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This first episode of the podcast is short just about 11 minutes. It’s really just an introduction to what the Gay Business & Marketing Made Easy Podcast is all about, a brief intro of who I am and what you can expect from future episodes.
Each episode of my show will be accompanied by show notes. The purpose of these notes is for you to refer back to at a later date if I mention a specific, product, service, resource, etc. Rather than you having to dig for the link you can come to the show note page and find it very quickly. (ie. I mention my blog post on transgendered not being a word. You can read it here.)
When I was trying to come up with the name for this podcast I asked a lot of people how they felt on a variety of names I had pulled together. I ended up choosing Gay Business & Marketing because gay is a word that all people know. Not everyone knows the proper acronym LGBT, which means lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. One of my goals is to make LGBT as recognizable as gay.
I am here to teach you about how to do business with and market to the LGBT community. I am the go-to gal for answering a myriad of questions daily. They range from how do I sell my products to LGBT consumers to should I come out to my doctor? I am here to provide an open forum for you to ask any question as it relates to business and marketing without you feeling embarrassed of how strange the question may be. You can e-mail me at anytime at blog@jenntgrace.com and I’m happy to feature the question and answer in an upcoming blog. You can also use the handy widget to the right of this window that says “Send Voicemail,” if you do it this way perhaps I can feature your question on an upcoming podcast!
A little About Me
In this first episode I share with you a little bit about myself, where I’ve been, where I am going and the intended future formatting of this show.
In 2005 at the age of 24, I was working for a company in the travel industry and I took on the project of finding a way to market to the LGBT community. (See my blog post on how I made the business case for LGBT outreach). My role with this company was a marketing projects manager. I’ve always naturally loved marketing and everything about it. Most people who know me know that I eat, sleep and breath marketing. Even when I’m trying not to pay attention to it, I find myself dissecting things, picking them apart and asking a lot of questions.
The endeavor of reaching out to the LGBT market for this company set me on a trajectory and a career path that I never dreamed of. In 2007 I found myself volunteering and being a board member for a Connecticut based LGBT chamber of commerce. This experience brought me down the path of wanting to help LGBT (and allied) business owners improve their businesses and it taught me how to work with corporations specifically regarding their diversity practices and their LGBT outreach.
After years of finding myself in similar conversations every day about LGBT business equality, corporate culture for LGBT employees, supplier diversity, becoming a certified LGBT business, etc. – I decided to launch a blog. (If that list of things I rattled off scared you – fear not – the podcast and blog will highlight each so you can better understand it all.)
What this all taught me was that I have a passion for educating people and taking foreign concepts, such as supplier diversity, and make them really digestible to those around me. So this podcast in conjunction with my blog are really designed to educate you, the listener/the reader, to help support you in your LGBT business or marketing endeavors.
What to Expect in Future Podcast Episodes
So the formatting of this show will be providing expert advice around specific topics of questions that come directly from you, the listener. I’ll provide you with simple tips and tricks for how to improve what you are doing and impact your bottom line. I will be doing expert interviews with people who are in the industry so you can learn from their journey’s as well.
I ask that you bare with me as I am still learning the ways of podcasting. When I set out on this journey of podcasting I had no idea what I was getting myself into but one thing I do know is that I love doing it. I owe a debt of gratitude to Cliff Ravenscraft of the Podcast Answer Man for teaching me everything I know! Thanks Cliff!
Keep in Touch
I encourage you to e-mail me, find me on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or leave a comment below.
I hope you are as excited and enthusiastic for what the next podcast will bring as I am!
Would you prefer to read the transcript than listen to the episode? No problem! Read the transcript below.
AUDIO TITLE: Episode #1 – Introduction
Jenn T Grace:
This is the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast, Episode One.
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:
I am your host, Jenn T. Grace, and you are listening to Episode One of the podcast. This podcast is dedicated to educating you about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues around business and marketing. As you heard in my intro, I pride myself on three very specific things which are being an entrepreneur, a marketing maven, and an advocate for the LGBT business community. The all-encompassing term is LGBT, which as I’ve said a couple of times already means lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. I emphasize saying this over and over again because what I have found is that not many people truly understand what LGBT means. Everybody traditionally understands the word ‘gay,’ gay is very easy to digest I was told recently by a business coach of mine. But LGBT is still one of those foreign words that- foreign acronyms I should say that not everybody can quite grasp or wrap their head around. And oftentimes people within the community itself don’t necessarily say it right, either.
A few things to mention up front…
So I wanted to make sure that I do preface that right up front, and I also wanted to make note that you may hear me shorten it to ‘gay’ every now and then, and that is specifically for the reason that I just said, which is the audience that I am targeting are people who are allies to the community that do have an interest of doing business and marketing to the LGBT community. So if I shorten it to ‘gay,’ it’s to really just make sure that I am resonating with that particular audience, and hopefully by them listening to this podcast on an ongoing basis, they will begin to adapt the LGBT term themselves.
So my personal mission and the purpose of this podcast is to educate you on the LGBT market. Whether it be around business, around marketing, or answering questions that you may have that you may be embarrassed to ask and you’re not sure who else to turn to. I started a blog in November, and one of the sections of my blog is called LGBT Questions from a Friend. And I started that section of the blog specifically because I have a friend who works in the medical field, and she keeps running into these small nuances that are very particular to the LGBT community, and she wasn’t really sure who to ask and I am certainly no medical professional in any way, shape or form, but I do know the right people to talk to so I’m able to get her the answers that she’s looking for.
