How To Craft Inclusive Copy

[00:00:00] Calan Breckon: Running a small business can be messy, but it doesn’t have to be. QuickBooks is a great way to track all of your expenses in one easy to use place. I’ve been using QuickBooks since 2019, when I launched my first business. My favorite part is the app because I can quickly and easily take a snapshot of my receipts if I’m on the go, and QuickBooks stores it in my account so that I don’t lose track of them. Never lose sight of your business expenses again. From tracking everyday expenses to being ready for tax time, QuickBooks helps you understand where your money goes. Head on over to calanbreckon.com/QuickBooks to grab yourself a special promotion or just click the link in the show notes. Now let’s get into today’s episode.

Welcome to the Business Gay podcast, where we talk about all things business, marketing and entrepreneurship. I’m your host, Calan Breckon, and on today’s episode, I have Renée Yoxon. Renée is a gender affirming voice teacher with a passion for voice education, creativity, and vocal curiosity. Since 2010, they have taught thousands of students how to love their voice. Their strengths as a teacher is explaining complicated concepts in plain language that anyone can understand, as well as anticipating student problems before they occur. They are the creator of a suite of online courses that provide concise and easy to follow trans voice education to trans and non-binary people all over the world. Today, we’re talking about inclusive copy and the simple changes you can make to be a more welcoming communicator. So, let’s jump in with Renée.

Hey, Renée, thank you so much for joining on the podcast. How are you doing today?

[00:01:41] Renée Yoxon: I’m good. Thanks for having me, Calan.

[00:01:43] Calan Breckon: Yes, I’m very excited to dive into the things that we’re going to be talking about today. So with that, I’m just going to get right to it. What’s the biggest blind spot when it comes to inclusive copy in today’s market? Because we know we are living in a very different world than even five years ago.

[00:02:00] Renée Yoxon: Yeah, I was thinking, I was meditating on this question a lot this week because I think that when we think about inclusivity, we think about how can we include more people? It’s very natural, right? But actually, inclusive marketing intentionally excludes people and is more intentional about what words we use when we’re talking about who is using our product or service. Right? So, for example, when we’re talking about, like, products for women, that word might mean what you think it means, but it might not mean what you think it means. Or it might include some people that are not good for your product or service and exclude others who are so inclusive. Copy is about really honing in on exactly who your product and service is for and speaking to them with words that include them.

[00:02:49] Calan Breckon: Yes, this is, okay. We’re gonna really get into it today. This is so difficult because I’ve been writing copy for myself for many, many years, and I. I’m not good at it. I am. Well, I’m fully good at admitting, like, it is not my roundhouse, because I find it so difficult to find those words and the language that really resonates with people. I don’t know whether it’s just me. Some people are just naturally talented, gifted. But what happens when, let’s use that woman example. What happens when. Because I know a lot of entrepreneur, women entrepreneurs are like, I want to empower other women entrepreneurs, and they use that as their, like, rally. What happens when it’s so much more or so much deeper than that? How could they actually get more specific?

[00:03:42] Renée Yoxon: Yeah, well, I think it’s about deciding, like, who is your service really for? Right. Because the word woman is so broad as to nearly be meaningless. Like, there are lots of women who don’t share any experiences with each other, and so maybe they don’t need to both be served by you. Right. Those two women who don’t have the same experiences. So let’s say, you know, if your product is for women, like, let’s dig a little deeper. Like, maybe your product is for mothers. Well, then let’s dig a little deeper there. Maybe you want to run a business group for people who have recently given birth. That could include women, but it could include people who are not women who have given birth. Or maybe you want to talk to women who care for children. Well, that could include.

That could be fine. Then women who have childcare responsibilities. Right? Like, we can dig a little deeper. And I think people are, like, afraid of using words like women now, because it’s like, what does it even mean? But it’s just about digging deep and asking yourself, like, what do the people I serve have in common? And how can I speak to them?

[00:04:39] Calan Breckon: I’m curious how. Because they’re always talking about the funnel, right? And so it’s like, what language can you use at the top of the funnel that’s maybe different at the bottom of the funnel? And is that woman experience, is that language their top of the funnel language? And as you go further in, that’s where it gets more specific. What. How specific do you get at the top of the funnel, would you say?

