Meet Stephanie Gray | Author | Love Coach | Host & Speaker

We had the good fortune of connecting with Stephanie Gray and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Stephanie, can you talk to us a bit about the social impact of your business?
My business and my brand is all about walking in my life’s purpose; to help people heal their hearts and find healthy love. From my publishing company, to the books I’ve authored, to my individual, couples, and group love coaching service, to my monthly live Cocktails & Conversation event series, to my upcoming weekly talk show the mission, vision, and ethos of the brand is helping people heal and find the highest and best version of love they’ve ever know. I’ve done this on many levels in many years of coaching and continue to build this community of healing via social media. I’ve served more than 50 personal coaching clients, sold over 1,000 books, and have growing community of more than 11,000 followers on Instagram. I’ve delivered a message of healing in front of audiences as large as 8,000 at corporate functions, and as small as 30 when volunteering with inner city youth or doing group workshops. I am changing the world by serving people who desire to build, grow and sustain healthy relationships. Through a multi media platform, I’m creating a community that supports the personal and emotional growth of its members. By teaching my audience to identify and repair emotional wounds, and nurture healthy relationships, I help love seekers unearth the highest and best version of love that they’ve ever experienced.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I am a writer and have been as long as I can remember. Even as a little girl, I wrote poetry, plays, short stories, anything you can think of I’ve written it. But as I grew into a standout athlete, writing started to take a back seat, but my imagination and passion for it never did. So as I began to understand the lessons in love and life that time was teaching me, paired with my natural inclination to help and lead people, my writing evolved into something different. As an adult, I’ve learned that my art is communicating whether its via writing, speaking, or even non-verbally. I’ve mastered is communication, developed the over years of my academic life, years of being in corporate America, and yes failed relationships (romantic, professional, platonic, and familial).

Two key factors sets me apart in my work. First is the global view I have on love and life. I’ve been a professional athlete who’s lived in 3 countries in Europe, Japan, and 4 major cities in the U.S. Through that experience of living and connecting with people across multiple geographies, I have research that spans as many places and 20 years, which enabled me develop and communicate my principles on love. Secondly, my road to being a love coach and author hasn’t been an easy one. The critical turning point in my life was surviving an abusive relationship, and rebuilding myself from the ground up after a traumatic end to that relationship. I had to come to terms with my own childhood traumas (being a survivor of sexual and emotional abuse), begin the process of reparenting myself, and understand how these traumas impacted my adult relationships, learning to trust and love myself for the first time in my life, all against the backdrop of being a highly achieving student, professional athlete, and an overachiever in general. Having my ego stripped down to see ALL of myself was the most difficult work I’ve ever done, and also the most rewarding. That process was the genesis of my path to authoring books and coaching others through their own journeys to healing and self-love. Through that process, my gift for the art of communication slowly evolved into putting those lessons on to paper and into books.

What I’d like the world to know about my brand is that I am speaking from a place of healing, it is the process that helped me to arrive here. Also, I identify as a masculine of center woman, the concepts in my book and practice are universal and transcend any label. This means through my travels and studies, I have identified the commonality of humans across whatever labels people choose to wear (straight, lgbtqia, race, geography, etc). The central theme of my messaging is healing leads to love. It doesn’t matter who you love, or how you love, it matters that you love and that you are loved. My book 10 Universal Rules of Love – Plus One (second edition) teaches readers healthy ways to give and receive love. Through real life and comedic examples, this book provides guiding principles that will help take you from fear/hurt based love habits, to a strong sense of trust and love for yourself; and ultimately the ability to have lasting healthy relationships. 10 Universal Rules of Love – Plus One (second edition) will guide you through weeding out unhealthy friendships, identifying and healing emotional wounds, knowing the difference between infatuation and being in love, knowing when to call it quits in love, and several other principles that will help guide your journey to finding true love. It will give you actionable steps to eliminate unhealthy habits, while replacing them with healthy ways of thinking and acting in love.

I am so excited one of my newest ventures which is in partnership with Rock Steady Atl, Ron Zacapa spirits and HER Place Events. Cocktails + Conversation (C+C) is a monthly 4-hour experience (including a cocktail hour, 1 hour live conversation, and post show wind down) where people from the LGBTQ+ people of color (POC), and our allies, have authentic conversations about love, relationships and identity. The purpose of C+C is to create a safe space for LGBTQ+ POC and their allies to have fun, engaging, entertaining, and educational conversations about love, relationships, and identity. Though our core target audience is LGBTQ+ POC and their allies, the topics are universal and are appropriate for all adults, no matter how they identify. We invite people from diverse backgrounds to engage, as long as it’s done with respect and a genuine desire to understand and be understood. Authenticity is the key ingredient to our brand. As such we encourage audience members and C+C guest alike to bring the most authentic version of themselves and an opened mind to meet and receive people where they are. We believe that through these conversations, walls of fear and ignorance are torn down, and community is born. So, the ‘cocktails’ (in moderation) are encouraged so to help people loosen up, lighten up, and engage. The ‘conversation’ is used to bridge gaps that are left by fear and ignorance. Most importantly, it is all done in the spirit of celebration and empowerment.

I’m also about the trajectory of my writing and coaching career. I’m excited about the 2 new books I’m working on; one self-help and my first fictional work! I’m overjoyed about the opportunities that living in Atlanta have brought me. My goal is to leverage my gifts and art to tell stories and help people heal all over the globe. I want to give my gift as much as God will allow and create space for. I want to be a conduit to people living in their highest and best version of love.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Although I’ve visited Atlanta many times before moving here in November of 2019, I didn’t really know the city. Also, I’m still learning it since COVID-19 kept us all inside for the better part of 18 months. But I do have some favorite places. Some of my favorite places in the city are

We’d go to The Gathering Spot to work, if they had work to do. TGS was my first introduction to the cool professionals in the A. Its still one of my favorite places. We’d also go to Rocksteady Atlanta for dinner during my Cocktails and Conversation event on a Wednesday. We’d also go to Parlor lounge for cocktails and dancing. When we want that uptown feel with good food and good tunes, we’ll head to Apt 4B in Buckhead. We’d have to check out the High Museum of Art on a Friday Night for Jazz. We might take in a movie at IPIC theatre. But we’d have to go to Piedmont Park, no matter how cool it was outside. When it’s sushi time, we’d have to check out Ra sushi in Midtown. And we’d have to do brunch at Virgils or Milk and Honey in College Park on Saturday. For church we’re definitely going to Impact Church in College Park, then after church we’d head to Traffic for brunch and an amazing Drag show. Now for Taco Tuesday, we’d hit up Bar Taco for good vibes and great tacos.

And to think, I don’t even know the city that well yet 🙂

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I’d like to dedicate my shout out to both my high school basketball coaches. Coach Charles Frank and Coach Roz Robinson saw and nurtured my God-given talents, and helped me see that there was much more to life than the impoverished East Side of Detroit where I grew up. They taught me the value of working towards my goals and completing them. But more than anything, they were the coaches that showed me what a loving committed coach looked like. It was their love (both tough and gentle) that showed me that I could be anything I aspired to be, as long as I was willing to work for it. So shout out to them, and all the coaches who dedicate their lives to loving, nurturing and developing children that they didn’t give birth to, but that God chose to use them as secondary parents for.

Website: www.stephanielgray.com

Instagram: Iamthelovecoach

Twitter: iamthelovecoach

Facebook: stephanie l gray