Alan Markovitz

Topless Prophet

Selected Excerpts

Not Taught in Business School

For the entrepreneur, it can be an extremely risky venture with a steep, sharp
learning curve. They just don’t teach you in business school what it takes to get
an adult club off the ground without immediately crashing and burning. You
pretty much have to learn the business hands on, so to speak, or from the bottom
up, like I did when I went to work at La Chambre. If you don’t know what
you’re doing, you will get ripped off by thieving parasites of all varieties and, for
those of you who believe that topless entertainment is the abject exploitation of
women, all I have to say is this: you try managing 50 or 100 competitive and
strong-willed ladies who are more often than not drinking copious amounts of
alcohol on the job. If you let them they will walk all over you in their stiletto-
heeled dancer platforms until you are no longer breathing…I kid you not. They
can and will whine, wheedle, demand, manipulate and fight – literally tooth and
nail – with all their feminine wiles as well as tricks they have picked up from
traveling kung fu masters to get what they want. Mind you, I am not saying that
there are not honest, kind, decent, hardworking and responsible women working
as topless entertainers. There are. But trying to separate out the different
personalities that often inhabit each individual dancer is work for a dozen clones
of Sigmund Freud.

Exceed Expectations
The main reason any business stays in business, or thrives, is demand.
Undoubtedly, the demand for the close proximity of nearly naked beautiful
women, along with premium cuisine and libations, is there…and is not going
away until testosterone is outlawed. The next ingredient for runaway success is
so simple that many topless club operators miss it entirely. That ingredient is
quality. The more beautiful ladies you have, the more customers you will get.
But without sumptuous and stunning surroundings, the ladies won’t come, and
neither will the big spenders. Every single element from building design and
appointment, from the signage to the kitchen to the bar to the lighting to the
servers, and managers and valet parkers-everything has to be top notch. Or, to
put it in customer service parlance-everything about your club must exceed
expectations.

Workplace Meets the Bedroom

I am often asked whether there is any temptation to dabble in the merchandise, so
to speak. Let me put it this way: if you work around throngs of sweet, sexy, half-
naked women all day and all night long, sooner or later you get to know some of
them rather well. I firmly believe that owners who lose control in this business
do so for either one of two reasons, often both – they turn their brains to mush by
drinking like fish or they get caught up starring in their very own sexual soap
opera. Neither is good business and I have always strived to keep business
separate from pleasure. I rarely drink and don’t drink on the job. As for the
talent, well, there is such a thing (even in the topless trade) known as “after
hours.”

The Business Formula

It takes time to build a club at a new location. As I have said repeatedly, you’ve
got to build the best, offer the best service and above all attract and keep the
hottest dancers…once the word starts getting out, customers will follow. It’s a
simple formula, but many, many operators just can’t seem to get it right or are
content to run B clubs and take home less than the lion’s share of the market. To
get the lion’s share, you’ve simply got to think – and act – like a lion! Hence the
name 747, which quickly became the buzz in the Detroit adult club market.
Despite getting shot, and having to stay away from the club to convalesce, the biz
was on a screaming vertical climb. Hell, inside of the first six months we were
clocking some $20,000 days. And that’s seven days a week. Till you’re totally
rocking out at max gross, you plow as much of that profit as possible back into
improving every single detail of the club…relentlessly and continually.

Rejecting Table Dancing…Before He Realizes It’s A Gold Mine

“Come on, get up here and dance for me! Here’s a ten!”
Our dancer looks around a bit nervously, and then you can almost see a cartoon
balloon form over her head with the words “what the hell” in it, and just like that
she steps awkwardly up onto the table in her four-inch CFM platforms and
begins gingerly doing some dance steps to the next song, which has just begun.
Pac Man is loving it, looking up not a foot in front of him, following the girl’s
long, lithe legs up to a tiny little G-string, and then, still climbing, …
What happened next, you can probably guess. All the girls in the club wanted to
get up on tables and dance for the customers. You know, “Hey, if you’re letting
her do it, why can’t I do it?” All I could envision was dancers falling off the
tables, breaking their legs and not being able to work for eight weeks.
“No!” I tell them, “No, no and no!”

Revolutionary
Let me be really clear about this: getting the dancers off the stage and closer to
the customers proved to be the catalytic event that revolutionized topless
entertainment not just in Michigan, but all over the country. This was bigger
than even I had realized – it was the turning point from what used to be known as
burlesque, or classical stripping, as entertainment that was passive, that is, meant
to be observed only – to active, allowing the patrons of a club to participate in a
close up dance that may or may not allow actual physical contact between dancer
and customer. This is that fabled “grey area” that truly revolutionized the
gentleman’s club. Along with it came another revolutionary idea – that instead
of paying the entertainers to entertain, the entertainers should become
independent contractors who would happily pay the club for the opportunity to
generate income far in excess of what they had earned as mere hourly workers. I
use the ‘happily’ with my tongue firmly in my cheek, for the changes that I
would institute were not happily acceded to nor did they happen overnight. And
certainly not without great turmoil and expense. But change, even positive
change, is often catastrophic at best. Or, as the old saying goes: you can’t make a
great omelet without breaking some eggs.

A Fantasy Business Model

The psychologists tell us that we instinctively want all the more what we cannot
have. They also tell us that when we do get it, it ain’t what it seems and we may
well not be able to handle it or know what to do with it! This, in my humble
opinion, is what makes strippers so damned fascinating. It’s what makes them,
and their successful nurturing and management, critical to the success of my
business. It is also the reason that you are advised to enjoy these salacious
seductresses in the safety and sumptuousness of one of my clubs. Like I laid it
out in the beginning of the book, the operation of jet aircraft and strippers are not
unalike. If you don’t know what you are doing you can get out of control in a
heartbeat and auger in with your tail shot clean off. Better live to tell the tale of
the tail that got away and hunt another day.

Dancing Leads to Riches

Yet some people have the unmitigated gall to call some of these hard working
women “stupid,” “sluts” or “prostitutes”? If more people minded their own
damned business and kept their noses pointed straight ahead, we would all be a
lot better off: the fact remains that topless entertainment has probably funded
more higher educations and furthered more careers than grants and scholarships
ever have…especially when one considers that dancing has historically opened
doors to more women of working class and blue collar backgrounds, who would
otherwise not have the opportunities, or the second chances, required to get a leg
up the career ladder. If you will also stop to think again for a moment about the
determination and willpower necessary to function productively and sanely in the
field of topless entertainment, you will gain another level of respect for the
women who do it.

Future Trends
Unless we degenerate to fascist rule in America or suffer a religious-cultural
backlash on the order of the Taliban in Afghanistan, or the mullahs of the Middle
East, I predict that topless entertainment will further evolve into the mainstream.
Though America was founded by the Puritans, and although there remains a to-
be-reckoned-with Christian conservative movement that seeks to reverse what
they see as a dangerous erosion of “family values,” I firmly believe that
Americans possess a righteous amount of mind-your-own-business independence
along with a certain, and healthy, lustiness. Call it a lust for life and a lust for the
freedom to enjoy something that has existed since ancient times: wine, women
and song.

Hired Hit Men

The first words out of the news anchor’s mouth were: “Today, two men, Alan
Howard and Dino Tilotti, were arrested by the FBI for allegedly being part of a
$12,000 murder-for-hire conspiracy to kill local topless bar owner Alan
Markovitz.” “Whaaaaat?” I said out loud. I was stunned, didn’t think I’d heard
right. But the anchor kept on talking, while the video clearly showed two guys
I’d never heard of being hustled in handcuffs into the back of cop cars.”