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  • #16
    Okay I read everything again and I don't sound too (insert the R word)
    sigpic

    Another fabulous post from the U.S.Department of Wild Imaginings, now in spectaclar stereo, sponsored by the Adhesives and Sealants Council, suggesting ways to stick things together since the 1800s. Not fabulous in a gay way. Your results may vary. Illinois residents add 8% sales tax. These posts have been made by professional post makers, do not try this type of posting on your own without extensive training, lovely assistants and a trusty clown horn.

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    • #17
      The title of my new book and companion movie/theater experience to be performed in December 2012, is:

      Dude, Where's my Business!?!

      What has happened in the performance in the past 10 years has been a historical watching of the haunt market over the past 3 decades. Originally there was a Jaycees haunt that still exists every year and a small volunteer fire department in a crusty old building that got a new giant building 4 times the normal size of any area fire halls. In the old crusty building they would drape black plastic and someone under the influence of beer would put out a sign that said haunted house $5. Which I drove by never ever wanting to be attacked by drunks where they thought is was somehow great fun.

      So the Jaycees used a money guy to do their books one year and so we had the charts of how much business they did for real. Most years hovered around 2800 people per year. One year all the magic came together for some reason and they saw 7500 people and then back to 2800. In a different location every year. Despite the fact that one crew got in there and increased the size and depth of the haunt from about 3,000 SF to 6,000 SF. And some of these locations they were getting from year to year were pretty sweet you would think population and traffic wise.

      All of my studies of what haunted houses did when properly advertised made me think this is 12,000 ticket town. So I had done a biker party for 3,000 bikers, a one night deal pretty much for free but we had spent 6 weeks building strange things out of strange materials and it was fun. One or two items actually made it to the first haunt and on to our first free TV coverage. The biker party was a lot of work and someone got $10 a head and I got a free night in my own front yard and 6 weeks worth of work to be at the party. I guess it did have an intented purpose as on of my businesses at the time was being the secret airbrush and gold leaf guy to a motorcycle shop so perhaps it was advertising, culture and customer appreciation/initiation times.

      I drove around to about a dozen haunts every year in a hearse which was a great conversation piece to get into everyones attendance, history and plans for the future. Everyone shared freely lloking for possible suggestions. Once my haunt was opened I lost contact due to timing to this cycle that was going on.

      One night I decided to try the firehall haunt, that was in black plastic in a about a third of this building in a 3,000 SF open space. No one else was there and the radios chirped that they were going to get the guy in the hearse. So it is the guy in a hearse that has walked through hundreds of haunts to the point of not flinching versus everyone fueled by beer. Which brings me back to my child hood. It is all history. So I didn't flinch at the chainsaw, saw masks that were presidential candidates at the time, a fat girl on a hospital bed and a stupid horn and lights in the dark. It was $8 and I sat in the lobby for a good 20 minutes while the has a break before being told it was time. So everyone went to the back yard and had a beer. They were obviously SO busy they needed a break.

      Now the biker pary and my motorcycle paint job business had me at the attitude that there are 3000 biker people of which there are per year at least 5 serious high dollar paint jobs done, it was a side business for me. I also am seeing air brush magazines doing lazer tags, side shows and haunted houses in addition to automotive graffix and commercial vehicle signage. My main business is at that time an automotive job, part time working in the summers with designer concrete companies, air brushing motorcycles, attending parties that bring the local motorcycle club big money with about 4 parties a year on laces that are 20 acres or more in the middle of nowhere transformed into kind of a burning man thing. Usually they charge $20 for a weekend and $40 for a vendor.

      It turns out the guy that gave us the information about the books of the Jaycees is still a one that every few years wrecks and gets a new $4,000 paint job again, a regular customer also with a drinking problem. Which is why he always has the nearly most innovative bike to replace the old pieces. This is great because most people take my airbrush jobs and leave them in their man cave or living room nd maybe 2 people ever see it, it never hits the streets as they enjoy their own little museum of their life.

      Many more motorcycle shops started up as it must have been so easy to do this stuff and it of course takes 5 shops to work on those 5 bikes that are spending real money. It took 2 or 3 years for every one to go out of business, get a divorce and the motorcycle enthusiasts would go to the big cities to get their work done rather than hear about how the divorce went down.

