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 Ash Miller of the Cupcake Girls. I'm proud to announce that Adult Site Broker Talk has been nominated for the prestigious AVN Awards as Favorite Adult Podcast. My thanks to AVN and those who nominated us, but most of all, you the listeners. To vote, go to avn.com forward slash awards forward slash voting and choose Favorite Adult Podcast. You can vote daily through January 24th. I'll be in Hollywood for XBizLA January 12th through the 15th. I hope to see many of you there. If you'd like to sit down and discuss business, contact me at adultsitebroker.com. We're proud to announce our latest project, thewaronporn.com. You'll find articles on age verification laws and other attacks on our industry. It's to raise awareness of our industry's plight in the war on porn. You'll find all that and more at thewaronporn.com. Now time for our properties of the week for sale at AdultSight Broker. We have a premium AI companion platform focused on emotional realism and deep memory. Users interact with lifelike companions that remember every detail and respond with real emotion. We have a network of BDSM subreddits. It has over 1.49 million users, over 3.8 million posts, and almost 45,000 comments. There's a porn picture site with both a Web3 and a Web2 domain. The keyword of the domains is one of the most globally recognized in search terms in the world. porn. We have a buyer who's looking for dating and lifestyle sites in Europe. They would also consider other geos. We're offering a strip chat white label. The average user spends 24 minutes on the site. We have a network of interracial reality hardcore sites. The main site has reality hardcore porn with amateur girls as well as some porn stars. There's a unique platform that bridges the gap between mainstream social link services like Linktree and adult content creators on platforms like OnlyFans. They combine a bio link with the ability to send virtual gifts. We're offering a growing free porn gaming site with adult sex games. The site is owned by one of the top entrepreneurs in our industry. And there's a highly active, organically grown Reddit community centered around the stocking and foot fetish niches. For more information, go to our listings page at adultsitebroker.com. If you have any questions, please contact us on our website. Now time for this week's interview. My guest today on Adult Site Broker Talk is Ash Miller of the Cupcake Girls. Ash, thanks for being with us on Adult Site Broker Talk. Thank you so much for having me today. It's great to be here. It's great to have you. Ash is the interim executive director of the Cupcake Girls, with a mission centered on respect, relationships, and holistic care. Ash is a passionate leader who works tirelessly to empower individuals, dismantle stigma, and advocate for equity and justice. A former school teacher for over a decade, that world was swapped for the sex industry in 2013. Since then, she's navigated life as a dancer and content creator. She believes in building bridges between communities and working to ensure that more people are included in the rooms and conversations where decisions are being made. The Cupcake Girls is a nonprofit organization based in the USA, offering nonjudgmental support, trauma-informed holistic resources, outreach, and advocacy to sex workers and survivors of sex trafficking. With a vision to eradicate sex trafficking, amen to that, and create safety and empowerment for consensual sex workers, they center on care without an agenda, prioritizing the needs and goals of those they serve. Their team of leaders, mentors, advocates, volunteers, and resource partners provide diverse support with an emphasis on empowering their participants to become mentally, emotionally, physically, and financially balanced and thriving. So, Ash, what inspired you to start your work with the Cupcake Girls? My work actually got inspired on the recommendation of a very near and dear friend of mine, who it was 4th of July several years ago. We were at a pool party, happened to be talking about sex work with several other friends who were also content creators. And this particular friend was like, you know what? I have an organization that you need to know about. I was fresh in town to Vegas and also looking to make connections, and I went ahead and submitted to volunteer with the Cupcake Girls, and that's the beginning of a multi-year relationship at this point. Yeah. Can you share more about the mission and vision of the Cupcake Girls? Absolutely. As a general statement, our mission is really one that is about meeting folks exactly where they are at. We are very unique in the work that we do, and we are looking to create a world and do everything we can to see sex trafficking just not exist anymore. Like, poof, it's gone. And in doing that, we recognize the importance as well of recognizing sex workers' rights and promoting rights over rescue, connecting folks to resources so that they can actually live their very best life without that life being prescribed to them by us or determined by us. Right. Or by anybody else, for that matter. Super true. Because there's just so many people trying to tell sex workers where to be, what to do, how to do it, so on and so forth. Talk a little bit about sex work versus sex trafficking. There's just so much confusion among the public about this. And that's because of the agendas of many, especially the political and religious leaders. Basta Sesta was a result of that. Obviously, FOSTA-SES has been a horrible law for sex workers. It's been a horrible law for the adult industry. And it's really been a horrible law for everyone