BGL

kevin@bestgaylife.com www.bestgaylife.com

Best Gay Life – A Social Enterprise company Text for panels in here

#StrongerTogether

Our mission

Unlock the potential of the LGBTQ+ community to impact positively on politics, commerce and culture.

DIVIDED AND FIGHTING AMONGST OURSELVES WE FAIL TO SHOW THE WORLD WHAT WE CAN DO AND HOW WE CAN OVERCOME. DIVIDED AND FIGHTING WE SHALL FOREVER REMAIN IN THE MARGIN. TIME TO SHOW WHAT WE ARE #STRONGERTOGETHER.

The elevator pitch

BGL IS STRIVING FOR SOCIAL CHANGE THROUGH AND CULTURAL INTEGRATION BY PROMOTING LGBTQ+ POSITIVITY.

The what

Best Gay Life, (BGL,) exists to embrace and encourage the positivity of diversity and to empower the LGBTQ+ communities to live their best lives in a peaceful, safe but above all united environment. The communities are currently splintered, divided and sometimes at odds with itself. Yet each faction is working towards a common goal.

Whilst divided we fail to address very real problems that face LGBTQ+ people and we fail to bring to the attention of the world the talent, skills and spending power of these incredible communities.

In the course of that fight the community has grown both in numbers and identity. What is now the LGBTQ+ communities encompasses over 29 (and growing,) different sexual orientation classifications. There are many, many organisations representing different intersections of these communities, from coming out support groups to family support groups to Stonewall and LGBT Humanists.

Does the world want or even need another LGBTQ organisation? We think YES. Best Gay Life (BGL) was set up by Kevin & David who, (rightly so) enjoy the freedoms of a same sex couple, with freedom of speech & equality in the UK. Protected by law and embraced by their own and the wider community, Kevin and David did not feel the need to fight as gay people had done in the 60’s and 70’s. That fight arguably was over. Whilst acknowledging that prejudice still very much exists, they observed there was a militant tone in many of the LGBTQ+ groups that they felt passionately only fuelled further social isolation.

They felt that the time was now for social cohesiveness amongst these groups. The promotion of working together to promote positivity and address the very real problems that the community face, daily.

The why

The LGBTQ+ community have fought a long, hard political, social and cultural battle to establish rights, enshrined in law that gives them equality. Whilst you may think that fight has been won, transgender, lesbians and gay people still face isolation and social exclusion, and in some parts of the world persecution, imprisonment, torture and so the fight for rights still goes on.

What are the social issues we are looking to address?

Stereotyping Bigotry Stigma Non-acceptance Legal equality Fear Inequality Homelessness Stifled entrepreneurialism Mental Health issues ...and at its worse... violence and hate crimes

Until BLG

There was NO network or hub that CONNECTS LGBTQ+ communities, that speaks with a united voice to champion acceptance and integration and serves as a portal for product and service brands to reach out to this community.

The how

AT THE HEART OF BGL IS THE COMMUNITY APP V1 of the app is built and live on the app store. It has been designed and built for both iOS and Android.

Testing complete, we are beginning to drive signups via Instagram, Facebook and the blog content.

Navigation and architecture – home (activity feed), – messaging – profile – notifications – social Purpose – events – FAQs – guidelines – blog and podcast Current features; – post content, – view content in an activity feed as well as per group – internal messaging between users, view profiles, follow and engage with other users – access BGL posted content without leaving the app.

V2 is currently in development, and we are hoping to add in subscription & monetisation We are looking to fully embed the BGL store with e-commerce commerce capability into the app and add in more safety features such as word blocking.

When V2 is complete the app will provide unparalleled access to brands wishing to engage with and provide products and services for the LGBT+ community which now stands at just over 1.2 million people.

We set up BGL subscription services aimed at gay men selling underwear and grooming products taking on Oddballs Underwear and MeUndies. We tested this strategy in the marketing market over 18 months with no paid advertising and were able to achieve LTV of £153, CAC of £64.50. We currently have an active, engaged subscription base and several brand partners including PUMP, Addicted, The London Grooming Company and Molton Brown.

We also wanted to test the strength of our content to actively engage the community.

BGL’s Creative Director and his team have a regular schedule of blog content and to date we have a total of 7,408 downloads.

What is more encouraging however is that we have galvanised a truly international audience, consistently ranking highly in download charts from countries such as: BELGIUM

FRANCE

BRITAIN

IRELAND

MALAYSIA

CANADA

GERMANY

HUNGARY

ISRAEL

MEXICO

INDIA

JAPAN

NORWAY

COSTA RICA GREAT

PAPA NEW GUINEA UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Build it and they will come

In building this community we have undertaken extensive testing to ensure we can both attract and monetise prospects.