      The design concrete company was something I had already entrepenriaized as an employee. I worked for this guy for 2 days and 4 years later I took over his company as his wife took off with his 5 kids and this business had not made them multi millionairs. When I found this guy, he was renting equipment, putting little door tags at high dollar houses to find work and buying materials from someone that charged about 3 times too much for it. And of course borrowing money to get to work and do all these "jobs". I came up with how about own the equipment, buy the materials direct and work for pool and commercial contractors instead of advertising like a newspaper route. When he left everyone was thrilled that the guy actually doing the fancy designs was who they got to talk to and it was successful.
      sigpic

      Another fabulous post from the U.S.Department of Wild Imaginings, now in spectaclar stereo, sponsored by the Adhesives and Sealants Council, suggesting ways to stick things together since the 1800s. Not fabulous in a gay way. Your results may vary. Illinois residents add 8% sales tax. These posts have been made by professional post makers, do not try this type of posting on your own without extensive training, lovely assistants and a trusty clown horn.

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      • #18
        Meanwhile the halloween biker party thing got me into accumulating things, coffins found, dummies were made, my shop was a labarinth of haunted house just to come see the weird airbrush guru. You actually entered the shop and went through a hole in the wall, into a room with bridges and stobes like a swamp, then through a submarine door, into a room with rats and coffins with stupid purple lights and lots of skeletons to the door where the weird artist was. On the walls were tests of 3 D air brushing that I got pretty good at and every year I had a shopping spree to find halloween decor that also doubled as art references for motorcycle artwork.

        JB Corn, had Castle Dragon. It had many years of raising money for a childrens theater school and had grown to being 5600 SF on a wood deck, with a metal roof. Every year on his website were his articles about how to scare someone and actually the 1986 design for Castle Dragon and more than half the lumber money came from Leonard Pickel. Instead of doing well it was sitting in 4 feet of water for 2 weeks. It got hosed out and only ran for a week. Following years it was open but never did great. It was intended to be a low profile fund raiser. It was decorated by JB Corn and had wild interpretational paintings done by children. Some of these children went on to work at other Texas Attractions later in life. Most of the attraction had been around and weird inventions cobbled into it since 1979. So JB Corn got Lukemia. It went to another place which after about a year split up and a good segment of what no one used in the 3 attractions there were the pay off to someone and I bought them.

        For me it was the best way to understand how the walls were built. I had no idea how to lay out the floor pattern and they had been in a flood. They were double sided panels and very heavy. When ever things were slow at the concrete design jobs, we would take the panels apart, repaint them, and make them lighter and single sided. They had all kinds of weird things no one uses, wiring inside panels you just hook together with terminal strips, 12 volt systems, emergency lights embedded into the panels, special door panels and what I would call "crazy panels" All the ones no one else thought were "scary" to me were the ones that were the most creative. Cut out holes and chicken wire, several layers of wood to make spider web ooking things, jail cells, mouth shapes with prison bars, cathedral like arch windows and openings. Crazy swirly muticolor washes and little kids paintings of ghosts that I really should have kept like it was art. Some of it in the repainting I actually repainted the designs.

        So how to do the floor layout? The solution was to pay Leonard Pickel $2500 I had heard as a consulting fee for a drawing or what. I didn't have a location or a plan really to have a haunt at all. I thought our rebuild would have been sold or rented to someone and we were in the scenic design business. The concrete design thing got me into haunts as we built an outdoor cave for an attraction with our equipment. Leonard was setting up in North Dallas and I was able to go help for free the day he was taking his napkin drawing and putting the marks on the floor. I laid the tape, and watched the measuring of the grid and saw how the doors and walls went together in a triangular grid patern and saved $2500. Infact I did a facade job for him that made money in concrete. That's just how I am.

        He found us other facade jobs and I watched places that normally saw 25,000 people jump to 35,000 people just because we redid their facades. So for like $1200 I'm making people at $18 a ticket $180,000? How does that work out.

        SO I went through the black plastic fire hall haunt and told them black plastic is very bad, you are fire fighters and should know better. They had been doing the haunt and drinking beer through several generations and this was a tradition that actually buys medical supplies for the medical team they have and puts tire on the fire trucks. I have Castle Dragon pieces in storage. The following year, they call like September 15th and are kind of thinking about halloween. A month later it was on TV, 3,000 SF. The lobby was also decorated and the queue line was outdoors in Texas. In later years we were able to have the queue line indoors in the other 3,000 SF and they added an outdoor trail through 2 acres of woods and creek beds. Every year it would increase in detail, the triangular grid designs would just get flopped and because there were 6 fire trucks each with 3,000 gallons of water and pumps, we never needed a sprinkler system. In fact the fire marshal never came. A building inspection was never sought. Yet, I had exits every 5o linear foot and had the core design built into 1000 SF sections. seperatated from each other with elaborate outdoor bridges and water effects. Kind of fire breaks and access corridors built in plus hundreds of secret ways actors get through the swiss cheese of things but the customers have no idea in a triangular grid where the are after the first 12 feet.
        sigpic

        Another fabulous post from the U.S.Department of Wild Imaginings, now in spectaclar stereo, sponsored by the Adhesives and Sealants Council, suggesting ways to stick things together since the 1800s. Not fabulous in a gay way. Your results may vary. Illinois residents add 8% sales tax. These posts have been made by professional post makers, do not try this type of posting on your own without extensive training, lovely assistants and a trusty clown horn.

