Giving hope to victims hiding in plain sight that abuse is wrong, criminal, and that they can do something about that.

I am Gemma Serenity Gorokhoff, a strong, powerful, and visionary woman victorious over 15 years of domestic violence, beaten, put down, and raped among other awful things.

I had two abusive marriages, one time 5 years, one time 10 years.

During the second abusive marriage, I didn't see a way out, even though I was aware that I was living in domestic violence again. In French (my mother tongue) we have a saying that goes like this: "Never two without three", and it goes in the positive as well as in the negative. The problem is that I believed it, and did not dare to leave my second husband, fearing finding myself stuck with a third one who would as bad if not worse than the two others.

When my cup was overflowing with emotional pain and suffering, and when I realized that nothing I was doing to try to cope with it was working, I set my plan of last resort into motion: suicide.

My gratitude to God is limitless and eternal, as I heard His spiritual voice when nobody was close to me. The Voice told me: "Of course, you can jump [from the 10th floor of your apartment's building], it's going to work; but I'm going to give you the same life in worse. Is that really what you want?" I answered on the same spiritual plane "noooooo" and The Voice ended the conversation with my next prompt: "Leave by the door." I put on my sneakers, do not take anything or anyone with me, and leave by the door. That was on June 15th, 2013 at 1:30 AM, and this is the moment my big SHIFT happened.

From that moment on, I started my healing journey, met my third, last, and dream husband, Sascha Gorokhoff (you can Google him, he is exceptional), and started to build myself back up from the ashes to the wonderful, strong, powerhouse whom I am today, with enough self-confidence to share the mic with other strong, powerful, and visionary women who have prevailed over abusive and toxic relationships, and are now helping our audience who are victims hiding in plain sight, to break free, to find hope, and to finally live life on their own terms.
 

In October 2020, I had a deep and real conversation with a strong woman who has prevailed over domestic violence and was building up her community "Unsealed Lips" on Facebook. We had a 2h long conversation, and we were understanding each other very well, as we had the same background. When I hung up with her, I realized that I would have loved to record this conversation and publish it as a podcast episode on Real Talk Real Women which would become my show eventually.

I am a very occasional podcast listener, but I have been interviewed quite a few times on podcasts as a guest, so I'm aware of them.

In 2022, 18 months after this conversation, I was watching the total lunar eclipse on May 15th, 2022, and committed to bringing my vision to life, to actually do it instead of just planning to have real conversations with real women. (NB: the meaning I give to "real" is deep and genuine, contrarily to gossiping or superficial)

I started putting out the call for guests, and within a couple of weeks, I was already interviewing strong, powerful, and visionary women who have prevailed over abusive and toxic relationships and are now helping and inspiring others to step into the energy of success.

On June 1st, 2022 I launched my podcast on Substack as an extension of Gemma's Gem which is my paid blog platform. Then, on August 1st, 2022 I launched the YouTube edition of it, catching up by publishing the 27 first episodes, one per day, and come back to my regular publishing pace of twice a week, sometimes three times a week when I have a special guest that I want to promote immediately.

Currently, I have 4 months of episodes already recorded, and ready to be released, and I keep on building my community, followership, and discovering new platforms to share my podcast RSS as well as the videos of the recordings with as many people as possible.
It literally took me 2 weeks to release my very first episode once I decided to get started.
 

I release two episodes per week. It takes about 4 hours to produce an episode and promote it.

I was already an entrepreneur in the digital marketing arena and all my efforts to manifest clients were time-consuming with little to no results. I did understand that I was simply spiritually misaligned with it, which is ok.

As soon as I started building my podcast/videocast, people poured over and I started being overbooked with intro calls and recordings and preparing the episodes, releasing them, and promoting them. It quickly became a full-time job since I started in May 2022. But for the first time in my life, I am happy and grateful to get up every morning and keep on growing it.

Finally, this is safe, right, and good, and it is divinely aligned with my higher purpose in life.

It costs about $500 per month for podcasting, hosting, editing, and marketing, with an all-in-one platform that allows me to also have my business going on alongside the show.

For the three first months, I did it pro bono, paying everything to the point of emptying my savings account. That couldn't continue this same way, and I had to change that, especially since nowadays you have to monetize your activity somehow.

I tried to invite my guest speakers to be part of a co-written book, but clearly, the commitment in terms of energy, time, and money was not aligned, and it fell flat.

Then, I thought that as I am talking to potential guest speakers all day long, all week long, if they would all give me $200, I would be completely self-sustainable and I could continue to focus all my attention and intention on this media business. On August 4th, 2022, I pivoted from pro bono to the pay-for-play model, refining the way I bring it forward to my guest speakers during the intro call when we assess if we are a good fit to record an episode together.

