Hello, America! 🇺🇸 Back in the United States and back blogging at a hotel room desk, when I’m not wandering the mall straight into a Dolby Cinema (where last night I watched “Twisters”; it was actually pretty good (!), and certainly much better than I expected from the trailers).
Well…and the Apple Store too, where I got a new case for my iPhone. Over three months’ worth of heavy traveling had left it with pockmarks, scratches, and withering; not very pretty. Interestingly, the case I got when I originally bought it was a generic clear case with white accents, whereas this case was clear with accents that actually are the same color as the cobalt-blue my iPhone 15 Pro Max is…and it was also the same size, which apparently my first case was not (!). I remember it took some doings to get my phone to fit the clear case I got originally, whereas this one fits like a glove. I’m wondering if the original one was even the correct size; that one came from an Apple Store located in (what is on paper) one of the most affluent suburbs in the entire United States but in a much smaller and lesser metro area than the one surrounding Tyson’s Corner, Virginia (which is where I got this latest one). Hmm.
The Apple Store in Tysons Corner Center was also a different and more expansive layout than any I’d seen before (along with the rest of the mall, which makes anything in the interior I’ve seen look like poverty level by comparison, despite posting similar median household income numbers in the data).
Also different was how when I mention I’m going to Silicon Beach to be an entrepreneur even the lowest-level employees practically roll out the red carpet with business services and advice and enthusiasm for the whole endeavor. Uh huh. I know the Dulles area has its own “tech corridor”, so perhaps the local culture is friendlier to this sort of thing, but even so it’s small potatoes compared to California; Virginia is still very much the land of big military contracts and unmarked blacked-out buildings, not venture-capital deals and garageside entrepreneurs.
And speaking of those buildings, as I type this I can actually see from my room a huge bank of buildings with no windows on them in the distance beyond the bushes…which have big barbed-wire fences, cameras, and various security measures around them. Yep, that’s just the kind of building anybody would have, right? Totally not an operation run by the US intelligence community. 🤪 Never change, Dulles…
Anyway, back to the original topic, I mentioned that I’ve been on vacation and I’ll be pivoting from giving private ballroom lessons to a business that’s a bit meatier, LLC and all: giving dance lessons, classes, and workshops to tech start-ups. I got that idea while I was vacationing, because while I do still want to start my own dance studio and event venue, the initial costs to do so are rather steep for someone of my means (realistically it would take putting $100,000 at risk in one fell swoop, which in my case would be a $100,000 chunk of money I need to live on…), so much so it makes me uncomfortable. But at the same time I need a more distinctive value proposition beyond just being a regular ol’ dance teacher.
I need a pathway that can get me big money; I’ve found on my trip that I’m perfectly happy with a $3000 a night girlfriend and a $1000 a night hotel suite, but when you add that together every day of the year it comes to $1.4 million. Ouch. Admittedly I wouldn’t be hiring myself a girl every night, but $1.4 million a year is, interestingly, the income at which the beach houses I love on the Westside start to come within the affordable range (entry level for that tier of property is very roughly $5 million), which is about the only sort of real estate I’d truly be interested in owning (I’ve been a homeowner of a middle-class-style home before; not interested in doing that again). As I understand it $1 million a year is also roughly what it costs to own and operate your own private jet, which considering how much I’d like to travel the world by private aviation (as opposed to what commercial is these days) adds a whole new layer of intrigue and attraction to that number.
Now, if $1 million is your entire income you’re probably not going to be devoting almost all of it to private aviation (unless you have a weirdo budget even by the standards of the 1%), but from my own cursory research it seems chartering a jet aircraft for a round trip across the Atlantic will cost you roughly $100,000. On $1 million a year that’s 10% of your annual income; affordable as a once-a-year indulgence.
The upshot, though, is, as I’ve said before, when I look at the sort of lifestyle I’m aiming for and the amount of money I’d have to make to fund it, the sort of numbers that crop out are well beyond what I could realistically make with a normal job. Or even a business like giving dance lessons. Sure, if you get a full-time crop of students and charge them private rates you’ll make a living, but the ceiling is somewhere in the neighborhood of $200,000 a year. And dance studios aren’t exactly the most profitable of businesses. Which has gotten me more interested lately in pursuing the real estate pathway, starting with being an agent and extending beyond into the field (broker, investor, etc.), targeting the luxury space.
