How to host a Meetup

Transcript

Speaker1: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Wherever you are, I hope you have blue skies, a breeze on your back, and sand between your toes. Welcome to The Other Lifestyle Podcast. I am your host, Jason. Leave vanilla behind as we talk about meetups. The show is for adults only. We will talk about sex and relationships, the lifestyle and ethical non-monogamy in an honest way with lots of real If you are under 18, this is your only warning to go find a different show right now. Around here on the beaches of sexual freedom, consent, education, good times, everyone is welcome. Lifestyle, vanilla, or the curious. Whatever your gender, identity, expression, truth, flavor, you are welcome here. I do my best to use inclusive language, though you may hear words like husband or wife or partner or woman to keep things simple. You want to connect, you can send me an email to host at thatofthelifestyle.com. Go to my website, that other lifestyle. And to mention, go to stdhero.com and use my promo code TOL15 for 15% off your order. Testing takes the community to make a difference, so get STI tested and be safe out there. For the absolute best lifestyle parties, check out risquealifestyleparties.com. We love their vibe, attitude, and always have fun, and I promise you will too. You, uh, you ever wake up at 3 a.m. and eat pizza? This is not a philosophical question or a deep look into the human This is me eating a leftover pizza at 3am and deciding it was a good time to write My cat Bart is on my desk as I wrote this fighting me for position because he is an asshole who is a terrible writing partner and wants to keep sniffing my pizza He does very little to contribute to the process besides being adorable and occasionally biting me Now obviously I'm not going to eat pizza while I record this but eating it and writing it Yeah, you can do that If you have pizza, you are awake, you can eat pizza. You are an adult, and if you are not of legal age, then please stop listening to my show. In between Bites of Pizza, I outlined all the stuff, all the topics and things I want to share about meetups that I have learned, and fuck me, this is going to be a long one today. And then a friend gave me even more tips I'm going to sprinkle in here and there. Do you mind if I go long today? I took a hiatus, so this is my way of balancing out my lack of content production. because I have a lot to share on this. And hey, listen to it. And you're going to be good to go if you want to host your first meetup. Freedom to do what the fuck we want. Like you said, pizza at 3 a.m. is a good starting point for today's episode. Meetups. Summoning heathens together for a night of fun. How do you do it? Not how to attend. This is a guide on the actual process of doing it. You know what? You have the freedom. You know you have the freedom to do this based on your geography. social circle capacity to organize shit. Yeah, you can do a meetup. There is no magical mystery to this, despite what some people may say. I want to demystify this topic so you feel empowered to do it. I have organized meetups. I have attended meetups of all different kinds. Good ones, bad ones, shitty ones. So let's share advice, thoughts, consideration traps, and the actual how. A nuts and bolts on pulling this off. The topic was suggested a few months ago by a buddy. It went on the big list of future ideas, and this early morning, I felt like it was a good time to throw this out into the ether. Okay, a meetup. What is it? If you are new to the lifestyle or maybe vanilla listening, going to blow your fucking mind here. Lifestyle people, swingers, gather together in public locations to meet up, mingle, dance, and interact. That's it. It can happen at any venue, public or otherwise. It does not have to be a dedicated Yes, at some point in your life, there may have been a meetup going on around you and you didn't know, which is fucking awesome. It means no one blew their cover. To dispel any myths out there, lifestyle people, we can. We are capable of gathering together and not fuck on the dance floor. We can behave ourselves enough that we blend in with everyone else in the bar. And I love the idea that before we join the lifestyle, at some point in my life, there may have been a meetup going on. on around us, and I didn't know, which is actually a good thing. Discretion is a big part of meetups, and I'm going to talk about that later, and why having our cover blown wide the fuck open is one of the reasons I stopped doing meetups personally. Depending on where you are in the world, you may have a different term to call a meetup. I don't know what those different terms are, so for this, I'm just going to stick with the term meetup. A meetup. To differentiate it from a house party is usually at a public venue, usually a bar or a place that serves alcohol, because people like to drink. This is also different than, say, a group of 50 people going to a sex club at the same time as a group. For my purposes, a meetup is at a location that does not have on-premises sex rooms. Meetups are a vital part of the lifestyle ecosystem. Why would people want to gather together and not if our hobby is fucking people we meet on the internet. The answer is to mingle, to meet people in the real world, to enjoy our culture together in a safe way. Not every interaction we have needs to focus on sex. A date is usually two couples interacting, and a meetup, for instance, is 50 couples interacting. And oh boy, I'm going off on a tangent super early today. Loneliness and humanity. We live incredibly lonely lives. shut off, shut away, shut down from connecting with other people. Yes, the internet makes it possible to connect with people, but there's still no replacement for that actual human being standing in front of you. Meetups are a place for us, lifestyle people, to go and enjoy our hobby together. It is no different than a group