Interview with a Brilliant Queer Business Owner!
Confidence, Community, and Resources!
Howdy lovely people!! I’m coming to you live today with an interview with the inimitable Mia Schachter. I started following them on instagram a while ago for their outstanding posts about consent education, and met up with them in person a few weeks ago to hang out and interview them for another, bigger project I’m working on. I was SO energized by our conversation, and they mentioned a really amazing project they have in the works for current and aspiring entrepreneurs (especially those who are disabled, queer or BIPOC) that I was eager to get in front of the lovely audience here!
For your inspiration pleasure, here’s an interview with Mia Schachter, creator of Consent Wizardry! Don’t forget to check out their 3-month entrepreneurship incubator here. Applications are accepted until August 22nd!
Ben: Mia!! Let’s start with the story. How did you get into running your own business?
Mia: It was totally an accident. I had trained to be an intimacy coordinator and I was fascinated by what I was learning about consent. This was in 2019 so I only did it for a year before sets shut down for Covid in 2020. I was twiddling my thumbs in my childhood bedroom asking myself, “What on earth can I offer my community from home?” and then I realized I could teach consent. I posted about a class on Instagram and much to my surprise, given that we couldn’t touch each other at the time, 10 people signed up. Then they wanted more, and people who didn’t make it asked me to offer it again. It snowballed and became Consent Wizardry, the school I run to this day. I didn’t start the business on purpose but I don’t regret it. I love working for myself, making my own schedule, and making a living off of my mind, my ideas. I pretty much invented my job and I get to change it as I want to, too.
Ben: That’s bold!! I love that for you. I know a lot of people have a lot of impostor syndrome about stuff like that. Where did your confidence come from?
Mia: My dad has run his own business most of my life, so I had him as a resource. His dad ran his own business, too, so I guess it runs in the family a little bit. I also hired a business coach, Dez Davis, and that was so incredibly helpful. Just to have a person whose role was to help me spitball and try things out, as well as help me hone my own judgment and instincts. But to be honest, I was a baby entrepreneur at 12 years old. I was baking banana muffins to sell at school during lunch in 7th grade. I learned to make jewelry in high school and was selling it. I used to make all the birthday gifts I’d give friends. I made my own lotions and shampoos in my 20’s—not to sell but just for me. I then turned my ceramics hobby into a business at 27 and I felt somewhat equipped to do that because I had assisted a jewelry designer a few years prior who showed me how to invoice, make a lookbook of wholesale items, and so on. It was a bit of a hodge podge of experiences. But I certainly never thought, “I want to be an entrepreneur” or even run my own business and definitely never had any formal training.
Ben: Yes!! I relate to that a lot. I kind of just fell in to running my business and then was always looking for people I could ask more questions to.
I don’t know about you but I made a lot of mistakes in my first years of business. Looking back on those early days, what do you wish you’d known?
Mia: I learned pretty quickly that I was the one responsible for holding my own boundaries around time. If I want to take time off, a vacation, a lunch break even, I was the only one who was going to make that happen. I still struggle with that. I wish I’d known that the adage “do a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life” is total bullshit. Because when you do a job you love, the risk is that you will always be working and it’ll be really hard to stop. When I get a great idea at 10pm, I have to restrain myself from opening my computer. “But it’s fun” doesn’t mean it’s not work, and if I start writing at 10pm or drafting a new post for IG, my wheels start turning and it’s harder to sleep. Plus, there’s always stuff you just never want to do, and now you’re responsible for that. Some of it you can outsource, like bookkeeping, or even marketing, outreach, etc. But a lot of it you have to do. Like your bank will only talk to you with your social security number. Only you can handle your health insurance stuff. There’s also a lot of stuff that’s very hard to let go of control of, like I really feel like I have to do my own social media so it’s in my voice and my aesthetic, even if I don’t want to. I have to do my own communications via email when people cold email me. I’ve had assistants in the past but I still have to do a lot of it myself.
I learned that when pricing my offerings, I’m not just asking people to pay for the time they get with me. They’re paying for my entire backend operations: my website, my video course hosting site, my unpaid time I spend on marketing and Instagram which is where most of my clientele comes from, my CPA fees, the $800 I pay yearly to the state just for existing as an S-Corp…this all gets factored into my prices. People don’t want to think they’re paying for this, but anytime anyone buys anything—a shirt, a flight, a tomato—they’re covering all those costs.
I also went through a certain amount of embarrassment about the self-righteousness I had when I was an employee, as a barista, where I thought I knew how my boss should be operating their business even though I had not experienced doing so myself. Now that I was running my own business, I understood much better a lot of the regulations and protocols and profit splits and I had to get through that period of feeling like, “Wow I was pretty judgmental and naïve.” I try to be less so now, but I’ve also been on the receiving end of that same kind of scrutiny from much younger aspiring entrepreneurs and I’ve had to come to peace with that. I see myself in them and I try to be gentle and kind.
Ben: Oh gosh I resonate with a lot of that. Being your own boss can so quickly become never getting to really take any time off. You gotta go hardcore with those boundaries!!
What advice would you give somebody who is at the very beginning of their journey with this?
Mia: Ask yourself what kind of boss you want to be, and then practice on yourself as your first employee. If you want to offer paid vacation time, let people take doctors’ appointments during the work day, provide financial support for education and R+D, or anything else, practice doing this with yourself. It’s not as easy as it sounds.
Ben: It’s really not!! Okay, last but not least, give us the pitch for your new program!
Mia: If you feel stifled working for other people and want to feel freer to express yourself authentically and get paid well for work you love, we can help you figure out your business plan, what you do and don’t do, who your work is for, how to set rates, market yourself, and build your brand identity without crashing out.
If you run a business and you feel you’ve hit a wall, want to rebrand, need community support, want to feel more creative in your work, or just need some accountabilibuddies, we can help you figure out next steps while connecting you with business experts in finance, social media, content creation, marketing, strategy, and more to help you feel more confident putting yourself and your business out there.
If you feel like a jack of all trades and master of none, if you feel like you do too many things and they’re not related at all (they probably are!), if you feel like you’re supposed to choose just one career, goal, artistic medium, or idea and you want to feel like an integrated, whole person with a coherent and cohesive business who never gets bored, you’re gonna like it here.
Not sure if this program is right for you? Email us!
Ready to apply? Click here!
September 8th to December 8th, Tuesdays and Thursdays, 6-8pm PT / 9-11pm ET.
All on Zoom.
Applications due August 22.
Thanks Ben! It was great chatting with you, too :)