Digital Social Hour - Alan Chang On Building a Strip Club Empire, Going Public & Taking Over Las Vegas | DSH #211

Episode Date: January 4, 2024

On today's episode of Digital Social Hour, Alan Chang reveals his come up into the strip club industry, how he plans on taking the company public one day and how the rise of OnlyFans affecting his industry. APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://forms.gle/qXvENTeurx7Xn8Ci9 BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail] SPONSORS: Opus Pro: https://www.opus.pro/?via=DSH Deposyt Payment Processing: https://www.deposyt.com/seankelly Digital Social Hour works with participants in sponsored media and stays compliant with Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations regarding sponsored media. #ad LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

you race nine million five days yeah so you must have really good like numbers yeah i do yeah so that's that's why i was able to do it right because how much can these strippers actually make like wow a good one can make five to ten thousand a week what oh yeah holy they're making half a million a year yeah easy holy that's crazy. Welcome back to the show, guys. Digital Soul Shower. Thanks for tuning in. I'm your host, Sean Kelly. Got with me an interesting guest for you guys today, Alan Shang.

How you doing, buddy? Good, man. So you're the first one on coming from the strip club life. Yeah. And can't wait to hear more about it. Yeah. Well, I started my career in Vegas in 2004, and I'm the owner of Peppermint Hippo in Las Vegas right now. So we have 10 clubs throughout the nation.

Wow. So I started in 2018 and built it up from there. So now Las Vegas is my flagship. So you have 10 clubs in five years? Yeah. That's crazy. So that's two a year almost. Yeah, it started slow.

So it was like one a year, and then all of a sudden it just it just ballooned like once we got you know vegas and then i closed three more clubs after that wow it's two are in construction right now so it's not fully up and running but yeah don't you need a lot of capital to start each one though i do so originally i was you know when i left the rhino back in 2015 i was trying to open up club in Vegas I couldn't get it done because it's too much money you know so I was like all right I give up and I had to go to uh Toledo Ohio which is not exactly the place I wanted to be at yeah you know I was looking in Cali I was looking in in Texas Florida places I wanted to live right finally I gave up I was like all right I'm gonna go to this this place in toledo ohio and uh i ended up going there and with me and three other guys and we put 100k in each year total yeah each each yeah i still

had to finance 200 from the owner wow and within a year i was able to get the it started to be profitable and then i went from there and opened up another club and just kept going you know and then but you know when i did capital raises you know the last one i did was over nine million i did that in five days you raised nine million five days yeah so you must have really good like numbers yeah i do yeah so that's that's why i was able to do it right because like my my dividends i was paying out i was paying out uh on my very first couple clubs there usually takes about year, year and a half to start doing dividends, but once it starts, it really kicks in. So they're paying out some of my two earlier clubs

were paying out over a hundred percent ROI. A year? A year. Bro. Yeah. That's like a lifetime investment for most people. And then my third and fourth club, they're paying about 40% right now.

Holy. Yeah. That's still really good. Yeah. And it's going to go higher because it's like, it takes a couple of years to get it going. Right. So when I looked at, so when I looked at deals, I always looked at it as like, hey, can I do a hundred percent ROI on a club?

Meaning like, hey, can I get these guys when they invest in, can they make a hundred percent a year? If their answer is yes. And, and I say, I don't hit the mark and we're doing 40. No one cares. cares yeah so that was always my benchmark for it wow that's crazy even 40 i mean we're in a recession right now so to get 40 in any market it's crazy yeah it's insane so that's so but you know i don't take over clubs that are like crushing it right i i go after clubs that are either non-existing or or or doing

horrible and then i turn it around got it so you're kind of like a fix and flipper of the club scene after clubs that are either non-existing or doing horrible. Then I turn it around. You're kind of like a fix and flipper of the club scene. Correct. Interesting. Why do you think certain clubs struggle and others just ****? Well, I think it's on the smaller market scales because I come from a big market. I understand like, hey, I came from Vegas.

That market is just like a different level. Are they the biggest in the country? Yeah. Okay. Maybe Club 11 now is probably the biggest. But they're like a big hybrid, right?

