Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional

Jenn T. Grace
Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional

This is the Gay Business & 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 $884 billion dollar lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. We’ll help you grow your business, gain market share, and impact your bottom line. Hosted by the Professional Lesbian, Jenn T. Grace. This podcast answers questions and provides tips and tricks for reaching out the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender audience. Reach out to Jenn at jenn@jenntgrace.com to ask questions or provide topic suggestions. Visit www.jenntgrace.com

  1. 10/11/2023 · VIDEO

    It's Book Launch Day! A surprise mini-episode

    Today Publish Your Purpose: A Step-By-Step Guide To Write, Publish, and Grow Your Big Idea launched! Get the ebook for $2.99 on Amazon.   Today is my book launch, which I am quite excited about. And the book is called publish your purpose. It is a step by step guide to write, publish and grow your big idea, which might be the first time I have said the title and subtitle succinctly without botching it. So I'm impressed its launch day, here we are. So I'm excited about this conversation today. Because instead of just having this be a kind of me going on and on about my new book, and how excited I am with my new book, I am bringing in a bunch of other authors who have worked on their books for quite some time, in some cases, where, you know, some of us painfully moved through the publishing process, the the writing process and the publishing process. And some of us just kind of crank it out fast. And everyone's kind of a, in a different place in a different journey. And so, for me, this book started on July 9, of 2020. And so it was kind of a, I started it, I put it down, I started it, I put it down, it's kind of a lot of this back and forth. And so I'm finally here and having it published, which feels like a monumental effort. And it is also it is October 11, which is also also National Coming Out Day. So it was intentional that I included that on here as well, even though this book has nothing to do with coming out, other than maybe coming out as an author, which I think can be as scary at times for folks. And the thing I have is an ask for for folks today is I have discounted the book on Amazon for the ebook to 299. So if anyone just kind of wants to get access to it at a reduced price, it is there today for 299. If you do that my request is leaving a review. So I'm not really focused on hey, go buy the book. So we can get bestseller status, I'm focused on making sure that this book gets into the hands of the people who need it. And that means getting it into the hands of libraries. So that way the book is accessible for people in in whatever economic situation they themselves might be in. So my goal is to get reviews. And so with reviews, comes more exposure in the algorithms in primarily Amazon. Unfortunately, Amazon is kind of still the, the place where people at least, are at least doing the research around around books. So that's my goal. So if you do if you've already bought the book, which I had a lot of pre orders, and I have made my local post office very angry lately, making many trips with a lot of books. But if you've already, if you've already bought the book, please take a moment to leave a review today. If you don't mind, that would be my my number one goal. Okay, so just a little bit about the book, it's a step by step guide to write, publish and grow your big idea. So it does kind of anchor into three separate pieces of this process. It is the writing, it is the publishing and then it's kind of like what you do with the books. So there's a lot of marketing in this book as well. And my intention with this book was to kind of demonstrate for folks, what's possible, because I think sometimes when we look at books we think of we think of them in a certain way. Even if I asked you the question of like, what is it like when you think of a book, what are you thinking? Are you thinking of a coffee table book? Are you thinking of a novel? Are you thinking of a nonfiction book that's heavy with graphics, everyone kind of has their own vision for it. And so for this book, it is very graphically heavy, it is full color, it is designed in a way to be as accessible as possible. My goal was to write a book that was 35,000 words, it is 68,000 words. So it's just a just a little bit more than my intention was.

    6 min
  2. 12/22/2016

    #100: The Big 100th Episode - What's Next?

