Adult Site Broker Talk Episode 195 with Steph Sia of the Podcast Stripped by Sia

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 performer Steph Sia of the podcast Striped by Sia. Would you like an easy way to make a lot of money? Send sellers or buyers to us at Adult Site Broker through our affiliate program, ASB Cash. When you refer business to us, you’ll receive 20% of our broker commission on all sales that result from that referral for life. You can make $100,000 or more on only one sale for some of our listings. Check out ASB Cash.com for more details and to sign up. At Adult Site Broker, we’re proud to announce our latest project, thewaronporn.com. You’ll find articles from industry websites as well as mainstream publications from around the world. 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We anticipate multiple offers for this very rare listing. For more information, contact us at adultscitebroker.com. Now time for this week’s interview. My guest today on Adult Site Broker Talk is Steph Sia of the podcast Stripped by Sia. Steph, thanks for being back with us today on Adult Site Broker Talk. Yay! Excited to be here. Thanks for having me, Bruce. Great to have you back and I appreciate your patience with all of my technical difficulties. Just a little word to all you podcasters out there. Don’t use the encaster. Okay, here we go. Now Steph Sia is a stripper digital content creator and pole dance instructor based in Vancouver, Canada. She is the host of Stripped by Sia, which is a sex worker podcast dedicated to destigmatizing the sex industry by sharing the lived experiences of its workers. Steph is a sex worker of varying mediums, invites different guests onto the show from all corners of the adult industry to provide a transparent approach to the work that we do. Each episode tackles a topic that affects sex workers with the aim to educate those who are and aren’t in our industry as well as humanize and legitimize the important work that we do. And Steph, every Sunday for new episodes, wherever you get your podcasts and on Patreon, you can find her on Instagram @siasstef, on Twitter, Patreon and anchor FM @strippedbysia and on her website, stefsia.com. Now Steph, we spoke the first time over a year ago. What’s been going on with you since then? Oh my gosh, so many things. Yeah, it gets a year ago. So there was a lot of things that has happened between then and now. So I guess starting off with the calendar year got nominated for an AVN award for my favorite adult podcast. Yeah, that was a surprise to me. So start off the new year kind of great. I’m not too jealous. It was a great experience to attend. So that was really cool. Didn’t win, but still an honor to be up there with all the other podcasters and cool porn stars that I look up to. So that was cool. And then I guess I got married in May. Yeah. How about that? That’s kind of exciting. That was a beautiful ceremony, beautiful wedding and then just kind of hung out for the entire summer, just traveled a ton. And what else did I do? Keynoted at a conference, did a lot of guest lectures and research and talking. And now we’re here. Yeah. Yeah. I know trying to contact you and trying to nail you down. It’s been kind of tough because you’ve been traveling a ton. A lot. Yeah, a lot. And then also, I think, yeah, we briefly ran into each other at X-Biz, Miami, like really brief. Yeah. And then it’s hard to catch me. So I’m really glad that we are able to make time for each other now. I know. No kidding. Well, you got married and this wasn’t on my original list of questions, but here we go. How is it being married and being a sex worker? How is that combination for you? Amazingly easy. And I say that because my husband, he was a former client of mine in the fetish world. So he’s been super supportive since day one. Like we never had to have that, oh, we got to have the talk and I got to sit you down and tell you about what I do here to new everything. So he was already there, super supportive about my journey and my career path and the things that we do in this industry. So that’s been great. And post-wedding, going until now, yeah, I’ve been super supportive. I’ve been working a lot. And he’s always just like, oh, how did the work go? How much money did you make? And like, what crazy stories you have for me today. So it’s been great. I can’t, I can’t be thankful enough for him. Do you ever feel like there’s anything you can’t talk to him about when it comes to your work? Honestly, I think I’m an oversharer with him. Really? Yeah, he probably like doesn’t want to hear some of it, like especially like with all the details about all the body parts and fluids and things. He thinks that’s a bit much, but that’s okay. I’m just very transparent. Too much information. Yeah, TMI for sure. Love it. So you’ve been doing your podcast trip by Sia for a while now. How’s it going and what have you got ahead? Yeah, it’s been going great. So four years strong, I think, yeah, the wedding was the first time I like took a break. But other than that, it has been a weekly show and it’s been having so much great momentum. Every year there’s almost some kind of new milestone. So again, last year was the AVN nomination being a thing and having some various brand partnerships. And then this year, I’m just going to XBiz and people are like, "Oh my God, you’re Sia from strip by Sia." And that whole thing was really cool and just has presented me with a lot of really great opportunities this year. I did