Adult Site Broker Talk Episode 232 with Leya Tanit of Pineapple Support

This is Bruce Friedman of Adult Site Broker and welcome to Adult Site Broker Talk where each week we interview one of the movers and shakers of the adult industry and we give you a tip on buying and selling websites. This week we’ll be speaking with Leya Tanit of Pineapple Support. We’ve added an event section on our website. There you can find out about all the B2B events in our industry and there are discounts on selected shows. Go to adultsidebroker.com to find out more. Speaking of events, I’ll be at the X-Biz LA show January 13th through the 16th and I’m looking forward to seeing everyone there and talking some business. Contact me on our website to book a meeting at adultsidebroker.com. To register for the show, go to xbizla.com and I’m proud to announce I’ve been nominated for Community Figure of the Year at the X-Biz Executive Awards as part of X-Biz Honors January 15th. It should be an exciting night and I hope to see you there. Now time for our property of the week that’s for sale at Adult Site Broker. We’ve reduced the price on one of the largest tube and cam networks in the world. With one of their sites growth, it could easily become the next X-Videos. In the last month, the tube network had close to 200 million visits. The company started with a site that created content as a video production company. That site now has almost 18 terabytes of original content. At the same time, they started the webcam section with the porn stars themselves. This site has a members area where people can buy videos and use webcam credits. The company soon grew and tube sites were launched for different countries along with translations. The network has grown from the original site with 80 tubes and 6 cam sites. Despite already being one of the largest networks in the world, there’s still plenty of room to grow since there’s no ad spend. All traffic is either organic or type in. This is a smart buy for an existing network with traffic or for someone willing to invite us to invest money in marketing. Now only 6.5 million euros. Now time for this week’s interview. My guest today on Adult Site Broker Talk is Lea Tannit, of Pineapple Support. Lea, thanks for being back with us on Adult Site Broker Talk. Thank you so much for having me back, Bruce. It’s a pleasure. Lea was born in the UK and has been involved in the adult industry for over 20 years. She’s the founder and president of Pineapple Support. This non-profit organization provides free and subsidized mental health care and emotional support to all persons working in the adult industry. Lea started the organization in 2018 because of a rash of suicides in our industry. She decided to take action and Pineapple Support was born. Pineapple Support has grown to over 500 therapists and helped over 2,000 industry professionals. I was clapping if you didn’t notice. They provide 24/7 support for all industry performers. There’s no discrimination, judgment or stigma. They ensure that every member of the Pineapple family is cared for should they need it. They create a safe, caring environment. They help to alleviate the isolation many performers feel by supporting each other so no one needs to feel alone. You okay with your commercial there? I am. Well, actually, I’ve got a little bit of an update on that. Yes. It said 2,000 performers. That is an old stat. We’re at about 15,000 now. Jesus Christ. Yes. I should probably had you update that one. That was a year and a half or so ago. God, you guys have been busy. No, goodness no. Maybe more. Maybe more. Maybe more. 15,000. I was thinking of the math, 500 to 2,000 and I’m saying they’re going, "Oh, I don’t know if that works." Anyway, what can I say? What kind of old copy? Old copy. So, Leia, let’s remind everyone and thanks for that update. Let’s remind everyone about Pineapple Support Services. Oh, goodness. I think we’ve probably added quite a few more since our last conversation as well. You mentioned a lot there in your very comprehensive introduction, but we are constantly adding. We’re always looking for ways to provide support in as many ways as possible to as many people as possible on the budget that we have. So we have the one-on-one therapy, which is what we are most known for. So that is connection to a industry-friendly, kink-a-wear, LGBTQ-positive therapist on a pay-what-you-can basis. We have support groups. I think we have five or six support groups that are drop-in. They either run weekly or monthly. We also have different six-week support groups that start every month. They’re on a different topic. We have webinars. We have workshops. We have in-person wellness events. We now do a lot of corporate trainings. We do a lot of corporate work with the companies that sponsor us. So understanding that supporting our creators really does come from the ground up and the first point of contact for many of the creators are the platforms that they’re working on. And if we can empower the team members from these platforms with the tools necessary to help support the creators, how to stand in, how to notice if somebody is in need of help, what happens if someone is in crisis, and also conflict management within the teams. If our sponsors are well-equipped, then we believe that the content creators will also be well-supported. And with that, we also do in-house wellness, so check-ins for our corporate supporters. So if you’re working, as you know, on the back end of this industry, there is still stigma. And to