    #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 t

    35 min
  3. 12/09/2016

    #99: Are We Innately Driven to Serve Others With Matt Kidd

    #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 c

    47 min
  4. 11/24/2016

    #98: Finding Your Niche & Brand in Consulting With Rhodes Perry

    #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 s

    42 min
  5. 11/10/2016

    #97: How to Establish Your Personal Brand With Intention With Jennifer Brown

    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 econ

    49 min
  6. 10/27/2016

    #96: Kicking Ass & Taking Names With Stacy A. Cross

    #96: Kicking Ass & Taking Names With Stacy A. Cross Jenn T Grace:              You are listening to the Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional Podcast, episode 96.   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 96 of the podcast. I am your host, Jenn T Grace, and as we near the end of October, as I promised I have another interview for you. Today's interview is with Stacy Cross, she is the founder of Comfort Killers, and this was probably one of the most high energy interviews that I have done in a very long time. So Stacy really got into a lot of mindset conversation, we talked a lot about personal branding, and how she has developed and created her personal brand over the last six months. You will walk away from this I believe inspired, but then also perhaps equally as exhausted because it was a really high energy conversation. So I really hope that you enjoy this. If you would like to see a transcript, or you would like links directly to anything that Stacy and I discussed, you can go to the blog at www.JennTGrace.com/96 for episode number 96. And if you would like to get in touch with Stacy or you have any n that you would like for me to hear, you can do so at pretty much Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn; all of those places I'm at Jenn T. Grace. Or if you'd like you can send me an email at Jenn@jenntgrace.com. Regardless of how you'd like to get in touch with me, please, please do. I’m happy to make an introduction to Stacy I'm happy to make, or if you just have general comments or feedback I always want to hear from you. It is never a wrong time to reach out so please, please do. And with that being said I'm going to cut the introduction short and get right into this conversation with Stacy.                                     So let's just start from the top, and let everyone know who you are, where you're located, what you do, and how you got to this place in time.   Stacy A Cross:             What, where, when, and how.   Jenn T Grace:              You name it, all of it.   Stacy A Cross:             Well thank you so much for having me on your podcast. I appreciate it greatly. I am Stacy A. Cross, and there is no E in my name, and I am currently living in Philadelphia, moved here roughly about three and a half years ago, been here since, ready to be nimble again and move on. I move with opportunity. I am the owner and founder of the company The Comfort Killers, and I know it sounds negative Jenn, but in this case two negatives does equal a positive. The comfort- to me being comfortable is such a negative word, and of course killers is a negative word. But the comfort killers is what we do, and we provide products, and solution, and content, and services to those seeking success through personal development, and I've been living it so the value is in my experience. And that's who I am, my mission is huge, my mission in life is to teach millions how to get uncomfortable, to think better, to live better, and to act better. And that's who I am in just a nutshell.   Jenn T Grace:              I love it. So how did you get to the place where you decided that you were going to go with Comfort Killers? All possible negativity aside, what was the impetus to say it's comfort that really is what's getting in people's way? What was your kind of revelation around that word specifically?   Stacy A Cross:             Definitely, because I believe that tradition and conventional wisdom led us to this comfortable life, right? We want to go to high school, get that great diploma, then take that diploma, go to college, get another diploma, then go off into the workforce, then of course get the picket fence with the home, get the kids, get the dog, get the car, and go to a couple baby showers in between, and be happy with a few vacations. That's a comfortable life. I wasn't even at that comfort level, but the revelation, the 'aha' moment in my life was realizing that I want so much more, but I don't know how to attain it because going through this comfortable path, I've been just getting this same type of result, these same outcomes. So what is it going to take? So I look for inspiration and motivation outside of