of people getting together to do their fantasy football draft together on a Sunday afternoon. Meetups are a cure for the lifestyle loneliness we all experience. How often have you looked through a dating site trying to find someone to catch your eye and reach out? The better way, the more efficient way, is to go to a meetup. You can instantly decide if there is a mental or physical connection because that person is right in front of you. They can't fake their physical features. No filters, no bullshit pineapple sticker over their face. They are real and here and you can talk to them. What do people do at these meetups? the floor, okay? We are in a public vanilla space. We are in their space, so we must obey their rules. That includes rules on dress, behavior, and discretion. I have been to meetups where people forget that we are not in our native environment. We are in alien territory, and they act like complete fucking wild jackasses. Titties pop out. People start making out with people they did not arrive with. Someone gets drunk, decides to start hitting on the vanillas at the bar. Someone else decides to play grab-a-dick. this shit happens. If you're going to host something, you need to be ready for it. Meetups serve that vital purpose in the lifestyle. They are less formal than a hotel takeover and cheaper. They give us a way to interact in person versus online. They can introduce newbies to the lifestyle in a low-pressure environment. They allow us to meet new people in a neutral location. They are important, and I know it can appear daunting from the outside to organize one of these. We do to our swinger ecosystem. They're pollinating and disseminating semen. Every local community probably has one or two people who take it upon themselves either selflessly or selfishly to organize and host meetups. To organize a meetup is, I'm going to be honest, some people may not like this. It is both work and not work. It is stupid fucking easy. I cannot stress this enough. Stupid fucking easy to organize a meetup. It could be as simple as a phone call to a bar and a post on a social site. Yes, they can get more complicated than that, which naturally requires more effort on your part to vet couples, organize things, maybe run a chat group for it. For time commitment on how long it takes to organize the actual meetup, it could be 10 minutes, it could be 10 hours, it could be 10 days. All depends on how big and complicated you want to do this. I do not want you to be deterred, though, by the perceived effort. Some people will make this shit out to sound like they're landing a fucking space shuttle while juggling knives. It is not that bad for you. I want to encourage you to do a meetup. Organize it. I want you to try. I do not want to put you off the thought of trying this. You might like it. You may enjoy the organization side of it. I know I do. So yes, there is effort involved, but not as much as you think, and this is easier than people make it out to be. to fucking show up. No matter where you are, I promise you can get ten couples together, maybe a handful of newbies, and meet up all at the same place at an agreed-up time. You can do this. You have permission. Experienced people who organize meetups fall into two camps. Those who want to make this sound so complicated that they are actively discouraging anyone else from doing it, because then you are competition for their events, and that sweet, sweet praise they may receive from their fans, the other camp will literally help you do this. They are nice people. They will provide tips, assistance all around good people because they know the value meetups hold in a lifestyle. Which leads me into the first thing is talking about your motivations for wanting to host a meetup. Why do you want to do this? Answer this because your motivations will inform the how and where and the logistics of it. Do you want to gather your friends together in one place? Cool. Does that mean you want people who are not in your social circle to attend? Do you want a reason to go party? Cool. Do you need other people for that? What do you want from the event? Build your network? Provide a service to others? Have everyone praise you all night long for your hard work and putting it together? Giving you a trophy and a medal? Don't scoff. These are real questions. All the answers are legitimate. One reason I did meetups and I may do them again in the future. Honestly, there was nothing going on. There was a drought of things to do in my local community. So I figured, fuck it. If there is no meetup, I will put on a meetup because I wanted to go to a meetup. In your local area, if there is no meetup, you can do one. Granted, the first one might not have great attendance. I will warn you on that. But they get bigger if you nurture them in the right way. Frequency of meetups and the openness to newbies. Something to think about. So let's go over here and talk about it. If you host a meetup on a random weekend, you will have people show up. I promise. If it's a one and done thing, And all those people you gather together will go into the wind. Start planning the next meetup if you want to have another one as you wrap up plans for the first one. That way at the event, and if you want to do this regularly, you can tell people at your event when and where is the next one. It's a sales trick. You set up the next meeting before the first one ends. Frequency compounds attendance. The people who came to your first meetup will tell their friends. Hopefully everyone who showed it the first time will bring a friend for the second one and the event can grow organically from there. Another factor to consider, openness to newbies. Everyone knows we need newbies in this. If you don't have newbies flowing in, being invited in, joining the crowd, then you end up partying with the same 20 people over and over again, which could be fine, I guess, but being kind to newbies, pulling