be working in the compliance areas where maybe you’re watching porn or adult content every single day, that also has an effect on your mental health and your whole life. And most people try to. But yeah, but not for eight hours at a time when you get to see some things that you probably don’t want to see. So we want to offer support there as well. Everyone deserves that help and to know that they’re cared for and understood. So far, so good. But you never know. And I remember when I had sites. It wasn’t that anything was disturbing. It was just that at a certain point, there’s another beautiful Asian woman. There’s another beautiful. It kind of started to all look alike to me. Yeah, which, you know, I’m sure could have had an effect on your home life. And you were very fortunate not to see anything that was, oh, what’s the word I’m looking for? Different. Well, not different. No. But we’ve had people come to us who have seen videos with miners, things like that. So ensuring that they have the correct support because going to see, you know, an everyday therapist that doesn’t have an understanding of the industry, they’re not going to know how to how to cope with that. Yes, it’s got to be horrific to see something like that and know that there’s nothing you can do. It’s happened. It’s there. It’s been in front of you. I can’t even imagine what that must be like. No. I mean, that would be very difficult in anything like that or anything with animals or, you know, I mean, there’s two sides to our industry. There’s the legit side and then there’s the other side. And as industry people who go to shows and people know, we’re on the legit side. There’s no two ways about it. So the other side of it, we don’t really get to see a lot. I don’t include that as our industry. I don’t either. I don’t think of that as but but sadly, some of that content tries to go public and, you know, into onto onto legit sites who play by the rules and it’s very sad. Yeah, exactly. So it’s been a tough year for fundraising. How are you finding new ways to fundraise? So yeah, you’re right. It has been a really, really tough year for fundraising. I think the industry saw a big change in profits from COVID. You know, everything was flying after lockdown and continue to do so. And I think in the last year, it’s all kind of evened out a little bit and there’s been some huge changes in the industry of other legislations in the US that we’re trying to fight or work with. So when companies don’t do so well or have to restructure the first place they pull their money from is sponsorships, which is difficult because when the corporate side, the industry suffers, you know, so too are the creators and the people who need our support. So we continue to see a rise in the need for therapy, but a drop in the funds that we have to spend. So it’s been a tough year trying to figure out, you know, how to continue the level of support with, as I said, a huge battle to keep our funding at the same level. We’ve really been looking at the fact, you know, there’s only so much money in the industry. There are only so many companies and so much money. There’s new companies coming in all the time, but there’s also, you know, big corporates buying up some of the smaller companies. Yes, I know. Yeah. Yeah. So I think there’s generally some kind of, there is generally some balance. But we need to have a look at ways we can bring in funds from alternate sources. So we’re really looking at it to work with companies to add kind of, you know, add a dollar to donate, you know, when you’re on a vanilla side, a normal everyday site, and they’re like, you know, do you want to add one dollar to this purchase? When you’re buying a flight, you know, do you want to help towards whatever? We want to work with companies to add this little cross-sale across donation on there, possibly for consumers, but 100% for content creators. When they’re going to withdraw their funds, maybe the option there to donate a dollar or a percentage or to round up. Now, if you put together all those transactions in a day, in a month, then that should all add up to a fair amount of money that could make a big difference. And also, you know, content creators are members of the community who want to give back to the community and maybe aren’t given that option. Absolutely. Any way that you can get people to give money to pineapple support, we need to try it because it’s just so important. Absolutely. Talk about the trends in the need for therapy in our industry. The need for therapy seems to be going up at around 10% every year. I think this is a combination of people getting to know who we are, we’re becoming a kind of household name within the industry. So the more people who know about us, the more people are going to want to access the services. I think there’s more and more people joining the industry. So the community is getting larger. And therapy in general is becoming less taboo. You know, we’re seeing a lot more people talking about therapy. And you also see as well, I’m sure my algorithms are completely different. Just a majority of folks. But you know, you can see trends in last year, everyone was talking about ADHD. ADHD was the kind of buzzword in mental health. And we saw a rise in the UK particularly from about 20% of applicants saying that they needed support with ADHD to something like 70. Which yeah, yeah. Not possible. But that’s what you think. Do people have ADHD and not know about it? People just concerned they have ADHD. Are people relating to