Business Briefing: Lego reality series provides platform for out entrepreneurs

For Justin Brady-Joyner and John Walls, their friendship was built via a shared love of Lego. The two met four years ago via social media when Walls began searching out other LGBTQ people who also have a passion for creating builds with the colorful plastic bricks.

“It is my creative outlet,” said Walls, who remembers getting his first Lego set in elementary school, a pirate ship brought by Santa Claus one Christmas. “I returned back to my love of Lego in college when I needed a stress relief.”

As an adult, building with Lego provides him an escape from his professional responsibilities. Walls, 43, who is gay and queer, will put a Marvel movie on his television in the background and work on creating his own Lego build using his imagination.

“My brain turns off, and I go to a different place,” said Walls, who lives in Dallas now but growing up spent time in Los Angeles County, living in the city of Westlake Village during his early high school years.

Brady-Joyner, 42, who is queer and nonbinary, grew up in Colorado and has lived in Austin since 2009. After earning a master’s in education from the University of South Carolina, they relocated to Texas for work and, not knowing anyone at the time, decided to take up Lego again after happening to find the company’s store it had opened in their new hometown.

“It was a fun side hobby,” explained Brady-Joyner, who that day bought a Lego winter village set to use as holiday decor for their house.

Brady-Joyner later started posting about their Lego builds on Instagram, which Walls had discovered and decided to reach out via a private message. They soon began chatting not just about brick-building as GAYFOLs – a play on the acronym AFOL for Adult Fan of Lego – but also about their personal lives and realized they had another connection in common.

After graduating in 2005 from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth with a public relations and advertising degree, Walls worked for a variety of small and large public relations agencies before being hired by Match.com in 2007.

Two years later, amid the recession, Walls was laid off then ended up in Austin at a PR firm. Through a boyfriend he dated there, Walls befriended a guy who years later would marry Brady-Joyner and also is a Lego builder.

“We realized we have all of this history together,” recalled Walls, speaking recently to the Bay Area Reporter during a joint video interview with Brady-Joyner. “We kept in contact and followed each other’s builds.”

They quickly formed a friendship “pretty substantially” in real life, noted Walls, who ended up being hired as a brand manager for a hotel chain and went on to earn a master’s in corporate communications and public relations from Georgetown University in 2017.

It led to his being hired as a senior director for corporate communications and content strategy with Neiman Marcus based out of Dallas, returning him to the Lone Star State. He survived five years of upheavals at the luxury retailer until once again finding himself laid off a little over three years ago. At that point Walls decided to open his own firm named JW PR.

“I work with small and medium size businesses on branding and communications challenges,” said Walls. “Some of them are just starting out on their comms journey and some are reimaging how their company is operating and need someone to come in to do some brand architectural work and reframing.”

Reality TV show
Throughout Wall’s relocations around the country for work and school, he maintained his friendship with Brady-Joyner. The two were avid fans of the Fox competition show “Lego Masters” hosted by actor Will Arnett, the voice of Batman in the “Lego” movies.

Its debut season in 2020 featured Oakland couple Richard Board and Flynn DeMarco, who spoke with the B.A.R. at the time. Walls and Brady-Joyner, now friends with Board and DeMarco, had talked about applying to be on the show themselves over the years.

Lego, in fact, had reached out to Brady-Joyner about being a contestant but they didn’t feel ready to do so until a few seasons into the show. With their husband unable to apply with them as a team for the fifth season, Brady-Joyner asked Walls to do so. They got selected and taped their episodes in the fall of 2023 though it didn’t debut until May of this year.

The second episode featured a marriage theme where the contestants had to make a wedding cake out of the toy bricks based on a theme they randomly selected. The episode aired a month ahead of the 10th anniversary of same-sex couples gaining the right to marry via the U.S. Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision.

It allowed Brady-Joyner and Walls a national platform to talk about being married, though Walls is no longer with his spouse. At the same time, due to the anti-LGBTQ political environment being stoked by Republican President Donald Trump, having that episode debut on the eve of Pride Month and able to compete in the episodes that aired during June made their season feel “more impactful and important,” Walls said, noting how marriage equality “is still under attack” and there are questions about it being repealed.

“For Justin and myself, we had talked so many times about making sure we want to be who we are and not anything different,” said Walls.

While they ended up being the fifth team eliminated, Walls said being given the opportunity to represent the LGBTQ community as out and proud contestants on a nationally televised show “is a gift. I am so thankful and grateful, and I know Justin is as well.”

