Before Brandon Voss created his multidisciplinary creative agency, Voss Events, the nightlife entrepreneur was earning a business degree and working as a bartender in some of Manhattan’s biggest gay clubs. In a whirlwind story that reads like the plot from a movie, Voss is the protagonist flanked by the most impressive cast of characters. After the economic recession deterred the then investment banker from his burgeoning career in finance, his next venture came up sooner than he could expect. It turned out the years he spent working in the clubs gave him the insight to adapt to a coming shift in the landscape of queer media and entertainment. “I knew everybody from the nightlife industry from my time working there while in school,” Voss says.
Throwing a series of weekly parties and returning to the LGBTQ nightlife scene he had become rooted in, Voss’ timing coincided with the birth of a cultural movement. When RuPaul’s Drag Race premiered in 2009, Voss was approached by Viacom to produce a crowning event for the season finale. While the show’s prize package was initially very limited due to budget, a publicity contract was worked in to benefit the winning queen.
In the decade since, the franchise has become a worldwide phenomenon and created a booming industry from drag that’s expanded the market exponentially. With services ranging from event design to production, promotions to tour management and content creation, the company has most recently launched its own management division. Representing a select few of the franchise’s talents like season 10 winner, Aquaria, Voss Events continues to meet the growing needs of a new, viable entertainment commodity: drag professionals. “These queens are legitimate celebrities at this point and can generate a lot of revenue but don’t have proper management,” Voss says. America’s reigning drag superstar, Aquaria, has just inked a book deal with Harper Collins and appeared in a worldwide Moschino campaign for its collaboration with H&M. Having earned over $1M in paid endorsements and performances, the entertainer is booked solid through the year 2020. “In terms of understanding the market and having proper contacts in the industry, I don’t think there’s anyone more suited to it than us, who are so immersed in that world,” Voss says. While promoters have focused mainly on booking the queens for performances and appearances, Voss’ approach in working with talent includes developing them for the long-term.
In addition to producing events and managing queens, the agency is responsible for the massive Werq The World tour, featuring a cast of queens from the Emmy-award winning series on a show around the world. Heading to Europe this April, the production has already been to Asia and features an all-star cast of performers on an intergalactic mission led by the show’s acclaimed judge, Michelle Visage.
I talked with the events entrepreneur about how he got his start in nightlife and carved out a successful business from the ever-growing world of drag.
Roytel Montero: How did you get your start in nightlife?
Brandon Voss: I wasn’t always in nightlife and I actually got my start as an investment banker, that’s what I moved to New York to do. During graduate school- I got my MBA from Baruch College and, while I was doing that, I worked at XL, and was a topless bartender for many years. I also worked at Splash and G-Bar, and Bowery Bar, to name a few, so I knew everybody from the nightlife industry from my time bartending while in school. I was working for Lehman Brothers during the mortgage crisis so I obviously lost my job…I took some time off and started almost for fun, working with one of my buddies who had a nightclub lounge in Hell’s Kitchen and we started throwing parties just as a hobby and it sort of took off from there. There was a party called Rocket and then after that we started a party called Club 57. Then we opened the new XL and from there, I exited nightlife and never went back to banking after having such success with nightlife.
Montero: You’ve added a management division to your agency this past year. How did adding this component to your business come about?
Voss: Part of the reason why we did that is more out of concern for the queens themselves, but I turned into an industry that’s making hundreds of millions of dollars. The whole drag phenomenon has created a whole industry, there’s live events, tours, tons of merchandise, there’s the television and all the revenue that it brings in, there’s music, there’s video, there’s modeling contracts and management, there’s so much to this huge industry and there’s so much money to be made in it. I found that there was a lack of people taking it seriously so there was this hole in the market for these queens to have good representation and career guidance. These queens are legitimate celebrities at this point and can generate a lot of revenue but don’t have proper management like CAA or William Morris.
Montero: The business of drag has grown very quickly with the success of RuPaul’s Drag Race. How have you kept up with the growing demand?
Voss: In terms of understanding the market and having proper contacts in the industry, I don’t think there’s anyone more suited to it than us, who are so immersed in that world. It seems like a logical transition to us. A big part of our business is the official world tours that we do and all the live events for VH1 and World of Wonder so it’s nice for us when we can have direct access to the talent and produce better quality shows.
Montero: How many queens are you representing at the moment?
Voss: Just seven, we’re pretty selective about who we take on too because that was a problem at the time when promoters were booking them and not doing any actual development for them. When one person has fifty clients they’re managing, there’s no way to give them any individual attention.
Montero: The “Werq The World” tour has also been an amazing success. What are some stories from the road you can share?
Voss: Early last year we were in South America and there was some crazy drama when we were stuck on the bus because a bunch of crazy fans were outside attacking our bus. We all thought it was funny and just crazy that these fans were jumping on our bus like Madonna was in there but I remember calling Randy from World of Wonder and said ‘listen, the stuff that goes down on this tour, send a camera crew and you’ll get great content’ so they did that during our European leg and I think they’re working on a documentary or behind the scenes. I’m not sure when it’s coming out but eventually there will be a behind-the-scenes look at tour life.
Montero: What are some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned in business?
Voss: We’ve learned a ton. The first world tour we did was three years ago, I put it together with Shangela. We were carrying bags with me and my one assistant. We learned so much from doing it over the years and learned from our first a ten-city European tour we did. I remember we didn’t have the staff so it was me and my assistant, John, carrying these drag queens’ bags. So from that small scale to hitting two hundred cities this year, we’ve traveled to every continent in the world except Africa. Our tour now travels with two giant semi-trucks, two giant sleeper buses, a trailer truck, we’re playing the Wembley arena in London this year at 14,000 seats, it’s just turned into a huge phenomenon. The “Werq The World” tour has become a brand in itself and people look to it as the premiere drag show of the world.
