I'm a student who posted on r/slavelabour one month ago in desperation because I was on the brink of homelessness. Now I'm running my own small business, AMA

Is there a certain percentage of your clientele that you would say might be using that hour of "dating advice" as a sort of substitution for an actual date. Have you found yourself employing types of preemptive measures/ rules to prevent this kind of thing happening? Any crazy stories thus far in those regards?

I definitely have clients who hired me because they wanted to talk to a girl for an hour, but it's actually a pretty low percentage. I've also definitely had a few people who just hit on me incessantly during the session, but I turn it into a learning opportunity by calling them out on their behaviour and explaining why it doesn't work. I don't let it make me feel uncomfortable or allow the focus to change from our lesson to his attempt to make it into a date. It's been pretty effective. Humour works pretty well in those situations. When their behaviour is less innocent/more vulgar, I establish strict boundaries really quickly and I have ended a call early once before.

Crazy stories... lots of prostitution requests, lots of requests for feet stuff. Once a guy offered me $24 to see my left tit... lol it's such a specific request. Obviously, I didn't comply.

😂 How did he arrive at $24? I wonder what the thought process was?

haha I'm assuming he looked in his wallet real quick

I like that you try to turn it into a learning opportunity. Hopefully the humor might let some of those seeds get through the uhm... tough soil?

I'm not even necessarily what I would call 100% anti-prostitution, but oh my god I'm cringing so hard at the thought of paying $20 just to ask someone for it. Not to mention the logistical aspect of the whole idea... I almost get the feeling they are using you to build up the courage to ask a real prostitute, and wow that kind of makes me sad.

But hey, congrats again. And continued success!

Pretty big difference from being ok with prostitution, and people assuming a woman they're chatting with for pretty much a completely different service is a prostitute.

This!

Deng you know your shit.

Are you studying to be a therapist? Sounds like you could do the part.

I am actually :) thank you!

Are you charging enough to cover taxes? (DON'T SKIP PAYING TAXES!!) $20 is very little, after taxes.

$20 is low and everyone is still telling me that I'm undercharging. I just started off a month ago offering $5 and I've bumped it up every few weeks. I was charging $10 a week ago before I had my website- so I didn't want to jump from $10 to $30. My plan is to keep it at $20 for a week or two and then try out $30

Yeah I also recommend doing your taxes ASAP if you're behind on them. There is money to be found if you know where to look. I believe it's something that everyone should learn in high school but what the hell does money and fiduciary responsibility matter, am I right? (Education is important!)

Not that OP or anyone was irresponsible or anything. Shit happens. I have had it happen, everyone has. Some worse than others. But taxes are important!!

I'm up to date on my taxes and I took my first customer a month ago. I'm saving 30% and reading a book on taxes and small businesses. I'm a newbie but I'm trying to be careful :)

I remember you on slavelabour! What a crazy story -do you find happiness in what you do ?

hey! I remember you too! I really, really love it. I love feeling like I'm helping people, I _love_ the excited messages I get from clients when they start getting matches or have a date lined up. It also lets me work from home, which is awesome haha. Being able to do homework between sessions and getting to make my own schedule is pretty priceless.

Woman to woman, do you credit any of your success to being a very attractive female? In other words, do you think an average-looking person would have the same success, whether or it they had more expertise, time or better pricing?

for sure, being an attractive female is definitely helpful when you're trying to attract a client base of men who are frustrated with online dating. I think being a female, in general, will offer an advantage, but being an attractive female will initially attract more customers I'm sure. Especially younger guys.

However, I don't think being attractive helps me to keep customers. I think that if people felt like they weren't getting good advice they would have a lot to say about it on Reddit, and I wouldn't be getting the positive reviews I'm getting. Is it a distinct advantage? fo sho. Is it the only factor in my success? I don't think so.

Woman to woman, do you credit any of your success to being a very attractive female

I suspect this won't get an answer, but your question is right on the money.

Fundamentally all she did was dip into that honeypot that has existed since the dawn of time: thirsty dudes.

I mean, more power to her. But I don't think there's much to "learn" from her example other than being an attractive girl greatly boosts your options in life.

I answered it ;)

What's the biggest mistake the guys who hire you make?

They take photos that are incredibly unflattering and are completely oblivious to it.

But what do I do if I look hideous in all my photos?

Then we work with what we've got to show off all of your good qualities. Not everyone is gorgeous, but taking a good photo that shows off your best traits helps. It won't make you look super good looking if you aren't- but if you're going to try to date online, why not do it with a bit of intention?

