Dark Culture
Following the money, not the narrative
The first question is never who was right. The first question is always why did this happen. The second question...
Tag
financial
Guides
Bar operations at raves
Bar revenue is the number that determines whether a venue invites you back. Not ticket sales, not Instagram impressions, not...
BTS
The first 15 events bled money
The first SLIST event at 494 Broadway in SoHo drew 60 people with a week of promotion. Total ticket sales:...
BTS
The guest list economics nobody talks about
The standard take on guest lists is that they are lost revenue. Every name on the list is a ticket...
Guides
Why Thursday events are worth losing money on
Thursday events do not make money. That is by design. We run them at a loss because the strategic value...
Guides
Payment delays, bank freezes
Payment processing issues will hit you at the worst possible time. Not when business is slow and you can absorb...
Guides
Ticketing platform showdown
We have used four ticketing platforms across 37+ events. Each one taught us something about conversion rates, data ownership, audience...
Guides
What headliner DJs actually cost
DJ fees are the most opaque part of event budgets. Every promoter guesses, every DJ inflates, and nobody publishes actual...
Shitposts
10 for the wolf, 3 for the shepherd, 1 for the sheep
10 for the wolf. 3 for the shepherd. 1 for the sheep. The wolf hunts. The wolf risks everything. The...
BTS
Ads sell more tickets than almost any DJ
This is the sentence that ended a decade of conventional wisdom in event promotion: ads sell more tickets than almost...
Guides
How to negotiate a venue deal
Every venue deal I’ve signed started from a position of weakness. No track record, no guarantee, no leverage. The venues...
BTS
The events are the loss leader
Most promoters measure success by whether an event made money. We measure success by whether an event grew the asset....
Guides
Ticket pricing strategy
Ticket pricing is not a math problem. It is a psychology problem with math consequences. Every pricing decision sends a...
Shitposts
BPM is P&L engineering
People think tempo is an artistic choice. It is. But it’s also a financial one. At 140 BPM, people drink...
Guides
Event economics 101
Most event promoters have no idea where their money goes. They throw a party, hope it works out, and either...
Guides
Merch as revenue bridge
Most event promoters treat merch as an afterthought. A box of leftover t-shirts under the DJ booth, sold between sets...
Guides
SMS marketing for events: the $4.28 cost-per-ticket-sale channel
SMS is the cheapest acquisition channel in event marketing. Not email. Not Instagram ads. Not influencer posts. A text message...
BTS
The commission-based DJ pay model
The standard model in nightlife promotion is simple: you pay DJs a flat fee, they show up, they play, they...
BTS
The Monarch deal: how 50/50 changed everything
Every venue deal before Brooklyn Monarch followed the same pattern. Either you rent the room and take all the risk....
Updates
From 60 people to 837: the growth timeline
This is the institutional record. Every number verified, every milestone documented. Not because growth stories need to be told —...
Updates
The consulting pivot
It started on Discord. Free advice. Someone asked how to get booked as a DJ in New York. I wrote...
BTS
The EJ theft: when your co-organizer robs your party
I was naive. That’s the short version. EJ was a co-organizer during the early NYC planning phase. We were building...
Updates
The first Patreon subscriber
Before SLIST had a website, before we had ticket links or commission models or any of the infrastructure that exists...
BTS
Experiment: Negotiating the best discount codes
I want to negotiate bulk-like discounts for my base. If someone sees a discount posted on this website, I want...