So.Gay’s Superpower of Intersectionality

[00:00:00] Calan Breckon: I don’t have time to create social media content for this podcast. It’s just a fact. When you’re a solo entrepreneur, your time is very, very precious. And the thought of me taking that time and sinking it into editing a bunch of short videos for social media was absolutely not at the top of my list of things to do. Problem is, how are people going to find out about my show if I don’t have anything on social media? Thank goodness today’s sponsor was invented and saves me countless of hours editing each and every week. Opus clip is a generative AI video tool that repurposes long form videos into short social clips for social media in one simple click. Seriously. After I record an episode, I upload the video into OpusClip and within minutes the powerful AI tool has created about 25 ready to use short videos for me. You can even create templates for the AI to follow so that your videos come out perfect each and every time. I 100% would not be sharing any videos on my social media if it was not for OpusClip. Check out opusclip by going to calanbreckon.com/opusclip or click the link in the show notes to start repurposing your long form content today with an easy, simple click. 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 founder and CEO of So.Gay, Alex Hughes.

Alex is an award winning and innovative media executive who has 13 plus years of experience at some of the world’s most prominent Internet businesses, including Yahoo, AOL and many more. His work has driven tens of billions of content views, acquired 80 plus million social followers, sold over $125 million in e commerce products, won over 50 industry awards, and driven over $50 million in custom advertising sales. He’s created and executed campaigns for top advertisers including Walmart, Verizon, Amazon, Pizza Hut, HBO, Saks Fifth Avenue, and developed and produced content with top talent including Marsai Martin, Chloe Bailey, Kim Petras and many more.

Starting as a virtual content creator and evolving into a business leader, he has married right and left brain skill sets to methodically build high performing, profit driving strategies that prioritize creativity and innovation to meet business goals. I’m excited to chat with Alex about So.Gays overnight success and what he’s doing to drive change and inclusivity in the community, so let’s jump in.

Hey Alex, welcome to the show. How’s it going good.

[00:02:45] Alex Hughes: Thank you so much for having me.

[00:02:47] Calan Breckon: Yeah, I’m really excited to dive into what you’re doing at So.Gay. So I want to start off here.

You started So.Gay after working at many prominent businesses, why did you decide to branch out and start your own thing with So.Gay?

[00:03:05] Alex Hughes: Totally. Um, I’ve had the pleasure and excitement of working at top brands like AOL, Yahoo, Rise and Media Food 52, like you mentioned. And I loved it. I loved working corporate. I was able to learn so many different things and execute so many different projects, but always in the back of my head, I had that entrepreneurial spirit of wanting to do my own thing, and obviously that’s easier said than done. So at the end of the day, as I was evolving my career, after I was working at those businesses for 1012 plus years, I was ready to take the next step. And why I launched specifically So.Gay is I really saw an opportunity in the LGBTQ media space that was underrepresented. I saw an opportunity to create a new culture forward brand that was fully representative of the diversity of the community. So I was able to apply my insights, learnings, experiences from the great training and knowledge that I had from corporate historically and be able to apply it to my own business.

So, yeah, I was really just ready to make that leap and own my own thing, do my own thing, be fully in charge.

[00:04:21] Calan Breckon: Is this your first time being an entrepreneur and kind of like figuring out how to do all the things yourself?

[00:04:28] Alex Hughes: Yes. Yeah. As a real business? Yeah, it’s the first time. And obviously, I mean, with you doing it yourself as well, you know so well of, it’s hard. You don’t have that corporate paycheck that comes in every two weeks. You don’t have the million support teams that are there to help you on XYZ.

So it’s definitely tough, but it’s also really rewarding because at the end of the day, the business is what you make it and what you put into it. So, yeah.

[00:05:00] Calan Breckon: How have you managed kind of that transition from corporate world to entrepreneur world? Because I know a lot of people dream about becoming an entrepreneur, especially when they’re working their regular day job kind of on the side, but not so many people actually take the leap. So how have you managed that? Oh, things are very different over here.

[00:05:21] Alex Hughes: Yeah, I think it’s a couple of different ways.