newbies in, making them comfortable at your event matters so much. I've seen groups that are agnostic to newbies. They're not unwelcoming, though I wouldn't say they are open. They make it hard for newbies to be brought in, and that stifles the potential growth of meetups. Don't be those fucking people. Don't create ridiculous layers of rules for newbies to join or hoops to jump through. I've seen meetups become big ol' cliques that actually turn away new people because everyone is kinda happy with their current social circle. Again, don't be these people. You cannot stop someone from walking to a public venue and hanging out with a lifestyle crowd, unless you lock down the venue, and more on that later. Don't be a shithead, and exclusively people from your little club be open to new people going along with nothing to do has motivation and i see it as someone has to do it and honestly half the shit i've done the lifestyle was because no one else was doing it and i wanted to go do it if there's nothing else going on in your area and you want to be the person to fix that do it you might enjoy it and i will caution though just be kind and don't step on anyone else's toes we have a finite number of weekends in the year do not schedule your meet up the same weekend in the same geographic area as someone else doing a meetup or a hotel takeover or party. It's kind of a jackass move. Here's what happens. You split the crowd. Only a finite number of lifestyle people within an area, and now you've given them a choice. Some may go to your event. Others will go to the other event, which means no one ends up with critical mass for a good event. Critical mass is so important, and I'm going to talk about that later. No one wins when we compete. You end up with two shitty events instead of one really good event. Now, is this always feasible and possible? No, absolutely fucking not. The rub is. Lifestyle people are secretive. There may be a group gathering next weekend and you don't know about it because they're a closed group, but they're big enough to pull in a decent crowd. You decide to host a meetup next weekend, a public one in the same town. Oh, shit. You learned last minute about this other thing going on. And people are messy. I promise somebody's going to come up to you and they're going to whisper this other group's organizers are mad at you. Put on better events and let people vote with their presence. Competition is not a bad thing. If your options as a attendee are two bar meetups next door to each other, both vanilla venues, which one are you going to pick? Toss up, maybe both, maybe whichever one you know the most people at. But if your options are a vanilla venue or a lockdown LS only venue, I know which one you're going to pick. And if you want more people at your events, put on better events. All that to say, though, be different. a bar meetup, people show up for the bar and then they don't go to the party. They might like the casualness of a bar, the relatively cheap cost of attending a bar meetup since there's usually no cover. They're comfortable in that environment. It kind of depends. And I'm going to use a bar meetup as an example for this episode. It's the easiest to explain, easiest to pull off for your first meetup. First important step is to make sure your spouse is on board. You need their support, okay? location. We need a place to put these humans that is not your house. For example, we will say that we want to do a bar meetup in town. Nothing else is going on that we can contend with. How do we do it? Well, you need a bar or a nightclub. Aha! Here's a wrinkle. The type of bar matters. If you pick like an Irish pub kind of thing, people are going to be able to talk and interact more. If you pick a nightclub, there's no damn talking because the music is too loud, but they'll be dancing. Oh, and speaking of music, little tip, when you're scoping out a place, be conscious of the music. Does the venue have space for a DJ to play music, or is there also space for conversation to happen away from the music? For my example, I'm picking a local speakeasy theme bar, which is where I organized my last meetup earlier this year. And I will walk through what I did when I hosted meetups. And in this example, so I went to this speakeasy, As a patron on a Saturday night, I looked at the space to get a relative idea of how many people it can hold. Pro tip, sometimes there is a big ass sign that says by order of the file marshal, max capacity is 150 people. Okay, that tells me how big this event can be right there. If there is no sign, we will need to talk to the manager in a minute. I picked this bar because of geography too. It's easy to get to, lots of parking, easy to explain where it is if I give people the address. can be a fucking hassle to deal with, to park and then get a walk, so that could impact attendance. For the speakeasy, I like the overall vibe of the space. Did it have the feel I wanted for the meetup? Yes, I wanted a little bit fancy, so I had a reason to dress up, so check that box. What about the vanillas we're going to be sharing this space with? What is their vibe? Rowdy college students, middle-aged professionals, retirees listening to Jimmy Buffett? These are the people who will potentially be around your friends. Are you okay with this crowd? For the speakeasy, it was middle-aged professionals. Demure, somber sons of bitches, so they were no threat to what we do. Something else, how fast are the drinks being served? And do you need to go into this level of detail? No. You could get 30 of your friends to crash a vanilla bar sight unseen, which I've done too. For the speakeasy, I was digging it, so then I connected with the manager. Here's the tricky part that is a 100% judgment call for you. What the fuck do you tell the manager? At a minimum, you need to tell the manager that you would like to gather a group of people together in their establishment at a