Gay Men and Starting Your Own Business
This year, 2024, I’m celebrating 20 years in full-time private practice, being my own boss as a self-employed person. It’s been quite a journey, but hugely rewarding, and I thank everyone who has been a part of that, from my clients, to coaches, mentors, assistants, and service providers. I started my private practice part-time in 1998, and had been working as a clinician and mental health program administrator before that, being in the field now 32 years as a clinical/psychiatric social worker and coach, and more recently as an AASECT Certified Sex Therapist.
In that time, I’ve worked with a lot of gay men who want to do the same thing I did: leave “workin’ for the Man” for a corporation or institution or government agency or non-profit, and work solely for themselves, in what I call the Gay Male Solo Entrepreneur. This has been in many fields, both in the United States and world-wide, and while I’ve mostly helped gay male individuals, I’ve also helped gay male couples who open their own business, in what I call “The Pop and Pop Store” instead of the old “Mom and Pop Store.”
Opening your own business is a product of various forces: economic, social, financial, and also with your values. I felt held back and frankly underpaid in the non-profit and public sectors; I was an ambitious guy who wanted to go as far as my interests, aptitudes, motivation, ambition, and efforts would take me – and working for others, I was always at the mercy of “upward mobility,” forces, which, let’s face it, are not always “meritocracies.” There were a number of frankly disgusting situations of anti-gay and anti-HIV discrimination I experienced, and even some discrimination based on gender, even as a male in an all-female office, which is not the more common sex discrimination we hear about, but it happens.
What held me back, as it does with so many others, but especially gay men or any historically oppressed group, was self-doubt. It takes a lot of confidence, a lot faith in yourself and in your community, and certainly some risk tolerance to open your own business and becoming partially – and especially fully – self-employed. Part of my work with clients is helping them address anxiety, self-doubt, “worthiness,” “Imposter Syndrome,” ambivalence, and just overall Self-Empowerment (which is the name of my 2013 book) that it takes to be a business owner.
I have been inspired by so many resources that I am very grateful for. Without their help, I wouldn’t have been successful. Those people, who were teachers, professors, coaches, mentors, and experts, empowered me to empower myself. Now, I want to be a resource for you, taking what I’ve learned along the way as a successful business owner, and helping you to do the same, or at least learn to consider to do the same, and have that as an option that is real, and not just wishful thinking or an unrealized pipe dream.
Much of what I can teach you is going to be in the form of a new e-course that will be sold online from my websites, and that’s in development. But until that’s available, I wanted to share with you a preview of that, to maybe whet your appetite for your interest in taking the course, and for you thinking about opening your own business.
When I told a colleague of mine that I was doing this, he said, “What makes gay men opening their own business any different from anyone else trying to do that?” And he made a good point; much of the advice, guidance, tutoring, coaching on how to open your own business would be applicable to many people, regardless of their variable demographics.
But I think there are special considerations for opening a business that pertain to women, People of Color, immigrants, people with disabilities, people with lots of capital to invest, people with little or no capital to invest, and certainly variation in who the person is, where they live, what their business community needs with its customers or clients, products or services, and where that is located, because there are always national or regional differences, and I know there are (readers and listeners) all over the world. This will focus on American gay men, but people who live in other places can hopefully apply this to their own locale.
Gay Business Owners: Pros and Cons
Pros
Gay men as business owners, or potential business owners, have an interesting mix of assets and liabilities, or pros and cons.
On the Pros List, we have male privilege in society. People discuss the “gender pay gap,” which is a long-standing and very unfair gap between men and women and how much they are paid for the exact same work. Gay men have an odd mix that they have a disadvantage as a sexual minority, as an oppressed minority group (even in the present day!), but we also have Male Privilege, and if we are White, we also have White privilege. But I’ve worked with many gay men of color who have become very successful entrepreneurs, but they have had to overcome both homophobia and racism, sometimes in varying proportions, along the way.
Gay men as business owners establish for themselves often a reasonably high income, higher than many or most corporate opportunities, depending on the situation. There are statistics that Americans who own their own business are among the most affluent Americans, despite those with high corporate salaries (and the related benefits, such as health care, 401-k retirement programs, paid time off, stock or profit-sharing options, etc.). Granted; I think there is some debate on whether you earn more in your lifetime career working years as a corporate person, or running your own business, or the other options, like life in the military, or working for a Federal, state, or local government job, or for a university or school system.
