The total amount of goods and services donated to cover the costs for the event came out to about three-thousand dollars.
I sold about three-thousand dollars worth of liquor.
I donated three-thousand dollars to local Breast Cancer charities from the proceeds collected at the door.
A rival and more established club sponsored their own last-minute Breast Cancer fundraiser on the same night in an effort to diminish the attendance for my event.
Instead of giving away the proceeds from their cover charge - this club elected to give fifty cents from every drink sold to local charities.
Sure, this sounds like a decent enough idea - but there was a catch.
The club raised their drink prices for the night by fifty cents, and it was that fifty cents which was to be donated - the club was giving up nothing.
Another catch was that their event was so lightly attended that they only had thirty guests.
The average patron drinks three drinks.
Fifty cents times ninety drinks....?
Wow... they made the customer pay extra just so they could 'donate' a whopping $45?
I used to work for the rival club - they even offered an interest in the club to me.
But the owners were too selfish for my tastes.
But the weekend was not over.
Every third Sunday of the month, I sponsor a table at a local social club's open house.
This past Sunday the rival club elected to do the same in an effort to show social supremacy.
The night was going well until the president of the club asked me to stand as he congratulated me on being the new owner of my nightclub.
The crowd erupted as though I had just scored the game-winning touchdown in overtime at the Super Bowl.
(I was a bit embarrassed by the adulation.)
When the president pointed out that the rival club was now also hosting a table...Crickets.
(I was embarrassed for them.)
The thing is;
I take a table in the back and offer free drinks to anyone in attendance.
I'm there for everyone in an effort to support the host club.
The rival club insisted on taking a table in the front so they could celebrate themselves.
The other guests noticed their lack of social grace and quietly let it be known.
I'm not a good businessman.
I don't have to make every penny on every dollar.
But somehow... things always work out.
The genuine article usually gets the appreciation. What most people try to diminish or copy only shows that they don't have a real genuine interest in providing a service.
ReplyDeleteThings work out because people respect you and what you provide. I go through this when talking about money as the cats who want to say they are real can't produce real numbers. Instead they stereotype the people as being fake since they are speaking so real.
In essence you are doing what you naturally do. How can anyone really compete against that?
Dude... I HATE running night clubs - but I can make money doing it.
ReplyDeleteThe thing is - I turned that rival club into what it is today.
To this day they're still bitter that I left when my service contract ran out.
I'm a good host and I benefit from being such.
It was just funny that they showed up to try to show me up but the local elite let them know what was realy up.
Good on you, man. As in the book of Matthew (paraphrased) "All shall come to those that have. All shall be taken away from those have not". This is typically interpreted as an enforcement of the Pareto Principle (the rich get richer). I instead interpret it to mean "No man is poor who has friends".
ReplyDeleteAnd not to belabor the point too much, but this just goes to show that the psychosis of Ayn Rand could never figure out the insight that altruism and self-interest are not mutually exclusive. This is why her so-called philosophy - practiced by the stingy and short-sighted - is destined to end up on the ash heap of history.
Congrats, I can't wait to hear more about how the rival club will compete with your club.
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ReplyDeleteDesertflower said...
ReplyDeleteGood luck in all of your endeavors!
I'd love to hang out at your club!
It sounds like a lot of bureaucracy over there,I see the clubs there are run like corporations or something :D
Just keep on doing what you're doing. One has to be grateful in life and give back as much as one can! The hell with the rich, remember, and I don't know who said it but I think it's so true:"behind every great fortune, there is a great crime"
and what John Kurman said too.:)