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        • #19
          So, if you went through oe of Leonard Pickel's attractions, there were very few props, actual rooms and all the acting was done from the other side of the walls. One guy would follow and torment a group from the other side of the walls. Not scary but they got the $8. So instead of one guy following your group I had so much crap in there and detail in props inspired by Verdun Manor, I had 45 actors working in 3,000 SF to where you rarely went more than 12 feet in a triangular grid unable to see around the next bend and something was happening. The combination actually had customers that just came from and evening at Verdun Manor with 3 attractions look at the outside of the building after going through and turn the head like a dog that just heard a weird noise and proclaim we really had something.

          So this heavily detailed, high actor, triangular grid actually stood up to the 6,000 SF Jaycees length. Using triangles it was the same walking distance. With so much going on it took sometimes half an hour for groups to get through and there were no places where a group stopped and listened to a skit. It was how long it took people to recover from perhaps 25 crazy encounters.

          So meanwhile. I have dinner with two advertising guys that want to open a haunt and tell them this town is good for 12,000 people. They end up working 2 years as the main contributors with the local Jaycees haunt and figure out what works with social media, bill boards. radio, size, designs and acting. They begin creating their own masks and characters and start a secret casting facility that I would regularly visit. I gave them big fans so they didn't kill themselves working with silicones and urethanes and watched young guys playing with sculpt pieces wondering how to engineer good molds. I relayed all the scenic design skills I had and the Jaycees haunt regularly went from 2800 people to 4,300 customers. For a third year they did what I was always wondering about and did side attactions at the Jaycees haunt. In otherwords they made money finally off of the greater number of customers they learned how to get for the Jaycees. Got connected with all the local independent film guys with lead them to a wide spread number of people that automatically wanted to be in if there was a new haunt.

          This three year education and ad marketing skills now proven, they rented an 8,000 SF building and put up 200 walls with animatronics, and all the things in a modern haunt. They set up in town and had to go through all the fire retardant problems and ultimately install a fire detection and show shut down panel. Their first year they saw 7500 people, the same number that had existed that decade ago at the best Jaycees year. They had something.

          In previous years the fire hall and the Jaycees fought and called the fire marshalls on each other. Now this new haunt, the Jaycees and the fire hall are made to all get along by us and trade advertising materials among each other. The secind year, the new haunt saw 10,000 people. I got screwed by the fire hall and had to do my attraction outdoors lke circa 1979 Castle dragon as the money now comes from the county and homeland security to buy 14 fire trucks. My charity money is now buying big screen TV's, automatic garage door openers and computers. The board of directors now is just deciding how much they will charge, not the original people I had a deal with percentage wise.

          So I made a bold move. I sold Castle Dragon to the young advertising guys and my hearse to be their second attraction. They can now charge a combo ticket and see as many as parking will allow. The fire hall and the Jaycees got together last year and did a combined effort and word if they hate each other again.

          SO in the mean time I had a few consulting leads to others in about a 50 mile radius wanting to have an attraction of sorts and did the marketing and population expectations to all the surrounding areas but never liked the deals. The young guys and I came up with the same conclusion for someone's business was to get near the major highway in between two major towns and buy the property. Yet there is no infastructure in those areas yet that can power a big water supply or sprinkler system so we are talking lakes, pumps, real buildings.

          Of course the economy is down as well. The haunt seeing 10,000 people has a lease to play out and more success to experience.
          sigpic

          Another fabulous post from the U.S.Department of Wild Imaginings, now in spectaclar stereo, sponsored by the Adhesives and Sealants Council, suggesting ways to stick things together since the 1800s. Not fabulous in a gay way. Your results may vary. Illinois residents add 8% sales tax. These posts have been made by professional post makers, do not try this type of posting on your own without extensive training, lovely assistants and a trusty clown horn.

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          • #20
            he motorcycle shop was my landlord and had a divorce. SO we moved closer to town into a more expensive shop building. The recession and weather dependent concrete design business watched other companies become formed from the original companies and old companies fold. Then the newer companies and my core job finders totally changed. Instead of corporate ordering, I now work for all the people those bigger companies fired and went out and started their own business. How tough is it I'm sure they think to find work, call in subcontractors and write out checks. One company lead to another and then lead to 8 seperate entities. Meanwhile the highest money year for my kind of business was probably 2005. No one told me, I was watching haunted house.

