Episode 65 – Business of the Lifestyle

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Wherever you are I hope you have blue skies. Welcome to That Other Lifestyle podcast. I am your host Jayson, leave Vanilla behind pull back the curtain on Lifestyle businesses.

This podcast is for adults only. We’ll be diving into adult and sexual topics with plenty of colorful language, so it’s not safe for work. If you’re under 18, this isn’t the place for you. This show is all about exploring the lifestyle and ethical non-monogamy, and it’s open to everyone no matter your background, gender identity, expression, or personal truth. While I do my best to use inclusive language, you might hear terms like husband, wife, or partner for simplicity’s sake. This show is for everyone, lifestyle, vanilla, or the curious.

Want to connect? Send me an email to host@thatotherlifestyle.com, visit my website at thatotherlifestyle.com. Everyone is welcome here because the lifestyle is about so much more than you think.

Hello. Last week, at the end of the episode I mentioned Lifestyle businesses. Went down a whole rant about that and after posting the episode and while sitting on a sailboat this weekend, I decided I wanted to talk more business side of the Lifestyle. Let me clarify, this was not a relaxing sailboat ride. It was a frantic fury of ropes and winches. I have learned there are two types of boat owners in this world. One group doesn’t want you to touch anything. Just sit there and they are the captain. The other group, fuck that, you will participate. They love their boat, and they want everyone to learn how to work and operate this boat.

Don’t buy a boat, find a friend with a boat.

Sailboats are a good analogy for lifestyle businesses. You see a calm sailboat out in the distance and think that it looks peaceful and relaxing right. Riding the waves and wherever the wind may take you. No. Fuck no. Sailboats are a furious orchestra of ropes and jibs and fabric and ropes and winches that can sheer the skin off your hand. Wild and intense. Then you get ten minutes of peaceful sailing before you have to adjust the sailing again.

Lifestyle businesses. From the outside, it looks like well-oiled machines. On the inside, there is the same frantic energy in the heart of this event. The best events out there, you never see or know the chaos. Just like watching a sailboat on the horizon.

When I wrote this, it was another insomniac kind of night. 2am is the best time to write. Head clear, heart pure, ideas flowing in a near manic stream of consciousness that will require heavy edits later for coherent flow before I record this episode. Yes. Wake up at 2am and pour your thoughts into a laptop so you can read them, question yourself, cut out half of it, remember what the hell you wanted to talk about for the week and promise yourself you won’t do this again.

Why am I awake? I wish I could say that I am a tortured creative soul needing to light the world on fire with my words. No. I have four cats and a dog. I got up to go pee in the middle of the night, the dog woke up demanding food. Three cats realized I was awake and wanted to go sit on the porch while the fourth cat demanded I cuddle him and his sharp murder mittens that he pressed lovingly into my flesh.

2am. 2am is a binary choice in the day or night or morning. If you wake up at 2am and realize you have to stay awake the rest of the day, that takes courage and unhealthy amounts of caffeine. 2am at a takeover, which is when the world shifts. Shit gets weird at 2am.

My mother always told me growing up that nothing good happens after midnight. Growing up in a small town that was more cow than human, I agree with her. Though she did not define the “not good” very well. I doubt the town I grew up in has a 24-hour restaurant even in this the year of our Lord 2025.

2am at a party is fun. The alcohol drinkers have already crashed around 1am. The people looking for a hookup either got lucky or resigned themselves to sleep. 2am is for the hardcore. Those lucky few who spend the night dancing away. 2am is the decision time. Either commit to seeing the sunrise or admit defeat and go to sleep.

A good takeover accommodates this 2am crowd. A good party acknowledges that people have way too much pent-up need for fun and they are letting it rip. A good party or event or takeover should be measured upon the merit of the event not whether a person got laid.

Shit is getting real when I can make a smooth transition in the discourse. Lifestyle businesses, whatever they may be, work just like a sailboat. They are work you never see from shore. There are considerations and actions and fuck even credit card processing headaches that can slap a business owner right in the face, then the dickhead.

