How being queer has fueled me as a business owner (with special guests)

Speaker 1 0:02

I just know that what you are doing is not just building what you think you're building, but you're actually changing the systems around you in the act of building what you're building. And you know, no pressure, but it's a beautiful thing. It's a hard thing. It's a beautiful thing. It's complex and ultimately, something that you should be extremely, extremely proud of.

Leah Neaderthal 0:25

Welcome to the smart gets paid podcast with me. Leah neaderthal, I help women land higher paying clients in their independent consulting businesses, but I've never been a salesperson. My background is in corporate marketing, and when I started my first consulting business, I learned pretty quickly that it's about 1000 times harder to sell your own stuff than it is to sell someone else's. So I taught myself how to do it, and I created the sales approach that I now share with my clients so they can feel more comfortable in the sales process, get more of the right clients and get paid way more for every client contract. So whether your client contracts are $5,000 $100,000 or more, if you want to work with more of the clients you love, do more of the work you love, and get paid more than you ever thought you could, then you're in the right place. Let's do it together. Thanks for tuning in, and don't forget to rate, review and share. Hey there, Leah here, and thanks for tuning in. I hope that wherever you're listening to this, wherever you are right now, I hope you're having a great week, making some good progress on your business and taking some time for you. So in the last episode, I shared that I recently realized that it's the 20th anniversary of my coming out, and it being pride month, this month, I wanted to share a bit of my journey as a queer person and what I've learned and how you can use what I've learned in your business, whether you identify as queer or not. So this is a second in a two part series. In the last episode, Episode 92 I shared a bit about my journey, my coming out, how I knew I was gay, my journey as a queer person, how that's affected me as a person, and what I've learned from that. And so if you haven't listened to that episode, be sure to check it out. Episode 92 this episode is going to be about how being queer has helped me as a business owner in some surprising ways. And in this second part, I've invited some friends and colleagues who are also queer business owners to share how being queer has helped them as business owners too. So you're gonna hear from Nate Shalev, Claire Wasserman, Eduardo Placer, B payles minor and Jennifer Brown about their experiences as well. So Happy Pride. If you're queer, I hope you liked this episode, and I hope you can see yourself in some of it. And if you're not queer, or you don't identify as queer, don't worry. There's a lot in here for you too, and a special message just for you at the end, so stick around right after this.

