Popular comedian and actor, Ayo Makun, AKA, AY has recounted how lost five hundred million Naira in opening a nightclub business that restricted smoking.
The stand-up legendary comedian said this during a recent interview with media personality, Chude Jideonwo.
According to AY, he thought he would be successful in the nightclub business since he could gather a huge audience in his comedy show which usually takes place at Eko Hotels and Suites in Lagos.
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Although, the reason he made it a non-smoking club was that anytime he and his wife go to clubs, she always comes back with her hair smelling of smoke, he said his wife advised had advised him against the idea but he refused to heed and he later regretted not listening.
AY said after unveiling the club he would visit on Fridays but would meet empty chairs and he did not realise that having a club where people don’t smoke is bad for that type of business.
He said:
“I woke up one day and I said to myself, ‘it’s time to open a nightclub’, ‘AY, if you can gather 6,000 people at Eko Hotel, what’s in a club that you can’t just gather 100 to 200 people buying drinks I think God just wanted me to know that ‘this one is not your calling’, ‘you are the one calling yourself’.
“It is good to have the right partner, my wife was strongly against it. I said, ‘No, it is good for networking and PR’. Shout out to all the guys who are doing it and getting it right.
“But I thought then that when I come, I am just going take all of them out of the market. It was a huge investment running to about N500 million.
“We put everything in place, the staff strength was solid, the interior was crazy and I will go there every Friday, I will look at the door and I am not seeing people coming. The opening was grand and massive. I started with a non-smoking club; I didn’t know that all these things go together.
“The wise ones will call me, and I will tell them that sometimes when I take my wife to the club when we get back her hair will be smelling of smoke, and women should have their wigs neat’. Long story short, I saw my ‘period’, it was very bad.”