            Haunted houses in Texas general had a hay day about a decade ago. There were too many, way too much spent on marketing and little spent on the actual haunts. Great sizes meant lack of ability to detail them properly and have effective acting and they generally sucked for $20 a pop. I had stopped doing my rounds of visiting haunts because even getting in free to all the places I have helped or freinds I now have didn't make up for $75 in gas in the hearse.

            I had to spend the haunted house money on a new truck for the concrete design business. Now when I started this hobby, I had a helper that had been with me for 5 years I could rely on and was making $20,000 I had no idea what to do with. If I didn't spend it on something that was not a tax deduction it would just go away in taxes. I already had two of every kind of equipment. That helper died and so did the yearly amount of work available to contractors. Plus I kept comparing haunted house businesses to the construction trade and back and forth. Each made the other better and keep up a tremendous reputation. But, there is no money, enough to get by. That helpful helper died before seeing the haunt set up, or the new big shop. The custom paint job business died. Simply being 4 miles away meant they couldn't drop sheet metal off at 4AM and expect it back the next day.

            Plus all the motorcycle guys were kind of retarded. They couldn't see do to age, had years of fumes in their brains, if you gave them a pencil to describe what flames or pinstiped design would look like it looked like a 3rd grader with muscular distrophy. Plus their real customer base is down to one customer a year and they have figured out how to do their own air brushing. I was needed at a point and it was all intresting. Now I can't see that well either. Maybe I'm getting a little retarded and the young guys have developed so many skills.

            When I was their age there were no haunted houses. Art was discouraged unless you were going to live like a hobo or pay an art school and end up in a printing shop as a graphics designer and I was preoccupied being a genious for governent subcontractors. Trying to make that million dollars everyone said I would make if I just got out into the private sector. But, I was told I would make a million dollars from people that only knew how to get jobs, fill out applications, not people that had made more than a paycheck, filed for unemployment and showed up for work every day. What did they know. Back in the day if there was a 1.5 million dollar job the 70 year old guy that got the job stole all the money. The reagan trickle down economy only peed on me.

            I have been though watching Pittsburgh PA completely shut down 8 major steel factory, the Japanese no longer being in the business of funding major private enterprise and 3.5 million people moved from that town in search of any jobs at all. I ended up in Tyler Texas which 20 years ago was a glorified truck stop and took over a major tire company shipping lot with 28 national carriers. I had taught a freind from high school how to take over a company and they decided they really didn't need to pay any taxes on the employees of federal or have insurance or have the trucks registered or for that matter brakes on the trucks used to move the trailers around. Who cares, just make sure the trailer air brakes realy work before going too far. So they had the IRS come in on them. I made some money in a car lot over a year and bought them out and that was kind of a distraction running a 24 hour a day business. Plus actually loading the trailers with 1700 tire in 6 hours. Actually making the money the old fashioned way in trailers out in the hot Texas sun and doing double shifts and answering the phone 24 hours a day, loading a trailer if someone didn't show up. Luckily after a year and a half the economy tore that one apart too. Trucking companies reorganized, got taken over and liquidated, some decided to not come to Texas at all. I sold it to the competitor with the good carriers gone and walked out into the world.

            JB Corn died before I ever met him but I had his haunt. Lance Pop died and I was only occasionally able to talk to him. The town that was a glorified truck stop became a place to buy property on golf courses and around lakes that are McMansions with swimming pools and big screen TVS at a third the cost of what they would be in California or up north. So Big business owners move here and need concrete design to cover up crappy concrete work on thrown together properties. Two years ago I had no idea I needed to downsize my concrete company. Two months too late was all it took to have to get a bail out. And the only person that would loan me money of course was a haunted house investor that I'm still indebt to. The normal so called sources of capital were never available to a business or to someone that is an independent contractor. You are supposed to give the bank stacks of cash and they will loan you your own money secured to run you business. That sounds like a deal doesn't it.

            If you have a job with a repeating pay check they will lend you money for a tuba or money to vaction in aruba but of course nothing meaningful like starting a business and then being in we don't know if you are going to make any money land. So a business is supposed to have stacks of cash, pay the government and it has to be a certain level they can prey on and demonstrated to be big money to be able to get any capital. A business plan is totally worthless. Who are you going to show it to? Are you going to do living room power point discussions to suckers that might loan you $50 like an Amway meeting or a Tuper ware party? I hear sex toy parties make money.
            sigpic

            Another fabulous post from the U.S.Department of Wild Imaginings, now in spectaclar stereo, sponsored by the Adhesives and Sealants Council, suggesting ways to stick things together since the 1800s. Not fabulous in a gay way. Your results may vary. Illinois residents add 8% sales tax. These posts have been made by professional post makers, do not try this type of posting on your own without extensive training, lovely assistants and a trusty clown horn.