One is really making sure that I’m laser focused on prioritization of what I need to be doing to truly execute the business on teams and projects and brands that I worked on before. It’s a bustling business, legacy business, tons of revenue, large teams, and you can kind of do a bunch of different stuff because there’s a bunch of different hands out there. Ultimately, when I started this, I started this completely alone. I am the one employee I onboarded and delegated different kind of aspects of the business, like engineering and design to third party agencies and freelancers, etcetera. But ultimately, at the end of the day, with a limited amount of hands for an entrepreneurial startup business is making sure that I am prioritizing every single thing. Of course, there’s a million ideas. I have a long list of a trillion different things that I want to do, but I have two hands right now. I have some great different support and freelance staff as well. But we have to make sure that every second, every penny counts to really towards driving the business so that long term we have that cash flow, we have that growing business so that we can go back to that list later in a year or two and say, hey, we really want to do this. We couldn’t do it two years ago, but now we can do it. And I think on that same topic, it’s also making sure that I know what I’m good at and what I can work on with other folks externally to help support. I’m not an engineer. Yes, I could probably figure out how to build a website, but is it going to look fantastic? Amazing? No. So I work with a third party engineering agency to help me develop everything on the web design, web platform side of things. So I think that’s a big thing as well, is, yes, there is limited resources and yes, there are limited hands, but I have to make sure to know what I’m good at and what others can be better at in different ways and what I don’t know. And leveraging them thoughtfully in different ways.

[00:07:36] Calan Breckon: Yeah. That’s a very crucial and important part of being an entrepreneur is knowing what your strong suits are and knowing what you’re missing and how to go out and find those people, especially once you move up kind of in your career. That is, you know, the essence of management is, yes, maybe you can do those things, but it’s knowing how to pick the people who can do it even better. That is the important part.

[00:07:59] Alex Hughes: 100%. Yeah, I love that. And like, for example, I was on a fantastic photo shoot yesterday for one of our upcoming cover stars and we had our amazing creative director, photographer, set designer, stylist, and I was there as an executive producer with the talent and that was something where I don’t need to micromanage a photographer. I don’t need to micromanage the stylists because I hired them because they’re fantastic at what they do. And the best scenario for a manager or a leader is really just being able to be kind of, like, silent in there and see your people work and execute a project, because exactly as you said, if you’re hiring the right people and working with the right people, you’re hiring them for a reason. Um, and it’s best for leaders and managers to kind of stay out, stay out of the way and delegate where possible.

[00:08:49] Calan Breckon: Definitely 100%. You mentioned you kind of said, oh, I couldn’t have done this two years ago. How long had you been preparing to do So.Gay and, like, what was the preparations you put into it before you actually did the physical stepping away of your day job?

[00:09:06] Alex Hughes: Totally. So I would say this has been in the back of my head as far as different projects and businesses for, honestly, since I can remember. So probably whenever I started in the business at age 21, as far as formal planning, I, before I stepped away, I did not make that kind of formal plan. I didn’t. That’s what I was able to do from just like, a privilege and where I was perspective in my career, being an executive.

And so I would say a couple of different things. One, I began development of this in Q four of 2023, officially, as far as pen to paper, building the site, hiring the engineer, etcetera, developing the content. And we launched in April 2024. We could have launched sooner, but we had some different roadblocks we ran into on different kind of aspects of ad support stuff and just kind of like powering the tech behind advertising, which I wasn’t an expert on whenever we started because I hadn’t built a site on my own independently that’s ad supported. But, I mean, I think the biggest thing for me is I was able to do this when it comes to making sure that I’m constricting my budget, living very thoughtfully, but also, I was an executive historically at a media business, so I was able to conserve and save money over the years for the purpose of doing my own thing, ultimately. So I would say that’s the most, besides my general plans and thinking, that’s what I set myself up for historically, of being like, I know I don’t want to work corporate forever. I want to work independently. I cannot do that without a certain amount of dollars, and I cannot do that without fundraising. I did not want to fundraise. I actively chose not to fundraise so I very specifically was focused on saving dollars and conserving money for when I did make this jump.

[00:11:17] Calan Breckon: Yeah. Which is very important. Not every business needs to be a venture backed business.

[00:11:22] Alex Hughes: Yeah.

[00:11:23] Calan Breckon: It’s really good to bootstrap sometimes. Cause then you’re the one in the driver’s seat. You get to control everything with that.

With that. What’s the big vision for So.Gay?

[00:11:34] Alex Hughes: Completely so, So.Gay. Today is six months, and I actually love that we’re filming this today because today is our six month, half birthday anniversary, whatever you want to call it.

And in those six months, we’ve grown to one and a half million monthly readers for the month of September, the newest and fastest growing LGBTQ media publisher.

And so we’ve made really great headway. We’ve covered and highlighted hundreds of different 100 plus creators and businesses and different folks across the board. But when I look at what we are going to continue to be building and scaling and growing is we are building the number one content destination for LGBTQ consumers in the uS.

So what that looks like is being number one as far as pure monthly readers and scale compared to the competitive set.

