37. Game Changing Tool for Planning Weddings - Everywhere is Queer App with Charlie Sprinkman

This week, I interviewed Charlie who is the founder of The Everywhere is Queer App (PLEASEEEE go download and support and review by clicking HERE) where we discuss not only Charlie's journey with designing and releasing the app, but also the practical uses of the app especially as it relates to finding queer owned wedding businesses for you to utilize while planning your wedding. This is absolutely beautiful and a game changer for those of us in the community wanting to find safe spaces wherever we go.
You can also follow them on insta @everywhereisqueer

The intro and all instrumentals were written, sung and recorded by @JaynaDavisMusic

Queerly Beloved, I'm so glad you joined!
Please keep the community going by checking me out on instagram @wildlyconnectedphoto and come say hi! I'd love to hear from you! :)

Transcript

0:42

All right, Queerly Beloved, welcome back to this week's episode. I'm so excited to have the coolest guest with me here today and I won't even chat too much about it because Charlie, I would love for you to introduce yourself and your pronouns and any other identities that you would like to share. Hi everyone. Anna, thanks for having me. I'm so happy to be here. Yeah. My name's Charlie. I use he, they pronouns. Welcome them both. I am the founder of Everywhere is Queer, which is a global, worldwide map of queer owned businesses. Oh my gosh. So cool. I, yeah, I have been so stoked to have you on here since it, you know, came up as a possibility and literally like everyone I'm talking to, I've just been like, have you guys heard of this app yet? And I'm like, pulling it up and being like, look how cool this is. Yeah. So I'd love to hear like your journey with this app. With this app, especially for those listening who aren't familiar with it yet. Yeah well, yeah everywhere is queer again is a worldwide map of over ten thousand five hundred queer owned businesses And we're now an app. We're just eight days out from app launch. So, it's been an exciting last week with our app i've been developing an app with one queer developer for the last seven months and She's live. You can download our app on iOS or Android. Totally free to join. Yeah. But everywhere is queer, like from the start. So I'm from rural Wisconsin ish, rural ish, suburbia 25 miles west of Milwaukee is where I grew up in a very conservative Catholic Like family and area so growing up was very difficult as I like battled all internal, you know, being told that being gay or queer is a shame every day at school because I was at a private Catholic school. Is hard to hear, you know, down in your formative years. I mean, still in my formative years, I feel like, but in those early, early years, you know, so that was just really difficult. I mean, obviously so many kids have had this experience. After high school though, I was like, I'm out of here. I love the Midwest. I do have a piece of my heart in the Midwest for you, Anna and Minneapolis. I'm like, I do love it there, but I'm like, I gotta get out of here. I obviously didn't have like a city experience also, like Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Madison, like such amazing, awesome places. I went to undergrad at in Fort Collins, Colorado. So I, I got a scholarship. I went to college in Colorado. I didn't come out until I was 21 though. So my junior year of college. So yeah, I mean, just growing up, I did not have any like queer representation. I have zero out ants. Uncles cousins. I'm one of 20 cousins and I'm the only out one today. And so, yeah, I went to undergrad. I studied entrepreneurship and sustainability. And after college, so yeah, I kind of came out my junior year of college after college. I was a rep for an organic beverage company. I hit the road and I went to 41 of the 50 states. And lived 100 percent on the road for all of 2019. And this is where I started to, I was like kind of freshly out. I mean, I came out. 2017 or 2018. So it was, it was freshly out. And I also just didn't really have a strong queer community in Fort Collins. There definitely is queer community there. I just like was three years into college, had my community and not a lot were queer. They were definitely accepting and it was like really amazing, but. So again, didn't really have queer community yet. Hit the road, went to all these places. I mean, I, I went to rural America, to metropolitan cities, to New York city, to LA, to Hawaii, to, you know, to so many places. And I just constantly was seeking for queer spaces. They didn't even have to be queer owned at this point. I had not thought of my idea. And it just like kept like not having a resource. So for me, I went to the co ops. I was like, I'm just going to find the co ops where people are just loving the environment. They're going to be nice people. I went to pretty much every co op in 41 of the 50 States. And yeah, I, I just. So yeah, I was constantly seeking queer spaces. And then 2021 I went to Brave Trails, which is a queer youth leadership camp for 12 to 18 year old youth. And that's when I had like this euphoric experience of being in a space of a hundred queer people for the first time in my life. And it just being so affirming. I mean, like all my life people have commented on my voice for being higher. I am a cis man. I probably sound like a woman as you're listening to this. I get it every day of my life. And yeah, I just at Brave Trails there was no, like not one person like thought about my higher voice or commented on it, and I was like, wow, like so much voice dysphoria in my life. And like, this just like eliminated for a week. It was just like so cool amongst so many other things. So I was driving back to where I lived in Boulder. I'll wrap up the story here. And I and this is when the idea came to me. I thought of a worldwide map of queer owned businesses. I was like, how can I connect queer people with spaces that will affirm them themselves for their true, authentic selves? And so. That's when the idea came. Wow. So what, what year was that then roughly? 