it more? This year we’re seeing a lot of talk around autism and being on the spectrum. So you know, you can see a big shift there. And it is very interesting. I don’t know whether it’s because I’m getting these algorithms in particular or if it really is something that’s being talked about. But it is making a difference. So we can definitely see it in the request that we’re receiving. We’re seeing a lot more people that are wanting to join our support groups, which is wonderful. But that’s what we’re offering a lot more options now as well, which is great. Yeah, it’s interesting. Are the support groups lessening the need for one-on-one therapy? I don’t think they’re lessening the need. No, I think a lot of the people that are using our support groups have either completed the therapy sessions. They’ve been allocated through pineapple support. When someone comes to therapy, we connect to a therapist who provides an assessment session and we provide them with a number of therapy sessions with that therapist. When they finish going to a support group is a really nice way to kind of transition out of therapy and to always know that that safety net’s there. So that makes a big difference. Also with the drop in support this year, which we hope we’ll get back on track next year, particularly with all these new avenues of fundraising, we have for the first time found a that we have a wait list, which is something that I never wanted to have. But if you look at any mental health support, there is generally a wait list there. We can only have X amount of people in therapy at any one time for our budget. So having the option for those clients to use a support group during the time that they’re on the wait list, I think has also contributed to the amount of people that are using the support groups. Makes sense. What are the costs involved to put a person through pineapple support therapy? So at the moment our costs are around 1100 per client that joins us for 101 therapy or uses our Rural One Therapy resources. This doesn’t include clients in Latin America, so we have a different setup there. So this is North America, Canada and Europe. We are working with this to bring that number down, obviously, that’s our job. The costs involved with a pineapple support client or resource user are usually a little bit more than they would be for a non-industry person going through, say, their insurance company. We offer our clients a maximum number of sessions of 16. Well, if you look at most insurance companies, they generally offer between kind of six and eight, which is very low. It’s said that it takes around 12 sessions to for somebody that’s maybe has experience trauma generally, around 12 sessions to see a notable difference. With pineapple support, some of our clients are a little bit more complex. So we feel that having that extra kind of month’s worth of sessions basically is quite often necessary. We do have clients coming to us for a wellness check or that can receive less therapy sessions, but the majority of our clients do end up needing the full 16. So this does drive the cost up somewhat, but we’re here to help people and give them the tools to work through whatever they’re dealing with. I feel that if we lowered the amount of therapy sessions that we offered, then we could end up kind of opening Pandora’s box or kind of giving someone half of what they need, which ultimately is going to have them coming back to us in a few months because they weren’t ready to move on. So why does support and counseling for adult people, industry people, why is that more costly than for the normal person on the street? Because they’re having more sessions through pineapple. Right. But I mean, do you think people in our industry require more sessions? I think people in the industry require a more qualified therapist quite often. So it’s not so easy to find a sex positive, cankeware, whatever else therapist. This is not... And when you do, they quite often charge a lot more because they’ve gone through more training. It’s not necessarily more costly for someone within the adult space. It’s just a different level of care and a different level of support. There may be more sessions required or a higher qualified therapist. Do you think the issues in the adult industry tend to be a little more complicated than they would be for the average person? The issues, possibly not. The traumas can be a little bit more complex. And I think that some of the traumas that people have experienced can be helped by working in the adult industry and give people control over what’s happening to their bodies. And a lot of people heal through this line of work. But also, people are in a very vulnerable position and those people who are healing through being in the industry could also have triggers that are very easily set off by sometimes a mistake. So it can complicate things. At Pineapple, we want to be able to allow people to continue with this work and also heal from what they’ve experienced. Should that be a trauma? A lot of people that come to us are suffering with ADHD, bipolar, anxiety, depression, addiction, all the things that would be the same in whatever industry they are working in. The stigma attached to the industry, the shame attached to the industry, the isolation from family. Of course, this all magnifies the stress. But I find it’s a difficult question because it’s our people’s mental health struggles worse because of the industry or because of the stigma surrounding the industry. Well, it all goes