concerned. It's doing nothing to help sex trafficking. In fact, it has made sex trafficking more able to happen. It really has. It has just turned everything upside down in those regards. And in the current climate, it's turning into even greater censorship beyond the adult industry. It's going after books. It's going after erotica. It's going after anything that could remotely hint at sexuality. And it's just such a heartbreak in earnest. Just truly, truly is mind-boggling to think about how we've gotten to the place that we have. Yeah. Obviously, this administration, not meaning to get political, but I will, this administration and the many people around, what's his name, are very, very, they seem to just be anti-sex, don't they? They really do. They seem to be very wrapped up in the notion, like a whole series of notions, including the facts that seems to be rooted in maybe that sex is not enjoyable for them, if I had to make a prediction in that regard. And they get so stuck in that kind of thought process that they can't imagine it being enjoyable for anybody. And this turns into them not imagining anyone choosing to want to engage in any pocket of the sex industry. And so they automatically do this very wrong equation of if it has to do with sex, it has to be trafficking. It has to be because they were forced into it. They were coerced into it. They are there against their will. And it just cannot be something anyone would ever choose, especially in the work that we do with the cupcake girls. We're really out to help educate as many people as we can that sex trafficking is indeed in those realms of force and coercion and removing people's right to choose and right to have access to any of the income that comes in from it. Whereas consensual sex work is all about that choice and is rooted in that choice that says, I am here to do this thing, whether I find it enjoyable or I feel that I'm good at it. The reasoning to us at the Cupcake Girls really doesn't matter. It's about the choice. And it's about someone choosing to say, this is how I would like to spend my time and how I would like to earn an income. And this job deserves to be treated like any other job. It deserves to be respected and it deserves to have options for healthcare, for example. And it deserves to be seen as a valid source of income when someone is applying for, oh, I don't know, a mortgage or an apartment to rent and you need to provide those pay stubs. These are all great examples of the rights that we are looking to do what we can to educate the public around in terms of why sex work is work. Yes. Financial discrimination is bad no matter what. It's heartening to see that there are actually bills in Congress against financial discrimination. Absolutely. And it's exciting to see more organizations, more individuals starting to connect those dots and willing to stand up against things like financial discrimination. There's a little light of a ray of hope there in that regard. Discuss the misconceptions people have, you touched on it, about consensual sex work and sex trafficking. I mean, one of the ways I often describe this to folks is so often when we hear sex trafficking, when the public hears sex trafficking, there's kind of this default envisioning of what I actually term all the time the Liam Neeson movie experience. Where it's just, it's absolutely, it feels terrifying to the person that we're seeing being trafficked, right? They have no choice. They have no voice. These things are being done to them and against their will, 9.9 times out of 10. That's where people's brains tend to go when they hear sex trafficking. And even that is a misconception and is wrong. Sex trafficking can be so much more nuanced than that. It can be a simple case of rooted in trying to help somebody that that individual may care very deeply for, may love. An example we commonly use in the Cupcake Girls in our education is around you have a family member that gets sick and there's a sudden need to be like, how can I bring in additional income? And especially in this day and age, after OnlyFans got so popular in 2020, that's another quick dot that people's brains like to connect. They're like, oh, you know, I'll make an OnlyFans account. Or there's the joke that's often not a joke on like, oh, I'll sell feet pictures, right? Like, here's an easy answer to bring in money. And there are some folks who can find success in that. And then that money comes in, but that money is also immediately being handed over to somebody else. And it's not actually something that they're getting any say in what's happening. And this is one of those real nuanced places that trafficking can be occurring without anyone actually beginning to connect those dots until they hear it presented this way and they stop and think about it. Now, I do want to acknowledge that there is often a cycle that can happen in the sex industry between trafficking and consensual work. Like folks can be in that bad spot and we can see trafficking going on and then somewhere a table will turn and kind of there's a switch that flips and times are good and the money's coming in and they're able to have access to those funds and they're able to set it aside or they're able to upgrade their car or get better insurance, put their kids in a nicer school style of thing until a bad time happens again. And we see that loss of empowerment and that loss of financial stability and that loss of voice in where their income is even going. And unfortunately, those things can happen over and over again. That's another step where we look to speak with sex workers as well to be like, hey, how can we connect you to resources to make