[00:05:01] Renée Yoxon: That’s a good question. I’m not an expert in this either. I will say, like, I think, yeah, we’re just shoot.

[00:05:07] Calan Breckon: We’re shooting this shit. We’re having fun.

[00:05:09] Renée Yoxon: I just think about this a lot because the words I use in my marketing are words like transgender and words like trans women. But there are words that people use that I need to use for SEO reasons, but I don’t necessarily feel comfortable using them, and I have to mitigate that. So, yeah, I don’t know. What words do we use at the top of the funnel? I don’t think there’s anything wrong with using the word woman to continue on with this example, but just add more. You know, it’s not like a. It’s not a dirty word, but we need to add to that so that we really are, like, calling to the people magnetically and having them be drawn to our copy, you know, so that they self select so that the type of woman you want to serve sees themselves in that copy.

[00:05:52] Calan Breckon: Yes. And I agree with adding to it because with my previous podcast and group, gay men, going deeper, you would look at that and it would be very specific. You would be like, okay, this is a group for gay men. But I made it very clear, we all did, and we all agreed on this, that inside of our copy for the group and everything, all of our messaging did specifically say, like, trans men inclusive and inclusive of other, you know, self identifying folks, because we wanted to make sure that they felt like, even if they see that, that can make it more of a safe space and just go, okay, we can’t control necessarily everything that gets said inside of Facebook group. We all know that things get wild, but they can look at that and go, I know that this is a safe space for me based upon what the admins are saying. And to the degree I understand, the admins are going to be there to back me up if something comes up. And so it is important to include those, like, one, two little words, because when somebody’s looking at it from the outside in, they go, this is a safe space for me.

[00:06:59] Renée Yoxon: I think that’s super valuable. I will caveat that sometimes people go wrong with this when they say things like, this group is for women and women identifying people, and they think that the word woman doesn’t already encompass, for example, trans women. And sometimes it needs to be explicitly said somewhere in your mandate. Hey, just so you know, we think trans women are also women because it’s right there in the name. So I think it’s valuable to specifically state that, but I think it can be alienating when you go out of your way to, like, make an extra category for trans people when they’re already. They already should be included in the original category.

[00:07:36] Calan Breckon: Yes. Yeah. It’s the. It’s the main. The top of the funnel is gaming. Going deeper. And then below, it does outline. Hey, if you’re reading this, just to be clear, this is part of us and who we include in that category. It doesn’t need to be part of the full sentence of the beginning of everything.

[00:07:54] Renée Yoxon: Exactly. And so in my work, I say, like, I help transgender people create a speaking voice they love, but, you know, people who are looking to feminize their voice. That’s the. What I would say instead of this is for trans women, because some non binary people want to feminize their voice, and they maybe don’t call themselves women. So I have that top of the funnel word, and then I have, like, deeper words as we go deeper.

[00:08:14] Calan Breckon: Yeah. Can I ask what’s, like, the hardest part about encouraging folks to use more inclusive language? Like, why do you think people struggle with. With change to language so much?

[00:08:27] Renée Yoxon: I think people struggle with change, period.

[00:08:30] Calan Breckon: Amen.

[00:08:31] Renée Yoxon: Just to get psychological for a second. Yeah. People have a hard time adapting to changing realities.

And I get that. Especially, I don’t know if you’re older or if you haven’t done a lot of inner work to change yourself. Maybe that’s confronting. And I also think that it makes people feel like if they change their copy, then they are admitting failure or that they’ve made a mistake in the past. And I think we need to let that go. Like, changing doesn’t mean everything you did before was wrong. It just means you learned a new thing and now you’re going a new way. That’s what learning looks like. And we shouldn’t be afraid to be seen learning or seen trying.

