It's
Saturday night and you're standing outside the velvet ropes at
the hottest Chicago nightclub, clamoring for entrance with
dozens of other scenesters.
Dressed to the
nines, you try to convince the clearly unimpressed bouncer that
you shouldn't have to wait in line.
Most bouncers
ignore you: They hear the same, impassioned speech dozens of
times every weekend.
But if you
happened to be in line at a hot nightclub in the early 1990s,
chances are you were shouting to then-bouncer Billy Dec.
And he was paying
attention.
Kinetic Energy
Defined as the
energy resulting from the movement of an object. The more
something moves, the more kinetic energy it has.
Dec is only a
decade away from his door duty. He said when he was working the
rope he made a point of connecting with every person in line and
making each feel important. Because of that, people started
coming to the clubs to see Billy.
“Slowly I became
that guy who created a happy feeling for people," Dec said.
This creator of
happiness is unassuming. His wardrobe ranges from baseball cap
to blue jeans. To see him on the street, you might think frat
boy, not realizing that what you’re looking at is a successful,
business-savvy nightlife czar.
Dec relaxed over
lunch on a recent afternoon at Rockit Bar & Grill, the
brainchild of Rockit Ranch Productions, to talk about his
business and, reluctantly, himself.
He formed the
company in 2002 with partners Brad Young and Arturo Gomez: "I
was filling rooms, making owners happy, and realizing it would
be better if I was the owner."
After saying
this, Dec glanced out of the corner of his eye at the two people
with him – a personal assistant [Katie Rose] and a young
protégé.
"Ask Katie Rose,”
Dec said. “I am really shy.”
Today, the
35-year-old Lincoln Park native, who studies management at
Harvard Business School in his spare time, is informally known
as the "Nightlife King.”
Dec reigns over
two of Chicago's A-list spots, The Underground and Rockit Bar &
Grill. Regular guests include Jeremy Piven, Kanye West, John
Mayer and Michael Jordan.
And while Dec's
guest lists may read like a page out of US Weekly, he is quick
to say that his staff treats celebrities the same way they treat
everyone else. He shuns the concept that stars deserve
preferential treatment simply because they are famous.
"The goal is to
take care of a million Chicagoans," Dec explained. "I just want
them to have a good time."
A good time; the
perfect night; the best party ever.
Dec’s eyes danced
as he talked about this notion. Using phrases such as "happy,
harmonious energy," "positive and negative reactions" and
"chemistry of the mix,” he sounded like a scientist hovering
over a Bunsen burner in a chemistry lab.
And arguably Dec
is a scientist, a social scientist who is working on throwing
the perfect party.
Dec remembers the
early 1990s, when he was in his own laboratory—the
nightclubs—still learning.
Chain Reaction
Defined as a
reaction in which the products from one step provide the
reagents for the next one.
While growing up
in Lincoln Park, Dec said he never aspired to be master party
host when he was a teenager wandering the halls at the Latin
School of Chicago.
“I never would
have thought there was a future in that,” Dec said.
His future, when
he was an economics and pre-law student at the University of
Illinois at Urbana, was to follow in his father’s footsteps and
becoming an attorney.
It was only when
he started bouncing at Chicago nightclubs on the weekends to pay
for school that he realized he was a natural host.
Soon, Dec figured
out a business model – by sheer observation – and began to see
his weekend job as potential for a lucrative future.
"Certain people
[night club owners] had nights that were empty," Dec said.
"There were consumers out there who wanted to see and be around
certain people and enjoy a certain environment, and they
couldn't find it with all the other places."
So Dec created
the environments for the consumers and he began personally
calling party seekers he had met in line to invite them to the
club.
Dec filled empty
nights at the nightclubs and soon the word around town was that
he threw the best night in the city.
This was a time
in Chicago when the massive warehouse nightclubs still ruled the
party circuit. Anyone who could regularly fill a club to
capacity was already a master of the game.
“It started to
spiral because the people I called brought their friends,” Dec
said. “And their friends brought friends.”
“That was a huge
tipping point,” Dec said. Suddenly, parties became something
serious for him. He soon had a Rolodex that would allow him to
execute his next move: opening his own club.
The final push
Dec needed to go out on his own, besides investors, came in 1994
during his senior year of college.
Dec claims that a
prominent club owner shorted him on cash he had earned from the
parties he hosted at the nightclub.
Angry, Dec said,
“I left and I decided I was going to go on my own. And I did.”
But first, law
school.