That might be more realistic for me than I think, considering that I’ve found, both in America and now also in Europe, that I get along much better and even fit in much better and have much more in common with rich people than with poorer people. For someone who doesn’t come from much wealth myself or have any connections in that bracket that might indeed be a rare gift. Looking up the requirements I would seem to be a good fit in terms of personality and temperament for the luxury space.
But where does that leave my dance skills and my passion for that field? Or indeed my idea to explore that other path to making a huge payoff, a position in a high-tech start-up of some sort? Brainstorming together with ChatGPT, it seems there might be a way to meld it all together: giving dance workshops and programs to high-tech startups. As in, offering my services to corporate clients. As a wellness, creativity, team-building, etc. exercise to employees.
Which leans much more on my own personal “talent stack” than just regular dance lessons at a studio would; “talent stack” as in maybe you’re not the best at field A or field B, but you might just be at the best at some endeavor that draws from field A and field B simultaneously. In my case a more unusual blend, but one that would still likely play very well in an artsy wealthy techy environment like coastal southern California, might be a much surer path to success than the trail that’s been blazed by so many competitive ballroom champions before.
As a bonus, targeting my services to high-tech startups goes a long way toward solving the problem of how exactly do I network with people in this field without seeming like I’m just hunting a job or am some kind of wantrepreneur with no idea what I’m doing. I’ll have a service to offer them, which I could even demonstrate live, a business I’m working on right now that’s relevant to them (not to mention the MBA I got in an unconventional way, which I’m sure would be a popular story…) and the scene in general, and a built-in topic of conversation. Sounds great.
Better still, it also goes a long way toward getting me a sphere of influence in the luxury real estate space down the road. Who can afford to buy these multi-million-dollar homes that could give an agent a five- or even six-figure commission payout? Why, these very same founders and partners in these start-ups, that’s who (along with high-level individuals in more established companies). Kills two or three birds with one stone too.
More bonus points come courtesy of the fact that dispensing with a space of my own to start out with might be a less formidable obstacle to a corporate client. For these more customized programs, renting a space at a third site or even outright coming to their usual worksite might be more desirable than for an individual client who might wander main street and want someone to teach their kid a few moves or some such.
I will be incorporating some of my ideas for my own space into the mobile dance venue concept, however; greenery and fixtures can be mobile, along with party lights and sound systems, etc. Indeed, that might be an attractive value proposition in itself: the idea that a certain atmosphere and vibe can be set up wherever my business goes. The interior decorating ideas I have for my future studio are rather unique even for Los Angeles, but interestingly I’ve found that the aesthetic I’m after is much more common and further along as a trend in Europe than in the United States, possibly auguring well for me being ahead of the curve, so to speak.
Anyway, it’s all on-trend, so I’m sure it’ll be popular. I do have some acumen regarding interior decorating, which is yet another business idea I have for down the road, and this would be an excellent way to show that off; indeed, probably better than having a singular space to call my own would be, since I could dress up multiple spaces and show off the differences on social media, etc, demonstrating that my skill transfers to many different sorts of built interior environments.
Eventually the idea is that the business expands beyond being a mobile venue oriented toward corporate start-up type clients, and we get a permanent space next to the beach to call our own, that will be a full-bore conventional dance studio and a dreamy place to get married, have a party, etc. right close to the ocean, but that all can come later once the client base is established, profits are coming in, and the business’s bank account is so flush with cash that a lease will be no problem (that’ll also help a lot in getting much-needed financing for building out a space etc., which usually depends on having a credible plan and being in business for a certain period of time, etc.).
Now that I’m back to the United States and explaining even an inkling of that to people they all get very excited and enthusiastic about my entrepreneurial journey, which leads me to think I might be onto something. In any case, I think I’ve possibly cracked the code, and I certainly want to give it a shot; with the deletion of the physical space requirement the venture is well within my price range to finance on my own, and my other goals such as getting a nice rental by the beach to call my home base and having a baby on my own soon become much more doable financially. There are preparations to make, but I for one am looking forward to getting started with it all when I once again lay eyes on Pacific Coast Highway…