From childhood, I had a keen sense that money is a key that unlocks many doors in this world. I distinctly remember thinking, “The adults handle all of that now, but pretty soon it’s gonna be my responsibility to think about money.” It always seemed mysterious and insurmountable.

As I got older and learned more about how the world works and money’s place in all of it, the realization began to settle in my bones that I would be forced to not only “figure out” money, but also generate it and use it to pay for all of the things my life required. Into my early adulthood, I was still mystified by money and always secretly hoped someone else would be the adult in the room and figure all of that stuff out for me.

Spoiler: nobody else ever did.

The chilling acceptance of my fate as a cog in the capitalist labor machine (though I didn’t have those words for it yet) led me toward a rabid pursuit of freedom in my early twenties. At twenty years old, I discovered the dangerous and intoxicating world of in-person sex work, and I became drunk on my own sort of power.

It wasn’t just the nature of the job, or the people it introduced me to, or even necessarily the dollar amount I was bringing home. What had it hooks in me was the discovery that I could become the nexus. I could be the center point through which all resource flows in my life. I didn’t have to rely on a timed paycheck or an employer to decide when I worked and how much I got paid for it.

In short, I had fallen in love with being a business owner.

Obviously, having sex for money comes with its own set of risks, as does any business venture, and the glittering promise of self-generated wealth—along with the fascinating types I encountered through the job, usually business owners themselves—kept me ravenously pursuing new heights of freedom and access through the vehicle of sex work.

At twenty-three, I was introduced to a multi-level marketing business (MLM) through a trusted friend, and this came with its own set of new, glittering promises—same wealth, much different method of acquisition. As much as I loved sex work, it bothered me that my plan for financial independence still required a man to reach into his pocket first. To build my own business, an official business that could legally exist on paper, seemed like the ultimate independence.

This particular MLM had a Christian nationalist lean to it, which was in such stark opposition to the things I was still doing for money that it was almost humorous: sitting in recruitment meetings and shaking hands with other tie- and pantyhose-clad people, all of us on our best behavior, and then leaving to meet with my long-time sugar daddy for dinner and the rest.

To me, the MLM represented a “respectable” path to the same freedom I had been chasing since I discovered sex work. It was something I could actually talk about with other people, or so I thought. Talking about being in an MLM and talking about having sex for money can both feel equally shameful depending on who is listening and which rooms you are speaking in. And truth be told, with a lot of the friends I had back then, it actually was easier to talk about being a whore than it was to talk about going to my little business meetings.

Part of the allure (and the problem) was that when I was doing sex work, I was being someone else. But when I was in my little business meetings, I was also being someone else. When I was at my day job, I was definitely being someone else. It was only when I was fully alone that I ever actually felt like myself.

Through these parallel experiences I had in my twenties, I learned a lot about creating a persona that was marketable and also functioned as a shield, or a mask, to protect the soft creature inside. I learned a lot about carefully selecting truths and lies to create a mosaic of another person—whoever the room I was in needed me to be.

After five years trying and failing to make any money in the MLM—when I finally decided to stop sinking time & money into something that was never going to reward me because I was genuinely bad at it—the first business I created was The Financial Witch, where I set out to help other money misfits and neurodivergent baddies make money in more accessible ways.

This was where I fully embraced my Fool era and threw whatever I could at the wall to see what stuck. I gave over 100 astrology readings in my first two years of business, the majority of them focusing on my clients’ relationships to resource, self-trust, and shame. I experimented and failed and iterated what succeeded. I made many mistakes. I surprised myself. I disappointed myself. I felt truly proud of myself for the first time ever. And I learned, eventually, that what I’m here to do isn’t actually to teach other people how to make more money; it’s to teach them how to feel good about the money they’re making.

