Starting a New Business . . . OR . . . People Suck

[saveliberty]

This thread is comically hilarious.

Just say, "Slap me silly." geaxtohell. We'll see who's laughing then.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Update. Remember how I started out saying that people suck? They still suck, just in new and fascinating ways. ::sigh::

I'm starting to think there should be a law that no performer should EVER be allowed to act as his or her own agent. You know what the purpose of agents is? To give event promoters someone to talk business with without feeling moved to homicide. Artists are FLAKES. I've seen pastry crust less flaky.

I can understand why it's like pulling teeth to get the vendors to translate enthusiasm into signing the contracts: because they have to give me money. But I'M trying to GIVE money to the performers, and I still practically have to get them in a headlock just to get them to stand still for a serious discussion of details. I'm starting to wonder if ulcer treatment is a tax-deductible business expense, and my manicurist has had to repair chips the last four times I've gone in because I'm actually CHEWING my acrylic nails.

Now that the checks have started to roll in, though, I'm back to feeling excited amongst all the terror and nerves. A friend of mine in the local community told me he got a phone call from the guy who heads up our counterpart event promoter in Phoenix, Horns and Haloes. He said the guy told him he'd heard from us about our event, and asked if my friend thought it would be worth attending, because if he did, then they would talk it around and make sure the Phoenix community attended.

Remind me to have a nervous breakdown after this is all over.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Okay, if you guys have never started your own business, or worked under a deadline, let me just tell you . . . OH MY GOD!

I literally have "nervous breakdown" penciled into my schedule book for the Monday after this event. I figure I'll spend all day Sunday sleeping, so I won't have time to really concentrate on falling apart until Monday.

EVERYONE wants to leave things to the last minute. I have no idea how they think I'm going to plan this whole thing the week before the event. My entire family has been down with successive waves of cold germs for two weeks, including me, so I'm running around attending meetings and making phone calls while trying to cough up a lung and doctor a sick two-year-old, a sick teenager, and two sick adult males. Guess which ones are the biggest hassle?

I finally have all my performers booked, although I'm still tidying up the details of the actual contracts and deposits - no, you are NOT getting any money until you sign the dotted line, thank you very much - and vendors are trickling in slowly but surely. Advertising blitz goes up this week. Can't get my DJ on the phone.

 

[boedicca]

I find it very amusing that the Hegemony of the Kink Club ended up being a bunch of Domineering Control Freaks.

Good luck with you even, C - I hope it is an Arousing Success!

 

[Cecilie1200]

New update.

With less than a month to go, my event is barreling down on me like a freight train in a tunnel.

Got the DJ. Gotta call him tomorrow to give him contact info for some people who can hopefully break him of the horrible tendency to veer off into Lady Gaga and other pop slush. With the DJ comes the sound board and dance floor lighting, so all that's a go.

Got signed contracts for all my performers. Burlesque troupe, fire dancer, and . . . a gender-bending group that kinda defies description. If you want to take a look, here you go:



Got all but two or three vendor spaces filled, with complete strangers starting to call me up and say they heard about us on the Internet and do we still have room for them. Caught me totally by surprise the first time it happened.

Got the ad up on Fetlife.com, the MySpace for BDSM. That was the biggest, most urgent of my advertising needs, so whew!

Got the flyers at the printer, and will be receiving a proof tomorrow morning. Hopefully, it will be able to go to print tomorrow afternoon, since I need the flyers this weekend for the Fourth Avenue Street Fair and some huge event or other that's happening in Phoenix.

Got a list of volunteers I can now organize into the jobs I need done.

So now I just need to write a press release for the necessary news outlets, print up the comp tickets/lanyard tags, distribute the vendor and perfomer packets, and . . . probably a half-dozen other niggling details I can't remember right now.

Dear GOD, I'm looking forward to the nervous breakdown I scheduled for the day after.

 

[Ravi]

Maybe it's just me, but planning a money making special event around sex just seems immoral.

 

[saveliberty]

About half the commericals on tv use it to make money everyday. More subtle to be sure, but the same idea.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Maybe it's just me, but planning a money making special event around sex just seems immoral.

Because it involves people's sexuality, or because it turns a profit?

I don't make money off of people having sex. In fact, I have no more connection with their sexual activities than a bar owner does when his customers hook up and go home together after an evening of partying. In fact, what my business does is virtually identical to what a bar does every weekend of the year, if it were a bar that happened to cater to people of alternative lifestyles and sexualities.

As for making a profit, throwing a kick-ass party is not an inexpensive proposition. The hall doesn't rent for free, the performers don't perform for free, and the advertisers don't advertise for free. And while I'm at it, my utilities at my house aren't free, and the supermarket doesn't give me food for my children's head holes just because they like us. If I want to be able to continue throwing these parties instead of spending all my time on a regular nine-to-five, it's gonna take some folding green to manage it.

 

[Cecilie1200]

About half the commericals on tv use it to make money everyday. More subtle to be sure, but the same idea.

Sexuality is as much a natural, everyday part of people's lives as eating is. Just as people gladly spend money to express and enjoy their food appetites by going out to restaurants, they gladly spend money to express and enjoy their sexuality by going to nightclubs and events like mine. Particularly if they are people, like my attendees, who tend to spend a lot of their regular lives keeping their sexuality very, very quiet.

You guys know me, and you know that I'm a staunch advocate for mature, responsible sexual behavior. I have little patience with rampant promiscuity, and nothing but contempt for people who want to brush the consequences of their actions under the rug and pretend they never happened. I would no more espouse treating sex lightly and frivolously than I would espouse gorging oneself on junk food every day.

That does not, however, mean that I think people should be buttoned-up, buckle-shoed Puritans, treating their genitals as though they're evil aliens that have landed on their bodies.

