Work somewhere very close to your home so that whenever you're out running errands, you're practically guaranteed to bump into regulars! That constant feeling of looking over your shoulder will ensure you leave your home as little as possible, which will help you feel like a caged animal. Trust me, in no time at all, you'll dread even going out to get the mail!
Try to find a club where the clientele is 100% regulars who don't spend unless they have your email and phone number so they can be in constant contact. This will help you get to a point where you can't even use your phone without being filled with dread and loathing. Each club shift will be basically the same as the last, which insures soul-deep boredom. And you'll feel increasing pressure to keep your regulars interested, which will help you feel like you aren't good enough for even perverted, smelly old men.





Make sure to work on days you know are dead, because you have "nothing better to do" than sit in the club making $10/hour.
"People jack off with the left hand and point with the right."
"You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave."
^Umm...yes. I could write a book on self-sabotage as related to my dancing career. Jesus. I'll be sure to add some gems of my own later.
hah. Quit your day job, and make stripping your ONLY means of income (while trying to adjust to full stripping v part time stripping) so you spend your shifts a big ball of stress trying to hit your goals.
^^This in addition to the others are such hard habits for me...no wonder the thought of going to work lately has me feeling off. I had stripper burnout and didn't even realize it, I was beating myself up for not being in a super great mood every single shift. This thread has opened my eyes that it's not just me.





Read "My last shift" and beat yourself up seeing everyone else's huge money nights. Forget to consider the fact that you work in a $10 dance city (meaning their numbers must be cut in half to actually compare), AND that you work day shift because night shift fucks with your sleep/school schedule.
Work at a club that requires use of the busiest freeway in the state. Be sure to leave for work around 3-5pm when rush hour traffic keeps you in the car for 2 hours, thus adding 3 hours to your work day and making going to work for a 4 hour shift literally an all day affair.
"People jack off with the left hand and point with the right."
"You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave."
Try to be your authentic self at work, in every way possible. Talk about topics that are very meaningful to you with your customers, and when they express their medieval, inane beliefs, argue passionately with them before remembering to ask them for a dance. Bring up anything that might be a turnoff for your customers. This way you'll challenge yourself continually to make any money (easy money is boring) and will constantly expose your vulnerable self to people who could not care less about you as a human being. If you aren't being your real self, you're a fucking poser, am i rite?!





-Let the club bully you into working six nights a week when you're in nursing school five days a week, so you can show up for clinicals hung over or still drunk.
-Sleep with coworkers who don't quite look the same in lighting. Make sure you tell them this, too.
-Take advice from customers.
-Approach every Indian who comes in.
-Give everyone who needs a ride home one whenever you can. Don't think for a second these extras girls can't afford cars-or a damn taxi-because of a drug habit. When you find their needles in the back seat, make sure to return them, they'll get mad if you dispose of the evidence.
-While on the topic, spend all your money on drugs to feel cool.
Spend all of the money you make at work on more things for work. New outfit, new bag, new makeup. Repeat.
Put on your best stripper counselor act and focus on the customers that are having emotional break downs.
Let the managers talk you into working day shifts and slowly begin to control your schedule until you're always on the slowest shifts. Work night shifts the nights before your 9am classes. Stop going out with your friends to bars or clubs because "You could just 'go out' at work and make money while you party." Become obsessed and addicted to money. Start planning expensive vacations and setting goals to buy a new car in cash within 5 weeks (for example.) Put as much pressure on yourself as possible to meet said goals. You don't need breaks, or fun, when there's money to be made.
When you're making new friends or dating, bring up your dancing job as quickly as possible. Not because you're a proud, independent woman. Do it because you're insecure and think that people won't like you unless you have dancing to talk about. You're only interesting and worth knowing if you're a stripper!
Don't try to win over the haters. You are not the Jerk Whisperer.
Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.




Omg this mixed with almost working every night for 2 weeks straight when I'm normally used to just working 3 shifts a week made me burn out really fast. I worked too much and did absolutely nothing except sit in my apartment alone for those 2 weeks that I ended up not working at all the next week. This wasn't a major burn out but it showed me exactly what NOT to do lol.
Convince yourself that your hustle is so strong that you can (and WILL!) sell dances to extras-seeking customers. Spend 15 minutes trying to close sales with them by using evasive, misleading language. Endure the most miserable lap dances ever while they try to lick you, grope you, grind on you, and push you around.
Then convince yourself that your super hustle means you can sell $250 VIPs to everyone, even college students and blue collar dudes on slow nights. Don't even bother trying to get them to buy $20 dances -- those are for loser baby strippers. Fail to sell a single VIP or dance, and leave with $30 after a six hour shift. For maximum burnout, spend $10 of it at Taco Bell on the way home so you can eat up all your stress.
Hang out with lots of vanilla people doing lots of cool, interesting things and moving up in the world. Make sure to compare that to the fact that you're "just" a dancer. Forget about all the stuff you HAVE accomplished. It sounds lame when compared to the fact that they've done all that AND more. You may as well not even talk unless you're contributing some "court jester" fluff story about a drunk customer to make people laugh. That's clearly all you're good for in social situations.
Don't try to win over the haters. You are not the Jerk Whisperer.
Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.





Be afraid to leave your first club cuz cleaner clubs with hot as hell girls are too intimidating, even though your home club has been taken over by extras girls who got there just in time for the summer slump. Work seven days a week for a month to make ends meet before heading for greener pastures, where you'll proceed to make the highest average of your dancing career. Oh, and instead of being happy to have found a club where literally everything is different for the better-and you can finally wear boots, making your stage show so much better, you beat yourself up for not having the balls to do it sooner. Then, do the math on how many extra days you worked since the invasion of the extras girls.





This is sooo true! I'm so glad when I started dancing, my goals were just to live nicely, still have fun and start a savings account. Very simple goals. I achieved that and then beyond. So, I allowed myself, school, travel, non-stripping night club excursions, bountiful trips snowboarding...fun stuff. Lot's of restaurants when I worked/lived in San Francisco!!!! Lots of fun tasting all kinds of exotic food, participating in a contest to find a sucky restaurant in San Fran (but slowly gaining over 20 lbs doing it) but those lbs have been gone for a while!!
But on a more serious note; you never know what the future will bring: economy changes, physical changes, accidents.....you never know. All that money you slaved away saving could be gone in a second. I've been there. I recently had to clear $26K out of my roth IRA (husband had an accident). Now I don't have enough to even start one. But I have some things that are paying small dividends and currently going through a paid certification program for a new job. So there is change, but some balance. And compromise: we can no longer afford our season passes to the biggest ski resort in the western US, I no longer get my yearly trips to the Sundance film fest in Park City, with snowboard perks, but I had them. And I enjoyed the hell out of them!!! But instead I get free gas gift cards, Sephora cards and Starbucks. Not as pricey, but a nice compromise.
( I know this is long), but save a little, make your plans, but please never forget to have some fun and release your stress while you have the $$, the energy and the health to do it.
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