certain time and date. Have a rough estimate of headcount going into this conversation. If you tell them that you want to show up with 100 people, the manager is going to get really fucking happy at the potential sales. But they also may need to get ready by staffing up. Staffing up costs them extra money. So if you tell them to expect 100 people and you only get 20, they may not be happy. The first meetup you do, be conservative, especially if you have not done the invites yet. The second meetup, yes, you adjust your numbers accordingly. Ask them if there's a private space available. This may cost money, though. Ask them if they could do drink specials of some sort, since you know the crowd you're bringing are going to consume a lot of alcohol. Make sure that you get the manager's name and direct phone number in case you need it, and give them yours. There's an elephant in the room we need to look at, and I know you're thinking it. Do you tell the manager that this group of people you are bringing in are swingers? Do you use that word? This is a hard one, and I don't have the perfect answer. If you tell this manager that this is a lifestyle group, you are outing every fucking person that shows up to this manager and potentially their staff that night. They may turn your happy ass away because they don't agree with the lifestyle or ethical non-monogamy. I would caution at a minimum in this conversation, this imaginary conversation we're having with the manager, about using the word swinger specifically. Swinger has a connotation that may turn people off. They have expectations of what a swinger is and what a group of swingers do. They may have the impression that a bunch of swingers will start fucking in the middle of the bar, which is wrong. I use the term lifestyle as an umbrella catch-all in these conversations, and I explain it in a a safe, conservative manner. That these people who are coming engage in ethical non-monogamy and are looking for a place to hang out together. Or you could say that you're a social club of some sort. Since I'm on the Gulf Coast of the United States, I use the cover story that we're a Mardi Gras crew. It works for our area. You need to figure out one that works out for your particular geographic area. It could be like a cattle association or a bowling league. Find one and tell everyone who's attending with you the cover story, which... I will say this works really, really well until one person fucking blows it. So might as well tell that story right now. I organized a meetup about two years ago. This was an informal thing. I told my social circle that we're all going to a bar together. This was a public bar. I knew relative crowd size to expect, so I didn't alert the bar ahead of time. It was a small gathering. No need. I told everyone the cover story that we were a Mardi Gras crew. We even came up with a name and a logo for it because Because, yeah, it was fun. 40-some-odd people showed up with us. This bar usually holds around 200 people, so no issue on the size here. This is a cautionary tale, my friend, about mixing lifestyle and vanilla people and the need for private areas, maybe. The meetup started around 8-ish at night, I think. We all showed up, and everybody's having fun. The vanillas in the bar noticed that we all knew each other, and they kind of asked a few questions here and there. Everyone said we were Mardi Gras crew, which is fun-fucking-tastic. Until one couple, who had a few too many white claws and fireball shots, decided to be more honest. This one dude, drunk, starts hitting on a drunk vanilla woman at the bar. Proceeds to tell her that we're all swingers. Everyone over on that side of the room, we're all swingers, and he tried to recruit her in a very poor fashion into the lifestyle that night. Oh, fuck. This is bad. He outed everyone to this stranger. This lady could have been someone's coworker or a distant cousin. This shit happens. But oh, Jason, you're saying you're overreacting. No, I am fucking not. I take discretion of my associates and friends very fucking seriously. Outing a person in the lifestyle is way the fuck up there on the list of shit we do not do. Cardinal sin right there against the dogma of the lifestyle. Okay, I admit this one might be on me. or invited the wrong people, learn my fucking lesson on that, and I am sharing it with you right now. Most meetups are going to be at bars or restaurants that serve alcohol. Why? They're third spaces. They're not a house. They're not work. They're a third space that we can gather and socialize in that has what we need, like air conditioning. Oh, my God. Or heaters. Whatever place you pick, make sure that it has air conditioning, HVAC, that you're not that freezing your nuts off or sweating your balls off in the middle of summer. But Jason, why not just go to a sex club? One reason is that a meetup happens with no expectation of fuckery. I can show up and mingle without the pressure of people trying to fuck us all night. Not that trying to fuck us is a bad thing. I find that as sex clubs, people are more interested in finding willing fuck partners versus conversation. The environment is pressure-free with more social lubrication at a meetup versus sexual lubrication. And another reason is there's not that many sex clubs. Major cities may have one or two, but I promise, Podunk, Nebraska, surrounded by 67 fields, 67 miles of cornfields, does not have a sex club. Sex clubs are fucking great. Get 50 of your closest friends together and go make it your own little clubhouse. Not everyone has this option, so we do need to organize meetups where we are. A little bit more about locations and venues. Public versus private. As in creating and getting a dedicated space for your lifestyle friends away from the public. Is it possible to rent out a venue for a lifestyle meetup? Yeah, but this is going to require money. Do you want to invest money in your meetup? How do you negotiate