When You Open Your Email, Does Snow Fall Out?

It's Not Just Because We're In Canada

This blog post is born from something I posted on LinkedIn a month ago, and it came up again the other night in response to a question.

That question was:
“What does ‘success’ look like to you as a queer business owner?”

When I originally wrote about this on LinkedIn, it was in context of realizing I needed to talk to a particular type of professional (for example - a lawyer), but I didn’t know any off the top of my head.

And I was about to ask my networks, but then I realized something.

I was almost certainly going to get recommended white guys first. And not just white guys, but straight, cis white guys. The most privileged people on earth.

As my cultural awareness (‘wokeness’ if you will) has increased, I’ve begun to think more about trying to hire BIPOC/LGBTQ/disabled people first. Because I know they often get left in the cold.

And while I am certainly not trying to have mostly fellow white people in my networks, i’m not going to lie to you and say that isn’t the reality. I need to do better, and so do most of my fellow white people.

I decided to try and be proactive and so I wrote a post on LinkedIn.

I acknowledged that whenever I would reach out to my network for help with hiring a certain kind of service, that old phrase ‘I know a guy’ is a lot more literally true than we might want to think.

9 times out of 10, if you ask ‘can anyone recommend a lawyer/plumber/videographer/etc’, the answer would be a man (and usually a straight, white man).

Women are generally better at recommending other women, but that also tends to be white women recommending other white women.

Queer/Trans people are better at recommending other queer/trans people, disabled people are better at recommending other disabled people - but again, it tends to be white recommending white.

[You know what this means? We’ve effectively got Referral Snowblindness.
ie When your professional network is so white you can’t see anything else. And if it’s THAT white, your inbox is ‘full of snow’]

Which means that BIPOC, 2SLGBTQIA+, and disabled professionals & entrepreneurs are mostly only getting recommended within their own community.

Communities that are already much smaller because spoiler alert - they’re marginalized!

Pretty hard to have an economically prosperous community when barely anyone is referring business to you! And marginalized people have less resources so there’s still less to go around even so.

Now, this isn’t a universal conspiracy. Lots of people are unfortunately blind to their bias and don’t realize they are doing this. (that’s called ‘institutionalized racism’). Of course to be clear - that doesn’t make it okay.

Part of the problem is that a lot of white people (myself included) don’t know as many non-white folks to recommend. As I said I was (and still am) guilty of this as well. Many white folks don’t stop to really consider that and think about starting to be more proactive to address it.

So the problem persists.

And so last night when I was asked that question, it reminded me.

“Success” as a queer business owner would look like more cis, straight people referring business to folks like me. I’m not BIPOC, but I am 2SLGBTQIA+ and invisibly disabled.

But more importantly, ‘success’ would look like my BIPOC • 2SLGBTQIA+ • disabled • women/non-binary entrepreneur peers getting MORE referrals than I do. Because they should, and they deserve it.

But the sub-layer of that success would be a majority of cis, straight, white people having BIPOC people at the top of their mental referral list and being the first person they think to call/email/DM. Not the 6th, or 10th, or 20th.

Instead of (as has still largely been the case for me) having 5 other white people spring to mind readily, and having to pause and dig deeper in the memory banks to find someone who isn’t white.

Like I said, I need to get better about this myself.

As I’m thinking about it yet further - I’m reflecting on the communities I am part of - both in person and online.

Off the top of my head, most of the people I am used to being on calls or in person with are white. Some of these communities just have a majority of white people.

And I know probably in part that is because BIPOC folks (justifiably) still don’t feel safe or properly supported in these spaces. They are more likely to start their own groups. And that is a failing of white people.

If i’ve lost you at this point, let’s pause.

If you’re thinking ‘jeeze Lacey, what’s with all the white guilt? It’s not our fault, it happened before we got here!’ well I hope you can ponder on this a little more.

One thing I’ve noticed about activism over my adult life - often times the first time we are exposed to a particular idea, we may recoil, we may be really uncomfortable. But a seed has been planted. And that seed can lay in your subconscious and slowly grow until it sprouts. And it can surprise you when that happens.

That has happened to me a number of times. So I can be hopeful that you reading about this idea (if you never thought about it before) is planting a seed in your mind. Maybe you’re not even resistant, maybe you’re thinking ‘that’s actually a good point, I’ll start being mindful of that’. Great!

One thought that did just strike me - I do a lot of virtual networking and we often get tossed randomly into breakout rooms. Perhaps I can start asking specifically to be paired with BIPOC folks. That will allow me to start to add more BIPOC professional contacts to my potential referral list and slowly begin to even out that imbalance.

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Would I be disappointed if a gig I REALLY wanted got awarded to someone else who happened to be non-white? I’d be disappointed about not getting a gig I was excited about, but i’d be glad for someone else to get a great opportunity that historically they would not have gotten.

That all said i’m going to drop in an open call here. Let’s help each other out.

I’m asking you to recommend me some professionals/entrepreneurs in your network who likely don’t often get recommended as much. The most marginalized. Both so that I can have them at the ready in my rolodex for next time, but so that others can have them on file also.

Heck, I do enjoy curating resources, so maybe I can try to start a new one. Maybe someone already has started a list like this, but I’m not aware of it.

Recommend me marginalized folks with these skills/specialties:
• Lawyers, Paralegals
• Accountants, Financial Planners, Financial Advisors, Bookkeepers
• Business Advisors/Coaches, Grant Writers
• Tradespeople (Plumbers, Electricians, Landscapers, Repair Techs, Contractors, Renovators, etc)
• Cleaners, Movers
• Therapists, RMTs
• Media producers (videographers, photographers, web designers, graphic designers, composers, copy writers, etc)
• Marketers / PR / Branding Strategists, SEO
• Programmers / Coders / App Developers
• Social Media Managers
• Rock star virtual assistants

Anyone you know who does these things (or other needed skills) professionally who is BIPOC, 2SLGBTQIA+, disabled, not a cis man.

It’s so easy to just say ‘hey I need a [blank], who can you recommend?’ and take the first suggestion, but the same people are always getting that business.

And as I wrote about in another post recent post on here - women as a whole (and women of colour particularly) are being severely undervalued, and the more marginalized someone is, the poorer they tend to be.

So I’m hoping this post can help put a bunch of great new contacts on my list so I can help play a small part in keeping more commerce where it needs to be - amongst marginalized communities rather than just white men at the top.

And IF THERE IS ALREADY A DATABASE someone has made for this very reason/purpose, please let me know - no sense in duplicating work!

Thank you for considering.

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Lacey Artemis (she/they) is a neurodivergent speaker, consultant, and media producer. She is the founder of Neuromix Consulting which provides sensory comfort and accessibility consulting, as well as facilitation and anti-burnout play workshops. You can find out more at www.neuromixconstulting.com.

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