If you recall, I mentioned recently that I had been asked for some advice and that I was more than a little bit ill humoured when answering!  The answers are, however, still relevant no matter how grumpy I sound!  Below is the original query that came in from the person wishing to set up an escort agency and my answers are below his email. The original diary entry is here.

For those of you that believe I am a cure all and know everything I would only ask you to remember this … I am me, what suits me, suits me not you and what I may choose to share is up to you if you choose to ask for my thoughts.  I work with principles that I hold dear and that may well not be ones you agree with.  It will always be a person’s choice to choose which pathways to go down and for me, professionalism and caring has always been a measure of success and has never been the number of £s in my bank account.  What I choose to do will always be my feelings so please do not give me a hard time if you ask for advice and then find it does not suit you.  We each make our own pathways and all I can do is give you what I have experienced and this will never be a blueprint for anyone else’s future.

The original email :

I have a business set up already in the web design industry but am relocating back to the manchester / liverpool area. Myself and an asian friend of mine are very interested in combining our skills and setting up an escort agency.
There are a few questions that puzzle us and we could really do with some honest advice, and your blog site seems so great – I certainly would have no problem referring business to you if we get this off the ground and dont have any girls free…. you seem so honest
Anyway would be great if you could answer some questions -
1) Whats the best way of taking payment from a client – via credit card machine or cash
2) how do you ensure that the escort doesnt steal the client for herself on private bookings once you have introduced them ? this one really confuses us
3) How do you interview the girls
4) we have a driver and we feel this might be safer for the escort and ensure no trouble as he is an ex head doorman – how do we charge the escort or work this into our rates
5) I have been ripped off before by an ex business partner – I trust my friend but how do i ensure that he doesnt nick the company for himself once setup

My designers are currently building a site for a massage parlour in manchester, we were going to see if the owner could advise us – is there any way we could get further advice from yourself sue. We are also considering setting up a non sexual side of escorting which is purely for business functions, dinners etc as we have a lot of contacts within manchester who are laddancing models and very well to do clients that may not want the sexual side.

Your advice is really appreciated

My answer was :

Thanks for your enquiry but will admit, you don’t sound like an agency owner who needs to head for the level of agency I personally believe needs to be out there, so you may find that my comments are a bit at odds with what you may want to hear at times – sorry!