Yeah. So, but yeah, when I did that, it was, we built it up and the other clubs were having struggles

because they don't change with the times. You got to change with the times. Otherwise, you're going to be stuck. Right. And you say the times,

are you talking about like this movement? So, did take a hit on us you know especially when the pandemic hit right everyone shut down including us so the thing is took a lot of the girls away but now at this point is we don't have a problem really getting getting entertainers and i think in the beginning we did but now it's like it got flooded right so it's like anything else, any other space, right? When you get flooded. Yeah. You're not going to make as much money. Yeah. It got saturated. Every girl started doing it. Yeah. Every, every girl in the world is doing it. And if you don't have a big social media following, you don't really make a lot of money and you literally got to do to make money there.

Yeah. So how much can these strippers actually make like shout out to today's sponsor gusto something always comes up when you're running a small business well gusto's payroll and hr services can make that a little easier for you guys gusto was designed for you a small business owner they take the pain out of running a business automatically calculating paychecks filing payroll taxes setting up open, all that stuff you don't like to do, Gusto does it all. If you want even more, they do time tracking, they do health insurance, they do 401k, onboarding, commuter benefits, other letters. They also have access to HR letters. You get the idea. They got pretty much everything you can think of. With Gusto, you can focus on the joy of running your own business super easy to set up and get

started and if you're moving from another provider they'll transfer all their data for you no surprise 94 of customers recommend gusto yes that's 94 one all this and more with no hidden fees try it out for three months for free at gusto.com slash social that's gusto.com slash social. That's gusto.com slash social. Wow. A good one can make five to 10,000 a week. What? Oh yeah. Holy. They're making half a mil a year. Yeah. Easy. Holy. That's crazy. Yeah. If they do it right. You know what I mean? Like they do it right. And they're, they're straightforward and they're good. They can crush it it so what's the difference between a high-end stripper making 5 10k a week versus a base one making 200 a week or whatever no they probably still if they if they listen the thing is with dancers is like they don't always come to work five days a week right

but if they did they would guarantee to make at least 60 70 grand a year wow if they i mean if they just came to show up to work. Yeah. And that's without tips or with tips? That's with tips, yeah. Okay. Easy. And then, I mean, that's on a very low end.

Your average girl would be making well over 100. I didn't know they were making money like that. That's crazy. Oh, yeah. Because the average person in America makes 50K a year. So they're making more than them. Oh, way more. Well, you got to think, you know,

they're doing like charging like 200 to 400 for a half hour right i mean that's pure profit yeah the margins are well they have to kick back to the club though right they do pay house fee yes okay yeah how does that work it depends on the timing they come in like so sometimes like what we do is we charge a flat rate for the whole day and then we give discounts of hey if you come in before say five or six or seven o'clock p.m it's free oh okay and then it goes up 40 50 or whatever it does you know interesting yeah what are the peak hours in different everywhere but in vegas it's usually 11 o'clock till 5 00 a.m in the morning that late oh yeah because everyone's coming from the clubs all drunk

yeah oh yeah because the clubs close at 2, right? Well, the clubs keep it open, yeah, but there are a lot of people leaving here at 2, and they're coming to the clubs afterwards. Wow, so you're up late. Oh yeah. And what was that like, transitioning into a night owl, basically? Well, when I started this industry, I was 29. So when I did it, I loved it in the beginning, right?

But now I work daytime. I'm all office. Okay. But in the whole meantime before that, I loved it. I mean, I was in nighttime, club atmosphere. I was in Vegas. Yeah. You know, I grew up in Pennsylvania, so it was a world different. Yeah, that's way different.

Yeah, it was awesome. You grew up on a farm? No, not on a farm, but Langsford, Pennsylvania was an Amish country. Right. So around Amish people. Yeah. We had a farm, but I didn't grow up on a farm.

That's where I got my dogs from, Amish people. They're good at that, man. Oh, yeah, they're great. It's a big change for you. And the networking is also really good, right? Yeah, it's some of the best.

I mean, you will meet millionaires and billionaires in there that you have no chance of ever meeting unless you're in a big networking space, right? And this goes for entertainers too they have the ability to meet high level people that they would never meet yeah on a regular setting who are some people or celebrities or famous people like uh well mark cuban he came oh yeah he's yeah isn't he married

well this was years and years ago yeah like I heard he was wild back in the day. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know, Tyson comes in still. Oh, Mike Tyson? Yeah. Yeah. He's single, right?

