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Who is Asa Leveaux?
Asa Leveaux is an author, decorated combat veteran, adventurer, father, and founder of both Genius Academy and The Queer School. Currently, he hosts The Entrequeerneur Show podcast which highlights entrepreneurs in the LGBTQ+ community.
The Queer School
The Queer School is an online personal development platform catered to the LGBTQ+ community. Their mission is to provide students with better opportunities as professionals and individuals. Asa founded The Queer School in 2016 to connect Gen Z with resources that they would not find otherwise living in certain parts of the country. Some courses include guides to self-acceptance, learning forgiveness, and discussions on sex. His desire is to help students find value in their own stories.
In light of COVID-19, Asa is also gearing up to offer business development courses to get more LGBTQ+ members involved in entrepreneurship. Because members of the trans community are more likely to suffer from unemployment, most of them turn to prostitution as a means of survival. Through The Queer School, Asa aims to break the cycle by opening students’ eyes to entrepreneurship so they may create the life they want to live on their own.
A Veteran with an Entrepreneurial Mindset
Asa Leveaux has had an entrepreneurial mindset since he was 9 years old. He recalls going to church one Sunday and hearing kids ask for candy, which gave him an idea. That same day, he bought as much candy as he could with three dollars borrowed from his mother and sold it from a Ziploc bag the following week.
Shortly after 9/11, Asa was sitting in his dorm room staring at a $7,000 bill he could not afford. Met with undesirable circumstances, he decided to take action and join the Oklahoma Army National Guard. His first plane ride ever was when he was deployed to Afghanistan in 2003. For many people of color, joining the military is the only way they get to experience traveling to other countries and being an adventurer is a title Asa never expected he would inherit. Asa says joining the service gave him the structure he needed to further develop his entrepreneur mindset and it provided him with the opportunity to get started.
After leaving the military, he obtained a mental health certification as a rehabilitation specialist and realized he had a strong desire to become a coach. In 2013 he founded the Genius Academy, which is a training and development agency that helps both entrepreneurs and startups fulfill their goals. Since then, Asa has traveled all over the Middle East and South America, spreading his messages of entrepreneurship and positivity wherever he can.
Interviewing LGBTQ+ Entrepreneurs
“There are other business people who are LGBTQ+ that need to feel that they are seen, heard, and valued. So I wanted to create a place for them because I wanted that place for myself. That’s why I created the podcast and the term, because entrequeerneurs are real.”
Asa Leveaux host of The Entrequeerneur Show
Today, Asa continues to use every platform to promote positivity in the queer community. He started The Entrequeerneur Show podcast after realizing that LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs were experiencing discrimination from potential clients who refused to work with them. Asa uses his podcast as a way to express who he is while highlighting other members in the queer entrepreneur community. In honor of Pride Month, he is interviewing LGBTQ+ elders to help share their stories. According to Asa, there is more to the gay community than the young beautiful people who grace Hollywood’s screens. He wants to thank these pioneers for paving the way to the more accepting society we live in now.
Asa has also written several books over the past decade. His latest book, Fuck Balance: A Paradigm Shift For Entrepreneurs and Those Who Love Them, calls b.s. on the work-life balance mindset. “Work-life balance started because there were executives of large industrial companies that wanted you, the worker, to feel good about working so many hours outside of your home. So they came up with that term. But work and life were never meant to be balanced.” Asa is opening other entrepreneurs’ eyes to a world where they are in complete control of their circumstances and can obtain peace of mind, body, and soul. “If you want your life to be the way you imagine, you will ebb and flow in the areas of your life where you want to be attentive.”
What Keeps Him Up at Night?
“Nothing. Not a damn thing. I’m totally in alignment with myself.”
What is Asa’s GREY Style?
This article originally published on GREY Journal.
