195- Courage to Leap & Lead with Robbie Samuels, part 1

You've got courage to leap, courage to lead. Be brave and be bold. Whoa, let it roar. Welcome to the Courage to Leap and Lead podcast, where each of our guests share the stories of courage that helped them become powerful leaders. Before we start today's show, please remember to visit courage-consulting.com. Where you can find all the episodes and other excellent resources, all at courage-consulting.com. Now, here's your host, Leadership Courage Coach CB Bowman.

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. How are you today? I have— oh gosh, you're going to kill me because, you know, I always start with, I have a special guest. But wait till you hear today's Interview. You know, I actually, when I first met this guy, I said, oh, he's a pious pain in the ass. And then I got to know him. And he is a pious whatever. But he has a heart of gold. And I want you to see that heart. I want you to be able to feel the things he can offer, the courage that he brings to people. And we'll also talk about his current work. I am so honored that my friend Robby has agreed to be interviewed today. Robby, welcome.

Thank you so much for having me, CB.

You know, so Robby, how did we first meet? I can't remember. It's been a bit.

I know that you were on my the book launch with, uh, Be Human, Lead Human. I know. Yes, we were there, but I'm not sure if that was our first actual connection.

I don't think so.

But I think you already were sort of involved. I see right around that time we connected and you had joined my No More Bad Zoom virtual happy hour. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So Robbie has this virtual happy hour that's really very inspiring for people.

It's actually sunsetting May 3rd, this Friday. Oh, after 4 years. And by the way, talk about courage, letting go of a project like that. I ran it weekly for 2 years and then monthly for 2 years. And a month ago, I got off the call and I sort of said to my wife, huh, I think I can let that go now. She goes, you seem very calm. I said, well, I've got a new monthly event that I've just committed to.

Oh.

I think that's the better one to focus on.

And what's the new one?

Well, I mentioned before we went on air that I launched the Biz Book Publishing.

Okay, wait, wait then. Okay, okay. I thought it was something in addition. Okay, no, we gotta—

it's a networking event related to that.

Okay. All right, Robbie.

I wear a lot of hats. Multi-passionate entrepreneur.

Let me tell you what he said before we went on the air. And I just, I am so in love with this expression. I'm buying it from him. He said, CB, it's another year and another me. And I thought, holy shit, holy Toledo. That is such a perfect description of this man. But let's, let's go back to what makes up this man in terms of courage, because it's like a jigsaw puzzle that is an amazing ride for you. Okay, Robbie, when we first met, you were talking on your networking meeting, you were supporting the LGBTQ+ community a lot.

Mm-hmm.

And I, off the air, 'cause I, I did, I didn't know what I was supposed to say or how I was supposed to say it. I said, so what's, what's the thing with this? Why, why are you a strong supporter? Now, audience, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying people should not be or should be. That's your choice. But I was very— I'm a very curious person, and for me, I have brass you-know-whats. When I'm curious, I ask the question. So I asked him, I said, What's— tell me, tell me more. Explain to me what's behind your drive, your passion. And he said, and I will let you tell the audience.

I'm an openly queer trans guy. And I, I mean, this is just sort of how I want to be out and supporting other people in the world. So For me, it's more about creating inclusive and welcoming spaces, both for people who don't feel like they belong and the people who want to help others feel like they belong. So I tend to attract audiences and build community not based on identity, but on those shared values of inclusion and belonging.

So for many of us, that don't know, don't understand the definitions and why you chose to have those definitions. Can you explain what queer means? Can you explain what trans means? And can you explain how they blend together and how they've affected your life?

So in my life, people probably assumed— I found out in college that people assumed that I was out in high school when I was not. I had no sort of self-awareness.

Out as what?