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            • #21
              When I had the charity haunt, every year they would hand me some money and I would let them keep a certain amount of the props and masks. I saw it as being like a party rental business and you get to steal the centerpiece. Most of the expensive props I have never went into the haunt to get destroyed or grabbed.

              So I have a coffin, a nice werewolf, a mannequin girlfriend, a saw blade collection, 100 stryrofoam wig heads, 2 dogs, a company that has become more like a job only with no regular pay check, a debt and somehow I became old and retarded. We are in a recession, The local McMansions all have for sale by owner signs on them and the concrete design business instead of doing fancy designs and luxury cover up of concrete does repaints and pressure washing, cleaning off dog poop so people can sell their house or a hotel just doing a paint job on their pool instead of really fixing it. It has gone through a full cycle. We began redoing everyone's old poorly done jobs and this is where it is at now.

              Yet, these young guys have proved to me the haunt market still works no matter what. Even in a down economy and maybe especially in a down economy. People go to be entertained to forget the real problems in their life even if it is only for 20 minutes.

              Being a business owner, in all the different forms I have been, You kind of for go all the fancy expenses anyhow and put everything into your business. When times are tough people are crying and you have already gone years and years not having all this stuff they are whining about. It doesn't matter if you are making $8,000 a week or $300 a week or $700 a week or making someone 10 million dollars a month, you generally live on about $20 to $30 a day and everything else goes into overhead or investment that either may prove to be something or is just expected behavior.

              With my current business I can run around and weasel $1000 in materials and go to work and have maybe $2500 in a few weeks. With a haunt, that $30 you spent might not get paid back for 5 years when it is actually out there a few years and customers have leased it for 3 seconds. The scale of justifying savings, investment and when you are going to get paid and paying storage on something that may never happen to the level you want it to is a hard road.

              I miss my hearse. I miss the haunted house but someone took the market I helped develop and went with it. Plus even though their income sounds impressive, it really isn't. They were young advertising guys, expected yearly income between $50,000 and $100,000. With their extremely successful haunt and the advertising company nearly down the tubes maybe because of having a pro haunt and the feeling there was something more fun to do with their lives, I'll bet they are down to about $25,000 per year or less. They have gone from working for someone, to being self employed to doing what gypsys do entertaining the drunken villagers just crazy enough to go to the outskirts of town or to the wrong side of the rail road tracks. How is that a real business? Certainly that is what some $18,000 per year bank loan officer has been trained to think.

              It isn't a business actually. Although everyone ries to make it all "industry" sounding. It is a life style. Or at the full on million dollar levels it migh be a quick promotion that is only going to last a year or two and never pay everyone. The other night on Hulu I found an episode of Shark Tank. These two old dude magicians wanted 1.4 million dollars to build a 25,000 SF event right on Times Square, how much does it cost in overhead per year? 7.4 million. FAIL. Yet I'm sure they got those numbers somewhere. I'll bet they even paid a consultant with some kind of vetting $25,000 to put all that in writing. Who cares no one will ever do it, here is a book of numbers that will be $25,000, it isn't my ass on the line. Fail again and there might have been no warning that it wasn't the right thing to do. Sure it will be the first EVER, no one has done it before! It will be stupendis.
              sigpic

              Another fabulous post from the U.S.Department of Wild Imaginings, now in spectaclar stereo, sponsored by the Adhesives and Sealants Council, suggesting ways to stick things together since the 1800s. Not fabulous in a gay way. Your results may vary. Illinois residents add 8% sales tax. These posts have been made by professional post makers, do not try this type of posting on your own without extensive training, lovely assistants and a trusty clown horn.

              Comment


              • #22
                But, if you really want to, you can make money from anything and save as much as you want. You can spend a hundred years living on a fixed income and everyone thinks you are rich while they go to the movies and you sit and think about how to make money or what things should look like and how to build things. Can you find the time, the few spare dollars and pay for the storage for say 10 years?

                Can you put yourself in the position to weasel not people but organizations to get a building, permits, fire codes, building codes, safty inspections? Can you weasel other organizations to sponsor your advertising campaign, to provide piza for your actors, to pay for your insurance? Sure you can.

                How much does it cost? Absolutely nothing, draw it out with a pen you stole off the counter at a bank.
                How big was it? How big can you make it? It should be big enough and detailed enough that people talk about it. It has to compare to ones in your area and be different somehow. It has to be better. It could be 100,000 SF of junk cars. Be creative and then cash in the scrap value every January. Or fill it with real antiques that you blow dust on for halloween and then polish and sell for $5,000 a piece, I would go with french furnitings.

                If you drive around here, it always has been, that the signs say, airconditioning and then there is a sign for taxidermy or transmission repair and arts and crafts. No one business seems to get it or occupy the income needs and so the whole family has to work. If you don't have a family you have to somehow buy every friend you can. No one is going to hang around because they like your teeth or the way you smile or the way you gas out the bathroom. Everyone wants money or to hang around because you have sandwitches. So how are you going to provide this environment that people will come to your tuperware party. This year and every year?