Build it and they will come

Our content reflects our ambitions and address the very real topics our audience wants to hear about, namely: New Year and the Naked Attraction LGBT+ History Month The Chapstick and the Circuit Queen Happy Coming Out Day with Colby Melvin Happy Pansexual Pride with Timmy Essex And, we’ve had great contributors and consumer feedback; for example: USA Election Special with Taylor Small “It has been a big week for LGBTQ+ people everywhere… Trump is out and Best Gay Life have just hit 22 in a UK Apple Podcast Chart! Dave and Shereece celebrate Biden’s big win, talk about Dave’s new obsession with ‘Married at First Sight’ and get ready to try their hands at being political correspondents.

They are joined this week by Taylor Small, the first trans person ever to be elected to the Vermont state legislature, and only the fifth trans state legislator in the whole of the US.” Chris Mosier – The Game Changer The ‘BBC’ and ‘New York Times’ named him ‘The man who changed the Olympics’. We are honoured to have Chris Mosier on the show! Amongst his many, many other accolades he can claim we discuss being the first transgender person on the USA national team, the first trans person to compete in trails for the Olympics as their chosen gender and the honour of being an inductee to the Gay and Lesbian Sports Hall of Fame.

Jack Guiness ‘The Queer Bible’ In our second Pride month episode, we loved celebrating all the intersections of our community with the enigmatic contributing GQ Editor, global model and author of the most fabulous book ‘The Queer Bible’ … Jack Guinness.

ARIESZ7 VIA APPLE PODCASTS · GREAT BRITAIN · 11/06/20

GREAT SHOW ✩✩✩✩✩ “Great show that covers it all on what it’s like to be queer!”

WOULFE32 VIA APPLE PODCASTS · UNITED STATES OF AMERICA · 04/09/20

LOVE THIS PODCAST! ✩✩✩✩✩ “This podcast makes me feel comfortable and surrounds me with likeminded people who i feel that have similar interests. The way Davidos makes his conversations and stories are fantastic.”

HOBBY HUSTLER VIA APPLE PODCASTS · CANADA · 04/09/20

We have no doubt at all that the platform we have created will achieve both our social purpose and meet our commercial goals.

Build it and they will come

THEME SONG IS EVERYTHING! ♥ ✩✩✩✩✩ “I don’t usually listen to Podcast but was told I should have a listen and without realising I was hooked! The theme song is just amazing! Well done team BGL x”

A movement

A MOVEMENT TAKES TIME TO BUILD & SOCIAL CHANGE TAKES TIME TO AFFECT. Both need a commercial model to fund and sustain.

The monetisation of the app is at the heart of our commercial model, and we have planned two app based revenue streams: 1 D2C Subscription: Our own subscription model. We will broaden this model out from gay men only to the wider LGTBQ+ community.

2 Marketplace: We will offer brands the opportunity to sell products and services to the community.

In addition, we will offer a B2B consultancy service offering strategic help to big brands that want to engage with the community but currently fall into the trap of, at best, cliched marketing and at worst just being damn right offensive. We know we have an unrivalled insight into the community and have tested this B2B proposition in the market with great success and very positive financial metrics.

Where are we today?

We have spent three years developing the proposition, building an audience, designing and building the technology and testing monetisation models.

We know it’s a model for success and now are looking to scale. Quickly.

We are currently seeking round 1 investment.

The team behind BGL CO-FOUNDER & CEO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . KEVIN LEONACE CO-FOUNDER & CREATIVE DIRECTOR . . . . DAVID WHITFIELD CTO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CLAYTON SMITH ADVISORY BOARD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . JOY JACK (COMMERCIAL)

CHRIS WARD (MARKETING)

MIKE DONOVAN (E-COMMERCE /RETAIL)

We put people before profits and chose our community and our allies rights before our own personal gain.

Win together. A win for BGL is a win for all the diverse groups within the LGBTQ+ communities, together we are #strongertogether.

Our values

We believe in good humour and a good heart: to take on issues our community face in one breath and laugh at ourselves in the next.

Join us

...as an investor ...as a content creator …as a brand ambassador …as an advisor …as someone who is as passionate about the cause and issues as we are

Contact

KEVIN LEONCE CEO M: 07815 555 352 E: KEVIN@BESTGAYLIFE.COM