Hot N Ready: The Secret World of Kazumi

This is the cover story of the October issue of AVN magazine. Click here for the digital edition. LOS ANGELES — Kazumi wants to get better in the cowgirl position. She’s even willing to pay for a lesson. “I’m trying to fly this girl out to teach me how to ride dick,” Kazumi says. “Because she’s just great at it—things that people don’t consider about being excellent.” The 25-year-old content creator who dropped out of film school considers excellence a lot these days—now that she’s become a multi-millionaire in less than three years on OnlyFans. She found her prospective “cowgirl instructor” on Instagram. “I’m bad with it,” Kazumi confesses. “I hope she replies to me. I had the idea today and I was like, ‘There’s riding classes—why don’t you come to my house and teach me how to do this myself?’ “People think excellence is an accident. Adriana Chechik doesn’t just be awesome. She had to fine-tune it and tweak it.” Not much Kazumi has done since spring of 2020—when she decided to focus on her OnlyFans—has been accidental. The former Shake Shack fry cook turned marketing exec makes moves with strategies that all lead to the same goals—customer acquisition and retention. She creates, performs, posts and grants interviews with a purpose—to stimulate discussion and build a community. “It’s really not even about competing with other people, it’s how far can I take this?” Kazumi says. It’s the Saturday lunch rush at a trendy eatery in downtown LA near the penthouse apartment where Kazumi resides—and less than 15 minutes from where she grew up with strict Filipino parents who wouldn’t let her have a cell phone until she was 18. “I feel like I work to be able to eat as many appetizers as possible,” Kazumi cracks. She orders four of them along with ice water on this afternoon of errands that will climax with tonight’s visit to Torture Garden Los Angeles—a fetish and body-art club at the Globe Theatre. Lounging in a brown, sleeveless body suit with green slippers and her long hair in a ponytail, Kazumi makes casual Saturday’s look easy—not unlike her unpredictable, never-boring posts on social media where she has become a force of nature, helping to re-define what it means to be a sex worker in 2022. An emerging meme queen whose six-figure marketing budget includes airplane banners during the Super Bowl, “Kazumi Hot N Ready” box trucks at Coachella, free condoms at the Kazumicon Supper Club and a dedicated TikTok team, Kazumi tells AVN there’s a method behind her madness. “My mindset is that if I’m going to get into a profession that’s so hard to come out of—like it’s hard for us to find jobs elsewhere that aren’t related to it—I just have to be the best,” she reasons. “Because if you do it halfway, then afterwards my life might become really hard. Like if I’m just kind of a mediocre performer, transitioning back into the workplace with such a big gap in my resume. “This is it. Some things are forever.” Kazumi memes may be one of those things. Even though she had yet to launch her Instagram at @kazumisworld, her first viral moment came in March 2020, when she decided to Photoshop her face with a Fox News headline that she got kicked out of Harvard. “It was just a selfie of me and it went on WorldStar and it went on all these influencer pages and it became like this talking point,” Kazumi recalls. “And people were like, ‘Who is this fucking stupid bitch? Let’s find her naked.’ So it happened. “Before that I was making a lot of money off of Telegram because I didn’t want social media for a long time. It was just a place where we would share tips and collaborate with each other. “I made my OnlyFans pop during Covid because I didn’t want to go outside and I wanted a remote job. And just working online I was in group chats being like, ‘Hey, how do I take a nude? How do I do this?’ And everyone would just come together like, ‘I don’t know, let’s try this.’ “And then we would just all collaborate, which is why I always say it’s community over competition. Because it doesn’t matter if another girl does the same thing. I just have to do it, too. And then people refine their own styles.” Kazumi made honing her techniques in content creation and social media marketing a priority during the first phase of the country’s stay-at-home mandate. “I wasn’t really collabing at that point in my life either,” she says. “So it was just about technique on optimization—how do you increase customer acquisition and how do you make sure the customer experience is so good that they keep buying shit? “Even if my porn at the time was ass—it was very amateur. It was me in hotel rooms with a ring light.” Now when Kazumi rents hotel rooms, she’s often