Sustainability isn’t just something good for the environment.

A good business doesn’t just make good money today, but makes good money tomorrow, next month, next year, and in 10 years. The element that keeps people coming back to your business over and over is uniqueness, quality, and consistency. Serve up a dish that no one else is serving, serve it well, and continue to serve it well, and people will come.

Be patient.

With a few exceptions, most businesses are not expected to make a lot of money at the beginning, in part because of costs associated with opening the business, but in part because most successful business owners realize that sustainable business doesn’t happen overnight.

Take this example: Let’s say a South African restaurant opens and decides to cater to the whims of whoever decides to stop in. One night, most people seem to want French food, so they stop making South African food and instead prepare French. The next night, they focus on Tex Mex. Over time, clients looking for South African food – the very clients who would become regulars – learn that the restaurant really won’t deliver, or at best is inconsistent. Rather than turning away non-target customers upfront and focusing on gradually and slowly building a base of loyal regulars, the restaurant focuses only on the shorter-term. In this situation, the restaurant is likely to make more money in the beginning by abandoning consistency and patience, but is likely to make even less money over time, if any money at all.

This example really seems like a no-brainer, but think of the extension to the DJ/entertainment world. How many times do DJs abandon any sense of quality, consistency, and uniqueness just to please a few people stopping in for shots? How many regular customers drinking quietly in the corner are lost because of one obnoxious bachelorette party that wants to hear Ginuwine’s Pony?

I’m really not against Top 40, I swear.

Seriously, though! Playing for bachelorette parties is perfectly fine in my book, just like opening a pizza parlor. My main point of this article is not to NOT serve pizza, but to encourage club owners/managers and promoters to consider how beneficial it would be to serve something other than pizza. Imagine – in my original example of all restaurants serving pizza – if someone decided to open a taco stand – can you imagine how long the line would be if it were the only one? Why, then, have few if any promoters focused on an upscale lounge experience musically? Why not old school hip hop? How is it that, in the live music capital of the world, you can’t go into a single bar on West 6th and hear mostly indie rock playing exclusively throughout the night?

My point, in one simple phrase, is that the market is wide open. There are so many of us so very tired of eating pizza every night. For those of you hosting one of the several really great weekly or monthly parties in the city, from DJ Mel on Monday to DJ Chorizo Funk/Riders Against the Storm’s Body Rock, THANK YOU. Thank you for being brave enough to do something different and offer a product that is not only great, but consistently great. Same goes with the few bars out there also willing to do something different in terms of DJs, like Dirty Bill’s, Plush, Malverde, the W, and Bar 96 on Rainey. To those bars serving pizza – if you want to serve pizza, fine. But, if you want to serve something else, and you do it right, I bet you we’d be hungry.

So, who wants to open a hot dog stand?

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