She Walks Into Strip Clubs With No Strings Attached

Brandon Andres Green, host of Good Neighbor Podcast Tulsa, sits down with Janae Swann of No Strings Attached to talk about outreach, recovery, lived experience, and what it looks like to love women in the sex trade without pressure, preaching, or hidden strings.

Janae shares how No Strings Attached reaches women working in strip clubs, OnlyFans, dancing, and other parts of the sex trade through consistent outreach, small gifts, honest relationships, and practical support. The goal is not to rush in and rescue people. It is to show up faithfully, learn their stories, and help them discover the dream still alive in their heart.

This conversation gets into Janae’s own story of addiction, exploitation, recovery, and seventeen years clean. She explains how lived experience changed the way she sees the women she serves, why judgment never helps someone heal, and why meaningful recovery often starts long before a person is ready to leave everything behind.

You’ll also hear what No Strings Attached actually does behind the scenes: pro bono counseling, court advocacy, dinners, baby showers, Christmas parties, support for women with children, and everyday friendship that continues after the first conversation. Janae also shares why Tulsa is different, why many women in local clubs are not making the money people assume, and why the biggest misconception is that these women do not want help.

If you care about trauma-informed outreach, addiction recovery, women’s ministry, survivor leadership, or supporting people without trying to control their choices, this conversation is worth your time.

Real love does not come with a price tag, a pitch, or a hidden agenda.

Transcript

Welcome To Good Neighbor Podcast

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Brandon Andris Green.

SPEAKER_01 0:12

Welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast Live. You know what? Some people bring professional training to their work. Others bring lived experience. Janae Swan brings both. Today I have the pleasure of introducing your good neighbor, Janae Swan with no strings attached. Janae, how's it going?

SPEAKER_02 0:33

So good. Thank you so much for having me on.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Oh, it's my pleasure.

What No Strings Attached Does

SPEAKER_01 0:37

So for someone that's maybe first hearing about no strings attached, um, what is it? And who exactly are you trying to help?

SPEAKER_02 0:48

So with no strings attached, we help girls um that are working in the sex trade, um, whether that be strippers, only fans, um, anything like that, dancers, obviously. Um, so what we do is we have a team, an outreach team, that goes out, we get a small gift together, and we give them a small gift and just tell them how loved they are. And then that opens the door to really start journeying with them to see where they're at, to see what they need, to see what the dream is in their heart.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Wow. And how did this even come about in the first place?

How The Mission Started

SPEAKER_02 1:22

So a very, very long time ago, I was in college and I met a girl named Jamie, and she um loved Jesus very much. And so she started No Strings about 10 or 11 years ago. But I was the only person she knew that had lived experience, and I was living in Texas at the time. So she would bring me in and I would talk to her outreach team about like what it was like to have lived experience and what the girls really needed from the team and that kind of stuff. And my I just fell in love with it. And so um I ended up moving to Tulsa partially to help her run it and it she didn't have a nonprofit at the time, she was just going with what she had. And so, about a year, a little over a year ago, I started the nonprofit. She gave it all over to me. Um, I've been doing it for three and a half years. She gave it to me a while ago, but we actually started the nonprofit a year ago. So that's how it came about is that she just wanted to walk with people that didn't look like her. And um, so it was just an amazing story. And then when I took it over, it changed a little bit and just how things do, and it's transitioned to where now we do pro bono counseling for the girls. Um, I'll advocate in court for them. We take them to dinner, we take them to the aquarium if they have small kids. Um, we just want to do life with them. We have baby showers and Christmas parties. So we just want to know what the dream in their heart is, and we want to help them get there. And if the dream in their heart is to be a dancer, we're okay with that. We just want them to know they are so loved by someone who doesn't need anything from them with no strings attached.

SPEAKER_01 2:58

Wow, it sounds amazing.

Funding Outreach And Showing Up

SPEAKER_01 3:00

How uh it also sounds expensive. How do you how are you able to afford this?

SPEAKER_02 3:05

You know what? There's never been a time that we didn't have money, it just happens. We get we have donors that give. Sometimes I'll have to teemu it and get this small gift from Timu. But you know what? They're just so happy to see us when we walk in. They call us the church ladies. I've heard us called the church ladies, I've heard us called um the ghetto angels, I've heard us called a lot of things, but most of them have been good, so that's good. When we walk in, they're just so happy to see us. So honestly, I've learned over the last five years doing this consistently, that they don't care what we bring in. So, but I do love to have the money that we need because there's always more I can do.

SPEAKER_01 3:50

Man,

Lived Experience And Real Needs

SPEAKER_01 3:51

and based off what I'm learning, your your own story includes addiction, exploitation, survivor, and recovery. And how's this how's your lived experience kind of changed the way you understand these people that you're helping?

SPEAKER_02 4:08

Man, when you're out there, when you're living a life that um my addiction, there was nothing to be proud of, right? There was every day was a struggle to survive. I was on meth for about seven years. Um, I have seven felonies. Like, I wasn't playing around. I know people see me now and they're like, no way. And I'm like, that's the honest to God truth. I've been clean for 17 years. And so it just helps me to realize like, no matter what place you're in, you could be in the best place or the worst place to be a dancer. Honestly, there's I've seen girls who are living their best life in that world. They think that, and and I'm not gonna tell them differently. So, but if they are having a hard time, that's who we want to help. We want to help them if they're in a sketchy situation or in a situation that they just don't feel comfortable in. That's when we are able to step in, or maybe they're just having some anxiety or having trouble parenting. That's when we're able to step in and say, Hey, let us journey with you for a little while and get you over this hump. So, my lived experience just teaches me like, don't ever judge someone from where they are right now because you never know where they'll be tomorrow.