[00:09:11] Calan Breckon: Yes. Growth, this growth mindset. There’s this amazing book by Carol Dweck. Um, and I believe it’s mindset. Growth mindset, one of those two things. You’ll find it. Um, and in the book, she talks about this kind of growth mindset, how we’re brought up with either, you know, you win or lose, and, like, you get the a or you get the f. There’s no kind of in between, and there’s no journey to that outcome. It’s just about the outcome. And that’s what we’ve driven into our economies and the way we live. Um, and I think we really need to double down on that growth side of it. It’s like, wow, you had to have studied so hard to get that a, you had to put in so much work to succeed in this thing. And we kind of forget about that journey part and we’re all about the outcome part. And it’s the same for the language. If you didn’t have inclusive language before and then you shift to include it, it’s a growth part of you. You go, hey, I did some educating of myself and I learned and I grow, grew from it. There’s going to naturally, of course, always be the people and the gremlins in the background shouting at you. But that’s what the Internet is a lot of the time. So you got to follow the inside to get there.

[00:10:22] Renée Yoxon: And it’s good to show, like, as a business owner that you’re able to take criticism and be adaptable and change to meet people’s needs. That’s like a positive quality in a business owner.

[00:10:31] Calan Breckon: Yeah. Have you ever had experiences where folks have shared with you where they had.

[00:10:35] Renée Yoxon: Pushback all the, all the time, every day?

[00:10:40] Calan Breckon: Yes, I should have known. I walked right into that one.

[00:10:43] Renée Yoxon: I mean, personally, like, I have had pushback from people who, you know, don’t like the language that I’m using. And I feel like I’m kind of between a rock and a hard place because I know the words that people are using to find my product and it’s not really in line with what I would like to be using. So I try and toe the line. Like, I use some of the words I don’t really enjoy, and then I have explanations about why I use those words in places. But it’s an ongoing process and I have plans in the back end to, like, make these things more explicit. But just for an example of, like, growth that recently happened in my business, I recently realized that people were not able to change their name in my mailing system, and I help trans people who famously change their name all the time. So I was like writing emails to people and they were like, hi, dead name, you know? And so this was like a big problem. And I’ve been running this mailing list for like, at least three years. So I had to write an email where I was like, hey, everyone, real sorry about this thing that happened. I’m trying to fix it and I’m not trying to conceal the problems that I have or, like, the issues in my business. Like, showing people how you navigate problems is how you navigate them well, I think.

[00:11:57] Calan Breckon: Yes. And how you navigate it authentically, I, first of all, I’m so sorry, because I understand. I use convertkit. And thinking on it, I’m like, I’m pretty sure they have like, an update settings, like, down at the bottom. I think they can go in, but I’ve never actively gone in and tried to change it. So I’m. Thank you for letting me know about that. I should probably go and check on that.

[00:12:22] Renée Yoxon: Put that on your to do list this week.

[00:12:23] Calan Breckon: Yeah, just update and check on this.

Wow. Yeah. Okay. So looking at that, what are some, you know, a few simple changes that folks can make to become more inclusive in their language without trying to be perfect?

[00:12:44] Renée Yoxon: I mean, it really depends on who you’re talking about, right? Like, I don’t think. I think, how do I say this? You don’t need to change anything about your copy if you believe that you are authentically speaking to the group that you want to be serving. But if you’re not sure, if you never thought, like, does my product, will trans women feel, like, respected in my space? Then maybe you need to make a space that’s not for trans women. And it’s okay to exclude people as long as you’re very clear about who you’re including. But if you feel uncomfortable excluding trans women, and you don’t want to say this is actually only for cis women, then maybe you need to do some work to your product to make it actually more inclusive and not think about changing the copy at all.

[00:13:27] Calan Breckon: Hmm. That’s a really good point. If it comes back to that full circle where you’re like, mmm, this is uncomfortable. It’s like, okay, well, let’s. We need to talk about that. Not the actual copy.

[00:13:37] Renée Yoxon: This is for trans women too. It’s like, is it. Did you. Is it actually.

[00:13:42] Calan Breckon: Right? You gotta dig a little deeper in there. So I want to continue on with that kind of people aren’t perfect thought, because, I mean, I know I screw up all the time and people do all the time. And this is maybe not so much the you as a representative, because you are an individual person and I recognize that nobody is. But from your personal perspective and your personal experience, when people, how do you best suggest managing when you mess up when it comes to inclusive language? Like, for example, if, uh, I know, you know, being gay, kitschy gay talk, I’m like, hey, girl, all the time.