sure that you are empowered, that you have a good setup, that you have access to who you want to be talking to, from a financial advisor to a mechanic that's not going to get cranky about where your income is coming from to a lawyer to help you, whether that's from immigration to helping to protect the fact that you deserve the right to be a parent and a sex worker at the same time. Yeah, no, absolutely. You think anybody benefited more from the pandemic than OnlyFans? Oh, I don't know. I mean... I know the guy, Leo. I know the owner. If you look at the numbers, there was a lot of benefit there that happened. I'm sure Leo thinks his lucky stars for the pandemic. That's all I can say. I've heard that it's for sale and I saw a number and I went, oh my God. I want that listing. I want that listing. Anyway, maybe I'll get it eventually. How do you approach providing nonjudgmental trauma-informed care? So we definitely, this is a multi-factor approach on our end. A lot of it is rooted in our staff and the training that we seek to provide our staff, whether that is training that is developed in-house, because we've had a beautiful number of folks who come in with great lived experience, great academic knowledge, great street smarts, and kind of combining all of those areas into trainings to help make sure that regardless of what the lived experiences are of our staff, they're able to find connection to folks who come from a different background, who are making different choices, perhaps. And then we go beyond that as well in building out this bedded, trusted network of partners that are going through their own steps in regards to certification and going through interview processes with us before they can sign their agreements to be a partner to offer services to our program participants. So we're looking for trauma-informed care. We're looking for sex worker-informed care, sex worker rights knowledge as well to do what we can to make sure that any connection we are providing to someone is coming in with a background of understanding the situations that person may be coming from. Now, you guys are Las Vegas based. And when I talked to your predecessor, Amy, we talked a lot about Las Vegas. How wide reaching are your services? Well, this is actually a real hot topic these days. I was actually just in Minneapolis over the weekend and got to share with a whole new group of people who were not very familiar with our work. And a common misconception was that you either need to be in Vegas or in Portland, which is our other physical branch location. I didn't know about Portland. Great town. It is a great town. Very different from Vegas. Both great towns in very different ways. Yeah, they vote different. Oh, yes. Oh, boy. How do they do? But the reality is our program participants, the folks we are connecting to resources, they can be located anywhere in the U.S. On average, any given month, we are connecting folks in no less than 30 different states to resources. Okay, that's awesome. Are you doing any work together with Swap? We do have some really good ongoing partnerships with Swap, with New Moon. We've got connections with Suede, kind of all working to collaborate and build our networks and figure out how we can best assist each other in very similar missions and coming at it with very similar values and certainly working with very similar demographics. Yeah, I just had Phoenix Kaleida on a little bit ago. Yeah, she was fantastic. Wonderful. Yeah. I definitely do a lot of my episodes about sex worker advocacy. That's something that's very near and dear to my heart. So the podcast has always been a real ally of sex workers and how they get by because that's very important. It is. And I can't speak for everybody universally, but I know I can speak for the Cupcake Girls and saying we deeply appreciate having this space to be able to talk about the work that sex workers are doing, what it looks like and why it's so important that we make changes across the board from addressing stigma that is faced in regards to sex work or in regards to trafficking survivors, because they face a different kind of stigma that is still related to sex and having had sex in relation to money for any reason by choice or by force. Sure. Can you talk about some of your biggest challenges as the executive director? Oh, it's really funny because the very first answer that pops into my brain absolutely connects into the current political climate that we're facing in the States and just seeing the destruction of support services across the board. We were already considered to be rather niche in the support that we were giving and how we were able to give it. And unfortunately, we're just going to continue to see a greater need for support systems to be figuring out how to work with one another as we kind of watch the outside world falling apart and losing a lot of the existing structures that were there. So that's definitely very top of my mind is the how to connect with other organizations across the board so that we can all be coming together for a community care model and lifting each other up and making sure that as many people need access to resources are being put in contact with those resources. Yeah. We're recording this on September 3rd. It's hard for me to even believe that he's been in office for less than eight months. It's just around less than eight months. It's just beyond me. It's almost like dog years. It really is. Oh, I feel you and I agree entirely. Yeah. What role does community support play in your organization's success? At the end of the day, this is truly one of the hearts of our mission and how we work. It is all about from