that? I'm so glad you asked. The benefit of locking down a location is no vanillas are around to ruin your fun. I can't tell you how many times we've been out with friends and vanilla dudes to crash our little circle. They see us all being friendly and handsy, and they just assume they can do the same thing. No motherfuckers, you ain't in the club. Last weekend, we attended Bunny's Events in Pensacola, Florida. And you can find out more about them at bunniesevents.com. And I think their next event is going to be January 17th in Pensacola, Florida. I cannot speak highly enough about them and what they do. Part of the reason I got inspired to do this episode. Great owners, great group of people. They did everything right. They rented out this bar, and they decorated. They decorated for the holidays. They had mistletoe up and holly and fake snow. It was so cute. It shows me that they want to put effort in creating an inviting and fun atmosphere. Everyone who attended was vetted by the owner, and they used a ticketing system for security. Attendees have to register in order to get in, which I really like because it keeps out the randos from just happening to stumble upon this. Top-notch meetups. This was a private venue for the event, and I like private venues, and I promise you will too want you to give it a shot. I can relax knowing that everyone in the room is in the lifestyle and everyone knows the general rules of how we operate as a culture. If you're interested in renting a location for a meetup, we need to talk through some considerations. And there's a couple. Cost money for you in the bar. If you approach a bar manager, and say, hey, I want you to shut down for normal business. Let me take a gamble on bringing in a large number of people who may or may not show up because lifestyle people are flaky as hell. They pay all of their bar staff their normal wages and hopefully sell enough alcohol to cover the cost of turning away vanilla people. You better have big balls and be ready for that conversation. For most bars, and honestly, as someone who has never managed a bar, but I know this, they want liquor sales. They make the most margins and money off of liquor sales. Yes, the cost of renting the space is one thing, but the profit margins on liquor sales is where they make most of their money. What will usually happen is the bar manager is going to ask for a flat fee to rent the space. Then they will probably most likely ask for some kind of liquor guarantee or a sales threshold or a liquor minimum. I've heard this called a couple of different terms. You can rent the space for $500 and then you guarantee that the bar is going to have at least $5,000 in liquor sales, just for an example. But if they don't meet that $5,000 minimum, then you as the renter are going to be required to make up the difference. This could get pricey, and there may be a contract involved that you're legally on the hook for. Now, obviously, this is not going to apply to all bars everywhere. But generally, yeah, there's going to be a fee to cover the space and a liquor minimum sale, I guess, sales that you have to meet. That is the reason it is easier and cheaper to just crash a bar with all of your friends versus Now, the manager may be willing to wiggle here. Like, for instance, if it's the off-season, we live in a tourist area. So from October to March, there's a lot less tourist business. So local bars are willing to negotiate because we can at least bring in revenue for them during the off-season. This changes, though, for us during the tourist season, and me offering to bring in 100 swingers, lifestyle people, is not as attractive as the normal 500 vanillas that may pass through on a Saturday night. If you rent a space, that money has to come from somewhere. And hey, maybe you're rich and you should totally just give this show money. And you don't care about dropping a couple grand on a meetup. Most of us are not. So let's say the space costs you $1,000 to rent for the night. Where do you get the money? Usually what happens is you will front the $1,000 and then as the organizer, you can charge tickets or a cover cause, cover fee at the door, to enter the meetup. Yes, you can also pad the cost if you want. Ten people, sorry, a hundred people, a thousand dollars, that's ten dollars a person to cover your cost. We live in a capitalistic society and you are providing a service to people by organizing the meetup, getting paid for your efforts. Adding an extra five or ten dollars is fine, but look, if you go apeshit with this and you charge a hundred dollars a couple, this better be the best damn meetup anyone has ever attended. a tangent here, just to educate everybody, about party promoters or people who do events for profit. Some of y'all heard the last part and you started thinking, I could do a meetup for profit. Yeah, that's what you could do. That's what party promoters do. They'll either set it up, they'll rent out a space, charge a ticket price to make profit off of that, or they're going to go to a club or a sex club in lifestyle circles, offer to bring in a set number of people in exchange for a cut of the door. No mystery here, it's a simple proposition. I bring in X number of people, they will give me 30% of the cover charge that they collect for the night. Yes, if you go to a sponsored or hosted party at a lifestyle club, there's a real fucking possibility here that the host couple is collecting money from the event for bringing you in. They're making profit off of you for being there. If you want to go down this route and try it, you're first going to need a large following. Like however many people you think you need, double it because people are flaky and all it takes is one event where you Concentric rings of promotion here. We're going to start with our friends and then work our way out towards the internet. A consideration is how big do you want this meetup? 10 people? 