Thea Rose, 33, is the founder of Testie, a start-up that helps people access private, walk-in STI testing nationwide. But to fund the company, she spent two and a half years working as “Sophie,” a high-end escort. Initially, she figured she’d only do this work for a year. “But it wasn’t quite the get-rich-quick scheme that I thought it would be,” she says. “I underestimated how much time it would take me to establish myself.” Ultimately, it did pay off — at her peak, she was making $25,000 a month for just a few hours of work per week. “To me, doing sex work felt much less humiliating than working three full-time jobs just to afford rent,” she says, “which I know a lot of people have to do.” (And, as she adds, “Doing sex work to survive is very different from the kind of high-end escorting that I did.”) In the latest edition of #MyTwoCents, Rose speaks to personal finance columnist Charlotte Cowles about her experience working on her start-up by day and building a business as an esco...