Uh, as part of the queer community, uh, I, I had no self-awareness. In college, I got introduced to the queer community and started to realize like, oh, this kind of fits for me. And so for a number of years, I identified as that part of that community until I started to get an inkling that it was my gender, not just sexual orientation, that was kind of, uh, in question. And so in my late 20s, I moved ahead, which was a speaking of courageous, a big deal, and decided that the way I wanted to show up in the world, the way I needed to show up, was to be perceived as a man. And so I started taking hormones over 20 years ago. And but I also for me, it's about creating a world where I don't have to hide. So I'm not, you know, stealth about it, which is what people are when they can't feel comfortable being out. And I feel incredibly fortunate because there are some really horrendous statistics around transgender people being murdered, being under or unemployed, unhoused. So Taking their own lives. So this— the fact that I am a successful business person, own my own company, run events and get hired by companies, have a family, 11 years married, like, to me, that is success across the board. And so partly I'm out because I think that people need to see that visual, not just the hardships that trans people face. Um, not to say that those don't happen, but that if you are a parent listening and your kid's coming out to you as something other than the gender they were assigned at birth, you will feel pretty frightened if the only visual you have for the world that they're about to live in is a scary one. So I think it's been important for me to be out about who I am as I sort of navigate the world. And it leads to some really interesting conversations. I still identify as queer because I feel like it's kind of almost like politically kind of, this is the world, this is the way I sort of view the world. I'm very happily monogamously partnered. So it's not like I'm looking for anything other than what I have, which is other than the white picket fence, a very boring suburban dad life. I got 2 kids and a wife.

Okay. Let me ask you some really naive or stupid— I will, I will gladly accept either label— questions. One is, when I was coming along, the word— first of all, what gender were you born? I—

oh, uh, a girl.

Okay.

Now, that's the trans part.

Oh, that's the trans. Okay.

Yeah.

When I was growing up a long, long time ago, the word queer was considered insulting.

Yes.

Defecating. Just, you did not say that. But now it's used—

I don't want to say it's There's, there's queer studies on college campuses. Uh, it's, it's a word that's been reclaimed.

And so what does it actually mean?

It's an umbrella term.

It's an umbrella term meaning what?

Uh, lesbian, gay, bi, questioning, like any flavor of what some may call sexual minority could fall under that. It's a bigger term. I mean, LGBT, I have been identified at one point or another in my life as all of those. So queer just feels like a better fit.

Okay, so it's an umbrella term for everything.

Yeah.

Okay. Now, trans, meaning that you were born one gender and transitioned into another gender?

Yes. And now for me, that has been a more or less binary transition because I—

Wait, wait.

Well, it means I was identifying as a girl and now I'm presenting as a man, identify as a man. Some people— there are more and more people who are non-binary, and that could mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. It just means that these are made-up constructs. Gender is a construct. Race is a construct. So, you know, now you can see me a little bit more.

Tell me more about—

Labels are useful, but they're also limiting. I have a friend who grew up in Nigeria, and she came to the United States and found out she was Black.

I understand.

Okay, so constructs, right? Race is a construct. It has to do with where you are. What does it mean? Gender similarly. I mean, some cultures in some times of history have had 3 genders that they recognized. A lot of indigenous communities did and still do. And so there are people—

What are the 3 genders?

Well, I mean, the wording for it's sometimes different, but some indigenous communities had like a two-spirit gender that they called medicine Men and women were often these sort of third genders. And today, like, the word non-binary is used, broadly speaking, to define people who don't feel that either the term man or woman sort of adequately defines and expresses who they are. Um, and so, yeah, so I just think the world's allowing for more complexity when it comes to gender. And similarly, the way we recognize race is even more complicated. The number of races that are listed on the census have evolved as we've become more nuanced about what that even means. And even in that case, there are more multiracial people than there are anything else. And so it's just kind of recognizing and accepting that multiracial is a term, it's useful, but it also doesn't really say anything about any one person. Different people will identify as multiracial for different reasons, and they may still move through the world as a Black woman, but yeah, they're multiracial.

I am beginning to get more clarity, so thank you. And at the same time, I'm a little confused, and so that has to do with age and experience. I want to believe because— so I was raised, as you could see, military, dad in the military, parents laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery. So we were raised very strict.

Mm-hmm.

You did not address anyone older than you by their first name. Or else you saw the back of my mom's hand, right? And you found yourself picking yourself up off the floor. Now, so for me, that means that I need to be sure that I'm addressing somebody by the right— I'm going to say, I think, pronoun.

Mm-hmm.