100 people? That matters. Just like I talked about how big is a space, how big do you want your party? You can have a great night with 10 people or you can pack the place. If you pack the place though, you will spend more time running the event versus socializing. If you're selling tickets, you obviously want to cover the rental fee and maybe make an extra profit. not let you charge a cover some don't and what about this caveat and oh yeah what about this thing and what about this little thing there are way too many fucking considerations for me to dive into each every one of them individually in this episode i'm giving you a broad stroke here numbers tie back to your motivation are you doing this to host the biggest event you can are you doing this to provide some fun for your social circle there is no right or wrong answer just honesty with yourself i will warn you about numbers if you're constantly chase bigger and bigger numbers it is a You could have three meetups in a row that grow exponentially every time, and then the fourth event no one shows up. Or people are bored with what you're offering and they go somewhere else. Or the event gets too big to manage. But then again, you want enough people to hit critical mass. Critical mass is a key term that should be on the quiz for all organizers of events. Your friends are going to show up to your event because they like you. Your shining personality and the enticement to be around you, though, may not be enough to attract friends of friends, or people from a dating site. You have to achieve critical mass. What that means is when a person looks at your event on one of the dating sites and they see 10 people going, they're going to skip it because there's not enough people going to interest them. If they see 100 people going, oh, they're going to think, oh, snap, I need to be here. This is a big crowd going. I might find someone to fuck. Or they're going to get the dreaded FOMO thinking this event is really popular, so it must be good. to jump from 100 people signed up to 200 versus 10 to 50. It is a shitty fact. Critical mass will motivate people to show up for your event. You can help achieve critical mass for events by hosting a dedicated chat group, for instance, or you get your friends to help push the event, which is where promotion comes in to help you achieve critical mass of a self-growing event. You probably have a local social circle, friends you can invite. Reach out to them first to gauge interest in actually doing the event. If enough people are on board, let's fucking go. Get your friends to invite their friends. Start a chat group so people can see who all is going. Again, this ties back into critical mass. People want to know who else is going, which is shitty to think about that people only want to show up if other couples are showing up that they want to fuck, but it's human nature and part of the lifestyle. If you want to keep it an intimate event, as in everybody knows everyone in attendance, stick to your local circle and word of mouth. a dating site. Make sure you include details. People like details. Date, time, theme. Make the post as inviting to newbies as possible. Remember, newbies can be timid, sort of like deer, so I wouldn't go too hard on selling a sexually charged environment. Think low pressure instead. Should you post the location, the address? Sometimes event organizers will not share the actual address until the day of the event. There are reasons for this. If the event gets torpedoed for various reasons, then they may make a last-minute change to the location without having to personally inform 200 people. Keeping the location adds an element of mystery to it. I'm not a fan of this reason. I like knowing where I need to go and where I need to park ahead of time. I am the person who will plan out my route to get there a week in advance. Another reason to keep a secret is to discourage randos and vanillas from finding out about what you're doing and crashing the event. of a lifestyle party that knew what was happening in there. Story time! Here's a lesson. In 2018, the Erotic Heritage Museum and a party promoter called Minaj Life wanted to do the largest orgy ever in Las Vegas. I can't remember the total number of people who were going, but this is hundreds, maybe a thousand people, to a giant orgy. But they had medical staff available, drinks, snacks, it was a big production. They promoted it through lifestyle channels, like our dating sites and E&M safe spaces. Sold tickets, rented out in an entire floor of a casino hotel in Vegas. And then, motherfucking Stephen Colbert, that guy, late night talk show host, found out about it and talked about it on his TV show. Whole fucking event got torpedoed because of that one. One vanilla dude, like three days before the event, exposed it to a nation and the whole party. got shut down. So there is a benefit and a reason for secrecy in this. Could this happen to your event? Possibly. At least be aware of it. A wrinkle here. Bars have liquor licenses and part of having that license may also have a morality clause which translates to the local government will twist any and all infractions and regulations to fuck over that bar owner if they think the bar is catering to alternative lifestyles, things that they don't like in an area where the local government doesn't approve of that shit no bar wants to have their liquor license threatened or pulled if uptight vanillas catch wind of a gathering of what of us they might cause a stink put pressure on the bar owners to not allow the event to happen and then you are shit out of luck okay pros sharing the location ahead of time it lets people know where to get a hotel room gives people an idea of what kind of venue they are attending this is important for ladies One wants to walk three blocks through town in lingerie. You can plan your outfit choices better. As a compromise, don't reveal the actual address, just the general