I’m Jorge Martinez. I spent 15 years running nightlife venues in Northern California — taking over a club its owners had decided to close and rebuilding it into the city’s #1 room. Now I’m in Austin.
In 2015, ownership at The Beach Nightclub in Chico, CA was ready to shut the doors. I’d worked my way up from floor security, and they handed me the keys instead. As Director of Nightlife & Marketing for 3 Downtown Bars, I rebuilt the room end to end: programming, talent buying on a $117K annual budget, marketing, security, staffing, and the bar experience.
The result was a ~600-cap club doing $11K–$14K in nightly bar revenue, named the city’s Best Place to Dance four times — and never finishing below second place from 2015 through 2019.
Since then I’ve co-founded a second nightclub (Frequency, 2024), and built two event companies of my own: Eclectic Sound DJs (500+ weddings and corporate events since 2009) and Black Noise Silent Disco (2018). I did the GM job solo, on a shoestring. With a real budget and a real team, it’s upside — not a learning curve.
Most operators rent expertise: a promoter here, a production company there, an agency for talent. I’ve done every one of those jobs myself — booking, marketing, sound and lighting, floor management, security. That means I’m cheap to operate, hard to surprise, and I can tell you in one walk-through why a night is underperforming.
I’m bilingual-market fluent too: my DJ company ran five bilingual DJs across 500+ events in the Hispanic market, from quinceañeras to club residencies.
If you run a venue and something about your nights isn’t working — or you just want a second set of eyes from someone who’s run the whole show — reach out. Worst case, it’s a good conversation.