Tuesday Talks: The Truth About Throwing Your Own Swinger Party

Transcript

Speaker1: This podcast is intended for adult audiences. Over the age of 18, it contains adult language and situations. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this podcast belong solely to us, and not of any employer, organization, committee, or other group or individuals. This podcast is not intended to be taken as professional advice. Welcome to the Swing Nation Podcast, a podcast by swingers for swingers, where we look to educate others and push back on the negative stigmas and misconceptions associated with our lifestyle. Come with us and share our pineapple journey as we travel the globe. Interview the experts, learn and grow together. Join the nation. So Lacey, people are asking, how do they get to go to a party or an event with us? They check out swingersociety.net, you create a profile, you sign up for an event, and you come hang out with us. Super easy. That's right. If you want to party with us and the other faces and names that you know from social media and TikTok, head on over to swingersociety.net. Can't wait to see you there. Hey there pineapple people and welcome to the swing nation podcast we are your host northern guy and southern girl and we are back with another of Tuesday Talks. We are. Talking Tuesday. I'm surprised you even. We didn't wish it. You even have the energy for all that. You know, we have these headphones on, so I was like, man, my voice sounds rough. I know, I was thinking that. Sounds rough. So if you don't, well, you don't know, but let's just tell you. We got home from Electric Pleasures about an hour ago, maybe hour 30, something like that. We, of course, all know, like, it's snowed everywhere. We didn't really take into account that it may snow. There was like, should we come home Sunday? Should we come home Monday? I finally had to like talk you into where I was like, we're going home today. Like it's Monday. I was like, we have to go home. And about halfway home, you were like, what day of the week is it? I was like, Monday. You were like, shit. We have a podcast. Then I was like, we recorded one, didn't we? And you're like, no, we didn't. I'm like, no, I think we did. And I looked at my computer and No, uh, no recording. So it's eight o'clock on Monday night. It is like 20, 15, 20 degrees outside. Like our locks were frozen at our office. And then we get in here, we realize that we have no lights. It's just, I, if you see me on YouTube, my hair is not fixed because it is post event. It was literally in a top knot on the top of my head. And I had to, I've got it pulled back into like a low bun to kind of make it look a little better. And I did put on some makeup, but We are definitely on the struggle bus. I feel like I've slept like eight hours in the last three days. You probably have. But anyway, we're here. We're going to knock this out. And what's crazy is while Dan was setting it up, I looked through the calls. And we literally got this question yesterday or the day before. I can't remember what day it came in. But it was super relevant to the fact that we're here at eight o'clock at night just getting home from an event. So this is kind of why we purposely chose this one. All right. So let's go listen to this week's Tuesday Talk question. Hi, Dan and Lacey. Hot North Texas couple here. Question would be for Tuesday Talks, I guess, if you guys want to do this one. We are newer to the lifestyle since July of last year, but we've been to a lot of different house parties, hotel parties, and we just feel like they're a little lackluster. sometimes, and so we're interested in maybe hosting some meet and greets or doing maybe a hotel floor takeover or something or a club takeover, but we're just curious, like, where do you start? Any tips and tricks you guys have for kind of doing any type of hosting like that? We do host a room when we do do the hotel takeovers, and it tends to be very popular, so we just feel like we could maybe do one and be really fun. So that's our Tuesday Talk question for you guys. Love the show. Big fans. We'll be on Bliss. We booked through them. But we hope to see you guys in April. And if you come to the Dallas area, hopefully we'll meet you there. Thank you. Bye. Hot North Texas couple. They want to know how to host a hotel takeover. We just did our first one. And I'm not sure I know how to do it. No. Well, and I think they had good points. what we could do, like a floor, a bar, a meet and greet, you know. And then she also mentioned doing a whole hotel takeover. And we are exhausted. And I don't want to come across negative. I want to make sure we stay positive. That's right. Because I definitely think that we should have more lifestyle parties. Some, like, people that host parties or host events and stuff. Gatekeep. They gatekeep because they think. They don't want competition. Yeah, but we are very much, let's make a bigger podcast. Instead of like competing with each other, we're all here to help build each other up. So I do not want to come across negative, but I'm going to be super realistic that we are like half dead. So it might come off a little, a little, uh, I don't know. Well, I have to, one, I am exhausted and I am tired. And, um, you know, this, you know, this electric pleasures and Gulf breeze was actually our first hotel takeover that we hosted ourselves. Yeah. And not even ourselves. There's a team of us that did it. And we have a business partner who we could not have done it without. So yeah. But I will say, I loved it. There's like a high. It kind of reminds me of like a secrets, like coming off of secrets. I think there's like, there's like this high of like, all the feedback's been really, really great. So I'm like, it's, it's exciting. So yes, exhausted, but exciting. All right. So without talking too much about us, let's, let's get to her question a little bit, though. So what she's asking is, how does she get into this? So what she's saying is, hey, I've gone to some parties around me and I've gone through some hotel takeovers and I'm not impressed. And I think I could do and I think I could do a better job. And listen, that's the whole reason we're throwing parties at this point in time, because we had