Because in my mind, that's respectful. But now you're putting a new philosophy in my head which says that that pronoun is a constraint, a construct constraint.

No, it's a—

the—

you can't assume a pronoun the same way I can't assume someone's family origin. Like, I don't— you know what I mean? It's like saying all Asian people are from China. Like, you can't You can't just look at that person and be like, I know exactly where you're from, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So similarly, we, we have these sort of broad strokes in the world where we assume certain characteristics are male characteristics. And I know, for instance, several Black women who happen to wear shorter hair, even when they're wearing long dangly earrings, because they're also tall, women and athletically built tall Black women, they get sirred all the time. I know white women who are a little taller than average who at a glance they get a sir in the supermarket or something. So there are certain like little things we notice that we, we assume about people. And All the bathroom laws that are coming up actually will hurt disproportionately people who are not transgender. And the term for people who are not transgender is cisgender. Cis meaning same gender, trans meaning across. So cis and trans are, are opposites of each other. So a lot, uh, there are a lot more people who are not transgender in the world than there are people who are. And so when we're policing people's behavior in bathrooms, there are going to be a lot of women, cisgender women, who are going to be sometimes forcibly removed from restrooms because people think they're in the wrong place. So whenever we lean too heavily into assumptions, we, we always risk making a mistake. sometimes harmful ones. And, um, I remember I was, uh, teaching someone how to do a fundraising, uh, auction. We had some volunteers that were working with us for an auction, a live auction. And I said, you have to say the person in red, the person behind the person in red. Please do not, unless you can read their name tag, say— don't say their name unless you can read their name tag or you know them. And don't assume that guy or that woman, because we might get it wrong. And particularly because we were an LGBT organization where gender norms around how long someone's hair is and whether or not that meant something about their gender was all over the place. You, you make a mistake with a major donor, and that is a major mistake to make. And it had happened.

Oh yeah.

So I was like, we need to just stop making assumptions and just say the person over there wearing the blue suit, you know. So, um, I just think, you know, it's good for all of us to be aware and that we wait for people to tell us who they are. You know, the word, uh, the term they is not a new pronoun. It's been around for over 100 years, and you use it all the time. If someone left a coat in a room and you were the last to leave, you'd say, oh, someone left their coat. They and their is used when you don't know the gender of the person, or it's not relevant. In, in, in our spoken language, we never say, I wonder whether he/she left a coat behind.

That's true.

That's true. We say, huh, who left the coat behind? I wonder if they'll come back for it. So, okay, come back for it.

This is so incredibly helpful. I have been quite uninformed. Now help me figure this out. I've been working with somebody from another country as part of people that are helping me. And another person who helps me said, are they a male or female? And I said, I have no idea. It never occurred to me to ask. I did assume that it was a male.

Based on the name, or you had met them, or like, what's their context?

No, I work with them. So the voice Sound like a male. He looked up. Sorry, the person looked like a male. Yeah, and the name was one that a well, the person had a two-part name. The first part we definitely associate with being female. The second part. Could we associate with being male or female? And the person used the second part of the name as the common name. So I said, well, ask which they prefer. And the person who was talking to me said, I don't feel comfortable. And I said, oh, well, then I'll ask. And people know that I just say what's on my mind, and everybody knows it comes from my heart and an interest in learning. So I said to the person, what pronoun do you prefer to be used?

Mm-hmm.

And they said, well, what does pronoun mean? Because remember, they're from another country. And I said, it means like he, she, they, their, You know, those, those words, in order not to get technical. And the person said, I prefer not to use any. Now, where does that leave me? Does that mean—

That you use their name?

And I was making it more complicated.

Well, in that book, How to Win Friends, right? The person's name is the sweetest sound. I think that was the quote, something like that. We love our names, you know, so you use their name. Some— that's some— for people, that's what they want. By the way, names are also really interesting. The name Jean is not a name that you know the gender. Allison used to be a very popular boy's name. Yes, in one version of the spelling. Stacy, another name. Yes, depending on the decade. Who's it mostly for? There are so many.

We determine that if it's a J, it's a girl. If it's a G, it's a boy.

Maybe, you know, I, I'm just saying that Uh, you know, Avery. There's so many— Alex. There's so many names. Sam. That the name alone doesn't tell you. Carol.

