your first year

[Greg Chrise]

The last two years or so of what all has happened with the economy really rattled around some long term fundamental things. Real estate was supposed to be the best investment ever and increase in value from 4% to 10% every year no matter what. Fail. It became evident that all the big banks are leveraged out 32:1, just how global the economy has become is unraveling every day. Even big money players had their big investments they were all braggy about crash to it's original dollar figure from 10 years prior. All retirement plans are being questioned and under attack as non sustainable.

There is a silver lining to this. The spend it now crowd that spends money to somehow make a job or opportunity for someone else wins. Those that hoarded money got a spanking and the taxes will change to spank them in the future. Still there are literally 10,000 different haunt stories out there and just duplicating one version of it seems to limited. You have to determine what social networks and advertising works for you in you specific area. If I start giving away everyone's secret formula for success it will just cause problems. Those that are tageting 3 or 5 towns with big private investment groups they fashioned for themselves verses the village idiots of the world who have somehow paid for everything themselves and they aren't on anyone else's schedule of when things get done or to what extent they have to get done to look cool. Still there are benefits to being small and there is a coolness to not having corporate feel behind it.

Plan 22, starts getting into danger zones of having a back up plan. Kelly Allen's book describes Team building. I'm saying the crew from the movie from Armagedon is assembled when volunteers and employees attempt to show you how so dependent you are on them. Even volunteer haunts, no one shows up when it is time to tear things down and someone has to go in and get the haunt and package every thing up and haul it out. Once I began doing this entirely by myself and of all people my secretary came later in the evening and helped put walls on trailers and props into hearse and get it out. I described this to a haunter friend a year later or so and he remarked "she's a keeper". While stupid people stood and watched like it was none of their business or they had somehow paid for this. Of course the last time I moved the haunt, it was a big surprise. Me and a helper went in and disassembled it in about half a day and 6 people from the new owners and I moved it outin abot 2 hours. Every year the charity would bring up the idea of them providing storage for it. Well, if they had the whole thing in their possesion what do they need to pay me for? I have heard lots of when the parties over stories.

Plan 23, suggests watching the last 20 minutes of the Willie Nelson movie "On the road again" Sometimes everyone takes what they see as the goal of the day and the real pros have a bigger goal.

Plan 24, wonder why there aren't a bunch of infomercials anymore about how you can buy real estate for no money down, find deals to lip and take advanta of owner financed deals, you don't even have to speak the language! It seems the borrowing money thing and not really having earned what you have means filing bankruptsy at some point, not paying a bunch of debts and taking what ever is liquid to live your life in Venesuala where it is worth 10 times what it is here. Don't drink the water.

Plan 25, there used to be a for $300 you can learn about all the credit unions and become a credit card millionaire and buy houses and sell them before intrest is due for a profit, you can buy cars at a deal what ever and flip it. So what happens to the poor sucker when there are no buyers out there? Some stocks have dropped just because of this. They put up a sale order and there aren't the hoards of buyers holding up tickets or poised on the internet buying program so the stock just goes down as it is apparently not in demand and thus a lower value. However if you have equipment and skills that can go to work they seem to command the same amount of money. What I'm saying is a haunt investor I know explained what they were doing to a financial advisor and they were stunned and told them to keep doing that. In lue of having an investor because they work mega population areas, investing in yourself is cool. Despite what someone with only a 2 year economics degree has been lead to believe.

The old dudes I used to ask advice had stupid things to relate. Instead of saying they don't know, they would have little ben franklin phrases to whip on you like the early bird catched the worm, the sun is up, if you aren't true to your teeth they will be false to you and the mega fail advice, that making a business out of hobby is very difficult. This is where they screwed up being in some form of business poised waiting for those hobbies to all in decades later to become billion dollar plus markets. Yeah enjoy you social security grandpa.

Plan 26, don't stress, or like the hitch hikers guide to the galaxy, don't panic. I have wandered into many haunt planning meetings and war rooms and watched the flurry of stress and making sure things are done a specific way. Just like every year about this time I see waitresses stressing filling out their tax returns to make sure their part time $2.65 is reported SO correctly and hope they are doing it all right. The customers to a haunt have no idea of what to expect and are generally smiling by anything you have to offer. The happier and less waves put toward the customers the better. No move it along bouncers or self appointed crowd managers with made up rules. Unless there is a problem, then it is full on storm trooper action. Sweep up the debris and it never happened. The IRS isn't going to go crazy on you unless $40,000 seems to have been reported due to them. They will be glad to use federal funds to help you get that together. Just don't owe money.