together, doesn’t it? It does all go together, sadly. We’re all victims of it. There’s no two ways about it. So yeah, it definitely is something that people have to deal with. They deal with it on their own or they get counseling. And if their issues are severe enough, they absolutely should get counseling. I think everybody at some point in their life needs counseling. I mean, I’ve had my share. I think that the most mentally healthy people are the ones who deal with it, not the people who go, "Oh, I’m strong. I don’t need to go to a psychiatrist or I don’t need to go to a psychologist or a therapist." It’s like, "Yeah, to me, those are the weak people." That’s my personal opinion. Yeah, I know what you mean. It’s really difficult to ask for help. Well, shouldn’t be, but yeah, you’re right. It is for a lot of people. I live in a country that mental health has an incredible stigma and that’s just ignorance. In Thailand, and my own wife, I have trouble explaining to her why people need counseling and why mental health is so severe. They’re so important. She’s a very intelligent woman, as you know, you’ve met her, but it’s just the society. The society doesn’t believe in mental health. When there’s a news story about someone who goes off and does things because of their mental health, they talk about it in the news, crazy person or mentally imbalanced. Oh, yeah. It’s pretty difficult to watch. We see it with some of the countries that we’re trying to work with at the moment. For example, we’re just about to launch a new initiative in Rania, which I’m really hoping is going to work because it’s been so interesting in the last six years. The difference in the outlook toward mental health support in Romania has changed so much. Good. Yeah, the first show when I was there, they did a little presentation on what Pineapple Support was about. The creators or the people that were there and watching the panel were having the queue and I afterwards and they were saying, "Oh, when it gets really bad, I’ll reach out." Or if I’m ever thinking of killing myself, I’ll reach out. And let me try a little bit before then. Yeah, exactly. Don’t let it go that far. But now, the last couple of years I’ve been there, the room’s been full and everyone’s wanted to talk and everyone’s wanted to say, "We need more. You have more of a presence here. We need you to be more involved here." So there’s this huge, huge shift just in the last few years, which is great. So I’m really, really hoping that we can make a difference with this new initiative. And it tends to be a bit behind. I can imagine. Yeah. It’s just all down to education, isn’t it? Talking and people being open about their mental health and until people start to do that. Exactly. And the leaders have to acknowledge it and that’s a big problem. What fundraising events are coming up for Pineapple Support? Oh, we’ve got loads, loads and loads. Good. Tell me. Or loads and loads of ways to raise money anyway. So the next big one is during Tuesday, which is on December 3rd. It’s an international day for charitable giving. We’re really hoping to work with all the companies that are involved with Pineapple Support and have them raise funds through their own channels. Also to get as many content creators on board and just do a huge, huge, huge campaign to raise as much money as possible. I’d like to raise and I know this is a big number. I know I know I’m probably aiming too high, but better than too low. But I’d like to go for kind of 200,000, 250,000 and just to see. Just why not? That’s going to be a big one. We’ll be putting that across all of our social medias. Yes. Me too. Thank you. We have our Mental Health Summit, which is coming up in December, which we’ll talk more about. Hopefully that is open to our sponsors to get involved with. We’re hoping to get at least 10 sponsors involved in that, which means the more sponsors we have, the more promotion I guess, the more people that attend, the more people see the logo. So if you’re interested in getting involved in that, please do reach out. We’ve got the January shows happening. We’re going to be releasing a fundraising hike or fundraising trek or something next year. I was looking at Machu Picchu to try and get a big group of creators to come and do a three-day hike. We can film the whole thing. It gets all the different companies to sponsor us, provide branded clothes. How far does it have? Yeah. And try and get some mainstream interest. I think now is the time where the US is trying to put a ban on porn. If ever there was a time to show that we are a community that cares about each other, now is that time. So I think as much mainstream involvement as possible. I’d like to get some government grants and let’s see that. But yeah, we’ve got, "Giving Tuesdays a Big One." Yeah. Let’s talk more about that. It’s on December 3rd. So why is this so big for your organization? In the past, we’ve had a couple of companies get involved and help us with "Giving Tuesdays" with their own campaigns. And they’ve done really well. We’ve had, I think a while ago, I think it was Kink managed to raise 20,000 for us. That was amazing. We’re talking about one day. And I’m trying to remember what they did. I think they gave us a percentage of sales on that one day. We’ve had a tough year. We’ve had a really tough year with fundraising. It has been difficult. There’s no getting around that. We’re actually going to end the year around the same as we did last year, which is huge. We lost three big sponsors, which was