Dyngus Day
Happy Dyngus Day!!! (“Szczęśliwa Dyngus Dni” in Polish) is an awesome Polish holiday. In the US we celebrate it a little bit differently than in Poland. In Poland, it is more of an impromptu wet tee shirt contest and in the US, we may see nudity, but it’s just because people forgot where they put their clothes while drinking. So what is this holiday with a funny name? It’s a Polish holiday. I equate it to being Polish Mardi Gras. Mardi Gras is the day before Lent starts where you go out and do all of the bad stuff that you can’t do for the next fourty days till after Easter. Dyngus Day is the day after Easter so it, like Mardi Gras, is not a set date, but based on the date of the Easter holiday. For a quick read on Dyngus Day, CLICK HERE and get some history on the day. So it’s a bit different in the US and where I live, La Porte, Indiana, it’s REALLY different. It’s just a drinking holiday. We turn our city transportation bus into a drunk-wagon and we have a city-sponsored pub crawl around La Porte.
So why does anyone care? Just read on. You’ll get it. If you are from San Francisco, you probably have never heard of Dyngus Day, but I guarantee the beer rep to your local bar knows very well what Dyngus Day is. So how do we celebrate it? Locally it is celebrated on other communities as well, but none like La Porte. In South Bend, it’s a big deal as well, but they have polka bands and Polish food. You eat, drink, and you are merry. In La Porte, it is a city-sponsored pub crawl and it is fun! Bars in Indiana can open at 7AM. By 8AM, some bars already have over-served people, but there is an “unofficial” suspension of public intoxication laws (along with public indecency and indecent exposure). The police just don’t have the time to deal with this. Our city buses take drunks around from bar to bar on the route, with one bus being reserved for the mayor and her closest friends. New Years Eve is just a practice run for Dyngus Day in La Porte. Expect shitty service and long wait-times. That’s the norm today. The bars simply don’t have the manpower to serve well and why should they? They are making money hand over fist today. Every beer rep knows about Dyngus Day because of the amounts of money that is brought in today. It is amazing. By some estimates, bars bring in an entire third of the money for the whole year just today.
The local Tavern Owner’s Association pretty much runs today. There are ten bars on the bus route. They fill out an application form and are paid members of the association. The ten bars are chosen based on their history of being on the route in previous years and if someone dropped out of the route, you can maybe get one of the coveted spots. Even bars not on the route make a killing today. The money flows in like tequila goes down for every local bar. It is perfectly acceptable for people to call off work today to “to dyngusing” and many offices will just be closed today since no one will show up to work. Tomorrow is the day for Dyngus Day hangover call offs. Either way, the money coming in is fantastic.
So what does any of this have to do with Full Tilt Business? I talk about marketing a lot in my pieces and this is nothing but a marketing holiday and it relies heavily on social marketing and standard marketing. Every bar you go to in town has the Miller signs that are locally advertising Dyngus Day and that individual bar and the Bud Light Girls are usually in town for the day. The Tavern Owner’s Association is constantly updating the Facebook page and working with each and every bar on the route. Each of these bars works in unison because the social advertising, beyond just a single social media outlet, is required for today to be a success. You will see Twitter, texting apps, Facebook, Google+, and just about every other social media outlet out there and brand everything they possibly can. Market branding is essential for a day like today to take shape. Instead of competing, each business on the route works together and everyone is successful. The Tavern Owner’s Association has moved beyond competition and into the realm of cooperation of its members.
The question I am posing now (yes, the thesis is in the fifth paragraph) why do businesses feel the need to compete when locally, cooperation seems to be working better? Can tattoo shops, shoe stores, restaurants, hotels, nail salons cooperate with each other and work to make everyone’s business stronger among various segments? Without price-fixing, businesses that work together with other businesses succeed more than those that do not. What does every billionaire businessman have in common with each other? They all work with others. The thing we were all graded on in kindergarten that said “works well with others” is the thing that determines success in business. I believe this factor to be the single most important trait in business. The deals that a business owner makes with the interests of others in mind will be what makes the business successful. The ten bars on the Dyngus Day route and the Tavern Owner’s Association know this first-hand. Local trade organizations for your industry are essential to your success and the ability to work within the trade groups. In an absence of these groups or if they are too expensive to join, please consider meeting with your competition and make them your cooperative. Farmers have used this method for decades with the co-ops and have done so successfully because they have a shared commodity. The co-op method can turn your local industry into a commodity.
Na zdrowie!
For more pieces like this, please go to website for Michael Beebe, Spark Plug Strategies, or Full Tilt Business.
Picture a young Michael Beebe, fresh out of La Porte High School in ’93, diving headfirst into the world of hospitality with a busboy gig at the old La Porte Holiday Inn. That hustle led him to an Associate of Science from Purdue-North Central in ’95 and a Bachelor’s in Hospitality Management from Purdue-Calumet in ’97 (those schools are now merged into Purdue-Northwest, by the way). Michael’s early career was a whirlwind—running a 140-room hotel in Indianapolis, where he learned the ins and outs of the industry but realized it wasn’t his true calling. What did spark his passion? Teaching. He found himself thriving in front of students at Ivy Tech Community College and Lake Michigan College, sharing the art and science of hospitality management. Oh, and he also moonlighted at WIMS radio in Michigan City, juggling both on-air and behind-the-scenes roles with his signature high energy.
Politics? That’s been Michael’s sidekick since he was 18, registering to vote with a fire in his belly to make a difference. He threw his hat in the ring for La Porte County Council in 2010, where he got a crash course in the power of social media marketing. Undeterred by not winning, he campaigned for Indiana’s General Assembly in 2012 and took another shot at the County Council in 2014 and 2016. Though he hasn’t clinched a seat yet, Michael’s relentless drive to serve shines through. Lately, he’s been pouring that energy into helping other candidates who champion personal liberty, amplifying their voices with his knack for strategy.
Here’s a twist: Michael once co-owned a tattoo shop, despite having no ink himself. As the business manager and marketing guru, he leaned hard into low-cost, social media-driven campaigns to put the shop on the map. That experience fueled his love for digital marketing, and now he spends his free time crafting websites and boosting businesses online—a true labor of love.
These days, Michael’s living the dream as an independent contracted transporter, crisscrossing the country while getting paid to soak up new places and cultures. When he’s not exploring, he’s parked somewhere scenic, laptop open, building his digital consulting company, Spark Plug Strategies, or penning his thoughts. He even wrote a few books.
Based in La Porte County, Indiana, Michael’s embraced a “decentralized laptop lifestyle,” blending work, travel, and passion projects into a life that’s as dynamic as he is.