meeting A-list talent and crew there for content shoots that she produces and owns. This year her high-profile collaborations include scenes with three-time AVN Female Performer of the Year Angela White, six-time AVN Favorite Male Porn Star winner Johnny Sins and reigning AVN Best Male Newcomer Anton Harden, to name a few. “Kazumi is proving herself to be a highly effective, independent operator in the contemporary adult space,” Angela White, the Australian superstar who is the winningest female performer of all time, tells AVN. “Eschewing the traditional studio-focused path, Kazumi is leveraging many of the self-publishing platforms performers now have access to, and pairing this with a strong work ethic and aggressive social media and marketing efforts.” White continues, “Kazumi’s brand tactics and strategies are a great example of ways performers can utilize the myriad tools and assets now available to content creators to establish themselves in adult entertainment on their own terms and in line with their own brand. “Kazumi and I have shot a number of scenes together, including our most recent threesome with Johnny Sins. I loved how genuinely excited Kazumi was to fuck us both. The energy on set was great and the fans loved the scene.” In mid-September she dropped an orgy/gangbang on her OnlyFans with Savannah Bond, Karmen Karma and seven guys—one of which was Harden. She’s no stranger to gang-bangs—she used to do them for free at private sex clubs that she began frequenting at 19. “She’s amazing,” Harden, the Vixen Media Group exclusive from Charlotte, N.C. by way of Atlanta, tells AVN. “We’ve shot together five or six times… When I first met her she obviously had a bubbly personality and was really nice and sweet. “She came over to my apartment at like 1 in the morning and we kicked it all night and talked. “We shot content for the first time then and ever since we just shoot all the time. Any time she needs someone and I have a free day, we’ll shoot. She’s super hard-working. “She runs all this stuff herself—all the marketing, all the trucks with her name on it… She’s really smart and made for the business.” Harden continues, “She’s really into community over competition. She says that all the time, like ‘Why can’t it be like that? Why can’t we all be famous?’ I just love her. And she’s obviously beautiful.” Anton was one of 30 special guests at the first edition of the Kazumicon Supper Club, an eight-course, gourmet dinner party that she paid for and hosted in August. “It almost felt like her birthday party,” Harden says. “She was such a great host.” Attendees left with swag in hand—such as the Kazumi Squirts cartoon keychain that Harden now uses. “So I made these stickers that say Zero Slurp Alert and I put them on these takeout boxes,” Kazumi says. “I did a little bit of graphic design before, so it’s kind of fun… I made my own menus and made these adult goodie bags. And then the condoms said We Met at the Kazumicon Mixer.” Kazumi is smiling today even though the past 24 hours were a roller coaster—her main Instagram got deleted, but she also enjoyed her best day ever on OnlyFans. “It’s funny because I always compare myself to bigger and bigger people and there’s people who’ve made like $100K a day. It’s like how the fuck are you doing that? I did $21K yesterday,” she reveals. Her daily average is $10K. “I started to try to do this meme thing with my TikToks. It’s like a secret strategy I’ve been trying to figure out. “Because memes create community. If you think about Johnny Sins and Riley Reid, they’ve transcended porn and become part of like a human experience. “I feel like if you go to Africa and showed them a picture of Johnny Sins, they’d be like, ‘That’s my doctor.’ They would all make the same joke.” Even though her main page @kazumisworld got disabled with more than 475,000 followers, she assures me she still has @kazumislife and @secretkazumi operational. “I’m paying a lot of money to get it back this week,” she says. “And @kazumislife is live today but tomorrow, we don’t know. “It’s just backups on backups on backups. I keep responding. … I have seven TikToks and I have seven Instagrams.” *** Kazumi started her OnlyFans account in 2019, when she was still doing direct marketing with her sights set on the corporate world. But when the pandemic began she “sugar-babied for a second” and thought what if? “I’m like, I’m making money, what if I just made more money?” Kazumi says. “And I wanted to buy my boobs, too. And all my sugar daddies were like sure, but you’ll become like my indentured sex slave to pay it back. And then I was like, no, let me see if I can try to finagle this myself.” By June 2020, Kazumi immersed herself in various