               So I think the words take on the meaning that we allow them to have, and if somebody wants to refer to me as gay or part of the gays, I'm fine with that. It took a long time to get here, I'll stay.   Jenn T Grace:              So what is interesting as you're talking, I think there's so many- when you're building a personal brand, you're putting yourself out there in many ways, and I think that what you're emphasizing is important for people who are listening who are part of the community, who are working on building a personal brand, that when you do decide to stick with one term versus another, that you are going to catch hell from some fraction of the LGBT community whether it's intentional or not. And I remember when I started with my tagline of 'I teach straight people how to market to gay people, and gay people how to market themselves,' I got a world of shit for that because I was saying gay and I wasn't saying LGBT, and I was saying, 'Listen if my marketing- if my primary audience are straight people, they don't know what LGBT stands for. It's my job to help teach them what that means.' And that's exactly what you're saying around the word queer which I think is super awesome. What you were just saying though, just I have a question here because I'm wondering if people bring this to you. I have been called out in rooms while I'm speaking or presenting on something when I'm talking about the disposable income of the LGBT community, or the buying power, or some flashy statistics of saying how great the LGBT community is from a consumer standpoint. But then there's a lot of data and studies that show that there is equal if not more poverty among people who are LGBT, and of course there's a lot of different variables on that. Do you find that people ever comment to you on that? Or are you addressing that issue kind of from a head on standpoint? Because it feels like you have the perfect platform to be helping people who may not be in the best socioeconomic status, get them there because this is what you do.   John Schneider:          Right, we have seen statistics, I think the most recent one was 2015 that the queer community has about close to a trillion dollars in buying power, but that's excluding taxes and saving for retirement. But what's interesting is the cost to raise a child from the age of birth to eighteen (not including college) is about $245,000, and the queer community obviously doesn't have as many children as the straight community does, but ironically we only tend to have about $6,000 more than our straight peers when it comes to saving for retirement or savings at all. So there's definitely a disparity there and we've heard a statistic that we're trying to verify, I've heard it several times just not found the source, that about 40% of the queer community is in the service industry, food service or bartending. And so that kind of puts us kind of behind the eight ball when it comes to planning, and being prepared for retirement and saving for other financial goals. So we are cognisant of that, nobody's called us out on it or asked questions about it, but we are trying to address that.   David Auten:               One of the other things that we have done a little bit of research on, and I think is indicative of to what has happened in our community, in the US so much of our personal net worth is tied up in the value of our homes whether you're in the gay community or straight community. And if you look at a lot of the people who are queer, they moved into areas, into cities, and specifically into neighborhoods that oftentimes in sixties, seventies and eighties, these were neighborhoods where they were less desirable, and that has completely changed. Those communities, those neighborhoods now are in many cases, they are some of the most desirable. I think of places like Castro or Chelsea in New York, even here in Denver Capitol Hill. And so a lot of individuals, although they did not earn a lot of money, they bought well in the sixties, seventies and eighties with their homes, and that has translated into a lot more net worth. So outward appearances I think for a lot of individuals is that we have- we're very well off because we are living in these communities, but I think that there's also statistics out there that show that as specifically as gay men, one statistic showed that a gay man will spend about $54,000 more on education, time and energy to equal the same pay as his straight white male counterpart. There's a lot of statistics out there that show that lesbian women and the family structures that they have, oftentimes they have more expenses but are earning less. There is this dichotomy in our community too I think that's even stronger than it is in the straight world, where we have some very, very, very high earning gay individuals, and that kind of throws off the average. So I think the average gets pulled up by individuals who are very high earners, but as John said that there is a significant number of individuals who are working in the service community, and they may not have access to be able to earn as much, or have not taken the time and effort to earn more in their lives   Jenn T Grace:              So I totally agree with everything that you're saying. I was just at a conference and they were talking about LGBT business owners, and basically the revenue numbers of LGBT business owners. And depending on how you want to play the statistics, if you're looking at the pie chart in one way you can say, 'Okay it looks like 70% of them are earning less than $100,000.' But then if you're looking at a different way of framing that is, 'Oh the average LGBT business owner is making $2 million because that 30% that's over the $100,000 is so enormous that it completely overpowers more of kind of what the reality looks like. So when we're talking about statistics and numbers, and you're focusing on educating people, I'm focusing on educating people, and we're to some degree focusing on educating the same people. Where are you finding the most people who are resonating with your message? Do you have statistics on that? Or not even like real data, but just kind of off the cuff. Is it more men like yourselves? Is it more women? Is it urban, suburban? Like is there any kind of breakdown and is there anything that you can attribute to why that fan base is following you?   John Schneider:          So we've done some market research a couple different ways and we find that our primary audience is gay men between the ages of 35 and 55, and their two primary concerns are number one, paying off debt whether student loan or credit card. And number two is saving for retirement. Why that's the case, I would think probably because we're gay men between the ages of 35 and 55 and we paid off credit card debt. But I also think it's about thirties and forties I think when people start to say, 'Alright well I didn't make as much as I thought I was going to make and I didn't save as much for retirement as I had hoped to at this point, so now it's time for me to get my act together. So I think that may be why that demographic is resonating with us. I also think while we've tried to reach out to the queer community, we haven't yet resonated or caught the attention of the other demographics within the queer community; lesbians and transgender people. But like David said we're definitely trying to do that. We think that people like you, and people like us, we have a platform and it's important for us to make sure that we're doing our best to try to lift all boats in the ocean, and not just focus on the white upwardly mobile gay people that we see on TV.   David Auten:               Right. I think that one of the other things is that you look at some of the other demographics, and I'm going to specifically look at racial demographics- down racial lines. Individuals who are African American and Hispanic are oftentimes raised in households where money is very scarce, so they're raised with that scarce mentality, and so talking about money is something so foreign to them that they may not be attracted to a message like ours. And so we're trying to break that down. We've had several guests on our show who are African American, who are moving in that right direction, have businesses that are trying to work in their community as well as being in the queer community, to raise awareness around being financially fit.   Jenn T Grace:              In terms of your- the structure of your podcast, have you proactively really sought out finding diverse people? Because I know for myself even getting people on my podcast, I try but yet a lot of times I still end up having lesbians on my podcast because that's who is a huge part of my audience. So I know that you said that that's kind of happening to you as well, just it's people who are part of your own demographic. Of course we all kind of gravitate toward people that are like us, it's just kind of human nature, so have you put together any type of strategy where you're thinking, 'Okay I'm really going to make a concerted effort to find more women, more people in the trans community, more people of color, or whatever it happens to be, or has it just been very kind of organic as you've gone through?   John Schneider:          It's been sort of both. We've had African American people and lesbians on our show, probably fewer lesbians than African Americans. We have reached out to several transgender people to have them come on our show. The way we typically get guests is either through networking on social media and actually real life which is kind of scary. But we hear people make comments or they say things in different meetings or events that we're at, and we think, 'Oh that could be interesting on our show.' We're not typically focused on their gender or their heritage, it's more that they've got an interesting story to tell and for the most part that organic approach has worked out for us, but we have made some strategic effort. Because we do- there are some questions, and if David and I aren't familiar with what it's like to be transgender, and our concern is what is the cost of transitioning? And can we help people who are considering transitioning prepare financially so that they can do so and not impact their retirement or affect too egregiously other financial goals.   Jenn T Grace:              Interesting.   David Auten:               I think that we do like to look at a holistic view of our community. So we are actively looking for individuals in our community that fit these various niches within the group. Like John said, we have actively pursued going out and trying to find someone who is transgender. We have actively gone out and looked for individuals who can carry on a valuable conversation around what it's like to be a queer youth who is homeless. So we are looking for that because we know that it isn't just individuals who are listening to our show that identify with that, but it's individuals who are listening to our show that want to hear, like John said those stories, and know what else is going on in our community. That makes us stronger when we realize our diversity, and we appreciate that diversity, and can support each other.   John Schneider:          Yeah I think a good example was when we had a show about- 'There Are Gays Richer than You' is what the title of the show was, and we had a lesbian on the show, she's a regular talk show host and a psychology professor, and she let us know- and this is our own fault for not being more aware, that 40% of homeless youth identify as queer. And we were like astounded by that so then that opened up another discussion. Like how can we identify these people and help them out with our platform? So that's why we started to seek out people who are helping and people who are a part of that demographic.   Jenn T Grace:              That's so awesome. So do you have any plans of not necessarily having a philanthropic arm to what you're doing, but more of just kind of the giving side? I'm sure you're already very much naturally doing that, but in terms of being able to take the education you're providing people, that kind of added step further for the people that might not be able to afford working with you one-on-one, or whatever that might look like?   John Schneider:          We have started doing that. We actually had an event in Philadelphia back in July, and the event was called Queer Money: Launching Your Success, and it was held at the William Way Foundation which is an organization that specifically caters to queer youth. And the desire of that event was to try to share with queer youth individuals in their community who have made a success of themselves; and success is all different kinds of definitions, it's not just financial, it's individuals who have built a life that they want. And so we want to continue with those events so that we can reach more queer youth and help them see that life does get better, and this is how it gets better. These are the people who have done it, and here are some examples, and you can use them as resources. So we have kind of a broad look at it right now with that. We aren't doing any individual one-on-one yet.   Jenn T Grace:              So what is your vision? Because I feel like what you're up to is so amazing. Are you trying to move into a space where the two of you become bigger, more well-known public speakers, and really kind of having more of these events that you can be doing? I'm just curious because I feel like it truly sounds like the sky is the limit because you're doing such good work.   David Auten:               Thank you.   John Schneider:          Thank you, appreciate that. Such a reputable source. So our main goal is to strengthen the queer community so that we can fight the fight for equality which is obviously not yet over, and so that we can then- like David said earlier, we can be more impactful or powerful contributors to the broader society. Strategically how we're doing that, we're not myopic in any particular way, but we're focusing on obviously the Queer Money Podcast, we are writing as well, and then we are public speaking. Right now the podcast has most of our focus, but hopefully we can broaden that out a little bit more as the podcast becomes more self-sustaining.   David Auten:               And when John mentioned that we are writing, it's not just writing at our site www.DebtFreeGuys.com. We are partnering with a number of other publications; Business Insider which is not known as a queer resource, but we work with them so that we can provide them with queer content. We also work with Huffington Post, Yahoo Finance, and a couple of other websites and publications that allow us to kind of reach a very broad audience. One of the other things that we are doing, and if anyone who is listening is a part of this community, we are right now working with local gay magazines and websites to provide them with syndicated content that will allow them to reach their local community, helping them build that strong financial foundation. So for example there's a magazine in the Midwest where we have content in that magazine, and then on their website which will highlight not only our focus on providing the queer community with financial tools, but also providing our podcast so they can listen to it there. And really the desire is to build kind of a grassroots effort among queer communities that let's focus on being financially strong, let's focus on being a support for our community, and the larger community in general.   John Schneider:          Yeah I think, as David's speaking, we're part of the queer community, but we're also part of the finance community. We've been in personal finance for 31 years, we've worked for big brokerage houses, and one of the things that David and I have noticed is that since June, 2015 the finance community seems to think that because same sex marriage passed, that there are no other issues that the queer community needs to deal with financially. And obviously as you know, that's not true. And so we're trying to- the reason why we're passionate about reaching out to those bigger- and working with those bigger publications is because we think that it's important, especially on their platforms, to show that there are nuances that are unique to our community, and this is how you can address them.   Jenn T Grace:              Okay so I have two completely different trains of thought happening right now, so I just wrote one down to come back to in a minute. But the first one is- so the people who are listening to our conversation right now are people who are trying to figure out how to go about starting a personal brand, or maybe adjusting the one they have, or just being more conscious about what they're doing. So what I think you just mentioned is so incredibly important is about being in publications that are more mainstream publications, where the LGBT community is a sampling of the rest of the world, so we are from all diverse backgrounds, you name it. So you're strategically working on being in those types of mainstream publications. So my question for you is around what was your- I don't even want to say strategy because I'm sure there wasn't actually a strategy at the time, but like what was that first article, or source, or magazine, or newspaper that you landed where you recognized like, 'Okay this is so what I have to be doing, is focusing on getting more of this.' And then what did it look like to actually try to get more of them? Because I know a lot of people who struggle with getting mainstream kind of publicity in a way, but you're obviously coming from a place of giving value, which I think is easier to do it when you're doing it from that direction. But what has that process looked like for you, and what might you share as a tip for someone listening to this who's also trying to figure that out themselves right now?   David Auten:               Sure so when we started Debt Free Guys and we started blogging we thought, 'Well we got out of debt, we've got a story to tell, people should just want us to write for them,' right? We thought Oprah was going to have us on her show. That's not how it works. And luckily it didn't work that way because our message has become much more clear, and our writing has gotten much more succinct and better. So I think in hindsight if we were to tell somebody the strategy to execute on, it would be to first start a blog. I have to tell you the first time we actually published something that actually had one of our names on it, wasn't just generically Debt Free Guys, it was scary. I walked around for like an hour before I actually posted it, but I knew it was something we had to do because when you put yourself out there, then you put yourself out there for the good and the bad, and I wasn't necessarily prepared for the bad. But so we wrote for about two years on our own blog, and then through the connections from blogging that we made on social media, we started to write for other blogs that may not be well-known to most people. But it helps get you out there and gets your comfortable with exposing yourself and your thoughts. And then the next catalyst to our success was we went to FinCon last year and we networked with a bunch of people. So whatever niche you're in, I would highly suggest finding your people, finding conferences of people who do what you do, and people who would support what you do, and we networked with a group of people who offered to syndicate our content, which was awesome. And so they were the first ones to get us on Yahoo Finance, and the first time we were on Yahoo Finance it was really weird. Basically what we did was we told our story of how we became the Debt Free Guys, and who we are, and we were pretty out and open about being a gay couple, and we were on the home page of Yahoo Finance all morning.   John Schneider:          We were doing cartwheels and we both had day jobs at the time so we had to be like focused on somebody else's work while we were also consumed with our own. And it was at that point we thought, 'Wow this is really something that we can do something with,' and that's when we started to research. We hadn't really paid attention that much, but that's when we started to research that since June 2015 nobody's really been talking about LGBT money issues, and we can really help these publications reach a different audience, and also reach an audience that needs to hear the message.   David Auten:               It was kind of funny that John talks about that first day we were on Yahoo Finance. I was sitting at my desk and around the cube comes- around the wall comes the guy who sat next to me and he says, "Hey come here." And I got up and I walked over to his desk and he goes, "This is a picture of you on Yahoo Finance." And I hadn't really been that out with people and sort of what I was doing, so that was a very fun experience. One of the other things that John and I would absolutely recommend if you're trying to grow your personal brand, and I think a lot of people kind of blow off Twitter, they think it's not worth it. Twitter is an amazing tool that allows you to connect with individuals who you may not be able to find otherwise at publications, at companies, at organizations where they would be hidden by or barriered by a number of walls for you to be able to get to them. So if you want to write for a particular publication, go out and see who on Twitter is a part of that organization. If you want to do public speaking for a particular school, go out and find who are the leaders that work with that school that are on Twitter. Start engaging with them in conversation. Don't ask right away, but just start engaging with them around what is it that they do, what is it that they want, what is valuable for them, and then you can introduce what you have that might be of value to them. One of the biggest pieces of advice that John and I ever got was don't ask for a handout, ask for a hand up. And that's very important. When you're going to a company, an organization or a school, and you want to work with them, you can't just say, "Hi I want-" and ask them. Just like with the sales process. We all want someone to kind of charm us, or we want someone to provide us with some sort of information that it gives them the invitation to sell to us. Well the same thing goes with our introductions to these organizations. We have something of value, you have something of value that they want. You truly believe this in your heart, that you have something of value that they want, you want to slowly introduce that to them, and Twitter is a great way to do that.   Jenn T Grace:              I think that's such valuable advice, and I'm sure you are both familiar with Gary Vaynerchuk and his whole- he's an acquired taste for sure, however I enjoy his very aggressive and go-getting personality. But his book- and I actually handed it out to people that work for me. 'Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook' exactly exemplifies what you're talking about where it's really all about giving, and giving, and giving, and when the timing is right, asking for whatever it is that you need. But we all- and I think that at least the three of us talking right now are all coming from such a place of service where we're genuinely trying to just help the LGBT community be stronger and better regardless of what shape that takes. But I think it's so natural for us to be constantly giving, and then asking when appropriate. But I don't necessarily know that everybody can kind of translate that mindset into kind of their day-to-day business where maybe they're in a service-based business since you were talking about service-based before, it's a lot harder to actually find I think that right balance.   David Auten:               I think that it's also kind of similar to when you want to go to your boss and ask for a raise. You can't go to your boss and just say, "Hey I want a raise." You've got to go with, "Well I did this, and I did this, and I did this, and I can do this for you, and I can do this for you. This is why I am worth X number of dollars or percent more." We have to do the same thing with the other organizations that we want to work with. We want to show them, 'This is what I've done for you, this is what I've done for you, this is why I'm valuable, why you should pay me to do something.'   Jenn T Grace:              That's exactly, exactly it. So you've obviously learned to build relationships with media, and publications, and really kind of take the long strategic road of connecting with people on Twitter. Have you found any value in any other social media platforms, or have any just kind of general tip that might be helpful for someone just starting out?   John Schneider:          I think it's important to find out where your audience is. Our audience, Debt Free Guys, Queer Money audience is on Facebook. But I know a lot of people in the finance community, especially the mommy bloggers, their community is on Pinterest. I know a lot of the media folks in our space, their biggest platform is LinkedIn. So I think you need to find out who it is you're trying to serve, and then make sure you have a presence there. It's not all about obviously just connecting and trying to grow your brand, but it's also about trying to serve, like you said, and we want to find out where the people are that you want to serve, and I think that's very important. It's easy to get distracted living in such a ferret society right now because there's so much social media, and somebody says, "Oh if you're not on Instagram you've been missing out." "If you're not on Pinterest you're missing out." And there was a time there when David and I were trying to be on everything and I think Gary Vaynerchuk is very good at figuring out how to appropriately be on everything, but our belief is that our audience isn't everywhere, and we can't be everywhere. So we primarily focus on Twitter and Facebook, but somebody else's audience and somebody else's business partners might be on different platforms. So our advice would be to find out where your people are and then be there.   Jenn T Grace:              And there is a known strategy which is Pat Flynn's strategy of be everywhere, but I would caution against that especially just starting out to really don't go half-assing every social media outlet. Focus on like two where your people actually are, and really kind of hit it out of the park there.   John Schneider:          Exactly, and we're actually going to see Pat next week.   David Auten:               Yeah, and you bring up a very good point there of half-assing it. You only have so much amount of time, especially if you are starting out and this is your side hustle. Or you're just starting out and you do have some financial backing but not a lot. You have a limited amount of time. So if you only are able to spend a limited amount of time, do it where you can hit a home run. And not everything you do is going to hit a home run, but do it where you can really, really be effective. So if you're trying to hit seven different social media platforms, there's no way you're going to hit seven home runs in a row, it's just impossible, it's not going to happen. Not even Pat Flynn can do that, not even Gary Vaynerchuk can do that. Not everything that they do is wildly successful. So focus on building that audience in one or two places and then you're going to be able to hit a home run there, and once you get consistently hitting home runs there, move on to somewhere else.   John Schneider:          Yeah I think what you want to do is try- you want to get a following and if you can get your 1,000 raving fans, then you're set for success, and it's easier to get those 1,000 folks following you if you're targeted, and it's easier to do that when you're on one or two platforms. Maybe when you get big enough and you have a social media staff and you want to be everywhere like Gary V, it's a little bit easier. But when you're just doing this in your kitchen it's a little bit harder so stay laser focused.   Jenn T Grace:              Absolutely. Oh I love the paths that we've gone down, and I know that we're getting close on time so this will be the last question that I ask you, and then you can shamelessly promote what you have going on. But this stemmed from something earlier that you were talking about, and the question is what do you see as the next kind of big fight or great fight for the LGBT community? We know that we have marriage equality, which yay to some degree, but at the same time we still don't have equal protections in the workplace. So there's a lot of kind of stuff that's still going on. From your standpoint- so I guess maybe it's a two part question. Like what do you think is the next fight that people are going to be going after? But secondly, what do you think your role in that is with the platform that you have?   David Auten:               Sure. I think John and I have had a little bit of discussion around this, and one of the things that we are very cognisant of right now is the differences from state to state, and that's one of the keys for us as individuals. I live in Colorado, you live in I think Connecticut?   Jenn T Grace:              Yes.   David Auten:               Is that right? Right, yeah and other people live in all these variety of other states. The laws that are affecting you as an individual, that will impact you the most are the ones that are at the state level. I think of individuals, and we've found this out recently, if you're a gay man or woman you can adopt a child in Florida.   John Schneider:          That law just changed, I was corrected. Until recently.   David Auten:               Right, but when you got married you were not allowed to adopt. So it's through our efforts as individuals going at the state level and saying, 'How can we make our laws more inclusive of all our community?' I think it's four states have laws that protect transgendered individuals in the workplace, we already said that 28 states have laws that allows an individual to be fired because they're gay. That's a state level issue, and when we can equalize things at the state level, then we're getting protections for everyone. And so that's one of our facets that we're fighting for now. We are going to be working at having individuals on the Queer Money Podcast that highlight those state level issues so that all of us can be aware of how different things are at the state level. It's very easy for us to say, "Oh well yeah, you live in the United States, you should be out." Well if you live in a small town in Arkansas and your life and your family is dependent upon the job that you have, and you don't want to move to a big city, or you can't afford to move to a big city, it may not be easy for you to be out. So we want to help try to change thinking at the state level right now.   Jenn T Grace:              I think that's so important. So I was just at a conference and I was on a panel with a couple of people from large corporations and we were talking about supplier diversity, and being an LGBT-owned business and how by announcing that you're an LGBT-owned business to a company that you want to do business with- so say you're in Michigan and you want to do business with Kellogg's, it's all well and good that you have now outed yourself to this company, but what ramifications does that have if you're in a remote town in Michigan where it's not acceptable for you to actually be out. So you're outing yourself for this business opportunity, but at the same time are you putting your personal safety potentially at risk. And there's this very interesting balance of when it's safe to be out and when it's not safe to be out, and I think that for people maybe- I'm not entirely sure about the climate in Colorado but I know in Connecticut it's far less of an issue here and it has been far less of an issue for a very long time. But I know that if you go to Tennessee for example, it's a totally, totally other story. So it almost seems that having people in places like myself, or even possibly you, where we're in better situations so we can advocate for different states to kind of get that same level of equality that obviously we're all searching for.   John Schneider:          Yeah Denver's pretty inclusive, we can hold our hands pretty much anywhere. But that's why I think it's incumbent upon us to spread that message. We're in the safe space, it's our responsibility, those who have more need to do more, and so it's incumbent upon us to use our platform and to use the safe space that we live in to make lives better for our brothers and sisters elsewhere.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah you're public figures, you have no choice at this point.   David Auten:               And I think that's part of the reason why John and I make a concerted effort to reach out to some of those larger financial publications that are read by millions and millions of people across the country. We know that our article about being a gay couple and paying off our debt was read by individuals who live in small towns across America, and it's going to be the individuals who are reading that that are gay, that are going to be let's hope inspired by that to do the same, or to just feel comfortable about who they are. But it's also the individuals who are not who see that and say, "Yahoo Finance cares about gay people. That's interesting." Or "Business Insider cares about gay people. That's interesting." Or I should say 'queer.' They care about queer individuals. It just changes that message or that conversation in their head, and our whole- John and I have talked about this for a long time. Winning hearts and minds of individuals who are enemies when it comes to our lifestyle is one of the benefits that we have of being public figures, and we want to do that.   Jenn T Grace:              It's a responsibility, yeah absolutely. I love it, we're so on the same page on so many things, I love it. So for people who are listening and now they're interested, they want to get out of debt or they just want to learn more about you, where are all the ways in which they can find you?   John Schneider:          We are the Debt Free Guys, and so we're at www.DebtFreeGuys.com, and on Facebook and Twitter you can find us at Debt Free Guys. We have our book, '4: The Four Principles of a Debt Free Life' on www.Amazon.com and a couple other places, but I think Amazon is the easiest. And then like we suggested if it's not already apparent, our main focus right now is the Queer Money Podcast, which is on iTunes and Stitcher and Sound Cloud. We also have some of our videos for the podcast on YouTube at Debt Free Guys. So that's where our primary focus is right now, and we would love for anyone who listens to our podcast because of listening to your podcast to share with us any feedback; if they like anything, hate anything, if there's anything they want us to talk about, or anyone they think we need to reach out to, we would love to have that feedback.   Jenn T Grace:              Perfect, I like it. And for the listeners, your first and last names? I know you said your first names in the beginning but just for the sake of it.   John Schneider:          I'm John Schneider.   David Auten:               And I've David Auten.   Jenn T Grace:              Perfect. Beautiful! Well thank you so much for coming on the show, this will be out shortly, and of course all the stuff that we talked about, I'll make sure that I have links all in the show notes for the audience to just find this much easier. But thank you, this has been great, I really appreciate it.   John Schneider:          Absolutely and thank you for the opportunity. When you have links and whatnot, let us know and we'll absolutely flood our social media with it as well.   Jenn T Grace:              Beautiful, you bet. It should be out on- my plan is going to be the 29th, so September 29th.   John Schneider:          Okay so I'll put you on our event calendar on our website. And then a long time ago we had talked about having you on our podcast, so I'll send you some information, see if we can schedule that.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah that would be awesome. Yeah, I would love to help in any way I can. It would be perfect.   John Schneider:          Great, awesome.   Jenn T Grace:              Well have a great rest of your day, I really appreciate it.   John Schneider:          Thanks you too, bye bye.   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 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.    