around 125,000 in the space of a couple of months, which as you can imagine was quite terrifying. And another reason why we want to have these different revenue streams, for example, with the small donations from consumers or content creators, because it really does bring home that you’re putting all your eggs in one basket when a big sponsor pulls out. And of course, we want the big ones. But we also need all those little donations coming in constantly. And with that said, and as we mentioned before, there is now a waitlist. We’ve managed to bring the waitlist down from 240 people to 117 now. So we’re doing really well. We are getting through it. But there are people that have been waiting there for months now. And it’s bad. I lost my sister-in-law. I’ve lost friends because they didn’t get help in time. So this is something that I’ve really wanted to avoid. And I would like to clear the waitlist. I want to clear the waitlist. And I want to show just how strong our industry is. If you look at, we have 70 sponsors of varying levels. And if every sponsor did something small, even if we look at some of the larger creators that have got millions of followers, if they could get their follow, donate a dollar, it would make a huge difference very, very quickly. And to get ourselves into a position where we could start 2025 with a clean slate, looking at working with all these new companies that are coming on board, coming into the industry. And hopefully working again with some of the previous companies that were restructuring, who have come to us and said that they’re in a better place now to continue, which is fantastic. I don’t know about you, but I saw a huge change at the September show in the general positivity. It was a really great buzz this year, this September. So yeah, this one for us is an opportunity to get everyone in need of therapy connected to somebody that can offer them support and be there for what we’re there for. Well, you mentioned something interesting, Kink giving a percentage of their sales that day. Why not Halo? Why not Gamma? You know, I mean, you go down the line of the big companies and even the small companies, like you said, a dollar makes a difference if there’s enough dollars. That should be a campaign to get as many of the companies as possible. How about only fans, you know, to get, I can dream, can’t I? But I mean, companies like, like just for fans and fans Lee and loyal fans and, you know, loyal fans and just for fans, I certainly know the owner as well. Well, I know the owner of only fans too, but that’s neither here nor there. Good luck contacting him these days. But hi, Leo, if you’re out there listening. Anyway, he’s too busy spending his money. But no, I mean, if we can get the creator platforms, the cam platforms, you know, flirt for free, cams, I mean, get all of them. Okay. Jasmine. I’m live. I’m live. All of those people to give a percentage on giving on December 3rd. Yeah. Or send out a newsletter or allow, allow their clients to, to add that extra dollar on themselves. It doesn’t even have to come from their, from their revenue. You know, send out a newsletter, put it on your social medias. Let’s, let’s get this out for a whole month or just do that, do it on the day. But if, if we all do a little bit, then all those little bits should come together to, to make something significant. Absolutely. Talk a bit about the mental health summit. You alluded to it earlier. When is it? And tell me what it’s all about. So this is going to be our sixth mental health summit. And it’s always been a fantastic event for us. I’m going to get the exact details right up in front of me because, you know, then I can make sure not to make any mistakes. This year, we’re really hoping it’s going to be the biggest yet. I’m super excited to have Laura Desiree working with us to be the presenter and moderator for all of the panels this year. She’s absolutely incredible and getting very, very involved as well, which is, you know, wonderful to see. We host the summit every year in December to try and coincide with December 17th, which is international day to end violence against sex workers. That was originally moved to that date in honor of Dr. Amy Halwick, who was one of our therapists who was who was murdered by her ex-boyfriend. And her passion was always to protect people from from this type of abuse. And so we moved it to this day every year to honor her. This year, we’re going to be running the event over four days, the 16th to the 19th of December. And we are focusing on relationships because relationships really are the foundation of all of our lives. Yes, of course. Mm hmm. So we’re going to do a day on romantic relationships, family relationships, work relationships and your relationship with yourself. Mm hmm. Yeah. It’s a big one. It’s a big one. And it gives you the opportunity to join us for the topics that they are interested in learning more about. Each day is going to have an hour’s presentation, which will be hosted by a therapist, followed by a 60 minute plus, depending on how the conversation goes, panel discussion. So that’ll be hosted. The panel’s discussion will be hosted by Laura. It will include the therapist. So we can continue asking them questions about the presentation that they’ve just, they’ve just held and also a number of content creators and industry professionals. So you know, we can really talk about life and relationships within the industry. Sounds fantastic. I can tell by your voice, you’re excited. I really am. I