location. Back to promotion. If you put this event out to the public in any channel, you will have people show up that you may not know, people show up that you may not like, people that show up that you know for a fact are going to cause drama. You may also need to do personal outreach to new couples to help them get comfortable with with the idea of going to your event. See, this shit gets as complicated or as simple as you make it. Some people are going to spend hours searching the sites, inviting people, chatting with them, or you're lazy like me, and I just threw the fuck out there. Show me if you want to. However you decide to promote it, I will tell you that about half the people that RSVP on one of the dating sites, they're going to RSVP to your meetup. They're not going to show up. I've seen events with hundreds of RSVPs on a dating site and maybe a hundred show up. It costs nothing to RSVP to an an event on one of these sites, people just click shit just to see the attendee list and be nosy. Temper your expectations. You need a name and a reputation to really draw in a crowd. And word of mouth goes a long way too. Remember what I said about multiple events to help you grow your crowd? If people show up, have a good time, they're going to become champions for what you do and tell more people about it. Organic growth. You put together a great invite. People are showing up. Let's talk about managing the event. A good party host will greet people at the door and make them feel welcome. Every single person. You tell them hi and how much you appreciate them being there. A shitty party host will stand by the bar with his clique of friends and say, fuck all you NPCs and background characters. A good party host will make sure that people have a general idea of where everything is, like the bar and the bathrooms, do a little tour. A bad party host will provide no guidance and leave you to wander around looking for a place to pee. A good party host will engage with everyone equally. as best as they can. A bad party host will spend the whole time trying to connect with one couple so they can fuck it out later. Good hosts will keep an eye out for couples being problems or drinking too much and stepping in gently. A bad host will allow people to get shit-faced drunk, fall out, and then laugh at them. One more, I think. A good host will make newbies feel welcome. And there's a trick to this for newbie couples. A newbie couple shows up, you introduce yourself, make a little small talk, and then you hand them off to another couple, so that frees you up to go somewhere else, and it gives them a place to go. So you find another couple, you do an introduction, human A, this is human B, y'all both enjoy dirt bike racing and drinking monster energy drinks and punching drywall. A bad host is going to let new couples hover in the dark corner, not talk to anyone, and feel leaving unwanted. A good host will remember that they are not the person that makes or breaks a party. All you're doing is creating a space for people to have fun, and it is on them to have fun and make could happen. I had been to meetups, had a decent... I personally had a good time, and then I talked to people afterwards who were also there, and they had a horrible time. It's not the host's fault if someone has a bad time. The host provided the space. People still have to take advantage of it. A good meetup is like a theme park. There's multiple activities to engage with. At Bunny's, they had an area set up with a banner for pictures, a 360-degree picture platform, multiple bars, a DJ, a dance floor. Have different areas set up for people with things to do versus just standing around a bar all night with thumbs up your asses. Activity creates and encourages engagement. And speaking of DJs, a DJ can make or break the night. If the bar does not provide a DJ or have space for one for you to get one, make sure you ask for access to their sound system if they're willing so you can make a playlist for the night. And at a minimum, try to control the music yourself if you can't do a DJ. is really bad for us. Educate them if you can. Back to my good host and bad host segment. A good host will check in with the venue staff and management throughout the night. A bad host will ignore them completely until they get pissed off and have words with you. Strong words. Angry words. Co-check. Can't figure out where to put this. Dropping it randomly. Set up a clothing rack for co-check. Especially if it's cold outside or generally just putting up a rack. One of the little pop-up racks. I think you can buy them for like $20. They're fucking great because if the ladies are coming to your venue and maybe they're wearing lingerie and they don't walk down the street in a lingerie, they're going to wear an overcoat, they have a place to put that coat. People need somewhere to put their coats. A few more notes about hosting. Name tags. Every time I go to an event, someone suggests that we use name tags. You could. You could buy a pack of name tags. I think I've done this one time. It's not a bad idea, but I haven't seen it put into Practice Very often. Group pictures. As I've said before, I don't like group pictures. You should set up a space out of the way for people to take pictures, but gathering all 70, 100, 200 people at your meetup together in a picture is a bad fucking idea. That is called evidence. Everyone in that picture is now associated with everyone else, and if one person is out about being in the lifestyle, all 99 other ones are now two, and that picture is going to end up on social media like Facebook. Everyone's going to see it. This sounds kind of harsh, and don't take it too strongly, but it's kind of true. You cannot be a good host and have fun. A good host stays mobile, engages, interacts with people, not chase their own strains for the night. Towards the end of event, yes, after people have settled in, then you can relax, but