I want to pull back the curtain and talk about the lifestyle economy. I find this super interesting and maybe you do too. I know people who work very hard to put on events or lead groups or just want to throw a hell of a party. Be it for the 2am crowd or the fuckers.

This is not a great secret except to the vanilla world. There is an entire economy built up around the Lifestyle, servicing, entertaining and operating in the shadows. Since I have started this podcast, I have met people from all aspects of this economy from concierge sex toy providers to hotel takeover maestros. Big events in Las Vegas to nudist camps in the country. I have talked to business owners on that other side of the Atlantic and I know fucking Australia is wild. This is a worldwide economy that the internet is surprisingly terrible at giving me an actual number of it’s worth. Billions. Let’s say billions.

I know when we were vanilla, I had no idea that any of this existed. I think the only business type that maybe popped up on my radar was a swinger cruise. Which makes sense. These are huge endeavors attended by thousands of people and maybe their marketing spills over into the vanilla world. To tempt and tease. Add to the provocative nature of it.

Most lifestyle events and I will lump anything from a takeover, party, not sex club, cruise, webinars, seminars, I will lump into the catch all term event to save on the word count. Sex clubs are their own beast. Events, temporary things. Not brick and mortar buildings, the vanilla world will not find out about because of careful marketing.

I have had debates on this show about the definition and usage of the word swinger. Whether we should reclaim it or what it means or who should use it. That debate will never be settled. I will tell you who will not use it. Businesses. My theory on why swinger fell out of favor and lifestyle gained prominence is due to businesses.

If you want to throw a hotel takeover, you cannot use the word swinger in your advertising. Simple. I just can’t. Every now and then someone tries, decides to get cheeky, wants to buck convention, call an event a swinger party and those are the parties the vanilla world finds out about and has a problem with. If you say this is a lifestyle party, that word is so damn generic no one is sure if you are hosting a yoga seminar or an orgy. To the swingers out there, we don’t care what the event is called or how it’s marketed. If the event is advertised in our spaces, which are very hard for vanilla people to crack, you could call it whatever you want, and we will show up.

Okay, so who cares if the vanilla crowd finds out about a party, big deal right. As long as no one is fucking on the dance floor they should leave us alone, right? No. Swinger carries such a heavy connotation the world over, it is immediately a target for anyone with a badge, bad attitude and a smidgeon of power.

I know in Las Vegas which markets itself a den of debauchery, which for the record I have been to Las Vegas, and I have been to New Orleans. New Orleans is much better and accepting of our kind of fun, they have four different law enforcement agencies that can shut an event down with quickness.

This ain’t the police. I doubt you will find anyone going around trying to criminally charge a group for indecent behavior. Unless you are in a particularly small Podunk town way out in the countryside. There are other ways to shut down an event besides a raid by the cops.

Here in the states, and I am pretty sure the world over, we have fire marshals. Their job, which is very valuable to society, is to determine if a space can safely accommodate a crowd. The space is rated to accommodate 200 people, and you have 300 in the room, that’s a problem because in the event of a fire, 300 people cannot safely evacuate. But what happens if a mayor type person doesn’t like this kind of people in their town. What if the fire Marshall miscounts? Not saying it happens, not saying it ain’t possible. There is a double negative that makes sense in there.

Maybe this mayor type person who I picture being the stereotypical small-town mayor of a Midwest United States town, wears a sash all day to let people know he is the mayor and has erectile dysfunction that is easily treatable but doesn’t want to admit he has trouble with his little peepee so he gets drunk on his own power instead.

He doesn’t like all these heathens contributed to the local economy and dancing and acting a fool. His next option. Liquor license. Liquor licenses are a delicate balance of federal, state, and local authorities granting permission to an establishment to sell liquor which is a big source of potential income. If a person takes over a bar for a swinger event, town doesn’t like it, they threaten the liquor license of the bar, maybe revoke it, make the owner go through a frivolous lawsuit. Yeah, that bar owner is kicking the swingers right the fuck out.