that experience. And we were lucky enough to have like a social media following and stuff that we knew that we could get it out there to people to get them to the parties. Like that was kind of like. We saw the need, and we saw the audience, and we were like, okay, I think we can do this. Right. Now, I'll say, so for most people, so if you're not going to go on TikTok or Instagram and start talking about swinging and start a podcast and start getting millions of views a month, you're probably going to have to go the more traditional route to start your own event. And what I would advise you, one, is kind of what we're talking about here, is it's a lot harder than probably most people realize or think. So my advice would be start small, right? I wouldn't go out and rent a hotel and think you're going to fill a hotel on your first party. It actually takes a lot of work. The lifestyle is weird that I think you need to build people's confidence. Like even though if you post about a party and it looks like a cool party and you make cool flyers, if people don't know you, if they don't know your brand, if they don't feel comfortable with you and safe and safe with you, they're not going to invest the money in you. I think a lot of this is world word of mouth. So, you know, we're pretty fortunate because we can post our video, you know, limited videos online, we can talk about it online, we can, you know, talk to our friends and stuff and post that. So we're able to kind of show, you know, our word of mouth, I think is larger than most people's. But I would say most people in the lifestyle before they go to a party, they're going to ask their friends, Oh, have you ever, have you heard of this party? Have you ever gone? How's that party before they commit money? So my advice to start would be to start small. I think that's a great. And because if you're choosing to not go like this, social media route, which is fine. Many swinger clubs, swinger parties, hotel takeovers over the years have done it. The more traditional route using platforms like SCC, Cassidy, SLS. I mean, there's definitely a place for that. We'll be honest. We've had hard times getting our parties. It's really like finding the right people. We've struggled. We're just now kind of tapping into that market. We did like almost like an alternative route. And now that we're kind of established, now we're learning about these sites and how to get our parties listed there. Yeah. Go ahead. No, I just want, so I think if you are thinking about starting an event group or starting parties, where I would start, if I was you, was probably hosting at my house and start doing house parties, right? And all that is, is you invite your friends and then maybe you have your friends invite some friends, right? And so these are all like vetted people that you know. Yeah. And it will kind of get you used to people coming, you know, what, what, you know, how does the meet and greet work? You know, are you doing play in your house? Are you not doing play in your house? And it'll get you kind of used to just hosting, right? And then what's going to happen is eventually you're going to get either sick and tired of people coming to your house and trashing it. Yeah. Or your party's going to get too big for your house. And then the next step most people take is then they rent out a venue, right? And, and this usually looks like something like, a room at a bar or a room at a restaurant, somewhere that maybe you can bring in a DJ or something like that. You can have like a meet and greet and a mix and mingle, but there's not going to be play because this is going to be a public bar or a public restaurant. Yeah. And then eventually I do love the idea of like renting a floor. We've had several hotel takeover groups reach out to us and want us to do a floor. What we found is the money just wasn't. there for like all the work that it required. Does that make sense? Well, and I just I think we are different because of social media. We grew so fast. We were almost too big for a floor crawl or, you know, by the time we were ready to do it. Yeah. But yeah, that is definitely a way to do it where you can rent like the top floor of a hotel and the ballroom at the same time and then host a floor party slash ballroom party. You know, the bad part about that, and you've heard us talk about this before, is when you train, you know, when people are going from their room to the ballroom. They have to be appropriate. So you're going to spend most of your night worrying about if people are being appropriate or not. That's what we found. And then, of course, jumping into the world of hotel takeover or club. I mean, what we found is. You almost need somebody that's done it before to kind of help you along. We were trying to do it on our own for quite a while. and just being swingers, you're going to get so much pushback from these hotels. I mean, truly, most hotels that will let you in are the crappiest of crappy hotels. Like the good hotels that everybody wants are like, hell no, you're a swinger, stay away. So what we found what worked for us is finding someone that had done it in the past and kind of brought them on. And that's what we did with Electric Pleasures is kind of brought them on to kind of help us through that. because we've got the social media part down, but we needed help with securing the contracts and all of that for these hotels. And so that's kind of what worked for us. Yeah. So I do think that is the natural progression is house parties, some kind of meet and greet, you know, ballroom, not ballroom, but event space takeover and then getting into hotels and like floor crawls and ballroom rentals and then maybe working your way up to eventually. to a full hotel takeover. So that would be my advice of the path to take if you're headed in that direction. I would say that now even if you aren't TikTokers in public on social media, having like Facebook groups or a Reddit page or groups on the websites like SLS and SDC and Cassidy, all of that will help to feed into your party. But ultimately, word of mouth is the most important thing. It's people going to your party, having a good experience, and then going and telling their friends that, oh, man, this party was