Lifestyle Business Exposed: Beyond the Horizon

Transcript

Speaker1: wherever you are i hope you have blue skies welcome to that other lifestyle podcast i am your host jason leave vanilla behind as we pull back the curtain on lifestyle businesses this podcast is for adults only we'll be diving into adult and sexual topics with plenty of colorful language so it is not safe for work if you are under 18 this is not the place where you get the hell out, stop listening. This show is all about exploring the lifestyle and ethical non-monogamy, and it's open to everyone, no matter your background, gender identity, expression, or your personal truth. While I do my best to use inclusive language, you might hear terms like husband, wife, or partner for simplicity's sake. This show is for everyone though, lifestyle, vanilla, or just the curious. You want to connect with me, send me an email to host at thatotherlifestyle.com or visit my website, thatotherlifestyle.com. Everyone is welcome here because the lifestyle is about so much more than you think. Hello. Hi. Last week at the end of the episode, I mentioned lifestyle businesses, went down a whole rant about that. And after posting the episode and while sitting on a sailboat this past weekend, I decided I wanted to talk more about the business side of the lifestyle. And let me clarify, this was not a relaxing sailboat ride. It was a frantic fury of fucking ropes. I've learned there are two types of boat owners in this world. One group doesn't want you to touch anything. Just sit there and let them be the captain. The other group, they want you to participate in the boat ride. They love their boat and they want everyone to know how to work and operate their boat. Don't buy a boat. Find a friend with a boat. Sailboats are a good analogy for lifestyle businesses. You look out on the horizon and you see this calm sailboat out in the distance and you think, oh, that looks peaceful and relaxing, right? Riding the waves wherever the wind may take you. No, they're not. Fuck no. Sailboats are a furious orchestra of ropes and jibs and fabric and more ropes and winches that can shear the skin off your hand. It is wild and intense. Then you get like 10 minutes of peaceful sailing before you have to adjust the sails again. Lifestyle businesses from the outside, it looks like a well-oiled machine. On the inside, there is the same frantic energy in the heart of this event. The best events out there though, you never see or know the chaos, just like watching a sailboat peacefully in the ocean. When I wrote this, it was another insomniac kind of night. 2 a. the best time to write. My head is clear, my heart is pure, ideas flowing in a near-med extreme of consciousness that will require heavy edits later for coherent flow before I record the episode. Yes, wake up at 2am and pour your thoughts into a laptop so you can read them, question yourself, cut out half of it, remember what the hell you want to talk about for the week, and promise yourself you will never do it again. Why was I awake? I wish I could say that I am a tortured, creative soul needing to light the world on fire with my words. No, nothing as romantic or sexy as that. I have four cats and a dog. I got up to pee in the middle of the night. The dog woke up demanding food. Three of my cats realized I was awake and they needed to go sit on the porch and stare at bugs, while the fourth cat demanded I cuddle him and his sharp murder mittens and his claws that he lovingly pressed into my flesh. 2 a.m. 2 a.m. is a binary choice in the day or night or morning. If you wake up at 2 a.m. and realize you have to stay away for the rest of the day, that takes courage and an unhealthy amount of caffeine. 2 a.m. at a takeover, though, that's when the world shifts. Shit gets weird at 2 a.m. My mother always told me growing up that nothing good happens after midnight, and growing up in a small town that was more cow than human, I agree with her. Though she did not define the not good part very well, I doubt the town I grew up in has a 24-hour restaurant even now in this year of our lore, 2025. 2 a.m. at a party is fun, though. The alcohol drinkers have crashed around 1 a.m. The people looking for a hookup either got lucky or just resigned themselves to sleep. 2 a.m. is for the hardcore, those lucky few who spend the night dancing away. 2 a.m. is decision time. You either commit to seeing the sunrise or you admit defeat and go to sleep. A good takeover accommodates this 2 a.m. crowd. A good party acknowledges that people have way too much pent-up need for fun and they are letting it rip. A good party or event or takeover should be measured upon the merit of the event, not whether a person got laid. It is getting real when I can make the smooth transition in the discourse. Lifestyle businesses, whatever they may be, they're kind of like sailboats, right? They're work you never see from the shore. There are considerations and actions and fuck even credit card processing headaches that can slap a business owner right in the face and then in the dickhead. I