Carol.

Oh, that's a good one, actually. So yeah, so, and also there are generations where an older generation may have a Carol that is a mister, and, you know, it's just not as common a name now for boys. But it— so this is where it's, um, I try to teach organizations to drop the honorifics in their letters unless they're asking people what they want. If they have an option for people to select Mr., Ms., Mrs., Miss— I mean, this is partly how we got into Ms. People were making a lot of assumptions about who was married and who was unmarried. Unless you give people options, and then the newest option is Mx. for people who don't want to identify with either Mr. or Ms., and it's pronounced mix. But unless you want to go to the effort of collecting all that, I— you can't just have an intern look at a list of names and make assumptions about whether it's Mr. or Ms., because you're gonna end up— I mean, out of 100, you're gonna probably get 3 wrong. Let's just—

So was I incorrect in asking the person?

I thought asking Asking's always great.

Okay. Yeah.

It's, you know, and it's, you're pretty, cuz you're always asking from a place of caring, right? Um, so I have a whole, I, before the pandemic, uh, before 2020, I spent over 10 years teaching people how to network at events and conferences. And part of that talk, I had this section called The Downside to Being a Unicorn.

Mm-hmm.

And I would open with, you know, you've ever heard the phrase, always be yourself unless you can be a unicorn, then always be a unicorn. But what if you were a unicorn? Are you imagining rainbows and sunny skies? It's probably more like, a unicorn. I've never met a unicorn. Hey, what's it like to— can I touch your— how do you— and all kinds of other curious questions. And I go through this whole bit about essentially everything from kind of minor annoyances to microaggressions. Um, so I tell a story about a guy who's 6'8, and I know he's 6'8 because he carries a card with him that says, 6'8, no, I don't play basketball. So I'm like, if the answer to a question is— that's so common it can be printed to be handed over to you, don't ask that question. It's not going to make you endearing to this person. You're not going to stand out as memorable. You're not going to get to know them. They're going to give you a pat response and move on. So I kind of drew a line where it's like, is this something someone chose? Like if I asked, said something complimentary about your earrings, you chose those earrings. They are a statement piece. You were at, you know, me saying, oh, I love those. Did you get this while you were traveling? Could lead to either a whole conversation about Thailand, or you might tell me I went to Macy's, right? Who knows? But we could end up with a whole conversation about it.

Never Macy's. I hate Macy's, but go ahead.

I almost said Target.

So that's better.

Okay, fair enough. Now, on the other hand, commenting on something that someone didn't choose— height, skin color, hair texture, accent— it's never going to get you anywhere.

And that's kind of like almost when somebody cuts their hair, you say, oh, I liked it better longer. Wait till it gets longer and say, I like it better this way.

You just say, I like your hair. Like, wait until you're ready to say I like it without the qualifier. Now, the one— so I make the distinction between is it something they chose or is it who they are? And the one caveat is don't talk about Black women's hair because yes, they can choose different styles, but no, unless you are at a point where you're sharing grandma recipes, you are not invited into that conversation. Like, there's a place and time for those conversations. But if I, if we're not swapping grandma recipes, we're not there yet in the relationship. Which is also true. If someone's got an accent, by the way, we all have accents. We all have hair color. We all have hair texture. We all have skin color, right? We all, but I was at a restaurant years ago and I was sitting with, um, a friend and the server came over and my friend said, oh, where are you from? And the woman said, wherever she said, some island in the Caribbean. And as she walked away, I said to my friend, oh. Were you trying to collect all of them? How far along are you? Because what are you talking about? I go, well, I was curious, like, why you thought— like, why was it important for you to know where she was from? Because that woman couldn't not tell you. She's getting paid by our tip. So like, she was kind of— it's not like an equal relationship where you were— you were all— you weren't going to share your family of origin story in that moment. You were just like, huh, I noticed this thing about you. Let me call it out. And that's the stuff I think we need to stay away from. The—

Okay, well, I'm gonna take this to a different level. When I moved here to Colorado, I considered the way people greeted me as an invasion of my privacy. Because everybody would say, how's your day going? Got any plans for the weekend? Going on vacation this summer, and I'm like, I'm from New York. You don't ask those questions. I'm like, what the freak is this? Why do they care? It's none of their business. And I finally—it still flares up now and then—but I finally realized, hey, CB, this is Colorado's way of saying hi. How you doing?

