Financial Advice For Freelancers From Mia Lee, Wall Street Banker Turned High-End Sex Worker
When the financial-executive-turned-high-end-escort Mia Lee approached me to write about her, I was hesitant. Not because she didn’t sound fascinating — she is a self-proclaimed psychopath sex worker with the tagline, “You can take the girl off Wall Street, but you can’t take the banker out of the whore” — but because my memoir Open had just come out. With the accompanying post-partum feelings, I hadn’t been feeling particularly inspired to work on much of anything.
But I also knew that if I want to keep my book “in the conversation” — and also have some income without getting a full-time job— I was going to need to level up my side hustles. This meant getting serious about doing things like editorial consultations for other writers and starting my podcast Help Existing on my own dime. It struck me, given Mia’s incredible business savvy, that this might be a person I’d benefit from talking with.
After an initial conversation with Mia Lee, I knew this was a fascinating and impressive woman I could learn a lot from. A Chinese refugee who was in foster care since age 13, Mia taught herself to read and graduated high school early. She worked 60-hour weeks through college and promptly went into finance. There, she climbed the ranks quickly but sometimes struggled to connect interpersonally. Seven years ago, she was diagnosed as a clinical psychopath. She says she doesn’t feel shame, fear, guilt, empathy, or sadness. And this, she says, not only makes her very “trauma resistant,” but also extremely good at business.
She pivoted to high-end sex work three years ago, and says she defines success as “making as much money as possible doing as little work as possible.” A trained CPA who volunteers her time helping sex workers do their taxes, Mia is also no bleeding heart. Her neuro-atypicality seems to make her especially good at setting business boundaries, and as someone who struggles with that, I wanted to know more.
I decided I’d ask Mia for some free financial advice, and see if we couldn’t make this a mutually beneficial conversation. She was game.
“You can take the girl off Wall Street, but you can’t take the banker out of the whore.” — Mia Lee
Rachel Krantz: So, when it comes to setting prices for any kind of freelance work or self-employment, how do you ask for what you deserve?
Mia Lee: I suggest you have a price sheet on your website stating your rates. And if you want to have a second-tier price for nonprofits or something, you can do that. But you don’t have to explain yourself. You don’t owe anybody a discount. Even if it’s my friend’s business, I typically tip more because I want to support their business AND I want good service. The same goes for you helping a friend.
You can research the market (at a time when we’re feeling emotionally rational and stable) to come up with your prices. And those are your prices. And then when someone reaches out to you, you don’t owe anybody an explanation. You are not a charity. You are a business.
If someone wants to fly business class to Australia, you would never tell American Airlines that their tickets are too expensive. You would either pay it or not pay it and move on with your life. Right? You are no different than American Airlines.
RK: Do you find charging by the hour is usually the best rule of thumb?
ML: Yes, but you can also have standard rates for “add-ons.” There are certain things that I believe are beyond my normal service offerings, like roleplay, or whatever. And I just charge clients for requests like that as an add-on. But I have an entire prefixed list of things I anticipate either being more annoying, less desirable, or taking more time — and I charge accordingly if it’s worth it to me. And I also charge people for things that may not require additional time, but that I just find really annoying.
For example, I had a client who asked me to date him outside of work (for free), which I found extremely offensive. And I was like, “I’m firing you.” And he was like, “Please take me back.” And I was like, “I will take you back, but I only accept apologies in cash.” Now I take Bitcoin, but at the time it was cash only. I let him make an initial offer. And then I countered with my offer as to what his fine should be for being a boundary-pusher. And then I took him back. So I took him back for an initial cash apology of $1,000. Which would be more like $10,000 nowadays, because I’m more established.
RK: What about charging for the initial consultation? I find it hard to ask for before I’ve even agreed to work with them. But it is time spent.
ML: A lot of people feel obligated to produce something before they can charge. But like, that’s not the way the world is. If you go to a plastic surgeon for a breast implant consultation, and then you don’t get breast implants, you still had the consult, right? And that surgeon will likely charge you for the consult.
So why would your business be any different? Have a fee structure that allows you to compensate yourself for all the time and work that you do. If someone sends you a manuscript, say something like, “Alright, I’m initially going to charge you X for reading this manuscript. And then based on my assessment of the manuscript, I will give you a price within this range to this range, roughly speaking, but I will follow up with a price for additional work.”
RK: Do I have to post my prices on my website? It almost makes me embarrassed, but that I know is also my own mental block I need to get over.