want to pull back the curtain and talk about the lifestyle economy. I find this super interesting. Hey, maybe you do too. I know people who work very hard to put on events or lead groups or just want to throw a hell of a party, be it for the 2am crowd or the fuckers. This is not a great secret except to the vanilla world. There is an entire economy built up around the lifestyle, servicing, entertaining, and operating in the shadows. And since I've started this podcast, I have met people from all aspects of this economy, from concierge, sex toy providers, to hotel takeover maestros, big events in Las Vegas, to nudist camps out in the country. I've talked to business owners on the other side of the Atlantic, and I know Australia is fucking wild. This is a worldwide economy that the internet is surprisingly terrible at giving me an actual numerical monetary value worth four. Billions, let's just say billions of dollars. I know when we were vanilla, I had no idea any of this existed. I think the only business type that may have popped up on my radar was a swinger cruise, which makes sense. These are huge endeavors attended by thousands of people, and maybe their marketing spills over into the vanilla world to tempt and tease at the provocative nature of it all. Most lifestyle events, and I will lump anything from a takeover party, not sex club, cruise, webinars, seminars, I will lump all of that into the catch-all term, event, to save on my word count. Sex clubs are their own beasts we're going to talk about later. Events, temporary things, not brick and mortar buildings. The vanilla world will not find out about because of careful marketing. I've had debates right here on this show about the definition and usage of the word swinger, whether we should reclaim it or what it means or who should use it. That debate will never be settled, but I'm going to tell you who will not use it. A business. My theory on why swinger fell out of favor in the lifestyle, that word, gained prominence, is due to business, money. If you want to throw a hotel takeover, you cannot use the word swinger in your advertising. Simple. You just can't. Every now and then someone tries, decides to get a little cheeky, they want to buck the tradition convention, call an event a swinger party. And those are the parties the vanilla world finds out about and those are the ones they have a problem with. If you say this is a lifestyle party, that word is so damn generic. No one is sure if you're hosting a yoga seminar or an orgy. To the swingers out there, we don't care what the event is called or how it's marketed. We're going to show up. If the event is advertised in our spaces, which are very hard for vanilla people to crack too, you can call it wherever the fuck you want. We're going to go party. Okay, so who cares if the vanilla crowd finds out about a party? Big deal, right? As long as no one is fucking on the dance floor and everybody stays dressed, they should leave us alone, right? No. Swinger carries such a heavy connotation the world over. It is immediately a target for anyone with a badge, a bad attitude, or a smidgen of power. I know Las Vegas, Nevada, which markets itself as a din of debauchery, which for the record, I've been to Vegas and I've been to New Orleans. New Orleans is a much better and accepting of our kind of fun. Yeah, just go to New Orleans, but Las Vegas, because that's the big one everybody knows about Vegas. Over in Las Vegas, there are four different law enforcement agencies that can shut down any event with a quickness. And I'm not talking about police. I doubt you're going to find anyone going around trying to criminally charge a group of people for a decent behavior, unless you are in a particularly small podunk town way out in the woods. There are other ways to shut down an event besides a raid by the cops. Here in the States, and I'm pretty sure the world over, we have fire marshals. Their job, which is very valuable to society, is to determine if a space can safely accommodate a crowd. The space is rated to accommodate 200 people, for instance, and you have 300 in the room. That's a problem, because in the event of a fire, 300 people cannot safely evacuate that space. But what happens if a mayor-type person, someone in charge of the town, doesn't like these kind of heathens in their town? What if the fired marshal miscounts? Not saying it happens. Not saying it ain't possible. That's a double negative that kind of makes sense. Maybe, running with the same example, this mayor-type person, who I picture being the stereotypical small-town mayor of a Midwest U.S. town, wears a sash all day to let people know that he's the mayor and has erectile dysfunction, that is probably easily treatable, but doesn't want to admit that he has trouble with his little pee-pee so he gets drunk on his own power instead. That fucking dude. He doesn't like all these heathens that legitimately contribute to the tax base and the local economy, dancing and acting a fool all night. What's his next option? Liquor license. Liquor licenses are a delicate