Plan 27, I have actually sat in the hearse with a cell phone and called people and told them it was time, right now, a good time to come. Kind of dialing for dollars. You develop a list of people who said they would come and call them on it. Don't tell me you would like to come and think I will forget. Bring money. Then there is the balancing act too of knowing where semi drivers are to move a trailer for one reason or another at any hour of the day or night. If a haunt other than your own owes you money this is an intresting collection technique. That and having a hearse so you can collect anything. Unfortunately this is what it gets down to when dealing with people who use buzz words like "budget" early in conversations and "partners" is another one to watch out for. It all starts to sound like a used car lot, she was supposed to make the payment! I thought he made the payment! Yeah, well we have your car so get together and talk about it. And it doesn't matter where you go, there are repo men 3,000 miles away that will answer the phone. After many years of this, you begin to recognize when someone wants YOU to be the one to do something for them, you are that special person they have been looking for. Really, why me?

Plan 28, Hearses are cool for stubborn collection days, making sure you get paid just prior someone turning themselves into the loony bin and closing their business for ever. However, they don't really work driving around askng customers to come to yor haunt. Maybe an art car is better. A hearse sitting at the haunt is great but it weirds people out that are potential customers out in the real world or the waitress you kind of are wondering where they are, they are hidding in the kitchen waiting for the serial killer to leave the parking lot. I had no idea serial killers were so up front like that. I always though like in the movies they all drive a dodge van. So that's what I drive now. You can still move a coffin if you have to, move the occasional dead werewolf or bring bicycles to little children. The first day I bought the hearse and was driving it home a little white car with some chick came up around me and waved all happy. I thought wow, this is going to be great? A hearse is a chick magnet! That never happened again for decades of driving around a 7800 pound 10 mpg car. One time I pulled up to the haunt and a girl came up and was super excited jumping up and down with long black hair to tell me what a cool car! She had 5 kids already.

Usually the only ones that think driving a hearse around are in the lane next to you, at speed, in the middle of a Molly Hatchet CD on their 2nd trip back from the beer store and they aren't really the desired haunt demographic. Don't be fooled by who thinks you are cool.

[Greg Chrise]

Plan 29, the signs that look hand made like huge garage sale today or wallermellons and potatoes here get more attention than the pro made signs on proffesional wire lawn carriers. So, it is nothing to spend lots of money on. Found materials are actually given credit by the paying population. High dollar graphix except on a web site seem to be a turn off. One place I went to off in the wilderness, you had to drive down a one lane road for about 4 miles at 25 miles per hour was about all you could do on a single lane roller coaster tar road. You would wonder if you were on the right country road. So this place had little signs up in the trees about 12 feet in the air on plywood with their haunt name. Each one progressively had one then two then a few more bloody hand prints on a white back ground at night. By the time I passed the 5th sign I was laughing my but off as the bloody hand prints were many by that time. Or there was the time I drove through 2 hours of cornfields talking through how everyone says you shouldn't actually go meet people you have met on the internet and I'm going hours into no where and that is where "they" are usually never discovered. In short making the journey to the haunt and all the finding of your information like a secret social game is a big plus. And all costs nothing but the time you put into it. There just isn't enough space in any of those little lines or the cover letter of a business plan are there. That cover letter ends up being a little short of full on hoop la for some reason. That's why they don't work. How do you spell Hoop Lah anyhow?

[Greg Chrise]

Plan 30, There is something funadamental that makes your time worth more money. Some willingness on your part to provide a certain quality or over and above performance and passion for what you do that changes you from a $10 per hour employee and you are supposed to be thankful and making between $30 and $50 per hour and being thanked for your service.

In the mind of the artist, to really pull things off, you hear stories of masters charging a dollar a minute for things that are a skill. You may even have 10 hours into a display and try to rationalize how this could possibly be worth $300 in labor or get someone to pay that amount. The difference comes from actually putting in that 10 hours freely and this steps up the game. Even a prop that was bought may in fact have been made by a person working for $10 an hour being employed by someone else taking $10 an hour to sell it and another $10 goes to over head. It is kind of tough to feel the excitement in being part of the machine, doing the same thing over and over because you think you have to. You don't have to. If you put your passion and a level of professionalism into your work you don't even have to advertise. People with enough money and a desire will find you.

It isn't simply build it and they will come. It's make it special no matter how small it is and people will seek you out. There has to be a certain something. An effort put into objects over and beyond I bought this. An entire japanese village worked on this for a week. More like there isn't another one of these in the world. The compensation comes through ticket sales and many viewers rather than that'll be $300 plus sales tax. A much easier sale.

Getting your head around making an investment in things that don't obviously involve people walking up to you handing you $20 bills that very day is something that is learned over time. Yesterday I had someone offer me basically a $15 per hour job. Yeah right, I want the security of knowing I have lost $2.50 per day or occasionally banked big time a whole $10. Why don't I just spend my free time watching people buy things at a vending machine andpick up the pennies that fall out of their pockets. Now I might have days where I might work for that amount of money just to get by but, it isn't generally something I will be doing every day and every day counting the hours, watching the clock. It is might seem tough finding opportunities but it really isn't if the quality is in your work and samples of already done things.

