Kyle Bender - Club Chaos
“Club Chaos!”
By: Kyle Bender
As a teenager growing up in mid-Michigan, there is very little to do that keeps students my age entertained. While surfing the Web one day to see how other teenagers occupy their nightlife, I came upon nightclubs. The pictures looked amazing, and I wanted to be right in the center of it all. Quickly, I researched to see where the closest teen nightclub would be for my friends and me. Well, it happened to be an hour-and-a-half drive, but my friends and I decided to go anyway. Once there, I fell in love with the place. The music, the people, the dancing, and the atmosphere – I loved it all! I just wished that there would have been a teen nightclub in or near Bay City (where my friends and I live), so we could meet people from around our area. Creating my own teen nightclub seemed impossible.
In December 2008, I enrolled in Professor Terry Duperon’s class on Entrepreneurship and Innovation. After taking this course, I learned to follow my dream and make it happen. I also learned that only I could stop my dream from happening. To start, I needed a location to host my nightclub. After speaking with my grandpa, who is a member of a local hall, I learned that I could rent out Pulaski Hall. After booking the hall, it finally struck me that this could actually happen and that I had a lot more planning to do. I enlisted the help of my friends for developing a club name and a logo. For advertisement, I purchased a week of radio spot advertisements and created a MySpace page (www.myspace.com/TeenClubChaos) to help get the word out.
Four weeks before Club Chaos started, I secured a DJ and professional security. A classmate made some flyers, and my friend and I passed them out at six local schools the week of the grand opening. On March 14, 2009, Club Chaos had a total of 124 teens show up! I was very nervous because I invested $1,800 of my summer job money into this venture. Watching over as the night progressed, I realized I made a lot of mistakes! This did not worry me, though, because Professor Terry Duperon taught me that failure is good and without it you cannot learn. I looked at all of my mistakes, found a way to fix them, and decided to have Club Chaos one more time to see if I could make a profit.
August 29, 2009, was the second event of Club Chaos themed “Back 2 School Bash.” Every expense I had, I found a way to make it cheaper or negotiate for a lower price. Advertising was difficult because the students were not in school and radio advertisement was too expensive to get the return I needed. A week before the show, I put up some signs around every busy intersection. Again, my MySpace page helped out by being able to comment on all 750 friends’ walls, letting them know about the “Back 2 School Bash.” There were only 75 teens that showed up, but they had a great time and wanted to come back! A new DJ, new security, and new design to make the hall smaller and give it a more “club” feeling really made a difference. Pyro Productions is our new DJ playing the latest music on turntables. Dancing is our main entertainment just like any club but we also have dancing silhouettes where you can dance behind a screen, which is pretty cool. Mountain Dew pong is always a favorite; some people really get into the competition of that. We stress teen safety by having a zero tolerance policy when it comes to drugs, alcohol, fighting or harassment. Any teen participating in such activity will immediately be asked to leave. We have friendly, professional security guards with experience in teen nightclubs, so rules will be enforced. No re-entry will be allowed. Adults are welcome to tour the building from 8:00 p.m. until 8:30 p.m.
Club Chaos is Bay City's only teen nightclub where teens can dance and meet one another. If I keep Club Chaos going, I will exceed my start up costs. It is difficult to plan another Club Chaos event right now because I am a full time student and I work two jobs on weekends. Once I get a break, I plan on continuing Club Chaos because I know there are a lot of teens that enjoy it as much as I do.
Here are some secrets of success that I have learned:
- Failure is a good thing. You learn from it.
- You decide. It’s your idea; make it happen!
- Find out what you love to do, and do it!