really great. You just try it next week. Like a house party starting, you know, with like five couples or four couples. And then maybe next time we're like, okay, we'll do 10 couples and see how that goes. I think that's how you create that word of mouth. I think it just starting small and slowly growing it. And honestly, that's how all of these groups started. Somebody wanted a party. Somebody started having people over at their house. And it just got too big. That's how Naughty, you know, we just had Bob from Naughty in New Orleans. Yeah. Which he's now throwing probably the largest hotel takeover parties in the country every year. He started with parties at his house. That's how it started. That's so common. I will say, we were talking about this before we hit, it's a lot of work. I think people think that, and Bob talked about this on the podcast, and I would recommend you go and listen to it, but I think people think that starting a lifestyle business and throwing parties is like a money grab, that there's a lot of profit in this space, and the truth is there's not a ton. Not when you compare it to the workload. We have just completely busted our ass. The profit is almost laughable at this point. I mean, by the time we like, I mean, now we do own some cool equipment because we are going to be able to pay ourselves back for all of that and stuff like that. But truthfully, it's, if we would have paid ourselves per hour, it would have been. We would have to arrest ourselves for paying ourselves under minimum wage. I mean, yeah, not even close. And that's something that I've struggled with, being so public, is people have criticized us pretty publicly about our events and how we're just making all of this money off the lifestyle. The truth is, I make my money off OnlyFans. And we use that to subsidize the other stuff. Yes. And I guess that is a good point. So if you are thinking about starting to hosting events and doing parties and stuff like that, if you're doing that, you really have to do it for the love of the game. Which sounds like where she's coming from, which is the perfect place to start. 100%. Yeah. If you're getting into this because you're like, oh, I think this is going to be an easy way to make money, I think you're going to find pretty quickly that there's a lot better ways. Lower risk, less scrutiny, less effects on your real life. There's better ways to make money. And also, we don't have near as much fun at our events as we do at other people's events. So it could be like a mediocre party, but we would still have more fun at their party because we're not working. Right. Yeah. So that's something. So there is some of that. So if you're hosting events, you're, you're working almost the whole, you know, 24 seven. We do a good job of squeezing in like fun time, but like everybody played all weekend. We played one time, you know, in which we were very, very lucky that we even did that. And honestly, we almost had to make ourselves because we were that exhausted. We just had to go because we just, really wanted to. But yeah. So I think all of that stuff is stuff to consider. Yeah. And then I think you talked a little bit about how hard it is to find a hotel. And so just to give you an idea, right? So we just hosted electric pleasures at a hotel in Gulf Breeze. So you have to secure that hotel for the weekend. So you're doing a contract with them. And then in that contract, not only are you coming up with a price, you're paying for every room in that hotel, whether you end up selling it or not, right? That's the only way they're going to do a full buyout, is rent you the whole hotel. Then sometimes, depending on if there's a restaurant or bar in the hotel, you have to guarantee that restaurant or bar minimums. We didn't hit our minimums this weekend. We didn't hit our minimums. There went our profit. So we wrote a check to the restaurant at the end of the party. So that's something to consider, right? So you have to negotiate minimums with the restaurants and the bar. You then have to hire security to secure it. If you do playrooms, you have to have playroom staff. You have to have staff the man in the front desk. We also had police. We had security. And we had uniformed officers on property. Yeah. And then, right, like Lacey's saying, you have to then work with the local government. And if they don't want you there, they can create problems. Because, you know, to be honest, just about any party, you could probably find some kind of reason to shut it down, right? So if you don't have a good relationship with the town or the county or the area that they're in, they can easily come in and shut your party down, which once that happens, your reputation is pretty much, you know, So you have to work. There's a lot of details that go into going into an event like this. Insurance is another thing that's almost impossible. It's impossible to get. Yeah. So that's a lot of work to get that. And then when you do finally get it, it's going to be way more expensive than what it should be. So there's a lot of work. And I think that's when you start at like the house party level, you know, you'll really you'll learn some of this stuff like as you grow so that you don't necessarily all have to learn it all at once, like drinking from a fire hose. So if you're doing just a house party, you might post your party on like SLS and SDC and Cassidy. And there's a whole you got to kind of learn those systems and how they work and how to post a party and how to get it approved. Right. And then if you move to an event space, well, you're going to have to contract that event space. Right. And then you're going to have to come up with pricing and you maybe you hire a DJ. Maybe you hire security. So you're going to have to kind of figure out. And you also have to have payment process. I have payment processing for swinger parties is outrageous and damn near impossible. It's fine. because a lot of people will start just doing it on like stripe or one of these publicly available places but if they figure out that you're you're charging for a swinger party on their platform you they can cancel your your payment authorization and keep your money and keep your money so you have to find you know ways to do to