Hayley Davies still remembers the nights she left the bar at 2 a.m.

Not as an intoxicated patron.

But as an employee whose task it was to wipe down tables, empty the trash and lock the doors in the wee hours of the morning. It was Davies's first-ever job, and as the weeks and months wore on, the schedule became grueling.

Especially for a 14-year-old.

“I’m pretty sure that wasn’t even legal,” Davies chuckles.

Indeed, the grind began early for Davies.

Unhappy with her home situation in New Zealand and battling a mild case of depression, she moved out of her parent's house after middle school and into her own apartment. She juggled jobs at two different restaurants—including one that transitioned into a bar at night—while taking her high school courses online.

“I had zero time for anything else,” Davies says. “I was consumed by studying and work.”

Demanding as the routine may have been, Davies relished her independence and embraced the challenge. She learned the importance of being organized, responsible, relentless and upbeat—traits that would later become her hallmarks.

After only a few months, Davies was making $1,500 per week—almost double the amount of her monthly rent. At age 15, she paid thousands for a full-sleeve tattoo on her right arm, a project that took 12 straight hours to complete. The following year she bought herself a car.

A few years later, Davies altered her course.

She dropped out of school and began studying software development, eventually landing a full-time job in IT. Davies didn’t mind the work—“I’ve always loved problem solving,” she says—but the pay was mediocre.

When Davies decided to relocate to Australia at age 19, she didn’t have the funds to cover the trip. A friend who was an exotic dancer convinced Davies to start stripping. After only a few weeks, Davies had more than enough money for the move.

Davies, though, couldn’t find an IT job in Australia that she liked. She moved back to New Zealand and returned to the gentlemen’s club, working late hours after spending all day at a desk.

“My family had always told me, ‘Oh my God, don’t ever do that!’” Davies says of stripping. “And I was always like, ‘No way! I would never!’ But there I was, not only doing it but loving it.”

Davies said a typical night at the club brought in $1,500-$1,800, and it wasn’t uncommon for her to make $3,000 or more. The fast money enabled her to fund her $10,000 boob job and reduced the stress of having to pay bills and rent.

Still, after every late night at the club, Davies would report to work the next morning at her software job, where she labored all day for only $200. By age 21, Davies realized none of it made financial sense.

She needed to start stripping full-time.

“The only reason I ever did IT was because I cared too much about what other people thought,” Davies says. “I wanted people to be proud of me. Oh, she’s in software development. My whole life was dictated by that one thought of caring what others think.

“But I wasn’t enjoying it. I would make my whole month’s salary in one weekend as a dancer. Eventually, I was like, ‘What am I doing?’”

Once Davies turned her attention to dancing, there was no turning back. She quickly became one of the top money-makers at the club, allowing her to live more lavishly than ever before.

It wasn’t uncommon for Davies to grind for two weeks, earn a boatload of money, and then sneak away for a month to enjoy one of her biggest passions: travel. She says she’s visited 37 different countries, choosing to take many of her trips alone.

Her love of Australia prompted her to return to the Outback, this time on a permanent basis. There, she flourished as a stripper and also began dabbling in OnlyFans.

The experience was frustrating at first, mainly because of the male collab partners she met on Bumble.

“Most of them didn’t want to get tested,” Davies says. “A lot of guys didn’t want their face on camera, so they’d back out. Other guys would get nervous and couldn’t get hard.”

Things changed, however, when a fellow dancer introduced Davies to a network of experienced content creators—many of whom were male.

“A whole new world opened up,” she laughs.

Along with shooting high-end scenes for OnlyFans, Davies began to educate herself on how to grow her Instagram and Twitter accounts. Collab postings, hashtags, tagging … the full gamut.

Eventually, Davies’ content caught the attention of American porn legends Johnny Sins and Kieran Lee, who convinced Davies to come to the United States for a series of content shoots.

Davies arrived in Miami in July.

She’s never gone home.