think the setup for this year is going to be great. Having Laura involved is fantastic. And the people that we’ve invited to join us to speak are absolutely wonderful. I am excited. Good. Good. You’ll have to let me know how it goes. Give us some information about upcoming fundraising ideas and events for 2025. So as I said, the hike is a big one. That’s going to be a lot of planning and hopefully a lot of involvement from within the industry. We are looking to do like a Gumball rally, but for the adult industry. I think that’s going to be pushed to 2026 now just because of the amount of planning that’s going to be needed. But that should be very cool. A lot of super cars, a lot of branding, a lot of driving around beautiful areas and having our therapists come and speak and raising awareness about mental health and the adult industry. As well as we’re going to be doing more online events, we’re going to be working more with our sponsors to provide more education. We’re also helping to work with our sponsors to do bespoke sponsorships and bespoke events with them. I’d like to do more wellness events in person. I know that some of the large camp companies have their island retreats. It would be wonderful for us to get more involved in those. I think if you’re having a retreat, then having some therapists there and some more support sessions would be hugely beneficial. Yeah, I just think having more in person. When you think about therapy, obviously it’s very, very personal, but it can be quite scary for a lot of people. Having actual people at events is going to make the whole process a lot easier. We’re also starting to work with Exotica more this year. I know I see a lot of the expo shows and the AVN shows, and we always have therapists around for the attendees there. Exotica is a huge show. There are thousands of industry attendees, and it can also become very overwhelming. The mixture of long hours, lots of people, and alcohol and parties, it can take its toll. We now have a booth there, a signing booth, and one of our therapists is going to be available at all times with a private room for people to be able to go and speak to her. It’d be necessary, or if they just want to. Very good. Very good. Well, let’s talk about the January shows. You mentioned those. They’re coming up. So quickly. Oh my goodness, so quickly. I know. I know. I know. Why are shows so vital to the Pineapple Support cause? Oh, Bruce, you know this industry. If you’re not there, you’re forgotten. If a company, it doesn’t turn up for a few shows in a row, everyone just assumes they’ve disappeared. Because we’ve had so many disappearances in our industry. Exactly. Exactly. And there’s always the new companies joining us. Some of them disappear as well, and some of them continue. Yes. I love the people who come in, and they’re first sure they do this huge sponsorship, and they spend all this money, and you never see them again. A lot of mainstream companies make that mistake where a payment provider will come in and they go, "Yeah, their whole selling point is we do high-risk payments." Oh, really? Gee, I’ve never heard that before. And they wonder why they don’t get anything for it, and then they’re so disappointed they never come back. Yeah. I mean, at least they’ve got money coming in from their non-industry revenues. It’s just the poor people that come and start up a new company and come in for everything in, as you should, but maybe don’t have any experience in adults. But anyway, it’s important that they know what resources are available. I think it’s more important now that the new companies already have us integrated into their system, more available for the creators to use. Creators are in control now, and they want to be able to see that the platforms are using care about them. Of course, it’s a business deal type thing at the end of the day. We are asking for money, and people want to know who you are, exactly what you do, that they can trust you, that you’re not just going to disappear overnight after they’ve transferred X amount of thousands into a bank account. So being at these shows is exceptionally important, build those connections to educate people on the need for mental health support and resources to be there to speak to the content creators so they know that they can trust us. Because they’ve been burnt so many times, and having information leaked, or handing over your details to a company that you’ve never met before is terrifying. And then adding to that that you’re being open about your mental health struggles, and that’s all there as well. It’s so important for everyone to see the people, the humans behind the organization. And that’s where we raise our money. We might not get the money in hand at these conferences, but that’s where it all comes from. Me too. That’s how I meet my clients. That’s how I meet a lot of my clients at these shows. So yeah, in person shows are very, very important. And the only thing I can say to people is choose wisely. Nobody can afford to go to every show, especially smaller companies like mine. Mine is not a big company. So you have to choose wisely. That’s very, very important. As the years go on, you decide what’s good and what isn’t. And don’t be afraid to ask people. Yes, exactly. And if somebody’s listening to this and they’re new in the industry and they’re thinking about going to shows, get a hold of me. Get a hold of Leia. Ask us. You’re going to get a reply. And we’ll be happy to give you our honest assessment. And neither of us pull