breaking down the stigma to being able to open conversations and open doors. It's really hard to open doors for a large group of people if you're not able to turn to community partners, because every now and then we get folks that we may not actually be the best fit for. And if we can't give them a good suggestion of where else to connect to and who else to connect to to find the right support that they're looking for in that moment, then we're only adding to the problem instead of adding to the solution. Sure. I would imagine Pineapple support is an ally. Absolutely. The amazing work that they are doing in regards to mental health and specifically mental health for sex workers and coming into that with that understanding of what it means to be a sex worker. Yeah. Leah and her organization is completely amazing. Completely amazing. That's another real friend of the show. What does anti-racism mean to you personally and in your work? For me, anti-racism is coming at it from, number one, the approach of acknowledging the privileges that choices that weren't ever mine to make have afforded me. I am a white woman in this world, and I actually had no choice in that, it turns out. Yeah, I'm a white man. I don't have a choice either, so there you go. But being able to recognize for all the places that I may struggle with privilege as a woman, as someone who is disabled, as someone who is queer, as someone who is a sex worker myself. Those are not pockets that we typically describe as places of privilege. But being white alone is already a privilege even in each of those different demographics. Because undeniably, people do approach me differently when I'm having a problem. whether I'm looking for their help or I'm looking for them to listen. The fact that my skin tone is white already sets a different tone in how they respond to me and how well they consider what it is I'm saying and whether or not it is deemed worthy of having their help or having their support or having access to their time or their energy. How about the people of color that you deal with? Do you look at being white as sometimes a bit of a disadvantage too? It can be. It is a place that I do have to sit in a constant state of reflection and make sure that I am being as aware as I can be in as many moments as I can be to make space for the people who don't have that privilege of skin tone, to give as many opportunities as I can to invite them to the table, to put them in the room, and then to not speak for them, to let them speak for themselves about their experiences, their needs, their hopes, their dreams, their troubles, their pitfalls, and to really hold that space and not correct them, to not give them an example of like, well, you know, I heard this way, or I read a book that said this, and to recognize they're being vulnerable with me in a way that is a different sign of trust, simply by skin tone alone. You know what's interesting? Okay. I mean, I'm 67. So I remember a time where race was hardly mentioned. And I'll bring up, maybe I should look back to the Obama administration for that. We elected a black president, one of the proudest days of my life. Okay. I cried because I was sorry my mom wasn't here to see it. First of all, she would have loved the guy. And second, she always had a soft spot for good looking guys. But she would have also been very emotional because, you know, the way I was raised, you're a Jew and there's a lot of people who hate Jews. So, you have no license whatsoever to have any prejudice in your body. Okay. And that's the way I've always approached things. I don't go around saying, well, some of my best friends are black or whatever, because that's ridiculous. But I don't know. I just almost think that race has become sometimes more of an issue in 2025 than it should be. There are a lot of racists out there. There are racists in the White House. But at the same time, I don't think that white people should have to apologize for being white either. You know what I'm saying? I do. I think I can hear pieces of that. And I think there's parts of me that also agree with that. I think where it becomes really tricky, though, is trying to understand the other perspectives that I know, at least in my life and in my experiences, have been put before me where my friends who are not white are saying, you know what, we're not actually asking you to apologize for being white. We also recognize you didn't really get a choice in that. You're just kind of here the same way we're just kind of here. But then taking the time to listen to what they are asking for. And usually in what I'm hearing is they're asking for those opportunities. They're asking for barriers to be removed that have been deliberately put in place to keep them from even getting a chance. Well, yeah. And it's not just right race. It's gender. It's sexual orientation. It's things like prejudice against sex workers. I mean, there's all of these things out there. And while race is important, sometimes I just think it gets highlighted more than it should be. Now, I am not going to sit here and say I have any idea what it's like to be black or Hispanic or gay or trans. You know, I do consider myself a sex worker because I work an adult. And again, being a Jew, I know there's a lot of people that don't like me, especially these days with the whole Gaza thing. And that's gotten a lot worse. And the anti-Semitism is horrific right now. But I just think that in some respects, it gets highlighted more than it should. Because people who are white and who are not racist, I don't know. I just think maybe we need a little more of a pass. I ultimately like to think that what usually happens