#91: Building a Speaking Career Based on Passion with Michaela Mendelsohn   Jenn T Grace:              You are listening to the Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Podcast, episode 91.   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 91 of the podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and today, guess what? I have another interview. So we are on quite a streak. I'm actually trying to see how long I can make this streak last at this point, so we're doing pretty good. So we're on episode number 91 and I have another interview for you, and it is with Michaela Mendelsohn. I have to say this was such an incredible interview to have. Michaela is absolutely amazing in terms of the amount of work she is doing to move forward the trans community, and the exposure, and the education, and the awareness of the trans community. So she is a transgender activist, she's a public speaker, she's also been a business person for over forty years running one of the largest franchises in the western region of the US, and she's recently founded the California Transgender Workplace Program which is designed to promote transgender employment opportunities. So she literally has been involved in so many incredible things, which it was so great to talk to her because she's just so humble about the amount of things that she's accomplished. And one of the cool things that we started to talk about toward the end of the interview is the fact that she consulted with the producer of Orange is the New Black on Laverne Cox's character, and that was about five or six years ago she was saying. So she's definitely had her involvement in a lot of different things around the trans community, and we can attribute some part of how Laverne's character came out in the show to a lot of the consulting that Michaela was doing behind the scenes. So I think that's kind of a fun little fact, and we do talk a little bit about Caitlin Jenner toward the end, and what she's been doing in regards to advancement of the LGBT community, specifically the trans community, but these are two things that we just kind of briefly touch upon. We really kind of go deep into the mindset, and transitioning, and what that looks like, and transitioning even from being a business owner to being a speaker, and really it was just an amazing conversation. So if you are listening to this and you want to check out the links to Michaela's website, or to any of the organizations that we talk about, you can head on over to my website and go to www.JennTGrace.com/91, that is for episode number 91. And yeah, you can find Michaela's contact information, her website, we talk about the Trevor Project, we talk about a lot of things so there's a lot of information to be had. So without further ado, please enjoy my interview with Michaela, and reach out to her and give her some social media love because this was just an incredible, incredible interview. Enjoy the show, thanks so much.   Michaela M:                I transitioned about nine years ago, and it was a difficult transition as it is for many people who are late transitioners who have families involved, and we can come back to that if you want to hear more about it. But first I'll talk about the transition itself. You know I lived my whole life mentally feeling inside different, and when I realized that what I had to do finally after years of suppressing it and trying to make it go away, that wasn't going to work anymore because I was getting very sick. I moved forward with my transition, like I said about nine years ago. The first few years of my transition were very confusing for me in that I'd gone from- and I think this is pretty common too, I'd gone from one box to another. So here before I was confined in a place and a body that wasn't mine, but then we have a tendency I think in transitioning to then try and become that perfect billboard, in my case of a woman. So here I am, you look at women in the news, in a magazine or billboard and think, 'Hey this is who I'm supposed to be,' and you're trying to- you worry so much about what you wear, how you talk, how you dress, your mannerisms, how you look, your makeup, your hair, and even worrying about every thought I had. You don't go from being a macho male, I did a great job of that for over fifty years to cover up, and to changing all your thoughts and who you are in an instant.   Jenn T Grace:              It's a process for sure.   Michaela M:                Yeah, so it's a tough thing to do. So I created this new box for myself, and found after a few years of getting totally frustrated with that, it was even more confining than what I was in before. Until I finally was able to go inside and through some deep meditation, and working on myself, I was able to just accept all parts of myself and stop judging myself, labeling myself anymore. I really like the term that young people are using these days called gender nonconforming. I think the word transgender will even be obsolete within ten years from now because it's just another box that I think many of us put ourselves into to try and be something, some other gender in a perfect way rather than just being who we are.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah, absolutely. So in looking at the information that I have about you that Mona was so gracious to send over, how do you go from what you're describing where it's a rough transition, because you're going from essentially one box that you've been in for fifty years, now kind of jumping into another box? I know that one of the things that she noted was that you took part in Miss Senior California. How do you go from kind of being a little bit uncomfortable in this new box to really putting yourself so out there in something like that?   Michaela M:                Well I went through extreme bullying as a child, and the chip on my shoulder that lasted, which isn't too bad most of the time, is that whenever there's a challenge presented to me, and if I'm feeling afraid of it, it tends to really motivate me where I say, 'You've got to go through this.' It makes me want to just walk through the fire. And so that was one of those things where I was doing some modeling, and one of the models had done Miss Senior California the year before and suggested it to me, and I thought, 'Well this is a great challenge, something that no transgender person had done it before,' and of course it was another mountain to climb, but also it was a way to open doors for other trans women, and that became really important to me. [Inaudible 00:07:25] and to normalize things, and to create a socio and economic playing field that's more level that we can all step into, that we don't have to feel- you know, we can break down barriers.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah and so I know that you are now a public speaker, you've been a business person for over forty years. So how did you go- again because I think this is kind of a different type of transition in terms of a career transition. So how do you go from owning one of the largest franchises from what I'm reading, to transitioning into being an activist, and being a public speaker, and really putting yourself out there for a living at this point? So what did that feel like and what was that transition like?   Michaela M:                Well first of all I've been through so much in my life that I've always had a Buddhist philosophy that our challenges are what makes us stronger and wiser. And so I feel very fortunate that I'm at this place in my life that when I look at so many of the other trans women especially that are suffering, I just feel like I have to give back. I made a decision to devote the rest of my life to things that I would feel I could help as many people as possible. And so that's kind of my motivation right now for waking up every morning, is what I can do to help, and it just fills me up.   Jenn T Grace:              So are you still running your franchises? Or is that kind of part of your past and you're really just pursuing this?   Michaela M:                My day would make you dizzy, but I usually get in the morning about 6:00 to my little one coming in and waking me up, but that's how early my day starts and it usually goes to about 12:30 at night. I'll take about three hours out for family time from 5:30 to 8:30, and other than that I've just got so many things that I'm involved in, and running my business is still one of them, but I'm so fortunate to have great people that work for me that can do so much of that so that I can focus on these other things.   Jenn T Grace:              And speaking of other things that you're focusing on, I see that you are launching the California Trans Work Project. Can you talk about that a little bit? Because I'm sure that that is something that can make a huge, huge impact.   Michaela M:                Okay well CTWP, California Trans Workplace Project is something I started- well the idea formulated in my mind about four years ago when one of my managers hired our first trans employee, and then I sat down with her and I heard her story where she had worked for another large franchisee of a different chain, and she was even though clearly identifying as a woman was forced to use the men's restroom, and was actually molested. And then she kind of felt like, 'I've got to keep this job, I can't get another one, it's so hard for trans women to get jobs even in California.' And she was told, "Okay you can use the women's restroom but make sure no one else is in there." One day she had someone scout it out, no one was in there, she went in but afterwards another woman had gone in and went out and told her husband, "I think there's someone in there that might be a man," so he got upset and pushed the manager until the manager fired her. So that opened my eyes to the problem. I'm just lucky being a boss, of course it was emotionally a difficult thing for me to come out to 500 employees which I did all at once at a Christmas party after having disappeared for a year, but I don't have to worry about being fired or getting a job. And so these- especially trans girls who may not fit in as easily as trans men that walk into a job, I've found the more I learn and I've hired 8% of my employees now are trans, by the way.   Jenn T Grace:              That's awesome.   Michaela M:                And I started actually hiring trans people and found that they're so appreciative to be on a level playing field, many of these girls had been out there looking for a job for a year, and they were very hirable people but people would come up with different excuses of why not they were going to hire them. So California Trans Workplace Project is taking that experience now that I've had for the last four years of hiring trans people, and what it takes to create an inclusive trans environment in the workplace, and going out and educating employers. Right now we're working for instance with the California Restaurant Association, they have 90,000 restaurants here in California, 1.8 million employees. And we've put on seminars for large groups of employers, and some may bring their managers, and then once they're into that and we help educate them in seminars about trans laws and creating that environment, and then we have- we just got a grant from the state of California to do this, and we're putting together a training video, and we use that to train their managers and get them ready to start connecting them with job seekers. Our mission is to make California truly a trans positive work environment and then spread that throughout the rest of the country. We're using California as a model.   Jenn T Grace:              Wow, and my question would be for someone listening to this- my audience are primarily business owners and there's a good amount of LGBT people, but also really kind of staunch allies to the community. So for a business owner listening to this who may not have ever considered hiring a trans person; not because someone applied and they said, "No I'm not going to hire a trans person," but just because they haven't proactively thought about it. What do you think that first step could be, regardless of what part of the country they're in, what do you think that first step could be for them to educate themselves or open up the awareness to hiring someone part of the trans community?   Michaela M:                Well of course one of the things we find most effective in any of these seminars we do, is the stories, it opens hearts and minds. But the other thing is let me talk for a minute about the business case because as employers right now we can't afford to exclude any talent pool of employees. It's the hardest to find- I know in the restaurant industry, which I've been in for thirty years and I was president of a national franchise association for nine, and very involved in that industry, and I know that the statistics show that it's the hardest to find employees in the last fifteen years even with minimum wage going up. So we can't afford to exclude a talent pool. And we also have a problem in our industry especially with turnover, and now here I am bringing in people, yes trans people that have- are really very appreciative to be on a level playing field, they're wonderful with our customers, we get more customer compliments on them than any other employees, and less turnover because they're loyal and appreciative of the work, they're treated well. And no I'm not just doing it because it's the right thing to do, I'm doing it because it's great for my business.   Jenn T Grace:              Do you have any-?   Michaela M:                And I think the business owners hearing that, I hope that they'll think about that positive business side of doing this as well as doing it from the heart.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah, absolutely it's both directions for sure. Do you have plans on raising that number for yourself personally from 8% and as far as the mission of this new organization are you trying to kind of set benchmarks and numbers to get people rallied up around to achieve those goals?   Michaela M:                Well I think 8% is already so much higher percentage than [Inaudible 00:14:13] in our population. But I think for me it's more now- we may go up or down, but for me it's more now about getting people hired and getting employers- open their hearts and minds and train their management to create that trans inclusive workplace, and to get people hired. My dream, my overall dream of doing everything I'm doing with speaking, and my work with the Trevor Project, and my work with the California Trans Workplace Project is to live to see the day where trans people are on a socioeconomic level playing field with the rest society and they can start moving past the fears they have that cause them to live day to day to survive, and the living a normal lifestyle. I mean I feel so fortunate to have a family, to have a wonderful partner, and to have a child, and three grown kids. I have my two families now have come together after years of difficulty and love each other, and I'm so, so fortunate to have that, and I think that's the life we should all have.   Jenn T Grace:              I absolutely agree. So when you're out speaking and kind of spreading this message of inclusion is really what we're talking about, what types of organizations are asking you to come speak? What type of topics are you talking on? Are they varied? What is that part of your new day-to-day look like?   Michaela M:                Well I tailor my speaking to the group. I mean, okay so I might be- like this last weekend I spoke at a Jewish congregation synagogue and I was talking about my journey not only as a trans person, but as a spiritual person, and then creating that as a metaphor for everyone in the audience to look into their own journeys because as I point out we're all in transition in our lives, and we all have things that we're afraid of, or embarrassed of, or a fear of failure that we can pull out of ourselves and become happier in our lives. My experience is just a metaphor. But if I'm speaking to a group of educators, I might be speaking to 100 school principals, and administrators from a large school district, I'm going to talk about what it was like for me growing up so they can understand the experience, to humanize it, and relate it to the kids and the parents that they're dealing with at the school and the situations they have. And it's wonderful these days that kids that are supported by their parents can actually choose their puberty because puberty is when most of these kids that commit suicide, or attempt it because they're going through a period of time that's totally adverse to who they are. They're becoming something they hate. And now parents that are supportive- and they're my real champions, these supportive parents, that help their children, they'll bring them to clinics, they'll help block the puberty that they were going to go through, and then when they're ready give them the hormones to go through the one that they were meant to. And I've been with these kids and they are just amazingly happy to have that opportunity to be who they are.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah, especially when they're allowed to go through it when they should be going through it, versus even your transition of having to wait fifty years before that was something that was possible for you.   Michaela M:                Yeah the late transitioners that we hear so much about now, the Caitlin Jenner's and all, are going to get fewer, are going to get fewer as time goes by because we're more open to it now. I had now idea- when I was growing up the word transgender wasn't even discussed and there was no Internet or talk shows, I had no idea. I was just very confused about what I was feeling.   Jenn T Grace:              I find that I know a lot of people within the trans community, and a lot of older people, and that's so exactly what I hear all the time where it's just there was no terminology around this. There were no role models, there was no one to look to, to see that, 'Oh yeah that's what I'm feeling.' So I can totally understand what you're saying. And yeah now kids, some of them anyway, have the benefit of not having to kind of carry that burden with them for so many years of just living an inauthentic life.   Michaela M:                Yeah, we still need to get past a lot of ignorance. I don't want to get into politics but just to get help frame it, the bathroom things that are going on and the twelve states that are suing the US government over this. And when you go to these states, and a lot of them are in the south, people have very little knowledge about what transgender means. In fact many of them believe that it's all a rouse, that it's manufactured, it's a devious state of mind, or people are talked into it, or people are using it to become predators. And all of that is just so far from the truth, and if they really experience the stories- that's why I want to go out and speak more in the south because when you're in front of a group of people, and you tell your story, they get to know who you are, it's hard for them to deny the reality and the experience, and it opens their mind. But yeah, there's tremendous ignorance. In some of the churches down there that are considering gay and lesbian affirming are still not on board with trans. They say God makes no mistakes and trans people must just be [Inaudible 00:19:09] the devil.   Jenn T Grace:              I can't even wrap my head around the logic that people come up with. So when we're talking about the bathroom bills, and all of just kind of the chaos that's ensuing at least in the twelve states, can you I guess- especially from your vantage point, for somebody listening to this who may not be fully clued in as to what that's all about, could you actually spend just a couple of minutes explaining it? Because I find that a lot of people, they just have a lot of misinformation. They just see whatever picture was on Facebook or on Instagram, or whatever it is and they don't actually know the facts of what's actually happening.   Michaela M:                Well when someone is transgender they're often tempted to live in the gender who they feel they are, so they'll present- let's say it's someone who's born biologically a male and they're now dressing and presenting as a female because that's who they feel they are. If they walk into a restroom- a male restroom like that, they're in danger and thousands of them have been sexually molested like that in doing so. In a female restroom they feel safe and comfortable as long as the women there are accepting. But they're certainly in any case feel better and safer than they were in the male restrooms. The people that are against it are using scare tactics saying it's invading their privacy, and these people could be doing this- it's opening the door for sexual molesters, and child molesters, and this is all so far from the truth. Like I said there's been thousands of cases of trans people being molested, but there's never been a case where a trans person has gone into a bathroom and it's been documented that they've molested anybody. And because it's the furthest thing from their mind. A simple way to say it is they just want to pee, but they also want to be accepted and just pee. It's like statistics go off and get used against the LGBT community like when Prop 8- as a metaphor for this, when Prop 8- you're familiar with that, right?   Jenn T Grace:              Oh yeah.   Michaela M:                When California-   Jenn T Grace:              Yes, absolutely.   Michaela M:                So during the campaign they had all these commercials showing things like we're getting teachers, and PE teachers, and coaches, and Boy Scout leaders, and people that are going to molest our kids because they're gay. Right? Because they're all- gay people are all predators. When I speak, I talk about statistics. The FBI statistics, and they're not a particularly gay affirming organization, are that 97% of sexual predators, sexual molesters are heterosexual men. So the other 3%-4% are women and all others. And we preclude heterosexual men from doing anything that could be in contact with children? So it's all such a misnomer, it's all scare tactics, but it's based on fear, it's based on ignorance.   Jenn T Grace:              What do you think the outcome of these pending lawsuits against the government are going to be? Where do you think if we were to flash forward a year from now, or two years from now, what is that going to look like?   Michaela M:                Well it depends on who gets elected as president, and then who gets [Inaudible 00:21:59].   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah.   Michaela M:                Like I don't want to talk too much about politics on your show but-   Jenn T Grace:              No it's fine.   Michaela M:                Hillary's speech last night, and I actually was a Bernie supporter but I liked everything that Hillary stands for and I was thrilled by her speech, and I'm hopeful that Hillary becomes president, and that the right people stay on the Supreme Court, and if that's the case I feel that it's like any other ignorant- you know we have a Constitution- we have a Declaration of Independence and we have a constitution, and the reason for it is so that the majority can make decisions who segregate and hurt people that are in the minority just because they don't understand them, and they don't like them because they're different. And I think that we have a government now that's not letting that happen, and if things move the way I hope they will, that will continue. We've made more progress in the Obama administration for transgender people than we have in the last forty years combined.   Jenn T Grace:              It's amazing, isn't it? Do you find that it's startling sometimes to think that we're in 2016 right now and we're having the conversations that we're having, not even exclusive to LGBT, but just even race conversations? Just to see almost how backward we feel like we're going sometimes?   Michaela M:                I think for so many of us it's so disturbing to turn on the TV these days, and to see the Donald every time you turn it on, and the kinds of things that he's saying. But the amount of people that have rallied behind those messages, the messages of hate and exclusion rather than inclusion. And maybe it's just I try to step back and say a lot of this is just pushback the ones that really- behind those racial comments, that are just pushback of people that feel like their way of life is being threatened because things have moved so quickly in the last four years in terms of gay marriage rights and other rights for LGBT people that are antithesis of how they were raised and the lifestyle they feel that's under attack. But I think the young generation is really the hope. I mean the younger generations are not buying into it. It's like in the schools when the principals will tell me, "Well we have kids that come in that are supported by the parents, and they come in as first and second graders changing their genders and much, much happier." And the other kids, it takes them one day where they'll just question. They'll just say, "Well I thought he was a girl. Or I thought she was a boy." And teachers explain it, and after a day of playing with their friend and their new gender, everything is fine. But then a week later the parents rally and there's a huge thing going on because parents are upset.   Jenn T Grace:              It's ridiculous.   Michaela M:                It's the younger generation I think gets it.   Jenn T Grace:              You know what's going to be interesting, is your vantage point from the perspective that you have grown children now, and now you also have an almost three year old. So to see kind of the differences and the social acceptance and the social norms of just what's happening in your son's lifetime at this point versus your other children's. I feel like that's going to be so interesting to kind of see, to see how matter of fact this young generation- the future leaders are going to be around all of these things.   Michaela M:                Well yes it is. My wife and I were always very open minded and supportive of the uniqueness and we- you could say we leaned as liberal. And we raised our kids to be that way, and my older kids are 24, 30 and 32, and they're doing things with their lives that are very socially oriented and I'm very proud of them. I feel a lot of it had to do with their upbringing. And so there isn't going to be a huge difference from what I saw and am seeing now, but I will say that while I was transitioning, my kids because of society at large, they felt very embarrassed and worried that their life was going to turn upside down. So they hid me, you know I had to stay away from everybody that knew anything in their lives, and hide when their friends came over and such. And I think that was a sign of those times. That was a sign that they were living in a world that was different than what we were teaching them.   Jenn T Grace:              Versus how you're now youngest son, how that would have played out if we fast forwarded fifteen or twenty years.   Michaela M:                Yeah I mean now it's like he goes to preschool, and after we're done I'll take him over there, and there I'm his mommy, and it's totally okay that he has two mommies to all the kids, to all the teachers, to all the parents. I went through a ceremony at my congregation- we're Jewish, and I went through a religious ceremony this last weekend where I decided I wanted to be renamed in the Jewish religion because at eight days old a Jewish boy gets their name at a birth ceremony and I wanted to get my renamed in the Jewish religion even though seven years ago I legally had my name just changed. And then I got to speak to the congregation to kind of come out to them because I've only been with this congregation a year, and it was such a wonderful experience. The warmth, and the love, and people in the congregation who'd been there for 22 years said it was the greatest night of that whole synagogue.   Jenn T Grace:              That's amazing.   Michaela M:                And we had a trans chorus sing some songs, we did a whole pride Shabbat around it- a Shabbat, and it was a magical experience, and I don't know how possible that would have been thirty years ago. A lot of people are changing thank goodness, although this might be a little different than most. This wasn't in West Hollywood, this was in suburbia so it was so refreshing. And there were people in the congregation in their eighties that were hugging me and crying.   Jenn T Grace:              Amazing.   Michaela M:                I'm getting emotional talking about it. I cried the whole night.   Jenn T Grace:              I can see why. You know what, I think the thing is, is that we look at the media and we're horrified by what we see because the media is controlled by just a couple of people, and the reality in so many ways is what you're talking about, where there's such inclusion even in suburbia in L.A. County. Like to have that type of experience, and to be so embraced, I feel like the media would twist that around and make it look like some hate-filled act, when really all you experienced was love which is so amazing.   Michaela M:                Well I think the media here in southern California is mostly open-minded and maybe somewhat liberal minded about these things. I mean they're very supportive of this direction. I don't know how if that had taken place someplace else in the country, I think it'd be a lot more of what you're saying, yeah.   Jenn T Grace:              And how do you feel about not media's representation from a news standpoint or anything like that, but from a what we're seeing on television lately, or what we're seeing in the movies as it relates to the trans community? How are you feeling about what you're seeing and its impact on trans visibility kind of more broadly?   Michaela M:                Well a close friend of mine just nine months ago started the first trans talent agency in the country, and the roles that she's getting for people now, there's so much more interest in it now and to get it right. I actually did the consulting for Laverne Cox's character in Orange is the New Black and at that time I met with the creator, Jenji Kohan and her team of writers, and I said, "Look I-" and this was like six years ago and I said, "I don't need to be paid for this, and I don't need any credit, but I ask two things. That you get it right because so many roles have been stereotyped and make trans people look crazy or sick or sexually perverted. And the second thing was to hire a trans actress to play the role which doesn't get done hardly at all." We use people that are not trans to play trans roles in Hollywood. And to her credit, she didn't have to do either because I don't have any power over that production, but she did both and I think that character being so successful and getting so much attention- I mean Laverne Cox was on the cover of Time magazine.   Jenn T Grace:              Which is amazing.   Michaela M:                The trans tipping point. And I think that started, opened the door, and we're seeing more and more roles and interest in roles in both television and in movies and film that are real to life and not stereotype. You'll still occasionally get characters that are kind of caricatures but I think it's getting better. I think it's getting better. And the film industry is somewhat liberal minded so I don't think the judgment was there, but they do reflect a lot of what the public wants of course, it's how they make money, and it's things like Hollywood often leads the way to doors opening and minds opening. So I hope that's a good thing.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah absolutely. And how does it feel for you to have been able to consult on such a blockbuster type of series that I feel like when- I don't know that anyone knew how big the show was going to be. So how does it feel to know that you had such an integral piece to making sure that trans representation really truly came through as it was intended?   Michaela M:                Well I have no idea. I thought the show would be successful because Jenji and her track record, and she seemed to have a great group of writers. But just I'm really pleased to see how well it went over and how that role made a difference. I'm not taking any credit for it, I think it's Jenji who made the right decisions and to do it right. And she made the role a little bit bigger than it was in the book, which to her credit I think she wanted to make a statement.   Jenn T Grace:              And I feel like Laverne Cox is such an incredible voice for the community, and I think just knowing how many people love that show, just the amount of impact that she herself is making. It's incredible to watch in so many ways just to see the power that one person has, even yourself, the amount of influence and power that you yourself have because this is something you've dedicated yourself to, to really just bringing about awareness and change across the board. It's just- it's powerful to witness.   Michaela M:                Well first of all I just feel incredibly fortunate that I can be in this position and do these things, but it's Laverne- I think was the right person at the right time, and I know she's got other big roles coming up. She's certainly taken advantage of that first well known role to become a spokesperson, and one that we greatly admire. Yes, she's made a real impact.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah I think it's because she's using her voice for good. I feel like there's a lot of people who are kind of thrust into the limelight and they may not be the best representation for a particular community, and then they do more harm than good, and in this case I feel like Laverne has really just kind of amplified such a strong message which is so exciting. And like you said, being on the cover of Time is just such an amazing kind of nod.   Michaela M:                You know when a magazine takes that chance and does that, they're part of the tipping point. They help move it in that direction. But yeah, she's been great. I'm good friends with Candis Cayne, she's had some roles, and I'm acquaintances- I see her often at events and we sit and talk with Caitlin, and I know there's a lot of controversy in the community about whether she's doing good or bad. But she does want to help, she does enjoy being in a role where she can make a positive impact.   Jenn T Grace:              I've heard a lot of controversy in regards to just things that she's said and done, and my response always to that is that everybody is on their own journey, and it's not for me to say what her journey should be, nor is it my place to say what yours should be. So I feel like we all have to just remember that for what good there is, the fact that she is a public figure, that's great, but at the same time I'm sure transitioning in some kind of quieter manner may likely have been her preference, and it's not fair that we're just kind of holding the spotlight on her and judging her for her every move. So I feel like in a lot of ways she's just kind of been hit with a lot of unfairness from a lot of people, including people within the LGBT community.   Michaela M:                Yeah well I agree with a lot of that. I think she wants to use that position though of being in the limelight. I think she knew- she tried, as she told me she was initially trying to transition in her thirties and she was so afraid because she was so in the limelight of what was going to happen. But I think at this point in her life, she hit her sixties she realized it's now or never, and that she knew she was going to be in the limelight. And so I think she embraced that as best she could to try and do- use it to do some good, and I think it is a purpose for her, and it's a calling she feels to do some good with this. Of course she makes a lot of money with the show, and people are going to look at that and say she's doing it all for the money, but I can't deny that part of it. But I also know that I believe from my talks with her that she's doing a lot of this because she wants to do some good.   Jenn T Grace:              And you know ultimately her money and influence is what has gotten her on TV's in very rural parts of America to expose them to what the trans community looks like, and she might be the first experience somebody ever has, and that is not a bad thing because there is an evolution, there is a journey for getting people to understand, and awareness and education around the trans community and the LGBT community as well. And I feel like for that alone, just being able to get people to listen and pay attention to her, even if she does screw up here and there, she's still helping make an impact on some level.   Michaela M:                More than anybody in this country, she's responsible for bringing the T out of the closet and for better or for worse because we talked about the pushback, of people pushing back against this. [Inaudible 00:35:09]. She has increased exposure tremendously.   Jenn T Grace:              And how are you feeling about the support from the LG and B of our community as it relates to the trans movement right now? Because I feel like there's a lot of variables in terms of what parts of the country you're in, what types of end goals people have, but I feel like there's still such a disconnect in so many ways between our community broadly.   Michaela M:                Well there needs to be- and now there are more every month, organizations that are strictly focused on trans health for children, trans development advocacy and policy like the National Center for Trans Equality, which is amazing what they've accomplished. And on the other hand we still have a lot of- every time you see a major center in a city and it's called the LGBT Center, and the T has for many years felt like the weak cousin of LGB. And to some degree that's changing. I know a board member of the Trevor Project, a lot of focus is going on trans because of the realization of the needs of the trans community being so great right now. These suicides- are you familiar with the Trevor Project?   Jenn T Grace:              Yes, but if you could give kind of a super quick overview for the listeners in case they don't, that'd be great.   Michaela M:                Oh yeah, so the Trevor Project, they are the largest organization in the United States working to eliminate suicides in the LGBT youth, ages 13 to 24. And suicide is the second leading cause of death in teenagers to begin with, in gay lesbian transgender kids it's much higher, and in those that are not supported by their families they're eight times more likely to commit suicide. So it's an epidemic, it's at its highest level ever because as all this pushback goes on and kids are thrown out of their family and their places of faith, they're feeling hopeless. And so the Trevor Project works to connect these people with their lifeline. I volunteer myself on the Trevor Crisis Line, and every day we're taking hundreds of calls of kids that are in crisis. So the point I was going to make was that about half of our- what we call our high risk crisis calls are coming from trans youth, and that's a much, much higher proportion than kids now that are trans compared to gay and lesbian. And so they're realizing at the Trevor Project the great need for increasing counseling, increasing their outreach and services to the trans community. And I think in every LGBT organization out there, this is what's happening. They're realizing the needs of trans, and so I don't think we're so much the weak cousin anymore as we used to be. Like I said there are the needs for the trans only organizations, but I think for a long time there was like, 'We need to separate the T, we need to not be LGBT anymore.' I don't agree with that. I think it's working just fine.   Jenn T Grace:              Which is amazing. So as we kind of conclude here, what is next for you? What are your plans? Like what does your future look like for even five years from now- or a year from now, or five years from now?   Michaela M:                Well I don't know if I can keep up this intensity, but certainly my California Trans Workplace Project is really first getting off the ground and I hope that's going to continue to develop in a way that I could have people- staff that- I'm used to building organizations and I want to build this as an organization that doesn't require me to be 80% of its energy, and then keep that moving. Like speaking of taking it to a different level, I've just launched my website, www.MichaelaSpeaks.com to elevate my speaking to move into areas of the country and internationally that I hadn't been speaking before. To not always be speaking- less to the choir so to speak and more to groups that need to hear the message. And so that's another thing, I think I'll be traveling more and my partner and I have to figure out how that's going to work because my family life is so important to me. But you know, I continue to run my business and I think that will still be there because I need a source of income, especially to do all these things. And I live now in Los Angeles, and I don't know if I'll still be here in five years from now, I'd like to experience what it'd be like to live in other areas of the country and the world, but those are things that are on my plate.   Jenn T Grace:              That's amazing. This has been such a great interview, I really appreciate your time. I know that you just mentioned that people can go to www.MichaelaSpeaks.com. Are there any other ways in which you would prefer people to connect with you if they want to know more about what you're up to?   Michaela M:                You know they can check out my Facebook. For right now, I just have one Facebook and it's my personal and my public profile, but we will be upgrading that into another one that works off of the website. So Michaela Mendelsohn, that's my full name, and they can find me on Facebook. Eventually there will be a separate Facebook just for my community work.   Jenn T Grace:              Excellent, and in the meantime they can go to www.MichaelaSpeaks.com and check out what you're up to, and potentially hire you to come in and speak. That would be amazing, right?   Michaela M:                That's great, thank you for putting that out there.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you again, this has really been such a great and educational conversation. I so appreciate all the work that you're doing.     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.

#90 - How to Change the World with E. Jag Beckford   Jenn T Grace:              You are listening to the Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional Podcast, episode 90.   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 90 of the Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional Podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and again I have another interview for you. So we are definitely on a roll full steam ahead with a lot of interviews over the last couple of months, and I just keep getting the opportunity to connect with awesome and interesting people, and if you're listening to this and you think that you would be a good guest on the show, please feel free to reach out at any time. If you go to www.JennTGrace.com and go through the Contact Us page, you can certainly send us a note through there.                                     So we have another interview today as I just mentioned, and Jag Beckford- so E. Jag Beckford is a guest that was recommended to me from Mona Elyafi who was a podcast guest herself quite some time ago, and she is a PR agent and she works with a lot of LGBT clientele. So it's been really amazing to get Mona sending me more people that are really interesting to talk to.                                     So today we're talking to Jag, and their business is Rainbow Fashion Week as well as Jag & Co. And those are two businesses; one being a fashion week that happens in New York City every June for Pride, and also a clothing line. So on today's show we talk a lot about just how the evolution of going from an entertainment attorney into launching a fashion line, and launching Rainbow Fashion Week, and all that great stuff. You will note that this is airing and we're in August, and we were making references to Rainbow Fashion Week coming up because we did record this in the beginning of June. So if you're listening to this now, you have already missed this year's Rainbow Fashion Week, however it will be going into its fourth year next year, so I would highly, highly recommend getting on Jag's radar now while you can, so that way you can keep up to date with all the stuff that's going on. But I highly recommend just staying tuned, and listening to Jag's story because it's really interesting, and the incredible amount of purpose-driven and mission-driven nature of this business is incredible. The goal of Rainbow Fashion Week and Jag & Co. are really to make us a more sustainable planet, which is pretty cool to see that kind of weaved in through LGBT.                                     So it's going to be great, I assure you of this. So if you want to get links that were mentioned in today's episode, if you go to www.JennTGrace.com/90 that is for episode 90, you can get access to the transcript, and the stuff that we talked about in today's episode. And without further ado, here is my interview with Jag.                                     So this podcast is the Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional Podcast, and I think that's why Mona thought it would be great for us to connect. So today I would love if you can start off by giving the listeners kind of a broad overview of who you are and what you do, and then my method is to just start asking you questions based on what you said to just kind of talk about your brand, and what you do, and how you're putting yourself out there to the world.   Jaguar Beckford:        No problem. Okay so my name is E. Jaguar Beckford. I am the Executive Producer of an annual event in New York called Rainbow Fashion Week. I'm also the CEO of Jaguar & Company Clothier, short Jag & Co. which is pretty much what it's known by. I just design clothing for more gender fluid women, women who are more male identified, but gender fluid women because pretty much it's about everyone enjoys wearing clothing that fits well, looks well, et cetera. And my background is I've been an entertainment attorney for about fifteen years, but ironically I put myself through law school designing clothing, so it's not a far stretch. So that's pretty much who I am, and hopefully we'll have an opportunity to tell you a little bit more about Rainbow Fashion Week, which is coming up in two weeks.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah, that's what I was going to ask you. In looking at your bio, and seeing that you came from an entertainment attorney background, and then now you have Rainbow Fashion Week; how did that idea hit you that this was something you should do, and can you just give kind of a broad overview of what Rainbow Fashion Week is, how many people come, what the purpose is, and all those great details?   Jaguar Beckford:        Okay so it wasn't a great leap or far at all to go from the entertainment business into the fashion business. One, as I previously stated that I actually designed throughout law school, so I designed jeans, tee shirts, I made clothing, and I sold them in my off time from school. Rainbow Fashion Week was actually conceptualized probably a couple weeks after I launched Jag & Co. And I just recall when rolling out to take my final vow to- when the designer goes out and everything, I said, 'Wow you know-' in that moment it's just so clear. In that moment I realized that fashion events are not just about the designer, but are more about all of the creative talents that come together to make the designer's vision- to bring it into fruition. And I said wouldn't the audience love to see the art of fashion, and not just what a designer put on the runway, but more the artistry of hair, makeup, and style. And so in that moment I was committed to say, 'I'd like to see an event where people can come and enjoy the artistry or the art of fashion as we call it. So it was conceptualized in 2013, and we got so many ways that we connected to our audiences; we did live streaming, casting, and so we reached over 20,000 viewers, attendees. We had about- I would say, I think our first year we had about maybe almost a million impressions just because social media was really buzzing about what was going on in this new type of fashion event. And so you know, we were just very committed to give new designers and existing designers, makeup artists, stylists a platform to be able to show the artistry of what they do. And so that's more of what Rainbow Fashion Week is really about. It's about the art of fashion.   Jenn T Grace:              That's awesome. And now is there anything in terms of just the fashion industry more broadly, other types of events that are doing it the way you're doing it? Or is this kind of a completely new take on things?   Jaguar Beckford:        We actually want to change how fashion is presented to the public. So the reason I say it that way, if you think about it, someone decided that women should wear high heels. Someone decided that women should put on rouge and makeup on their face. But men don't do it. Men don't wake up in the morning and say, "Oh I have to put on stockings, and I have to wear high heels," et cetera, so if we really look at what the fashion industry has become, you know it was a male-dominated industry and pretty much we had designers putting things on women primarily because the women models were who really drove the fashion industry. So we had very, very creative souls who decided, 'Well I'm going to create this fantastic so-and-so to put on this model's head, these amazing shoes to put on this model that they could barely walk in,' and so it was pretty much a very male-dominated society that was dressing us, almost like dolls. And it kind of just moved us over into how women were supposed to dress, and what they were supposed to wear, and so on and so forth. So if you actually look back in time, you'll see when women finally said, 'Hey, why do I have to dress like that? How come I can't wear a man's suit? Or come I can't wear a man's suit that's tailored? That can look just as good and I can look as sexy.' So it took someone to break that mold and to say, 'You know, I don't want to conform to that.' And so when I looked at the fashion industry I said, 'Well why do we have to conform? Why do we have continue to have size zero to two models walk the runway when they're not part of our average taking on a daily basis?' I don't see size zero to two people on an average day. I don't go into a department store and says, 'Wow I want to wear that outfit because I want to look just like that person that I saw in Vogue magazine.' It just wasn't reflective of who I was, and who I knew our community was as a whole. And so I said to my team members, I said, "Guys, you know we have an opportunity to change the standard for the norms of what fashion events are. We can make this more fashion expose. We can make them more about fashion and experiences, and have people actually leave still getting the sense of what a runway show is, but at the same time have a total different type of presentation." And so that's where we came up with our commitment to Rainbow Fashion Week was.   Jenn T Grace:              That sounds amazing. So where in this timeline did you launch Jag & Co.? So your actual clothing line? Where did that happen?   Jaguar Beckford:        Jag & Co. was launched in 2013. And it was so funny because I actually said- I was like, "Wow I'm going to actually take a hit with Jag & Co. not really being able to brand and develop and put things into production in the window that I would want. You know we got very great, and we've had continued success coming at us before. Surprisingly people love Jag & Co. We get standing ovations at shows, people love our products, we do one-of-a-kind types of suspenders, and ties that we make from craft items, so that's kind of a way of repurposing and things like that. So technically ideas came in where we said, 'We don't have to always go out and buy new rolls of fabric. We can look at some of the existing things and say well why can't we create beautiful things from these products as well that people would love and enjoy?' So Jag & Co. took a step back in 2013 to really go out in full production. And I said that we would have our natural evolution through Rainbow Fashion Week, and so I have a day which is called the Haus of Jag & Co. This year it's June 18th which happens to be my birthday, it just kind of happened that way, and our theme this year is transition. From the time that I launched Jag & Co. I can say approximately nine to ten of my mottos have transition. And I've just been there fully supporting them, I always have very kind words because I've noticed that the community tends to begin to shun them, and their language begins to change as it relates to, 'Well how do I now speak to this person?' The same person that you knew and loved and that you embraced in the Facebook group, now all of a sudden your words are harsh because you don't understand why the new posts of someone who just had their surgery, why that's important to them to be able to present that to their community. And so I decided to do a show that pretty much honored what their struggles have been, and that's the other thing that's different about Rainbow Fashion Week. We have themed events with social responsibility causes that we tie into our shows. Not just a name and a pamphlet, but we actually tie them into the show thematically as we present it to the audience. So this is a whole other way of how we can present a plethora of things to an audience once we have their attention.   Jenn T Grace:              Wow that's incredible to have such a social good component to things, and I obviously don't have to tell you this but you were just saying how a lot of times people within our own community get ostracized, and the fact that you're finding a way to embrace their transitions, I feel like is such an incredible gift that you're providing to not just the models that you're working with but to the community at large.   Jaguar Beckford:        Yeah and what motivates me is I receive letters from people all over the world. And when I say 'all over the world' I mean all over the world.   Jenn T Grace:              That's awesome.   Jaguar Beckford:        I received notices this year from a young lady who was in a play called 'The Little Prince' in the UK, and she just reached out and she said, "Oh my God, I love what Rainbow Fashion Week is about. I would love to be able to walk in something like it." One, the person didn't see the day would be able to do something like that because you know we have Eight Days of Queer so it's not just like one event that happens one time, and you can't get there during a specific day of the week, so on and so forth, so it just gives people more opportunities to plan to come. But just the mere fact that we would be accepting that she's 5'2" and last year I did an event at the Brooklyn Museum and my shortest model was 4'11". After just training her how to walk and show her the type of confidence I wanted her and what she was wearing to present Jag & Co., she killed it. I mean 4'11". And so we wanted people to see that it's not about your size because that person has to go out and shop for things just as the 5'11" 5'10" model that's a size zero has to as well. And I received another email from a police officer in Camden, New Jersey. She's actually going to be in my show this year. And she said, "Jag, I'm in my thirties," she said, "I feel like I'm in my best body, my best frame of mind." She was like, "I would just love to walk in your show." And you know, everybody can't walk in my show but it was her story; her story motivated me about what was going on in her life. And just to be able to give someone like that an opportunity to do that is all of what Rainbow Fashion Week is about. Another came from a woman in Norway, her name is Siri, and same thing. She was like, "I will come to the United States just for an opportunity to have this experience." And you know, that's pretty much what it is. We want to be able to just show people that you, the average person, have a right to hit a runway. And so we try to actually create shows and experiences for all of our community. So we have a pet show- Rainbow Pet Fashion Show, our social cause this year is dog waste composting. And people are like, "Jag isn't that a stretch?" I said, "Why should it be a stretch? We have an audience, we have an opportunity in having our pet lovers within our queer community to be able to help us, help the city of New York, clean up the city. Why not take advantage of it?" And so that's what we kind of look out; how can we take advantage of utilizing our audience and our voice and having accomplished. And that's what's important to us, so that's what's different about Rainbow Fashion Week and that's why our tagline is 'Not your average fashion week.'   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah I feel like the way that you're incorporating such an inclusive message seems to be so obvious. Like so as you were talking I opened up your website, www.JagAndCo.com for anyone who wants to go check it out, and just looking at the different gender expressions of everybody that you're using for models who are modeling your clothing line, I feel like it's incredible because I feel like anybody who goes there and is looking, they're going to find somebody that they resonate with that they're not used to seeing as a model for clothing.   Jaguar Beckford:        Right, exactly.   Jenn T Grace:              So in terms of how the clothing side works, are you manufacturing all of that stuff yourself? And is it any type of on demand, or do you have to purchase a lot of stuff in advance? Is it tailored? How does all that work?   Jaguar Beckford:        For Jag and Co. specifically?   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah.   Jaguar Beckford:        For Jag and Co. products we purchase our materials, we have our patterns, and we kind of make maybe two pieces of a kind. We're not in production so a lot of times it may be one piece that's for show just to get an idea. We're still feeling through what it is that we think people want. It's so funny because in 2013 I came out with the paperboy and that came from my grandfather. So you know I had like an old black and white picture, and I just fell in love with the forties and fifties style, and I said wouldn't it be great that we could present this style to our young and older aggressive females and show them very hip, swanky and sophisticated. And the reason I say swanky is because I'll tell this to bring the craziest socks. I don't care if it's Mickey Mouse or whatever, and I said, "I'm going to show you how to dress up and dress down." And so sometimes we create pieces just for the runway because we're still trying to get a sense of what it is that our market is looking for. We're actually going to be going into production soon which we're going to be doing a crowd on a campaign and it's basically going to be a suit that takes you from casual play to formal. And so yeah, that's pretty much what our next step is going to. We were looking for a place to do our production and we had an opportunity to work with a goodwill ambassador in Honduras and she has been over there doing textile study and she said, "While this would be a great opportunity, I think we can actually get a space for you guys." She's actually found a 20,000 foot- it's a raw space and I said, "Yeah but how do we get things going there?" And she said, "Well the mayor is willing to give you guys a space." And so I decided that through Rainbow Fashion Dream Academy, we would- which we will be launching this year as well, we are going to start their first Women's Economic Empowerment Program. So technically it sounds like a lot but it really isn't. We're committing sewing machines, solar generator, and sewing kits, and so we're going to start the women off on their own small businesses. And then they'll be back into the system to start the next. And we're actually going to create a consortium of producers producing our production, not just for Jag & Co. but for some of these new designers who are coming through Rainbow Fashion Week. And so the Dream Academy is going to give some of these makeup people, designers an opportunity to go to Honduras and see what it's like starting a production, and we'll pretty much be starting everything raw. So they'll be building, they'll be donating their time, they'll be sitting down with seamstresses, and so on and so forth, and that's a new venture but that's how we're going to take Jag & Co. as well as some of our other designers into production and some of the others that are coming through Rainbow Fashion Week, we say, "If you give us a certain number of hours we will open other opportunities and doors for you globally." We've also been invited to come to Nepal to do a Rainbow Fashion Week event. We've also been invited to Johannesburg, South Africa. So there are other opportunities for the people who work within the Rainbow Fashion Week team, because we're building a team, we probably have now about sixty or so team members on various productions for each show. And so now we want them to be able to grow with us, and now seek other opportunities that they never even had within the fashion world as it exists here because the existing fashion world and present model is very elitist so the average person can't just walk in and explore the opportunities that exist. So yeah we have a model and we really try to build on this model, and we're trying to show people that the old model is not the way. We need to work towards a new model that includes our community in greater perspective.   Jenn T Grace:              Wow, your mission and purpose in life, and everything that you do seems so incredibly huge and so powerful and impactful. And I know that we are running up against you having another interview right after this, but to kind of close us out if you were to think what Rainbow Fashion Week is going to look like in five years, or what Jag & Co. or just your brand as yourself will look like in five years, what do you think that's going to be? What is your vision for five years from now?   Jaguar Beckford:        Our vision for five years is we will have set the standard for the new fashion week from the standpoint of what our social responsibility is globally, what it is we're doing to our planet. We will have set the standard that more brain trust attention goes into the planning of an event. I just finished doing an article and I said we're David up against the Goliath of the fashion industry. So I know that we're going to make a lot of change within the industry, I know that we're going to catch the attention. A lot of the big corporate giants that are going to want to become a part of and reach our audience from a variety of perspectives. So I know that we are going to create the new model for fashion. I strongly feel that, most of the people that work with us, they strongly feel it as well. We are going to cause the fashion industry to take a look at how they produce these events, how wasteful they are, the products that they purchase, how they purchase them, how they're disposed. So from the standpoint of being a solar- the first solar neutral event, we are going to attempt to reduce our carbon footprint by at least one third, just in energy- electric energy consumption alone. And some people said, "Why is this large fashion event sold out and sets up tents where you have all of the sun, and no one is sourcing solar energy? Why are they using nine, ten, eleven, twelve thousand diesel fuel generators, noise pollution, carbon pollution? So we know that we're going to begin to shape this industry. And it's not from the standpoint that we're something that's- we just want people to stand up and pay attention, and we think that we are going to be the organization that is just going to have people stop and re-evaluate when they're doing a production, how to do a production that reduces our carbon footprints because truly our planet matters, and everything that we're doing we want to consider what that means.   Jenn T Grace:              Wow, such an incredible mission. Thank you so much for taking the time to connect with me today. For anyone who wants to get in touch with you, how would you recommend that they do that?   Jaguar Beckford:        Well you can send us information on our website, www.RainbowFashionWeek.com. There's a contact form and it comes straight through to info@rainbowfashionweek.com. They can also go to our website. And Jag & Co. you can probably reach me, JagAndCo, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, you can find me on any of those and inbox me. I always try to respond to everyone no matter how busy I am. So definitely thank you for your time, and I appreciate you guys helping us get this message out as well.   Jenn T Grace:              Absolutely. Thank you so much and have a great day. Appreciate it.   Jaguar Beckford:        Thank you, bye bye.   Jenn T Grace:              Bye bye. 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.    