2021 was when just the, just driving back to Boulder from brave trails. It's like what in the car. I thought of that idea. All my greatest ideas come in the car. I don't know why. I mean, yeah. Hey, for some people it's in the shower, some people, you know, Yeah. So this is truly like years in the making. Yeah. I mean, the idea came in, in summer of 2021. I dove into my computer in January 2nd of 2022. I launched Everywhere is Queer. So we're two, about two years and two months in. Yeah. Oh my gosh. And wow. Yeah. Even just hearing your story, I'm like, wow, are we in the same person? Cause very shared experiences. Like I'm a pastor's kid, went to a private Christian school. Lived outside the cities, didn't come out till my senior year of college, minored in sustainability. It's just like, wow, it's just really well, okay, cool. I love to hear that. Are you from Minneapolis? I am. Yep. I mean, outside of Minneapolis. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, so even in just thinking in that, like, That shared experience of not necessarily, like, having that representation or seeing that kind of community or support. Like, I love to hear your perspective on why something like this is like, it's obviously so cool. Like. You know, opening up the map and like getting to see all these places. Very cool. But I think it's also very like necessary for people like us. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. Yeah. I mean, I think of you and I think of me as kids and our younger selves as we battled these internal feelings of, you know, so much. But even those thoughts of. I mean, as a kid, I'll be honest. I did not accept my queerness like at all as a kid, like not until literally junior year of college. But if for those out there that are maybe a little bit kinder than themselves and please do be kinder. If I knew of a queer owned like coffee shop and just could go see and sit there as a closeted kid. And just see queer people exist and working and have a job, you know, that's, that, that is why I want this resource. This is why I built this, you know, I think of our younger selves. Obviously it's a great resource when you go to New York and LA and Minneapolis, but I mean, I really do have a huge part of my heart for outside of the metropolitan cities and all the people that exist within that space. Yeah, yeah, 100 percent and to thinking about, like, the impacts it'll have on folks outside of the community to write. Like, I think there's still a lot of, like, Stereotypes and misconceptions and hateful things that people have to work through and so being able to just like see people in the community, like, in those kinds of environments and being like, oh, this is actually like a nice normal human being, like, yep, impacts too. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I totally agree. I mean, my mom, who was so Catholic growing up, now has an everywhere is queer bumper sticker on the back of her car in rural Wisconsin, intentionally drives miles out of the way to go visit queer owned businesses and tell the owners that they're queer. They're like my mom, you know, which she's just like, number one fan, you know, change can happen. Like even in my mom, you know, is fifth turning 60 this year. And. It was very Catholic and conservative for a large chunk into her forties, fifties, and we're turning a leaf, you know, Wow. Go Charlie's mom. Go Charlie's mom. Go Charlie's mom. Go. Seriously. Yeah. That's so beautiful. But just seeing queer people exist, you know, like for my mom, you know, Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, I like, first of all, I mean, we'd love to hear about how the app launches going and also just kind of like what your dreams are for it too. Oh, gosh at lunch, I mean, I, this is a totally like bootstrapped project, like, full reality. And I'm very transparent about this. I haven't even paid myself yet. I had a full time job up until October of 2023. So however many months ago, that is 6, 5 months ago. And I'm like actively working on it. I mean, this app is like a path to monetization. And it's, it's working already in eight days. I'm like, Oh my gosh, this is cool. So yeah, I mean, this is like a path to like growing my business. Like I want to, I want to hire people. I want to bring queer people into this project and like, just. Continue to do so much for the, the community and beyond, but app launch, how did it go? My first reflection, who knew? For anyone launching an app, this is a PSA that when you hit publish in the app stores, so Google Play Store and the Apple app, like iOS app store you hit publish. I would think that the apps would show up, you know, like. Shortly after and like, you know, you hit publish and you go live. Right. So, my little heart was like, let's just hit publish 24 hours before we go live. We won't tell anyone, but the app will be, I'm like, the app will be available. But like, just so like, my developer and I have fun. Are you able to download it? Make sure everything's good. We hit publish not showing up, not showing up, not showing up, not showing up, not showing up, not showing up in