Yeah. Floyd. Floyd owns one, right? He owns one, yeah, but he still comes into other clubs. Not as much anymore, but he definitely does. Yeah. Nice. Did he approach you to partner on one?

No. I feel like you would have done really well with him. Yeah. Yeah. Well, his club is just in, it's an old Sherry's club. That was the very first club I've ever worked at as a host. Oh, okay. So that was the-

Oh, it used to work for him? No, not for him. He didn't own it back then. Oh, got it. So he bought it? Yeah, he bought it later on. Was it struggling? I think it was closed.

Oh. He bought it. Yeah. So I think he turned into more of a hip hop club. Yeah. So what were some of the struggles you had along the way i know payment processing was an issue right yeah payment processing we're considered like a high risk uh business yeah so our we get hit with a higher rate of uh a payment so like you know usually credit cards are like two point some percent yeah we're

gonna hit that four or five percent And that's because people get drunk and then dispute the charge, right? Yeah. I mean, it's just a reason for them to add on that extra percentage. Because our win-loss rate is like 90-some percent. Oh, so you win most? Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Wow. Because you have evidence of them obviously walking in on the cameras. Listen, we have cameras everywhere. Yeah. You probably have evidence of them signing the check, too. Everything.

Yeah, everything. So our win-loss array is great. So that's not a real big issue anymore. It's just that the credit card still charges as a high-risk business. Yeah. It makes sense. They do that with **** too, I think. Yeah, us and ****, our banking is actually the hardest part.

Oh, really? Yeah, because we can't get loans. So even in real estate, it's very hard to get loans in real estate yeah oh just to buy the actual place yeah any anything to do like we the banking won't provide us with any funding at all because we're considered even though we're a legal business we're considered a illicit business wow that sucks yeah yeah i was able to get loans easy yeah we can't do it even if we show 25 million dollars in revenue yeah i it's so hard to get a loan we can't that's so wild even personal loans personal loans a little bit it's easier right because i show an income like hey this is my job yeah but business

loans no wow so you could literally have 20 million in revenue and they won't care no they won't and we do we have 25 million last year no Last year we did 20. We're going to do about 25 this year. Holy crap. That's insane. So it's scaling up. Yeah. So what's the end goal? I want to get to 100 clubs and probably go public or private.

Wow. You think you can manage that many? Well, it's getting harder now. So I got to build up a whole team for that. So I need a bunch of GMs, 525 regionals, a couple of VPs, a couple of presidents. Is there anyone that has taken something like this public or would you be the first?

No, RCI did. RCI? Yeah. How many did they have? I think that when they went public, they were pretty small. They were like six or four or six. So you're already ahead of them.

Yeah. They're big now. Oh, they're big now. Yeah, they have I think close to 60 clubs they must be making like 100 million a year almost at least that's crazy yeah they have to be doing it yeah 100 holy these clubs are bringing in you have 10 and you said you did 20 mil so about two mil on average a year yeah but but it's going to change drastically now with with vegas right Because when I was working at Rhino, and I know from my other sources here,

we're doing like 60, 70 million a year. What? From one club. Rhino does 60 million a year? Yeah. I think at one point it was going, Are you serious? Mm-hmm.

Dude. One club. That's mind-blowing. Mm-hmm. I think 11 is probably even higher than that right now in miami yeah this is a whole new world to me i've never been to a strip club well you gotta come by bring your whole crew my friends go but i didn't know they were caking like that oh yeah they crush it so you're gonna be wow where's the one you're opening here uh oh so we had our one

year was uh in april we in April. We opened last year. Our second year. Where's it at? It's on Las Vegas Boulevard. It's the old OG building, which is the Olympic Garden building. If you go past Stratosphere, it's right on the right there.