So just a quick recap to bring you up to speed. And if you've already heard this in the last episode, just sit tight. So in the last episode, I talked about how I came out around this time, 20 years ago, I made my first gay friends, and I spent the first, you know, eight or nine years of being queer, just like living my life, building my career, dating and all of that. And then that year, I co founded an organization called lesbians who Tech with my ex, and I became a professional gay like being queer was like my job, because we were running an organization for the lesbian and queer community, and that organization lesbians who tech is still around today, after we held our first major summits in San Francisco and New York, my ex and I ended our relationship. I walked away from everything. I moved away. I met my wife, and I lived happily ever after, and I really didn't even touch or go near the queer space until now. And so to fill the gaps on how I got from there to here, that's another story I'm gonna tell that in just a minute. So I've been out for 20 years. I've been a business owner in some capacity for 14 years, and I've been running this company smart gets paid for nine years, so forgive the double negative here, but there wasn't a time in running my business when I wasn't queer. But I do know how I was before I came out, you know, just in my career, and I can see the difference between how I am now and how I was then, not even just on the queer aspect, but just how it's made me a different person. And reflecting on 20 years of being out and looking at it through the lens of being a business owner, I can definitely say that there are very real ways that being queer has helped me as a business owner, not how it's helped my businesses necessarily, but how it's helped me as a business owner. And if you don't identify as queer, some of these ways might surprise you, and if you do identify as queer, you might see yourself in some of these but I didn't just want to share my experience, because I'm just one. Person, and the experience of being queer is so vast and varied and different for everyone because I'm cisgender, which means my gender presentation matches my biological sex, and I'm FEM, presenting like I dress in a way that's like, I guess feminine. You know, I got long hair like you might not look at me and know one way or another what my sexuality is, and I'm white, which comes with its own set of privileges, and I'm from the south, even though I'm from a blue.in the south, I'm from Nashville, and I came out in a city that had a huge gay community. I came out in Chicago, and now I live in a big city, New York, where it's really actually impossible to be different, because you find everything here. And so this is my experience, but it's not the only experience. So I've invited some friends and colleagues who are also queer business owners to share their experience too. So just a quick note about some of the language you're going to hear me and the other folks use in this episode. You might hear me say queer, gay, lesbian. I sort of use all those interchangeably, but they all basically mean queer. And just to touch on, you know, why am I doing this? Like, aside from the fact that it's the 20th anniversary of my coming out, and it's pride like, why am I talking about this? Because, as I mentioned in the previous episode, being gay is so much a part of who I am, and it's inseparable from who I am and the things I've experienced and the things I've learned as a gay person are really inseparable from how I am as a business owner and how I've run my business. And I mean, even though I've certainly mentioned my wife and I've mentioned our kids and all of that, like, I haven't really put my gayness front and center here before. So I felt like, you know, to celebrate 20 years of being out and doing 91 episodes squarely focused on building a consulting business, I felt like I'd earned a couple where I get to talk more personally about this. But in all seriousness, I'm also doing it because I want to put something out there that's about hope and that's optimistic about being queer in business, because it has to tell you, it's scary out there right now, for the LGBTQ plus community, there are very loud voices that are trying to shift the culture away from acceptance and away from equal rights for our community. You might not know that in state legislatures, in the US, there are 515 bills that are currently being moved through legislative bodies. That's 515 bills that the ACLU is currently tracking. And even beyond just the legal aspect, there's simply what's going on in the culture around the backlash around equal rights, LGBTQ, plus everything. And this is the reality of LGBTQ people today. But in the midst of all that, there is lightness, there's joy, there's so much to celebrate, especially as business owners. So if you are a queer business owner, or if you are questioning or if you are an ally, this episode is for you, and I hope you'll share it with the people in your life. So just to bring us up to speed here, so after I walked away from lesbians who tech one of my friends who I knew from San Francisco, who ran a speaking and consulting business, she reached out to me and asked me to become her Managing Director and essentially run her business. She had seen that I was behind the scenes in the businesses that my ex and I had run before, and she needed someone to make the trains run in her business. And so I took everything I had learned in running my consulting business, and everything I learned from building lesbians who tech and I brought that into her business to help her increase her revenue and run more smoothly. And we did, I mean, we doubled her revenue in the first year, and then did the same in the second year. And a few years into that, I realized that if we had done that for her business, then there were probably a lot of other women business owners who could benefit from what we were doing. And so I started coaching women on how to increase revenue in their businesses and how to get more clients. And that's how my coaching business was born. That's the business that became smart gets paid. So in my 14 years running a business in some capacity, and more specifically, in the nine years since I've run my coaching business, there are very real and specific ways that being queers helped me as a business owner. In the last episode, you heard me share a big one that's more about life in general, but also really extends to running a business. I stopped doing what I call running the program, like just doing what was expected. When I came out, I started looking at everything differently, everything that's sort of expected or established, and I got to decide, is this still right for me? It's almost like having a veil lifted from your eyes or starting to see in color. And I started to be able to do things, not just the way they're supposed to be done, but really asking what's right for me and doing things my way and not just sort of repeating or reenacting what's expected. A perfect example of this is something that's small but actually kind of important. So it's really common. If you're a woman, you know this. It's really common that when a woman receives a compliment, like, let's say she gets a compliment on something she's wearing right a shirt. Yeah, it's really common