in those spaces and where there can come across as a lot of aggression from anybody who's not white is it's that experience that it's having spent so much time fighting to be acknowledged and fighting to be heard. And again, while I am a white woman myself, I've also been disabled from birth. And it's in that way, I can relate to some of the overlap in shared experience on the needing to constantly remind people. Oh, handicap rights are so important. And it's just it becomes exhausting at some point. Life is exhausting. Oh, boy, sure is. Social media doesn't help either. I think since social media really came into vogue, it's made everything more difficult. And I think it's kind of brought the race issue and the race baiting back. And it shouldn't. People who are racist are racist. That's not going to change. I'll never be one. Okay. And I don't look down on people who aren't like me. And I think the vast majority of white people are that way. Then again, the question would be, how did Trump get elected? But anyway, that's another story. There's a whole big can of worms there in regards to the different experiences. I know people who voted for him. And I look at these people and I go, well, wait a minute. I don't think of you as a racist, but there's got to be something in there. He's a real good snake oil salesman. I'll sell that. Oh, my God. The best. He's really adept at fine-tuning what he's saying to tap into the emotional response of the people he's trying to talk to. And just across the board that you can't really trust anything that's coming out of that mouth. Oh, my God. Because it's being tailored custom to the exact person he thinks he's looking for. He's a wizard. He got a bunch of blacks and Hispanics to vote for him, for God's sakes. You know, I mean, he's a demon. What can I say? And to get them to vote for him after the first time when he pretty much told everyone what he was going to do the second time, there have been no surprises. Not for many of us. People who have been paying attention. My outer network, yeah, exactly. I've got some folks in my outer network who, like you were mentioning, a lot of us know somebody, at least one somebody, who voted that way. And it's been interesting to see kind of the dawning of just how much snake oil they were sold in that process or how much emotional reactivity was coming out of that. He had a real good sales pitch on the, I'm not a politician. Politicians have been making everything worse for everybody. I'm not a politician. You want me as your choice. No. No, boy, is he a politician. And it would be nice if the Democrats would put up some competition, let's just put it that way, and not anoint somebody who wasn't properly given the job. Let's just leave it at that. You know, I mean, my God, that was so undemocratic. It was unbelievable. Anyway, I digress. How do you balance advocacy and prevention work? You know, in earnest, I'm not sure I have a foolproof answer on this one at this point, especially in light of all the different ways that the world at large feels like it's a dumpster fire right now in that my heart exists in that advocacy and in that doing the steps to use the places that I do have privilege to create space for the folks who don't. And in that, I see the connection for that piece of that work also turning into prevention. The more doors I can help open, the more spaces I can help open is its own version of prevention for the folks who will come after me and mine. Yeah, absolutely. What advice do you have for people who want to get involved in anti-trafficking or in sex work advocacy? I've got slightly different answers on that one. Because first and foremost, anybody looking to get involved in the anti-trafficking realm, My best piece of advice is to thoroughly do your homework of who you're looking to connect to. Read up on them. We see where their ethics are. See what they describe as their morals. And make sure that you're in alignment with that. Because once you start connecting there, it's real hard to turn back. And in regards to sex workers' rights, however, that's the listen to sex workers. First and foremost, that is the biggest piece of advice I can give. It's that concept of don't tell these people that you know better than they do. Listen to what their experiences are. Listen to what they are asking for and then move forward. See what you can do. How can you help? Is that helping to spread educational content? Is that helping to even in your personal life, correct misconceptions that you hear the people around you bringing up or speaking about, right? Like there's so many different ways that we can show up and begin this work that it really just comes down to on either side, listen before you do anything. Yeah, absolutely. Well, and I understand where you were going with that first statement about sex trafficking, because there are a lot of wolves and sheep's clothing out there that are supposedly anti-trafficking organizations and that are taking donations for that. And actually their real goal is to eradicate porn and sex work. Absolutely. There's a whole lot of saviorism that can exist in the anti-trafficking realm. This idea of like, oh, but we, the real answer is that corn, sex work, camming, strip clubs, they have to go away. That's, that's the only way we stop trafficking. And then there's that whole other realm of folks that connect to anti-trafficking because, you know, it's a, it's a clutching of the pearls and a think of the children moment, but we must protect the children. And it's just, it is slightly mind boggling to me, both as someone who was a school teacher, who was an educator for over 10 years, who then