either iOS or Android. And I'm like, Googling, I'm like, go on Reddit. And I'm like, how long does it take for your app to show up? And now I am doing my entire launch in 24 hours. Okay. Like everything is scheduled to launch like out to thousands of thousands and thousands and celebrities are posting. And. I read it says 48 to 72 hours, your app will show up. Oh my God. And I just started sobbing. I am a SAG cancer cancer. Not that I'm really into all of that, but I I have a lot of water in me. So, very emotional. I just started sobbing uncontrollably. And this is the day before launch. I haven't even thought about it. I just, I lost it. I was like, everything's going to crash and burn. Oh, it's been really intense. I did not sleep at all that night. I thought maybe if I could like, like have my friends download it, maybe it will get them to populate onto the app stores while iOS app, I woke up at 2 AM, 4 AM, check to the app stores. It was not there. And 6 AM. Populated into the cert into the app store. IOS did the day of launch. Wow. So it was a rocky start. Android was not populating at all. I'm so sorry for Android folks. You can now find our app. It's there. I promise we made an app for you. Yes, so it's been a rocky start, but we've had about 33, 34, 000 downloads in 8 days. So, I'm really grateful. Really, really grateful. Yeah, that, that does sound rocky indeed, but I mean, I feel like just on behalf of everybody, like. Thank you for for being the one to, to put that work in. It's truly amazing. Oh, it's been a lot, but it's been really good. I'm very excited. It feels like a rebrand for my brand, and I am just like, ready for this next chapter. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And in, in thinking about like who. You know, all the people that have downloaded it, I'm sure there's kind of been a mix of both people in the community and then also allies and folks outside of the community. And I'm curious, kind of like how you envision the app serving each of those groups differently. Yeah. I don't know if you saw some of my social media posts, but we had quite a few allies wanting to add their businesses to the map. And at this time we are a worldwide map of queer owned businesses. So I'll just do my little seed here. If you are a queer owned business, you can apply via the profile tab in the app. If you know of a queer owned business, tag them in our comments on social media at everywhere is queer on everything. Instagram, Tik TOK threads tag them in our comments. So the queer owned businesses, cause we all, we want All of the owners to apply themselves as we want their consent to be on the map. I don't add any businesses. I only approve. So all 10, 600 have all applied themselves. But maybe 1 day. I don't, don't quote me on this. You can keep it in this one day we might have an ally like EIQ map that could be like a filter on and off or something, because I do think of rural America and I think, okay, if there aren't any queer owned businesses, the next. Best thing would be an ally, you know, like, knows of everywhere is queer that knows what we're doing that like wants to be on our platform, you know? So, yeah, maybe one day we'll have like an ally map, but for now, if you are an ally, download our apps, please follow us on social media and please go support the queer owned businesses within your community and send our app to Your other ally friends, we need your support. We, we as a community would not be here today without you. We, we, we recognize that and we can, we need your continued support. So please go out and support as many queer owned businesses as possible. We have an entire online businesses tab and app that allows you. Like, what are you looking for? Apparel, jewelry. You name it, there's so much on our platform. Yeah, absolutely. And in your mind, do you, like, when you were creating this, was it something you felt was sort of like an equal split of like, this is here to provide the You know, community and connection for folks in the community as much as it is from providing that connection for Allies to businesses or how how was that process for you? Yeah, I mean at the bottom line it was definitely I mean This was created for the queer and trans community to be connected and feel seen as your true authentic selves locally or globally all over the world. End of sentence. Yeah. I mean, ally community, you y'all are absolutely amazing and I'm so grateful for you. And I hope that you use our resource. This is created for you as well. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think Yeah, there's so many conversations to be had about like, the importance of, of having queer owned spaces and like being in queer owned spaces. And that's something that, you know, as a wedding photographer, I'm constantly talking to my couples about that, right? Like, they're like, okay, cool. We found you, but like, we want To continue this feeling of being with other queer folks for a wedding day. And so yeah, I'd love to hear your, your perspectives on the importance of like queer owned spaces too. Well, on the wedding note I think there's so much room to grow our platform within like the wedding sphere. You'll actually see, we have an event venue category. We have an event planner category. There's so many florists on our map. I think that that needs to become a category sometime soon here. Yeah, I mean, I, I've been on a few podcasts with people within the wedding And they inspired me a wedding planner was like, you gotta build this out to be more like, cause like we when we have a queer couple, like they want, I mean, it's so important