that she'll respond by saying something self deprecating about that thing. I mean, think about that phrase, oh, this old thing. I mean, that's sort of where that comes from. Or when you might hear somebody say, oh, you know, I got it on sale or whatever. So I started hearing that and really paying attention to it. And I was like, All right, so like, every woman in my world is doing that. But this whole like, self deprecating thing just started to sound so lame to me, and I was like, I don't want to just repeat that sort of like basicness. And so I started doing something different. When someone complimented me on something, instead of doing what was expected, I just said, thank you. And I started noticing how that made me feel which is stronger more powerful actually, not trying to shrink and not trying to take up less space. And this is just one small example, but when I stopped running the program, I started to make these little changes, and they felt really good. So coming out and being queer in business helped me think differently and challenge assumptions, because I had to, and I got to sort of re examine everything. And I think everything in my business, on some level, has stemmed from that. Before this, I had totally been on the corporate track and like, what would have made me think I could start a business? I was really comfortable behind the scenes, and I never posted on LinkedIn. But how did I get the courage to think I had something to say so stuff like that? I really do think that everything in my business came from coming out and stopping running the program. So that's the first one. So the second way that being queer has helped me as a business owner, and I think this sort of comes out of the first, you know, like that first not running the program, and it's that being queer has allowed me to define how I want to be in this business and really express myself authentically. So when I started moving away from being the managing director of my friends speaking and consulting business, I started looking around at other sales coaches who worked with women, you know, just to, like, see who was out there and who was doing what. And every woman I found like to a person, all their photos showed them wearing a body con dress with a plunging neckline, you know, like, bodycon dresses, right? They're like, super fitted, you know, hugging all the curves. And these, in particular, the ones these women were wearing, like, Why did there need to be so much cleavage? And listen, I'm not against cleavage, but like, why was that the choice in this professional context? And, like, I think it's because they all came from sales. And maybe that's more common, you know, when you're a salesperson or something. But like, why? And I thought to myself, do I have to do that? Like, do I have to wear a bodycon dress and show my cleavage? I mean, I'm so much more of a like, jeans and sneakers kind of girl, and I just, I don't know. I just, I'm just not trying to look good for men anymore, which is what so much of our conditioning as women is about. Like, even if we don't realize it, it's so ubiquitous that it's so hard to shake it, even if we think we are shaking it. But like, I guess when on some deep fundamental level, I didn't really care what men thought of how I looked, I just, like, really felt like I didn't need to dress in a sexy way. Like I certainly wasn't a bodycon dress girl even before I came out, and I'm definitely not one after. So I realized I don't have to dress like that just because the other women in my space are that doesn't have to be how I do it. And so I just didn't. When I got my first headshots for my coaching business, I was wearing jeans, a white tank top and a black leather jacket, and it felt like me and so being queer really helped me say in my business, whatever anyone else is doing, I can do something different, and it really helped me express myself authentically. A third way that being queer has helped me as a business owner is it's made it really easy to know who my clients are. I mean, yeah, over the years, I've honed my actual ideal client, and I've gotten a lot clearer and more specific on who can benefit the most from what I teach. You might have heard me talk about this already in Episode 65 how I figured out my niche, but beyond the functional aspect of my ideal client. Being out as a business owner has meant, I mean, let's just say this, if you aren't cool with the gays, you probably won't want to work with me. And you know, it's self selecting on both sides, like I don't have a lot of Maga right wing people lining up to work with a progressive Jewish lesbian for sales coaching. And I am totally fine with that. I actually have an FAQ on the overview page for the Academy, where one of the FAQs is, Can I do this program if I think Trump won the 2020 election? And the answer to that FAQ, when you open up the answer and the answer goes, no, Trump lost. But seriously, if you think that, you will hate what I have to say about a lot of other things. I. And so over the years, the more I've talked about being queer, the more I mention my wife, the more I just drop little comments here and there, the more I attract people who are totally 100% supportive and cool with the gays. I've been so fortunate to work with, women who are progressive, women who I don't just love to work with, but even if we weren't working together, I'd love to be friends with so being queer as a business owner has absolutely helped me identify and signal my ideal clients, and it's allowed me to work with clients I absolutely adore. So that's three ways that being queer has helped me as a business owner. It's helped me decide for myself how I want to be in the business. It's helped me express myself authentically, and it's helped me know who my clients are. And I mean, there are so many more ways, everything from being queer has empowered me to share my point of view and actually understand that I might have a unique point of view to begin with, and really just giving me the confidence around that, or something else, the fact that I'm in a marriage with a woman, and when you're in a same sex relationship, we get to rewrite the roles in the household and not just go with traditional roles that we've been conditioned to. So we have, like, a much more equal division of house labor than you tend to hear about in straight marriages, and since we're both sharing the household labor pretty equally, we each have more time to do the things we want or work on the business, because neither of us is shouldering all of it or most of it, and all of this comes down to, you know, being queer is really inseparable from how I am and how I am as a business owner, so I'm sure there are even a number of things I'm forgetting, but this is just my experience, and I wanted to invite some friends and colleagues to the podcast as Well to share their experience and how being queer has helped them as a business owner. So in a second, you're going to hear from Nate Shalev, Claire Wasserman, Eduardo Placer, B Pagels minor and Jennifer Brown. And I've also invited them to share some advice for queer business owners and some advice for people who don't identify as queer. So be sure to stick around for that. So the question I posed to them was, How has being queer helped you as a business owner? All right, here's Nate.