Give you another one cause I ain’t done. Hotel code enforcement. You want to do a takeover. Maybe like in Las Vegas, there is an entire squad of people whose sole job is to go around to all the hotels and check out the events for compliance with a labyrinthian set of building codes.

That doesn’t sound too bad. No, it is. Their hotel building codes could include rules about nudity. So, while someone decides to pop out a titty, not breaking a criminal law per se, not something a police officer would bother with because come on titty. No, it’s those hotel code enforcement guys who will stick the organizer with a civil penalty like a fine. Rules matter. Don’t pop a titty out or it could cost someone thousands of dollars.

Then we have the general public who have fucking opinions and want to be let everyone know their opinions when they don’t agree with what consenting adults are doing with their free time. Self-appointed morality police.

Brief story without going into too many details. Someone wanted to open a swinger club in a rural southern state in the US. They complied with all the building codes. The facility was outside city limits on a rural road, like no street lights and open pastures. The business was going to operate as a member’s only establishment. There was a process to join, monthly fee, no chance of vanilla people stumbling into this building.

In this small town, word got out that a swinger club was going to open. And people lost their fucking minds. There were accusations that this would become a den of drugs and prostitution. Which are two things that are not prevalent in the Lifestyle. The local pearl clutching crowd gathered and made their close-minded voices heard. Bad vibes. The local policy jury, which is a version of the city council, enacted rules to basically outlaw any club of this type operating.  Which sucks because that’s one less club, a business owner who can’t follow their dream, a venue that is accepting of Ethical Non-monogamy.

The whole story is nauseating, and I really hope this business wins their appeal.

If a business flies too high and gets on the vanilla world radar, especially in towns that don’t like fun, they can get shut down before they even open.

People who put on events must navigate all of this shit. Layers of bureaucracy and bullshit. Throwing a paid event, taking over venues is more complicated than people think. Speaking of bullshit, something I personally ran into. Money.

I launched my first course, the single men’s guide to the lifestyle, now only 45 dollars available at thatotherlifestyle.com, last year. Good news while I am working on this script, I am also bouncing over to my script for my next course, the guide to unicorn hunting. I should have that out by June. And the third thing I am doing is attempting to stop my cat from clawing my new studio set up. Which you can see by going to my YouTube channel, thatotherlifestyle. Woo Hoo, I remembered to plug my courses and worked it seamlessly into the script.

Taking money, credit card transactions, surprisingly hard for a lifestyle business. For business, you have to be able to take credit cards. Simple fact of life. That means finding a credit card processor. There are not many options. The main credit card processors, and I will not specifically say their names, but whoever you are thinking of, yeah them.

I offer courses. There is no pornography. Just me, fully clothed talking into a camera. Nothing racy going besides having an honest discourse about the lifestyle and sex and ethical non-monogamy. And I got dinged about 4 weeks after I signed up with my first credit card processor. I was doing good, I was selling courses that first month. I even decided to do an advertising blitz on one of the social sites. The morning of my advertising blitz was starting, I knew I would have orders coming in. I got a snarky email that my account had been disabled. Oh shit.

My account was disabled because I was selling dating services. Fucker I ain’t. There was an appeal process. Which I failed. I had to scrub the words swinger off my website and replace it with the much less sexy term those who participate in the lifestyle. I gave up and found a different processor.

Taking credit cards for an LS business is this delicate game of not saying too much, saying enough to attract attention, stating the purpose without actually stating the purpose. It’s a bitch.

That sounds rough Jason and also an opportunity for a company to fill the niche here and handle credit card processing for lifestyle and possibly sexual businesses. You are right. There are niche processors and them son of a bitches take 20%. Only fans does it. I could run everything through Only fans, and they would take 20%. For comparison, other credit card processors, vanilla ones, take 1.5%.

You either play a constant game of whack a mole, shifting processors and words to stay below the line of attention or you give up and hand over 20 fucking percent of your money.

I have since learned, there are processors out there that take a much smaller cut, still more than I want to share with them. Another consideration that goes into an event that most people will never even think about while they are chatting up a new couple.