Another thing happens when you magically decide you are worth $30 instead of $15 per hour. You only have to work half the time to make the same money. This frees up the energy of real work to be done at such a greater output because you aren't trying to pace yourself to go some hourly distance. You magically are spending that new found half the time maybe not getting richer but seriously using your brain. Being able to judge your own work, make it better, see over time what could be added, realizing what is missing. That's a whole lot better than someone esle being paid to keep an eye on you sneeking up all proud to tell you what you haven't done or figured out and so it is a fail.

When you can get rid of the clock life goes by fast. So transforming what you do in your own time into what is all your own time is the goal. You also all of a sudden have the fee time to consider those paying projects that might really help others and pop a profit when done of $2500 or so. If not a profit at least a savings of a chunk of money, a return on investment. A bunch of mini investments all collected as one.

So, before I suggested spending 2 hours on an object was good. Well spending 10 hours on an object is better. It steps up peoples wonderment to a level not seen everyday in the manufactured world where someone figured out how to get something done in under a minute. You might buy someones elses props and sets but, you have to add something and make it your own.

[Greg Chrise]

Plan 31, the world is full of people that have figured out they can sit on momma;s couch, drive their girlfriends car, get their boss to pay their cell phone bill, use coupons at the pizza restaurant. These are not the people developing the markets and deciding how much things should cost. I have heard so many haunters starting their first haunt and tell me that the people in their area don't have any money and the ticket price needs to be pretty low. These same poor people can be found having a $100 per month cell phone plan, eating at a $23 per meal restaurant once a week to make themselves feel better.

Valueing the starting price of a haunt or a group of haunts needs to be a little higher so as to reflect a self esteme in the project. Cheap ticket prices will be percieved as a lacking offering. Something equally cheap, thrown together and not though out. It wll actually have far lower attendance than something higher priced and fully detailed. Simply not everyone is your customer. If they had a higher priority on a case of beer or a carton of cigarrettes, that isn't your fault. They simply were not your customers. In some businesses the phone can ring 100 times and only 2 of them are really the customers you want.

You are intrested in the self driven people, that seek out self driven displays and props and acting to admire a similar mind. The best customers are not mindless or non formed yet brains. The best and highest number of customers available are those you gave some credit to being something and deserving something they don't get to see everyday. Thats when you are no longer a haunt that starts out seeing 800 people the first year and one that start out seeing 7500. Realizing the customer is someone to impress and provide a service to, not a line of cattle to put tags on. Most people get into this business because it looks easy, they saw a haunt that sucked and think they can do better and that line should be their paying customers. Actually the perception should come from seeing a fully detailed awesome haunt and realize you can do this. Nothing to do with seeing the lines of people at first. More the end goal of what a haunt can be is realized first. What can a really good offering be. If this is the focus the lines will come. The advertisers will be making you offers not waiting for you to call in. The actors will have sought you out wanting to act. The set designers will come asking if they can help. It completely turns around everything being some chore or a things to do list that has to be done.

How do you communicate greatness on a business plan? Is it represented in a dollar figure? That doesn't work. Like what was said, a bank will offer you credit when you prove to them you already have that much money. If you have the skills and the sets you don't need them. So the business plan that just forecasts a budget and strikes out monthly expenses is heartless and thus doomed from the beginning. You just have to build the stuff and then crap seeks it's own level.

Plan 32, forget letting a TV camera into your haunt. They will only put the cute stuff on TV and you will end up with a line of 2 year old girls and their parents when these days the real money market is mid to late 20s. The demographic used to be ages 14 to 34. They grew up and now they have money.

[Greg Chrise]

Plan 32, medication? We don need no stinking medication.

[naberhoodhaunts]

Greg

lol...Some would say meds are needed... I dont think so. still alot to take in, in the process of reading through it again.
Thanks for the continuous feed back.

[Greg Chrise]

A starter haunt can actually be quite small. My crew and I would joke that we were going to trademark and franchise VooDoo Hop Scotch of death. A piece of chaulk, some voodoo symbols on drawn squares and a rock you toss to and that one you have to skip over while being attacked by a chainsaw.

What is actually a haunt can be the trunk of your car! Simply lock someone in there on Halloween night and drive around, not letting them out until they give you money. We can sell you a video on how it is done and a spooky CD plays and being in the trunk they are real close to the speakers. Taking roller coaster roads becomes driving off into the bayou for all the customer/victim knows.

A transworld back in the oughts the 2000 ishes, John Denley set up a display that we decided was an entire haunt. It was maybe 10 foot by 20 foot and consisted of two rooms and a dark hallway. One actor making sure you paid attention to what the master had to say. Two rooms full of simple but effective animatronics. All detailed out. I was later told how some of the haunts that people started out with were well below 1000 SF. So how many rooms would be in 1000 SF? Maybe 10 the way I do it and everyone of those stations can be something completely interactive that takes 5 minutes each to enjoy.

Jim always jokes that all you need is a story and open field and a shovel about graves in the area.

People give ghost tours for $30 a pop to groups of 10 to 30 people and they don't even go inside or own or rent any of the buildings they tell tale of.