Speaker 2 17:08

My name is Nate schleb, and I have my own inclusion consulting business, so I help create workplace cultures where businesses and people can thrive. It's just an interesting question, because it is the reason I'm in business, and also it is the reason that I can actually be a successful business owner. So it feels so integral. So the first thing, I think, is just around being genuine and what that means. And so I am who I am. At all times I've had to think a lot about what it means to be queer, be me in the world, both for the celebratory moments. What does it mean to affirm my gender and sexuality, and then also in the Navigating safety in the world moments. And so it's constantly on my mind, so I'm really thoughtful about it, but I just show up in the way that I show up everywhere, and I've realized that's not something that everyone does. And so when I'm often in business spaces talking to other business owners, they'll talk about how I'm able to show up genuinely, and how that helps them show up genuinely. And I think a lot of that is because of queerness and because I've had to be so thoughtful about what it means to be me, and I also have no other way to be in the world. I think people always hire people, right? You hire you often hire somebody, yes, for the work that they're doing, but it's often for the connection that you have with them. And because I'm able to show up in this genuine way, folks get a good sense of who I am. From the very beginning, it's been interesting in a way that I didn't expect again, just because I am who I am, but I think a lot of that is because of the queerness.

Speaker 3 18:34

I'm Claire Wasserman, and I'm the founder and author of ladies get paid. Ladies get paid is an educational platform and global community all about helping women own their worth and expand their wealth. So the short answer is, I think being queer released me from trying to conform to what men needed me to be, or what I felt that men needed me to be, whether it was in the romantic relationships I had before, or how I presented myself in business, how I thought of myself. So even just the relationship I had with myself, let alone with men, I have found that since coming out, I am so much more free to just take up space in all different kinds of ways, and a big way is business. I don't think you can separate business and what you do for a living from who you are and how you show up in your life. It's all interconnected. There's a freedom to just take up space. I find. I think being queer as a business owner allows me to have a deeper sense of empathy for all different kinds of people and voices, but particularly marginalized voices, right? And when you can have that deeper empathy, you create better products, right? You're serving real needs. You're also communicating in a way that res. Nates more deeply with different kinds of people than if I did not have the lived experience of somebody who was marginalized in some way, while also acknowledging that I carry immense privilege too. But I think the empathy is incredibly helpful in life and in business.