balance of federal, state, and local authorities granting permission to an establishment to sell liquor, which is a big source of potential income for a bar, right? It's a bar. If a person wants to do a takeover at a bar for a swing or event, and the town finds out and they don't like it, they can threaten the liquor license of the bar with just one phone call, maybe revoke it, maybe make the owner go through a frivolous lawsuit. So yeah, that bar owner is not going to play around with swingers. I'll give you another one because I ain't done. Hotel code enforcement. Say you want to do a takeover, maybe over in Las Vegas. In that town, there's an entire squad of people whose sole job is to go around to all the hotels and conventions and stuff and check out the events for compliance with a labyrinthian set of building codes. That doesn't sound too bad, right? No, it fucking is. These hotel codes, these convention codes, they have rules about like nudity. So while someone decides, a patron of the event decides to pop out a titty, not breaking a criminal law per se, not something a police officer is going to bother with because come on, it's a titty. They're fantastic. No, but these code enforcement fuckers, they will stick the organizer with a civil penalty like a fine. Rules matter. Don't pop a titty out or it could cost someone thousands of dollars. Then we have the general public who have fucking opinions and they want to let everyone know their opinions when they don't agree with what consenting adults are doing in their free time. The self-appointed morality police. Brief story without going into too many details. There's the person who wanted to open a swinger club in a rural southern state in the U.S. They went, they complied with all the building codes. They complied with all the permits. They did everything they were supposed to, right? The facility was outside city limits. It was on a rural road, like no streetlights, open pastures. Fuck, it was probably a dirt road. The business was going to operate as a members-only establishment. There was a whole process to join, a monthly fee. There was absolutely zero, no chance of a vanilla person stumbling into this place. In this small town, word got out that a swinger club was going to open and people lost their fucking minds. There were accusations that this would become a did of drugs and prostitution, which are two things that are not really prevalent in the lifestyle. The local pearl-clutching crowd gathered and made their closed-minded voices heard at all of the city council meetings. Just bad vibes. The local police jury, which is a version of the city council, that's what they call it in this area, they enacted rules to basically outlaw any club of this type from ever operating, which sucks because that's one less club. That's a business owner who can't follow their dream. That's one less venue that is accepting of ethical non-monogamy. The whole fucking story is nauseating and I really hope the business wins the appeal. But it goes to show that if a business flies too high, if they get on the vanilla world radar, especially in towns that don't like fun, they can get shut down before they even open. People who put on events, they have to navigate all of this shit, layers of bureaucracy. Throwing a paid event, taking over venues is way more complicated than people think. And speaking of bullshit, something I personally ran into is money, credit card processing. I launched my first course last year, right around this time, The Single Men's Guide to the Lifestyle, which now is only $45, available at thatofthelifestyle.com. And good news, while I'm working on this script, I'm also bouncing over to my other script for my new course, The Guide to Unicorn Hunting, is exactly what it sounds like. I should have that out in a few weeks and tune in and I'll make sure to tell you about it. And the third thing I'm doing is attempting to stop my cat from clawing my new studio setup, which you can see by going to my YouTube channel, That Other Lifestyle. See, I remembered to plug my courses and I worked it seamlessly into the script. Taking money, credit card transactions, it's surprisingly hard for a lifestyle business that we don't, for businesses, we don't directly sell sex. For a business, you have to be able to take credit cards. It's a simple fact of life. That means finding a credit card processor. There are not many options. The main credit card processors, and I will not specifically say their names, but whoever you're thinking of, yeah, them. I offer courses. There is no pornography in my courses. It is just me, fully clothed, talking to a camera. Nothing racy going on besides having an honest discourse about sex and various topics. Just talking. And I got dinged about four weeks after I signed up with my first credit card processor. I was doing good. I was selling courses that first month. I even decided to do an advertising blitz on one of the social sites. The morning my advertising blitz was scheduled to start. I knew I was going to have orders coming in. I got