punches. That’s one of the things I love about you. Thanks, Bruce. The honest assessment is also based on what you want to get out of these shows because the show might be great for Pineapple, but maybe not so great for Bruce. Yeah, we were talking about that right before we hit the record button. So there you go. How are you expanding that support at in person shows? So yeah, so we chatted about that a little before with the discussion on Exotica and having Dr. Minique who’s going to be available hopefully at all the Exotica shows. We are looking for a sponsor for this literally just to cover the cost of Minique to be there. She’s fantastic. Thank you. She is, isn’t she? I love her. She’s been on this podcast. I met her last year in LA. She’s amazing. She’s been quite a vital role within Pineapple. Just all the support she’s given us, not just to the client. She’s always there. Wonderful, wonderful person. She’s going to be, and she helps run the booth there as well. We’re really excited about this AVN. As you know, we’ve always had therapists available at the AVN shows. I think that’s the most, the one that can be the most overwhelming for attending creators. It is full on. Yeah, so we’ve had therapists there for the last six years. For the last two, we’ve had a pineapple retreat lounge, which has been great. It’s sometimes difficult to get creators to go to because it’s not on the show floor. This year, which I’m just really, really pleased about. We have a signing booth. We’re looking for creators to come and join us on the signing booth. We’ll also have therapists there, but we have our therapist now in the main model lounge, which is exactly where they should be to ensure that creators that are in need of support can access them quickly. Without struggle, without having to find us. Hopefully there’ll be more attendees that will know that that support is available as well. Awesome. How are you working even closer with your sponsors? We are. We’re sending out a lot more information now. It’s been a few years of just making a note to myself there. Something to do with AVN, but I just have an idea. I was like, write that down. Write that down. Don’t forget it. So, yeah, so first with our sponsors, since we began, it was a slow start. Then with COVID, the need for therapy was just, we increased, we grew so quickly that we didn’t have any time to change our in-house systems. We were still running on old systems. We spent the last year building our own tech. So, yeah, so 2024 has been a lot of working on internal systems. We’ve built our own therapist portal, which has been a lot of tech, a lot of background work, changing from one system to another is never easy. Working with, we now use ChatterBates accounting team, which is amazing as well. So we’ve got all of these wonderful resources available to us. But what that has meant now, now that we’re eventually transferred over to everything and things are running smoothly, there’s always going to be teasing problems, but we’re running smoothly on the new systems. It’s allowed me to spend more time working on keeping our sponsors up to date. You folks who donate and want to support us, you want to know what’s happening. You want to know whether money’s being spent. You want to know what opportunities are coming up. So maybe you can get more involved with having information of what’s happening with the waiting list, having information on what we’re currently spending, how many therapists that we’ve got, any new ambassadors that are coming on board, just new opportunities and new ways in which we can help you with visibility and providing extra support. These things are really important and it’s been something that we haven’t had so much time to do in the past. But I mean, you’ve probably noticed that there’s a lot more information coming through at the moment and we’re working on more and more information and making sure that everyone’s just kept up to date and has access to all the resources available. It also helps that I am now a medication with my ADHD. That gives me a bit of a bit more control. Goes back to our conversation earlier. That’s awesome. I was diagnosed. I do now have medication. Congratulations, I think. It is life-changing. I’ve heard. I mean, yeah. That’s made a huge difference in the amount of work that I am able to get done and one of the reasons that you’re getting so much more information now. Yeah, I did notice that. Well, there you go. We can thank ADHD for that. Beautiful. Adult Site Broker is a very proud sponsor of your organization. Talk a bit about why someone would sponsor Pineapple Support. I think that I could say whether or should. People should sponsor Pineapple Support if you’re making any money. If your business relies at all on content creators, whether you are a payment processing company, affiliate marketing, whether you’re an adult site broker, you don’t have to be working directly with content creators. You are still making money from them. They’re not commodities. They’re humans. We see far too often that some companies can. It doesn’t matter if they lose some creators on the platform because 10 more are going to take their place. It’s a bad way to look at it. Yeah, it really is. It’s not just one person. It’s their family. It’s them keeping a roof over their heads. It’s feeding the table. This industry is tough. We need to be working together. We need to be supporting each other. We need to show that we really are a community because we have too much bullshit from the external, from