                For me the haunted house was the greatest thing ever because every year after setting it up all my workers would quit and I didn't have to lay anyone off for winter or have my unemployment insurance rates go up. By time the next season rolled around they would understand they were pretty much unemployable anywhere else. Get in the truck. But what they despised was not necessarily the work. Everyone quit because I was helping the community instead of handing them bigger stacks of cash. I was developing markets even though they had no understanding that the job we are jumping in the truck to go do day after day is someone I have talked to fo months or years. To an employee mind set it is all magic. You know what they say on TV about how to have a business. What some 2 year college student writting an article for Yahoo news thinks you should do to save money. How they think someone made a million dollars and you should do that too.

                Of course they say you should save up 2 years total expenses before engaging in a business. Bullshit, you just go to work. No one would ever save that much or get that much in advance even if you were in silicon valley and had a cool glitter idea for facebook advertising or the latest iphone app.


                Having your own business is more like the special olympics. Even if you win, you are still.................
                sigpic

                Another fabulous post from the U.S.Department of Wild Imaginings, now in spectaclar stereo, sponsored by the Adhesives and Sealants Council, suggesting ways to stick things together since the 1800s. Not fabulous in a gay way. Your results may vary. Illinois residents add 8% sales tax. These posts have been made by professional post makers, do not try this type of posting on your own without extensive training, lovely assistants and a trusty clown horn.

                Comment


                • #23
                  Oh yes, just before one season at the firehall haunt, it never happened because two fire fighters died so everything was like starting out completely over again in a new location with not as much help. And the first year they thought I guess that Walt Disney himself was here to give them a billion dollars worth of crap and he could do it all himself, perhps he would call in a few imagineers to offer their spare time.

                  Everybody dies. A great number of very succesful haunts have had partners die after so many years and that signaled the beginning of the end to what is once was.

                  So, is this a side job? A long term investment? Dabling in philanthropy? A hobby that just means no more vacation spending? A learning experience? A taste at independence and self fullfillment? Running away with the circus? Doing something crazy with out the lasting effects of a tattoo?

                  Is it a what can you get from the dumpster gameshow? What industrial waste can you make money on having customers rent to see it and then sell for scrap value? What bugs like to eat long term experiment? How to have your entire family tree freak out and think you are evil and weird and should not really be in any wills? A way to hire the most attractive personal assistant and costume coordinator? A way to provide work for people? A way to make sure other people develop some skills and self confidence as well? An opportunity to even have handicapped people scare people that other wise would never get out of the house? A way to feed a charity money that is buying things you don't even have or thought you could afford?

                  Is it something to fall back on? Something to fall forward to? Is is something to make your life a living hell because you are on the Hauntworld Forum at 4:48 in the morning and tomorrow have to paint a 1500 SF pool deck? In other words it already is tomorrow?

                  If you actually have a job, you might know you have little money, even run short and some will be available again with that next check. When you are self employed every check is your last and so you don't spend it. Maybe won't spend it unless you know there is a good outcome. When you run out of money you are in trouble. You have maybe an accounts recievable but that doesn't have a real time schedule. And you never know you are broke until you are in to the laundry money, having a net worth of $14 is a normal thing. Even if there is $20,000 on paper or in future projects. It is definitely a lifestyle difference.

                  Having a job with limited income and having failure doesn't work either. Burdens just pile up and accumulate over time. You can't plan for anything. The business cycles of the world in my life time have gone from every 30 years to every year. The entire global economy is working like a farmers harvest and then throw in a tsunami and some radiation.

                  But as an artist, you can build things of value out of nothing. Out of garbage. It could become 1.4 million dollars. Or it could be 80 people show up and eat all the free snacks and leave. Untill you put it out there you just don't know. And you aren't land locked. They might not like it here but they love it 50 miles or 500 miles away. Even 1500 miles away. Then you have to discover things that the two extreme locations desire and trade things back and forth. Ideas from Texas might not work in Michigan. The garbage you started out with is different.
                  sigpic

                  Another fabulous post from the U.S.Department of Wild Imaginings, now in spectaclar stereo, sponsored by the Adhesives and Sealants Council, suggesting ways to stick things together since the 1800s. Not fabulous in a gay way. Your results may vary. Illinois residents add 8% sales tax. These posts have been made by professional post makers, do not try this type of posting on your own without extensive training, lovely assistants and a trusty clown horn.

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                  • #24
                    So who knows how money really works?