group chats on Telegram, absorbing all the information she could about creating content that converts. “And I was like I want to buy my boobs—that was $8K—how much money do I have to make a week, a day, an hour to calculate that? And my first big month was July 2020 when I made $16K,” she says. She remembers thinking that one-month haul was incredible. "I dropped out of film school,” says Kazumi, who was an aspiring screenwriter. “I was like, what the hell, I have never touched $16K in my life—that’s insane. I bought my titties the next month.” Then she made new goals. “Then I kind was like let’s do $25K a month and then I did that. And then I was like let’s aim for $50K. Inch by inch… What’s $50K a month divided by a week, divided by a day, divided by hours? “At this point I didn’t really have a social media until I got my [Brazilian Butt Lift]. Because I was like, ‘I’m finally hot guys,’” Kazumi says half jokingly. “So I got my BBL in April of 2021. People like to tell me sometimes, 'You know, you wouldn’t be this far if you didn’t get your surgery.’ And I was like, ‘I was making quite a bit of money before I looked like anything or even had a social.’” Kazumi reached a milestone in December 2020, when she completed her first six-figure month. “From there I was like I want to hit $200K a month,” she recalls. “Just because I saw someone else do it and that’s why I feel like I always will communicate my numbers. Because I feel like in a world where we have so many glass ceilings, I want to show people you can do it yourself. “I didn’t have assistance or an agency or management. You can figure it out and scale up yourself.” *** Kazumi describes the multi-level marketing job she had before adult as “like a military bootcamp.” She gave out government-issued cell phones to the homeless and others eligible for government assistance. “And it was very direct marketing so what they would do is they would drop me off at like Skid Row,” Kazumi recalls. “They would drop me off in the projects like Jordan Downs or what not. “They would make me stand in front of Ralph’s and a lot of times I would be at welfare offices.” Every morning she and her co-workers would listen to a motivational speech about having an “attacking mindset” and then be sent into the field to give out the free phones. She says her MLM bosses would “sell a dream.” “They were saying like look, if you get really good at this you can become a Team Lead and then you can train X amount of people to also do the same thing,” Kazumi explains. “Then you can get elevated to a junior partner with the company. Then you get to have your own office, get some residuals and make six figures a year. “And that was the dream that I fought for—for almost three-and-a-half years.” She thrived in the position, earning a promotion to Team Lead by the time she left in 2020. “Sometimes I would be out there until 8 p.m., 10 p.m., 11 p.m. on Skid Row—in people’s tents handling it,” Kazumi says. “Because I wanted six figures. I wanted freedom. I wanted to not live at my parents’ house.” She says it was a grind because it was an outdoor assignment and because homeless people often don’t trust government handouts.  “But it gave me a lot of perspective,” Kazumi adds. “Which is why I feel like I’m very grounded. “And at some point my ex kicked me out and I was couch surfing… And for me it was really great in terms of changing my mindset. You were either going to do it or you’re not. And if you don’t do it, you’re going to be really uncomfortable like right now. So it was a really important thing for me to get into. “If you ask my other co-workers they’d be like what the fuck was that weird MLM we were in? I personally liked it.” *** Kazumi learned another lesson from that period in her life—the importance of financial independence. “So I always tell girls make sure your money is right. Make sure that you can provide for yourself because you don’t want to be… my ex didn’t want me anymore and he kicked me out,” she says. “I was just couch surfing and chronically houseless for a few years. And that was just insane but I felt like that was a good learning curve to be like I need my own money.” Born in Kuwait, a country located in the Persian Gulf between Iraq and Saudi Arabia, Kazumi’s parents brought her to L.A. when she was 2. She wasn’t allowed to go out for recreation until she was 17 and her parents put a tracking device on her phone when she was in her early 20s. Still, she tells AVN she was sexually promiscuous—doing only anal until she lost her virginity at 19. To this day Kazumi says her parents don’t know exactly what she does for a living. “I’m a social media marketer and if they press it I start talking about NFTs and they tell me to shut the hell up because they’re just like, what the hell is that?” Kazumi jokes. “I feel like I have a suspicion they have to know." She’s had “beef” with her parents for a long time after being kicked out of the house due to a bad boyfriend.  “Then I had to live with a shitty boyfriend for a second and then he kicked me out,” Kazumi says. “And then I was back with my parents. And then it was just kind of back and forth for a long time. My last boyfriend also kicked me out after cheating on me. And I really didn’t want to go back home so I was just couch surfing. “I lived in a co-op for a sec and also just had to do bullshit for a long time until I finally just sucked it up and went back to my parents’ house for a second. ... Because I was a different person when I needed to survive versus now when I just do what I want.” *** Kazumi in the past year has done numerous interviews, crediting her first appearance on the notorious “No Jumper” podcast—a popular platform for rap artists and entertainment influencers—with “putting me on the map” in November 2021. She tells AVN many podcasters want to hear about her uninhibited nights at sex clubs—when she sometimes took on all comers. “The catch-22 of podcasts is I want to go viral and people don’t understand nuance,” Kazumi says. “The most viral things about me are these sex stories, which I did do and also are really fun. And my job was to get people in and once you’re in, then I can share these more extra-dimensional parts of myself. “It’s like what is shareable and what do people want to communicate to their friends? They want to communicate jokes and insane stories that start discussions. “Everything out there about me is to stimulate discussion. I keep it silly. And it’s also, people want to jack off.” Kazumi says on the heels of several "No Jumper” appearances as well as other podcasts that now she’s “rebranding” in an effort to show more of who she is away from the sex club scene. “That’s why I made a YouTube and made a Discord, so that fans can actually talk to me in real life and see me in my own element,” she says, adding that her YouTube channel is “not totally fleshed out yet.” “Right now it’s new. But what I want to do is to bring simps on and have them do things for that fan engagement. I’ll fly them out, I don’t care. But it’s been cool to start creating a community where… I’ll hang out with them, I’m not like this slut monster. It humanizes me.” Kazumi says she likes the company of men and always has. “I feel like throughout my life even before I was a sex worker I liked men a lot and I like making them horny,” she adds. “And I like making them feel good—like genuinely. It fulfills me and my own self-esteem. “And I feel like sometimes girls don’t really like men and that’s kind of their downfall. And you can tell they don’t like men. But I live for the attention. “I mean I was in warehouses [having sex] for free in front of random guys for no reason. “I like having sex with men. I like hanging out with them. I like women, too, and I have had a lot of great times with simps. They come to my house. I’ve taken them to dinner, I’ve given them jobs, I’ve paid their rent. It also feels good that people like me.” *** Kazumi, who also earns about $30K every month on Fansly, at press time was in talks with a major adult production company for her first studio scenes. “Right now I want to work until I’m bored of it,” she says. “Theoretically, I could stop working now and I’ll be fine, probably forever, and my future kids would probably be really fine. “So it’s more of a test to see how far I can take it. Because it’s really fun and obviously I set goals for myself.” For example, her next goal is a $400K month. “But that’s not necessarily important or something that’s going to impede my happiness because I’m just chilling right now," Kazumi says. "Right now it’s cool to only do things I want to do. I would do [studio scenes] because I want to, not because I need the money. But because it looks like a cool and fun experience.” She adds, “I would know I made it when I feel like I’m on a level where Riley Reid and Lana Rhoades are in terms of pop culture. They’re just like everywhere. “It’s a level of notoriety that pays itself residually forever. … Johnny Sins, like everyone in the world knows who that guy is. That’s the coolest guy ever. “I feel like right now I’ve been experimenting with how do I get into broader and broader audiences outside of my own bubble? “I’m at the top of the game I feel in terms of my sex-work bubble, but I have to cross over to different avenues of entertainment to keep multiplying. I want to cross into the public consciousness.” Photography by @thephotographer