Yeah, which in New York is just like a chin. Yeah, it's just a chin. It's a chin. What's up? It's like the words can be silent, right? No, there are cultural differences, regional differences. Um, I mean, there's differences across cultures around distance that we feel comfortable standing away from each other while having a conversation, whether or not we handshake. How we handshake. I mean, this is even like if you're doing business in another culture, you better know. Like Americans are very get down to business, and in an Asian culture, you know you don't do that. That's rude. Right. So it's just again here in the States, if you were to spend three hours getting to know someone before you got to your the point of the meeting, you know we'd be like tick tock. Hello? Can we keep going here? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I get like cultural differences around all kinds of things are true, but I still think calling out difference, or in other words, saying the knee-jerk curious question is something that we can all learn to avoid if our goal in life is to actually get to know people, because people don't like feeling put on the spot or being othered or being called out for their difference. And neither do we, by the way. Um, sometimes when I'm doing this training, it's mostly white people and lots of men, and they may not have had that experience of feeling like the other or the only in the room as often as someone else might have. But there have always been— like, everyone can come because we're insecure human beings. We all can remember a moment walking in and feeling like all eyes are on us. Something was off about us being there.

Let me just tell you Yes.

And if you go into a room— yeah.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

So just working with people to say, you remember that feeling of feeling a little, uh, like, why would you make someone else feel that way? The whole goal of you leaving your house is to meet people. You could just stay home and learn. You don't need to leave your house. In fact, my whole premise for my, my talk that I did called Art of the Schmooze for 11 years, my signature talk, It was, you made the effort to leave your house, often traveling long distances on multiple modes of transportation. You did not just get here in order to learn something. You could have learned something from the comfort of your home. And that, by the way, is before the pandemic. That was back when it was, you know, podcasts and webinars and books, which have been around for a long time. And now there's nonstop online access. So, you know, I, I'm like, if you're going to show up, make that moment count. And we're there just for content but also for connection. And if you approach people in a way that's really off-putting, what's the point of you having shown up all that way, like doing all that work to show up? So—

But, you know, okay, I'll push back a little bit in the fact that people don't know What's off-putting?

Which is again why I gave them the— yeah, yeah, I totally— question. Don't call out difference. I remember things people don't have control over.

My neighbor, who was at the time much older than me, white Italian, she and I became best friends. But whenever I went to her house, I would look up and see above her kitchen, she She'd have a little Aunt Jemima. And somebody said to me, did that bother you? And I said, you know what? Actually, it didn't. Because she had no idea—

Right.

—how it could be interpreted. I only needed to focus on she made wonderful food for me. And I learned a lot about the stock market from her. I learned so much from her. And that That, you know, that was my focus.

Right. No, there, there are those inadvertent things we just don't know yet. No, I mean, you opened with that. You— there's things you don't know, right? Things I don't know. And the way we learn those things is that there are some people in the world, and I think you and I are among them, who are bridge builders, who are willing to hang out and spend time and create community with people who did not have the exact upbringing. as us. And that's how we learn and grow, is a willingness to kind of get into that a little bit and to see the world through other people's worldview a little bit. Be like, oh, I didn't— I would never think that.

Robbie, I think that you have to then ask those questions that probably are not appropriate, like the one about where are you from. I think—

After you've gotten to know someone.

But I have to push back because I think maybe part of getting to know somebody— so that, that line is so thin.

Yeah, let me, let me just draw the example here. And I'm a New Yorker too, by birth. So interrupting means I'm paying attention.

Hey, we're from the same club.

Yeah. So, okay, if a person has an Australian accent, and you randomly said, oh, hey, where are you from? There's not— there's nothing charged there. Like, because everybody wants to go to Australia. Same thing with England. Someone's got a British accent, right?