Speaker 4 20:19

My name is B, bagels, minor My pronouns are they, them, theirs, and I am the founder and general partner of divergent ventures, as well as the founder of the wealth salons. First and foremost, I think being queer helped me understand that I was unique in some way. And I know it's okay, queer unique. Yeah, it's like an easy one, but it's a little bit different than that. So I started my career in large corporations for the most part, and in those corporations, just like any other human where you're coming from a humble background, I would say, Oh, wow, I can't even believe I I'm working here, like I'm so fortunate that I even work here. But the reality is that I often have some insight that no one else would have, and the reason for that was because, you know, sign female at birth. But I was also a lesbian. I was also a burgeoning trans person. I didn't see things in the same way a lot of my coworkers did. For instance, when I was@cars.com I was in charge of personalization, and I really wanted to go deeper on personalization. And they were like, we only need to know, like, where they're from, their gender, their age? And I was like, Well, how do we like, what do you mean by gender? They're like, well, you know, if there's a man and woman, I was like, well, there's a lot of nuance there. Now let's use other terminologies. Use terminology or like, you, are you the breadwinner? Are you the head of household, etc. And what we found is that by putting in that kind of clarity, and then you actually, when you map gender onto that, it was actually women who made a lot of the decisions when it came to car buying, for instance. And so that was a complete difference of opinion. And what leads to what we started out there. And so being able to have those different insights that made me confident enough to start a business. And it was just like, if I'm doing this pretty consistently, and these people are supposed to be some of the smartest, most talented people in the world, the chances are I can go out and start a business and provide those insights to those businesses, actually at scale, and then eventually through my investment firm, to my investors. And it's been true, right? Because it's ultimately about being around the corner for what's next and not waiting for people to tell you what's next.

Speaker 5 22:31

My name is Eduardo placer. I use hehim pronouns, and I am the chief story doula and founder of fearless communicators. Being gay is the fire at the source, the spark of my work because I was bullied and picked on growing up as a child in Miami, Florida, I did not feel safe to speak the truth or be the truth. I felt like I had to put on a show, or I had to act or perform something other than who I was in order to be celebrated, to be loved, to be liked, and I think that core wound doesn't disappear. And my whole business fearless communicators. We are a diverse, inclusive public speaking. Coaching business is a platform and a process, a methodology to have people heal that trauma so they can be the vehicles and the light of their message in relationship to their intended audience. And the reason why my business is called fear less communicators is because I am constantly in the healing of that origin, fear that I have around actually fully being seen for who I am, being queer, is at the root of everything that I do. I have a little pin that I put on whenever I speak, which is a unicorn. And it's remind me, reminding me to lean into that uniqueness, that quality that I have, and at the root of that, I believe is my queerness. I think my magic is in my queerness, and I think that specifically in my work as a public speaking coach, I'm not only healing my shame and my fear and my self doubt about standing up in front of people, but I get the privilege of working with people heal whatever that wound is for them that could be in relationship to their queerness, but all the various other ways that people have been forced to conform to a style or a type of performance that is not authentic to Who they are, and the opportunity to build a business that heals that and converts that to joy is the real gift.

Speaker 1 24:50

I'm Jennifer Brown. My pronouns are she her, and I have had a dei consulting firm for almost two decades, and I am a key. Notes speaker and an author of four books on inclusive leadership, and I'm a podcaster on the will to change, given the business I'm in, which is building more inclusive organizations, I incorporate my own experience into what I teach every minute of every day. I never forget what it was like not to be fully out, to be covering, to be afraid of acceptance or not not being accepted and just navigating that so the empathy I have, the compassion, the relatability, I hope, the credibility that I have when I speak about my own experience allows me to stand in the teaching that I do, particularly for leaders who are not LGBTQ plus and are often, frankly, white male leaders, which is where I find myself often. So it allows me to, I think, feel really grounded in what I am bringing to those audiences. I think this identity has made me extremely resilient and creative in terms of how to reach people, in terms of being able to withstand a lot of the resistance to the ideas that I represent, which is inclusivity for all and equity for all. And it's it toughened me up, because I think queer people have to put everything on the line. They have to know that when they live their truth, they may lose the love of their family, they may be fired from jobs, they may suffer ostracization and isolation and emotional and physical harm. So I And fortunately, I've been so shielded in my life from so much of that that I just described, and I never, never a day goes by that I don't appreciate that, and I also feel very activated in my own allyship. Actually, even though I'm in the queer community, I've I'd like to think that I've deeply worked on being an ally to others in the community that don't identify with the same mix of identities that I do. So the resilience, the courage, the deep understanding of allyship, what it sounds like, looks like, feels like, and how to be on the other side of it and how to be that for other people, hopefully, has been such a gift of a lifetime. So I think it's made me a resilient, emotionally intelligent, fearless and courageous and dialed in leader, because those are lessons from my own experience that I will never forget, and it's something that I every day work to remedy for others and leave it better than I found it