If it is not like, then known that somebody, it was uncomfortable or something happened or that that wasn’t okay, maybe not outwardly, but it’s like, oh, let’s double check on that. How would you navigate that? Or how would you suggest folks navigate that in your personal experience?

[00:14:41] Renée Yoxon: Yeah, I mean, these are, there’s two things, right? There’s navigating this on, like, a macro level with when it comes to copy, and then there’s navigating, like, interpersonal things. When it comes to interpersonal relationships, I generally know my close friends well enough to only use words that they like to hear. I wouldn’t call somebody girl if they don’t want to be called girl. And that’s work. That’s part of the practice.

I find being called girl only in the gay way. I don’t want to be called girl in the straight way.

But then when it comes to the macro, you have to just accept that you’re not going to please everybody. But that’s what I mean by thoughtful exclusion. Like, decide who you want to speak to and then use the language you’re going to use. And if people are, like, coming to you with feedback and saying, this is really hurtful, that’s like, a different thing than just, I don’t like this. It’s okay to just make an apology and make a change, but you kind of need both, right? An apology and a change. An apology without change is completely hollow and serves you and not the person. But it’s okay to just, like, apologize, show that you’ve grown and make changes in your life and systems. Like, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. I know it’s scary because we live in the Internet age where everything is permanent and things get dragged up from, like, a long time ago, but all we can do is move forward with grace.

[00:15:57] Calan Breckon: Mm hmm. I definitely agree. And with that, how do you feel about cancel culture in terms of language and all of this?

[00:16:07] Renée Yoxon: Oh, my gosh.

[00:16:08] Calan Breckon: No.

[00:16:08] Renée Yoxon: We’re just diving right in casual cancel culture. I mean, what do you mean by that? Do you mean, like, pile on culture? Do you mean, like, losing opportunities? Because I believe in de platforming people who are hateful, if that’s what you mean by cancel culture.

[00:16:25] Calan Breckon: So I’m. I’m speaking more about somebody has clearly made a mistake and is genuinely trying to make up for it. Apologize, learn, and grow. And the audience isn’t allowing that to be true from their point of view, even if the person genuinely is, like, I did learning, I went, and I now understand that the language that I use was not correct. And then it’s still just like, no, we’ve already decided in my mind, you’re not allowed to grow as a person anymore. That kind of cancel yeah.

[00:17:01] Renée Yoxon: Obviously, that kind of thing makes it hard to grow, and it makes it hard for people to exist online.

It really is like a case by case thing. Right. Because I’ve seen things where this exact thing happens, where somebody’s apologizing and people aren’t able to get the message, and so the pile on continues, and then it drives them off the Internet. And obviously, that’s not conducive to growth or community, but I’ve also seen a pile on happening where the person is, like, pushing back and not apologizing. And so it really is, like a case by case thing. But I think this is why, like, slow growth is better than, like, super viral growth. Because when you grow slowly as a business, you get a chance to, like, form these relationships with. With your audience slowly and, like, adapt to larger and larger audiences and learn how to, like, say things more thoughtfully, because the bigger your audience is, the more you have to be thoughtful about the things that come out of your mouth. You can’t just shoot from the hip, you know, when you have a million people listening.

[00:18:00] Calan Breckon: Yeah.

Yes. And, you know, nuance gets very lost on the Internet. So it is a very case by case thing. And everybody’s out here trying. I like to. I like to believe that everybody is doing the best they can with what they have.

And if I have to, and if I choose to believe that about everybody, even the worst people, which I do, then it’s like I just have to recognize that they’ve gone through things and experienced things that I can’t comprehend or understand, but they are truly doing the best they have. They can with what they have. And that gives me permission to kind of just not rage all of the time, because the Internet and what people say can make us rage a lot.

[00:18:47] Renée Yoxon: Yeah. And I do feel like people in more left spaces hold each other to a higher standard, which is like a double edged sword, because we want to be held to high standards and we want to do the best we can for a community. But the right wing doesn’t hold each other to any standards, and so we have more of a critical, like, milieu than they do, and we have trouble moving forward politically as a result of that.

It is harder to, like, think in drafts on the Internet. Like, I don’t really do that anymore. I do my reading and I do my journaling, and I keep a lot of stuff private. And when I’m ready to talk online, it’s pre written stuff. I don’t, like, often just ideate. Like, I don’t do this actually, very often.

