Ask UPLIFT: Emma Schmidt and Associates, Sex + Relationship Therapy
Owning and operating a small business is a journey. Whether it’s slinging drinks, hiring employees, navigating finances, learning new tax codes, or carving out a space to make your own, each journey is different. UPLIFT is Women of Cincy’s directory of women-led products, services, and businesses. Each month, we ask one or more UPLIFT entrepreneurs about their journeys, and we discover a new business and a new path to entrepreneurship.
This month, we meet with Dr. Emma Schmidt, founder of Emma Schmidt and Associates, Sex + Relationship Therapy, to discuss her experiences as a small business owner and how she takes care of herself while managing a busy life as an entrepreneur.
Why did you start your business?
I started my business because I saw a need in Cincinnati for more sexual healthcare. The lack of care became clear when I was first married in 2007. My husband and I quickly realized sex wasn’t what we expected. Specifically, I was experiencing Genital Pelvic Pain and Penetration Disorder (G.P.P.P.D.), a topic I wrote my doctoral dissertation about. When we looked for help, we were passed around by providers. I felt like the process needed to be easier. At the time, I was already working on becoming a therapist, and I knew we weren’t the only ones struggling with these challenges. So, I started school and became a sex therapist.
How do you take care of yourself while running a small business?
I’ve learned I have to show up for myself and stop walking away from my own needs. I took time off work to take care of myself when dealing with a chronic illness (copper poisoning from an I.U.D and endometriosis). Now, I stop working around 2 p.m. and take a break. I exercise, pick my kids up earlier, and get to cook. Self-care looks like letting go of control and delegating my work more to allow myself these times to breathe.
What does community support mean to you?
Community support is so important. I have this saying, “You were never meant to do this alone.” I would have never made it this far without the support of so many people – other professionals, mentors, friends, and family. To me, we were designed to be together, to help each other out, to use each other’s resources for the better. Community support is how we thrive together, grieve together and show up for each other.
How have you personally measured success as a small business?
As we’ve gotten bigger, one item I come back to is an old tax sheet I made in that first year of business. It gives me motivation because it shows how far we’ve come. It’s not the financial mark that is the measure of success but the people I saw and helped behind that financial mark. Going from not seeing many clients to this past year, as a group, we had over 11,000 sex therapy sessions feels like a great measure of success to me.
Success also looks like getting programs off the ground that used to be dreams. We now offer an in-house sex therapy school for the therapists on our team. Another dream was having a more global impact on sexual healthcare. We now have the resources to help the care team at our partner, Mukti, in Nepal. Our team provides them with free supervision, free group therapy, and free sex therapy training for the care team, which houses and helps children who’ve been rescued from sex trafficking start their healing journey.
Once, I had to convince people that sex therapy is a beneficial therapy, and now it has become more known in the Cincinnati area. That feels like an incredible measure of success.
What advice do you have for people wanting to start a small business?
Buckle up, buttercup, because you’re in for a ride! I have three tips.
You really need to be passionate. In those hard moments, it’s the “why" that carries you through. You always want to have a vision that’s bigger than what you’re doing right now.
Also, value building a community of relationships. You were never meant to do this alone. Reach out to them for help, celebrations, guidance.
Lastly, practice failing. It will be the thing that helps propel you. I live by the passage from Theodore Roosevelt, The Man in the Arena, and have it hanging up in my office and home. It’s worth quoting the whole thing:
“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly …”
Thank you, Emma! You can find Emma at Emma Schmidt and Associates, Sex + Relationship Therapy. You can check out all of our UPLIFT business here.