What I’ve enjoyed the most about working for myself is the flexibility. I think I probably don’t earn as much as some of my family members, clients, or friends who have traditional corporate jobs, but I’ve also had what I consider the extreme luxury of doing exactly – very exactly, in fact – what I want to do, and love to do, over a very long time – decades now – and being able to, within reason, set my own schedule, but we’ll get to that later.
When gay men work for themselves, we often do not have children, but with some exceptions, and more and more lately, I’ve observed, either with partner/spouses or as single gay men raising children, as two of my current coaching clients are doing by way of the surrogacy process. But if one or both/more partners in a relationship run their own business, or share one, there is a certain “conservation of resources” that I’ve noticed, that helps these men live a generally higher Socio-Economic Status, because none of their labor is going to the owner of a company or a set of corporate shareholders, or to a big institution; they get to keep what they earn, after overhead expenses and various taxes, and this can contribute to a long-term financial security and building a nest egg over time, very efficiently.
Cons
However, there are plenty of challenges, or Cons, for the gay male solo entrepreneur business owner. We are, indeed, socially, an oppressed minority, and there is research that shows not a “gender pay gap,” but a sexual orientation pay gap; straight men were surveyed to earn more than gay men, on average, which is explainable by either the oppression of gay men in the workplace to fail to be hired, or fail to be promoted, or the advantage of straight men who “bond” with other straight men in the “Old Boys Network” that harms both women workers and gay men, or anyone that is not part of Straight White Heterosexual Men.
Another challenge for the gay male business owner is if he is known to the community of customers and clients as a gay-owned business. These days, this is more rare, because even some anti-gay people will still shop at a gay-owned store or eat at a gay-owned restaurant, even perhaps unknowingly. But gay-owned businesses can be essentially boycotted by anti-gay customers or clients. For example, clinically and academically, and by experience, I can certainly treat in psychotherapy or providing coaching to straight people, but they tend to overlook that, even though I try to make everyone welcome who has a sincere intention to do the work with me. But I don’t tend to get those clients, whereas straight therapists and coaches see gay male clients all the time, and this is only questioned when situations arise where even the most well-meaning straight therapists or coaches don’t quite “get it” on lots of different, subtle levels, and then they come to me as a gay men’s specialist, and as a gay male peer; sometimes that’s about being gay, and sometimes (such as in Sex Therapy) it’s also about being more comfortable talking to another guy, including sensitive topics like sexual dysfunctions or concerns where the guys need to be very candid, frank, and trusting to discuss things they might not discuss with anyone else; sometimes including their own doctor.
But any “gay-owned” business is likely to be known as such, and then they can be listed in LGBT-owned business directories, or local “LGBT shopping districts”, or within a network where gay male customers and clients recommend gay male businesses and service providers, just for the specific needs that gay men have, whether therapy and coaching like me, or the special financial planning, tax planning, legal issues, or “gay sensibility” esthetics or tastes culturally.
Another challenge the gay male business owner can have, maybe more rarely, is having to “explain” their same-sex couple status, such as if they and their partner own a business together. Working with some vendors, suppliers, service personnel, employees, government permit clerks, banking professionals, or real estate professionals might have a certain “speed bump” these people making the mental gear-shift away from how they would conceive, and relate to, a straight couple owning a similar business. I’ve gotten a little of this, “What, now? You’re a same-sex couple buying a property, together? And both of you are taking this on?” And a certain “who do I talk to?” since the two men present as handling things equally in an egalitarian partnership. I had a mortgage broker (briefly) who really couldn’t understand that same-sex married couples had the same property rights and procedures as straight ones, and she was replaced.