Unsure at the time of taping the wedding cake episode how it would be edited later for air, Brady-Joyner told the B.A.R. they were “thrilled” with how it came together. Their narratives felt woven together in a matter-of-fact way rather than coming off as trying to make a political point, noted Brady-Joyner. They spoke with the B.A.R. on their 10th wedding anniversary to their husband, Philip, as the couple rushed to marry shortly after the court ruling was issued on June 26, 2015.

“I loved how normalized and natural the show made it in terms of the editing. One of my goals is to talk about queer representation and how important that is,” said Brady-Joyner, who honeymooned in San Francisco and the Russian River region north of the city. “It is a goal of mine and a passion in my life.”

The couple is currently vying to win $20,000 and appear in Variety magazine as America’s Favorite Couple, with the contest doubling as a fundraiser for the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank and international ocean conservation advocacy organization Oceana. Voting ends at 7 p.m. Pacific Thursday, and people can cast votes for the Brady-Joyners online.

A decade ago, they had incorporated Legos into their own wedding ceremony they held with family and friends. Mini-figurines resembling the couple served as the topper on their wedding cake; the Sig Figs, short for signature figures, then joined them on their honeymoon.

“We were taking photos of our Sig Figs, and friends thought it was neat,” recalled Brady-Joyner, which is how they ended up creating an Instagram account to share the pictures at the suggestion of the couple’s friends.

In addition to Walls, Brady-Joyner’s Lego creations caught the eye of the company, which signed them up to work with it on commissions and do activations. Brady-Joyner, one of more than 100 official LEGO Fan Media Ambassadors and content creators for the brand around the globe, is also sent new Lego sets to try out, provide feedback on, and publicly review.

“I am working on a secretive project now,” said Brady-Joyner, who expects to be able to talk about it in the fall. “It has been really cool to be able to be a part of this community.”

They have used their public platform to push both the Lego company and fellow builders to be more inclusive with their creations. Five years ago, they launched the hashtag #diversifylegoholidays and ever since have made it an annual challenge, posting videos such as this one from last December with examples of how to do so.

Brady-Joyner rejected charges of Lego being anti-LGBTQ, most famously suggested by a recent exhibition at the Science Museum in the UK. They noted the company’s social media team swiftly responds to any online hate they receive, often in fun and snarky ways, “which I love,” they said, and it celebrated Pride Month in various public ways in June unlike other companies that pulled back amid the debate over diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in workplaces.

“Lego has gotten hate, sometimes deserved, sometimes not. I love they stay committed to expanding efforts on DEI,” said Brady-Joyner.

As for their compensation from working with Lego, it is mainly through bricks, Brady-Joyner noted. They are working on monetizing their Lego-focused social media accounts.

Their professional pursuits are “all connected to Lego in fun, different ways,” said Brady-Joyner. “It lets me do the things I love the most and which I flourish with.”

Being on the show provided Brady-Joyner the confidence they needed to make a pivot in their professional life. Upon returning home, they left their corporate tech job working on DEI initiatives and went out on their own. They launched their own firm as an organizational consultant and facilitator with the belief that they could do so and make it work.

“I think that came out of the show experience,” said Brady-Joyner.

Despite the attacks on DEI programs by Republican officials and conservative pundits, they haven’t had trouble finding work. It helps being in Austin, one of the most progressive cities in Texas, Brady-Joyner acknowledged.

“I’ve actually found companies wanting to work with me because our values are aligned. I’m not seeing that dry up,” said Brady-Joyner.

Reachable via their website brady-joynerbricks.com , Brady-Joyner last year went through a certification program to learn how to use Legos in a workplace context and help teams of employees learn how to be more creative in their problem-solving approaches.

“It encourages people to have fun when approaching workplace challenges, too,” they noted.

As for Walls, he last year became a co-owner of a functional beverage company with a gay married couple, one of whom was his best friend in college, and a female friend of theirs. Called Sēkwl Beverage House, the name derived from seeking wellness, each can of its different flavored sparkling waters is made with 1,000mg of functional mushrooms, such as Lion’s Mane and Turkey Tail.

During Pride Month the company launched its seventh flavor – cranberry lime – and is working to be on store shelves by December. Based out of Denver, it currently ships to all 50 U.S. states via its website at drinksekwl.com.

With the job title of chief storyteller and head of marketing and communications, Walls said he is asked “all the time” if Sēkwl’s products taste like mushroom seltzer. Each time he notes that the mycological extracts are flavorless.

“There is none of that mushroom flavor but all the functional benefits you would get from mushrooms,” said Walls.

Got a tip on LGBTQ business news? Call Matthew S. Bajko at (415) 829-8836 or email [email protected].