How to Own a Room (or crowd) with Robbie Samuels   Jenn T Grace:              You are listening to the Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional Podcast, episode 89.   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 89 of the Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional Podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and in line with the last half dozen episodes or so being interviews, I have another interview for you today. I'm so excited to welcome Robbie Samuels to today's podcast, where we really dive deep into personal branding from a networking type of component, or from a networking aspect. So we talk about what it means to strategically network, and volunteering, and how to work a room if you will. And Robbie's business is around helping people do just that, helping them network with sessions. So he's a public speaker, he does a session called The Art of the Schmooze as well as a variety of other types of sessions and speaking engagements, which all focus around building great relationships and strong and welcoming communities. His website is www.RobbieSamuels.com so I'm really excited to basically just dive right into today's episode where you will learn a lot about networking, and how that can be good for your business whether you are an introvert who might be afraid to show up to a networking event, to the very outgoing extrovert, and everyone in between. For any information that Robbie and I talk about in today's episode, you can go to www.JennTGrace.com/89 and that is for episode number 89. And without further ado, here is my interview with Robbie.                                     Alright so let's just start if you will by telling the listeners a little bit about yourself, what you're up to currently, and then we'll just dive into some things about personal branding.   Robbie Samuels:         Thank you so much Jenn, and I appreciate being on your show. So a little bit about me. Well I am currently a work-at-home dad to a five and a half month old which is the first and foremost thing on my mind. The work part gets a little bit in quotes because I'm still working out the schedule of what works while having an infant. But also focusing on my business as a professional speaker, and that mainly is that I get asked to come and speak to companies, to nonprofits, boards of directors, et cetera to talk to them about relationship building. And my most requested session is called Art of the Schmooze. And so we can dive more into the different topics I do later, but part of building that business which I started on the side as sort of a side hustle in 2009, and then went full time in 2015, part of that is working on launching a podcast called On the Schmooze where I interview leaders from different sectors, and ask them about how they've built their professional networks and stayed in touch with people, and what success looks like for them. And I'm also blogging regularly on the topics of relationship building, networking tips, et cetera. That's kind of where I'm at currently.   Jenn T Grace:              Nice, okay good now I have about fourteen questions which I knew would happen. So to start, how did you come up with the topic of the On the Schmooze? Like how did that form and evolve?   Robbie Samuels:         On the Schmooze as the podcast or Art of the Schmooze the session?   Jenn T Grace:              The session first, and then I think the podcast we can get into next.   Robbie Samuels:         Sure so Art of the Schmooze actually came about- I was running a group that I started ten years ago called Socializing for Justice, and this is a cross-cultural, cross-issue progressive community and network in Boston that really brings together likeminded progressives. And about a year in to organizing that, I recognized that there were regulars who came to all of our events. They weren't focused on only one type of event, they came to everything. And I was concerned that this group was going to become very clicky. And we've all experienced coming into a space for the first time, we've assumed that everybody else is best friends, nobody else is new, and it's very awkward as a newcomer. So I wanted this to continue to be a very welcoming space so I invited the regulars out for coffee and we started chatting about what it takes to make that kind of welcoming space. I asked them if they would come fifteen minutes early, and they said yes. I asked them if they would maybe help out at the front door in a more formal role of greeting or helping with nametags, sure. And then I said for that first hour, go out of your way to meet someone you don't know. Like just try to meet some of the new people and introduce them to the other regulars, and they said, "Sure we could do that." I said, "Okay then after that just kind of mingle and work the room," and that's where I got a lot of angsty responses because the room that I was talking to was filled with people who were shy and/or introverted, and so the idea of floating a room, chatting with strangers was the antithesis of a good time for them. So I started coaching one-on-one, started sharing some tips. I'm an outgoing extrovert so I wasn't trying to teach them how to be me, I actually don't really want the world to be filled with more outgoing extroverts. I think there's enough people who speak with very little prompting and take up a lot of space. But I did want them to be seen, heard and respected when they arrived in a room, and to be part of creating this welcoming culture. And it worked. The training evolved from there because speaking one-to-one was not a good use of my time, and I guess that was probably around 2007, 2008 that I first created this training, this session, and it evolved until 2009 I started getting paid to do speaking engagements on a variety of topics, and that has become my most requested one. And it's helped such a wide array of audiences really be more present and mindful and strategic about their networking too. So it's about body language, and eye contact and business cards, but it's also about just taking that time to figure out why are you going to this event in the first place? And then going from there. So it's chock full of information, two hour interactive training, and I love doing it because really people clearly remember a lot of the content which is so rare in a training.   Jenn T Grace:              No kidding, right? So how did you take it from this free offering you were doing with your people, and then you moved it to this one-on-one coaching situation with people, and now fast forward to 2009 you're able to get paid to be doing this. What made that leap really natural or maybe unnatural for you?   Robbie Samuels:         So what's funny is that, Jenn I love doing professional speaking because I've always loved doing public speaking. When I was in college I was on a speaker's bureau, and I did a variety of trainings, and there was this gap of about a dozen years where I just didn't have a topic. So when the opportunity came to create this and share it, I started to share it from like 2007 to 2009, I was just sharing it with any organization locally that I thought would benefit. So lots of really, really small grassroots groups I kind of met with and helped them out. In 2009 a former colleague of mine- actually not someone I worked with but someone I'd known years ago, and I hadn't actually lived in the same state in probably seven or eight years. She reached out to me and said, "I know that you're doing these talks on networking, and I know that you are a fundraiser," because that was my profession, I was working a nonprofit organizing fundraising events doing major gift work. She said, "Will you come to D.C. and do a fundraising training for my board of directors?" So my answer of course was, "Um yes," and then I went and created a training called Fundraising: Getting Past the Fear of Asking. And I went down to D.C., this organization offered me $200 which was very little money in the world of speaking but I'd never been paid before so I also was really excited. They paid my plane ticket and I shared a hotel room with my friend. And when I got there, it was actually the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association so they were doctors, and they were there for their convention, and they have to talk to people about membership. So fundraising wasn't something they felt very comfortable with, but they were having a break and I went in, and I got a chance to meet all of them, and one by one I memorized their names and when they sat down around the table, and were about to begin, I said, "Oh we should do introductions," and I said, "Oh allow me." And I then introduced each of them one by one around the table.   Jenn T Grace:              And how many were there?   Robbie Samuels:         Eighteen or so.   Jenn T Grace:              Jesus that's awesome.   Robbie Samuels:         And they sat up straighter and just were like, "Whatever you have to tell us Robbie, we will listen."   Jenn T Grace:              That's awesome.   Robbie Samuels:         So that was my first time being paid, but what I did strategically was that when I billed them, I billed them $400 and then applied a 50% referral discount, and I did this because I knew that I needed to get my own mind around the value of what I was offering. And so they only were budgeted to give me $200 but I billed them $400 and then put a 50% referral discount so that the total was $200. And for the next year whenever someone asked me about doing a training, I said, "Oh my usual fee is $400," and then I slid it to whatever was comfortable for their budget because I was still working a lot with really small grass roots or volunteer run organizations. And then a year later this organization, I said $400, they said great without blinking an eye. I was like, okay. And I then increased it to $600 and again spent another year sliding it to whatever was comfortable for people. And then a year later it went to $800, and now it's gone on up. So really a lot of that is that the content for those trainings has gotten better in the years since I started doing this in 2009 because they're way more robust, I've presented it dozens and dozens of times. But it's also my own belief in my own value of what I can offer an organization. So I think that's a trick into how do you sort of move into being an entrepreneur and believing in what you're offering. For me I had to kind of put a value out there, and then allow the dollar amount to be settled along the way.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah I feel like that's definitely something that I find a lot of people are stuck on. Is 'what am I worth?' And I feel like people get stuck in how to value that, especially when you're looking at speakers. And I know you're part of the National Speakers Association, and I believe it says that you're a professional member which means that you are out there speaking a lot in order to be qualified if you will for that level of membership. So I think that a lot of people, they'll go from doing it for free and then immediately think that they have to jump to charging $5,000 for a talk. And you just clearly outlined that going from zero to $5,000 is not the avenue, but it's a matter of incrementally going further and further with what you're comfortable with, which I think you'll see more success if you gradually do it, rather than sticking a flag in the sand tomorrow and saying, "I'm now charging $5,000 for this" because your mindset may not actually be caught up with what you're asking, in my experience anyways.   Robbie Samuels:         You know Jenn, I've learned so much more about mindsets since 2009. I think every training that I've purchased online about online business, and being an entrepreneur starts with mindset. But I agree with you, that is what I was trying to do at the time. I also think that the client list has to really change for me to be charging $5,000. And so I'm pivoting now into working more with corporate organizations versus smaller nonprofits. So like right now my client list is more larger nonprofits and corporations, and it's exciting because it's a totally new market for me to be connecting with, and of course their ability budget-wise is very different than a really small organization. I feel like I want to have a nice balance portfolio though, where I still can offer- particularly on a local level where it's not involving a lot of travel, I want to offer these skills to organizations that I think will just benefit but couldn't otherwise have me come in. And one way I've done that is foundations. So for me, a foundation will have me come in for a half day or full day of trainings, and they'll invite all of their grantees, and so they're getting to bring me in and do this sort of like assistance, technical assistance, and capacity building, and it's great because the funding is actually coming from the foundation and the grantees just get to benefit from it.   Jenn T Grace:              Interesting. So for me, I have a similar setup that what you're describing where I do a lot of corporate engagements, and you can get paid good money for corporate engagements. So mine right now on average are right around like $9,500 for a corporate gig. That is not something a nonprofit in any way, shape or form could handle, but I feel like to some degree it's almost like my ability to give back when I do work with that smaller audience, but just because you're working with a smaller audience doesn't mean that there aren't ways to capitalize on that time in the room. So you can ask them in advance if they would send out emails to their list of people, however many that might be, or if you have a book to have them offer- give you the spotlight to kind of pitch your book to the room. So there's a lot of ways that even if you're only making $300, or even if you're not making any and it's completely pro bono, there's still ways that you can ask them for things because they're usually more than happy to do that because they understand the value that they're getting at no charge.   Robbie Samuels:         And actually speaking of that Jenn, even when I've slid my training- I no longer do completely zero, but I've slid it to like $100 for a lower organization, or $250 or something just to kind of- I want them to be committing to having me come in as a professional speaker, but I also let them know what my top rate is so that they know what they're getting. Because I think that sometimes when it is free, and this is also true for anyone who's attending and not having to pay to attend, they often don't commit the time in advance of what they want to get out of it. So when I'm brought into some audiences where they pay, I ask them if they looked ahead of time to research who I was. 'Did you Google me? Did you get a sense of what I was going to be talking about?' And more hands go up because they committed their own dollars, even if it's a little bit of money. But if it's a free event and I ask that question they're like, "Well I was just told to be here."   Jenn T Grace:              And that's the same thing for everything, right? So if you do someone's telesummit online for example, and there's all of this amazing content- because there are a lot of telesummits out there, and a lot of webinars, a lot of online content that is really amazing, but if you're not paying for it the chances of you taking action on it are so much more greatly reduced. Versus if you're like, 'You know what? I just signed up for this person's course. It's three months, it just cost me $1,000.' You bet your ass people are fully committed and all in on making sure that they get every possible minute of value out of that particular program. And it's the same thing with showing up to speak, I totally agree.   Robbie Samuels:         Yeah, mindset.   Jenn T Grace:              Totally is mindset. So in terms of mindsets, and balancing the fact that you're now a stay-at-home dad. So Grant is young, and so how are you finding that you're able to grow your personal brand? And one of the reasons why I wanted you on the show is because if you go to your website which is www.RobbieSamuels.com and that will be in the show notes, I feel like you have- it's really succinct and very clear as to what you do, who you are, the types of clients that you work with. But how are you finding that growing your personal brand is kind of balancing with fatherhood right now? Because I can't imagine- my kids are seven and nine and I still have challenges at times. So having a five and a half month old is definitely a challenge unto its own. So how is that working for you right now?   Robbie Samuels:         Well I think part of my personal brand is that I am a convener and a connector, and I can't turn that part of me off. So when there was a new challenge of being a new parent, I basically dove right in. And so in August before my son was even born- he was born in mid-December of 2015, in August a few months beforehand, I actually started an online Facebook group for parents with children around my kid's age. And it is now over 400 members and we're hosting a monthly baby clothing swap and other socials, and cross-promoting a lot of great content, as well as having an amazing online support system. So by doing that and making an effort in the first few months to really show up with him to a lot of different parent groups, I've now established myself in a very short amount of time within this sort of parent network in Boston. So wherever I go, someone says- they either know me or they know of me and they say, "Oh I'm in your group. Hey everybody, this is Robbie." So to me that was really important because as a work-at-home, stay-at-home dad I knew that during the week I was going to be around a lot of moms. And so this is sort of a weird catch 22 of being praised for being a dad for doing little things, but being ostracized on the playground on the other hand. So now by offering, by being someone who hosts and convenes people, and creates value, I'm just practicing what I'm preaching in 'Art of the Schmooze,' and with all my training material, and all my blog posts and the podcast that I'll be launching, which is to offer, offer, offer before you ask. And it's wonderful because people know what I do, they're learning a little bit more about my business, I'm quite certain that as we get past the only knowing each other because we're parents, we'll start to know each other's work and professions, and there will start to be connections there as well. And so that's been something I've put a lot of energy into in the last year, is establishing sort of these foundational support networks because I want those for my family. And it's basically me practicing this philosophy of abundance. I'm at the point now where if I can imagine something that we might need for our family, I can put it out there to these different groups, and somebody will find it for us and respond, and offer to just bring it to us for free. So that's been a part of my personal brand; people now in this new sphere now know me. But really my personal brand has been a lot about that. Like Socializing for Justice, the group I mentioned earlier is turning ten years old this year. No one is paid to run that. We've had a few hundred events, we have almost 3,000 members, and it's all run by small donations that people give at the events. And it's been a wonderful sort of place to meet people, I met all my best friends, I met my wife through this, and again it's been really about offering before I ask. So when I launched my business sort of formally in 2015 after working for ten years at the same nonprofit, and saying, "Okay I'm going to take a side hustle, and I'm going to go into this full time," this was before my son was born, I was able to really do that without feeling like I was on my own because I had so much support and there were so many people who had just been like waiting for me to do this. So I think my personal brand is not just topic-based which is networking and Schmooze, I think people know me, but so many people thought that Socializing for Justice was my full time work because that's how they knew me. They didn't even know I actually had a very full- more than full time career that was separate from that. So I think offering is a big part of my brand.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah and it makes me think about ways in which people can continue networking outside of the traditional networking opportunities. So I think that what you're talking about is really important for people just to build more relationships that have meaning and value. And I think this probably might be specific to some industries probably wouldn't make sense for this. So actually maybe they would. I'm just thinking about how you have your parents' group, right? So there's 400 people in it, it's an opportunity for you to build new relationships with people outside of a transactional 'I'm trying to sell you' environment. But rather like you said, over time you'll start to develop those relationships and if you happen to need an attorney, granted there's guaranteed somebody in that group who's some kind of practicing attorney for some particular part of law. So it's kind of like a- it's a different way of looking at networking. So I would wonder if you were to give a tip to somebody, because this obviously comes really natural to you, to be the convener, to be the person who's putting together- putting bodies in a room and getting them to connect and work together. So for somebody who might be in introvert, or not even fully a shy person necessarily, but somebody who this is uncomfortable for, so somebody- a client, type of client that you've worked with in the past. What's one or two tips that you would give to them to help them be more of a convener so they can take advantage of networking opportunities where they least expect them to be?   Robbie Samuels:         I think it's wonderful. One thing is to realize that networking is just a matter of being in the world, and present, and aware of who's around you. So it doesn't have to be at a formal event. Someone I know wrote about their experience of having a conversation like online with the DMV, and that it dawned on her in that moment that that was networking. That they ended up into a whole conversation that they actually discovered a connection in the time they were standing around together, and it's just being open to that experience is a piece of it. The other thing is that I actually think convening and being a host for me is actually a way to overcome a fear that I have of not belonging. So I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling like, 'Hm I'm not sure if these people are going to like me. I don't know whether I belong here.' And particularly in the context of being a dad in a new parent space knowing that there aren't going to be a lot of dads wherever I go during the week. That convening parents in this way was a way for me to become known, and for people to appreciate what I have to offer because I am giving them a space to connect online, and then by hosting these monthly baby clothing swaps, I mean we're all benefitting from those resources being shared. And similarly with Socializing for Justice, by starting that it gave me a reason to talk to other people wherever I went in Boston because I had this resource to share, and all the regulars started doing that as well. It gave them sort of an opening of something to talk about. 'Oh you're new to Boston? You might want to check out this group. Oh you're looking to promote your events? Oh here, this group can help you.' They would be very clear ways into the conversation. Now you don't have to start by launching a whole huge group or anything like that, but you can whether online or offline create sort of these niche conversations. And one way to do that offline is something that I've done a lot with my good friend Dorie Clark, and I know you interviewed her earlier on this podcast. But we co-host dinners together, and she's really taken this to an art form. But we started doing this years ago, and we each would invite three or four colleagues and go out to dinner, and just like have a loosely- sort of loosely defined conversation that allowed people to bring more of their full selves, and that's the important part. Is that it's not so strictly business because when people find shared passions, they're both really, really into yoga, that actually can break down barriers much faster than finding out they're both lawyers. So creating opportunities like that are great because as the host of that small dinner gathering, even if you're a shyer person and have a hard time really kind of wandering into an open networking event, this is different, these are people that were hand selected to be here with you, and your whole role is to help them feel welcomed and comfortable. And so it really shifts things in your head, you become that host which is I think a mentality that we can all bring with us wherever we go.   Jenn T Grace:              I could not agree more. I was thinking about- when you were just talking about being a host, I remember when I first started learning about chambers of commerce, which is now an actual ten years ago, and I remember going to events and being somewhat frozen in fear of like I didn't know where to be, I didn't know where to go, I didn't know who to talk to, I didn't know anybody, I had travelled halfway across the state to get there, and it was all very awkward to me. But within a couple of months I'm like, 'You know what? My happy place is sitting behind the registration table because now I'm in control and I'm able to talk to every single person who comes in the room, but I have a purpose and a reason to be talking to them.' So I feel like for me it was just a matter of like how can I take this really awkward situation and find a way to network with people in a way that didn't feel threatening to me? And it happened to be helping people find their nametag. It seemed so simple, but for me it was a complete game changer because then you're able to follow up with people after the fact and say, "We only got a quick chance to say hello when you checked in, but I'd love to have coffee with you." So I think it's a matter of finding little ways to take yourself from being completely frozen and afraid of the situation that you're walking in, and making it easier and more attainable. And I think your idea of just having a couple people together that you don't know, and then- like you said it really comes back to mindset of being like, 'Okay my job here is not to be networking. My job here is to make sure that everyone else is networking.' But really when you're helping other people network you are yourself too, and it's just completely like you're fooling yourself, but it works.   Robbie Samuels:         Yeah Jenn, I talk a lot about the difference between inviting and welcoming. So as event planners we sit around and talk about who we wished attended our events. 'Oh I wish there were more of X people,' and we brainstorm where those folks might get information about our event. And so we send the invitation to new list serves, or post it on new bulletin boards, et cetera. And then those new folks and other folks arrive, but no one actually greets them. You know they sign in, they get their nametag, they circle the room, they look for an opening, they don't really find one, they stand around awkwardly, and then they leave shortly after. And then the next time we get together as the event planners we talk about retention, and how- well what can we do to keep these people that we made this effort? What could we do? And the answer to what we could do is put more of an emphasis on the welcoming than the inviting, and that's where 'Art of the Schmooze' was training our regulars to be hosts. Because it can't just be me, the person who booked the room, who greets people because often the person who booked the room is also dealing with AV, or catering, or some- getting a banner hung up. They're distracted in that time period when the first awkward newcomer arrives, which is usually even a few minutes before the official start time. So that's why we ask our regulars to arrive fifteen minutes early so that the event was sort of already happening when those first few newcomers arrive not knowing where to stand and what to do. And re-coach them to talk to those new folks and introduce them to the other regulars in the room. And just by doing these couple of things, and asking them to play this host role, it awakened within them this like sense of purpose in the room. Like I now have a role, and so matter how shy they were or how introverted and exhausted they found this sort of being in a space with a lot of people, they started to see, 'Oh there's someone standing off by themselves-' and they used to ask me permission at first. They'd be like, "Robbie should I go talk to them?" And I was like, "Yeah, that'd be great." Now they just do it. They just go over, and they chat with them, and then they introduce them to someone else. Now that's really different than if you really are that brand new person. If you're a guest and you've never been here before and you go and talk to the wallflower, you might have a great conversation, but neither one of you knows anyone else in the room and that's going to be a really difficult ending to the conversation. So I always ask people to be really mindful when they walk into a space, are they a guest like as in they're brand new, or have they been there a few times? And I think if you just show up three times within a space, within an organization’s events, or within an industry's events and you kind of get to know people. At that point you can really start to think of yourself as a host, and the way you kind of mingle in that room is going to be different.   Jenn T Grace:              And now how do you think connectors fit into this? Because I know for myself, and so since I'm networking primarily in LGBT environments it's a much smaller community, even in a larger city like Boston. But for myself I know that my style is usually if I just start talking to somebody random, which I typically have very little problems just going up and starting a conversation with somebody. But if I hear them say something that triggered a thought about a conversation I just had, I will walk that person from where I am to that other person and be like, "They two of you have to connect," and I will just go through the room and continue to do this, because I feel like to a certain degree you have to be mindful of your time, and there might be 100 people in the room and you want to be making sure that you're having conversations that are helpful to further your own agenda if you will. I don't like using that phrase but you know what I mean. How do you find that people who are natural connectors, or people who aren't natural connectors but would like to be, how do they fit into this equation, and where is their role?   Robbie Samuels:         Well so Malcolm Gladwell talked about connectors, and they know a lot of people and they like to connect them. And so some of us very naturally fall into that category, and you and I both do. And so exactly how you described the scene, I do that but I also have introduced two people who are just standing next to each other, and they assume that there's a reason I did that and they ask each other questions until they find that connection, and then they'll come running over excitedly saying, "Oh how did you know we both went to southern California schools?" You know so I think that it's interesting that I created a space where people are looking for those connections. On the other hand I think everybody has the ability to be a connector, and I'll give you a quick example. I was at a huge conference, 18,000 people, there was this like after party / networking event with like loud music, dark lights, not conducive actually to networking. The first person I chatted with was a college student, I haven't been in college in a decade or longer, so on the surface we had very little in common. And we chatted for a few minutes and at the end I said, "You know I don't know very many people here. Is there anyone you think I should meet?" And he got really excited, and he told me someone's name, and I said, "Oh that's great. I'd love to be introduced." And he grabbed my hand, and he dragged me through the crowd up to his intern's supervisor who was the Communications Director of a nonprofit that I'd wanted to get to know. And he introduced us, and I said, "Thank you so much," and I turned to the Communications Director and started chatted with him, and the student walked away all peacocked, 'I just did that. I just made that connection.' And how many people did he need to know in the room to be a connector? Just the one. And the other piece of this story is that you can't discount people because they're students, or assistants, or receptionists, et cetera, because they're all working for important people who have interns, and assistants, and receptionists. So he got super excited to make that connection, and it helped me leapfrog in this very large, loud crowd over to a good conversation. Like you said, you want to try to talk to the kinds of people you want to talk to. And that is my philosophy. I want to- that's my way of ending a conversation, if I'm in a room and I don't know a lot of people I ask that question, and otherwise I'll ask the reverse. If I'm hosting I'll say, "You know, I know a lot of people here, is there anyone you want to be introduced to?" And I'll just offer that, and that's a nice way to wrap up a conversation gracefully, but also help them or you kind of leapfrog to what hopefully is going to be another meaningful conversation.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah, absolutely. I love the direction that we've been going in this conversation. One of the things that I'm thinking about is the fact that you grew your brand very organically, and I feel like mine was the same way. Like it just- there was very clear this led to this, which led to this, and now here we are. For someone listening to this who- so you know it's the Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional Podcast. So in thinking about personal branding, and then also thinking about the LGBTQ community, how has the LGBTQ piece influenced what you're doing or not influenced what you're doing?   Robbie Samuels:         Well I wanted to work- when I moved to Boston in 2002 from New York, I wanted to work for a mission driven progressive organization that hosted multiple annual events. And I did a lot of contract work in my first couple years in Boston working at a number of different LGBT and HIV/AIDS healthcare organizations before I ended up at GLAD, GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, formerly Gay and Lesbian Advocates & Defenders based in Boston. And I think that the strategic volunteering that I did to get those first few jobs was really important. Volunteering for the health organizations doing outreach, volunteering at the AIDS walk, and this was all before I actually moved to Boston. I was coming every other weekend to do some sort of volunteer effort. So I think strategic volunteering was important, and then here I had this job where I was working at an LGBT mission driven organization, and I did that for a decade so I didn't feel like I needed to focus the rest of my life within that sphere. But for me I guess the way it influences me is that I'm an out trans man who is out online, I'm out when I do my trainings I talk about it, I talk about it in the context of feeling like a unicorn, and that we all know what it feels like to be a unicorn. You know like, 'Wow I didn't know unicorns existed. Can I ask you lots of questions? Hey what's it like to-' and there's a downside to being unicorn, to being sort of put under that spotlight, and that we don't want to do that to other people when we meet them. We want to avoid questions that are actually about something that someone can't choose. Like height, or skin color, or hair texture. But we want to more focus on things that people do choose, like their funky sunglasses, or the scarf they're wearing, et cetera. And so I do talk about it and I feel like my activism around LGBT, queer, trans politics has actually been to being an out professional, and to be out as a person who's organizing a cross-issue progressive community movement in Boston so that it wasn't like a singular focused issue-based organization when I started Socializing for Justice, but it was this like multi-faceted space that was extremely welcoming to queer and trans people, but it wasn't exclusively about queer and trans people. And we host an annual dating while progressive event on Valentine's Day and we use the exact same networking tags that we've used at our other major events. One says, 'Ask me about,' and the other says, 'I'm looking for.'   Jenn T Grace:              I love it.   Robbie Samuels:         There's no like check these different boxes if you're this and this, and if you're looking for this and this. It's like you throw a bunch of people in a room and they meet people, and they find connections, and they find friendships, and I love that like we're co-hosted by a number of progressive organizations including the Queer Poly Women Organization, and I just think like part of my activism is creating these spaces that allow so many different kinds of identities to be present. Because for most of us, most of the time when we're out in the world, we're only really able to be seen for one of our identities, and we're not able to really bring forward the complexity of who we are. So I want to create spaces where we can bring more of our full selves and share that, because that's actually how I think we form really strong connections.   Jenn T Grace:              And in that vein I guess then, that's really being authentic. It's being authentic to you, it's being authentic to your brand, and because it's authentic I feel like that's probably why you're seeing the success you're seeing because they get what they get. Like you are who you are, you're not trying to adapt or modify for different audiences, you're just kind of all in everywhere. Is that a fair statement?   Robbie Samuels:         Yeah I think about this also, about what do I post on Facebook? And my Facebook is public so you don't have to be friends- I don't know all my friends anyway is my thought pattern, so I thought why close it to friends only? So I get involved in some political conversations, I get involved in some issue conversations online, and for me I'm of the vein if you're not going to work with me because of my points of view, then that's okay.   Jenn T Grace:              Amen to that.   Robbie Samuels:         I don't want to like twist myself into a pretzel just because that's the pretzel you were looking for, if that's not how I'm feeling. And so it calls to me some people, and I'm sure that it repels other people, but it makes it a lot easier though to sort of choose who you want to work with because they're choosing to work with you.   Jenn T Grace:              Absolutely. I always say that going by the Professional Lesbian is such a gift because it weeds out people that would not resonate with me to begin with. So I don't ever have to worry when I get on a sales call, or a potential client call, and they are the ones who requested, I know that that's not going to be an issue and that's not going to be a barrier. And mind you half the time they are- more than half the time they're hiring me for something LGBT-specific, so one would imagine that wouldn't be the case. But for the times where I'm working with an ally helping them write a book for example, knowing that I go by Professional Lesbian, they know automatically that it's going to be a safe and welcoming environment for them and whatever identity they may be bringing to the table that may not actually be part of the LGBT community, but they have something that's making them fearful. So it gives people some kind of sense of comfort if you will. So I think that's great because it's really a matter of not wanting to work with people who are disingenuine, right? Like who wants to- we have our own businesses for a reason and it's not to be working with people that we don't like, which is what happens when you're working for someone else. So let's see, so we have probably about five minutes to go here. So for someone listening to this who isn't yet where you are, or yet where I am in terms of developing their brand, what would be the one action step you think that they could take today, right now, as soon as they're done listening to this they could go do X. What do you think that might be to get them at least thinking or headed in the right direction to help really kind of build their personal brand?   Robbie Samuels:         Well I think having some clarity about what you'd want that personal brand to be is important. I was following on Twitter a very well-known woman who works in the intersection of technology, and nonprofit, and mission driven organizations, and every couple of tweets was a cat video, or something like that. And she one day sort of sent out a note and asked people for their thoughts and whether she should separate her Twitter accounts so that her sort of tech, and nonprofit, and mission drive content was separate from her cat jokes content. And the overwhelming response was yes. And so she did that, and so some people follow both, and some chose one or the other. And I thought that was such a good example of being aware of the fact that you have an audience, and as you build that audience they're gravitating to you because of something that you're sharing to the world, but that sometimes the content you're sharing doesn't resonate with everybody. And so starting to be a little more focused or create separate channels for interests that are very varied and not having enough overlap. So I think that's also true on my Facebook page, for instance there's a wide array of what I talk about, but it's within a very progressive frame. You know? I also don't write hateful things, I don't write anti things, I don't allow people to post anti messages. You can write anything for anyone that you want to talk about, but you can't write nasty things.   Jenn T Grace:              It has to be respectful.   Robbie Samuels:         It has to be respectful. I'd rather everyone talk about what they're for in the world, and so many of us are framing our thoughts and our positions based on what we're against. So I think getting some clarity about what is it that you want people to see you for, and then curating what you put out in the world more as you go forward. Start to be a little more curated about what you share publicly, and maybe creating separate channels that have different sort of foci, that's what it is that you are feeling very divergent in what your interests are. People will then start to see what you're talking about and either gravitate towards it or not; that will be how you create an audience. Because I've read about this needing to have 1,000 fans, that's it. If you had 1,000 people who were truly committed to the work that you're doing, and would buy anything you sold them just because you're offering it to the world, then you're fine, you've made it, that is success. No matter what you do, you'll be successful. But it's hard to find those 1,000 devoted fans if your content is a little bit all over the place, because you don't have 1,000 fans in one topic, you have 1,000 fans for three different topics, and that's not 1,000, that's a third.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah that is such good, good information. I feel like we could talk for hours just on this- kind of go down a rabbit hole here. But just thinking about even my content, you would think that LGBT marketing, communications, business would be specific enough, but even with me it's not specific enough. I have- it's very broad, and there's a lot of different people who come to it for very different reasons. So even what you're saying in terms of kind of segmenting things out, even I run into that and you would think that my niche is niche enough, but it's far from. And I think that most people actually have that type of challenge where they think that they're talking about technology, but really when we break down technology just because somebody wants to hear about this type of technology, by no means means that everyone wants to hear about it. So that is definitely a long process I think for people to fully kind of wrap their head around, but to your point, if they're mindful of that from the onset then that's a really good starting point. So as we wrap up, do you have anything that you're working on, and the listeners will be hearing this on July 21st; so is there anything that is on your radar right now that you want to share with the audience, explain to them how to get in touch with you, and whatever means or fashion that might be?   Robbie Samuels:         So I am working on launching a podcast called On the Schmooze where I interview leaders from different sectors and ask them questions about what does leadership mean to them, how do they build their professional networks and stay in touch with people they've met across their career, what does work life balance look like? And I had the good fortune of interviewing about ten people prior to my son being born, and I'm now finally re-focusing my energy and effort to launching that this summer. So about the time that this comes out, I will be either having launched it or will have a timetable to be launching it shortly after, and that's www.OnTheSchomooze.com and it's also on my website, www.RobbieSamuels.com which is the best way to reach me. I post blog posts and great content that I just give away. I think it's important to share a lot of value up front, so I have a lot of really great, very practical, implement them today kind of tips on my website that if you're interested in sort of being more thoughtful and strategic rather than wasting your time networking and just randomly collecting business cards; if you want to be more strategic in how you build relationships, I have a lot of great resources and content on my website to help you sort of do that and be more thoughtful in the future.   Jenn T Grace:              Awesome, thank you so much for being a guest, I really appreciate it. And for anyone listening, I highly recommend checking out Robbie's website, and of course getting in touch and listening, especially as podcast listeners, go check out his because I'm certain it's going to be awesome. So thank you so much and perhaps I'll have you on as a guest a second time and we can go into some more depth on some of the things we covered today.   Robbie Samuels:         That'd be great Jenn, I'd appreciate it.   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.