Mission of Your Business
Owning your own business is, as I said, enormously rewarding. You’re doing something for a livelihood that has a meaning beyond just putting food on the table. You are, as one of my many coaches said, “Making a living, while making a difference.” So the Mission of your business is important. Ask yourself: why do you want to do this? Why is having this business important to you? What can you do if it’s your baby, you’re the one in charge, you’re the one to conceive, and design, and implement every aspect of it, that you wouldn’t be able to do if you were working as part of someone else’s business? Even if you’re a freelancer, like an actor, or designer, or writer, and you’re part of a larger whole project, like a play or movie or magazine, you’re still bringing the product of your original intellectual content “for sale” to a buyer. That’s true if you’re a Hollywood makeup and hair stylist, or a guy on the beach selling ice cream out of a cart, or running a CPA firm.
Lots of non-profit organizations and others have a written “Mission Statement” that guides all aspects of what they do in their organization. It’s the raison d’etre for the entity’s existence, and it’s usually about fulfilling a need in your community that people will literally spend money to fulfill, while at the same time, it’s something that you want to do, or provide, because you have a special interest in it, or talent/aptitude for it, or special enjoyment doing it. It’s the old saying, “When you do what you love, you never work a day in your life.” It’s often something that you would do for free, even if you didn’t have to make a livelihood in a capitalistic, modern society.
Purpose of Business
Beyond crafting the Mission of your business, there is also the purpose. Just asking, “why?” Why does this business entity need to exist in your community? What’s the point of it? Will the people you are marketing to, locally or remotely (such as online) be willing to patronize your business in fair exchange of money spend for goods or services received? If the public does not find your product or service relevant to them, even if it’s just something they do for fun, then it won’t meet the threshold of them spending their own hard-earned money for it. But if your business does meet a sufficient, critical mass of people to patronize your business, especially over the long term, then you have an “exchange” or a “covenant” with your community. It’s a win-win situation.
Take any business you know – the most common things, like Heinz ketchup. The Heinz family got very very rich, just because people liked to put ketchup on their burger or their French fries. The Wrigley Family got rich selling very low-cost chewing gum, over and over and over. RuPaul got rich producing his own TV show that so many people enjoyed watching, that advertisers of products bought commercial air time on those shows. An accountant might make a living providing professional financial and tax advice to everyone who has finances or files taxes, which is just about everybody. It’s a matter of thinking to yourself, what do you like to do, at least enough to do a LOT of it, for theoretically a LONG time, that people “out there” will patronize in sufficient numbers – or a sufficient magnitude – for you to not only survive, economically, but to have the Standard of Living that feels right for you, which could be all up and down the scale. Many gay men like to be affluent, because despite the stereotype of “having good taste,” we do tend to like “nice things” and are willing to work sometimes very hard to be a part of them, perhaps at times even more so than the typical, average, suburban American straight family.
Gay men can sometimes pursue high-income professions, either in their own business or someone else, like a big, Fortune 500 company, because after a lifetime of being denigrated for being gay by possibly parents, siblings, teachers, clergy, public officials, and so on, collectively, gay men have a “living well is the best revenge” approach to their adult life, maybe as a psychological defense against to the denigration, and maybe just because they want to have or do certain things.
Commercial Value
Similar to thinking about your business’s Mission and Purpose, is considering its commercial value. This can be a tough one. If your business is too narrow, or it’s not relevant to your local community (or one online), or if “they’re just not that into you,” your business will not be robust. If you open an Ethiopian food restaurant in a small town in West Virginia, I’m not sure you would do well. The local culture just isn’t drawn to what they mostly would consider “exotic” or even “alien” cuisine. But if you opened this same restaurant on a chic street in an urban shopping district that is cosmopolitan in other ways, you might thrive. Before launching your business, you have to consider – and maybe do some research, or get consultation on – the commercial value to what your business proposes to do.
Values as a Business
When you’re a business owner, you have your Mission, Purpose, and Commercial Value, or Viability, but there is also conceiving how you want to be viewed as a business in your community. What are its Values? Or, what are your values that get manifested, or expressed, in your business?
Do you want your business to be a part of a civic movement, such as the urban improvement of a city’s area? Do you want to be involved in some kind of philanthropy, such as being a sponsor of a local Little League baseball team, or charity of one cause or another, such as owning a restaurant that gives its surplus or unused food at the end of the day or week to a food bank or other resource to fight local hunger? Do you want your business to be an “environmental good citizen,” and have a “Green” business in your space and materials? Do you want to make a point of creating opportunity for people to work, such as jobs for young people, or people of color, or people with disabilities, or veterans – even though you can’t discriminate in these areas, you can certainly do things to make people from under-represented groups in your community feel welcome to apply and be a part of what you’re building?