Is it a legit business already? One month seems like such a short time to set something like that up.

Was it complicated to design and set up your webpage? Do you have prior experience in webdesign?

I wasn't sure at what point I would be considered a business. A few people on r/smallbusiness told me that I'm considered a small business as soon as I've had my first customer.. which is a little intimidating haha.

I used squarespace with a template, so it was pretty easy to set up but it also means that my website is pretty basic haha. I just wanted to get it functioning and then find time to learn about how to make it better or hire someone to make it better. I have absolutely no experience in web design haha

What’s your favorite sandwich and why?

pb and j with banana all the way :)

Wait. I've had pbj, and pb and banana, but never all three. I'm gonna have to try this

try with some strawberry jam. It will change your world!

Add some honey on top of the peanutbutter side ;)

oh hell yes!

Try with nutella instead of pb ^{^}

I like nutella, but nothing can touch crunchy peanut butter imo

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I did my undergrad in cultural anthropology and human rights. I have a masters in human rights and I'm currently working on my masters in clinical social work. I then want to get my PhD in clinical psychology. I'm extremely interested in the history of culture and human behaviour. My long-term goal is to eventually run my own non-profit for survivors of sex trafficking. That's a good 10-15yrs away though :)

My goal with this business is to be able to do it full-time while I finish school.

You have a very ambitious trajectory! It sounds like you will be more than qualified clinically and in community building without the PhD in clinical psychology. It might be worth considering a different PhD (or putting off that terminal degree altogether). I know too many folks who missed out on their dream gigs because of the amount of debt and time being sunk into wanting more clinical specialty without a dream job that requires it.

My two cents of unsolicited advice.

The Phd adds an element of research that I'm very interested in, so it's worth it to me. I've been very blessed and also worked my ass off to get grants to cover most of my tuition so I don't have a lot of debt (thank goodness)

What is the legality of charging people for advice? Do you need a specific license or just have them sign a waiver?

Why would she need a license? It is a paid service like anything else, and she pays self-employment taxes.

idk, that's why I am asking. Say she gives bad advice and destroy a relationship, then the person, who also had mental problems unknown to her, offs themself. Family comes looking for someone to blame and they see a charge for relationship advice. The family digs into her background and finds anthropology, human rights, and a few psychology classes, but she isn't a lcsw. I don't think a lawsuit is too far fetched in that kind of situation and I'm just wondering how she protects herself from the very slim, but possibility of the worst outcome occurring.

To clear things up a bit, I don't do couples counselling. I help single guys fix up their profiles and teach them how to avoid getting ghosted on dating apps.

Not to mention the possibility of not being able to get licensed in her chosen field because of misrepresenting herself while only a student.

To clear things up a bit, I don't do couples counselling. I help single guys fix up their profiles and teach them how to avoid getting ghosted on dating apps. I am in no way misrepresenting myself or my qualifications :)

What's the most common piece of advice that you can give away without potentially hurting your acquisition of clientele?

Your initial message to her should include a question that is:

a) compelling. something you suspect she is interested in or excited about based on clues from her profile b) making her the expert. people love giving advise. making her the expert flatters her. c) is something she already knows the answer to, so she can respond without having to think about it.

For example, you see a photo of her with a book by Patrick Rothfuss on her desk. Google him, you'll find that he wrote the Kingkiller Chronicles.

"I heard that the kingkiller chronicles was incredible. Did you read it? what did you think?"

If the book is on her desk then she's either read it, is currently reading it, or plans to read it. It's something she's interested in. You asked her a question, which will compel her to respond to her. You made her the expert, which will compel her to respond to her, and you asked her a question she already know the answer to- which makes it easy and fast for her to respond to you.

Your goal is for her to be able to read your message and then responded immediately. If she has to think about it, you've lost. If she reads it and then tells herself that she'll get back to you, you've lost. She is swamped in messages. As new ones come in, yours will get buried.

Bad advice. It's definitely 500 different "hey." messages sent out indiscriminately at 11PM on a Friday, followed by a picture of your dick with the toilet in the background, followed by something angry about being a nice guy. My patented 3-step formula.

bahaha nice. You looking for a job?

Hi Chloe, congratulations on turning your situation around quickly and adapting to the demand! May everything continue to go well in your career and studies. I do have a couple of questions for you:

1. Most memorable dnd moment for you?
2. What do you think of Mercer as a GM?
3. What's a challenge or problem in your business at the moment, and how do you plan to solve it?
4. What thing do you like most about your business?
5. If you were to take a vacation somewhere using what you earned in your business one day, what would your vacation look like?

thanks!!

