Got pole?
Alternate title: Grab life by the pole

I'm going to start doing in-home pole dancing parties.

Now, as Dave pointed out, this will be made significantly more difficult by the fact that I, myself, don't technically know HOW to pole dance. Plus, I don't have a pole.

But I will soon (on both points).

It all started last week when I saw a news broadcast about in-home "sex industry" parties. One of my fellow Pure Romance sisters was featured and the link was posted on our message boards. The other girl featured in the story was with a company called Pole Lot of Fun and--you guessed it--she did in-home pole dancing parties. She brings the pole, the music, the feather boas, everything.

I, of course, thought the idea was FANTASTIC so I immediately sent a request to the company asking for a local instructor to contact me. I received an email back saying that unfortunately, they had NO ONE in this part of the state and in fact, they only had one in the entire state of Florida. "However," the woman continued, "this could be an AMAZING business opporunity for you, if you're interested."

Hmm. Teach women to pole dance? "Yeah, um, I've never pole danced," I logically wrote back. "Plus I could stand to lose 10 pounds. AND, I'm a TEACHER," I also threw in for good measure. Teachers don't pole dance, for Pete's sake!

Well, they do now. That email kicked off a flurry of emails. After talking to her extensively and doing a lot of research (about the company, how it works, etc), I started to realize that this could potentially become HUGE. An informal "market survey" sent out to the 300+ Myspace ladies linked to my Pure Romance page confirmed it--the demand for this is off the charts. Seriously. I couldn't BELIEVE how many women were interested in this--and the fact that I COULD stand to lose 10 lbs, am a teacher and have never pole danced made me all that more appealing to them. "We'd much rather learn from you," wrote one woman, "than take lessons from some young, hot, incredibly fit chick."

Um....thanks?

But she's right. Seeing an "average" woman up there will show the other ladies that, yes, EVERYONE really can do this. After all, would you rather open a fashion magazine and see all these super-thin waifs or see a "real woman" (with actual curves and everything?). It's that same principle.

So I started to seriously figure out how I could make this work. The company has an instructional DVD that teaches the various moves (or, as we in the biz say, "tricks" and "poses") to the would-be instructors. The woman I've been dealing with--a mid-30s stay-at-home mom, FYI), swears UP AND DOWN that the DVD is easy to follow, the moves are pretty easy to master and that yes, it IS possible to learn to pole dance from a DVD.

(Yeah, okay.)

Then, I go out and the women at my parties those same moves. At the end of the night, for the grand finale, each woman puts on her own show.

As far as in-home parties go, this one is even BETTER than, say, Pure Romance. You get paid based on how many people are THERE, not how many decide to buy something. There are two ways to charge: you can either charge per party (usually $200-400 , depending on market demand and saturation), and then girls divide that out among themselves for a per-person rate--or you can just charge per participant ($25-45--again, depending on the market).

I already have 4 parties scheduled for my coming-out month of September. I offered a discounted rate for my first 3 parties--$25 per person with the hostess being free. (I figured they should get a discount for being my "test parties," allowing me to work out the kinks, smooth out my presentation, etc.). Normally, I'm going to charge $35 a person (unless I decide to go with the per-party rate; I haven't decided yet). I figured I can get away with $35 because the demand IS so high and I'm the only person in the area, but maybe I'll go down a bit. But I'm going to run an incentive stating that if the hostess has at least 10 girls there (not counting herself) I'll drop it to $30 per person and she can dance for free--that way I'm guaranteed at least $300 per party and she'll work that much harder to get people there.

This is even better money than with Pure Romance--plus, there's no orders to fill, stock to carry around, etc.

So...I did a LOT of research on poles (if you want advice, let me know--I'm quite knowledgable now); I found a great one on eBay for a decent rate (they're expensive but I enrolled in this program that will allow me to make payments--although I can make back the money for the pole in the first party), I ordered the DVD and I figure I'll begin "training" here in the next 7-10 days. That gives me a month to get pole-ready by my first party scheduled for Sept 7.

Lord help us all, LOL.

http://www.myspace.com/polepartiesbyjen ---> check it out!