We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Moushumi Ghose a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Moushumi, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s kick things off with a hypothetical question – if it were up to you, what would you change about the school or education system to better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career?

I have been a sex therapist for over 20 years. I did much of it the traditional way, but most of my success came from doing things my way, and, today I want to talk about why taking the traditional path is not always the solution.
Becoming a licensed sex therapist, included going to school, getting my bachelors degree, masters degree and then getting my 3000 hours before I could sit for the exam to get my license to become a CA licensed therapist.

I felt that my undergraduate education at San Francisco State University was great: very liberal, very political, very queer, very feminist, very sex-positive. I learned so much. I majored in Clinical Psychology but I did an upper division cluster in Human Sexuality. Somethhing that school is well known for.

Then I came to LA where I attended grad school, a graduate program that left a lot to be desired. It was conservative, and steeped in heteronormativity. It didn’t support the color, fluidity that I identify with.
This was how I knew I needed to my work in the mental health field would be supporting the LGBTQIA++ community and other marginalized communities around sexuality and identity.
I knew I wanted to be a sex therapist.
And days fter I got licensed I opened my practice right away.

I then also embarked on a journey to become a Certified Sex Therapist. But this too fell flat. Between seeing clients and in-between my clients I was driving to Bevery Hills to meet with yet another supervisor to now get hours for a certification, a certification I did not need. my schooling had ended and here I was still spending money, and learning things that I already felt like I knew.

My lived experience had been sex-positive, kinky, queer and I just needed to lean into who I already was.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

So I did not go the route of getting that certification. Instead I opened my practice, began working as a sex therapist, and sought out continuing education that felt more in alignment with my vision.

A couple years later I began hiring pre-licensed therapists to work at my practice, whom I would mentor toward becoming sex-positive therapists.

After about 15 years of working as a sex therapist and working with many sex-positive professionals, I realized that the business I built could’ve been done with less time spent in school, and with less money!

One of the things that I dislike about academia is the gatekeeping. It made me realize that we can be doing this work with a passion for it. Sometimes all we need is some guidance, some good advice, some tools. In 2022 I launched Pleasure Psych. It’s a program that empowers therapists and coaches to become sex-positive, kink-friendly educators and practitioners. It’s affordable, onlind and flexible.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

I built my practice on social media. In 2009, was posting about erectile dysfunction on Twitter. In 2010, voice America gave me a podcast. I moved that over to blog talk radio in 2011 and in 2012 one of my former podcasta guests and I decided to start doing youtube videos. That was when my practice really took off. It was the early days of social media. There weren’t a lot of people making LGBTQ, sex positive, sex therapy content on YouTube.

I did that for about 4 years and since then I’ve slow down quite a bit. I still post, but nowadays I have most of my visiibility on Substack.

Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?

In 2020 when the world wide pandemic hit,my group practice Los Angeles sex therapy was overflowing with clients. I couldn’t hire sex-positive therapists fast enough to catch the overflow. I wished at that time that I could train a bunch of coaches that could provide sex-positve mental health coaching and support while they waited to work with a therapist.

That’s when the idea was born. In 2022, I asked one of my colleagues what she thought about the idea of launching a program where I would train and certify sex-positive practitioners. She thought it was a good idea.

I ran a beta test and offered the program for a very low rate to my existiing audience. Ten people bought the program that first round without any hesitation. That was when I knew I was onto something.

Today over 100 students have enrolled, and we just had our very first in-person intensive retreat.

My program is meant to be accessible to everyone who has a passion. We offer scholarships for LGBTQIA++, adult industry professionals, BIPOC and more. My goal is to get rid of the gatekeeping and make sex-positive education and information more accessible to everyone.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://instagram.com/moushumicoaching
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/moushumicoaching
• Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/moushumighose/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/moushumicoach
• Youtube: https://YouTube.com/moushumicoaching
• Other: pleasureforthemasses.suubstack.com
  queenofseasons.substack.com