Place in Time
Another consideration for your business is remembering that you, as an entrepreneur, and your business, as an entity, are products of your own time and place in history. If I were a gay men’s specialist psychotherapist and life/career/executive coach, or certainly as a sex therapist, in the 1950s, even in a known historically progressive area like Los Angeles and “Hollywood,” I wouldn’t have been able to make a living, as it would not have been legal to advertise as such. Gay men like 1920s (and later) Hollywood film star and interior designer William Haines was an openly gay actor, very rare at the time, and when his being gay undermined his film acting career, he became an entrepreneur by being a talented and sought-after interior designer to his movie star friends’ homes, and was successful. Gay men becoming self-employed entrepreneurs has been, historically, a work-around for homophobia in the workplace; you just “take your case” directly to the people, and while some will avoid you, others will patronize you, exactly because you are a gay-owned business; and you can very liberatingly “set your own terms.”
Administration
These bigger ideas about mission and purpose are very important to identify, and clarify, and cultivate, especially early on, but I have found a lot of my success has been in having VERY high tolerance for “the boring stuff,” the administrative aspects of running a business, which every business requires; there is no getting around the “boring stuff” of administration. And there is a lot of it, when it largely falls to you, with perhaps delegating to other staff only a bit further in the process. I employ several freelance people in my business that help with all kinds of tasks and services, but I needed to learn to do most or all of them first, especially when it comes to financial management and marketing, which is what sustains your business, over time.
My e-course will go over these things in detail, so that you really feel informed and empowered about what you need to know when you’re approaching opening your own business. There are things to analyze, like strengths and weaknesses. There is reflecting on your own assessment of what skills do you have, versus ones you have to learn, versus ones you hire other people to do; and the discerning judgment of these things is critical, so you don’t set yourself up for hardship or failure.
Part of your approach needs to be self-aware and self-reflect on your own sense of discipline. Without discipline, and a certain amount of focus and sacrifice even, you are undermining your own mission.
Businesses are created in types, or legal entities. If you’re working as an individual, you can just be a “sole proprietor”, hang a shingle, and be in business, just reporting your income by way of your Social Security number for your income taxes. I did this for many years. Later, you can take this up to the next level by forming entities like a Professional Corporation, which is what many professionals have in California, such as therapists, doctors, dentists, plumbers, electricians, and so on might have. Others might have the LLC, or Limited Liability Corporation, so that your personal assets like owning a home are protected if something goes flooey with your business entity. It’s kind of a “cover your ass” thing. It can also lower your taxes, which, when you’re a business owner, is a very considerable topic, and something that is very easy to overlook and underestimate, at first. I narrowly missed having real hardship with taxes, but I found my own way of dealing with this, and I teach this in the e-course so that you don’t have to worry about being in the Hot Seat with Uncle Sam!
My network of getting started as a professional corporation, after many years of being a Sole Proprietor, came from my (gay) Certified Financial Planner, Thomas Donnelly in Los Angeles, who referred me to Rick Server of Server and Associates, a CPA firm, who guided me (somewhat, I had to Google a lot about this) on how to form a Professional Corporation in California, which takes filing certain forms with the state. An online service called BizShop.net helped with this enormously, and it was worth it to outsource the strictly administrative aspects of setting up a Corporation, filing taxes as an S-Corp, which sounds intimidating at first, but you get through it. Sole Proprietors don’t need to do all that.