I had a stretched limosine that was getting kind of torn up and thought many times seriously about adding it to mine or another haunt that saw more people, literally driving out into the wilderness on country roads to locations where actors were waiting. Sort of the Limo from Hells tour. You could actually advertise and pick people up at their homes. I actually got the idea as I got pulled over one night and the hillbilly cops started wearing me a little thing. There was bird seed from a wedding and they decided they wanted to search my car. They said there aren't any dead babies or weapons in here? I think they just wanted to see what the inside of a limo looked like put I promised myself if I ever did get pulled over again it would be completely weirded out. Opening a little door and something would pop out at them, the trunk would infact be an entire little diarama of dead babies. Maybe the doors would lock on them and gas would start pouring in. The cops had a little form you sign that you agreed to letting them search your car. I would have my own form that if you have a heart attack in searching my vehicle I'm not responcible. Somehow I figured this on the road show would bring in about $5,000 per show as they later got sued searching a vehicle with no probably cause. Go ahead take 2 hours out of my life asshole.

I was offered money to bring the limo as a shuttle at a larger haunt but wasn't into really tearing it up going from a mud parking lot to the front of their event. I just liked my car too much and it could have been much more of a business. I liked going to the laundromat in a limosine. In restoring it, we discovered all kinds of frame damage like it had already been though the Chuck Strange Stunt Show and never put it back together or sunk lots of money into it. I really should have just chopped the roof completely off and made it into something crazy or used it anyhow. At spooky level when I wanted class level again.

In my region there are what are called trades days. Giant flea markets that have been there for years that cover miles and miles. Outdoor spaces and many pavilions. Infact a few little things have been there for years. For $3 you can pet a miniature donkey and go into something about 16 foot by 8 that is for kids to experience a gold mine. I haven't been inside but I can imagine rock walls and an old prospector, some mine carts, maybe a water effect. Maybe what is in my head is better than actually seeing it. Little kids can pan for gold over a little trough and get to take home what they find. The thing is I know some people that have worked one trade days for 20 years and in November they saw 1.5 million people. You have to do a lot of dividing because there are so many places for people to be that they may never walk by your little event but I figured it could make $3,000 to $4,000 a month as it is open 4 days per month only. It could be 1000 SF, set up and taken away each month. It could be a complete living if one wanted that lifestyle. Or was trying to gather funds for something much more elaborate. Renting the space is only $150 a month. Maybe it is a once a year Halloween season thing.

Someone had set up one of those Beast Inflateables and upon hearing about it jumped in the car and drove the 50 minutes to see how it was doing. Apparently it did so well they thought closing after dark in the cold was just fine. It was not running people through by time I got there. It looked like it rolled up and fit into a 20 foot trailer that was 4 foot high made into a black plywood crate and a nice truck. Nothing too fancy except the Beast itself is big bucks. You need a few people to roll up very heavy rolls of this tarp like material and put it on skids.

Many haunts I have spied have wheels on everything like rock band roadies where everything can be moved in a few hours into trailers and gone. Lots of people have car trailers, 16 foot trailers and you can simply pay the fee for a roll back tow truck for really big things or there are services that move little buildings and there are also PODS you can rent. haven't done it but I have one 8 foot trailer that is enclosed I keep imagining all the air compressors and sound system are in and it rolls in and the wiring harness is rolled out across the top of the haunt and it is sort of built in somewhere out of view. It does get used to deliver props and kind of fits in there anyhow.

The trailer that actually moves the walls is small 4 by eight open trailer with side metal bars and the walls go inon their side, 22 or so at a time wedged in and it has an old timey 2,000 pound axle and it could never be sold for what I have into that one trailer. Even though there are semis and storage facilities, the small trailers and gathering the assistance of anyone with a pickup and a trailer, even just a pickup is better than moving a semi trailer 4 times. Move it there, unload it, Move it out of the way, Move it back to load it, Take it back to where it is parked. For a while I had a fork truck but it is still quicker to just have lots of people grabbing things. I got too used to putting really big things way up high. That sucked when the fork truck was so worn out it wouldn't start anymore. Still there again, I paid $800 for it and 3 years later got $730 scrap price for it. So 3 years for $70?

I prefer building things people can actually carry or no more than 2 people are required to set something up. My back actually got better when the haunt got sold. I had dreamed of being able to use all the ADA features myself, rolling through setting up with a powered wheel chair that has an oxygen tank, an ashtray, some kind of sugar IV going all the time, a coffee mug holder and a bullhorn to bark out orders. Another thing that just might not happen.

[Greg Chrise]

Seeing episodes of American Pickers reminds me of some of the old timey junk guys. One in particular had pretty much turned his pile of crap into mazes that the normal person would not walk through with out being distacted or feeling scared, lost? To me it was fun and actually inspiring. I was there to save a 67 hearse before the crusher got it. He took us to a second location that was wilder and more maze like that no one could have known how to get in and find something they might feel of value with out him giving the tour.

Buildings were assembled or more like cobbled from junk, there were sections of chain link fence where all the junk yard dogs would rush you in a limited pathway. He had taken hog fencing and made a canopy that things were hanging from 10 feet in the air. Large things like a cement mixer off the back of a truck was up on end and painted like a giant scary clown face.