1. Our dm gave us 8 cursed pearls as a prize for defeating an illithid. Our plan was to sell them for cash. However, one of my teammates cast the sleep spell on another as a prank, and he rolled a 1 on his dex check and dropped a pearl as he fell. The pearl cursed him by having all of his facial features fall off (his nose, lips, mouth, eyes, eyebrows.. everything). He had no idea that it had happened to him and he and walked out into the main room and our barbarian screamed in shock and threw two pearls at him (he thought he was a bad guy)... which then cursed him with sentient and animated clothing that started thrashing and trying to escape his body and with a trait of smiling in inappropriate moments. Which, to be fair, doesn't matter since he no longer has a mouth haha. That happened at the end of our last session so I'm very curious to see what happens next.
2. I love mercer as a GM. That man can weave a story.
3. My biggest problem is learning how to run a business. I've had a website for three days, and I have no idea what I'm doing haha. I'm learning how to advertise, how to make good business decisions, etc... my biggest challenge currently is learning how to take the personality that helped me blow-up on slavelabour and learn how to make changes to it to appeal to a large audience.
4. I love the excited messages and screenshots I get a few days after a session from guys who are getting matches. I also love the tip that sometimes accompany those excited messages lol
5. dream vacation would be Florence, Italy :)

I see you are using Squarespace - I have over a dozen Squarespace sites in production, let me know if you need any help (free, of course - I'm in the NYC area, I know what its like.).
Your content is great, but your layout and design needs work.
Good luck!

omg thank you!!! I will def dm you

Are you paying taxes?

I do my taxes every year, but I've only had this business for a month. I'm saving 30% and reading a book about taxes and small businesses. I'm a newbie :)

What are your qualifications?

I have an undergraduate degree in human rights and cultural anthropology. I have a masters degree in human rights, and I'm currently mid-way through a masters in clinical social work. My plan is to get my PhD in psych after I finish my masters.

What's the most intriguing thing you learned in your Cultural Anthropology studies?

I really loved studying the ways in which our environment affects our culture. It impacts our religions, our laws, our sense of morality, everything. For example, Mesopotamia experienced a lot of devastating floods and harsh weather. Their religion was based on the idea that humans were servants designed to worship and appease the gods. Whereas ancient Egypt the environment was less destructive and provided them with fertile crops, so their gods were typically more loving and generous.

Going off of this - any books you’d recommend for cultural anthropology? I had taken two classes before dropping out of college and loved it. Not sure where to go to get more info on it really...

Cannibals and Kings: Origins of Cultures, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Sweetness and Power, Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding, Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches: The Riddles of Culture, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies.

If you end up checking one of them out, dm me! I'd love to gossip about it haha

have you ever come across a person who is beyond saving? what did you do?

I told him that I couldn't help him.

wow. brutally honest. did you still charge him? also, why couldnt you help him? was it his personality, his looks...?

I charged him half because he took half of our time. His personality. He was very, very, very interested in appearing to be Mr. Cool Guy. He argued with me at every point, and he was painfully sexist. His profile was painfully and obviously dishonest, he made wild claims that were just clearly not true, and he talked about women they were toys for him to play with. I ended the call early and refunded him the other half of his time.

Would you ever consider hiring others in the event that demand increases beyond your expectations? 😉

(edit) A second question, how many hours do you typically spend on a single client/profile?

This is so interesting to me. Huge congrats on starting your business!

thanks!!

The weekends are when I'm most busy and would benefit from having help, but to be honest the idea of trusting someone else with my clients makes me really nervous. I've worked really hard to create content that I think it genuinely helpful, I've gotten tons of good reviews and I haven't had a disgruntled client (yet). Trusting my new reputation with someone else gives me anxiety haha. I have considered hiring someone to help me out a few hours a week answering my emails, and contacting clients who haven't yet paid to remind them to send payment before services, that sort of thing.

I used to spend almost two hours per client. I was only paid for an hour, but I almost always went over and I spent a lot of time scheduling with people. Like at least two hours of my days were spent scheduling on Reddit. When I built my website I got a built-in scheduler to make scheduling a lot easier. I also split up my services so that I wasn't trying to cram a million things into one session. I now offer an hour session to fix up your profile or make a new one; an hour session to talk about how to craft your initial message, compel women to respond to you, and avoid getting ghosted; a two-hour session that combines the previous two; and I have a unique service called The Pocket Chloe where I am available to you via messaging for a week. I approve new photos that clients take, answer questions, help them craft messages when they're stuck in the dms, etc.. anything they need that can be done through messaging.

