Letter 9: A Letter to someone I worked beside. Specifically, a stripper whose real name I never actually knew.
Destiny, I’d be lying if I said I still think about you often, but I do remember you.
Earlier today, I was telling a client about my early 20s, my stripper days, and you. Remembering you sneering, telling me how much you hated me, my red lipstick and my little red devil leotard. Laughing that it made my ass looked like a pig’s. Making piggy noises at me when I walked past. Grudgingly admitting that you, ‘can’t deny it makes you money though’ like it was some kind of painful concession.
Like somehow it was the outfit that made the money. That it made it despite me, not thanks to me.
I never let you see it, but it hurt me. Every part of me was vulnerable and tender. My armour was blood, sweat and tears, alone.
You had this sense of entitlement, because you’d danced professionally for years with stars like Janet Jackson. Bitterly held to the idea that money should just flow through you, and I was robbing you somehow. All because I could make enough to re-pave the floor in cash each night, yet it never flowed to you.
I did understand your ill wishes. In fact, I understood them too well. There was no denying it; you were hotter, fitter, had bigger boobs and were a better dancer. Even I would have bet on you, as the more successful stripper. On paper, there was no rational explanation for me making more a night than you did a week.
It took me looking back with a good 15 years distance or more, before it finally dawned on me…
We had the same opportunity before us. The same size of audience. The same basic skill set. The same strategy. And while you were gorgeous and talented, I was pretty and talented enough.
It was what I had and you didn’t that was worth so much more than the other differences between us. If I could go back now, I’d tell you this
A CEO mindset, and understanding how to mobilise your transferable skills is priceless
Your real job is your energy: it profoundly impacts sales and customer experience (which means future sales)
You need to know who your ideal client is, what to expect from them, what they expected from you, and the exact message they needed to hear so that they understand the value of the highest ticket service (stag shows).
Prioritise customer experience before, during and after the sale and service.
Time invested with clients comes back to you multiplied. No, even as a stripper that is NOT “dirty” it is always 100% about respecting and seeing each client as a complete, embodied, emotional being and speaking to their whole self.
That’s how I did less stripping and more selling than any other girl in every club I ever worked.
Also FYI, I’m still fine tuning those lessons and using them nearly 20 years later. I’ve never quite got back to the equivalent rate of $4k/hour yet though… maybe one day.
Did you learn those lessons too? Did you become a creator of money? I truly hope you did: you deserve to live a life you love. We all do. Success isn’t something that you sit and wait for, like an Amazon delivery. It’s who you are, moment-to-moment. Including – especially – who you are in the hardest moments.
I guess you didn’t know it then, but it was my hardest moments that brought me there. That’s another letter though.
To everyone reading this, you have lessons you learned a long time ago too, ones that are waiting for you to reclaim them. Make them part of who you are, instead of something you did a long time ago, and they will change your life 
That’s one of the many things I can help you with – figuring out who you really are and how to package it and sell it simply and organically to an audience that can’t wait to hear what you have to say next 