a snarky email that my account with my credit card processor had been disabled. Oh shit. My account was disabled because according to them them, I was selling a dating service. The fuckers I ain't. And there was an appeals process, which I failed. I had to scrub the word swinger completely off my website and replace it with a much less sexy term and less SEO-friendly term those who participate in the lifestyle. It was a headache to try to appease these sumbitches. I gave up and found a different company. Taking credit cards for an LS business is this delicate game of not saying too much, saying enough to attract the right attention, stating the purpose without actually saying it. It is a bitch. And you think that sounds rough, Jason, but there must be an opportunity here for a company to fill the niche and handle credit card processing for lifestyle and possibly sexually oriented businesses. You're absolutely correct. There are niche processors and them son of a bitches take 20%. OnlyFans does that. I could run everything through OnlyFans, and they would take 20% of my money. For comparison, the traditional vanilla credit card processors, they take about 1.5%. You can either play a constant game of whack-a-mole shifting processors and words that stay below the line of attention, or you give up and you hand over 20% of your money. I've since learned there are processors out there that take a much smaller cut, still more than I want to share with them. That shows you there's that's a whole nother consideration that goes into an event that most people will never even think about while they're chatting up a new couple and trying to get laid. Are you ready to party in paradise? Risqué Lifestyle Parties presents presents pulsify 2025 at the island resort on the sparkling waters of the gulf coast in fort walton beach florida september 26th through the 28th 2025 come for the two-day party that will take hotel takeovers to the next level in one place with many stories and endless fun for you your sexiest friends. Spend the day relaxing by the pool with swim-up bars, evenings on the white sand beach, and your nights with the hottest lifestyle DJs all in one place. Rooms now available. Go to risquelifestyleparties.com for more information. Be the ultimate lifestyle hero with STD Hero's new Ultimate STI testing kit. The Ultimate Hero panel is a comprehensive, affordable panel for infections transmitted sexually, including anal and oral, which can often be symptomless. The ultimate test screens for 13 high-risk STIs. It is the ultimate protection for those in the lifestyle. Compare the prices and see for yourself. STD Eros kits are shipped to your home in discreet packaging, utilising painless blood sample collection. Be safe out there. Be a hero of your own story. Use promo code TOL15 for 15% off your order at stdhero.com. Brick and mortar sex clubs, swinger clubs, apologies, apologies, lifestyle venues, whatever the fuck we want to call it, you know what they are. These are nightclubs with spaces for fucking. The laws and rules and codes around them, they're a daunting as well. Not insurmountable because there are some that are open. They're daunting. Swinger clubs are everywhere. Major metropolitan areas may have multiple. I live near a big city. I have a friend who has lived in that city for 20 years. When we started in the lifestyle, I mentioned to him that there was a club in the downtown area and he was puzzled. He had never heard of it. His office is a block away from it, never knew it existed. There are no exterior signs on this building. The windows are blacked out. If you didn't know what you were looking for, you would never know it was there. They're flying way under the radar. The weirdest quirk out there I feel about, um, swinger clubs is the rules around liquor. Most clubs that I've been to do not serve alcohol at all. Patrons bring their liquor from home. The bar will hold it for you and then they provide mixers and bartenders. The bartenders will pour alcohol from the bottle you brought from home. This arrangement doesn't require a true real liquor license. They're serving your own liquor back to you. And fun fact, because I was curious while I was writing this, where I live in my local County, there are over 30 variations of a liquor license. They're serving your own liquor back to you. And fun fact, because I was curious while I was writing this, where I live in my local county, there are over 30 variations of a liquor license. The fuck? On-premise, off-premise, manufacturing, temporary, damn it, that's in bureaucracy. So look, don't bitch about having to bring your own liquor to a sex club. Be happy to even let you drink in them. Why can't they get a liquor license? Morality. Morality clauses. It would be immoral to the local community to allow both nudity slash sex and liquor in the same establishment. I can kind of see the point of it. You don't want people getting drunk and having sex or at least providing alcohol that could lead to sex or bad sex or bad vibe or bad situations that might get the cops