the mainstream, from some random walking down the street that thinks that because you’ve been on a fan site that you no longer deserve any kind of love or affection. This is the kind of shit that people are having to listen to. Content creators as a content creator now have so much more control. They are in control. They have the power. They can choose what platforms they’re using. They can choose how much money they choose to give to what companies. They can see if you care about them. It’s important. People talk about it. I was just at the Berlin Porn Film Festival last week. It was spoken about. One of the topics there was should off-com or someone was talking about reports on all adult platforms to show how they care about and protect the creators that are registered with them. Is this a good idea? I think hell yeah. Because it would certainly put a lot of the larger companies in that place that do not give back to the community that really should be. They should. They should be giving to you guys. They should be going giving to FSC. They should be giving to Wood Hall. They need to be giving to the people who support our people. By the way, we are a small company. You guys are the only ones we truly sponsor. A lot of that has to do with, and you and I have talked about this before, my past with mental health and my history and my belief that counseling is so important for people. I had my first counseling session, I believe when I was eight, when my parents were going through a divorce. It’s ingrained. It’s in my brain right there. I’m sure having that, well, as you said, it’s ingrained in you now and being at that age and receiving that support and understanding how important it is. And the tools that you would have learned when you were eight have probably continued to serve you into adult life. Absolutely. Very few children get that benefit. I really thought it was a benefit. I loved my counselor. I remember. And that was damn almost 60 years ago, 59 years ago. Anyway, yeah, I just had a birthday. So, you know, yeah, yeah, people and I want to say that everyone should be supporting pineapple support. If you’re a small company, you can be a small sponsor. If you’re a big company, back up the truck, man, give them a chunk of money because we don’t, we shouldn’t have a waiting list for people who need help. That bothers me. That really bothers me. These companies should be doing something on Giving Tuesday and they should be doing something all the time. And you give our industry a lot of opportunities to help a lot of sponsorship opportunities, a lot of situations where people in our industry can benefit greatly from the association with your organization. So, all I can say is just give. I agree. And you know, it’s so, it’s so easy to give. You know, you can even pay the lowest annual sponsorship is $1,000 a year. That can be paid monthly. If you want to pay $83 a month, we can do that. And you know, $83 a month is hardly noticeable. That’s $275 a day. Come on. That was fast, Bruce. Well, I don’t know if that was exactly right, but it’s probably pretty close. Very good. So, Leia, I’d like to thank you for being our guest again on Adult Site Broker Talk. And I hope we’ll get a chance to do this again soon. Thank you, Bruce. It’s been wonderful talking with you. I appreciate you. I appreciate you. It’s always wonderful talking to you. My broker tip today is part six of How to Buy a Site. Last week we talked about the sales agreement. So now, both you and the seller have signed the agreement. What comes next? There needs to be an escrow setup where you send the money, whether it be a one-time payment or a deposit if you’re going to be making payments. The seller for their part puts the assets of the sale into escrow, namely the domains being sold and any other tangible assets. Your attorney can give you more information on that. We recommend escrow domains for escrows. They’re a firm out of Washington, D.C. and no, they’re not paying me to say this. I just use them, trust them, and am delighted by the work they’ve done for us. Either an escrow agreement will be drawn up by them in the case of a custom escrow, or if it’s a simple one, it can be done right on their website. Then you, the buyer, the seller, and the broker will be contacted by escrow domains with further instructions such as wiring information. The escrow is opened and either the deal closes within a matter of days or an inspection period is allowed. It all depends on what the agreement calls for. Whether you need an inspection period really depends on whether there’s still some information you need to find out prior to the deal closing. Your broker and your attorney can advise you more on this and it’s on a case by case basis. Then the money is transferred as are the domains and the deal is closed. Now in many cases, in fact, most of the time, the seller either stays on board for a period of time to help with the transition or is at least available on an uncalled basis to answer questions. This is something most buyers should ask for. But at this point, you’re pretty much on the website. What do you do now? We’ll talk about that subject more next week. And next week we’ll be speaking with Adam Gins of Layers Accountancy and Adrian Jinkensen of UPEI. And that’s it for this week’s Adult Site Broker Talk. I’d once again like to thank my guest, Leya Tanit of Pineapple Support. Talk to you again next week on Adult Site Broker Talk. I’m Bruce Friedman. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]