I was able to make him laugh and he had some lines developed over the years. One of the dogs came up and I petted it. He said that's YOUR dog now, you have to come by and feed it everyday. When I got to the hearse the door had not opened for anyone since 1970. I walked up and the door opened. He said after all these years, that's your car. He was almost crying which got to me too. I had been wandering around in there describing what a haunted house was to a man who had been building crazy land for 60 years. Everytime I would tell him something, he would show me something else or similar.

So how much does it cost to have a haunt? How much does it cost to make a maze out of used refirgerators from trash day in an open area? How much does it cost to line up wrecked cars? Build spooy things only a demented mind would imagine building things out of? Or does a $300 vacuum form panel somehow impress you? Will it really give off that $300 feeling to your customers? Nope, they look like they are worth $7.50. Is that all you think your customers inteligence is worth?

I have experienced some cool outdoor crazy haunts as well. Pretty much a maze of junk dividing pathways and only the actors knew how to get through it. Since it really is junk it can be outside and rot. You will be surprised how a haunted house ends up doubling as a sales lot for old gas pumps and such. People saw it at Halloween time, How much?

You can have one small building with dozens of ways in and out that outdoor trails are shaped like flower pedals. The people go out into some amount of time and weirdness and return half a dozen times and the actual building only has maybe 3 rooms, moving walls and secret panels behind book cases. YOu will be financially rewarded for cleverness.

Plan 33, you must visit the Raven's Grin Inn, open all year long every night. Mount Carroll Illinois. Be There. Even worth the travel from New York. Or in my case Texas. Been there a few times. You will never recreate anything but it will support the entire theory of how much do things cost? Nothing but lots of imagination and physical work. $85,000 in welding rod, nails, screws, pizza. Not really. Maybe over 23 years? Maybe a million dollars? Yeah really. Yet the guys that write $150,000 checks for props at Transworld don't quite get it. Yeah we are scared that 24 foot tall flopping latex thing in the dark zone could really fall on someone. Thats all the scary it is.

I think to some degree, there is a larger part of the population that when they realize how much these toys cost, and someone was able to buy them it kind of pisses people off. You really like the old guy driving a red corvette right? He is now so cool. High dollar props are the same thing I think. It is better to have a hundred hours into something original that no one can pt a value on if they started digging. The other people that start digging are attorneys wondering if they can get something if they sue you. Here have an old water heater. If someone does over a 20 year period manage to get a cut that costs $160 at an out patient clinic to put a bandaid on a boo boo, and attorney sees $18,000 in toy buying power or ten times that.

[Greg Chrise]

Certainly it costs money to go get things and haul it home. I got a little nuts and even before there was a craigs list found a building to tear down that was metal with a lumber frame. It was treated lumber and it became enough lumber for a complete 2,000 Sf wall system. Another place someone had dumped a 6 foot pile of 2 by 6's, an old lady I knew wanted it gone. To improve the property, make sure no animals live in there and the fear of fueling a fire. This became countless bridges, haunted porches, even the faces of buildings. It was actually a boat house someone had torn down and dumped. It had been on fire but tons of it were salvageable.

I kind of duplicated then surpassed the concept of a $75,000 haunt. I kept track. It cost $3500. I ran it for 5 years, probably stored things for 10 while it came together and off season, It sold for $4,000. So my real margine was intended all along to be storage costs versus how many paying customers I could get into. I can actually sit down and justify every expense that the man would have spent $75,000. I way exceeded how the haunt worked in creativity. I'm just wonky and refuse to let the bugs out of my wallet. Anybody can spend money. It is a skill to make money.

How much does it cost? I accidentally made $400 Crap! Of course it took 10 years to cash in. Nope how long ago was 1998? What year is this? I must have time traveled again. Crap again! I can't stay in one place. There is alot here still. All I need to do is have a miniature donkey or customers to pet and I'm livin the life!

Over the years I had conversations with people that had sold their haunts. It is both tramatic as well as a fresh start in many ways. It doesn't mean my next one will cost $75,000. There is always fresh junk out there, a new palet of colors if you will. There is also the overall option that it really is junk. You can actually just walk away from it. Knock yourself out, clean that mess up. Ride away in a Cadillac or on a $20 bicycle with a hobo bag, a dog and uncontrollable insane laughter. It's all good. Move place to place leaving behind you contribution to collected and catagorized toxic waste. What people will hold dear when it is presented to them of some value is actually quite hillarious. You just need to make sure in all this stone cold genius that you are indeed making a living. The money goes into your well being.

Plan 34, Invest in yourself, not stuff. Make sure you eat good things and sample the coffees of the world. Really good things. Make your brain work or what ever you call that, that is happening inside my head.