                    Somehow people that are $250,000 in debt need to take a cruise to get over it. You pay the land lord and they go off for a mini vacation. You finish a job and the company you did the work for has a new truck sitting there and of course for some reason your check isn't coming yet.

                    I came upon the $20 idea watching the slow operation at the motorcycle shop. The man's wide paid all the untilities, the parties were to pay the property taxes they had neglected every year, all the other buildings paid the mortgage and the insurances. So all he needed was to run his business and do just enough work to feed and cloth himself and bolt more things, paint more wild things on his motorcycle. A customer would come in that actually bought something rather than just come by to get an update about motorcycles in general and where the parties were or free advice. He would sell one thing with dismal commission and he was GONE! I would say as he left, what, did you make $20 already? Yes! so long! It was a joke but it was so true.

                    Buisness property being somehow paid for with no rent seems to be a big ingredient to alot of companies mixes. They had help by parents who wanted to make sure their son or daughter who was a little off could make it. Maybe the parents got the extra $100 a month from all the rent collections? Then even in the termil of a divorce or a bankruptsy somehow the guy who set up this ig weasel somehow gets to keep his plot of land and building that represents a business and everyone else's property gets sold out from under them when they were the one's paying anyhow. Then with out a wife, the man actually has to focus on paying the phone bill, the electric bill, the insurance payments and taxes on the property. No one comes to a party and he has gone from $20 and the ability to escape for a days entertainment to $2 a day and having to go sand a motorcycle tank for someone. He goes months not having any customers or jobs he is able to pull off successfully but still he is living the life. The solution or him seemed to be to get a new wife.

                    Many other businesses here work in such a slow fashion. People sit around visiting like it is the lets tell jokes part of hee haw. It realy means they have nothing to do right now and are waiting for the next thing to spring into action. I don't have that. I have rent to pay and all those other bills, there will be no jabber jawing or visiting. But I looked back in my head and precisely when these people did nothing was where the wall street journal graphs showed a recession spike. One old woman with nick nacks and a garden decor iron work stand is actually the land lord to several business and says if she had to make a rent payment, her business would not work. If you ponder this with a younger go getter kind of guy they think that is something wrong, not the way to be at all. But, the old dudes and dudettes did figure out how to not have so many payments and can get buy and keep intrested in magical products and spend the time to know their customers because they aren't burdened with the hype of do it now sales ads and a phone bank of operators standing by to take your order.

                    You can make a million dollars all at one time and somehow everyone hates you or decides to become you or you can make a millon dollars a little bit over time and no one knows you are holding or not.
                    sigpic

                    Another fabulous post from the U.S.Department of Wild Imaginings, now in spectaclar stereo, sponsored by the Adhesives and Sealants Council, suggesting ways to stick things together since the 1800s. Not fabulous in a gay way. Your results may vary. Illinois residents add 8% sales tax. These posts have been made by professional post makers, do not try this type of posting on your own without extensive training, lovely assistants and a trusty clown horn.

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                    • #25
                      On my Yahoo music channel and advertisement comes is. Airbrush action dot com is having a trade show in Las Vegas, at some specific hotel, 5 days only! You too can learn how to make thousands full or part time airbrushing T-shirts, tanning and custom automotive graphics! Seminars on how to start and tun your own airbrush business, meet air brush masters! This makes me want to throw up and take all the airbrushes I have accumulated over the last 20 years, take them all outside and melt them together into a disgusting glob.

                      But, really what happens is all these people spend $1000 to get there, maybe buy $1700 worth of stuff, and have their head spinning about the wonders of making an extra $15 for 4 hours worth of work. Using paint that has been on the store shelves and in some cargo container on the high seas for a decade that won't blow through their expensive equipment and they are doomed to fail even if they are the top 2% that can actually move their hand the right way. Th hype phenomina is how I got thousands of dollars worth of airbrushes on the cheap as they never got cleaned the first time or alas the new owners were faced with the fact they had no skill and for them it meant using stencils and that is no fun.

                      In reality, you only need one good airbrush, brand new fresh paint and some practice no one seems to understand. You look at pictures of what has been done since the craze of the late 50's of old dudes smoking cigarettes on their knees putting some crude doodle on someone's car. The rest is history.

                      In all the scenarios I listed above for haunted house real performances, they all even when it appeared that magically their first year was stupendous? It was really about their 5th or 6th year of practicing. Experimenting with other people's money until they saw how to make money themselves. Their programs were already trimmed to what was absolutely necessary. The people that are trying to be really informative starting out telling you how they use a bug sprayer to apply blood in the movies are deemed insane and left behind.