Brick and mortar sex clubs. Swinger clubs. Apologies lifestyle venues. Whatever the fuck we want to call them. You know what they are. These are nightclubs with spaces for fucking. The laws and rules and codes around them, they are daunting. Not insurmountable. Daunting.

Swinger clubs are everywhere. Major metropolitan areas may have multiple. I live near a big city. I have a friend who has lived there 20 years. When we started in the LS, I mentioned to him that there was a club in the downtown area. He was puzzled. He had never heard of it. His office is a block away from it. Never knew it existed. There are no exterior signs, windows are blacked out. If you didn’t know what you were looking for, you would never know it is there. Flying under the vanilla radar.

The weirdest quirk out there is rules around liquor. Most clubs I have been to do not serve alcohol. All at. Patrons bring liquor from home. The bar holds it for you, and they provide mixers and bartenders. The bartenders will pour alcohol from the bottle you brought from home. This arrangement does not require a liquor license. They are serving your own liquor back to you. Maybe it does require it’s own kind of license. Fun fact, where I live on the US Gulf coast, my local county, there are over 30 variations of a liquor license. The fuck. On premise, off premise, manufacturing, temporary. Damn it.

Don’t bitch about having to bring your own liquor to a sex club. Be happy they even let you drink in there. Why can’t they get a liquor license? Morality clauses. It would be immoral to the local community to allow both nudity/sex and liquor in an establishment. I can see the point of it. Don’t want people getting drunk and having sex. Or at least providing alcohol that could lead to sex. Or bad sex. Or bad vibes. Or bad situations that may get the cops involved.

It's a liability thing. I don’t know about the rest of the world, here in the states, business insurance is a bitch too. If a bar over serves a patron, they drive home drunk, get into a wreck then the business is liable and could get sued because they over served the patron. While there is personal responsibility here, the business did contribute. Business can be liable which means being sued and having to get insurance to cover this possibility. I ain’t a lawyer, this is my dumb explanation of it.

For sex clubs, it’s probably easier to forego the headache having a liquor license would bring, if they could even get one at all.

All these factors that go into running an event business. And you still have to get people in the door. To make money. Money and profit. The people I have met who cater to the Lifestyle, I will say they genuinely enjoy it. You have to. It is such a niche business you have to enjoy what you are doing. The ones who put in all the work to pull off an event, I respect it. I personally have done bar meetups and that is like herding cats. That was just for my local tribe of people.

Well damn Jason, this all sounds complicated. Yep. It is. Contracts, insurance, oversight, productions, load out, set up. That’s just events. We need to look at the wider Lifestyle ecosystem.

There is an entire ecosystem, interconnected web of businesses to serve the Lifestyle. Which is pretty fucking cool. Other hobbies, industries, have this. Take baseball. Think about what all goes into a baseball game. Stadium, food vendors, promotions, marketing, the players, the balls. It’s a complicated industry. Same thing with the lifestyle.

For all these lifestyle businesses though there is an extra barrier. We can’t advertise anywhere except within the ecosystem. Baseball, they could slap an ad on any vending machine. I can’t advertise my course to help people meet unicorns in the same spots. Social media. Them fuckers.

I looked into running Facebook ads one time. Turns out you can’t just filter down to swingers. In the vanilla world, we don’t use that identifier, a handful do, most don’t. I could advertise to people who are parts of certain groups but not the spicy ones or the fun ones. I could advertise based on demographics and just hope that all swingers fall into the 18-35 age bracket. Wasted money there.

A huge part of the ecosystem, if you want to reach the masses, are the online dating sites. They are the best things we have for gathering, meeting, advertising, collaborating. Everyone on that site is part of the ecosystem, whatever flavor they choose.

These sites are the glue for our community. There are different ones, but they serve a greater purpose than just facilitating fucking. They are our community hubs. They are where businesses can let you know they exist. People may cringe at the word advertising; they don’t want to be sold on anything. You need to know these businesses like takeover exists. The online sites are where other types of businesses are able to touch the right crowd. Be it reaching in from outside or home-grown Lifestyle businesses that cater to the right crowd.