#87 - How Lindsay Felderman Turned a Pile of Words Into an Inspirational Book  [Podcast] Jenn T Grace:             You are listening to the Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional Podcast, episode 87. Well hello and welcome to episode number 87 of the podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and today I have a special interview for you. As you know for the last probably three months or so at this point, and for probably the next three months to come, I have had nonstop interviews. And I'm so excited to be back on the interview kick, and today I have Lindsay Felderman on, and she is the proud new author of the book, 'Walking through Walls. Finding the Courage to be Your True Self,' and I cannot be more excited to have Lindsay on because she shares her journey of writing and publishing her very first book. Her book talks about the coming out process, and a lot of really kind of amazing things in terms of just getting outside of your comfort zone, and really kind of pushing yourself to realize that you have a story to tell, and your story is important, and your story can impact the world. So it's super exciting to have Lindsay on, and even more so because she is one of the first graduates- or one of seven people who graduated from my spring session of the Purpose Driven Author's Academy, and she's the first of those seven to produce her book through the program. So I could not be any more excited as my second group of authors recently started on June 7th. So I'm in the summer session right now with seven new amazing authors. So it's really kind of cool to have Lindsay on who talks about her experience of writing the book, a little bit about her experience of publishing the book, and kind of the things that have been a little more of a pain versus things that were a little bit easier. So yeah, it's just- it was a really good conversation, and the moral of everything in what we talked about is it's really kind of about finding the courage to just be yourself, whether you are part of the LGBT community or not. So her book is already available on Amazon, which is super exciting, so you can go to Amazon and type in Lindsay Felderman or type in Walking Through Walls, and either way you should find Lindsay's book, and you can purchase it, and I've already read it so I'm excited for you to get your hands on it as well. So that is what I have for an introduction. I don't want to take up any more time, but I do want to let you know that if you want to see the transcript for today's show, if you want to have access to the links that Lindsay and I talk about, if you want a direct link to the Amazon page where you can find her book, you can go to www.JennTGrace.com/87 and that is for episode number 87. So enough of my blabbering on, let's just dive right into the interview with Lindsay. So yeah if you just want to start off by giving the listeners a quick kind of background of yourself, and then we'll get into all the good things about your book.   Lindsay Felderman:  Okay, I don't even know where to start with a background I guess. Yeah I'm Lindsay, I'm in my late twenties, I am gay and I wanted to write a book about my coming out story because I struggled with my identity for a long time, and I wanted to kind of just share that with the world and show them that it's okay to struggle. But at the end of the day you really should trust your gut and believe in yourself. Yeah.   Jenn T Grace:             So how long would you say you had been thinking about writing a book? Because I know when we first talked which was like six or eight months ago at this point when you were first thinking about this, that we were talking about how it feels like there's a lot of books out there for this topic, but in the way that you were thinking about it, it just didn't feel like anything was landing for what you were feeling. So how long has that been on your mind?   Lindsay Felderman:  I probably first started thinking about writing a book probably a little bit after college. When I graduated from college which was in 2006, so I guess like ten years ago- oh now that was high school, college was six years ago. Yeah okay so 2010 I graduated from college, and I don't know, soon after that. I'd been thinking about it, and then a few times I would actually go to like write it on my computer, and start writing, and I always for some reason just had this like inclination that what I had to say didn't really matter, and always ended up just like shutting my computer down and was like, 'Forget this, I don't know why I'm even thinking about doing that.' And then it wasn't until I guess last year, I went to this- I guess you could call it a seminar with Seth- I always mess up his last name.   Jenn T Grace:             Godin?   Lindsay Felderman:  Yes. My old boss called him 'Gahdin,' so then like it's in my head as 'Gahdin' but I know it's Godin, so every time I go to say it I like stutter. Anyway I went to a seminar with him, and it was called 'The Ruckusmaker's Seminar,' and basically it was just this whole thing where you were just bringing like a project, an idea that you wanted to make better, and like everybody kind of had the same theme of like making the world a little bit of a better place. So my old job actually sent me to it, which was kind of funny because I didn't really use it for that, which was probably- he doesn't need to know that. I mean I did, I did think about work, but I really was there like personally. People would ask me, "What do you want to do if you're unhappy at your job?" And I was like, "I don't know. I really want to help LGBTQ youth. I don't really know how to do that." At that point- had I started volunteering for GLSEN? Yeah I think I had already started volunteering for GLSEN, so I was doing that. But other than that I was really unsure what I wanted to do. So I just kind of talked to people all weekend about that, how I wasn't really super happy in my corporate marketing job, but I wanted to find something that I felt like I was helping people. And then Seth wrote a book called, 'Your Turn,' and it's just kind of basically just a bunch of passages just talking about all sorts of things about life, and I kind of was sitting there looking at the book on like a break, and I turned it to a page and there was a quote at the bottom and it said, 'The most important book you'll ever read in your life is the one you write yourself.' And I kind of just was like, 'You know what? I've been wanting to do that forever. I really need to stop messing around with it.' So we had to like break up into groups, and I was in with a couple of my friends, and I just was like, "I want to write a book." And they both were like, "Yes, you should, oh my gosh," and I had never really said it out loud or told anybody that I had wanted to, so that was like a really big moment for me when I realized like, 'Yeah I'm going to do this.' And then I actually went up to Seth to thank him for the seminar, and I told him, "I'm going to write a book." And he's like an accomplished author, he's written like twenty books, and I was so nervous to say it, and he just like looked me in the eye and he said, "Yes you will."   Jenn T Grace:             That's awesome.   Lindsay Felderman:  I don't know, from there that's when I was like, 'I've got to this. It's something that I really just need to do.'   Jenn T Grace:             That's awesome. Not everyone can say that Seth Godin said it right to their face that, "Yes you will." That's pretty impressive.   Lindsay Felderman:  It was cool, yeah.   Jenn T Grace:             So that's awesome. So in terms of like getting past that place of turning the computer off because you're like, 'I can't do this,' and being completely afraid; how did you get from that hump to actually starting to put words on paper? Because I know that when we finally connected, which wasn't until December, you had already had so much of it finished. So that's like a big kind of emotional and some kind of like mental roadblock type of hurdle that you had to get over. Do you have any specific ways that you feel like you got through that?   Lindsay Felderman:  I think a lot of it had to do with the confidence in myself that when I had first thought about writing it, I was only like 21 or 22, and you've read the book so you've seen I went through a lot after that. And I think I was finally in a place now to actually believe that what I was saying would matter, and that I kind of know what I'm talking about when- because I'd been through so many things versus just kind of writing about life. And I kind of got more of a vision too of what I wanted to do. When I first would go to write it I kind of just was like writing my thoughts on the world, and kind of how I felt, and I don't really think there was real purpose to it, and so just like over the years realizing my- focusing more on my vision, and then like going to Seth's thing was really like the catalyst because I said it out loud for the first time, I think that was a really huge thing, and I had some validation from my peers saying, "Yes you need to do that," and that was a really huge thing as well. So then at first in order to like kind of start, I started actually writing my blog which I've been horrible at doing this year because I've been focusing on the book, but writing a blog was super helpful too, just kind of like writing in chunks and having people respond to that. And then I just took my computer and started like writing, it kind of was like word vomit, it was literally just write down everything that you can think of that happened in your life, and why that's relevant, or why that would help somebody else. But I'm not going to lie, it was hard. Like every time I would go to do it, it was super emotional for me. I had to be in a spot where I could actually focus on it, and like really just focus on that. And I actually wrote a lot- because I travelled a lot for work, a lot of it I wrote on like planes because it was like easy to be able to just kind of like shut everything down, and there was nobody there to bother me, and I kind of just could like zone in. But I never felt like I could just go in for like twenty minute spurts and just kind of write, because I would- it just kind of lost the emotional feel for me, and it was too much. But it just was really just telling myself, 'Okay you've got to go do this,' and other people asking me about it. "How's your book going?" Or "What are you doing and what are you thinking about?" And I was kind of like, 'Oh yeah I've got to do that.' And I set a date for myself, I think that was helpful, so I told myself by my 27th birthday which was October 22nd, that I would have my rough draft finished. So when we talked in December, that is what I had done. I had just my rough draft and then I kind of didn't know what to do with it. And I had some peers from this thing that I met at Seth's, that I tried to kind of reach out and was like, "What do you think I should do?" But everybody's kind of going at a thousand miles per hour, so they didn't- we kind of talked through it, but it just got stagnant. But yeah I think the validation of just hearing, "Yes, you should do that," and having the confidence in myself that it matters, and saying it out loud. Saying something out loud and telling yourself you're going to do it is- you think that it kind of sounds silly, but when you actually say it or like write it down, it like changes your perception of what that actually means.   Jenn T Grace:             And how many people do you think you told? Obviously you told the people in that room that were there that day, but did you announce it on any social media that this is something you were going to do? Was it only close friends and family? Like to what degree did you put yourself out there to tell people- or declare this to the world that you were doing this?   Lindsay Felderman:  Right. I guess so initially it was just the people that I met that weekend, I came home and obviously told Sam. I was super emotional when I came home and told Sam. She like realized because I was just not happy in my other job, and she was like super happy to see that I was having something that I was really passionate to start working on. But then I didn't announce it on social media right away. I did tell like close friends and family kind of just like over that next month or so that that's what I was planning on doing. But in my blog a few times, I started to mention it. I didn't kind of just say, 'Hey I'm writing a book, this is what I'm doing.' I would say, 'I'm going to be working on a project,' or something along those lines that that's what I was doing. But I pretty much told anybody I saw in person that I was doing it. So it wasn't like I was hiding it per say, but I didn't really know- at that point in my early stages I didn't have the whole concept down yet, so I didn't- I don't think I actually fully announced it until after I started your class online, because then I was asking people for help. So that's I think the first time that I was kind of like, "Hey, I'm writing this book, I want your story, I want you to be involved." And that's kind of I think the first time I did it. I guess it was like January or February.   Jenn T Grace:             So now in looking at your story, part of- again we briefly touched on this, was the fact that you felt like there weren't enough coming out stories that kind of resonated with you, and I know that when you and I connected, I completely agreed with that because I'm like, "You know what, my coming out story isn't tragic, but it's certainly not fun or great." I don't think anybody's is. So have you found some kind of niche- or I don't even know if niche is the right phrase, but do you feel like what you've put together is really going to help that person who may not have the worst possible coming out story? To just kind of hear from you, and then also that process of reaching out to other people to say, "Hey can you share some of your thoughts?" Can you kind of describe what that process was like in terms of just reaching out to other people to add to what you were already writing? Because I can imagine that can be kind of a pain in the ass in some regards, but also adding good value to the end reader, which would be an LGBTQ youth.   Lindsay Felderman:  Yeah. So it was kind of a pain in the ass, and I actually got kind of the same almost reaction that I felt before even writing the book. A bunch of people said to me, "I could give you my story but there's really nothing to it, or it's not exciting, or there's nothing really that I can say." And I would explain to them it's like no, any coming out story is like a struggle. Like I have a very good friend of mine, her parents aren't really accepting of it, they don't really know that she's with her current girlfriend. They do know but they don't, it's kind of one of those things they just don't talk about. And she kept telling me, "I could give you my story but it's really not that much." And it's like, no that kind of thing matters. The fact that you struggled with your parents, like there's plenty of people struggling with their parents. Yeah like were you kicked out, or were you harmed, or were you severely bullied? Maybe not, but I think the family struggle is probably one of the biggest struggles that isn't talked about. The ones that are just, 'Here's my family and we struggle every day. And yeah we still have a relationship, but it isn't the really, really dramatic stories that we do hear about. I think the majority of us go through that as- you mentioned when I listened to the recording you gave me after you read my book, and you said something about your parents have to grieve the loss of what they thought, and I think that it's like really important, and I think a lot of parents like take a really long time to do that because you spend a lot of time thinking about who you are, and what you want, and when you finally take the step to say, "Hey, yeah I'm gay, or I'm this, or I'm that," or whatever to the outside world, it's like this relieving feeling for you, and it's so exciting, and it's new and it's fresh, and you finally feel like, 'Yes I'm showing myself to the world,' and you weren't showing that part of yourself to the rest of the world, so all of a sudden they feel like you're this new different person, where you feel that this is who you've been the whole time, you just weren't sharing that. And I think that more people really have those types of stories but aren't talking about it because they think that, 'I wasn't beat up, or I wasn't this, or I wasn't that,' and so it doesn't really matter, but every single- I think out of all my friends I have one friend that I can think of, that her parents were like excited when she came out. And it was like this weird thing, it was like a coo, "Oh yay, you're gay, that's so cool!" But like everybody else that I know has had some struggle, something going on where their parents were just not accepting, or they didn't want to hear it, or they just told them they didn't know what they were talking about. And I think especially for me, coming out so young and being told you don't know what you're talking about, was really hard for me. It really- like that's why I really started to question myself and have a lot of self-doubt because the people that raised me, and told me, "Hey you don't know what you're talking about, you're fifteen, you have no idea." It's like wait a minute, how do you know how I feel inside? Like this is not something that we're talking about, like I'm saying I'm dumb or something and you know that I'm smarter than that. It's like I'm telling you I'm attracted to females, I romantically want to be involved with females, and you're telling me that you know me so there's just no way that that's possible. That at that age did a lot of- I don't want to say damage, but almost damage to me in my confidence, in my feelings, and like I had a lot of doubt for a long time about who I was because I really trusted my parents, and I didn't expect that. And I think that a lot of people have that same type of thing, where I wish I had a book like this one, where I could have read and been like, 'Oh my gosh, you were doubting yourself too? Oh my gosh, you thought your parents knew everything and that was like earth shattering to you?' I think that would have been everything for me, and I started to realize that too when I started volunteering for GLSEN and I was speaking to some of the youth, and just in passing just explaining to them some of the things about myself, and why I was there, and just like little bursts of story and they would be like, "Oh my gosh, thank you so much for sharing. I feel so much better about X, Y, and Z. Or why my parents are being annoying, or not accepting." And that's why I was really like, I've got to write this. There's more people out there that I think need to hear it's okay to like have all this self-doubt, and it's okay to like have people not accept you, and it's okay to continue trying to figure out yourself, and not listening to the people that are just not willing to even understand what's going on. So that was a really long-winded answer.   Jenn T Grace:             No that was such a perfect, beautifully articulated answer. And for anyone who might be listening who doesn't know what GLSEN is, can you just kind of give a thirty second of what GLSEN does?   Lindsay Felderman:  Sure, so they are the Gay and Lesbian Straight Education Network, and they basically are the ones that started GSAs in school, so Gay Straight Alliances, and have done a lot of work over the years in really just helping gay youth feel comfortable, and have resources and outlets for them in schools in order to be themselves. And I actually didn't even know about GLSEN until later because of Sam, she worked for Teach for America and then met through GLSEN. But that's over there. They basically started the GSAs in schools, they spent a lot of time with LGBTQ youth, and making sure that they feel confident in themselves, or even as something as serious as the trans bathroom issues that are going on, they work on- I don't exactly know how they do it, but they work to try to get legislation changed. For me it was just volunteering, you worked with youth in the schools, and we'd have meetings, and just kind of talk about like all sorts of issues surrounding the LGBTQ youth, or being queer in high school.   Jenn T Grace:             Perfect. And so for those listening who keep hearing you reference Sam, that is indeed your fiancé, so we want to make sure people know that.   Lindsay Felderman:  Oh yes, that is my fiancé.   Jenn T Grace:             Yes. So if we're talking about just kind of how you started to volunteer with GLSEN, and really started to interact with other young LGBTQ people, did- I guess if you could turn back time and you had an opportunity to have recognized that they were a resource to you, do you think to some degree- because I feel fortunate that I've actually read your entire book before it's published, and I obviously now have a really good handle on your story, but the fact that you had a- that you came out twice. And I wonder how many people have had that type of experience. And have you had- have you talked to others through GLSEN or any of the other work that you're doing and found that that has happened to other people as well?   Lindsay Felderman:  I have obviously talked about it. I don't think I've met anyone specifically that has done it the way that I have. I think the more stories that I've heard is somebody comes out as gay, and then they later realize they're actually trans. So I think for our generation, especially for me when I was in high school, it was like you were gay or straight, there wasn't all these other letters. There wasn't all these other identities, or these things that you could associate with or feel that you were. So it was like if you don't feel straight then you're gay. And I think so for a lot of people in my generation they kind of would come out, 'Okay I'm obviously gay,' and then as these letters have been progressing, and all these identities and people really saying hey, it isn't just black and white like that, there's a lot more going on. And as people started to associate with other identities, I think that's kind of the- I would say double coming out story. But I have not heard of anybody that came out in high school, decided to pretend they were completely straight, and then come back out again. It was definitely an interesting one. I felt so dumb when I was 21. I was like, 'Seriously? You were fifteen, you knew exactly what you wanted, and then like you have to do this all over again.' It was stressful to say the least.   Jenn T Grace:             Yeah, I can feel the stress and the angst in your writing, and so hopefully- well we haven't even said the name of the book, so I would love for people to know the name of the book, and then I feel like we have a good synopsis of what it's about, but maybe give a synopsis as well so that way people who are listening to this can actually go read your story, and really kind of get this- it's not like an opposing view at all, but I feel like your take on it is very unique, and I think for anyone who might be saying- and mind you my audience is mostly LGBT people listening, so it's not like we're talking to a completely unknown audience. But I feel like a lot of people nowadays are saying, 'Well why do we have to talk about this? Why does this matter? It's 2016, we have marriage equality, this, that and the other,' and to me it's a very short-sighted type of view on things. So I feel like you're kind of shedding some light on things that people are absolutely going through right now, like in present day. But yeah can you just say the name of the book, and just a brief kind of description of what it entails.   Lindsay Felderman:  Sure so the name of my book is 'Walking through Walls: Finding the Courage to be Your True Self.' I can't believe I just tripped over that. And it is just a- the whole background of the book is my coming out story, which as we said I came out twice, and then what I did is I took stories of others that represent all the LGBTQ letters, and intertwined them into my book. Just asked them a bunch of questions, and they responded to them about pretty much anything that has to do with coming out. And I totally get what you're saying about it's 2016, and why do we need to talk about it, and let's just everybody kind of be equal, but the issue is we're not, and I think that we can't brush all of that under the rug. And even though we have a lot of milestones, and I will honestly say that I did not think that I would be able to get married when I came out in high school. Like I remember- I think it was Massachusetts passed something and I was like, 'Wow that's crazy,' and I never thought that like that was going to be able to be a thing. You know, like it would be like, 'Hey I'm actually getting married in 2017 and I'm literally getting married, not just having the ceremony to say that I'm married,' and that kind of thing. And I think as much progress as we're making, there's still so many issues that need to be talked about, and I think if we just kind of pretend that they're not there, that- I don't know, I just think they need to be talked about, and I think they need to be validated, and in order to truly be equal with everybody and be accepted, we need to have everybody actually be accepted, which is just not the case. I mean you can turn on the news for five minutes any day, or go on Facebook, and there's just so much hate, and so much ignorance. And even people that are my age, I'm like shocked the ignorance when it comes to like the LGBT community, and the misconceptions, and thinking that people are just- somebody who they're just not. And it's like I think it's just- the fight has been fighting, and people have been fighting, and we've won a bunch of battles, but I still think there's a huge war that we're still up against. And for everybody in the community, and specifically with trans people right now, I mean just the bathroom laws. Like that's just ridiculous. Like the things that I hear people say to me about those like, 'Oh well they can do something in the bathroom. I don't want them with my child.' It's like are you serious? Like any guy can walk in the bathroom and like hurt your little girl if they want to, or little boy. Like it has nothing to do with your identity, how you identify who you are. Like no, they're just shitty people, like stop. And I think that kind of thing just needs to be talked about, because the amount of ignorance I think is really the biggest battle that we need to fight. I mean I literally wrote an article yesterday too, about a boy who identifies as a girl, out in Alaska so she was competing in a track event, and I guess like demolished all the other girls. And somebody wrote an article like, 'See world, you made your bed, now you need to lie in it. You can't complain that this girl decimated the other girls when she was born a male.' And it's just like seriously? You just don't understand. And so I think this type of thing does need to be talked about. We can't just pretend that we're equal and say, 'Hey we're equal.'   Jenn T Grace:             Yeah, I cannot agree more. Have you seen the thing on- the Save Sarah that's a Go Fund Me campaign that's happening right now? And I feel fortunate that this episode is going to air within like a week of us recording it versus a lot of times I have like months delay. But the seventeen year old gay girl in- I think she's in Austin, Texas, who was sent away to a Christian boarding facility that's one of those pray the gay away type of places, and she's basically trapped, and her family is doing nothing so she has a cousin who's trying to kind of help her get through it, and they're raising money for her legal fees. And it's like, okay it is June 8th as we're recording this, it will be out next week, but this is happening on June 8th in 2016, that we have children who are being forced into places that are already deemed not helpful by many, many governing medical bodies, saying that this does not help and it actually causes more harm than good. So it just kind of continues to prove that books like yours, and books like anybody who want to write about LGBT and about coming out, or anything like this, it just kind of continues to prove that there's such a need for it because this stuff is not going away, and it's not going away as fast as we would like it to.   Lindsay Felderman:  And that kind of thing blows my mind. I didn't get sent to like a Christian camp, but just the same kind of mindset. 'You're not gay, you're not gay, what are you talking about?' It's just ridiculous to me. I mean one of the people that contributed to my book I met through my blog, I followed their blog, they followed mine and I posted that I wanted to write this and they submitted their story, and they're in their fifties, they're bisexual, they're married to a man, and she writes about how in her fifties she still realizes she thought that that would just go away, and it doesn't go away. Like I know for a fact that if I'd ended up marrying the guy that I'd been dating in college, or some other guy, like I would still be feeling the way that I felt when I was fifteen right now, and into the rest of my life. It just doesn't go away, and you can't pretend that it's just going to go away. I think that's probably the biggest thing too for me, is I want people to see like hey I tried to be somebody that I didn't want to be. I gave it more of an effort than I think that I probably should have. But I spent four years with a guy that- I loved him, I really did, that's the thing. He is still very angry with me, but I truly did love him, and we were best friends, but I wasn't romantically in love with him. I wasn't sexually attracted to him, and I could have stayed miserable, and stayed with him, and it would have been really bad for both us because we wouldn't have had the life that we should be living because I was hiding behind this wall of me, and I was a miserable human being. Like so miserable, I was very angry, I would get like little things that would happen, I would flip out, and it was just not me, but it was because I was holding so much angst in all the time, and nobody knew about it. It wasn't like only a few people knew, and I was talking to them on the side or whatever, and they helped me get through it. It's like I literally cut out every person in my life that knew that I was gay when I graduated from high school, slowly throughout my freshman year in college. It wasn't like a one and done, it was like I went to college, I didn't tell anybody there that I was gay or that I had been dating girls in high school, because they met me and I was dating my current boyfriend who I call Max in the book. I keep going to say his name and I don't want to do that to him. So anyway, there was no reason for me to talk about it, and then I just kind of let it be, and interestingly enough where I went to college there were people there that I went to high school with but they didn't really talk about it. I think one person that I wasn't friends with of course, because that's always what happens, the people that don't know you out you to other people, told one of my college friends, and it happened to be one of my Christian God-loving college friends, and she almost- she freaked out and I said to her, "I don't know what she's talking about. I'm with Max," and she was like, "I know, I told her she was crazy." In my head I'm like, 'No she's not, I did date girls all throughout high school, and they all knew it.' And so I started to just kind of get rid of it, and I didn't even talk about it like, "Oh yeah I dated girls." It was like, "No that never happened." Like I literally was like I took the delete button and pretended that whole part of my life just didn't exist. And so that pain and that struggle of thinking all the time like that didn't exist- and for my mom, and my boyfriend, it was a very hot topic for both of them because when he started dating me, everyone was like, "Why are you dating the lesbian? She's gay, what are you doing?" So he would get really angry, and even when I told him that I was gay, he freaked out and was like, "No you're not." Because we were best friends prior to us dating, and my mom, same thing. So it was just this hot button that I just never spoke about to anybody, and I didn't see anybody that knew it, and I moved down to Florida and so just nobody knew. And so it was like okay, I just literally went as far back into the closet as I possibly could, and it was just not good, and it didn't go away, and I didn't feel- I still felt that same way that I did when I was fifteen years old, and I think that- I don't even know what response I was responding to, but I want people to understand that it's like not going to go away. If you're feeling a certain way, you need to trust yourself because nobody is going to understand how you're feeling, and you don't want to be that miserable person. Like you could be something so much better. Where I couldn't bring anything to the world- I had nothing to offer because I was just so miserable, so caught up in hiding myself, so caught up in self-loathing. Gosh the self-hate that I had towards myself was bad, and anything gay that came up; stories, or people, it was just I had to- I couldn't take it. Like I said, I stopped talking to everybody, all my friends that knew. It was hard, I don't know why I did that to myself. And I don't want anyone else to do that to themselves which is why I wrote the book.   Jenn T Grace:             Yeah, it's such a perfect way of phrasing why you did what you did. So tell us how you came up with the title, because it's an interesting take on the typical coming out type of book. So 'Walking through Walls,' how- what sparked that?   Lindsay Felderman:  So initially actually, this weekend that I had with Seth Godin, right? Godin? I'm going to say it right. I'm just going to call him Seth. Anyway so that weekend literally was like the biggest catalyst for me. But everybody that was there kind of got like a nametag with a little catchphrase about themselves, so there was eighty or so people there, and each person had this little catchphrase and mine was I walk through walls. And I can't remember other people's to give a good example, but everybody- was something about what they were doing. So my friend works with Lululemon and something hers was about like I help- something with yoga, and every person's thing made sense for them. And for me I think they gave it to me because I worked at a software company, and so I'm not sure if they weren't sure what I did, and so it was kind of like firewalls or whatever.   Jenn T Grace:             Oh yeah.   Lindsay Felderman:  But I'm in marketing so I had nothing to do with the IT thing. So I felt very much a fraud when I was there that weekend because I really didn't know what I was doing there, I didn't really know how I could help my business- my old job there, and I had this thing where I walk through walls. And everyone is doing these amazing things helping children, and creating these like amazing businesses, they all give back to like communities, and I was just like blown away by the amount of people that were there and the work that they were doing, and I just felt very much like I don't belong here. But the whole thing is I walk through walls, and I started- as the weekend went on and I was talking to more people, and kind of telling them what I really wanted to do, they all kind of felt like the walk through walls tagline actually fit me because they were like, "You walk through kind of like these barriers, or you walk through these different ideas of who you are, and what you want to do." So I really actually started to resonate with that towards the end of the weekend, where at the beginning of the weekend I felt very like, 'Oh crap, what does this thing on my nametag? What am I going to talk about? I don't know what to do.' And by the end of it I was like, okay I really like the idea of I walk through walls because a wall is a very permanent fixture, a barrier to wherever you want to go. If there's a wall you can't walk through it, right? You have to find some sort of a door. But what I like about it, and what I ended up kind of playing it into is the whole idea of when you're queer or part of this community is you have to come out of the closet, and it's very cliché, it's like okay everyone's coming out, right? But for me I feel like I spent so much time building walls around myself to hide who I truly was, that at the end of the day I had to break down these walls. I had to actually almost physically walk through these walls that I'd built around myself of how I thought of myself, and I think that that is truly what it is. It's not about opening a door, opening a door is really easy. It's really easy to walk up to a door, hey somebody built this door and it's opening, and you can just walk through it. Where I think the majority of us, and I don't want to speak for everybody in the community, but it's much harder than that. It's not easy to come out, and a lot of times some people have to come out all the time. Like you have to constantly kind of just tell people- when you meet somebody, you like name drop that you have a fiancé that's a girl, or your wife, or whoever. And walking through walls to me spoke much more strongly about what I had to do, just breaking down those barriers that I'd built, took so many years building, to just say, 'Okay this is going to be who I am. I'm choosing to build these walls, and I'm going to do this, and how I'm going to live my life.' And then I realized these walls are trapping who I am, and I need to break them down, and walking through them is the only way that I'm going to be able to be truly happy.   Jenn T Grace:             I like it.   Lindsay Felderman:  Yeah, that's kind of it.   Jenn T Grace:             So what do you think in terms of- so if somebody's listening to this, and they're thinking, 'Wow I feel like I can resonate with her because I totally have sat at my desk and started to write, and then said no I have nothing to write.' Or kind of that stop and start. For somebody listening, what do you think that one piece of wisdom might be to push them out of their comfort zone, and have them just actually say, 'You know what? I am doing this.' Do you have any words of wisdom on that?   Lindsay Felderman:  Yeah I think first probably it would be good to just write in short bursts, and not about anything in particular. Like when I first started to like really write, I just would write almost like word vomit, just like what I was feeling, what I was doing that day. Almost like journals, but not. It's just writing, like you just need to get in the habit of writing and like letting your emotions and your thoughts, putting them down on paper. And then I was blogging, and I would share what I was writing for people, and you've just got to do it really. It's like one of those things where it's like, 'What's the great trick?' And like the great trick is just sitting down and writing. Like it's just taking that time and saying- and it doesn't need to be like you're sharing it with the world, but getting in the habit of writing and kind of just like doing what- figuring out what your writing style is too. I think for me the biggest thing too, I always was told I was a bad writer, so I really struggled throughout high school and college, in like English classes they were just like, "Yeah you don't really have great writing skills." And even in my work, my jobs, I had bosses tell me- my last job, he told me multiple times that I didn't know how to write, and it really like shattered my confidence. Like seriously? What are you talking about? And I worked really hard at kind of just like fixing it in business and whatever, but for me it was like you know what? I'm not listening to how you want me to write anymore, I'm going to write the way that I want to write, and I'm going to put it out there, and if people resonate with it, then okay, and they started to. So- but I just think the biggest thing is one, you have to believe in yourself, you really just have to believe that what you are going to say matters. And two you've just got to start writing. You literally just have to- whatever it is. I don't care if you write, 'Hi my name is Lindsay' five times on a piece of paper. Like you just need to understand that it's okay that you can actually do that. You have to have- starting to actually write, and believing that you can do it is like the two biggest things that you have to do. Because I still look at the proof that I have of my book, like when I get the actual book I don't even know what I'm going to do, but like looking at that- there are so many words in it. I still can't believe like I wrote all those words, but you just have to continue to like every day, wake up, 'Alright what am I going to write today?' And it doesn't have to be every day, it wasn't every day for me, but just doing it. Like Seth actually that weekend, he talked about- I can't remember what the name of the author was, but he said he woke up every morning at 6:00 AM, and he wrote from 6:00 until like- I don't know, 12:00 or 1:00 PM every day, and he wrote hundreds of books because he sat down and he did it every day. And that's the kind of thing- if you want to become something, you have to work at it, and you have to sit down, and you have to do it. And that's the biggest thing. And then finding somebody that supports you, I think too. So as soon as I started telling people, like really my fiancé Sam, she was like, "Wow that's amazing that you want to do that." I think she kind of didn't believe me that I was going to do it. Not so much that she didn't think I could, but she was just like, "That's a big thing to do." But having her support, and just like the support of my family saying, "Yeah you need to do that," I think- and I talk about that in the book too. Like as your coming out story- like just finding somebody that's supportive in your life is super important regardless. Whether it's you're writing a book, whether it's you want to become an astronaut or scientist, or whatever you want to do, you just need to find people that support your dreams and are positive. Because if you bring people into your life that don't believe that you can do what you know you can do, they're just going to bring you down, and there's no point in having those types of people in your life. So it's find somebody that's supportive, sit down and write, and just do whatever- you do whatever you want to do. There's just so many things you can do in this world, and you have to follow your dreams, and you can do it is what I would say.   Jenn T Grace:             I love it.   Lindsay Felderman:  Anybody can do it.   Jenn T Grace:             So speaking of anyone can do it, I totally agree. I think anyone if they focus and they sit down to do it, they totally can. So after the writing part, where do you feel like it was the second most challenging? Because obviously the writing- like you can't pussyfoot around that, there's just- it is what it is. But where were those other types of roadblocks, or perceived roadblocks where you were like, 'What the hell is going on here?' Did you have those moments where you were just kind of stressed out because of certain logistical things? Or what did that look like?   Lindsay Felderman:  So the logistical things- I guess initially they did. So basically I wrote my book, and then it sat in a Word document, I didn't know what to do. And I can't even begin to describe to you how I think like the universe works, but because I volunteer for- because I met Sam, because she worked for Teach for America, because I then found out about GLSEN, volunteered for GLSEN, because I chose to go to one like random Wednesday night at a business thing, walked by your booth, and I didn't have time to stop because I was leaving, I saw Jenn T. Grace, Professional Lesbian, looked it up on my way home and was like, 'Wow this lady is pretty cool.' Started following you on like social media, responded to you- whatever, got on your email list, and then like two months later got an email from you saying, 'Do you want to tell your story in 2016?' It's like, 'Wait what? Yes, yes I do. I literally wanted to pick up the phone right now, call you and be like, 'I absolutely want to tell my story. Like how did you know? Did you just send this to me?' It was so crazy. But so the biggest thing definitely is the writing, that sucks, but then the logistical thing was scary because I didn't know what I could do. I didn't know anybody in publishing, I didn't know do I just send my book to all these specific publishers? I had friends saying, 'Okay look up LGBTQ publishers, and reach out to them.' And that just all seemed really daunting and scary and I was like, 'I don't really know what to do with this.' And then meeting you, and your class really helped with all that, like I could self-publish through Amazon, great that takes all that away, I don't care what anyone else has to say. No that was fine, but then I think the editing part of the book, and going back and just having to re-read what you wrote is like really, really hard. Especially when it's something like the book that I wrote, where it's emotional and every time I read what I wrote about whatever chapter it is, like it brings me back into that moment of that pure raw emotion, and it's hard to kind of put yourself back in those moments I think sometimes, because it was really emotional. So I think just- I think I remember saying in your class one time I said, "I haven't read it in a while," because it took so much out of me to read it, and to have to go back, and figure out does this make sense? And then I had to go back and do like kind of the so what's at the end of the book- or end of each chapter because I kind of realized I just kind of moved on and I didn't really explain like why that was important. So just all that part is just- I feel like once you do it you feel really accomplished that you wrote it, you put all these words on paper, but you're only really halfway there. Like there's so much other things that go into it, and you want to just be like, 'This is a book, put it on the shelf, this is a book,' but you have to do so much more to get it to be- like I'm literally 99% of the way there. I literally just have to fix some formatting and the way that I fixed the quotes, and make it so it fits so that Amazon will say that my file looks good, and then I'm good. And it's just like I have to do it, but it's just getting there. Picking all the little details, and understanding, and yeah.   Jenn T Grace:             And you have a cover now, right? So I believe I saw your cover. Because when I saw the proof it was just plain white, which was like mysterious.   Lindsay Felderman:  Oh that's a piece of my cover actually, that's not even the whole thing.   Jenn T Grace:             Beautiful.   Lindsay Felderman:  The one that you saw on Instagram- or Facebook?   Jenn T Grace:             Yeah.   Lindsay Felderman:  Yeah it's a piece of it.   Jenn T Grace:             I like it. So when- so somebody listening to this, when should they expect your book to be available for purchase? They will be listening to this as of Thursday, June 16th this will be live.   Lindsay Felderman:  I am hoping that it will be published- I don't- once you hit the big- I should just ask you. When you hit the big publish button, like what's the waiting period on Amazon? Is it just like- do they need to like approve it? Or is it just like, 'Hey you're good.'   Jenn T Grace:             It's within like 24 hours that it's available for other people to buy.   Lindsay Felderman:  So yeah, I'm hoping either today or tomorrow I fix those little formatting issues, and then like I'm hitting publish.   Jenn T Grace:             Nice.   Lindsay Felderman:  So we're pretty much there. I would say by the time this podcast airs, you'll be able to buy it on Amazon.   Jenn T Grace:             Good, good. Now there is- you're having to be held to it because now there are thousands of people listening and may want to purchase, which I totally think they should. This was fantastic. I so appreciate you jumping on, and sharing your process, and hopefully inspiring some other people to share their stories too. If somebody wants to contact you directly, what is your- either your blog website, or where you are on social media? How would you prefer people to get in touch with you?   Lindsay Felderman:  Honestly I'll give out all my- I guess ways of contact because I know everybody is kind of different in the way they want to contact. So if you want to go to my website it's just www.LindsayFelderman.com, and there's like a form on there that you can submit and it goes directly to my email. My Instagram is LFelderman so you can find me there, I'm not private so you can follow me, or send me a message, or whatever you want to do. And then my Twitter, which I'm not going to lie I don't really use all that often, is LFelderman22. So those are probably the easiest ways to get in contact with me, all of them are hooked up with my email so I'll get it- and it's email that I actually check, so I'll see whatever you send.   Jenn T Grace:             Or go to Amazon and type in either your name or Walking through Walls, and your book should come up and be available for purchase. And of course if people do buy the book, I certainly want to know. So if anyone listening to this, if you buy it, please let me know about it so that way we can make sure Lindsay knows it came through here. And then of course leave a review. I feel like reviews are always important, even if you only have a couple, it's really helpful to have some reviews because I have no doubt that your story will help change lives, which is kind of the end goal that we're both going for, which is just so amazing and so awesome. So thank you again for your time, I really appreciate it.   Lindsay Felderman:  Thank you Jenn, I really appreciate it more than you know.