do that so again what it would be i'd probably have to teach you like a a whole like college course on this to teach you everything you need to know unfortunately we've just learned it a little bit and if you choose to go this route which i hope you do you will also learn it as you go um you just unfortunately we've learned the hard way i no longer have a venmo you know i you know stuff like that i mean we've just kind of learned a lot of this you know just going through the motions over the years and then on top of all that i think we probably had close to a hundred thousand dollars worth of equipment at this hotel last hotel and we also had a snowstorm and so we had cancellations out the ass right before which we were luckily we We had a lot of people at overflow hotels. We were able to move. It ended up working out. But what if it hadn't worked out? We were very, very fortunate that for us it did. But somebody out there, it probably didn't work out for. So I think the key to all this, again, and I'm tired and probably repeating myself, but is to start small, work your way up, learn all the lessons as you grow, and then I think you'll be successful. Yeah. I think if you go into it with very good intentions, to mess up, but I think that's okay. I think that's part of it. You know, as part of growing, we have always strived to throw safe, fun parties. Have we missed the march sometimes? Absolutely, we have, but we just try to learn from it and grow and do better next time. No, I agree. And I think, like Lacey said, I think there needs to be more parties and events in this country. I think if we want to grow as a community, growing the amount of safe places that we provide for people that are in this community, across the country is the best way to do that. I just will, you know, I guess our caution is it's not for the faint of heart. And if you're going to do it, do it the right way. Don't cut corners. Don't, you know, make sure you have all your eyes crossed and, you know, your T's crossed and I's dotted, as they say. Because the worst thing you want is something bad to happen at your party because you didn't have a playroom monitor or security there or, you know, something like that. Not even because you said, oh, we don't need that. You just genuinely thought everyone was going to be on their best behavior. You never would have thought that Billy from down the street was going to grab somebody. You've played with him 10 times and he's always been respectful. You could have had the best of intentions and unfortunately shit still happens. Yeah, because unfortunately those are the stories that are going to make it into the news and wreck the whole community as if something bad happens at a party and then it ends up on the local news and then the national news. That's all you hear about. And we've seen some of those types of stories before. But I will say, just like to end this on like a positive note, just like coming off of electric pleasures, I cannot tell you the amount of people that have came up to me as they were leaving to say, what an amazing party. Oh my gosh. Cannot wait to come back in March or with the texts that we were seeing or the, just the social media comments is definitely been rewarding. And so like that, yes, we didn't like, we can't even go on vacation. We can't even go with what we made, but our hearts are full. We're happy. We're happy that everyone had a safe, fun, and place, and we look forward to doing it again, and maybe we'll get better, and hopefully we'll fix our profit margins. Yeah. No, 100%. Yeah. Well, and for us, I think it's not really about the profit margins. I mean, the events feed the TikToks, which then feed our social media, which then helps people find your only face. So for us, it's kind of this all-inclusive cycle that one thing feeds everything. So it's not just about the event profit margins for us. But we are one of the very few that are in a position that are able to do that. So we're super thankful for that. But this weekend, Electric Pleasures was amazing. We had a blast. If you guys were there, you probably know what we're talking about. If you weren't there, you need to go book the next one. I have a feeling March is going to sell out probably in the next couple of weeks because of how much excitement is going on about the Gulf Coast. Well, it's already like halfway sold out anyway. I mean, there is more hotel, like another hotel that we could take over, right? In the same parking lot. If we wanted to, but we don't know. We haven't decided, right? So we'll see. So yeah, if you want to come, definitely book sooner rather than later because what's going to happen is it's going to sell out and then we're going to have a wait list like we always do. So yeah. So swingerside.net to get tickets for the next Electric Pleasures event or you can go to electric-pleasures.com. I hope that helps if you're thinking about doing events and give you a little insight into how that works. If you definitely, if you have any, I mean, like Lacey said, we're not trying to gatekeep here. So if you have other questions, you can email us or, you know, if you see us at an event or something like that. Well, she's going to be at April Bliss. Let's have dinner. We can talk. We can help you. We're always here to help someone that's wanting to do better for the community. Agreed. Yeah. All right. Anything else for the Swing Nation listeners? That's it. We got to go get this posted so we can go get some sleep. Yeah. All right. guys. I think with that, in a world full of apples. Be the pineapple. Be the pineapple guys. Bye. Bye. If you've enjoyed our podcast and want to support us, we have a five-star review wherever you're listening. If you want to see more of our content, you can find links to Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram, OnlyFans and more in the show notes. Come join the conversation with us and other Swinger content creators on our Swinger Society Discord server. If you have questions, or feedback, email them to us at the swing nation at gmail.com. Make sure you head on over to the swing nation.net and keep up to date on all things swing nation. We thank you so much for joining us and we'll see you next time. Goodbye. That's so hot.