The sex business is pretty much exactly what it sounds like, a business. Most people do not realise that, but it is absolutely true. And I guess I have been preparing for my current role in running sex businesses all my life – without realising it – I hasten to add. I pretty much doubt that Her Majesty’s Armed Forces or Security Services quite appreciated what training they were giving me over the years. But it is strange the way things work out.
A few years ago I thought about a list of skills that someone might need if they were going to run a pan European network of escort agencies, strip clubs, lap dancing clubs and all the associated websites that go with those. But most importantly, to keep all those inside the laws of the respective territories, and to keep everyone involved in them – clients, staff, suppliers, the best escorts Marbella can supply safe and secure. And I realised that the British Government had very helpfully spent millions of pounds teaching eighty per cent of them to me and giving me a chance to practise them.
And the other twenty per cent that you need to run a really quite large sex business? Well those come from my business partner. And they happen to be the ones that really make the business work because they are all about marketing and business. My business partner has a Masters of Business Administration and a Doctorate in Marketing – both from well known academic institutions which I am not going to name for two obvious reasons – while we are both perfectly comfortable with what we do for a living the world at large is not, so we keep our identities private. And the other is my professional and personal obsession with operational security, which pretty much pre dates my years doing the job that I am still not comfortable talking about. Secrecy? Privacy? Security? Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? Yes, yes, yes and yes.
Apart from academic qualifications and training, the great thing that my business partner brings to the party is years of running international businesses. Before we got together she was a really big cheese in international telecoms. She was running divisions with over a billion of revenue but she was bored witless. And the one thing about this industry is that it is not boring. Unless you are doing it right – which I think we are.