made the consensual decision to enter the sex industry. Yeah. You're a dancer, right? I am a dancer. I'm a content creator digitally these days since 2020 myself. Of course. And it's just one of those, it's just kind of the recognition that people need to realize that adults are capable of making decisions for themselves. Sure. Do you dance locally in Las Vegas? I do not at this point. I actually predominantly do private hire style. And that finds me traveling here, there and everywhere kind of based on who's looking for me and how does that line up with my current availability? Excellent. That's good. Can you share a story of someone impacted by the Cupcake Girls? This is one of those that I have sat on the fence thinking about what kind of story to put forward and how best to respect the people who have shared personal stories with me in the work that I've done here. And so my best reflection on this is at least here in Nevada right now, here in Vegas, most importantly, one of the biggest consistent stories we hear from folks that are coming into the office and able to meet with us in person and do things like attend the free store that we run monthly that has a wide range of items in it. everything from household cleaners to personal hygiene products to baby products has actually been a big one lately. But the fact that we are able to offer this every month and folks can come in and they know that we're there and they know that we will do this every month without fail and open the doors and not ask any questions about why they're in need. Not make them prove that they need to be helped. This is something that just has come through time after time after time in so many different voices and so many different ways and so many different things that they may be saying thank you for. But at the heart of it, it really comes down to that we make it accessible and that we don't make them answer a bunch of qualifiers to get that access. Absolutely right. You don't want to be the government. How has your personal journey shaped the way you lead and serve? My personal journey has been a bit of a wild and varied existence in the years that I've been around from my childhood and my younger years and growing up connected to the predominantly gay and lesbian community of West Hollywood in the late 80s and through the 90s. I did lose a family member to AIDS, and I remember that very vividly. And those were some of the first conversations I had. Yeah, I lost friends in the Bay Area. Yeah, those were some of the first conversations I had even around things like cannabis. And that it was a useful tool for this particular family member as their life was going through this kind of very rapid decline. But being connected to the gay and lesbian community really specifically in the sometimes you just have to show up even when it's hard. You know, like there's all the quotes that have become very popular again in 2025 around, you know, you go and you fight all day and you dance all night and you get up and you do it again tomorrow. And it's learning pieces of those balance around everything is going to be hard at some point. And you have to figure out the way to find your joy and to connect to your community and to lean into other people who are sharing pockets of that experience with you just to be able to get through. Right. So like those are the early childhood influences. And then the decade plus spent as a school teacher throughout three different states, actually, in the U.S., California, Colorado and New Hampshire. So three very different states across the U.S. and being able to need to connect to not just my kids in my room, but the families that they were coming from and being able to listen to what needs were of each family and how best could I support them and support their kids and do what I could. That's great life experience. It really was. And honestly, a lot of those skill sets translated really well when switching into the sex industry in terms of needing to listen first, listen before taking action, take in what people are asking for before you try to do anything else. Right. And I won't lie. It's also that ability to keep a pocket of yourself in reserve because you can't take on everybody else's experiences and you can't take on everybody else's problems or their bad day because everybody will have a bad day and they'll come into interaction with you at one point in time and you can hold space for them, but you're not the reason for their bad day. Oh, absolutely. What are your goals for the cupcake girls? The goals, like we've hit on pockets of politics so much in this interview, but certainly a big goal right now is to keep being the organization that we are. We've had 14 amazing years of existence already. And throughout most of that, that's actually seen both of our locations in Vegas and Portland being able to be in this work and be present. And we've seen many evolutions of the Cupcake Girls already in those 14 years. We've molded, we've adapted. We're on a journey of modernizing in many ways. And I want to see this organization get another 14 years plus. I want to see us keep going and keep adapting and keep connecting folks to the resources that they're looking for and keep educating the public about those differences between consensual sex work and sex trafficking and continuing to combine forces with other organizations, with other foundations, with other businesses, with other people one-on-one who can connect into why we do the things we do and why it's so vital that we keep talking and that we keep connecting people together. What you do is very, very vital. By the way, when are you going to have that interim