Back in the day when I was figuring out what doing business was I had another book that was only $8 circa 1979. Maybe that was a lot of money back then? In many essays it described an entrepenuerial challenge where a man was dropped off in a town with $100 and no luggage. He bought clean clothes, a hotel room for a week and a few dinners. He walked out a week later with $2600 just finding opportunity in a strange town no one else had realized was not complete. Someone had product they couldn't pay to ship, someone else needed the product shipped and he got a percentage of a very big deal he crafted.

Another story was a guy spent years finding out the value of a dollar. He organized 5 large farms of potatoes to get their produce to market, became partners with someone with refrigeration in rail road cars and developed a cutting machine. Every rail car full of potatoes now cut into french fries and cooled for travel all the way acrossed the country when sold paid $1. Of course it ended up being quite the sensation and there were lots of dollars and way many farms having problems selling things. Ever hear of McDonald's? Can you imagine driving around no where's ville in a model T ford trying to put all the pieces together changing tires pretty often? Even though Mickey D's started half a century later, this is who now ownes those farms. Can you say pay day boys and girls? Sure you can.

I have to say I have one weird freind that pops up to get paid to tear down buildings, comes by with coffins he found in a barn, finds connections of someone has to get rid of junk, has load something that weighs 8,000 pounds on a rented trailer skills. Again, most of these things happen off the grid where people haven't even come to the idea that maybe they should list this on craigs list? Oh that's a pain in the butt, who can help without all that mess? Ta Da! (Insert name here)

[No_Regret]

I'll tell you what Greg, you seem to have an endless supply of awesome information. I love reading what you type. Alot of what you say scares me, but yet at the same time, clears alot of things up.

I was set on going to a bank and doing the whole "business plan" idea to take a loan out to start up a haunted house. Your posts may have just saved me the hassle.

One thing I am learning to do right now is to try to branch out, and make as many connections with people as possible. It can never hurt you to know alot of people.

I know you dont seem to like the idea of a partnership when it comes to operating a business, especially one like a haunted house, but I disagree with that one. I feel like that by having a partner, you can cut the risk of having a big loss out by a small margin, and have the whole "two heads are better than one" theory of coming up with ideas, and troubleshooting other ideas.

[No_Regret]

At the end of the day, you are going to be splitting your net profits with your partner, but is that necessarily a bad thing?

And if you can begin to run a successful enough business, you could potentially save up and go open and operate a second business on your own. Just another thought.

[Greg Chrise]

Old age kind of makes you cranky enough that you don't play well with others. Pretty much every business I had went on with out me for decades as I brought one good employee up to total speed or a partner that began with nothing but one skill that was needed by a specific business really had no better opportunities in life and with out a partner got rich or became 5 foot wide or took care of their extended families quite well.

There is some sociology that is happening. When you are young you feel like it doesn't matter, if you spend money you can just go make more, if you fail you just get up and do it again. But with partners it can happen right now. However can you really find that match that has as much to offer and no alterior motives and is equally willing to spend every penny like it is a savings account or does it work out that some how THEIR expenses are more important and you get your 50% of the proceeds AFTER THEIR investment is met. Well that is shark crap. Sometimes it might be the only means for people to feel like they have some backing or to get a leg up at all. Sort of a comfort zone.

I got into an argument with an old pro about taking over a high dollar attraction. It brought light to yes, there are all sorts of buzz words and ways of doing things that seem quite normal and the thing to do in business. If it is $650,000 you need you find a partner right? If you take over the right attaction you can just sit around and do other things and it will all work out. You can save or make sure you get some small percentage every year until it runs into the ground. You can go years somehow finding lunch money from some other source of income and turn a profit 10 year down the line.

However the one thing that people always forget about whether it is a business, home or car ownership in the first pride of ownership moments is that everything rots. Also there are taxes on things that no one seems to have any experience paying or calculating into all these wonderous deals that make sure they are never what it started out to be. For a business to really survive, pay all the bills and so much more it has to make serious margine in a short period of time before everything rots and has no intrinsic value.

50% of nothing is still nothing. 50% of some asset like the realestate or the overall inventory might sound good but it usually isn't as liquid as those sales people said, or the failed guys looking for partners hold 100% of the only thing that hasn't rotted somehow. In the beginning it was despiration and one chance or the tenth time trying out this formula that still has Las Vegas Odds of really making it to profit level.

With a haunt, not only do you have all the walls and electical systems but some how all the masks lighting fog machines and lots of the latex and props all was destroyed after a single year. Insurance money goes out the door never to be seen again, inspections rake up to higher standards every year, more compliance and advertising money is not something you spend money on once and it works for ever like a timex. More people involved expecting to have the whole system ramp up to meet the needs of the many usually ends up in just paying all the bills and no one person walking away with ven a portion of what they could do even having a McJob. So disillusionment sets in eventually.

In middle age I got a little smarter and pretended to be that one best employee and hopeful suggestion maker. I ended up being helpers that turned people's businesses around that gave me the businesses for super cheap liquidation of equipment for all the help I really did for them. Every where I worked in between businesses there was always one guy that is still there putting up with the shit 20 and 30 years later. Putting up with things I certainly would not and didn't.