mention I keynoted at a conference, a sex work conference in October, so that was definitely a highlight for me. And yeah, in terms of what’s in the future, hopefully more paid guest lecturing opportunities. I really want to try to get the word out more and work with the community a bit closer. So that’s kind of what’s on the horizon. I don’t know how I’m going to do that. So we’ll have to bring me on again for a third time and I’ll give you an update. Absolutely. Anytime. Who are some of the recent interviews you’ve had that you’ve really enjoyed? Yeah, I just spoke with last week Ariel Anderson, who is one of the biggest dominatrixes in the UK. She’s very interesting, professional, submissive. She just wrote a book, so just finished reading her book and having her on. I would recommend if you ever need an introduction to her, she’s awesome. A delight to have on. I loved having her on. Other recent people, oh my God, there’s just been so many. So many cool people. Ariel has been like, yeah, I think that was the most recent one that I would definitely rave about because her journey, her stories have just been so interesting. And also maybe I’ll shout out Bella Vendetta from Treasure Cams, who’s a studio owner, but she’s been in the industry for over two decades. So just hearing her expertise in the cam world and the adult industry in general has been very eye-opening and insightful. So those two for sure. Those of us who’ve been in it for a couple of decades like myself, yes, I know it is quite a journey and you definitely have the have the tread come off the tire a little bit. That’s for sure. Talk about advocacy work, which I know you take part in and really believe in. For those of us in this space, what should we be doing to normalize sex work? Talk about it. So shows like this. You know, tweet about it. Talk about it. Normalize that in your conversation. That is one way of really starting up a discussion. Whether it’s good or bad, I think any kind of press is good press, but just kind of questioning things. I know for myself, I’ve really tried to be a critical thinker when it comes to the work that I’m involved with, but also just like marginalization in general. So I think if you start talking about it, that’s already like more of a normalization. You’re already trying to de-stigmatize and educate people, especially for those who are not in this industry or don’t have a better understanding of it. If someone says something that was actually incorrect or like an assumption or stereotype, I like to stop that person right there and just like, actually, where does that come from? Why are you saying that? Like actually, it looks like this or actually, their realities are this. So I just find every opportunity possible to be point to educate folks. And by doing that, you de-stigmatize and hopefully that person will have a takeaway and a better understanding of the work that we do. I notice this with all the negative publicity the industry gets and all of these laws that they’re trying to pass to ban porn, to make it so hard for people to come onto sites with these very, very difficult age ID laws. What they’re doing is they’re really trying to get rid of our industry. And unfortunately, not only the politicians, but the people out there, their image of our industry is just so negative because they don’t have a clue, do they? No, they don’t. They really don’t or they have like a really stereotypical depiction of what sex workers do or what or who they are. And oftentimes, those stereotypes are actually really negative and often inaccurate. So again, I really just try to correct as much as I can because most of the people have probably never talked with or experienced a sex worker before. So it’s a lot of things that’s kind of built up in their mind or things that they see on TV. Exactly movies. Yeah, could be problematic. Big time. You like to talk about collaboration over competition in our community. What does that look like for you? Yeah, for well, for myself, like I really like to work with the community and work and engage together as a cohesive unit, just because, you know, akin to what we’re just talking about, there are some people that are against sex work in general. So instead of like working against us, like why don’t we try to work together? And of course, like within our industry, there’s so much like there can be. And I’m just saying this out loud because there is like a hierarchy or a phobia against like other sex workers that’s still very present. And that itself, that kind of behavior, that kind of thinking is also super negative and doesn’t do any of us justice. So instead of like, yeah, like trying to work independently or being isolated and thinking that everyone is a competition, maybe try to like take a step back and try to learn from others, learn from the community. And I myself have learned so much in like the past four years that I’ve been doing this show just because like I just never claimed to be an expert on anything. I’m not. I’m really not an expert on anything. You’re becoming one. Slowly, maybe. Huge imposter syndrome, but sure. Right. Yeah. So I think it’s really, really a good idea to try to work together as much as we can and kind of bind together. It’s, it makes us stronger in the long run. Absolutely. And I think just the term sex worker, which used to be reserved for just prostitution. Okay. And now it’s used by creators. It’s used by really everyone. I mean, I consider myself one. And you know, I think that just