 

[saveliberty]

That does not, however, mean that I think people should be buttoned-up, buckle-shoed Puritans, treating their genitals as though they're evil aliens that have landed on their bodies.

Interesting picture. Evil aliens.

 

[Cecilie1200]

That does not, however, mean that I think people should be buttoned-up, buckle-shoed Puritans, treating their genitals as though they're evil aliens that have landed on their bodies.

Interesting picture. Evil aliens.

I was raised in a fundamentalist religious family (which has done a remarkable job of accepting and supporting my business, amazingly enough), and I distinctly remember as a child and preteen treating my "private parts" as though they were somehow dirty and not just parts of my body the way my arms or my nose were, because those were the attitudes I was raised with. Pretty much, if it didn't soak clean in the soapy bath water, it didn't get cleaned, because I considered actually TOUCHING those parts for any reason to be "naughty".

So as humorous as it sounds, I came by the "evil alien" analogy honestly.

 

[saveliberty]

Seems you "speak alien" now.

 

[High_Gravity]

Do you have to be a member of the club to attend this even, or is it open to everyone? sounds like it would be fun.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Seems you "speak alien" now.

Well, I did manage to become comfortable living in my own body - ALL of my own body - eventually, yeah. Oddly enough, given the attitudes toward sex and some other things that I was taught, my family and upbringing were a big part of my learning to be comfortable with myself.

I was taught that Christianity should be a logical, practical thing, meant to apply to everyday, mundane life, not just mystical, Cloud-Nine spiritual experiences. It helped me come to the conclusion that many of the things that humans automatically condemn as "wrong" and "sinful" are MAN'S constructs, not God's. Sex is definitely one of those things. I really doubt that He would have created our bodies the way He did if He viewed sex as shameful and dirty.

I don't know that the conclusions I came to are exactly where my parents expected me to follow their teachings to, though.

 

[Ravi]

Somehow, I just can't imagine Jesus attending your fetish fest.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Do you have to be a member of the club to attend this even, or is it open to everyone? sounds like it would be fun.

It's open to the public, so long as you're over 18. And, obviously, you will not be allowed to purchase or consume alcoholic beverages unless you are 21 or older.

 

[High_Gravity]

Do you have to be a member of the club to attend this even, or is it open to everyone? sounds like it would be fun.

It's open to the public, so long as you're over 18. And, obviously, you will not be allowed to purchase or consume alcoholic beverages unless you are 21 or older.

Sounds cool, one more question if you don't mind, how long is the event? the reason I ask is I read through the pages on this thread and it looks like you have put in alot of work into this, and hopefully it is more than just a few hours.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Do you have to be a member of the club to attend this even, or is it open to everyone? sounds like it would be fun.

It's open to the public, so long as you're over 18. And, obviously, you will not be allowed to purchase or consume alcoholic beverages unless you are 21 or older.

Sounds cool, one more question if you don't mind, how long is the event? the reason I ask is I read through the pages on this thread and it looks like you have put in alot of work into this, and hopefully it is more than just a few hours.

It's a one-night party, doors open at 7 pm and breakdown starts at 1 am.

Most of the work I've had to put into it is caused by the fact that this is the first event our business has done, so it has required plugging into the network of contacts in the AZ alternative community and convincing people to take a bit of a flyer on working with an unproven source. The more events we put together in the future, the easier it will get, because the groundwork will have been laid already and people will start coming to us more and more to be part of it.

Then, too, a chunk of work was caused simply because of a knot of idiots here in town who decided they wanted to obstruct the entire thing, and I had to work around them.

 

[High_Gravity]

It's open to the public, so long as you're over 18. And, obviously, you will not be allowed to purchase or consume alcoholic beverages unless you are 21 or older.

Sounds cool, one more question if you don't mind, how long is the event? the reason I ask is I read through the pages on this thread and it looks like you have put in alot of work into this, and hopefully it is more than just a few hours.

It's a one-night party, doors open at 7 pm and breakdown starts at 1 am.

Most of the work I've had to put into it is caused by the fact that this is the first event our business has done, so it has required plugging into the network of contacts in the AZ alternative community and convincing people to take a bit of a flyer on working with an unproven source. The more events we put together in the future, the easier it will get, because the groundwork will have been laid already and people will start coming to us more and more to be part of it.

Then, too, a chunk of work was caused simply because of a knot of idiots here in town who decided they wanted to obstruct the entire thing, and I had to work around them.

I have read through your posts and alot of the problems you encountered tend to happen in pretty much every kind of industry when you try and set something like this up, I give you credit for sticking to your guns and not giving up, alot of people would have just stopped when it got to be hard.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Sounds cool, one more question if you don't mind, how long is the event? the reason I ask is I read through the pages on this thread and it looks like you have put in alot of work into this, and hopefully it is more than just a few hours.

It's a one-night party, doors open at 7 pm and breakdown starts at 1 am.

Most of the work I've had to put into it is caused by the fact that this is the first event our business has done, so it has required plugging into the network of contacts in the AZ alternative community and convincing people to take a bit of a flyer on working with an unproven source. The more events we put together in the future, the easier it will get, because the groundwork will have been laid already and people will start coming to us more and more to be part of it.

Then, too, a chunk of work was caused simply because of a knot of idiots here in town who decided they wanted to obstruct the entire thing, and I had to work around them.

I have read through your posts and alot of the problems you encountered tend to happen in pretty much every kind of industry when you try and set something like this up, I give you credit for sticking to your guns and not giving up, alot of people would have just stopped when it got to be hard.

That's one reason so many small businesses fail in their first year: because it DOES get hard - anything worth having will at some point - and people just cave. Another reason is that the owners don't understand the importance of advertising, and don't budget for it. I got THAT handled, at least.