The hardest thing was learning to treat my time like it's valuable. I only also spend as much time as I am getting paid for. It's definitely helped me to maintain a work/life balance that didn't exist before.

Any background in the liberal arts field?

I did my undergrad in cultural anthropology and human rights. I have a masters in human rights and I'm currently working on my masters in clinical social work. I plan to finish it off with a PhD in clinical psychology. Lots of liberal arts haha. I'm very interested in human behaviour.

How diverse is your client base at the moment?

In terms of ethnicity? pretty diverse. With age, mostly guys 18-26. About 1/4 of my customers are in their 30's and I've had a few older men who are dating again for the first time in ages.

Have you started branding? If you want this to really blow up you'll want to make yourself more and more sought after and that starts with having a name that's recognizable

I haven't. I'm actually reading a book about branding now. This whole thing just started a month ago and I've only had a website for three days, so I'm still very much in the shocked, excited, and terrified phase of not knowing what I'm doing business-wise. I'm learning as I go :)

Fellow nerd here! What characters do you play in your D&D campaigns and why?

I play a ghostwise halfling druid (circle of the moon) in my primary campaign. I discovered d&d through watching Critical Role. There was a character called Keyleth on Critical Role who was a druid and I thought that her abilities were SO COOL haha. I went for the ghostwise halfling because Silent Speech gives me the ability to communicate with my party when I'm in my wildshape.

I'm also in a casual d&d game that doesn't meet consistently, and there I play a Khalaster light cleric called Talia Chocolate-Milk (pronounced Cha-kala-ma lol)

I'm so happy for you, any words of advice for people hanging on the edge?

Be resourceful. Don't give up, and do everything you can to have a savings account with 3 months of living expenses in it. I had one month of living expenses saved when I lost my job, but I couldn't find another one by the time my rent was due again and I almost lost everything because of it.

Inveterate proofreader here. Your main page has a typo.

Ladies Galore: An hour lesson on how to get responses- $20 How tf

Just FYI. :)

thank you for that!!! The tf actually means 'the fuck' but a friend and I went back and forth over whether or not it would be perceived as a typo. I'll change it to something that makes it a little more clear :)

It may be an age thing as well, I’m a wee bit outside your target demo.

Also, if I may also be so bold, on iOS 12, your testimonials appear in a much larger font. Mobile is such a weird animal anyway, I thought you should know.

GL & HF, it looks like you’re off to a great start. 👍🏻

thank you for the feedback!

This definitely is giving me enough insight to change it. One of the things I'm struggling with is how to take the casual/sass approach that really works in the Reddit cultural and make it more professional. Finding that line where I don't lose the personality that helped me blow up on r/slavelabour while also appealing to a wider audience has been a struggle. I never in a a million years imagined myself building a website or going down this avenue so this is all very new to me.

Was dating advice something you initially thought you’d be good at, or was it just something and you found out you were good at it by providing the service?

I gave dating advice to a lot of my guys friends. My interests are pretty nerdy and I play a lot of video-games, so most of my primary friend group is guys. I was just completely shocked at how bad they were at online dating haha. Even legit attractive and charming guys have no idea how to advertise themselves to women or take good photos. I knew I was good at helping guys redo their dating profile, I just had no idea how much of a market there was for it until I posted.

Have you been compared to the character of Hitch yet? Did you draw any inspiration from that movie?

I've been called Hitch 2019 a few times in r/slavelabour haha. I haven't seen that movie in ages. I'm definitely going to watch it again soon.

No, my reason for posting initially was just a desperate attempt to buy groceries and pay my light bill. It was just a shot in the dark.

I don't really have a question, so I'll turn my suggestion into a question. Are you aware you still aren't charging enough? If you are truly good at what you do, you should raise your prices.

I know, my clients tell me that i'm undercharging as well. I'm just trying to raise them slowly. I start off a month ago doing it for $5 an hour, so I've been raising them a bit every week or so. I'm going to change them to $30 in a week or two.

Why do your eyes look so big in that pic? I saw that on profiles in Asia all the time is that like a contact thing or a filter?

a lot of Asian girls know how to do their makeup to make their eyes look bigger, and then I also wear contacts that add a cool/weird texture to my eyes. I don't think it makes them bigger though. If you're interested, I can show you the difference of me without makeup haha. My eyes definitely look smaller without makeup.

How to fuck to talk to girls?

haha how the fuck to talk to girls. I'm going to change it, I can see that it's confusing