In 1995, Dec
entered Chicago-Kent College of Law. He also simultaneously
opened up his first nightclub, “Solo.”
That year, Dec
said, was “the scariest ride ever.”
Balancing law
school and overcoming all the obstacles that typically put 90
percent of clubs out of business in their first year, Dec had a
hit with Solo.
On a recent blog
post for Chicago magazine, an anonymous Chicagoan reminisced
about Solo.
“It was the
biggest scene of all. That was when massive dance clubs were all
the rage. The nightlife just isn’t what it used to be.”
Dec spent the
rest of the ’90s learning the ropes of the nightclub industry as
an owner, finishing up law school and building a reputation as a
gracious host and savvy businessman who knew how to give people
the VIP treatment.
This powerful
combination enabled him to attract investors and partners who
gave him the necessary money to underwrite other hotspots in
Chicago.
By the end of the
decade Dec had opened up other top venues in Chicago, including
Equinox Café and Wine Bar, Dragon Room Nightclub and Sushi Bar,
and Circus, one of Chicago's largest nightclubs.
Dec appeared to
have the Midas touch. He bristles at the notion that people say
things came to him easily: “I worked my butt off.”
But what was it
about Dec that made it click?
Electron
Affinity
Defined as the
energy change that accompanies the addition of an electron to an
atom in the gas phase.
“Billy has very
good instincts," said Rich Melman, founder of Lettuce Entertain
You Enterprises. Melman transformed Chicago’s restaurant scene,
first with R.J. Grunts, then Ed Debevic’s, Wildfire Grill and
Big Bowl.
Dec considers
Melman a mentor.
"He has a real
hunger,” Melman said, “and that is an important ingredient."
Melman keeps tabs on what is happening with the younger crowd
through Dec.
Melman said Dec's
ability to recognize what he is good at and what he is not
good at contributes to his golden touch.
"He figured it
out and he just keeps shaking hands," Melman said.
Dec takes it a
step beyond mere networking.
He said that he
connects with people by using "human nature tools that allow you
to adjust to all the different types of people in the entire
world."
So does Dec have
a transcendent insight into human beings that allows him to
connect and consequentially build a perfect party?
The scientist
sheds some light.
“There needs to
be a careful balance of how we greet people and how we bring
them in and where we put them,” Dec explained.
Dec said his
staff will think about everything from the lighting levels and
what effect it has on his crowd, what kind of music is playing
at certain times in the night, what type of servers are serving
his guests at any given moment, all the way to how he arranges
the people in a room at one of his venues.
At his current
hotspot, The Underground, Dec will personally dish out coveted
V.I.P. cards that list the customer’s favorite drink, music
genre and times he or she likes to come to the club.
Dec’s desire to
give his customers the best night ever could almost be seen as
borderline obsessive.
This isn’t news
to people who knew him before his life in the throb and pulse of
Chicago’s nightclub scene.
Former U of I
classmate and fraternity brother Brian Hammersley offered this:
"The fact that he is doing what he does now is not surprising to
a lot of people who know him."
Hammersley said
Dec's skill lies in the fact that "he makes people feel
welcome." And Dec has apparently been doing this since he was a
freshman in college.
“He was a city
kid and most kids down there [U of I] weren’t, Hammersley said.
“He had a different vibe.”
When Dec was
asked to ponder why he has been continuously successful, able to
prevent being chewed up in a harsh industry, he said it was
because of his work ethic and his desire to treat people like
royalty.
"The only way I
knew how to do anything was to make one person smile and times
that by a million," Dec said. "In the process of being that
person, they remembered my name and I made a connection in only
10 seconds."
Aside from the
fact that Dec has a flair for bringing together people who have
different backgrounds, energy levels, personality traits and
business money, Dec has an uncanny ability to make people feel
valued.
Eureka
Defined as an
exclamation used as an interjection to celebrate a discovery.
As I rose at the
end of the interview to shake Dec's hand and thank him for his
time – saying, “It was nice to meet you,” he stopped me dead in
my tracks with his response.
“We already met,
a long time ago," Dec said.
Dec then
proceeded to describe the exact nature and location of a
conversation we had on Rush Street several years ago.
Flabbergasted
that he would remember such a nondescript and fleeting moment, I
walked away realizing what he had been trying to make me
understand for the past two hours: “I just want to make the
other person feel great,” Dec had said, “and I want nothing in
return from them.”
Except maybe
their presence in the perfect room for a perfect night.
