I'm Quiet Quitting My Six-Figure Wall St. Job for a Strip Show

As the son of immigrant parents, I was constantly reminded to work hard and to get good grades to succeed in life.

The goal was always to go to the best college and to get the best job, otherwise I would be deemed a failure.

Me and my sister were enrolled in tutoring programs, piano lessons, and numerous extracurricular activities, all because we were told that hard work was the key to a successful life.

So, I did as I was told, and I truly did believe that by getting a high-paying job I would become successful, and my life would be rainbow and sprinkles.

I was accepted into Cornell University and spent over four years obtaining my Bachelor's and Master's in Mechanical Engineering.

Once I graduated in 2007, I landed a job in NYC working as a mechanical engineer making $65,000 a year. I thought I had made it.

I had not.

The work was boring and miserable. I was on construction job sites, climbing ladders and measuring heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) equipment.

In the office, I was doing the same calculations and reports repeatedly. On slow days, I was expected to look busy or to look for work to do, which was ridiculous to me.

I saw the senior managers in their 40s and 50s and I thought to myself there is no way I can do this for the rest of my life.

Luckily, I also landed a part-time position at a local male strip club on the weekends which gave my life a little bit more excitement and allowed me to get away from my regular 9 to 5.

Concurrently, my college buddies on Wall Street were making much more than I was so I thought to myself that if I were to be miserable all day then I might as well be miserable with a higher-paying salary.

So, I quit my engineering job, went to business school at New York University, and managed to land a job on Wall Street paying $150,000 a year. Once I graduated, I thought I had made it.

I had not.

My job was to analyze data for traders and management so they could make better financial and trading decisions.

The work quickly became repetitive as I kept recycling the same code and writing similar reports, just on different data sets. I knew I wanted something different in life, but I had no idea what or how.

Throughout this entire time, I was still moonlighting as a male stripper on the weekends because it was the one thing I had looked forward to. It was easy money, a great way to meet new people, and there was an entrepreneurial spirit to it which I had admired.

I played with the idea of starting my own male strip show, but I was too afraid of failure to try. However, of all the different jobs and career paths I had experienced, I was much more passionate about stripping than I was about anything else.

Male stripping had opened doors for me that no other industry has. As an introvert, it allowed me to express myself and to take on a different persona during the weekends while still allowing me to return to my normal life during the weekdays.

It opened my eyes to business opportunities that I never knew existed. Throughout the years, I saw the owner of the male strip club grow his company horizontally by expanding into different cities and vertically by expanding into different entertainment categories including drag queen and burlesque shows.

I quickly realized this type of growth was not available to me as a salaried employee working in finance.

In finance, the path for professional growth is riddled with bureaucracy and red tape. I could work extremely hard all year long but there would be external factors preventing me from moving up including unfavorable market conditions, other departments performing poorly, and high expenses due to poor management decisions.

Simply put, there were too many factors out of my control for me to grow but, more importantly, I simply did not enjoy the work.

Becoming a part-time entrepreneur allowed me to take my future into my own hands, which was more important than a six-figure salary from Wall Street.

My successes and failures would be directly correlated to my own personal performance. Even though there are still forces outside of my control, I had a much better handle on my path to professional and personal development.

During COVID, I had a falling out with my male stripper employer, and I made the difficult decision to leave and start my own male revue, Exotique Men.

Working from home allowed me to focus more time and energy on my male strip show. I had no idea what I was doing, and I kept thinking it would fail.

I fell into a state of depression and spent many days, weeks, and months just trying anything and everything to see what would help me sell tickets and what didn't.

After a period, I realized that my brain had been conditioned to treat failure as something negative. Throughout my school years and career, failure meant having to retake a class, not getting that job, or getting laid off. Failure had to be avoided at all costs.

However, once I started my business, I realized I had to shift my mindset. Failure was good because it gave me feedback on what worked and what didn't. I had to try different things, learn from my mistakes, and to grow from the experience. The goal was to sell more tickets and I knew the only way I could fail was if I gave up.

I launched the website for Exotique Men in January 2021 and for the first two years, I had zero ticket sales. Everything I did failed. I was emotionally distraught, but I had already invested so much time and energy that I couldn't give up.

During 2023, we began our first shows. The shows were small at first and financially I was breaking even, sometimes even making a small profit. These small wins kept me going because, for the first time, I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. I spent two years trying and failing and things were finally starting to take shape.

It was at this time that I started to understand the power of manifestation. As someone with a technical background, when I first heard of manifestation, I thought it was just an excuse for lazy people to try to get rich without doing any work.

However, I realized that manifestation was more about constantly thinking of becoming the person I wanted to be—a successful entrepreneur. The reason for its importance was that it would help provide a pathway to achieve my goal.

In school, I always had a syllabus for my courses, so I knew what path to take. When building my business, there was no syllabus. I had to figure everything out on my own.

By manifesting and constantly thinking about who I wanted to become, I noticed strategies and opportunities that I could take to help promote my business.

As of now, I am quiet quitting my Wall Street job while growing Exotique Men. It is not at the point yet where I can go at it full-time, but that day is close, whereas two years ago it wasn't even on the radar.

I believe that there are many other people out there who are working 9 to 5 who have some crazy dream they want to chase but are too afraid to fail so they won't even try.

Hopefully, my own dysfunctional journey will provide inspiration to others to take that first step. We only have one life so it is up to each one of us to make the most of it and we should never let the fear of failure get in our way.

Andrew Chan is the founder of Exotique Men, a male strip show in New York City. He spent about seven years working as a mechanical engineer and the past nine years working for a major Wall Street bank analyzing data for traders.

All views expressed in this article are the author's own.

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