Misconceptions About Dancers In Tulsa

SPEAKER_01 5:22

Have you come across some standard misconceptions that people tend to have about all of this?

SPEAKER_02 5:27

Yes. Well, you know, dancers in general make money, they are not lacking for money, most of them, but Tulsa is a different, it's a different place. They don't make a lot of money in Tulsa. And so you see these TikTok videos of all the stuff, and so they're like, Why are you trying to help people who don't want your help? First of all, they do want our help. When we walk into the club, they are so happy to see us, and we are so happy to see them. Like, we know their kids and we know their stories, and we know um that they had to go to the doctor the time before last. And so the misconception is that these are not like humans, that these are people who just like are in a different world than your world. No, they're in our world, they are amazing human beings who just happen to do this for a living.

What Meaningful Recovery Means

SPEAKER_01 6:22

What does meaningful recovery kind of look like to you? I mean, just getting beyond the uh getting out of immediate danger stage.

SPEAKER_02 6:32

The getting out of immediate danger stage sometimes is the hardest part, right? Getting out of immediate danger and then staying out of immediate danger for a significant amount of time. Because I've found um in our work, not just with dancers, but I do it, I do a different different kinds of work all the time too, since I'm a therapist. And I can get them out, and they may get out for a few days, right? And then they're like, actually, the way I was living wasn't that bad. And so they go back. So if I can get them out and start helping them to dream again, that's what meaningful recovery is. Not just getting clean, but having a life that you want to live, living out the dream that you have in your heart.

SPEAKER_01 7:11

Have you

A Story Of Real Change

SPEAKER_01 7:12

experienced some moments when you realized that no strings attached was really making a true difference in someone's life?

SPEAKER_02 7:19

Yeah. Yes. Um, we had a girl that we had taken to lunch and taken to dinner and had some really great, meaningful conversations with outside of the club, which is always what we want because in there it's just really hard to have a great conversation. So we had talked to her, and um, her family did not know that she was a dancer. They thought that she was like working healthcare at night overnight. Um, and she was in a relationship that wasn't a horrible relationship, but it was not a great relationship for her. And so we just were walking through that with her. My daughter helps me at No Strings Attached. She's the vice president. She's incredible. She's 23. She has her own lived experience. So she's able to connect with the girls way better than I can because her story is so much closer than mine is. So she had taken her out a couple of times. We had done some fun things with her. She wanted out, she wanted to go to school. We had everything kind of lined up for her, and then she fell off and we didn't hear from her for a while. And we would go to the club and she would see us and she would like kind of like avert her eyes, like, hey, I'm really busy, I gotta go. And we understand that, like, we're not mad. And so we just would tell her, like, we love you so much, we're not mad at you. And so she kept saying, like, I got it, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this. And we're like, we are here for you, whether you get out or not, we love you so much. And so eventually, probably six, six to nine months into that kind of circle cycle of she's in, she's out, she doesn't know what she wants. She wrote us this beautiful message that she had moved away to a different state. She had told her family what she had been doing, she had told her family that she had been abused, they were helping her walk through that. Um, she had found that the relationship was not for her, and all of that was because she had been able to take just a few short steps with us on a journey. And then she started her own. And now she has this beautiful life in a different state, and she's um going to school. All of the things that we had talked about for those six to nine months when we didn't think anything was like penetrating the surface there. We thought, you know, she doesn't want to leave, she's just kind of stringing us along, maybe. Who knows what is in her mind? It was working. The seeds were being planted, and now the seeds are growing, and she's doing phenomenal.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

Hey man, what a great story! And

Growing The Work Into Dallas

SPEAKER_01 9:41

and as this work grows, Janae, what do you really want? String, no strings attached to become known for.

SPEAKER_02 9:48

We just want to be known for loving people, honestly, just loving people. We're expanding to Dallas right now, so we're gonna start going to the clubs in Dallas um on a monthly basis as well. So we want it to be known for I want people to see us out and about in the world and at the clubs and be like, those are the women who love us, they love us for no other reason than they just love us because it's the right thing to do. And so if we can get to that point with all of the girls where they trust us enough because they love us to say this is the dream in our heart, I mean, that's winning to me.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

Amen.

How To Connect And Support

SPEAKER_01 10:27

And how can listeners learn more, maybe support your work, maybe invite you to speak, or just simply try to connect with you?

SPEAKER_02 10:35

Um, I am on this on social media. Um, I can I link it after this or do you want to do it? Sure. I'm bad.

SPEAKER_01 10:43

You tell us, you tell us, and we'll do both, or just tell them how they can find you.

SPEAKER_02 10:47

Okay, so I'm Janae Swan on Facebook. That's the easiest way to get a hold of me. Um, I do speaking engagements all across the nation. I love to come and talk to your church. And and I don't just talk about this, we talk about a lot of things. I have a book called Communication is Key. It's a back-and-forth journal for parents and teenagers to get to know each other and support each other more. Um, I have groups that you can be a part of um as a counselor. If you're just wanting to learn what the dream in your heart is, I want to help you get there, whether you're a dancer or just, you know, a mom or a dad or just you know, trying to figure it out at 17, 18 years old. We have I have a group that that meets weekly that we just figure out the dreams in your heart and we try to get there. Um, so there's lots of things like that. Facebook is the easiest place, and then I'll link all the places for no strings after this.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

That's excellent. Janae, I really appreciate you being on the show, and I really wish you and No Strings Attached the best moving forward.

SPEAKER_02 11:44

Thank you so much for having us.

SPEAKER_00 11:48

Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to tmptulsa.com. That's gmptulsa.com or call 918.