involved. It's a liability thing. I don't know about the rest of the world, but here in the States, business insurance is a bitch and you gotta have it. For instance, if a bar over serves a patron, they drive home drunk, get into a wreck, then the business could be liable and get sued because they served alcohol to that person. While there is some personal responsibility here, the business could be argued they did contribute. Businesses can be liable, which means being sued, which means then making sure you have insurance to cover this possibility. I ain't a lawyer. This is my dumb explanation of it. Sex clubs. It's probably easier to forgo the headache of having a liquor license and everything it would bring if they could even get one at all. All these factors that go into running an event business and you still have to get people into the door to make money, to make profit. The people I've met who cater to the lifestyle, I will say genuinely, they enjoy it. You have to. It is such a niche business. You have to enjoy what you're doing. The ones who put in all the work to pull off an event, I respect it. I personally have done just small bar meetups, and that is like herding cats. That was just with my local tribe of people, and I knew everybody. And you think, well, damn, Jason, this all sounds complicated. Yes, it is. Contracts, insurance, oversight, productions, loadouts, setup. And that's just for events. We need to look at the wider lifestyle ecosystem. There is an entire ecosystem, an interconnected web of businesses to serve the lifestyle, which I think is pretty fucking cool. Other industries have this, like baseball. Think about what all goes into a baseball game that you see televised. You've got the stadium, the food vendors, promotions, marketing, the TV crew, the cable providers, the players, the balls. It's a complicated industry, and it's the same thing with the lifestyle. For all these lifestyle businesses, though, there is an extra barrier. We cannot advertise anywhere except within the ecosystem. Baseball, they could slap an ad on the side of a bus. I can't do that. I can't advertise my course for helping people meet unicorns on the side of a bus. Maybe I could. I probably shouldn't. And then there's social media, them fuckers. I looked into running Facebook ads one time. Turns out, you can't just filter down to swingers. There's no identifier for that. I could advertise people who are part of a certain group, but not the spicy ones or the fun ones. I could advertise based on demographics and just hope that I would attract all the lifestyle people that fall into the 18 to 35 age bracket. A huge part of our ecosystem, and if you want to reach the masses, are the online dating sites. They are the best things we have for gathering, meeting, advertising, collaborating. Everyone on that site is part of the ecosystem, whatever flavor they choose. These sites are the glue for our community. There are many different ones, but they all serve a greater purpose of more than just facilitating fucking. They are our community hubs. They are where businesses can let you know that they exist. And people may cringe at the word advertising. They don't want to be sold on anything. But you need to know that these businesses like the takeovers in my podcast exist. The online dating sites are where other types of businesses are able to touch the right crowd, be it reaching in from the outside or homegrown lifestyle businesses that cater to the crowd. To use a corporate buzzword that creates a little bit of bile in the back of my throat, there is synergy between these businesses. You got event companies like Risque Lifestyle Parties giving people a place to party, content creators like me talking about Risque, amplifying their reach, helping to bring in new people. You got educators making the community better. It's this beautiful interplay of people working within this community, and I bet you never even thought about it. Even STD Hero. I need to plug them. Use promo code TOL15 for 15% off your order. Working with them, our relationship, and I will tell you this, any partner I have on this show, I want it to be a relationship, not just throwing a affiliate link at you. A few months ago, I realized I needed an STI testing partner. I tell people go get tested every week. I need it to be able to refer people somewhere, anywhere. However you want to get tested, go get tested. I needed a partner that I could send by and send people to. And I looked around and I knew some people who knew some people who knew STD Hero. I reached out, I talked to them, they're a full service lab. They offer an allergy test and a tick bite test and a COVID test. At this point though, they wanted to get into the STI testing space. They learned about the lifestyle. They learned that this exists. We'll be right back. a tick bite test and a COVID test. At this point, though, they wanted to get into the STI testing space. They learned about the lifestyle. They learned that this exists. And from a business standpoint, it makes sense for them. People in the