[00:19:26] Calan Breckon: I mean, to be fair, there were. I did. I think I said, did I send you the questions before? Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. Okay. Yeah, sometimes I do.

[00:19:34] Renée Yoxon: I just let it percolate. I didn’t write anything, but I will give you an example of, like, when I got some pushback that, like, looked like it was going in pile on, a pile on direction, and it was when I put a TikTok out, talking about how gender affirming care or just, like, transition could just be, like, for fun. Like, you could just try changing your hair and your clothes and your voice. And I mentioned surgery in the TikTok, but it was, like, separate from for fun. I was like, you can do all these things for fun. And also in transition, our surgeries, and somebody with a pretty large audience on Twitter was, like, this person saying, you should get surgery for fun. And then I got all these weird comments, and I never get, like, pile on hate in my. I don’t know. I’ve been blessed. Like, thank you. I hope I continue to never get piled on. And it was like, people were unwilling to listen to my perspective that I was saying, like, it was just a bad faith reading of my words, you know? And luckily, the person who wrote, who posted about me on Twitter, like, just deleted it within a few hours, and then the comments stopped. And I don’t know why they did that, but that was, like, my brush with cancellation, and I was scared, to be honest.

[00:20:43] Calan Breckon: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don’t have a big. I’ve never had a big, massive social following. I. I don’t do it very well. I don’t do social media very well. I love my podcasting, and I love this because it’s. It’s an organic conversation. And that, I think, is so magical when two people can just, like, connect and, like, converse, but online, the talking camera social aspect of it, and then, like, just the cancel culture, and that scares me to death. And the only times I’ve ever had it is on YouTube, and it was on one specific thing, and I know exactly what it is. And all the hate just piled on, and I was like, you’re all just taking everything out of context. But the. The rage sells, and that really disappoints me about social media these days.

[00:21:27] Renée Yoxon: Well, YouTube is a particularly bad algorithm. Like, it. It is designed to drive attention and clicks, and it does that primarily through rage baiting. So, you know, things will get, like, more and more outrageous the more you are in them. So that’s the only place nowadays that I receive hate is on YouTube, so I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t take YouTube as, like, representative of all social media. It’s just a kind of bad place. But if you’re too scared to, like, get out there and talk, then we’re in. Our opinions are the ones that are not being seen, whereas right wing people are not scared of talking online.

[00:22:00] Calan Breckon: No, we know.

We know.

[00:22:03] Renée Yoxon: I think we have to, like, confront that fear and deal with the consequences of pylons when they happen, and otherwise, like, we’re never going to continue to move forward as a society, you know? And I want to see, like, progress is not guaranteed. People have to work at it.

[00:22:18] Calan Breckon: So I want to know more about you and what you do, because this obviously leads into more conversation about social media. So share with everybody what you specifically do and why you’re online so much.

[00:22:29] Renée Yoxon: Sure. So I’m a gender affirming voice teacher, and I make online courses that help transgender people create speaking voices that they love, that give them gender joy, gender comfort, and that’s it. And I make a lot of TikToks about it.

[00:22:45] Calan Breckon: Yeah. So how is that experience? I mean, you just shared a little bit, but going deeper on that, how has that experience been in TikTok social media space of, you know, sharing your knowledge and journey?

[00:22:57] Renée Yoxon: Yeah, for the most part, it’s been extremely positive. Like, I would say that I have a business thanks to TikTok. I got into TikTok around the time when they were doing their warming thing. This was earlier in the days when people were just starting to become, like, full time content creators on the platform, and so they had this metric whereby new creators would be warmed. So it was quite easy to go viral if you just joined the platform. So I posted, like, literally my first TikTok, and in one weekend, I had 10,000 followers, and I had an identity crisis about it. I was, like, phoning my friends, like, what am I doing? I’ve never had so many eyeballs on me. Yeah. First TikTok super viral and launched my first course. Like, because of that TikTok, like, I just saw there was market demand, and I moved rather quickly to pivot my business. Before that, I had been teaching this privately, teaching gender affirming voice privately, and also teaching singing. But I was like, oh, I can’t meet the demand anymore as a private teacher. So I pivoted to online courses.

