“Say, ‘Titty city!’”
Michelle Elhai and her partner lift their legs and arms as the customer between them smiles and repeats as instructed. The man’s friend snaps the photo of him with the marijuana-themed showgirls, who are equipped with nurse-like outfits, sparkly backpacks shaped like cannabis leaves and a three-foot inflatable blunt nicknamed “Jimothy.”
For the final photo, the women turn around, hinge at the hips and start shaking their butts.
“What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas!” they shout as the man, with their permission, lightly taps their behinds.
He tips them $200.
It’s not always that successful. Earlier in the day, a man flashed a $100 bill but only gave them $8. One of their first clients refused to pay even though the women made it clear up front — as they tell all their customers — that they pose for a “generous tip.”
That’s what it’s all about: the tip. Their success partly comes down to the luck of the day and clientele, but also stems from experience, skill and an arsenal of trade secrets.
“I’m not going to force anyone to give me a photo, but I’m going to strongly encourage it,” Elhai, 20, said. “And I’m going to give, do everything I can to get as high of a tip as possible.”
For her, that’s $540. That record payment, which was split with her partner, came from a group of nerdy men whom Elhai joked had never touched a woman. On average she makes $1,000 for a four-hour shift and aims for $4,000 a week from showgirl photos. A showgirl in 2013 said the good performers make an average hourly wage of $20. Today, any “generous tip” under $20 is offensive to Elhai.
After all, showgirls really aren’t just selling photos — they’re selling an experience.
The women who work with the agency Elhai runs, Picture Perfect Showgirls, are all high earners like her. The showgirls are self-employed and keep all of their tips, but they rent costumes from Elhai, work on a schedule she makes and benefit from the techniques she teaches.
Jamie Pool, Elhai’s partner that day, said most of the other 10 to 15 agencies are “showgirl factories” with a conveyor belt of performers. But Elhai’s company is a “beast maker.”
“It doesn’t matter how you look. It doesn’t matter what costume you have on. It matters how you work people,” said Pool, 36, who’s been a showgirl for five years at a variety of companies.
And Elhai knows how to work people and build a team of showgirls who know how, too.
Elhai graduated high school at 16. While attending community college in San Jose, California, she found that her minimum-wage job wasn’t enough to build her savings or start investing. She began working higher-paying housekeeping and babysitting gigs. She quickly realized she could run a profitable company finding those jobs, scheduling other college-age students to work them and charging the workers a fee.
She wanted to create an app for the business. When she couldn’t find someone to program the product, she learned how to code herself. She eventually moved on and became a software engineer at another company at age 17.
Elhai got laid off during the pandemic. She moved to Las Vegas, started working on another business idea and turned to showgirling to fund it. She loved the money but thought she could run the business better. So she quit and worked independently for three months while she learned to make her own costumes for her own agency, which she’s been running since last fall.
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