me at one time, this external. So I was going to a seminar and on Valentine's Day in 2016 I went to one seminar, pumped everyone else up, and for me I just wasn't getting pumped up. I wasn't feeling it. And I was like, 'But I'm a motivated person already.' And then I realized you know what? I'm going to walk out of this seminar. I'm going to take a step back and walk out and I'm not going to feel guilty about it. I remember the day clearly because I did feel guilty about it, but I said, 'What can I do differently that I haven't been doing,' and that was one answer was get uncomfortable. Do what people won't do. Do the dirt, and that's what I've done, and I've built a company. So upon coming home from the seminar that day, I wrote so many articles, I created the company in one day. I started writing a Comfort Killers handbook which I finished in 24 hours, and then things just started happening, result-based things. And I realized, 'Wow doing the opposite of comfort really allowed me to grow in my space,' and I think more people should apply their lives to living an uncomfortable lifestyle.   Jenn T Grace:              Wow, I feel like you are saying so much with the time already, so we've been recording for like four minutes at this point. I feel like people can immediately get a sense of your energy level which is through the roof, and you're really motivated, and you're out to like kick ass and take names. Where do you see the direction and your ability to kind of be branding yourself with this? Because Comfort Killers is a really kind of perhaps polarizing type of statement for people who are stuck in their comfort zones. How are you finding other people who really just need maybe that kick in the ass to kind of get them going, or really have you be their personal motivator? Where are you finding those people? Are they reluctant to hear the phrase of 'Comfort Killer'? Do you find that you have to explain what comfort killing is? I know that's a lot of questions in one shot, but hit me.   Stacy A Cross:             I understand where you're going with this, and yes, in the beginning it was like, 'Okay well how am I going to explain this?' It's easy to naturally just say The Comfort Killers, I am Stacy Cross, and there is no 'E' in my name, but then there's got to be some explaining. Okay what is it that I really do? I want to motivate people, I want to teach people how to get uncomfortable. It's been a blessing so far where people are naturally drawn to this idea of change. They want to change, they're in a place that I could easily explain to them that I was in the same place, so it comes from my story, and what my story relates to is a sense of addiction. I was a gambler, I didn't even know it. Right? So I had to overcome that but thought I didn't want to go to an AA meeting, right? So- and I came from a place of procrastination. I've started and stopped so much times that it became known that if Stacy says something it's probably not going to be done. It takes a while to reverse that aspect. So when people arrive at my domain, when people arrive at my face, when people come to me or essentially I go to them, I have this big humongous story, this personal story that I've written that I believe is so relatable to any facet of anyone's life that's willing to change. But here's the deal, change doesn't come easily, right? The seeds have to be planted. So I only work with people that have planted these seeds and that are willing to take the next steps, because the next course of action definitely is an accountability action; you have to want it, you have to go for it. So how do I purposely drive myself to these people? I put it in my articles, my website, all that jazz. Or really when you're talking to me face-to-face, I don't give you back pats. I'm not in the game to make you feel good. Tony Robbins even turned me down from going to Business Mastery. He said I needed more credit. I understand it, here's the deal, I am not here to say everything that everyone already said, it's been said. If you could motivate yourself from that, that's fine, but the reason you came to me is because none of it worked.   Jenn T Grace:              I love all of that, and so I feel like it takes a really strong personality to be able to say, "Listen this is where I'm sharing my story, and it's not all roses. I was known for not actually following through with whatever it is." How are you leveraging that aspect in terms of maybe relating with the people that you're working with to say, "Listen you're coming from the same place that I came from, and now I'm going to be able to navigate you through this because I personally went through it." Because I think a lot of coaches out there, and strategists, and people who are counseling, and motivating; they don't have that real credible story behind them.

