An entire industry hinges on one very crucial element — specifically, the entertainers. But as club operators around the US have lamented, having enough quality dancers — and keeping the ones you do have — has become a bigger challenge than ever before. The EXPO seminar “How to get, and keep, entertainers in the digital age” offered key insights for dancer retention, as well as crucial data derived directly from thousands of club entertainers.
(NOTE: This story appears in the Nov 2024 issue of ED Magazine.)
For many club owners and managers, the number-one issue they’re faced with on a daily basis is having enough quality entertainers. Of course, that’s no secret — clubs have struggled with this aspect of club operation for decades. But now, with the growth of sites like OnlyFans, it’s harder to “keep” the entertainers you have than ever before. Our panel of experts, including Pony Clubs head DJ Jeb Jarrell, Bucks Cabaret Regional Manager Mark McAvoy and Caressa of Pole Position, addressed these key issues, with a special concentration on the best strategies for entertainer retention. The seminar was moderated by ED Publisher Dave Manack.
Here, we’ve printed the majority of the questions posed by Manack to the panel of speakers.
MANACK: It’s a different game today than it was 10 or 15 or 20 years ago in terms of keeping dancers in the club. So let’s start here: how difficult is it to keep entertainers now compared to what it was five or 10 years ago? And in your opinion, why have things changed so much when it comes to dancer retention?
JARRELL: Ten years ago, there were so many more dancers just literally coming through the door. If a girl was causing a problem, you just sort of shuffled them down the road because there were eight more girls coming in the door. Nowadays, there’s such a lower amount of new entertainers coming in the door that we really have to invest in each entertainer to keep them coming back. I have a unique situation where my owner owns every club in town, so my competition is literally my own family. So for me, individually, trying to keep an entertainer away from another club that also operates at a great level is a challenge. And you know, OnlyFans is my biggest competition; girls can stay at home and make more money in two or three hours than they can in six hours at the club sometimes. I have to literally work hard to convince them to stay with us to make that money. It’s definitely a giant change.
MCAVOY: It’s definitely more difficult. I think most of it is just how life is now. You know, everything moves very fast. Everything is now now now. So when entertainers don’t meet their own expectations, they’ll go somewhere else.
MANACK: What are the biggest reasons why entertainers stopped dancing into clubs where you worked? Are they going to other clubs? Are they leaving the business entirely? Are they going to work online?
JARRELL: I think the majority of them are actually going online. I don’t think I lose many of them to competition or other clubs. I really think that online is my biggest competitor. The younger group of people expect an instant return. They think that they walk in and within two hours they expect to have made $1,000.
MCAVOY: It’s definitely about unfulfilled expectations. I think entertainer-to-entertainer communication is at an all-time high right now. So the daytime girl in Ohio has the same expectations as the nighttime girl Miami. And again, it’s the grass is always greener on the other side so they move on. For me I don’t necessarily think OnlyFans or LoyalFans that has a negative impact on us. I think it’s just communication; one girl out of 50 has a certain experience at a club, then the other 49 girls think they’re going to have the same experience and they’re disappointed when they don’t.
MANACK: We can boil it down to maybe two main reasons why entertainers stay at clubs. One, they make good money. Two, they’re treated well by managers, staff, customers and the owner. So what do you do to help them in each of these areas, to help make them more money and to help make them feel like they’re treated well?
JARRELL: I have to spend more time investing in the individual entertainer. Back in the day, it was, what’s your name? Check in, you’re on stage next. Now I check in at 7 pm; I spend two hours talking to every entertainer. I make notes every day on what we talked about. Questions like, how the day is, how the kids are, how the dogs are doing, etc. I spend way more time investing in them individually than I used to, and I find that really helps with retention. I feel that they care a lot more when I ask those questions. They feel more value. They’re literally waiting for me to come by and ask how their kid is doing. I think it’s really made an impact on keeping them there.
MCAVOY: It definitely starts at the top. If you’re a manager, get out of the office, work the floor, touch tables. Show them that you’re trying to help them make money. If your manager is just in the office, you can’t be upset if your entertainer doesn’t feel like anyone in the club cares about them.
MANACK: What can or should clubs do to help make them more welcoming and comfortable for the entertainers? What is it that entertainers tell you that let’s you know they feel comfortable in your club?
JARRELL: The more they’re involved, the more they’re invested in what we do. So I really let my entertainers kind of work with us and come up with ideas for our special events and promos. The more that they’re engaged in that the more that they’re engaged in actually following through with it.
I check in at 7 pm; I spend two hours talking to every entertainer. I make notes every day on what we talked about. Questions like, how the day is, how the kids are, how the dogs are doing, etc. I spend way more time investing in them individually than I used to, and I find that really helps with retention.