label dropped? Oh, that's going to be fun facts. Again, I won't hide it. I suspect there's some internal bets that are not really bets being placed on that as we speak. But I'm happy to be doing the work and I'm happy to do the work as long as it's beneficial to the org. Well, you sound like the right person. I'm going to give you that. I definitely think you sound like the person to lead the Cupcake Girls forward. How do you and your team address stigma and discrimination? I mean, this one actually feels like a simple answer in earnest, and it's through having conversation. It is through being able to, one of our core values at the Cupcake Girls actually is to communicate courageously. And part of what we mean by that is you have to be able to have the harder conversations. You have to be able to talk about the things that feel sticky or feel complicated and to be able to dive into them with nuance and to dive into them with curiosity about where different folks may be coming from and what their lived in experiences are contributing to every interaction. And certainly all of our staff, myself included, we prioritize respecting lived experience over other versions of knowledge, whether that's academic or hearsay or street smart, but it is really trying to honor in all the ways that we can and acknowledging when we make mistakes in that, because we are all learning together. We are all different versions of imperfect. So being able to have that kind of accountability and celebrate those wins and celebrate those ways that we're able to move forward as much as recognizing when we've made a mistake, when we've said something wrong, when we didn't understand because we didn't know. Absolutely. What keeps you motivated and inspired in this line of work? You work really hard. At the end of the day, it really is for me about being out in community. I know I mentioned earlier that I was over the weekend in Minneapolis. I was in rooms full of people that were burlesque performers and drag performers and circus artists and kinksters. You're painting quite a picture for me. It was amazing. Like we got to throw an amazing fundraising event and our board chair is actually the person who put together this fundraising event. And so to be able to go out and connect with them directly and to stand side by side and and talk to people about this organization and why it's important. And to be in rooms where folks are kind of already coming into it with different levels of acknowledgement that sex work is work and different levels of awareness of the stigma that sex workers face and to speak more openly and more candidly. It's like I had a room primed full of people who were looking for and ready to connect with me as a dancer, as a performer, as much as they were looking to connect with me as an executive director of a nonprofit out here looking to make a difference and to educate and to build more connections and better connections and deeper connections. And those kinds of experiences, they fuel me, they keep me going. Oh, yeah. I can only imagine. Ash, I'd like to thank you for being our guest today on Adult Site Broker Talk, and I hope we'll get a chance to do this again soon. Thank you so much for having me. It was an absolute delight to be able to be here, and I look forward to being able to talk more and hopefully about some slightly more pleasant topics the next time that we're able to connect. Here's hoping. My broker tip today is part three of what to do to make your site more valuable for when you decide to sell it later. Last week we talked about making a good offer and how to structure your site. Next, keep your website design up to date. Do a redesign from time to time. People will tend to think your site is the same as ever and click out of it without even looking at it if something doesn't change. So keep it fresh and up to date. Times change, so should your website. Look at what your competitors are doing and see what it is you really like. If you know a site to be successful, look at what it is they're doing and do some of the same things. I'm not saying copy their sites. I'm just suggesting you improve your site by looking around a bit. You've got to keep up with the times or you'll end up being left behind. Also, keep an eye on your competition and make sure you're offering everything on your site that they are or more. Don't just look at their design, but make sure your offers are good and competitive. The same goes for your content. Do you ever wonder why one site does well and others don't? Check out the competition's content. What are they doing that you're not doing? Be willing to make changes. People can't understand why they're losing sales to a competitor, yet the competitor is clearly doing everything better. Emulate success. Make sure everything on your website works well. Make sure all your links work properly. Check them on a regular basis. If things don't work, you'll lose customers. People are not patient these days. People's attention spans are like that of a gnat. They click out immediately and go to the next result in Google if they don't find what they're looking for, if the site is hard to navigate, or if things don't work. Check all your internal scripts and plugins and make sure they're updated regularly as well. We'll talk about this subject more next week. And next week, we'll be speaking with Jeff Wilson of kams.com. And that's it for this week's Adult Site Broker Talk. I'd once again like to thank my guest, Ash Miller of the Cupcake Girls. Talk to you again next week on Adult Site Broker Talk. I'm Bruce Friedman. Happy New Year, everyone.
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