Let's Address The Elephant In The Room... or online space!

Alright, this is gonna get a little uncomfortable because I am actually stepping out of my comfort zone today to talk about something that is personally really important to me. And I'm gonna try to make sure everything is not perfect in this video. I'm trying to make it more of like a conversation with you. Even though internally it is very, very hard for me not to make sure I don't re say parts of this video that I mess up or that and make sure everything behind me is perfect. We're gonna do this together. As we get closer to the end of the 2020, it's probably caused you to reevaluate a lot of things in life. I mean, we've had a lot of time to since we've all been pretty much stuck at home, unable to really go anywhere for the past nine months. But it's made me be very intentional with my time and very intentional with what I want to do with my time. Earlier this year we actually had a very unexpected quick death in our family. And for me, as an enneagram3, if you know anything about personality types and enneagrams, for me to deal with that death, I just jump headfirst into working on another project. I don't necessarily take the feelings and deal with the feelings. For me, the way I deal with those kinds of situations is keep moving and bury myself in work to forget by being at home though these past couple months dealing with that death, not even together with our family, has made me figure out how to deal with these types of things. Cliche as it is, life is short. But how do I want to spend my time here? What am I doing with my business? What is this purpose of this entire YouTube channel? I had to stop and think, why? Go back to my reasoning. Why? Why am I putting time into these videos? Why am I taking time away from from my kids to do these videos? Why am I taking the time to work on other people's videos and their strategies? And then it hit me back in September when I brought up what I didn't even realize was going to be a controversial topic on my Instagram. I went live on my Instagram talking about the lack of representation of women in the YouTube education space. Now understand that I come from a business background with a master's degree in business, and I completely understand the importance of being politically correct and making sure you watch what you say because everything you say is a part of your brand. So for me to take a step and talk about equal representation for women educators in the YouTube space, it was A huge step for me, knowing that not everyone was going to believe and what I was saying. But also, it's 2020, and why am I asking for women to be equally represented? And so it was time for me to stand for something. If I don't make a stand for something, what is the whole reason I'm doing this? So back in September, when I decided to take that step and talk about something that made me uncomfortable to say out loud, I had finally reached that point where this was bigger than me being comfortable. And so I went on live and I asked people, why are there predominantly just white men? So speaking about YouTube education, you can look at multiple conferences, whether they're video conferences or social media conferences or business conferences. But when you go to the topic around YouTube education, there's not a lot of female presence in that group of speakers ever. And this is absolutely not a man bashing session. I have a son who I hope grows up and gets the opportunities that he wants. I have a husband, I have a father. Like, this isn't a man bashing session. Let me be totally clear here. This isn't about men versus female. This is about being equally represented because there's more than just men talking about how to grow a YouTube channel here on YouTube. I've even collaborated with multiple of these ladies. There's Desiree, there's Morgan, there's Annie, there's Diana, there's Shelley, and so many more. But why aren't these women being asked to speak on conference stages? Here's the thing, as much as you don't want to admit it, men and women are different. We're different. We handle things differently. We have different experiences, we have different responsibilities, we have different strategies. And with a community, myself that is predominantly women, we don't get to see ourselves up on stage talking about creating YouTube content or even creating video content. That really holds us back as women video creators. Because again, men aren't necessarily experiencing the same things we are as women. For example, men most of the time have shorter hair. They're not thinking about what's their hair and makeup look like. What are people going to say about our hair and makeup on camera? Maybe they don't have children. Maybe they have a caretaker for their children. But for women, a lot of the times, we're the primary caretakers of kids. So we have to think about our schedule and how it works around kids and when we can film when it is quiet at home. These are all things I know you, as my community, have asked me personally how I do it. And even in those comments of that Instagram Live that I did, these were the same comments that were coming up over and over again. That their voices weren't being heard, that they didn't have somebody to look up on stage to see how they were doing it, how they could replicate how another female was creating video content for YouTube. And again, I did not at the time realize how controversial this was going to get or the