                      So one way of getting into it is obviously buying what others realized for them was going to be a dissapointment or a financial burden. In haunted houses people sell things because they didn't make enough money to keep paying storage or never got that first just right situation but the accumulation of things is easy. Making the commitment to spend a couple hours per object is artistry. At least it is the total sum of what art school will teach for a fee. If you spend a couple of hours on something, it might look like something and keep a viewers attention. But then the art teacher writes Very Good A+ right on the drawing you spent hours on and defaces it, making it total garbage. Is this what I'm supposed to lean? Don't let some bald guy touch your drawing after you spent so much time on it? Someone will think they are somebody and tell you what they think and we really haven't seen the bald guy do anything so what gives him the right. What does he know anyhow? Maybe art sucks because it is treated like it is disposable like all the thing from Walmart? You are supposed to buy it cheap, let you pet poop on it and throw it away.

                      One of the funny twists of the haunted house is here, you not only don't get to buy and take away the art, you only get to pay to see it and can't see it just anywhere. Plus the final twist is, you just paid to see what you all threw ot last year and how scary that is? Being haunted by the rubbish you didn't take care of. Now it has little googly eyes and a voice and it is talking to you. It is wondering why you don't give a shit. Look deep into it's eyes.

                      Now going directly into $50,000 rent, insurance and advertising expense based in the life of crap is a very bold move. So lets say in reviewing all the scenarios of what haunts turned out to be a success, the first haunts and take overs generally only risked 5 to $10,000 and they were acculated over about 5 or 6 years. All the other heavy expenses were covered by people who somehow had money but no hands on talent. I haven't figured out how in life that happens, all the people that have money can perhaps see what they can't do and this becomes an opportunity over looked by the ones with talent? It really shouldn't have that high a value if everyone can do it but, the ones that can do it are kind of blind and confused that they actually have in their world every day skills others would pay big bucks for. Perhaps actually doing and getting money still over looks that fundamental situation.

                      Well, time to go do what I think is expected behavior.
                      sigpic

                      Another fabulous post from the U.S.Department of Wild Imaginings, now in spectaclar stereo, sponsored by the Adhesives and Sealants Council, suggesting ways to stick things together since the 1800s. Not fabulous in a gay way. Your results may vary. Illinois residents add 8% sales tax. These posts have been made by professional post makers, do not try this type of posting on your own without extensive training, lovely assistants and a trusty clown horn.

                      Comment


                      • #26
                        AWESOME advice Greg. You hit the nail on the head. Everything you pointed out is so true and is a valuable lesson for any haunter.
                        I'm only doing this to impress 2 people ... The fire marshal and the customer that's it !!!

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                        • #27
                          Oh crap, it looks like I have been typing on the internet again.
                          sigpic

                          Another fabulous post from the U.S.Department of Wild Imaginings, now in spectaclar stereo, sponsored by the Adhesives and Sealants Council, suggesting ways to stick things together since the 1800s. Not fabulous in a gay way. Your results may vary. Illinois residents add 8% sales tax. These posts have been made by professional post makers, do not try this type of posting on your own without extensive training, lovely assistants and a trusty clown horn.

                          Comment


                          • #28
                            Are you in the middle of adjusting your meds Greg? Some pearls in all that though...lol.
                            www.Stiltbeaststudios.com
                            http://www.youtube.com/user/Stiltbea...s?feature=mhee

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                            • #29
                              My House is my art gallery.

                              Nothing is for sale, I "Rent" them the experience. (Tee shirts, bumper stickers, a little book are for sale)
                              I knew a very successful and talented artist who had much trouble from those art gallery owners (Used car salesman?)
                              They would not do their part of promoting his shows, like forgetting to send him his money,or send out the invites from their customer list, good thing he told his patrons about the show and sold something like 43 works that first day out of 47 available! ( I was there with him) "Why am I paying you people?" I'm taliking about pieces that sold for $800 to $2,200! And this was 40 years ago! Yes he had much success by anyone's standards but too many art gallery people were really just wanna bees, hobbiests who had alot of money to play with, usually someone else's.
                              My artist friend/mentor said "Goodby" to gallerys many years ago, now after about 25 books published of his art.....
                              I am not supremely talented in any one area but I work hard, long hours and have unusual ideas that I work toward creating in this physical realm, anybody can have "ideas", and ideas is where everything entertaining starts but I bring them to life here.
                              My place is not typical as defined by the current definition of the term "Haunted House", and the "Not Typical" is what most of my customers seem to like(and pay for)
                              I adjust the tours to try to fit and entertain whatever type of a group is sitting there looking at me, which is fun for me!
                              hauntedravensgrin.com

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                              • #30
                                Thanks Greg i will have to read that one more time. but its great advice from what i have gotten out of it so far. will have to change a few things for this year have a few more things to look at. will let everyone know what will be ahead for this haunter. thanks everyone foe your input!!
                                In Darkness they hunt the living
                                http://www.DarkMatterScreamWorks.com

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