Speaker 1: About. This is the seventy seven WABC Mini Test. Now.
Speaker 1: I know you've told people you don't believe in socialism
Speaker 1: because it's the thing to do at the old age home.
Speaker 1: I don't believe in I'm socialists. I don't believe that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I don't believe you. There is one test to
Speaker 1: prove whether or not you are a socialist or not.
Speaker 1: One test. You've been alive a while, according to the
Speaker 1: Sales Department, much less time than it's true. However, there's
Speaker 1: one test to determine whether or not you are a socialist,
Speaker 1: and it's this. At any point in your life, have
Speaker 1: you tried to start a business from scratch? Only a
Speaker 1: true capitalist would try to start a business from scratch?
Speaker 1: Does it no matter what it is, and it certainly
Speaker 1: doesn't matter if it succeeded, because ninety ninety five percent
Speaker 1: of businesses that start brand new businesses do fail. Odds
Speaker 1: are bad, almost as bad as a successful marriage. If
Speaker 1: you've ever tried to start a business on your own, congratulations,
Speaker 1: you're a capitalist. If you have not, if you have
Speaker 1: not fantasized about doing that, if you've not imagined the power,
Speaker 1: the omnipotence of running your own business, growing your own business,
Speaker 1: starting your own business. If you have done that, then
Speaker 1: you're a capitalist. But if you've not, you are a socialist.
Speaker 1: Remember that time you tried to start your own strip club.
Speaker 1: There were some key points about the business model that
Speaker 1: you missed in order to have a successful strip club.
Speaker 1: There's some things that are important to understand. Very few
Speaker 1: people outside of the strip club industry actually understand these
Speaker 1: things running a strip club. Operating a strip club is
Speaker 1: very much like running a mall, running a barbershop. The
Speaker 1: way strip clubs work is not the way outsiders imagine it. Now,
Speaker 1: you're an insider. You tried to start a strip club.
Speaker 1: You found it very attractive. You're a capitalist. You know that.
Speaker 1: The most interesting thing about a strip club is that
Speaker 1: those women are not your employees. Those women like renting
Speaker 1: a chair in a barber shop. They rent a position
Speaker 1: in the strip club. They work a certain number of hours,
Speaker 1: and they split the revenue with the owner of the club.
Speaker 1: They also split some other things drinks, security, bouncers. They
Speaker 1: split the revenue on everything with the owner. It's about
Speaker 1: a fifty percent split. All the money they bring in,
Speaker 1: whatever they bring in, it's about fifty percent they have
Speaker 1: to split, and then the internal structure of the tipping
Speaker 1: is complex in a strip club, incredibly complicated. I made
Speaker 1: some notes. Let me just make sure I get this right,
Speaker 1: because I don't want to. If you're in Jersey, I
Speaker 1: don't want to get this wrong. The most fundamental thing
Speaker 1: you have to know about strip clubs is that they
Speaker 1: are malls. The dancers pay rent to work at the club.
Speaker 1: They are not employees or contractors. They work like barbers,
Speaker 1: taxi drivers. They pay a portion of what they earn
Speaker 1: to the house. They keep the rest. There's a delicate
Speaker 1: balance between having too many dancers and missing out on revenue.
Speaker 1: The best dancer they don't want other dancers. The best
Speaker 1: dancers don't want other dancers there. You might think the
Speaker 1: more dancers, the more business, but no, the best dancers
Speaker 1: they have regulars, and they want their regulars. They want
Speaker 1: their regulars to be there and not to be distracted
Speaker 1: by others. For you, the owner of the strip club,
Speaker 1: you want as many dancers as you can get because
Speaker 1: you want as much volume as you can get. However,
Speaker 1: if you're a stripper, you don't want volume. You want regulars.
Speaker 1: There's a conflict right there. You might have imagined that
Speaker 1: running the strip club was going to be easy, be
Speaker 1: really good. A club makes a lot of money from
Speaker 1: sales of food and beverages. If you can serve alcohol,
Speaker 1: you make a lot of money from the liquor sales.