One of the things I teach my clients, and in the e-course, is the idea that when you work for yourself, you have to approximate an equivalent of the things that you might see on your paycheck stub when you work for someone else. Take a look at that sometime, if you don’t already, and the various line items on your pay stub or pay statement. There are often lines for Federal tax withholding, State tax withholding, Social Security and Medicare withholding, maybe a line for health insurance plan premiums, maybe a pre-tax Health Care Savings Account, and maybe a 401-k or 403-b (such as in a non-profit or university or government job) pre-tax investment account for saving for retirement (or perhaps a pension plan contribution). Some states have a line item for contributing to a short-term or long-term disability plan, or unemployment programs. I’ve used California’s short-term disability program twice in my lifetime, and it was a real life-saver; I even “opted in” to this when I became self-employed. Understanding all of your insurance coverage needs is a big deal in your business and your personal life, and it can take a chunk from your budget. You don’t need it until you need it, but then you really need it. Having insurances of various kinds can save you from financial ruin if something should happen in your life, and I’ve found that “things happen” for just about everyone, eventually.
Goals
Owning your own business uses the word “goals” a lot in its vernacular. There are immediate, practically daily, goals, and also ones in the short term, medium term, and long term. This is how you grow as a person, and as a business, and “make things happen” over and over that can be very rewarding. My starting to offer e-courses that I’ve developed has been (and is still) a goal of mine. Moving from working in a commercial office to working online was a goal. Goals need to be carefully planned, because they, too, can have pros and cons, or risks and benefits. Having your own business is a lot of Cost/Benefit Analysis, or Return On Investment, and that involves some risk, but without risk, there is no growth. This can be both exciting, and a little daunting, at the same time. One of the greatest impedimenst to people starting their own business is the idea of risk; it can feel “safer” to work for a larger organization or institution, but these can have down-turns, or layoffs, or firing for performance sometimes. In the course of working life, in your career, there are surprisingly few “safe havens” or guarantees, but certain concepts (such as marketing and saving) tend to contribute to success very reliably. So does flexibility.
Staffing
When you own your own business, you are, obviously, The Boss. You get to have many or most of the rewards, as the “owner’s prerogative”, and that’s great, but you can’t do it alone. First, there isn’t time, and Second, you might not want to do everything about everything. As much as you can, you want to do the “fun parts” and delegate some operations to people who can or like to do those things. Over the years, I’ve learned that recruiting, hiring, developing, supervising, evaluating, and changing staff is an art form. Hiring and working with staff is a certain kind of relationship, or “commercial covenant” that you enter with them, and it has to be a win-win situation, or it doesn’t endure. Even when it’s a great working relationship experience, it’s the nature of employment that it is inherently temporary – including your own, when you eventually change businesses or retire (and hopefully not just die). You have to accept that hiring others is like an affair, with a beginning, middle, and end, but it is very much NOT like an affair when it comes to the rules about what that relationship can be, and not be. For lots of good moral and legal reasons, you have to know how to treat people, to motivate them, to support them, to challenge them, and certainly to respect them. You want to be one of the Good Guys in business, and not contribute to things like sexism and patriarchy and able-ism and prejudices of so many kinds. That takes a lot of work, to know what to do, and know what not to do. What not to do is especially important, and it’s like navigating a maze. If you don’t challenge people enough, they are a waste of resources and more trouble than they’re worth to the business; I’ve seen this with especially unmotivated or even dishonest people. And if you don’t reward the people who really come through for you, you won’t have them around for long.
I’ve done a lot of clinical supervision of new therapists, as they accumulate clinical practice hours to become eligible to sit for state licensing exams, and this has been rewarding and challenging. The best bosses not only think about the work at hand in the business that needs to get done, but also accept a certain “mentoring” role, especially to younger people, and you help them as others have helped you to get where you are. You pay it forward, while also everyone having a job to do. Some people like teaching and mentoring and developing people more than others. I like it; which is why I do so much coaching in the workplace and various kinds of teaching. I feel like I’m honoring the people who taught me. I’m also aware of the people who did not support me, such as bosses who were abusive, cruel, and guilty of even criminal activity in the workplace. You have to be optimistic, but not naïve. You run into all kinds when you run a business, and you have to be ready to respond to a variety of scenarios, and these various scenarios are what I often coach clients on, as they come up.