That allows me to confidently pay the next bills and keep on doing what I love to do: inspire victims hiding in plain sight by having real talks with real women who break the silence around abuse.
 

So far, I haven't gone the route of sponsorship yet, though I'm totally open to it. I would be open to sharing revenue if any, of course.
I'm thinking that the way I could get my first sponsorship would be to ask my guest speakers who are all business owners if they would want to sponsor it and if yes define with them a price that would be fair for both.

I have a reach of 150,000 people all platforms included with about 2000 downloads at this time, 4 months after the initial launch. I haven't used any paid promotion for it yet, but I plan to do it.

I think that the biggest benefit I found with podcasting is to connect with amazing women all over the world, to have meaningful conversations, and friendships, to now have clients, and to share the wisdom acquired through the hell of domestic violence and domestic abuse when being home meant being unsafe.

I'm so happy and grateful to have my third, last, and dream husband Sascha who has facilitated my healing journey and my learning skills to the point of holding certificates from renowned universities, like New York University Mindfulness, IMD Business School, MIT, and now I am just starting another course at Kellogg Northwestern University.

Having been empowered to the point of safely sharing what happened without fearing retaliation is priceless, and listening to my guests' horror stories and how they prevailed over the abuse also is absolutely amazing, and I'm forever grateful for that.

I really feel that I'm on my way to building a billion-dollar media business, and I'm open to opportunities to make that happen, as this is my soul calling.
 

I started to use Zoom to record the episodes, then as I am on a Mac, I have to use CloudConvert to have the audio file converted into an mp3 file. And recently I pivoted to use riverside.fm which allows downloading all the formats I can think of for the recording (large for YouTube, tall for stories, and square for Instagram). Moreover, it allows having each audio/video file individually separated, which allows for many more options when it comes to repurposing recordings.

I find my guests in Facebook groups where those who are available to be a guest on podcasts show up and podcast hosts show up, and people match with each other. Between May 2022 and September 2022, I have interviewed 270 guests so far, recorded 70 episodes so far, and am receiving between 2 and 10 new potential guest speakers every single day, due to my hand-raising posts where I'm very clear regarding the type of guest I'm looking for.

I always run my episodes the same way, so it's consistent, I know my 3 main questions, and then we simply have a heart-to-heart conversation. One thing that I ask my guest speakers to do is to fill out my worksheet to provide their headshot, bio, and media release, as well as their desired title for the episode if they have one, otherwise, we come up with one on day of the recording.

I do everything online, via videoconference.
 

My listeners find my show everywhere they listen to their podcasts. I regularly update this page on my website https://www.gemmaserenity.com/news to tell my people where they can listen to the show as far as I know. I'm discovering every week another place where it's being published.

So far, from what I've been able to know, most of the listeners come from my email list, followed by Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
I find my email list to be the most efficient, especially since they have all opted into it, and they expect to hear from me and to know what I'm up to. Besides that, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube do an amazing job at promoting the show, and of course, I've learned a great deal about SEO and I'm doing my best to integrate them into my episode's notes.
 

1. Have a very clear and precise plan, the main topic, and a schedule you plan to respect and stick to it.

2. There are countless ways to monetize a podcast. Follow Tracey Lee Cook with the Victim To Victory podcast & book, as well as her YouTube channel where she teaches aspiring podcasters how to do it the right way and fast. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkv23pWAcs2pW7_J85DFaFuNbRiaEqXue

3. Google your question, there is always a response awaiting you somewhere.
 

I am Gemma Serenity Gorokhoff.

My website is https://www.gemmaserenity.com

The main platform where I publish my blog articles, as well as my podcast, is https://gemmasgem.substack.com. You can choose to support the show with $7/mo, $70/yr, or be a founding member with the amount of your choice (suggested at $700/yr)

You can find my personal profile on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GemmaSerenityG

My Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/gemmaserenity

My podcast's Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/realtalkrealwomen.breakingthesilencearoundabuse

The podcast's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHIjbcHze3LNxI-pj0ovUiA

My LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gemmaserenity

My few Twitter accounts:
https://twitter.com/sascha_leader (that's my husband's one)

https://twitter.com/WomenNotSilent (that's the podcast's one)

https://twitter.com/GemmaSerenity (that's mine)

https://twitter.com/gemma_sascha (that's both of us together as we used to lead the business together before splitting our efforts, and still supporting each other)

To send me money, which I sincerely appreciate,

My Paypal address is gemma@gemmaserenity.com which also works to communicate with me by email.

CashApp is $GemmaGorokhoff,

Venmo is @Gemma-Gorokhoff,

Zelle is gorokhoff.gemma@gmail.com.