Speaker 1: Managing that business is pretty much like dealing with any
Speaker 1: other bar. You need to increase volume and prices to
Speaker 1: increase revenues, but you don't want your paid tants so
Speaker 1: drunk they cause problems. It's a delicate balance. Everything about
Speaker 1: a strip club is a delicate balance. In some clubs,
Speaker 1: the entertainers are required to generate a certain number of
Speaker 1: drink sales per hour. Usually they do this by getting
Speaker 1: patrons to buy them drinks. Obviously, if they actually consumed
Speaker 1: all those drinks, they wouldn't be able to work. Clubs
Speaker 1: may also charge an entrance fee or cover charge. Typically
Speaker 1: they can only do this when there is a high
Speaker 1: enough demand to get into the club. Inside the club,
Speaker 1: this is where it gets very tricky, and this is
Speaker 1: probably why you failed when you were running that strip club.
Speaker 1: This is probably why you failed. Inside the club, there's
Speaker 1: a very detailed tipping economy. Remember, the dancers are not employees,
Speaker 1: they are independent business people using the club as a
Speaker 1: venue to generate in club, everyone in the club who
Speaker 1: is not an entertainer feels entitled to a part of
Speaker 1: the revenue that the dancers make. The justifications are lengthy
Speaker 1: and mostly nonsense, but it boils down to this. If
Speaker 1: you dance in a strip club, be prepared to pay
Speaker 1: fifty percent of everything you earn in tips to other people.
Speaker 1: The guy with the broom cleaning up, he expects a
Speaker 1: tip from you. The dancer, the guy at the door
Speaker 1: expects a tip from you, The bartenders expect tips from you.
Speaker 1: Everybody expects a tip from the dancer, and the dancer
Speaker 1: believes that all of it should be hers. That's the dilemma,
Speaker 1: That is the challenge. What does that mean. It means
Speaker 1: that as the owner of a strip club you, when
Speaker 1: you owned a strip club, your challenge was managing the
Speaker 1: expectations of the staff with the expectations of the dancer,
Speaker 1: and the demand for tips distributed as a result of
Speaker 1: the work of the dancer. Now imagine you're taking off
Speaker 1: your clothes, You're dancing around for a bunch of slobs
Speaker 1: in Jersey. You're the reason the club exists, and yet
Speaker 1: you still have to give up half of your income
Speaker 1: in tips to these clowns all around you. No doubt,
Speaker 1: when you owned a strip club, that's where the fights
Speaker 1: came because you look at you. Were you able to
Speaker 1: stop the fights? Were you able to manage all that?
Speaker 1: And then what about Vinnie? When Vinnie comes in to
Speaker 1: collect his tip? You want fresh towels, that's going to
Speaker 1: be twenty percent of your revenue. You want clean glasses?
Speaker 1: Or do you want all these classes trashed by tomorrow morning?
Speaker 1: Those are the challenges of managing a strip club, especially
Speaker 1: in the Great Northeast. Now I know that you tried
Speaker 1: to run a strip club. I know that you started
Speaker 1: several I know that your family didn't know about it.
Speaker 1: But you figured you'd play Russian roulette. You'd run the
Speaker 1: strip club long enough that it would get successful enough
Speaker 1: you'd be able to bring in money for your family,
Speaker 1: and everybody would be happy, and nobody would ask you, really,
Speaker 1: what's it like to run a strip club? Or how
Speaker 1: does that happen? Or how do the girls find you?
Speaker 1: Or what do you do with the girls? What do
Speaker 1: you do with girls in their off time as a manager?
Speaker 1: Are you allowed anything? Absolutely not. They're the challenges but
Speaker 1: it proved one thing when you ran the strip club.
Speaker 1: It proved you are a capitalist and not a socialist.
Speaker 1: No socialist ever says, you know what I'm going to do.
Speaker 1: I'm going to start up a strip club. No socialist
Speaker 1: ever says I'm going to start up my own store.
Speaker 1: I'm going to risk ninety percent of my savings to
Speaker 1: start this shoe store, this after school supply store, this bodega,
Speaker 1: this strip club. And that's the proof. If you've imagined
Speaker 1: over these past few weeks, when socialism has become a
Speaker 1: very hot topic on old fashioned dog stations, when it's
Speaker 1: become a very hot topic, you've sat back and said, well,
Speaker 1: I'm no socialist, And I challenge you, my friend, I
Speaker 1: say you are a socialist unless you have started up
Speaker 1: your own business, because beating in the heart of every
Speaker 1: true capitalist is a deep and profound desire to own
Speaker 1: their own business. Have you tried to own your own business?
Speaker 1: Did you start up the strip club?