And then from a consumer standpoint, because that’s more b two b, that’s more focused on our advertising partners, our strategic partners, etcetera, being able to say to them, if you want to reach the queer audience, we are your partner. We are the biggest, number one platform for us to. For you to tap into. And then from a consumer perspective, I want to make sure that we are creating a living and breathing brand. So I want to be that destination. If you’re looking for amazing culture, art, photo and video content that’s entertaining on the short form perspective, you want to type in So.Gay, you want to check out our instagram on your feed, you want to make sure that you’re getting our emails and newsletters and text and that you’re being entertained on a daily basis. And then also importantly, is not just on the culture and the art side of things, but also making sure that we’re being a huge resource for this community. One of our top performing categories since day one has been in our health category, particularly sexual health, but also physical health, as well as substance abuse and harm reduction. Because what we are looking at and why I believe this is performing is because people want to know how to live their healthiest and safest lives when it comes to nuances that affect the lgbtq community. And honestly, it’s not something that’s out there. There’s also, not only is it something that mainstream outlets are not producing content that’s geared towards this community, but also there’s a significant amount of censorship that affects this content and distribution. I remember I won’t say the platform because I won’t call it out, but we had a story about Doxypath. Doxypep is a revolutionary treatment that’s gaining more steam, but it’s something that people still are not aware of at scale as far as potential options out there. We had a great piece. I was educational about it. We posted it on a very popular social platform. Literally just kind of the headline, the story saying, read more about this.

And it was flagged and taken down for inappropriate content.

And this was just pure health information content.

[00:15:01] Calan Breckon: Who are you, laith Ashley? Just going on lives and being taken down for doing nothing.

[00:15:07] Alex Hughes: I know, it’s like crazy. And we run into that a lot, too, where sexual health content like condom use, literally just saying. One of our top performing stories is, do condoms expire? We gain a lot of traction on that because people don’t know when they’re curious.

That’s flagged as sexually explicit content by a lot of the major platforms, which obviously is not sexually explicit.

And it’s pure educational, informational, really public safety, safety information.

So when we look at the content and what we want to be doing, yes, I want to entertain and engage, but I also want to be that destination where folks can come to us and learn about how to live their best lives, whether that’s sexual health, physical health, nutrition, fitness, harm reduction, substance abuse, what have you. And really looking at our audiences, yes, we are all LGBTQ, and with that, there’s nuances to our. Our health, but also, we’re all humans as well, and have the same kind of human health concerns that anyone else does.

So, yeah. Ultimate goal number one LGBTQ content brand in the US, and also being that living and breathing destination and brand that our audience really has an affinity for. That’s not just something they read, but they’re obsessed with. They come to our parties, they engage with us. They really feel a part of the community in a way that a lot of really top brands out there, I would say historically, whether historically or currently, feel like that.

Yeah, that’s our goal.

[00:16:55] Calan Breckon: So all of what you just talked about, there’s obviously has to be a lot of strategic partnerships that goes into something like that, like sexual health. You’re obviously not an expert on sexual health, but you are connected to people with sexual health. How are you working those aspects of the business with strategic partnerships and managing these aspects to make sure that you’re getting correct information and supporting the community and also even just on the growth side like big brands and building those partnerships completely.

[00:17:27] Alex Hughes: And I’m just going to type the three points that the headline that I want to make sure that I get so that I properly answer. But I think it’s a couple of different things. And I think the three different categories are advertising partners b, two b partners, including nonprofit as well, I guess communities nonprofit. So to answer your question there, how we leverage strategic partnerships to grow our business and also create the best platform for our community. One, advertising partners. We’re an ad supported business. So that comes with a, the display ads you see on our site, video ads, branded content, social production, what have you. What’s great is we are able to work with those partners who are looking for a targeted audience, the queer community.

And with that, since that is our key revenue source, we’re able to drive that revenue and reinvest it into the business. So ultimately, at the end of the day, our most strategic and important partners are advertisers. And what’s also great, because of this and because of our platform, we are able to really offer kind of unique opportunities to advertisers that they might not have in other places. So if I’m a sexual health company or if I’m a pharma company that’s providing a resource to the community, you can tap into So.Gay and distribute your content that you already have with us, work with us on acquiring customers, work with us on serving our audience to attract more engagement. And then, so the two other things on the strategic partner side is also b, two b. So I work with great partners when it comes to tech platforms. And on the health side, we actually just launched a partnership with Taco, which is the AI search engine.