[00:23:52] Calan Breckon: Wow. And it’s been growing ever since.

[00:23:56] Renée Yoxon: Yeah, it’s been growing ever since. Now I don’t have as many viral hits related to, like, the content, because it’s, like, it’s really just practical things that I share. So it’s not, like, super inflammatory, and I try and play the game a little bit and tease, you know, whatever. Do what you’re supposed to do to make Tiktoks more engaging.

But I like the pace that I’m growing at. It’s, like, good for me. I don’t need super virality more than I can manage.

[00:24:22] Calan Breckon: Yeah. So looping back around to the copy, um, where we began, how do you use that in terms of your tiktoks? Because you said that you don’t usually go kind of off the cuff. Like, we are here. You like to plan these things out. So how do you do that? And how’s that process for you when you’re, like, creating a video?

[00:24:41] Renée Yoxon: Sure. So I batch make content. So I will, like, make a month’s worth of tiktoks in a couple of days. Generally, I’ll script them if I’m going to, like, speak without a script. It’s usually about, like, an exercise that I’ve taught a hundred times.

But I’m very thoughtful about the words that I use because I want to avoid perpetuating stereotypes about trans people.

I also just want to understand that, like, being trans is not a monolith. Right. And there’s no two people who have the same experience of being trans. This is actually why I got pushback from that person I was mentioning earlier in that earlier anecdote was because my experience of being trans is very joyful. And I try in my content to, like, make that the focus. It’s like, transition is joyful and wonderful, and it can be, like, experimental, and you’re finding yourself, and it’s so beautiful and fun. But a lot of trans people have had extremely negative experiences of transition, obviously. And so I can see from. If I put myself in their perspective, I could see someone being like, what the heck? Like, it’s so fun. Like, well, good for you, you know? And that would be very confronting to see my brand of being trans. So I don’t try to cater to everybody, but for those who are empowered by a positive transition experience, that’s who I’m speaking to. So I’m not speaking to all trans people, right? I’m speaking to those who come at it from a similar perspective as I do. I also try and avoid things like your real voice and your authentic voice, like, understanding that authenticity is very situational. Like, if someone is too poor to afford gender affirming care, does that mean their gender expression is not authentic. No. It’s, like, completely representative of their reality. So I’m like, I’m always trying to find words and coining phrases, and it’s never perfect. And I’ve changed everything. I’ve said, like, ten times since 2021, and that’s part of it, you know?

[00:26:30] Calan Breckon: Yeah. It goes back to that perfectionist thing. Like, nobody’s perfect. Nobody at all is supposed to be everything to everyone.

[00:26:38] Renée Yoxon: Like, perfection doesn’t exist. It’s not. It’s a moving goalpost. You can never reach right.

[00:26:43] Calan Breckon: 110%. So it’s just like, do the best with what you got and hope for the best. And when you learn and grow, you evolve and you change and you, you know, continue going on. That’s why I had the, we had the whole cancel culture a little earlier because I was like, I wanted people to understand that there’s nuances to it. And I think that that specific conversation gets lost a lot in the weeds online. It doesn’t have room for the nuance.

So where can folks find out more about you, your journey, and your offerings?

[00:27:20] Renée Yoxon: I am Renée Yoxon on all the socials. @Renéeyoxon. And I’m at RenéeYoxon.com

[00:27:28] Calan Breckon: Absolutely magical. Is there any last words of wisdom you’d like to leave the folks with?

[00:27:33] Renée Yoxon: I just would like people to not be afraid to grow and speak in drafts and try new things and get in there with their little fingers. Get really inside who your client actually is, for sure.

[00:27:48] Calan Breckon: I love it. Thank you so much for being on the podcast, Renée. This has been absolutely enlightening and magical.

[00:27:54] Renée Yoxon: My pleasure, Calan. Thanks for having me.

[00:27:56] Calan Breckon: I hope you learned a little bit more about crafting some creative and inclusive copy today. Thanks for tuning in. Don’t forget to hit that subscribe button. And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, I would love a star rating from you. The business Gay podcast is written, produced and edited by me, Calan Breckon. Thanks for tuning in. Oh, this is a weird ending. Thanks for tuning in. Peace, love, rainbows.