Have you had any weird, crazy incidents because people are drunk and doing dumb shit? Always. Not as much anymore because now that we're corporate at this point, but back in the day before the clubs

all went corporate, it was wild times back then. Frank Mir used to work with us. Oh, yeah? He was head of security. No joke, right? Phil Bar Miri used to work with us. Oh yeah? Yeah, he was head of security. No joke, right? Yeah, no joke. Phil Barone, he was working with,

I think he's in prison right now, but yeah. Oh,. He used to work with us too. So a lot of the UFC fighters worked in our club. Wow, that's dope. Did you, do you have to have like crazy security every night? Well, we do.

So we probably have, you know, our hosts are counted as security too, right? And our managers are all guys. So we probably have, you know, our hosts are counted as security too, right? And our managers are all guys. So we probably have 20, 25 guys on staff all night time. Have you ever had to kick someone out? Yeah. Like, not me personally, because I didn't do it anymore. But yeah, we'd have to walk customers out.

You know, we used to handcuff. Like, this was back in the day, so not anymore. But we used to handcuff. Like, guys wouldn't sign their tabs. We'd be like, hey, listen, you know, this is used to handcuff like guys wouldn't sign their tabs we'd be like hey listen you know there's a theft of service and they wouldn't sign their tab yeah so you would handcuff them no we'd handcuff them to the dumpsters in the back no way oh yeah so we'd be like hey listen and we tell them be like hey listen man we're gonna call police metro it's a non-emergency they're gonna take three hours to get here yeah at least so you know you could either sign the tab and you know they get the speed or whatever they want but you know sometimes they're drunk they just want to be

they just want to fight so they're like you know f you blah blah i'm like okay we handcuff them to the dump we literally handcuff them to the dumpsters hopefully so they'd be standing back dude and it's stonked back there right there's handcuffed to the dumpster they can't sit there stand there and then we'd walk back about and we'd leave them yeah so we walked back about an hour or so hey you ready sign the tab give me the tab it'd be like that you know because the metro's not coming he'll be there three four hours wow i didn't know there was like a separate line for non-emergencies like that yeah and and this is vegas right so like it's you're gonna wait forever yeah wow how much marketing goes into these?

Or do they kind of market themselves? No, we do spend a lot of money on marketing. We're probably, in just Vegas alone, probably doing about half a million a year just in our marketing space. Like billboards, commercials. Billboards, promos, our social media. And social media is huge now, right?

So we get our girls to post, we get our waitresses to post, and that's how we kind of run it. And it's always like an event that we try to do. It's cool that you're adapting with the change because some owners are old school and they don't care about social media. Majority of them are old school. But you realize the importance of it.

I mean, I see it changing the restaurant space right now. These food influencers are getting tens of millions of views and there's lines out the door at certain restaurants. Yeah, you have to. You have to adapt, otherwise you're going to get yeah you know and and hopefully we're gonna be the ones running people that's the plan so you're doing vegas and then what are you doing next what cities um looking at dallas uh possibly uh minneapolis so now a lot of my places were small areas right in the beginning i have a club in reno but Little Rock Arkansas baseball Arkansas stuff like that so but now I'm trying to go into like more larger scale markets

yeah so because it's just because you've got the capital now yeah it's different now and when you raised that nine million was that just from private investors friends yeah it's all friends friends of family a couple of private guys and that's it i knew i knew all of them yeah or friends of friends that's it because a lot of people struggle to even raise six figures but you were able to pull off almost eight figures listen when i was doing my first club i couldn't raise anything so it was like i so i had a couple guys i was like hey listen we'll go vegas but they're we're so undercapitalized i knew it was going to work and then when i went to my my first club is me and three friends so we each put 100k in that's it so we're like hey let's give this a shot and

you know two of them were like hey we're not moving to ohio so you have fun i was like all right i'll take it what was that like living in toledo for a few years i only lived there one year it was not fun i remember i remember calling my friends i'd be like, oh, my God, dude, I can't believe I'm here. Because, you know, I came from Vegas. I came from the number one club in the United States to Toledo, Ohio. And I was like, every single day, I'd be like, man, I feel like hanging myself, man. This is horrible. You deserve some extra commission on that one or something.