That’s something where we are able to leverage their database and their creative tools of graphics and leveraging data that is out there in the world to help inform our audience, to provide information for our stories. So that’s something where we’re able to continue to validate and partner and bring that information to enhance our consumer experience. With a third party partner, then I also think on the community side, we’re an independent publication. So that’s something. What I’ve been most excited about is being able to connect with other independent publications, both for profit and nonprofit. One of those nonprofit publications being Queer Kentucky, that’s doing a great job of not only informing, educating and entertaining the Kentucky based queer community, but also putting them on a national stage. So we’re able to work with them on different content partnerships, advertising partnerships, and really work with them as a third party strategic partner to meet both of our goals together. And then it’s also things like also just making sure we’re marketing and integrating the brand in really fun and unique ways. We’re the first official media partner of the New York City Pride Basketball league here in New York, which creates an amazing sports centered community league where we are able to not only integrate our brand, support their camaraderie, support their passion when it comes to playing basketball together with other queer sports players, and also create some really new, unique and exciting content for such an important content and entertainment vertical in the world that is sports and basketball. So all those different things together, we’re really able to make a stronger brand and partnership with others and also in the same way partner with them to help extend their business as well. So whenever I look at marketing or advertising or just general business development, when it comes to strategic partnerships, those are some of my most kind of exciting conversations that I have on a daily basis where it’s like we have our goals, we have our opportunities for growth. So does that business, whether they’re huge and worth a billion dollars or they’re a small startup that hasn’t even launched yet, those are the most kind of exciting and creative and fun conversations for me to say, hey, let’s do something we haven’t done before. And that doesn’t mean it’s going to be tons of work and tons of money. We can spend $0 and x amount of hours on this, but let’s make it really cool and impactful for all parties.

[00:22:17] Calan Breckon: Okay. So would you say that, that, you know, that kind of direction and angle that you’re taking is part of your secret sauce that is making So.Gay so successful?

[00:22:30] Alex Hughes: Yes, I think so. That is definitely a contributing factor.

My background is in audience development and in social and I worked at some of the biggest scaled organizations out there and I always had to think creatively to bring in new audience and engage users in a way that other brands weren’t. So I have a much smaller budget, if not a non existent budget today to do that. I miss the budgets that I used to have. We’ll get back there someday.

And so yeah, it’s about meeting people where they are throwing events, throwing experiences, looking at alternative advertising channels, tapping into folks and talent and influencers and businesses that haven’t worked with a content brand before and just doing it differently.

And it’s something that I don’t see that others are doing it in the same way as us. So that not only allows us to kind of have our layers lane, as well as other folks kind of have their lanes and what they’re great at and what they’re strong at and really tap into a new audience that’s felt underrepresented and really being able to engage them that way.

[00:23:54] Calan Breckon: Okay, I want you to speak a little bit more on that and what you think might be missing in the current existing, you know, businesses that are out there doing similar things versus what you have going on right now completely.

[00:24:11] Alex Hughes: I think it’s a couple of different things. One, we are super focused on that 18 to 34 year old multicultural consumer that is not fully represented in the media landscape today.

So whether that comes down to the diversity of our models, the businesses that we’re working with, big and small, whether that comes with telling the different types of stories from our writers and editors, really making sure that when we look at our audience and what the LGBTQ community is, making sure that it’s fully represented in our content every single day, and then also it’s about just creating that fun, cultural brand. We are not doing politics. We are not doing news. We are not doing a news of the day.

I’ve worked at a lot of news brand. News. Brands are great and a very important need within the world. Um, but that is not what we are. We are a lifestyle focus and evergreen business. Um, so with that, we are able to engage our audience in a way that isn’t tied to the news of the day. With that and creating these experiences both digitally as well as in person, we have people really resonating with the brand. So I have this. I don’t know if it’s blurred out, but I have So.Gay stickers on my phone, which is so great to see because we’ve already had a thousand plus of our consumers reach out, provide us their marketing information and contact information in exchange for these stickers to put on their phones. I’ve walked around the city, I’ve swiped on Tinder, seen people I’ve never even seen before, and they have the soda gay sticker on their phone, which is so great to see. So not only are people loving the brand, but they’re also putting it on one of their most important devices that everyone in the world sees and marketing it for us because they believe in the brand, they connect with the brand, they love the brand. So that’s really exciting to see.

And so many conversations have sparked from that. I have different folks who reach out to me and they’re like, oh, I saw this on my friend’s phone, and I looked you guys up, and I’d love to chat with you.

I’ve had different people come up to me and say, oh, are you a part of that brand? Whatever.

So I think that’s something where we’re really resonating with the brand and the business with our cultural consumers.

That’s exciting. We can kind of think of other brands out there that do it really well, like a New Yorker magazine. Everyone loves their kind of New Yorker. Totes. You’re showing who you are. You’re showing you resonate with the brand.

