TrendyMinds of Indianapolis, Indiana was invited as an honored guest to President Obama’s State of the Union address January 27, Wednesday night. Part of the decision was because TrendyMinds is an NGLCC member, but another reason may have been because the company is so successful despite the economy and recession. id Magazine was able to speak with TrendyMinds principal, Trevor Yager.

id Magazine: How long have you been an NGLCC member?

Trevor Yager: We joined in October of last year, so if this is how they are all the time, all the better!

How has NGLCC helped you as far as acquiring clients?

Well since we’re so new to that, we’re getting into the supply diversity a little bit more. We’ve registered with their database and they’ve been really helpful as far as keeping us abreast of opportunities as they’ve come up with the different sponsors they have and the different corporations they work with…they have a very large audience, within the LGBT community, but also corporations they have a sponsors. They do matchmaking between the corporations and LGBT businesses.

For example, when I was out for their annual dinner in November, they arranged meetings with us and PepsiCo and IBM. So we were able to sit down with them and their top procurement people and give them an overview of our business, tell them a little bit about what we do, and they were able to give us some direction and point us in different directions of their company.

They’re well put together and how they can help businesses. They’ve got a great report with the White House. They were just, one of their executive directors was just up at the White House, discussing different ways to help small businesses.

Your success is amazing – how have you continued your success in this economy while others are floundering so to speak?

That’s an interesting question…I don’t think there’s one major way. Both myself and my business partner, we feel very blessed with were we are, we’re very fortunate. We know that we’ve got a great staff, we’ve got wonderful clients, and you know we do our best to work really hard, and we make sure we’re coming up with the best ideas to help our clients. We genuinely love what we do, I think that helps as well. Then you just add in several different components, and I think thats why we’ve grown and why we’re continuing to expand.
It doesn’t hurt to have an invitation to the White House either…

There was a quote in your press release that I found interesting, where you said – “Major corporations are now required to spend their dollars with minority businesses, and they’re recognizing the gay community as a very valuable segment of this market.”
Do you see that as two pronged – A. Awarding accounts to LGBT businesses because they are equally matched for the job and an untapped source and B. Spending advertising dollars geared to the LGBT community – again as an untapped source of disposable income.

Right…yes it is an interesting thing – because you’re seeing both sides, they’re trying to market out – that is one of the reasons I think the NGLCC programs are really working because corporations now realize that they now not only need to represent employees that work for them, but also those that will be buying their products or service. So it’s really important…then if they want to show they’re support they have to be genuine about it. You can’t just say, “Oh we’re going to throw some advertising dollars at you and you guys are going to love us, and you’re going to come and buy our product.” I think with what’s out there now, we do our background checks to see if they really do care about the LGBT community.

You know being in the branding business and especially since doing this magazine, I’ve seen a really big, swift wave of change of new advertisers that are now targeting the LGBT community which I find incredible…it’s so nice to see.

I’ve worked with the LGBT community on different levels in the past. So it’s cool to see how things have changed. Like what you’re saying with advertising, it is picking up a lot and I think with groups like NGLCC are really helping us. I spoke with a few members today and they were say, “It’s so great to see this, we’re experiencing some good things, and we’re excited about this too.” I think it’s neat to see we’re finally being recognized that we’re a great group of people and not only should we be marketed too, but we should also be hired to help out and help grow businesses.

On a PR/Marketing note, have you seen a surge in demand for Social Media to be included in marketing plans?

Yes – actually that is one of our service line…we have that folded in between interactive and PR because It is kind of both. We want to make sure it is used the right way and it’s not just people out there talking, talking and talking…you want to be sure there’s someone listening to your conversation. You know, there’s a lot of different tools out there, I think it’s important to see what’s the right fit for the right business. In this instance (referring to being invited to the White House) my Facebook page an Twitter have gone crazy today. It’s interesting, I commented earlier that usually people would call when your in the news story or you’re on the news…and then it was e-mail. now it’s Facebook posts and Twitter. So it’s been interesting to see that progression.

Yes – and some people are replacing e-mail with Twitter these days!

You can read an interview post the State of The Union that NGLCC’s BIZ magazine did with Trveor Yager here.