comments that I was going to receive about how I was man bashing and not being fair. I got comments about, well, it's all about merit. Let's base it around merit. Well, what about the people who are spending most of their time in strategy for other channels and they don't have the time to work on their own channel because they're working on other people's channels and taking care of their kids. So when you say you want to have speaking slots based on merit, let's be real and list what the merits are that you're picking people to speak on your stages. So as you can tell, that particular topic and that particular Instagram Live really struck me and it stuck in my head and it pretty much made my blood boil because I have a daughter and I want to think 20 years from now, if she's going through this same situation, trying to be fairly represented on a stage, seeing somebody like her on a stage, see, speaking about a topic, whatever she wants to be doing, Holy cow, it's 2020. Why are we talking about female being equally represented? And why is that still such a controversial topic to have female equally represented? Last I checked, we're 5050 here on this world. And why aren't women being picked to speak 50% of the speakers that are selected? In addition to that, let's look at some data because you may be coming to me. Well, Trina, what are the facts? I need facts. I need data on why we need to see more women on stage. Here's some actual facts for you. This comes from an article on. And when you look at the businesses that were created in 2019, 21% of those businesses were women owned businesses. While all businesses only increased by 9%, total employment by women owned businesses rose 8% in 2019. And when you compare that to all businesses, total employment rate only rose 1.8%. So when you look at this data, not only are more women so starting businesses, but the businesses that women are starting are employing more people. But in addition to women business owners actually growing and employing more people, much of the businesses that are growing by women are by minority women. Because while the percentage of women owned businesses grew by 21% in 2019, businesses owned by women of color grew 43%. And Black women owned businesses grew even faster at 51%. So I ask again, why aren't we being represented on these stages now? Again, let's reiterate, this isn't a man bashing session. There have been many great men that have reached out to me to support this who tell me that they understand this. I want to thank the people over at TubeBuddy. They have been a huge support. Phil, Andrew, Rob, I also want to thank Tom over at ChannelFuel. All of these guys reached out and asked, how can we help? How can we help amplify more women's voices? And so to you men, thank you so much for your support. But it's sad that we still can't see this disconnect because even when my friend Desiree put together a Women of YouTube panel, there was still backlash that why do we need to make this a male and female thing? The reason is because if you look at years and past panels upon panels, predominantly these panels have been led by men. So when you ask why do we need to make it a male and female thing, it's because you have been leading it. Men have been leading it for so many years. And the only way we can have our voices heard and people in my community can see somebody like themselves talking about YouTube and how they do it and have the same insecurities they do is we have to find a way to have a complete women panel and be heard. So let's get to the whole reason why I decided to break out of my comfort zone and do something totally different than I've never done before. And that's because I want to ask you a huge favor. I know my audience here. I know you all. There's a lot of women here. But there are men here as well. And don't think this isn't a space for you. I appreciate you every single bit. But I want to ask, no matter what gender you associate with, I want to ask for this massive favor. If we are going to see change and if we are going to start to see equal representation at these conferences, at these online summits, I need you to ask these conferences and summit organizers to please represent female educators when they release their lineup. Ask why are there not women? Why are there not women of color? Why are there not black women speaking on this stage? When it comes around YouTube education, I need you to suggest people to these conferences and these summits and podcasts that you like learning from that are women. Women of color, Black women. Because the only way we are going to be heard is if we band together to get our voices heard again. I am just like totally shocked that we are needing to be talking about equal representation of women in 2020. But here we are. So my final ask for you is to help us spread the word. One thing you can do is share some of your favorite creators, some of your favorite female business owners, some of your favorite female podcast hosts down in the comments. Give us great women that we can look towards and we can support and also share this video. Help us get more people to band together and make a change so that we can actually look at women up on that stage and relate with somebod. Thank you for watching this. Like I said, it's not my normal kind of content. It was very out of my comfort zone and I appreciate you so much. If you've got to the end of this and you are going to help support from here on out. Thank you.