We were lucky to catch up with Edward Wilson recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Edward, thanks for joining us today. Let’s kick things off with talking about how you serve the underserved, because in our view this is one of the most important things the small business community does for society – by serving those who the giant corporations ignore, small business helps create a more inclusive and just world for all of us.

While I believe gay men are generally more privileged than other minority groups, we have our unique struggles and difficulties too. When I grew up I didn’t see “me” in movies, TV shows, comic books. Only in gaudy, unrepresentative sex magazines or breifly (pun intended!) bombastic queer pride style party scenes.

Gay men have a universal journey: we are soaked in shame at an early age, or even if you avoided that, you’ll run into it before long… so our journey is to accept and overcome this situation. Easier said than done. For me, I found great solace and soul-nourishing representation in illustrated books and fandoms that celebrate and depict quite masculine (my personal flavour of gay) man-on-man romantic, sexy, normal and even tame content. It helped me realise who I am and how I can be in this world. I wanted to create this for a wider audience, with as much representation and inclusion as I could.

By smashing together core self-help topics for gay men (shame, acceptance, belonging), and wisdom from a variety of well-known and much-loved and respected sources I have created a book that both embodies our differences, but shows our combined journey, where we are the hero, the victim, the bully, the shamed, the sad, the sexy, the funny and the cute protagonist. I hope it opens windows and doors (why not both?!) to gay and queer readers the world over, so that they feel more belonging, peace, joy, “of-nature”, “designed-as-intended-by-god”, and that makes me extremely, extremely proud. We deserve it.

It’s a gift to the me of the past, the very deserving and largely still unprepresented men of the present and for those just coming up now too. We all belong together, we are all human, we are all natural and blessed with the gift of life.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

This year I’m 33, I’ve lived in Australia all my life except two challenging and unforgettable years in Japan when I was 15 and 21. I was good at sales until I came across coaching while having my own personal mini-crisis. What I found helped me in a way I didn’t know was possible and I realised that work was exactly what I wanted to be doing as my primary work for the future. I had to know more. And it’s great! I found a business coach who is also a creatives coach who helped me carve out my niche, find my voice, establish my platform (Insta and website, but 95%+ Insta). I provide self-transformation coaching for (primarily but not limited to) gay men. It’s ~10 sessions over ~3 months. I work with them until they get everything they came for. I only ask they do their best too, and we finish when we finish. I couldn’t be happier with “my” success rate. I say “my” because my clients are responsible for themselves. and they have achieved their own outcomes too. To help so many beautiful (mostly) men is so life-affirming, I have had a few little cries of happiness about it all, I probably will again! #blessed.

Now I’m writing a book to get a mass-media message of love, joy, connection, healing and belonging to ‘my people’ delivered through stunning art works created by ‘our people’ too. It fulfills the same mission, uses similar knowledge and wisdom, and makes for an excellent, fun new way for me to spend my working hours. I split about 50/50 between them now and that keeps me engaged and happy. My business/creatives coach is also a well established publisher! So she’s been instrumental again in helping me become the version of myself that does all this well.

In summary: get yourself the right coach <3. Getting the right people around you might be exactly what you need. I know for my own personality quirks, I never could have done all this solo. Not a chance.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

This is aboslutely critical. In my experience I can easily say “websites are dead”. But this of course only applies to me and my work specifically. I never could have done this without Insta and working Insta correctly.

1. Post quality content. Treat people with the utmost respect (without flattery or BS), and share *all of your secret sauce*. They will come to know, like and respect you. Then they want to AAA course, because you’ve proven you’re a good investment,

2. Paid ads are necessary. It seems to me organic reach won’t cut it. I know a coach who posts 3x as much as me with 3x as much polish. My results are far superior. Find your posts that resonate, don’t muck around, spread them. Just spread your true self and your core message and wisdom, the rest will come.

3. Canva and a design team can very quickly make you look pro, but stay in control. If you are a solopreneur you can have a team of all kinds of skilled people, but you must be capable of every aspect yourself if you had to. Not in extreme detail, but savvy with the basics. Commit to learning just enough of everything so you remain in complete control and aren’t beholden to any single other person.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

I always knew I wanted to transition to full time, so I had committment and had the bravery to overcome the risks. That being said, I treated it like a side-hustle while I built up the basics. Once I had the very simple blocks in I knew I was headed in the right direction, and had to jump in all the way. Sometimes this even meant sitting on my hands or going for a walk while I *let* things happen.

Every journey/task is just one step, then another, then another. Stick to learning and attempting just this step, and you’ll find yourself back in the same position, but further on your journey. If you get stuck, ask for help and get unstuck. Keep moving. Do lots and lots of good activities that indicate *real* results, and let the rest happen all by itself. Let yourself be surprised by your success when it comes.

If you don’t feel your conviction and certainty in your heart about all this, listen. Your gut is supremely intelligent. We can convince ourselves of anything. If you feel off, in your gut, then something is most likely not right. Slow down, look around, find why you feel this way. Resolve it, accept it, or quit.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://get.agaymanbook.com, https://brownbearcoaching.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brownbearcoaching/, https://www.instagram.com/agaymanbook/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/agaymanbook