Obviously, New Yorker has their specific content point of view and brand point of view, and I think we’re doing that in a new and fun way for the queer audience, specifically.

[00:27:16] Calan Breckon: Nice. I really love that you’re acknowledging the intersectionality that is so predominant in the LGBTQ community that tends to get left behind or for many generations and many years has been left behind, and that is such an underserved portion of the community that is constantly like, well, what about us? And I’m of the same ship. I’m like, well, yeah, what about everybody? Like, why doesn’t everybody get a piece of the table? And it sounds like you’re really working hard to make sure that that is an inclusive space at Sogey to bring in all those different voices, and it just creates more richness within our community and the content that you’re producing.

[00:27:56] Alex Hughes: Completely. Yeah. If you look at. At any news site, I will bet that nine out of ten images that anyone sees are of older white men.

And when we look at media in general outside of news, it defaults to white people to be totally transparent. Then we look at gay media. Gay media has historically defaulted to cis gay, middle aged, or middle aged white men.

[00:28:34] Calan Breckon: Don’t forget the abs. Don’t forget the abs.

[00:28:36] Alex Hughes: Yes, and the abs. Yeah.

And I’m saying this as a cisgender gay white male, but because of that, when I look at my friends, when I look at my community, when I go out and about, that’s not what the world looks like. Obviously, we’re a portion of the community, but that’s not the real full look of the community. So I want to make sure. And it’s really just also organic and natural. It’s not really this really hard effort that we’re doing. We’re naturally finding and working with the best editors, photographers, creative directors, models, and they’re very representative of the entire community. What I’m super proud of is a lot of brands can kind of have kind of a point of view externally, but it’s not always representative internally. But what I’m super excited about is not only do the majority of the folks and the writers and the models and the talent that we work with on the front end, not only are they LGBTQ, but they’re also majority BIPOC, a part of the BIPOC community, but also when you look on the back end, that’s equally important. So whether it’s our vendors, our partners, the businesses we work with, behind the scenes, people that are never going to be visible on the front of the site, not only are the majority of those folks and entities and businesses LGBTQ owned as well, but also BIPOC owned as well. From a majority perspective, I want to make sure that we’re supporting the broader ecosystem of LGBTQ media and businesses. So it’s super important for us to put our money where our mouth is and really create a full business that’s fully representative of the community authentically.

[00:30:32] Calan Breckon: Definitely. I’ve thought for a long time now that intersectionality is the superpower of the LGBTQ community because it doesn’t discriminate against where you live in the world, how rich you are, where you were born, how you were brought up, and it has so many intersections that comes into this community, and that truly can be our superpower. And it is our superpower, for sure. Sure.

[00:30:53] Alex Hughes: Completely.

[00:30:54] Calan Breckon: Um, is there any parting words of advice for any listeners who are maybe working in a similar market that you might just kind of, like, give them a little word wise advice?

[00:31:05] Alex Hughes: Um, I think kind of two things. I mean, I would say on the personal basis, like make your dreams come true. I mean, that’s cheesy, but if you put your mind to it, you can figure out a way to do it. It might not be the path of least resistance. It might not be the easiest path you can accomplish and do what you want to do.

And I think when it comes to kind of on the business side, and it’s also just like making sure that I think queer owned businesses are also supporting and partnering with queer owned businesses. So whether you’re a bakery or a platform or a publisher, what have you think about all the different on both the front end and the back end, ways that you partner externally and see where you can also partner and support with other LGBTQ media and businesses? Just in general, whether it comes down to accounting or a lawyer or an actor model, what have you, us all supporting each other within this ecosystem will just continue to grow LGBTQ buying power, authority, and really just strength as a community by partnering all together in a variety of different ways.

[00:32:34] Calan Breckon: I fully support that. Well, thank you so much for being on the show, Alex. Where can everybody go to find out more completely.

[00:32:43] Alex Hughes: So feel free to add me on LinkedIn. Everyone is Alex Hughes. But then for the brand, most importantly, the brand. So.Gay. That is the URL so.gay

Easy to remember. Log on to our site, read our content, follow us on Instagram @sodotgay and hope that you love the site, find some connection to it, and stay tuned as we continue to grow and serve the community you. Thank you.

[00:33:19] Calan Breckon: Fantastic. I’ll make sure to have all those links in the show notes for everybody. All right, Alex, this has been lovely. Thanks for doing the work that you’re doing and being a guest on today’s show.

[00:33:27] Alex Hughes: Thank you so much. I appreciate it so much.

[00:33:30] Calan Breckon: Thanks for tuning in today. 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. That’s it for today. Peace, love, rainbows.