#86 - Insider PR Tips with Communications Expert, Jonathan Lovitz [Podcast] Jenn T Grace:              You are listening to the Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional Podcast, episode 86.   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 86 of the podcast. I am your host, Jenn (with two N's) T. Grace, and today I have another interview for you. So fortunately in the last episode, episode 85, we had a phenomenal interview with Jacob Tobia who taught us about all things genderqueer, nonbinary, non gender conforming, all kinds of just great information. So that was an awesome interview, but today I have an equally as awesome interview with Jonathan Lovitz who is the VP of External Affairs for the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. If you are a long time listener of this podcast you will know that there's certainly a theme with having a lot of folks from the NGLCC on this show. Today's interview is just fantastic because Jonathan's background is in communications and he has a ton of knowledge around personal branding. So for those of you who are listening to try to figure out how to improve, or start, or amplify your personal brand, the content that we talk about in this episode is just straight up tactical, as well as just really informative to be honest. So I'm so excited to bring today's interview with Jonathan Lovitz, and he has a lot of different ways to get in touch with him, but if you go to www.JonathanDLovitz.com, that's his personal page. And yeah I'm so excited about this interview so if you have any questions for me as a result of listening to this episode, or if you have any for him feel free to hit us up on pretty much any of the social media outlets. If you are interested in hearing more about what we talked, or looking for the links from today's episode, if you go to www.JennTGrace.com/86 for episode 86, that will give you a page with the transcript of the interview, as well as links mentioned in today's show. So without further ado, please enjoy this interview with Jonathan Lovitz.                                     So let's start off with having you just tell the audience and the listeners a little bit about yourself, and your background, and how you became to be doing what you're doing right now.   Jonathan Lovitz:         Sure, well hi Jenn, and to all your listeners. I'm thrilled to be here. I'm a big fan of your work, and of your podcast, and the incredible energy you put out in the community, and really exciting to be here with you.   Jenn T Grace:              Thank you.   Jonathan Lovitz:         So I'm Jonathan Lovitz and my official title is Vice President of External Affairs of the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, which is based in Washington, but I live in New York City where I'm also the Director of our NGLCC NY affiliate because I'm a masochist. This organization is fantastic as you know, we reach every corner of the country and work with every conceivable type of LGBT and allied business, and I've known them for years. I now- actually next week celebrating one year with the organization after being a friend of NGLCC for at least the last five. My career got started in New York in a sort of bizarre twist. In my undergraduate I did what all the cool gay kids were doing and I majored in musical theatre, and also because I was a big nerd I got a dual degree in communications focusing on politics. And I'm also one of those really rare people that managed to get the job and feeder first. I graduated college and immediately booked a Broadway show that went on tour, and I went around the country for two years, and then settled in New York, and did some more theatre here, and eventually some TV work. And during that time I got picked up by LOGO, you might remember is an MTV network, it's for the LGBT community, and once upon a time it had gay news on Sundays, and I used to help anchor and do some reporting on the gay news, and then some other man on the street interview programs about LGBT issues, and that sort of thrust me into being a sort of professional homosexual in a really positive way. I would asked to come be a spokesperson at a fundraiser for great people like GLAAD, and Human Rights Campaign, and the Trevor Project, and what started off as a one month contract became a three month contract, then a nine month contract, and before I knew it, I was doing far more LGBT community engagement policy work than I was performing, and yet I never would have been able to do any of it if I hadn't been a performer first. The amount of times they threw me up in front of a teleprompter in front of a thousand people and said, "Go, raise us some money," I never would have been able to do it had I not been trained as a performer for almost a decade. And then they found out, "Oh you've also got this background in policy, and you love to write, and you want to talk about these issues to a much broader policy based audience," that's how things really get to flip into this full time professional work in advocacy, and communications, and awareness raising for LGBT issues, particularly around economics. I found it really fascinating when I would attend some of these conferences out on the street, and the NGLCC conference which I went to originally as a guest because at the time, LOGO I was hosting a dinner, and doing a live auction, sort of using the public persona to get my foot in the door. And I was really floored by the work that LGBT businesses and all the corporations were doing around the world to create equity for a community that was doing just fine building equality for themselves, and I thought that that notion was really powerful. So I was really, really thrilled when the first time I was asked to join StartOut, another LGBT organization that helps bring funding, and advice, and mentorship to brand new LGBT companies. I started off as their Communications Director, and shortly thereafter became their interim Executive Director and helped run the ship for a while. And that set me up well with all the skills that I needed to quickly learn about management, and organizational structure, and policy work that set me up well when the NGLCC came to me and said, "We'd like to build a position for you." They'd never really had a VP of External Affairs, and I think what I love most about my job is something that would probably kill most other people, that there are really no bullets underneath my title. It's a really big net that includes everything from public policy, to PR and communications, to affiliate affairs, and to engagement with the community of doing great public work like this, talking to you and your listeners about all the great ways to get involved in the community both personally and professionally. So it has been a wonderful, incredible, organic, and sometimes mind blown journey that's gotten me to where I am today, and I still can't believe I'm here this young, and it's incredible, I love every second of it. I'm really excited for everything that seems to be coming up next.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah, and it's so awesome to be so young in so many ways, and to have made such a mark already because you still have your entire career ahead of you. So I feel like that's so exciting just to see what is on the horizon, especially given our political landscape these days, and all the things that are changing so rapidly, and sometimes for the positive, other times not so much, as we're experiencing right now, but I think that it seriously feels like the sky's the limit. I don't know if that's your impression these days.   Jonathan Lovitz:         It certainly does, and I'm actually floored, and it seems like every month something is happening where I'll speak to my mother and I'll just drop in, "Oh by the way I'm going to this meeting with so-and-so." "Wait, do you realize what you just said? You're my son that used to sing and dance, and now you're going to meetings at the White House, and making plans at the UN?" I don't entirely understand how it's all happening, but it is very much a powerful gesture and point of pride in my life that I've ended up here. I look at what I've gotten to do, and all the things that seem to be coming when people are asked to be a public servant. The work chose me, I never really sought out this career path, but when the opportunities came to speak for the community, and get involved, and raise awareness for all these issues, and still fulfill everything that I had always wanted to do about being in the public eye for things that I care about; it's really incredible that these opportunities have come my way. I'm so thankful for them, and now I'm really fortunate to be in the position to help others grow their own opportunities, and that's even more special.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah it's interesting that you say that the work chose you. I find that that seems to be the case for a lot of people, myself included, where I remember when I first got involved which was back in 2006 - 2007, I didn't even know what a chamber of commerce was at that time. So and then fast forward, we all know the history. It's just insane sometimes when you're like, 'Okay I would never have predicted that this is where my life would end up,' but you know that you're there for a reason, and sometimes you have to shake yourself at the fact that, 'Oh yeah I have been in the White House.' Like it's not something that everybody gets to experience, and yet you're there on a pretty regular basis.   Jonathan Lovitz:         Absolutely. And a great Mark Twain quote; there are two days that stand out in your life, the day you're born and the day you realize why. And it's nice to know that it doesn't have to just be limited to one day of realization. I feel like every day helps us understand why, and a lot of it is the people, getting to know you, Jenn, and the people I get to know through this incredible network reminds me every day that we're all doing something bigger than ourselves, and that's really powerful, and it's something very exciting to know that everything we do has an impact on others, even when we don't realize it.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah, absolutely. And so the podcast here is around personal branding, and I truly feel like you've done such an awesome job at personal branding from just kind of a big picture level, whether you were intentionally doing that or not. But we just saw each other in- I want to say it was the end of March, I don't even know, in Boston. And we- if you remember when we were sitting around I think having dinner, and you had said- you made some statement about pitching to the media, and just basically writing what you want to be written. Can you talk about that a little bit? Because I feel like that is such- and I don't know why, that was not my plan to discuss with you today, but it just popped in my head. Because when you said it I was like, that is so genius, why don't more people do that? Could you just kind of share a little bit about that conversation we were having and then maybe give some tips for folks who are just kind of starting out on this journey?   Jonathan Lovitz:         Sure. It's all about authenticity, right? It's all about knowing who you are, what you bring to the table, and what you want your legacy- whether it's a message, or whether it's your personal statement, or whatever it may be, what you want that to be, and giving people no excuses and no choice but to take that at its worth. So I think step one is really understanding who you are, what you stand for, what you care about, and what you want to do with your voice. And you don't have to be a celebrity to realize you have a voice that matters. I think that's one of the great things about something like Twitter; it's the great equalizer. A tweet from me, and a tweet from the White House, and a tweet from a Kardashian all show up with the same- the same time and the same place on your feed, it's what you choose to resonate with and amplify that helps decide whether or not that message continues out in the world. So when you and I were having that conversation about just putting out there exactly what you want, I think we were talking a little bit about press strategy and I think it's all related to knowing your voice and the value of your voice. If you're a business owner, you're a representative of an organization, you're either pitching the press, or pitching the PR company, and you want them to know what you care about. Leave as little wiggle room for interpretation as possible, give them what I always call show in a box. Which is the story, here's the headline, here's the quote I'd love you to use, here's the photo to go with it, here's the link to the video, here's all the citations of the research that go with it. I'm trying to make your life- the reporter, the PR company, whatever it may be, as easy as possible because I want you to return the favor sometime if I'm in a jam and I really need the help. It's all about relationships, and it's all about helping each other out. But reporters are busy. They're getting pitched hundreds of stories a day, and maybe only half of one percent are worth anything. And I can tell you from all the blind pitching in the world that you can do, it's the reporter that you've gotten to know by taking them out to coffee and talking to them as a human being, getting to know what matters to them as a person, that will help you when it comes time to extending sort of your personal brand to them, and saying, "I want to work with you as a partner, and help tell an important story. And sure there's a benefit to my employer, or the movement I'm working for, or whatever it may be, but it's about people helping people and telling a good story."   Jenn T Grace:              I feel like that applies to sales even.   Jonathan Lovitz:         Oh absolutely.   Jenn T Grace:              Just it's really- and I feel like it's becoming more and more obvious, at least in 2016, that is really is human to human interaction. One person to one person.   Jonathan Lovitz:         You couldn't be more right. I mean think when you're working with someone who's calling you on a sales call. They have an objective, and you in your own business, you have an objective to close that deal and meet that benchmark. You could provide all the fact sheets, and all the ROI in the world, but until you really hit a chord with someone on a truly personal level, you'll never really close that deal because it will just be transactional versus a human interaction. And if you want that sale to come back year after year, you want that relationship to continue growing, you have to have a validation that's based on human interaction, that's based on empathy, and sharing and understanding. And it may just be business development, but it's about how you as people are going to grow your respective sides of that business together.   Jenn T Grace:              So would you say that maybe for yourself, you have any type of- I don't know, weeding out mechanism or some way for you to understand that when you're building a relationship, whether it's with a prospective chamber member, or whether it's with a prospective reporter; do you have a way to- for lack of a better phrase, sniff out who would be the person that you should be focusing on building that relationship with? Because I think that a lot of people could spend each and every single day building relationships with the wrong people, and you want to make sure that there's a dual win to that scenario where both parties are getting something from it.   Jonathan Lovitz:         You know I'm a huge political nerd, so if any chance I can quote the West Wing, I will do it. And there's a great line in an episode about exactly this question. 'I need information but I'm getting the run around from all the secretaries, the agencies.' I said yeah, secretaries have agendas, policy wants to have information, and I look at that in the same way with a sales funnel or anything else. If you're dealing with a most senior person, they're accountable for a certain deliverable and a certain report. But they're not as active in the growth department and the actual interaction with other people, as likely a rowing account executive, or someone who's responsible for the day-to-day operation, because it's their job to make that person look good and that's when they help their own career. So the more we can be building relationships with people one or two rungs down the ladder to help bolster the goals and ideas of the person at the top, that's how we really build those in roads with someone who's going to be there and help us out for a long time. It's helping that junior assistant shine by helping to bring in some phenomenal new business that ultimately helps you, but helps them look like they're bringing so much value to the company. You've now got a friend for life on the inside, and that's entirely a human interaction. You've identified what it is you can do to make each other's lives better, both personally and in business. So do your research, it's incumbent upon you, do a little Googling, who's the Internet machine? Pull up the LinkedIn and find the connections of the senior people you want to be working with, and then look at their orbit, look at their Zeitgeist, odds are you're going to find someone, one or two steps removed who you share another mutual friend with, or a common interest, or a group you're both in, and use that as your point of entry. I get calls all the time from reporters saying, "We've got to get to Tim Cook, we want to talk to Tim Cook, he's the top gay CEO in the world, you've got to be able to know him." I said, "You know contrary to popular belief the gays don't all meet once a week for coffee and a handshake, we don't actually have a secret club." I guess that's what the NGLCC tries to be.   Jenn T Grace:              Yes.   Jonathan Lovitz:         What I do say is work your way up, talk to the people who have influence and pull, and get into the conversation not because you need something, but because this conversation means something to you, and that's how you have leverage to make an ask when the time is right.   Jenn T Grace:              It's about building internal champions. I find that the most successful client projects I work on, especially within corporations, it's always the person that's a couple of rungs down from maybe the VP who's signing off on the check. But your ultimate goal is to make that contact of yours look amazing. And the more you make them look amazing, the higher chance that that business is going to continue coming to you. Obviously if you're doing the job well to begin with, but understanding that that's an assumption that you're doing the job well. As long as you're making sure that your contact on the inside who put their neck on the line to say, 'Hey this person knows what they're doing, and they're going to do a good job,' then there's no way- at least in my opinion, that that could fail. It seems completely fool proof.   Jonathan Lovitz:         I think you're absolutely right. Looking at it from with my press hat on, which it's been a bulk of my day, there's a great website that a lot of us use to find out what reporters are looking for, what stories are they trying to find a lead on, and how can I help. It's called HARO, Help A Reporter Out. And I taught that to my team in DC, and I said, "As you're reading the paper, you're looking at the blog, and you're seeing a reporter talking about a really awesome issue, and even if it's not quite a fit for us, it's a fit for someone we know, and when we do a solid for somebody, that gets remembered. And we want to help the community out. There's no prize in being the most selfish in your industry. There is a big prize for being the most collaborative.   Jenn T Grace:              Absolutely. So going back to that particular tool- so that's definitely a tool that I've used myself, and helped clients of mine use. What would you say to somebody listening who's never heard of it for starters, what is it, www.HARO.com? It's really simple, right?   Jonathan Lovitz:         Yeah.   Jenn T Grace:              Okay so if somebody has no idea, they've never heard of this before, what would you say maybe a top one or top two tips might be for making that actually a usable or a viable tool for somebody who really just is just getting started?   Jonathan Lovitz:         Sure. Think of it as an eavesdropping tool. I know this may be a strange way to think of it, but think about sitting on the bus or the subway, or sitting at a restaurant and you overhear a conversation, and you know it's killing you that you could answer the question that you just heard someone at the next booth ask. 'Oh my God, I know the person that they're looking for, but I know an expert that could help them out,' and it's just killing you that you can't help. Well here's an opportunity to do that. You go to HARO, or you go to MuckRack or some of the other great places where you can connect with reporters, and they say, 'I'm looking for a personal branding expert to help me reach minority communities.' Sure I could do that. You know who could really do that is Jenn Grace. And now I recommended a friend, and they see not only am I willing to help this reporter out, I'm willing to help out colleagues of mine. And that matters, and that's something that resonates with people.   Jenn T Grace:              So using that example, how narrow niche do you feel somebody should try to define their brand around- their personal brand? So if we're thinking about all of the things- because I feel like there are more opportunities for me personally to take advantage of than I have time in the day. Like there's just so much opportunity these days. And I know that that's the case probably for even yourself because there are so many things that you hands down could completely and beautifully articulate some response or answer to, but it may not be directly in alignment with what you're doing. You might say, "You know what? Let me throw that to Jenn, or let me throw that to Sam, or let me throw that to somebody else." How have you been able to kind of I guess define the lane in which you like to travel in, and where those opportunities make sense to help a colleague out, so that way it does end up coming back at some point.   Jonathan Lovitz:         That's a great question. I think it's a matter again knowing exactly what you bring to the table, and doing your due diligence to know also what you can't bring, and what you can outsource to others. I mean it's the whole point of a supply chain, right? Is I may not be able to do it, but I know someone who can, and we can work together and build a team, and collaborate, and/or just pass off a great lead in the expectation that that's going to pay it forward the next time around. And that really starts with identifying your skillset, and in some cases being super explicit about it either on your website, or your capabilities deck, or whatever it may be and saying, "I do X, Y, Z." And you don't want to say that you are the next iteration- like Judy Garland said, "I don't need to be the second rate imitation of myself, there already is one." It's too early in the morning for a Judy Garland reference, I'm sorry, but it happens. But you don't need to say you're the Uber of community service, or I'm the seamless web of PR, whatever the comparative may be. Say, "I am the next thing. I am here to provide a unique service that you can only get from me, and if I can't do it I am connected to this massive network of-" and then list out all of the organizations you're a part of, or all the certifications you have, all of the awards you've won and say, "If I can't do it, trust me I'm a phone call away from someone who can and will get the job done."   Jenn T Grace:              You know what actually? An interesting thing happened to me a little bit along these lines. A couple of months ago, it was back actually in January so it was longer than I thought, I was on a sales call with a Fortune company that I won't mention their name, but we were talking about their Employee Resource Group, and how they just need to help figure out how to make their Employee Resource Group members better kind of sales advocates within the community- so within the LGBT community specifically. And she had reached out to me and I was like, "You know, I don't feel that I'm the qualified person to be having this conversation with. Employee Resource Groups are not my bailiwick but I know a couple of companies that would be perfectly suited to do this for you, but as the conversation kept going on, we were talking about exactly what they were looking for, and it ended up being exactly what I do, but I just have not specifically done it for an Employee Resource Group, but I've done it for a corporation, for a nonprofit, whatever it happens to be. But it was interesting that I started off that conversation saying, "You know what? This is totally not my thing, let me refer you to someone," and then I ended up getting the business anyway, and I think it really had to do with being very clear on what I was good at, and what I really thought my strength was, and it ended up being that it was in alignment anyway. But I feel like if I had gone into it being like, "Oh yeah I'm totally the expert on this particular subject," that I probably wouldn't have gotten the business. It was a really interesting kind of dynamic of what you were a little bit of just talking about.   Jonathan Lovitz:         I mean that's a great example and there's opportunity everywhere, right? And it may not be apparent in that first interaction, and that's what's the beauty of getting to know someone on a personal level first is all about. If you're constantly looking at someone with the 'what can you do for me' goggle, you'll never actually get to know them as a human being, and you'll never know what they care about, and what their broader network is, and what it is that make them tick. And then you've lost a huge opportunity to find layers of opportunity within. So start with the people, and then build the business on top of it.   Jenn T Grace:              Absolutely. Are you familiar with Gary Vaynerchuk to any degree?   Jonathan Lovitz:         No but I want you to educate me.   Jenn T Grace:              So he has a very confronting style I will call it, like he's just really brash, he's loud, he's in your face, straight up what you would imagine a New Yorker to be stereotyped as.   Jonathan Lovitz:         Hey.   Jenn T Grace:              You're so rough. And he has a huge online following and has for years, like millions and millions of people. And he has a book that he wrote, I think it's a couple of years old now, called 'Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook.' And his whole philosophy is you have to give, give, give, and then ask, and then keep on giving. So there has to be a far more likelihood of you giving before you're asking. Because if you just go into any scenario and you just start asking for the business, and you haven't built the relationship, people are going to be completely turned off or ignore you. But if you've been giving, and giving, and giving, when the right time to make that ask comes along they're going to be far more likely to want to do business with you because you've given them so much so far.   Jonathan Lovitz:         Right, absolutely right. And again, it's not that you're giving for that guaranteed return. It's that you're giving because that's in your nature and you want people to recognize that about you.   Jenn T Grace:              Yes and if you are coming off as like 'I'm only giving because I'm going to ask you for something in three days,' then I think anyone would see right through that.   Jonathan Lovitz:         We sure hope so.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah, right? Okay you were talking about strengths a little bit ago. And for some reason Sally Hogshead popped in my mind in terms of really understanding your strengths. And I've been a Sally fan since 2011, and I only remember that because it's when one of her books came out, and having her at the NGLCC conference last year was legit like one of the highlights of my year because she was so amazing in person, on the stage, in the breakout, and then one-on-one. From a personal branding standpoint, I personally think that she’s truly amazing in terms of the framework that she provides to help people understand where their strengths naturally lie. What has your experience been, since I know you were at the conference obviously, what was your experience with that kind of new framework to really just understand what your brand as a person means and feels like?   Jonathan Lovitz:         For anyone who hasn't taken it, I highly recommend they go to her website and take the personality matrix test that she has, because it's really eye opening. And if you can, if you're a part of a team, I recommend doing it as a group. We recently did it at the NGLCC office and we now know who has what traits, and some were really shocking. There were a lot of people who possess these stealth characteristics that make them a great program manager, or even a great leader, and are sometimes so unspoken but it's nice to see it articulated in this really visual way, in a color coded way, that helps you understand where everyone fits. For me personally I was really impressed by the real clarity of the questions. It was not a super broad Myers Briggs conversation. It was really about what makes you tick, and what qualities about you make you a strong human being, whether it's for your persona life or your professional life. And the elements about who I was, as a leaders, as someone who likes to take charge, as someone who likes to be- they cleared me out, "You're a talker, you like to be the public face of what you're doing." It was nice because it's also backed up with an understanding of why; it doesn't just drop the bomb and say 'this is who you are.' It says 'because you got these five strengths behind you, that will help you succeed.' And it also outlines some of the pitfalls which is also I think a sign of a great leader and a great business person, is knowing where your shortcomings are and what you can do to actively work around them. I know I can sometimes miss the woods for the trees when I'm really down in a project I'm working on. I'm so mired in the details I forget this can be a little rough around the edges, the big picture is what matters here. And it's nice to be able to be reminded of that. And a trait of mine, and I should most importantly surround myself with great people who are my opposite so that they catch those mistakes, or that they help me execute correctly. I recently had been given some great help and some staff at the NGLCC to work on some projects, and we worked in completely opposite fashions, and it has made us stronger and more effective than we've ever been because we challenge each other. You're your own best yes man, no one needs another one. I can look in the mirror and tell myself what a great job I'm doing, I need the product to speak for it, and I need my relationships to reveal that. So as much as it's about discovering your own brand and your own skillset, allowing yourself to be self-aware enough of what you need to get the job done, the people you need to surround yourself with is just as or more so important.   Jenn T Grace:              Do you remember what your archetype was?   Jonathan Lovitz:         I knew you were going to ask. If you give me one second I can pull that up and tell you. Because I think it's such a great thing for everyone to know. Let's see, I do have that here.   Jenn T Grace:              I think the key is looking as she calls it the Double Trouble. So when your characteristics are doubled up on each other where you're actually acting at your worst. So something that should be making you your best, when you go to an extreme, it just makes it harder for people around you to either work with you, or take your direction, or operate. I feel like that was a really kind of eye-opening thing. Because when I was looking at mine, mine is the Maestro which is power and prestige, and it's kind of the ringleader in a lot of ways of like organizing things, and to me it's all about getting shit done. So it doesn't matter how, I will get it done. And I can see now how overbearing that could be to people on my team when they don't necessarily know what place I'm operating from. So it's a matter of being really cognisant of where your strength can actually become something that's hurtful to you.   Jonathan Lovitz:         I love that. So mine was the Avant Garde, and it's the person who likes to work quickly and come up with solutions, and be a leader, and if I don't like how the game is played, turn the table over and start a new game, that kind of thing. And I really do love that, but again one of my favorite parts was how it helped me identify what the opposites of that highest and best value may be, which are if I'm not perpetually challenged, I'm going to get bored and I'm going to want to walk away from a project. So being sure that everything I'm doing is new, and innovative, and that certainly served me well, and it's helped me develop unexpectedly I think in my career an entrepreneurial spirit that I didn't know I had. If you had told me ten years ago when I was first starting out as fortunately a solid working actor in New York in Broadway and television that that foundation I was laying, by building a social media platform, and building my own website, and all of those things that I thought were just helping me get a few more roles; that laid a foundation for the rest of my career because now I've converted everyone who ever knew me as a performer into someone who can help me amplify my policy work, and the LGBT stances that we take, and everything begets everything else. And so as it relates to your personal brand, making sure it's positive and flexible, it's all about you and what you want to put out there. And I think it's important for everyone to remember, and I try to teach this when I speak at a lot of universities and I try to remind young people these days you are what you tweet, far more than it used to be when it was your academic record, and your body of work. Now it's how the Internet sees you because people are going to Google you before they meet you, and you want that digital trail of breadcrumbs to lead to something positive that you're proud of, and it's never too late to course correct. So if you want to make that pivot and change your personal brand to be an expert on a certain subject, or a champion for a cause, start right now and get moving, and get help. There are lots of people who know how to do this and you can be that change you want to be.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah and you have to start putting out content that reflects that, and I recently read- it was on LinkedIn and it was some ridiculous number like four out of five hiring managers, the first thing they do is Google your name or go to Facebook and look up your name. And if your profile picture is you with a beer can, chances are you're not getting the job. So it's that severe that I don't think people recognize it, and I actually was looking to hire somebody a couple of months ago, and a colleague of mine said, "My daughter is 22, she's graduating college, what you're working on I think would be in alignment with what she's interested in," and I go to her social media page and everything is her smoking pot with bongs. And it's like I'm not going to be a prude and say, "That's wrong, you can't do that," but for crying out loud, like your social image has to be more professional than that. You really can't be putting that out there, and once you put it out there, even though you think it's deleted or gone, it's still floating somewhere in the interwebs which is dangerous, especially when people are looking for- either looking for a job or just looking to grow their brand and grow their following of people.   Jonathan Lovitz:         I think that's absolutely right. And making yourself approachable for the things that you care about also matters. It's one thing to just drop the bomb and walk away. It's another thing to say, "I want to have a conversation." So if you're using Twitter, for example, to grow your brand, and you want to start a conversation, be prepared for there to be all sides of that conversation, and be prepared to have a- if you want people to reach you, use a Google voice number so it's anonymous. Or start a Google Hangout where you can keep yourself at an aesthetic distance. But be approachable and don't just throw a bunch of words out either and hope that it sticks. You've got to be able to back it up with passion, conviction, data when you've got it, whatever it may be, because that's also how you validate your brand. The world needs one more YouTube sensation flash in the pan like it needs a hole in the head. But what it does need is someone who's using their voice along with their fame to do something really great.   Jenn T Grace:              Absolutely, and I think it's important to be paying attention to sometimes maybe the more subtle cues of where your direction should be headed, because you might start off your personal brand and have- think that you have a really clear idea of what people are looking for, but once you start talking with the people you realize that, 'Oh wow, what I thought they were looking for isn't actually what they're looking for, they're actually looking for this,' and be able to make those short pivots, and not marry yourself to that original concept, of being open to different ideas and different directions.   Jonathan Lovitz:         Absolutely, and don't let others define your brand for you. It's your brand for a reason, and I certainly remember this well from back in my acting days. Something I don't miss is being told, "You're too this, you're too that," you're at the whim of every director and every casting person saying, "Grow your hair out, be thinner, work out more, do whatever it takes to be the next up and coming star and you're going to take over for this guy when he gets too old." I don't want to take over for him, I want to have my own path, I want to do my own thing, I don't need to replace anybody else, I want to just be Jonathan Lovitz out there. And finally I was able to find that by ironically enough just being myself. It's when I was given that opportunity to be on camera, and do the news, and interview celebrities and such as myself, and speak in my own voice, and talk about my own issues the way I cared about them, that's when I finally began to shine in the way that I didn't know I was destined to.   Jenn T Grace:              Yes I feel like that is probably the biggest piece of advice is to just be yourself, because when you're trying to fit the mold of what someone else is expecting of you, I feel like that's where you kind of go off the rails. And I can think back to probably 2011 maybe, and this was when I was actually running the Connecticut LGBT Chamber. For some reason I feel like I completely lost my way, and I felt like I had to be what was expected of me to be, and I completely went away from who I was. And if I look at pictures of me from 2010 and 2011, it shows how far from my original core I really was, and then in 2012 I just kind of had this epiphany one day of like, 'Screw this. I cannot continue to try to be something that I naturally don't feel like I am.' And then all throughout 2012 and 2013 I went on this whole weight loss kick, I got healthier again, and I completely re-changed everything that I was doing to just be very much in alignment with me because it's so much easier to just be you than try to be somebody that you're not.   Jonathan Lovitz:         I could not agree more; the best advice we could put out there in the world for people.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah and especially with personal branding. So one of Sally's quotes, I'm trying to think- it's something of not trying to be others, just be more of who you are. So don't- I'm going to totally butcher it, it's like one of her best quotes. But yeah just be more of who you already are naturally rather than trying to add these characteristics or traits that are very unnatural to you.   Jonathan Lovitz:         I think that's absolutely right. And when you are most in tune with yourself, you're an instrument that's been primed, and ready, and destined for the spotlight. And that's when your message takes off. When you get given that microphone metaphorically or literally, and you're speaking from a place of groundedness and authenticity, that's when your message takes hold. That's definitely something Sally Hogshead before- it's messages that fail to fascinate become irrelevant, and I think that's right because what's fascinating about someone is their authenticity, not the facade.   Jenn T Grace:              Totally. And I feel like you are probably a living example of this as I feel like I am too. Is that I really pride myself on being the same Jenn. So whether you catch me when we're having dinner with a couple of people, whether it's at a conference, or whether we're having a one-on-one conversation or a conversation that thousands of people are listening to, I feel like I really pride myself on always being that same person, so there's never that jarring disconnect. And I feel like you are always the same person regardless of what interaction I have with you, and I would imagine that probably carries out through other people as well.   Jonathan Lovitz:         Well I really appreciate that, and I'll be the first to admit it wasn't always that way, and that was a major life lesson and journey for me was figuring out that's who I'm supposed to be, is myself all the time. And I definitely see this among a lot of young people, and people starting out in their careers, is trying too hard to please everybody by pivoting. That when you're in the office you're trying to please the boss, so you've got one persona versus who you are with your friends, or who you are with your family versus who you might be when you're networking with your eye on the next job, and that doesn't work.   Jenn T Grace:              It's exhausting.   Jonathan Lovitz:         It's just too exhausting, and for anyone who's ever been through the coming out experience in their professional life, they know about when you can bring your best self to your work by being who you are. Your work has never been better, in fact your whole life gets better because that lead vest comes off. So do yourself the favor and take off a couple extra layers of lead vest and just carry yourself around.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah just being the same person. I just had an introduction from a colleague to a Fortune company, and it was a CMO and it's not typically a recommendation that I'd prefer written an email, but the introduction was, 'You need to meet Jenn, she's whip smart and she gets shit done.' Like that was exactly the line. And I'm like okay, this was to the CMO of a really large company, I'm not sure that that would be the natural way I would like to be introduced, but it actually is who I am, and when I had that first initial call with this particular company, it set the tone so beautifully because I- and I really even with sales calls and high people in larger companies, I'm still genuinely the same person, but it really kind of was very freeing to be like, 'You know what? This is how I was introduced, they still wanted a call with me, so I can really just kind of be who I am,' and it was just such a natural flowing conversation because of that. Even though I wouldn't necessarily want that to be the way I'm referred frequently, but it worked out so beautifully. So I think that it really kind of comes down to that authenticity, and for me having the moniker of the Professional Lesbian, that immediately weeds out people that would not even want to give me the time of day. And to me that's a great thing because I don't have to waste my time or someone else's for them to see if they even want to build a relationship with me.   Jonathan Lovitz:         Oh I think you're so, so right. We don't have time anymore to have to chip away and figure out what's behind the facade. Leading with yourself is the easiest way to make sure people get what they pay for, literally and figuratively. And I can't tell you the number of times in my career I thought I've gotten to know someone under a totally false pretense, and when the mask came off and I was so disappointed with the person that was really underneath, I wish I had known that from the beginning.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah.   Jonathan Lovitz:         Because it's wasted a lot of time and energy and frustration, and I came out on the other side more aware of what I don't want in my life, which is potentially a great lesson, but again speaks to the value of your own brand and self-awareness. Be aware of what you're putting out in the world because that's what people are buying. And in a world where we all look to our Yelp reviews before we buy anything, word of mouth is your living Yelp review, and we want it to be a good one for you.   Jenn T Grace:              Absolutely. So I feel like we're getting already to almost 45 minutes, we've already been talking that long, and I feel like we could be talking for days because there's so much information to be had, and we both have communications degrees which is why I think it's kind of morphed into what we're talking about. But I want to ask you what is the best piece of advice that you've been given? And not even necessarily related to branding or anything like that, but just kind of in business or in life. What is it and who gave it to you?   Jonathan Lovitz:         Well you'll indulge me I'll have to say it's two.   Jenn T Grace:              Okay.   Jonathan Lovitz:         Because in my personal life it came from my parents when I was a teenager and really struggling with who I was personally, what I cared about versus what was expected of me as a teenage boy in the suburbs, and all the things that I was into when I was far more interested in being involved in theatre and school than I was sports and friends and all of that. And all my- and after all the time talking to school counselors, and all the stress of all of that in your teenage years; sitting down and having a good cry with my parents and them saying, "Yeah but do you like you? Good. Stick with that and that's all that matters."   Jenn T Grace:              That's beautiful.   Jonathan Lovitz:         And that has served me well in my personal life ever since. It's just thinking, 'If I'm unhappy with something, all I have to do is change it. I could sit here and rock back and forth and worry about it, or I could make it better.'   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah.   Jonathan Lovitz:         So that certainly served me in my personal life, and then in my professional life which I am so grateful as I said at the beginning of all this, very bizarrely and organically led me to such incredible experiences, it's all been because I never let a door that was closed dissuade me from a path. And anytime that there was a door, I have been told by so many friends, and colleagues and mentors, 'Build your own,' and that has always served me well. Between the idea of never letting a lack of an opportunity mean that there isn't one, just should inspire you to come up with a creative solution, and that usually leads you to lesson number two which is it's usually better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.   Jenn T Grace:              That's my favorite quote.   Jonathan Lovitz:         Yeah, get it done, wow people, and someone will help you get out of any kind if icky situation that arises with it. But it's better to have done it. Another great Sally Hogshead quote was something to the effect of the world was never changed by people who just kind of cared.   Jenn T Grace:              So true, especially in this work, right?   Jonathan Lovitz:         Yeah, exactly. And whether it's your personal business, or community service, or whatever it may be, care with all you have because you're only going to get one shot to make a difference.   Jenn T Grace:              I love that. I love that. I feel like we should end on that because it's so beautifully articulated. But before we actually end, how do people find you? So tell us all the different ways in which they can get a little bit of loving from you.   Jonathan Lovitz:         Well if they ever want to know about our professional work, and the great things we're doing to make the world a better place for LGBT people to live, and work, and thrive, get involved in www.NGLCC.org. But for me personally I have a website, www.JonathanDLovitz.com. It's a little bit under construction right now, so anyone out there with some great web skills, do feel free to get in touch. But there's my links to all my social media are there, I'm really active on Twitter, it's my favorite. @JDLovitz. I will always write back and get in touch with people if they use the email link on my website. There's no such thing as a relationship without value, so I hope to hear from everybody listening. I hope to always be a good friend and connection with you, Jenn, I think your work and energy you put out into the world is so inspiring and we need a lot more of you out there, but I'm pretty glad that there's just one Jenn Grace.   Jenn T Grace:              Thank you, I appreciate that. We should just start cloning ourselves and just have a little army. Wouldn't that be great?   Jonathan Lovitz:         Absolutely. I don't know the world needs another one of me, I think I'm- certainly my partner wouldn't want more.   Jenn T Grace:              I would say the same thing about my wife. Yeah I don't think she wants another one of me either.   Jonathan Lovitz:         Yeah.   Jenn T Grace:              They get the best of us, don't they?   Jonathan Lovitz:         They sure do, even at the worst.   Jenn T Grace:              For real. Alright this has been great, thank you so much for being a guest, I really appreciate it.   Jonathan Lovitz:         It was a real pleasure and an honor, and I hope to do it again. Thanks for all you do.   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.  

