In the beginning...

I suppose being the first post a back story is in order. I am the part owner/C.F.O./GM of a small adult establishment in upstate NY. I started here in college to help pay the bills. Well maybe it wasn't ALL about the money. What 21 year old guy do you know that doesn't want to work in a nude club? At the time it was only supposed to be a part time job and just till I got my degree in Biology the following year. Well, needless to say, the best laid plans... So fast forward a decade and I now run the most successful club in a 100 mile radius.

I started my "career" as a bartender for the first couple of years. Within a few months I was also handling all the bookkeeping for the company as well. The owner wasn't exactly bright and the manager that was brought in soon after I was hired wasn't exactly trusted with the money. So after 2 years of this I convinced the owner that he was a fool to keep the manager on when business wasn't exactly booming and I was stuck doing most of the duties that a manager would. It took many nights on the phone until after sunrise but at last he agreed to make the change. I was given the title of interim manager until someone better suited could be found. This stayed the same until 2003 (4 years later) when he decided to bring in a new partner.

So I was told there was an investment group from Florida that were interested in buying the club. But they wanted to put one of their own guys in to run the club for 6 months to see if they were still interested. Yes, I told you he wasn't so bright. Needless to say I didn't exactly believe the cover story, but then again, I didn't care that much either. I was still DJing by then and that paid way more then the manager position paid. Being the nice guy that he was the owner held a meeting on my 28^th birthday to tell everyone that he was bringing in a new manager and I would no longer be running the club. This would not have been such a bad thing if any of his story was true. Instead he brought in a man who's experience included working at a home for troubled children (which is strangely similar to working at a strip club) and working at a gay bar. Did I forget to mention he was a homosexual? So from October until January I watched the owner and the new manager undo much of the work I had done to give the club a little credibility. We had come full circle from the days of balloons on the ceiling and a manager running around dressed as Ziggy Stardust or the Mad Hatter to having video games and a crane machine in the middle of the club.

In January 2004 I was first introduced to the "investment group". It turned out to be a member of the Spearmint Rhino group. A chain of gentleman's clubs that started in the L.A. area and then spread globally. Within minutes of meeting me he offered me the GM position. He informed the previous owner that he did not want to keep the current manager (who oddly enough he had no knowledge of) and that we would be making a lot of changes at the club. A starting date in mid April was set for his involvement to begin. By July the previous owner who was now the minority partner was regretting his decision to sell the majority stake in his business. By August he was forced to sell his remaining shares in the club to the new owner. The new owner in turn offered me a minority stake in the business and the offer to operate as partners instead of employer, employee. Obviously I took the offer and within 30 days the previous owner had passed away in his sleep of heart failure.

In 2007 I got a call from my partner who asked if I had ever been to Prague. 10 days later I was on my first trans Atlantic flight with the owner of a club in the Czech Republic. A month later I was the minority owner of 2 gentleman's clubs. I've traveled around the country looking at potential clubs and on several occasions we have even entered deals but currently these are the only two clubs in my portfolio.

I guess that brings us up to date for now. In the future we may revisit the past and the events that brought us here in more detail. But unlike the Billy Joel character, I know that it isn't me that you're coming to see. So until next time...