It was crazy, yeah. It was good times, though, you know. Do you still work with those same three guys you went on with on the first one they're they're investors with me now nice and one when it broke off on his own did his own club but the other two are still they're they're with me right now nice so was it like a bad split up or was it all no it was cool it was like hey we built it up to a certain level i bought him out okay you know i mean i bought his share out he took that money and he opened up his own club you know so he has one club right now and he's he's building his own thing yeah he's like you know i talked to him a little time he's like hey man i

never want to get as big as you because i don't want to deal with the headaches so if i get a couple clubs i'm good i feel that yeah certain people have a limit where if they make like 500k a million a year they're good you know yeah and and listen there's something to be said about you know because i was making a lot of money and and you know at four or five clubs and then when a million a year, they're good. Yeah, and listen, there's something to be said about, because I was making a lot of money at four or five clubs, and then when I expanded, it's like, yes, my gross is a lot higher, but because you have all that overhead now, it compounds, right? And the headache just compounds.

Yeah, that's the problem when you scale too quickly sometimes, right? The numbers are all over the place, and at the end of the day, when you look at them, you're like, wait, I didn't make as much as I thought. Yeah, you're like, oh, I made more. Only two clubs, yes. Yeah, it happens. So I guess, what else do you do outside of the strip club stuff?

You got any other businesses or hobbies? No, man, it's just that I have a strip club. I mean, I travel once in a while and stuff like that and have fun. I used to have a lot more fun before I started doing this, like getting to a larger scale. But now it's just all strip club you know i have a yeah i have a lot of animals i have pets and stuff like that but besides that you got i got a well the one that everyone's interest is always an african serval how's that it's like a um

it's like a mini cheetah mini cheetah you can have that yeah in vegas you're serious you can have anything in vegas i gotta see a photo you got one yeah dude i love cheetos so it's like Cheetah. Mini cheetah. You can have that? Yeah. In Vegas. You're serious? You can have anything in Vegas. I got to see a photo. You got one? Yeah. Dude, I love cheetahs.

It's about 45 pounds. So it's like a dog that runs really fast, basically? Yeah. I think it's the second or third fastest lamb out. Yeah. In a quick sprint. You know what I mean? Yeah.

What do you feed it? Raw chicken eggs. Raw chicken eggs. Interesting. It eats the whole egg or does it take the shell off? No, it eats everything, the bone, everything. Wow. Yeah, it's probably, it's like literally this big and probably this high. Yeah, I'd love to see a photo.

I'm into like exotic animals. I used to want a flying squirrel. Oh, dude. I want to get a tiger and stuff like that, but we're on. But we'll see when that happens. I used to want a panda, but they're so expensive. The pandas? Yeah, they eat bamboo like nonstop. Can you even buy them not legally you know but if i ever move to

like some country one day yeah i mean vegas you could do a lot with so here yo that's sick it kind of looks like a cat it dude it acts exactly like a house cat man dude how much was it it's like 5k bro are they friendly like can you pet it and stuff it's friendly to me but not to others yeah like you know it'll sleep like it literally sleeps between my legs wow but it's kind of defensive of you probably yeah a little bit it's it's just imagine a big house cat yeah that's exactly what they act like wow you know what i mean but they he knows his name something so you call him and he'll just run over to you dude that's sick i used to love cats my girl's allergic so she might be allergic to

that it's it's different they're they're different yeah their hair is definitely different wow so do you like where you're at because you seem to just be working non-stop like yeah i do like i said it will get easier because i'm getting ready to hire clo i'm getting ready to hire you know i'll need a cfo soon so hopefully they'll take some workload off me. Then I could do a little bit of traveling. But I know myself, because what happens is, once it starts getting a little bit boring, meaning that, hey, everything's going good,

so you get a little bored, I always put myself right back in the heat. So I'm like, all right, because once everything going great, all right, what other clubs can we buy? So you don't like being content. You like being kind of uncomfortable. Yeah, I think that's the only way to grow. You have to be a little bit uncomfortable to grow.