To use a corporate buzzword that creates a little bit of bile in the back of my throat, there is synergy between these businesses. You got event companies like Risque giving people a place to party, content creators like me talking about Risque, amplifying their reach, helping to bring in new people. You got educators making the community better. It’s a beautiful interplay of people working within this community. And I bet you never thought about it.

Even STDHero. Plug for them. Use promo code TOL15 for 15% off your order. Working with them, our relationship, and I will tell you this, any partner I have on this show, I want it to be a relationship, not throwing an affiliate code at you.

Few months ago, I realized I needed an STI testing partner. I tell people to go tested every week, I need to be able to refer people somewhere. However, you can get tested do it. I needed to find a partner that I could refer people to. I looked around and knew some people who knew STDHero. I reached out. I talked to them. They are a full service lab. They offer an allergy test and tick bite test. Covid test. Full service lab. At this point, they wanted to move into the STI testing space. They discovered this Lifestyle exists. From a business standpoint, makes sense for them. We get tested multiple times a year, that’s recurring business. You take an allergy test once, you get the results, and yah you know what you are allergic to.

To STDHero’s credit and I am sharing this to illustrate a point, stick with me. They didn’t know anything about the Lifestyle. This community is a unique animal. To their credit, they wanted to learn. And I taught them. Other people in the industry, guess we can call it an industry taught them. They sat down with us, not just me, others. Going to say us as in people who are in the Lifestyle, to understand our concerns. They didn’t want to sell into the Lifestyle, they wanted to be a part of it.

I share that to contrast with a man who did a very dumb thing. On Reddit, you know the septic tank of human thought that is currently being used to train our future AI overlords. This dude, not sure who is, went on the swingers subreddit and to paraphrase. He is a travel agent, vanilla travel agent, and he was inquiring about whether he should offer lifestyle vacations and travel packages. He saw it as a business opportunity. The community saw it as a ghastly affront to decency. I have never seen a pack of swingers descend on a poor bastard like this.

The comments ranged from rage to offense to kind words of education. This was a vanilla business, with no regard for the community, thinking he had this great idea to make extra money with a total disregard for the existing travel agents that already serve the Lifestyle. People rightly pointed out that as a vanilla person, he would have no fucking clue how to make any recommendations to any lifestyle person about a destination, cruise, resort. I felt a little bad for him, but that dude did a dumb thing. And people told him it was dumb.

What that guy didn’t realize is that there are already businesses fulfilling that niche. This niche is small. For me, I know my show is limited, which is a weird thought. The lifestyle is only so big. There is a finite number of people who will ever think about being ethically non monogamous. There are no reliable numbers on the worldwide population of people who might listen to a podcast about the lifestyle, might go to a takeover, might take a cruise. But that number is small in comparison to the rest of the population.

Maybe that is why we are so protective of our community. Maybe that is why we hold this so precious. Maybe that is why people gatekeep and guard it. There are two kinds of consumers for Lifestyle content, and I will lump events into that word to make my life easier as I write this. There are those who are within the community, who participate in some fashion. They know the rules and etiquette. They are a part of the ecosystem. Then the other consumers are the vanilla people looking in. Hi. I see you and acknowledge you. You are welcome here. I appreciate you.

The ones within the ecosystem, frequent LS friendly businesses please. Do it. Go to events. Go to takeovers. Do the cruises if you can. Participate in the communities. Listen to bad ass podcasts like this one and tell a friend. If every person who listens to this show tells a stranger in an elevator every day, soon I will be the number one Lifestyle podcast. Support the businesses.

Understand that the providers are doing their best to put on a great event for you. I don’t like when I hear people say an event was bad because they didn’t laid. I have heard that. People will say oh that club or that party is not worth it or they didn’t have a good time. And I ask why. I am curious why. And the reason is that they didn’t get laid. How is the fucking business owners problem that you didn’t get your dick wet? I did a whole episode on the Lifestyle being a freemium game. No matter where you go, what you do, there is no guarantee that you will have sex with anyone. Doesn’t make it a bad event.