to have like a queer wedding. Oh gosh, we had a whole conversation about creating like a safe space at a queer wedding for your guests. Yeah. And all the things I mean, and a huge thing would be. All queer staff, you know, food, you know, all of it, you know, so, but yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah, so much room to grow within the wedding sphere. Yeah, hence, hence why we're here. Yeah. But yeah, I think. I think it's, it's important broadly speaking to have those spaces, but I think especially when it comes to something like, I mean, I feel like weddings are so vulnerable, right? Cause it's like, it's not just like a random party. It's like literally a celebration of like your love and like everything you've had to go through to get there. And so I feel like having, You know, knowing that all of your vendors are, like, right there with you, it's just going to be like a big sigh of relief. Huge. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's so important. Queer community, to me, has, has saved my life, and I don't say that lightly, and queer and trans and ally people, but deserve queer community. And so I hope that our map. Will allow people to find that community, you know, I, as one that I was living in Bend, Oregon before Portland. And I mean, my queer community was of so many establishments and businesses within the community. It's just people deserve to find that community. So I urge you, if you're using our map to reach out to the businesses, genuinely just meet them, ask if you can meet the owner or like, you know, connects with these people, go hang out in their spaces. If they're not a brick and mortar, you know, like meet up with them. That's what I urge people to constantly do that, you know? Yeah. And if you're like in rural America and there's only one pin, like ask them for places to go, like, maybe they don't have queer owned places, but maybe they have more affirming places to go network. Yeah, 100%. And I think you've already kind of been touching on it throughout the episode, but like, just the idea too, of like what a huge ripple effect. Like, your app has right? Because I think it definitely is a thing where if you pour into somebody from that community, then that person is so likely to go and pour that into their same community and like. Keep that going. Like, have you been seeing that kind of already? Oh, absolutely. I mean, I've received thousands and thousands and thousands of messages of people that have just said, thank you. I mean, thank you for connecting me. Thank you for allowing my partner and I to travel on our first cross country road trip. We would have never done this without your resource before, you know? Absolutely. I mean, it's, it's a sound. Add this. The app is so much better than my map that I had before. It's just so much easier to use. And then now it's just like accessible as an app, you know, it's go to my website. It's not glitchy. You can just like favorite your, your, your spots that you love. But yeah, I, Yeah, my mind just goes a million places on how I just want to continue to, like, improve the app just to continue to keep connecting people. I mean, I'm not stopping. This is like, this is not this, the end of Everywhere is Queer just because we launched an app, in my eyes. This is like, we've connected thousands and thousands and thousands of people with queer owned establishments. Like, let's connect millions, you know? Yeah, what a huge goal. That is so possible. Yeah. I mean, obviously I don't hear of all the connections, so I have no idea how many, but I've received thousands of messages, so, yeah. Yeah. So impactful. And yeah, I mean, I think both from the perspective of like in the community, right, like obviously people like you and I, like, I'm so hyped. Like I remember, you know, the first day opening the app, I was like, Oh my God, there's this. That's a queer and trans owned brewery. Like 20 minutes from me, I had no idea. Like, I'm so hyped. Like, of course I'm going to go like pour into them. But I think like, it's the same for, for people outside of the community too. That like when, when they start pouring more into. Our businesses, it's going to have like such a positive impact. Like, yeah, yeah. I mean, on, I've talked so much on this pod about, you know, the user experience, not as much about like the businesses and all that they get out of all of this platform as well. But yeah, I mean, if we can support more queer owned businesses, I mean, just think about. Sometimes in local, like, economic communities, the people that get seen the most are the most successful businesses, or get heard the most, or actually get to have, like, the most and strongest opinions about what happens sometimes in those cities. And so, just think about if these queer owned businesses can, Be successful and their allies in the other restaurant or whoever it is, they're like, Whoa, like, what did you do? You know? And it's like, we built community. We allow people to feel safe within our space. And people saw that and they, they supported, you know, I think there's so many lessons there. And then, you know, that can just allow those businesses to have a greater voice within their communities. And be more respected which is unfortunate that it should not take success to be respected at all, but right. Well, and even just like, maybe making it more normalized, right? Like, I think there's something so beautiful about us being able to be like, you know, we're queer on business. We're like, Having space for that where our own like amazing community of people, like not necessarily losing that like specialness, but also normalizing it like across the board so that it doesn't have to be, you know, fighting to have space or or what have you exactly. Yeah, I totally agree with you. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, I'd love to ask like, kind of, a little bit of a fun question. Two parter. First, I'd love to know, like, five years down the road, what your hopes and dreams are for the app. And also, just like, from your perspective, what's your favorite thing about the app so far? Five years. I'm like, let's see what happens next week. Yeah. Fair. Five years. I'm like, I'm gonna maybe go with like a year or two. Okay, great. We can go five All in all, I want to, you know, I am totally new to this whole realm. What I'm about to say is like the venture capitalist worlds, raising money, investors. I have been approached by some people. I have no idea what will happen, but I am interested to host some conversations. If you're an investor listening, okay, reach on out. I'm just hoping to open some conversations. But yeah, I I'm, I, I would love to start to raise some money so I can actually start to like, build out a team. The first person I'll be hiring is my developer. He's absolutely amazing. He, this app was completely built by one person. Now I gave. All the feedback, the copy, the design, all of that, but like the entire infrastructure and code. I mean, it's all from scratch is all made by 1 person over 7 months, which working 5 hours a week for me, which he definitely worked more than 5 hours a week. Sometimes But yeah, so five years, I hope to have like a little everywhere's queer team. I know people, I, I don't quote me on this one, but I'm like, I kind of want like a queer office. Yeah. Oh, you're not working in the office anymore. And they're like, screw you. I don't want to work in an office. I want to work remotely, but I just think of like a little like queer office. I'm so inspired by organizations like Lex who have just, do you know Lex? No, I'm not familiar. It's like a, a lesbian queer app it's all about like meeting up and like events going on within your area and stuff. It's probably pretty active in Minneapolis. I'm not sure. But they're out of New York city and they raised money and they like have built this like beautiful queer team. And it's just like, so inspiring to me. Fields is another one that I am super inspired by, which is like a queer and poly dating app. But yeah, inspired by them goals to like grow a team and just continue to like fully support queer owned businesses. Like would love one day to be a little bit of like a shark tank, but on the side of like the sharks and like queer owned businesses. And I would love to like have everywhere is queer, like in maybe like. Give loans to queer owned businesses to like, get started to like, you know, and like coach them along the way, like have like a whole entire process. That's like an idea that I would love to do. Yeah, so many ideas. So many. This is version one of the app. We, I already got two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. We got ideas. Okay. My favorite part of the app. Such a good question. Okay, well, the online businesses tab graphics, I think, are just freaking adorable and put the cherry on top. My partner is a graphic designer. He actually hand drew all of those. So touch of that in there, which is really cute. We're actually moving in together in 3 days. So, and The app. I would say the map is just my favorite. I mean, the like filtering and the user experience of the map is so much better than my old map. It's just so easy to use. But I have so many ideas of like changing the pin colors and like, there was just so many things that were only accessible at the cost of like version one budget wise. We're going to like make it a little bit more queer in the experience, you know, but yeah, the map is just so beautiful to see. I mean, take a look over here in Portland. It's bananas. It's just 400 plus businesses here in Portland and just growing. It's like crazy. So when I opened it, it's just like, yeah, that's the place to be. So grateful. I also have networks a lot in Portland. So that's why, but yeah. Oh, my gosh. I just like, wow. When you were talking about that, like just getting chills thinking about like the many, many amazing things that this is already done and will continue to do. Thanks. Yeah, lots of ideas. So, the world is our oyster. I feel like I just now need the resources to like, do it. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And truly everyone that's listening, like I know we have a blend of allies and queer folks on this podcast. So like, if you have not already downloaded the app, please do like, please, please make Charlie's dreams come true. Downloading. So, so grateful. It's free on iOS and Android. Just search everywhere is queer. You'll find it in both app stores. You can find it now so easily. It's populating and confirm gun confirm. Yeah. Well, seriously, like, thank you so, so much for all the work that you've done on behalf of our community. Like, I can't tell you how exciting this is. And also like, yeah, even Just from the small wedding perspective, like this is going to be such a game changer and we're just so grateful for you and the people who've helped you. Thanks. Yeah. So grateful for you and all that you do for our community and beyond. And thanks for having me on the pod. Yes. Okay. I will link. Everything for the app and your socials in the notes. So everybody go, go connect with Charlie and everywhere is queer. And yeah, thanks again, Charlie. It was so great to meet you. Thanks, Anna.