– Jeb Jarrell
MCAVOY: I’m a big proponent that incentivizing them. I run weekly sales competitions for them, give them free meals. I’ll do something like, if you come into the club for 19 full “shifts” in a month, I give them something back. The old the sales pitch of “just come to work and make money” doesn’t really work anymore.
MANACK: Jeb, could you tell the story you told me about how you have nightly meetings at the Pony Bama to get the entertainers excited and motivated?
JARRELL: We literally call over all of our entertainers to the dressing room, and we have a pre-shift meeting and motivation session. We’ll spend three or four minutes talking about promotions, especially that night’s promotions. And then we do cheers, literally, like a football team. And we do that every single night, and that has a giant impact on attitudes. That’s made a huge difference in our entertainers’ energy for the prime time of the day.
Another thing too that we do as management and DJs, when we’re talking about entertainers, we don’t talk about tomorrow. Everyone’s already got plans tomorrow, so we talk about two days out. If I see you on Wednesday, I ask you about (coming in on) Friday. On Friday I tell them ‘I’ll see you on Sunday.’ Between those two things, I think it’s been a giant impact on our entertainers coming back to work, getting more than two days of a week out of them, and getting more than four hours a day. By increasing our engagement it’s really had a huge impact on our entertainers.
MANACK: For the younger girls, let’s say 18 to 25, what defines them in contrast to the girls that are older? And how do you reach this very young generation of entertainers?
JARRELL: They are incredibly impatient; teaching them to slow down and lower their expectations to something more realistic has been difficult. They definitely are looking for instant gratification. So it’s a challenge to explain to them that it’s a process.
MANACK: When it comes to music, how do you get them to buy into the fact that the song she wants to hear isn’t going to work for this club? How do you help them understand that you’re trying to help them make more money?
JARRELL: Keep playing the music you know is right for the club. Once they see that what your saying works, then they’re gonna follow along. And sometimes it takes time. You probably fail nine times with these girls before you’re successful with one. But that one will move the needle, so you just keep going and don’t get frustrated that it didn’t work with one girl. The other entertainers will see what’s happening and say, “Wait, he talked to her, and she did (what he suggested) and she made more money.”
Embrace their independence, have some empathy. These girls are doing something that 98% of the female population doesn’t have courage to do. Show them the respect they deserve.
– Mark McAvoy
MCAVOY: Be upfront with them. Explain the “why”; why we do things a certain way, why this music is better than that music, why we want them to approach things in a certain way. Just, you know, treat them like a human being, let them know, make them a part of what you do and communicate with them.
MANACK: This is a generation of people, 18-25 year olds, that prefer to communicate on their phone with text messages, so it isn’t always easy for them to strike up a conversation, to have human interaction. So what do you do to help them talk to and to connect with customers?
JARRELL: In our pre-shift meetings that’s we do, we actually throw out a couple of popular topics like sports. Many of the girls don’t follow sports, but I’m in Alabama where football is a very big deal. So that’s one of the things we might discuss, and we give the girls something to go back on the floor with and talk to the customers about. And it’s funny, with a sports thing, we’ll talk about it in the dressing room and the girls absorb it, and you see them on the floor talking to every guy about it like they’re excited they learned something. And social media itself can be a talking point. Remember the ‘hawk tuah’ girl? My goodness, everyone talked about that girl for three or four weeks, and that was the conversation starter. So sometimes we actually use their phone to start the conversation.
MANACK: If you could offer a couple of tips that the people here leave with today in regard to dancer retention, what are the two or three things that are most important when it comes to keeping entertainers in your club?
MCAVOY: Embrace their independence, have some empathy. These girls are doing something that 98% of the female population doesn’t have courage to do. Show them the respect they deserve.
JARRELL: It really comes down to how much time you’ve invested with the individual entertainer. I think you get a higher return the more time that you invest with those girls and really stay consistent with it. I know it’s easier to do it on a Thursday than it is a Friday, but every single day, spend that time with those entertainers.
CARESSA: I’m gonna start with a totally different answer. I think it starts with your foundation. It starts with your leadership. And so what I see across the country, working with some of the mom and pop clubs, is, your your employees, your management, receiving a fair wage. It starts there because then they’re not trying to steal tips from the entertainers, they’re not trying to do shady things. Foundationally, your staff and your entertainers are what bring you literally all of your business. I think it starts with the management/leadership, and it starts (with paying them fair wages).
Next, it’s about really listening to your entertainers, listening to your staff, embracing change. Nobody likes change. It’s uncomfortable. But I think embracing change, embracing new technology, figuring out how to listen to that and embed that into the culture in a way that still helps you succeed financially. I think that will keep you at the forefront of being a leader in the industry.