#82 - How to Impact 1 Million LGBT People [Podcast] Jenn T Grace:              Well hello and welcome to episode number 82 of the Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional Podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and today I am going to do a slightly different episode, and I think this one's going to be pretty short compared to past episodes. And I know for those of you who've been listening for a while, guaranteed every time I say that it ends up being a longer episode. So we'll see if that happens today.                                     So as you know for those of you who've been listening for a while, I recently rebranded the name and the artwork, and kind of the approach of this podcast back last episode, episode 81 when I did an interview with Kimberly Vaughn of www.LGBTWeddings.com. So I really had the same focus for a really long time, which is talking to amazing LGBT business owners and allies who are really awesome in the community as well, and I decided to just go whole hog, change the name of the podcast to attract more people who are really looking for personal branding type of advice around being an LGBTQ professional.                                     Now I said it really briefly in episode 81 because I really wanted to get Kimberly's interview out, and honestly this episode probably should have come before that one, where I spend just a couple of minutes just explaining the new direction of the podcast in more detail. So as you know, this used to be the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast, and now we are talking about Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional Podcast. So there's a couple of changes kind of even within the title. Most of the people that I've had on here as guests- and while this is episode 82, I've actually recorded 112 podcasts, so I had a special series that aired quite some time ago at this point, that was 30 Days, 30 Voices: Stories from America's LGBT Business Leaders, and I released a podcast a day for thirty days, talking to some really amazing people. And I did that probably back in 2013, and every June I relaunch all of them because most of the information in all of them is still pertinent to today, and it's kind of an evergreen topic if you will where it just kind of lives on forever.                                     So in talking with those thirty people, and then probably I'd say another thirty to forty in the just day-to-day podcast, I've learned so much information from so many really amazing leaders. And the thing that I started to realize is it's really about personal branding, and it's around how do you as an LGBTQ professional, or a business owner, or somebody- I think between professionals and business owners regardless, you're working for someone or you're working for yourself, but being LGBT is such a leg up, and such an advantage I think in so many ways, that I really just wanted to change the name of the podcast to be directly in alignment with how to show you how to really use this to your advantage. And rather than me being the one that's delivering this information to you, I want to bring on more guests to have these conversations with you with. Because there are some pretty amazing people in the world right now doing some really awesome things, and I think that that's the end goal, is to really just continue to inspire and help other LGBTQ people, and regardless of what settings, just kind of be your best selves. And I feel like that's kind of a phrase that's quasi-overused, but I really believe that there are so many opportunities to truly be your best self.                                     So I want to share with you just a small kind of mindset shift that I have had over the last- I would say maybe the last six months, yeah I would say six months or so, to kind of explain to you the direction that I'm headed in, as well as maybe share with you a couple things that I'm doing right now because everything that I'm doing ties directly into LGBT in some form or fashion.                                     So for as long as I can remember, my goal for myself whether I was planning on running a business, or honestly I had no idea what my plan was. My goal was always to make a million dollars by the age of 35, and honestly I can think back until like my teens when that was my goal. So I have had that goal on the back of my mind, I have it on a post-it note written inside- I don't want to call it a vision board because it's certainly not, it's just post-it notes with goals that I have hung up so that way I can see them regularly. And they're goals of all different kinds, that just happens to be the really big crazy one. The BHAG if you will; the big, hairy, audacious goal.                                     So I've had that sitting on my- sitting inside my cabinet on a post-it note for as long as I can remember. And I've really started to be thinking about what does that actually mean? So when I created that goal for myself, it was very arbitrary, no rhyme, no reason, just kind of like a 'hey I want to do this by 35.' It is now April of 2016, and I will be 35 in June of this year. So a while back I updated my goal to say I wanted to make a million dollars within my 35th year. So that way I was really buying myself an extra 364 days of time to meet my goal.                                     Now as I tell you this, my goal is not that far off in the future. So it is completely an attainable goal for me at this point. My business is doing quite well and it continues to kind of grow, and succeed, and I'm venturing into new and different areas, and it's just really exciting because I'm still sticking to the core of my mission which is to help LGBT people.                                     However I joined a Mastermind group in September of last year, and we went around, and we were talking about like what our goals are, so a year from now what do we want our goals to look like, and how is that going to impact the way that we're doing business, and all that kind of stuff that you sometimes aren't really thinking about, and when you have a goal sometimes you're operating with blinders on if you will, you're just head down, focused on 'I need to attain this goal.' Now for me going back to one million by 35, that is a goal that I know I'm going to accomplish, and it's exciting that I'm going to accomplish it, but I've been busting my ass for ten years at least in the LGBT space trying to get to that goal, and then previously a lot of experience in marketing getting here. So I definitely chip away at that goal every single day.                                     But one of the things that has really recently come to light is I don't necessarily care about the monetary aspect of the goal. I've always thought that I want to make a million dollars just because. Seriously it's not like I'm thinking about upgrading homes, cars, anything. It legitimately was just a goal that was very arbitrary and had not a whole lot of meaning to it to be perfectly honest. My business is doing well enough now that I'm perfectly content where I am, I don't need to be making giant sums of money, we live a very modest lifestyle. But what I've recently learned is that my goal to make a million really has nothing to do with making a million dollars, but rather how can I impact a million people? And I will share with you why I'm bringing this up today.                                     So I really started to see that shift, because I've heard people talking about it all the time. I read a lot of Inc. and Entrepreneur, and a lot of different blogs and websites, and really just information, I'm always consuming information listening to audiobooks, reading books, I have a lot of books that are on my to-do list or I'm currently reading. And in looking that, so many people, so much sage wisdom is around don't focus on the money, focus on how many people you can impact. And I for a long time I'm like, "Yeah, yeah that sounds fine but is that really true? Or is that really the case?" And I honestly had- it wasn't an epiphany because it didn't just kind of spring upon me overnight, but it really just started to become so much clearer over the last probably between like four and six months. And that clarity is around that I really do want to impact a million people. And then it starts to break out of like how the hell am I going to do that? Because I can make a million dollars I think a hell of a lot easier than trying to impact a million people, especially when you work with large companies that will spend $90,000 on one project, and that's one company that might have four or five points of contact. So to me, reaching the million dollars actually seems much, much more simple than reaching a million people.                                     So I bring this up because I've had a just kind of a complete mindset shift to hell with the reaching the million dollar goal, however I'm certain I will get there at some point; when the exact specificity of that is, I don't know but I'm confident that I will get there eventually. But in looking at how the hell am I going to impact a million people, that's the goal and that is the nut that I'm trying to crack currently. And I do think I have figured out a way, but that certainly involves all of you, my amazing listeners, you've been on this ride for going on four years with this podcast, and I know that you have audiences, and I want to talk to you about let's find a way to join forces is really what it comes down to.                                     So before I get into the logistics of that, the one thing that I want to mention- and I say this all the time, and I really need to create a video, or something, some kind of infographic, something to put on my website to explain this whole concept because it's honestly my guiding principle and it's the motto I go on of knowing whether or not I should say yes or no to something. So I look at this as a pyramid in terms of who I will do business with, how I'll do business with them, et cetera. So for me, I need to have- it's basically a triangle where there's three sides of it; there's me, there's you, and then there's the LGBT community broadly. And if you come to me and say, "Hey I want to do business with you." Maybe we'll do individual coaching, maybe you sign up for a program I'm doing, maybe you need an LGBT marketing strategy created. Whatever that kind of scenario might look like. There's me and you who are doing business together. Now I weed out people based on authenticity, based on how sincere I think they are, and what has to happen in that relationship is that my working with you, I have to win. So whether I'm winning because we're exchanging money and I'm growing my business, or whether it's something that I'm doing pro bono, I'm doing some kind of volunteer work, whatever it is I have to personally feel like I am gaining from this whether it's monetary or otherwise. The gain is kind of variable.                                     Additionally you have to win for the same exact reason. So you're working with me will increase your business, therefore you're winning. Or us working together is just kind of some merging of some kind of harmony, and we're both really excited, and we're energized about working together additionally. So we have two pieces of the pyramid. We have the 'I win,' and we have the 'you win.' So that's two pieces of the puzzle. But the third, and I think the most important piece, is that the LGBT community has to win as a result of us working together. So that creates a whole added layer of some kind of happening here. Because if I win from a- I'm going to get paid, or I'm going to feel good about doing this, and you win because you're going to increase your business, whatever that kind of scenario looks like, those are two great things, right? So I'm getting something, you're getting something, we're both happy.                                     But the LGBT community has to gain something from us working together for me to know if that makes sense for me to work with somebody. Now let me give you an example of how this would go south. It could be a scenario where a- and I had this happen years ago and I'm sure I have talked about it on the podcast probably many, many episodes ago. But I had a financial company reach out to me here in Connecticut and they wanted to market to the LGBT community, and they were very- it's very hard to describe, but they were just a bunch of jerks, let me just be blunt. They were a bunch of jerks. And they were so inauthentic, they were very sleazy feeling, it wasn't good. So I could have taken that project, and this was at least five years ago. I could have taken that project, or they could have engaged with me, so they might be gaining business. There's a whole other can of worms around that, about just their approach not being good for the community. But regardless, so they might feel like they're winning because I'm helping them gain business, I might feel like I'm winning because I'm making money. But guess who doesn't win in that scenario? The LGBT community doesn't because they were really sleazy. They were not authentic, they were not in it for any genuine sincere reasons, they were just thinking how can I get money from this community while saying inappropriate things and making derogatory comments? So clearly there's one giant piece of the triangle missing, and it was the LGBT community. So I easily could have felt like I was winning because it would have been a very large contract. But to me, I have to win, they have to win, and so does the LGBT community. So I have this very specific kind of triangle that I am always looking to, to identify whether or not I'm going to do something. So whether that's conducting a focus group, or speaking somewhere, or developing a marketing strategy, it has to be one, two, three. Across the board, straight up, I win, you win, LGBT community wins because of what we're doing together.                                     So that's kind of been my mantra for many, many years. And I've really just kind of gotten to a place where I can describe kind of my weeding out mechanism to people in a much more succinct way. But it's definitely how I've been operating for many years, and it works really well because I can decide whether or not something's going to make sense for me to work on, or spend my time on, et cetera.                                     So in looking at that, and in looking at this type of approach, I started to look at the types of businesses that I work with, and the types of people that I work with, and realizing that they have a very, very similar mentality and mindset of they win, their customer wins, and their LGBT community in which they live, or are working, or whatever the parameters are wins as well. So I realized over the years I've started to kind of draw in people that are like this, which is amazing because we're all in it together is kind of how I see it. And I had somebody recently ask me about competition and who I viewed as competition, and my statement back to them was while yes, there's direct competitors out there, I feel like there's more synergy and more harmony and more opportunity for us to be working together, and doing things that are bigger and better for the community based on us working together rather than fighting with each other because we're competitors.                                     So that's kind of the mindset that I'm talking about. So going back to the whole concept of how on earth can I impact a million people, it occurred to me that I have a program that I'm doing right now, and I have seven people in it, they started in the beginning of February, they will be graduating in just a couple of weeks at the end of April, and they are amazing people. Seriously, amazing. And I cannot wait until they graduate, and until they have the core of what the deliverable is for this program which is writing a book. I can't wait to have them produce and publish their books because I'm going to have them on the show to just let you hear them, because they're amazing.                                     So the program is a three month program and it's designed to help the business owner or professional- it's mostly business owners who have a story to tell, who have a message, who want to build a platform. It's a course for them to just kind of get all of their stuff together, understand what their personal brand stands for, understand what their goals are, what they want to accomplish out of having a book; so do they want more speaking engagements? Do they want to charge higher amounts for speaking engagements? Do they want to do book signings? Do they want to create online courses? What is it that they want to do? So when I first started this course it was really around let me help you write a book. I've written two of them, I have a couple of others in the works, I know all of the traps, the pitfalls, all of the BS and the drama that you can get sucked into in trying to create a book. So I came up with this course, and it's for ninety days, and the whole plan is to help people walk through all of that muck so they can focus on what they do best, which is their topic, their expertise, and they can write their book.                                     So what I've incorporated into this entire program is the whole personal branding aspect of things. So let's not just say- it's very simple for me to say this is how you write a book. Go here, this is how you pick a title, this is how you pick a subtitle, this is how you get it printed, here's how you find an ISBN number; all of that stuff, that's easy, that's all the logistics. To me- and I would imagine they might not agree with that statement of it being easy, but to me that's the easy part. The hard part is digging deep and understanding why you are writing a book to begin with, what your plan is, what your vision is, what your personal brand stands for, and how are you going to impact the world?                                     So I am in the throes of a course right now with seven people which is amazing. It's seriously amazing, I love every one of them in there, they all have really interesting kind of niches within niches, and I'm really excited for the impact. So that's kind of where I recognized that I personally don't have to work with one million people. I need to work with people who work with other large groups of people to then impact them. So here is basically my new vision for how I can impact a million people. So if I have these seven amazing people in my course right now, and the seven of them have audiences of 1,000 people. My helping them and coaching them and guiding them through understanding what their brand stands for, and how to write a book, and how to get it all done, that's impacting 7,000 people. By me working with seven people, I'm impacting 7,000. So that's the whole new mentality and mindset and the train that I'm on in terms of how I can continue to make a difference in the lives of LGBT people. So some of the people in the course right now, one of them, their focus is on helping younger LGBT youth, and kind of those who might be struggling with coming out, and coming to terms with their identities, et cetera. Another person in it is focused on aging LGBT baby boomers. So they're totally different audiences, but it serves my mission of impacting a million people, because the more people they impact, and the more tools and resources I can provide them, the more amazing it is for everybody. So I personally don't have to make money from a million people, it's not a transaction where I'm trying to figure out, "Oh if I reach a million people and I can say I get a dollar from each one of those people, then yay, I make my million and I reach a million." It's not that at all, not even close to that. It's more of how can I work with a select group of people who have amazing stories to tell, who just need that boost of confidence, or that kind of kick in the ass to get them to that next stage of their evolution, and how can we find a way that they can impact more people?                                     So right now if we have these seven people and they each have an audience of 1,000 how can I help them grow their audience from 1,000 to 10,000? Because now I'm impacting not 7,000 people but I'm impacting 70,000 people. And how can we go from impacting 1,000 people to 10,000 to 100,000? So in looking at the math from that standpoint, it's really easy to impact a million people. But that means I need to be working with more people like those that I'm working with now.                                     So I do want to share with you- and this is not meant to be a hard sell or anything like that, it's more of just my excitement for the second version of this course. So the course that I started as of February 1st, it goes through April 30th, it's been so rewarding, it's going to be done in a few weeks and I'm going to be sad because I really have been enjoying working with these- it's all women in the program right now, and we meet every week for one hour on a webinar, and I provide customized learnings around everything having to do with building your personal brand and writing a book. So the book to me is kind of the foundation of your personal brand. It's the bottom of your platform to stand on. So if you have a book, you've written a book, a small percentage of people in this world have written books, so it makes you stand out alone by just being a published author. So I like to use that as the foundation on which we can build so many different things. So how to be a better speaker, how to position yourself, what does your brand stand for? What is your brand positioning statement? All of that kind of stuff.                                     So that's what I've been working with them on now, and that goes until April 30th, and then I'm taking a month break, and then I'm restarting a next version of it on June 6th. So if you're interested in poking around and seeing what it's about, you can go to www.Author.LGBT. Not dot com, but dot LGBT. So that's probably a whole topic for another day over the fact that there are domain names out there that end in .LGBT. So I highly advise you to check it out. You can also just go to my website which is www.JennTGrace.com and on the home page under the picture on the left hand side, there's something to the effect of telling your story, and you can click on that and get more information. But basically the course starts on June 6th, it will run for three months as well. It will run in the summer months which I actually think is a benefit to many people because it might be a good opportunity to be able to fit something in in a month where maybe it's a little bit slower, unless you are a seasonal business where summer is your busiest.                                     So in looking at that, my goal to share completely directly with you is to get twelve people in this course, and that is not a lot of people, and I have a very large network so getting twelve people shouldn't be too difficult. But I want twelve of the right people. So you might be listening to this, and you might be one of those right people. So I'm looking for advocates. I think that's the best word to summarize the seven people who are in this course right now. I think the best description of them is the fact that they are all advocates. They're advocating for something different, but they're all advocating for something that's bigger than they are. They're all looking to leave a mark in this world long after they're gone. And it's really exciting to me to think how I could find twelve new people that I don't know personally, or maybe we've talked on the phone once, or maybe you've just been listening to this podcast for years. I really want kind of a diverse mix of people of any type of business, any type of anything where you're just looking to get the message out more.                                     So I wanted to share that with you today because I'm so excited about the people I'm working with right now, and I am going to start going on some kind of blitz in the next probably month or so, so starting I would say in May. All of May I'm really going to be focused on getting the message out there to get more people into this course that starts on June 6th. And this first go-around of people that have been in the program has been a lot of a learning curve because I've been able to- I had a structure set up in advance, but as we go through, and as they're asking questions, and they're needing more information on things, I've been able to kind of adapt and tailor the course quite a bit to make sure that it's really exactly what they need in this moment. And I imagine having learned from this first go of it, the second go of it I think is going to be amazing, and I think it's going to be so easy to adapt on the fly based on those of you who are in the group. So I guess one of the biggest benefits that I see of joining this group is you only meet once a week for an hour, and there's a private Facebook group where everybody can kind of talk and bounce ideas off of each other. Right now where we are in the program, everyone's in there kind of talking about their book titles, and their subtitles, and kind of bouncing ideas around there, and that's super exciting to see. Just being able to chime in here and there saying, "Oh my God I love this title, you should totally do that." Or "The title's great but the subtitle's off." It's great to have a bunch of other people who are in the same space you are in terms of- I should say the same mental space of like, 'I said I'm going to write this book, I have to write this book, I need some help, I need some guidance.' You have kind of an unbiased party of at least in this case seven other people where they're all just trying to help each other. And one of the things I'm super excited about, it's going to depend on who launches their book first. So there's seven of them, so someone's going to be the first one to do it. I can't wait to have the person who launches first, the six other people and of course myself, rally around them and help them launch their book to reach even more people. So to me I see this as a way of everyone's audience growing. So if my goal is to impact a million people, and in reality I might only need to reach a hundred people to reach that million people goal. You know that I'm not just going to stay steady at, 'Oh I reached a million people. Ho hum, now I can say that I've done it.' I'm going to say, 'Now I want to reach two million people,' and continue to be upping the ante. But I think it's going to be great because now if you're coming to the table and you have a really tiny audience, maybe you only have fifty people that are in your network, or maybe it's 200 people, maybe it's just a small amount. Coming together with other people who have established brands, or who have established audiences, it really creates this interesting dynamic where everyone can support the other. So whether I have an audience of 200 people, and you have an audience of 10,000 people, if you believe in me, and you believe in my message and my book and what I'm advocating for, there's nothing saying that you wouldn't post on social media something about my book being released, or send it to your email list maybe. Obviously it'd have to be kind of in alignment with your audience, and there's parameters around it, but that's the thing I'm so excited for for this group of people, is that once they start launching their books, they have a built in audience to help them launch their book, which is amazing and something that when I first launched my book in 2013, I wish I had that kind of- I did my own version of it, but I wish I had seven people that were committed to helping me succeed in getting that book done.                                     So that's one of the biggest benefits that I see of this program. I do hope that when the program does end at the end of April, that I will get some testimonials and have some case studies and let them tell you what they gained from this program. Because everyone seems to be very happy right now, and I'm thrilled, and I'm so excited to think that even if they all just have an audience of 1,000 which is just a complete random number, I know that the audience size of those in there now definitely varies. But just knowing that I've been helping seven people for three months, and they're impacting I would say at a minimum of 7,000 people with their enhanced message.                                     To me I feel like it doesn't get any better than that. Like it seriously doesn't get any better than that. So I wanted to share all of this information with you, and just try to describe my whole I win, you win, LGBT community wins. How my plans are evolving into impacting a million people. I'm sure based on what I'm doing right now with this program, which I'm really loving doing, I'm sure that's going to evolve into something more, or some kind of branching off doing different things, who knows. But my end goal is to impact as many LGBT and ally people as humanly people to help spread the word of equality. Really I just want basic equality for all of us, and I think the more advocates we can help kind of raise and bring into this world, the better off all of us are. So if you are listening to this, and you think that this something that you'd be interested in, I would love to talk to you. You don't even have to- you can definitely go to the website and check out the www.Author.LGBT or going to the home page and clicking on the Tell Your Story. But you can certainly just pick up the phone and call me, it's 860-281-1583. Or if you want to send me an email it's Jenn@jenntgrace.com. Either way I would love to get on the phone and talk with you, and just hear more about your brand. Because as I shared in terms of the pyramid, I want to make sure that it's the three way win. So I really want to weed people out very carefully to make sure that you are a right fit for the program. Just because you think you are, you might not be, who knows. I want to make sure we talk through it, and I want to make sure that everybody gets the most benefit and value from this. So I'm being very picky right now, and I am only looking to get twelve. I believe I already have three commitments so that kind of brings us down to nine already, and we still have a couple of months before it launches.                                     So at any rate, I wanted to share that with you because I wanted you to see how that direction in my business actually is in complete alignment with how the podcast is kind of changing and morphing. So really focusing on personal branding, and really focusing on how to get more advocates in the world who can impact more people. So that is kind of it in a nutshell, and it actually is a shorter episode than usual which is great, because typically I'm a liar when we get to this point, it's usually well past the normal time.                                     But yeah, I wanted to just kind of give you the rundown of that. I really, really appreciate you. I would love to talk to you, so again my phone number, 860-281-1583. You can certainly call and we can connect on anything really, it doesn't even have to be related to this particular program. But if you are kind of in the stages where you're looking to create a book, and you really want to build and maximize your audience, and there's some tie to the LGBT community, I would love nothing more than to be the one to help you do that.                                     So that's all I've got. I really enjoy that you're listening to this, I really appreciate it. For any links to today's episode you can go to www.JennTGrace.com/82 that's for episode number 82, and yeah that's all I've got. Again, I appreciate you and I will talk to you in the next episode. Thanks so much, bye bye. 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.

The 6 Steps to using Content Marketing to create your Personal Brand Intro:                          Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast, where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about an $884 billion lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share, and impact your bottom line. 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.   Well hello and welcome to episode number 78 of the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and today we are going to talk about personal branding, content marketing, and being an author all in six simple steps. So content marketing, personal branding, authorship are completely intertwined in what I want to talk about today. You don't have to have one to do the other, there's no kind of contingency on any of them. But what I want to provide to you today are basically six steps into providing a framework for all of this to make sense. So I want to talk about taking an inventory of what you've already done, strategically coming up with some kind of content plan, mind mapping your ideas, putting those ideas into an outline, planning and scheduling your time, and then getting it done. So that is what we're going to talk about in today's episode, I hope you enjoy it.                                     The last couple of episodes that I've been sharing with you have been around planning to become an author in 2016, and talking about confidence, and the most recent episode we talked about the five fears that new LGBT authors have and how to conquer them basically. So I'm kind of going along the theme of authorship in this episode, however it's much bigger than that, and what I mean by that is that the topic of today's podcast is around content marketing, and it stemmed from my second week's class with the authors that I'm working with right now. So as I mentioned in the last podcast, they are working with me from February 1st through April 30th, and each week we're going through a lot of information almost to probably an overwhelming degree for a lot of them. But we're trying to cover a lot so they can ultimately have a book at the end of the ninety days that we have together. And one of the things that I was talking with them about in the last week is about taking an inventory of the content that they have, and how they can basically apply that to potentially their book and telling their story. So as I was thinking about that, I was thinking how can I share this information, and not really what I talked about in the author program itself, but kind of how can I share information around content marketing bigger and more broadly? So basically what I want to cover is content marketing kind of from a big picture level, and how you can use that in your business. So in building your personal brand really. So one of the things that I have been doing for a really long time is working with businesses around content marketing specifically. And content marketing is a little bit of a buzzword and kind of has been a buzzword for a couple of years now I would say. But really when we're talking about content marketing, it's around blogging, and podcasting, and writing for other people's blogs, guest posting, putting out newsletters, and being on other people's podcasts as being interviewed there, and doing videos, and all these types of things that basically are content that you're putting out to the universe. So if you're building your personal brand, you have to find what you stand for. So if we're looking at- and this all kind of ties together in terms of authorship. So as part of your personal brand, you could absolutely be an author. You don't have to be, but being an author is certainly going to help you catapult your personal brand.                                     So if we're talking about content marketing as it relates to personal branding, and really building your personal brand, it's really a matter of identifying what it is that you want to talk about. What is your niche? And of course starting with the obvious of what's your business? So what is it that you do? I know that there's a lot of business owners listening to this, so it could vary. You could be an accountant, you could be a financial advisor, you could be a consultant, you could be a motivational speaker; there's just a bunch of things that you could be doing. And I know for myself that when I started off my business, I've been in business since 2004, but it's absolutely morphed and changed shape a variety of times over the years. And this most recent iteration of my business being a professional lesbian began in November of 2012. So I'm going into the fourth year here, and in doing so everything I've done to this point has really been around content marketing. And I don't necessarily- I wish I could say that this was really intentional in the beginning, but it really wasn't intentional until probably about a year, maybe a year and a half in, where I realized that your personal brand stands for so much more. So if you are beginning your kind of personal brand journey now, you can be looking to get a domain name that has your name as the domain name. So for me I have www.JennTGrace.com. And a side note, a funny little fun fact is that I could not get www.JennGrace.com. So I had to throw the 'T' in there to make sure that I could get something as close to my name as I could. And it is my name obviously, but I really would have preferred Jenn Grace, and not sounding so formal with the 'T,' but alas I wanted to make sure my brand all matched, therefore I had to go with the Jenn T Grace on everything. So that's kind of how that happened. But I would encourage you to make sure you have your domain name. I know that most of the people that I work with right now already have it. There are times- I'm actually working with a client right now who cannot get her name no matter how hard we tried. We even tried to negotiate with the person who owns it via GoDaddy and they're not willing to give it up even though they're not using it. So there's a lot of variables with that kind of stuff. But you can do- depending on what you're doing, like if you're trying to build a platform for speaking you could do- put 'Speaks' at the end of it. So I could do www.JennGraceSpeaks.com for example. Or you can do JennGraceAuthor. There's a lot of different variables, but you really want to try to get as close to your name as possible and make it simple for people to find.                                     So that's just kind of a small simple tip in terms of having a home base if you will to drive people to. So if you have your website and it's not your name, that's fine too. If it's your business name, and you want to start putting out content, then as long as you have a place to bring people back to, that's the end goal. You don't want to be posting all of your blog posts just on LinkedIn but not on your own website. You want to make sure that you're driving people from social media, from the interwebs to your website so you can work on getting people to subscribe to what you're doing and all that kind of stuff.                                     As I had said I was not completely intentional about it when I began. I really began wanting to do this podcast, so I was having a couple of conversations in one day with some really amazing people and thought, 'Wow they have such brilliance to share. I need people to be a fly on the wall to listen to this conversation and hear their great wisdom.' And it was shortly thereafter that day I was like, 'That's what I need to do. I need to do a podcast so I can interview people, and I can talk about these really interesting things, and really just allow people to kind of see the inside look at all of what makes these LGBT leaders and allies amazing people. So it did start off with just a podcast and then I realized, 'Alright so if I'm going to do a podcast, I'm definitely going to have to do some blogging here,' and then the blogging turned into writing a book, and the book turned into creating videos, and it all kind of transpired from there. But one of the things- and this was what I wanted to talk to you about today is really just trying to take an inventory of all of the things that you've done in the past that could tie into your personal brand. So if you're looking at your career path. So you may have had three businesses by now. Just because business number one doesn't have anything to do with business number three, the common denominator there is still you, and you being the brand. So if you may have worked for an insurance company, and happen to be a rock star, and you got a whole bunch of awards for what you were doing, but now you are running a fitness empire. Yes, the two of those things have nothing to do with one another in any way, shape, or form, but the common piece there is you. So how can you leverage the fact that you were an award winning insurance agent maybe, and now you're an award winning fitness guru. So it's a matter of trying to find ways to marry the two of those, and the first place to start is by creating a list of all of the awards that you've ever received based on what jobs you held, what roles you were in, what business you happened to own at the time, and all of that kind of stuff.                                     From there what I would recommend is gathering articles. So I guess we can say that was number one. Number one is what are the awards that you've won, and gathering all that stuff. So number two would be looking at any articles that you've been featured in. So thinking about articles in the newspaper, or a magazine whether it's industry specific, or whether it's a national magazine, or a local newspaper versus national paper; going in and trying to find all of those places that have either focused on you specifically, or they have mentioned you, and start that list. So now you have two lists going.                                     So the third one would be is blog posts. So where- if you have guest posted on other people's blogs, where has that been? Do you have a concrete list of all the places that you've contributed? Make a list of that. Same thing with podcasts. So if you've been interviewed on other people's podcasts, write it down, get it in a list. So at this point- so we're basically looking at a variety ways, a half dozen ways of gathering places that you've- taking an inventory of all these different places that you've been published, or you've been talked about, or the awards you won, the articles, the blog posts, the podcasts, all these different places. This is all kind of the foundation for what could be a content marketing strategy. So a strategy- it has to have a strategy behind it. You can just start saying how great you are on social media, or how great you are on your website, and only doing that. So it's just one piece of the puzzle is getting the inventory of this stuff.                                     The other thing I would say in terms of taking inventory is reviewing your website copy; so any of the writing that's on your website whether it's the 'About' page, or maybe it's a 'Services' page, or your 'Home' page. Grabbing all of that information too, and just reviewing it and seeing what type of content you have there, is there opportunity for you to weave in some of the other things that we talked about? Is there a way for you to weave in articles, or blog posts, or podcasts and make them very natural in part of that conversation? So reviewing your website, reviewing your blog content. So are you getting the most mileage out of your blog content? That is a huge, huge question for so many people. Or are you getting the most mileage out of past newsletters? Are your past newsletters currently blog posts? Or are blog posts into newsletters? So if you're going to create a piece of content, find a way to use that piece of content in 1,000 different ways. There are so many different ways that you can use it, may as well leverage all of it. So to me, if I'm going to work with a client and I'm going to convince them that they need to spend their precious resources on sitting down and spending two hours on writing a piece of content, and they're a very busy CEO that needs to be focused on sales calls and all kinds of stuff, and that two hours of time is really valuable to them. I'm not going to just say, "Hey thank you for writing this 600-800 word piece of blog content," posting it on the blog, and then just leaving it at that. It's far more than that. It's looking at that blog content and saying, okay how can we re-purpose this? Can we pitch this to a publication as some kind of guest post? Could we talk to other people in our space and say, 'Hey I have this interesting information, is this something you want to put on your post?' Or oh the newsletter is going to come up in a couple of weeks, can we put this information in the newsletter? Of course all of these different scenarios you have to modify the language a little bit, but the substance and the meat of that information remains the same. So if you're talking about a specific topic, maybe the intro and the outro of that topic change a little bit based on the audience, and where it's going, and if it's an article versus a newsletter versus a blog post. In looking at it that way, yeah we're going to have to change the content a little bit to make sure that it resonates with the audience. So yeah we'll have to change the content a little bit to make sure it resonates with the audience, but ultimately it's re-purposing that one blog post that you may have spent two hours on, and putting it in six, seven, eight different places to really start to gather and create more traffic to your website, and ultimately the hope would be to convert leads once people get to your website. So convincing them that they should pick up the phone and call you, or to download something, or reach out to you.                                     So another piece of this is thinking about the strategy for your content. So I just said it's kind of like step one. So step one is basically taking an inventory. So step two is more of what- how can I strategically use this information? So we just talked about how you can use your website content, your blog content, newsletters, podcasts, all that kind of stuff is intertwined, and really kind of in harmony to drive your end goal. But in terms of a strategy, one of the things that I did- and I know a lot of authors who are doing this now, is when I started writing on my blog in November of 2012, it was really starting off with the podcast, but when I started writing I knew I was going to use the information at some point somewhere else. And again I didn't really- I wasn't coming from a personal branding side of things. I wasn't trying to figure out how to build my personal brand. All my goal at the time was to help educate people, and it's still a huge, huge part of my goal is to educate people on LGBT stuff. But I knew as I was writing these blog posts that I would do something with them eventually, and it wasn't fully thought out, but in hindsight, and something you could learn, is that if you say, "My end goal is to have a book by the end of 2016. And I write to my blog twice a week," maybe it's once a week, maybe it's once every two weeks, maybe it's once a month. Whatever the frequency is, so you can put that content together each week as you go throughout the year so by the time you get to the end of the year, you have all of the content available, you basically just have to marry it all together into something that creates a book. So if you're talking about one topic that goes in with the second topic, you're going to have to create- going in and adding paragraphs and making sure that the flow is right, and making sure that the chapters flow well. But the beauty is that you would have all of that information to work with rather than sitting there in November saying, "Crap I said in 2016 I'm going to write a book, and now I have to write 30,000 words. So it's a matter of really thinking strategically; instead of having to write 30,000 words at once, how can I write thirty blog posts that are 1,000 words each and marry them together into a book by the end of the year? So it's really thinking from a big strategic level of how to do that. So as I mentioned in my first book which is, 'But You Don't Look Gay,' and it's The Six Steps to Creating a Successful LGBT Marketing Strategy. What I did is when I first started, the first half of that book really is a lot of information about who the community is, the buying power of the community, some of the bigger marketing tips of understanding why people use the rainbow in their marketing, giving some data, and that kind of stuff. All of that information was taken from past blog posts. And again, I didn't have the strategy at first for how I was doing this, so it was completely disjointed when I started working with it, but the content was all there. So I probably had I would say 15,000 words to work with probably at the very least, and I was able to move things around, and really just bridge these thoughts together, but it was a little more cumbersome because when I was writing it to begin with, I wasn't writing it with an end goal of, 'I'm going to put this in a book.' However probably midway through 2013, I guess maybe it was even in early 2013, I had the thought of creating a series of blog posts that all tied together in one topic, which happens to be the six steps. So I think when I was doing it I had created five steps. So it was what are the five steps to creating a really good strategy? And I would write it saying, "Okay so this week we're going to talk about step one of five," and I would write a blog post about it, sometimes it's 600 words, sometimes it's 1,000 words, and then I would say, "Come back next week and we'll get into number two. And then we'll get into number three." So it was a series that lasted over the course of five weeks, and that one- that information is the second half of that first book. So it was so easy because I had already written it with a natural flow from chapter to chapter essentially. So because I had that in mind of, 'I'm going to make a book, like this is definitely going to be the foundation of my book,' it was really, really easy to take those blog posts that really already flowed well together, and putting them in the second half of that book.                                     So going a little bit further along, I created my second book in 2014, and that one is, 'No Wait, You Do Look Gay,' and it's The Seven Mistakes that Prevent People from Being Able to Sell to the Community. And that one was very artfully crafted over the course of probably ten months, maybe a little bit longer, of here's all the things that I want to include in this book, and oh by the way I have six months of blog content that I have to come up with. Let me make sure it's both. So in essence, somebody could go to my website and go through every blog post I've ever written, which is over 400 at this point, it's probably closer to 450, which would be a total pain in the ass of having to go in, and try to find things, and sometimes it's logically setting up for the next thing to read, but most of the time not, and not intentionally, just how the website's structured. Or you could just buy the book for $10 and make it easy on yourself, and have it laid out beautifully for you.                                     So I guess the thing that the book has that the blog posts don't have is there's additional content and context for building the business case, and building the business case for this book itself. So from that standpoint, this is something that anybody can do. So I know that I've been talking about authorship, and really becoming an author in 2016, but you can totally be tag-teaming this approach. You could be working on a content marketing strategy, and working on a book at the exact same time, and using that same information in both places. And of course for- I don't know if it's an ethical reason, I don't even know what to call it. You don't want it to be completely identical. So I made sure that when I was writing both of the books that I'm adding a little more information in the book because I want people to feel like they're getting a value from it. In the grand scheme of things, you can probably figure out 85% of it on the website itself without ever having to get the book, but again it's the convenience and the ease of having the book to look at, and to guide you through the process.                                     So if you already have content, and going back to that inventory of taking an inventory of where you've been seen, but then also things that you've produced, there's probably a good chance that you have the foundation- a big foundation of being able to put a book together in a relatively short period of time, because you already have a lot of it, you just have to start putting it together like a puzzle. So in terms of the content marketing strategy- So there's taking the inventory, and then there's having a strategy for what you're going to do with that information. And the content marketing might flow into a book, maybe you don't want to write a book, and that's fine too. I think that a lot of people have it in mind that they can sit and just spend an hour and write 600 words for a blog post, and that doesn't have to do anything else, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.                                     So if you do want to go down the road of creating a book, and again this is probably applicable if you're just trying to figure out a content marketing strategy. The third step would be figuring out basically what your outline would look like. So if we think, 'Hey we started at the top, we took an inventory of everything we have, and now we have these stacks of stuff that we can use and they're all over here on this side of the desk, and now we are strategically looking at what we want to do with this information whether it's just producing on the blog- I guess podcast too, on the blog or podcast, or producing a book with this information eventually. The next piece would be coming up with an outline. So even if you don't want to write a book, it still would be in your best interest to have some kind of road map, or some kind of outline to follow, which could be part of the overall strategy. But having some tactical road map that basically says, 'Okay on Tuesdays I'm going to write communication tips, and on Fridays I'm going to write marketing tips. And every other week I'm going to do an interview.' So that way you at least have an outline for what you're trying to accomplish. And I use those examples because when I started my blog I was writing twice a week, and I'm not going to lie, it was a lot of work. But now four years later I have 450 blog posts that are just kind of out there in the universe, and when someone goes to Google and they're looking for something around LGBT and marketing, a lot of times I'm the one that shows up because I have so much information out there for it. But you can save yourself a lot of time and headache if you come up with an outline. So I was doing my Communications Tuesdays, and every Tuesday I would write something about a faux pas that people say or do, or a term that you might not want to use, or one you would prefer to use. And then on Fridays it was very tactical and marketing driven. So what's a step to launching a successful strategy? What's step one? What's step two? And those were always on Fridays.                                     So if we're looking at it from that standpoint, you can take route one, or route A, whatever we want to call it, and say, 'Alright I'm just going to focus on getting content out there. I'm not trying to do a book.' So pick a day of the week that you want to release your blog, podcast, whatever it happens to be, and pick a theme, and then go from there. And they don't have to tie together, but if you want to figure out how to use this for a book down the road, actually put together an outline of a book. So you don't have to have any of it written, don't get stressed out about, 'Oh I don't even know what I would write.' Just start putting together an outline of your thoughts, and from there you can totally create this outline that turns into your roadmap of, okay chapter one has to be on general high level who the LGBT community is. Chapter two can go into the more nitty gritty details of the LGBT community. Maybe it talks about the 'L' of the community. Chapter three talks about the 'G' of the community. Chapter four, the 'B.' Chapter five, the 'T.' Chapter six, okay now you know all this information, why is it important? I guess really think through what people ask you the most about, what are those common questions? What is your process and your methodology for how you walk a client through whatever product or service it is that you sell? Because that's really going to be the framework of what could be your outline to your book, and also an outline as part of your content marketing strategy.                                     You may be listening to this and thinking, 'I have never written an outline for anything, let alone a book.' So what I could recommend doing is mind mapping your ideas. Mind mapping is really just grabbing a piece of paper, writing down your central idea in the center of it, and then just branching off, drawing lines that come out from that center that are different pieces of information or topics around your business that you would want to talk about. And if you just go to Google and type in 'mind maps,' there are tons and tons and tons of information, and pictures, and how to's of actually creating a mind map. But it's really simple. Grab a piece of paper, write in the middle 'LGBT marketing,' and from there what are all the pieces that people would need to know about LGBT marketing? It could be the same thing for financial advisors. So if you're an advisor and you're listening to this, circle financial advisor, that's who you are, you're in the center of it. Who are the clients you work with? What are the questions they ask? Where are you doing business? All of the things that could be beneficial to your end customer to hear. Or maybe your end customer- maybe you're not trying to get customers, maybe you have a different goal of your book. But regardless, starting with the mind map, and then from the mind map you can create an outline because then you can start grouping things together. So even though it might look like a big, crazy, chaotic mess of information on a page, you might look at it kind of high level and say, 'Alright for some reason there's a lot of chatter about marketing tactics. Let me just grab all of those and put them aside in one place.' Or 'There's a lot of chatter about words that you shouldn't say. Let me put all those on this side of the page.' And then eventually it becomes really clear, 'Oh wow, there's actually a story arc here, there's a structure here. I couldn't see the forest through the trees before to see that there's a structure, but there's totally a structure.' So really from that mind map stage it's a matter of creating- it's going back to the outline. So you either create the outline first, or you use a mind map to help you create the outline. So those are kind of like steps three and four kind of combined.                                     And then from there you just plan and schedule your time of essentially how you're going to get it done. So if you decide that, 'Hey my outline has enough for fourteen chapters, I'm going to try to write 1,000 words each for each of these fourteen chapters. So now we have 14,000 words.' That's great but how are you going to do that? Are you going to block out time on your calendar? Are you going to reserve certain days of the week to focus on your writing? Are you going to write say every morning from 8:00 to 8:30, and when 8:30 hits, the buzzer goes off, you're done? Are you going to do it for four hours on a Friday? Are you going to focus one day a month? There's a million different ways you can do this, you just have to do it with what works best for you. For me it used to be focusing on writing for a little bit every day. I used to do usually between 8:00 and 9:00 AM, I would do my writing. And then once that was up, I was done, and I moved on. And now I really morphed into- by the time I get to the place where I want to write something, I have it in my mind pretty concretely, and it's just a matter of getting it out of my head and on paper. So I wrote a blog post- one of the January blog posts, I ended up writing it in like 21 minutes, and I do time myself just to see, whereas when I first started this about four years ago, that easily could have been something that took me three hours to do. So of course you basically- you get better as you go through. And it takes a while, there's a lot of process involved, but it's a matter of scheduling it and make time for it.                                     And then of course the last step would be if you're going to schedule it and make time for it, then you have to actually do the work, that's the big piece. So you actually have to get it done. So that could be just using a Word document, that could be getting a product like Scrivener, which is a product specifically for writing whether it's blog posts, books, whatever it happens to be. It's a really helpful tool, I happen to love it. I'll make sure I include a link in the show notes for that, and just as a side note the link for today's show would be www.JennTGrace.com/78 for episode number 78.                                     So yeah, so I know I just kind of spewed out a lot of information all at once, and maybe it didn't come out- I'm thinking as I'm talking it became more clear as I went along, but it's really what we're talking about, is the six steps to creating a content marketing plan that could eventually evolve into a book. Or the six steps to creating a book that could evolve into a content marketing plan. So it's really just those six steps of taking an inventory, creating a strategy, outlining and then mind mapping, or mind mapping and then outlining depending on what your process is. Planning and scheduling, and then getting it done.                                     So yeah, that I'm sure I have raised far more questions than I have answered, but I hope that today's episode gives you at least a little bit of a framework of how you can use content marketing in your business, how you can use it as part of your personal brand, how you can have that evolve into being an author by the end of 2016 if that's what you're trying to do, or if you're listening to this podcast and it's 2017, it's all still applicable. Everything I'm talking about is totally an evergreen topic, meaning this is something that you can do regardless of when in a period of time this happens to be that you're listening to it. So for anyone listening to this, I would strongly encourage you to reach out, whether you leave a comment in the blog post that this podcast is on, whether you comment on it in LinkedIn, send me a tweet, send me a note on Facebook; wherever you happen to be, I probably am too, and I would love to hear your thoughts on this because I really am thinking I would like to go into more detail on content marketing from a really big picture level, and just helping give you kind of that step by step advice. I am currently working with a fair amount of really large companies who I'm helping with their content marketing strategy, and it's something that I really love doing. And to be perfectly honest, I've never really marketed it. Like it's not something- like to me I'm teaching straight people how to market to gay people, and gay people how to market themselves. That is my tagline, I'm still sticking entirely true to that, but because my business is built on content marketing, I do have a lot of companies that reach out to me to say, "Hey, how did you do that? How did you build it? Can you build it for us?" And of course I would love to build it for them, because as long as it has some tie into what we're talking about in terms of the LGBT market, then it's a win-win for everybody, and that's kind of how I prefer to do things.                                     So anyway, if you want to reach out to me on social media, by all means please do. If you want to contact me, you can do so on my website. And if I threw out things that are not clear to you, please email me and ask for clarification, and I can certainly do a follow-up episode about this. And yeah, we can kind of go from there.                                     So I hope you enjoyed today's episode, and we will talk in episode number 79. Talk to you soon.                                     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 Jenn T Grace. 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.   [End of Audio 00:34:35]

Thank you for listening to episode 71 of the podcast. On my last podcast I was able to answer a question from a reader and it was nice to get back to that type of podcast! I decided this week I would get to a few more questions I've received from LinkedIn connections that address reaching LGBT consumers. I also chat briefly about my recent marathon experience and international postage :) If you have an LGBT-related question please feel free to drop me a line, I'd love to hear it.....and you never know.....your question may be featured on an upcoming podcast!     Listen to the episode by clicking the play button below. Would you prefer to read the transcript than listen to the episode? No problem! Read the transcript below. AUDIO TITLE: Episode #71 Jenn T Grace: You are listening to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast, episode 71. Intro: Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast, where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about an $884 billion lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share, and impact your bottom line. 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 71 of the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and today I am going to be answering a handful of questions that I have received from LinkedIn. In the last episode I'm pretty certain I had mentioned that I had a whole queue of LinkedIn questions that I wanted to answer. However the last episode I ended up only answering one of them, which I ended up titling, 'An Open Letter from a Self-Admitted Homophobe.' So if you have not listened to that podcast yet, I would totally recommend doing so. It's episode number 70 so you can go to www.JennTGrace.com/70. And if you prefer to read it rather than listen to it, the transcript for that episode is available as well, so you can certainly do that. But because that episode ended up taking me- or I should say that question ended up taking me an entire episode to respond to, today I want to cover three particular questions that I've received. One is from a gay business owner who is abroad, and there's a lesbian business owner who is in the United States, and then the third one is from a recent college grad looking for advice and tips on what she calls, 'the consulting thing.' So I do want to address all three of those questions, and hopefully I can keep it to a reasonable time frame here. Somehow under an hour, which is usually my goal, however as you all know sometimes that does not happen. But anyway, so before I talk about those questions and provide some thorough answers, there's a couple of things that I do want to mention before diving into the meat of the episode. And the first of those things is that I wanted to give you a super quick update on my half marathon. I was just looking through old podcast episodes going back to in the mid-thirties for episodes. So going back to mid-2013, and I realized that for a really long time I was giving you regular updates on the progress, and what was going on. But then at some point along the way I have somehow stopped doing so. And it was interesting because I just ran my third half marathon over this last weekend, and I had a handful of people from my Facebook page reach out to me asking for updates because it was a whole debauchery of epic proportions, just like the last time I ran one. But when people were asking me for updates it occurred to me that, oh wow I have not actually mentioned it on the podcast in a while. And some of you who reached out are podcast listeners. So I wanted to just give a super quick update.

