That’s creative. How did you come up with that idea? PN: To be honest, one of our DJs that we’ve dealt with for years, DJ Saxwell, had been doing it on a smaller level with another company. They decided to step down because it wasn’t a major success for that company. We all got together and said we could make it big. I would say the idea came from Saxwell. Does your company do events outside of Florida? PN: Oh yeah. We do events all around the country. We do big events for the Super Bowl, the NBA All Star Game, Essence Music Festival and things like that. What are your plans for expansion? Are you happy with the size of your company or would you like to see it grow even more? PN: We were just thinking about that last night. We plan to start a teen division with Front-Line to capture a younger audience so when they get older they’ll know about Front-Line. Also, we’re going to get into the ad agency business. We have relationships with all the major radio stations, mainly in the South. We can really go out and do a lot of good marketing for other companies. Of course, Willie and myself don’t just play into going to the club every day so we’re going to expand into other businesses like restaurants, day care centers. Willie already has a dump truck business. We really plan to go to a whole other level. We also plan to start buying tours and things of that nature. How do you stay ahead of the competition in the entertainment business? PN: We really feel that we’re our own competition. Competition is healthy but we feel we’re own our competition because the more and more we push each other, the further we’re going to go. What is the most rewarding part of your job? WF: Seeing an event go successfully. It takes hard work to put on an event but at the end of the day knowing that it was a success, not just money-wise but everything went good – the artists showed up, there weren’t any incidents, things like that, that’s when we’re happy. PN: I would say the same thing Willie just said – seeing that everything came together and went fine. It’s not always about the money. Sometimes it’s about the look and the perception. That’s what a lot of people don’t understand. Sometimes they do an event and may not have made the money, or may have lost some money, but sometimes success is based on what your customers feel. It’s about how the party or concert turned out. WF: As long as your customers are happy, that’s a success. If they’re not happy, then it’s not a success. Some promoters are happy they made a lot of money, but their people are upset. That’s not a successful event because it’s going to be real hard for you to come back and do another one. A lot of people also might not understand the entertainment business runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
What are your thoughts on that? Is that difficult? PN: You’re definitely right about that. I have people in my family that ask me to go here and there for them and do this for them, but I got to go to work. They don’t look at it as a real full-time job, but it’s more than a full-time job. It’s 24 hours a day. We may get a call at 5:30 in the morning that something went wrong at our club and we may have to get up out of bed and go see what’s going on. It takes a lot of planning to put together all the stuff that we do. We do events almost every day of the week. Do you have a website where people can view your upcoming parties? PN: FrontLineEvents.com andClubWhispers.net Do you have any other knowledge to share? WF: I don’t want to seem too harsh, but we have a problem of trying to make people understand that we all need to support each other. Pat mentioned that we have a nightclub. There’s only one other black owned club in Central Florida. We try to make sure that our community understands that we’re entrepreneurs; we’re business owners. We need support. The only way this place is going to continue to run is if we all stick together. You have clubs that open up and say they’re not doing any Hip Hop, but what they’re really saying is they’re not doing any blacks. But as soon as their club starts to fail, they turn to the black dollar. The black dollar is the strongest dollar in the nightclub business right now. You have a lot of cliques, like the upscale urban people, and sometimes they tend to stray away from an urban owned club. People told us in the beginning when we opened the club that we need to be as diverse as possible. We said no. We’re trendsetters; we set our own standards. We have a full-fledged urban club and we’re proud of it. You can get your Hip Hop on one night, your R&B and Neo-Soul on another, your Reggae on another and your Latin on another night. We’re diverse, but we’re diverse in the minority community. PN: A lot of times people look at us, including other promotion companies, and say that we don’t want to share the wealth. It took a lot to get where we are and I always practice this quote: I don’t have any control of how the wind blows, but I can adjust my sails to reach my destination. For people who don’t understand, everyone has the right to do business and it’s up to you to go out there and make it happen. // Words by Ms. Rivercity // Photos by Terrence Tyson