Okay, wait a sec, wait a sec. I know you blew your gum because my husband and I were having lunch with 2 of my dear friends who are a gay couple who are married. I was introducing them to my husband because I wanted to get their opinion in terms of does this guy love me? And is he marriage material? So I know it's a funny story, but when we were having lunch, this woman sitting next to us said, oh, you remind me of a woman I knew. And I knew exactly where this was gonna go. And I said, oh really? Tell me about her. And everybody was looking at me. My husband's Italian. And Afterwards, my husband said to me, you were so patient with her, right? And I said, yeah, because she did not know what she was saying or asking. And so why am I going to jump down her throat when she was trying to strike up a conversation with innocence?

I didn't say that we should take offense at these things. I actually think we— microaggressions like that need to be, you know, Hopefully we can just move through evaluating, evaluate now because that there I don't think there was any malice behind what she was doing, or you like or it went there, you know.

Oh, and you're here, you know.

Yes. Now, but that person's not going to be memorable to you in a good way. So I'm speaking as her. If I were to work with that woman about how to approach. building relationships, I would try to teach her how to do so, so that you were left remembering how amazing she was.

Yeah.

Not this moment that she stepped in it. Um, because that then colors everything else we know about that person. And if people make us feel uncomfortable, we— and also, you know, any Latinx women who get that where are you from question, it— where, where, where am I in the country? when that question is being asked, you know, what does that mean? Like, are you telling me I gotta go back there? I was raised here. You know what I mean?

Like, yeah, I get it.

Yeah. Yeah. Where are your parents from? Texas and New York? And you're like, you know, like that kind of stuff.

Yeah, yeah. No, I totally get it. You must be from Africa because you have long hair and you're Black. No, from the United States. This is not my hair. Okay, Robbie, I want to be able to ask somebody who is gay or queer, and they say that they're married to their wife— suppose it's a male— I want to ask them, is their wife a male or a female? Is that an inappropriate question?

Well, the way you just asked that whole question is a little bit convoluted in the sense that If you like, if you know it's two men that are married, well, that gives you some sense that they're part of the queer community. If you meet someone and they say spouse or partner and they don't disclose wife or husband, there may be a lot of reasons for that. My wife was sort of brought up in the world of student affairs, so colleges and universities and working. In that world. And in that world, it became very common for people to say partner instead of husband or wife, or even boyfriend or girlfriend, just like partner.

And— But what if, what if, what if there's 2 men and one of them says my wife?

Well, then they— it's not 2 men.

No, it is 2 men, but they refer to their partner as their wife.

That may be tongue in cheek. Okay, so that's humor. That's, that's an in-joke.

Okay, I'm now in. Okay, I get it.

You're in it. It's an inside joke moment.

I'm an insider now. Yeah.

So I spent all this time teaching people how to approach each other in person.

And wait a second. Ellen DeGeneres, doesn't she refer to her partner as her wife?

Yes, because they're married. She's a woman and she's married to a woman and they— that's her wife.

Why wouldn't she refer to her as her husband?

Because her partner identifies as a woman.

So it's about—

I think that you got caught up in some gay male humor.

Oh, and I didn't get it. Okay, I'm prepared now.

So I spent all this time focused on in-person networking. And I left my day job at the end of 2014. And then in 2015, I started working on a podcast. And it launched in 2016, is about networking leadership. 2017, my first book came out, was about networking at conferences. 2018, my group program was up and running. I hired Dori Clark, my mentor and friend, to be my coach in 2019. And she said, you have to write for Harvard Business Review and do a TEDx. And I was like, I do? And then I wrote for Harvard Business Review and I got a chance to do a TEDx. And the TEDx about networking at events was aired on YouTube in January of 2020, and I was poised to be an overnight success. 10 years in the making. And then 2 months later, no one needed to know how to network at events because we were all at home. So that's the other inflection point in my life that I had to figure out how to move forward.

Okay, wait a second, you just jumped on me. And that was actually going to be part 2 of my interview. So ladies and gentlemen, we are going to end part 1 Much smarter, much more aware, and we want to thank Robbie for educating us. Part 2 is about what he's doing to help us, particularly as writers, as coaches, build our brand. So please come back for part 2. Thank you, Robbie.

Thank you.

Bye now. See you next week.