1. Your main business clients come from Manchester hotels not Liverpool hotels.  The latter clients tend to be a lot of irish guys coming over into cheaper hotels in and around Liverpool
2. Thanks for the offer of referrals, however, from your questions you are definitely not looking for the kind of business we target and referrals would not be appreciated – but thank you for thinking of us
3. How much do you really know about accounting systems?  If you accept a credit card payment direct from a client, you have to account for the whole sale with a deduction then being allocated to the girl in the accounts.  If the girl accepts cash, the only money that then goes through your accounts would be the part that the girl pays you.  The NET effect is exactly the same, however, in relation to turnover, this figure would very quickly hit the VAT threshold because you accept the whole amount via credit card – example:
   1. Agreed fee £150 – paid credit card – in your accounts £150 sale, £120 cost (amount sent to girl later)
   2. Agreed fee £150 – paid cash to girl – in your accounts £30 sale (introduction fee from girl)
   3. Imagine you had 10 bookings in a month – with example A your sales would be £1,500 and with example B £300.  This figure only becomes important when you are reaching the VAT threshold however example A grossly overinflates your sales
   4. So to answer your query – if you don’t care about VAT thresholds and believe you don’t need to declare sales by credit card in the gross amount then obviously you are safer accepting the full fee by credit as you then ensure the girl pays you, however, you will need to ensure you have the correct details in your accounts
   5. Cannot believe you asked this one!  Let me spell it out for you – for most of escorting a girl is in this industry because she NEEDS money, not because she wants to have fun.  The more that NEED is; the more the girl has escorted before; the longer she has been in this industry; the more lies she will tell and the more risk you have.  The only way I have found to ensure professionalism is to accept women with professional careers only with no financial need – for example, some of our team careers are/have been : bank manager, museum curator, accountant, vet ….. if you have women who do this as a full-time career or who are in lower paid work (ie £12-15k pa) then they will NEED money and before long, they will think that they can get away without telling you that they are seeing the client behind your back.  All will seem sweetness and light at the beginning but believe me, the longer the girl has been an escort, the more risk she will always be to you.
   6. I don’t interview these days – Marie manages Angels4You and she does meet out team but only if she believes that she is someone who meets our standards.  Most agencies are set up for an immediate demand and immediate supply.  For that reason you need girls who need money.  Some agencies don’t care about who the girl is, they just want a body to send out when a client rings up so some agencies, if the girl says she is experienced, won’t bother meeting her or setting up the ground rules.  Its horses for courses, if you need to earn money through your agency then you will need girl after girl after girl – don’t bother interviewing as an existing escort will know what to do most of the time because of the level of business you will be targeting.  If you want my professional answer (as opposed to my irritated one!) …. When you put through on your website who you look for, do those words come from your heart or from your business need.  Do you care about what you write and who you target and if you wonder what on earth I am wittering from, read the Join Us page on Angels4You (www.angelsyou.co.uk/join_us.html) and then look at other agencies and see what the difference is between how they project a Join Our Agency and how I prefer to do it.
   7. If you are wanting a driver then so be it … have a look at the following diary entries and you make your own mind up …. Sorry to sound irritated (again) on this point – you did note that I seem honest – sometimes the honesty goes towards too much bluntness too!  The diary entries on the Escort Agency Set Up Advice page has one specifically about drivers …. http://www.suesdiary.co.uk/index.php/escort-agency-set-up-advice/
   8. If you are asking this kind of question then you already have a gut instinct of unsafeness …. Quite frankly, don’t go into partnership with him.  If you feel that have to have some measure of trust, agree key things such as everything in the bank account needs 2 signatures, don’t set up internet banking that allows either one of you to do transactions without the other knowing and so on.  Businesses are built on trust and if you are thinking already along the lines of “What If” then you already have concerns.  From a counselling session 11 years ago following a sexual assault that happened to me in a workplace I was given a book to read, it took a lot of years before I really absorbed its message.  The book was called “The Gift of Fear” and for years it did not make sense to me yet over time, I came to realise that my gut instinct was sometimes being overrode by my heart and desire to trust people – these days, no matter what, if I have even a twinge of discomfort, no matter what, I won’t go forward.  It stands me in good stead in the escorting industry because the idiots I listen to on the phone wont ever get past me (or Marie) to book one of the team if they even remotely make me uncomfortable in the way they are asking.  Trust your gut instincts and keep to them because the only person to blame if things do go awry will be yourself.
   9. You ask about advice from me …. Based on what you have told me, I don’t believe that I can help anyone who is asking the kind of questions you already are.  The core issue for me is that you were talking about setting up a non-sexual side of escorting … in other words, you have already made up your mind that escorts sell sex straight away.  I don’t, and wont, condone that thought.  An escort has the right to say yes and no and I would put it back to you … if a girl was in a booking and she felt unsafe and said no to the client, how far would you back her up if you knew this guy yourself (ie one of your mates) and you felt she was being paid for sex so she should do it?  There is a HUGE difference in my attitude towards men and services.  I don’t and won’t sell girls for sex and woe and betide any client who expects a sexual service and then feels he is short changed if one of my term turns him down – we have a right to spend our time how we wish to and that does not include sex just because a client thinks he has bought a girl’s body and not just her time.
   10. As for massage parlours … they are illegal and yes I know that your company is simply doing a website from them but you were thinking of asking for advice from someone who is operating an illegal business.  Yes police turn a blind eye so much of the time as its informally seen as better for a girl to be off the street but think about the level of person in the parlours … they NEED money and believe that by using their body they can earn it.  Again, I cannot condone this.

I know I have probably surprised you with how I feel – having been an escort I know what it really is like out there and I also know that male escort agency owners are often horrific in expecting a girl to be a prostitute and just perform when she is told.  Angels4You was set up entirely on a business side for business people who have been able to appreciate the difference between a pretty face and body that needs money and a business woman who meets them on their own level for her own fun not because she needs money.

I do so wish you good luck.  I am not sure how much help I have been, however, I will post this entry for others to see on the Escorting page of Sue’s Diary, as I think it is important for others to realise that I am not here to be traditional – Sue’s Diary and Angels4You stays on the right side of every part of the law and I need people to see that there can be people like me (and Marie who manages Angels) who are prepared to stay away from the crowd and the traditional thinking behind escorting being always about a sexual demand.

On a final note – I have re-read my answer on more than a few occasions now and I can see why the person asking for advice felt he had had his bead bitten off.  I do, however, stand by my comments no matter how ill-spirited I was in the way they came across.  I do apologise publically to the person who asked these queries for having been so grumpy in answering as I said in my initial entry, I have been incredibly down with ill-health for most of December and my patience was obviously on a very low level.  Excuses aside, I do stand by my feelings and, as I said at the beginning of this entry, whilst I am always happy to answer queries, I cannot be expected to soften my thoughts just to be what someone wants to hear.  I can only be myself and if that happens to be me on a grumpy day … oops!

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