It is human nature that at some point someone takes over and becomes an asshole and someone has to go and someone has actually earned something and either gets it or it is tough shit.

[Greg Chrise]

You can be a serial entrepeuner, and just keep starting businesses and merger them, sell them, become a consultant. You can become a totally free advisor to 100 companies and be in on the stock options. A real study of businesses is that they can't for some reason stay just a normal little happy machine that does something and makes enough money to make a living. It has to grow and grow and try new things and adapt and grow and evey growth spirt is where you make the money, if some one made you get an insurance policy there is a mark up on that and everything else and you make money by the frequency of how you have to comply with things and get a pay check for everything you have to do. Even owning or becoming part owner of something thus becomes an ever more demanding job until wait a minute, it isn't able to grow anymore. Things are changing and we have to do something and it isn't going to pay something unless we sell out and grab a percentage. Or we have to go public or get a Japanese guy to buy all this or get a Chinese company to take it over and be the operating management company and on paper we have all these holdings. We don't care if the bank is making money because we are making 10 times that because we had to deal with the banking issues.

Okay none of that sounds like a haunted house. It sound like why the economy failed. A haunted house can be a business that over a ver long period of time, to the tune of 20 years become something. The only thing that has any intrinsic value is what is in you head as having worked, looks good, is enjoyable for the actors to do and thats the end of it. But, for some reason everyone has to go through all these false start issues and rely on previous experiences being an employee guessing what the banks reason for doing this or that. Or how this technique of problem solving might apply. Again way too complicated.

So after years of experience I began to ask myself why I helped all these idiots. Why did someone that needed the lowly help of me of all people get my help and get what they wanted, the dream of their life. Why have I made millions for people and if I was to walk in and ask to bum $25 or $20,000 they have a thousand conditions? Because I taught them to think that way. What ever money they make is theirs.

You can right now do anything that will make more money than some long drawn out haunt brand that is years in the making. You could find that one car in a barn somewhere or that one antique for $5,000 and double your money. You could even put the entire deal on someone's credit cards and flip it right now and have no fees. But now building something that is going to become a life style is another matter all together.

So, I made it a point to study those weirdo haunters that made the test of time by themselves and in all the stable deals and all the not so stable deals that sort of define where they are as a player and in the market as a whole. If you rely on anyone else, a partner a contractor or what ever to do any major portion of your deal, you haven't leaned how to do the whole deal. You only know the mechanics of getting someone to do this other part somehow and hoping they are as good. They won't be.

In some of the companies I deal with here it is actually hillarious. We are subcontractors and generally I make my deal with who ever actually owns the company but I might have 5 middle men calling me in the course of business calling for our services. So over time to incentivise all the long hours, gung ho commitment and such this one owner makes everyone a partner and vice president of this or that. To compensate I make my helpers vice president of troweling, vice president of hose holding and executive vice president of hand sanding. Because when it all went down, these people were still actually employees with fancy titles. When they screwed up or times were slow they always could be booted out the door and pop up at another business to continue what ever their drag was somewhere else. For some reason none of these people ever seemed to have some legal binding document that they were part owners because they would then also be part responcible for the billions in debt all these companies got themselves into, the reason everyone has to put in all these long hours anyhow to make sure they surpass the debt and their payroll every week.

In the real world even though they might have been made a partner or vice president and executive superintendent of something fancy, no one is actually going to work from 5 AM to 8 PM 6 days a week. They may put in the hours but they are just going to at some point go though the motions and have all the answers. Long term they are going to figure out all the got was a title and a demand to do this or hit the street. So there is presenteeism. The hours make them chronically sick, they realy only do aout 4 hours of real work aday and figure they are getting over making so many dollars for those 4 hours until the jig is up.

Now in reality, a haunted house is really only demanding of super long hours for a month or six weeks so maybe it can be done. It is the whole purpose of not really kiling yourself off season and pacing out the whole year but, when you do work it is like an olympic event and it gets done. If you chose to make it a fast paced deal to reach some super goal, it might pay off. Typically people given the right pressures will injure themselves, get into car accidents, forget they left the kitchen on fire, blow out a heart valve, put on the pounds, offend everyone they meet and all the while blow harding about how they are owners in a business instead of doing something with their hands that yeilds money.

You can't take someone with street smarts and someone with an academic pedigree mannerisms and make it work. Maybe for a short time the street smart guy plays along but as soon as all the little forms or mannerisms are revieled who needs the college degree guy and his high ass demand for money? A haunted house is not necessarily the type of business that has to list a professional engineer and a bar registered attorney on the board of directors or the payroll. Instead if you need these things you rent them for a short period of time. If they don't produce they don't get their final check. You might have to pay $50 to $375 per hour for some short term but that is SO much better than all the time it takes to make someone partners and disolve what ever is neccessary to get them out.

There will be so many other things like the entire population has had to leave town for lack of work, there are 5 competitors now, someone with serious money is coming to your town, they might not stay but, for a couple years are going to kick your ass for no reason what so ever. And you want to make you domestic life a serious hassle on top of that?