lifestyle, we get tested multiple times a year. That's recurring business. You take an allergy test once you get the results and yeah, you know what you're allergic to and you never do it again. To STD Hero's credit, and I'm sharing all this to illustrate a point, so stick with me. They didn't know anything about the lifestyle coming into this. This community is a very unique animal, and to their credit, they wanted to learn. And me and some other people in the industry, we got together and we taught them, we educated them about the lifestyle. We sat down with them, told them, this is how our community works. And going to say us, our community, as in all of us lifestyle people, we brought our concerns to them so they would understand. They did not want to sell into the lifestyle. They wanted to be a part of it. I share all of that to contrast it with something very dumb, a very, very dumb thing on Reddit. You know, that website that is the septic tank of human thought that is currently being used to train our future AI overlords on Reddit. This dude went to the Swingers subreddit. I have no idea who he is, and the post is probably buried somewhere. I don't know. This dude went on the Swingers subreddit, and to paraphrase it, he was a travel agent, a vanilla travel agent, and he was inquiring to the community about whether or not he should offer lifestyle vacations and travel packages. He made it very clear that he was not lifestyle, was not interested in learning, and interested in the community. He just saw it as a business opportunity. He was giddy and happy with himself that he realized this exists. The responses, the community saw it as a ghastly affront to decency. I have never seen a pack of swingers descend on a poor bastard like this. It was like rage-filled monkeys. The comments ranged from just outright rage to offense. There were a couple of people who said a few nice things, but no, most of them were in general just offended. This was a vanilla business, a vanilla person with no regard to the community, thinking, oh, I have this great idea to make money with a total disregard for the existing travel agents that already serve the lifestyle. And people rightly pointed out that as a vanilla travel agent, he would have no fucking clue how to make any recommendations to anyone about a destination, cruise, or resort. I felt a little bad for him, but he did a dumb thing and people told him he was dumb. What that guy didn't realize is that there are already businesses filling that niche. And the niche that we are in is small. For me, I know my show and my reach is limited, which is a weird thought. The lifestyle is only so big. There is only a finite number of people who will ever think about being ethically non-monogamous and then decide to listen to a podcast about it. There are no reliable numbers on the worldwide population of people who might be interested in ethical non-monogamy, might be interested in what we do, might go to a takeover, might take a cruise, but that number is small in comparison to the rest of the population. Maybe that is why we are so protective of our community. Maybe that is why we hold this so precious. Maybe that's why people gatekeep and guard it. There are two types of consumers for lifestyle content, and I will lump events into this other word just to make my life easier as I write it. There are those who are within the community who participate in some fashion. They know the rules and the etiquette. They are a part of the ecosystem. Then the other consumers are the vanilla people. Hi, looking in. Hi, I see you. I acknowledge you. You are welcome here. I appreciate you. The ones within the ecosystem, the ones, y'all who are inside of this, please frequent lifestyle-friendly businesses. Please do it. Go to events, go to takeovers, do the cruises if you can. Participate in the communities. Listen to badass podcasts like this one and tell a friend. If every person who listens to this show this week tells a stranger in an elevator tomorrow, soon I will have the number one podcast in the country. But I say all that. Support lifestyle-friendly businesses. Understand that the providers are doing their best to put on a great event for you. I don't like it when I hear people say an event was bad because they didn't get laid. And I've heard that. People will say, oh, that club or that party was not worth it or they didn't have a good time. And I ask why. I'm curious. And the reason is they didn't get laid. How was it the fucking business's problem that you didn't get your dick wet? I did a whole episode on the lifestyle being a freemium game. No matter where you go, what you do, there is never a guarantee that you're going to have sex with anyone. It doesn't make it a bad event. This problem in the same vein is so fucking bad that the lifestyle cruises, they have therapists on staff to handle situations. What happens is a couple goes on a cruise, they have a fight, they have a domestic issue. Then they leave a terrible review for the cruise. It's just easier to have staff on hand to handle that