This problem is so fucking bad, that the lifestyle cruises, they have therapists on staff to handle these situations. What happens is, a couple goes on a cruise, has a fight, has a domestic issue. Then they leave a terrible review for the cruise. It is easier to have staff on hand to handle that shit. The organizers have nothing to do with your marital problems or inability to get laid. Ain’t their fault. They provide the space; you are still responsible for your sexual engagements.

The other kind of consumers are the curious. No intention of ever jumping in, they like the fantasy of it. It appeals to an unfulfilled desire they may have. Be it sexual, listening to stories and fantasizing or the gawk factor. They want to gawk at their neighbors, gossip, try to figure out our secret symbols and signals so they can say they know. They can say they are part of the crowd without any personal investment. I started doing YouTube videos for that crowd. Vanillas want to know, let’s educate them.

I need to call out other less prominent pieces of our ecosystem. Chat groups and social media groups. These fly way the fuck under the radar. Non-monetized communities of people using messaging apps. Public Service Announcement, if you run a swinger group on Facebook, what the fuck. Those rat bastards can drop the hammer for any picture with too much skin. Get the fuck off Facebook.

These chat groups, they can be work. They can take a lot or a little effort. They are space for us to gather and talk, hopefully free from censorship. They are places for people to share nudes, share their humanity, a constant stream of people interacting. It’s a beautiful thing. I need to do a whole episode on groups. Suffice it here, I am part of many chat groups across multiple apps. They serve a vital function in the ecosystem.

Educators and coaches. I think I fall into this category. They help make sense of all this. Some people raw dog the lifestyle, they jump in hard, and they may pay a heavy price for their ignorance. The educators, unsung heroes of the lifestyle. Providing guidance, resources, knowledge.

Think of them as cheat codes for the Lifestyle. A couple could stumble around for two years, trying to figure out all the little nuances of this or they could find the right person to educate them fast. Like having someone help a couple speed run all the embarrassing parts and get straight to being successful.

Since any discussion of business must include predictions on the future of the businesses, where do I see lifestyle businesses going in the next ten years? I think that Ethical Non-monogamy will gain more mainstream attention. Look at polyamory becoming more prevalent in the media in the last ten years. I don’t know if the same thing will happen with swinging because polyamory is easier for the vanilla world to understand. Polyamory is sex outside a marriage with an emotional component. Vanilla people tend to only see sex in a binary dynamic. Either one night stand or as a piece of a committed relationship. Swinging is the third option. We can do one night stands, but sex is not a prelude to a long time emotional commitment.

I do see more people joining the Lifestyle as it gets more attention in social media. Less control of the narrative versus traditional media. People will paint swinging with good colors or bad colors. At this point for us, any press is good press.

There will still be a need for social dating sites. There are big players in the space now and maybe a new site or app will rise to challenge their dominance. I think if you are thinking about making an app for swingers, instead of going after the whole population look at starting an app to cater to a slice like bisexual men or single men or unicorns. There might be potential for growth.

There will be new takeovers. There will be new events. Others will stop. Clubs will close and clubs will open. I hope more open than close though. There are vast parts of our world that need a spicy outlet for the local LS community.

There will be a decentralization of the lifestyle. Which is a good thing. It is now easier than ever to gather a chat group or tribe together. We don’t have to rely on a handful of sites to make connections.

For business people and those thinking about starting an LS business, the potential is there. There is a consumer base that wants events and parties, and you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Find a location with a need and fill it. The lifestyle is big enough for everyone to have a slice of pie. Cream pie.

I always appreciate hearing your feedback and comments on episodes or suggestions for topics, so feel free to reach out to me at host@thatotherlifestyle.com. My website is thatotherlifestyle.com.

My personal disclaimer, I am not a medical professional nor a trained and certified educator of any kind in any way. I am a guy with a microphone, sharing my personal experiences with you. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only and please join us for the next episode. Remember STI testing is important and takes a community to make a difference.  Go to STDHero.com and use my promo code TOL10 for 10% your order.

Whatever you may do today, I hope you have a fantastic time doing it. Know that you are appreciated and loved. Have a great day.