*****

A few weeks ago, Hayley Davies posted an Instagram reel at 3 a.m. Within an hour, hundreds of people had left fawning comments underneath the sizzling video, but one in particular stood out.

“Go to sleep!” it read.

The author was Ryan Pownall, the host of the popular Pillow Talk podcast and one of Davies’ closest industry friends. Pownall knows all too well about Davies’ tireless work ethic. More than once, he’s invited her over for a movie night, but instead of the television screen, her eyes are always affixed to her phone, texting to set up collabs, editing TikToks, or monitoring her social media feeds. Pownall often asks Davies why she “can’t relax and chill."

“I just can’t,” she’ll respond.

Davies’ dedication quickly caught the eye of longtime agent Mark Spiegler, who added Davies to his roster of high-profile stars just two months after she arrived in the United States.

“She’s very professional, very driven,” Spiegler says. “Like I always say, ‘A hot girl is hot. But a smart girl is even hotter.’”

Davies says she usually awakens around 7 a.m. to prepare for that day’s collabs. She drinks coffee in the morning but rarely eats anything before 5 p.m.

While collabs for most performers are strictly limited to sex, Davies usually plans out TikToks and reels to film with her partners and is always shooting BTS footage during every spare moment of downtime.

“The fans don’t realize how much goes into it,” Davies says. “I’ll say I work 100 hours a week, and they’ll say, ‘How can you fuck for 100 hours a week?’ But the fucking is the smallest part of it.”

Performer Sisi Rose, one of Davies’ closest friends in the industry, jokes that Davies can turn even the most average daily routine into viral content.

“We could be eating an acai bowl,” Rose says, “and Hayley would say, ‘If you lick the spoon really, really seductively, we could make it into a TikTok.’ She has a wicked mind when it comes to business and marketing.”

And Davies is still learning. She says she’s constantly studying analytics about optimal times of the day to post—and how often to post. She DMs with other influencers, asking for advice, and her research has helped her avoid being shadow-banned.

While Davies has shot for virtually all of the top studios in the industry—Jules Jordan, Vixen, Brazzers BANG! and Adult Time, to name a few—she says she focuses most of her energy these days on collabs.

“I thought (studio work) would be a great way to get exposure,” Davies says, “but really, it’s just putting your stuff out there for free. Financially it’s not worth it. It can be fun, and it’s cool because they’re investing more money into the production, but monetarily it’s under one-tenth of what I would make.

“It’s a one-time payment for such a long day. In that time, I could do three collabs.”

And Davies often does.

In fact, she says she’s shot as many as five collabs in a 24-hour span.

Rose couldn’t help but chuckle a few weeks ago when Davies told her she was scaling back and “only shooting” six collabs weekly in March.

“To me, six collabs a week is crazy,” Rose says. “But to her, that’s the equivalent of slowing down. She’s a little powerhouse. I worry she’s going to burn herself out. She has such a crazy work addiction.”

Perhaps the most impressive thing is that Davies navigates through all of it with a smile. As much as she’s known for her volume of content, Davies’ most notable trait is her glow. In every reel, TikTok video, or scene, she maintains a spunk and energy that radiates off the screen. Rose compares Davies to Bubbles from the animated TV series Powerpuff Girls.

“Everyone asks me how I do it,” Davies says. I don’t drink Red Bull, do drugs, or smoke weed. I’m just really high-energy and really bubbly. Also, I have ADHD, and that helps with my energy levels because I’m really hyper. It helps me focus on my work.”

Still, in recent weeks, Davies has finally realized she may need to slow down a bit.

She wants to travel more, re-establish her gym routine, and start having girl’s nights with friends. She’s making good money, yes, and hopes to be someday able to help her mom retire. But for now, she’s ready to focus on herself.

“You don’t want to work so much that your mental health deteriorates,” she says. “I work way too much. It’s just insane. I feel like I’ve lost who I am a little bit.

“I want to actually have a life.”