I agree, man. And most people think the opposite. Yeah, listen, I don't even know if I'll ever fully retire because I think when you fully retire, you're going to die. Right. So I think like, hey, listen, once I get to a really comfortable state in finance and everything, I will probably still do business. I'll just take a lesser role yeah yeah they've done

studies on that like people that retire their brain just starts degrading immediately yeah i see that all the time you know i mean like my parents are retired you know again they're my parents i love them to death yeah but yeah yeah it's sad to see honestly i saw my my pops when he retired yeah it goes fast too yeah within a couple years dude yeah one year his hair turned all gray like within a year yeah because they don't have anything to do yeah so they're sitting there doing nothing just sitting there yeah it's terrible yeah yeah i don't believe in retirement i believe in just doing something at least yeah well you're still young so you got a long time to go well no i mean i've had friends

my age that want to retire really because they make millions and they get bored but it's like what are you going to do for 50 years yeah what are you gonna do just travel i mean traveling's fun but you can only do it so much listen i've traveled for weeks at a time but by two weeks i mean that's the most i'm ready to come home oh yeah so like what are you gonna do to travel like non-stop yeah yeah and then you have to have someone to travel with right so you have to at to travel like nonstop? And then you have to have someone to travel with, right? So you have to at least your girl or your wife or hopefully the best case is like a bunch of friends too.

Yeah. That would be the case. But who knows if that's going to really happen, right? Yeah. Traveling's interesting because I find myself wanting to work near the end. Yeah. Same here. I get bored.

Yeah. I get bored. No matter what happens, I get bored. And like most people are like traveling and they love it. But near the end, I'm like, nah, I just want to work again. Yeah. I love working. How did your parents view this because this was probably a foreign industry to them right oh yeah they thought i was uh they thought i was doing something stupid

for sure your parents are asian obviously this is like totally different culture wise yeah yeah so i was adopted too but i do know my real mom and, um, and she's really close with me. She lives in Vegas now. Nice. And, uh, yeah, she was like, always like, even when I started this, she was like, uh, go back to college, you know, uh, you know, you could be in counting. I was like, mom, I'm never going to do that again. Yeah. Literally the Asian parents, the accountant, attorney, whatever, doctor. Yeah.

They're like, Hey, can you do this? I'm like, mom, I'm never doing that. I'm never going to do this stuff again. But yeah, they were, they thought I was just doing it as a phase to have fun. And I was in the beginning. Listen, I worked in construction, and I was in construction sales and marketing. And when I went into strip club, it was just literally just, hey, I just got to Vegas. I want to do some fun that wasn't cooped up in an office.

And I did it, and I just found a career in it. And it was great. So what was that turning point where they started to kind of believe in you more? Was it at first, or did it take a while? No, it took a while. Because no one knows the money we make. Even, like I said, when I was a host,

people would be like, you guys can make minimum wage, blah, blah, blah. At that time, this was 15 years ago, we're making $120,000, $130,000. Hosts are making that much? Yeah. Just for coordinating girls to tables and stuff? Yeah.

Wow. I didn't know that was a six-figure job. Yeah, it is. Still is. Even at clubs too? No, nightclubs are a little bit different. Okay. So the high-level guys make a lot.

Right. But all those junior hosts and those mid-level hosts. I see so many of them in Vegas. Yeah. I mean, they work them to death. They're probably working, I would say, 60 to 80 hours a week. And they probably make about 50. So what's the differential in the strip club?

Why do those make more? Because we're more tip-oriented with the entertainers and the customer base. You know what I mean? And we deal with more with the club. And there's less of us. You know what I mean? And we deal with more with the club. And there's less of us. You know what I mean? If you go to like XS, how many junior hosts do you have? How many promoters do you have?

So many. Yeah. They run through them like. Yeah, because they work them. They work them. Yeah. So it's just like, it's a different field. And one of our biggest things is like, we have a hard time with management, man.

And we're looking for more people all the time. And I would love to find young or even a little bit older people that would want to work and understand this because even the restaurant field, our managers make way more than most restaurant managers. In Vegas?

Anywhere in the country. We're trying to get more qualified people to come work with us and to work for us and to build because they have because of our expansion rate we could you know if they want to be a gm run a club they can they just have to go through the process wow so they'll have gms yeah i didn't know that yeah so there's no cap so they don't have cap right like normally if you go into a place you're like if you're a worker you're like well i'm probably never gonna make a management

or i'll never make it to running the club or whatever. But here, we don't have a cap. So you want people to just be there for years and to work their way up? 100%. You promote that? Listen, I'm looking for other people like me, how I was. I started as a host.