It’s very easy to feel bad about making money when you’re somebody who is keenly aware of things like systemic injustice, intersectionality of privilege, and the never-ending evils of capitalism. It’s easy to feel guilty or ashamed of showing up to sell things and make money when you’ve aligned yourself with anti-capitalism. People will tell you that you’re a hypocrite for making money on your own terms as someone who needs money to survive just like everyone else. There is so much subtle and overt messaging telling you to just fall in line, find a good job, put your head down, and work until you die. But if you’re here reading this, it’s probably because you know in your soul that you can’t live like that.

I’ve never stopped being in love with the entrepreneurial spirit, and many solopreneurs & freelancers have found their way to my work over the years.

Over time, through working with my clients who ran their own businesses, I realized that the problem was never the fact that you have to sell; it’s how you feel forced to sell in certain ways, and you feel like a failure when they don’t work, but you also feel like a fraud when they do work. I also realized that until we collectively face the destructive nature of capitalism and work to dismantle it so a new world can proliferate in its absence, no amount of money will save any one of us. It’s no good having your own pile of gold if there’s no food to eat and nobody around to share it with.

However, at some point The Financial Witch—which I always knew was a mask, but it was protective armor that allowed me to show up in bolder ways than I normally would have—began to feel like an ill-fitting KN95 that was fogging up my glasses and blurring my long-term vision, so in 2025, I rebranded as simply… me. Samantha Young.

Instead of trying to make myself fit into a certain label or align myself fully with my business, I decided to just start showing up as me and let the labels cultivate themselves naturally. So, I’m a shame alchemist, an anti-capitalist business coach, a witch, a writer, a weirdo, a mom, a wife, a Capricorn, a mycelial network tender, and a person who is endlessly in pursuit of autonomy… but I’m also a soft creature learning to utilize my protective shields to allow for more authenticity, instead of more pretending.

I’m a business owner who loves business owners and is obsessed with the entrepreneurial spirit. I believe that anti-capitalist business owners are worldbuilders in our own right, functioning as micro-governments as we set the terms of the world we want to live in, and the powers that be dedicate a lot of effort to trying to make us forget the power our position holds.

I also know that anti-capitalist business owners are even more susceptible to shame, self-doubt, and imposter syndrome, because we’re keenly aware of the many contradictions peppered throughout our day-to-day decisions. What you need most likely isn’t another free PDF (though I have some, if you can’t resist) or another virtual mastermind or another retreat. What you need is the same thing that MLMs, cults, and other high-control groups offer to their congregants:

• built-in community

• access to resources via said community

• a shared vision to work toward and generate feelings of hope

That’s the bait. You aren’t wrong for wanting to take it—remember, you need these things. The key is to recognize the hook, and a lot of predatory business structures hang their bait on a hook in the form of hierarchy, shame, coercion, social isolation, and self-abandonment. For someone who values autonomy, those organizations can seem particularly savior-like at first, and it’s common for anti-capitalist business owners to have spent some time in an MLM or other pyramid-shaped business before arriving at your own doorstep.

But just deciding to run an anti-capitalist business as one person doesn’t solve the problems of the externalized and internalized shame that comes with asking for money, nor does it solve the problems of your internal cop, the respectability trap, or moral perfectionism. There is no blueprint or easily digestible YouTube video that shows you how to do the shadow work that is showing up and selling with heart and enthusiasm when the world is on fire, the rent is due, and the voice in the back of your head keeps telling you how much of a secret capitalist you are for wanting to be paid for your time and labor.

My response, both to the rampant grifting in the online business coaching world and to the world of predatory MLMs, was to build The Mycelial Network, my Patreon where anti-capitalist solopreneurs and freelancers can come to be seen, transmute their shame, ask for resources, offer their genius, practice the art of exchange, and engage our imaginations to create new worlds together.

I also host regular workshops (both public and Patreon-exclusive), which you can hear about when you join my mailing list, and I occasionally open my books for astrology readings. You can read more of my personal writing on my blog, if you enjoy digging into lore and backstories.

So, if you:

• hate capitalism

• have accepted that your dreams of autonomy will haunt you forever until you pursue them

• run a business entirely on your own, and

• feel like you never have quite the tools you need to guide you,

you’ve found yourself in the right place.