ML: Can you imagine how many emails my assistant would get if people didn’t see my prices ahead of time? Yeah, definitely post your prices. And you don’t have to post every scenario. Strike a balance between brevity and robustness. Post some prices. And then you just have a line saying, like, “For additional services not listed such as XYZ, contact me with details.” I also highly recommend having a contact form because it streamlines the communication.
RL: Yeah, I used to have one, and then I started getting more harassing messages. So I took it down.
ML: So this is something that sex workers have a LOT of experience with. You can put certain value-locked fields into your booking form. So for instance, I have required fields for clients to put in the screening information, the date of their request, etc. Some morons will contact sex workers for free attention or ask for a booking “sometime.” When the hell is “sometime”? So for clients to contact me, they have to submit a completed booking form including screening, requested date, time, length of booking, city, and incall or outcall.
RK: How do you know that someone won’t end up wasting your time anyway?
ML: You can make them put down a $50 deposit just to talk with you. This might negatively impact your business if no one else is doing this. But if the potential client does not send a deposit to me or tries to argue about sending a deposit, straight to spam! And I’m never seeing that client ever unless he sends an apology in cash or bitcoin.
RK: Do you have advice around investing in yourself? I just started a podcast called Help Existing, but I find myself nervous about the investment, even though it’s small.
ML: What I see a lot of people do wrong is like, they think that those numbers are scary to look at. So they just go for it and don’t have a plan as to how they’re gonna pay themselves and their expenses. So I would say, don’t be afraid of that. Because you don’t want to be three months into a loss-making business and realize that you only have funds for two. Do your research and figure out how much whatever you might want to do is going to cost, and then make a decision based on that data.
So for instance, if you want to start a podcast, figure out how much money it’s gonna cost. Do some research. Research how long it takes a comparable podcast to become profitable, and what the success rate is, and punch it into an Excel spreadsheet. “Based on the market that I can discern, this podcast will become profitable in six months. In that six months, my fixed and variable living expenses are going to be X. And this is how much money I need to have plus a 25–30% contingency. This is how much money I have to have to not be a miserable human being while launching this business or project.”
It’s also a good idea to talk with some other people who’ve launched a podcast or done similar work, to do research for those projections.
RK: Do you have any advice about asking other people for advice?
ML: So one thing that I think sex workers are pretty good with is offering people money for their help. We know it’s very annoying when random people are like, “can you give me some advice?” And for me, I never take money from other sex workers for giving financial advice. It’s not a business that I run. But I’m much more likely to say yes to helping if someone offers to pay me for my time. I always say no in those cases. But I might not have time for you if you don’t offer me money, because I’ll think you’re rude and/or will be difficult to help. The offering is a signal of consideration for my time and expertise.
RK: What if a personal venture isn’t working as well as you wanted? When do you know to cut your losses?
ML: People are very, very vulnerable to the sunk cost fallacy. They’re like “I’m already down 20% of this trade, I’m gonna hold the position until it recovers.” Meanwhile, that stock goes down another 40% while they could have taken their 20% loss and reinvested the funds into a different opportunity that could have been profitable. The human bias toward loss aversion is very well documented in behavioral economics. I’ve seen whole businesses go bankrupt because of this loss aversion bias. In situations where it’s really not going anywhere, just eat the loss.
RK: What if someone comes to you and you want to help them pro-bono, or for a discounted rate, as a good deed?
ML: I think it’s really important to segregate your charity work from your business work. And never conflate the two.
Have really clear boundaries on how much time money, effort, and mental space you want to allocate toward things that don’t make you money. Things that you just want to do for the benefit of society, budget that time accordingly. So like, with my financial literacy pro bono work, I allocate a certain amount of time to that. And once that time is filled up the next person that reaches out to me, the answer is no! Set boundaries around how much you give of yourself. A lot of people have budgets for their finances, but they don’t budget their time and mental space. So budget your time and exertion the same way you would budget your cash.
RK: What do you think about offering trades?
ML: I never trade with clients. We only accept cash or in some cases crypto payments from clients. You’d be surprised by the ridiculous barter requests time-wasters offer us. But sex workers all trade with each other, often. Sex workers are huge in the barter economy amongst ourselves, especially as many members of our community have barriers to accessing banking or traditional financial systems and products.
So for instance, I had a friend and colleague come over and help me assemble my table, and I helped her with her taxes. Maybe that’s not a great example, because I would have helped her with her taxes for free. But then, to be fair, she would have helped me assemble my table for free as well.