So I decided to make that a topic area that I can address specific questions that people have. Just the other day I posted an entire blog around ‘transgendered’ which if you want to check it out, you’re more than welcome it. It’s www.JennTGrace.com/transgendered with the ‘ed’ at the end. And I’m addressing that specific word because transgendered, with the ‘ed’ is not the appropriate usage of that word. So me being a bit of a grammar snob at times, I wanted to make sure that I address that because I hear it becoming a common complaint within the trans community. That that’s not a word, because if that’s the case then that must mean that I’m ‘lesbianed,’ and clearly that’s not the case either. So you know that’s just a couple of things that I focus on on my blog.
The main “core” of my blog…
But then the main core of my blog is around LGBT marketing and marketing to the LGBT community. I absolutely love all things marketing, I eat, sleep and breathe marketing, and oftentimes I wish I could kind of just turn that off at times. But it’s really given me a really broad perspective of marketing in general, and within that broad concept and perspective I have a very specific niche of understanding the LGBT community itself.
So at the age of 24, just to give you a little bit of my background, I was working for a travel company and one of the projects that I was assigned to was finding ways to market to the LGBT community. So you know, I figured ‘what the heck, I’m just going to go out there and see what’s out there, see what the research is,’ and I jumped into an area that I had absolutely no idea existed. And that was the LGBT business movement, and that’s really where my passion lies. So you’ll see plenty of information on the news about LGBT marriage, or what’s going on on state levels, or across the United States as a whole, or even globally; but one of the things that’s very rarely touched upon is the economic impact of the LGBT community, and that’s really where I strive to provide insight and value and information to the readers of my blog, and hopefully you, the listener of my podcast.
So you know one of the things that I enjoy the most about what I do is educating people. So you’ll hear me say that over and over again, that really what I’m trying to do is educate you on the appropriate way to target the LGBT market. Oftentimes you will see large corporations, or even small companies, try to market to the community but they’re not doing it in the right way, so basically they’re wasting money. And the right way is really not that difficult, it’s really just a matter of being your true self, your authentic self, and just being honest and transparent with what you’re doing. So you know if you’re a large company and you’re saying, ‘You know what, I really want to market to the LGBT community.’ One of the first things that you should be kind of concerning yourself with is what does the inside of your company structure look like? Are your LGBT employees able to be out and happy in the workplace? Or are there policies that you have that are blatantly discriminating against them- you know not having domestic partner benefits, or spousal benefits where applicable. So it’s all those types of things that the LGBT consumer is really knowledgeable about. So if you want to target this market, you need to make sure that you’re doing all of the right things because the LGBT consumer is very savvy and does look into those particular things that basically are showing your true- exposing your true selves. So if you’re really not LGBT-friendly on the inside of your company, it’s going to come across very loud and very clear to LGBT consumers. So basically don’t waste your money if you’re not in it for the right reasons is really what I educate people on, on an on-going basis.
I think this is going to conclude my intro. I just really kind of wanted to throw out there what it is that I do. But one other thing that I do want to mention is kind of how I stumbled into podcasting itself, which was fairly recent that I made the decision that I wanted to have my own podcast. But back in 2005, for those of you who are familiar with the TV series ‘The L Word,’ it was on Showtime- I don’t even know when it started. I think it was probably 2004. There was a podcast by two women, KC and Elka, and their podcast is actually still available in iTunes. And I would listen to them after every single show of ‘The L Word,’ and I almost at one point found myself more fascinated and more excited by what the two of them had to review regarding the previous episode, than the actual episode itself. They were hilarious, they were great to listen to and they really just hooked me in to what a podcast was. Prior to that I had no idea what it was. So you know it was a great experience for me back in 2005, and from there I kind of stumbled out into listening to business-focused podcasts. I’m also a huge fan of the ‘How Stuff Works’ podcast. I want to say there’s at least eight different version of the ‘How Stuff Works’ podcast, and they’re all awesome. They have great content, they know what they’re talking about, and if you’re really just trying to educate yourself in a certain area, they are absolutely a great place to go to as far as that’s concerned.
So after listening to them, I’ve ran through I would say almost all of the episodes from all of the shows that they do have which makes me sound like I have no life, but really it’s just because I’m in the car a lot. I do a lot of travelling for what I do, so I spend a really good amount of time in the car each week, so I make sure that I am educating myself while I’m in the car. So maybe you’re listening to me while you’re in the car, or maybe you’re listening to me as you’re at the gym; but wherever you happen to be, I’m absolutely thrilled that you are choosing to listen to me over something else that you could be doing.
So I thank you very much for this first listen at my podcast. I absolutely hope that you come back and listen to me again. So I encourage you to email me at Podcast@jenntgrace.com. Or find me on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. You can find me at any of those places with the user name Jenn T Grace. I am doing my best to keep it easy for all of you who are trying to reach out and find me.
So at any rate, I hope you are excited and enthusiastic about what the next podcast will bring, and I hope to catch you soon. Thanks so much, bye bye.