I ended up owning my own clubs. And I would love to find more people like that. You know what I mean? Because they are inventive and they could really do better for themselves. Yeah, that's cool. So what's the hierarchy system? You start off as a host.

What's the next level? Host and then management would be next. Management and then GM. Then GM. And then owner. Oh, regional. Yeah, then probably VP, president. Oh, so you climbed all that?

Well, I went from like, so there's other positions in there. So I went from host to director of business development. Then I worked for someone else at Rick's Chicago for a little bit. And I was the GM there and then owner. So then I built it up from that. So you had a lot of mentorship on the way up. Yeah, I did.

And that probably helped you know how to run your own club. It 100% helped me. Yeah. Like, you know, listen, my time at Rhino was invaluable. Like I learned from the best because they were the number one in the industry and it really helped me out and it helped me form a structure of how a club should be ran now did i use all of it no but i did learn a lot from from there yeah that's cool because some people just jump in without any mentorship yeah that's hard yeah

that's really and we see it all the time because like what happens is sometimes you have like wealthy guys they're like hey they want to own a strip club yeah yeah i mean the only reason why they want to own a strip club is you know why the girls right and it's like they do that they don't realize hey it's actually work and you could dump millions of dollars into a club and fail so after a little bit they're like oh this is horrible they'll sell yeah no i literally knew guys that wanted to do that and i just didn't think it was a good idea no they should at least partner up with someone that knows what they're doing yeah i mean otherwise you're just like it's being like me hey i want to open a podcast i have no idea what i'm doing i'm just gonna throw a million dollars into it yeah it's not gonna do well so

did you have like an affiliate program with the clubs for them to send you people we do like with the hosts and stuff we do that's smart yeah everyone does but we do too you know so we we set it up with like independent hosts um you know club hosts you know even bartenders cocktail waitresses you know vip services yeah send us business because that could be very lucrative for people that are in nightlife. 100%. Listen, like the regular host out there or the junior host that's only making $50,000 a year, you know, they send one group to us. The guy spends, you know, $10K. You know, they make $2,000 right off the rip.

Wow, 20%? That's pretty good. Yeah. I might have to start sending people your way. Yeah, no problem, buddy. Anytime. Dude, I know people hitting me up to go all the time. I'm literally just going to send them to you yeah set it up man say less well uh what's

next for you man uh you know what i don't i'm just gonna keep building clubs and then you know probably do uh private funding and then put it all together and you're gonna raise more yeah i'm gonna raise how much more uh the next raise i'm doing is a it's actually a private fund i'm gonna do about $40 million. That's a lot of money, man. It is, yeah. It's kind of crazy. The higher level I get, the more people I meet at the next level.

And that's what we're trying to do. And is that for equity or is that a loan-type structure? Loan and equity. It's going to be partial. Part for real estate, part for the equity piece. Then someone's a note, obviously. Are you trying to retain as much ownership as possible? I know by the end, your goal is to go public.

I think the average CEO owns 7% or something? Yeah, I'm trying to retain as much as possible. Obviously, the more I raise, it gets diluted. Because of the structure of my company right now and because of liquor license laws, the investors are invested into a holding company and the holding company funds the clubs. So I actually own all the clubs. But because of the liquor license laws,

I have to do it that way. Oh, interesting. Because each state is different, right? Each state is different, yeah. So you can't serve it past certain times? Yeah, most states it's like 2 o'clock. What is it in Vegas? We're 24 hours.

Oh, it's 24? Okay. But every other state is like 2, right? Yeah, 2. I remember Jersey was super early. Like 1.30? Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, 1.30, everyone has to be out by 2, probably.

Yeah. And I think, isn't Utah really early? Oh, I don't even know. Yeah, because they're Mormon. Yeah. Well, you know, my one club's in Arkansas. We have a 5 a.m. license there. So we have a special license.

But the county above us is a dry county wow it actually benefits yeah so they all come down yeah that's sick well uh dude that was a blast where can people find out more about you hey man uh just go check out our website it's uh pepper hippo um las vegas and our instagram handle is uh you know phlv love it man if you guys are looking for a good night, hit them up. Yep, anytime. Thanks, guys. Thanks for watching.

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