Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional

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]

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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,

Direct download: epi_49_gay-business-and-marketing-8-lessons-of-2014.mp3
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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,


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