Competition
You always run a business in the context of what kinds of similar resources or businesses like yours came before you, who else does what you do concurrently, sometimes as very direct competitors who are competing for business and “market share” in the same arena you’re in, and what might come after you’ve had your turn, when you leave the function of your business role(s) to the next generation. And these contexts happen for everyone, everywhere. It’s another “rule” of business. We pass this way but once. One of the things I’ve been thinking about lately is how fast the time goes, from starting in your business and your career to nearing a time when you’re at least thinking about retirement, even if it’s still a ways off (thank you very much). It’s important to enjoy the journey, because I’ve found that it does go fast.
There is a healthy competition, where there is a community of like-minded, like-skilled people who collectively band together to serve the community in what you do, usually in subtly different ways, because you can’t be everywhere and serve everyone. Even as a gay men’s specialist therapist, I specialize in things like this, career support and development, even though I can also treat things like Depression, Anxiety, PTSD, and substance abuse recovery, and other things like relationship and sex therapy, and family of origin issues. But I have colleagues who are especially focused on things like substance abuse recovery, or working with younger guys, or working with gay dads, even though we all tend to do a variety of things in helping gay men live better lives.
There can be Toxic Competition, though, in any business. Things like theft of intellectual property, false advertising, or various forms of unscrupulous business practices, sometimes deliberate, and sometimes almost “accidental” by people who are just being over-zealous or hasty in their ambition. But you have to deal with this, and be prepared for it, to protect your assets and your own resources from those who would frankly steal them. Having good legal advice, having a clear policy on ethics, and knowing how to set appropriate boundaries are all components of the healthy business. There has to a balance between an ambitious optimism, and the reality that could make you cynical from “hard knocks” if you’re not careful, especially in a competitive, capitalistic society, where money (or status) is involved. And gay men can be just as ruthlessly competitive as straight men, sometimes even more, in these dramatic “Real Housewives” kinds of ways. But there is generally a community of cooperation, and you support others’ success as they support yours. I’ve mentored and “groomed” my own competition, but we’ve created a sound community of providers serving gay men, and it’s a team and collective that shares the mission of supporting specifically gay men’s quality of life. Somebody has to!
Selling/Retiring
Usually, I’m helping guys with how to start, or sustain, or grow a business. But there is also attention to when it’s time to bring a career in for a landing, either changing roles or entering retirement, usually in Late Middle Age, or early Seniorhood. There are special considerations to leaving a business, or selling it, just like there are so many considerations when you’re starting. Thinking about how the story ends can be an important part of thinking about how it begins. What do you want your overall, over-arching purpose of your business to be, or have been? What do you want to say that you’ve accomplished, when it’s time to stop, and let someone else take over? While we might re-invent ourselves many times over during the tenure of our business, our last re-invention is going from being in the business to being out of it. Think of a stage play: making your entrance is a grand thing, but you always want to “leave them laughing” like they used to say in Vaudeville acts, or make your exit gracefully. We don’t all get to see our business gracefully have a beginning, middle, and end, but we ideally prepare and plan for that. And we all know when the time is right: I’ve learned this from people I admire who are older than me; they enter the scene, they make their mark in their body of work, and they move on. And that’s OK. If you knew your parents’ or grandparents’ roles in business, you might have already seen examples of this. It’s about what do you want to create as your “body of work” in your professional lifetime. People who have their own business often have the advantage of having a strong sense of what their legacy was. People who work in corporations or schools or government agencies can have this, too, but when you have your own business, it’s especially rewarding because it was all driven by you. You help “move the field along”, whatever your field or the nature of your business is, or was.
Planning
What’s key to all of this, a successful and rewarding business, “making a living while making a difference,” is planning.
I hope this helps get you thinking, and helps to hone and focus your own thoughts and feelings about how you might see yourself as the Gay Male Solo Entrepreneur. There are ways to make it not scary or daunting or intimidating, but exciting and empowering, from being simply informed. And supported; you can’t do this alone.
If you would like more customized, specific help to you, consider discussing your professional self in therapy (for guys in California, where I’m licensed for that), or Coaching, anywhere in the world (we just figure out the time zone difference when we schedule appointments). This today can get you started, and if you’re interested, the e-course will be available soon, and I can keep you informed about that, as well as other e-course offerings that are in the works. If you want individualized help sooner, email Ken@GayTherapyLA.com, or Ken@GayCoachingLA.com, or call/text 310-339-5778, and I’d be happy to help.