generally, if you're hosting, you're not going to have as much fun as an attendee. Okay, I think we're good. Congratulations. you put on your first meetup. Now what? Bask in the glory of your achievement for a few days. Then go ask for feedback. Real feedback. Ask your friends. Ask people you don't know that well. Feedback is what you need to make your next event better. Watch the event. Watch where people where you could improve the flow of the room are little things you could do to make it better next time. Accept feedback. No meetup is perfect and you only improve by being open to feedback. Before I depart and wrap up this long fucking episode, I'm already 46 minutes, Jesus, I want to talk about the icky shit, the sticky sucky parts of hosting a meetup. Toxic behavior from both organizers and attendees. Attendees first, you need to know this. Not everyone is going to be happy with your event. Some people may show up and be very vocal about being unhappy within the first five minutes of getting there. I have been at house parties and meetups, motherfuckers show up, eat some chips, and then start trying to get a contingent of people to leave with them and go somewhere else. Fucking rude. There will forever be unhappy people who show up to your event, and they try to convince people to leave your event. But Jason, maybe they really wanted to go do something else. Fucking great. Don't poach attendees because you were too chicken shit to go somewhere else by yourself. I have no solution for this. to bitch about it. Another kind of couple you may deal with when you do events and meetups is the ones who are scared to be in public. So setting the scene, a meetup is going on at a bar. One of the attendees happens to see their boss walk in. Oh, fuck. They flip out like they saw a velociraptor. They grab their shit and they make for the door and in the process, they try to take half the meetup with them to another location. Or this could all just be a sneaky ruse to ditch the crowd and try to take select people they want to hang out with personally and or fuck them at a second location. Can you stop this? No. Is it shitty behavior by human torpedoes with questionable ethics? I am now calling out so less people are inclined to do it. Yes. A person's boss being at the bar is their problem. Behave your fucking self. Not yours as the host or anyone else in the crowd. I don't have a solution for it. I just want to bitch about this. Another icky, shitty bit are drama and trouble couples. Couples may have strong disagreements publicly. Your role is not to settle their disagreement. Your role is to get them the fuck out of the way in somewhere else. You go up to them and say, hey, I can feel things are a bit tense right now between y'all. Maybe this bar is not the best place for you to discuss these issues. Why don't you step outside and take a breath? See, easy and polite. Then there are the trouble couples. because that's going to make it hard for you to do an event there again. I promise, though, those troubled couples do not give two shits about your relationship you are trying to establish with this business. They want drama in the most bombastic way possible. Like the dude I told you about earlier going around telling everyone more lifestyle. Had to pull his happy ass to the side and politely tell him, shut the fuck up. Settle down. Don't make it a big show, though. I told his wife, you need to deal with him. Another pitfall. And I mentioned this one more time as chasing numbers. Having the biggest meetup around does not mean it's a good event. The bigger an event, the more likely it gets that there's going to be clicks that form which no one enjoys, or factions, or other dumb human ways we create divisions between us. If you are constantly trying to suck in new people, then you will end up sucking in a lot more toxic couples than you think. A lot of fucking talking this time around. I want to share everything I can think of about meetups, and this is not the final word on everything. It never is. No way possible to go into every single nuance or scenario. The takeaway from today is, think about hosting a meetup wherever you are. Do it. Just do it. If there's no meetup in your area, give it a shot. Gather your friends, crash a bar, see how it goes. If you're in an area with regular meetups, fuck it. Do your own. Better to put on a better event with a bounce house or a ball pit or bowling and people are going to come. Come. Before I go for real this time, we will be at the Risque New Year's Eve party on December 31st, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Go to risquélifestyleparties.com for tickets. I also want to mention two events next year that you need to put on your calendar now and go buy tickets for. Risqué Luminous is going to be an awesome glow party in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, the first weekend of May. And Risqué Pulsify, the second annual Risqué Pulsify, will be the first weekend of October. Risquélifestyleparties.com for tickets. Check it out. and come party with us. Thank you for listening and tuning in every week. Make sure you tell a friend about the show. Thank you to the love of my life, my wife, who is on this wonderful journey with me. If you want to reach out, ask a question, suggest a topic, send me an email to host at thatotherlifestyle.com. And my website is thatotherlifestyle.com. My personal disclaimer, I am not a medical professional nor a trained and certified educator of any kind in any way. I am a guy with a microphone sharing my personal experiences with you. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. And please join us for the next episode. Go to STDHero.com, use my promo code TOL15 for 15% off your order, and get tested. Whatever you may do today or tonight, I hope you do it with enthusiasm, consent, curiosity, and a little bit of spice. You are appreciated and loved, and I will see you for the next episode.