that alone has definitely bound our industry more and more together where before the creators and the porn stars were like, oh no, we’re not like that. Okay. And now everybody kind of is one. Yeah. I still think that there are like, you know, little divides between that. Generally speaking, I think if you are talking from a creator to like sex worker to sex worker, if I’m just going to use it that way, I think in general, like term and also just us working together, I think we do in certain ways, like see each other as equals. I think just like major corporations and stuff can group us in certain categories and that can also further create a divide. That’s just kind of what I was referring to. But for the most part, I feel like in the end, we’re all kind of whores. You know, I’ve always been, of course, I’m a man. So what can I say? You can be man, whore, Bruce. Yeah, big time, big time. And I live in Thailand. So I’m really branded. Okay. We always like to remind everyone that sex work is work. So how do we legitimize and humanize sex workers? Yeah, I mean, treating the work as work, looking at it as work, those are great steps. And like what we said earlier too, just talking about it and actually asking good questions about the work it is we do, I think that all counts. Because at the end of the day, again, like with these negative stereotypes and, you know, people’s perceptions of what sex work is, it’s almost like that butt, those butt jokes, you know what I mean? Like, oh, you know, if the world ends and I’ll just become like a stripper or I’ll just start an only fans, that kind of attitude is what I’m referring to. Like this very light, it’s very non serious. The people that are in this industry, we do actually take it pretty seriously because it is our like what we do for a living. And it is, there’s a lot of stuff that you don’t see that goes on your feed or online that we don’t display. So what you see is a finished product, but there actually is like a ton of work that goes on behind the scenes. A lot of it really monotonous, really boring, like back any type of stuff and lots of editing that no one ever gets to see. And those hours and hours of time that we put into that, I don’t know, people forget about that kind of stuff. They just don’t know. Yeah. Yeah, they really don’t have a good grasp or this of like the scope of work that we do. Yeah, they just think you’re looking into your iPhone and you’re doing whatever and let’s face it, it’s a lot more than that. I mean, yeah, editing, I mean, that takes a long time. I mean, audio editing takes a long time to the point that I just stopped doing it and hired a very excellent editor. Yes. Yeah, I just got to the point where I was like, I don’t want to do this anymore. Just pass it on. And I’m not that good at it. You know, he’s good at it. So there you go. He’ll enjoy hearing that. Hi, Jed. Okay, so many people don’t believe that those of us doing sex work are even really human like them. Talk a little bit about that. Oh, okay. And the humanization aspect of it. Yeah. I mean, well, you know, when you compare, again, like people compare, or people don’t compare actually. People don’t compare like sex work to like a quote unquote real job or like a nine to five job. They see it as like maybe a hobby thing, a part time thing, side hustle. And maybe for some of them, it is like that’s what people do. Like for me, like some of my gigs are side hustles and that’s fine. But like they don’t view it as like a legitimized career. And that’s where I think a lot of the misunderstanding and problems can actually start. For example, there’s so many questions that people ask sex workers that like, you know, I would never ask someone about their job. How much money do you make like coming into your work and asking to bargain or like that’s so expensive or is that your rate and like just stuff like that. Like if you walk into a restaurant and be like, it’s too expensive in here and you try to like barter down the price, like you would never do that. Or you like wouldn’t question a doctor and how he is doing his job. Why are you questioning sex worker? How we operate and how we set our prices and stuff like that. Like there’s so many double standards that come with this community, with this industry, this line of work that there’s so many double standards that are present there that really dehumanizes us because people see us as like replaceable. People see us as disposable or like subhuman kind of attitudes, which is not great. But unfortunately our reality. Yeah. Yeah, it’s not fun. No, not at all. Whatever your experience has been like with people who don’t really look as sex workers as human. My experience? Oh gosh. Oh man. I mean, just the comments and some of them, I guess they’re trying to seem like they care, but usually not really. I remember like a person when I first embarked on this industry 10 years ago as a sugar baby. And I was talking about like, I used to call like the sugar baby part of the industry like the sugar bowl. And that was just like commonplace. And I remember this person, also another woman told me that’s not an industry. And I’m just like, seriously? I’m like, really? Do you have any idea how much money? Yes. And that still shakes with me today because I’m just like, look lady, like that’s where the oldest profession in the books here. Like people are trying to eradicate us where we’re not going anywhere. And yeah, I mean, there’s so many different laws and like legislation, especially