John and I were two young men who wanted to be somebody when we grew up. We never really sat around and thought about reality like taxes and getting a job or being parents. We only thought about making it big and being rich because that's all we grew up around. The majority of our older friends were all driving flashy cars and rocking nice clothes. They all were in some form of business whether it was legal or illegal. All John and I wanted was a piece of that life.
Besides John, there were a few other members of our "gang." Lucky, a 350 pound 6ft 5 monster. Cj, who was too full of himself and owned a basement studio. Kirby, who always had good ideas and never put them to use. Torin who literally resembled a pitbull. Doug, who was an ex-marine. And lastly, Billy who is my cousin by blood but brother at heart.
We all formed a group called STE. This stood for Street Team Entertainment. Looking back at it now it is the funniest shit of my life but also the most dangerous in some aspects. We began our take over by meeting another guy named Lucky but he was much older, probably in his early 30's. Once we met the other lucky we got our first task as a promotion team, passing out flyers. At first, we thought it was a joke but it wasn't. Our job was to pass out pieces of paper to over 20 high schools. We had approximately two weeks to do so and our incentive was free admission to the party. I guess at the age of adolescence you will do anything it takes to get in "free."
Although the little tasks we were doing seemed pointless it all made perfect sense and benefited us in the long run. The tasks we performed basically showed us the structure of the game and how to enter in the market of high school parties. With nothing but money on our mind, we were determined and hungry to make a killing.
The business model was perfect: Rent some empty space for a few hundred dollars with a capacity of 400 plus individuals and charge ten dollars a head up to a certain time then raise the price. The only challenge we faced to enter the market was the publicity, nobody knew who the fuck we were.
After performing the small tasks to get into parties for free for about three months we figured it was time to give ourselves a promotion. As a group, we decided the only way for us to make some real money is to take over the entire market. We needed to plan this out since it would take a great deal of time.
We scheduled a meeting at a nearby IMO'S Pizza to put our plan into action. Typically our meetings were always held at food joints as an incentive for members to show up and show up on time. During our first meeting is when we thought of our name and planned our first party. Going into this we thought it would be a piece of cake but soon found out it took up mostly all of our time.
The first party was at an old rec center but since we didn't have enough money up front we had to host the party with another group. Profit after the party was very small, we thought we had failed. But actually we won, that party was the foundation of our success. Hundreds of people were in attendance but the revenue was depleted after paying security guards, the other group and rental fees.
We had to go back to the drawing board.
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