“The one thing that is ‘typical’ about a day at the forge is that there is a lot of mess and noise, and that I sweat buckets and come home very dirty.”

“A-Camp was sort of a turning point for me. We were talking about building a year-round Autostraddle community and it was decided that I’d be the coffee roaster. I was like, ‘Well, guess I better get good at this coffee roasting thing.’ You can’t have mediocre coffee in a queer commune. I started actually writing a business plan the next weekend.”

“What your clients come to you for will be a huge signal for what your focus could be. They are attracted to a certain quality within you. If you pay attention, your clients will call it out from within you. My clients were speaking to me all along. It took a while, but I listened in and came to my true focus. It takes time. Let yourself grow. It is a sacred journey.”

Autostraddle’s webmaster Cee Webster has been a freelance web developer for 15 years. Here, she shares her thoughts on freelance working, ‘winging it’, the challenges of juggling many projects, and the perks of working when you choose.

“The best thing about my work is when I have people from all over the world write me about how excited they are to find my shoes or learn about my company and how it inspires them. Having so many others who shared my pain and experience of not finding shoes that represent my style really motivates me to keep pushing to turn this dream into a reality.”

In Follow Your Arrow, we’re talking a lot about building a business out of doing what you love. But what if you don’t have just one thing? What if you have so many interests you wouldn’t know where to start creating a business? Meet Emilie Wapnick, who has built an entire community around helping people just like you!

Welcome to this new column featuring interviews with queer and trans women running all kinds of businesses! We’ll talk about the challenges, what drives us, tools and tips, workspaces, marketing, and realism. First up: Beth interviews herself about her business, Little Red Tarot.