like here in Canada and also the US obviously too. In the world too, like even in Thailand, I’m sure. Prostitution’s not legal. I mean, it’s illegal, you know, which everybody goes, you’re kidding. I go, nope, it’s illegal. They’ve talked about decriminalization, but it hasn’t happened yet. Yeah. And like here, like we have the Nordic model here in Canada. Yeah. They’re giving giving sex workers, you know, benefits and things like that. And they have that in Canada, right? No, we don’t. We don’t. We know. I mean, we still pay taxes obviously on stuff like that. But like a lot of the times like sex worker, they’re exempt from any kind of like benefits and stuff like that. So it’s not great. Like the Nordic model, it just it criminalizes like the purchase of sex. So then by doing that, you’re just pushing all the work underground, making it more dangerous for sex workers to thrive. It’s like what Fosta Sesta did in the US, which I’m sure you’re very familiar with. It just made it more dangerous for sex workers because they couldn’t properly vet their clients on legitimate sites. Exactly. The same thing. There’s lots of parallels there for sure for what’s happening in the USA, what’s happening in Canada and what they’re trying to do. Because I think Maine was trying or was trying to pass or did pass the Nordic model. I know that Vermont is trying to push for Decrem. There’s each state is different. Which is. Yeah, which is weird. I get tired of it. The US is so screwed up. It’s not even funny. It was amazing here how quickly they legalized pot or actually decriminalized pot in Thailand. I mean, it was like fast and it’s like the US. Some states allow medical, some states allow recreational, some states don’t allow it at all. Federally, it’s illegal. It’s like, God. Can’t cross state lines with that. So messed up. So incredibly messed up. And yeah, with sex work, it’s the same thing. I don’t see it happening in the US. The US is way too backwards. I could see it happening in Canada, but I don’t see it happening in the US. I could see decriminalization here in Thailand. It almost has to happen just because there’s so much sex work here. Right. That’s another topic too. I mean, that’s a huge thing. And like sex tourism is a whole big thing there. We’re trying to say that sex tourism is bad for the image of Thailand. I’m like, give me a break. If it wasn’t for sex tourism, you guys would have like half the money you have. So get over it. Talk about what you call the imposter syndrome and the validity of this for micro creators all the way up to huge influencers. I briefly mentioned it earlier too. Like imposter syndrome. Yes. Yeah. I mean, for myself personally, like sometimes I just like most of the time I just don’t know what the hell I’m doing. And sometimes I wonder like, oh, how did I get here? How did I get some sort of success? But it’s exactly that. It’s a lot of like questioning yourself and not believing in yourself. It’s not sometimes maybe it’s a confidence thing, but also just like the disbelief that, okay, like maybe I’m actually doing something right. Maybe I’m actually more successful than I am or maybe I could actually do blank. Maybe I can actually do this. So that is definitely very apparent in our industry for sure. And especially like when we’re in this micro creator mode or phase or wherever we’re at and trying to like, again, comparison competition and stuff too. Like that also is all part of the cycle in my opinion. And it’s hard because our industry is very saturated. There’s a lot of people in this business doing the same thing that might be in the same niche as us. Maybe you’re doing the same fetishes and the same clips and all this kind of stuff. So sometimes it can be really hard to try to stand out and try to admit that, okay, maybe I’m doing okay. Maybe I’m doing all right. I can confirm that. I can confirm that you’re doing pretty darn good. You also have a quote unquote real job. So how are you able to balance your sex work life with your straight work life and do the people in your straight work know about your sex work? Okay. Answering backwards. Yes, they are very aware of the work that I do and they think is awesome. Like I was telling one of my clients and not all my clients know, but like this client I’ve worked on her. I basically build e-learning courses for this person, do their additional marketing, email campaigns, etc. All online stuff. Anyways, I’m almost like, oh yeah, like stuff works on my email campaigns. When she’s at the strip club, which is true. And I think it’s hilarious, but also like, I mean, trying to balance it is an interesting juggle laying up. Yeah. So that’s why it’s really hard to catch me sometimes because like my schedule can be pretty regimented. Yeah. I really can be really busy. I’m up every day at five. So I try to sleep. I’m trying to sleep earlier than midnight now. Yeah. You’re just a beautiful thing. It’s not sustainable, but you know, I’m trying to like do everything that I can right now because like for me it’s important because well, one, I actually still really enjoy doing a lot of that work. But also too, I’m still wanting to keep clients and keep working as much as I can in the quote-unquote vanilla world because you know, one day I might be exiting this industry at some point. So I want to make sure that like I am creating some cushions for myself and also like maintaining my skills and stuff too. But I mean, to answer your question, it’s all about prioritizing and good time management. You know, having to say no to some things, but you know, now like each year I get older and older. I’m very okay saying no to people, especially when it comes to like my health and trying to okay, I really got to finish this. I don’t want to like be pulling it all in later tomorrow. So just trying to find that balance is honestly, it’s fine now, but there are some certain times where things can get hairy and shit hits the fan. Absolutely. As with any job though. As with any career. So I get it. You ever had a client of yours that didn’t know about your sex work discovery that your sex work? Yes. Yes. But in the end, he was okay with it, but like he worked in, he worked and had a background in like law enforcement and background checks and stuff like that. Actually I studied criminology and this was a criminology related job that I did in relation to my like education. This is a few years ago, but he found out about it and he’s like, but he actually approached me about it and said, it was like, Hey, like I Googled you and I don’t exactly hide it. It’s all out there. So I’m not trying to hide anything, but you know, he found it and that’s totally fine. And he’s like, I’m okay with what you do. It’s fine. I just want to let you know that I know and that, you know, you’re safe. Nothing to worry about here. Excellent. That’s a good feeling. Yeah. Talk about the war on porn in America and throughout the world. At first everyone said this is just like in the past, but I don’t know. I think something’s different this time. The assaults are more frequent and unrelenting. What are your views on it? Gosh. There’s a moral panic about porn. There’s a big moral panic and because like morality lies so much and is so, it can be so embedded in relation to the adult industry. What I mean by that is just like, there’s so much, you know, porn is bad. Sex work is bad. Like that kind of evangelical groups type of preachy nest that’s happening. So I think, you know, there are some things I have to agree with and what parts I would agree that like would be that, you know, porn getting into the hands of children I think is bad. 100%. But everything else. Yeah. Cause like, you know, they’re not adults. They don’t know what that is or what reality is. They don’t have any media literacy training as children. They don’t know what’s real. What’s fake. So I understand like for me, yeah, porn getting in the hands of children and stuff like, I don’t, obviously I don’t support that. And you know, you won’t find many in our industry or any that I’ve found in our industry. You don’t agree with that. Yeah. Right. I just feel like, no, that’s like, that’s sure. That’s like, everyone would agree with that. But most things, everything else though, like when you’re dealing with two consenting adults, then why should there ever be another argument on that? Does there have to be any discussion beyond that? No. So for me, like porn is great. It’s created many jobs for people. Yes. It’s very financially viable and a lot of people enjoy it. So for me, it’s just like, why can’t you just look at this as like a real career choice that people are choosing to do? But also, I guess it’s that whole complication with human trafficking that people also get up and arms about and also why the whole foster sesta. It’s not even close. Not even close. Not even close. So it’s frustrating when I hear individuals bringing that up and mixing everything together. It’s just like, actually, like, let’s let’s go back to this. It’s between two consenting adults. That’s what it needs to start to end at. Yeah. And it’s amazing what people will believe. You just throw the two words sex trafficking into anything and you’ve got moral outrage. And the politicians know that. Yes. Yeah. And that’s another whole thing too, adding that to their political agenda and to and how they want to like, quote unquote, crack down on that. And I’m just like, you are probably the biggest consumers. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. It must be real. Yeah. Like that moron who’s the speaker of the house now. He’s a piece of work. You work as a stripper. So why do you like doing that? Yeah. Well, I love performing. That is like, I love dancing. I love performing from a crowd. Maybe it’s also goes hand in hand with me being like a exhibitionist as well. So it just kind of it just kind of makes sense. And that’s why I like I love camming and stuff too, because I love being on and showing off and having fun on stage. And for stripping in particular, though, there is a certain like air of like creativity that I can do, especially with shows are create and the sensuality that goes on stage and the ability to connect with the audience. That’s why I love doing it. And obviously, yeah, money can be good, but I just love like live performances. You just like cannot beat, you know, there’s some kind of magical that comes with it. And it’s not exactly the same as when you’re like recording something or watching it back in video, you know, it’s like music. There’s nothing like a live performance. Yeah, I was just about to say that like a concert 100 percent. Recording this in December, I’ll be out in LA for almost two weeks in January and I’ll be going to a live jazz show almost every night. Well, I got to get my fix in because this is a desert. Big time desert. It’s really funny. A Patei and parent Pateia, they had a quote unquote jazz festival and the headliner was Kenny G. And yeah, I’ve seen him before and I’ve met him before and it’s like, yeah, I met him in an elevator in Hollywood one time back when he was just starting to become popular. And the thing was, there was nobody else on the bill that was worth the shit. They were all type performers and all that stuff. I’m a big time snob when it comes to my jazz. And I wasn’t going to go through all the trouble of going over there just to hear Kenny G. It was like, nah, that’s as good as it gets. It’s over here. So I was just looking forward to January. That was like three weeks ago. If you could change one thing about sex work, what would you change and why? Oh my gosh, that’s such a big question. With sex work, what would they change? I mean, I would love to see sex work decriminalized. What would it change? I don’t want to change much, but like in terms of the community, I love the community. But yeah, everything around it that governs sex work, I would like to see some change with that, at least where I am in North America. I would love to see more agency given to the workers because we deserve it. And it’s really hard to do our jobs sometimes without the fear of criminalization or say if I go to the States, being banned for life because that’s happened to some people that I know and just going without fear and also just having people like maybe akin to what we were seeing earlier in the conversation, just having everyone respect what we do and not question it. It can be very exhausting to emotionally educate people about this sometimes. Very, very tiresome. So I just would hope that it’s just like one day if we ever get into conversation with somebody like, "Oh, what do you do? Oh, I’m a sex worker. Okay, that’s cool." Then you just move on to your next conversation and drink some wine or whatever. But it’d be cool for that one day to be a reality, hopefully in this lifetime, but we’ll see. If somebody asks you what you do, do you say I’m a sex worker or do you say anything else? Yeah, sometimes I feel like I’m so proud about that. Sometimes I definitely get some weird looks because it’s just like, "Oh, you sometimes just got to read the room." But yeah, if I don’t know anybody or if it’s not an environment that I deem as quote unquote safe, I’ll just say my vanilla job like, "Oh, I’m a marketing consultant." And it’s always interesting at family stuff too because they know of to an extent of what I do, but it’s always talking about the boring vanilla stuff. They won’t ever ask me about like, "Yeah, keep the peace," I guess. I think it’s probably best. That’s usually the best. Is there any aspect of sex work that you haven’t done that you’d like to do? Yeah, I mean, sometimes I have a dream about being in porn, but yeah, I just think that would be very interesting and fun, but also a lot of hard work as well. Because yeah, I’m not sure if that would happen in my lifetime, but it would be very, very cool. Honestly, yeah, I think that’s just something I haven’t done professionally, professionally. As a creator, yes, collaborations are fun. That’s been great. But I don’t know. I just feel like I know so many people in the industry now and it’s just like, "It’d be fun to fuck your friends." I’ve done that before. I didn’t call it porn, but I’ve definitely fucked my friends before. I had fucked friends when I was younger. So one thing that I wondered about, you talked about keynoting some conferences. I mean, what is a typical presentation when you do a keynote? What do you talk about? Yeah, well, this one was specific to this conference, so they had a topic in mind. They’re like, "You can go anywhere with this." So basically, there was a conference that happened up here in Canada, a provincial conference called Response Resilience and the organizers, which I sit on the board for because of this, the charity for sex workers called Living Community, they put on this conference. They had asked me to keynote on the topic of sex work as a labor issue. They’re like, "You can go anywhere with this topic. You can go anywhere." So the other Co-Keynote did it specifically with talking about unions and the labor movement. And then I piggybacked on that. And for the second half, I keynoted about why sex workers are very employable people, why we’d be amazing fit to the labor force. We have so many different transferable skills for multitaskers, rehearsers, and stuff like that. For this particular conference, yes, it was a bit more catered to that particular topic. But preparation for that was interesting because, again, it was going into that whole imposter syndrome thing that we talked about and me not feeling like, "Oh, I don’t know if I should like, I don’t know if I feel good enough for this." And also just me questioning, am I already seeing a lot of things that people know of? But in the end, it was well received. People really were able to resonate with it. It was the first keynote of the day of the entire conference. So I really wanted to uplift and empower people to get them all fired up and geared up for the next two days of conferencing. And that was kind of my intention for that. What would you say if you keynoted a conference that was a vanilla conference? Oh, yeah. I mean, that would be a dream. Well, that’s something we tried to do. So I also am a consultant with PS Group. So yeah, Carly David, myself, Siri Doll. I had Carly on the podcast. Yeah, Carly’s awesome. Yeah, she is. You got to get her back on, actually. You must. Yeah, you got to ask her about this because we pitched ourselves. It was me, Carly David, Lexi Luna, and Siri Doll. We got together to try to pitch ourselves for South by Southwest, which is a huge tech music innovation, entrepreneurship conference. That’d be perfect. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that would have been in March of, I guess, when this comes out, March of this year. But we did not make it in because it’s insanely competitive to get in. And it would have been really big. So we had a little prep for a year to just get their pitch right and stuff too. So a vanilla conference would be great. Yeah, there’s always going to be another opportunity. So maybe we tackle something smaller and work our way up. Who knows? But yeah, I feel like, I mean, I haven’t keynoted at any other vanilla conferences. I have guests lectured in universities talking about this. So that to me is kind of vanilla. Yeah, I don’t think that conversation strays too much actually in comparison to the keynote that I just delivered, because I am really trying to make an impact and trying to get people to think about sex work differently and get them to ask questions and be engaged with the topic. So I don’t try to hide anything or sugarcoat anything. I try to be as real as I get. So what’s ahead for Steph? See you. What’s ahead? So that’s my question. I’m still trying to map out my 2024. So I can go as far as the first quarter in this year. I mentioned earlier that I was looking at really getting more in touch with the community, especially the community here in BC and in Canada where I am. So I spent the last year and a half to almost two years sitting on a couple of boards and just learning more about sex work and sex work in these particular organizations. And now being in that and having volunteered for a couple of years, I am really wanting to try to give more back to the community. So I’m launching this campaign basically end of January or maybe at this point beginning of February to highlight sex worker businesses or nonprofits or charities that help benefit sex workers. So I’m kind of doing that by giving us some free airtime and some ad space on my podcast because I feel like sex worker businesses are more likely to purchase from sex worker owned businesses. So it’s kind of like a match made heaven as they should. So right now I’m really wanting to connect people that way and also just help out small businesses as well. And then going to maybe a couple more adult industry related events in the new year as well. I felt like last year was my first year of like getting in touch with the industry events and I thought they were so useful. So I want to be able to connect more and especially in person as well. So those are kind of like next steps for me in the immediate like in the new year. And then honestly, Bruce like in a couple of years probably start a family. So I really want to keep this kind of momentum going right now because I feel like my life was going to shift in a few years. So that’s kind of where I’m at. Very cool. Well I look forward to hearing about it Steph. I’d like to thank you for being our guest again today on Adult Sight Broker Talk and I really hope we’ll get a chance to do it again very soon. Thank you. Thank you. My broker tip today is part three of how to buy a site. Last week we talked about finding the right site to buy. Once you find it, what do you do? Once you’ve either reached the broker of the site or the seller, review the information about it. The broker should provide you with the following. A profit and loss statement of at least three years that’s up to date. If it’s June and they give you financials only through the end of the previous year, you need to see what the site is doing now, not last year. If it’s a pay site, get a username and password for the site so that you can review the content. Ask how often the site is updated. Get some history on the site, how long has it been in business, the story behind the site and why the seller wants to sell. Get an inventory of the content and how much of it has current technologies. Find out if all the content is exclusive to that site. Ask the seller if the content has ever been on VOD or DVD. See if there are any clip stores the content is on. Find out how much the content costs to produce and what the current cost to production is. Very importantly, see if this operation can run without the owner. Do they do the shooting themselves or do they hire someone to do it? And if there’s an outside producer, will that person continue to provide content for the site? Find out how many new joins and rebuilds there are a day. Ask them what’s the retention rate on the site. And find out if they do advertising on the site and where they get their traffic. Ask for Google Analytics access so you can see where the traffic comes from. This information will give you the opportunity to truly evaluate what it is you’re buying. Then if everything looks good to you and you want the site, it’s time to make an offer. Only you can decide what the site is worth to you. If you’re working with a broker, say, oh, I don’t know, adult site broker, of course your broker can help you determine the value of the site. We’ll talk about this subject more next week. And next week we’ll be speaking with author and men’s coach, Erik Everhard. And that’s it for this week’s adult site broker talk. I’d once again like to thank my guest, Steph Sia. Talk to you again next week on adult site broker talk. I’m Bruce Friedman. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [BLANK_AUDIO]