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When I was a stripper in the 1990s, there was one customer every dancer hoped would walk through the door.

But most nights, it wasn’t him.

Most nights, it was the guy who walked in like he owned the place, convinced he was the King of F Mountain. And with that delusion at the forefront of his mind, it led to all sorts of rude behavior, from throwing coins onto the stage to shooing me away like I was a pesky fly to blurting out NO before I even finished asking if he wanted a dance.

Hey, I was selling dances for cash. I didn’t expect anyone to pretend this wasn’t a transaction, but some common decency would have been appreciated.

And that is exactly why I loved to dance for Mr. Prim (as I called him, as in prim and proper), a sharply dressed businessman who was borderline obsessive when it came to expressing gratitude. The words “Oh, thank you very much” accounted for at least 80% of what came out of his mouth, and the more I danced, the more animated and enthusiastic his appreciation became, as though my table dances were the greatest gift he had ever received and he simply could not believe his good fortune.

It was oddly charming, disarming, and genuinely appreciated.

I don’t think there was a single dancer in the club who didn’t enjoy Mr. Prim’s company, because while he never once bought a lap dance and stuck exclusively to $10 table dances (which I typically disliked giving because it meant standing the entire song in six-inch stilettos with no chance to sit down), I never minded dancing for him because he made the whole experience hilarious.

He wasn’t trying to get anything out of me or prove his dominance, and he wasn’t pretending the table dance was more than it was.

I will always be grateful to Mr. Prim for making my job as fun as it could be.

I didn’t have the language for it back then, but I felt it in my body. Energy projects, whether we can mentally gauge it or not, the body will feel it.

I felt on guard around the entitled guys. I couldn’t fully relax, and if I couldn’t fully relax, they weren’t getting my best dance. I still took their money (of course!).

With Mr. Prim, it was different. I felt appreciated. And when I feel appreciated, I always give more.

Same club. Same music. Same dancer. Completely different energy and outcomes.

Energy travels. And somewhere out there, I hope Mr. Prim is still saying, “Oh, thank you very much.”

This is one of the 68 lessons inside Think Like a Stripper… a playbook on how to perform under pressure and make money––without losing yourself.

If you’re interested, you can download a free copy on my site and start working on these lessons today.

XXXO

When I was a stripper in the 1990s, do you know what the most expensive habit in the club was?

Complaining.

And I was very good at it.

Peggy was not.

In the dressing room, where complaining was practically a sport, she didn’t play. And kept to herself while the rest of us glued on lashes and complained about how cheap the customers were.

But on the floor? Peggy was the most extroverted person in the room. And she always made a lot of money.

At first, I made her quietness mean she thought she was better than us.

But one night, we became work besties after bonding over a bottle of tequila I kept hidden in a hairspray bottle. And that’s when I learned something fascinating about Peggy.

What I had mistaken for snootery was actually her best kept money-making secret.

Peggy wasn’t a snob.

She was a positivist—and no, that’s not a Seattle-based cult.

Despite the fact that she’d been dancing for years, she was rarely critical about anything.  

In contrast, I complained about everything. But Peggy? Lips buttoned. She was there to make money, not complain.

Peggy made me realize I was a big whiner. 

But I didn’t want to be because I saw the results that Peggy got. If I could just stop complaining about everything that was wrong, I could put that energy into making money. But I needed something to help me not complain because remember I was super good at it.

A few nights later, I had an  idea. I drew a star on my hand with a black Sharpie and called it my happy star to remind me to stay positive like Peggy.

But by the end of the night, my happy star was horribly smudged and looked like a crude prison tattoo. I grumbled, of course. Peggy just laughed and said she had the perfect fix.

The next day, she showed up with a beautifully wrapped box. Inside was a rhinestone star on a silver chain. It was her way of making sure that I never had to keep scribbling Sharpie stars on my hand again.

That necklace became my constant reminder that positivity—with a purpose—is a choice.

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This is one of the 68 stories inside Think Like a Stripper. It’s not your typical business book. It’s a playbook on how to perform under pressure and make money without losing yourself.

If you’re interested in it, you can download a free copy here.

XXXO

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When I was a stripper in the 1990s, I once got in trouble for reading a book on the floor on a slow night. When your job is to be looked at, anything that breaks the expected performance gets noticed—and judged.

That moment pretty much sums up the environment I worked in. Chronic evaluation from people who thought they had authority over my body—and very real financial pressure if I let that evaluation get inside my head.

Working in an environment centered around being unclothed meant that almost every dancer carried a running list of things she thought she should fix. Not just for herself—but, casually, for everyone else.

Bodies were discussed openly. Flaws were identified quickly. And surgery was often framed as the obvious solution.

What could start as a room full of confident, beautiful women could shift fast—into a room where everyone was mentally inventorying what they might change next.

My own list included cellulite, long arms, and a flat rear.

None of this came from a single source. It came from customers making comments, dancers repeating opinions, and my own internal commentary running in my head.

When you’re under that kind of constant scrutiny, your brain starts looking for fixes because evaluation, repeated often enough, left unchecked, starts to feel like the truth.

Being under that kind of microscope didn’t only mess with my confidence. It also messed with my ability to make money.

Leaving the club wasn’t an option if I wanted to make money, pay my college tuition, pay my rent, and go shopping at Nordstrom. So instead I built an emergency money-making protocol to keep myself operational.

I’d tell myself…

1. Men fantasize about my cellulite.
   
2. J.Lo’s got nothing on this white girl’s booty.
   
3. Monkey arms are a classic. They never go out of style.
   

And you know what? For the entire nine years I danced, my arms were too long, my legs still had cellulite, and my booty was still flat. None of that ever changed.

But with my emergency money-making protocol, I wasn’t trying to believe these things were objectively true. I was choosing the internal dialogue that kept me operational.

I had a way to stabilize myself when a customer commented on something I had never even considered a problem—or decided to casually critique my body like it was public property. The protocol kept me from collapsing internally, so I could keep making money.

If you like this, it’s an excerpt from my book, Think Like a Stripper, where I share business lessons I learned about sales psychology and performance under pressure.

XXXO