Leah Neaderthal 27:43

all right. Oh so much goodness there. And I also asked them to share some advice for other queer business owners and some advice for people who don't identify as queer, and they really came through. So first, some advice for queer business owners. Here's Jennifer again, and b

Speaker 1 28:01

i would say to other queer people building their businesses, that the world needs you, needs to see you, needs to hear your story. Needs to have you as a problem solver, as an innovation partner, creative partner, thought partner, your lived experience and all your wisdom and knowledge that you've gathered are unique, and it can be hard to build when you don't have a lot of role models, when you are fighting against all the biases and the systems that we need to help us build and launch our businesses and scale them. And believe me, there are many we have obstacles to funding. We have obstacles just from biases, conscious and unconscious, in terms of clients and business acquisition and lack of role models and mentors who are clueing us in on how to look around the corner and anticipate the challenges of growing a business when you are queer, but all these things build resilience, and I would say, tap into every possible community that you can that don't let yourself feel alone, because you actually aren't alone, but it can feel that way, and when you get overwhelmed, you're probably not activating the network that you actually have available to you. So seek out other queer owned businesses, queer founders, queer entrepreneurs, there's tons of networks that exist, teach that group, learn from that group, utilize those resources and really buckle up because building a business is hard enough. When you're building a business in all the ways that I've just described and those identities, it can feel really overwhelming, and yet it is completely transformational for you to reach a point where you have succeeded, where you have clients, where you're being valued, where you're being sought after, for the voice that you have, for the knowledge that you have, for the kind of boss that you are, for the people that you will hire, for the amazingly diverse businesses that you'll probably build. Because. Is when you hire people, you have a different lens on how you build your business, what you want to be about, what your values are, etc. So just know that what you are doing is not just building what you think you're building, but you're actually changing the systems around you in the act of building what you're building. And you know, no pressure, but it's a beautiful thing. It's a hard thing. It's a beautiful thing. It's complex, and ultimately, something that you should be extremely, extremely proud of.

Speaker 4 30:31

So first and foremost, be creative. A lot of times as an entrepreneur, you try to follow the journey of other people. The simple fact is that doesn't work. Just because one person's journey looked XYZ way does not mean that it's going to work for you, that it's really a combination of all the elements of human and what I mean by that is it's their own internal drive. It's what they've learned. It's the network around them, it's which city they're in. Like, that's how nuanced it is why some people are successful in certain ways, and other people are not. And so because of that, you have to give yourself grace and give yourself time to find the path that makes sense for you. And so your path may look very different. So you have to figure out who you are, what you're doing, why you're doing it. And then once you really get your arms around that, hold on to it, and don't let anyone push you away from it, because it's hard enough to do this work without also trying to put all these other extraneous factors on yourself as well.

Leah Neaderthal 31:36

So finally, I asked them one last question. So I often feel like the experience I've gone through in coming out and seeing things in a new way, and reassessing everything in my life and what's true for me and what I get to do now, and how I get to do things, I often wish that I could, like, package that up and just like, give it to straight people, so that you could have that mindset shift too, and really start to, I don't know, start to see in color, so that you can really have that veil lifted. Because I do talk to women who come with so many assumptions about how they need to be, or how we should be as women, and I mentioned in the last episode that I've heard that it's also really common that if you've gone through a loss or a transition or a trauma, anything that's sort of outside the everyday that you've also had that experience. So I know that you know, coming out and living as a queer person isn't the only way, but I do wish I could, sort of like, just give that experience to people. And when I shared that with the folks that you heard from here, they all knew exactly what I was talking about. So when I asked them what advice they would give to people who don't identify as queer. Here's what they said. Here's Claire again, and then Nate. So