Thanks for listening to episode #70 of the podcast. Today's episode of the podcast isn't an interview, it's a response to an email I received from a reader. It's been a few months since I've spent a podcast just talking to you, my audience, so it was nice to get back to that and even share some exciting updates to come to this podcast. I receive a lot of comments and emails from my readers and listeners, but this one in particular felt like it should be shared. Because there's a lot in the question itself, and I think that it's probably a little more common of a thought process than we might want to believe. So I really wanted to take time today to dedicate answering this question in as much detail as I can. Take a listen and let me know if you can relate to the question being asked. I always love to hear your thoughts - leave them below! Listen to the episode by clicking the play button below.   Would you prefer to read the transcript than listen to the episode? No problem! Read the transcript below. AUDIO TITLE: Episode #70  Jenn T Grace: You are listening to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast, episode 70.   Intro: Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast, where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about an $884 billion lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share, and impact your bottom line. 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 episode number 70 of the podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and today is not going to be an interview. I know many of you listening have been enjoying interviews that from what I can tell started back at episode 61. So we are in episode number 70 today, so we have had many, many interviews that if you are listening to this live as it comes out, you have been listening to it pretty much all throughout the summer, I've had awesome guests on the show. So the last time that I just kind of riffed with you one-on-one was back in July. It seems a little bit crazy, I didn't realize it had been that long, but back in July I had done episode number 61, which was the 'Marriage Equality has Arrived, But the Work is Far from Done.' So I talked about the implications of marriage equality, and what that's going to mean for marketing going forward. So since then we've heard from Jeremy Wallace, Alice Derock, Bryce Summers, Rolla Selbak, Ann Townsend, Diane Conklin, Michele Wierzgac, and Melissa Ferrick. So we've had some pretty awesome lineup, if I do say so myself, of guests that I've had on the show. So I'm definitely planning on having more guests coming in the next few months or so to kind of wrap up the year. But today I wanted to talk with you one-on-one in response to a reader's question. So this question is really lengthy, and it's really, really astute and I think requires a podcast response versus me trying to create a blog out of it, or just email them back. Because there's a lot in the question itself, and I think that it's probably a little more common of a thought process than we might want to believe. So I really wanted to take time today to dedicate answering this question in as much detail as I can. And I'll read the entire question first, and then I'm going to break it up not necessarily line by line per say, but I'm definitely going to break it up so that way I can address very specific points that have been brought up in that question. So before we get into answering this question, which I'm hoping is going to be very informative for you, I do want to bring up a couple of things, because we are at the end of October, and we are on episode number 70,

On today's episode of the Gay Business & Marketing Made Easy podcast, I talk to Gina Capristo-Gajdosik, the filmmaker behind the film Make Me Blush! We talk about her personal coming out journey, the journey of being a filmmaker and seeing your project through to the end. This interview is one of the most raw and heartfelt episodes I've done in quite sometime, where you'll learn a bit about the film industry and a lot about how to communicate with your LGBT clientele. Links mentioned in today's episode: Today's episode Make Me Blush: The Movie Twitter: @MakeMeBlushFilm Listen to the episode by clicking the play button below! Would you prefer to read the transcript than listen to the episode? No problem! Read the transcript below. AUDIO TITLE:  Episode #60 – The Power of Coming Out Jenn T Grace: You are listening to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast, episode 60. Intro: Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about the $790 billion lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share and impact your bottom line. And now your host - she's an entrepreneur, a marketing maven and an advocate for the LGBT business community. Jenn, with two N's, T. Grace. Jenn T Grace: Well hello and welcome to episode number sixty of the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and today I have a really awesome interview for you. In last week's- or I guess the last podcast this month, episode number 59, I as you may recall was having some sort of technological problems with my podcast, and I have since been able to resolve them, so I'm really excited about that. But I did promise you a brand new interview, a brand new episode. And I am very pleased that I can actually deliver on that promise. Because when I promise something and I can't deliver on it, it just destroys me even if it's something as simple as a new podcast for you. So I'm quite pleased today to share with you this new episode. So a couple of things that I want to mention before I really kind of dive into who I'm speaking with today, is in the last podcast I mentioned that I have a new webinar, so I want to talk about that briefly again if you don't mind, because I'm super excited about this new webinar called Sales and Marketing Strategies for Reaching LGBT Customers. And the primary objective of the webinar is to help you find, market and sell to the LGBT community in as few steps as possible. So this webinar is just under an hour or so, it's available on my website, you can go and find a date that makes sense for you to come and attend the webinar. And you'll just learn a whole bunch of stuff as it relates to really thinking about how you're going to market your product, service, business, et cetera to the LGBT community. You know it covers things like how to target, what LGBT clients are going to be right for your business, and how- it'll give you some tips and tricks around how to make sure that you're not treating your LGBT marketing efforts as one big mass marketing approach, and identifying things like what pain points are specific to your LGBT clients that may not be pain points for other clients of yours. So that's really kind of the short and dirty of the new webinar, so again you could head over to www.JennTGrace.com/webinars and you can totally check that out there. The other thing that I wanted to mention is I have not mentioned my running endeavors recently; and to be honest I don't even know if I told you that I was running a half marathon in May. So this episode is airing on May 28th, if you're listening to this live, the day it comes out. But I actually ran a half marathon earlier this month in the first weekend in May.

  Today's podcast episode is going to cover the ripple effect that supplier diversity opportunities can have on ​your​ business, whether or you are part of the LGBT community or an ally to the LGBT community. It doesn't matter if you are a diverse supplier or if you are selling to corporate - no matter what your business there is a world of opportunities that you are probably overlooking completely! Who doesn't want access to new opportunities to expand and grow your business? I don't think many people would say no to that. Today's episode will talk about all of the ways your business can benefit and grow as a result of these opportunities. You don't want to miss it. Links mentioned in today' post: Set up a call with me! Today's episode NGLCC Website    Listen to the episode by clicking the play button below! Would you prefer to read the transcript than listen to the episode? No problem! Read the transcript below. AUDIO TITLE:  Episode #56 – Supplier Diversity Jenn T Grace: You are listening to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast, Episode 56. Intro: Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about the $790 billion lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share and impact your bottom line. And now your host - she's an entrepreneur, a marketing maven and an advocate for the LGBT business community. Jenn, with two N's, T. Grace. Jenn T Grace: Hello and welcome to episode number 56 of the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace. And today I have a fairly meaty episode for you. So I want to talk about supplier diversity. Yes, again it's that phrase that you keep hearing me talk about but you may or may not know how that actually relates to your business. So I want you to from the get-go, basically understand that when I'm talking about supplier diversity, my mentality around it is that everybody has an opportunity, even if you're not someone of any type of diversity. But I guarantee you probably are, you just don't know it. So that's going to be today's episode, but of course before we get into the actual meat of the episode, I want to just talk about three particular things. So the first of those three things is that I am looking for additional guests to feature on this podcast. So I have a pretty large network of people that I can go to and ask if they want to be on the show, and I personal just enjoy interviewing people that I somehow get along with, or somehow I see some sort of synergy between what they do and what I want to talk about here on the podcast. But I actually want to hear from you, and who you think should be on the show. I've been inviting people based on my own personal preferences, but at the end of the day, you're the ones listening to the show and I have a continuously increasing amount of listeners, and I want to know what you want to hear. So if you yourself would like to nominate yourself to be on the show, or you have a client or a colleague, a friend, a partner, spouse; whomever it happens to be that you think would be a good fit for this podcast, please let me know. I would love to hear from you. So you can do so by going to my website, going the Contact Me page, sending me an email that way and then I will get back to you and we'll see if it's a good fit. So that is item number one. And item number two is that I am still accepting new coaching clients. I've been talking about it for- I don't even know, a couple of months maybe now, that I have been increasing the amount of coaching clients that I'm taking on. I only have five spots remaining at this point, so if you would like to be one of those five, please feel free to reach out to me on that.

Today's podcast is an interview, finally! It's been since episode #45 with Amy Mayes since I've done an interview - wow. Well, now that we are back to an interview format - you are in for a real treat. I had a chance to talk with Mona Elyafi of ILDK Media. She owns a boutique public relations agency based in Los Angeles. She shared her personal story of how she came to found her company and all of the important milestones she hit along the way. We also discussed the nuances of pitching LGBT stories to LGBT publications and mainstream publications. She provides some solid PR strategies you could take and run with in your own business. I hope you enjoy the show! Please reach out with any thoughts or comments! Links mentioned in today's podcast: Check out my survey here! Today's episode  #45: Expert Interview with Amy Mayes of Amy Mayes Photography [Podcast] ILDK Media Website for the Dinah Shore To listen to the podcast, click the play button below! Would you prefer to read the transcript than listen to the episode? No problem! Read the transcript below. AUDIO TITLE:  Episode #54 – Mona Elyafi Jenn T Grace: You are listening to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast, Episode 54. Intro: Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about the $790 billion lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share and impact your bottom line. And now your host - she's an entrepreneur, a marketing maven and an advocate for the LGBT business community. Jenn, with two N's, T. Grace. Jenn T Grace: Well hello and welcome to episode number 54 of the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and today I have a real treat for you. It's been probably, I have to say at least a couple of months since I have done an interview with someone. And I am now getting back into the swing of things. It does require far more additional planning to schedule and line up guests and all that great stuff. But fortunately this time around works out beautifully. So I have the guest today on the show, is Mona Elyafi, and she is the founder of ILDK Media which is a PR agency based in Los Angeles. And she had reached out to me in terms of actually mentioning one of her clients that she wanted to see if she could get as a guest on my show. And come to find out she had already been a guest which is Christin Mell from Tello Films, so she has already been a guest which is pretty awesome, and then we also discovered that Rony Tennenbaum was also on my show quite some time ago and is also working with Mona. So she's certainly well connected and very involved in the LGBT space as you're going to find out from a public relations standpoint. It was just a great opportunity to connect with somebody that I did not know and just really learn and she had some great insights, and words of wisdom to share. So I'm really looking forward to sharing today's interview. As always before we hop into the interview I do have a couple of things that I want to announce in advance. So we are in episode number 54, which seems quite crazy that we're already at episode 54. But I want to mention the next webinar that is coming up. I have an absolute ton of RSVP's for this webinar, I'm really excited about it. I don't know- I think I might have said this in the last podcast, I have no idea what it is about this particular webinar that has everybody excited, but it is happening and I'm stoked. So it is on March 24th, so it's a couple of weeks out from the time that you're listening to this. And of course if you are listening to this and it's after March 24th of 2015, don't worry because there will be another webinar available for you.

In today's episode I cover a few topics. The first is I answer a listener question about what to do when you don't feel comfortable networking in an LGBT environment. The second is I do a deep dive into what the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), Corporate Equality Index is. I also review an article shared with me by a Facebook fan, who wanted to hear my personal opinion on the HRC. With the HRC it is usually a love em' or hate em' scenario. I share why I see such a significant importance in the Corporate Equality Index specifically and of course, share how I really feel about the HRC. This is an episode you've been waiting for. And now that I'm back from jury duty I have time to the deep dive you've been asking for! Speaking of jury duty, next week's blog post is going to share the 4 lessons I learned by being a juror on a murder trial - you won't want to miss that post - so come back next week! Links mentioned in the episode: Corporate Equality Index | Human Rights Campaign Food Dive  Homonormativity 101: What It Is and How It's Hurting Our Movement  Out Now Global  015: Tables are Turned - Paul Collanton interviews Jenn! [Podcast] Listen to the podcast by clicking the play button below! Would you prefer to read the transcript than listen to the podcast? No problem! Read the transcript below!   AUDIO TITLE:  Episode #53 – HRC Corporate Equality Index Jenn T Grace: You are listening to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast, Episode 53. Intro: Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about the $790 billion lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share and impact your bottom line. And now your host - she's an entrepreneur, a marketing maven and an advocate for the LGBT business community. Jenn, with two N's, T. Grace. Hello and welcome! Well hello and welcome to episode number 53 of the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and I have a very content-filled episode for you today; I'm pretty excited about having the time to actually get this episode done. I've been talking about it and delaying it a couple of times. But today we are going to talk about the Human Rights Campaign and their Corporate Equality Index. There will be lots of information shared in addition to a couple of areas of just my own personal opinion about the organization based on a request from somebody that is a fan on Facebook and somebody that I know. So I want to address a question of hers. In addition I want to talk about kind of an overview of what the Corporate Equality Index is, because you may not have any idea what it is. So I want to share that a little bit. I also am going to reply, in audio format, to a question I received from somebody that was on my webinar last month. So I want to have an opportunity to respond to this because it's a longer question, and I just didn't have enough time to actually type a really thoughtful response. But, also in looking at her question I feel like it's something that you may also feel or have a similar question around. So it can help you at the same time. What's in store for today's episode! So that's basically that in terms of what we are going to cover in today's episode. As I am recording this I'm going to apologize in advance for perhaps some rustling sounds or- I don't even know what kind of noise this would make in the microphone. But I am wrapped up in a blanket as I am recording this, and I have big, fluffy slippers on. Because it is one degree outside right now. It is- as I'm recording this it's about 8:00 in the morning, so one degree is actually warmer than it has been overnight. But it's very cold.

Today's episode of the Gay Business & Marketing Made Easy Podcast covers the topic of knowing, liking and trusting someone. A recent plumbing snafu in my house made me realize how important this and even further how important it is for someone within the LGBT community. My experience can help you adapt your LGBT marketing message to attract more LGBT customers. Find out about this topic and more in this monumental 50th episode of the podcast! Links mentioned in today's podcast. Gay Sales 101: How to Sell to the $830 Billion LGBT Market #45: Expert Interview with Amy Mayes of Amy Mayes Photography [Podcast] #48: How to be an ally to a community you don't belong to [Podcast] My first book: But You Don't Look Gay... Tutorial on how to create your 'why' Visit the online store! The Trevor Project Check out Tony Ferraiolo's inspiring website! Listen to the podcast by clicking the play button below! Would you prefer to read the transcript than listen to the episode? No problem! Read the transcript below! AUDIO TITLE: Episode #50 – Why Know, Like & Trust is Important for LGBT People You are listening to episode number fifty of the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about the $790 billion lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share and impact your bottom line. And now your host - she's an entrepreneur, a marketing maven and an advocate for the LGBT business community. Jenn, with two N's, T. Grace. Welcome to Episode Number 50! Well hello and welcome to episode number 50 of the podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and I am delighted to ring in the New Year with you. Today is the first podcast of the New Year, and it is episode number fifty, which I consider to be quite monumental. I started this podcast back in January of 2013, and now here we are in January of 2015. And I can certainly say that a lot has changed in two years for me personally and for my business and for the LGBT community and movement. And it's really been I think a very fast moving two years that we've just had. So I would encourage you if you are interested to check back at some of the past episodes that I've done. There's at least the fifty from this particular podcast; but then I also did a special interview series where there is another thirty interviews. All of which are available on the website at www.JennTGrace.com/thepodcast. So definitely go check it out. In today's podcast... Today's podcast I want to cover four topics really, and I'm trying to bucket out some of my thoughts here and a lot of times I just kind of hit record and just run off of a pretty general outline. But today I have some really concrete thoughts that I want to share with you, and some links that I want to share, and all that kind of great stuff. So generally speaking the first thing that I want to cover is going back to something that I talk about a lot, a favorite topic of mine, about knowing your 'why' and being an ally to a community that you're not part of. So I'll get into a little bit of detail there. #LeelahAlcorn I also want to talk about the recent tragic story of a transgender Ohio teen, and what this means for you as a business person, as a person, as an ally to the community or possibly somebody within the community. And it's just a terribly tragic story and it's certainly worth bringing up on today's show. Our first webinar of the new year... The third thing that I'm going to cover briefly is what to expect from the first webinar of the new year, which is, if you are listening to this live- or not live but as it came out, it is next week on January 13th.

In today's podcast I talk about the 8 key lessons I learned in 2014. Each year I do an annual recap and there are 8 that stand out to me. As a listener you have been following my running journey throughout 2014 so I use some running analogies to explain my 8 key lessons. I hope you enjoy it and wish you a very happy holiday season! Links mentioned in today's podcast! How do you recover from sticking your foot in your mouth? SO...Where are the lesbians? #46: What is coming in 2015 and answering listener questions [Podcast] #25: LGBT Year in Review & Key Lessons in 2013 [Podcast] Listen to the episode by clicking the play button below!   Would you prefer to read the transcript than listen to the episode? No problem! Read the transcript below. AUDIO TITLE: Episode #49 – Eight Lessons of 2014 You are listening to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy, Podcast Episode 49. Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about the $790 billion lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share and impact your bottom line. And now your host - she's an entrepreneur, a marketing maven and an advocate for the LGBT business community. Jenn, with two N's, T. Grace. Hello and welcome to Episode Number 49! Well hello and welcome to episode number 49 of the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace. And here we are. It is the end of December, 2014. We are about to go into a new year with lots of new things to accomplish. And today if you are listening to this as it's coming out live, it is actually coming out on Christmas Day for those of you who do celebrate Christmas. I know that I will be spending time with family. You know we celebrate Christmas but we are not an overly festive holiday-filled household, we just prefer the holiday season more generally and spending time with family and friends and collecting holiday cards from others and friends of ours. Our refrigerator right now is just completely from top to bottom filled with cards that people have sent us. So that's the kind of stuff that we enjoy around the holidays, is just getting just nice notes from people and checking in with people that we may not have talked to as much as we would have hoped throughout the year and that kind of stuff. But we do celebrate Christmas and our kids have plenty of things to look forward to on Christmas Day. But my personal excitement is a homemade apple pie that awaits me at my inlaws' house, that I'm very, very excited about. So you can see where my primary focus is, I'm focused on food and what greatness awaits. So yeah, I don't know what is in store for you today if you are maybe you're listening to this while you're travelling somewhere, or if you're listening to this it could be June 2015 by the time you're listening to this, and that's totally cool too. Today I have an unedited show for you.. So because I am recording this just a couple of days before the airing date, I do not have time to make this a very nicely edited show. So you are getting a very raw version of the show today, so if I mess up along the way there will be no editing this or cutting it out. So I've had a couple of episodes in the past where I did kind of a Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Unplugged version where I wasn't doing a whole lot of editing, and to be honest I feel like you probably won't even be able to tell the difference unless of course we're two and a half minutes in now and I do something egregious in the next few minutes; which, there we go, is quite possible. Today's topic.. Anywho. So today's topic is I want to just talk about some of the things, some of the key lessons that I've learned in 2014,

Today's podcast addresses specifically how to be an ally to a community you are not necessarily a part of. I train LGBT allies on a daily basis and successfully I might add. ;-) But I had an epiphany recently. How does one enter the world of being an ally where they don't know where to start? I talk about this as it relates to LGBT allies but it wasn't until recent where I've been struggling to find my way as an ally to the black community that it truly hit me with how intimidating and daunting this can be. Allies are critical to any group of people and the concepts are universal. In this episode you'll hear my struggles of what an ally means to me and how I am trying to be a better ally to a community that I am not a part of - and how you can be too! Enjoy listening and as always, I would truly love to hear your thoughts on this. Links mentioned in today's podcast: Corporate Equality Index Blog Post: Resources Resources for Questioning Youth Visit my Homepage here for the Hartford Courant article!   Listen to the episode by clicking the play button below!   Would you prefer to read the transcript than listen to the episode? No problem! Read the transcript below. AUDIO TITLE: Episode #48 – How to Be an Ally to a Community You Don’t Belong To You are listening to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast, Episode 48. Welcome! Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about the $790 billion lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share and impact your bottom line. And now your host - she's an entrepreneur, a marketing maven and an advocate for the LGBT business community. Jenn, with two N's, T. Grace. What's on the agenda for today.. Well hello and welcome to Episode Number 48 of the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and we are in December 2014 and I just want to say Happy Holidays to those of you celebrating holidays during this lovely time of year. And I have a- I almost feel like I might end up just going completely rogue from what I had planned for today's episode airing on December 11, 2014. I have a whole list of things that ideally I would like to cover in today's episode but there's just a couple of things that are on my mind that are weighing me down significantly and I feel like I have a trusting audience, and I feel like it might not be a bad idea to share with you a couple of those things. So I will end up I think, covering a couple of the things that I wanted to actually cover in today's episode, I have some information on a recent article that went out about my business, I have some updates on book number three that I've been kind of been teasing in my social media. I wanted to touch base on the CEI, which is the Corporate Equality Index put out by the Human Rights Campaign, and in that I wanted to update you specifically on Barilla Pasta. If you recall I did an episode awhile ago which I will include in today's show notes, that you can go back and take a listen to, and I've also talked about Barilla on webinars of mine in the past about what PR tragedy they had in September of 2013 and I have some interesting updates on their progress, which is kind of interesting. And then I wanted to share a touching note that I received from someone who is just kind of following my stuff, and it's kind of one of those warm and friendly types of things. #blacklivesmatter.. So that was basically what I had on my agenda to talk with you today, and while it might seem like a long, lengthy list, they all kind of ducktail into one another so it's not really that bad. However I do feel the need to go rogue and address what is happening in present day, December 2014,

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Today I'm pleased to share episode #47 of the podcast. In this episode I discuss what I am thankful for this year as well as tackling a listener question about the usage of the word Queer. It's an interesting topic and one you should know about as you embark on your LGBT marketing endeavors! Check it out and enjoy your holiday. Links mentioned in today's podcast! Episode 23 - What I am Thankful for in 2013 Huffington's Post: The Salvation Army's History of Anti-LGBT Discrimination Jennifer Brown Consulting Queer: What does it mean? What do the Great Depression and the LGBT equality have in common? The hidden implications of LGBT terms and why you may want to avoid them   Listen to the episode by clicking the play button below Would you prefer to read the transcript than listen to the episode? No problem! Read the transcript below.   AUDIO TITLE:  Episode #47 – A Queer Question  You are listening to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast, Episode 47. Welcome... Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about the $790 billion lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share and impact your bottom line. And now your host - she's an entrepreneur, a marketing maven and an advocate for the LGBT business community. Jenn, with two N's, T. Grace. Well hello and welcome to episode number 47 of the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and first I would like to say Happy Thanksgiving. So Happy Thanksgiving to all of my US listeners, to my Canadian friends I apologize I know your Thanksgiving was on October 12, so I'm a little bit belated in saying Happy Thanksgiving to you as well. But I hope that you are enjoying your day today and spending time with friends, family, et cetera and hopefully- hopefully not at work however I'm sure there are many of you out there who are working today, myself included. Fortunately I have the benefit of working from home so I don't have to be dealing with any type of retail chaos or craziness that ensues during this beloved consumer driven time of the year. But anyway I do hope that the last year is something that you can look back on and think of all the many reasons why you're thankful and grateful and all that great stuff. Things to be thankful for... In today's podcast I want to just talk about a couple of things. I do want to mention just a couple of reasons why I'm thankful, because I did that in an episode I did last year, which was episode number 23, but this year I don't want to make that the focus of that podcast, I do want to mention a couple of things. But today I want to talk about two things in particular. The first of those two is talking about your options as a consumer, whether you're LGBT or not, and donating to places. So donating to food shelters, pantries, et cetera. I just want to talk about a couple of things as it relates to that as we're in the spirit of the holidays and it's now Thanksgiving. ...And the word 'queer.' And then the other thing which is completely unrelated to Thanksgiving is that I want to talk about the word 'queer.' And this is something that I should have been talking about more; I've written a couple of blog posts on it, it's something that I bring up in almost every webinar that I do, but I haven't actually dedicated any real significant piece of content to the word 'queer.' It does stem from an email that I received from somebody working in corporate America. So I want to read her email, my response to her, and then I want to elaborate on it a little bit. Just because it is a topic and word that comes up on a fairly regular basis including the webinar that ...

Hi there podcast listener! Thank you for being here. I am delighted to share with you my plans for this podcast as I enter year 3 of doing so. I also discuss ways in which I will be improving my blog and products going forward as we enter 2015. This is the first podcast of many where I am including a full transcription of the podcast, which you can read below. Links included in today's podcast: Three (3) years in: What new content will you get to improve your LGBT efforts? #024: Expert Interview with Candice Czubernat [Podcast] My first book - updated!     Play the episode by clicking below! Would you prefer to read the transcript than listen to the episode? No problem! Read the transcript below. Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about the $790 billion lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share and impact your bottom line. And now your host - she's an entrepreneur, a marketing maven and an advocate for the LGBT business community. Jenn, with two N's, T. Grace. Welcome to podcast episode #46! Well hello and welcome to Episode #46 of the podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and today I am going to share with you a couple of things that may be seemingly random but we're going to just talk about a couple of things and this episode is probably going to be a little bit shorter than most. So I have three things. So the first is that I want to share a little bit about the half marathon that I completed this past weekend. I've been sharing details of this journey with you since I decided to do it, probably I think it was over a year ago and I'm pretty certain I started talking about it on the podcast from the get-go, so I just wanted to give you a quick update on that. I want to share with you information about what's to come on the blog and the podcast going forward, because November marks - this will be going into my third year of blogging and podcasting - and going into the third year I'm making some changes that I want you to be aware of. And then I have four questions that somebody who attended my webinar last month in October, she had asked me these via email and I have been telling her for quite some time that I'm going to respond to them and I just don't have the time to type up a written response that I feel like it really deserves; so I decided that I will answer her questions on the air because I think there's something in here that you can learn from as well. So I'm hoping that by my answering her questions there's something as value for you as well. So that's pretty much my agenda for today, like I said chances are this is going to be a shorter episode than usual and I feel like that is completely okay.   First things first... my half marathon update So I said the first thing, I just want to share with you that I have finally completed the - I almost said damn but I shouldn't say damn because it was a good thing. So I have finally completed the half marathon that I set out to complete in August, 2013 is when I first came up with the idea while out with a friend over drinks at the beach, we decided, "Hey, let's run a half marathon," neither of us being runners mind you. And we set out to do the Disney Wine and Dine Half Marathon which was this past weekend which was November 8th and 9th I believe the dates were. November 8th is what my medal says sitting next to me right to my left. And it was quite, quite the process. So I feel like the reason why I like talking about it on the podcast, I think there's just so many similarities between running when you have a goal and then just running your business. I know I've said this before in speaking engagements that I've done recently,

I am so pleased to present you with today's podcast interview with Amy Mayes of Amy Mayes Photography. She is a brilliant photographer and an LGBT Rights Activist. She shares many great insights on being an ally to the LGBT community and what that means to her and her business. You are bound to learn a thing or two from today's show. As always, feel free to reach out with questions or comments - I'd love to hear from you! Links mentioned in this episode: NGLCCNY News Blog Advocate v. Activist Blog Post Amy Mayes Photography Barbara Russo Strategics Listen to this podcast by clicking the play button below. Would you prefer to read the transcript than listen to the episode? No problem! Read the transcript below. AUDIO TITLE:  Episode #45 - Interview with Amy Mayes Photography  Jenn T Grace: You are listening to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast, episode 45. Intro: Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about the $790 billion lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share and impact your bottom line. And now your host - she's an entrepreneur, a marketing maven and an advocate for the LGBT business community. Jenn, with two N's, T. Grace. Jenn T Grace: Well hello and welcome to episode number 45 of the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and today is October 30th, and I am really delighted to be bringing you an interview today that I wasn't planning on bringing to you for a couple of months now, but I have a great interview to share with you today with Amy Mayes of Amy Mayes Photography. She is a New York based- or New York City based photographer who is an ally to the LGBT community, who is also an LGBT rights activist. And I absolutely loved the conversation that she and I had, and I'm really excited to be sharing it with you. And what makes this conversation even more cool and fun in my opinion is the fact that Amy is a follower of the podcast, so it was kind of- it was interesting to kind of have the tables turned. So instead of listening to the podcast at the gym, the next time she's at the gym listening to it, she'll be listening to the podcast with herself. So I think that's pretty cool, so I am super excited about sharing the interview with you, she's just got some great, great insights as it relates to LGBT and being an ally, and how to really use that as an opportunity within your business. So I'm excited about that, but as always before we get into the interview, I do want to just mention a couple of things. And today I'm going to be more brief than usual, and I know that that's somewhat probably famous last words at this point. But I want to mention three things. So the first of the three is on a personal note, that as you're listening to this, if you're listening to it when it actually airs on October 30th of 2014, by the time we speak on the next podcast which will be in the middle of November, I will finally have had completed the half marathon that I have been talking about with you guys for quite some time now. I have been- I've really been sharing my journey with you since I decided to do this over a year ago, and the day is finally coming. So in about a week I will be running the Disney Wine and Dine Half Marathon in Orlando, Florida, and I'm super excited about it. I finally did my first training run of that full distance not last weekend, but the weekend before, so I made the full 13.1 miles, still standing when I reached the end of it, and I did it in two hours and 39 minutes, and 29 seconds. So my goal has been to do it in 2:55 or less, so I already beat my goal. So I am super, super excited. So I will certainly be updating you with information as i...

I had a chance to recently sit down with Re Perez of BRANDING FOR THE PEOPLE. I've known of Re for a couple of years through our mutual relationship with the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. At this past conference I brought home some of his marketing materials and promptly reached out to see if he would be a guest on the show and he agreed. It was great talking to a brand strategist. I think you will learn a lot of general branding and marketing information from this episode in addition to many valuable tips for effectively marketing to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community. Happy listening! Here are some links derived directly from today's episode: BRANDING FOR THE PEOPLE. Also, check out when the next webinar is here. My book: No, wait… You do look gay! The 7 Mistakes Preventing You from Selling to the $830 Billion LGBT Market. Listen to the episode by clicking the play button below! Would you prefer to read the transcript than listen to the episode? No problem! Read the transcript below! AUDIO TITLE:  Episode #44 – An Interview with Re Perez Jenn T Grace: You are listening to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast, Episode 44. Intro: Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about the $790 billion lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share and impact your bottom line. And now your host - she's an entrepreneur, a marketing maven and an advocate for the LGBT business community. Jenn, with two N's, T. Grace. Jenn T Grace: Well hello and welcome to episode number 44 of the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace. I am delighted to be talking with you today as I always am. We are in the middle of October right now and it's starting to really get a little bit crisp around these parts up here in New England. I absolutely love it. I love the fall, I'm excited about it, and I just figured I would share that with you. I just got back in from an early morning run, and it was just gorgeous, and the leaves crunching under your feet which can also be equally as gorgeous as they can be a hazard to not falling on the ground which I did not do but I feel like it's in the back of my mind that I am waiting for it to happen one of these mornings. But it is what it is. I want to just talk about a couple of things before I get into today's episode which is in interview with Re Perez of Branding for the People. And I had just an awesome conversation with Re and we talked about his role as a Chief Brand Strategist as well as the CEO and Founder of Branding for the People. Which is an NGLCC certified LGBT-owned business. And he just shares so much good information about how he came to starting his business, what those 'ah-ha' moments looked like that made him want to start it and kind of guide him in that path of doing so. And then because he is a personal branding expert, we really got to talk about some really interesting things that I think are going to help you be a more effective marketer, or either an effective LGBT person marketing to other LGBT people, or a more effective ally. So I'm really excited about that, so I'm looking forward to getting your thoughts on this. So we will get into the interview in just a moment. Of course we do you know I always like to make a couple of announcements. And today's announcement- so today is, as this is being released, it is October 16th, and I am just a couple of weeks away from running my half marathon. And I am feeling quite confident at this point which has been kind of touch and go throughout; whether or not- you know some days I was like, "Oh I don't think I can do this," other days I'm like, "I've got it.

