Keeping Notes on Your Regulars: What to Record and What Never To

Keep short notes on every customer who might come back: the name he knows you by, his name, his drink, his job, what he spends and on what, when he last came, his usual night, and one personal detail you can ask about next time. That is enough to make a man feel remembered, which is the product you are selling to a regular. Keep it short, keep it somewhere that survives a dead phone, and never write anything you would be embarrassed to have read out loud in a dressing room or a courtroom.

Why notes beat memory

Everyone remembers the big spender. Nobody remembers that the quiet guy from three Thursdays ago has a daughter starting college, and he is the one who will come back every month for two years if you ask about her. The Round Table dancers who manage the most regulars all describe some kind of system: one keeps standard text routines keyed to each client, another remembered a regular's interests well enough to pick him a book for his birthday, a third tracks which regulars need a decompression slot afterwards. Hairdressers, who run on the same repeat-client economics, keep notes for identical reasons: what the client talked about last time, what they like, what not to bring up.

The second reason is portability. Lily T. tells new dancers to build a book that follows them when a club closes or they move. A book in your head leaves with your memory of a club you no longer visit. A book in writing goes to the next city.

The fields that earn their place

Each line should change what you say or do next time. If it does not, cut it.

• Name he knows me by. If you have used two stage names or work two clubs, this is the first field, because calling yourself the wrong name is the fastest way to end a regular.
• His name or nickname, and the club. "Mike, the one from the Tuesday day shift," not just "Mike".
• Drink. Ordering it before he asks is the cheapest act of attention there is.
• Job, roughly. It tells you his money and his schedule.
• What he spends and on what. Four dances every visit, or one half-hour room and a tip. This is how you know what to offer and when he is pulling back.
• Last visit and usual night. This drives your working-tonight text and tells you when he has lapsed.
• One personal detail. The dog's name, the divorce, the team, the trip he was planning. One is enough; next visit you will get another.
• Topics to avoid. The ex-wife, the business that failed, whatever made him go quiet.
• Hands and behavior. A one-word rating: fine, warn, watch. See the safety side of this in /advice/sharing-bad-customer-info-safely.
• Birthday, if he volunteers it.

What never goes in the notes

Nothing that identifies you, and nothing that could read as evidence of anything beyond dancing. That means no real name of yours, no reference to your address, your car, your school, your day job, and nothing that describes a dance in physical detail. A note is for you, but phones get lost, accounts get subpoenaed in divorces, and a manager may ask to see it. Write every entry as if the customer's wife and your club's licensing officer could both read it. "Spends on rooms, tips well, hands fine, talks about his boat" is a note. Anything beyond that is a liability.

Also leave out your opinions of him beyond what helps you work. "Boring" does not change your next shift; "likes to talk about fishing, do not interrupt" does.

Where should I keep customer notes?

Somewhere with a backup, under your work identity, separate from your personal accounts. Dancers currently use the notes field on a saved contact in a burner app, a Notes document, a spreadsheet, or the DM history on Snapchat or Instagram as a de facto record. All of those fail in the same way: the app dies, the number is reclaimed, the account is banned, and the book goes with it. Whatever you use, export it monthly. A client book that stores notes alongside the number and exports them, which is what Hotline does, solves this specific problem; a spreadsheet you back up also solves it. The tool matters less than the habit.

Keep the book under your work name and off your personal phone's main contacts. Dancers Information recommends a whole separate work identity, number and accounts included, and the notes belong on that side of the wall.

How much detail is too much?

If writing it takes longer than the dance did, too much. Thirty seconds after each customer, in the dressing room or the bathroom, is the whole discipline: name, spend, one detail, done. The dancers who abandon note-taking are the ones who tried to write biographies. The ones who keep it up write three lines and move on. Over ten visits those three lines become a profile that no new dancer can compete with.

Using the notes

The notes are only worth keeping if you read them. Before a shift, skim the regulars likely to come and refresh the one detail each. Before replying to a text, open his notes. When he walks in, order his drink. When he mentions something new, add it. Josephine's birthday book, the Vice regular who remembered a dancer's birthday with dinner years later, the escort who schedules difficult clients into decompressable slots: all of that is notes, used.

And when a regular lapses, the notes tell you what to send: not "haven't seen you in a while" but "how did the move go? I'm in Friday." That text, and the two-, four- and eight-week pattern behind it, is in /advice/re-engaging-a-lapsed-regular.

Do this tonight

• Write notes on every current regular with the ten fields above, even if some are blank.
• After each customer tonight, spend thirty seconds: name, spend, one detail.
• Delete anything in your existing notes that identifies you or describes a dance.
• Export or back up the book, and put a monthly reminder on it.