Meet Michael Towns | Partner

We had the good fortune of connecting with Michael Towns, partner of Noir Lounge and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Michael, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking
Risk plays a huge role in all of our lives and the decisions we make. I feel we had alot of the education on running a business, starting a lounge and the ins and outs of doing so and so for us it was about execution. Risk can be looked at in two ways: a negative or a positive. For us we never want to live to 80-90 years old and wonder what if. What if we took that risk and the business was successful where would our lives be? So for us that risk is much greater than taking a chance and failing. If I take a chance and fail at least when I am 80 or 90 years old, I knew the result. The kicker here also is that you never truly fail or lose…you always learn. You win or you learn so the cup is always half full and taking a chance is always worth the risk.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
Myself (Michael Towns), Dravon Tyson (partner) and Kashif Smiley (partner) all come from so many different walks of life but we all remain in corporate positions which have primarily remained in the banking industry. With us all having a connection to finance and banking it really propelled us to be in a position to be successful in owning our own business. We each have started businesses in the past as well and so the experience we brought made this much less overwhelming. Do not let that fool you, we had to build the lounge completely from scratch, deal with financing conditions to close, work with creating a positive culture amongst are staff and so on. There is a lot of hard long work that goes into owning Noir Lounge that we have learned and grown so much in just under 2 years. Therefore it certainly was not easy but it was very much possible and we believed in what we were doing. Lastly, our brand is our heartbeat. we want people to recognize Noir as an upscale lounge where you can have fun, be free and most importantly be yourself. We want to maintain an image of safe and all inclusive fun and I believe we have succeeded in that venture.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I guess we are a little biased but I would tell them to come to Noir Lounge. We didn’t have food initially but we now have a full service food truck, we have half off Thursdays for the entire lounge, happy hours, nightlife, etc. Pretty much all you can think of for a fun nice night out is held at Noir Lounge so why go anywhere else? We have a saying at Noir that our staff had created and that saying is “Noir or Nowhere” and I think that says it all.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
We would like to recognize the support and backing amongst so many great people here in and around our central, OH area. We have the support from such organizations like the Columbus Chamber of Commerce who was gracious to include us in their Urban Business Connection program and Experience Columbus who has constantly acknowledged and shared our space to their clients. The city council has been a huge factor to making things a success for ourselves. There are so many connections that we could go on and on about how much we appreciate the support of our city. We have a strong family who constantly gives us gas to keep the fire going and so the list is endless. We are so thankful for all those who constantly keep Noir Lounge in their minds, hearts and spirit.

Website: www.noircolumbus.com

Instagram: www.instagram.com/noircolumbus

Facebook: www.facebook.com/noircolumbus

Other: Find us on Tik Tok as well!