Hello and welcome to episode #42 of the Gay Business & Marketing Made Easy podcast I am your host Jenn Grace. As always I thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to listen to this show. I really appreciate it. Today's show is an interview with Dr. Ronni Sanlo who has an incredible past as it relates to LGBT history. She's been in the movement for a really long time and has been doing incredible work. She shares two stories during our conversation that are so moving that I had chills. I would consider her to be a true pioneer in LGBT rights. And because of that she has some really interesting thoughts around how to market to the LGBT community. During the interview today one of my announcements was asking you to send your pictures of you reading my new book! :) Here are some links mentioned in today's episode: Purple Distinctions Facebook.com/RonniSanlo RonniSanlo@gmail.com Listen to the podcast by clicking the play button below!         Thanks for listening today, I hope you enjoyed and found value in this episode! Would you prefer to read the transcript than listen to the podcast? No problem! Read the transcript below. AUDIO TITLE:  Episode #42 – Ronni Sanlo Interview Intro: Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about the $790 billion lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share and impact your bottom line. And now your host - she's an entrepreneur, a marketing maven and an advocate for the LGBT business community. Jenn, with two N's, T. Grace. Jenn T Grace: Hello and welcome to episode number 42 of the podcast. I am your host, Jenn- with two N's- Grace. And as always I thank you so much for taking the time out of your day today to listen to today's show. I have a great guest coming up and I'm super excited to have her on. And one of the random things that I want to ask you right out of the gate, and I think by now you probably actually associate me with random because I do throw a random thing here and there for you. And I think you may know this, but I am a total podcast junkie. So I listen to, it's probably about eight different podcasts right now, and I find value in all of them for very different reasons. And whether I'm in the car by myself I'll be listening to them, if I'm out running I'm listening to them. Even sometimes if I'm just kind of in transit going from store to car or anything like that, I'm usually listening to a podcast. So I have found over the last couple of weeks that I have very specific podcasts that I listen to for a very specific timeframes. So if I am going to be in the car and I know it's going to be a quick thirty minute drive, I have a thirty minute episode I listen to. And then also if I'm going to go out for a run, I know that I need one that's usually about 45 to 60 minutes. So what I want to know from you, is when and where are you listening to this show? I would love to hear it. I know from, actually a great deal of you, that a lot of you listen to it on your way into work in the morning. So I'm curious to know what your commute length is like, or if you're going to the gym and listening to this, what that might be like too. I'm really just a curious person in general, but what I would love to do is to find out when you guys are listening to them, and what your ideal episode length would actually be like. Because I do have episodes that range from thirty to sixty minutes, and I know there's other podcasts out there that are far more routine with the length of their episodes. So I'm just curious to know when you're listening to it. Because if there's a way that I can make it easier for you, I would love to do that. So like I said,

This week's podcast is all about my virtual book launch. A much shorter episode than usual, that is filled with so much love and gratitude to you the listener and reader. I really appreciate you! :) Now through Friday is the virtual launch of my new book, No, wait… You do look gay! The 7 Mistakes Preventing You from Selling to the $830 Billion LGBT Market. (www.nowaityoudolookgay.com) It is a really unique book packed with marketing and sales advice to any business owner or professional looking to reach the widely untapped LGBT market. My goal is that this book becomes an Amazon Best Seller during this time frame.  At the time of writing this podcast post, it is sitting at #7! Can we get to #1, together??I could use your help so that I actually have a shot at achieving this goal. Would you be willing to share posts on your social media between August 21-22? As an incentive to purchase during the virtual launch, I am offering a super low Kindle price ($5.99) during those 4 days and I am giving purchasers free access to my online training course 'Defining Your LGBT Target Market' (normally $97) completely free. There is something beautiful about having just bumped into the first page! None of this would be happening if it weren't for this incredibly supportive network of friends and colleagues - thank you all from the bottom of my heart, I really appreciate you! Would you prefer to read the transcript than listen to the episode? No problem! Read the transcript below. AUDIO TITLE: Jenn T Grace – Ep 40 Jenn T. Grace: You are listening to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast, Episode 40. Intro: Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about the $790 billion lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share and impact your bottom line. And now your host - she's an entrepreneur, a marketing maven and an advocate for the LGBT business community. Jenn, with two N's, T. Grace. Jenn T. Grace: Well hello and welcome to episode number forty of the podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and today is going to be an extra brief episode because I am in the middle of launching my second book, 'No Wait, You Do Look Gay: The Seven Mistakes Preventing You From Selling to the $830 billion LGBT Market.' And I have been talking about the book launch for a while, but today is the day. Actually this past week has been the week. So on Monday I began reaching out to folks in my network asking them if they would be willing to post something on social media, whether it's on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, maybe send something to their audience in an email, newsletter, whatever it happens to be. And I personally have the goal, and the goal still stands because the launch is from August 19th through the 22nd, and today is August 20th, and the goal is to make it to number one in the Business and Money category on Amazon in the Etiquette section. So I have picked a really broad topic, or a broad category, trying to rank in on Amazon. And right now as it stands of this recording, I am in the number nine slot. So I have made it to the top ten bestselling list on Amazon, and I can't even being to explain how super excited I am at the moment. Right before I was about to hit record on this podcast I happened to do a refresh, and I went from number fourteen up to number nine. So my goal is still really strong of trying to get to number one. When I first started this out I had no idea if it would be even remotely attainable, but now looking, sitting here in the number nine slot, I feel like it's possible. I just have a lot of hope, it's possible. I just want to say thank you to those of you who are listening who have participated in the sharing of this information. It is amazing,

In this new podcast, I had the pleasure of interviewing a close friend and colleague on the show. I lovingly refer to her as an operational genius, but you can just call her Stacy (Morataya-Pilkington). This interview covers many topics and her retail experience as an LGBT shopper will teach you a thing or two about how to effectively market to the community. Don't miss this episode! Below are the items mentioned in this episode of the podcast. 'No Wait, You Do Look Gay' Book Preview  Greater Connecticut Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (CTGLC) Listen to the episode by clicking the play button below! Would you prefer to read the transcript than listen to the episode? No problem! Read the transcript below. AUDIO TITLE:  Episode #38 - Stacy Morataya-Pilkington Intro: Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about the $790 billion lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share and impact your bottom line. And now your host - she's an entrepreneur, a marketing maven and an advocate for the LGBT business community. Jenn, with two N's, T. Grace. Jenn T. Grace: Hello and welcome to episode number 38 of the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and today I am absolutely delighted to bring you an interview that I did with a very dear close friend of mine, Stacy Morataya-Pilkington, and she is the Director of Hotel Operations for Foxwoods Resort Casino which is based here in southeastern Connecticut. And she and I have been friends for several years now, and she's very near and dear to me, and she also happens to be the President of the greater Connecticut Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce in which I am the Vice President of. So it was really awesome to be able to sit down with her in a more formal capacity and just kind of pick her brain, and ask her some questions about her life's story, and what's brought her from Las Vegas out here to Connecticut, and then just really talk about what it means to be an advocate in the workplace. We talked about how to be effective in your LGBT marketing outreach, that there are a couple of things that you need to do such as be authentic; which I think by now you know that I preach a great deal about. But then also to be vulnerable and ask questions. So today's episode is going to be fantastic. She had just tons of inspirational advice, and she's just great, I'm certain that you will enjoy today's interview. However before we hop over to the interview, I just want to make a couple of announcements just because it is indeed July 24th and the launch of my new book, 'No Wait, You do Look Gay: The Seven Mistakes Preventing You from Selling to the LGBT Market,' is just days away from launching. So if you are listening to this, and you are listening to it live, hooray, I love you, you're awesome. I encourage you to head over to www.NoWaitYouDoLookGay.com and check things out. And if you happen to be listening to this in the very, very distant future, maybe it's a year from now, maybe it's two, three years away, if you go to that same link, www.NoWaitYouDoLookGay.com it will be redirecting you over to Amazon where you can purchase the printed copy, the audio copy, or the Kindle version, or some sort of mobile version. I'm really excited about the book coming live. We kind of talk about it a little bit in the interview towards the end because while it may seem like I paid Stacy to talk about some of the things that she talked about, I did not actually do that. Although now that I think of it, it's probably not a bad idea to pay my guests to do some plugging. But I would never do that because I love you guys, and I preach about authenticity, and transparency,

In this podcast I proudly discuss my newest project, which is my 2nd book. I give insider info on the book and share how you can buy books in bulk and get some amazing bonuses! Listen to learn more!   Play the episode by clicking below. Or subscribe to the free podcast in iTunes today!     New Book: "No Wait, You Do Look Gay: 7 Mistakes Preventing You From Selling to the $830 Billion LGBT Market" Did you check out the first book, "But you don't look gay..." Want a Free Book? Send me a message at blog@jenntgrace.com with Subject: Book Review   Would you prefer to read the transcript than listen to the episode? No problem! Read the transcript below.   AUDIO TITLE: Episode #37 – Seven Mistakes Preventing You from Selling   Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about the $790 billion lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share and impact your bottom line. And now your host - she's an entrepreneur, a marketing maven and an advocate for the LGBT business community. Jenn, with two N's, T. Grace Hello and welcome! Well hello and welcome to Episode Number 37 of the podcast, I am your host Jenn Grace, and here we are today in July. If you are a long time listener of this show, hopefully you went through one of the 30 interviews that was in the month of June. I recorded those interviews back in 2013 but in order to celebrate Pride again I figured I'd bring them back out and have you listen to them all over again in 2014. I hope you enjoyed them. I can tell based on my statistics of my podcast listeners that you certainly were enjoying them so I'm pretty excited about that. I'm really excited to share that I have surpassed 5,000 downloads which is pretty exciting, I've been on the air since January of 2013, so I'm going on a little over a year and a half now and I'm quite pleased with the listeners that I have so I really thank you so much for tuning into my show every other week. In today's episode I want to cover a handful of things and the meat of the show is going to be around when I am talking about my book. The new book is launching in the month of July, 2014 and if you recall, or maybe you don't recall, but I launched a print book last July as well. I was actually trying to hit the same exact publication date for 2014 as I did in 2013 and I'm just a little bit shy, just a couple of days shy of that. So at any rate I'm really excited about the new book and I want to give you a little bit of a sneak peek into it and talk about what type of special offers I have and all that kind of fun stuff. Really kind of going into what you can expect from this book. So I'm excited to share that with you. And there's just a handful of things that I kind of want to talk about. I guess this episode is more of- I guess you could say me rambling about just stuff that's going on in my business and people that I've been interacting with as of late. So if you are looking for an episode that has some very specific meaty type of content to it, where I'm talking about a very specific topic or I'm doing an interview, you may want to consider just kind of skipping through this one, pretending it didn't exist; but I can assure you that the next episode that comes out I will have a guest on. So feel free to just kind of mosey past this one if you'd like and I can check you out in episode 38 which will be in just a couple of weeks. Check out my new website! So for those of you still listening who would like to hear me ramble about all the random things that are happening in my business right now, I want to share with you first and foremost how incredibly excited I am about my new website. If you haven't been to my website recently,

This podcast interview is with Dina & Dom, founders of Teazled Greeting Cards, which is a company that focuses exclusively on creating cards for LGBT people and families. We talk about our families, how they came to founding their company and many tips on effective marketing to the LGBT market. Have a listen and let me know what you think in the comments below! To listen to this audio podcast please click the play button on the left above. Or subscribe to the free podcast in iTunes today!     Below are the items mentioned in this episode of the podcast. NGLCC Conference But you Don't Look Gay Liberty Print Co. Fusion Print & Web Design jenntgrace.com/webinars Gay Marketing Insider mailing list 30 Day, 30 Voices - Stories from America's LGBT Business Leaders Are you listening to this podcast from your computer? Would you like to be listening while walking, jogging or driving in the car? You can subscribe in iTunes by going here; Jenntgrace.com/iTunes Teazled Check out the sponsors of this podcast, the Human Performance Academy’s, new podcast at Mentalcompass.com You can get in touch with Dina & Dom here: www.teazled.com 855-4-Tell-Them Online Training Course - www.authenticgaymarketing.com   Would you prefer to read the transcript than listen to the episode? No problem! Read the transcript below. AUDIO TITLE: Episode #36 – Teazled Interview AUDIO START: [0:00:00]   Jenn T Grace: You are listening to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast, episode 36. Intro: Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about the $790 billion lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share and impact your bottom line. And now your host - she's an entrepreneur, a marketing maven and an advocate for the LGBT business community. Jenn, with two N's, T. Grace Jenn T Grace: Well hello and welcome to episode number 36 of the podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and today I have an interview with you from a couple of folks that you have probably heard of, because you are listeners of this podcast, so you've probably heard the commercial for Teazled Greeting Cards in the past, or possibly seen them on my website. But I am interviewing the co-owners Dina and Dina of Teazled on today's show, so I'm pretty excited to bring that to you. However, I do have a list of announcements. I actually have a handful of things, moreso than usual today to just kind of bring you up to speed on before we get into the meat of the episode. So why don't I just dive in, I don't want to take up more time than necessary for you today, so let me just kind of hop right into it. So my first really exciting piece of news is the fact that my second book is almost complete. I am within just a couple of days of sending it over to an editor who is going to clean it up, make sure everything flows properly looks great, sounds how I want it to, et cetera. So I've been on a pretty tight timeline in getting that done, because I have wanted to make sure that I have the new book ready for me for when I go to the NGLCC conference at the end of July. So the NGLCC being the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. It is hands down my favorite event to attend yearly, and this year it happens to be in sunny Las Vegas, hot and sunny Las Vegas at the end of July. So that should be an interesting time for my pale skin to be scorched undoubtedly. But I'm sure there will be many, many business opportunities, networking opportunities, and I wanted to make sure that I have my new book available when I go to this. So I'm really excited about that, I just actually started really,

Today's interview is with Ann Jenrette-Thomas of Esquire Coaching Inc. Ann and I had a great conversation around being an LGBT business owner, coming out to our families, how to leverage being a lesbian in business and all of the wonderful things she is doing in her coaching practice focusing on the legal field. Below are the items mentioned in this episode of the podcast: Esquire Coaching The Happy Law Practice Free e-book for listeners: Sassy Time Management System Email: info@esquirecoaching.com Headline: Sassy Ebook Listen to the episode by clicking the play button below! Would you prefer to read the transcript than listen to the episode? No problem! Read the transcript below! AUDIO TITLE:  Episode #35 – Ann Jenrette Thomas Jenn T Grace: You are listening to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast, Episode 35. Intro: Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about the $790 billion lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share and impact your bottom line. And now your host - she's an entrepreneur, a marketing maven and an advocate for the LGBT business community. Jenn, with two N's, T. Grace. Jenn T Grace: Well hello and welcome to episode number 35 of the podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and we are now in the middle of May. I am so incredibly grateful to be finally what feels to be spring in this part of the country. I don't know about you, but it certainly is nice to actually see flowers blooming and trees being green again and all that fun stuff. I know I've been moaning and groaning about the winter the entire winter, so finally I have nothing to complain about in terms of the weather because it's just gorgeous here. So yay, spring is here which is very exciting. And let's see, let's think about what is going on in today's episode. So as always I want to start in the beginning and just kind of share with you a couple of things that are coming up that you might be interested in hearing about. And then I'll give you a little snippet of what is to come in today's episode. And then also a little insight into our May 30th episode as well. So let's see, first thing's first. I want to share with you that the date of the next webinar is on May- let me check my calendar, I should know this already but for some reason I don't. I know it's next week, let's see. May 21st. So if you are listening to this as the episode comes out, you can join the next webinar on May 21st. If you are listening to this sometime in the distant future, or the not-so-distant future I should say, the June webinar will be on June 17th. So every single month without fail, I have a webinar that goes on and I get to meet great people and I get to answer some awesome questions that you have. So if you're interested in checking out the webinar I highly encourage you to do so, which you can do by heading over to www.JennTGrace.com/webinars. Each of them last about an hour or so, and there's plenty of time for Q&A, and in this particular one I want to talk about the Mozilla Firefox issue that happened in March. And- or actually it might have been April. But I want to talk about that as a case study and what you as a business who's looking to reach the LGBT community can learn from the kerfuffle if you will, of what happened with them. So I'm looking forward to talking to you all about that on the 21st. So my second call to action, if you will, for you is to consider joining my mailing list. It's so exciting to see so many people on a regular basis joining the list, and being able to have access to some really valuable content, I feel anyway. And you know I don't bombard your inbox, I don't go crazy spamming you,

Today's podcast is all about LGBT Chambers of Commerce. Yes, you've heard me talk about them in the past but today we do a deep dive in how they can change your business and possibly even your life. They have been a big part of my life since 2006 and I share my story of how it has transformed my business and life and why I think you'll get benefit from them too! Have a listen and of course, let me know what you think. Below are the items mentioned in this episode of the podcast. Sign up for the next webinar here! But You Don't Look Gay - Amazon LGBT Chamber of Commerce Online Training Course - authenticgaymarketing.com NGLCC.org Connecticut Gay Lesbian Chamber of Commerce  Check out the sponsors of this podcast: The Human Performance Academy’s, new podcast at Mentalcompass.com Teazled.com Nevada Chamber of Commerce  2014 National Business & Leadership Conference in Las Vegas - July 29th to August 2nd Expert Interview with Justin Nelson Join the Gay Business Insider Mailing List Listen to the episode by clicking the play button below! Would you prefer to read the transcript than listen to the episode? No problem! Read the transcript below! AUDIO TITLE:  Episode #34 – LGBT Chambers of Commerce Jenn T Grace: You are listening to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast, episode number 34. Intro: Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about the $790 billion lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share and impact your bottom line. And now your host - she's an entrepreneur, a marketing maven and an advocate for the LGBT business community. Jenn, with two N's, T. Grace. Jenn T Grace: Hello and welcome to episode number 34 of the podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and we are now in the beginning of May. I cannot believe it is May already, and Mother Nature is certainly telling us that it's not quite May around these parts because it's still pretty cold. I don't know about where you live but it's been ridiculously cold this past winter, and even now going into the spring. But alas, we can see that summer is just around the corner which I am very much looking forward to. On today's podcast... So anyway, on today's podcast I want to talk about LGBT Chambers of Commerce. If you've been following me in any capacity, whether it's on this podcast or on the blog, or maybe you've checked out a couple of webinars, in any way, shape or form, or even if you actually read my book, you'll see that I have talked about LGBT Chambers of Commerce here and there and I've sprinkled information all around about why they're important, why you should be involved, why that matters for your LGBT marketing initiatives. And today, it occurred to me that I have not actually dedicated a podcast solely to this topic. So that's what I want to do with you today, but before I get into that I do want to give you a couple of announcements. So the first one being that my next webinar is on May 21st. And if you've attended any of my recent webinars, I always have a very similar beginning where it's just kind of like an overview of the LGBT community. I like to talk about who- what the preferences are in terms of what terminology to use, I like to give some stats and some numbers and figures to help you really understand the type of market opportunity that might exist for your business, and then I go into a case study. And so this month I want to focus on Mozilla, which is the owner of Firefox, or Firefox is a product of Mozilla Corporation. And if you don't use Firefox, it's basically an Internet browser. And you may have seen the kerfuffle on the CEO basically being ousted by his own...

So this weeks podcast is a little bit different. This is the audio recording of my March 19th webinar that I did. As you may know I do webinars every single month. I've heard from many podcast listeners that you just can't make it live to a webinar so instead I've brought the webinar to you this week! If you'd like to attend a live webinar, you can check out the next date here! Blog Posts mentioned throughout this episode 3 reasons you should never say homosexual. ever. New Numbers are Out: America’s LGBT Buying Power What’s the buzz about the ‘gay dollar’? … and why you should care. Duck Dynasty, A&E and Cracker Barrel: A Case Study [Podcast] Which lesbian is the ‘man’ in the relationship? Queer: What does it mean? The 7 Deadly Sins Series Why Making Assumptions is a Critical Mistake in your (LGBT) Gay Marketing Efforts Are you using Stereotypes in your (LGBT) Gay Marketing Efforts? If so, stop! Are you asking LGBT People Inappropriate Questions? My guess is yes. Are you non-verbally stereotyping in your gay marketing? Are your LGBT communications unknowingly insulting and derogatory? Find out! The hidden implications of LGBT terms and why you may want to avoid them Why being aggressively assertive won’t get you new LGBT customers   Listen to the episode by clicking the play button below! Would you prefer to read the transcript than listen to the episode? No problem! Read the transcript below. AUDIO TITLE: Episode #31 – Webinar Recording You are listening to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast, Episode 31. Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about the $790 billion lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share and impact your bottom line. And now your host - she's an entrepreneur, a marketing maven and an advocate for the LGBT business community. Jenn, with two N's, T. Grace. Hello and welcome! Hello and welcome to episode number 31 of the podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and today is going to be an interesting and different podcast for you. So what I decided to do today was to use my recording of my webinar that I did just a little while ago. So today is March 19th, I believe, this is Wednesday that I'm recording this. And I just had my monthly webinar this morning, and what I wanted to do is utilize that webinar for today's content. I know a lot of you are interested in attending my webinars but can't always make it; so I thought I would bring the webinar to you. So it's about an hour, actually- yeah it's about an hour long, so I highly encourage you to check it out if you would prefer not to listen to this and you'd rather attend live in person. The next one is happening on April 15th at 1:00 PM Eastern time, so I highly encourage you to come check it out then if you like. I do change the content of every webinar; there's a lot of core content that remains the same, but there's a lot of stuff that I change out as well. So I definitely recommend checking it out if possible, and if you're listening to this and it's well past April 15th, don't worry because depending on whatever month you're in, there's most likely a webinar that's going to be happening any minute now. So definitely check all of that out. Here's my new commercial.. So what I'm really excited about is that I have a new commercial for my online training course. So instead of every month trying to explain to you what my online training course entails, I actually have a cool commercial that is by the same person who does my intro, telling you all about it. So I would love to introduce to you the promo for my online marketing course here; and have a listen and let me know w...

So we are talking to Kathy Borkoski today who in my opinion is the true definition of an entrepreneur. She focuses on building solutions to problems business owners face. We connected because I was researching proposal software for a client and previous podcast guest Kristen Kavanaugh said "You have to talk to Kathy!" After a great conversation I knew I had to bring her on the show to share her story. So let me give you a short background on Kathy - she is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy, she served in active duty for 8 years and now she is in the US Navy Reserve in the San Diego area as a Bomb Technician and Diving Officer. In addition to being the Vice President of Trident Proposal Management and the Founder of KB Software Solutions. Below are the items mentioned in this episode of the podcast: Power of now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle The Art of Power DADT - Don't Ask, Don't Tell The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes You can get in touch with Kathy here: www.kathyborkoski.com TridentPropsals.com Listen to the episode by clicking the play button below! Would you prefer to read the transcript than listen to the episode? No problem! Read the transcript below. AUDIO TITLE:  Episode #30 – Kathy Borkoski Interview Jenn T Grace: You are listening to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast, Episode 30. Intro: Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about the $790 billion lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share and impact your bottom line. And now your host - she's an entrepreneur, a marketing maven and an advocate for the LGBT business community. Jenn, with two N's, T. Grace. Jenn T Grace: Well hello and welcome to episode number thirty of the podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and as always I'm very excited that you are taking the time out of your day today to just sit and- or run, or drive, whatever you happen to be doing and learn more about how to authentically market to the gay community, how to communicate effectively with the gay community, and all of those other great things that hopefully this podcast is helping you learn. So today's episode I have a guest, Kathy Borkoski, and I am super excited to have her on here. She is a connection of a past guest of ours which was Kristen Kavanaugh, who I believe was episode number 28 of the podcast. Let me check before I say anything- nope actually it was episode 26. So I'm excited to have her on the show today, and she really is kind of a true definition of an entrepreneur so it's pretty exciting to have her on here. But before- as always I get into the meat of the episode, I have a couple of announcements to share. So as always my first announcement is the date of my next webinar. So the webinar is titled, 'Increasing Your LGBT Market Share through Authentic Communications,' and the next time we will be doing that is on March 19th at 11:00 AM Eastern Standard Time. So if you are interested in checking out that next webinar, which I would love to see you there, please head on over to my website which is www.JennTGrace.com/webinars. So as you may know by now, it is about an hour long and I have about 40 to 45 minutes or so of presentation and then I leave about 15 minutes of Q&A open at the end. So if you have any questions as it relates to something that you learned on the webinar, or if it's something that's completely random and out of the blue, there's no problem, feel free to bring it on over because ultimately your questions help fuel this podcast and my blog posts. Because the more questions that I get from people, I'm guessing- you know nine out of ten times if you have that questio...

Welcome to episode #26 of the Gay Business & Marketing Made Easy Podcast! You'll note that I made a few changes to the podcast artwork to the left here. Rather than calling my interviews 'Expert Interviews' I have changed it to 'Storytelling with...' The more I listened to my own shows I realized that I really am helping share someones story and this title seems more appropriate. This episode will sound a little different in the opening because I was recording it live from Las Vegas at the New Media Expo conference but the remaining interview with Kristen has fabulous sound quality. :) Kristen was a great guest with some really keen insights to share so I hope you enjoy it! Listen to the episode by clicking the play button below. Below are the items mentioned in this episode of the podcast. #014: Expert Interview with Mike Brooks Mike Brook's Podcast - Nuclear Chowder Marketing 'The Road to TED' interview by Mike Brooks with Kristin Kavanaugh Kristin's TED Talk Don't Ask, Don't Tell Military Acceptance Project 'Start with Why' TED Talk by Simon Sinek Here is how you can get in touch with Kristin - KristinKavanaugh.com Militaryacceptanceproject.org Twitter.com/kriskav Facebook AUDIO TITLE:  Jenn T Grace – Ep 26  Jenn T. Grace: Hello and welcome to episode number 26 of the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast. This is Jenn Grace, and I am coming to you live from Las Vegas where it is about 62 degrees versus my home state of Connecticut which is in the single digits, if not negative numbers right now. So this episode is going to sound much different than you're probably used to because I am recording from my hotel room, and there is actually some sort of new casino going up to the left of my window so I'm sure you'll be able to hear construction, you might be able to hear the maid service going on outside my door, et cetera. But I did an interview with Kristen Kavanaugh about a couple of weeks ago, it was just at the end of December, and I have an amazing interview in store for you today with her. But before I left for a conference I forgot to do the intro and outro for it, so here it is today, very rough, very raw, no editing done, et cetera. So I do just want to share with you a couple of things, is that the reason I'm in Las Vegas right now is the fact that I just attended the New Media Expo, which was formerly known as Blog World. And it's essentially what I'm guessing to be probably about 1,500 if not close to 2,000 different bloggers, and podcasters, and people who are doing WebTV from all over the United States and the world. And it was an incredible couple of days, it was hit or miss in regards to some of the speakers and topics, but overall I learned a lot, and I think from the majority of what I've learned, there's going to be some changes headed our way in terms of the- maybe the branding of the podcast and the branding of the blog. So I would say stay tuned for that because that's definitely going to be coming in the next couple of months, I'll be working on stuff like that. But that's all I really wanted to share with you today, was just it was a good time, I met some new people, hopefully they're listening to this podcast right now. And if you are listening to this and this is your first episode, please know that it does not normally sound this much like I am in a tin can. I'm usually using some expensive audio equipment, and today it's just me and a recorder sitting on a hotel bed. So let's see, it wouldn't be fair of me to not mention the sponsors of this podcast. Before I press play on the interview with Kristen, but the two sponsors of this podcast, one is www.MentalCompass.com and if I had their file I would just drop it in, but I don't so go check out their site. They have a great podcast, and it's all about being your best peak performer.

Have a listen to episode #24 of the Gay Business & Marketing Made Easy Podcast. In this episode  I talk with Candice Czubernat the founder of The Christian Closet. We talk about the intersection of being Christian and LGBT and the struggle folks have with it. We discuss how she turned the need for a therapist who understands both into a thriving business. Below are the items mentioned in the show: Christian Closet Candice's Guest Post- Hidden: The Hidden Shame of Secrecy Skype Venmo App www.thechristiancloset.com Listen to the episode by clicking the button below! Would you prefer to read the transcript than listen to the episode? No problem! Read the transcript below! AUDIO TITLE:  Episode #24 – Candice Czubernat   Jenn T Grace: You are listening to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast, Episode 24. Intro: Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about the $790 billion lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share and impact your bottom line. And now your host - she's an entrepreneur, a marketing maven and an advocate for the LGBT business community. Jenn, with two N's, T. Grace. Jenn T Grace: Well hello and welcome to episode number 24 of the podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and I really can't believe it is the end of 2013. So we are just a few weeks shy of the end of the year, and I'm wondering where exactly this year has gone. It's been a very big year for me personally, I'm hoping that's been the case for you as well, and I just have two more episodes before we close out the year. So today I have an interview for you with Candice Czubernat who is the founder of The Christian Closet, and she and I connected on Twitter, we had a really good discussion there, and I thought she would be great to have join the podcast because she just recently founded her business within the last year, and she's got some really good insight. So I'm hoping that you can all learn from the conversation that I have with Candice today, and then we have one more episode which will be episode 25, and that will wrap up the whole 2013. And while it's episode 25, I really did produce 55 podcasts this year because I had the 30 Days, 30 Voices that was in the middle of the year in June, so there's a lot of interviews that you can go back and kind of listen to if you are interested. Before we dive into the interview... So before we get into the interview with Candice today, I do want to share a couple of announcements. And the first is that I would love to invite you to the next webinar that I have. It's called 'Increasing Your LGBT Market Share through Authentic Communications.' And it is on January 15th, and if you're interested you can go to the blog post that goes with this particular podcast which is www.JennTGrace.com/024 for episode number 24. Or you can head on over to www.JennTGrace.com/webinars. And that will bring you directly to the registration page for the webinar itself. So it's about an hour long presentation, it's got plenty of question and answer time, so if you have any questions as it relates to LGBT business, marketing, communications, you name it, by all means please feel free to bring those questions with you because I will stay on the webinar as long as it takes to answer all of your questions. So I'm looking forward to it, it's always great to connect with you, and meet new people. So I would love for you to definitely come and check it out. And for you who may be listening to this and it is well past January 15th, there's no need to worry because I do webinars on a monthly basis. So if you're listening to this and it is well after the date I've just announced,

Have a listen to episode #22 of the Gay Business & Marketing Made Easy podcast! You’ll hear the story of Joanne Sprague, the Re-Founder & CEO of Friendfactor the "LGBT Rights Organization for Straight Friends." Listen to the podcast, and sign up to participate in the Workplace Ally Challenge Joanne describes! Below are the items mentioned in this episode of the podcast: Happy blog-o-versary to us! Next webinar is December 2, 2013 at 2pm EST Join the mailing list! Authentic Gay Marketing Training Course Friend Factor MBA Ally Challenge Workplace Ally Challenge Free Market Madness Predictably Irrational Drive Nudge You can get in touch with Joanne here: FriendFactor.org Email: Joanne@friendfactor.org twitter.com/FriendFactor facebook.com/FriendFactor Listen to the episode by clicking the play button below! This is the "cat scarf" I mention in the conversation...   Would you prefer to read the transcript than listen to the episode? No problem! Read the transcript below! AUDIO TITLE:  Episode #22 – Joanne Sprague – Friend Factor Jenn T Grace: You are listening to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast, episode number 22. Intro: Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about the $790 billion lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share and impact your bottom line. And now your host - she's an entrepreneur, a marketing maven and an advocate for the LGBT business community. Jenn, with two N's, T. Grace. Jenn T Grace: Well hello and welcome to episode number 22 of the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and as always I am thrilled that you are taking some time out of your day to catch up with me and listen to what's going on in the world of gay business, LGBT business, and marketing and all that great stuff. So thank you for joining today. I have a great interview lined up for you in just a few minutes, you will hear from Joanne Sprague with Friend Factor. And if you have not heard of Friend Factor before, by the end of this episode you are going to know all sorts of great things about it. So before I get into the interview I want to just talk with you about a couple of things. So I have been flip-flopping quite a bit about the format of the show. I have been doing it for quite awhile where it's gone from educational episode to an interview-based episode, and I've asked for your feedback and you've graciously provided your feedback, and yet again I have totally thrown off the way the show is formatted. So I apologize for those who may be tuning in looking for something that's straight up educational, but I do have an interview again for you today. And what keeps happening is that I keep meeting great people and their stories are so inspiring, and they're doing such great work in terms of LGBT business, LGBT marketing, in all regards. So I feel like it's a disservice to you to not bring these awesome people on the show. So again, like I said today I've thrown it off a bit but as always you're going to learn a ton of information; Joanne brings a lot to the table today with a business background who has some really great, insightful comments. So I am happy to have her. And you will note that next episode, which will be episode number 23 on November 28th; that will be an educational podcast. And I say that right now and hopefully there isn't some person who just crosses my path who's also brilliant and gets placed in there. But as of right now I really want to just kind of start wrapping up 2013 with you in the November 28th episode. So stay tuned for that.

Have a listen to episode #21 of the Gay Business & Marketing Made Easy podcast! You’ll hear the story of filmmaker, Jodi Savitz. You'll hear her story as an invisible feminine lesbian and her current documentary project, "Girl on Girl." Below are the items mentioned in this episode of the podcast. Pro noun game  What is queer? But You Don't Look Gay Coming out in the workplace You can contact Jodi here: Website: girlongirlmovie.com Indiegogo campaign twitter.com/girlongirlmovie vimeo.com/channels/girlongirlmovie Trailer Listen to the episode by clicking the play button below! Jodi's current film project- Girl on Girl: an original documentary -- Official Promo Trailer from Jodi Savitz on Vimeo.   Jodi's First film- Yo Soy Así from Jodi Savitz on Vimeo. Would you prefer to read the transcript than listen to the episode? No problem! Read the transcript below! AUDIO TITLE:  Episode #21 – Jodi Savitz Jenn T Grace: You are listening to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast, Episode 21. Intro: Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about the $790 billion lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share and impact your bottom line. And now your host - she's an entrepreneur, a marketing maven and an advocate for the LGBT business community. Jenn, with two N's, T. Grace. Jenn T Grace: Well hello and welcome to Episode 21 of the podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace. And today, Happy Halloween, just want to throw it out there. Happy Halloween to all of you. I am, as you are listening to this, I am actually en route flying back from Minneapolis, Minnesota, after having just attended the Out and Equal Workplace Advocate's annual summit. And the workplace summit is amazing, and I believe in Episode 20 I talked a little bit about it. So I just want to throw out there that I am probably blogging away like a maniac right now while you are listening to this podcast. So today I have a really packed episode for you. I had the great pleasure of talking with filmmaker, Jodi Savitz. She is currently working on a film called Girl on Girl. And it's a documentary about the invisible feminine lesbian. And as you're listening to this intro you might be thinking, 'Well what does this have to do with business?' And throughout the entire interview, we end up talking about workplace related issues and business issues, and how being an invisible feminine lesbian plays into all of the different facets of your life and being out at work is one of them. So this interview is absolutely fantastic, and I really encourage you to take some sort of action after having listened to this interview, even if it's just going to the website and watching the trailer for the film; because it really looks like it's going to be a powerful film. So I highly encourage you to do that. And as you know, every episode you can find on the website at www.JennTGrace.com/021, for episode number 21. So before I dive into the interview with Jodi, I do want to remind you of the course that launched in late September called 'How to Authentically Market to the Gay Community.' And if you are looking for additional information on this course I would highly encourage you to stop by www.AuthenticGayMarketing.com, and you can see all the information about the course itself; but essentially it's a ten-part course with ten specific steps to take in order to really understand and learn how to communicate with the LGBT community. And then how to appropriately market to the LGBT community with of course the end goal being for you to dramatically increase the bottom line of your business by targeting this very loyal nic...

Have a listen to episode #20 of the Gay Business & Marketing Made Easy podcast! You'll hear a communications related near disaster after I attended a conference last week to speak about just that - avoiding communications disasters! You'll also hear from Andrea Hays the Director of Diversity & Inclusion with the MBA Orlando (Central Florida's LGBT Chamber of Commerce) and finally you'll hear about all of the good things happening at the Out & Equal Workplace Summit taking place in Minneapolis at the end of this month. Below are the items mentioned in this episode of the podcast. Travel Gay Canada Conference Travel Gay Canada Online Training Course - www.authenticgaymarketing.com Check out the sponsors of the podcast - the Human Performance Academy at Mentalcompass.com  National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce Central Florida's LGBT Chamber of Commerce Corporate Equality Index Out & Equal Workplace Advocates Out & Equal Workplace Summit in Minneapolis MBA Orlando - Andrea Hays Listen to the episode by clicking the play button below! Would you prefer to read the transcript than listen to the episode? No problem! Read the transcript below! AUDIO TITLE:  Episode #20 – Andrea Hays Jenn T Grace: You are listening to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast, Episode 20. Intro: Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about the $790 billion lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share and impact your bottom line. And now your host - she's an entrepreneur, a marketing maven and an advocate for the LGBT business community. Jenn, with two N's, T. Grace. Jenn T Grace: Well hello and welcome to episode number twenty of the podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and as always I am super excited that you are taking the time out of your day to listen to me for a while, educate you around all things LGBT business and marketing. So before I get into the guest that we have on the show today, I want to just share a couple of things with you. A couple things to mention first.. So the first thing is that I want to welcome all of my new Canadian listeners. So I had the great pleasure of attending the Travel Gay Canada Conference this past week, and it was in Niagara. And it was a fantastic, fantastic conference. It was a smaller group of people, compared to conferences that have thousands of people and it's really hard to make really good connections with folks. And it was a smaller crowd, but it was such an engaged crowd. So I would love to welcome all of you who are new listening to this podcast, who are now my Canadian friends, my friends to the north. So when I was at the conference I was there to speak about building LGBT consumer loyalty. And one of the pieces of the presentation that I had was, you know, the do's and don'ts. The things that I talk to you about on this podcast on a regular basis, and I talk to you about on the blog. And I picked seven of my favorites, and I went through- it's almost like the Seven Deadly Sins of LGBT Marketing. And I went through those, and I think it got the conference off to an interesting start because I threw out a lot of things that you should or should not say in a business setting, or when trying to acquire new LGBT customers. So I think that the session went really well, I had a lot of people come up to me after and say that they enjoyed it, and it sparked a good amount of conversation throughout the presentation. And then towards the end there was a lot of chitchat back and forth between folks who were asking questions, and then rather than just me answering the questions, there were other folks in the audience answering the questions as wel...

This was a fun podcast to record. It's a great conversation between Mike and Maria Keiser, and myself. We have two main takeaways for this conversation. 1) The benefit of having a trusted group of peer advisors. 2) The power of knowing your own strengths and how to play to their advantage. Have a listen to hear more! Below are the items mentioned in this episode of the podcast. MentalCompass.com Entrepreneur Circle Peak Performance Podcast Mike's Favorite Podcast Episode: Interview with NFL great, actor, & personal trainer Pete Koch Maria's Favorite Podcast Episode: Two questions you should ask yourself everyday Are you a peak Performer Assessment  Download the Intro Program Listen to the podcast by clicking the play button below! Would you prefer to read the transcript than listen to the episode? No problem! Read the transcript below! (Coming soon!) AUDIO TITLE:  Episode #16 – Mike and Maria Keiser Jenn T Grace: You are listening to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast, Episode Sixteen. Intro: Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast where you'll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We're talking about the $790 billion lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender community. We'll help you grow your business, gain market share and impact your bottom line. And now your host - she's an entrepreneur, a marketing maven and an advocate for the LGBT business community. Jenn, with two N's, T. Grace. Jenn T Grace: Well hello and welcome to episode number sixteen of the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and today I have a really exciting interview for you. I have been talking about the Human Performance Academy and www.MentalCompass.com and Mike and Maria Keiser for a while now. And they actually sponsor this podcast. So anyone who's a loyal listener of the podcast, I'm sure you've heard the commercial from Mike Keiser of www.MentalCompass.com. And today I actually was able to sit down and talk with both Mike and Maria about the benefits and values of having a peer advisory board, and the benefits of knowing yourself, and knowing how you operate in business. So I had a great conversation with them, that I'm really pleased to be bringing you. If you hear any links in the podcast, you can find the information at www.JennTGrace.com/016, that is for episode number sixteen. So without further ado, let's dive into the interview. Okay so today I am talking with Mike and Maria Keiser. They are the- I don't even know what your titles are officially. But the founders of the Entrepreneur Circle, and also the creators of the Human Performance Academy. And for people who are listening to this right now, I'm sure you've heard me announce 1,000 times over that the Human Performance Academy is amazing, and that they are sponsors of this podcast, et cetera, et cetera. And then of course most of you will be familiar with Mike's voice, however we have Maria here as well who's somewhat the quite force behind the scenes. Maria Keiser: Hi Jenn. Jenn T Grace: There, oh look, she's already appeared. Maria Keiser: Jenn if you are wondering about a title for me, people have asked me this before and I just usually stick with Queen. Jenn T Grace: I'll take it, let's do it, 'Queen.' Alright so we have Queen Keiser and Mike. Mike Keiser: Court jester is fine. Jenn T Grace: That's actually pretty fitting based on your podcast as well. So this is my first time interviewing two people on one show, so this should be interesting to say the least. But I would love before we get into any of the nitty gritty and the details on all the different business types of endeavors that you're going on, I would love for you both to just give a really quick ov...