Speaker 3 32:47

I was thinking about this last night, and I had this realization that I actually think that's what I'm trying to do with ladies get paid, is teaching women to unpack the layers of how they've been socialized and simply ask themselves, does this still work for me? And if not, what's a different way, a different way to look at myself, a different way to look at the world, a different way to look at my career, at my financial future, my spending, my saving like it's a domino effect I find, at least in my own life, when I realized, well, first of all, I got into alignment with my work. So I started to do something that I loved for living, which was to talk to women about money. And then I realized, you know what, I gotta live in alignment in my romantic life. And so it was actually ladies get paid creating ladies get paid empowered me to make change in my personal life. And then when I made change in my personal life, I got unlocked the next level of taking up space in this world, which was making my business even bigger. But I think it does begin with questioning is the way that I have been operating. Does that sit right with me anymore, and really tapping into like your intuition and honoring it, as opposed to the narrative around you of what you think other people need you to be? What do you need you to be

Speaker 2 34:02

thinking about your identity and how you show up in the world? Isn't solely for queer folks. So when I'm thinking about how I talk about like gender and sexuality, when I'm speaking to teams, is that everyone's got a gender, everyone's got a sexuality, queer folks think about it a lot more, because it's the non assumed one. And so we have to think about it, because we're forced into it. But if I asked like 100 cis, straight women what it means to be a woman, they're going to give me 100 different answers. And that process of understanding your gender and who we are happens for everyone. And so to not only think about some of these lessons around being comfortable figuring out who you are through trial and error, or being critical of the expectations and norms that you're given around gender and sexuality isn't something that is solely reserved for queer communities, even though we're the ones who have thought about it. So just to really reflect and say that this, as I would say, this fight that seems a little intense, but this like process. And this understanding is for everyone. I think the other thing is just that this that just thinking about for like straight folks and non queer folks, that this work benefits us all. And so when we're focusing on inclusion, or we're focusing on thinking about what it means to be a queer business owner, it really does help everyone. And I like to use the example of a gender inclusive restroom helps me as a trans person, being able to just be comfortable using the restroom, but it's also going to help a father who needs to go to the restroom with his daughter that he brought to the office. And so this kind of work really does help us all, and when we're thinking inclusively, it really does benefit everyone at work, and it makes all of our workplaces just work better.

Leah Neaderthal 35:41

So thank you for coming on this journey with me over these couple episodes, from my coming out story all the way to how being queer has helped me as a business owner. And before I end, I just want to offer this. As you heard earlier, it's a scary time for the LGBTQ plus community, and even in that, there is also joy and love and so much to celebrate. So I hope I hope I brought a little bit of that here. So if you're queer or if you're an ally, and especially if you're an ally, then make your voice heard and be louder than the people who are attacking us in the legislature, in the voting booth, in the marketplace and in the streets. Donate to LGBTQ organizations, and if you need a suggestion, I recommend the National Center for Lesbian rights@nclrights.org or translifeline@translifeline.org and speak up for marginalized communities. So I'll end with something that Eduardo shared with me about how we can all be an ally to someone at the beginning of their queer journey. And I just thought it was so lovely. Check it out.

Speaker 5 36:43

I would say the biggest advice that I would give to people who do not identify as LGBTQIA plus is that when you have the opportunity, or you are presented with the opportunity where someone trusts you enough to out themselves to you, that you refrain from using something that was used with me when I came out, which is I accept you because your acceptance is not warranted nor wanted and irrelevant, and I instead offer instead what my godfather and his husband said to me, which Is, congratulations. And I think that there are antiquated tropes that exist around the hardship of being gay, the difficulty of what a queer life would look like. And I think those are narratives that have shifted and are continuing to shift. And I think the more that we can learn from the LGBTQ plus community the power of our joy, the beauty of our love and the fire of our fabulotti and our fierceness. I think that we can all take that as a lesson.

Leah Neaderthal 37:56

Thanks again for listening and Happy Pride. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai