The Entrepreneur Behind the Fister

If you asked me a few years ago how I described myself, I probably would have said I was a fister.

It's the skill I spent years developing. It's the thing people know me for. It's the foundation of the work I teach today and the lens through which most people discover me.

As my training business evolved, another identity began to take shape: sex worker.

I was providing intimate services, building relationships with clients, navigating stigma, and learning how to operate within an industry that many people misunderstand. That label made sense too. It reflected a very real part of my work and the experiences I was having.

For a while, I thought those were the two categories that defined what I did.

But over the last year, I've realized there's a third category that sits above both of them: entrepreneur.

The reason I say that is because when I look at where most of my time and energy actually goes, it isn't always spent fisting or providing services. It's spent building.

I build systems, offers, relationships, educational resources, an audience, and ultimately, a business.

The funny thing is that being skilled at fisting didn't teach me how to create a website. Being a sex worker didn't teach me how to manage an email list, publish guides, track inquiries, navigate taxes, attend networking events, or create a marketing strategy.

Those were entrepreneurial skills.

Entrepreneurship also comes with a set of challenges that people rarely see. It's the slow weeks and quiet months when you're still putting in the work, investing in yourself, and showing up even when the results aren't immediately visible. It's knowing that rent is still due, bills still exist, and life keeps moving whether business is thriving or not.

That uncertainty is one of the hardest parts of building something of your own. There isn't a roadmap telling you exactly what to do next or a guarantee that your efforts will pay off. You simply keep building and trust that today's work will become tomorrow's opportunities.

Over the last few months, I've found myself sharing more of the behind-the-scenes aspects of my work online. The networking events, the spreadsheets, the laundromat runs before a busy weekend of sessions, the process of publishing a guide, and even the challenges of payment processors and platform moderation.

What surprised me was how much people resonated with those posts.

I think that's because most people only see the visible part of a business. They see the session, but not the preparation. They see the guide, but not the hours spent researching, writing, editing, formatting, and promoting it. They see the finished product, but not the years of trial, error, uncertainty, and learning that made it possible.

When people tell me, "I could do what you do," I sometimes smile to myself.

Maybe they could.

But which part are they talking about?

The session itself, or the years spent creating everything around it?

Because the infrastructure isn't just the systems and tools. It's the willingness to keep going when there's no guarantee things will work. It's learning skills you never expected to need, from marketing and writing to sales, networking, client communication, operations, and financial management.

Those aren't fisting or sex work skills. They're entrepreneurial skills.

In many ways, they've become just as important as my technical knowledge. Maybe even more important.

Today, I still identify as a fister, and I still identify as a sex worker. Those identities are an important part of who I am.

But when I zoom out and look at the bigger picture, I increasingly see myself as an entrepreneur. Not because that identity replaces the others, but because it's the thing that made the others sustainable.

The fister gave me a specialization.

The sex worker gave me a service.

The entrepreneur gave me a framework for turning both into something real.