    57 min
  7. 10/13/2016

    #95: Dissecting LGBTQ Identities Around Same Sex Relationships with Dr. Jennelle

    #95: Dissecting LGBTQ Identities Around Same Sex Relationships with Dr. Jennelle Jenn T Grace:              You are listening to the Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional Podcast, episode 95.   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 95 of the Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional Podcast. Today I am just super excited that we are in the middle of October in 2016, and that I am on episode 95. It somewhat seems crazy to me that I have recorded 95 podcast episodes, and really it's been 125 because I did a special feature of thirty episodes a couple of years ago. But thinking that I'm nearing the 100 mark just- it seems mind boggling. I remember the first episode I did and what a- I don't want to call it a complete hot mess, but to some degree it was definitely a learning experience, and it took a bit of time to really kind of catch my bearings, but 95 episodes in I'm feeling really good and really confident about the guests that I've been having, and I just feel like everything is going really, really well.                                     So today I have an interview for you, and then I can also tell you that episodes 97, 98, 99 and the big old 100 which will all occur within 2016 will all also be interviews.                                     I have found over the years that just interviewing people who are a part of the community, not part of the community but some way are supporting the community, all of that, I find that interviews are absolutely the best way to help educate you. And today we have an interview with Dr. Jennelle who is a PhD psychologist and she is in the greater Boston, Massachusetts area, and she has a really interesting niche within the LGBTQ community, and you'll hear from her directly that she's not even saying that her niche is LGBTQ, but rather she works with women who are in relationships with other women, but that doesn't necessarily need to be confined with or by having a label of being part of the community.                                     We had a good 45-minute or so discussion on just all of so many different things; about stigma of being in a relationship with somebody of the same sex, and how people are always trying to label you, and we talk a lot about personal things, and family, and just kind of dynamics around what it means to be in a same-sex relationship. And as a psychologist, her goal as a relationship advisor as she calls herself, is to really help women kind of navigate these lines. And a lot of it I think is really valuable for you the listener to just be listening in, and kind of seeing how she is positioning herself as a personal brand within the space. So as we're here as the Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional Podcast, we're really talking about how to brand yourself and your identity as it relates to the LGBT community whatever label you're applying, and how to really use that and leverage it within your particular business.                                     I feel like Dr. Jennelle is doing an amazing job of that, and you can find her at www.DrJennelle.com, and she, like I, has two N's in her name so it's Jennelle, so www.DrJennelle.com. And if you're looking for links that are mentioned in today's episode, or you're looking for a transcript of what we talked about, you can find all of that at www.JennTGrace.com/95 and that is for episode number 95.                                     Thank you so much and enjoy this interview. I want to just start off with having you share with the listeners a little bit about your background, and about yourself, and really what kind of led to you doing the work that you're doing in present day.   Dr. Jennelle:                Sure, well first thanks so much for having me Jenn, I appreciate being here, I'm excited about this. And I have, as I think we all do, a winding path to get to where I've been. I think I always start off by saying that I don't think I've met anyone who says otherwise. But I was in graduate school for psychology, I realized pretty early on I did not want to go the academic route and be the college professor doing the research, and I was looking for a more direct line of help. I really wanted to see my impact right away, and so I actually ended up going into the wellness field for a while, and that was also directly related to my own personal wellness revolution as I call it. So in 2009 I lost thirty pounds which I always say was the catalyst for getting me to kind of figure out that I could make myself a priority and go after what I want, and achieve it, and I started doing that more and more. I went into the wellness sector for work and kind of was using that as my way to help people through the psychological process of sort of losing weight and changing their whole life. And then that sort of led me to realize that I had somewhat outgrown my own life and I really wasn't feeling fulfilled in what I was doing with my relationship, my personal life, and I sort of accidentally- completely accidentally met someone who she was feeling the same way, she was married to her husband, they had three kids, and we met through a friend of a friend who was getting married, and we ended up both leaving our partners to be together, and that was in 2012. So it kind of turned my whole world upside down, I was engaged at that time to my high school boyfriend of over ten years, and four years later about the small wellness company that I had been working for was basically going under. They really had a terrible business model even though they had a great program, and they couldn't pay me, they couldn't afford to keep me anymore. So I went off on my own to really start using my psychological background more to help people again in a really direct way. Which as a result of my personal experience, I became a relationship advisor. I started helping people that were going through some really challenging times with their partners, even though that they loved their partner like crazy and wanted to stay with them, that it's still really complicated, messy, and hard. And I started specifically working with female same-sex couples, and even beyond that I really like to help people with their big change of heart as I call it. So in my case and in my partner's, we both were with men and left our male partners to be with a woman, and there's a whole host of challenges that come along as a result. So that's really the way where I sort of look at it the 'ah-ha' moment, her after him, and helping people embrace that big change of heart.   Jenn T Grace:              You just said quite a mouthful. Okay so let's unravel that a bit. So for the person listening- so you and I have had the pleasure of having a couple of conversations prior to recording today, so I have a good sense of what it is that you do, and how you serve your current clients. So I know that you were saying that you're a relationship advisor, and it's for primarily same-sex couples that are women. Can you go a little bit deeper into that for the audience listening to just kind of get a general sense of what your practice looks like, and how- even to some degree how you're acquiring women that are in those situations that you're helping advise?   Dr. Jennelle:                Sure, yeah. So the first part is that I specifically termed and call myself a relationship advisor. I'm not a counselor, I'm not a coach, a clinician, a teacher, trainer, or any of those words, specifically because I do think a little non-traditionally, which you'll see that word pop up a lot with me. But it really came from thinking about sort of a financial advisor, right? You don't wait until you're bankrupt, you don't wait until you're reaching retirement age to finally go see a financial advisor, or at least you shouldn't. Came out to ideally start really in your twenties and early thirties to see someone where you can make small adjustments in your daily spending habits to eventually reach some sort of financial goal that you've set. Well the same is really true for relationships, that's my philosophy, that you need to be proactive, you need to make small adjustments day to day if you want the love that you have to last a lifetime. And so that's really how I kind of position my approach. It's solution-focused, it's proactive, and it's really about making sure that the love that you've found that you were so happy to have, that you're able to continue to foster and grow that even though there's going to be tons of things pulling you and stressing you in a million directions. And so I actually wrote a piece about my own personal experience and have had it for a long time, but I had it published this past April in Elephant Journal, and a lot of people actually reached out to me who had been through a similar experience where one of the people in their relationship at least had left their husband, and they had kids, so there was this complexity of dealing with

    55 min
  8. 09/29/2016

    #94: Building a Stronger Queer Community with the Debt Free Guys

    #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

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About

This is the Gay Business & 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 $884 billion dollar lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. We’ll help you grow your business, gain market share, and impact your bottom line. Hosted by the Professional Lesbian, Jenn T. Grace. This podcast answers questions and provides tips and tricks for reaching out the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender audience. Reach out to Jenn at jenn@jenntgrace.com to ask questions or provide topic suggestions. Visit www.jenntgrace.com

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