shit. The organizers have nothing to do with your marital problems or your inability to get laid. It is not their fault. They provide the space. You are still responsible for your sexual engagements and getting along with your spouse. The other type of consumers are the curious. They have no intention of ever jumping in. They like the fantasy of all this. It appeals to an unfulfilled desire they may have. Be it sexual, listening to stories, and fantasizing, or just the gawk factor. They want to gawk at their neighbors, gossip, try to figure out our secret symbols and signals so they know what's up. Then they can say they are part of the crowd without any personal investment. I started doing YouTube videos for that crowd. Vanillas want to know, so I'm going to educate them. I need to call out other less prominent pieces of our ecosystem, chat groups and social media groups. These fly way under the radar of consideration. Non-monetized communities of people using messaging apps to come together. And public service announcement, if you run a swinger group on Facebook, what the fuck? Those rap bastards can drop the censorship hammer at any time for any picture with too much skin. Get the fuck off Facebook. These chat groups, they can be work. They can take a lot or a little effort. They are a space for us to gather and talk, hopefully free from censorship. They're places for people to share n nude, share their humanity, a constant stream of people interacting. And it's a beautiful thing. I need to do a whole episode on groups. Suffice it here. I am part of many chat groups that borrows multiple apps, and they serve a vital function in the ecosystem. Educators and coaches, I think I kind of fall into this. They help make sense of all of this. Some people raw dog the lifestyle. They jump in hard and they may pay a heavy price for their ignorance. The educators, unsung heroes, are the lifestyle. They provide guidance, resources, and knowledge. Think of educators like cheat codes for the lifestyle. A couple may stumble around for two years trying to figure out all the little nuances of this, or they could find the right person to educate them fast. It's like having someone help a couple speedrun all the embarrassing parts and get straight to being successful. Since any discussion of business must include predictions of the future of the business, where do I see lifestyle businesses going in the next 10 years? I think ethical non-monogamy is going to gain more mainstream attention. Look at polyamory becoming more prevalent in the media in the last 10 years, and I don't know if the same thing is going to happen with swinging specifically. Ethical non-monogamy in general gaining more prominence. Polyamory is easier for the vanilla world to understand than swinging. Polyamory is sex outside of marriage with an emotional component. And vanilla people tend to only see sex in two ways. Either it's a one-night stand that means nothing, or as a piece of a more committed relationship. Swinging is the third option. Yeah, we can do one-night stands, but sex is not a prelude to a long-term emotional commitment. I do see more people joining the lifestyle as it gets more attention though. On social media, there's less control of the narrative versus traditional media. People will paint swinging with good or bad colors. At this point for us though, any press is good press. There will still be a need for social dating sites. There are big players in the space now and maybe a new site or app will rise to challenge their dominance. Bit of advice, if you were thinking about making your own app for swingers, instead of going after the whole population, look at starting an app to cater to a slice like bisexual men or single men or unicorns or people looking for gang banks. There's a lot more growth there to service those smaller markets. There will be new takeovers. There will be new events. Others will stop. Clubs will open. Clubs will close. And I really hope more open than close though. There are vast parts of our world that need a spicy outlet for the local lifestyle community. And I see a decentralization of the lifestyle, which is a good thing. It's now easier than ever to gather a chat group or a tribe together. We don't have to rely on a handful of sites to make connections. For business people and those thinking about starting a lifestyle business, the potential is there. There is a consumer base that wants what you're offering and you don't have to reinvent the wheel. You find a location, you find a service with a need, and you fill it. The lifestyle is big enough for everyone to have a slice of the pie. I always appreciate hearing your feedback and comments on episodes or suggestions for topics, so feel free to reach out to me at host at thatofthelifestyle.com. My website is thatofthelifestyle.com. 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. Remember, STI testing is important and takes a community to make a difference. Go to sddhero.com and use my promo code TOL15 for 15% off your order. Whatever you may do today, I hope you have a