People in general totally over value what they think they are worth or what they are expecting to get out of this if something happens in the worst case scenario or if at some point they just simply find they want some free time. Everyone seems to think that the median income of the country is $43,000 and that's how much it is. Or they have "I want to be comfortable" in their mind. There is nothing comfortable about putting so many hours in you discover you are really making $2 an hour as so many real haunters discover. Of course it depends on what town and what market you are dealing with.

The problem is, all of these market that really are something have already been capitalized on. There are already household named haunts in those towns and you can't just walk in because they have given their all for 20 years. So what is left is all the small towns with much lower end yeilds. I'm just being totally realistic. Are you going to take you haunt panels that have been laying outdoors for a year to the big city and make half a million? It has been done actually. The guy I have in mind I thought for years was a doofus but years later I'm thinking this guy was a stone cold genius. Or at least he had learned from the past 25 partners how to do it all and own everything.

[Greg Chrise]

What really ends up happening is down the road you have to find new younger people to be all excited to have an opportunity because they have no idea what they are doing but they are going to give it their all. If only for the sake of knowing everything.

So on the first day, do you hand some jack weasel the keys to your 25 year investment and say it's yours? I'm making you manager, partners even, fire everyone, hire a bunch of people who know nothing and run my shit into the ground? No. You get rid of the asshole that has no idea how much long term investment things really take. You empower people who really care no matter what their status and no matter how much it pays. That aren't fooled with titles or different colored uniforms, you want the people that literally cry because you gave them a 25 cent raise and it wasn't the $20 a month more it was that they were really noticed for working harder than everyone else. The ones that are passionate.

So when it comes right down to it, the word partners is a substitute for how can I use other peoples money, other peoples knowledge but rarely is it how can I get someone to do all the work for me. And what ever the deal is, at some point it will just become okay name that tune. It is rare to make a deal with someone and they didn't have some upper hand or alterior motive so maybe you are setting yourself up to be the sucker in the end?

But now we are doing partnerships like it is 1870 and here we have the internet where any information you can think of totally replaces any higher learning or information of how to do something. So what you really need is people that will actually do things. Possibly for delayed gratifcation but actually do something, not just think of things that could be done and debate about what would be so cool. Okay maybe we will do that in 5 years. Fail.

When all these businesses you read about everyday hit the fan, they go into bankrupsty court and get bought out of debt by some other group who will either advance the thing or liquidate everything just to make sure a competitor is totally gone and ruined. Still it works the same for the owners on getting paid to some degree even though they are the ones that ran it into the ground. When a haunt runs aground, there is nothing of value there. Some stake holder might get pennies on the dollar that they had in expenses but then it is way over. It isn't a growth oriented payday business. It is a cycle whether that is 5 years or 30 years in cycle. You too can be worth lots of money on paper. It won't get you anything. Just pieces of paper that supposedly say things. You can't take it to the paper store and cash it in.

All I'm saying is don't fantisize. Really do a poll of markets like yours, is it one guy, a family, two friends that have been together since high school, two families, two major foundation level organizations, a network of secret investors, a kid that has a day job in a fish market working for his mom?

[Greg Chrise]

Some people need to experiment and learn. No problem. Others are actually quite capable of starting out with absolutely nothing and making it all the way on their own. They just need to realize that at some point being the haunt owner is no longer fun sometimes. You end up being at the casino behind the glass watching the tricksters try to take advantage of you. You actually let them take advantage of you as long as it achieves some goal. Then you shut them down and tell them the last 4 hours was for nothing cause you cheated. How much fun is that?

You discover your partner threw in a little management fee you didn't know about for a year or two, or you discover the guy you have been paying rent to didn't really own the property all along. Or late at night everyone is yelling at each other because they have been dumb and should have been millionares like the avon lady already instead of having their car repossessed. The secret there is the avon lady is really being subsidized somehow that isn't obvious but, she looks like a success. So is the young guy with the lawn mowers driving a $50,000 truck. It isn't real. It isn't paid for.

A haunt is something that can be totally paid for up front and reap the income. Even the word profits is kind of screwed up. Spend money, make money. Spend the money you make. Make some more money. Profits means paying yet some other obligation that doesn't have to exist unless you let it exist. And when markets are small, you want as few obligations as possible.

And you will have people offer to be your partner but they are already beholding to so many other partners in their lives that are somehow going to be making decisions for you. You might as well just run out into traffic right now and get over with it. If what ever you are planning is going to have some contract involved and that will certainly make sure all the agrements are kept straight?, guess what, you will end up in court and this magical word profits goes to the attorneys. Decades of profits. Thats how things work. No one give a crap until there is something to get.

So really if you are married or have a significant other, you already have a partner. If you are alone, just throwing that word out there isn't going to fix things. You need to just figure out what services and real hands on work you need from others and estimate how much that is going to cost. Or can you be a star and learn and do it yourself using the power of the internet?

We are all your partners if given enough information.